with Judy the night before—I piled dishes in the sink, gave the table a couple of haphazard wipes, took out a sheet of parchment and inked a pen, then buckled down to it.
The first thing that hit me was just how many defense firms dumped at the Devonshire site. All the big aerospace consortia that have kept the Angels City economy booming for decades used the place: Confederated Voodoo (it’s Convoo these days, what with the stupid and paranoid mania for clipping consortiate names into meaningless syllables: who’d waste time with name magic against as diffuse an entity as a consortium?), North American Aviation and Levitation, Demondyne, Loki (I wondered if byproducts from Loki’s famous Cobold Works were trying to trickle through the wards around the dumps; some of them might be very bad news indeed), all the other famous names.
Along with them were a host of smaller outfits, subcontractors mostly, that nobody’s ever heard of except their mothers: firms with names like Bakhtiar’s Precision Burins, Portentous Potions, and Essence Extractions, Inc. I looked at that last one for a while, trying to figure out in which square it belonged: my transmogrified list had evolved into a chart. Finally I stuck it in almost at random: with a name like that, it could have done just about anything (another modern trend I despise).
Along with the defense outfits were several of the Hollywood light and magic companies. When I thought about it, that made sense; Hollywood has always been a magic-intensive business. I wished I remembered which outfit had made the St. George epic that had snarled traffic this morning—I might have been tempted to try some name magic on it myself, more because I knew it would be useless than for any other reason.
I was a little more surprised to find how many hospitals were on the list. Layfolk see only the benefits medicine brings; they don’t think much about the costs involved (except the ones that come from their purses). But healing bodies—and especially working with diseased souls—takes its toll on the environment like any high-tech enterprise.
There’s only one major carpet plant left in Angels City—the General Movers looms in Van Nuys. They dumped at Devonshire, too. The GM plant wasn’t high on my list of probable culprits, though. For one thing, I had a solid notion of the kinds of spells it used. For another, it’s likely to close down in the next year or two: too much competition from less expensive Oriental rugs.
And what was I supposed to make of outfits called Gall Divided, Slow Jinn Fizz, and Red Phoenix? Until I got back to the office to see what they were dumping, I was as much in the dark about what they actually did as I was with Essence Extractions, Inc. They sounded more interesting, though, I must say.
After a moment, my eyes came back to Red Phoenix. I underline the name, just on the off chance. The phoenix was a bird neither Judy nor I had thought of the night before. It would be worth checking out, at any rate.
I started to call Judy to tell her about it, then remembered Wednesday was her night for theoretical goetics. She’s only a couple of classes away from her master’s initiation. One day before too long I expect her to be writing grimoires instead of copy-editing them.
Having done as much on the list as I could do, I tossed it back in my attachÇ case, read for a while, and then got ready for bed. Through the thin wall of my flat, I heard the fellow next door howling with laughter at whatever ethernet program he was listening to.
One of these days soon, I figured I’d break down and buy an ethernet set for myself. They’re based on a variant of the cloning technique that’s put telephones all over lately. In the ethernet, though, they clone thousands of imps identical to a few masters. Whatever one of the masters hears, each clone repeats exactly—provided you’ve chosen to rouse that particular imp from dormancy.
You can buy plug-in imp modules that let you choose from up to eighty or a hundred different ethernet offerings at any one time. More and more people all over the country are listening to the same shows, admiring the same performers, telling the same jokes. Unity isn’t bad, especially in a country as big as the Confederation, and I don’t deny the advantages of being able to pass on news, for instance, quickly.
So why didn’t I have an ethernet set of my own? I guess the basic reason is that too much of what they spread is, pardon my Latin, crap. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’d sooner think for myself than get my entertainment premasticated. Go ahead, call me old-fashioned.
When I got to the office the next morning, the wizard was still working on the elevator shaft. No, I take it back; more likely, the wizard was working on the elevator shaft again. What with everybody’s budget being tight these days, the government isn’t enthusiastic about overtime. I walked up to my office. Yes, I know it’s good exercise. It also wasted the shower I’d taken just before I left home.
And on my desk waiting for me, just as I’d known it would be, was my second draft of the report on the spilled load of fumigants. I gave it a quick look-through. Not only had my boss changed about half of her revisions back to what I originally wrote, she’d added a whole new set, something she didn’t often do on a second pass. And on the last page, in green ink that looked as if it would be good for pacts with demons, she’d written, “Please give me final copy this afternoon.”
I felt like pounding my head on the desktop. That cursed silly report, which could have been and should have been two words long, was going to keep me from getting any useful work done that morning. Then the phone started yelling at me, and the report turned into the least of my worries.
“Environmental Perfection Agency, Fisher speaking,” I said, sounding as brisk and businesslike as I could before I’d had my second cup of coffee.
Just as if I hadn’t spoken, my phone asked me, “You are Inspector David Fisher of the Environmental Perfection Agency?”—and I knew I was talking to a lawyer. When I admitted it again, the fellow on the other end said, “I am Samuel Dill, of the firm of Elworthy, Frazer, and Waite, representing the interests of the Devonshire Land Management Consortium. I am given to understand that yesterday you absconded with certain proprietary documents of the aforesaid Consortium.”
Even through two phone imps, I could hear that capital “C” thud into place. I could also hear Mr. Dill building himself a case. I said, “Counselor, please let me correct you right at the outset. I did not ‘abscond with’ any documents. I did take certain parchments, as I was authorized to do under a search warrant granted in Confederal court yesterday.”
“Inspector Fisher, that warrant was a farce, which you must realize as well as I. Had you fully implemented all its provisions—”
“But I didn’t,” I answered sharply. “And, in case you have a Listener on this call, I make no such admission about the warrant. It was duly issued in reaction to a perceived threat to the environment from the Devonshire dump. And surely
“I deny the land management consortium is in any way responsible for this statistical aberration,” Dill replied, as I’d known he would.
I pressed him: “Do you deny the need to investigate the matter?” When he didn’t answer right away, I pressed harder: “Do you deny that the EPA has the authority to check records to evaluate possible safety hazards?”
By now, I ought to be old enough to know better than to expect straight answers from lawyers. What I got instead was about a five-minute speech. No, Dill didn’t deny our right to investigate, but he did deny that the dump (not that he ever called it a dump, not even once) could possibly be responsible for anything, even, it sounded like, the shadow the containment fence cast. He also kept coming back to the scope of the warrant under which I’d conducted the search.
I got back another speech, but what it boiled down to was
“I understand your concern,” I said, which shut him up without conceding anything. He finally got off the phone, and I put the second-generation changes into that worthless Hydra-headed report. I was about halfway through letting the access spirit scan it when the phone yowled again.
I said something I hoped nobody (and Nobody) noticed before I answered it. Turned out to be Tony Sudakis.
