The first battle was really no more than a skirmish.
Mrs. Dickison, wife of the cavalry commander, happened to be visiting Gainesville. She knew that there was a cavalry group camped [a few] miles away, at Newnansville. She wrote a note explaining the situation, and sent it via her eight-year-old son, who slipped by the Yankee picket, pretending to be grazing his horse.
in October
It was a good month for oracles. The local one, Charles Dubois, wrestled with Scripture and calendar and proved that January 1 would be the two-thousandth anniversary of the Savior's Resurrection. And thus the occasion for our resurrection, if we first cleansed ourselves. They had to install outdoor loudspeakers at his church in Archer, to provide for the overflow of believers sitting in the gravel parking lot or seeking shade in the old live oaks.
Johnny Kale asked his hundred million followers to pray for guidance; this thing is "a sign and a portent" whether it comes from heaven or merely an alien civilization.
The American archbishop Philip Stillwell followed the pope-in-waiting in reverence. The Coming was still only a two-word phrase whose provenance was the realm of science, not spirit. The Ayatollah Bismahin dismissed it as a blasphemous hoax.
The tabloids, electronic and paper, had a field day. The big ones arranged among themselves to rotate points of view, so that at any given time there would be headlines to suit those who believed in the Second Coming as well as those who believed the government was out to get us all.
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.
1 November
Ybor Lopez
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 Formationand 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 Jose 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 Bobon 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?"