The Forever War (19 page)

5ECHN:

2LT Borgstedz 2LT Brill

2LT Gainor

SSgr Webster SSgt Gillies

SSgr Abram:

SSgt Dole

7ECHN:

Sgt Dolins Sgz Bell Cpl Geller Cpl Kahn

Sgt Anderson

Cpl Kalvm

Sgt Noyes Cpl Spraggs

8ECHN:

Pvt Boas CpJ Weiner

Pvt Lingeman Pvt IkIe

Pvt Rosevear Pvt Schon

Pvt Wolfe, R. Pvt Shubik

Pvt Lin Pvt Duhl

Pvt Simmons Pvt Perloff

Pvt Winograd Pvt Moynihan

Pvt Brown Pvt Frank

Pvt Bloomquist Pvt Graubard

Pvt Wong Pvt Orlans

Pvt Louria Pvt Mayr

Pvt Gross Pvt Quarton

Pvt Asadi Pvt Hin

Pvt Horman Pvt Stendahi

Pvt Fox Pvt Erikson Pvt Born

Pvt Miller

Pvt Reisman

Pvt Coupling

Pvt Rosiow

Pvt Huntington

Pvt Dc Sola

Pvt Pool

Pvt Nepala

Pvt Schuba

Pvt Ulanov

Pvt Shelley

Pvt Lynn

Pvt Slaer

Pvt Schenk

Pvt Deelstre

Pvt Levy

Pvt Conroy

Pvt Yakata

Pvt Burns

Pvt Cohen

Pvt Graham

Pvt Schoeliple

Pvt Wolfe, E.

Pvt Karkoshka

Pvt Majer

Pvt Dioujova

Pvt Armaing

Pvt Baulez

Pvt Johnson

Pvt Oitrecht

Pvt Kayibanth

Pvt Tschudi

Supporting: ILT Williams (NAy), 2LTs Jarvil (MED), Laasonen (MED),

Wilber (PSY), Szydlowska (MAINT), Gaptchcnko (ORD), Gedo (COMM),

Gim (COMP); 1SGTs Evans (MED), Rodriguez (MED), Kostidinov

(MED), Rwabwogo (PSY), Blazynski (MAINT), Turpin (ORD); SSGTS

Carreras (MED), Kousnetzov (MED), Waruinge (MED). Rojas (MED), Botos (MAINT), Orban (CK), Mbugua (COMP); SGTs Perez (MED), Seales

(MAINT), Anghelov (01W), Vugin (COMP); CPLs Daborg (MED), Correa

(MED), Kajdi (SEX), Valdez (SEX), Muranga (01W); PVTs Kottysch

(MAINT), Rudkoski (CK), Minter (ORE)).

APPROVED STFCOM STARGATE 12 Mar 2458. FOR ThE

COMMANDER:

Olga Torischeva BGEN STFCOM

I went down to Six early, thinking to eat dinner there, but they had nothing but snacks. So I munched on a fungus thing that vaguely resembled escargots and took the rest of my calories in the form of alcohol.

"Major Mandeila?" I'd been busily engaged in my seventh beer and hadn't seen the Colonel approach. I started to rise but he motioned for me to stay seated and dropped heavily into the chair opposite me.

"I'm in your debt," he said. "You saved me from at least half of a boring evening." He offered his hand. "Jack Kynock, at your service."

"Colonel-"

"Don't Colonel me and I won't Major you. We old fossits have to - - keep our perspective. William."

"All right with me."

He ordered a kind of drink I'd never heard of. "Where to start? Last time you were on Earth was 2007, according to the records."

"That's right."

"Didn't like it much, did you?"

"No." Zombies, happy robots.

"Well, it got better. Then it got worse, thank you." A private brought his drink, a bubbling concoction that was green at the bottom of the glass and lightened to chartreuse at the top. He sipped. "Then they got better again, then worse, then. . . I don't know. Cycles."

"What's it like now?"

"Well - . - I'm not really sure. Stacks of reports and such, but it's hard to filter out the propaganda. I haven't been back in almost two hundred years; it was pretty bad then. Depending on what you like."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, let me see. There was lots of excitement. Ever hear of the Pacifist movement?"

"I don't think so."

"Hmn, the name's deceptive. Actually, it was a war, a guerrilla war."

"I thought I could give you name, rank and serial number of every war from Troy on up." He smiled. "They must have missed one."

"For good reason. It was run by veterans-survivors of Yod-38 and Aleph-40, I hear; they got discharged together and decided they could take on all of UNEF, Earthside. They got lots of support from the population."

"But didn't win."

"We're still here." He swirled his drink and the colors shifted. "Actually, all I know is hearsay. Last time I got to Earth, the war was over, except for some sporadic sabotage. And it wasn't exactly a safe topic of conversation."

"It surprises me a little," I said, "well, more than a little. That Earth's population would do anything at all.. - against the government's wishes."

He made a noncommittal sound.

"Least of all, revolution. When we were there, you couldn't get anybody to say a damned thing against the UNEF-or any of the local governments, for that matter. They were conditioned from ear to ear to accept things as they were."

"Ah. That's a cyclic thing, too." He settled back in his chair. "It's not a matter of technique. if they wanted to, Earth's government could have total control over. . . every nontrivial thought and action of each citizen, from cradle to grave.

"They don't do it because it would be fatal. Because there's a war on. Take your own case: did you get any motivational conditioning while you were in the can?"

I thought for a moment. "If I did, I wouldn't necessarily know about it."

"That's true. Partially true. But take my word for it, they left that part of your brain alone. Any change in your attitude toward UNEF or the war, or war in general, comes only from new knowledge. Nobody's fiddled with your basic motivations. And you should know why."

Names, dates, figures rattled down through the maze of new knowledge. "Tet-17, Sed-2l, Aleph-14. The Lazlo

'The Lazlo Emergency Commission Report.' June, 2106."

"Right. And by extension, your own experience on Aleph-l. Robots don't make good soldiers."

"They would," I said. "Up to the twenty-first century.

BehaViOral conditioning would have been the answer to a general's dream. Make up an army with all the best features of the SS, the Praetorian Guard, the Golden Horde. Mosby's Raiders, the Green Berets."

He laughed over his glass. "Then put that army up against a squad of men in modem fighting suits. It'd be over in a couple of minutes."

"So long as each man in the squad kept his head about him. And just fought like hell to stay alive." The generation of soldiers that had precipitated the Lazlo Reports had been conditioned from birth to conform to somebody's vision of the ideal fighting man. They worked beautifully as a team, totally bloodthirsty, placing no great importance on personal survival-and the Taurans cut them to ribbons.

The Taurans also fought with no regard for self. But they were better at it, and there were always more of them.

Kynock took a drink and watched the colors. "I've seen your psych profile," he said. "Both before you got here and after your session in the can. It's essentially the same, before and after."

"That's reassuring." I signaled for another beer.

"Maybe it shouldn't be."

"What, it says I won't make a good officer? I told them that from the beginning. I'm no leader."

"Right in a way, wrong in a way. Want to know what that profile says?"

I shrugged. "Classified, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said. "But you're a major now. You can pull the profile of anybody in your command."

"I don't suppose it has any big surprises." But I was a little curious. What animal isn't fascinated by a mirror?

"No. It says you're a pacifist. A failed one at that, which gives you a mild neurosis. Which you handle by transferring the burden of guilt to the army."

The fresh beer was so cold it hurt my teeth. "No surprises yet."

"And as far as being a leader, you do have a certain potential. But it would be along the lines of a teacher or a minister; you would have to lead from empathy, compassion. You have the desire to impose your ideas on other people, but not your will. Which means, you're right, you'll make one hell of a bad officer unless you shape up."

I had to laugh. "UNEF must have known all of this when they ordered me to officer training."

"There are other parameters," he said. "For instance, you're adaptable, reasonably intelligent, analytical. And you're one of the eleven people who's lived through the whole war."

"Surviving is a virtue in a private." Couldn't resist it. "But an officer should provide gallant example. Go down with the ship. Stride the parapet as if unafraid."

He harrumphed at that. "Not when you're a thousand light years from your replacement."

"It doesn't add up, though. Why would they haul me all the way from Heaven to take a chance on my 'shaping up,' when probably a third of the people here on Stargate are better officer material? God, the military mind!"

"I suspect the bureaucratic mind, at least, had something to do with it. You have an embarrassing amount of seniority to be a footsoldier."

"That's all time dilation. I've only been in three campaigns."

"Immaterial. Besides, that's two-and-a-half more than the average soldier survives. The propaganda boys will probably make you into some kind of a folk hero."

"Folk hero." I sipped at the beer. "Where is John Wayne now that we really need him?"

"John Wayne?" He shook his head. "I never went in the can, you know. I'm no expert at military history."

"Forget it."

Kynock finished his drink and asked the private to get him-I swear to God-a "rum Antares."

"Well, I'm supposed to be your Temporal Orientation Officer. What do you want to know about the present? What passes for the present."

Still on my mind: "You've never been in the can?"

"No, combat officers only. The computer facilities and energy you go through in three weeks would keep the Earth running for several days. Too expensive for us deskwarmers."

"Your decorations say you're combat."

"Honorary. I was." The rum Antares was a tall slender glass with a little ice floating at the top, filled with pale amber liquid. At the bottom was a bright red globule about the size of a thumbnail; crimson filaments waved up from it.

"What's that red stuff?"

"Cinnamon. Oh, some ester with cinnamon in it. Quite good. . . want a taste?"

"No, I'll stick to beer, thanks."

"Down at level one, the library machine has a temporal orientation file, that my staff updates every day. You can go to it for specific questions. Mainly I want to... prepare you for meeting your Strike Force."

"What, they're all cyborgs? Clones?"

He laughed. "No, it's illegal to clone humans. The main problem is with, uh, you're heterosexual."

"Oh, that's no problem. I'm tolerant."

"Yes, your profile shows that you... think you're tolerant, but that's not the problem, exactly."

"Oh," I knew what he was going to say. Not the details, but the substance.

"Only emotionally stable people are drafted into UNEF.

"I know this is hard for you to accept, but heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure."

"If they think they're going to cure me-"

"Relax, you're too old." He took a delicate sip. "It won't be as hard to get along with them as you might-"

"Wait. You mean nobody... everybody in my company is homosexual? But me?"

"William, everybody on Earth is homosexual. Except for a thousand or so; veterans and incurables."

"AK" What could I say? "Seems like a drastic way to solve the population problem."

"Perhaps. It does work, though; Earth's population is stable at just under a billion. When one person dies or goes offplanet, another is quickened."

"Not 'born.'"

"Born, yes, but not the oldfashioned way. Your old term for it was 'test-tube babies,' but of course they don't use a test-tube."

"Well, that's something."

"Part of every creche is an artificial womb that takes care of a person the first eight or ten months after quickening. What you would call birth takes place over a period of days; it isn't the sudden, drastic event that it used to be."

O brave new world, I thought. "No birth trauma. A billion perfectly adjusted homosexuals."

"Perfectly adjusted by present-day Earth standards. You and I might find them a little odd."

"That's an understatement." I drank off the rest of my beer. "Yourself, you, uh.. . are you homosexual?"

"Oh, no," he said. I relaxed. "Actually, though, I'm not hetero anymore, either." He slapped his hip and it made an odd sound. "Got wounded and it turned out that I had a rare disorder of the lymphatic system, can't regenerate. Nothing but metal and plastic from the waist down. To use your word, I'm a cyborg."

Far out, as my mother used to say. "Oh, Private," I called to the waiter, "bring me one of those Antares things." Sitting here in a bar with an asexual cyborg who is probably the only other normal person on the whole goddamned planet.

"Make it a double, please."

They looked normal enough, filing into the lecture hail where we held our first muster, the next day. Rather young and a little stiff.

Most of them had only been out of the creche for seven or eight years. The creche was a controlled, isolated environment to which only a few specialists-pediatricians and teachers, mostly-had access. When a person leaves the creche at age twelve or thirteen, he chooses a first name (his last name having been taken from the donor-parent with the higher genetic rating) and is legally a probationary adult, with schooling about equivalent to what I had after my first year of college. Most of them go on to more specialized education, but some are assigned a job and go right to work.

They're observed very closely and anyone who shows any signs of sociopathy, such as heterosexual leanings, is sent away to a correctional facility. He's either cured or kept there for the rest of his life.

Everyone is drafted into UNEF at the age of twenty. Most people work at a desk for five years and are discharged. A few lucky souls, about one in eight thousand, are invited to volunteer for combat training. Refusing is "sociopathic," even though it means signing up for an extra five years. And your chance of surviving the ten years is so small as to be negligible; nobody ever had. Your best chance is to have the war end before your ten (subjective) years of service are up. Hope that time dilation puts many years between each of your battles.

Since you can figure on going into battle roughly once every subjective year, and since an average of 34 percent survive each battle, it's easy to compute your chances of being able to fight it out for ten years. It comes to about two one-thousandths of one percent. Or, to put it another way, get an oldfashioned six-shooter and play Russian Roulette with four of the six chambers loaded. If you can do it ten times in a row without decorating the opposite wall, congratulations! You're a civilian.

There being some sixty thousand combat soldiers in UNEF, you could expect about 1.2 of them to survive for ten years. I didn't seriously plan on being the lucky one, even though I was halfway there.

How many of these young soldiers filing into the auditorium knew they were doomed? I tried to match faces up with the dossiers I'd been scanning all morning, but it was hard. They'd all been selected through the same battery of stringent parameters, and they looked remarkably alike: tall but not too tall, muscular but not heavy, intelligent but not in a brooding way. . . and Earth was much more racially homogenous than it had been in my century. Most of them looked vaguely Polynesian. Only two of them, Kayibanda and Lin, seemed pure representatives of racial types. I wondered whether the others gave them a hard time.

Most of the women were achingly handsome, but I was in no position to be critical. I'd been celibate for over a year, ever since saying goodbye to Marygay, back on Heaven.

I wondered if one of them might have a trace of atavism, or might humor her commander's eccentricity. It is absolately forbidden for an officer to form sexual liaison with his subordinates. Such a warm way of putting it. Violation of this regulation is punishable by attachment of all funds and reduction to the rank of private or, if the relationship interferes with a unit's combat efficiency, summary execution. If all of UNEF's regulations could be broken so casually and consistently as that one was, it would be a very easygoing army.

But not one of the boys appealed to me. How they'd look after another year, I wasn't sure.

"Tench-hut!" That was Lieutenant Hilleboe. It was a credit to my new reflexes that I didn't jump to my feet. Everybody in the auditorium snapped to.

"My name is Lieutenant Hilleboe and I am your Second Field Officer." That used to be "Field First Sergeant." A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.

Hilleboe came on like a real hard-ass professional soldier. Probably shouted orders at the mirror every morning, while she was shaving. But I'd seen her profile and knew that she'd only been in action once, and only for a couple of minutes at that. Lost an arm and a leg and was commissioned, same as me, as a result of the tests they give at the regeneration clinic.

Hell, maybe she had been a very pleasant person before going through that trauma; it was bad enough just having one limb regrown.

She was giving them the usual first-sergeant peptalk, stern-but-fair: don't waste my time with little things, use the chain of command, most problems can be solved at the fifth echelon.

It made me wish I'd had more time to talk with her earlier. Strike Force Command had really rushed us into this first muster-we were scheduled to board ship the next day-and I'd only had a few words with my officers.

Not enough, because it was becoming clear that Hilleboe and I had rather disparate philosophies about how to run a company. It was true that running it was her job; I only commanded. But she was setting up a potential "good guy-bad guy" situation, using the chain of command to so isolate herself from the men and women under her. I had planned not to be quite so aloof, setting aside an hour every other day when any soldier could come to me directly with grievances or suggestions, without permission from his superiors.

We had both been given the same information during our three weeks in the can. It was interesting that we'd arrived at such different conclusions about leadership. This Open Door policy, for instance, had shown good results in "modern" armies in Australia and America. And it seemed especially appropriate to our situation, in which everybody would be cooped up for months or even years at a time. We'd used the system on the Sangre y Victoria, the last starship to which I'd been attached, and it had seemed to keep tensions down.

She had them at ease while delivering this organizational harangue; pretty soon she'd call them to attention and introduce me. What would I talk about? I'd planned just to say a few predictable words and explain my Open Door policy, then turn them over to Commodore Antopol, who would say something about the Masaryk II. But I'd better put off my explanation until after I'd had a long talk with Hilleboe; in fact, it would be best if she were the one to introduce the policy to the men and women, so it wouldn't look like the two of us were at loggerheads.

My executive officer, Captain Moore, saved me. He came rushing through a side door-he was always rushing, a pudgy meteor-threw a quick salute and handed me an envelope that contained our combat orders. I had a quick whispered conference with the Commodore, and she agreed that it wouldn't do any harm to tell them where we were going, even though the rank and file technically didn't have the "need to know."

One thing we didn't have to worry about in this war was enemy agents. With a good coat of paint, a Tauran might be able to disguise himself as an ambulatory mushroom. Bound to raise suspicions.

Hilleboe had called them to attention and was dutifully telling them what a good commander I was going to be; that I'd been in the war from the beginning, and if they intended to survive through their enlistment they had better follow my example. She didn't mention that I was a mediocre soldier with a talent for getting missed. Nor that I'd resigned from the army at the earliest opportunity and only got back in because conditions on Earth were so intolerable.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." I took her place at the podium. "At ease." I unfolded the single sheet that had our orders, and held it up. "I have some good news and some bad news." What had been a joke five centuries before was now just a statement of fact.

"These are our combat orders for the Sade138 campaign. The good news is that we probably won't be fighting, not immediately. The bad news is that we're going to be a target."

They stirred a little bit at that, but nobody said anything or took his eyes off me. Good discipline. Or maybe just fatalism; I didn't know how realistic a picture they had of their future. Their lack of a future, that is.

"What we are ordered to do.. . is to find the largest portal planet orbiting the Sade138 collapsar and build a base there. Then stay at the base until we are relieved. That will be two or three years, probably.

"During that time we will almost certainly be attacked. As most of you probably know, Strike Force Command has uncovered a pattern in the enemy's movements from collapsar to collapsar. They hope eventually to trace this complex pattern back through tune and space and find the Taurans' home planet. For the present, they can only send out intercepting forces, to hamper the enemy's expansion.

"In a large perspective, this is what we're ordered to do. We'll be one of several dozen strike forces employed in these blocking maneuvers, on the enemy's frontier. I won't be able to stress often enough or hard enough how important this mission is-if UNEF can keep the enemy from expanding, we may be able to envelop him. And win the war."

Preferably before we're all dead meat. "One thing I want to be clear we may be attacked the day we land, or we may simply occupy the planet for ten years and come on home." Fat chance. "Whatever happens, every one of us will stay in the best fighting trim all the time. In transit, we will maintain a regular program of calisthenics as well as a review of our training. Especially construction techniques-we have to set up the base and its defense facilities in the shortest possible time."

God, I was beginning to sound like an officer. "Any questions?" There were none. "Then I'd like to introduce Commodore Antopol. Commodore?"

The commodore didn't try to hide her boredom as she outlined, to this room full of ground-pounders, the characteristics and capabilities of Masaryk Ii. I had learned most of what she was saying through the can's forcefeeding, but the last thing she said caught my attention.

"Sade138 will be the most distant collapsar men have gone to. It isn't even in the galaxy proper, but rather is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, some 150,000 light years distant.

"Our voyage will require four collapsar jumps and will last some four months, subjective. Maneuvering into collapsar insertion will put us about three hundred years behind Stargate's calendar by the time we reach Sade138."

And another seven hundred years gone, if I lived to return. Not that it would make that much difference; Marygay was as good as dead and there wasn't another person alive who meant anything to me.

"As the major said, you mustn't let these figures lull you into complacency. The enemy is also headed for Sade138; we may all get there the same day. The mathematics of the situation is complicated, but take our word for it; it's going to be a close race.

"Major, do you have anything more for them?"

I started to rise. "Well. . ."

"Tench-hut!" Hilleboe shouted. Had to learn to expect that.

"Only that I'd like to meet with my senior officers, echelon 4 and above, for a few minutes. Platoon sergeants, you're responsible for getting your troops to Staging Area 67 at 0400 tomorrow morning. Your time's your own until then. Dismissed."

I invited the five officers up to my billet and brought out a bottle of real French brandy. It had cost two months' pay, but what else could I do with the money? Invest it?

I passed around glasses but Alsever, the doctor, demurred. Instead she broke a little capsule under her nose and inhaled deeply. Then tried without too much success to mask her euphoric expression.

"First let's get down to one basic personnel problem," I said, pouring. "Do all of you know that I'm not homosexual?"

Mixed chorus of yes sirs and no sirs.

"Do you think this is going to. . . complicate my situation as commander? As far as the rank and tile?"

"Sir, I don't-" Moore began.

"No need for honorifics," I said, "not in this closed circle; I was a private four years ago, in my own time frame. When there aren't any troops around, I'm just Mandella, or William." I had a feeling that was a mistake even as I was saying it. "Go on."

"Well, William," he continued, "it might have been a problem a hundred years ago. You know how people felt then."

"Actually, I don't. All I know about the period from the twenty-first century to the present is military history."

"Oh. Well, it was, uh, it was, how to say it?" His hands fluttered.

"It was a crime," Alsever said laconically. "That was when the Eugenics Council was first getting people used to the idea of universal homosex."

"Eugenics Council?"

"Part of UNEF. Only has authority on Earth." She took a deep sniff at the empty capsule. "The idea was to keep people from making babies the biological way. Because, A, people showed a regrettable lack of sense in choosing their genetic partner. And B, the Council saw that racial differences had an unnecessarily divisive effect on humanity; with total control over births, they could make everybody the same race in a few generations."

I didn't know they had gone quite that far. But I suppose it was logical. "You approve? As a doctor."

"As a doctor? I'm not sure." She took another capsule from her pocket and rolled it between thumb and forefinger, staring at nothing. Or something the rest of us couldn't see.

"In a way, it makes my job simpler. A lot of diseases simply no longer exist. But I don't think they know as much about genetics as they think they do. It's not an exact science; they could be doing something very wrong, and the results wouldn't show up for centuries."

She cracked the capsule under her nose and took two deep breaths. "As a woman, though, I'm all in favor of it." Hilleboe and Rusk nodded vigorously.

"Not having to go through childbirth?"

"That's part of it." She crossed her eyes comically, looking at the capsule, gave it a final sniff. "Mostly, though, it's not.. . having to. . . have a man. Inside me. You understand. It's disgusting."

Moore laughed. "If you haven't tried it, Diana, don't-"

"Oh, shut up." She threw the empty capsule at him playfully.

"But it's perfectly natural," I protested.

"So is swinging through trees. Digging for roots with a blunt stick. Progress, my good major, progress."

"Anyway," Moore said, "it was only a crime for a short period. Then it was considered a, oh, curable.. ."