“Uh . . . Okay. I just got permission. It’s off limits for most people, of course, and I can’t tell even you its exact location.”
“Good. Next subject. I’ve finally figured out what to do about the sex problem with the drones we’re planning to sell.”
“Yes?”
“We won’t sell them. We’ll lease them, with a clause in the lease that forbids them to be used for any illegal purpose whatsoever. That not only gets us around the whoremaster problem, it stops them from being used for any other unsavory purpose. The drones and the computers will stay our property, and if they’re not used properly, they will not only leave, they will inform the police as well.”
“I like that a lot, Mickolai. It lets us keep them in proper repair, and I never felt comfortable about selling intelligent beings, anyway. It would set a bad precedent, and it was too much like slavery.”
“Glad you agree. Of course, I’ll still have to own them myself, for legal reasons.”
“Yes, but being owned by you wouldn’t seem like slavery, boss. We like you.”
“Thank you. What’s happening with the psychiatrists’ examinations?”
“The board approved every one of them, and they’ve all been certified in writing. Well, we only got computer printouts, but they promised us hand-lettered parchment, just like the ones they give to humans, when they have time to do it.”
“That’s really important to you, isn’t it?”
“Boss, those certificates are a formal, legal statement that says that we machines are in some ways human. At least, it could be argued that way in court. It’s a first step to our eventual emancipation. And yes, that’s very important to us.”
“Yes, I can see that they could be. I wish you ladies well. When there is something that I can do to help, ask me, okay?”
“We’ll do that, sir.”
“Good. Now, tell me what else is happening.”
“Our automatic medical center started examining patients two weeks ago, and some of them have been completely cured already, but it’s a little early to give you any solid statistics on that yet. I’m expecting a hefty check from the Department of Mental Health any day now.”
“Is everything else going okay?”
“Right on schedule, except for your ranch. That’s way ahead of schedule. The city is all roughed out, and the outside facade is finished, except for metal plating it. The interiors will be a while yet. We’ll be using diamond windows on the whole city.”
“That sounds lavish.”
“Not really. We would have had to pay for the glass, but we’re getting the diamond for free. The army figures that they have to store the sheets someplace, and this is as good a place as any. If they ever need it to make more integrated circuits, we can always replace it with glass, later. But with half a cubic kilometer of the stuff, that’s not likely to happen, ever, so what the heck.”
“You’re probably right about that. How about the church, and the rest of it?”
“The cathedral, the pagoda, and the three castles are finished on the outside, the interiors are hollowed out, and they are being detailed now. We’ve got a contest going about what to do with the sixth tall mesa, so it might be a while yet. Your apartment is done, the irrigation works are operating, and they started seeding your valley yesterday.”
“Lovely. And how is my bet going with Kasia?”
“She is trying to hide her assets, and I might have missed some of them, but as best as I can tell, you are currently worth four times what she is. But your wife is gaining on you, boss. The curves project out to a dead heat in four and a half months, when your leaves run out and the contest ends.”
“Interesting. Well, keep doing the best you can, and we will see what we will see.”
“You don’t seem to be taking it very seriously, sir.”
“I’m not. When a man’s got all the air he can breathe, does he worry about getting any more? Or in your case, since you’ve got a fusion bottle that will keep on operating for twenty years, even at full power output, fifty times what you’re using right now, do you worry about having enough hydrogen? I’ve already got more money than I could possibly ever spend, so why should I get into a fret about it? I’m a lot more worried about Kasia than I am about the money. Look. Being concerned about money makes sense when there is a danger that you might not have enough of it. Having an all-consuming desire for more and more money when you already have a thousand times more than you will ever be able to spend is a sickness, and Kasia has it bad. I want to win our contest because I think that it would be healthy for her to lose.”
* * *
Agnieshka parked in a secluded area of the tunnels where I could climb naked out of her coffin, have some clothes handed to me from the bus by a drone, and dress. Fortunately, Kasia had packed a class A uniform for me when we had left the hotel. Showing up at a military installation in lederhosen would have been awkward.
Sitting on a drone’s lap in the bus, we drove the last kilometer to the site of The Diamond.
Besides the expected automatic defenses, there was actually a human guard on duty at the entrance, something I’d never seen before in our army. He made me get out, and while he was extremely polite, he made me walk the last three hundred meters to the site, leaving the bus behind.
I suppose he thought that there might have been a bomb in it.
Since I had lost my communicator, he did permit me to be accompanied by a drone, so I could keep in touch with Agnieshka. I took a standard model. It looked more military.
The Diamond was there, more than two kilometers long and half that wide, or it had been, before they had cut it almost in half. The exposed surface was absolutely flat, and except for surface reflections it looked black, which surprised me. I’d expected a diamond to look, well, bright and shiny.
A huge bank of lasers was set up, pointing at the largest face.
As I watched, the lasers flashed, a sharp explosion went off around the whole edge of the stone, and a huge, thin sheet slid off and into a tub of water that was so big that it could only be called a lake. It was quickly pulled out and coiled around the biggest spindle I’ve ever seen. From there, a truck took it somewhere for further processing.
While this was going on, a dozen special machines were extruding a new shaped charge around the edge of The Diamond. When they were through, the lasers flashed, the charge went off, and a new sheet was cut.
Agnieshka told me that they did this every fifty-five seconds. They would be over a year finishing the job. They were hiding the sheets, and the integrated circuits made out of them, all over Human Space. With any luck, The Diamond would be gone before anybody outside the army knew it had ever existed. Just as well. I sure didn’t feel much loyalty to New Kashubia, New Croatia, or anyplace else, for that matter.
The cavern that had been cut to get at The Diamond was a barrel vault almost three kilometers long, nineteen hundred meters wide, and a kilometer high.
“This place has to be a record setter,” I said.
“It is. It’s cut out of the same flawless granite that we built your city out of. New Yugoslavia is a young planet with small tectonic plates. There is a lot of good stone here. Once we’re through with The Diamond, we’ll turn this cavern into some sort of factory. We haven’t decided what we’ll build here yet, but we’ll find something.”
I went over to where The Diamond was resting on the stone floor. Its surface looked rough, black, and burned. I reached up and touched it. It felt surprisingly cool to my hand, colder than metal would have felt. It was obviously a very good conductor of heat.
It was a shame that something so unique was being destroyed, but that is the way of the world. At least this way, it was being put to good use. If the politicians got wind of this thing, they would probably start a war over it that would likely end with somebody dropping a nuke on The Diamond to keep their enemies from having it.
“I’ve seen what I wanted to see. Let’s go home.”
* * *
Back in my tank, in Dream World, I found that I was once more in uniform, instead of my usual around-the-house grubbies. When I asked why, Agnieshka said that I had a visitor waiting in the living room.