Joe Haldeman

by The Coming

  On the way to where he’d double-parked, Rabin called dispatch and said he was ambulance-chasing, headed for the secure ward at North Florida. He had to shout to be heard over the ambulance’s shriek.

  The historian

  The sudden wail shattered his concentration. He watched the ambulance lift and sail down the street, followed by a squad car. What department was that building? Physics?

  He capped the old-fashioned fountain pen and took a sip of his tea. He liked to work here, on the edge of the student food court, because nobody would sit down and say, hey, you writin’ a book? There were distractions, but usually if it was sirens, they were of the female variety.

  He opened the memorybook and typed in a date. It had every Gainesville newspaper from the Civil War onward. He reread an article for the dozenth time and continued writing: The first battle was really no more than a skirmish. Union forccs A raiding party of 42

  cavalry rode into town, encountering no resistance. Under orders They posted guards on the streets entering G’ville, while the main body constructed a hasty fort of cotton bales on what is now University Avenue.

  Mrs. Dickison, wife of the cavalry commander, happened to be visiting Gainesville. She knew that there was a cavalry group camped [a few] miles away, at Newnansville. She wrote a note explaining the situation, and sent it via her eight-year-old son, who slipped by the Yankee picket, pretending to be grazing his horse.

  A The small Confederate force, led by Captain ______ Chambers, attacked the next morning, but were unable to break through the cotton-bale fortifications. The Union soldiers, armed with repeating rifles, killed one man and [many] horses. Chambers retreated with his wounded to a camp outside the city, but the Yankees decided to quit while they were ahead, and that night returned to their main group at Waldo. They torched a syrup warehouse, but left behind nearly a million dollars’ [$85M in today’s money] worth of supplies and provisions.

  in October

  It was a good month for oracles. The local one, Charles Dubois, wrestled with Scripture and calendar and proved that January 1 would be the two-thousandth anniversary of the Savior’s Resurrection. And thus the occasion for our resurrection, if we first cleansed ourselves. They had to install outdoor loudspeakers at his church in Archer, to provide for the overflow of believers sitting in the gravel parking lot or seeking shade in the old live oaks.

  Johnny Kale asked his hundred million followers to pray for guidance; this thing is “a sign and a portent” whether it comes from heaven or merely an alien civilization.

  The American archbishop Philip Stillwell followed the pope-in-waiting in reverence. The Coming was still only a two-word phrase whose provenance was the realm of science, not spirit. The Ayatollah Bismahin dismissed it as a blasphemous hoax.

  The tabloids, electronic and paper, had a field day. The big ones arranged among themselves to rotate points of view, so that at any given time there would be headlines to suit those who believed in the Second Coming as well as those who believed the government was out to get us all.

  The stock market went into a two-day spasm and settled back into a period of growth, slightly accelerated. RadioShack International coined money with an aimable radio antenna that you could point to any spot in the heavens, and pick up alien broadcasts. So far the aliens had only “broadcast” in a beam of light, but surely they’d discover radio before long. Outfits that sold survival gear also prospered; one called Take Control (actually a subsidiary of L. L. Bean) bought short-term leases in malls across America, selling complicated knives, solar collectors, dried (“L. L. Brand”) beans, and five-gallon jugs of tap water.

  There were the usual riots in the usual countries, controlled by the usual methods, which provoked the usual responses. But even the most coolheaded and rational looked toward Christmas and the New Year, and wondered if there would be a January, after the first of the month.

  Things did calm down for Aurora Bell, after the first week or so. She became science coordinator for the Committee on the Coming, which involved little enough science, in the absence of any new data.

  Deedee Whittier had a nervous month, wondering whether Ybor would keep his silence.

  1 November

  Ybor Lopez

  Ybor woke to the chiming and looked at the clock set into the wall, as if it might reveal a surprise: 0700 1 nov 54, one month after he’d been arrested.

  He put his feet on the cold cement floor and rubbed his face. The walls were blue this morning.

  Powder blue or baby blue. It was better than the pink.

  The other inmates were making getting-up noises. He added his bit to the symphony of splashes and flushes. Brushed his teeth; rubbed shaving cream on and rinsed off his stubble. He sat back down.

  At least he had a measure of privacy, behind his white-painted bars, since Manny had walked.

  Manny, who until two days ago had occupied the cell across the way, was a wild-eyed kid from Ohio, come to Florida for the drugs. Wound up in this “pussy prison,” no walls. Just a white line painted on the ground. Cross that line and they send you to a real prison. He’d rather put up with the bullshit, thank you.

  So Manny might be in Raiford by now, four in a cell with murderers and rapists. Or he might be back in Dayton. He’d left inside a driverless bread truck. It probably took him exactly as far as the gate.

  What to do for the hour before the door unlocked for breakfast? He was allowed to keep two books at a time. Biophysics of Cell Formation and Don Quijote, Segunda Parte. Neither one appealed this early.

  He lay back down and tried to remember heaven. He would do his two years and go out and score again, if not Jose y Maria, then White Cloud or Vista Interminable, the other local sperm-based DDs.

  The very notion of rehab revealed their ignorance. Like being rehabilitated from being a twin. From being human.

  There had been no physical withdrawal. He’d listened to the agonies men went through in the other cells, and felt compassion for them, but not empathy. His loss was deep and spiritual, like losing a parent or a brother. It didn’t make him scream or cry or puke. It made him patient in his grief. If you lost a person, he was gone for good. Ybor could go to a lab and jerk out a few cc’s of himself, and have his powerful brother back the next day.

  Meanwhile he would measure out his days here, loneliness and labor, neither intolerable. He put in six office hours a day, working on the prison’s computers, and then two “work” hours in the laundry or kitchen.

  He was learning interesting things about the computer system. He couldn’t erase the record of his sentence—that was backed up in too many outside systems—but his record here would be of a model

  “patient,” who emerged drug-free and eager to face the world.

  His life was his own the rest of the time, as long as he stayed inside the white line and returned to his

  “unit” after dinner. He read a lot in the library and, for a couple of weeks, watched the cube with the other patients. But the cube, which he’d ignored all his adult life, proved dangerously addictive. He’d left it for the others to enjoy.

  So he didn’t see the news. He probably knew less about the Coming than any adult in Gainesville.

  Which suited him. If Whittier hadn’t gotten a hair up her ass about Rory Bell, he wouldn’t be in here.

  A metallic chatter broke his reverie. The fat trusty Bobon was rattling his baton on the bars. Behind him, a man who looked vaguely familiar—Gregory Moore, the court-appointed lawyer who had so successfully defended him straight into this bunk.

  “What’s with the beard?” Ybor said.

  “Makes me look older,” Moore said. It did; it was white, while his hair was salt-and-pepper gray.

  “I’ve come to take you to an interview.” The trusty unlocked the door, and it slid up into the ceiling.

  “Will it get me out of here?”

  “Might get your sentence reduced. Your period of treatment.”

  “Yeah, treatment. I’m cured, a
lready.” He followed the lawyer out and walked down the corridor between him and Bobon. Carefully. The trusty’s stick was a neurotangler, and he liked using it. It didn’t hurt much, depending on how you fell, but could be embarrassing.

  In prison movies, the other prisoners would hoot obscenities and bang their tin cups on the bars. At Alachua Rehabilitation Center, they had Styrofoam cups and a point system, and few serious criminals.

  Most of them glanced up momentarily from books or games, if they reacted at all to the parade.

  “Left here,” the trusty said, and Ybor followed the lawyer through an unmarked door he’d never seen open before. He’d thought it was a storage room. It opened into a narrow damp corridor as long as a cell was deep, ending in another unmarked door. The lawyer held it open for Ybor and closed it behind himself. On the other side, the trusty locked it with a rattling of keys.

  The room was white and spotless, starting to brighten with light from a picture window facing the horse pasture to the east. A door to the outside was open, metal screens keeping the bugs out.

  Three hard chairs faced a plain white table. He recognized the man behind the table, and was startled. They’d never met face-to-face before, but everybody knew who he was.

  “Willy Joe Capra,” he said. “You’re the mob guy.”

  “You buy that shit?” He smiled. “There ain’t no such thing as a mob.”

  “This is still a funny place to make your acquaintance.” He took the chair directly in front of the man.

  Moore stood behind him, silent, until Willy Joe pointed to the chair on his left.

  “I wouldn’t call this place funny,” Willy Joe said. “I was here, I’d just want out.”

  ” Si. It could drive you crazy.”

  Willy Joe just stared. “Mr. Moore said you might be able to help me.”

  “Yeah. You help me, I help you.”

  Anything you want, Ybor thought. But he just nodded and waited. Looking at the screen door.

  “At your hearing,” the lawyer said, “you testified that you were working on your own. A ‘fishing expedition,’ you called it.”

  “The woman was on the news,” he said carefully. “I knew she had lots of money, or her husband did.”

  “So you figured you’d find something and squeeze her,” Willy Joe said. “Just like that. Nobody put you up to it.”

  “I do it all the time,” he said, which was true. “Usually just for fun.” So far, he hadn’t implicated his boss, figuring that silence would pay off in the long run.

  “That’s what you said at the hearing,” Moore said, “and voice analysis indicates you were telling the truth, or some version of the truth. It also says that you lied later, when you said you didn’t find anything interesting—I think ‘useful’ was the word.”

  “Yeah, well … you know voice spectrum’s unreliable. Not admissible in court.”

  “This ain’t no court,” Willy Joe said. “This is a fishing expedition, too. Look at the bait.” He reached into a jacket pocket and withdrew a hypo popper.

  “That can’t be mine,” Ybor said, but he felt sweat suddenly evaporating on his forehead. “Nobody can get in there but me.”

  He twirled the cylinder, smiling at it. “I don’t have to get into your private stash. Where do you think this shit comes from?”

  “From you?”

  “From a friend of mine. Not the guy you buy it from. What he’s called, Blinky?”

  “That’s right, Blinky.” He could smell his armpits now, sour.

  “Blinky don’t make the stuff. He just collects the juice and the money.” He balanced it upright on the table. “Suppose I could get you this once a week. You spill your guts for that?”

  “What … what do you need to know?”

  “You been followin’ this alien bullshit?”

  Oh, shit. “Not much, no. I got busted the day it all started.”

  “But you do know the Bell woman was behind it,” Moore said. “You were going through her files, and that pulled down the wrath of God, or at least the chancellor.”

  “So what did you find?” Willy Joe said. “What wasn’t ‘useful’?”

  Damn. It wouldn’t be enough. “Look. I’ll tell you all I know. But you got to get me out of here.”

  “As if you were in a position to bargain,” the lawyer said.

  “I’m worth a lot more to you on the outside. I can get more information where this came from.”

  “Sure,” Willy Joe said. “Like you’ll get your old job back and they’ll let you hack their computer.”

  “You don’t understand jaquismo,” he said quickly. “I don’t have to be at the same computer.”

  “Just you let me know what you got. I’ll decide how much it’s worth.”

  “Okay.” What’s the best way to put it? “Dr. Bell and her husband … “

  “Dr. Bell and Dr. Bell,” Moore said.

  “Yeah. They’re living a lie. Covering up his past.”

  “He kill somebody?” Willy Joe straightened slightly.

  “Worse than that. He got caught fucking a guy.”

  Willy Joe looked at Moore. “I told you he was a fucking mariposa.” To Ybor: “This was after the law.”

  “After the state law. Before the federal one.”

  Willy Joe nodded. “This ain’t much. I seen him hangin’ around with Nick the Greek. If they ain’t queer I ain’t never met a queer.”

  “This wasn’t Nick the Greek.” Ybor paused long enough for Willy Joe to open his mouth. “It was a cop.”

  “A cop. Which one?”

  Ybor stroked his chin. “Don’t know yet.”

  “What is this ‘yet’? You know it was a cop, but you don’t know who?”

  “That’s right. I need more time on the computer.”

  “What did you find out?” Moore said.

  Ybor stroked his chin harder. “You holdin’ out on me,” Willy Joe said quietly, “you don’t get your DD. And I get you transferred to Raiford. You want to meet some fuckin’ queers.”

  “All I know is the path of the data link, and the way it was stopped. And when and where he was picked up.”

  “Go on,” Moore said.

  “It was down at People’s Park, three in the morning. Twelve April 2022.”

  “So what were they doin’? Blow job, cornhole?”

  “The call-in didn’t say. Just that it was a 547, sodomy. They identified Norman Bell, but the other guy didn’t have an ID.”

  “So how you know he’s a cop?” Willy Joe leaned forward. “Make it good.”

  “The whole record got erased, all the way back to the call-in. It was an ‘administrative edit,’ and the authorization came from a police-department internal-security unit.”

  Willy Joe tapped the DD popper on the desk, in a slow rhythm. “It got erased, but not to you.”

  “I saw the hole in the data. It’s complicated. But there was an erased link to Norman Bell, and I followed it up to the hole, so to speak. From there, I just searched unencrypted chat mail for a half hour around that time. Found a guy who monitors police and emergency bands, and he was talking to somebody when the sodomy call came in.”

  “I don’t see how the lack of data implicates a policeman,” Moore said. “Sounds more like Norman Bell pulling strings. He has money, or she does.”

  “They did pull strings.” Ybor allowed himself a smile. “Mrs. Bell did, anyhow. The cops were glad to take her money, but the erasure was complete a good eight hours before she paid.”

  “She didn’t just pay,” Willy Joe said. “Even a professor ain’t that stupid.”

  “No … I just looked for a big credit transfer. The guy she paid was the police dispatcher’s father.

  She bought a new garage door. But no installation fee. Like she put it in herself.”

  “That is interesting,” Moore said. “The sodomy charge would ruin him, and she’d go down for buying off the policeman. So your next step would be to confront them?”

 
“Yeah, if I had a next step. I’d just found the garage-door thing when the cop stepped in and shot me. Son of a bitch.”

  “So if you was to walk out this door,” Willy Joe said, “you’d get your shit together and then go hit up the Bells.”

  “Well, I guess not,” Ybor said carefully. “Guess you’d want to do that.”

  “Smart kid,” Willy Joe said to Moore. He tapped the cylinder with his finger and it rolled almost to the edge of the table. “Here ya go. Have a ball.”

  Ybor uncapped it hungrily and turned his back to the men. He almost caught his penis in the zipper, in his haste.

  A sharp sting and the first real peace he’d had in a month. He felt the calm power glow through his muscles and organs.

  He took a deep breath, and something rattled in his chest. He turned and sat down. A surge of nausea and twisting pain in his stomach. “What … “

  Willy Joe

  “Y’know, I think you made a mistake there. You’re not supposed to shoot that in your dick.”

  “No, he isn’t,” Moore said.

  Willy Joe stood up with a bright smile. “That’s supposed to go in your pussy. “

  Ybor was doubled up in pain. “Shit. Immune … system.”

  “Yeah, little mix-up. Sorry. Some girl musta got yours. No fun for her, either.”

  Moore stared at Ybor’s convulsions. “They said it would be sudden and painless.”

  “One outta two.” He picked up his cap off the floor.

  He set the cap on his head and straightened it, looking at the mirror on the wall. He saluted whoever was behind the mirror, probably Bobon and the warden. “You wanta take it from here?”

  Moore didn’t answer at first. He was watching Ybor, who had fallen off the chair, rigid, and was slowly moving his limbs around, his jaw locked open in a silent scream.

  “I said you wanna take care of it?”

  “Sure,” Moore said, not looking up. “Papers already made out. Bad drug reaction.”

  “I’ll say.” Willy Joe wrinkled his nose at the smell. “Think I’m gonna die some other way.” He pushed the screen door open, stepped out, and took a deep breath. The golden pasture smelled wonderful, a mile or more from the early-morning highway fumes. He stepped over the white line painted on the sidewalk, the symbolic wall, and pulled out the antenna on his phone.