Red Thunder

“You’ve all got a terrible task ahead of you. I said, ‘the wrong hands.’ But who has the right hands? Who do we trust with that much responsibility? How do we identify someone who can be trusted not to steal the secret, sell the secret, or hand it over to his or her native country? I don’t envy you, but now I gladly hand the burden over to you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity, and please, please, be wise.”

And he walked out. The stu

SO THE IPA proposed and debated and approved and rejected and discussed and shouted at each other and got into fistfights, and in about a year produced a course of action. It didn’t satisfy anybody, but was probably the best they could do. Some problems don’t have easy or obvious solutions. Some have no solution at all.

The IPA could impose levies on its member nations, so it did, and bought the Falkland Islands, which contained 2,945 people, 700,000 sheep, and millions of Rockhopper, Magellanic, Gentoo, King, and Macaroni penguins. They moved the now-wealthy shepherds and their sheep to milder climates. The penguins they let stay. And there they built the most secure facility on Earth, the one place on Earth for the manufacture of the machines that produced Squeezer bubbles.

The manufacturing plants there on the cold, windy Falklands built Squeezer machines that would initiate, expand, or contract Squeezer [406] bubbles. They didn’t build many of them. These machines were sent to governments under strict handling rules, and with what Travis called “a million exploding cigars” built into them. Tamper with them, and you die. Every year some jerk thinks he’s figured them out, and is burned alive.

THE TOUGHEST QUESTION facing the assembly in the Orange Bowl was this: Jubal can build machines that will create, expand, contract, and produce thrust from Squeezer bubbles-but not turn them off, that was forbidden-but Jubal won’t live forever. Who will pick up the torch of unlimited power once Jubal is gone?

What the IPA eventually came up with was a lot like a priesthood, and a lot like a guild. The trade secrets or magical arcana of Squeezing would be conserved, used, and passed down by means of an elite scientist class. To be in this elite you had to be capable of understanding the physics and mathematics. This eliminated me, and Dak, and Travis. In fact, it narrowed the field to about one in a hundred million.

So begi

The popular press immediately dubbed these seven men and women the High Priests of Squeeze. They served for life, because even if they retired they had to be watched for the rest of their lives. They were not precisely confined to the Falkland Islands, but if they went anywhere they were constantly guarded, both from kidnapping and from passing the Squeezer secrets to somebody else.

These were the people who actually built the Prime Squeezers. These were the self-sacrificing saints who were let in on the whole secret of the Squeezer phenomenon, who agreed not to reveal it to anyone under pain of death, the wise ones who would chance partaking of the [407] fruit of the Tree of Power. These were the poor schmucks who assumed the burden that had fallen on Jubal the day we lifted off in Red Thunder.

OF ALL OF us, the aftermath of the voyage has treated Jubal most cruelly. He lives on the Falklands. He is not a prisoner there, but if and when he leaves he is under enormous security. He hardly ever does leave these days.

Three months after our return, not long after Jubal came out of hiding, an attempt was made to kidnap him. It came very close to working, but ended up with eight dead would-be kidnappers and three dead Navy Seals, who had been assigned to guard him at Rancho Broussard. Travis believes the caper was pla

So Jubal doesn’t tempt fate anymore. He hated the Falklands at first for its cold, windy climate, so different from the lands where he had spent all his life. The IPA does its best to make him happy. He has a fine house, a wonderful laboratory. All he has to do is ask for something and he gets it. All he’s ever asked for is Krispy Kremes. A dozen are delivered every afternoon on the daily plane.

He does a lot of rowing in the many bays of the islands, he told me, but nowadays he’s accompanied by a destroyer, part of the IPA’s protective fleet. It is such a fu

He’s become a world authority on penguins, like the Birdman of Alcatraz. Often you can find him sitting among them, completely accepted.

I asked him once how effective he thought the elaborate IPA system would be, in the long run.

“Long run, don’ nothing work forever,” he said. “Dey say ain’t no Squeezer-buster gone ever be develop. Dat ain’t nuttin’ but swamp water. Dem seven smarties over yonder, dey done figgered out how to [408] turn one off, oh yeah. If’n you understan’ how to make dem bubbles, makin’ ’em go ’way ain’t too hard, no. Then, boom!

“Aside from dem smart boys and girls, somebody else apt to figger it out, jus’ like I did. I jus’ hope he don’ need to get whomp upside de haid, like I did!” He laughed and rubbed the dent in his skull.

So there it is. You can’t hide knowledge forever. The only encouraging thing I can think of about that is, we’ve had the atomic bomb for a long time now, and the last city we destroyed with it was in 1945. Maybe we can get by that long before somebody figures out how to make his own Squeezer.

WE TRY TO visit Jubal at least once a year. Sometimes it’s a reunion with the whole happy family, sometimes just me and Kelly. The flight to Stanley, the capital, makes you feel the islands are almost as remote as Mars.

Six months after the return we got married as quietly as we could, not wanting to deal with shouting paparazzi and circling helicopters with long lenses. Two years later our daughter, Elizabeth, was born, and in another two years, our son, Ramon.