Red Lightning

by John Varley

  Homelanders? That didn’t make any sense. I knew the situation was chaotic back in America, there was a lot of debate about who was in charge and some of it was being settled with planes and tanks. But what did they care about what happened on Mars? Why not invade Antarctica, if they wanted to waste their time? It was a lot closer to home, and would seem to be about as important, geopolitically.

  “We didn’t get anything from the web on our way down,” Evangeline said.

  “They’ve taken control of all the transmitters. All we’re getting is these announcements. ‘Stay in your rooms. There is no danger. This is all routine, don’t worry.’ All the time they’re pointing guns at people and herding them around. You can’t make a phone call, I tried. Not even over the emergency line.”

  Neither Evangeline nor I was wearing our stereos, and we had our helmets off. I hunted through my suit pockets for mine while the nurse was applying a quick-drying plaster to Evangeline’s ankle. In moments it hardened with just her toes sticking out. The toes were turning purple.

  Sure enough, no matter what icons I ticked on, all I got was a window with a continuous scroll of EMERGENCY REGULATIONS. They were extensive, but added up to “Stay at home and do what we tell you.”

  “There’s supposed to be some sort of announcement in three hours,” the nurse said.

  “You okay, Evangeline?” I asked. She nodded. “Then let’s get out of here.” We thanked the nurse and headed for the door to the emergency room.

  It took us right into the spacious lobby of the Red Thunder. I’d never seen it looking like this. It was almost deserted. A couple who looked like tourists were at the front desk, looking very angry. There was nobody behind the desk. That had never happened, in my experience.

  In fact, other than the couple who probably intended to ask for a refund, there was no one in the lobby at all except for armed guards in black uniforms stationed at all the four portals to the concourses and the escalators to the lower levels.

  Then four men in black uniforms came up the escalator, in a big hurry. They turned left and came straight at us. Something in their attitude made me think they weren’t here to apologize for almost killing us.

  I wasn’t familiar with the uniforms—no surprise, Earth has so many armies only an expert could keep track of them—but it was clear these were of a different class than the grunts guarding the doors. They were dress uniforms, officers. The largest of them, slightly ahead of the others, had stars and ribbons and medals all over the front of his uniform. Clearly the man in charge. We waited for them. They had sidearms, but they were in holsters on their waists. Evangeline grabbed my arm and held on tight.

  They stopped with the “general” about three paces from us, and the other three men moved to form a loose circle around us.

  “Ramon Strickland-Garcia?” he asked.

  “My friends call me Ray. But I don’t think we’re gonna be friends.”

  He ignored that. I felt a hand grip my right arm, and looked down to see the guy over there holding on to me. He reached into a pocket and came out with a set of handcuffs.

  “And who are you?” the general asked Evangeline.

  “My name is Evangeline Redmond,” she said, and took two quick steps toward him, timed so that she was set perfectly to swing her foot with the cast on it right into his crotch. It lifted him six inches in the air before he quite knew what hit him.

  “Run, Ray!” she shouted.

  Well, it wasn’t quite the strategy I’d have taken if I’d had time to think about it, but suddenly it felt right.

  Not the running part, though. Where would I run?

  I jerked to my left and the guy holding my arm pulled harder. I reached down, grabbed his forearm, and then leaped into the air and did a backflip. I took his arm with me, but not his body. I could hear something cracking in his shoulder, and his grip came loose.

  I was hearing a high-pitched shriek from the general and a whimper from my guy when another of the officers started toward me. He was reaching for his weapon. I aimed a punch at his head and he reacted. He overreacted, which is what I was counting on in a guy who hadn’t gotten his Mars legs yet. His muscles, which should have just tensed, pushed him about six inches in the air and he hung there longer than he wanted to, which gave me time to sweep my leg under him and he found himself lying sideways, overcompensated again, and I kicked him in the face before he hit the ground.

  The guards at the portals had noticed something was happening. They started running toward us, and two of them promptly jumped way too high and didn’t land well. I was watching their guns, and they weren’t pointing them at us. If they had, I’d have given up right there. No point in getting shot. But I was hoping they didn’t have orders to shoot, and it looked like they didn’t. Any one of them was big enough to tear me limb from limb, but they’d have to catch me first.

  Adrenaline can slow time for you. That’s what I felt, like I had all the time in the world with these clumsy Earthies. I remember turning and seeing Evangeline as though she was frozen in midair, but the foot with the cast on it moved lightning quick, to the side of the head of another officer. How many was that? I’d lost count, and reinforcements were coming up as fast as they could, not knowing the proper way to run on Mars. I grabbed Evangeline’s hand before she even hit the ground and pulled her toward me. She almost slugged me before she realized who I was. Her eyes were wide and she was grinning, out for blood. In fact, there was a little blood on her lips. Not hers; she had bitten one of the officers.

  “Let’s go!” I said, and got us both headed for the front desk. That was about all the plan I had at the moment. My helmet was back at the lock, and she didn’t have any part of her suit, so outside wasn’t an option. But I knew places in the hotel even the staff didn’t know about. I figured we could hide.

  Then Evangeline stumbled and dragged me down, and when I looked at her I saw her eyes were rolled up in her head and she was jerking spastically. I noticed two sets of thin wires with hooks at the end pricking the fabric of my suit and realized we had both been tazed. My suit had protected me.

  I scooped her up in my arms again and as I was rising, looked up to see a soldier with a billy club. I saw the club coming down, and that was that.

  13

  I LATER LEARNED that those were the only casualties inflicted on the occupying force during the invasion of Mars. Some military statistician somewhere at the rear must have cataloged them all:

  One (1) shoulder: dislocated

  One (1) jaw: broken

  One (1) concussion

  One (1) laceration (bite: human)

  One . . . well, probably two (2) very, very sore jewels: family

  So although they won the war, technically, we sure beat the living crap out of them, didn’t we?

  But that was later.

  I WOKE UP in a cell. It wasn’t much longer than I was, had a bunk and a steel sink and a steel crapper. The bunk was hard, the room was cold, and I was naked.

  I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know what had happened to Evangeline, I didn’t know where my family was, I didn’t know what the soldiers taking over was all about. I didn’t know anything at all except that I needed something to hang on to or I was going to start bawling like a baby, so I concentrated on hoping that the guy I had kicked in the head was hurting ten times worse than I was.

  When I got tired of that, I thought of ways to kill the pilots of those planes. Slowly. I was very imaginative, it would have made you sick to see into my head during that time.

  I don’t know how long it was. The light in the ceiling was very bright and it never varied, and there were no windows.

  At some point a guy opened the door and frowned at me for a moment. There was an armed guard outside the door. The guy came in and shined a light in my eyes, pinched and prodded me in a few places, touched the top of my head with a rubber-gloved hand. I yelped, and saw that his hand came away slightly bloody, which scared me.

  “He’s a
ll right,” the guy said, and they left. Medical care, I guess, as required by the Geneva Convention, as if anybody even knew where to find that anymore, much less abide by it.

  Somebody came by a few minutes later, opened the door a crack, and tossed in a plastic bottle. I got up, moving slowly. Picked it up. Snapped off the lid. There were about a dozen aspirin inside. I swallowed them all and lay down.

  I must have slept.

  I GOOGLED IT later, under “interrogation” and “brain-washing.” Fear and isolation and disorientation are all useful in the early stages.

  But that was later. Then, I felt exactly what they wanted me to feel. Scared, isolated, disoriented. I probably would have even if I’d known it was part of their technique.

  I was left alone for a long time. It might have been only a day, but it felt a lot longer. The light never varied. I could drink out of the sink by cupping my hands. At what seemed like irregular intervals the door would open and someone would set a piece of fruit or a sandwich wrapped in paper on the floor. The sandwiches were tuna fish or bologna or egg salad. The wrapping paper was printed with the words “Red Thunder Hotel” in the tasteful red script we use in the restaurant to wrap the hamburgers. But the food didn’t come from the hotel. Mr. Redmond would never have let that shit into his kitchen, much less out of it.

  Were they making a point with the paper? I didn’t think it was a coincidence. I had a lot of time to think about it, and I’m sure that’s what they wanted me to do. They were telling me they were in control of my family’s business, and therefore, my family. I began thinking of more interesting things to do to these people if I ever got the drop on them in some dark alley.

  Never going to happen, I knew that even then, but it’s amazing how much it can buck up your spirits. Their screams for mercy resonated in my head and covered up the throbbing.

  I WAS ASLEEP when they came for me. (See Interrogator’s Manual Chapter Two: Grogginess is Good.) Two large guys in black uniforms and body armor barged into my cell. They handcuffed me and tied my legs together. I guess I can’t blame them, considering what we’d done when they kidnapped us. But instead of taking me out of the room, one of them held a rag to my face and I smelled a chemical. I went out pretty quick.

  I woke up in a room right out of a cop movie. It was dark, with a bright light over me. In front of me was a long table with four chairs behind it. There was a large mirror set into the window to my right. I was bound to a chair with tape, arms and legs, and I was wearing just a pair of boxer shorts. There wasn’t much else to see, except two wires, a red one and a blue one, coming out the left leg of my shorts and trailing across the floor to a device sitting on the table. I could feel some sort of clips attached to my scrotum. There was a dial on the top of the device, which was plugged into an ordinary wall outlet by a long, orange cord.

  They left me that way for maybe an hour, to think it over.

  So this is the part where I chew through the tape on my wrists, use my toenails to unscrew the chair bolted to the floor, hurl it through the one-way mirror, and wait for the bad guys to come on, a sharp shard of glass in my bleeding hand. I dispatch all five or six of the people who arrive using my superior Martian combat skills, strip the uniform from one of them, which just happens to fit my tall skinny frame, fight my way out of wherever it is I am, get back to civilization and rally all my oppressed Martian comrades and we repulse the evil invaders.

  I thought about it, believe me, but I never got past the chewing through the duct tape part. It turns out duct tape is strong enough to loosen teeth, and it tastes awful.

  The rest of the time I spent trying not to think about how I really, really had to go to the bathroom. Now.

  There were three of them when they finally came. All were dressed in black uniforms. The insignia on them didn’t quite fit, like old patches had been torn off and new ones sewn on. They were two men and one woman, all wearing opaque-lensed stereos with that clunkiness that spoke of military issue. There wasn’t anything remarkable about any of them. The woman had short black hair. All three were white, racially. None of them ever smiled.

  Somebody brought in coffee and served it to them, and they didn’t say thank you. I hoped their moms would be ashamed of them, but I didn’t say anything. Then they just sat there for a while, looking at me—or their faces pointed at me, anyway, though I never saw their eyes.

  Finally, the guy in the middle spoke.

  “Where is Jubal Broussard?” he asked.

  I thought that over, knowing there was a sharp, witty remark I could make that would put this bastard in his place, but I couldn’t think of it.

  Then I had it.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Where is Jubal Broussard?”

  “Jubal . . . he lives on the Falkland Islands.”

  “That’s where he lives. Where is he now?”

  “How should I know?”

  “We think you do.”

  “Then you got a problem, because I don’t know. I didn’t even know he had left.”

  “No, Ray, it’s you who have a problem, because we know that you know where he is, and you are going to tell us.”

  I knew there must be a way to convince him that he was wrong, so I opened my mouth to tell him so.

  “Fuck you!” I explained.

  His hand moved to the big dial that was connected to the wires that were connected to my balls, and I peed my pants.

  HE DIDN’T SHOCK me, it was just nerves and the need to go. And I don’t think he ever intended to shock me. It was the humiliation he was after. It worked.

  “Where is Jubal Broussard?” he said again.

  And that’s how it went for a long time.

  They seemed endlessly patient, and so totally, impassively sure of themselves that I eventually began to wonder if it was me who had gone insane. Did I know where Jubal was? Did somebody tell me and I forgot? Who the hell was Jubal, anyway?

  I kept waiting for the shock in my crotch, for them to bring out the hot screwdrivers and the splints to jab under the fingernails. I kept waiting for anything to change, and for a long time nothing did.

  I want to say that I would have held out. I want to say that if I had known where Jubal was, I wouldn’t have told them. But part of me is pretty sure that I probably would have told them. Sitting in your own cold urine, almost naked, strapped to a chair, not knowing where you are or where your family is, facing some implacable power that you know can wipe out your life like a mayfly . . . well, trained soldiers have cracked under pressure like that, as I found out later. What do you expect from an eighteen-year-old kid?

  What kind of gumption I had expected from myself was a lot more than what I managed to show, and I knew it was something I would carry with shame for the rest of my life. No one else will ever know just how long it took them to make me cry, how long it took before I was begging. I’m not going to set it down here. I’ll just say that, in time, I did cry, and I did beg. The best I can say for myself in the self-respect department is that I never got around to bargaining.

  I’m not saying I didn’t think about it: “Go ask my mother and father. Please! They’re tougher than me.” I never said that.

  Maybe I would have, eventually. Sneer at me if you want to, but not until you’ve been through it yourself.

  But finally the woman pressed a button I hadn’t seen, and the door opened. In came the “doctor.” It was the guy who had shined the light in my eyes, anyway, though I suspect that if he had a medical degree it was from the University of Dachau.

  There were no formalities at all. He came around the table, and I saw he was holding an old-fashioned syringe, the kind with a metal frame and a long, wide needle that looked like it would hurt real bad. I struggled, I guess because that’s just what you do when you think somebody is about to kill you, no matter how hopeless it is. And it did hurt, like the dickens. I watched as he depressed the plunger and about 10 cc’s of some yellowish liquid went into my arm.

  After t
hat, I didn’t worry anymore.

  THERE ISN’T A lot I can say about what came next. My memories are vague. I would be in the chair, no longer strapped in because I didn’t need to be. I had no more initiative than a garden slug, and about as much as strength. They’d ask me questions, and I’d answer them. It was sort of free association. I’d start off answering the question they asked, and then I’d wander off into dreamy stuff. I’d laugh. I’d cry. They listened to it all, and then they asked more questions. I don’t remember what the questions were. Then I’d be in the cell, thinking about absolutely nothing. I don’t recall my mind ever actually being blank before, but it was then. If they put food in front of me and told me to eat it, I’d eat it. If they didn’t bring any food, I didn’t get hungry. It was all the same to me.

  Then I’d be back in the interrogation room again and then back in the cell. This cycle repeated more than once, but that’s all I’m sure of.

  Looking back, I really don’t know why they bothered. It must have been clear to them even before they drugged me that I couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know.

  All I can figure is that it was part of a routine. The manual says you question him for X days. Then you do one of four things: you torture him physically, you kill him, you put him in jail and forget about him, or you let him go. The possibility of a trial with a judge and lawyers didn’t even occur to me. These weren’t trial sort of people.

  Routine, rote, going through the motions. Brutality is the reflex of fascism. It’s not a fallback position, it’s where you start.

  Then, for a while, nobody bothered me. I woke up two times in a row in the narrow bunk, and in between times of sleep they fed me twice. Call it one day. I didn’t do much of anything. My head still felt like glue.

  I woke up again, and for the first time in a while I was sure what my name was, how old I was, and that I lived on Mars. I didn’t recall much else. I remember that, for a while, I knew I had a mother and a father, but I couldn’t recall their names. I thought about it for hours. It made me angry, then sad. I cried about it, alone in that bright cell. I think I may have cried myself to sleep. All I know for sure is I woke up again and was served some slop for breakfast, and I felt a lot better. Not quite ready to appear on Jeopardy!, but at least with my important memories intact.