Judy was chewing, too. She held up a finger, swallowed, then said, "Yes, I can see that, especially since - didn't you say?-you know some Persian firms use that dump?"

"That's right. Sudakis told me so." The Peacock Throne is the one which was wanned by the fundament of the ShahanShah of Persia until the secularists threw him out a few years ago. St. Ferdinand's Valley has a large Persian refugee community. And if Persians had been whispering in Charlie Kelly's ear, I wouldn't have any trouble getting a warrant from old Maximum Ruhollah, either. He was plus royal que Ie roi, if you know what I mean.

"After the Peacock Throne, the next possibility I thought of was the Garuda Bird project," I went on. "Aerospace and defense are Siamese twins, and a lot of defense outfits use the Devonshire dump."

Judy nodded, slowly. Her eyes caught fire. So did mine whenever I thought about the Garuda Bird. Up till now, no one's ever found a sorcerous way to get us off Earth and physically into space. People have even talked about trying to do it with pure mechanicals, though anybody who'd fly a mechanical in a universe full of mystic forces is crazier than any three people I want to deal with.

But the Garuda Bird project links the ancient Hindu Bird with the most modern western spell-casting techniques. Before long, if everything goes as planned, we'll try visiting the moon and the worlds in person, not just by astral projection.

There's a good-sized Hind community up in the Valley, too," Judy said.

"That's true." It was, but I didn't know how much it meant. Angels City and its metropolitan area are so big, they have good-sized communities from just about every nation on earth. If God decided to build the Tower of Babel now, he'd put it right here: the schools, for instance, have to try to teach lads who speak close to a hundred different languages, and some towns have laws that signs have to be at least partly in the Roman alphabet so police, firefighters, and exorcists can find the places in case of emergency.