“And what was this flash of enlightenment? What exactly did you think about?”
“I suddenly saw a whole lifetime of research laid out in front of me, research the results of which could easily make me the most important person on the entire planet,” Kren said.
Kren explained the whole program to Bronki, in more detail than he had explained to Duke Dennon, and not suppressing his thoughts on breeding superior soldiers.
“This body I got in the mines is obviously far better than the usual one. The duke said that I was better with a spear than the soldier that I had eaten, the one who gave me my skills with a spear in the first place. I seem to be stronger, much faster, and much more accurate than anyone else on the planet. I suspect that it might have something to do with the nerves. As soon as possible, we must build a structure where my offspring can be kept and secretly nurtured. If whatever this body has breeds true, think of the army that I’ll have!”
“And where will you get the females to perform this experiment with?”
“There are plenty of fine female athletes at the university. Some of them might have some of the same genes that make me so good. I need only invite a dozen of them over to some secluded place for a dinner, a victory party perhaps, a few times every year. I will personally clean the place very thoroughly before they arrive, make sure that no one else but me, my athletic friends, and some juvenals are there in the interim, and then I will vacuum the whole place carefully after they leave, using new vacuum bags. I will distribute the fertilized eggs on new grown grass inside a closed building with suitable growing lights. The grubs will be kept separate, and when their time comes, they will become well-fed pollywogs in their own tank. The juvenals will be carefully nurtured on grass grown under artificial lights. Then, once the first generation has grown, my own daughters would be suitable egg layers. After a few more generations, the offspring would be genetically very like me.”
Bronki said, “Most of that sounds very good. But about using your own daughters, well, there might be some genetic problems with double recessives, and so on.”
“True, but we will be carefully testing all of the offspring, and culling anything inferior. We’ll just sell the substandard ones for food. That will clean the gene pool in a few generations.”
“Or we could always eat them ourselves.”
“Yes, that might be best, in case someone finds out what we’re doing. We wouldn’t want anything superior to get into someone else’s army,” Kren said.
“Kren, to come up with so much, all at once, well, it’s simply unprecedented. I’ve never heard of anything else like this ever happening before. There’s nothing like it in the literature. But, you know, the literature on vampires is very limited, for obvious reasons. Those who do this sort of thing aren’t likely to write scholarly reports about it.”
“No, but you have had flashes of creativity, too, and if our experience is common among vampires, then it is probable that many of the rich and powerful are secretly like ourselves. Which leads me to another thought. Perhaps the reason why vampirism is so frowned upon is that those in power don’t want the competition.”
Bronki said, “And if that is true, then you and I are treading on very dangerous ground.”
“The world is a very dangerous place. But if we wish to climb to the top of it, we must be prepared to take some risks.”
“Very well, then. I wish you the very best of luck in your endeavor.”
Kren was not about to let Bronki bow out and leave him without her expertise and advice.
“We will, of course, be very cautious and very secretive until we are very powerful. You have called yourself my partner. If that is so, I will be expecting some help from you,” Kren said. “First off, I want to form a corporation to own and develop the land that we have bought this day. Since you have formed many corporations in the past, I want you to handle this one for us. You will issue shares with a par value of one million Ke each to me for my contribution of a gross billion Ke, and to you for the billion Ke that you have earned as a commission for putting this deal together, and for the billion Ke paid by you to your friend Sala in the form of a bribe.”
“There was also the twelve million Ke I paid as your half of the fee to the Bonding Authority.”
“That seems excessive!”
“They are guaranteeing the performance of both parties to the agreement. That means that if Duke Dennon reneges, then the Bonding Authority might have to go to war with him to ensure compliance,” Bronki said. “Considering the quality of Dennon’s army and the cost of wars, two dozen million seems very reasonable.”
“Oh, very well. Anyway, it has already been paid. Set us up with a corporate bank account, as well. Two signatures will be required on every check, one of which must be mine.”
“I will file the paperwork for the corporation this evening, and take care of the bank in the morning. What would you like to call it?”
“I think that something very ordinary sounding would be best,” Kren said. “We’ll call it the Superior Food Corporation. And voting by the board of directors will be in proportion to the number of shares that they own, not one person, one vote.”
“Kren, that’s so undemocratic!”
“When did I ever claim to be a democrat?”
Bronki had only paid to Sala the half billion Ke that the accountant had requested. Duke Dennon had an outstanding credit rating, despite his current financial problems, since for thousands of years, he had honored all of his contracts and paid all of his debts. Because of this, the total fees required by the Bonding Authority had been only twelve million. Bronki thought that the stock that she would be issued would be quite acceptable. Anyway, it looked like an interesting operation, and being a world leader might be fun.
When they got home, Kren called Dol to his sitting room and explained everything that happened, and all of his thoughts for the future.
“So you see, we are going to need your engineering expertise on a number of projects.” Kren said, “We are going to need a large grass-mowing and collecting machine. We are going to need several large experimental buildings. We are going to need an efficient system of sedating and boxing up juvenals for shipment. But the first thing that we are going to need is a fence that goes around the entire property, one that lets juvenals enter, but stops them from leaving.”
Dol had listened, fascinated by everything that Kren had told her, but now she had to say, “Kren, we can’t do that. Planetary law is very specific about the building of fences. It is illegal to inhibit the free motion of juvenals. Except for fields licensed for the growing of long grass, all fences must have an ungated opening wide enough for an adult to pass easily through, at least once every two gross yards.”
“I know that, and our fences will have those openings. Here, look.”
Kren took a sheet of grass paper and drew a vertical line of half circles on it, with the concave sides to the left and the convex to the right, and with the wingtips almost but not quite touching.
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“Kodo once read a study on the migration patterns of juvenals,” he said. “When they come to an obstacle, like a fence, and they want to get to the other side, they follow along it. When the fence ends, they just keep on walking in the direction that they have been going, having apparently forgotten why they were following it in the first place. Now, when a juvenal comes to the convex side of one of these semicircles, she will follow along the fence until she comes to one of the openings, and then she will go through. But if she comes to the concave side of a semicircle, she will follow it around until it turns her back in the direction that she was coming from, and she will walk right back into the middle of our field. Since there are two gross yards between the openings, and the openings are only a yard wide, only once in two gross times will she happen to come directly to the opening without hitting the fence first.”
A human would have recognized Kren’s invention immediately as a fish weir. But for someone living on a planet without any fishes, Kren had come up with a brilliant innovation.