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longish pause
(he might as well have been on the telephone ran through my mind one of those
maddening bursts of irrelevance that will pop up no matter what you do).
"Reaching the wrong ears, your prophecy could become self-fulfilling."
"It might help if you'd tell me which ears are the wrong ones." If I sounded
plaintive, can you blame me?
He shook his murky head. "No, for two reasons. First, the information is
classified and therefore not to be casually disseminated under any
circumstances. And second, the more you know, the more apt you are to betray
yourself to those who may have reason to be interested in your knowledge. Your
basic assumption should be that no one may be privy to your speculations. If
anyone with whom you come into contact shows undue interest in this area,
summon me at once from Central Intelligence headquarters in
D.StC."
"How do I get hold of you in particular?" I asked I mean, Central Intelligence
has a lot of spooks on the payroll.
"My name is Legion," he said. "Henry Legion." He turned around, walked out
through my chair and wall, and was gone.
Next day, thank God, was Friday. Traffic was light going in, as it often is on
Friday mornings. I wasn't fooled; I knew I'd have the usual devilish time
getting home. I tried not to think about that. Maybe, I told
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myself as I floated up the elevator shaft, I'd have myself a nice easy day,
knock off early, and beat the weekend crunch on St James' Freeway.
I walked into my office, took one look at the IN basket, and screamed. Sitting
there was one of the ugliest Confederal forms ever designed In big block
letters, the cover said, REQUEST FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT. Slightly smaller letters added, PROPOSED
IMPORTATION OF NEW SPECIES INTO BARONY OF ANGELS.
Having got the scream out of my system, I merely moaned as I sank into my
chair. Who, I wondered, wanted to bring what into Angels City, and why? I just
wished Huitzilopochtli had to fill out all the forms he'd need to establish
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himself here legally: we'd be free of him till Doomsday, or maybe twenty
minutes longer.
Huitzilopochtli and his minions, unfortunately, didn t bother with forms. With
trembling fingers, I picked up the report request and opened it. Somebody, it
seemed, was proposing to schlep leprechauns over from the Auld Sod in
hiberniation, revive them once they got here, and establish a colony in Angels
City.
At first glance it looked reasonable. We have a good number of Erse here, and
a lot more who pretend they are when St. Padraig's Day rolls around The
leprechauns wouldn't have any trouble feeling at home in Angels City. Tracking
the little critters to their pots of gold would help a few poor folk pay off
the mortgage. The odds were about like winning the lottery, but who doesn't
plunk down a few crowns on the lottery every now and again?
The way of environmental issues, though, is to get more complicated the longer
you look at them.
Figuring out how leprechauns would affect the local thecology wasn't going to
be easy: tracing the interactions of beings from This Side is complicated
enough, but when you start having Powers involved
I moaned again, medium loud. One of the things I'd have to examine was the
impact importing leprechauns would have on the Chumash Powers (assuming those
weren't extinct). If the Chumash
Powers were still around, hanging by a metaphorical fingernail, would bringing
in leprechauns rob them of the tiny measure of devotion they needed to
survive?
Bea walked by the open door just in time to hear that moan. She stuck her head
into the office. "Why, David, whatever is the matter?" she asked, as if she
didn't know.
"This," I said, pointing to the orange cover of the environmental impact
report request "Do you by any chance have a spell for making days forty-eight
hours long so I can do everything I'm supposed to?"
"If I did, I'd use it myself," she said, "but I don't think God's been in the
habit of holding back the sun since Joshua s day."
"This is going to be a bear to handle," I said, "especially on top of the
Devonshire dump case and the
Chumash extinction study "St. Elmo's fire came on above my head, just like you
see in the cartoons.
"That's why you passed it on to me: so I could run it parallel to the Chumash
project."
"That's right, David." She smiled sweetly. Bea isn't what you'd call pretty,
but she can look almost angelic sometimes: being sure you're on the right path
will do that for you, I guess. She went on, "I figured it would be better to
have both of them in your hands than to make two people run back and forth
checking with each other all the time and maybe working at cross purposes."
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"Okay," I said; put that way, it made sense. Bea didn't get to be boss of my
unit on the strength of an angelic smile; she has a head on her shoulders.
"The easiest way to handle the issue would be to work up two scenarios," she
said "one for the leprechauns' environmental effects without worrying about
the Chumash powers, the other assuming those Powers do still manifest
themselves here."
"Yeah, that makes sense." I scribbled a note on a scrap of foolscap on my
desk. "Thanks, Bea."
"Any time," she said, sweetly still, and went off to inflict impossible
amounts of work on someone else.
To be fair, I have to admit she worked like a team of Percherons herself.
And she had put her finger on the most efficient way to handle the two studies
side by side. They still wouldn't be easy or quick. I'd have to design
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