Rolling Thunder (38 page)

Meanwhile, I retired to my dressing room for a stiff drink. Maybe two.

WE ALWAYS MADE
time to visit the children in the refugee camps. I would arrive with a sack bulging with candy, and I’d talk to them and to their parents. A lot of them didn’t look so good, though no one was starving in the places I visited. Not that plenty of people weren’t starving; it just wasn’t safe to go there. Many of the children looked far too old. Hollow-eyed. They’d seen too much, lost too much. All of Earth was now a war zone, and we were losing, and nobody had the smallest idea of what to do about it.

After these visits I’d retire to my dressing room for a stiff drink. Maybe three.

WE PLAYED CHICAGO,
and we played Katmandu. We played Geneva, and we played Alice Springs. We played Denver, Paris, Moscow, Yakutsk, Vientiane, Lucknow, Poona, Chongqing, Brazilia, Mexico City, Quito, La Paz, Manchester, Bloemfontein, Pretoria, Luxor, Las Vegas, Dallas, Budapest, Berlin, Bucharest, and Belgrade.

And a lot of other places. We were on the road for six months.

What was it like? Pretty much all the same.

You’re kidding, right? I hear you say. Just how is Katmandu like Manchester? Well, in the sense that I usually couldn’t see much through the rain in my armored limo, and in the sense that, everywhere I went, what I mostly saw was the inside of concert venues and the ubiquitous, sprawling refugee housing where the people fleeing the coasts now lived. There are probably Buddhist temples somewhere in Katmandu, but I never saw them. I’m sure there’s something distinctive about Manchester, too, but it was all a blur seen through a tinted window to me.

What was that like? In a word: ugly. Back when Grumpy was approaching, people evacuated coastlines and lived in tents, or simply out in the open when the tents ran out. Later they built temporary shelters from whatever was at hand, varying with the wealth of the country, mostly fiberglass (rich countries), plywood (medium-sized countries), and scrap wood, corrugated tin, and cardboard (everybody else). Years later, before the arrival of Leviathan and the beginning of the wind and rain, many people were still living in these “temporary” quarters, in their own shit. Then the storms began and blew the houses away, like the first two little pigs. People began replacing their homes with ones made of stone, brick, or concrete, whatever was available locally, like the third little pig.

The developed nations started building sturdier shelter much earlier, and when the weather hit, most people were living in poured concrete boxes that had the sole virtue of being quick and cheap to build. They were on the outskirts of every place I visited, with absolutely nothing to distinguish one project from another except the smells of food cooking and the various types of cultural squalor. It produced a sense of disorientation in me that lasted for the whole trip.

I HAD A
new wardrobe that Tina helped me pick out, this time suitable for the new and only slightly improved Podkayne. I’d had to buy a lot of bras, which I’d thought I’d never have to do again. They ranged in design from spiderweb to cantilever bridge to armored gun turret, depending on the outfit. I tried on a girdle and shouted
too much
! I’d do like the Earth girls and just let my ass go wherever it wanted to go. Which was south.

I had fifty pairs of shoes and not one of them was comfortable in one gee. They’d all been fine at home. My feet hurt all the time, even bare, but never more than by the end of a concert spent (mostly) standing up.

Gripe, gripe, gripe. I know, I know. It could have been worse. Worse was all around me, everywhere I went. That’s why I was needing a drink or four to get to sleep at night.

But something else was happening. I was still having my … fainting spells, episodes, dreams. I got away with covering them up for a while, because I wasn’t socializing except to rehearse and to eat meals in the ship’s mess. Later, I even started bringing my food back to my cabin, and still later asking to have it delivered, the one instance of “diva” behavior I will cop to. Nobody seemed to have a problem with it. I just didn’t want to be around people. Everyone respected it, wrote it off to moodiness. We “artists” are allowed to be moody, even difficult; everybody understands.

Then in the middle of one concert—and I honestly can’t recall where we were—I passed out onstage.

It was apparently pandemonium. I, of course, don’t recall it. As usual, all I recall is that space that wasn’t space, and time that wasn’t time, and the awareness of presences all around me in directions I could not understand. There were many thousands of them, disembodied, not speaking but making their presence known in some way. Angels? Spirits of the dead? Souls in limbo? I had no idea. These spirits didn’t talk, other than to make me aware of their presence. And if I had to guess, I had the feeling that they were as clueless as I was as to where they were and what they were doing there.

As always, I came out of it peacefully in ten minutes, to find I was backstage with a battalion of medical teams hovering over me, debating what to do.
Whew
, just in time, I figured, before somebody decided to do exploratory surgery! I sat up, to general shock and dismay, and was pushed down again and urged to be quiet. I sat up again and tossed off the blanket that had been wrapped around me.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“I think you should take it easy,” the ship’s doctor said.

“I know what I’m doing, Doc, trust me. Now, I’ve got a show to finish.” It was one of my finer moments, I have to say. I probably should have put on a brave face, staggered just a little, maybe held the back of my hand to my brow tragically, because it was obvious from the expressions all around me that everyone present thought they were witnessing a great moment in musical entertainment, as the exhausted but scrappy Podkayne refused to let a little thing like a possible stroke get in her way.
The show must go on!
Nobody ever told me exactly
why
it must go on … but I did feel it. Those people out there had come for a show, and I’d give them one.

But the joke was that I really
did
feel fine. Better than before I passed out, which was always the case with these episodes.

Afterward, back in the ship, Tina knocked on my door. I knew what was coming, and had decided it was time to come clean.

“Podkayne, we’ve got to talk.”

“You’re right.”

“I’ve seen it before, I should have stayed closer to you, should have been a better friend.”

“What’s that?”

“The drinking, Pod. It’s time to admit you have a problem.”

I laughed, then stopped quickly when I saw the look on her face. I reached over and touched her hand.

“I’m sorry, I can see how you’d think that. I do drink at night, sometimes too much. But I never, never,
never
drink during the day, and certainly not before a performance.”

“Then what …” She suddenly looked stricken. “Oh, my God. What is it, Podkayne? How bad is it?”

I shrugged. “Nobody knows, but the doctor I saw wasn’t alarmed. It’s just fainting spells, Tina, and I get them from time to time since the accident. And I’ll see the surgeon about it today.”

I did, and he examined me and pronounced me fit as a Fender. Then he sent me to the ship’s shrink, and we talked for a while.

“Stress,” she decided. “Nothing to be alarmed about, as such, but the source of the stress should be addressed.”

“That’s easy. It’s a killing schedule. I could use a rest.”

“Yes, that’s a problem,” she said. “I see a lot of it with troops on the ground, and, of course, there’s nothing I can do. I have some pills that might help. But they might affect your performance.”

“No thanks.”

Sometimes the episodes came at night, and no one but me noticed. Sometimes they came during the day, and I’d fall over like I’d been hit with a hammer, and be perfectly okay ten minutes later. What’s
that
all about?

I did my best to reconstruct the days since they’d started happening. It wasn’t easy, and there were big gaps when I simply couldn’t remember. But I fed all the data into the computer and the clever little rascal noticed a pattern at once. It even gave me a little graph to ponder.

The fainting spells with associated altered state of consciousness were coming three and a half days apart. That figure seemed oddly familiar.

So I did a little experiment. I knew to the second when the last one had happened. I had the concert tape, with a counter down in one corner. I made sure to be in my room with a video on me when three and a half days had passed. And sure enough, I conked out. There they were again, the floating points of light/not-light in the space/no-space and time/no-time. I sensed a feeling I can only describe as warmth from one of them. There were others, somehow far away and yet contiguous with all the rest of us, and they seemed to be angry spirits. (I don’t know what other term to use.)

I came to on my back, on my bunk, feeling terrific, and backed the video up. Saw myself slump with a goofy grin on my face. Noted the time. Handed it to the computer to analyze. 85 hours, 13 minutes, 42.4 seconds. Or … 306,822.04 seconds. Or … 3.55118 Earth days.

I already knew, but I checked the orbital and rotational period of Europa. 3.55118 Earth days.

What was
that
all about?

I GOT THE
music in me. I got the music in me. I got the music in me.

Did writing “Jazzie’s Song” have anything to do with it? Each note of the Europan crystals’ song was exactly 3.55118 Earth days long. But Jazzie had been compressed, sampled, digitized, altered. Still, was it possible that some process had happened in my brain during that odd state I recalled so vividly when I was writing the song? Something that attuned me to their cosmic rhythms?

Search me. I’ll ask my Magic 8-Ball.

But deep questions like that aside, the information enabled me to solve a problem, which was passing out onstage, or in front of my friends. I knew when the next one was going to happen, and could make sure to be safely in my cabin or my dressing room for the ten minutes I’d be incapacitated. It could be my little secret until the madness of the tour was over.

THEN, AFTER SIX
long months, it
was
over. Canceled.

The news didn’t completely take us by surprise. We’d been following the debate back home about giving up the whole Earth rescue mission as a bad job. Or maybe not so much that, as an admission that we’d done all we could, and further “peacekeeping” and “humanitarian aid” wasn’t having enough effect to justify the lives being lost and the drain on everything Martian.

I’ve mentioned before that the Martian Constitution is open source, meaning anybody can amend it. Earthies think we’re crazy, but Earthies love their incredibly complex laws and, in spite of what they claim, their lawyers. And open source doesn’t mean some weenie can insert a codicil to the effect that it’s illegal to be Billy Smith because he’s a nimrod. There’s open, and then there’s open. Junk and idiocy is sorted and deleted in minutes, and the poster can be fined (after open discussion and majority agreement), and is banned from the franchise for varying periods, up to and including life for the most determined putzes.

Changes to the sidewalk-spitting regulations can take as little as a week to be ratified. Changes to murder law have to resist challenges for six months. Debates on national policy require a year, a 60 percent majority, and ratification by the Senate.

The pullout debate had been going on for five years, slowly building momentum as dead and wounded Martian citizens came back from Earth. The faction wanting a withdrawal had finally carried the day, and there was no shilly-shallying about implementing it. I’d been so distracted that I didn’t even know where my family stood on the issue. Not that we’re monolithic in that respect, but as soon as the evacuation order came I sent off a message to Grandma Kelly asking her opinion.

“Come home, Poddy,” she said, simply, about an hour later. “You’ve done a lot of good, but there’s nothing more you or anybody else can do. Your uncle Travis wants to see you as soon as you arrive. Says it’s urgent.”

And what was
that
all about?

WE WERE AMONG
the first ships to get back home. There was no big hoopla, no flag-waving and no bands playing. No ceremonies at all. We weren’t returning in triumph, and we weren’t returning in disgrace. We were just returning, and we were tired.

Much of the family met me at the Thunder City Port and took me out for dinner at Mom’s place. I tucked into the finest vegetarian meal I’d ever had, at least a thousand times better than anything I’d had on board ship.

Between the salad and the main course, Uncle Bill handed me an envelope. I opened it, and was staring at a sheet of thick vellum, embossed with a lot of important-looking seals. It was my discharge papers. I felt a sudden rush of elation, tinged with just a little sadness.

“Thanks, Uncle Bill, you’ve come through again.”

“No thanks necessary, Commander. We’re downsizing now that we’re pulling out. Technically your mandatory service was over years ago. It runs by the calendar, not by your internal time. Anyway, now we’re demobilizing most of the people whose mandatory enlistment was extended for the crisis.”

I gave him a big kiss, anyway.

“What about you, Mike?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I still have some time to go. And I may go career. The Navy’s treated me well, and I’m doing important work, and I like it. I’m still thinking it over.”

Over dessert, Grandma Kelly beckoned me to the ladies’ room, rather mysteriously, I thought. I joined her; that age-old female excuse of needing to “powder my nose.” As usual, she got right to the point.

“Poddy, are you feeling tired? Because I told Travis if you needed a night of rest, or even two, that you damn well deserved—”

“I’m fine, Grandma. I’ll see Uncle Travis.”

“Maybe you should stop calling him Uncle Travis, dear. You’re old enough. He isn’t really your uncle, and neither is Jubal. Family, sure, but not blood.”