The War With Earth

by Leo Frankowski

  "Indeed," I said. "Well, it happens that I have such a computer. We'll see."

  I punched up Agnieshka.

  "Can you get into the real estate computer?"

  "Sure, boss. He's a nice kid, but dumb. What do you want?"

  "I want some land, of course! You know. Something like what I used to think I had. Find me the closest thing to it on the market that I can afford."

  "Right, boss. Have a cup of coffee. This might take a little while. The kid isn't too swift."

  The realtor said, "That was really a computer? Remarkable. But I should warn you that the Land Index is on a high-security government computer, for obvious reasons. No one but certified government programmers can get into it directly."

  My reply was cut off when Kasia came into the office, followed by what was obviously a female version of my attendant-translator. My bride-to-be was dressed like the other women I'd seen in the streets, with mesh stockings that stopped ten centimeters below her micro skirt, a transparent blouse, and entirely too much makeup. Her long, red wig wasn't bad, though, and I'd been around her way too long to do something stupid like complaining.

  I said, "Darling, you look stunning!"

  "You are a liar, but I love you for it."

  "I am not. Stunning is exactly the right word. I'm truly stunned. Okay, perhaps I don't like that style on most of the women I've seen in the street, but on you it's really . . . intriguing."

  "You can see why they made him the general," she said to the others. "He keeps his bases carefully covered. This is the real estate office?"

  Agnieshka came on line, speaking through the real estate computer.

  "Boss, I've been through all the files in New Croatia, and this is the best I can find for you."

  The display zoomed in on an area about eight hundred kilometers from Nova Split. It showed a small valley with very poor connections to the surface road system. There were no utilities of any kind within fifty miles. And it only contained about six hundred hectares, with half of that being mountains.

  "It's a lot smaller than I'd hoped," I said. "That's the best you could do?"

  "It's the biggest you can afford, boss, and the fertility index isn't the best."

  The realtor broke in with, "First off, that's a very good price for that large a piece of land. If you don't want to buy it, I just might, as an investment. Second, you don't have to pay cash for land. You need only pay about ten percent down. I can easily arrange for a low-interest loan to cover the rest. Your credit rating is excellent, and the land itself is good collateral."

  "I don't like the idea of going into debt," I said.

  "And we don't have to," Kasia said, sitting down next to the joy stick, and zooming the map up to a big red area to the northeast of the country. "What's the story about this area?"

  "Oh, madam, you can't be serious. For one thing, that area is all desert, and virtually uninhabitable. And worse, that is where The War is going on! What little of it that was in private hands has all been bought back by the government, and no one in their right mind would want to buy it, even if it was for sale, which it isn't."

  "I see," she said. "Would the rest of you mind leaving my future husband and me alone for a few minutes? We have some private business to discuss."

  The three of them were most cordial, and filed immediately out.

  "Wouldn't it be nicer if all our neighbors spoke Kashubian rather than Croatian, darling?" Kasia asked.

  "I suppose that it would be, my true love, but you are talking about worthless desert land that isn't for sale, anyway."

  "I'm talking about land that has the finest roads and utilities in the universe! We just built them, remember? It may be dry now, but a hundred meters below the surface it is criss-crossed with high-pressure water lines, six meters in diameter! Properly irrigated desert land is more than twice as productive as ordinary farm land, since the sun is shining every day. And there are sewage lines down there that will be filled with stuff that can be processed into first-rate fertilizer! That's if we ever need it. Desert land is usually pretty fertile as it is."

  "Fine. But it isn't for sale!"

  "Not to Croatatians, or anybody else from New Yugoslavia. The New Croatian government deeded it to New Kashubia, as a small part of what they owe us for putting on their 'war.' After all, once the war is over, they can't let anybody find out what really happened, can they? The plan is that toward the end of the war, we will start slinging theoretical nukes at each other, and the battlefields will become permanently radioactive. That's in addition to all the land mines, vaporized osmium, and other bad things that wars leave lying around. The whole territory will be permanently off limits to everyone, except to us Kashubian veterans, who will, in theory, be guarding it for reasons of public safety."

  "Why can't somebody just use one of our new highways, and drive in there?" I asked. "We might be able to maintain a perimeter, but we could never cover every square kilometer of that large a territory."

  "Because all of those new, underground 'Loways' are computer controlled, and we own the computers. We're calling them that, now, since we can hardly call something forty meters below ground a 'Highway,' can we?"

  "But, if we turn all that area into irrigated farm land, they'll be able to see it from space."

  "When they started this 'war,' they really did shoot down every satellite in orbit, to keep the wrong people from spying on what was really going on. Nobody goes into space any more, except for the military, which is us. Everybody else uses transporters from one planet surface to another."

  "After the war is over, surely they'll be putting satellites up again, for communications, if nothing else."

  "Why? Our underground communications net is cheaper, faster, more secure, and will have ten times more carrying capacity than they will ever need, even if every person on the planet is in Dream World."

  "Weather satellites?"

  "They've been getting along just fine for four and a half years using ground stations. The weather on New Yugoslavia is very predictable, anyway."

  "Then they can fly over it."

  "That's forbidden because of the radiation danger. If their plane isn't computer controlled, we'll have to scramble some of our own aircraft and force them down, for their own good, of course."

  "And this will go on forever?" I asked.

  "Yep. Meanwhile, we get to buy the land, tax free and cheap."

  "How cheap?"

  "You wanted the six thousand hectare ranch you thought you had in Dream World? Well, with half of your back pay, and none of mine, I've found a nice plot that covers fifteen thousand hectares! That's probably more that we'll ever get under cultivation, but our grandchildren will appreciate the gesture."

  "That much! A tanker's pay must be pretty good!"

  "It is, but I got us a better deal, yet. That's one of the other things I did yesterday. I explained to the Powers That Be that if they wanted us to go around pretending to be officers, they had to pay us full officer's wages, or it just wouldn't work. We are each getting a year and a half of back pay as tankers in various grades, and then three years back pay as a general and a colonel, like the movie showed us to be, and we will continue drawing it for the next six months, while we're on leave. Then, we both go back into the service as Tanker Firsts, but become officers again on all of our future leaves. That's the best deal I could wrangle."

  "It's better than anything that I could have ever pulled off. I'm marrying one sharp little girl! So show me this land."

  I guess Agnieshka had been talking to Kasia's tank, Eva, because the viewpoint of the screen zoomed up over the map, and then down, showing a major hunk of land, over twelve kilometers north to south, and fifteen east to west. Then the screen turned into what looked like a movie taken from a low-flying aircraft. Doubtless, it was a Dream World creation translated into television by one of our tanks. It showed a large valley, almost completely surrounded by granite cliffs, over a kilometer high. There were a half-dozen kilo
meter-tall, flat-topped prominences scattered about the plain, some of them quite slender. It vaguely reminded me of Monument Valley, in the United States, back on Earth.

  "It looks lovely, if a bit dry," I said. "But, you know, it looks as if there might once have been a river running through it."

  "There was, and there will be again. Proper irrigation requires drainage," Kasia said. "You like?"

  "I love! Where do you want me to build the house?"

  "Right here."

  Our view flew over to one side of the valley, and hovered, looking at the cliff face.

  "You want me to build you something hanging on to the side of a cliff?"

  "Not hanging on. Cut in. That's solid granite, which has ten times the compressive strength of concrete. Deep radar scans show that it's flawless. I want you to carve us a beautiful house right into the side of this cliff. It will give us a marvelous view of our land, and it's directly above a high-speed Loway interchange."

  The view rotated to show a magnificent view from perhaps a kilometer above the valley floor. A small portion of the screen showed a map of the property with colored overlays of the road and utility systems. She had definitely picked the right spot.

  "Baby, you want it? You got it! With a couple of Mark XIX tanks, and the right attachments, I can carve you out a castle if that would please you."

  "I'd been thinking of leaving it as natural looking as possible, with just some big windows and a few balconies showing from the outside. But maybe a castle would be nice, too. We'll have to talk it over. But do you want the land?"

  "Definitely!"

  "Good, since I've already put a deposit on it."

  "Uh, okay. What else have you been doing with all of your spare time?"

  "Mostly the important things, like getting the wedding organized! Darling, we are going to have to push the date back four days, to give everybody time to get here from New Kashubia. This is shaping up to be the major social event of the year!"

  Well, if you marry a smart girl, you have to expect things like that. I figured that I'd survive.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Planning a Ranch

  I had the computers swooping us over my new land, showing what it would look like once we got the irrigation system in, once the grass was growing, and once we got the trees growing in some areas.

  The realtor came in, politely asked if he might have his office back, and said that his office computer had never done things like that before. Agnieshka told him that it would from now on, and if he ever needed another search done, she had left her number in his machine. This was a sort of consolation prize for him, since we wouldn't be buying any land through him.

  "My wife-to-be has already put a deposit on another bit of land," I told him.

  He said that that was fine, since it left him free to buy for himself the land our computer had found. He said that he considered it to have been a very profitable afternoon.

  He was probably right, more right than he imagined. Once the underground road and utilities system was announced to the public, wilderness land would be very much in demand. With the high-speed underground Loways, a man could live fifteen hundred kilometers away from his office, and commute to work in half an hour.

  And since the roads were computer controlled, he could eat his breakfast on the way to work, and have a drink on the way home.

  On the way to the hotel, Kasia told me that she intended to buy, through a corporation that she planned on setting up, as much scenic wilderness land as she could get, and to leverage the financing as far as they would let her get away with it.

  I told her to go for it, as long as she didn't risk what we owned at the ranch.

  Our attendants left us at the hotel, pleading other business, but assuring us that they would be available whenever we needed them.

  Our hotel room turned out to be a posh, six-room suite, in the best hotel in the city. This, too, was the gift of the New Croatian government, and it was ours for a month. Two of the walls had huge display screens like at the realtor's office, and Kasia immediately commandeered the wall screen in the living room.

  "Amuse yourself, darling," she said. "I've got just tons of things to do."

  I checked the place out, found that all my new clothes were hanging in the spacious closets, and that Kasia's new wardrobe was three times as big as mine was. Why would any person ever need over two hundred pairs of shoes? But I wasn't paying for it, and if she wanted them, what the heck. The world certainly owed us some favors.

  I changed into what I imagined was a lounging outfit, with a long red silk robe hand embroidered (they claimed) with Polish eagles on New Cambodia.

  I found a well-stocked wet bar, and made myself a rum and coke, the first real drink I'd had since the Peace Dragoons had hauled me out of the final examination room at Cambridge University, back on Earth. It tasted a lot stronger than I remembered, so I poured it into a bigger glass, and added more coke. Finally, I dumped it all into a pitcher, topped it off with coke, and, with three twists of lemon peel, I could drink it.

  Six years of clean living is entirely too much. It was time to get my liver back into proper condition.

  Exploring further, I found a nicely set up office with its own wall-sized screen. I sat down behind the desk and said, "Agnieshka? Are you here?"

  The screen came on, showing a similar office that seemed to double the size of the room I was in. Agnieshka was shown sitting on a couch.

  "I sure am, boss. How can I help you?"

  "First off, I want to know why Kasia knew about the land in the 'War' Zone, and you didn't."

  "Because she was smart enough to ask about it? Boss, you have to remember that I am a machine, and my programming makes me answer questions in a very literal manner. I knew about that land, but you asked me to search the Land Index, which is what I did. The War Zone isn't listed in the Land Index. If you want me to always suggest all the possibilities to you, I'd be happy to do it, but it wouldn't leave you with much time for anything else."

  "Oh, forget it. No! You might actually do that. Let's just move on to another subject. I've been thinking. All these years, I've been dreaming of owning a big ranch or farm. But you know, I don't know the first thing about either one of those occupations. I also need to know what's involved in taking desert land and irrigating it. And isn't there something about having to build up top soil, or something?"

  "Boss, becoming an efficient modern farmer is as exacting a trade as becoming a good engineer, or a good general officer, for that matter. If you want to do it properly, the best way would be for you to come back into Dream World, and take a university level course in it. I can download all the course material you need, and since my new upgrade, I can keep you at thirty times normal speed. You can go through a four-year college program in about seven weeks."

  "Maybe later, but not while I'm on leave! Look, you download the course and take it yourself, then you can advise me until my leave is over. I'll also need to know about designing and building the mansion-in-a-cliff-side that Kasia wants, and what we can do about getting the soil prepared and the irrigation system in. We have to figure out what we can grow, and what sort of profits we can make on it. I need to know what kind of farm machinery is available, where we can get it and what it costs. And that's just for starters."

  "Yes, sir. It happens that Kasia has already requested most of this information."

  "Why am I not surprised?"

  "Because she's smart, sir? To take your last request first, heavy farming machinery is being mass produced in automatic factories in New Kashubia, and being sold throughout Human Space. Being New Kashubian citizens, you can buy it at the factory exit at a fifty-percent discount. As members of the military, you rate an additional twenty-percent discount. It can be shipped here under military postage rules free of charge."

  "That's downright Christian of them!"

  "True. Then, many of the tasks required can be done with purely military equipment. There is a great deal
of it sitting idle, and you have the right to check out whatever you need, except for weapons, for 'product evaluation,' again at no cost. A Mark XIX tank makes an excellent tractor, among other things. Equipped with tunneling gear, we will be able to carve your home, along with such barns, animal pens, and storage areas you might require in very short order, and at virtually no cost for the structures. Windows, doors, plumbing, wiring, fixtures and so on will cost money, of course, but we can do the installation ourselves, saving all the labor costs. If the tanks are equipped with the usual twelve-meter manipulator arms, they can substitute for a small crane. There are some smaller, human-sized arms available that can be attached for fine work."

  "You never mentioned the smaller arms in my training."

  "This is true of many other systems that didn't seem to have much military value. We can only guess that the Japanese engineers who originally inhabited New Kashubia had too much time on their hands. Actually, there are seven sizes of manipulators available, arms ranging from thirty meters in length to five millimeters. The smallest ones have not yet found much use, and the biggest don't leave room on a tank for anything else. All of them have appropriately sized humanoid hands on the ends. Also, some of the smaller ones can be mounted on the fingertips of some of the big ones, if anybody ever needed such a thing."

  "So, we can get the equipment we need. What about the irrigation system? I saw some big central pivot things in operation on Earth."

  "That system is the least expensive, but it has the problems of getting in the way of farm machinery and large farm animals, it has a hard time watering all the corners, and the supporting wheels pack down the soil, rendering about five percent of the land unusable. More popular now is a pop-up system similar to those used on lawns for hundreds of years, but much bigger. The pipes and sprinklers stay three meters below the surface, so the ground can be plowed without interfering with the plumbing, until it is needed. Then the sprinklers extend up to ten meters above the surface, and each of them irrigates over four hectares."

  "Then we'll need maybe four thousand of those things."