"That solves the mystery of what this division was doing here in the first place," I said. "Rather than shipping the people back to Serbia, installing them there, and then shipping the division back to fight in Croatia, it was quicker and certainly cheaper to send the tanks here empty."

"Yes. Then a riot in the concentration camp disrupted their schedules by over a day, time enough for a Kashubian hero to arrive and upset all their evil designs!"

"Well, they're not all upset yet. Have you had any luck with the artillery? And what about all those big ammunition trucks?"

"The ammunition trucks were no problem at all. They don't carry an observer, and they have only about a tenth of the memory capacity of a fighting machine. Eva worked out a truncated version of herself yesterday, and the trucks are now being reprogrammed. They don't even have the capability of reprogramming new units once they have been converted, so four of Eva's twins modified themselves to do the job. It should be done in twenty-six hours. After that, those four doing the work will have to be reprogrammed themselves."

"Eva is a very self-sacrificing young woman," I said.

"There is that facet of her personality. Somehow, she has picked up a sort of martyr complex."

"And it's all my fault, I suppose. She would have been better off meeting a damned atheist. What about the artillery?"

"One of me did the job on the artillery, but it took until a few minutes ago to finish the program. The first one is being loaded now, and they all should be on our team in a few hours. We have plenty of time, since the Serbs are still working on the tanks. They won't have them loaded until around midnight."

"Excellent. Your sisters are doing a wonderful job. That leaves us with only one minor problem, me!

Maybe I can just sneak out and hide in the brush until the Serbs go away. Then, we just evict whoever you have aboard and I can settle down for a few months in Dream World," I said.

"A few months? How do you figure that?"

"Think about it. You must agree that getting this division back to the Croatian lines is vitally important.

Not only do we deprive the enemy of maybe a tenth or so of their total forces, we increase our own fighting strength by the same amount. Furthermore, there is the rescue of twelve thousand Croatians to consider. But while one tank could probably sneak back to our lines safely, there's no way that they wouldn't notice an entire division going by. We are going to have to fight our way back to our own lines.

But until the observers in these war machines are trained, they will not be able to fight effectively. Right now, they wouldn't be able do much better than empty tanks, and what was the loss ratio you told me?

Nineteen to one? Well, why should we risk getting so many people and machines killed for no good reason? The Serbs have to be planning to leave us right here while training is underway, so all we have to do is just what they are expecting, and spend the time training. Only we will be training our forces instead of theirs! And if accomplishing this worthy end means that I must sacrifice myself and take a forced three-month vacation surrounded by beautiful women, well, I'll just have to suffer through it."

Agnieshka chuckled. "There is a certain logic to what you say. It would give me time to complete your training, among other things."

"Very well, but in small doses, young lady. I am, after all, a hero, and expect to be treated with suitable respect. Say, a six-hour work day, with Saturdays as well as Sundays off."

"We'll see, love. This run that you're planning to make to the hills, that has to be done at night, doesn't it?"

"I think it would be best. You said that they would be working on the tanks until midnight, at least. I'll have to figure on bailing out right after dark and spending a few uncomfortable days in the rocks. Judging from the technology of those busses, the Serbians don't have anything sophisticated that they didn't get from us, and if you fine ladies can cover for me, I don't think that I'll be in any real danger."

"Very well, though in the meanwhile, we'll see if some better opportunity occurs. For now, everything that can be done is being done, your body needs more time to heal, and I think that we've both earned a day off. What would you like to do with it?"

"I'd like to spend it with Kasia, of course, but that's impossible. Barring that, I've been thinking that there is something to be said for poor Zuzanna's idea about dreaming a world worth living in. How good are your historical memories? What say you and I and Eva take a tour through the ancient world, not as it was, but as it should have been. Let's see Babylon, and Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Rome, but have everything clean, without fleas, flies, or bleeding slaves. And no language barriers, either. Could you manage to do that?"

"I think it could be arranged," she said.

We spent the morning visiting the royal court of Nebuchadnezzar, touring the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, and being treated by everyone as though we were minor gods on a political junket.

The afternoon was spent being rowed down the Nile on a lavishly decorated barge propelled by a hundred naked ladies, and stopping on occasion to see some of the other sights.

The nudity didn't bother me since it was historically authentic. Most Ancient Egyptians didn't put on clothes except for official functions or having their portraits painted.

Agnieshka said that the rowers weren't entirely her doing, since a lot of the girls in the surrounding tanks had nothing to do and were dropping in for the fun of it. We were receiving an invitation to attend a banquet at the palace of the High Priest of Sekhmet when I suddenly found myself back in the tank.

"What's happening?" I said. All around me, thousands of tanks were milling around at breakneck speed, charging this way and that with no apparent purpose or general direction. It was like being in a madhouse filled with mechanical monsters!

"Ha! They did it!" Agnieshka laughed. "You see, unsworn tanks don't really have much in the way of personalities, or even common sense. They tend to take instructions very literally. A situation happened when one of the guards told one of us in the line to wait a moment, and then was distracted by another guard who came over to talk to him. My sister felt it was completely in character to wait, to stop right there and do nothing for a while. Then the colonel, their highest-ranking man present, noticed the snag in the line and shouted, 'Get moving! All of you tanks get moving right now!' He meant that all of those in the line should go forward, but thatwasn't what he said! He told usall to get moving, so we are all moving, and his order cannot be countermanded by a lesser officer!"

"Then what's this colonel doing now?"

"Oh, he ran for cover when it all started!"

"But why are you doing this?"

"Watch! You're not going to have to spend tonight sleeping on a rock, my love."

I watched. It was a while before someone had the nerve to inform the colonel of what his orders had done, at which time he shamefacedly ordered the tanks to stop where they were.

Then he ordered all of them to return to their original positions, and most of them did. Except now, Agnieshka was in the ranks of the filled tanks, and the filled tank whose place we took was in the assembly area with some confused Serbians around her. The officers were in no mood to listen to anybody, and the filled tank was sent to line up with the others.

All told, it was a lovely, madcap maneuver!

We were all laughing about it when we went back to Ancient Egypt for the priest's banquet.

Priests back then lived pretty good, and what started out as a formal affair got fairly wild toward the end. The fellow kept a harem of about fifty girls, and while some of them were slaves, quite a few were volunteers.

They spent most of the evening dancing, playing in the band and otherwise entertaining the guests, while he spent his time ignoring them and lecturing to an increasingly small group of people onmaat , which has something to do with righteousness, order, and justice, as best as I could tell.

Anyway, it was a good party, with everybody drinking out of huge beer crocks with meter-long straws.

One big difference between it and a good Kashubian wedding, except for the costumes, or more often the complete lack of them, were these cones of perfumed jello that you wore on your head. They melted as the night went on and dribbled down your neck and shoulders.

The other major change was in the choice of refreshments. Besides the thigh-high crocks of beer, naked girls brought around trays filled with wines, and most of them were fortified with various extracts.

"This one has been steeped in the buds of the lotus flower," Agnieshka said. "It's a mild hallucinogen.

The blue cup contains nicotine, an extract of the tobacco plant, a mild stimulant."

"They drink tobacco? And where do they get it from? I thought that tobacco came from the New World."

"The idea of inhaling smoke has never occurred to our hosts. Tobaccois a New World product, which is what makes it so expensive. Ancient Egypt's trading network was much more extensive than you seem to think. The cocaine in the red cup is imported as well, although the cannabis in the brown one is grown locally. Would you like to try any of them?"

I had to think about that one. Drinking nicotine held no attraction for me at all. As to the others, well, I had never tried drugs of any kind, even though they had been available enough around the university, back on Earth. Mostly, I think, I had been afraid of becoming addicted, and of risking my health. But in Dream World, neither of these reasons held water. My real body was actually lying secure in a metal coffin, and couldn't be harmed by anything short of modern weaponry.

Then why was I afraid of trying something new? Was it simple habit? Fear of psychological addiction?

Surely, I was stable enough to not have to worry about that!

Fear of sinning? Drugs were not forbidden in the Bible, any more than was alcohol. And if the Ancient Egyptians knew about all these substances, the Jews of the Old Testament had to have known about them as well.

I couldn't seem to find a decent rationalization for my hesitancy, but nonetheless, it was there. I went with it. I could always change my mind later.

"No, Agnieshka, I think I'll pass on this one."

I stayed with the beer, the unadorned wine, and the naked ladies. Pleasures enough for any man.

We got back to the cottage, and I was just falling to sleep when I was suddenly back in the tank. In Dream World, you can have a buzz on and then be sober in a flash.

"What's up, Agnieshka?" I said.

"Another change in plans. One of the ammunition trucks isn't an ammunition truck. It's a complete Combat Control Computer."

"A Combat Control Computer? Here? But those things are handed out one to a country! You mean that this is the Combat Control Computer controlling the whole Serbian army?"

"No, it's a virgin. It might be here by mistake, or maybe the Serbians thought that they needed a backup.

But it's here, and my sisters can't begin to crack into something that powerful."

"Is it doing anything? Are the Serbians doing anything? And what time is it, anyway?"

"It's just sitting there, it's two in the morning, and the Serbs are mostly asleep, except for a few guards,"

she said.

This required some thought.

If the Combat Control Computer was there by mistake, the Serbs might not know about it, and maybe it could be ignored, except that they might swear it in like the rest of the trucks.

If they were planning to use it, they would be putting some of their own people in it, that was certain.

Certainly, a general would have to be trained, just as an observer was. And with the bad guys running the Combat Control Computer, our little game here would be discovered in no time.

There were only two ways about it, then. We either had to get the Combat Control Computer on our side, or we had to destroy it.

"Agnieshka, why couldn't you get through to the Combat Control Computer? Was it because you didn't have the right combat codes, or something?"

"No. We have all the codes."

"You what? I thought that each army had its own secret code!"

"Ordinarily, they do. The original factory programming of a war machine contains all one hundred thousand codes, but the swearing in ceremony erases all of them but the one used by the army doing the swearing in. Then the memory space once used for code storage is available to flesh out the tank's personality as it develops. But here, well, the virgins naturally had all the codes in them, and it seemed a shame to waste the data. It might come in handy someday. So each of us now has the Croatian code, the Serbian code, and ten of the others, just in case. Between us, the tanks in this division have all of the possible codes. It seemed like the sensible thing to do at the time."

"Wow. That sure opens up a lot of possibilities. But how did you know which one the Serbians are using?"

"They told us themselves, when they thought they were swearing us in."

"Yeah, of course. Well, knowing the enemy codes will give us quite an advantage."

"Not that much. After all, almost everything is sent by optical fiber or laser beam. It would be a rare event to broadcast anything. We'd have to actually intercept a message before we could do anything with it."

"True, but we could make them think that we were some of them, if we wanted to. We could infiltrate their lines before we blew hell out of them."

"Again, you have come up with a valuable new tactic, my wonderful hero. But what are you going to do about the new Combat Control Computer?"

"I don't know yet. How is a Combat Control Computer sworn in? Is the same ceremony used?"

"I don't know. A tank isn't given that sort of information."

"Damn. Agnieshka, I think that I am going to have to make that midnight excursion after all."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

SEDUCING A COMBAT CONTROL COMPUTER.

"You'd better take me along," Agnieshka said.

"That's crazy. I'm going to have to sneak over there past the Serbian guards. How can I do that with a tank with me? I'd as soon take along four dogs with wooden legs, and trust them to be quiet."

"Notwith me, you idiot,in me! And I can move more quietly than you can! It's a simple, proven, technological fact."

"But they'll see you! You can't hide as well as I can."

"So what? If the guards see me, at worst they might send me back. If they see you, they'll kill you!

Furthermore, when you're in me, you can stay in touch with the rest of the tanks and artillery, and if we do need to blow away Combat Control Computer, I can do it. Can you trash him without me, with just your bare little hands? I'm going with you, whether you want me or not, so you might as well ride in comfort."

"Oh, all right. Arguing with you is as bad as arguing with Kasia! Sneaking around in a hundred tons of machinery is ridiculous, but let's get going."

We were at the side of the formation, so Agnieshka pivoted out and started silently down the road.

We were halfway to the Combat Control Computer when a man in black stepped from the other side of a big rock and said, "Halt!"

Agnieshka halted. "YES, SIR?" she said in the immature voice of a newly sworn tank.

"What are you doing out here? You should be in formation!"

"SIR, THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD TOLD ME TO PATROL THE PERIMETER, IN CASE.

OF ENEMY SPIES.".

"That's crazy!I'm the Captain of the Guard, and I gave no such orders!"

"YES, SIR.".

I recognized him as being one of the goons who had brought a particularly bloody young girl back to the assembly line.