Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

“I’ll be involved, yes,” he answered. “Is it convenient for you that I come down and discuss matters now? You’re on the sevendi floor, is that right?”

“Yes, and sure, come on down. Can you stop at the cafeteria and bring a couple of cups of coffee? I’ll pay for them.”

He came; we drank coffee; he asked all the same questions Johnson had the night before. Numbly, I gave the same answers. He scribbled notes. When I was done, he said,

“We’ll do everything we can for you, David, and for Mistress Ather. I promise you that” I noticed he didn’t promise they’d get her back alive and unhurt; he must have known belter than to make promises he might not be able to keep.

When he left, I called Henry Legion. The spook said, “I shall be there directly.” He was, too, faster crosscountry than Saul Klein had been from two floors up. Of course, Henry Legion hadn’t had to stop for coffee.

I told my story for the third time. Repetition made it feel almost as if it had happened to someone else—almost but not quite. The CI spook said, “This is disturbing. Events are moving faster than crystal-ball projections had indicated. My opinion is that your scanning around the toxic spell dump may well have been the precipitating factor.”

“But except for a little stardust, we didn’t find anything,” I said, nearly wailing, as if I were I kid who got caught and walloped for peeking in a bedroom window witthout even seeing anything interesting.

“You may know third,” the spook said. “I would doubt the perpetrators do.” Then he disappeared on me. I hate that. It always gives him the last word.

Two down. My next call was to Legate Kawaguchi. I wondered if he’d still be off on his other case, but no, I got him. “This is in relation to the kidnapping of Mistress Ather whom I met at the Thomas Brothers fire?” he asked when he heard it was me, so the Long Beach constables must have already talked with him.

That’s what this is in relation to, all right,” I said heavily.

“I can’t imagine any other reason for kidnapping Judy, especially when whoever did it also tried to kill me a few days ago.”

“I can imagine other reasons,” Kawaguchi said. Before I could start screaming at him, he went on, “I admit however, that your scenario appears to be of the highest probability. As you will have surmised”—and as I had surmised—“I have discussed this matter with the Long Beach force. I would, however, also be grateful for your firsthand account” I gave it to him. One more repetition, I thought one more movement out of the realm of reality and into that of discourse. In a way, it was a sort of anti-magic. Magic uses words to realize what had only been imagined. I was using them to turn tragedy and horror into memory, which is ever so much easier to handle.

When I was through, Kawaguchi said, “Did you learn from the forensics man what sort of sleep spell he detected at your fiancee’s flat?”

“You know, I didn’t,” I answered. “His plainclothesman—Johnson—and I went down to the Long Beach station so I could make my sworn statement there, and the forensics fellow didn’t stick his head into Johnson’s office while I was giving it.”

“I shall inquire,” Kawaguchi said. His words were spaced a little too far apart, as if he was writing and talking at the same time.

I said, “I wanted to check with you, too, Legate, to see if you have any new answers that would help dear up who did this to Judy.” Whoever it was had also undoubtedly arranged to have the earth elemental dropped on my flying carpet. At the moment, that seemed utterly unimportant to me.

“New answers, no,” he said. “I have some new questions, however: there has been vandalism relating to the Garuda Bird project at the Loki plant in Burbank, vandalism behind a hermetic seal.”

“That is supposed to be impossible,” I said, now speaking slowly myself—I was scrawling a note to call Matt Arnold.

“Many things once supposed impossible have come true,” Kawaguchi said. “Take virtuous reality, for example.”

“Thank you,” I exdaimed. “That reminds me of something else I wanted to ask you: what’s the more usual name for Pharwnachrus mooinno?”

Kawaguchi actually laughed; I hadn’t been sure he could.

“My apologies, Inspector; I should not have read the name to your secretary straight off the laboratory report. The common name for the bird in question is the quetzal.”

“Quetzal?” I slammed into that head on, as if my carpet had run into a building. “Are you sure?’

“Confirmed by an ornithologist and an Etruscan ornithomancer,” Kawaguchi said.

“You’re sure,” I admitted. “But that’s crazy. Michael Manstein—he runs the sorcery lab here—and I went around the Devonshire dump yesterday, and we found no trace of Aztedan sorcery leaking. He even tested with flayed human skin substitute for Huitzilopochtlism.”

“I have told you what I know,” Kawaguchi said. The possibility remains that the feather was somehow altered in its translation from virtuous reality into our own merely mundane space and time; as I noted at the time, if would not be accepted as evidence in a court of law. Another alternative is that the feather is indeed derived from a quetzal, but was deliberately placed within range of the scriptorium spirit Erasmus’ sensorium for the purpose of misleading us.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Or it might be real—whatever that means in connection with something out of virtuous reality.”

“Exactly so,” Kawaguchi said. “Ockham’s Razor argues for that interpretation, although the others cannot be ignored.”

I shave my data with Ockham’s Razor, too; it’s the most practical tool to use in preparing baseline data for projections and such. But, like any other razor, it will cut you if you’re not careful with it “Thanks for the information, Legate Kawaguchi,” I said.

“Would you do me one more favor, please. Would you call a spook named Henry Legion at Central Intelligence back in D.StC.”—I gave him the number—“and tell him what you’ve just told me? It’s something he needs to know, believe me. Use my name; it’ll help you get through to him.”

“I shall do as you suggest,” Kawaguchi answered slowly.

“The implications, however, are—troubling.”

“I know.” When I’d first heard Charlie Kelly reluctantly admit the possibility of the Third Sorcerous War, it chilled me for days. Now, as far as I was concerned, it was old news.

Judy bulked ever so much larger in my thoughts. I couldn’t worry about the whole world going up in smoke; that’s too much for any mere man to take in. But when some damned—I hope—bastard kidnaps the woman you love, you understand that real well. Kawaguchi and I said our goodbyes. He promised again that he would call Henry Legion. Me, I called Loki, and eventually got connected to Matt Arnold. “I just got off the phone with Legate Kawaguchi of the ACCD,” I told him.

“He said you had a break-in and some vandalism on the Garuda Bird project.”

“That’s right,” he answered. “One of our people was critically injured, too.”

“Kawaguchi didn’t say anything about that,” I said. “What happened?”

“He was bitten by a snake.” Even over the phone, I could hear Arnold’s voice turn grim. “Some dever sorcerer found a way to beat a hermetic seal. Did the constable tell you about that?”

“He mentioned that it had been done, but not how,” I answered. “You sound like you know.”

“I do, yes,” Arnold said. “There’ll be some sleepless nights up in Crystal Valley until they can bring their sorceware up to date.”

“You don’t need a crystal ball to predict that,” I agreed.