The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

The only thing I'll say about his office is that it made Tony Sudalds' look like a slum, and Tony's beats mine seven ways from Sunday. He poured mint tea, gave me sweetmeats, sat me down, and generally fussed over me until I felt as if I'd gone back to my mom's for Rosh Hashanah dinner, I don't care for the feeling at my mom's and I didn't care for it here, either.

I answered it with bluntness: "Devonshire dump is under investigation for leaking toxic spell components into the surrounding environment. We haven't learned exactly what's getting out yet, but I can give you an idea of how serious the problem is by telling you there have been three cases of apsychia in the area over the past year alone."

"And you think we are to blame? Slow Jinn Fizz?" Durani bounced - no, flew - out of his chair. His volatility was still there, all right; I just hadn't conjured it up in polite greetings. "No, no, ten thousand times no!" he cried. I thought he was going to rend his garment. He didn't; he contented himself with grabbing his turban in both hands, as if he feared his head would fall off. "How can you accuse us of such an outrage? How dare you, sir!"

"Calm yourself, Mr. Durani, please." I made a little placating gesture, hoping he'd sit down again. It didn't work. I went on quickly, before he threw the samovar at me. "Nobody's accusing Slow Jinn Fizz of anything. I'm just trying to find out what's going on at the dump site."

"You dare accuse Slow Jinn Fizz of causing apsychia!" He extravagantly wasn't listening.

"I haven't accused you," I said, louder this time. "Have - not. I'm just investigating. And you must admit that Solomon's Seals are very potent magic, with a strong potential for polluting the environment."

Durani cast his eyes up to the ceiling and, presumably, past it toward Allah. "They think I am destroying souls," he said - not to me. He glared my way a moment later. "You wretched bureaucratic fool. Slow Jinn Fizz does not cause apsychia, I - we - this consortium - am - are - is on the edge of curing this dreadful defect."

I started to get angry at him, then stopped when I realized what he'd just said. "You are?" I exclaimed, "How, in God's name?"

"In God's name indeed - in the name of the Compassionate, the Merciful." Durani calmed down again, so fast that I wondered how much of his rage was real temper and how much for show. But that didn't matter, either, not if he really was on the edge of beating apsychia. If he could do that, I didn't mind him chewing me out every day-and twice on Fridays.

"Tell me what you're doing here," I said. "Please." People have been trying to cure apsychia since the dawn of civilization, and probably long before that. Modem goetic technology can work plenty of marvels, but that… "Jinnetic engineering can accomplish things no one would have imagined possible only a generation ago," Durani said.

"Combining the raw strength of the jinn with the rigor and precision of Western sorcery-"

That much I know," I said. Jinnetic engineering outfits have fueled a lot of the big boom on the Bourse the past few years, and with reason. The only way their profit margins could be bigger would be for the jinni to fetch bags of gold from the Other Side.

But Durani had found something else for them to do Over There: jinn-splicing, he called it. What he had in mind was for the jinni to take a tiny fraction of me spiritual packet that made up a disembodied human soul, bring it back to This Side, and, using recombinant techniques he didn't - wouldn't - describe, join it with a bunch of other tiny fragments to produce what was in essence a synthesized soul, which could then be transplanted into some poor little apsychic kid.

"So you see," he said, gesturing violently, "it is impossible-impossible, I tell you!-for Slow Jinn Fizz or any of our byproducts to cause apsychia. We aim to prevent this tragedy, to make it as if it never was, not to cause it."

Whether what he aimed at was what he accomplished, I couldn't have said. For that matter, neither could he, not with any confidence. Sorcerous byproducts have a way of taking on lives of their own.

But that wasn't what was really on my mind. "Have you actually transplanted one of these, uh, synthesized souls into an apsychic human being?" I knew there was awe in my voice, the same sort of awe the Garuda Bird program raises in me: I felt I was at the very edge of something bigger than I'd ever imagined, and if I reached out just a little, I could touch it.

"We have transplanted three so far," he answered with quiet pride.

"And?" I wanted to reach out, all right, reach out and pull the answer from him.