Rolling Thunder Read Free Page B

I know you’ll do all you can do to get here in time …”
    She stopped, and took a deep breath.
    “That’s what the family has decided, anyway. Mostly Kelly, of course. This is for your ears only, from your mother who loves you, from me to you.
    “If you don’t want to come … don’t come. When you think about it, what’s the difference? She’s not going to die, not now, anyway, and I suggested that they stop her and then, next time you’re here, they can take her out for ten minutes or an hour or whatever she wants, and you can say what you need to say then.
    “Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying, this has been a surprise to me, too, and some angry things have been said. But I wanted you to know that if you’d rather not be dashing about for no good reason, I’ll support you all the way. That’s all I have to say. Good-bye, Poddy sweet. I love you.”
    Well. I found it tough to sort all that out at once.
    For one thing, Mom visits an entirely different Earth than I do. I’m Mars-born. I’m tall and slender, and a simple walk in the park makes my feet hurt and my back ache. Mom still loves the Earth. She was born here, and she and Dad make a pilgrimage back every year, at first going to Florida to try and help out; later, when things deteriorated too much in the Zone, they went to California or Mexico or Rio or anyplace with a beach. They love the wind and the blue sky and the forests and … just about anything about the Earth except the people, who almost no one on Mars can abide. She keeps herself in shape, so after the first few days, she doesn’t even mind the gravity.
    So she thought she was doing me a favor by giving me an out, a reason not to abandon my long summer vacation on the world of melting ice caps.
    Oh, Mom, I love you, but sometimes you haven’t got a clue.
    Then there were the “family discussions,” and the “angry words.” That would be Kelly, of course. Kelly “Don’t call me Grandma!” Strickland. You may have heard of her. First president of Mars? Ring any bells?
    I love Kelly, too … in my own way. I don’t think anyone loves Kelly in quite the way they love anyone else, except Grandpa Manny.
    Being the granddaughter of a former president of Mars is not quite the deal it would be if my grandma was, say, ex-president of Western America. We’re small potatoes, nation-wise, except for the power thing and the Navy thing. There’s not even a million of us; big-city mayors down here on Earth have more responsibility, in some ways. Of course, they don’t have the means to cut off the power to Earth’s billions …
    Grandma Kelly tends to take over any situation she finds herself in, and that can include her daughter-in-law’s life. They’d locked horns more than a few times.
    But Mom is no wimp, and Dad backs her up one hundred percent, and if it comes to it, Grandpa Manny will have a word with Kelly, and that’ll be the end of that. So I appreciated the gesture on Mom’s part, but frankly, I’d have gladly abandoned my post at Pismo on a much flimsier excuse. It’s not as if the ravening barbarian hordes of the Zone or the Christian Armies of the Heartland were just looking for the opportunity of Podkayne being away from her desk to establish a beachhead in the holy war against Redboy Hegemony.
    I recorded a telegraphic “message-received” thing: Doing everything possible, expect departure oh eight hundred hours, rendezvous Rodger Young, ETA Deimos Base such-and-such a date, over and out. PS, I love you. Not much, I know, but a lot better than my last message: Earth price$ are ridiculou$! $end money!
    Next message. A tough one.
    She began the way she always does.
    “I hate talking this way. I don’t know why they don’t do something about this time lag thing.” Gran wasn’t stupid, she knew there was nothing to be done to speed up radio signals, but she would never be comfortable with the time lag, even if she were around for another ninety years … which she