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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER

 

Kren's Kiddy Hotel—
They Check In but They Don't Check Out 

 

The contractors started work promptly on Monday morning, putting up the first twelve miles of fencing around the new property. If it worked, they would get the go-ahead to complete the project, but they wouldn't have the whole job done for twelve weeks.

With Bronki working on the sales end of things, Kren and Dol started getting production going.

"We have to have an efficient method of gathering up the juvenals, getting them on the train, getting them to market," Kren said. "I think that the best way to do it would be to drug them, put them in boxes, and use material handling equipment from then on. There is a chemical called piperphentamone that is not on the illegal list, because it has no effect on adults. Injected into a juvenal in the proper dosage, it will knock her unconscious for a week. Also, there is an antidote, brantadiatol, which can bring them around in a few minutes, and it too is legal. I want you to find a manufacturer who can produce these for us."

"I'll get on it in the morning, sir."

"Right. Next, we'll need some shipping boxes for them. Find out what the standard sizes are, and what they cost. Collecting the juvenals up won't be a problem at first, because winter is coming on, and they will be collecting themselves at the wintering centers. I note that each of these centers is near a train terminal."

Lacking the human urge for creativity, all Mitchegai train terminals were built the same. Once they had an efficient design, they stuck with it. Rarely used terminals in the countryside were just as large and well equipped as those in the cities, although more of them had been added as the cities grew. Since they were expected to last forever, and had been built before many of the current cities existed, there was a certain logic to this way of doing things.

"I'm sure that it was simply easier to build the centers where the materials could be easily delivered," Dol said.

"I expect that you are right, but it is still very convenient for us. I want you to work on some method of efficiently taking contented children from the center and turning them into boxes of product loaded on a hovercraft that can deliver them to the train station. Bear in mind that this will have to be done mostly outdoors, in the wintertime."

"Right, sir. Then there were the buildings you mentioned earlier?"

"That's what I'll be doing, drawing up some rough sketches of what we need. Later, you can do up some finished drawings on that fancy computer of yours."

"Very well, and I already have a plotter on order, to do proper technical drawings. It should get here in a week. You really should learn to use a computer, sir."

"Later, maybe. Just now, I don't have time. We'll need the packaging center, to gather juvenals from the fields and prepare them for shipment. I'll want it built and running by spring, and I'm very eager to start in on the breeding projects we talked about."

"Not to mention the grass-mowing machines and the business of growing grass under artificial lights."

"Right. The grass mowing is your project. We'll need it by next summer, I expect. Keep me posted. As to the artificial lights, I need some research done there. All of the artificial lights I've seen have imitated the spectrum of sunlight. But plants are most efficient under a particular wave length of monochromatic red light. Any photons with less energy simply do the plant no good at all. Any energy above a certain level is wasted, and just goes into waste heat, which has to be gotten rid of. I want you to find me some inexpensive, monochromatic light sources."

"I'll see what I can do, sir. Do you know the precise wave length we need?"

"No, that slips my memory. I only remember that it was red. Vampire memories are not perfect."

"Or maybe Kodo forgot it."

"That too is possible. Well, you know what to do."

* * *

The next weekend was an away game, and the opposing javelin tennis team had been studying tapes of Kren's last performance. They all showed up to the meet wearing protective headgear, and they made all of their shots to the rear of the court, from which Kren could not effectively pole-vault. This made for some long and boring games. One of them was indeed a world record setter for both length and dullness, but they didn't give away any platinum medals for that. Kren didn't come close to winning.

Kren had suspected that something like this would happen, and hadn't bet on the tennis tournament. The odds were too low, anyway.

Instead, he won the javelin distance event, without setting any records. The payoff was only two to one, and Kren, in keeping with his earlier vows, had only bet half of his purse on the outcome. Bronki had always been a bit secretive about her betting, but Dol said that she would continue betting everything she had, since a girl never could tell when she might need another billion Ke.

* * *

"Dol, I've been invited back to Duke Dennon's palace for the weekend. Would you like to come along?" Kren asked.

"A visit to a ducal palace? Most definitely, sir!"

"Then book us a cabin on an express train on Friday afternoon, and find out from Bronki who we should contact at the palace to tell them we're coming. Tell her that she's invited along, if she wants, but if she's too busy, that's okay, too."

* * *

As he and Dol walked into the ducal palace, Kren noted that many small changes had taken place. The carpeting was new, and of the very best quality, as were the drapes. Minor repairs had been made where necessary, and the servants all sported new uniforms. Only the very professional guards were unchanged, although Kren was sure that by now they'd all gotten their back pay.

They were immediately escorted to Duke Dennon's private quarters, which had been lavishly redecorated. They made the proper bow to His Grace, who stood up to greet them.

The duke said, "Kren! Welcome back! All the more so since you have made me a half gross billion Ke richer!"

"I thought that it might have been you who bet a gross billion Ke on that fencing match! Your wager drove the odds down so low that we almost decided to win the javelin accuracy throw instead!"

"I'm glad that you didn't! But the gross billion Ke you paid me for my land barely covered my debts. The additional money I made on that wager has given me financial security and permitted me to make some very needed repairs to my estate. Who is your friend?"

"Your Grace, this is Dol. She's nominally my servant, but she's also on my board of directors, and she has been acting as my chief engineer, so I suppose that makes her my friend as well."

"Your friends are always welcome," the duke said.

They had been speaking in Meno, the military language, which Dol was completely ignorant of, but the duke's smile was all that she really needed to go on.

Mitchegai do smile to express pleasure. Like humans, they do this by looking at the person they are addressing and exposing their fangs.

"I thank you, Your Grace," Dol said in Deno, the common language.

"I am almost completely ignorant of Reno, the engineering language, so I guess Deno it is," the duke said in fluent Deno. "It is difficult to express anything but the simplest things in the common tongue, though. I'm sure that you'd be far more comfortable talking with my chief engineer, Dako. In fact, I want you to meet her. Among other things, I am now the owner of a huge supply of mining machinery that is completely useless to me. It occurs to me that a conveyor belt designed to haul ore might prove useful in hauling grass clippings. I could give Kren here a very good price on it."

"That is a very interesting idea, Your Grace. Yes, Dol, by all means, find out what they have available," Kren said.

A servant was assigned to escort Dol to Dako's office.

"Just be sure and come to the party tonight," the duke said as they left. Turning to Kren, he said, "Now then, have you been thinking more about your fascinating plans for your new lands?"

"More than thinking, Your Grace. We've already started doing. For a week now, I've had a crew putting up fences around my land."

"First, you have now used up your allotment of 'Your Graces' for the entire weekend. Just call me Dennon. Second, you have been putting up your fences on the boundary with my lands, and the reports I've been getting are strange. You are building these curving things that have to be costing you half again more than a straight fence would. Your workers have told my men that you are doing this for aesthetic reasons, but that does not fit with my judgment of your character. Please explain this to me."

Kren said, "Very well, but you must agree to keep this a secret."

The Mitchegai never had anything remotely like a patent office. The only way they had to make a profit off of an idea was to keep it secret. This could be another reason for their general lack of creativity.

Kren then explained his new idea, the fish weir, drawing sketches on a pad of paper that the duke provided.

"And this strange device actually works?" the duke asked.

"In fact, it does. Dol found a standard industrial product, a long armed mechanical switch that operates a mechanical counter when something goes by in one direction. Putting two of them on one of the openings gave us the ratio of juvenals going one way as opposed to those going the other. More of them are going in the wrong direction than I thought they would, but it is still much better than a gross to one. My fence is an effective valve. I also intend to use something similar to make collection paths, where juvenals in the fields are collected up and sent to my packaging facility. They'll come to us, we'll select the ones we want and send the rest back out to the fields," Kren said.

"Remarkable. But all of this means that you will be denuding my lands of the juvenals that my subjects need to survive."

"That remains to be seen. Many will be entering my lands, but many more will be drifting into yours from the other directions. I do, however, promise that none of your subjects will starve because of what I am doing."

"I'll take your word on that, and hold you to it," Duke Dennon said. "Now, what of your other thoughts?"

Kren explained about how grass only absorbed red light, and how any artificial lights should be monochromatic.

"Now that is odd," Dennon said. "Somehow, I'd always thought of grass as being the perfect energy converter, changing sunlight into food for the children."

"If it was a perfect converter, it would absorb all of the light and look black. Grass is green because it doesn't need the green light, and reflects it back to our eyes."

"Interesting. But can you buy monochromatic lights?"

"I was surprised to find out that they are the only sort that you can buy," Kren said. "The white lighting panels that are used everywhere are made up of seven different sorts of tiny light emitting diodes, each of which is monochromatic, but of a different color. The numbers of each sort is such that together they appear to us as being white. Making a panel with only a single sort of LED actually cuts the cost in half, assuming that you are buying in large quantities, which of course I will be."

"I didn't know that."

"Neither did I until Dol did some research on it."

"And what about that business of breeding more efficient juvenals?" the duke asked.

"That will be a long-term project, of course. I have designed a research building with three dozen large complexes that will let us test three dozen types of juvenals simultaneously, keeping each type separate from the grub stage, through the pollywog stage, and then as juvenals and even a few brainless adults to make more eggs. We can have three dozen selective breeding projects going at the same time. Also, I will have a complete genetics laboratory, so that we can know exactly what we are dealing with in every experiment."

"But I thought that the DNA experiments had wound down, well, many millennia ago, when everything that could be learned had been learned."

"You are right, they did," Kren said. "The equipment I'm buying has been in storage for over twelve thousand years. I've put a clause in the contract whereby I won't have to pay for it if it doesn't work, but I'm more than a little worried about it. Having to build all new equipment from ancient plans would be expensive! Also, I've got seven biochemists on the payroll trying to learn what the ancients knew about DNA analysis."

"I wish you well! But now, it's Friday Night and Party Time! Come with me to the great hall, and we'll get the festivities started!"

 

 

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