The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Help me he did. The gate was the land with the little wheel on the bottom that retracted in back of the fence. He pushed it open. Behind it was a single, symbolic strand of barbed wire, with a placard whose message appeared in several languages and almost as many alphabets. The English version read, ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO UNAUTHORIZED ENTER HERE.

Dante always makes people sit up and take notice.

The guard moved the wire out of my way, too. Behind it was a thin red line painted on the ground which went across the gap where the two sections of wall came out to form the entryway. The guard picked up a little arched footbridge made of wood, set it down so that one end was outside the red line, the other inside. He was very careful to make sure neither end touched the strip of paint. That would have breached the dump's outer security containment, and doubtless cost him his job no matter how many backup systems the place had.

"Go ahead, sir," he said, tipping his cap again. "Mr. Sudakis is expecting you. Please stay within the confines of the wires and the amber lines inside." He grinned nervously.

"I don't know why I'm telling you that - you know more about it than I do."

"You're doing what you're supposed to do," I answered as • I mounted the little footbridge. Too many people don't bother any more." As soon as I'd got off the bridge, the guard picked it up and put it back on his side. The amber lines on the concrete and the barbed wire strung above them marked the safe path to the administrative office, a low cinderblock building that looked like a citadel in both the military and sorcerous senses of the word.

I looked around as I walked the path. I don't know what I'd expected - blasted heath, maybe. But no, just a couple of acres of weeds, mostly brown now because nobody's spells have been able to bring much rain the past few years. And yet, for second or two, the fence around the dump seemed very far away, with a whole lot of Nothing stretching the dirt and brush the same way you'd use bread crumbs to make hamburger go farther. Astrologers babble about the nearly infinite distances between the stars. I had the bad feeling I was looking at more infinity than I ever cared to meet, plopped down there in the middle of Chatsworth. Magic, especially byproducts of magic, can do things to space and time that the mathematicians are still trying to figure out.

Then I looked again, and everything seemed normal.

I hoped the wards the amber lines symbolized were as potent as the ones the red line had continued. By the data I'd taken from the Thomas Brothers' chapter house, even those weren't as good as they should have been.

A stocky fellow in shirt, tie, and hard hat came out of the cinderblock building and up the path toward me. He had his hand out and a professionally friendly smile plastered across his face. "Inspector-Fisher, is it? Pleased to meet you. I'm Antanas Sudakis; my job title is sorcerous containment area manager. Call me Tony - I'm the guy who runs the dump."

We shook hands. His grip showed controlled strength. I was at least six inches taller than he; I could look down on the top of his little helmet Just the same, I got the feeling he could break me in half if he decided to - I'm a beanpole, while he was built like somebody who'd been a good high school linebacker and might have played college ball if only he'd been taller.

He wasn't hostile now, though. "Why don't you come into my office, Inspector Fisher-"

"Call me Dave," I said, thinking I ought to keep things friendly as long as I could.

"Okay, Dave, come on with me and then you can let me know what this is all about. All our inspection parchments are properly signed, sealed, blessed, fumigated, what have you. I keep the originals on file in my desk; I know you government folks are never satisfied with copies called up in the ground glass."

"What sorcery summons, sorcery may shift," I said, making it sound as if I was quoting official EPA policy. And I was.

Still, I believed him. If his parchmentwork wasn't in order, he wouldn't brag about it. Besides, if his parchmentwork wasn't in order, he'd have more to fret about than a surprise visit from an EPA inspector. He'd be worrying about the wrath of God, both from bosses who didn't pay him to screw up and maybe from On High, too. A lot of things in the dump were unholy in the worst way.

His office didn't feel like a citadel, even if it had no windows. The diffuse glow of St. Elmo's fire across the ceiling gave the room the cool, even light of a cloudy day. The air was cool to breathe, too, though St. Ferdinand's Valley, which like the rest of Angels City was essentially a desert before it got built up, still has desertly weather.

Sudakis noticed me visibly not toasting. He grinned.

"We're on a circuit with one of the frozen water elementals up in Greenland. A section of tile here"-he pointed to the wall behind his desk-"touched the elemental once, and now it keeps the place cool thanks to the law of contagion."