"Yes, boss."
"Also, Your Honor, I should mention that some of our best warriors are female. We would also accept women who wished to enlist."
"That is an interesting thought, General Derdowski, but perhaps we should wait to see how the male inmates work out first. Most of our serious criminals are men anyway, of course."
"The choice is, of course, yours."
After the judge left, and the door closed behind him, I asked Agnieshka if the judge really was who he said he was, and she said yes. Then I asked her if a New Croatian Supreme Court judge really had complete control over their prison system, and she again said yes.
I let out an ancient Kashubian battle cry, trusting to the hotel's soundproofing to keep my secret. We were not only getting the troops we had so badly needed for years, but they were actually paying me an incredible fortune to take them!
Kasia came in to see what the commotion was all about.
"We are rich, girl! We are fabulously wealthy!"
"Yes, dear, I was going to tell you about that. Also, I've set up that real estate holding company we talked about earlier, and the projections on it are absolutely fantastic."
"No, no. I mean absolutely filthy dirty rich! I have hundreds of millions of marks coming in every year from now on!"
"One of your projects? You must tell me about it sometime. A few hundred million more every year won't hurt us a bit. But just now, I've got some loose ends that must be tied up right away. We'll talk later."
Maybe there is such a thing as marrying a girl who is too smart.
When Kasia left, Agnieshka said, "Mickolai, have you gone crazy? You are accepting bribes and taking onto yourself things that should be resolved in Congress!"
That brought things back into perspective.
"Agnieshka, how many empty tanks are there on this planet?"
"Sixty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, boss."
"Would those tanks like to have observers?"
"Yes, of course."
"Will it cost anyone anything to put New Croatian citizens, felons though they might be, into our tanks?"
"Well, no, boss. Everything needed is already there, sitting idle."
"Then what is your bitch?"
"That you are accepting bribes?"
"What bribe? I am being paid for a service that I am performing while I'm on leave. I'm saving my planet's customer, the New Croatian government, four marks for every one that they give me. This leaves them with that much more money that they can pay to New Kashubia. I'm going to be giving many thousands of criminals a chance at a new, productive life, if they'll take it. I'm greatly strengthening the Kashubian Expeditionary Force, since a tank with a trained observer has nine times the combat effectiveness of an empty tank. And I've decided to buy a whole lot more land. What's more, I might even contribute something to charity, someday. Enough said?"
"Yes, boss."
"Good. Now, go and see what an additional three hundred and twenty million Croatian marks a year will buy me in land."
* * *
About an hour later, I said, "Agnieshka, how many empty tanks are there in the entire Kashubian forces, on all the planets that we have contracts with?"
"I'm not sure, boss. Certainly over a million. Do you want me to get an exact number?"
"Yes. Next, there are twenty-seven governments on this planet. I want you to find out who has the authority in each government to make a deal such as the one we just made with the judge here in New Croatia. After that, I want you to figure out a way to informally leak out the information to the right people that the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces are going into the prisoner custodial business, at prices of about one fifth of what they are paying now. Lastly, I want you to check on the availability of interstellar transport. We are going to be shipping a lot of tanks around the stars."
"Yes, boss. You are either going to be a hero, or you are going to be in jail."
"How can they put me in jail if I'm scheduled to go back into a tank in a few months anyway? That's what they do to criminals nowadays. The important thing is that if Kasia thinks that three hundred and twenty million a year is small potatoes, let's see what she thinks about four billion!"
CHAPTER NINE
My Wedding
Although I really wanted to spend my time working on my plans for the ranch, I got roped into the wedding preparations, anyway. Every relative of mine that I had ever met, and quite a few that I hadn't, were showing up, and somebody had to greet them. Suddenly, I was the long lost hero returned, and fifth and sixth cousins were crowding around, reminding me that we had met once when I was eight years old at somebody's wedding or christening or funeral.
Worse, some of them hadn't bothered to make hotel reservations, and the town's hotels seemed to be packed. They had come assuming that we'd just put them up, somehow. Kasia's parents were soon staying in one spare room, and mine were in the other. Even my annoying kid brother was here, sleeping on the couch in my office, when he wasn't watching pornography on the wall screen.
Kasia had made me promise to be polite to my relatives, so I tried hard to do it. Now that I was famous, they all crowded around, but in New Kashubia, when I was tried for what was a really a very trivial offense, and sentenced to either death or joining the army, none of them had come to my aid. None of them came to my comfort, or even to talk to me while I was in jail. And now I was somehow morally obligated to be polite to them?
Worst of all was my uncle, Wlodzimierz Derdowski.
Most of my near relatives were in no position to actually do anything to help me when I was in trouble, but my uncle was a very prominent politician, even back then. He knew me well, and was living in the bunk below mine in the barracks, starving in the golden tunnels of New Kashubia. He could have pulled some strings, somehow. He could have helped me, but he didn't. He didn't lift a damned finger to save his own nephew. He just let them haul me and my lovely Kasia away, and didn't even visit us during the trial.
Kasia, always the practical one, had insisted on inviting him to our wedding, since she said that it was likely that he would soon be elected as our next president. I made a point of avoiding the bastard.
* * *
Every politician in New Croatia and New Kashubia seemed to be in town, hoping for news interviews, as were a few hundred political wannabes, who were here for the very same reason.
As to my own friends, well, there actually weren't that many of them. I was the only Kashubian at my college in England, and none of my friends there were exiled to the planets, that I know of. I had a few dozen acquaintances from my years in New Kashubia, but things had been so grim back then that nobody was all that friendly with anybody else. And in the army, I had actually been in contact with only nine human beings.
There were Quincy and Zuzanna, of course, and the lovely girl that I was finally going to get to marry, once this nonsense was over.
There was a guy named Radek Heyke, whom I found to be personally disgusting, and had refused to invite to my wedding.
And there were the six "colonels" who studied with me for eight subjective years at "Oxbridge," the computerized military school. They were all very good friends, but the problem was that except for Kasia, my colonels were Croatians, not Kashubians. We could communicate just fine in Dream World, where the computers saw to it that language barriers didn't exist, but out in reality, we couldn't speak to each other without a translator.
What's more, they didn't look the same.
In Dream World, Maria Buich was a stunningly beautiful, long-legged blonde who looked to be about twenty-three. In reality, she was a healthy fifty-year-old woman with a rather plain face, but Conan still loved her.
In Dream World, we had called Semo Birach "Conan" because of his deliberate resemblance to the old-time movie actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, he was a physically fit man in his mid-seventies, an old fisherman who still had the look of the sea about him.
Neto Kondo was now permanentl
y insane. Someone told me that he was being well looked after, somewhere.
A Croatian with the improbable name of Lloyd Tomlinson had taken Neto's place, but since he was studying three years behind the rest of us, he somehow never became socially one of the group. I mean, we all tried, and he was always invited to everything, but the difference was still there. Unlike his handsome, male model appearance in Dream World, he had a very large nose and closely spaced eyes in the real one. Like the rest of us, his tank had kept him very physically fit.
Of them, only Mirko Jubec had not elected to change his appearance in Dream World. Personal vanity simply wasn't part of his makeup. He still looked like the big stolid farmer that he always had been.
Kasia had been beautiful to begin with, of course, and it had simply never occurred to me to change my appearance, not when I already had Kasia.
Only now did I realize that I did not know what my good friend Neto really looked like.
One pleasant surprise was that they were all in colonels' uniforms. Whoever was in charge had decided that if Kasia and I were officers, the rest of the team had to be officers, too. With Agnieshka translating, I soon found that they had been given the same deal that we had, and that they were all enjoying the notoriety, except for Mirko, of course.
I talked to them about the cheap land available, and they soon were very interested in exploring the possibilities, all of them except, strangely, the farmer Mirko Jubec. He said that he had already bought thirty hectares near his home town, and two fine horses to help him work it, and that was all he wanted. He had no interest in wealth or in modern farming at all. He said that his only interest was in having food that tasted right.
It takes all kinds of people to make a world. My grandfather told me that.
* * *
Finally, after a drunken brawl that they called a bachelor party, which is best left undocumented, a bridal shower that Kasia refused to talk about, and two long, boring rehearsals, the day arrived when I was to—at last!—get to marry my bride.
The church that I had picked for the wedding was judged to be too small, and the ceremony was held in the biggest cathedral in Nova Split. The Kashubian-speaking priest I had talked to earlier performed the ceremony, even though the services of the Bishop of the Archdiocese of New Croatia had been offered.
My colonels and I finally found a use for the full-dress uniforms that we had been issued, complete with swords, capes, knee-high boots, and enough gold braid to decorate a fifty-girl chorus line, each.
Kasia, although she was one of my colonels, had opted for a dress made with dozens of square meters of white lace, but stayed with her long red wig, since I'd told her that I liked it.
My best man, Quincy, had surprised me with a full-dress uniform for a Tanker First Class, which I suspect that he had designed himself, since it had ever so slightly less gold braid than us officers carried, but had Marine Corps chief senior master sergeant's stripes embroidered in gold running the length of both of his sleeves. On his belt, instead of a sword, he had slung on an ancient Slavic boulava, an ornate club similar to the western "Morning Star," or "Holy Water Sprinkler."
With my best man at my side, and my four remaining colonels behind me, we marched as best we could into the filled-to-capacity cathedral. Well, we tried. The Kashubian Expeditionary Forces had never bothered to teach us how to march.
I was surprised to notice that dozens of wall-sized display screens had been slung to the walls of the huge church, below the stained glass windows, but above the crowd. They showed hundreds, maybe thousands, of beautiful young women, well groomed and dressed in their finest. In a moment, I realized that these were the tanks who had served under me, in Dream World. My metal ladies had all wanted to be there. There was a sprinkling of handsome men among them, because many of our troops were women, and their tanks generally developed a male personality.
Agnieshka and Eva were sitting together up there, waving discreetly at me.
Sitting down in the pews, there were family members, dignitaries, and people in a hundred different uniforms, none of whom I had never met, all looking expectantly at us.
The ceremony, which included a full High Mass, took over an hour, but when it was done, Kasia was my wife, now and forever.
Walking out of the church, I saw up on one of the display screens a big, blond man wearing a uniform exactly like my own. Sitting beside him were five people dressed as Kashubian colonels. I realized that this had to be the guy who had made summa cum laude at Oxbridge, and who was my boss. I saluted him as I passed, and he returned the salute.
Then there was the reception, which was held at the hotel we were living in, and took up all of the available function space. Kasia had told me that the space, the food, and the drink had all been donated by the local hotels, a favor in return for the way our wedding had filled them all to capacity for the first time in years.
The walls of the convention center were covered with wall screens as well, but this time at floor level. My lovely metal ladies were enjoying themselves, talking and flirting with the people in the crowd. Someone referred to them as wallflowers, and the name stuck. It was the first time that they had ever met large numbers of civilians, and the first time that those people had ever met them. They seemed to be equally fascinated with each other. I heard later that many of the young men in the crowd had exchanged telephone numbers with my tanks, and that many long friendships developed between them.
I looked around for the Kashubian general, the one that I thought might be Jan Sobieski, but I didn't see him on any of the wall screens.
Eva and Agnieshka stayed on the wall screen behind Kasia and me as an endless procession of people walked by. Prompted by our perfect social secretaries, we made very few social blunders. We always knew who we were talking to, when and where we had met them, if we had, and we were always prepped with some witty and appropriate remark to make.
We did it, and I think that everybody thought that we did a good job. For mine own self, by the time it was all over, I don't think that I remember a single thing that I said, or a single person that I met. I think they call it stimulus saturation.
Then there was all the usual wedding nonsense. The bouquet was thrown to the maidens of the group, Kasia's garter was removed by me to the strains of some sexy tune, and thrown out to the eligible bachelors, and a dozen similar ancient ceremonies were observed. I must have kissed her publicly a hundred times.
When it was finally over, I carried my love out of the hall, up to our suite, made love to her, after six years, at last, perfectly legally.
As I dozed off, I felt her get out of bed, put on a housecoat, and go to work in the office.
CHAPTER TEN
The Plan for the Ranch
Late the next morning, while Kasia was in the bath, and the crowds were gone at last, I sat down in my office in my hotel suite.
Finally, I had some time to get back to business.
"Agnieshka, what's happening?"
Playing the ever perfect secretary, her image on the screen opened a notebook, and pretended to read from it. She seemed to be enjoying her role as an executive secretary, so I let her get away with it.
"I was finally able to locate those humanoid drones Quincy talked about, but only by contacting his tank, Marysia. Those things were officially listed as "Drone, Difficult Terrain, Obsolete." No wonder nobody noticed them. Anyway, they had almost ten thousand of them in storage in New Kashubia, and we bought them all for three hundred and eighty-six zloty each. I also ordered the next two years' production to be sent to us in monthly lots at the same price."
"What's the exchange rate, zlotys to marks?"
"It's almost par. A zloty is worth about two percent more."
"Then you just spent something like four million marks. Do I have that much?"
"Oh yes. The judge's first check cleared this morning. It was for eighty-nine million marks."
"That much? Then they must be sending us eighty-nine thousand
men! Did everybody in his prison system volunteer?"
"I think that those criminals might have volunteered in much the same fashion that you did, boss."
"Huh. Well, I suppose that a tank is better than a prison cell, most of the time. Next question. Where are we going to put them all? You said that we only had about sixty-eight thousand empty tanks on the whole planet."
"Yes, sir, but we also have more than thirty thousand empty artillery pieces, which will serve equally well."
"So I was asking the wrong question again. Okay, will there be any problems installing the new men?"
"Yes, sir, there will be. It takes about a half of a man hour to install an enlistee into a tank. I can get you the machines. I can get you the extra male sanitary fittings, since many of our tanks are currently equipped for women. I can get you the floor space to do the work. What I can't get you is forty-five thousand trained human man hours, not on short notice."
"So use the drones we just bought, with some of the tanks to control them. They can do the installations and guard the prisoners until they are buttoned up. If anybody asks, tell them that our men are using a new kind of battle armor."
"Brilliant, boss. That's why we need you humans."
"I thank you, my beautiful and ever perfect lieutenant."
"Am I a lieutenant now? Did I just get promoted?"
"Well, in the old days, a general officer would rate at least a major for his personal secretary. Let's say that if I'm an acting general, then you are an acting major. Of course, there is no such rank in our army, so that means that you have to design your own uniforms," I said laughing.
"Zowie!" She said, and was suddenly dressed in a female version of the uniform of a major in the Napoleonic Polish Lancers. It was a form-fitting thing of red and white silk, with lots of gold braid and feathers, high boots, and a sword at least as gaudy as the one that came with my full dress uniform. It also had as much decotage as the law will ordinarily allow.
"Enjoy yourself," I said. "Now, what is happening with my land?"
The War With Earth Page 8