Joe Haldeman - The Coming

The building was deserted. Everyone was probably down at the Cape.

Pepe’s office was still unlocked. Feeling a little bit guilty, voyeuristic, she went in to snoop around.

On a worktable under the window there were three neat stacks of paper, the last assignments and finals for Pepe’s three classes.

There was a letter to his secretary, detailing the disposition of these papers, thanking her, and saying good-bye. He would be in touch.

Rory had a feeling that he would not be.

In a quiet corner of Barcelona, the man who was not Pepe Parker relaxed in a situation of modest wealth and perfect privacy. He had a cook, a servant, and a gardener, and walls of books in various languages.

Buried in the basement, there was a weapon that would turn a man into a torch.

With his full white beard and darkened skin, no one would connect him with the youthful Cuban scientist who had run the Coming Committee and mysteriously disappeared.

He spent most of his time reading, in the garden when it was fine, or in front of the fire when it was cool. Sometimes he dined out with beautiful women who thought he was a retired scholar, independently wealthy. Which was true, as far as it went.

In a safe-deposit box at Banco Nacional de Catalunya, there was a single sheet of paper which only he could read. It had a schedule of conservative stock purchases, and the names of the winners of the Kentucky Derby for the next fifty years.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE COMING

An Ace Book

Published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

http://www.penguinputnam.com

Copyright © 2000 by Joe Haldeman.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

First edition: December 2000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haldeman, Joe W.

The coming / Joe Haldeman.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-441-00769-4

1. Human-alien encounters-Fiction. 2. Life on other planets-Fiction. 3. Astronomy teachers-Fiction. 4. Mass media-Fiction. I. Title.

PS3558.A353 C66 2000

813’.54-dc21 00-029306

Printed in the United States of America

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