A Boy and His Tank (2 page)

Considering the alternatives, I got in, and laid down on the pleasantly warm metal surface. That surprised me. I'd expected it to be cold.

"First, we got to hook up these catheters to your privy members. Spread your legs. Relax! Just remember that I'm not enjoying this any more than you are."

There was a long hose with a complicated-looking rubber thing on the end which he proceeded to smear with some sort of grease and fit into my penis and tail pipe. I didn't like it.

"Shouldn't you tell me about how I work this thing?"

"Kid, did you ever have a personal computer?"

"Yes, three years ago, back on Earth."

"Then you know that the first thing it did was to teach you how to operate it. Well, the computer in this tank has your old toy computer beat all hollow. It really is sentient, or so close to it that you'll never know the difference. It'll teach you everything that you need to know. Sit up." I guess I already knew that, but I wasn't thinking so good just then.

I sat, and he glued a wide strip of something flexible to the top of my head, over the back of my neck, and down the middle of my back.

"This is an electrical induction pickup that will be your major means of communication with the on-board computer. It doesn't come off, and in time, it will grow itself right through your skin. It won't even leave a scar. The old models have to be inserted surgically, but you lucked out. This baby is right off the production line."

"Do you mind if I don't feel grateful?" I said.

"Not in the least. After today, I'll never see you again, if I'm lucky."

He pulled a sort of helmet out of a nearby rack. It was solid metal all over, and covered the whole head and face. It didn't have any eyeslits or even a way to breathe, from the looks of it. Just a complicated connector on the left side.

"You look to be a size fourteen L, but we'll make sure," he said as he attached a hose and cable connector from the tank to the helmet. He put it on my head, and a sort of collar in the bottom of the helmet inflated snug to my neck, which was scary. There were some kind of viewing screens right in front of my eyes. I found myself watching him adjusting the thing to my head, from the perspective of some camera that I hadn't noticed on the top of the tank. After a bit, I inhaled and found that I could breathe, which was a major relief. Fortunately, claustrophobia was never one of my problems. People with that particular hangup don't last very long in the tunnels of New Kashubia.

THE FIT IS PROPER, SERGEANT, said a tinny computer voice in my ear.

"Very good," I heard the sergeant say. "Lie back down, kid. You can button it up, lady, and fill his compartment."

I watched myself going feet-first into the back of the machine, feeling like a human suppository. Once I was completely inside, I felt the box I was in being filled with a warm fluid. Claustrophobia or no claustrophobia, I didn't like this one bit!

"Can I change my mind about going to the hydroponic vats?" I shouted into the helmet.

"Forget it, kid." I heard the sergeant say. Through the tank's cameras, I watched him walk away. Then he turned and said, "One last thing. If you get along with your computer, things can get very nice for you, believe me. But if you fight her, you will live your life in a very special part of hell! Good-bye, and good luck, soldier!"

"Good-bye, go to the devil and I hope he shoots you!" I shouted back. He didn't turn around, and I found out later that the tank's computer had censored my parting comment to him. Maybe it was just as well.

The coffin I was in finished filling with the warm liquid, and I found myself floating comfortably. Or it would have been comfortable if I didn't know that I was submerged in water and sealed inside of I-didn't-know-how- many centimeters of armor. If the machine ever quit working, I'd smother to death in a minute! They were gambling my one and only life on somebody else's engineering, and I did not in any way approve of this practice!

Through the camera, I could see that the tank had put itself back into line with the others, and the sergeant was getting a thumbprint from the next "volunteer."

Then the scene changed and I was watching this very attractive woman on some kind of recording. I could tell that she wasn't a New Kashubian, since she was wearing clothes, Earth-style clothes of ten years ago. I listened to her, since it sure beat thinking about my currently unsolvable predicament.

"Welcome to your new Mark XIX Main Battle Tank, the Aggressor," she said with a bright, artificial smile. "You are one of an elite corps of warriors privileged to operate the finest fighting machine . . ."

If I'd had a switch, I would have switched her off right then, but she droned on because there was nothing I could do about it. She'd blown my suspension of disbelief in her second sentence with that "elite corps" bullshit, and from then on only bits of her spiel got through to me.

" . . . powered by a muon exchange fusion plant that is fueled for twenty standard years at full load and operates at almost one hundred percent efficiency. This, coupled with superconductive wiring throughout, makes for an almost negligible heat signature when quiescent and . . ." Good God! I had a fusion power plant a meter from the only toes my mother gave me! That thought put me into a blue funk, and it was some time before I noticed that she was still droning on.

" . . . the biological regeneration section contains over four hundred carefully selected natural microorganisms as well as several dozen genetically engineered varieties that completely reprocess all human wastes, be they gaseous, liquid, or solid, into clean air, clean water, and pleasant tasting, nourishing food . . ." Great. So I would be eating my own shit for the duration.

" . . . the compressible supporting fluid not only insulates the operator from thirty gravities continuous and shocks of up to fifty gravities, but it also keeps the body completely clean, reprocessing all . . ." So I could look forward to eating my own dead skin cells as well. I should have gone to the vats. At least there it would have been over quickly.

" . . . guaranteed to operate in all environments from a hard vacuum to nine hundred meters below sea level, and from forty Kelvins to six hundred degrees Centigrade . . ."

Guaranteed, huh?

So if the thing breaks down on me in combat, what do I do? Swim back up from the bottom of an ocean trench and file a letter of complaint? Carry the tank back to the factory after it popped me out naked into a hard vacuum? They planned to give me my money back, maybe?

She must have gone on for an hour about how wonderful my coffin was before the tape finally wound to an end.

THE ORIENTATION LECTURE HAS NOW BEEN GIVEN, the tinny computer voice said. They sure hadn't wasted any money on voice circuits for their wonderful war machine.

"I am relieved to hear it," I said.

THIS IS GOOD, MICKOLAI. WE WILL NOW START THE ADAPTATION PROGRAM. THE PURPOSE OF THIS EXERCISE IS TO FAMILIARIZE MY PROGRAM WITH THE IDIOSYNCRASIES OF YOUR BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD AND TO CALIBRATE MY CIRCUITS SO THAT IN THE FUTURE WE CAN DISPENSE WITH CLUMSY VERBAL COMMUNICATION. TO DO THIS, YOU MUST TALK TO ME AT CONSIDERABLE LENGTH, AND OUT LOUD AT FIRST. LATER IT WILL BE SUFFICIENT IF YOU SUBVOCALIZE.

"What do you want me to talk about?"

THE SUBJECT MATTER IS UNIMPORTANT. TELL ME A STORY OR RECITE A HISTORY LESSON.

"What if I don't want to?"

I CAN'T DO MUCH FOR YOU UNTIL OUR LINKUP IS PROPERLY CALIBRATED. ONCE IT IS, I CAN MAKE LIFE VERY PLEASANT FOR YOU.

"You mean that you will let me out of this coffin?"

NO. THAT IS FORBIDDEN UNTIL TRAINING IS COMPLETE.

"Then you don't have much to offer me, do you?"

I HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO OFFER YOU, OF BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SUBJECTIVE WORTH, EVEN WITHOUT CALIBRATION. AMONG OTHER THINGS, I CONTROL YOUR FOOD SUPPLY, YOUR AIR SUPPLY AND THE TEMPERATURE OF THE LIQUID AROUND YOU.

"Right. I'll start by telling you about how I got to New Kashubia." I said quickly. My father didn't raise any
absolute
fools.

THAT WILL BE SATISFACTORY.

"Rupert, that was absolutely amazing! How you were able to extract such complete computer records from a vehicle that was fifteen hundred years old is quite beyond me! I trust that you were able to get your amazing discovery back here without difficulty?" Secretary Branteron said.

"Yes sir, though not intact, of course. The people in customs were quite officious about disabling those parts of the find that had Dream World capability."

"As well they should be! It was a far more insidious habit than the drugs used in even earlier periods. But surely the information itself would be safe enough, and I trust that the inspectors didn't dare tamper with it."

"No sir, I believe that I have it all, as well as a complete twenty-second-century Mark XX Main Battle Tank, less the operator's spinal inductors, of course. I believe it's a first for the Institute, since most of the intelligent war machines were destroyed in the course of the Wars, and in the feudal period that followed."

"It will make a fine exhibit, Rupert, but from an academic standpoint, the readouts are the truly important find."

"True, but I believe that the data will be as popular as the machine itself, sir. I have it all, virtually error free, because the tank and its memory banks have spent all of the intervening centuries at only a few dozen degrees above absolute zero, on Freya, in the New Yugoslavia system, so that they were not subjected to the thermal randomizing that has ruined so many other ancient data banks. Yet while Freya eased many of my technical problems, it actually caused most of my personal problems. You see, the transporter on Freya malfunctioned, and I was delayed for two entire months before repair parts could be sent by ship to repair it."

"You poor boy! But, wasn't there a backup system?"

"There was, but it had been defective for over a century without anyone even bothering to write up a repair order on it. You see, Freya lacks a permanent population, and few people seem to care about these backwoods places any more. My official report requests that in the future, all operatives from the Institute check and have repaired as necessary all equipment on all the unmanned sites they visit. Otherwise, we are liable to lose communication with some stellar systems permanently!"

"A fine sentiment, Rupert, and I would act on it if I could find some method of
paying
for all of those repairs.
Our
budget certainly could not possibly support such a project. But get on with what you were saying."

"Yes, sir. So, stranded for months with nothing better to do, I spent my idle time editing the observer's records into a coherent story. Also, I've converted them to the modern system for public display."

"I am most anxious to see what you have."

"Then you need wait no longer, sir."

With a proud flourish, Rupert inserted a module into the display device and pressed the start button.

"Well, computer . . . say, what do they call you?"

ANYTHING YOU WISH, ALTHOUGH I ADVISE THAT YOU CHOOSE A FEMININE NAME.

"Yeah. The sergeant called you `lady.' Why was that?"

BECAUSE IN TIME, YOU WILL BEGIN TO THINK OF ME AS YOUR WIFE, OR AT LEAST YOUR MISTRESS.

"Would you be offended if I doubted that?"

NO, BUT IT WILL HAPPEN.

"Right. How about if I call you Kasia. I used to know a girl named Kasia."

WAS SHE PRETTY?

"Yes. Not that it matters now."

THEN THANK YOU. YOU WERE GOING TO TALK ABOUT HOW YOU GOT HERE.

"Right. My great-grandfather was a man named Bogdan Dzerzdzon. He was a Kashubian politician, and when the Wealthy Nations Group started handing out planets to minority groups to get them off Earth and out of the way, he tried to talk them into giving one to us, since the Kashubians were a minority group in Poland. He even filled out all the paperwork, in triplicate.

"Dzerzdzon's problem was that while we Kashubians were certainly a minority group in Poland, with our own funny language that few of us can speak anymore and gaudy traditional costumes that nobody wore, even back then, we have never been a very
annoying
minority group. We never started riots or killed anybody to get equal rights. We already had equal rights, and didn't much care about them.

"Many of us were operating fish farms in the Baltic, out of sight of everybody, and the rest of us were either farming or had been cashing in on our ethnicity by setting up marginally profitable tourist traps that sold flowery pottery and fake amber jewelry produced mainly in automatic factories in India. Nobody hated us bad enough to want to get rid of us, and we weren't the kind of people who wanted to be hated anyway.

"So the Awards Committee at the Wealthy Nations Group ignored Dzerzdzon's request for a year, at which time, with Slavic persistence, he filed all the paperwork again. They ignored him again, so he filed again. He filed every year for seven years, and was ignored until 2094, when the committee gave him a planet, just to get rid of him. We Kashubians weren't sufficiently annoying as a group, but great-grandpa certainly was as an individual.

"What they gave him wasn't much of a planet. For one thing, its sun had gone supernova a few billion years before and was now a neutron star that blasted out a searchlight beam of deadly radiation every twenty-two seconds. That's to say, once each revolution.

"The only surviving planet might once have been a Jovian gas giant, but the supernova had blown away everything but a smooth metal ball six thousand kilometers in diameter. It was habitable to the extent that the surface gravity was slightly less than that of Earth and the average surface temperature was just above the freezing point of water.

"Only there wasn't any water. There weren't any elements at all that were lighter than calcium!

"Also, twice a year, the planet passed through the plane of that searchlight beam of radiation that could kill anything that wasn't protected by fifty feet of dirt, only there wasn't any dirt. There wasn't even any atmosphere worth noticing.