A Boy and His Tank (22 page)

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!

My only data input was the wholly inadequate one of the television screens in front of my eyes. I couldn't zoom, or come in on a narrow bandwidth.

"Eva, let me see what's happening!"

"I can't, Mickolai! I'm not attuned to your spinal column! It will be days before I can read it!"

"But I've used your sensors lots of times before!" I said.

"Only when you were physically inside of Agnieshka. She was processing your raw data for me then. I only had to deal with the coded data she sent me."

It made perfect sense, now that she mentioned it. I had to get back to Agnieshka.

"Eva, is anybody looking? I can't see well enough on the screens."

"I think so. There are hundreds of them getting out of the busses."

"Damn. I think I'll just have to risk being seen. Tell Agnieshka to open up, will you?"

"She never closed up. But Mickolai, you don't really have to risk it. There's another way. You can have Agnieshka reprogram me to be her."

"What happens to you in the mean time?"

"If you can wait another six minutes, I will have completed a copy of myself. You can still have an Eva then, if you want one."

"
An Eva
? But it wouldn't be the same Eva, would it? What would being reprogrammed feel like to you?"

"I think it would feel like dying, Mickolai. I mean, the other one would think she was me, and so would you, because you couldn't tell the difference, but I would feel my memory go away and I'd be gone."

"I thought it would be something like that, so no way! I mean, thanks for the offer, but I couldn't let you do such a thing. Open up. I'll take my chances getting to Agnieshka, and if I have to live in my own urine for a while, well, at least it won't feel like dying."

I was unplugged by the time that Eva had the coffin out. Staying as low as possible, I rolled over the edge to the ground and went on all fours to the next tank.

"I knew you'd come crawling back to me," Agnieshka said over her speakers.

"Quiet!" I said in a stage whisper, "we don't know what they have in the way of listening devices." I rolled into her coffin and got the helmet plugged in and put on. The unit was sliding in as I fumbled frantically with the catheter. I managed to get the back half of it installed. Or was it the back third? Anyway, my tailpipe at least was covered, and being soft silicone rubber, the front of the catheter fitting wasn't all that uncomfortable.

"Don't worry too much about the rest of it," Agnieshka said. "After all, you spent the first nine months of your life in your mother's womb, floating in your own urine. What's a little more time?" When I groaned, she continued, "I'll turn up the filtration cycle, and make sure you stay nice and clean."

The coffin started filling and I had to remind myself that it was still a clean new solution.

"On to more important topics. Would you give me a better view of the enemy? What have they been doing so far?" I said.

"Writing myself into another machine is taking all of my IR bandwidth and almost all of my data-handling capability. If you want me to do other things, it will slow down transcription."

"How long does it take to write yourself in?"

"Without interruptions, about eighteen minutes."

"Can't you write into all of them at once? Broadcast it, sort of?"

"I could do that if these machines were still on the assembly line. As it is, each of them has had certain unique experiences, and therefore they have unique memories. Each must be handled as an individual."

The coffin finished filling and I was floating again. It felt good on my battered body.

"What if you just erased all of their memories and then started them all from scratch?"

"And leave ten thousand nuclear reactors running for eighteen minutes without any control programs? Are you insane?"

"But what if—"

"Shut up, Mickolai! I know my job!"

I shut up. Manually, I sent one of the sensor clusters up as high as it would go and looked around. Nobody was running at me with guns in their hands, so I guess I hadn't been noticed. There were about a hundred and fifty big busses pulling up in a long neat line, along with twenty big semitrucks. Playing with the manual controls, I zoomed in on the busses. They looked fairly new, but they were of such an ancient design that they still had steering wheels! I was sure that they were mostly of local manufacture, except perhaps for the engines.

Guards with submachine guns were stationed all around the busses, and somehow they didn't act like ordinary soldiers. Maybe it was the black uniforms, but there was something about them that said "secret police," or something equally rotten. It was a warm day, but they weren't letting any of the people in the busses out, except for the drivers. You sure could tell that the Third Serbian Lancers weren't going to be an all-volunteer outfit.

A group of older guards in fancier outfits were strutting around in knee-high riding boots, pointing this way and that with their swagger sticks. I had the feeling that they were getting ready to put the new troops into their tanks, and I sure wanted the tanks that they swore in to be on our side before they did it.

"Agnieshka, once you finish up with the tank you're on, I want the front row of tanks to have top priority. Be sure and tell Eva."

"Yes, sir."

In a half hour or so, the boys in black had themselves sorted out, and twenty assembly lines were going, with men and women being stripped naked side by side. Any hesitation was met with brutality. Peoples' heads were shaved, induction mats were glued to their heads and backs, and they were fitted with helmets on a production line basis.

Survival kits were being issued, but they were just pulled from the box and put into the coffin. No attempt was made to see that the boots and uniforms fit. Apparently, the idea was to stop the people from running away, or at least to force them to do it naked. Or maybe they just didn't care.

Tanks were coming up and being sworn in while the "volunteers" were forced in at gunpoint. Male guards were installing the catheters on both men and women. Maybe those poor, abused people won't mind changing sides, I thought.

In fact, that was a very pleasant thought, indeed! Having the Serbs arrive at this time shot down my old plans, and they had certainly upped the ante, but they had upped the pot as well. What if I could get home with not only a division of machines, but also a division of troops? Troops that had a very good reason to hate the Serbs? Damn, but I'd be a hero!

I had Agnieshka tell me how many tanks had been converted into twin sisters of her and Eva before they got observers. For her it was only a matter of updating a register, and didn't take much of her time. I also had her display the numbers that had been sworn in by the black shirts before we could get to them.

She quickly assured me that a twin sister would have no difficulty faking it as an untouched virgin, and swearing a false oath was no problem as long as it was to an enemy. The problem became simply one of a race as to who could get to the majority of the tanks first, and Agnieshka was sublimely confident.

On the first round, the score stood at twelve for the good guys and eight for the bad. Okay, I thought. It's their arithmetic progression up against our geometric one. I knew it would be eighteen minutes before we could score again, so they would pull temporarily into the lead. They might be faster now, but every tank we converted was a teacher working on our side.

Six minutes later, the score stood at twelve for us and twenty-eight for them.

They were doing things by the numbers, like a bunch of strutting Germans. They passed one complete "class" of twenty every five minutes or so, and Agnieshka was updating the scoreboard every time they did it. The next update said still twelve for us and forty-eight for them. It made me wish that I could get my hands inside my helmet, so I could chew my fingernails.

Scanning up and down the line, I watched them strip naked a young woman who had a remarkably attractive body. Three of the black shirts pulled her from the line and took her to the bushes behind the assembly area. I couldn't see what went on back there, but I knew. Some time later, they brought her back, bruised and bleeding, to have her head shaved and be forced into a tank.

Until then, I really hadn't felt strongly about the enemy. Until then, they had been just opponents with whom I was playing a very deadly game. Now I was learning to hate the evil bastards.

My inclination was to open up with my new rail gun and kill every one of them, but I couldn't do that without killing most of their prisoners as well. There were no combat infantry on New Yugoslavia, so none of the tanks except for that guard were equipped with antipersonnel weapons. All we had was antiarmor stuff, and the shock wave from a rail gun will definitely kill anyone who was unprotected and within ten meters of the stream of osmium needles. Unarmored people would be at least severely wounded out to thirty, and being a hundred meters away wasn't safe. Furthermore, the radiation damage was infinitely worse than the shock wave in the long run. There was nothing that I could do for those poor people but lay there and watch them suffer.

The more I thought about that, the less sense it made. Why on New Yugoslavia would anyone brutalize someone else, then promptly put them in command of more firepower than that possessed by an old-style battleship? It sounded like a messy way to commit suicide. I asked Agnieshka about it and she told me that she was busy, and that I should shut up and soldier.

The score was twelve to sixty-eight. Soon, it was twelve to eighty-eight for the bad guys.

"Agnieshka! What's going wrong?"

"Everything is just fine. Shut up!"

More women were abused, as were some very young and smooth-skinned men. What's more, I noticed that after a bunch of goons brought back a victim, they went to this guy with a clipboard, and he scored them up! They each had a quota that they could fill. This wasn't individual brutality, this was official policy. This was recreation for the troops!

The next score was twenty-eight to ninety-two, and I started to feel some better. The tide was finally turning.

But after that it was twenty-eight to a hundred and twelve, and my heart sank again. Five minutes more and it was twenty-eight to a hundred thirty-two, and I just shut my eyes for a while.