The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

"I called you for two reasons. You were the guy who spotted the Nothing in the first place, and the wizard you had with you seems pretty sharp. Man, I tell you, I think I need all the help I can get on this one."

"I'll get Michael. We'll be there as fast as we can fly," I promised. Then something Sudakis had said really hit me. I echoed it "Inside out."

"What's that?' Tony said. "Listen, if you and your buddy Manstein don't get here in a hurry, there may not be any here to get to, you know what I mean?"

Inside out," I repeated. "Tony, didn't you say the stuff in that zone came from the beach up in Malibu?"

"Yeah," he said. "So?"

"Way up at the northwest edge of the Barony of Angels, right?"

"Yeah," he said again. "What are you flying at, Dave?"

"Get a hazmat team there right now," I said, fear knotting my belly: I thought I knew why Professor Blank's grad students hadn't found the Chumash Powers' encystment site where they thought it was supposed to be.

"I've been Hying to," Tony protested. "They won't listen to me."

Tell 'em the guy who tipped 'em to Chocolate Weasel says this is liable to be a thousand times worse. Tell 'em that Use my name. They'll come, all right"

"You know what's going on." Even through the phone imps, he sounded accusing.

"I'm afraid I do. I'm coming anyway." I hung up on him for a change. Then I ran down the hall, yelling for Michael like a man possessed. He listened to me for fifteen seconds, tops, grabbed his black bag, and sprinted for the slide, me right behind him. We piled onto his carpet and hightailed it back to St. Ferdinand's Valley. Knowing what we were heading for, I wished we were flying the other way. When he was good and ready, he delivered his verdict.

I mean it just like that - he really sounded magisterial:

There is, I believe, much truth in the view you express.

The great European theological and economic expansion of the past five hundred years, coupled with the enormous growth of thaumaturgic knowledge that spearheaded, among other things, the Industrial Revolution, has indeed had a profound impact on both the politics and thecology of the rest of the world. I can hardly be surprised to learn that long-established Powers, chafing under the pressure of European-imposed belief structures imposed by superior military and magical force, are actively seeking to overwhelm that force."

"You mean you approve?" I stared at him.

"That is not what I said," he answered, more sharply than usual. "I said I am not surprised that the Powers and, presumably, the peoples who reverence them, seek to regain their former prominence. I did not say I wished them success in that effort. Such success would be the greatest disaster the world has ever known, or so I believe, at any rate."

"You get no argument from me," I said.

"I had not expected you to disagree," he said. 'You have a reasonable amount of sense, by all appearances."

I wanted to reach over and pat him on the knee. "Why, Michael, I didn't know you cared," I said. From his point of view, he'd just given me the accolade, and I knew it "Facetiousness aside," he amended. I just grinned. He ignored that and went on, "Let us take the Americas, for instance, they being the most dearcut examples of a massive human and thecological transformation in the past semimillenium."

"Okay, take the Americas," I said agreeably, gesturing to show he was welcome to them. Truth was, as long as I was schmoozing with Michael, I didn't have to think (as much) about either Judy or the likelihood that Armageddon was liable to come bubbling out of a toxic spells dump.

Michael gave me a severe look. "Facetiousness aside, I said."

"Sorry," I told him. "You were saying?"

"Nothing of great complexity; nothing, in fact, that should not be obvious to any reasonably objective observer: that we immigrants have done more and better with this land in the past five hundred years than its native peoples would have accomplished during the same period."

"Nothing that isn't obvious, eh?" I said, grinning wickedly.

"Plenty of people, natives and immigrants both - I'd use your phrase: why not? - would say you've just committed blasphemy, that we've done nothing but slaughter and pollute in what was, for all practical purposes, paradise on earth."

"I find only one technical term appropriate to use in response to that viewpoint: bullshit." Michael delivered his technical term with great relish. "I am not saying that slaughter did not take place; I am not denying that we pollute - working as I do for the Environmental Perfection Agency, how could I? I do deny, however, that this was, in a manner of speaking, government work for the earthly paradise."

"Careful how you talk, there," I said. "You work for the government yourself, remember?"