I recognized one of the prisoners - Jorge Vasquez. He saw me at about the same time I saw him. I thought about making some crack about his getting shut down for EPA violations along with everything else, but I kept my mouth shut. Even captured, he looked too smart and tough for me to want to twit him.

Behind him came Legate Kawaguchi, who was busy loading another charge of powder and ball into his pistol as he walked along. Brother Vahan called to him: "Do any within that building require my services?"

Kawaguchi finished ramming home the ball before he looked up. "For last rites and such, you mean. Brother?" He shook his head. "Just corpses in there."

"Martyrs,'' Brother Vahan said, his voice grim. Their reward shall surely come in heaven."

I wondered about that was somebody who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time a martyr in the same sense as a person who deliberately invited death for the sake of his faith? I'm neither Catholic nor theologian, so I can't tell you what Brother Vahan should have been thinking by the standards of his church.

That was the least of my worries, anyhow. I lunged for Kawaguchi in a way that almost made him level his newly loaded pistol at me. "Did you-" I choked on fear and had to force myself to go on: "Did you find Judy in there?"

Ib my relief, he slipped the pistol back into its holster.

Then he said, "Inspector Fisher, I neither searched extensively through Ae Chocolate Weasel building nor closely examined the bodies of the victims around the altar." Something else to be decontaminated, I thought. Kawaguchi was continuing, "So long as you understand these limitations, sir, I can state to you that I did not see a corpse matching the description of your fiancee in that - that abbatoir."

Kawaguchi talks like an upper-level constable: as if every word he says is going to show up in a written report or as courtroom testimony Real Soon Now. For him to pick a word like abbatoir… all at once I was glad the very large fellow in the blue uniform hadn't let me follow the legate.

I was also gladder than I could say that - subject to his careful limitations - he hadn't found Judy. If I chose to believe that she wasn't there because he hadn't found her, can you blame me?

Michael said, "Legate, can we lend any further assistance?" We hadn't lent Kawaguchi much assistance before that I'd noticed. Michael is usually too precise to make a slip like that, but after everything that had happened during the day, can you blame him, either?

Thank you, sir, but I think not," Kawaguchi answered.

He turned to me. "Inspector Fisher, you did your best to warn me of the magnitude of this threat I must concede that at the time of our telephone conversation I did not have a full appreciation of it. My apologies for that error." "Who would have believed this?" I said. My guess was that Kawaguchi still didn't have a full appreciation of what he'd been part of today. Put what happened here together with our desperate struggles back at the Devonshire dump, let both containment efforts fail, and Angels City goes light off the map. And who could say what was happening elsewhere in the Confederation, or would have followed Azbedan success here? Maybe we'd put a spike in the wheel of the Third Sorcerous War.

"David, I shall take you back to Westwood now," Michael said in a tone that brooked no argument. I wasn't in a mood to argue, anyhow; now that the terror which had kept me hopping most of the day was easing, I could feel myself subsiding into something with all the crisp decisiveness of a bowl of tapioca pudding. More boneless with every step, I walked over to his carpet. We headed down toward the Venture Freeway. I told myself I never wanted to see St Ferdinand's Valley again.

When we got to the Confederal Building, Michael got off the carpet and headed for the entrance instead of going home. He gave me a bemused look when I fell into step beside him. "I may as well keep working," I told him. "The more I have to do, the less time I have to worry."

"Ah," he said, "The anodyne of distraction," Which is what I'd just said, but I hadn't managed to boil it into four words.

If I didn't have anything urgent on my desk, I figured I'd write up what I'd been through today. The EPA, like any government agency, thrives on documentation, and I must confess that I've been indoctrinated to the point where I sometimes don't believe something is real until it's committed to parchment On the other hand, if Moses had had to fill out all the EPA forms parting the Red Sea would have required, the Bible would be written in Egyptian.

Only one message waited for me, from a woman named Susan Kuznetsov. I frowned, trying to remember who she was. Then name and face matched: the no-nonsense gal from the Barony's Bureau of Physical and Spiritual Health who'd reported little Jesus Cordero's apsychia to me.

I asked my watch the time: going on six. Mistress Kuznetsov had impressed me as the hard-working type, so I called her back. Sure enough, I got her. 'Inspector Fisher!" she said, I thought she sounded pleased. "I'd expected you'd be gone for the day." °I just got back in," I told her. "What can I do for you?"

"Inspector, the Cordero family has been contacted by a consortium styling itself Slow Jinn Fizz," she answered. "This consortium mentioned the possibility of instilling a soul into the infant, something they had been given to believe was impossible. Unlike too many poor and poorly educated families, the Corderos called me for advice instead of allowing themselves to be taken in by probable charlatans. My preliminary investigation, however, indicates that Slow Jinn Fizz may perhaps be able to deliver on some of its claims. I called you to learn whether it's yet come under EPA scrutiny yet"

"As a matter of fact, I was out there myself, right around the time Jesus Cordero was being born," I said.

When I didn't go on right away, Susan Kuznetsov said,

"And? Are they flimflam men like so many outfits with impressive claims?"

"You know, I don't really think so," I answered. "I think they're right on the edge of making psychic synthesis possible, and I think the procedure may well have important benefits for apsychic patients and give them at least a chance at life after death."

"Really?" She sounded surprised. "You recommend the procedure, then?" 'I didn't say that," I told her, and then explained: "I don't knew where or from whom the pieces of soul the jinni are synthesizing come from, or whether Slow Jinn Fizz is solving one problem now at the expense of widespread psychic depletion years, maybe even generations, down the line. It's certainly a tempting technology, but you know who the Tempter is."

"I certainty do," she said. "So you'd suggest the Corderos stay away from it?"

If she'd asked me that the day before, I would have said yes. Thanks to modem medicine, Jesus Cordero had every chance of living to a ripe old age, and psychic synthesis would be investigated and refined until people understood all the gremlins in the process. That would be the right time for him to have a soul implanted.

But after what had happened at the Devonshire dump and then at Chocolate Weasel, I felt less easy about that waitfor - developments approach. Just because the odds said you were likely to lead a long life didn't mean you would: a big piece of Angels City had almost gone up in flames. If you were an apsychic, could you afford to take a chance like that?

Would you want to, knowing extinction awaited?

"Mistress Kuznetsov," I said carefully, "the EPA hasn't taken a position on Slow Jinn Fizz and what it does. Before we do, we'll have to weigh short-term benefits against lowergrade long-term risks. My guess is that the technology won't be allowed out of the experimental stage and into general use for many years."