by John Varley
Suddenly, our heroine is attacked by what looks like a brown cannonball. The missile bounces almost as high as her head as it homes in on her, but instead of trying to avoid it, Podkayne opens her arms, braces herself, and catches her brother Mike in midflight. His stumpy arms embrace her and they kiss, then she lets him go.
Mike is short. About three and a half feet, and that’s as tall as he’s likely to get. He’s what you’re supposed to call a “little person.” Not to mince words, which he never does, he’s a dwarf. When people stare and point at him—and some still do—he delights in clomping around like Frankenstein and making an ugly face and bellowing, “Me dwarf! Me kill!” Shuts ‘em right down.
You’ll have a few questions, so I might as well get them out of the way.
No, he’s not my biological brother … to which I’m supposed to add “but I love him exactly as much as if he was.” I don’t know; I don’t have another brother to compare him to, but I never put the word adopted in front of his name, not even on the first day when Mom and Dad brought him back from Earth at age two, when I was ten. I’d already graduated from baby-doll age, but I took to him instantly like the finest toy a girl ever had, then the finest pet, then the finest friend, all in about a year’s time. I took him everywhere with me, including classes, which may help account for the fact that he’s almost ready to graduate from high school.
Or it could be native intelligence. Who knows? His DNA has been analyzed, of course, and aside from the autosomal dominant mutation in the fibroblast growth factor receptor gene (FGFR3), which is the cause of his achondroplasia (the most common of the over two hundred types of dwarfism), he’s healthy as a horse. He’s mixed race, his skin is medium brown, and his hair is kinky. There’s some African in there, and some of a lot of other things. A not-atypical blend for his birthplace, which was Florida.
Mike was found by a UN patrol in the Red Zone, abandoned by the side of the road, a few weeks old, almost dead from exposure. Used to happen a lot. The UN cleaned him up, cured a few of the diseases endemic to the Zone, and put him into an orphanage in one of the “temporary” refugee camps, still jam-packed fifteen years after the Big Wave. And there he easily could have rotted, at least in mind and moral fiber, as so many have. He was a “problem” adoptee, being brown-skinned and with a disability, or at least a disfigurement. Then came Mom and Dad.
I’m not sure exactly how it happened. She told me the timing of my arrival was an accident, they had intended to wait a bit. He told me they’d always planned for two, and didn’t want me to be old enough to be my sibling’s mother when they got around to it, but Mom kept putting off the conception of Number Two. Next thing I knew they were off to Earth, shopping.
Mike has the big head and high forehead of your average achon-droplast, but has avoided some of the other typical problems, like curvature of the spine and bowed legs. Most of that’s due to Aunt Elizabeth, who goes exploring inside him several times a year and takes care of problems like that … if she can. There are limits to surgery. Not that he worries about that much. Or at least he never shows it. It can’t be easy, being a little squirt in a society of giraffes, even for Chrondro the Magnificent.
“How ya doin’, Chrondro the Insignificant?” I asked him.
“How’s the weather up there, beanpole?” he countered.
“Ouch. You really know how to hurt a girl.” I let him get the last word.
I’d come more or less directly from the Deimos shuttle, taking time only to change into my new clothes, so I hadn’t had time to get up to date with Mike. And we didn’t have time then, because Grandma Kelly was at the podium calling us all to order.
Madame President Kelly Strickland had addressed the Martian Assembly, which made the monkey house at the zoo seem sedate. She had faced the United Nations and shoved proposals down the throats of all the governments of Earth that, in an earlier age, could be considered acts of war. She had met with all the most powerful leaders on Earth, political and corporate, and left with their balls in her handbag. But in those cases she had the squeezer technology, and Mars’s sole possession of it, to back her up, and she wasn’t shy about squeezing.
Here, she had nothing. She was just Kelly. Mom, Grandma, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law … not a lot of power in any of those positions, not with this bunch. We were Martians, and we were Strickland-Garcia-Redmonds, and an ornerier bunch were never born. She looked the least little bit intimidated.
“Ladies and gentlemen … if there are any of them here …” But then Gran, sitting in the front row in the seat of honor, struggled to her feet and started slowly toward the podium. Kelly could keep talking, or she could help Gran get where she was going. She quickly moved to take Gran’s arm while Granddaddy Manny hurried up on the other side, but she shook them both off.
“I may be slow, but I get there,” she said, when she’d made it to the podium and Granddaddy had adjusted the mike. She looked so tiny, so wasted, but there was still fire in her eyes. She looked at Kelly as she took her seat beside Granddaddy.
“Kelly, I know you planned this all out. It’s what you’re good at, and the citizens of Mars are lucky you are. But I decided this is going to be my show.” Kelly nodded, and started to clap, and we all joined in, but Gran waved us quiet.
“That’s enough of that,” she said. “I figure you were going to have everybody come up here one at a time and spout a lot of lies about what a wonderful person I was. Am I right?”
Kelly nodded.
“Well, bless you, sweetie. But I’m too tired for that. I think what I’ll do is make a few remarks, and then get this show on the road. You first. Kelly, you are the best daughter-in-law a mom could ever have wished for. I won’t lie to you, I didn’t think you were going to be, what with dragging my son off to Mars and all in a leaky old ship like Tom Swift or some damn thing …” That got a big laugh, while Kelly pretended to be offended by the accusation.
“Okay, okay, so maybe Manny had something to do with it, too. Anyway, you two nearly killed me with worry, but the real danger was when y’all got back, and I thought my heart was going to bust with pride. And I got to say, life sure has been interesting with you around. I got to meet and shake the hands of some of the most famous and powerful people in the world … and nine out of ten of ‘em made me wish I could wash my hand right after. I don’t know how you stood it as long as you did.”
Laughter, and applause. And could that be a tear leaking from the corner of Grandma Kelly’s eye? It is, it is, ladies and gentlemen! Quickly wiped away, but there it was, the first liquid I’d ever seen come from that eye when she wasn’t chopping onions. I felt a little moisture in my own eyes, but I cry over old country and western songs.
“So, before we go any further,” Gran was saying, “where is Travis? He ought to be here for the whole silly shivaree. What were you going to do, have a grand unveiling or something?”
“Something like that,” Kelly admitted.
“Well, roll his disreputable ass on out here and let’s unveil the mother—oops, sorry kids. I want one more look at Peter Pan, the man who decided never to grow old or grow up, before I go.”
That got Kelly hurrying to the doors, and soon they were opened and a white electric forklift came silently into the room with a load full of … nothing.
Not strictly true, of course. A black bubble looks like a hole in space. There was no way to tell it was spherical, if it was standing alone. To handle them, since they are frictionless and just about everything-else-less, you have to put them in a net. Just a tracery of strong thread; black bubbles have no mass.
The driver put the platform with the net down, and a small cap came down from the ceiling to hold the bubble in place. He cut away the netting. Gran was coming around the podium, helped again by Grand-daddy. Kelly went over and whispered something into Gran’s ear. Gran gave her a wicked smile.
“That’s a great idea,” she said. “Wish I’d thought of that. Everybody,” Gran announced, smiling and
gesturing, “come on over here. We’ve got a surprise for Travis.” I hurried over close to her.
“I almost did this last time he came out of his shell,” she whispered to me.
“I don’t get it.”
“You will. Everybody …” She waited until she had everyone’s attention. “I want you all to stand like this.” She put her hands in the air, like a holdup victim. I looked around. Everybody was standing with their hands in the air. I shrugged, held my hands up, and saw Kelly nod to the technician. He pushed a button.
The black ball vanished with no fuss at all. For Travis, one scene would be replaced by another in the blink of an eye. If things had gone well, it would be a very similar scene, here at the bubble factory. But he expected to be inside for five years. God knows Travis had enough enemies on Earth. Hell, maybe we’ve been invaded by superbeings from the Andromeda Galaxy and they plan to fry him and eat him for lunch, regarding the bubbles as convenient deep freezes for meat.
Anything might be awaiting him. What would you do? If you had any sense, you’d be on full alert. For Travis Broussard, that meant fully armed.
The bubble went away, and Travis landed on his feet, in a crouch … and looked out at several hundred people, all of them with their hands in the air.
“Don’t shoot, Travis!” we all yelled. And sure enough, though he didn’t have his pistol in his hand, the holster cover was unsnapped and his hand was on it, ready for a fast draw. He straightened from his semicrouch and shook his head, with a wry grin.
“Very funny, y’all,” he deadpanned. He snapped the cover on his sidearm.
My “Uncle Travis” is not really my uncle. Neither is Uncle Jubal. They are of the large and cantankerous Broussard clan, but our families have been entwined for about half a century now. Jubal’s invention had made the first trip to Mars possible, Travis had made it feasible and led it, but Manny and his friend Dak had had the idea to go in the first place. Travis and Jubal and the next generation, my father and mother, had fought and won the Martian War with Jubal’s new invention, the black bubbles, his old one, the squeezer bubbles, and the biggest bluff in the history of warfare.
It had all been too much for Jubal. Though his inventions had provided the power to send humans to the stars and free Earth from its reliance on dwindling energy reserves, and then saved countless lives by suspending time, they had also been responsible for the Big Wave, and the Martian War had been fought over the right to control all the power Jubal had unleashed.
Actually, of course, it was human greed and madness and fanaticism that had caused those disasters, but Jubal didn’t see it that way … and I suppose he had a point. Some of the men who built the first nuclear weapons suffered the same doubts and regrets afterward.
So just about the time I was being conceived, Jubal allowed himself to be enclosed in a black bubble, the second time he’d been in one, the second time anyone had been in one. He’d gone in the first time to escape from his plush prison on Earth, then had mailed himself to Dad and Mom on Phobos, which was what started the Martian War. That’s right, mailed himself.
But that’s all history. Read Dad’s book for all the details. Uncle Jubal was still in cold storage. If he ever came out, he’d be exactly the same age, which was late fifties.
Later, Uncle Travis had become the first “skipper.” There aren’t many of them and probably never will be. It’s an odd way to live.
There’s nothing medically wrong with Travis. He is a very rich man. He and Jubal had given humanity the gift of unlimited power, which made it cheap, but it wasn’t free. Taking even a tiny royalty for every kilowatt that sated humanity’s vast appetite for energy made them rich beyond the dreams of Arabian princes of the twentieth century.
But Travis made a lot of enemies in his life, both by his decision to turn the squeezer technology over to the International Power Agency, and later, when he threatened to squeeze Planet Earth down to the size of a neutron if certain powerful people and corporations weren’t brought to heel right now. A lot of applecarts were overturned, a lot of boats swamped, a lot of rice bowls broken. These were people who never forgave and never forgot. Mighty oaths were sworn, contracts were taken out. Assassination attempts began. So he invented the practice of skipping.
Jubal’s bubble was to be opened in only two circumstances.
One, if it was finally safe for him to go home to his beloved bayou country in Louisiana. Given that he was the only person alive—the only one who had ever lived—who could made the squeezer machines, that didn’t seem likely. Until and if someone else showed up who could do it, the powers in his brain were just too valuable.
Two … if he was needed. Needed “real bad,” as he had put it. It was understood that “real bad” meant something on the order of an alien invasion. Some situation that only he might be able to solve in some unknowable last throw of the dice in the hope that he could pull a third miracle out of the hat that covered that special brain.
Travis had a longer list of circumstances that would bring him out of the bubble. Most importantly, he was to be released every five years. Travis had gone into his bubble for the first time when I was four. I have only vague memories of him from that time.
I was nine when he came out again, and I remember that visit clearly. I was there with a small number of family members. That’s when we first started calling Uncle Travis’s days of arrival “Groundhog Day.” Travis would stick his head out, look around for a month to get the lay of the land and catch up on current world affairs and family events, then retreat to his burrow for five more years of winter.
Next time I was fourteen. I was appointed to be his guide, and naturally Mike, six at the time, came with me, and the two of us showed him all the new things from the last five years and filled him in on happenings on Earth in the evenings.
Now here he was again, just under a year early, looking exactly the same as he had the last time I saw him, four years earlier.
Travis wasn’t slow. From the number of people there, he instantly took in that something special was going on. The date and time were posted on the wall, as they were in all these rooms, as a quick aid to orientation.
He knew that among the parameters for waking him up was the death or critical illness of a small number of people close to him, and his mind put it together quickly that this was the most likely reason he wasn’t seeing the date he expected. I saw his face fall, and his eyes darted around, looking for the faces he hoped would be there.
Gran had anticipated this, and she stepped forward and smiled at him.
“I ain’t dead yet, Travis, but all this fuss is for me. But since I’m the next thing to dead, and I’m on your list, we figured you might want to stick your furry little head out of your hole and see me one last time before I join you in the hole next door.”
Travis jumped down from the small platform and tenderly took Gran in his arms. They stood that way for a while, and soon people began to clap, possibly because they were at a loss for any other way of showing their approval.
I had to get out my hankie before my mascara started to run.
THE NEXT HOUR was a bit of a blur. Gran had insisted she wanted no more tributes, no more formalities, and that if this was to be a semiwake, it would be a semi-Irish wake, so let the singing and dancing and feasting and drinking begin.
Grandma Kelly took the demolition of all her planning in good humor and immediately began organizing the merriment along new lines. Those of us who played an instrument were pressed into service as an impromptu band. It was pretty good, though most of them were friends, rather than family. Food was consumed, and more rolled out, and the bar was open and doing a good business.
Tides of humanity shifted and eddied, as they do at these things. I hung back as much as I could, watching, nursing a Shirley Temple and smiling at all the faces, half of whom I didn’t even know. I don’t favor crowds, have never liked large, noisy parties. My idea of a good time is more like three or four or five good
friends and just a whiff of Phobos Red to loosen me up a little.
Travis was looking more than a bit overwhelmed, a really unusual position for him. Normally, he’s the most unflappable man I’ve ever met, and one of the most cheerful. That’s from personal experience; the tales of his calm under fire are legendary. But this mob meeting him when he really wanted some peace and quiet and a few close friends to slowly start bringing him up to date was too much. I saw him being passed from person to person, a weak smile plastered on his face, and then I lost track of him.
It was ten minutes later when I turned and he turned and there we were, facing each other. He had to look up, of course, but he was used to that. I was already almost my present height when he saw me last, at the age of fourteen. His eyes widened.
“Is it … it can’t be … is it Podkayne?”
I allowed as how it was.
He looked me over from nose to toes, and in an instant the first genuine smile of his new day broke out all over his face.
“Pod, you’ve … you’ve grown.”
I could feel my face go warm. Goose bumps broke out all over my arms and icy fingers ran up and down my spine. I almost tottered off my spike heels.
Yes, I guess my secret is out. I had a crush on Travis powerful enough to squeeze a squeezer bubble.
5
I WAS NINE, and Travis was about the most exciting thing I’d ever seen.
I listened in fascination as he told his stories. I’d heard the same stories from Mom and Dad, the few times I could get them to talk about them, but neither of them was the born storyteller that Travis was. He could have me helpless with laughter one moment and breathless with fear the next, to the point that I had a few nightmares and Mom had a little talk with Travis and he apologized to me but I told him please, please don’t stop, and don’t worry about me, I’m a big girl and I can take it.