Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

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 certainly 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.”