The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  Since I’m not a mage myself, to me that just looked like little brownish flies coming out of a bottle. When Michael screwed the lid back on, I figured I could safely interrupt him, so I asked, “Any skin of Beelzebub?”

  “None apparent to me,” he answered. The Lord of the Flies is renowned for his trickery, but I do not believe him capable of evading the fruit-fly test; it draws them even more strongly than spoiled plums.”

  “Good to hear,” I said, “because I know there are spell byproducts with his influence on them inside the dump.”

  “Yes, that is to a certain degree reassuring,” Michael agreed. “If a Power so corrosive as Beelzebub cannot break free of the containment area, that augues well for its chances of holding in other, less aggressive, toxic spells.”

  “Who after Beelzebub?” I asked.

  “I had thought Huitzilopochtli,” he answered. “He is at least as dangerous as Beelzebub, and we have seen through the case of that wretched curandero’s nostrum that he is active—and seeking to become more active—in the Angels City area.”

  Again, he didn’t try to invoke the Aztedan war god: after all, we were doing everything we could to keep Huitzilopochtli from manifesting himself around Angels City. Instead, he performed another indirect test, this one using flayed human skin substitute. It looked like parchment, but it made my flesh creep all the same.

  Michael chanted hi a clucking, gobbling language. It wasn’t Poultry; it was Nahuad. Spainish is the dominant tongue in Aztecia today, but many people still use Nahuad in their day-to-day lives, and it’s as much the language of the native Powers as Arabic is forjinni. I hadn’t known Michael knew it, but I wouldn’t bet against Michael’s knowing any particular tiling.

  The chant ended. Michael looked down at the square of flayed human skin substitute. It seemed just the same as it had when he took it out of his bag. He grunted softly.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I would have expected to observe some reaction there,” he answered. “Huitzilopochtlic contamination is as likely an inducer of apsychia as any I can think of. But there appears to be no external seepage, at least not as measured by this test.”

  “What were you expecting to see?” I asked.

  “The influence of Huitzilopochtli was brought into the Devonshire toxic spell containment area by means of flayed human skin substitute. Had that influence spread beyond the containment area, the sheet of the substitute material I have here would have demonstrated it by beginning to bleed.”

  I gulped; I was sorry I’d asked. “Would it be—real blood?” I asked.

  “In diaumaturgy, ‘real’ is a word almost witthout meaning,” Michael said sniffily. “It would look, feel, smell, and taste real. Whedier it could be successfully removed from the flayed human skin substitute and impplanted in the veins of someone who had suffered a loss from injury or vampirism… Truth to tell, I do not know. It might be worth determining. An interesting question. Yes.”

  He pulled a pencil out of the pocket of his lab robe, peered around for something on which he could jot a note.

  For one dreadful second, I feared he was going to scribble on the piece of flayed human skin substitute. I don’t think my stomach could have stood that. But at the last minute he fished out a parchment notebook instead, and did his jotting on that.

  He spent the rest of the morning and the whole afternoon on tests of that sort. To my amazement and distress, he came up empty every time. No, I take that back: he did find one leak. After four in the afternoon, when both of us were fed up and frustrated enough to try something silly, he tested for stardust, and sure enough, the tip of the wand he was using glowed for a minute.

  “Undoubtedly deposited here, along with more unsavory items, by one of the Hollywood light-and-magic outfits in search of a hit,” Michael said.

  “But even if stardust is leaking, it’s not toxic,” I said. “The most it could possibly do would be to make somebody popular who doesn’t deserve to be.”

  Michael Manstein looked at me as if I were a schoolboy who’d added two and two and come up with three. Not five, but definitely three—I’d fallen short of what was expected of me. Like a good schoolmaster, he set me straight: “The problem is not stardust outside the containment area, David. As you say, that is trivial in and of itself. The problem is that stardust could not possibly get out of the dump if it were not leaking. We have, therefore, established that the leak exists.

  What we have not established is which serious contaminants are emerging from it.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling dumb. Odds were awfully good that he was right. Still, though—“You tested for all the dangerous Powers whose influences are likely to be in the dump, and came up with zip. Stardust is pretty elusive stuff; even the light-and-magic people don’t know for sure where it’ll stick. Maybe it did leak out by itself.”

  “Indeed,” Michael said. “And maybe you could find a mineral able to create blasts to rival those of megasalamanders, yet I would not lose sleep fretting over the probability of either event. I will take oath upon any scripture you care to select that something—and something malevolent, at that—created the breach through which the stardust emerged. That is my professional judgment.”

  You work with experts to get their professional judgment.

  If, having got it, you then choose to ignore it, you’d better have a real good reason. I not only didn’t have a real good reason, I thought Michael was right. But if he was, what had gone wrong?

  I said, “What bothers me most about detecting the stardust and nothing more serious is that the dump operators will be able to claim that the dust didn’t really come from inside, even though we know it was dumped there.”

  “The neighborhood will make it hard for them to substantiate that.” Michael waved to show what he meant I had to nod. If ever a neighborhood remained conspicuously untouched by stardust, the one around the Devonshire dump was it “Why haven’t we found any nastier influences leaking, then?” I asked.

  The most obvious reason is a failure in our testing technique,” Michael answered. “I must confess, however, that at this moment I cannot tell you where the flaw lies. All my procedures have in the past shown themselves to be more than satisfactory.”

  I asked my watch what time it was. When I found out it was twenty to five, I said, “Let’s knock off for the day and see if we’re more brilliant in the morning.” I wanted to get back to my own carpet so I could go down to my place, pack an overnight case, and then head for Judy’s.

  Most days, Michael Manstein’s impressive integrity wouldn’t have let him contemplate taking off early, let alone doing it. When he said, “Why not?” I confess I blinked. He added, “We certainly aren’t accomplishing anything here at the moment with the possible exception of entertaining the security guard.” Maybe he was trying to justify leaving to himself, or maybe to me. At that point I didn’t need any justifying; all I wanted to do was head south.

  Michael must have talked himself into it, because he started sticking tools and substances back into his little black bag. I stood there waiting, hoping he wouldn’t get an attack of conscience. He didn’t. As soon as he was through, we walked across the street to his carpet and headed for Westwood.

  Traffic was its usual ghastly self. So many carpets on so many flyways meant there was so much lint and dander in the air that the famous Angels City sunshine turned pale and washed-out; a lot of people were rubbing their eyes as they flew. That pollution usually seems worse in St. Ferdinand’s Valley than other parts of town, too; they don’t get the sea breeze there to clear it out What they’re going to have to do one of these days is design a flying carpet that isn’t woven from wool. People have been trying to do that for years; so far, they haven’t managed to come up with one the sylphs like. But if they don’t succeed before too long, Angels City isn’t going to be a place anybody in his right mind would want to live.

  I breathed easier—literally and figuratively—when we go
t out of the Valley and back into Westwood. Michael pulled up beside my carpet in the parking lot. “Are you going to go back up to your office and see what awaits you?” he asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “What’s that New Testament line? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof? Something like that, anyhow. Tomorrow will have troubles of its own. I’m not really interested in finding out about them in advance.”

  “As you will,” Michael said. Since it was nearer six than five, he didn’t have any trouble finding a parking space—most people who work at the Confederal Building had gone home. He headed on in anyhow; now that he was here, he’d do some more work. Maybe he was feeling bad about his fall from probity.

  Me, I didn’t feel bad at all. Hungry, yes, but not bad. I jumped onto my carpet and headed home. I got off at Imperial instead of The Second, just in case more earth elementals with my name on them were waiting for me.

  If they were, I evaded them—I got home unscathed. I stayed just long enough to use the plumbing and toss tomorrow’s outfit into an overnight case. Then I was out the door, down the stairs, back on my carpet, and on my way to Judy’s.

  Going down St James’ Freeway into Long Beach in the evening is a gamble. When it’s bad, the carpets might as well be sitting on your living room floor. I could have got there at nine as easily as a little before eight But I was lucky, and so I pulled up in front of Judy’s place right on time.

  I used the talisman to let her building’s Watcher know I belonged there, then went up the stairs two at a time to her flat. I knocked on the door. When she didn’t come right away, I figured she was using the plumbing herself or something, so I let myself in.

  I took one step in the front room and then stopped, staring. For a second, I thought I’d gone into the wrong flat. It took me a while to realize Judy’s spare key wouldn’t have let me into any place but hers.

  But Judy, as befits a copy editor, is scrupulously neat. The flat had been trashed. Books were scattered all over the floor, knickknacks strewn everywhere. Some of them were broken.

  Earthquake, I thought, and then, more sensibly, burglars.

  I ran into the bedroom, calling Judy’s name as I went.

  Nobody answered. On me bed, lying exactly parallel to each other, just the way Judy would have set them there, were a green silk blouse and a pair of linen pants: the right land of outfit to wear to the opening of a nice new restaurant. The bedspread was white. I am, you will have gathered, familiar with Judy’s bed and its bedclothes. The red stain next to the blouse was new. It wasn’t a big stain, but seeing even a little blood is plenty to make your own blood run cold.

  “Judy?” My voice came out as a frightened croak. No answer again. I hadn’t really expected one.

  The bathroom door was open. The air in there felt humid, as if she’d taken a shower not long before. She wasn’t in there now, though, not anywhere—I yanked back the curtain to be sure.

  Burglars faded from my mind. I wished the word would have stayed; stuff, after all, is only stuff. You can always get more. But an uglier, more frightening word took its place: kidnappers.

  I didn’t want to dunk if let alone believe it. After what had happened to me on The Second, though, what choice did I have? I ran back to the bedroom, where the phone was.

  I snatched up the handset.

  Nothing happened. The phone was dead. Ichor dripped from the little cages that held the ear and mouth imps. The front mesh on both cages was pushed in. Whoever had snatched Judy had taken the time to implode the phone before he left with her.

  I hurried out to the walkway, went to the flat next door. I knocked, hard. “I need to use your phone to call the constabulary,” I said loudly. Someone was home; St. Elmo’s fire glowed through the curtains and I could hear little noises inside. But nobody came to the door.

  Cursing the faintheart to a warmer climate than Angels City’s, I ran downstairs and pounded on the manager’s door.

  He answered; opening the door was part of his job. He’d seen me going in and out often enough to recognize me. As soon as he got a good look at my face, he said, “What’s the matter, son?”

  I didn’t take offense; that’s how he talks. Besides, he’s old enough to have fought in the Second Sorcerous War (and he has a bad limp, so maybe he did), so he’s old enough and then some to be my father. I said, “May I use your phone, please? I think Judy’s been kidnapped.” As with any magic, saying the word made it real.

  “Judy? Judy Ather in 272?” He gaped at me, and men at the door I’d left open, I suppose to confirm that that was the flat I was talking about He stood aside. “You’d better come in.”

  His flat could have been furnished from the St Ferdinand’s Valley swap meet; the operative phrase was essence of bad taste. From the couch, his wife gave me a fishy stare.

  That was the least of my worries. But he took me to the phone and let me use it, so his carp-eyed wife could stare all she liked.

  Even through two phone imps, the Long Beach constabulary decurion sounded bored when he answered my call.

  Kidnapping, though, is a word to conjure with when you’re talking to constables.

  “Don’t go back into the flat,” he told me. “Stand out in front of the building and wait for our units. It won’t be long, Mr., uh. Fisher.”

  I stood out in front of the building. It wasn’t long. Two black-and-whites pulled up, red and blue lanterns flashing.

  Right behind them were a couple of plainweave carpets that carded plainclothes constables.

  Everybody swept up to Judy’s flat and started doing constabulary-type things: physical searches, spells, what have you. One of the plainclothesmen grunted when he saw the imploded phone. “Looks like a professional job,” he said.

  “We aren’t likely to come up with anything much.”

  They hadn’t bothered asking me for a statement yet. I said, “This isn’t just an isolated case. I can guarantee you that.”

  “Oh? How?” The plainclothesman sounded-skeptical is the politest way I can put it.

  As with the bored decurion at the phone desk, I had the words to rock him. I spoke them, one by one: attempted murder, Thomas Brothers fire. Central Intelligence. “You’d better get hold of Legate Shiro Kawaguchi, up in St. Ferdinand’s Valley,” I added. “He can fill you in on the details.”

  “All right, sir, we’ll do that,” the plainclothesman said—he was a tall black fellow named Johnson. “Jesus, what kind of mess are we walking into the middle of?”

  “A bad one,” I said. “But you’re not in the middle of it; you’re just on the edge. I’m in the middle—and so is my fiancee.”

  A fellow wearing forensics crystal balls on his collar tabs came up to Johnson and said, “I ran a similarity check between the blood on the bedspread and the razor I found in a bathroom drawer. They match, so that’s probably Ather’s blood.”

  I moaned. That’s a word you hear every so often, but you hardly ever use it, let alone do it This was one of those times. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the belly. Judy, bleeding?

  Judy, maybe dead?

  I must have said that out loud (though I don’t remember doing it), because the forensics man put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I don’t think she’s dead, sir. There’s evidence of some funny kind of fast-dissipating sleep spell in the flat.

  My best guess is, she put up a fight, they slugged her, she kept fighting, and they knocked her out so they could get her away from here.”

  I liked him, and believed him, too. He didn’t try sounding like somebody who knew everything there was to know; no pseudo-learned drivel about analyses and reconstructions.

  His best guess was what he had, and that’s what he gave me.

  I thought it seemed likely, too. The constables in uniform had been knocking on doors through the block of flats. People opened doors for them—even the louse who lived next to Judy and had pretended I didn’t exist. But there’s a difference between getting doors to open and learning anything once
they have. The constables came back to Judy’s flat empty-handed: nobody had seen anything, nobody had heard anything.

  “That’s insane,” I exploded. “They take an unconscious woman downstairs and out of a block of flats at a busy time of the evening and nobody noticed?”

  “Must have been magic,” Johnson said. “If they used it to knock Mistress Ather out, they probably used it to aid the getaway, too.”

  “I’ll check that,” the forensics man said, and he bustled out onto the walkway.

  “What do I do now?” I said, as much to myself as to anyone else. Half of me wanted to make like a light-and-magic show mercenary and go out slaughtering all the bad guys.

  The other half, unfortunately, reminded me that not only did I not know how to get my hands on the bad guys, but that if I went after them—whoever they were— alone, they’d dispose of me instead of the other way round.

  Johnson’s answer showed that, as suited a constable, he had a thoroughly practical mind: “What you do now, Mr. Fisher, is come down to the station with us so we can get a sworn statement from you.”

  I didn’t know where the Long Beach constabulary station was; I had to follow one of the plainweave carpets back there.

  It turned out to be almost on the ocean, in a fancy new building. Legate Kawaguchi would have killed for Johnson’s large, bright, efficient office. Come to that, I wouldn’t have minded having it myself.

  Like constables anywhere in the Barony of Angels, the Long Beach crew had a regular library of scriptures on which the people with whom they dealt could swear truthfulness: everything from the Analects to the ZendrAvesta. They pulled out a Torah for me; I rested my hand on the satin cover while I repeated the oath Johnson gave me.

  Then he called up their scriptorium spirit to take down my words. I repeated everything I’d said in Judy’s flat, and added detail to go with it. After a while, I paused and said,

  “What time is it, anyhow?”

  Johnson asked his watch. It said, “Nine forty-one.”