Red Thunder

by John Varley

  Travis looked relieved… a little. I could pretty much read his mind: How far can I trust these flaky kids? Well, short of torture, he could trust me all the way, and I was pretty sure of the others, too.

  Travis scowled.

  “I hate this thing. I really hate it. If only there was a way to release [141] its energy slowly. Control the release. We could be solving the world’s energy problem.”

  “I can do dat t’ing,” Jubal said. For a moment Travis looked like he was about to go on with what he was saying, then he did a double-take right out of Laurel and Hardy.

  “Say again, Jubal?”

  “I can maybe fix dat t’ing, do what you say. Dribble it out, maybe.”

  “Maybe? You haven’t actually tried to…”

  “No, mon cher. Travis, why don’ you tell me ’bout de folks goin’ to Mars, huh?”

  Travis got a bad case of conversational whiplash over that one. Mars?

  “You never asked, Jubal. And I didn’t know you’d be interested.”

  “I’m innersted, me. Travis, de fus’ folks on Mars, dey should be Americans.”

  “Yeah, I wish it was going to be Americans, too. But it’s too late.”

  “Not too late. No, suh! Not too late at all. I’m goin’ to Mars, yes, I am, and I beat de Chinese, too. Even if I hafta make my own spaceship, me.”

  Travis stared at his cousin, then drained his long-neck bottle of Dixie beer.

  PART TWO

  15

  * * *

  THE BUILDING KELLY wanted to show us was over on Turnbull Bay, across from the New Smyrna Beach airport, one of a dozen similar structures built in marshy ground as part of an industrial park that never quite panned out. Only three or four of the buildings were currently occupied.

  It was made of corrugated metal lapped over a steel framework. There were streaks of rust all over the sides and tall weeds growing in cracked concrete and along a railroad siding that was one of the chief reasons we were looking at the building. A sign along the roof ridge read: THE R. W. WHITE COMPANY.

  Kelly parked in front of a loading dock with three truck bays, all closed and locked. Dak and Alicia pulled up in Blue Thunder as we were getting out.

  We all stood there for a while, taking it in. It was noon on a hot, muggy day, five months away from M-day, the day the Chinese were going to land on Mars.

  “Railroad siding goes right into the building, that’s good,” Dak said.

  Kelly took a big ring of keys out of her purse and led us to a small [146] door scaled for people, not boxcars. The third key she tried turned out to be the right one.

  It was cooler inside, which surprised me. The concrete floor was part of it, but I saw that overhead there were big fans that kept the air moving.

  “I left the fans on after I saw the place yesterday,” Kelly said. “It was like an oven in here without them.” She turned to an electrical panel and flipped six rows of switches, one row at a time. Big overhead lights came on in sequence and we could see the extent of the space inside.

  “We don’t need no more than a third of this space,” Dak said.

  “Dak, if you think there’s another place within fifty miles of-”

  “Shush, babe, I ain’t complaining. Better too much than not enough.”

  “It was a hell of a list you gave me.” She began ticking off points on her fingers. “Railroad spur. High ceiling-but you never said how high. On the water. Heavy lifting capability-and again, you didn’t say how heavy. That traveling crane up there is rated for five hundred tons.”

  “More than enough, more than enough, Kelly,” Dak said.

  Kelly got out her laser range finder-a real good thing to take along if you’re hunting for an empty factory, lots better than climbing to the ceiling and dropping a string. She pointed it at the roof, then glanced at the readout.

  “One hundred twenty feet,” she said. “Is that enough?”

  “It’ll have to be,” I told her. “We’ll build it with that in mind.”

  Our voices echoed in the big empty space.

  The building consisted of two distinct areas. The part where we were was 120 feet high, as Kelly had just determined, maybe a hundred feet wide, and two hundred feet deep. Running on heavy rails overhead was a big traveling crane that could cover that entire area.

  The rest of the building was only about twenty feet high. It accounted for two-thirds of the floor space. In a far corner of this lower area was standing water. Above it were rust streaks. Kelly saw where I was looking.

  “That leak would be easy to patch,” she said.

  “I don’t think we’ll really need to,” I said.

  [147] We followed her to the big doors. She slapped an outsized button and the big doors began to slide back, making warning beeps like a bus backing up. The sun streamed in and we all squinted but Kelly, who was wearing her sunglasses.

  Outside was a wooden wharf. An old guy sat on the pier and dangled a line down around the pilings. He looked at us, then went back to fishing. I could smell creosote, and warm brackish water, and fish.

  “The rails for the crane run right out to the end of the wharf,” Kelly pointed out. “You said something about a barge. You can get a barge right up under the crane here.”

  “That’ll make loading it a lot easier,” Dak said.

  Kelly pointed to the east, then north.

  “Turnbull Bay here connects with Strickland Bay. Then under the bridge on U.S. 1 and you’re in the Ponce de Leon Cut, turn left, and a mile later you’re in the open ocean.”

  “Right there by the Coast Guard station?” I asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Port,” Dak said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t make a left turn in a boat. You steer to port.”

  “Oh, the great admiral speaks,” Kelly muttered. She was not in a great mood.

  “How high is the highway bridge?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll measure it later.”

  “Wait a minute,” Alicia said. “Strickland Bay? As in Strickland Mercedes? As in… Kelly Strickland?”

  “My family has lived in the area a long time,” Kelly said. Myself, I hadn’t even known that wide stretch of shallow water had a name.

  “Mine, too,” Dak said. “Only we been fixin’ the cars your daddy been selling.”

  “Has somebody got a problem with this?” Kelly asked, angrily. She looked at each of us. Nobody said anything. She sighed and shook her head.

  “We got lucky here, people,” she said. “I looked at seventeen places [148] that were almost right, but then one thing or another didn’t work. No heavy lifting, no rail spur, crowded neighborhood, or way too expensive.”

  “How much for this?” Alicia asked. Kelly named a figure that made me a little short of breath.

  “So, doing the math,” I said, “we’re looking at six months at that rate, which-”

  “Did I say month? That figure was per week.”

  I needed a place to sit down. Talking about that much money makes me queasy.

  “I can find you a dozen places much cheaper… but without the crane. Here’s the deal, folks. This place is in a legal limbo at the moment. The original developer went broke. There are lawsuits working their way through the courts. They can only rent month to month, which suits us down to the ground. There’s a group of investors who want to tear all this sh-… this stuff down and build a golf course.”

  “Just what Florida needs,” Dak said. “Another golf course.”

  “How’d you find it?” Alicia asked. Kelly gave us a small smile.

  “In my father’s files. He’s the man behind the investors. He may or may not own this building, depending on how a judge rules on whether it was all done legally.”

  “I thought your daddy sold cars,” Dak said.

  “He’s thinking of getting involved more in land speculation.”

  “Just what Florida needs,” I said. “Anothe
r land developer.” Kelly punched my arm, playfully, but with an edge to it this time. She really was feeling bad.

  “So what do you say? Should I put down a deposit?”

  “We’ll run it by Travis this evening,” I said.

  “Travis. Right,” she said, bitterly.

  No love currently lost between Kelly and Travis. And to think, no more than a week ago we were just like one big happy family…

  16

  * * *

  NOTHING FURTHER WAS said the night of Travis’s return about Jubal’s plan to build him his own spaceship, him. Travis helped him bundle up his belongings, which now included a nice selection of original shell people by Aunt Maria. We stood together and waved good-bye as Travis drove out of the parking lot.

  “I’m going to miss that Jubal,” Mom said.

  Little did she know how soon she would change her mind about that.

  A FEW DAYS went by. After all the togetherness while Jubal was staying with us, we four who were in on the big secret stayed apart, maybe taking a breather from each other. I only spoke to Kelly twice in that time, over the phone.

  On the fourth day Travis called me.

  “Jubal wants to talk to you,” he said. “He hates talking on the telephone, won’t do it unless it’s an emergency. Could you come over sometime this afternoon?”

  [150] “Sure,” I said. “Things are running more smoothly here since he fixed things up. I can be there in two, three hours.”

  “Good enough. Thanks, Manny.”

  I hurried through the rest of my chores and hopped on the Triumph. I figured it would be my last ride on the grand old masterpiece, so I opened it up a little, as much as I dared with the damned empty sidecar cramping my style.

  TRAVIS WAS WAITING for me by the pool. He had a big pitcher of iced tea, and he poured me a glass without asking if I wanted one. I took a big drink, then sat down.

  “Thanks for coming, Manny,” he said.

  “Sure. What’s the problem?”

  “Jubal and his pipe dreams is the problem.”

  “He said an American should be the first man on Mars.”

  “He meant just what he said. And if those Ares Seven clowns aren’t up to the task, he’ll just go there himself.”

  “Sounds nuts.”

  He rubbed his unshaven chin with one hand.

  “No, the nutty thing is, it might actually be possible. Outrageous, goofy beyond belief… but I can’t actually say it’s impossible. In fact, we’re going out tomorrow to the ’Glades to do a little testing on the Broussard drive, see just how possible it is.”

  “Broussard drive?”

  He grinned. “Got to call it something. But there’s things I need to know, now that Jubal says he can release the energy slowly. Like, just what comes out after you’ve squeezed a cubic acre of seawater to the size of a tennis ball? Protons? Atomic nuclei? Gamma rays? I haven’t tried to do the math on it because it makes my head hurt.”

  “Has Jubal done the math?”

  “I don’t know. Jubal and me… well, we’re hardly speaking, Manny.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  [151] “Manny… I know this isn’t fair. I know it’s a lot to ask. But… could you take a shot at talking Jubal out of this?”

  “Travis, I…”

  “He says you’re his best friend, Manny. He’ll listen to you. I don’t know if you realize justy how much of an impression you and your family made in his life. All he talks about, except about building a spaceship and flying it to Mars, is you and your friends. His friends. All I ask is you take a shot. Will you do that for me, Manny?”

  I FOUND JUBAL where Travis had said he would be, deep in the darkness of his laboratory in the prefab barn. He had made a big, primitive desk with sawhorses and a four-by-eight sheet of plywood. He was surrounded by stacks of downloaded books, printed out, two-hole punched, and bound together with string. It made me think of a child’s fortress, made of bricks of compacted snow, though I’d never had a chance to build such a thing. His high-speed printer was spitting out another book at about ten pages per second.

  I saw his face before he saw me, and the expression there was one I’d never seen before. Jubal was mighty worried. Then he looked up, and the frown wrinkles vanished as he recognized me. He used a number two pencil with the eraser chewed off to mark his place in one of the Big Chief elementary school pads he used to take notes.

  “Manuel Garcia, my fren’! I am so glad dat you see me! Entrez, entrez, come on in, chile, you wanna Popsicle?” He hurried to a small freezer in the shadows and came back with a grape Popsicle, which he knew was my favorite.

  The next little while was taken up with the social pleasantries Jubal would no more think of dispensing with than he would eat a meal without saying a prayer. I told him we were all doing fine, that the business was running better than it ever had, thanks largely to him. He asked about several people in the neighborhood, many of whom I’d never met until he brought his infectious enthusiasm into our lives. People like Mr. Ortega the grocer, who I had dealt with since I was old [152] enough to cross the street by myself, but who I had never really talked to until Jubal and I bought a bag of fresh oranges from him and spent the next twenty minutes learning about fruit.

  “Still got dat rifle I tell Ralph Shabazz I fix,” Jubal admitted. “You tell him Jubal been mighty busy dis week, hah?”

  “I’ll do dat t’ing.” He laughed like he always did when I spoke a little Jubalese. He knew I wasn’t mocking him. He knew his accent was sometimes almost impossible for strangers to understand. He said he’d tried to shake it, speak like the people on the television, “Spit de crawdads outta my mouth an comb de swamp moss outta my hair,” as he put it. No luck.

  “Travis is worried about you, Jubal.”

  “I know dat, me. He t’ink I’m crazy.” He touched the depression in his head, the awful wound given him by his father.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  “Tanks, mon cher. T’ank you fo’ dat. But he worried, Travis. He plenty worried.”

  “About what?”

  He sprang to his feet and hurried to the plywood desk. He swept papers aside until he came to the notebook he wanted. I could see him writing his home-school lessons in a book just like that one.

  Looking over his shoulder, there was very little I saw that I could relate to. I knew it was math, but it was Greek to me. Actually, a lot of it was Greek. I recognized the letter pi, and theta. I didn’t think it meant he was pledging fraternities. I saw a few equals signs. A square root radical. That was about it. Nothing else was familiar.

  “What is this?” I asked, without much hope.

  “Dis de Vaseline drive.” Vaseline? Oh, right. VASIMR. The ion drive the Ares Seven were currently using to get to Mars.

  “Slow, but steady, right?” I asked.

  “Should be, oughta be. But is it slow enough, hah?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dey in a big hurry, yes dey are. Dey aimin’ to get dere, get back to home fus’, steal some glory, oh yes.”

  He looked into my eyes with an intensity I’d never seen before. This [153] was Jubal the genius. This was Jubal zipping, flashing, flying through regions I knew I’d never even crawl through. This was a Jubal to stand in awe of, and believe me, I did, from that moment on.

  “Look, rah cheer,” he said, and pointed at his notebook, talking so fast that even if he spoke fluent Floridian I’d probably never have understood. That notebook led to another. Stacks of printouts toppled as he bored through them, hunting for the diagrams he wanted. I tried signaling him that I was in way over my head, but he was off in his own world. So I stood there and tried to soak up at least an idea of why he felt the American Ares Seven was doomed.

  IT TOOK HIM half an hour to make his presentation to what was, for all practical purposes, an absent audience. Absent, as in the space between my poor ears. I mean, I wasn’t even fit to pound the erasers in Jubal’s class
room.

  “You see, Manny? You see why it so important?”

  Anyone but Jubal, I’d be wondering if he was just rubbing it in. Because I didn’t see, might never see… and my appraisal of my own prospects for an education in science had never been lower.

  On the other hand, how many people get tutoring from Albert Einstein’s smarter brother, and how many could keep up?

  “I see that you think there’s something to worry about, Jubal,” I said.

  He nodded, absently chewing on the end of another pencil. The eraser broke off and he took it out of his mouth and frowned at it, as if wondering how it got there.

  “Travis, he t’ink dis idea of us all buildin’ us a spaceship an goin’ to Mars, he t’ink dat a stupid idea.”

  Us? First I’d heard of it. All of us?

  “I dunno. Travis, he know a fis’ful more ’bout de ‘impractical amplications’ of t’ings dan I can do, oh yes.” He tapped his head, shrugged fatalistically. “Maybe getting’ dere fust, maybe dat ain’t important. But dem Ares Seven folks, dey gonna be in a heap a trouble. An dat means de mother a his two sweet little girls, yes. We gotta go out dere, Manny. We be de onliest one’s what can be dere to help out, de time comes.”

  [154] “I’m convinced, Jubal.” All of us? When do we start?

  “But not Travis! Manny, I…” he trailed off, muttering to himself.

  “Go ahead, Jubal. Say it. We’re friends, you can ask me anything.”

  He studied me. Jubal had never completely trusted anyone but Travis, which was why he was finding it so hard to go against him.

  “Travis, he ain’t talkin’ to me, Manny.”

  I thought it was Jubal who wasn’t talking to… Well, I knew the same story often looked entirely different to two different people.

  And I knew that was exactly the sort of problem you didn’t want to get in the middle of. Never in a million years. No way, Jose! Include me out.

  “Would you go talk to Travis, Manny?”

  “Sure, Jubal. Sure I will.”