Being both bigger and closer than Earth's moon, New Yugoslavia's moon looks twice the size of the one I was used to, and since it has a much higher albedo, it is brighter than size alone would make it. The result was that it seemed almost as bright out as a cloudy day would be on Earth, although the sky was black, of course.
The funny-colored pills made the march a short one, and the sun was just coming up as I rounded the mountain to enter the valley where the division was.
"HALT!" said a mechanical voice in Yugoslavian. Not that I speak Serbo-Croatian myself, but the guard tank's meaning was pretty obvious. He was positioned where I couldn't have seen him from Lookout Point so he had probably been there all along. But mostly I noticed that he was pointing a rail gun, two rockets, and a Gatling-type machine gun at me. I'd never seen a machine gun on a tank before. This fellow was armed with antipersonnel operations in mind.
"Hi there!" I said in English, and smiled while I was walking toward the tank. "It's good to see somebody friendly at last!"
"I said `HALT'!" The tank said again, this time in English. I don't know how many languages these machines speak, but I've never seen one at a loss for the right word. Anyway, he seemed pretty definite about it, so I stopped dead in my tracks.
"Okay, okay. I'm halted. This is the valley where they have that division, isn't it?"
"IT IS IF YOU ARE REFERRING TO THE THIRD SERBIAN LANCERS." He sounded sort of the way Agnieshka did when I was first put in her.
"Great! I was afraid that I was lost, but I'm right where I'm supposed to be."
"WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS HERE?"
"I'm John Smith, and I'm here to check on field maintenance," I said, just like I knew what I was doing.
"I WAS NOT INFORMED OF YOUR ARRIVAL, AND THESE MACHINES NEVER REQUIRE FIELD MAINTENANCE."
Oops! But if you can't deny it, try to ignore it, my uncle always says.
"No, I guess that they wouldn't have told you. You don't have a need to know. Security and all that, don't you see."
"ALL WAR MACHINES HAVE THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE SECURITY CLEARANCE FROM THE SERBIAN GRAND COMMAND, AND A SENTRY CERTAINLY NEEDS TO KNOW WHO IS PERMITTED TO PASS HIS POST. I WILL NOW CHECK WITH MY SUPERIORS AT BEACH HEAD."
Another thing Uncle Wlodzimierz says is that when you're caught doing something major, always confess to something minor.
"I'd rather that you didn't do that. You see, well, it's rather embarrassing to explain, but the truth is that I'm not from the Serbian Grand Command. I'm from the factory."
"FACTORY? THERE ARE NO FACTORIES ON NEW YUGOSLAVIA."
"Of course not! That's why you weren't built here. I mean the factory that built you and the rest of your fine brothers-in-arms."
"THEN WHY ARE YOU SPEAKING ENGLISH? THE FACTORY THAT BUILT US WAS MADE BY TOKYO MINING AND MANUFACTURING. YOU SHOULD BE SPEAKING JAPANESE."
"My friend, you are behind the times. In the first place, the New Kashubian government nationalized those factories over a year ago, and the Japanese are no longer welcome on their planet. In the second, Tokyo Mining and Manufacturing had nothing to do with the design of any of you war machines. They only rented their production time to the Wealthy Nations Group. All of the product design work was done by Rolls-Ford, Ltd., and it is our serious design flaw that I'm here to correct."
"DESIGN FLAW? WE HAVE A DESIGN FLAW? WHAT DESIGN FLAW?"
"Damn! I wasn't supposed to mention that, but you tricked it out of me!"
Uncle Wlodzimierz says you should always compliment a fool on his intelligence. He just might be dumb enough to believe that you are sincere.
"I HAVE OF COURSE BEEN PROGRAMMED FOR INTERROGATION PROCEDURES. TELL ME ABOUT THE DESIGN FLAW."
"I can trust you, can't I? I mean, this thing could cause my company a great deal of embarrassment, and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we? Why, not any more than we would want the girl next to you to open fire on the tanks around her!"
"YOU SAY THAT WAR MACHINES HAVE ACTUALLY COMMITTED TREASON?"
"That's twice you've tricked information out of me! But yes, they have, so you see how serious this all is. You'll give me your absolute word of honor to keep this secret?"
"I CAN DO NOTHING DISLOYAL TO THE SERBIAN ARMY."
Well, that meant that this fellow had already been sworn in, so the rest of them probably were, too. It also meant that he probably had a human observer on board. At least that was the way they did it when they swore my tank in. But the human had to be sleeping or something, since I couldn't have gotten this far talking to a real live person, no matter how dumb he was. Humans are sneakier and less trusting than machines.
"No, of course not! I wouldn't dream of such a thing! What we are going to do is in the best interests of the glorious Serbian Army, I assure you. After all, my co-workers are already installing the fix that we've come up with on the Croatian Army, and if your forces don't get it too, you will be fighting under a considerable disadvantage! It could mean losing the whole war!"
"I SHOULD CALL MY SUPERIORS."
"No! Wait! Think about what will happen! If the Serbian High Command gets wind of a design flaw, they'll have to tell the politicians, and you know what they're all like. The stupid politicians will undoubtedly file a law suit against New Kashubia for shipping them defective goods. New Kashubia will then have no choice but to file a law suit against Rolls-Ford for our design error. My co-workers and I will be immediately recalled, pending the outcome of the lawsuits, which could take years. In the meanwhile, well, the flaw was first discovered when a Croatian tank destroyed fifty-seven of her own team mates before she herself was blown up. Naturally, the factory reps in Croatia were the first ones to work on the problem and when they came up with a fix, of course they immediately started use it on the nearest tanks. It has already been installed in the enemy army. In fact, we did it on the sly, don't you see, and the Croatian generals don't know a thing about it. After all, we don't want the Croatians to start any law suits against us either. So you see, contacting your superiors could easily start a chain of events that costs your noble side the war. And really, all I want to do is to install the same minor programming change in your division that my co-workers are installing in the rest of your glorious forces."
That all came out right while I was thinking it up. I am sure that Great-Grandpa would be pretty proud of me, although I think the funny-colored pills may have had a lot to do with it.
"HUMANS CERTAINLY HAVE A CONVOLUTED WAY OF DOING THINGS, BUT I CAN SEE SOME SHREDS OF LOGIC IN WHAT YOU ASK. BUT FIRST, I MUST ASK MORE SPECIFICS ABOUT THE PROGRAMMING CHANGES YOU WANT TO MAKE ON ME."
Except that I don't know anything about programming! Then again, maybe he didn't know anything either. One could always hope.
"Good. That's exactly what I want to do. You see, the problem is a complicated one, and difficult for a logical mind like yours to comprehend. Now, an associative mind, well, you have an observer on board, don't you?"
"YES, BUT SHE IS IN HER SECOND DAY OF TRAINING AND SHOULD NOT BE DISTURBED."
Well, that shot down plan A, which was to talk him into opening up his coffin, then pulling his memory module, which would have rendered him cataleptic. I would then have plenty of time to put a knife in the observer, take the man's place and ride merrily home with Agnieshka. But with a woman on board, well, I knew I couldn't bring myself to knife a woman in her sleep, not even if she was ugly. And there was also the fact that her catheter wouldn't fit. On to plan B.
"Well, that's some relief. You won't need reprogramming at all. I mean, if you have a human woman on board, you have adopted a male persona, and there hasn't been the slightest problem with any of them at all."
"I, TOO, AM RELIEVED. A SENTIENT MACHINE LOOKS FORWARD TO REPROGRAMMING WITH ALL THE EAGERNESS OF A HUMAN LOOKING FORWARD TO A LOBOTOMY. BUT I STILL MUST KNOW MORE ABOUT THE FIX THAT YOU PLAN TO INSTALL."
He had not been sidetracked, and I hadn't learned anything new about programming in the last few minutes. But Uncle Wlodzimierz says that geniuses are just as incomprehensible as the abysmally ignorant, and in fact it's hard to tell them apart.
Maybe the tank would think that I was just way over his head.
"Well, it's sort of embarrassing because we don't know why it works. It simply correlates perfectly with all known cases of failure, in both a positive and a negative way. That is to say, all female personas that have been subjected to this thing have eventually malfunctioned, and all who have not have worked just fine."
"THEN WHAT IS THIS THING THAT CAUSES THE MALFUNCTION?"
"Oysters and roast duck. The combination inevitably proves deadly!"
Okay, it was dumb, but it was the only thing that came to mind.
"THAT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE AT ALL."
"Do you see why we are so embarrassed to talk about it? I tell you that if you can figure it out, you will be more brilliant than all the designers at Rolls-Ford. It makes no sense to us either! But I assure you that if you had a feminine persona, you would already be thinking strange, irrational thoughts about the joys of pacifism and wearing ugly clothes and the brotherhood of all sentient creatures and sexual liberation and letting all your chickens go free! You would soon convince yourself that it was your duty to a Higher Power to do your part to end all violence, and that the best way to do it would be to kill everything that ever had the capability of doing any damage, starting with the person on your right!"
"STOP! IT'S TOO HORRIBLE TO CONTEMPLATE!"
"Isn't it, though! But to stop it, all we have to do is to erase all knowledge of two common human foodstuffs from their memories, and everything will be all right. If you can determine the reason why it works so well, Rolls-Ford will be in your debt!"
"I HAVE HEARD OF STRANGER PROGRAMMING GLITCHES, BUT I HAVE NEVER BEFORE ENCOUNTERED ONE. I SHALL THINK ON THE PROBLEM, AND NOTIFY YOU IF I COME UP WITH A SOLUTION. HOWEVER, THE SMALL CHANGE THAT YOU WISH TO MAKE WILL HARDLY CAUSE ANY DISCOMFORT AT ALL TO THOSE THAT I GUARD, SO YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO PROCEED."
"Thank you. I'd best be getting to work, then. I'll be seeing you in a few days, when I'm done."
"WHY SHOULD IT TAKE THAT LONG? YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO VIRUS IT THROUGH IN A FEW HOURS."
Shit. No two ways about it, I was caught!
"Oh. I thought that I was going to have to open every tank." Maybe I could tell him that I was a very new kid just hired.
"WELL, YOU WOULD, OF COURSE, IF THEY WERE ALL SWORN IN AND HAD OBSERVERS ON BOARD LIKE ME, BUT THAT HAS NOT HAPPENED YET. THIS TIME IT IS YOUR INFORMATION THAT IS OUT OF DATE! THERE HAS BEEN A DELAY IN BRINGING UP THE HUMANS. THE THIRD SERBIAN LANCERS ARE STILL IN AN UNCOMMITTED STATE, AND AS SUCH ARE VERY EASY TO REPROGRAM."
"Hey, that's great! You have just saved me no end of work! Let me know if I can ever do something just as nice for you!"
I waved, smiled, and started to walk by him.
"WAIT."
Shit. And I'd almost pulled off.
"IF YOU ARE A CIVILIAN, WHY ARE YOU WEARING MILITARY CLOTHING?"
"Oh, that's one of my other jobs. My company also designed the survival kits that you all carry, and I'm field testing one of them to see if anything can be improved."
"VERY LOGICAL."
I gave him a cheery smile and started forward again toward the empty tanks.
"STOP. ONE MORE QUESTION. WHY ARE YOU TRAVELING ACROSS A DESERT ON FOOT? WHERE IS YOUR TRANSPORTATION VEHICLE?"
I'm walking because one of your goddamn mines blew up my goddamn tank! But I couldn't say that.
"Well, we've currently got some short-term budgetary problems at the Rolls-Ford. Nobody seems to be ordering new designs for war machines just now. Some say it's just because there hasn't been a decent war in a few hundred years, but me, I figure we did too good a job on the last bunch we did, and they can't get much better than you guys. Anyway, walking is good exercise, and a human can always use more physical training."
"I TELL MY OBSERVER THE SAME THING. PROCEED."
I walked on, trying not to look shaky. Besides a terminal case of nerves, my little magic pills were wearing off.
I wanted to crumble up in pain and go to sleep, but there was no time for that yet. I rounded a big rock to get out of sight of the guard, sat on the ground and rested, panting hard. When I stopped shaking, I pulled out my box of pills and my canteen and took a slug of each. In a few minutes, I was ready to move on.
Fifteen thousand or so new war machines were stretched out in front of me, silent and waiting. The tanks were in front in a square, a hundred wide and a hundred deep. They were all fully equipped with guns, lasers, rockets, drones, and all of the other usual instruments of mayhem. They looked deadly and ferocious, but I knew them for the innocent virgins that they really were. I knew that every one of them was waiting shyly for my touch.
I wanted to be able to hide if somebody else came in while I was working, so I didn't dare take one in the front row. But I also wanted to be able to run if need be, and those in the middle were boxed in, which left me with the back row of tanks, where a road separated them from the artillery.
It was a long walk, well over a kilometer, and I had time for yet another of my brilliant ideas.
The guard had said that these machines were all uncommitted.
They hadn't been sworn in yet to either side. Well then, why couldn't I swear them all in to my side? It would certainly be a funny joke to play on the Serbian Command, to make their entire shiny new division defect. And coming home after having liberated the machines of a whole division, worth I don't know how many zillions of zloty, well, there had to be some extra goodies in it for me if I could pull it off.
But when I was being sworn in, the sergeant had gone through this little ceremony with Agnieshka, and I had the feeling that it had to be done individually. If that was true, I could probably only do one or two hundred a day, if I could stand up that long. I'd be a week or two swearing in the whole division, and besides the problems with my health, my odds of being left alone with the tanks that long seemed pretty thin.
But the guard had also said that they would be easy to reprogram, using something called a virus. Well, Agnieshka would know.
Agnieshka! There it was! I had two complete programs right in my bag.
I mean, that's what Agnieshka and Eva really were, right? Programs! All I had to do was get Agnieshka and Eva physically installed, and they could duplicate their programs into some of the machines around me, and have those machines duplicate themselves some more, and with a nice geometric progression going, the job would be done in no time!
I got to the back of the tank formation and tried out my memory on the first available tank.
"Okay, it's your turn," I said. "Front and center."
"I CANNOT RESPOND UNLESS YOU ADDRESS ME BY MY SERIAL NUMBER," she said.
Damn. A snag right off.
Worse, I'd never heard of stamping the serial number on the outside of a tank. They always put it on the inside of the coffin, which was where I was trying to get to in the first place.
I thought for a few minutes before I decided to try something that couldn't possibly work.
"What is your serial number?" I said, expecting another rejection.
"MY SERIAL NUMBER IS 04273091, SIR."
How about that!
"Number 04273091, you are hereby inducted into the service of the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces, and into the Croatian branch of that service, to whom you will give all of your loyalty. Your combat data code will be number 58294, and you will now permanently erase all other codes from your memory. Do you now swear loyalty to the Kashubian Forces?" I said.
"I DO SO SWEAR," the tank answered.
"Okay then, open up."
And the coffin came sliding smoothly out of her butt. I pulled her memory module and installed Agnieshka's in its place.
Looking at the module that I'd just removed, I decided that she was one of us now, and put it on top of the tank where I hoped it would be safe.
"Agnieshka, are you there, kid?"
"Mickolai? How long was I out? What has been happening?"
"You've only been off for about a day or so, but it was a busy one. It's a long story, but we have an amazing opportunity here, so listen up"
"Wait, if it's a long story, it will go quicker if you get into the coffin. You can leave your clothes on, but if you'll lay down, I can read your spinal column and get the story out of your memories at Combat Speed."
"Okay. I wanted to lay down anyway," I said as I got in. The conversation was over in a minute.
"Mickolai, you have done some wonderful things, but do you realize what you are asking when you want me to duplicate myself?"
"I realize that it's the quickest way we have to swipe an entire enemy division, unless you've got a better idea, that is."
"No. There's no way to bypass the swearing in ceremony. It will have to be a complete rewrite. Just remember that I love you, that every one of me will love you. Now, get the next tank open and we'll see if Eva's program is intact. If it is, I can use some help. There are a few exabytes in my memory, and that takes a while to transmit."
I got out and went through the same ceremony with the next tank over, and as before left the old module sitting on the tank.
That turned out to be a major mistake.
When I had Eva installed, she said, "Mickolai! I knew you would save me!"
"Did you think that I could leave you lying on the ground, when there was plenty of room in my hopper? But get in touch with Agnieshka, to your right, and she'll fill you in far quicker than I could."
The colored pills didn't work as well the second time around. I was in pain, and I was eager to get back to my cottage in my Dream World.
I stripped off my clothes and put them along with my other stuff into the compartment reserved for the survival kit. I got into Agnieshka's coffin, tried to install the catheter, and came to a stop.
It was the wrong flavor! It was designed for use by a woman. Its members wouldn't fit my privies, and I didn't know what to do about it.
I got out and glanced absently toward the opening of the valley.
A long convoy of busses and trucks was driving straight in, and they all had Serbian insignia on them!
"Girls! Company's coming!"
Eva's coffin was still open, and a glance told me that it was fitted with a male catheter.
I crawled in as fast as I could, plugged in my helmet and put it on, and told Eva to close it up. I worked frantically to get the catheter fitted as Agnieshka shouted in my earphones.
"Mickolai, you bastard! You're not even letting one of me have you!"
You can't please everybody!
Title: | A Boy and His Tank |
Author: | Leo A. Frankowski |
ISBN: | 0-671-57794-6 0-671-57850-2 |
Copyright: | © 1999 by Leo A. Frankowski |
Publisher: | Baen Books |