Kren dropped his cloak, took three running steps, and let fly. The spear arched high in the sky and came down perfectly on target, going right through the startled girl, and nailing her to the ground. She was screaming, and spinning about in circles, but unable to free herself.
“That was lovely! You are a master of your art!” Bronki shouted.
“Hardly that! It didn’t even kill her!” He shouted back as he ran up to retrieve his broad bladed spear. He gave the child a casual kick in the head to silence her, and then pulled out his spear.
The overlapping, flexible plates of the Mitchegai cranium make for a much weaker skull than that of humans. Furthermore, the motile brain cells are less firmly connected to each other than those of any earthly species.
This results in making Mitchegai rather easy to knock unconscious. At the same time, the motile brain cells readily reconnect, and thus a blow to the head will rarely kill a Mitchegai.
With humans, the force required to knock one unconscious is very nearly that required to knock him dead.
Kren said, “Did you want this one? Or should I kill you another?”
“I had thought that she would be big enough for both of us.”
“I can see that academicians have smaller appetites than soldiers do. How would you like the small one out there?” He pointed at another juvenal as far away as the first had been.
“I think that I would prefer the little boy down there.” She pointed to one half again farther.
Mitchegai eyesight is extremely good, superior to that of an earthly eagle.
“That’s really pushing it, but I will try.”
Luck was with him, and Kren caught the little fellow cleanly in the neck.
“Truly, you are a great master! Let me pace off the distance of that throw. I shall E-mail the university’s athletic director about you right after we wake up.”
“Thank you. I hope that I will be as lucky in my demonstration for him as I have been in this one for you.”
“Kren, you must learn to cease hiding your light under a basket. Come on, let’s carry these children closer to the house before we eat them. Otherwise, we’ll end up sleeping it off in the fields, and wake up chilled to the bone.”
Mitchegai are nominally cold-blooded. However, through the use of clothing and various behavioral traits, the adults usually maintain a body temperature slightly higher than humans do.
It was two days before Kren felt up to doing more reading, and a week before he finished his first book.
A semi-sentient housekeeper came by every other day, shook out the carpets, washed all of the floors and windows, and trimmed back the barely encroaching grass, but never touched anything on a table or a desk. She never spoke a word, but brought fresh linen, changed the beds, and took away Kren’s cloak for cleaning. She had an arrangement with Bronki, which involved getting the use of a small, nearby house with the utilities and taxes paid.
Kren simply moved to another room whenever she appeared anxiously at his doorway, and that was sufficient.
Bronki spent most of her time writing a book on her general-purpose computer, rattling her claws on the hardened metal keyboard. She had contracted to finish the last volume of her history of the computer before the next semester, and she was worried about fulfilling it.
As with all contracts among the Mitchegai, there were severe penalty clauses for late delivery. In the worst cases, they would sometimes not eat you alive, a bad end for a Mitchegai.
Kren was struggling through a book on mathematics, something which none of his victims had prepared him for, when there was a shout from outside the front door.
He went to answer it, but Bronki got there first. Two older ladies with large heads were standing there in brightly colored academic cloaks. They had a naked young girl tied at wrists and ankles, slung under a long aluminum pole that they supported between them on their right shoulders.
“Bronki! We heard you were back! We’ve come to welcome you home to the civilized world!”
“Zoda! Sava! Come on in! And what is this that you have brought me?”
Zoda shouted, “Party food, of course! Isn’t she lovely? Just the right age, soft and tender, and not a mark on her! It took us all day to find one this good!”
“She is lovely! She looks almost too good to eat! Maybe, I’ll keep her and have her eat me when her time is right!” Bronki said.
“Not a chance!” Sava said, “We’ve carried her for three miles, and we’re going to eat her! Who’s your friend?”
“Have it your way,” Bronki said, and introduced Kren to her friends. They were both university professors on ten-year-long sabbaticals, and living a few miles away.
The Mitchegai neither smoked tobacco nor drank alcohol, probably because they lacked tobacco plants and the yeast to make beer or wine. A wide variety of illegal, synthetic drugs had been developed, but these were frowned upon by polite society.
Yet all intelligent beings need to get together to talk and socialize.
During such functions, some method to release the inhibitions is desirable, and with drunkenness an impossibility, the Mitchegai used the stupor brought on by eating. Eating a very large meal put you to sleep too quickly, but snacking lightly throughout the evening proved efficacious.
“How is the book coming?” Sava asked Bronki.
“Poorly! It’s way behind schedule!”
“Mine too! What’s more, I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do next, but at least I’ve got a year before it’s due. Tell you what. How about if I stay here and help you out, and then if you have time, you can do the same for me?”
Bronki said, “You’d do that? You’re a blessing from the duke! Yes, by all means! Help me! Help me!”
The two academicians brought their gift straight into the living room, and tied the struggling girl to a low ceramic tiled table with raised edges that was obviously made for this purpose. Several small, decorative knives were put on the table as well, and the group sat down on couches around it.
“So, Bronki, will you do the honors of the first cut?” Sava said.
“But surely, it is your gift, so you should do it.”
“No, no. You know the rules. You are the hostess.”
“But Kren is a special guest. He should have the honors,” Bronki said.
“I am but a soldier, and unfamiliar with civilized ways,” Kren said. “I would probably do something improper, and flub the whole thing.”
“No, you won’t,” Bronki insisted. “We’re all friends here. Just take a knife and cut off some small part. Actually, most party goers start with the fingers and toes, and work inwards as the night goes on. Just don’t let her die too soon.”
“As you wish,” he said. He took a knife which was none too sharp and stretched out one of the girl’s fingers. Apparently guessing what he was about to do, she struggled and screamed, such that when he cut the finger off, he didn’t slice cleanly through the cartilage at the joint, but had to lean heavily on the knife and took off a bit of bone as well.
The girl screamed again, much more loudly this time, and longer.
“That was really good, Kren,” Zoda said. “The pitch and timbre were wonderful! I’ll have to remember that! Always take a bit of bone off on the first cut!”
The Mitchegai have very little sense of rhythm, and thus music and dance have no place in their pantheon of art works. But extracting pleasant sounds from their party food is considered to be an honored art form, and a lot of fun besides. In addition, it always put the guests in a very good mood.
“You are the computer expert here, Bronki,” Zoda said, cutting off a finger for herself. When the screaming stopped, she continued, “What do you think of Kem’s suggestion that it might be possible to build a computer with real intelligence?”
“I think that it is pure and utter nonsense! Computers can only do what their name implies. They can compute. The so called artificial intelligence programs are exactly what their name says they are. Artificial! They can’t really think!” She stabbed the girl’s forearm to emphasize her point.
“Exactly right,” said Sava. “Computers have been around for millions of years, and if it were possible to make them truly intelligent, somebody would have done it by now.”
The long evening was most pleasant for the four of them. Kren was quizzed at length about the military, and he asked as many questions about their lives at the university.
“So tell me, why are we so often at war?” Bronki asked the group, when the conversation hit a lull.
“That’s easy,” Sava said. “Because they’re fun!”