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deck—there is no means of lifting it.”
    “Ha! I find
the notion absurd!” Pushing his way through the crowd, the poet
squirmed his way onstage. He hopped over to a section of what he
thought to be a suspicious panel and the magician, gaping
slack-jawed, gave an inarticulate croak. Weavil scuffed his feet
along the platform right before the mirror. Immediately, a tiny,
perceptible lever presented itself. Now it was Weavil’s turn to
guffaw.
    “So! The trap
of which I speak runs so and so. When the smoke engulfs the
subject, it merely suffices to trip this valve, which triggers the
door and renders the volunteer sliding helplessly down a hole. I
stand vindicated.” Nodding triumph, Weavil addressed the crowd.
“This is the way a noble man snatches your coin and harps on about
idiotic things like ‘nesispheres’. Dark dorlords? Nuzbek, couldn’t
you have come up with something better?”
    Nuzbek’s lips
quivered. A malice like none ever seemed to burn in his crepuscular
eyes. He shouted a sinister challenge: “An outlandish fantasy! You
are deranged, Weavil. Even in your diseased imagination. I hereby
denounce you as a clod and a simpleton. Nolpin! Apprehend this
louse before I loose my toad-turning magic on him.”
    Weavil ignored
the threat. “I hear a familiar voice. Hark! Can it be Conikraul?”
He tipped an ear, knelt on the planks and implored the audience to
silence. “Look, I spring the trap and what do I find? A chubby arm,
a podgy shin, a milk-white face.”
    “’Tis an
illusion only!” shrilled Nuzbek. “I see only a varnished
crossboard, and a joist, in faint reminiscence perhaps of a human
limb, owing to this afternoon sunlight, I suppose. I brand you a
blackguard and a lunatic, Weavil—not to mention an overweening
pip!”
    A angry shout
rose from the audience. A rustling of flustered patrons and
demonstrators rounded on the stage. “Here, you spider-tongued
mountebank! It is Conikraul we see. Move aside so we can inspect
this platform of yours.”
    “Yes, you
hoaxing grifter—the thickness of the smoke we saw earlier brings us
to doubt. Let us climb your stage and have a look at your trap, the
one that Weavil has exposed.”
    The magician
tottered from foot to foot. “The requests are impossible! How can I
permit many hecklers to mount my stage? I prohibit plebeians of any
sort to ascend!”
    “An outrage!”
shrieked a high-born woman dressed in a flowing green gown. “Weavil
ascends the stage. Why not us?”
    “Indeed!”
stormed another patron. “Are you implying that we are plebeians and
not Weavil?”
    A group of men
who were better cargo lifters than logicians accredited the
declaration as an insult. They leapt to scramble onstage. The crowd
was flung into pandemonium. A trio of indignant sailors gained the
stage brandishing fists and offering aggressive action. Nuzbek,
Nolpin and Boulm, managed to pitch the instigators into the crowd,
but several of the defenders regrouped and ploughed onstage, along
with five rugged dockworkers. They slapped Nuzbek’s attendants
aside and seized the magician and began administering an incisive
punishment.
    Nuzbek’s buxom
helpers fled in panic. Conikraul was hauled up from the crawlspace
and was handed to safety. Nuzbek, horror-stricken, was ripped off
the stage like a scarecrow. He watched in frozen disbelief as a
dozen members of the audience began pillaging his storehouse
concealed underneath the slats. Uttering moans of distress, he
watched through sunken eyes as items of value were flung onto the
lawn: fire-sticks, gyros, crystal runestones, ghost globes, bird
cages, costumes, costly robes, polished horns, magic boots, gilded
urns, imploding, smog-ridden balloons, an ornate fume thrower
engraved with the gyrfalcons of Karsh. With the assistance of the
seamen, they tore the awning down, dismantled the timbers and flung
the segments about in disorderly ruin. Nolpin was forced to
surrender his monies that had been accepted for the