“That sounds attractive, but my leave will not go on forever,” he said.
“Often, things can be arranged. These are peaceful times. The duke’s army might not be averse to granting an officer an academic leave of absence.”
“You make life at the university sound far more interesting than drilling illiterate troops, or standing guard duty when there is really nothing to guard against. I shall think on it.”
“Do that,” she said. “Should you decide on venturing into the academic world, it is possible that I could be of some assistance to you. I am not without influence there.”
The sun was close to setting when they came to Bronki’s retreat. At first, Kren could see nothing at all but a grass-covered hill, but Bronki took out a knife and cut away the grass that had grown over the doorway.
“You can see that I have not been here for several years,” she said, throwing the thick mat down the hill, where it was eagerly pounced on by two juvenals.
“The other door and the windows are best cut away from the inside,” she continued, leading him inside, and turning on the lights.
The house was quite spacious, and extremely luxurious compared to what a mining slave was used to. There were chairs and tables and real cots to sleep on. There was a tall and spacious entrance hall, and a large living room with many comfortable couches centered around a long, low table and a drinking fountain. Opening off these central rooms were two studies, a steam room, and five bedrooms. Mitchegai homes do not have kitchens or dining rooms, of course, and outside of the cities, they don’t have toilets. The grass took care of waste disposal.
But the things that impressed Kren the most were the books. Every wall, every small bit of space, was covered with bookshelves, and these were all crammed to overflowing with books. Big books, small books, thick ones and thin. Some of them had ancient tooled leather coverings, but most were of simple grass paper.
And besides the books, there were thousands of tapes and discs, along with the viewing screens and computers to use them.
“I am very impressed,” Kren said. “Have you actually read all of these?”
“Most of them. Many are reference texts, of course, good for looking things up in, but not intended to be read from cover to cover. Perhaps you would like some reading suggestions?”
“I would very much appreciate your advice, yes.”
“Then we shall discuss it in a little while. Let me unpack and then rest a bit while you choose one of the guest bedrooms. I usually entertain several friends here, but this time, everyone that I would usually have invited along was otherwise engaged,” she said.
“Thank you. I will do that.”
Kren walked about the house, opening windows and doors, cutting away the grass that covered them with his sword, and throwing the thick mats away as he had seen Bronki do. The windows were thick and well insulated, but no one on a Mitchegai world had ever heard of window screens.
He found that they were at the top of a hill, with pleasant views in every direction, an arrangement that also permitted good cross-ventilation.
Seeing no great difference between the guest rooms, he chose the one to the north, and hung his clothes and equipment up there, on pegs set into yet another bookshelf.
His hostess came in with some fresh bed sheets, so he made the bed in the neat, military style that one of his victims had taught him. This was a very pleasant place, and he would obviously be welcome to stay here for a long while.
Kren lay down thinking that this was a very good turn of events.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Promotions and Awards
New Yugoslavia, 2205 a.d.
A few months went by, and I found myself becoming human again. Then I got a summons from my boss.
In the course of things, I had managed to acquire seven qualified colonels rather than the usual five. Lloyd and Mirko had been elected delegates to a planetary constitutional convention, and were needed there. When my boss, General Sobieski, invited me and my staff to New Kashubia for a conference, I took my wife, Conan and Maria, and Quincy and Zuzanna with me in my Combat Control Computer. Three friendly couples made a good group, anyway.
A Combat Control Computer was basically a cylindrical truck, five meters across and ten meters long, that contained life support units called coffins for six people. You floated in an aqueous solution, and computer controlled systems supplied you with food, oxygen, and everything you needed to stay alive. Inductive mats imbedded under your scalp and along your backbone connected you with an array of computers. These were identical to the coffins that were inside of most of our bigger fighting machines, our tanks. The greater computer power of the CCC let you live almost twice as fast, however.
There were six small computers that contained the personalities of our personal tanks, Agnieshka, in my case. But in a CCC, you were also connected with twelve truly massive computers that contained everything known to humanity. This group of computers called himself Professor Cee, and acted like an English college professor.
When connected up, the huge computer power let you operate in Dream World at combat speed, which in my case was fifty-five times as fast as normal living. This effectively expanded my lifetime by a factor of fifty-five, a nice fringe benefit.
And while you were in it, you lived in Dream World, a form of artificial reality that could be anything that you wanted it to be. It was very pleasant, provided that you obeyed orders. If you didn’t, you could be living literally in Hell.
* * *
The CCC also contained an array of communication devices that kept you in touch with as many as a hundred thousand Mark XIX tanks, as well as your superiors, no matter where you were in Human Space, although interstellar communications could take days.
So I called the gang together and we got into the CCC down in my garage, below my apartment. You had to strip down naked to get into a coffin, and as usual, the girls insisted that we males take a walk while they got in. I suspect that this had nothing to do with modesty, but was because Maria and Zuzanna were far more beautiful in Dream World than they were in reality. My Kasia was beautiful anywhere she went, of course.
It was a half-hour trip by the underground MagLev system to the military transmitter, over a day in Dream World. Our party consisted of six humans, six intelligent machines, and Professor Cee. Socially, we treated each other as equals. We spent the time at a medieval tournament, followed by a banquet in Zuzanna’s castle. This had a lot in common with the Dark Tower that I’d had built for her in my valley, except that the real one didn’t have moat monsters, wizards, and dragons hanging around.
Accelerating the CCC to the vector of New Kashubia took another thirty minutes, but none of us on board noticed it. Fluid suspension lets you ignore gravity, at least when it stays below ten Gs. We spent the day coursing after the stags with the palace hounds.
Transit time to New Kashubia took another hour, according to laws of physics that I have learned twice, and still don’t understand. Had we been in separate tanks, we would have had to spend the time alone, but since we were all in there together, we spent the two subjective days on a dragon hunt. This time, Conan won the prize for the biggest kill. He said that he would have it mounted in his den, the way I had done with the prize I had taken during the “Search Light Party,” during the last war.
We reported to General Sobieski in Dream World as soon as we got to New Kashubia. That was the way he preferred things. I’ve never met anyone who ever saw him in the flesh.
Sobieski is a great fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, and among friends he usually adopted the persona of Elessar, the king. The thirteen of us suddenly found ourselves wearing not medieval finery, but armored garb suitable for the nobility of Middle Earth. Quick changes of clothing are a common occurrence in Dream World.
We were escorted into the great hall atop Minas Tirith by hundreds of warriors with winged helmets. They didn’t march very well, which indicated that these were all humans, and not machine intelligences. Our army never wasted much time on things like marching.
“Your Majesty,” I said, standing in front of the dais, and bowing. “You called, and we have come.”
“And right welcome you are!” Sobieski said, standing and stepping down from his throne. “The first order of business here is the long delayed awarding of promotions and decorations!” The crowd made a series of “Hooahs,” “Poobahs,” and “Praise them with Great Praise,” which happened a lot that afternoon.