"Please tell me," he said, changing the subject. "How soon do you think it might be before we can receive the rest of the Everclear you promised?"
I was too stunned to say anything but "Probably in about twelve days. After that, we can ship you a like amount every three months." They knew how to build perpetual motion machines?
"That would be most convenient. But you must please excuse me now, as there are several calls waiting."
I left the plans lying on the floor and went home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
In Your Face Sports
The next day in the locker room, the director of Athletics just happened to stop Kren and him if he knew who Kodo was.
"Yes, sir, he is the director of the College of Architecture. Someone pointed him out to me once, in a crowd." As always, lying came easily to Kren.
"Have you seen him around lately? I've been looking for him."
"No sir, I haven't. But if I do see him, I'll ask him to contact you."
"No! Don't do that! If you see him, you come straight to me and tell me about it."
"Very good, sir. I will do as you wish."
Kren walked away, knowing who at least one member of Kodo's syndicate had been. After all the athletes that he had skinned alive for using drugs, the director had been buying into a drug syndicate.
If Kren had had any faith in anything, he might have lost some of it then. But of course he didn't, so he didn't.
On the way to the locker room, Kren met a stranger who identified herself as Bo, the runner who had been killed at the Death Match at the first meet of the year.
"You took my money, and you didn't perform the services you promised!" Bo said.
"Well, I tried to perform those services, but the director of athletics forbade me to do it. What else could I do? Anyway, before this goes any further, I want you to prove who you are."
Bo produced sufficient ID cards to convince Kren.
"Very well then," Kren said, pulling out his money pouch. "Here is your ten thousand Ke."
"But you got a dozen and nine times that much, when you collected on that bet!"
"So? If I had lost that contest, would you feel that I didn't owe you anything at all?"
"Well, no, of course not, but what you are doing isn't fair!"
"Bo, I do not understand this 'fair' thing that you talk about. Your options are that you can either take what I am offering, or you can fight me. Take your pick," Kren said, drawing his sword.
"You know that I can't fight you!"
"The choice is yours. Decide."
Bo took the money and went away. Apparently, her new body wasn't that of an athlete. Kren never saw her again.
Kren returned home to find Dol at work on her new computer, an oversized thing with more than the usual number of lights and gadgets.
While Mitchegai computer hardware was comparatively primitive, their programmers had had over a million years to catch up with their hardware. Their programs were very efficient, and they could accomplish a great deal despite small memories and slow circuits. When one of their computers crashed, it was always a hardware problem.
"I've gotten prices in on various forms of fencing, ranging from glazed brick, through stainless steel, and down to some galvanized steel mesh temporary stuff that's only guaranteed for six dozen years. It's only a twelfth the price of good brick, though."
"Since we don't really know if my design will work yet, and we don't know if there will be legal objections to what we have in mind, we might as well go with the cheap stuff."
"My thought exactly, sir. Then, I've gotten in a set of standard survey maps for the area, but the most recent are over nine thousand years old. The Space Mitchegai had some satellite photos that are less than a year old, and I've been comparing the two. There were three new houses built lately, or in the last nine millennia, anyway, and an additional underground winter housing unit for juvenals, but that's about it, that I can see, anyway."
"How many of these wintering centers are there, and what's their capacity?"
"There are a dozen and nine units, with an average capacity of just over a million juvenals each. I have all of that compiled here for you, sir," Dol said, handing him a stack of fan folded computer printouts.
"You have been very efficient."
"I don't have to study my homework anymore, and I want to make myself indispensable to you, sir, so that I won't be dispensed with. I think that this project could make you a world power, and I like the idea of being close to a world power."
"Thank you. How is everything else going?"
"The gambling situation is not so good. We'd planned on having you win the épée tournament on Saturday morning, but the odds on you have dropped to a payout of only three for two! Someone has apparently bet a huge fortune on you. I suggest that we change the plan, and have you win the javelin distance competition instead."
"Ordinarily, that would be a good idea. But the person who placed the huge bet is probably Duke Dennon. The fool must have bet everything he got yesterday on the tip I gave him. No, I'll have to win with the épée, or I might turn a friendly, wealthy neighbor with a big army into an angry, impoverished neighbor, with a big army."
"I see your point, sir."
"Right. But don't bet any of our money on fencing. I have another idea. Maybe I can win at javelin tennis."
"The odds against you there are a dozen and one to one. You have never won a match, but due to your popularity, well, there are two dozen and eight players competing, and if you were only average, the odds on you should be two dozen and five to one, when in fact they are less than half that. But how will you plan to win at a game that is mostly luck?"
"Pole-vaulting, and taking the luck out of it. I'll let you know for sure, Friday afternoon."
"As you wish, sir. I've been doing a statistical study on the betting patterns for your events. Your fame is causing gamblers to bet on you in an irrational fashion. It really is a pity that you won both the fencing tournament and made a world record at the javelin accuracy event on your first time out. It was very profitable at the time, but it's costing us money now. So many are betting so much on you that they are bending the odds. They are losing more than they are winning by a factor of fully one-third."
"You mean to say that on the average, betting on me is a bad idea?" Kren said.
"Exactly. Since the second meet of the year, they have lost more money when they bet on the events that you lose than they have won when you win. And I'm including the wagers made by the In Crowd, who are making huge profits, along with everybody else, who aren't. Winning one event in three, the odds on you should be three to one, or a little less than that, after the house takes its cut. But they're not. They're more often two to one, or even less. It's a quirk of pari-mutuel betting. Your fame is driving down the odds on you, which reduces our winnings. When they bet against you, and we decide to win, we get their money. When they bet on you, they share in what we take. But I don't see what we can do about it."
"I do," Kren said. "Write up two versions of your study. Do one in Keno, or maybe Leno, the scientific language, and make it a properly formatted scientific paper. We'll get it out in one of the scientific journals. Then write up a simplified, popular version in Deno, and send it to all the newspapers and sporting magazines on the planet. Maybe if the gamblers learn that what they are doing is stupid, we can get the odds on me back up."
"I'll get right on it, sir. Getting a paper published as an undergraduate will be a boost to my academic career."
"You'll get it published, all right, even if we have to pay them to do it."
"That is the usual procedure, sir."
"Oh."
* * *
On Tuesday, Kren dutifully reported to the director, telling him that he hadn't seen Kodo, and that he would win
the fencing meet on Saturday.
The director nodded and dismissed him, seeming distracted. He left his impressive office early, and was not seen again until the morning of the game.
The temporary coach in charge of javelins had been told to just let Kren do whatever he wanted to do, and Kren spent all of his time on the tennis singles courts, with a series of hapless opponents.
Kren's thought was that the reason why he always lost at the sport was that he couldn't know where his opponent was. There was a tall brick wall cutting the court in half, and any sort of signaling between the players and anyone else was strictly forbidden.
The wall was too tall for him to jump up and see over it, but a standard javelin was three and a half yards long, with blunted ends. It was lightweight, slightly flexible, and very strong. Kren thought that he might be able to use it to pole-vault himself high enough to see over the wall, and then, while he was flying up there, to whip the same javelin around fast and throw it downward at someplace where his opponent wasn't.
What made this maneuver even more difficult was the fact that the rules required him to return the throw in under two seconds.
By Tuesday evening, he had established that the thing was possible, but only if everything was perfect. He had to be near the wall, moving in the right direction, and on his left foot when he caught the javelin very close to the end, but it was possible.
The Mitchegai have a six-day week. They don't do Wednesday.
By Thursday night, he knew the strategy he had to use. This was to continue lobbing high, easy throws into the middle of the opposing court until just the right one came back to him. Then he would pole-vault, and nail the javelin into the ground.
On Friday, he sequentially beat every single member of the Dren University javelin team three times each. They all swore themselves to secrecy and went out to place their bets. So did Kren, Bronki and Dol.
Also, by this point, Kren and Dol had the plans for the outer fence completed, and had put it out for bids, telling the contractors that the strange shape had been decided on strictly for aesthetic reasons.
They were about to sign a deal with the low bidder when Bronki then got into the act, and within an hour managed to get the price reduced by one fourth, and got a sizeable kickback for herself from the contractor.
Kren suggested that Bronki use that kickback, when she got it, to buy more stock in the corporation. She said that she had been planning to.
Dol and Kren nodded to each other and signed the new contract.
On Saturday morning, Kren dutifully went to the opening ceremonies, and then participated in the fencing tournament. He won without great difficulty. Actually, losing was more work than winning, since he had to make losing look realistic. The crowds cheered, but no one came up and hugged him. The payoff was too small. But Duke Dennon would be happy, or at least not furious with him.
He did nothing unusual at the team tennis game, and for a change they won.
All of his cash, a gross, a dozen and four million, had been bet on the singles javelin tournament, which naturally made him nervous. There were many things that could go wrong.
It took three points to win a game, and he had to win five times in a row. One of his opponents could figure out his strategy, and counter it simply by always playing to the back court. Or, the judges could rule pole-vaulting to be illegal. Or, he could simply screw up, and lose before he had a chance to pole-vault. A single loss would wipe out everything that he had won since he got to the university.
He was beginning to think that betting everything on a single contest wasn't the best way to go. He swore that from this point forward, he would never bet more than half of his fortune. But for now, his money was already down, and he couldn't change that.
Kren won the first game surprisingly easily, before he got a chance to try his pole-vaulting stunt. He just kept throwing the javelins into the center of his opponent's court, and three of them didn't come back.
The second went well for the first two points, but then he lost two, and was beginning to worry before his opponent lobbed one high and near the barrier. Kren went into pole-vaulting mode and nailed it into the center of his opponent's field, to win the match. The crowd went wild, and the judges allowed the point, to Kren's considerable relief.
The third game went as easy as the first one, but on the fourth, he was up against some real competition. He stayed with the program, lobbing them back high and easy, and after over two dozen returns, the right one came in. Kren pole-vaulted for the point.
Someone told him later that it was one of the longest games on record, but all he could do was stick with his strategy, and eventually he pole-vaulted twice more and won the game.
The long game was starting to tell on him. Kren was beginning to tire as the last game started, and when he finally got a chance to pole-vault, there was his opponent, right in plain view, and making an obscene gesture at him.
This involved pointing the two upper fingers of the right hand upward with the other four closed, while moving the hand up and down. It signified "Up your cloaca!"
Something told him to get it over with, so instead of nailing the blunt javelin into the field, for the point, he threw it hard and straight at his gesturing opponent!
He was behind the wall before he could see it hit, but there was no doubt in Kren's mind. It was a perfect head shot.
Just to be on the safe side, Kren was ready to return the javelin, but it never came. He had won. The crowd was cheering enthusiastically, beating their left hands on their chests.
Injuries happened often enough in the game, so the rules were both well defined and well known. If the javelin was not out of bounds, it must be returned. And if a player was not able to continue, she lost.
Kren had expected the javelin to bounce off, rendering the girl unconscious. When he walked around the wall, he found her sitting there with the blunt javelin having gone into the skull, just above the eyes. A yard of it was sticking out the back of her head, stuck in the grass. It was propping her unconscious body up as the stretcher bearers arrived.
The next day, at the awards ceremonies, someone announced that she had lived, and was expected to be playing again in a few weeks.
Motile brain cells have several advantages. Among them was the ability to repair major brain damage. A human would probably have died on the spot.
The sportscasters said that Kren must have been very shaken up about the accident, since he did so poorly at the last two events of the day, the javelin distance and accuracy throws.
The director of athletics was furious at not having been informed of Kren's intention of winning the javelin tennis competition.
Kren said that he hadn't been sure that he could win it, that he wasn't sure that using a javelin to pole-vault with would be allowed by the judges, and that the director had been gone for most of the week, and out of touch, so he couldn't be consulted.
The director walked away grumbling.
Kren didn't really care. Not when his net worth was now one billion, two gross seven dozen and six million Ke. Plus a small duchy, of course.
The memory of the stunned look on his opponent's face as the javelin came at her was a very nice, lingering satisfaction.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
Kren's Kiddy Hotel—
They Check In but They Don't Check Out
The contractors started work promptly on Monday morning, putting up the first twelve miles of fencing around the new property. If it worked, they would get the go-ahead to complete the project, but they wouldn't have the whole job done for twelve weeks.
With Bronki working on the sales end of things, Kren and Dol started getting production going.
"We have to have an efficient method of gathering up the juvenals, getting them on the train, getting them to market," Kren
said. "I think that the best way to do it would be to drug them, put them in boxes, and use material handling equipment from then on. There is a chemical called piperphentamone that is not on the illegal list, because it has no effect on adults. Injected into a juvenal in the proper dosage, it will knock her unconscious for a week. Also, there is an antidote, brantadiatol, which can bring them around in a few minutes, and it too is legal. I want you to find a manufacturer who can produce these for us."
"I'll get on it in the morning, sir."
"Right. Next, we'll need some shipping boxes for them. Find out what the standard sizes are, and what they cost. Collecting the juvenals up won't be a problem at first, because winter is coming on, and they will be collecting themselves at the wintering centers. I note that each of these centers is near a train terminal."
Lacking the human urge for creativity, all Mitchegai train terminals were built the same. Once they had an efficient design, they stuck with it. Rarely used terminals in the countryside were just as large and well equipped as those in the cities, although more of them had been added as the cities grew. Since they were expected to last forever, and had been built before many of the current cities existed, there was a certain logic to this way of doing things.
"I'm sure that it was simply easier to build the centers where the materials could be easily delivered," Dol said.
"I expect that you are right, but it is still very convenient for us. I want you to work on some method of efficiently taking contented children from the center and turning them into boxes of product loaded on a hovercraft that can deliver them to the train station. Bear in mind that this will have to be done mostly outdoors, in the wintertime."
"Right, sir. Then there were the buildings you mentioned earlier?"
"That's what I'll be doing, drawing up some rough sketches of what we need. Later, you can do up some finished drawings on that fancy computer of yours."
Kren of the Mitchegai Page 22