They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  “If I take a drink from the bar, will I actually taste it?”

  Calon laughs. “Feel free to investigate.”

  I walk over to check out the liquor. Calon stays in her seat. “I assume you’ve changed your mind about my offer?”

  “I’m prepared to discuss it.” I make a show of scanning the bottles, which lets me avoid making eye contact with her. I pull down a bottle of Yamazaki Single Malt and pour a glass. After a sip, I ask, all smooth and casual, “How are you with blood bonds?”

  “I’ve established a few in my time,” she says. “Is that your price? You want a blood bond over someone?”

  “Fuck, no!” Isn’t it just like a Darkling to think I’d want such a thing? Does Calon imagine there’s a guy I want as a slave? “Can you break blood bonds?” I ask.

  “Possibly,” she says. “But I don’t see bonds on you.”

  “It’s on my roommate,” I say. “My friend. Got bonded to a vampire named Elaine Vandermeer. Know her?”

  Was that a twitch in Calon’s eye? Very tiny, but I’m world class at reading micro-expressions. Calon says, “I’ve met Elaine. I’ve met most of the Darklings in Canada. How did your friend become bonded to her?”

  I hate to give away K’s secrets. But if Calon’s going to help, she likely needs the facts. “My friend used to date Elaine’s brother. My friend wanted to get on Elaine’s good side, so…”

  Calon finishes my sentence: “Your friend let Elaine drink some blood.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Complete consent?” Calon asks. “And an actual bite, not just licking a cut or some such?”

  “The full monty,” I say.

  “Your friend’s a fool,” Calon tells me.

  I shrug. “I’ve personally done worse. I’m making a deal with you, aren’t I?”

  Calon smiles. “So you are.” She stands up from her chair. She seems taller than before—the same height as me. She begins walking toward me. “So to be clear: if I remove the blood bond from your friend … or if I persuade Elaine to sever the connection … you’ll join me at the memorial?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. “Do I have to make a fuss over you? Like make a big entrance hanging on your arm, and let you feel me up or whatever?”

  “I told you, Jools, this isn’t sexual. Nor is it crass. Certain members of the nouveau Dark might want you clinging to them worshipfully, but I’m too old to require servility. I’ll leave an invitation for you at the reception desk; be at the party by nine and look me up when you get there. We’ll chat for a bit, then walk around and meet people. Oh, and sometime during the night, I’ll require you to perform a small service.”

  “So now we get to what this is really about,” I say. “What kind of service?”

  “Less than ten seconds of your time. A single easy action. Then we’re quits. Transaction completed, over and done with.”

  I say, “You aren’t going to tell me what you want, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then how will I know what to do?”

  “If we shake hands on this,” Calon says, “you’ll do your part automatically when the time comes.”

  I say, “You don’t want me to kill someone, do you? Assassinate the prime minister? Nothing like that?”

  “Jools,” Calon says, pretending to be wounded, “Darklings fully comply with human laws. Surely you know that. I promise you won’t do anything illegal.”

  “Can I have that in writing?”

  “This won’t be a written contract,” Calon says. “Young Darklings obsess about documents, but I prefer traditional ways.”

  She holds out her hand. I stare at it for a moment, as I digest that she’s admitted to being an Elder of the Dark. Or at least older than the Darklings who’ve been made since the 1980s. She’s probably the real Calon Arang, and who knows what else beside—any creature that lives for centuries has probably used many names.

  Making a deal with such a thing is totally fucking insane.

  I say, “My friend’s name is K. Or Kim. You’ll really break the bond?”

  Calon closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. I have the weird impression she’s seeing into the future. She opens her eyes and says, “The bond will be permanently broken within twenty-four hours of you fulfilling our agreement. You have my word.”

  She holds out her hand again.

  Making a deal with the devil is nuts, but this is for a good cause, right? This is for K.

  I take Calon’s hand.

  I half expect her to yank me in and bite my throat. But she simply gives a straightforward handshake. A bright pink glow blooms around our grip. I feel nothing except her slightly rough flesh. It’s several degrees hotter than mine.

  After a heartbeat, Calon lets me go. “I’ll send you something to wear,” she says.

  “Look,” I say, “do you really have to go all sugar daddy? It makes me feel nasty, and not in a good way.”

  “Jools,” Calon says, “I can’t have my entourage looking shabby.”

  “Don’t judge me on what I wear around the house,” I say, trying to suppress the urge to cover my clothes with my hands. “I have some very nice outfits.”

  “I don’t want nice, I want spectacular. You reflect on me, Jools. I won’t settle for what you let yourself get away with.”

  She says that as if she knows me. Knows all about me. It’s enough to make me grab my glass of whisky and take a gulp.

  Suddenly, I’m back in the washroom of our town house. The whisky glass is still in my hand.

  Now I really do have to pee.

  * * *

  FOR AN HOUR AND forty-two minutes, Miranda sings along with Frozen. She sometimes tries to sing pop-style, but always slips back to being an opera soprano: full volume, articulation, and vibrato. It clashes with the soundtrack, but I don’t mind; I like to see her happy.

  Every time we do this, Miranda encourages the rest of us to sing along, too. We never do; K is too self-conscious and I refuse to sing unless I’m drunk. Tonight it occurs to me that I can now sing as well as Miranda. Actually, I must be better—I’m as good as any professional diva on the planet, whereas Miranda is only a well-trained amateur. Then again, Miranda = Aria, and Aria’s voice is literally superhuman. For all I know, she can sound like a hundred-voice choir.

  Note to self: don’t try to outsing the super prima donna.

  My mind starts to wander. First it goes back to the stupid fucking bazooka and my stupid fucking brain. Then, because contemplating my inadequacy makes me want to drown myself, I shove my thoughts in other directions.

  I bemoan all the hassles of being a Spark: not just getting my face burned off, but jumping through hoops to maintain two separate identities. Much of the hassle would go away if I could quick-change from costume to civvies and vice versa. And this isn’t just a selfish concern. I want to be able to help other people if anything bad ever happens while I’m out in public. But it takes forever to change into Ninety-Nine, and that’s even assuming I’m carrying around my full uniform. Then, after a stint of heroic supering, I need a safe and foolproof way to flip back to myself so I can walk into the house without giving away my Sparkosity.

  I need something that yanks off whatever I’m wearing and shoves on a different outfit, even if that outfit includes hockey pads and fiberglass protection. I can’t just wear my costume under my street clothes—tomorrow night, for example, I’ll be rocking a swanky dress, courtesy of Calon Arang. If it’s the sort of gown I’m imagining, I won’t even be able to wear undies, let alone a full hockey outfit under the dress. But this memorial is exactly when I may need to become Ninety-Nine at a moment’s notice. How the hell am I going to do that?

  I cogitate. My mind turns to quick-change artists in nature. I’m still a biologist at heart, even if I’m now a pro at everything.

  Lots of animals change appearance quickly. Chameleons and octopuses are obvious examples. Cats raise their hackles … pufferfish puff up … jellyfish open wide or clench down small t
o avoid trouble …

  Jellyfish. Jellies. Phylum Cnidaria. Distinguished by poisoned stingers that they can shoot out at high speed.

  The stingers are called nematocysts. They spike into targets, inject a load of toxin, then reel in their prey.

  Hmm.

  Suddenly the movie is over, the TV is off, and we’re sitting in darkness. K and Miranda poke the nuggets of unpopped popcorn at the bottom of their bowls, probably asking themselves, How bad would it be if I ate those, too?

  They’re feeling the late-night blues. But me, I’m stoked. I’ve got a plan. If it’s not exactly Mad Genius, it tilts in that direction. A Slightly Loopy Savant. An Erratic Engineer.

  “I’m going for a run,” I announce.

  “You’re kidding,” Miranda says. “It’s midnight.”

  “That’s only ten, Edmonton time. I’m reverse jet-lagged and I need fresh air.”

  Miranda and K look at me, then exchange glances. I can almost hear mental gears grinding as they debate offering, “Why don’t I come with you?” They suspect I’m up to something. On the other hand, they know I’ve gone running several nights a week ever since we started living together. It would almost be suspicious if I didn’t go for a run.

  Inside my head, K says, « Call if anything happens. »

  “Sure,” I say aloud. I whip up to my room and put on a running jacket. I also put on leather gloves … but considering that it’s January, K and Miranda will just think I’m keeping my hands warm. A nip of tequila, then I’m out the door.

  First stop: a lab in the Heather C. Williams biology building. WikiJools gives me the exact location of a freezer containing hundreds of tissue samples, including several species of Cnidaria. The lab with the freezer doesn’t even have an alarm—just a lock on the door. It’s a pretty good lock, so it takes a full minute to pick open. Still, it’s 12:05 A.M. on Saturday, January 3, and ain’t nobody here to say boo. I finesse my way into the lab, I find the freezer …

  … and my Joolsness goes offline.

  It’s not that I black out. I’m awake and alert and at ease. But it’s like when I analyzed the bazooka: my Joolsy self goes bye-bye. Parts of my brain reallocate. Instead of the messy business of performing Jools, millions of neurons switch to different chores.

  A prissy voice in my head says, “That’s not how neurons work!” The brain may be adaptable, but it can’t just decide to repurpose cells at the drop of a hat. You can’t say, “I don’t need to talk right now, so you cells that usually handle verbal processing, you’re reassigned to differential equations. Now shut up and calculate.”

  It’s ridiculous. But it’s also ridiculous that Zircon shrinks and Aria sings golden force fields. Sparks do grotesquely impossible things; changing the specs on my brain is actually on the sedate end of the spectrum.

  So instead of being Jools, I crunch numbers. I invent. Any pinprick of selfhood that survives just serves as a bookmark: like a go-to label in old computer code that my brain will jump to when the grunt work is done.

  Till then … zzzz.

  * * *

  COME MORNING, I WAKE up sitting at my desk back home. My computer is on, with the screen showing words in eighteen-point Comic Sans type. Awesome. Mad Genius Jools has left Dumbass Jools a cryptic message:

  Bra and panties in each jar

  One for one, one for the other

  Four in all

  Cued to thinking the phrase

  “Ninety-Nine Power, Make Up!”

  “Zircon Power, Make Up!”

  Etc.

  Return with “Jools Power, Chill Down!”

  Etc.

  Lied to K about needing blood

  Said it was trying to break the blood bond

  Better smooth over

  Okay, what?

  The?

  Living?

  Fuck?

  I stand up and look around the room. There are four big aquariums on the windowsill, all with standard-issue air pumps bubbling to oxygenate the water. I cannot have acquired these legally—not in the middle of the night. Besides, the aquariums look like ones we used in Bio 310, when we were working with Planaria and other aquatic beasties. I hope these aquariums are unused extras, and that I didn’t dump a bunch of unhappy critters down the drain when I stole their water tanks.

  Wait, there’s a worse possibility: that I used those critters as raw materials to make what’s now in the tanks.

  Cautiously I approach the closest aquarium. It contains salt water; I can smell the briny goodness, thanks to the pump throwing salt-scented bubbles into the air. The tank looks mostly empty—no sand on the bottom, no plants, nor any of the usual nonsense people buy for tropical fish. Despite my best-in-the-human-world eyesight, it takes me time to spot what the tank does contain: two delicate glassy objects like transparent jellyfish, except that they’re shaped like a filmy bikini top and an equally filmy bikini bottom.

  You have got to be shitting me.

  No, I have got to be shitting me. I’m the one who made a two-piece swimsuit from marine invertebrates.

  No, not a swimsuit. This is underwear: a bra and panties. Which I made from sea life I scrounged on campus.

  That’s …

  That’s so cool!

  I reach into the aquarium and pull out the panties. They feel like half-set Jell-O. I remember a lecture where some researcher talked about extracting protein fibers from hagfish slime to make extremely strong fabric—tougher than Kevlar, more natural than nylon. This looks like the stuff. It has the appearance of cling wrap but the texture of snot.

  It’s drying out fast. In seconds, it changes from goo into something smooth and silky. Another few heartbeats and it feels more slinky than the undies I usually wear. It’s like a high-thread-count fabric that breathes. (Heh.)

  I reach into the tank and pull out the other piece: bra-shaped slime. It has long dangly tie strings like a bikini top. Just like its sister, it dries out in seconds until it’s transparent, silky, and sheer.

  It’s too flimsy to provide support. Just pulling on the tie strings stretches it out to a flat strip of gauze. But when I stop pulling, it relaxes back into sort-of kind-of cups. Memory fabric. It’s too see-through to wear on a beach, but it could fit under a regular bikini just fine. And nearly invisible on my skin.

  What the hell, let’s try these jelly babies on.

  Doff clothes. Don Cnidaria. They don’t feel gooey at all. And not like plastic wrap, either—they’re thinner and permeable to air. I barely feel them once they’re on; they shape to my skin without crinkles. I can move any old which way without them binding or chafing.

  All underwear should feel this good. I could make good money selling this stuff.

  Admittedly, “Slap on some slime!” won’t compete with whatever slogan Victoria’s Secret uses. And I’ll have trouble getting Miranda to so much as touch these things with the tip of her pinkie, let alone apply them anyplace intimate. But if these do what I think they do …

  I stand in front of my full-length mirror. I’m wearing nothing but my tattoos, the jelly strips, and my comm ring. (The ring is important, I think. It turns thoughts into radio transmissions, and that seems like part of the setup.)

  I take a deep breath, then say inside my head, « Ninety-Nine Power, Make Up! »

  The bra and panties explode. Kind of. Specifically, they shoot out masses of thin strands that must be nematocysts. The strands envelop me—even around my eyes. For a moment I can’t see anything. I imagine myself surrounded by little fibers, making me look like I’m swaddled in cotton. Then silently, the fibers slurp back from whence they came and I look exactly the way I started.

  Well, maybe a little more erect.

  But I get it. I think. It boggles my mind, but I get it.

  I put on my Ninety-Nine costume: the pads, the guards, black jersey and all. I even smear on the black greasepaint that serves as my “mask.” When I’m ready to throw body checks for justice, I think, « Jools Power, Chill Down! »


  As silently as a Portuguese man-of-war, the nematocysts shoot out. This time, they have something to grab hold of. They stab the clothes I’m wearing, they inject whatever is stored in their poison-payload reservoirs, then they reel back in whatever they’ve managed to spear.

  The whole process takes a second and a half … and now I’m naked again, except for transparent Cnidaria undies. Even my face paint is gone, dragged off by greedy tentacles.

  Ho. Lee. Shit.

  Where did the costume go? The slime silk on my boobs is marginally darker than before—a teensy bit smoky instead of transparent. I sure as hell hope my superhero clothes haven’t been digested.

  « Ninety-Nine Power, Make Up! »

  Whoosh! The nematocysts envelope me in their cloud. Whump! They retract and I’m dressed again. Even the greasepaint is back.

  Shit. Lee. Ho.

  The clothes went away and came back, like zits on my chin.

  Only one explanation … especially considering that note on the computer about taking blood from K. K can shrink. I must have extracted something from zir blood and distilled a shrinking potion. Then I used it to fill the fluid reservoir in each jellyfish stinger. When the stingers stab clothing, they inject the potion and shrink the fabric to microscopic levels. My costume literally shrank into the bra, like a thin film of microbes. Then I said the magic words and the process reversed: the stingers sucked away the shrinking potion, and the costume returned to normal size.

  That’s brilliant! Also ludicrous, impossible, and just plain stupid. But hey, that’s the superhero biz.

  « Jools Power, Chill Down! »

  Costume goes away. Nothing but me and my ink in the mirror.

  Quickly, I dress in street clothes: leggings, a tank top, and for funsies, my ski jacket. Before I say the magic words, I swipe some eyeshadow on one eyelid—proof of concept.

  « Ninety-Nine Power, Make Up! »

  Bye-bye, street clothes; hello, hockey. If the hockey stuff was stored microscopically inside the bra, then the street clothes must get stashed inside the panties. That way they’re kept separate, and I don’t end up with half-and-half leggings and hockey shorts. End result: a perfect clothes swap in less than two seconds. I can’t see what I look like while the swap is happening, but it must be like a cloud of cotton batting bursting out of me and then getting sucked back in.