The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  He parked the carpet in front of a place whose skin had two words in the Roman alphabet—DVIN DELI—and a couple of lines in the curious pothooks Armenians use to write their language. I don’t read Armenian myself, but I’ve seen it often enough to recognize the script.

  Sure enough, the fellow behind the counter in there looked like Brother Vahan’s younger cousin, except that he sported a handlebar mustache and had a full head of wavy iron-gray hair.

  “God bless you, what can I do for you gentlemen today?” he said when Michael and I walked in. “I have some lovely lamb just in, and with yogurt and mint leaves—” He kissed the tips of his fingers.

  Even if mixing meat and milk wasn’t kosher, it sounded good to me. I hated to have to say, “I’m sorry, we’re just looking for a pay phone.”

  “Across the street, behind the camiceria next to the Hanese bookstore,” he said, pointing. “I don’t know why they didn’t put it out front, but they didn’t. And when you’ve made your call, why don’t you come back? I have figs and dates preserved in honey, all kinds of good things.”

  He was a salesman and a half, that one. I got out of the Dvin Deli in a hurry, before I was tempted into spending the next hour and a half there, buying things I didn’t need and half of which I wasn’t permitted to eat.

  The Hanese bookstore also had a two-word English skin—HONG’S BOOKS—and the rest was in ideograms. For a couple of seconds, I didn’t see the pay phone back of the Aztecian meat market. It was on the far side of a very fragrant trash dumpster; nobody flying casually down the street would have noticed anything going on while whoever had Judy made her call me. The camiceria’s back door didn’t have a window, either, so people in there might not have spotted anything amiss, either.

  I dug in my pocket, found change, and fed it into the greedy little paw of the pay phone’s money demon. I called Plainclothesman Johnson, Saul Klein, and Legate Kawaguchi, in that order. Johnson and Klein weren’t altogether convinced that Chocolate Weasel was involved in Judy’s kidnapping, though they both said the evidence was better than anything else they had. Kawaguchi said I’d handed him enough so he could give Chocolate Weasel a good going-over.

  “Don’t just send constables,” I warned him. “That place is major sorcerous trouble. If you don’t call out a hazardous materta magica team for it, you’ll never, ever need one.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Inspector Fisher,”

  Kawaguchi said, “but I assure you that I shall make all necessary arrangements. Good day.” Shut up and let me do my job, was what he was saying. I just hoped he knew the kind of trouble his people were liable to walk into at Chocolate Weasel.

  After that, I had to cadge some more change from Michael. I called Bea to let her know what was going on.

  Instead of Bea, I got Rose, who told me the boss was at a meeting away from the Confederal Building and couldn’t be reached no matter what for the next couple of hours.

  “Wonderful,” I said. “Listen, Rose, dungs are liable to start felling on your head any minute now.” I explained how and why.

  She just took it in stride. I would have been surprised at anything less. Whatever needed doing, she’d take care of it as if Bea were standing behind her giving orders. We’re unbelievably lucky to have her, and we know it When I was done, she said, I have two important phone messages for you. One is from Professor Blank at UCAC and the other is from a Mr. Antanas—is that right?—Sudakis at the Devonshire dump.”

  “Yes, Antanas is right. Thank you, Rose. We’ll be back at the office soon, and I’ll attend to the calls then. ’Bye,” I said, and hung up. I’d been meaning to call Blank, and I wasn’t all that surprised to hear from him first. But I wondered why he said it was urgent for me to call him back—nothing about his investigation of the Chumash Powers had been urgent up till now. And I wondered what had bitten Tony on the backside. Just my luck to be out of the office when two important calls came in.

  Michael said, “Before we leave this site, I suggest that you examine it most carefully. I would be willing to wager the CBI has tried already, but if you find anything here which you can identify as belonging to Mistress Ather, the law of contagion may enable us—or the constabulary, or the CBI—to trace her present whereabouts. No guarantees, of course, sorcerous countermeasures having become so effective these days, but a chance nonetheless.”

  So I looked. God, did I look! Leaving something behind was just the sort of thing Judy would have done if she got the chance—anything to give us a better shot at finding her. I went down on my hands and knees and pawed through weeds and pebbles like a wino after a lost quarter-crown, hoping, praying, she’d managed to drop a button or something.

  No luck. All I got was the knees of my pants dirty. Finally I admitted it, even to myself. “Sorry, Michael, but Acre’s nothing here. In the adventure stories, people always manage to leave a clue while the bad guys aren’t watching. I guess it doesn’t work that way in real life.”

  “It would appear not to,” he agreed. “This is my first encounter with a situation which might reasonably fall into that category, so my experience is as limited as yours. I suspect, however, that if real criminals made as many errors as those in adventure stories, virtue would triumph in the real world more often than it does.”

  “I suspect you’re right,” I said glumly, brushing at my trousers. Some of the dirt looked to be there to stay. I sighed, feeling useless and also, irrationally, as if I’d let Judy down.

  “Let’s head back to the office, then—we’re wasting time here. From what Rose said, I’ve had a couple of calls that need answering right away.”

  “I also have other work upon which I could be usefully engaged,” Michael said. That made me feel bad all over again; I hadn’t even asked him what I was disrupting by dragging him up to the Valley again and again. But he went on, “Seeking information which will aid in the rescue of your fiancee necessarily takes priority over other concerns.”

  “Thank you, Michael,” I said as we walked back to his carpet His glance over at me was puzzled, as if he wondered what I was thanking him for. Maybe he did. He thinks so well that I sometimes wonder about the rest of his spirit I noticed that he flew down Soto’s to the freeway instead of going back to Winnetka. With Michael, I think it was gust for the sake of greater efficiency. I’d have done the same thing, but not on account of that I just wouldn’t have wanted to swing back any closer to Chocolate Weasel than I had to.

  When we got back to the Confederal Building, I bought something allegedly edible from the cafeteria; while I fought it down, I kept thinking about lamb with yogurt and mint leaves - sinful as bacon for me, but it sounded delicious all the same—and candied dates. Then, with my fireplace full of fuel—and with a heartburn to prove it—I went to my office and picked up the phone.

  Professor Blank sounded blunter than phone imps could normally account for when he answered the phone, so I figured I’d caught him at lunch twice running, and probably a brown bag one. UCAC boasts better eateries than we have here, which meant he was either tight with a crown or else dedicated to what he was doing.

  I’d been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt even before he said, “I’m so glad you returned my call, Inspector Fisher. I’ve been waiting here at my desk, hoping you would.”

  “I just now got in,” I answered, starting to feel guilty because I’d eaten lunch before I called him back. “Rose, our secretary, said it was urgent, so you’re the first call I’ve made.” That, at least, was true. “What’s up?”

  “I trust you will recall,” he began, which meant he didn’t trust any such thing, “that when we last spoke I was uncertain whether the Chumash Powers were extinct or had, so to speak, encysted themselves on the Other Side, abandoning all contact with This Side for an indefinite period, perhaps in the hope of being lured back Here should more worshipers appear to propitiate them.”

  He hadn’t said all that when we talked before; some of it he must have worked out sin
ce then. But he had said enough of it to let me answer, “Yes, I remember that. Do you know which is true now?”

  “The latter, I’m afraid,’’ he said, “and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word.”

  I’d figured it was the latter; having learned that the Chumash Powers were in fact extinct wouldn’t have been news urgent enough for him to haunt his office waiting for me to call back. But I hadn’t though even finding them active would be frightening. “What’s to be afraid of?” I asked.

  “The Powers are indeed encysted; new regression analysis establishes that beyond any statistical or theological doubt,” he said. “But it’s a topologlcally unusual spherical encystment Are you aware. Inspector, that the surface of a sphere can be continuously deformed until it is inside out?”

  “Well, no,” I said. “What does that have to do with the Chumash Powers?”

  “It’s a good approximation of what those Powers seem to have done on the Other Side,” he answered. “As I said in our earlier conversation, they seem to Taawe taken a hole and pulled it in afterward, apparently leaving nothing behind.”

  Something he said there made a bell toll in my mind, but before I could figure out what It was, he went on, “The problem, from our point of view, is that the Powers, if my calculations are correct, can reverse their encystment and burst out violently at any time they choose.”

  “Violently?” I echoed. “How violently?”

  “Crystal-ball prognostications vary; the scenario is unique and so many of my parameters are uncertain,” he said. “If, however, they release maximum magical energy, the effects on the surrounding area will be somewhere between those of a megasalamander ignition just above it and an earthquake, oh, approximately on the order of magnitude of the one that hit the city of St. Francis in the early years of this century. The effects will be different, you understand, because they’ll be primarily thaumaturgic rather than physical, but the size of the event will be more or less in that range.”

  “Jesus,” I said, which shows how acculturated I am. Foolishly, I added, “No wonder they didn’t want to bother making rain.”

  “No wonder at all. Inspector,” Professor Blank said. “Neither I nor my staff have been able to determine where the interface between the Chumash powers’ encystment and This Side is presently located. We would have expected it to be in the extreme northwest of the Barony of Angels, for that was formerly Chumash territory, but, as I say, we have not succeeded in detecting it I hope that, with your greater resources, the Environmental Perfection Agency will do what we have not accomplished. Good day.”

  He hung up on me. I wanted to loll him. “Hello. Here comes a catastrophe. I’ve found out it’s on the way, but I can’t deal with it All up to you, Dave. Good luck, pal.” That’s what was left at the bottom of the alembic. In my nose, it smelled like old catbox.

  Instead of committing murder, I called Tony Sudakis. He didn’t sound as if I’d caught him at lunch, but he had something in common with Professor Blank anyhow: he sounded scared. “Dave? It’s you? Perkunas and the Nine Suns, I’m glad to hear from you! You know that thing—I mean, that Nothing—you spotted in the containment area? It’s going through some changes, and I don’t like ’em even a little bit”

  “Changes? What land of changes?” I asked, thinking I didn’t need one more thing to worry about on top of everything Professor Blank had just dumped on me.

  “Well, for one thing, you can notice the effect from anywhere along the safety walk now, and I can see it from the roof of my office, too. Eerie, if you ask me. But there’s worse.

  I can feel something starting to build over there, even through the wardspells, like the world’s gonna turn inside out any minute now. It’s bad. I don’t even know if the outer containment wall will hold this one. And if it doesn’t—”

  He let it hang there. I gulped. I didn’t like the way it sounded, not even slightly. “What have you done so far?” I asked.

  “I’ve called for a SWAT team, but a lot of those are busy somewhere else,” he answered. I had a hunch I knew where, too: theywere taking down Chocolate Weasel. Tony went on,

  “I called you for two reasons. You were the guy who spotted the Nothing in the first place, and the wizard you had with you seems pretty sharp. Man, I tell you, I think I need all the help I can get on this one.”

  “I’ll get Michael. We’ll be there as fast as we can fly,” I promised. Then something Sudakis had said really hit me. I echoed it “Inside out.”

  “What’s that?’ Tony said. “Listen, if you and your buddy Manstein don’t get here in a hurry, there may not be any here to get to, you know what I mean?”

  Inside out,” I repeated. “Tony, didn’t you say the stuff in that zone came from the beach up in Malibu?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “So?”

  “Way up at the northwest edge of the Barony of Angels, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said again. “What are you flying at, Dave?”

  “Get a hazmat team there right now,” I said, fear knotting my belly: I thought I knew why Professor Blank’s grad students hadn’t found the Chumash Powers’ encystment site where they thought it was supposed to be.

  “I’ve been Hying to,” Tony protested. “They won’t listen to me.”

  Tell ’em the guy who tipped ’em to Chocolate Weasel says this is liable to be a thousand times worse. Tell ’em that Use my name. They’ll come, all right”

  “You know what’s going on.” Even through the phone imps, he sounded accusing.

  “I’m afraid I do. I’m coming anyway.” I hung up on him for a change. Then I ran down the hall, yelling for Michael like a man possessed. He listened to me for fifteen seconds, tops, grabbed his black bag, and sprinted for the slide, me right behind him. We piled onto his carpet and hightailed it back to St. Ferdinand’s Valley. Knowing what we were heading for, I wished we were flying the other way. When he was good and ready, he delivered his verdict.

  I mean it just like that—he really sounded magisterial:

  There is, I believe, much truth in the view you express.

  The great European theological and economic expansion of the past five hundred years, coupled with the enormous growth of thaumaturgic knowledge that spearheaded, among other things, the Industrial Revolution, has indeed had a profound impact on both the politics and thecology of the rest of the world. I can hardly be surprised to learn that long-established Powers, chafing under the pressure of European-imposed belief structures imposed by superior military and magical force, are actively seeking to overwhelm that force.”

  “You mean you approve?” I stared at him.

  “That is not what I said,” he answered, more sharply than usual. “I said I am not surprised that the Powers and, presumably, the peoples who reverence them, seek to regain their former prominence. I did not say I wished them success in that effort. Such success would be the greatest disaster the world has ever known, or so I believe, at any rate.”

  “You get no argument from me,” I said.

  “I had not expected you to disagree,” he said. “You have a reasonable amount of sense, by all appearances.”

  I wanted to reach over and pat him on the knee. “Why, Michael, I didn’t know you cared,” I said. From his point of view, he’d just given me the accolade, and I knew it “Facetiousness aside,” he amended. I just grinned. He ignored that and went on, “Let us take the Americas, for instance, they being the most dearcut examples of a massive human and thecological transformation in the past semimillenium.”

  “Okay, take the Americas,” I said agreeably, gesturing to show he was welcome to them. Truth was, as long as I was schmoozing with Michael, I didn’t have to think (as much) about either Judy or the likelihood that Armageddon was liable to come bubbling out of a toxic spells dump.

  Michael gave me a severe look. “Facetiousness aside, I said.”

  “Sorry,” I told him. “You were saying?”

  “Nothing of great complexity; nothing, i
n fact, that should not be obvious to any reasonably objective observer: that we immigrants have done more and better with this land in the past five hundred years than its native peoples would have accomplished during the same period.”

  “Nothing that isn’t obvious, eh?” I said, grinning wickedly.

  “Plenty of people, natives and immigrants both—I’d use your phrase: why not?—would say you’ve just committed blasphemy, that we’ve done nothing but slaughter and pollute in what was, for all practical purposes, paradise on earth.”

  “I find only one technical term appropriate to use in response to that viewpoint: bullshit.” Michael delivered his technical term with great relish. “I am not saying that slaughter did not take place; I am not denying that we pollute—working as I do for the Environmental Perfection Agency, how could I? I do deny, however, that this was, in a manner of speaking, government work for the earthly paradise.”

  “Careful how you talk, there,” I said. “You work for the government yourself, remember?”

  Michael refused to be distracted. “Leaving aside the habits of the natives of the islands off the coast, whose tribal name gave English the word ‘cannibal,’ the two most prominent cultures in the Americas five hundred years ago were the Aztecs, also cannibals, who fueled themselves both theologically and in terms of protein through human sacrifice, and the Incas, whose theology was benign enough but who regimented themselves more thoroughly than the Ukrainians would have tolerated before their latest crisis.”

  “You’re hitting below the belt, talking about peoples who didn’t live in what’s now the Confederation,” I protested.

  “What about the noble warriors and hunters of the Great Plains?”

  “Well, what about them?” he asked. “The culture they now revere and think of as ancient did not exist and could not have existed before the coming of the Europeans because their own ancestors had hunted the American horse to extinction—hardly good environmental management, in my opinion. And the firearms they used to defend their territory—bravely—against encroaching whites were all bought or stolen from those same whites, because they did not know how to make them for themselves.”