Red Lightning Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  “JOHN VARLEY IS THE BEST WRITER IN AMERICA.”—TOM CLANCY

  More praise for

  RED LIGHTNING

  “Varley is a kind of latter-day, humanist Heinlein, someone who writes science fiction with imagination and verve . . . A cracking, exciting space-adventure tale that’ll have you laughing and cheering as it goes . . . There are few writers whose work I love more than John Varley’s, purely love—but now that I’ve finished Red Lightning, I love his stuff even more.”

  —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

  “A cosmic coming-of-age novel . . . This is possibly the first post-Katrina novel in SF’s history, depicting a global disaster in hard-edged terms informed by recent real-world events . . . [A] keen-edged depiction of off-world existence . . . plenty of exciting action . . . enthralling everyman heroics.”

  —Paul Di Filippo, SciFi.com

  “John Varley blends past fiction, current events, and future tech to create a story all his own.”—SF Site

  “A highly satisfying sequel to Red Thunder . . . Much more than a simple adventure story, full of poignant moments and relevant social commentary.”—Kirkus Reviews

  “At his Heinlein-channeling best.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Fans of Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars may want to see how Varley treats a similar voice and themes.”—SFRevu

  “A highly effective blend of hard science; social, political, and ecological commentary; quirky, engaging characters; and razor-sharp, satirical humor. An exciting, fully satisfying sequel to the heart-pounding, mind-grabbing, funny story begun in Red Thunder, the further adventures of Ray Garcia-Strickland and his family will win a place of honor on SF readers’ bookshelves.”—BookLoons

  Praise for

  RED THUNDER

  “Varley’s great strength is in his characterizations, but in Red Thunder he also shows a strong sense of place. The novel is also in a sense an elegy: Science fiction readers have long hoped to travel in outer space, and Varley implies that this will be possible only if we discover something radically different from anything now known to physicists. But if you are willing to simply fantasize about fleeing your office cubicle and becoming a heroic space explorer, this novel will fulfill your wishes.”—The Washington Post

  “The heart-pounding space race is on! [A] riveting SF thriller . . . with hilarious, well-drawn characters, extraordinary situations presented plausibly, plus exciting action and adventure.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Fast-paced . . . engaging characters.”—Rocky Mountain News

  “Full of little gems of wit and intelligence.”—Booklist

  “[A] fun-filled adventure. Varley matches a serious literary style with an outrageous plot and he’s one of the few writers in the field who could make it work.”—Chronicle

  “[Red Thunder] is unlike anything John Varley has previously written, and yet it bears all the hallmarks of his past work . . . startling ideas, pellucid dreams, amiable characters, a gorgeous specificity of detail, and a sense of honest victories achieved at real costs. Dedicated to the master of such topical tomorrows, Robert Heinlein, this novel also pays allegiance to the comic capers of Carl Hiaasen. Varley lauds the unconquerable human spirit of exploration. But it’s just the frosting on the rich cake of practical, visionary comic adventure he’s already supplied in full.”—Science Fiction Weekly

  Praise for

  MAMMOTH

  “Imaginative and engaging . . . Varley is in top form.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “[A] rollicking, bittersweet tale of time travel and ecology . . . Varley’s sparkling wit pulls one surprise after another out of this unconventional blend of science and social commentary.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Terrific . . . H. G. Wells meets Jurassic Park.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “The author of Red Thunder excels in imaginative SF adventure, bringing together an intriguing premise and resourceful characters in a tale of mystery, suspense, and a voyage through time.”—Library Journal

  “Varley’s fans won’t be disappointed.”—Booklist

  Praise for

  JOHN VARLEY

  “One of science fiction’s most important writers.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Science fiction doesn’t get much better than this.”

  —Spider Robinson

  “Inventive . . . strong and satisfying.”—The New York Times

  “Varley is a mind-grabber.”—Roger Zelazny

  “Superior science fiction.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Varley has earned the mantle of Heinlein.”—Locus

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ACE

  The John Varley Reader: Thirty Years of Short Fiction

  Books by John Varley

  THE OPHIUCHI HOTLINE

  THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION

  PICNIC ON NEARSIDE

  (formerly titled THE BARBIE MURDERS)

  MILLENNIUM

  BLUE CHAMPAGNE

  STEEL BEACH

  THE GOLDEN GLOBE

  RED THUNDER

  MAMMOTH

  RED LIGHTNING

  THE GAEAN TRILOGY

  TITAN

  WIZARD

  DEMON

  THE JOHN VARLEY READER:

  THIRTY YEARS OF SHORT FICTION

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Albany, Auckland 1311, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  RED LIGHTNING

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2006 by John Varley.

  All rights reserved.
<
br />   No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-0-441-01488-0

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to the memory of

  Don and Mary Stilwell,

  and to Jim, John, Jane, Joe, Janice, and Jerry.

  1

  MARS SUCKS.

  If you’re from Mars, you already know what I’m talking about. If you’re from Earth and have read all the glossy travel brochures and watched all the fancy promos, you’re thinking I must be nuts. What sucks about swanky hotels and souped-up sand buggies? What sucks about the longest ski slopes ever built, and low-gee rock climbing where you race up the Valles Marineris like a lizard on a wall? Mars is like the biggest cruise ship in the system, nothing to do but have fun, fun, fun, and your daddy never takes the T-bird away, like it says in one of Dad’s corny old songs. What’s wrong with that?

  Nothing, for a few weeks.

  At least, none of the Earthies seem to mind it, they’ve been coming over like rats to a big red Gouda cheese ever since I was a kid, more of them every year. First it was just the rich ones. Not that it cost all that much money to get them there but because the cruise lines could charge whatever they wanted to since there weren’t enough cruise ships to take everybody who wanted to go.

  But Earthies know a good thing when they see it, and soon there were a lot more ships, but there weren’t enough places to stay once they got here. Can’t just dump a lot of overmuscled Earthies out on the sand in man-shaped Ziploc baggies with a bottle of oxygen. (Well, I wouldn’t mind it, but you sure would use up a lot of Earthies that way. Not enough, of course; Earthies reproduce like rabbits, and not even their habit of tossing nuclear bombs around seems to make a dent in the population.)

  Now we’re building more hotels, and you know what that means: more Earthies. And if you want to know the biggest reason why Mars sucks, you’ve got it right there.

  Earthies.

  On any given day there are more Earthies on Mars than Martians, Reds and Greens together. In the summertime there can be twice as many, and all I can say is, it’s a good thing that summer only comes every two years.

  MY NAME IS Ramon D. Garcia-Strickland, but don’t ever call me Ramon unless you want a fat lip or you’re a teacher I can’t hit. I’m Ray to my friends, and to all the decent teachers, too. And don’t ask what the D. stands for, either. I swear, parents can get the goofiest ideas, and I don’t care if it is a name that goes back six generations in Mom’s side of the family. Trust me, if that name ever got out I’d be having fistfights every day.

  I was born five years after the first four people set foot on Mars. You may have heard of it, if they still teach history at your school. (I understand they’ve pretty much given it up at a lot of schools on Earth, but they still drill it into you at Burroughs High.) Which is okay, I like history, it’s one of my best subjects. Even if I didn’t like it, nothing short of an A is acceptable to my mother, who makes sure we get our studying done every evening before we’re allowed out.

  I mention this because one of those first two men on Mars was my father, Manny Garcia, and one of the first two women was my mother, Kelly Strickland, though they weren’t much older than me at the time. You want to talk Martian pioneers, you’re talking about my family. Even if you don’t know any history you might have seen the movie or the TV series on an oldies channel, and you may have thought it was just made up, like most movies, but this one was true.

  For just a little over a million dollars they built a spaceship called Red Thunder out of old railroad tank cars. They didn’t do it alone. They couldn’t have done it all without my uncle Jubal, who is a crazy genius.

  You should have heard of Jubal, since he’s the most important man on Earth, but I once ran into an Earthie about my age who said he was into music and he didn’t know who John Lennon was, so you never know.

  Okay, first, my uncle Jubal and my uncle Travis aren’t really my uncles, we aren’t even related, but me and my sister started calling them that when we were very young and that’s how we think of them, as family. An odd family, but my own. Travis is Travis Broussard, who was once an astronaut on Earth, back when space travel involved strapping yourself into a very dangerous guided missile rocket machine and keeping your fingers crossed. You wouldn’t get me up in one of those Space Shuttles or VentureStars for any amount of money. I’m not crazy. The VStars even looked like tombstones.

  Travis had a cousin, Jubal, who might have been almost anything he wanted to be until his religious maniac father beat him on the head with a two-by-four studded with nails. After that, he was suited only to be a mad scientist. He made something that was truly revolutionary, something that to this day no one has completely figured out: the Squeezer.

  Now I’ll bet you know the dude I’m talking about.

  It violated just about every law of physics you want to name, but it worked, and what it did was squeeze stuff really, really, really hard. Any stuff at all: air, water, rocks, garbage, that big Earthie bastard who beat the crap out of me a couple years ago when I objected to him putting his hands on my girlfriend (don’t I wish!). You could take a cubic mile of seawater and squeeze it down to the size of a football, and then you could make a little hole in it, a discontinuity, and what came out was one hell of a lot of energy. You could use that energy to power a rocket like no rocket anyone had ever seen, a rocket that didn’t need to carry one hundred times its own weight in fuel just to get out of Earth’s atmosphere. That’s because the football didn’t have the mass of the seawater you squeezed, it didn’t weigh anything, not even the Planck mass, it had gone somewhere else for a while. You could float it in the air like a silver soap bubble. In fact, if you didn’t keep your eye on it you could easily lose it, it would just blow away. One of Jubal’s early bubbles did just that, and my father found it, and that’s how they came to go to Mars.

  Free energy. The only known free lunch in the universe.

  But nothing is really free.

  THAT DAY IT all started was pretty much like any other weekend day. I had spent most of it in Phobos and was on my way back down when my phone rang. Not the very best time to get a call, but it was from Jubal and I knew he’d be waiting by his phone for an answer and would worry if I didn’t get back soon. He understands time lag as well as anybody, but he’s a nervous man, and a lonely one, and I’m one of his favorite people, so I never keep him waiting. I called up a picture window on the inside of my pressure suit helmet and ticked ANSWER.

  What I saw was a man with a round, jolly face and a wild shock of white hair and white beard. Jubal’s hair had all gone white at an early age, which led a lot of people to think he was older than he really was, which was in his fifties. You can’t tell it from a head-and-shoulders phone shot, of course, but he was quite a small man, not much over five feet, though chubby.

  “Hi-de-hi, Ray,” he said, “an how happy I am for you to see me!”

  Jubal’s got his own way of talking. A lot of it is a thick Cajun accent and strange syntax. When Dad wrote his book he tried to reproduce it pretty much exactly, but I’m not going to do that. It strikes me as a little condescending. But there was a definite flavor to his speech that is delightful, and I’ll try to retain that.

  Then there was the usual pause. He denies it, but I’m sure he’s wai
ting for me to answer back. He can’t help himself. He comes from so far back in the swamp and such poverty that he didn’t make his first phone call until he was eight or nine. He’s usually pretty loud, too, unlike his face-to-face mumble, as if he had to shout to be heard all the way to Mars.

  “How’s da weather up dere?” he said, and chuckled. This is about as sophisticated as Jubal gets in the joke department. He knows very well that the weather on Mars is one of two things: bad, or very bad. It also has to do with my height, a joke tall people quickly get tired of, but with Jubal I didn’t mind. He always says it as if he’s just that moment thought of it . . . and maybe he has.

  “We got our usual storm blowin’ here,” he went on. “De penguins don’t mind it, so neither do I. Was out rowin’ dis morning, me, an I seen me a whale. Coulda been a big blue, or maybe a fin. I taken off after it, but de Captain tole me dat was a no-no. I had to let that big boy go, me, or de Captain he would of put a few rounds into him, just for meanness sake.”

  Jubal lives on the Falkland Islands. The only other things that live there are millions of penguins, and the military contingent there to protect him and the scientists and staff there to take care of him. The man in charge is actually a former general from Russia whose name Jubal can’t pronounce and I can’t remember, but Jubal always calls him the Captain.

  When Jubal goes rowing, which is his favorite activity when he’s upset or thinking, he’s accompanied by two heavily armed destroyers and there are at least three fighter planes in the air at all times. The protection around the President of the United States is nothing compared to the security around Jubal.