“Ah, there you are, Kren! Well, get suited up, and we’ll try each other’s mettle.”
“As you wish, Dennon, but I hadn’t expected to be fighting you.”
“Well, it would hardly be fair to put you up against someone who had been living in armor for years. I’m not a novice to fighting, of course, so I expect that I’ll give you a bit of a challenge. Just be sure that you give me your best effort as well. I would be seriously offended if I thought you were faking it just to make me look good.”
“Again, as you wish.”
It took two soldiers twelve minutes to get Kren’s armor installed and fitted properly, and he spent another two dozen minutes moving around, getting used to the feel of it. The weight of the tail armor was particularly bothersome. It threw his balance off considerably.
Finally, Kren said, “I think that I’ve got the feel of it now. I’m ready if you are.”
“You are doing better than most,” the duke said. “Many troops spend most of their first week getting up again, after they’ve fallen down, again. On guard!”
They started slow, feeling each other out the way professional fighters always do. Then the duke launched a fast attack, feinting with his spear while attacking with his sword on the other side. Kren was just able to parry both weapons, but his riposte didn’t get through, and he had to leap backward to avoid the counter. After a short breather, Kren attacked, and after six counters, he doubled under the duke’s sword, fencing style, and caught him in the chest with a thrust.
“Well done, Kren! I should have known to guard better against your point, having seen you fight at an épée tournament. Well then, do you want to have a go at one of my troops?”
Kren agreed to it, after a few minutes to catch his breath. The armor around his waist interfered with his lung exhausts.
In the course of the morning, Kren beat six of the duke’s warriors, without losing a match.
“Wow, but your troops are good!” Kren said, “That last one in particular almost had me at least six times there! I hope that I never have to go to war against this bunch!”
“That last one was my weapons’ master, Kren, and you are the first one to defeat him in his last three lifetimes! We are all astonished at your prowess, and to fight this well on your first day in armor, well, it is simply astounding!”
“Thank you. I think that I’ve had enough of a workout for today, though. I’ll be happier when I get this armor off. My tail is protesting more than anything else. If this armor were mine, I think I’d have the tail armor removed, and just let my tail take its chances.”
“Most novices to armor say that for the first two weeks. They get used to it in time, though, and an armored tail is sometimes useful. Once the strength in it builds up, the tail is useful for blocking with.”
“Yes, I noticed two of your soldiers using it that way. But for now, get me out of this stuff!”
They spent the rest of the day strolling around the palace and its grounds. Most of the conversation revolved around Duke Dennon’s problems in managing his estate.
To the duke, managerial details were simply a nuisance. His true and only intrest was in war, and in further developing his army. All else was trivia. In the late afternoon, the duke was called away to settle a minor emergency. He and Kren agreed to meet again in the morning.
Kren spent the evening reading a novel from the duke’s small library.
In the morning, Dol came to Kren’s room and started waxing enthusiastically about all of the machinery that she had spent the day before examining.
“I said that there were seven big tunneling machines, sir, but from the drawings, I didn’t realize just how big they are,” Dol said. “They each break up into eleven pieces so that they can be transported by rail! Can you imagine something eleven times as big as a rail car? Those things are built to dig a tunnel twelve yards in diameter through solid rock, loose sand, and everything in between. The cutters in the front can take on anything natural, even granite, chew it up, and spit it down a vibratory conveyor line that it drags behind it. They can move at a yard a minute through granite, and three times that fast through dirt. Actually, it’s the conveyors that slow them down, just hauling the stuff away. And if the material is too soft to hold itself up, the tunnelers are equipped to build a metal tube to line the tunnel with. They take a coil of stainless metal, form corrugations in it, and then weld it in a spiral around the inside, all automatically. They’ve each got their own fusion power supply, too, and can run for a thousand years without refueling.”
“That sounds impressive. It also sounds a little big, just to have juvenals running down it a few times a year.”
“Right, sir. But there is also an eighth tunneler, intended for exploratory work. It cuts a tunnel three yards in diameter, dragging an extendable conveyor line behind itself, just like the big ones do. Through dirt, it can do twelve yards a minute, since it uses the same conveyors as the big ones do.”
Kren said, “And does it put in the metal lining, like the big ones do? I think that most of the tunnels from the train stations to the wintering centers will be shallow, and through dirt, not rock.”
“Oh, yes, sir. It does everything that the big ones do, except break up for shipment. It doesn’t have to, since it will fit on a flatcar.”
“Then that solves one of our problems.”
Duke Dennon walked in through the open doorway.
“You were having problems, Kren?” The duke said in stilted Keno, which Dol and Kren had been using.
“Just the minor problem of getting the juvenals from the wintering centers to the train stations in the wintertime. If we had the use of your small tunneler, we could put in an underground connection to each of them, and thus avoid the inevitable losses that would occur if we took the children outside during bad weather.”
“Oh. Yes, I can see where many of them might freeze to death, doing such a thing, and that would cut into your profits. Well, I’m sure that we can arrange something, one way or another. I’ve found a surplus equipment buyer who has offered to pay me one sixth of what I had to pay for all of that stuff, but that’s the best offer I’ve had.”
“Just how much did you pay for it, if I may ask,” Kren said.
“You may. Including transportation charges, but not counting legal fees and the atrocious penalties I had to pay for late payment, it came to just over eight dozen billion Ke.”
“Hmmm. It is possible that I could better the offer that the scrap dealer made you, but there would have to be a number of stipulations.”
“I am interested. Just what stipulations did you have in mind?” The duke unconsciously slipped over to Meno, which he was more comfortable with.
Kren said in Meno, leaving Dol out of it for a while, “First off, I don’t have anyplace to store so much equipment. Could I leave it here until I need it?”
“I don’t see why not. We have plenty of room. I could let you store it here for, say, twelve years, before I start charging you rent on it.”
“That would be adequate. Next, I’m a little low on ready cash just now. Would you be willing to take stock in my corporation in return for your equipment?”
“Now that would take some mulling over. How much were you thinking of offering me?” the duke asked.
“I offer to take it all for one quarter of what you paid, two dozen billion Ke.”
“That sounds reasonable, and more than anyone else has offered. But this stock of yours, what sort of dividends do you intend to pay?”
“I intend for my company to continue reinvesting all of our considerable profits back into the business for the foreseeable future. There won’t be any dividends for a very long time,” Kren said.
“Well, what bloody good is an investment that doesn’t make me any money? I’d be better off working with the used equipment dealer. There at least, I’d get something for my machinery! Why should I accept your strange offer?”
“You should accept my offer because it will make your army invincible, and you a world conqueror!”
The duke closed the door and sat down. “That is a remarkable statement. Would you care to expand on it?”