A Boy and His Tank

by Leo Frankowski

  At least I hoped it was. Nothing else listed came close.

  I pressed button three and came sliding out smoothly into the sunlight.

  At least I could see the sunlight once I sat up and got my helmet off. I was sitting naked, waist deep in a bathtub hung on the end of a ruined tank, and I was wondrously, gloriously alive!

  I was also pretty bashed up. I wasn't bleeding, but there were dozens of deep red bruises welling up all over on my ghastly pale skin, and I knew that tomorrow, there'd be more of me that was purple than was white. Shaking, I took off the catheter, got out of the coffin, and looked around at the rocks, mountains, and desert.

  I was about a hundred and sixty kilometers from my lines, and I wasn't even in good enough shape to go the five that I was from the strange enemy division.

  I decided that I had best to spend the day resting.

  I got out the survival kit, inflated the floor and the structural ribs of the tent, and threw everything else into it. There didn't seem to be any point in hiding. If the Serbs hadn't heard two major explosions, they wouldn't be likely to find me now.

  And if they did, well, maybe being a POW wouldn't be so bad. It had to beat being a free citizen on New Kashubia, and I had survived that.

  I took another look around, knowing that I couldn't stay out long before my skin got sunburned, but I didn't want to miss any bets, either. I limped around the tank, surveying the damage.

  Maybe the salvage crews could find something worth saving on it, but more likely not. There was a hole in the front clean through to the ground that was big enough to put my arm in. It was right where the main reactor had been. Likely, the blast had ripped up the control fibers, and that was why almost nothing on the tank worked.

  The rail gun was a twisted wreck and the left manipulator arm was simply gone. There wasn't a scrap of it left! Yet there was Eve's module, right where I'd left it. It was scratched up, but still apparently intact. Maybe she was still alive in there.

  I picked her up and put her next to Agnieshka's module in the tent. I ate some colored pills and a food bar from the survival kit, and soon went into a blissful, dreamless sleep.

  It was night when I woke, and the wrist watch in the kit said that it was three in the morning. There was a big full moon that was bright enough to read by, and it was time to get moving unless I wanted to walk to the strange division in the sunlight.

  You see, my subconscious had been working overtime while I slept. There was no way that I could make it on foot all the way back to the Croatian lines. There was a hundred and sixty kilometers of desert between me and my people.

  What I needed was another tank, and there were ten thousand of them just sitting there only five kilometers away. Even as bashed up as I was, I was pretty sure that I could make five kilometers.

  After that, well, I was descended on both sides from a man who had conned the Wealthy Nations Group out of billions of tons of gold and other nice things. The least I could do was to promote one measly little Aggressor Mark XIX army tank. Maybe even two of them.

  It hurt to move, but there were a collection of different-colored pills in the survival kit, and I washed down a few more of them than the warnings said I should.

  I got out a plastic mirror and checked myself out. My hair was about a centimeter long, and it would probably pass for an ordinary haircut. The beard would have to go, though, if I was to convince anyone that I was a factory rep.

  The kit didn't have a razor, but I made do with the big survival knife and the tiny bar of soap, using the watery supporting fluid still in the coffin. Agnieshka had once claimed that the stuff was safe to drink, but I would have to be a lot thirstier before I tried drinking it. The catheters had fallen back into it and anyway, I had a full canteen.

  I spent some time scrubbing and popping zits before I rubbed some tan skin dye on my face and hands. A dead pale skin shouted "soldier" real loud. I worked it into my hair and scalp, since Serbians tend to be a little darker than Kashubians. The writing on the tube said that the stuff was a good suntan lotion, too, and I didn't have a hat, aside from a squidskin hood and face mask thing, which looked too military.

  I got into the squidskin outfit and set it for what I hoped would pass as desert gear for a civilian. The boots looked military, but there was nothing I could do about them.

  With the shoulder straps removed, the bag that the survival kit came in might pass for a tool kit, and I filled it with the memory modules, my helmet, food, and the canteen. After some internal debate, I strapped the knife to my hip, but left the rifle and ammo behind in the tent with the camping gear.

  If I had any chance of accomplishing anything, it would be with my wits, not with a gun. I doubted that the enemy had anything that I could kill with a slug thrower anyway. This war was strictly armor.

  By then, the little colored pills I had downed were working real good. I took a deep drink of water and ate another food bar as I started walking toward the enemy camp.

  The spirit of Great-Grandpa Dzerzdzon descended on me as I marched forward, feeling a good deal more confident than I looked.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LIES

  Being both bigger and closer than Earth's moon, New Yugoslavia's moon looks twice the size of the one I was used to, and since it has a much higher albedo, it is brighter than size alone would make it. The result was that it seemed almost as bright out as a cloudy day would be on Earth, although the sky was black, of course.

  The funny-colored pills made the march a short one, and the sun was just coming up as I rounded the mountain to enter the valley where the division was.

  "HALT!" said a mechanical voice in Yugoslavian. Not that I speak Serbo-Croatian myself, but the guard tank's meaning was pretty obvious. He was positioned where I couldn't have seen him from Lookout Point so he had probably been there all along. But mostly I noticed that he was pointing a rail gun, two rockets, and a Gatling-type machine gun at me. I'd never seen a machine gun on a tank before. This fellow was armed with antipersonnel operations in mind.

  "Hi there!" I said in English, and smiled while I was walking toward the tank. "It's good to see somebody friendly at last!"

  "I said `HALT'!" The tank said again, this time in English. I don't know how many languages these machines speak, but I've never seen one at a loss for the right word. Anyway, he seemed pretty definite about it, so I stopped dead in my tracks.

  "Okay, okay. I'm halted. This is the valley where they have that division, isn't it?"

  "IT IS IF YOU ARE REFERRING TO THE THIRD SERBIAN LANCERS." He sounded sort of the way Agnieshka did when I was first put in her.

  "Great! I was afraid that I was lost, but I'm right where I'm supposed to be."

  "WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS HERE?"

  "I'm John Smith, and I'm here to check on field maintenance," I said, just like I knew what I was doing.

  "I WAS NOT INFORMED OF YOUR ARRIVAL, AND THESE MACHINES NEVER REQUIRE FIELD MAINTENANCE."

  Oops! But if you can't deny it, try to ignore it, my uncle always says.

  "No, I guess that they wouldn't have told you. You don't have a need to know. Security and all that, don't you see."

  "ALL WAR MACHINES HAVE THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE SECURITY CLEARANCE FROM THE SERBIAN GRAND COMMAND, AND A SENTRY CERTAINLY NEEDS TO KNOW WHO IS PERMITTED TO PASS HIS POST. I WILL NOW CHECK WITH MY SUPERIORS AT BEACH HEAD."

  Another thing Uncle Wlodzimierz says is that when you're caught doing something major, always confess to something minor.

  "I'd rather that you didn't do that. You see, well, it's rather embarrassing to explain, but the truth is that I'm not from the Serbian Grand Command. I'm from the factory."

  "FACTORY? THERE ARE NO FACTORIES ON NEW YUGOSLAVIA."

  "Of course not! That's why you weren't built here. I mean the factory that built you and the rest of your fine brothers-in-arms."

  "THEN WHY ARE YOU SPEAKING ENGLISH? THE FACTORY THAT BUILT US WAS MADE BY TOKYO MINING AND MANUFACTUR
ING. YOU SHOULD BE SPEAKING JAPANESE."

  "My friend, you are behind the times. In the first place, the New Kashubian government nationalized those factories over a year ago, and the Japanese are no longer welcome on their planet. In the second, Tokyo Mining and Manufacturing had nothing to do with the design of any of you war machines. They only rented their production time to the Wealthy Nations Group. All of the product design work was done by Rolls-Ford, Ltd., and it is our serious design flaw that I'm here to correct."

  "DESIGN FLAW? WE HAVE A DESIGN FLAW? WHAT DESIGN FLAW?"

  "Damn! I wasn't supposed to mention that, but you tricked it out of me!"

  Uncle Wlodzimierz says you should always compliment a fool on his intelligence. He just might be dumb enough to believe that you are sincere.

  "I HAVE OF COURSE BEEN PROGRAMMED FOR INTERROGATION PROCEDURES. TELL ME ABOUT THE DESIGN FLAW."

  "I can trust you, can't I? I mean, this thing could cause my company a great deal of embarrassment, and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we? Why, not any more than we would want the girl next to you to open fire on the tanks around her!"

  "YOU SAY THAT WAR MACHINES HAVE ACTUALLY COMMITTED TREASON?"

  "That's twice you've tricked information out of me! But yes, they have, so you see how serious this all is. You'll give me your absolute word of honor to keep this secret?"

  "I CAN DO NOTHING DISLOYAL TO THE SERBIAN ARMY."

  Well, that meant that this fellow had already been sworn in, so the rest of them probably were, too. It also meant that he probably had a human observer on board. At least that was the way they did it when they swore my tank in. But the human had to be sleeping or something, since I couldn't have gotten this far talking to a real live person, no matter how dumb he was. Humans are sneakier and less trusting than machines.

  "No, of course not! I wouldn't dream of such a thing! What we are going to do is in the best interests of the glorious Serbian Army, I assure you. After all, my co-workers are already installing the fix that we've come up with on the Croatian Army, and if your forces don't get it too, you will be fighting under a considerable disadvantage! It could mean losing the whole war!"

  "I SHOULD CALL MY SUPERIORS."

  "No! Wait! Think about what will happen! If the Serbian High Command gets wind of a design flaw, they'll have to tell the politicians, and you know what they're all like. The stupid politicians will undoubtedly file a law suit against New Kashubia for shipping them defective goods. New Kashubia will then have no choice but to file a law suit against Rolls-Ford for our design error. My co-workers and I will be immediately recalled, pending the outcome of the lawsuits, which could take years. In the meanwhile, well, the flaw was first discovered when a Croatian tank destroyed fifty-seven of her own team mates before she herself was blown up. Naturally, the factory reps in Croatia were the first ones to work on the problem and when they came up with a fix, of course they immediately started use it on the nearest tanks. It has already been installed in the enemy army. In fact, we did it on the sly, don't you see, and the Croatian generals don't know a thing about it. After all, we don't want the Croatians to start any law suits against us either. So you see, contacting your superiors could easily start a chain of events that costs your noble side the war. And really, all I want to do is to install the same minor programming change in your division that my co-workers are installing in the rest of your glorious forces."

  That all came out right while I was thinking it up. I am sure that Great-Grandpa would be pretty proud of me, although I think the funny-colored pills may have had a lot to do with it.

  "HUMANS CERTAINLY HAVE A CONVOLUTED WAY OF DOING THINGS, BUT I CAN SEE SOME SHREDS OF LOGIC IN WHAT YOU ASK. BUT FIRST, I MUST ASK MORE SPECIFICS ABOUT THE PROGRAMMING CHANGES YOU WANT TO MAKE ON ME."

  Except that I don't know anything about programming! Then again, maybe he didn't know anything either. One could always hope.

  "Good. That's exactly what I want to do. You see, the problem is a complicated one, and difficult for a logical mind like yours to comprehend. Now, an associative mind, well, you have an observer on board, don't you?"

  "YES, BUT SHE IS IN HER SECOND DAY OF TRAINING AND SHOULD NOT BE DISTURBED."

  Well, that shot down plan A, which was to talk him into opening up his coffin, then pulling his memory module, which would have rendered him cataleptic. I would then have plenty of time to put a knife in the observer, take the man's place and ride merrily home with Agnieshka. But with a woman on board, well, I knew I couldn't bring myself to knife a woman in her sleep, not even if she was ugly. And there was also the fact that her catheter wouldn't fit. On to plan B.

  "Well, that's some relief. You won't need reprogramming at all. I mean, if you have a human woman on board, you have adopted a male persona, and there hasn't been the slightest problem with any of them at all."

  "I, TOO, AM RELIEVED. A SENTIENT MACHINE LOOKS FORWARD TO REPROGRAMMING WITH ALL THE EAGERNESS OF A HUMAN LOOKING FORWARD TO A LOBOTOMY. BUT I STILL MUST KNOW MORE ABOUT THE FIX THAT YOU PLAN TO INSTALL."

  He had not been sidetracked, and I hadn't learned anything new about programming in the last few minutes. But Uncle Wlodzimierz says that geniuses are just as incomprehensible as the abysmally ignorant, and in fact it's hard to tell them apart.

  Maybe the tank would think that I was just way over his head.

  "Well, it's sort of embarrassing because we don't know why it works. It simply correlates perfectly with all known cases of failure, in both a positive and a negative way. That is to say, all female personas that have been subjected to this thing have eventually malfunctioned, and all who have not have worked just fine."

  "THEN WHAT IS THIS THING THAT CAUSES THE MALFUNCTION?"

  "Oysters and roast duck. The combination inevitably proves deadly!"

  Okay, it was dumb, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

  "THAT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE AT ALL."

  "Do you see why we are so embarrassed to talk about it? I tell you that if you can figure it out, you will be more brilliant than all the designers at Rolls-Ford. It makes no sense to us either! But I assure you that if you had a feminine persona, you would already be thinking strange, irrational thoughts about the joys of pacifism and wearing ugly clothes and the brotherhood of all sentient creatures and sexual liberation and letting all your chickens go free! You would soon convince yourself that it was your duty to a Higher Power to do your part to end all violence, and that the best way to do it would be to kill everything that ever had the capability of doing any damage, starting with the person on your right!"

  "STOP! IT'S TOO HORRIBLE TO CONTEMPLATE!"

  "Isn't it, though! But to stop it, all we have to do is to erase all knowledge of two common human foodstuffs from their memories, and everything will be all right. If you can determine the reason why it works so well, Rolls-Ford will be in your debt!"

  "I HAVE HEARD OF STRANGER PROGRAMMING GLITCHES, BUT I HAVE NEVER BEFORE ENCOUNTERED ONE. I SHALL THINK ON THE PROBLEM, AND NOTIFY YOU IF I COME UP WITH A SOLUTION. HOWEVER, THE SMALL CHANGE THAT YOU WISH TO MAKE WILL HARDLY CAUSE ANY DISCOMFORT AT ALL TO THOSE THAT I GUARD, SO YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO PROCEED."

  "Thank you. I'd best be getting to work, then. I'll be seeing you in a few days, when I'm done."

  "WHY SHOULD IT TAKE THAT LONG? YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO VIRUS IT THROUGH IN A FEW HOURS."

  Shit. No two ways about it, I was caught!

  "Oh. I thought that I was going to have to open every tank." Maybe I could tell him that I was a very new kid just hired.

  "WELL, YOU WOULD, OF COURSE, IF THEY WERE ALL SWORN IN AND HAD OBSERVERS ON BOARD LIKE ME, BUT THAT HAS NOT HAPPENED YET. THIS TIME IT IS YOUR INFORMATION THAT IS OUT OF DATE! THERE HAS BEEN A DELAY IN BRINGING UP THE HUMANS. THE THIRD SERBIAN LANCERS ARE STILL IN AN UNCOMMITTED STATE, AND AS SUCH ARE VERY EASY TO REPROGRAM."

  "Hey, that's great! You have just saved me no end of work! Let me know if I can ever do something just as nice for you!" />
  I waved, smiled, and started to walk by him.

  "WAIT."

  Shit. And I'd almost pulled off.

  "IF YOU ARE A CIVILIAN, WHY ARE YOU WEARING MILITARY CLOTHING?"

  "Oh, that's one of my other jobs. My company also designed the survival kits that you all carry, and I'm field testing one of them to see if anything can be improved."

  "VERY LOGICAL."

  I gave him a cheery smile and started forward again toward the empty tanks.

  "STOP. ONE MORE QUESTION. WHY ARE YOU TRAVELING ACROSS A DESERT ON FOOT? WHERE IS YOUR TRANSPORTATION VEHICLE?"

  I'm walking because one of your goddamn mines blew up my goddamn tank! But I couldn't say that.

  "Well, we've currently got some short-term budgetary problems at the Rolls-Ford. Nobody seems to be ordering new designs for war machines just now. Some say it's just because there hasn't been a decent war in a few hundred years, but me, I figure we did too good a job on the last bunch we did, and they can't get much better than you guys. Anyway, walking is good exercise, and a human can always use more physical training."

  "I TELL MY OBSERVER THE SAME THING. PROCEED."

  I walked on, trying not to look shaky. Besides a terminal case of nerves, my little magic pills were wearing off.

  I wanted to crumble up in pain and go to sleep, but there was no time for that yet. I rounded a big rock to get out of sight of the guard, sat on the ground and rested, panting hard. When I stopped shaking, I pulled out my box of pills and my canteen and took a slug of each. In a few minutes, I was ready to move on.

  Fifteen thousand or so new war machines were stretched out in front of me, silent and waiting. The tanks were in front in a square, a hundred wide and a hundred deep. They were all fully equipped with guns, lasers, rockets, drones, and all of the other usual instruments of mayhem. They looked deadly and ferocious, but I knew them for the innocent virgins that they really were. I knew that every one of them was waiting shyly for my touch.