Catch the Lightning

A young girl from Earth falls in love with a handsome stranger—and becomes a pawn in an interstellar war.

“Asaro, who’s a physicist, offers an intelligent exploration of possible links between telepathy and quantum physics and informs many of the scenes between the lovers with power and tenderness.”

—Publishers Weekly

“In this sensual tale of telepathy and love between Mayan descendants of different worlds and times, Asaro continues to develop the Skolian culture. Recommended.”

—Library Journal

“Catch the Lightning combines hard science speculation with striking, hard-edged characterization in a way that is seldom attempted, much less achieved, by genre writers. Its portrayal of a hypersensitive young woman, an empath making her way through a world inhabited by predatory men, is a revelation.”

—William Barton

“Hard science fiction fans can rejoice—the next superstar is here—while fans of great storytelling can rejoice in one of the best books of the year.”

—Romantic Times

The Saga of the Skolian Empire

Primary Inversion

Catch the Lightning

The Last Hawk

The Radiant Seas

Ascendant Sun

The Quantum Rose*

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

The translations of Zinacanteco texts on pages 62 and 292 are taken from the book Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas, by Evori Z. Vogt, Harvard University Press, 1969, pages 649 and 686. Copyright © 1969 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The translation of the Hummingbird text on pages 107-108 is taken from Of Cabbages and Kings: Tales from Zinacantan, by Robert M. Laughlin, Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology No. 23, 1977. Reprinted with permission.

CATCH THE LIGHTNING Copyright © 1996 by Catherine Asaro All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Cover art by Peter Bollinger Edited by David G. Hartwell A Tor Book V Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-812-55102-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-21281

First edition: December 1996

First mass market edition: October 1997

Printed in the United States of America This book is dedicated to Sharon Todd and David Dansky, two gifted teachers who made a great difference in my life 09.8765432

I gratefully acknowledge the readers who
gave me input into this book: William Barton,
David Burkhead, James Cannizzo, Louis Gannizzo,
Al Chou, Paula Jordan, Frances and Norm Miller, Lyn Nicols,
Nicolas Retana, Joan Slonczewski, Bud Sparhawk, and David
Truesdale; the Dream Weavers: Juleen Brantingham,Jo Clayton,
Suze Feldman, ElizaBeth Gilligan, Lois Gresh, and Brook and
Julia West; the people in the research topics on the GEnie SFRT
and the Internet who answered my questions; Caltech students
Bradey Honsinger, Stacy Kerkela, Jeffrey Miller, Divya Srinivasan,
and Shultz H. Wang. My thanks to Shawna McCarthy and Russ
Galen at Scovil Chicak and Galen, to Tad Dembinski at Tor,
and particularly to my editor, David G. Hartwell. A special
thanks to my husband, John Cannizzo, for his love
and support.

I last saw Earth in 1987, when I was seventeen. The years since then have brought so many changes that the girl I was in Los Angeles seems like another person. But my memory, bio-enhanced now, remains vivid.

I felt the city that night. Although LA never fully slept, it was quiet, wrapped in its own thoughts. Drowsing. Waiting for a jolt to wake it up.

Joshua met me when I finished my shift at the restaurant, and we walked to the bus stop. It had drizzled earlier and a slick film covered the street, reflecting the lights in blurred smears of oily water. Above us a few stars managed to outshine the city lights and pollution, valiant in their efforts to outdo the faint amber glow that tinted the darkened sky. Sparse late-night traffic flowed by, sleek animals gliding through the night, intent on their own purposes.

I could see Joshua’s good mood. It spread out from him in a rose-colored mist that shifted with vague shapes, the form of unspoken words. It sounded like waves on a beach, smelled like seaweed, tasted like salt. I was used to seeing and hearing people’s emotions, even feeling them on my skin, but smells and tastes came less often. I knew nothing about Coulomb forces then, but it didn’t matter: experience had taught me the effect decreased with distance; I would experience it until he moved away. Or until the intensity of his mood faded. I didn’t tell him, of course. I didn’t want to sound crazy.

We sat at the bus stop and Joshua put his arm around my shoulders, not like a boyfriend, which he had never been to me, but like the best friend I had known for six years, since 1981, the year Jamaica became the fifty-first state and the Hollywood sign burned down in the hills above LA. Tousled curls fell over his forehead and brushed the wire rims of his glasses. He was my opposite in many ways, his blond curls sun-bright compared to my waist-length black hair. His eyes had always seemed like bits of sky to me, blue and clear where mine were black.

A harsh sensation punctured the bubble of our mood. I had no idea where it came from, only that it cut like a knife.

“Tina, look.” Joshua pointed across the street.

I looked. A red sports car was turning off San Carlos Boulevard into a side street. “What about it?”

“That was Nug driving.”

Hearing Nug’s name was like being hit by ice water. “He can drive down the street if he wants.”

“He was watching us.” Joshua looked past my shoulder and his face relaxed. “The bus is coming.”

As we stood, the bus came alongside us. I got on and glanced back at Joshua. He waved, his hand disappearing from sight as the driver closed the door.

During the ride I sat by myself, leaning against the window. The few other passengers seemed lost in their own thoughts. I wondered if they were going home to their families, to a world they understood.

As hard as I tried to fit, Los Angeles was alien to me. I had grown up in the Zinacanteco village of Nabenchauk on the Chiapas plateau in southern Mexico. I missed its cool evergreen forests, its dry winters and rainy summers. My earliest memories were of my mother, kneeling barefoot at her metate, grinding maize in the predawn hours. In many ways, she was a traditional Maya woman. So how, at fourteen, did she get pregnant with me by an artist from Mexico City who visited Nabenchauk to paint the village?

When I was eight, my uncle and aunt died in one of the earthquakes that hit the highlands, leaving behind their eleven-year-old son Manuel. After years of struggling with the decision, my mother decided to look for my father. She took Manuel and me down the Pan American Highway to Mexico City, what I thought then was the edge of the universe. We never did find him. Eventually we ended up here, in the city of sleepless, fallen angels.

The bus stopped on San Carlos Boulevard a few blocks from where I lived. The drugstore on the corner was closed and deserted. I had hoped Los Halcones would be around so I could ask someone to walk me home. My cousin Manuel had died the previous year, just before my seventeenth birthday, and since then Los Halcones had looked out for me. I could almost see Mario jiving with my cousin:
Oye, vato, let’s go the show
. And Manuel:
Chale homes. I want to go cruising and check out some firme rucas
. No one was there that night, though.