“It seems to satisfy the letter of the law, if not the spirit of it,” Dol said. “Are you absolutely positive that this will work?”
“Absolutely? No, but I think that it would be worthwhile to build a few dozen miles of it, and see.”
“Well then, I will see about getting your property surveyed, and I’ll get some prices together on various kinds of fencing. I consider this sort of work to come under our agreement, so I won’t be charging you anything for my time. But tell me, this Superior Food Corporation of yours. Can anybody buy stock in it? Me, for example?”
“We will need all the capital we can get, and your funds are certainly welcome,” Kren said. “Our long-range plans must remain a secret, however.”
“This is reasonable. How do I go about making a purchase?”
“See Bronki about it. She’s setting up the corporation right now.”
“Very well. I wonder what sort of a commission she’s going to charge me,” Dol said.
“You will tell her that I said that the price was a million Ke a share, and that’s what you will be paying. I know that Bronki loves to snatch every Ke she can get her claws on, but the fact is that it is generally more profitable to do business with her than without her.”
“I didn’t realize that you were aware of what she was doing.”
“I’m not a complete fool,” Kren said. “Sometimes it’s amusing to watch her operate. She just stole more than a half billion Ke from me today, but since she is getting it in stock, and I don’t plan to declare a dividend for a very long time, if ever, then it really doesn’t make much of a difference, does it?”
Dol decided that if dividends would not be forthcoming in the foreseeable future, buying one share would be sufficient. That would get her on the board of directors, since it wasn’t likely that anyone else would buy shares in a secret corporation at a million Ke each.
Kren went to talk to Bronki.
“Have the corporate papers been filed?” he asked.
“Yes, and here’s a printout of them. We should get approval on them by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Very good. The next thing that we must think about is the sales organization. Dren is the closest major city to my lands, so we should start selling here. We will need a factory outlet near the train station, and it must be on the underground walkway system, because of the large volumes of juvenals we will be handling. On the walkways, we can use electric wheeled trucks, for delivery to the store, and manual wheeled carts for delivery to our customers, rather than having to carry them.
“At the store, we will need a front desk for walk-in business, an office to handle the phone-in business, a large storage area for our merchandise, and I think a display area for those who wish to pick a particularly pretty child for a special party. These will be at a premium price, of course.
“It might be profitable to sell accessories as well. Knives, branding irons, party tables, and so on. Then we must think about advertising, what our budget should be, which media we will use, and who will handle it for us. Or we might try doing that ourselves, since it will be a while getting our production volume up, and we don’t want more customers than we have product to sell.
“Eventually, we might think about franchising our sales outlets, where each store is owned by a semi-independent operator.”
“That sounds all fine and good, but just how much space do you think that this first outlet will require?” Bronki asked.
“I don’t know. Probably not much at first, but with expanding sales, it could eventually be quite large.”
“That’s not much to go on. But look, the entire bottom floor of this building is on the level of the walkway system, and we aren’t all that far from the train station. The nearest commercial outlet is only four dozen yards away, and the entire floor is currently being used for storage. If you were willing to pay commercial rates, I could have a door and window cut out to the walkway, and we could put in a small store. Then, as business expanded, you could rent more space, and I would again have it refurbished, but again at commercial rates.”
“Why couldn’t I just rent the storage space, and fix it up on my own?” Kren asked.
“You could, and you are welcome to. You can deal with the architects and the construction contractors yourself, in your copious spare time, and you can get all of the city permits on your own. There will be more than four dozen of them required. Then, of course, there will be the electrical company, the waste disposal company, the water company, and the phone company to deal with. If you wish to hire employees, there are nine different branches of the city government that you must make arrangements with. And there are probably at least a dozen other things that I am forgetting about just now.”
“Okay, Bronki. What are you suggesting?”
“If you can bring them in to the train station, and sell them to me on the dock for two dozen Ke each, I’ll take care of everything else. I’m talking about first-quality merchandise, you understand. Deal?” Bronki said.
“You’ll take everything that we can send you?”
“Within reason. Say, increases of no more that three parts per gross per week, unless mutually agreed upon.”
“Well, okay, but only for the City of Dren, and only for a twelve-year period. Anything more will have to be negotiated,” Kren said.
“When can I get my first shipment?”
“Tentatively, in about four weeks. Shall we say a thousand children the first week?”
“That will do for starters. I’m not sure, but the total market in this city might be a thousand times that. You’ve got yourself a deal, partner. I’ll write up the arrangement for your signature and have it ready for you tomorrow.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Perpetual Motion, Type Two
New Yugoslavia, 2212 a.d.
Our designers and architects had the preliminary designs done for a system of fallout shelters three kilometers down, and big enough to hold the entire population of the planet of New Yugoslavia.
To get the people down there in the simplest, fastest and most foolproof way, they had settled on cutting spiraling tubes down into the bedrock and lining them with polished metal. The faster you went down, the harder that centrifugal force pushed you against the outer wall. The added friction slowed you down, some. It was a blindingly simple speed control device, the kind of engineering I like. Also, a penetrating bit of radiation couldn’t follow the curve, so it helped there, too.
It was a super amusement park ride, and we might have a few heart attacks on the way down, but there was nothing mechanical to fail at the wrong moment, so I approved it.
Actually, the plans had been done two weeks ago, but then my wife, a lovely mother of four fine sons, intelligent, caring and ungodly greedy, got into the act. Now, in addition to barrack space for everybody, with public latrines, communal chow halls and food that might satisfy a chinese coolie, there were two more, deeper sets of shelters.
One was for the moderately wealthy, and included private apartments, separate bedrooms, private bathrooms, private kitchens, and lots of storage space that you could stock with your favorite items.
The one below it was for the filthy rich, and was really very nice, if you could afford it. Kasia’s plan was to sell these two posh layers for enough to pay for the entire installation. Then, she planned to talk the local governments into paying for the barracks, latrines, and chow halls, anyway.
That’s my wife.
We had done other engineering projects on the planet that had required a lot of digging, like putting in a planet-wide underground highway system. In the past, we had simply flushed the dirt and pulverized granite into the oceans. It hadn’t caused any ecological damage last time, but now we had a major ally living in those oceans, and I felt that it was politically advisable to check with them before we did it again.
With rolls of plans under my arm, I met Bellor floating in his swimming pool in my garage.
“Mickolai! It is so delightful to see you again. What can I do for you, my old benefactor?”
“Well, you can look over these plans for the planet-wide system of shelters to protect our people from the Mitchegai, and see if there is anything about them that would offend your people. Also, we’d like to know what we could do to protect the Tellefontu in case of attack.”
“This is most courteous of you, Mickolai, but as to my own people, well, we have already made our own arrangements. When it comes to hiding, it is perhaps wise to keep your plans as secret as possible, yes?”