Then there was the building of our end of the New Kashubian-New Yugoslavian Transporter Link, but that involved little more than feeding the engineering data into the input device of an automatic factory and picking the options we wanted off a menu.

All in all, it only took us a few months to get the new transporters built.

While I was thusly occupied, impressing my colleagues and getting promoted in the engineering section, Uncle Wlodzimierz was deep into the politics of the situation.

First there was the worry about training the mercenaries. We Kashubians hadn't gone to war for a hundred and fifty years, and even back then we had not gone voluntarily. Except for what we had read in cheap paperback novels, nobody knew anything about being a soldier. Were we going to have to hire mercenaries from someplace else to train our own mercenaries so that we could go to New Yugoslavia to get killed? Where could we get mercenaries in this day and age? What could we pay these foreigners with? Gold? Would they take that? And how could we feed them when we couldn't even feed our own people?

Then somebody pointed out that nobody on the other side of the fight would know anything about soldiering either, because they would mostly be just like us, so it wouldn't matter if our own troops in New Croatia were ignorant. We were hiring ourselves out to another bunch of amateurs! We didn't really hate the opposition, so the less efficient we were at killing, the better!

What was important was that we should put on a good, big show, with lots of parades and demonstrations blowing up a lot of useless desert and so on. But to be seriously out trying to kill somebody we didn't even know? Are you crazy?

After three weeks of heated debate on the subject of military training, my uncle suggested that we should inspect the weapons stockpile to see just what our boys would be training to use.

The council immediately voted him to be made a committee of one to go do just that thing, and he went.

When he inspected the weapons that we intended to borrow, he found that all of our fears were for nought. Every major piece of military hardware was equipped with computers that were either sentient or so close to it that you couldn't tell the difference. He knew it was true because they told him so themselves! And like any other personal computers worth having, they were programed to train their own operators, so that the problem was either solved or hadn't existed in the first place. He reported back, and the argument on the floor immediately changed subject.

The next problem was getting a sufficient number of volunteers for the New Kashubian Expeditionary Forces. A few romantic souls yearned for the glory of flashing sabers and cavalry charges, and if they couldn't get that, well, an armored assault would be okay, too.

Some more sensible folks joined up because they were sick of living on rotten food, and too little of it, and in single sex barracks, even if they were made of gold. The army looked like a better deal since nothing could possibly be worse than their present situation.

Then too, the deal involved transportation to New Yugoslavia, and by all reports, New Yugoslavia was a pretty nice place. And who knows? Once you got there, maybe the Yugos would let you immigrate permanently. They already had thirty other ethnic groups. What were a few Kashubians, more or less?

But while volunteers flocked in by the hundreds and hundreds, our existing contracts with the Croatians alone called for mercenaries by the thousands and thousands.

The lack of volunteers was made more serious since the Macedonian Yugoslavians were worried about the Montenegrin Yugoslavians, and had ordered four divisions just to be on the safe side. And so naturally the Montenegrins promptly ordered five divisions just in case, and paid cash in advance to get their divisions first.

This set a trend that our warmongering Kashubian salesmen couldn't refuse, and before long the various Yugoslavian factions were clamoring with money in their hands to outbid one another with such vigor that they forgot to get mad at us for renting ourselves out to fight on most of the sides of what was shaping up to be a twelve-sided war.

The Slovenes ordered a few divisions in case the war spilled over onto them, and the few Muslims left in New Bosnia did the same.

Thereal minorities in New Yugoslavia, namely the Slovaks, the Bulgarians, the Ruthenians, the Czechs, the Romanians, the Vlachs, the Italians, and the Gypsies, all of whom were living separately on fairly small islands, clubbed together to order two divisions of seagoing troops to stand guard just in case while everybody else was fighting.

And these groups did not include the enclaves of Albanians, Hungarians, Turks, and Germans who had simply, and perhaps rationally, decided to sit this one out.

Studying the political situation, you could almost develop a certain sympathy for the powers that be at the Wealthy Nations Group. Almost. The Yugoslavians were a complicated assembly of many mutually antagonistic peoples, and all living in one country! They were a time bomb and one would prefer them to explode as far away as possible!

Be that as it may, the money was coming in so fast that the new New Yugoslavian transporter terminals were paid for in cash on the day that Soul City delivered them. New Kashubia was on its way to getting a new credit rating, at least among the smuggling set.

Oh, we couldn't spend the money through regular channels to improve things on the planet that way. It might alert the inspectors of the Wealthy Nations Group to the smuggling going on. In fact, we were careful that shipments and orders to and from Earth went on through regular channels exactly as before, to keep from tipping our hand. But the food coming in from New Yugoslavia sure helped a lot. For the first time in years, we were averaging over twelve hundred calories a day, each. Almost half what the Chinese got!

By the time the transporters were ready, we had orders for fifty-five divisions of ten thousand men each, and everybody was getting antsy about shipping them out. We needed more than a half a million volunteers, and we had less than ten thousand, which fact it would not be wise to let the Yugoslavians know about, since they had mostly paid in advance.

The New Kashubian legal system came to the aid of the recruiting service. What with all the rules that had to be enforced to make bare survival possible on New Kashubia, there was a growing class of perpetual criminals that something had to be done with. It did no good to put them in jail, since ordinary life on New Kashubia was worse than any jail that anybody could think of. Physical punishment was considered barbarous, and what else was there? Shooting them all? For what were on the whole really trivial misdemeanors? Better to send them off to the army. It was the traditional thing to do. Maybe the military would make men out of boys and the girls too.

My own uncle voted for it, and he even had me believing it was a good idea, at the time anyway.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

HOW MICKOLAI DERDOWSKI GOT INTO TROUBLE.

So everything was finally starting to look up. What with the food imports, we were all getting almost enough to eat for a change (including soon, we were promised, some real meat!), and of course we were also getting in the raw materials with which to expand our system of hydroponic vats. The growing light factory was going at full production for the first time since we'd built it. We finally had the sand to make enough glass. We'd have no problems reprocessing all these new organics again and again. The new projections showed that within a year, we could relax most of the emergency measures, and start living like human beings again, with clothes on, and with our families, and dating girls and having weddings and everything!

I guess the big problem was that Kasia and I started celebrating a little early, and she turned up pregnant.

"But Mickolai, I thought you said that you were totally segregated," my tank said.

"We were," I said. If she could talk, I figured I could talk.

"Then how . . . ? You know that I'm a machine, and that my grasp of this sort of thing is only theoretical, but my information was that physical contact was required . . ."

"It is. Love found a way."

"But I still don't understand, Mickolai."

"Look! I said there was that hole in the wall, didn't I? How graphic do I have to get?"

"That doesn't sound very satisfying."

"It was a hell of a lot better than nothing at all," I said. "Say, just how much longer does this calibration thing have to go on, anyway?"

"I had enough data a while ago, Mickolai, but I was interested in what you were telling me. Why don't you complete your story."

"There's nothing much else to say. Kasia was pregnant and the gene prints said that I was the father. My uncle tried to help, but he got absolutely nowhere. Nobody cared about our work records or education or anything. The court case lasted three minutes and the jury didn't even leave the room before they gave their verdict. Our kid was aborted as the law required, and we were both sentenced to death or worse."

"Living with me can't be worse than death, Mickolai."

"It's a lot like being buried alive, and the view is boring." I'd been forced to stare at these magic television goggles inside my helmet since I got up and they showed nothing but a blank wall.

"What do you think of this, Mickolai?"

Suddenly, my view changed from a blank palladium wall to a lovely forest scene from Earth, with a brook and a little waterfall. But more importantly, the view on the screen in my helmet was like an old-style TV picture, with the scan lines visible, but this was just like real life!

"It's beautiful!" I said. Then a breeze blew through the woods, rustling the leaves,and I felt it on my cheek!

"How in the world did you do that?!" I shouted, and realized that I was smelling the trees and flowers, too.

"Direct neural stimulation, Mickolai. This is part of what I have been calibrating for. Get up. Walk around!"

"You're serious?"

"Of course I'm serious! Do it!"

So I did. I stood up and looked down at my feet. I was wearing a tee shirt, blue jeans, and a comfortable pair of sturdy hiking boots, just like I used to own on Earth. I looked at my hands, flexed my fingers, and they really were my own hands, not those of some movie actor. This wasn't some kind of recording. I was wearing my old flannel shirt!

"It's like a dream!" I said.

"Very perceptive, Mickolai. It's called Dream World. Itis very like a dream, except that you are awake and I am controlling it."

"I've never heard of such a thing! How could this be possible without my ever hearing about it?"

"Dream World is not the sort of thing that they'd tell a poor boy about, Mickolai. It takes some massive computer power and some very expensive sensors and inductors to do it, but if you were a manager with the Wealthy Nations Group, you'd probably have a Dream World set of your very own to play with."

"Then why would they put something this fancy on a tank?"

"Because almost everything required to do it with was already needed here for some other reason. In fact, all of the special equipment required for Dream World was originally developed for military purposes. The neural pickups are also needed for both biological monitoring and for receiving your command inputs. The neural induction circuits are required militarily to give you rapid feedback on combat situations. A Mark XIX already has a sentient computer, so more computer power is already available than is needed. In fact, the only additional cost was the fairly minor, one-time cost of purchasing an off-the-shelf program.

"In return, the army can vastly lower its expenses and logistical problems by not having to provide field kitchens, barracks, and Rest and Recuperation Facilities. Military training costs are reduced to almost nothing. Combat fatigue is greatly reduced. Military leave requirements are reduced. Reenlistment is no longer a serious problem. In fact, some troops elect to so rarely leave their tanks that they don't even bother to draw their pay! It is good for morale and it doesn't cost very much more. On top of that, I'm a weapon, and ever since the beginning of time, men have always done everything possible to make their weapons as perfect as possible, and hang the expense."

While pondering it all, I waved my hand in front of my face. "I'm controlling this dream, too."

"Correct, within certain parameters."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I have decided that this is a realistic environment. If you decided to flap your wings and fly, it wouldn't work. You'd just flap your arms and stay where you were."

"But it doesn't have to be realistic, does it?"

"No. The world can be anything that I want it to be, Mickolai," she said as a white unicorn walked by.

"Go ahead! Try to catch it! You need to work up an appetite for lunch!"

It was all too magic for argument, so I took off running down the forest path after the beautiful creature.

It was exhilarating, and it felt like I was in better shape than I'd ever been before. Even so, after more than a kilometer, I was gasping for breath and I had to slow down. The unicorn had fled, but I hadn't been qualified to catch it since I was sixteen, anyway.

"That's just fine, Mickolai. You've had close to an optimal workout. What would you like for lunch?"

"What do you have?" I asked, panting.

"That's a silly question, my friend. You can have absolutely anything at all."

"Anything? Then make it a steak and a lobster, and both of them broiled. Hey, I really feel exhausted.

Isn't that carrying things a little too far?"

"You have just had a strenuous physical workout, Mickolai. It was real. While your mind was practicing running, and the coordination required to do it, your muscles were getting a workout as well. We have to get your weight up to optimal, and we don't want to add any flab, do we?"

"Huh. If you can give me a workout without my knowing about it, why let me know at all? Why do I have to put up with the bother and pain of it all?" I said as I walked slowly down the path.

"I could do that if all I wanted was to put uncoordinated beef on you. You'll need more than clumsy strength if you want to survive battle. You'll need a mind that knows how to coordinate the muscle.

Anyway, it's not that painful, and it won't get any worse providing that you stay cooperative."

"Well, you're the boss." The path opened out into a meadow, and there, absurdly, was standing a table and a chair that belonged in a good French restaurant, with polished silverware and impossibly white linen. I sat down at the table, still surrounded by the lovely, manicured forest.

"I'm the boss until your training is complete. After that, we're partners," she said as she brought a serving platter with a big silver lid to the table. She was an attractive young Scandinavian woman, wearing an abbreviated French maid's costume, low cut, and with mesh stockings and high-heeled shoes.

"So you're in the dream, too," I said. "I was wondering what you looked like."

"I can look like anything you want." Her hair darkened and somehow she now looked sort of Italian.

"Enough. Don't throw everything at me at once," I said. I started into my meal, cutting off a big slice of beef and swabbing it in A.1. sauce. It was indescribably delicious! Protein! "I suppose that my real body is eating, back in the tank?"

"Yes, although what you're really eating is simply a nutritious paste. I didn't bother with any special flavorings or textures. Do you want me to switch you back for a moment?"

"No. I'm in pig heaven, so I might as well wallow in it. So what I had for breakfast wasn't a fantasy?

You can fake it either way?" I broke off the lobster tail with my hands and split the back open with a pair of heavy scissors. I gouged out the meat with a small fork, dunked it into a bowl of melted butter and gloried in it! After three years on a horrible vegetarian diet, and not nearly enough of that, this was God in Heaven with All of His Angels!

"Yes, but maybe neither mode is faking. I control the food synthesizers, your neural net, and a whole lot else. But your personal reality is always what it appears to be."

"That's either very profound or very sophomoric. To me it seems like a silly duplication for you to be able to do both."

"In combat, you'll need a strong grip on reality, Mickolai. It wouldn't be a good idea to have you in Dream World then."

"You're the expert. For right now, are you going to eat?" God, but the lobster was delicious! The first I'd had in five years.

"No, but I can make it appear that way if you want me to."

"Don't put yourself out. So what's next on the agenda?"

"Once you finish eating, we'll continue your training. This afternoon, we'll start you on target pattern identification."

"Okay. When are you going to teach me how to drive this tank?"

"Not for quite a while. Not until we get into emergency override procedures. Ordinarily, I do all the driving, Mickolai. My reflexes are much quicker than yours could ever be."

"So you're the driver and I'm the gunner? Is that how it works?" I wolfed down the rest of the magnificent steak and started work on the lobster claws. The tool provided looked like a nut cracker and wasn't up to the job. Suddenly, some clean, new electrician's tools appeared as part of the place setting.

Needle nose pliers and diagonal cutters made quick work of the lovely beast.

"No, I handle the weapons as well. Again, my speed and accuracy are better than anything that you could ever attain."

"Then what do you need me in here for? A sacrificial victim?" I dropped an empty lobster claw on my plate.

"Of course not! You are a vital part of the system, or you will be once you are properly trained."

"Doing what, for God's sake?"

"Doing just what I told you in the first place, Mickolai! Target pattern identification. It's like this. I am a system of digital computers that is very well qualified to perform any task that can be quantified. If a problem can be defined, a machine can always be designed and programmed to solve it better and faster than any human possibly could. I am a logical system and I can handle any logical problem. Your brain is not logical-"