“And the topless angels with the golden wings?”
“They represent the Joy of Heaven in having you there.”
“And that painting on the ceiling?”
“Again, it says that you are not really dead, that your God is welcoming you as you have welcomed so many of your guests.”
“Hoy!” It was all that I could say. I sat down at the table, and drew myself a beer. Kasia got up off the floor and did the same.
“Well, here’s to death!” She laughed, and downed it.
“To death,” I said, and followed suit. “But dammit, I’m not dead yet! Agnieshka, I know that you ladies meant well, but until I am finally not only merely dead, but really quite sincerely dead, I want this room locked up!”
“Yes sir.”
When we got back to the main floor, I saw one of our drones sweeping the floor. It was wearing a long, brown monk’s robe. I looked at this, shook my head, and continued on my way.
When we were walking down the steps of the western facade, Agnieshka stopped and said, “Boss, all leaves have been canceled. You and Kasia have been called up for immediate duty. The war has started.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
How I Started the War
I looked out over my land, my cathedral, and my magnificent city. The grass had only been planted the day before, and the tall sprinklers were putting out a fine mist to keep the seeds moist without disturbing them much. But if I squinted and imagined a bit, I could almost make the wet sand look green.
“So soon,” I said. “It happened so soon. Somebody is really going to pay a heavy price for making me leave this place so soon.”
I stripped in front of the church, left my clothes lying on the ground, and got into Agnieshka’s coffin. Kasia said that she would wait for Eva to get there, a matter of a few minutes. I told her to get into the bus, and we’d meet Eva half way, and for a change, she didn’t give me any argument.
As soon as I was hooked up and in Dream World, I said, “Agnieshka, who are we fighting?”
“Earth.”
“Earth? General Sobieski hinted that there might be some interstellar enemy. Aliens, of some sort.”
“I think that is, or was, what he was worried about. There are certain astronomical anomalies that look like they might be ships of some kind coming toward us, but we can’t be sure. If they are like the probes that human civilization has been sending out for hundreds of years, they are using sodium and fluorine rockets instead of the oxygen and hydrogen ones that we use. Or, they might be some natural phenomenon that we don’t understand. I think that this war with Earth might be as big a surprise to the general as it is to us.”
“Damn. So tell me what else you know.”
“Boss, at this point, you know everything about the war that I do.”
“Hoy! Okay, then I’d better be on my toes when more information comes in. Put me to sleep, now. Wake me when Kasia gets into Eva. She’ll need me.”
* * *
On our way to our assigned arming station, I asked Agnieshka about my squad, the “colonels” that I trained with.
“There’s a problem there, boss. All of them have the rank of tanker first class, and as such have a right to lead their own squads. With all the new recruits that you arranged for the army to have, there is a serious need for trained squad leaders. Maria and Conan have elected to stay with you, but Mirko and Lloyd have decided to lead their own squads, since they say that the odds are way against you ever becoming a real general, which is the only thing that could get them promoted to colonel. That leaves you two people short of the standard squad.”
“Damn. Without a full staff of colonels, I’ll never get that promotion, no matter what happens. I can’t say that I blame Mirko and Lloyd, though. They are probably right. What about Zuzanna and Quincy? They were only a week shy of graduating from the military school when their general died. I wonder, would they be interested in joining my squad? That way, if an opening for another general actually came along, I would be in a position to fill it.”
“I’ll ask them, boss.”
“Better still, can you put me in touch with them? I’d like to invite them myself.”
“I can’t do it in Dream World, boss. The communication channels are jammed.”
“I thought that our comm system had the capacity to keep everybody on the planet in Dream World.”
“It will, boss, but it’s not finished yet.”
“Then get a message to them somehow, and tell them why I couldn’t deliver it personally.”
“Yes, sir.”
I could connect with Kasia by laser, since she and Eva were directly behind us on the Loway. She was working over her stocks, but her heart wasn’t in it. Soon we were in the sack together, again. We needed it.
Afterward, she said, “Well, I guess the contest is over. Who won?”
“Agnieshka? Eva? Would you two get together and figure out the net worth of each of us?”
Our tanks were a surprisingly long time at it before Agnieshka said, “You won, boss, by a factor of more than five.”
“Five,” Kasia said, crushed. “You beat me by that much and you never even worked hard at it.”
“It’s like I kept on telling you, love. Keep your thoughts on the big picture, and delegate everything else. If you try to micromanage anything more complicated than your bank account, you are bound to fail.”
“I didn’t fail! I’m still the richest woman in the country!”
“And the smartest and the most beautiful. And the one I love. And now I’m going to collect on your gambling debt.”
“Didn’t we just do that?”
“Yeah. And we’re about to do it again. Come here, woman!”
“Yes, master.”
* * *
Somewhat later, Agnieshka said that Quincy and Zuzanna would be honored to join our outfit, since, among other things, it let them stay together, and three couples would make a nice group. But they had expressed considerable curiosity as to why a general officer was leading a mere squad.
I told her to tell them the whole story, and not to leave out any of the embarrassing parts. Within the squad, there shouldn’t be any secrets.
A few minutes after that, I suddenly found myself in the living room, in a class A uniform. General Sobieski was just walking in. Being a real general apparently lets you pull rank when it comes to comm channels.
“Mickolai, some people are going to claim that this war is all your fault. It isn’t, but they will say so. Because of that, I thought it best to explain some things to you directly.”
“Yes, sir. I never started a war before. What did I do?”
“You were generous, decent, and you have humanitarian instincts, that’s what. It was those automatic medical centers that you sent all over Human Space. And yes, I knew what you were doing, and yes, I approved of it. But the whole story is that when The Diamond was discovered, and we realized what semiconductors made from it would mean to all of our military computers, the commanders of the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces ordered that all of the military computers under their command would be equipped with diamond semiconductors as soon as possible. The automatic medical centers were officially listed as military equipment, and therefore army property, even though nobody knew that they existed. But, following orders, the automatic factories upgraded all military computers, including the medical centers. Are you following me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, you sent one of them to New Nigeria. That planet is so rich with Earth-compatible life forms that it was possible for most of the population to revert to a hunting-gathering life style. It’s something that most human beings would do, given the opportunity. Historically, we humans spent millions of years as hunter-gatherers, and that life style became the natural thing for us to do. We got very good at surviving that way, and we liked it a lot. Even today, given the chance, a man will go hunting, and a woman will go shopping, an activity that has a lot in common with gathering.”
“I’ve noticed that, sir. But just how did I start this war?”
“The hunter-gatherer life style does not naturally lend itself to higher education. New Nigeria has very few technically trained people. Because of this, most of their communication centers and so on are maintained by foreign technicians, from Earth, as luck would have it. When they got your fabulous gift, they naturally turned over the maintenance of it to their foreign technicians. And those boys, being naturally curious, got to trying to figure out how it was that the new computers they had been assigned to repair were thirty times faster than anything they had ever heard of before. It wasn’t too long before they deduced that it was because of the new diamond semiconductors. Without the permission of the New Nigerians, major chunks of the automatic medical center were shipped back to Earth.”