Rolling Thunder (50 page)

We felt nothing at first. You don’t want to hit a big rock like
Rolling Thunder
with a croquet mallet; you want to ease it forward. But gradually we began to feel a shift beneath our feet. The rock was still rotating, of course, providing two-thirds of a gee, and it always would rotate. But now we were getting another thrust vector. The ground that had formerly had a slight slope to it now became level.

“Point oh five gees,” Travis announced. “One-twentieth of a gravity. It may take us a while, but we’ll get there.”

By “there,” he meant near-light speed. Jubal explained it to me, how it doesn’t really matter how fast you accelerate, as long as you can do it forever. It just keeps building and building and building; why be in a hurry? If we boosted at one gee, we’d have to have decks perpendicular to the axis of thrust. This way, we got all our serious “gravity” from the spin, and a little extra at right angles from the thrust.

Once you reached a big fraction of light speed—you could never actually reach it, according to relativity, and confirmed to me by my genius husband—it hardly mattered how far you were going, unless you were planning on coming back. Time would slow down relative to the rest of the universe, and the miles would just race by. A thousand-light-year trip wouldn’t take much longer than a ten-light-year trip. Of course, there would be a lot of changes if you went back to Earth …

There were thousands of strain gauges throughout the rock beneath us, and soon the computers reported that all was well. No cracking, hardly any bending. They estimated that we could pile on ten times the acceleration and still have a nice safety margin.

I’d asked Travis at one point why he had decided on two-thirds gee for the centrifugal gravity.

“I don’t want to get there with a bunch of weak-legged Martians,” he said, and grinned when I scowled at him. “I know you’d prefer Martian gravity, but we have no idea what our new planet will mass. It might be a bit more than one gee—but not a lot, I don’t want us all to get hernias—or it might be less, in which case we’ll all be the stronger for it.”

Which made sense, but I didn’t have to like it. I’d been thinking about getting another bra—I’m sure Travis has some somewhere, probably the low-cut, push-up kind—but Jubal doesn’t think it’s necessary. I’ll defer to his judgment, for now.

When Travis was sure the multiple computers had the situation well in hand—as if they had needed his guidance at all—he moved to another console, which controlled all the interior machinery. Again, computers would handle it, but they needed him to push a button first.

“Here we go, folks,” he said. “Let’s hope this works.”

I didn’t see what could go wrong. It was just pumps, and they were brand-new and thoroughly tested, though quite large. They were Martian-made, and we Martians know a lot about pumps.

We all looked to the “north,” which was the bow of the big ship. Mountains had been sculpted all around the hollow hemisphere at that end, a ring of mountains where pine trees grew. Some of the mountains were half a mile high, and would make for good hiking. The higher you went, the lighter you’d get! Now water began to gush from some of them, and flow down their sides, slowly at first, then faster as it moved into regions of higher gravity. By the time the streams reached the surface, they were going over waterfalls, sections of white water, deep pools. We’d be putting trout in there.

Over a few hours the method behind the system of cliffs built into the floor became apparent. There were depressions where lakes formed, then the stream would dash or trickle over the low cliffs and into a new environment. There were three rivers moving slowly south, filling in low areas as they went. We’d have to name them soon. There was going to be a
lot
of naming going on. We watched them brim over, getting closer and closer to us, and we all walked a short distance to where a wooden mill had been built over a dry creek bed paved with natural rock. Inside the millhouse was a real grinding stone, and outside was a big wheel. We would make flour there. Travis figured we all needed to learn “rural skills,” though I’d believe he was willing to lend a hand at tasks like that when I saw it.

The water came flowing down, and soon the streambed became a burbling brook, and the big wheel began to turn. Something about it made my city girl’s heart swell. I felt Jubal hug my waist, and I knew he felt it, too. My eyes teared up, then I was applauding, along with everybody else.

We were under way.

ROLLING THUNDER
IS
a living, breathing organism. Each day I’m struck by its incredible beauty, not just around me, not just in the distance, but overhead!

There were forests. There were “mountains.” Quiet streams and rushing rivers. I quite liked it. Jubal and I had picked out a home in the little tin-roof town built out on stilts in a marshy area where bullfrogs the size of house cats filled the evening with their song.

Every few days Kahlua would bring in a brightly colored songbird and lay it solemnly at my feet. Yuck! But I guess it’s the thought that counts. There were no mice, no rats. We had them in storage—never know what you might need!—but I hoped they remained in the category of mosquitoes: Got ‘em, don’t want to use ‘em.

We did have June bugs and other insects deemed essential to the ecology. I was slowly getting to the point where I didn’t freak out every time one landed on me. Jubal even had me handling one for a short time.

Everybody was calling the town Jubalville, over Jubal’s protests. He wanted to call it New Lafayette.

We’re getting to know our neighbors, who are either unimpressed by Jubal’s great brain and my notoriety, or are damn good at acting that way. Which is fine with me. Baako lives two doors down from us. The other night we had a crawfish boil. Baako and I sang
“Allon a Lafayette”
and other numbers appropriate to the setting. I’ve learned about a hundred words of Cajun French and can almost make a sentence.

As the central light pole dims—our equivalent of nightfall—I can still see tractors halfway up the slope tilling soil for corn planting. A little to the south is an orchard, with both full-grown trees, brought here intact and transplanted, and seedlings. Apparently I’m going to learn to farm. I’m going to be a farmer in the sky. A singing farmer, but a farmer nonetheless. Not what I had set out to be, but life takes some strange twists. I’ve found I enjoy tending our little patch of garden out back. I’ll enjoy it even more if I conquer my horror of earthworms. You should taste my tomatoes. To die for!

SINCE IT
IS
a living, breathing organism,
Rolling Thunder
is subject to both the joys and sorrows of the human condition. To everything there is a season. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to die, a time to be born.

Turn, turn, turn.

A TIME TO
die …

We woke Gran Betty on Mars before most of the family settled down in the ship. We gave her a condensed version of the horrors of the last ten years, but she was no fool. She understood how bad it really was. When told
Rolling Thunder
would depart in a few weeks, she asked to be put back in the bubble and then awakened again when we got moving. When she came out again she surprised us all.

“I’m not going in again,” she said, to the assembled family of which she was the matriarch.

“But Mama …” Granddaddy Manny said.

“Hush, son. They didn’t figure out how to cure what I’ve got in ten years, right? And Travis, be honest with me. How much advanced medical research is going to be happening in this big old rock?”

“Well, Elizabeth is aboard, and—”

“I said be honest, you old bastard.”

“Practically none,” he admitted.

“I thought so. Y’all are going to be too busy making a living, and that’s as it should be. I think I’ve already lived my allotted time. That’s what it feels like, anyway. I don’t want to wake up in a few hundred years to find all y’all are my age or dead. I’m going to let nature take its course.”

And that’s what she did. She died a week later, sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch, Manny and Kelly at her side, a lot of heroin coursing through her veins and a fat joint handy in an ashtray. Letting nature take its course didn’t mean you had to die in agony.

Her last words to us were spoken with a smile as she looked up at the bountiful land arching over her head. With the last of her strength, she lifted her hand to it.

“Look at this, children,” she whispered. “Not bad for a little girl from Florida. I was born before men walked on the moon, and I’ve gone from running a cheap motel to traveling on a starship. I wish I could get there with you.”

“You’ll be there with us, Mama,” Manny said.

“In spirit. In spirit. I’m so happy.”

An hour later she was gone. It was the second time I ever saw Grandma Kelly cry.

A TIME TO
be born …

Four months into the journey, Marlee gave birth to a perfect little boy. I guess all fathers are proud, but Mike seemed ready to explode with pride. He makes light of his short stature, and I tease him mercilessly about it because I know that’s the way he wants it, but I know it hurts. It would hurt on Earth, and it’s worse on Mars, where I’m considered only slightly tall for my sex. Being a father was important to him.

I’m sitting on my front porch, alone, babysitting. Mike and Marlee are off somewhere learning about pruning fruit trees, I think, then they plan to have dinner together in a restaurant that just opened up a few miles from here. I look after little William once a week so they can have some time alone, baby-rearing being a sometimes stressful job. I don’t mind.

William is three months old, gurgling at me, his tiny brown hand gripping my finger tightly.

I’m a little distracted, wondering when is the best time to tell Jubal I’m pregnant.

Oh, yeah, I know what I said before. But I never really ruled out having babies, did I? Jubal and I had never talked about it, but we didn’t have to. There was just something about Jubal that told me it would be the best news he’d ever received. So I wasn’t worried about that, not a bit.

I’d had another girl-to-girl talk with my vagina.

ME: Yeah, I know Marlee opted for that “natural childbirth” nonsense. Never saw so much sweating and hollering in my life. And the blood!

MS. V: Yeah, and what about
me?

ME: All you have to do is handle the fertilization part, and I
know
you like that.

MS.V: Well, sure, but …

ME: No buts. They can cut it out. Doesn’t even leave a scar anymore.

MS. V: Now you’re talking! Let’s get fertilizing!

So I stopped taking my birth control, and my reinstalled ovaries did their egg-dropping thing, and Jubal’s little wigglers did their thing with their usual enthusiasm. And here I am, three months gone, puking every other morning, just almost, sort of, beginning to show, and looking at myself in the mirror every morning to see if I have that fabled motherly glow. No sign of it yet. Aunt Elizabeth is the only one who knows so far, and she says everything is looking very good, and that’s after about a hundred tests.

So, now, when to tell Jubal? See, he’s sleeping …

NOTHING IS EVER
going to entirely solve the age problem between us, if problem it be, which I don’t concede. But life aboard
Rolling Thunder
is going to be different,
very
different in a lot of ways. Consider black bubble hibernation.

The star we’re headed for doesn’t really have a name, just a catalog number. I don’t know how Travis’s panel of astronomers chose it, except that the giant telescopes on Luna confirm there’s a planet circling it at about the right distance from the star, and it definitely has water and oxygen. I am not going to name the star because Travis asked us all never to do that. He’s worried someone might still come after Jubal, and I can’t say he’s wrong. So, we’re not currently aimed at that star; we’re going to change course a bit as soon as we’re comfortably out of the range of telescopes.

But the trip is going to take about forty years. That’s ship’s time; I don’t know how much time will pass back home, but it will be a lot more.

There are some people aboard who would be perfectly happy to spend that entire time awake and working. Maybe they’ll be allowed to; that hasn’t been worked out yet. But most of us will be spending greater or lesser amounts of time in hibernation. No one will be spending
all
their time in a bubble. Part of the signing agreement is that everyone gets a little time outside, though with the last, relatively unskilled ones rounded up more or less to provide strong backs, a population base, and genetic diversity when we land, that time will be short, a few weeks here and there to stretch their legs, as it were.

Others—skilled workers, administrators, engineers, and “friends of the captain,” which means my family and Travis’s friends—will be out for longer periods. We friends will be able to choose what we want to do. I know, unfair, but it’s his boat and he gets to make the rules. Travis is the Supreme Captain of
Rolling Thunder,
and though we are forming a civilian government (with Grandma Kelly in the thick of it), his word is the final law. That’s always the way it’s worked on ships, and I wouldn’t change it.

Jubal and I don’t plan to spend the next forty years awake. He’d likely be dead before we ever reached the new star.

We had tentatively worked out a schedule for the first few years, though. I was going to stay awake, and he would sleep three weeks out of every four. I’d be gaining ground on him, age-wise, at a ratio of four to one. I’d never catch him, but this plan would mean he would be gone for three weeks—which I knew I could handle—and then I’d have him for a week. He’d have me all the time, by his clock. At some point we’d both go into hibernation for five or ten years, then reassess when we came out.

The baby was going to disrupt that plan, but that was okay. I expected to stay awake until I gave birth, then Jubal and I would talk it over. My preference would be to stay awake another four or five years, and I fully expected Jubal would want to do the same, so the child could grow up with both of us. Then we could all three hibernate for a while, and decide how much time to stay awake until we got to our destination. I was thinking we should give the child enough awake time—with both of us, of course—so that he or she (don’t know yet, and don’t care) would be almost grown when we arrived. Say fourteen or fifteen waking years, out of forty ship’s years.