The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

VII

Everything was fine till I got off the freeway at The Second. Traffic, in fact, had been a little lighter than usual, though on St. James’ Freeway at rush hour a little light than usual isn’t the same as light, or even close to it Still, I was feeling pretty good about the world as I headed east up The Second toward my flat I had to wait for cross traffic at the comer of The Second and Anglewood Boulevard; a small church was being moved up Anglewood on top of a couple of extra-heavy-duty carpets. When at last it cleared the intersection, I tried to start across fast but couldn’t because the little old lady on the carpet in front of me didn’t. That probably saved my life, though I sent foul thoughts her way at the time.

A carpet had been idling in the parking lot of the filed chicken place on the far side of Anglewood. I’d noticed it, and wondered what the two guys on it were thinking about. Most likely nothing, was my disparagmg opinion; if they’d had any brains, they would have taken advantage of the hole in traffic the traveling church made and headed up The Second themselves.

They got moving fast enough after I went by. Too fast, in fact—if a black-and-white carpet had been anywhere nearby, they’d have picked up a ticket just like that I saw in my rearview mirror that they didn’t seem to like the way I was flying, either: they zoomed up above me to pass. That would have earned them another ticket from any constable who saw them.

I thought about signifying my opinion of the way they flew with an ancient fertility gesture, but I decided not to. As I’ve mentioned, Hawthorne is a tough town, and people have been known to get shot or have other unpleasant things happen to them on the flyways of Angels City. So I just did my best to pretend the louts didn’t exist as they went up and over me.

As they did, though, one of them leaned out past the fringe of his carpet and dropped something down onto mine.

They sped away,.. and my carpet didn’t want to fly any more.

I had time for one startled squawk and the first two words of the Shnw before the carpet, suddenly just a rug, hit the ground with a thump that made me bite my tongue and left my backside bruised for the next two weeks. If I hadn’t been wearing my safety belt, if the carpet hadn’t rolled up around me when I hit, or if I’d been going faster, I don’t care to think what might have happened.

As things were, I wasn’t badly hurt, but I had that weird sensation you get after an accident: I was pretty shaky, but I had almost total perception and recall of everything going on around me. Other carpets kept flying by a few feet overhead, the people on them intent on their own business and not caring at all about somebody who’d just had his carpet fail him.

But why had it failed? I couldn’t figure that out Did it have something to do with whatever the punk had dropped on my carpet? I looked around for that, trying to find out what it was. I didn’t see anything on the carpet itself, but something was stirring out on the weed-covered dirt just beyond the fringe.

I bent my head closer. The earth itself seemed to be writhing. For a second or two, I didn’t understand what I was looking at Then I did, and ice ran through me: it was a tiny earth elemental, busfly digging itself back into its proper home.

Fire and water are the opposing elements we most commonly notice, but earth and air are opposites, too. Matt Arnold had talked about sylph-esteem and sylph-discipline, but if those two guys had tossed an earth elemental down onto my carpet, that was nothing short of sylph-abuse.

The elemental had gone now, though, back to its own proper home. I tried the starting spell. My carpet lifted off the ground as smoothly as if nothing had ever been wrong with it Very carefully, looking every which way as I went and wishing for eyes in the back of my head, I flew on home.

All the way there, I tried to make some sense out of what had happened, the way theologians wrestle with God’s will.

Was it just a couple of hooligans out to have some sport with whoever drew the short straw? That’s the sort of random violence that gives Angels City flyways a bad name, but this time I wished I could believe it. I couldn’t, though.

Those two guys on that rug had been waiting for me in particular. I’d noticed them sitting a few feet off the ground in the parking lot while the church slowly flew by on Anglewood Boulevard. If they’d wanted to head up The Second, they’d had all the time they needed to do it. They’d just waited.

But why? Again, I didn’t have much trouble coming up with an answer: it had to have something to do with the case of the toxic spell dump. I did my best to remember what the two punks had looked like. All I could come up with was swarthy and dark-haired. They might have been Persians or Aztedans. They might have been hired muscle, too: Israelites, Druzes, Indians from the Confederation or from India, even Hanese or Japanese. I hadn’t got a real good look at then, and an awful lot of people in Angels City match up to the description swarthy and dark-haired.

I came to that dispirited conclusion about the time I set my carpet down in its parking space back at my block of flats.

Somebody was going downstairs from his carpet as I was coming up from mine. He gave me an odd look as we passed on the stairs, but I didn’t think anything of it past wondering what was haunting him that afternoon.

Then I turned the knob to my own flat. Judy sat curled up on the couch in the front room, reading a book on the Gamda Bird I’d picked up a few days before and hadn’t got around to putting on a shelf yet What started out as her smile of welcome turned into something else when her mouth sagged open in surprise. “Good God, David, what happened to you?”

A lot had happened to me, but I asked foolishly, “What do you mean, what happened?”

She sprang to her feet, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me to the bathroom mirror as if I wasn’t to be trusted to do anything that required rational thought on my own. “Look at yourself!” she commanded I mentally apologized to the fellow who’d stared at me while I was coming up to my flat I looked like someone who’d been French-kissed by a vampire: streaks of blood ran from the comers of my mouth and had dripped down onto my shirt. Before I wore it again, I’d have to go visit Carlotta or somebody else with a vampster. All my clothes were disheveled, as if I’d been through a carpet crash in them.

Funny how that works, I thought vaguely.

“What happened?” Judy said again.

So I told her, in as much detail as I remembered: pieces seemed blank, while others that happened only moments later were there in incredible perfection—I could have described exactly how every tiny dod of dirt wiggled and wavered as the earth elemental pushed its was through them after it rolled off my carpet. I started to, until Judy’s face told me that wasn’t something she needed to hear.

“You could have been killed,” she said when I was through.

“That was the general idea,” I said. “If I hadn’t been wearing my safety belt, or even if I’d been going faster when they dropped the elemental on me—” I didn’t care to think about that, much less talk about it I turned on the cold water, splashed it onto my face. That, and then burying my head in a towel to dry off, gave me an excuse not to talk for a couple of minutes.

Then I tried to unbutton my shirt That was when I discovered how bad my hands were shaking: I had a dreadful time making my fingers hold onto the smooth little buttons. After watching me struggle with the first two, Judy took over. As in everything she did, she was quick and deft and capable.

The feel of her fingers fluttering against my chest inflamed me as if she’d turned into a succubus. I’ve heard that living through a battle makes you homy. I didn’t know about that, not firsthand; I hadn’t been in a fight, let alone a battle, since I got out of primary school. But by the time Judy got to the last button, I couldn’t wait any more. I grabbed her and kissed her—not quite as consumingly as I’d had in mind, because my tongue was still sore.

“Well,” she said when she came up for air. Before she could say anything else, I kissed her again. “Well,” she repeated a minute or so later, and (his time she managed to go on: “It’s a good thing I drank the cup of roots when I got here instead of waiting till after dinner.”

It turned out to be a very good thing: for the next half hour or so, I forgot all about what had happened on The Second. The only problem with making love to put aside your problems is that they’re still there when it’s over. Sitting up on the bed afterwards, I said, “You’d better be careful, too, honey. You’ve gotten yourself involved in this case. If they come after me—whoever they are—they’re liable to come after you, too.”

“That’s non—” But it wasn’t nonsense, and Judy must have known it, because she didn’t finish the sentence. She sat up beside me. Her nod made her jiggle most pleasantly, but her voice was serious as she replied, “What have we gotten ourselves into here?”

I thought about Charlie Kelly and Henry Legion. “I don’t know,” I said grimly, “but I’m going to find out.”

Dinner at the Hanese place was good. In fact, dinner was probably wonderful, but we were both too distracted to enjoy it as much as we should have—and, not meaning to be crude, my rear end hurt. And when we flew to the restaurant and then back again, I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering who was behind us… and why. I almost jumped out of my skin when a carpet zipped by closer than it should have, but it was just a couple of teenage lads with more machismo than brains.

When we got back to my flat—safe, sound, and overfed—Judy said, “I want you to do something for me.” Like some people you may know, Judy has a Serious Voice. She was using it now.

“What is it?’I asked.

She said, “Before we went out, you said I should be careful from now on. Well, you should, too. I want you to start doing what they do in the thrillers: leave for work a few minutes early one day, then a few minutes late the next. Don’t get onto the freeway at The Second every morning, or off it there every night. The same for Wilshire at the other end of your commute. Don’t make yourself an easier target, I mean.”

I started to laugh, to tell her that was all silly stuff. But it didn’t seem silly, not after those guys had tried to do me in.

“Okay,” I said, and found myself nodding. “You do the same.”

“I will,” she promised.

I wondered if we ought to stop seeing each other for a while. If she’d said she wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have let out a peep. But I didn’t suggest it myself. Maybe that was selfish of me. In fact, I’m sure it was, a little. But the main reason I didn’t was that I was pretty sure she was in too deep to turn invisible so easily.

“Do you want to stay the night, or do you think you’d be safer going home now?” I asked her.

“I’d intended to stay,” she said. “I stuck a change of clothes in your closet” She did some very visible thinking. “If they’re interested in me—whoever they are—they have to know where I live. They could be waiting for me there as well as here. I’ll stay.” She made a face. “Oh, I don’t like this! Having to think about everything before you do it—is it safe? is it risky? I don’t like it at all.”

“Me neither,” I said. “But I’m glad you’re staying. I wasn’t what you’d call keen on being here by myself. I think I’d probabfy wake up every time a cat screeched or a dog barked.” Was that selfish? Well, yes, probably. It was also very true.

I did something else then: I went into the hall closet took out my blasting rod, and put it under the bed where I could get at it in a huny. Judy watched without saying a word, but nodded soberly when I was done.

Judy and I woke up once in the middle of the night with a horrible start when the sylphs in somebody’s carpet started screaming because the anti-theft gear was violated—or maybe because they thought it was, or maybe for no reason in particular. You never can tell with spirits of the air. Their nocturnal screams are a sound you hear fairly often in Angels City or any other good-sized town, generally when you least want to. At last whoever owned the carpet went down there and made them shut up, or maybe the thief flew away on it. Anyway, quiet returned.

“Jesus,” Judy said.

“Or Somebody,” I agreed. We both settled down and tried to go back to sleep. It took me a long time, and by the way Judy was breathing, she had as much trouble as I did. What had happened to me left both of us jumpy.

The horological demon in the alarm dock I’d bought at the swap meet caterwauled to get us up a little past six. The noise it made was so awful, I figured the Siamese exported its land so they wouldn’t have to listen to ’em. But at least it had the courtesy not to laugh as Judy and I woke up and untangled—we’d drifted together after we finally drifted back off, and were sort of sleeping all over each other.

Shower, shave (for me), dress, breakfast, coffee. We’d spent title night at each other’s flats often enough that we had a routine for it. What wasn’t routine was the way I walked Judy out to her carpet, looked around to make sure nobody was lurking nearby, and watched till she was out of sight Then I went back to the garage, gave my own carpet a careful once—over before I got onto it, and finally headed for work.

I got there unscathed, shut the door to my office, and got on the phone. The first person I called was Legate Kawaguchi. He heard me out, then asked, “This occurred where? On The Second past Anglewood, you said?”

“That’s right.”

“This location, unfortunately, is not within the jurisdiction of the Angels City Constabulary Department, Inspector Fisher. I suggest you contact the Hawthorne constables and report it to them.”

So I did, feeling foolish. People always say “Angeles City” or “A.C.,” but the metropolitan area has lots of other municipalities, some large like Long Beach, others minuscule, but all of them jealously hanging onto as much autonomy as they can. The Hawthorne constables took my report and promised they’d look into it, but I didn’t have any great faith in the promise. Unlike Kawaguchi, they had no feel for the kind of case in which I’d gotten myself involved. The decurion at the other end of the line asked if my flying could have angered the two men who dropped the earth elemental on my carpet He wanted to keep things inside a simple framework.

When I finally got off the line there, I called Charlie KeDy in D.St.C. I listened to the imp at the far end squawk. It sounded very far away. I know you’re going to tell me that’s nonsense: thanks to the ether, no two points are more distant than any other two. I don’t care; I’m teDing you what I heard.

“Charles Kelly, Environmental Perfection Agency.” Took him long enough to answer his bloody telephone, I thought “Good morning, Charlie,” I said; it was still morning back in D.StC., with half an hour to spare. “This is David Fisher, out in Angels City. A couple of men tried to kill me last night Charlie. As far as I can tell, the only reason anybody would want to do that is the toxic spell dump case I’m working on—your toxic spell dump case. Don’t you think it’s about time you gave me the gospel truth, Charlie?”

“David, I—” There was a long, long silence on the other end, then a tiny sound, and then more silence. Even though it was reproduced through two phone imps, I recognized the sound: it was a handset going gently back into its cradle.

Charlie had hung up on me.

I didn’t believe—no, I didn’t want to believe—what that meant. Maybe, I told myself, Charlie’d had somebody important walk in and he’d get back to me later. Back in D.St.C., there were lots of important people, and even more who thought they were. I fooled with the parchment on my desk for fifteen minutes, then called back.

The phone squawked even longer than it had before.

Finally I got an answer “Environmental Perfection Agency, Melody Trudeau speaking.” It was a woman’s voice, all right not the gravelly tones that made Charlie identifiable in spite of phone imps.

“Mistress Trudeau, this is David Fisher, from the Angels City EPA office. I’m looking for Charlie Kelly. I was on the phone with him a little while ago, and we got cut off.” That was more than giving him the benefit of the doubt but I still thought I might as well.

Then Melody Trudeau said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Fisher, but Mr. Kelly left for the day about fifteen minutes ago. Would you like me to take down a message for him?”

The kind of message I wanted to give him, I couldn’t send over the phone. I said, “No, that’s all right; thank you for asking,” and hung up.

After that I just stared at the phone for about five minutes. I needed that long for what had happened to soak in.

As far as I could tell, Charlie Kelly had told me he didn’t give a damn whether I lived or died. I know the Confederation has been only remotely feudal since not long after we broke away from England, but I still thought supervisors owed subordinates something in the way of loyalty, especially when they were the ones who’d got their subordinates into the mess in the first place. Go ahead, call me naive.

I started to go up front and dump my troubles on Bea, but stopped about two steps away from my door. What was I supposed to tell her? “I’m sorry, boss, but I may not be in tomorrow because someone will have murdered me”? That didn’t do the job, and what point complaining to her about Charlie Kelly? She couldn’t do anything she was junior to Charlie, too. She’d think he was contemptible, sure, but I already thought he was contemptible.

I stood there, halfway between my desk and the door, getting madder by the second. Then I turned around and stomped back to my chair. If Charlie wouldn’t listen to me, Henry Legion would.

Seems logical, right?. Getting hold of the CI spook wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. Central Intelligence wasn’t in the D.StC. telephone directory, apparently on the assumption that if you couldn’t figure out how to reach them, you really didn’t need to talk to them.

After I’d scratched my head for a minute or two, I called Saul Klein. He works for the Confederal Bureau of Investigation; his offices are a couple of floors above mine. I’d gotten to know him on the elevator and in the cafeteria. He’s a good enough fellow. When he answered the phone, I said,

“Saul? How are you? This is Dave Fisher down in the EPA.

Can I pick your brain for a minute?”

“Sure, Dave,” he answered. “What’s up?”

“You know those little musical sprites they import from Alemania?”

The mmisingers? Sure. What about ’em?”

“I’ve heard some people express concern that they don’t just learn new songs while they’re here—that they might be picking up other things which could be useful for Alemanic intelligence.” As far as I knew, there was nothing to that.

Minisingers aren’t spooks; you just take ’em to your Heeler and turn ’em loose. A lot of taverns have them for background music, things like that. But my madness had method to it. Ingenuous as all get out, I asked, “Would that be CBI business, Saul?”

“Intelligence by foreign Powers? No, we don’t touch that, Dave. You need to talk to Central Intelligence back at the capital,” he said.

“Thanks. Do you happen to have their number?”

“Sure. I’ve got it right here,” he said, and gave it to me. I wrote it down, thanked him again, and made my phone call.

Sometimes the indirect approach is best Once I was actually talking with a real live human being (or so I presumed—you never can tell with CI), things went better. I got connected to Henry Legion faster than I’d ever been transferred before.

“Good day, Inspector Fisher,” the CI spook said. His phone voice sounded more like his real voice than any natural person’s. I wondered if that was because he, like the phone imps, was a creature of the Other Side, so they could pick up the essence of his voice as well as what he said.

While I was wondering, he went on, “I thought I might hear from you again, but not so soon as this. What is the occasion of the call?”

“Somebody tried to Idll me last night,” I answered bluntly.

“The only reason I can think of for anybody wanting to do that is the toxic spell dump case. I want to get to the bottom of that, and you’re the only channel I have now.”

No denying Henry Legion was sharp; he pounced on that last word like a lycanthrope leaping onto a roast of beef.

“Now?” he said. “You previously had another source of information who has become inaccessible to you?”

“Inaccessible is just the word.” I know I sounded bitter;

I’d thought Charlie Kelly was a friend—oh, not a close friend, but somebody who wouldn’t let me down if things got tough. He’d shown me what that notion was worth, though.

Well, my loyalty to him stopped at the point where it was liable to get me killed. I told the spook, “You asked how I got wind of the danger of a Third Sorcerous War?”

“Yes?” Across three thousand miles, I could visualize his ectoplasmic ears springing to attention.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Before I tell you, I want your promise that you’ll let me know what’s going on. Everybody keeps saying that the more I know, the more dangerous it’ll be for me. I can’t think of anything a lot more dangerous than getting killed.”

“I can,” Henry Legion said. Maybe he really could; maybe he was just trying to scare me. But I was past being scared of—or by—phantoms, and didn’t answer. After a couple of silent seconds, the spook took another tack: “Why should you believe any promise I make? I am of the Other Side, and have no soul to stake on an oath.”

“Promise on your pride in your own wits and I’ll believe you,” I told him.

Another telephone pause. When it was done, Legion said,

“You’re not the least clever mortal with whom I have dealt Let it be as you say. By my pride in my wits, Inspector Fisher, I shall tell you what I know in exchange for your information—on condition that the secret go no farther than you.”

“Uh,” I said. I couldn’t think of a condition better calculated to make Judy want to wring my neck. “My fiancee is also involved in this case, and has been just about from the start. She knows about the threat of the Third Sorcerous War. I can’t promise not to tell her, but she doesn’t blab.”

Henry Legion let out a long sigh. “Sexuality,” he said, as if he were cursing. “Very well, Inspector Fisher, I agree to your proposed amendment, provided she agrees to tell no one.

Now speak, and withhold nothing.”

So I spoke. I told him about Charlie Kelly, and about the bird Charlie kept being too coy to name. And I told him what Charlie had said about the risk of war—and about how Charlie had hung up on me and bugged out of his office.

“Ah, Mr. Kelly,” the spook said. “Matters become less murky.”

“Not to me, they don’t,” I told him.

“Although of low rank himself” (Charlie was several notches above me, but I let that go) “your Mr. Kelly is wellconnected politically,” Henry Legion said. “He is the close friend and familiar—I use the word almost in the thaumaturgical sense—of a Cabinet subminister whose name I prefer not to divulge but who, I think, is like to be the source of his, ah, sensitive information. That matter can be—and shall be—rectified, I assure you.”

I didn’t care for the way he said rectified. I wondered if the anonymous Cabinet subminister was about to have the fear of an angry God put into him… or if he’d have to suffer what they call an unfortunate accident. But that; for me, was a side issue. I said, “I told you what I know. Now you keep your end of the bargain.”

At that point, much too late, I wondered how I was supposed to make him keep the bargain if he didn’t feel like it, But he said, “Perhaps this conversation would be better continued face to face rather than through the ether. You are on the seventh floor of the Westwood Confederal Building, is that not correct?”

“That’s right,” I agreed.

“Hang up the phone, then. I shall see you shortly.”

I dutifully hung up. Sure enough, a couple of seconds later Henry Legion materialized in my office—or rather, the top half of him did: the floor cut him off at what would have been his belly button if spooks had belly buttons. The soundproofing in the Confederal Building is pretty good, but I heard the woman in the office right below me let out a starded squeal, so I presume Henry’s legs end popped into being just below her ceiling.

The spook peered down at himself. He looked mistily annoyed, then said, “A three-foot error on a crosscountry journey isn’t bad. It’s not as if I were material.” He sounded like someone trying to convince himself and not having much luck. He pulled himself up through the floor so his ectoplasmic wing-tips rested on the carpet.

It’s a good thing he’s not material, I thought. Two different sets of matter aren’t designed to occupy the same space at the same time. The likeliest result of that would have been one big bang.

Once he was all in the room with me, his dignity recovered in a hurry. He draped himself over a chair, gave me a nod, and said, “By my pride in my own wits, David Fisher, I shall tell you what I can. Ask your questions.”

His wits were still working pretty well, I noticed: if I didn’t come up with the right questions, I wouldn’t find out what I needed to know. Well, first things first—“Who’s trying to loll me?”

Henry Legion’s indistinct features distinctly frowned. “Without further information, I cannot answer that with any more assurance than you possess yourself. I realize it is of the essence to you, but I trust you will understand it is not my primary concern.”

“Yeah,” I said grudgingly. Understanding didn’t mean I had to like it I tried something else; “If there is. God forbid, a Third Sorcerous War, who’s going to be in it? And whose side will we be on?”

“God forbid indeed,” the spook said. “As for who would begin the fighting if war came, again I cannot say with any certainty. The Confederation’s place would depend on the patterns of other belligerents; as you may know, some of our alliance systems overlap others.”

“As a matter of fact, I do know that” I was getting angry.

“I also know that I gave you straight answers and you’re giving me the runaround. I don’t call that a fair exchange.” I didn’t know what I could do about that, unfortunately. If Henry Legion didn’t feel like answering questions, all he had to do was disappear and ignore my phone calls from then on out.

But he didn’t disappear. He held up a transparent but placating hand. Before he could say anything, Rose tapped on the door, then opened it and stuck her nose into my office.

“I’m sorry, Dave,” she said quickly. “I didn’t realize you had someone in here.” Then she got a good look at Henry Legion. Her eyes widened as she realized what sort of someone he was. But she dosed the door and went away anyhow.

Rose is a wonderful secretary.

“You were saying—” I prompted the spook.

“So I was,” Henry Legion agreed. “I do apologize for appearing evasive, but the matter is more complex than most mortals, even those in high places, fully grasp. The turmoil that has marked this century—and that may yet precipitate the Third Sorcerous War—has roots that go back hundreds of years. It is an outcome of a fundamental shift in the balance of Powers that occurred with and as a result of the European expansion which began half a millennium ago.” °I do follow you,” I said. “Remember where you are: this is the EPA. One of the things I’m working on that has nothing to do with the toxic spell dump case is whether the Chumash Indian Powers have gone extinct in the past few years.”

“This is a trivial example of the phenomenon to which I refer,” the spook said. Towers have been reduced and displaced and others magnified on a scale unseen since the diminution and near-destruction of the Greco-Roman pagan deities and the rise of Christianity. And that impacted only Europe, North Africa, and western Asia; this is worldwide in scope. To give you some notion of what I mean, consider that Sarganatas and Nebiros, the one brigadier—major, the other field-marshal and inspector—general of the JudeoChristian Descending Hierarchy, have for several centuries made their residence here in the Americas.”

“I grant that they’re wickeder than Huitzilopochtli, but are they any nastier?” I asked. The Aztecian war-god wasn’t evil in and of himself the way the demon princes were, but his proper food was blood. My stomach twisted when I thought about the flayed human skin in the potion Cuauhtemoc Hemandez had sold to Lupe Cordero.

But Henry Legion said, “That is not the point. The point is that Huitzilopochtli has been displaced, and naturally resents it. The same is true of most of the indigenous Powers of the Americas, of Polynesia, of Australia. The Muslim expansion through the Southern Isles has reduced the range of the Hindu Powers, who still have their enormous Indian belief base upon which to draw. Ukrainian and Spainish conquests, on the other hand, have cut into the sphere where jinni and ghouls and other Muslim Powers can roam at will.

And the horror that was Alemania two generations ago shows Christendom isn’t immune to theological disaster, either.”

“What you’re telling me is that the whole world is going to hell,” I said slowly. I wondered whether I was exaggerating for conversational effect or being perfectly literal.

“Central Intelligence prognostications put the probability of that outcome as less than ten percent in the next decade,”

Henry Legion said, his voice inhumanly calm. “A year ago, however, that same probability was assessed at less than three percent. Whether fully Judeo-Christian or not, Inspector Fisher, trouble is brewing beneath the orderly surface of our existence.”

Since I’d had the door closed all morning, my office was warm and rather stuffy. I shivered even so. “Okay,” I said.

“There’s trouble. What does it have to do with the Devonshire toxic spell dump?”

“As for a precise answer, I can only speculate,” Henry Legion replied. “But consider this: the spell residues stored at that site are the worst and most potent yet devised. If they are lealdng into the wider environment, they draw attention to the dump. That attention is liable to be extremely unwelcome if something undocumented but deadly is being disposed of at the Devonshire dump.”

All at once, I remembered the Nothing I’d seen walking the path from the dump entrance to Tony Sudalds’ office. I never had got around to asking him what that was. I hadn’t called him Tuesday, either—too many other things going on.

“Have you any further questions?” Henry Legion asked.

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Okay, you don’t know for sure which Powers or humans might touch off the Third Sorcerous War.

You must have suspects, though. Isn’t that what Central Intelligence is for—to be suspicious?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” the spook answered. “Suspects, you say? In order of probability, they are Persia, Azteda, the Ukraine, and India.”

That didn’t help me much. Some sort of Persian connection seemed the most likely cause of trouble at the Devonshire dump, too, at least judgtog by what had happened to Erasmus, while I couldn’t rule out the Aztecans, either, not with Huitzilopochtlism on the loose and the trail that had led me to poor soulless Jesus Cordero.

For that matter, I couldn’t rule out the Powers of India, either, which meant Loki and the other aerospace firms were still suspects. Along with the cow, Erasmus had been tormented by sorcerous serpents, and the Garuda Bird is a great foe of such.

Complications, complications… I remembered that other serpent I’d seen, the one in the Garden of virtuous reality who hadn’t had to crawl around on his belly. If the model for that serpent had behaved himself better, the world would be a more peaceful place today.

I said, “What you’re telling me is that you don’t know who’s trying to kill me or who wants to start the war, but you want to use me to help you find out”

“In essence, yes,” Henry Legion said. “Keeping you alive while the investigation proceeds would also be desirable,”

To me even more than to you,” I assured him. The situation reminded me of an old riddle: how do you know when there are pixies around? The answer is, when you get pixilated. I never had found that riddle very funny. It was a lot less so now, when it was more like finding out who was trying to IdB me by what happened when they did it Someone tapped on the door, then opened it Rose again.

She said quietly, “When I saw you hadan important guest, David, I arranged for my phone imp to cover yours. Here’s a message for you.” Nodding as politely to Henry Legion as if she couldn’t see through him, she went back outside again.

The spook said, “We here at Central Intelligence—and at other nations’ equivalent services, I assure you—are generally less than delighted when an amateur like yourself gets stuck between the lines of the cantrip, so to speak: not only because of the danger to which you are exposed but also on account of your unpredictability, which may set off other unpredictable acts at a juncture when unpredictable acts have the potential to bring on what may for all practical purposes be Armageddon.”

If Henry Legion had been a human being, he couldn’t possible have said all that on one breath. As it was, Charlie Kelly had in essence told me the same thing. But Charlie had bugged out on me, while the CI spook was still on my side—I hoped.

“What do you suggest I do next?” I asked him.

“Cany on with your life and work as normally as you can,” he answered. “If fate is kind-always an interesting question—you will eventually be able to work your way out of the center of interest you now occupy.”

“And if fate isn’t?” I said. A human being, even one who worked for Central Intelligence, probably would have given me a soothing answer back. Henry Legion didn’t. “If fate is unload, Inspector Fisher, you will be killed. If fate is very unkind, the world will go with you. As I said before, the balance of Powers has been upset for a long time. Megasalamanders may be the least we have to worry about”

That much pessimism rocked me. “But a megasalamander can slag a whole city—” I felt absurd the second the words were out of my mouth. Was I bragging of how destructive our ultimate weapons were or complaining they weren’t destructive enough?

“Yes, Inspector Legion, but although megasalamanders are of the Other Side, the devastation they create is confined to the material,” Henry Legion said implacably. “Further, they do not launch themselves, but travel when and were ordered by the mages who control them. If the Powers seek to redress the balance on their own—”

He dematerialized then, leaving me an empty office and cold dread in my middle. That’s the trouble about arguing with a spook: if he wants it, he can have the last word.

This time, though, I think he would have had it even if he’d stayed around.

I thought about what he’d just said. Suppose all the Powers that had seen their domains shrink over the past five hundred years or so got together and struck back at the Ones that had dispossessed them. A man mad for revenge is liable to take it no matter what ft costs him and those he loves. If the Powers acted the same way, then heaven help the people over a big part of the globe… except it would more likely be hell on earth.

No wonder Henry Legion couldn’t work up much concern about whether I individually lived or died. In a way, it didn’t seem that important to me any more, either. But only in a way.

I stared down at my desk, trying to get back from contemplating Armageddon to doing my job. My eye fell on the note Rose had come in to give me. The message, I saw, was from Legate Kawaguchi. It said, in its entirety, “The feather is from a specimen of PHAROMACHRUS MOCINNO.” It was written just like that; Rose had printed the formal name in block capitals so I couldn’t possible misread it Undoubtedly she’d had Kawaguchi give it to her letter by letter so she wouldn’t get it wrong, too. Rose is a queen among secretaries.

Only one trouble: I hadn’t the slightest notion what a Pharomachrus mocinno was. I called Kawaguchi back, but I didn’t get him. He’d gone into the field—something horrible and gruesome had just broken. The centurion who took my call sounded so harassed that I didn’t have the nerve to ask him whether he knew what land of bird Kawaguchi had meant I went and checked our own reference library: not all environmental issues involve the Other Side. We had books about birds that dwell in the Barony of Angels. Pharomachrus mocinno wasn’t one. A little information, but not much. I made a mental note to ask Kawaguchi about it the next time I talked with him, then went back to work.

A good rule I’ve developed and don’t follow enough is when in doubt, make a list. Writing things down forces you to think about what’s important to you. It works so well, it’s almost magic. The first writing, I suspect, really was magic—vaasfc against forgetting. It still serves that role if you give it half a chance.

So I wrote. When I was done, the top of the list looked like this:

Everything below ®, I figured, could wait. Most of the bottom of the list was day-to-day stuff where it didn’t really matter whether the day was today, tomorrow, or next Tuesday. Some of the other items, like what had caused Jesus Cordero to be born apsychic, were important in and of themselves, but were also linked to high-priority items.

I also noticed I didn’t really have five items up at the top: I had two. Getting to Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins and Chocolate Weasel sprang from trying to get to the bottom of what was going on at the Devonshire dump, and of course the Chumash Powers study and the one on leprechauns were almost incestuously intertwined.

Armed with my list, I did go up front to see Bea. I wanted to get her approval on it so I could cany on with a clear conscience and without having to worry about unexpected thunderbolts from her. Rose waved me through into her sanctum; for a wonder, Bea wasn’t on the phone and she didn’t have anybody in there with her.

“Good morning, David,” she said. One eyebrow went up.

“I hear you’ve been spending time with some high-powered company. I’m very impressed.”

I wasn’t surprised Rose had told her, a secretary is supposed to keep a division head informed about what people are doing. And besides, even a queen of secretaries is entitled to a little gossip.

But if Bea knew about Henry, I could take advantage of it even though I wished I’d never met the CI spook. I said,

“The Devonshire dump case seems to be turning into a national security affair. That’s why I’ve put it at the top of my to-do list.” I shoved the parchmentacross the desk at her.

She looked at it, she looked at me, she shook her head slowly back and forth a couple of times. In that church-choir voice of hers, she said, “David, why do I get the feeling the main reason you’re showing me this list is to get my approval in advance for what you intend to do anyway?”

With some bosses, wide-eyed innocence would have been the best approach: Me? I can’t wtagfne what you’re talking about. Try that with Bea and she’d rap your knuckles with a ruler, maybe metaphorically, maybe not. I said, “You’re right. But I really think these are the things that need doing. I’ll handle as much of the rest of the stuff as I can, but I’m not going to worry if I get behind on it while I’m settling the big things.” If I’d had to, I’d have told her about Charlie Kelly then. That would have shown her I wasn’t taking the spell dump case too seriously.

But she looked at me again, nodded as slowly as she’d shaken her head before. “David, part of being a good manager is giving your people their heads and letting them run with their projects. I’m going to do that with you now. But another part of being a good manager is letting people know you’re not here to be taken advantage of.”

“I understand,” I said. And I did: if these cases turned out to be inconsequential, or if they were important and I botched them, she’d rack me for it. That was firm, but it was fair. Bea is a good manager, even if I do hate staff meetings.

“All right, David,” she said with a faint sigh. “Thank you.”

Rose gave me a curious look as I emerged from Bea’s office. I flashed a thumbs-up, then waggled it a little to show I wasn’t sure everything would fly on angels’ wings. She made silent clapping motions to congratulate me. “Oh, David, what was mat bird the constabulary legate called you about?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, I still don’t know myself,” I said. “I went to the reference center to look it up, but I couldn’t fend it there. That means it’s not local, whatever it is. I’ll call Kawaguchi back this afternoon and find out I’ll let you know as soon as I do.” One way to keep a secretary happy is not to hold out on her.

I went back to my office, dug through my notes, found the phone number for Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins, and called. The way my luck had been running, I figured a thunderbolt would probably smite the Confederal Building just as I made the connection.

And I was close. The phone at the other end had just begun to squawk when a little earthquake rattled the building.

I sat there waiting, wondering the way you always do whether the little earthquake would turn into a big one. It didn’t; in a few seconds, the rattling stopped. Along with (I’m sure) several million other people, I breathed a prayer of thanksgiving.

The secretary for Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins and I spent a little while going “Did you feel that?” and “I sure did” back and forth at each other before I confirmed my appointment and hung up. Then I got back on the phone—this morning I’d used it as much as Bea usually does—and called Tony Sudakis. “HeDo, Dave,” he said. “I was wondering when I’d hear from you again. Thought maybe my file fell behind your desk or something.” He laughed to show I wasn’t supposed to take him seriously.

I laughed too, to show I didn’t. “No such luck,” I told him.

“This is just to let you know that we will be doing a sorcerous decontamination check of the area around your site as soon as we can get the apparatus together. I appreciate the courtesy of the call, Inspector,” he answered slowly—I wasn’t Dave any more. I have to tell you, though, we still deny any contamination. You’ll need a show-cause order before you can start anything like that, and we’ll fight it.”

“I know,” I said. “When your legal staff asks you, tell them the case is under the jurisdiction of Judge Ruhollah”—I spelled it for him—“since he granted me the original search warrant.” If the EPA couldn’t get a show-cause order out of Maximum Ruhollah, I figured it was time for us to fold our tents and head off into the desert.

“Judge Ruhollah,” Sudakis repeated. “I’ll pass it along.

’Bye.” I didn’t think he knew about RuhoBah. But the consortium’s lawyers would.

I moved parchments from one pile to another on my desk, called Legate Kawaguchi again and found out he was still at the crime scene, then ate a rubberized hamburger at the cafeteria. I washed it down with a cup of hot black mud, slid down the parking lot, and headed up into St. Ferdinand’s Valley again.

Normally I wouldn’t go up there ten times a year. I’d been doing it so often lately that I was starting to memorize the freeway exits. I got off at White Oak and flew north toward Balditiar’s Precision Burins. On the way, I passed a church dedicated to St. Andrew: actually, to San Andreas, because it was an Aztecan neighborhood. A line of penitents was filing in. I wondered why; St Andrew’s feast day isn’t until November.

Then I remembered the morning’s earthquake. No doubt they were calling on the saint to keep more and worse from happening. Their chants rang so loud and sincere, they made me sure that if another earthquake did strike, it wouldn’t be San Andreas’ fault I flew into the parking lot behind Bakhtiafs Precision Burins a couple of minutes early. The building that housed the outfit was four times the size of Slow Jinn Fizz’s fancy establishment on Venture Boulevard, and probably cost about a fourth as much to rent It had the virtue of absolute plainness—one more industrial building in an industrial part of town.

The receptionist who greeted me was about a fourth as decorative as the one at Slow Jinn Fizz, too. So it goes. But she was friendly enough, or maybe more than friendly enough. “Oh, you’re Inspector Fisher,” she said when I showed her my EPA sign. “Did the earth move for you, too?”

She giggled.

I didn’t know what to make of that If I’d been unattached, I might have been more interested in finding out As it was, I figured the best thing to do was let it alone, so I did.

I said, “Is Mr. Bakhtiar free to see me?”

“Just a minute, I’ll check.” She picked up the handset of the phone. Bakhtiafs Precision Burins wasn’t in the high-rent district but it used all the latest sorceware. The silencing spell on the phone was so good that I couldn’t hear a word the receptionist said till she hung up. “He says he can give you forty-five minutes at the most. Will that be all right?”

“Thanks. It should be fine, Mistress Mendoza,” I answered, reading the name plate on her desk:CYNTHIA MENDOZA.

“Call me Cyndi,” she said. “Everybody does. Here, come on with me. I have to let you into the back of the shop because of the security system.”

I followed her back down the hall. Balditiar’s doorway wasn’t hermetically sealed; as I’ve said, only really big firms and governments can afford that much security. But he did have an alarmed door: if anybody who wasn’t audiorized touched the doorknob, it would yell bloody murder.

Cyndi Mendoza took the knob in her hand and chanted softly from the Book of Proverbs: “ ‘She criedi at the gates, at the entrance of the city, at the coming of the doors,’ ” and then from the Song of Solomon: “ ‘I rose up to open to my beloved. I opened to my beloved.’ ” The knob turned in her hand. She waved me through ahead other, then murmured something else to the door to propitiate it for having let me through.

“Do you know,” she said as she led me through the burin works to Bakhtiar’s office, “the same charm that persuades the alarmed door to open peaceably is also used sometimes as a seduction spell?”

“Is that a fact?” I said, though it didn’t surprise me: nothing in the Judeo-Christian tradition blends sensuality and mystic power like the Song of Solomon.

She nodded. “It doesn’t get tried as often as it used to, though—it only works on virgins.” This brought forth more giggles.

She couldn’t have made it more obvious she was interested in me if she’d run up a flag. A man always finds that flattering, but I wasn’t interested back. I said, “Is that a fact?” again. It’s one of the few things you can safely say under any circumstances, because it doesn’t mean a thing.

“Well, here we are,” Cyndi said, stopping in front of a door that had ISHAQ BAKHTIAR, MARGRAVE painted on it in black letters edged with gilt She tapped on the door—which mustn’t have been alarmed, since it didn’t scream—then headed back toward her own desk. I’m afraid she gave me a dirty look as she went by.

Ishaq Bakhtiar opened his own door, waved for me to come in. He didn’t look like a corporate margrave; he looked—and dressed—like a working journeyman wizard.

By stereotype, Persians come in two varieties, short and round or long and angular. Ramzan Durani of Slow Jinn Fizz had been of the first sort. Bakhtiar exemplified the second.

Everything about him was vertical lines: thin arms and legs, his big, not quite straight nose and the creases to either side of it, the beard worn short on the cheeks and long on the chin that made his face seem even narrower than it was.

Like Ramzan Durani, he wore a white lab robe. Unlike Durani’s, his didn’t give the impression of being something he put on to impress visitors. It wasn’t what you’d call shabby, but it had been washed a good many times and still bore faint stains that looked like old blood and herbal juices.

When we clasped hands, his engulfed mine—and I’m not a small man, nor one with short fingers. But if he hadn’t gone into sorcery, he would have made a master harpsichordist; those spidery fingers of his seemed to reach halfway up my arm.

“I am pleased to meet you, Inspector Fisher,” he said with a vanishing trace of Persian accent that did more to lend his English dignity than to turn it guttural. “Please take a seat”

“Thank you.” I sat down in the chair to which he waved me. It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was the same as the one behind his desk, so I couldn’t complain.

“Will you take mint tea?” he asked, pointing at a samovar that must have come from a junk shop. “Or perhaps, since the day is warm, you would rather have an iced sherbet?

Please help yourself to sweetmeats, also.”

Since he poured tea for himself, I had some, too. It was excellent; he might not have cared how things looked, but how they performed mattered to him. The sweetmeats sent up the ambrosial perfume of almond paste. Their taste didn’t disappoint, either.

He didn’t linger over the courtesies, nor had I expected him to, not when he’d blocked out only forty-five minutes for me. As soon as we’d both wiped crumbs from our fingers, he leaned forward, showing he was ready to get down to business. I took the hint and said, “I’m here, Mr. Bakhtiar, because you’re one of the major dumpers of toxic spell byproducts at the Devonshire site, and, as I said over the phone, the dump appears to be leaking.”

His dark brows came down like thunderclouds. “And so you think it is my byproducts that are getting out. You think I am the polluter. Allah, Muhammad, and Hussein be my witnesses, I deny this, Inspector Fisher.”

“I don’t know whether you’re the polluter,” I said. “I do know from your manifests that enough sorcerous byproducts come from this business to make me have to look into the possibility.”

“Get the burin—maker—he is always the polluter.”

Bakhtiar scowled at me, even more blackly than before. “In superstitious Persia, I could understand this attitude though I know how foolish it is. Here in the Confederation, where reason is supposed to rule, my heart breaks to hear it. Taken over all, Inspector, Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins reduces the sorcerous pollution in Angels City; we do not increase it. This I can demonstrate.”

“Go on, sir.” I thought I knew the argument he was going to use, but I might have been wrong.

I wasn’t He said, “Consider, Inspector, if every wizard had to manufacture his own sorcerous tools, as was true in the olden days: not just burins but also swords, staves, rods, lancets, arctraves, needles, poniards, swords, and knives with white and black handles. Because the sorcerers of the barony would be less efficient and more widespread than we are here, far more magical contamination would result from their work. But that does not happen, because most thaumaturges purchase their instruments from me. They cause no pollution because they are not doing the work. I am, and because of it, Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins draws the attention of regulators like yourself.”

I’ve heard that single-source argument many times. It generally has an element of truth to it: doing things in one place often is more efficient and better for the environment than scattering them all over the landscape. And Bakhtiar was right when he said single-source providers do stand out because they still pollute and the people who use their services don’t. But all that doesn’t mean single-source providers can’t pollute more than they should.

I said as much. Bakhtiar got to his feet. “Come with me, Inspector. You shall see for yourself.”

He took me out onto the production floor. It was as efficiently busy as most other light industrial outfits I’ve seen. A worker wearing asalamandric gloves lifted a rack of red-glowing pieces of steel out of a fire, turned and quenched them in a bath from which strong-smelling steam rose.

That must have been the third heating for the burin blanks,” Bakhtiar said. “Now they steep in magpie’s blood and the juice of the herbforoile.”

“Ergonomically efficient,” I said; the factory hand had been able to transfer them from the flames to the bath without taking a step. As they soaked up the virtues of the blood and the herb, he prayed over them and spoke words of power. Among the Names I caught were those of the spirits Lumech, Gadal, and Mitatron, all of whom are potent indeed. I asked, “How do you decontaminate the quenching bath after you’ve infused the Powers into it?”

“The usual way: with prayer and holy water,” Bakhtiar answered. “Inspector, I do not claim these are one hundred Ercent efficacious; I am aware there is a residue of power t behind. This, after all, is why we dispose of our toxic spell byproducts at the Devonshire facility, as mandated by the laws of the barony, the province, and the Confederation. If leaks have occurred, surely that is the responsibility of the dump, not of Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins. We have complied with the law in every particular.”

“If so, you don’t have a problem,” I answered. “My concern is that someone has been disposing of byproducts that aren’t listed on his manifest, things vicious enough to break through the protection setup, even if in only minuscule amounts, and to sorcerously contaminate the surrounding environment.”

“This I understand,” he said, nodding. “As manufacturers of burins and other thaumaturgical tools, however, we operate with a limited range of magic-engendering materials, as you must know. Here, come with me. See if you find one tiny thing in any way out of the ordinary for an establishment such as ours.”

I came. He was right; I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. The knives with the black handles were steeped in cat’s blood and hemlock and fitted with handles of ram’s horn. Interesting that Bakhtiar, a Muslim, conformed to common Judeo-Christian usage there; I’m given to understand the affinity goes back to the shqfar, the ram’s-horn trumpet which commemorates the trumpets that toppled Jericho’s walls. Another technician was inscribing magical characters onto hazelwood wands and cane staffs. The scribing instrument was a burin, presumably one of Bakhtiar’s precision burins.

He also inscribed the seals of the demons Klippoth and Frimost onto wands and staffs, respectively. I could feel the power in the air around him.

The sorcerous and the mundane mingled in the production of the silken cloths in which Bakhtiar’s burins and other instruments were wrapped. The firm did its own weaving in-house; three Persian women in black chadors and veils worked clacking looms, turning silk thread into fine, shimmering cloth. I wondered how long it would be before the automated looms of the Japanese made that economically impractical. They’d taken much of the flying carpet business from Detroit, and they were skillful silkworkers. As far as I could see, the combination made it only a matter of time.

Bakhtiar said. The red silk is for the burins, the black, fittingly, for the knife with the black handle, and the green for the other magical instruments. For those others, the proper color is less important, so long as it be neither black nor brown.”

A calligrapher with a goose quill dipped in pigeon’s blood wrote mystic characters on a finished silk cloth. Around him, a dozen other goose quills, animated by the law of similarity, wrote identical characters on other cloths. I asked Bakhtiar,

“Why are you using automatic writing for this process and not that of inscribing the wands and staffs?”

“As we have the opportunity, we shall, inshallah, do the latter as well,” he answered. “But the silks are merely protective vessels for the instruments, while the instruments themselves are filled with a thaumaturgic power which as yet overcomes the automating spells. But we are working on it, as I say. In fact, I read recently that a sorceware designer up in Crystal Valley has had a breakthrough along those very lines.”

“Was he using virtuous reality, by any chance?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, he was.” Bakhtiar sounded surprised.

Up till then, his expression had said I was an unmitigated nuisance. Now my nuisance value was at least mitigated. He said, “You are better informed on matters sorcerous than I should have expected from a bureaucrat.”

“We don’t spend all our times shuffling parchments from one pile to the next,” I said. “Too much of our time, yes, but not all.”

He stared at me out of black, deep-set eyes. “I might even wish you spent more time at your desk. Inspector, provided that time was the period you have instead set aside for harassing legitimate businesses such as mine.”

“Investigation is not harassment,” I said, and stared right back. Persians of the lean variety tend to look like prophets about to call down divine wrath on a sinful people, which gave Bakhtiar what I thought of as an unfair advantage in that land of contest, but I held my own. “And we can’t afford to take a spill from this dump lightly. In aid of which, may I see the decontamination facility you mentioned?”

“I shall take you there,” he said. “I expected that would be your next request.”

Sensibly, Bakhtiar kept his decontaminators off the main shop floor and in a chamber of their own. That both minimized any corruption that might interfere with their work and made sure their procedures wouldn’t weaken the sorcery that went into the instruments.

“Inspector Fisher, allow me to present Dagoberto Velarde and Kirk McCuDough, the decontamination team for Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins,” Bakhtiar said. “Bert, Kirk, this is David Fisher of the EPA. They think we’re responsible for a leak at the Devonshire dump.”

I didn’t bother denying that any more; I’d seen I wasn’t going to convince Bakhtiar and his crew. The decontaminators glared at me. Velarde was short and copper-brown, McCullough tall, gaunt, and red-haired, with the light of religious certainty shining in his hard gray eyes. “Just carry on, gentlemen,” I said. “Pretend I’m not here.”

By their expressions, they wished I wasn’t. They made an odd team, one you wouldn’t find everywhere, but they worked smoothly together, as if they’d been doing it for years. They probably had. One of the guys from the shop floor—no, I take it back, it was a woman in hard hat, overalls, and boots-wheeled in a vat on a dolly. She slid it off, nodded to the decontaminators, and headed back out Bert Velarde broke open an ampule of holy water, sprinkled it over the vat to neutralize as much of the goetic power in there as it could. Holy water is efficacious if applied by any believer, and, while you can’t always tell by looking, I would have bet two weeks’ pay he was Catholic.

But prayers by Catholic layfolk aren’t as potent as those from priests. Velarde didn’t pray. That was Kirk McCullough’s job. He had a deep, impressive voice and a thick Caledonian burr. He hardly bothered looking at the Book of Common Prayer he held in his big hands; he knew the words by heart. That didn’t mean he was just reciting by rote, though—he put his heart into every word.

“Kirk is an elder of the Church of the Covenant,”

Bakhtiar told me quietly. The diversity of Angels City has its advantages.”

“I’ll say,” I agreed. Ishaq Bakhtiar was one sharp operator.

The distinction between clergy and laity is much less in Protestant churches than in Catholicism; the prayers of an elder, who presumably was among the elect, were as likely to’ be heard as a minister’s. And Bakhtiar could hire two laymen for less than he’d have had to pay one who was consecrated.

Like I said, a sharp operator.

He was also sharp enough to say, “And if you have any doubts whatsoever, Inspector Fisher, as the whether the decontaminators are fully employed, come back to my office with me now and I will show you complete records of their activity since we moved into this building.”

I had no doubts, but I went with him nonetheless. He rummaged through his files, plopped a handful down in front of me. I looked through them. They showed me what he’d said they would. This left me unsurprised: how often will the head of a business voluntarily show documents that don’t paint him in the best possible tight?

But if anything was wrong at Bakhtiars Precision Burins, you couldn’t have proved it by me. All his procedures were what they should have been; his decontamination team might have been unorthodox (in the nontheological sense of the word), but it was effective.

“Anything else, Inspector?” he asked when I’d worked my way through the last folder. Rather pointedly, he asked his watch what time it was.

The little horological demon’s answer showed I’d already devoured fifty-five of his precious and irreplaceable minutes, where I’d promised to make do with a mere forty-five. I guess I was supposed to wail and abase myself and swear never to sin in that particular way again. Living in a large city, though, has a way of coarsening you. When I said, Tm sorry I took up so much of your time,” I put just enough bureaucratic indifference into my voice to let him know I wasn’t the least bit sorry.

He glared at me again. This time, I didn’t bother glaring back, which only irked him more. I got up. “I think I can find my own way out.”

“No, you mis—” He caught himself. If he was really rude to me, who could guess how much trouble I’d cause him?

Persians understand about revenge. He tried again: “No, Inspector, you forget the door. It is active in both directions.”

So, no matter how much he didn’t care for me, he had to escort me out so I wouldn’t alarm his door (and in case you’re wondering, I hadn’t forgotten). He gave me some insincere parting pleasantries and let me walk up the hall by myself.

Cyndi Mendoza hit me with a dazzling smile when I came out to her desk (I’d forgotten about her—Bakhtiar could have won the exchange if he’d called her back to his office to bring me out, but that would have cost him an extra couple of minutes of my presence, and I suppose he was too efficient to think of it). She said, “Do you remember that opening spell?”

Which was, no doubt, intended to get around to asking if I thought it would work on her. I forestalled that, though: I said, “Tm sorry, no—I make it a point never to remember anything.” I walked out while she was still staring.

When I got back to the Confederal Building and went up to my office, I found on my desk a note from Rose in big red letters: David, come up to Bea’s office immediately. Wondering what sort of trouble I’d managed to get into while I was gone, I went up to Bea’s office.

In the anteroom sat Rose—the real ruler of the domain—and a fussy-looking little fellow with a big nose and a loud cravat. He was looking through one of Rose’s stationery catalogues, which meant he was either madly meticulous or bored stiff: the latter, if a couple of little faint spots on his shirt meant anything.

“Hello, Dave,” Rose said to me, and then, “Here he is, Mr. Epstein.”

The little man bounced to his feet. “You are David Fisher, Inspector, Environmental Perfection Agency?” he asked, running my name and job title together.

“Yes,” I said. “Who are you?”

“Samuel Epstein, subclerk of the courts. Angels City, Barony of Angels.” From under the stationery catalogue he drew out a piece of parchment so splendid with calligraphy (it’s mostly done by automatic writing these days, as with the quills inscribing symbols on the silk instrument covers at Bakhtiar’s, but it stffl looks mighty impressive) and gaudy with seals. “I hereby deliver unto your person this summons to appear in the court at the day and hour incvited hereon in the matter of The Constabulary of Angels City vs.

Ctiauhtemoc Hemandez.” He presented it to me with such a gorgeous flourish that I half expected to hear a ruffle of drums.

I read the parchment. It was what Epstein said it was. “I’ll be there,” I told him. “Sorry to keep you waiting here so long. Couldn’t you just have left this on my desk?”

“Not in cases involving thaumaturgy in the commission of a first-degree felony,” he answered. “In such cases, the chain of transmission of summonses must be as tightly controlled as that concerning the transmission of evidence.”

“Okay,” I said, shrugging; he undoubtedly knew the arcana of his own field, “But you must spend an awful lot to time just sitting and waiting. Why don’t you bring along something more interesting to read than that?” I pointed at the catalogue.

But he recoiled with as much horror as if I’d offered him a bacon cheeseburger. “Anticipating idleness would constitute moral turpitude on my part. Good day to you, sir.” He edged around me and fled.

Rose and I looked at each other. She said, “If I spent a lot of working time waiting, I’d bring something interesting, too.” That relieved my mind; if Rose doesn’t think something involves moral turpitude, you can take it to the bank that it doesn’t.

All the way home, I thought about what had gone on at Bakhtiai’s. It was of a piece with everything else connected with the Devonshire dump case: as far as I could tell on a quick visit, everything there was on the up and up, and the boss loudly denied doing anything that could possibly make toxic spell byproducts get out of the containment area and into the environment. Somebody was lying, but who? Not knowing was devilishly frustrated.

I was going to call Judy after I finished dinner, but she called me first “Want to do something perverse?” she asked.

I know a straight line when I’m handed one. “Sure,” I answered, “Do you want to fly up here, or shall I go down there?” Besides, the very male part of me panted, there was always the outside chance that was what she had in mind.

The snort she gave me said it wasn’t—and also said she’d fed me the line on purpose. Maybe she wanted to see what I’d do with it, or maybe she’d already guessed what I’d do with it and wanted to see if she was right. She said, “I was thinking more along the lines of a Monday night date.”

That’s perverse, all right,” I agreed. “Why Monday night?”

“Because I read in the Independent Press-Scryer that a new Numidian restaurant is opening up Monday night about six blocks from here. Feel like coming down and trying it with me?”

“Numidian, eh?” Jews often go to Muslim-style restaurants, and the other way round, too; no need to worry about pork on the menu or back in the kitchen. And Aside from that, I like North African food. Couscous, salata meshwiya—tuna salad with chili pepper, eggs, tomatoes, and peppers, dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt—chicken with prunes and honey, the lamb soup called harira souiria, with onions, paprika, and saffron… my stomach rumbled just thinking about it. “Sounds wonderful. Only thing is, how crowded will it be?

“We can find out. Of course, if you don’t want to—”

“I said it sounded wonderful.” I really had, too, so I got points for that “What time do you want me down there?”

“What time do you want to come?”

“Listen, Mistress Ather, this is your date, so you tell me what to do.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Is that how it’s supposed to work? Okay, I’ll play along—is a quarter to eight all right?”

“Sure—by the time we get there, I’ll be hungry enough to do proper damage to the menu. And afterwards—always assuming I don’t fall asleep on your couch because I’m so full—maybe we can do something perverse.”

She snorted again.