Joe Haldeman

by The Coming

  It was Marya Washington. Could they come by in twenty or thirty minutes? Rory said sure, and put the “Do Not Disturb the Bitch” sign on her office door. How much of an article could she read in twenty minutes?

  She actually got through the first page of an Astrophysical Review article by a friend at Texas, who had found a consistent correlation between galactic latitude and duration of one class of short-term gamma-ray bursters. That could imply local origin; at least not extragalactic. Or hopeful mathematics, anyhow.

  Security called up and she took the sign off her door, and ushered in the young woman and her “crew,” one man shepherding three cameras. “So welcome to Gainesville, Marya. How’s New York?” “God, don’t ask. It’s a miracle we got out.” A two-day blizzard had just stopped. “We were able to get an old chopper into JFK this morning. Otherwise we’d still be in traffic. If you can call something ‘traffic’ that doesn’t move.”

  The cameraman suggested where to place the cameras and Marya nodded. “I know there aren’t any revelations,” she said, “but do you have anything new? Or that I can pretend is new?” “Any time now,” the cameraman said. “Just be natural, ma’am; we’ll edit later.” “Well, Marya … this isn’t new exactly; it’s from last week. But I’m not sure anybody got the whole story.” “You mean the bounce-back from the thing.”

  “Exactly.” How to phrase this diplomatically? “You reported it, and so did others. But it was more important than you gave it credit for being.” She smiled. “Okay. Words of one syllable?”

  “We sent them a message and they sent it back. Can I say ‘message’?” “So far so good.’

  “It came back with absolutely no distortion. We couldn’t do that. Period.” Marya shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, right. I remember.” She waggled a hand in front of one of the cameras. “Off the record, Rory, we couldn’t really punch that up.” “They intercepted a signal that was ‘way blue-shifted, in a relativistically accelerated frame of reference. They recorded it and re-broadcast it with exactly compensating distortion. The signal we got back was absolutely the same as the one we’d sent.” Marya laughed and shook her head. “Jesus, Rory. Would you come join the world for a minute?

  The real world?”

  “Okay.” Rory smiled, too. “So you couldn’t ‘punch it up.’ “

  “Look. It’s worse than that. We have to think of counter story. We run your version and three out of six tabloids are on us like clothes from Kmart. ‘We got exactly the same signal.’ So where do you think they’ll say it came from? Outer space?” “Of course it came from outer space.”

  “No way in hell. It came from you.”

  “What?”

  “You’re trying to stay in the spotlight. So you generate a story.”

  “God, can you fear yourself? That’s so ridiculous.”

  “It’s not, Dr. Bell,” the cameraman said. “People want to think conspiracy. Want to be on the inside.

  You can sell any goddamn thing if it’s against the establishment.”

  ” I’m the establishment?”

  “You’re authority,” Marya said. “Bobby’s right. Best way for you to get that story out would have been to let somebody else announce it and you hotly deny it.”

  Rory realized she was standing, and sat down. “It’s so Alice in Wonderland. So what do we do?” “Just what we’ve done here. We didn’t punch it up, so when we repeat it next week, it’s backstory.

  It’s routine, so it must be true.”

  “That’s when people point out how important it is,” Bobby said. “Do it all the time, in politics.” “As if I, or we, didn’t understand how important it was at the time.” “You don’t have to go that far,” Marya said. “Just don’t punch it up for now, and later it’ll look like you’ve been cautious. Conservative.” “Okay. You’re the boss.”

  Marya smiled and nodded to the cameraman. “Good evening. It’s exactly one month since the discovery of the Coming, and so we’ve left the blizzards of New York to revisit Dr. Aurora Bell at the University of Florida … “

  Marya

  The interview went pretty well, though they had to ask Rory to repeat some things in simpler and simpler terms. They got out by ten, though; only fifteen minutes later than they’d expected.

  And about two minutes late on the parking meter. Marya saw the big white tow truck from half a block away, checked her watch, and broke into a run.

  It was a heavy-duty floater with a bed big enough to hold a large passenger car. It could park parallel to a car and, using a kind of built-in forklift, pick it straight up and haul it aboard in no time.

  Marya got to him just as he was raising the car. He was a young black man. Her intuition weighed charm versus indignation as she ran up to the driver’s-side window. “I’m sorry, mister. I got held up just a minute or two.”

  The man looked down at her wearily. “You’re gonna get held up, you oughta park on campus. Park on the street and I get the call soon as your time’s up, automatically. You didn’t know that.”

  “No. I’m from New York.”

  “Well, enjoy the sunshine. You can pick up your car at the police lot anytime after twelve. Bring four hundred bucks and be prepared to spend a couple hours.”

  “Oh.” She smiled. “The press card on the windshield doesn’t … “

  He gave a little start of recognition. “No, Miz Washington. Nobody escapes the wrath of the Gainesville Police Department.”

  The cameraman had caught up with her. “Couldn’t we just pay the fine here, and be on our way?”

  “What, is that the way they do it in New York?”

  “No,” he said. “In New York we pay a little extra.”

  “Like five instead of four,” Marya said. She folded up a single bill and offered it.

  The driver looked up and down the street, and then pushed forward on a big lever between the seats, and the car eased back down to the ground. He took the bill and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

  He picked up a wand from the dashboard. “Give me dispatch.”

  Rabin

  Sergeant Rabin walked up to the dispatcher’s desk. The woman was grinning and shaking her head while she talked. “Yeah, some of those meters. It’s a crime. Hasta luego.” She took off her headset and tossed it on the desk. “Those tow-truck guys make more than the mayor.”

  “You know it. Got a gun for me?”

  “Down here.” She opened a drawer and lifted out a white box labeled evidence. “What’s the story?”

  He opened the box and took out the pistol. “Murder weapon, probably. Tossed in Lake Alice.”

  Bright chrome revolver, maybe fifty years old. “Some kids in a biology class saw it in the shallows and fished it out.”

  He pointed at the short barrel, a duller metal, slightly rusted. “This is cute. Forensics says it’s a homemade barrel, smooth bore, a little bigger than the .44 Magnum bullet.”

  “So you couldn’t trace it?”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t make sense. We find a .44 bullet in somebody that doesn’t show any trace of rifling, we know it came from this gun.”

  “Have a body?”

  “Not yet. But this thing wasn’t in the water more than a day or two. So we’re looking.”

  ” Buena suerte.”

  “Yeah. Meanwhile, I get to take this around to the local dealers and pawnshops, see if anyone says,

  “Oh, sure, I sold that to John Smith last week.’ “

  “Sounds like a fun job.”

  “I think ‘shit job’ is the technical term. But maybe I can do some Christmas shopping in the pawnshop. Buy the kids a couple of matching pistols.”

  “Start ‘em out right.” Rabin had four-year-old twin daughters. The phone rang and he waved goodbye.

  There were two pawnshops just a few blocks down Sixth, so he decided to leave the squad car and walk. Get lunch down there, too.

  It wasn’t the best part of town, but they didn’t put pawnshops
in the high-rent district. Or police stations. It amused him to walk along in uniform and watch people’s expressions. Trying to look innocent was a real strain on some of them.

  There were two large shops next door to one another. He went to the farther one first; the owner was a likable enough guy.

  He stepped into the cold air. They probably kept the airco cranked up to minimize the attic smell, mildew and dust. Gun oil and furniture polish. Rabin was fascinated by the places, but not the weapons counter. All the biographies scattered around. Life stories, death stories. Complete tool sets, well-used musical instruments, fancy camera and cube sets. You got so little on the dollar for them, their owners had to be dead or desperate. Or thieves.

  The bell when the door closed brought the owner out of a back room. “Qabil. What can I sell you?

  Can I buy your gun?”

  “Yeah, and my thumb, too.” His weapon was keyed to his thumbprint. “Check this out?” He put the box on the glass case full of handguns.

  “Evidence, eh? What happened?”

  “Some guy’s going around killing pawnshop owners. What you think?”

  He picked it out of the box gingerly and rubbed his thumb along the base of the butt, where the serial number had been ground off. “Cute barrel. Not exactly a sniper weapon.”

  He clicked the cylinder around, peering through. “Ruger stopped making these in the teens. I see ‘em now and then.”

  “Bet you do. That was before they started isotope IDs.”

  “Tell me about it. I don’t think this one came through the shop, I mean with the original barrel and number. Don’t see many chrome-plated ones, in any caliber.”

  “You think the chrome plating was factory?”

  He took out a pair of magnifying glasses and slipped them on, and peered along the weapon’s edges and surfaces. “Yeah. Guarantee it.” He took off the glasses and set the gun back in the box.

  “What else?”

  “You fished it out of the water, but it hadn’t been in there long. Allow for that, and the gun’s practically new. Probably stolen from some collector. Must have been. That’s where I’d start.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “Actually, nothing. Without the barrel, I wouldn’t touch it. Obvious hit weapon. If it had the original barrel, four or five grand. Before its little bath.”

  “On the street?”

  “Maybe a grand, maybe five hundred. You oughta ask the guy next door about that.”

  “Think I will.” Rabin closed the box and tucked it under his arm. “Thanks, Oz. You’ve been a help.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t ID it. Buena suerte.”

  ” Buenas.” When he opened the door the sun was so bright it made his eyes water. He crunched through the gravel parking lot and walked up the unpainted wooden stairs to the next place.

  The door opened with a surprise like a slap. Norman Bell!

  Norman

  His heart stopped and restarted. “Qabil. I … I don’t know what to … buenos dias.”

  “Uh … buenos. How’ve you been?”

  “Fine … just fine.” Could he be in on it? No, he’d never. “I saw your girls a couple of weeks ago.

  They’re growing fast.”

  “They do that.” There was an awkward silence and he held out a box. “Got to see a man about a gun.”

  “Oh. Sure.” He held the door open. Rabin stepped through and then stopped.

  “What are you doing here? Slumming?”

  “I come by every now and then, looking for old guitars and such. Nothing today.”

  He nodded. “I see your wife on the cube all the time. She looks good.”

  “Oh yeah. She’s fine.” The one time they’d met had been strained. In the kitchen, she with wide eyes and he with mouth full.

  “Take care,” he whispered with tenderness, and turned toward the gun rack and counter.

  Norman finally shook off his paralysis and walked down the stairs. If Qabil had come in a couple of minutes earlier, he would have interrupted an illegal transaction.

  The pawnbroker wouldn’t say anything. He was guiltier than Norman. Selling a pistol without waiting period or ID check.

  It had to be a coincidence. Rabin wouldn’t be in on a thing that would cost him his job and family and put him in prison for ten or twenty years. As if a cop would last even one year in prison.

  Norman stood at his bicycle and considered waiting for Qabil to come back out. Tell him about the threat and enlist his aid. He couldn’t do anything legally without throwing his life away. But maybe he would do something illegal.

  Maybe later. First he’d talk to the lawyer and his gun-toting pal. Maybe they’d have a shoot-out there in front of the lunch crowd, and simplify things for everyone.

  He clipped the bag onto his handlebars. It was awkwardly heavy, with the snub-nosed revolver and box of bullets. Had to find someplace private to load it.

  He went a couple of blocks uptown and locked his bike outside a pool-hall bar where he’d never been. Just as soon not be recognized. He undipped the bag and walked into a darkness redolent of marijuana and spilled beer.

  There were no other customers yet. He walked past the rows of shabby billiard tables to the small bar at the end.

  There were three crude VR games along one wall, at least twenty years old, and a century-old pinball machine, dusty and dark, glass cracked. A sign on the wall said no fucking profanity/no use palabras VERDES, CARAJO! under a shiny holo cube of the president, all brilliant smile, a helmet of perfect hair guarding both of her brain cells.

  The bartender was out of sight, rattling bottles around in a back room. He called out “¡ Momentito!”

  and it actually was just a moment.

  He was a big black man with startling blue eyes, obviously Cuban. Bright metal teeth. “What’ll you have?”

  “Draft Molly. Use your bathroom?”

  “Sure. Ain’t cleaned it yet.”

  Norman was prepared for an odoriferous hell, but it wasn’t bad in that respect. The urinal was a metal trough that evidently dispensed a powerful antiseptic. There was blood on the floor, though, and a smeared handprint of dried blood on the stall door.

  He opened the door and didn’t find a body, so the previous night’s activity had probably been conflict resolution rather than murder. He locked the stall and sat down and opened the bag.

  He’d bought an old-fashioned revolver for reliability. It had been so long since he’d fired a gun; more than thirty years. In 2020 he’d killed a couple of dozen men for the crime, he always said, of wearing the other side’s uniform. Something he’d had in common with Qabil, though their wars were a generation apart, and he was technically the enemy.

  In Norman’s mind, there were no enemies in war. Just victims. Victims of historical process.

  Heavy blued steel. He riddled with a mechanism on the side and the cylinder swung away. He slid six fat cartridges into their homes and snapped it shut.

  He could just put the muzzle in his mouth and, again, simplify everything. Sure. Then Rory would have to identify the rest of his body, and Willy Joe and his pals would just shift their focus to her.

  Besides, simplifying was against his nature. He resealed the cartridge box and considered what to do with the nineteen remaining rounds. If it were combat, you’d want them as handy as possible. But he couldn’t imagine a situation where he’d have the opportunity, or necessity, to reload. He knew that Willy Joe carried a weapon; that was part of his swagger. Maybe his lawyer was armed, too, or there would be bodyguards.

  He’d survived two bullet wounds, lung and leg, in the war. He might survive another. But the real lesson from the experience was to aim for the head.

  They were experimenting with brain transplants. In Willy Joe’s case, anything would be an improvement.

  He considered throwing away the nineteen cartridges here, where another patron could make use of them. But with his luck the police would find them instead, and they’d trace them ba
ck to him. Assuming he survived lunch.

  The rational part of him knew there was little danger; he was useless to them dead. But part of him would always be in the desert, fighting men with guns, and he wasn’t going to face one unarmed.

  Besides, Willy Joe didn’t strike him as particularly rational. He put the bullets back in the bag and took out the light plastic holster. He set the revolver on a shelf and read the instructions, then opened his shirt and twisted the holster back and forth rapidly. It warmed in his hands. He carefully positioned it under his left arm and pressed it into place. It stuck like glue, but would supposedly peel away painlessly.

  He slipped the gun into it, the weight strange but reassuring, then flushed the toilet (a flagrant violation of the law) and returned to the bar.

  The bartender had waited for him to come out. He cracked the tap slowly and filled a frosted mug.

  “Y’know, I got a memory for faces. You ain’t been in here before, but I seen you someplace.”

  “That’s not surprising. I’ve lived around Gainesville for forty years.” The beer was a new kind, bland but with a little catnip bite. Ice-cold, though, and welcome. “Good. Norman Bell. I’m a music teacher and musician.”

  ” Si, si. I’ve seen you on the cube with your wife, Professor Bell. What you make of all this stuff?”

  “Well, I sort of have to go along with the wife. Preserve domestic tranquillity.”

  He laughed. “I hear ya.”

  “She makes a good case, though. New Year’s Day is going to be interesting.”

  “Little green men on the White House lawn?”

  “Probably something even weirder than that. Something we can’t even imagine.”

  The bartender poured himself a small glass of beer. “Yeah, I was reading … like why don’t they send a picture? They afraid of what we’d do?”

  “What my wife says, they have no reason to be afraid of us for anything. They could fry the planet if we made a threatening move.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But there are any number of innocent explanations. Maybe they don’t send pictures because there’s nobody aboard; it’s just a robot that’s programmed to wander around, listening for radio waves. That’s what Rory thinks. My wife.”