It was a pleasant lunch. Any time with Judy was pleasant, but the good food and the chance to be out and about in the middle of the day (she'd been right about that the night before) just added to it. I hated to leave, but she had to get back to work and I needed to be at the Loki plant early enough - in the afternoon to do some useful work.

I parked my carpet in the loading zone in front of Handof-Glorys office, kissed Judy goodbye before I took off. It was a pretty thorough kiss, if I say say myself. This ten-year old who should have been in school made disgusted noises as he walked by. I didn't care. Give him a few more years and he'd find out about the sweet magic between man and woman.

I waited there till I saw Judy safe indoors, then headed up the Golden Province Freeway to Burbank. The Loki works weren't far from the tede airport there. They were big and sprawled-out enough to have separate buildings and lots for each of the consortium's many projects; I flew around till I found a skin that said SPACE DIVISION and had a stylized Garuda bird under it. I parked my carpet as dose to the skin as I could, then walked off some of my lunch hiking toward the entrance.

Inside, where they didn't show from the parking lot, were guards armed with pistols and holy water sprayers. I presented my EPA sigil. Even though I'd phoned ahead in the morning, I could see how little ice it cut here. The guards were ready to take on major foes, from This Side or the Other. One bureaucrat wasn't worth getting excited about.

Which is not to say they weren't diorough. They turned a spellchecker on my sigil, to make sure it wasn't forged and hadn't been tampered with. One of them carefully compared the image on my flying license to my face. The other waited tffl the first was done, then called my office to confirm I really did work there. He didn't ask me for the number; he looked it up himself.

Only when they were satisfied did they phone deeper into the building. "Magister Arnold will come to escort you shortly, sir," one of them said. "Here is your visitors talisman." He pinned it on me, then added, "Once you pass through that door, the demon in the talisman will be roused and will sting you if you get more than fifteen feet away from Magister Arnold. Just so you know, sir"

"What happens if I need to use a toilet?" I asked.

"Magister Arnold must accompany you to the facility, sir," he answered, unsmiling. The guy outside the Devonshire dump had billed himself as a security guard. This Loki fellow reallywas one.

I found another question: "Suppose I ditch the talisman once I go inside?"

"First, sir, any attempt to do so would rouse the demon.

Second, once inside the door there, the talisman will weld itself to your dodiing and remain bonded to it until you emerge. If you're a good enough sorcerer, sir, you can beat the talisman, but you'll set off a great many alarms in the process, and will be apprehended in short order." I don't want to beat it and I don't want to be apprehended," I said. "I was just curious." The guard nodded, polite but unconvinced. His job was being unconvinced, and he was real good at it Magister Arnold came out a couple of minutes later. He was a big, rangy fellow in his mid-fifties, in a lab robe almost as fancy as Ramzan Durani's. "Call me Matt," he said after we shook hands. "Come along with me now."

I came along. The door closed behind us. I gave the talisman a surreptitious yank. Sure enough, it was stuck to the front of my shirt. I'd figured it would be. Loki took security seriously.

I found out just how seriously when we got to the door of Arnold's office: it was hermetically sealed. Now I grant you that Hermes is a good choice of protector for an aerospace office - in his wingfoot aspect, he's naturally related to flight sciences, and who better to propitiate in a security system than the patron deity of thieves?

But merdful heavens, the expense! A security system isn't just a seal; the backup is a lot more important Maintaining a whole cult at a level sufficient to keep its god active and alert will kill you with priests' fees, fanes, sacrifices, what have you. I wondered how much of the bill Loki was paying itself and how much it was passing on to the taxpayer. Somehow cost overruns never turn out to be anybody's fault. They're just there, like crabgrass, and about as hard to weed out.

Be that as it may, Magater Arnold rubbed the toggle that served as the door Herm's erect phallus. The Herm must have recognized his touch, for it smiled and the door came open.

It dosed behind us with a definitive-sounding snick. "Coffee?" Arnold asked, waving to a pot that sat on top of a little asbestos salamander cage.

"No, thanks," I answered; I'd just as soon drink vitriol as muck that was reheating all day. And besides - "You really don't feel like following me down the hall if I have to use the men's room, do you?"

"Oh, yes, of course. Thaft right, you're wearing a visitors talisman, aren't you? I hope you don't mind if I have a cup?"

At my inviting wave, Arnold poured himself one. It looked as thick and dark and oily as I'd figured it would. Even the fumes were enough to make my nostrils twitch. When he set the cup down, he asked, "So what have we done that's brought the EPA down on us?" He didn't say this time, but you could hear it behind his words.

"I don't know that you've done anything," I answered. "I do know that somebody's spells are leaking out of the Devonshire dump, and I also know that whoever that somebody is, he's murdered monks to keep his secret."

That got Arnold's instant and complete attention. His eyes gripped me like the Romanian giants Eastern European sorcerers use to handle magical apparatus they wouldn't touch with a ten-foot Pole. He was quick on the uptake. The Thomas Brothers fire is connected to this affair, is it?" he said. "A bad business, very bad."

"Yes." I let it go at that; no need for him to know I was personally involved with the monastery fire. I pulled out my chart. "As near as I can tell from this, Magister Arnold, Loki puts more toxic spells into Devonshire than anybody else - and the ones I have here are those you admit to publicly."

"For the record," Arnold said loudly, "I deny there are any others." His tone was just as sincere as Tony Sudalds', and told me (in case I hadn't been sure already) a Listener was in there with us.

I liked that tone even less from the magister, because I knew he wasn't on my side while I hoped Sudakis was. All Arnold wanted to do was play with his projects, whatever they happened to be. It wasn't that I doubted their worth. I didn't; as I've said, I'm demons for the space program myself. But nobody has any business fouling the nest and then pretending his hands are clean.

"For the record," I answered, just as loudly and just as snotcily, "I don't believe you." Arnold glared; my guess was that nobody'd talked to him like that for a while. I let him steam for a few seconds, then said, "Are you seriously telling me nothing too secret to get into your ERA forms goes on at the Cobold Works?"

"What Cobold Works?" he said, but he couldn't keep a twinkle from his eye. That the establishment in the desert exists is an open secret. But his smile disappeared in a hurry.

"If it's too secret to go into the forms, Inspector Fisher, it's also too secret to talk about with you. No offense, but you need to understand that."

Tm not out to betray our secrets to the Hanese or the Ukrainians," I said. "You need to understand that, and to understand that the situation around the Devonshire dump is serious." I tossed him the report on birth defects around the site. As he read it, his face screwed up as if he'd bitten into an unripe medlar. "You see what I mean, magister."

"Yes, I do. You have a problem there, absolutely. But I don't believe the Loki Space Division, at least, is responsible for it If you'll give me a chance, I'll tell you why."