"To answer that, I would have to ask, compared to what? Compared to living with an independent income of a gross thousand Ke a year, what she has to offer is decidedly inferior. At the time that I accepted her offer, however, the only other employment I was able to locate involved collecting juvenals from the countryside and delivering them alive to the city, on commission. By comparison, her offer was outstanding."
"And what does she pay you?" Kren asked.
"Something much better than three dozen Ke a week."
So my servant gets paid more than I do! Kren thought, Someday I'm going to have to do something about that!
They decided that because of the weight of the books they would return to Bronki's house to drop them off.
When they got there, Dol said that they might as well get Kren's credit card number loaded into the household computer, so that he could use the doors without needing someone to let him in.
"She trusts you with so important a task?" Kren asked. "I would think that the value of any one of these paintings is worth many gross times what your yearly salary is. What if you stole a few of them?"
As Dol worked at the computer, she said, "You are probably right about the relative values of things, but one must be alive to enjoy money properly. Actually, Bronki wouldn't mind if I stole everything here. She has everything insured for at least twice its market value. If it was stolen, she would make a profit, and Bronki likes making a profit.
"The insurance company, however, doesn't like to lose money. Kren, they hire teams of bounty hunters who are more ruthless than you can possibly imagine. I would prefer death at the stake to having those killers after me. If you are thinking of stealing anything, don't do it. Or if you absolutely must do it, please tell me first so that I can report you to the bounty hunters, so as not to make them angry, and then kill myself before they get here, just in case they get angry anyway.
"There, that should do it. Step outside and try the lock with your card."
As they left, Kren said, "Where to next?"
"A clothing store, Leko's. Bronki insisted that I take you to the same store that she always uses, so as to be sure that you get the highest quality."
"Well, she got me the clothing allowance. I suppose that she has the right to tell me where to spend it. There's another thing that I wanted to ask about. We didn't have anything like that javelin in the military. When I threw it, it seemed like it was defying the laws of physics! It went straight and level for the longest time!"
"You came to the right person to ask that question," she said. "It happens that I did a paper on those things last semester for my aerodynamics class. The javelin is balanced with the center of gravity slightly behind the center of area. When it reaches the top of its flight, and is traveling slower, the tail falls slightly below the point. This gives the whole javelin some aerodynamic lift, and the flight curve flattens out. As it continues to slow down, the tail falls more, giving a higher angle of attack to compensate for the lower speed. The result is that they can fly twice as far as an ordinary spear."
"That is interesting. With the spear, all of the weight is at the point, and the shaft just keeps the point facing toward the enemy. Then why hasn't the military adopted the javelin as a weapon?"
"Because the javelin trades kinetic energy for distance. When one of those javelins touches down, it hits tail first, and it isn't going fast enough to hurt a pollywog. You can safely catch one in your hand!"
"Then if it can't hurt anyone, what good is it?" Kren asked.
"As a military weapon, it's worthless. As a piece of sporting equipment in a game where you are trying to see who can throw something the farthest, it's the difference between winning and coming in last!"
"I see. So you are studying aerodynamics?"
"Engineering. I may specialize in aerodynamics later, in graduate school. I thought you knew, since I wear engineering colors."
"I am not versed in the fine points in academic garb."
"I'll give you a book on the subject when we get back home, but for now, I wear the maroon with lime green piping of an engineer. The purplish-red belt is that of a junior undergraduate. We will be buying you the crimson robe with black piping of the business college, and you will wear the white belt of a freshman."
"What does Bronki's colorful clothing tell you?"
"Bronki has so many degrees, and is affiliated with so many academic organizations that she may wear pretty much whatever pleases her. That rainbow belt of hers is granted when one has earned a dozen doctrates in as many different diverse fields."
"And the little tassels around her shoulders?"
"One for every earned doctorate. She has a dozen and ten of them. Here's the clothing store."
In one respect, a Mitchegai clothing store has it easy by Earthly standards. All Mitchegai are exactly the same height, and their girth varies only with differences in musculature, and how long it has been since their last meal. The voluminous robes which they wore were rather similar to those worn by medieval Japanese samurai, and they handled the girth problem.
On the other hand, there are four dozen and nine different academic uniforms worn at the university, and each is available in six different degrees of price and quality. In addition, each of those comes in summer, winter, and spring and fall weights.
When they entered the store, Dol immediately announced that they were here at the request of Bronki. The clerk at the front desk instantly pressed a buzzer, calling Leko herself to the front. A distinguished-looking tailor came quickly out to greet them.
"Friends of Bronki's? But of course! I will handle all of your needs personally! What would be your requirements?"
"Kren here needs a complete kit for a freshman at the College of Business."
"Excellent! We can satisfy his every need. Come this way, please."
She took them to a special room at the back of the store, which contained nothing but the absolute best, and most expensive, merchandise. Dealing with a friend of Bronki, she would charge them twelve per gross more than usual, and send Bronki a commission of twice that, which still left Leko with a very good profit.
In the course of the next hour, Kren found that he absolutely had to have two summer weight cloaks, two more for spring and fall, and two particularly expensive ones for winter.
There was a heavy winter over cloak, and two pairs of gloves, medium and heavy. Kren noted that the seamless leather gloves had been made from the stretched and tanned skin removed from the hands and forearms of adult Mitchegai. They were dyed black, nicely tooled around the cuffs, and quite attractive, he thought, with holes on the ends of the fingers to let his claws remain useful.
Then there were two pairs of shoes, something that he had never worn before, and a pair of heavy winter over boots. The over boots were of an insulated, waterproof synthetic fabric that extended well past the knees, but the shoes were much like the gloves, and made of the skin of the feet and calves of a deceased adult. They had reinforced soles and were decorated to match the gloves.
Lastly, Dol convinced him that he really needed four sets of long winter underwear, two of which were electrically heated.
Kren also bought a nicely appointed matching book bag that was to have his name embroidered on it, and would be delivered in two days.
A cold-blooded creature must be very careful about temperature control, but in fact, the store was simply making the bill as large as possible.
At least this time, there was no difficulty with getting a receipt, and the store promised to have it all delivered within the hour, except for the book bag.
It was getting dark when they finally got home.
"Dol, why was it that I needed two of everything?"
"So that you could be wearing one while I have the laundry servant washing and pressing the other. A guest of Bronki's must always look his best, you know."
"I see. Do you realize that I have spent more than six thousand Ke today?"
"That sounds about right,
but you will be reimbursed. It would be more accurate to say that the College of Athletics spent all of that money. It will be amusing to present them with the bill, tomorrow."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Good Life
New Yugoslavia, 2207 a.d.
Things were progressing very well.
I now had twelve full ten-thousand-man divisions of Gurkha warriors. They were living with their families in their own valley, next to mine. Every man was equipped with a new mark XIX tank, and many of them had been issued a humanoid military drone. I only had been issued four CCCs to manage them with, but more were promised as soon as they were built, and we now had thirteen Gurkha generals trained, each with five colonels. They were time-sharing the CCCs we had.
I also had an almost full division of female Gurkha warriors, something that the male Gurkhas didn't like at all. They had ostracized the ladies to the point that I had to put the girls up in my own valley, and keep them very separate from the Gurkha men. It was a bother, but those girls were good fighters, and army regulations wouldn't have let me reject them on the basis of sex, anyway. I hoped that in time the problem would settle itself out.
Maybe once they had proved themselves in battle.
They had their own CCC, their own female general, and five female colonels. There were Gurkha men who were probably more qualified than they were, but until the men were willing to integrate their command, the girls would have to go it alone. They were certainly eager to prove their worth.
New Yugoslavia did vote for universal military service, on the same "join or don't vote" system that New Kashubia used, and I had eighty-two divisions of New Yugoslavian troops, a number that was growing rapidly.
A sufficient number of transporters had been put in so that it was now possible to ship my entire army out in somewhere between one and nine days, depending on where we had to go. More were being installed as fast as they could be built. Receivers cost only three percent of what a transmitter does, and could operate four times faster than transmitters. We now had twelve times as many of them as transmitters. If it was us who needed help, we could get it in a hurry.
Research on the alien ship was making progress. It had been powered by a muon exchange fusion power supply technically very similar to the ones that we used, except that it was one-eighth the size of our usual unit, and produced twelve times the power. Our people were working at trying to duplicate it.
The ship was driven by an efficient but understandable ion engine. But there was nothing about that engine that could explain the incredible accelerations that we had seen.
Our scientists managed to get the ship's primary weapon working. It made things disappear. We had no idea of how it did this, and we'd had no luck in duplicating it.
And our electronic people were absolutely in awe of the programs that were used in the simple computers aboard. They said that if we could duplicate them, we would quadruple the speed of our own computers, including themselves.
There were other machines on the ship that completely baffled us. We didn't know what they did, or how.
* * *
The planet-wide underground MagLev Loway system had been completed and announced to the public, but it wasn't seeing anything but military use. The factories were too busy with military production to make any civilian vehicles to use it. Someday, someday.
The associated planet-wide water, sewage, and power systems were getting good use, though. And they insured that we never were faced with drought or flooding conditions, or power blackouts, either.
My dairy farm was in production, and besides providing products for local consumption, we were shipping butter, yogurt, and forty varieties of cheeses all across Human Space. The beef cattle were growing, but we would be building the herds for many years yet.
Most of the apartments in my city had been sold, as had most of the business spaces. Veterans were setting up restaurants, bars, and every other sort of business imaginable. The schools were starting to fill up, too, at least the lower grades.
At the outer edges of Human Space, the exploratory probes had been upgraded with better sensors, better artificial intelligences, and major self-destruct mechanisms. New probes were being added as fast as they could be built, but the whole system wouldn't be completed for fifty years. I kept on referring to it as our Maginot Line, but I couldn't seem to get the name to catch on.
Planetary defenses were still minimal, something that bothered me considerably. Putting all of your trust in defensive lines, or spheres actually, is silly. Defensive systems have to be in depth! Military history has proved that again and again, but the powers that be won't listen to me. It was very frustrating.
But the really important thing that happened was that my Kasia presented me with a baby boy! He came out red, wrinkled, squalling, and absolutely beautiful.
And equally important, my industrious wife is busily working on our second one.
Late last night, as she lay in my arms, she said, "You know, Mickolai, these are the good times. We must cherish them."
And I do. She always was smarter than me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
Sword Slashes and Burning Memories
The next morning, Kren dressed himself carefully in a new summer-weight academic uniform, marveling at the feeling of smooth, strong quality in the cloth. It was vastly different from the heavy, rough warmth of his military cloak.
In part because he had been told that the director wanted to see him use a sword, but mostly because after wearing it all summer, he felt uncomfortable without it, he belted his sword on first, and put the cloak on over it. He was pleased to see in the mirror that it wasn't noticable under the voluminous garment, and resolved to wear it regularly.
When he and Dol arrived, the director's secretary had a dozen papers ready for Kren to sign.
"You might as well read through those before you sign them," she said. "It's an all or nothing deal, and nothing in these documents is negotiable, but you really ought to know where you stand."
Kren read through each one of them slowly, discovering that if he was injured for any reason, he could not sue the university, or anyone employed by the university, but had to pay for all of his medical bills himself.
If he was damaged beyond possible repair, the university would provide a new body, and then bill him for it. And if he was somehow killed beyond all possible hope of being properly eaten, the university would settle all of his debts, and then keep the rest of his bank account.
He was obligated to serve under the terms of the contract for as long as the director chose to maintain his scholarship. He could be dismissed, but he could not quit, until he graduated.
He agreed to play in any and all sports that the director saw fit, and would not expect to receive any extra compensation for the time that this took.
He would never in his life be allowed to play for any other university, nor could he play for any professional team while he was an undergraduate.
He would restrict his diet to one normal for a Mitchegai, that is to say, meat and water. Partaking in anything else, especially drugs, would result in his termination.
"Termination?" Kren asked the secretary.
"Oh, yes, and I do mean that literarily. The director publicly skins drug users alive, and then nails their hides to the wall down in the lobby. An athlete on drugs can get his entire team disqualified."
"Yes, I saw four of them down there as we were coming in. I'd wondered about them."
"Now you know. There are only four because we had an auction last year, and sold off three dozen skins. Be warned," she said.
Lastly, the contract said that he would obey the director, and such other persons as the director might from time to time appoint over him, in absolutely all things.
Finally, Kren said, "All of this seems very r
estrictive."
"It is," the secretary said. "But it's not nearly as bad as it sounds. You have to remember that the director's job is to make money for the university. He does this by having very good athletes playing for him. Happy, healthy athletes make the best players, so he wants you to be happy and healthy. As long as you do well, you will be able to get away with doing just about anything that you want. If you give him problems, or if your performance slips, he can get away with doing just about anything that he wants to you."
"I see. What would be the most drastic thing that he might do to me?"
"Under ordinary circumstances, I'd say that the worst would be to put you into the gladiator pool. Twelve times a year, we have a fight to the death with one of the other universities, during half-time ceremonies. It's a major draw, and often gets play on the Planetary News. The names of the participants are drawn by lot."
Thinking of the buffoons he'd seen on television, Kren figured that he'd come out of it without the slightest difficulty, and even get a free meal in the bargain.
"Well, if that's all, there won't be any problems," he said, and started signing the papers. Dol and the secretary witnessed them.
"Now then," Dol said. "How do I go about getting Kren reimbursed for these expenses?"
"You just give them to me, and I'll see to it that Kren's account is properly credited," the secretary said.
But on looking at the receipts, she shook her head and said, "Oh, my! Oh, me oh my! Uh, please, wait right here."
A few minutes later, the director strode in followed by his secretary.
"Kren! These amounts are excessive!" he shouted.
"I'm sorry that you feel that way, sir, but I only did as I was instructed to do."
"Instructed? By who?"
"Bronki, sir. She gave Dol very specific instructions as to where we were to go, what we were to do, and with whom we were to speak."
"Did Bronki tell you to pay three semesters of tuition in advance?"
Dol said, "No sir. But the registrar at the College of Business insisted on it."
Kren of the Mitchegai Page 11