“I’ll get right on it, boss!”
“This is good,” I said, pouring myself a glass of Jim Beam.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
Everybody Wants a Bite of the Action!
Or, The Vampires’ Kodo Conduct
Once again, bodily needs forced Duke Kren to remove the recording helmet, to relieve himself, and to drink.
A thin, gray light was coming in through the small, barred window. It was early morning, but Kren was in no shape to do any work today. He lay back down and put the helmet back on, returning to his memories of two thousand years before. He remembered . . .
* * *
The following Saturday Kren again won the fencing tournament, but the odds on him were down to five to one.
And the week after, at an away game, he won the accuracy competition without having to break a world record, but the payoff was only four to one.
The Friday after, with a gross, a dozen and four million in the bank, being paid two million for killing a prominent citizen no longer seemed like profitable venture. But, a deal was a deal, and he’d promised.
Kren had been waiting in a dimly lit passageway between two buildings for over two hours. Bronki had assured him that Kodo always passed by this way on route to his regular Friday night game of Nada, a very high-stakes gambling game. He had never been late for this event during the weeks that he had been under observation.
What Kren couldn’t know was that Kodo had finally found out the hiding place of the brander, and was arranging for a hit team of six fighters to go and use her for a party snack. And while he was at the KUL Assassins’ Hall, he also signed up for a second hit team, of twelve this time, to go after Bronki again. And this time, he had sent his four personal guards along with them, to make sure that nothing went wrong.
“Would you please tell me what your business is?” a uniformed guard said.
“What?” Kren tried to sound frightened. He had no doubt about his ability to kill the strutting fool, but he wanted to do this job as quietly as possible, and disposing of two bodies would be harder than one. It was best to seem a coward. He could always kill the guard if the act didn’t work.
“What are you doing here? I saw you in this same place when I passed by an hour ago.”
“I was supposed to meet a friend between these two buildings. She was going to lend me some money.”
“It would seem that she is late,” the guard said.
“Yes, and I really need that money. I don’t suppose that you . . .”
“Look, if I didn’t need money myself, I wouldn’t be working on a Friday night. Give up on her, and move on.”
“Please, sir, just a few more minutes. She still might get here,” Kren said.
“Just don’t be here when I come by again.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
Kren waited another dozen minutes before he saw Kodo walking toward him. There was no mistaking the light orange and lavender outfit of the College of Architects, the Rainbow Belt, and the dozen and eight doctorate tassels. He did not have the expected guards with him, but that just made Kren’s job easier.
They were just passing each other when Kren drew his sword and took the businessman’s head off with a single, clean blow. Before the body hit the ground, Kren had a tie-wrap around the jaws, to keep from being bitten, and the head tucked into his book bag. He quickly searched the body and put everything he found in the bag on top of the head.
Then, with a tool he’d brought along for the purpose, Kren lifted the heavy lid from a sewer manhole, dumped the body inside, and replaced the lid.
Because of the Mitchegai’s muted sense of smell, and the lack of any microbes that could cause anything to rot, there were no separate storm drains on any Mitchegai planet.
Since trash removal had to be paid for, but the sewers were a city service, most residents used the sewers for disposing of their trash. To stop things from plugging up, the sewer lines had powerful grinders installed upstream of every pump, as did the sewers on human planets, all the way back to the twentieth century.
Functioning like humongous garbage disposal units, these grinders were capable of chewing up granite, concrete, and strong metal bars, if need be. Kodo’s body would give them no trouble at all, and the next grinder was only two yards from the manhole Bronki had chosen.
The pollywogs would eat a little bit better for a while.
Kren had the whole job done in under a minute, and went home with his book bag, unnoticed.
“You are late,” Bronki said, coming into his sitting room. “Did you have any problems?”
“Kodo was late, but everything went well. I saw our dinner out there, tied to the party tables.”
“Yes, they’ve been waiting anxiously for over an hour, the poor dears. I’ve given the servants a week off, with pay, and soon I’ll have six guards posted outside, so that we aren’t disturbed during our stupor. It’s a common enough practice among the wealthy. Now, let me see Kodo.”
Kren put the head on a table, and put the rest of his booty in a drawer. The head looked at Bronki, scowled, and blinked. He tried to open his mouth, but was hindered by the tie-wrap. A severed Mitchegai head is capable of staying alive for hours, as is that of an Earthly turtle.
“You see, Kodo dear, trying to kill me was not a nice thing to do, and you are being punished for it. I suppose that you could call it a learning experience, but we will do the learning, and not you. Kren, could you please take the skull plates off of him, so I can get at the brain? I might as well do the dissection myself, and make some use of that doctorate of surgery.”
She was marking neat, black lines directly on Kodo’s bright blue brain, and labeling two of them for herself and five to give Kren Kodo’s knowledge of architecture, business, and biology when Dol walked in unexpectedly.
“It’s a problem I never expected to have,” she said. “Even though I got the largest denominations of currency possible, my safe is completely packed solid with money! I’ve had to put a lot of it under my mattress, but that makes it very uncomfortable. I suppose that I will just have to put it all in the bank, but that will make the information available to the chancellor’s accounting department, and then they’ll make me pay taxes on it! But for a few day’s Kren, do you suppose that . . . that . . . That’s Kodo, the director of the College of Architecture, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so,” Kren said, his hand on his sword.
“And I suppose that you’re going to dissect the brain and eat the parts with your name on them, a capital offense. And since I am a witness to your crime, the most practical thing might be for you to eliminate me, as well.”
“That thought had occurred to me, yes.”
“May I respectfully suggest an alternative, sir.”
“You may, if you do it quickly.”
“Right sir. Instead of killing me as an unwanted witness, why not make me into a second coconspirator? I mean, I see Bronki’s name on two of the bits there. Now, Kodo had a doctorate of engineering, something that it would take me six more years of study to obtain on my own. Let me eat that part of him, and then both of you are safe from any threat of my betraying you.”
Kren said, “Bronki?”
“Oh, I suppose so. Dol, I had completely forgotten that you were here. I mean, I had sent the servants away, and you used to be a servant, and, oh well. No harm done, I suppose. You’d better order another juvenal for dinner, though. You can start by helping us with ours, and then we’ll help you with yours when she gets here,” Bronki said, drawing in two more sections and writing Dol’s name on them. “You see, Kodo? Everybody wants you. I don’t think that you’ve ever been this popular before.”
Kodo continued scowling and blinking, but that was the extent of his possible repertoire.
The door gong sounded, and Bronki said, “That’s probably the guards. Would you please take care of them, Dol?”
Dol returned to report that they now had six guards, stationed in the hall, and around the main staircase.
“Shouldn’t we have some out on the balconies?” Kren asked.