The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

This place is supposed to be safe, it's been safe ever since I took over here, and I want it to keep on being safe. That's what they pay me for, after all."

"Why do you have to turn aside the Listener if that's so?" I asked. Come to that, I didn't know his outre Httie ritual really had turned aside anything.

He said, "Because the company basically just wants me to run this place so it makes them money. I want to run it right."

All I could think was, He'll of a note when a man has to deafen the Listener before he says he wants to do a proper job. But he'd convinced me. Too many top corporate managers hide dorsal fins under expensive imported suits. If one of those types got wind of what Sudakis had said, let alone what he'd done, he'd be out on the street with a big dusty footprint on his behind.

"How'd you get word there was trouble here, anyhow?" he asked. "Did you paw through the Thomas Brothers' files hoping you'd stumble over something you could use to curse us?"

His bosses wouldn't have let him manage the dump if he was stupid. I answered, "No, as a matter of fact, I didn't I got a call from the District of St. Columba this morning, telling me I ought to check things out. So I did, and now you know what I found."

"That's-interesting." He stuck out his chin. "How'd Charlie Kelly know back there that something was up when you hadn't heard anything out here?" No, he wasn't stupid at all, not if he knew the fellow at the EPA who was likeliest to give me orders.

"His job is to hear things like that," I answered, suspicious again. Not all the ways Sudakis might have learned about Kelly were savory ones.

"Yeah, sure, sure. But how?" If he was acting, he could have given lessons. He looked down at his wrist, said something scatological. That's a safer way to work off your feelings than swearing or cursing. "My stinking watch says it's day before yesterday. Must be eddy currents from the garbage outside."

"You ought to wear something better than that cheap mechanical," I said. I touched the tail of the timekeeper that coiled round my wrist. It's a better-behaved little demon than the one that sits on my nightstand at home. It yawned, stretched, piped, "Eleven forty-two," and went back to sleep.

Sudakis scatologized again. The Listener will go back on duty any minute now. I can't put it out two times running; the magic doesn't work. I hate doing it even once: too much magic loose here as is. That's why I don't wear a fancy watch like yours. Mechanicals are all right. When one gets bollixed, I just buy another one: no need to worry about rites or anything like that"

I shrugged; it wasn't my business. But I have as little to do with mechanicals as I can. If the Other Side weren't as real as this one, they might be all right. But as Atheling the Wise put it, though, most forces are also Persons, and mechanicals have no Personalities of their own to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - to say nothing of outraged (or sometimes just mischievous) Forces. That's why you'll never see lodestone levitation under an alkahest pool. Sometimes, when I'm in the mood for Utopian flights of fancy, I think about how smoothly the world would run if all natural forces were as inanimate as the ones that let mechanicals operate. We'd never have to screen against megasalamanders launched on the wings of supersylphs to incinerate cities anywhere in the world. Neither of the Sorcerous Wars that devastated whole countries could have happened. For that matter, I wouldn't have had to worry about toxic spell dumps or the ever-growing pollution of the environment. Things would be simpler all around.

Yeah, I know it's a dream from the gate of ivory. Without magic, the world would probably have fanners, maybe towns, but surely not the great civilization we know. Can you imagine mass production without the law of similarity, or any kind of communications network without the law of contagion?

And medicine? I shiver to think of it. Without ectoplasmic beings to see and reach inside the body, how would medicine be possible at all? If you got sick, you'd bloody well the, just like one of Tony Sudalds' cheap watches when magic touched its works.

I pulled my mind back to business and asked him, "Can you give me a list of the firms whose spells you're storing at this containment facility?" That was a question I could legitimately ask him, regardless of whether the Listener was conscious.

He said, "Inspector Fisher, in view of the unofficial nature of your visit, I have to tell you no. If you bring me a warrant, I will of course cooperate to the degree required by civil and canon law." He thought he was being heard again - he tipped me a wink as he spoke.

"Such a list is a matter of public record," I argued, both because it was something I really wanted to have and because I still wasn't sure I could trust him.