But nothing happened.

Two weeks later a woman brought her car in to a reserved lot while he was surveying it. He was angry, because the peripheral emanations from the atomic motor interfered with his laser. But before he could formulate some suitably cutting remark, she stepped out. He recognized her: the matron the incubus had serviced on the beach. The gonorrhea trap.

Prior said nothing to her, and she never noticed him. Instead he noted the tag number of her car. When he got home he phoned the registry department and got her name and residence. Then he located her medical file. The information was supposedly confidential, but as a state employee he knew which computer buttons to press.

What he was after, of course, was the truth about her gonorrhea. Had the succubus been trying to scare him out of sheer perversity? She was, after all, a demon, and he had dismissed her impolitely. DOES SUBJECT HAVE VENEREAL DISEASE? he typed into the appropriate line.

NO, the answer came immediately.

Relief and anger fought for supremacy. The succubus had been lying—if in fact she was a succubus, and not just an idle woman with some devilish tricks up her skirt—and he had fallen for it. There was his anger. But he had no risk of contracting gonorrhea. There was his relief.

But computers were demons in their own fashion, and liked to torpedo unwary querists with partial truths. The files only provided the specific information requested. It was always necessary to countercheck. HAS SUBJECT EVER HAD GONORRHEA?

YES.

Oh-oh. PROVIDE DETAIL ON CASE HISTORY, LAYMAN'S TERMINOLOGY.

It turned out that the woman had had a trial marriage a decade ago (only a decade? She must be younger than she looked!) and had contracted the disease then. She had avoided treatment because of the stigma attached, so the illness had become entrenched. She had thought the hysterectomy would clean it up, but it hadn't, and she remained a carrier.