Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

More goodbyes. After they were through, I sat staring at the phone, wondering whether to call Henry Legion again or give Tony Sudakis a piece of my mind. Before I could do either, Rose stuck her head into my office and said, “Bea would like to see you and Michael up front, please. You weren’t there for staff meeting yesterday, so she wants to catch up on what you’ve been doing.”

“No,” I said. It came out utterly flat, as if—ridiculous notion—somebody built a mechanical that could talk.

Rose stared. She knows I’m not fond of staff meetings, but when the boss says come unto this one, he cometh; and when she says go unto that one, he goeth, at least if he knoweth what’s good for him. “But, David—” Rose began, trying to bring me to my senses.

“No,” I said again. “Can’t. Too busy. I was just going out into the field when you came in.” It wasn’t true, but I could make it so. I got up from my desk, started for the door. If Rose hadn’t got out of the way in a hurry, I’d have walked right through her.

“David, are you all right?” she called after me as I trudged down the hall.

“No,” I answered. Being very tired is kind of like being drunk; it makes you say the first thing that pops into your head. You often regret it later. I wondered if I’d still have a job to come back to even as I was sliding down to the parking lot It’s a good thing I’d come to know St. Ferdinand’s Valley well over the past few weeks: I could fly up to the Devonshire dump without having to think about where I was going.

I wasn’t real good at thinking, not then. When I’d told Rose I was about to go out and do field work, I hadn’t had the slightest idea where I’d go and do it. Grilling Tony Sudakis face to face instead of over the phone was the closest thing to a good idea I’d had.

This time, the security guard didn’t need to see my EEA sign before he got on the phone with Sudakis. A minute later, he set up the footbridge and I went into the containment area. As I walked up the warded path toward Sudakis’ fortress of an office, I looked for the patch of Nothing I’d seen a couple of times before. Rather to my relief, I didn’t notice it, not then.

Sudakis opened the outer door himself. He probably started to say something pleasant and meaningless, but one look at my face made him change his mind. “You all right, Dave?” he asked.

I gave him the same answer I’d given Rose: “No.” To him, though, I amplified it “I was supposed to go out to dinner with my fiancee last night after I got back from examining this place. I didn’t get to do dial When I went down to her flat, I found she’d been kidnapped.”

“That’s terrible,” he exclaimed, a comment I could hardly disagree with. He started to take me inside, then stopped in his tracks. Say what you like about Antanas Sudakis, he’s plenty sharp. He looked back at me. “Wait a minute,” he said slowly. “You dunk there’s some land of connection between us and that, don’t you? Listen, Dave, I’m here to tell you that—”

I overrode him: “You bet your sweet ass I dunk there’s a connection. Tony. I’ve drought there was a connection ever since the Thomas Brothers monastery burned down. I really thought there was a connection when a couple of louts tried to kill me after I got off the freeway one afternoon—”

“When what?” Now he interrupted me.

I realized I hadn’t told him about that, so I did. Then I went on, “And now, the day after the EPA wizard and I scan this place, Judy gets snatched. What am I supposed to dunk, Tony? What would you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said, hardly louder than a whisper. He was shaken—I could see that. His left hand reached for the little amber amulet he wore under his shirt. He made it go down by what looked like a deliberate effort of will. I decided to shake him up some more; “And just so you know, Tony, you do have a leak in your containment setup. Michael Manstein and I found Hollywood stardust all around your walls.”

“Stardust is harmless,” he said, rallying as gamely as he could.

“Yeah, but if stardust is leaking, what else is getting out with it?” Michael had had to make that obvious point for me; now I took malicious pleasure in hitting Sudakis over the head with it He was tough. I’d known that already. “You didn’t find anything else, did you?” he demanded.

“No, but we will. Us only a matter of time and thaumaturgy, and you know it as well as I do.” I took a deep breath, tried to calm down. “Anyway, that isn’t what I came up here for. I wanted to find out who you called when Michael and I got to work out here. Whoever it is either did the kidnapping themselves or else called somebody to arrange to have it done.”

The only call I made was to the Devonshire Land Management Consortium office,” he said. “I had to let them know so-they-could—” He ran down like a mechanical watch as he realized what he was saying. He kicked at the cement under his feet “Oh, shit.”

Them or somebody connected with them,” I said. “It just about has to be.”

I thought he’d give me more arguments, more denials, but he didn’t “Yeah,” he said in a voice like ashes.

“So what are you going to do about it?” I said, pushing hard. “Be a good little consortium soldier and pretend none of this has ever happened? You can. It would be legal. You’d probably even get promoted. But could you look at yourself in the mirror whenever you went into a men’s room?”

“Fuck you, Dave,” he said evenly. I did try to hit him then.

He caught my fist before it connected. I’d known he was stronger than I am, but not how much. If he’d hit me back, somebody else would be telling you this story. But he didn’t He just hung onto me for most of a minute, then said, “You done being stupid?”

I nodded. He let me go. “Good. You don’t want to fay preaching at me again. It won’t push me in the direction you want me to go. You got that?” He waited until I nodded again before he went on, “Okay. Now that you’ve got that straight I’d do everything I can to help you get your lady back. For my reasons, mind you, not yours. We’re wasting time here.”

“I don’t think I understand you at all,” I said.

“I don’t think you do, either.” It wasn’t pejorative: more as if he was stating a law of nature. Maybe he was. As I’ve said, I’d never dealt with anybody of European origin who still clung to his people’s old gods, not in an artificial cult like that of Hermes, but as part of a tradition as old and serious as my own. Balance of Powers, I thought and then wondered whose side Perkunas was on. After enduring umpty hundred years of Christianity, the Lithuanian Power might be as eager as Huitzilopochtli to get his own back.

But no matter where his god stood, I thought Tony stood with me. Almost dragging me in his wake, he started down the walk toward the exit. I happened to look back toward his office at just the right time. “Wait!” I exclaimed, and grabbed his arm.

It was like taking hold of the Juggernauts car; once he got moving, he didn’t want to stop for anything. “Look back there,” I said in a tone heading toward desperate. That’s what I was talking about before.”

Grudgingly, he turned around. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“I don’t see anything, either,” I answered. “I see Nothing.

Here, stand right where I am now.” I moved off the spot he moved onto it. He shook his head, started to go. Now I was desperate. “Stand on tiptoe,” I suggested; I’m several inches taller than he is.

He gave me a look that would have wilted me under any other circumstances. When I stayed crisp, he shrugged and went up on his toes. A second later, he said something in Lithuanian that I didn’t understand. Then he dropped back into English: “You were right after all, Dave. I don’t know what that is.”