by Joe Haldeman
I supposed I was more likely to get a court-martial than a furlough, anyhow. Losing 88 percent of my company, many of them because they didn’t have enough confidence in me to obey the direct earthquake order. And we were back where we’d started on Sade-138; no Taurans there, but no base either.
We got landing instructions and went straight down, no shuttle. There was another surprise waiting at the spaceport. Dozens of cruisers were standing around on the ground (they’d never done that before for fear that Stargate would be hit) — and two captured Tauran cruisers as well. We’d never managed to get one intact.
Seven centuries could have brought us a decisive advantage, of course. Maybe we were winning.
We went through an airlock under a ‘returnees’ sign. After the air cycled and we’d popped our suits, a beautiful young woman came in with a cartload of tunics and told us, in perfectly-accented English, to get dressed and go to the lecture hall at the end of the corridor to our left.
The tunic felt odd, light yet warm. It was the first thing I’d worn besides a fighting suit or bare skin in almost a year.
The lecture hall was about a hundred times too big for the twenty-two of us. The same woman was there and asked us to move down to the front. That was unsettling; I could have sworn she had gone down the corridor the other way — I knew she had; I’d been captivated by the sight of her clothed behind.
Hell, maybe they had matter transmitters. Or teleportation. Wanted to save herself a few steps.
We sat for a minute and a man, clothed in the same kind of unadorned tunic the woman and we were wearing, walked across the stage with a stack of thick notebooks under each arm.
The woman followed him on, also carrying notebooks.
I looked behind me and she was still standing in the aisle. To make things even more odd, the man was virtually a twin to both of them.
The man riffled through one of the notebooks and cleared his throat. ‘These books are for your convenience,’ he said, also with perfect accent, ‘and you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, because … you’re free men and women. The war is over.’
Disbelieving silence.
‘As you will read in this book, the war ended 221 years ago. Accordingly, this is the year 220. Old style, of course, it is 3138 ad
‘You are the last group of soldiers to return. When you leave here, I will leave as well. And destroy Stargate. It exists only as a rendezvous point for returnees and as a monument to human stupidity. And shame. As you will read. Destroying it will be a cleansing.’
He stopped speaking and the woman started without a pause. ‘I am sorry for what you’ve been through and wish I could say that it was for good cause, but as you will read, it was not.
‘Even the wealth you have accumulated, back salary and compound interest, is worthless, as I no longer use money or credit. Nor is there such a thing as an economy, in which to use these … things.’
‘As you must have guessed by now,’ the man took over, ‘I am, we are, clones of a single individual. Some two hundred and fifty years ago, my name was Kahn. Now it is Man.
‘I had a direct ancestor in your company, a Corporal Larry Kahn. It saddens me that he didn’t come back.’
‘I am over ten billion individuals but only one consciousness,’ she said. ‘After you read, I will try to clarify this. I know that it will be difficult to understand.
‘No other humans are quickened, since I am the perfect pattern. Individuals who die are replaced.
‘There are some planets, however, on which humans are born in the normal, mammalian way. If my society is too alien for you, you may go to one of these planets. If you wish to take part in procreation, I will not discourage it. Many veterans ask me to change their polarity to heterosexual so that they can more easily fit into these other societies. This I can do very easily.’
Don’t worry about that, Man, just make out my ticket.
‘You will be my guest here at Stargate for ten days, after which you will be taken wherever you want to go,’ he said. ‘Please read this book in the meantime. Feel free to ask any questions, or request any service.’ They both stood and walked off the stage.
Charlie was sitting next to me. ‘Incredible,’ he said. ‘They let … they encourage … men and women to do that again? Together?’
The female aisle-Man was sitting behind us, and she answered before I could frame a reasonably sympathetic, hypocritical reply. ‘It isn’t a judgment on your society,’ she said, probably not seeing that he took it a little more personally than that. ‘I only feel that it’s necessary as a eugenic safety device. I have no evidence that there is anything wrong with cloning only one ideal individual, but if it turns out to have been a mistake, there will be a large genetic pool with which to start again.’
She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Of course, you don’t have to go to these breeder planets. You can stay on one of my planets. I make no distinction between heterosexual play and homosexual.’
She went up on the stage to give a long spiel about where we were going to stay and eat and so forth while we were on Stargate, ‘Never been seduced by a computer before,’ Charlie muttered.
The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.
Once they could talk, the first question was ‘Why did you start this thing?’ and the answer was ‘Me?’
The Taurans hadn’t known war for millennia, and toward the beginning of the twenty-first century it looked as though mankind was ready to outgrow the institution as well. But the old soldiers were still around, and many of them were in positions of power. They virtually ran the United Nations Exploratory and Colonization Group, that was taking advantage of the newly-discovered collapsar jump to explore interstellar space.
Many of the early ships met with accidents and disappeared. The ex-military men were suspicious. They armed the colonizing vessels, and the first time they met a Tauran ship, they blasted it.
They dusted off their medals and the rest was going to be history.
You couldn’t blame it all on the military, though. The evidence they presented for the Taurans’ having been responsible for the earlier casualties was laughably thin. The few people who pointed this out were ignored.
The fact was, Earth’s economy needed a war, and this one was ideal. It gave a nice hole to throw buckets of money into, but would unify humanity rather than dividing it.
The Taurans relearned war, after a fashion. They never got really good at it, and would eventually have lost.
The Taurans, the book explained, couldn’t communicate with humans because they had no concept of the individual; they had been natural clones for millions of years. Eventually, Earth’s cruisers were manned by Man, Kahn-clones, and they were for the first time able to get through to each other.
The book stated this as a bald fact. I asked a Man to explain what it meant, what was special about clone-to-clone communication, and he said that I a priori couldn’t understand it. There were no words for it, and my brain wouldn’t be able to accommodate the concepts even if there were words.
All right. It sounded a little fishy, but I was willing to accept it. I’d accept that up was down if it meant the war was over.
Man was a pretty considerate entity. Just for us twenty-two, he went to the trouble of rejuvenating a little restaurant-tavern and staffing it at all hours (I never saw a Man eat or drink — guess they’d discovered a way around it). I was sitting in there one evening, drinking beer and reading their book, when Charlie came in and sat down next to me.
Without preamble, he said, ‘I’m going to give it a try.’
‘Give what a try?’
‘Women. Hetero.’ He shuddered. ‘No offense … it’s not really very appealing.’ He patted my hand, looking distracted. ‘But the alternative … have you tried it?’
‘Well … no, I haven’t.’ Female Man was a visual trea
t, but only in the same sense as a painting or a piece of sculpture. I just couldn’t see them as human beings.
‘Don’t.’ He didn’t elaborate. ‘Besides, they say — he says, she says, it says — that they can change me back just as easily. If I don’t like it.’
‘You’ll like it, Charlie.’
‘Sure that’s what they say.’ He ordered a stiff drink. ‘Just seems unnatural. Anyway, since, uh, I’m going to make the switch, do you mind if … why don’t we plan on going to the same planet?’
‘Sure, Charlie, that’d be great.’ I meant it. ‘You know where you’re going?’
‘Hell, I don’t care. Just away from here.’
‘I wonder if Heaven’s still as nice—’
‘No.’ Charlie jerked a thumb at the bartender. ‘He lives there.’
‘I don’t know. I guess there’s a list.’
A man came into the tavern, pushing a cart piled high with folders. ‘Major Mandella? Captain Moore?’
‘That’s us,’ Charlie said.
‘These are your military records. I hope you find them of interest. They were transferred to paper when your strike force was the only one outstanding, because it would have been impractical to keep the normal data retrieval networks running to preserve so few data.’
They always anticipated your questions, even when you didn’t have any.
My folder was easily five times as thick as Charlie’s. Probably thicker than any other, since I seemed to be the only trooper who’d made it through the whole duration. Poor Marygay. ‘Wonder what kind of report old Stott filed about me.’ I flipped to the front of the folder.
Stapled to the front page was a small square of paper. All the other pages were pristine white, but this one was tan with age and crumbling around the edges.
The handwriting was familiar, too familiar even after so long. The date was over 250 years old.
I winced and was blinded by sudden tears. I’d had no reason to suspect that she might be alive. But I hadn’t really known she was dead, not until I saw that date.
‘William? What’s—’
‘Leave me be, Charlie. Just for a minute.’ I wiped my eyes and closed the folder. I shouldn’t even read the damned note. Going to a new life, I should leave the old ghosts behind.
But even a message from the grave was contact of a sort. I opened the folder again.
11 Oct 2878
William —
All this is in your personnel file. But knowing you, you might just chuck it. So I made sure you’d get this note.
Obviously, I lived. Maybe you will, too. Join me.
I know from the records that you’re out at Sade-138 and won’t be back for a couple of centuries. No problem.
I’m going to a planet they call Middle Finger, the fifth planet out from Mizar. It’s two collapsar jumps, ten months subjective. Middle Finger is a kind of Coventry for heterosexuals. They call it a ‘eugenic control baseline.’
No matter. It took all of my money, and all the money of five other old-timers, but we bought a cruiser from UNEF. And we’re using it as a time machine.
So I’m on a relativistic shuttle, waiting for you. All it does is go out five light years and come back to Middle Finger, very fast. Every ten years I age about a month. So if you’re on schedule and still alive, I’ll only be twenty-eight when you get here. Hurry!
I never found anybody else and I don’t want anybody else. I don’t care whether you’re ninety years old or thirty. If I can’t be your lover, I’ll be your nurse.
— Marygay.
‘Say, bartender.’
‘Yes, Major?’
‘Do you know of a place called Middle Finger? Is it still there?’
‘Of course it is. Where else would it be?’ Reasonable question. ‘A very nice place. Garden planet. Some people don’t think it’s exciting enough.’
‘What’s this all about?’ Charlie said.
I handed the bartender my empty glass. ‘I just found out where we’re going.’
9
Epilogue
From The New Voice, Paxton, Middle Finger 24-6
14/2/3143
OLD-TIMER HAS FIRST BOY
Marygay Potter-Mandella (24 Post Road, Paxton) gave birth Friday last to a fine baby boy, 3.1 kilos.
Marygay lays claim to being the second ‘oldest’ resident of Middle Finger, having been born in 1977. She fought through most of the Forever War and then waited for her mate on the time shuttle, 261 years.
The baby, not yet named, was delivered at home with the help of a friend of the family, Dr Diana Alsever-Moore.
A Separate War
1
Our wounds were horrible, but the army made us well and gave us Heaven, temporarily.
The most expensive and hard-to-replace component of a fighting suit is the soldier inside of it, so if she or he is crippled badly enough to be taken out of the fight, the suit tries to save what’s left. In William’s case, it automatically cut off his mangled leg and sealed the stump. In my case it was the right arm, just above the elbow.
That was the Tet-2 campaign, which was a disaster, and William and I lay around doped to the gills with happyjuice while the others died their way through the disaster of Aleph-7. The score after the two battles was fifty-four dead, thirty-seven of us crips, two head cases, and only twelve more or less working soldiers, who were of course bristling with enthusiasm. Twelve is not enough to fight a battle with, unfortunately, so the Sangre y Victoria was rerouted to the hospital planet Heaven.
We took a long time, three collapsar jumps, getting to Heaven. The Taurans can chase you through one jump, if they’re at the right place and the right time. But two would be almost impossible, and three just couldn’t happen.
(But “couldn’t happen” is probably a bad-luck charm. Because of the relativistic distortions associated with travel through collapsar jumps, you never know, when you greet the enemy, whether it comes from your own time, or centuries in your past or future. Maybe in a millennium or two, they’ll be able to follow you through three collapsar jumps like following footprints. One of the first things they’d do is vaporize Heaven. Then Earth.)
Heaven is like an Earth untouched by human industry and avarice, pristine forests and fields and mountains—but it’s also a monument to human industry, and avarice, too.
When you recover—and there’s no “if”; you wouldn’t be there if they didn’t know they could fix you—you’re still in the army, but you’re also immensely wealthy. Even a private’s pay rolls up a fortune, automatically invested during the centuries that creak by between battles. One of the functions of Heaven is to put all those millions back into the economy. So there’s no end of things to do, all of them expensive.
When William and I recovered, we were given six months of “rest and recreation” on Heaven. I actually got out two days before him, but waited around, reading. They did still have books, for soldiers so old-fashioned they didn’t want to plug themselves into adventures or ecstasies for thousands of dollars a minute. I did have $529,755,012 sitting around, so I could have dipped into tripping. But I’d heard I would have plenty of it, retraining before our next assignment. The ALSC, “accelerated life situation computer,” which taught you things by making you do them in virtual reality. Over and over, until you got them right.
William had half again as much money as I did, since he had outranked me for centuries, but I didn’t wait around just to get my hands on his fortune. I probably would have wanted his company even if I didn’t love him. We were the only two people here born in the twentieth century, and there were only a handful from the twenty-first. Very few of them, off duty, spoke a language I understood, though all soldiers were taught “premodern” English as a sort of temporal lingua franca. Some of them claimed their native language was English, but it was extremely fast and seemed to have lost some vowels along the way. Four centuries. Would I have sounded as strange to a Pilgrim? I don’t think so.
(It woul
d be interesting to take one of those Pilgrim Fathers and show him what had evolved from a life of grim piety and industriousness. Religion on Earth is a curiosity, almost as rare as heterosex. Heaven has no God, either, and men and women in love or in sex with people not of their own gender are committing an anachronistic perversion.)
I’d already arranged for a sumptuous “honeymoon” suite on Skye, an airborne resort, before William got out, and we did spend five days there, amusing each other anachronistically. Then we rented a flyer and set out to see the world.
William humored my desire to explore the physical, wild, aspects of the world first. We camped in desert, jungle, arctic waste, mountaintops, deserted islands. We had pressor fields that kept away dangerous animals, allowing us a good close look at them while they tried to figure out what was keeping them from lunch, and they were impressive—evolution here had not favored mammal over reptile, and both families had developed large swift predators in a variety of beautiful and ugly designs.
Then we toured the cities, in their finite variety. Some, like the sylvan Threshold, where we’d grown and trained our new limbs, blended in with their natural surroundings. This was a twenty-second-century esthetic, too bland and obvious for modern tastes. The newer cities, like Skye, flaunted their artificiality.
We were both nervous in Atlantis, under a crushing kilometer of water, with huge, glowing beasts bumping against the pressors, dark day and dark night. Perhaps it was too exact a metaphor for our lives in the army, the thin skins of cruiser or fighting suit holding the dark nothingness of space at bay while monsters tried to destroy you.
Many of the cities had no function other than separating soldiers from their money, so in spite of their variety there was a sameness to them. Eat, drink, drug, trip, have or watch sex.
I found the sex shows more interesting than William did, but he was repelled by the men together. It didn’t seem to me that what they did was all that different from what we did—and not nearly as alien as tripping for sex, plugging into a machine that delivered to you the image of an ideal mate and cleaned up afterwards.