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was phony.
There didn't seem to be any limitation to what she could fake up. At one point during intermission when
she was in the women's room, I hit up a conversation with one of the engineers from Soul City that I'd
met when we were getting the power plant installed on Freya, and I swear I couldn't tell him from the
genuine article.
The play wasMan and Superman , and well performed, though I'd seen it once before. Driving back to
the cottage, Agnieshka sleepily rested her head on my shoulder. It was all so real that I couldn't help
being more than a little attracted to her.
Back inside, she got us some champagne and said, "Dessert, boss? You got your choice of Big Boy
fresh strawberry pie or New York cheese cake." Now she was sort of American, but still with red hair
and freckles. Her skirt was much longer, but the top of her dress was about as low at the law allows.
"Make it the cheese cake. Why are you still changing your appearance?"
"Just doing some more calibration, boss. I'm monitoring your blood pressure and pupil diameter with
each of my body and clothing changes, zooming in on what you want in a woman." She came next to me
on the couch, sitting much too close.
"Can't we just be good friends? You know that I've already found the woman I want, and I'm going to
marry her as soon as I can be done with this army business. Can't you understand that I don't want to get
involved with another woman right now?"
"Especially one who's really a computer in a war machine, Mickolai? Your physiological reactions will
tell me what they will tell me, so don't you worry about it."
"Okay, I won't," I said, getting angry. I mean, forcing me to go through a training program was one thing.
Forcing me to have a love affair with a goddamn army tank was quite another! It was not only illegal but
downright immoral on top of it! Suddenly, the cheese cake stopped tasting good. "Hey, wait a minute.
Are you trying to tell me that you have feelings?"
"Me? Of course not! I'm just agoddamn army tank! But I'm programed toact like I've got emotions, so
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you'd betterwatch your step, buster! " She was still an American girl, but now her canine teeth were
about a centimeter longer and she wasn't pretty anymore.
"All I said was . . ."
"I know what you said! I know what you thought, too, asshole! You sure know how to wreck a nice
evening."
"But . . ."
"Go to sleep, Mickolai."
I slept.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE REAL KASIA COMES TO THE RESCUE
"Wake up, Mickolai!" Agnieshka was looking like Kasia, and she was shaking me. She was kneeling at
my side, naked and lovely, her long brown hair falling over her shoulders.
I glanced at the gold-and-diamond wrist watch I'd been wearing the night before. "I still have a half hour
of sleep coming," I said drowsily. I looked at her again. "Agnieshka! I don't like you looking like her,
dammit!"
"No, stupid, itreally is me! " She certainly looked like the woman I loved, but how could I tell? I looked
around. I was still in the cottage, laying on the couch in a crumpled tux. Some kind of residual program?
"How can it really be you, Kasia? I'm still inside a stupid army tank!"
"So am I, Mickolai, and it's not even the same tank. But these tanks are just machines, and you can
make machines do anything you want, if you know the right buttons to push!"
"But how could you know how to do this?"
"How could I rig up a telephone between us when they tried to keep us apart before? I'm the smart one
here, remember?"
"I've never argued with you on that, love. But tell me how you did it."
"I knew that these tanks had to be able to communicate with each other. Nothing else makes sense, if
you'll think about it. It was just a matter of convincing my tank that we'd both be more efficient if we had
a little decent emotional release. Part of the deal I made was that it wouldn't interfere with training time,
and you've already wasted seven minutes. Now get out of that ridiculous outfit!"
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I got, fumbling with the metal studs that the ridiculous dress shirt had in lieu of buttons. "They're watching
us, aren't they?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]