Cultists. They're like cockroaches. We humans are incredibly fine-tuned by evolution for the task of spotting coincidences and causal connections. It's a very useful talent that dates back to the bad old days on the savannah (when noticing that there were lion prints by the watering hole and then cousin Ugg went missing, and today there are more lion prints and nobody had gone missing yet, was the kind of thing that could save your skin). But once we developed advanced lion countermeasures like stone axes and language, it turned into our secret curse. Because, you see, when we spot coincidences we assume there's an intentional actor behind them—and that's how we create religions. Nature does weird stuff, so it must be governed by supernature. There's lightning in the clouds: Zeus must be throwing his thunderbolts again. Everyone's dying of plague except those weird folks with the strange god who wash every day: it must be evil sorcery. And so on.

Being predisposed to religion has its uses, but it's a real Achilles' heel if your civilization is under threat by vastly powerful alien horrors. We have a rich repertoire of primate behavior which includes the urge to suck up to the big bad alpha male, and a tendency to assume that any intelligence smarter or nastier than we are is the top of the pack hierarchy. Finally, we've got any number of dark religions out there. The followers of Kali or Mictecacihuatl or the various other faces of the lady of death. Certain splinter sects of millennialist Christianity who believe that the Revelation of St. John is black propaganda and that Satan will triumph. Strange heresies, by-blows of the Albigensians who trace their heritage back to secret cells who worshiped Ahriman in the palace basements of the Persian Empire. Other groups who are less familiar: syncretistic heresies spawned by bizarre collisions between seekers of hidden knowledge and followers of Tibetan demon princes. And, of course, bat-winged squid gods, although I find it hard to believe that anyone takes that seriously these days.

None of their specific beliefs matter. What matters is that if a cell or coven or parish or whatever get their hands on a genuine summoning ritual, the things at the other end of the occult courtesy phone aren't fussy about what they're called as long as the message is "chow time."

I take a deep breath. "What variety of cult was it this time?"

"The rich American expat kind." She takes a deep breath.

"American? But didn't the Black Chamber—"

"They didn't lift a finger." Her voice rises. "Instead, the Dustbin got a reluctant tip-off from the FBI that a bunch of nutty Jeezmoids from the every-sperm-is-sacred crowd were planning on making a big splash at the UN Population Fund summit in Den Haag last week. It's not terrorism in America this decade if they shoot doctors or firebomb family planning clinics, you know?"