The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  “The transplants appear to have taken: that is to say, the synthesized souls bond to the body, giving the apsychic a true spirituality he has never before known.” Durani held up a warning hand. “The true test, the test of Judgment, however, has not yet arisen—all three individuals who have undergone the transplant procedure remain alive. Theory indicates a risk that the synthesized soul may break up into its constituent fragments when its connection to the body is severed at death. We shall research that when the time arises.”

  “Yes, I’d think so,” I said. A soul, after all, exists in eternity: it lives here for a while, but it’s primarily concerned with the Other Side. What a tragedy it would be to give a living man a soul, only to have him lack one when he died and needed it most. Worse than if he’d never had one, if you ask me—and till that moment, I’d never imagined anything worse than apsychia.

  Something else struck me: “What happens to the souls from which you’re taking out your little packets? Are they damaged? Can they still enspirit a human being?”

  “This is why we take so little from each one,” Durani answered. “To the limits of our experimental techniques, no measurable damage occurs. Nor should it, for is not God not only compassionate and merciful but also loving and able to forgive us our imperfections?”

  “Maybe so, but do your artificial imperfections leave these, hmm, sampled souls more vulnerable to evil influence from the Other Side?” The further I got into the case of the Devonshire dump, the more hot potatoes it handed me. This new technique of Durani’s was astonishing, but what would its environmental impact be? The lawsuits I saw coming would tie up the ecclesiastical courts for the next hundred years.

  You may think I’m exaggerating, but I mean that literally. For instance, suppose somebody does something really horrible: oh, suppose he burns down a monastery. And suppose he’s able to convince a court that, on account of the Durani technique, he’s been deprived of 1% or 0.1% or 0.001% of the soul he would have had otherwise. Is he fully responsible for what he did, or is it partly Durani’s fault? A smart canon lawyer could make a good case for blaming Slow Jinn Fizz.

  Or suppose somebody does something horrible, and then claims as a defense that he’s been deprived of part of his soul by the Durani technique. How do you go about proving him wrong, if he is? I’m no prophet, but I foresaw the sons of a lot of canon lawyers (and the nephews of Catholic canonists) heading for fine collegia on the profits of that argument alone.

  And here’s another one: let’s suppose the Durani technique is as safe as he says it is, and doesn’t do irreparable harm to anybody’s soul. Let’s suppose again that his synthesized souls have even been passing the test of Judgment. But nothing manmade can hope to match God’s perfection. What happens if a misassembled soul does break apart on death, leaving a poor apsychic all dressed up with no place to go? To what sort of recompense is his family entitled?

  All at once, I wished again that magic were impossible, that we just lived in a mechanical world. Yes, I know life would be a lot harder, but it would be a lot simpler, too. The trouble with technology is that, as soon as it solves a problem, the alleged solution presents two new ones.

  But the trouble with no technology, of course, is that problems don’t get solved. I don’t suppose apsychics, suddenly offered the chance for a better hereafter, would worry about risks. I wouldn’t, in their shoes.

  I guess nothing is ever simple. Maybe it’s just as well. If things were simple, we wouldn’t need an Environmental Perfection Agency and I’d be out of a job.

  Caught in my own brown study, I’d missed a couple of sentences. When my ears woke up again, Durani was saying, “—may develop a sampling technique to bring back components only from what you might term mahatmas, great souls, those who have spirit to spare.”

  “Very interesting,” I answered, and so it was, though not altogether in the way he’d intended it. Sounded to me as though he had some concerns over safety himself. I wondered who his lawyers were. I hoped he had a good team, because I had the feeling—the strong feeling—he’d need one.

  “Is there anything further, Inspector Fisher?” he asked. He’d relaxed now; I guess he only got vehement when he thought his interests were endangered. A lot of people are like that.

  “That’s about it for now,” I told him, whereupon he relaxed even further. He thought the operative phrase there was that’s about it; I thought it was for now. He’d done something new and splendid, all right, but I wasn’t sure he’d ever realize any profit from it. He hadn’t had a lawyer at his beck and call the week before. He’d need one soon, or more likely a whole swarm of them.

  Remembering his call reminded me how many I—and Bea—had fielded all at once. I asked my watch what time it was, found out it was a few minutes before three. I decided to go over to the Devonshire Land Management Consortium offices and find out just how so many of their clients found out about the EPA investigation so fast.

  My sigil got me into the office of a markgraf in charge of consortiate relations, a redheaded chap with hairy ears whose name was Peabody. He showed a full set of teeth undoubtedly kept so snowy white by sympathetic magic (I wondered what would happen if a forest fire spilled soot all over the snow to which those teeth were attuned).

  I give him credit: he didn’t try to cast any spells over me. “Of course we notified our clients,” he said when I asked him my question. “Their interests were impacted by your search of files at the containment site, so we might have been liable to civil penalty had we kept silent.”

  “All right, Mr. Peabody, thanks for your time,” I said. Put that way, he had a point. I might have thought better of him if he’d talked about loyalty instead of liability, but how much can you expect from a mercenary in a fancy suit?

  After that, I headed for home. I picked up a daily once I got off the freeway, for the sake of the sport more than anything else. Over in Japan, I saw, the Giants had beaten the Dragons for their league title. And closer to home, the Angels and Blue Devils played to a scoreless tie.

  “Might as well be real life,” I muttered when I saw that. Then I shook my head. In real life, the Cardinals would never have been higher in the standings than the Angels.

  But looking at the score gave me an idea. I called Judy. “Feel like a Zoroastrian lunch tomorrow?” I asked her.

  She giggled. “Sounds good. But to make it perfect, I ought to fly my carpet. After all, it’s an Ahura-Mazda.”

  “That’s right, you did buy an import last year, didn’t you?” I said. “But let me pick you up instead afterwards anyhow.” I explained what I was doing with my red-letter list.

  “That’ll be fine,” Judy said. “Nice you get a chance to be away from the office part of your day. Too bad it couldn’t be mornings, though.” She knows how much I hate staff meetings.

  I smacked myself in the forehead. “I should have thought of that. But listen to what I came across today—” I told her about Ramzan Durani and Slow Jinn Fizz.

  “That’s exciting!” she breathed. “To give those poor people hope… Have they worked all the gremlins out of the process?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. Durani talks like he has, but it’s his operation, so you’d expect him to.”

  “Yes,” Judy said. “Of course, even if he has, the moment anything goes wrong the lawyers will say he hasn’t. The spiritual implications are—overwhelming is the word that comes to mind.”

  “You know one of the reasons I love you?” I said. She didn’t answer, just waited for me to go on, so I did: “You see implications. So many people don’t; they just go ‘Oh, how marvelous!’ without stopping to think what their marvels end up costing them.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice surprisingly serious. “That doesn’t sound anywhere near as romantic as something like ‘You have beautiful eyes,’ but I think it gives us a much better promise of lasting. I feel the same way about you, just so you know.”

  “What, that I have beautiful eyes?” I sa
id. She snorted. I added, “Besides, I told you that was just one of the reasons. I wish you were here right now, so we could try one of the others.”

  “Now what might that be?” She sounded so perfectly innocent, she was perfectly unbelievable. She didn’t even believe herself: “I wish I were over there, too, honey, but I’ve got to finish working out this astrology problem for my class. Reconciling western and Hanese systems is a bitch and a half. I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch.”

  “Twelve-thirty all right?”

  “Sounds good. ’Bye.”

  Judy works in a part of East A.C. where you hear Spainish spoken in the streets about as often as English. The rage for Zoroastrian diners has reached even there, though. Next year, no doubt, they’ll be passÇ; right now, they’re fun.

  The one trouble with those places is that Judy and I can’t enjoy them to the fullest, because a lot of their dishes feature deviled ham. We managed, though. I ate angel-hair pasta and devil’s-food cake, while she had a deviled-egg-salad sandwich and angelfood cake. Just names, sure, but names have power.

  “So where are you going this afternoon?” Judy asked while we waited for the waitress to bring us our lunches.

  “Up to Loki, in Burbank,” I said. “I have the feeling their parchmentwork didn’t report half of what they’re dumping. They have a real reputation for secrecy; nobody except them and the military knows what goes on at the Cobold Works up in the desert, and nobody at all, it looks like, knows—or will say—what comes out of the Cobold Works.”

  “They’re working in the Garuda Bird project, too, aren’t they?” Judy said.

  “That’s right—and if you think I’m going up there partly so I can learn more about that, you’re right,” I admitted. Space travel has fascinated me ever since the first magic mirror let us see the far side of the moon back when I was a kid.

  The girl carried our plates over to us just then. “Thanks,” I said as she set them down. Because she looked as if she’d understand it better, I added, “Gracias.”

  “De nada, señor,” she answered, smiling. She hardly seemed old enough to be working full time. Maybe she wasn’t. People who come up to Angels City to get away from Azteca find out soon enough that the sidewalks aren’t paved with gold here, either. They do what they can to get by, same as my great-grandparents did a hundred years ago. Most of them will.

  It was a pleasant lunch. Any time with Judy was pleasant, but the good food and the chance to be out and about in the middle of the day (she’d been right about that the night before) just added to it. I hated to leave, but she had to get back to work and I needed to be at the Loki plant early enough in the afternoon to do some useful work.

  I parked my carpet in the loading zone in front of Hand-of-Glory’s office, kissed Judy goodbye before I took off. It was a pretty thorough kiss, if I say say myself. This ten-year-old who should have been in school made disgusted noises as he walked by. I didn’t care. Give him a few more years and he’d find out about the sweet magic between man and woman.

  I waited there till I saw Judy safe indoors, then headed up the Golden Province Freeway to Burbank. The Loki works weren’t far from the little airport there. They were big and sprawled-out enough to have separate buildings and lots for each of the consortium’s many projects; I flew around till I found a sign that said SPACE DIVISION and had a stylized Garuda bird under it. I parked my carpet as close to the sign as I could, then walked off some of my lunch hiking toward the entrance.

  Inside, where they didn’t show from the parking lot, were guards armed with pistols and holy water sprayers. I presented my EPA sigil. Even though I’d phoned ahead in the morning, I could see how little ice it cut here. The guards were ready to take on major foes, from This Side or the Other. One bureaucrat wasn’t worth getting excited about.

  Which is not to say they weren’t thorough. They turned a spellchecker on my sigil, to make sure it wasn’t forged and hadn’t been tampered with. One of them carefully compared the image on my flying license to my face. The other waited till the first was done, then called my office to confirm I really did work there. He didn’t ask me for the number; he looked it up himself.

  Only when they were satisfied did they phone deeper into the building. “Magister Arnold will come to escort you shortly, sir,” one of them said. “Here is your visitor’s talisman.” He pinned it on me, then added, “Once you pass through that door, the demon in the talisman will be roused and will sting you if you get more than fifteen feet away from Magister Arnold. Just so you know, sir.”

  “What happens if I need to use a toilet?” I asked.

  “Magister Arnold must accompany you to the facility, sir,” he answered, unsmiling. The guy outside the Devonshire dump had billed himself as a security guard. This Loki fellow really was one.

  I found another question: “Suppose I ditch the talisman once I go inside?”

  “First, sir, any attempt to do so would rouse the demon. Second, once inside the door there, the talisman will weld itself to your clothing and remain bonded to it until you emerge. If you’re a good enough sorcerer, sir, you can beat the talisman, but you’ll set off a great many alarms in the process, and will be apprehended in short order.”

  “I don’t want to beat it and I don’t want to be apprehended,” I said. “I was just curious.” The guard nodded, polite but unconvinced. His job was being unconvinced, and he was real good at it.

  Magister Arnold came out a couple of minutes later. He was a big, rangy fellow in his mid-fifties, in a lab robe almost as fancy as Ramzan Durani’s. “Call me Matt,” he said after we shook hands. “Come along with me now.”

  I came along. The door closed behind us. I gave the talisman a surreptitious yank. Sure enough, it was stuck to the front of my shirt. I’d figured it would be. Loki took security seriously.

  I found out just how seriously when we got to the door of Arnold’s office: it was hermetically sealed. Now I grant you that Hermes is a good choice of protector for an aerospace office—in his wingfoot aspect, he’s naturally related to flight sciences, and who better to propitiate in a security system than the patron deity of thieves?

  But merciful heavens, the expense! A security system isn’t just a seal; the backup is a lot more important. Maintaining a whole cult at a level sufficient to keep its god active and alert will kill you with priests’ fees, fanes, sacrifices, what have you. I wondered how much of the bill Loki was paying itself and how much it was passing on to the taxpayer. Somehow cost overruns never turn out to be anybody’s fault. They’re just there, like crabgrass, and about as hard to weed out.

  Be that as it may, Magister Arnold rubbed the toggle that served as the door Herm’s erect phallus. The Herm must have recognized his touch, for it smiled and the door came open.

  It closed behind us with a definitive-sounding snick. “Coffee?” Arnold asked, waving to a pot that sat on top of a little asbestos salamander cage.

  “No, thanks,” I answered; I’d just as soon drink vitriol as muck that was reheating all day. And besides— “You really don’t feel like following me down the hall if I have to use the men’s room, do you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. That’s right, you’re wearing a visitor’s talisman, aren’t you? I hope you don’t mind if I have a cup?” At my inviting wave, Arnold poured himself one. It looked as thick and dark and oily as I’d figured it would. Even the fumes were enough to make my nostrils twitch. When he set the cup down, he asked, “So what have we done that’s brought the EPA down on us?” He didn’t say this time, but you could hear it behind his words.

  “I don’t know that you’ve done anything,” I answered. “I do know that somebody’s spells are leaking out of the Devonshire dump, and I also know that whoever that somebody is, he’s murdered monks to keep his secret.”

  That got Arnold’s instant and complete attention. His eyes gripped me like the Romanian giants Eastern European sorcerers use to handle magical apparatus they wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot Pole. H
e was quick on the uptake. “The Thomas Brothers fire is connected to this affair, is it?” he said. “A bad business, very bad.”

  “Yes.” I let it go at that; no need for him to know I was personally involved with the monastery fire. I pulled out my chart. “As near as I can tell from this, Magister Arnold, Loki puts more toxic spells into Devonshire than anybody else—and the ones I have here are those you admit to publicly.”

  “For the record,” Arnold said loudly, “I deny there are any others.” His tone was just as sincere as Tony Sudakis’, and told me (in case I hadn’t been sure already) a Listener was in there with us.

  I liked that tone even less from the magister, because I knew he wasn’t on my side while I hoped Sudakis was. All Arnold wanted to do was play with his projects, whatever they happened to be. It wasn’t that I doubted their worth. I didn’t; as I’ve said, I’m demons for the space program myself. But nobody has any business fouling the nest and then pretending his hands are clean.

  “For the record,” I answered, just as loudly and just as snottily, “I don’t believe you.” Arnold glared; my guess was that nobody’d talked to him like that for a while. I let him steam for a few seconds, then said, “Are you seriously telling me nothing too secret to get into your EPA forms goes on at the Cobold Works?”

  “What Cobold Works?” he said, but he couldn’t keep a twinkle from his eye. That the establishment in the desert exists is an open secret. But his smile disappeared in a hurry. “If it’s too secret to go into the forms, Inspector Fisher, it’s also too secret to talk about with you. No offense, but you need to understand that.”

  “I’m not out to betray our secrets to the Hanese or the Ukrainians,” I said. “You need to understand that, and to understand that the situation around the Devonshire dump is serious.” I tossed him the report on birth defects around the site. As he read it, his face screwed up as if he’d bitten into an unripe medlar. “You see what I mean, magister.”

  “Yes, I do. You have a problem there, absolutely. But I don’t believe the Loki Space Division, at least, is responsible for it. If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll tell you why.”