The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  II

  Judy did end up staying the night, because she didn’t feel like flying after two rounds of the cup of roots. (In case you’re wondering how we did the second time, it’s none of your business.) No hanky-panky in the morning, though. We were both up early, her to go back to her place and change before she headed for work, me to to the parchmentwork I’d need to get a warrant from Judge Ruhollah.

  After a fast breakfast, I walked her out to her carpet (as I said, I don’t live in the best neighborhood), then went back to my own and headed for the Criminal and Magical Courts building downtown.

  The commute downtown wasn’t too bad, but parking in the heart of Angels City is outrageously expensive, even though they stack carpets up higher than you’d see in a rug merchants’ bazaar. I was almost as upset as if I’d had to pay with my own money, not the EPA’s.

  You want to see every kind of human being any kind of God ever made, go the the Criminal and Magical Courts building: secular judges in black robes, canon law judges in red ones, bailiffs and constabulary and sheriffs looking more like soldiers than anything else, defendants sometimes looking guilty of everything in the world (regardless of whether they’re only charged with flying a carpet too fast) and others who from the outside might be candidates for sainthood, witnesses, doctors, rabbis, wizards… If you like people-watching, you won’t find better entertainment.

  Judge Ruhollah’s bailiff was a big Swede named Eric something-or-other—I never can remember his last name, though I’d dealt with him before. He said, “I’m sorry, Inspector Fisher, but the judge won’t be able to see you till about eleven. Something’s come up.”

  I sighed, but what could I do about it? I went over to the bank of pay phones across the hall from the courtrooms. When I told the mouthpiece imp what number I wanted, it squawked back, “Forty-five coppers, please.” I pushed change into the outstretched hand of the little pay phone demon, which must be descended from Mammon by way of the Gadarene swine. If I’d turned my back on it, I’m sure it would have tried to pick my pocket.

  After I called in at the office to say I’d be late, I bought some coffee (and a Danish I didn’t really need) and cooled my heels in the cafeteria, looking with one eye at the data I’d be giving the qadi and with the other at people going past. Two cups and another Danish later (I promised myself I wouldn’t eat lunch), it was a quarter to eleven. I threw the parchments back into my briefcase and presented myself to Eric again.

  He picked up a phone, spoke into it, then nodded to me. “Go on in.” I went.

  How do I describe Judge Ruhollah? If you’re Christian (which he wasn’t), think of God the Father when He’s had a lousy eon. I don’t know how old Ruhollah is, not even to the nearest decade. Long white beard, nose like a promontory, eyes that have seen everything and disapproved of most of it. If you’re up before him and you’re innocent, you’re all right. But if you’re even a little bit guilty, you’d better run for cover.

  He glowered at me as I approached the bench. Had this been the first time I’d come before him, I’d’ve been tempted to pack it in as a bad job: either fall on my knees and pray for mercy (not something Maximum Ruhollah handed out in big doses) or else turn around and run for my life (for who’s not a little bit guilty of something?). But I knew he glowered most of the time anyhow, so he didn’t intimidate me… much.

  I began as etiquette prescribed—“May it please your honor”—though I knew it was just a polite phrase in his case. I set forth the reasons the Environmental Perfection Agency, and I as its representative, wanted to examine the records of the Devonshire Land Management Consortium.

  “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 (he 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.

  Rather to my own surprise, I was virtuous enough to skip lunch. I just headed straight for the Valley; the sooner I served the warrant, the sooner I could—I hoped—start finding answers.

  Thanks to a stupid publicity stunt, I got stuck in traffic in Hollywood. If you ask me, stunts by the side of the freeway ought to be illegal; it goes slow enough without them. But no. One of the light and magic companies was releasing a spectacular called St. George and the Dragon, so nothing would do but to have one of their tame dragons roast a sword-swinging stunt man right where everybody could stop and stare and ooh and ahh. People who actually had to go someplace—me, for instance—got stuck right along with the rubbernecking fools.

  Behind the stunt man in his flame-retardant chain mail stood a blonde who wasn’t wearing enough to retard flames. The dragon was well trained; he didn’t breathe fire anywhere near her. Even so, I wondered what she was doing there. She wasn’t the sort of maiden I pictured St. George rescuing. If they’d been making Perseus and Andromeda, maybe—but St. George?

  Well, that’s Hollywood for you.

  I made good time after I finally put dragon, stunt man, and bimbo behind me. I parked in the lot across from the Devonshire dump I’d used the day before. This time the security guard was on the phone before I got across the street. He came out of his cage, started wheeling back the gate. “Mr. Sudakis is expecting you, sir,” he said.

  “Thanks.” I crossed the wooden footbridge, went into the dump site. Sure enough, Tony Sudakis was already on his way out to greet me. I still wasn’t sure whose side he was on, but he brought a lot of energy to whichever one it was.

  “How may I be of assistance to you today, Inspector Fisher?” he asked in a loud, formal voice that said he knew what was coming.

  I produced the parchment and did my best to speak in ringing tones myself: “Mr. Sudakis, I have in my possession and hereby serve you with this warrant of search issued by Judge Ruhollah authorizing me to examine certain records of your business.”

  “Let me see this warrant,” he said. I passed it to him. I thought his scrutiny would be purely pro forma, but he read every word. When he spoke again, he didn’t sound formal at all: “You do everything this parchment says you can do and you’ll break us to bits. Maybe I’d better call our legal team.”

  I held up a hasty hand. “I don’t intend to do or seek any more than we talked about yesterday. Is that still agreeable to you?” Light the candle or cast
the spell, Mr. Sudakis.

  “Let’s go to my office,” he said after a pause like the ones I’d been hearing from Charlie Kelly. “I’ll show you where the client lists are stored.”

  By the time I thought to look for the Nothing I might have seen the day before, I was already past the place on the walk where I’d noticed it. I had more concrete things on my mind, anyhow.

  Sudakis pulled open a file drawer. “Here are clients who have used our facility in the past three years, Inspector Fisher.”

  I started pulling out folders. “I will copy these parchments and return the originals to you as soon as possible, Mr. Sudakis.” We were both talking with half a mind for the Listener in his office. I asked, “Does this list also include the spells and thaumaturgical byproducts each of the consortia and individuals stated were assigned for containment here?”

  “No, not all of them. That’s a separate form, you know.” He glanced down at the warrant he was still holding. “We didn’t discuss those lists yesterday. This thing”—he waved the warrant—“gives you the authority to go fishing… until and unless our people try to quash it. Shall I make the phone call now?”

  I pointed to the amber amulet he wore—it made a small lump under his shirt. He nodded, pulled it out, went through his little ritual. I wondered again what language he was using. As soon as he nodded a second time, I said, “Look, Tony, you know as well as I do that finding out what’s in here will help us learn what’s leaking.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t talk about it yesterday.” He looked stubborn.

  I talked fast. “I know we didn’t. If you want to play all consortiate, you can lick me on this one. For a while. But how will you feel when you read the next little story in the Valley section of the Times about a kid who’s going to vanish out of the universe forever some time in the next fifty or seventy or ninety years?”

  “You fight dirty,” he said with a fierce scowl.

  “Only if I have to,” I answered. “You’re the one who told me you wanted to keep this site safe. Did you mean it, or was it so much Fairy gold?”

  He looked at his watch. It must have been a new one, because he didn’t ask me what time it was. After about a minute and a half (my guess; I didn’t bother checking), he said, “Very well, Inspector Fisher, I shall comply with your demand.” Clearly we were out from under the rose.

  More folders followed, too many for me to carry. Having decided to be helpful, Tony was very helpful: he got me a wheeled cart so I could trundle them down the path and out to my carpet. I said, “I hope losing these won’t inconvenience your operation.”

  “I wouldn’t give ’em to you if it did,” he said. “I have copies of everything. They’re magically made, of course, so they aren’t acceptable to you, but they’ll keep this place running until I get the originals back.”

  I didn’t say that might be a while. If we ended up going to court again to seek a closure order, the parchments would be sequestered for months, maybe for years if the dump’s legal staff used all the appeals they were entitled to. Sudakis had to know that, too. But he seemed satisfied he could go on doing what he needed to do, so I didn’t push him.

  He even trundled the cart out to the entrance for me. When we got there, a slight hitch developed: the cart was too wide to go over the footbridge. “Can’t I just stand on one side of the line and you on the other?” I asked. “You can pass the documents out to me.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Sudakis said. “Go on outside; I’ll show you.” I crossed the bridge, stepped a couple of feet to one side of it. Sudakis made as if to pass me a folder; I made as if to reach for it. Our hands came closer and closer to one another, but wouldn’t touch. Sudakis chuckled. “Asymptotic zone, you see? The footbridge is insulated, so it cleaves a path right on through. We do take containment seriously, Dave.”

  “So I notice.” Even if Anything was on the rampage in the dump, that zone would go a long way toward keeping it inside where it belonged. When I leaned toward Sudakis above the footbridge, he had no trouble passing me the files. I turned to the security guard. “Do you have twine? I don’t want these blowing away after I load them onto my carpet.”

  “Lemme look.” He went back into his cage and came back out with not only a ball of twine but also a scissors. I hadn’t expected even that much cooperation, so I was doubly glad to get it.

  Sudakis watched me tie parcels for a minute or two, then said, “I’m going back to work. Now that you’ve officially taken these documents, you understand I’m going to have to notify my superiors about what you’ve done.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. Decent of him to remind me, though. I thought he really might be on my side, or at least not altogether on the side of his company.

  I carted the documents across the street to my carpet; I needed three trips. Like anybody, I had storage pockets sewn on, but the great pile of parchments overwhelmed them. I don’t know what I would have done if the guard hadn’t had any twine. Sat on some of the folders and hung onto others, I suppose, until I flew by a sundries store where I could buy some for myself. You see people doing that every day, but it’s neither elegant nor what you’d call safe.

  Back to my Westwood office, then. When I got there, I discovered the elevator shaft was out of order. Some idiot had managed to spill a cup of coffee on the Words and sigil that controlled Khil. A mage stood in the shaft readying a new compact with the demon, but readying didn’t mean ready. I had to haul my parchments up the fire stairs (you wouldn’t want to be in an elevator shaft when the controlling parchment burns, would you?), slide back down, and then climb the stairs again with the other half of my load. I was not pleased with the world when I finally plopped the last parcel down by my desk.

  I was even less pleased when I saw what lurked on that desk: my report about the spilled fumigants, all covered over with red scribbles. That meant I wasn’t going to get to the documents I’d so laboriously lugged upstairs by quitting time. I thought they were a lot more important than the report, but my boss didn’t see things that way. Sometimes I wish I were triplets. Then I might keep my desk clean. Maybe.

  The office access spirit appeared in the ground glass when I called it. I held up the pages one by one so it saw all the changes, then said, “Write me out a fresh version on parchment, if you please.”

  “Very well,” the spirit said grumpily. It likes playing with words, but has the attitude that actually dealing with the material world and getting them down in permanent form is somehow beneath it. It asked me, “Shall I then forget the version you had me memorize yesterday?”

  “Don’t you dare,” I said, and then, because it was literal-minded, I added a simple, “No.”

  My boss had the habit of making changes and then going back and deciding she’d rather have things the first way after all. Yes, I know it’s a female cliche, but she really was a woman and she really was like that. Judy, now, Judy is more decisive than I’ll ever be.

  After the spirit promised it would indeed remember both versions of the report, I waited for it to finish setting down the new one. When that finally wafted over to my desk, I read it through to make sure all the alterations were accurately transcribed, then set it in my boss’ in-basket for the next round of changes. And then, it being about the time it was, I went out to my carpet and headed home.

  I took with me the list of firms that used the Devonshire dump. I left behind the forms that showed what they’d dumped there; those would be more secure behind the office’s wards than the cheap ones my block of flats uses. But I figured I could do some useful work at the kitchen table, just grouping the firms by type. That would also give me at last a start on knowing what sort of toxic spells were in there.

  After a dinner I’d rather not remember—certainly nothing to compare to the lush Hanese spread I’d enjoyed with Judy the night before—I piled dishes in the sink, gave the table a couple of haphazard wipes, took out a sheet of parchment and inked a pen, then buckled down to it.

>   The first thing that hit me was just how many defense firms dumped at the Devonshire site. All the big aerospace consortia that have kept the Angels City economy booming for decades used the place: Confederated Voodoo (it’s Convoo these days, what with the stupid and paranoid mania for clipping consortiate names into meaningless syllables: who’d waste time with name magic against as diffuse an entity as a consortium?), North American Aviation and Levitation, Demondyne, Loki (I wondered if byproducts from Loki’s famous Cobold Works were trying to trickle through the wards around the dumps; some of them might be very bad news indeed), all the other famous names.

  Along with them were a host of smaller outfits, subcontractors mostly, that nobody’s ever heard of except their mothers: firms with names like Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins, Portentous Potions, and Essence Extractions, Inc. I looked at that last one for a while, trying to figure out in which square it belonged: my transmogrified list had evolved into a chart. Finally I stuck it in almost at random: with a name like that, it could have done just about anything (another modern trend I despise).

  Along with the defense outfits were several of the Hollywood light and magic companies. When I thought about it, that made sense; Hollywood has always been a magic-intensive business. I wished I remembered which outfit had made the St. George epic that had snarled traffic this morning—I might have been tempted to try some name magic on it myself, more because I knew it would be useless than for any other reason.

  I was a little more surprised to find how many hospitals were on the list. Layfolk see only the benefits medicine brings; they don’t think much about the costs involved (except the ones that come from their purses). But healing bodies—and especially working with diseased souls—takes its toll on the environment like any high-tech enterprise.

  There’s only one major carpet plant left in Angels City—the General Movers looms in Van Nuys. They dumped at Devonshire, too. The GM plant wasn’t high on my list of probable culprits, though. For one thing, I had a solid notion of the kinds of spells it used. For another, it’s likely to close down in the next year or two: too much competition from less expensive Oriental rugs.