Rolling Thunder

by John Varley

  Then the Navy Cross. I still couldn’t get my mind around it. Me, Poddy the singer, the Navy Cross. The words didn’t seem to belong in the same sentence. I had to lean way down for Mr. President to put the ribbon around my neck, then the sheer weight of the big gold medallion seemed to want to keep me there. But I straightened and saluted. Down there in the front row were Mom and Dad and Mike, and it took all the spine-stiffening I had in me to keep my eyes dry. There were Granddaddy Manny and Grandma Kelly, and Grand-père and Grand-mère Redmond, and aunts Amelia and Elizabeth, and half a dozen cousins. I looked for Travis, but realized he might not be welcome here. I hoped all the hoopla was doing Uncle Bill some good, politically.

  Then I was presented with two velvet-lined boxes. One had my commander’s bars and star in it, and the other a smaller version of the medal, suitable for pinning on one’s tunic, and much more tasteful and less gaudy than the anchor and chain I was wearing.

  This was the moment I’d been dreading. Part of the deal was that I wouldn’t have to make a speech, but Grandma Kelly had taken me aside for a moment backstage and warned me that, when you get a politician on a stage with a hero, all bets are off. Our president might very well break the deal for the chance to get into the frame when a hero and a celebrity said her first words after returning from the dead.

  “If he bushwhacks you,” she whispered, “thank him, thank the Navy, thank the people of Mars, and get off.”

  “Thank Uncle Bill?”

  “No! Don’t draw attention to him. Everybody here gets the point. Keep it short, sweet, and modest.” She looked up at me. “Just like you are, honey, except for the short part.”

  And damn if that weasel didn’t do just as she’d suspected. I stepped up to the podium, gulped, and did exactly as she’d told me to do. Then I saluted once more and hobbled offstage to a standing ovation.

  “NO INTERVIEWS! NO interviews!” someone was shouting up ahead of me. Not that it did any good. It felt like the time-honored perp walk; I had a strong impulse to cover my head with my jacket. I just felt guilty, somehow. But this was a ceremony, and there had to be a photo op, which they had limited to my route, back on crutches again, between the stage and a secure area where the bus was waiting. So I endured it.

  Something was nagging at me. I thought I heard a familiar voice, rising above the babble. Who could I possibly know in this gaggle of bottom feeders?

  “Podkayne! You have to speak to me!”

  And there he was, about as welcome as Marley’s Ghost. Cosmo, standing in the front row against the barrier, back from the dead. Well, so was I, right? But it was the first time I knew he had survived. It had seemed too unlikely that he would, but later I learned he’d only been in vacuum for about a minute and a half, not long enough to freeze solid, and not long enough for brain damage. He’d had extensive freezer burns; they’d had to replace all of his skin.

  I realized he was standing on artificial legs. He was wearing short pants, so I’d be sure to notice.

  I couldn’t help myself. I had to go over and see what he wanted.

  Which was to serve me with a subpoena. He thrust it into my hands and I took it without thinking, just an ordinary brown envelope with a government seal on it.

  “You’ve been served, Podkayne,” he spat out, and the media horde all turned toward him and began to press closer. “I’m suing you for reckless indifference causing great bodily harm. You cut off my legs!”

  It was true. Only part of him had been close enough to me to be included when the stopper bubble formed. His legs had been left outside. It later came out that it wasn’t just his legs that were outside the zone. Part of his left hip, a few inches of penis, and one testicle also had to be thrown away as spoiled meat.

  “But I thought you were—”

  Now he was thrusting a mike into my face.

  “Do you have anything to say in your own defense?”

  “But you stole—”

  “Come on, come on, the world is waiting to hear. We all want to hear you justify maiming me. We all want to hear how you can explain such a thing.”

  The babble of the crowd was disorienting me, I guess. I couldn’t seem to think straight, and I felt a little dizzy.

  “Come on, Podkayne, what’s your reaction?”

  So I dropped one crutch and broke his nose again.

  16

  IT WAS A damn stupid thing to do, I admit it. Damn stupid for both of us, as it turned out, but stupider for him. Cosmo had his following, but at that time and in that place, it was dwarfed by the people who felt love and affection for dear, sweet, modest Poddy. Public reaction was overwhelmingly in my favor.

  And the suit wouldn’t be likely to go anywhere. Mars is not a litigious society, because we don’t use the trial by jury method for civil matters. Both sides get to air their story on the Net, and the public decides. There are perils in this, but there are also checks and balances and reviews, and it works pretty well. Plus, you don’t need a lawyer, and Grandma Kelly says that any system that makes less work for lawyers is always an improvement.

  Cosmo was from Earth, and probably didn’t understand our system all that well. He probably expected his day in court. He probably expected sympathy for his injuries, and may even have expected to sway a jury with his patented line of bullshit. I don’t doubt the man would have been pleased to drop his pants in court to show his shortened weenie. We may never know, because no one’s heard from him in a long time.

  What he didn’t count on was my guardian angel, Slomo. It never came to any sort of testimony. Slomo just sold two tapes to the Red Planet News, after a spirited bidding war that made him a lot of money.

  The very next day a two-part show was being downloaded by about 99 percent of citizens. The first part was low comedy, and showed Cosmo getting bounced around by the quake, getting his head stuck in the ceiling, acting like a spoiled child and a clown.

  The second part showed his actions on the bus. Martians watched in disgust as he attacked me and seemed to be trying to rip me out of my suit. Disgust turned to cold, hard outrage when, through the magic of a super-high-rez camera and macro zoom, Cosmo could be seen palming my KYAG. After that, he was doomed. After that, everybody wanted me to keep swinging that tripod until his skull was pulped.

  Justice can be rapid on Mars. We don’t have the death penalty, though from time to time, as in the case of a child murderer, for instance, that clause in the constitution has to be frozen by administrators until passions cool down. But the chats among the jurors—which means all citizens—suggested some highly imaginative punishments, the least drastic of which was the removal of his remaining ball, “since he obviously has never used it.”

  In the end it was left to me as the offended party to determine his punishment and his fine. I elected to let the people decide, and they promptly stripped him of his citizenship and all his money, and gave the money to me. I donated it to refugee relief charities. It was a lot of money, and that made me feel good.

  The other part was more problematic. Normally, being “voted off the planet” meant banishment to Earth, but Earth wasn’t taking anybody, not even celebrities. No place else would take him, so he was shipped to the nearest thing we have to a prison, which was Siberia. Actually, 1094 Siberia, a stone in the asteroid belt about ten miles in diameter. Nobody had ever settled it, so the Republic, in cooperation with some of the lustier nations on Earth who wanted an escape-proof prison for their thousands of really scary criminals, hollowed out several habitats inside and sent the worst of the worst there. Only a few Martians had ever qualified, but it was filled with some pretty rough characters from other places. When you were sent to Siberia you were given some clothes and a knife, and bid a not-so-fond adieu. Food, air, water, and sanitation were provided; other than that, you were on your own.

  On the bright side, in the microgravity, Cosmo would not be needing his legs.

  Like I said, no one has ever heard from him again.

  WE DIDN’T G
O back to my room in the Red Thunder. Most of all I wanted to go home, back to my own bedroom, with the posters of Billie and Barbra and Baako, the bust of Beethoven, my guitar and my first keyboard and my balalaika and my bandura. I wanted to see my high-school trophies and my plush Marvin the Martian and Duck Dodgers, my Magic 8-Ball and my collection of porcelain kittens. Okay, my secret shame, I collect kitschy kats, but don’t tell anybody or I’ll get ten thousand of them in the mail starting tomorrow.

  Instead, I was driven to Pellucidar Estates, the most exclusive of the several dozen private, sequestered communities about twenty minutes away from Thunder City on a private subway. It was a bit like the Malibu Colony down the road from Pismo Beach, before it washed away, or so I’m told. Pellucidar (and yeah, I know it was the interior of the hollow Earth in the books, but Mars went through a period when we were all gaga for Edgar Rice Burroughs) is a big dome filled with about a hundred second or third homes of the superrich and/or superfamous. “Cottages” with twenty rooms, everything from the Taj Mahal to Tara to the Sheik of Araby. No kidding, one of my neighbors lived in a tent the Ringling Brothers would have envied.

  I’d known I couldn’t go home, at least for a while. Home was besieged by media; it was tough for Mom and Dad to come and go. They had picked this out and leased it for me, and I hadn’t seen it yet. It was a modest mansion on a street of modest proportions—by Pellucidar standards, anyway. It was Spanish style, with “adobe” walls and red tiles on the roof, like a lot of the housing developments I’d seen in Pismo. I had an orange and a lemon tree growing in the small front yard, and tropical shrubs and flowers all around. There was a tall palm tree at one corner. It was a Glenn Miller house, an Andrews Sisters black-and-white era bungalow.

  Mom met me at the door, along with Kahlua, who rubbed against my legs for a bit before darting outside to see who he had to do battle with to be the Pasha of Pellucidar.

  “I hope you like it,” Mom said. “There were only three available, and the other two were … well, a bit tacky.”

  “It’s great, Mom. Perfect.”

  And it was. If you don’t mind the irony and excess of trying to duplicate California on Mars. I was embarrassed by it, especially after driving by the aluminum hovels of the refugee families. But I needed the maximum security, and any way you looked at it, it was better than a knife and a pair of overalls in 1094 Siberia.

  I was introduced to Millie, who was to be my housekeeper. She was wearing a black-and-white uniform, and the first thing I asked her to do was change into her own clothes. I felt like I was in a French farce.

  The place was pretty much furnished, with Mexican blankets and pottery and folk art, bright and cheerful. There was a round entryway with a spiral staircase that led up to the bedrooms. The rooms had hand-painted beamed ceilings and mullioned windows. I glimpsed a violet-green hummingbird feeding on a red flower outside.

  All my stuff had been moved. My kitties were in a fancy display case. My posters of Billie, Barbra, and Baako had been framed and hung in the main room. All my clothes had been hung by color on wooden hangers, looking forlorn and lonely in the vast walk-in closet. My shoes were arrayed on a mahogany rack, all nine pairs in an area that could have held two hundred. The dressing room and bathroom were furnished with shampoos I’d never used and makeup I’d never worn.

  I figured I’d get used to it. Right now it just felt like a bigger, more luxurious hotel room.

  After Mom left, I rattled around in the place for a few hours, looking into nooks and crannies. Somebody had already thought of everything. Try as I might I couldn’t find anything I needed, except maybe more shoes and clothes to fill out the closet.

  I called Mike.

  “I hear I need a secret password to get into your new neighborhood,” he said, when he answered. “And they suggest crawling the last hundred yards to your door on my hands and knees.”

  “Kissing my feet is optional,” I said. “What are you doing tonight?” Mike was a warrant officer fourth class, a civil defense specialist based in Thunder City, and his time was not always his own.

  “I thought I might take off from the dizzying whirl of my social life and come over and hold your hand. Or maybe scrub your floors and shave your legs.”

  “No, I have nine naked musclemen to do that. How about a little game of kickball in the rec room? You can be the ball.”

  “Can’t turn down an offer like that. Can I bring a friend?”

  A friend? Oh my, first I’d heard of that! I was going to have to stop thinking of my little brother as being ten years old.

  They arrived a few hours later, in mufti. Her name was Marlee, and I was going to say she was on his arm, but she pretty much had to reach down to hold his hand. She was as tall as I was, wearing flats, and she was gorgeous, with long black hair and almond eyes and an impressive bust, dressed in a flowing apricot pantsuit. I looked her over suspiciously, since my feelings for Mike are as much maternal as sisterly, and if this bimbo was condescending to Mike in any way, if this was some sort of charity thing, a be-kind-to-dwarfs evening, she’d leave my house with cat scratches all over her face.

  But aside from seeming a little nervous, she betrayed no signs of anything other than affection for Mike. And I eventually realized that the nervousness came from meeting me. So I worked hard at putting her at her ease, and soon we were old friends. In fact, the only person who didn’t do herself proud that evening was me. I’m afraid that I kept imagining Mike and this girl in bed, and having to mentally kick myself in the big, stupid butt to keep from giggling. I eventually got over it. And believe me, Mike would have no trouble satisfying Marlee. I’d seen him naked many times, of course, around the house, and Mike’s endowment was entirely normal, even a bit large. I knew Marlee would be impressed.

  In fact, as the evening progressed, I began to wonder if I’d have to hose them down. Footsies under the table, adoring glances, that sort of thing. Good for you, Mike!

  We ordered out for pizza, which was slightly less complicated than declaring a Stage Five National Alert, and the delivery boy almost dropped it when he met me at the door. I had to autograph the box top and tear it off for him. We spent the evening playing Scrabble. Marlee wiped the floor with both of us. No bimbo, this.

  After three games they left, a little tipsy from the two bottles of wine we’d opened, and the door closed, and the silence of exclusive Pellucidar descended around me. My footsteps echoed like I was in a haunted house as I climbed the stairs.

  I did a few laps around the bubble-filled bathtub, brushed my teeth, and climbed into the huge bed.

  I cried myself to sleep. I wanted to go home.

  MY SECOND VISITOR sort of made up for a lot of the shortcomings of being a virtual prisoner in paradise. There was a knock on my door, and I beat Millie to it and threw it open. Standing there, in a shapeless print dress and looking like she wanted to borrow a cup of sugar, was Baako Williams. The greatest female singer of my parents’ generation, in her seventies now and more barrel-shaped than ever, smiled at me and asked if she might come in. She thrust a homemade chocolate cake into my hands and I looked over her shoulder to see if Billie Holliday and Barbra Streisand were there, too, in what I assumed was a dream. I mean, I had this lady’s picture on my wall, and I’d been listening to her adoringly since I was two.

  Turns out she lived a few houses down from me. She had retired the year before I started my military service, and came to Mars because the low gravity agreed with her arthritic knees.

  I told her I had all her downloads, had them all memorized, while frantically signaling for Millie to brew some coffee, rustle up some snacks … anything to stop me from babbling.

  She wanted a tour of the house, which she said she had thought about buying a few years ago when it went on the market. I wanted to give it to her, free. Luckily, I didn’t say so.

  She finally said the real reason she’d come over was because she liked my work. She was talking about the popular stuff I’d done with th
e Pod People before “Jazzie’s Song.” She said she hadn’t understood Pod music at first, but was experimenting with it and even thought she might record a few things she was working on … and she asked, a little shyly, I thought, if I might be interested in jamming with her a little.

  Does an elephant have a big nose?

  So that’s how I spent the second day in Pellucidar, listening to Baako’s ideas about Pod music, desperately trying to convince her I understood it … and by the end of the day, thinking that maybe I did, a little. Midway through one song—and let me tell you, her pipes are still the finest around, retirement or not—she called up a few studio sidemen she’d known forever, an amazingly talented group of those people that only the people in the business know, and they all came over and we tossed ideas around.

  It was the beginning of my first post-Grumpy friendship.

  I didn’t cry that night. I danced down the Yellow Brick Road in a blue gingham dress and ruby slippers, with the White Rabbit and Wendy Darling and Frodo at my side. And I wasn’t smoking anything!

  MY NEXT VISITORS called from the gate the next day. The guards wouldn’t let them in. When I saw who it was, I told security it was okay … and they still wouldn’t let them in. All my visitors had to be on an approved list. I decided this was a good time to try out my car. I’d never had a car before, never driven one, but I could drive a spaceship. How hard could it be?

  So I got in—it’s a six-seat electric dingus that I guess you’d call a golf cart, open-sided, with a canvas cover with a fringe on top—opened the garage door, put it in gear, stepped on a pedal, and nothing happened except some red lights went on in the back. Ah. Brakes. So I stepped on the other pedal and lurched backwards into a tool cabinet. Clue number one: R probably means “Reverse,” not “Ride,” as I had assumed. The tool cabinet was going to need some work. I looked for a gear named G, for “Go,” but there wasn’t one. I tried D, for “Dear me, this is harder than I thought,” and away I went. Out of the garage, down the driveway, turn the wheel to the left—going up on two wheels for an exciting moment— stomped on the brake and almost went through the windshield. But now I had the hang of it. I tooled down the curving drive, and if that guy coming in the other direction wanted to play chicken, I could do it as well as him, and all that honking was uncalled-for and rude, I thought.