Each new city became more beautiful than the last. Some boasted buildings with spires over a mile high, and with more than three gross stories. Many spires had great, arching bridges connecting them. Some were built entirely of structural glass, and not covered with grass at all, to the scandal of the critics.
Kren didn’t care about critics. His cities were beautiful, and the apartments and commercial spaces were often purchased before they were even built.
Each new city had a university, often founded as an offshoot of the University of Dren. Kren simply thought that a city should be built around a university. Anything else seemed unnatural to him.
The cities that Kren owned had efficient police departments, staffed by absolutely honest officers, the products of his authoritarian schools. The criminal classes never got a foothold in them. Murder became a rare event, and the population grew.
* * *
When it came time for Brandee to get a new body, she branded it in a manner similar to what Kren had done to her, although she had done the branding herself weeks before she was eaten by the young carnivore. She had no desire to suffer the pain, personally, however pleasant it might be to force another to endure it.
In time, full body branding became the standard for professional artists, so that they could display their talents wherever they went.
* * *
The certainty of Duke Dennon’s conquests eventually got to the point that he was able to send a letter to a fellow duke, saying that he had decided to conquer that duke’s lands, but that if Dennon were to promptly receive a notarized deed for the property, he would spare his opponent’s life, provided that the former duke left the planet within one week, along with his nobles.
And most dukes took him up on his offer!
Those who didn’t, died.
* * *
Unfortunately, Dennon had long ago developed a habit of using his sword as a pointer, and gesticulating with it when talking. While touring one of Kren’s factories, he asked a question about a high-tension electrical cable while his helmet happened to be touching a grounded metal surface. Death was instantaneous and permanent.
By Mitchegai law, when a stockholder like Duke Dennon died, his stock ceased to exist, and his share of ownership was effectively distributed to the other stockholders. To those of their race, inheritance was a null concept.
Kren actually had nothing to do with the duke’s death, although many didn’t believe it. He had been very pleased with his arrangement with Duke Dennon as it stood. He had actually liked Dennon, at least as much as a Mitchegai can like anybody.
Such had become their partnership, that when Duke Dennon died, there was no question in anyone’s mind but that Kren should succeed him.
Oh, there were a few minor rebellions at the start of his reign, but Kren put them down without difficulty. He was more brutal than Dennon had been in his conquests, since it was necessary to establish himself as a leader, and not just a business man.
At one point, he burned over eleven thousand rebels at the stake over a two-week period, with planet-wide news cameras recording the whole thing.
The show increased Kren’s popularity immensely. It went into reruns, and was used for filler material for a thousand years.
There were no further rebellions.
Kren retained the red and lavender uniforms that Dennon had used, and adopted Dennon’s use of a military uniform for his everyday wear. He felt that continuity was important, and he intended no changes in policy, anyway.
After that, Kren completed Dennon’s plan of conquering the entire southern continent, but further conquest did not appeal to him. He could always buy whatever he wanted, and nobody wanted to fight him anymore, anyway.
* * *
Biologically, the grass resisted all attempts to genetically improve it.
Kren’s scientists determined the precise conditions for optimal productivity under controlled, underground conditions, with the result that a square yard of grass in the tunnel system produced just under two dozen times as much food per year as the average square yard of uncontrolled surface grass. With the tunnel system, there were eventually six times as many square yards below that surface as on it.
With an optimal watering and fertilizing schedule for surface grass, productivity was typically doubled.
However, the basic genome of grass remained unchanged. It was already as good as it could get.
This was not true of the Mitchegai themselves. After two thousand years of careful, selective breeding, and a bit of genetic engineering, children were now normally raised from the egg to eating size in under five years, and they required only half of the food to accomplish this that they had before.
For adult bodies, Kren’s physical descendants had largely taken over the planet, to his considerable regret. Once everyone had a superior body, Kren lost his huge advantage on both the playing field and the battle field.
For almost a thousand years, he had been able to keep his descendants “in house,” making his soldiers astoundingly effective in combat, his workers efficient, and his athletes amazingly profitable.
The Mitchegai spend more on gambling than they do on food and housing combined. After a thousand years of being able to occasionally predict the winners of sporting events, more than half of the wealth of the entire planet was in Kren’s hands. Mostly because he enjoyed doing it, he continued to gouge his bookie, usually twice a year, forcing her to buy more stock that still didn’t pay any dividends.
At one point, he had so much of the planet’s wealth that he was forced to loan money to banks at excellent rates, just to keep the planetary economy going. Later, when they could not repay him, he simply foreclosed. He then bought out the entire banking system, added it to his vast holdings, and increased the rates.
* * *
Once Kren’s personal breeding program bore fruit, for the first gross years only males could be bred that had Kren’s athletic prowess, to the dismay of anyone who had to walk into a locker room or barracks. Dol and Bronki were particularly unhappy about this, but finally became males for a while.
Eventually, the biochemists were able to transfer the requisite genes to other chromosomes than those that specified sex, so that females could again be as physically fit as males, and the Mitchegai world returned to normal.
Kren remained male.
But such a thing as a superior body could not be kept under wraps forever. Adults had to occasionally go out into the fields. Natural breeding took place, and each Mitchegai normally sought the best possible body for her next resurrection. The secret was out, but oddly, it was considered to be an entirely natural development. No one attributed the advance to Kren, or his scientists.
This was just as well, since there was a very conservative streak in many Mitchegai. Very long life does that to you. There was even some talk of sterilizing the entire planet, as would be done with any new world about to be colonized, just to preserve the “Purity of the Mitchegai Genome.”
After many years, messages were received at light speed from the nearer inhabited planets, through the huge, interstellar lasers and telescopes, requesting that ships be sent to them with fertilized eggs of these new Mitchegai. This interstellar approval was sufficient to make the new bodies socially acceptable, and in a gross years, everybody had one.
Usually, they paid considerably extra, and bought the very best bodies from the Superior Food Corporation. When the price of an eating child had gone up to over a gross Ke, the price of a purebred young carnivore, guaranteed to be genetically perfect, had gone up to over twelve thousand, and there was a waiting list.
* * *
Bronki was very successful as head of the Department of Chaos Theory at the College of Mathematics. Her department was soon the most profitable one at her college, and remained so for the next dozen years. Bronki herself became very popular among the other department heads, doing many personal favors, and often providing the very best party snacks.
Then, the director of the college had a fatal accident, falling from the balcony of his apartment late one winter night, and freezing solid before anyone noticed his body. Freezing destroyed the cells of the brain, and made resurrection impossible.
It was soon found that he had large doses of recreational drugs in his system, and the university hushed the whole thing up.
Kren was sure that Bronki had arranged the affair, but didn’t think that it would be polite to ask about it.
The other department heads elected Bronki to be their next director, and within a few years, the College of Mathematics was the most profitable academic college in the university, not counting athletics and drama, of course.