The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  “Could you get me a sandwich or something?” I asked. “I came down here for a dinner date with Judy, and I haven’t eaten since lunch. We were going to try that new Numidian place—”

  “Oh, Bocchus and Bacchus?” Johnson said. “Yeah, I’ve seen it advertised. I wouldn’t mind trying it myself. Hang on a minute, Mr. Fisher; I’ll find out what I can round up for you.”

  Instead of couscous and Iamb, I had a greasy burger, greasier fries, and coffee I drank only because it would have been an environmental hazard if I’d poured it down the commode. Then I finished giving my statement, and then I said, “What do I do now?” This time I was asking the plainclothesman.

  “By to live as normally as you can,” he said. I’d heard that advice before; I was sick of it. How are you supposed to live nomially when people are trying to kill you and they’ve abducted the person who matters most to you in the world?

  Johnson must have understood that He raised a lightpalmed hand and went on, “I know it’s a taH order. What we’re going to have to do now is wait for contact—wait for either your fiancee or the people holding her to get in touch with you. Whatever their demands are, say you’ll comply and then let us know immediately.”

  “But what if they-?” I couldn’t say it—absit omen and all that—but he knew what I meant “Mr. Fisher, the only consolation I can give you is that if they’d intended to commit homicide, they could have done it They must have some reason for wanting Mistress Ather alive.”

  “Thanks,” I said from the bottom of my heart. It made sense. Now all I had to do was pray the kidnappers were sensible people. But if they were sensible people, would they have been kidnappers?

  Johnson came around his desk, set a big hand on my ^ shoulder. “You just go on home now, Mr. Fisher. Try and get some rest Do you want one of our black-and-whites to fly up with you, make sure you’re not walking into a trap yourself?”

  After a couple of seconds, I shook my head. He looked relieved, as if he’d regretted the offer as soon as he made it I suspected the Long Beach constables were stretched as thin as any other force. It’s an ugly world out there. I’d just had my nose rubbed in how ugly it can be.

  He walked out to my carpet with me. “We’ll be in touch, sir. And we’ll also get in touch with that Legate Kawaguchi of yours, and with Central Intelligence, and with the CBI, too, because it’s a kidnapping… What’s funny, sir?”

  “I can get in touch with the CBI,” I said. “I work two floors under their Angels City office.” I wondered if Saul Klein would get involved in the case. Nice to have one landsman around, anyhow. He’d certainly be more comfortable to work with than the CI spook; Henry Legion was unnerving.

  Johnson patted me on the shoulder again, sent me on my way. I remember very little about flying back to Hawthorne—too much else on my mind, too little of it good. I propitiated the Watcher for my block of flats, glided into the garage, got off my carpet, and headed for the stairway. Once I was inside the building, I didn’t worry about how late it was, or how dark. Stupid, I know, especially after what had happened to Judy. I suppose you’ve never done anything stupid, eh?

  A vampire stood grinning at the bottom of the stairs.

  Modem medicine can do a lot for vampires: periodic blood impplants to stifle their hunting urge, heliotrope badis to let them go abroad between dawn and dusk (never on Sunday; the correspondence between real and symbolic sun is too strong then), sun-spectacles to keep them from being blinded when they do fare forth by day. Those who choose to—and, I admit, those who can afford to—take advantage of such techniques can lead largely normal lives.

  Not all do. Some would sooner follow their instincts and prowl. I hadn’t heard of vampires in Hawdiome, but I wasn’t shocked to encounter one. For one tiling, I dunk I was beyond shock; for another, as I’ve said, this is a pretty rough little town.

  Just for an instant, I wondered if he was connected with the bastards who’d taken Judy. I had my doubts. Vampires, if I can mix a metaphor, are usually lone wolves. Odds are, this one was just trying to keep himself fed. Random street crime, however, is just as dangerous to its victim as one that targets him in particular.

  The vampire’s eyes glittered. I knew that if I looked into them for very long I’d be fascinated, and then the bloodsucker could do whatever it wanted with me. I reached under my shirt, pulled out something on a chain round my neck.

  The vampire must have drought it was going to be a crucifix. Its fanged mouth opened in a scornful laugh. A lot of vampires, especially the ones that survive for very long in Christian countries, are of Balkan Muslim blood, and so immune to the skin of the cross.

  But I didn’t pull out a cross. What I wore instead was a mystic Jewish amulet, a seven-by-seven acrostic prepared by the same Mage Abramelin Works that made my blasting rod.

  I yanked it off over my head and direw the kaballistic missile at the vampire.

  He had quick reflexes—he caught it before it hit him in the face. But that didn’t do him any good. His cry of pain turned to an anguished howl. The Hebrew term for vampires is kepiloth—“empty ones”—and it’s a good description.

  Because they’ve lost so much humanity, they’re extremely vulnerable to magical countermeasures. When the acrostic based on the Hebrew word for “dog” hit this one, he had no choice but to transform.

  “Get out of here, you son of a bitch!” I yelled, and drew back my foot to give him a good lack. He fled, yelping, tail between his legs.

  I picked up the amulet, hung it back around my neck, and trudged upstairs to my flat. Only later, when I was lying down and trying to sleep, did it occur to me that if I hadn’t been emotionally drained from what had happened to Judy, the vampire might have made me panic and drained me in the literal sense before I thought of the amulet. As it was, I just took him in stride and did the right thing without even thinking about it Every so often, lying there, I’d ask my watch what time it was. The last answer I remember getting was 2:48.

  Going to work on three hours’ sleep is one of those nightmares everybody has once or twice. A lot of the time, a new baby in the house is the reason. Not for me. Thinking about a baby made me think about Judy. We’d had so many plans—I didn’t want to think about throwing them all away.

  A cup of coffee with breakfast. Another cup of cafeteria mud the minute I got in, and another one right after that One more half an hour later. I felt myself wind tighter and tighter. By God, I’d get through the day. If tonight ever came, I’d probably be too buzzed to sleep then. One things at a time, though. Get through the day first. That meant more phone calls. I didn’t feel the least bit guflty about using my office; my personal affairs and those of the toxic spell dump case had become inextricably intertwined. First I called Saul Klein upstairs.

  “Saul, this is David Fisher down in the EPA again,” I said. “I want—no, I don’t want to, but I have to—report a kidnapping.”

  “This is the report that we received from the Long Beach constabulary last night?” he asked. When I said yes, he went on, “Is dus connected with the minisingers case you were telling me about a little while ago?”

  I’d forgotten the minisingers. I discovered that, along with tired and worried, I could be embarrassed, too. “No, it doesn’t have anything to do with dial. If you’ve received that Long Beach report, Saul, does that mean you’ll be on the case?”

  “I’ll be involved, yes,” he answered. “Is it convenient for you that I come down and discuss matters now? You’re on the sevendi floor, is that right?”

  “Yes, and sure, come on down. Can you stop at the cafeteria and bring a couple of cups of coffee? I’ll pay for them.”

  He came; we drank coffee; he asked all the same questions Johnson had the night before. Numbly, I gave the same answers. He scribbled notes. When I was done, he said,

  “We’ll do everything we can for you, David, and for Mistress Ather. I promise you that” I noticed he didn’t promise they’d get her back alive and unhurt; he must
have known belter than to make promises he might not be able to keep.

  When he left, I called Henry Legion. The spook said, “I shall be there directly.” He was, too, faster crosscountry than Saul Klein had been from two floors up. Of course, Henry Legion hadn’t had to stop for coffee.

  I told my story for the third time. Repetition made it feel almost as if it had happened to someone else—almost but not quite. The CI spook said, “This is disturbing. Events are moving faster than crystal-ball projections had indicated. My opinion is that your scanning around the toxic spell dump may well have been the precipitating factor.”

  “But except for a little stardust, we didn’t find anything,” I said, nearly wailing, as if I were I kid who got caught and walloped for peeking in a bedroom window witthout even seeing anything interesting.

  “You may know third,” the spook said. “I would doubt the perpetrators do.” Then he disappeared on me. I hate that. It always gives him the last word.

  Two down. My next call was to Legate Kawaguchi. I wondered if he’d still be off on his other case, but no, I got him. “This is in relation to the kidnapping of Mistress Ather whom I met at the Thomas Brothers fire?” he asked when he heard it was me, so the Long Beach constables must have already talked with him.

  That’s what this is in relation to, all right,” I said heavily.

  “I can’t imagine any other reason for kidnapping Judy, especially when whoever did it also tried to kill me a few days ago.”

  “I can imagine other reasons,” Kawaguchi said. Before I could start screaming at him, he went on, “I admit however, that your scenario appears to be of the highest probability. As you will have surmised”—and as I had surmised—“I have discussed this matter with the Long Beach force. I would, however, also be grateful for your firsthand account” I gave it to him. One more repetition, I thought one more movement out of the realm of reality and into that of discourse. In a way, it was a sort of anti-magic. Magic uses words to realize what had only been imagined. I was using them to turn tragedy and horror into memory, which is ever so much easier to handle.

  When I was through, Kawaguchi said, “Did you learn from the forensics man what sort of sleep spell he detected at your fiancee’s flat?”

  “You know, I didn’t,” I answered. “His plainclothesman—Johnson—and I went down to the Long Beach station so I could make my sworn statement there, and the forensics fellow didn’t stick his head into Johnson’s office while I was giving it.”

  “I shall inquire,” Kawaguchi said. His words were spaced a little too far apart, as if he was writing and talking at the same time.

  I said, “I wanted to check with you, too, Legate, to see if you have any new answers that would help dear up who did this to Judy.” Whoever it was had also undoubtedly arranged to have the earth elemental dropped on my flying carpet. At the moment, that seemed utterly unimportant to me.

  “New answers, no,” he said. “I have some new questions, however: there has been vandalism relating to the Garuda Bird project at the Loki plant in Burbank, vandalism behind a hermetic seal.”

  “That is supposed to be impossible,” I said, now speaking slowly myself—I was scrawling a note to call Matt Arnold.

  “Many things once supposed impossible have come true,” Kawaguchi said. “Take virtuous reality, for example.”

  “Thank you,” I exdaimed. “That reminds me of something else I wanted to ask you: what’s the more usual name for Pharwnachrus mooinno?”

  Kawaguchi actually laughed; I hadn’t been sure he could.

  “My apologies, Inspector; I should not have read the name to your secretary straight off the laboratory report. The common name for the bird in question is the quetzal.”

  “Quetzal?” I slammed into that head on, as if my carpet had run into a building. “Are you sure?’

  “Confirmed by an ornithologist and an Etruscan ornithomancer,” Kawaguchi said.

  “You’re sure,” I admitted. “But that’s crazy. Michael Manstein—he runs the sorcery lab here—and I went around the Devonshire dump yesterday, and we found no trace of Aztedan sorcery leaking. He even tested with flayed human skin substitute for Huitzilopochtlism.”

  “I have told you what I know,” Kawaguchi said. The possibility remains that the feather was somehow altered in its translation from virtuous reality into our own merely mundane space and time; as I noted at the time, if would not be accepted as evidence in a court of law. Another alternative is that the feather is indeed derived from a quetzal, but was deliberately placed within range of the scriptorium spirit Erasmus’ sensorium for the purpose of misleading us.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Or it might be real—whatever that means in connection with something out of virtuous reality.”

  “Exactly so,” Kawaguchi said. “Ockham’s Razor argues for that interpretation, although the others cannot be ignored.”

  I shave my data with Ockham’s Razor, too; it’s the most practical tool to use in preparing baseline data for projections and such. But, like any other razor, it will cut you if you’re not careful with it “Thanks for the information, Legate Kawaguchi,” I said.

  “Would you do me one more favor, please. Would you call a spook named Henry Legion at Central Intelligence back in D.StC.”—I gave him the number—“and tell him what you’ve just told me? It’s something he needs to know, believe me. Use my name; it’ll help you get through to him.”

  “I shall do as you suggest,” Kawaguchi answered slowly.

  “The implications, however, are—troubling.”

  “I know.” When I’d first heard Charlie Kelly reluctantly admit the possibility of the Third Sorcerous War, it chilled me for days. Now, as far as I was concerned, it was old news.

  Judy bulked ever so much larger in my thoughts. I couldn’t worry about the whole world going up in smoke; that’s too much for any mere man to take in. But when some damned—I hope—bastard kidnaps the woman you love, you understand that real well. Kawaguchi and I said our goodbyes. He promised again that he would call Henry Legion. Me, I called Loki, and eventually got connected to Matt Arnold. “I just got off the phone with Legate Kawaguchi of the ACCD,” I told him.

  “He said you had a break-in and some vandalism on the Garuda Bird project.”

  “That’s right,” he answered. “One of our people was critically injured, too.”

  “Kawaguchi didn’t say anything about that,” I said. “What happened?”

  “He was bitten by a snake.” Even over the phone, I could hear Arnold’s voice turn grim. “Some dever sorcerer found a way to beat a hermetic seal. Did the constable tell you about that?”

  “He mentioned that it had been done, but not how,” I answered. “You sound like you know.”

  “I do, yes,” Arnold said. “There’ll be some sleepless nights up in Crystal Valley until they can bring their sorceware up to date.”

  “You don’t need a crystal ball to predict that,” I agreed.

  “How was it done? Everyone’s always claimed hermetic seals are proof against just about anything.” I heard the silence that meant he didn’t want to tell me. Quickly, I added,

  “Remember, I have a professional interest in this. Any magic that can beat such a powerful seal has to have serious consequences for the environment.”

  “All right,” he said grudgingly. “I guess I can see that. But don’t go spreading the word to all and sundry, you understand?”

  “I’m not a reporter or a newsman for the ethemet,” I replied with dignity.

  “Okay,” he said. “What happened was, the bastards used one of Hermes’ own attributes to break the seals he was supposed to oversee. It was a very clever application of the law of similarity, I’ll say; I wish whoever came up with it would have put as much energy into something legitimate.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “The snakebite has something to do with it”

  He paused again. I realized I was supposed to figure out why. Some other mornin
g, I might have enjoyed playing intellectual games. That particular day, I just didn’t have it.

  “I’m sorry; I must be dense,” I said—my troubles weren’t any of his business. “Can you explain it for me?”

  A sniff conveyed across the ether by two phone imps carries an impressive weight of scorn. Matt Arnold said, “Think about the kerykeion Hermes carries.”

  “The what?”

  He made another impatient noise. As far as I was concerned, lucky for him he was at the far end of a phone connection. The EPA doesn’t have the money—or the secrets—to get hermetic seals, so I had no reason to be familiar with the minutiae of Hermes’ cult Maybe he realized that, or maybe he just wanted to get me off the phone so he could go back to whatever he’d been doing before I called. He said,

  “The Latin term for the kerykeion—not really proper, you know, for talking about a Greek Power—is the caducous.”

  That I did understand. “The staff with the…” My voice trailed away. “Snakes,” I said in an altogether different tone of voice. “No wonder you said the bite had something to do with it.”

  “That’s right,” he said, as if there might be some hope for me after all. They used the affinity of all snakes to the ones of the caduceus to weaken the seal and let them get into our secure areas.”

  “Sneaky.” I added, “I hope you told Legate Kawaguchi about that. If one set of bad guys figures out a stunt, everybody will be using it two weeks later.” Then something else occurred to me. “How did your vandals get to the hermetically sealed areas, anyhow? You had some tough-looking guards out front when I was there.”

  They got lulled to sleep.” Arnold sounded as if he didn’t like to admit that “Some land of spell or other—Kawaguchi’s forensics people haven’t got back to me with the data.”

  Excitement ran through me: it sounded a lot like the way Judy’s kidnappers had operated. I wrote that down so I wouldn’t forget it, and promised myself I’d call Plainclothesman Johnson as soon as I was off the phone with Arnold.

  While I still had him on the ether, though, I asked, “What land of snake bit your man?”