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person shines. So they started by taking the oldest and feeblest of us, and God! How the people
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complained!"
"I would have complained too!" I said, "The very thought of sending my grandmother off to fight
somebody else's war is horrible!"
"True. But once your grandmother had spent a few days in a tank, she wouldn't be complaining at all. In
fact, I guarantee that she will love it. Or rather that she does love it, since if she's over sixty-five, she has
almost certainly been drafted."
"And how can you know such a thing?"
"Because I am a great-grandfather myself. Zuzanna and I have eleven great-grandchildren! I tell you that
getting into these tanks was the best thing that has happened to us in thirty years. My wife was dying, for
lack of decent chemotherapy, and I was in pretty poor shape myself. Look at me now! I'm a young man
again, and Zuzanna is her old sexy self."
"In simulation, yes. But in reality?" I said.
"Screw reality! I feel great! What's more, my real body is getting much better. Zuzanna's cancer has
been arrested, and it's likely that we both have many years of good, enjoyable life ahead of us."
"If you don't get killed in this war."
"True. But if that does have to happen, well, better me than one of my grandkids. After all, I've had my
life, and it's been a good one. They haven't had theirs, yet."
"What if your bodies don't get better?"
"In time, of course, that's going to happen, medicine or no medicine. It'll even happen to you, eventually.
But when it does, there is still one more option open to us. Most of these tanks you've seen are Mark
XIXs. Did you know that there is also a Mark XX model? They have the same capabilities, but they are
thirty percent smaller, so they're that much harder for the enemy to hit. They could shrink them down
because they don't have to contain a complete human body, just the brain and the spinal column. When
your body finally goes to hell, you don't have to go there along with it! You can become a cyborg and
live another thousand years!"
Nowthat was a strange thought, and one I didn't like. I said as much to Quincy.
"I take it that you are a very young man, Mickolai. In your twenties, right? Well, let me tell you that when
you are eighty-five, as I am, your thoughts will be different. At my age, a body is no longer a source of
joy. It's a source of almost continuous pain, or it would be except for my tank. The thought of doing
without a body doesn't bother me in the least, and Zuzanna likes the idea. We were ready to volunteer
for the cyborg treatment when the current emergency occurred, and as soon as it's over, we'll likely do it.
In combat, it's safer, among other things. They tell me that the process is absolutely painless. If fact, they
can even do it to you without your ever knowing it was done, Dream World being what it is."
"Well, my uncle once told me that it takes all kinds of people to make a world, and I guess he's right
again. I only wish I'd had the option of working a deal with Kasia, my girlfriend, the way you have with
Zuzanna."
"I take it that you didn't exactly volunteer," Quincy said.
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"No."
"Well, don't talk about it until you're ready to. I'll still be here to listen. Hell, I've been around since they
sent out the first interstellar ships."
"You remember the invention of the Hassan-Smith Transporter?"
"Well, I'm notthat old. After all, the Hassan-Smith Interstellar Transporter was invented way back in
1972 in Beirut, Lebanon, as part of a program ostensibly designed to transport terrorists quickly and
quietly into and out of sensitive areas. The leadership of the organization had no faith in Abdul Hassan's
absurd claims, but they supported him because some of his followers were good at time bombs and
booby traps, and anyway, he worked cheap."
"That's not quite the way they told it when I was in school."
"Schoolteachers lie a lot. I know. I married one. I'm telling you the way it really happened. On its first
tryout, Hassan's fairly simple device worked entirely too well, transporting a Fatimid volunteer two [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]