The Coming

Professor Bell

Reporters.

Normally her desk was no neater than it had to be, a comfortable random pile of notes, journals, and books. So long as she knew where everything was, who cared? But she had just spent fifteen minutes nervously straightening things up, desk and worktable. It was not quite six in the morning.

There would be reporters.

She looked at the coffee machine in the anteroom. The smell was a magnet. No, not now. Her heart was already racing. Doctor said two cups a day.

She pushed a button on the desk. “Previous,” she said, and the diagram on the wallscreen was replaced by a double page of equations and numbers. “Previous,” she said again, and got a double page of numbers and words. “Left.” The screen reconfigured and gave her a single magnified page of words. She stared at it and shook her head.

It was an old and old-fashioned office, dating from before the turn of the century. It had an antique blackboard that she enjoyed using, the only one left in the physics building, and one whole wall, floor to ceiling, had built-in shelves for books printed on paper. Some of that space had been converted into a large display screen, but she did have rows of paper volumes bound in leather, cloth, and cardboard. The head of the department can be eccentric.

“Music,” she said; “random Vivaldi, then random Baroque.” An oboe began a familiar figure. “Louder, ten percent.”

She sat down for a minute, listening, and then got up and slid a large book from the shelf, one she’d bought on impulse Monday. She leafed through the yellowing pages carefully. It was a book of news photographs from the old Life magazine, documenting a war that her great-great-grandfather had fought in. Grainy patriotic pictures and ads with meaningless prices. Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War. What on Earth did that mean? Lucky Strike was evidently a tobacco cigarette; maybe green tobacco had some weapons application back then.

At the sound of the elevator, she closed the book and returned it. Her husband came into the outer office. “Coffee any good?”

“Just made it, half-real.” He poured a cup. White stubble on his chin, rumpled workclothes. He got up almost as early as she did, but didn’t bother to shave and dress till noon.

“I didn’t quite understand your message.” He sat down on the chair normally reserved for nervous graduate students. “Or quite believe what I heard.” She always expected to get the house when she called home. Norman was a cellist and composer, and spent the first hour of his workday warming up, meditating over scales and intervals, and ignored the phone. But the house had told him it sounded important, and so he picked up the message. He’d called back immediately and said he was coming over.

He looked around the neat office. “You have someone in?”

She laughed. “I’ve been tidying. Waiting for a longer parallax verification.”

“Parallax, yeah, Relax. Sit down, you make me nervous.” He gestured at the wallscreen. “This is it?”

She nodded. It was a neat column of words: WE’RE COMING, repeated sixty times.

“Well… by itself, it doesn’t exactly make one—”

“Norman. The signal came from a tenth of a light-year away. In English.”

“Oh.” He sipped his coffee. “We don’t have anyone that far out?”

“Of course not.”

“Creatures from outer space.”

“Something from outer space.” The phone rang and she picked up the wand. “Bell.” She leaned forward, elbow on desk, staring blankly at the column of words. “Anytime is okay. Is he the science reporter?” She rolled her eyes. “Please. Can’t we wait for a science reporter?” She exhaled slowly. “I understand. You have the address? Right. Bye.”

Norman smiled. “Science reporters aren’t up at six?”

“They’re sending their ‘night man.’ He’s probably used to murders and things.”

“They couldn’t wait?”

“No, it’s out on the nets. I called the Marsden Bureau in Washington as soon as I was sure what it was.”

“Oh, you’re sure what it is?”

“No, no.” She stood up and sat back down. “Just how far away, how fast. You know what the blue shift is?”

“An article of clothing?” She gave him an exasperated look. “I guess it’s like the red shift, but blue.”

“Right. It tells how fast something is coming toward us, rather than away.” She pointed at the column of words, stabbing. “This thing came in a burst of gamma rays. Its source is coming at us with almost the speed of light.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“It’s slowing down. If it weren’t, I couldn’t say anything about the blue shift—I mean, they could just be broadcasting in high-energy gamma rays.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s complicated.” She waved the complications away. “Anyhow, I can tell how fast it’s slowing down. From that… what it boils down to is that this thing popped into existence going the speed of light, exactly one-tenth of a light-year away, and it’s decelerating at such a rate that it will reach Earth in exactly three months. New Year’s Day.”

“No coincidence.”

“Of course not. They’re giving us a creepy message. Those two words, combined with the blue shift and position, say, ‘We know a lot about you, and we are vastly superior technologically. Ready or not, here we come.’”

He rubbed the stubble on his throat. “Jesus.” They both looked up when the elevator door chimed. “The night man cometh.”

Daniel Jordan

Dan didn’t like the way the old elevator squeaked and shuddered. They were supposed to be fail-safe, but he’d covered a story over in Jax a few years before, where one—newer than this had dropped twenty floors. Broken necks and fractured skulls and only one survivor, her muffled screaming terrible as the Rescue Squad rappelled down to cut open the roof. He pushed on the squealing door to speed it up, then held the door for the cameras to roll out behind him.

He checked his watch: 6:17. The Kampus Kops wouldn’t start ticketing until seven. Maybe the press card on his windshield would protect him. The station only paid for two tickets a week, and he’d already had them.

Dr. Bell, 436. He turned to the right and the cameras followed. The small one stopped every couple of meters to take atmosphere: bulletin boards, an empty classroom, the sign that said DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS. Dr. Bell was waiting for him in a doorway, a small stocky woman with short black hair streaked with white; a kindly face with an expression difficult to read. Dan introduced himself and they went into the office.

The guy sitting by the desk looked like the janitor, but Dan had a good memory for faces and made the name connection. He held out his hand. “Norman Bell, of course. I went to your concert in the park last spring.”

The man shook his hand and looked amused. “You cover music as well as astronomical anomalies?”

“No, sir.” Something about the man compelled honesty. “Actually, I’m tone-deaf. It was a date.”

He laughed. “She must have been worth pursuing.” He stood up. “Well. I’ll get out of your way.”

“Please stay, Norman.” She looked at Dan. “Is that all right?”

He shrugged. “As long as you don’t stand or sit together. Confuses the cameras’ tiny brains.” They would scurry around getting two-shots, long shots, intercuts, reaction shots. Half the footage would be of a scruffy-looking man in gray workclothes, temporarily irrelevant. “I think it would shoot best with you at your desk, Professor. I’ll sit over here.” He indicated the chair that Norman had just vacated.

“I’ll go lurk by the coffee machine. Want some?”

“No thanks. Just came from Burgerman.”

“That’s how you got here so fast,” Dr. Bell said. “I hope it didn’t interrupt your breakfast.”

“Oh, no,” he lied, “just hanging out with the city cops. Trade gossip.” He looked at the big camera and whistled, then spoke slowly: “Establishing shot. Bee Gee two-seventy from behind subject to my left.” The camera drifted behind Bell and then wheeled out in an arc. “That’s for editing back in the studio. I just repeat the questions there and they can paste my face in from any angle. So the cameras don’t have to worry about me now.”

The camera completed its circuit and said “okay” in a monotone. “Begin at the beginning,” Dan said.

“How much do you know?”

“Almost nothing. You got some weird signal from outer space and the night desk thought it was important.”

“It is.” She leaned back. “I got to the office a little after four. The screen was blinking for attention.”

“Can you recreate that?”

“Sure.” She pushed a button on her desk. “Find today, 0405.”

The screen began to blink red, saying ANOMALY RECORDED GRB-1 0355 EST.

Dan whistled and pointed at the screen. The large camera rolled up to it and seemed to concentrate. “Daniel,” it said in a soft woman’s voice, “please come adjust my raster synchronization.”

Dan shook his head. “That’s automatic in the new models.” He got up and peered through the camera and fiddled with a pair of knobs until the picture of the wallscreen settled down.

He returned to his seat and the small camera climbed up onto Bell’s desk and stared at her. She looked at it warily. “Am I supposed to talk to it?”

“No, just talk to me. What does the message mean?”

“GRB-1 is a gamma-ray burst detector. The ‘one’ is optimism; we never got money to launch the second, which would’ve been a backup.

“Anyhow, some sources send out bursts of gamma rays, sometimes for hours, sometimes minutes, usually just seconds. This satellite detects and analyzes the radiation. It has a small telescope, essentially a fast wide-angle lens, that covers the whole sky every two seconds. If it detects a gamma-ray burst, the bigger telescope can be on it in about a second.”

“Does it have any practical applications?”

“One never knows, but I doubt it. Except that if the Sun ever did that, it would fry everyone on the daytime side of the planet. It would be nice to have a few hours’ warning.”

“Do you have a picture of the satellite?”

“Sure.” She pushed the button. “Find GRB hyphen one comma artist’s conception.” A dramatic holo of the satellite appeared, silhouetted against the sun peeking crimson from behind the curve of the Earth. Dan pointed at it and the big camera, which had been tight on Bell, turned around and got a shot of the wallscreen.

“That’s pretty but falsado,” she said. “GRB-1’s up in geosynchronous orbit; the Earth’s just a big ball that gets in the way.”

“So what’s this anomaly? I mean, what does the word mean?”

“It means something unexpected, a mystery. In this case, we recorded the gamma ray burst, but when the computer tried to find out what source it was, there was no object there, in previous records. I mean down to twenty-fifth magnitude, which is about as faint as they get.

“That was the first anomaly, which was interesting. The second was startling. Whenever we get a burst that’s more than a few seconds long, we send out a request to the Japanese gamma-ray observatory on the Moon, for backup data. Their detector’s more powerful. It found the burst but said that our position was a tiny hair off. We checked and no, our position was accurate. What it was, was parallax.”

She anticipated the question. “You hold your finger up at arm’s length, and look at it first with your right eye; then with your left.” She demonstrated, blinking. “The finger appears to change position with respect to things farther away. That’s parallax.

“Stars, let alone galaxies, are too far away for there to be a measurable parallax between the Moon and GRB-1, the right eye and the left. This thing was only about a tenth of a light-year away. It’s not a star.”

“So what is it?”

“That’s the third anomaly, the fantastic one. I went to analyze the spectrum of… I went to analyze the signal. It was a long steady beep for sixty seconds, and then a jumble for sixty seconds, and then another steady beep, and then an identical jumble.” She paused. “Do you know what that means?”

“You tell me,” he said quietly.

“It means the signal isn’t natural. The sixty-second minute is not an interval that occurs in nature.”

“Yet it was coming from somewhere farther than humans have ever been?”

“That’s right. And it’s obviously a signal. I put it through a decryptation, what we call a Drake program. It’s simple frequency modulation, like FM radio. This is the message.” She pushed the button and said, “Previous previous.”

Dan pointed at the screen and the camera obeyed. “They’re coming?”

“Yes, initially at almost the speed of light. At the rate they’re slowing down—fifty gees’ deceleration!—they’ll be here in exactly three months. That’s New Year’s Day.”

He was silent for a moment. “Suppose it’s a hoax. Could it be a fake, a joke?”

“Well, somebody could get to my computer, verdad, and set me up for a practical joke. But they couldn’t get to the Moon. I mean, I just told them where to look, and there it was.”

“So something’s out there.” Dan laughed nervously. “An invasion from outer space.”

“We’d better hope it’s not an invasion. You extrapolate back from the first signal, and when that thing first appeared it was going point-nine-nine-nine… fifteen or sixteen nines… of the speed of light.” She leaned toward the little camera and spoke carefully. “If you took all of the energy that all of the world produces in one year, and put it all into a space drive… we couldn’t make a golf ball go that fast. If it’s an invasion, we’ve had it. Perdido.”

“Dios,” Dan said under his breath. “Use your phone?” He reached past her and picked up the wand; checked his watch while he was punching. “Charlene, listen up. Dan. You have to cut me a fifteen-second teaser on the seven o’clock. Then a three-minute lead at eight, and a five-minute lead at nine. And get… listen, it’s my ass, not yours. And get Harry and Rebecca down here right now for depth and color, for nine.”

He listened. “Just tell Julie to be down in Room Six in fifteen minutes. I’m gonna show him two crystals that’ll blow him into the next county. The next century. We’re gonna scoop the whole fucking world.”

He nodded at the phone. “The Second Coming, bambina. The Second Coming.” He hung up the wand and pulled a data crystal out of the small camera, and then stood and extracted a similar crystal from the large one.

“Thanks, Professor, you were great. Gotta run. Couple science types be here in a half hour.” He started for the door.

“Your cameras?”

“They’ll use ’em.” He sprinted down the hall, crashed through an emergency exit, and ran down the stairs.

Norman Bell

Norman winced at the ugly clanging the emergency door precipitated. A pure tone would do the job. His wife called maintenance and the noise stopped.

He stood up and stretched. “Guess you’re stuck here. Bring you back something to eat?”

“Where you going?”

“Greek place, Nick’s.”

“Hmm. One of those spinach things. Spinach and cheese. No hurry.”

“Spanakopita.” He bent over slowly to pick up his bicycle helmet. “Don’t forget to watch yourself on the news.”

She was looking at a screen full of numbers and letters. “I wonder what channel.”

Norman tapped the number on the side of the large camera. “Seven would be a good bet.”

Downstairs, he unlocked the ancient bike and pedaled squeak-click-squeak though campus, taking the long way downtown to avoid traffic. There weren’t too many cars at this hour, but drivers were erratic. The ATC didn’t kick in until seven.

He checked his watch and pedaled a little faster. He would have to cross University Avenue, and it was best to be off the main roads well before “the bitching hour.” Some drivers would go a little crazy, their last few minutes of manual control, trying to make an extra block or two before the ATC system engaged and turned them into law-abiding citizens—or at least turned their cars into law-abiding machinery. Until then, an orange light meant “grit your teeth and step on it.”

He got across University without incident, and kept up the rapid pace for the few blocks remaining, just to get some exercise. He was a little winded by the time he locked up outside the Athens, Nick’s, and was glad Nick had the airco on inside. It was going to be a bad one today, close to eighty already, with the sun barely over the trees. He could remember when it was never this hot in October in Gainesville.

He selected a honey-soaked pastry and asked for strong Greek coffee and ice water, then put three bucks in the newspaper machine and selected World, Local, and Comics.

He read the comics first, as always, to fortify himself. The world news was predictably bleak. England and Germany and France snapping at each other, the Eastern Republics choosing up sides. Catalonia declaring itself neutral today—the day after its sister Spain aligned with Germany, squeezing France. Europe has to do this every century or so, he supposed.

The coffee and roll came and he asked for a glass of ouzo. Not his normal breakfast drink, but this was no normal morning.

“Nick,” he said when the man brought the liquor, “Would you mind turning on the seven o’clock news? Channel Seven; Rory’s going to be on.”

“Your wife? Sure.” He shouted something in Greek and the cube behind the bar turned itself on.

Still five minutes to go. The local station was filling time with its trademark “Girls of Gatorland” nude montage. He watched a pretty young thing display her skills on the parallel bars, and then went back to the paper.

Water riots in Phoenix again. Inner-city Detroit under martial law, the national guard called in after a police station was leveled by a predawn kamikaze truckload of explosives. A man in Los Angeles legally married his dog. In Milwaukee, twins reunited after sixty years immediately start fighting.

The local section had an unlovely, but possibly useful, photo-essay that showed the types of facial mutilations that various local gangs used to tell one another apart. They were more like social clubs nowadays, however fearsome the members looked. Ten years ago there was a lot of blood spilled. Now they just have those strange tournaments, killing each other in virtual-reality hookups, with dozens playing on each side. Why couldn’t Europe do that? Too American, he supposed, though the Koreans had actually started it.

He folded up the paper as the news program started. The lead story was Detroit, of course. There was dramatic footage of a water-dumping helicopter that was fired upon and had to drop its load a block away from the fire and retreat. The crowd shots around the ruins of the police station showed little grief; one group of boys was cheering, until they saw that the camera was on them, and scattered.

Rory’s discovery hadn’t made the lead, but it got more time than Detroit. It wasn’t often they had a story that was both interplanetary and local.

There was an interesting déjà vu feeling to watching it, seeing which parts of the interview were chosen, and how they were modified. They didn’t actually monkey with Rory’s responses, but some of the questions were changed. Predictably, there was nothing about parallax or the noncoincidence of the human minute being part of the signal; nothing about what the distance and speed implied. That would come in a later broadcast. This seven o’clock one just established their scoop.

Nick had brought the ouzo and stood by Norman, watching the broadcast. “Your wife gonna be famous?” he said. “She gonna still talk to you?”

“Oh, she’ll talk to me.” Norman sipped the ouzo and looked away from the screen, which was featuring a graphic feminine hygiene commercial.

“Guys from outer space,” Nick mused. “’Bout time they admitted they was out there.”

“Really.”

“Sure—been in the papers since I was a kid. Damn air force shot one down a hundred years ago. They got the dead aliens in a freezer.”

“Nick. You don’t believe that.”

“It was in the paper,” he said. “Hell, it was on the cube.” He raised both eyebrows high and bent to polish a table that was already spotless.

“This could be pretty big,” Norman said. “Rory didn’t think there was any way it could be a hoax. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have called the news.”

“Well, you don’t never know, do you?”

“I guess in about a week we’ll find out. You wouldn’t care to make a gentleman’s bet?”

Nick stared at his reflection in the plastic tabletop and scowled comically. “Where you from, Mr. Bell?”

“Boston.”

“Well, I never make bets with people from Boston.”

“I was actually born in Washington, D.C.”

“You kiddin’? That’s even worse.”

The news picked up with outer space again. They’d had time to contact the Moon. A confused Japanese astronomer, the one who had verified Rory’s signal, was on live, providing more questions than answers: What do you mean, message? Speed of light? Who is this Aurora Bell? Rory hadn’t identified herself personally, of course, she was just some code name like UF/GRB-1.

When the announcer explained to the scientist that Professor Bell had decoded the signal as “We’re coming,” repeated sixty times, his eyes narrowed. “Is this some sort of a college prank?” Then someone off-camera handed him a piece of paper. He stared at it for several seconds and then looked up. “We… um… we apparently have verified the Florida analysis. “We’re coming’?”

“So what does it mean, Dr. Namura?”

The delay was longer than the usual Earth-Moon time lag. He shook his head. “I suppose it means they’re coming. Whoever ‘they’ might be.” He spread his hands in a gesture more Gallic than Oriental. “I really don’t have the faintest idea. Of course we can’t rule out the possibility of a hoax. Not to accuse your Mr. Bell.” He glanced off-camera and back. “Mrs. Bell, Dr. Bell. Excuse us. We really do have to discuss this.” He walked away, the camera starting to track the back of his head, and then cutting to the moonscape in the holo window behind where he’d been standing.

“Tell you what, Mr. Bell. I say it’s a hoax. If I’m right, you owe me a hundred bucks. If I’m wrong… you and me gotta trade jobs for a day.”

“What, you can play the cello?”

“Maybe. Never tried.”

Norman laughed. “It’s tempting, but I’ll pass. Never was much of a pastry chef.” He pointed. “Oh, yeah. Rory wanted a slice of spanakopita.”

“Sure thing. Fresh this morning.”

A small dark man came in and let the door slam behind him. He was in formal evening wear and looked as if he’d been up all night. “¿Qué pasa, Professor?”

“Not much,” Norman said. The man had called him Professor ever since he found out his wife outranked him. “Invasion from outer space.”

“Yeah, right. Lay ya odds.”

“Better talk to Nick about that. Thanks.” Norman took the spinach pie, paid, and left.

Willy Joe

“What the hell he’s talkin’ about?” Him and Nick probably been in the back room, coupla fuckin’ mariposas, everybody knows about Greeks, and the musicians, hell, do anything. Take turns down the ol’ dirt track. Otherwise why’s he always here in the morning? Half the time, anyhow.

“They got some weird radio thing at the observatory. Had his old lady on the news.”

“It’s always somethin’, ain’t it?”

“Siempre.” Nick brought out a small cup of strong coffee, a sausage pastry, and a glass of retsina wine. He set them down in front of Willy Joe with a neatly folded five-hundred-dollar bill under the saucer. “So how’s business?”

Willy Joe palmed the bill and took a sip of coffee. “Always good, first of the month. Runnin’ me ragged, though.”

“Pobrecito,” Nick muttered as he walked back to the pastry counter.

“So what’s that mean?” he snapped. “What the fuck you mean by that?”

“Just an expression.”

“Yeah, I know what it means. You watch your fuckin’ mouth.” Willy Joe shifted, slumping back in the chair. The new belt holster was uncomfortable in the small of his back. He didn’t have to carry a gun on these collection rounds, anyhow. Who’d fuck with him? Not to mention Bobby the Bad and Solo out in the car.

Got this fuckin’ town by the nose, now the new mayor’s in. Bought an’ paid for before the Commission election back in ’40. The bitch last year was hard to handle. She found out what it was to push on Willy Joe, though. Might as well piss in the sea, bitch. Nothin’s gonna change.

He unfolded his list and checked off the Athens. It was the last twenty-four-hour joint; the others wouldn’t be open for a while. He took the phone wand out of his pocket and said, “Car.”

“Solo here.”

“Look, we’re ahead. You guys go do what you want till quarter to nine. Make it nine, outside Mario’s.” He put his thumb on the hang-up button while he drained the retsina. “Sanchez.”

“Buenos.”

“Willy Joe. Where you at?”

“Second and North Main, like you said.”

“Okay; you try and keep up with Solo. Black and red Westing-house limo pullin’ out from the Athens.”

“No problema if he stays in town.” Sanchez was on a bicycle. With the ATC going in the morning, you could keep up with traffic on foot without overexerting yourself.

The limo moved smoothly in a diagonal from the curb, between two cars and into the left lane. Headed for the ghetto, interesting. Bobby the Bad was okay but a little dumb. Solo was new; friend of a friend in Tampa. He acted a little too tough. Willy Joe would love to get something on him. Someday he might need a little lesson in who’s boss.

“Nick.” He held up the empty wineglass. “Another retsina. You got the sports page?”

“Get you one.” He brought the bottle over and then put a buck in the paper machine.

Willy Joe snatched the sports section. “See if I got any money left.” He took a leatherbound notebook from an inside pocket and checked his bets against the columns of results: Thoroughbreds at Hialeah, dogs at Tampa, jai alai in town. He knew from last night’s news that he’d lost his biggest wager: convicted murderer Sally Anne Busby chose the wrong door and was electrocuted. The bitch. He’d played a hunch and put a thousand on lethal injection.

Won a dog trifecta, though. All told, he was down $378. So he’d bet double that today. He spent twenty minutes drawing up a list distributing the $756 among safe bets and long shots, and then called his bookie.

The cube had some black broad talking to the professor’s wife. “Did you ever expect this sort of thing to happen?” she asked. “Is there any precedent?”

“Nick, you wanna put somethin’ else on the cube? Enough about the fuckin’ president.”

Marya Washington

“Nothing I’d call a precedent,” Professor Bell said. “As you certainly know, there have been ambiguous SETI results—”

“Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” Marya supplied for her audience.

“Yes… that may come from other intelligent species, or they may be radio signals generated by some natural process we don’t completely understand.”

“Like intelligence,” Marya said.

“Quite so.” She smiled broadly at the younger woman. “But in more than twenty years of analysis, we haven’t gotten any clear semantic content from the three suspect sources. This one is as plain as a slap in the face.”

“And as aggressive?” She held up two fingers in front of her chest, out of sight of the camera.

“That’s not clear. If they were attacking us, why announce that they were on their way? Why not just sneak up?”

“On the other hand,” Marya said, “if their intent is benevolent, why don’t they say more than ‘ready or not, here we come’?” One finger.

“Well, they have three months to go. This first signal might just have been to get our attention.”

“They certainly have done that. Thank you so much, Dr. Bell, for taking time here at the University of Florida to explain this interesting new development to our audience at home; this is Marya Washington reporting live from Gainesville, Florida; we now return you to your local stations.” She smiled into the large camera until it clicked twice. Then she leaned back in the chair and yawned hugely.

“Caramba. I guess astronomers always discover things at ungodly hours.”

“Used to be. It’s around the clock now.”

“I suppose. Well… thanks, Aurora—can I call you Aurora?”

“Rory.”

“Thanks for your patience. I wish we’d had more time, but we’re competing with some big hard news.” She laughed. “As if a police station being blown up was anything compared to this.”

“Oh, my. Was anyone hurt?”

“Eleven dead they know of. It was leveled.”

“Funny I didn’t hear the explosion.”

“Oh, no, no. It was up in Detroit. It may not have been directed at the police, either. They were holding some Mafia guy who was going to sing to the grand jury on Monday… You didn’t know about any of this, did you?”

“No, I—I’m afraid I don’t pay much attention to the news.”

“Me neither, for a reporter. Since I specialize in science stories. My big newsmagazine is Nature.”

Rory picked up a beige crystal. “Astrophysical Review Letters. All the latest gossip.” She tapped it on the table, thinking. “So what about this special? What will you want me to do?”

Marya interpreted the gesture as impatience. “Oh, don’t worry. No rehearsal or lines or anything. I’ll just be interviewing you the way I did today, but in more depth. Bother you as little as possible.”

“But I really do want to be involved. SETI is pretty far from my specialty, but I seem to be thrust into it. Besides, it was a passion with me thirty years ago, when I was an undergraduate.”

“Was that about the time they found the first source?”

“Five or six years before that, actually. By the time they heard from Signal Alpha, I was pretty much committed to the physics of nonthermal sources, academically—not much time for little green men.”

“Who didn’t materialize anyhow.” Marya took a leatherbound bookfile from her purse, flipped through the pages, and pulled out a blue crystal with SETI-L printed in small block letters across the top. “You have the Leon survey book?”

“No. Heard of it.” She took the crystal and slipped it into the reader on the desk. It hummed a query note, copyright, and Rory told it “general fund.” It copied the crystal and ejected it. Rory looked at it. “This has the raw data?”

“All three stars. The reductions, too.”

“Well, we might want to redo them. It’s been a few years, early forties?”

Marya squinted at the back of the crystal. “Twenty forty-three.”

“Don’t know how much has happened in eleven years.” She asked the desk for the department roster, and it appeared on two screens. “You’ll be talking to Leon, I guess—he’s where, Cal Tech?”

“Berkeley. I called his office and left a message asking for an appointment. But who do you have doing SETI here in Gainesville?”

“No one specializing… but Parker’s pretty sharp. He does our radio astronomy courses, intro and advanced, and he’s kept up on SETI. Keeps the undergrads excited.” She wrote his name and number down on a slip of paper. “Excited as I was… and will be again, looks like. Mysteries.”

“It should be a good show. Network gave me two days to come up with forty-five minutes, though, so I have to move.” She put the crystal back, and hesitated. “Um… can you sort of assign me someone? Someone less senior than Parker, some grad assistant I could call at any ungodly hour for information?”

“No, I can’t get you a grad assistant,” she said, and studied Marya’s reaction. “You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t let anybody else share in the fun. Parker can give us both an update, but I’m your pet astronomer for the project. Finders keepers.”

The elevator bonged. “Well, hablar del diablo. Here comes Parker.” A tall man, unshaven and bleary-eyed but wearing a coat and tie with his kilt, shambled down the hall toward them. He had small rimless glasses and a goatee.

Pepe Parker

He leaned against the doorjamb, a little out of breath. “Rory… what the hell?”

“A reasonable question. Pepe Parker, this is Marya Washington.”

He peered at the attractive black woman. “I know you. You’re on television.”

“Not at the moment,” she said. “Newsnet asked me to put together a special on this message.”

“And I took the liberty of volunteering you.”

“Oh, muchas gracias. I had so much time on my hands.”

“If you’d rather not—” Washington said.

He raised one hand. “Kidding. Look, I don’t have half the story: Lisa Marie had the news on and recognized your voice; she punched ‘record’ and woke me up. Or tried to. I was up at the dome till past three,”

“What on earth for?”

“Don’t ask. Don’t get me started. Be nice if somebody besides me could make the goddamned bolometer work. So you got some LGMs?”

Washington looked at Bell. “‘Little Green Men.’ I don’t know what else it could be. Open to suggestions.”

“Could it be a long-delayed hack? That occurred to me on the way over. Some eighty-year-old probe with a practical joke encoded.”

“Nice try. You haven’t seen the spectrum, though. Eighty years ago there wasn’t that much energy on the whole planet.”

“And it’s actually English?” She nodded slowly. “Holy Chihuahua. What’s it doing now?”

“Carrier wave. It’s a 21-cm. signal blue-shifted to 12.3 cm.”

“Yeah, okay. How fast is that?”

“Call it 0.99c. Decelerating.”

“Oh, yeah—Lisa Marie said you said it would just take three months? To slow down and get here? Fifty goddamned gees?” Rory nodded.

“What if it didn’t slow down?” Washington asked. “What if it hit us going that fast?”

“Terminado,” Pepe said. “If it’s any size.”

“Let me see.” Rory turned to address the wall. “How much kinetic energy is there in an object massing one metric tonne, going 0.99c?”

“Four-point-four-three X 10²¹ joules,” it answered immediately. “Over a million megatons.”

“Crack this planet like an egg,” Pepe said. He was amused by Washington’s avid expression. “I think she’s got a lead for her story,” he said to Rory.

“I’m not the one you have to worry about,” Washington said. “By noon you’re going to have stringers from every tabloid in the country down here. If I were you I’d have some secretary send them all to the Public Information Office.”

“Do we have one?” Pepe asked.

“Yeah, some kid runs it,” Washington said. “I talked to him, Pierce, Price, something.” She took a Rolodex card out of her breast pocket and asked it, “Name and office number, Chief, University of Florida Public Information Office.” It gave her “Donate Pricci, 14-308.”

Rory wrote it down. “Good idea,” she said. “God knows when we’ll get any science done around here. You straight newspeople are going to be bad enough.”

“We try,” Washington said. “But wait until you meet the science editor from Dayshot. He’s also the astrology columnist.”

“Maybe we better put the secretary down by the elevator,” Pepe said. “The front door. Maybe with a couple of fullbacks.”

Washington checked her watch. “I better get down to the station. See what local talent can cover; how many people I’ll have to bring in. Try to bring in.”

She squeezed past Norman, coming through the door. He put the white box with the spinach pie in the cooler under the coffee machine. “Buenos, Pepe. Program looked good, hon.”

Rory looked momentarily confused. “Oh, the early one. We just did another.”

“I don’t know about that million megatons,” Pepe said. “That’ll be on every front page in the world tomorrow morning.”

“What million megatons?” Norman said.

Rory gestured at the wall. “I asked it how much kinetic energy the thing had.”

“If it were to hit us without slowing down,” Pepe said.

“Save Germany and France some trouble.” He tossed the folded-up newspaper sections onto the table by the coffee machine. “Comics and world.”

“From the sublime to the ridiculous,” Pepe said.

The phone chimed and Rory picked it up. “Buenos… why, Mr. Mayor. Such an honor.”

Mayor Southeby

“Mr. Mayor, right.” Cameron Southeby lived across the street from Rory and Norman; they’d been neighbors for nine years. “So what can I do to help you? What can you do to help me?”

Rory told him that the situation wasn’t clear yet; there might be a lot of reporters—if she could figure out some way to send them over, she would.

“Do that. We eat ’em alive.” He swiveled around and looked out the glass wall over the city, two hundred feet below. “City of Trees” was becoming an embarrassment. “City of High-Rise Parking Lots” wouldn’t help real-estate values, though. “Seriously… keep me in mind, Rory. You know our university liaison, June Clearwater?” She didn’t, but read him off the Public Information name that Washington had given her.

Pricci the Prick, Southeby thought, remembering his grandstanding over a little assembly permit. “I’ll get them in touch with each other,” he said. It was his day for Italians. He fingered the card that said WJC 9:30—Willy Joe Capra, one of his favorite people. He touched the envelope in his side pocket.

Rory told him not to get his hopes up about this having any far-reaching effect on the city. It might turn out to be a seven-day wonder; it still could be some subtly arranged hoax.

“But you said on cube that you were sure it wasn’t a hoax.” Southeby’s vision of his town becoming the focus of the world’s attention evaporated, replaced by a nightmare of worldwide derision.

Rory told him to pick up his shorts; all she meant was that just because she was sure there was no hoax didn’t mean there couldn’t be someone smarter than her behind it, second-guessing her suspicions. The straightforward explanation was still the most probable, but…

“Oh… okay. Well, you must have a million things to do. I’ll let you go. Mañana.”

Norman Bell

Norman watched his wife’s expressions with amusement as she finally extricated herself from their blowhard neighbor. “He’s trying to find a money angle?”

“Good old Cam.”

“I’m going through the market on the way home. What you want for dinner?”

“Whatever. Something I can reheat. No telling how late I’ll be.”

“Keep it in mind.” He picked up his helmet.

“Don’t forget your sunblock.”

“You kidding?” Actually, he had forgotten, but he kept a tube in his bike bag. “Give me a call when you start home. I’ll hot it up.”

“You do that.” Her husband spoke in accents of cool New England, but he used southern expressions he’d picked up from her cornball uncle, whom she loathed.

It was a ten-minute pedal down shady back roads to the Farmers’ Market in the middle of town. Halfway there, he started sweating in spite of the shade, and stopped to put on the sunblock.

They’d been doing this for about ten years, using the space between the federal building and City Hall as an open-air market two days a week. It was a “free” space, as Norman knew, with a catch: you had to put down a five-hundred-dollar deposit, which would be refunded at closing time, or more likely a week later. That kept marginal farmers at home.

He locked his bike and walked past the seafood display, expensive fish, shrimp, squid, and eels attractive on beds of shaved ice. Save it for last. The place was pretty crowded, as he knew it would be at this hour, city workers killing time before going to the office at nine. The crowd was bright and young and chatty—lots of new students, this time of year. He liked to drift through, eavesdropping.

He had two cloth bags, and as he wandered from one end of the market to the other—from fish to coffees—he checked out prices and planned what he was going to buy where, on his way back. Rory thought the market business was a silly affectation, the city manufacturing nostalgia for a simpler time that had never existed in the first place, and although Norman couldn’t disagree, it was still a high point of his week. Prices were cheaper in the supermarket, but the produce was suspiciously uniform there, and the crowds were just crowds.

“Dr. Bell!” Lots of warm brown skin and a little tight white cloth: Luanne somebody, a student from three or four years ago.

“I saw the news this morning—isn’t that just… total?”

“It’s something,” Norman admitted. “So where have you been? Haven’t seen you around.”

“Oh, I went to Texas for a master course, keyboard. No work there, surprise. So what do you make of it?”

“I don’t know any more than you do; just what was on cube. Aurora does think it’s real.” He studied her. She was radiating sexual signals, but they communicated display rather than availability, just as he remembered from before. He wondered how much of it was deliberate, like the carefully bedraggled hair and the makeup so subtle it was almost invisible, and how much was just in her nature. She liked being looked at; glowed in his attention. Any man’s attention.

“When I left a few minutes ago, she was talking to the mayor. Fishing for an angle to bring fame and fortune to Gainesville. Or to Cameron Southeby.”

“That zero is mayor? I should’ve stayed in Texas.”

“You know him?”

“Knew him.” She touched his arm and whispered, “When he was police commissioner,” raised one eyebrow, and walked on.

He watched her go. Interesting walk: “She moves in circles / and those circles move.” What illegal thing might she have been involved in? He had no doubt that Cam was on the take, but Luanne had seemed so prim and shy as a student. Oh, well. Probably a leather-underwear-and-handcuffs prostitute on the side. Some of the quietest people had bizarre private lives. He had met one or two, pursuing his own private life.

Suppose this thing does turn out to be creatures from another planet, landing on the White House lawn on New Year’s Day. How would that change things? Would the Europeans lay down their arms in celebration of the universality of life? Sure.

It would all boil down to what they brought along with them. The threat of absolute destruction might indeed unify humanity against the common enemy, but what good would unity do against an enemy who could crack the planet like an egg?

Maybe they would bring the truth, and the truth would make us free. As it had so effectively in the past.

He wished he were older. At sixty it was hard to have a sense of humor about dying. Maybe in another thirty years.

He studied the various coffees and invested in a moderately expensive blend: an ounce of Blue Mountain with three ounces of French roast. It made more difference to Rory than to him. She had perhaps one cup a day at home, and liked to savor it. He drank it constantly, fuel for music, but not the real stuff. Coffee-est or MH Black Gold. One good cup of real in the morning and then twenty cups of anything black and strong.

He turned around and paused, looking at the thirty or so stands, remembering which ones had what. He checked his list; crossed out coffee, added green peas and smoked ham. Make a nice soup and let it cook all day. Bread and salad, already on the list.

His day for young women. “Good morning, Sara.”

“Buenos, Maestro.” She was the bartender and co-owner of Hermanos Mendoza—the Brothers Mendoza, who had gone north in a hurry twenty years before, leaving behind a stack of unpaid bills and their name.

Sara always touched her neck when she said hello to you. She had been in a terrible fire a few years back, and even after they rebuilt her face she’d had to talk through a machine in her throat for a while. She still wore long sleeves and high necklines. Her face looked sculpted, less mobile than you would expect.

She shifted a large bag of onions so some of the weight was on her hip. “So how’s the music business?”

“Lento, as we say. Slow. You want to buy a song?” Actually, he realized, one was forming in his mind. The first few notes of a mock-bombastic overture. A greeting for the aliens.

“If I could afford a song from you, I wouldn’t be tending bar.”

“There you go.” He sang to the tune of the last century’s “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic”: “If I could afford a tune from you / I wouldn’t be tending bar.”

“Wow. You just make that up?”

He smiled. “Trade secret.”

“You take care.” She shifted the big bag of onions onto her shoulder and walked away. Completely different from Luanne, her walk was stiff and mannish. It was probably from the fire; months of immobility and then walking in braces. Brave girl, Norman thought.

Sara

She could feel his eyes on her butt, every man’s eyes. One more operation. Cut through the scar tissue, give her two buttocks again. Then learn how to walk again like a woman.

Not covered by Medicare. Rebuilding a womanly butt was not covered; it was “cosmetic.” If you wanted cosmetic surgery you had to save up for it. They had paid for this so-called face and the two hard sponges on her chest. They opened her labia up and gave her pubic hair again, which of course is not cosmetic because who sees it?

Nobody had, not socially. Not until she could afford the last operation. She kicked open the door to the bar with unnecessary force.

“Nuestra Señora de las Cebollas,” said José, the morning man. Our Lady of the Onions.

“Hey, next time you carry ’em and I’ll cut ’em.”

“Sure you will.” The bar’s big specialty was the onion flower: a machine slices the onion carefully in a crossed dice, three quarters of the way through. Then when somebody orders one, you just dip it in light spicy batter and deep-fry it for a few minutes. It opens like a flower in the cooking and turns sweet.

All very delicious, but someone had to peel a few dozen onions before eleven, and it wouldn’t be Sara. “I’ll take over the coffee. You get on the onions.”

“Let me take a leak first.”

“Oh God, yes. Don’t pee on the onions.”

“Flavor of the week.” No customers, which wasn’t unusual at nine sharp. José had crowds on the half hour, five-thirty, six-thirty, seven-thirty, eight-thirty. Things were calm by the time Sara came in.

She put on an apron and took a cloth to the machines. They had a hundred-and-fifty-year-old cappuccino monster that still worked, and José liked to mess with it. Sara didn’t. She made cappuccino with the milk jets on the espresso machine, and nobody complained. When everything was shiny, she made herself a cup and sat down.

“Chee-wawa,” José

“Some bosses drink blood, José. Be grateful.”

He popped an orange drink and sat next to her at the small table. “Qué día.”

“Already? What’s happening?”

“Oh, the usual. Drunks, bums. Invaders from outer space.”

“We get ’em all.”

“No, I mean verdad. People from outer space.”

“Really. What did they want? Beetle juice?”

“No, I mean verdad! You don’t watch the news.”

“How could I watch the news when I don’t have a cube at home?”

“Okay. A good point.”

“So what about these invaders?”

José poured the orange drink over ice and squeezed a half lime into it. “Government bullshit, you ask me.”

“It was on television?”

“Yeah, some woman at the university. She got some message from outer space. We got aliens on the way.”

“Hold it. This is really true?”

“Like I say, government bullshit. Next week they come up with some alien tax we got to pay.”

“Did you record it?”

“What I record it with? You leave a crystal here?”

“It was on CNN?”

“I guess, I don’t know. Whatever was on.”

“You’re a big help.” Sara got up and started doing the tables. Wipe each one down with a cloth, reposition the silverware. “I mean really, it’s real?”

“Your friend the musician’s wife, the professor? She was on the cube.”

“Oh, yeah. Dr. what’s-her-name Bell. The astrologer.” She sat back down. “So really. It’s really real.”

“Would I bullshit you?”

“All the time. But I mean, this is real.”

“Verdad. Really real.”

“Holy shit. Do you know how big this is?”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s all they talk about, all morning.”

She sipped her coffee. Then she drank half of it in two gulps. “Holy shit.”

“I wouldn’t get all worked up over it. It’s just the government.”

“José, look. The government doesn’t always lie. What could they gain from this?”

“Alien tax.”

“Oh yeah, sure. But I mean, don’t you see? We’re not alone! There are other people out there.”

“’Course there are. I knew that all the time.”

“Oh God, of course. Your tabloids.”

“So what’s wrong with my newspapers? They’re right? That’s what’s wrong with my newspapers?”

“Just… just let’s go back, about three squares. You saw this on the cube.”

“Bigger than shit. Like you say, CNN.”

“CNN. And it wasn’t a joke.”

“No way. Verdaderamente.”

Sara was strongly tempted to go to the bar and pour herself something. Not so soon after dawn, though. She sat back in the chair and closed her eyes.

“You’re thinking.”

“Happens.” After a moment: “So have they called out the army yet? NASA going to blow them back to where they came from?”

“Not yet. They’re not due for another three months.”

“Nice of them to tell us.” The door banged open and Willy Joe flowed across the floor and onto a bar stool, the one nearest the men’s room.

“Cup of espresso, Señor Smith?” José said. He nodded.

Sara checked her watch. “You’re two minutes early.”

“It’s the goddamn aliens. Screwin’ everything up.” While the espresso machine was building up pressure, José punched “No Sale” on the antique register and took out a pink five-hundred-dollar bill.

“Hey. Be obvious,” Willy Joe said.

“I’m an obvious kind of man.” He put the bill under the saucer in front of Willy Joe.

“I could make you real obvious. You don’t watch your fuckin’ trap.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He poured the coffee, making a sound like a chicken, just audible over the machine hiss.

“José…” Sara warned.

He served the coffee. “It’s okay. Senor Smith knows I know his boss.”

“You know too many people, génie. Get you some trouble someday.”

“Enjoy your coffee, sir,” he said with a broad smile. “I hope it is done to your liking.”

“You boys want to put your dicks back in? Customers coming.”

“You watch your mouth too, lady.”

Sara turned and made a sign only Willy Joe could see: right thumb rammed up through left fist. “Y tu madre,” she mouthed, her face turning red.

“Yeah, well, fuck you, too.” He turned back to his coffee. Two women and two men came in, suits from the federal building. Sara took their orders and passed them on to José.

At exactly nine-thirty, the mayor strode in. He said hello to Sara and José and one of the suits, Rosalita. He sat down two stools away from Willy Joe and ignored him.

“Café con leche, Mr. Southeby?” José said.

“Oh, let me be daring. The chocolate one.”

“One chococcino, coming up.”

Sara brought him a place mat and setting. “So what about these aliens, Cameron? You made it all up, confess.”

“Ah, you see though me like a window, m’dear,” he said theatrically. “Anything to keep from raising taxes. Tourists by the planeload.”

She patted his shoulder. “Send some of them here,” and went on to seat two new customers.

José brought the hot-chocolate-with-espresso, and ground a scatter of fresh chocolate on the top. “Merci gracias,” the mayor said, and took a careful sip. He sipped and studied the menu for a few minutes, then went into the men’s room.

Sara had seen the little dance every month since Cameron took office. Mayor goes into the men’s room and comes back out. Willy Joe suddenly feels nature’s call, and stays in the bathroom long enough for the mayor to finish his coffee and escape. Willy Joe comes back out, leaves a stunning five-dollar tip, and slithers on to his next stop.

She could blow the whistle on them. She could have her fingers broken, one by one, too. She could have them broken off, and fed to her. Willy Joe was just a hood with delusions of grandeur. But the people he collected for played for keeps.

She sat down again. Busy, slack; busy, slack. Were all businesses like this? Did whores spend two hours on their backs and then two hours doing crossword puzzles?

Here comes Suzy Q., the poor daft thing. Sara stood up and went to the bar, but José was a step ahead of her. He’d filled a large foam cup with sweet coffee and hot milk.

She took it outside with some pastry from yesterday. Suzy Q. accepted her morning gift with calm grace. Fix up the random hair, the pungent rags, and she could look like Queen Victoria or Eleanor Roosevelt. Stern ugliness, imposing.

“How goes it this morning, Suzy Q.?”

“Oh, it’s hot. But hot is what you got. Am I rot or not?”

Sara laughed. “You’re rot, all rot.” She patted the old woman on the shoulder and went back inside.

Suzy Q.

Now she knows how to treat somebody. She has so much pain herself she sees other people’s pain clear. I remember when she had the fire and that thing in her throat, she had to use a crutch to come out but she come out with my coffee. Wish I could kill someone for her, there must be someone she needs killed, I could do them like old Jock and put them in the swamp. But it’s not a swamp no more, no, it’s all apartments on top of old Jock, would he be pissed? Always carrying on about so many people come to Florida, and himself come down from Wisconsin. The Big Cheese, he used to work in some Kraft plant up there, but he got too cold and come down here to pick at me until I couldn’t take no more and had to hit him, hit him four times with that frying pan, till the brains come out his ears. More brains than you’d think he had, the way he carried on.

My lordy lord, this coffee is good. I do miss old Jock sometimes, I should have wrote down the date the year, so I’d know how long he’s been gone. I told people he just run away with some little girl from Café Risque, and they say sure, Suzy Q., he always was that way, and by the time they get around to building on the swamp I guess there’s not much left. I did go out there once to check and he was all white and wormy and popping out of his clothes. I found a big piece of old plywood to put on top of him. He did smell something fierce. But I guess nobody went out to the swamp back then.

I could use a tomato. I got six paper dollars and some change. The Lord provides for this believer but he don’t provide tomatoes in this town, just coffee. I could chop up a tomato in that rice, and a little sugar.

Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. Seems like everyone talking about aliens from outer space today. I try not to listen but there it is.

Bet I can get a tomato for two dollars, I don’t mind a few spots. And who’s in my way but Normal Norman.

Norman

He had a small bouquet of flowers. “Suzy Q. How’s by you?” He handed her a blossom.

She took it, sniffed it, and stuck it in her scraggly hair. “The usual. Except for the aliens. You know anything about the aliens?”

“Nope. Just that they’re coming.”

“Everybody wants to come to Florida.” She waggled a hand at him. “You’re in the way of my tomatoes.”

“Sorry.” He stepped aside and she pushed her grocery cart past him. It held about a dollar’s worth of bottles and cans, and some random newspaper sections, neatly folded.

The old lady was really only one year older than Norman. In high school she had been the quintessential cheerleader, always there if you had a football or basketball letter. Norman was band and orchestra, no letters. Alien Boston accent.

They used to call her Snowflake. It had snowed in Gainesville the day she was born.

She’d started to go crazy with her first husband, didn’t do too well with the second, and when the third ran away she just popped. Had she ever gone to a shrink? Norman didn’t know; he’d stopped going to reunions and didn’t have any other source of gossip about his generation.

He looked up at Hermanos and considered going in to have a cup with Sara. No, better get on home and record the theme that was building in his head.

He unlocked the bike and loaded the groceries and pedaled slowly back across campus, humming the new melody as he went. It was between classes, a lot of attractive undergraduate bodies hurrying, but he wasn’t distracted. This might turn out to be something interesting.

He left the bicycle in the atrium and set the produce bag next to the refrigerator; sort it out later. He hurried into the music room and snapped on the antique Roland and slipped a blank crystal in the recorder, labeling it Alien concerto/1st pass.

He chorded out the twelve-bar opening with the screen off, and then turned it on to review what he’d done. He played a second version, looking at the screen, simplifying here, elaborating there. But he wasn’t happy with his changes; they were moving the piece toward a conventional kind of drama, almost like a march.

Should not have had that ouzo. Booze in the morning wasn’t conducive to work. He left the keyboard on but stretched out on the couch, asking the room for Hermancina’s rendition of the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique. He closed his eyes and let the slow, stately passage fill him.

The phone chimed, of course. He asked the music to hold and picked up the wand. “Buenos.”

The voice at the other end identified itself as People magazoid and asked whether Professor Bell was in.

Norman didn’t bother to point out that he was Professor Bell, too. “She’s at work. She doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

They asked for her number at work. “It’s unlisted,” he said, and hung up. Of course it wasn’t unlisted, but a reporter ought to be able to figure that out.

He pushed a button on the wand. “Rory’s office,” he said.

Aurora

Rory sighed and picked up the wand. “Yeah?” She smiled at her husband’s voice. “Oh, hi.” He told her about the People magazoid call. “Well, if they don’t track me down in the next half hour, this number won’t work. At eleven-thirty they’re going to start routing everything through some publicity office.”

He asked whether she was getting any work done. “No, we’re just killing time before the big meeting. Barrett and Whittier live.” University chancellor and dean of sciences, respectively. “Some government people beaming in.” She checked her watch. “Five minutes. Anything interesting at the market?” He described the dinner menu and told her about meeting Suzy Q. and giving her a flower.

“Poor damned thing. She’s been on the street since I was a kid… yeah, I’ll give you a call if I’m going to be late… ’dios.”

Pepe looked up from his work. “Who’s on the street?”

“Poor old woman named Suzy Q. Pushes a grocery cart around?”

“I’ve seen a few of those.”

“She went to high school here with Norman. You don’t remember Bolivia.”

“Rory. I was two years old then.”

“Sorry… anyhow, her first husband was a marine, went down there and won the war. But he came back with a time-bomb virus. She woke up one morning and he was dead, melted in a puddle around his own skeleton. She just came undone.”

“Jesus. I didn’t know people brought it home with them.”

“It was rare. He must have gotten it right at the end of the war.” She paused. “Pepe, what happens if there’s a war now?”

“To me?” She nodded. “Well, I’m still a Cuban citizen, even though I’ve been away for seven years. You know I’ve only got a blue card.”

“I know. Could they call you up? Cuba’s not going to be neutral.”

“You know, I’m not sure?” He took off his glasses and polished them with a tissue. “When I left I was reservado, like inactive reserves here. You stay that way until age forty, or until you do active service. Or until they change the law, which they might have done without telling me.”

“But as a reservado you’d be safe. Especially living over here.”

“Truthfully, I don’t know. But they’d have a hard time finding me. I’d be in Mexico mañana.” He blinked through his glasses and imitated a broad Mexican accent: “¿Cuba? ¿Dónde está esta isla Cuba? Soy campesino mexicano solamente.”

“Sure. You sound like a campesino with a Ph.D.”

“Seriously, I’d go home and fight if the island herself was in danger. But I don’t care about Europe.”

“Good. You know how Norman and I feel. I’d hate to lose you, but if you need help disappearing…”

He held up a hand. “Gracias. Best not to talk about such things.”

“I suppose.” Her wall chimed. “Meeting in two minutes, Room 301.” Today it had the voice of Melissa Mercurio, a thirties movie personality. A seating diagram came up on the screen:

“Oh, the governor,” Rory said. “This will be a feast for the intellect.”

“I should know who Pauling is,” Pepe said. “Sounds familiar. NSA?”

“No, cabinet. He’s the president’s new science adviser. “Science and technology.’” She pushed a button and got a paper printout. “I don’t know anything about him. Life sciences, I think. More politician than scientist, I’d imagine.”

“Buena suerte.”

“Yeah.” She opened a few drawers and found a notebook. “Maybe we can get away for lunch? Go down to Sara’s and get a beer?” Dos Hermanos was the department’s official bar.

“Love it.”

Rory walked down a floor and went to 301, a room usually reserved for first-Friday get-togethers and holiday parties. They’d put in a round table that was too large for six people, holo flats in place for the governor and Grayson Pauling.

The holos were dark and the chancellor hadn’t shown up yet. She said hello to the two deans and took her place to the right of Bacharach.

She suppressed a smile at his sour “buenos.” They had been at odds for three years, ever since Bacharach had inherited the “Dean of Research” title. Some people would covet the job, but to Bacharach it was a necessary evil—five years of afternoons spent in argument and analysis and the annual excruciation of presenting the budget to the board and trying to explain science to them.

Rory suspected that he didn’t like teaching any more than he liked committee work; he’d really prefer to be left alone with his particle physics. It was more than delicious that her astrophysics budget had slowly climbed under his tenure, while particle had to eat a major cut in spite of his arguments.

She did like him in spite of his dourness and departmental politics. He was an odd-looking man, very tall, huge hands. A ponytail and beard that reminded Rory of her father’s generation.

Deedee Whittier was Bacharach’s opposite. She loved academic infighting; she was a master of finely tuned sarcasm and the art of playing one person against another. Rory approved of her, though. She could have used her position—as Bacharach did—to limit her teaching to intellectually challenging seminars in her specialty. Instead, she took on two huge lecture courses, Life Sciences and Biology I, and the students had twice voted her Teacher of the Year. Rory had eavesdropped on her lectures and envied her charisma. She envied her trim athletic beauty, too; almost as old as Rory, she looked more than ten years younger.

Chancellor Barrett hurried in, checking his watch. “Damned reporters.” He sat down heavily next to Whittier. “So. We’re all in our places, with bright shiny faces.”

“Good morning to you, Professor Mal,” Rory said.

He tilted his head toward her. “And to you, Professor. Deedee, Al. Anything new, Aurora?”

“Not since this morning’s broadcast. You saw it?”

“Yes, twice.” He took out a large white handkerchief and rubbed his face with it. He was a big round man who didn’t take well to the unseasonal heat. “That fellow on the Moon, that Japanese. Do you know anything about him?”

“I didn’t. I looked him up about an hour ago. He’s a radio astronomer doing a project for the University of Kyoto.”

“He’s legitimate? He couldn’t be part of a hoax?”

“Mal… how the hell could I know? He might be in the pay of the Mafia.”

The chancellor winced, just as a soft ping warned of an incoming transmission. “Don’t say ‘Mafia’ when the governor’s here.”

“Heavens, no. Let’s keep relations out of this.” The two deans laughed.

The governor’s image faded in and solidified. He smiled broadly. “Good morning, all. Buenos días.” Murmur of returned greetings. “So what’s the joke? Can I be in on it?”

“Reporters,” Chancellor Barrett said quickly. “Though I suppose they are no joke to a man in your position.”

“Ah, no. No. But we have to live with the little darlin’s, don’t we? Ha.” He studied a prompt screen, which had the disconcerting effect of making it look like he was staring accusingly at Dean Bacharach. “Now. God knows I don’t want to interfere with your science work. This is really serious stuff, I know. But it could be a real shot in the arm for the state of Florida, too. Surely you can appreciate my position.” He looked around at the holographic ghosts who sat at his table in Tallahassee. Rory suddenly realized that that was why this table was so large; it had to be the same diameter as the governor’s.

“I won’t try to kid anybody. Florida has had a couple of bad years.” A bad decade or two, actually. The barrier dikes around Miami and the other coastal cities had cut into tourism, even before last April’s flood. The southern part of the state was permanently tropical and growing hotter; light industry was moving away because nobody wanted to live there. The long-running sitcom Flying Cockroach Blues had not helped. If it weren’t for Disney and the Three Dwarves, the whole state would go Chapter 11 and slide into the sea.

“This can help change our image. I mean, Florida has always been strong science-wise, but people don’t know that. They think about hurricanes and floods and bugs and, uh… cancer. But Florida’s a lot more than that, always has been.” The chime sounded again and the governor looked at the appropriate blank space. The image of a gaunt, weary man appeared.

“Good morning, all.” Grayson Pauling looked around. “Don’t bother with introductions. I’ve been briefed.”

He looked at Rory. “Dr. Bell. You are on record as being politically, shall we say, agnostic. Can we trust you to cooperate with the government?”

“Is that a threat?”

“No. Just reality. If you don’t care to work with us, you may get up and leave now. There are 1,549 astronomers in this country. One or two of them must be Republicans.”

“If you’re asking whether I can work within the system—of course I can. I’m a department head. Academic politics is so convoluted and smarmy, it makes Washington look like summer camp.”

“Point well taken. Speaking of Washington… please join me.” The room shimmered and snapped and suddenly Rory found herself sitting at a round table in the White House, evidently. A large window behind Pauling showed a manicured lawn with a high wall, the Washington Monument beyond.

She didn’t know you could do that, without setting it up beforehand. It was an impressive demonstration.

Even the governor was caught off guard. “Nice… uh…” He cleared his throat. “Nice place you have here.”

“It’s the people’s place, of course,” Pauling said, deadpan. “It belongs to you more than to me.”

“What sort of cooperation are you talking about?” Bacharach asked, not hiding his hostility. “You want Professor Bell to keep the facts from the public, the press?”

“Under some extreme circumstances, yes.” He put his elbows on the table and looked at Bacharach over steepled fingers. “And under such circumstances, I think you would agree with me.”

“Being?”

“Panic. When Dr. Bell mentioned a million megatons this morning, and the possible destruction of the planet… that was unfortunate.”

“A calculation anyone could make,” Rory said. “Any student computer would give you the answer immediately.”

“Ah, but only if you asked the questions. And the student asking that question wouldn’t have a hundred million people watching her on cube.” He shook his head. “You’re right, though. It’s not a good example. A sufficiently bright college student could make the calculation.”

“A sufficiently bright junior-high-school student, Dr. Pauling,” Bacharach said, almost hissing. “Do you actually have a doctorate in science?”

“Al…” Chancellor Barrett said.

“Political science, Dr. Bacharach. And a bachelor’s degree in life science.”

“Dean Bacharach does not mean to imply—”

“Of course he did,” Pauling said. To Bacharach: “I trust you are satisfied with my credentials… to be a politician?”

“Eminently satisfied.”

“I think we’ll get along together splendidly. For as long as you stay on the project.” He sat back slowly. “Now. The Department of Defense is assembling a task force to deal with the military aspects of this problem. They’ll be in touch with you, Governor.”

“What military aspects?” Rory said. “Do they plan to attack this thing?”

“Not so long as its intentions are peaceful.”

She laughed. “Do you have any idea of how much energy a million megatons represents?”

“Of course I do. Our largest Peace Reserve weapon is a hundred megatons. That would be ten thousand times as large.”

“So isn’t it rather like ants plotting to destroy an elephant?”

He smiled at her. “An interesting analogy, Dr. Bell. If the ants worked together, they could sting the elephant, and make it change course.”

Deedee Whittier spoke for the first time. “Rory, would you be practical for once in your life? Do you think we’ll get a nickel of federal money if we don’t let the generals come in and play their games? This is going to be an expensive project, and the state is flat broke. Is it not, Governor?”

“Well, I wouldn’t actually say we were, uh, broke.”

“I like your directness,” Pauling said to Whittier. “Let me return it: your state’s worse than broke; it’s in debt up to its panhandle. Largely because of a government so corrupt it makes my fragrant city seem honest by comparison.”

“Corrupt?” the governor said. “Young man, that’s simply not the case.”

“Not your office, Governor.” He made a placating gesture with one hand. “Lower down, though, surely you’re aware…”

“Yes, well, yes. Government attracts both good and bad.” Tierny’s administration hadn’t attracted a surplus of good people. He was the kind of governor only a newspaper cartoonist could love, and he would have long since been impeached if his machine hadn’t owned the senate and judiciary before he came into office.

“I suspect you won’t have much to do with the Defense people,” Pauling said. “Most of the resources that come into Florida will come through Cape Kennedy.”

“More good news,” Rory said. “No surprise, though.”

“The NASA can get things done when they’re allowed to,” Deedee said. “Your own gamma-ray satellite, didn’t it go up ahead of schedule?”

“My one gamma-ray satellite. The backup is rusting away in some shed down at the Cape.”

“Perhaps something can be done about that,” Pauling said smoothly. “Gamma-ray astronomy seems a little more important than it was yesterday. I’ll have my office look into it.” Rory just nodded.

The governor cleared his throat loudly. “One reason I wanted to be in on this meeting was to ask you educated folks a simple question. I don’t think it has a simple answer, though.” He paused dramatically, looking around the table. “Have you given any thought to the possibility that the thing what’s behind this thing… is God?”

“What?” Rory said. Whittier rolled her eyes. Bacharach studied the back of one large hand. Pauling openly stared at the governor.

“It might not be obvious to you scientist types, but that’s just what your man in the street is going to think of first. All that thing said was ‘We’re coming.’ What if it’s the Second Coming?”

“Are you serious, Governor?” Pauling said.

He sat up straight and returned the man’s stare. “Do you think I am the kind of man who would exploit religion for political gain?”

Rory decided not to laugh. “Why should God be so roundabout? Why not have the Second Coming in Jerusalem, or the White House lawn?”

“Actually, ma’am, I have given that some thought. It could be that God meant to give us three months to ready ourselves. Cleanse ourselves.”

“He might be more specific,” Deedee said. “The last time, he told everyone who would listen.”

“God works in mysterious ways.”

“So does the government.” Deedee reached out of the holo field and brought back a plastic cup. “Let’s leave that part to the holy joes, okay?” She sipped coffee and set the cup down. It hovered a disconcerting inch over the table.

“It is something we’ll have to deal with,” Chancellor Barrett said. “If that becomes a commonly accepted explanation, there may be some public resistance to our research. Even organized resistance.”

“That’s true, Mal,” Deedee said, “but what can we do about it ahead of time?”

“There’s the obvious end run,” Pauling said. “Does your university have a religion department?”

The chancellor shook his head. “Philosophy. There are subheads in comparative religion and ‘philosophies of social and religious morality.’”

“Well, find one of them who’s ordained, if you can—a tame one—and make him a pro forma member of your committee.”

“Hold it,” the governor broke in. “You all act like this was some kind of a game. You’ll look pretty sorry if it turns out that God really is behind it.”

This time they all stared at him. He seemed dead serious. “Now, I’m not saying that business and science aren’t important. But this could be the biggest thing in history. Second biggest thing.”

It actually was calculation, Rory decided. The idea had come to him while he was sitting there, and now he was going to hang on to it with all of his famous “bull ’gator” tenacity. He probably didn’t have much support from organized religion, so he was going to milk this for votes.

“Now I understand the church and state thing,” he continued, “and anyhow you scientists won’t do much about the God end of it. Wouldn’t expect you to. But Dr. Pauling’s right. To be fair about it, you have to put some religious people on your committee.”

“And you have a suggestion for one,” Pauling said.

“As a matter of fact, I do. And he lives right near Gainesville, out in Archer, practically suburbs.”

The chancellor forced an unconvincing smile. “That wouldn’t be Reverend Charles Dubois.”

“The same! By George, Dr. Barrett, you don’t miss much, do you?” Reverend Dubois would be hard to miss. He was prominent in almost every conservative movement in the county. He had delivered Alachua County’s votes to the governor in spite of the pesky liberal presence of the university.

“Um… I’m not certain he would be qualified…”

The governor was staring at his prompter. “He has a doctorate. He went to your own university.”

Barrett looked a little ill. “He didn’t earn his doctorate here?”

“Well, no. That was in California.”

“Through the mail,” Bacharach said. “That charlatan doesn’t have a real degree at all.”

“You know him?” Rory asked.

“I live in Archer, too. He tried to push through a zoning variance for his new church last year.”

“We can’t spend our energy worrying about local politics,” the governor said, “Dubois is an energetic, intelligent man—”

“Who flunked out of UF his first—”

“Who has the trust and support of many elements of the community that do not automatically trust you academics.” He glared into an uncomfortable silence.

Bacharach stood up. “Malachi, thanks for asking for my input here. I’m obviously not helping the process, though.” He turned around abruptly and disappeared.

Rory realized she was in the same room with him; if she stood up and stepped away, the illusion would vanish, the dean and the chancellor staring at ghosts. Maybe she should. This was getting pretty far from the astrophysics of nonthermal sources.

Well, there was no way to keep the politicians and religionists out of it, anyhow. Might as well start dealing with them now.

“Governor,” she said, “with all due respect, I wonder whether we might want a representative of the religious community who’s more widely known. This Dubois man may be notorious in some circles, but I’ve never heard of him, and I live just twenty miles away.”

Deedee smiled at her. “Aurora, I’d bet that everything you know about local politics could be inscribed on the head of a pin.”

“She has a good point,” Pauling said. “We should find someone of national stature. Perhaps Johnny Kale could find the time.”

“Or the pope. Everybody trusts the pope.” Deedee looked into her coffee cup and put it back down. Johnny Kale had been the pet preacher of the last three administrations. He had as much clout as a cabinet member.

Even Rory had heard of him. “But he’s kind of old-fashioned,” she said, although she meant something less charitable.

“Well, perhaps that’s what we want,” Pauling said, “for balance. Most of the country is pretty old-fashioned, after all.”

Rory wasn’t very political, but she knew a turf battle when she saw one. The governor was thinking so hard you could hear the dry primitive mechanisms grinding away.

“There’s no reason we can’t have both men,” he conceded. “Reverend Kale at the national level and Reverend Dubois down here.”

“At any rate,” Chancellor Barrett said, “we have to keep a sense of perspective. This is still primarily a scientific problem. Absent some startling revelation.”

“I don’t know how much revelation you need,” the governor said.

“More,” Barrett said.

“I guess you find it easier to believe in ETs than God?”

“Save it for the speeches, Governor.” He turned to Pauling. “What sort of many-headed beast are we cooking up here? At the federal level we have you, Defense, NASA, and now that sanctimonious camp follower Kale. No doubt we’ll have a boatload of senators before long.”

Pauling nodded. “Half of Washington will find something in this that’s relevant, as long as it’s hot. I’ll try to deflect them so they don’t interfere with your science.”

“What science?” Rory said. “Unless they begin broadcasting again, everything we do is idle speculation. Until they’re close enough to observe directly.”

“How long would that be?” Pauling asked.

“Depends on how big they are. Depends on what you mean by ‘observe.’ We have a probe orbiting Neptune that’s the size of a school bus, and we can’t see it optically. If that’s the size of the thing, we won’t see it until it’s a day or so away.”

“Three months’ wait.” The governor frowned. “That’s a long time to keep people interested.” Rory opened her mouth and shut it.

“We can work on that,” Pauling said. “The preparations for various contingencies could be made pretty dramatic.

“When I was a kid I remember reading about plans to orbit nuclear weapons—not as bombs, but as insurance against a catastrophic meteor strike, like the one that got the dinosaurs.”

“May have,” Deedee said.

“Anyhow, it never got off the ground, combination of money and politics. I wonder if they could do it now.”

“Not in eleven months,” Deedee said. “No matter how much money and politics you throw at it.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate the Defense Department,” Pauling said. “Remember the Manhattan Project.”

“It was the War Department then,” Rory said, remembering from her new book, “and the threat was more immediate and obvious.”

“I don’t know about this Manhattan thing,” the governor said. “We don’t need to drag New York into this, do we?”

Barrett broke the silence. “That was the code name for the team that developed the atom bomb, Governor.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. World War II.”

“I don’t think it’s conceptually difficult,” Whittier said, “putting missiles with large warheads into orbit. I’m no engineer, but it seems to me you could cobble it together with existing stuff. Peace Reserve weapons mated piecemeal with the Super Shuttle. The problems would be logistics and politics rather than engineering.”

“International politics more than national,” Barrett said. “A lot of countries wouldn’t care to see American H-bombs in orbit, no matter which way they were pointed.”

“And there’s a law against it,” Pauling admitted. “‘Weapons of mass destruction’ have been proscribed, in orbit, for almost a hundred years.”

“Has anybody told the Pakistanis about this?” Rory said.

Pauling shrugged. “Outlaws don’t obey laws. We have to step lightly, of course, especially given the European situation. There’s no reason all the bombs should be American, and of course their launching wouldn’t be under the control of any one nation.”

“Dr. Pauling,” Rory said, “don’t let yourself be too impressed by a few hundred megatons in orbit. We’re still the ants in this picture.”

“We must remind ourselves of this constantly,” the governor said, “and not fall prey to the sin of pride.”

“How very true,” said Pauling in a weary, neutral tone. “Hubris. Get you every time.” He stood up. “I think we have a sense of how everyone feels. We need more data; we need time for the data we do have to sink in. Shall we meet again two days from now, same time?”

Rory was the only one who didn’t nod or mumble yes. This was going to be nothing but an impediment.

Suddenly the three academics were sitting alone at their too-large table in Room 301. Barrett turned to Whittier. “So. Do you think we’ve lost Bacharach for good?”

“Pretty sure,” Deedee said. “He doesn’t have any real stake in staying.”

“He could lose his position.”

“Al wouldn’t lift a finger to retain his deanship,” Rory said. “You know that. He’d gladly trade the extra pay and perks if he could do science full-time again.”

“I’ve always wondered how sincere he was about that. Perhaps we’ll find out.”

Rory got up. “I’ll have some tentative scheduling for both of you tomorrow morning. Have to go confer with my second-in-command, over a beer.”

“Thanks for your patience, Rory,” Deedee said. “Difficult man to work with.”

“Or against.” Rory gave them a parting smile and closed the door quietly.

Deedee Whittier

“You’ve met the governor before, Mal?”

“Twice, at formal receptions. This is the first time I’ve had an extended colloquy with him.”

“He’s a piece of work. Not really that stupid, I assume.”

“No. He has normal intelligence, or at least the equivalent in animal cunning.” They both laughed. “And vast reserves of ignorance to work with. I think Pauling’s going to be much more of a problem.”

“He’s going to take over.”

“Already has. At least we don’t have to deal directly with LaSalle.”

Deedee nodded wearily. Carlie LaSalle, president of the United States, made Governor Tierny look like an intellectual. A completely artificial product of her party’s analysts and social engineers, she gave the people exactly what they wanted: a cube personality who was nice to the core, with a gift for reading lines and a suitably inoffensive personal history. She was an anti-intellectual populist who had presided over four years of stagnation in the arts and sciences, and had just been reelected.

“We’ll be walking on eggshells,” Deedee said.

“I was thinking bulls and china shops, actually, with Garcia. I like him but think we’re well rid of him. He won’t disguise his contempt.”

“No; he’s no diplomat.”

“What about Dr. Bell?”

“Aurora? She’s pretty levelheaded.”

“She was pushing Pauling harder than I liked.”

“Mal, be realistic. Most of the professors in my department would gleefully take a blunt instrument to that son of a bitch. Besides, Aurora made the discovery, for Christ’s sake. We’re stuck with her.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “This is the problem. This is the problem all around. We’re stuck with Tierny. We’re stuck with Pauling and LaSalle. We already have to do a goddamned minuet around them. It would be real nice if we had more control over our own side. Our own half of the equation.”

Deedee took a mirror and a blue needle and touched up the edges of her cheek tattoo, which was fading. Someday she would get a permanent one, to cover the cancer scar, but her dermie said to wait. It might grow.

She worked for half a minute, frowning. “So be plain, Mal. What do you want me to do about Aurora?”

“Well… as you say, we can’t just dump her. I guess I just want to know more about her. Find some weakness we can exploit. Is that blunt enough?”

“Si, si. I’ll put Ybor Lopez on it. He’s trustworthy and a real computer magician. I’ll have him put together a dossier on her. I… well, I have something to make him cooperative.” She snapped her bag shut. “For you, Mal. Just this once.”

“I appreciate it. I won’t abuse the information.”

“Oh, mierda. I know you won’t. You owe me one, though.”

“You have it.” They got up together and left the room.

Deedee wished she had kept her mouth shut. Traitor to her class—she’d been a professor a lot longer than she’d been an administrator. And to pull this on Aurora, of all people. She’d never been anything but helpful and kind. Ybor would probably find out she was an ex-con or a dope addict. Like him.

They started to go down the stairs, but heard the crowd murmuring three floors down: reporters. They backtracked and used the fire stairs.

Deedee’s office was two buildings away. She hurried through the noontime glare, the cancers on her face and shoulder saying, “You forgot your hat.” The sunscreen was supposed to be good for eight hours, but she’d been sweating. In that air-conditioned room in Washington.

Lopez was locking up the office as she came out of the elevator. “Ybor,” she said. “Hold it. We have to talk.”

They went back into the outer office, a spare uncluttered place where Ybor ran interference for her. She sat him down in the visitors’ chair and perched herself on the desk.

“I need your expertise, Ybor. And your silence.”

“Something illegal, Dr. Whittier?”

“No. Shady, but not illegal.”

“Okay. You can trust me.”

She let out a long breath and chose her words. She used Spanish. “—I don’t have to trust you, Ybor. Because I have you by the hair.”

“No comprendo.”

“—I’ve seen you shooting up, twice. Tell me it’s diabetes.”

He slumped. “How the hell did you ever see me?”

“—What is it?”

“Se llama ‘José y María.’”

“Some kind of DD?”

“Sí.” A designer drug. “—You give them some blood or sperm and they customize it.”

“—As much as you know about science, you let them do that?”

“—It’s hard to explain. You don’t do anything?”

“—Nothing big. Nothing illegal.”

“De acuerdo.” Ybor switched to English. “Who do you want me to kill?”

“I just need your jaquismo. Get into and out of university personnel files and some municipal records without leaving any tracks. Try to find some dirt.”

“So who’s the villain?”

“She’s a nice person, not a villain. I just need some leverage. Aurora Bell.” She looked oddly expectant.

He shook his head slowly. “So what happens if I don’t find anything? She’s not exactly Mata Hari.”

“I don’t expect you to find something that’s not there. Just do your best and be extra careful. How long?”

“Oh… this afternoon. Say four.”

“Thanks.” She slid off the desk. “Sorry about, you know. Anytime you want to go into rehab…”

“Yeah, well. You know. It’s not like that.”

“I don’t know, actually. But so long as it doesn’t interfere with your work, it’s not a problem. Not for me.” She walked out, leaving the door open.

Ybor Lopez

He shut the door and locked it and leaned against it for a few seconds, eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched. Then he went to the supply closet and unlocked the backup files safe, a fireproof metal block to which only he had access. He took out the José y María hypo, dropped his pants, and put the applicator nozzle flat against the large vein in his penis. He fired it, wincing, and rubbed the sting away. By the time he had his pants pulled up and the hypo locked back in the safe, the drug was coming on.

He sat down and reveled in it, the clean pure power that roared through his veins, the light that glowed from inside. The absolute confidence. What could she know about this? He felt a moment of compassion, of sorrow, for people who went through life without having this. A gift from his own body, grown from his own seed. There was nothing wrong with it. It was the law that was wrong.

To work. Leave no tracks, all right. No voice commands. No backup crystal. Go under the machine’s intelligence and use it like its twentieth-century predecessors: simple commands executed sequentially.

He did it all the time, for fun and the department’s profit, as Whittier well knew. It was winked at; probably half the science and engineering departments had someone like Ybor, who could make an hour of computing time look like fifteen minutes. (The missing time would show up on accounts like Slavic Languages and Art History, who didn’t have Ybors.) The same sort of skills could slip through the light encryptation that protected the privacy of personnel records.

It took Ybor about half an hour to set up the program that would assemble a cybernetic image of the private life of Aurora Bell. It just took a few minutes more to have it do the same for Deedee Whittier, insurance. He pushed a button to start it running and went out to get some lunch.

Good timing. José y María did make you feel famished about an hour after you popped. It was a healthy hunger, though; felt good.

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 or 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.”

They exchanged professional smiles. “I’ll try to control myself, Harry.”

“I’ll try to keep my hands off him. What did you think?”

“Gonna be a long couple of months. Can’t wait.”

She nodded at the ceiling. “Anything could happen.” She dipped a finger into the softening gel and spread it around her external genitalia. “You ever have Professor Bell?”

“No, I never took astronomy. I had her husband.”

“I had her intro course some years back. Before medical school, of course.” She circled her clitoris lightly.

“Good teacher?”

“Oh, yeah. A little nervous, but really sincere. Really wanted you to love the stuff. Too much math for me, though.”

“Doctors just need to know how to add,” he said.

“You have that right. How’s her husband?”

“Kind of sweet. He starts out tough, but it’s all an act.”

“Big class?”

“No, a quartet. Six-week phrasing workshop a couple of summers ago.”

Harry came over with a thing that looked like a cross between a snake and a telescope. “Take a reading.” Gabrielle pressed both thighs with her palms and spread wide. He inserted the tube a few inches into her.

“Ow!” She jumped. “Easy on that thing. It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“Yeah yeah.” He peered into the tube and turned a knob. “Squeeze.” She did, grunting. “Again.” He nodded and pulled the thing out with a little sucking sound. “Okay. Get it up.”

Gabrielle grabbed the nearest projection and pulled Louis closer. She cradled his scrotum with the other hand. “So what’s phrasing?”

“Basically timing.”

“You’re good at that.”

“Thanks. It’s…” He gasped and paused a moment as she took him into her mouth. “It’s how you put your own interpretation on a piece of music. Of course, with a quartet, you have to all agree.”

“Sounds difficult.” She stroked him slowly, studying his progress. “This is the only instrument I ever learned how to play. Skin flute.”

“‘Duet for skin flute and honey pot.’”

“Honey pot, yeah. Marry me and take me away from all this.”

Harry rolled the lights and holo cameras in around them.

Harry explained the narrative, such as it was. They were in a rowboat near the shore of a small lake. Nine minutes into the sequence, another boat was going to approach. They’d try to get down and hide, but would keep fucking, and be caught at the last minute.

He turned on a flatscreen that showed what the actors on the actual boat were doing, so they could mimic the postures and timing. They didn’t have to be too precise. The actors on the boat wore skinspray that conducted the feeling of rough wood and water splash. The somatic input from Gab and Louis would be edited in, combined into the main male and female tracks.

“Gabby, get on your knees and back up here.” He unmounted the stirrups and pushed a button that lowered the platform a foot.

“Oh, goodie,” she said, rolling over. “Arf, arf.”

“We still have a little panty line.”

“Oh, bullshit, Harry,” Louis said. “You can make this look like we’re in the middle of a rowboat, and you can’t edit out a little panty line?”

“Just extra work. Take a couple of dips before we put the harness on.”

They worked together well. Louis stood still behind her and let her control how deep, how fast. The external cameras caught it in every detail. He slid out of her and was so erect his penis slapped against his abdomen.

“Good, we got that,” Harry said, and handed him the harness. Louis rolled it over his organ, a loose transparent condom covered with tiny wires. He tightened a collar at the base of his penis and pulled the lower part of the arrangement over his testicles. Harry lubricated a pair of sensors and Louis eased one into his own anus and one into Gab.

She sighed. “Well, let’s move it.” Louis inserted his decorated dick and they proceeded.

The virtual-reality recording equipment had been bought as part of a legitimate grant for the study of orgasmic dysfunction. Harry was not a scientist, of course; he was an artiste. The scientist whose department owned the equipment was willing to let it be used for artistic purposes twice a week, for an amount of money roughly equal to his IISR salary, before taxes.

Gab and Louis had the talent of being able to make their bodies ignore all the hardware. The customers on the receiving end were not so encumbered, of course; they just wore the neural inductor hats.

A lot of customers went to the same feelie twice, male and female, to see how the other half felt. Gab had tried it once, fucking herself, but partway through she took off the cap and left the theater, anxious and confused. That had been the semester she first did cadaver dissection, and although she hadn’t been too squeamish about the woman’s body, cutting it up didn’t put her in much of a mood to look inside her own.

This was going to be a 2X deep feelie: two orgasms and the internal sensors. With only two climaxes, it might even have a plot, though the audience wasn’t demanding. It would be called Love Boat II.

A commercial feelie wasn’t exactly like “being there,” perfect virtual reality, which was dangerous and illegal because of the drugs involved. People participating in Love Boat II would taste and smell and feel a simulacrum of what the four actors did, and some of them would experience orgasms along with Gab and Louis. The “deep” feelie part enhanced that; they could see what was going on inside the vagina, and for most people that made it work better. Other people went to the regular feelies, which were less anatomical but had more dialogue.

There was a countdown clock on the flatscreen that told them how many seconds to orgasm. Gab was looking at it in a mirror; they were facing each other now, lying in the bottom of the boat. At sixty seconds she squeezed his shoulder hard and gasped for Christ’s sake slow down, and concentrated furiously on the names of the facial nerves and the cost of the textbooks this embarrassment was financing. When the clock allowed her to, she let go and quite enjoyed it, as usual. If she’d enjoyed it much more she would have pulled Louis off the platform, which would have been okay if he could manage to stay inside her.

Harry monitored the ejaculation on a small holo cube, and applauded lightly. “Excellent. Louis, pull out suddenly at minus twelve seconds.” On the flatscreen, a rowboat with an elderly couple came alongside and overacted. The couple in the bottom of the boat sprang apart the same time as Gab and Louis. She laughed, out of breath. “My God; he’s even bigger than you.”

“Trick photography,” Louis said, panting. Harry brought them a couple of large towels.

Gab dried off and went back into the bathroom and used the bidet. Then she douched with a solvent and used the bidet again, as hot as she could stand it. She inserted a special tampon and dressed.

Harry gave her a check for two thousand dollars. She said goodbye to the men and left. A fairly busy whore could make that in one night, she thought; four tricks. She’d given herself to a million men and women for that. But her cheapest text this semester had cost four hundred dollars. This took a lot less time than waiting on tables or typing.

Besides, a doctor ought to be objective about her body. “Temple of the Lord,” her mother always had called it. If Mom knew how many people had worshiped at this particular temple, she’d have a heart attack and die.

She put on her broad-brimmed hat and went out into the sunlight. If a million people go to this feelie and half of them ejaculate twice, how much sperm is that? Half a million times five cc’s times two… five million cc’s. Five thousand liters. She visualized a quart jar full of sperm and tried to multiply that by five thousand. A roomful, anyhow.

A greasy ugly man leered at her and she looked away, suddenly nauseated.

Ybor Lopez

Dios, Ybor thought, that beautiful creature has just now had sex, still radiating pheremones and sweat. He turned to watch her walk away, a little unsteady but still linda, dark skin visible under the white dress, white underwear accentuating the curve of her buttocks. He started to get an erection but the pain at the injection site wilted him. He would remember the sight and smell of her later, though, and put it to good use.

He went into Building 16 and stood for a moment in the air-conditioning, using his floppy hat to mop the sweat from his face and neck. Concentrate, now. Have to be quick and careful. Download the data and erase all links. He started reviewing the process in his mind as he hurried up the steps.

No one in the office. Lock the door or not? It would be a little suspicious, but the extra couple of seconds while the secretary rattled away would give him time to change what’s on the screen. But the secretary wouldn’t have any reason to be curious about what he was working on, and no one else was likely to come in except Dr. Whittier, his partner in crime. He left it unlocked.

He put a data cube in the desk niche and said, “Commence Minotauro.” A blur of numbers and words scrolled up the wall. He took a keyboard out of the drawer and waited. A couple of times a minute, the scrolling stopped and a query blinked. He typed a quick word or number and the scrolling continued.

After about ten minutes, the wall made a sound like a tree frog and went blank. Mission accomplished. He put his thumb over the “off” button and said, “Review data, Aurora Bell.”

Blocks of statistics, paragraphs of biography. “Faster, one hundred percent,” Ybor said. He could read very fast with the drug’s help.

Whittier was going to be disappointed. Dr. Bell either covered her tracks well or didn’t have much of a past. Parking tickets and one for speeding. Now, this bit about her husband might be useful…

The door made a faint tick sound and Ybor thumbed the display off. He half turned toward the door.

It wasn’t Whittier; it was Malachi Barrett, the chancellor. He stepped away from the door and said, “Here.” A uniformed policeman swiveled in with gun drawn; aimed, and fired.

Sergeant Rabin

It was a good clean shot, right into the biceps. The man was able to pull the dart out, but that didn’t make any difference. He got partway out of the chair and then fell back, dazed.

“You are under arrest. Anything you say may be used as evidence. A copy of this proceeding will be provided for your defense attorney.

“Let it be noted that the drug 71 Tikan has been administered. Your testimony will be reviewed in that light.

“Ybor Lopez, you are charged with information theft and unauthorized decryptation. Do you wish to deny the validity of these charges?”

Ybor tried to look up at him but his head slumped. Then his whole body sagged forward and he fell out of the chair.

Rabin kneeled down and turned him over. His eyes had rolled back so that only the whites were visible. He felt for a pulse under the jaw.

“What’s happening?” the chancellor asked. “Does this usually happen?”

“No, sir. I think it’s a drug interaction. Seventy-one Tikan is psychotropic, and if the offender has taken some other psychotropic drug… shit. There goes his pulse.” He chinned a microphone switch. “Dispatch, this is Rabin in 16-dash-304. We have a code nine here, need help fast. Heart stopped.” After a few seconds a female voice said they were on their way. Rabin had already begun cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

After a minute of rhythmic shoving on the man’s chest, alternating with breathing into his mouth, he asked Barrett, “Sir, can you do CPR?”

“Uh, no. I’m afraid not.” He made an ineffectual gesture with both hands. “I’ve been meaning to take the course…”

Another minute. “Find someone who can. I may need help.” It was hard work, and Rabin was out of shape. He’d heard of people having heart attacks themselves while administering CPR. He didn’t want to be part of an ironic newspaper story.

Barrett didn’t go straight out the door, but first stepped over both of them to take something off the desk. Then he went out into the corridor and started knocking on doors and shouting at people.

“Code nine” meant that a suspect needed immediate medical attention. Sometimes the rescue unit dragged their feet a bit, since suspects were usually guilty, and a dead suspect meant less work all around.

Rabin was starting to have chest pains, which he knew were psychosomatic, when a middle-aged black man kneeled down next to him. “Need help?” Rabin nodded and rolled away, gasping.

He leaned back against the desk and watched his replacement: slower, but pretty good, considering that he’d probably never done it on a live person before. Of course this person was only somewhat alive.

Not armed, at least not obviously. So why had he been ordered to dart him on sight? If he was dangerous, why risk sending the chancellor along to identify him?

Could the dart have been switched—did he inadvertently fire a killer dart rather than a talker? No, he’d loaded the weapon himself when the call came in.

The dart was on the floor. He leaned over slowly, still hyperventilated, and picked it up. The charge cartridge was green-blue-green, 71 Tikan. He got a plastic bag out of his utility kit and dropped the cartridge in and put it in his pocket.

Other evidence. He stood up slowly and checked the desk. A keyboard, but nothing up on the wall. No crystal or cube in the readers. A notepad and stylus. He pushed the “previous message” corner of the notepad and got a crude drawing of a naked woman and a neatly printed phone number.

He wrote the number down in his notebook. Ma’am, you’re being investigated in conjunction with a serious information crime. No, don’t bother getting dressed. I’ll just handcuff you to this bed here.

Chancellor Barrett stepped into the office. “Sir, what was it you took from the desk here?”

“Desk? Oh, nothing. Nothing… I was just checking the notepad there.”

“But I—”

“Nothing, Sergeant Rabin.”

“Yes, sir.” The old bastard, it must have been a cube or crystal from the reader. Whatever this guy was working on.

It put Rabin in an interesting situation. Under oath, or drugs, he would have to testify that he’d seen the chancellor take something from the desk. Did the chancellor realize that? Was the chancellor corrupt enough to threaten his job? His life?

“I was mistaken, sir. I thought I saw… it was a confusing moment.” The older man put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, wordlessly.

The rescue unit, two men and a woman, came crowding in. They relieved the black man, ripped open the suspect’s shirt, applied two inductor pads to his chest, and cranked his heart. He flopped around and coughed and retched. They had to repeat it twice before his heartbeat stabilized.

The woman stood up. “Should we take him to the cardiac ward or the secure ward?”

“Secure ward,” Rabin said. “Have them find out what drug he’s on. This was a 71 Tikan reaction.”

“Probably a DD,” she said. She made a gesture and her two helpers rolled the man onto a stretcher. They rushed him out the door.

The chancellor thanked the black man, Professor Pak, and ushered him out.

“Sir, if you don’t need me, I’d better follow the ambulance.”

“Of course, Sergeant. Thank you.”

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: