Robert Asprin - Class Dis-Mythed

I was puzzled. Why would five of them own up to causing a near-fatal accident when four of them, and maybe all five, had to be lying? Why did they want to stay with me so badly? For that was what they wanted, without exception.

The last to talk with me, Jinetta, had hung back at the door. "You'll keep us on, now that you know what—who the joker was. Right?" She had given me a meaningful glance then slipped off into the dim hallway. Her confession had sounded as sincere as the others, all of which I now doubted.

Bunny and I now really suspected Bee, who was looking mournful. As soon as the meal was finished, he sprang up.

"I'll do the dishes, Miss Bunny," he volunteered.

The others listlessly took on the other chores. Pologne went for the broom and pan. Freezia cleaned the table. Even Melvine pushed the benches back under the edges of the table.

I cleared my throat.

"I've, uh, decided," I began. The students whirled to face me. "I've decided you can stay. I've had a talk with the, er, perpetrator."

"Hurray!" Melvine whooped, sailing into the air and zooming around the ceiling like a flannel-clad bumblebee.

"Hold the happiness," I said. "This is provisionary. I will go on with the lessons if, and only if, there are no more near-death experiences and no more thefts. I want the six of you to start getting along again the way you did in Humulus. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Skeeve!" they chorused. Even Bee cheered up.

Bunny's eyebrows rose to frame the question that she did not ask out loud: why?

I hated to admit the truth even to myself: I didn't want to fail. I had taken on this class. I saw their misbehavior as a failure on my part to express my wishes and make them stick. I would have to be very clear from that moment on to let them know everything I wanted from them. On the other hand, I could hear in my head the voice of my mother, who had been a teacher, and a good one, all her adult life.

"And if they stick beans up their noses, will you feel responsible because you didn't tell them not to?"

I didn't know. I might. But I had to try. The students, and my own self-esteem, were counting on me.

"Aaaarroroooorrraaaaagghh!"

A huge, purple form came rushing into the courtyard where I was teaching advanced levitation. It bore down upon the cluster of students who were holding themselves above the ground and a variety of objects at different levels around them. Bee immediately lost focus and fell heavily to the flagstones. Melvine took off for the top of the trees. Tolk let out a whimper of pleasure and started swimming through the air toward the being.

The Pervects screamed then, seemingly caught in mid-shriek, raised their hands as if they were calling the spirits of the dead. The purple form was hoisted into the air.

"Oh, I say!" it exclaimed.

Chumley. I chuckled. "Let him down, girls! It's my friend Big Crunch."

"He is?" Jinetta asked. "Oh! Of course it is. I am so sorry, Mr. Troll. Permit me."

"I'll do it," Pologne snapped out.

"If you want," the tallest Pervect said.

The Troll was lowered gently to the ground. I was reasonably pleased. That exchange had even passed for civility.

The preceding week had tried my patience in more ways than one. I had gained no more insight on who was responsible for the explosion. Bee was still my major suspect, which I based on the absence of a confession and the fact he was the only one of the six who might ever have had close experience with ordnance weapons. General observation would have made him the last person I should ever have considered. He continued to be polite, hard-working and cooperative.

So had the others. In fact, each one was determined to show me that he or she was THE most cooperative, willing and hard-working pupil who had ever lived anywhere in the universe. Unfortunately that cooperation still didn't extend to one another. The distrust had taken firm hold, and refused to be detached. Even the Pervects were beginning to keep one another at arm's length. It distracted me from being able to concentrate. My lesson plan began to look like a dance chart, making sure none of them spent too much time with any of the others.

Instead, they all made efforts to spend as much time as possible with Bunny or me. Each clamored for private instruction and practical training from me. I ran through all the ideas I could glean from my own experiences, and not a few I stole from the shows on the Crystal Network, like having them extract a fragile glass bubble, intact, from a nest of horned weaselsnakes without getting bitten. As usual, each tackled the tasks in different ways. The Pervects still tended to go for the academic approach, but I was pleased to see that more frequently than ever they put aside the books and tried to analyze the situation in the real world. Bee looked at everything from a logistics and supply point of view. I thought his solution was the most elegant of all, setting out the weaselsnakes' favorite prey at a distance from the nest, and retrieving the bubble at his leisure. Tolk tried to make everything his friend, disastrous in the experiment with shield-hornets, but very successful in getting the local townsfolk to lend him enough ingredients to make a pan of scones. Melvine whined and complained a lot, but away from the distraction of others he buckled down. He really was as smart as Markie thought he was. His easy command of magikal force had made him lazy. Once he stopped blasting everything full force, he became more effective. The surgical precision with which he whisked the glass ball out of the snake nest was a beautiful sight to behold. I wished the others had been there to see it, or even evinced the most remote interest in hearing my recitation of Melvine's success.

They were scrupulously polite at meals, and each vied to take over Bunny's chores. It had escalated to the point where the Pervects had fought over cleaning the windows and ended up making new curtains for all of the inn's many casements. Melvine had made it a matter of honor to seal up every crack in the old building's walls, to the point where the inn was now virtually airtight. When the front door slammed, all of our ears popped. Tolk weeded the garden and 'healed' all the plants of black spot and wilt. The vegetables grew visibly larger after that. Bee inventoried everything not indicated as private property in the neatest handwriting I had ever seen. For the first time, I knew that Isstvan had left me nineteen and a third kegs of beer, four hundred and fifty-three bottles of indifferent wine and eight bottles of wine so good it should be saved for coronations, and three well-hidden casks of hard spirits. I was glad I hadn't known about all of that in my dipsomaniac phase. Bunny enjoyed the leisure to an extent, but told me privately she was getting bored having nothing to do. She spent more and more time each day communicating with her friends through Bytina.

The practical jokes had gone on in a minor way. I was sorry I hadn't given them my mother's lectures on beans up their noses, because each time I had forbidden a certain behavior, they came up with something else that didn't violate any of the previous rules. One night someone had short-sheeted all of the students' beds. Whoever the troublemaker was had learned to include everybody in the prank, including him or herself. When I forbade apple-pie beds, then everybody's clean clothes turned up tied in wet knots. That morning's exercises had been conducted in pajamas and bathrobes. At no time were my or Bunny's things disturbed, and nothing else of ours went missing. I suppose I could have put the annoyances down to the usual social interaction between young people, but I couldn't, not after the exploding ring incident.