The War With Earth (3 page)

"It happened in Dream World, if that's what you mean. It was as real as anything else that happens here. Your emotions were real enough, and so were mine."

"Then what about the rest of it? The mine we hit, and the enemy division that was in the valley there. That was all fake, too?"

"The mine was a standard exercise in the survival course, one that not every student passes as well as you did. As to the rest, well, Mickolai, you did extremely well in your training. Besides having a natural talent for functioning as an observer, you were innovative, hard working, and self-sacrificing in battle. During that artillery barrage, not every observer would have turned the defense of his own tank over to another while he gave his full efforts to observing for Eva's X-ray laser."

"It was just the right thing to do at the time," I said.

"Oh, I agree. You made a sound tactical decision, but it was not one that every soldier could have carried out. You increased the survival odds for your unit while lowering your own chances of living. Your strange inner conflicts and contradictions make you a good leader, Mickolai. During the flanking attack on the Serbians, you managed to keep three very diverse and difficult people under your control. You spotted those low dirt mounds where the Serbians had dug in, and understood their importance, something that not every student did. And you fought your unit very efficiently, given the difficult circumstances."

"What about the unmanned enemy division?"

"That was another test, which you passed wonderfully. You had already shown your leadership potential, and in taking that division you showed tremendous initiative. Therefore, you were given the chance to try out for a command position, and you graduated
cum laude
."

"You mean that I really am a general officer?"

"No. You are in the top one hundredth of one percent of the troops enlisting in our forces. You are one trooper in ten thousand. But the usual general commands fifty to a hundred thousand troops, Mickolai. You are close, but it would take a military disaster to get your promotion through."

"That still puts me in range of being a colonel, doesn't it?"

"I'm afraid not. Being a good leader is different from being a good subordinate. The skills required of a good colonel are different from the skills required of a good general. In the category of being a staff officer, you don't even come close. Your wife is a fine colonel, Mickolai, but you are not. With our computer-controlled command structure, the dozens of layers of middle managers in the usual military structure are done away with. There is only one general, five staff officers, and a lot of fighting men and machines."

"So I'm still a tanker." I put my head down on my arms.

"Yes, though you're a Tanker First Class. One of the very best."

"And all of that schooling was for nothing."

"You made
cum laude
but not
summa cum laude
. After graduation, you managed to totally defeat the enemy, but the man who is our current commanding general accomplished much the same thing as you did without losing a single man, and without killing a single enemy soldier or civilian. Furthermore, he captured
all
of their equipment without having to destroy
any
of it. I can get you a recording of what he did if you want to see it."

"Huh. Maybe later. So who was this guy, anyway?" I said, getting a bit interested.

"You haven't met him, though perhaps I can get you an introduction to do so. He is a Pole with a bit of Kashubian blood in him. His name is Jan Sobieski."

"Not the ancient King Jan Sobieski, of course," I said. "Again, maybe later. So, what happened to my classmates, my supposed colonels? Besides Kasia, I mean. They were real, weren't they?"

"They were all biological humans, and they all have made tanker first. In the unlikely event that you ever do get promoted to general, they will make colonel."

"Yeah, best to keep the team together. But aside from Kasia, all of them were Croatians, not Kashubians. How did that happen?"

"They really were captured by the Serbians, during the first attack of the war. The Serbians really did load them involuntarily into Serbian tanks. Once we took command of both sides, we were going to repatriate them, but your colonels were among those who volunteered to stay in the army. The timing was right and their qualifications were good, so their training was incorporated into your training program."

"Huh. One other thing. What really happened to Neto Kondo? I never did buy that crap about his 'emotional unsuitability.' Neto was a fine, intelligent, and stable man."

"He went permanently insane, Mickolai. His tank's computer crashed when he was tunneling a road under the biggest ocean on New Yugoslavia. It was a week before he could be retrieved, and while his tank's subsystems kept him physically alive, he was done in by a combination of claustrophobia and stimulus deprivation. An unfortunate accident."

"Tunneling a road underneath an ocean? What the hell for?"

"That's what we've really been doing here on New Yugoslavia. We've been working on an engineering project. After all, while you were lying in my coffin being trained, it was only reasonable that the tank should be put to one of its many other uses."

"An engineering project. Shit. Neto was a good man. All that character, brilliance, and schooling gone to waste," I said.

"True. Even a construction project is not without its casualties. Still, wasn't the school enjoyable for its own sake?"

"I suppose it was, and what the heck, it was only two months, in the real world."

"I'm afraid not, Mickolai. You see, you spent the time in me, not in a real Combat Control Computer. I don't have the capability of keeping you in Dream World at combat speed, running at fifty times normal speed."

"You're telling me that
eight years
has gone by?"

"No. I was upgraded a few months ago with the diamond semiconductors that are now available. I can now handle Dream World about thirty times faster than I could before."

So the breakthrough in semiconductors had finally happened! For two hundred years, something better than silicon was always supposed to be right around the corner, be it organic semiconductors, or molecular switches, or even nanotubes, and always silicon technology improved just enough to be superior. It was much like the way that people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries kept expecting something better than a piston engine in their automobiles, and it didn't happen for a long, long time.

"It's closer to four and a half years since you first enlisted."

That brought me back to reality in a hurry. "Good God! But that's impossible! I've only been out for a haircut once, and that was after only a few months. I can't be wearing four years of hair and beard! I'd smother!"

"You are quite clean shaven and bald, Mickolai. Hair growth is inhibited by one of the chemicals I feed you, and the skin on your head is kept clean by a bioengineered fungus, a slight modification of a symbiotic fungus that you've had on your skin all your life. You were in Dream World when the incident happened that you are thinking of, the one where you saw Kasia in the tank next to you. It wasn't real. I'm not sure why you went through it. Some of my programming isn't completely up to date, although perhaps there were psychological reasons why the programmers included it in your training. The other incidents involving shaving and haircuts were added for consistency."

"That means that I never married Kasia, either!"

"I'm afraid that by your standards, you are still single. I mean, that was not a real human priest who married you and Kasia. We didn't have one available."

"God damn you! God damn you all to hell!" I was so angry that all I could do was sit there and shake.

After a bit, Agnieshka put her hand on my shoulder. "Mickolai . . ."

"Shut the hell up!" Not being a hero, I could take. Not being a wealthy land owner, I could take. Not being a general, I could take. Not being married to Kasia, I could
not
take, dammit!

Secretary Branteron said, "Rupert, I continue to be absolutely amazed! After yesterday's performance, I took the liberty of inviting Sir Rodney and Sir Percival from our board of directors to review with me these remarkable computer records that you were able to salvage."

After politely sniffing the exalted gentlemen, and being smelled in return, Rupert said, "Thank you, sir. I of course know these excellent gentlemen by reputation, but I have never had the singular honor of actually meeting them in person before."

Sir Rodney said, "Judging from what little I've seen thus far, it might be that the honor of this meeting is mine and not yours. I too am amazed that you were able to extract such complete computer records from a military vehicle that was fifteen hundred years old. In all of the years since the tragedy, we have all felt such deep sympathy for the wonderful human race that was so sadly lost. We all have a profound sense of loyalty to our former masters, down in our very genes from the many millennia of companionship we shared with them, and now, at last, you have been able to bring us the very thoughts of a true human being. For this, we thank you with all of our hearts."

"Amen to that," Sir Percival said. "I trust that you were able to get your amazing discovery back here without difficulty?"

"Yes, Sir Percival, we got it back, though not completely intact, of course. I had already disabled the weapons, but the people in customs were quite officious about disabling those parts of the find that had Dream World capability."

Sir Percival said, "As well they should be! It was a far more insidious habit than the drugs used in even earlier periods. But surely the information itself would be safe enough, and I trust that the inspectors didn't dare tamper with it."

"No sir, I believe that I have it all, as well as a complete twenty-third-century Mark XX Main Battle Tank, with the weapons disabled, and less the observer's spinal inductors, of course. I believe it's a first for the institute, since most of the intelligent war machines were destroyed in the course of the Wars, and in the feudal period that followed."

"It will make a fine exhibit in our museum, Rupert, but from an academic standpoint, the data you were able to extract are the truly important find."

"True, but I believe that the data will be at least as popular as the machine itself, sir. I have it all, virtually error free, because the tank and its memory banks have spent all of the intervening centuries at only a few dozen degrees above absolute zero, on Freya, in the New Yugoslavia system, so that they were not subjected to the thermal randomizing that has ruined so many other ancient data banks. Yet while Freya eased many of my technical difficulties, it actually caused most of my personal problems. You see, the transporter on Freya malfunctioned, and I was delayed for two entire months before replacement parts could be sent by ship to repair it."

"You poor boy! Two months alone on an ice ball! But, wasn't there a backup system?"

"There was, sir, but it had been defective for over a century without anyone even bothering to write up a repair order on it. You see, Freya lacks a permanent population, and few people seem to care about these backwoods places any more. My official report requests that in the future, all operatives from the institute check and have repaired as necessary all equipment on all of the unmanned sites they visit. Otherwise, we are liable to permanently lose communication with some entire solar systems! Of course, the institute here could hardly afford such an expensive project, but perhaps gentlemen of your power and influence could find the money someplace. It really is very important."

"Hmmm. Perhaps something could be done," Sir Rodney said. "I'll ask around. But get on with what you were saying."

"Yes, sir. So, stranded for months with nothing better to do, I spent my idle time editing the observer's records into a coherent story. Also, I've converted them to the modern system for public display."

"I am most anxious to see what you have."

"Then you need wait no longer, sir."

With a proud flourish and his tail held high, Rupert inserted a module into the display device, and pressed the start button.

We sat there for almost a quarter of an hour before I was ready to talk again.

"Why did you do all this to me?" I asked. "Not the training and all the lies. I can understand that, even if I can't forgive it. But why did you make me into such a big hero? Why did you take me to the top of the world, and then let me crash at the bottom when it all fell apart? Why did you go so far out of your way to make me so miserable?"

"Your psych profile said that you needed a psychological release, a good party as it were. That, and it's standard operating procedure, for a student who has done exceptionally well."

"I don't love you for it. My home and my lands aren't real either, are they?"

"No, it all happened in Dream World. But Mickolai, you have four and a half years of back pay coming, plus interest. Land on New Yugoslavia isn't expensive. Laws have been passed enabling the two of you to get immediate citizenship here, or to become permanent resident aliens with full legal rights while retaining your New Kashubian citizenship. You can afford to buy an estate here if you want one, although perhaps not as big as six thousand hectares. And you were really in communication with the real Kasia, every time you met her in Dream World. She is as committed to you as you are to her. The two of you can be properly married in the real world any time that you want to."

"And I suppose that Kasia's back pay will get us the house built, but dammit, it's not the same as having it all given to us by a grateful government. And Jesus Christ. Four and a half years, chopped right out of my life. What has really been going on in the world while I've been out playing soldier?"