"And why does it do that?"
"You've never seen winter?"
"Except for the last few months, I've spent the last nine gross years or so in a mine below ground. I didn't see any of this winter thing down there," Kren said.
"You wouldn't. Underground, it always stays the same temperature. That's why we keep the juvenals underground in the winter. Do you see those doors on the south side of the wall? Those doors lead to an underground set of caverns. The juvenals stay there for most of the winter. The caverns are right under the field of long grass. This makes it easier to cut the grass and deliver it to the juvenals. Our taxes pay for the workers who feed the juvenals in the winter. Our taxes also pay for other things."
"You are speaking slowly, while using a lot of small words and simple sentences."
"I apologize. I am still not used to speaking to a vampire," Bronki said. "Until I learned what you are, I always assumed that when you asked a strange question, you were making a joke. Your store of information is extremely spotty. Your knowledge of mathematics, languages, and the military arts is outstanding, yet you are ignorant of the simplest things. I find myself talking to you as if you were a newly emerging mind, which I suppose, is exactly what you are. But, if you ask this sort of thing of other students once you get to the university, they will think that you are very strange. Once we get there, I suggest that you remain silent when you don't understand something, and then come and ask me about it later. For now, keep on asking questions, and I will do the best I can."
"Thank you. I will follow your suggestions. Why is winter?"
Why is winter? Bronki asked herself. "Okay, you see that bright shiny thing up there? That is the sun. What do you know about it?"
"I know that it is a ball of mostly hydrogen, with some helium, too, and small amounts of most of the other elements. It is heated by gravitationally induced fusion of the hydrogen into helium. It is three gross three dozen thousand miles in diameter, and has a surface temperature of . . ."
"That is adequate. Now, this place we're walking on is a planet. It is located two dozen and seven million miles from the sun, spins on its axis once a day, and travels around the sun once a year. The axis of the spin is not the same as the axis of its circle around the sun, but is at a relative tilt of eleven degrees."
"This was all mentioned in the book on physics I just read," Kren said.
"Good. Now, because of the axial tilt, the southern hemisphere of the planet, where we're now at, gets more of the sun's radiation for one half of the year, and less for the other half. Is that obvious to you?"
"Yes, of course. You say that we're in the southern hemisphere?"
"Yes. I should have given you a book on geography, a fault that I will correct as soon as we get to my house at the university. Anyway, when this hemisphere is getting less radiation, it gets colder. That's what we call winter," she said.
"Thank you. Do the adults go underground the way the juvenals do?"
"Generally not, although many of the facilities in the cities are below ground. We prefer to live above ground and heat our houses. We wear heavily insulated clothing when we must go outside. I'll see that you are taken to where you can buy some warm clothes when we get to the university."
They got to the tube station as the sun was setting. From the surface, this was little more than a doorway set into a low hill. Bronki used her credit card to open the heavy door.
"The doors are kept locked to keep the juvenals out," she explained.
Inside, a stairway went deep into the earth. At the bottom, signs directed them to platforms that went to eight different cities, with many stops along the way. One of the cities listed was the University of Dren.
Kren was interested in everything around them. He had never imagined such a place as this. Deep below ground, it was well lighted, clean, and pleasantly decorated, with colored tiles of blue, lavender, and green on some walls, and red, orange, and yellow on others, and all artfully arranged. The ceilings glowed evenly in an attractive sky blue, from the side, but white when you looked straight up. The floors were a uniform grass green. He had to look carefully before he was sure that it wasn't actually grass, but a synthetic carpet.
Yet, there didn't seem to be any other travelers around.
"This is lovely," he said.
"If you say so. The important criterion in the design of this sort of structure is that it must require very little maintenance. I doubt if this place has been refurbished in five thousand years. The initial costs are sometimes high, but quality pays for itself in the long run."
He followed Bronki to the proper train platform, where she pressed a request button for the next train to stop. They waited on a bench for less than a dozen minutes before a MagFloat train pulled quietly up.
They stepped on quickly, and the train took off immediately. Bronki went forward, gave the operator her credit card, and told her their destination.
"You'll owe me another eleven Ke for the ticket, when we go to the bank tomorrow," she said. "After what I've lost, I'm surprised that I can still remember my numbers."
They were the only passengers in any of the four cars.
"I'm surprised that so few customers use this amazing train," Kren said.
"There isn't much traffic this far out in the country. It will fill up as we get close to the university. As to being amazing, well, I suppose it is, but it doesn't seem so to me. Tube trains have been here all of my life. Actually, the tube system on this planet was completed over eight gross thousand years ago. You can go to within a day's walk of any place on the planet's surface with it, but for long trips, aircraft are faster."
"I wonder what it would be like to fly."
"It's not much different from being on a train, except for being more crowded. Well, the view is better. On your first flight, ask for a window seat."
"Bronki, I don't understand why you are being so helpful to me."
"Why shouldn't I be helpful; it doesn't cost me anything. I've told you that hate is a wasteful emotion. There's no profit in it. Yes, you've taken things from me, but now that they're gone, harming you wouldn't get them back. It is most unlikely that you will ever again be in a position to take anything more from me without my consent. I might be very useful to you now, but in time, I suspect that you might become very useful to me."
"In what way?" Kren asked.
"I'm not entirely sure. For the next two years, I'll be teaching literary subjects, so I probably won't need my mathematical abilities in the near future. But if it should happen that I do, well, you now have those abilities, and I think that you might be courteous enough to help out if I asked."
"Certainly, within reason."
"Also, I maintain living quarters for students and junior faculty members at my town house. You would be wise to stay near me, for my advice if nothing else, for the next few years, and you will need to rent a room someplace in the city. You will probably find it convenient to pay me rent and stay with me. I had a few vacancies last year, and that cuts into profits," she said.
"I imagine that I might do that, if your rates are competitive."
"They are. Lastly, you are a superbly trained warrior. Such beings are rare at the university. In the unlikely event that such skills proved necessary to me, it would be very useful to have someone to call on."
"I would be most happy to discuss such things with you," he said.
"That's all that I ask. It might possibly happen that we could have some mutually profitable business dealings with each other."
"When such things occur, I would be interested in hearing about them."
"We shall see," Bronki said.
At this point, a group of twelve entered the car, and Bronki ended the conversation by feigning sleep.
Her mind, though, was churning over, examining the various permutations of this situation. With a devoted dependant who was both a warrior and a vampire, there were so many pleasant possibilities.
Academic superiors who
were in her way at the university, plugging a hole that would otherwise allow for her advancement, could be eliminated. From being a senior professor, she could see herself becoming a department head, a director of a college, and eventually even the chancellor!
Of course, that sort of thing would have to be done cautiously, with much preplanning, and with great discretion. She would have to be sure that when some ancient academic went to his just reward, she would be the obvious successor to his chair.
Business dealings, on the other hand, often allow one a great deal more latitude. She could imagine certain of her competitors selling out their holdings to her at very reasonable prices and then simply leaving town, never to be seen again.
And Kren, of course, would be happy to eat the evidence.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
First Blood
New Kashubia, 2205 a.d.
We found ourselves suddenly back in the meeting hall. General Sobieski was at the podium.
"So, now that we are finally back together, let's get on with this," he said. "A month ago, General Abdul Hussein was exercising his troops in the Cometary Belt of New Syria."
I put my face in my hands. I'd had to work with Hussein during the taking of Earth's Solar Station, and he was a murderous, suicidal lunatic. If there was anybody to not choose to represent humanity in our first contact with an alien race, it was Abdul.
A large wall screen appeared behind Sobieski, showing the action.
My boss continued, "They picked up a fairly small, spherical ship coming at them at almost light speed. In the few seconds available to them, they sent recognition signals to it, which were not answered. Then, Abdul's forces were hit with some sort of energy field that took out thirty-one of their tanks. These tanks were not exactly destroyed. They simply ceased to exist. General Hussein took this to be an unfriendly act, and the rest of his forces, some four thousand tanks, opened fire on the intruder."
Well, at least they fired on us first. That's something, I thought.
Sobieski continued, "As you will see shortly, the rail gun needles simply bounced off, but the X-ray lasers, which deposit their energy deep into their targets, were more successful. The alien ship showed considerable warming.
"Then, in two hundred and fifty-two milliseconds, it ceased traveling in the direction of our forces. From moving at nearly light speed, it simply stopped, made an eighty-nine degree turn, and then proceeded sideways at three hundred and ten thousand kilometers per hour!"
Actions like these are simply physically impossible, and the crowd broke into gasps of shock.
"Right," the general continued. "Now, look at this close-up. You can clearly see that the rail gun needles are stopping ten meters from the alien craft. Or rather, they are suddenly moving at the same speed that it is. They wander around a bit, but when they get more than twenty meters from the ship, they suddenly take off, continuing in the direction that they were going before they encountered the alien!"
I was as confused as everyone else in the room.
"Abdul sent six squads of tanks after the intruder, since his fuel stores on his home planet weren't big enough to send his entire force. Those thirty-six tanks eventually caught up with the alien. They found it completely dormant. It was warm, but cooling off, and was generating no energy of its own. It appeared to be completely dead. They didn't feel up to opening the ship themselves, so they simply pushed it home, putting it in a three-day orbit around New Syria.
"Since then, experts from all over the system have been studying the alien craft. What we have learned so far is very preliminary, but we can state the following:
"First. Their materials technology is vastly superior to our own. That ship was constructed of ordinary elements well known to us, but in combinations such that many of them had tensile strengths up to fourteen times better than anything that we have ever produced.
"Second. Their computer technology is inferior to ours. There was not a single integrated circuit on that ship! Every single transistor was a discrete component! There is no possibility that they had an artificial intelligence on that ship. On the other hand, from what little we have been able to deduce, the programming of these simple computers is extremely sophisticated.
"Third. There were a number of charts and books on board. While we are nowhere near being able to decipher their language, we are pretty sure that we understand their numbering system. We deduced the age of their civilization from what we are fairly certain is a history book. Then again, it could be a cook book, I suppose. We are more definite about the star charts we found. Incidentally, the characters in the books and charts are so small that a human can not read them unless they are expanded by at least a factor of sixteen. Their eyesight is apparently much better than ours.
"Fourth. There were absolutely no microorganisms of any kind on that ship, not even dead ones. This level of sterilization would be beyond our technology. What it means is beyond us."
"Last. There was only a single pilot on that ship, a strange creature who looks vaguely reptilian."
The screen showed him. An ugly sucker!
"There were also twenty-two and a half other, smaller creatures on board, all of whom had been alive until our X-ray lasers cooked the place. We haven't been able to analyze their version of DNA yet, but it appears certain that they were chemically identical to the pilot. There can be no other explanation for this than to assume that they were juveniles of the pilot's own race. And since there were no other food supplies on board, the presumption is that he was eating them. This supposition is backed up by the fact that he was eating one of these children at the time of the attack. It had not been slaughtered first. He'd been eating it alive."
The screen showed a small, green, partially eaten body, with obvious tooth marks in it.
"So. That's all we know right now. As we learn more, you will be informed. Get your preliminary suggestions together, submit them, and then go home and think about this. Keep in touch with each other. I'll call you all back together later on. Dismissed."
After we shipped our preliminary suggestions to HQ, Kasia wanted to spend a week visiting her parents on New Kashubia, Quincy and Zuzanna wanted to see their grandchildren, and Conan and Maria did some sightseeing.
I stayed bottled up in the CCC and thought about our new problem a lot.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
Kren Knocks One out of the Park
Duke Kren took off the recording helmet, got up, visited the toilet and the drinking fountain, and lay back down on the cot.
His head was throbbing. Damn, but resurrection was a painful process. Being eaten alive was actually the easy part!
He put the recording helmet back on, and remembered. . . .
* * *
It was dark when they arrived at the university, but Kren wasn't aware of it. They left the lighted, underground tube station, and walked a half mile through a pleasant underground tunnel that was lined on both sides with many gross of shops and other establishments for which Kren could not imagine any possible use. Finally, they went through a locked doorway and up a winding staircase that led to Bronki's huge town house.
The building had three floors below ground and a dozen and five above it. Passenger elevators were as illegal as private transportation among the Mitchegai, for the same reasons of physical fitness. This caused the highest levels of buildings to be the least desirable, and here they were used for undergraduate housing. Graduate students lived below them, and junior faculty members below that. Bronki kept the entire second floor for her own, personal use.
The glassed-in first floor was taken up by a large lobby, six public meeting rooms, and some office space. It was here that they stopped first, at the registration desk.
"Zon, this is Kren," Bronki said to her subordinate behind the counter. "He will be registering as an und
ergraduate soon, and he will need a room."
"I'm sorry, madam, but business has been surprisingly good for the last few days, and we are completely filled up."
"That's certainly good news, even if it is a bit disappointing. I suppose that we can put him up in graduate housing until something opens up."
"I'm afraid not, madam. I really meant that we are completely filled. We presently have three gross, a dozen and nine tenants staying here. Even all of the faculty rooms are rented, and there's quite a waiting list."
Bronki said, "Well, Kren, it seems that you have gotten lucky. I'll just have to put you up in one of my guest rooms for the time being. At undergraduate rates, of course."
"I suppose that this arrangement would be adequate for a few days, anyway," he said. "Why are there so many students this semester?"
"I don't know, but someone in sociology will probably do a study on it soon."
Another flight up on the winding, central staircase took them to Bronki's private level. She let them in using her credit card on the door lock.
"We'll get you a credit card at the bank tomorrow," she said. "For now, well, you can always leave, but you might have difficulty getting back in."
Kren had believed Bronki's country house to be luxurious, while she herself had thought of it as being quaintly rustic. Her private quarters in her town house were considered to be the peak of luxury even by her standards.
It was big enough to entertain a gross of guests at a party. The ceilings were four times as high as Kren was tall, and encrusted with artwork and colored stones. Tall windows looked out on a magical city with thousands of lighted windows.
Inside, every piece of furniture looked to have taken a master craftsman years of labor to produce. There were artworks on the walls and statues on the floor that Kren had seen in photos in art books at Bronki's country house.
"I am amazed at your wealth," Kren said.
"Yes, well, in five thousand years, things accumulate," she said. "You might as well take this room, for now. It's my nicest guest room, but I don't have anybody else here at present. Just remember that you might get bumped down if somebody else more important than you stays over. And in this city, everybody is more important than an undergraduate."
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