All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

by James Alan Gardner

  “So what do you think she did?” Aria asked.

  “The Widow had been drained. She was weakened, maybe unconscious. Being a vampire, Elaine would be plenty strong enough to carry the Widow to a fire escape and leave the building. In all the confusion, she’d just seem like someone taking a wounded friend to safety. Then off to the car and away.”

  “What about Trent?” Ninety-Nine asked. “He was the Widow’s bodyguard. He had to be somewhere close by. When the shit hit the fan, he would have rushed to the Widow’s side.”

  “Even if he did,” Aria said, “so what? Elaine would just say, ‘Let’s get the Widow out before anything else happens.’ Any decent bodyguard would say, ‘Hell, yes.’”

  “Where would they go?” Dakini asked.

  Nobody answered. I thought, Maybe Lake Huron. But I didn’t believe it.

  OUR GLUM SILENCE WAS BROKEN BY THE WORST SOUND IN THE WORLD

  “I’d Come for You” by Nickelback.

  Aria, Ninety-Nine, and I cringed. We knew the ringtone well.

  Dakini smiled. “My sweet is finally awake.” She calmly got out her phone while the rest of us tried not to kill her in front of Pox.

  DAKINI SAID, “HELLO, SWEET.”

  Pause.

  “I had to go out for a while.”

  Pause.

  “No, you should go home. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  Pause.

  “It’s in the parking lot right behind the house. The keys are on my dresser.”

  Pause.

  And.

  Because Dakini was psionically attuned to the energy flows of the universe (which allowed her to make serendipitous discoveries, even in the midst of chaos, or a lame phone call from her boyfriend), she said, “By the way, sweet, have you ever heard of an engineering professor named Adam Popigai?”

  Pause.

  “Really?”

  Pause.

  “Really?”

  Pause. By that point, Ninety-Nine and I were covering Aria’s mouth with our hands to prevent her from blasting Dakini into foie gras.

  “How interesting,” Dakini said.

  Pause.

  “No, his name just came up in conversation. You go home. We’ll talk in the morning. Bye-eee.”

  With maddening composure, she tucked the phone back into her costume. Even with Spark-o-Vision, I couldn’t see where she put it—as if time and space suffered a momentary stutter. In literally no time at all, the phone wasn’t anywhere in sight; it had gone to wherever people in Highlander movies hide their swords.

  Ninety-Nine and I dropped our hands from Aria’s mouth. Aria’s eyes blazed. “What’s this about Popigai?”

  Dakini looked smug. “Remember what my sweet said about that surplus equipment we were supposed to carry? His supervisor tried to throw it out earlier in the day, but the e-waste drop-off area was full.”

  “Popigai,” Aria, Ninety-Nine, and I said in unison.

  “Yes,” Dakini said. “Apparently my sweet’s supervisor ranted at great length about a self-important professor who thought he could monopolize university facilities.”

  “So you’re saying,” Aria said, “that Popigai left a shitload of electronic equipment in the university’s disposal area?”

  “Yes.”

  Aria whipped toward Ninety-Nine. “Where would things go from there?”

  Ninety-Nine glowed green. “To the regional dump. It’s not just a landfill these days; it has complete recycling facilities for paper, plastic, e-waste…”

  “Damn, Diamond is sneaky,” Aria said.

  “He covered his tracks beautifully,” I agreed. “By now, the Dark Guard will be all over this: computer records and phone traces, scrying, clairvoyance, retro-cognition…”

  “And none of that will turn up anything,” Aria said. “Popigai shipped a ton of equipment to the landfill without ever going there himself. He didn’t even leave a paper trail. He just dumped the stuff and let university services do the work. Investigators would never connect the dots. Not in the short amount of time before Popigai uses the equipment to do something mega-death-y.”

  I nodded. This plan made more sense than crashing some ritual more than a hundred kilometers away. It was also easier for us to check. The dump was on the outskirts of town; Aria could get us there in a minute. If we didn’t find anything, at least we wouldn’t end up far away and feeling like idiots for having been tricked.

  But this felt like the real deal, even if it had been handed to us by an epic coincidence.

  LET’S TALK ABOUT COINCIDENCE FOR A MOMENT

  Sparks are creatures of drama and wish fulfillment. We’re Victor Frankenstein creating new life even though he knew nothing of how biology actually worked. We’re ridiculously beneficial mutations, as opposed to the 99.9 percent of mutations that are either negative or give you a slightly more efficient pancreas. We’re the last-of-their-kind aliens, the experiments that only worked once, the billionaires who rejected the Dark Invitation and instead used their fortunes to Fight Crime.

  Every species has an ecological niche. A Spark’s niche is coincidence. We inhale luck and exhale unintended consequences. We’re born in fluke accidents, die in dramatic irony, and come back to life at the precise moment it will have maximum impact.

  So don’t worry about that perfectly timed call from Richard. If you accept that I can shrink in defiance of every conventional law of physics, you should also accept that wild coincidences fall into our laps in defiance of sane expectations.

  Besides, any lucky break a Spark receives is balanced by a steaming pile of disaster. Call it the Second Law of the Dark and Light: For every stroke of luck, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  Or as Jools says, “BOHICA.”

  Bend over, here it comes again.

  13

  Deformation

  TO THE DUMP, TO THE DUMP, TO THE DUMP DUMP DUMP

  Pox stayed behind at Red Pine Villa. He was too injured to venture into danger, and anyway, we didn’t trust him enough to bring along. On top of that, the Dark Guard would show up at the Villa sooner or later; if Pox was there, he could tell them where we’d gone. Aria huffed and puffed about that, but I told her (a) we ought to welcome help from the Dark Guard because they wanted to stop Diamond from causing death and destruction, and (b) we couldn’t stop them from getting the truth out of Pox even if we wanted him to keep silent.

  Now that we were Sparks, we had to expect occasional “encounters” with the Dark Guard. We may as well start out on a cooperative footing. Besides, when we were facing off against one of the world’s worst supervillains, we could use all the cannon fodder we could get.

  STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES

  Aria flew us from Red Pine Villa to a hill opposite gate number one of the dump. From there, I attempted reconnaissance.

  It wasn’t easy. First, I was hampered by the snow. It came down thickly, like the chaff used by planes to confuse radar. I wished I could place my viewpoint high in the sky and get an overview of the site, but I couldn’t—wherever I centered my Spark-o-Vision, it couldn’t see more than a couple of paces before the whiteness became impenetrable.

  Second, the landfill was huge. On our way from Red Pine Villa, Ninety-Nine had regaled us with a quick infodump. (See what I did there?) I therefore knew that this was the only waste-management site in the entire Regional Municipality of Waterloo. It served half a million people and included a lot more than just heaps of trash. It had a center for recycling, facilities for producing compost, places for dealing with several types of toxic waste, and a generating station that burned gas from rotting garbage in order to produce electricity. According to Ninety-Nine, the station generated enough power to service six thousand homes.

  But from where we were on the hill, almost all of the station was out of sight. I couldn’t even see the actual garbage. The mounds were just too far away for Spark-o-Vision to perceive, especially with the snow. The landfill site was bigger than the university campus
, with multiple entrances, more than a dozen buildings, and a network of internal roads.

  But at least I found the e-waste disposal. The gate closest to us had a sign saying ENTER HERE FOR ELECTRONIC WASTE DROP-OFF. Additional signs appeared at intervals along the roadway, eventually leading to a prefab building labeled ELECTRONICS DISPOSAL.

  For once, there was no blinder wall blocking my view. However, there still wasn’t much to see. The building’s door opened into a small receiving area. Behind that was open space holding assorted bins of computers, televisions, microwave ovens, etc. The back of the building had a large loading door where new drop-offs arrived and where filled-up bins were sent to other sites. Electronic junk sat near the door, presumably waiting to be sorted, but none of it looked like Cape Tech. Diamond must have already picked up his stuff and taken it elsewhere.

  Did he have a truck to transport his equipment? I looked outside the loading door but couldn’t see tire tracks—the snow had covered any marks that might have been there. I moved my viewpoint, looking for tracks on other roadways; I found a barely discernible trail from gate number one leading into the back of the complex.

  «Got something,» I told the others. «Someone drove through the gate recently enough for the tracks to be visible.»

  «Then we follow,» Aria said, rising into the air.

  WE TRACKED THE TRACKS ALONG A TWISTING TRACK

  I had to admire the skill of whoever had driven the vehicle. Following the dump site’s winding roads was difficult enough (in the dark, in the snow), but driving the route without getting trapped in a snowdrift was practically a miracle. On top of that, few of the landfill’s roads were actually paved. Most were just temporary, made of packed earth, and changing as the dump itself changed.

  Over time, the trash heaps moved like glaciers of garbage, slowly advancing. The roads had to move in synchrony, modified by the same bulldozers that plowed through the garbage and covered it with topsoil. The edges of the ever-changing roads were marked with red plastic light-reflectors mounted on steel rods and jammed into the dirt, but the roads themselves were invisible under the snow.

  Aria’s voice sounded in my head. «Are you sure we’re going the right way?»

  «I can still see the tracks,» I told her. I didn’t mention that they were barely visible. In another ten minutes, they’d be hidden completely by new-fallen snow.

  «I can’t see a thing,» Aria said. «None of the lights are on.»

  I hadn’t noticed: Spark-o-Vision. But I had seen that the landfill had security lights on the buildings, and streetlights lining the few roads that were paved and permanent. I’d just assumed that the lights were still shining. If they were out …

  I said, «This is a promising sign. Diamond is likely here, and cut the lights so no one would see what he’s up to.»

  «Either that,» Ninety-Nine said, «or the snow just took down some power lines.»

  «No, there’s definitely something afoot,» Dakini said. «Local wildlife are upset. I can feel them.»

  «Ugh,» said Aria. «You mean rats, don’t you. Nasty little beasts that live on garbage.»

  «Not as many rats as you might think,» Dakini said, «because of all the predators that eat the rats. There’s a forest on the property that’s full of hawks and owls. Even a pair of eagles. I can also sense coyotes, skunks, raccoons, and feral cats. But most of all, I sense gulls. Many, many gulls, with loud squawky thoughts, even though they ought to be sleeping.»

  «Can you find the center of the disturbance?» Ninety-Nine asked. «That’s likely where we’ll find Diamond.»

  «Yes, by all means,» Aria said, «let’s head toward the greatest mass of agitated vermin.» Under her breath she muttered, “I know it’ll mostly be rats.”

  «You can’t be afraid of rats,» Ninety-Nine said. «You have a force field. And a sonic blast that can turn rats into pâté.»

  «I’m not afraid of rats, I just don’t like them,» Aria said.

  I sympathized. I could imagine being eaten by a rat when I was shrunk small enough to swallow. I’d be as hard as a rock, so being eaten wouldn’t actually hurt, but once you’re inside a rat’s digestive tract, there’s no good way for the story to end.

  «CAR AHEAD,» ARIA SAID

  «How do you know?» I asked. I hadn’t seen anything.

  «Picked it up on sonar,» Aria replied. «Since I can’t see for shit, I’ve been pinging.»

  I shifted my viewpoint far forward and found the car quickly enough. It was a familiar black Lexus. It had hit a patch of deeper-than-expected snow and gotten stuck. I reported this to the others and added, «There’s nobody inside, but I see footprints in the snow. Three sets: driver, front passenger, and someone who was riding in back.»

  Aria said, «So, the Widow, her driver, and who?»

  «Land by the car,» Dakini said. «Let’s see what we can sense.»

  We landed. Dakini sniffed, Aria listened, and Ninety-Nine used the light from her phone to examine the tracks in the snow. I remained where I was in Aria’s hair; I could see just fine from my perch, and I didn’t have to worry about getting buried in drifts that were hundreds of times my current height.

  After a few seconds, Dakini said in a low voice, “I can smell the third person’s scent, but it’s unfamiliar.”

  “Could it be Elaine Vandermeer?” Ninety-Nine asked.

  «That makes sense,» I said. «The Widow would only come here if she knew something would be happening. Who else but Elaine knew Diamond would be here?»

  Now that I thought about it, who else but Elaine could guide the car along these twisty, unseen roads? Neither the Widow nor her driver would know the landfill’s layout, but if Diamond had picked this site for his grand finale, Elaine would surely have gotten a map and memorized every detail.

  “Where do you think they’re going?” Aria asked.

  “The generator station,” Ninety-Nine answered immediately. “That’s where Diamond will be.”

  Aria smacked her head. “Of course! It gives him a power source.”

  “An uninterruptable power source,” Ninety-Nine said. “If he plugged into the normal grid, we could disconnect him by cutting some wires, or at worst, demolishing a transformer. But these generators run on methane from rotting garbage. The garbage will keep rotting for decades. That gives Diamond a serious number of kilowatts to play with.”

  “Crap,” Aria said. “There’s nothing I hate more than a supervillain who plans ahead.”

  “What about rats?” Ninety-Nine asked.

  “You can shut up now,” Aria replied.

  WE BEGAN FOLLOWING THE FOOTPRINTS

  Of course, I could do that much faster with my Spark-o-Vision. While my teammates slogged through the snow—or rather while Ninety-Nine slogged, and Dakini and Aria flew beside her, just high enough to clear the drifts—I sent my vision ahead.

  As expected, the prints led to a building that had to be the generating station. Now, maybe the words “generating station” make you picture a big shiny place with turbines and Three Mile Island–like cooling stacks. Wrong. This one looked like a prefab cattle barn with aluminum siding.

  It was the same size and shape as a barn—two stories tall, and longer than it was wide. It had six chimney stacks, but just small ones: bare metal pipes on the outside of the building, with fat sheaths of heat-proofing material between the pipes and the siding to prevent the aluminum from being damaged. The bottoms of the pipes connected to chunky blue exhaust fans that must have attached to furnaces inside the building. The walls of the building had many additional heat vents, each of which was pumping hot air out into the night. I could tell because they were making heat-haze ripples. The station was apparently running at full capacity, providing all the power Diamond might need.

  The footprints from the Lexus led to a door at the front of the building. I shifted my vision inside …

  … and immediately wanted to kill myself.

  Literally.

  THERE WAS NOTHING S
UBTLE ABOUT IT

  With Ignorance spells and the Bride’s “happiness is winning” dream, obfuscation was the name of the game. I wasn’t supposed to realize someone was playing with my mind. But this time, the attack made no attempt to disguise itself. A wave of crushing force gripped my brain and said, “Die. Do it now. Do it fast.”

  I tried to resist, but I didn’t have the strength. I don’t mean I was too weak. I literally didn’t have any type of power I could use as defense.

  It made me think of Nicholas in his chair. He told me once about reading an “inspirational” book claiming that people could use mind over matter to achieve anything. “The crippled can walk if only they believe.” Nicholas had tried to get out of his chair, and of course, he collapsed. He simply didn’t have the neural links to make his legs work.

  I didn’t have anything that could fight this mental magic. In the moments I was thinking of Nicholas, my hand moved of its own accord and drew the golden dagger from its sheath. At the same time I leapt from my place in Aria’s hair and grew to full size, unable to resist the imperative. I didn’t stop growing at Maximum Zircon height, but went all the way up to soft-fleshed Kim.

  I lifted the blade to my throat. It happened without hesitation—none of the straining you see in movies, where someone’s arm trembles as they try to stop what their arm’s going to do. I was absolutely helpless to prevent this.

  But no. That wasn’t true. All I had to do was overcome a lifetime of being Kimberley/Kimmi/Kim.

  As the knife rose with a flash of golden metal, I whispered, “Help.”

  DAKINI RESPONDED THE FASTEST

  Given her ability to smell mental powers, she may have already noticed psychic forces at work. She threw out a violet tendril that grabbed my wrist and stopped it from slashing my jugular. A second later, a violet globe sprang up around my head like a diver’s helmet; it blocked the magic compulsion and put me abruptly back in control.

  Adrenalin rushed through me, as hot and burning as shame. I started to shake.