He nodded at the phone. “The Second Coming, bambina. The Second Coming.” He hung up the wand and pulled a data crystal out of the small camera, and then stood and extracted a similar crystal from the large one.
“Thanks, Professor, you were great. Gotta run. Couple science types be here in a half hour.” He started for the door.
“Your cameras?”
“They’ll use ’em.” He sprinted down the hall, crashed through an emergency exit, and ran down the stairs.
Norman Bell
Norman winced at the ugly clanging the emergency door precipitated. A pure tone would do the job. His wife called maintenance and the noise stopped.
He stood up and stretched. “Guess you’re stuck here. Bring you back something to eat?”
“Where you going?”
“Greek place, Nick’s.”
“Hmm. One of those spinach things. Spinach and cheese. No hurry.”
“Spanakopita.” He bent over slowly to pick up his bicycle helmet. “Don’t forget to watch yourself on the news.”
She was looking at a screen full of numbers and letters. “I wonder what channel.”
Norman tapped the number on the side of the large camera. “Seven would be a good bet.”
Downstairs, he unlocked the ancient bike and pedaled squeak-click-squeak though campus, taking the long way downtown to avoid traffic. There weren’t too many cars at this hour, but drivers were erratic. The ATC didn’t kick in until seven.
He checked his watch and pedaled a little faster. He would have to cross University Avenue, and it was best to be off the main roads well before “the bitching hour.” Some drivers would go a little crazy, their last few minutes of manual control, trying to make an extra block or two before the ATC system engaged and turned them into law-abiding citizens—or at least turned their cars into law-abiding machinery. Until then, an orange light meant “grit your teeth and step on it.”
He got across University without incident, and kept up the rapid pace for the few blocks remaining, just to get some exercise. He was a little winded by the time he locked up outside the Athens, Nick’s, and was glad Nick had the airco on inside. It was going to be a bad one today, close to eighty already, with the sun barely over the trees. He could remember when it was never this hot in October in Gainesville.
He selected a honey-soaked pastry and asked for strong Greek coffee and ice water, then put three bucks in the newspaper machine and selected World, Local, and Comics.
He read the comics first, as always, to fortify himself. The world news was predictably bleak. England and Germany and France snapping at each other, the Eastern Republics choosing up sides. Catalonia declaring itself neutral today—the day after its sister Spain aligned with Germany, squeezing France. Europe has to do this every century or so, he supposed.
The coffee and roll came and he asked for a glass of ouzo. Not his normal breakfast drink, but this was no normal morning.
“Nick,” he said when the man brought the liquor, “Would you mind turning on the seven o’clock news? Channel Seven; Rory’s going to be on.”
“Your wife? Sure.” He shouted something in Greek and the cube behind the bar turned itself on.
Still five minutes to go. The local station was filling time with its trademark “Girls of Gatorland” nude montage. He watched a pretty young thing display her skills on the parallel bars, and then went back to the paper.
Water riots in Phoenix again. Inner-city Detroit under martial law, the national guard called in after a police station was leveled by a predawn kamikaze truckload of explosives. A man in Los Angeles legally married his dog. In Milwaukee, twins reunited after sixty years immediately start fighting.
The local section had an unlovely, but possibly useful, photo-essay that showed the types of facial mutilations that various local gangs used to tell one another apart. They were more like social clubs nowadays, however fearsome the members looked. Ten years ago there was a lot of blood spilled. Now they just have those strange tournaments, killing each other in virtual-reality hookups, with dozens playing on each side. Why couldn’t Europe do that? Too American, he supposed, though the Koreans had actually started it.
He folded up the paper as the news program started. The lead story was Detroit, of course. There was dramatic footage of a water-dumping helicopter that was fired upon and had to drop its load a block away from the fire and retreat. The crowd shots around the ruins of the police station showed little grief; one group of boys was cheering, until they saw that the camera was on them, and scattered.
Rory’s discovery hadn’t made the lead, but it got more time than Detroit. It wasn’t often they had a story that was both interplanetary and local.
There was an interesting déjà vu feeling to watching it, seeing which parts of the interview were chosen, and how they were modified. They didn’t actually monkey with Rory’s responses, but some of the questions were changed. Predictably, there was nothing about parallax or the noncoincidence of the human minute being part of the signal; nothing about what the distance and speed implied. That would come in a later broadcast. This seven o’clock one just established their scoop.
Nick had brought the ouzo and stood by Norman, watching the broadcast. “Your wife gonna be famous?” he said. “She gonna still talk to you?”
“Oh, she’ll talk to me.” Norman sipped the ouzo and looked away from the screen, which was featuring a graphic feminine hygiene commercial.
“Guys from outer space,” Nick mused. “’Bout time they admitted they was out there.”
“Really.”
“Sure—been in the papers since I was a kid. Damn air force shot one down a hundred years ago. They got the dead aliens in a freezer.”
“Nick. You don’t believe that.”
“It was in the paper,” he said. “Hell, it was on the cube.” He raised both eyebrows high and bent to polish a table that was already spotless.
“This could be pretty big,” Norman said. “Rory didn’t think there was any way it could be a hoax. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have called the news.”
“Well, you don’t never know, do you?”
“I guess in about a week we’ll find out. You wouldn’t care to make a gentleman’s bet?”
Nick stared at his reflection in the plastic tabletop and scowled comically. “Where you from, Mr. Bell?”
“Boston.”
“Well, I never make bets with people from Boston.”
“I was actually born in Washington, D.C.”
“You kiddin’? That’s even worse.”
The news picked up with outer space again. They’d had time to contact the Moon. A confused Japanese astronomer, the one who had verified Rory’s signal, was on live, providing more questions than answers: What do you mean, message? Speed of light? Who is this Aurora Bell? Rory hadn’t identified herself personally, of course, she was just some code name like UF/GRB-1.
When the announcer explained to the scientist that Professor Bell had decoded the signal as “We’re coming,” repeated sixty times, his eyes narrowed. “Is this some sort of a college prank?” Then someone off-camera handed him a piece of paper. He stared at it for several seconds and then looked up. “We… um… we apparently have verified the Florida analysis. “We’re coming’?”
“So what does it mean, Dr. Namura?”
The delay was longer than the usual Earth-Moon time lag. He shook his head. “I suppose it means they’re coming. Whoever ‘they’ might be.” He spread his hands in a gesture more Gallic than Oriental. “I really don’t have the faintest idea. Of course we can’t rule out the possibility of a hoax. Not to accuse your Mr. Bell.” He glanced off-camera and back. “Mrs. Bell, Dr. Bell. Excuse us. We really do have to discuss this.” He walked away, the camera starting to track the back of his head, and then cutting to the moonscape in the holo window behind where he’d been standing.