“I’ll get our people right on it, boss,” Agnieshka said. “Things have been getting a little dull around here anyway. Have you talked to Kasia about this?”
“Not yet. She’s next on the list.”
Kasia was not enthusiastic.
“Mickolai, this is crazy! You are talking about expenditures of a size that whole planets can barely afford. Things that are out of sight for mere individual citizens!”
“All we are going to have to pay for is some used machinery and some raw metal. We already have the engineering force and the labor force, sitting idle. We already have a place to put it all,” I said. “We can do it.”
“I really doubt if it will be that cheap. Remember Cheop’s Law. ‘Everything costs more and takes longer.’ And on top of that, why should we have to be the ones who pay for it? It is the whole planet that needs defending! The whole planet should pay for it!”
“And maybe it will, love. Once we get it built, and people realize what we have done for them, they will vote to reimburse us.”
“Get serious!” She said, “What they will do is to say ‘Thank you, sir!’ They will throw a few more parades, and pin a few dozen more medals on your chest, but pay money? I doubt it!”
“Okay, what if what they were told was that what we had would protect the military, but not the civilians? But, for just a few trillion zlotys more, they could come under the umbrella, too.”
“Now, that has possibilities.”
“Right,” I said. “And if we get New Yugoslavia to go along with this, why can’t we sell the other planets on the program? We can sell inexpensive ‘starter kits,’ all the machinery and plans that are needed to build a decent defense system of their own. There could be a very hefty profit in it for you.”
“Hmmm. Perhaps. But you’ve just stacked three maybes in a row, and it is getting increasingly improbable.”
“That could be. But what good is all of our money going to do for us if the Mitchegai attack us, and we lose? Our wealth would be useless. Our estates would be gone. Our children would be dead.”
“The boys would be dead?”
“The Mitchegai have no immune system. They need absolutely sterile planets. Before they can settle on a new world, they must eradicate all existing life on it. That would include you and me and the boys.”
“Damn you, Mickolai, when you put it that way, you don’t leave me any choice. Spend everything we’ve got, if you have to, but get it done.”
I had the feeling that I would be sleeping alone, that night. It doesn’t pay to win an argument with your wife, but sometimes it has to be done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
An Interesting Day
Kren slept through the night, the entire next day, and the night following it. He was awakened by Dol.
“Wakey, wakey, you fabulous warrior! Today is a school day!”
Kren stumbled to the toilet, then to his drinking fountain, and finally to a mirror, where he examined his brands. The pain in his arms had subsided to a dull ache, and the burns were almost healed. Millions of years of selective breeding had given the Mitchegai remarkably resilient bodies. His head, however, felt almost as fuzzy as when he had eaten a portion of Bronki’s brain. He hadn’t eaten that much of the Greenie’s brain, but what he had didn’t seem to want to fit in with the rest of him.
Once dressed, Dol walked him to class, to be sure that he didn’t get lost.
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to you the other night, but I got there in time to see what you did to that last sword swinger,” Dol said. “You were unbelievably fast! Whap! Whap! And there she was, three pieces on the floor!”
“Yes, well, tell me, what do you know about pistols?”
Many of the dreams he’d had in his long sleep had been about various weird weapons, and about the many strange ways that a person could die.
“I’ve heard how they work, but I’ve never seen one. Someone said that Bronki owns one. That was what made those explosions, the other afternoon, wasn’t it?”
“Best we not talk about it,” Kren said. “That’s my college there, isn’t it?”
“Yes. All of your classes this term will be in the building to the left, on the top floor. That’s where they do their remedial learning. I put a copy of your schedule in your new book bag. I’ll have to leave you now, since I’ve got classes of my own to get to. Do you know how to get to the gym from here?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then I’ll see you back at Bronki’s place, this evening.”
Kren was in a fog all morning. He dutifully went to each class at the beating of the gong, took notes on the instructor’s name, and all else that seemed important, but mostly his thoughts were on weapons and death. Most of them, things that sprayed fire, or bombs that exploded under your feet, struck him as being foolish. And could a gas really be used to kill?
But more and more kept surfacing on a system of fighting without any weapons at all. How to kill with a kick or a blow, where your claws could sink the deepest, and how to avoid these things from happening to you. Kren could see that this technique could be very useful, if ever he was deprived of his sword and his spear.
Two of his instructors commented on his lack of attention in class, for which Kren dutifully apologized. But in truth, he was sure that the athletic director would never permit him to flunk out, so long as his athletic and weapons skills stayed with him, and so he wasn’t terribly worried about it.
Finally, the sixth gong sounded, and he had an hour to find the gymnasium and prepare himself for three hours of physical training.
He got lost twice in the complicated city, laid out without a single right-angled turn, and completely without roads or street signs. He arrived three minutes late.
Fortunately, Dik was the forgiving sort.
“Every new freshman gets lost at least three times in the first week,” she said. “Just see to it that next week, you are here on time. We’ll spend an hour with the sword, and then I’ll turn you over to your javelin instructor. Here is the number and combination to your locker. Be back here in six minutes.”
Kren worked as diligently as he could, but his performance was much worse than it had been a few days before. The coach had given him twelve legal touches in six minutes.
“What’s wrong with you, Kren?”
“Coach, the pain in my arms from the new branding was bothering me, and I ate too much, the night before last.”
“You should have bought the anesthetic,” Dik said, easily parrying an awkward attack and touching him yet again with her épée.
“I did buy it! But I don’t think that I actually received it.”
“That happens. The trash probably saved herself two Ke by cheating you.”
“She charged me twelve Ke! If she’d wanted more money, she could have asked for more, and I’d have willingly paid it!”
“Then she probably just enjoyed watching you endure the pain. Visit her, but don’t kill her. Just cause her more pain than she caused you.”
“I am unfamiliar with civilian ways. Is such a thing permitted?”
“I’m not sure that it’s permitted, but it is surely commonly done. How else can the trash be trained to respect their betters?”
“Thank you, Coach. I shall act on your advice.”
“Do it in a few days, when you are feeling back to your normal self. For now, on guard!”
The rest of the fencing session went badly for Kren, and he was glad when he was sent out to the javelin field.
A Mitchegai who always referred to herself as “The Master of Javelins” soon had her three dozen athletes standing rigidly in a neat line, with their eyes facing forward. Strutting like the martinet that she was, she started by explaining the rules of the games to them.
There were four competitions with the javelin. One was the distance throw, to simply see who could make a standard javelin go the farthest. Each contestant got three throws, and only the longest one counted.
The second was for accuracy. Each contestant had three throws at each of four targets, all shots counted, and the winner was the athlete who had the highest total score.
The third was a game similar to the Earthly game of tennis, or ping pong, save that it was played with javelins, with the two opponents being required to catch any javelins that might fall within a designated area, and throw them back within two seconds. Also, the “net” was a solid wall half again taller than the contestants. The spectators could see where both of the players were, but the participants couldn’t. This put a large element of luck into the game, but made it popular with spectators. The javelins used had blunt tips, for safety reasons.