Old Man's War Universe: Short Stories

by John Scalzi

  ♦♦♦

  Of course Fear knows all this. Knows that I fear neither Death nor Pain, or those who use either to divorce me from my will. This is what fear does: presents you with what you can bear, so that when he shows you what is unbearable, you will open wider to let him feed on your heart. I know this and even knowing this does not keep me from a moment of satisfaction, and the hope that Fear will step away from my table. Fear allows you a moment to hope that he doesn’t truly know what will break you. But he does, and he proves it to me by showing me you, and showing you without me.

  This is what I fear. And I confess that part of me hates you a little for it, hates that you have taken my life and so threaded it with yours that I can’t pull away without losing myself; I who had always been whole in myself but who now knows what she stands to lose in losing you.

  It is not your death I fear, or separation. We have been at war as long as we have known of each other. Death follows behind us both, and separation has been what we have had the most of, our time together both trivial and precious measured against our time in absence. Death and separation do not alter what is between us. What I fear is diminishment, and subtle change, and the moment in which a life without you becomes a sustainable thought.

  It seems such a small thing compared to all the other things one may fear. There is no finality here; you and I would continue in our lives, no death or distance to separate us. Just disinterest, and the perception of what we have becoming what we once had, becoming memory and history and remembrance. What was separated from what is and separate from what will be.

  A small thing and a survivable thing. And for all that the thought of it falls on me like wreckage and pulls into me to burn with sickening violence. I look across the table and Fear is gone, not because it has gone but because it has found the thing that will let it live in me. I fear a life without you and you without me.

  ♦♦♦

  I choose not to share this fear with you. You do not deserve to have it put on you. There has never been a time when you have not reached toward me, even when I had pushed you away (or, when we were formally introduced, when I threw you across a table). You never made me ask your forgiveness for being her, and you never loved me simply because I was the only part of her you had left. You have always seen me and you have always seen me with you.

  I feel ashamed I have this fear, based on nothing real, called into existence by my own irrationality. I have so many excuses for it, beginning with my youth, and my inexperience in weaving my life to someone else’s. But I will not rationalize this fear. It is what it is; the serpent in my ear, whispering the promise of the fall.

  I am human. Fear lives in me and sets to make my heart bitter. But I know something about Fear. Fear is a scavenger who feeds on the future; on what may be and what is possible, extending down the line of our lives. Fear lives in me and I cannot change that. But I choose to starve Fear. I choose to live here with you now.

  In the future perhaps we will diminish and we will divide, and all we will have is memory. I accept that this could be what we have in time, and in accepting it set it aside. What is left to me is this moment, and you with me. I choose to be with you in this moment, to love you in the present time and in the present tense. It is all the time we have, have ever had, or will ever have. All of our lives here and now, wherever here and whenever now may be.

  I love you now and will not regret having loved you and will not fear loving you forward. I am here now and I am with you. It is enough for as long as I have it.

  With that thought I accept what I must from Fear and move toward you. Negotiations are closed, and you and I remain.

  8 Endings

  It is time to come to the end of things and to the beginning.

  I am standing in a room where there are two of me. One of them is who I have always been as long as I have had memory of myself. The other is who I will be, someone I will be poured into to become who I must be to start our lives together.

  I cannot stop staring at her. I see myself in the curve of her cheek and the line of her nose and the length of her limbs. Through her I will gain many things I would not have.

  I will gain a husband and a daughter and a new world, which I will not have to meet at the end of a gun, and whose citizens I will not have to defend or kill. I will gain a measure of peace and I will gain an identity that is my own—not one of a soldier or an officer or a killer, but simply Jane Sagan, whoever she may be.

  She offers me so many things, she who is not yet me. And all I have to do for her to become me is to give up myself.

  I give up myself in speed and strength; my new body has only what nature and evolution saw fit to provide, limbs weak enough to force the brain to better them, with spear and sword and bow, gun and gears and engines, every marvelous creation made by man to compensate for a body barely competent to carry its brain in its head.

  I give up myself in mind, abandoning the fluid switch between machine and gray matter that extends myself into others, to disconnect my thoughts to them and theirs to me, to sever the connections that have sustained me. To shut myself off in my own head. To live alone with my thoughts, their echoes muffled in close quarters.

  I give myself up in identity as a soldier and an officer and a killer, as a friend and a colleague, and as one by whose hand humanity keeps its place in the universe.

  Make no mistake that I am weaker for the loss of each. Make no mistake that I will have to learn again how to fit myself into a world that no longer works like it should. Make no mistake that it will be through force of will alone, that my frustration and anger at being less than what I was will not be visited on you—that even in my newly weakened state I am still dangerous and liable to rage at what I have taken from myself, by becoming this new self.

  The woman who opens her eyes in the body I see before me cannot be the same as the one who closes her eyes in the body I have now. Too much changed to remain intact, too much left behind that can’t be brought over. I will hold my image of myself to me, but there is only so much of me that will fit.

  ♦♦♦

  If you knew all of this I know you would ask me to consider what I was doing, whether I was sure I was making the right decision, and that you would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself. I know this is what you would say and do as well as I know myself.

  And this is why I say with all affection that sometimes you can be such a stupid man. I wouldn’t mind you feeling just a little bit greedy for me, that the idea of not having me would make you angry, not heavy-hearted and accepting. There are things you still have to learn about me and this is one of them. It is not that you are too considerate but that I don’t mind when you tell me what you want and put that first instead of last.

  I don’t mind because that is what I am doing now. You should not think I do any of this for you, that I am committing a selfless act or an expression of slavish devotion, that I have signed on for a mermaid’s sacrifice and will walk on knives for dumb love. I am too selfish for that. I want you to know that I am here not for you but for me. I want you for my own. I want the life we will have together for my own. I want the silence of peace and release from being the one who walks ten steps ahead of Death. I want the honor of not being feared or hated, and of not having those be the correct response to my presence.

  I want to be able to say that I have done my part and I have done it well, but that my part is over and now it is time for my reward, and that reward is you and this life. I want all of this and I am willing to pay to get it.

  But it is still hard.

  In this I imagine that I am now your equal: You once gave up a life, leaving behind a world and everything on it, all that you had been and everything you knew, on that single sphere of rock and air and water. You put it behind you and stepped into a new life in which you found me. I can’t imagine that it was easy to do this.

  But was it a sacrifice? Did it take from you
more than you could bear? It takes nothing from what you did to say it was not, that you left a life that had nothing left for you except the marking of time. Hard though it may be, it is not a sacrifice to give up that for which you no longer have a use.

  I am at that place now. This life has made me who I am and who I am no longer wants this life. I have seen so much of this universe behind a rifle and a mission. I am ready to see a smaller part of it in depth and in peace. It is not a sacrifice to pay for what you want though the price is high. The price for this new life is everything in the old one. You once gave up everything in your old life and gained me. I am ready to give up this life and keep you.

  ♦♦♦

  I rest in the container that holds everything I am but not anything I will be, and watch as the technician makes her preparations. You are holding my hand and telling me of what it was like for you.

  I smile and I want to kiss you, but not here and not now. I do not want a last kiss in an old body and in an old life. I want a first kiss in a new life, a promise fulfilled and no regrets. I am looking forward to that kiss. I hold it in my thoughts as I hold myself there and you there with me.

  The technician looks at me now and asks me if I want to begin. I look to you and say I do.

  Appendix: Company D in Memoriam

  In the transcription of ISC/IRI-003-4530/6(C) (“The Sagan Diary”), Lt. Sagan briefly recounts her first mission, the rescue and retrieval of 16th Brigade, Company D, which participated in the Third Battle of Provence. Lt. Sagan’s assessment of the tactical qualities of Company D is overly harsh: the official history of the battle ( CDFBA/OHR-003-1800/1(A)) clearly indicates that Company D fought tactically and well against a far superior enemy force, and was key in allowing later CDF forces to retake the planet. As acknowledgment of its sacrifice, we note the fallen members of 16th Brigade, Company D here.

  Thomas W. Aldrich

  Carl Anderson

  LaLani Anderson

  Will Anderson

  Jason Arneaud

  Sgt. Sue Arnie

  Sean Baeza

  Kathryn Baker

  Patrick Baker

  Nathan P. Bardsley

  Kevin Barry

  David Baynham

  Sean Bell

  Spencer Bernard

  Moray Binfield

  Diane Blum

  Eric Bowersox

  Joe Brockmeier

  Justin Brown

  Kevin Brown

  Harvey Byas

  Jose Cabanillas

  Christopher Carrera

  Matthew Carroll

  Howard Carter

  Dave Ciskowski

  Joseph Collins

  Bruce A. Conklin, Jr.

  Karl Cook

  Stephen Crowell

  Rich Daniels

  Christian DeBaun

  Griffin T. Demas

  Parker B. Demas

  Jason Donev

  John Doty

  Christopher M. Downing

  Amanda Dwyer

  Gerard Fievet

  Stephen Fleming

  Steven Frame

  James Franks

  Darren Fry

  Juan Fuentes

  Janice Galeckas

  Matthew Gallagher

  Nathan Gendzier

  Gerald Getz

  Mike Goffee

  Samuel Ray Granade

  Jeremiah J. Griswold

  David Gulick

  Christopher Hamilton

  Christofer Hardy

  Stephen Kennedy Harrison

  Rodney Haydon

  Lorelei Heinmets

  Rein Jacob Bandicoot Heinmets

  Jason Henderson

  Tillman James Hodgson

  Tatiana Hodziewich

  Billy Hollis

  Kristian Holvoet

  Robert Holz

  Jonathan Hoopingarner

  David Horst

  Eric Howald

  Butch Howard

  Glenn Howarth

  D. Geordie Howe

  D. Geordie Howe (no relation)

  Kenneth Hunt

  Robert Jackson

  Melissa Jankovic

  Randy Johnson

  William Johnston

  Jason Julier

  Mary Kay Kare

  Ben Katt

  Adam Kearns

  Jerry Kelleher

  Sean Kelly

  David Kirkpatrick

  Michael Kranjcevich

  Brent Krupp

  John C. Kulli

  Bobby Kuzma

  Ken Nozaki Lacy

  Steve Landell

  Michael LaSala

  Rich Laux

  Mathieu Lavigne

  Jennifer Leo

  Adam Letterman

  Allen Lewis

  James Lewis

  Sean Li

  Stephen Lichtwark

  Matthew Lindquist

  Willem Lohr

  Joshua Lopez

  John Elliott Lowe IV

  Joshua Lowman

  John Lowrance

  Do-Ming Lum

  Susan Mahaffey

  Pedro Marroquin

  Harry Mayo

  Damian McCarthy

  Timothy McClanahan

  Jason McCulley

  Chris McLaren

  Phil Merritt

  Paul Meyer

  Godfrey Milan

  Christopher Miller

  Jason Mitchell

  Stephen Mitchell

  P. Janiece Murphy

  Michael Myers

  Robert Myers

  David Nater

  Benjamin Nealis

  William Nealis

  John Needham

  Michael Nolan

  Patrik Nordebo

  Kelly Norton

  John O’Neill

  Anthony Parisi

  John Peitzman

  Alex Penchansky

  Kurt Perry

  Foster Piekarski

  Michael A. Porter

  Robert Presson

  Bryan Price

  Michael A. Putlack

  Adam Rakunas

  David E. Ray

  Randall Richmond

  John Romkey

  Michael Rowley

  Karl Sackett

  Tomas Sanchez Tejero

  Becky Sasala

  Jack Savage

  James Seals

  Ian Seckington

  John Clive Edmund Sheffield

  Patrick Shepherd

  Chris Shipley

  Neil A. Shurley

  David Smith

  Michael Smith

  Scot Sonderman

  Blaine Spaulding

  Hugh Staples

  Erik Stegman

  Charles Stewart

  Stuart Stilborn

  Gail Stout

  James Courtney Stowe

  Jennifer Strachan

  Abi Sutherland

  Todd Taylor

  Charles Terhune

  Jason Thurber

  Howard Kai-Hao To

  Eric Tolladay

  Doug Triplett

  Lauren Uroff

  George Vaughan

  Patrick Vera

  Lee Walter

  Nik Weisend

  Bradley G. Wherry

  Geraldine Winter

  Paul Wood

  Paul Worosello

  Jody L. Wurl

  Todd Yankee

  Adam Ziegler

  Zane L. Zielinski

  Author Afterword

  On September 25, 2006, science fiction and fantasy author John M. Ford passed away. His loved ones suggested that those who wished to remember him do so by contributing to a book endowment, established in his name, which would benefit the Minneapolis Public Library. I had met Mike Ford only briefly, but a number of good friends and colleagues were close to him, and I wanted to do something to help get the endowment off to a good start. I offered a bound draft version of my novel The Last Colony for auction, and noted somewhat jokingly that if the bidding got to $5,000 or above, I w
ould write a short story for the winning bidder, on the grounds that someone who bid that much deserved a short story.

  As it happens, Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press had been trying to get me to write a story for him, set in my “Old Man’s War” universe. So he asked me if I was serious about writing the short story for a $5,000 bid. I said I was; he bid that amount. And here we are: The John M. Ford Book Endowment is $5,000 richer, and I wrote the story you now have in your hands.

  I don’t want to overstate my relationship with Mike Ford; as I mentioned before, we had met only a few times, although each time was an enjoyable experience. Nevertheless, his warmth and kindness and wit enlightened the lives of people whom I have come to care about in the science fiction community, and their memories and celebration of his life served as an inspiration for me in the writing of this story. I encourage everyone who reads this to seek out his work, which is eminently worth reading.

  I’d also like to give a word of appreciation to Bill, whose positive delight in maneuvering me over a barrel to get a story out of me in no way diminishes the generosity of his contribution, which serves both to honor the memory of Mike Ford and puts books in the hands of readers. Bill’s a good egg, and I’m delighted he got this story out of me.

  —John Scalzi

  December 16, 2006

  After the Coup

  Copyright © 2008 by John Scalzi.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover and interior illustrations

  Copyright © 2008 by John Harris.

  All rights reserved.

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-4299-5212-5

  A Tor.com Original

  www.tor.com

  “How well can you take a punch?” asked Deputy Ambassador Schmidt.

  Lieutenant Harry Wilson blinked and set down his drink. “You know, there are a number of places a conversation can go after a question like that,” he said. “None of them end well.”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” Schmidt said. He drummed the glass of his own drink with his fingers. Harry noted the drumming, which was a favorite nervous tell of Hart Schmidt’s. It made poker games with him fun. “I have a very specific reason to ask you.”