The Forever War (27 page)

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 live. Maybe you will, too. Join me.

I know from the records that you're out at Sade138 and won't be back for a couple of centuries. No problem.

I'm going to a planet they call Middle Finger, the fifth plane: 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 Fmger? 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."

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 late 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 iwned, was delivered at home with the help of a friend of the family, Dr. Diana Aleever-Moore.

Joe Haldeman was born in the USA ifl 1943. At college he studied physics and astronomy He then served as a combat engineer in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. He was severely wounded during the war and received a Purple Heart. Haldeman's first SF story was 'Out of Phase', published in 1969. The Forever i4'
zr was published in 1974 and became a huge success, winning both a Nebula award in 1975 and a Hugo in 1976. He wrote two other novels in the 1970s, Mindbridge and All My Sins Remembered, before starting the Worlds sequence in 1981. A novella version of The Hemingway Hoax (1990) won both Nebula and Hugo awards ifl '90 and '9! respectively More recent titles include J'fone So Blind and 1968. Haldeman now combines his writing career with a position as adjunct professor teaching writing at MIT His latest novel, Forever Peace, won the igg8 Hugo award, and will be published in
by Millennium. He is presently working on a sequel to The Forever War, entitled Forever Free.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR