The War With Earth (16 page)

"Let me know when you come up with an answer. But back to what I was saying. There are the feminine drones being designed now. You know about them, right?"

"Of course. I'm looking forward to getting mine."

"Well, once we produce enough of them so all of you ladies have one, there ought to be a huge market for them in the civilian world as housemaids, barmaids, waitresses, sales girls, and all sorts of things. Get me those old computers and we can sell the drones and their brains as a package."

"I'll see to it. I've been asked to remind you that over twenty percent of our tanks have female observers, and that most of their computers have therefore developed male personalities. Those guys want a male version of the feminine drone developed."

"Sure, why not? The differences would be only cosmetic, anyway, and I'm sure that there is a big civilian market for male drones as well."

"They asked me to say, 'Thank you!' Another thing. These computers you will be selling with the drones. Will they have Dream World capabilities?"

"I hadn't thought of that. It's a possibility. We could sell it as an extra-cost option. We could sell it without the drones, if that's what the buyer wanted. Yes, an excellent suggestion, Agnieshka."

"And another thought, considering your unusual moral nature, Mickolai. The drones being designed for our military teammates will be fully capable of performing the human sex act. The boys and girls will insist on that. Will the civilian drones have the same capabilities?"

"Now that opens a can of worms, doesn't it? If they do, they will be bought up by whoremasters, won't they? Is that worse than having real women forced to do the same job? And some of them are forced, you know. And some of them like it. Shit, I don't know. Ask me about it later. We don't even have the drones yet."

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. New topic. Those huge windows you plan on putting into that marvelous cathedral you ladies are building for me. They are seven hundred meters tall and twenty meters wide. How do you plan to get them from that huge diamond to my valley?"

"We'll roll them up. Those windows will be only two millimeters thick, and will be held in their frames under considerable tension, which diamond is good at. We can roll them into tubes five meters in diameter, and twenty meters long, and ship them to your building site through the Loways."

"Nice trick, if it works."

"It will work. We've already tested it."

"I should have known. What if that hadn't worked?"

"Plan B was to airlift them in, with a cargo helicopter, some dark and stormy night when nobody was looking. Plan C was to use smaller pieces, but that wouldn't have been as nice, aesthetically."

"Always a backup. Good. How is everything else going?"

"About as expected. The last of those hoodlums is out of the hospital and inside of a tank. They seem to be doing okay. The Serbs, the Montenegrins, and the Albanians have taken us up on our offer to empty out their penitentiaries, and I think it likely that most of the smaller countries will also do so, it time. The money keeps rolling in.

"The Croatian convicts are being loaded as scheduled, and our new psychiatrists are undergoing their examinations as we speak. The automatic medical centers are glad to have something to do, but they are not pleased with having most of their recovery units sent elsewhere. They also complain that the psychiatric patients should be examined for physical ailments before being given extensive psychiatric care."

"You know, they might have a point there. I read something once about how many mental problems have a physical basis. Has the medical center scheduled for New Yugoslavia been delivered yet?"

"Not yet. There is some debate as to which of the twenty-nine governments we should send it to."

"Well, keep it for a while, and process the nut cases through it, first."

"Boss!"

"Well, 'psychiatric patients' is such a mouthful. Tell you what. Let's call them 'Danes.' Everybody likes the Danish. They're the most inoffensive people in the world, so it can't have any derogatory connotations."

"Yes, sir. I wish you were in my coffin, so I could tell whether you were lying or not."

"Back to the Yugoslavian medical center. When we're through with it, send it to the Ecological Council. They are the closest thing to a planetary government this place has. Tell them to timeshare it with everybody else. How is my valley doing?"

"It's going way ahead of schedule. We have thirty-nine thousand tanks working there now, along with most of your new drones, who are doing the small-scale work."

"I wish I could see it."

"Boss, if you were there, all you could see would be one vast cloud of dust. When your vacation here is over, the heavy stuff will be finished, and you will be able to admire to your heart's content."

"A contented heart. I could use one of those just now. How is Kasia doing?"

"She's buying and selling and seems to be enjoying herself. She's just discovered that we are sending a lot of tanks back and forth between the planets, getting the entire Kashubian army filled with observers. She's planning to recruit many of those that we are sending back to the other planets into her financial empire. She wants to start trading off planet as well as here on New Yugoslavia."

"That's my wife. Beautiful, smart, and greedy. Say, you said that we had a lot of money in the bank, right? Well, there's no point just letting it sit there, not when I've got this bet to win. Do you think that you could invest that money for me as well as Kasia is doing for herself?"

"I think so, yes. I'm not as creative as she is, but I can certainly copy what she is doing. Furthermore, we are starting with a much bigger capital base than she has, which gives us a considerable advantage."

"Good. Do it. And get us going on every civilized planet except Earth as soon as possible. We'll show Kasia what
wealth
really is!"

But I sat and watched a movie alone, that night, and at midnight I had to switch off Kasia's screen to get her to come to bed.

The next morning, after a quick breakfast of smoked salmon, Kasia was back at her screen, working on some new idea.

I went down to the gun room and selected a .30-06 Remington automatic with a Leupold 3X9 power scope, a magnificent antique.

I rode out on horseback, my rifle strapped to my back, with ten drones for trackers and beaters. Before noon, I bagged a twelve-point white-tailed buck, a huge American elk, three African antelopes, and four European wild boars. We made quite a parade, coming back to the mansion, but Kasia never looked out the window.

After a late lunch of the traditional hunter's feast, roasted deer's liver, I determined that Kasia's six hours were up, and had Eva shut off her equipment.

Kasia was surprisingly pleasant for the rest of the day and evening. She was animated, friendly, and eager to please, much like a junkie who has gotten her fix.

In college, on Earth, I had seen too many people who were on drugs act this way, and a few who treated gambling in the same fashion. Maybe the thrill of making money was a lot like a gambler's high to her.

I didn't like it. I worried about her, but I didn't see anything that I could do about it except to hope that she would eventually outgrow it.

At least now, she was fun to be with.

She eagerly let me show her my plans for my ranch, our home, and the city. She was very impressed with it all, oohing and aahing the whole while.

We debated for hours over whether we wanted to live in the largest of the three castles, which the architect had named "Three Eagles," or in the cliff dwelling apartment being built at the site that Kasia had originally picked out. In the end, we decided that the huge apartment was really for us, but we'd visit the castle often.

We talked and ate and laughed and ended up dancing together under the tropical stars and New Yugoslavia's huge moon, now waxing but still new.

And at night, in bed, she was marvelous.

The next morning, she was back at her "work," but not in front of a wall screen. She was inside of her tank, so that she could work in Dream World, at thirty times normal speed. It turned her allotted six hours into a hundred and eighty hours, an entire week, of subjective time.

At least there, I knew that Eva was keeping her healthy.

I went for a walk on the beach on the ocean side of the island. The tide was halfway out, and various ecologically approved squiggly and crawly things were moving about. I vaguely recognized most of them from watching old nature programs from Earth. Then, one of the weirdest creatures I have ever seen came walking toward me.

First off, it was bright blue, and I don't think I'd ever heard of a blue land animal before. I suppose that it could be called some sort of crab, even though it looked like it might have massed about three kilos, since it had a pie-shaped body and six legs, but there was something decidedly machinelike about it. It was slowly, painfully moving in the fashion of any six-legged animal, moving one tripod of legs forward, planting it firmly on the ground, shifting forward and then moving the other tripod in the same jerky manner.

The segments of each of its legs were doubled, with what looked like a bone below and what looked almost like a sort of hydraulic cylinder above it. Yet it was obviously alive, and not a machine.

I yelled for Agnieshka, and one of the standard drones ran up.

"Yes, boss?"

"Do you have any idea what this thing is?"

"It's one of the planet's original inhabitants, but that's all I can tell you. Uh . . .  No, it's not listed in the data banks, but they're pretty sketchy. There are only twenty-two marine biologists working on the entire planet, so of course they've missed a lot."

"Maybe we should send it to one of the universities, then. It might have some scientific value to them. Do we have any sort of preservative or embalming fluid around?"

"There's a twenty-five-liter carboy of ninety-five percent ethanol in one of the store rooms, boss."

"A hundred and ninety proof, huh? One of the former tenants here was either a biologist collecting specimens, or he had a very serious drinking problem. It will suffice. Put the critter into the jar, and we'll take it back with us."

The drone picked up the crab, which didn't protest much, and took it back to the house, while I continued my beachcombing.

That evening, I wanted to show the crab to Kasia, so I sent a drone to get the carboy. It came back empty handed.

"It escaped, boss. It didn't move after I put it into the ethanol, and I assumed that it had died. When I went down there again, I found that it had cut a neat, circular hole in the metal lid of the carboy, and had crawled out. I sent another drone to track it, but it had already made it to the ocean."

"It cut a hole in the metal? With what? I didn't notice any sort of claws on the thing."

"Neither did I, boss. And another thing. The liquid level in the jar was lower than it was this morning. The creature must have drunk at least five liters of the ethanol."

Kasia said, "It drank almost twice its body weight of one-hundred-and-ninety-proof booze, and then it walked home? Did it at least leave us a 'Thank You' note?"

"No, ma'am."

"Probably just as well," I said.

I spent the next day learning how to handle a sailboat, under Agnieshka's tutelage. It was a big, fast catamaran, decorated to look like an ancient Polynesian craft, but made with modern materials. Together, her drone and I made it across the lagoon and back without ever having to use the motor.

In the late afternoon and evening, Kasia was again mine, and the times were good.

The whole month went like that, with six hours a day spent apart, and the rest together.

I became something of an expert at hunting and fishing, horseback riding and sailing. And of course, with a beginner's overconfidence, I eventually got myself in trouble.

There was a second, much smaller boat available, a much more authentic Polynesian dugout canoe with a single outrigger, all made out of the same native wood that they had used on the mansion. It was too small to carry the weight of one of our drones, so I took it out alone, with little more than a picnic lunch, a coating of suntan oil, and a bathing suit.

Agnieshka wasn't happy about that. She wanted me to delay the trip for a day so that she could equip her tank with the flotation pods and impellers needed for seagoing duty, in case I needed help. I said that she was acting like an old lady, promised to stay in the lagoon, and paddled out from shore before setting my sail on its two Polynesian-style masts.

Sailing a small boat is actually trickier than sailing a big one. Things happen a lot faster. I was having fun with it, but I stayed near the shore for safety, figuring that I could always swim to the beach if I really blew it. That was my first mistake.

The other was that I wasn't paying attention to the tides, which, because of the large, close-in moon, are huge on this planet. On the ocean side, there was a fifteen-meter difference in water level between high tide and low. Inside the lagoon, the variation was only three meters, because there were only three small breaks in the ring of coral for the water to flow in or out.

The speed of the currents in those breaks was far greater than I had ever imagined.

I was on a broad reach, going parallel to the beach with a brisk wind blowing directly toward shore, when the current caught my little boat. From that point on, I had no control at all over what was happening. Both wind and current had the same direction in mind. Out!

It was as if I was on a big river that was going through a white water rapids, and dropping the height of a three-story building in the process!

It was one hell of a ride. I was going so fast that when the masts snapped off my dugout, they and the sail flew
backward
, back toward the lagoon! I was going that much faster than the wind!

I went through the channel in half a minute, and had somehow managed to keep upright, with the aid of the outrigger. Besides the masts and sail, I'd lost the paddle, my fishing gear, my communicator, and my lunch. The boat was filled with water, and I bailed furiously with my hands, the only things I had left for the job.