“I’m sorry, madam, but business has been surprisingly good for the last few days, and we are completely filled up.”
“That’s certainly good news, even if it is a bit disappointing. I suppose that we can put him up in graduate housing until something opens up.”
“I’m afraid not, madam. I really meant that we are completely filled. We presently have three gross, a dozen and nine tenants staying here. Even all of the faculty rooms are rented, and there’s quite a waiting list.”
Bronki said, “Well, Kren, it seems that you have gotten lucky. I’ll just have to put you up in one of my guest rooms for the time being. At undergraduate rates, of course.”
“I suppose that this arrangement would be adequate for a few days, anyway,” he said. “Why are there so many students this semester?”
“I don’t know, but someone in sociology will probably do a study on it soon.”
Another flight up on the winding, central staircase took them to Bronki’s private level. She let them in using her credit card on the door lock.
“We’ll get you a credit card at the bank tomorrow,” she said. “For now, well, you can always leave, but you might have difficulty getting back in.”
Kren had believed Bronki’s country house to be luxurious, while she herself had thought of it as being quaintly rustic. Her private quarters in her town house were considered to be the peak of luxury even by her standards.
It was big enough to entertain a gross of guests at a party. The ceilings were four times as high as Kren was tall, and encrusted with artwork and colored stones. Tall windows looked out on a magical city with thousands of lighted windows.
Inside, every piece of furniture looked to have taken a master craftsman years of labor to produce. There were artworks on the walls and statues on the floor that Kren had seen in photos in art books at Bronki’s country house.
“I am amazed at your wealth,” Kren said.
“Yes, well, in five thousand years, things accumulate,” she said. “You might as well take this room, for now. It’s my nicest guest room, but I don’t have anybody else here at present. Just remember that you might get bumped down if somebody else more important than you stays over. And in this city, everybody is more important than an undergraduate.”
Again, Kren was amazed. It was really a suite of rooms, with a palatial sitting room with couches, tables for party snacks, and a private drinking fountain. It connected to the rest of Bronki’s quarters with a lockable door. Another door connected to a hallway that led to the stairway, so that he could come and go as he wished, without going through the rest of the apartment. It had the same high windows as the rest of her floor, and the high ceilings were, if anything, even more ornate.
There was a huge bedroom with a magnificently carved bed big enough for a half dozen Mitchegai, if such a thing were imaginable. Mitchegai prefer to sleep alone, behind locked doors. They are very uncomfortable with the thought of being unconscious while lying next to another deadly carnivore.
The three large chests of drawers in the room were now empty. Kren could not imagine owning enough things to fill them. He had a private toilet, and a clothes closet big enough to hold many gross of cloaks.
The walls supported paintings of outstanding quality, the bookshelves were neatly filled with beautifully tooled leather-covered volumes, and the furniture was all done as masterfully as that in the main living areas.
“I can spare you a few hours tomorrow morning,” Bronki said. “We’ll stop at the bank, and then I’ll introduce you to the athletic director. After that, I’ll be very busy for a while. I’ll send in one of the servants to see that you have everything that you need.”
When she had left, Kren lay down on the bed, thinking that when he had Bronki strapped to her chair, with both of her legs cut, he should have gotten a lot more from her than twelve thousand Ke.
A servant wearing an undergraduate’s cloak of maroon with lime green piping and a purplish-red sash came in without knocking.
“I am Dol, sir. I’ve been assigned to you during your stay here.”
“How nice. I didn’t expect a servant.”
“I suppose that it is a bit unusual for a junior to be the servant of one not yet a freshman, but there are many servants here, and only one guest, so things are as they are. Is there anything that I can get for you, sir?”
“There’s nothing that I can think of, but then except for my housekeeper in the country, I’ve never had a servant. Is there anything that you would suggest?”
“Food? Books? Clothing? Some sort of entertainment?”
“Not food, and Bronki said that she was going to send me a book on geography. I will be needing some clothing suitable for an undergraduate student, but I think that is best put off for a while. What sort of entertainment is available?”
“How about a television set?”
Dol wheeled the bulky set in, demonstrated its use, and left, promising to be on call at all times.
Kren soon found himself watching a program called Big Time Gladiators, which involved a sort of combat between two remarkably clumsy Mitchegai adults. One was swinging an oversized sword, and the other had a badly balanced spear, while someone off screen was talking about the match excitedly, trying to make it sound interesting. The fighters appeared to have had no training with their weapons at all!
After a dozen minutes of buffoonery, the swordsman managed to land a blow to the leg of the spearman, obviously more by accident than by design. With the encouragement of the crowd, she further crippled her opponent, and then chopped her head off with an awkward, two-handed blow. This head was held up to the cheering crowd, and then presented to someone who, it seemed, was officiating the event. It was again held up to the crowd, after which the brain was eaten by the official. The living gladiator dragged the dead one’s body off, perhaps to enjoy her meal in private.
As she did so, the announcer mentioned that she was the last living slave from the Senta Copper Mine.
Kren now knew what had happened to his former coworkers, while he was hiding in the small tunnel. He congratulated himself for having definitely made the right move that time!
He turned the set off, locked and barred all of the doors, and went to sleep.
The next morning they went first to the bank, with Bronki leading the way and Dol following behind. The weather was good, and Bronki elected to walk on the surface, rather that going by tunnel.
As they left the house, Kren turned around and looked at it, surprised at its size. It was a dozen and five stories high, but much wider than it was tall. Basically cylindrical, it was surrounded by balconies that spiraled upwards in a double helix.
“One goes up and one goes down,” Dol said. “There are revolving doors top and bottom that keep the juvenals circulating up to the top, and then down again. Otherwise, they’d get confused, and the grass on the roof never would get eaten.”
“Come along, you two. We don’t have all day,” Bronki said.
At the bank, Bronki quickly converted Kren’s savings account to a credit card account, deducting his travel expenses and a year’s advance rent in the process, and he was soon issued a credit card, complete with a photo on it. Not a picture of his face, of course, but of the identification scarring on his right arm.
The athletic director was waiting for them in his very impressive office.
“So you’re the one Bronki here was telling me about, huh? The one who was involved in Duke Dennon’s disaster at the Senta Copper Mine?”
“I’d hardly call it a disaster, sir, except for me personally, of course, since I was killed there. But for my unit, we were given a military objective to take and we took it, with only ordinary casualties,” Kren said.
“Oh, militarily, everything was just fine, and I’m sure that your unit did a fine job. It was what happened afterward that caused all of the duke’s problems.”
“I’m afraid that those of us in the military were often not informed of such things.”
“Yeah? Well, the duke’s plans were that he would take the mine, and then shut it down for maybe a year, while he had it completely automated. You see, that mine produced nine dozen per gross of the copper ore produced on this whole planet. With its production halted, the price of copper ore was projected to quadruple. Then, he would sign long-term contracts with the copper smelters, at the new high price, of course, since they would be afraid of the price getting even worse. When he put the mine back into production, he would make a fortune!” The Director laughed.