"Whatever you say, Inspector Fisher." He winked again to show he was really on my side. I wondered if he was. He sounded very much like a man speaking for the Listener when he said, Tm happy to cooperate informally with an informal investigation, but I do need the formal parchment before I can exceed the scope of my instructions from management."

He went out to the entrance with me. I craned my neck to see if the Nothing reappeared as I passed the place where I'd seen it before. For an instant I thought it did, but when I blinked it was gone.

"What's there?" Sudakis asked when I turned my head.

"Nothing," I said, but I meant - I guessed I meant - it with a small n. I laughed a little nervously. "A figleaf of my imagination."

"You work here a while, you'll get those for sure." He nodded, hard. I wondered what all he'd seen - or maybe not seen - since he started working here.

When we got out to the front gate, the security guard again carefully placed the footbridge so it straddled the red line. I felt like a free man as soon as I was on the outside of the dump site. Sudakis waved across from his side, then went back to his citadel.

It wasn't until I'd crossed the crosswalk, chanted the phrase that unlocked the antitheft gear on my carpet, and actually gotten into the air that I remembered the vampires, the werewolves, the kids born widiout souls, all the other birth defects around the Devonshire dump. Getting outside the site didn't necessarily free you from it. Were that so, I wouldn't have had to make this trip in the first place.

Midday traffic was a lot thinner than the usual morning madness. I was more than twice as far from my Westwood office in the Confederal Building as I was when I left from my flat, but I didn't need any more time to get there than I do on my normal commute. I slid into my reserved parking space (penalty for unauthorized use, a hundred crowns or an extra year for your soul in purgatory, or born-judge's discretion: if he thinks you won't rate purgatory, he'll just fine you), then walked inside.