Red Thunder (32 page)

I HAD NEEDED a rest, or at least some kind of break,
and the trip back to the Blast-Off, while you couldn't say it was
restful, was certainly refreshing. These people talked a lot, loudly,
and laughed a lot, just as loudly. They hadn't seen each other in a
year in one case, and three years in the other. There was a certain
amount of catching up to do, though they talked and e-mailed
frequently. Patty's stories of bush piloting in Alaska and Africa had
me anxious to hear more, and I was sorry to hear she wouldn't be
staying on beyond the next day.

I felt enveloped and warmed by a feeling of family I'd longed for all my life. An
extended
family, something the racism of all my grandparents had deprived me of.
By the time we arrived I was ready to change my name to Broussard...
but eventually realized I didn't have to, as I'd already been adopted
into this big, messy, ornery clan.

FOR THE FIRST few minutes things were a little chilly
when we arrived at the Blast-Off. Caleb, Salty, Grace, and Patty
immediately picked up on the hostility between Mom and Travis. You
would have had to be in a coma to miss it. But between Aunt Maria's
determined efforts and the magic of the Broussards, it was soon put
away. Grace insinuated herself into Maria's kitchen without making
Maria feel crowded, quite an achievement, and soon it was clear we were
about to be treated to a Battle of the Brunches, Cajun versus Cubano.
The only sure winner in a contest like that was our pepper-blasted
taste buds, and the only sure loser was our waistlines.

We pulled all the outdoor tables together around the pool, and when
that whole bunch sat down around them it was a toss-up, for me, as to
whether I'd rather go to Mars or just stay right there, soaking up the
love.

"Will somebody say grace?" Jubal asked.

"Grace," I said.

"What?" Grace asked, and first the Broussards, then the rest of us,
broke up. Then Jubal offered up the prayer—"Please bless dis
fam'ly,
O Lord!"—and we dug in.

Soon it became clear to me that the new arrivals were aware of the
nature of the Red Thunder project. I wasn't worried about that. It was
clear to me that "family" meant as much to these people as it did in
the Mafia. Being closemouthed was deep in their genes, they would never
reveal anything important to any outsider.

Without ever asking a question, I learned a lot about them from the
constant happy chatter. I learned, for instance, that Salty was an
electrician. And I learned that, among many other skills, Caleb was a
welder, that he plied that trade on offshore oil rigs when his family's
myriad other enterprises weren't bringing in enough cash.

Somehow, I doubted this was a coincidence.

"So," I said to Caleb at one point, "did Travis hire you to do
welding on... the project?" He laughed, finished a mouthful of boudin
sausage.

"Travis couldn't 'ford me, Manny. I get union scale, and triple time
on Sundays." I must have looked confused. "But that's when I hire out.
I got me my own company, too, and I can charge as much or as little as
I like, since I'm the boss."

Kelly had been listening.

"Caleb, Travis didn't tell me he'd offered—"

"He's not buttin' into your department, Kelly. We done our own deal,
I'll get my money outta Travis and Jubal's share. Keep it off the
books, that way, help keep the expenses down under one mill."

Kelly didn't look entirely convinced, but she let it go. It turned
out Salty had the same arrangement. By bringing in a professional
electrician, I thought maybe Travis was horning in on
my
department. I told Dak about it, and we drew ourselves up in righteous
indignation... for two seconds, purely for form's sake. I was never so
delighted to see someone in my life, and Dak felt the same way. We were
in
way
over our heads, trying to design a system to meet all the electrical needs of
Red Thunder.

The brunch meeting went well. I saw Caleb talking shop with Sam
Sinclair, and Salty sought out me and Dak and questioned us about the
work we'd done so far, mapping out the electrical system. I gradually
realized he was a lot more than an electrician, he was an electrical
engineer, with a degree from LSU. And Dak and I were about to become
apprentice electricians, in a
big
hurry.

The only worry was when I saw Travis take my mother to the other end
of the parking lot. They talked for a long time, mostly with my mother
shaking her head in that dogged way she can do better than anyone else.
You don't have a chance, Travis,
I thought. No matter what you're trying to sell her.

It turned out he was selling her some free help... and he
sold
it, which was a first in my memory. Not long after that she pulled me aside.

"Grace and Billy are moving in for the duration," she said, not
making eye contact with me. What was she worrying about, that I'd think
less of her for accepting help? "It was either that, or pack it in.
Shut the doors and let the sheriff put all the furniture out on the
street. I almost wish I'd done that, too."

"I'll support you either way, I hope you know that."

She put an arm around me as we walked, and she hugged me close.

"I do. The only reason I've kept at it so long is... it was your
father's dream. And it wasn't even really a dream, I guess, I think it
was more of an obsession."

"You don't need to let it be your obsession, too."

"But I did. You're right. Your father was determined to make it
work, he wanted to show his parents... and even more, my parents, the
white folks who never said a racist word to him but always managed to
let him know he was their social inferior, right up to the day we
married.

"He wanted to make it work so bad... that he got a little stupid.
Just once. He did something he'd never have done if he hadn't wanted
this so bad, for you, and for me."

And what was the stupid thing? What would be the worst possible way
for him to die to perfectly satisfy my mom's parents' expectations?
Why, a drug deal, of course.

Just this once, it was going to be. He lived long enough to tell Mom
that, as he lay dying in the hospital. I remember Mom was crying, not
much else.

It wasn't even a very big drug deal, certainly not by Florida
standards. Just two Cubans and three Colombians and half a kilo of
cocaine. But one of the Colombians was flying high, and he got mad,
pulled out his gun, started shooting. None of the others could even
recall what the fight was about. None of the others were hurt; the
Colombian was too stoned to shoot very well, except for that first shot
at point-blank range.

They left my father there, all four of them, to bleed almost to
death in a deserted parking lot and die of septic infection the next
day. All of them are out of prison now except the one who was killed
inside. I know their names. Maybe one day I'll do something about that.
Or maybe it's better to just bury that kind of hatred.

"Travis made a lot of sense, Manny," Mom went on. "He asked why I
hang on here. Why work so hard to keep this goddam place running when I
know, when
everybody
knows, that one day it's all going to
come together at the same time, all the bad things, no customers, a big
lawsuit, a hurricane, and the only thing different than if we'd gone
belly up ten years ago would be ten years less of heartbreak.

"When I think of selling it, it just hurts that after all our hard
work it's come to nothing. I think about getting another loan,
someplace, do some renovation, make it nice, like your father wanted
it. But this place is Old Florida, and it always will be, until some
New Florida outfit comes along and puts up a shopping mall.

"Well, I'm tired of being Old Florida. So I'm going to accept Grace
and Billy's help while you're working on this thing you're working on.
Travis is right, you're going to work yourself to death trying to do
both things at once, you're too good a son to let me and Maria handle
it by ourselves, even though I've already told you to. You're your
father's son, that way... and I'm proud of you.

"But I'm telling you right now, Manuel. Whether you go or not, whether you come back or not... I'm through here."

"I'm glad, Mom."

"When you... when you get back, we're getting out of this life." She
shook her head and looked up at me. "You're already out of it, Manuel,
and I can't tell you how glad that makes me. And, yes, I thank Travis
for that... even though I'll kill him if he harms one—"

"I'm coming back, Mom. And we'll be rich and famous."

She squinted at me, looking too old and too tired in the merciless sunshine.

"Is that what you want, Manuel?"

"Famous? Not really. But we probably will be. I only want to be rich
enough not to have to worry about every dime, all the time. Have enough
money to pay for college, maybe have a few nice things. Not have to...
to worry all the time that I can't get Kelly the things she's used to."

"Well, you know I like her. Even though she's rich." We both laughed
at that. "And if you don't want to be famous, you'd better have a talk
with her. She's figuring on cashing in on this thing right from the
git-go. She's been talking to Maria and me about it. The lady has big
plans."

"What do you mean?"

"Talk to her. And you go with Travis, and you come back." She kissed
me on the cheek, hugged me very tight, and we rejoined the people
around the picnic tables.

Big plans, huh? First I'd heard of it.

SIXTY DAYS.

That's how much time we had if we were going to beat the Chinese to
Mars. We put up a big calendar on a wall of the warehouse and Kelly
marked off each day at midnight, when we were supposed to have been in
bed for an hour, per Travis's instructions. We were supposed to get up
at six and run, having theoretically gotten seven hours of sleep.
Instead, we were always up at four or five, unable to sleep.

But... run?

Mom got a big laugh at that, when she heard. And nobody could have been more surprised than me. I know I
should
exercise, get into the habit of it since I didn't plan to be a
lumberjack or a rodeo rider, or anything else strenuous. Astronaut? In
truth it's a very sedentary occupation, especially in the free-falling
space stations. They have to put in one or two hours' exercise every
day just to keep themselves from losing too much muscle mass and bone
density.

But running around and around a track always struck me as a
stupifyingly boring waste of time. Running on the street was only
slightly better.

"That's gotta change," Travis told us, early on. "I want all of you
to be in tip-top shape when we leave, not shriveled up from staring at
a computer screen twenty hours a day. A strong mind in a strong body,
that's what I want."

I was going to ask Travis how much running he'd gotten in during the
last four or five years of steady alcoholism... but then I saw how much
one hour of jogging was costing him, the first time we all went out
together, with the sun just coming up and dew sparkling on the leaves.
But he was out there again the next morning. Neither Dak nor I could
let an old ex-alky outrun us, of course, so we really pushed ourselves.

And the girls? It was easy for them. They'd both been doing it since high school.

"You think this gorgeous body comes for free?" Kelly had chided me,
puttering along at half her normal speed as I huffed and puffed beside
her.

"Hell, no. I paid ten dollars for that body."

"Which you still owe me, come to think of it."

It took a week of torture, and a considerable amount of denial, for
me to admit that after the morning runs I felt more rested and alert
than at any other time of the day. After that I relaxed to the
inevitable. After two weeks even Travis was getting back into shape.
Jubal... well, Jubal was exempt, because nobody made Jubal do anything.
Most of the time he was too engrossed in his calculations to drag
himself away from the computer. But then one morning he did run with
us, and he held his own. I'd forgotten about the midnight rowing trips
on the lake.

We moved spare beds and dressers from the motel into some of the
empty offices in the warehouse, and set up a prefab shower inside the
rest room. Most nights Kelly and I slept over, and so did Dak and
Alicia. Pretty soon the delivery boys from the local pizza and Chinese
places could find their way to the Red Thunder Corporation blindfolded.

THE SHIP WAS to be in two parts, the cradle and the
life modules. Dak and I were ready to start construction on the top
part quickly, but it couldn't be built until it had something to sit
on, which was frustrating. We devoted the time to materials testing. We
also had weekly meetings at Rancho Broussard.

"It's a good thing we didn't start building the cradle a week ago,"
Travis said at our second meeting. "We thought we were ready, but Jubal
did some more tests, and what he found out changed the parameters
pretty radically.

"You'll recall I set out radiation sensors at that first test in the
swamp. Didn't find any. But now Jubal has found there's two types of...
maybe we should say 'quantum states' inside the Squeezer bubbles. Most
of the ones we've tested, they've been what we're calling Phase-1
bubbles. I'll come back to them.

"But there's a second type of bubble."

"Let me guess," Dak said. "Phase-2?"

"I'm surrounded by geniuses. The stuff inside a Phase-2 is
compressed so hard, so tight... we're really not sure just what the
matter inside them is like, but it may be like a neutron star, all the
electrons stripped away and nothing but neutrons packed together like
Japanese on a Tokyo subway car.

"Whatever. What comes out is
very
hot,
very
fast, and releases radiation. If you were close to the exhaust, the neutrons would boil you like an egg.