The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Finally he said, "That is a reasonable request" Which didn't mean he was happy about it. "Come with me, then.

You may accompany us if you like, Mistress Ather."

"How generous of you," Judy said. I knew she'd have accompanied us whether Kawaguchi liked it or not, and gone off like a demon out of its pentacle if he tried to stop her. The irony in her voice was thick enough to slice. If the legate noticed it, though, he didn't let on. I wondered if the Angels City constabulary wizards had perfected an anti-sarcasm amulet. If they had, I wanted to buy one.

Such foolishness vanished as the legate took Judy and me over to his command post (Brother Vahan tagged along, without, I noticed, any formal invitation). The firecrew forensics man was talking with his opposite number in the constabulary, a skinny blond woman who had a spellchecker that made my little portable look like a threeyear-old's toy. I stared at it with honest envy. As soon as Kawaguchi introduced me to her - she was Chief Thaumatechnician Bornholm - I asked, "How many megageists in that thing, anyway?"

She must have heard me salivating, because she smiled, which made her look a little younger and a lot less tough.

"Four meg active, eighty meg correlative," she answered.

"Wow," I said; beside me, Judy whistled softly. I wondered when the EPA would get a portable spellchecker with that land of power. Probably some time in the new millennium; it would just about take the Millennium for us to have the tools we need to do the job right The next century shouldn't be more than two or three decades old before we're ready to deal with this one.

"So what do we have in there?" Kawaguchi asked.

Bomholm was a good constable; she glanced over to him and got his nod before she started talking in front of us civilian types. Then she said, "Even with the spellchecker, this won't be as easy as I'd like; on hallowed ground, soreerous evidence has a way of evanescing in a hurry." She turned her head in Brother Vahan's direction. The abbot here has a most holy establishment good for his monks and a credit to him, but hard on the constabulary"

"All right, I won't expect you to hand me the case all sealed up with a papal chiysobull," the legate said, "though I wouldn't have been sorry if you did. Tell me what you know."

"About what you'd expect in an arson case," Bomholm said: "strong traces of salamander, rather weaker ones from the use of a blasting rod."

"Uh-huh," Kawaguchi said. "Any special characteristics of the salamander that would help us trace it back to a particular source on the Other Side?" Different rituals summon different strains of salamander; had this been one of the unusual ones, it could have told a lot about who called the creature to the monastery.

But tile thaumatech shook her head. "As generic a spell as you can find. Ten thousand campers use it out in the woods every day to get their fires going. Of course, they tack a dismissal onto it, too, and that didn't happen here. Just the opposite, in fact; it was encouraged. Same with the blasting rod: very ordinary magic."

"Hellfire," Kawaguchi said, which wasn't literally true - salamanders are morally neutral creatures - but summed things up well enough.

Bomholm hesitated, then went on, "When I first set up, I thought something else might be there, too. I wanted to stake down the certain arson traces before anything else, though, and by the time I came back to the other, it was gone. Hallowed ground, like I said. Fll take the rap for it - it was my choice."

"That's what free will is about," Kawaguchi said. "You did what you thought was best. I presume you ordered the spirit to remember, not just analyze. We can do further evaluation later."

"Certainly," Bomholm answered, with a "What do you think I am, an idiot? look tacked on for good measure. I didn't blame her, not one bit" She added, "The trouble is, you can't evaluate what just isn't there."

"I understand that." Kawaguchi smacked right fist into left palm in frustration. I didn't blame him, either. There was the spellchecker, with access and correlation capability on relations with the Other Side for everybody from Achaeans to Zulus and all stops in between, with hordes of microimps inside to do the thinking faster and more thoroughly than any mere man could manage - but, as the thaumatech had said, you can't analyze what isn't there.

"Legate!" The shout rang through the smoky night.

Kawaguchi spun round (so did all of us, as a matter of fact).

One of the guys from the sorce-and-rescue crew had emerged from the ruined scriptorium. His boots thumped on the pavement as he walked over to us. He was sooty and sweaty and looked about half beaten to death, but his eyes held triumph. "We made contact with that access spirit Legate."

"Good news!" Kawaguchi exclaimed. "That's the first piece of good news I've heard tonight. What sort of shape is the spirit in?"