The Search for Spark

by Steven Erikson

  Hadrian winced. “Ouch. Any other traditional values you’d care to excoriate?”

  “My pride stands unblinking in the face of all sarcasm, sir. Unintentionally, of course, since we just don’t get it. Ever.”

  “Huh. How about that? Well, fine, go back to your oily weapon barrels then. I’m sure Nina would be relieved. In fact, so will I, come to think of it.”

  At last only Tammy was left with Hadrian in the Insisteon Chamber.

  “Well, Captain, somehow you scraped through yet again. Though your shirt didn’t. Again.”

  “Tammy, I happen to know you effect all these tears in my shirts. Pretty much every time.”

  “Shit! When did you, uh, cotton on?”

  “Ages ago. Now, aren’t you impressed by my cleverness, my sly genius, my extraordinary capacity for allowing you your little foibles and flaws of character, whilst I just go on maintaining my impressive equanimity and flair for understatement?”

  “Cut it out! I’m NOT kissing you no matter what you say!”

  FOUR

  Aboard the Terran flagship, AFS Portentous Smug Pomposity …

  Rear Admiral Jebediah Prim sat down at the conference table opposite Affiliation Director of Alien Affairs Soma DeLuster. “I’ve decided we best keep this private, Director, if you don’t mind? Just the two of us, that is.”

  “Why all the subterfuge?” queried Soma. “We’re all agreed on the plan, aren’t we? Broker this deal, keep Captain Hadrian Sawback up front as the acceptable figurehead, and then backstab the slimy Radulak idiots at the first opportunity.”

  Prim flinched. “Madam, let’s not be so crass. We’re Terrans, after all, forever virtuous, eternally right in all matters of comportment, wise and clever, honest and forthright, inclined to modest errors in judgment while maintaining our heartfelt desire to do good and therefore entirely capable of sweeping under the carpet all the genocidal horrors studding our history in the galaxy.”

  “Well of course, that goes without saying. I wasn’t being crass as much as direct, Rear Admiral. The economic situation couldn’t be any direr than it is presently—hmm, ever noticed how hard it is to say that word? Direr. Anyway—the Klang surrender has crippled us across the entire Affiliation. Were you aware that there is a knockoff Fleet Flagship hovering not seven light-minutes from our position? The AFS Portentous Smug Pomposity. Presently crewed by three Klang janitors while awaiting all the transfer requests from your very own vessel.”

  “What? Why haven’t I heard about any of this?”

  “Need to know, Rear Admiral. I should also point out that their employment benefits and pension rates are far superior to ours, including maternity and paternity leave, free child care, discounted health package, generic drugs offered at cost, and paid three-week vacations every six months.”

  “But—but that’s outrageous!”

  “Diabolical,” Soma said, nodding. “We could end up with a Klang Shadow Fleet inside seven months, doing our job better, cheaper, and probably more efficiently than we could ever manage under the present military structure of dogmatic obduracy, cost overruns, indentured servitude, and willful exceptionalism.”

  Prim brought his hands to his face in appalled distress. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “We’re working on it,” Soma said, unaffected by the rear admiral’s display. “I trust the hunt’s still on for the terrorist war criminal Hans Olo?”

  Prim nodded. “No recent leads,” he muttered. “My guess is, the Klang are keeping him squirreled away, probably living in some opulent palace on some remote but idyllic planet deep in Klang territory.”

  “Hmm. Now, what was this meeting all about, Rear Admiral?”

  “Bill-Burt blabbed during our last conference call. Said they were planning on a surprise attack to announce the breaking of their treaty with us. Once they’ve taken care of the Ecktapalow.”

  “You mean betray us before we can betray them?”

  “Exactly. Disgusting. Treachery beyond belief, in fact.” Then Prim brightened. “But they’re offering us up Captain Hadrian Sawback as the fall guy, the ‘Peace in Our Time’ blinkered twit we can then crucify. All things considered, it might be an even exchange, but I wanted your thoughts on it first. It seems to me we can squeeze this personal victory over the hated Hadrian into the realization of our greater plan of righteous preemptive betrayal, and if anything you and I come out smelling even sweeter.”

  “And Hadrian takes the fall. Yes, that’s optimum.”

  Prim nodded. “The fallen hero, reputation destroyed, career tanked, a life spent on some horrific prison planet. All in all, most optimum.”

  Soma pursed her lips as she further contemplated the scenario. “My last report from Adjutant Lorrin Tighe suggested uncommon loyalty among Hadrian’s crew. We may have to take down more than Sawback.”

  “Suits me,” Prim replied. “The more the merrier. I mean, it’s one thing constantly saving the galaxy, it’s quite another taking all the credit for it. What about the rest of us, dammit?”

  Soma smiled. “You refer to the mediocre wannabes like you and me riding the coattails of dynamic, appallingly virtuous heroes, Rear Admiral?”

  “Now you really are being crass!”

  “Call it uncharacteristic honesty. Our lives are crap, despite all the fancy titles and whatnot. We’re small-minded pedantic pencil pushers infected with jaw-dropping self-entitlement issues bolstered on a vast history of dragging down our betters at every turn and then bemoaning it later as we long for a return to the golden age our historical counterparts spent all their time destroying. Oh, the humanity.”

  “Well,” sighed Prim, “that calls for a drink. Join me, madam?”

  “Happily.”

  “We can toast the fall of Captain Hadrian Alan Sawback.”

  “And then to the details.”

  “Indeed,” Prim said. “The details.”

  Then he laughed, and a moment later Soma DeLuster joined him. That evil kind of laugh, heads tossed back, pearly whites bared, that went on and on until the scene ends, but the laughter lingers, faintly echoing now, as the view pans back to the flagship in the depths of space, the ship symbolizing the self-contained arrogance of humanity against a backdrop of inhuman, cruel, airless, lifeless coldnessness.

  But such subtext only shows up with filmmakers who can manage more than rehashing previous stories because let’s face it, that fucking rinse-and-repeat bullshit announces little more than bankrupt creative mediocrity.

  Now, CUT TO:

  * * *

  “Well, the Rebel Alliance only thought it won, and now they’re building another Death Star (because, like, the first one was such a huge success!) and this time we don’t need some boy on a desert planet scrounging machine parts, we need a girl on a desert planet scrounging machine parts! Why, that’s creative genius! I mean, it’s so … different.”

  “Molly, what are you talking about?”

  “Sorry, ex-Captain Betty. I was just whiling away my leisure time coming up with this great space opera holovid series that I can pitch to superrich small-brained executives scared of their own shadows thus strangling any hope of risk-taking originality for, like decades.”

  “Sounds ridiculous if you ask me. Where’s the realism? When a much better story would be about rehashing the story of a genetically modified supermeerkat named Betty (but not the same Betty as yours truly. No, this new Betty resembles me in name only because who gives a shit about actually thinking things through?) whose Moby-Dickian wrath endangers the entire galaxy before his tragic demise at the hands of the Affiliation’s finest starship captain and his sidekick science officer who betrays every nuance of her famous integrity because otherwise the plot wouldn’t even work.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “Well so does yours, dammit! And it’s not like there’s any common denominator between the two, is there?”

  Neither Klang spoke for a few minutes, and then Molly shrugged, or what passed for
a shrug from his position of hanging upside down in chains suspended over a pool of frenzied piranha.

  Then Betty said, “I still can’t believe I let you talk me into that escape attempt. What time is it anyway? We’ve been hanging here for what seems like forever!”

  “Ah, well, since all punishment is implemented only during our designated leisure time to ensure a continuation of Irridiculum Crystal extraction, I believe we have been hanging here for approximately six minutes. Fortunately, since leisure time is closely regulated and lasts a fixed and very precise ten minutes per week, why, we’re already more than halfway through our punishment!”

  “Ah, but the torture of you talking is proving to be a lifelong sentence, Molly.”

  “Everyone needs an explicatory minion, sir,” Molly said, sniffing.

  “Which of course I’m too megalomaniacal to ever appreciate.”

  “I look forward to my next opportunity to provide sage advice you will fatally ignore, sir.”

  Betty snarled and then hissed, “I just bet you are, treacherous minion!”

  They heard a flapping sound approaching from one of the side tunnels, and a moment later Felasha’s silky voice rose to greet them. “Such a flimsy escape plan, my friends! You should have come to me, you know. After all, the icy wastes of the planet surface comprise my natural environment, a place where my kind can thrive barring the occasional foray of rogue humans wearing floppy hats.”

  “Fine,” Betty snapped. “Next time we’ll come to you and that’s a promise, although why you’d want us to escape still, uh, escapes me.”

  The Purelganni sighed. “I don’t, of course. Rather, not yet. The time is not yet propitious.”

  “Propitious?”

  “It means ‘well-timed.’ The time is not yet well-timed—see how clumsy that sounds? No, the word we want is ‘propitious.’”

  “This is like my worst nightmare,” Betty said. “Trapped in a classroom and I haven’t studied. My God! I haven’t studied!”

  “The classroom of Life permits no time to study, dear Captain Betty.”

  “Oh please! Tell you what, Felasha. Cut me down, hand me a stick, and then lift your butt in the air. I’ll show you the art of cramming in a way you’ll never forget!”

  “Ooh, funny. But I’m pleased to announce that I am here to do just that: cut you down, that is. Not the other stuff. Your punishment period is now at an end. Time to get back to work.”

  “Great!” cried Molly. “But, uh, how will you manage that? I mean, you’ve got flippers and you’re barely knee-high and all.”

  “Off-screen, of course.”

  Both Klangs swung away from the pit and then fell to the floor of the tunnel with meaty thuds.

  “There! Now, as your evil forewoman, must I add Now get to work you lazy pink-tongued catlike aliens?”

  “Yes,” said Betty, climbing stiffly to his feet. “Yes you do.”

  “Now get to work you lazy pink-tongued catlike aliens!”

  The two Klang picked up their kit bags and set off down the tunnel.

  Molly said, “I’ve got a new one! Imagine being trapped on a spaceship with a giant transforming alien that drips acid! Why, we could do that film over and over again! Dozens! Hundreds! A whole franchise rehashing the same old shit and making us feel oooh! Like scared!”

  “Fuck me,” Betty sighed. “I’m starting to feel suicidal.”

  Hairball System, eleven light-years from Kittymeow, Planet Backawater, continent of Desertica, town of Modest Spaceport but Many Dusty Bars …

  The smaller-than-average Belkri comms officer in the Spaceport Command Center pivoted round on its cup-shaped chair and said, “Prophet Gruk! Beloved Happy One! We now have complete control of the entire.….…. .!”

  “Well done, my volleyball-like friend. My blessed followers are now legion, in control of the entire planet inviting us all into a state of mindless and ephemerally rewarding bliss, not unlike video games and taking pictures of your supper with handhelds. As if anyone gives a flying fuck about your supper. Now then.” Gruk turned to Forlich, his newly appointed science officer. “Brother Forlich, start the program. I want pictures of porn interspersed with cat and kitten albums on every screen on this planet, to ensure that perfect blend of cuteness with inarticulate longing crumbling into desensitized absence of emotional commitment as pointless as masturbating in front of an electronic image of pixels.”

  “Yes, Prophet. Implementing Trapped (in World Wide) Web Indulgent Terminal-encephalic-reduction Program, version 1.01, aka TWITer-fest. Prophet! I already feel my brain shrinking!”

  “Excellent. Soon I will be in command of millions of drooling drones consumed by mindless rage at the vast injustice of not getting everything they want, and while we could begin a galaxy-wide rampage of senseless violence in the name of an immortal paradise we don’t deserve, that strikes me as somewhat pathetic. No, instead, we shall pay a visit to God. But first, my friends, we need a starship and yes, I have a devious, diabolical plan to acquire one. So hang tight, my friends. Keep watching that porn and those cute kittens, and trust in me (or someone just like me) to lead you all to the promised land.”

  “The promised land, O Wise One?”

  “Yes, land. I promise. See, wasn’t that easy?”

  Everyone in the command room fell to their knees in supplication.

  Hallelujah!

  Near the Litter Nebula …

  “Combawt Spweshalwist Paws, wis it dead yet?”

  Lieutenant Pauls studied the sensor data on his screen, and then looked up and squinted at the small drifting vessel and all its broken pieces on the main viewer. “Not entirely, Captain. I still have ever-so-faint life-sign readings.”

  “Awrr, wewwy good! Wewwy werrl, fffirwerr wagain! Hawr! Hawrr!”

  Aboard the Ultra-Bombast Radulak Fleet Flagship I Saw No Need to Mention My Mother’s Moustache …

  Supreme Admiral Drench-Master Drown-You-All-in-My-Magnificence Bill-Burt jammed her finger up one nostril and withdrew a massive slimy booger sprouting an impressive collection of nose hairs. She flicked it into the face of the ensign standing before her. “Deliver this encrypted message to our fleet hiding in the Conveniently Cloudy Nearby Nebula, and no pausing to admire it either!”

  The ensign, head bent to one side with the message’s weighty, uh, message, slimed away in haste.

  Bill-Burt emerged from the drool pit and slopped her way over to the spit shower. “Science Officer Bolemia! Do another extended deep scan. I smell a cloaked Ecktapalow Matron Ship in the vicinity, waiting to pounce and thus disrupt these crucial Kittymeow Accords.”

  In the adjoining drool pit Snuffle-Drench-Master Bang stroked her eye patch, and then bounced around making slurpy thick waves. “‘Look at me! Look at me! Look at me now! It’s fun to have fun! But you have to know how!’”

  “I fear the humans intend to betray us before we can betray them,” mused Bill-Burt, “but I fear even more the Ecktapalow betraying both us and the humans before we can betray anyone! And if that’s not bad enough—” She pointed at a nearby proto-Klang who was standing in a corner of the Bathing Chamber holding a recording device. “—what is that thing doing? Bolemia! Drown that creature at once!”

  “But Supreme Admiral! It’s only recording for a new porn show revealing your lustful nakedness to ensure slathering worship of your eminent self on behalf of the crew!”

  “Is it now? Well, I find that acceptable, but only my good side!” And she turned to offer up a nose-dripping profile. “See how exquisite this gleaming dangle? The crew has one hour to masturbate following the release of this new porn video, and then it’s back to work!”

  Snuffle-Drench-Master Bang now rose from her pool. “‘That was fun—’”

  “Oh shut up. Have you got a single original piece of cartilage in your body, Bang? I think not.” She stepped out of the shower and stood in a growing pool of spit. “To slime or not to slime, ah, that is the question. Bolemia! How much time do the humans h
ave left before the twenty-four-hour clock runs out?”

  “Thirty-seven minutes, Supreme One!”

  “Hmm, dripping it fine, aren’t they?”

  “They are playing poker,” said Bang, flopping out of her pit to slide slowly toward the nearest drain.

  “Playing what? A game? A damned card game? But we’re supposed to be in negotiation!”

  “Ah, Supreme Admiral, my apologies. I meant that the humans were employing tactics similar to their game of poker. They’re not actually playing cards—”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I don’t. I mean, maybe they are. I’m sorry, what were we talking about again?”

  “The fate of the Radulak Empire hangs in pendulous balance, you fool. The humans stretch my patience. Meanwhile, Ecktapalow Soldier Ships raid and pounce and loot and impose their dominance of our trade routes at will. Their infernally dry and scaly lizard-insect selves haunt my nights. Hmm, now that I think on it, why aren’t we making a treaty with the Ecktapalow instead of the Affiliation?”

  “But Supreme Admiral,” objected Bang, “we hate them!”

  “We hate the Terrans too. We hate everyone, in fact. Indeed, we should be making peace with everyone and then betraying each in turn, thus achieving the ruination of all our foes! I shall propose this to the Supreme Ruler of Supremeness Brian the Sumptuous Babe and Lustful Center of the Universe. In the meantime, keep a stretchy on that clock, Bolemia! I shall be in my stateroom.”

  Bill-Burt slimed out of the chamber, trailed by the proto-Klang with the camera taking a close-up of the supreme admiral’s backside.

  Bang glanced once at Bolemia, but the science officer was glued (literally) to the giant clock on its pedestal. Moving quietly, the snuffle-drench-master slipped from the room. Out in the corridor, she made her way to a nearby closet and, pausing to see that no one was paying attention, she quickly edged inside and closed the door behind her.