The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

XI

II took my troubles down to Madame Ruth—you know, that medium with the gold—capped tooth. She had an office down on 34th and Vine. I hoped she could help with a problem like mine. When Erasmus had been so dreadfully hurt as the Thomas Brothers monastery was torched, she and I Nigel Cholmondeley managed to access him where everyone else had failed. I was praying she’d be able to do the same for Judy.

In her green silk dress and the matching scarf she used to cover her hair, she put me in mind of nothing so much as an enormous watermelon wearing too much makeup. But her looks didn’t matter, not to me they didn’t. She and her English partner were the local experts on virtuous reality, and from what I’d seen of the technique, I figured it offered the best chance of rescuing Judy’s spirit and bringing it back to This Side where it belonged.

Madame Ruth heard me out, then slowly shook her head back and forth. “I dunno, Inspector Fisher,” she said. “This ain’t gonna be as easy as gettin’ hold of what’s-his-name, the scriptorium spirit, was. You don’t just wanna access your fiancee’s spirit, you wanna download it, too. That’s one fresh problem.”

“If you say that’s one, you mean there are more,” I said.

“What are they?”

“Two good ones, offhand,” she answered. “One’s in the spiritual realm. We were able to build our own kinda place to meet the spirit—Erasmus, that’s what he goes by—in. If your girlfriend’s already stuck in the Nine Beyonds, we’re gonna hatta go in there and haul her out. Like I said, that ain’t gonna be easy.”

I wondered what walking through a simulation of the Nine Beyonds would be like. Could even virtuous reality pretty up something with a handle like that so anyone except a Power named the One Called Night would want to go there? I had my doubts, but I also had no choice, not if I wanted Judy back. I asked, “What’s the other problem?”

Madame Ruth coughed and looked down at her desk, an elephantine effort at discretion. “It’s not spiritual,” she said.

“It’s more material-like, if you know what I mean.” She stopped there.

After a couple of seconds, I figured out what she was flying at. Tm sure Judy’s medical insurance will cover your fees,” I said. “It’s one of the Blue Scutum plans, and it has an excellent thaumaturgy benefits package.”

“That’s okay, then,” she said, nodding briskly. I understood that she had to show a profit, but what would Judy have done without insurance? Got stuck in the Nine Beyonds forever because no one would come after her without crowns on the barrelhead? Or ended up bankrupting herself to pay the fees afterwards? Nothing’s simple these days.

“Will you try to help her?” I asked.

“Lemme talk with my partner. This is gonna take both of us,” she said, and got up to go next door. I didn’t age more than eight or ten years in the few minutes she was gone. She came back with Cholmondeley, (weedy as ever, in her wake.

She must have read my face, because she said, “It’s okay, Mr.

Fisher. Well give it a try.”

I started gasping out thank—yous, but Nigel Cholmondeley cut me off. “Time for all that later, old chap, if we succeed.

Meanwhile, where is Mistress, uh, Ather now located?”

Kawaguchi had told me that. “Her body’s at the West Hills Temple of Healing,” I said. Where the rest of her was… Well, Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth already knew about that.

Madame Ruth was looking through her appointments scroll. “We’re on for this afternoon and tomorrow morning, too,” she said. “We can work her in tomorrow afternoon, though, if that’s okay wit’ you?” She looked at me. I nodded.

I wanted them to drop everything and rush right out to take care of Judy, but everybody else they were working for felt his case was the most important one in the world, too.

Madame Ruth said, “It’s okay, Mr. Fisher, maybe even better than okay. This gives us a chance to square things with the constables and with the West Hills place, so as we can be all set up and ready to go.”

I nodded again. Cholmondeley unrolled his own scroll, inked a quill, and scribbled a note. “We shall see you there, then, at half past one.” He stuck out a bony hand. I clasped it, then walked out of Madame Ruth’s office. I wanted to get back to my own shop as soon as I could: I was using vacation time for this visit. Crazy how you keep track of the little things even when the big ones in your world are falling every which way.

There was a rack of news stands outside Madame Ruth’s building. I stuck a quarter-crown into the waiting palm of one of the little vending demons, took away a copy of the A.C. Times. I figured yesterday’s goings-on would be pageone stuff, and so they were: the flight of the Garuda Bird across St. Ferdinand’s Valley isn’t something you can easily ignore. Neither is the emergency evacuation of the neighborhoods surrounding the Devonshire toxic spell dump.

Sure enough, both of those got plenty of ink, though the reporters seemed confused about just what had happened.

That didn’t bother me; the whole truth here probably would have set off a panic we didn’t need, especially since (I hoped) things were back under control.

One of the reporters quoted Matt Arnold out at the Loki works. He gave the impression he’d turned the Garuda Bird loose as a preorbital flight test, then went on about the next step in the space program after the Bird got us into low orbit:

Loki was designing new sorceware to work the Indian Rope Trick from some spot on the equator 22,300 miles straight up to geosynchronous orbit, from which mages could project sorcery over big parts of the globe day and night.

Nobody asked me, but I thought Loki ought to work on a new rope, too.

The mess at Chocolate Weasel made page one, too, but only as a big industrial accident Not a word about the sacrifices, not a word about any connection to the mess at the Devonshire dump.

What really got me, though, was the rest of the headlines.

The Aztecian Emperor had ordered his entire cabinet executed, It was, the Times said, the first general cabinet massacre since the time when Azteca almost joined the First Sorcerous War on the Alemanian side. The new ministers were supposed to be “more inclined toward improving relations with the Confederation than their predecessors had been.”

Or else, I read between the lines.

There’d also been some sort of disaster outside D.StC., but I didn’t even glance at that story. I just headed over to Westwood to go back to work.

When I got up to my floor, Bea was coming down the corridor as I stepped out of the elevator shaft. She asked about Judy and gave me her best in a way that sounded as if she really meant it. I’m sure she did, too; Bea cares about people. Sounding as if you care, though, isn’t so easy. Then she said, “You and Michael have done some very important work lately, and under extremely trying circumstances. I want you to know I know it, and I couldn’t be more pleased.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But you know what? I think I’d rather have spent all that time in a nice, dull staff meeting.”

Her head went to one side; I realized I’d stuck my foot in my face. “I’m going to understand that the way I hope you meant it,” she said, to my relief more in sorrow—and in amusement—than in anger.

She let me escape then, so escape I did, to the smaller problems left behind after the spectacular collapse of the bigger ones. I plugged away at the leprechaun study, lining up values for my variables so I could get rolling on the crystal-ball prognostications maybe next week. I had to call the Angels City archdiocese for some of the data I needed; the Catholic Church has lived side by side with the Wee Polk on the Emerald Isle for the past fifteen hundred years, and knows more about ’em than anybody these days.

Try as I would, though, I didn’t get a whole lot done.

People kept coming in to congratulate me and wish me the best—Phylhs, Rose, Jose. Even if the papers were being coy, the folks I work with knew what I’d done. Maybe Michael had talked with them; I don’t know. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate their dropping by, but they kept distracting me from what I was trying to do. And when I got distracted, I had a hard time pulling my mind back where it was supposed to be.

I also kept trying to crystal-ball it in my head, to work out where in the big picture the events in Angels City really fit.

What did thwarting the Chumash Powers have to do with the liquidation of the Aztecian cabinet, for instance? Something, sure, but what?

As with the leprechaun study, I was missing data. Here, though, the Catholic Church wasn’t the place that had ’em. I called Central Intelligence back in D.StC. and asked for Henry Legion.

I listened to a long silence on the other end of the ether.

Then the CI operator asked, “Who’s calling, please?”

“David Fisher, from the EPA out in Angels City.”

“One moment, sir.” If that was one moment, you could live a long lifetime in three or four of them. At last, though, someone came back on the line—a new voice, but not Henry Legion’s. “Mr. Fisher? I’m sorry to have to tell you that Henry Legion’s essence has undergone dissolution. He gave his country the last full measure of devotion; his name will go up on the memorial tablet commemorating our agency’s heroes and martyrs. He shall not be forgotten, I assure you.”

“What happened?” I exclaimed. “And to whom am I talking?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer either of those questions, sir: security,” the new voice said. “I’m sure you understand.

Good day. Thank you for your concern,” The phone imps reproduced the sound of a handset clunking into its cradle.

I hung up, too, and stared at the phone for a while. Whatever Henry Legion had been doing, it cost him everything. I knew I’d never learn all the answers I wanted, not with him gone. I was back to my own guesses, for better or worse—probably worse. After seeing a little ways into his secret, secretive world, I was blind again.

I wondered if his passing had anything to do with the extermination of the sitting Aztecian cabinet, or perhaps with the disaster outside D.StC. the Times had mentioned. Did some sort of war try to start there, too, and get suppressed as it had in Angels City? More things I’d never know, not without Henry Legion to ask.

Since I’d never know, sitting around wondering was just a waste of taxpayers’ crowns. I buckled down and tried to do my job, but things came slow, slow. Maybe I suddenly needed a crisis breathing down my neck like a hungry werewolf to make myself perform.

Lord, what a horrid idea!

I flew into tile parking lot of the West Hills Temple of Heating about ten past one the next afternoon, then flew around inside the lot for the next ten minutes looking for a space for my carpet. I wouldn’t have been late, not for anything.

When I told the receptionist who I was and for whom I was looking, she said, “Go up to the fifth floor, Mr. Fisher.

Mistress Ather is in 547, right across the hall from the Intensive Prayer Unit. Just follow the IPU signs and you can’t go wrong.”

Famous last words, I knew. Well, this time the gal was right; the signs took me straight to 547. I didn’t know what to think about Judy’s being where she was. Should I have been glad she was so close to intensive prayer in case she needed it, or worried she was there because they were afraid she would need it? Being me, I worried. When I opened the door to 547, I discovered a constable sitting in one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs in there.

He carefully checked my EPA sigil and said, “You’re fine, Mr. Fisher, but we have to be sure,” before he went back to his book.

By then I’d forgotten all about him. Seeing Judy again took everything else out of my mind. She didn’t look bad, but then she always looks good to me, so I wasn’t in any real position to judge. Her color was good, her eyes were open, she was breathing normally: to that much I can objectively attest.

But I soon noticed that, even if her eyes were open, they didn’t track. I walked across her field of vision a couple of times, but she took no notice of me. She didn’t say anything. When she moved on the bed, she didn’t adjust the covers afterwards. Her body lay there, but not the rest other. That was off in the Nine Beyonds, the realm of the One Called Night.

Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley came in just then, accompanied by a fellow in a white lab robe who introduced himself to me as Healer Ah Murad. “I look forward to learning to apply virtuous reality to healing situations,” he said. This will be an excellent opportunity for me to enhance my knowledge.”

Wonderful. Somebody who saw Judy as a guinea pig, nothing more. I wondered how he’d like enhancing his knowledge of what getting flung out a fifth-floor window felt like. He looked pretty sharp—maybe he could learn to fly before he hit the ground.

I made myself relax. By his lights, Hr. Murad was only doing his job. What he learned from Judy might help him treat somebody else. But that didn’t mean I had to like him, and I didn’t Nigel Cholmondeley was carrying a case large enough that he had to be stronger than he looked. He set it on the empty bed next to Judy’s, flipped open the brass catches, and took out four of the big-eared virtuous reality helmets I’d last seen in the constabulary station.

He looked at the setup in the room, fretfully clucked his tongue between his teeth. “Forming a circle under these circumstances will be rather difficult,” he said, making the a m rather so broad I thought he’d never finish pronouncing it.

Madame Ruth was bluntly practical. “We’ll just turn her around,” she said. “If 11 be easy if her head end’s at the foot of the bed.” Hr. Murad took care of that, moving Judy with a practiced gentleness that said he might have a bedside manner after all. Madame Ruth rounded on the constable. “Hey, you, be useful—move some chairs around for us.” She gestured to show what she wanted.

The constable gave her a dirty look but did as she asked him: he put one chair at the foot of the bed, close by where Judy’s head now rested, and one more to either side at that end of the bed. While he was taking care of that, Nigel Cholmondeley set a virtuous reality helmet on Judy. She didn’t react at all as it covered her eyes and ears.

When he was done, Cholmondeley turned to me and said,

“You sit here.” Here was the seat right across the footboard from Judy. Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth took the other two seats. Grunting, Madame Ruth got up from hers and arranged Judy’s arms so her wrists and hands dangled off the sides of the bed. “Oh, capital,” Cholmondeley said as she sat back down. “Now we shall be able to maintain the personal contact so essential in this exercise.”

He handed me a virtuous reality helmet. I put it on. The world went black and silent. From my earlier experience, I knew I was supposed to take the hands of the people to either side of me. I groped for them. At first, I didn’t find them. I wondered what was wrong until I realized Madame Ruth and Cholmondeley needed to put on their helmets, too.

I wished I were holding one of Judy’s hands, but that wasn’t how the medium and the channeler had set things up, and I had to assume they knew what they were doing. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than Nigel Cholmondeley’s left hand caught my right. A moment later, Madame Ruth’s right hand took my left in a warm, damp, fleshy grasp.

And a moment after that, the psychic circle complete, we were on the Other Side. Madame Rudi had warned me we wouldn’t be going back to the garden where we’d questioned Erasmus, so I’d been braced for worse. I wasn’t braced for what we encountered.

“We’re here, sure enough,” Nigel Cholmondeley said; as soon as he spoke, I could see his virtuous image.

“But where is Aere?” I asked to help him see me.

“A bad place,” Madame Ruth said, springing into apparent being. “Very bad.”

As in my earlier venture into virtuous reality, they both appeared idealized to my second sight; Cholmondeley handsome, with more meat on his scrawny bones; Madame Rudi minus about half of her corpulent self and her screechy tough-guy accent. As before, I couldn’t see myself at all.

I couldn’t see any skin of Judy, either.

Not as before, I couldn’t see anything but my spirit guides. The Nine Beyonds were dark as an underground cave at midnight. My sight had been totally obscured when I slipped the virtuous reality helmet over my eyes. What I was sensing now felt darker than totally obscured. I don’t know how, but it did.

It was just dark like a cave; it didn’t feel as if we were inside one. If we’d been in a garden before, my guess was that we were in jungle now, jungle on a moonless, starless night a million miles—or maybe farther—from anything of man’s. Though I knew my body was back in a cool room at the West Hills Temple of Healing, the air that seemed to be around me felt hot and wet and smelled as if dungs I didn’t want to know about were just beginning to rot somewhere not far enough away.

Things were moving there, too, and I didn’t know what they were because I couldn’t see them. Whatever they were, I didn’t think they meant us well. This was not a place where we were meant to be. A sudden sharp noise made the self I didn’t have start in alarm: it sounded as if something had stepped on a dry twig, although where you could have found a dry twig in that stifling humidity, I couldn’t tell you.

I remembered the One Called Night was also known as the Crackler. Having remembered, I wished I could forget again.

I turned to Madame Ruth. “How are we supposed to find Judy in all this?” We were somewhere in one Beyond; even if we somehow went over every inch of it (and I was afraid it had a lot of inches), that left eight more to search. We were liable to be there forever, or maybe twenty minutes longer.

The Emperor Hadrian’s death poem ran through my mind; Animula vagida blandula… Little soul, wandering, gentle guest and companion of my body, into what places will you go now, pale, stiff, and naked, no longer sporting as you did? If I’d perceived myself as embodied in that dreadful place, I would have burst into tears. The image fit only too well what I feared was happening to Judy’s spirit.

“We’ll do the best we can, Mr. Fisher,” Madame Ruth answered. “Beyond that, I don’t know what to tell you. This domain is not shaped by us alone; the Power who dwells here influences our perceptions. We must attempt to move, and hope we find ourselves guided toward Mistress Ather.”

She’d warned before we set out that this wouldn’t be as easy as contacting Erasmus had been. She hadn’t warned how bad it would be. Maybe she didn’t know till we tried it; virtuous reality is a technology that’s just opening up, which means one of the things its practitioners are still discovering is what can go wrong.

I got the feeling that if anything went seriously wrong in the Nine Beyonds, Hr. Alt Murad would learn some things he hadn’t expected—and some new intrepid explorers of virtuous reality would have to try to rescue three more spirits lost in this suffocating place.

Would they have any better fortune than we did?

Madame Ruth had said we had to try to move, to explore the Nine Beyonds and hope we found Judy. Move we did, but it wasn’t easy. The Nine Beyonds resisted every metaphysical motion we made. We cried out, but everywhere in vain. It was as if we were drunk, as if the Nine Beyonds themselves were having sport with us, mocking our search.

We might as well have been wading through mud, through quicksand, through hot dinging slime.

And it felt as if the area in which we stood and moved was growing smaller all the time. With everything perfectly black all around us, with Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley the only things my second sight could perceive, I don’t know how I got that impression, but I did. That led me to another interesting question (if interesting and horrible are synonyms): what would happen if it closed real tight around us?

Someexperiments you’d rather not see performed, especially on you.

No sooner had I thought that than I discovered I wasn’t the only one feeling the invisible closing in. Voice tight with concern, Nigel Cholmondeley said, “I think we had best withdraw, lest we be overwhelmed by that which lurks in darkness here.”

“How do we get away?” I asked.

“Break me circle; free your hands,” Madame Ruth said.

“Quicldy!”

That hadn’t been easy even when we were leaving the virtuous reality garden. Remembering you had an actual physical body that could do things was tough; making it do those things tougher.

And not for me alone—I watched the virtuous images of Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth twist in concentration as they struggled to make their bodies respond to their wills.

No doubt my own virtuous image bore a similar grimace in their second sight Madame Ruth had been right; we needed to hurry. Something was breathing down the neck I hadn’t brought along to the Nine Beyonds. I didn’t know what the One Called Night could do to me, but I was very conscious of operating on the Power’s turf—or rather, muck. If it took hold of me…

Just then, one of us (to this day, I don’t know who) managed to get a hand loose and break the circle. Coming back wasn’t like returning from the garden; I seemed to be falling and falling in a forever compressed into maybe a second and a half. Worse still, I thought the One Called Night was falling after me, falling faster than I was, reaching out with black, black hands in which never a star would shine.

Under the virtuous reality helmet, my eyes flew open. I saw only darkness there, too, but it was a darkness I knew, the familiar darkness of This Side. Unlike the blacker than black of the Nine Beyonds, I knew what to do about this. I yanked the helmet off my head and sat blinking in the mellow afternoon sun.

I got my helmet off just ahead of Nigel Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth. Their faces—their real, everyday faces, not the idealized images they bore in the realms of virtuous reality—were pale and haggard, as yours would be, as mine surely was, after such a narrow escape.

Cholmondeley leaned forward, pulled off Judy’s virtuous reality helmet Her face showed nothing, just as it had before the helmet went on. Her spirit hadn’t been in there to experience what we’d gone through.

Madame Ruth wiped sweat from her forehead with one sleeve. I didn’t think the sweat had anything to do with wearing the helmet. “Jesus,” she muttered. “It tried to follow us back.”

Too bloody right it did.” Cholmondeley also sounded shaken to the core. “I think it used Mistress Ather as its conduit: it controls her spirit, after all.”

“I never heard of that,” I said.

“Nor had I,” Cholmondeley answered. “Nor, so far as I know, has any practitioner of virtuous reality. Of course, there is the caveat that anyone encountering the phenomenon at full strength, so to speak, is unlikely to remain a practitioner of virtuous reality, or, indeed, of any trade thereafter.” He essayed a laugh; it came out as a series of nervous little barks.

The procedure was unsuccessful?” Hr. Murad asked. He hadn’t been there with us. Lucky him.

“Buddy, you’re lucky—we’re lucky—it’s us sittin’ here talking to you, and not the One Called Night,” Madame Ruth said. Nigel Cholmondeley’s nod in support of that was as herky-jerky as his laugh had been.

I stood up. I felt as if I’d been away from my body for a long time, slogging through the steaming, lighdess swamps of the Nine Beyonds. The physical part of me, though, the part that hadn’t left the chair, rose now so smoothly that I knew virtuous reality had fooled me again, Before Hr. Murad could turn Judy the right way around on her bed, I leaned over the footboard and looked down into her face. Her eyes were open, and looking back at me.

Nothing showed in them, any more than it had before: no recognition of me, no awareness of where she was.

I kept looking, down into the blackness other pupils. Was the One Called Night hiding in that blackness, peering back at me through those portholes into This Side while it held her spirit trapped in the Nine Beyonds? I had no way to tell.

When I stepped back, the healer did put Judy back where she belonged. Nigel Cholmondeley was glumly packing the virtuous reality helmets back into their travel case. He set a hand on my arm. Terribly sorry, old man, I truly am. I’d hoped for better results.”

“So did I.” I looked at Judy again. If we couldn’t get her spirit back from the Nine Beyonds, she was going to stay in that bed for the rest of her life, eating when they fed her, drinking when they gave her water, wiggling every now and then for no reason at all. And what would happen when she died? Could her spirit break free of the One Called Night even then?

I shivered all over, and the room wasn’t that cool. In a way, she was even worse off than Jesus Cordero. With no natural soul of his own, he at least had hopes of getting an artificial one from Slow Jinn Fizz. But what could Ramzan Durani do for Judy, whose spirit was stolen rather than absent?

What could anyone do?

Hr. Murad stepped in front of Madame Ruth as she was about to go out the door. “Wait, please,” he said in the tone of somebody trying—not too hard—to be polite about giving an order. “We have not yet fully examined the etiology of your treatment’s failure.”

Madame Ruth looked down her nose at him. She was taller than he was, as well as wider. “If you don’t get out of that doorway, sonny, I’m gonna squash you flat. You ask nice, maybe we’ll talk about it later. Right now I need a drink or two a whole lot more than I need you.” She advanced. Hr. Murad retreated. Nigel Cholmondeley followed in her massive wake.

I followed, too. Leaving Judy was a knife stuck in my heart, but staying there, with her like that, hurt even worse. I felt another sleepless night coming up. I’d had too many of those lately, and earned every one of them.

“Excuse me,” I called to Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth as they were about to step on the slide back down to the lobby.

They both paused. “Sorry like anything we couldn’t help ya, Mr. Fisher,” Madame Ruth said. Tm just glad we got ourselves back to This Side in one piece. Too bad we couldn’t bring your girl friend with us.”

“Most unfortunate,” Nigel Cholmondeley agreed.

“For Judy especially,” I said, at which the two of them had the grace to nod. That gave me the nerve I needed to go on:

“If I can come up with anything that would give us a better chance, would you be willing to take another try at rescuing her from the Nine Beyonds?”

They looked at each other. I didn’t like the look; it said, Not on your life, bud. Madame Ruth opened her mouth to answer, and I’d bet a big pile she was about to say that out loud. Cholmondeley raised a finger to stop her; he was the smooth man of the pair. What he said was, “It would have to be something quite extraordinary, Mr. Fisher.” Which was also no, but sugar-coated so it went down sweeter. Besides, he wouldn’t want to drive away business by coming right out and saying virtuous reality just couldn’t do some tricks.

So he let me hope—a needle—eye’s worth, maybe, but hope. The last thing at the bottom of Pandora’s box, and generally running too many lengths behind trouble ever since.

But it was all I had, so I clasped it to my bosom.

What I didn’t have was any idea of what I might come up with that would give us a better chance in the Nine Beyonds.

The One Called Night seemed to rule the roost there. Why not? It was his roost If we could make him confront us on neutral ground, so to speak, we’d have a better chance of making him release Judy’s spirit. But how? The Nine Beyonds were his home on the Other Side. I didn’t see any way to force him out. Beat him on his home ground, then? We’d tried that already, with no luck.

That left—nothing I could see.

Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley had already slid away. I stood by the slide, doing my best to come up with the brilliant idea to save the day. It’s always easy in the adventure stories. I’d even done it myself, when I summoned the Garuda Bird to the Devonshire dump.

Not this tone.

Another sleepless night. This time I mean it literally.

When it got to be about one in the morning, I just gave up and made myself a cup of coffee. If I was going to be awake, I might as well be awake, I figured. Somehow I’d stagger through the next day and somehow, after that I’d sleep.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile, I prowled around my flat For want of anything better to do, I cleaned it cleaner than it had been since just before the High Holy Days the year before. When I moved the couch and chair to clean under them, I found close to a crown and a half in loose change, so I even turned a profit on the deal.

I read an adventure story, paid some bills, wrote some letters, all the things you do in slack time. I wrote to people who hadn’t heard from me in so long, I hoped the shock wouldn’t send ’em on to the Other Side.

Every so often, I’d get up from the kitchen table—which doubled as desk—and go back in the bedroom. Not to try to go to sleep: I’d given up on that I’d push back the curtain and look out at the night. It was very dark out there, no moon, just a couple of stars I could see. I might have thought it looked really black if I hadn’t almost been trapped in the Nine Beyonds that afternoon. Next to that place, Angels City night was high noon in the desert.

Back out to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. As I had once or twice before, I wished for an ethemet set to give me some noise to be lonely with. With quiet all around me, I couldn’t keep from thinking, and none of my thoughts were ones I wanted.

I went back to the bedroom again. Still night outside. What a surprise. My alarm clock told me it was half past four.

Maybe I was imagining things, but I thought the horological demon sounded slightly worried at having me awake and prowling around at that hour. Maybe I alarmed it for a change.

I sat down on the bed. The state I was in, that proved another mistake. It made me remember all the times Judy and I had lain there together, and how unlikely we were to do it again. My eyes filled with the easy tears that can come when you’re half underwater with exhaustion. An effect of the law of contagion? I don’t know.

Out to the kitchen again, this time for breakfast You stay up all night, you get hungry. I was washing the dishes when a pigeon landed on the tile roof above me with a noise like a flying carpet crashing into the side of a hill in the fog. There have been times when that kind of predawn rackets bounced me out of bed in a fright. If I’d been asleep, it might have happened again. As things were, I welcomed the noise—it showed something besides me was alive and moving.

I finished washing the dishes, dried them (a prodigy), and put them away (a bigger prodigy). Then I took a shower, and after that I went back into the bedroom and got dressed to face the new day.

Facing the day, in fact, was easy: when I opened the bedroom drapes, the eastern sky was brilliant pink, shading toward gold at the horizon. It got brighter by the second as I watched. Finally the sun crawled up into sight. Another day had started. I didn’t feel too bad, not physically. Mentally, spiritually… a different story.

The sun rose higher, as the sun has a way of doing. What had been a black mystery out past my window was revealed as—what a surprise!-romantic Hawthorne, a not particularly exotic suburb of Angels City.

I started to turn my back on the too-familiar panorama, then stopped with one foot in the air. Before I fell over, I spun around and ran for the little book by my phone. I was just about sure I had that number, but not quite. I checked. I had it. I called it.

“Hello?” Through two phone imps, I recognized that groggy tone. I’d had it myself, the too early in the morning when Charlie Kelly called me and got me and Judy and maybe the whole world into the mess we were in. I didn’t care. I started to talk.

I found a parking spot right at the comer of Thirty-Fourth and Vine, settled my carpet into it, and settled me down to wait I’d got there twenty minutes before I was supposed to meet him. He’d promised he’d come. He’d even sounded eager to help, which to my way of thinking only proved he didn’t fully understand the situation.

That comer wasn’t one of the swankier ones in Angels City, and it wasn’t an angel who sauntered past and gave’me the eye. It was a succubus, swinging her hips fit to make the Pope sweat. But my mind was on other things. She muttered something I was lucky enough not to catch and walked on down the street.

Two spaces in front of me, a carpet pulled out and headed up Vine. Within half a minute, another one slid into the space. Tony!” I exclaimed gladly; promises or no, I’d feared he’d find some reason not to come. Before six in the morning, you’re liable to promise anything, just to get a pest off the phone.

But here he was, grinning like a man who’s had some sleep, anyhow. “Let’s go, Dave,” he said. “I’ve read a lot about virtuous reality; you think I’m gonna throw away a chance to check it out from the inside?”

If he’d had any sense, he would have. He must not have had sense; he gave me a shot in the ribs with his elbow and went into the office building ahead of me. He was singing something in Lithuanian. I caught Perkunas’ name, but that was all. Before I’d met Tony, I wouldn’t have understood that, either.

My legs are longer than his. By the time we got to Madame Ruth’s office, I was a couple of strides in front of him. I opened the door and went in. Tony on my heels. If I told you Madame Ruth looked delighted to see me, I’d be tying.

“Mr. Fisher,” she said, as patiently as she could (which wasn’t very), “we told you yesterday we couldn’t do anything more for you.”

“No, that’s not quite what you said,” I answered. “Nigel Cholmondeley said you couldn’t do anything unless I came up with something extraordinary. Well, here he is—Mr.

Antanas Sudakis.” I wasn’t making all the sense I might have; more than a day without sleep will do that to you.

Tony grinned. “Something extraordinary, hey? I like that.”

Madame Ruth did not look amused. “Why is he extraordinary?” she asked. Why is he extraordinary, wise guy? was what her tone said.

So I told her why, in detail and probably repeating myself more than a little. I watched her eyebrows, or rather the painted lines that showed where they used to live. They’d ridden high and skeptical on her forehead when I started, but the longer I talked, the lower they got.

When I finished, she just said, “Wait here, both ofyouse.”

She walked out, came back a minute later with Nigel Cholmondeley. “Okay, buster, tell him what you just told me.”

So I did. I doubt I was any smoother the second time around than I had been the first. By the time I was through, Cholmondeley was rubbing his long, horsy chin in speculation. When he spoke, it wasn’t to me but to Tony Sudakis:

“My principal objection, sir, is doubt that Perkunas is a Power sufficiently powerful (please forgive the play on words) to achieve the effect desired in the Nine Beyonds.”

The Thunderer not powerful enough?” Tony was a man of direct action. I was afraid he’d take some now: pitching Cholmondeley through a wall, for instance. But he didn’t; he just said, “Listen, once upon a time not so long ago a fanner invited the Devil to his daughter’s wedding. He didn’t really want him there, so he said the Christian God, the Virgin, and a bunch of saints were coming, too. The Devil didn’t care.

Then the fanner told him he’d invited Perkunas, and the Devil stayed away—he remembered how the Thunderer had beaten the tar out of him the last time they met. If he can do that, you think he can’t handle something like the One Called Night?”

Madame Ruth and Cholmondeley looked at each other.

I’m no psychic, but I could read their minds anyhow: Perkunas had to be one tough, smart Power to have survived so long in the predominantly Christian thecosystem of Europe.

I wouldn’t have wanted to run him up against Huitzilopochtli or Huehueteoti, but the One Called Night wasn’t a Power on their order of magnitude himself.

The other variable in the equation was that Perkunas hadn’t gone down to hell to beat the tar out of the Devil.

Could he do it in the Nine Beyonds, even with the advantage I’d outlined to the virtuous reality practitioners?

I had no idea. I did know I wasn’t going to bring it up if the medium and the channeler didn’t. I was willing to take any chance at all to go after Judy again; I wanted to persuade them to try again, too, because I couldn’t reach the Nine Beyonds without ’em.

“Gentlemen, do please excuse us,” Nigel Cholmondeley said. “We shall have to consult with each other on the proper course of action to take.”

They went over into the next office, which was Cholmondeleys. Last time they’d done that, I hadn’t heard a thing.

Now, Madame Ruth’s screeches came right through the wall.

A moment later, so did Cholmondeley’s shouts. I was glad they’d identified what they were doing as a consultation. If they hadn’t, I’d have called it a brawl.

But everything was sweetness and light when they came back into Madame Ruth’s office. Madame Ruth glared at me, scowled at Sudakis, glared at me again. Then she said,

“Let’s go.”

I gaped. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she said. “We’ve got nothing calendared till late this afternoon, and either we’ll be able to bring this off by then or else we’ll end up stuck in the Nine Beyonds and we won’t gotta worry about it. So come on.”

On we came. Tony and I flew to the West Hills Temple of Healing each on his own carpet. That sort of thing adds to Angels City’s traffic nightmares, but it was more convenient for both of us because we’d be going home in opposite directions. Besides, I didn’t want to endanger anybody but me if I fell asleep at the fringe.

We got into the West Hills parking lot within a couple of minutes of each other, then stood around waiting for Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth. I figured they’d be a little while; they had to pack up their gear before they flew over.

Tony smoked a cigarillo while we waited. He’d just ground it out under his heel when their carpet settled itself a couple of spaces over from mine.

“We can go straight up,” Cholmondeley said as he hauled the case toward the doorway. “I called ahead to make sure Mistress Ather isn’t undergoing any other spiritual therapy at the moment.” He—was more efficient than I’d given him credit for.

“Good,” I said, from the bottom of my heart, for it also meant they hadn’t had to transfer Judy to the IPU or anything like that. They were supposed to call and let you know when they did that, but I’d been away from home all moming. She hadn’t got worse, then. Where she was struck me as bad enough.

We went up to the fifth floor together. Waiting for us in Judy’s room, along with the constable, was Hr. Murad. He and Madame Ruth exchanged unfriendly looks. I felt like reminding them they were on the same side, but they remembered by themselves. Murad arranged the chairs for the virtuous reality circle before anyone asked him to, and he remembered that circle would have an extra member today.

This time I shifted Judy to the foot of the bed. However much I’d hoped it would, it didn’t feel as if I were touching the woman I loved. Her flesh might have been there on the bed, but her essence wasn’t.

Nigel Cholmondeley slid the virtuous reality helmet onto her head; As before, he and Madame Ruth took the seats to either side of her. I sat on the other side of Madame Ruth, with Tony between me and Cholmondeley.

From his case, Cholmondeley passed us virtuous reality helmets. The room went black as I slipped mine on. Again as before, a few seconds’ undignified fumbling followed, with all of us trying to find our neighbors’ hands.

And then we were back in the Nine Beyonds: blacker than black, hot, wet, fetid. Somehow I got the idea the One Called Night knew we were there faster than he had before.

I couldn’t see anything, but the space around me already felt tight and strained, as if my spirit was trying to fit into a pair of pants a couple of inches too small for it.

“Boy, this may be the Other Side, but it’s sure not the high-rent district,” Tony Sudakis said. When he spoke, he became visible to me in the midst of the darkness. When I met him, I thought he looked like somebody who’d been a good football player till the competition got too big for him to handle. Well, his virtuous reality image was about seven feet tell and maybe four feet wide through the shoulders: big enough to make a good football team, not just a player.

Other than size, though, it looked like Tony.

This is what I warned you about,” I said, mostly to make myself known to him. Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley spoke up, too, and appeared in my second sight as they did so. No trace of Judy. I hadn’t expected one, but you never give up hope.

Cholmondeley turned to Tony Sudakis. “If this is to work, it had best work soon: the advantage of surprise, don’t you know?” he said. “The longer the One Called Night has to gather his resources against us, the worse our likely plight.”

“Okay.” Tony’s virtuous voice was nearly an octave deeper than the one he really had. He reached inside the shirt that had grown with his torso, pulled out the little amber amulet I’d seen him use the first time I walked into his office.

Here, though, it didn’t seem like just amber. It shone like a tiny piece of the sun, and shed real light through the gloom of the Nine Beyonds. Looking at trees and mud and stagnant water wasn’t much, but it beat looking at hostile, smothering black nine ways from Sunday.

In that rumbling, thunderous voice. Tony Sudakis called,

“Perkunas, Thunderer, hear your loyal subject Do for us, trapped here in the Nine Beyonds, as you did for the Morning Star at her wedding: give us, I pray you, the Nine Suns in the sky!”

He’d sworn by Perkunas and the Nine Suns a couple of times, enough to make me think his god might have some power in the Nine Beyonds that the One Called Night wouldn’t expect. If ever a Power seemed ideally suited to influence another’s home environment, this was the time.

I waited for what felt like forever, though I knew time was, to say the least, arbitrary in the realm of virtuous reality.

Then that glowing bit of what had been amber flew off the chain around Tony’s neck and streaked for the black sky.

Surely you’ve wished on a falling star. There in the Nine Beyonds, I wished on a rising one.

Up and up the shining spark flew. No matter how high it rose, it didn’t get any dimmer. Its progress halted directly over what would have been my head if I could have sensed myself in virtuous reality.

Another pause, and then a great explosion of light, enough and more to dazzle the eyes I didn’t have here. The sky stayed black, but suddenly nine suns blazed there, in the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen.

“By Jove,” Nigel Cholmondeley murmured.

“No,” Tony said smugly. “By Perkunas.”

Light spread over the Nine Beyonds for the first time since the One Called Night shaped his realm from the raw stuff of the Other Side. I could see what was around me and, in a different way, I could perceive the whole domain at once.

I could be wrong, but I thought each of the Nine Suns illuminated a different Beyond. I sensed all Nine Beyonds.

All I’ll say about them is that, even illuminated, each was less attractive than the next. If the One Called Night had designed this place for his personal comfort, well, if you ask me, he should have hired a decorator.

And there, off in the distance and yet at the same time close enough to reach out and touch, I saw something that didn’t belong in this dark jungle. “Judy!” I cried. The One Called Night might have tried to hide her, but he couldn’t, not with Perkunas’ Nine Suns blazing down from the black sky.

No sooner had I called her name than she stood there beside me. As I’ve said, virtuous reality images have a way of improving on mundane reality. Not, you understand, that I ever thought Judy needed improving on, but seeing her there made me understand all at once how Beatrice must have looked to Dante.

Dante hadn’t needed virtuous reality to see that way, but Dante was an artist and a genius. Me, I’m just an EPA man.

However it had come to me, I knew I’d cherish Judy’s virtuous image the rest of my days.

You know what else? By her expression, I didn’t look half bad to her, either.

She said, “Thank you, David. I was beginning to be afraid I’d never get out of this dreadful place. I never lost hope, but I was worried. When the One Called Night hid me from you the last time you came here, whenever that was, I wondered if anyone could sense me. But you found a way.”

“I never lost hope, either,” I said. “I—” The light that filled the Nine Beyonds got dimmer. I looked up into the sky. The Nine Suns were still there, but they seemed to fade more with every apparent second I watched.

“We have to escape at once,” Madame Ruth said urgently.

“This is the domain of the One Called Night. Perkunas and the Nine Suns may have taken him by surprise, but Perkunas is not the ruling Power here.”

“My colleague is correct,” Nigel Cholmondeley said. “We must break the virtuous reality circle. Remember your fleshly forms; will them to separate one from the other, to loose the hands you are now holding. Quickly!”

I concentrated on the body I’d left behind at the West Hills Temple of Healing. Remembering I had hands, let alone moving them, took more effort than I thought I had in me. And all the while, the Nine Beyonds got darker and darker and darker. I felt the power of the One Called Night closing in around us.

And then I was back in room 547 again. I was still holding hands with Tony Sudakis and Madame Ruth, so I hadn’t been the one to let go. That was the first thing I noticed as I did turn loose of my companions and snatch the virtuous reality helmet off my head. Only then, as I blinked against light that seemed much too bright, did I realize the One Called Night hadn’t tried to chase us as we left his domain this time.

You have to understand—all that passed through my mind in a fraction of a second, and a small fraction to bootThen I stopped caring about it, because Judy had taken off her helmet, too. She was sitting up in her bed, looking over her shoulder at me, and smiling bright as all Nine Suns put together.

I smiled back. So did Tony, Nigel Cholmondeley, Hr. Murad, and the constable who’d been keeping watch on her. she wasn’t wearing her own clothes, just a pure white healing gown of virgin linen, and all it had in back was a couple of ties that didn’t do much to hold it together.

When Judy figured that out, she squeaked and wiggled around so the part of the gown that actually covered her was frontways to us. Then she said to me, “David, I think you’d better introduce me to these people. You got to me through virtuous reality, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” I said, and did as she’d asked. After the hellos and thank-yous, I went on, “You told me you wanted to get involved in the new technology. I don’t suppose you wanted to see it from the inside out, though.”

“No.” She shook her head so her hair flew every which way, a Judy gesture I’d seen since the day I met her. It made any tiny doubts I’d had disappear: she was back on This Side, fully and completely. “It was still interesting,” she added. “I’d recognize all of you from the way I saw you in the Nine Beyonds, but you, David, you looked just the same to me.”

Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth gave me an odd look I didn’t understand for a second, and then I did: you need to be a person of unusual virtue—Brother Vahan, say—to keep your normal appearance in virtuous reality. My ears got hot.

“Must be love,” I muttered.

“Very likely,” Nigel Cholmondeley said. “After all, were it not for the love you bear for Mistress Ather, she would still be trapped on the Other Side.”

That only made my ears hotter. Back in the Nine Beyonds, I’d idealized Judy into an image I’d cherish all my life, while she’d seen me just as I am. Which was the greater compliment? I couldn’t begin to tell you.

The constable pulled out a sheet of parchment and a pen.

Where the rest of us were exalted, he stayed businesslike.

“Can you describe the motivations of the alleged perpetrators who caused your spirit to be projected into the realm on the Other Side termed the Nine Beyonds, Mistress Ather?” he asked formally.

“You mean, why they sent me there?” Judy said—sure enough, a copy editor to the core. She shook her head again.

“They didn’t tell me much, which was probably sensible from their point of view. I think they just didn’t want to have to worry about my escaping for a while. They had some sort of big plans afoot, though; I know that much. They kept saying they’d deal with me properly once this other thing, whatever it was, happened.”

That reminded me she didn’t know what had gone on at the Devonshire dump or Chocolate Weasel. It also explained why she hadn’t been at the Chocolate Weasel building, but I didn’t want to think about what those people had intended to do to her once they got the power they’d sought As fast as I could, I filled her in on what had been happening on This Side while she was Elsewhere. She nodded soberly, saying, “That fits in well with what we were talking about before they kidnapped me. I’m just glad we managed to foil it.”

“Not “we,’ Mistress Ather,” Tony Sudakis said. “Him.” He pointed right at me. “If he hadn’t thought to summon the Garuda Bird, we’d all have been in the soup.”

“Somebody had to do something,” I said. Seeing the admiring look Judy was giving me, I added, “What I think I’ll do is hire Tony to do my advertising for me. The other thing you have to remember is that if it hadn’t been for his Perkunas and the Nine Suns, we couldn’t have rescued you.”

“Yeah, but you were the one who thought of that, too, and made Madame Ruth and Cholmondeley here go along with it even when they weren’t what you’d call enthusiastic,” Tony said. The virtuous reality duo nodded vigorously.

“Well, if you insist on giving me the credit, you know what?” I said. Tm gonna take it.” Everybody laughed and clapped hands.

Judy said, “Do I have any clothes here besides this peepshow of a gown? Now that I’m living in my body again, all I want to do is check myself out of here… where exactly am I, anyhow?”

“This is the West Hills Temple of Healing, Mistress Ather,” Hr. Murad said. He opened the closet, pointed to a tunic and trousers. These are the garments in which you were discovered. They have been laundered subsequent to their detailed examination by the constabulary.”

I dare say they’d needed laundering, too; I wondered how long Judy’s body had worn them and soiled them while her spirit was trapped in the Nine Beyonds. She must have been thinking the same thing, for she said, “They’ll do to get me out. Then I think I’ll bum them.”

“As you wish. Mistress Ather,” Hr. Murad said. “One formality yet remains before you can be released.” Judy gave him a classic make-it-snappy look. It took effect. Hastily, he went on, “I must certify you as sound before sending you down to the business office.”

“Go ahead, then,” Judy said, visibly composing herself. As one who worked with magic, she knew the importance of adhering strictly to rules and procedures.

To give Hr. Murad his due, he made the examination the formality he’d told Judy it would be. He took her pulse and blood pressure, then said, “Please recite the creed of your faith.”

“Sh’ma yisroayl, adonai dohaynu, adonca ekhod” Judy said, and then for good measure repeated it in English:

“Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Hr. Murad made cryptic notes on her chart. When he was through scribbling, he said, “I have the pleasure of pronouncing you physically and spiritually sound.”

Then please leave, all of you, and let me get dressed,” she said, adding, “David, when I’m done with their business people, will you take me home?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll have to let the Long Beach and Angels City constables know you’re well; they’ll both want to talk with you. But,” I went on—quickly, to keep her from throwing the bud vase on the night table at me, “we don’t have to do it right now”

“I’ll take care of that,” the A.C. constable on guard duty said. He grinned. “I’ll give you a fade while, though.”

Thanks,” Judy said. We all trooped outside. Hr. Murad went off to see another patient Nigel Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth headed for the slide. So did the constable.

I turned to Tony Sudakis. Thanks more than I can say.”

“No problem.” He brushed it aside. Tm just glad everything worked out. Listen, I gotta get back to work. I hope I see you around—long as you’re not investigating my dump.”

They’ll send somebody else out there from now on,” I told him. “I’ve got a conflict of interest”

He grinned, slapped me on the back, and took off. I waited in the corridor. Right across from me was a skin with big red letters: INTENSIVE PRAYER UNIT. ALL VISITORS MUST BE BLESSED BEFORE ENTERING. I just looked at it, gladder than I can say that Judy hadn’t had to pass through those portals.

She came out of her room. I had to show her where the business office was down on the ground floor; she knew nothing of how she’d come here but what I’d told her. The business people were inclined to be huffy with her until she said the magic words: Blue Scutum. Then suddenly everything was easy, though she did have to spend a while filling out the BS forms.

At last we went out to the parking lot and buckled ourselves onto my carpet. Before we took off, I leaned over and gave her a kiss. She grabbed me. We hugged for a while.

Before I puddled up, I started flying her home. I took everything slow and easy, keeping in mind how tired I was. It was the middle of the day, so traffic was easy. Practically everybody at her block of flats had gone to work. We had to use my entry talisman; she didn’t have hers.

“Oh, God, it’s good to be here,” she said when we went in.

The curtains were open; she shut them. Then she went into the kitchen and opened the icebox. I heard her duck in distress: “Have to throw most of this stuff out. But oh, good—there’s still some beer in here.”

“Beer?” I echoed.

She clucked again, this time at my foolishness. “For the cup of roots,” she explained, as if I weren’t very bright (and at the moment, I wasn’t). She came back into the front room, where I was standing like a lost soul. She did her best to remedy that; this loss she gave me… well, if my eyelids were window shades, they’d have been flapping on their spindles from being yanked up too hard.

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” she said, ticking off points on her fingers, neat and organized as usual: Tm going to drink the cup of roots. I’m going to get out of these clothes, never ever put them on again, and take a shower to help me forget I was wearing them. Then I’m going to put on something I hope you’ll think is more interesting and try and thank you property for getting me back from the Nine Beyonds. How does all that sound?”

“Wonderful,” I said hoarsely.

“Good. It sounds wonderful to me, too.” She gulped down the cup of roots, then took off her clothes right there in the middle of the living room. When I tried to grab her, she skipped back away from me. “Go sit down,” she said. “I do want to get clean. I won’t be long, I promise. All right?”

“All right,” I said, and went over and sat down to prove it. She nodded in approval and headed off toward the bathroom. The water in there started to run.

I fell asleep on the couch.

Judy eventually forgave me, though she hasn’t let me forget about it. All I ever wanted, from the minute I landed in the Devonshire dump case, was to get tilings back to normal again. Brushing the edge of Armageddon is for saints and heroes, not a working stiff like me.

I have to say I’m making progress. Judy and I set our date, and I solemnly promised to stay awake for the wedding and the night after, too. “You’d better, or I’ll have it with somebody else,” she told me. But we were both joking and we both knew it, so that was all right.

I still haven’t caught up on all my work. I’m gaining, but I’ve spent so much time in court lately that I haven’t been at my desk as much as I’d need to dig out from under the backlog. But helping give the people who kidnapped Judy and almost wrecked Angels City (plus God knows how much of the rest of the Confederation) just what they deserve has its own satisfaction.

And, for that matter, I won’t be out of court even after those trials are done. One thing I did manage to accomplish was the report on the environmental impact of introducing leprechauns into Angels City. I didn’t see any problems with it, especially after the Chumash Powers became irrelevant to the prognostication. After Bea read the report, she said nice things about me in Monday staff meeting (or so I’m told; I wasn’t there at the time—somehow I bear up under the disappointment).

But Save Our Basin decided to contest my findings, so that case should drag on more or less into eternity. My guess is that any possible damage the Wee Folk might cause would cost less to fix than all the litigation about them, but I’m just a dumb inspector; they don’t pay me to make policy.

And I’ve been working on one other thing. Not long after all the commotion I’ve been talking about here, I happened to notice a tiny item in the Times to the effect that one Charles Kelly, an assistant administrator with the Environmental Perfection Agency back in D.StC., had resigned and been replaced by a chap named Gupta Singh.

Did Charlie jump or was he pushed? I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. I looked at the little story and thought about how much trouble had come about—and how much more could have come about—from the way he’d handled the Devonshire dump case. Not only had he given it to me informally, he’d been coy about feeding me information I needed like anything, and then he’d fled like an exorcised demon when I counted on him most People had died in part because Charlie didn’t handle his job the way he was supposed to. Even more to the point as far as I was concerned, I’d almost lost the most important person in my life. I know that on a cosmic scale my priorities there are skewed, but I don’t weigh myself on a cosmic scale.

And what had happened to Charlie because he’d screwed up and chickened out? He’d left his job, and he might not even have been forced out of it. That was all. It didn’t seem enough, somehow.

I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking I took out a compact on him. Sorry, no—bloody vengeance isn’t my style.

Besides, I don’t know any mages who know that kind of demon, and I didn’t care to go looking for one. Charlie wasn’t worth jeopardizing my soul for, either. But still—I left it in the back of my mind, the place where things stew while you take care of more immediate concerns.

Finally, just before I got called to the witness box one day, I had an idea I liked.

Unfortunately, doing something about it didn’t prove as easy as I’d hoped. The first time I called back to D.StC., I couldn’t get the information I needed. Frustrated but not, I resolved, beaten, I put the idea back into the stewpot and let it simmer while I went on with the rest of my life.

A couple of days later, while I was gulping down a burger at the courthouse cafeteria (better than the one at the Confederal Building, but not much), I knew where I could get my answer. Once you’ve made connections, you’re a fool if you don’t use them.

So I called Central Intelligence, identified myself, and asked to speak to the fellow who’d let me know Henry Legion had shuffled off this mortal coil. I didn’t have a name with which to identify him, but I hoped CI would be able to get around that. Sure enough, inside a minute he was saying,

“Good day, Mr. Fisher. I’m glad everything worked out well for you and your lady.”

Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Central Intelligence knew about such things. Thanks,” I managed.

“What can I do for you today?” he asked.

I told him what I wanted and why I wanted it “I’ll only use it the once,” I promised. “If you like, I’ll take a formal oath on that.”

“No need, Mr. Fisher,” he said. The phone imp in my ear reproduced a curious scratchy noise I identified as a chuckle.

“Just between you, me, and the wall, I’d say you’ve earned the right to use it any way you like. Don’t stay on the ether now; I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes with what you need.”

I hung up. Pretty soon, just as promised, the phone yarped. I answered it, wrote down what the chap from Central Intelligence gave me, thanked him again, and hung up.

Then all I had to do was wait Since I was doing this for my convenience, not Charlie’s, I waited till Saturday night my Sabbath was over, so I could use the phone without the slightest sin, and I didn’t have to get up early and go to work the next morning. That counted, too, for what I had in mind.

I was yawning when I picked up the phone at my flat, but I didn’t care. I called the number I’d gotten from Central Intelligence: Charlie Kelly’s home phone. I listened to the racket it made.

“Hello?” Even with phone imps between us, Charlie sounded drowned in sleep.

“Hello, Charlie,” I answered brightly. “This is Dave Fisher, out in Angels City. How are you this morning?”

“Jesus,” he said, his voice a little clearer. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Since I’d asked my alarm clock, I knew down to the minute. “Your time, it’s 5:07,” I said: “Just the same time when you called me here to get me into the Devonshire toxic spell dump case. It turned out all right, no thanks to you.”

He started to splutter. I hung up.

You know what? Phones aren’t so bad after all.