I wonder what I would have done if I'd been dealing with a seventy-year-old apsychic in poor health, someone facing imminent oblivion. Would gaming that person a soul (assuming the procedure worked) outweigh me harm inflicted on other souls in the process (assuming it didn't work as well as Durani claimed)?

I decided I was awful glad Jesus was just a baby.

Lupe raised the little fellow to her shoulder, patted him on the back. After a few seconds, he let out a burp about an octave deeper than you'd think could come from anything so small.

"When will you be going home from the hospital?" I asked her.

"Mariana," she said.

"Td like to come by your home that afternoon, if I could," I said. "I have a portable spellchecker, so I can begin investigating for toxic spells in the local environment, and I'd also like a look at whatever potion you got from your curanderv." I saw from her face that she didn't understand everything I'd said. So did Father Flanagan.

He translated for me. Lupe and Ramdn looked at each other. "No questions about nothing else?" he asked.

They were illegals, then. "None," I promised. That wasn't my business. "Hying to find out why their son had been born without a soul was. "I swear it in God's name."

"You don' make no cross," Bam6n said suspiciously.

Father Flanagan was giving me a questioning look, too.

Tell them I'm Jewish," I said. His face cleared. I was sure he didn't care much for my beliefs, but that's okay: I wasn't fond of all of his, either. But we acknowledged each others sincerity. He spoke way too rapidly for me to follow what he said to the Corderos, but they nodded when he was through.

Lupe said, "You go, you look, you find out. We trus' you, the padre say we can trus' you. He better be right"

"He is," I said, and let it go at that. If I'd taken another oath, the Corderos might have thought the first one wasn't to be trusted. Father Flanagan nodded slowly, understanding what I'd done.

Susan Kuznetsov said, "Besides, Jesus there is a nativeborn citizen of the Confederation, and entitled to all the protection of our laws." When she turned that into Spainish, the Corderos beamed; they liked the idea. The woman from the Bureau of Physical and Spiritual Health quietly added, "I just wish our laws could do more for the poor little guy." Neither she nor Father Flanagan translated that.

I said my goodbyes, collected Mistress Kuznetsov's carte de vistte, and flew back to the office. The elves hadn't magically cleaned up my desk while I was gone. I didn't care. It could stay dirty a while longer. I picked up the phone and called Charlie Kelly.

The yammering at the other end went on for so long that I wondered if he was back from lunch yet. It was well past two back m D.StC.; where the demons did those confounded Confederal bureaucrats get the nerve to keep swilling at the public sty like that? All I needed was a minute of no answer on the phone to swell up and bellow like an enraged buB taxpayer, when after all I was a confounded Confederal bureaucrat my very own self.

"Environmental Perfection Agency, Charles Kelly speaking." Finally!

"Charlie, this is Dave Fisher in Angels City. We just had another apsychic birth close by the Devonshire dump. That makes four in a little more than a year. This isn't going to be a quiet investigation any more, Charlie. I'm going to find out what's leaking and why, no matter how noisy I have to get."

He kind of grunted. "Do what you think necessaiy."

"Shit, Charlie, you're the one who sicced me onto this."

I'm not usually vulgar on the phone and I'm not usually vulgar in the office, but I was steaming. "Now you're making it a lot harder than it has to be."

"In what way?" he asked, as if he hadn't the slightest idea.

When Charlie Kelly goes all innocent on you, check how many fingers and toes you're wearing. The odds are real good they'll add up to a number smaller than twenty. I can't imagine how I kept from screaming at him. "You know perfectly well. Tell me about the bloody bird that keeps singing in your ear."

"I'm sorry, David, but I can't," he said. "I never should have mentioned that to you in the first place."

"Well, you did and now you're stuck with it," I said savagely. "There's something rotten in the area of that dump.

People are being born without souls. People are dying, too, if you'll remember the Thomas Brothers fire. You started me on this and now you won't give with what you know?

That's - damnable."

"I have to pray you're wrong," Charlie answered. "But whether you are or not, I can't give you what you're asking.

This whole matter is bigger than what you seem to grasp - bigger than I thought, too. If I could, I'd shut down your whole investigation."

This, from a high-powered EPA man? "Good God, Charlie? What are we talking about here, the Third Soreerous War?"

"If we were, I couldn't tell you so," Kelly said. "Goodbye, David. I'm afraid you're on your own in this one." My imp stopped reproducing his imp's breathing; he'd hung up on I don't know how long I stared at my own phone before I hung up, too. Jose Franco walked past my office door. I think he was just going to nod at me, the way he usually does, but he stopped in his tracks when he Saw my face.

"What's the matter, Dave?" he asked, real concern in his voice. He's a good guy, Jose is. "You look like you just saw your own ghost"

"Maybe I did," I said, which left him shaking his head.

Why in God's name was Charlie Kelly acting altogether too serious about a Third Sorcerous War? The first two were disasters beyond anything imaginable even in nightmares before this century. A third one? If mankind was stupid enough to start a Third Sorcerous War, we'd probably never have to worry about a fourth one, because nobody'd be left to fight it And Charlie wouldn't even tell me who the enemy was liable to be. You ever look back on your life and notice just how many sins you've committed to get where you are, how everything that always seemed solid all at once starts to crumble under your feet until you're peering straight down into Ae Pit? That was what I felt like after I got off the phone with KeBy. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, No wonder I'd alarmed Jose.

Afterwards, I needed to gwe myself a good hard shake before I went back to work. When you've spent a whfle contemplating Armageddon, environmental concerns don't look as big as they did. If the Third Sorcerous War comes along, there won't be any environment left to protect, anyhow.

I drowned my sorrows in a cup of coffee, wishing it were something stronger. Then, more or less by main force, I made myself call Legate Kawaguchi to find out how Erasmus was doing. People are like that: the world may be going to hell around them (and the Third Sorcerous War would be a reasonable approximation, believe me), but they try to keep their own little pieces of it tidy.

"Ah, Inspector Fisher," Kawaguchi said after I'd made it through the maze of constabulary operators to his phone. "I was going to phone you in the next few days. We expect that access spirit to become accessible to interrogation within that time frame."

That's good," I said, both because I hoped I'd learn something that would help my case (and, presumably, Kawaguchi's) and because I was glad Erasmus would make it "What other news do you have about the fire?"

"Investigations are continuing," he answered, which meant he had no news.

Or maybe it meant he just didn't feel like telling me anything. Constables are like that sometimes. I decided to give him a nudge, see if I could shake something loose: "Have your forensic sorcerers made any progress in analyzing those strange traces the thaumatech picked up at the scene, the ones the consecrated ground erased before she could fully get them into her speBchecker?"