The Demon and the City

limited.
    Sung and the governor were both beaming at one another in mutual admiration. Chen forced himself to attend to what Sung was saying.
    " . . .leading a small group down to Hell on a fact-finding mission, after a very kind invitation . . .current exchange has gone so well that we're thinking of making it a permanent post."
    That made Zhu Irzh look up from his squid. Chen saw his lips move behind his napkin. Chen? We need to talk.
    Now he tells me.
     
    Back at the station, Chen focused on plowing through that paperwork. As soon as he got rid of one piece, another appeared to take its place: incorrectly filed visa applications for Heaven, a whole slew of Hell-based internet scams. Zhu Irzh had disappeared the moment they'd left the restaurant, called away on some urgent piece of business, apparently. Chen felt frustration mounting and eventually he went down to the locker room and sat in meditation for a few minutes. It helped, but not a lot.
    When he came back up to the office, however, he found Zhu Irzh perched on his desk, waiting for him.
    "Hi," the demon said. "Sorry I had to rush off."
    "Not a problem," Chen said, although it had been. "Sung's evidently got a bee in his bonnet."
    "About this outreach thing," Zhu Irzh remarked. "First I've heard of it."
    "You're not the only one. I looked up a few policy statements when I got back. It's tied in with this equal ops thing. Increased connectivity between the worlds. After that episode with Heaven, the governor apparently started thinking that improving links with Hell might not be a bad idea. There's a Western saying: better the devil you know."
    The demon grimaced. "I thought Governor Ling already had improved connections with Hell. They've been giving him kickbacks for years."
    "No surprises there." Just for once, Chen thought, I'd like to be taken aback by proof of someone's innocence.
    And strangely, proof was not long in coming.
     
    The demon suggested going for a quiet beer, to talk things over. It sounded like a fine suggestion to Chen, after the end of a long, sticky, tedious day, but as he was on his way out the door with the demon, Sung hurtled out of his office like a human torpedo and stepped into Chen's path.
    "Chen. Sorry, I can see you're leaving. Have you got a moment?"—in that tone that suggested it was not optional.
    "Both of us? Or just me?" Chen asked. The prospect of a peaceful beer was receding glumly into the distance.
    "Both of you."
    Chen and the demon followed Sung into his cramped office and Sung closed the door behind them. To Chen's surprise, they were not alone in the office, though he had seen no one wander past for the last hour. Someone was seated in the chair on the other side of Sung's desk.
    The person was small and slight and pale, smiling beneath a fall of white hair. It was hard to tell at first whether it was male or female, but then it shifted position and Chen glimpsed breasts.
    She still wasn't human, though. An unmistakable, and rather sickly, waft of peach blossom floated across the room from the personage's pink and white silk robes.
    "This," said Captain Sung, "is Mi Li Qi. She's from Heaven." An expression of fleeting alarm crossed his features as he spoke, as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just said.
    "Delighted," Zhu Irzh drawled. Oh dear, thought Chen. The demon's last trip to Heaven hadn't been an unmitigated success. He couldn't smoke, for a start, and although they clearly tried very hard to be non-discriminatory, Zhu Irzh was, after all, demonic.
    "I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Qi," Chen added.
    "And you," Miss Qi said. She had a voice like a breath of wind, light and airy and slightly tinkling. Chen, seeing that Zhu Irzh was about to say something further, cut him off at the pass.
    "To what do we owe the pleasure?" he said.
    "This equal opportunities policy," Sung said. Chen had heard a number of ominous statements in his time ( "the assassin is on his way," "the goddess has gone mad" ) but few of them were beginning to strike such fear into his heart as "This equal opportunities policy."
    "Chen," the captain went on. "You don't have much on at the moment, do you?"
    "Yes," Chen said.
    "So," Sung continued as though Chen had not spoken, "I thought this was the ideal time to strengthen connectivity, think outside the box in developing our links between the worlds . . ."
    The management course that Sung had been obliged to attend last month had had disastrous results, Chen thought.