The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

"Really?" She sounded surprised. "You recommend the procedure, then?" 'I didn't say that," I told her, and then explained: "I don't knew where or from whom the pieces of soul the jinni are synthesizing come from, or whether Slow Jinn Fizz is solving one problem now at the expense of widespread psychic depletion years, maybe even generations, down the line. It's certainly a tempting technology, but you know who the Tempter is."

"I certainty do," she said. "So you'd suggest the Corderos stay away from it?"

If she'd asked me that the day before, I would have said yes. Thanks to modem medicine, Jesus Cordero had every chance of living to a ripe old age, and psychic synthesis would be investigated and refined until people understood all the gremlins in the process. That would be the right time for him to have a soul implanted.

But after what had happened at the Devonshire dump and then at Chocolate Weasel, I felt less easy about that waitfor - developments approach. Just because the odds said you were likely to lead a long life didn't mean you would: a big piece of Angels City had almost gone up in flames. If you were an apsychic, could you afford to take a chance like that?

Would you want to, knowing extinction awaited?

"Mistress Kuznetsov," I said carefully, "the EPA hasn't taken a position on Slow Jinn Fizz and what it does. Before we do, we'll have to weigh short-term benefits against lowergrade long-term risks. My guess is that the technology won't be allowed out of the experimental stage and into general use for many years."

"I know that much already," she answered. "The people from Slow Jinn Fizz said as much to the Corderos, and I give them credit for it. What I'm realty asking is, what would you do if that were your kid?"

"If it's my kid, I worry about saving him first and everything else later," I said. "Isn't that what being a parents all about? But just because that's what I'd do doesn't mean it makes good public policy."

"That's fair," she said. "Let me put it a different way, then; would the EPA have kittens if the Slow Jinn Fizz experimental protocol expanded to include Jesus Cordero?"

"Right now, the answer to that is no," I said. Too much else - bigger stuff - was going on for us to worry about Slow Jinn Fizz right now, but I didn't tell that to Susan Kuznetsov.

I hoped that one day (one day soon. God willing) things would slow down to the point where we'd be able to worry about the problems synthesized souls present No doubt they were important but they weren't world-threatening, so for now they'd just have to wait And besides, I told myself, how much environmental damage on the Other Side would manufacturing a soul for one little boy cause? Not much, surety, and it would do so much good for Jesus Cordero.

You know, of course, which road is paved with good intentions. So do I. So does the EPA. The real question wasn't what would happen when one apsychic kid got a soul. The real question was what would happen when jinnetic engineering and jinn-splicing techniques began stirring up the psychic material of the Other Side on a large scale, I didn't have any answers for that. Neither did anybody else. The EPAs job was to make sure we found those answers before exploiting those techniques got us into trouble, not afterwards. But to give Jesus Cordero, a series of one case, a chance at life after life - why not?

Mistress Kuznetsov said, 'Inspector, I want to thank you for being flexible; you're going to make the Corderos very happy, and as for Jesus - he won't understand what's happened for a long time yet, but when he does, he'll be eternally grateful."

"I hope so, anyway," I said. "The technique is experimental and, from what Ramzan Durani told me, it hasn't yet undergone the test of mortality. But when you're in that position, you have to grasp at straws, don't you?"

"That's my view as a public health officer, certainly," Susan Kuznetsov said. "I wasn't sure how the EPA would view the matter."

"If you'd said you wanted to add a thousand people to the experimental list I would have given you a different answer.

But one little boy, and one I've met-"

"Yes, the law of contagion does remind us of how important personal contact is, doesn't it? I was just afraid you'd be working against contagion, as I often have to do, rather than allowing it full scope."

"Not this time," I answered quietly. Letting Jesus Cordero have a chance to beat apsychia wasn't as big a thing as thwarting the Chumash Powers or keeping Huitzilopochtfi and his fiery fiiend from establishing themselves in Angels City, but it felt just as good. Maybe better - as Susan Kuznetsov had said, this was personal.

I only wished the rest of my personal worries were doing as well. No word of Judy, none at all.