One of the reasons I didn't was that the gal flying that carpet wasn't exactly where she was supposed to be, either: instead of keeping her eye on the carpet in front of her, she'd been gaping at an incubus who was taller, darker, and handsomer than he had any business being.
When you think about it, you shouldn't be surprised our sexual demons are so strong. They've been evolving right along with us for as long as we've been human, proof of which is how strongly they manifest themselves on This Side.
They're used to coming Across; they've been doing it for millions of years. (You have a dirty mind, do you know that? Filtering out all the double entendres that come naturally [you see, there you go again] when discussing succubi is more trouble than it's worth.) Unlike the Medvamp protesters, the succubi and incubi didn't cany signs or chant slogans. They just paraded, they were their own best message.
By then I'd got dose enough to hear Phyllis as well as see her. She was saying, "-but the existence you lead degrades both you and mankind. Don't you see that sexual exploitation is wrong and damaging to the soul?"
"If this were a Muslim country, we'd be honored, not hunted," a succubus retorted. Though irate herself, she made PhyUis sound shriD and screechy by comparison: her voice brought to the ear the taste of Erse Creme liqueur. She went on, "We have no souls to worry about; we exist for pleasure. And since you humans endlessly prate about free will, surely you'll admit you can choose us or avoid us as you see fit."
PhyUis had been over that ground before. She said, "Tart of your attraction comes from the Other Side, so it distorts free will. Besides, humans of unsavory sorts carry on their sordid affairs in areas you frequent because they know they'll find a lot of customers there. You don't just haunt neighborhoods - you blight them."
The succubus' shrug was magnificent. This is your problem, not ours. We get we want from humans; they get what they want from us. We find it an equitable arrangement."
As I finally flew into the parking lot, Phyllis lost her temper and started shouting at the succubus. It's always a mistake to let Powers, even minor ones, get your goat. They have more patience than people anyhow; what with their far longer terms of being, they can afford it.
Besides, here I feared PhyUis was fighting a losing game.
The succubus' knowledge of biology was empirical and extremely specialized, but she had a point: her kind and mankind were essentiaUy symbiotes, and nobody was likely to make either turn loose of the other. If that hadn't happened all through recorded history, it wasn't likely to start in modem Angels City.
But Phyllis had a point, too. Because the people in our society who go to succubi and incubi are generaUy out for a cheap thrill, they're often the people who go after other thrills. Find a neighborhood with succubi on the streetoorners and you'H generally find it's not the kind of place where you'd want to bring up your lads if you had a choice. Keeping sexual demons of any flavor off the streets makes pretty fair sense to me.
I parked my carpet, got off, and went over to see if Phyllis wanted a hand from me. As I was walking up to her that succubus in blue gave me the eye again. My breath went short. I couldn't help ifc succubi have been perfecting the art of seduction probably since the days of the man-apes. Natural selection works on the Other Side no less than on this one - Powers that aren't adored perish, and others take their place.
If my reaction meant anything, that particular succubus would stay around forever.
Phyllis saw me not quite slavering and made an exasperated noise. I suppose I can't blame hen I must have seemed more like part of the problem than part of the solution. She said, "What do you plan on doing, Dave? Will you whip out your little tin badge and run them all in?"
You don't want to get into a war of sarcasm with Phyllis, or at least I don't. I've been scorched often enough to keep that in mind at all times. So - please believe me - I was about to answer with something mild and soothing.
But before I could, the succubus in blue said, "I'm sure he'd rather whip out something else instead, dear." Just listening to her was enough to set my heart racing like a couple of laps around the track. But when she licked her lips again, I started sweating so hard I did the only thing I could (short of whipping out something else, I mean)-I fled.
Phyllis lost it. Again, I can't say I blame her - here she was, watching one of her own people turned into a bowl of quivering gelatin (I was definitely quivering, but at least part of me was a lot stiffer than gelatin) by one of the sexy little demons she was trying to control. She started screaming at the succubus. The succubus screamed right back, with invective from just about every language since primeval Indo-European.
She'd had a lot of satisfied customers, all right.
Since I obviously wasn't going to be of any use at the demon stration, I went upstairs to work on other tilings.
Rose had left a message on my desk: Professor Blank of UCAC had called while I was out.
Scratching my head, I took the message up to her. "Professor Blank?" I said, pointing. "Wouldn't he leave his name?"
Now Rose looked puzzled. "I think he said his first name was Harvey."
There I was, looking and feeling like an idiot twice in the space of ten minutes. Harvey Blank was chair of the Goetic Sciences Department at UCAC; he was one of the first people I'd phoned about investigating whether the Chumash Powers were still around. I slunk back to my desk and returned his call.
The telephone imps reproduced his voice even more blurrfly than is their habit; he must have been eating something when he answered. After a sentence or two, he spoke more clearly: "Hello, Inspector Fisher. Thanks for returning my call. I wanted to get back to you about some preliminary results of the extinction investigation."
"Go ahead," I said, grabbing for a pencil and a scrap of parchment. "What have you learned?"
"Not as much as I'd like," he answered: yes, he was a professor. "The experiments I have conducted, however, do indicate that the Powers formerly venerated by the Chumash Indians are not currently manifesting themselves in the Barony of Angels."
"They're extinct, you mean?" I had curiously mixed feelings. Most of me was sorry, as I'm always sorry (well, almost always - I'd make an exception for Huitzflopochtii) to see the Other Side diminished. But that nasty, lazy piece everyone has lurking inside, the one Christians identify with Original Sin, let out a cheer because I wouldn't have to work as hard on the leprechauns if the Chumash Powers were gone for good.
"I didn't quite say that," Professor Blank said.
"That's what it sounded like to me," I told him.
"It was the first conclusion I drew from the thaumaturgic regression analysis," he admitted. "A more thorough evaluation of the data, however, leads to a different interpretation: it seems more likely that the Powers in question have not so much vanished as withdrawn from any contact with This Side. The withdrawal appears volitional."
"Are you sure?" I said. "I've never heard of anything like that." The general rule is that Powers will keep a toehold on This Side if they possibly can: the more active they are, the more they show themselves in the world, the better chance they have of attracting and keeping worshipers to give them the veneration they need, Professor Blank said, "No, I'm not sure. The void in the thecological contours of the barony is certainly there. It is, however, if you will permit me to employ metaphorical language, more as if the Powers made the hole and pufled it in after themselves than as if they simply disappeared from spiritual starvation."