THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman

When she was more than halfway to oblivion, mumbling a reassuring soliloquy to her liver, she suddenly tilted her head up to stare at me with childlike directness.

“You have a real problem, Major William.”

“Not half the problem you’ll have in the morning, Lieutenant Doctor Diana.”

“Oh not really.” She waved a drunken hand in front of her face. “Some vitamins, some glu. . . cose, an eensy cc of adren. . . aline if all else fails. You.. . you. . . have… a real.. . problem.”

“Look, Diana, don’t you want me to-”

“What you need.. . is to get an appointment with that nice Corporal Valdez.” Valdez was the male sex counselor. “He has empathy. Itsiz job. He’d make you-”

“We talked about this before, remember? I want to stay the way I am.”

“Don’t we all.” She wiped away a tear that was probably one percent alcohol. “You know they call you the Old Qreer. No they don’t.”

She looked at the floor and then at the wall. “The 0l’ Queer, that’s what.”

I had expected names worse than that. But not so soon. “I don’t care. The commander always gets names.”

“I know but.” She stood up suddenly and wobbled a little bit. “Too much t’ drink. Lie down.” She turned her back to me and stretched so hard that a joint popped. Then a seam whispered open and she shrugged off her tunic, stepped out of it and tiptoed to my bed. She sat down and patted the mattress. “Come on, William. Only chance.”

“For Christ’s sake, Diana. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“All’s fair,” she giggled. “And ‘sides, I’m a doctor. I can be clin’cal; won’t bother me a bit. Help me with this.” After five hundred years, they were still putting brassiere clasps in the back.

One kind of gentleman would have helped her get undressed and then made a quiet exit. Another kind of gentleman might have bolted for the door. Being neither kind, I closed in for the kill.

Perhaps fortunately, she passed out before we had made any headway. I admired the sight and touch of her for a long time before, feeling like a cad, I managed to gather everything up and dress her.

I lifted her out of the bed, sweet burden, and then realized that if anyone saw me carrying her down to her billet, she’d be the butt of rumors for the rest of the campaign. I called up Charlie, told him we’d had some booze and Diana was rather the worse for it, and asked him whether he’d come up for a drink and help me haul the good doctor home.

By the time Charlie knocked, she was draped innocently in a chair, snoring softly.

He smiled at her. “Physician, heal thyself.” I offered him the bottle, with a warning. He sniffed it and made a face.

“What is this, varnish?”

“Just something the cooks whipped up. Vacuum still.”

He set it down carefully, as if it might explode if jarred. “I predict a coming shortage of customers. Epidemic of death by poisoning-she actually drank that vile stuff?”

“Well, the cooks admitted it was an experiment that didn’t pan out; their other flavors are evidently potable. Yeah, she loved it.”

“Well. . .” He laughed. “Damn! What, you take her legs and I take her arms?”

“No, look, we each take an arm. Maybe we can get her to do part of the walking.”

She moaned a little when we lifted her out of the chair, opened one eye and said, “Hello, Charlee.” Then she closed the eye and let us drag her down to the billet. No one saw us on the way, but her bunkmate, Laasonen, was sitting up reading.

“She really drank the stuff, eh?” She regarded her friend with wry affection. “Here, let me help.”

The three of us wrestled her into bed. Laasonen smoothed the hair out of her eyes. “She said it was in the nature of an experiment.”

“More devotion to science than I have,” Charlie said. “A stronger stomach, too.”

We all wished he hadn’t said that.

Diana sheepishly admitted that she hadn’t remembered anything after the first drink, and talking to her, I deduced that she thought Charlie had been there all along. Which was all for the best, of course. But oh! Diana, my lovely latent heterosexual, let me buy you a bottle of good scotch the next time we come into port. Seven hundred years from now.

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