“Your information makes that appear more likely,” he answered, maddeningly evasive and dispassionate as usual.
I was too tired to get angry at him. I just pushed ahead; “If it was the Aztedans, why did they attack the Garuda Bird?”
The CI spook hesitated—I must have asked the right question. “The answer which immediately springs to mind is that the Garuda Bird is the great enemy of serpents, being the representative of birth and the heavens, while serpents are in the camp of death, the underworld, and poison.”
“The great enemy of serpents,” For a second, it didn’t mean anything—I was beat Then an alarm dock started yelling inside my head. “Quetzalcoati.”
“This though had occurred to me, yes,” Henry Legion said.
“What do we do?” I demanded.
“Prayers come to mind,” the spook answered, which, while sensible, was not what I wanted to hear. He added,
“Past that, the best we can. Call if you require my assistance, Inspector Fisher; I shall do what I can for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. I was talking to a dead line; he’d hung up.
Someone tapped on the door. I looked up. Now, as the day wound down, it was Bea. I gulped. She wasn’t the person I wanted to see right then. Or at least I thought she wasn’t, until she said quietly, “I just want you to know, David, that my prayers will be with you tonight.”
From Henry Legion, the suggestion of prayer had had the undertone that even that probably wouldn’t help the mess we were in. Bea, though, sounded calmly confident it would make everything all right. I liked her attitude better than the spook’s. But then, Henry Legion knew more about what all was wrong than she did.
I’m sorry I didn’t come see you,” I muttered. I wasn’t just sorry; I was ashamed of myself. But that’s not something you can casually say to your boss.
I guess she was good at reading between the lines. She said, “If you like, we can talk about it more tomorrow. Why don’t you go home and try to get some rest now? You’ll be better for it” She made shooing motions, then smiled. “My mother used to do that to chase chickens off the back porch.
I haven’t thought about it in years. Go on home now.”
“Thank you, Bea,” I said humbly, and I went on home.
I don’t remember what I cooked for supper that night, which is probably just as well. I thought about going to bed right afterward, but if I did that, I knew I’d wake up at three in the morning and stay up. So I rattled around in my flat instead, like a pea in a pod that was much too big for it. The quiet in there felt very loud. I wished I had an ethemet set to give myself something to occupy my ears and maybe my mind. Being alone with yourself when you’re worried is hard work. I tried to work, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words.
The phone yelled. I banged my shin on the coffee table in the front room as I sprang up and dashed off to answer it. It was some mountebank selling microsalamander cigar lighters. I’m afraid I told him where to put one before he let the salamander loose. I limped back out front after I hung up.
I picked up my book again. I should have been reading something useful, maybe about the Garuda Bird or Quetzalcoati. But no, it was a thriller about thirteen guys on a spy mission to Alemania during the Second Sorcerous War.
I was at the exciting part—the Alemans were trying to drive them into the alkahest pits still bubbling from the First Sorcerous War. Even so, I kept losing track of what was going on. The phone again. I almost hoped it was another huckster, I’d taken savage, mindless pleasure in baiting the first one.
Too much had happened to me, with no chance for me to hit back at anyone. If a miserable salesman chose that moment to inflict himself on me, it was his lookout “Hello?” I snapped.
“David?” The progressive distortion from two phone imps couldn’t mask the voice. All my rage evaporated even before she went on, “It’s Judy.”
“Honey,” I whispered; just hearing for sure that she was alive took my breath away, I made myself talk louder: “Are you all right?”
“I’m—fair,” she said, which made me fearful all over again. She hunted on: “Don’t ask questions, Dave. You have to listen to me. They won’t let me talk long. They say you have to stop messing around with things that aren’t your business, or else—” I waited to hear what the “or else” was, but she’d stopped. I was afraid I could figure it out for myself.
“Tell them I say I’ll do whatever they want,” I answered. I hoped she’d get the distinction: just because I said it didn’t mean I would.
“Be careful, Dave,” she said. “They aren’t joking. They—”
Her voice cut off. Faintly, as if the imps were reproducing the words of someone farther from the phone, I heard,
“Come on, you.”
“Honey, I love you,” I said. While I was talking, though, somebody hung up the phone. I don’t think Judy heard me.
I spent a while wishing damnation on the wretches who’d snatched her, then pulled myself together and called the Long Beach constables. Plaindothesman Johnson had the night off; I got some other worthy, name of Scott. He heard me out, then said, “Thanks for passing on the information, sir. We’ll do what we can with it”
Which meant as I knew only too well, they weren’t going to do much. It did tell them, as it had me, that Judy was still on This Side. That did count for something to them, and it had counted for a lot more than something to me. I had fresh hope.
I called the CBI. Saul Klein had gone home, but the fellow who answered the phone knew what was going on with the case. I asked him, “Can you send someone down to try to trace the call? Your Mistress Chang managed to do it earlier today.”
“Well, why not?” the CBI man said after he thought it over. “Don’t hurt to try.” He read me back my home address to make sure he had it right, then said, “We’ll have someone there in half an hour or so.”
It was more like forty-five minutes, but that didn’t surprise me. I drive St. James’ Freeway every day; I know how things can be down there. When the rap on the door came, I opened it with my left hand. My right hand was holding the blasting rod; after what had happened to Judy, I wasn’t taking any chances.
The weedy little fellow outside gave back a pace when he saw I was carrying a rod, which meant he almost went ass over teakettle down the stairs. He rallied fast, though.
“Can’t say as I blame you, six,” he said, and flashed a CBI sigil that said he was an intermediate thaumaturgic analyst—by which I learned the CBI has silly job tides, too—named Horace Smidley. I lowered the rod right away. He might not have looked like the light-and-magic show version of a CBI man, but he sure did look like a Horace Smidley.
I led him to the phone. He went through the same tracing ritual Celia Chang had used earlier in the day back at the office. He wasn’t as smooth as she had been—he was only an intermediate thaumaturgic analyst after all—but he got the job done. The quasi-mouth that formed Ehgors seal spoke its series of digits, then fell sflent once more.
That’s the same number they used when they called before,” I said.
“Is it? Careless of them.” Smidley made a ducking noise in the back of his throat; I got the idea that he disapproved of carelessness no matter who perpetrated it, even if it made catching the bad guys easier. He went on. “I’ll take the information back with me.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked. “Are they holding Judy somewhere dose to there and using that phone because it’s convenient to them?”
That is most probable,” he said; he and Michael Manstein would have got on well together. The other possibility is that they are deliberately transporting her a long distance to mislead us. Possible, as I say, but risky: any accident or flying violation that a constable happens to observe destroys what up to now has appeared a well-organized scheme.”
Again, you could tell he liked organization, no matter who was using it or for what purpose. I worry about people like that; the Leader of Alemania had had a lot o
f them behind him. Horace Smidley, though, was on my side, for which I was duly grateful. I thanked him for taking the trouble to come down at night “My pleasure,” he said, and then, to my mind, weakened the answer by adding, “And my duty.” He headed down the stairs—intentionally this time—and then, I presume, on back to Westwood.
Me? I shut the door after him, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I don’t remember another thing until the alarm clock scared me awake the next morning.
It was going to be a hot one. I could tell as soon as I got out of bed. Even after a long night’s sleep, I still felt tired, but out my bedroom window I saw that the wind stirring tile eucalyptus tree next door was some from out of the northeast what they call St. Ann’s wind. That always strikes me as rude, or don’t you think naming a wind after the Virgin’s mother implies she talked too much?
The wind swirled hard enough to shake my carpet as I headed for the freeway. When I flew past a vacant lot, I watched the dust devils spinning tumbleweeds around and tossing them up into the sky. There are more dust devils these days than there used to be; I’ve always said cutting the budget for meteorological exorcists was a mistake. One day the devils will join forces and blow down a building or three, and fixing things will end up costing a lot more than we’re saving now.
But what politician looks to the future? I wondered why I was bothering myself, come to that. If the Third Sorcerous War broke out, dust devils would be the least of my—and everyone else’s—worries.
Michael was waiting for me in the parking lot. “Have you received any news?” he asked as I walked up to his carpet. “They made Judy call me last night,” I said, nodding.
“Whoever they are, they want us to stop investigating anything that has anything to do with the Devonshire dump—or else.”
Michael gave me a curious look. “Yet you are still here.”
He turned on to Wilshire to get to St. James’ Freeway for the trip up into the Valley.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” I said. “I don’t believe stopping would really make them turn Judy loose. And besides… the deeper we get into this case, the more important it looks.”
God, help me, I was starting to think like Henry Legion. Saving the world, not just one person, looked bigger all the time.
We got off the Venture Freeway at Winnetka and headed north, Michael flying, me navigating. It was a mixed kind of neighborhood, first a business block, then a row of homes, then some more businesses. Once we flew past what looked half like a school, half like a farm. I glanced down at my map.
“That’s the Ceres Institute of St. Ferdinand’s Valley.” In spite of everything, I laughed. “Angels City is an ecumenical place.”
“Another artificial cult,” Michael said; his business is keeping up with such things. They say the goddess really does improve agricultural productivity.”
“I wonder how much maintaining her cult adds to the price of produce, though.” Cost-benefit analysis again. You can’t get away from it in our society: it was the same kind of thing I was doing to see whether the Chumash Powers would be worth preserving if they did still happen to exist That reminded me I’d have to call Professor Blank one of these days and see what more he’d harassed his graduate students into finding out “We should be getting dose,” Michael said.
“We are,” I answered, after a check of where we were.
The next major cross street is Nordhoff. You’ll want to turn left there. Mason is the next fair-sized street that will cross it, about half a mile west of Wimietka.”
“Very good.” Michael swung into the leftmost flight lane at Winnetka and Nordhoff. We had to wait for all the southbound carpets to go past before we could turn, though.
Strange how rules of the road that were codified for horses in Europe long before anyone outside the Middle East was flying carpets still govern the way we handle traffic. Sorcery, of course, maintains anything old and curious because being old and curious makes it powerful in and of itself. I’d never thought of traffic rules falling into that category, though.
The north side of Nordhoff was a light industrial park, with one big rectangular box of a building following another.
The south side was mostly houses, though the comer with Mason boasted a liquor store, a Golden Steeples that probably did a land-office business from all the working types across the street, and also a Spells ’R’ Us.
Chocolate Weasel was in the industrial park, a couple of buildings past Mason. Michael let his carpet down in an open space near the front door. As I undid my safely belt and stood up, I noticed that a lot of the carpets in the lot were old and threadbare. People didn’t work here to get rich, that was obvious.
Michael picked up his little black bag. We walked over to the entrance side by side. The first thing that hit me when we went inside was the music. There were minisingers involved in the case after all—I’d have to tell Saul Klein. But they weren’t playing lieder—oh my, no. The inside of Chocolate Weasel sounded like an Aztedan bar in East A.C.—or maybe like one down in Tenochtitlan—both in style of music and in volume. I must confess I winced.
All the chatter inside was in Spainish, too. No, I take that back: I heard a little clucking Nahuad, too. No English, not until people noticed us. I got the idea people who didn’t look Aztedan didn’t pop into Chocolate Weasel every day. The Aztedan community in Angels City is big enough to be a large city of its own, and doesn’t have to deal with outsiders unless it wants to.
By the looks they gave us, we were outsiders they didn’t want to deal with. Those looks got darker when we pulled out our EPA sigils, too. Suddenly everyone in the place developed a remarkable inability to understand English.
Michael foiled that ploy, though, by asking for the head of the firm in fluent Spainish.
I wondered if the secretary would fall back into Nahuad; she was one of the people I’d heard using it If she did, though, Michael would give her another surprise. I wondered how many pale blonds spoke the old Aztedan language. Not many seemed a fair guess.
But, rather to my disappointment, she didn’t. In fact, hearing Michael use Spainish made her unbend enough to remember she knew some English after all, which put me back in the conversation. She took us down the hall to the consortium markgrave’s office.
Jorge Vasquez looked at us with about as much enthusiasm as a devout Hindu confronted with a plate of blood-red prime rib. He was a handsome fellow in his early forties, and doing quite well for himself: unless I missed my guess, his suit would have run me dose to two weeks’ pay.
He shoved our sigils back across the desk at us, then leaned forward to glare. “I am sick and tired of harassment by the EPA,” he said. “You people have the attitude that our spells must be perverse because they are based on the authentic rituals of our people. It is not true; our procedures are no more wicked than the thaumaturgy the Catholic Church works through transubstantiation.” He pointed to the crucifix on the wall behind him.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” I answered. “Myself, I’m Jewish.” I didn’t elaborate; what it meant was that I found any ritual of human sacrifice, no matter how symbolic, on the unpleasant side.
Vasquez didn’t say anything, but his nostrils flared. So he wasn’t real fond of Jews, eh? Well, that was his problem, not mine.
I went on, “In any case, this visit has nothing to do with the merit of your rituals, only with the way you’re preparing your toxic spell byproducts for disposal. The Devonshire dump is leaking, and leaking something noxious enough to cause an outbreak of apsychic births in the neighborhood.
Considering some of the materials and cantrips you use, I hope you can understand how we might be concerned”
“I tell you again, Inspector Fisher, this is bigotry in action,” Vasquez said. “We run a dean shop here. What do you think we are doing, attempting to bring about the dominion of Huitzilopochtli over Angels City?”
That was one of my major concerns, but telling him so didn’t seem politic. I just said, �
��Why don’t you take us over to your flayed human skin substitute processing facility? That’s the likeliest source of thaumaturgic pollution here, I think.”
“It is a legitimate sorcerous substance, permissible under the laws of the Confederation,” Vasquez said hody. “I repeat, you are harassing Chocolate Weasel by singling us out—”
“Bullshit,” I said, which made him sit up straight in his chain not the first time lately I’d surprised somebody by not talking the way an EPA inspector was supposed to. I didn’t care. If he was hot, I was steaming. I went on, “You are not being singled out, sir. I’ve been visiting businesses that dump at Devonshire for weeks now. You’re not being discriminated against because you’re Aztecian, either—I’ve hit Persian places, aerospace firms, what have you. But even you won’t deny flayed human skin substitute is a dangerous substance, I hope? Now we can do this politely on an informal level or I can go out, get a warrant, and turn this place inside out. How do you want to play it?”
He calmed down in a hurry. Somehow I’d thought he might. He said, “What sort of tests do you have in mind?”
I looked at Michael—he was the expert. He said, “I intend to use the similarity test with my own piece of skin substitute to see if uncontrolled Huitzilopochtlic influences are present.” He was going to try the same test he’d used back at the dump, in other words.
I didn’t know what Vasquez would say about that—maybe start complaining about theological discrimination. But he didn’t; he just got up and said, “Come with me, gentlemen.”
I concluded he was a lot like Ramzan Durani of Slow Jinn Fizz: plenty of bluster when he was excited, but a reasonable man underneath. Fine with me; I’d had it up to here with arguments.
As soon as we left the office, the racket from the mariachi minisingers came back full force. That kind of music has its enthusiasts. Unfortunately, I’m not any of them. And the minisingers, true to their Alemanic Ursprung, gave it a slight oompah beat that did nothing to improve matters.
The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump Page 31