John Varley - Red Thunder

Tentative conclusion: I’m probably missing something.

No weight, no friction. How tough?

I got a hammer and some nails. I cut a small hole in a piece of old linen sheet, not big enough for the bubble to go through. Then I used [63] thumbtacks to pin the cloth to the desk with the bubble trapped inside, just a piece of it showing.

I held the tip of one nail to the surface of the bubble. I tapped the nail head lightly with the hammer. The tip slid off the bubble surface. I looked at the bubble through a magnifying glass. No dent or scratch I could see. I tapped It again, this time a little harder. Again the tip slipped off. No dent, no scratch.

I withdrew to seek counsel with myself.

I know a scientist is supposed to welcome a challenge, he’s supposed to rejoice at results inexplicable and unexpected… but I’ll bet a lot of them don’t. I’ll bet a lot of them try to shrug it off, especially if it doesn’t fit their theory. If this thing was ever made public, I had a feeling a lot of theories would have to be rewritten.

The hell with it. I started whaling away at it with all my strength.

After seven or eight blows the piece of linen tore and the bubble floated up above my desk again, swirling in the eddies my swinging arm had made in the air. I caught it before it could float into a hiding place, and put it under a glass tumbler.

I put my face down close to the desk. There was a new, circular depression in the wood surface. And on the bubble… no dent, no scratch.

Answer: very tough.

I FOUND Icouldn’t sleep. I went out on my little balcony and watched the cars go by. Not as boring as it may sound, many of them were full of students shouting and laughing. People in convertibles would see me up on my balcony and wave, sometimes invite me down to join them.

Not too many people on the sidewalks. There used to be a few hookers who staked out corners within sight of the Blast-Off. Then the Golden Manatee moved in, and the cops ran them all off. Now, the preferred way to buy sex in this neighborhood is to get a room in the Manatee and call one of the escort services. I imagine you’ll get a [64] better class of hooker, but be sure to bring a lot of cash. You’ll pay more tipping the bell captain to bring your escort in the back way than you would have paid for a whole night with one of the chased-away streetwalkers.

One girl seemed not to have got the message. She came strolling down the sidewalk, bold as brass, on three-inch cork platform shoes. She wore a silvery blouse tied up between her breasts and a hollerin’ orange miniskirt. Lots of lipstick, lots of piled-up blonde hair, and big, dark, pink-rimmed sunglasses at one in the morning. She looked up at me and grinned.

“How about it, cowboy? Should I come up?”

Cowboy? I thought it over.

“Not sure I can afford it,” I said.

“Sure you can, sweetie.”

“Oh… well, all right.”

“That’s what I love. Enthusiasm. What’s your room number?”

I told her, and in a minute I could hear the clunking sound of her huge cork soles. She knocked on the door and I turned off the lights and opened it.

“Twenty dollars gets you all night,” she said.

“All night? Hell, it’s already one-thirty.”

“C’mon, stud.” She put her hand in my groin. “I can tell you’re glad to see me.”

“That’s a banana for my pet monkey. And all I have is ten dollars.”

“That’ll have to do, I guess.” She came into the room and closed the door. I jumped her as she turned around. I pressed her back against the door.

“Lipstick! Watch the lipstick, you wild man!”

“Forget the lipstick,” I said. Or tried to say, between kisses.

I was tearing at her skirt and she found my zipper. I wasn’t surprised to see she was wearing no underwear. I took her right there against the door, then on the floor, and finally with her knees on the floor and her body bent over the bed. In about half an hour we both collapsed at the foot of the bed, leaning back against the sheets and blankets we’d torn up.

[65] She still had on her silver lame blouse and big clunky shoes. My pants were over by the door somewhere. I picked up the skirt and held it up to the blue light from the streetlight outside. It was even ghastlier that way.

“Where the hell did you get this?” I asked.

“Thrift shop,” Kelly said.

“Which one? Whores ‘R’ Us?”

“Yeah, I think that was the one.” She pulled off the blonde fright wig and tossed it toward my garbage can.

“Did you have a permit to shoot that?” I asked.

She kissed my cheek, then bounced to her feet and headed for the bathroom. The high shoes made her bare bottom do things even more interesting than usual. She went in, flicked on the light, then the blouse came sailing out the door followed, one by one, by the shoes. In a minute I got up and joined her.

Kelly wears a green stone in her navel. It’s big enough to fill the entire belly button and I’m pretty sure it’s a real emerald, but I wasn’t going to ask her, or take her to a jeweler to have her assayed. She was looking down, fiddling with the tiny gold rings that held it in. She looked up at me.

“Something wrong?”

“What could be wrong?” And really, what could? The emerald set off her greenish eyes nicely. Her skin was smooth and flawless, except for some tiny moles scattered around, what the upper classes used to call beauty spots and put on deliberately. She had lots of blond hair which she was unpinning. Everything else was where it ought to be, in ample amounts. Let’s just say that picking out a bikini or a thong didn’t give her anxiety attacks.

She was laying out mysterious female stuff from her crowded purse. I was far from through for the night, but first I had to answer a call of nature, and wasn’t about to dress and go downstairs, so I used the sink. Kelly glanced at me.

“Boys,” she said, disdainfully.

“Hey, it all goes down the same pipes.”

“You rinse that out real good.”

[66] “You’re telling me you aren’t going to use it as soon as I’m through?” I reached for her arm, but she shook me off.

“Down, boy. Later. First, I need you to go down to my car and get the small suitcase in the trunk. I’m not going down there again as Sally Streetwalker.” She tossed me her car keys.

“Did you have any trouble?”

“The doorman at the Manatee gave me a funny look. I parked in their lot, all the way over toward the beach.”

“What’s in the suitcase? Can you stay over?”

“Yes, if you bring me the decent clothes that are in the suitcase. I’m not walking out of here tomorrow and let your mother see that outfit.”

“Don’t worry about that. You’re solid with my mother.”

“Whatever.”

“I guess I should bring the car over to our lot. Those bastards might tow it.”

“Good idea.”

“Are you sure you want me going out alone at this hour? I could get mugged.”

“Hey, it was you called me up, remember?”

She was filling a plastic douche bottle so I pulled on my pants and left.

KELLY DRIVES Agreen Porsche 921, this year’s model, that cost more than our income at the Blast-Off for two or three years. When your daddy is the biggest luxury car dealer in northeast Florida having a rad ride is something you just naturally expect.

Not that she lacked for anything else, either.

Kelly.

Every once in a while something drops into your life that makes you think that, in spite of all evidence you’ve seen so far, somebody up there really does like you. Meeting Kelly is the first time it’s happened to me.

We went to different schools. She can’t help being born rich any more than I can help being poor, at least until I get a better shot at [67] carving out my own destiny instead of just settling into the level I’d been born into.