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hadn't had the crowns to go to an odontomagus to affix the usual invisible
shields to her mouth& they will not speak slightingly of the virtues of a full
belly and a healthy body, things we take for granted despite their being
historically rare."
"Wait a minute, Michael. You just cheated there. You were talking about how
wonderful our culture is, and then one of your suffering examples comes
straight out of our own slums. You can't have it both ways."
He didn't answer for a few seconds; he was getting the carpet off the freeway.
Once he'd done that, though, he said, I fail to see why not. I never claimed
we were perfect. Perfection is an attribute of the divine, not the human. I
said that, on the whole, we do better for more people than anyone else has.
Our flaws notwithstanding, I hold to that position."
I thought about it. The only times I'd ever been hungry were at Yom Kippur
fasts, and those I undertook for the sake of ritual, not because I had no
food. I slept in a flat on a bed; I was protected against diseases and curses
that had lain whole nations waste in ancient times. I said, "You have a
point."
The other thing was, the Chumash Powers and the Aztecians wanted to restore
the unpleasant old days.
The trouble with that was that most of the millions of people in the Barony of
Angels liked the new days better. What would happen to them? My limited
acquaintance with the Chumash Powers didn't make me think they were that
ferocious, but Huitzilopochtli
The Chumash Powers must have cut a deal with the Aztecian war god, I realized.
I tried to imagine the secret dealings that must have happened on the Other
Side. Huitzilopochtli was a much bigger fish than the Sky Coyote, the Lizard,
or the demons of the Lower World, but they were extra powerful here because
the Barony of Angels was their native territory. The combination could prove
deadly.
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I reached that unpleasant conclusion about the time Michael pulled into the
parking lot across the flyway from the Devonshire dump. To my relief, three or
four black-and-whites were already there, their synchronized salamander
lanterns flashing red and blue.
People were standing on the sidewalk rubbernecking the way they always do when
something goes wrong. Over on the dump side of the street, a couple of
constables were laying down the ritual yellow tape that keeps rubberneckers
from getting too close to the action.
Michael and I hurried across. The constables saw our EPA sigils and
demystified a stretch of tape so we could cross the line. "Did you get a
hazmat team here?' I asked one of them.
"Yeah, we did," he said I thought they had- there were more black-and-whites
in the parking lot than constables outside the dump. But while his partner put
the magic back into the line, the fellow went on.
The guy who runs the dump tried to get an EPA hazmat team, too, but it was
already on an urgent call, worse luck."
Luck had nothing to do with it; I'd told Kawaguchi he was liable to need that
team at Chocolate Weasel.
And he was, God knows. But Tony Sudakis was liable to need it here, too. No
magic yet has made people able to be two places at the same time. They're
working on it, I understand, with thaumatechnology based on what they've
learned with ectoplasmic cloning, but so far it happens only in
light-and-magic shows and sorcerous fiction stories. Too bad. Boy, could we
have used it.
The security guard recognized Michael and me. Without being asked, he brought
out the footbridge so we could cross into the containment area. As soon as we
did he yanked it away as fast as he could. In principle, that was smart; you
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didn't want to weaken the magical containment scheme in any way. In practice,
I was afraid it would do about as much good as sunglasses under the
megasalamander blast
Professor Blank had mentioned.
About three steps down the warded path that led to Tony Sudakis' office, I
stopped dead in my tracks.
Tony hadn't been kidding you could see the Nothing from anywhere on the
walkway now. You felt that if you leaned forward, you might fall straight
toward it forever. And he'd been right about the feeling that pervaded the
dump, too; it was as if the Nothing were an egg quivering on the verge of
hatching.
But that wasn't the only thing that made me stop and stare. The constables
from the hazardous materia magica team weren't working only from the warded
path they'd actually gone into the dump itself to come to grips with the
Nothing.
Sure, they knew what they were doing. Sure, they were draped with so many
different lands of apotropaic amulets that they looked like perambulating
Christmas trees. Sure, their shoes had cold-iron soles to insulate them from
the thaumaturgic vileness that littered the place. All the same, they put
their souls on the line, not just their soles. I wouldn't have gone out there
for a million crowns.
For Judy? Yes, without a second thought. If you don't know what really matters
to you, why bother living?
Tony Sudakis was up on the roof of his office. He saw Michael and me, waved,
and disappeared. A
minute later, he came pounding down the path toward us. He had a hard hat on
his head, his cravat was loosened and his collar open. He was a foreman again,
not an administrator, and looked as if he loved it.
"Glad you got here," he said "Dave, on the phone you sounded like you know
more about this shit than maybe anybody. You want to brief Yolanda there?" He
pointed up ahead to one of the hazmat team
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