The Coming

Aurora

“This should be entertaining.” Rory snapped off the screen.

Norman was in the supplicant’s chair. “Well, I’m impressed. The leader of the Western world up at nine.” He sipped coffee.

“Oh, since eight at least, putting on makeup.” Rory leafed through a thin stack of papers and slid them into a plastic portfolio. She reached for his cup. “May I?”

He pushed it an inch toward her. “No sugar.”

“I stand in awe of your willpower.” She took a sip. “Ugh. Delicious.”

“Take it along.”

“They’ll have some there.” She gave him a good-bye peck and took her jacket off the peg. “Wasn’t it raining out?”

“Stopped before I left.” She’d come to the office about four and saw lightning over the horizon. Crazy weather.

The elevator had a sharp scrubbed smell; first of the month. She put the scruffy jacket on over her businesslike meet-the-president dress, feeling bohemian. But who in Florida bothers with fancy cold-weather clothes?

The sky was gray with fast-moving clouds, the air damp and cool. It might rain again. She hurried along with the students hustling to their nine-o’clocks, some of them resolutely wearing shorts. Maybe they didn’t have anything else.

She got to the conference room early and was startled to see the president already there. “It’s just a test holo,” Deedee said from the other side of the room. “Coffee?”

“Half a cup, sure.” The holo looked absolutely real. Its eyes seemed to follow you. “I wonder how much science the holo knows. We could just go ahead and get started.”

“Ye of little faith.” Deedee handed her a plastic cup as she sat down, and took her own place across the table. “Let’s hope it’s just a pro forma pep talk.”

“Not a funding cut,” Rory said. “That’s the first thing that occurred to me.”

“It’s been a real windfall for you guys.”

She blew on the coffee. “You know it. Half our salary load this semester’s covered by the federal grant. Of course it’s generated a lot of paperwork. People trying to justify their ongoing research in terms of the Coming.”

“I didn’t hear that.” Chancellor Barrett walked into the room.

“I didn’t say it, Mal.” She smiled at him. “I was temporarily in the thrall of millennial demons.”

“That was last month.” He poured some coffee and squeezed past Deedee to get to his assigned chair. “I hope we won’t have to address the spiritual side of it this time.”

“God willing,” Deedee said.

“Amen.” The meeting a month ago with Reverend Kale had been harrowing. You were either with him or against him, and he had come to the meeting knowing that it would be a confrontation with his strongest enemies.

He tried to turn it into a ground-shaking media event, but fortunately, the press was tired of dealing with him. So it was a lot of sound and fury and no airtime.

There was a soft gong and the president came to life, a few inches higher, her hair unchanged but her blouse lavender instead of teal. Governor Tierny and Grayson Pauling appeared at the same moment. The governor had a green suit with a red tie, Christmas coming. The science adviser always wore gray. This morning, his skin seemed a little gray.

“Good morning,” the president said, as if she meant it. A smile that revealed just a trace of her perfect teeth. “Let’s get right down to business.” She reached outside of the holo field and someone handed her a leather folder.

Rory had expected the Oval Office, but this was some other room, oil paintings of the presidents looking down from windowless walls.

“This is top secret. You may not discuss it with the media. A few days ago, the secretary of defense asked me to convene a secret cabinet meeting.”

“Oh, no,” Rory said, at the edge of audibility. Pauling looked up at her, but the president didn’t seem to notice.

“…about our preparedness for what amounts to an alien invasion. Clearly, we are not prepared, he admitted, but just as clearly, we can be.”

She looked around the room as if daring anyone to speak. “We reviewed your testimony on this, and the corroborating testimony of the National Science Foundation and the American Association for Science—”

“The Advancement of Science,” Pauling corrected.

“Thank you, Grayson. Simply put, we felt that you were well meaning but wrong. This is actually a political issue, not a scientific one. I mean, we wouldn’t know about the danger without you scientists, true. But it is a political problem with a political solution.”

“Which is to say military,” Deedee said. “Ms. President.”

“Strategic. There’s a time-honored distinction.”

“Strategic, until you push the button,” Pauling said. “Then it’s military.”

“And the reason for strategic preparedness is to prevent war.”

“Ms. President,” Rory said, “what are you going to use to scare these space aliens with? Nuclear weapons?”

“Better than that.” She pulled a diagram from the folder. “Though it uses a nuclear weapon for fuel.”

The diagram was just a polar view of the earth, with a dotted orbit surrounding it, about four thousand miles up. There were three equidistant Xs on the orbit.

“Each of these three shuttles has a one-shot maser, microwave laser, generator. It turns the power of a hydrogen bomb into a single blast of energy powerful enough to vaporize anything. At any given time, two of the three will cover any approach to Earth.”

“Boy, I hope they don’t have four ships,” Rory said.

“What?”

“Ms. President, if you were going to invade another planet, would you send just one ship?”

“Well… I’m sure we can put any number of these things in orbit…”

“On orbit,” Pauling said. “And there are only three. Two of them aren’t even—”

“You’re always saying that, Grayson. As if you could be on an orbit the way you’re on the street. I suppose we should make more.”

“You can’t,” he said. “Even if it were legal—and it’s not; they would be in violation of international law—you can’t build these things in a month, no matter how much money you throw at the contractors.”

“I think there may be more someplace,” she said expressionlessly.

“I don’t suppose they ever pass over France or Germany,” the chancellor said.

“Several times a day,” Pauling said.

“But that’s immaterial,” the president said. “These point up, not down. And we’ve worked out the international aspects. The UN Security Council will be part of the decision-making process.”

“They point whichever way we want them to,” Pauling said. “And the UN’s big red button doesn’t have to be connected to anything.”

The president sighed. “You’ve always been such a good team player, Grayson. Until this thing came up.”

Pauling faced the others. “I was the only cabinet member not in favor of this scheme. But then I’m the only one who knows an electron from his asteroid.”

“As I said, it’s no longer a scientific problem. The science has been solved. But we still have our people to protect.” She was trying to look presidential but was obviously pissed at Pauling. He had probably said he was going to behave.

“Have they been orbited yet?” Rory said, avoiding the in-orbit/on-orbit controversy.

“No, Dr. Bell, they’re undergoing checks. They’ll go up next week.”

“No matter what our advice is,” Deedee said.

The governor cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “Dean Whittier, with all due respect, the president and her cabinet have considered the scientific aspects of this along with all others—”

“And come up with the wrong decision!” Rory snapped. “This is like children setting up a practical joke to surprise Mommy when she comes through the door. She is not going to be amused.”

“I have been assured that there is no conceivable defense against these weapons.”

“Oh, please. The Praetorian Guard was invincible in its time, but one soldier with a nineteenth-century machine gun would destroy them in seconds.”

The president stared for a moment, perhaps listening to someone offstage explaining what the Praetorian Guard was. “Science is on my side here, Professor. This energy beam goes at the speed of light. Do you know of any way to detect it and get out of its way?”

“No, but neither do I have a spaceship that can go the speed of light. If I did, I’d probably have something to protect myself against twenty-first-century weapons.”

“Exactly my point last night,” Pauling said. “The only thing we know about these creatures is that their science is beyond our comprehension.”

“You may be committing suicide for the whole human race,” Rory said. “Or murdering the human race out of ignorance and hubris.”

“This is not just a bad idea,” Deedee said. “This is the worst idea in history.”

The president’s famous temper finally boiled over. “Then history will judge me! Not a roomful of professors!” She disappeared, along with Pauling. The governor faded out with a fixed smile pasted on his face.

It was just the three of them, spaced around a plain round table.

Rory sipped cold coffee. “I think she has a thing about professors.”

“Professors tend to have a thing about her,” the chancellor said.

“We don’t have to keep this secret,” Deedee said. “We ought to get the word out before the administration does.”

Mal shook his head. “She said it was top secret.”

“I don’t have any clearance,” she said. “Do you?”

“I can probably get Marya Washington,” Rory said. “She’s not exactly pro-administration.” She took a phone out of her purse and punched two numbers. She nodded at a robot voice. “Tell Marya that Rory Bell, down in Florida, has to talk to her immediately. Big scoop.” She pushed the “off button. “Big scoop of something.”

“I need a real cup of coffee,” Deedee said. “Go by Sara’s on the way back?”

Mal checked his watch. “You two go. I still have time to show up at a budget hearing and surprise some people.” He smiled and the smile faded. “Let me know if you need any help, Rory. With the cube people or Her Nibs.”

“Thanks, Mal. I may need you to back me up on what the president said.”

“Count on it.” He looked at Deedee. “See you Saturday?”

Deedee

“With bells on.” The chancellor nodded, snapped his attaché case shut, and left.

“Hobnobbing with the greats?” Rory said.

“He’s a tiger in bed,” she said hoarsely. “‘Administer me! Administer me!’” They both laughed. “It’s something the provost dreamed up. They’ve invited all the four-point seniors to a barbecue with all the deans and Mal. Should be fun, if Mal and I aren’t in some dungeon in Washington, along with you.”

“Any bets as to who he’ll show up with?”

“I don’t gamble with love.” There was a faint rumble of thunder, and she held up an umbrella. “Beat the rain?”

They didn’t. Halfway to Dos Hermanos the skies opened up. The umbrella kept their heads dry, but not much else.

Dos Hermanos was warm and crowded. They sat at the bar and ordered cafés con leche.

“So it’s us against the president of the United States,” Deedee said. “Where do we go from here?”

“You know, she didn’t say why she called the meeting,” Rory said. “She must have known what our reaction was going to be. So what did she gain by letting us know before a general announcement was made?”

Deedee shook her head. “Maybe it was Pauling who set it up. She pretty much does what her cabinet tells her to do.”

“Yeah, Snow White and the Fourteen Dwarfs. The executive branch has seen better days.” The coffee came and Rory stirred in a spoonful of sugar. Deedee just sprinkled a little cinnamon on top. “I wonder,” Rory continued. “What if you could get someone to claim that this was a declaration of war, and need the approval of Congress?”

“Well, she owns the House, except the Greens. Put the House Greens with the Senate Democrats, you’d at least have some noise. But I don’t think you can declare war against a vessel—or a message, which is all we really have.”

She held the coffee cup to warm her fingers and sniffed deeply at the cinnamon. “I think the key is going to be education, or propaganda. Your newscaster is probably our most powerful weapon. If the gallups tell LaSalle not to launch the things, she won’t.”

Pepe burst through the door, drenched, holding a soggy newspaper over his head. “¡Hola!” He dropped the paper into the recycle bin.

There were no seats at the bar. He stood between them and ordered a double espresso.

“How’d the meeting go? Is Fearless Leader smarter in person?”

“A regular Hawking,” Deedee said, and in low voices the two of them summed up what had transpired.

“I wouldn’t be too worried,” he said. “She’s just putting on her ‘woman of action’ hat. France is going to raise holy hell, and Russia, too. She’ll never get the Security Council behind it, and she knows that. She’s posturing. Campaigning.”

“Wish I could be sure of that,” Rory said. “Sounds too sophisticated for her.” Her phone rang and she plucked it out of her purse. “Con permiso. I have a call in to Marya Washington.” She pushed the “record” button. “Buenos?”

Her jaw actually dropped; sharp intake of breath. “Did you record it? I’ll be right over.” She folded up the phone and put it away. “That was Norman, at the office. There’s a new message from the aliens. A long one.”

They left three coffees steaming on the bar.

Norman

He thumbed in a blank crystal and made another copy, for safety’s sake. Then he sat and read the message on the wall:

Norman grinned. The third partita would be Christmas hymns, combining and then clashing, building to chaos and silence.

He would write the fourth partita after he heard what they had to say. If composer and audience were still alive.

Rory came bustling in with Deedee and Pepe, all of them drenched. They stared at the message, wordless. The phone chimed, over and over. Someone important, or the secretary would just file a message.

Still looking at the writing on the wall, Rory groped behind her and found the chair at her desk. She sat down slowly and pushed a button. “Buenos.”

“I don’t know how you did it.” President LaSalle’s face on the screen was blotchy, livid. “But it’s not going to work. We will have those weapons in orbit in a week.”

“Ms. President,” Rory said, “I just saw this message one minute ago for the first time. I assume it did come from the spaceship?”

“That’s what the NASA people say. But the timing is too perfect. I don’t know how you did it, but you did it. And it’s not going to work.”

“Why don’t you ask your NASA people how I could manage that trick?” she said slowly. “I assume they picked it up on the Moon as well as here. So by simple triangulation, you can tell how far the message has come. It was probably sent before we began to talk.”

“Impossible,” the president said, and disappeared.

“Pepe, go check on the Moon?” The phone started chiming again. Rory shook her head and stabbed the button.

It was Marya Washington, her face distorted and bouncing around the screen. “Rory, I’m in a cab to JFK. The station’s putting me on their own plane; I’ll be down in Gainesville”—she looked at the inside of her wrist—“in maybe ninety minutes. Can we have lunch?”

“Uh… sure. We have a lot to talk about.”

“That Mexican place on Main Street? At twelve o’clock?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Good. Más tarde.” The screen went blank.

“What the hell was that all about?” Norman said. “The prez?”

“That’s what our meeting was about. She wants to orbit those killer satellites. The secretary of defense’s idea, I take it. But all the cabinet’s behind it, except Pauling.”

Norman let out a little snort. “I guess this means we won’t be invading France. Just frying it.”

Pepe was mopping his long hair with a paper towel. “Surely she’ll reconsider after she calms down.” He gestured at the screen. “Or wiser heads may prevail.”

“Wiser heads better get her out of office,” Deedee said. “The woman is seriously bent. She sees everything in terms of conspiracy.”

“Yeah,” Norman said. “Poor old Brattle.”

“Who’s Brattle?” Rory said. Everybody looked at her.

“Undersecretary of defense,” Norman said. To the others: “She doesn’t listen to the news.”

“She had him charged with sedition,” Deedee said. “Sedition! ‘Moderation’ is more like it. But he’s being investigated by a closed committee. Essentially under house arrest.”

“Well, she can house-arrest me.” Rory smiled at Norman. “At least I have a good cook. She’s going to be terminally pissed off after I talk to Marya.”

“Don’t do that,” Pepe said. “You mustn’t do that. Not yet.”

“Somebody has to stop her.”

“Somebody will. In Washington.”

“You sound pretty confident. For someone who’s usually nothing but sarcastic about government.”

“Just give it a day or two, and see what happens. If you violate the president’s trust, you’ll be out of the game completely. And you probably will go to jail somewhere.”

“I think he’s right,” Norm said. “Where there’s a loose cannon on deck, you want to be belowdecks.”

“So what do I tell Marya? I left her a message that we were conferencing with La Presidente this morning.”

“Just tell the truth,” Pepe said. “That important matters were discussed, but you were sworn to secrecy.”

Rory shook her head. “We’re talking about the survival of the whole human race, versus my going to jail.”

“Just give it one day,” Pepe said. “See what Washington does. If they conceal it, hell, you’ll give Marya even more of a story.”

“I think he’s right,” Deedee said. “Another couple of days won’t make a big difference. Stay out of jail and hold on to your professorship. That’s my strategy.”

Norm nodded at the screen. “You’ll have plenty to talk about. I mean, now it really is an invasion from outer space.”

“I’ll do something useful,” Pepe said, “besides checking the Moon. See whether we can calculate how big a boom it would take to blow up Phobos.”

“It’s just a little pebble, isn’t it?” Norm said.

“Compared to a planet,” Rory said. “About twenty kilometers in diameter?”

“You’re asking me?” Pepe said. “I’m not a planet guy. But that’s twice as big as Mount Everest is tall. Think about a bomb that could level Mount Everest. Then multiply it by eight; two-cubed.”

“Considerable bang,” Rory said. “Interesting that they chose the larger one. If memory serves, Diemos is only half its size.”

“I’ll go see if I can find Leo.” Leo Matzlach was their Mars expert. “Maybe I can get you a number before launch.”

“That would be good,” Rory said. “Anything concrete. We’re not exactly in a data-rich environment.”

Running out, Pepe almost collided with the chancellor.

Malachi Barrett

“Sorry.” He dodged the young man, then walked into the office and exchanged greetings.

“Dr. Bell,” he said to Norman, “I have to speak with your wife and Dr. Whittier in private.”

“No problem.” Norm got up and stretched. “Guess our lunch date’s off, anyhow.”

“Unless you want to be interviewed,” Rory said.

“No; think I’ll go home and play.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the wallscreen. “That gives me an idea.” To Mal: “Stopped raining?”

“For a while.” He brushed a few drops from his shoulder.

“Try to beat it home.” Norm scooped up his bicycle helmet and left.

“This changes things.” Mal dropped heavily into the chair Norm had vacated. “A direct threat.”

“Her Nibs called right after the message came,” Deedee said. “She thinks it’s a fake, and Rory’s behind it.”

“Well?” Mal said.

“Well what?” Rory said. “Is it a fake?”

Mal shrugged. “Tell me it’s not.”

“Mal… okay, you’ve got me. It’s a fake. But since it came from beyond the solar system, I had to send the message before we met with La Presidente. So I’m not only a traitor, I’m a fucking clairvoyant!”

Mal raised a hand. “Okay, sorry. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You’re one step ahead of Fearless Leader,” Rory said. “She not only didn’t think of it, she doesn’t believe it. I don’t think they covered that speed-of-light stuff at her finishing school.”

“So you think she’s going to go ahead with orbiting those weapons?”

“Seems likely. She has a testosterone problem. And she has the backing to push it through.”

“They would probably work, though, wouldn’t they?”

“What, the weapons?”

“Yes. I mean, there are thousands of satellites up there. Surely the aliens couldn’t tell that three of them were weapons.”

Rory paused. “Maybe they couldn’t, especially if the weapons were disguised as other kinds of satellites. Though their positioning would be suggestive, suspicious.” She rubbed her still-damp hair. “Besides, suppose there’s more than one alien vessel? They seem to know a bit about human nature. Maybe they know us well enough to send a decoy first.”

“Which could be behind the Phobos demonstration, too,” Deedee said. “If it is an actual invasion, they may be sending a decoy in to provoke us and test our resources.”

“Well, if it is an invasion, we can save our H-bombs. They can stand back a ways and throw rocks at us, at .99c.”

“Another thing the president seems not to believe,” Mal said. His own background was in psychology and sociology, but he knew enough science to grasp that.

“And she doesn’t want to listen to the one person who keeps telling her the truth,” Deedee said. “Poor Pauling. He’ll be out on the sidewalk before long.”

“Replaced by her astrologer,” Mal said.

“She has an astrologer?” Rory said, wide-eyed.

Mal shrugged. “Might be tabloid nonsense. Maybe she does chicken entrails instead.”

“So what do your chicken entrails say?” Deedee said. “Rory’s talking with Marya Washington at noon. We’ve been telling her to keep it under her hat, at least for the time being.”

“I would, too. The president was unambiguous about that. Top secret,’ she said. Though I’m certain she’s about to reveal it herself. Maybe not until after the launch.”

“She thinks these aliens aren’t watching our broadcasts?”

“She doesn’t think very far beyond the nearest camera lens, and this morning’s gallup numbers. And she knows the people are going to eat this up.”

“The people,” Deedee said. “The only thing wrong with democracy.”

The phone chimed and Rory thumbed it. It was the departmental secretary, looking strained. “Dr. Bell, I’m sorry to interrupt. But I have calls stacked up from all over the world. If we could schedule a press conference…”

“Okay, let’s say fourteen hundred. Do you have Marya Washington’s phone number?”

“Right here.”

“She’ll be landing here in a half hour or so, I guess with a small crew. Call her first, set up a time and place, and then contact everyone else.”

“Okay, will do.” The screen went blank.

“You always play favorites like this?” Mal asked.

“I guess I do. She’s well informed and fair.”

“She probably doesn’t have a quarter the market share of CNN.”

“I should care? The news gets out.” The phone chimed and the screen flashed INTRADEPARTMENTAL. She pushed it.

Pepe: “Okay, I called the Moon and they confirmed. And the choice of Phobos is no mystery. It’s cracked. There’s a crater, Stuckney, that’s a third the size of the moon itself, and it damn near blew the thing apart. Fractures radiate away from it; you just have to shoot a bomb down into there, and finish Mother Nature’s job for her.”

“So how big a bomb?”

Pepe shrugged. “Pick a number. Leo guessed a hundred thousand megatons. Give or take a factor of a thousand.”

Rory laughed. “Well, that’s precise enough. A hundred million megatons it is. Thank Leo for me—you want to come to this interview?”

“No; God, no. Earthshaking stress isn’t in my job description.”

Pepe

“Buenos.” He pushed the “on/off” button on the pay phone and looked around the library. This was as good a place as any to wait for the news to break.

News. He hadn’t been keeping up. He sat down at a console and called up The New York Times, and toggled back a couple of days.

That must have been when the president first got a hair up her ass about the orbital weapons. She was evidently a pawn, or a rook anyhow, in the current Defense Department power struggle—a schism between those who wanted to ally with Germany and Russia, and the isolationist/pacifist/Francophile set, who wanted us to sit back and watch.

If we stayed out of it, France and her allies would prevail; the eastern coalition was about to spin apart into impotent factions. But with our killer satellites always within a few minutes of Paris and Lyons, coupled with a commander-in-chief who was pro-East and prone to dramatic gestures, Paris had to stop and think: We could be vaporized.

Washington was thinking, as well. Not talking yet, waiting for the White House’s lead.

It was like watching an ant colony scurry around, oblivious to the larger world around them. The Defense Department seized on the threat of the Coming to justify “weapons of mass destruction” in orbit. Thinking that when the alien hoax petered out, the weapons would still be up there. Pointed down, at Paris and her allies.

One microsecond blast from them, and Paris would be a postmodern Troy. There was a great city once, under the rubble and ash.

He knew it wasn’t going to happen. The Defense Department might have a lunatic at the top, appointed by a fellow lunatic, but that was not going to last.

Poor Brattle. He was not even a liberal, but he was on talkshows and the gallup preps, talking about how futile and dangerous it would be to mount a campaign against these aliens: “If they come in peace, fine. If they come spoiling for a fight, we can’t match their high-tech weapons. But we can resist them on the ground. They’ll find we don’t make good slaves.”

Brattle was an intelligent man, but he was too straight and plain-spoken to be undersecretary of defense. He was obviously under fire—under arrest!—because he had stood up to the president and his boss over the satellite scheme.

Pepe knew they wouldn’t get three to orbit, and surely the president and her cabinet did, too. The maser weapon only existed as one demonstration model, and it would take a half-trillion dollars, and a lot of luck, to put three in orbit before the New Year. But even the demo could destroy Paris, and the other two could be dummies.

All of them pointed toward Earth.

“Hello, stranger.” It was his girlfriend, Lisa Marie. “You’ve been awfully busy lately.”

He liked her a lot, pretty and dark and quick, but he had been easing away from her, knowing he’d have to leave soon. “Yeah. Aliens this, aliens that.”

Lisa Marie

“You still have to eat, though.” She watched him carefully. “It’s almost lunchtime.”

He looked at his watch and hesitated. “Sure. You mind going to Dos Hermanos?”

“Love it. I’ll buy you a taco.”

He laughed, picking up his umbrella and book bag. “Where I come from, that would be an indecent proposition.”

She knew that. “First things first, guapo.”

She was glad for the light rain, holding on to his arm and huddling together under the umbrella as they walked across campus. He told her about the unsettling new message.

“Was the wording strange? I mean, did it sound like it was written by a human being?”

He put on a strange accent. “We come in peace, Earth beings. Lay down your weapons and take off your clothes.”

She copied it: “And climb please into these pots of hot water. Bring vegetables.”

He shook his head, smiling. “They may fry us. But I don’t think it will be to eat us.”

“You really think we’re in danger?” They stopped at a fenced-in pond and watched an alligator watching them.

“Maybe not so much from them.” He looked thoughtful and chose his words carefully. “Our own response might put us in danger, though. LaSalle is such a dim bulb, and she’s not exactly surrounded by geniuses. Then we have the Islamic Jihad and the Eastern Bloc. Any one of them could try to knock the aliens out of orbit. Or nuke them when they land at Kennedy.”

“There’s a pleasant thought.”

“Yeah—if LaSalle says she’s going to stay home and send the vice-president, I’m out of here. I don’t want to be a hundred and sixty kilometers from ground zero.”

“I’ve got a car,” she said seriously. “The trunk’s already full of food and jugs of water.” She shook her head. “And a gun and ammunition. My father brought it all down a couple of weeks ago. ‘Better safe than sorry,’ he said. I don’t think beans and rice and bullets are the answer.”

“But you do keep them in your trunk.”

“Yeah, but like you, I’m not so much afraid of the aliens. What I’m afraid of is gangbanging and looting. Like back in twenty-eight, all the grocery stores in flames.”

“You weren’t alive in twenty-eight.”

“Born in 2030. But my parents would never shut up about it.”

The air in Dos Hermanos was warm and heavy with spicy cooking smells. It was early, but they got the last table. Pepe waved to his boss and a black woman who looked familiar.

Something in his manner worried Lisa Marie. He seemed to be studying every customer in the café as they were led to their table and seated. Looking for aliens, maybe.

“Is something wrong?” he said.

“I was going to ask you the same thing. Just the message, though?”

“Yeah, just. I wonder how many people here haven’t seen it.” He pointed to the cube over the bar, which showed the message on a flatscreen with a commentator being earnest in front of it. You couldn’t quite read the words or tell what he was saying, over the café hum.

She glanced at the menu but didn’t really read it; she’d eaten here a hundred times.

“It’s early,” she said, “but you want to split a bottle of wine? Celebrate your aliens?”

He shook his head. “Like to, but it’s going to be a busy day.” The waitress who came up was the owner of the place. “Buenos días,” he said.

Sara

“Buenos. Your aliens are at it again.”

“Why does everybody call them ‘my’ aliens? They’re Rory’s aliens.”

She looked over at their table. “Her newsie didn’t waste any time getting down here. She called in a lunch reservation from her corporate jet, la-di-da.”

“Sure glad I’m an overpaid academic,” Pepe said, “and don’t have to flit around the world at somebody else’s beck and call.” He ordered chicken fajitas with a double espresso and milk. His girlfriend, Lisa what’s-her-name, got a Cuban sandwich and half carafe of white wine.

She was headed back to José with the orders when she heard the shrill emergency whistle from the cube. “¡Silencio!” she shouted. “Everybody shut up a minute.” She cut her eyes to the cube and saw the unthinkable.

It was a long shot of the White House. One end of it was rubble, gray smoke and orange flames.

“We don’t know what’s happened,” a tight, panicky voice said. “One minute ago, something… some explosion… we don’t know!”

His image appeared in the corner, the normally unflappable Carl Lamb. “Word just coming in.” He put his hand flat against his left ear.

“Oh, my God. The president is dead. Most of her cabinet, too. The vice-president, he, he’s… he was in another room but he’s badly hurt. There’s an ambulance floater—there; there, you can see it.” On the cube, a white floater overshot the flames, spun around, and settled down behind the smoke.

“All the Secret Service can say is it didn’t come from outside. It was a powerful bomb that went off in the cabinet room.

“It was an emergency meeting, called about the aliens, the new message. What the Secret Service wonders is how could anybody know they’d all be in that room at that time?”

She sat down in the nearest empty chair, which was Rory’s table. “The aliens… they couldn’t’ve done this?”

Aurora

“I don’t… No. No, of course not.” Though it was certainly handy for them. She looked over at Pepe, the only other person here who knew how handy. He was looking at her.

A young man ran outside to vomit, falling to his knees on the sidewalk. Rory’s own stomach twisted. Her head felt full of light, as if she were going to faint. Still staring at the screen, she reached across the table at the same time Marya did. Her grip was firm and dry but she was trembling.

“This couldn’t be a movie or something?” Sara said. “This can’t be happening.”

Marya gulped. “A War of the Worlds thing, Orson Welles? They wouldn’t do it, they couldn’t.”

Rory could only shake her head. She tried to say something but her mouth and throat were suddenly dry. She took a sip of water and it was like glue. Was she going into shock?

“Jesus,” Marya croaked. Her dark skin was gray, bloodless. “It’s like a palace coup. Who’s left?”

Her phone buzzed. She took it out of her purse, listened for a moment, and said, “Okay.” She put it back. “They want me to stay here,” she said quietly.

There was a murmur of conversation. Two or three people were sobbing.

“Wait,” the commentator said. “There is what? There is a message. Our station, many stations, received it right after the tragedy.” He looked off-camera and nodded, openmouthed. “This is Grayson Pauling, President LaSalle’s, the late president’s, science adviser.”

Pauling looked tired and miserable. “Good morning. I have a grave duty today, which must be explained.

“It has been obvious for many months that our president is mentally ill, profoundly so. It has been a source of amusement in Washington, and a weakness for the brokers of power to exploit.

“The union has survived mentally ill and incompetent leaders, and it might have survived Carlie LaSalle, but for the Coming. Especially in light of this morning’s message.

“Ms. LaSalle, with the very active cooperation of the secretary of defense, proposes to orbit killer weapons that will supposedly destroy the aliens before they have a chance to land. This would be suicide, genocide… there is no word for it. The destruction of our entire species.

“She does not truly understand the amount of power these aliens have demonstrated. To the extent that she does understand, she sees it as a challenge to her own power. It is not. It’s just a statement of fact.”

He looked down and sighed, and then looked into the camera again. “When I was a young man, I was a military officer. Often I had to order men and women into action, knowing that some of them would die. I often went along with them, and the possibility of my own death—sometimes what I saw as the certainty of my death—was of no consequence, compared to the responsibility I felt for them. The guilt, perhaps.

“So today I’m going to die, and in the process, sacrifice the lives of many people who didn’t even know there was a war. I’m sorry. My sorrow is no comfort to those of you who are going to lose loved ones. But we’ll all be dead in one month if I do not do this.

“When I turn off the camera and set the delay on this message, I will leave for an emergency cabinet meeting set for noon. In my briefcase, I have twelve pounds of C-9, a powerful plastic explosive. When I am in the cabinet room with the president and the secretary of defense, I will open the briefcase and we will all die, as well as others, who are innocent bystanders. Collateral casualties, as they say.

“I have always liked Carlie LaSalle, in spite of her craziness, perhaps because of it, and now I am repaying her trust with murder. History will vindicate me, or at least admit the necessity for this, but that gives me no satisfaction this morning.” He reached out of the cube and turned off the camera.

Rory found her voice. “What happens now?”

Marya shook her head. “Pray the vice-president survives. The speaker of the House makes Carlie LaSalle look like a Phi Beta Kappa.”

“Who would’ve thought it,” Sara said in a stunned whisper. “Here in America.”

“Yeah, America. I wouldn’t’ve predicted LaSalle, either.” Rory shook her head. “Washington’s a zoo.” Carl Lamb was back on the cube, saying that the vice-president was being rushed to Walter Reed, but was not expected to live.

“It makes a kind of sense,” Marya said, rubbing her chin hard. “I mean story sense. Grayson Pauling always was a wild card. You know he was DDT in Desert Wind?”

“No,” Rory said, staring at the cube. “What’s DDT?”

“It’s a unit of the Special Forces they call ‘Department of Dirty Tricks.’ Unconventional warfare; I forget its actual name. He never talked about it; claimed he wasn’t allowed to. But that may be how he knew how to build a bomb he could carry into the White House.”

As if to back her up, the cube showed a gray positron scan of the briefcase. “Even cabinet members are checked when they enter the White House,” Carl Lamb said. “Grayson Pauling appeared to have nothing but books and papers.”

A security guard came into the cube, the side of his head bandaged, blood drops on his tunic. “Maybe we shoulda wondered about those books. Why would someone carry big books into a cabinet meeting?”

Lamb made reassuring noises. “His mind was made up this morning,” Rory said. “He might have done it without the new message, eventually.”

“This morning.” Marya stared at her. “That meeting.”

They looked at Sara and she got up. “Yeah, I got to go.”

Everybody was hypnotized by the cube, but Rory lowered her voice to a whisper anyhow. “He was openly rebellious and she was really pissed off. It looked as if she’d allowed him to be in on the conference call if he promised to behave. But then he wouldn’t go along with the party line.”

“This is the scoop you called about?”

“Yes. The president was going to authorize three orbital weapons: masers powered by H-bombs. Pauling seemed to think they would wind up pointed the wrong way. Toward France.”

“Ah. That’s the DOD connection.”

“What?”

“He said on the cube he was after the secretary of defense as well as the president.”

“He did, right. Another interesting thing… the president cut him off, but I think there’s only one of these masers. I guess the other two are decoys.”

“I don’t know how much of this I can use. Though I appreciate knowing it.”

“What could they do to you?”

“Cut me off from Washington sources, at the least. Haul me up in front of a security committee—hell, they’ve got the undersecretary of defense under house arrest.”

“Isn’t he the secretary now?”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way. The president, whoever that may be, appoints a new one. If he can find anybody at home—I suspect half of Washington will be out beyond the Beltways before quitting time.”

“France might do something?”

“More likely the Jihad. But we have lots of enemies who can see that it would be a good time for a couple of strategically placed bombs. Convenient to be out of New York, too.”

“Sleepy college towns have their advantages.”

“This one, I don’t know. The way the Jihad rails about the Coming, they might be able to spare a bomb for here or the Cape. As long as they’re bombing.”

“You’re not kidding?”

“Just professionally paranoid. Look at that. They kept turning rocks over until they found him.”

Carl Lamb was standing on the Capitol steps next to Cool Moon Davis, who looked like a ninety-year-old Native American who had just been dragged out of a deep sleep. He was only seventy-two, actually, but had had an eventful life.

“Speaker Davis, do you have any words for America at this tragic time?”

He looked up into the camera, eyes dull, and straightened up slightly when his earphone started feeding him lines. “I’ve always admired Carly Simon—Carly LaSalle, that is, for her spirit and her dedication to American ideals of America. Like all Americans I feel a deep lens of sauce, I mean sense of sauce, and a truly deep outrage at this crime against the Republic. The crime of assassination.”

“He came up with that himself,” Marya muttered.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We… uh… we have a link to Walter Reed, and the vice-president, I mean President Mossberg, wants to address the nation.”

He looked bad, his chest a tight wrapping of bloodstained bandage, arms inert at his sides, breathing tube taped to his nose.

His normally clear voice was gravelly and nasal. “The doctors say I have a good chance of surviving, but I have spent most of my life in the company of professional liars, and I can see through them.” He coughed violently, and a nurse cut off the view for a moment.

“I am ordering that an election be held as soon as possible after my death, and I’m sure Mr. Cool agrees.” He spoke slowly, teeth clenched. “The nation faces—the world and this nation face an unprecedented historical challenge one month from now. We need a leader in place who is… is not Cool Moon Davis.” He grimaced and his head lolled to one side. “Am I still alive?”

“Your brain is alive,” a male voice said. “Not much else is.”

“Thank you. In fact, I believe that you could pull a random citizen off the street and find him or her better able to deal with this crisis than Representative Davis. Or the late president, for that matter. Forgive me for speaking plainly, but—” The cube went dark, and faded back in with Carl Lamb and Davis, both looking a little pale.

“We seem to have lost—”

“The vice-president,” Davis cut in, “has not been sworn into office…” He paused, listening. “And cannot yet speak as president. The laws of succession are plain, and there is no need for a special election.”

“Chief Justice West is hurrying to Walter Reed as we speak,” Lamb said. “He was en route to New York when this disaster struck.”

Miguel Parando

The bartender realized he’d been cleaning the same glass for several minutes, ever since the emergency signal came from the cube. Someone broke a rack with a loud crash.

“Hey!” He spun around. “You show some respect?”

It was Leroy, a tall white guy, dealer. “I’m payin’ for this table by the hour. You show me some respect.” He lined up an easy shot and hit hard with a lot of draw, whack-thump, and the cue ball glided back to its starting place. “She was the worst president we ever had. So somebody finally punched her fuckin’ ticket. What took so long, is what I wonder.”

“You a hard fuckin’ case, Leroy. She was a nice lady.”

“Nice lookin’,” said a short fat man at the bar. “I wouldn’t go no farther than that. People in Washington didn’t think much of her.”

“You think much of them?”

A woman in a sparkly silver shift, blue eyes and black skin like the bartender’s, smoothed a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. “I’d like a whiskey, Miguel.” She put another bill on top. “And anybody else who wants one.”

“When did you start drinkin’, Connie?”

“Just now. A little ice?”

Leroy came up, emptied his glass, and put it on the bar. “I’ll have one for her vaporized ass.”

“Somebody gonna vaporize your ass someday, Leroy,” Connie said. “You ought to get in some other business. The people you run with.”

He pointed up at the cube, which was back to Cool Moon Davis. “Not as dangerous as those guys.” Miguel poured four glasses, one for himself, and slid them over. “Or the frogs, if it’s them that did it.”

“That would be crazy,” Miguel said. “The French don’t want us in the war.”

“So the damn Germans.”

“Doesn’t have to be a foreigner,” Connie said. “People in this room who’d do it if the price was right.”

“Ooh-woo.” Leroy sipped the neat liquor. “My ears are burning.”

“It’s a hell of a thing,” the short man said. “No matter who gets it. It’s not American.”

“Is now,” Connie said. She looked back at the cube as it switched back to the Walter Reed hospital room.

“Bobón” Mitchell

The cube room at the prison was crowded and silent, both rare. The warden had given permission to open the cells so that everyone could get to the news. Bobón and three other guards covered the doors, armed with tanglers, but nobody was going anywhere.

Bobón was still sorting out the murder he’d witnessed this morning. Not the first one, but Ybor was just a nice kid who hadn’t hurt anyone. Why’d the warden have to drag him in there to watch? And now this damned thing.

Maybe it was all just a long nightmare. Maybe he would wake up and it would just be another morning. But he’d felt that way before, and it never worked. Just in stories.

Why did so many people feel so bad about the president? Well, she’s pretty and smart and powerful, and maybe people who like one don’t like the other.

At least she never could of felt anything. That boy this morning went through all kinds of hell before he died. He couldn’t get it out of his head.

The inmates knew. The way they looked at him, it’s like they thought he did it. Not this time. Towelheads, watch out, though.

Davis had shut up and they switched to a local reporter.

Daniel Jordon

“—here at the International Plaza, we’d like to get the reaction from some of the students here, pardon me?”

The young man turned around and revealed a diamond-shaped scar on his cheek, a member of the Spoog gang. “I ain’t no student fugoff,” he mumbled in passing.

Great assignment. “Young man, could you give me your reaction to the tragedy in Washington?”

He was small and frail and red-eyed. “I really don’t know anything. Was he crazy? He must have been crazy?”

“Some people have said he never got over his experience in the Gulf,” Daniel prompted.

“I had an uncle there, and an aunt, and there’s nothing wrong with them,” he said, looking intently at the ground, and wandered away.

A pretty young woman approached, tailored suit, smile. “Pardon me, ma’am, could you—”

“No! Leave me alone!” She whacked him hard on the shoulder with her heavy purse, aiming for his head.

Like a message from the gods, a little voice in his ear said, “Switching to network in five.”

Aurora

“Twelve pounds of C-9 is enough to demolish a good-sized house,” a man in army fatigues was saying, the smoldering ruins in the background. “That was probably in case he got stopped at the door.”

“Pauling might have used a little less explosive,” Marya muttered sotto voce, “if he’d known he was going to give us Davis on a platter.”

“Who’s next in line if Davis dies?” Rory asked. “He looks like he’d blow over in a strong wind.”

“Cabinet members, I think. It’s not my beat. Maybe the president of the Senate, R. L. Osbourne. She’s better than most.”

As they found out in a few minutes, though, Senator Osbourne had been in the meeting room and was among the dead. So were the chief of staff, the attorney general, and the UN ambassador, as well as the administrators of Defense, Energy, the CIA, FEMA, and NASA. LaSalle liked to have all her cabinet together when she made her pronouncements, watching them for shifts of allegiance.

There would be a fundamental realignment of power in Washington, as soon as everyone came back. Marya had been right about the exodus, politicos prudently putting some distance between themselves and ground zero. Of course, the explanation was that they wanted to be with their families in this time of tragedy, and their families happened to be out of town, or at least were able to catch up with them there.

The vice-president didn’t live through the hour. They watched the chief justice swear in Cool Moon Davis, inside a fast helicopter headed for Camp David. Then they saw a few minutes’ coverage of the traditional riot in Washington, confined to a few blocks downtown, the looting and arson quickly discouraged by armored shock troops from the D.C. Police department and an air-mobile civil disturbance unit from the National Guard. No soldiers or police were hurt.

“I’m going to watch the rest of this at home,” Rory said. “I feel like people are looking at me. You’re welcome to come along.”

“Thanks,” Marya said. “I wouldn’t mind getting away, either. Of course they’ll call as soon as I get my shoes off.”

They stopped by Pepe’s table on their way out. “Don’t bother coming in tomorrow,” she said. “It’ll just be chaos. I’ll call if anything comes up.”

Pepe

“Thanks, Rory.” They nodded at each other for a moment, not able to say anything, and she left with the newsie.

“Will you come stay with me tonight?” Lisa Marie said hoarsely. “I just can’t…”

“Sure.” He was holding her hand, and briefly clasped it with his other. “Nobody should be alone now.”

“I never even liked her,” she said. “Did anybody you know?” Pepe shook his head. “But this is too horrible.”

“It’s not like America,” Pepe said. “I guess it is now, but it’s the sort of thing that happens in little dictatorships. Despot of the month.”

“I wonder whether that old man will be able to hold things together.” Davis was standing in a press room now, his hand to his ear, relaying his staff’s answers to questions.

“He won’t have to do much. I don’t suppose he’s made an unassisted decision in the past decade. If we make it through the next few hours, things will get sorted out.”

“You think the Islamic Jihad might…”

“If I were him, I’d be more worried about the Democrats than the Muslims. They probably have a competency challenge all worked out. If I were them, I’d wait a decent interval, and give him a chance to do some really unforgivable things. Then start the impeachment process, more in sorrow than in anger.”

She tilted her head at him. “You really know a lot about American politics.”

“More than I do about Cuban. I had to study it for the blue card, and got kind of fascinated.” He made a mental note to watch his step, not reveal too much sophistication. Lisa Marie was no danger, but there would be a lot of press and government around soon.

“Your aliens.” She pointed at the cube.

Davis peered intently. “Would you repeat the question?” A reporter asked whether he intended to follow LaSalle’s aggressive strategy toward the Coming.

He looked at her with robotic blankness for a long moment, an expression that was already familiar. “I don’t want to say anything specific about that. Anything at all.”

Aurora

“Anything at all. My people are looking into it.” It was curious to hear Davis’s voice coining out of her office. She thought she’d locked it. Rory had dropped by with Marya to see whether Norm might be there, not wanting to bike home through the rain. Inside, there were two strangers watching the new president on the wall cube.

“Hello? Can I do something for you?”

The short one clicked a remote and the president disappeared. They were in identical government-gray suits. The short one was bland, normal looking, but the other was over seven feet tall, his white hair trimmed to within a millimeter of his skull. She had seen him around, the past month.

They both produced identification. “I’m Special Agent Jerry Harp of the CIA,” the giant said. The other identified himself as Howard Irving, FBI.

“You didn’t just fly down,” Marya said. “You’ve been here awhile. You were both at the—”

“We have no business with you, Ms. Washington,” the FBI man said. “We would like to speak with Dr. Bell alone.”

“I don’t think so,” Rory said. “This is my office, and I say who stays or goes. Unless I’m under arrest.”

“We’re only concerned about national security,” the tall man said in low, measured tones. “Some of what we have to ask you about cannot be made public. Not yet, at least.”

“I’ll be down in the lounge,” Marya said to Rory. “You’ve got my number.”

“This won’t take long,” the FBI man said.

Marya said, “Sure,” and he closed the door behind her.

“You talked with the president and Grayson Pauling this morning,” the tall man said.

“Along with the governor, the chancellor, and the dean of science. I’m the small fish in the pond. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

“In due course,” the FBI man said. “This is like interviewing witnesses to an accident, or a crime scene. Best to get their separate impressions, before they talk to each other.”

“Why don’t you just play back the crystal? Surely they keep records.”

The FBI man shook his head. “It was profoundly encrypted, scrambled. If you made a copy, you’ll find it’s just white noise.”

“Unless you made an audio recording, independent of the VR projector/receiver,” the CIA man said. “You didn’t do that, did you?”

“In fact, it didn’t occur to me. I’m really more of an astronomer than a spy.” She sat down behind her desk and looked up at him. “How could they do that, though?”

“You question the president’s right to—” the FBI man started.

“No, no—I mean physically. The signal had to be decrypted on this end. Why couldn’t we make a crystal of it then?”

The tall one stared at her for a moment before answering. “That was from my shop. Before you spoke to the president the first time, we modified the equipment in your room. I don’t understand the electronics, but if the signal from the White House is scrambled, you only see a transient virtual image. The signal that gets to the copy head is still scrambled.

“Of course the sound waves do exist. So an audio recorder that wasn’t plugged into the system would have picked it up. A videocam would’ve gotten the sound, too, though the only image would be of you three actually in the room.” He grimaced. “If we were as sneaky as people think we are, we could have bugged the room when we installed the rescrambler.”

“But you didn’t think we were that important.”

“We didn’t know the president’s science adviser was a lunatic,” the FBI man said. “We might have kept closer tabs on him.”

“I’m not sure who the lunatic was,” Rory said. “I’ll leave that up to the history books.”

“You don’t mean you condone this mass assassination.”

“Howard,” the CIA man said, “let’s not—”

“I don’t condone it, but I can appreciate why the president’s behavior drove Pauling to desperate measures.”

“So you would have done it, too?” The FBI man was reddening. “If you could have killed the president, you would have done it, too?”

“That’s a ridiculous question.”

“Howard…”

“No, it’s not! If you could have killed the president, would you?”

Rory considered refusing to answer. “It honestly wouldn’t have crossed my mind. I would have liked to sit with her and talk, woman to woman. She was dangerously wrong.”

“Dangerous enough to die?”

“Pauling thought so.” She looked up at the CIA man. “So what do you want from me? It’s been a long day already, and I want to go home.”

“Just a description of what passed between the president and Grayson Pauling. There weren’t any other administration people there, were there?”

“Not in view. Unless you count the governor of Florida. He was a better team player than Pauling. She used that term when she got exasperated at him: ‘You used to be a team player’ or something.”

“They argued in front of you?” the CIA man said. “Please start at the beginning.”

Rory went back to the original bombshell, LaSalle essentially saying that the secretary of defense had come up with this great idea. The conversation, or argument, had only lasted a few minutes, and she was pretty sure she remembered it accurately.

“So if you were to sum up Pauling’s attitude, his mood?”

“He was quiet and patient. Quietly exasperated, like a teacher or a parent. Which drove LaSalle to the outburst of temper that ended the conversation.”

“Quietly insane,” the FBI man said.

“Why don’t you go talk to the governor?” Rory snapped. “He’ll agree with you, and then we can all go home.” She turned back to the tall man. “I’ve heard that people often become remarkably calm once they’ve made up their mind to commit suicide. He must have known about the noon meeting; I suppose he may have already decided he had to die.”

“And destroy the government.” The CIA man shook his head. “You may be right. In another hundred years, maybe less, people will see this as an act of supreme sacrifice.”

“Maybe one month,” Rory said. “When the aliens don’t destroy us out of hand.”

“Which they may still do.” He checked his watch. “Almost time for Whittier, Howard.”

“What, with her you made an appointment?”

He nodded. “We don’t have a key to her office,” the FBI man said.

She followed them down the hall and turned into the lounge, where Marya was watching the cube, by herself, snacking on cheese and crackers from the machine.

Marya

“That didn’t take long.” She offered Rory some cheese and crackers.

Rory shook her head—“No appetite”—and got a ball of juice from the wall dispenser and poured it into a plastic cup. “Not much to tell them. That conference this morning didn’t go five minutes, and that’s what they were interested in—evidently the White House scrambling is pretty sophisticated; the CIA didn’t have a clue what went on, and they’re the ones who installed the descrambler here.”

“You told them the truth, of course.”

Rory eased back onto a worn couch. “Yeah, that our late great president was a demented fruitcake, which seems to have been news to the FBI man.”

“They ask you about Pauling? That’s what CNN’s obsessing on now.”

“A little. The CIA guy even admitted that someday he might be seen as a hero, a martyr.”

“That’s not what they’re saying here. They’ve dug up men and women who were in the service with him, going on about how fanatical and unpredictable he was.”

“That’s probably why LaSalle picked him. Like unto like.” She took a sip of juice and frowned at it. “Warm. He didn’t come on that way, though. He was the reasonable one, trying to keep dear Carly from courting votes by destroying the human race.”

Marya looked at her watch. “They want me to do a five-minute spot sometime today. It won’t be live; we can wait awhile.”

Rory dumped the cup in the recycler next to the couch. “Crew downstairs?”

“Better be.”

“Let’s just do it and go put our feet up at my place. Turn on the cube and watch Washington get nuked.”

“Is there anything you don’t want me to ask you?”

“No.” Rory stood and stretched. “God, no. I have a feeling truth, is going to be in short supply for a while. Anything we can do to keep Davis from launching those weapons, we ought to do.”

“They didn’t tell you not to talk about this morning?”

“I don’t really give a shit. What can they do to me?” She pushed open the door. “Rhetorical question. They can pull off my toenails and make me eat them. But I don’t think they will.”

They took the elevator down to the first floor, where two cameramen were watching CNN on a small portable cube. “Let’s gear up, guys. Five-minute spot.”

She looked at the large flatscreen that provided the interview backdrop. It had the logo of the Committee on the Coming, two concentric Cs with a question mark inside. “Don’t want this one, Deeb. You got one of the White House ruins?”

“Just take a minute. I’ll run back and snatch one from CNN. You want to thumbprint it?”

“Sure.” When the picture appeared, Marya put her thumb in a box in the lower right corner. A list of options appeared and she touched the first one, one-time reproduction rights. It chimed and the list and box disappeared.

Rory was already seated at one of two black leather chairs that faced one another across a low table in front of a blue screen. Marya whistled at the cameras. “Position A, all three.” She stepped aside while one of the small cameras rolled onto its mark. The man who wasn’t Deeb set down glasses of ice water.

She dropped into the other chair and looked at herself in the screen, patting her hair reflexively. She could be a frazzled mess and the editor would automatically fix the image. “No pressure, but let’s try for one take and bust outta here. Deeb, when I look at you, maybe four minutes thirty, we want the logo back, and then segue into the deep space shot.”

“Got it,” he said. “Editor on line now.”

“Good.” She took a page of scribbled notes out of a breast pocket and smoothed it on the table. She looked at the wall clock behind Rory. “Eight seconds.” She shook her head. “No, wait. Cameras off. We’re two minutes from the hour. Rory, if I can clear it, do you mind if we go live?”

“I’m a teacher. I usually go live.”

She smiled and pushed a button on her phone. “Fez, this is Marya. Scramble.” She pushed another button. “Loud and clear. Look, you got the feds there? Figures. Look, I’ve got a White House angle that we don’t want reviewed; they’d gut it or even cancel it.” She nodded. “Dr. Bell down here talked with LaSalle and Pauling this morning. Can you give me five live ninety seconds after the hour?” She laughed. “Owe you one, babe.” She set the phone down and looked at the cameraman. “You didn’t hear that, right?”

“Hear what?” Deeb said.

“Yeah, well, go take a leak for about a minute. Be back by two.” They hustled out. “Rory, the broadcasts are going through a White House censor with a five-second delay. What they can do in New York is accidentally push the wrong buttons and leave the room. So this interview, scheduled for seven, comes in live instead, on a circuit that’s not controlled by the White House remote.

“I don’t know how long we’ll have before they’re able to cut us off. So I’ll ask the most important questions first.”

“We might not even get on,” Rory said. “This room is probably bugged by the CIA.”

“Hmm. They probably wouldn’t have anybody live listening in, though. We’ll find out.” The two men came back in and she whistled the cameras to start. She looked at the main camera. “We’re going to take five minutes, commencing fourteen-oh-one-thirty.”

Rory twisted around to look at the clock and then settled into an interviewee posture.

Marya faced the camera and her expression became serious, then grim: “Good evening. This is Marya Washington coming to you from Gainesville, Florida. This afternoon I talked with Professor Aurora Bell, who is chief administrator of the Committee on the Coming.

“This morning, Dr. Bell had a VR conference call from the White House. Were there other witnesses to the call, Professor?”

“Oh, yes. The governor of Florida, the chancellor of this university, and… another professor. And science adviser Grayson Pauling.”

“Did anything happen between the president and Pauling that might have presaged today’s tragic events?”

“In retrospect, yes.” She shook her head at the memory. “She blew up at him. At all of us, actually.”

“What did you say?”

“LaSalle talked about orbiting three antimissile weapons, to destroy the alien spaceship if it made a wrong move. I think it was the DOD’s idea, but she was behind it a hundred percent.

“This was before the new message came in. Even so, we argued that it would be suicide. The aliens’ technology is so superior to ours that we would be like mice attacking an elephant. Ants.”

Rory’s phone was buzzing; she took it out of her pocket and skimmed it across the room.

“And Pauling was on your side?”

“As any reasonable person would be. She was annoyed at him, and then openly angry. Pauling implied that the rationale for orbiting these weapons was to have them flying over Europe. Over France, in case we did decide to enter the war. If the war happens.”

“Do you agree?”

“I don’t know much about politics. If I were French I’d be nervous. But the issue isn’t Earth politics.”

“Especially in light of the new message.”

“If they believe it. The president didn’t.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Oh yes. She called me back, right after the new message came out.”

“Really!”

“She was mad as a hornet. ‘I don’t know how you did it, but it’s not going to work.’”

“Well, the timing is interesting.”

“Yes, but nobody on Earth could have done it. The signal started our way long before the conference call.”

“We’re off,” Deeb said. “We had a second of white noise, and they cut to a commercial.”

“Well, shit. Erase it back to Dr. Bell saying ‘conference call,’ and we’ll continue as if nothing’s happened. Okay?”

“Sure,” Rory said. “It might be aired eventually.”

“By historians.”

“In five,” Deeb said, holding out five fingers and folding them one at a time.

“Well, suppose the president were right, and it was a hoax. The hoaxers—one of whom would have to be you, or someone else who witnessed the conference call, could have had the second message made up long ago, and just signaled for it to be sent.”

“But not from way beyond the solar system. It would take more than a day for the signal to get there, and more than a day for the message to get back. Parallax on the signal—comparing the angle of it from two different positions—proves how far away the aliens are.”

“But a really paranoid person would point out that we have to take your word for that—yours and some other scientists’ on the Moon. They could be in on it, too.”

Rory smiled. “You could have said that, a month or two ago. But now it’s close enough for two sites on Earth to triangulate it. It’s a little fantastic to think of a conspiracy involving every astronomer in the world.” Off-camera, Marya nodded to Deeb.

“Don’t think nobody will suggest it, Dr. Bell. So… would you have any advice for President Davis?”

“Only the obvious: listen to the experts. LaSalle’s problem, and finally her undoing, was that she surrounded herself with yes-men, and then followed their advice when they parroted her views.”

“Pauling the exception.”

“Which became obvious. She might have saved her life by replacing him. Though as Pauling said in his… suicide note, she would have died a month later, along with the rest of humanity.”

“And suppose Davis does follow her example, and orbits these weapons?”

“I suspect the aliens won’t even bother demonstrating with Phobos. They’ll just destroy us out of hand.”

“A terrible thing to contemplate… thank you, Dr. Bell, for being with us on this strange and awful day. This is Marya Washington, reporting from Gainesville, Florida.”

“Out,” Deeb said.

“Just wrap it and send it on up with no comment,” Marya said. “As if.”

“You’re going to be in real trouble over this,” Rory said.

“All of us. Maybe they’ll put up a statue someday.” She shook a pill out of a vial and took it with the ice water.

She leaned back. “Off the record. It could work, couldn’t it?”

“The maser weapon? It’s never really been tested.”

“I mean in principle. It goes at the speed of light, right? The alien ship wouldn’t have any warning.”

“Assuming there’s only one alien ship, and the beam doesn’t miss, and they don’t have any defense against twenty-first-century weapons. A lot of assumptions.”

“Just trying to look at the bright side.”

“Oh, yeah.” Rory crossed the room and picked up her buzzing phone. “Buenas.”

It was the chancellor. “Rory, what did you do? The governor’s been on the phone screaming at me. He wants you fired immediately, yesterday!”

She played dumb. “Because of this morning?”

“He just saw you on the cube. Says you betrayed him and the country and the sacred memory of the president. Divulged top secret information.”

“I don’t have clearance to get top secret information. Was this an interview?”

“Yes, with that black New York woman.”

“Well, I did an interview. But it won’t be aired until seven o’clock tonight.”

“That might be what they told you. But the governor sure as hell saw it.”

“So I’m fired? Just like that?”

“No, no. But I have to give you a sabbatical, get you out of the public eye. Out of the line of fire.”

“No longer head of the committee?”

“No. In fact, off the committee altogether. You have other things to pursue—go do them until mid-January. Full pay. You don’t have any classes this semester?”

“No, because—”

“So do some research. Preferably somewhere far away. Turn your phone off and disappear.”

“Is that an order, Mal?”

“You know it’s not. Just advice, good advice.” His voice was tight. “For all of us, Rory. You should’ve heard the governor. Our budget’s in committee! He’s liable to do anything.”

“Okay, I’m out. Won’t make a fuss over it. Can I choose my own successor?”

“Sure, of course. Thanks, Rory. I know you could fight it.”

“And win. Academic freedom.” She took a deep breath. “Pepe Parker would be the logical successor. I’ll see whether he wants the job.”

“I owe you for this, Rory. I haven’t seen the interview myself…”

“The governor’s probably right. I was not respectful of the late president. But then she was a lunatic.”

“Rory…”

“I’m off-camera. Are you?”

“Sure.”

“I’m coming to think that Pauling was a brave man. He didn’t see any other option, so he gave his life to save the world. You were there, Mal. Am I wrong?”

There was a short silence. “No. I don’t think you’re wrong. But don’t ask me to back you up, not until after the governor signs the budget.”

“Understandable. I’ll call Pepe.” She pushed the “off” button without saying good-bye and stood there looking at the phone. The other three were looking at her.

“You got the axe?” Marya said.

“Yeah. Until the aliens go home or the world ends, or whatever.” She punched two keys.

Pepe

His phone buzzed but he didn’t answer it. His boss was on the cube, committing political suicide.

“…nobody on Earth could have done it. The signal started our way long before the conference call—” The cube went blank and Carl Lamb appeared. “That was Professor Aurora Bell, in a transmission—” Pepe stabbed a finger at the phone. “Buenas?”

“Pepe…” It was Rory. “The shit has really hit the fan.”

“I just saw it.”

“The governor wants me tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. You want my job?”

“You make it sound so attractive.”

“I’m serious. Mal Barrett just put me on sabbatical indefinitely. Nobody else but you can run the thing.”

He knew that, of course. “Sure, okay. Where are you now?”

“Up at the office.”

“I’ll be right up. Buenas?”

“Sí, buenas.” He turned off the phone and slipped it back into his pocket.

“What was that?” Lisa Marie said.

“My boss. Ex-boss.” He finished off his beer and set the mug down with a thump. “Looks like I’ve been promoted.” He took out a card and slid it through the pay slot. “I’ve gotta run. Don’t know how long this will be. I will be with you tonight, though, as soon as I can get free. Call when I know.”

She nodded. “Dinner if you can. I’ll get us some steaks or something.”

“Deal.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Buenas.”

“Sí, buenas. Muy buena suerte.”

He went a block and a half before he realized he’d left his umbrella back at the café. It wasn’t raining hard, though, and Lisa Marie could use it.

This was how it happened. Rory sacrificed her job, making sure the world knew the truth. So he would be standing down at the Cape with President Davis, to meet the supposed aliens.

He passed a woman who was sitting on a park bench, sobbing, her face in her hands. Her white dress, saturated with rain, revealed her alluring figure. He vaguely recognized her—a student?—and slowed to say something, but then went on. She didn’t want company in her grief.

Gabrielle

She heard his steps hesitate—please stop, talk to me, hold me—but he didn’t stop, would she? Probably, it didn’t happen all that often, you come home and find your cat lying dead, and then the president and all those others, she had poor Happy’s body in a shoebox and didn’t know what to do with it.

Am I being punished for sin, is my mother’s God really up there counting the times I put a camera up my cunt to pay the bills? No, cats die, presidents die, snap out of it, you know better, you know better. Her nose was running and she didn’t have anything in her purse; she blew into her wet hand and scraped the mucus onto the bottom of the park bench, then splashed her palm in the puddle at her feet, and rubbed her nose hard against her forearm.

Aliens dropping out of the sky, a science father figure blows up himself and everybody in the room, a perfectly good cat drops over dead, and I’m ten minutes late for an anal-intercourse shoot. Which I’m not going to do. Even if it means my job. Louis is gentle but he’s just too big around. It’s not the proper use for that opening; things are supposed to come out, not go in.

“Oh, sweetheart. Things can’t be that bad.”

She wiped her eyes and looked up. It was the old lady with the shopping cart. She sat down next to her. “What is it that’s so bad?”

She looked into the old kind face. “My cat died.”

“Oh, my.” She lifted a corner of the sodden shoebox and looked inside. “What was her name?”

“His name. Happy.”

“Never had a boy cat. Lots of girl cats. You want one?”

“Not now, no. Thank you, no.”

“You got cat people and dog people, you know? My husband, he was a dog person. One reason I had to get rid of him.”

Gabrielle smiled. “He take the dog with him?”

“No, that would be cruel. I kept the dog, even though he smelled bad.” She leaned close and whispered. “He had gas. Both of them did.”

Gabrielle wiped her eyes. “How long ago was that?”

“Thirty-some years, I guess. Buried him when Hull was president. Hardly anybody had the cube back then.”

“You still think about the poor thing.”

“Oh, yeah. Buried him under a big piece of plywood out in the swamp. Mall there now.”

“You couldn’t just bury him in the backyard?”

“No. Gosh and golly. Way too big. Laws, too.”

“There are laws about burying dogs?”

She nodded slowly. “Some kinds.” She looked over Gabrielle’s shoulder. “Afternoon, Officer.”

Rabin

He touched the brim of his plastic cap. “Good afternoon, Suzy Q. Are you ladies all right?”

“Nobody’s all right, Officer. Nobody’s all wrong, nobody’s all right. We all of us stuck in the middle.”

He smiled a little. “It’s a hard day for everybody. Can’t I give you a ride to the shelter?”

“We gone through that before, Officer. I don’t want nobody preachin’ at me.”

“You could stand it for a little while. It’s a roof over your head.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my head.”

He held up a hand. “I just don’t want you to get pneumonia again. You remember two years ago?”

“I remember eighty years ago. Don’t you worry about me.”

“She won’t catch pneumonia from exposure,” the beautiful woman said. She touched the old woman’s hand. “But he’s right. You should get out of this rain.”

“You should, too, ma’am. You’re not exactly dressed for this.”

“No.” She startled him by taking off her hair and wringing it out. “What I’m dressed for is getting fucked in the ass.”

“What?”

“People do it,” Suzy Q. said in her defense. “Where you been all these years?”

Rabin swallowed a couple of times. “Sure. But you’re wet. You’re cold and wet.”

The beautiful woman patted her hair into place and favored him with a brilliant smile. “It’s a living. Not the cold and wet. The other.”

“You aren’t a whore, are you?” Suzy Q. said.

“No. No, I’m an actress. And a medical student.” She looked up at Rabin. “No laws broken. I just do cube for the Institute of Sexual Studies here.” Still smiling, she started to cry. “Could you do me a favor? Could you do something with my cat?”

“¿Perdón?”

She pushed the shoebox an inch toward him. “My cat died. He just died, with the president. I don’t know what to do with him. And I don’t want to go to work and I wish it would stop raining.”

He carefully picked up the sodden box. “Sure, don’t worry about it. But will you do something for me?”

“Sure. That’s what I do, is do things for men.”

“Get yourself and Suzy inside somewhere. I don’t want her to die on my shift.”

“Okay. Is that a deal, Suzy?”

“Okay. Let’s get a cuppa coffee.” They headed toward Main Street, the beautiful woman pushing the cart. She wasn’t wearing underwear, and her buttocks clung to the translucent fabric, rolling. Rabin’s heterosexual fraction watched with interest. What would it be like to do that with a woman? Just different scenery, he supposed.

His civilian phone rang. He wiggled it out of his pocket. “Yeah?”

“Qabil, this is Felicity.”

“What?” The dispatcher? Why wasn’t she calling on the shoulder unit?

“I’m downstairs, on the pay phone. Look, you’re friends with Norman Bell.”

“Well, I…”

“You’re friends. He and his wife have to disappear right now. I was just up in the boss’s office and he got a call from some FBI guy. The feds are gonna pick them up tonight and take them to Washington for questioning.”

“About what?”

“You didn’t see the cube? Of course not. Look, they’re suspected of being foreign agents. For France or her allies.”

“What bullshit!”

“Yeah, and they know it is. He joked about it; they just want to lock her up and throw away the key. It’s serious, Qabil. A presidential order. From that senile old Indian.”

“Allah. Thanks, Felicity. I’ll call him right away.”

Norman

Exasperated, Norman hit the “save” button on the Roland and touched the phone screen. It stayed blank.

“Turn off your house,” said a voice he didn’t recognize. Another blackmailer?

“House, turn yourself off for thirty minutes.” It chimed. “Okay. Who are you?”

There was a click, the distorter going off, and a heavy sigh. “Norm, it’s Qabil. There’s real trouble.”

“Yeah? ¿Qué pasa?”

“Is Rory home?”

“No. I expect her any minute.”

“You have to pack up and leave as soon as she gets home. The FBI’s going to pick you up tonight, take you to Washington and bury you.”

“What, that damned interview?”

“I guess; I didn’t see it. They claim you’re agents, working for France.”

“For France? We’ve never even been there.”

“Well, you can stay at home and talk it over with them, or you can be missing. That’s what I’d advise. It’s not like the cube; these guys are a law unto themselves.”

“So I’ve heard. How long do we have?”

“Maybe until dark. I’d leave as soon as possible. Do you have cash?”

“A little.”

“What I’d do… take a cab down to Oaks and max out the ATM, then get on the first train to Archer. From there you can use cash to get anywhere, short trips. Go to Canada or Mexico, someplace you don’t need a passport.”

“But she didn’t break any law.”

“All I know is that the FBI is after her. I think they can find a law.”

“Jesus. When it rains, it pours.”

“Don’t worry about the rain. Just move as fast as you can.”

Norman had to smile. How long did you have to live in a country before you picked up the catchphrases? “Okay. If Rory agrees, we’ll be out long before dark.”

“If she doesn’t agree, you leave by yourself, okay? All this shit in Washington.”

“Sure. I’ll get packing. Buenas.” Qabil said good-bye and Norman turned off the phone. Of course he wouldn’t really leave Rory behind. Both or neither of them would go to Washington. To be buried. In shit? He wondered what Qabil meant by that.

He’d pack for both of them, though. He set out two bags, small enough for carry-on, on the bed, and neatly stacked warm-weather clothing in each. He assumed Rory would rather go to Mexico, for the winter, than Canada. Besides, she didn’t speak Canadian.

With both of them packed, he carefully lifted out the contents of Rory’s bag. Let her check through and make changes.

She should be here by now, he thought. He went to the phone and punched RR, Rory roving.

“Buenas?” No picture, of course.

“Where are you, darling?”

“In a cab. Home in two minutes. Where did you think I’d be?”

“Just making sure.”

“How are you taking it?”

“Um… not on the phone. Talk to you in two minutes.” He pushed the “off” button and rummaged through the drawer under the phone for a joint. It was old and dry. He found a match and lit it. Took one puff and stabbed it out in the sink. Wrong direction. He poured a glass of port and sipped it, waiting, thinking.

This might not have anything to do with the interview. The FBI might have linked him and Rory to whatever that superweapon was, that may or may not have been an invention of Pepe’s.

The doorknob rattled and Rory knocked. Of course her thumb-print didn’t unlock it unless the house was on. He went down the hall and opened the door.

Aurora

“What, is the house off?”

Norm held the door open and shut it behind her. “Yeah. The shit has hit.”

She nodded. “I know. Goddamn governor on top of everything else. But why the house?”

“The governor?”

“Yeah. Why’s the house off?”

“The FBI. What did the governor do?”

Rory rubbed her wet hair with both hands. “The governor got me fired, you know that? Did he call the FBI?”

“Fired?”

“You didn’t know.” Norman opened both hands and made a noise. “The governor leaned on Mal because of an interview I did this morning. So I’m on sabbatical. What does the FBI have to do with it?”

They were in the breakfast nook. “Sit down. Let me get you something to drink.”

She sat down. “Just water. What’s the FBI? The assassination?”

“Somebody got assassinated?”

She kneaded her forehead. “Of course. Why would you know? The president and all her cabinet, killed in a bomb blast. The vice-president, too.”

“My God. Bombed! Was it France?”

“No. Grayson Pauling carried a briefcase full of explosive into a cabinet meeting. Suicide-murder.”

“Pauling.”

“He was serious about changing the agenda. Lunatic, martyr, I don’t have it sorted out. What about the FBI now?”

He got a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. “Qabil called.”

“Oh, good. That’s all we need.”

“No. That’s not it. He found out, as a cop, down at the station, he heard the FBI is coming to get you. Take you to Washington.”

“Oh, shit.” She took the water but didn’t drink. “They can’t do that. I didn’t break any law.”

Norm sat across from her with a small glass of wine. “I don’t know. Maybe we could talk our way out of it. What Qabil said is they think we’re agents for France—”

“We’ve never been to France!”

“Verdad. I think they know that. It’s just an excuse.”

“Was it before or after the assassination?”

“Just now. I think Qabil assumed I knew about the president dying.”

She shook her head. “State of emergency, I guess. But do you really think they can just call us spies and lock us up?”

“I don’t know. That’s what Qabil thinks. And he’s sort of in their line of work.”

“Oh, hell. Double hell.” She slid the water bottle back and forth in a small arc. “Is that port you’re drinking?”

“Get you some?”

“Ah, no.” She threw out the water and went to the refrigerator and squeezed herself a tumblerful of the plonk. “So what does your boyfriend recommend that we do?”

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just looking out for us.”

“I’m sorry.” She sat down and leaned into her hands; her voice was muffled. “It’s been such a day.”

“And it’s just begun.”

She sipped the wine. “Qabil said?”

“He said we should disappear. Before night. Stay on local transport so we can pay cash, and make our way to a country that doesn’t need a passport.”

“Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean?”

“You’ll do it?”

“I’d like about thirty seconds to think about it.”

“Go ahead. I’m going to pack some music cubes.”

“Packing? You’d leave without me?”

“Of course not. I just want to be ready if you decide to go. I can hear the hounds yapping.” He found a cheap plastic box that held a hundred cubes, and started at the beginning, Antonini.

“Oh, hell. Put some jazz in there for me.” She stood up. “I’ll pack some clothes.”

“I already put out a few things. Warm weather?”

“Yeah. Canada doesn’t really appeal.”

He heard her opening and closing drawers, slamming them. “How about Mexico?”

“Cuba’s closer,” she said. “Some stuff I wanted to check there, too.”

He pulled a couple of handfuls of cubes from her jazz collection, totally random. “Cuba it is.” They would have to avoid the Orlando-Miami monorail, unfortunately; that was ticketed like a plane. Have to zigzag their way down.

He took the cube box and a small player into the bedroom and put them in his bag. Rory was almost packed, rattling around in the bathroom. “You have the sunscreen?” she said.

“Both kinds, yeah. Though I guess we could buy it in Cuba.”

Rory came out with a plastic bag of toiletries, put it in the travel bag, and zipped it closed. “So. You ready?”

“Yes.” He held out a hand. “I’ll take your bag.

“I can—”

“On my bicycle. We can’t risk a cab.”

“Oh, joy.” She handed him the bag. “Mother said if I married you I was in for a rough ride. But bicycling through the rain in December?”

“Fleeing the FBI. Sort of strains your sense of humor, doesn’t it.”

It wasn’t too bad, though. The rain was a cool mist, and they only had to go a mile, to the Oaks substation.

They left the bicycles unlocked, trusting that it wouldn’t take long for thieves to remove that particular bit of evidence of their flight, and walked into the venerable, not to say crumbling, mall.

It had seen better days, most of them more than a half century before. A whole block of stores had been demolished, their walls knocked down, to make space for a huge flea market, and that drew more customers than the low-rent purveyors of cheap imported clothing and sexual paraphernalia.

There was a weird youth subculture that had taken over one part—the beatniks, who dressed in century-old fashion and smoked incessantly while listening to century-old music. Rory liked the sound of it as they walked by, but it made Norman cringe. They had to go through there to get to the ATMs.

They thumbed two machines to get the maximum from different accounts, four thousand dollars each. The machines didn’t hold any denomination larger than one hundred, though, so they wound up with a conspicuously large wad of bills.

Rory looked around. “Uh-oh.” She turned back to the machine. “There’s a guy staring at us. From the café.”

Norm glanced sideways. “Yeah, I see him in Nick’s sometimes. Always writing in that notebook.”

“Yeah. Now that you mention it.”

The historian

They don’t look like the kind of people who come down to the Oaks, he thought, familiar from somewhere. The Greek restaurant. He drank off the rest of his strong sweet coffee while it was still warm. He snapped his fingers twice to get the waitress’s attention—a very local custom—and shook a pseudo-Camel out of its package. He lit it with a wooden match and got a sudden rush of THC. Real tobacco must have been something.

He had been staring for a half hour at the image of .the Gainesville Sun for 24 November 1963, the last time a president had been assassinated. Maybe getting back to work would cut through the feelings of despair and helplessness. He had gotten up to the year before the year he was born.

He tried to ignore the old-fashioned but seductive Dave Brubeck chordings and rhythms, and toggled through the two old newspaper articles that were relevant to this part: