Dark Lightning (Thunder and Lightning) Read Online Free PDF Page A

time, but mostly they don’t, as it doesn’t sit well with the voters. This would be my first trip in a powered flying machine, if you don’t count the powered flycycles I’ve used a few times when officiating at a skypool game.
    I found I didn’t like it much.
    It was a boxy contraption, roomy enough for all of us inside though the walls were packed with medical gear.
    Outside, it had no wings, just four humming fans in nacelles that twisted and turned for vertical takeoff and landing, then were in constant movement to adjust to the ship’s quirky atmosphere. There was a big windshield up front, and Polly and I sat facing it.
    You wouldn’t think that a girl who loved nothing better than flying a mile over the ground would suffer from a fear of heights, and I don’t think that was exactly what it was, but the ground was going by underneath us too damn fast. I had never traveled that fast in the air, and probably not on the ground, either, for that matter. We just never speed in
Rolling Thunder
 . . . if you don’t count the fact that we’re moving at .77c relative to Old Sun.
    The computer that flew the ambulance had one prime command, and that was to get from Point A to Point B in the fastest possible time. You couldn’t ask it to slow down.
    Luckily, the trip was only about a minute and a half. Otherwise I might have had to look around for an airsickness bag, and Polly would have never let me forget it. She seemed to be doing just fine.
    —
    We landed at our home, the Broussard Mansion, on the edge of the small town of Bayouville. The ambulance set down on Seven Acre Pond, which we own but share with the town, and turned itself into a hovercraft, then gently bumped us up against our dock. It was so sweetly done, I doubt if it even disturbed the turtles. We all piled out and hurried down the dock, past Papa’s pirogue and our canoe and the rowboat suspended in the little boathouse. Waiting for us at the far end was our mother, Podkayne, with her arms crossed and an angry look on her face. But she looked concerned when she spotted the cast on Polly’s arm.
    “Can’t you limp a little more?” I whispered.
    “That hasn’t worked with her since we were six.”
    “What have you done to yourself this time?” Mom asked.
    “Whatever happened to ‘Are you all right, my darling daughter?’”
    “Don’t you get smart with me, Pollyanna Broussard.”
    “She fell off her flycycle,” Aunt Elizabeth said. “Don’t worry, it was a minor fracture. I’m more worried about the possibility of infection from—”
    Before she could say pigshit—or feces, more likely—I jumped in.
    “We’re not actually
late
, Mom. It’s still . . .” I glanced at my clock. “. . . a few seconds to sun-on.”
    On cue, the tube down the center of the ship began to glow. It takes about a minute for it to reach high noon, but already it was bright enough to turn off the pole lights strung on the dock.
    “And what’s the deal with the ambulance?” Mom wanted to know.
    “Don’t fret about it, Poddy,” our aunt said. “We were delayed a little while I treated her. And we did make it on time.”
    With a rising hum, the ambulance lifted off and threw itself into the sky. Mom didn’t look happy, but she turned and went back into the house. No hugs today, at least not until Papa came out of his bubble.
    —
    When I say “Broussard Mansion,” I’m being ironic. That’s what we call it, that’s the address you’d write down if you were sending us a package, but it’s nothing like a mansion, not in size and especially not in looks. But as with many things in the ship, appearances can be deceiving.
    From the outside it looks like a run-down bait shack. Or at least that’s what I’m told, since I’ve never seen a real one. The back end—which is the front end, to me, because I seldom use the front door—is on pilings over the water. The house has a steep tin roof with a lot of “rust spots,” is clad in pine