The Coming

by Joe Haldeman

  He walked down tree-lined Second Avenue to downtown, studying the undergraduate girls. His appreciation of their beauty had an exquisite purity, partly because he couldn't do anything about it until a day or so after the drug wore off. But that was not really a problem, he told himself. For every thing there is a season. He tried to ignore the persistent itching pain at the injection site, the slight numb erection.

  It wasn't just the way they looked, moving in their soft summer clothes. He could smell them as they passed; smell the secret parts of their bodies as well as the public perfume, the astringent sunblock. He could feel the heat from their bodies on his face, on the back of his hand, as they passed. He could almost read their thoughts, at least when they were thinking of him.

  What a wonderful day. He even loved the heat, the blast that glowed up from the asphalt as he floated across streets. It was as if he walked on the heat. Cars stopped for him respectfully, their horns music. Brakes squealing in beautiful unison as he triggered the street's emergency mode.

  As he approached Hermanos, the smell of meats frying was almost too much for him. He swallowed saliva and walked into the cool and dark.

  What were all these people doing here? Usually Hermanos was uncrowded until after one, when the Cubans and Mexicans started drifting in. There were only two tables unoccupied. Ybor sat down at the bar.

  The owner Sara waited on him. She made him uncomfortable. He had known her before the accident, when she was a lifeguard at the Eastside pool. He had studied her body for hours when he was eleven and twelve, and it disgusted him to think of what it must look like now. But he always went to the bar when she was serving.

  "Hola, Ybor. What'll it be?"

  He didn't have to look at the menu. "Ropa vieja y vino tinto."

  She wrote it down. "Old rags and new wine, coming up." She poured him a glass of red wine, cold, and went back to the kitchen.

  Ybor took a sip of the wine and then held the glass between his palms, warming it. Like everything, the bar was transformed by the drug, made more real and more fantastic at the same time. The cheap paneling became a whorl of frozen life, tropical trees microtomed over and over. The liquor bottles with their rainbow of colors and flavors; from yards away he could smell them individually. The slow ceiling fans pushed gentle puffs of cool air over him, like slaves waving palm fronds. The mirror showed a young man capable of great things. Thirty-five was still young.

  Sara brought the stew with a plate of warm tortillas and the green hot sauce Ybor liked. Ropa vieja, literally "old clothes," was beef slowly cooked in tomato sauce and peppers, until it fell apart into shreds. Ybor liked it but had chosen it mainly because he knew it would just be ladled out and brought to him. He could have starved to death while they were fixing a hamburger.

  Sara watched him tear into it with a spoon in one hand and a rolled tortilla in the other. "I like a man who likes to eat," she said, smiling, and went off to fill a bar order.

  This drug could make eating a cracker into a sensual experience. The spicy stew played an ecstatic symphony in his mouth, nose, palate; the act of swallowing was a complex and delightful counterpoint.

  Sara came back. "So how about these aliens?"

  "¿Cómo?" She going to carry on about immigrants again, interrupt this symphony?

  "Right next door to you." She waved a hand at all her new customers. "All these reporters. All because of Aurora Bell."

  That got his attention. "What'd Dr. Bell do?"

  "What, you live in a goddamn cave?"

  "Working all morning. What she do?"

  "She got some signal from outer space. Some aliens coming to Earth, like in the movies."

  "Aw, bullshit, Sara. You're bullshittin' me."

  "Like you'd know bullshit if you stepped in it," she said cheerfully. She whistled at the set over the bar and told it CNN. "Just watch for a few minutes."

  Now what the hell had he gotten himself into? The way Whittier had talked, of course she'd thought he knew.

  The stew turned sour in his mouth and he swallowed with difficulty. Shit, what if they expected some newsie to hack the system and beefed up the watchdogs? They might catch the tap and it would point right back to him.

  A live reporter standing in front of the building next to where he worked delivered a one-minute summation of the alien thing. There was Dr. Bell, sitting in her office with all the old paper books, talking about, Jesus, a million megatons? Okay, relativistic kinetic energy. Still. One hell of a bang.

  There was some commotion behind him and he turned around to see Aurora Bell walk in with Pepe Parker. They were good-naturedly telling the reporters no interviews; this was lunch. The big guy who runs the coffee machine in the morning came out to stand behind her with a cast-iron frying pan. Subtle.

  Pepe raised a hand in greeting and he returned it. They saw each other every now and then at the dance clubs. Not a bad guy for a Cubano.

  "Something wrong with the ropa?" Sara asked.

  "Oh no, it's great. Let me have another wine, though."

  "Tinto," she said, and refilled his glass.

  Sara

  Wonder if he's a drunk. If he is, he's a cute one. Late for him, actually, he's usually in here for a wine or cerveza by eleven. Work all night, drink all day, but he doesn't seem to drink that much, just unsteady and bright-eyed from fatigue and coffee. He was a cute kid back in high school, junior high, always down at the pool looking at me, I wonder does he remember, does he know I remember? I looked at him, too.

  José was taking the order of Dr. Bell and the guy who came in with her. Funny Ybor didn't know about Dr. Bell and the aliens, right in the building next door. Physics and astrology. Astrophysics, they just said, probably a combination.

  Astrology had helped her a lot. Some of it was just made up, maybe all of it, but you had to make a decision one way or the other, might as well ask your chart. She carried hers in her purse usually, but this morning the battery light was on, so she left it plugged in at the house. She could get along without it for a day. Maybe when she got home she would ask it Is Ybor a drunk? Would he fuck a woman with a body like hers? She knew the answer to that and looked away from him as she pressed her knees together and felt a small helpless ripple of desire, not for Ybor in particular. Time to go to a feelie, or maybe back to Orlando to get serviced for real. There was a place in Gainesville but if she used it Willy Joe would find out. She would have to kill him. It would be a public-health measure, but they'd probably put her in jail anyhow. She thought about last time in Orlando and felt warm and wet and knew she was blushing, the big black man who called her his little doll. What was the name of that place, the Bluebird, the Blackbird? She knew where it was and knew the man's name, John Henry, claro.

  José was in front of her. "Two Tecates on five?" he asked. "Preparadas. I've got my hands full."

  "Tecates," she said slowly.

  "You okay, amiga?" He stood there with order pad and frying pan.

  Sara laughed. "Just thinking. Not used to it, I guess."

  She opened the two cans of beer and sprinkled a pinch of rock salt on the top of each, and topped them off with lime. Disgusting combination, but the customer was always right, or at least was always the customer.

  She carried the two beers over to table five and gave them to Rory and Pepe. "I saw Norman in the mercado this morning. He was acting funny."

  "He usually acts funny," Rory said.

  "I didn't know you were famous then. He was probably thinking about being second fiddle."

  "Not his instrument," Rory said, and they both laughed. There was a loud crash in the kitchen and Sara went to check.

  Pepe

  He watched her rush away, the peculiar walk. "It was a drive-by?"

  Rory nodded and grimaced. "Just off University, student ghetto somewhere. A car door opened and some stranger splashed her with gasoline and lit a match. She heard some people laughing, at least two men and a woman. But she couldn't remember what kind of car it was o
r tell them anything about the man. I guess that was a year or so before you came."

  "Pobrecita," he said, squeezing the lime into his beer.

  "People wonder whether it had something to do with the brothers who owned the place originally. But they'd disappeared years before."

  "That was back when the gangs were so bad."

  Rory didn't use the lime. She brushed off most of the salt and sipped from the can. "A lot of random violence then. People think it's bad now. There were places you just didn't go after dark."

  "Still are."

  "Claro." She got a pad and stylus out of her bag and turned them on. She drew a row of neat boxes, frowning, and then erased them with her thumb. "I told Deedee and El Chancellor that I'd have some scheduling for them tomorrow morning. But until I hear from NASA and the Cape, everything's kind of moot. Defense, too, in a way. They'll oversee a lot of the funding."

  "You mean you don't want to make up a table of organization just to have the government come in and kick it apart."

  "Sí. No harm in doing a tentative one, I guess. Who's qualified for what, interested in what. If the feds change it, they change it."

  "So where do I fit in?"

  "Pretty face." She pretended to write it down. "'Official … pretty face.'"

  "How about 'nonadministrator'? I just do the science?"

  "Muy buena suerte. You get to help me run this circus."

  Pepe shrugged and suppressed a smile:

  That's what I'm here for. Eight years of winning your trust, so I can make sure you divine half the truth, the right half.

  And the decade before that, studying how to talk, how to think, how to act. Not in Cuba. Learning how to live with this alien food and drink.

  In his way, he loved her. But that was of no importance. He knew what his job was going to be, over the next week, the next three months.

  "Qué bueno," he said. "Do I get a pistol and chair?"

  "I'll put in a requisition."

  A man rushed up to the table. "Professor Bell."

  "Yes?" After a moment she recognized him as the reporter from this morning. "Mr. Jordan."

  "Dan. Don't want to take your lunch time, but look … they've put me on … God! … soft background, local color. It's not my … it's not…"

  "It's not your story anymore."

  "That's right. I'm just a local flunky now." He took a deep breath. "What I wanted, wanted to know, is could I get an interview with you and Mr. Bell sometime today, tonight?"

  "Sure, sin problema. Just call first, what, eight?"

  "Thanks. I've got your number." He looked at Pepe. "Perdón. I'll get out of your hair."

  Daniel Jordan

  He went back out into the heat and whistled for the camera to follow him. Lots of local color out here by the mercado, but nobody wants to stand in the sun and chat. He moved over to the shade of a pair of trees just past the coffee booth.

  People walked by him. It must have been easier in the old days, when you had a big square camera and a human cameraman, a microphone in your hand and wires trailing everywhere. A pain in the ass, actually, but at least people would have to notice you.

  "Excuse me, sir." He stepped in the path of a slow-moving, round middle-aged man. "I'm Daniel Jordan from News Seven…"

  "Good for you," he said, but stopped.

  "I came down to the mercado to ask people's opinions about the Coming."

  "That's what they're calling it?"

  "Some people, yes…"

  "Well, I don't like it. Sounds religious."

  "Whatever the name. How do you feel about it?"

  "Feel? I suppose it's a good thing. Make contact and all that. Been talking about it long enough."

  "You don't feel there's any danger?"

  "No, no. We were talking about that at the shop. Small's Jalousies and Windows? Government's gonna try to scare us, spend tax money protecting us from these goddamn things. But it's bullshit. You know? If they wanted to get us, they would've snuck up on us, right? A burglar doesn't ring the bell on his way in, does he? I think it'll be real interesting."

  "Thank you, Mister…"

  "Small, Ed Small. Small's Jalousies and Windows." He leaned toward the camera and waved. "'When you think of windows, think Small.'"

  A few people had stopped to watch the interview. Dan zeroed in on a woman with her son, eight or nine years old.

  "What do you think about all this, young man?"

  "About the monsters?"

  "Le … roy," his mother warned.

  "You think they'll be monsters?" Dan asked.

  "They're always monsters," he explained patiently.

  "He watches too much cube." His mother glared at the camera.

  "Mother. They're always monsters because that's what people want. The guys who made this up know that."

  The mother stared at her son. Dan cleared his throat. "So you think it's all made up?"

  "Well, it's on the cube," the boy said, explaining everything.

  Dan laughed unconvincingly. "Do you share your son's skepticism?"

  "Not really, no. I'm hoping it will be something … really wonderful. What the man you just talked to said, that's true. If they meant us harm they wouldn't have announced they were coming."

  "You don't think it could be a hoax?"

  "No—it's already too big."

  "Well, I think it's a hoax," the man behind her said. He was ebony black, shimmering skintights like rainbow paint on a weight-lifter's body. "They had it orchestrated months in advance, maybe years."

  "Who are 'they,' then?"

  "Well, who do you think has the money? If it's not the federal government then it's a group of conglomerates working together—assuming the last act of the farce will be a spaceship landing on the White House lawn."

  A live one, Dan thought. He made the hand signal that instructed the camera to move in tight. "And what will the government or conglomerates gain?"

  "More and better control over us. Thought control!" He held up both fists. "Watch and wait. These aliens will be presented to us as unassailably superior savants. What they say is true, we will have to accept as truth. Who could argue with creatures who came umpty-ump light-years to save us?"

  "You have it pretty well thought out," Dan said.

  "I used to be paid to think," he said. "Dr. Cameron Davisson, at your service. Ex-professor of philosophy at this august institution."

  "Um … what do you do now, Dr. Davisson?"

  "I try to serve as a bad example."

  "Ah…" Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw a vision of loveliness. "Ma'am? Pardon me, señorita?"

  The woman stopped and looked at him. She was a classic Latin beauty—statuesque; haughty, aristocratic features. Ebony hair and skin like dark honey set off by a simple white dress that loved the flesh it clung to and partially exposed.

  "I'm interviewing people here about the Coming."

  "The aliens? I think it's marvelous. Have to get to work." She turned and walked away and even the camera stared at her. I wouldn't mind going to work with you, Dan thought, but he didn't know half of it.

  Gabrielle

  She'd forgotten to take the gel home with her and so that meant an extra fifteen minutes without pay at work, feet in the stirrups. So it didn't make any difference that she'd worn underwear. She couldn't have worn this dress without underwear, anyhow, and it was a hot-weather favorite.

  Two blocks into campus, she turned into the building discreetly labeled IISR, the International Institute for Sexual Research. What a joke.

  She took an elevator to the top floor and went into Lab 3 and locked the door behind her.

  "Gabby? You're early." A bald man looked up from a machine.

  "Forgot to take the gel home. Afternoon, Louis."

  "Hi, Gab." A young man lounged by the window, naked, scanning a magazine about popular music. There was nothing unusual about him except for the length and breadth of his penis.

  Gabrielle stepped into a small
bathroom, where she hung up her dress and put her shoes and underclothes on a shelf. She urinated and tried to break wind, and the medical student in her wondered for the dozenth time what perversity of psychology and anatomy made it impossible for her to do it now and almost imperative later, horizontal and public.

  Obeying state law, she didn't flush the toilet. She checked her makeup, carefully blotting the slight shine of sweat from her face and between her breasts. She tried to smile at her reflection and then left the bathroom and walked toward the table.

  "Panty lines," the bald man said.

  "Harry. I knew the gel would take fifteen minutes to set, so I allowed myself the exquisite luxury of underwear, okay?"

  "All right. I guess they'll be gone."

  "Maybe your customers like panty lines." She mounted the table with a gymnast's slow grace, her ankles landing precisely in the stirrups. "I bet you never asked."

  "Artistic convention," he said with a straight face.

  "Right." She picked up the large syringe next to the table and applied a liberal amount of lubricant to the nozzle, and then some to herself. She inserted the nozzle carefully, grimacing, and slowly injected the clear gel. If you did it too fast you left air bubbles in the vagina, which would be edited out later, but why make work for your boss? Even if he is a pig.

  The gel provided a medium with the proper index of refraction. It smelled and tasted like diesel fuel and was about as hard to get rid of as a coastal oil spill. Fortunately, Gabrielle didn't have any lovers who might complain about it, just an uncritical fellow medical student with whom she shared occasional spasms.

  She leaned back. "Louis, would you get me that pillow?" She took off her long black wig and smoothed on a cap of metal mesh, then put the wig back on. Louis was already wearing his neural inductor cap.

  He brought over a firm cylindrical pillow and she put it under her neck and gave him a playful tug. He was semierect. "You see the stuff on cube about the aliens?"

  "Yeah, I was watching it." He ran a finger lightly down her thigh. "Qué maravillosa."

  "Hey," said the bald guy from behind the machine. "You come too soon and neither one of you gets paid."