The environmental study on importing leprechauns, though, took a large step backwards. I got a very fancylooking legal brief from an outfit that called itself Save Our Basin, which opposed allowing the Little People to establish themselves here. SOB put forward the fear that, once we had leprechauns here, all the Sidhe would henceforth pack up and move to Angels City. I'm condensing, but that's what the gist of it was. Now on first glance this stuck me as one of the more idiotic environmental concerns I'd seen lately. The climate here, both literal and theological, isn't congenial to Powers from cool, moist Eire. But the Save Our Basin folks had so many citations in their brief - from the evocatio of Juno out of Veil and into Rome to the establishment of the Virgin at Guadalupe in what had been a purely Aztecan thecology - that I couldn't dismiss it out of hand. It would have to be countered, which meant more research, more projections - and more delay. I wondered how long leprechauns could stay in hiberniation. I hoped it was a long time.

I looked at the names on the letterhead of the Save Our Basin parchment I didn't recognize any of them, but somebody in that organization was one clever lawyer. As far as I could see, none of the citations in the brief was precisely analogous to what would happen if we imported leprechauns into Angels City, but they were all close enough to being analogous that I (and, again by analogy, our legal staff) couldn't afford to ignore them. We'd have to examine every one of those instances, demonstrate that it was irrelevant, and withstand challenges from Save Our Basin trying to establish that the instances weren't irrelevant at all.

In a word, a mess. I figured the best way was to taclde their citations chronologically, so I started researching the Roman sack of Veil. I found out in a hurry that all the accounts of the sack are legendary, some more so than others. Legends are trickier to deal with than myths. Mythical material definitely has theological overtones; you know what the thaumaturgic content is. But in a legend you can't tell what's from This Side and what from the Other. A lawyers paradise, in other words.

I'm sure Save Our Basin did it on purpose, too. Not for the first time lately, I had the feeling I was wading deeper into quicksand. When quitting time finally rolled around, I breathed a heartfelt. "Thank God!" My spirits improved considerably as I left behind the spirits I'd been wrestling with at work and looking forward to dinner with rest of the being more enjoy on my way home, someone tried to kill me.

VII

Everything was fine till I got off the freeway at The Second. Traffic, in fact, had been a little lighter than usual, though on St. James' Freeway at rush hour a little light than usual isn't the same as light, or even close to it Still, I was feeling pretty good about the world as I headed east up The Second toward my flat I had to wait for cross traffic at the comer of The Second and Anglewood Boulevard; a small church was being moved up Anglewood on top of a couple of extra-heavy-duty carpets. When at last it cleared the intersection, I tried to start across fast but couldn't because the little old lady on the carpet in front of me didn't. That probably saved my life, though I sent foul thoughts her way at the time.

A carpet had been idling in the parking lot of the filed chicken place on the far side of Anglewood. I'd noticed it, and wondered what the two guys on it were thinking about. Most likely nothing, was my disparagmg opinion; if they'd had any brains, they would have taken advantage of the hole in traffic the traveling church made and headed up The Second themselves.

They got moving fast enough after I went by. Too fast, in fact - if a black-and-white carpet had been anywhere nearby, they'd have picked up a ticket just like that I saw in my rearview mirror that they didn't seem to like the way I was flying, either: they zoomed up above me to pass. That would have earned them another ticket from any constable who saw them.

I thought about signifying my opinion of the way they flew with an ancient fertility gesture, but I decided not to. As I've mentioned, Hawthorne is a tough town, and people have been known to get shot or have other unpleasant things happen to them on the flyways of Angels City. So I just did my best to pretend the louts didn't exist as they went up and over me.

As they did, though, one of them leaned out past the fringe of his carpet and dropped something down onto mine.

They sped away,.. and my carpet didn't want to fly any more.

I had time for one startled squawk and the first two words of the Shnw before the carpet, suddenly just a rug, hit the ground with a thump that made me bite my tongue and left my backside bruised for the next two weeks. If I hadn't been wearing my safety belt, if the carpet hadn't rolled up around me when I hit, or if I'd been going faster, I don't care to think what might have happened.

As things were, I wasn't badly hurt, but I had that weird sensation you get after an accident: I was pretty shaky, but I had almost total perception and recall of everything going on around me. Other carpets kept flying by a few feet overhead, the people on them intent on their own business and not caring at all about somebody who'd just had his carpet fail him.

But why had it failed? I couldn't figure that out Did it have something to do with whatever the punk had dropped on my carpet? I looked around for that, trying to find out what it was. I didn't see anything on the carpet itself, but something was stirring out on the weed-covered dirt just beyond the fringe.

I bent my head closer. The earth itself seemed to be writhing. For a second or two, I didn't understand what I was looking at Then I did, and ice ran through me: it was a tiny earth elemental, busfly digging itself back into its proper home.

Fire and water are the opposing elements we most commonly notice, but earth and air are opposites, too. Matt Arnold had talked about sylph-esteem and sylph-discipline, but if those two guys had tossed an earth elemental down onto my carpet, that was nothing short of sylph-abuse.

The elemental had gone now, though, back to its own proper home. I tried the starting spell. My carpet lifted off the ground as smoothly as if nothing had ever been wrong with it Very carefully, looking every which way as I went and wishing for eyes in the back of my head, I flew on home.

All the way there, I tried to make some sense out of what had happened, the way theologians wrestle with God's will.

Was it just a couple of hooligans out to have some sport with whoever drew the short straw? That's the sort of random violence that gives Angels City flyways a bad name, but this time I wished I could believe it. I couldn't, though.

Those two guys on that rug had been waiting for me in particular. I'd noticed them sitting a few feet off the ground in the parking lot while the church slowly flew by on Anglewood Boulevard. If they'd wanted to head up The Second, they'd had all the time they needed to do it. They'd just waited.

But why? Again, I didn't have much trouble coming up with an answer: it had to have something to do with the case of the toxic spell dump. I did my best to remember what the two punks had looked like. All I could come up with was swarthy and dark-haired. They might have been Persians or Aztedans. They might have been hired muscle, too: Israelites, Druzes, Indians from the Confederation or from India, even Hanese or Japanese. I hadn't got a real good look at then, and an awful lot of people in Angels City match up to the description swarthy and dark-haired.

I came to that dispirited conclusion about the time I set my carpet down in its parking space back at my block of flats.