The Coming Read online

  "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…"

  "Ye
ah, 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.