Joe Haldeman - The Coming

The professor gestured at him on the way out. “Buena suerte.”

Yeah, good luck to you, too. You’ll need it, mariposa.

The little crook never came in except on the first of the month, Norman had noticed. Not an early-morning person; he always looked as if he’d been up all night. This morning he looked especially tense, even though he’d evidently come out ahead on his horses.

What could his world be like? Up all night partying? Hanging out with the other hoods in some pool hall or after-hours bar. He was so macho, maybe he was gay. There were still clubs, Norman knew, though he hadn’t been into one in eight years, not since the federal law got pushed through. It was being tested for constitutionality in a dozen states—but not Florida, which had its own sodomy laws. Norman was not the crusader type, anyhow. And the clubs were for young people, alas. He’d feel like an old pervert.

They’d had a raid on one in downtown Southeast a couple of weeks ago. Norman had studied the coverage to see whether there was anyone he knew, and in fact there had been, but not among the men and boys arrested. One of the cops, Qabil Rabin. The one he’d been with when Rory found out. Though of course she hadn’t been surprised.

Qabil was a strange and beautiful man, just a year or two out of the army when they’d met. He’d been an enemy POW, captured in Desert Wind. But the army found out he’d been pressed into the Iraqi force against his will, going along with it just to protect his family in Kurdistan. When they were liberated, Qabil wound up in the American army, a three-way interpreter.

He came to UF for political science, police-department scholarship, but he minored in music, and Norman met him in a cross-cultural composition workshop. One thing led to another. They’d been together for over a year, when Rory came home unexpectedly and found them—in the kitchen, of all places.

Norman had seen him now and then over the years, and they exchanged careful signals of recognition. He had a wife and at least two children now, and a uniform that probably restricted his sex life. He hoped things were going well with him. There had been something like love between them, despite the differences in age and culture.

Thinking of him brought an interesting melody back to mind, a Middle Eastern thing in a Phrygian mode. He jotted down a pattern of notes on the back page of the mystery he was reading (trying not to read who done it) and went up to pay Nick.

Nick poured a plastic bowl of soup for Rory and sealed the top. “Things quietin’ down over there?”

“Not lately, anyhow. There’s a news special tonight, a one-month update. All the networks, crazy.”

“Yeah. Like a war ain’t enough news for ’em.”

“Not as long as we’re not in it.” Greece was, now.

Nick said something in Greek. “Grace a’ God,” he explained. “You say hi to the professor for me.”

“Sure thing.” Norman carried the soup out and secured it in his front basket, which had an adjustable holder for such things, and pedaled off.

He went a few blocks out of his way, to avoid traffic. Rory wouldn’t be in the office till eight, anyhow. He passed Rabin’s house without looking over at it.

Rory’s car was in its spot at eight-oh-one. Norman locked his bike in the rack by three spots that had “Permanent Press” signs. He was not quite old enough for that to make him think of trousers.

There was nobody in the office. He put the soup container in the fridge with a note—“Albóndigas—no avgolemono today”—and hurried back to his bike. He wasn’t avoiding Rory, but he wanted to get home and work on this Phrygian theme. While he pedaled, he searched his memory for a source besides the Middle East folk tune. Once he’d spent almost a week on a composition, and when he played it for Rory, she pointed out that it was a jingle from a beer commercial.

Home, he splashed some cold water on his face while the coffee reheated. Then he sat with the cello and played the theme in E and G and then settled on D.

He snapped on the Roland and keyboarded it, and worked out a preliminary pattern of chords and dischords. Then he set it to repeat, and played the cello along with it a few times. He turned off the machine and improvised for most of an hour, the coffee growing cold again while he was lost in thought.

He put the coffee back in to reheat again and with two fingers sketched out the elaborated theme, looking back and forth between the screen and the keyboard. He could midi it in straight from the cello, but knew from experience that it saved time to go through the Roland, since a note’s duration was recorded more precisely, and you didn’t have to clean up harmonics.

Sipping coffee, he played the twenty-four bars over and over, using a light pen to isolate four voices. He set the Roland to try different instrumentations, reluctantly admitting that the solo voice couldn’t be a cello. Clarinet or even oboe. He played with the phrasing of the oboe and turned it into a parody of Rimsky-Korsakov, which he saved as “Joke 1.” Then he returned to the original phrasing, dropped the solo an octave, and tried it with bassoon, and then bass clarinet. Odd but good. He saved it as “BC 1” and got up to stretch and walk around.

Tense. He locked himself in his office, undressed, and gave himself an erection. From a locked drawer he took a VR girdle and goggles and gloves, and a highly illegal, because it was homosexual, compact ring. It was called “Scherherazade”; he’d bought it because the boys reminded him of Qabil Rabin.

He set the CR on the stereo spindle and hurriedly fitted the girdle over his genitals, around his waist, and between his legs. He rolled on the gloves and slipped the goggles over his head. Put the earplugs in and said, “Go!”

It was a harem scene, seven young men lounging naked on silken pillows, chatting, sipping coffee from small cups.

There was a random function that determined which boy would show interest; if the customer wanted a different one, he could say “reset.” Norman liked them all.

One of them looked at him and smiled, and said something in Arabic. He set down his coffee and gracefully uncoiled from his supine position, becoming erect as he walked toward Norman.

A part of his mind always marveled at the technology. The boy gently took hold of his penis and cradled his testicles, and drifted to his knees.

Norman stared at the top of the boy’s close-cropped head as he gently fellated him. With a couple of words he could switch to anal sex, active or passive, but this was enough for him. He watched the other boys, having fun with each other while they watched him and his virtual partner. (That part felt fake, or at least too staged, since it was always the same, a kind of moving erotic wallpaper.) After a few minutes, he knew he couldn’t delay any longer, or his body would lose the illusion and melt, so he pushed a couple of times and ejaculated. The boy stood up while the whole scene faded into gray mist.

He walked into the bathroom with his silly-looking garb and carefully unwrapped the girdle, everted, and scrubbed it. Then he patted it dry with a towel, folded everything together, and returned it to his hiding place. He lay down on the couch and asked the room for Rimsky-Korsakov, and closed his eyes for a few minutes.

He only half slept, thinking about the composition. If a bass clarinet was going to take the melody, he wanted another line, a bass viol in a slow pedal. Doubled with one of the violins here and there. A quiet percussion rattle, like a distant woodpecker, signaling the measures where the two came together, two octaves apart. And a metallic tapping, like a muted triangle, doing 5:4 against their 4:4.