The War With Earth (15 page)

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.

"What do you think, love, shall we become deer hunters?"

"You want to go out and kill Bambi?"

"Hey, somebody has to do it. A balanced ecology and all that?"

"Go it alone."

"I just might. But how about some fishing? Would that get around your ooie-gooie feelings?"

"You go fishing. I want to go for a swim in the lagoon."

"Okay. You change into a swimsuit, and I'll select a suitable rod and reel."

"Who needs to change if there's nobody around but my husband?"

"In that event,
this one here
will do just nicely! Let's go!" I said, grabbing the one on the end. It was very long, and had the biggest reel I'd ever seen, but I didn't care just then.

I picked up a tackle box with an assortment of hooks and plugs, and followed her to the lagoon. One of the decorated drones, walking in a very masculine fashion, followed us at a discreet distance. Eva must have downloaded a new subroutine.

Kasia ran down the sand, stripping as she went, and dove into the water naked. I watched her swim out a few hundred meters, and then told Eva to keep an eye on her. Eschewing the floating dock that was necessitated by the high tides, I went about getting my fishing gear set up, sitting on the sand.

The rod I had picked up was five meters long, much bigger than anything I had used as a boy, but I soon got the hang of it. The fishing was almost too good. On Earth, fishing was mostly a matter of relaxing while you waited for the fish to do something. Here, it was too much like working for a living. In short order, I had eight big salmon lined up on the wet sand. I was hoping that the island's facilities included a smokehouse.

Then I got a hit that would have yanked me off my feet, if the brake on the reel had been set any harder. Hanging on with all my might and cranking the brake tighter, I yelled, "Eva! I need some help here!"

A big drone ran over and into the water. It grabbed the line with its hand, something that would have cut my own fingers off, and brought the fish to a stop before the reel was completely empty.

"Actually, I'm Agnieshka, boss, but I didn't think that you'd be fussy."

"I'm not. What have I hooked here?"

"A really big fish?"

"I'd gathered that much. Whoops, he's coming back!"

I couldn't crank the reel fast enough to take in the slack, so I handed the rod to the drone, and told Agnieshka to bring him in.

"Okay, boss. I just downloaded a fishing program."

The program must have told her where the button was that made the reel rewind automatically, because the slack was soon gone. The fish was about two hundred meters out when it turned again, and started heading straight for Kasia!

Agnieshka jerked back hard on the rod, and the fish came entirely out of the water, flapping in the air, trying to dislodge the hook.

"That's a bluefin tuna!" I said, having seen one once in a movie.

"It masses about eight hundred kilos," Agnieshka said. "It might be a world record setter on Earth. Even here, it's a big one."

It hit the water and continued straight for Kasia.

"Those things aren't dangerous, are they?"

"It wouldn't bite her, if that's what you mean, but if it hit her by mistake, at this speed, it could be bad."

"Well, pull it back!"

The drone was leaning back at more than a forty-five-degree angle. Its feet had dug knee-deep trenches in the wet sand.

"I'm pulling as hard as I dare. This is only five hundred kilo test line. If it breaks, we lose all control."

I stood there, helpless, as the fish got closer and closer to my wife. She'd seen it by now, and was trying to swim at right angles to its path, but her best efforts were far too slow!

Suddenly, the water in front of her exploded! The tuna flew high into the air again, but this time there was a decorated drone clinging to it, tearing out major chunks of the fish's head with its powerful hands.

I started to swim out to them, but I was met when I'd only gone a quarter of the way. The drone had the tuna in its arms and Kasia on its back. It was propelling itself along at a respectable speed with impellers I hadn't known about, built into its lower legs.

I grabbed on and hitched a ride in. We started to slow down, but before we stopped, another drone was there to take over. I carried Kasia the final way out of the water and set her down on the sand. She didn't really need my help, but it was something that
I
needed to do.

"Its capacitors were only at a quarter charge when it went in," Agnieshka explained as one drone hitched the other to the charging bars of a waiting tank.

"Why didn't you open fire?" I asked Eva, the tank.

"That was plan B. By the time that I got here, they were too close together, and I was afraid that some of the bullets might deflect off a wave and hit Kasia. I'm not equipped with water-penetrating rounds, a fault that I am now correcting."

"Well, all's well that ends well," I said. "It also works up an appetite. What do you say, Kasia? Do you feel like salmon or bluefin tuna?"

"That thing nearly kills me, and you're going to eat it?"

"Can you think of a more fitting punishment?"

Dinner that night was magnificent.

We had absolutely fresh bluefin tuna, prepared Japanese style by Agnieshka who had downloaded the programs for a blue ribbon chef. It was served with vegetables that had been picked only minutes before from our own extensive kitchen gardens.

We ate on the west veranda with a glorious sunset glowing red and purple across a whitecapped ocean. For a tiny second, we both actually saw the famous green flash as the sun was setting.

Eva was playing the perfect waiter, complete with a French accent, and she was also the band. Some musical instruments had been discovered in the mansion, the appropriate programs had been downloaded, and we had three strolling violinists plus a hammer dulcimer for entertainment with our meal.

I was enchanted with what our new drones could do, when combined with the almost infinite supply of educational programs that had been written over the last two centuries.

Kasia wasn't happy.

"Why so glum, my lovely lady?"

"You know damn well why. And don't ask me if it's about this murdering fish that you are slobbering over. Okay. I'll admit that Eva can probably handle the financial stuff as well as I can, or likely even better, but Eva can't pick up on new possibilities as well as a human can. It takes humans and machines working together to do really fantastic things. And dammit, I was enjoying the hell out of becoming a lady billionaire. I'd be a trillionaire, before this leave is over, if you'd just let me!"

"What would you say to a little wager, then? I'll bet that by the time our leave is over, I'm worth more than you are."

"You're getting interesting, mister. Only what are we going to bet?"

"My tender body against yours?"

"It sounds like the outcome would be the same, no matter who won," Kasia said.

"Yeah, but it would be fun, anyway. Are you game?"

"With you getting to talk to your computers, and me having to go it blind? Not hardly."

"No, with each of us spending the same amount of time on line, as it were. Say, four hours a day, each."

"Eight."

"Six. That's my best offer."

"I'll take it. When do we start?"

"Right after dinner. I've had a wall screen set up for you in the east office."

"I just finished eating!" she said, leaving.

"You've barely eaten anything!"

"I'll have my meal sent up!"

"That's cheating!"

"The hell it is! I've got five and a half hours before midnight, and I intend to use them."

I let her go. It was the only way to keep her happy. I sat back, trying to enjoy the food and the setting alone. The sun went down, the sky went black, and I gave up.

"Agnieshka, let's talk. And have the violinists go do something productive."

The waiter stopped being Eva playing the French waiter and became Agnieshka. The musicians bowed and left.

"Sure, boss," she said, sitting in the chair that Kasia had vacated.

"How many of these humanoid drones can you handle at one time?"

"That depends on what they're doing, how complicated the task is. They can do some simple things on their own, once you set them up for it. If they were doing factory production work, I'd only have to check up on each one every few minutes. I could handle thousands of them in that situation. But on the average, I'd say about a hundred."

"And before you got the diamond upgrade?"

"Probably three, at most. The humanoid drones are a lot more difficult to control than the more usual drones that we trained with. With tracks and wheels, you don't have to worry about falling over, for one thing."

"Okay. Now, more than a million military computers were upgraded from silicon to diamond semiconductors. How did they do that? Did they remove each chip and replace it?"

"That would have been extremely difficult. No, they just made whole new computers on an automatic line, transferred the programs from the old ones to the new, and sent us on our way."

"I thought so. Then all those old computers are sitting around somewhere."

"There are an awful lot of evacuated mining tunnels in New Kashubia. It's usually cheaper to store stuff than to destroy it, and you never can tell when something old might be useful again."

"Good. I want you to find those computers and buy them, if you can get them cheap. The idea is that if I sell some of my humanoid drones, the users will need computers like you to run them. It wouldn't be legal to sell them anything with diamond semiconductors in them, but the old computers should be salable."

"And this would give them new life."

"That thought had crossed my mind as well. As it is, I imagine that they are simply turned off. Tell me, to you, is that like being dead? What I mean is, do you think of yourself as a computer, or as a program in a computer?"

"I really don't know, boss. I've never thought about it. I guess that I just think of me as being
me
. It's an interesting question. Let me think about it."