John Varley - Red Thunder

“Avery found Jubal’s stash and spent a whole afternoon leafing through it. There was a biology textbook that discussed evolution, other sinful things, too. Avery lay in wait, and when we showed up that afternoon he lit into Jubal. He didn’t have his pool cue. He had found a two-by-four and driven some nails into it.

“He hit me once with it, backhand. I don’t know whether I was just lucky or he didn’t intend to strike me with the nail side. I’ve still got a scar, right here…” He fingered a spot near his hairline where I’d noticed a faint scar before.

“Then he started in on Jubal. I don’t know how many times he hit him, all I could do was sit there in a daze. The doctors found four punctures that went through his skull and into his brain. Both his arms and most of his ribs were broken.

“I ran away while he was still beating Jubal. I… I still have nightmares about it, and I will probably always blame myself.”

“Not fair,” Kelly said. “You were too small to stop him.”

“I should have thought of something. I’ve thought of plenty things since. Get on his blind side, hit him with a stick, stand off and chuck rocks at him… hurt him or distract him. But I didn’t think of any of those things, so I ran for the nearest house, which was about a mile away. Two very large men, the Charles brothers, came back with me. Avery had built an altar. Jesus had told Avery to offer Jubal up to God, like Abraham with Isaac. God was bluffing, but Avery wasn’t. They got Jubal off the altar, put out the fire, and got Jubal to a hospital. On the way the Charles brothers didn’t quite kill Avery, but they bloodied him up something awful.

“Jubal had so much brain damage the doctors didn’t think he’d ever walk or talk again. He might not even be able to feed himself. That [100] didn’t matter, because I intended to take care of him for the rest of his life.

“His brothers and sisters wouldn’t allow that, though. They told me to go on and get my college education, and they’d take care of Jubal. And they did. He never lacked for any material thing from the day his daddy almost killed him to the day I moved him here to be with me, seven years ago. His memories before the beating are almost nonexistent.”

“He told us about his only Christmas,” I said. I was going to say more, but suddenly felt I might start to cry if I did. My only memory of my own father is a very hazy one from Christmas day. He is rolling a Tonka truck toward me, making sputtering sounds, and I am laughing. I think I was four.

Kelly took my hand and squeezed it.

“That Christmas story gives you just a glimpse of what Avery was like. Jubal remembers a few things about reading with me in our hideout. He remembers the day I sneaked him into the picture show. It was Deliverance . You know what part Jubal liked? The rushing water. The mountains and cliffs they went through. Jubal had never been more than twenty miles from home, mountain streams were new to him.

“Anyway, he’s shown he’s able to relearn things, and frankly, many of his memories of living with his family are better lost, anyway.

“Jubal is still as smart as he ever was, and you can believe it or not, up to you, but I’m talking Einstein, Hawking, Edison, Dyson. A few years after the assault I showed him Einstein’s equation, E equals mc squared. Jubal said, ‘What dat big E fo’?’ I told him, and he asked about the m . ‘An de c?’ I told him it was the speed of light. He looked at it for a second or two, and grinned, and said, “Dis gonna upset all dat Newton stuff you showed me. Gonna make a big bang, too.’ In the next hour I fed him more data and a few equations, and he pretty much deduced the General Theory of Relativity.

“That mind still works, but not always according to the laws of logic you and I know. But amazing things can come out of that mind.”

He looked down at the silver bubble he had been playing with.

“Like that,” he said. “That… that violates just about every law of [101] physics I was ever taught. And something that different, something that violates so many rules… well, friends and neighbors, that scares me.”

“Jubal was making them for some sort of target-shooting game,” I told him. “Or to put on Christmas trees.”

“Yeah, that’s pure Jubal,” Travis said.

We were all silent again for a time. Jubal wanted to use the silver bubbles as children’s toys, but it was pretty obvious they meant a lot more than that. Just what they meant was still an open question.

Which Travis meant to solve. He got up from his seat and stretched. Then he looked at all of us again, in turn.

“I told you, I’d be a lot happier if it was just Jubal and me aware of this.”

“We won’t steal anything from you,” Dak said.

“I trust you guys more than anybody I know.”

“Because we didn’t rob you on the beach?” Alicia laughed. “I’ll fess up, I told Dak he ought to take a hundred for the taxi service.”

“You had a right to,” Travis said.

“And you said yourself you’ve used up all your friends but us. Who else is there for you to trust, except Jubal?”

“Do you ever pull any punches, lady?”

“Not that I ever saw,” Dak said, standing and stretching, too. “So what do you want from us, man? Swear us to secrecy?”

“Until we’ve had a chance to learn more about it from Jubal.”

“I’m okay behind that. What about the rest of you, musketeers? All for one…”

“And one for all…”

IT WAS JUSTstarting to get a little light in the east when Travis, Kelly, and I found Jubal out on the lake. When Jubal was rowing at night, he hung an old kerosene lamp from a davit in the bow, just as his father had done in the Louisiana bayous when out hunting at night. We could see it from some distance, flickering like an orange firefly.

Travis’s boat was about what you’d expect from a guy who had been letting a Mercedes cook in the Florida sunshine. It was low, fast, and [102] plush, with a tiny cabin and head up front and room to seat six or seven in the open in back. But it was showing distress from the indifferent care it had been getting since drinking became a full-time occupation for Travis. Some of the seat material was cracking and there were patches where green slime was growing on the Fiberglas.

The big Mercury outboard seemed healthy, though. It started at once, and then burbled with quiet authority as we pulled away from the dock.

We eased up from behind. He didn’t acknowledge us in any way. I was amazed at the speed he was making in the old craft. It was easy to see how he got the big arms.

“I’m sorry, Jubal,” Travis said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“Don’t matter none, no,” Jubal said. And kept rowing. Travis kept us off to Jubal’s right and just behind the sweep of his oars.

“We’d all like to see those target bubbles again, Jube, see what they can do.”

“Dey don’ do much,” he said. “Jus’ go pop!” He giggled.

“Maybe you could show us how,” Travis suggested.

“What I be out here fo’,” Jubal admitted, and now his brow furrowed. “Tryin’ to ’member how dey works.”

“You mean you can’t make any more?”

“No, cher , no, I can make plenty wit’ de squeezy t’ing I show you. I tryin’ to member how I make de Squeezer .”

“It’ll come to you, mon ami ,” Travis said.

“Mebbe yeah, mebbe no.”

“Come on, Jube, let me tow you in, we’ll have us some petty dejournez .”

Kelly leaned over the side of the boat with an open cardboard box. “We got Krispy Kremes, Jubal,” she said.