Sween Myth-tery of Life   ::   Asprin Robert

"Grimble," I said, letting my voice take on a bit of an edge. "Watch my lips. I said she's my administrative assistant. Got it?"

"Yes. I ... Quite."

The Chancellor seemed to pull in on himself a bit as he licked his lips nervously, but he rallied back gamely.

"Very well. Let me show you our expanded operation."

While Grimble might have been essentially unchanged, physically or morally, his facilities were another matter entirely. He had formerly worked alone in a tiny, cramped cubicle filled past capacity with stacks and piles of paper. The paper was still there, but that's about all that remained the same. Instead of the cubicle, it seemed he was now working out of a spacious, though still windowless, room ... or, at least, a room that would have been spacious if he had it to himself.

Instead, however, there were over a dozen individuals crammed into the space, apparently preoccupied with their work, which seemed to entail nothing more than generating additional stacks of paper, all covered by columns and rows of numbers. They didn't look up as we came in, and Grimble made no effort to halt their work or make introductions, but I noticed that they all had the same fevered glint to their eyes that I had originally assumed to be unique to Grimble.

"It seems that the current financial crisis hasn't caused many cutbacks in your operation," Aahz said dryly.

"Of course not" Grimble replied easily. "That's only to be expected."

"How's that?" I said.

"Well, Lord Skeeve," the Chancellor smiled, "you'll find that accountants are pretty much like vultures ... we thrive when things are worse for other people. You see, when a kingdom or company is doing well, no one wants to be bothered with budgets, much less cost savings. As long as there's money in the coffers, they're happy. On the other hand, when the operation is on the skids, such as is currently the case with Possiltum, then everyone wants answers ... or miracles ... and it's up to us irritating beancounters to provide them. More analysis means more man-hours, which in turn means a larger staff and expanded facilities."

"Charming" Aahz growled, but Grimble ignored him.

"So," he said, rubbing his hands together like a blow-fly, "what would you like to address first? Perhaps we could discuss our overall approach and strategy over lunch?"

"Umm ..."I said intelligently.

The horrible truth was that, now that I was actually confronted by Grimble and his paper mountains, I didn't have the foggiest notion of how to proceed.