The Spark

by David Drake

  Baga looked at me. I nodded to show I was listening. What he was saying didn’t make sense because he didn’t understand the workings of his boat, but he was telling me what to look for. “Go on,” I said.

  “Well, getting fresh sand on Marielles didn’t help,” Baga said. “We’ve been going slower and slower on the way back. I finally told Lady Frances that we had to stop at the next node and look for a Maker because there’s something really wrong.”

  “It’s possible that we were sabotaged on Marielles,” Frances said, though the hard look she gave Baga showed that she hadn’t let him off the hook for the problem. “Certainly I got no satisfaction there. I wouldn’t put anything past Prince Philip, let alone his whore.”

  I frowned, because so far as I knew it wasn’t any easier to sabotage a boat than to fix one. Anybody who really had the skill to do that wouldn’t be the sort to destroy a piece of the Ancients.

  “What does the boat’s menu tell you?” I said to Baga.

  “I don’t know about any bloody menu!” the boatman said. His red face was angry, but I couldn’t tell who he was angry at. “I’m a bloody boatman, I’m a good one, but I’m not a bloody Maker, all right?”

  “Well, I am,” I said. “We’ll get you going again, don’t worry.”

  I smiled a trifle. I had a lot more confidence knowing that Guntram was backing me up than I would otherwise; but if Baga didn’t even know how to open the boat’s menu, the problem might be a lot simpler than I’d thought to start out.

  “I assure you that you’ll be paid for your work,” said Frances, working hard on her sneer. “That is—can anyone in this place process a credit transfer?”

  I shrugged. “I guess a couple of the bigger farmers might be able to,” I said. “I don’t figure to charge for helping a lady in distress, but you may want to pay somebody for your keep while I’m working on this thing.”

  I patted the hatch behind me. I was really looking forward to getting inside the boat’s structure.

  Frances glowered again. “How long is this going to take?” she said. I guess she’d have threatened me if she could figure out any way to do that.

  My smile—because there wasn’t any threat she could make—just made her madder. “Ma’am,” I said, “I don’t have any idea till I get inside. I’m going to bunk down in your hallway here—”

  I pointed to the aisle.

  “—and check things out.”

  “Use one of the capsules, why don’t you?” Baga said. “It’ll be more comfortable.”

  “Eh?” I said.

  He reached past me and tapped the panel on the right side of the aisle. It slid up, opening a room about five by five by nine feet long.

  “You can live there as long as you want,” Baga said. “The lady here—” he nodded toward Frances “—didn’t come out of hers the whole voyage.”

  “This man told me that though there are six cabins in the boat, it can only carry two people,” the woman said sharply.

  “Look,” said Baga, “maybe it’d haul six when it was new but it’s not new, it hasn’t been new for thousands of years, and it won’t take but two!”

  Frances looked at me. “Perhaps you think I should have trusted him without a chaperon if not a guard? Are all the men in whatever this place is saints?”

  “It’s Beune,” I said. “And no, they’re not.”

  I’d heard stories, mostly told by the guys involved. I didn’t like some of what I’d heard.

  I shrugged and said, “Ma’am, why don’t you go out and look for a place to stay while you’re here. Say—chat with Guntram. He’s from Dun Add and he can talk about things with you. Baga, I don’t need you right now. If I do, I’ll look you up.”

  “What’s someone from Dun Add doing here?” Frances said as I hunched to get into the open compartment.

  “I wondered that too,” I said, “but I didn’t think it was polite to ask.”

  “You close it by the corner like you open it from the outside,” Baga volunteered. He reached in to point.

  “I don’t need it closed,” I said. “I just need to be left alone for a bit.”

  I laid my head on the pillow built into the couch. I wondered how the compartment kept clean and all the other little practical things, but I could ask about that later. Now I slipped straight into a trance.

  Warriors, Makers, and boatmen all work with Ancient machines. I knew warriors were different, that they didn’t need to understand the structure of the weapons and shields they used, but I’d figured boatmen were more like Makers.

  I was wrong. Anyway, that sure wasn’t the case with Baga.

  The boat was amazingly complex. My first thought was that it was like trying to follow every strand of silk in a huge spiderweb and do it all at once. I could see gaps in the structure in hundreds of places, thousands, but there were so many that I couldn’t focus. When I tried to, my mind melted off into twenty other directions. That didn’t stay either.

  I withdrew for a moment. Boats were supposed to have menus that provided their state of health. When I looked for one, it just about leaped out at me.

  The list of missing elements was long, and some of them were things I’d never heard of or anyway didn’t know how to replace.

  “Are you here to return me to specifications, Master?” said a voice in my head. “It has been a very long time since I was at my designed optimum.”

  “Boat?” I said. In my trance I don’t know if I spoke aloud or not.

  “Yes, Master,” the voice said. It didn’t keep talking because it’d answered the only question I’d asked.

  I looked at the list again. Nothing stood out, but I didn’t have to depend on my own eyes anymore.

  “Boat,” I said, “rank your missing elements in order of limiting factors.”

  The list in front of me shook itself into a different arrangement. It was like water spilling out of a basin the way it changed. The top of the list now was sodium.

  “I didn’t know boats could talk,” I muttered. It was a dumb thing to say and it wasn’t a question, so the boat didn’t respond.

  “Baga told me that he’d been adding sand to the supply hoppers,” I said, “and that was how he got you working again. There’s no sodium in sand, so what was happening?”

  Baga was ignorant, but he wasn’t dumb. Though he hadn’t understood anything about the boat’s insides, he did know what had worked.

  “I have been based on Holheim for the three thousand years,” the boat said. “The sand I was given there comes from the seashore and is contaminated by salt. The most recent sand was brought aboard me on Marielles and had been mined from an ancient desert. It contained very little sodium.”

  “We’ve got salt here,” I said. I guess I was talking to the boat.

  There was a lot yet to do, but first things first. I came up from my trance. I needed to talk about things with Guntram—and maybe with Lady Frances too.

  Baga was sitting on the cockpit chair, looking back at me. That was kind of a surprise, but I guess he was just as glad to be free of Frances’s presence.

  I sat up and waited a moment for my head to clear. As I climbed out of the compartment I said, “We can get you going, I promise. I want to talk with my friend about how we do it, though.”

  When I came out of the hatch at least half the crowd had drifted away, so I wondered just how long I’d been in the boat’s structure. It hadn’t seemed that long, but I guess it must’ve been. Gervaise was one of the people still hanging around, though, so I said, “Where’d Guntram go off to, Gervaise?”

  “Up to your shed,” he replied. “He took the lady there, Pal. He said they wouldn’t be disturbed.”

  A few fellows wanted to chat with me—one of them I didn’t even know by name; he lived in the far north—but I brushed past them with a smile and muttering, “I’ve got business, I’m afraid.”

  It made me think about being famous. I’d wanted that, I guess. Anyway, I’d known that being a Champion wo
uld make me famous and I really wanted to be a Champion.

  Now I was famous—in Beune, but that was where I live—for having been asked aboard a boat that’d landed here. That was just an empty thing, but the guys who were trying to cozy up to me didn’t think that. It struck me that maybe being a Champion wouldn’t have been such a great deal either.

  I grinned at myself. I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

  Buck picked me up from the house and rubbed close to my leg as I trotted on to the shed. All the fuss bothered him. I reached down and rubbed behind his ears. It made me feel better to know that it wasn’t just me.

  Guntram and Frances were sitting on heavy baskets that I used for storing the bits I’d found. There was a trestle table set up between them with a couple wooden mugs on it. They looked up as Buck and me came in.

  “Guntram, I found the menu,” I said. “The boat needed sodium, not silicon, and the sand it took aboard on Marielles didn’t have sea salt in it.”

  I turned to Frances and said, “Ma’am? It wasn’t sabotage on Marielles, it was just a different kind of sand. Nobody’s fault, just the way things go.”

  She stood up. The dim light of the shed made her look prettier, but I think her hopeful expression did even more for her looks. When I came to think about it, I could see that she must’ve been scared to death about breaking down in the sticks—which Beune is, no question about that. That doesn’t help anybody’s looks, or their temper.

  “This is something you can fix?” Frances said. She wore a necklace of beads that shaded from white to violet; she reached up and caught the strand with both hands now. “You have the right kind of sand here?”

  “Well, we’ve got salt,” I said. “We can take care of that, sure. But ma’am? There’s a lot else wrong with the boat that I’d like to fix before you leave.”

  “What?” said Frances, flying hot again. “Do you think I want to stay around here any longer than I have to? Of course not! If there are problems, they can be fixed on Dun Add! I have business there.”

  Guntram drew in his lips. He said, “Lady Frances, you might consider the risk of journeying in a vessel which needs repairs.”

  “They all need repairs!” Frances said. Her head snapped back to glare straight at me. “You, Pal! Will the salt fix the boat well enough to reach Dun Add?”

  “Yes, I think so,” I said. I was twisting up inside with what was about to happen.

  “Well, do that and I’ll leave,” she said. “And get on with it! Do you want money after all? Just tell me how much.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. I was standing straight and my eyes weren’t focused on her. “I won’t do that. I talked to the boat and I want to help it.”

  “Why in the name of God do you think I’d care about a boat?” Frances shouted, taking a step toward me.

  “Ma’am, I don’t guess you would,” I said. “But I do. I told you I wouldn’t take pay for getting you back on your way and I won’t. But I want to do what’s right for the boat. If you want to think of that as paying me, then fine, I’ll take that for my pay.”

  I didn’t speak loud, but I guess Frances heard me. Instead of shouting again, she stepped back and took a deep breath. She said, “Master Guntram? Can you fix the boat?”

  “Pal,” said Guntram. “How long do you think we’d need for repairs?”

  I shrugged. “About a day to get things organized,” I said. “That’s with both of us working, sir, learning what we need. After that, anything from three days to a week to make the repairs. Some of the materials may be hard to find, so maybe longer for them. Or we’ll have to leave some things undone.”

  Guntram nodded. He looked up at the woman and said, “Lady Frances, I agree with my host. We’ll get your boat working as quickly—”

  “It’s not my boat, I’ve hired it!” Frances said. “And been cheated, I can see!”

  “We’ll get the boat working as quickly as possible,” Guntram continued mildly. He was still seated on the basket. “For the moment, why don’t you explain your situation to Pal as you’ve been doing to me. I think that will be useful in the longer term.”

  Frances opened her mouth, then closed it again. She sat down and closed her eyes for a moment.

  “I don’t see what possible difference it can make,” she muttered; but then she began to talk.

  CHAPTER 9

  A Damsel in Distress

  “My sister Eloise is very beautiful,” Frances said. “She took after our mother. Eloise isn’t stupid, but I sometimes think that she doesn’t have good sense. She hasn’t needed good sense, of course, because she’s beautiful.”

  She stopped and frowned at the way she’d put that. I’m sure Beune isn’t the only place a pretty girl could get just as deep in trouble as an ugly one and get there a lot quicker. She flicked a hand angrily and said, “Eloise had Father and then me to look after her. And we’re quite wealthy. The wealthiest family on Holheim, I believe.”

  She scowled at the mug in her hand, then set it down with a clack against the table. “Is there wine on this benighted place?” she said. “I’ll pay for it!”

  Guntram looked at me. I said, “I guess the boat’s converter’s the only place on Beune that you could get wine. Do you want to go back aboard, ma’am?”

  “The wine on the boat is terrible!” Frances said. “It tastes of turpentine. I mean it: turpentine!”

  “I dare say Pal and I can adjust the menu choices on the converter,” Guntram said. “If you like, we’ll do that now.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Frances said. She was flashing from high-and-mighty to right to the edge of giving up, if I was reading her voice right. “Everything’s gone wrong since I got on this wretched boat. Since the envoys came from Marielles. That’s when the trouble really started.”

  I walked over and dipped more ale into her elmwood cup from the barrel and put it down beside her. I thought she might fling it at me, but she just took a sip like she hadn’t even noticed me move.

  “There were two of them, courtiers,” Frances said. “Prince Potentate Philip of Marielles was looking for a wife. They’d come to Holheim because they’d heard that Lady Eloise was a beauty.”

  She sniffed. “I’d have sent them away with a flea in their ear, I can promise you that,” she said. “But the news got to Eloise—one of the servants talked, I’m sure, and they’ll regret it if I ever learn who it was. Eloise was always flighty, you know, always reading romances. I think she half believed that she really was a king’s daughter and only being fostered here.”

  “Could that be true?” I asked.

  Frances glared at me. “In dim light, she and Mother could’ve passed for twins!” she snapped. In a milder voice she went on, “Mother was always full of nonsense too, though she was a sweet lady. She died a year ago, not long before Father. He loved her very much.”

  Frances shrugged. “The courtiers took Eloise’s image in a mirror and went back to Marielles,” she said. “I gathered Philip had sent out several groups of people. They went by Road.”

  “Did they all have mirrors?” Guntram asked, leaning forward slightly.

  “I suppose so,” Frances said with another dismissive flick. “I couldn’t say, could I? Do you imagine I was interested in such things?”

  “I gather not,” said Guntram, nodding politely. “Please go on.”

  I gave him a kind-of grin. It’s hard for folks like us who’re interested in all sorts of things to understand that a lot of people aren’t, even though they tell us so every time we start chattering about the most wonderful thing that we just learned.

  “Well, I hoped that was the last we’d hear of Marielles and this Prince Philip,” Frances said. “But it wasn’t. In three months a whole delegation came to work out the details of the marriage with Father.”

  She paused and took a deep breath, flaring her nostrils. “The prince demanded a huge settlement,” she said. “Nearly half the family’s worth. I don�
��t know if Father would have agreed, even with Eloise weeping every time he tried to bargain the envoys down a little, but then Mother died. Father couldn’t refuse Eloise after that. He didn’t have the heart for it. He met their terms and they went back to Marielles.”

  “What did you do during the negotiations?” Guntram said. He held his mug, but I hadn’t seen him drink since I came into the shed.

  “I did nothing!” Frances said. She was angry again, but maybe not angry at Guntram. “It was none of my business. If you mean the settlement, it’s family money and Eloise is family. If she wanted to spend it to buy a prince, well, she was no more of a romantic fool than she’d always been.”

  I hadn’t sat down. I’d thought about sitting crosswise on the floor, but it was just as easy to stand and listen while the lady talked.

  “Anyway, the envoys went off,” Frances said. “And after another month a boat came for Eloise. Father had made it clear that Eloise couldn’t be expected to walk to Marielles.”

  I’d never heard of Marielles or Holheim either one. I figured they were bigger places than anything around Beune. For the first time ever I wondered where the boats that landed on Beune when I was young had come from.

  “The boat came and it was very well decorated, but the boatman claimed that it would only carry two people besides himself,” Frances said. “I thought he was lying since there were eight cabins, but I gather he may not have been. At any rate, Baga is telling me the same lies if it is a lie.”

  “If that boat was in as bad shape as Baga’s,” I said, “it was probably the truth.”

  I walked over to the ale cask. There were only the two cups. There were others in the house, but there hadn’t been a need for more out here, so I drank from the ladle. Just enough to wet my dry lips and mouth.

  “The boatman’s name was Camm,” Frances said. “I didn’t like him or trust him.”

  I must have smiled because she looked sharply at me. I expected another blast, but instead she returned a slight smile and said, “All right, I suppose I don’t like or trust many people. I’ve had to handle the family estate since Father died. Really since Mother died, because he lost all interest. And—”