Joe Haldeman - The Coming

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

“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.”

“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.

“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!”