Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

“Tell me what you’re doing here,” I said. “Please.” People have been trying to cure apsychia since the dawn of civilization, and probably long before that. Modern goetic technology can work plenty of marvels, but that…

“Jinnetic engineering can accomplish things no one would have imagined possible only a generation ago,” Durani said. “Combining the raw strength of the jinn with the rigor and precision of Western sorcery—”

“That much I know,” I said. Jinnetic engineering outfits have fueled a lot of the big boom on the Bourse the past few years, and with reason. The only way their profit margins could be bigger would be for the jinni to fetch bags of gold from the Other Side.

But Durani had found something else for them to do Over There: jinn-splicing, he called it. What he had in mind was for the jinni to take a tiny fraction of the spiritual packet that made up a disembodied human soul, bring it back to This Side, and, using recombinant techniques he didn’t—wouldn’t—describe, join it with a bunch of other tiny fragments to produce what was in essence a synthesized soul, which could then be transplanted into some poor little apsychic kid.

“So you see,” he said, gesturing violently, “it is impossible—impossible, I tell you!—for Slow Jinn Fizz or any of our byproducts to cause apsychia. We aim to prevent this tragedy, to make it as if it never was, not to cause it.”

Whether what he aimed at was what he accomplished, I couldn’t have said. For that matter, neither could he, not with any confidence. Sorcerous byproducts have a way of taking on lives of their own.

But that wasn’t what was really on my mind. “Have you actually transplanted one of these, uh, synthesized souls into an apsychic human being?” I knew there was awe in my voice, the same sort of awe the Garuda Bird program raises in me: I felt I was at the very edge of something bigger than I’d ever imagined, and if I reached out just a little, I could touch it.

“We have transplanted three so far,” he answered with quiet pride.

“And?” I wanted to reach out, all right, reach out and pull the answer from him.

“The transplants appear to have taken: that is to say, the synthesized souls bond to the body, giving the apsychic a true spirituality he has never before known.” Durani held up a warning hand. “The true test, the test of Judgment, however, has not yet arisen—all three individuals who have undergone the transplant procedure remain alive. Theory indicates a risk that the synthesized soul may break up into its constituent fragments when its connection to the body is severed at death. We shall research that when the time arises.”

“Yes, I’d think so,” I said. A soul, after all, exists in eternity: it lives here for a while, but it’s primarily concerned with the Other Side. What a tragedy it would be to give a living man a soul, only to have him lack one when he died and needed it most. Worse than if he’d never had one, if you ask me—and till that moment, I’d never imagined anything worse than apsychia.

Something else struck me: “What happens to the souls from which you’re taking out your little packets? Are they damaged? Can they still enspirit a human being?”

“This is why we take so little from each one,” Durani answered. “To the limits of our experimental techniques, no measurable damage occurs. Nor should it, for is not God not only compassionate and merciful but also loving and able to forgive us our imperfections?”

“Maybe so, but do your artificial imperfections leave these, hmm, sampled souls more vulnerable to evil influence from the Other Side?” The further I got into the case of the Devonshire dump, the more hot potatoes it handed me. This new technique of Durani’s was astonishing, but what would its environmental impact be? The lawsuits I saw coming would tie up the ecclesiastical courts for the next hundred years.

You may think I’m exaggerating, but I mean that literally. For instance, suppose somebody does something really horrible: oh, suppose he burns down a monastery. And suppose he’s able to convince a court that, on account of the Durani technique, he’s been deprived of 1% or 0.1% or 0.001% of the soul he would have had otherwise. Is he fully responsible for what he did, or is it partly Durani’s fault? A smart canon lawyer could make a good case for blaming Slow Jinn Fizz.

Or suppose somebody does something horrible, and then claims as a defense that he’s been deprived of part of his soul by the Durani technique. How do you go about proving him wrong, if he is? I’m no prophet, but I foresaw the sons of a lot of canon lawyers (and the nephews of Catholic canonists) heading for fine collegia on the profits of that argument alone.

And here’s another one: let’s suppose the Durani technique is as safe as he says it is, and doesn’t do irreparable harm to anybody’s soul. Let’s suppose again that his synthesized souls have even been passing the test of Judgment. But nothing manmade can hope to match God’s perfection. What happens if a misassembled soul does break apart on death, leaving a poor apsychic all dressed up with no place to go? To what sort of recompense is his family entitled?

All at once, I wished again that magic were impossible, that we just lived in a mechanical world. Yes, I know life would be a lot harder, but it would be a lot simpler, too. The trouble with technology is that, as soon as it solves a problem, the alleged solution presents two new ones.

But the trouble with no technology, of course, is that problems don’t get solved. I don’t suppose apsychics, suddenly offered the chance for a better hereafter, would worry about risks. I wouldn’t, in their shoes.

I guess nothing is ever simple. Maybe it’s just as well. If things were simple, we wouldn’t need an Environmental Perfection Agency and I’d be out of a job.

Caught in my own brown study, I’d missed a couple of sentences. When my ears woke up again, Durani was saying, “—may develop a sampling technique to bring back components only from what you might term mahatmas , great souls, those who have spirit to spare.”

“Very interesting,” I answered, and so it was, though not altogether in the way he’d intended it. Sounded to me as though he had some concerns over safety himself. I wondered who his lawyers were. I hoped he had a good team, because I had the feeling—the strong feeling—he’d need one.

“Is there anything further, Inspector Fisher?” he asked. He’d relaxed now; I guess he only got vehement when he thought his interests were endangered. A lot of people are like that.

“That’s about it for now,” I told him, whereupon he relaxed even further. He thought the operative phrase there was that’s about it ; I thought it was for now . He’d done something new and splendid, all right, but I wasn’t sure he’d ever realize any profit from it. He hadn’t had a lawyer at his beck and call the week before. He’d need one soon, or more likely a whole swarm of them.

Remembering his call reminded me how many I—and Bea—had fielded all at once. I asked my watch what time it was, found out it was a few minutes before three. I decided to go over to the Devonshire Land Management Consortium offices and find out just how so many of their clients found out about the EPA investigation so fast.

My sigil got me into the office of a markgraf in charge of consortiate relations, a redheaded chap with hairy ears whose name was Peabody. He showed a full set of teeth undoubtedly kept so snowy white by sympathetic magic (I wondered what would happen if a forest fire spilled soot all over the snow to which those teeth were attuned).

I give him credit: he didn’t try to cast any spells over me. “Of course we notified our clients,” he said when I asked him my question. “Their interests were impacted by your search of files at the containment site, so we might have been liable to civil penalty had we kept silent.”