by John Varley
Jubal nearly fainted. He did some things with some devices of his to trap it. I won’t tell you what devices, or how he used them. Trade secret. I won’t tell you what I was staring at. And I won’t tell you if it takes a year of staring, half an hour a day, like I did, either, because I don’t know, but I wouldn’t tell you if I did know.
Did it really have to do with having been inside a black bubble? If it does, then there are many millions of people who might be able to do it now, given proper guidance. I don’t think we’re ready for that. Or did it have to be a black bubble in close proximity to the Europan crystals, such that one became “tangled” with Jubal’s mind?
Don’t know that, either.
Then there’s probably the biggest question of all. Why didn’t any of the old starships come back? We will probably find out, one of these days. Is it because of some new force we aren’t aware of, some interstellar factor we’re not taking into account? Dark matter? Dark energy? Something we haven’t even postulated yet?
Is there some sort of malevolent Galactic Empire out of a bad science-fiction novel our ships fell afoul of? If so, why haven’t they come for us?
Is it something even stranger? We know now that the universe is a stranger place than we had ever imagined. We’ve always known that man is a very small, very delicate animal. We need conditions within an extremely small set of parameters to survive in this hostile universe at all. If we can’t find them on a planet like Earth, we have to re-create them on a planet like Mars, or in an artifact like Rolling Thunder. And now we know how easily those parameters can be upset on a planetary scale. We were learning about it even before the catastrophe, because what was global warming but Europan-style planetary engineering in slow motion?
Rolling Thunder is even more vulnerable. If Earth is a tiny grain of sand circling a pinpoint of light and heat, Rolling Thunder is a molecule rushing through spaces so vast and so hostile it doesn’t bear imagining. When you think about it, it hardly seems we have a chance. We are fleeing, after all; this is not a triumphant voyage but a hasty retreat. Travis was right about that. We can’t even kid ourselves that we put up a good fight. Stories of alien invasion aren’t supposed to end that way, you know. In the end, we’ve always assumed humanity would triumph.
Aha! Water kills the alien creatures!
Thank God, we’re saved, the aliens—Martians!—were killed by the common cold virus!
Didn’t happen that way, not in this story, not in Podkayne’s story.
So do we have a chance? I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what we do have.
We have Manny Garcia and Kelly Strickland, who with Travis and Jubal and two friends built and flew the first interplanetary ship to Mars and back.
We have Jim Redmond, my grand-père, Evangeline Redmond, my mother, and Elizabeth and Ray Strickland-Garcia, who with Travis entered the Red Zone right after the Big Wave and brought Gran out alive, and then Mom and Dad and Travis fought off a fleet of Black Ships and brought the Planet Earth to its knees.
We have the spirit of Betty Garcia, who held off looters and saved about a hundred survivors while waiting for Mom and Dad to get there.
We have Jubal Broussard, quite possibly the smartest living human, and Travis Broussard, possibly the gutsiest. Sometimes the most obnoxious.
I’ll put that crew up against any Galactic Empire.
And we have thousands of people I haven’t even met yet living and working in this big rock, and many thousands more hibernating.
I’m not worried.
KAHLUA HAS JUST jumped up and settled himself on my belly. He’s staring suspiciously downward, where the babies—twin girls!—just tried to kick him off. These kids are either going to be black belts in karate or world-class dancers. I’ll try to steer them toward dance.
Something’s tugging on my line. I may have to land the damn thing. Blackened catfish a la Jubal sounds mighty good, but pulling on that line sounds a little too much like work. Life is so hard.
THERE IS A time for everything, a season for everything.
A time for traveling, a time for settling down. We’ve managed to do both at the same time.
I’m going to miss my home, the Red Planet. But now I’m between planets.
Now it’s time for the stars.
Table of Contents
Books by John Varley
Title Page
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Dedication
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