They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  I say, “You invented the tank, but you don’t know what it can do?”

  “Exactly so,” Marian says with a sheepish laugh. “A fact of life for Spark inventors. The whole is so often greater than the sum of its parts.” She smiles and focuses back on my body again. “So. About your muscles?”

  “One hundred percent earned,” I reply. “Crunches and clean living.”

  This is not the time to discuss how becoming a Spark tightened and toned me. This is the time to feel awkward for standing around like the Venus de Milo while Marian admires my sculpting. Her Halo has that soothing Don’t worry effect, but this is still a bit weird.

  My feelings must show because Marian steps back and turns her eyes away. “I said I would get you clothes, didn’t I? And you probably want to shower—the fluids in the medi-tank have likely made you feel gummy.”

  “Kind of,” I agree.

  She tsks her tongue. “No matter how I improve the tank, I can’t make that go away.” Marian makes a face. “You’d think it would be easy. Compared to repairing damaged organs, doing a final rinse-off should be a piece of piss. But the Light refuses to play along.” Her face takes on a thoughtful expression. “Perhaps it’s symbolic. The Light will deliver miracles, but always with some niggling imperfection. An Achilles heel. Or a recognizable motif that’s always present no matter how hard you try to avoid it.”

  She stops and looks embarrassed. “Or like the tendency for Sparks to soliloquize. Sorry.” Marian points to a corner of the lab. “The shower is over yonder. I’ll go find you something to wear.”

  She takes two steps toward a door marked EX T. (The I has been obliterated. In a lab where you make superweapons, I guess that happens.) Then Marian stops and turns back. “Please just shower, all right? Don’t touch anything while I’m gone.” She waves her hand vaguely around the room. “Dozens of things here could kill you so badly the tank would never bring you back. Neither of us wants that.”

  Marian smiles apologetically, then leaves.

  * * *

  I HEAD FOR THE shower. It’s not the sort you see in normal bathrooms; it’s the type you install in a lab where you may need to drench yourself in a hurry because you’re covered with hydrochloric acid. There’s only one tap to turn on and I’m certain the water is icy cold. That’s what you want when your lab coat is smoking, since low temperatures slow down chemical reactions.

  But oh, this is gonna hurt.

  I consider not showering at all; freezing my delicate lady parts may be worse than feeling gooey. But when I think of the gloop the tank left on my skin, I can’t help but worry. I was soaking in Mad Genius fluids that never went through medical trials or even casual safety tests. Like all Cape Tech gizmos, the medi-tank is a work in progress, probably whipped up impromptu to deal with some emergency, then sporadically toyed with thereafter.

  Showering in frigid water is the lesser of two evils. Besides, I’m a tough-ass superhero. I should be able to stand …

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s cold! Splash, wipe, one sweep of my hands to spread water everywhere, then I turn off the tap so hard I might have damaged it.

  Good thing I don’t possess actual super-strength. Otherwise, I might have ripped the plumbing out of the wall.

  And oh, look, there’s no towel. Just a roll of rough brown paper that’s less absorbent than my butt. This is exactly what you want if you’re dealing with a chemical spill, since a real towel would get damaged. But paper is damned useless for drying off quickly when you’re dying from a case of the shivers. My hair is also a mess, and there’s no shampoo. But who cares? Even if there was shampoo, there’s no fucking way I’d go under that water again.

  I truly feel as if I’ll expire of hypothermia. What I need is—

  Now I’m warm. Things went blank there for a second.

  Maybe longer than a second. Cuz now I’m halfway across the lab, and standing in front of a workbench where I’ve cobbled together a heater from random parts.

  My hair is clean and dry. It smells like peaches.

  No, all of me smells like peaches. I must have mixed a shampoo and body wash from random chemicals lying around. Which is worrisome, since pretty much all the chemicals I’ve seen here are either toxic or incendiary.

  But I feel fine. I smell great.

  *Sniff*

  Everywhere.

  Note to self: start a bath-and-beauty store.

  Additional note to self: you’re an idiot. You should never have a Mad Genius blackout in enemy territory, especially when you’re trying to pretend you’re human.

  I sprint back to the shower before Marian returns. I debate forcing myself under the water again—being peachy clean and dry is hella suspicious. But getting wet again could do the same as before: another hypothermal blackout, whereupon I might get caught making something even weirder.

  Better to cross my fingers and hope Marian doesn’t notice. Just because she’s a genius doesn’t mean she’s observant, right? Plenty of bright people go through life completely oblivious.

  I point no fingers.

  I’m barely back in position before Marian returns. She takes no special notice of how I look or smell. She just hands me a bright-red outfit that’s very Men in Tights: red jacket, red shirt, red leggings, red leather buskins.

  There’s a codpiece. A very noticeable codpiece.

  I say, “There’s a codpiece. A very noticeable codpiece.”

  “Yeeessss,” Marian says in a tone that’s only making a token effort to be apologetic. “I made this for Multiplier when he first joined our band. Robin wanted him to be Will Scarlet, but it never really clicked. By tradition, Will Scarlet was the best swordsman in Sherwood; Multiplier was just dreadful with a sword. Terrible archer, too. So we set the costume aside. That’s why it’s available now.”

  Marian pushes the outfit toward me. “It’s more or less your size, and it adjusts. Its fabric can stretch or tighten more than an inch in any direction.”

  I say, “It has a codpiece.”

  “Yes, I know,” Marian replies. “But the outfit is tougher than Kevlar, resistant to caustic chemicals, and insulated enough to keep you alive at forty degrees below zero. If you’d been wearing this when Robin’s flame arrow hit you … well, the shirt doesn’t cover everything, but you wouldn’t have ended up with burned intestines spilling on the floor.

  “And,” Marian adds, “if you don’t like this costume, the alternative is wearing some of my clothes. Unless you’d prefer borrowing something from Wrecking Ball? Or Ninja Jane?”

  “You make a compelling argument,” I say. Besides, I’d like to examine a costume that’s so resilient to damage. It resembles ordinary cloth and leather—not bulky like the bulletproof suits you see on TV. If I put on these duds, I can look them over real carefully as soon as Marian gives me a minute … the only price being that the red fabric makes me look like the next person to die on Star Trek.

  No underwear, but whatever—ending up without undies after a party is the story of my life. I worry about chafing, but slipping into the clothes, I find them amazingly comfortable. As Marian said, they reshape to fit: a little more in the hips, a little less across the shoulders.

  There’s a deep V down the front, which I guess must have been intended to show Multiplier’s manly chest hair. On me the V shows my cleavage, such as it is … but as the outfit continues to reshape, it provides some moderate push-up action.

  Really? Really?

  Did Marian design the shirt to work like this on Multiplier? Why? But if Marian has blackouts like I do, she made this outfit while lost in the throes of creation. Instead of thinking about Multiplier or anyone else, Marian just invented a generic super-athleisure wardrobe, adaptable for male, female, or off the axis.

  Except for the codpiece. The rest of the clothes adapt to my body, but the codpiece doesn’t go away. I rap on it with my knuckles. It’s hard. Armored. Well, okay, I won’t object to extra armor down there. But it feels weird.

  I tr
y a few kicks; the bulge doesn’t get in the way. And hey, if my skill set includes the absolute peaks of human accomplishment, I must be a wiz at working around certain lovely but ridiculous bits of anatomy.

  So I opt for denial. La-la-la, the bulge isn’t really there.

  La-la-la.

  La.

  There, I’m good. Tucked up, tucked in, and tucked down.

  Marian looks me over and says, “You’re a picture. Now come with me; Robin wants to meet you.”

  She heads for the door. I don’t. I say, “Wait.”

  Marian turns back. “Yes?”

  “Where’s this going?” I ask. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful you saved me from joining the choir invisible. But you folks are outlaws, right? And the Darklings have a hard-on to throw you in jail. The more I see, the deeper I’m in, aren’t I? As in I can never go home again.”

  Marian waves away my words. “Don’t worry, I have a widget to erase your memory. Whatever happens while you’re here, you won’t remember after you go.”

  “Will the Darklings believe that?” I ask. “Or will they work me over with enchantments that rip up my brain?”

  “I’m sure they realize it’s pointless,” Marian says. “Robin entertains many overnight guests. I always wipe their memories before they leave. No doubt, the Dark tried to interrogate our first few visitors. Maybe the first several dozen. But by now, they must have come to accept they’ll never obtain useful information.”

  She says it like it’s no big deal. As if the Dark have truly given up, and don’t browbeat every “overnight guest” in the hope that this time the brain-wipe missed a scrap of useful data. Even if Marian is right and the Dark don’t bother anymore, what about the ones who got tortured before the Darklings decided it was a waste of effort?

  But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I demand, “Does Robin consider me an overnight guest?”

  Marian shrugs. “You’re our guest. And I imagine you’ll stay several hours. Or days.”

  “With Robin?” I ask.

  She shrugs again. “Probably.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “Then don’t,” Marian says. “But you will.”

  She turns away and goes to the laboratory’s door. She holds it open for me.

  I’m tempted to tell her and Robin to jointly fuck off. Sure, he’s cute, but I refuse to be taken for granted: number 3,057 in an endless parade of bimbos. Brought in for a bounce, then brainwashed and sent on my way. I mean, shit, I’m all for meaningless one-night stands, but they ought to be win-win, not win-and-don’t-remember-losing.

  On the other hand, what happens if I say, “Go to hell”? The best-case scenario is that Friar Tuck whistles up his teleporting horse and tells it to take me home. But only after I get sent through the memory laundromat.

  No way. This is my first time inside a Spark’s secret base; whether or not I remember, I want to see what it’s like. Otherwise, this will be like getting up to the door of some awesome location like NASA Mission Control, then saying, “Nah, I’m not in the mood.”

  So I plod along behind Maid Marian as she leads me out into Sherwood Forest.

  11

  Courtship Display

  WE EMERGE FROM THE lab building. When seen from the outside, it resembles a medieval hunting lodge: flagstone walls and a thickly thatched roof. It’s much larger than such lodges actually were. It’s even much larger than the lab room I saw—the building extends far enough to contain a dozen labs of equal size.

  But forget the building. What grabs my attention is Sherwood Forest.

  It really is a forest. Giant oaks cast their shadows over the front of the laboratory. Unseen birds chirp and chitter in the canopy. Four dirt paths lead away beneath the trees, weaving through the kind of underbrush you might see in parts of the real Sherwood Forest.

  But this can’t be the real one. It’s too bright and sunny, and it smells of warm summer green. England’s winters may be milder than Ontario’s, but still—in January, the real Sherwood Forest should at least be frosted over. And even if the actual forest experienced a fluky heat surge, oak trees wouldn’t have all their leaves and the brush wouldn’t grow in such abundance.

  Besides, Marian said I was only in the medi-tank for fifty minutes. I don’t know how long I blacked out for in the lab, but adding everything up, it can’t be later than midnight, Waterloo time. Five in the morning in England. But the sun here shines brightly almost directly overhead. That puts us on a line of longitude somewhere around Beijing … but farther south, since Beijing is shivering its toes in deep winter, too.

  So we’re in the tropics or the southern hemisphere. The Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, or one of those famous uncharted islands that don’t really exist.

  “I give up,” I say to Marian. “Where are we?”

  “Sherwood Forest,” she replies with a smile.

  “Can’t be the one in England,” I say. “Not where it’s January, and five A.M., Greenwich time.”

  “Very good, Jools,” Marian says. “But it’s still Sherwood Forest.”

  “Time travel?” I ask. “Or some alternate universe?” If Marian is a Mad Genius, she could totally build a gate to, let’s say, Sherwood Forest a million years ago, during some toasty time between ice ages. That would explain why no one has ever found Robin’s base.

  Marian says, “No, we’re still in the present, and still in our own home dimension. I’ve tinkered with going elsewhere, but it just causes headaches. Time paradoxes, for example—that whole kill-a-butterfly-bring-on-a-nuclear-war scenario is no joke. Took us ages to set that right. And alternate realities are worse: alien invasions, worlds overrun by zombies, places where Satan won the war with heaven … no thanks!”

  “So if we’re still on our Earth,” I say, “where are we?”

  Marian smiles again. “It’s a secret.”

  “So what? You’re going to erase my memory.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” Marian says. Before I can protest, she takes my arm. “Come now, Jools. Robin’s waiting.”

  * * *

  WE WALK THROUGH SHERWOOD Forest. Botany has never been my bud—I rank the kingdoms starting with Animalia, then Protista, Archaea, Bacteria, Fungi, and finally Plantae hanging off the bottom like toilet paper on Linnaeus’s shoe. But now I recognize every damned species that flutters its fronds in my face. That’s why I realize this forest’s carpet doesn’t match the drapes.

  Oak trees are rank bastards; they don’t play well with others. Their leaves contain a whopping amount of tannic acid, so when the leaves fall in autumn, they rot and poison the dirt. The oaks themselves don’t mind acidic soil, but most other plants can’t handle it. Result: either an absence of undergrowth or a preponderance of plant species with high acid tolerance.

  But this Sherwood Forest is different. The ground cover varies too much. I see mosses and holly, mushrooms and lilies, ivy and jack-in-the-pulpits. It’s all very pretty and woodsy, but wrong. Ninety percent of the species I pass couldn’t survive in a full-grown oak forest.

  So Sherwood has to be fake. At the very least, someone has worked their ass off, planting things that normally wouldn’t thrive and mitigating the acid in the soil. More likely, Marian used Cape Tech to make these plants grow despite their innate characteristics. Cape Tech can do that—there’s a loony German dude who calls himself Baumfuhrer, and every now and then he gets mad at some city and turns it into a jungle. Last year, he Guatemala’ed Gdansk in less than a day, with giant trees sprouting in the middle of streets, inside buildings, and half a mile out to sea. He made the city look like a Mayan ruin, completely enveloped by rainforest.

  Maybe Baumfuhrer produced Sherwood as a favor to Robin Hood. Baummie Boy is an outlaw himself; he’d love providing a gang with suitable surroundings. Or Marian might have concocted the forest on her own. Anything that a Spark can do, a Mad Genius can usually replicate with enough time and money.

  I say none of this aloud. Maria
n may not be the kind of Mad Genius who screams, “Bow down, peasant!” and talks about herself in the third person. But we call them Mad Geniuses for a reason. Marian might get miffed if I say, “Nice fake forest, dude.”

  Besides, I’ve noticed a glitch in the gestalt: a total lack of animals. No squirrels. No ants. And despite the abundant tweeting, no actual birds. The trees must have hidden speakers that broadcast birdsong.

  I approve of the notion. Without any twitters and chitters, these woods would be eerie. Not Merrie Olde England, but Creepy McCreepPlace.

  Still, I wonder why there aren’t any animals. If we’re really in the present day on normal old Earth, how could there not be animals? There should at least be insects.

  Unless something killed them all.

  Don’t want to think about that. Instead, let’s strike up conversation with Marian. She’s ahead of me, leading the way. We’re following a trail too narrow for us to walk side by side. I say, “So how did you get your powers?”

  Without turning, she says, “Why do you think I have powers?”

  “Because you invented that medi-tank,” I reply. “Definitely Cape Tech. If people could make it with ordinary technology, you’d mass-produce it and become the richest gazillionaire in the world.”

  “True.” She sighs. “I’ve tried to make more than just one, but I just can’t get motivated. I dawdle around the lab till I think of something different I could build. Then boom, I’m off and running on that, instead of a second medi-tank. Mind you, when I think of a way to improve the tank I’ve got, it’s full speed ahead.”

  She stops and turns. “Can you imagine what that’s like? Having the know-how to make a machine that can save people’s lives, but only being able to do it once? It makes me lose sleep. I lie awake at night, imagining all the dead people who might have been saved if I could force myself to concentrate.”

  “That’s not how it works,” I say, even though she must know already. “Remember when Myoblast tried to generate electricity with that super treadmill? He passed out after a few minutes, and when he woke, he’d lost all his powers. The Light refuses to be used that way.”