The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

"Which we know is not the case," Michael said. "This suggests to me that the building is shielded against probes from outside."

"You have to be right," I said. "But what can we do now?

Go on in? Like you said, if we do that, we're liable not to come back out again."

"I am of the opinion that we have sufficient information to seek a warrant and let the constabulary deal with the matter from here on out," Michael said. "The staff of Chocolate Weasel are consorting with criminals, and the building's being so tightly sealed is suspicious in and of itself. The blanking of the sorcery within goes far beyond any that would be required to prevent industrial espionage."

Just then the front door to Chocolate Weasel opened and a couple of women came out. No matter how good the place's shielding was, I'd already found out it wasn't topologically complete like the Devonshire dump's: I hadn't had to cross over an insulated footbridge to get in. That meant influences could go out through the opening, too.

I looked down at the ground glass on the spellchecker.

The microimps saw something across the street, all right, something they didn't like one bit. Words started forming:

UNIDENTIFIED - FORBIDDEN. I felt as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water down my back. The door to Chocolate Weasel closed quickly and the damning words disappeared from the ground glass, but they remained imprinted on my mind. I'd hoped never to see their like again, but here they were.

"That's the same spellchecker reaction I got when I probed the potion that curandero gave Lupe Cordero," I said. "Now I know why your similarity ritual failed, Michael."

I was glad I hadn't had lunch yet; I might have thrown up right on the sidewalk in front of Spells 'R' Us.

Michael shook his head. "I'm afraid your logical leap went past me there."

"You were testing for similarity to flayed human skin substitute," I said. "I don't think that's substitute in there - I think that's real flayed human skin."

"Yes, that might conceivably throw off the accuracy of the test." Sometimes Michael is almost off in a virtuous reality of his own. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised he thought about the testing first, but I was. Still, he does connect to the real world. After a couple of seconds, his eye got wide behind his spectacles. "Dear God in heaven, there are thousands of square feet of flayed human skin substitute in those vats. If it is the genuine material rather than the substitute-"

"Then a lot of people have ended up dead, Huitzalopochth is well fed, and the whole stinking world may come down on our heads." I didn't realize I'd started spouting doggerel till the words were out of my mouth.

Tt is now imperative - no, mandatory - that we notify the authorities forthwith," Michael said.

Since he was right, I shut down the spellchecker (no doubt to the microimps' relief) and took it back into Spells 'R' Us.

"Thanks very much, gentlemen," I said. "We appreciate the help. Now can you tell us where the nearest pay phone is?"

There's one outside the Golden Steeples," the manager answered, "if it hasn't been vandalized."

The salesman blurted, "But can't you tell us what's going on?"

I'm sorry," I said, "but it's against EPA policy to reveal the results of an ongoing investigation. As I say, you've helped, though."

Leaving them frustrated, we headed across Mason toward the Golden Steeples. The closer we got, the less optimistic I was about finding the phone in working order. The local street gangs had vandalized the building, scrawling tags like HUNERIC and TBASAMUND on the wall in big, angular letters. Graffiti are an environmental problem, too, one for which we don't have a good answer yet.

And sure enough, when we came up to the pay phone, I saw that somebody - presumably the punk who went by that monicker - had carved the name GELIMER into the base of the phone and used either a tweezers or a little levitation spell to get the coins out through the narrow slits he'd cut Of course, once he violated the integrity of the containment system, the coin-collecting demon was also able to escape, and pay phones are rigged so their imps stay dormant unless he collects his fee. The phone, then, might as well not have been there.

Unless - I turned to Michael. "Are you a hot enough wizard to get around Ma Bell?"

"Possibly - with time and equipment we lack at the moment," he said. "Finding another pay phone would be more efficient"

Ergonomics again. Whether it's what size to make the cap on a bottle of wine or deciding to spell or not to spell, you can't get away from it. "Let's go back to the carpet, then," I said. "We're sure to pass one as we fly back to the freeway."

We crossed over to the Chocolate Weasel parking lot. Me, I wasn't what you'd call enthusiastic about setting foot there again, but I didn't feel too bad because I was doing it only to leave the place for good.