Life under the thumb of the Spark Lords – the League's Earthly representatives – is dull but comfortable for Philemon Abu Dhubhai and the other teachers at a third-rate private school for second-rate rich kids. But all that changes when a female student is found murdered by an unknown alien organism, and her boyfriend, the prime suspect, goes missing. Suddenly an unofficial homicide investigation has snared Philemon and five other "misfits" – plus one of the planet's most powerful criminals, the mother of the murdered girl – trapping them all in a web of terrifying conspiracy that could involve the Spark Lords… and even the League of Peoples itself. For all is perilously not what it seems, on Earth and in the heavens. But then again, neither are Phil and his compatriots…
And, looking back at what had promised to be our own unique, unpredictable, and dangerous adventure, all we find in the end is such a series of standard metamorphoses as men and women have undergone in every quarter of the world, in all recorded centuries, and under every odd disguise of civilization.
– Joseph Campbell,
Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it?
– Herman Melville,
(Yes, Mr. Melville, I would. A cataract of sand, especially one the size of Niagara Falls, would be mind-bogglingly cool.)
The best is the enemy of the good.
– Voltaire
Thanks to Khalid Shaukat for calculating the Islamic date. Thanks to A. A. Milne for Zunctweed. Thanks to Howard Gardner (no relation) for his theory of multiple intelligences, reflected here in aspects of the way psionic powers work. Thanks to John McMullen and Anton Kostechne for creative uses of nanotechnology. Thanks to Derwin Mak for winning the auction and dying so colorfully. Thanks to Linda Carson, Richard Curtis, and Jennifer Brehl for the usual editorial advice.
Death Hotel really exists, and I'm glad I got the chance to put it into a story. My only regret is that I couldn't work in one other tidbit about the Hotel: it sits close to a pioneer cemetery with a special gate designed to prevent witches from stealing corpses. Two hundred years ago, witches were supposedly incapable of turning sharp corners, so the gate forced people to turn sharply several times on their way in or out.
It must have been a great annoyance to pallbearers.
It began, as many things do, in a tavern: about eight o'clock on a Friday evening, in The Pot of Gold on Post-Hoc Lane in Simka. Contrary to its end-of-the-rainbow name, The Pot of Gold was a dreary blood-clot of a place-the sort of vomitous swill-hole where the lamps had to be locked in wire cages to prevent drunks from swigging the kerosene, where the tapman's only insurance policy was a trio of flintlock pistols worn on a grease-smudged bandoleer, and where the Steel Caryatid squashed a cockroach ‹BANG› with her tankard before asking, "Why would anyone go on a quest?"
"For glory," said Sir Pelinor.
"For God," said Sister Impervia.
"For kicks," said Myoko Namida.
"For Gretchen Kinnderboom," said I, "provided the task didn't take too much effort, and Gretchen promised to be extravagantly grateful."
The Caryatid slapped my foot (which was propped on the table beside her). "Be serious, Phil," she told me. "I'm talking about real, honest-to-goodness quests, not trotting down to Dover-on-Sea to fetch peach-scented soap."
I sat up straighter. "They've got a new supply of peach-scented soap?"
"Vanity, vanity," murmured Sister Impervia, whose own taste in soap could be described as "The more lye, the better."
"We're talking about quests," said the Caryatid, "and I don't understand why a sane person would go on one. Not that anyone at this table qualifies as sane."
Sir Pelinor socked on his mustache, producing a wheezy, bubbling sound that was amusing the first time I heard it, irritating the next dozen times, totally maddening the three hundred times after that, and now a source of complete indifference. "Depends what you call a quest," he said. "Suppose a village hereabouts was having trouble with a largish animal-a bear, perhaps, or a cougar. I wouldn't call it insane to gather a few friends and go hunt down the beast."
"Especially," Myoko added, "if the villagers offered a reward."
"Or suppose," Sister Impervia said, "a gang of heathen bandits stole St. Judith's jawbone from the academy chapel. Wouldn't we be honorbound to organize a party and retrieve the saint's remains?"
The Caryatid made a face. "Those aren't quests, they're errands. You'd leave such business to the town watch… if Simka
