“The smart ones, though … the really smart ones … the nerds … they left. Got taken to the city above. If you showed some skill with computers, or math, or writing, off you went. They got good jobs, I hear. In Steelheart’s propaganda corps or his accounting offices or something like that. When I was young I’d have laughed about Steelheart having accountants. He’s got a lot of them, you know. You need people like them in an empire.”
Megan looked at me, curious. “So you …”
“Learned to be dumb,” I said. “Rather, to be mediocre. The dumb ones got kicked out of school, and I wanted to learn—knew I needed to learn—so I had to stay. I also knew that if I went up above, I’d lose my freedom. He keeps a lot better watch over his accountants than he does his factory workers.
“There were other boys like me. A lot of the girls moved on fast, the smart ones. Some of the boys I knew, though, they started to see it as a mark of pride that they weren’t taken above. You didn’t want to be one of the smart ones. I had to be extra careful, since I asked so many questions about the Epics. I had to hide my notebooks, find ways to throw off those who thought I was smart.”
“But you’re not there anymore. You’re with the Reckoners. So it doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” I said. “Because it’s not who I am. I’m not smart, I’m just persistent. My friends who were smart, they didn’t have to study at all. I had to study like a horse for every test I took.”
“Like a horse?”
“You know. Because horses work hard? Pulling carts and plows and things?”
“Yeah, I’ll just ignore that one.”
“I’m not smart,” I said.
I didn’t mention that part of the reason I had to study so hard was because I needed to know the answer to each and every question perfectly. Only then could I ensure that I would get the exact number of questions wrong to remain in the middle of the pack. Smart enough to stay in school, but not worthy of notice or attention.
“Besides,” I continued. “The people I knew who were really smart, they learned because they loved it. I didn’t. I hated studying.”
“You read the encyclopedia. A few times.”
“Looking for things that could be Epic weaknesses,” I said. “I needed to know different types of metal, chemical compounds, elements, and symbols. Practically anything could be a weakness. I hoped something would spark in my head. Something about him.”
“So it’s all about him.”
“Everything in my life is about him, Megan,” I said, looking at her. “Everything.”
We fell silent, though Diamond continued blabbing on. Abraham had turned to look at me. He seemed thoughtful.
Great, I realized. He heard. Just great.
“That will be enough, please, Diamond,” Abraham said. “That weapon really won’t work.”
The weapons merchant sighed. “Very well. But perhaps you can give me a clue as to what might work.”
“Something distinctive,” Abraham said. “Something nobody has seen before, but also something destructive.”
“Well, I don’t have much that isn’t destructive,” Diamond said. “But distinctive … Let me see.…”
Abraham waved for us to keep searching. As Megan moved off, however, he took me by the arm. He had quite a strong grip. “Steelheart takes the smart ones,” Abraham said softly, “because he fears them. He knows, David. All of these guns, they do not frighten him. They won’t be what overthrows him. It will be the person clever enough, smart enough, to figure out the chink in his armor. He knows he can’t kill them all, so he employs them. When he dies it will be because of someone like you. Remember that.”
He released my arm and walked after Diamond.
I watched him go, then walked over to another group of weapons. His words didn’t really change anything, but oddly, I did feel myself standing a little taller as I looked at a line of guns and was able to identify each of the manufacturers.
I’m totally not a nerd though. I still know the truth at least.
I looked over the guns for a few minutes, proud of how many I could identify. Unfortunately none of them seemed distinctive enough. Actually, the fact that I could identify them guaranteed that they weren’t distinctive enough. We needed something nobody had seen before.
Maybe he won’t have anything, I thought. If he has a rotating stock, then we may have picked the wrong time to visit. Sometimes a grab bag doesn’t give anything worthwhile. It—
I stopped as I noticed something different. Motorcycles.
There were three of them in a row near the far side of the hallway. I hadn’t seen them at first, as I’d been focused on the guns. They were sleek, their bodies a deep green with black patterns running up their sides. They made me want to hunch over and crouch down to make myself have less wind resistance. I could imagine shooting through the streets on one of these. They looked so dangerous, like alligators. Really fast alligators wearing black. Ninja alligators.
I decided not to use that one on Megan.
They didn’t have any weapons on them that I could see, though there were some odd devices on the sides. Maybe energy weapons? They didn’t seem to fit with much of what Diamond had here, but then again, what he had was pretty eclectic.
Megan walked past me and I raised a finger to point at the motorcycles.
“No,” she said, not even looking.
“But—”
“No.”
“But they’re awesome!” I said, holding up my hands, as if that should have been enough of an argument. And, sparks, it should have been. They were awesome!
“You could barely drive some lady’s sedan, Knees,” Megan said. “I don’t want to see you on the back of something with gravatonics.”
“Gravatonics!” That was even more awesome.
“No,” Megan said firmly.
I looked toward Abraham, who was inspecting something nearby. He glanced at me, then over at the bikes, and smiled. “No.”
I sighed. Wasn’t shopping for weapons supposed to be more fun than this?
“Diamond,” Abraham called to the dealer. “What is this?”
The weapons merchant began waddling over. “Oh, it’s wonderful. Great explosions. It …” His face fell as he neared and saw what Abraham was actually looking at. “Oh. That. Um, it is quite wonderful, though I don’t know if it would suit your needs.…”
The item in question was a large rifle with a very long barrel and a scope on top. It looked a little bit like an AWM—one of the sniper rifles the Factory had used as a model in building their products. The barrel was larger, however, and there were some odd coils around the forestock. It was painted a dark black-green and had a big hole where the magazine should have fit.
Diamond sighed. “This weapon is wonderful, but you are a good customer. I should warn you that I don’t have the resources to make it work.”
“What?” Megan asked. “You’re selling a broken gun?”
“It’s not that,” Diamond said, tapping the section of wall beside the gun. An image displayed of a man set up on the ground, holding the rifle and looking through the scope at some run-down buildings. “This is called a gauss gun, developed using research on some Epic or another who throws bullets at people.”
“Rick O’Shea,” I said, nodding. “An Irish Epic.”
“That’s really his name?” Abraham asked softly.
“Yeah.”
“That’s horrible.” He shivered. “Taking a beautiful French word and turning it into … into something Cody would say. Câlice!”
“Anyway,” I said. “He can make objects unstable by touching them; then they explode when subjected to any significant impact. Basically he charges rocks with energy, throws them at people, and they explode. Standard kinetic energy Epic.”
I was more interested in the idea that the technology had been developed based on his powers. Ricky was a newer Epic. He wouldn’t have been around back in the old days when, as the Reckoners had explained, Epic
s had been imprisoned and experimented on. Did this mean that kind of research was still going on? There was a place where Epics were being held captive? I’d never heard of such a thing.
“The gun?” Abraham asked Diamond.
“Well, like I said.” Diamond tapped the wall and the video started playing. “It’s a type of gauss gun, only it uses a projectile that has been charged with energy first. The bullet, once turned explosive, is propelled to extreme speeds using tiny magnets.”
The man holding the gun in the video flipped a switch and the coils lit up green. He pulled the trigger and there was a burst of energy, though the thing seemed to have almost no recoil. A splash of green light spat from the front of the gun’s barrel, leaving a line in the air. One of the distant buildings exploded, giving off a strange shower of green that seemed to warp the air.
“We’re … not sure why it does that,” Diamond admitted. “Or even how. The technology changes the bullet into a charged explosive.”
I felt a shiver, thinking about the tensors, the jackets—the technology used by the Reckoners. Actually, a lot of the technology we now used had come with the advent of the Epics. How much of it did we really understand?
We were relying on half-understood technology built from studying mystifying creatures who didn’t even know how they did what they did themselves. We were like deaf people trying to dance to a beat we couldn’t hear, long after the music actually stopped. Or … wait. I don’t know what that actually was supposed to mean.
Anyway, the lights given off by that gun’s explosion were very distinctive. Beautiful, even. There didn’t seem to be much debris, just some green smoke that still floated in the air. Almost as if the building had been transformed directly to energy.
Then it hit me. “Aurora borealis,” I said, pointing. “It looks like the pictures I’ve seen of it.”
“Destructive capability looks good,” Megan said. “That building was almost completely knocked down by one shot.”
Abraham nodded. “It might be what we need. However, Diamond, might I inquire about what you mentioned earlier? You said it didn’t work.”
“It works just fine,” the merchant said quickly. “But it requires an energy pack to fire. A powerful one.”
“How powerful?”