The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  “Speaking of the flames,” Legate Kawaguchi broke in, “I would be grateful for your account of what took place during the evening on which the Thomas Brothers monastery fire took place.”

  “Must I recount it?” Even in virtuous reality, Erasmus looked scared. “So dose came I to being eKtinguished forever.”

  “If you want the perpetrators apprehended, we must have your statement,” Kawaguchi answered. “Yours, I think, is the only reliable testimony as to what occurred on the Other Side during the commission of the felony.”

  Brother Vahan added, “You should also know, old friend, that eleven of the brethren lost their lives in the fire, and many others were badly burned.” His face twisted. I thought about the stiff-necked Cardinal of Angels City and his doubts about cosmetic sorcery.

  “I did not know,” Erasmus whispered. His pale, thin visage twisted, too. Remembered pain? Fear? I couldn’t tell.

  “They warned me it would be folly of the purest ray serene to speak of what they did to me, evenassuming I was thereafter able to manifest myself, which they found unlikely. But eleven of the holy brethren—Very well, abbot. Legate: I shall speak in praise ottofly.”

  Legate Kawaguchi held a stylus and note tablet in his hands. I don’t know where they came from; they hadn’t been there an instant before. Maybe it was just the nature of virtuous reality to accommodate itself to the wills and desires of those who occupied it. Being a constable, Kawaguchi felt he needed written documentation when he questioned a witness. Since he needed it, he got it. Or maybe I’m altogether off base; I don’t pretend to be a thaumaturge.

  At any rate, note tablet poised, the legate asked, “What do you mean by ‘they,’ Erasmus?”

  The individuals who tormented me on the night of the fire,” the scriptorium spirit answered.

  Kawaguchi scribbled a note. Then he said, “Let us take that night in chronological order, if possible. That may be the clearest method of ascertaining the facts in this matter. Is that a reasonable request?”

  “For many denizens of the Other Side, beings not so bound up in Time as you humans, the answer would be no,”

  Erasmus said. “But as a scriptorium spirit, concerned not only with order in my records but also with regular access to those records by the holy brethren and other researchers”—he looked toward me—“I have a dear sense of duration and sequence, yes.”

  “Go ahead, then.” Kawaguchi poised his stylus.

  Erasmus took him literally. Beginning with the monks’ celebration of vespers, he began to give a minute-by-minute account of everything that had happened within range of his sensorium. At first, everything was both tedious and altogether irrelevant. If he kept up in that vein, I began to fear we’d stay in virtuous reality forever. It would certainly feel like forever.

  Nigel Cholmondeley held up a hand. “Forgive me, Erasmus,” he broke in, “but could you perhaps skip to that portion of the evening when you first noticed something amiss?”

  “Ah.” Erasmus gave Kawaguchi a why-didn’t-you-say-what-you-wanted? look, then took up the tale anew: “At 12:04 in the morning, two unauthorized persons entered the scriptorium. I attempted to give the alarm, but was prevented.”

  Before Erasmus could answer. Brother Vahan put in, “We noted nothing out of the ordinary. Legate, as I told you on the night of the fire. That evildoers should trespass upon hallowed ground without drawing the notice of anyone within, and that they should overcome alarm spells lain down with the authority of the Holy Catholic Church… they had no small power behind them. Till the day, I would not have thought it possible.”

  Like any other major faith, the Catholic Church maintains that its connections with the Other Side are the most potent around (I’d say the most omnipotent, but purists like Michael Manstein and Erasmus wouldn’t approve). With the powers the Church has Over There, it’s not easy even for a Jew like me to disagree very loudly. Having his holy protection fail must have been a dreadful shock for Brother Vahan.

  “I cannot answer the question with certainty,” Erasmus said. “I know only that I was silenced, as the holy abbot has suggested, by a spell of great force.”

  “What flavor did it have?” I asked. “Was it some strong ancient ritual revived specially for this purpose, or did it cany the precision of modem magic?”

  “Again, I cannot say,” the scriptorium spirit answered. “If I may use an analogy from your Side, as well ask a mouse crushed by a boulder in a landslide whether it was granite or sandstone.”

  “Very well, we are to understand you were forcibly silenced and prevented from alerting the brethren,”

  Kawaguchi said, trying to keep Erasmus moving in the right direction. “What transpired subsequently?”

  “I was interrogated,” Erasmus answered. “My questioners sought to learn what Inspector Fisher here had gleaned from our records. I tried to refuse, I tried to resist; the holy abbot had ordered me to treat the inspector in all ways as if he were one of the brethren, and I should never have betrayed (heir secrets who came into the scriptorium like—or rather, as—thieves in the night Then they began to torment me.”

  So much for virtuous reality. I didn’t feel virtue, not after I heard that—what I felt was guilt. I didn’t need to ask that disappearing serpent where the Tree of Knowledge grew; I’d already eaten of it at the Thomas Brothers monastery. And because I had, Erasmus had suffered.

  Brother Vahan made a noise that said he was suffering, too. He embraced the scriptorium spirit. They dung to each other.

  Whatever Legate Kawaguchi was feeling, he didn’t let it interfere with his interrogation. He said, “Could you please describe for me the torments performed upon you?”

  Brother Vahan angrily turned on him. “Why are you trying to force Erasmus to reexperience the torments those murderers inflicted?”

  “Because their nature may provide important information on the perpetrators,” Kawaguchi answered. “The particular magics utilized will be clues to the backgrounds of those who performed them. I assure you, this is standard constabulary procedure in dealing with cases involving the Other Side, Brother Vahan.”

  “I pray your pardon,” the abbot said; he was one of the rare people I’ve met who didn’t find his manhood threatened by backing down. “You don’t tell me how to conduct my affairs; I owe you the same courtesy.”

  “Erasmus?” Kawaguchi said.

  The scriptorium spirit didn’t look happy about recounting what had happened to him, but after a little while he nodded. “Let it be as you say. Legate, and may the truth bear out your hopes. First came fire: this would have been at 12:32, when my questioners decided I was and would remain obdurate.”

  “Fire wasn’t reported in the monastery until after one,”

  Kawaguchi said.

  “Not the Fire of This Side, but that of the Other, which burns the spirit rather than the material,” Erasmus replied.

  “Not for nothing, I can now tell you, do so many mortals fear the pangs of hellfire, for to endure such eternally would be anguish indeed.”

  Kawaguchi scribbled notes. I wondered how much good they’d do him. Counting the magics that don’t have fire in them somewhere is a much easier job than reckoning up those that do. And the way Erasmus talked about what had happened to him suggested the fire sprang from Christian or Muslim sources; the former, espedaBy, didn’t lend itself to narrowing down the list of suspects.

  The scriptorium spirit continued, “At 12:41, the invaders concluded fire was inadequate to persuade me. They resorted instead to the venom of sorcerous serpents, which coursed through my ichor and brought with it suffering different from, but not less intense than, that which the names had produced.”

  “Snakes, you say?” Kawaguchi repeated with a now—we’regetting—somewhere air. “And of what nature were they?”

  “With all respect. Legate, I must remind you that I am a scriptorium spirit at a monastery, not a herpetologistfs establishment,” Erasmus answered in a dignified voice. “I can
state with authority that they were dissimilar to the one inhabiting the garden here, for which claim I have Scriptural authority behind me. Past that, fools may rush in but, while I am no angel, I tear to tread.”

  I found a question I thought Kawaguchi had missed: “Can you describe the men who tormented you, Erasmus?”

  “Again, I fear not,” the spirit answered. “They were masked against the sight of Your Side, and so cloaked around in sorcery that I have no notion of their true spiritual semblance, either, save that were it benign they would not have used me as they did.”

  I sighed. Kawaguchi sighed. Even Brother Vahan looked a little less saintly than he had. Nigel Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth shifted from foot to foot They’d brought us all together here in virtuous reality, but for the amount of information Erasmus had given us, they might as well not have bothered.

  “Very well, then,” Kawaguchi said, sighing again. “What happened next?” °I still refused to divulge the nature of the research Inspector Fisher had been conducting,” Erasmus said. “At 12:48, the intruders again became discontented with their means of torment and shifted stratagems. I found myself tramped under the sharp hooves of an enormous cow.”

  That made me sit up and take notice: metaphorically, you understand. Legate Kawaguchi leaned forward toward Erasmus till he was fell past the point where I thought he’d fall on his face. Maybe you can’t do that in virtuous reality; I don’t know. “A cow, you say?” he pressed. “Not a bull? Are you sure about that?”

  “I am certain,” Erasmus declared.

  “Interesting,” Kawaguchi said. I saw what he was flying toward. Bull cults are common. Straight Mithraism has never quite died, and there are modem revivalist sects trying to pick up supporters who don’t get the spiritual charge they need from Christianity and Islam. Personally, I don’t need to get drenched by the blood of a slaughtered bull to feel a union with the Godhead, but some folks evidently do.

  But cows, now… two of the places where the cow is a focus of magic are India—home of the Garuda Bird—and Persia, from which sprang, among others in the case. Slow Jinn Fizz and Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins (a place I hoped I’d get to before I died of old age).

  Erasmus went on. The hooves of the cow seemed sharp as whetted steel. They flayed me past any anguish I had previously imagined. And so, to my lasting shame, Inspector Fisher, at 12:58 I yielded to my inquisitors’ torment and described in detail the records I had copied for you. Judge me as you will; the deed is done.”

  When a spirit talks about lasting shame, it means lasting forever unless it’s a sylph or one of that flighty breed. I said,

  “Erasmus, you did the best you could. What you went through is more than I could have stood; I’m sure of that.

  You don’t need to feel shame on my account.”

  “You are gracious,” the scriptorium spirit said. Brother Vahan also inclined his head in my direction. That made me feel good; winning Brother Vahan’s good opinion isn’t easy, but it’s worth doing.

  “What happened after you finished providing the perpetrators with this information, after”—Kawaguchi glanced down at his notes—“12:58?”

  “I finished betraying Inspector Fisher at 1:03,” Erasmus said bleakly. “I hoped that would be the end of it, that the malefactors would take what they had learned and depart. Instead, as you know, they forthwith kindled the fire which I gather resulted in the destruction of the Thomas Brothers monastery. As to that, I could not speak with certainty, for when the ground glasses in the scriptorium melted or shattered from the heat of the flames, I lost my interface with Your Side and, still in agony, awaited my own dissolution.”

  “The firecrew and constabulary rescued you,” I said.

  “Exactly so. At the time and since, I have doubted whether they did me any great favor, but, as with my betrayal of you, the deed is done and we now must proceed to act upon its consequences.” The scriptorium spirit turned to Legate Kawaguchi. “Oh: there is one thing more. For some time after I was tormented, I lacked much of my normal awareness of self and surroundings. Were I flesh and blood, I gather you would say I was semiconscious. Only quite recently have I regained my full sensorium. When I did so, I found as part of my immediate surroundings—this.”

  I hadn’t figured Erasmus for a sense of the dramatic. But from behind his back he pulled out a short green feather.

  Kawaguchi held out his had. “May I see it?” Erasmus gave it to him. He felt it, held it close to his face in a gesture that said he was nearsighted. He shrugged. “Just seems like a feather to the eye and the hand.” He turned to Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley and asked, “Are magical forensic tests possible in virtuous reality?’

  They both shook their heads. Madame Ruth said,

  “Remember, that isn’t the actual feather you’re holding, Legate, but its analog in this sorcerous space. And, like everything else in virtuous reality, it is imbued with special properties springing from this space and thus not a fit subject for testing.”

  “I should have thought of that.” Kawaguchi clicked his tongue between his teeth, not so much in disappointment as in annoyance at himself. He turned to Brother Vahan. “Further questions?”

  “I have one,” I said. “How did the two men react when you finally yielded to the cow’s hooves and told them what I’d been investigating?”

  “One of them said to the other, ‘He’ll get his, too, I expect,’ ” Erasmus answered. It didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t delight me, either. If somebody was willing to bum down a monastery, the added burden of sin that would accrue from going after an EPA inspector couldn’t have been heavy enough to worry him.

  Brother Vahan said, “Old friend, how soon will you be able to manifest yourself normally on Our Side once more?”

  “It shouldn’t be much longer, holy abbot,” Erasmus said.

  “The metaphysicians tell me I could do it now if my familiar haunts were restored. As it is, I’m given to understand it’s a matter of days rather than weeks.”

  “Good,” the abbot said. “I shall pray that the time will be soon, for purely selfish reasons: I find I miss you very much.”

  An undead who hadn’t fed in a thousand years had infinitely more blood in him than Erasmus ever could, so when I saw the scriptorium spirit blush I just chalked it up to virtuous reality. And if we were out of questions, we didn’t need to be there any more. I asked, “How do we get back to Interrogation Room Two?”

  “You must return to awareness of the body you left behind there,” Nigel Cholmondeley answered. “As soon as your hands leave contact with those of the persons to either side of you, the circuit will be broken and you—and all of us—will return to the mundane world.”

  My hands? I looked down, and of course I couldn’t see them. From what my eyes reported, I might as well not have had any hands, or anything else—I was just there. Virtuous reality is an insidious kind of place: it so completely involves all the senses and seems so dioroughly real that leaving wasn’t as easy as Cholmondeley made it sound. I wondered if early explorers had got stuck in it forever. Ifdiey had, I wondered ifdiey’d realized it.

  An intense look of concentration came over Brodier Vahan’s face. Presumably he couldn’t see his own hands, either. But an instant later, I was sitting on a hard chair with a stifling helmet over my eyes and ears. I clawed it off. The (nimy reality of the interrogation room was a long, long way om the Garden where I’d been a moment before. Everyone else was taldng off the masks, too. Now that we were back in the constabulary station, Nigel Cholmondeley was horsefaced again, Madame Ruth fat as any two people you want to name, and Legate Kawaguchi short and skinny and tired-looking. I suppose I looked the way I always do, too.

  On the table in front of Kawaguchi, along with the cigarette bums and coffee rings, lay a note tablet full of scribbles.

  I didn’t remember its being there when we sat down. I didn’t think he could have brought it back from virtuous reality… but then I saw, right in the middle
of the table, a bright green feather. Kawaguchi spotted it at the same time I did.

  He grabbed it and stuck it in a little transparent pouch made of spirit gum to keep it from being magically influenced.

  “Remarkable,” Nigel Cholmondeley said. “One seldom sees artifacts returning with participants in a virtuous reality experience.”

  “Officially, this is not and cannot be evidence,” Kawaguchi said. “Its trail of provenance is severely tainted; any judge to whom it was presented would throw it out of court, and very likely the case with it. Unofficially, I shall convey it to the lab and find out what our forensics people make of it.”

  “Let me know, please,” I said. If I’d snatched it first, I’d have taken it straight to Michael Manstein—assuming, of course, that Kawaguchi and half a dozen big constables with clubs hadn’t started working out on me to make me give it back. Since they might have done just that, constables being demons for evidence, maybe it was for the best Kawaguchi got it instead of me.

  Brother Vahan dipped his head to Madame Ruth and then to Cholmondeley. “Let me apologize to both of you for my previous doubts as to the nature of virtuous reality,” he said; he was, as usual, nothing if not gracious. “I can see that it will become a valuable tool in thaumaturgic research.”

  “Thanks right back atcha for thinkin’ fast and breakin’ the circle.” Madame Ruth sounded like herself again, too. Too bad. “That can be the tricky part, gettin’ back here where we belong.”

  Nigel Cholmondeley put it more piously: “Mankind was ever reluctant to leave the Garden.”

  “So I thought,” the abbot agreed. “But then I remembered I had no true right there, burdened as I was by the weight of Original Sin. After that, recalling my body to action in this actual world was easier.”

  The channeler and the medium looked at each other.

  “Let’s talk about that some more. Brother Vahan, if you don’t mind,” Cholmondeley said. The extraction technique you describe might well be incorporated into one of the helmets’ ritual subroutines if we are able to isolate the symbolic essence of your thought sequence.”