"Yet it is well liked by many intellectuals," Bronki said.
"Then that is its apparent purpose. To fulfill the aggressive fantasies of intellectual armchair soldiers. Treated as such, it might have merit. As a description of military life, it is fraudulent."
This left a lull in the conversation that was soon filled by everyone having another bite to eat, with suitable verbal accompaniment by the party snack.
"I notice that the grass is recovering nicely, much faster than I thought it would," Sava said.
Kren said, "Besides providing all of the party snacks, I have also hauled in over a dozen juvenals from points over a dozen miles from here, and released them around the house. The program seems to be working."
"Then I think that we can cease worrying about intervention by the authorities," Zoda said. "Now all we have to worry about is Sava's book."
"We'll start on that in the morning," Bronki said. "We work very well together as a team, much more productively than we do as individuals. Perhaps we should consider some sort of a partnership."
"I like that idea," Zoda said. "It's been too long since I've seen my name on anything."
"Then see what you can do about getting yourself a suitable book contract, and we'll work on it next summer. I'll have to go back to the university in a few weeks, and there are some course outlines I have to do, besides getting Sava's book back on track, but I'll be free all next summer."
"It's settled, then. We're a three-way partnership," Sava said.
They all ate to that, tapping their meat together over their snack in the time honored fashion.
The next day, while the others worked at their computers, Kren decided to give up on mathematics, and to start on the sciences. Things progressed well for a while, but he soon found that his progress was slowed by his deficiencies in math. Grumbling, he went hunting the day after.
He found that if he tied six large juvenals by the neck and connected all of the ropes to a central knot, he could get them home without too much difficulty. Since they all tended to run in random directions, they averaged each other out, and holding on to the knot, he could control them, and keep them moving in the desired direction.
If they had all pulled together in the same direction at the same time, he might have been in trouble, but they weren't smart enough to do that.
Five of them were released alive near the house to improve the grass, and the last became a party snack.
After two more weeks, Sava's book was half completed, and the rest of it was completely outlined. After a last, rollicking party, the two old academics packed up Zoda's computer, slung it over their shoulders, and, after many good-byes, went bouncing home.
Once they were gone, Bronki sat at the stool in front of her computer, working on her course outlines.
Kren came quietly into her study and thrust his spear into the flesh under her leg bones, just behind the knees. This cut most of the tendons to her lower legs, crippling her.
She screamed in pain, and fell to the floor.
"Why did you do this to me?" she yelled.
"To immobilize you, and thus make you easier to eat," Kren said.
"Are you crazy? Why would you want to eat an old body like this one when there are plenty of tender young ones around?"
"Because I am not interested in eating your body. I am interested in eating your brain."
"That, too, is madness! My brain is at least three times as big as yours is. If you ate it, you would not be providing yourself with my brain, you would be providing me with your body, which I could certainly use at this point! I think you've crippled me for life," she said, angrily.
"That would happen only if I ate all of your brain, which I do not intend to do. I want your mathematical abilities, and your knowledge of the computer arts."
"Your slow progress in math bothered you that much? I knew that I should have given you some tutoring! Anyway, do you know how to do that?"
"Certainly," Kren said. "One of my earlier meals was a medic who was very knowledgeable in anatomy."
"So you've done this before?"
"Five times. This really was the body of a mining slave, but what I didn't tell you was that I was that slave."
"That's quite a bit of personal advancement! Would you like to tell me the whole story?" Bronki asked, still lying on the floor.
Kren did so, simply because he enjoyed talking to Bronki, and there was no rush. He told his life's story completely and accurately, with none of the self-aggrandizement or face-saving lies that a human criminal would have used. Shame has no place in the Mitchegai character.
Hours later, when he had finished, Bronki said, "Okay, I suppose that if I had been in your position, I might well have done the same thing that you did, at each step of the way. Certainly, I can't hate you for it, except that in one way it certainly galls me! Here I am, one of the most intelligent professors at the university, and now I find that I was stupid enough to invite a vampire into my own home! I hope that nobody ever finds out about this. I'd be a laughingstock!"
"A vampire?"
"Yes, of course, that's what you are, you know. Did you think that you were the first person to come up with this method of self-improvement?"
"I didn't know," Kren said.
"There are so many things that you are ignorant of. You really must get a proper, university education, you know. I'll do what I can to help you accomplish that."
"I don't see how. You won't be alive."
"Of course I will," Bronki said. "There's no need for me to die, and at this point, I need a new body in any event. I would have done it in a year or two, anyway, even if you hadn't crippled this one. We'll just agree on exactly what you'll take for yourself, and feed the rest to a recently metamorphosed adult."
"And you expect me to commit what must surely be a crime by civilian laws, and then leave you alive to testify against me in court?"
"Yes, I do. For one thing, I would be willing to sign a contract that I would never bring charges against you, and never testify against you in court. If I broke such a contract, I would be punished right along with you. For another, if it was learned that I had lost some of my intellectual abilities, it could very well cost me my job at the university. For a third, I would be willing to pay you very well to not kill me."
"Pay me? How much?"
"How does twelve thousand Ke sound? It's all that I have in my savings." Bronki had a dozen times that much in the bank, and many times more in other investments besides, but she felt no need to be scrupulously honest.
"It does not sound bad, but I have often admired this retreat of yours. Would you throw it in as well, with all of its contents?"
"If I must, yes, although I am very attached to it. May I borrow it occasionally when you have no need of it?"
"If you will throw in your servant and her house, yes," Kren said.
"Done. We have an agreement." Bronki thought that if she still had the use of the house, and someone else had to pay the taxes and utilities, here and for her housekeeper, she had just made a profit. If her servant had to work a little harder, taking care of two masters now, well, so what?
"Okay. So what do we do now? Must I go out in search of a suitably mature juvenal, and then wait around until she is ready to metamorphose?"
"Of course not! There are dozens of companies that provide suitable, well-selected bodies, at competitive prices, with all of the proper shoulder brands that an academic requires. Help me back up to my stool, and I'll E-mail the one that I used last time," Bronki said.
"How can you afford to pay for her if you are giving me all of your money?"
"My money may be gone, but my credit is very good. I'll charge it on my credit card."
"And the rest of our bargain?" Kren asked.
"I'll do the contract, the bank transfer, and the deed on the property next. Look, I'll need your help getting installed in my new body, won't I? I'm in no position to cheat you now."
"But I'm in a position t
o cheat you."
"True, but it would be stupid for you to do so. If you stay with our deal, you will come out quite well. Besides getting the knowledge that you want, you will have the money, a nice home, and a trained servant. If I'm dead, my money and property would end up in probate, and you'll be years getting it, if ever."
"Yes, I see. Well then, let's get on with it," Kren said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Something Wicked This Way Comes
New Kashubia, 2205 a.d.
There were six generals waiting in the meeting room, and each of us had five colonels and seven electronic people with us. We were all in class A uniforms, except for the professors, who wore their inevitable tweeds. Our insignia was traditional. Generals wore a star, colonels an eagle, majors an oak leaf, captains, two silver bars.
Being in Dream World, the room was exactly the size that it needed to be. Every one of us had the ability to stop the action and discuss matters privately with anyone we wanted to, for however long we wanted, without disturbing the others at the meeting.
In so many ways, Dream World was a very convenient way to do business.
I never used the stop action option, at first because I wanted Sobieski to get on with it, and then because everything he said scared the shit out of me!
General Sobieski stepped up to the podium.
"I want to cover some lesser matters first before we get on to the main subject of discussion," he said.
Three hours of accounting procedures before he gets around to mentioning that we are at war! I thought to myself.
"There are some lessons to be learned from the last war," Sobieski continued. "The biggest one is that it does you little good to have overwhelming firepower if you cannot get that firepower to the battlefield. In the War with Earth, we were able to overcome that difficulty with a stratagem developed by Colonel Quincy Tsenovi here."
He stopped to give Quincy a round of applause from all present. Quincy smiled and nodded to their approval. Then Sobieski continued, "But doing that made it a hairy operation. It required absolutely precise timing by hundreds of thousands of units. Any one of a thousand things could have gone wrong, and lost us the war. We were lucky, even though many things did go wrong, costing us many good men and machines.
"But in the future, we will see to it that we have a sufficient number of Hassan-Smith transporters to get our army to wherever they are needed very quickly. This will take some years to accomplish, but it will be done. New production lines here in New Kashubia have already been designed and funded, and construction has already begun.
"Next, during the assault on Earth's Solar Station, the enemy wisely targeted General Derdowski's CCC. He had seven supply trucks with him that looked identical to his CCC, and the enemy managed to knock out six of them without hitting the CCC. Each of those trucks had a guard, and the enemy ignored them to hit the trucks.
"Again, we were very lucky, because without Derdowski and his CCC, we could have either lost the entire war, or we could have lost touch with the thousands of robot ships that are continuing the exploration of space, and the expansion of Human Space. That would have stunted our growth for fifty years.
"Besides adding more trucks as targets, and guarding them better, we will adopt a practice of always sending at least two CCCs on each mission. Other suggestions are welcome.
"Also, our streamlined command structure, which can have a hundred thousand men and fighting machines reporting to a single CCC is a bit extreme. In the future, there will be typically ten thousand tanks per CCC, and every fighting unit will have several CCCs that it can report to, should its primary one be knocked out. This will involve vastly expanding our officer corps, but there is a lot of good talent out there.
"Lastly, the army itself will be vastly expanded. New Kashubia will soon be passing a law requiring universal military service for all full citizens. You don't have to join the army, but if you don't, you can't vote. It is likely that most of the other planets will soon be following suit.
"You might reasonably ask why all of this huge expenditure of wealth and manpower is necessary. The answer is simple. Humanity now faces the worst enemy that could possibly be. They are very ancient, with histories that go back for almost seven million years. They are incredibly numerous, with at least sixty-eight thousand planets that have populations of perhaps a hundred and fifty billion people on each of them. And they are unspeakably evil. When they take a new planet, they eradicate absolutely all life on it, usually using thousands of neutron bombs in low orbit, in addition to totally poisoning all life in its oceans. That, and they regularly eat their own children. In fact, they don't seem to eat anything else.
"There are only two things that give us any possible hope of defeating them. The first is that despite their great age, they have never developed computers to the extent that we have. They have nothing like our electronic people. The second is that they have never developed anything like our Hassan-Smith transporters. They are limited strictly to the speed of light. And since their domain is some six thousand light-years across, we will never have to face more than a small percentage of them at any one time.
"On the other hand, they have several technologies that we, at present, can't begin to understand. They can, for example, accelerate and decelerate from almost light speed instantaneously. And they have some sort of a shield that can deflect rail gun needles, among other things.
"We have one of their ships. In time, we will learn more about them, and their technology. Because they are limited to light speed, it is likely that they do not yet know that we exist, and this gives us time to prepare.
"But, the indications are that they have already scouted all or most of Human Space, and have been doing so for hundreds—or even thousands—of years. Their attack may come sooner than we think. We may have five years, we may have fifty. But when it happens, we'd better be ready.
"This afternoon, we will be going over the taking of that alien ship, and explaining what little we know about it.
"That's all for now. Dismissed."
Mickolai found himself wishing that he was still at last night's party.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
Bronki's New Body
Or, Eating Your Math Teacher
Kren had to pick Bronki up and put her on the stool in front of her computer. Seeing that she had difficulty staying upright, he quickly got some rope and tied her to her seat, before she got her computer online.
"This will probably take me an hour to arrange," Bronki said. "The pain is getting worse, not better. Why don't you go out and find me a big meal. The feeding stupor will help me endure the pain you've caused me."
"I will do that, soon. But first, I would like to see you fulfill your side of this bargain." Kren had visions of Bronki calling in the authorities while he was out.
"You are not a very trusting person."
"This is true. But you have every reason to hate me, for what I have done to you. I would be a fool to trust you at this time."
"Kren, you must realize that I am over five thousand years old. There is very little that can happen to a person that I haven't seen. Also, I am one of the most intelligent teachers at the university, as well as one of the wisest. Look. Every being must play the game of life from the position that she finds herself in at the present instant. The normal emotions—hate, joy, anger, greed—these things were useful to us when we were savages, but now that we are civilized, they only get in our way. Do you understand that I don't hate you?"
"I can believe that. But you must understand that I only started to become intelligent a year ago, and from the position that I find myself in now, I still think that I would be a fool to trust you. Go online, and do the things that you have promised while I watch. Then I will take you someplace comfortable, and I will hunt for you. Oh, and do the c
ontract first, the deeds second, and the money third."
"As you wish," Bronki said. She had, of course, been planning to contact the authorities, and have Kren arrested and eventually executed, not because she hated him for his treachery, or even because she badly wanted to save her mathematical abilities, but rather to save herself the twelve thousand Ke she had promised, and two of the many houses that she owned.
She started to work the net, thinking that sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. Perhaps, a continued relationship with Kren would prove profitable.
First, she wrote, signed, and filed a confidential contract with the Bonding Authority for a fee of five gross Ke, which she talked Kren into paying by claiming that they did not accept credit.
Next, she filed a quit claim deed for both houses and all of their contents with the Land Authority, and then transferred the utilities and taxes over to his name. Doing the bank transfer to a new account in Kren's name was a matter of only a few minutes.
Finally, she ordered a new body, with suitable brands burned into the girl's upper arms, from the Dependable Carnivore Company, Ltd. The young carnivore was to be delivered the next morning, along with a syringe of anesthetic. The painful natural process that the aristocracy was so proud of using was not for Bronki.
"Now, will you please do something for this pain?" she asked him.
"Of course, I'd be delighted to." Kren untied her from the stool, carried her outside, and placed her gently on the grass, with her back propped up against the house. Then he locked the door behind him, put the key of his new house in his belt pouch, and went hunting.
He was back in a dozen minutes with a large, but suitable juvenal.
Bronki had taken a mechanical pencil and a large pad of grass paper with her, and had used the time to sketch a life-sized diagram of her own brain, with carefully drawn lines showing exactly what parts Kren could and could not eat. These were one fairly large section and three small ones. These agreed with what his memories from the medic told him, so he readily agreed to follow her instructions.
Kren of the Mitchegai Page 7