The War With Earth (18 page)

The Diamond was there, more than two kilometers long and half that wide, or it had been, before they had cut it almost in half. The exposed surface was absolutely flat, and except for surface reflections it looked black, which surprised me. I'd expected a diamond to look, well, bright and shiny.

A huge bank of lasers was set up, pointing at the largest face.

As I watched, the lasers flashed, a sharp explosion went off around the whole edge of the stone, and a huge, thin sheet slid off and into a tub of water that was so big that it could only be called a lake. It was quickly pulled out and coiled around the biggest spindle I've ever seen. From there, a truck took it somewhere for further processing.

While this was going on, a dozen special machines were extruding a new shaped charge around the edge of The Diamond. When they were through, the lasers flashed, the charge went off, and a new sheet was cut.

Agnieshka told me that they did this every fifty-five seconds. They would be over a year finishing the job. They were hiding the sheets, and the integrated circuits made out of them, all over Human Space. With any luck, The Diamond would be gone before anybody outside the army knew it had ever existed. Just as well. I sure didn't feel much loyalty to New Kashubia, New Croatia, or anyplace else, for that matter.

The cavern that had been cut to get at The Diamond was a barrel vault almost three kilometers long, nineteen hundred meters wide, and a kilometer high.

"This place has to be a record setter," I said.

"It is. It's cut out of the same flawless granite that we built your city out of. New Yugoslavia is a young planet with small tectonic plates. There is a lot of good stone here. Once we're through with The Diamond, we'll turn this cavern into some sort of factory. We haven't decided what we'll build here yet, but we'll find something."

I went over to where The Diamond was resting on the stone floor. Its surface looked rough, black, and burned. I reached up and touched it. It felt surprisingly cool to my hand, colder than metal would have felt. It was obviously a very good conductor of heat.

It was a shame that something so unique was being destroyed, but that is the way of the world. At least this way, it was being put to good use. If the politicians got wind of this thing, they would probably start a war over it that would likely end with somebody dropping a nuke on The Diamond to keep their enemies from having it.

"I've seen what I wanted to see. Let's go home."

Back in my tank, in Dream World, I found that I was once more in uniform, instead of my usual around-the-house grubbies. When I asked why, Agnieshka said that I had a visitor waiting in the living room.

He was a tall, powerful-looking blond man that you really couldn't call handsome, but he looked like somebody you could trust. He was wearing the same general's uniform that I had on.

"I gather that you are General Jan Sobieski, my boss," I said, offering my hand.

As we shook hands, he said, "And you are the guy who has been legally impersonating me. I've wanted to touch bases with you for some time, but I didn't want to disturb your honeymoon."

"That was decent of you, sir. I saw you and your colonels at the wedding, on the big screens, but not at the reception."

"The reception was too public, and too many questions would have been asked. I watched it, though, without my image being displayed. We toasted you and your wife with the best Dream World champagne. I only wished that I could have been there in person, so I could have kissed your lovely bride. Unfortunately, regulations are regulations, and when you had a hand in writing them yourself, well, they're pretty hard to duck. The general and his staff have to stay in their coffins, in case of emergencies."

"Maybe you should have a backup staff, so you could use some of your leave time, sir."

"If things looked like they would stay peaceful, I would do just that, but there are some very black clouds on the horizon, just now. We just might have a major war coming up, so I have to stay bottled up."

"A real war, sir? With who?"

"Just now, you don't have a need to know. I'll fill you in, once your leave is up. But suffice it to say that the production of military equipment has been increased tenfold in the last three standard months, and the rate of increase itself is increasing. Finding troops to fill those tanks has been a problem, but the stunts that you have pulled, getting the Croatians to
pay you
for taking their men, have been a godsend. You know, Earth's original idea was to fill these tanks with convicted criminals."

Agnieshka came in, more scantily dressed than usual, and served us some big steins of a strong Russian honey beer, Medovia Krepkoiya. Then, discreetly, she left us.

"Yes sir, but what about the people from the insane asylums?"

"The medical computers think that they can cure about eighty percent of them, eventually. Most of them will decide to stay in our army."

"Should I continue charging them for the patients who were cured, but elected to stay in the army?"

"Why not? And charge them heavy for the ones we cured, but who want to try to go back to their old lives. I would have preferred it if you had charged the planets for all those medical centers that you sent out for free, but I decided that it might turn out to be good advertising. Those were army property, you know, even if none of us knew that they existed. The planetary governments will want more of them, and they will find that they are very expensive, but still much cheaper than doing without them."

He took a deep drink of his beer, and continued.

"Look. The Kashubian Expeditionary Forces are the only human interstellar military force in existance. This is a big universe, and we have only explored a tiny portion of it. We don't know what's out there, but I've got a gut-level feeling that not all of it is friendly. So far, we've kept our army in existence by doing engineering work—brute labor, actually. The politicians don't see the need for a military, except when they want to fight a local war, like the ones here on New Yugoslavia. They are not about to pay for a defense against a threat that is not immediately visible, and they are not able to think about any time period longer than the time between now and the next election. But if we do nothing and wait for somebody bigger and badder than us to come along, then when they get here, we won't stand a chance. We have to be ready for whatever happens. We are protecting seventy-odd human colonized planets, with more being found every year. Most of them are politically disorganized within, and connected with each other only by commercial treaties. Earth, which should be the natural leader among the planets, is concerned only with milking the others for every cent it can get. The KEF must somehow protect those planets, and we damn well deserve to be paid for it! Otherwise, without us, humanity will eventually run into something that it can't handle, and that will be the end of ten thousand years of human civilization."

He took another deep pull on his beer.

"Yes, sir. I see. And I should keep this money myself?"

"Yes. It's better that way. But if there was really a need, and I asked you for a donation, would you give it to me?"

"Yes, sir. Of course I would."

"Then that answers your question. But back to the medical centers we were talking about. Frontier planets like New Yugoslavia are way behind the times medically, and Earth won't let anybody who was deported come back, not even for medical reasons. Most of those who have been cured have been talked into volunteering to join us. A cured mental patient often has a hard time being accepted back into civilian society, but here, well, they're one of us. Those we can't help will stay in Dream World, in militarily obsolete machines. Your actions have vastly improved the fighting capabilities of the New Yugoslavian KEF, and once you get back in the saddle, you'll be getting some decorations for it."

"How about the criminals and mental patients on all the other planets, sir?"

"My fellow generals have men and machines working on every other off-Earth planet, trying to do the same thing that you have done here. The preliminary results look good."

"I thought you might be angry about the money I accepted, sir."

"It's small change, really. You are welcome to it, especially since I like what you are doing with it. That magnificent city of yours will end up being populated by the veterans of the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces. After all, nobody else is allowed to live in that area. Owning a piece of something so marvelous will give a man something to fight for. And don't just give them those apartments. Make them spend their back pay on them. That will increase their commitment."

"Thank you, sir. Would you like to have the golden castle?"

"It's beautiful, but no. What I want is the Citadel on top of Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon."

"Sir, what with my honeymoon and all, I haven't gone over in detail exactly what the girls built for me. I just saw that what they were doing was so good that I didn't have the right to criticize any of it, and told them to do as they wished. But if you want this Citadel, it's yours."

"Thank you. I'll pay you for it, too. I love our mechanical ladies as much as you do, I think. You see, they knew that you admired the works of J. R. R. Tolkien as much as I do, and over the centuries, most of the world's best artists have illustrated scenes from his books. With those paintings as a guide, they have built Hobbiton, Rivendell, the Mines of Moria, Helm's Deep, and a dozen other suchlike places, including some of the bad ones. I want the citadel."

"You got it. I wonder if they'll make us some Ents."

"They just might. I'm waiting to see what they do about a Balrog. Have you been keeping up with what they're doing about those social drones you authorized?"

"No sir. Good?"

"I think that once they're through, you won't be able to tell one from a human being without an X-ray machine. That's what they really want, you know. To be human, and to have all the rights of humans, too."

"I think that they are earning those rights, sir."

"So do I. Well. Go back and enjoy the rest of your leave. I just might have to cut it short."

"Yes, sir."

I saluted him, he returned the salute and flicked out of existence.

I began to think that maybe I really felt some loyalty to something after all.

The Human Army.

Coming up from the Loway, still in our tanks, we approached my underground garage. Agnieshka mentioned that there were various hidden weapon systems around us, under the control of the house computer, which was actually a disabled tank. As she described them, I said that it all seemed rather extreme.

"In our present world, you are probably right, boss, but remember that this whole complex is designed to last for five thousand years. Who can tell what might happen in so long a time span? You, or your descendants might one day have to defend yourselves from a barbarian horde, for all we know."

"As you wish. But I'm glad that you decided to keep it all hidden. I wouldn't want my guests to know that they could be gassed, lasered, or shot dead at any time, at the option of my household computer."

The walls and ceilings of the entrance drive were ornately carved, and the beautifully tiled floors were underlaid with a magnetic layer, so that the tanks didn't have to set a tread on them.

One long wall had a fifty-meter-deep trench running along it, with a MagLev track running along the bottom.

"That track doesn't go anywhere," Agnieshka said. "It's just there to conceal the fact that this is really a moat."

A drawbridge that I hadn't seen even with the tank's sensors came down from the wall across the moat, and we floated over it.

My garage was big enough to store fifty tanks in full battle array. If I ever decided to start collecting cars, I had a place to put them.

Kasia and I got out of our tanks, dried ourselves off, and dressed. Somehow, even though we were alone, it didn't seem right to take possession of our new home while we were naked.

I started to get into some civilian lederhosen, but I saw Kasia dressing herself in a long and slinky red dress, with red high heels, and worrying about her wig and makeup. I changed my mind and got back into my class A uniform. A dress uniform would have been better, but I didn't have one with me.

I waited until the elevator took us up to our apartment, decided that the elevator door counted as a threshold, and picked up my wife in the customary manner. I carried her over it, while she made the customary squeals. Tradition is tradition, after all.

Much of our huge apartment was as my virtual tour had shown it, but many of the finished details were different. For example, the railings of the balconies were now set with huge cut gemstones. There were diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and stones of other colors that I didn't recognize. Many of them were hundreds of carats in size.

"The diamonds, I can understand," I said to Agnieshka, who was wearing her decorated drone persona, "But where did you get all the other stones?"

"Those are all diamonds, boss. With ion implantation, we can make them any color you want. Chromium ions turn them red, for example."

"They are magnificent, however you did it."

Two walls of my den were covered with mounted trophies of the animals, birds, and fishes I had bagged on my honeymoon. I was surprised that there were so many of them. The furniture was covered with leather from the deer, antelopes, and wild boars I'd killed. Two of the big easy chairs had Dream World receptors built into them, so we wouldn't have to strip and get into a tank any more.

"Agnieshka, I love it," I said. "I love it!"

There was a gun rack that held all the guns, bows, and fishing gear that I had favored on the island. That, or they were perfect facsimiles of them. I decided not to ask which.

Kasia didn't like my room at all, saying that shet couldn't stand all those dead animals staring down at her. She went to explore the rest of the place with Eva, but I stayed for a while.