Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

“Sylphs are like that,” I agreed. “Always have been. How do you propose to get them to act any different?”

“As I said before, we have a two-element approach to the problem—”

He pulled a chart out of his top desk drawer and showed me what he meant. If he hadn’t been an aerospace thaumaturge, he would have called it the carrot-and-stick approach. As it was, he talked about sylph-esteem and sylph-discipline.

Sylph-esteem, I gathered, involved making the sylphs above the Garuda Bird launch site so happy they wouldn’t think about blowing the Bird around as it flew past them. Like a lot of half-smart plans, it looked good on parchment. Trouble is, sylphs by their very nature are happy-go-lucky already, and also changeable as the weather. How do you go about not only making them even more cheerful than they were already but also making them stay that way?

If you ask me (which Magister Arnold didn’t), sylph-discipline is a better way to go. Putting the fear of higher Powers into the sylphs might well make the air elementals behave themselves long enough to let the Garuda Bird get through. True, you couldn’t keep it up long, sylphs being as they are, but then, you wouldn’t need to.

“For sylph-discipline to be effective, timing is of the essence,” Arnold said. “Implement your deterrence activity too soon and the elementals forget the brief intimidation; implement it too late and it is useless. We are still in the process of developing the sorcerous systems that will enable us to ensure minimal sylphic disturbance as the Garuda Bird proceeds on its mission.”

“If you’re still developing them, am I correct in assuming that no byproducts from that element of your project would appear on my list of contaminants from Loki?”

“Let me check, if I may,” he said. He looked at my chart, just as I’d looked at his. “No, that’s not correct. Some of this activity with Beelzebub comes from our shop.”

I remembered the patch of flies at the Devonshire dump and shivered a little. Dealing with Beelzebub involves some of the most potent, most dangerous sorcery there is. I said, “Sounds like overkill to me. Why pick such a mighty potentate of the Descending Hierarchy to overawe the air elementals?”

My guess was that asking the question would prove a waste of time, that Arnold would baffle me with technical jargon till I gave up and went away. But he fooled me, saying, “It’s really quite straightforward, at least in broad outline. We shall require the Lord of the Flies to inflict a plague of his creatures on the sylphs to distract them from the passage of the Garuda Bird.”

“You don’t think small,” I said. Then something else occurred to me: “But what’s to keep the flies from tormenting the Garuda Bird along with the air elementals?”

Magister Arnold smiled thinly. “As I said, it’s straightforward in broad outline. Details of the negotiations with the demon are anything but simple, as you may imagine. He is, if you will forgive me, hellishly clever.”

“Yes.” I let it go at that; if it were up to me, I’d have come up with some other way of distracting the sylphs. After a couple of seconds, I said, “Don’t byproducts from a conjuration involving Beelzebub have a chance of sliding through the underground containment scheme at the dump? They aren’t all volatile, as you claimed before.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Arnold sounded anything but happy about supposing that was true, but he did it anyhow. I give him credit for that. He tried to put the best face on it: “You haven’t alluded to these particular byproducts as being the ones which are leaking, however, Inspector Fisher. Until you show me evidence that they are, I hope you will forgive my doubts.”

“Okay, fair enough,” I said. Going around the edges of the dump with a sensitive spellchecker, checking air and earth, fire and water for sorcerous pollutants would blow Charlie Kelly’s request for discretion further into space than the Garuda Bird could carry it, but that couldn’t be helped, not now.

I got up and started to leave. I’d just about made it to the door when I remembered the demon imprisoned in my visitor’s talisman. I turned around and headed right back toward Magister Arnold. He was coming after me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t mention it.” His voice was dry. “My own peace of mind is involved in keeping you healthy till you get out the door, you know. Just think of all the parchmentwork I’d have to fill out if an Environmental Perfection Agency inspector got stung to death by the Loki security system. I wouldn’t get any real work done for weeks.”

Knowing the EPA bureaucratic procedures as I do, I was sure he was right about that. Then a couple of casually uttered words sank in. “Stung to death , Magister Arnold?” I said, gulping. “The security guard didn’t mention that little detail.”

“Well, he should have,” Arnold answered testily. He must have noticed my face chance expression. “Before you ask, Inspector, we do have a permit to incorporate deadly force into our security setup because of the sensitive nature of so much of what we do here. If you like, I will be happy to show you a copy, complete with chrysobull, of that permit.”

“No, never mind.” The assurance in his voice said he wasn’t bluffing. And if I wanted to check, I could do it at the Criminal and Magical Courts building. “But visitors should be warned before they enter the secure area, sir. They’d have more of an incentive for following instructions carefully.”

“Oh, it seems to work out all right. We haven’t lost one in a couple of weeks.” The aerospace man had a perfect deadpan delivery. At first I accepted what he’d said without thinking about it, then did a double take, and only then noticed the very corners of his mouth curling up. I snorted. He’d got me good.

He led me out to the door by which I’d entered. As soon as I was on the far side of it, I took off the talisman (now I could) and all but threw it at the security guard. “You didn’t tell me it was lethal,” I snarled.

“If your intentions were good, sir, you didn’t need to know,” he answered. “And if they were bad, you also didn’t need to know.”

He should have been a Jesuit. After I got done gasping for air, I slunk out toward my carpet, then headed for home. It was still early, but if I’d gone someplace else and done my song and dance, I’d have been late. I was late the day before. Put the two days together, I figured, and they’d come out even. It was the sort of logic you’d expect after a Zoroastrian lunch, but it satisfied me for the moment.

Because I was early, I made good time on the way back down to Hawthorne. Of course, that left me rattling around my flat for a chunk of the afternoon. I’m usually good at just being there by myself, but it wasn’t working that day. I didn’t feel like going out and going shopping; besides, with next payday getting close and the last one only a ghostly memory, the ghouls had been chewing on my checking account.

I decided to do something to put crowns into my pocket, not take them out. I had three or four sacks of aluminum cans rattling around under the sink and in my closet; I took ’em out (which freed up space to put in more), carried ’em down to my carpet, and headed for the local recycling center.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND SAVE ENERGY , said the sign outside: RECYCLE ALUMINUM. I nodded approvingly as I lugged the cans over. Some programs sell themselves as being good for the environment when they’re not, but recycling isn’t one of them.

The fellow at the center tossed the cans on the scale, looked back at a little chart on the wall behind him. “Give you two crowns sixty,” he said, and proceeded to do just that.