Old Man's War

by John Scalzi

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and pointed to his tray. “That looks like a four-egg omelet you’re working on there. With about a pound each of ham and cheddar.”

  “‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ That was my creed as a practicing physician,” he said. “If more patients had listened to me instead of following my sorry example, they’d be alive now. A lesson for us all. Thomas Jane, by the way.”

  “John Perry,” I said, shaking hands.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Although I’m sad, too, since if you eat all that you’ll be dead of a heart attack within the hour.”

  “Don’t listen to him, John,” said the woman across from us, whose own plate was smeared with the remains of pancakes and sausage. “Tom there is just trying to get you to give him some of your food, so he doesn’t have to get back in line for more. That’s how I lost half of my sausage.”

  “That accusation is as irrelevant as it is true,” Thomas said indignantly. “I admit to coveting his Belgian waffle, yes. I won’t deny that. But if sacrificing my own arteries will prolong his life, then it’s worth it to me. Consider this the culinary equivalent of falling on a grenade for the sake of my comrade.”

  “Most grenades aren’t soaked in syrup,” she said.

  “Maybe they should be,” Thomas said. “We’d see a lot more selfless acts.”

  “Here,” I said, sawing off half of a waffle. “Throw yourself on this.”

  “I’ll launch myself face first,” Thomas promised.

  “We’re all deeply relieved to hear that,” I said.

  The woman on the other side of the table introduced herself as Susan Reardon, late of Bellevue, Washington. “What do you think of our little space adventure so far?” she asked me.

  “If I had known the cooking was this good, I would have found some way to sign up years ago,” I said. “Who knew army food would be like this.”

  “I don’t think we’re in the army quite yet,” Thomas said, around a mouthful of Belgian waffle. “I think this is sort of the Colony Defense Forces waiting room, if you know what I mean. Real army food is going to be a lot more spare. Not to mention I doubt we’ll be prancing around in sneakers like we are right now.”

  “You think they’re easing us into things, then,” I said.

  “I do,” Thomas said. “Look, there are a thousand complete strangers on this ship, all of whom are now without home, family, or profession. That’s a hell of a mental shock. The least they can do is give us a fabulous meal to take our minds off it all.”

  “John!” Harry had spied me from the line. I waved him over. He and another man came, bearing trays.

  “This is my roommate, Alan Rosenthal,” he said, by way of introduction.

  “Formerly known as Sleeping Beauty,” I said.

  “About half of that description is right,” Alan said. “I am in fact devastatingly beautiful.” I introduced Harry and Alan to Susan and Thomas.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Thomas said, examining their trays. “Two more plaque attacks waiting to happen.”

  “Better throw Tom a couple bacon strips, Harry,” I said. “Otherwise we’ll never hear the end of this.”

  “I resent the implication that I can be bought off with food,” Thomas said.

  “It wasn’t implied,” Susan said. “It was pretty much boldly stated.”

  “Well, I know your roommate lottery turned out badly,” Harry said to me, handing over two bacon strips to Thomas, who accepted them gravely, “but mine turned out all right. Alan here is a theoretical physicist. Smart as a whip.”

  “And devastatingly beautiful,” Susan piped in.

  “Thanks for remembering that detail,” Alan said.

  “This looks like a table of reasonably intelligent adults,” Harry said. “So what do you think we’re in for today?”

  “I have a physical scheduled for 0800,” I said. “I think we all do.”

  “Right,” Harry said. “But I’m asking what you all think that means. Do you think today is the day we start our rejuvenation therapies? Is today the day we begin to stop being old?”

  “We don’t know that we stop being old,” Thomas said. “We’ve all assumed that, because we think of soldiers as being young. But think about it. None of us has actually seen a Colonial soldier. We’ve assumed, and our assumptions could be way off.”

  “What would the value of old soldiers be?” Alan asked. “If they’re going to put me in the field as is, I don’t know what good I’m going to be to anyone. I have a bad back. Walking from the beanstalk platform to the flight gate yesterday just about killed me. I can’t imagine marching twenty miles with a pack and a firearm.”

  “I think we’re due for some repairs, obviously,” Thomas said. “But that’s not the same as being made ‘young’ again. I’m a doctor, and I know a little bit about this. You can make the human body work better and achieve high function at any age, but each age has a certain baseline capability. The body at seventy-five is inherently less fast, less flexible and less easily repaired than at younger ages. It can still do some amazing things, of course. I don’t want to brag, but I’ll have you know that back on Earth I regularly ran ten K races. I ran one less than a month ago. And I made better time than I would have when I was fifty-five.”

  “What were you like when you were fifty-five?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Thomas said. “I was a fat slob at fifty-five. It took a heart replacement to get me serious about taking care of myself. My point is that a high-functioning seventy-five-year-old can actually do many things without actually being ‘young,’ but just by being in excellent shape. Maybe that’s all that’s required for this army. Maybe all the other intelligent species in the universe are pushovers. Presuming that’s the case, it makes a weird sort of sense to have old soldiers, because young people are more useful to their community. They have their whole lives ahead of them, while we are eminently expendable.”

  “So maybe we’ll still be old, just really, really healthy,” Harry said.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Thomas said.

  “Well, stop saying that. You’re bringing me down,” Harry said.

  “I’ll shut up if you give me your fruit cup,” Thomas said.

  “Even if we’re turned into high-functioning seventy-five-year-olds, as you say,” Susan said, “we’d still be getting older. In five years, we’d just be high-functioning eighty-year-olds. There’s an upper limit to our usefulness as soldiers.”

  Thomas shrugged. “Our terms are for two years. Maybe they only need to keep us in working order for that long. The difference between seventy-five and seventy-seven isn’t as great as between seventy-five and eighty. Or even between seventy-seven and eighty. Hundreds of thousands of us sign up each year. After two years, they just swap us out with a crew of ‘fresh’ recruits.”

  “We can be retained for up to ten years,” I said. “It’s in the fine print. That would seem to argue that they have the technology to keep us working for that period of time.”

  “And they’ve got our DNA on file,” Harry said. “Maybe they’ve cloned replacement parts or something like that.”

  “True,” Thomas admitted. “But it’s a lot of work to transplant every single organ, bone, muscle and nerve from a cloned body to ours. And they’d still have to contend with our brains, which can’t be transplanted.”

  Thomas looked around and finally realized he was depressing the whole table. “I’m not saying that we won’t be made young again,” he said. “Just what we’ve seen on this ship convinces me that the Colonial Union has much better technology than we ever had back home. But speaking as a medical doctor, I’m having a hard time seeing how they’ll reverse the aging process as dramatically as we all think they will.”

  “Entropy is a bitch,” Alan said. “We’ve got theories to back that one up.”

  “There is one piece of evidence that suggests that they’ll improve us no matter what,” I said.

  “Tell me quickly,” Har
ry said. “Tom’s theory of the galaxy’s oldest army is ruining my appetite.”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “If they couldn’t fix our bodies, they wouldn’t be giving us food with a fat content that could kill most of us within the month.”

  “That’s very true,” Susan said. “You make an excellent point, there, John. I feel better already.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And based on this evidence, I have such faith in the Colonial Defense Forces to cure me of all my ills, that now I’m going back for seconds.”

  “Get me some pancakes while you’re up,” Thomas said.

  “Hey, Leon,” I said, giving his flabby bulk a push. “Get up. Sleepy time is over. You’ve got an eight o’clock appointment.”

  Leon lay on his bed like a lump. I rolled my eyes, sighed and bent down to give him a harder push. And noticed his lips were blue.

  Oh, shit, I thought, and shook him. Nothing. I grabbed his torso and pulled him off his bunk to the floor. It was like moving dead weight.

  I grabbed my PDA and called for medical help. Then I kneeled over him, blew into his mouth, and pumped on his chest until a pair of Colonial medical staffers arrived and pulled me off of him.

  By this time a small crowd had gathered around the open door; I saw Jesse and reached out to bring her in. She saw Leon on the floor and her hand flew to her mouth. I gave her a quick hug.

  “How is he?” I asked one of the Colonials, who was consulting his PDA.

  “He’s dead,” he said. “He’s been dead for about an hour. Looks like a heart attack.” He put the PDA down and stood up, glancing back down at Leon. “Poor bastard. Made it this far just to have his ticker crap out.”

  “A last-minute volunteer for the Ghost Brigades,” the other Colonial said.

  I shot a hard stare at him. I thought a joke at this moment was in terribly bad taste.

  FOUR

  “Okay, let’s see,” the doctor said, glancing at his rather large PDA as I entered the office. “You’re John Perry, correct?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I’m Dr. Russell,” he said, and then looked me over.

  “You look like your dog just died,” he said.

  “Actually,” I said, “it was my roommate.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, glancing down at his PDA again. “Leon Deak. I would have been working on him right after you. Bad timing, that. Well, let’s get that off the schedule, then.” He tapped the PDA screen for a few seconds, smiled tightly when he was through. Dr. Russell’s bedside manner left something to be desired.

  “Now,” he said, turning his attention back to me, “let’s get you looked at.”

  The office consisted of Dr. Russell, me, a chair for the doctor, a small table and two crèches. The crèches were shaped for human contours, and each had a curving transparent door that arched over the contoured area. At the top of each crèche was an arm apparatus, with a cuplike attachment at the end. The “cup” looked just about large enough to fit on a human head. It was, quite frankly, making me a little nervous.

  “Please go ahead and make yourself comfortable, and then we’ll get started,” Dr. Russell said, opening the door to the crèche nearest to me.

  “Do you need me to take anything off?” I said. As far as I remembered, a physical examination required being looked at physically.

  “No,” he said. “But if it makes you feel more comfortable, go right ahead.”

  “Does anyone actually strip if they don’t have to?” I asked.

  “Actually, yes,” he said. “If you’ve been told to do something one way for so long, it’s a hard habit to break.”

  I kept my togs on. I set my PDA on the table, stepped up to the crèche, turned around, leaned back and settled in. Dr. Russell closed the door and stepped back. “Hold on one second while I adjust the crèche,” he said, and tapped his PDA. I felt the human-shaped depression in the crèche shift, and then conform to my dimensions.

  “That was creepy,” I said.

  Dr. Russell smiled. “You’re going to notice some vibration here,” he said, and he was right.

  “Say,” I said while the crèche was thrumming gently underneath me, “those other fellows who were in the waiting room with me. Where did they go after they came in here?”

  “Through the door over there.” He waved a hand behind him without looking up from his PDA. “That’s the recovery area.”

  “Recovery area?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve just made the examination sound much worse than it is. In fact, we’re just about done with your scan.” He tapped his PDA again and the vibration stopped.

  “What do I do now?” I asked.

  “Just hold tight,” Dr. Russell said. “We’ve got a little more to do, and we need to go over the results of your examination.”

  “You mean it’s done?” I said.

  “Modern medicine is wonderful, isn’t it,” he said. He showed me the PDA screen, which was downloading a summary of my scan. “You don’t even have to say, ‘Aaahhhh.’”

  “Yeah, but how detailed can it be?”

  “Detailed enough,” he said. “Mr. Perry, when was your last physical examination?”

  “About six months ago,” I said.

  “What was the prognosis from your physician?”

  “He said I was in fine shape, other than my blood pressure being a little higher than normal. Why?”

  “Well, he’s basically right,” said Dr. Russell, “although he seems to have missed the testicular cancer.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  Dr. Russell flipped the PDA screen around again; this time it was showing a false-color representation of my genitals. It was the first time I’d ever had my own package waved in front of my face. “Here,” he said, pointing to a dark spot on my left testicle. “There’s the nodule. Pretty big sucker, too. It’s cancer, all right.”

  I glared at the man. “You know, Dr. Russell, most doctors would have found a more tactful way to break the news.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Perry,” Dr. Russell said. “I don’t want to seem unconcerned. But it’s really not a problem. Even on Earth, testicular cancer is easily treatable, particularly in the early stages, which is the case here. At the very worst, you’d lose the testicle, but that’s not a significant setback.”

  “Unless you happen to own the testicle,” I growled.

  “That’s more of a psychological issue,” Dr. Russell said. “In any event, right here and right now, I don’t want you to worry about it. In a couple of days you’ll be getting a comprehensive physical overhaul, and we’ll deal with your testicle then. In the meantime, there should be no problems. The cancer is still local to the testicle. It hasn’t spread to the lungs or the lymph nodes. You’re fine.”

  “Am I going to drop the ball?” I said.

  Dr. Russell smiled. “I think you can hold on to the ball for now,” he said. “Should you ever drop it, I suspect it will be the least of your concerns. Now, other than the cancer, which as I say isn’t really problematic, you’re in as good a shape as any man of your physical age could be. That’s good news; we don’t have to do anything else to you at this point.”

  “What would you do if you’d found something really wrong?” I asked. “I mean, what if the cancer had been terminal?”

  “‘Terminal’ is a pretty imprecise term, Mr. Perry,” Dr. Russell said. “In the long run, we’re all terminal cases. In the case of this examination, what we’re really looking to do is to stabilize any recruits who are in imminent danger, so we know they’ll make it through the next few days. The case of your unfortunate roommate Mr. Deak isn’t all that unusual. We have a lot of recruits who make it to this point just to die before assessment. That’s not good for any of us.”

  Dr. Russell consulted his PDA. “Now, in the case of Mr. Deak, who died of a heart attack, what we probably would have done would be to remove the plaque buildup from his arteries and provide him with an arterial wall-strengt
hening compound to prevent ruptures. That’s our most common treatment. Most seventy-five-year-old arteries can use some propping up. In your case, if you had had advanced stage cancer, we would have trimmed back the tumors to a point where they didn’t pose an imminent threat to your vital functions, and shored up the affected regions to make sure you wouldn’t have any problems over the next few days.”

  “Why wouldn’t you cure it?” I asked. “If you can ‘shore up’ an affected region, it sounds like you could probably fix it completely if you wanted to.”

  “We can, but it’s not necessary,” Dr. Russell said. “You’ll be getting a more comprehensive overhaul in a couple of days. We just need to keep you going until then.”

  “What does ‘comprehensive overhaul’ mean, anyway?” I said.

  “It means that when it’s done, you’ll wonder why you ever worried about a spot of cancer on your testicle,” he said. “That’s a promise. Now, there’s one more thing we need to do here. Bring your head forward, please.”

  I did. Dr. Russell reached up and brought the feared arm cup down directly on the top of my head. “During the next couple of days, it’s going to be important for us to get a good picture of your brain activity,” he said, moving back. “So to do this, I’m going to implant a sensor array into your skull.” As he said this, he tapped the screen on his PDA, an action I was learning to mistrust. There was a slight sucking noise as the cup adhered to my skull.

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  “Well, right now, you can probably feel a little tickle on your scalp and down the back of your neck,” Dr. Russell said, and I could. “Those are the injectors positioning themselves. They’re like little hypodermic needles that will insert the sensors. The sensors themselves are very small, but there’s a lot of them. About twenty thousand, more or less. Don’t worry, they’re self-sterilizing.”

  “Is this going to hurt?” I asked.

  “Not so much,” he said, and tapped his PDA screen. Twenty thousand microsensors slammed themselves into my skull like four ax handles simultaneously whacking my skull.