Red Lightning (36 page)

The fire had gone out on Earth, and everybody was hard at work trying to track down the modern Prometheus.

In case you didn't know, the whole title of Mary Shelley's book was
Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus
. Just thought I'd toss that in.

"We've had other quantum leaps," I told Evangeline. "But probably nothing like the discovery of fire. The Industrial Revolution was just a series of more efficient ways to use fire."

"Power," she said.

"Exactly. The steam engine, electricity... none of it was for free. You could trace all energy back to the sun, which is big-time fire. Even hydro power is the sun evaporating water that falls on the land. Oil, gas, all stored solar energy. The sun is what makes the wind blow."

"Nuclear power," she suggested.

"Another quantum leap. A different kind of fire, and at first it looked like something for nothing. You know, they were talking about free power, just giving it away, when they made the first nuclear reactor. Turned out that building them was a lot harder than they thought. Fusion... still working on it, that turned out to be even harder, but nobody's working on it too hard now that we have the Squeezer.

There was no worldwide research leading up to the Squeezer. Jubal was more like Alexander Graham Bell, working in his lab, suddenly he's got a telephone."

"But Bell built on other people's work," Evangeline said. "Electrical experimenters, chemists... I don't know. Didn't Jubal?"

"I don't
know
," I had to admit. "When you can get him to talk about it, he talks about superstrings and branes and esoteric stuff like that. I don't understand it at all. I'd always assumed that other scientists did... I mean, the ones they picked to go to the Falklands and study at his feet. I guess
everybody
assumed that."

"And you're saying they were wrong."

She thought about it. I could practically see her mind going down the same paths my own had taken when Travis revealed this to us. She shook her head.

"It doesn't make sense. Look at your caveman. He starts a fire, and everybody sees how he does it. How hard can it be?"

"Pretty tough for somebody with an IQ of maybe five, and an instinctive fear of fire. All animals fear fire except us... and we treat it with healthy respect."

"Still..."

"You're looking at it wrong. Say the caveman genius comes into the cave with a shotgun. He's figured out how to make one. And think about what all that would take. One, he has to invent gunpowder. Two, he has to figure out how to make iron, cast it, bore it out, make some sort of spark mechanism. And I wasn't kidding, much, about the IQ. Say he tries to explain how to
make
one to these other people, folks who have a vocabulary of nine or ten words and still haven't quite figured out all the uses of the opposable thumb. You figure they'd be able to mix gunpowder? Could a chimpanzee?"

"You're saying the best minds on the planet are so far behind Jubal that they're like apes?"

I shrugged. "No, it doesn't really work that way. Analogies only go so far. Jubal's the smartest man I've ever met, but there are people who are just as smart as him."

"So what's the story?"

"I wish I knew. Jubal's head's been examined just about every way a head can be examined, trying to find out what's different about it. Your first thought has got to be that when his dad nearly killed him, beating him with that nail-studded two-by-four, something happened to his brain. One theory is that some part of his brain adjusted, some cross connection to the higher math functions or something like that – and he was already very good at higher math before he was hurt – but it's all guesswork. There's been fights about who gets Jubal's brain when he's dead, and plenty of people who'd like to take it apart while he's still alive. Some of them even claim he'd survive the experience."

"Which brings us to the golden goose."

"The goose that laid the golden eggs."

"Whatever."

"Yeah, but in Jubal's case it's more like that old joke about my brother is crazy, he thinks he's a chicken. We'd get him some help, but we need the eggs."

She looked over at Jubal again, snoring quietly in his safety web.

"Poor guy. All he's ever wanted is to be left alone."

"That's why he's tried so hard for twenty years to teach gunpowder making and iron smelting to the other monkeys. But there's something about the Squeezer that no other human mind has succeeded in grasping. Not yet anyway. There's a thousand theories about what that might be... but they're monkey theories, they're bound to be wrong. Jubal's
brain
is the quantum leap this time. He seems to have the first human brain that is able to deal with quantum mechanics on a practical level. And there's only one of them."

"And we have him," she said, quietly.

We both looked at him for a while.

"We are so fucked," she said.

"You said it."

"What are we going to do?"

"Hello... Mom?"

"Ray, where are you? And why aren't I getting a picture?"

"I'm at my trailer." No need for specifics. And there was no picture because I'd turned it off. "I guess the camera's broken. Listen, Mom –"

"Have you finished those applications, Ray? The school year is beginning soon, and I've told you and told you."

"Mom... I need to see you."

Long pause.

Do all moms have extrasensory perception, or is it just mine? I can pull off anything with Dad, just distract him a little and there you go. But something in the very little I said, or in the way I said it, had tickled her trouble radar.

"Sure," she said, cautiously. "Come right over. I'm home."

"I sort of need to see you here. And sort of... soon."

Longer pause.

"Are you in trouble, honey?" Not
What have you done?
I really appreciated that.

"There is some trouble, yeah."

Very short pause.

"I'll be on the next bus."

I'd made the call from the other bubble, the one that used to be packed with tourists but was pretty deserted now, what with the recent violence.

I'd moved out here so in case I was traced and someone came to do something about it, Evangeline would see me being rousted and try to think of something to do with Jubal before the troops descended on my trailer again.

As to what exactly that would be... we hadn't gotten that far.

But if they were watching, they were subtle. Mom showed up along with a few other passengers and I jetted over to her. She looked a question at me, and I just shook my head and took her hand and led her along toward the trailer.

Let me tell you, I was never so happy to have someone to dump a problem on.

About eight hours later a guy and a girl guided another guy down the wide tunnel leading to the Phobos air locks. They each had hold of an arm. All three of them were in space suits, as you'd expect of people heading toward a lock. All three of them had their helmets on and locked down.

How do you tell a drunk in a space suit? By the barf on his faceplate. This chubby little fellow's was coated with the stuff, and there were big splashes of it on the outside, too, and from time to time a bit of it flew off. Everybody gave the trio a wide berth, given the behavior of vomit in free fall.

Not an uncommon sight in Phobos, at least the tourist part. The three people were the very picture of two disgusted employees and one fat Earthie with a load on.

At least that's what we hoped. If only we could get Jubal to curse and wave his arms around and protest that he'd get us fired, the picture would be perfect. But Jubal was sound asleep.

Did I mention that sometimes my mom can be a little scary?

She pushed into my trailer, glanced at Evangeline, who pointed forlornly at the far corner of the room. Mom looked over there, at Jubal snoring peacefully. I think her eyes widened a little bit. I can't be sure. Then she faced me.

She sighed.

"Tell me about it," she said.

We filled her in on the story, such as it was. I'm sure glad we had Jubal there with us, or I wouldn't have believed it myself. Mom heard us out and then was silent for a few minutes.

"Okay," she said, finally. "We've got to get him someplace secure."

"Preferably with some gravity," I pointed out. "Evangeline, do you have any more of that dope?"

"Mrs. Garcia, I –"

"Hon, it's Mrs. Strickland-Garcia, but if you're going to be seeing my son, I'd prefer it if you'd call me Kelly."

Evangeline had a hard time, but eventually choked it out.

"K-k-kelly, I don't use that stuff, I don't do any drugs, I just know –"

"Evangeline, I don't care about that right now. In fact, right now I'm glad you had the contacts. So do you have more?"

"I can get it."

She handed Evangeline a wad of money. "If possible, get something that will sedate him without totally knocking him out. We need him able to answer questions, at least as much as he's ever able to. Lord help me, I'm brokering a drug deal with a teenager. Never mind. While you're out, rent a suit. Short, portly, would be my guess. And pick up a can of soup. Vegetable would be good. Unless you have some, Ray."

"Soup..."

"Close your mouth, son, some of the garbage in this dump might drift in. Never mind. Soup, Evangeline. And scissors and a razor –"

"That I've got, Mom."

She favored me with half a smile and touched my check. Well, I did need to shave. Sometimes every other day.

Evangeline left and Mom and I extracted Jubal from the safety web. She set me to work shaving off his beard and cutting his hair short. I ended up with a completely different Jubal, one I'd never seen before. Nobody else had, either, which couldn't hurt.

"It will fool people, but it won't fool scanners," Mom said. "But I have an idea about that." Lord, she hated those things. You never knew when one might be probing your eyes, scanning your irises like the UPC code on a packaged steak and comparing it to the universal identity database.

Evangeline came back from her shopping trip, and we all worked together to stuff Jubal into the suit and get it fitted as best we could. His eyes were wandering around. As a precaution we tethered him in place with a few tie-downs hooked to rings on the suit.

"What have you got, Evangeline?" Mom asked.

"Pills. Still in the bottles."

Mom read a few labels, googled the names, and settled on a little pink one. Evangeline got a water bottle, and Mom gave Jubal the pill.

"Stop her," he said.

"Stop who, Jubal?" I asked.

He shook his head, looking groggy. He worked his mouth a few times, his eyes rolled around. He tried again.

"Stop her."

We all looked at each other.

"Not stop.
Her
," he said, desperately. "
Stop-per
. Where my stopper?"

"Does he mean a stopper, like a cork?" Evangeline asked us.

"Don't feel too
good
, me. My... stopper. Little box I brung with me. Maybe it's under these silver pants..." He started groping futilely at the outside of the suit.

I went to my shelf and got the little box he'd had with him inside the black bubble. I showed it to him. He reached for it. Mom put out her hand and stopped him.

"Is this the thing that makes the bubbles Ray told me about?" she asked.

"This is that thing," he agreed.

"I don't think you should have it right now, Jubal, I think –"

I thought he was going to cry.

"Please, Kelly, I have to have that thing. I have to."

"Jubal, I don't think it's safe."

"It safe, I promise, me. Oh, it real safe." Then he mumbled something.

"What was that?" I asked.

"My fault," he said. "All my fault. But this, it safe. Can't hurt nothing, this." He let out a weak laugh. "Harmless, this. Safe, this."

Mom looked dubious, but she handed it to him. He flipped a switch on the side, and Mom winced. Nothing happened.

"Safety," he explained. "It turned off, now, this thing." Then he wrapped his hand around it and curled up and seemed to go to sleep.

That's when somebody started pounding on the door. "You expecting anybody?" Mom asked.

"Nobody who pounds." I admit it; my heart was in my throat.

"Back door," Evangeline said, and headed toward it. She was still in motion when somebody started pounding on that one, too. For the first time I saw Evangeline disconcerted in free fall, flailing wildly and smacking one hand painfully against a shelf as she tried to twist and somehow claw her way through the air back toward us. In a cartoon it would have worked, but in real life she had to wait until her feet hit the back door, and she pushed off from it like it was on fire, coming back toward us too fast. I caught her in my arms and hugged her. She was shivering, and didn't seem to notice that she was bleeding from a small cut on her pinkie.

"Open this door at once. I repeat, open this door at once."

Mom started toward the door. I reached for her, not wanting her to be behind it if shooting started, but she was just out of my reach. She opened the little peephole and took a quick look, then slammed it closed.

"A soldier," she said, quietly.

"Just one?" I asked.

"How many do you need, if he's armed and we're not?" Mom asked.

"At least one at the back door, too," Evangeline pointed out.

I was in no mood to give in without a fight. I had to have a plan. The pounding started again, making it hard to think. "Open this door at once," the voice said.

"If they blow that door, somebody's going to get hurt," Mom said. And I knew the fight was over. And really, what sort of fight could I have put up? The closest thing I had to a weapon in that trailer was a kitchen knife.

"I'm going to count to three," the voice said.

"Don't bother," Mom shouted. She looked at me. "Unless you have a better idea?"

"No, Mom," I said, quietly. I put my arms around her, gave her a hug.