Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

“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 primary 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.