Rolling Thunder

by John Varley

  “Can you boost us up again? Maybe into orbit?”

  Well, jeez, why didn’t I think of that? Was my brain turning to jelly? It wouldn’t be easy, but landing with only the rear engine seemed impossible, and to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how difficult, is what you’ve got to try.

  “Strap in tight, everybody,” I said. “I’m going to get the nose up with the attitude jets, angle the aft engine as far back as it will go, and try to nurse it into orbit without spinning again. If anybody’s got a better idea, or any suggestion at all, say it now, because we’ve got about a minute and a half to impact.”

  Nobody said anything, but I could hear seat belts being buckled and tightened.

  “Hang on,” I said. “This ain’t going to be pretty.”

  I eased the nose up to about a forty-five-degree angle, which gave me a view of Grumpy again, still looming but visibly farther away. It seemed clear the thing was headed out and into an orbit around Jupiter.

  I eased on the power. The bus wanted to lift its tail because I couldn’t angle the engine directly backwards. Every time it started to do that I increased the thrust from the downward attitude jets in front until the nose started to lift again. Those jets were simple chemical rockets, never intended to have much of a punch, just there for fine-tuning when you landed the bus. Their combined thrust was pitiful. I watched the acceleration gauge and the altimeter. Still falling, but the rate of fall was slowing. At this rate, it would take me five minutes to kill our downward vector and start a forward one. What was orbital velocity on Europa? Math was never my strong suit; I couldn’t work it out. I had the attitude jets on full power and was glumly watching the fuel gauges sinking as the thirsty little engines burned. I set the computer to start calculating the velocity I’d need, when there was a roaring, clanging, scraping sound, a hard impact that came from the rear … and the power went out.

  We started to spin again, and I cut off the thrusters. What the hell?

  Emergency strip lighting came on in the floor. Just enough light to move around. I looked back, and saw someone at the back, looking out the rear window. He turned around, and I saw it was Slomo. His shoulders sagged.

  “The loose track is back there,” he said. “And I think—”

  We didn’t get to hear what he was thinking just then, because the spin had started everything moving again. It wasn’t heavy, like before, only about a quarter gee … but it was too much. The driver’s body hit the battered windshield in front of him, not very hard, but just hard enough. With an odd ripping sound, a hole opened under his head, and tore across the shattered surface until the whole sheet of high-impact plastic popped out. In two very chaotic seconds, everything that wasn’t tied down flew out of the huge square hole in a diminishing shriek, including the driver’s body, along with all of our air.

  Some days you just can’t catch a break, you know what I’m saying?

  My suit had been loose; now it expanded. My ears popped, my knee was twisted, I screamed in pain. It became very hard to move. Those e-suits weren’t designed for anything more than keeping you alive. They are just bags, and when they fill up with pressurized air they are very hard to move in.

  And what was the point of moving, anyway? Slomo’s voice came over the radio, sealing our fate.

  “That track knocked off the rear engine,” he said, quietly.

  Which I already knew, as the ship drew its power from the slow release of energy from its two bubble drives.

  We were now a battered, airless tin can, running on batteries, at the mercy of gravity, with as much control of our fate as a batted baseball.

  So, here’s my plan …

  Well, Poddy, you really screwed that one up.

  I didn’t have any prayers to say, or anything like that. I figure a creator who keeps score of sins and wants to be worshipped like an insecure little boy isn’t worth my time.

  There was an odd spang sound from the back of the bus. I turned and saw a featureless black ball wedged between the seats near the back. I say wedged … what happened was the stopper bubble engulfed everything within a certain radius of the generator. That included parts of some seats, some of the floor, and a bit of the ceiling.

  Slomo was looking at me from the middle of the bus. He had the KYAG unit in his hand, his thumb on the button, which was glowing red. He wiggled his fingers at me and smiled, and was replaced by another black bubble.

  Senator Wu hugged his daughter and they became yet another. There was one all the way at the back.

  I reached into my suit pocket …

  Which was hanging open. I distinctly remembered closing the little Velcro patch, knowing how things are apt to get lost in weightlessness. It wasn’t closed now, and there was no little black box inside.

  Most likely location for it: a mile in front of us, and receding fast.

  I glanced at the panel in front of me, still working fitfully on batteries. Fifty seconds to impact.

  I started a halfhearted search of the area around me. I mean, what were the chances? Had the pocket been pulled open as Slomo and I descended to the front? Could have happened. Probably what had happened.

  Forty seconds. There was a great view out the front of the bus as we swung slowly around. My, what a lot of activity in the ice down there! What a thrill ride this would be if we could move it to Pavonis Park!

  Thirty seconds.

  Not down there on the floor.

  Twenty. Ten.

  Nowhere else to look. Might as well enjoy the show.

  As a virtual reality bit, it would have been a gasser. As real reality, I wouldn’t recommend it.

  We hit ass first, and I saw in the rearview mirror—still intact, still unbroken!—as the body of the bus collapsed like an aluminum soft drink can in Superman’s fist. My chair creaked and cracked, and held on, then we slammed out full length on what looked like an ice floe, and began to slide. I hurt everywhere. Just everywhere. I was amazed I was still alive.

  We were going down nose first, so I got an excellent view of what awaited me, which were giant ice cubes grinding together like molars. It ought to be quick … if it would just goddam happen! I was too pissed to cry. Get it over with!

  Something slammed into my back, then slithered over my shoulder. I couldn’t believe it. It was Cosmo, getting in his last licks. Even in death he wouldn’t leave me alone! There was a rime of frost on him, but he hadn’t had time to freeze solid yet.

  Which was a damn good thing, because there it was, in his hand, what he had really been going for when he attacked me: my KYAG. One will get you ten his own was buried somewhere in his luggage.

  I pried his fingers away from it and took it in my palm, and that’s when the bus nosed into the grinding slush and an iceberg pinched it from my left side, squeezing the roof down like tissue paper and driving parts of it into my side and left leg.

  You think you might reach a point where you’re beyond pain, but you’re not, you’re not. At least I hadn’t reached it. I was pretty sure my ribs were crushed on the left side. I wasn’t going to take a breath to see … but then slush started flooding in all around me, rising. Cold, cold, unimaginable cold that came right through my suit.

  I had to concentrate. Wouldn’t it be a pisser if, after all the trouble the Hand of Fate had taken to get my KYAG to me, I fumbled it? I rotated it in the palm of my suit glove, which was now coated with ice as well as being hard to move in the first place … and got my thumb into position. I pressed, and the light came on, and I held.

  Five one thousand.

  Four one thousand.

  Three one thousand.

  Two one thousand.

  One one thousand …

  One one thousand …

  Bastard wasn’t working. Just my luck… . What the… ?

  Light, coming from all directions. Oh, man, fuck me, was I wrong? Should I have been praying? Is this that “tunnel of light,” will all my loved ones r
ush up to—

  “That’s her! She’s alive!”

  —greet me … Travis? Was that Uncle Travis’s voice? I couldn’t see much. It was still so cold, but the slush was draining away. Ice, everything was covered with ice, and it was so bright …

  “X-ray!”

  “Done!”

  “Infrared!”

  “Scanning … done!”

  I coughed, and wished I hadn’t, because the pain was intolerable, and the inside of my helmet was now bright red with blood.

  “Okay, put her ba

  Instantly, much dimmer light. A giant metal fist moved over me, grabbed a piece of metal that had once been part of the roof of the bus, and tore it away like tissue paper. I turned my head and had just enough clear faceplate over the blood coating to see a second robot arm grab the piece of the bus that was crushing my side and rip that away, too. Which I really could have done without, as the pain was … you know, you really quickly run out of words to describe pain like that, so just try to imagine it, okay? Or don’t, which would be my recommendation. Blood spewed out of me like a fountain.

  I heard no voices now, but all around me was frenetic activity, moving at a pace only machines can do. The remains of the bus and my seat—and Cosmo—were peeled away, and robot arms insinuated themselves in close to me and, in seconds, cut away my suit. Needles jabbed me, and something was wrapped around my chest and tightened. I felt like a chicken being shrink-wrapped for market.

  I quickly began to drift. Things kept happening, but they didn’t seem very interesting. Is that my leg? Should it be bending that way? Oh, well.

  But the pain was gone! The pain was gone! Oh, glorious day! I laughed, and coughed up more blood. Then something grabbed me under the jaw and tilted my head back and clapped something over my face, and I took a breath, and another.

  And that was all it took to send me into glorious blackness.

  My final thought?

  Yes, sir. One hell of a bus ride.

  13

  THEY’VE MADE AMAZING advances in medicine since my greatgrandmother’s day (otherwise I wouldn’t be here), but one thing that’s pretty much the same as in the twentieth century is general anesthesia. You don’t just pop out of it. It’s a gradual process.

  I have vague memories of nurses in isolation suits, and of doctors poking and prodding and sampling. The standard indignities. I remember wanting to pee so badly it hurt, trying to tell someone that I needed to go, finally letting loose and realizing there was a catheter in. Duh.

  The first thing I remember more or less clearly is Mike. He was sitting on the bed, holding my hand, asleep sitting up. I don’t know how he does that, but he does. I gave his hand a hearty squeeze, which wouldn’t have crushed a bug. His eyes snapped open. My vision was a bit blurred, and I could only concentrate on one thing at a time. I couldn’t even see all his face at once; it was like looking through a crazy lens.

  “Podkayne!” he shouted, and started to embrace me. Then he stopped himself. “All right, my girl, no more lollygagging. I know you’ve been faking it. So get up, get dressed, and let’s get out of here!”

  “Sure,” I mumbled. “Clothes … ?” I looked around vaguely, and when I looked back the first thing I saw were the tears streaming down his face.

  “Oh, Poddy,” he moaned. “I swore I wouldn’t cry.”

  “Give us a hug, baby boy,” I said, and he put his arms around me. I expected it to hurt, but it didn’t. He didn’t squeeze hard. After a while he drew back, snuffling.

  “You look terrible,” he said, wiping his nose.

  “Just what a girl wants to hear. Mike, am I…”

  “You’re going to be fine, Pod. Just fine. You looked like something dragged out of a trash compactor when they brought you in, but they’ve got you all fixed up. That’s no bullshit, the doctors tell us you’ll be just as awful as you ever were in a few weeks.”

  “Weeks?” I yawned.

  “Well, months, with rehab.”

  “That’s nice. I think I’ll sleep now.” I frowned. There was something I wanted to know, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Then I had it.

  “What’s the date?”

  “December first.”

  Oh, good. I’d have time to get my Christmas shopping done.

  And I drifted off. My last thought … Mike was wearing red. Mike hates red. Was my little brother in uniform? What was that all about?

  SWIMMING BACK INTO consciousness, as from the bottom of a deep well …

  Familiar faces. Family. Mom, Dad, Mike. Aunt Elizabeth.

  “Back with us, Podkayne?” Elizabeth asked, brightly. It was her bedside manner, I guess. She was wearing goggles of some sort, and looking at a lot of machines that I imagine were telling her a lot more about my poor abused body than I’d ever want to know.

  The bed was high. Mom only had to bend at the waist to put her face close to mine and kiss me. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth that I hadn’t noticed before. My mom is a beautiful woman—I must have gotten it from somewhere, right?—but she looked a lot older. I must have caused them a lot of worry. I felt all choked up inside as she kissed me again and wiped away a tear. Then Dad was there, too.

  “How’s my girl?”

  “A little woozy.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Aunt Elizabeth said, from behind them. She had something in her hand, but kept her distance. I looked at Dad again. His face looked a lot older, too. A lot older, and it wasn’t wrinkles. His hairline, which had been receding since I was ten, was way back from where it had been less than a year ago …

  Okay. Blame the drugs.

  “How long?” I asked.

  Mom looked me right in the eye and didn’t dissemble.

  “Ten years and a bit,” she said. A tear made its way down her cheek. “And we’re so glad to have you back.”

  “Ten years …”

  “Which means I’m older than you, now,” Mike said, with a smile. But he couldn’t keep it in place.

  “Ten years …”

  Aunt Elizabeth pressed something against my neck, and there was a hiss. The rising panic I’d been feeling fell away, and I sank back into welcome darkness.

  Ten years.

  “NO WAY ARE you older than me,” I said.

  “Way.”

  “Mike, I’m twenty-nine.”

  “Only if you go by the calendar. You know and I know that you’re still nineteen. And I was twenty-one in February. Well, on March the first.”

  “Actually, you were five.”

  “Which makes you a bit less than five,” he said, smugly.

  We were back to normal—or as back to normal as we’d ever be, with him the same age as me—joshing each other. He was sitting in his usual place on my bed, spoon-feeding me raspberry sherbet. I had just about enough strength to lift the spoon, but not enough coordination to get it to the right spot on my face, as red blotches on my nose and cheek testified. I was on a liquid and ice-cream diet until my digestive system recovered from the trauma of many days of nanosurgery.

  There was so much Mike and I couldn’t really get into yet, so many things for me to sort out … it was going to be a time for sorting out, that was for sure.

  “So you’re really going to take this ‘oath of secrecy’ business seriously,” I asked him, for the third or fourth time.

  “Have to, Poddy. Gave my word. And you know ‘The word of a Martian Patrol Space Commander—’ “

  ” ‘—is as good as gold.’ ” It was a game we’d played when he was young.

  There’s a lot of questions you could ask when you come out of a coma—medically induced, and lasting about a month, one of the few details anyone had seen fit to give me. I hadn’t asked any of them, as such; I was too woozy for the first three or four days. But I’d pieced together a few things.

  Where am I?

  Mars. The good old Red Thunder Hotel, the family business. I was in a small suite, with Aunt Elizabeth installed in
a spare bed in the living room and in twenty-four-hour attendance. Why the hotel? Why not a hospital? No one was willing to tell me.

  What happened?

  I knew what happened up to the point I pulled the plug. I remembered it all quite well, every agonizing moment, including a lot I’d much rather forget. But what happened after that? No one was saying. They’d all taken the Martian Patrol Space Commander Oath.

  Why not just tell me and get it over with?

  Ah, at last, a question they were willing to answer.

  They had a lot of experience with taking people out of time stasis. They’d tried a lot of different methods, including just answering any questions the stasee (new word: someone freshly out of stasis, also known more idiomatically as Rips, as in Van Winkle) asked, in the order she asked them. Usual result: confusion, anxiety, mild sedation. For instance, one question that soon arose in a long-term stasis (five years or more), especially if a familiar face wasn’t there, was … who died?

  So protocols had been developed. Only the closest relatives were allowed to see the stasee at first. Then recent history, including the macro kind (what are countries doing?), the personal kind (what are my friends and family up to?), and yes, even the popular kind (what are the hit downloads?), is doled out in bites the “reintegration counselor” thinks the stasee—oh, the hell with it, I hate that word!—the Rip can handle.

  My RC was a tiny little Earth-born—Nigeria, I believe—named Maimuna. She explained all this to me, and listened patiently while I told her it was stupid, Come on, Doc, I can handle it! I realized she’d heard the same old song and dance a hundred times, then I surprised myself by realizing she might know more about this than me. So I shut up.

  “We’ve prepared summaries of world events,” she said. “They’re pretty standard. We will show them to you at the rate of one per day. In a week and a half—”

  “—I’ll be all caught up.”