Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Bornholm said, “The spellchecker’s already sniffing something nasty up ahead.”

Higgins rapped on the door. Now the boys from the SWAT team stood on either side of him, ready to kick it down. But it opened. I don’t know what I’d expected CuauhtÇmoc Hernandez to look like, but an Aztecan version of your well-loved grandfather wasn’t it. He had white hair, spectacles, and, until he took in the crowd on his front porch, a very pleasant expression.

That faded in a hurry, to be replaced by bewilderment. “What you want?” he asked in accented English.

“You are CuauhtÇmoc Hernandez, the curandero ?” Higgins said formally.

“ Sí , but—” The old man smiled. “You need what I got, señor ? Maybe you have trouble keeping your woman happy?”

From the way the back of Higgins’ neck went purple and then white, maybe he did have trouble keeping his woman happy. But he was a professional; his voice didn’t change as he went on, “Mr. Hernandez, I have here a warrant permitting the Angels City Constabulary to search these premises for substances contravening various sections of city, provincial, and Confederal ordinances dealing with controlled sorcerous materials, and another warrant for your arrest on a charge of dispensing such materials. You are under arrest, sir. Anything you say may be used against you.”

Hernandez stared as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “ Señor , you must be mistaken,” he said with considerable dignity. “I am just a curandero ; I don’t hardly do no magic worth the name.”

“Did you sell a potion to a pregnant woman named Lupe Cordero a few months ago?” I asked: “One that was supposed to fight morning sickness and keep the baby healthy?”

“I sell lots of these potions,” he said, shrugging. “It could be.”

“Lupe Cordero’s baby was born without a soul,” I told him.

He went pale under his swarthy skin; had he started off fair, he would have ended up the color of his shining hair. He crossed himself violently. “No!” he cried. “It cannot be!”

“I’m afraid it is, Mr. Hernandez,” I said, remembering Michael Manstein’s speculation that the curandero might not even know what all was going into his nostrums. I went on, “Sorcerous analysis of your potion shows that part of its power comes from ingredients and spells consecrated to Huitzilopochtli.”

Like any Aztecans, he knew of the gods his people had worshiped before the Spainish came to the New World. He got paler still; he reminded me of a cup of coffee into which you kept pouring more cream. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, señor , I did not use this, this poison of blood.”

“But it was there,” I said.

“It’s still there,” Bornholm the thaumatech added. “I can detect it inside the house. Nasty stuff.”

“Stand aside, Mr. Hernandez,” Higgins said in a voice like doom. The curandero stood aside, as if caught in a nightmare from which he couldn’t wake up. One of the fellows from the SWAT team took charge of him. The rest of us walked past them into the house.

It was none too neat in there; my guess was that he lived alone. A black-framed picture of a gray-haired woman on the mantle put more force behind the guess.

If he followed Huitzilopochtli, he sure didn’t let it show. The front room had enough garish Catholic images to stock a couple of churches, assuming you put quality ahead of quantity. Candles flickered in front of a carved wooden statuette of the Virgin. I glanced at Bornholm. She nodded; the little shrine was what it appeared to be.

One of the bedrooms was messy; it got a lot messier after the boys from the SWAT team finished trashing it. The kitchen was pretty bad, too: Hernandez was not what you’d call the neat kind of widower. The SWAT team started in there as soon as they were done with the bedroom.

What had been the den was the curandero ’s laboratory these days. A lot of the things in there were about what you’d expect to find in an Aztecian healer’s workroom: peyotl mushrooms (few more effective aids in reaching the Other Side), bark of the oloiuhqu plant (which has similar effects but isn’t as potent: it’s related to jimsonweed), a potion of xiuh-amolli root and dog urine that was supposed to prevent hair loss. Personally, I’d rather be bald.

Hernandez had had his triumphs, too: a glass bowl held dozens of what looked like tiny obsidian arrow points. Either they were a fraud to impress his patients or he’d been pretty good at curing elf-shot (from which the Aztecans suffer as badly as the Alemans, although Alemanian elves generally make their arrowheads out of flint).

We also found an infusion for invoking Tlazol-teteo, the demon of desire: not, apparently, to provoke lust, but rather to put it down. The infusion had a label written in Spainish on it. Bornholm the thaumatech translated it for us: “ ‘To be used together with a hot steam bath.’ ” She laughed. “I wouldn’t be horny after a steam bath anyhow, I don’t think.”

If that had been all the curandero was up to, the visit by the SWAT team would have been a waste of taxpayers’ hard-earned crowns. But it wasn’t. Bornholm went over to a table in one corner of the room. She looked at her spellchecker in growing concern. “It’s here somewhere, in amongst this gynecological stuff,” she muttered.

Again, a lot of the stuff you could find at any curandero ’s: leaves for rubbing against a new mother’s back to relive afterpangs, herbs to stimulate milk in women with new babies, a douche of ayo nelhuatl herb and eagle dung for pregnant women: all more or less harmless. But with them—

“Bingo!” Bornholm said when she opened a jar of clear liquid. I already knew her spellchecker was more sensitive and powerful than mine; now she showed that, being a constabulary model, it was also better protected against malign influences. Her face twisted as she read from the ground glass: “The microimps are reporting human blood and flayed human skin, all right. Disgusting.”

“Bring Hernandez in here,” Sublegate Higgins ordered. As soon as a couple of fellows from the SWAT team had done so, Higgins pointed at the jar and said, “What’s in there, you?”

“In that jar?” Hernandez said. “Is ferret blood and a little bit dragon’s blood. Is for mostly the ladies who are going to have babies. They get the—” He ran out of English and said something in Spainish.

“Hemorrhoids,” Bornholm translated. “Yeah, I’ve heard of that one.” She gave the curandero a look on whose receiving end I wouldn’t have wanted to be. “Brew this up yourself, did you?”

“No, no.” Hernandez shook his head vehemently. “Dragon blood is muy caro —very expensive. I buy this mix from another man—he say he is a curandero , too—at one of the, how you say, swap meets they have here. He give me good price, better than I get from anybody else ever.”

“I believe that,” I told him. “The reason you got such a good price is that it’s not what he told you it was. Tell us about this fellow. Is he young? Old? Does he come to the swap meets often?”

You can find just about anything at a swap meet, and cheap. Sometimes it’s even what the dealer says it is. But a lot of the time the fairy gold ring you got will turn to brass or lead in a few days, the horological demon in your watch will go dormant or escape—or what you think is medicine will turn out to be poison. The constabulary and the EPA do their best to keep the meets honest, but it’s another case of not enough men spread way too thin.

Hernandez said, “He calls himself Jose. He’s not young, not old. Just a man. I see him a few times. He is not regular there.”