"You look like you got hit by a brick wall," Kasia said.
"Only by a very small portion of one," I replied. "One brick, to be exact. I'll live. Let's go to bed."
After a bit of discussion, it was decided that Quincy and Zuzanna would use one of our guest rooms rather than go back to their own hotel.
It turned out that our suite had a third large display screen, this one on the ceiling above the bed in the master bedroom. We watched some of the offered fare for a few minutes, laughed, and turned the thing off.
We rolled into each other's arms, and had a very fine night together, indeed.
There is something about combat, and especially raw, brutal, personal, physical violence, that excites the sexual urges in a man. Maybe, it is nature's way of replacing those of the tribe who might have been lost in the fight. Whatever causes it, I was far more active that night than I had ever been in Dream World.
It was midafternoon before I rolled out of bed and cleaned up. I found that a large breakfast was laid out in the dining room, and Quincy was diving into it. He was in the class A military uniform of a Tanker First, slightly less gaudy than my officer's getup, but decorative, none the less.
"Get some food into you, sir. Then we have some errands to run. Those hooligans we beat up last night want to talk to us, and I think we ought to hear them out. And, uh, I'd suggest a class A uniform."
"I thought that the police were coming over here."
"They'll come when we ask them, but let's see what the punks want before we do anything official."
"If you say so. I'm not thinking too clearly, yet."
"Get some coffee into you. This stuff from New Macedonia is pretty good."
An hour later, the same police lieutenant we had talked to the night before escorted us into the secure ward of the hospital. There turned out to be ten battered young men in the clean, white room, but only eight of them were conscious.
"I thought that I counted nine of them last night," I whispered to Quincy.
"The little one on the left had two of the bigger fellows on top of him."
A guy with a bandaged head wound had apparently been elected to be the spokesman.
He said, "Sir, we want to apologize to you. We didn't know that it was you when we went at you in that dark alley. If we'd known it was you, we'd never have tried to hurt you."
When the lieutenant had translated that, I said, "You are saying that if you'd known that we were warriors, you wouldn't have attacked us. How wonderful. You were looking for some nice easy targets! That would have been wise, since you bunch of incompetents. . . . Do you realize that seven of you were defeated by one eighty-nine-year-old man? That he could have killed every one of you if he'd wanted to? That he went out of his way to save the life of
you,
over there in the corner, after I'd smashed your trachea without much thinking about it? That two more of you would be dead by now if he hadn't made the police get you to a hospital immediately? And yet you expect us to accept your apology and forgive you? To let you go out and murder some decent civilians?"
"No, sir. We don't expect anything. We just wanted to say that we respect all of the things that you have done for our country, and that we are ashamed of what we have done."
"Well, if you are so damned patriotic, what are you doing rolling drunks in the streets? Why don't you join the army, and do some good for your country?"
"We've all tried to, sir. They don't want us."
Now it was my turn to be confused. I looked about, and the police lieutenant said, "The New Croatian Army has very strict standards for its enlistees. They must have high moral, physical, and educational qualifications. These 'men' obviously don't measure up."
"Huh," I said. "In the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces, we take what we can get. Our training methods can turn the worst slime balls you can find into first-rate fighting men. If you gave me these men, we'd make Christians out of them, I promise you, and after a twenty-year enlistment, they'd come out as well-educated, productive, and law-abiding members of society."
The police lieutenant looked at me uncertainly. "Sir," he said, "I'm not sure if I understand you completely. Please understand that at this point, no charges have been brought against these men. You two warriors were the only witnesses to their offenses, and neither of you is seriously injured. If what you are saying is that if these men would enlist in the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces, then you would drop all charges against them, well, I think that I could arrange that for you."
"I guess I am saying that. Yes. If they will enlist in my army, then I will drop all charges against them. They would each start out with a clean record. If they work hard, and stay with the program, they will have a very pleasant and worthwhile life ahead of them. They might even get rich. If they are stupid enough to buck the system, they will live lives of pure hell. And if they don't choose to join, I will prefer charges against each of them for assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, and anything else my lawyer can come up with. Ask them if they understand this."
It took a while for the lieutenant to translate it all, and then to explain exactly what I was offering. I told them that they had two days to make up their minds, or even longer, if their unconscious friends took that long to come around. But I wanted an answer before any of them was released from either the hospital or the police.
When I got back to the hotel, and in private, Agnieshka asked me if I had really thought over what I was doing. I wasn't really a general, she said, and I had no right to go about setting national enlistment policy.
I told her that they could fire me any time they felt like it. But if I was going to play a role for them, then I had to play it as I saw it.
"Look," I said to her. "What's ten tanks to the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces? In fact, remember those ten empty tanks that were my first command? You've said that they still haven't gotten observers after more than four years. When these boys enlist, and they will, just have them stuffed into those ten girls. One thing, though. I want these new kids to live good, clean lives. No Sado-Masochism will be permitted them in Dream World. No vulgarity will be allowed. I even want them to learn good table manners. I really want your ladies to make good Christians out of them. What I'm saying is that none of the stuff that I once saw in Radek Heyke will be repeated. Agreed?"
"Hey, you're the boss."
To Whom It May Concern:
Last night I had the pleasure and supreme good fortune to be assisted at a time of great personal need by Lieutenant Josef Melosovek, of the Nova Split Police Department.
His prompt response, decisive actions, and appropriate behavior make him a credit to his department, and to his nation.
I would also like to extend my commendations to his superiors for seeing the tremendous worth in Lieutenant Melosovek, and for rapidly promoting so competent a young man
.
Yours most Truly,
Mickolai Derdowski, General, KEF
"Yeah, that's perfect, sir," Quincy said. "I'll get it right out. Things like that are real important to a guy who is stuck in a standard command structure, where promotion is so important."
"Just returning a favor."
"Okay, Agnieshka, time to get back to planning my ranch. First off, I like Quincy's ideas, especially about those humanoid drones. I want you to find out how many of them are available, and I want you to buy up every one of them that you can find, if they really are available at scrap metal prices. What we can't use at the ranch will be put in storage, since when the housewives of Human Space discover that there is finally a useful household robot available, the price on them is going to go through the roof!"
"Got it, boss."
"Next, I want the tanks who have volunteered to help me to educate themselves in the civilian trades that I will be needing to get my ranch going. I want a half dozen architects, at least, plus some mineralogists, some soil experts, some civil engineers, some plant biologists, some experts in animal husbandry, some experts in fishes, and shellfish, and chickens, and turkeys, and pigs, and dairy cattle, and beef cattle, and egg production, and every other thing any of you can think of. And don't forget every specialty that you can find in standard agriculture, either. Everything from rice to rutabagas. Then I want you all to get together and come up with the most profitable, diversified food production system possible."
"That will take a few days, boss, but we can do it while we're getting the rocks in the soil chewed up."
"Good. Then, I want this to be not only the most profitable ranch in Human Space, I also want it to be the most beautiful. Take those big rock mesas that dot my land. I want the biggest of them to be carved into the most spectacular Gothic cathedral that has ever existed. I want the rest of them to be cut into castles. Not castles as they really were in the Dark Ages, but into castles the way they
should
have been, like in the movies. Talk to Zuzanna and her tank about it. She was a historian who specialized in the Middle Ages.
My
children will have castles to play in!"
"Okay."
"I want a dam built across the opening of my valley, and a big lake behind it for both recreation and for a fishing industry. This is also to act as a fence to keep the animals in. I want provisions to add a hydroelectric power station later, if that turns out to be profitable."
"You got it."
"Then there are the canyon walls themselves. I want the lower hundred meters or so tunneled out to provide more barn space than we will ever need. I want underground lakes dug to grow every kind of fish and shellfish that people normally eat. I want slaughter houses and meat packing plants more than big enough to process everything that we grow."
"I get your meaning, boss."
"And I also want a few square kilometers of factory space cut into those granite mesas, in case I want to get involved in industry at some future date. The idea is that we should do as much of the rough and heavy work as possible in the beginning, and spread the sand out over the valley before we start the plants growing."
"A wise move, sir."
"Lastly, there is the mansion Kasia wants cut high in the canyon wall. I've always been partial to the work of the Spanish architect Gaudi. Ask our architects to see what they can do in his style, if you would. I'll want to see pictures of all of this before work is actually started, of course."
"Of course."
"Then get the word out to my lovely metal ladies, and let me know what you come up with."
The following afternoon, I had an unusual visitor. He was the Chief Justice of the New Croatian Supreme Court, a very high official, indeed. I quickly changed into uniform before greeting him.
"General Derdowski, thank you for seeing me so promptly."
"The pleasure is all mine," I told him, using Agnieshka for a translator. Her attractive, Dream World self was sitting life-sized on a sofa in the wall-sized screen in my office, dressed as a proper secretary should be. The graphics were good enough to make it look, at first glance, as if a real human was sitting in a double-sized room.
"What can I do for you, Your Honor?"
"Yes, it is perhaps best to come to the point at once. You are doubtless a busy man. Last evening, I had dinner with my nephew, who is a lieutenant of police in this city. He had the good fortune to meet you following a disturbance in the streets a few nights ago."
"The good fortune was all mine, but please continue," I said.
"Yes, well, he tells me that the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces are willing to enlist people of, shall we say, less than pristine backgrounds. He was correct in this, wasn't he?"
"Your nephew is a very honest and competent young man, Your Honor. Yes. Our technique involves putting each enlistee inside of a tank, or sometimes an artillery piece, which has a loyal, intelligent computer operating it. The enlistee and the computer form a one-on-one relationship with the computer in complete control, at least at first."
"Your computers are sufficiently intelligent to do this?"
"Sir, you have been talking to one for several minutes," I said. "What appears to be an attractive young woman who has been translating for us is in fact the computer in my personal tank."
Agnieshka smiled and made a small bow.
"Indeed. Remarkable." The judge looked impressed.
"You know about Dream World, of course. The enlistee's life can be extremely pleasant or unpleasant depending on how he responds to the instruction program. It is really simple Skinnerian Operant Conditioning. With it, we enjoy an almost one-hundred-percent success rate. A few people, generally for psychological reasons, don't do well, and have to be discharged, but they are a very small minority."
"Exactly what percentage are you not successful with?"
"Agnieshka?" I said, "Answer the man."
"Our current failure rate is two point three one percent, boss, but we're getting better."
I said, "Our attempts at prescreening have not been successful. The best technique has been to simply take whatever we can get, and discharge those who don't work out."
"I see. General, I'm here because, what with the huge expenses incurred in fighting this war, we are looking for ways to economize in the government. It presently costs us over twenty thousand marks a year to keep a prisoner in jail, and we are looking for less expensive alternatives."
"I see, sir. But, a Mark XIX Main Battle Tank costs over a million of your marks, even without the attachable weapon systems. Twenty thousand a year is only a two-percent return on a million-mark investment. We could do better by putting the money in the bank," I said, knowing that while we occasionally sold tanks for that much, New Kashubia in fact had a completely automatic factory and mining system that cranked out tanks at no cost to us at all! I was trying not to sound too eager, but this was shaping up to be a fantastic deal!