The Search for Spark

by Steven Erikson

  “Oh, um, that would be Captain Norville Normal Guy.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Uh, Captain Norville Normal Guy, sir.”

  “Fine. On the main viewer, please.”

  The image of an Engage-class bridge flickered into view. Smoke drifted, wreckage hung from the ceiling, consoles sparked. Hunched over in the command chair was a man, presumably Captain Norville Normal Guy, who suddenly cried, “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “Like wow,” said Sticks, “he looks so normal I could, like, puke. I mean, talk about Swollen Head! Thinking he could possibly be captain of anything! I mean, I’m sitting here and he’s like, oh, not my fault! And oh, look at me! Boo hoo!”

  “That will be enough, Sticks,” Hadrian said. “Captain Normal Guy, where’s your crew? You appear to be alone on your bridge.”

  “I—I displaced them onto the ninth planet in the system since it was the only one left after the Giant Planet-Eating Machine ate all the other ones!”

  “I see, and why did you do that, Captain?”

  “Because I, uh, I wrecked the ship, I guess. It wasn’t my fault!”

  “You wrecked your ship by attacking the Giant Planet-Eating Machine?”

  “No, we didn’t get to that part. I just … oh, look! I’m completely unqualified to be anything, not even a holovid showrunner since I haven’t got an original bone in my body! Oh, and now look! The ninth planet just got eaten, too! Who could have anticipated that?”

  “You mean, after the Giant Planet-Eating Machine ate the other eight planets?”

  “Exactly! Fleet should never have put me in charge!”

  “Agreed,” said Hadrian. “So why did they?”

  “It was all just some cocked-up storyline designed to get me, Norville Normal Guy, in command of an Engage-class deep-space vessel. You know, for laughs, I guess. But you see, I’m a really normal guy! Barely competent at anything. I’m actually supposed to go through my life in a mediocre nondescript haze of mediocrity.” He suddenly leaned forward. “But I’ve heard of you, Captain Hadrian. Oh, I know, we’re all pretending otherwise, but never mind that! Look, I just fired a torpedo at the Giant Planet-Eating Machine, and it went in the hole and then … and then…”

  “And then what?”

  “Uh, I think I made it pregnant, cause now there’s a little one, too, eating moonlets and asteroids! Captain! It’s heading straight for Earth!”

  “Hardly,” Hadrian said. “We’re like fifty light-years from Earth.”

  “We are? But … how did we get so far away?”

  “Listen carefully, Captain Norville Normal Guy. If you follow my instructions here, we can sort all of this.”

  “Really? You promise?”

  “I promise. We’re still, oh, about a half hour from your position. So, before we get there, I want you to fly your Engage-class vessel straight into the maw of that Giant Planet-Eating Machine. Got that?”

  The man quickly nodded. “I can do that! I still have two percent thrusters and the big one’s coming straight for me anyway and I can’t outrun it! Okay, here we go! I’m doing it right now! Then what?”

  “I’ll get back to you. Hadrian out.”

  The screen blanked.

  Beta suddenly stood up. “I am restored to acceptable operating parameters. Robot dog, please exit my chair at the navigation station.”

  “Spark jumping from smelly chair! It was fun! I did nothing! So much fun!”

  Sitting down, Beta said, “Captain, long-range sensors have just registered the destruction of an Engage-class vessel inside the maw of a Giant Planet-Eating Machine. Oh, and the birth of two more baby Giant Planet-Eating Machines.”

  “Very good, thank you, Beta.”

  Sin-Dour moved up alongside Hadrian. “Sir, you just sent Captain Norville Normal Guy to a merciful death when in fact he should have been arrested, court-martialed, and vilified by the entire Affiliation as an incompetent mass murderer of his own people.”

  “Yes well, I admit to succumbing to a spasm of mercy. Sticks, top speed to that family of Giant Planet-Eating Machines, please. Galk, weapons hot! Tammy, prepare the Dimple Beam.”

  “Oh sure,” said Tammy, whose chicken manifestation had just arrived on the bridge, “always the easy way out. Dimple Beam this! Dimple Beam that! Where’s the challenge? Where’s the drama?”

  “A good captain makes use of all tactical advantages, Tammy. That way, no one on this ship dies which is how I like it. Tammy, employing Dimple Beams against all those Giant Planet-Eating Machines, how much time will this add to our ETA in answering the SOS transmission from Planet Backawater?”

  “About thirty seconds.”

  “Excellent!” Hadrian rose. “2IC, you’re with me in the Ping-Pong room.”

  “Now, sir?”

  “I’ve come up with a new serve that’s going to get you lunging over half the table,” Hadrian said with a bright smile.

  “Oh, really,” she replied in a dry tone.

  “Wait till you see it!”

  “Sounds like I will be too busy trying to return the serve to see much of anything.”

  “No problem,” Hadrian replied. “I record all our games. I even have super slow mo!”

  “Do you now? I see.”

  “That’s right,” Hadrian said, suddenly sweating. “Uh, is it hot in here? We flying too close to a sun or something?”

  “And,” Sin-Dour continued in steely tones, “I expect you have all our games filed with your personal computer in your ready room as well?”

  “Er, uh, only for purposes of deconstructing your attack and defense patterns, Commander. Proper tactics for any confrontational engagement, wouldn’t you agree?”

  She smiled. “Naturally, sir. Well then, let’s play some Ping-Pong, shall we?”

  “Well, if you really don’t want to—”

  “Oh no, sir, happy to oblige. And the video recordings should prove most enlightening, I’m sure.”

  Tammy cackled a laugh. “You’re a dead man, Captain. She’s going to utterly destroy you, humiliate you, savage you, reduce you to—”

  “I get it, Tammy, thank you.”

  “Can we all watch? I mean, if I transfer the live action over to this main viewer here.”

  Sticks clapped her hands. “Oh like yeah! Watch! Humiliating!”

  “Belay all that!” Hadrian said. “Tammy, just you and Galk make sure we Dimple all those Giant Planet-Eating Machines, will you?”

  “Thirty seconds,” Tammy replied smugly. “While you two usually play best three of five. So, lots of time for us to follow the play.”

  Beta said, “I will make popcorn.”

  Hadrian glared at everyone. “Fine then! Be like that!”

  * * *

  Shirt shredded, hair awry, streaked in sweat and grime, Hadrian staggered out from the Ping-Pong room. He stumbled forward and then slumped alongside the command chair. “Get Printlip up here,” he groaned. “With every healing device ever created and every drug ever invented.”

  Spark moved up to sit beside the captain. “Haddie. Slaughter! Annihilation! It was all recorded and witnessed by everyone on the ship! Popcorn! Super slow mo! Tufts of hair and strips of shirt and blood!”

  “Thank you, Spark, that will be all. Go patrol the corridors or something.”

  “Patrol! Slaughter intruders! Annihilate enemies! I am inspired!” The robot dog bounded off.

  Printlip arrived, scurrying up with its medical bag. “No need to summon me, sir. I was already on my way. Oh my, such a beating! Who knew Ping-Pong could offer for us all such a delightful pounding-down of human male arrogance and.….…. .!” The doc began waving a medical Pentracorder over Hadrian. “Oh dear! Fractured ego, sprained confidence, dislocated immodesty, and broken bravado! Can this even be cured? Extensive long-term damage is the sad prognosis, alas.” Printlip prepared a series of shots.

  At that moment, Hadrian leapt to his feet. “Never mind, Doc! I feel fully recovered!”

 
; Printlip’s hands waved about. “But—but—”

  Hadrian slapped the doc on the back. “Make a note, Doc. The human male psyche’s ability to rebound from degradation, humiliation, and severe embarrassment is damn near miraculous!” He quickly took his seat, crossing his legs.

  Tammy the chicken hopped up onto one arm of the chair even as Sin-Dour emerged from the Ping-Pong room, making minor adjustments to her hair and barely glowing following her minor exertions.

  “Giant Planet-Eating Machine family all Dimpled, Captain,” said Tammy. “Once again the galaxy is saved and all that. Will you now compose a posthumous commendation for Captain Norville Normal Guy?”

  “NO!” shouted everyone on the bridge.

  Hadrian sighed. “Thou shall not speak ill of the—oh, all right, no commendation then! You can all put away your nonregulation blasters, yeesh!”

  “Sir,” said Beta. “Now approaching Backawater Planet.”

  Eden, now back on Comms, turned and said, “Captain, we have been sent displacement coordinates for a landing party which will displace the team inside a small room with one wall made of bars and a single door with a huge lock.” Eden paused, and then said, “Sir! I think it’s a trap!”

  “Now now, Jimmy,” Hadrian said, standing and attempting to straighten the remnants of his shirt. “Each planet we visit possesses its own unique cultural practices and rituals, although, come to think of it, it’s kind of odd how every civilization we encounter all wear the same uniforms. Well, no matter, where was I?”

  Tammy said, “You were attempting to alleviate Mr. Eden’s concerns about all this being a possible trap, employing completely unconvincing generalities only to segue into fashion. But hey,” the chicken added, “far be it for me to interrupt. Please, do go on, Captain.”

  “Right. I mean…” He looked round at his bridge crew. “Can we honestly say that our own cultural prejudices have not led us down the twisted path of unmitigated paranoia regarding the locale we’re about to displace to on the planet below?”

  “Sir,” ventured Sin-Dour, “Mr. Eden described a prison cell.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions, is all I’m saying.”

  “What bullshit!” Tammy cried. “You damn well know it’s a prison cell! You want to displace into it!”

  “Adventure!” Hadrian replied. “Excitement! Sin-Dour, Printlip, you’re with me. Eden, get Galk and Buck down to the Insisteon Chamber—we’re heading down to that planet to answer this SOS crap! Why? Because, it’s what we do! But first, let me change my shirt.”

  TWELVE

  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 on the main viewer. “Not entirely, Captain. I still have faint life-sign readings.”

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

  THiRTEEN

  Blimpie, the volleyball-sized Belkri on comms, turned to the Prophet. “Holy One with All the Promises, the landing party is about to displace down from the AFS Willful Child. Won’t they be surprised when they appear in a prison cell! Hahahaha!”

  Gruk smiled. “Very good,” he murmured. “Excellent. Outstanding. Perfect. Could this be any better? Brother Forlich and Brothers Birk and Morony, come with me. It’s time to greet our guests.”

  “But Prophet,” said Forlich with a frown. “I thought you wanted us to go meet our new prisoners.”

  “Yes, as I said.”

  “You said guests. We don’t have any guests. I was all ready to go meet the new prisoners!”

  “They are one and the same, Brother Forlich.”

  “The prisoners are also our guests?”

  “Exactly. Precisely. You got it, bro.”

  “We should hurry then, Prophet, so there’s time to change the linen and put new bars of soap in the cell!” He clutched his hair. “And has anyone even swept the room? They’ll see the dust, ohmigod!”

  Gruk held up a hand. “Be at ease, Brother Forlich. I only used the word ‘guests’ ironically. They’re not really guests, of course. They’re prisoners. Or they will be once they displace into the Faraday Cage Cell we have prepared for them—do you recall doing that, Brother Forlich? Twisting all those strips of tinfoil around all the bars and whatnot? Thus preventing an emergency displacement out of the cell once our guests realize that they’ve appeared inside a cell and are therefore not guests at all, but prisoners. Hmm?”

  Forlich scratched his beard, nodding, and then frowned. “Ironically? Oh no, we didn’t iron the sheets!”

  “No time for that,” Gruk said. “Brothers, follow me—no, not you, Blimpie. Just the ones I selected earlier. Yes, that’s you two, Birk and Morony.”

  Forlich paled and sat down.

  “No, you too, Brother Forlich. Up you get. There then. Forlich, Birk, and Morony, follow me.”

  At the door Forlich hesitated. “Prophet? Where are we going?”

  “Why, to greet our guests, of course!”

  “Guests!”

  “Right,” said Gruk. “But, uh, first, let’s go see our new prisoners.”

  “The prisoners! Yes! And then we can go greet our guests!”

  They left the admin and comms room of the port and set off down the stairs into the basement where waited a row of prison cells normally used to detain Suspicious Non-White People with Foreign Accents.

  They arrived in time to see the Affiliation rescue party displace down into the cell beside the one with all the tinfoil on the bars.

  “Oh well,” Gruk said, sighing. “Never mind.” He drew back his hood and stepped forward. “Welcome, my friends! I am the Prophet Gruk—”

  “No you’re not,” interrupted one of the prisoners.

  Gruk stepped closer still. “Galk? Is that you? What an extraordinary coincidence!”

  Galk turned to the man wearing the gold velour shirt. “Sorry, Captain, but this is my wastrel half brother, Gruk.”

  “Now now,” said Gruk, smiling. “Beloved brother—”

  Forlich whimpered, “I thought I was your brother, Prophet Gruk! Me and Birk and Morony and Blimpie and—”

  “Yes of course you are, Forlich.” He waved his hands expansively. “You are all! My brothers!”

  “I’m not,” said the woman prisoner.

  “Well, no. You’re my sister—”

  “No I’m not. I don’t even look like you. Besides, you’re Varekan. I’m from the Midlands.”

  “But my new religion embraces you all as my extended family, you see. Thus, ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ all. Euphemistically, as it were. Metaphorically, even. In spirit, that is. We’re all one.”

  “Except,” the woman persisted, “that we’re here in a prison cell while you’re not. Not quite all one, then.”

  “Ah! That!” Gruk quickly opened the cell door. “Come out! Come out! Let me show you the Program of Salvation now playing on infinite loop on every monitor on this planet. You will love it. You will adore it. I promise!”

  He led them all up the stairs to the nearest Viewing Room where monitors lined all the walls. As they were ushered in, Gruk said, “Oh do forgive me. Allow me to introduce Brothers Forlich, Birk, and Morony! Forlich is my designated science officer—”

  “I do science,” said Forlich, puffing up his chest and pulling out a crumpled piece of paper with writing all over it. He began reading out loud. “I measure things. I apply technology to solve all our problems. I hand over all my amazing discoveries to be twisted by paranoid twats in their endless need to consolidate power into their own hands at the expense of everyone else. I’m a scientist! I hide behind blinkered objectivity and pretend it’s all good even when it isn’t, like when I invent something like, oh, you know, pesticides that kill all the bees.” He folded up the piece of paper and put it back in his pocket, and then smiled at everyone.

  “And this is Brother Birk and Brother Morony, my
legal team. They were once Birk, Morony, Birk and Morony, specializing in litigation, mitigation, and duplication.” Gruk frowned. “It’s complicated business, being a prophet, especially when it comes to holo-evangelical productions and all the necessary tax havens in which one must squirrel away all the donations handed over by dirt-poor-but-easily-exploited followers, never mind the tax-exemption documents for our new super-duper Temple of Gruk even now being built in Barbados. Ah! What do I see? Yes, keep watching the monitors, my friends! Soon you too will be among my vast family of brothers and sisters—yes yes, that really is the cutest kitten, isn’t it?”

  Gruk’s eyes narrowed as he watched the captain look at his team in sudden alarm. “Oh dear,” he murmured, “one among you is not like the rest, oh dear. One among you is different. We don’t like different, do we? Oh no, we certainly do not! You must be Captain Hadrian Alan Sawback, yes?” He stepped forward and offered a hand to shake. “So delighted to meet you.”

  The captain looked down at the hand.

  “Oh!” Gruk smiled. “You must have noticed all the tiny syringes on my fingertips filled with mind-bending will-sapping drugs! Oh well, guess we’ll have to do this the hard way. Brother Galk, please point your weapon at the captain. Yes, like that. Excellent. Delightful. Outstanding.”

  Hadrian stared at Galk. “Galk! Put that Conformorizer Mark VII away and that’s an order.”

  “I can’t, sir,” said Galk. “I must obey Brother Gruk now.”

  “Mhmm yes,” agreed Gruk. “I’m afraid he does, and the same goes for the rest of your team. Sister, please take these handcuffs Brother Forlich is now offering you and bind the captain’s hands behind his back. A moment, please. Brother Forlich, do you have the handcuffs I gave you?”

  “Yes, Prophet, I have them! Look!”

  “Excellent. Outstanding. Now hand them over to your sister.”

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “That woman, there, what’s your name?”

  “Sin-Dour, Prophet.”

  “Brother Forlich, hand the cuffs over to Sister Sin-Dour now. No no, it’s all right, I’ll get you another pair to carry around. I promise. Go on, then. Go on. Oh just give them to her! Now, there, that’s better. Sister Sin-Dour, do bind the captain’s hands behind his back. Excellent, yes, just like that. Perfect. Outstanding.”