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

the big eyes, the parted lips, the slightly cocked head. Every ounce of her body language was saying “Kiss me, you gorgeous man!”
    Still smiling, he patted her on the shoulder and deftly stepped around her. She almost lost her balance and fell over, she was so intent on staying near him. He joined a few other relatives around our own age, and they made their way to the door and out. Cassie had her back to me. She was rigid as a fencepost.
    Maybe there
is
a god.
    “Cassandra!” Mom shouted. “Here, now, this minute.”
    Cassie jumped a foot and came quickly toward us. I knew I should be heading back to see to Papa like she told me to, but I know that tone of voice and wouldn’t have missed it for a brand-new Fuji flycycle.
    Mom looked her up and down and hissed at her.
    “Cassandra Ann, what the heck were you thinking?”
    Cassie tried an innocent look, but Mom’s shoulder-to-ankle gaze was about to burn the toga off her and scorch the skin beneath. So Cassie went to the fallback position: Civil rights.
    “I’m a grown-up now, Mother. Don’t forget that.”
    “And you’re still living in my home. And that dress makes you look like . . . I don’t even want to say it. And Patrick is your first cousin.”
    Well, I was sure in the mood to see my sister catch heck, but I have to admit that was unfair. Patrick was our first cousin legally, but not genetically. His father was adopted into our family, and Marlee was no relation. Children would be no problem.
    Not that I was really thinking in those terms. I just wanted to date him.
    To be even more blunt: I just wanted to get into his pants.
    —
    Papa Jubal is . . . different.
    Our father grew up in a large, extremely poor family on Earth, completely dominated by his father, who was a religious fanatic. Our grandfather Avery was an adherent of some beliefs so strange I can hardly understand or believe that anyone could be so stupid. But I’ve never known Papa to lie to me, so it must be true. This sect did things like handle venomous snakes and spiders, believing that if they had faith, God would protect them. As you might expect, they had a high mortality rate, but there always seemed to be enough new believers to fill up the little backwoods church on the bayou.
    They didn’t believe in birth control, thus the large family. Their child-rearing practices were sub-Neanderthal, and consisted mostly of knocking their children about for any offense. Almost everything was forbidden but prayer. No reading was permitted except the Christian Bible.
    Total obedience was demanded. Papa was beaten regularly. When his father discovered that he was extremely bright, with a supergenius IQ, he was beaten even more, on the theory that a child shouldn’t be smarter than his father. Being that smart was seen as an affront to God.
    After one violation of the rules his father beat Papa so badly with a nail-studded pine board that it was a miracle he survived. The people who were supposed to stop things like that finally took notice, and my grandfather was tried and convicted of attempted murder. He died in prison.
    Papa was brain-damaged. The verbal part of his mind took the worst injury, and he never recovered fully from that. He has a small vocabulary, learns new words only with great difficulty, can never get the hang of certain concepts of grammar and so speaks with the thick Cajun accent and dialect he grew up with, garbled and inconsistent syntax, and no understanding of the more esoteric parts of language. We always understand him well enough, but his problems with communication led him to withdraw from human society, to become a loner.
    To become, in many ways, a mad scientist.
    There’s nothing of Dr. Frankenstein about Papa. You won’t find him cackling madly over boiling beakers or sparking machines. He’s not in search of a way to rule the world.
    No one is really sure if Papa would have done the things he did without the brain damage. He was smart before, no