Rolling Thunder (17 page)

I want my nest!

Aw, stop crying about it, Podkayne. This is what you asked for, so make the most of it. Four more tracks are in the can, you’re sounding better than ever. The band has come together in a way none of us could have imagined a few months ago, and the reason, I’m forced to admit, is the hothouse pressure of traveling, and playing and playing and playing night after night. We’ve reached the point where we play off each other effortlessly. No signals are needed, we can read each other’s minds, I know what the others are going to do before they know it themselves, and when they do it, I’m
there
!

Thursday, June 19

Artigas Day in Uruguay. Algerian Righting Day. Labour Day in Trinidad and Tobago. Canadian National Public Service Day. Juneteenth in the Second Republic of Texas.

Last stop. If it wasn’t, I think I’d have to kill myself.

Sinope. Not really much farther from Jupiter than Pasiphae, in miles, and only about V3 smaller.

Diary, honey, compared to Sinope, Pasiphae is the Big Apple.

If we had an agent, we’d be screaming, “Who booked us in this toilet?” But if we had an agent, she’d be steaming, too, because we
did
finish the songs we set out to do, and we
did
download them, and they
are
getting some pretty good play … in which case, any sensible agent would have pulled us back to the Galileans to take advantage of our newfound popularity.

Not a chance. Callisto, Ganymede, and Io are nothing but fond memories now. If the Navy sez you gotta finish your tour of the obscure gravel that makes up the outer reaches of the bazillion moons of Jupiter, well, honey, that’s what you do.

But
Sinope
… ?

Okay, I’m being mean. The most significant thing about Sinope is not its extreme isolation. Pasiphae is isolated, too. All you need to know about Sinope can be summed up in one number: 96. That’s the population. And some of those were failing fast.

But there was a good side, I guess. Of those 96, I’d say 92 were avid fans of Podkayne and the Pod People. Our downloads had arrived ahead of us, and the Sinopeans were gaga. Of course, since the last MADDMN troupe had come through here in about 1956, they’d probably have been fans of Lawrence Welk if somebody had dug him up and put an accordion in his hands and delivered him and his ghostly Champagne Orchestra to Sinope. (You learn about some really odd acts if you study music history.)

If they’d had palm fronds, they’d have strewed them across our path from the ship. Which was a weekly milk run. Literally. We shared cabin space with butter and eggs and bread and moo juice. If they’d had donkeys, we’d have been invited to ride into the settlement on our asses.

Which were sore, as the cargo shuttles boosted at a steady 1 gee all the way, and if you think it’s hard to go from Mars to 1 gee on Earth, try going from the no-grav whistlestops we’d been playing to 1 gee of acceleration. Oh, my aching back!

Every admiral in the Navy will deny it, but everyone below that rank knows this: Places like Sinope are where the hopeless fuckups are posted. The law says we all have to serve, but there are some folks who can’t even manage the simplest tasks, like a recruiting post in Western America, and they are sent to monitoring outposts like Sinope, with the bare minimum of population, not much recreation, and base functions that are largely automated. It’s make-work, about as important as counting the grains of sand in Saturn’s rings. (There are people in the Navy that do something very like that.)

And oh, my, they killed the fatted calf, they rolled out the red carpet, they wined us and dined us, and I believe every man Jack and woman Jill attended both our concerts. We were all wondering if we’d ever get such an enthusiastic reception again as long as we lived. No telling, but I am pretty sure of one thing. It is probably the only time we’ll ever sell out an entire
planet
.

* * *

By the way, diary … I got laid. Last performance, I could have had my pick of half a dozen acceptable prospects. Like, if I was a guy and they were girls, sort of thing, I’d have been showered in panties with phone numbers written on them. Podkayne has
groupies! Hurray!

Last few numbers I started making eye contact with a guy in the front row, about my height, Mars-born (I can almost always tell), curly blond hair, slight build, and the sweetest green eyes. And long, narrow hands that looked gentle. By the last encore I felt a connection had been made, if not between our hearts, then at least between certain lower, moister parts. So I bought him a drink, and invited myself up to see his room (he was shy; please don’t let him be gay!). Once there he took over, though. He was a great kisser, and the hands were all I had hoped they would be. I told him I wasn’t a sexual athlete, that I preferred gentleness and slow rhythms, and then proceeded to batter him within an inch of his life. Where did
that
come from? Too much enforced abstinence, I guess. He didn’t complain, and the second time was more Podkayne and less Nadia the Nymphomaniac. Still, we did about everything two humans without major fetishes can do without rubber hoses and a jar of molasses. As is my custom, dear diary, I won’t go into details, preferring to relive them in total privacy, even from you. I’m sure they won’t fade away, and play-by-plays are for tennis.

After the fourth and seemingly final set, not even my most ardent attentions could get his little soldier to stand at attention again, though it was fun to try.
Can you feel anything when I do this?
Flip, flop. (Actually, the GI in question was far from a PFC, though a bit short of a major general. Call him a lieutenant colonel. I don’t require the top brass, don’t even like them, but have to admit to a prejudice against enlisted men.)

With nothing else to do, and unable to sleep for a while—he didn’t roll over and start to snore, not even after what I put him through—we talked a bit. His name was Michigan. First name, no need for last ones here, not unless we meet again. And yes, diary, I knew that
before
I fucked him. What do you think I am? Don’t answer that, and I don’t care what you think, anyway. I’m a healthy 19-year-old, almost old enough to drink liquor in Western America, and it
is
the twenty-first century.

The name was dumped on him because his parents came from Grand Rapids, in East America. I told him I liked it, which was true; people with names like Podkayne and Michigan should glory in it and give thanks we’re not just another Tiffany or Brandon.

He was eager to get back home, and he was short, only 3 months to go on his mandatory hitch. He’d been posted here the whole time, with only two leaves back home, and a few furloughs to Ganymede and Cal-listo. He hadn’t been impressed by either place.

But he was reasonably happy. He was able to be a full-time student since there was so little to do out here, carrying a full load at universities as diverse as Oxford, UCLA, and the University of Beijing. I thought about telling him that my father is an historian, but held back. Once I let something like that out he might be wanting to meet Dad, and I didn’t know him well enough to invite him home. After all, I said Sinope was a post for fuckups, didn’t I? I’m sure they’re not
all
losers, but he might be one. As you well know, diary, I’ve got a tendency to pick out the loser in any group of ten decent-looking guys. Remember Quinn?

So I held back, and we exchanged numbers and said we’d look each other up when we both got back home. Only he might not be home very long, as he was planning to go to Earth to meet and take some classes from some professors in China, which reminded him, since he was still not sleepy, that he was behind on the 3 hours of exercise he had to do every day if he was to have any hope of surviving Chinese gravity in a few months, so he floated out of bed and started in on those.

I watched him for a while, naked and muscular. Gosh, I do love sweat on a man, as long as it’s fresh. Makes me want to sweat, too, so I suggested an alternative exercise that would burn up almost as much as he was doing, and we could do it together, and he said if I could get the lieutenant colonel interested while he continued working out it was fine with him, and I did, without even touching either of them, just exercising the parts that guys like to look at most, which I learned to do just shortly after I attained those parts and realized their power.

And with our usual modesty we will break off the narrative here, dear diary, except to note it was the most gratifying exercise session I can recall.

Tuesday, June 24

Discovery Day in Newfoundland and Labrador. Fête Nationale in Quebec. Fisherman’s Day in Zaire. Inti Raymi in Peru. Manila Day in the Philippines. Latvian and Estonian Midsummer Festival. St. Jean’s Day. St. John the Baptist Day.

Home!

Yes! Europa
will
do for home, after a trip like that!

Hello, Karma! Hello, Kahlua! My, but you look pretty. Stop scratching my legs, I didn’t have any choice but to abandon you.

Hello, Swamp, and all you disreputable riparian residents! I love you all!

Good-bye, Joey, Cassandra, and especially you, Quinn, I don’t want to see any of your ugly faces for at least a week. Practice be damned!

The Swamp creatures love a party, and they threw a nice coming-home celebration for me. I got a bit more tiddly than I’m used to and came close to doing something I’d regret in the morning with at least three guys who’d never turned my head before. Alcohol has this amazing ability to make people more attractive. Everybody except the one who’s drinking it.

There was dancing and singing—but not by me, even though I was asked several times. I was really serious about hanging it up for at least a few days. Can you overdo something you really love? Answer: Yes.

But best of all, there were two things waiting that were beyond price. The best was a message from Mike, timed to be waiting for when I got back from the tour. He said he’d been listening to a few of our tracks, and that he thought they were okay … “If you like old-folks music.”

Good try, Mike, but I know you better than that. He had listened to them all, just as he always has, multiple times. Part of our mutual nongushing pact is that we never admit we like something the other one has done, but he’s my number one fan. I know it, and he knows I know it.

The second thing was a pass during my next furlough—which starts today!—to the highly restricted base by the Big Rock Candy Mountains. I was going to get to see what very few people, even those in the Navy, ever get to see.

Yes!

9

THERE WAS A
small quake as our bus neared the Alphesiboea Linea on the way to the Taliesen region of Europa. The Linea is a crack in the surface ice caused by tidal flexing as Europa is pulled this way and that by Io, Ganymede, and, most of all, by Jupiter. There’s also the fact that the rocky core of Europa, way down there under the ice and the incredibly deep sea, rotates at a slightly slower rate than the ice does. The core gradually falls behind, at the rate of one complete rotation every ten thousand years. This messes with things, too.

Our driver stopped and waited it out. I gripped the armrests of my seat and made sure I was buckled in tight. The springs under us creaked, and the bus slued a little sideways. Then it stopped and I cautiously checked my panties: dry, thank the lord.

We had landed just shy of the Linea and would proceed on the surface from there, because strange things happened around Taliesen and it was better to be on the ground if you had to deal with them.

I’ll come clean. It was right there, at the start of the journey I’d so much wanted to take, that I began to wonder what the hell I was doing here.

* * *

LENTICULAE. WHICH IS
Latin for “freckles,” a term I prefer. The Big Rock Candy Mountains. Europan jelly beans. They either contain life of a form so alien that we don’t have much of a grip on it after twenty years of cautious study, or they are the source or focus of forces we don’t yet understand and can’t even detect. The best minds of Mars and Earth had studied them intensively to the extent that they could, watched them and listened to them, and we still don’t know much more than when we started: They are huge, strange things happen around them, and they sing.

That they are huge is something that was known ever since the first Voyager and Galileo automated spacecraft flew by and photographed them in the 1970s and ‘90s.

The strange things go way back to the days of the initial ground expeditions, and include gruesome death.

The singing is a recent discovery.

THEY KNEW THE
freckles were emitting very powerful radio waves in what is called ELF, for Extremely Low Frequency. This band is usually described as being from three to thirty Hertz—that’s Hertz, singular, not megahertz or gigahertz!—but some of the signals coming from the freckles were even lower than that. It took a while to find that out because, after all, who’s listening down that low in the electromagnetic spectrum? And once the waves were detected, they were pretty much dismissed as having no realistic use, because …