"Soldi—?"

"I said, do you copy that?!"

"Sir, yes sir!" Peez barked back.

"I can't heeeeearrrrr youuu!"

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Now you rise up, you get some coffee into your sorry gut, and you march yourself right out of this hotel room and off to your next battle. And that is a battle which you will win, is that clear?"

"But I—"

"I said, is that clear?"

"Sir, yes sir!"

"Good. Now move 'em out!"

Fully under Teddy Tumtum's control, Peez snapped to attention, slapped the bear to Right Shoulder Arms, and marched out of her hotel room on the double. Just as the door swung closed behind them, she shook off his charismatic spell long enough to say, "Coffee's not a bad idea. Know where I could get some?"

"You want to know where you can get coffee in Seattle?" The sound of a teddy bear plotzing from shock echoed through the hotel corridors.

* * *

Martin Agparak was not having a good workday. Because of the nature of his craft, he labored in a more-or-less open-air situation. The tools of his trade were sheltered from the weather in a series of watertight cupboards that were in turn mounted on the back wall of a large shed. The shed itself looked as if it had encountered a giant with a chainsaw who had sawed it neatly in half, right along the rooftree, leaving it with the same three-wall construction favored by dollhouses everywhere. Martin's actual workspace was outside the halved shed, a suitably huge open area roofed only by a tarp. It was just what he needed.

The problem in general was, when you worked out in the open like that, some people considered it to be a likewise open invitation to no-holds-barred kibitzing. They refused to understand that you could be distracted and that you did not want to listen to their ongoing stream of unwanted conversation.

The problem at the moment was that not all such clueless people were, well, people.

"So then she says to me, she says, 'Do you know where I could get some coffee around here?' and I say to her, I say—"

"Teddy Tumtum, shut up." Peez picked up the garrulous bear and tossed him back over one shoulder. He landed in a big pile of sawdust.

Sawdust, like rain and coffee, was everywhere.

Martin Agparak watched the bear's trajectory and ultimate soft landing dispassionately. "Sounds like one of Edwina's creations," he remarked. "Same kinda pushy."

Peez felt her face color up. "That's not how I would describe it," she said.

"Sure. She's your mother." Martin leaned back against the trunk of what had once been a towering pine tree. When Peez had first come into the glorified lumberyard that served as his studio, he'd been in the process of removing the last of its bark. Her visit had forced him to put off beginning the real work. He wasn't too pleased by the interruption and he didn't mind showing his displeasure by being rude.

"If you find her style to be so abrasive, why have you signed on with E. Godz, Inc. in the first place?" Peez asked somewhat sharply.

Martin shrugged. He was a young man in top physical condition, and the Mariners singlet he wore to work in showed off his muscular arms to advantage. A simple shrug from him should have been poetry in motion, but his attitude reduced the poetry to a men's room wall limerick.

"Because I can use the contacts that membership gives me," he said. "You know the old saying about us Eskimos: We got thirty-seven words for snow but not one for networking."

Peez's brow creased. "I thought you called yourselves Inuit. I thought that Eskimo wasn't—"

"Was, wasn't, was again, who cares?" A pair of safety goggles was perched atop his head. Now he pulled them back down over his eyes and turned his back on Peez, the better to study the log before him. "That's the sort of thing that bothers the folks whose ancestors were actually native to this place; not me. As an Eskimo, I'm a real out-of- towner. I'd call myself Tinkerbell if it gave me a bigger market share."

He pulled a piece of chalk from the back pocket of his skin-tight jeans and made a few preliminary markings at one end of the log. Peez recognized the stylized face of Raven. Moving down the log, Martin Agparak sketched in quick succession the images of Bear, Wolf and Salmon, then paused for a moment at the bottom of the severed trunk, thought long and hard, then added the final face.

"What—?" Peez peered at the chalked lines, trying to recognize which spirit the young Inuit artist had chosen to invoke for his totem pole in the making. Try as she might, she couldn't figure the last one out at all. "What is that supposed to be?"

"Huh?" Having finished the drawing, Martin was now over at his workbench, selecting a chainsaw of the proper size with which to begin the actual carving. "Oh. I guess you don't have kids." He popped on a pair of soundproof earphones. "If you did, you wouldn't just recognize that one, you'd probably be trying to kick the crap out of it." He found the saw he wanted and revved it up. "Don't worry; it'll look much more familiar once I paint it purple."

Peez stood there dumbstruck, staring at the now-recognizable face that would be the base of Martin's totem pole. "Purple ..." she repeated, locking eyes with that vapid, grinning, irrationally irritating icon of toddler TV. Martin ignored her and began to carve.

"Yow!" said a voice by her ankle. It was Teddy Tumtum who had managed to pull himself out of the sawdust pile and across the floor to rejoin his mistress. "Am I seeing things? Do my glassy eyes behold that heinous purple blobosaurus on a totem pole? Naaahh, can't be. I must be hallucinating. I blame myself for chug-a-lugging that quadruple espresso before we came in here. Those lemon twists will get me every time."

Martin stopped his chainsaw. "What did you say?" Amazingly enough, he had heard Teddy Tumtum's words even through the earphones. Or perhaps it was not so amazing after all: Peez had lifted the A.R.S. on the little bear when she entered Agparak's open-air studio. As heir presumptive to the E. Godz, Inc. empire, Peez could tote Teddy Tumtum along as a bespelled Object of Great Power, but as a plain old ordinary-looking teddybear? No. Not if she wanted to maintain her credibility with her potential supporters as a serious contender for the corporate throne. Teddy Tumtum's ability to talk was the gift of magic, and as such, stronger than any sound-blocking device available to mere mortals.

"I said that anyone who'd put that thing on a totem pole is probably wanted by the FBI for a slew of lesser crimes against nature and humanity," Teddy Tumtum replied sweetly.

Martin set down the chainsaw and took off his earphones. "Look, I'm doing this job for a big computer company exec who does have children. If I showed you the down payment check, you'd choke on your own stuffing. How about taking a look around, seeing some of my other pieces before you get all bent about this one?"

He gestured at the small army of finished and half-finished totem poles standing guard at various points under the big tarp. The timeless features of Bear and Whale, Wolf and Raven shared poles with the leering features of sports stars, politicians, pop idols, and other celebrities. One pole featured none of the old spirit animals. After Agparak had carved in all the members of one particularly testosterone-challenged boy band, there simply wasn't enough room.

"This is what you do?" Peez gasped. "But—but I thought your carvings were intended to raise the power!"

"I'd rather raise the rent. Hey, there's all kinds of beliefs in this world, all kinds of totems. Who are you to judge?"

"You mean we came all this way across the country to talk to a sellout?"

Agparak gave her a hard look. "No, you came to talk to me, the representative of one of E. Godz, Inc.'s most profitable subsidiaries. I happen to know that my contributions account for a major chunk of your yearly income, with unspecified significant growth potential predicted within the next fiscal year. Translation: I'm teaching my little brother how to use a chainsaw without cutting his foot off."