The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  He was right about the neighborhood changing. I’d gone past a couple of houses that had signs saying Curandero tacked out front. If you ask me, curanderos are frauds who prey on the ignorant, but nobody asked me. A basic principle of magic is that if you believe in something, it’ll be true—for you.

  I’ll tell you something I believed. I believed that if the EPA took Devonshire dump to court just on the strength of an increase in elf-shot around the area, the lawyers Sudakis’ people would throw at us would leave us so much not-too-lean ground beef. I had no doubt Tony Sudakis believed it, too.

  So I hit him with something bigger and harder. “Are you going to blame the immigrants for the three cases of apsychia around here in the past year?”

  He didn’t even blink. “Coincidence,” he said flatly. One hand, though, tugged at the silver chain he wore around his neck. Out popped the ornament on the end of it. I’d expected a crucifix, but instead it was a polished piece of amber with something embedded inside—a pretty piece, and one that probably cost a pretty copper.

  “Speaking off the record, Mr. Sudakis, you know as well as I do that three soulless births in one area in one year isn’t coincidence,” I answered. “It’s an epidemic.”

  He let the amber amulet slide back under his shirt. “I deny that, off the record or on it.” His voice was so loud and ringing that I would have bet something was Listening to every word we said, ready to spit it back in case we did end up in court. Interesting, I thought. Sudakis went on. “Besides, Inspector, think of it like this: if I didn’t think this place was safe, why would I keep coming to work every day?”

  I raised what I hoped was a placating hand. “Mr. Sudakis—Tony, if I may—I’m not, repeat not, claiming you’re personally responsible for anything. I want you to understand that. But evidence of what may be a problem here has come to my attention, and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I ignored it.”

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “I can deal with that. Look, maybe I can clear this up if I show you the containment scheme. You find any holes in it, Dave”—I was Dave again, so I guess he’d calmed down—“and I will personally shit in my hat and wear it backwards. I swear it.”

  “You’re not under oath,” I said hastily. If he turned out to be wrong, I didn’t want to leave him the choice of doing something disgusting or facing the wrath of the Other Side for not following through.

  “You heard me.” He got up from his desk, went over to a file cabinet off to one side, started pulling out folders. “Here, look.” He unrolled a parchment in front of me. “Here’s the outer perimeter. You’ll have seen some of that; here’s what all really goes into it. And here’s the protection scheme for the complex we’re sitting in.”

  I was already pretty much convinced the outer perimeter of the dump was tight; that’s what the spellchecker had indicated, anyhow. And a cursory glance at the plans to keep the blockhouse safe told me Sudakis didn’t need to be afraid when he came to his job. Satan himself might have forced his way through those wards, or possibly Babylonian Tiamat if her cult were still alive, but the lesser Powers would only get headaches if they tried.

  “Now here’s the underground setup.” Sudakis stuck another parchment in front of my face. “You look this over, Dave. You tell me if it’s not as tight as a Vestal’s—”

  Unlike the other two plans, this one really did demand a careful onceover. Proper underground containment is the Balder’s mistletoe of almost any toxic spell dump. The ideal solution, of course, would be to float the dump on top of a pool of alkahest, which would dissolve any evil that percolated through to it. But alkahest is a quis custodiet ipsos custodes? phenomenon—being a universal solvent, it dissolves everything it touches, which would in short order include the dumping grounds themselves.

  Some of the wilder journal articles suggest using either lodestone levitation or sylphs of the air to raise the dump above the ground and to keep it separated from the alkahest below. I think anybody who’d try such a scheme ought to be made to live in the dump office. Lodelev is a purely physical process, and, like any physical process, vulnerable to magical interference. And sylphs of the air really are just as flighty as their reputation makes them out to be. They’d get bored or playful or whatever and forget what they were supposed to be doing.

  That wouldn’t be good, not where alkahest is involved. They used it in the First Sorcerous War, but not in the Second. It’s just too potent, even as a weapon. As it eats its way straight toward the center of the earth, it’s liable to bring up magma or ancient buried Powers through the channels it cuts. Nobody even stockpiles it—how could you?

  So, no alkahest under the Devonshire dump. Instead, the designers had put in the usual makeshifts: blessings and relics and holy texts from every faith known to mankind, and elaborate spells renewed twice a year to use the law of contagion to extend their effect to the places where they weren’t actually buried.

  “It looks like a good arrangement on parchment,” I said grudgingly. “I presume you rigidly adhere to the resanctification schedule.” I made it sound as if I assumed nothing of the sort.

  Tony Sudakis set more parchments in front of me. “Certification under canon law, the ordnances of the Baron of Angels, and national secular law.”

  I examined them. They looked like what they were supposed to be. The dump management outfit might have forged the secular documents; the worst the Baron of Angels can do is send you to jail, the worst the secular power can do is leave you short a head. But you’d have to be pretty bold to forge a canon lawyer’s hand or seal. The punishment for that kind of offense could go on forever.

  I shoved the pile of parchments back at Sudakis. Now my tone of voice was different: “I have to admit, I don’t know what to tell you. This really does look good on parchment. But something’s not right hereabouts; I know that, too.” I told him about the rest of the birth defects I’d spotted, the vampirism and lycanthropy.

  He frowned. “You’re not making that up?”

  “Not a word of it. I’ll swear by Adonai Elohaynu, if you like.” I am, God knows, an imperfect Jew. But you’d have to be a lot more imperfect than I am to falsify that oath. People who would risk their souls by falsely calling on the Lord won’t make it past the EPA spiritual background checks, and a good thing, too, if you ask me.

  Sudakis’ beefy face set in the frown as if it were made of quick-drying cement. “Our attorneys will still maintain that the effects you cite are just a statistical quirk and have nothing to do with the Devonshire dump, its contents, or its activities. If we go to court, we’ll win.”

  “Probably.” I wanted to hit him. The certain knowledge that he’d murder me wasn’t what stopped me. Getting in a good shot or two would have made that worthwhile. Far as I’m concerned, people who hide “it’s wrong” behind “it’s legal” deserve whatever happens to them. The only thing that held me back was knowing I’d bring discredit to the EPA.

  Then Sudakis pulled out that little amber charm again. He licked a fingertip, ran it over the smooth surface of the amulet, and murmured something in a language I not only didn’t know but didn’t come close to recognizing. Then he put the amulet back and said, “Now we can talk privately for a little while.”

  “Can we?” I had no reason to trust him, every reason to think he was trying to trap me in an indiscretion. The lawyers he’d been throwing at me would have loved that.

  But he said, “Yeah, and I think we’d better, too. I don’t like the numbers you laid out for me, I don’t like ’em at all. This place is supposed to be safe, it’s been safe ever since I took over here, and I want it to keep on being safe. That’s what they pay me for, after all.”

  “Why do you have to turn aside the Listener if that’s so?” I asked. Come to that, I didn’t know his outrÇ little ritual really had turned aside anything.

  He said, “Because the company basically just wants me to run this place so it makes them money. I want to run it right.”

  All I could
think was, Hell of a note when a man has to deafen the Listener before he says he wants to do a proper job. But he’d convinced me. Too many top corporate managers hide dorsal fins under expensive imported suits. If one of those types got wind of what Sudakis had said, let alone what he’d done, he’d be out on the street with a big dusty footprint on his behind.

  “How’d you get word there was trouble here, anyhow?” he asked. “Did you paw through the Thomas Brothers’ files hoping you’d stumble over something you could use to curse us?”

  His bosses wouldn’t have let him manage the dump if he was stupid. I answered, “No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t. I got a call from the District of St. Columba this morning, telling me I ought to check things out. So I did, and now you know what I found.”

  “That’s—interesting.” He stuck out his chin. “How’d Charlie Kelly know back there that something was up when you hadn’t heard anything out here?” No, he wasn’t stupid at all, not if he knew the fellow at the EPA who was likeliest to give me orders.

  “His job is to hear things like that,” I answered, suspicious again. Not all the ways Sudakis might have learned about Kelly were savory ones.

  “Yeah, sure, sure. But how?” If he was acting, he could have given lessons. He looked down at his wrist, said something scatological. That’s a safer way to work off your feelings than swearing or cursing. “My stinking watch says it’s day before yesterday. Must be eddy currents from the garbage outside.”

  “You ought to wear something better than that cheap mechanical,” I said. I touched the tail of the timekeeper that coiled round my wrist. It’s a better-behaved little demon than the one that sits on my nightstand at home. It yawned, stretched, piped, “Eleven forty-two,” and went back to sleep.

  Sudakis scatologized again. “The Listener will go back on duty any minute now. I can’t put it out two times running; the magic doesn’t work. I hate doing it even once: too much magic loose here as is. That’s why I don’t wear a fancy watch like yours. Mechanicals are all right. When one gets bollixed, I just buy another one: no need to worry about rites or anything like that.”

  I shrugged; it wasn’t my business. But I have as little to do with mechanicals as I can. If the Other Side weren’t as real as this one, they might be all right. But as Atheling the Wise put it, though, most forces are also Persons, and mechanicals have no Personalities of their own to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—to say nothing of outraged (or sometimes just mischievous) Forces. That’s why you’ll never see lodestone levitation under an alkahest pool.

  Sometimes, when I’m in the mood for utopian flights of fancy, I think about how smoothly the world would run if all natural forces were as inanimate as the ones that let mechanicals operate. We’d never have to screen against megasalamanders launched on the wings of supersylphs to incinerate cities anywhere in the world. Neither of the Sorcerous Wars that devastated whole countries could have happened. For that matter, I wouldn’t have had to worry about toxic spell dumps or the ever-growing pollution of the environment. Things would be simpler all around.

  Yeah, I know it’s a dream from the gate of ivory. Without magic, the world would probably have farmers, maybe towns, but surely not the great civilization we know. Can you imagine mass production without the law of similarity, or any kind of communications network without the law of contagion?

  And medicine? I shiver to think of it. Without ectoplasmic beings to see and reach inside the body, how would medicine be possible at all? If you got sick, you’d bloody well die, just like one of Tony Sudakis’ cheap watches when magic touched its works.

  I pulled my mind back to business and asked him, “Can you give me a list of the firms whose spells you’re storing at this containment facility?” That was a question I could legitimately ask him, regardless of whether the Listener was conscious.

  He said, “Inspector Fisher, in view of the unofficial nature of your visit, I have to tell you no. If you bring me a warrant, I will of course cooperate to the degree required by civil and canon law.” He thought he was being heard again—he tipped me a wink as he spoke.

  “Such a list is a matter of public record,” I argued, both because it was something I really wanted to have and because I still wasn’t sure I could trust him.

  “And I will surrender it to properly constituted authority, but only to such authority,” he said. “But it could also give competitors important information on the spells and charms we use at this facility. Limited access to magical secrets is one of the oldest principles of both canon and civil law.”

  He might have been playing it to the hilt for the sake of the Listener, but he had me and I knew it. Sophisticated magic has to be kept secret or else everyone starts using it and the originator gains no benefit from hard and often dangerous research work. People who want to socialize sorcery don’t realize there wouldn’t be much sorcery to socialize if they took away the incentive for devising new spells.

  “I shall return with that warrant, Mr. Sudakis,” I said formally.

  He grinned and gave me a silent thumbs-up the Listener wouldn’t notice, so he was either really on my side or one fine con man. “Will there be anything else, Inspector?” he asked.

  I started to shake my head, then changed my mind. “Is there a safe spot in this building where I can look out at the whole dump?”

  “Sure is. Why don’t you come with me?” Sudakis looked happy for any excuse to get up from behind his desk. My guess was that he’d been promoted for outstanding work in the field—he probably liked the money from his administrative job but not a whole lot of other things about it.

  Our shoes rang on the spiral stairway that led to the roof of the cinderblock office. Steps and rail alike were cold iron, a sensible precaution in a building surrounded by such nasty magic. The trapdoor through which we climbed was also of iron, heavily greased against the rains Angels City wasn’t seeing lately. Sudakis effortlessly pushed it out of the way.

  “Here you are,” he said waving. “You’re about as safe here as you are indoors; topologically, we’re still inside the same shielding system. But it doesn’t feel the same out in the open air, does it?”

  “No,” I admitted. I felt exposed to I didn’t know what. I wondered if the air itself was bad somehow. I imagined tiny demons I couldn’t even see crawling down into my lungs and relieving themselves among my bronchial passages. An unpleasant thought—I scuttled it as fast as I could.

  The dump still looked like a couple of acres of overgrown, underwatered ground. If it had been paved over, it would have been a perfect used carpet lot. I don’t know what I’d expected from a panoramic view: maybe that I could spot boxes or barrels with corporate names on them. I didn’t see anything, though. The most interesting thing I did see was a little patch of ground about fifty yards from the office building that seemed to be moving of its own accord. I pointed. “What’s over there?”

  Tony Sudakis’ eyes followed my finger. “Oh, that. It’ll be a while before decon does much with that area, I’m afraid. Byproducts from a defense plant—I can say that much. Those are flies you see stirring around.”

  “Oh.” I dropped the subject, at once and completely. I’d thought about the Lord of the Flies on the way over to the dump. He’s such a potent demon prince that even saying his name can be dangerous. Speak of the devil, as everyone knows, is not a joke, and the same applies to his great captain, the prince of the descending hierarchy.

  I didn’t care for the notion of the Defense Department dealing with Beelzebub, either. I know the Pentagram has the best wizards in the world, but they’re only human. Leave out a single line—by God, misplace a single comma—and you’re liable to have hell on earth.

  I looked back toward the place where I’d seen a whole lot of Nothing when I was coming up the protected (I hoped) walk toward Sudakis’ office. From this angle, it didn’t look any different from the rest of the dump. I thought about mentioning it to Sudakis, but didn’t bother; he prob
ably saw enough weird things in the course of a week to last an ordinary chap with an ordinary job a lifetime or two.

  Besides, that thought gave rise to another: “How often do you run across synergistic reactions among the spells that get dumped here?”

  “It does happen sometimes, and sometimes it’s no fun at all when it does.” He rolled his eyes to show how big an understatement that was. “Persian spells are particularly bad for that, for some reason, and there’s a large Persian community here in the Valley—refugees from the latest secularist takeover, most of them. When their spiritual elements fused with some from a Baghdadi candy-maker’s preservation charm, of all the unlikely things—”

  I drew my own picture. It wasn’t pleasant. Shia and Sunni magic are starkly different but argue from the same premises. That makes the minglings worse when they happen: as if Papists and Protestants used the same dump in Ireland. The Confederation is a melting pot, all right, but sometimes the pot wants to melt down.

  I didn’t see anything else about which to question Sudakis, so I went back down the spiral stairs. He followed, pausing only to shut the trap door over our heads. As we walked back to his office, I said, “I’ll be back with the warrant as soon as I can: in the next couple of days, anyhow.”

  “Whatever you say, Inspector Fisher.” He winked again to show he was really on my side. I wondered if he was. He sounded very much like a man speaking for the Listener when he said, “I’m happy to cooperate informally with an informal investigation, but I do need the formal parchment before I can exceed the scope of my instructions from management.”

  He went out to the entrance with me. I craned my neck to see if the Nothing reappeared as I passed the place where I’d seen it before. For an instant I thought it did, but when I blinked it was gone.