Rolling Thunder (33 page)

“Many of these people were desperately poor back on Earth,” Uncle Bill said. “They didn’t have jobs where they came from, and they have no qualifications for jobs on Mars. Unemployment is eighty percent. Materially, they’re better off here, and they still have fragments of their cultures to cling to. Most of them have better medical care than they did where they came from. But a lot of them die, and a lot commit suicide.”

What were we supposed to do? Welcome all of the Earth’s teeming billions? “Give me your tired, your poor, your tempest-tossed.” Your unskilled, your desperate, your illiterate, your criminal, your psychotic. Emma Lazarus never got to that part of the deal. A huge number of Earthies still lived the life of a peasant … and those were the
lucky
ones, who at least had land to work. Even more in Africa, Asia, and South America had
nothing,
already displaced by climate change, interminable wars, sold out by government corruption and disinterest. Some were the tenth generation of hopelessness, and some had nothing to cling to but the irrationalities of their religions, which told them to suffer in silence or to go out and slay the infidel.

In the “developed” nations things often weren’t much better, having raised generations of consumers with the morals of a pit viper. We didn’t ask for any of them, but here they were.

THE CEREMONY WAS
held at the Sagan Auditorium, one of the places that had played prominently in my dreams when I first decided to be a famous singer. In Earth terms, think the Royal Albert or Carnegie Hall, or the Sydney Opera House, or the Dubai Theater. I sat in a chair in the wings and watched on a monitor as the house filled with a sea of red uniforms. Even many of the non-Navy guests wore red, in a patriotic spirit. There were hundreds of media reps there, and a line of beefy shore patrol between them and the stage, as they had been known to try almost anything to get to a hot interview.

Behind the stage hung the biggest Martian flag I’d ever seen.

It all got off to a rousing start with a speech by the president of Mars, a rotund little Earth-born I’d met several times over dinner at our place. He seemed a nice enough guy, and Grandma Kelly said his politics weren’t completely awful. He took the opportunity to deliver a rousing speech urging his fellow Martians to stay the course, be patient, stand up for your fellow man, even if he was an ignorant Earthie. Stuff like that.

Behind him was more brass than you’d see at a John Philip Sousa concert, basically all the admirals who were not actually out with the various fleets.

I’ll give him this: With the ‘cast going out live, not having to worry about sound bites, he still kept it short, which is remarkable for a politician. In five minutes he was starting in on me, my “heroic” exploits, da dum da dum da dum. Behind him, the Martian flag was lifted and some tape Slomo had shot was shown. I looked away. I wasn’t ready to see that stuff yet.

Finally, with a flourish …

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … Podkayne.”

At the last minute I decided to put the crutches aside. Taking it carefully, I stepped out onto the stage and shuffled over to the podium, amid riotous applause, trying not to squint in the spotlights. I look like a prune when I squint. I made it to the president’s side, and snapped off a salute. He took my hand in both of his, that officeholder’s handshake that makes you want to account for your jewelry, and maybe your fingers, afterward. Then it was time to smile for the cameras.

Then the Navy Cross. I still couldn’t get my mind around it. Me, Poddy the singer, the Navy Cross. The words didn’t seem to belong in the same sentence. I had to lean way down for Mr. President to put the ribbon around my neck, then the sheer weight of the big gold medallion seemed to want to keep me there. But I straightened and saluted. Down there in the front row were Mom and Dad and Mike, and it took all the spine-stiffening I had in me to keep my eyes dry. There were Granddaddy Manny and Grandma Kelly, and Grand-père and Grand-mère Redmond, and aunts Amelia and Elizabeth, and half a dozen cousins. I looked for Travis, but realized he might not be welcome here. I hoped all the hoopla was doing Uncle Bill some good, politically.

Then I was presented with two velvet-lined boxes. One had my commander’s bars and star in it, and the other a smaller version of the medal, suitable for pinning on one’s tunic, and much more tasteful and less gaudy than the anchor and chain I was wearing.

This was the moment I’d been dreading. Part of the deal was that I wouldn’t have to make a speech, but Grandma Kelly had taken me aside for a moment backstage and warned me that, when you get a politician on a stage with a hero, all bets are off. Our president might very well break the deal for the chance to get into the frame when a hero and a celebrity said her first words after returning from the dead.

“If he bushwhacks you,” she whispered, “thank him, thank the Navy, thank the people of Mars, and get off.”

“Thank Uncle Bill?”

“No! Don’t draw attention to him. Everybody here gets the point. Keep it short, sweet, and modest.” She looked up at me. “Just like you
are,
honey, except for the short part.”

And damn if that weasel didn’t do just as she’d suspected. I stepped up to the podium, gulped, and did exactly as she’d told me to do. Then I saluted once more and hobbled offstage to a standing ovation.

“NO INTERVIEWS! NO
interviews!” someone was shouting up ahead of me. Not that it did any good. It felt like the time-honored perp walk; I had a strong impulse to cover my head with my jacket. I just felt guilty, somehow. But this
was
a ceremony, and there
had
to be a photo op, which they had limited to my route, back on crutches again, between the stage and a secure area where the bus was waiting. So I endured it.

Something was nagging at me. I thought I heard a familiar voice, rising above the babble. Who could I possibly know in this gaggle of bottom feeders?

“Podkayne! You have to speak to me!”

And there he was, about as welcome as Marley’s Ghost. Cosmo, standing in the front row against the barrier, back from the dead. Well, so was I, right? But it was the first time I knew he had survived. It had seemed too unlikely that he would, but later I learned he’d only been in vacuum for about a minute and a half, not long enough to freeze solid, and not long enough for brain damage. He’d had extensive freezer burns; they’d had to replace all of his skin.

I realized he was standing on artificial legs. He was wearing short pants, so I’d be sure to notice.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to go over and see what he wanted.

Which was to serve me with a subpoena. He thrust it into my hands and I took it without thinking, just an ordinary brown envelope with a government seal on it.

“You’ve been served, Podkayne,” he spat out, and the media horde all turned toward him and began to press closer. “I’m suing you for reckless indifference causing great bodily harm.
You cut off my legs!”

It was true. Only part of him had been close enough to me to be included when the stopper bubble formed. His legs had been left outside. It later came out that it wasn’t just his legs that were outside the zone. Part of his left hip, a few inches of penis, and one testicle also had to be thrown away as spoiled meat.

“But I thought you were—”

Now he was thrusting a mike into my face.

“Do you have anything to say in your own defense?”

“But you stole—”

“Come on, come on, the world is waiting to hear. We all want to hear you justify maiming me. We all want to hear how you can explain such a thing.”

The babble of the crowd was disorienting me, I guess. I couldn’t seem to think straight, and I felt a little dizzy.

“Come on, Podkayne, what’s your reaction?”

So I dropped one crutch and broke his nose again.

16

IT WAS A
damn stupid thing to do, I admit it. Damn stupid for both of us, as it turned out, but stupider for him. Cosmo had his following, but at that time and in that place, it was dwarfed by the people who felt love and affection for dear, sweet, modest Poddy. Public reaction was overwhelmingly in my favor.

And the suit wouldn’t be likely to go anywhere. Mars is not a litigious society, because we don’t use the trial by jury method for civil matters. Both sides get to air their story on the Net, and the public decides. There are perils in this, but there are also checks and balances and reviews, and it works pretty well. Plus, you don’t need a lawyer, and Grandma Kelly says that any system that makes less work for lawyers is always an improvement.

Cosmo was from Earth, and probably didn’t understand our system all that well. He probably expected his day in court. He probably expected sympathy for his injuries, and may even have expected to sway a jury with his patented line of bullshit. I don’t doubt the man would have been pleased to drop his pants in court to show his shortened weenie. We may never know, because no one’s heard from him in a long time.

What he didn’t count on was my guardian angel, Slomo. It never came to any sort of testimony. Slomo just sold two tapes to the
Red Planet News,
after a spirited bidding war that made him a
lot
of money.

The very next day a two-part show was being downloaded by about 99 percent of citizens. The first part was low comedy, and showed Cosmo getting bounced around by the quake, getting his head stuck in the ceiling, acting like a spoiled child and a clown.

The second part showed his actions on the bus. Martians watched in disgust as he attacked me and seemed to be trying to rip me out of my suit. Disgust turned to cold, hard outrage when, through the magic of a super-high-rez camera and macro zoom, Cosmo could be seen palming my KYAG. After that, he was doomed. After that, everybody wanted me to keep swinging that tripod until his skull was pulped.

Justice can be rapid on Mars. We don’t have the death penalty, though from time to time, as in the case of a child murderer, for instance, that clause in the constitution has to be frozen by administrators until passions cool down. But the chats among the jurors—which means all citizens—suggested some highly imaginative punishments, the least drastic of which was the removal of his remaining ball, “since he obviously has never used it.”

In the end it was left to me as the offended party to determine his punishment and his fine. I elected to let the people decide, and they promptly stripped him of his citizenship and
all
his money, and gave the money to me. I donated it to refugee relief charities. It was a lot of money, and that made me feel good.

The other part was more problematic. Normally, being “voted off the planet” meant banishment to Earth, but Earth wasn’t taking anybody, not even celebrities. No place else would take him, so he was shipped to the nearest thing we have to a prison, which was Siberia. Actually, 1094 Siberia, a stone in the asteroid belt about ten miles in diameter. Nobody had ever settled it, so the Republic, in cooperation with some of the lustier nations on Earth who wanted an escape-proof prison for their thousands of really scary criminals, hollowed out several habitats inside and sent the worst of the worst there. Only a few Martians had ever qualified, but it was filled with some pretty rough characters from other places. When you were sent to Siberia you were given some clothes and a knife, and bid a not-so-fond adieu. Food, air, water, and sanitation were provided; other than that, you were on your own.

On the bright side, in the microgravity, Cosmo would not be needing his legs.

Like I said, no one has ever heard from him again.

WE DIDN’T GO
back to my room in the Red Thunder. Most of all I wanted to go home, back to my own bedroom, with the posters of Billie and Barbra and Baako, the bust of Beethoven, my guitar and my first keyboard and my balalaika and my bandura. I wanted to see my high-school trophies and my plush Marvin the Martian and Duck Dodgers, my Magic 8-Ball and my collection of porcelain kittens. Okay, my secret shame, I collect kitschy kats, but don’t tell anybody or I’ll get ten thousand of them in the mail starting tomorrow.

Instead, I was driven to Pellucidar Estates, the most exclusive of the several dozen private, sequestered communities about twenty minutes away from Thunder City on a private subway. It was a bit like the Malibu Colony down the road from Pismo Beach, before it washed away, or so I’m told. Pellucidar (and yeah, I know it was the interior of the hollow Earth in the books, but Mars went through a period when we were all gaga for Edgar Rice Burroughs) is a big dome filled with about a hundred second or third homes of the superrich and/or superfamous. “Cottages” with twenty rooms, everything from the Taj Mahal to Tara to the Sheik of Araby. No kidding, one of my neighbors lived in a tent the Ringling Brothers would have envied.

I’d known I couldn’t go home, at least for a while. Home was besieged by media; it was tough for Mom and Dad to come and go. They had picked this out and leased it for me, and I hadn’t seen it yet. It was a modest mansion on a street of modest proportions—by Pellucidar standards, anyway. It was Spanish style, with “adobe” walls and red tiles on the roof, like a lot of the housing developments I’d seen in Pismo. I had an orange and a lemon tree growing in the small front yard, and tropical shrubs and flowers all around. There was a tall palm tree at one corner. It was a Glenn Miller house, an Andrews Sisters black-and-white era bungalow.