The Search for Spark

by Steven Erikson

  “Right.”

  “The one that says ‘Dietrich’ on it.”

  “No, the one that says ‘Collins’ on it once you rip off the badge saying ‘Dietrich.’”

  “Oh, right. So I’m Collins.”

  “And I’m Berlant,” Dietrich said.

  “No, wait,” said Halasz. He pointed at Dietrich’s coveralls. “Those were mine. So I’m Berlant and you’re Collins.”

  “No, because you’ll be wearing the Collins coveralls, making you Collins and me Berlant.”

  “Only because you’re wearing my coveralls!”

  “Covering your shifts, Collins!”

  “Damn you, Berlant—”

  “Quiet!” Hadrian pulled at his hair. “Never mind all that! Berlant, Collins, Dietrich, Halasz, all four of you, follow me to the Marine Quarters!”

  The two janitors exchanged a glance, and then nodded.

  “I’ll cover Collins,” said Dietrich.

  “And I’ll cover Berlant,” said Halasz. “Man, do they owe us or what?”

  FOURTEEN

  Dungeon Master Sweepy Brogan lit another cigar and leaned back. “You’re now at the foot of Mount Doom, home of the Unholy Wizard Hadrian of Mount Doom, P.O Box F.U.4U.”

  Muffy Slapp stuffed some taco chips into his mouth, and around all the crunching and gusts of orange powder he said, “We check for traps.”

  “What, at the foot of Mount Doom?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But it’s a foot.”

  “What?”

  “I told you, you’re at the foot of Mount Doom. It’s a giant foot, right?”

  Chambers sat forward with finger raised. “We check the giant toenails! Are any of them hinged?”

  “Gotta roll for success at finding hinges and traps, what’s your percentage, Chambers?”

  “Not Chambers,” Chambers pointed out, “Slickpalm the Thief. Uhm … traps … hah, seventy-nine percent! Fuck yeah.”

  “Roll then, starting with the big toe—”

  “Wait!” cried Stables. “Hold it, Slickpalm!”

  “Is something wrong, O Paladin Righteous Pucker?”

  “That depends, thou clever thief of, uh, clever-thieving. Forsooth and quoth, which foot are we looking at? The right one or the left?” And he stared pointedly at the DM.

  “Right foot,” Sweepy replied behind a fresh cloud of acrid smoke.

  “So where’s the left one?”

  “Oh dear!” said Sweepy. “Where did that giant shadow come from?”

  “I look up!” shouted Righteous Pucker.

  “I dodge!” cried Slickpalm. “Emergency dodge!”

  “Too late!” shouted Sweepy. “The giant left foot comes down!”

  “I make my save!” barked Lefty-Lim. “Brickhead the Dwarf makes his save!”

  “I save too!” laughed Skulls, or, rather, Ranger We Go This Way.

  “Hold on,” said Burny the Fire Mage (Charles Not Chuck), “I’m staying way back like I always do. Do I need to make a saving throw?”

  “No.”

  Bits of soggy taco chip spattered the table as Muffy said, “Gonad the Barbarian saves, hah, suck on that.”

  “Emergency dodge!” shrieked Slickpalm.

  “Minus twenty on your roll!” Sweepy snapped.

  “Made it! Hah!”

  “Paladin Righteous Pucker goes for his saving throw. Thirteen percent. Shit.”

  “SPLAT!”

  “How much damage? Remember, I’m wearing the Armor of the Pucker God, plus three against all crushing damage.”

  “Right, so subtract three from this.” Sweepy rolled die behind her cardboard screen. “Ooh, two hundred twenty-seven points of damage. How many hit points did you have again?”

  “Forty-two,” the paladin said glumly, and then he sat straight. “I call upon the Pucker God for Righteous Salvation! Plucking me out of danger!”

  “Only once a day! Now you’re on your own, Righteous Pucker!”

  “Better than dead!”

  “So now there’s two feet at the base of Mount Doom—”

  “Are they side by side?” Slickpalm asked.

  “Well, yeah. Your point?”

  “Nothing, just building my mental picture, right? Two giant feet, side by side. We’re at the feet of Mount Doom. I check for hinges in the giant toenails! Seventy-nine percent success … twenty-three percent! I nail it!”

  “Hah hah,” said Sweepy.

  Slickpalm frowned. “What? What now?”

  “Never mind. You find that the left big toe is in fact a door, with ancient steps leading down.”

  “In we go,” laughed Slickpalm. “Follow me, O Famous Party of Adventurers! How many steps are there?”

  “Are you counting?”

  “I am!”

  “Well then, you’re counting, and counting, and counting.”

  “How many until we get to the bottom?”

  “Three thousand. Three thousand steps, assuming your thief can count that high—what’s his intelligence? Twelve? But then, what’s your intelligence, Chambers?”

  “My intelligence doesn’t count, Sweepy! It’s the character’s intelligence you have to use!”

  “Your intelligence doesn’t count? Hah hah—never mind. At the foot of the stairs there’s a door made of wood banded in bronze.”

  “I creep up and listen for sounds.”

  “You hear a faint moaning sound from the other side.”

  “Gonad the Barbarian pulls the seven-foot-long two-handed sword from the scabbard on his back—”

  “Yeahhh,” drawled Sweepy, “how exactly does that work, Gonad?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a seven-foot blade, right, in a seven-and-a-half-foot scabbard strapped to your back. Your character is six and a half feet tall. So, uhm, how does he pull that weapon out from its scabbard?”

  “What do you mean? He just pulls it out!”

  “Yeah, sure, but how, exactly?”

  “I know!” offered Paladin Righteous Pucker. “I let him use my ten-foot ladder!”

  “Right,” said Gonad, “I use Pucker’s ladder—Pucker, what kind of ladder is it, anyway?”

  “Well, it’s a Ladder of Climbing.”

  “So, like, no special adds.”

  “What kind of adds?”

  “I don’t know. A plus one add or something.”

  “Plus one what? Plus one step? Sure, it’s got an extra step. A plus one Ladder of Climbing.”

  Sweepy said, “I think he’s pulling your leg, Gonad.”

  “Why—hey, Pucker, don’t pull my leg while I’m busy trying to unsheathe this sword! Yeesh, you want me to fall over and cut myself or something?”

  “Sorry, Gonad, didn’t know that was your leg.”

  A moment of silence, and then a chorus of snickering.

  Then Sweepy said, “Gonad gets his sword out.” (more snickering) “Now what?”

  “I kick down the door!”

  “You can’t, you’re still on the ladder.”

  “I climb down and then I kick open the door!”

  “Roll your kick strength and it’d better be good.”

  “Eight percent! That door goes flying!”

  Sweepy nodded. “So it does. You all see before you a ledge, and beyond that nothing but open sky. Oh, and there’s stone stairs leading up on the left on the outside of the ledge.”

  “I sneak out,” said Gonad, “looking around.”

  “You’re on a ledge above a huge steep cliff and way down at the bottom are the mangled corpses of three hundred goblins.”

  …

  “We’re back where we started!” screamed Slickpalm.

  “That’s right,” said Sweepy Brogan. “You spent three days fighting your way up the side of the cliff on the outer stone steps, and then you just went down the three thousand inner steps to end up where you started! And that door you just kicked open was the one you couldn’t break into yesterday from the other side. And that moaning soun
d you heard? That was the wind! Hahahaha!”

  “That was a dirty trick,” Slickpalm said.

  “Well, you obviously failed your intelligence roll. Not your thief’s intelligence. Yours, Chambers, and we’re talking Critical Fail here.”

  “You can’t use my naturally low intelligence! You can only use Slickpalm’s and he’s a twelve!”

  “Twelve IQ,” snorted Lefty-Lim. “That’s about right.”

  Slickpalm turned on Lefty. “And you all followed me down! Three thousand steps!”

  “Oh, yeah, shit.”

  Slickpalm crossed his arms and glared at Sweepy. “That Crit Fail shouldn’t have counted.”

  Sweepy leaned forward over her cardboard barrier. “You really want to go down the rabbit hole of the Existential Quagmire of rolling up a character who’s smarter than you are? Really, Chambers? You know where that takes us, don’t you?”

  “Okay okay! Never mind. We go back inside and climb back up the steps we just came down!”

  “Sure, only this time at the first landing above, why, there’s two hundred zombie goblins!”

  “I prepare my Giant Furball spell!” cried Burny.

  “What the fuck is a Giant Furball spell?” Sweepy asked.

  “My own invention. I can do that, you know. Anyway, it’s like a giant fireball, only furry.”

  “What’s it do,” Lefty-Lim asked, “choke cats?”

  Sweepy collected up the Spell Book, flipped through a bunch of pages, and then shut the book. “I’m making my decision here and it’s final. Giant Furball isn’t a spell. It’s stupid. In fact, it’s utterly unrealistic.”

  No one spoke for a moment, and then Burny said, “I prepare my Spell of Swarming Fire Salamanders.”

  “Okay.”

  Gonad thumped the table. “Fuck that. I take my seven-foot sword and rush—”

  “No room in there to swing it, Gonad.”

  “Fine! I sheathe my seven-foot sword and pull out my two axes—”

  “How do you sheathe your sword in that seven-and-a-half-foot scabbard strapped to your back?”

  “I use Pucker’s ladder!”

  “But even up there, the scabbard’s behind you.”

  “I climb up there with him,” said Brickhead.

  “But you’re a Dwarf, so you only reach Gonad’s hip, and besides, you’d need to make a saving roll since you’re scared of heights.”

  “Ranger We Go This Way climbs the ladder and helps Gonad sheathe his sword.”

  “Okay. Done. Who takes point for the Grand Battle of the Inside Staircase Against the Zombie Goblins?”

  “I will!” said Ranger We Go This Way. “Everyone, we go this way!”

  “You reach the foot of the steps and look up, only to see that the zombie goblins are all wielding flamethrowers! They fire! Gouts of burning napalm pour down the steps!”

  “I try and save!”

  “No saves!”

  “What?”

  “You’re in a cramped tunnel at the foot of the stairs, with ten gouts of burning napalm arcing down straight for you. You can’t go left, you can’t go right. You can’t jump since the ceiling’s too low. So, no saves! And you take four thousand points of damage! You’ve burned up to cinders!”

  “Get her!” bellowed Skulls—

  Their charge across the table was interrupted by a soft knock upon the door. Everyone froze, and then weapons came out.

  “I don’t fucking believe it,” whispered Lefty-Lim.

  “Nobody move,” hissed Chambers. “Maybe they’ll just go away.”

  “Oh sure,” drawled Muffy Slapp, “like your mum did six months ago when we were on leave for that Mega D&D Weekend in the Basement at your place.”

  “She didn’t go away,” Chambers said. “She disappeared. That’s different.”

  “Right, ’cause you painted that fucking pentagram at the foot of the stairs to make things more realistic. She ever show up again?”

  “Not yet, but we’re hopeful.”

  The knock came again.

  Sweepy Brogan sighed heavily and stood. “Everybody, rounds in the chambers, safeties off. If it’s another fucking exorcist you turn him into spam, understood?” She worked her way round the table and walked up to the door. Paused for effect, and then flung it open.

  “It’s Unholy Wizard Hadrian of Mount Doom!” shrieked Chambers, throwing himself to one side in a desperate save attempt.

  “At ease everyone!” barked Sweepy. “It’s the Captain version of Hadrian, not the Unholy Wizard one.”

  Lefty-Lim shifted his weapon but did not stand down. “Don’t know, LT. Could be the King Zombie Necromancer Hadrian—”

  “No, that was last week’s campaign,” Sweepy pointed out. “Stand down all weapons. Safeties on, clear your chambers. You too, Chambers. Obviously we got ourselves a genuine emergency and it’d have to be, interrupting our Mondo Weekend. Right, Captain?”

  “I wouldn’t be here otherwise, Lieutenant. A genuine emergency. We’re even now on our way to meet God.”

  “Another damn exorcist!” screamed Stables. “Gun him down!”

  Fortunately, Hadrian made his saving throw.

  * * *

  “Got it,” Sweepy Brogan said, chewing on her cigar. “That’s quite the sit rep, Captain. The whole crew brainwashed, huh? Barring the robots and those two janitors over there. Right.” She drew round her Destroyitall Mark III and activated the MegaCharge button. It started winding up. “Only option, Captain: We need to kill ’em, every last one of ’em. In a hail of depleted plutonium, tracker bullets, RPGs, lasers and proton beams—it won’t be pretty, granted. It’ll make quite a mess, to be honest, with people-bits in every corridor, blood up the walls and even on the ceilings. Tufts of bloody hair and flaps of shredded scalp. Shards of bone, exploded intestines, lacerated livers, burning clothing and all those screams still echoing and echoing and—well, you get the picture.” Then her brows lifted. “Luckily, we got us a couple janitors with mops and buckets!”

  “Body parts and bloodstains not in the standard contract,” said Collins/Dietrich.

  Berlant/Halasz nodded. “He’s right. What you’re describing there involves a Gore Bonus to our pay packet.”

  “There’s also the Vomit Stipulation,” added Collins/Dietrich. “Every time we upchuck over the mess we’re cleaning up, it’s another five hundred credits.”

  “He’s right,” Berlant/Halasz said again. “This shit’s gonna cost you big.”

  “We’re not killing anyone,” said Hadrian. “Power down that weapon, Lieutenant. Our first task is to wait here for Spark and Beta. Tammy? How many minions does Prophet Gruk have on board?”

  “Including your crew of drooling mental midgets?”

  “No. Just the others, please.”

  “A small Belkri named Blimpie and three Varekans: Science Officer Forlich and the legal team of Birk and Morony.”

  Sweepy started powering up her weapon again. “Leave those ones to us, Captain, especially the lawyers.” She paused and glowered at the two janitors. “Small mess, right? I mean, barely a handful, right? Get ’em all in one room and it’s what, a couple hours’ work for you guys?”

  “Gore Bonus still applies,” Collins/Dietrich said firmly. “It can be just one tiny bit of gore. Like, say, part of an ear lying on the floor, or stuck to a light fixture, and wham! Gore Bonus. And Vomit Stipulation.”

  Tammy said, “Oh really. Look, I can displace every bit of gore into space. Right down to the molecular level.”

  The two janitors brought their mops up, faces twisting as they glared at Hadrian.

  “You think that’s funny?” Collin/Dietrich snarled. “Puttin’ us outa work just like that? Oh, nice joke. Ha ha.”

  “Not funny,” Berlant/Halasz added. “You don’t even have your dummy, meaning the whole gig don’t work. It’s shit, in fact. You see us laughing? No.”

  Sweepy leaned close to Hadrian. “Captain, what’re they going on about?”

  “T
hey don’t believe in Tammy,” Hadrian replied. “They think I’m a ventriloquist.”

  “Shit! Y’know, that never occurred to me. You remote-controlling that chicken, then? Hot damn, Captain, you had us all going for all this time? I mean, wow!”

  “I’m not a ventriloquist! Tammy exists! A genuine rogue AI from the future!”

  The chicken ambled into the tiny service corridor where they’d all gathered (barring Sweepy’s squad, which remained in the games room for the moment, picking up shell casings and wiping down the burn streaks on the walls, and of course scarfing down the last of the junk food, too). “And here I am!” announced Tammy.

  “Holovid projection,” said Berlant/Halasz with an eye-roll. “I prefer the old style, you know, wooden dummy with hinged mouth and blinking eyes and swiveling head—like that one!” he added, pointing as Beta arrived, followed by Spark. “Ooh and that’s fancy, there’s a dummy dog, too!” He turned to look at Hadrian with new appreciation. “Three dummies to work, huh? Man, this I gotta see!”

  “Captain,” said Beta, “the rest of the crew are acting strangely. For example, James Eden at comms hasn’t panicked or passed out once in his entire shift. While Helm Jocelyn Sticks has already adopted twenty-three abandoned cats, not one of which has all its body parts. Commander Sin-Dour is binge-watching porn flicks with scenarios involving the brutal subjugation of men in uniforms, while Dr. Printlip is watching soap bubbles pop on a monitor.”

  Spark added, “Haddie! I saw a crew member watching me poo!”

  “Not bad at all,” commented Berlant/Halasz, turning expectantly to the chicken.

  Tammy sighed. “Okay, even I see no way out of this, since we’re all talking in turn. Fine then! You sharp-eyed janitors saw through the whole charade! The captain really is a ventriloquist! Using those twitches and assorted facial tics to manipulate my holovid projection and both robots. The man’s a genius. Now, can we get on with it?”

  “Right,” sighed Hadrian. “Okay, I need two volunteers from the audience.” He frowned as both janitors stepped forward. “Ah, look at that. How delightful.”

  “Oh and look,” said Tammy, “both have talking mops.”

  One of the mops rustled slightly and then said, “Hey everyone! I’m Vlad! And boy can I soak up blood!”

  The other mop then said, “And I’m Queen Smear! I evenly distribute dirty water down entire corridors!”