John Varley - Red Lightning

by Red Lightning [lit]

  Could happen, I guess, but a lot of experts doubted it. More likely the autopilot would turn around at the halfway point and the ghost ship would automatically take up a parking orbit around Jupiter, where all starships have departed for fifteen years, by international agreement. On the other hand, there was nobody with the authority to mandate what kind of electronics and programs an interstellar vehicle shipped out with. Some of the coun­tries that sent out ships back when it was a point of national or religious pride were pretty poor; they might have cut corners.

  You can come up with a hundred accident scenarios without breaking a sweat, and I'd read dozens of them in my spare time aboard the Sov.

  Then there was the scariest possibility of all.

  Maybe it wasn't an accident.

  Somewhere in those nightmare scenarios I guess I drifted off to sleep. Weak orange morning sunlight was in my face when Mom shook my shoulder, and I looked out to the east as the plane descended into Orlando.

  The sky was black with smoke.

  6

  I had meant to look at Disney World and all the related attractions as we flew over them, to see if I could spot the final landfall of Red Thunder in one of the vast parking lots. There was some kind of monument. But I kept looking at the smoke as we descended into a sooty black layer of air.

  As far as the eye could see – which wasn't all that far, that awful morning – columns of smoke rose into the air. At some point they reached winds in the upper atmosphere and swirled and merged into a thick layer. Soon we descended into it, and the morning dark­ened. By the time our wheels touched on the runway it looked like twilight, not morning. The sun was an orange ball near the horizon. You could look right at it.

  We were going into that?

  I realized I didn't have much of an idea just what we were going to do when we got off the plane. Last time I landed in Orlando I got on a train and was in Daytona Beach an hour later. Somehow I didn't think it would work that way this time.

  Mom and Dad hadn't told me much about their plans. I'm not blaming them; I hadn't asked. Now I was kicking myself because I realized I'd been acting like a little kid, letting the parents handle everything. I hated it when they still treated me like a kid. I hated it even worse when I gave them an excuse to do it. I resolved to get more involved in the family. Not going to be easy, I realized, because I'd spent the last four or five years dis­tancing myself from them.

  Uncle Dak was waiting for us as soon as we got off the plane. Dad gave him a bigger smile than I'd seen from him in days, and they hugged each other, then Dak hugged Mom. He was going to hug me and Elizabeth, but pulled back, looking alarmed.

  "My god, you guys are sure growing 'em tall on Mars. This can't be little Ramon and Elizabeth?"

  "Ray, Uncle Dak," I said, and took his hand. He was fairly tall himself, for an Earthie – and I'd have to remember not to use that term too freely while I was actually here – but I had three inches on him.

  "And Elizabeth, holy sh – you must have to beat 'em off with a stick. The fine young men, I mean."

  Elizabeth shook hands solemnly, and Uncle Dak seemed to remember why we were here, because he dropped the glad-handing immediately.

  "No news since we spoke, my friends," he said. "It's a fu – it's unbelievable over there. Worst thing I ever saw."

  Uncle Dak was the same age as Dad, still skinny as a rail, with long-fingered hands, dark skin, and a forehead a lot higher than I remembered. The hair he had left he wore naturally kinky and short-cropped, against the current fashion for trendy Africans world­wide. There was a lot of gray around the temples.

  Dak was introduced to the Redmond family, and we set off down the concourse, past long rows of slot machines and shops and restaurants and a chorus line of dancing Mickey Mouses. After about a mile Dak started to look concerned.

  "Dude, you want me to get y'all a cart?" he asked.

  "I might as well get used to it," Dad said, huffing and puffing.

  "Is that a yes or a no?"

  "Get used to walking, I mean. In one gee."

  "Like God intended," Dak said, with a grin. "I told you you'd regret it, living the soft life on that damn place."

  Dad gave him a dirty look. I knew there was some sort of history there, but I didn't know much about it. Dak and Dad had been best friends for some years when they were my age, and for a while after they got back from their first trip to Mars, but they hadn't actually gotten together since my family moved to Mars. I don't think they even talked on the phone anymore, which was why I was a little surprised to see him waiting for us.

  "So how is your father?" Dad asked him.

  "Retired to California, two years ago. Sold the speed shop, got good money for it. He still tinkers with the cars out there, but mostly he putters."

  "Putters?"

  "In the garden. Yeah, I know, the man knows bupkis about plants, he used to could kill a lawn just by walking over it, and he's not doing much better out there in the golden west, but he seems to enjoy it. Christmas, he FedExes me a box of oranges from his trees. I figure they cost him about fifty bucks each, and they ain't as good as the ones they grow here and sell for five bucks a pound. Or used to. Who knows what they're going for now?"

  Everybody knew the American economy was in the toilet, and had been for over a decade. All the bills coming due, Mom said, and nothing to pay them with. According to Dak, the tsunami had hit the financial world almost as hard as it hit the beaches of Amer­ica.

  After we passed out of the security zone we reclaimed our luggage and stepped out into the pleasant air of Florida. I'm kidding. It was ghastly.

  Even in the wintertime Florida can be blistering or, even worse, smothering. Consider that I'd spent most of the last ten years in a totally temperature-controlled environment. It hit us like a hammer. Ninety in the shade. Temperature and humidity. In five minutes my shirt was sopping.

  There was a long line of people just outside the entrance, and I figured we'd have to join that one, too. In fact, I was headed that way already, just like a docile American, when Dak called me back.

  "No need, Ramon... sorry, Ray. That's for weapons."

  "Weapons?" I'm pretty good at feeding the straight line sometimes.

  "Folks who feel naked without a piece. They can't bring 'em on airplanes, so they send 'em ahead."

  I looked at people retrieving packages, mostly small ones but a few long and thick. Some of them unwrapped them right there on the sidewalk and stored them away in shoulder holsters or purses.

  "Does everybody go armed now?" I asked him.

  "Pretty much." He pulled back his light windbreaker and showed me a big ugly lump of metal stuck into his waistband. He grinned at me. "You gotta remember, Ray, you ain't on Mars anymore. You in America. Worse than that, you in Florida."

  The road away from the airport was lined with stores that all seemed to have the same name: GUNS! Okay, there were a few liquor stores, too.

  Dak had taken us to a rental agency, where we picked up a vehicle large enough for the nine of us and Dak. We loaded it with our stuff and he punched in a destination and the vehicle moved automatically onto the web of autoways that crisscrossed and ringed Orlando. The adults were in front, Dak and Mom and Dad reliving old times, the Redmonds mostly staying quiet. Elizabeth and Evangeline were talking to each other, and the brats were busy plotting the downfall of human civilization, leaving me with not much to do but look out the window.

  Naturally, there are no road signs on the autoways, since no manual driving was allowed, but it seemed to me we were going in the wrong direction. I've got a pretty good navigator in my head, but it's not much use in strange terrain when you can't see the sun. So I opened a GPS window and confirmed my hunch: We were heading west on State Autoway 528, not north on Interstate 4. Looked to me like we should have been going north on 417... but what did I know?

  We took an exit that had an animated arch over it, advertising the twenty or so theme parks in the Lake Buena Vista a
rea. A few minutes later we were pulling up to a fanciful hotel that looked like a log cabin garnished with lollipops.

  "Here we are, kids," Dad said. "This is where you get off."

  I turned around and watched the brats tumble out along with their mother. Good rid­dance. I hoped the hotel would still be there when we returned. Then I turned back around and saw that Dad was looking right at me.

  "No fucking way!" I shouted.

  "Language, Ramon."

  "My name is Ray, Dad, and there's no fucking way I'm staying behind."

  "Ray, we've discussed this and –"

  "Dad, I'm seventeen. Mom, you guys can't do this to me."

  "What about me?" Elizabeth wanted to know. "Are you dumping me, too?"

  "Ray, Elizabeth," Mom said. "This is going to be dangerous. Dangerous, and very, very ugly. We have decided it wouldn't be responsible to take you into this mess. You can stay here with Mrs. Redmond and her kids."

  "Mom!" I was horrified to hear a note in my voice I'd tried to stop using when I was about twelve. Not satisfied with that, I went on with another childish argument. "This isn't fair. If you were going to strand us here, why the hell did you drag us along in the first place? Why not hire a babysitter and leave us back home?"

  "Ray, you're just going to have to accept this."

  "I don't think so," I said.

  Dak muttered something. I saw him grinning in the rearview mirror.

  "You say something, Dak?" Dad asked, dangerously.

  "I said, 'Told ya.' And I did."

  "You stay out of this. You don't have any kids."

  "You're right," Dak said, not seeming to take offense. "But if I did, I'd hope they had the sort of balls Ray has."

  "Dad," I said, with no idea where I was going. Then I had it. "If you leave me here, you'd better tie me up. Because I'll follow you."

  "Oh? How?"

  "I'll... I'll get a taxi!"

  "And how will you pay for it?"

  "I've got money." Not a lot. There was a trust fund for me that I would get when I turned eighteen, but my allowance was fairly generous, and I'd saved up a bit. Frankly, there's not a lot of things I wanted to buy on Mars, after Dad bought my airboard.

  "How much cash?"

  That's when it sank in. Cash? Cash? What would I need with cash? It's practically obsolete back home. You pay for things with credit and a retina print. I had a stack of Martian redbacks back home in my closet. Why bring them?

  Because if you're under eighteen a parent can shut down your savings account and/or line of credit in two seconds and not even have to get out of his chair. Isn't modern bank­ing wonderful?

  We glared each other down for a while. I knew the money business was a fight I couldn't win, and he knew it, too.

  I'll give him one thing. He didn't look happy about it.

  "I'll hitchhike," I said.

  "No, you won't," Dak said. "Manny, this is –"

  "Stay out of this, Dak."

  "No, man, I'm just saying. This is Earth, remember, and it's scary times. There's loot­ers and rednecks and all kinds of nuts out to settle scores. Just plain maniacs. Ray, this ain't going to be no trip to no ski resort."

  "He won't have to hitchhike," Elizabeth said. "He can go with me."

  "You're not going anywhere, Elizabeth," Mom said, sharply.

  My sister and I got along pretty well. I'd gone through a hell-raising stage, getting in small trouble here and there, rebellious, defiant, but mostly I was good, I didn't do illegal things, and if I wanted to do something Mom and Dad wouldn't have approved of, I just did it and made sure they didn't find out.

  Not Elizabeth. As far back as I could remember she had been the perfect daughter. About the worst thing I ever saw her do was cover for me when I'd done something bad, and never a word of reproach from her except to make me promise never to do it again. Usually, I didn't. We were close, until we got into our teens, when boys and girls turn to different interests.

  Elizabeth was the dream child. Beautiful, smart, obedient, helpful, cheerful, coura­geous. I couldn't count the number of times I'd seen her stand up for younger or weaker kids against bullies. Sometimes that child was me, before I got my growth. I can't think of any major faults she has, unless it's to resist everyone's attempts to call her Liz or Liza or Beth or Betty.

  In short, if a neutered house cat had suddenly growled like a Bengal tiger I could hardly have been more surprised. I looked back over my shoulder and saw something I'd hardly ever seen before. My big sister was angry.

  You wouldn't have known it unless you knew her as well as I did. Her face wasn't twisted up, she wasn't glaring at anyone, just looking at Mom calmly, but with absolutely no give to her. It was the way she looked when she saw an injustice, and the look meant, to anybody with any sense, that they'd better retreat to the bunkers because a world of hurt was about to descend on them.

  "Elizabeth, be reasonable," Mom said.

  "I am being reasonable, Mother." Not Mom. I smiled. This was the equivalent of Elizabeth calling me Ramon, which she never did, except when I'd screwed up big-time.

  "This, is not open to discussion," Mom said.

  "If that's the way you want it," Elizabeth said, calmly. She opened the car door and got out. "Are you coming, Ray?"

  I piled out after her, so Dad got out, and then Mom. I could see Dad working to con­trol his anger, and I could see the wheels turning in Mom's head, figuring the angles, what arguments to use, which angles to try. She was looking increasingly frustrated. She had forgotten one crucial fact, probably because she'd never really had to face it before.

  Elizabeth was happy to point out the flaw in her reasoning.

  "It's really very simple, Mother. I am nineteen. You don't control my money anymore. You should either have left us at home – in which case I would have bought tickets on the next ship out – or discussed this on the way here. I'm on Earth now. I intend to rent or buy a vehicle of some sort, and hire a driver, and take off for Uncle Travis's place as soon as you are gone. If you leave Ray here I'll take him with me. Look for us in your rearview mirror. I don't know how you can stop Ray from going. You can't tie him up, you can't arrest him. About the only option I can see is for you to give him such a guilt trip he'd probably end up hating you. Did I miss anything?"

  Anybody. else, this speech would have a high raspberry factor. You know, a Bronx cheer, phooey on you. Elizabeth simply laid it out there as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, I'm resorting to this more in sorrow than in anger. And you know what? I believed her.

  Apparently Mom did, too. She sighed.

  "Get back in the car, kids."

  "Kelly, I don't think..."

  "Manny, darling, if you have a better idea, let's hear it. I think she's got us backed into a corner."

  He looked like he was about to get angry, then gave it up.

  "Look at it this way, Dad," I said, taking a chance. "If Grandma had put her foot down when you decided to build Red Thunder, none of us would be here."

  "Don't push your luck, young man. That was different."

  Sure. It's always different, isn't it?

  That's when Evangeline spoke up.

  "I'm going, too."

  We only wasted about five minutes arguing about that one. Mr. Redmond tried, but his heart wasn't in it. So we waved good-bye to Mrs. Redmond and the brats. There were some tears, but not from Evangeline. She didn't have any more use for the brats than I did.

  Soon we were hurtling down the autoway again. Elizabeth was wedged between me and Evangeline in the very back of the bus. I turned to Elizabeth.

  "Thanks for what you did," I said.

  "No need. It wasn't fair."

  "I was... sort of surprised. Not you standing up for me, you standing up to Mom. You don't do that a lot."

  She thought about that for a while.

  "Elizabeth the compliant little mouse, you mean?" she asked.

  "You know I don't think of you like that."

/>   "A lot of people do. I don't mind. Uncle Jubal told me a story a long time ago that you might consider the next time you find yourself about to get into an argument." I saw Evangeline's face perk up at that. To most people, Jubal Broussard was a semimythical figure, the most famous person in the world that nobody ever saw. The general impres­sion people had was that he made Einstein seem about as bright as Spongebob Square­pants. Naturally, Evangeline was all ears. She didn't know that Uncle Jubal is just a simple country boy, mostly.

  "He told me about this boy who grew up and never talked," Elizabeth went on. "When he was two, his parents were just a little worried. They figured he'd talk when he was ready. By the time he was four they were going crazy. He didn't speak a word. They took him to doctors, who couldn't figure it out.

  He got older, and never talked, and they eventually resigned themselves to it.

  Then one day his mother was making breakfast, and she burned the toast. She was in a hurry, so she put the burnt toast on his plate beside the grits and scrambled eggs and catfish. The boy took one look at it, and he said" – and here Elizabeth dropped into a pretty good imitation of uncle Jubal's deep-bayou fractured Cajun dialect that's like no one else's in the world – " 'I cain't eat dis toas', me! Dis toas' is boint!'

  Well, de boy mama, she jus' 'bout lost it rat dere. She jump up and down and she shoutin' hallelujah, she shoutin' praise de lawd! Den she stop, and she look at her boy, her, and she axe him, 'How come you never talk before?'

  An' he say, 'Up to now, everything been okay.' "

  After we'd stopped laughing, I thought about it.

  "You're saying, save your energy for the fights that matter?"

  "Ray, you waste a lot of time and energy bitching about things you can't change. Or worrying about trivia. You say you hate living on Mars, but you've never done anything that will lead you away from it. You just coast a lot. You're smart, but I've never heard you say anything about what you want to do with your life."