“I’d be happy to. You have admired my athletic abilities, and yesterday, you were impressed with my prowess as a warrior, yes?”
“Certainly. You are the perfect athlete. I’ve been saying so since I saw you win that first fencing tournament.”
Kren said, “Would you like to have every soldier in your army be as good an athlete, as good a warrior as I am?”
“By the Great First Egg, I certainly would! Are you saying that this is possible?”
“I think that it is. But first, I must tell you that before I got this body, I was not a particularly adept soldier, and I wasn’t any sort of an athlete at all. I was in fact physically very ordinary. Then I was badly injured in a field exercise, and didn’t stand a chance of living half a day. It was night, and we were out of touch with our commander. There wasn’t a normal metamorphosed youngster available to eat my brain, but a friend of mine found an ordinary slave, without much of a brain of his own. It could have worked out badly, but I urged my squad to give it a try, and they did. You have seen the result. There is something very special about this body, and I think perhaps it has something to do with the nerves. I think that with proper breeding and a lot of work, we can get it to breed true. It will probably take three or four generations to do it, but I am confident that in the end it can be done before this body is worn out. Then, we will have a breed of Mitchegai that can be the finest warriors the universe has ever seen! You were willing to bet a gross billion Ke on the outcome of a fencing tournament. I’m willing to bet that you would wager some useless machinery on the hope of building the finest army in this world, or any other!”
“You would win that bet, Kren! I’m with you!”
“Excellent, Duke Dennon! I see a long and mutually profitable partnership before us.”
“Partnership?”
“Well, this is premature, and it will be many years before it brings fruit, but think on this. My interest is in business and management. Your interest is in armies and war. If we had a trusting relationship, together we could, in time, rule this entire planet!”
“That is a very interesting thought, Kren, but as you say, it is for the future. For now, I will have what we have agreed to today properly written up, and sent to you in a few days for your signature.”
“Excellent, Dennon. You’ll be hearing from us soon. For now, there’s a train to catch.”
“Very well, Kren. For war and profit!”
“Yes! For war and profit!” Kren switched to Keno. “Come along, Dol. It’s time to go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
Billions for Building
Again, Duke Kren satisfied the needs of nature, with the pain in his head pulsing. Yet, as he reviewed his memories, he couldn’t help but think that those were the great old days! The days of joy and fulfillment!
He lay down, and put the recording helmet back on.
Once they were in their private cabin on the train, Dol said, “Kren, just what was all that about?”
“Sorry, but the duke’s Keno isn’t very good. I just made a deal whereby Duke Dennon will give us all of the machinery that you inspected yesterday, in return for two dozen billion Ke worth of our corporation’s shares, which he doesn’t expect to make any money off of!”
“How wonderful, sir.”
“You don’t seem to be very enthusiastic about it,” Kren said.
“I’m not! Don’t you see that you’ve just blown me off the board of directors?”
“Perhaps, but not necessarily. The corporation only elects a new board once a year. You have plenty of time to come up with a few dozen billion Ke, and invest it properly in your favorite corporation. Then you can blow Bronki off the board.”
“There is that, yes,” Dol said.
“And anyway, the corporation is going to need a lot of spending cash.”
“I expect that it will get it, since Bronki won’t like being pushed out, either. She’ll be buying more stock, too. Watch her!”
“Right, she will. Have fun, you two. If you both get really enthusiastic with the competition, maybe you can blow Duke Dennon off the board,” Kren said. “Next, I want you to hire a crew who knows how to use our sort of mining machinery, and start them digging three-yard tunnels from the train stations to the wintering centers.”
“Oh, we’ve already got them, sir.”
“We do?”
“Duke Dennon’s engineers have all been through an extensive course in how to use all the machinery they bought. The original plan was to have them set it up in that old copper mine themselves. They spent a year in mining school, came back eager to work, and the bottom promptly fell out of the copper market. They’ve all been sitting around for a year now with nothing to do, and getting very frustrated about it. I’ve already discussed the project with Chief Engineer Dako, and she wants to start immediately,” Dol said.
“Then as soon as we get home, phone her and tell them to start on it! Do you think that they would be willing to take company stock for their work, instead of cash?”
“So far, there has been no mention of money. I tell you, sir, these girls really want to get going on something! But if the subject comes up, I’ll relay your suggestion to them.”
“I suppose that we can take the dirt we remove and load it directly on to railroad hopper cars,” Kren said.
“That is the plan, yes. Dako suggested that the best thing would be to just dump it in the Borako Ocean Trench. There’s a railroad station built on the grass mat right above it, and everybody within a thousand miles uses it for a dump. That trench is so big that at present usage, it will take three dozen million years to fill it up.”
The Mitchegai tend to worry about ecological things in the long term, but not that long.
Dol continued, “That’s what they were planning to do with the waste material from the Senta Copper Mine. I’ll have to make arrangements with the MagFloat Corporation, for cutting holes in the walls of their loading docks, shipping in and out our equipment, and using their floor space to package the children. And hauling away the dirt, of course. I think that once we get the lighting strung up in the tunnels, we’ll be able to buy the electricity for them from the railroad as well. It should be a lot cheaper than putting in our own power supplies.”
“So you’re way ahead of me on this thing. Good. Do it!”
“Thank you, sir,” Dol said. “I’ll get on it, directly.”
“Right. Next subject. I’d been planning on building conventional buildings, big buildings, for growing grass in, and for feeding the juvenals until they are big enough to eat. I wonder if it wouldn’t be cheaper to use the big tunneling machines to make underground buildings. We could take these big, metal-lined tunnels and weld floors in them. We could put lights and water sprinklers on the ceilings, and grass on the floors. Then we could have mowing machines running along rails mounted on the side walls. It has the nice advantage of keeping everybody else from knowing what we are doing.”
“That’s interesting, sir. I’ll do some cost analyses in a few days, once I get the tunnels to the wintering centers going.”
“Fine,” Kren said. “But talk to Bronki about dealing with the MagFloat Corporation. She probably knows somebody on their board of directors, and can cut us a better deal.”
“And get herself a kickback in the process.”
“Which she’d better invest in company stock. I’m going to take a nap. Fighting in armor is a real pain in the tail, and I think I’ll be sore for days. Wake me when we get home.”
Kren felt perfectly safe, sleeping in the same room when Dol was awake there. If he was killed, she wouldn’t have a sure thing to bet on.
* * *
When they returned home, Dol filled Bronki in, and she agreed to talk to several old friends on the MagFloat board of directors.
“You know, Dol, after five thousand years, one gets to know just about everybody who is really important.”
By Monday afternoon, she had struck a deal whereby the Superior Food Corporation had permission to cut tunnels into a dozen and nine of their largely unused stations, provided that they placed a secure and attractive door over the opening when it was not in use. They could use the currently underutilized loading docks to package the children at no cost, provided that they cleaned up after themselves.