The Spark

by David Drake

  “Indeed it is,” Guntram said. He slipped his hedgehog into a breast pocket—more of a sling, really—to free both hands for the object we’d found. He knelt, then looked up at me and said, “He’s used to sleeping like this.”

  “He seems very comfortable,” I said. I didn’t think it was any of my business.

  The find was three inches long and shaped like a fat spindle. A layer of crystalline matrix ran through it the long way. Guntram slipped into the piece, then came back out only a few seconds later.

  “I think it’s a refrigeration device,” Guntram told me, “but I’d have to do considerable work before I could be sure.”

  He coughed, then looked at me and said, “Do we go back into the Waste now, Pal?”

  “We can if you like,” I said, “but I really came here just to show you what it was like. I’d as soon have something to eat and head on back. I’ve never eaten food from a converter.”

  “Yes,” said Guntram. “There’s something back at the house that you’ll want to see.”

  As I gathered twigs and leaves to feed into the converter, I thought about what Guntram had just said. He’d already shown me more than I’d learned in twenty years on my own.

  * * *

  The meal which flowed from the converter had the taste and texture of porridge with spices. It was filling and I’m sure was nourishing, but I won’t pretend that it was a patch on Phoebe’s cooking. Though it was better than Mom’s.

  As a choice between the converter’s output and whatever dry food I’d have brought otherwise, I gave it high marks. Also the disk ran out clear water which we cleaned our bowls with as well as drank. It tasted better than many springs and just about all the standing water I’d found along the Road to and from Dun Add.

  Back home I placed my weapon on the table and hung the belt and my shield on the peg by the door. The new weapon didn’t have a mounting hook like my old one, but despite its high output, the electrode cooled off almost instantly after use. I’d touched it to the inside of my arm to be sure. I might make a proper holster for it, but for the time being I just carried it in the right pocket of my tunic.

  Guntram brought something else out of his satchel: a bundle of rods six to eight inches long, extending from a round black base. I expected him to set it on the table, but he continued to hold it.

  “This,” he said, “is a practice machine. We discussed them in Dun Add.”

  “I remember you talking about them, sir,” I said, amazed. “Sir, should you have taken this from Dun Add?”

  “And who is there, do you think, who has the right to give me orders, Master Pal?” said Guntram. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was as sharp as the crack of thunder before an autumn cloudburst.

  I stiffened, remembering what May had said about this man. I said, “Sir. Not I, sir.”

  “Forgive me,” said Guntram, softening back into the kindly man I’d been getting to know. “Jon and Louis are sure of their course and concentrate everything within close boundaries to get where they intend to go. I am less sure, and I think it worthwhile to cast my net rather wider.”

  “Sir, Dun Add is none of my business,” I said, wishing that I’d kept that in mind earlier. “You know what you’re doing.”

  “Yes,” said Guntram with a slight smile. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m correct.”

  He cleared his throat and added, “Let’s go outside so that you can put this device through its paces, shall we?”

  And me through mine, I thought. Well, that was what I needed—or would’ve needed if I’d been going to become a Champion.

  “How badly were you injured when you fought Easton, Pal?” Guntram asked as we walked into the farmyard.

  I finished buckling on the belt with my shield. “He didn’t break anything,” I said, “but that was mostly luck. I had the shield on low so I could move, but it must’ve helped some. The main thing is he cut behind because I was moving faster than he figured. I still feel it when I swing my left arm around, though.”

  Guntram set the unit on the ground ten feet from where I’d stopped. He looked at me. “I suppose you realize that if Easton had been even slightly more skilled,” he said, “he would have killed you?”

  “Do you think I cared!” I shouted, surprising myself. I hadn’t known that I was still so angry about what had happened in Dun Add. “Sure, I thought he might kill me. All I wanted was to get in one stroke, that was all. Being dead just meant I wasn’t humiliated anymore!”

  “Personally…” said Guntram, stepping away from the device, “I would have regretted that result. But someone of my age is well aware that men die.”

  I was suddenly facing a warrior with a nondescript dog, something with more terrier than Buck, who favored a hound/setter mix though there was a lot of breeds in him besides those. He was at my side.

  I switched my shield on at low level and brought my weapon sizzlingly live. I went in.

  My opponent swung overhand at my head. Almost before he moved, I saw the blow coming through Buck’s eyes: the whole track of the weapon was a shimmering fan in Buck’s prediction. I caught it in the air with my weapon and guided it down to my right without thinking: it was all part of Buck’s world for this moment.

  My thrust back toward the top of the image’s breastbone was a reflex. The dummy figure vanished with a pop and a crackle.

  I backed away and switched off my equipment. “Guntram?” I said. “Did I break it?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “The target shuts off when you achieve a kill. Which you did very neatly. Let me adjust this a little.…”

  Guntram’s right index finger wobbled in the air. I didn’t see anything there except a shimmer like heat rising from a black rock in sunlight.

  “Now try it,” he said. “I want to see how good your weapon is, so I’ve run up the target’s shield.”

  I was facing another armed figure. This one had blue clothing and a modular unit, with a booster collar around his neck that turned his head into a featureless ball.

  I switched on again and advanced. To tell the truth, I was feeling cocky. I thrust straight for the base of the image’s throat.

  He—it—met my stroke with his weapon. He didn’t push it aside as easy as I’d done the first dummy’s, but I felt the shock right up to my shoulder and my thrust missed the center of his chest.

  When my weapon hit his shield the bang! was like a wall falling over and a blinding flash. His counterstroke slashed me at the base of the neck. It felt like a bucket of boiling water.

  I must’ve blanked out, because I found myself on my back. The dummy stood, glowering facelessly down at me for a moment; then it vanished.

  Buck whined and licked my cheek.

  I switched off my shield and weapon; I’d been real lucky not to have cut my foot off when I went flying base over teacup. The burned feeling was fading.

  I reached up and felt the place where the stroke had seemed to land. It didn’t hurt to rub.

  “I think the rotor of your weapon was intended for a slightly smaller stator,” Guntram said, “so the maximum intensity of your stroke isn’t as high as it could be. Still, it’s very high, as you saw. I believe you could hold that output all day.”

  I got up and nudged Buck. “What happened?” I asked, putting the weapon in my pocket.

  “The device is intended to improve your skill as a warrior,” Guntram said. “Not to provide you with a straw man to knock down. If you behave like a fool, it will punish your foolishness.”

  That hurt worse than the slap the machine had given me. I ducked my head and said, “Sir, I’m sorry.”

  The old man smiled at me. “The device doesn’t do permanent injury,” he said. “You should be able to resume practice by now.”

  So I did.

  * * *

  The next month went about the way the first day had. Guntram watched me practice on his device early morning and in the afternoon. After I’d worked up a sweat, we generally took a trip out on th
e Road to one or another of the nodes where I’d found objects in the past.

  Twice we even prospected new sites according to a notion that Guntram had about currents in the Waste. We didn’t find anything there.

  And we didn’t find much in the spots I’d flagged either, but mostly you don’t. One short tube, more of a ring really, that Guntram thought might’ve been part of a weapon; and another thing the size of my clenched fist that had to be something, but hanged if we knew what. We spent a lot of time getting inside it in the evenings after supper.

  There were about a dozen families feeding us, at their houses or more often sending hampers along for us to eat on our own. Guntram charmed them. Folk who’d always been a little doubtful about the things I did as a Maker were next thing to bowing to Guntram—who was a thousand times more of a Maker than I could ever hope to be.

  Guntram gave little things to the families who helped us, some that he’d brought—like the light he’d given Phoebe—but many things he made out of my scraps, glowing balls that hung in the air or a little disk that played tunes. I never heard it play the same music twice and I didn’t much like any of its choices, but it put Sandoz of Lakeshore and the three generations that lived on his big holding over the moon with happiness.

  I didn’t think much about what was going to happen next. I was learning from a Maker who had taught the best even though he claimed he wasn’t the best himself; I was learning how to use the wonderful weapon that I’d helped make; and for maybe the first time in my life, surely the first time since Mom died, I wasn’t alone.

  And then everything changed.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Boat

  It’d been a short day up the Road and into the Waste, the same place I’d taken Guntram the first time we’d gone out. Today, though, I figured he’d had enough experience to go out alone with his hedgehog. Worst case, Buck and I could find him if he didn’t wander far. Anyway I hoped we could.

  There wasn’t any need. I won’t say, “I shouldn’t have worried,” because nothing’s certain till it’s happened, but Guntram came back in a couple minutes as pleased as punch, his hedgehog wriggling its nose, and him waving the artifact he’d found. It was flat and about as big as my thumbnail.

  On the way back to Beune we probed the piece and talked. Guntram chattered like I’d never heard him before. I realized that in sixty-odd years working with things that had survived from the Ancients, this was the first time he’d collected one himself.

  “Mostly what’s brought in to Dun Add comes from professional prospectors,” Guntram said. “And generally from quite a distance away. Of course we are quite a distance away now.”

  “From Dun Add we are,” I said. I was a lifetime away from Dun Add, though Guntram could be back there in a few weeks. I’d say “back where he belonged,” but in truth he seemed fine on Beune and Beune was sure fine with him.

  We stepped off the Road. The chip Guntram found didn’t seem much, but we’d take a good look at it this evening. For now I was thinking about bacon and biscuits, washed down with some of Sandoz’s good ale.

  The first thing I noticed in the afternoon sunshine was the boat. The second thing was that there was about fifty people around it. I hadn’t seen as many of my neighbors all together since the boat landed when I was fourteen.

  Gervaise’s two oldest saw me and Guntram before anybody else did. They started calling, “Pal! Pal! They need you here to fix the boat!”

  I turned toward the crowd. Guntram came along with me. We exchanged glances but there wasn’t much to talk about.

  Buck doesn’t like crowds. When he whined, I patted him on the ribs and said, “Go on home, boy. Go home!”

  Not everybody around the boat knew me, but enough folks did that they cleared a path for me and Guntram up to the front. I said to him, “I guess you’d better handle this, sir.”

  “No, Pal,” Guntram said. “I’m a stranger here and I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. I’ll watch you, if you please.”

  He smiled—sort of—and added, “You can think of it as a further test, if you like.”

  I thought about ways to argue, but I wasn’t going to. Guntram was my guest and he’d expressed his preference clearly. What I’d prefer—letting somebody else handle the business—didn’t matter.

  “Sir!” said Gervaise at the front near the boat’s open hatch. “Sir! This is Pal, our Maker!”

  The fellow he was talking to had a beaked cap so I figured he was the boatman. He wasn’t near as tall as me, but he was close-coupled and we were about of a weight. He was in his thirties, with red-brown hair and a short beard that was darker brown.

  He looked angry and frustrated, which I could understand, but that didn’t justify him looking at me and snarling, “What the hell is this? I need a real Maker, not some hick kid!”

  I thought of Easton baiting me; and I thought of my last sight of Easton. I smiled at the boatman and said, “If you weren’t completely ignorant of what a real Maker is, you wouldn’t need one, would you? Why don’t you explain the problem and let me take a look at things. Though if you’d rather bluster like a fool, you’re welcome to do so while I go home and get outside a mug of ale.”

  A woman stood in the doorway behind the boatman. She wore a purple dress with puffed sleeves and lots of gilt embroidery around the cuffs and the high waist. In a voice as sneering as her expression she snapped, “Baga! We’re in the Marches, so all we’re going to find is hicks. Since you can’t fix the problem, we’ll see if this fellow can at least get us to somewhere that we can find proper help.”

  From the woman’s tone, I was willing to bet that at least some of Baga’s frustration came from being close quarters with her when things were going wrong. I felt a flash of sympathy, which I hadn’t felt for him earlier.

  “Baga, get out of the way and let me see him,” the woman said. When the boatman hopped aside, she glared at me and said, “Step closer so that I can get a proper look at you.”

  I was about five feet away, as close as I liked to be. She was standing on the boat’s floor, three steps up, so she’d have been looking right down at me if I did like she said. Looking right down her nose, in fact.

  “Ma’am,” I said. “My name’s Pal. Coming on like a great lady doesn’t seem to have scared your boat into working right, and I don’t think it’s going to help with me either. Now, if you want to act like a proper person, we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  In Dun Add I’d been bossed around by people who gave me little thought and no courtesy. I’d been uncomfortable from the moment I arrived, and their contempt made me feel lower than a snake.

  This woman in the boat was more of the same, only here we were on Beune and I was home. I had my neighbors to back me, but I didn’t need backing against a lone woman.

  She flared her nostrils at my words. Her nose was long and already bigger than fitted in her pinched face, so that didn’t help her looks. She wasn’t but a little older than me, I guess, but being so sour added twenty years to what I’d thought at first glance.

  Now she swallowed whatever was going through her mind. “Master Pal,” she said, “I am Lady Frances of Holheim. If you’ll come aboard this boat, we can discuss your offer of assistance more easily.”

  I looked over my shoulder. “Guntram?” I said.

  “You appear to have matters under control,” Guntram said. “I’ll look around the outside to see if anything strikes me.”

  “All right, lady,” I said, walking forward. She backed inside ahead of me.

  Baga came last and closed the hatch. I hadn’t been expecting that, but after the first little twinge it didn’t matter. I guessed I could handle Baga without the weapon in my pocket—but it was in my pocket.

  I’d never been in a boat before. It was like all the best days of my life rolled into one.

  We’ve found a lot of artifacts from the Ancients, and more—more than I could even hope to guess—must still be lying in the Waste, waiting
to drift to a node or to be pulled out by those of us who look for them. All are in bits and pieces, parts of what they were in the time of the Ancients.

  Boats are complete. Oh, they’re worn and they don’t work like they ought to, but they’re at least the bones of what the Ancients meant them to be. I’d always wanted to examine one, and now I wasn’t just being allowed, I was being asked to do just that.

  “Now, Pal of Beune,” Lady Frances said, using her hard tone again, “I want you to understand something. I’ll not be cheated. If you and this boatman are in league to rob me by pretending there’s a problem with the boat, I’ll walk back to Holheim.”

  I shrugged. “Holheim must be a pretty dreadful place,” I said, “if the people there behave like that. I don’t know where Baga’s from, but—”

  “I’m from Holheim too,” the boatman said. “There’s worse places.”

  I grinned at him, then met the lady’s eyes again. “Beune’s different,” I said. “We don’t rob each other. Word’d get around. I don’t swear I can fix this—”

  I was sure Guntram could, and I figured he’d help if I got stumped. He was a good guy.

  “—but nobody’s going to cheat you here.”

  Frances’s lips made a little twitch. I’d like to think she was embarrassed by the way she’d been behaving, but it could as easy have been her wanting to call me a liar but swallowing the words.

  “So,” I said to Baga. “What’s the boat doing that it shouldn’t be?”

  The boat was thirty feet long and twelve wide at the flat bottom. The sides curved up and over like a section of cylinder.

  It was bigger than the house I lived in and I figured there’d be plenty of room inside. There wasn’t. A seat in the front and a narrow aisle to pretty near the back were all I could see from here just inside the hatch.

  “She needs sand to run,” Baga said. “I keep some of the hoppers full of sand, and I always exchange with fresh sand when I get back to Holheim. The run to Marielles was a long one so I refilled there instead of waiting till we got home. When the sand’s used up the speed drops, so that’s how you know.”