A Boy and His Tank

by Leo Frankowski

  "Then why do you have all the armor?" I asked.

  "I can take quite a bit of punishment, but not a series of direct hits. Even a near miss by a rail gun is very destructive. This was all covered in the introductory lecture that I showed you, Mickolai. Weren't you listening?"

  "I think I must have been daydreaming for most of it."

  "Humph. Then no recreation for you this evening, student! You have to watch it again, and this time there will be a quiz afterward."

  "Yes, teacher. But for right now, it's my job to find them and yours to destroy them?"

  "Correct. And you must learn to be very good at finding them. If you don't see the enemy and they see us, we both get killed. And if you make a mistake, and have me shoot out something that isn't the enemy, and they see us doing it, well, an operating rail gun is about as obvious as a fireworks display. It does not take a keen observer to spot the source. If we shoot first and shoot wrong, we're dead, too."

  "I see. So it's mostly a matter of hiding and sniping at each other."

  "Right. You and I work together at hiding."

  I'd finished eating, and the forest glen dissolved around me. I was in the tank again, flat on my back and watching the displays on my helmet screen, augmented by other information coming in through my ears and my spinal column.

  The tank had active communication and detection systems, like lasers, radar and headlights, but these were never used in combat. Any energy that you put out can be used to detect you. Combat is done using passive systems only. We could search the whole electromagnetic spectrum, darn nearly, and hear everything from a tenth of a hertz up to a few terahertz, but we tried not to broadcast anything on our own.

  It was a long afternoon, with the tank feeding me simulated displays and pointing out what other, more experienced operators had found, when as usual I had missed them entirely.

  It's hard to explain what I was actually doing, and how I was doing it. I was seeing, but I was seeing over a huge bandwidth, but while I was doing it, it seemed a perfectly normal thing to do. Then, if something caught my attention, I could narrow down my attention like a zoom lens, and I could look at only a small bit of the spectrum, if that's what I wanted. All I can say is that at the time it seemed not at all unusual to be able to do this.

  My new hearing was much the same as my new vision, in the way I could control it, pick out one part and amplify what I wanted.

  My other communications with the tank also had that same strange-ordinary feeling about them. Sometimes, I simply knew what she wanted me to do, without her saying anything. When she did speak to me, it wasn't in words, exactly, but I knew that she was talking and what she was saying. And it was fast, fifty times faster than ordinary conversation. When I wanted to point out a target, or whatever, I sort of thought "There!" and meant her to know what I was seeing, what I wanted her to do, and she always did.

  I guess this doesn't make much sense, the way I've put it, but I don't know how else to explain it. As I write this journal, I'm going to write it as though all of our conversations were in regular words, and when we were in Dream World, as we were when I was eating lunch, they were. But in simulated combat, well, we used something else, and at Combat Speed.

  Anyway, it seems that whatever I was doing, I had a knack for it.

  "Well," she said at last, "That was a fairly good start, Mickolai. Tomorrow, you'll do better. For now, let's get in some more physical training and then have supper." Suddenly, I was back in the forest again.

  "Suits me. Where's my unicorn?"

  She stepped out from behind some bushes. She was wearing gym shorts and track shoes, but she was topless. Worse still, she looked entirely too much like the real Kasia, the woman that I loved.

  "No unicorn. This time you get to try and catch me!" She laughed and took off running.

  I hesitated a moment, but then decided that I'd better stay with the program and followed her. It wasn't just a straight run this time, but had a lot of obstacle course stuff in it, going over log piles, bridges and so on, as well as climbing some ropes and one fair-sized cliff face. She left me in her dust, even though I was doing my best, which was probably just as well. I didn't really like to think about what I'd do if I actually caught her.

  The trail ended at a nice little cottage by the side of a clear blue lake. The place was like an illustration from a children's storybook, with medieval-looking timbers, white plastered walls and a real thatched roof. Smoke curled invitingly up from the chimney. I caught my breath for a bit and then went in.

  Inside, it seemed to be bigger than it was on the outside, and there was nothing of the peasant's hovel about it. The furnishings inside were extravagantly expensive, with oil paintings and a massive electronic entertainment center. The furniture was mostly leather and teak wood, and all of the fittings seemed to be real gold. Supper was already on the table.

  Kasia was already there, waiting for me. She was a busty redhead now, with a tiny waist, pure green eyes, and freckles. She was wearing a lovely green evening gown with some huge emeralds at her neck and wrist when she sat down beside me. I noticed suddenly that I was freshly bathed and wearing a formal tux, something I'd never done before. There was a gold-and-diamond watch on my wrist and matching studs on my shirt.

  "I think I like you when you're well dressed, Mickolai. You did well this afternoon, so you deserve something special this evening. I caught you thinking about roast duck a while ago, so voila!" With a flourish, she took the golden lid from a golden platter, displaying a beautifully roasted duck with all the trimmings.

  "It smells as wonderful as you look," I said, "But you know, I think you were right, yesterday."

  "What about, handsome?" She rested her chin on her intertwined fingers and smiled at me in a way that very few women had ever done before. It felt good, but somehow it was also frightening.

  "About how I should call you something else than Kasia. It's confusing, you know, having two Kasias on my mind. How about Maria. My mother's name was Maria."

  "I don't think I'd want you confusing me with your mother, Mickolai."

  "Okay, then. How about Agnieshka? I once had a childhood crush on a pretty little red-haired girl named Agnieshka."

  "If you want, you can call me that. Eat your supper before it gets cold."

  So I carved the duck and served her, too. We both knew that she wasn't really eating, but then we weren't really here at all, so what the heck.

  After eating a very full meal, she suggested that we put off dessert for a while and go to a show.

  "I thought that I had to spend the evening watching that orientation lecture again, Agnieshka."

  "Tomorrow. You've been a good boy today, and all good boys deserve favor. You speak English. Do you like Shaw?"

  "GBS? Sure. A fine writer."

  "Good, because I have tickets to the theater."

  The cottage had a garage now, and the garage had a big new Hunyadi in it. We drove only a mile to town and saw a fine play from the front row, center balcony. We had the best seats in the house because all the rest of the seats were there just to give the proper atmosphere. Not that I could tell that anything was phony.

  There didn't seem to be any limitation to what she could fake up. At one point during intermission when she was in the women's room, I hit up a conversation with one of the engineers from Soul City that I'd met when we were getting the power plant installed on Freya, and I swear I couldn't tell him from the genuine article.

  The play was Man and Superman, and well performed, though I'd seen it once before. Driving back to the cottage, Agnieshka sleepily rested her head on my shoulder. It was all so real that I couldn't help being more than a little attracted to her.

  Back inside, she got us some champagne and said, "Dessert, boss? You got your choice of Big Boy fresh strawberry pie or New York cheese cake." Now she was sort of American, but still with red hair and freckles. Her skirt was much longer, but the top of her dress was about as low at the law allows. />
  "Make it the cheese cake. Why are you still changing your appearance?"

  "Just doing some more calibration, boss. I'm monitoring your blood pressure and pupil diameter with each of my body and clothing changes, zooming in on what you want in a woman." She came next to me on the couch, sitting much too close.

  "Can't we just be good friends? You know that I've already found the woman I want, and I'm going to marry her as soon as I can be done with this army business. Can't you understand that I don't want to get involved with another woman right now?"

  "Especially one who's really a computer in a war machine, Mickolai? Your physiological reactions will tell me what they will tell me, so don't you worry about it."

  "Okay, I won't," I said, getting angry. I mean, forcing me to go through a training program was one thing. Forcing me to have a love affair with a goddamn army tank was quite another! It was not only illegal but downright immoral on top of it! Suddenly, the cheese cake stopped tasting good. "Hey, wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that you have feelings?"

  "Me? Of course not! I'm just a goddamn army tank! But I'm programed to act like I've got emotions, so you'd better watch your step, buster!" She was still an American girl, but now her canine teeth were about a centimeter longer and she wasn't pretty anymore.

  "All I said was . . ."

  "I know what you said! I know what you thought, too, asshole! You sure know how to wreck a nice evening."

  "But . . ."

  "Go to sleep, Mickolai."

  I slept.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE REAL KASIA COMES TO THE RESCUE

  "Wake up, Mickolai!" Agnieshka was looking like Kasia, and she was shaking me. She was kneeling at my side, naked and lovely, her long brown hair falling over her shoulders.

  I glanced at the gold-and-diamond wrist watch I'd been wearing the night before. "I still have a half hour of sleep coming," I said drowsily. I looked at her again. "Agnieshka! I don't like you looking like her, dammit!"

  "No, stupid, it really is me!" She certainly looked like the woman I loved, but how could I tell? I looked around. I was still in the cottage, laying on the couch in a crumpled tux. Some kind of residual program?

  "How can it really be you, Kasia? I'm still inside a stupid army tank!"

  "So am I, Mickolai, and it's not even the same tank. But these tanks are just machines, and you can make machines do anything you want, if you know the right buttons to push!"

  "But how could you know how to do this?"

  "How could I rig up a telephone between us when they tried to keep us apart before? I'm the smart one here, remember?"

  "I've never argued with you on that, love. But tell me how you did it."

  "I knew that these tanks had to be able to communicate with each other. Nothing else makes sense, if you'll think about it. It was just a matter of convincing my tank that we'd both be more efficient if we had a little decent emotional release. Part of the deal I made was that it wouldn't interfere with training time, and you've already wasted seven minutes. Now get out of that ridiculous outfit!"

  I got, fumbling with the metal studs that the ridiculous dress shirt had in lieu of buttons. "They're watching us, aren't they?"

  "Was the telephone listening to us when we talked on it? They're just damn machines, Mickolai! Anyway, they don't have their idiot recorders on, I made sure of that. Why do you think you have to waste time with those stupid studs?"

  "I never put them on in the first place! I've never worn a shirt with studs before! How am I supposed to know how to take them off?"

  "Here, let me help you. There. On my next visit there should be more time, but for now, it'll just have to be a quickie," she said as she finished undressing me.

  Well, quickie or not, it sure beat hell out of using a hole in the wall!

  "Now that was better than the average telephone call," Kasia said, just before she blinked out. Moments later, the room blinked out as well, and I was back in my tank.

  A foul-smelling goo was squirted into my mouth. It tasted a lot like the excrement it was made out of. "Field rations," Agnieshka said over my ear phones. She sounded nasty, as though she was still wearing those fangs. "Chow down. Physical Training starts in two minutes."

  There were no lovely forests, unicorns, or bouncing bimbos today. I was suddenly on a bleak, concrete plain in the cold grey dawn with a thousand troops in ranks around me, doing jumping jacks, pushups, and situps until they hurt. Then we did some more of the same with rude people shouting at us, and took a three-kilometer run. I was in a lot of pain when it was finally over.

  Then came six solid hours in enemy pattern identification, with an annoying electric shock every time the enemy "killed" us, which was pretty often. Lunch was a ten-minute goo break, and then we went back to patterns and pain. Agnieshka was acting as if she was vastly annoyed with me and everything I did, but I stayed with the program. I had the feeling that things would get even worse if I complained.

  Supper that night was yet another mouthful of goo, followed by the orientation lecture I'd been promised. Twice, since I flunked the first quiz she gave me.

  The main rail gun fired four thousand rounds per second, not per minute. That repetition rate was necessary so that each tiny osmium needle flew in the shock wave of the round ahead of it, and after the first few they were all traveling through a pretty hard vacuum. They had to, or they'd all be vapor within a few meters, not just the first ones. One of the reasons for the tank's armor was to protect it from the shock of its own weapons. She made me learn that twice.

  When that was over, I found myself in a sort of motel room, rather Spartan but clean enough. I showered and went to bed. In a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. When I got up and answered it, Kasia came in.

  "I managed to deal us into an all-nighter," she said with her brown eyes flashing.

  "Wonderful," I said, and meant it. "I think I've already paid the room rent."

  "What do you mean, Mickolai?"

  I told her about my day.

  "Oh, you poor baby. They say that Hell hath no fury like an Aggressor Mark XIX scorned."

  "Nothing we can do about it, love. Let's just make sure that I get my money's worth."

  And you know, she made it all worth while.

  She left in the morning, and after eating my goo, I was back on that cold endless plain, doing pushups. And in the evening, I was back with Kasia. This went on for a week, with no time off for Sunday. It was rough, but the nights with my one true love made life worth living.

  Then one day after fourteen hours of pattern identification, I was in the forest again, and Kasia joined me there, wearing a gym suit.

  "I proved to them that we're both ahead of schedule, and wrangled us some better working conditions," she said. "At least from now on, we get to do our Physical Training together, so long as we don't slough off. Come on!"

  She took off running, and I was soon at her side, just barely able to keep up with her as we went over a long and very difficult obstacle course.

  "I can hardly keep up with you," I gasped. "I would have thought that I'd be better than you at this."

  "You probably are, love," she said, breathing hard. "I think they're faking the distances that we're each going. After all, the idea is to give each one of us an optimal workout, and to use each of us to motivate the other."

  "That makes some kind of sense," I said, rounding the last curve in the path. "I see I have my cottage back."

  "I thought that it was my cottage. The tanks probably all use the same set of stock backdrops," she panted.

  We showered up together and took turns giving each other a good, thorough rubdown. Supper was good roast beef, and in the morning after breakfast, we were allowed to do PT together again before we parted for another day in the tanks. This went on for a solid week, and then Agnieshka told me that we'd earned a Sunday off.

  Kasia and I are both fairly religious, but we spent the whole of Sunday morning just lazing in b
ed with the stereo playing softly. Going to a faked-up church seemed sort of useless. I mean, if it wasn't real, with a real priest, what was the point?

  Kasia cooked a nice brunch, we took a walk by the lake, and we discovered that we had a sailboat, or at least she did. It had her name on it, anyway. Neither of us had ever sailed before, and we were wet and giggling by the time we finally figured out how to get the silly thing underway, but sure, we had a good time. That evening, we found a tavern at the far end of the lake, with Italian food, candlelight and a strolling violin player. Not having any money, I just signed the check. Kasia gave the sailboat to the violin player for a tip, with the understanding that he had to share it with the waitress, and they were both delighted. We took a cab home. Why worry about the sailboat when none of it was real?

  The next week was more of the same, but now we were doing vacuum simulations. The enemy is harder to spot in a vacuum, with no air currents to give him away, and you learn to be more trigger happy there, since many kinds of weapon discharges are harder for them to spot if you shot where they weren't. I mean, a laser or a rail run going off is as obvious as a bear on a chess board when you're in an atmosphere, but they can be hard to spot in a hard vacuum. Sometimes you even got a second shot.

  Thermal signature is the best way to spot your opponent in a vacuum, so you spend most of your time looking through one narrow band, down around eighteen microns. Even then, it's hard. I mean, a muon exchange fusion reactor gives you direct conversion from nuclear to electrical power, at better than ninety-nine percent efficiency, and what with superconductors used everywhere, the shell of a resting tank is rarely more than a degree warmer than ambient. They warm up a lot when you are firing a weapon, and the energy requirements get huge. Ninety megawatts for a rail gun, and a bit more for most lasers.

  Also, the tanks all carry a bottle of liquid air as a coolant, and if the enemy knows that you're looking, he can chill his surface down to ambient, for an hour or so, anyway, but that one works better in air than a vacuum since sometimes you can spot the turbulence of the coolant escaping. But if you exhaust your air bottle, it takes a half hour to recharge it, assuming that you are in an atmosphere, and when you have been firing your rail guns for a while, you need that coolant to keep your coffin from overheating. Like I said, it gets complicated, but somehow, I seemed to have a knack for it.