IV

I don't know much about babies: call it lack of practical experience. Give Judy and me a few years and I expect we'll do something about that, but not now. Oh, my brother up in Portland has a two-year-old girl and I have some little cousins up there, too, but I can count on the smelly fingers of both hands the number of diapers I've changed.

So poor little Jesus Cordero (the irony of the name struck me as soon as I heard it) didn't look much different from any other new-minted kid to me. He lay on his tummy in the cradle, wriggling in a sort of random way, as if he didn't really understand he had arms and legs and could do things with them. The only thing in the least remarkable about him to the eye was an astonishingly thick head of black, black hair.

His mother sat on the side of the bed by the cradle. She was nineteen, twenty, something like that; she might have been pretty if she hadn't looked so wrung out from giving birth. Her husband had a hand on her shoulder. He was about her age, dressed like a day laborer. They talked back and forth in Spainish. I wondered if they'd entered the Confederation legally, and wondered even more if they truly understood what had happened to little baby Jesus.

In the room with them were Susan Kuznetsov - a middleaged woman, no-nonsense variety, built like a crate - and a priest. He was a tubby little redheaded fellow named Father Flanagan, but he proved to speak fluent Spainish himself. In Angels City, that's a practical necessity for a priest these days.

"Any question about the diagnosis, Father?" I asked him.

"Not a'bit of it, worse luck for the poor boy," he answered.

Listening to him, I wondered if you could speak Spainish with a brogue. But all such frivolous thoughts vanished as he went on: "I was going through the nursery last night the way I always do, blessing the newboms of my creed. I came to this little fellow and - well, see for your own self. Inspector."

He took off the crucifix from around his neck, set it against the baby's cheek, murmured a few words of Latin.

That's not my ritual, of course, but I knew what was supposed to happen: because babies, being new to the world, are uncorrupt, the cross should have glowed for a moment, symbolic of the linkage between goodness on the Other Side and the innocence of the baby's soul. Not for nothing did Scandinavian converts speak of the White Christ But nothing was all we saw here. The crucifix might have been merely metal and wood, not one of the most potent mystical symbols on This Side. At its touch, little Jesus twisted his head in the hope that it was a milk-filled breast.

Gendy, his face sad, the priest redonned the crucifix.

Susan Kuznetsov said, "Fadier Flanagan called me first thing this morning. Of course, I came out immediately. He repeated the test in my presence then, and I made odiers so as to be absolutely certain. This baby, diough odierwise healdly and normal, possesses no soul."

Tears stung my eyes. Having something so dreadful happen to a poor tiny kid who'd never even had the chance to commit a sin struck me as horribly unjust Not even Satan got anything out of it, either, because when Jesus Cordero died, he'd just be gone. What did it mean? Far as I could tell, it meant only that we don't understand the way dungs work as well as we'd like to.

"Sir," I said to the baby's fadier (his name was Ramon; his wife was Lupe), "I'd like to ask you some questions, if I may, to see if I can learn how this unfortunate thing happened to your son."

"Sf, ask," he said. He understood English, even if he didn't speak it too well. His wife nodded to show she also followed what I'd said.

The first thing I asked was their address. I wasn't surprised to learn they lived within a couple of miles of the Devonshire dump; we were only five or six miles away there at the hospital. Then I tried to find out if Lupe Coidero had used any potent sorcerous products during her pregnancy.

She shook her head. "Nada," she said.

"Nodungat all?" I persisted, contact with magic is such a part of everyone's everyday life that sometimes we don't even think about it "Your medical treatments were all of the ordinary sort?"

She answered in rapid-fire Spainish. Fadier Flanagan did the honors for me: "She says she had no medical treatments till birth; she could not afford them." I nodded glumly; diat's the story with so many poor immigrants these days. Through the priest, Lupe went on. The only thing even a little different was that I had morning sickness, so I went to the ourandero for help."

Speaking for himself, Fadier Flanagan said, "Probably something on the order of camomile tea; few curanderos traffic with Anydiing important"

"Probably," I agreed, "but I have to be diorough. Mrs.

Cordero, can you give me the name and address of this person?"

"I don' remember," she answered in English. Her face closed up. I could guess what that meant: it was bound to be somebody from her home village back in Azteda, somebody she didn't want to see in trouble.

I tried again. "Mrs. Cordero, it's possible the medicine you received had something to do with your giving birth to an apsychic child. We have to check that out, to make sure the same misfortune doesn't happen to someone else."

"I don' remember," she repeated. Her face might have been cast in bronze. I knew I wasn't going to get any answers out of her. I caught Father Flanagan's eye. He nodded almost imperceptibly. Maybe he'd try to talk some more with her later, maybe he'd just ask around in the neighborhood. One way or another, I figured before too long I'd find out what I needed to know.

Ram6n Cordero bent over the cradle, picked up his son.

By the smooth way he held the baby in the crook of his elbow, I guessed it wasn't his first. "Nifio Imdo" he said softly. Even more softly. Father Flanagan translated: "Beautiful boyLittle Jesus was a nice-looking baby. "Enjoy him all you can, Mr. Cordero," I said. "Love him a lot. This is all he has.

He'u have to make the best of it."

That's good advice," Susan Kuznetsov said. She dropped into Spainish at least as fluent as Father Flanagan's, then returned to English for me: "I told him that many apsychics live extraordinary lives on This Side, maybe to help compensate for not going on after they the. Artists, writers, thaumaturges-"

What she said was true, though she'd just mentioned the good half. There's pretty fair evidence that the Leader of the Alemans during the Second Sorcerous War was an apsychic, and that he promoted the massacres and other horrors of the war exactly because he wasn't afraid of what would happen to him on the Other Side: once he was gone, he was gone permanently. That wasn't the sort of thing you wanted to mention to an apsychic's parents, though.

The baby wiggled, thrashed, woke up with a squall about like what you'd expect from a minor demon who doesn't care to be conjured up. Lupe held out her arms; her husband set Jesus in them. I glanced down at my toes while she adjusted her hospital robe so she could nurse him. The squalls subsided, to be replaced by intent slurping noises.

"Tiene mucho hambre," Lupe said - "He's very hungry."

She seemed pleased and proud, as a new mother should. No, little Jesus' tragic lack hadn't fully registered with her.

I stood there for a couple of more minutes, wondering all the while if I ought to say something about Slow Jinn Fizz.

Maybe - God willing - Ramzan Durani and his outfit could fill the vacuum at the center of little Jesus Cordero. From what Durani had said, he could fill it. What troubled me was whether he was creating similar but smaller vacuums in other souls. He said not, but even he'd admitted his procedure was still experimental.

In the end, I kept my mouth shut Part of that was not wanting to raise the adult Coroeros' hopes too much. The rest was simple pragmatism: even though baby Jesus had no hope for eternal life, odds were he wasn't going to shuffle off this mortal coil tomorrow or next year, either. He had the time to wait whfle the gremlins were exorcised from Durani's jinnetic engtaeering scheme.