John Varley - Red Lightning

by Red Lightning [lit]

  Evangeline covered the mike with her hand and whispered in my ear.

  "Hello, anybody home? He just told you the assholes are listening in. Do you think he should be discussing tactics with us?"

  Oh.

  "Maybe he's got a few tricks up his sleeve," she said.

  "Travis usually does," I whispered back.

  "I'm open to suggestions," Travis said. "But if you have any, it might be best if you wrote them on a piece of paper, tucked it in a bottle, and chucked it over the side, if you get my drift. Here's the situation as I see it. Correct me if I'm wrong, Captain Shitbag on the SS Snotbucket, and all y'all on the other two ships, too..."

  We had two big advantages. The three black ships could have blasted us to hell and gone, but they wanted Jubal alive. And they were warships, not cargo carriers. They had no means of grappling us, no way at all to capture us without risking violence that would kill us. They could chase us forever, but they couldn't stop us.

  We had two big disadvantages. First, we were unarmed.

  "What can I say?" Travis asked, defensively. "When I had this ship built I never thought about having to fight pirates. I got no laser cannons, no blasters, no space torpe­does. I got a good shotgun, a rifle, and three handguns. That's it."

  The second drawback to our situation was that we had nowhere to go. They might not be able to stop us or capture us, but they sure as hell could follow us. Forever. Where we were heading there was nothing at all. Behind us were all the possible ports of call, and every one of them would be infested with more black ships, alerted by these fellows, waiting for us to land. We might fly around for months, but eventually the food and oxygen would run out.

  "Stalemate," I said.

  "Well, no," Travis said. "Not even a Mexican standoff. It's a traveling siege. Sooner or later they'll wear us out. All we can do is decide when."

  "Situation like that," Evangeline said, "best thing to do is put it off as long as possible. Something might change."

  "I agree," Travis said. "You hear that, Captain Scrotum? We're not turning ourselves in just yet. What I'm going to do is rendezvous with my friends, take them off that flying bread-box, and then turn around and head for home. Maybe somebody else will be in control when we get back, we can work a deal with them and watch them shove it up your asses. Maybe the mass-murdering pimps who are paying your wages will be too busy fucking your mother to pay attention to you. Of course, they'd have to tie a dirty towsack over your mother's face to fuck her..."

  Neither Captain Scrotum nor Captain Shitbag nor any of the other colorful captains Travis addressed over the next hour had anything to say. Maybe their feelings were hurt.

  Probably not.

  Over the next half hour the time lag gradually lessened. We didn't use the radio much, as we didn't have anything to say that we wanted Captains S & S to hear, just a time check now and then so the ships' computers could calculate the rendezvous.

  Finally Travis's ship hove into view beside us and we got our first look at it. I'd heard about it but never seen it. It was pure Travis.

  He'd based the design on an old movie, Destination Moon. It was sleek and silver, and had four landing fins because it was designed to enter the atmosphere of Earth – or Mars or even Titan – and come down on its landing jets. It was quite large, maybe bigger than the black ships. It wasn't the largest private space yacht, but it was up there in the top twenty.

  Written on the side in old cursive, like the U.S. Constitution, was the name: Second Amendment.

  Evangeline had gotten Jubal prepared while our ships matched speeds. He was in his suit but not his helmet. He was shivering and holding a sturdy barf bag up to his face.

  We cut thrust at the same time, and drifted side by side. I turned on the headlights and rotated the ship to the sounds of Jubal's volcanic heaving. A cargo bay was opening on the side of the Second Amendment. Inside was a land/space vehicle in the same family as my nameless little shuttle, a boxy thing like mine, but slightly larger. As I watched it crawled forward, extended its front wheels over the lip, and then with a little spurt of its jets, moved past us and into the darkness, presumably into interstellar space, as we would have no place to put it and no way to find it later. Expensive, throwing something like that away, but Travis had said not to worry about it.

  I jetted forward and into the bay. It wasn't meant to be entered while in space, nor­mally a crane would lower it to a planetary surface or it would be used as a lifeboat. But there was enough room for me to ease in and position the shuttle in the center of the cargo bay.

  "You clear of the door?" Travis asked.

  "All clear," Evangeline said from the back.

  "Closing doors." I couldn't see anything, but Evangeline told me when the doors were shut.

  "Resuming acceleration." Slowly the thrust built up and the shuttle settled down to the floor. Then it came on stronger, until it was half a gee.

  "Don't get out yet, guys," Travis said. "I'm watching... damn. Oh well, it was a long shot."

  "What's that?"

  "I was hoping one of those guys back there might hit my shuttle. I tried to get it in the right position, maybe they wouldn't notice it, they were five miles back... like I said a long shot. Okay, I'm pressurizing the bay."

  We could see the air rushing in, as water condensed and froze into hard little ice crystals, then we could hear it. A green light came on and Evangeline and Jubal went into the bay, Jubal holding a second barf bag like a holy rosary. It cycled, and I went through, helmet in hand. They were already hustling toward the air lock/elevator at the front of the shuttle. It was cold in there! Frost had formed all over the shuttle but heated air was flowing all around us and inciting it, where it dripped onto the rubber nonskid floor. We all three squeezed into the air lock, which sealed, and immediately rose five decks to the bridge, just under the pointed nose of the Second Amendment.

  Travis was there when the door cycled open. Jubal practically leaped into his arms, sobbing and shouting with happiness. Travis was grinning like a fool, slamming his hands against Jubal's broad back. Evangeline and I hung back. I looked at her, and she wiped away a tear. Then Jubal and Travis were beckoning to us, and it was a very small but very happy little party there for a while.

  Jubal didn't want it to stop, he was babbling happily, trying to tell all of his story at once, in no particular order, much of it in Cajun French. But Travis brought us all down to Earth... so to speak.

  The bridge was a wide, comfortable cylinder, like a wheel of cheese. There were sofas and tables around most of it, with about a quarter devoted to the captain's chair and a control console array. There were windows all around, but they were closed. He had drinks laid out on a table, and some snacks. Mostly crackers and cheese...

  When we'd stopped laughing and explained about our diet for the last three days, Travis produced sliced ham, bread, mustard, and apples from a fridge concealed in one wall, and we all made sandwiches while Evangeline and I brought him up to speed.

  "Okay," he said at last. He produced a video screen on another wall, and we looked at three black disks, about evenly spaced, outlined in bright, flickering light like a solar corona during an eclipse. I knew they were the saucer-shaped black ships, seen from the top, accelerating along with us. Actually, getting closer, it looked like, as the distance between them was gradually increasing.

  "They're moving up," Travis confirmed. "They'll have us surrounded in about thirty minutes. They're taking their time. No hurry. They'll get us boxed in, and then I guess they'll make their move, if they've got one."

  "Do you think they can do anything?" I asked.

  "I haven't been able to think of anything. Not and be sure of getting Jubal alive. Even if they had some sort of grappling equipment, and I'd bet a billion dollars they don't, it would be easy for us to keep jigging and jagging away from it. Too risky, too many things to go wrong and destroy both of us."

  "So we're fu – ouch!" Evangeline glared at me and rubbed h
er arm where I'd pinched her. I'd never impressed on her strongly enough that Jubal was depressed by blasphemy and obscenity and she'd forgotten.

  "I don't know," Travis said. "I figure if they're ever going to talk, it'll be when they're alongside. Then they'll make whatever offer they're going to make. Jubal, tell me about the black bubbles. The... what did you call them?"

  "Stoppers," he said. "See, there ain't really no bubbles at all, no. I mean, they look like bubbles, so that's what I call 'em, but they really... the word the other folks use for 'em is superstrings, but that's stupid. They ain't strings, and they ain't super."

  "I thought superstrings were incredibly tiny," I said.

  "Tiny don't signify," Jubal said, shaking his head. "Somethin' got sixteen dimensions, all twisted up in a way... well, it make my head hurt when I think about 'em, so I don't think about 'em much. But you can unscrew 'em some. They can unfold, if you know how to give 'em the right twist." He opened an imaginary mason jar in the air.

  "But why are these different from the first kind?"

  "Sixteen dimensions," Jubal said. "Four squared. Four of 'em is... time dimensions. Different kinds of time. So if you unwind a string a different way, the stuff inside it..." He frowned. "Inside ain't the right word. The bubbles don't have no insides, see. They's not even really all here, the silvery part you see is just the part that sticks out from where they really are into where we really are." He looked at us hopefully.

  "So where are they really?" Travis asked.

  "I ain't figgered that part yet. Some other infinite universe. Or someplace, make us look like little bitsy meebas in a microscope." Meebas? Oh, amoebas. "Anyway, I ain't thought about it much, because it hurts my head, but I figgered how to unstring one a them strings so that it can be any size. Didn't know what it'd do to something inside it. Killed rats, it did." I remembered that the rat they'd placed inside a Squeezer bubble had turned into a fine gray powder. "And if you can make 'em any size, what's inside can be squished real right. That's the Squeezer bubbles."

  "And the stoppers?"

  "Well, time is different in 'em. Maybe time is zeroed out, I still haven't figgered all the equations for that one."

  "Why'd you make it?" Evangeline asked. "Oh, dumb question. You made it so you could escape."

  "No, ma'am. I made it because I don't like frozen fish, me." There was a suitable silence. Travis sighed and made a go-ahead motion toward Jubal. He was used to this.

  "Lotsa fish in them Falkland Islands. I like to catch 'em, me. But some days I don't catch any, and then if I want fish, I got to take some out of the freezer."

  "Jubal, they'd have flown any kind of fresh fish you want in if you'd asked for it."

  Jubal stared at the floor.

  "I don't like to ask for stuff. And I like to catch my own. Tastes better. But you know fish, it ain't as good the second day. and the third day... whew! Forget about that thing! So I wondered how I could keep fish fresh longer."

  It made perfect sense, didn't it? When you thought about it? But Jubal was just... ah, warming to his subject.

  "Keep stuff hot, too. Cook up a étouffée, put it in a stopper, and a year later you open 'er up and she still be steamin'! Never have to freeze nothin', nothin' ever have to spoil, no! Keep your drinks hot or cold, dependin' what you want."

  Travis looked at us, and he looked as astonished as I'd ever seen him. It actually was a pretty damn good idea. Of course, there were about a thousand other ways to use a stop­per bubble that the three of us could think of without breaking a sweat, some of them with scary implications... but that was Jubal. He was the theory man and the engineer. Travis was the practical one.

  We were interrupted by a beeping sound. Travis sighed.

  "Jubal, you okay with me opening the windows?"

  "Think I wear my helmet, me," he said, and put it over his head. When he was safe with whatever comfort the suit gave him, Travis opened the windows all around the bridge and we saw the three black ships surrounding us. Their exhausts were so bright the windows darkened until we could barely see the ships themselves. They were equally spaced, and seemed to be around the same size, which was the same size as the ones that had first landed and taken me and my family prisoner. Say a bit bigger than the Second Amendment. Travis picked up the old-fashioned mike from his console and spoke.

  "Captain Broussard of the SS Second Amendment, calling Captain Jerkoff of the good ship Pus-bucket. Come in, Pus-bucket. Don't you think it's about time we talked? You're bound to have a proposal for me. A threat? An offer? A heartfelt plea?"

  "You are instructed to cut your drive immediately and prepare to be boarded," some­body said, in a voice that sent chills up my spine. It was a woman's voice. It was hard to be absolutely sure, but it sounded a lot like the voice that had interrogated me for endless hours and then threatened my family.

  "Oh, an instruction, is it? Am I addressing Captain Jerkoff herself, or are you merely a lackey? By the way, did you know it's customary, by the ancient and honorable laws of the high seas and high space, to identify yourself when communicating from one craft to another?"

  "Who I am is none of your concern. Cut your drive and wait to be boarded." She was trying for the calm, even voice she had used during interrogation, but there was anger there in the rising tone at the end.

  "Hoo! Getting a little cranky, are we? Boosting at two gees for three days didn't agree with you? Hard to sleep, isn't it? Man, I've got a crick in my neck, hurts something awful." Travis put the mike down and cracked his knuckles in front of it, grinning at us. He was enjoying this. I tried to smile myself, but that voice took most of the fun out of it.

  "You are ordered to cut your drive at once, and –"

  "Or what?"

  There was a silence. When Travis spoke again, there was steel in his voice.

  "Or what, Captain Douchebag? Cut the baloney and lay your cards on the table. Tell me why I should cut my drive, or I'm going to keep blasting until somebody's food runs out. I got a lot of food aboard. Enough to feed the four of us for about a year. How much do you have?"

  Silence again. Travis winked at us.

  "Not that much, huh? Course, at the speeds we'll be reaching, it might be enough to last a hundred years, back home. That would be awkward, getting back home and finding out the people who were paying you for your atrocities have forgotten who you are."

  "Who's bullshitting now?" she said. I saw Jubal wince. "You people have families. You wouldn't want them to all be dead when you got back."

  "Touché," Travis said. "So we both have to turn around at some point. But I don't see why I should do it in your custody."

  "Keep thinking about family, Broussard," she said, and the menace and confidence was back. "And you, too, Ramon, and you, Evangeline. I'm sure you remember the things that were told to you when you were in custody. Are you really willing to sacrifice every­one who is dear to you to protect that... that freak?"

  I'd have been shocked, but I'd already been there. Once someone threatens your fam­ily like that, you know where your real vulnerability is.

  Would I? Would I beg Travis to stop the boost, get down on my knees, and plead with him to surrender Jubal to these people if I thought they would hurt my family, or Evangeline's?

  You betcha.

  If you wouldn't have done the same thing, there's something wrong with you. Don't forget, the worst that would happen to Jubal would be getting locked up again in a prison like the Falklands. They didn't want to kill him; they wanted what was in his head.

  I'd already worked it through in mine. These were people who didn't mind using any amount of force, who would drug children and actually seemed to like psychological torture. I knew without question that they'd enjoy physical torture as well, or if they didn't, they'd hire somebody who did, who was good at it, who was a Michelangelo of torture. Maybe they figured they could force the secrets of the Squeezers out of Jubal. Maybe they actually could. I didn't know. Would I give him up, with the certainty
that they'd use any means necessary?

  Sorry, Jubal. I love you, I really do. But I'll turn you in if it comes to it.

  But first, before I start pleading, let's hear what Travis has in mind.

  He seemed to have been reading my thoughts. He looked at me and Evangeline and shook his head. He covered the mike with his hand.

  "Not gonna happen," he said, quietly. "We will all do whatever it takes to protect your families."

  "Ray, Evangeline," Jubal said, quietly, "came to it, I'd give myself up. I done caused too much trouble already. Don't y'all worry none about your families."

  Evangeline looked away from him. There were tears in her eyes.

  "Not gonna happen," Travis said again. Then he spoke into the mike.

  "That sounded like a threat to me, Captain D. Would you mind repeating it for the recording, so we can play it at your trial?"

  "Just turn off your drive, you motherfucker, or I will personally supervise the slow deaths of everyone you ever held dear."

  "Got it," Travis said. "Give us one hour to talk it over, okay?"

  "Are you out of your fucking –"

  "Come on, Captain. We've come this far, and we've got a big decision ahead of us. What's one more hour?"

  "There is one more thing you should know," she said. "You understand we want Jubal Broussard alive. But even more important than that, we want to make sure that no one else gets their hands on him. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "I'd. understand it a lot better if I knew who you are, and who the 'no one else' is."

  "That's not something you need to know. All you need to know is that, if you don't stop accelerating and allow yourself to be boarded in one hour, your fucking ship will be destroyed, and your fucking families will still die."

  "Got it. Talk to you in an hour."

  There was a short silence after Travis turned off the radio, then he turned to me and Evangeline.

  "First, what happens out here will have no bearing on what happens to your families, I can promise you that. I don't know if they've been rounded up, there's no way to know what's happening. But those folks on those ships out there aren't going to be sending any orders back. They're fixing to disappear."