Dark Lightning (Thunder and Lightning) by John Varley Read Free Book Online

few hundred outfits. Cassie and I had never stinted when it came to spending our allowances on clothes. There were no designer labels from Paris or Beverly Hills or Rio or Moscow like there were on Earth, though there were a lot of copies of Earth and Mars fashions.
    For the last few years, since we lost contact with Old Sun, the boutiques where we do our shopping had been forced to design their own stuff, which I guess was a good thing. Now we only had to keep up with girls from around the curve instead of imitating Old Sun fashions.
    I turned my mind back to the closet. It opens into both our rooms. There was a lot of stuff neither of us had worn for two years or more and that was ready to be boxed up and sent to the secondhand shops or the recycler. There was even more we had grown out of and just hadn’t bothered to take off the rack. You know how closets get.
    What it came down to was I realized I was looking for the
next best thing
. Cassie was wearing the number one outfit. I was looking for number two. And when you do that, you’re licked before you even begin, right?
    I put on something. I don’t even recall now what it was, and if you knew me, you’d realize how really depressed I was. I
always
remember what I wore to any kind of party, that’s just the way I am. I like clothes, okay?
    I dragged myself to the bedroom door and slouched through it, and stumbled toward the party. I thought my heart couldn’t sink any lower, but as soon as I came into the room I saw my sister and Patrick. They were dancing. She looked radiant. I looked for a hole in the floor I could sink through, all the way into the black, absolute zero emptiness of interstellar space. Let me be flung into the starry void on an eternal trajectory of misery. It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.
    Cassie says I overdramatize, but I don’t think so.
    Well, if life was indeed to go on, I’d just have to gather up the remains of my broken heart, somehow stitch them together, and join the party with a brave face. I was getting ready to do that when I heard the parental bedroom door creak open. Mama Podkayne came out, wearing the scowl I knew well, and that usually meant I was in big trouble. I would have been running for the poles—which is what we do instead of heading for the hills—except I was pretty sure it wasn’t aimed at me. And I was right.
    “Polly, go in and sit with your father,” she growled. “He’s upset.”
    “Sure, Mom, but—”
    “Do as I say.”
    She shouldered past me and down the short hallway, and stood facing the crowd. I lingered, and heard her shout. Mama Podkayne was and is a singer. When she wants to be heard, she can shatter not only glass, but steel.
    She wanted to be heard.
    The crowd quieted instantly, and so did the band.
    “Friends and neighbors, I hate like hell to be so rude, but as you probably guessed, something has come up. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask y’all to leave. My husband is very upset about something. I don’t know what it is, but he’s made me understand that something must be done about it.
    “Now, it would be a shame to let all this fine food go to waste, so I want you all to find a bucket somewhere and fill it up and take it all home with you. I want to see nothing but empty plates when I come back. Okay?”
    “I’ll take care of it, Podkayne,” said Great-grandpa Jim.
    “Thanks, and thanks for cooking it all. Mike, Marlee, could y’all come back here with me, please? Granddaddy Ramon, Granny Evangeline, Aunt Elizabeth and Dorothy, could y’all come, too?”
    I finally spotted Cassie, on the far edge of the crowd. She had maneuvered Patrick up against the wall and was standing very close to him.
    They were eye to eye. Invading his personal space.
    He didn’t seem uneasy about it. She was talking, one hand casually draped over his shoulder. He nodded, put in a word or two here and there, and began to move toward the front door. Cassie dug her claw into him and gave him