"I'm so jealous, I'm going to hit you the next time I see you," she said when I told her I'd been involved in using virtuous reality to contact Erasmus. "We were just talking about Ak-x that at the office today. The consensus in the business is that it's the biggest advance in sorcerous technology since ectoplasmic cloning." "I didn't think it was that important," I said. Look at the ways having large numbers of identical microimps has changed our lives: spellcheckers, telephones, ethemet sets, all sorts of things our grandparents couldn't have imagined.

Thinking of that much change happening again - and probably happening faster, because it would be allied to the developments that are already in place - made my head spin.

But Judy said, "Oh, it is, David. The world will be a different place twenty years from now, because we'll have figured out all the things we can do in virtuous reality. Think about it: what's the biggest problem in sorcerous applications today?"

"Ask me a hard one," I answered. "To accomplish everything people want to do these days, spells keep getting more and more complex, and errors creep in." Some of the errors are pretty ghastly, too, like the one at the Union Kobold works in India a few years back, where a Rakshawas mistakenly ordered to turn out wood alcohol instead of the more friendly sort. Hundreds died from drinking it, and a couple of thousand more were permanently blinded - all from one small goof in translating a spell from Latin into Sanskrit so , the Hindu demon could understand it "You're right, of course," Judy said, which took my mind off the contemplation of disaster. Just as well, too. She went on, "But think what will happen when any old mage can go into virtuous reality to develop his sorcerous subroutines.

Because of the nature of that space, the number of errors should drop way down. Ideally, it should fall to zero, but I think the fallibility principles will keep that from happening.

Still-"

"I hadn't thought of it in those terms," I admitted. "It just seemed a handy way to reach a spirit who'd been too badly damaged to manifest himself in this rough, rugged world." I thought about some of the things the wizards had done to poor Erasmus. Judy didn't need to know about those.

She said, "I'm just glad I'll have my master's and be out of the copy-editing and proofreading end of the business soon.

Mark my words, the accuracy breakthrough that will come with virtuous reality is going to throw a lot of sharp people onto the streets."

"Change has a way of doing that: the more efficient the spells get, the more they do and the less anybody needs actual people," I said. One of the reasons the General Movers plant in Van Nuys is going under is that the Japanese have figured out a way to power the looms that make their flying carpets by kamkazes-divine winds.

"That does look to be the way it's going," she said, "but what do we do with all the people who lose jobs? Eventually nobody will need people for anything, and then where will we be?"

The two answers that occur to me are bored and broke"

I answered. "But those are for people in general. People in particular - us, I mean - will be married. We may end up broke, but I don't think we'll be bored."

"No, not bored," she agreed, "especially not with children in the house."

"Uh-huh," I said. I know children are usually one of the things marriage is about. I even looked forward, in an abstract sort of way, to being a father. But it didn't seem real to me; I had trouble imagining myself giving a baby a bath or helping a little girl with her subtraction problems.

Then I thought about the Corderos. They were nice lads who'd had every reason to expect a nice, normal baby.

Instead they got Jesus, bom without a soul. How were they handling it? How could I handle something like that if it happened to me? The very idea was nearly enough to put me off parenthood for good.

"You still there?" Judy asked when I didn't say anything for a while. "Relax - it's not as if you're going to have to start changing diapers tomorrow." The woman can read me like one of the grimoires she proofs. I suspect that, like them, I'll end up better for the editing, too.

Just to show her I had other things on my mind besides immediately turning into a daddy, I said, "Something else interesting happened today - or at least I thought it was." I told her about the demon stration outside the Confederal Building.

"I'll bet you thought it was interesting," she said darldy.

Women take a particular tone when they talk about attractive competition that bothers them. They take a different - but not very different - tone when they talk about attractive competition that amuses them. Over the phone, I had a tough time telling which one Judy was using. She went on, "See anything you liked in particular?"

"Well-" The image of the succubus in blue leaped into my mind, as fully three-dimensional as the little demon had been herself. "As a matter of fact, yes." I did my best to sound sheepish, but I didn't know how good my best was.

Judy left me hanging for a couple of seconds before she started to laugh. "Good," she said between chuckles. "If you'd told me anything else, I'd have figured you were lying - succubi are made to be succulent, after all. I wish I'd been there; I could have leered at some of the incubi.

Watching is fun, though I think men may be more apt to enjoy it than women."

"Maybe," I said. "It didn't seem to matter much to the traffic, though. Everybody was staring, men and women both."

"Oh, God, I hadn't even thought about that It must have been awful." Commuting every day from Long Beach up into East A.C., Judy knows all about traffic tangles and loves them as much as anyone else who has to get on the freeway to go to work.

"It was worse than that." She laughed again when I told her how the strong-minded priest had foiled my effort to escape down Veteran. Thinking back on it, I decided it was funny, too. It certainly hadn't felt funny why I was sitting on my carpet twiddling my thumbs for an extra twenty minutes.

"So how was your day?" I asked.

"Certainly not as interesting as yours," she answered.

"Very much the usual: looking at sheets of parchment and making little marks on them in red. It keeps me out of the baron's Paupers' Home, but past that it doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it. I can't wait to finish my master's so somebody will hire me to work on the theoretical side of sorcery."

Then you'll be working in virtuous reality all the time, if it turns out to be as important as you think it wffl," I said.

"It will, and I will. Then I'll come home and we can be less than virtuous together." Judy hesitated, just a beat "But we'll be married, so it'll be virtuous after all. Hmm. I'm not sure I like that."

"I think it'll be fine any which way," I said. "And speaking-indirectly-of such things, do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?"

"Indirectly indeed," she said. "Sure, I'd love to. Shall we go to that Hanese place near your flat again?"

"Sounds good to me. You want to meet here after we get off work?"

"All right," Judy said. 'It'll be good to see you. I love you."

"Love you too, hon. See you tomorrow. Bye."

Thinking of seeing Judy kept me going through a miserable Tuesday at the office. I did get some of the small stuff done. Lord, the things that show up on an EPA man's desk sometimes! I got a letter from a woman up in the high desert asking it the ashes of a coyote's flesh had the same anti-asthmatic effect as those of a fox's flesh when drunk in wine and, if so, whether she could set traps for the ones that kept trying to catch her cats. Just answering that one took a couple of hours of research and a phone call to the Chief Huntsman of the Barony of Angels (in case you're interested, the answers are yes and she had to buy a twenty-crown license first, respectively).