"You have supporting documents to show probable cause?" he asked. He didn't have an old man's voice. He'd been in the Confederation for close to forty years the was expelled from Persia the last time the secularists there seized power for a while), but he'd never lost his accent I passed him the documents. He put on reading glasses to inspect them. Just for a second, he reminded me of the scriptorium spirit at the Thomas Brothers monastery. Before I could even think of smiling, though, his hard old face became so terrible that I wanted to look away. I had a pretty good idea what he'd come across, and I was right He stabbed at the parchment with a forefinger shaking with fury. "It is an abomination before God the Compassionate, the Merciful," he ground out, "the birthing of children without souls. All should have the chance to be judged, to delight with God the great in heaven or to eat offal and drink boiling water forever in hell. This dump is causing the birth of soulless ones?"

That's what we're trying to learn, your honor," I answered. "Finding out just who dumps there - which is what the warrant seeks - will help us determine that."

This cause is worthy and just," Judge Ruhollah declared. "Pursue it wherever it may lead." He inked a quill and wrote out the warrant in his own hand, signing it at the bottom in both our own alphabet and the Arabic pothooks and squiggles he'd grown up with.

I thanked him and got out of there in a hurry; his wrath was frightening to behold. As I went back to where my carpet was parked, I skimmed through the document he'd given me. When I was finished, I whistled softly under my breath. If I'd wanted to, I could have closed down the Devonshire dump with that warrant. Of course, if I'd tried it, the consortium's lawyers would have descended on me like a flock of vampires and gotten the whole thing thrown out. I didn't want that, so I planned on carrying out the strictly limited search I'd already had in mind.