Actually, I’d traded one kind of trouble for another. Despite the fact that there were several disinterested witnesses THE FOREVER WAR 213 to Graubard’s demise, there was a persistent rumor that I’d had Doc Alsever simply exterminate him-since I’d botched the job myself and didn’t want to go through a troublesome court-martial. The fact was that, under the Universal Code of Military “Justice,” Graubard hadn’t deserved any kind of trial at all. All 1 had to do was say “You, you and you. Take this man out and kill him, please.” And woe betide the private who refused to carry out the order. My relationship with the troops did improve, in a sense. At least outwardly, they showed more deference to me. But I suspected it was at least partly the cheap kind of respect you might offer any ruffian who had proved himself to be dangerous and volatile. So Killer was my new name. Just when I’d gotten used to Old Queer. The base quickly settled back into its routine of training and waiting. I was almost impatient for the Taurans to show up, just to get it over with one way or the other. The troops had adjusted to the situation much better than I had, for obvious reasons. They had specific duties to perform and ample free time for the usual soldierly anodynes to boredom. My duties were more varied but offered little satisfaction, since the problems that percolated up to me were of the “the buck stops here” type; those with pleasing, unambiguous solutions were taken care of in the lower echelons. I’d never cared much for sports or games, but found myself turning to them more and more as a kind of safety valve. For the first time in my life, in these tense, claustrophobic surroundings, I couldn’t escape into reading or study. So I fenced, quarterstaff and saber, with the other officers, worked myself to exhaustion on the exercise machines and even kept a jump-rope in my office. Most of the other officers played chess, but they could usually beat me-whenever I won it gave me the feeling I was being humored. Word games were difficuit because my language was an archaic dialect that they had trouble manipulating. And I lacked the time and talent to master “modern” English. Joe tialdeman hi’) For a while I let Diana feed me mood-altering drugs, but the cumulative effect of them was frightening-I was getting addicted in a way that was at first too subtle to bother me-so I stopped short. Then 1 tried some systematic psychoanalysis with Lieutenant Wilber. It was impossible. Although he knew all about my problem in an academic kind of way, we didn’t speak the same cultural language; his counseling me about love and sex was like me telling a fourteenth-century serf how best to get along with his priest and landlord. And that, after all, was the root of my problem. I was sure I could have handled the pressures and frustrations of command; of being cooped up in a cave with these people who at times seemed scarcely less alien than the enemy; even the near-certainty that it could lead only to painful death in a worthless cause-if only I could have had Mary-gay with me. And the feeling got more intense as the months crept by. He got very stern with me at this point and accused me of romanticizing my position. He knew what love was, he said; he had been in love himself. And the sexual polarity of the couple made no difference-all right, I could accept that; that idea had been a clichй in my parents’ generation (though it had run into some predictable resistance in my own). But love, he said, love was a fragile blossom; love was a delicate crystal; love was an unstable reaction with a half-life of about eight months. Bullshit, I said, and accused him of wearing cultural blinders; thirty centuries of prewar society taught that love was one thing that could last to the grave and even beyond and if he had been born instead of hatched he would know that without being told! Whereupon he would assume a wry, tolerant expression and reiterate that I was merely a victim of self-imposed sexual frustration and romantic delusion. In retrospect, I guess we had a good time arguing with each other. Cure me, he didn’t. I did have a new friend who sat in my lap all the time. It was the cat, who had the usual talent for hiding from people who like cats and cleaving unto those who have sinus trouble or just don’t like sneaky little animals. We THE FOREVER WAR 215