A Separate War and Other Stories by Joe Haldeman Page B

after a minute a door swung open. We had to sidle through it sideways, because of the size of our fighting suits. I suppose we could have just walked straight through, enlarging it in the process, and in fact I considered that as I sidled. It would prevent them from using the airlock until they could fix it.
    Then another door, a metal blast door half a meter thick, slid open. Seated at a plain round table were Eagle and a woman who looked like his twin sister. They wore identical sky-blue tunics.
    â€œWelcome to Alcatraz,” Eagle said. “The name is an old joke.” He gestured at the four empty chairs. “Why not get out of your suits and relax?”
    â€œThat would be unwise,” Morales said.
    â€œYou have us surrounded, outside. Even if I were inclined to do you harm, I wouldn’t be that foolish.”
    â€œIt’s for your own protection,” I extemporized. “Viruses can mutate a lot in four hundred years. You don’t want us sharing your air.”
    â€œThat’s not a problem,” the woman said. “Believe me. My bodies are very much more efficient than yours.”
    â€œâ€˜My bodies’?” I said.
    â€œOh, well.” She made a gesture that was meaningless to me, and two side doors opened. From her side a line of women walked in, all exact copies of her. From his side, copies of him.
    There were about twenty of each. They stared at us with identical bland expressions, and then said in unison, “I have been waiting for you.”
    â€œAs have I.” A pair of naked Taurans stepped into the room.
    Both our laserfingers came up at once. Nothing happened.
    â€œI’m sorry I had to lie to you,” one of the women said.
    I braced myself to die. I hadn’t seen a live Tauran since the Yod-4 campaign, but I’d fought hundreds of them in the ALSC. They didn’t care whether they lived or died, so long as they died killing a human.
    â€œThere is much to be explained,” the Tauran said in a thin, wavering voice, its mouth-hole flexing and contracting. Its body was covered with a loose tunic like the humans’, hiding most of the wrinkled orange hide and strange limbs, and the pinched antlike thorax.
    The two of them blinked slowly in unison, in what might have been a social or emotional gesture, a translucent membrane sliding wetly down over the compound eyes. The tassels of soft flesh where their noses should have been stopped quivering while they blinked. “The war is over. In most places.”
    The man spoke. “Human and Tauran share Stargate now. There is Tauran on Earth and human on its home planet, J’sardlkuh.”
    â€œHumans like you?” Morales said. “Stamped out of a machine?”
    â€œI come from a kind of machine, but it is living, a womb. Until I was truly one , there could be no peace. When there were billions of us, all different, we couldn’t understand peace.”
    â€œEveryone on Earth is the same?” I said. “There’s only one kind of human?”
    â€œThere are still survivors of the Forever War, like yourselves,” the female said. “Otherwise, there is only one human. As there is only one Tauran. I was patterned after an individual named Khan. I call myself Man.”
    There were sounds to my left and right, like distant thunder. Nothing in my communicator.
    â€œYour people are attacking,” the male said, “even though I have told them it is useless.”
    â€œLet me talk to them!” Morales said.
    â€œYou can’t,” the female said. “They all assembled under the stasis field, when they saw the Taurans through your eyes. Now their programmed weapons attack. When those weapons fail, they will try to walk in with the stasis field.”
    â€œThis has happened before?” I said.
    â€œNot here, but other places. The outcome varies.”
    â€œYour stasis field,” a Tauran said, “has been old to us for more than