I risked Slight Alley.

The ramshackle frame half-timber structures popular in the neighborhood leaned in overhead, reaching out to one another like drunks in need of mutual support. Most of the afternoon's intense sunshine failed to penetrate, but there was more light than normal. The paving bricks were cleaner than usual, too. You could see their dark red. On the other hand, there were squatters in residence. Not only the ratmen you expected, but families of refugees.

The times they change.

I wondered how we would feed all the immigrants. If racist groups like The Call had their way, the refugees would eat the dwarves and ogres and elves already here.

I stopped. "What?" I had caught a strange smell. There was no describing it. It was neither awful nor particularly pleasant. Mostly it was startling.

It was gone in an instant. I couldn't catch it again. Happens all the time. I resumed walking, ignored the sleepy-eyed stare of a drunken ratman trying to decide if I was behaving strangely.

I was. At the first hint of the unusual my hand had darted to Magodor's cord. My habit is to face sudden threats with an eighteen-inch oaken nightstick into which has been introduced, by way of providing additional encouragement to the customer, a pound of lead at the business end.

Slight Alley has a couple of jags and an offset where it crosses another alley stretching east and west. I noticed that the light had a golden, autumnal cast. Though diffuse, it sent shadows crawling over the walls. Some of those seemed to assume almost recognizable shapes.

Then there were the whispers behind me, like the whispers of mocking children, perhaps speaking a foreign tongue. I felt a lot better when I reached a real street filled with real people.

As I hurried the last mile, I tried to think of somebody I knew in the religion racket who wouldn't run me off on sight. Most religious leaders are paranoid about their privacy. They feel especially threatened if they suspect an investigation of their finances. They have me run off just on the chance somebody might want me to check them out.

Playmate was the only religious character I knew. And he was just a wannabe preacher.

Then how about somebody who would answer my questions in order to get rid of me? Somebody who had no use for me at all. I tried to recall who all had been involved that time that Maya and I had straightened out the feud between the Church and the Orthodox over their missing Terrell Relics.

Hell. I didn't even have useful enemies down in the Dream Quarter.

I hit the Street of the Gods farther to the west than I had planned, but Slight Alley had given me a case of the willies. There was no reason not to feel safe now. The Dream Quarter is the safest neighborhood in town.

I hustled past Chattaree and other huge places belonging to successful cults, recalled from past cases. Back then, though, I was dealing with flawed holy men, not the gods themselves. What was Maya doing now? I could ask Dean in a few days. He would know. They stayed in touch.

The weather must have melted the stone hearts of the older priests because the acolytes and postulants and what-have-you were all out fluttering like mayflies. The scenery was positively brilliant around the female-oriented temples.

The first four or five people I approached had not heard of either the Godoroth or the Shayir. Farther east I got a couple of bewildered "I ought to know what you're talking about but don't" responses, like the guy seven and a half feet tall, pale as death, wearing a black robe and lugging an ivory staff topped by an angry cobra's head. This character had no more meat on him than a skeleton. He mused, "Shayir? Those the people with the squid gods?"

"I don't know." Squids? I'm not even fond of mortal cephalopods, let alone many-armed critters with delusions of being masters of the universe.

"No, wait. Those are the Church of the Nameless Unspeakable Elder Outer Darkness From Beyond the Stars folks. I'm sorry. I should know, but I don't. But you're headed in the right direction. They must be right on the bottom end, ready to fall into the river."

How you going to learn anything when nobody knows anything?

I thanked him, accepted a small card good for one admission into one of his snake-worshipping services, said I sure would stop by, I just plain loved snakes. The bigger the better. I had a few for breakfast in the islands.

He guaranteed me they had a serpent that was a genuine kick-ass god snake big enough to snack on horses.

"Excellent idea. Round them all up and let him get fat." Then feed him to the ratmen.

A block later I met a guy who knew about both cults. He was a free-lance guide and street sweeper. He did little odd jobs, and the temples fed him scraps and let him sleep in warm spots out of the way, as long as he didn't spook the marks. He was raggedy around the edges, so probably didn't get a lot of work at the high end of the street.

"Name's No-Neck," he told me, proud of the fact that once upon a time folks thought enough of him to hang a nickname. "Had a little muscle on me when I was young."

"I figured. Marine?"

"Hey! Fugginay! How'd you know?"

It might have been the tattoos. "You can always tell a Marine. Got that special attitude."

"Yeah. Ain't dat da troot? You too, eh?"

"First Force." I added the years, so he would know there was no chance we had acquaintances in common. I hate it when people play that game. They find out you are from a particular neighborhood, whatever, they spend an hour asking do you know this one or that like all you ever did with your life was keep track in case somebody asked.

"Good. Dat's good. You come wit' me. I show you where dey hang. What you say you want to know for?"

"I didn't, No-Neck. But I'm supposed to check up on some changes going on down here." I told him about the Antitibet cult coming in.

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "I'm gonna help wit' da moving. Dese here Dellbo priests from da Cantard, you ask me, dey got no business taking over from honest TunFairen gods, but rules is rules and the gods made dem demselfs. You can only have so many temples and stuff or pretty soon you lose control and have dem loony churches wit' only tree members where nutsos worship killer radishes and stuff."

I am no heartbreaker, so I didn't let him know there were some off-Street storefront temples where minuscule congregations really did worship holy rutabagas and snails and whatnot. If the mind of man can come up with a screwball god, however bizarre, a god will arise to answer that lunatic appeal. At least in the imagination of man.

Many of the nonhuman species have their religions, too, but they do not go for diversity and cuckoo. Only us humans need gods crazier than we are.

And we are the future of the world. The other races are the fading past.

Makes you wonder if there isn't a god of gods with a really nasty sense of humor.