“As you must have guessed by now,” the man took over, “I am, we are, clones of a single individual. Some two hundred and fifty years ago, my name was Kahn. Now it is Man.
“I had a direct ancestor in your company, a Corporal Larry Kahn. It saddens me that he didn’t come back.”
“I am over ten billion individuals but only one consciousness,” she said. “After you read, I will try to clarify this. I know that it will be difficult to understand.
“No other humans are quickened, since I am the perfect pattern. Individuals who die are replaced.
“There are some planets, however, on which humans are born in the normal, mammalian way. If my society is too alien for you, you may go to one of these planets. If you wish to take part in procreation, I will not discourage it. Many veterans ask me to change their polarity to heterosexual so that they can more easily fit into these other societies. This I can do very easily.”
Don’t worry about that, Man, just make out my ticket.
“You will be my guest here at Stargate for ten days, after which you will be taken wherever you want to go,” he said. “Please read this book in the meantime. Feel free to ask any questions, or request any service.” They both stood and walked off the stage.
Charlie was sitting next to me. “Incredible,” he said. “They let … they encourage … men and women to do that again? Together?”
The female aisle — Man was sitting behind us, and she answered before I could frame a reasonably sympathetic, hypocritical reply. “It isn’t a judgment on your society,” she said, probably not seeing that he took it a little more personally than that. “I only feel that it’s necessary as a eugenic safety device. I have no evidence that there is anything wrong with cloning only one ideal individual, but if it turns out to have been a mistake, there will be a large genetic pool with which to start again.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Of course, you don’t have to go to these breeder planets. You can stay on one of my planets. I make no distinction between heterosexual play and homosexual.”
She went up on the stage to give a long spiel about where we were going to stay and eat and so forth while we were on Stargate, “Never been seduced by a computer before,” Charlie muttered.
The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only continued because the two races were unable to communicate.
Once they could talk, the first question was “Why did you start this thing?” and the answer was “Me?”
The Taurans hadn’t known war for millennia, and toward the beginning of the twenty-first century it looked as though mankind was ready to outgrow the institution as well. But the old soldiers were still around, and many of them were in positions of power. They virtually ran the United Nations Exploratory and Colonization Group, that was taking advantage of the newly-discovered collapsar jump to explore interstellar space.
Many of the early ships met with accidents and disappeared. The ex-military men were suspicious. They armed the colonizing vessels, and the first time they met a Tauran ship, they blasted it.
They dusted off their medals and the rest was going to be history.
You couldn’t blame it all on the military, though. The evidence they presented for the Taurans’ having been responsible for the earlier casualties was laughably thin. The few people who pointed this out were ignored.
The fact was, Earth’s economy needed a war, and this one was ideal. It gave a nice hole to throw buckets of money into, but would unify humanity rather than dividing it.
The Taurans relearned war, after a fashion. They never got really good at it, and would eventually have lost.
The Taurans, the book explained, couldn’t communicate with humans because they had no concept of the individual; they had been natural clones for millions of years. Eventually, Earth’s cruisers were manned by Man, Kahn-clones, and they were for the first time able to get through to each other.
The book stated this as a bald fact. I asked a Man to explain what it meant, what was special about clone-to-clone communication, and he said that I a priori couldn’t understand it. There were no words for it, and my brain wouldn’t be able to accommodate the concepts even if there were words.
All right. It sounded a little fishy, but I was willing to accept it. I’d accept that up was down if it meant the war was over.
Man was a pretty considerate entity. Just for us twenty-two, he went to the trouble of rejuvenating a little restaurant-tavern and staffing it at all hours (I never saw a Man eat or drink — guess they’d discovered a way around it). I was sitting in there one evening, drinking beer and reading their book, when Charlie came in and sat down next to me. Without preamble, he said, “I’m going to give it a try.”
“Give what a try?”
“Women. Hetero.” He shuddered. “No offense … it’s not really very appealing.” He patted my hand, looking distracted. “But the alternative … have you tried it?”
“Well … no, I haven’t.” Female Man was a visual treat, but only in the same sense as a painting or a piece of sculpture. I just couldn’t see them as human beings.
“Don’t.” He didn’t elaborate. “Besides, they say — he says, she says, it says — that they can change me back just as easily. If I don’t like it.”
“You’ll like it, Charlie.”
“Sure that’s what they say.” He ordered a stiff drink. “Just seems unnatural. Anyway, since, uh, I’m going to make the switch, do you mind if … why don’t we plan on going to the same planet?”
“Sure, Charlie, that’d be great.” I meant it. “You know where you’re going?”
“Hell, I don’t care. Just away from here.”
“I wonder if Heaven’s still as nice—”
“No.” Charlie jerked a thumb at the bartender. “He lives there.”
“I don’t know. I guess there’s a list.”
A man came into the tavern, pushing a cart piled high with folders. “Major Mandella? Captain Moore?”
“That’s us,” Charlie said.
“These are your military records. I hope you find them of interest. They were transferred to paper when your strike force was the only one outstanding, because it would have been impractical to keep the normal data retrieval networks running to preserve so few data.”
They always anticipated your questions, even when you didn’t have any.
My folder was easily five times as thick as Charlie’s. Probably thicker than any other, since I seemed to be the only trooper who’d made it through the whole duration. Poor Marygay. “Wonder what kind of report old Stott filed about me.” I flipped to the front of the folder.
Stapled to the front page was a small square of paper.
All the other pages were pristine white, but this one was tan with age and crumbling around the edges.
The handwriting was familiar, too familiar even after so long. The date was over 250 years old.
I winced and was blinded by sudden tears. I’d had no reason to suspect that she might be alive. But I hadn’t really known she was dead, not until I saw that date.
“William? What’s—”
“Leave me be, Charlie. Just for a minute.” I wiped my eyes and closed the folder. I shouldn’t even read the dammed note. Going to a new life, I should leave the old ghosts behind.
But even a message from the grave was contact of a sort. I opened the folder again.
11 Oct 2878
William—
All this is in your personnel file. But knowing you, you might just chuck it. So I made sure you’d get this note. Obviously, I lived. Maybe you will, too. Join me.