Rolling Thunder (11 page)

Clarke Centre was the biggest of them all, home to a force of about twenty-five thousand people, 90 percent of them Navy personnel. It was built mostly from standard cold-planet habitat modules and, like most outposts in extremely hostile environments, grew in a more or less random fashion when more space was needed. It’s a collection of domes and cylinders and shoe boxes and spheres covering almost a square mile, sometimes as much as thirty stories high. The predominant color is Navy red, but there are splashes of brighter paint here and there. It looks a little like a derelict oil refinery, preserved as a bit of cultural heritage, that I saw from a train going through Long Beach in California, a little like a junkyard, and a wee bit like a train wreck.

The ship landed lightly on a big transporter and was trundled to the arrivals area, where a rocketway attached itself to us like a lamprey, sealed tightly, and we passengers waited with our luggage while safety checks were made. Then we walked the fifty feet from ship to port, and I could feel the cold trying to suck the life out of me when I came within a foot of the wall.

Maybe it was my imagination. Surface temperature on arrival was -320. The very thin oxygen atmosphere out there would be faintly visible as a liquid dew that would boil off when the sun came up. It was still twenty-nine hours to sunrise. Europa’s day is a bit over eighty-five hours, three and a half days, and it’s tidally locked to Jupiter, so wherever the Big Guy is in the sky when you land at a base, that’s where it’s going to stay.

Clarke Centre was located near Pwyll Crater. And why so many features on Europa should be in Welsh is a question no one seems to have the answer to. It’s pronounced “pool,” or “poil,” or “pwill,” depending on who you ask, though all are acceptable because no one wants to go out on a limb and correct you, and because as far as anyone can tell, no actual Welsh speaker has ever been to Pwyll … and, frankly, because you seldom hear the word at all. People speak of Clarke Centre and avoid the issue entirely. I doubt you’ll see
me
use the word again.

Clarke is at about 260 degrees of longitude, which puts it just into the Jupiter side of the moon. Jupiter is at the horizon, about 90 percent of it visible, and there it stays, going through phases like Earth’s moon as Europa orbits around it, and is eclipsed by it. Clarke Centre and all the other bases get their coldest during eclipses.

There was none of the customs hassle you encounter practically everywhere else in the solar system when you arrive at a Navy base in a Navy ship. Even civilians don’t come in for much attention, as they’ve already been thoroughly vetted and searched and sniffed before they ever got aboard. There was an orientation area where we checked in, were given room assignments, and were handed a few items like an events calendar, a list of base regulations and practices and customs— and every base is different that way—and even a few gifts. The base commander sent a box of chocolates. A
small
box, but hey!

I got a luggage dolly because I had a lot of stuff: one suitcase full of uniforms and two full of a
lot
of civvies—because let’s face it, as a Madam nobody expected me to perform in uniform—and a bunch of my favorite musical instruments. All of it together didn’t weigh more than forty pounds on Europa, but it was too bulky to carry. I quickly learned the low-gee shuffle needed to avoid banging one’s head on the ceilings.

Okay, so I
did
hit my head a few times in the first hour. Everybody does.

Then I promptly got lost. Clarke Centre would baffle a gerbil in a habitrail. It’s full of long corridors connecting different modules, and a surprising number of dead ends, both the physical type, as in a blank wall, and the other, as in a guard telling you this is a restricted area and you aren’t rated for entry. You go up. You go down. You go over stuff and around stuff. And there you are … in a big shopping mall.

Okay, start over.

In the end I had to ask for directions from a passing ensign. He didn’t even bother trying to spell it out but took me by the hand like a lost child and led me to my dorm—which the ensign informed me were always called “barracks” here at Clarke Centre.

The barracks contained two hundred units and a small civilian staff, including a janitor and a front desk that was manned from 6:00 a.m., base time (which was also Greenwich Earth time) to midnight. Hey, this was the twenty-first-century Martian Navy, not the British Navy of the Napoleonic Wars. We all have to serve, and we all vote, and we all like our comforts.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” said the night porter, and glanced down at his desk display. “My name is William, and I guess you’d be Lieutenant Patricia Kelly Elizabeth—”

“Just Podkayne,” I said. “Do we use ranks around here?”

“Not unless you insist. Junior officers only here in the Swamp. Your neighbors will be about the same rank, though of course they’re all senior to you at the moment.”

“Swamp?”

“It’s better than Barrack 35, and Animal House was already taken. I think it’s from a movie about something called the Korean War.”

“Whatever. I just need a cot.”

“First order of business, however, is to issue you a kayak.”

Well, that’s what it sounded like.

“Do a lot of white-water rafting on Europa, do you?”

He looked blank for a moment, then smiled.

“Kay-ag. KYAG. Short for—”

“Kiss Your Ass Good-bye. I forgot about that.”

“Also known as the one-way ticket to the Big Bang, the mortician’s best friend, and other epithets you’ll learn when you’ve been at an outer-planet posting for a while.” He opened a drawer in his desk with his thumbprint and took out a small box with a security seal on it, broke the seal, and unwrapped a package inside the box. And there was the KYAG.

It was a flat plastic box, two inches on a side, half an inch deep. There was a red button on one side. Also inside the package was a wrist strap and a chain.

“Put your thumb on the button,” he said.

I did. A little light flashed red, then green.

“Now it will only work for you. In the last extremity, press and hold that button with your thumb for five seconds. If your thumb won’t function, use any finger, or hold it to your eye; it has downloaded all your personal ID by now. If your eyes aren’t working, you can put it in your blood and it will analyze your DNA. If you need it, you will very likely be bleeding.”

Gruesome, gruesome. What he meant was “if your thumb has been blown off or if your eyes have been put out.” The real name of the scary little device was PSU, for Personal Suspension Unit. They’d only been around about four years, and so far were only issued to people residing beyond the asteroid belt, where danger was highest. There were people who wanted to issue them to all Martians—hell, all humans—but there was still a lot of resistance. Heartlanders called them the Devil’s work, but they said the same about birth-control implants.

The KYAG contained a tiny black bubble generator. This was strictly a last-resort measure, to be employed only when death was clearly imminent and unavoidable. A spurting jugular, zero pressure, falling toward a lake of liquid nitrogen … these were the sorts of circumstances in which the Navy allowed the use of the PSU.

So far they’d only been actually used a few times, once after an explosion in the oxygen tanks of a ship orbiting Neptune, a few times in fires in planetary habitats. That way, in the aftermath, rescue crews could go in and find the bubbles, bring them back to a hospital, and save lives. Most of the time it worked. Some of the time when the bubble was opened, the person inside was too far gone to save.

“I have to tell you some legal stuff,” William said, with a sigh. “The penalty for using a PSU without demonstrable need is five years at hard labor. These are not toys. ‘Demonstrable need’ is usually understood to be the certainty of death within a few minutes. The example I use: If your hand has been cut off, don’t use the PSU. Find a tourniquet. If your arm is off at the shoulder … use it.

“Misplacing your unit will cost you thirty days in the brig, loss of rank, and loss of accumulated enlistment time. In other words, you’ll start all over as an ensign with your full ride still ahead of you. The Navy does
not
want these things falling into the wrong hands, and so far, none of them have. Keep it that way. You are required to have the unit on your person everywhere outside of your own room. My advice:
Wear it,
on the chain or wrist or, even better, chained to a navel ring or a nipple clip … or whatever else it is you females pierce. Never take it off, not in the bathtub, not to make love.”

“What about losing it, as opposed to misplacing it?”

“Never happened. Oh, the penalties are severe, theoretically, as bad as setting it off without just cause. But it has a location finder in it, and the only way to turn that off is to destroy it, and the only way to do that would be to toss it into a blast furnace. These little critters are
tough,
Podkayne.”

I looped the chain around my neck, not having a pierced navel or nipple or labia, if that was the word he was looking for.

“So where’s my room, William?”

“Follow me, please.”

I was so glad he didn’t say “Walk this way,” because it is
such
an old joke and he was flamboyantly effeminate, and there’s no way I could have managed that sashay in a low-grav field I wasn’t used to. I was seriously rocket-lagged, and behind on my sleep. My days aboard ship had been busy ones. More about that later.

We went down a corridor and passed a common room on the right that was empty this time of night. There was a big gym on the left
—not
a luxury, but a necessity, a place I’d be spending at least an hour a day to keep my muscle tone up to Mars standard. Three people were working out on the machines. We passed a sauna and a small automated 7-Eleven store where you could buy those minor items that weren’t worth a trip to the PX.

Then up an elevator to the twentieth floor and a few steps around a gently curving corridor to room 2001. Hey, I’m on a space odyssey! William informed me there were ten rooms on each floor—which he called a deck. He keyed the door and had me press my palm against it, and the barracks computer memorized my print.

“We had a wire from an Admiral Redmond a few days ago,” he said as he opened the door and stood aside so I could pull my baggage train inside. “He said to tell you this was his room when he was an ensign and assigned to Europa. He thought you might like it. Luckily, it was available.”

I looked at his face, but it was all innocence. I had the feeling that a wire like that from an admiral would be read by William as pretty much an order, and I hoped nobody had been dumped in the hall because I was coming. You don’t need that when you’re the new kid on the barrack.

The first thing I saw was the cat. He had a black face and ears, blue eyes, and a cream-colored body, black legs with white socks, and a black tail. He had a
lot
of fur, a regular powder puff. He sat in Sphinx position in a comfy chair, front paws tucked under him, eyes half-open. He swiveled his head to look at me for a moment, didn’t see anything interesting, and closed his eyes again.

“Oh, that’s Kahlua,” William said. “I thought I had sealed the cat door, though I wouldn’t put it past him to pick the lock. He belongs to the previous tenant … sort of. I’ll banish him to the hall.”

“Let him stay. I imagine the owner will know where to look for him.”

“I’m sure she will. Very well.” William then gave me a brief tour.

My family are innkeepers from way back, and we have our own code words for amenities in rooms. This one was below a Hyatt, but far above a 6 and maybe a cut above a Holiday Inn. You could call it a suite, because there were two rooms, but you don’t call quarters a suite in the Navy.

Living room with a couch and a media wall and a table and a few chairs. Kitchen nook with a two-seat bar counter, small fridge, microwave, heating surface, little pantry, and enough utensils to serve four.

You dropped your dirty dishes and trash in a chute, and clean stuff was delivered back to you in the night. The plates all had Martian Navy written around the edge in red. The usual pots and pans and gadgets.

The colors were soft and inoffensive and boring. William said I could change them if I wished but had to do my own painting.

The bedroom: just big enough for a double and a nightstand. I sat on it, stretched out on it, and it was good. Of course in .134 gee a slab of concrete would have been acceptable, so long as it was warm.

The head: much better than I expected. All the usual plumbing plus a bathtub that looked long enough for me to stretch out and soak for a while. It was five feet deep.

“Don’t run it too full,” William advised. “Things slosh here on Europa like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said. “When are inspections? Or do they surprise you?”

He looked offended. “This isn’t boot camp, darling. So long as your uniform passes muster in public, no one cares how you keep your quarters, though someone might take notice if you started raising chickens. You don’t even have to make your bunk.”

“I probably will anyway. My family was always big on that.”

“Yes, I suppose they would be. I worked for your grandfather for ten years.”

I didn’t know if I liked that or not, but he soon made it clear that he had loved working at the Red Thunder and thought the world of Grand-daddy Manny. He mentioned meeting me when I was two or three, when he was the head concierge, and I realized he was older than he looked.

“Well, unless you have any questions …”

“No. Thank you, William,” I said. “Should I tip you?”

He started to look offended, then saw I was kidding.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said, and quietly vanished. I didn’t even hear the door close. I thought I could learn to like William. And he was good-looking. Too bad about the sexual orientation.

THERE WAS A
houseplant and a fruit basket sitting on the counter in the tiny kitchenette. I’d noticed them before, but after exploring the storage spaces (not bad, but not room enough for all my wardrobe and instruments) and doing what little wandering could be done in the little suite, I took a closer look. Apples, oranges, a mango and a guava, walnuts, almonds, black and orange jelly beans, some sort of cranberry cookies … and a small carved pumpkin. I checked my heads-up and, sure enough, tomorrow was Halloween back on Earth.