never stopped arguing—he attacked me. Why? It must be some kind of curse. An enemy has conjured him from Hell to persecute me."
The broker nodded, sagely. "I know the being," he had told Roche. "I have made enquiries. He is attached to the police department—an unorthodox but legitimate arrangement. Putting an end to his persecution of you will undoubtedly attract attention."
"What are you saying? I thought you wanted to help me?"
"That is correct. My sympathy for your plight is as bottomless as the pits of Hell itself. I am not suggesting that there is nothing that can be done. Merely that it will not be cheap. Legal fees can eat money like candy."
Paravang shot the broker an incredulous glance. "Who said anything about legal fees?"
The broker favored Paravang Roche in turn with a lengthy and considering look.
"Then there is a man . . ." he began.
The broker had set it all up for Roche, deducting a token payment from the practitioner. The bulk would be paid once the exorcist had carried out his work. Then they had gone together into the temple and Paravang had gazed with bitterness at his fickle, beaming goddess. Senditreya's bovine face betrayed nothing. Useless to rely on such an apathetic deity. He was glad that he'd had the wit to turn to human help.
"Will it not be too soon? Look obvious?" he had asked the broker.
"Not if it is carefully done. Leave it to me."
Paravang caught the tram back to his neighborhood: the row of crumbling tenements that lined the suburban hills. He was tired and angry, and he was not pleased to find a neighbor, an elderly, vituperative woman, waiting outside his apartment. Not wishing to lose face, however, Paravang forced himself to be polite.
"Good evening," he said with a small, stiff bow.
"Citizen Roche! You have to do something about it!" the old lady said without preamble.
"What?" asked Paravang, bewildered.
"The Third Commercial Bank! What else?" his neighbor said. Paravang listened as patiently as he could while she explained at length and volume the wickedness of the new Third Commercial Bank for pointing their sharp and nasty roof right at her kitchen window.
"Spoils my dinner!" she shrilled. "Brings bad luck!"
This was the problem with being a dowser, Paravang reflected. Everyone expected you to be able to solve their problems for them, especially when some organization decided to get the drop on their neighbors by manipulating the energies that lay beneath the city and altering the surrounding feng shui. The neighbor was quite right. Throughout Kuen, Rama and Wuan Chih, a ch'i war had snaked across the city. The whole thing had started in Shaopeng, where the Eregeng Trade House had erected its monstrous new headquarters: capped by a devilish pagoda roof flaring out in all directions, but directed principally at the northeast. Everyone directly beneath its baleful influence had called in the builders—at night, so as not to lose business—and had their premises tweaked and tucked to accommodate the energy flow of beneficent ch'i and malignant sha. The battle lines had shot from Shaopeng and radiated east, all the way to Paravang's neighbor's kitchen ten miles distant.
In the days—so sadly recent—when he had still possessed a dowsing license, Paravang would simply have recommended some lesser practitioner. Fixing his neighbor's feng shui would not have been worth his while, but now, he was forced to take what little he could get. He accepted the meager dollars that the neighbor shoved grudgingly into his hand, and, grinding his teeth, fixed her culinary trauma with a set of judiciously positioned bagua mirrors to halt and deflect the unlucky energy.
Now, he stood in his little kitchen, angling more octagonal mirrors to deflect the malevolent sha lines that were still running off from the Eregeng Trade House. He had hung red tassels around the windows and over the door and the entrance to the disposal chute, and set up a complex array of bagua mirrors. Gradually the sense of oppression had begun to lift, but he could still feel it, hanging heavy and ominous, like a storm cloud just beyond the horizon.
Eventually the mirrors were arranged to his satisfaction, and Paravang turned his attention to his dinner. He shredded ginger and spring onion, pounded it with the garlic that he grew in pots on the windowsill, and chopped Chinese leaf, bean sprouts and shrimps. He doused the mixture in soy, rice vinegar and sesame oil and set to making neat little packages with the won ton wrappers made by his