“No. If I can do anything about it, I’ll make it a world where every single item, every shoe, every chair, and every device is individually considered for its form and function, and individually crafted to be of the best quality that can be managed.”
“A nice thought, Zuzanna, but mass production happened not because of some dark conspiracy, but because it’s a lot cheaper to do things that way. Make those shirts on a spinning wheel and hand loom and sew them together with a needle and thimble, and they would cost more than a week’s pay per shirt. Without mass production, most people would have only one set of clothes, live on a hovel with dirt floors, and be hungry much of the time. Except for a very small elite, life would again become nasty, brutal, and short.”
“True, and I am not advocating the reintroduction of slavery. You technical sorts have done a magnificent job at providing the material wherewithal that has done so much for humanity over the last eight hundred years. But I want you to understand that what you have built is merely the foundation of a great society. The actual edifice that is erected on that wonderful, machine-oriented foundation is going to be the work of all kinds of people. Including old history teachers.”
“A very interesting thought, Zuzanna. I think that I am going to have to sleep on it before it’s digested properly.”
The same could probably be said for the food, assuming that it could be digested at all. Apparently, it was authentic, and authentic medieval food is wretched stuff! I dawdled with it, trying to look as though I was actually eating some of it.
She smiled politely and gestured for her serving boys to bring in dessert, three amusingly anachronistic hot fudge sundaes. Conversation went back to lighter topics.
While Quincy was in the marines, she had earned her doctorate while raising their seven children.
“One for every time he came home on leave,” was the way she put it.
After he retired from the service, he had joined her at the University of Europe, and they lived for forty pleasant years in academia, until they were forced to emigrate to the horrors of New Kashubia.
She was a charming lady, once you overlooked her eccentricities.
Agnieshka and I went home, and we spent the next eight hours in the sack.
About an hour before his shift was to begin, Radek came over. He was a small, thin person, with greasy hair and quick, nervous gesticulations. He was dressed in the loud, flashy clothes that had been popular with the young hoodlum set on Earth three or four years ago. I was impressed, but not favorably.
“We ain’t never had no chance to talk,” he said. “Since we’ll be fighting together, you know, I thought that we maybe oughta to take the time to get to know each other some, first.”
“I quite agree. We visited Zuzanna a little while ago.”
“Yeah. Me too. She’s not a bad lady for a witch.”
“I thought she was a sorceress.”
“She told me she was a witch. When we were getting into it, I asked her why she didn’t wear no underpanties. She said the reason was that it gave her a better grip on her broom. You got anything good to eat around here?”
“Sure. Good idea. I haven’t had dinner yet. Will you join me?” I said, even though I hadn’t even had breakfast. Shift work screws up your circadian rhythms. Anyway, he looked like he needed dinner, and he was a guest.
“Yeah. Good idea. I’m starved.”
Agnieshka set the table and served us an entire roast lamb, with all the extras. But she did it wearing high-heeled shoes, fishnet panty hose, and nothing else. I felt embarrassed about it at first, but Radek took it all in his stride.
I eventually figured that Agnieshka must know him better than I did. Thinking about it, she had stood guard duty with him.
Radek needed no encouragement to dig into the meal, which he did, literally, using his hands rather than any of the proper utensils.
“So how did you come to join the army?” I asked, trying to get the conversation going.
“Same as you, I guess. They said I’d join or they’d kill me, and I figured, shit, better later than sooner, you know?” He ripped one entire leg off of the lamb and started chewing on it, with grease all over his face.
I winced. “What got you into trouble?”
“Food, mostly. See, it’s my nerves, I guess, but I need to eat a lot more than other people, and they never would let me have enough. You know what it’s like, tending crops all day long and never being allowed to put none of it in your mouth?”
Radek’s table manners were abominable. Not only was he holding the roast in his hands while he ate, he was using the table cloth for a napkin, and when he had picked a bone clean, he casually threw it over his shoulder! Now, I realized that this was all just a simulation, that I really didn’t have a dining room floor littered with bits and scraps of half eaten food, but even so I didn’t like it one bit.
If he observed my displeasure, and cared, he made no note of it.
“Well, I was mostly in engineering. Of course, we were hungry all the time too, but I can imagine how rough it would be,” I said.
“Maybe you can, but maybe you can’t. Anyway, about the fourth time my foreman, she chews me out right in public for eating a potato while we was harvesting, I pops her a few in the fucking face, and I guess we wrecked a bunch of plants before it was over. And for that, they was going to kill me! Four lousy potatoes!”
It looked as though he was getting more food on the floor than into his mouth.
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that it all wasn’t real.
Even then, I wondered if he was as messy in reality. The thought of food paste dribbling out of his mouth, filling up his helmet, and polluting the liquid that his body was floating in wasn’t very pleasant either.
“Well, you seem to be well enough fed now, at any rate, so the problem has solved itself. All I’m concerned about is that you do your job and guard my flank.”
“Hey, no worry about that, boss. I’m good at my job! Ask Boom-Boom. I only wish that I could get that damn foreman and the fucking judge in my sights, instead of these shitfaced Serbians. I mean for real. I don’t know how many times I killed them bitches in Dream World. Burned ’em, mostly, like at the stake!” He said with his eyes blazing.
“I see your point, but just now it’s the Serbians who are trying to kill us, for even less reason than your judge had. Look, it’s getting late, and I wanted to talk to Quincy and Zuzanna before we saddle up,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m through here anyway,” he said as he wiped his greasy hands on his shirt. “Say, that girl of yours is a looker. Maybe I shoulda brought Boom-Boom along, so’s you could see her. What say we get together sometime and party down? Boom-Boom’s a boss fuck!”
“Sometime. Sometime later.”
“Yeah. Later.” And he blinked out.
“Sometime very much later,” I said. “Agnieshka, have you ever met such a disgusting person before?”
“Well, I’ve met Boom-Boom.”
“They’re two of a kind, are they?”
“She naturally adapted her persona to suit his personality, if that’s what you mean. She wears an incredible amount of makeup, her hair looks like an antenna array, she has a dozen sexually suggestive tattoos, there are large black iron rings in her nipples and—”
“Enough! Suffice it to say that I don’t want to meet Boom-Boom under any but business circumstances. Or Radek, either, for that matter.”
“Yes boss. You wanted to see Quincy and Zuzanna?”
“No, I was just making excuses to get rid of that annoying person. Anyway, Zuzanna is on duty, and I don’t feel like having Quincy kill me today. I’m going to lay down for a while. Get me to the war on time.”
“You really should get some PT in, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. The Combat Control Computer gave us specific orders to get plenty of rest, and an obedient young soldier like me wouldn’t think of disobeying a direct order.”
“Boss, you are a lazy bum. Okay, let’s go to bed,” she said.
“Perhaps I’m lazy, but you are still a lecherous young lady.”
Later, I was just starting to drift off to sleep when there was a knock at the door. Agnieshka got up to answer it, and let in a small and slender young woman with very pale skin.