These particular pickets weren't just marching; they were chanting, too: "Hey, hey, waddaya say, let's throw out the EPA!"

That flicked my curiosity. I wandered over to see what they were upset about Their signs spoke for themselves:

SAVE OUR STBAWBERMESI was one. Another said, STOP AERIAL GARLIC SPRAYING! And a third - BETTER MEDVAMPS THAN TURNING MY BACK YARD INTO AN ITALIAN DEU! I liked that, actually, even if I couldn't agree with it Sometimes protesters will listen to reason. I decided to give it a try, remarking to a fellow with a blond beard, "You know, if we let Medvamps establish themselves here, they'll wipe out a good part of our agriculture. Look what they've done to the Sandwich Islands."

"I don't care about the Sandwich Islands, pal," Blond Beard answered. "All I know is that as far as I'm concerned, garlic stinks. I have to smell it - every hour of the day and night and I think it's making me sick. And. it's gotten into my flying carpet and the sylphs don't like it any better than I do.

I may have to trade the stupid thing in, and with the performance shot I won't get near what it's worth. So there!"

"But-" I started. Blond Beard had stopped paying attention to me; he was chanting again. I gave up and headed back to my own carpet. Reminding him that all the people in the spraying area had been warned to cover up their carpets or bring them indoors wouldn't have changed his mind, it would just have made him angrier than he was already. Some people might as well be zombies, for all the constructive use they get out of their free will.

As I started to fly toward - the freeway, I noticed a familiar-looking man holding a glass glove up to the mouth of one of the picketers. It was Joe Forbes of Ethernet Station One. "Thanks a lot, Joe," I muttered. Thousands of people, I had no doubt, would hear about the imaginary evils of garBc spraying just as if they were thaumaturgically established.

I hoped he'd have the integrity to interview an EPA sorcerer or somebody from the citrus business, too. But even if he did, the views of people who didn't know anything except what they didn't like would in effect get equal weight with those of folks who'd been studying the problem since it first bared its teeth. I sighed. What could I do about it? People out picketing and raising a ruckus were "news," regardless of whether they had any facts to back them up.

The freeway was jammed, too, which didn't do anything to improve my mood by the time I finally got home.

Next morning, I started adding to my chart some of the toxic spell components the aerospace firms dumped at Devonshire. I hadn't been at it for more than a couple of hours before I saw I'd have to talk with my boss.

Bea was on the phone when I went up to her office.

Sometimes I think she's had that imp permanently implanted in her ear. As soon as she laid down the handset I scurried in. Before the phone could go off again, I tossed my still only half-done chart on the desk in front other.

Her eyes followed it down. When she saw some of the things I'd written in red, she gave a real live theatrical gasp.

"Good God in heaven, are we actually storing these things inside a populated area?" she exclaimed, raising a shocked hand. Her gaze lingered on the flayed human skin substitute.

Even though it's legal, it's appalling to contemplate.

"Looks that way," I said, "and this isn't all of it, by any means. I wanted to ask you to let me do some afternoon fieldwork this week, maybe talk to some of the people who use this stuff and see if there aren't substitutes. Or even substitutes for the substitutes," I added, wondering if a second-generation ersatz skin would be magically efficacious.

"Go ahead," she told me without hesitation; she really is a pretty good boss. "Do one other thing first, though: call Mr.

Charles Kelly and let him know what sort of mess he's landed this office in. I've already had words with him about that, but you can emphasize it, too. If we have to holler for help from the District of St Columba, I don't want him to be able to say he wasn't warned in advance."

Burning brimstone makes you think of demons.

Bureaucratic finagling has a smell of its own, too, I went back to my desk and made the call. When I got through to Charlie, he sounded jovially wary, a combination implausible only to someone who's never taken his crowns from the government "What can I do for you this afternoon, David?" he boomed. I'd expected him not to bother remembering it was still morning for me, so I wasn't disappointed when he didn't.

"You've hear about what happened out here over the weekend?" I asked. It wasn't really a question.

For a second, though, he sounded as if it was. "Only news out of Angels City I've heard is that monastery fire." He hesitated, just for a second. I could almost see the ball of St Ehno's fire pop into being above his head. "Wait a minute.

Are you telling me that's connected to the Devonshire case?"

"I sure am, Charlie. Eleven monks dead of arson, in case all the news didn't make it back East" Without giving him a chance to rally, I pushed ahead: "My boss Bea says she's already spoken to you about the way I got this case. It's bigger than you thought, it's bigger than I imagined when you dropped it on me. You should be aware that we may have to have help from D.StC."

"If you do, you'll get it Eleven monks. Jesus, Mary; and Joseph." Charlie being of the Erse persuasion, I thought that would hit him where he lived.

"Something else," I said: "Don't you think it's time to level with me and stop playing coy about the 'bird' who tipped you to the trouble at the Devonshire dump?"

This time, Kelly's pause lasted a lot longer than a second.

Even through two phone imps and three thousand miles of ether, he sounded unhappy as he answered, "Dave, I'd tell you if I could, but I swear I can't. I'm sorry."

I blew exasperated air out my nose, hard enough to stir the hairs of my mustache against my upper hp. "Okay, Charlie. Play a game with me, then. Is your feathered friend from groups involved with any of these…?"! named the Garuda Bird, Quetzalcoad, the Peacock Throne, (hesitantly) the Peacock Angel, and, as an afterthought, the phoenix.

More silence from Charlie. Finally he said, "Yeah, the bird's in there somewhere. Believe me, I'm taking a chance telling you even that much. So long." And he was gone, fester than a Medvamp out of a Korean restaurant.

Nice to know one of the ideas Judy and I had come up with was the right one. It would have been nicer still, of course, to know which. I thought about what he'd said and, as well as I could tell over the phone, how he'd said it. Maybe politics wasn't what sealed his lips. Maybe it was fear. That was the first time I started getting a little bit fearful myself.

Well, onward - no help for it unless I felt like quitting.

And if I did that, not only would I not want to look at myself in the mirror but Judy would drop me like something just up from the Pit. So off I went to Slow Jinn Fizz, the closest outfit I'd yet found that had a red-letter contaminant on my chart.

The carpet ride up into St. Ferdinand's Valley took about twenty minutes. Slow Jinn Fizz was on the chief business flyway of the Valley, Venture Boulevard. The address itself was enough to tell me the outfit had money. The building argued for that, too: an elegant gray stucco structure with SLOW JINN FIZZ in neat gold letters on the plate glass window by the entry door. Underneath, in smaller (but just as gold) letters, it added, A JINNETIC ENGINEERING CONSORTIUM. "Aha!" I said before I walked in. The combination of the name and the Solomon's Seals discarded at the Devonshire dump had made me figure jinnetic engineering was what Slow Jinn Fizz was all about. Nice to be right every so often.

A dazzling blond receptionist, as expensive-looking and probably as carefully chosen as the rest of the decor, gave me a dazzling white smile. "How may I help you, sir?" she asked in the land of voice that suggested she'd do anything I asked.