Harry Turtledove The Case Of The Toxic Spell Dump

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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."
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"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 clearcut 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
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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 feet, 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'll 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."
" find only one technical term appropriate to use in response to that
viewpoint: bullshit." Michael
I
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?"
Michael refused to be distracted. "Leaving aside the habits of the natives of
the islands off the coast, whose tribal name gave English the word 'cannibal,'
the two most prominent cultures in the Americas five hundred years ago were
the Aztecs, also cannibals, who fueled themselves both theologically and in
terms of protein through human sacrifice, and the Incas, whose theology was
benign enough but who regimented themselves more thoroughly than the
Ukrainians would have tolerated before their latest crisis."
"You're hitting below the belt, talking about peoples who didn't live in
what's now the Confederation," I
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protested. "What about the noble warriors and hunters of the Great Plains?"
"Well, what about them?" he asked. The culture they now revere and think of as
ancient did not exist and could not have existed before the coming of the
Europeans because their own ancestors had hunted the American horse to
extinction hardly good environmental management, in my opinion. And the
firearms they used to defend their territory bravery against encroaching
whites were all bought or stolen from those same whites, because they did not
know how to make them for themselves."
"Whoa, there." I held up a hand "Blaming people for not having skills isn't
fair. And the whites who took the land away from the natives weren't what
you'd call saints. Conquest by firewater, deliberately spread smallpox, and
mass exorcisms of the native Powers isn't anything to be proud of."
"You're right," he said. "But if Europeans had not found the Americas until,
for example, the day before yesterday, they would not have found them much
different from the way they were five hundred years ago. And that is precisely
the point I am trying to make. Thanks to modem thaumaturgy, our present
culture supports far more people at a higher level of affluence and greater
material comfort than any other in the history of the world."
" that all you judge culture by?" I asked. "Seems to me there should be more
to life."
Is
"Oh, no doubt. But make note of this, David: as a general rule not universal,
I concede, but general the people who show the greatest contempt for material
comforts are those lucky enough to have them. The Abyssinian peasant starving
in his drought-stricken field, the Canaanite cobbler suffering under a plague
of gnats because no local sorcerer knows enough to properly control Beelzebub,
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