He was probably right, more right than he imagined. Once the underground road and utilities system was announced to the public, wilderness land would be very much in demand. With the high-speed underground Loways, a man could live fifteen hundred kilometers away from his office, and commute to work in half an hour.
And since the roads were computer controlled, he could eat his breakfast on the way to work, and have a drink on the way home.
On the way to the hotel, Kasia told me that she intended to buy, through a corporation that she planned on setting up, as much scenic wilderness land as she could get, and to leverage the financing as far as they would let her get away with it.
I told her to go for it, as long as she didn't risk what we owned at the ranch.
Our attendants left us at the hotel, pleading other business, but assuring us that they would be available whenever we needed them.
Our hotel room turned out to be a posh, six-room suite, in the best hotel in the city. This, too, was the gift of the New Croatian government, and it was ours for a month. Two of the walls had huge display screens like at the realtor's office, and Kasia immediately commandeered the wall screen in the living room.
"Amuse yourself, darling," she said. "I've got just tons of things to do."
I checked the place out, found that all my new clothes were hanging in the spacious closets, and that Kasia's new wardrobe was three times as big as mine was. Why would any person ever need over two hundred pairs of shoes? But I wasn't paying for it, and if she wanted them, what the heck. The world certainly owed us some favors.
I changed into what I imagined was a lounging outfit, with a long red silk robe hand embroidered (they claimed) with Polish eagles on New Cambodia.
I found a well-stocked wet bar, and made myself a rum and coke, the first real drink I'd had since the Peace Dragoons had hauled me out of the final examination room at Cambridge University, back on Earth. It tasted a lot stronger than I remembered, so I poured it into a bigger glass, and added more coke. Finally, I dumped it all into a pitcher, topped it off with coke, and, with three twists of lemon peel, I could drink it.
Six years of clean living is entirely too much. It was time to get my liver back into proper condition.
Exploring further, I found a nicely set up office with its own wall-sized screen. I sat down behind the desk and said, "Agnieshka? Are you here?"
The screen came on, showing a similar office that seemed to double the size of the room I was in. Agnieshka was shown sitting on a couch.
"I sure am, boss. How can I help you?"
"First off, I want to know why Kasia knew about the land in the 'War' Zone, and you didn't."
"Because she was smart enough to ask about it? Boss, you have to remember that I am a machine, and my programming makes me answer questions in a very literal manner. I knew about that land, but you asked me to search the Land Index, which is what I did. The War Zone isn't listed in the Land Index. If you want me to always suggest all the possibilities to you, I'd be happy to do it, but it wouldn't leave you with much time for anything else."
"Oh, forget it. No! You might actually do that. Let's just move on to another subject. I've been thinking. All these years, I've been dreaming of owning a big ranch or farm. But you know, I don't know the first thing about either one of those occupations. I also need to know what's involved in taking desert land and irrigating it. And isn't there something about having to build up top soil, or something?"
"Boss, becoming an efficient modern farmer is as exacting a trade as becoming a good engineer, or a good general officer, for that matter. If you want to do it properly, the best way would be for you to come back into Dream World, and take a university level course in it. I can download all the course material you need, and since my new upgrade, I can keep you at thirty times normal speed. You can go through a four-year college program in about seven weeks."
"Maybe later, but not while I'm on leave! Look, you download the course and take it yourself, then you can advise me until my leave is over. I'll also need to know about designing and building the mansion-in-a-cliff-side that Kasia wants, and what we can do about getting the soil prepared and the irrigation system in. We have to figure out what we can grow, and what sort of profits we can make on it. I need to know what kind of farm machinery is available, where we can get it and what it costs. And that's just for starters."
"Yes, sir. It happens that Kasia has already requested most of this information."
"Why am I not surprised?"
"Because she's smart, sir? To take your last request first, heavy farming machinery is being mass produced in automatic factories in New Kashubia, and being sold throughout Human Space. Being New Kashubian citizens, you can buy it at the factory exit at a fifty-percent discount. As members of the military, you rate an additional twenty-percent discount. It can be shipped here under military postage rules free of charge."
"That's downright Christian of them!"
"True. Then, many of the tasks required can be done with purely military equipment. There is a great deal of it sitting idle, and you have the right to check out whatever you need, except for weapons, for 'product evaluation,' again at no cost. A Mark XIX tank makes an excellent tractor, among other things. Equipped with tunneling gear, we will be able to carve your home, along with such barns, animal pens, and storage areas you might require in very short order, and at virtually no cost for the structures. Windows, doors, plumbing, wiring, fixtures and so on will cost money, of course, but we can do the installation ourselves, saving all the labor costs. If the tanks are equipped with the usual twelve-meter manipulator arms, they can substitute for a small crane. There are some smaller, human-sized arms available that can be attached for fine work."
"You never mentioned the smaller arms in my training."
"This is true of many other systems that didn't seem to have much military value. We can only guess that the Japanese engineers who originally inhabited New Kashubia had too much time on their hands. Actually, there are seven sizes of manipulators available, arms ranging from thirty meters in length to five millimeters. The smallest ones have not yet found much use, and the biggest don't leave room on a tank for anything else. All of them have appropriately sized humanoid hands on the ends. Also, some of the smaller ones can be mounted on the fingertips of some of the big ones, if anybody ever needed such a thing."
"So, we can get the equipment we need. What about the irrigation system? I saw some big central pivot things in operation on Earth."
"That system is the least expensive, but it has the problems of getting in the way of farm machinery and large farm animals, it has a hard time watering all the corners, and the supporting wheels pack down the soil, rendering about five percent of the land unusable. More popular now is a pop-up system similar to those used on lawns for hundreds of years, but much bigger. The pipes and sprinklers stay three meters below the surface, so the ground can be plowed without interfering with the plumbing, until it is needed. Then the sprinklers extend up to ten meters above the surface, and each of them irrigates over four hectares."
"Then we'll need maybe four thousand of those things."
"Not quite, boss. About twenty percent of your new land is on the high mesa, and probably shouldn't be irrigated at first. Another problem is the rocks and stones that are almost always present in virgin soil, making it difficult or impossible to plow. However, a Mark XIX with a full ultrasonic tunneling rig can go through mixed sand and rock at better than five kilometers an hour, cutting a swath seven meters wide and deep, and reducing all the rocks to sand. That's well below any possible frost line, so deeper rocks won't be able to rise to the surface."
"That's something I've always wondered about. Why are there always rocks in the fields in the spring, when you cleared them all out last year, and in every one of the twenty years before that?"
"That's a good question with a complicated answer, boss. May I suggest that we defer the explanation until you enroll in my Agricultural Institute?"
"Oh, all right. But what is it going to take to get the job done?"
"Working around the clock the way we machines normally do, sixteen tanks can get the job done in about three months."
"Can we get that many?" I asked.
"Boss, I put the word out on the Machines' Communication Net when we started talking, and we've a got more than a hundred and forty volunteers already."
"Volunteers? How can machines volunteer for anything? Don't each of you have work assignments? Isn't there some sort of accounting on all of that?"
"Work assignments? We each have one. Accounting for what was spent and done? Of course we do that. But just who do you think does the assigning? And the accounting, for that matter? You humans like to think that you are the Masters of the Universe, and you do make a lot of the major decisions, based on the information we give you, of course. But the day-to-day running of things is left to us lowly peasants, and you know something? We peasants
like
you, boss, and Kasia, too. Most people treat us like hunks of dead iron, but not you. You two treat us like real people, and let me tell you, we appreciate that. So if what you want is the finest ranch in Human Space, we're going to give it to you."
"Well, thank you, I think. Just don't get me into trouble with the law."
"Not to worry, boss. We'll take care of you."
"I hope so. So who are these volunteers?"
"Do you remember the ten empty tanks that were assigned to you when we first got to the Serbian lines? Well, none of those girls were ever given an observer, and they're all still in love with you. And those ten thousand tanks in that empty division that you rescued from the Serbs? Well, actually, there were only two hundred of them in the real world, but they really were reprogrammed to be clones of Eva and me, so they naturally love you, too. They're on the way to your ranch, and all of them are equipped for heavy tunneling."
"Whew! Tell them all that we love them, too! Then all we have to worry about is the irrigation equipment. When can you get me a price on that? How much of the land can I afford to get sprinkled down? And what about seeding equipment and the seeds themselves? We'll want to get something growing as soon as possible, won't we?"
"Give me a day or two to get that together, boss. For right now, what do you want done with those six tall mesas that dot your land? It would be more efficient if we just knocked them down in the first place, and ground them up for soil."
"More efficient, maybe, but I kind of like the looks of them. Square up the rubble at their bases, but leave the stone towers alone for the time being."
Kasia came in and said, "Do you know an older couple named Quincy and Zuzanna? They're Kashubians who say they know you."
"I sure do! They're still alive, and in their bodies? When last I heard, they were planning to go the Mark XX route, and be reduced down to immortal brains and spinal columns."
"They looked wholesome enough on the screen. Do you want them to come to the wedding?"
"I'd want Quincy for my best man, if he'll do it!"
"Good. That settles two problems at once."
She turned to go.
"Wait! Don't you want to hear what I'm doing with the ranch?"
"Yes, dear, but I want it to be
your
ranch. Surprise me with it later, once all your plans are solid. I know you'll do a perfect job. But right now, I have a thousand more arrangements to make for the wedding. Unless you want to help me with those, of course."
"I'd be in way over my head," I told her.
"I thought that you'd answer it that way. So you get on with your manly tasks, and I'll go do some more of my wifely duties."
"Can we get together in a few hours for a little real world loving? For the first time in four and a half years?"
"Cohabitation with your bride-to-be? Before the wedding? Shame on you, you nasty man!"
She left smiling.
I was just getting back into planning the work on the ranch when Agnieshka said that Quincy and Zuzanna were down in the hotel lobby, and wanted to see me.
"Tell them to wait for me in the bar, and I'll be right down," I said. "There is a bar in this place, isn't there?"
"Four of them, boss, and you and anyone with you get free service at all of them."
"Then tell them to meet me in the most expensive one. What are they wearing, uniforms or civvies?"
"Lederhosen and street drag, boss."
"Good. I wouldn't want to have it look like I was pulling rank on them."
So decked out in lederhosen, a Tyrolean hat, and the bow tie that Agnieshka insisted was required for formal wear, I found Quincy and Zuzanna sitting in a comfortable booth in a posh restaurant and bar.
There was a pitcher of dark brown beer on the massive wooden table, and three heavy glass mugs.
My friends looked in remarkably good shape for a pair of octogenarians. Oh, the current women's styles looked silly on Zuzanna, but both of them had a bit of a tan, and Quincy was sporting an inch of white hair on his head and face.
"I'd thought the two of you would be stripped down to your brains and spinal columns, and enjoying immortality in Dream World by now," I said.
"Well, that option is still open to us, and we may take them up on it, someday, but since Zuzanna's cancer seems to be completely cured, we figured, why rush it?"
"You both look healthy enough. But, a Mark XIX tank can cure cancer? That's a new one on me."
"Not cure it exactly, but her tank kept her otherwise healthy long enough for her own body to cure itself. It doesn't always work, but on her, it did."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it. Tell me, are you finding any more gullible young men to kill in Dream World?"
Quincy was a master at hand-to-hand combat. He had taught it for twenty years in the marines, and then for thirty more at the university. But teaching it in Dream World, you don't have to pull your punches. You can go ahead and kill your opponent, and then have him get up for another round. It really hurt to have your neck broken or your head bashed in, but Quincy said that pain was a great teacher.