They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  “I’m no lady, and I’ll prove it.”

  I head out the door, leaving my untouched whisky on the table.

  * * *

  THE DOOR FROM THE kitchen exits into a classic English garden: lupins and columbines, hollyhocks and roses. On a warm day like this, the flowers should be busy with bees and butterflies. Nope. No buzzing, no flits. No sound except our footsteps as Robin and I cross to a swath of grass between the garden and the forest.

  I say, “What, no river with a log across it?”

  “No streams of any kind in Sherwood,” Robin replies. “At least not this Sherwood. Besides, I’ve never found a suitable Little John. The closest substitute I have is Wrecking Ball, and if she walked onto a log, it would snap.” He gives me a rueful smile. “If I fought her with a quarterstaff, she’d snap me.”

  “Have you ever fought with a staff at all?”

  “Not that I recall.” He raises his staff in one hand and gives it a spin, ending with it tucked under his armpit and his empty hand extended in a press-palm, the sort of show-off maneuver you’d see in a martial-arts movie when a warrior wants to say, I’m totally hot shit. “But I’m Robin Hood,” he says. “Fighting with a staff is bred in the bone.”

  I know the feeling. When my friends and I got our powers, there was no learning curve: our bodies knew exactly what to do. The first time I tried fancy gymnastics, I leapt and rolled and bounced like I’d practiced each trick a million times. No questioning what to do next. Instinct just took over.

  So it’s no surprise that Robin has quarterstaff skilz. They’re part of his legend.

  Howsomever, legend says he’s not as good as he thinks.

  He’s not the best in the world. I am.

  At least I’m as good as the best true human. There are six living Sparks who rank way beyond humans when it comes to fighting with staffs, but Robin ain’t on the list. He’s supremely agile and super-strong, but darling, he doesn’t have the range.

  I don’t indulge in wuxia moves to show I’m ready to fight. I’m not Robin Hood, I’m Ninety-Nine. Before we fight in hockey, we sure as hell don’t bow.

  I just hold my staff two-handed, spacing my hands apart so they divide the length of the staff into thirds. Then I move in hard and fast.

  Maybe it’s what Robin expected. If I truly were a newbie, I might go into maximum frenzy right off the bat, trying to score a hit by the power of surprise. I swing one end of the staff in a downward blow toward Robin’s head. He easily blocks, and he’s quick to block again when I snap up the other end of the staff, going for a cheap shot to the groin. What he doesn’t expect is my follow-through: as his staff blocks my upswing, I let my staff slide downward, riding along his until the butt of my staff jabs his foot like a spear.

  He makes an “uhh” sound of pain. Then he shoves me back hard enough to lift me off my feet. I go flying into the lupins. Instead of landing on my ass, I plant one end of my staff on the ground as I hurtle backward. I use the staff like the pole in a pole-vault jump: my legs go up to the sky then arc over and come down. I land on my feet and casually swing around to face Robin again.

  The whole move unfolds as a reflex—a demonstration that Spark powers don’t need practice or forethought. But it looks acrobatic as hell.

  “Well, well, well,” Robin says. “You have hidden depths, milady.”

  “And they’ll stay hidden,” I say. Using the staff to pole-vault again, I jump over the flower bed and the fight really begins.

  It’s fun in the same way that a hockey game is fun—exhausting, sweaty, and bruising. I hit him two more times before he truly gets up to speed, a smack on his thigh and a jab that scuds along his rib cage when he doesn’t turn fast enough. At that point, he drops his smirk and his chivalrous restraint. Perhaps he thinks, If I hit her too hard, we can always put her back in the medi-tank. Perhaps he’s also thinking, She moves like a Spark.

  I’d love to disguise that possibility, to stay within the limits of an average girl on the street. And Robin should be able to see I’m not super-strong or -fast. I don’t even have superhuman skills. But I’m a Wudang mountain beyond your typical Jane Jock. I’m Donnie Yen good—Donnie Yen at his prime, with Tsui Hark as choreographer.

  So fuck it. Let’s make this a fight. One that’s worthy of Robin Hood.

  We take it into the forest, and up into the trees. It’s easy to bounce off three trunks in a row to attack from surprise directions. Or pole-vault from branch to branch, then somersault down to the ground where I can slash at a patch of poison ivy and flick leaves at Robin with the end of my staff. Meanwhile, he does the Tarzan thing, always finding a vine exactly where he wants it so he can swing past and try to fracture my skull.

  Whackety-whack. Snicker-snack. Back to the house and onto the roof, balancing on the ridges of two adjacent gables as we exchange flurries.

  My hands soon hurt like hell. Each collision of staff on staff sends vibrations through the wood, making my fingers sting. Other parts of my body ache, too—I block every strike Robin slams at me, but he’s so damned strong, the impact still shakes me to the bone.

  It’s a wonder the staffs haven’t broken. They’re thick, and I do my best to turn each direct smash into a glancing blow. Even so, some part of my brain that thinks like an engineer is adding up all the damage my staff takes, then subtracting the result from a decreasing endurance limit. If the score reaches zero at an inconvenient moment, Robin’s staff will break mine and splatter my face.

  Unless, of course, I use the moment to my advantage.

  I wait for the right opportunity, when Robin’s incoming strike has just the proper angle so I won’t get flattened by the follow-through. Then, instead of discreet deflection, I spread my grip wider and slam the center of my staff into his swing. The quar terstaff shatters in the middle, giving me two half-length sticks to his one.

  Now I switch to fighting Eskrima-style: clunk, feint, clunk. It’s faster and two sticks to one. Robin blocks the stick that snaps toward his head, but misses the one jabbing his solar plexus. He gasps and stops breathing. A moment later, he collapses. The staff falls from his fingers.

  Even before he hits the ground, my brain shifts from fighter to paramedic. I drop to my knees beside him and check his vitals. His pulse is strong, beating like mad from all the exertion. After a moment, he wheezes and starts breathing again … but his eyes stay shut and his body stays down for the count.

  Awesome, Jools: was this what you wanted? To knock out the hottest guy you’ve ever met?

  At this moment, the two of you could have been drunk and naked, but oh, no. You got weird about the whisky, then suddenly you were all, “Let’s fight.”

  With quarterstaffs, no less. You couldn’t just have a little squabble over who got to be on top?

  First?

  Oh my God, it’s so stupid being a Spark!

  I think I may have ruptured Robin’s spleen. Now he’s just lying there with internal bleeding.

  Fuck.

  It’s a damned good thing I have an eidetic memory. I might have to find my way back to Marian’s lab so I can carry Robin to the medi-tank.

  I’m about to sling him over my shoulder when his body begins to shrink. His arm muscles go soft. His beautiful ringlets revert to short curls, his beard turns to patchy ungroomed stubble, and his cheekbones vanish under a layer of pudge.

  In five seconds, Robin is gone, replaced by a much more average-looking dude who opens his eyes and asks, “What just happened?”

  12

  Alternative Ecosystems

  I HELP THE GUY sit up. He’s dazed but healthy. Breathing well. No signs of injury.

  I touch my fingers to his throat to take his pulse. He goes tense, like he’s afraid I might try to strangle him. But he doesn’t bat me away; he’s fatalistic.

  The dude’s heartbeat is fine. The same speed as Robin’s, but not as strong.

  Seems to me, “not as strong” is the phrase to mark with highlighter. Even if I hadn’t watc
hed Robin turn into this guy, I’d see a resemblance. He could pass as Robin’s couch-potato older brother: a dude in his forties who’s not Nigeria’s answer to Errol Flynn, but the hardworking chartered accountant who pays bail when baby-bro Robin gets busted on a DUI.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  “Disorientated.” His accent is British, but not posh. With a few more sentences, I could pin down his accent precisely, regional, class, and ethnic influences all factored in. But that would be showing off.

  “I’m Jools,” I tell the dude.

  “I know,” he answers. “I’m…”

  He hesitates, obviously debating whether it’s wise to give his real name. Then he shrugs. “I’m Vernon.”

  Awkwardly, he reaches to shake my hand. I take it. I stand and use the handhold to lift him to his feet. He seems steady enough; when I let him go, he doesn’t teeter. He just looks at his surroundings, taking in the trees, the garden, the house. He breathes in deeply, leaning toward the flowers nearby. He inhales their perfume, then smiles.

  “It’s strange,” Vernon says. “I know everything Robin gets up to, but I don’t actually experience it. I’m aware of what Robin is seeing, but I don’t see it myself. Same with feeling, hearing, and smelling.”

  “That sounds awful,” I say.

  “Not really. It’s like reading a book: no direct sensory input, but I still get vicarious enjoyment.” He gives me a rueful smile. “And at the moment, it means I don’t feel black and blue with a terrible ache in my gut. I’ve just set down the book and I’m fine.”

  He takes another deep breath, clearly inhaling the pleasant scents around us. “I feel rather good, actually.” He gives himself a shake, shifts his balance, flexes his fingers. “Nice to have a body again.”

  “Have you been stuck a long time as Robin?” I ask.

  “Almost eight months,” Vernon replies. “The last time I got out was when Robin slept with Tigresse. You know, the super-goddess. The one who looks so damned amazing. Sex with her wasn’t much different from being smashed around with a quarterstaff. Draining, even for Robin. The third time through, he folded like a lawn chair.”

  “Leaving you alone with Tigresse?”

  “Yeah.” Vernon has a distant look on his face. “I thought she’d bloody well murder me. But actually, she was very, very kind. She tried to make tea. She kept apologizing for having no idea how to be ‘ordinaire.’ We spent the rest of the night just talking.”

  “Shut up, you’re making me cry.” And it’s true, I’m getting teary. Poor guy. But good for Tigresse. I say, “Maybe I should pound the crap out of Robin on a regular basis.”

  Vernon laughs. “It’s really not so bad. I get to be Robin Hood! I even sort of know what it’s like to have sex with Tigresse. Lots of other women, too. Also a few men, and a couple of…” He stops and shrugs. “With so many Sparks and Darklings around, sexuality has more dimensions than M-theory.”

  “M-theory,” I repeat; the great-grandma framework that unifies all versions of string theory. “Yeah, I heard you were a science dude before you got Robin-ized. I got the four-one-one from Marian. Hey, would you like to see her?”

  “Marian?” Vernon looks baffled a moment, then laughs. “Oh, right: Marian. She absolutely hates that name. But Robin just had to have a Maid Marian.”

  “She seems okay with Marian,” I say. “She just doesn’t like the ‘Maid. ’” I take Vernon’s hand. “Let’s go see her.”

  He resists my pull. When I look, I see him surveying himself with disgust. He does look kind of saggy, considering he’s still wearing Robin’s costume. Not many guys can rock tights.

  On the other hand …

  I say, “Dude, do you think Marian cares what you’re wearing? I mean…” I stop myself from making an asshole-ish remark about Marian’s muumuu. I say, “She doesn’t come across as a fashion snob. She’s also not…” I stop myself again. “When she and I talked, I could tell she misses the real you. I’m sure she’d love to spend time together. Speaking of which, how long do you have?”

  Vernon shrugs. “I don’t know. This has only happened four times since I turned into Robin. I guess it depends on how long he takes to recover.”

  “I didn’t hurt him too badly,” I say, hoping it’s true. Ruptured spleen … internal bleeding … minor things for a Spark. He’ll snap right back. “You may not have long,” I say. “Let’s hurry.”

  Vernon looks down at himself once more. He grimaces.

  “Stop comparing yourself to Robin,” I tell him. “I guarantee Marian won’t care.”

  Vernon hesitates a moment longer, then nods. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  I TRY TO SET a quick pace back to Marian’s lab, but Vernon doesn’t keep up. I think he’s still ashamed of himself and afraid of meeting Marian. In other words, he’s just as much of a guy as Robin was: he completely misunderstands Marian’s feelings.

  Or maybe Vernon just sucks at stomping through the woods. He strikes me as a city boy, not to mention the geeky sort of dude who always fled when jocks like me entered the room.

  I slow down and let him catch up. When he does, he says, “You’re a Spark, right? You’re pretending you aren’t, but you are.”

  The question takes me by surprise. And I feel so sorry for the dude, the way he’s trapped in nowhere for months at a time, I don’t want to lie to him. So I say nothing.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, “I won’t tell. I just…” He gives an exasperated sigh. “Robin meets Sparks all the time, but he never talks to them. He’s forever bumping into people by chance, fighting at their sides, and usually shagging them after. But he never has an actual conversation. That time with Tigresse … it’s the only chance I’ve had to hear someone else’s thoughts on being a Spark. Robin is a doer, not a thinker. Whereas me, thinking is all I do for months at a time.”

  I meet his eyes for a moment. He has nice eyes. Big and brown. “Yes, of course, I’m a Spark,” I say. “But I’m pretty new at it, so I don’t have a lot of insights.”

  “What do you do?” Vernon asks. “What powers?”

  “I’m human max in everything. Strength, speed, skill … probably intelligence, too, though that doesn’t seem to stop me from acting like an idiot. And I heal crazy fast. One of my teammates says it looks like time-lapse photography.”

  “How did it happen?” Vernon asks. “Getting powers, I mean.”

  “I got zonked by a supervillain’s machine.” I turn away and start walking again, partly so I don’t have to look Vernon in the eye. “Not so different from what happened to you. Marian told me about you, her, and Byte Bitch.”

  Vernon is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “How much did she tell you?”

  “Not a lot. Not enough for me to figure out your true identity, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Jools,” Vernon says, “if you ever figure out my true identity, I wish you’d let me in on it. But that’s not why I asked.”

  Vernon puts on a burst of speed so he’s walking beside me rather than behind. The trail isn’t really wide enough for that, but me being the best backwoods girl in the history of the planet, I can slip and slide through the undergrowth without Vernon noticing that I’m letting him monopolize the path. Besides, he’s focused so hard on choosing his words, he’s not paying attention to much else.

  He says, “I’ve never had a chance to talk about this with … Marian.” He’s not comfortable using the name, but he presses on. “And when I talked with Tigresse she did her best, but she’s not very introspective. She has hundreds of funny stories, but they’re all about clawing people and shoving them off cliffs. Not about coping with … stuff.”

  “Just FYI,” I say, “I haven’t won medals for coping with stuff either. I specialize in avoidance.”

  “But you’re human,” Vernon says. “Tigresse is a tiger goddess, supposedly thousands of years old. For all I know, she’s actually like Robin Hood, a human who recently changed int
o a Spark, and only thinks she’s a goddess. But even if that’s true, she’s completely invested in the goddess identity. It’s endearing when she tries to come down to a mortal level, but she’s really bad at it. You, on the other hand—do you remember the moment you changed?”

  I shudder. “Of course I do.”

  “What was it like?”

  I want to say, “You’re the one who wants to talk; you go first.” But I don’t want to be a shit. This guy spends his life locked in Robin Hood’s head. Am I going to stonewall him during his few minutes of freedom?

  I’d do almost anything to avoid discussing stuff that’s close to the bone. I have an outstanding track record in that department. As in, Dude (whatever your name is), do you really want to talk? Wouldn’t you rather just have a beejer? That’s ma girl Jools.

  But fuck it. Marian is going to wipe my memory, so I’ll never have to remember how squirmy the next few minutes will make me feel.

  I take Vernon’s hand. Don’t ask me why.

  I say, “There was this portal…”

  * * *

  THERE WAS THIS PORTAL, created by the Mad Genius Diamond. Call it a door to another reality, a rip in the fabric of our world. Multicolored candle flames swarmed from the portal, like the sparks when you’re close to passing out. My head went woozy and the sparks shot into my brain—parasites shouting, “Free food, free food!”

  Once the flames got inside my head, they made me remember horrible things. I don’t bother giving Vernon specifics, but I know what people mean by, “My life passed before my eyes.” A Jools montage zoomed past at a million frames a second … and the memories that stood out were the ones I’d rather forget.

  Missing crucial shots in hockey. Being jerked around by my sisters. Literally getting caught with my pants down. Stuff like that. I realized what the worst was going to be … and boom, as soon as the thought crossed my mind, we were there.

  The awfullest day of my life.

  But that day didn’t zip through at high speed. The million frames a second came to a screeching stop, and suddenly I was there again.