The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

My stomach growled, fortunately a couple of seconds after that. What with all the coffee I'd poured down there, it had been growling on and off for a while now, but this was a different note. It wanted food. No matter what your mind tries to do to you, your body has a way of reminding you of life's basics. I went over to the cafeteria and bought myself a vulcanized hamburger - as a matter of fact, it was cooked so hard that Vulcan, had he been of a mind to, could have carved the battle reliefs that he'd put onto the shields of Achilles and Aeneas right onto the surface of the meat. I ate it anyhow; at the moment, I didn't much care what I fed my fire, as long as it filled me up. And I washed it down with more coffee.

The stuff was starring to lose its power to conjure up my demons. I found myself yawning over the last of my fries.

But no rest for the weary; I plodded back to the office to see what I could accomplish.

In short, the answer was not much. Part of the reason was that I jumped halfway to the ceiling every time the phone yarped, hoping it would be Judy again. It never was. None of the calls I got was of any consequence whatsoever. Every one of them, though, broke my concentration. In aggregate, they left me a nervous wreck.

Along with hoping one of the calls would be from Judy, I also kept hoping one wouldn't be from Bea. I just didn't have it in me to play staff meeting games right then, and I wasn't real thrilled about having to bear up under sympathy, either.

Atlas carried the whole world, but right now I had all the weight on me I could take.

But Bea, to my relief, didn't call. Except for relief, I didn't think anything of it at the time. Looking back, though, I think she didn't call precisely because she knew I couldn't deal with it. Bea is a pretty fair boss. I may have mentioned that once or twice.

The phone squawked yet again. When I answered it, Celia Chang was on the other end. "Mr. Fisher? We have located that telephone whose number I traced a little while ago. It is, unfortunately, a public phone up on the comer of Soto's and Plummer in St. Ferdinand's Valley."

"Oh," I said unhappily.

"I am sorry, Mr. Fisher," she said, "but I did think you would want to know."

"Yes, thank you," I said, and hung up. I never have figured out why you thank someone who's given you bad news - maybe to deny to the Powers that it's really hurt you, no matter how obvious that is.

After Celia Chang's call, the phone stopped making noise for a while. I tried to buckle down and get some work done, but I still couldn't make my mind focus on the parchments in front of me. I'd write something, realize it was either colossally stupid or just pointless, scratch it out, by again, and discover I hadn't done any better the next time. All I could think about was Judy - Judy and sleep. In spite of all that coffee, I was yawning.

About half past three, someone tapped on my door. Several people had been in already; news of what had happened was getting around with its usual speed in offices. I knew they meant well, and it made them feel better, but it just kept reminding me of what Judy had gone through and might be going through now. Still, once more couldn't make me feel much worse than I did already. "Come in," I said resignedly.

It was somebody I worked with, but somebody who already knew what was going on. "Hello, David," Michael Manstein said. "I trust I am not intruding?"

"No, no," I said - someone else would have been, but not Michael. "Here, sit down, tell me what that thing - that Nothing - I mean - in the Devonshire dump is."

He folded his angular frame into a chair, steepled his long pale fingers. "First tell me if you have any word of your fiancee," he said. So I had to go through that again after all. He listened attentively - Michael is always attentive - then said, "I am sorry you were out of the office when Judith called. I wish I could have been here when the CBI wizard traced the call, as well. I have had occasion to attempt that twice, but succeeded in only one instance. An opportunity to improve my technique would have been welcome."

I had the feeling he was more interested in the magic for its own sake than the reason it had been used, but I couldn't get angry about that - it was Michael through and through. I tried again to make the carpet fly my way: "So what was that Nothing? Did you analyze it?"

"I did," he answered. "As best I could determine, it is - Nothing."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I know I sounded peevish - nerves, exhaustion, coffee again.

Michael didn't notice. What he'd found intrigued him too much for him to pay attention to details like bad manners.