THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman

”saliright.” She snuggled over and clasped me spoon-fashion. She was warm and reasonably soft. I patted her hip in what I hoped was a brotherly fashion. “Night, Rogers.” “G’night, Stallion.” She returned the gesture more pointedly. Why do you always get the tired ones when you’re ready and the randy ones when you’re tired? I bowed to the inevitable. 2 “Awright, let’s get some goddamn back inta that! Stringer team! Move it up-move your ass up!” A warm front had come in about midnight and the snow had turned to sleet. The permaplast stringer weighed five hundred pounds and was a bitch to handle, even when it wasn’t covered with ice. There were four of us, two at each end, carrying the plastic girder with frozen fingertips. Rogers was my partner. “Steel!” the guy behind me yelled, meaning that he was losing his hold. It wasn’t steel, but it was heavy enough to break your foot. Everybody let go and hopped away. It splashed slush and mud all over us. “Goddammit, Petrov,” Rogers said, “why didn’t you go out for the Red Cross or something? This fucken thing’s not that fucken heavy.” Most of the girls were a little more circumspect in their speech. Rogers was a little butch. “Awright, get a fucken move on, stringers-epoxy team! Dog’em! Dog’em!” Our two epoxy people ran up, swinging their buckets. “Let’s go, Mandella. I’m freezin’ my balls off.” “Me, too,” the girl said with more feeling than logic. “One-two–heave!” We got the thing up again and staggered toward the bridge. It was about three-quarters completed. Looked as if the second platoon was going to beat us. I wouldn’t give a damn, but the platoon that got their bridge built first got to fly home. Four miles of muck for the rest of us, and no rest before chop. We got the stringer in place, dropped it with a clank, and fitted the static clamps that held it to the rise-beams. The female half of the epoxy team started slopping glue on it before we even had it secured. Her partner was waiting for the stringer on the other side. The floor team was waiting at the foot of the bridge, each one holding a piece of the 6 THE FOREVER WAR 7 light, stressed permaplast over his head like an umbrella. They were dry and clean. I wondered aloud what they had done to deserve it, and Rogers suggested a couple of colorful, but unlikely, possibilities. We were going back to stand by the next stringer when the field first (name of Dougeistein, but we called him “Awright”) blew a whistle and bellowed, “Awright, soldier boys and girls, ten minutes. Smoke’em if you got ’em.” He reached into his pocket and turned on the control that heated our coveralls. Rogers and I sat down on our end of the stringer and I took out my weed box. I had lots of joints, but we were ordered not to smoke them until after night-chop. The only tobacco I had was a cigarro butt about three inches long. I lit it on the side of the box; it wasn’t too bad after the first couple of puffs. Rogers took a puff, just to be sociable, but made a face and gave it back. “Were you in school when you got drafted?” she asked. “Yeah. Just got a degree in physics. Was going after a teacher’s certificate.” She nodded soberly. “I was in biology . . .” “Figures.” I ducked a handful of slush. “How far?” “Six years, bachelor’s and technicaL” She slid her boot along the ground, turning up a ridge of mud and slush the consistency of freezing ice milk. “Why the fuck did this have to happen?” I shrugged. It didn’t call for an answer, least of all the answer that the UNEF kept giving us. Intellectual and physical elite of the planet, going out to guard humanity against the Tairan menace. Soyashit It was all just a big experiment See whether we could goad the Taurans into ground

Awright blew the whistle two minutes early, as expected, but Rogers and I and the other two stringers got to sit for a minute while the epoxy and floor teams finished covering our stringer. It got cold fast, sitting there with our suits turned off, but we remained inactive on principle. There really wasn’t any sense in having us train in the cold. Typical army half-logic. Sure, it was going to be cold where we were going, but not ice-cold or snow-cold. Al- 8 Joe Haldeman

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