Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

“I must advise you to keep your suspicions to yourself,” the spook said after a longish pause {he might as weU have been on the telephone ran through my mind—one of those maddening bursts of irrelevance that will pop up no matter what you do). “Reaching the wrong ears, your prophecy could become self-fulfilling.”

“It might help if you’d tell me which ears are the wrong ones.” If I sounded plaintive, can you blame me?

He shook his murky head. “No, for two reasons. First, the information is classified and therefore not to be casually disseminated under any circumstances. And second, the more you know, the more apt you are to betray yourself to those who may have reason to be interested in your knowledge.

Your basic assumption should be that no one may be privy to your speculations. If anyone with whom you come into contact shows undue interest in this area, summon me at once from Central Intelligence headquarters in D.StC.”

“How do I get hold of you in particular?” I asked—I mean. Central Intelligence has a lot of spooks on the payroll.

“My name is Legion,” he said. “Henry Legion.” He turned around, walked out through my chair and wall, and was gone.

Next day, thank God, was Friday. Traffic was light going in, as it often is on Friday mornings. I wasn’t fooled; I knew I’d have the usual devilish time getting home. I tried not to think about that. Maybe, I told myself as I floated up the elevator shaft, I’d have myself a nice easy day, knock off early, and beat the weekend crunch on St James’ Freeway.

I walked into my office, took one look at the IN basket, and screamed. Sitting there was one of the ugliest Confederal forms ever designed. In big block letters, the cover said, REQUEST FOR ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT. Slightly smaller letters added, PROPOSED IMPORTATION OF NEW SPECIES INTO BARONY OF ANGELS.

Having got the scream out of my system, I merely moaned as I sank into my chair. Who, I wondered, wanted to bring what into Angels City, and why? I just wished Huitzilopochtli had to fill out all the forms he’d need to establish himself here legally: we’d be free of him till Doomsday, or maybe twenty minutes longer.

Huitzilopochtli and his minions, unfortunately, didn’t bother with forms. With trembling fingers, I picked up the report request and opened it. Somebody, it seemed, was proposing to schlep leprechauns over from the Auld Sod in hibemiation, revive them once they got here, and establish a colony in Angels City.

At first glance it looked reasonable. We have a good number of Erse here, and a lot more who pretend they are when St. Padraig’s Day rolls around. The leprechauns wouldn’t have any trouble feeling at home in Angels City. Tracking the little critters to their pots of gold would help a few poor folk pay off the mortgage. The odds were about like winning the lottery, but who doesn’t plunk down a few crowns on the lottery every now and again?

The way of environmental issues, though, is to get more complicated the longer you look at them. Figuring out how leprechauns would affect the local thecology wasn’t going to be easy: tracing the interactions of beings from This Side is complicated enough, but when you start having Powers involved—I moaned again, medium loud. One of the things I’d have to examine was the impact importing leprechauns would have on the Chumash Powers (assuming those weren’t extinct). If the Chumash Powers were still around, hanging by a metaphorical fingernail, would bringing in leprechauns rob them of the tiny measure of devotion they needed to survive?

Bea walked by the open door just in time to hear that moan. She stuck her head into the office. “Why, David, whatever is the matter?” she asked, as if she didn’t know.

This,” I said, pointing to the orange cover of the environmental impact report request. “Do you by any chance have a spell for making days forty-eight hours long so I can do everything I’m supposed to?”

“If I did, I’d use it myself,” she said, “but I don’t think God’s been in the habit of holding back the sun since Joshua’s day.”

“This is going to be a bear to handle,” I said, “especially on top of the Devonshire dump case and the Chumash extinction study—” St. Elmo’s fire came on above my head, just like you see in the cartoons. “That’s why you passed it on to me: so I could run it parallel to the Chumash project.”

That’s right, David.” She smiled sweetly. Bea isn’t what you’d call pretty, but she can look almost angelic sometimes: being sure you’re on the right path will do that for you, I guess. She went on, “I figured it would be better to have both of them in your hands than to make two people run back and forth checking with each other all the time and maybe working at cross purposes.”

“Okay,” I said; put that way, it made sense. Bea didn’t get to be boss of my unit on the strength of an angelic smile; she has a head on her shoulders.

The easiest way to handle the issue would be to work up two scenarios,” she said: “one for the leprechauns’ environmental effects without worrying about the Chumash powers, the other assuming those Powers do still manifest themselves here.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” I scribbled a note on a scrap of foolscap on my desk. “Thanks, Bea.”

“Any time,” she said, sweetly still, and went off to inflict impossible amounts of work on someone else. To be fair, I have to admit she worked like a team ofPercherons herself. And she had put her finger on the most efficient way to handle the two studies side by side. They still wouldn’t be easy or quick. I’d have to design simulations approximating the immediate effect of leprechauns on the thecology of Angels City with and without taking into account the Chumash Powers. Then an EPA wizard would animate the simulations and follow them under the crystal ball as far into the future as he could, noting changes every year or two until the images faded into uncertainty.

I’d have to justify every assumption I used in my initial simulations, too. The people who wanted to import leprechauns in carpetioad lots and the folk who were convinced bringing in even one wee fellow would disrupt the local thecosystem would both be preparing their own models and running them under crystal balls. I’d need to demonstrate that mine were the most accurate representations of what was likely to happen.

All of which meant that I didn’t get out to Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins that afternoon, let alone Chocolate Weasel.

And neither I nor anybody else did any fancy spellchecker sniffing around the Devonshire dump to try to find out just what (if anything) was leaking out.

People long for the days (or at least they say they do) when the king ruled instead of reigning, when the power of the barons was undiluted, when the prime minister kept quiet and did what he was told. They say the government’s gotten too big, too complex.

Maybe they’re right some of the time. I couldn’t teD you for sure; politics is a brand of theology that never excited me. But I will tell you this: some important EPA work wasn’t getting done because my department didn’t have enough people to deal with projects as fast as they came up. Am I supposed to assume we’re the only government outfit with that problem?

I know I worked overtime that night; I made it to the synagogue with bare minutes to spare before the rabbi started singing L’khah dodi to welcome in the Sabbath. Judy was sitting so close to the front on the women’s side that she didn’t even see me come in. I didn’t manage to nod at her—let alone say hello—until the service was done.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” she said after we hugged.

“Work.” I made it sound like the four-letter word it was.