“Oh, I’ve already got a general idea as to what we’ll be doing,” Aahz admitted.
“Isn’t he sweet?” Tanda grimaced. “Would you mind sharing it with us, Aahz? We’ve got a stake in this, too.”
“Well,” he began lazily, “the name of the game is delay and demoralize. The way I figure it, we aren’t going to overpower them. We haven’t got enough going for us to even try that.”
I bit back a sarcastic observation and let him continue.
“Delay and demoralize we should be able to do, though,” Aahz smiled. “Right off the bat, we’ve got two big weapons going for us in that kind of a fight.”
“Ajax and Gus,” I supplied helpfully.
“Fear and bureaucracy,” Aahz corrected.
“How’s that again?” Tanda frowned.
“Tanda, my girl,” Aahz smiled, “you’ve been spoiled by your skylarking through the dimensions. You’ve forgotten how the man on the street thinks. The average person in any dimension doesn’t know the first thing about magik, particularly about its limitations. If the kid here tells ‘em he can make the sun stop or trees grow upside down, they’ll believe him. Particularly if he’s got a few strange characters parading around as proof of his power, and I think you’ll have to admit, the crew he’s got backing him this time around is pretty strange.”
“What’s bureaucracy?” I asked, finally getting a word in edgewise.
“Red tape … the system,” Aahz informed me. “The organization to get things done that keeps things from getting done. In this case, it’s called the chain-of-command. An army the size of the one we’re facing has to function like a well-oiled machine or it starts tripping over its own feet. I’m betting if we toss a couple of handfuls of sand into its gears, they’ll spend more time fighting each other than chasing us.”