These modifications were kept secret, and were not available to the public. If anyone noticed the difference, they were told that they were looking at the old style armor, and what was sold to cash customers was the new stuff.
* * *
At the Planetary Championships, Kren was entered in eleven events. He again won three gold medals, and set two collegiate planetary records. But they were in swimming, all three of them, and the outside betting on Kren was low, since no one had seen Kren swim before.
The money rolled in.
* * *
Dol graduated with honors, and promptly enrolled in a doctoral program, studying aerodynamics. She had decided that there was no need to rush things, she had plenty of other things to occupy herself, and why risk any possibility of being charged with vampirism, anyway.
* * *
That summer, Kren officially moved into his lavish apartment above his research center, mostly for tax reasons. He was virtually a duke in his own right, so why should he have to pay taxes to anyone? Taxes, after all, existed for the benefit of the rulers, and not for those who are taxed!
Nonetheless, he often visited Bronki, and happened to stay the night, about three times a week, when there wasn’t a home game. When there was, he stayed over six times a week.
An inexpensive worker was hired to travel back and forth from the Research Center to the university every day, always getting Kren’s season ticket punched, again for tax reasons.
She also acted as a courier for messages between the Research Center and Kren’s interests in Dren, those that were best not trusted to the phone lines.
* * *
The next several years went very smoothly. Growth was as projected, and all concerned were content.
CHAPTER FIFTY
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
Progress, Boredom, and Something Kren
Can Sink His Teeth Into
On Earth, it was 1832 a.d. Americans were crossing the Appalachian Mountains and sometimes finding their way into the Great Plains, flintlock rifles in hand. Europe had finally recovered from the Napoleonic Wars, and a private British company was conquering India without quite intending to. The Mitchegai could not possibly have cared less.
At the same time, Duke Kren was waking up again from the long stupor of resurrection. He stumbled once again to the toilet and to the drinking fountain. Then once more he lay down and put on the recording helmet.
Every time he got a new body, it seemed to take longer. And to hurt more. Still, the pain was starting to abate. Perhaps in a day or so, it would be time to leave the resurrection chamber and get back to work.
He glanced at the recorder. He had three thousand years of personal history to record, and most of what he had gotten down in his two weeks of recovery time had covered a period of barely two years.
At that rate, this body would be middle-aged before he was through, and the colonizing fleet would be long gone without him.
Bronki, his academic advisor, would not be pleased.
Still, the two years covered were his formative years, when most of his basic plans had been well laid down. For the rest, Bronki would have to be satisfied with a summary. He remembered . . .
* * *
Kren had resorted to vampirism only one more time in his long life. He had been forced to kill a scholar with doctorates in over three dozen different languages, the circumstances were such that he could not permit the academician to be resurrected, and it was just too tempting to pass up. Now, he could talk with almost everybody who might be important to him, including the Space Mitchegai, who had many languages of their own, quite different from those used by the Planetary Mitchegai, although everyone spoke Deno, the common tongue.
In sports, Kren had continued to perform at collegiate events until he was forced to graduate, and was no longer qualified to play. He declined to get involved with professional sports, since he found the whole thing to be profitable, but boring. The cheers of the crowds meant nothing to him. In fact, he was never sure why they did this strange thing.
Business was far more interesting, especially when it was spiced up with the occasional battle, assisting in Duke Dennon’s conquests.
Kren liked fighting in battles. Here was something that he could understand, the joy of pitting himself against another warrior in the ultimate contest, and the fierce pleasure of taking her head off when he won!
He and the duke had indeed become very good friends, learning over the years to trust each other implicitly. For over a thousand years, Dennon built his army, and periodically conquered another duchy until most of the Southern Continent was under his command. He spent most of his time working with his army, and taming each new duchy until it was loyal to him, and to his partner, Kren.
Kren spent his time making sure that they both always had a surplus of money.
Each newly conquered duchy was soon converted to the efficient production of children for food. Watering troughs, sprinklers, and the use of chemical fertilizers spread across the land. The grass above the wintering centers was mowed weekly, but additional mowing machines were not installed, as they were not cost effective.
The small tunneler stayed busy, connecting wintering centers to the train stations, providing children for winter meals.
In time, Kren’s corporation bought an additional three dozen large tunneling machines, and kept them all working constantly. The ground under the land of the entire continent was eventually filled with a layer of twelve-yard tunnels, as was the land under the surface of the uninhabited South Polar Continent, which Kren bought for a relatively small price.
The South Polar Continent already had a complete, but unused, MagFloat rail system, built thousands of years before to satisfy the MagFloat Corporation’s original political mandate. This corporation was delighted to finally have something to ship out of the South Polar Continent, and gave Kren very attractive shipping rates.
Vast tracts of North Polar lands on the two northern continents were purchased as well, and put to use. The advantage of polar lands was that the dirt from the tunneling machines did not have to be shipped by rail to the nearest ocean trench, but could be simply piled on the grassless snow above. Keeping the tunnels warm when they were beneath many yards of dirt and snow was not a problem.
* * *
Each underground tunnel system was vast, but most Mitchegai did not know that they existed. The system was largely automated, and Kren’s fanatically loyal workers lived apart from the rest of the population, with neither group really being aware of the other.
Kren’s workers were all vampires of a sort, though they didn’t know it. Their knowledge was taken from others, the old nobility of the continent, and criminals who ran afoul of Kren’s justice.
Their personalities were formed in the rigid, authoritarian schools that Kren and Bronki had set up. These workers did as they were told, and took an almost religious joy in performing their duty. Those few who did not were soon reprocessed, with most of their brains being fed to a new young carnivore. This was followed by another careful education. But, three times and you were out.
* * *
It was eventually found that the most profitable method of food production was to use carefully selected stock, raised to the midsized juvenal stage indoors on artificially grown grass. Then they were taken outside for a year, to toughen them up, and to develop a proper amount of muscle tissue, meat. This was followed by a dozen weeks of heavy, indoor feeding, to soften the meat and build up the right amount of body fat.
By Mitchegai standards, they were delicious!
Soon, eating natural children was something for those primitives in the countryside to do. Civilized individuals ate the fine products of the Superior Food Corporation. The prices of food rose, slowly, by a factor of six.
Many companies were formed to compete with them, but without the SFC’s vast industrial plant, they could compete in neither price nor quality. All of them eventually dropped by the wayside.
Over the years, the planetary population had tripled. Most of them chose to live in the cities, where there were jobs, entertainments, and interesting things to do. Kren’s construction teams enlarged many cities, and built dozens of huge, new ones.
Building new cities became a particular interest for Kren, and he played with dozens of innovative designs. With Bronki’s influence, and some help from Brandee, beauty became more important than economic efficiency. Surprisingly, the most beautiful cities soon became the most profitable, since citizens were willing to pay more to live in them.
In order to make the towers taller and more slender, Kren passed a law stating that buildings on his lands more than a dozen stories tall were permitted to have elevators. The Planetary Council, fearing to offend him, made no objection.