And again, in time, he became hungry.
This time, he came up to the sentry at the mouth of the mine marching erect in the manner of a trained soldier. He wore the helmet and cloak of an officer in Duke Dennon’s forces, and carried a standard spear. He hailed the sentry in his own language, and in the manner of a superior officer. When the sentry turned to speak to him, Kren efficiently put a sword in the Mitchegai’s throat, with a powerful thrust that drove it out of the back of her neck.
This third victim had a smaller brain than the first two, and now, he dared to take a larger bite. More, but by no means all. He was beginning to comprehend the rules about all of this.
This time, his dreams were troubled and turbulent. The soldier he had eaten had not been valued by her superiors, had often broken minor rules, had often been punished for it, and for her persistent lying. The kill brought little new knowledge to Kren, and much emotional upset, for this had not been a happy Mitchegai. Yet even this unhappy soldier had some useful skills, if lying was indeed a skill.
The captain of the guard decided that in view of the soldier’s many misdemeanors, her trooper had simply gone AWOL, and that her loss was good riddance. It was mere coincidence that another soldier had been lost at that same post. She pocketed the guard’s back pay and wrote her off the books. No search was made for her, but the captain had the guard at that point doubled, just in case.
Kren now knew much about the world outside the mines, but he still did not feel confident enough to go out into it. Many more weeks passed before hunger again drove him to the surface.
He carried two spears with him, which was fortunate, for there were now two guards at the entrance.
Kren waited in the darkness, trembling with hunger and anticipation for hours until one of the soldiers stepped away from the tunnel mouth to relieve herself, while her partner watched her leave.
As soon as the first was well out of sight, Kren launched a spear at the one who had stayed behind. It was a long throw of at least four dozen yards, in almost total darkness and under a low ceiling, but one of Kren’s previous victims had been a master with the spear. It caught his victim in the back of the neck, severing her spinal column. She fell with barely a sound.
Kren sprinted up and caught her before she hit the ground, although the guard’s spear clattered loudly on the rocky rubble when it fell. He dragged the body back into the darkness, and, wearing the same helmet, cloak, and weapons belt as the guards, he stood in his victim’s former position, but facing into the tunnel.
The second guard came running back in.
“I thought I heard something!” she shouted at Kren’s back.
He pointed urgently into the tunnel.
As the soldier ran past to see what he was pointing at, Kren jabbed his spear into the hamstring of her right leg. The guard crumbled to the ground with a scream.
As she hit the ground, Kren was already cutting the other hamstring, and then slashing through both of the bicep muscles of her arms.
Another scream earned the guard a kick to the neck, which knocked her unconscious.
It took him two trips to bring both of his victims, with their weapons, back to his lair, but no other soldiers came to disturb him. Using three weapons belts, he tied the still-living guard to a sturdy concrete beam that supported the ceiling.
When the soldier started to make noises, Kren cut her tongue out, and ate it. Then, as an afterthought, he put a sword through all four of her vocal cords. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to, but he could not afford to have the soldier making noises while he lay in his eating stupor.
Finally, he made a third trip up to the surface, and erased all traces of his last attack. Slowly, he was learning.
Mitchegai, like many cold-blooded creatures, take a long time to die. Their circulatory systems clamp down quickly, and blood loss is much less than in a warm-blooded animal. As they grow cold, their metabolism demands much less oxygen, and even a completely severed head is capable of biting you, three hours later.
Thus, the brain of his first victim was still very much alive, and he took a very big bite of it with relish. He ate the rest of the body, but fed the skin and the bones to his captive.
This was not out of kindness, for the Mitchegai feel no such emotion. Rather it was to be sure that his next meal was still alive when it came time to eat it. Using a helmet as a bucket, he watered her as well, for the same reason. Then he fell asleep, looking up contentedly at the silent, but still very much alive second guard.
The captain of the guard was furious when she learned that a third and a fourth of her subordinates had disappeared, and all from the same location! Surely, this would be a black mark on her record!
But before she could send her entire command down into the ancient mines for a very thorough search, orders came from Duke Dennon himself that she should report at once to the capital with her entire company.
The duke had not been able to arrange for the profitable sale of the mine’s ore. The Space Mitchegai had discovered an asteroid with a high copper content, and were undercutting the prices of all planetary sources of that element. The mine was being abandoned.
The captain had no choice but to obey Dennon’s orders immediately.
Kren slept long in his eating stupor. The dreams he had fascinated him. The soldier he had eaten had extensive training as a medical corpsman. Besides the knowledge required for the treating of wounds, she had a vast knowledge of anatomy, including the anatomy of the brain.
Kren now knew precisely which portions of the brain could be safely eaten, increasing his knowledge and prowess, and which contained the personality, and were best discarded.
Many more weeks passed as Kren integrated all of this new knowledge into himself. He started to get hungry before the process was through, so he amputated one of his captive’s legs and ate it. The skin and bones were again fed back to his prisoner, who resisted eating these bits of her own body until they were shoved down her throat past her now broken jaw.
Weeks later, he ate the rest of the creature, along with three quarters of her brain.
And much later, hungry once again, he walked up to the surface. Besides knowing the arts of the warrior, and of the medic, he now was capable of speaking three languages.
There was no guard at the tunnel mouth. Grass had started to close off the entrance, and there seemed to be no one around at all.
Cautiously, he stepped out into the sunlight for the first time in nine gross, eight dozen and two years.
CHAPTER FIVE
This Land Is My Land
New Yugoslavia, 2205 a.d.
The news was full of politics.
Before the war, the colonies had been loosely associated in what had been honestly called “The Smuggling Network,” trading illegally with one another to get around Earth’s strangling trade monopoly.
Now, they had formed “The Union of Human Planets,” and had perhaps magnanimously made Earth an equal member. Since Earth had half of the population and more than half of the wealth in the entire system, the colonies arranged it such that taxes were to be paid by individual income taxes, but voting was on a one planet, one vote basis. Thus, Earth would pay half of the bills, but only have two percent of the say as to how this money was spent.
But then, Earth had both started and lost the last war, so what do you expect? Certainly, this arrangement looked much nicer than making them pay tribute.
New Kashubia, my home planet, was both the leading manufacturing center in the system and the main communication center as well. It was soon voted to be the capital of the Union.
My annoying uncle, Wlodzimierz Derdowski, had recently been elected President of New Kashubia, and this made him a major player in the new political order. But I was stationed on New Yugoslavia, and was happy for this excuse to not get involved in politics.
Four of my colonels were citizens of New Yugoslavia, and were involved in planetary politics up to their ears. Knowing intellectually that the job was important, I gave them leave to go at it, but said that since I wasn’t a citizen here, it wasn’t proper for me to have any say in it.