They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  She says, “It turns out that many so-called Mad Geniuses are sane. Relatively, anyway. Like our friend the Inventor guy. He’s pretty balanced, right?”

  “Miranda,” I say, “he’s currently a basset hound. Sane people don’t spend their time as dogs.”

  Miranda waves her hand dismissively. “That happened by accident. A miscalculation. And for a Spark, it’s run-of-the-mill. Superheroes mutate, get possessed, lose their powers, even die, then come back stronger. It’s nothing important. It’s just churn.”

  “So you’re saying we’ll all turn into dogs eventually?” I hold out my hand. “Pinkie-swear that when it happens I get to be a husky. I like huskies. But what kind of dog would you be? I want to say a golden retriever, but you hate me obsessing that you’re blond.”

  “Jools, focus,” Miranda says. “The point is that Sparks can be Geniuses without being mad. Like Maid Marian—she’s one of Robin Hood’s group.”

  “She calls herself Maid Marian, but you think she’s sane?”

  Miranda glares. “The point is she’s a Genius and she’s been around for years, but she’s never made a doomsday device. She just builds useful stuff for Robin: vehicles, gadgets, defenses. She’s the main reason Robin’s group have never gotten caught. Like, they must have a headquarters somewhere, right? But it’s shielded so well, no one can find it.”

  I say, “Has anyone checked Sherwood Forest?”

  “They’ve checked everywhere, Jools. The Dark Guard use clairvoyants, scrying rituals, and heaven knows what else. They really want to bust Robin Hood’s ass. But thanks to Marian, Robin’s headquarters are undetectable.”

  My brain idly toys with two threads of ideas, one envisioning ways to hide a base from all efforts to find it, and another devising ways to find something that’s so well concealed. I have no particular urge to rat out Robin and his outlaws, but I’m intrigued by the challenge of beating defenses that no one has ever pierced.

  No, Jools, stop, before Miranda notices. “So are you saying you’re okay if I invent stuff?”

  “Provisionally. Yes.” She takes a deep breath, then launches into what is obviously a prepared speech. “Because if you’re drawn to that lifestyle now, and it’s not guaranteed to drive you mad, then we should make a safe space for you, right? We should say, If that’s who you’ve become, we’ll be supportive. Which I will be, Jools, I really will.” I can see her trying not to make a face. “Even if you want me to wear something made of biology.”

  I have to hug her—she’s trying so earnestly to meet me halfway. She hugs me back gingerly. Miranda is not a natural hugger, but she’s working on it. She’s made it a goal.

  When I let her go, I say, “You’ll love this. Seriously.”

  I show her how the jelly undies work. It’s only a tiny bit awkward. When she digs down deep, Miranda can throw a mental toggle switch to change from prima donna to physicist. She drops her high-maintenance instincts and starts to investigate.

  A perfect example: Miranda is squicked out by blood, but if a friend is bleeding, she switches over to clinical mode and has no hesitation washing a wound, applying antiseptics, and bandaging you up to perfection. Afterward, she seems unfazed; maybe she falls to pieces when she’s finally in private, but she doesn’t show any revulsion while she’s with you. At worst, Nurse Miranda chews you out for trying to chop veggies while drunk, but she only turns into a scold when the worst is over.

  So demonstrating the slime isn’t a nightmare. I do have to take off my clothes and let Miranda examine the jellyfish at point-blank range. But she doesn’t make it weird; it’s more like a trip to physio, where the people who have to fix your dislocated shoulder are polite but treat your body like a car without a passenger in it. Miranda asks questions, but all of them are practical: “How do I,” “What if,” and “When.” She stringently avoids inquiring what the bikini parts are made of, or how I procured the raw materials. When she’s in this frame of mind, Miranda excels at compartmentalization—she keeps her brain on a very short leash and makes sure it doesn’t stray.

  Of course, she also stays wrapped in her bathrobe with the belt cinched tight and double knotted. She’s not going to put on the slimewear with me in the room. Even in clinical mode, Miranda has rock-solid boundaries.

  So when Miranda runs out of questions, she sends me packing so she can try on the undies alone. I’m not the only person who needs a safe space to be who she’s become.

  * * *

  SO WE HAIR. WE nails. We face. We garb.

  Not necessarily in that order. I don’t know how the others finalize their on-fleek-dom, because we prep the last hour in private till it’s time for The Reveal. And because being a Spark means a life adrip with coincidence, we emerge from our rooms simultaneously like the end of a montage in a movie.

  Me in the red dress from Calon Arang. Diamonds in my ears and around my neck. Hair extensions inserted so I’m ready to mermaid with Ariel. I look like a fucking Bond girl walking into the Monte Carlo casino.

  But there are two types of Bond girl: the A-list stars who get their names in the opening credits, and the C-list also-rans killed by the end of act one. Alas, I’m the act-one girl—hot enough for the promotional photo spread in Maxim, but not hot enough to sit with Bond at the grown-up table. The A-list honor belongs to Miranda, who’s red-carpet ready in strapless white. WikiJools tries to inform me which big-name designer made the dress, but I tell it to fuck off. We all know Miranda is rich; let’s not rub it in. I’m jealous enough that she looks like a Disney princess … and one of the modern ones with arm muscles.

  K is Disneyesque, too, but the movie is Mulan. K’s outfit is a full-length silk robe with a Mandarin jacket. Both robe and jacket are black, embroidered with golden dragons. It’s the first time I’ve seen K wear anything that reflects zir Chinese heritage. I think it’s brilliant, simultaneously dressy and unisex. The finishing touch is a black Mandarin hat, possibly to hide K’s shockingly short white hair. Then again, K has never shown any reticence about flaunting zir punk hairstyle, so let’s just chalk up the hat as a fashion statement.

  Speaking of fashion statements, Shar has gone loud. Never mind that Buddhists traditionally wear white to funerals. Shar looks like a bowl of Froot Loops: she wears a green sari cloak over a red petticoat skirt and an orange choli blouse. Blue slippers. Purple head scarf. Gold bangles.

  It’s typical Shar. Day to day she wears blue jeans or leggings, but when she gets the chance, she goes Sri Lankan to the max. I don’t know if she’s reveling in her heritage, or just being fabulous. But she says that dressing ultra-Asian has the great advantage of pissing off her mother, who is super-mega-Westernized—I’ve never seen Shar’s mom in anything but a pantsuit. (Momma Chandra is a wiz at computerized finance simulations. She’s rich enough to go Darkling, but the prospect doesn’t interest her. All she cares about is economic models … and fighting with Shar.)

  So here we are: three hot babes and one hot abstention. Miranda is the only one who’d get on the cover of Cosmo—I’m too horsey, Shar too 3-D, and K too hip for the room. But all four of us are rocking our peak potential. I lick my finger, touch each of the others, and make sizzling sounds. Shar laughs. “We’ll achieve quite the entrance, yes?”

  “Oh yeah,” Miranda says. We grin at each other.

  “And costumes?” I ask. “We’re set for that, too?”

  Simultaneously, we activate our slimewear. Two seconds later, we’ve changed into badass Sparks.

  More grins. We switch back to glam.

  K says, “So let’s go mourn the dead.”

  We head for the car.

  * * *

  WE TAKE MIRANDA’S CAR: a gold-colored Solfeggietto from I-Light Industries. The car was designed by our basset-hound friend, the Inventor, and I think it was intended as a big middle finger extended toward other car companies. It’s solar-powered, with an ordinary 110-volt power cord to top up the battery if the sun stays too long behind clouds. The car seats four peo
ple comfortably. It has such good safety features, they’re practically superpowers. And it sells for less than any car on the market, partly because there are no dealers to take a cut as middlemen. If you want a Solfeggietto, you sign on to I-Light. com; you specify a color, payment method, and delivery address; and five days later, a car teleports into your driveway.

  So of course Miranda owns a Solfeggietto. (It doesn’t hurt that the name comes from a famous piece of music by C. P. E. Bach.) And of course we’re going to drive it to a gathering of Darklings, where it will stand out in the parking lot like a dove among crows. More precisely, it will stand out like a bright gold sun-mobile among the black gas-guzzling limos that each take up multiple parking spaces at the Transylvania Club.

  But during our drive to the club, we talk things over and decide to avoid parking in the actual lot. We expect trouble, and that starts with T, and that rhymes with D, and that stands for Diamond. Miranda doesn’t want her beloved Sol-fa getting damaged by superweapons, gunfire, magic, or any of the other destructive forces that might run amok during the evening. So we park on a side street several blocks from the venue, and walk in all our glory to our appointment with Fate.

  We walk at a fast clip. Waterloo never reaches the blistering cold that Edmonton does, but I have to admit the night is pretty darn frigid. WikiJools tells me it’s minus ten degrees Celsius, with a windchill dropping down to minus fourteen. I can resist icy temperatures as well as any human on Earth, but I’m still bloody freezing. Shar cheats by surrounding herself with a wafer-thin force field to shut out the breeze. I’m surprised K doesn’t cheat, too—it would be simple for zir to shrink and hitchhike a ride in somebody’s hair.

  But K doesn’t take the easy way out. In fact, by the look on zir face, K is obviously suffering from more than the temperature. After a minute of walking, K grimaces and says, “Shar. Do you know about me and Elaine Vandermeer?”

  “Yes,” Shar says. “Miranda told me.”

  Miranda looks guilty. “Sorry, K, but I had to. Keeping that kind of thing secret is asking for trouble.”

  “I know.” K draws in a breath “So, Shar, can you protect me? Wrap my head in a mental shield or something?”

  It’s obviously hard for K to ask. The night we got our powers, Shar used her mental mojo on K without permission and K has been mad at Shar ever since. It shows how much K fears Elaine that ze will ask Shar for help.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Shar says. “But this is my first time encountering a blood bond. I’m not sure how to oppose it. I’ll also be in civilian clothes, so I can’t use my full strength; otherwise, I’ll glow and give us all away. But I’ll do my best. If worse comes to worst, I can … well … even if I can’t block the bond, I’ll stop you doing anything you’d regret.”

  “You mean knocking me out?”

  “If needed. I’m sure I’ll notice if Elaine attacks you mentally. If I can’t deflect the assault, I’ll twist it and cause an overload.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Miranda says.

  Shar nods. “But it’s not like I have a wealth of experience countering Darkling magic. This is unexplored territory.”

  “Well,” K mumbles, “do your best.”

  Ze suddenly shrinks out of sight. In our heads, K’s voice says, « I’ll fly ahead and pick up the invitations. »

  K’s not good with interpersonal tension. And someone does have to pick up the invites.

  The pickup process is trickier than it sounds. While shrunken invisibly small, K changes costume into Zircon. Then K flies to the club and claims the invitations set aside by the Vandermeers. With invites in hand, Zirc shrinks out of sight again and comes back to meet us in the shadow of a tree. Zircon reverts to a full-sized K and hands us each an invitation.

  So much jumping through hoops … and for something as simple as getting into a party for which we have legit invitations! Does every Spark have to deal with this shit?

  But never mind. We’re good to go. We’re great to go. Flashing our invitations, we enter the heart of Darkness.

  7

  Natural Habitat

  THE TRANSYLVANIA CLUB HAS a lobby with a coat check and a security station. We show our invitations again and get waved through a magical body-scanner. It’s similar to a conventional walk-through metal detector, except it’s covered with sorcerous runes that make my eyes cross when I look at them. Briefly, I wonder if our slimewear will set off alarms. But the four of us sail through as if we aren’t wearing anything super.

  Inwardly, I cheer. Then I realize that if the scanner can’t recognize our slimewear, it might have a blind spot for Cape Tech in general. Diamond, Robin Hood, and other dangerous Sparks could waltz in with their pockets full of death rays, and no one would be the wiser.

  But maybe there’s a glimmer of hope. Beyond the scanner, a wrestler-sized dude stands on guard at the doorway that leads into the main part of the club. He’s heavily invested in the Men-in-Black look: dark suit, white shirt, and sunglasses. His feet are comfortably spread and his gloved hands are folded in front of his waist, bodyguard-style. He could easily be mistaken for run-of-the-mill security, except that he has no wrists.

  Seriously. There’s a five-millimeter gap between the ends of his jacket sleeves and the beginnings of his gloves. The gap ain’t got nothing but empty.

  Cool.

  When I look more closely at Wrestler Dude’s face, I can tell that it’s totally makeup. I’m not seeing skin, I’m seeing a paint job on cheeks, lips, and forehead. Under the Estée Lauder, the dude’s invisible.

  Hey, WikiJools, who dat? As fast as a speeding Bing, the answer hits me. I’m looking at Mister No One of the Aussie All-Stars. His file says he’s a tough guy who happens to be invisible. One of his favorite things is disguising himself to blend in with crowds.

  « Yo, dudes,» I say with my comm ring, «that beefy guy is an Aussie All-Star. »

  « How did they get that name? » Shar asks. « It feels so ill-advised. And ‘Aussie’ is problematic. It sounds like an ethnic slur. »

  A WikiJools lookup later, I report, « The All-Stars didn’t choose the name themselves. It came from some rando’s internet post. But it stuck. »

  « See? » Shar says. « If we don’t pick a name for our team, someone else will. And it’s bound to be dreadful. »

  She has a point. K says, « Let’s not get distracted in enemy territory. The important point is that the All-Stars must be here in an official capacity. That man is stationed at the door, and making himself obvious. The other All-Stars are probably doing the same in other parts of the building. »

  « They sure aren’t being subtle,» I say. « They planted Mister No One where everyone could see. That’s a message to Diamond: we’re here, so back off. »

  « Oh noes! » says a new voice over our comm rings. « The All-Stars are gonna get me! I’m weeing in my wellies. »

  Male voice. Australian accent. Eek.

  « Hey, Diamond,» K says calmly. « Still tapping our phones? »

  The guy gives a creepy laugh. Oh, just awesome. We’re conference-calling with Hannibal Lecter.

  « Go fuck yourself,» Miranda tells him. Meanwhile, I’m looking around the lobby, but I don’t see anyone with a supervillain vibe. Some people nearby are obviously Darklings, but most others could pass as human. Since nobody knows what Diamond looks like, anyone here could be him. He could even pass as a woman or were-beast: I’m sure a Mad Genius could whip up a device to disguise his real appearance.

  And why should I think he’s in sight? The comm rings have unlimited range. Diamond might be on another floor of the building. Hell, he could be lying on a beach in Bora Bora and yanking our chains just to troll us.

  « What’s your plan? » K asks him. « The usual senseless slaughter? »

  « My slaughter is never senseless,» Diamond replies. « But these rumors about finding one of my weapons … they’re an obvious ruse to draw me out. »

  « You’re saying the bazooka isn’t yours? �
� I ask.

  « The weapons I cached nearby all destroyed themselves,» Diamond replies. « That’s what they were designed to do, and that’s what they did. Anyone claiming I left a loose end is trying to piss me off. »

  « Because of course,» Miranda says, «it’s impossible you’d ever screw up. »

  « Don’t taunt me, girl,» Diamond says. « I may be a sociopathic narcissist, but I’m not that easy to bait. I intend to— Shit! »

  His voice cuts out. “Damn,” Miranda says out loud, “that bastard sure is annoying.”

  « Apologies,» says a new voice inside our heads. This one is nasal and familiar: our friend the Inventor. Invie says, « I attempted to backtrack Diamond’s signal in order to locate his position. However, I triggered some kind of detection protocol. Diamond disconnected before I could pinpoint him. »

  I say, « Do you have a rough idea where he is? »

  « Somewhere in Waterloo Region,» Invie says. « We should discuss this. Please meet Grandfather and me at the main floor bar. »

  « Now you’re talking,» I say. I tell my friends, “Bar. Now. Fast.”

  * * *

  THE TRANSYLVANIA CLUB HAS three stories and a beer cellar, each divided into sections that can be booked for weddings and such. I’ve been in the club before—I came last year for Oktoberfest. Back then, however, the place was only filled with humans, all of them drunk and eating sauerkraut while trying to dance the polka. Now I’m surrounded by Darklings. My lizard brain screams, “Run, run, run!”

  Now that I think about it, this is only the second time I’ve been in a big crowd of Darklings. The first was when we went to the Goblin Market. That time, however, I had the benefit of being in Spark ID, so I was surrounded by a Halo that partly warded off the Darkling auras. Now, I’m less protected. I still have more resistance than most humans do, but without my costume and my Halo, I’m only half armored up.