the northeast what they call St. Ann’s wind. That always strikes me as rude, or don’t you think naming a wind after the Virgin’s mother implies she talked too much?
The wind swirled hard enough to shake my carpet as I headed for the freeway. When I flew past a vacant lot, I watched the dust devils spinning tumbleweeds around and tossing them up into the sky. There are more dust devils these days than there used to be; I’ve always said cutting the budget for meteorological exorcists was a mistake. One day the devils will join forces and blow down a building or three, and fixing things will end up costing a lot more than we’re saving now.
But what politician looks to the future? I wondered why I was bothering myself, come to that. If the Third Sorcerous War broke out, dust devils would be the least of my—and everyone else’s—worries.
Michael was waiting for me in the parking lot. “Have you received any news?” he asked as I walked up to his carpet. “They made Judy call me last night,” I said, nodding.
“Whoever they are, they want us to stop investigating anything that has anything to do with the Devonshire dump—or else.”
Michael gave me a curious look. “Yet you are still here.”
He turned on to Wilshire to get to St. James’ Freeway for the trip up into the Valley.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” I said. “I don’t believe stopping would really make them turn Judy loose. And besides… the deeper we get into this case, the more important it looks.”
God, help me, I was starting to think like Henry Legion. Saving the world, not just one person, looked bigger all the time.
We got off the Venture Freeway at Winnetka and headed north, Michael flying, me navigating. It was a mixed kind of neighborhood, first a business block, then a row of homes, then some more businesses. Once we flew past what looked half like a school, half like a farm. I glanced down at my map.
“That’s the Ceres Institute of St. Ferdinand’s Valley.” In spite of everything, I laughed. “Angels City is an ecumenical place.”
“Another artificial cult,” Michael said; his business is keeping up with such things. They say the goddess really does improve agricultural productivity.”
“I wonder how much maintaining her cult adds to the price of produce, though.” Cost-benefit analysis again. You can’t get away from it in our society: it was the same kind of thing I was doing to see whether the Chumash Powers would be worth preserving if they did still happen to exist That reminded me I’d have to call Professor Blank one of these days and see what more he’d harassed his graduate students into finding out “We should be getting dose,” Michael said.
“We are,” I answered, after a check of where we were.
The next major cross street is Nordhoff. You’ll want to turn left there. Mason is the next fair-sized street that will cross it, about half a mile west of Wimietka.”
“Very good.” Michael swung into the leftmost flight lane at Winnetka and Nordhoff. We had to wait for all the southbound carpets to go past before we could turn, though.
Strange how rules of the road that were codified for horses in Europe long before anyone outside the Middle East was flying carpets still govern the way we handle traffic. Sorcery, of course, maintains anything old and curious because being old and curious makes it powerful in and of itself. I’d never thought of traffic rules falling into that category, though.
The north side of Nordhoff was a light industrial park, with one big rectangular box of a building following another.
The south side was mostly houses, though the comer with Mason boasted a liquor store, a Golden Steeples that probably did a land-office business from all the working types across the street, and also a Spells ’R’ Us.
Chocolate Weasel was in the industrial park, a couple of buildings past Mason. Michael let his carpet down in an open space near the front door. As I undid my safely belt and stood up, I noticed that a lot of the carpets in the lot were old and threadbare. People didn’t work here to get rich, that was obvious.
Michael picked up his little black bag. We walked over to the entrance side by side. The first thing that hit me when we went inside was the music. There were minisingers involved in the case after all—I’d have to tell Saul Klein. But they weren’t playing lieder—oh my, no. The inside of Chocolate Weasel sounded like an Aztedan bar in East A.C.—or maybe like one down in Tenochtitlan—both in style of music and in volume. I must confess I winced.
All the chatter inside was in Spainish, too. No, I take that back: I heard a little clucking Nahuad, too. No English, not until people noticed us. I got the idea people who didn’t look Aztedan didn’t pop into Chocolate Weasel every day. The Aztedan community in Angels City is big enough to be a large city of its own, and doesn’t have to deal with outsiders unless it wants to.
By the looks they gave us, we were outsiders they didn’t want to deal with. Those looks got darker when we pulled out our EPA sigils, too. Suddenly everyone in the place developed a remarkable inability to understand English.
Michael foiled that ploy, though, by asking for the head of the firm in fluent Spainish.
I wondered if the secretary would fall back into Nahuad; she was one of the people I’d heard using it If she did, though, Michael would give her another surprise. I wondered how many pale blonds spoke the old Aztedan language. Not many seemed a fair guess.
But, rather to my disappointment, she didn’t. In fact, hearing Michael use Spainish made her unbend enough to remember she knew some English after all, which put me back in the conversation. She took us down the hall to the consortium markgrave’s office.
Jorge Vasquez looked at us with about as much enthusiasm as a devout Hindu confronted with a plate of blood-red prime rib. He was a handsome fellow in his early forties, and doing quite well for himself: unless I missed my guess, his suit would have run me dose to two weeks’ pay.
He shoved our sigils back across the desk at us, then leaned forward to glare. “I am sick and tired of harassment by the EPA,” he said. “You people have the attitude that our spells must be perverse because they are based on the authentic rituals of our people. It is not true; our procedures are no more wicked than the thaumaturgy the Catholic Church works through transubstantiation.” He pointed to the crucifix on the wall behind him.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” I answered. “Myself, I’m Jewish.” I didn’t elaborate; what it meant was that I found any ritual of human sacrifice, no matter how symbolic, on the unpleasant side.
Vasquez didn’t say anything, but his nostrils flared. So he wasn’t real fond of Jews, eh? Well, that was his problem, not mine.
I went on, “In any case, this visit has nothing to do with the merit of your rituals, only with the way you’re preparing your toxic spell byproducts for disposal. The Devonshire dump is leaking, and leaking something noxious enough to cause an outbreak of apsychic births in the neighborhood.
Considering some of the materials and cantrips you use, I hope you can understand how we might be concerned”
“I tell you again, Inspector Fisher, this is bigotry in action,” Vasquez said. “We run a dean shop here. What do you think we are doing, attempting to bring about the dominion of Huitzilopochtli over Angels City?”
That was one of my major concerns, but telling him so didn’t seem politic. I just said, “Why don’t you take us over to your flayed human skin substitute processing facility? That’s the likeliest source of thaumaturgic pollution here, I think.”
“It is a legitimate sorcerous substance, permissible under the laws of the Confederation,” Vasquez said hody. “I repeat, you are harassing Chocolate Weasel by singling us out—”
“Bullshit,” I said, which made him sit up straight in his chain not the first time lately I’d surprised somebody by not talking the way an EPA inspector was supposed to. I didn’t care. If he was hot, I was steaming. I went on, “You are not being singled out, sir. I’ve been visiting businesses that dump at Devonshire for weeks now. You’re not being discriminated against because you’re Aztecian, either—I’ve hit Persian places, aerospace firms, what have you. But even you won’t deny flayed human skin substitute is a dangerous substance, I hope? Now we can do this politely on an informal level or I can go out, get a warrant, and turn this place inside out. How do you want to play it?”
He calmed down in a hurry. Somehow I’d thought he might. He said, “What sort of tests do you have in mind?”
