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The shiny front door snicked up like a guillotine in reverse. We went through with dignified haste, and it slammed back down. The blade, or door, was pretty massive, for us to "hear" it in a vacuum; vibration through our boots.
Air hissed in-that we didhear-and 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 Man and a woman who looked like his twin sister. They wore identical sky-blue tunics.
"Welcome to Alcatraz," he said. "The name is an old joke." He gestured at the four empty chairs. "Why not get out of your suits and relax?"
"That would be unwise," Morales said.
"You have us surrounded, outside. Even if I were inclined to do you harm, I wouldn't be that foolish."
"It's for your own protection," I extemporized. "Viruses can mutate a lot in four hundred years. You don't want us sharing your air."
"That's not a problem," the woman said. "Believe me. My bodies are very much more efficient than yours."
" 'My bodies'?" I said.
"Oh, 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."
"As have I." A pair of naked Taurans stepped into the room.
Both our laserfingers came up at once. They refused to fire. I snatched the utility knife from my waist and threw it, and Morales did the same. Both creatures dodged the weapons easily, moving with inhuman swiftness.
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. But these two didn't attack.
"There is much to be explained," one Tauran said in a thin, wavering voice, its mouth-hole flexing and contracting. Their bodies were 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."
"Humans like you?" Morales said. "Stamped out of a machine?"
"I 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."
"Everyone on earth is the same?" I said. "There's only one kind of human?"
"There are still survivors of the Forever War, like yourselves," the female said. "Otherwise, there is only one human, although I can be either male or female. As there is only one Tauran. I was patterned after an individual named Khan. I call myself Man."
We'd supposedly been fighting to save the human race. So we come back to find it replaced by this new, improved model.
There were sounds to my left and right, like distant thunder. Nothing in my communicator.
"Your people are attacking," the male said, "even though I have told them it is useless."
"Let me talk to them!" Morales said.
"You 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."
"This has happened before?" I said.
"Not here, but other places. The outcome varies."
"Your stasis field," a Tauran said, "has been old to us for more than a century. We used a refined version of it to keep you from shooting us a minute ago."
"You say the outcome varies," Morales said to the female, "so sometimes we win?"
"Even if you killed me, you wouldn't "win'; there's nothing to win anymore. But no, the only thing that varies is how many of you survive."
"Your cruiser Bolivarmay have to be destroyed," a Tauran said. "I assume they are monitoring this conversation. Of course they are still several light-minutes away. But if they do not respond in a spirit of cooperation, we will have no choice."
Garcia did respond in less than a minute, her image materializing behind the Taurans. "Why don't we invite youto act in a spirit of cooperation," she said. "If none of our people are hurt, none of yours will be."
"That's beyond my control," the male said. "Your programmed weapons are attacking; mine are defending. I think that neither is programmed for mercy."
The female continued. "That they still survive is evidence of our good intentions. We could deactivate their stasis field from outside." There was a huge thumpand Man's table jumped up an inch. "Most of them would be destroyed in seconds if we did that."
Garcia paused. "Then explain why you haven't."
"One of my directives," the male said, "is to minimize casualties among you. There is a genetic diversity program, which will be explained to you at Stargate."
"All right," Garcia said. "Since I can't communicate with them otherwise, I'll let you deactivate the stasis field-but at the same time, of course, you have to turn off your automatic defenses. Otherwise, they'd be slaughtered."
"So you invite us to be slaughtered instead," he said. "Me and your two representatives here."
"I'll tell them to cease fire immediately."
All this conversation was going on with a twenty-second time lag. So "immediately" would be a while in coming.
Without comment, the two Taurans disappeared, and the forty duplicate humans filed back through the dome.
"All right," the male Man said, "perhaps there is a way around this time lag. Which of you is the ranking officer here?"
"I am," I said.
"Most of my individuals have returned to an underground shelter. I will turn off your stasis field and our defenses simultaneously.
"Tell them they must stop firing immediately. If we die, our defenses resume, and they won't have the protection of the stasis field."
I chi
"I don't like this," Morales said. "You can turn your weapons on and off with a thought?"
"That's correct."
"We can't. When Captain Potter gives them the order, they have to understand and react."
"But it's just turning off a switch, is it not?" There was another huge bang, and a web of cracks appeared in the wall to my left. Man looked at it without emotion.
"First a half dozen people have to understand the order and decide to obey it!"