All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

by James Alan Gardner

  I actually knew how long, but didn’t have the nerve to answer. Miranda intimidated the heck out of me—and remember, I used to hang with vampires.

  Let me correct that. It wasn’t me who hung out with vamps—the fang-banger was Kimmi. I’m not Kimmi anymore. And since I get this all the time from people who knew me back then, let’s clear the air. I didn’t become Kim as a wounded reaction to Nicholas rejecting me. Kimmi was just a closet that I hid in for a while. I became Kim because that’s who I was when I stopped hiding.

  Outward representation of internal reality. Just more premeditated than how a lot of other people live.

  UP THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF CAMPUS

  Past the J. R. Thomas Centre for Mathematics … through the shadows between Elizabeth M. Cochrane Chemistry Hall and the S. Lorenzo Gotti Biology building … around “P-Cubed,” the Patricia Park Physics Institute …

  You get the idea.

  J. R. Thomas and the rest? Every one of them was a Darkling. As far as I can tell, they didn’t have anything to do with math, chemistry, etc. They just wanted their names on UW buildings, and they outbid the competition. It was graffiti tagging for rich people, except they used plaques instead of spray paint.

  One building on campus had escaped the Darkling vandalism. Engineering 3: a name the building was given before the Dark Invitation changed everything. As with everything else on campus, the name of Engineering 3 had been bought and paid for in the past few years, but by a super-intelligent guy who called himself the Inventor.

  No one knew his true identity, but everybody agreed he must have been one of the thousands of engineers to graduate from Waterloo. The Inventor had made billions of dollars from patents in energy storage, smart materials, and much more—things that could be used by anyone, but first had to be dreamed up by a super-enhanced brain. His inventions were part of a burgeoning field called Cape Science or Cape Tech. The Inventor himself was called a Spark: a term we were forced to use after some damned Darkling trademarked the word “superhero.”

  The Inventor had spent a hefty wad of cash to protect Engineering 3 from a Darkling name change. Presumably he did it out of nostalgia for the place where he’d learned his trade. Also, to give the finger to non-engineer Darklings who wanted their names above the door.

  So E3 had no bronze plaque; no in honor of; no full-length painted portrait of a Fortune 500 vampire or were-jackal. E3 had nothing but classrooms and labs, pretty much as they’d always been.

  As a science student, I was required to trash-talk engineers and curl my lip in disdain, but on this particular issue, I envied them.

  UW MAPS DEPICTED THE CAMPUS AS DIVIDED INTO SEPARATE BUILDINGS

  The maps lied. Many buildings had accreted into lumpy conglomerates by means of tunnels, overpasses, and extensions. Some connections were planned from the start, and joined so smoothly you couldn’t tell when you left one building and entered another. Other connections were obvious afterthoughts, hodgepodged together like a clutter of plugs and extension cords jammed into a power bar.

  Hence the Engineering Link. It’s where E3 merged with the Simon and Janine Hunter-Chan School of Chemical Engineering and also with the Vlad T. Kallikandros Center for Systems Design. The result was Escher architecture: a convergence of corridors, stairways, and ramps of varying widths, heights, and angles. To add to the fun, vending machines had been planted in the exact center of the Link, because nothing improves traffic flow like a crowd of engineers lined up for Doritos.

  One of the Link’s stairways always seemed to be cloaked in shadow. The effect was just psychological—the campus’s Health and Safety Department would have done something if the lighting were truly dim. But the stairs were narrow and deep, bounded between grim gray walls. Standing at the bottom, you felt like you’d fallen down a well.

  I was climbing those very stairs when I heard the Darklings coming.

  FOOTSTEPS ECHOED THROUGH THE EMPTY HALLS

  I pictured engineering students: maybe guys returning from an off-campus pub after celebrating the last night of the term.

  I don’t get hassled often, not even by drunk engineers. But once in a while, someone gets all Precambrian about the way I look. With the campus so empty and abandoned, discretion seemed the better part of valor.

  I slipped as fast I could back to the bottom of the shadowy stairwell. With luck, the group would pass by overhead and never notice me. The footsteps drew nearer, moving at a purposeful pace. I held my breath, but peeked to see who they were.

  Now that I think of it, that’s foreshadowing. I was a hider, but also a peeker. Huh.

  I SAW A PARADE OF DARKLINGS

  Two were-beasts, then two demons, then two vampires: paired off, one male and one female of each, as if Noah were assembling an ark whose walls would leak blood.

  The were-beasts were in feroform. Male polar bear, female black panther. Both were huge—eight feet tall, with their heads approaching the ceiling of the modest corridor. But they weren’t decked out for a fight. They were clothed in casual wear and wore backpacks.

  Backpacks are standard gear for were-beasts. A were’s feroform is so much bigger than its ordinary human size that it needs two sets of clothing. Then it needs a backpack to carry the extra outfit. Were-beasts could, of course, go naked, but remember who Darklings are. They are not going to show the world their primary and secondary sexual characteristics when they could buy something chic from the Armani WyrWear line.

  Behind the beast-folk walked two demons. The male was a classic bogeyman: human shaped but murky, like the darkness at the back of an alley. If you’ve ever had a nightmare of being chased by someone you can’t quite see, you know what a bogeyman is. You can’t pin down why he’s frightening—he doesn’t have weapons or claws. He’s just something that wants to get you … and if he does, whatever happens next will be awful.

  The bogeyman was bad, but the female demon was worse. She wore a white wedding gown draped down to her toes, plus long silk gloves and a veil over her face. Her body was fully concealed, not a millimeter visible; even her hair was completely covered by the veil.

  And that was good. I knew, I just knew, that a single glimpse of the woman herself would break me. I could tell that my dread was caused by the demon’s Shadow, but knowing my fear was due to magic didn’t matter. The were-beasts could rip me to ribbons and the bogey could hurt or kill me, but this bride could corrupt who I was.

  I shrank farther into the shadows. But I couldn’t look away.

  The last two Darklings were vampires. They looked human, their eyes and teeth normal. If not for my time as Kimmi, I wouldn’t have known what they were.

  But vampires move too fluidly—like butter across a griddle. Living creatures move with muscles that are under control of neurons. The neurons work together, all trying to fire in sync, but inevitably they don’t. A microsecond here, a millisecond there, and the discrepancies mean our movements are never completely smooth.

  Vampires, on the other hand, aren’t alive. Their hearts don’t beat, and their neurons don’t spark. They shouldn’t be moving at all; they should be rotting in their graves. But magic lets them walk with perfect precision. A vampire is how a mind moves when it simply ignores its body. Once you notice, it’s disturbing—deep in the Uncanny Valley.

  So two vampires, two demons, two were-beasts glided along. Not speaking, not looking around. Almost robotic.

  If they sensed me, they made no sign. They passed by with the air of people who had something important to do.

  THE DARKLINGS SURELY NOTICED ME

  The were-beasts must have smelled me. The vampires must have felt the heat of my blood. Either they were all so focused they weren’t paying attention, or else they sensed me and just didn’t care.

  And why should they have cared? They weren’t doing anything villainous, they were just walking down a hall. Probably they were even legitimate students. Waterloo isn’t a big Dark school—Darklings usually study law and finance, not tech—but
we had about a hundred and fifty Darklings on campus, counting undergrads, grads, and professors. The six who passed me had as much right to be there as I did.

  On the other hand, it was the long dark night of the solstice. The moon was full and scheduled for a total eclipse. If the Darklings were on the move, in silent procession, on a campus devoid of other people …

  It just didn’t bode well.

  THE SMART MOVE WOULD HAVE BEEN TO LEAVE

  But I’ve mentioned my time as Kimmi. I sort of had a thing about Darklings.

  So I was up those stairs in a flash, as quiet as falling snow. (When you’re a hider you learn to tiptoe, even in hiking boots.) I reached the top of the stairs in time to see the Darklings enter a room down the hall. The last vampire closed the door behind him. A red light lit up above the door: the kind of light that’s always accompanied by a sign saying DANGER, DO NOT ENTER WHEN LIGHT IS ON.

  I knew the rooms down that hall were all labs: high-ceilinged spaces with big, chunky machines and roaring ventilation systems. By contrast, our labs in the science buildings were smaller and more sedate. (We preferred precision to brute force.) We also kept our laboratories closed, but whenever I walked through E3, every lab door was open, spilling decibels into the world.

  Not tonight. The labs were silent. Everything was shut down for Christmas.

  I crept along the hall, past labs with signs like HIGH-PRESSURE HYDRAULICS and TRIBOLOGY. But when I got to the Darklings’ lab, it had no ID. Just that red warning light. A small window was set in the door at eye level (well, somebody’s eye level, not mine), but thick black paper covered the other side of the glass.

  I heard nothing from the lab. If I hadn’t been interrupted, I would have pressed my ear to the door. Before I could do that, the corridor filled with singing.

  “HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THEM THAT PREACH THE GOSPEL OF PEACE…”

  Handel. From the Messiah. I’m no cognoscente of music, but I recognized the tune because Miranda had been belting it out all month long. She claimed she didn’t know when she was doing it; one moment she’d be hearing it in her head, and the next she was singing out loud.

  And I mean loud. Before microphones, opera sopranos had to be heard at the back of theaters while accompanied by hundred-piece orchestras. Ever since, they’ve been trained to deliver arias at volumes that would scare a trumpeting elephant.

  Which Miranda often did. In the shower. Sometimes at six in the morning.

  When I heard Handel echo through E3, I knew Miranda hadn’t been able to resist the acoustics of the empty building. Silent, vacant corridors = reverberation. I should have been glad that Christmas put her in a mood for the Messiah. Otherwise, she might have been trilling one of those high-pitched coloraturas that make non-opera-lovers want to blow up La Scala.

  One thing for sure: I couldn’t stay where I was. The Darklings in the lab might wonder, “What’s with all the noise?” and open the door to see. I didn’t want to be caught trying to eavesdrop. As quietly as I could, I trotted in Miranda’s direction so I could shush her before the Darklings got upset.

  I met her at the intersection of my corridor and hers. I waved my hands. “Shh, be quiet.”

  Miranda stopped and asked, “Why?” She made no attempt to keep her voice down.

  If you whispered to Miranda, “Hush, we’re being stalked by a moon-maddened werewolf,” she’d say in her normal opera-volume voice, “Don’t be ridiculous, that’s against the law.”

  LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MIRANDA

  She was a goddess.

  Not literally. Our world has real goddesses—you can watch them on YouTube—and Miranda wasn’t actually divine. But she’d still fit in with Bastet, Athena, et al.

  She had Nordic blond hair: long and genuine, not L’Oréal. (I love dye, but I envy those who don’t need it.) She was six feet tall with flawless Nordic skin. Not too thin, not too full, perfect posture and teeth. I don’t know if her voice was great by professional opera standards or only impressive to lowbrows like me, but I’ll bet Miranda could walk into any concert hall and get a role as a Valkyrie just on looks alone.

  She also knew how to dress, even how to accessorize. And how to use makeup so she didn’t look made up at all.

  Miranda Neuhof: the ideal woman, as defined by the media and thrown in the faces of short, queer Asians.

  If life weren’t unfair enough, Miranda also had a brain. Ish. Selective intelligence: She’d made the physics honors list for three years running, but didn’t have an ounce of common sense or moderation.

  Miranda came from old money. She shared much in common with Lilith, that vampire from the roadhouse. I don’t know how much of Miranda’s perfection was innate, how much came from surgery, and how much was the result of expensive “optimizations”—everything from private tutors to human growth hormone and “maximum potential” treatments sold on the black market by superintelligent Sparks.

  Unlike Lilith, Miranda wasn’t a Darkling. Miranda’s parents inherited fortunes, but they refused to join the Dark. Their refusal was pure pigheadedness—I’d met Miranda’s mother and father, and they would argue about anything, just to be contrary. While the rest of the Neuhof clan had eagerly embraced the Dark Invitation, Miranda’s parents said no. Vociferously. The arguments grew into a family feud, and now Miranda hated Darklings more than anyone else I knew.

  BACK TO MIRANDA ASKING WHY I’D SHUSHED HER

  “Darklings,” I whispered.

  Her eyes turned steely. “Doing what?”

  “Six of them went into a lab and locked the door.”

  “Which lab?”

  “Umm.” If I told her where the Darklings were, she might go and bang on the door, demanding to know what they were up to.

  “Look,” I said, “it’s past nine. Richard and Shar are waiting. We have to get over there.”

  WHY RICHARD AND SHAR WERE WAITING

  Shar was another of my roommates. Housemates. Whatever. Shar, Miranda, and another girl named Jools shared a townhouse with me off campus.

  Richard was Shar’s boyfriend. He was a fourth-year engineer who worked ten hours a week in a lab elsewhere in the wing. The fact that he had a lab job tells you that Richard was pretty darn smart—competition for on-campus work can be hellishly fierce.

  Richard’s expertise was pumps: anything from the giants used to pump oil across the country to the cute little babies that keep you alive during surgery. I estimate that Richard spent 85 percent of his waking moments working or thinking about pumps. That left 10 percent for Shar, and 5 percent for everything else.

  This suited Shar fine. She wasn’t what you’d call emotionally invested. She saw Richard as a convenience, and both seemed content with the arrangement. When Richard graduated in April, he’d leave for a high-paid career of pumps, pumps, pumps. He and Shar would hug good-bye, then never think about each other again.

  Until then, Shar played Supportive Girlfriend. On the night in question, this meant that she dragged our household to Richard’s lab to cart equipment. Giant metal pipes? Obsolete computers? I hadn’t been told what the job entailed. Shar had only said the professor who ran Richard’s lab was giving him a load of surplus pumpy goodness, and Richard needed extra hands to haul it away.

  So we intended to lug a mess of machinery out of a lab on a night when the campus was empty. This didn’t exactly scream “legitimate.” But even Miranda had agreed to help. None of us believed Richard had the balls to steal stuff so blatantly—not even a stash of lovely, lovely pumps.

  Besides, Shar had promised us cookies when we were finished. Shar made really good cookies.

  BRING ON THE PUMPS

  Miranda pressed me for more information about the Darklings, but I just headed toward Richard’s lab. Fortunately, we didn’t have to pass the room where the six Darklings had gone; I doubt if I could have walked by without a furtive glance. I managed to stonewall Miranda’s questions until we reached our destination, but that didn’t mean she dropped the sub
ject. The moment we entered the lab, Miranda told Shar and Richard, “Kim saw Darklings up to no good but won’t tell me where. No cookies for Kim till we get the story.”

  Typical Miranda, laying down rules for somebody else’s cookies. Something else typical: No one objected. Shar merely said, “Darklings? What were they doing?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just walking down the hall.”

  Shar looked at me dubiously. She was good at dubious. Shar did dubious better than anyone else in the world except my mother.

  Ashariti Chandra: born in Sri Lanka, dark-skinned and generously big. I don’t want to call her a mama bear, since that’s condescending and besides, she’s two months younger than I am. Also, she’d hate being called motherly. Shar’s own mother was the opposite of maternal—a professor cross-appointed between applied math and economics. Mama Chandra used computers to model financial systems, and she was good enough to be in demand at universities around the world. Shar and her mother had bounced hither and thither on visiting fellowships from Colombo to Brussels to Chicago to Shanghai, finally coming to rest at UW. Shar’s father had traveled with them for a hop or two, but then he’d gotten fed up playing househusband and had stomped back to Sri Lanka after a quickie divorce.

  Since then, Shar had been her mother’s keeper: cooking, cleaning, and organizing because Mom didn’t want to be bothered with anything except GDP and exchange rates. It must have been tough for eight-year-old Shar to run everything on her own; on the other hand, Shar was smart and had a take-charge personality that fit quite well with domestic domineering. Besides, it meant she could go for days eating nothing but her own home-baked cookies, and Mom didn’t even notice.

  Shar still looked like someone who ate a lot of cookies, but she no longer ran her mother’s life. Quite by surprise, Mom had remarried when Shar was in her first year of university, and five months later, Shar had moved in with Miranda, Jools, and me. Her only explanation was, “Friction at home.” She’d smiled when she said it, and she didn’t seem upset, so I didn’t think it was anything too severe. Maybe her new stepdad just had a mind of his own and didn’t like to be “managed.”