"No, never mind." The assurance in his voice said he wasn't bluffing. And if I wanted to check, I could do it at the Criminal and Magical Courts building. "But visitors should be warned before they enter the secure area, sir. They'd have more of an incentive for following instructions carefully."

"Oh, it seems to work out all right. We haven't lost one in a couple of weeks." The aerospace man had a perfect deadpan delivery. At first I accepted what he'd said without thinking about it, then did a double take, and only then noticed the very comers of his mouth curling up. I snorted. He'd got me good.

He led me out to the door by which I'd entered. As soon as I was on the far side of it, I took off the talisman (now I could) and all but threw it at the security guard. "You didn't tell me it was lethal," I snarled. "If your intentions were good, sir, you didn't need to know," he answered. "And if they were bad, you also didn't need to know."

He should have been a Jesuit. After I got done gasping for air, I slunk out toward my carpet, then headed for home. It was still early, but if I'd gone someplace else and done my song and dance, I'd have been late. I was late the day before.

Put the two days together, I figured, and they'd come out even. It was the sort of logic you'd expect after a Zoroastrian lunch, but it satisfied me for the moment.

Because I was early, I made good time on the way back down to Hawthorne. Of course, that left me rattling around my flat for a chunk of the afternoon. I'm usually good at just being there by myself, but it wasn't working that day. I didn't feel like going out and going shopping; besides, with next payday getting close and the last one only a ghostly memory, the ghouls had been chewing on my checking account I decided to do something to put crowns into my pocket, not take them out I had three or four sacks of aluminum cans rattling around under the sink and in my closet; I took 'em out (which freed up space to put in more), carried 'em down to my carpet, and headed for the local recycling center.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND SAVE ENERGY, said the skin outside: RECYCLE ALUMINUM. I nodded approvingly as I lugged the cans over. Some programs sell themselves as being good for the environment when they're not, but recycling isn't one of them.

The fellow at the center tossed the cans on the scale, looked back at a little chart on the wall behind him. "Give you two crowns sixty," he said, and proceeded to do just that The small change went into my pocket, the two-crown note into my wallet. "Thank you, friend," I told him.

"Any time," he answered. "See you again soon, I hope.

You're making some sorcerer's life easier."

I let that go with a nod. Since I work for the EPA, I would have bet I knew more about it than he did. Recycled aluminum lets magicians use the law of similarity to extract more of the metal directly from the ore; it's a lot cheaper and more energy efficient than the alchemy they have to resort to when they're working without any aluminum source… to say nothing of the preposterous and expensive mechanical processes you have to use to coax aluminum free of the minerals that contain it. Were it not for sorcery, I doubt we'd ever have learned what a wonderfully useful metal aluminum is.

Two crowns sixty wouldn't come close to paying the bill from the Department of Water and Powers I'd found in my mailbox. The bill was up from last month, too; the Department, a little dipped - on notice said, had gained approval for a three percent increase in salamander propitiation fees. Everything costs more these days.

The money I'd got for the aluminum cans would just about cover a hamburger, though not the fries that went with it. A Golden Steeples was right around the comer from the recycling center. I went in there, spent my dividend and a bit more besides. It was a long way from a gourmet treat, but when you're eating by yourself, a lot of the time you don't care.

A newspaper rack stood just outside the Golden Steeples: it used the same kind of greedy little imp that dwells in pay phones. I stuck in the right change, pulled out a Times. If I'd tried to take more than one, the imp would have screamed blue murder. I think it's a'shame the racks have to resort to measures like that, but they do. Life in the big city.

Back in my flat, I opened a beer and drank it down while I read the daily. One of the page-nine stories directly concerned me: Brother Vahan was appealing to the Cardinal of Angels City for a dispensation to allow cosmetic sorcery for one of the monks badly burned in the Thomas Brothers fire.

I prayed that the Cardinal would grant the dispensation.

Cosmetic sorcery can do maivelous things these days. If the doctors and wizards have a recent portrait of someone before he was burned, they can use the law of similarity to bring his appearance back to what it used to be. Function doesn't follow superficial form, of course, but a bum victim gains so much by not becoming a walking horror show.

Trouble is, the Cardinal of Angels City is a stiff-necked Erseman who takes the mortification of the flesh and God's will seriously. The story said he was considering Brother Vahan's appeal, but the issuance of a dispensation cannot be guaranteed." He was liable to decide God wanted that monk disfigured, and who were we to argue with Him?

That sort of attitude never made sense to me. Far as I can see, if God wanted bum victims to stay ugly forever. He wouldn't have made cosmetic sorcery possible. But then, I'm just an EPA man, not a theologian (and especially not a Catholic theologian). What do I know?

St. George and the Dragon was splashed all over the entertainment section (and I wondered what the Cardinal thought about that). I hadn't gotten a good enough look at the blonde by the Hollywood Freeway to tell if she was the one falling out other minitunic in the ads. I wasn't about to go to the light-and-magic show to find out, either. That miserable publicity stunt had cost them at least one cash customer.

When I got to work the next morning, more pickets were marching out alongside the Confederal Building to protest the aerial spraying for Medvamps. I shook my head as I went up the elevator to work. Some people simply cannot weigh short-term inconvenience against long-term benefit.

As soon as I got to my desk, I started working like a man possessed; had a priest wandered by, he probably would have wanted to perform an exorcism on me. But I banged through the routine parts of my job as fast as I could so I'd have time to investigate the Devonshire case properly. I wanted to get out to Chocolate Weasel that afternoon.

The best-laid plans - I'd just managed to get the wood on top of my desk out from under the usual sea of parchments and visible to the naked eye once more when the phone started yelling at me.

Unlike some people I know, I don't usually have premonitions, but I did this time. What I smelled was trouble. The phone hadn't given me much else lately.

"David Fisher, Environmental Perfection Agency."

"Mr. Fisher, this is Susan Kuznetsov, of the Barony's Bureau of Physical and Spiritual Health…"

"Yes?" I'd never heard other.

"Mr. Fisher, I'm calling from Chatsworth Memorial Hospital. I was going to notify the St Ferdinand's chapter of the Thomas Brothers, as is usual in such cases, but due to the recent tragedy there, that was impossible. When I called the East Angels City Thomas Brothers monastery, I was referred to you."

"Why?" I asked. My mind wasn't on the Devonshire dump, not that minute. But then, before she could answer, I put together whom she worked for, where she was calling from, her likeliest reason for wanting to get hold of the Thomas Brothers, and their likeliest reason for passing her on to me. "Don't tell me. Mistress Kuznetsov-"

"I'm afraid so, Mr. Fisher. We've just had an apsychic baby bom here."