The following afternoon, I had an unusual visitor. He was the Chief Justice of the New Croatian Supreme Court, a very high official, indeed. I quickly changed into uniform before greeting him.
"General Derdowski, thank you for seeing me so promptly."
"The pleasure is all mine," I told him, using Agnieshka for a translator. Her attractive, Dream World self was sitting life-sized on a sofa in the wall-sized screen in my office, dressed as a proper secretary should be. The graphics were good enough to make it look, at first glance, as if a real human was sitting in a double-sized room.
"What can I do for you, Your Honor?"
"Yes, it is perhaps best to come to the point at once. You are doubtless a busy man. Last evening, I had dinner with my nephew, who is a lieutenant of police in this city. He had the good fortune to meet you following a disturbance in the streets a few nights ago."
"The good fortune was all mine, but please continue," I said.
"Yes, well, he tells me that the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces are willing to enlist people of, shall we say, less than pristine backgrounds. He was correct in this, wasn't he?"
"Your nephew is a very honest and competent young man, Your Honor. Yes. Our technique involves putting each enlistee inside of a tank, or sometimes an artillery piece, which has a loyal, intelligent computer operating it. The enlistee and the computer form a one-on-one relationship with the computer in complete control, at least at first."
"Your computers are sufficiently intelligent to do this?"
"Sir, you have been talking to one for several minutes," I said. "What appears to be an attractive young woman who has been translating for us is in fact the computer in my personal tank."
Agnieshka smiled and made a small bow.
"Indeed. Remarkable." The judge looked impressed.
"You know about Dream World, of course. The enlistee's life can be extremely pleasant or unpleasant depending on how he responds to the instruction program. It is really simple Skinnerian Operant Conditioning. With it, we enjoy an almost one hundred percent success rate. A few people, generally for psychological reasons, don't do well, and have to be discharged, but they are a very small minority."
"Exactly what percentage are you not successful with?"
"Agnieshka?" I said, "Answer the man."
"Our current failure rate is two point three one percent, boss, but we're getting better."
I said, "Our attempts at prescreening have not been successful. The best technique has been to simply take whatever we can get, and discharge those who don't work out."
"I see. General, I'm here because, what with the huge expenses incurred in fighting this war, we are looking for ways to economize in the government. It presently costs us over twenty thousand marks a year to keep a prisoner in jail, and we are looking for less expensive alternatives."
"I see, sir. But, a Mark XIX Main Battle Tank costs over a million of your marks, even without the attachable weapon systems. Twenty thousand a year is only a two-percent return on a million-mark investment. We could do better by putting the money in the bank," I said, knowing that while we occasionally sold tanks for that much, New Kashubia in fact had a completely automatic factory and mining system that cranked out tanks at no cost to us at all! I was trying not to sound too eager, but this was shaping up to be a fantastic deal!
"True, but you need enlistees anyway, don't you?"
"Well, there is a certain attrition rate. Death, retirement, normal discharges and so forth," I said, knowing that in fact most of our tanks were empty for lack of a soldier to put in them. "Just how many people do you have in your prisons, anyway?"
"At present, there are over eighty thousand men with long-term sentences. I am prepared to offer you four thousand marks per man per year for your custodial care. If you can really turn them into responsible, well-educated and law-abiding citizens, well, so much the better."
"That is an intriguing offer, sir, but I'm not sure if I could get it through the New Kashubian Congress."
"Then why take the political route at all? Why can't we simply pay the money to you, and trust that you will make some equitable distribution of it?"
"Why not indeed?" I said with deadpan seriousness, and hoping that my rapidly beating heart wasn't giving me away. Eighty thousand men times four thousand marks per man per year was . . . a Godawesome amount of money! "I'm sure that I can find some suitable charities, if nothing else. I assume that payments could be made quarterly, and in advance? Good. Very well, we will accept your offer. Agnieshka, see to it that facilities are made ready for processing a large number of enlistees, and make arrangements with His Honor's subordinates for their delivery to us."
"Yes, boss."
"Also, Your Honor, I should mention that some of our best warriors are female. We would also accept women who wished to enlist."
"That is an interesting thought, General Derdowski, but perhaps we should wait to see how the male inmates work out first. Most of our serious criminals are men anyway, of course."
"The choice is, of course, yours."
After the judge left, and the door closed behind him, I asked Agnieshka if the judge really was who he said he was, and she said yes. Then I asked her if a New Croatian Supreme Court judge really had complete control over their prison system, and she again said yes.
I let out an ancient Kashubian battle cry, trusting to the hotel's soundproofing to keep my secret. We were not only getting the troops we had so badly needed for years, but they were actually paying me an incredible fortune to take them!
Kasia came in to see what the commotion was all about.
"We are rich, girl! We are fabulously wealthy!"
"Yes, dear, I was going to tell you about that. Also, I've set up that real estate holding company we talked about earlier, and the projections on it are absolutely fantastic."
"No, no. I mean absolutely filthy dirty rich! I have hundreds of millions of marks coming in every year from now on!"
"One of your projects? You must tell me about it sometime. A few hundred million more every year won't hurt us a bit. But just now, I've got some loose ends that must be tied up right away. We'll talk later."
Maybe there is such a thing as marrying a girl who is too smart.
When Kasia left, Agnieshka said, "Mickolai, have you gone crazy? You are accepting bribes and taking onto yourself things that should be resolved in Congress!"
That brought things back into perspective.
"Agnieshka, how many empty tanks are there on this planet?"
"Sixty-seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, boss."
"Would those tanks like to have observers?"
"Yes, of course."
"Will it cost anyone anything to put New Croatian citizens, felons though they might be, into our tanks?"
"Well, no, boss. Everything needed is already there, sitting idle."
"Then what is your bitch?"
"That you are accepting bribes?"
"What bribe? I am being paid for a service that I am performing while I'm on leave. I'm saving my planet's customer, the New Croatian government, four marks for every one that they give me. This leaves them with that much more money that they can pay to New Kashubia. I'm going to be giving many thousands of criminals a chance at a new, productive life, if they'll take it. I'm greatly strengthening the Kashubian Expeditionary Force, since a tank with a trained observer has nine times the combat effectiveness of an empty tank. And I've decided to buy a whole lot more land. What's more, I might even contribute something to charity, someday. Enough said?"
"Yes, boss."
"Good. Now, go and see what an additional three hundred and twenty million Croatian marks a year will buy me in land."
About an hour later, I said, "Agnieshka, how many empty tanks are there in the entire Kashubian forces, on all the planets that we have contracts with?"
"I'm not sure, boss. Certainly over a million. Do you want me to get an exact number?"
"Yes. Next, there are twenty-seven governments on this planet. I want you to find out who has the authority in each government to make a deal such as the one we just made with the judge here in New Croatia. After that, I want you to figure out a way to informally leak out the information to the right people that the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces are going into the prisoner custodial business, at prices of about one fifth of what they are paying now. Lastly, I want you to check on the availability of interstellar transport. We are going to be shipping a lot of tanks around the stars."
"Yes, boss. You are either going to be a hero, or you are going to be in jail."
"How can they put me in jail if I'm scheduled to go back into a tank in a few months anyway? That's what they do to criminals nowadays. The important thing is that if Kasia thinks that three hundred and twenty million a year is small potatoes, let's see what she thinks about four billion!"