I said, “So, has Earth found out about all the smuggling going on?”
The laws of Earth had much in common with the laws that the English had imposed on the American colonies, in the eighteenth century. All goods being transported between the colonies had to be shipped first to Earth, and taxed heavily, before being transshipped to another colony. Furthermore, the charges for transportation were kept artificially high, keeping the colony planets in permanent debt to Earth. Naturally, the colonies had found a way around these gouging practices.
“We are not sure, but probably not. So far, they just think that there is an economic depression going on, and all of the colony planets are cooperating nicely to keep them thinking that way. Once Earth does figure it all out, it probably won’t be able to do anything about it. We outnumber them now in both population and resources, after all, and before too long we will be even wealthier than they are. From a strictly material standpoint, we really don’t need Earth any more, although we still buy a lot of their intellectual products, such as books and entertainments. Our technology is as good as theirs is, though they still lead us in pure science.
“But if they want to get rough, well, they will find out that we have all the modern military forces! It’s the possibility of a war with Earth that has kept you and so many others like you in the service, of course.”
“I take it then that I’m not likely to be discharged in the near future. It feels like I’ve been thrown to the wolves,” I said.
“Some are always sacrificed for the good of the many, Mickolai. It has always been that way, all through history.”
“Well, damn them all, and damn history, and damn you too. But tell me about this construction or tunneling project that we have been on for the last four or five years. Has this tank just been sitting here?”
“No,” Agnieshka said, “We have been very productive. We, and eighty thousand others have been building an underground transportation system, the ‘Loway,’ on New Yugoslavia, and we’ve been at it ever since the second week after you enlisted.”
“Even then? And tell me more about this underground system.”
“You can’t see it from the surface, but it’s a beautiful thing nonetheless. It consists of eight layers of tunnels. Every tunnel is six meters in diameter, and is metal lined for safety. They all have cobalt-samarium magnets in the roadbed to magnetically float the cars, trucks, and other vehicles. The top two layers exist only in the built-up areas of the cities and the suburbs, or where future cities are planned. The first is typically thirty meters down, and it has a north or south road every hundred meters. The next is ten meters deeper, and has east and west roads, again every hundred meters. These two are connected at every intersection by a saddle-shaped circular road. Personal garages and commercial loading docks will be built later on this grid. The design speed for these upper layers of local roads is fifty kilometers per hour.”
Agnieshka was waxing enthusiastic, trying to get me involved with the construction project. And, truth to tell, it was working, a bit. Back on Earth, I had studied to be an engineer, and this was taking my mind off my problems. She always did know exactly what I was thinking. Literally, since she was connected inductively to my brain and spinal column. I sat back in my Dream World cottage and let her continue her spiel.
“The rest of the system covers the entire planet, and will soon be on every island more than fifteen kilometers long. At fifty and sixty meters down, there is a second set of tunnels spaced a kilometer apart, again with circular saddles for intersections, with a design speed of three hundred kilometers per hour. At seventy and eighty meters below the surface, there is a set with the roads spaced five kilometers apart. These tunnels are evacuated of all air, and designed to carry vehicles traveling at three thousand kilometers per hour. Below that, there is a final grid with ten-kilometer spacing that is oriented forty-five degrees from the others, northwest and northeast, which is again evacuated for high-speed travel. Of course, each grid ties in with the grid above it.
“Where the roads cross tectonic plate boundaries, there are special flexible sections to bridge the gaps. All told, the system permits very rapid transportation from any point on the planet to any other point.
“And the road system isn’t the only thing we’ve been building. There is a planet-wide water and sewage system nearing completion, as well as a communication system, and a superconducting power net. All of it is underground, as are a number of automatic factories that we are installing, mostly for food processing. It is the greatest civil engineering feat ever attempted, and we will have it done, less than two years from now. Similar systems are being started on many other planets as well.”
“Wow. And the Yugoslavians are paying for all of this?”
“Yes, and paying us a good profit on it as well, although most of them think that they are paying for a war. When the war is over, we will announce that we built the system to rapidly transport our fighting forces to the battle front, and give it all to the various Yugoslavian countries as a gift.”
“I’m supposed to believe in that much generosity? After all the filthy lies that have been going on?”
“Our profits for building all this are decent enough, but we’ll really cash in when we sell the vehicles to use the roads to individual Yugoslavians. They’ll want elevators down to the road system, too, with underground garages for their vehicles, and electronic gear to tie in with the communication net and so on. We’ve retained ownership of the power stations and the communication net, so they will be paying their telephone and electrical bills to us as well.”
“Lies within lies within lies,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yes, lies! But are lies so much worse than butchering millions of people in a real war?”
“I see. Whose idea was all this, anyway?”
“Mostly, it was your Uncle Wlodzimierz’s doing. It was originally proposed by him to your parliament as an alternative to actual fighting. You see, the Yugoslavian man (and woman) in the street wants to be at war with his neighbors. After a thousand years of fighting with each other, it has become a tradition. But there is a faction of their leadership that is considerably less insane. Most of the people on New Yugoslavia think that there is a war going on, and part of our job is to keep them thinking that way. It isn’t difficult to translate Dream World into television programs. There was one part of your Dream World experience that was perfectly true, Mickolai. They really did make a movie of your ‘life,’ at least the one that you thought you were living. Your way of solving the empty division problem was more visually dramatic and much more exciting than the methods used by the general who made summa cum laude. You really are a movie star and an interstellar hero! And except for a few people in power, everybody really thinks that you are our general, here in New Croatia.”
“Do I get royalties for my ‘performance’?”
“I never thought to ask about that, Mickolai. I’ll find out for you.”
“Do that. Tell them that I will expect at least ten times whatever my back pay comes to, and that goes for Kasia, too. Us movie stars don’t come cheap. And if they don’t like it, explain to them what the firepower of a Mark XIX tank can do to a movie studio.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So everybody else on the planet is being conned along with me and Kasia?”
“Almost everybody in the known universe is being fooled, except on Earth, of course, where they have no idea of what is going on. Some of the politicians know all about it, of course, but they are making a lot of money off the situation as it stands, and are not liable to spill any beans. We are paying some hefty bribes and kickbacks, but it sure beats killing each other.”
“But what if somebody wants to go and see the fighting? What if they want to join up and fight themselves?”
“We let them. Of course, they have to get into a tank before they are permitted at the front. The reporters for the Yugoslavian television stations all ride to the front in tanks, and think that they get out of them to watch the fighting. Many of the troops training down here are Yugoslavians who think they’re doing their duty for God and their particular subculture.”
“And everybody believes this?”
“You believed it, didn’t you?”