Rolling Thunder

by John Varley

  That would be the original bubble maker, which he’d cobbled together from scraps in his laboratory in Florida. The outside of it was just several electronic remote controls, like they used to use with old television sets. He used them because they had buttons and knobs that he could wire for his own purposes, but the insides didn’t contain anything the manufacturers had put in there. He must have had at least a vague idea that he was playing with fire, even with that first one, because he made it such that if you opened it up, the singularity went away.

  “I was playin’ with the quantums,” he said. “It was like that German cat. Dingley’s cat. Only it was rigged. Wit’ the singularity, I could stack the deck, see? I could change the odds by givin’ it a bowl of milk here and a kick in the butt there.”

  Googling … okay, Schrödinger’s cat. I remember we talked about it in one of my science classes, which we called Physics for Dummies. It was a famous thought experiment to demonstrate some principle of quantum mechanics. I wasn’t clear if it meant that quantum effects do scale up to the “real world,” or that they don’t. If you understand all this, please consult a physics site for more info; the rest of you dunces, come along with me and we’ll try to get out of this alive.

  There was a lot more about quantum stuff, which I have a hard time understanding when it’s being explained by a professional, with good audiovisuals. Confession: C-student in Physics for Dummies. You wanna make something of it? And it doesn’t really matter, anyway, in a practical sense, except to another scientist. What we were about to get into might as well have been voodoo. In science, you’re supposed to be able to replicate an experiment, right? That’s basic. A machine should work for everybody, and not only if you “hold your mouth right,” as Jubal put it. There should be no crossing of one’s fingers involved, no incantations to the spirit of Schrodinger or Max Planck or anybody else. You shouldn’t have to be hypnotized to make it work.

  But that’s exactly what Jubal did, eventually. Hypnotize me. Finally I’d had enough of trying to understand it all. I didn’t see what difference it made, anyway.

  “Jubal, let’s just admit I’m a dumb bunny and you tell me what you’re trying to get at?”

  He smiled tenderly, and reached out without thinking and patted my knee. Then he hastily withdrew his hand and blushed like a teenager.

  “Okay. You no dumb bunny, you, but I know you ain’t got the math. What I want, I want tell you what the no-place place is like fo’ me, and see do you reckanize it.”

  And that’s what he did.

  “I BEEN IN the bubble t’ree times, me. First it was to get away from that island. Then I went in again for a long time. Long real time. That first time I noticed the … the … I called ‘em the points of light, but they wasn’t really points, and they wasn’t really lights. I’m messing this up …”

  “No, I was there, Jubal, I know what you’re talking about. No time, no place, no eyes or ears or any other senses I know, but something.”

  “Yeah, I can’t do no better than that, either, me. Something. I thought about it a lot that first time Travis took me outta the bubble. I hyp … hyp …”

  “Hypnotized?”

  “That’s it. They hipenized me lots on that island. I learned how to do it my ownself. I hipenized myself, and I tried to bring it all back. And it all slippery, but I got some pieces of it, ‘cause I used to thinkin’ ‘bout multidimensimul geometry. And the first words outta my mouth, I said, ‘Where’s Podkayne?’ “

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  He smiled. “Me, too, cher. ‘Cause I didn’t have no idea why I said it, me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He grinned. “Nope. It just pop out. And then I got a picture of a real, real pretty girl, who was smiling at me and I think she was singin’ a song, and …” He stopped himself and blushed furiously. “I didn’t mean nothing …”

  “Sure you did,” I said, grinning back at him. “Jubal, believe this: No girl has ever been insulted when a guy calls her pretty. So long as he means it.”

  He was so flustered it took him a few minutes to get back on track. It was enough time for me to ask a few questions of my own. What are you up to, Podkayne? Are you deliberately needling him? You’ve never been a tease. You like a guy, you come out and tell him so. Well, I liked Jubal plenty, but he was so insecure about himself I felt I had to walk on eggs. And as for the whole sexuality angle … I felt sure he had next to no experience at it. Maybe his sexuality had been one of the things destroyed when his brains were scrambled by Crazy Daddy. Dancing the Cajun Jitterbug with me was probably as far in that direction as he could go.

  So Podkayne, stop teasing him. Lay off, girl!

  “Anyways,” he said, after a while, “I thought about it, and I hipenized my ownself, like I learned to do, and tried to get back to that noplace place.”

  “Did you?”

  “I got back some memories, me. See if you reckanize any of this.”

  HE WAS IN the place I’ve found so hard to describe, and given his verbal limitations, Jubal found even harder. But he groped his way through it.

  Since there was no time, no space, no location, no sensory input that was familiar to either of us, all I can do is use euphemisms to describe the experience. When I say he, or we, “felt” something, accept that it wasn’t feeling something in any way you or I or Jubal had ever experienced before. When I say something seemed “distant,” I realize that in no-space nothing can be distant from anything else. Yet there was a “feeling” of distance.

  Got it? I didn’t think so. Take heart from the fact that if you’re confused, you’re in the same boat with me and Jubal. Or with me, anyway.

  After a while in his trance state Jubal came to perceive, to feel, other presences around him. There were thousands of them. Most were clustered in a group not far away. Later, thinking about it, Jubal concluded that these presences, these abstractions of consciousness, were in the Utopia Planitia Time Suspension Facility, where Gran is. He “felt” that he could read their minds … but they were almost as blank as fetuses in the womb. Yet he could sense emotions in them.

  He could sense more “points of light” much, much farther away. They seemed to be in three groups, which was odd, considering there was no possibility of numbering anything in no-space, which wasn’t a geometrical point, and wasn’t a mathematical infinity. But the number three came to him after the trance. He could guess what those points were. They were the trapped souls on the three black ships he had helped Travis trap in big black bubbles.

  “I felt guilty ‘bout that, me,” Jubal said. “Always will.”

  “They were bad people, Jubal. They would have killed Mom and Dad and Travis and you.”

  “I know that, me. And I could feel something … not right about ‘em. In the trance. Don’t make no difference. I still feel bad.”

  What are you going to do with somebody that decent? I searched my conscience for any feelings of guilt about what I’d allowed to happen to Cosmo—because I’m pretty sure that if I’d shown mercy, the Martian people would have let him off. I didn’t feel a thing. Does that make me a bad person? So be it. But it didn’t stop me from recognizing a truly good man when I found one.

  Jubal felt presences even farther away than that. Could they be the people who left on starships before I was born and still hadn’t returned? It was possible. But there were others, even farther away.

  “Thousands of light-years,” he said, and I don’t know where he came up with the figure, but I was willing to believe him. If it was right, then it could hardly have been human beings he was sensing. Other races, living around other stars?

  Impossible to answer.

  There was another cluster of points of light. His trance state brought it back to Jubal that he’d been aware of them at some point before Travis woke him up the first time, shortly after Grumpy lifted off. He tried to remember if he had been aware of them appearing, but that was such a slippery concept he couldn’t g
et a handle on it. If there is no time, how could he be aware of a time when those points of light weren’t there, and a time when they were?

  But some information had been transferred in some way, because he knew my name, and he knew my face. Travis showed him my picture in an array of other girls who looked something like me, and he picked me right out. Travis told him who I was, and Jubal wanted to see me, and Travis told him that I wasn’t available, that I was off-planet. He didn’t mention that I was buried under a mile of ice.

  “I knew it, though,” Jubal said. “I knew you wasn’t on Mars, and I knew you was in a bubble.” He shrugged. “Travis tries to proteck me. He knows I gets the jimmy-jams real easy.”

  He said it sort of forlornly, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he regretted the fact that he was so easily upset or the fact that Travis protected him so thoroughly. Note to self: Think that one over, later. Everybody had a tendency to treat Jubal like a child because he was— let’s face it—so childlike in so many ways. Everybody in my family older than me had a history with Jubal, and their stories always mentioned how immature he was, emotionally, socially, everything but intellectually. I was seeing him fresh, without any preconceptions—or if I had any, I was quite willing to throw them out. Jubal was seeming to be a much more complex individual than I’d been led to believe.

  “Those points was you and the others, on Europa,” Jubal said. “And how you shined! All of y’all, in a way, but you most of all.”

  “You recalled this after you came out of the trance the second time? After you met me, down here in the Fortress?”

  “Yessum. That first day, I went to bed all druggy, and I put myself under, and I knew those points of light were different. They was magni-ficated.”

  “Magnified?”

  “That, too. But I come to feel that we was touching, me and you. In that no-place place. The others, they was shinier than most, but you was just a-blazin’!”

  He went silent, recalling that moment. I thought it over.

  “So … what does it mean?”

  “I’m tryin’ to figger it out, me. Befo’, I didn’t make no contact with nobody, no. Knew they was there, me, but that was all. And I didn’t contact any of them others what was trapped with you, not a one. But they was mixed up with this other thing, which I think, mebbe, is them crystal things. And what with you passin’ out and all ever time Europa makes a trip around Jupiter … it muss all conneck some whichaway.”

  “You think on it, Jubal, that’s what you’re good at.”

  “I think them crystal things live in that no-place place. And you bein’ so close to them, and all, I think they connected to you, and you still tangle up with ‘em.”

  “Tangled?”

  “It’s a quantum thing. A particle can be tangle with another particle, don’t matter how far apart they are, they influence each other.”

  “That sounds spooky.”

  “That’s what Einstein said, too. ‘Spooky action at a distance,’ he said. But it’s the real deal, no doubt about it.”

  So what did this mean to me? I wanted to know. He shrugged.

  “Mebbe it jus’ means you gonna pass out ever t’ree and a haff days. But I been wondering if you might be the onliest one who ever has contacted them critters.”

  “But I didn’t contact anyone! Anything?”

  “That song of yours.”

  ” ‘Jazzie’s Song’? That was just me fiddling around with—”

  He was shaking his head. “It be the music of the spears, cher. I think it may have some of that no-place place in it, if we study on it. I don’t know nothin’ bout music, me, ‘cept a few old Cajun stomps. But I know this is different.”

  “But Jubal … what are you saying? … you think they’re trying to contact me? Us? Humans?” I sure as hell didn’t need this. But he was shaking his head.

  “I don’t think they even notice us, cher. But you done listened in to ‘em, and some whichaway that got you tangle with ‘em.”

  Long silence. Deep sigh, from me.

  “So what does it mean?”

  “Like I done said, mebbe nothin’. I thought and I thought and thought about it, the first time Travis woke me up, and I don’t have no idea a tall how to do anything about them things. All I know is, you the onliest one ever touched ‘em some way, and something about that touching tuned you in to ‘em, and made it doable for you to reach out to me or me to reach out to you, in the no-place place.”

  And that was it, for that day. I had plenty to sleep on, and I wasn’t happy with any of it.

  20

  I’D NEVER BEEN hypnotized before, but Jubal was good at it. It wasn’t what I’d expected. I didn’t get all goofy, and I was fully awake and aware, but some things seemed different. My head seemed clearer. If he’d asked me to walk around flapping my arms and clucking like a chicken, would I have done it? I don’t know, maybe I would have, to humor him (and I later learned that that’s what hypnotic subjects often thought they were doing), but he didn’t ask. I don’t think I was under all that deep, at least the first time.

  He kept the first session short and asked me to imagine myself back in the no-place place. We didn’t get very far. My recollections of the dreams and episodes, if there was any difference, were still hazy.

  The second time I figured it didn’t work, because I fell asleep there on the couch. I don’t mean your standard psychiatrist’s couch; this was just your normal soft-leather overstuffed sofa where Jubal and I often sat together in the evenings watching classic movies, since most of the HD3D stuff made in the last fifty years was too much of a sensory overload for him. But when I woke up, Jubal seemed happy, and told me I’d been in a deeper trance. I looked at him suspiciously.

  “You didn’t make me do anything stupid, did you?”

  He didn’t seem to understand at first.

  “You know. Parlor tricks. I saw a stage hypnotist once. He had people acting crazy, and stuff.”

  He looked shocked.

  “Cher, I would never … oh, my, no, Podkayne, ma cher … maybe I oughta should set up a camera, something, and then you could—”

  I put my hand on his, which always cut off the awkward flow of words, the few times I’d done it. We didn’t touch much. Jubal didn’t touch anybody very much, including Travis. I wondered if he confused touching with pain, given his terrible childhood.

  “I trust you, Jubal,” I said.

  “I jus’ don’t want you to think I’d do anything … I mean, I wouldn’t take any … I wouldn’t touch …” His tongue finally was completely knotted, and I patted his hand and then withdrew mine. I thought the fact that he said he’d never touch me meant that he’d been thinking about it. I knew with absolute certainty that he never would, but the idea that such thoughts entered his mind was intriguing. Somewhere in that lost little boy, that incredibly damaged and abused child, was a man, with all that implied.

  THE BEST SESSION of all was the next time I was due for an episode. We both thought it would be interesting if I was in a trance state when it hit. Would it apply some sort of double whammy to my perceptions? I was game to try it.

  But I began to think we’d started too late. Thirty minutes before I was due to keel over, Jubal was still patiently droning at me and I was still trying to make my mind a blank, but I was too nervous about it. Losing consciousness is never a lot of fun, even if you know you’re going to feel great when you wake up. It’s too deathlike, not at all like sleep. So I was resisting, unconsciously.

  So when I woke up, refreshed and feeling very hungry for some reason, I shrugged and sighed.

  “Didn’t work, huh?”

  He smiled at me.

  “You was deep as you ever been, ten minutes before the time, you,” he said. “What was it like?”

  I thought about it.

  “I wish I could tell you something spectacular … but I didn’t notice anything different. It’s all still so vague; it’s like trying to grab smoke.”

 
He looked disappointed, but then he brightened.

  “Sleep on it, cher. It’s dreamland, the no-place place. And I get mos’ of my best ideas when I’m asleep.”

  SO THAT’S WHAT I did. And I woke up in the middle of the night with music playing in my head. Blasting in my head, filling me with a sense of urgency I hadn’t felt since that crazy time—trancelike, I realized, now that I had something to compare it to—when Jazzie first came to me.

  I stumbled out of bed in my nightgown and made my way to the main room, where my recording equipment was. No keyboard, no guitar, not even a kazoo.

  “Somet’ing wrong, cher?” Jubal was standing there in his pajamas. They had little cartoon alligators on them.

  “I need a keyboard, Jubal.” Lord, Podkayne, you sound like a junkie.

  “A …”

  “Keyboard.” I mimed playing one, and I was so far in the zone I could actually hear the chords I was hitting, on the bare wood of the table in front of me.

  Jubal asked no more questions but ran toward his laboratory. Meanwhile I was hunting feverishly for a pencil and paper. Music can be such an evanescent thing, it can be here one minute and gone the next unless you write it down or record it. Right now this stuff existed only in my head, which wasn’t a very good storage medium.

  I had my head in my hands, trying to keep the musical string in my mind, a haunting theme that I just knew, when I pulled on that string, would let loose a torrent of sounds that would flow through me … and then Jubal unceremoniously grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me toward the kitchen. I followed, and he sat me down at the big, high oak preparation table and brought up a barstool and sat me down on it. He had a keyboard in his hand, and when he unrolled it dust flew.

  “Gee, Jubal, you’ve got a bit of everything in there, don’t you?”