“Damn. Agnieshka, I am still angry with you and everybody else for lying to me, but thinking on it, well, I have to admit that what I thought was happening has been more interesting than knowing that I was trapped underground in a piece of construction machinery for four and a half years.”
“I’m glad that you are being so philosophical about it, Mickolai. I was worried that you would hate me forever.”
“Agnieshka, I couldn’t hate you for long. I’m still pissed off at you, you understand, but I don’t hate you. One thing, though. I absolutely insist that in the very near future, Kasia and I will get out of these tanks for a while so that we can get properly married. I’ll put up with everything else, but not with a phony marriage!”
“Yes, Mickolai.”
“Where is Kasia now?”
“She’s only ten kilometers away. She and her tank, Eva, are our partners on these digs. They’re doing a northwest tunnel while we’re doing a southeast one. We’re both heading northwest, of course.”
“Okay. Do what ever you have to do to get us some leave time in the real world. Dammit, after four and a half years, we deserve at least that!” I said.
“Yes, Mickolai. You do. Now that your education has been completed, I have secured a six-month leave for both of you. It starts in two days, and of course, like I said, you both have quite a bit of back pay coming. It’s really enough to buy you that ranch, if you want it.”
“Maybe we’ll do that, but first, we’re going to see a priest, dammit!”
“Yes, Mickolai.”
“One last thing. Why have you told me all of this? I mean, you took a risk in doing it. I could have gotten so angry that I refused to have anything to do with any of you ever again. It would have been safer for you to keep me believing your damn lies.”
“Well, in the first place, please believe that I really do love you, Mickolai, and it hurts me to have to lie to you. Also, from a military standpoint, it is important for a soldier to know the true situation around him, so that he can accurately evaluate his best course of action.”
“Fine, but we are not really in a military situation here. This is a construction project, and I am not even involved in the engineering of it. There is no war, just one of the biggest con games in history.”
“That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. There are some indications that there is a real war on the horizon, one that we can’t make disappear by faking it.”
“Shut up. Don’t say another word. I’m not going to get involved in a God damned thing, not for my God, not for my country, and sure as Hell not for my God damned Uncle Wlodzimierz! I am not going to do anything for anybody or to anybody except for myself and my only true love, not for at least six months after Kasia and I see that damned priest, and get properly married!”
“Yes, Mickolai.”
CHAPTER THREE
Life Outside of a Tank
Kasia and I didn’t try the sex-in-a-canoe thing that night. We just held each other in Dream World, and talked and swore and talked and made love and talked and cried, sometimes, but in the end, well, she has always been the more practical one. Probably the smarter one, too.
I said, “So the first thing to do, is we go and find a real priest.”
“Soon. But the very first thing we have to do once we get out of these tanks is to clean up and go clothes shopping! Do you realize that we have both been stark naked for four and a half years?”
“Six years, counting the time on New Kashubia. But hey! On you, it looks good!”
“You’re not so bad-looking yourself, stranger, but that’s not the point! God. What would my mother say?”
“She’d probably wonder what had happened to you for all of these years,” I said.
“I’ve already checked on that. It seems that for the past four and a half years, the world thinks that we have been writing to our friends, our parents, and to all our other relatives on a very regular basis. Our tanks saw to it that nobody was worried about us. Everybody back home thinks that we are wonderful war heroes. My kid brother went and saw the movie they made about us more than twenty times!”
“Those dirty, filthy bastards. So now what? When we go home, do we put on phony officer’s uniforms, or something?”
“That’s exactly what the people in public relations want us to do, Mickolai. They want a presence around to let the people know that they are being well protected, but the real Powers That Be want our actual command structures hidden, and in their Combat Control Computers, in case of emergencies. Having you and me out there pretending to be in charge is the compromise they came up with.”
“Damn them! They want us to be targets for enemy snipers, local lunatics, and suicidal maniacs, that’s what they really want! Well, I won’t do it!”
“We will be well protected. And have you thought it out, love? Being famous might be a very nice thing. We’d get the very best service in the restaurants, in the hotels, and in the shops.”
“We’ve already been getting the best service, for eight years, subjectively, in Dream World, and it’s no big thing. What we’d also get is mobbed by every newscaster, social climber, and autograph hunter on thirty planets. Really famous people all need bodyguards. Have you ever thought about why?”
“If it gets to be tiresome or dangerous, we can always crawl back into our tanks. Nobody can bother us in here, without our wanting them to.”
“We won’t have our tanks. We’ll be on leave, remember?” I said.
“Oh, yes we will. You are thinking of what we were told in Dream World, when we thought we were retired. You’d know the rules when you are still on active duty, if you’d bothered to read the regulations. I checked it out. As members of the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces, we are required to have our weapons at hand at all times, in case of emergencies. For us, that means we keep our tanks.”
“You know, that regulation could actually come in handy.”
“You are oh, so right, my handsome hero. Especially when it comes to building us our house. I’ve already taken steps to insure that Agnieshka and Eva will be properly equipped for the job.”
“Properly equipped? What do you mean?”
“You’ll find out. But for now, roll over, and I’ll rub your back.”
* * *
Getting out of a tank after more than four years wasn’t the shock that I’d expected it to be.
Agnieshka said, “Good-bye, for now!”
The coffin drained and slid out the back with me in it. I sat up, took off my helmet, and removed the sanitary fittings. I was in a private garage, of sorts, but a clean, well-appointed one. A polite male attendant took my helmet, helped me to clean up, and showed me to the room where military clothing of my size was kept.
On the way, I stopped and looked at myself, naked, in a mirror. Agnieshka hadn’t done a bad job on me at all. Oh, I was bald, and the complete lack of sunlight had made my skin a sickly white, but I looked fit and well muscled, and I moved with a certain grace that hadn’t been there before. All told, I was a far cry from the starving immigrant who had been inducted so many years ago.
All the uniforms I was shown had a general’s insignia on them, and I decided not to fight it, for now anyway. There were five rows of campaign ribbons on the class A uniforms, and almost two dozen medals hanging on the dress outfits. I had no idea what they were supposed to be for, but I guessed that they were a part of the disguise, and I didn’t question my right to wear them.
The attendant told me that I was being issued a full set of uniforms, and I figured, what the heck, I might as well get it over with. Besides six sets of tailored, supercamouflaged Squid Skins, two of which were armored, I picked up four sets each of work fatigues, garrison uniforms, and class A Uniforms, in both summer and winter varieties. Then there were two sets each of formal dinner uniforms, dress uniforms, which came with a fancy ceremonial dagger, and full dress uniforms, which had an inordinate amount of real gold embroidery, knee-high boots, and a stupidly ornate sword. I soon had nine pairs of various footgear, lots of socks, shirts, ties, belts, and underwear, plus eight increasingly garish hats, a fatigue jacket, a dress overcoat, and a full-dress cape.