Rolling Thunder by John Varley Read Free Book Online

tightly around my little finger it curled his hair.
    Alas, no more. There seems to be a different set of rules after you pass eighteen, and I’m still figuring them out.
    Standing next to him there, five inches shorter than his six and a half feet, is my mommykins, Evangeline Redmond. Though I never called her that. Mom and I have a businesslike relationship. I love her and all, and she was always there to kiss a skinned knee or console me when my heart was broken … but sometimes it was a bit after the fact, long after Dad had already had the first shot. That’s because she’s a workaholic, like Kelly. She works in the family business, which is Redmond’s, the best restaurant on Mars. And believe me, in a tourist destination like Thunder City, where the clientele expects top service and food, that’s saying something. The menu is French, Creole, Cajun, and what we call Martian Fusion, which is anything Mom and her parents say it is.
    That’s them not far away, Jim and Audrey Redmond, quiet and unobtrusive like Granddaddy Manny. Jim is checking out the long table groaning with food, which he catered, naturally. Grand-mère Audrey runs the business, Grand-père Jim rules the kitchen with an iron oven mitt, and Mom … well, Mom is the real reason Redmond’s is the best. She’s the one who created both the style and the term Martian Fusion, and the one who keeps inventing new stuff to keep the rich folks coming back. After all, there are a jillion French restaurants, several hundred just on Mars, and likewise Creole and Cajun. But where else are you going to get filet of thoat or stuffed sorak? Nowhere, that’s where, because Mom trademarked both names. I’m not going to tell you what those “Barsoomian” animals really are, it’s a trade secret, but if you don’t have a moral objection to genetically engineered meat, try the sorak in white wine sauce. You’ll never forget it.
    Over there by the buffet, where he always is when the food is free, is Anthony Redmond, my uncle Tony, piling a plate. He’s twenty-eight, masses around three hundred pounds, and is currently failing at his third career, having already gone bankrupt twice. He’s a burden to Jim and Audrey, but it’s hard to dislike him because he’s so cheerful and outgoing. My advice: Let him guide you to all the most fun places in Thunder City, and even buy him drinks, but never loan him any money.
    Not far from him, the handsome guy with the short military haircut, looking like the offspring of a cardinal and a peacock in his full-dress uniform, is Rear Admiral William Redmond, NMR, my uncle Bill. He’s thirty, which might seem young for a proctologist (belowdecks slang for a rear admiral; get it?), but as well as being a young republic, we are a pretty nonmilitaristic one. We don’t have a warrior culture to speak of. People from Earth find that surprising, as Mars and Switzerland are the only places where military service is mandatory for everyone, but the huge majority of us are only in the Navy for the one year (one Martian year: 669 Martian days, 687 Earth days, 1.88 Earth years) and spend the rest of our lives in the reserves. Lifers are rare, as the pay is bad, the chances for combat are remote if you’re the kind who wants that, and the social status almost nil. But you do get to wear a bright red uniform to all formal occasions.
    Uncle Bill has always been kind to me and was probably responsible for me entering my year of misery as a jg.
    Standing there at his side, like the good Navy wife she is, you can see Aunt Amelia, probably the most domestic woman I know. That’s not to say domestic ated ; so far as I can tell she and Uncle Admiral Bill have a good marriage of equals. It’s just that she’d have been right at home in the 1950s in Dubuque or Cedar Rapids or Charleston or someplace awful like that, reading Betty Crocker Magazine, dressing in calico pinafores or whatever they wore back then, and popping out babies like a gumball