The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

by Harry Turtledove

  “It’s coming out!” I cried, coughing.

  Another flap, more dust, still another wingbeats Then, with a pop! in my head that felt like the psychic equivalent of the one you’d make by sticking your finger into your mouth against the inside of your cheek, its feet came all the way out of the Nothing. In its daws writhed the Lizard.

  Yolanda grabbed me and kissed me on the cheek. A good thing she did, too, because Tony Sudakis slapped my back so hard, I might have staggered off the warded path and into the dump if she hadn’t been holding on to me.

  No matter how joyful he was, Michael Manstein didn’t do things like slapping people on the back. He shouted, “Brilliantly reasoned, David! The similarity between lizards and snakes was enough to touch off the Garuda Bud’s instinctive antipathy.”

  “Yeah,” I said, which I admit wasn’t a fitting response to praise like that. But I was too busy watching the fight above my head to get out more than the one word.

  The Chumash Lizard was an alligator lizard the size of the biggest anaconda you ever saw. If you live in Angels City, you know about alligator lizards. They’re the most common kind of lizard around here. The material ones can get more than a foot long, with yellowish bellies and dirt-brown backs striped with black. For critters their size, they have large, sharp teeth. The ones on the Chumash Lizard looked to be a couple of inches long, and it had a whole mouthful of them.

  Alligator lizards also have little short legs, which makes them look even more ophidian than most lizards (they’re related to glass snakes, which aren’t snakes but lizards with no legs at all). My guess—my hope—was that that would just make the Garuda Bird madder.

  The Lizard made horrible hissing noises and bit at the Garuda Bird’s legs. However huge and fierce it was, though, it had no more chance against the Bird than an ordinary alligator lizard would have against an eagle that decided to have a reptilian lunch. Crunch! With a noise like a monster cleaver biting into a side of beef, the Garuda Bird bit off the Lizard’s head and about the front third of its body. Ichor spattered down all over the dump. Luckily, it didn’t splash any of us—talk about your hazardous materia magica.

  The Chumash Lizard’s body convulsed and thrashed even more wildly than before. Even material lizards are hard to kill. Lizards that are also Powers… But all the thrashing didn’t stop the Garuda Bird from gulping down the rest of the lizard.

  Michael tapped me on the shoulder. “I believe you may now definitively declare one Chumash Power extinct,” he yelled.

  “You know what?” I yelled back, °I don’t miss it a bit.

  Dreadful thing for an EPA man to say, isn’t it?”

  “I find myself less scandalized than I might be under other circumstances,” Michael said.

  With another earsplitting bellow, the Garuda Bird tried to poke its clawed feet into the Nothing. Again, it was hard work. But the Bird didn’t have to back up and make a second effort—slowly but surely, talons, toes, and feet sank into the Chumash Powers’ sphere of encyshnent and disappeared.

  The Bird let out a pain-filled screech like the one it had made when (I guess) it seized the lizard. It started flapping its wings again in that half-material way it had used to force itself out of the Nothing. Feet, toes, talons reemerged—and then, with another of those psychic popy’s, the Garuda Bird was free once more.

  It didn’t come out of the Nothing empty-footed, either.

  Its claws held what the Chumash called the Great Eagle. I will admit, a golden eagle with a body the size of a Siberian tiger’s is pretty Great - under other circumstances, as Michael had put it Up against the Garuda Bird, the Chumash Eagle might as well have been a sparrow.

  The Eagle, unlike the Lizard, didn’t try to fight. It wriggled, twisted, broke free, and streaked for the sky. I feared it would get away: it seemed so much more graceful in the air than the ponderous Garuda Bird. But the contest wasn’t only, or even mostly, bird body against bird body. It was magic against magic, too, and the Garuda Bird had not only its native Indian potency but also all the souping up the Loki Kobold Works had given its sorcerous systems. It didn’t just fly—it was destined for space. It shot after the Eagle faster than the eye could follow.

  High in the sky, the Eagle tried to dodge—if it couldn’t flee the Garuda Bird, maybe it could outjink it But no. One of those immense feet closed on it, and this time there was no escape. I heard a despairing shriek fade and the. Hovering above the dump, the Garuda Bird devoured its prey. A couple of big feathers came spiraling down into the containment area—all that was left of the Chumash Eagle.

  “We’ll have to decontaminate those,” Yolanda said.

  “As soon as you do, there’s another Chumash Power that won’t show up in the Barony of Angels again,” I said. As an EPA inspector, I felt bad about that. As somebody who was wondering whether he’d still be alive five minutes from now, I figured I’d worry about the long-term consequences of the Great Eagle’s demise later, if there was a later.

  High overhead, the Garuda Bird let out a roar that made all its earlier cries seem like whispers. It folded its wings and stooped like a hawk onto the Nothing. I braced myself—uselessly, I knew. When that bulk hit, the earth wouldn’t just shake, it would quake, San Andreas notwithstanding.

  A split second before the Bird’s talons seized the Nothing, another psychic pop sounded in my head, this one bigger than the other two put together. The talons closed on empty air—the Nothing was gone. Somehow—sorcerously, of course, but don’t ask me about the Kobold Works’ proximity spells, because I don’t know from nothin’—the Bird stopped in midair without touching the ground.

  I looked out at the far wall of the Devonshire dump, and it seemed only as far away as it should have. The sense of the imminent immanence of something eminently dreadful’s becoming dreadfully evident was gone, too. I looked over at Tony Sudakis. “I think you can tell the cacodemons to shut up,” I yelled at him.

  He flipped me a salute-casual but, I thought, not faked—and trotted back toward his office. As he did so, the Garuda Bird rose into the air (without a single flap) and headed east, back toward Burbank. That took more weight off my mind: my guess was that the Bird would have stayed around had it sensed any remaining trouble.

  Just the same, I walked over to the spot on the path from which I’d first noticed the Nothing, a million years ago: that’s what it felt like, anyhow. I wasn’t quite there yet when the cacodemons closed their mouths. Sudden silence hit me as hard as the squalls of alarm had before.

  I knew just where that spot was now. I looked out across the weed-strewn dirt toward the Nothing and saw—nothing.

  I was never so glad not to capitalize an “n” in my whole life.

  “I think they’re gone,” I said, words which ranked right up there with the first dme I told Judy, I love you.

  “I believe you are correct,” Michael said. “What we sensed, in my opinion, was the Chumash Powers abandoning any contact with This Side to keep the Garuda Bird from reaching into their encystment, dragging them out one by one, and destroying them. Thaumaturgic analysis will eventually confirm or refute this, but it is a tenable working hypothesis.”

  “I’m with you,” Yolanda said. “If they went away like that, they won’t be back.” She wiped her forehead with a sleeve.

  I’m not sure she really grasped just how bad a hazmat she’d helped hold at bay, but none of what her team did for a living was easy.

  “Perkunas and the Nine Suns, I hope not.” Tony Sudakis clutched his amber amulet in one beefy fist.

  “Let me use your phone one more time?” I asked him.

  “I’ll call Professor Blank at UCAC; he’s been running a study for me to find out whether the Chumash Powers really have become extinct. I think we can safely say two of them have, but he’d be the best fellow to evaluate what’s become of the others.”

  “Be my guest.” Sudakis waved me toward the blockhouse.

  It wouldn’t have done a bit of good against what
had almost come forth from the dump, but suddenly it looked strong and secure again.

  I got hold of Blank. He was still in his office, wondering, I suppose, whether the building was going to collapse around him. When I told him what had happened at the dump, he let out a sigh of relief so heartfelt even phone imps couldn’t spoil it, then promised to send his research team out as fast as carpets could get from UCAC to Chatsworth. Since it was heading into late afternoon, that wouldn’t be any too fast, but the urgency level had gone down, too.

  Then I called Legate Kawaguchi to see how the constables were doing at Chocolate Weasel. Him I didn’t get; instead, some other constable bawled in my ear, “You can’t talk to him, bud, whoever you are. He’s down at the war, and I’m headin’ that way myself.” He hung up with a crash that that phone imps did an uncanny job of reproducing.

  That sent me out of Tony’s office on the run. I filled him in on what Blank had said, then passed on the rest of the word to Michael. The only thing that can mean is Chocolate Weasel, I think,” I said. “We’d better get over there as fast as we can.”

  “I concur,” Michael said.

  Yolanda—her last name, I finally had the chance to notice on her badge, was Simmons—said, “Where’s this Chocolate Weasel place? Sounds like we might do some good there, too.”

  “Your team is welcome to follow my carpet,” Michael said.

  “Will the health of the gentleman who collapsed suffice for the venture?”

  “I’m okay,” the gentleman said, and sat up to try to prove it. He still didn’t look okay, but he was game, anyhow. “All the stuff in here just overloaded my protective systems for a minute there.”

  “It’s liable to be worse at Chocolate Weasel,” I said, but he shook his head—he didn’t think it was possible. I envied him his innocence.

  The security guard put down the footbridge for us, and we trooped out. Then the fellow took off his uniform cap and bowed, which made me feel great. The guard might not have know who’d done what, but summoning the Garuda Bird wasn’t something you could ignore.

  Thanks to the cacodemons’ announcing an emergency evacuation, traffic around the dump was unbelievably snarled. We passed Chocolate Weasel’s address on to the hazmat team and followed them instead of the other way round: they had constabulary lanterns on their carpets, which helped move people out of their way.

  About halfway to Chocolate Weasel, we met head-on a rush away from that area. I gulped, remembering what the constable who’d answered Kawaguchi’s phone had said about a war. Maybe he hadn’t been exaggerating.

  A constable in full combat gear, material and thaumaturgic, was turning back traffic heading in Chocolate Weasel’s direction. The hazmat team’s lanterns got them through;

  Yolanda’s shouted encouragement and our EPA sigils did the job for us.

  “You know, Michael,” I said, “just once today, I’d like to fly away from the scene of a disaster.”

  “I have considerable sympathy for this point of view,” he answered. “However—”

  “Yeah,” I said. When duty calls, you’d better do it. Doing it and liking it, though, were not the same critter.

  When Yolanda asked another constable exactly where we were going, he directed her to a command post at the comer of Nordhoff and Soto’s. The reason that was the command post, I discovered when we followed her there, was that it was as close to Chocolate Weasel as you could get without being in immediate danger of getting yourself messily lolled.

  Sure enough. Legate Kawaguchi was there, in uniform and helmet—not Constabulary Department standard issue, but samurai-style, with the man of his clan affixed to the forehead to help protect him against malignant magic.

  He didn’t act surprised to see me. “Good afternoon, Inspector Fisher. I must admit, you were not in error concerning the nature of that building ahead.” He pointed east I looked that way myself. A thin column of smoke rose from the Chocolate Weasel facility. Tell me that’s not what I’m afraid it is,” I said to Kawaguchi.

  “I wish I could,” he answered. They are tearing the hearts from victims and kindling fires in their chests. We face the apparition not only of Huitzilopochtli but also of Huehueteoti, the fire god.”

  “In proper Aztedan ritual, that practice occurs only at the completion of the Five Empty Days between the end of one year and the start of the next,” Michael said, as if objecting not so much to the slaughter as to its taking place outside canonical limits. Sometimes he can be quite exasperating.

  Kawaguchi said, “My guess is that they’re going outside the usual pattern to try to bring the Powers to full potency outside their native land.”

  Michael said, grudgingly, “Yes, I suppose such a procedure might be efficacious. It remains most irregular, however.” You see what I mean?

  “Where are they getting their victims?” I asked; to me, that was more important than whether they were following all their own rules for the sacrificial rites. I thought about the two guys at the Spells ’R’ Us place who’d let me borrow the spellchecker. I thought about them spreadeagled on an altar with their chests hacked open. I wanted to be sick.

  “Resistance backed by thaumaturgy of a high order began as soon as our first units responded into the parking lot,”

  Kawaguchi answered. “My best guess is that several employees volunteered to become the initial victims to trigger their Powers’ presence here.”

  “Again, this seems likely,” Michael agreed.

  I nodded, too. Kawaguchi probably had the right of it, despite his curiously bloodless way of describing sacrifices of the bloodiest sort. But constables, who see so much blood in their work, need to ward themselves from the reality of what they do with mild-seeming words. After all, words have power, too.

  Then something else occurred to me. “You said those were the initial victims. Have there been more?”

  “Unfortunately yes, an unknowable but large number,”

  Kawaguchi said. “Because of the strength of the Powers evoked within the Chocolate Weasel building, we have been compelled to draw back our lines several times. The perpetrators have taken advantage of this to raid surrounding businesses and homes. We do not know the precise status of all individuals captured, but some will almost certainly have been employed to nourish Huitzilopochtli and Huehueteod.”

  I thought about some poor lunk whose stomach decided to growl while he was flying up Nordhoff. He’d spot the Golden Steeples, pull in, grab himself a burger… and end up with his still-beating heart torn out of his body, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’d have to be a very thoroughgoing Calvinist to find the mark of divine plan in that.

  Then I had a worse thought. Much worse. I’d been acting on the assumption that the people from Chocolate Weasel had something to do with kidnapping Judy. If she was hidden away somewhere in the building when the constables flew into the lot…

  “God forbid,” I whispered. I tried not to think about it, to tell myself it was impossible, but I knew too well it wasn’t.

  Just then, the roof of the building that housed Chocolate Weasel started burning a lot brighter. It wasn’t an ordinary flame; it wasn’t even like the flame from a salamander, which is powered from the Other Side but manifests itself here.

  This flame you didn’t just see; you felt it in the place where prayers come from. I close my eyes, but that didn’t help. My soul still felt scorched.

  “Huehueteod,” Legate Kawaguchi and Michael said in the same breath. Quietly, Michael added, “One must conclude that the sacrifices within the building have reached a critical mass, allowing him to manifest himself fully in Angels City.”

  “I wonder how long we have to wait for Huitzilopochtli,” I said numbly.

  “He being a greater Power, more sacrifice will be necessary to bring him onto This Side,” Michael answered.

  “Hueheuteod’s manifestation, however, will only speed his translation from the Aztecian gods’ realm on the Other Side to our present locati
on.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement,” I said. Michael gave me a puzzled look, then recognized irony and nodded.

  The flames on the roof leapt higher. After some delay, thick smoke began to rise as real flames joined the spectral ones emanating from Huehueteod. I wondered how the people inside the Chocolate Weasel building were faring now that it burned around them. Maybe Huehueteod protected them from the flames so they could go on sacrificing. Or maybe they’d just keep doing what they were doing until they burned to death. Every faiUi has its martyrs willing, even eager, to the for the greater glory of the Powers they reverence.

  I wished the Aztecians would have shown their piety another way.

  Kawaguchi was shouting into a constabulary-model ethemet set. It held two different imps, so he could both send and receive messages. He looked toward the burning building, then to Michael and me. “Are you gentlemen familiar with the Hanese ideogram for the term ‘crisis’?”

  “I am,” Michael said; I might have guessed he would be.

  He went on, “It combines the ideograms for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity.’”

  Kawaguchi looked surprised and maybe a little disappointed that,a pale blond chap had stepped on his lines. But he nodded and said, “Exactly so. And developments here have now reached the crisis stage. If in the next few minutes Huitzilopochtli succeeds in manifesting himself as dioroughlyas Huehueteod has—”

  That was the danger, all right. If it happened. Angels City was in more trouble than it had ever known. The only problem was, I didn’t see any skin of the opportunity.

  “I have been in touch with the archdiocese of Angels City,” Kawaguchi said. They will do what they can for us.”

  “An acute strategic move. Legate,” Michael said, nodding in approval. The Power based at Rome successfully overcame those centered on Tenochtitlan almost five hundred years ago; with luck, it will do so again.”