The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump Read online

  And what was I supposed to make of outfits called Gall Divided, Slow Jinn Fizz, and Red Phoenix? Until I got back to the office to see what they were dumping, I was as much in the dark about what they actually did as I was with Essence Extractions, Inc. They sounded more interesting, though, I must say.

  After a moment, my eyes came back to Red Phoenix. I underline the name, just on the off chance. The phoenix was a bird neither Judy nor I had thought of the night before. It would be worth checking out, at any rate.

  I started to call Judy to tell her about it, then remembered Wednesday was her night for theoretical goetics. She’s only a couple of classes away from her master’s initiation. One day before too long I expect her to be writing grimoires instead of copy-editing them.

  Having done as much on the list as I could do, I tossed it back in my attachÇ case, read for a while, and then got ready for bed. Through the thin wall of my flat, I heard the fellow next door howling with laughter at whatever ethernet program he was listening to.

  One of these days soon, I figured I’d break down and buy an ethernet set for myself. They’re based on a variant of the cloning technique that’s put telephones all over lately. In the ethernet, though, they clone thousands of imps identical to a few masters. Whatever one of the masters hears, each clone repeats exactly—provided you’ve chosen to rouse that particular imp from dormancy.

  You can buy plug-in imp modules that let you choose from up to eighty or a hundred different ethernet offerings at any one time. More and more people all over the country are listening to the same shows, admiring the same performers, telling the same jokes. Unity isn’t bad, especially in a country as big as the Confederation, and I don’t deny the advantages of being able to pass on news, for instance, quickly.

  So why didn’t I have an ethernet set of my own? I guess the basic reason is that too much of what they spread is, pardon my Latin, crap. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’d sooner think for myself than get my entertainment premasticated. Go ahead, call me old-fashioned.

  When I got to the office the next morning, the wizard was still working on the elevator shaft. No, I take it back; more likely, the wizard was working on the elevator shaft again. What with everybody’s budget being tight these days, the government isn’t enthusiastic about overtime. I walked up to my office. Yes, I know it’s good exercise. It also wasted the shower I’d taken just before I left home.

  And on my desk waiting for me, just as I’d known it would be, was my second draft of the report on the spilled load of fumigants. I gave it a quick look-through. Not only had my boss changed about half of her revisions back to what I originally wrote, she’d added a whole new set, something she didn’t often do on a second pass. And on the last page, in green ink that looked as if it would be good for pacts with demons, she’d written, “Please give me final copy this afternoon.”

  I felt like pounding my head on the desktop. That cursed silly report, which could have been and should have been two words long, was going to keep me from getting any useful work done that morning. Then the phone started yelling at me, and the report turned into the least of my worries.

  “Environmental Perfection Agency, Fisher speaking,” I said, sounding as brisk and businesslike as I could before I’d had my second cup of coffee.

  Just as if I hadn’t spoken, my phone asked me, “You are Inspector David Fisher of the Environmental Perfection Agency?”—and I knew I was talking to a lawyer. When I admitted it again, the fellow on the other end said, “I am Samuel Dill, of the firm of Elworthy, Frazer, and Waite, representing the interests of the Devonshire Land Management Consortium. I am given to understand that yesterday you absconded with certain proprietary documents of the aforesaid Consortium.”

  Even through two phone imps, I could hear that capital “C” thud into place. I could also hear Mr. Dill building himself a case. I said, “Counselor, please let me correct you right at the outset. I did not ‘abscond with’ any documents. I did take certain parchments, as I was authorized to do under a search warrant granted in Confederal court yesterday.”

  “Inspector Fisher, that warrant was a farce, which you must realize as well as I. Had you fully implemented all its provisions—”

  “But I didn’t,” I answered sharply. “And, in case you have a Listener on this call, I make no such admission about the warrant. It was duly issued in reaction to a perceived threat to the environment from the Devonshire dump. And surely you, sir, must admit examining dump records is not unreasonable in light of evidence showing, among other things, increased birth defects in the community surrounding the dump.”

  “I deny the land management consortium is in any way responsible for this statistical aberration,” Dill replied, as I’d known he would.

  I pressed him: “Do you deny the need to investigate the matter?” When he didn’t answer right away, I pressed harder: “Do you deny that the EPA has the authority to check records to evaluate possible safety hazards?”

  By now, I ought to be old enough to know better than to expect straight answers from lawyers. What I got instead was about a five-minute speech. No, Dill didn’t deny our right to investigate, but he did deny that the dump (not that he ever called it a dump, not even once) could possibly be responsible for anything, even, it sounded like, the shadow the containment fence cast. He also kept coming back to the scope of the warrant under which I’d conducted the search.

  Blast Maximum Ruhollah. That warrant was the juristic equivalent of performing necromancy to get someone to tie your shoelaces for you. I said, “Counselor, let me ask you again: do you think my taking the documents I took was in any way exceptionable?”

  I got back another speech, but what it boiled down to was no. Dill finished, “I want to put you on notice that the Devonshire Land Management Consortium will not under any circumstances tolerate your use of that outrageous warrant to conduct fishing expeditions through our records.”

  “I understand your concern,” I said, which shut him up without conceding anything. He finally got off the phone, and I put the second-generation changes into that worthless Hydra-headed report. I was about halfway through letting the access spirit scan it when the phone yowled again.

  I said something I hoped nobody (and Nobody) noticed before I answered it. Turned out to be Tony Sudakis. He said, “I just wanted to let you know my people aren’t too happy about my turning records over to you yesterday.”

  “They’ve made me aware of that already, as a matter of fact,” I said, and told him about the phone call from the Consortium’s lawyer. “I hope I haven’t gotten you into a pickle over this.”

  “I’ll survive,” he said. “However much they want to, they can’t send me to perdition for obeying the law. If you push that warrant too hard, though, things’ll get more complicated than anybody really wants.”

  “Yeah,” I said, still puzzled about where he was coming from. The contemptuous way he dismissed higher management made me guess he’d worked his little charm with the amulet again, but the message he delivered wasn’t that different from Dill’s. I’d got somewhere pushing Dill, so I decided to push Sudakis a little, too: “You aren’t having any kind of trouble out there, are you?”

  But Sudakis didn’t push. “Perkunas, no!” he exclaimed, an oath I didn’t recognize. “Everything’s fine here… except for your ugly numbers.”

  “Believe me, I don’t like those any better than you do,” I said, “but they’re there, and we need to find out why.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He suddenly turned abrupt. “Listen, I gotta go. ’Bye.” He probably had done his little charm, then, and run out of time on it.

  I pulled out my Handbook of Goetics and Metapsychics to see what it had to say about Perkunas. I found out he was a Lithuanian thunder-god. Was Sudakis a Lithuanian name? I didn’t know. The Lithuanians, I read, had been about the last European people to come to terms with Christianity, and a lot of them also remained on familiar terms with their old gods. Tony Sudakis certainl
y sounded as if he was.

  Grunting, I put the handbook back on the shelf. Anybody who uses it a lot develops shoulders like an Olympiadic weightlifter’s—if you hung two copies on opposite ends of a barbell, you could sure train with ’em.

  I’d just started my third stab at revising that blinking report when the phone went off again. I thought hard about ordering the imp to answer that I wasn’t there, but integrity won. A moment later, I wished it hadn’t: “Inspector Fisher? Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. I am Colleen Pfeiffer, of the legal staff of the Demondyne Consortium.”

  “Yes?” I said, not wanting to give her any more rope than she had already.

  “Inspector Fisher, I have been informed that you are investigating the sorcerous byproducts Demondyne deposits in the Devonshire containment area.”

  “Among others, that’s correct, Counselor. May I ask who told you?” I’d expected calls from some of the consortia that dumped at Devonshire (I’d also expected nobody’s lawyer would say anything so bald as that), but I hadn’t expected to get the first one by half past nine of the morning after I searched.

  Like any lawyer worth a prayer, Mistress Pfeiffer was better at asking questions than answering them. She went on as if I hadn’t spoken: “I want you to note two areas of concern of Demondyne’s, Inspector Fisher. First, as you must be aware, byproduct information can be valuable to competitors. Second, much of our work is defense-related. Some of the information you have in your possession might prove of great interest to foreign governments. An appropriate security regime is indicated by both these considerations.”

  “Thank you for expressing your concern, Counselor,” I said. “I have never had any reason to believe the EPA’s security precautions don’t do the job. The parchments to which you refer have not left my office.”

  “I am relieved to hear that,” she said. “May I assume your policy will remain unchanged, and make note of this for the rest of the legal staff and other consortium officials?”

  Such an innocent-sounding question, to have so many teeth in it. I answered cautiously: “You can assume I’ll do my best to keep your parchments safe and confidential. I’m not in a position to make promises about where they’ll be at any given moment.”

  “Your response is not altogether satisfactory,” she said.

  Too bad, I thought. Out loud, I said, “Counselor, I’m afraid it’s the best I can do, given my own responsibilities and oaths.” Let her make something of that.

  My phone imp reproduced a sigh. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who thought I was having a bad day. Colleen Pfeiffer said, “I will transmit what you say, Inspector Fisher. Thank you for your time.”

  I’d just reached for the fumigants report—I still hadn’t had the chance to let our access spirit finish looking at it—when the phone yarped again. I took in vain the names of several Christian saints in whose intercession I don’t believe. Then I lifted the handset. It was, after all, part of my job, even if I was growing ever more convinced I wasn’t going to get around to any other parts today.

  No, you’re wrong—it wasn’t another lawyer. It was the owner of Slow Jinn Fizz, an excitable fellow named Ramzan Durani. I’d noted that as one of the smaller companies that used the Devonshire dump; evidently it wasn’t big enough to keep lawyers on staff just to sic them on people. But the owner had the same concerns the woman from Demondyne and the fellow from the Devonshire Land Management Consortium had had. For some reason or other, I began to suspect a trend.

  Then I found myself with another irate proprietor trying to scream in my ear, this one a certain Jorge Vasquez, who ran an outfit called Chocolate Weasel. I tried to distract him by asking—out of genuine curiosity, I assure you—just what Chocolate Weasel did, but he was in no mood to be distracted. He seemed sure every secret he had was about to be published in the dailies and put out over the ethernet.

  Calming him down, getting him to believe his secrets could stay safe for all of me, took another twenty minutes. I still wanted to know why he called his business Chocolate Weasel and what sort of magic he did in connection with it, but I didn’t want to know bad enough to listen to him for twenty minutes more, so I didn’t ask. I figured I could make a fair guess from the dump records anyhow.

  When I got around to them. If I ever got around to them. That all began to look extremely unlikely. Just as I was about to let the spirit start moving with the report again, someone came into my office. I felt like screaming, “Go away and let me work!” But it was my boss, so I couldn’t.

  Despite my grumblings, Beatrice Cartwright isn’t a bad person. She’s not even a bad boss, most ways. She’s a black lady about my age, maybe twenty-five pounds heavier than she ought to be (she says forty pounds, but she dreams of being built like a light-and-magic celeb, which I’m afraid ain’t gonna happen). She’s usually good about keeping higher-ups off her troops’ backs, but she can’t do much when Charlie Kelly calls you (or, more to the point, me) at home at five in the morning.

  “David, I need to talk with you,” she said. I must have looked as harassed as I felt, because she added hastily, “I hope it won’t take up too much of your time.” Even talking business, her voice had a touch of gospel choir in it. She never hit people over the head with her faith, though. I liked her for that.

  I said, “Bea, I’ll have that fumigants report for you as soon as the bloody phone stops squawking at me for three minutes at a stretch.” I looked at it, expecting it to go off on cue. But it kept quiet.

  “Never mind the report.” She sat down in the chair by my desk. “What I want to know is why I’ve gotten calls from Loki and Convoo and Portentous Products this morning, all of them screaming for me to have you pulled away from the Devonshire dump. I didn’t even know you were working on anything connected with the Devonshire dump.” She gave me her more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger look, the one calculated to make even an eighth-circle sinner get the guilts.

  More-in-sorrow-than-in-anger disappeared when I explained how Charlie had gone around her to call me. Real anger replaced it. If she’d been white, she’d have turned red. She said, “I am sick to death of people playing these stupid games. Mr. Kelly will hear from me, and that is a promise. Doesn’t he have any idea what channels are for?” She took a deep breath and deliberately calmed down. “All right, so that’s how you got involved with the Devonshire dump. Why are these people phoning me and screaming blue murder?”

  “Because something really is wrong there.” By now, I could rattle off the numbers from the Thomas Brothers’ scriptorium in my sleep. “And because I’m trying to find out what, and—I think—because the Devonshire Land Management Consortium honchos aren’t very happy about that.”

  “It does seem so, doesn’t it?” Bea thought for maybe half a minute. “I still am going to talk to Mr. Charles Kelly, don’t you doubt it for a minute. But I would say that, however you got this project, David, you are going to have to see it through.”

  “I thought the same thing the minute I first saw those birth defect statistics up at the monastery,” I answered.

  “All right. I’m glad we understand each other about that, then. From now on, though, I expect to be kept fully informed on what you’re doing. Do I make myself clear?”

  I almost sprained my neck nodding. Even if she weren’t my boss, Bea wouldn’t be a good person to argue with. And she was dead right here. I said, “I was going to tell you as soon as I got the chance—Monday morning staff meeting at the latest. It’s just that”—I waved at the chaos eating my desk—“I’ve been busy.”

  “I understand that. You’re supposed to be busy. That’s what they pay you for.” Bea stood up to go, then turned back for a Parthian shot: “In spite of all this, I do still want the revisions on that spilled fumigants report finished before you go home tonight.” She swept away, long skirt trailing regally after her.

  I groaned. Before I had the chance to let the access spirit finish scanning the secondary revisions (and, let us not forget, the pri
mary revisions about which Bea had later changed her mind), the phone yelled for attention again.

  After Judy and I went to synagogue Friday night, we flew back to my place. I’ve already remarked that my orthodoxy is imperfect. Really observant Jews won’t use carpets or any other magic on the Sabbath, though some will have a sprite trained to do things for them that they aren’t allowed to do themselves—a shabbas devil, they call it.

  But such fine scruples weren’t part of my upbringing, so I don’t feel sinful in behaving as I do. Judy’s attitude is close to mine. Otherwise, she would have called me on the carpet instead of getting on one with me.

  When we were settled with cold drinks in the front room, she said, “So what’s the latest on the Devonshire dump?”

  I took a sip of aqua vitae, let it char its way down to my belly. Then, my voice huskier than it had been before, I explained how all the consortia that dumped at Devonshire were so delighted to have their records examined.

  “How do they know their records are being examined?” Judy, as I’ve noted, does not miss details. She spotted this one well before I needed to point it out to her.

  “Good question,” I said approvingly. “I wish I had a good answer. The people who’ve been calling me, though, sound like they’ve been rehearsing for a chorus.” My voice, to put it charitably, is less than operatic. I burst into song anyhow: “It has come to my attention that—” I gave it about enough vibrato to fly a carpet through.

  Judy winced, for which I didn’t blame her. She tossed back the rest of her drink, then got out those two little porcelain cups. I would have been more flattered if I hadn’t had the nagging suspicion she was trying to get me to shut up.