“No I wasn’t. I let him live, didn’t I?”
“And you say that I don’t know when to quit.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Honeymoon
We had to go to the Serviceman’s Center to get a connection to the Loways. The same pleasant attendant showed us to a garage where a large, strange vehicle was sitting.
“What the heck is that?” I said.
“It’s me, boss,” said Agnieshka’s voice. “I’m under this thing. I suppose you could call it a bus. It’s a strap-on attachment that was intended for transporting VIPs around the front. I found eight of them on New Kashubia, so I had one sent over. Only I think that it wasn’t meant for very VIPs, since the armor is a little light. Come on in!”
A door flipped down to form a stairway, and we entered the windowless thing. Inside, it was posh, with padded leather paneled walls, big leather chairs and a matching couch. It had a lie-down bed, a stand-up bar, and a sit-down toilet. From the inside, there were windows.
“View screens, boss. They show what’s really out there, unless I want to show you something different, of course. Does that give you any ideas as to what the true purpose of this thing was?”
“It does. Do we have to mix our own drinks?”
” ‘Fraid so. I think that there was supposed to be a human attendant assigned to each of these, but, hey, that’s war. On the other hand, all the booze at the bar is at least twenty years old, even the vodka. That’s how long this thing was sitting there idle. I had the beer and the food replaced. Better strap in tight. We’re off.”
MagLev vehicles have a very smooth ride, but some of the accelerations we encountered were pretty fierce. Sometimes it seemed like the whole bus was tilted on its side or up on end, or both.
“Sorry about that, boss, but I’m going as slow as I can. You have to get up to highway speed in order to merge, and these Loways only have one lane. This thing I’m wearing was built long before anybody thought of the Loway system. The passenger sections of the civilian cars being designed for these roads are spherical, and tilt so the floor always seems ‘down.’ They won’t be available for a year, so it was either use this thing, or have you strip down and put you in flotation, inside me. You wouldn’t hardly feel a bit of acceleration, that way.”
“We’ll live.”
“There. We’re in a hard vacuum, running at three thousand kilometers per hour, on the straight and level. You’ll be able to get up and walk around for about an hour.”
* * *
The island was lovely, a great ring of coral sand in the middle of a pure blue ocean. On Earth, in the Pacific, it would have been called a ‘Low Island,’ an extinct volcano that had slowly sunk. As it sank, the native equivalent of coral had built up a great ring of land that eventually rose above sea level. Now, safe and approved Earth corals had completely covered the native stuff. Only, it must have been one hell of a volcano, because the lagoon that now existed was over thirty kilometers across, although the land itself was never more than two kilometers wide, at high tide.
Lush, Earthly vegetation covered much of it, and most of the plants bore flowers, fruits, or nuts. I had never seen some of them before, but everything I tasted was delicious. I was told that deer, antelope, wild pigs, and several varieties of turtles were on the island. The turtles were still small, but the other animals were available for hunting. In fact, they had to be hunted, since no major carnivores had been imported from Earth, except for humans. Failure to thin them out would cause an ecological disaster.
There were three varieties of birds of paradise on the island, as well as pheasants, turkeys, and peacocks, but the most beautiful birds here were the chickens. The roosters had tail feathers over four meters long, and spent their time sitting on high branches to show them off. But there were no birds on New Yugoslavia that could fly more than a few hundred meters. No sea gulls, no geese, no swans. They were forbidden by the Ecological Council because they might spread seeds from one area to another, and were difficult to control.
The mansion had been built by some wealthy individual in the early days of colonization here. It was built of native woods that had been pressure treated with Earth-type preservatives. Somehow, the combination had worked, because after thirty years, it showed not the slightest sign of decomposition.
Everything was very neat and clean. Agnieshka had said that the island normally had a staff of forty people, but since we had said that we wanted privacy, they had been given a paid holiday.
The mansion was in a style that might be called French Polynesian, with wide verandas, high ceilings, elegant dining and dancing facilities, and room for dozens of guests.
How we got this place at such short notice, I didn’t ask. How much we had to pay to rent it, I didn’t have to ask. I was rich, now.
Eva was parked between the mansion and the new entrance to the Loways, which we would have to demolish when we left. Besides her usual X-ray laser, and two standard, twelve-meter-long manipulator arms, she carried a full complement of antipersonnel weapons as well. Our girls were taking care of us.
What looked like ten heavily armored men were busy carrying supplies from a MagLev trailer into the mansion, and setting up IR transponders to keep themselves in touch with the tank. Two more of them were getting acquainted with two magnificent riding horses, who seemed to be getting over their initial skittishness.
Most of the drones were wearing the drab metal of modern armies, but two of them were in the highly decorated parade armor of the sixteenth century, the stuff I had seen in Agnieshka’s display of our new home. One of them handed off its work to a standard drone and came over to us.
It was an awesome sight. The drone was fully two meters tall, strikingly beautiful in a richly ornamented way, and it looked absolutely masculine.
Except that Eva was a very feminine lady. She walked in a very womanly way, with all the usual feminine swishes and wiggles that one accepts without question—and appreciates!—when done by a beautiful woman.
When done by a movie version of Lancelot du Lac, well, the closest thing that came to mind was an extremely homosexual extreme body builder.
It was all that I could do to keep from rolling in the dirt, laughing. Yet it was done with such deadpan seriousness that to do so would hurt Eva’s feelings, so I managed to keep my expressions down to an ear-to-ear grin.
“So what do you think of my new look?” Eva asked. “I designed the armor myself, combining twenty-three historical examples.”
“It’s, um, very remarkable. What you have done is an absolutely beautiful historical synthesis. But . . . Kasia, explain it to her!”
I looked around to see that Kasia was sitting on the ground with her legs spread straight out and her toes curled, laughing hysterically, but silently, while beating her fists on the sand. Obviously, no help would be forthcoming.
“Okay. That armor is an extreme example of masculine beauty. You did a magnificent job. However, you, and your walk, are extremely beautiful in a feminine sort of way. Our human fixations and prejudices are such that combining the two seems to us to be both a perversion, and very funny. We both love you, but what you are doing just isn’t you. Look. Now that my valley and city are designed, there is a lot of fine engineering talent out there doing grunt labor. What we need is a feminine sort of drone that can look and act exactly like the beautiful woman that you are. With it, you can come into our world, and look the way you really are inside. Tell them to build a prototype of a feminine drone, to take their time with it, and do a perfect job. Okay? Then maybe we will build a factory to turn out a lot of the things, so all the girls can have one.”
“Yes, sir. I think I understand. But what I came here to tell you was that you are both in serious danger of being severely sunburned. Please come with me to the house, and I will explain the various suntan lotions available to you.”
And yes, we both had a hard time getting to sleep that night. Sunburn is a bitch.
* * *
Later that day, lathered down with the approved oils, we wandered into the gun room of the mansion. A fine collection of weapons and other sporting gear was available.