Dark Lightning (Thunder and Lightning) (14 page)

“I think Polly has a class she had to get to,” my bitch sister said with a big smile. “But I have some free time.” She survived the next five seconds, proving once more that looks
can’t
kill.

“Cassie is confused,” I said. “I already aced that one. It was just this morning, remember, sis?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, reluctantly, shooting me a middle finger where Patrick couldn’t see it.

“So,” I said. “Just a friendly visit? I’d be happy to cook lunch for you. Cass, how about you jet off to the market and get some lamb? Do you like lamb chops, Patrick?”

“I love them, and I’d be happy to take y’all up on that offer, but that’s not why I came.”

Notice the “y’all.”
I
was the one who invited him.

“So what’s the deal?” Cassie asked.

“Mom and Dad would like to see you if you don’t mind. They have something they’d like to talk to you about.”

Well. I glanced at the bitch, and she raised her eyebrows at me, then shrugged. A bit of a comedown that he wasn’t the one who needed us, but there it was.

“Sure, Patrick. Lead the way.”

Cassie:

Rolling Thunder
was by no means a finished project when we started our journey twenty years ago. Everything needed for survival had been built, tested, and was functioning perfectly when the ship left, but much of Travis’s shopping spree was still in storage, including a great many buildings bought entire, dismantled, shipped, then filed away for reassembly when all the critical work was done. A lot of trees and crops had been planted, but there were large stretches with nothing but the thick layer of topsoil and big piles of rocks and gravel.

I can dimly remember some of the very early times when a lot was barren, and during our first six years, the place was crawling with bulldozers and cement mixers and trucks hauling building materials. Some of that still goes on, but it’s now a much more peaceful and static place. There are no more rivers to landscape, no more ponds and lakes to be lined and fitted with pumps and filters. We have as much surface housing as the interior could comfortably accommodate and a stable population, so very few new buildings get erected.

In addition to whole buildings—Travis once said to me: “I’m a twenty-first-century William Randolph Hearst!”—he also bought
things
. All kinds of things.

Frivolous things, such as the Hope diamond as a wedding ring for Mama and Papa. We used to play with it when we were kids, and we’ve each worn it set in a necklace pendant to school dances. I recommend it as a way to impress your friends.

Practical things like a fleet of airplanes (impossible to fly in the ship, but probably useful at New Sun) and large oceangoing ships (again, useless in here, but probably worthwhile when we get there). He bought trains and streetcars and sawmills and textile mills and refineries and canneries, the great majority of which were stowed away under the surface.

He bought very few original artworks—“Digital copies are just as good, and besides, we’ll be making our own art.” He didn’t buy any Egyptian mummies or Neanderthal skeletons or Ming vases or copies of the Magna Carta on parchment or Gutenberg Bibles. He bought very few cultural or anthropological or sociological artifacts at all except those that appealed to him, such as the
Spirit of St. Louis
and the
Apollo 11
capsule, a few sculptures by Rodin, and the world’s largest pipe organ.

He got all this stuff at bargain-basement, fire-sale prices. Remember, the whole of Planet Earth was a fire sale after the Europan crystals arrived. And when Travis was done, both he and Papa were broke. Which didn’t matter, as they had no further use for Earth or Mars money.

Of the things he bought, mine and Polly’s favorite things when we were young were two merry-go-rounds, one from Central Park in New York City and one from Balboa Park in San Diego. They were set up when we were five, and we usually rode one or the other every day after school.

They became so popular, in fact, that they eventually became the core of our entertainment district, Fantasyland Township. That’s where Patrick lives, still with his parents, like us, and that’s where he was coming from when we met him on the road.

—

Like I said, the interior of
Rolling Thunder
was pretty basic when we started out. There was much to do, and most of it had to do with survival. For recreation, people mostly watched the entertainment we had brought along with us, which was virtually everything that had ever been recorded and digitized, everywhere. There was live music and some theatricals and dances in the parks—as soon as we had built them—on bandstands and small stages. But for an amusement park, the two carousels were it.

Gradually, as our leisure time increased to the relative ease we now enjoy, other amusements grew up around the carousels. At first, these were simple games of the sort Travis said you could find at county fairs on Earth. Tossing rings or balls, shooting baskets, hitting a clapper to ring a bell. Old-fashioned stuff. Step right up, ladies and gents, knock over the milk bottles and win a teddy bear! You could buy caramel corn and cotton candy and candy apples.

Soon this simple beginning was joined with some new rides, like a Ferris wheel and a Tilt-A-Whirl and a loop-the-loop and little cars you could “drive” on a track and little boats that followed a small, serpentine river. They were mostly for younger kids, which suited Polly and me fine.

But
Rolling Thunder
is chock-full of engineers, and eventually they had some time on their hands like everybody else. Somebody designed and built a roller coaster and, at age eight or nine, Polly and I thought it was the scariest, neatest thing ever. We would ride it a dozen times in a row.

It became something of a friendly competition. The townships agreed that all amusements should be confined to Fantasyland, then each township vied for building the newest, scariest ride there.

By now the place really lived up to its name. It was best to visit it at night, when the LEDs encrusting almost every surface were flashing in all the colors of the spectrum and some that seemed to be imported from another spectrum entirely. There was a roller rink and an ice rink, a fun house, spooky rides, thrill rides, splash rides, waterslides, wave pools where you could actually surf for ten or fifteen seconds.

A few of the rides were copied from some of the old Disney and Universal resorts, but most were original to the ship. Most of it was completely automated; we hadn’t come to the point where we could spare much labor to operate a helter-skelter. Much of it looked horribly dangerous, but that was the idea. It was actually safe as a quiet walk in the park.

—

At the far end of the midway was something that had been a major source of controversy when it was first proposed. That was the Seven Dwarfs Casino.

When Travis was writing up the ship’s regulations—that later were mostly confirmed by popular vote—he admits it was a hurried and sometimes slipshod affair. His guiding principle was that anything that doesn’t hurt someone else should be legal, that government interference in private behavior should be minimal to nonexistent. His feeling about prostitution was that pimps, should such trash appear in the ship, should be black-bubbled until we arrived at New Sun. He didn’t give much of a damn about drugs, either, as long as they didn’t wreck your life. Showing up impaired for work or duty was also a black-bubbling offense.

He had nothing to say about gambling. Later, when I asked him, his comment was simple: “People will gamble. Get used to it.”

So we had always had “friendly” bets in the ship, on races between people on foot or on bikes or skycycles or horses. Some people raced dogs and pigs. I even saw a turtle race once. There were people who played games for money: poker, bridge, chess, go, bocce, bowling, football, tennis, Chinese checkers, old maid, you name it.

Winnings or losses were not legally enforceable. If someone welshed, you just had to eat it and never bet with him or her again.

There were, of course, bets on skypool, and naturally we players were forbidden to bet. It wasn’t a problem. If any girl on my team was ever shown to be shaving points, the rest of us would beat the shit out of her, and she would never be able to hold her head up in public again. It’s never happened. We take skypool very seriously.

The rules on gambling were just like the ones for prostitution and drugs: Keep it under control, or wake up in a few decades for your trip down to our new home. Problem gamblers were defined as those whose debts threatened the livelihood of their families. We have no social-welfare programs in
Rolling Thunder
except for those who become physically disabled. We don’t need them. Earn a living, or get bubbled. Slackers, deadbeats, anyone who looked like a burden to his or her neighbors or was failing to support his or her family got voted off the ship for a long, long snooze. There were plenty of people in stasis who would be happy to take your place.

But there were those who enjoyed the sort of games they remembered from Earth or Mars, where gambling had been big business as an integral part of the huge tourist trade—at least until the crystals cut severely into everyone’s leisure time. My family has a long history in tourism, the hotel business, restaurants, and gambling. My great-grandparents, Manny and Kelly, opened the very first hotel on Mars, and my family ran it for many decades. There was a large casino in the hotel.

When the casino was proposed at Fantasyland it quickly became one of the more controversial issues in a body politic that is not really known for a lot of dissent. After all, it couldn’t be clearer that we all have to pull together to make the voyage work, and most radicals of any stripe were weeded out when the crew and passengers were selected. But we do have differing opinions from time to time, and casino gambling was one of them. Polly and I were too young to vote—you have to be sixteen—but we knew our family was largely for it, and we followed the issue on political barometer sites like Soapbox and PublicSquare, where most decisions are made without the need of a formal referendum. This was one close enough that an actual vote was held, and it won by a narrow margin. So the casino was built and soon opened for business, and our uncle Mike got the job as manager. So for the last five years, Mike, Marlee, and Patrick had lived above the only gambling establishment for several light-years.

—

I like the casino even though I’ve only been there when visiting Uncle Mike and his family. It’s all glitz and noise and the smells of beer and gin and excited human beings. The most animation is always around the dice tables, the least around the slot machines, where some people sit like zombies, pumping quarters into the one-armed bandits.

Slot machines are one of the things Travis did
not
bring along, but they are easy to make. Not the old-time ones with an actual handle and spinning drums inside, but the electronic kind with a screen. Mike insisted that they only accept and pay off in coins—actually tokens, since we don’t have coinage in the ship, everything is in even-dollar amounts—so there’s the constant clatter of metal hitting the tray beneath. The machines are brightly colored and full of flash and sound effects, highly animated. They look like fun, but the attraction wears off pretty quickly, I found.

Polly and I each played here a couple of times and found that table games and slot machines don’t do anything for us. I started with fifty dollars, turned that into eighty at a slot machine, turned that into twenty at roulette, made it back to forty at blackjack, then lost it all playing craps, a game I never really fully understood. Polly actually came away with a profit but was no more excited by it than I was about my loss.

We both understood that our results would always be much like that . . . with a small difference. Mike operates what may be the only casino in history where the house doesn’t take a cut. So, theoretically, if we played frequently at such games we could expect to break even, barring a run of good or bad luck.

Poker was a different story, of course, because you played against individuals, and skill was a big factor.

That was part of the compromise that allowed the casino initiative to squeak by. Anybody can win big or lose big on any particular day, but over time it will even out . . .
if
the house doesn’t take a cut.

One more difference between
Rolling Thunder
and Las Vegas or Monte Carlo casinos is that Mike won’t take your marker. No credit is extended. In fact, at a certain point he will stop taking your bets. That amount is determined by how much you have to lose, something you have to disclose before you’re allowed to gamble. Your daily wagering allowance is determined by your savings and your income. When you reach that point, you are sent home, to try another day.

These measures have largely subdued the opposition to Uncle Mike’s enterprise. He makes his money serving food and beverages, and it’s enough for a good living. He’s a respected member of the Fantasyland community, not seen as a predator on the helpless any more than a bartender is. And in
Rolling Thunder
, we do
not
blame the server of alcohol for the idiotic behavior of the drunk. Travis, a former drunk, was adamant about that.

—

Patrick had called ahead so Uncle Mike was down on the casino floor to meet us, dressed in his working clothes of a tuxedo and mirror-shined shoes. We took turns bending down to kiss him, and he led us through the clanging, scintillating, roaring, flashing, chattering explosion of light and sound. I paused to put a dollar in a slot machine, as I always did when visiting, and the machine seemed to have a nervous breakdown, clattering and whooping and flashing lights in my eyes, doing everything but sending up flares, and five-dollar tokens began clattering into the tray.

I saw on the screen that I had won a hundred dollars. That had never happened to me before!

“Congratulations,” Uncle Mike said, with a big smile on his face. “Should we all stick around until you lose it back?”

“In your dreams, Uncle Mike. This will buy a couple of new outfits I’ve had my eye on for a long time.”

“Let’s see if I can win a replacement for my broken flycycle,” Polly said, putting a coin in the slot next to my winning machine. She pulled the handle, and we watched the video reels spin.

“Thanks for the buck, sucker,” the machine said, and chuckled. Polly didn’t look surprised. My gloomy sister always expects the worst.

We entered an elevator and rose to the floor just above the pool level.

Up there was the owner’s suite, a nice apartment whose chief attraction was a view down on the rooftop pool and park. The pool is huge and free-form, lined with trees and tropical shrubs, with tiki bars and other grass-roofed businesses. All very lovely and exotic, very South Pacific.

At the far end was a putting green and the first tee of the only permanent nine-hole golf course in the ship. (For three months of the year, a cornfield is converted to grass, mowed, and shaped into a full eighteen-hole course. If you want to play it, make your reservations now. It’s booked up for the next two years.)