THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman

We stopped for the “night”-actually, the sun wouldn’t set for another seventy hours-atop a slight rise some ten klicks from where we had killed the aliens. But they weren’t aliens, I bad to remind myself-we were. Two platoons deployed in a ring around the rest of us, and we flopped down exhausted. Everybody was allowed four hours’ sleep and had two hours’ guard duty. Potter came over and sat next to me. I chinned her frequency. “Hi, Marygay.” “Oh, William,” her voice over the radio was hoarse and cracking. “God, it’s so horrible.” “It’s over now-” “I killed one of them, the first instant, I shot it right in the, in the . . .” 1 put my hand on her knee. The contact had a plastic click and I jerked it back, visions of machines embracing, copulating. “Don’t feel singled out, Marygay; whatever guilt there is, is. . . belongs evenly to all of us,. . . but a triple portion for Cor-” “You privates quit jawin’ and get some sleep. You both pull guard in two hours.” “OK, Sarge.” Her voice was so sad and tired I couldn’t bear it. I felt if I could only touch her, I could drain off the sadness like ground wire draining current, but we were each trapped in our own plastic world- ”G’night, William.” “Night.” It’s almost impossible to get sexually excited inside a suit, with the relief tube and all the silver chloride sensors poking you, but somehow this was my body’s response to the emotional impotence, maybe remembering more pleasant sleeps with Marygay, maybe feeling that in the midst of all this death, personal death could be very 55 56 Joe Haldeman soon, cranking up the procreative derrick for one last try lovely thoughts like this. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was a machine, mimicking the functions of life, creaking and clanking my clumsy way through a world, people too polite to say anything but giggling behind my back, and the little man who sat inside my head pulling the levers and clutches and watching the dials, he was hopelessly mad and was storing up hurts for the day- “Mandella-wake up, goddammit, your shift!” I shuffled over to my place on the perimeter to watch for god knows what. . . but I was so weary I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Finally I tongued a stimtab, knowing I’d pay for it later. For over an hour I sat there, scanning my sector left, right, near, far, the scene never changing, not even a breath of wind to stir the grass. Then suddenly the grass parted and one of the three-legged creatures was right in front of me. I raised my finger but didn’t squeeze. “Movement!” “Movement!” “Jesus Chri-there’s one right-” “HOLD YOUR FIRE! F’ shit’s sake don’t shoot!” “Movement.” “Movement.” I looked left and right, and as far as I could see, every perimeter guard had one of the blind, dumb creatures standing right in front of him. Maybe the drug I’d taken to stay awake made me more sensitive to whatever they did. My scalp crawled and I felt a formless thing in my mind, the feeling you get when somebody has said something and you didn’t quite hear it, want to respond, but the opportunity to ask him to repeat it is gone. The creature sat back on its haunches, leaning forward on the one front Leg. Big green bear with a withered arm. Its power threaded through my mind, spiderwebs, echo of night terrors, trying to communicate, trying to destroy me, I couldn’t know. “All right, everybody on the perimeter, fall back, slow. THE FOREVER WAR 57 Don’t make any quick gestures. .. . Anybody got a headache or anything?” “Sergeant, this is Hollister.” Lucky. “They’re trying to say something. . . I can almost… no, just.. .” “All I can get is that they think we’re, think we’re… well, fimny. They’re not afraid.” “You mean the one in front of you isn’t-” “No, the feeling comes from all of them., they’re all thinking the same thing. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.” “Maybe they thought it was funny, what they did to Ho.” “Maybe. I don’t feel they’re dangerous. Just curious about us.” “Sergeant, this is Bohrs.”

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