“Here we are, ladies! Our own private party room, but one big enough to hunt in!”
The room was huge. It measured two gross yards to the side, the ceiling was six yards above the grass, and it was covered with growing lights. The monochromatic lights were turned off now, but enough normal, solar spectrum lights were on to provide adequate lighting.
Six dozen children of various ages were grazing, foolishly unconcerned by their arrival.
Six party tables were clustered at one side of the room, complete with knives and a few electric irons.
“The floor is bouncy!” one of the athletes shouted, running across the room.
“Yes,” Kren said. “That’s real grass, growing on top of a tank of water that’s six yards deep. I was afraid that it wouldn’t be solid enough to walk on in time, but there it is!”
“I thought that this would be a more formal affair,” another athlete said.
“No, I wanted to do something really unusual. Something fun! So, the party has begun! Pick a snack that suits you, and run her down! Strap the child to one of the party tables available, and we’ll all chow down! And if we eat all of these, I can order up some more! Now let’s see who gets the first scream, and who gets the best one!”
It was pleasantly warm in the big room, and when Kren doffed his clothing, the others did so as well, as he had planned, all the better to ensure that all of their eggs dropped on the grass.
Most of the party guests took off running after the children, and over two dozen were caught. Most of them were soon released, to be caught again later, when the first six occupied all of the party tables. Soon, six children were screaming in pain, to the applause of the party goers.
Kren circulated, spreading his sperm around. This room and this party were a refinement of his earlier plans for breeding more bodies like the one he wore. Here, inside of this fairly natural environment, their eggs and his sperm could interact, and a large number of grubs would be the result.
When the grubs were ready to become pollywogs, they had only to eat through the grass to get to the pool below. And when the pollywogs were ready to become juvenals, it would be a simple matter for them to eat their way back up to the air.
In a natural environment, on dry land, very few of them would have made it, but here, Kren reasonably expected to get a large number of them for testing.
The whole room had been built under stringent conditions, in the dead of winter, with every worker having her sexual organs carefully covered. Kren himself had filled the tank with distilled water and chemical fertilizers. He had spread the grass seed on the surface personally, and since that time, no one else had been permitted in the “Breeding Room.”
Nonetheless, a certain amount of contamination was inevitable. Also, many of his own kids would doubtless prove to be unsuitable. Therefore, every single juvenal would be carefully genetically tested, and only the best would be allowed to live.
As the party became more boisterous, some of Kren’s athletic guests began jumping up and down on the grass-covered water, generating waves that spilled the party tables and knocked some of the other ladies down. They were trying to figure out the right timing to bounce themselves ever higher in the air, trying to touch the ceiling.
Soon over a dozen of them were jumping up and down in the same spot, and the grass below them gave way. They went right through, and ended up below the water.
Their fellow party mates, who were more than slightly annoyed at their antics, laughed at them, literally rolling on the ground. No one was worried about them, since Mitchegai are naturally aquatic. Their webbed toes help to make them natural swimmers, and when necessary, a Mitchegai can go without air for a long time.
Kren laughed along with the rest of his fellow athletes. Nonetheless, rather than risk losing a third of the eggs he wanted to fertilize, he ran back to where he had dumped his clothes and retrieved the sword that Duke Dennon had given him.
He cut the hole in the grass much bigger, so that enough light would get through for his guests to find their way to the surface, and threw the mats of grass to the juvenals who eagerly started to eat them.
“Come on in, Kren!” the first one said as she bobbed to the surface. “The water is just the right temperature!”
“I will! Right after we’re sure that none of you idiots have killed yourselves!”
A head count soon proved that they were all alive and happy, even the one whom Kren had accidentally cut while chopping the hole in the grass. They decided the wound wasn’t serious enough to need stitching up, so the party went on. Infections didn’t happen on a Mitchegai planet.
Kren jumped in, followed by the rest of the guests. Again, Kren wasn’t worried. Eggs floated, and so did grubs.
This was actually the first time in his life that Kren had been in the water, but swimming came naturally to a Mitchegai. He loved it, with the breathing exhaust vents bubbling around his waist. He vowed to himself that in his new apartment, being built two dozen stories above them, he would have a big swimming pool in the main living room.
Hours later, with the party snacks mostly eaten, with only one who was still alive and whimpering pleasantly, Kren and his guests fell asleep, scattered on the warm grass.
* * *
The next afternoon, half of his guests were still asleep, but a few, including Kren, had been more moderate in their eating.
One of the athletes said to Kren, “So just what is it that you are really doing here?”
“Would you believe that I am relaxing in the presence of good friends after almost a year’s hard work?”
“No. You are obviously plotting something.”
“Is that necessarily bad?” Kren asked.
“Not necessarily. Tell me about it.”
“Well, first off, I’d have to swear you to secrecy, and you would have to agree that if you ever broke this oath, you would permit me to kill you. I mean, I’d kill you anyway, but it’s so much nicer to have the victim’s permission, don’t you think?”
She said, “And what’s in it for me if I do take this risk?”
“First, you get to satisfy your curiosity. Second, there is a very good chance that you could become fabulously rich.”
“I like the second part best. Okay, I will take your oath of secrecy. Now tell me about it.”
“Very well,” Kren said. “Do you realize that I could have taken the gold at every single event I played in last year?”
“A lot of us are of that opinion, yes. You only lose so that the betting odds get better.”
“Correct. Now, before I got this body, I wasn’t much of an athlete at all. When it gets so old that I have to replace it, it is likely that I won’t be nearly as fit as I am now. This is a very superior body, and I want my next one to be just as good. What we are doing here is trying to breed some more of this sort of body. I think that I can do it in three or four generations, maybe four dozen years or so.”
“Interesting. Yes, it makes sense,” she said. “One male, three dozen physically fit females, and a place where grubs, pollywogs and juvenals can grow up in seclusion. If it can be done at all, this is the way to do it. But how does this make me rich?”
“Well, you can’t breed just one of anything. I’ll have to breed many of them, and do a great deal of careful selecting. In the end, there will be lots of extras, and you could have one, if you work with my program.”
“I like that idea. What’s the program?”
“When you change bodies here, we will also change your ID. I’ll then send you to one of the universities on the planet, and pay all of your expenses there. You will enroll in the school’s athletic program, and you will stay just good enough so that they don’t drop you. Then, twice a year, when I tell you to, you win the gold at your event,” Kren said. “You will do that for four years, multiplying your bankroll by maybe a gross each time, eight times in a row. Of course, I’ll be betting on you, too, and that’s where I’ll make my money. But nobody else gets in on this, understood? If they did, it would drive the odds down, and we’d both lose money. Then, in your fifth year, you can go ahead and win everything, if you want to, and rake in all the glory that you need, but for the first four years, you will do it exactly my way, or I will kill you.”