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A Boy and his Tank


THE STREETS WERE
MADE OF GOLD....

He Was a Rugged, Hardened Combat Veteran Who Had Gone to Hell and Back—in Virtual Reality! Now He Had to Face the Real Thing . . .

The planet New Kashubia started out as a Jovian gas giant, but when its sun went supernova, the lighter elements in it were blasted into interstellar space. All that was left was a ball of heavy metals, heated to 8,000 degrees. As it cooled, something akin to zone refining took place, with tungsten solidifying first at the surface, then layers of the other metals and alloys continuing down to a ball of mercury at the center. The sun meanwhile evolved into a pulsar, a neutron star with a deadly beam of radiation that baked the planet's surface twice a year. The New Kashubians lived inside the planet, in tunnels drilled in a thousand foot thick layer of solid gold.

Still without carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, or even dirt, they were the poorest people in the universe.

But when New Kashubia combined virtual reality with tank warfare, giving its warriors a close symbiosis with their intelligent tanks, neither war nor the galaxy would ever be the same. Not to mention sex . . .

"When I teach science fiction, I use Frankowski's books as an example of how to do it right." —Gene Wolfe


Hardcover
Paperback

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First Paperback printing, February 2000

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-671-57850-2

Copyright © 1999  by Leo A. Frankowski

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
http://www.baen.com

Typeset by Windhaven Press
Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights
http://www.webwrights.com


BAEN BOOKS by LEO FRANKOWSKI

A Boy and His Tank
The Fata Morgana

Dedication

I'd like to dedicate this book to Owen Lock, who was for many years my editor at Del Rey. He's a VP at Random House these days, and no longer directly concerned with science fiction. Thus, I can now thank him for his long years of patience, sound advice, and friendship without it looking like I'm kissing ass. For many things, Owen, thank you.

—Leo Frankowski

Acknowledgements

This book was a long time in the writing, and a lot of people generously lent me a hand in getting it done. So many, in fact, that I don't see how I can properly thank all of them. But if I don't try, I'll end up offending everybody I know instead of just most of them. So.

To Debbie Haberland for proofreading an earlier version of this and several other books. To L. Warren Douglas for the encouragement, the support and the beer. To Alan Greenberg, Gilbert Parker, Jane Devlin, Mike Hubble, Joe Ainu, and others for proofreading, encouragement, and friendship. To Halina Harding for keeping me alive the entire time. To Tom Devlin for giving my aging computer CPR when it died, several times and at the worst possible moments, and with the aid of various spells and potions restoring it to life. To Gene Wolfe for permission to repeat a conversation I overheard in a bar. To Harry Turtledove for clearing up an annoying historical point. To Glen Horning, for aid when it really counted. And to Toni Weisskopf and Jim Baen for buying the thing and getting it out to you. To all of you, my very sincere thanks.

Very special thanks are owed to Sgt. James Coop, Co. C Task Force, 1-32 Armor, First Cavalry Division, for proofreading an earlier version of this book while sitting in the desert waiting for Desert Storm to happen. Some twenty of his friends wrote up their comments as well, and included them with the manuscript when they mailed it back to me. The Post Office managed to demolish the package and all of their valuable comments were lost. All I got back was bits and pieces of the brown paper cover held together by forty yards of clear tape, and the computer printout of the manuscript. By the time it got back to me and my letter got back to them, the war was over, and the men were scattered. The advice of the real professionals was lost to me, and I'm sure that this book suffers because of it.

Then I compounded the tragedy by personally managing to lose the list of the names of the soldiers who had tried to help. I'm sorry, guys. It's all my fault.

Finally, no thanks at all are owed to the SOB of a Physicist from the Warren Tank Plant who borrowed a copy of the manuscript from me at Tudor's Tavern last year. He never was seen again, nor was my manuscript. If some of my ideas start showing up on the latest tanks, well, you'll know where they swiped them from.

Leo Frankowski
Sterling Heights
November 21, 1998

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