I found a question I thought Kawaguchi had missed: "Can you describe the men who tormented you, Erasmus?"

"Again, I fear not," the spirit answered. "They were masked against the sight of Your Side, and so cloaked around in sorcery that I have no notion of their true spiritual semblance, either, save that were it benign they would not have used me as they did."

I sighed. Kawaguchi sighed. Even Brother Vahan looked a little less saintly than he had. Nigel Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth shifted from foot to foot They'd brought us all together here in virtuous reality, but for the amount of information Erasmus had given us, they might as well not have bothered.

"Very well, then," Kawaguchi said, sighing again. "What happened next?" °I still refused to divulge the nature of the research Inspector Fisher had been conducting," Erasmus said. "At 12:48, the intruders again became discontented with their means of torment and shifted stratagems. I found myself tramped under the sharp hooves of an enormous cow."

That made me sit up and take notice: metaphorically, you understand. Legate Kawaguchi leaned forward toward Erasmus till he was fell past the point where I thought he'd fall on his face. Maybe you can't do that in virtuous reality; I don't know. "A cow, you say?" he pressed. "Not a bull? Are you sure about that?"

"I am certain," Erasmus declared.

"Interesting," Kawaguchi said. I saw what he was flying toward. Bull cults are common. Straight Mithraism has never quite died, and there are modem revivalist sects trying to pick up supporters who don't get the spiritual charge they need from Christianity and Islam. Personally, I don't need to get drenched by the blood of a slaughtered bull to feel a union with the Godhead, but some folks evidently do.

But cows, now… two of the places where the cow is a focus of magic are India - home of the Garuda Bird - and Persia, from which sprang, among others in the case. Slow Jinn Fizz and Bakhtiar's Precision Burins (a place I hoped I'd get to before I died of old age).

Erasmus went on. The hooves of the cow seemed sharp as whetted steel. They flayed me past any anguish I had previously imagined. And so, to my lasting shame, Inspector Fisher, at 12:58 I yielded to my inquisitors' torment and described in detail the records I had copied for you. Judge me as you will; the deed is done."

When a spirit talks about lasting shame, it means lasting forever unless it's a sylph or one of that flighty breed. I said,

"Erasmus, you did the best you could. What you went through is more than I could have stood; I'm sure of that.

You don't need to feel shame on my account."

"You are gracious," the scriptorium spirit said. Brother Vahan also inclined his head in my direction. That made me feel good; winning Brother Vahan's good opinion isn't easy, but it's worth doing.

"What happened after you finished providing the perpetrators with this information, after"-Kawaguchi glanced down at his notes-"12:58?"

"I finished betraying Inspector Fisher at 1:03," Erasmus said bleakly. "I hoped that would be the end of it, that the malefactors would take what they had learned and depart. Instead, as you know, they forthwith kindled the fire which I gather resulted in the destruction of the Thomas Brothers monastery. As to that, I could not speak with certainty, for when the ground glasses in the scriptorium melted or shattered from the heat of the flames, I lost my interface with Your Side and, still in agony, awaited my own dissolution."

"The firecrew and constabulary rescued you," I said.

"Exactly so. At the time and since, I have doubted whether they did me any great favor, but, as with my betrayal of you, the deed is done and we now must proceed to act upon its consequences." The scriptorium spirit turned to Legate Kawaguchi. "Oh: there is one thing more. For some time after I was tormented, I lacked much of my normal awareness of self and surroundings. Were I flesh and blood, I gather you would say I was semiconscious. Only quite recently have I regained my full sensorium. When I did so, I found as part of my immediate surroundings - this."

I hadn't figured Erasmus for a sense of the dramatic. But from behind his back he pulled out a short green feather.

Kawaguchi held out his had. "May I see it?" Erasmus gave it to him. He felt it, held it close to his face in a gesture that said he was nearsighted. He shrugged. "Just seems like a feather to the eye and the hand." He turned to Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley and asked, "Are magical forensic tests possible in virtuous reality?'

They both shook their heads. Madame Ruth said,

"Remember, that isn't the actual feather you're holding, Legate, but its analog in this sorcerous space. And, like everything else in virtuous reality, it is imbued with special properties springing from this space and thus not a fit subject for testing."

"I should have thought of that." Kawaguchi clicked his tongue between his teeth, not so much in disappointment as in annoyance at himself. He turned to Brother Vahan. "Further questions?"

"I have one," I said. "How did the two men react when you finally yielded to the cow's hooves and told them what I'd been investigating?" 

"One of them said to the other, 'He'll get his, too, I expect,'" Erasmus answered. It didn't surprise me, but it didn't delight me, either. If somebody was willing to bum down a monastery, the added burden of sin that would accrue from going after an EPA inspector couldn't have been heavy enough to worry him.

Brother Vahan said, "Old friend, how soon will you be able to manifest yourself normally on Our Side once more?"

"It shouldn't be much longer, holy abbot," Erasmus said.

"The metaphysicians tell me I could do it now if my familiar haunts were restored. As it is, I'm given to understand it's a matter of days rather than weeks."

"Good," the abbot said. "I shall pray that the time will be soon, for purely selfish reasons: I find I miss you very much."

An undead who hadn't fed in a thousand years had infinitely more blood in him than Erasmus ever could, so when I saw the scriptorium spirit blush I just chalked it up to virtuous reality. And if we were out of questions, we didn't need to be there any more. I asked, "How do we get back to Interrogation Room Two?"

"You must return to awareness of the body you left behind there," Nigel Cholmondeley answered. "As soon as your hands leave contact with those of the persons to either side of you, the circuit will be broken and you - and all of us - will return to the mundane world."

My hands? I looked down, and of course I couldn't see them. From what my eyes reported, I might as well not have had any hands, or anything else - I was just there. Virtuous reality is an insidious kind of place: it so completely involves all the senses and seems so dioroughly real that leaving wasn't as easy as Cholmondeley made it sound. I wondered if early explorers had got stuck in it forever. Ifdiey had, I wondered ifdiey'd realized it.

An intense look of concentration came over Brodier Vahan's face. Presumably he couldn't see his own hands, either. But an instant later, I was sitting on a hard chair with a stifling helmet over my eyes and ears. I clawed it off. The (nimy reality of the interrogation room was a long, long way om the Garden where I'd been a moment before. Everyone else was taldng off the masks, too. Now that we were back in the constabulary station, Nigel Cholmondeley was horsefaced again, Madame Ruth fat as any two people you want to name, and Legate Kawaguchi short and skinny and tired-looking. I suppose I looked the way I always do, too.

On the table in front of Kawaguchi, along with the cigarette bums and coffee rings, lay a note tablet full of scribbles.

I didn't remember its being there when we sat down. I didn't think he could have brought it back from virtuous reality… but then I saw, right in the middle of the table, a bright green feather. Kawaguchi spotted it at the same time I did.