The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  “So what do we have in there?” Kawaguchi asked.

  Bornholm was a good constable; she glanced over to him and got his nod before she started talking in front of us civilian types. Then she said, “Even with the spellchecker, this won’t be as easy as I’d like; on hallowed ground, sorcerous evidence has a way of evanescing in a hurry.” She turned her head in Brother Vahan’s direction. “The abbot here has a most holy establishment: good for his monks and a credit to him, but hard on the constabulary.”

  “All right, I won’t expect you to hand me the case all sealed up with a papal chrysobull,” the legate said, “though I wouldn’t have been sorry if you did. Tell me what you know.”

  “About what you’d expect in an arson case,” Bornholm said: “strong traces of salamander, rather weaker ones from the use of a blasting rod.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kawaguchi said. “Any special characteristics of the salamander that would help us trace it back to a particular source on the Other Side?” Different rituals summon different strains of salamander; had this been one of the unusual ones, it could have told a lot about who called the creature to the monastery.

  But the thaumatech shook her head. “As generic a spell as you can find. Ten thousand campers use it out in the woods every day to get their fires going. Of course, they tack a dismissal onto it, too, and that didn’t happen here. Just the opposite, in fact; it was encouraged. Same with the blasting rod: very ordinary magic.”

  “Hellfire,” Kawaguchi said, which wasn’t literally true—salamanders are morally neutral creatures—but summed things up well enough.

  Bornholm hesitated, then went on, “When I first set up, I thought something else might be there, too. I wanted to stake down the certain arson traces before anything else, though, and by the time I came back to the other, it was gone. Hallowed ground, like I said. I’ll take the rap for it—it was my choice.”

  “That’s what free will is about,” Kawaguchi said. “You did what you thought was best. I presume you ordered the spirit to remember, not just analyze. We can do further evaluation later.”

  “Certainly,” Bornholm answered, with a What do you think I am, an idiot? look tacked on for good measure. I didn’t blame her, not one bit. She added, “The trouble is, you can’t evaluate what just isn’t there.”

  “I understand that.” Kawaguchi smacked right fist into left palm in frustration. I didn’t blame him, either. There was the spellchecker, with access and correlation capability on relations with the Other Side for everybody from Achaeans to Zulus and all stops in between, with hordes of microimps inside to do the thinking faster and more thoroughly than any mere man could manage—but, as the thaumatech had said, you can’t analyze what isn’t there.

  “Legate!” The shout rang through the smoky night. Kawaguchi spun round (so did all of us, as a matter of fact). One of the guys from the sorce-and-rescue crew had emerged from the ruined scriptorium. His boots thumped on the pavement as he walked over to us. He was sooty and sweaty and looked about half beaten to death, but his eyes held triumph. “We made contact with that access spirit, Legate.”

  “Good news!” Kawaguchi exclaimed. “That’s the first piece of good news I’ve heard tonight. What sort of shape is the spirit in?”

  “I was just getting to that, Legate,” the sorce-and-rescue man said, and some of the sudden hopes I’d got up came crashing down again—he didn’t sound what you’d call upbeat. “The spirit’s here—it’s manifested enough so we can move it—but it’s not in good shape, not even slightly. Preliminary diagnosis is that whoever set the fire went after the poor creature on the Other Side, too.”

  “Poor Erasmus,” Brother Vahan said, with as much concern as if he were talking about one of his monks.

  “Erasmus? Oh,” the sorce-and-rescue man said; then: “I don’t think it’ll perish, but it’s had a rough time. Hard to characterize torments on the Other Side, but—did it used to manifest itself with its spectacles cracked?”

  “No,” Brother Vahan said, and started to weep as if that was to him the crowning tragedy of all those which had befallen the Thomas Brothers monastery tonight. I remembered the fussy, precise spirit and the neat little pair of glasses it had worn. How could you crack lenses that weren’t really there? I suppose there are ways, but I got queasy thinking about them.

  “We can run the spellchecker on this access spirit,” Thaumatech Bornholm said. “Maybe we’ll learn just what hit the monastery by finding out how the spirit was tormented.”

  “For that matter, simple questioning may yield the same information,” said Kawaguchi, who sounded ready to start asking poor abused Erasmus questions right then and there if the sorce-and-rescue man would summon the spirit onto a ground-glass screen.

  But the sorce-and-rescue man shook his head. “Nobody’s going to run a spellchecker on that spirit any time soon. Any sorcerous nudge right now, before it has a chance to regain some strength, and it’ll be gone for good. I’m not kidding—a sorcerous nudge right now will destroy, uh, Erasmus, and I’ll set that down on parchment. The same goes for interrogation. If that spirit were a material being, it would’ve gotten last rites. Because it’s not material, it has a better chance of recovering than thee or me, but I warn you: you’ll lose it if you push.”

  “I shall pray for Erasmus’ recovery along with the recovery of my brethren who took hurt in the fire,” Brother Vahan said, “and for the souls of the brethren who lost their lives.” He spoke slowly and with great dignity, partly because he was that kind of man and partly to hold the tears back from his voice.

  Judy stepped up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He twitched a little; you could see how unused he was to having a woman touch him. But after a couple of seconds, he realized she meant only to comfort him. He eased, as much as you can when everything that matters to you is gone.

  I wished I’d thought to make the gesture Judy had. I suspect the trouble is that I think too much. Judy felt what she ought to do and she did it. I’m not saying she doesn’t think—oh my, no. But it’s nice to be in touch with This Side and the Other Side of yourself, so to speak.

  I turned to Legate Kawaguchi. “Do you need us for anything more here, sir?”

  He shook his head. “No, you may go, Inspector Fisher. Thank you for your statement. I expect we will be in touch with each other about aspects of this matter of mutual concern.” I expected that, too. Then Kawaguchi unbent a little; maybe a human being really did lurk behind the constabulary uniform. “A pleasure also to meet your fiancÇe, Inspector. A pity to drag you out of doors at such an unholy hour, Mistress Adler, especially on dark, grim business like this.”

  “I asked David to let me come along,” Judy said. “And you’re right—this business is dark and grim. If I can do anything to help you catch whoever did it, let me know. I’m no mage, but I’m an expert on sorcerous applications.”

  “I shall bear that in mind,” Kawaguchi said, and sounded as if he meant it.

  Judy and I ducked under the tape the constabulary had put around the Thomas Brothers monastery and walked back toward my carpet. The sun was just starting to paint the sky above the hills to the east with pink. I asked my watch what time it was and found out it was heading toward six. By my body, it could have been anywhere from midmorning to midnight.

  We fastened our safety belts and headed back toward the freeway. A couple of minutes before we got there, Judy said, “I didn’t know I was your fiancÇe.”

  “Huh?” I answered brilliantly.

  “The way you introduced me to Legate Kawaguchi,” she said.

  “Oh. That.” I’d just done it because it seemed the easiest way to explain what she was doing over at my place at two-something of a morning. I thought about it for a few seconds, then said, “Well, do you want to be?”

  “Do I want to be what?” Now Judy was confused.

  “My fiancÇe.”

  “Sure!” she said, and her smile was brighter than the sun which just that moment poked itself
into the sky. It wasn’t the traditional way to answer a proposal of marriage, but then I hadn’t proposed the way I’d intended to, either. I really had intended to get around to it, but I didn’t know just when. Now seemed as good a time as any.

  We held hands on St. James’ Freeway all the way back to my block of flats. After a black night, morning sun felt very fine indeed.

  III

  When I got to work Monday morning, somebody ambushed me in the parking lot. No, it’s not what you think; this fellow standing outside the entrance to my building called out, “Are you EPA Inspector David Fisher?” When I said I was, he came trotting over to me, stuck a glass globe in front of my face, and said, “I’m Joe Forbes, Angels City Ethernet Station One News. I want to ask you some questions about the tragic Thomas Brothers fire Friday night.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, peering cross-eyed into the globe. The imp inside had enormous ears, mournful little eyes, and a mouth that stretched all the way across its face. I’d never seen an ethernet imp before.

  Forbes shifted the globe back toward his own mouth. “How are you involved with the Thomas Brothers, and why were you called to the scene of the fire shortly after it occurred?” He held the globe out to me again.

  “I’d been using some Thomas Brothers records in an ongoing EPA investigation, and the constabulary were trying to find out if there was any connection between that investigation and the fire,” I answered, truthful enough but not what you’d call forthcoming.

  As I talked, I watched the little imp in the globe. Its ears twitched with every syllable I spoke. Its mouth moved in a rather exaggerated parody of human speech. I’ve never had any reason to learn to read lips, but I didn’t need long to notice it was echoing what I said, about half a beat behind me. It was transmitting my words back to Ethernet Station One, either to one of its own clones that would relay what I said on to the master broadcasting imp so all the master’s clones in people’s sets could hear, or else to a Listener that would speak them in front of the master imp at a time more convenient for the station crew.

  Joe Forbes took back the globe. “Do I understand correctly, Inspector Fisher, that an immaterial witness survived the fire and may yet provide important information about the case?”

  I’d talked to Kawaguchi the afternoon before. From what he said, Erasmus was probably going to pull through its ordeal, though the access spirit wouldn’t be in any shape to answer questions for a while yet. Actually, Erasmus didn’t have any shape at all, but you know what I mean.

  I started to tell Forbes as much, but had second thoughts. I didn’t know how many people listened to the ethernet news, but could I afford to assume none of the people who’d burned the monastery did? And if those bastards were listening, could I afford to tell them they’d botched the job on Erasmus? They might try again, and they might do it right the next time.

  All this went through my mind in about the time it took to finish exhaling, inhale, and begin to talk. If Forbes had caught me on an inhale, I must have just started talking before I stopped to think. As it was, I said, “I really think that’s something you ought to take up with the constabulary. They know more about it than I do.”

  Forbes looked unhappy; I guess he saw from my answers that he wasn’t going to get any exciting revelations from me. He asked a couple of innocuous questions, then tried once more with something substantive: “What sort of Thomas Brothers records were you using in your own investigation?”

  Maybe he’d hoped I’d not notice that one was charmed, and would blab away. But I didn’t; I answered, “I’d rather not comment, since the investigation is still under way.” The fellow’s laziness irked me as much as anything else. If he’d known This Side from the Other, he could have gone down to the Criminal and Magical Courts Building and found the parchments I’d filed to get my search warrant. But no—he wanted me to do his work for him.

  Well, I had enough work of my own. I said as much: “I’m sorry, Mr. Forbes, but I really have to get upstairs now.”

  “Thank you, Inspector David Fisher of the Environmental Perfection Agency,” Forbes boomed, just as if I’d told him something worth knowing. I pitied his poor imp. It didn’t look very bright, but I wouldn’t have been very bright after listening to and transmitting the mind-numbing stream of chatter Forbes turned out.

  I’d hoped to start getting some serious work done on the sorcerous contamination at the Devonshire dump itself, but I hadn’t taken into account its being Monday morning. Monday morning under Beatrice Cartwright is a ritual that, while not as old as the Mass or synagogue Sabbath rite, is every bit as sacred: the staff meeting.

  Monday morning, everybody in the department sits around for two, two and a half hours listening to what everybody else is doing. About ninety-nine times out of a hundred, what everybody else is doing is, to put it mildly, irrelevant to what you’re doing yourself, and you could better spend the time actually doing whatever it is you can’t do while you’re sitting around in staff meeting (thank God we’re an Agency, not a Department, the way some people back in D.St.C. want; if we were a Department we’d probably meet twice a week, not just once).

  I mean, in an abstract kind of way I was glad to hear that Phyllis Kaminsky was working closely with the constabulary to make several Angels City streets less congenial to succubi; vice of that sort does need to be combated. But even if her report did earn Phyllis a pat on the fanny from Bea, I didn’t need to know all the ichor-filled details.

  And I didn’t need to know about the aerial garlic spraying Jose Franco was working on with some of the horticulture people at UCAC to try to slow down the little vegetable vampires that have played such havoc with the local citrus crop over the past few years, ever since they got here in a cargo of imperfectly exorcised lemons from Greece. It wasn’t that I had anything against Jose or his project; I don’t want to have to pay three crowns for an orange any more than anyone else. But just the same, Medvamps aren’t my biggest worry in the world.

  For that matter, even though people looked more interested than usual (which isn’t saying much) when I talked about the Devonshire mess, it didn’t have a whole lot to do with their lives or their jobs. But Bea likes to soak it all in, so every Monday morning we meet. World without end, amen, or so it seems in the middle of a staff meeting, anyhow.

  At last we were released; I felt as if I were upward bound from purgatory (no, not a Jewish concept, but useful all the same). I staggered off to the jakes with the staff graphic artist. “At least here I know what I’m doing,” I said as we stood side by side. Mart°n laughed and nodded; he’s about as fond of staff meetings as I am.

  Having accomplished at least one worthwhile thing that morning, I went back to my desk to see if I could make it two. I wished the thaumatech had been able to catch more about the incendiary sorcery that had torched the Thomas Brothers monastery; it might have given me a better notion of which toxic spell components to be alert for, and from that which consortia to suspect. But if magic were just wishing, life would be too simple to stand.

  I made myself a new chart, an expanded version of the one I’d done on my kitchen table the week before. This one broke things out not just by consortium and type of business, but also by specific type of contaminant. In lieu of turning the chart three-dimensional, I assembled a neat battle line of quills, each in an inkstand of a different color (to be sure I had enough, I’d borrowed some from Mart°n’s immense supply).

  Just when I was ready to buckle down to some serious work, the phone yammered at me. I didn’t say what I thought, but I thought it real loud. That, of course, didn’t make the phone shut up. I spoke to the mouthpiece imp: “David Fisher, Environmental Perfection Agency.”

  “Good morning, Dave—Tony Sudakis calling.”

  “Good morning, Tony. How are you?” Half my annoyance went away; at least the call had something to do with the case I was working on. “What’s up?”

  “I heard about the Thomas Brothers fire over the weekend. Ter
rible thing. Those are good people there. We need more like ’em.”

  “That’s certainly true. But there are less like them now—eleven less, I understand.”

  “Yeah, I know.” A pause. I was getting used to pauses from people I talked with, which is not to say I liked them any too well. Once Tony was finally done with his, he went on, “I just want you to know that the Devonshire Land Management Consortium didn’t have thing one to do with this fire.”

  I chewed on that, found I didn’t care for the taste. As politely as I could, I pointed out, “Tony, you can speak for yourself, but how can you go about declaring your whole consortium innocent?” Oh, he could declare it, sure, but how was he supposed to make me believe it?

  He surprised me—he found a way that sort of worked: “The consortium management staff is contributing twenty-five thousand crowns to the constabulary’s reward fund for the capture and conviction of whoever fired the place.”

  “Interesting,” I said, and it was; interesting enough to write down, in fact. Figuring out exactly what it meant wasn’t so simple. The most obvious interpretation was that management staff was innocent. The other possibility was that somebody up there was guilty as sin and had found a particularly devious way to cover his—or even her—tracks. In the absence of further data, I just had to note it and go on.

  Sudakis was dealing with my pause now. Into it, he said, “You don’t take anything on trust, do you, Dave?”

  “I trust in God,” I answered. “He has a more reliable record than most of the people I know.”

  “Life must be easy if you can honestly give all your allegiance to one omniscient, omnipotent deity,” Sudakis said. “But I didn’t call you up to talk theology with you. I wouldn’t mind doing that over some beer one day, but now now. I’ve said what I needed to say, and I’ve got the usual swamp full of alligators here.”