Rolling Thunder (39 page)

“Okay. What the heck is this about, Grandma?”

She grimaced. “He won’t tell me. All he’ll say is he needs to see you and take you somewhere. I’ve held him off, but you know how Travis can be. I asked him specifically, ‘Are you about to involve my granddaughter in an adventure, Travis?’ Because the last one he involved my son in nearly got him killed.”

The way I heard it, Grandma was involved in that one, if only at the beginning. Not being there at the end was what had really grated on her. But I stayed silent.

“Maybe I’m just getting old,” she said, “but I’ve found as the years go by that adventures are highly overrated. A little adventure can go a long way.”

“Amen to that.”

“Of course, you’ve been on quite an adventure of your own, and paid a heavier price than I ever did.” She reached out and squeezed my arm. “Just tell the son of a bitch—and I use the term with all possible affection—that if he allows you to get so much as a hangnail, he’s going to have to deal with me, and I’ll be armed to the teeth.”

I told her I’d pass it along.

Travis was waiting for me outside, with an armored limo. I questioned him on the way to wherever we were going, but didn’t get any satisfactory answers.

We were whisked away in a private car on the high-speed maglev rail to Argyre Planitia, about forty-five minutes away. From there we transferred to a local line, slightly slower, but again we were the only people on the car.

I wasn’t sure where we were when we got off, but Travis took me to a Mercedes rover and we got in and passed through the lock and out onto a paved road.

Two hours later we were on a dirt road bulldozed through a rocky plain, then a track that led down into a canyon.

“Very mysterious, Travis. This place we’re going. Does it have a name?”

“I call it my Fortress of Solitude,” he said, and grinned at me. I googled the term and was presented with a lot of images from old comic books.

“Where’s your blue suit and cape?”

“I’m working undercover.”

“Well, I’m pissed. You could just have just picked me up and flown me here.”

WE WERE ALMOST
to the South Pole when we entered a tunnel through a camouflaged barrier door. Stranger and stranger.

We drove some miles as overhead lights came on in front of us and went off behind us. Every mile or so, airtight doors got out of our way and slammed shut behind us. I knew without being told that if our vehicle hadn’t been sending out the right encrypted and scrambled signals that the doors wouldn’t open and, knowing Travis, that there might be some nasty surprises to any intruder.

By now I was getting a pretty good idea of who we were going to meet. It was exciting, and a little scary.

Finally we pulled into a garage bay and I followed Travis to another security door, which opened and closed behind us. We were in what turned out to be an apartment, large and quite nice except for the location, which would be a long commute to just about anywhere.

“Must be hard to find a maid willing to come out here,” I said.

“Robots. Plus, I’m hardly ever here.”

He unlocked a door with an actual key, not something you see every day. Beyond was what I’d expected to see: An eight-foot black sphere being held in place with a net.

“I guess you know who’s in there,” he said.

I nodded. My mouth was dry.

“All right. Now you’re wondering why I brought you here. I’m not going to tell you yet. I have my reasons, but trust me, there’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s plenty of things to be mystified by, but that’s another story. I’m going to ask you for one thing. Don’t say anything when he comes out. He’s on powerful medication. He’ll be groggy. Can I count on you?”

I nodded again. And without further ado, Travis walked to a desk and pressed a button on its top. Instantly and without sound or fury, the bubble vanished. Inside, sitting in a chair, was Jubal Broussard.

“—d is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and …”

He started twisting his head around in all directions, but not with a lot of urgency. It was clear he was doped up.

“Everything’s okay, Jubal,” Travis said in a soothing voice. “Nothing to worry about. Everything’s okay, nothing to fear.” He helped Jubal to his feet.

Once that was accomplished, Jubal looked around the room and his eyes settled on me. At once he grinned broadly. And he said this:

“Podkayne!”

I DIDN’T PASS
out, though I felt faint. Vaporish, as my Victorian forebears might have put it. I found a chair and sat down. Travis helped Jubal to a chair, too.

“So … you’ve had him out,” I tried. “You had him out of stasis, and you told him about me and other family members? Showed them pictures?” Because when Jubal had first been put into a bubble for the long haul, I hadn’t been born.

Travis was shaking his head.

“When Grumpy landed I took him out, against my better judgment. The deal was, Jubal was to stay inside until I could take him to a better world. A world he could deal with without being afraid all the time. The bayous of Louisiana, specifically, or Florida. Somewhere that people wouldn’t bother him, or try to kidnap him for the knowledge in his head.”

“Louisiana,” said Jubal, dreamily.

He looked different from the pictures I’d seen. And I’m one of the few people who have ever seen a picture of him. The number one frustration to the media all over the system is that no pictures of Jubal exist. Probably the most important living human, and no one knows what he looks like. Over the years Travis and my family have carefully dropped hints here and there, and composites have been drawn, which are usually used in videos about him. They bear a suspicious resemblance to the standard picture of Jesus Christ, though with white hair.

But Jubal is in our family albums, on our computers, under slightly more tight security than the Martian national treasury. We don’t have a lot of snapshots of him, but I’d looked at them all many times, and they show a fellow with slightly chubby cheeks and usually a big smile, with a long white beard and bushy white hair. A lot more Santa Claus than Jesus. He’s barrel-chested with powerful arms, and he’s about a foot shorter than I am.

Jubal had changed. The hair had been trimmed short and combed in a conservative style, and the beard had been trimmed down to less than an inch. It changed the shape of his face. Now you could see that he had a strong chin, and freed from the hair that was always drooping into his eyes, a high forehead was revealed. It was a good face, and not one I would have expected to be under all that hair.

I said he was stocky, but I didn’t see any fat under the old-fashioned polo shirt he was wearing. He was in tennis shorts and shoes, and his legs were almost hairless.

All in all, not a bad-looking dude, for an old guy.

“Everybody was saying, ‘Where’s Jubal?’ ” Travis was saying. “When the bubble generators didn’t work on the crystals, lots of people thought only Jubal could figure out how to fix them, or think up something else to stop what was going on. I got a lot of pressure, and I finally decided to talk to him. Hell, maybe he
could
do something. How was I to know? If I woke him up later and found out he could have done something … anyway, I did wake him up. And the first thing he said was …”

“Podkayne,” Jubal said, and looked at me and gave me a sloppy grin.

“He said, ‘Where’s Podkayne?’ ” Travis elaborated.

“But you’d never awakened him before? I mean, after I was born, you never brought him up to date—”

“No. I hadn’t. This is the second time. I showed him no pictures, before or after he asked for you. I didn’t tell him you were …” We both glanced at Jubal, who seemed blissed out. “You know.”

“Did he … uh, Uncle … I mean, Travis, I don’t like talking about this with him sitting right there.”

“I don’t think he can hear much.”

“I can hear, me,” Jubal mumbled. What he really said was more like “Ah kin hear, me,” but I’m not going to attempt to reproduce his accent, other than a few words. It seems condescending, somehow. Just assume that when I quote him as saying
this, that, there,
and
those,
he’s really saying
dis, dat, dere,
and
dose. I
is always pronounced
ah.
You’ll get the hang of it.

“Sure, but you’re not really processing, are you, Jubal?”

“Not processing,” Jubal agreed.

“It doesn’t matter. He knows all this. I got him out of the bubble, gave him a day to come out of the drugs, sleep it off, get comfortable, and then I walked him through the situation, what had happened, what was likely to happen next. Naturally, that isn’t what he wanted to hear. All he wanted was for me to tell him he could go back to the bayous and not be bothered.”

“Not be bothered,” Jubal agreed.

“I told him that if he couldn’t think of something, there might not be any bayous to go back to, ever. That got his attention. So he thought about it.”

“And he didn’t…”

“He didn’t. Jubal is amazing, Podkayne, but he’s not a wizard, and he’s not a god. He had no magic spell, and he doesn’t know how to bring down some sort of plague on Grumpy and his pals. He worked on it for a month, and told me he had no idea as to how they made the bubble generators not work; he didn’t have a clue.”

“Not a clue, me,” Jubal agreed. He was flying so high I’m sure he’d have agreed if we said we were both blue monkeys and he was Queen of the May.

“But about once a day he asked for you. By name. He didn’t know who you were, just your name … and what he said was the ‘feel’ of you. I didn’t know what he was talking about. Still don’t. I told him you were Ray and Evangeline’s daughter, and that made him very happy, but that you were currently on Europa and couldn’t come see him for a while, and that made him sad.

“Eventually we both gave up. We weren’t getting anywhere, and Jubal was miserable, as usual. So he took his medicine and got back in the cage, and here we are.”

“Here we are.” Jubal giggled, and sort of mooned his eyes at me.

“Last thing he said to me, before he started his Hail Mary, was that you’d be waiting for him here the next time I got him out of stasis. Which, when I think about it, was either a damn good way of making sure I
brought
you here, or clairvoyance. For now, I’ll go with number one, but I’m not as sure as I used to be.”

“I guess not.”

“Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

“No,” I lied. He raised one eyebrow and I think he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t press it. Which was good, because I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

“Okay. Meantime, I think it’s beddy-bye time for your uncle Jubal.” He got to his feet. He was right. Jubal’s chin was resting on his chest. We got him to his feet and supported him to a door that led to a bedroom. There were pictures of the Louisiana Bayou country all over three walls, and the fourth was a video of a swamp. I heard a sound, and watched an alligator slip into the water. It all looked hideous to me, but I guess home is where you grew up.

We peeled off his shirt and got him down to his skivvies—which had little bottles of Tabasco sauce printed on them—and took off his shoes and socks. What a chest the man had, and a tummy flat as a washboard that looked like it could stop cannonballs. He was almost hairless up there, too, except a little around the nipples and navel.

I peeled back the covers and Travis guided him and laid him out and I covered him to the neck. As I was about to straighten up, one of his hands darted out and seized my wrist. It was gentle, but I felt he could snap my bones like dry spaghetti if he wanted to. But I felt no threat, and leaned back down.

“Podkayne,” he whispered. “We have to go back to the no-place place.”

“What did he say?”

“I’m not sure,” I lied again. I gave Jubal a big smile, and kissed him on the forehead. He smelled of licorice and cinnamon. “Sleep now, Jubal.” And he did.

So what was
that
all …

But this time, I had an inkling.

19

I GOOGLED JUBAL
for facial resemblances, and the computer dug way back into history and came up with two I thought were spot-on. His mouth and jaw looked a lot like Ernest Hemingway. His forehead and eyes resembled Leonard Bernstein. Now, if only I could persuade him to wear his hair like Lennie …

There were several matches for his nose. Unfortunately, none of them really fit with either Lennie or Ernie. I guess the key word was “unfortunate.” It was a weak feature set on a distinguished face. But nobody’s perfect, and the little button sitting there uncomfortably in the middle of all that leonine grandeur gave him an impish, endearing quality. It was a shame to have covered up so much of it all those years with all that wild hair … and I got an old match on the old hairstyle, too, one that made me laugh. Somebody named Hairless Joe in a comic strip, producer of something called Kickapoo Joy Juice.

I spent a month out there at the Fortress of Solitude, at first because Jubal seemed to need me and wouldn’t let me go. I don’t mean he tied me up or hugged my ankles as I was trying to leave or anything like that; he just looked so dejected at the thought of my leaving that I couldn’t find the heart to do it. And it wasn’t like I had any more pressing business at the moment. Later, I stayed because … but we’ll get to that.