Whatever her reasons, though, I was happy to let her use up some of my beer. And, not too long afterwards, we were both pretty happy. Later, she got up to use the toilet and the spare toothbrush in the nostrums cabinet. Then she came back to bed. Neither of us had to go to work in the morning. Except for Saturday morning services, we’d have the day to ourselves.
I thought.
We were sound asleep, half tangled up with each other as if we’d been married for years, when the phone started screaming. We both thrashed in horror. She bumped my nose and kneed me in a more tender place than that, and I doubt I was any more gallant to her. I had to scramble over her to answer the phone; my flat’s laid out to suit me when I’m there by myself, which is most of the time.
I spoke my first coherent thought aloud: “I’m going to kill Charlie Kelly.” Who else, I figured, would call me at whatever o’clock in the dark this was?
But it wasn’t Charlie. When I mumbled “Hullo?” the response was a crisp question: “Is this Inspector David Fisher of the Environmental Perfection Agency?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “Who the—who are you?” I wasn’t quite ready to start swearing until I knew who my target was.
“Inspector Fisher, I am Legate Shiro Kawaguchi, of the Angels City Constabulary.” That made me sit up straighter. I was beginning to be fully conscious. Having Judy pressed all warm and silky against my left side didn’t hurt there, either. But what Kawaguchi said next made me forget even the sweet presence of the woman I loved: “Inspector Fisher, Brother Vahan of the Thomas Brothers monastery requested that I notify you immediately.”
“Notify me of what?” I said, while little ice lizards slithered up my back. Judy made a questioning noise. I flapped my free hand to show her I couldn’t fill her in yet. “Of what?” I repeated.
“I regret to inform you, Inspector Fisher, that Brother Vahan’s monastery is now in the final stages of burning down. Brother Vahan has forcefully expressed the opinion that this may be related to an investigation you are pursuing.”
“God, I hope not,” I told him. But I was already getting out of bed. “Does he—do you—want me to come up there now?”
“If that would not be too inconvenient,” Kawaguchi answered.
“I’m on my way,” I said, and put the handset back in its cradle.
“On your way where?” Judy asked indignantly, mashing her pretty face into the pillow against the glare of the St. Elmo’s fire I called up so I could find my pants. “What time is it, anyhow?”
“Two fifty-three,” said the horological demon in my alarm clock.
“I’m going up to St. Ferdinand’s Valley.” I rummaged in my drawer for a sweater; Angels City nights can be chilly. As I pulled the sweater over my head, I went on, “The Thomas Brothers monastery up there, the one with all the damning data about the Devonshire dump, just burned down.”
Judy sat bolt upright, the best argument I’d seen for staying home. “It wasn’t an accident, or they wouldn’t have called you.” Her voice was flat. She started getting dressed, too.
By then I was buckling my sandals. “Brother Vahan doesn’t seem to think so, from what the cop I talked with told me. And the timing of the fire is—well, suggestive is the word that comes to mind.” No, I wasn’t looking at her. Besides, by that time she already had on skirt and blouse and headscarf. “You don’t really need to bother with all that,” I said. “Sleep here, if you like. I’ll be back eventually.”
“Back?” If she’d sounded indignant before, now she was furious. “Who care when you’ll be back? I’m coming with you.”
Procedurally, that was all wrong, and I knew it. But if you think I argued, think again. It wasn’t just that I was in love with Judy, though I’d be lying if I said that didn’t enter into it. But procedure aside, I was glad to have her eyes along. She was likely to notice something I’d miss. And as far as investigating arson went, I’d be pretty useless up there myself. That’s a job for the constabulary, not the EPA.
The freeway flight corridors were almost empty, so I pushed my carpet harder than I could have during the day. All the same, some people shot by me as if I was standing still. And one maniac almost flew right into me, then darted away like a bat out of hell. I hate drunks. The one advantage of being a regular commuter is that you don’t see a lot of drunks out flying during regular commuting hours. It’s not much of an advantage, but commuters have to take what they can get.
One of these days, the wizards keep promising, they’ll be able to train the sylphic spirits in new carpets not to fly for drunks. This is another one I wouldn’t stake my soul on. Sylphic spirits are naturally flighty themselves, and they hardly ever get hurt in accidents. So why should they care about the state of the people who ride their rugs?
I pulled off the freeway and darted north up almost deserted flight lanes toward the Thomas Brothers monastery. Toward what had been the Thomas Brothers monastery, I should say. It was still smoldering when I stopped at the edge of the zone the constabulary and firecrews had cordoned off.
Fighting fires in Angels City is anything but easy. Undines are weak and unreliable here: simply not enough underground water to support them. Firecrews use sand when they can, and the dust devils which keep it under control. For big fires, though, only water will do, and it has to come through the cooperation of the Other Side: the Angeles City firecrew mages have pacts with Elelogap, Focalor, and Vepar, the demons whose power is over water. Most of the time, that just means keeping the infernal spirits from harassing the mechanical system of dams and pipes and pumps that fetch our water from far away.
But sometimes, like tonight, the crews need more than sand can do, more than pipes can give. I was just showing my sigil to a worn-looking constable when one of the monastery towers flared anew. A wizard in firecrew crimson gestured with his wand to the spirit held inside a hastily drawn pentacle. I saw the mermaid-shape within writhe: he’d summoned Vepar, then.
That mage had a job I wouldn’t want. Incanting always in a desperate hurry, drawing a new pentacle in the first open space you find, never daring to take the time to do a thorough job of checking it for gaps the summoned spirit could use to destroy you… only military magic takes a tougher toll on the operator.
But this fellow was cool as an ice elemental. He called on Vepar in a clear and piercing voice: “I conjure thee, Vepar, by the living God, by the true God, by the holy and all-ruling God, Who created from nothingness the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all things that are therein, Adonai, Jehovah, Tetragrammeton, to pour your waters upon the blaze there in such quantity and placement as to be most efficacious in extinguishing it and least damaging to life and property, in this place, before this pentacle, without grievance, deformity, noise, murmuring, or deceit. Obey, obey, obey!”
“It pains me to cease the destruction of the monastics housed therein.” I felt Vepar’s voice rather than hearing it. Like the demon’s visible form, it was sensuous enough to make me want to forget from what sort of creature it really came.
The wizard didn’t forget. “Obey, lest I cast thy name and seal into this brazier and consume them with sulphurous and stinking substances, and in so doing bind thee in the Bottomless Pit, in the Lake of Fire and Brimstone prepared for rebellious spirits, remembered no more before the face of God. Obey, obey, obey!” He held his closed hand above the brazier, as if to drop into the coals whatever he held.
I wouldn’t have ignored a threat like that, and I’m a material creature. To Vepar, who was all of spirit, it had to be doubly frightening. Water suddenly saturated the air around the burning tower; you could see fog turn to mist and then to rain. The same thing had to be happening inside, too. The flames went out.
“Give me leave to get hence,” Vepar said sullenly. “Am I now sufficiently humiliated to satisfy thee?”
The mage from the firecrew was too smart to let the demon lure him into that kind of debate. Without replying directly, he granted Vepar permission to go: “O Spirit
Vepar, because thou hast diligently answered my demands, I do hereby license thee to depart, without injury to man or beast. Depart, I say, but be thou willing and ready to come whenever duly conjured by the sacred rites of magic. I adjure thee to withdraw peaceably and quietly, and may the peace of God continue forever between us. Amen.”
He stayed in his own circle until the mermaid-shape vanished from the pentacle. Then he stepped—staggered, actually—out. I hoped the fire truly had a stake through its heart; that mage didn’t look as if he could summon up ten coppers for a cup of tea.
A slim, Asian-looking man in constabulary uniform came up to me. “Inspector Fisher?” He waited for me to nod before he stuck out a hand. “I’m Legate Kawaguchi. As I said, Brother Vahan asked for your presence here.” He affected to notice Judy for the first time. His face went from impassive to cold. “Who is your, ah, companion here?”
What are you doing bringing your girlfriend along on business? he meant. I said, “Legate, allow me to present my fiancÇe, Judith Adler.” Before he could blow up at me, I added, coldly myself, “Mistress Adler is on the staff of Hand-of-Glory Publishing. As I feared magic might well be involved in this fire, I judged her expertise valuable.” I gave him back an unspoken question of my own: Want to make something of it?
He didn’t. He bowed slightly to Judy, who returned the courtesy. Kawaguchi turned back to me. “Your fears, it seems, are well-founded. This indeed appears to be a case of arson and homicide by sorcery.”
I gulped. “Homicide?”
“So it would appear, Inspector. Brother Vahan informs me that eleven of the monks cannot be accounted for. Firecrew have already discovered three sets of mortal remains; as the site cools further, more such are to be expected.”
“May their souls be judged kindly,” I whispered. Beside me, Judy nodded. Until it happens, you don’t want to imagine men of God, men who worked for nothing but good, snuffed out like so many tapers. Murder of a religious of any creed carries not just a secular death sentence but the strongest curse the sect can lay on, which strikes me as only right.
Kawaguchi pulled out a note tablet and stylus. “Inspector Fisher, I’d be grateful if you’d explain to me in your own words why Brother Vahan believes your recent work to be connected with this unfortunate occurrence.”
Before I could answer, Brother Vahan himself came up. I might have known nothing, not even magical fire, could make the abbot lose his composure. He bowed gravely to me, even managed a hint of gallantry when I introduced Judy to him. But his eyes were black pools of anguish; as he stepped closer to one of the firecrew’s St. Elmo’s lamps, I saw he had a nasty burn across half his bald pate.
I explained to Kawaguchi what I’d been investigating, and why. His stylus raced over the wax. He hardly looked at what he was writing. Later, back at the constabulary station, he’d use a depalimpsestation spell to separate different strata of notes.
When I was through, he nodded slowly. “You are of the opinion, then, that one of the firms in some way involved with the Devonshire dump was responsible for this act of incendiarism?”
“Yes, Legate, I am,” I answered.
Brother Vahan nodded heavily. “It is as I told you, Legate Kawaguchi. So much loss here; enormous profit to someone must be at stake.”
“So I see,” Kawaguchi said. “You must understand, though, sir, that your statement about Inspector Fisher’s investigations is hearsay, while one directly from him may be used as evidence.”
“I do understand that, Legate,” the abbot answered. “Every calling has its own rituals.” I didn’t really think of the secular law, as opposed to that of the Holy Scriptures, as a ritual system, but Brother Vahan had a point.
A firecrewman with the crystal ball of a forensics specialist on his collar tabs stood waiting for Kawaguchi to notice him. When Kawaguchi did, the fellow said, “Legate, I have determined the point of origin of the fire.” He waited again, this time just long enough to let Kawaguchi raise a questioning eyebrow. “The blaze appears to have broken out below ground, in the scriptorium chamber.”
I started. So did Brother Vahan. Even in the half-dark and in the midst of confusion, Kawaguchi noticed. Judy would have, too; I wasn’t so sure about myself. The legate said, “This has significance, gentlemen?”
The abbot and I looked at each other. He deferred to me with a graceful gesture that showed me his arm was burned, too. I said, “I drew the information alerting me to a problem around the Devonshire dump from the scriptorium. Now, I gather, any further evidence that might have been there is gone.”
“The actual parchments from which you made your conclusions, and from which you might have gone on to draw other inferences, are surely perished,” Brother Vahan said heavily. “I confess I have given them little thought, being more concerned with trying to save such brethren as I could. Too few, too few.” I thought he was going to break down and weep, but he was made of stern stuff. He not only rallied but returned to the business at hand: “The data, as opposed to the physical residuum on which they resided, may yet be preserved. Much depends on whether Erasmus survived the conflagration.”
“Erasmus?” Legate Kawaguchi and I asked together.
“The scriptorium spirit,” Brother Vahan explained. He hadn’t named the spirit for me when I was down there, but that had been strictly business.
Kawaguchi, Judy, and I turned as one to look at the smoking ruin which was all that remained of the Thomas Brothers monastery. Gently, Judy said, “How likely is that?”
“If the spirit betook itself wholly to the Other Side when the fire started, there may be some hope,” the abbot said. “The monastery is—was—consecrated ground, after all, and thereby to some degree protected from the impact of the physical world upon the spiritual.”
Kawaguchi looked thoughtful. “That’s so,” he admitted. “Let me talk to the firecrew. If they think it’s safe, we’ll send a sorce-and-rescue team down into the scriptorium and see if we can’t save that spirit. It may be able to give vital evidence.”
“Without the corroborating physical presence of the parchments, evidence taken from a spirit is not admissible in court,” Judy reminded him.
“Thank you for noting that, Mistress Adler. I was aware of it,” the legate said. He didn’t sound annoyed, though; my guess was, Judy had just proved to him she knew what she was talking about. He went on, “My thought was not so much for your fiancÇe’s investigation as for the facts relating to the tragic fire here. For that, the spirit’s testimony may very well be allowed.”
“You’re right, of course,” Judy said. One of the many remarkable things about her is that when she has to concede a point (which isn’t all that often), she concedes it completely and graciously. Most people go on fighting battles long after they’re lost.
Kawaguchi went off to consult with the firecrew. I turned to Brother Vahan. “I’m sorry, sir, more sorry than I could say. I never imagined anyone could be mad enough to attack a monastery.”
“Nor did I,” he answered. “Do not blame yourself, my son. You uncovered a great evil at that dump; that I knew when you spoke to me of what you’d found. Now it has proved greater than either of us dreamt. But that is no reason to draw back from it. Rather, it is more reason to work to root it out.”
I had nothing to say to that. I just dipped my head, the way you do when you hear the truth. Rather to my relief, Kawaguchi came back just then. A couple of men in red dashed into the ruins. My eye followed them. Seeing my head twist, Kawaguchi nodded. “They will make the effort, Inspector Fisher. They have, of course, no guarantee of success.”
“Of course.” I noted the understatement. After a moment, I went on with a question: “Did you call me up here just to take my information, or can I help you with what you’re doing?”
“The former, I fear, unless you have resources concealed in your carpet which are not immediately obvious.” Did the legate’s eyes twinkle? I wasn’t sure. If he had a sense of humor, it was drier than An
gels City in the middle of one of our droughts.
“Well, then,” I said, “do you mind my asking you for as much as you can give me of what you’ve found out here? The more I learn about how this fire started and the magics that went into it, the better my chance of correlating those data with one or more of the consortia that use the Devonshire dump. That’ll help me figure out whose spells are leaking, which ought to help you figure out who’s to blame for this burning.”
I’ve worked with constabularies before. Constables are always chary about telling anybody anything, even if the person who wants to know is on the same side they are. Kawaguchi visibly wrestled with himself; under other circumstances, it would have been funny.
Finally he said, “That is a reasonable request.” Which didn’t mean he was happy about it. “Come with me, then. You may accompany us if you like, Mistress Adler.”
“How generous of you,” Judy said. I knew she’d have accompanied us whether Kawaguchi liked it or not, and gone off like a demon out of its pentacle if he tried to stop her. The irony in her voice was thick enough to slice. If the legate noticed it, though, he didn’t let on. I wondered if the Angels City constabulary wizards had perfected an anti-sarcasm amulet. If they had, I wanted to buy one.
Such foolishness vanished as the legate took Judy and me over to his command post (Brother Vahan tagged along, without, I noticed, any formal invitation). The firecrew forensics man was talking with his opposite number in the constabulary, a skinny blond woman who had a spellchecker that made my little portable look like a three-year-old’s toy.
I stared at it with honest envy. As soon as Kawaguchi introduced me to her—she was Chief Thaumatechnician Bornholm—I asked, “How many megageists in that thing, anyway?”
She must have heard me salivating, because she smiled, which made her look a little younger and a lot less tough. “Four meg active, eighty meg correlative,” she answered.
“Wow,” I said; beside me, Judy whistled softly. I wondered when the EPA would get a portable spellchecker with that kind of power. Probably some time in the new millennium; it would just about take the Millennium for us to have the tools we need to do the job right. The next century shouldn’t be more than two or three decades old before we’re ready to deal with this one.
The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump Page 7
