Joe Haldeman - The Coming

The stock market went into a two-day spasm and settled back into a period of growth, slightly accelerated. RadioShack International coined money with an aimable radio antenna that you could point to any spot in the heavens, and pick up alien broadcasts. So far the aliens had only “broadcast” in a beam of light, but surely they’d discover radio before long. Outfits that sold survival gear also prospered; one called Take Control (actually a subsidiary of L. L. Bean) bought short-term leases in malls across America, selling complicated knives, solar collectors, dried (“L. L. Brand”) beans, and five-gallon jugs of tap water.

There were the usual riots in the usual countries, controlled by the usual methods, which provoked the usual responses. But even the most coolheaded and rational looked toward Christmas and the New Year, and wondered if there would be a January, after the first of the month.

Things did calm down for Aurora Bell, after the first week or so. She became science coordinator for the Committee on the Coming, which involved little enough science, in the absence of any new data.

Deedee Whittier had a nervous month, wondering whether Ybor would keep his silence.

Ybor woke to the chiming and looked at the clock set into the wall, as if it might reveal a surprise: 0700 1 NOV 54, one month after he’d been arrested.

He put his feet on the cold cement floor and rubbed his face. The walls were blue this morning. Powder blue or baby blue. It was better than the pink.

The other inmates were making getting-up noises. He added his bit to the symphony of splashes and flushes. Brushed his teeth; rubbed shaving cream on and rinsed off his stubble. He sat back down.

At least he had a measure of privacy, behind his white-painted bars, since Manny had walked. Manny, who until two days ago had occupied the cell across the way, was a wild-eyed kid from Ohio, come to Florida for the drugs. Wound up in this “pussy prison,” no walls. Just a white line painted on the ground. Cross that line and they send you to a real prison. He’d rather put up with the bullshit, thank you.

So Manny might be in Raiford by now, four in a cell with murderers and rapists. Or he might be back in Dayton. He’d left inside a driverless bread truck. It probably took him exactly as far as the gate.

What to do for the hour before the door unlocked for breakfast? He was allowed to keep two books at a time. Biophysics of Cell Formation and Don Quijote, Segunda Parte. Neither one appealed this early.

He lay back down and tried to remember heaven. He would do his two years and go out and score again, if not José y Maria , then White Cloud or Vista Interminable, the other local sperm-based DDs. The very notion of rehab revealed their ignorance. Like being rehabilitated from being a twin. From being human.

There had been no physical withdrawal. He’d listened to the agonies men went through in the other cells, and felt compassion for them, but not empathy. His loss was deep and spiritual, like losing a parent or a brother. It didn’t make him scream or cry or puke. It made him patient in his grief. If you lost a person, he was gone for good. Ybor could go to a lab and jerk out a few cc’s of himself, and have his powerful brother back the next day.

Meanwhile he would measure out his days here, loneliness and labor, neither intolerable. He put in six office hours a day, working on the prison’s computers, and then two “work” hours in the laundry or kitchen.

He was learning interesting things about the computer system. He couldn’t erase the record of his sentence—that was backed up in too many outside systems—but his record here would be of a model “patient,” who emerged drug-free and eager to face the world.

His life was his own the rest of the time, as long as he stayed inside the white line and returned to his “unit” after dinner. He read a lot in the library and, for a couple of weeks, watched the cube with the other patients. But the cube, which he’d ignored all his adult life, proved dangerously addictive. He’d left it for the others to enjoy.

So he didn’t see the news. He probably knew less about the Coming than any adult in Gainesville. Which suited him. If Whittier hadn’t gotten a hair up her ass about Rory Bell, he wouldn’t be in here.

A metallic chatter broke his reverie. The fat trusty Bobón was rattling his baton on the bars. Behind him, a man who looked vaguely familiar—Gregory Moore, the court-appointed lawyer who had so successfully defended him straight into this bunk.

“What’s with the beard?” Ybor said.

“Makes me look older,” Moore said. It did; it was white, while his hair was salt-and-pepper gray. “I’ve come to take you to an interview.” The trusty unlocked the door, and it slid up into the ceiling.

“Will it get me out of here?”

“Might get your sentence reduced. Your period of treatment.”

“Yeah, treatment. I’m cured, already.” He followed the lawyer out and walked down the corridor between him and Bobón. Carefully. The trusty’s stick was a neurotangler, and he liked using it. It didn’t hurt much, depending on how you fell, but could be embarrassing.

In prison movies, the other prisoners would hoot obscenities and bang their tin cups on the bars. At Alachua Rehabilitation Center, they had Styrofoam cups and a point system, and few serious criminals. Most of them glanced up momentarily from books or games, if they reacted at all to the parade.

“Left here,” the trusty said, and Ybor followed the lawyer through an unmarked door he’d never seen open before. He’d thought it was a storage room. It opened into a narrow damp corridor as long as a cell was deep, ending in another unmarked door. The lawyer held it open for Ybor and closed it behind himself. On the other side, the trusty locked it with a rattling of keys.

The room was white and spotless, starting to brighten with light from a picture window facing the horse pasture to the east. A door to the outside was open, metal screens keeping the bugs out.

Three hard chairs faced a plain white table. He recognized the man behind the table, and was startled. They’d never met face-to-face before, but everybody knew who he was.

“Willy Joe Capra,” he said. “You’re the mob guy.”

“You buy that shit?” He smiled. “There ain’t no such thing as a mob. ”

“This is still a funny place to make your acquaintance.” He took the chair directly in front of the man. Moore stood behind him, silent, until Willy Joe pointed to the chair on his left.

“I wouldn’t call this place funny,” Willy Joe said. “I was here, I’d just want out.”

“Sí. It could drive you crazy.” Willy Joe just stared. “Mr. Moore said you might be able to help me.”

“Yeah. You help me, I help you.”

Anything you want, Ybor thought. But he just nodded and waited. Looking at the screen door.

“At your hearing,” the lawyer said, “you testified that you were working on your own. A ‘fishing expedition,’ you called it.”

“The woman was on the news,” he said carefully. “I knew she had lots of money, or her husband did.”

“So you figured you’d find something and squeeze her,” Willy Joe said. “Just like that. Nobody put you up to it.”

“I do it all the time,” he said, which was true. “Usually just for fun.” So far, he hadn’t implicated his boss, figuring that silence would pay off in the long run.