Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

“Thank you,” I said. “But you know what? I think I’d rather have spent all that time in a nice, dull staff meeting.”

Her head went to one side; I realized I’d stuck my foot in my face. “I’m going to understand that the way I hope you meant it,” she said, to my relief more in sorrow—and in amusement—than in anger.

She let me escape then, so escape I did, to the smaller problems left behind after the spectacular collapse of the bigger ones. I plugged away at the leprechaun study, lining up values for my variables so I could get rolling on the crystal-ball prognostications maybe next week. I had to call the Angels City archdiocese for some of the data I needed; the Catholic Church has lived side by side with the Wee Polk on the Emerald Isle for the past fifteen hundred years, and knows more about ’em than anybody these days.

Try as I would, though, I didn’t get a whole lot done.

People kept coming in to congratulate me and wish me the best—Phylhs, Rose, Jose. Even if the papers were being coy, the folks I work with knew what I’d done. Maybe Michael had talked with them; I don’t know. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate their dropping by, but they kept distracting me from what I was trying to do. And when I got distracted, I had a hard time pulling my mind back where it was supposed to be.

I also kept trying to crystal-ball it in my head, to work out where in the big picture the events in Angels City really fit.

What did thwarting the Chumash Powers have to do with the liquidation of the Aztecian cabinet, for instance? Something, sure, but what?

As with the leprechaun study, I was missing data. Here, though, the Catholic Church wasn’t the place that had ’em. I called Central Intelligence back in D.StC. and asked for Henry Legion.

I listened to a long silence on the other end of the ether.

Then the CI operator asked, “Who’s calling, please?”

“David Fisher, from the EPA out in Angels City.”

“One moment, sir.” If that was one moment, you could live a long lifetime in three or four of them. At last, though, someone came back on the line—a new voice, but not Henry Legion’s. “Mr. Fisher? I’m sorry to have to tell you that Henry Legion’s essence has undergone dissolution. He gave his country the last full measure of devotion; his name will go up on the memorial tablet commemorating our agency’s heroes and martyrs. He shall not be forgotten, I assure you.”

“What happened?” I exclaimed. “And to whom am I talking?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer either of those questions, sir: security,” the new voice said. “I’m sure you understand.

Good day. Thank you for your concern,” The phone imps reproduced the sound of a handset clunking into its cradle.

I hung up, too, and stared at the phone for a while. Whatever Henry Legion had been doing, it cost him everything. I knew I’d never learn all the answers I wanted, not with him gone. I was back to my own guesses, for better or worse—probably worse. After seeing a little ways into his secret, secretive world, I was blind again.

I wondered if his passing had anything to do with the extermination of the sitting Aztecian cabinet, or perhaps with the disaster outside D.StC. the Times had mentioned. Did some sort of war try to start there, too, and get suppressed as it had in Angels City? More things I’d never know, not without Henry Legion to ask.

Since I’d never know, sitting around wondering was just a waste of taxpayers’ crowns. I buckled down and tried to do my job, but things came slow, slow. Maybe I suddenly needed a crisis breathing down my neck like a hungry werewolf to make myself perform.

Lord, what a horrid idea!

I flew into tile parking lot of the West Hills Temple of Heating about ten past one the next afternoon, then flew around inside the lot for the next ten minutes looking for a space for my carpet. I wouldn’t have been late, not for anything.

When I told the receptionist who I was and for whom I was looking, she said, “Go up to the fifth floor, Mr. Fisher.

Mistress Ather is in 547, right across the hall from the Intensive Prayer Unit. Just follow the IPU signs and you can’t go wrong.”

Famous last words, I knew. Well, this time the gal was right; the signs took me straight to 547. I didn’t know what to think about Judy’s being where she was. Should I have been glad she was so close to intensive prayer in case she needed it, or worried she was there because they were afraid she would need it? Being me, I worried. When I opened the door to 547, I discovered a constable sitting in one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs in there.

He carefully checked my EPA sigil and said, “You’re fine, Mr. Fisher, but we have to be sure,” before he went back to his book.

By then I’d forgotten all about him. Seeing Judy again took everything else out of my mind. She didn’t look bad, but then she always looks good to me, so I wasn’t in any real position to judge. Her color was good, her eyes were open, she was breathing normally: to that much I can objectively attest.

But I soon noticed that, even if her eyes were open, they didn’t track. I walked across her field of vision a couple of times, but she took no notice of me. She didn’t say anything. When she moved on the bed, she didn’t adjust the covers afterwards. Her body lay there, but not the rest other. That was off in the Nine Beyonds, the realm of the One Called Night.

Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley came in just then, accompanied by a fellow in a white lab robe who introduced himself to me as Healer Ah Murad. “I look forward to learning to apply virtuous reality to healing situations,” he said. This will be an excellent opportunity for me to enhance my knowledge.”

Wonderful. Somebody who saw Judy as a guinea pig, nothing more. I wondered how he’d like enhancing his knowledge of what getting flung out a fifth-floor window felt like. He looked pretty sharp—maybe he could learn to fly before he hit the ground.

I made myself relax. By his lights, Hr. Murad was only doing his job. What he learned from Judy might help him treat somebody else. But that didn’t mean I had to like him, and I didn’t Nigel Cholmondeley was carrying a case large enough that he had to be stronger than he looked. He set it on the empty bed next to Judy’s, flipped open the brass catches, and took out four of the big-eared virtuous reality helmets I’d last seen in the constabulary station.

He looked at the setup in the room, fretfully clucked his tongue between his teeth. “Forming a circle under these circumstances will be rather difficult,” he said, making the a m rather so broad I thought he’d never finish pronouncing it.

Madame Ruth was bluntly practical. “We’ll just turn her around,” she said. “If 11 be easy if her head end’s at the foot of the bed.” Hr. Murad took care of that, moving Judy with a practiced gentleness that said he might have a bedside manner after all. Madame Ruth rounded on the constable. “Hey, you, be useful—move some chairs around for us.” She gestured to show what she wanted.

The constable gave her a dirty look but did as she asked him: he put one chair at the foot of the bed, close by where Judy’s head now rested, and one more to either side at that end of the bed. While he was taking care of that, Nigel Cholmondeley set a virtuous reality helmet on Judy. She didn’t react at all as it covered her eyes and ears.

When he was done, Cholmondeley turned to me and said,

“You sit here.” Here was the seat right across the footboard from Judy. Cholmondeley and Madame Ruth took the other two seats. Grunting, Madame Ruth got up from hers and arranged Judy’s arms so her wrists and hands dangled off the sides of the bed. “Oh, capital,” Cholmondeley said as she sat back down. “Now we shall be able to maintain the personal contact so essential in this exercise.”