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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

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

Selling Shares in Children 

The duke's guard, Lorka, met them on the stairway and presented Kren with the spear he had used earlier. Kren and Bronki talked only of ordinary things until they were in their cabin on the train. It took off immediately after they got aboard, since they really had been holding the train for them. This was something that the MagFloat Corporation did not like to do, but one does not argue with a duke.

"What happened between you and the duke while I was gone?" Bronki asked.

"Something very strange. He asked me what my plans were for the land he was selling me, and I had a most amazing burst of creativity, something which has never happened to me before. Well, I have done original things in the past, or at least things which I thought were original at the time. Originality is easy when you are ignorant of what has happened before. I deduced that by eating juvenal brain tissue, I could improve my studying, for example, and I came up with a novel way to bring six juvenals, who were each almost as big as I am, back to what is now my house. But those things were trivial compared to what happened to me today."

"And what was this flash of enlightenment? What exactly did you think about?"

"I suddenly saw a whole lifetime of research laid out in front of me, research the results of which could easily make me the most important person on the entire planet," Kren said.

Kren explained the whole program to Bronki, in more detail than he had explained to Duke Dennon, and not suppressing his thoughts on breeding superior soldiers.

"This body I got in the mines is obviously far better than the usual one. The duke said that I was better with a spear than the soldier that I had eaten, the one who gave me my skills with a spear in the first place. I seem to be stronger, much faster, and much more accurate than anyone else on the planet. I suspect that it might have something to do with the nerves. As soon as possible, we must build a structure where my offspring can be kept and secretly nurtured. If whatever this body has breeds true, think of the army that I'll have!"

"And where will you get the females to perform this experiment with?"

"There are plenty of fine female athletes at the university. Some of them might have some of the same genes that make me so good. I need only invite a dozen of them over to some secluded place for a dinner, a victory party perhaps, a few times every year. I will personally clean the place very thoroughly before they arrive, make sure that no one else but me, my athletic friends, and some juvenals are there in the interim, and then I will vacuum the whole place carefully after they leave, using new vacuum bags. I will distribute the fertilized eggs on new grown grass inside a closed building with suitable growing lights. The grubs will be kept separate, and when their time comes, they will become well-fed pollywogs in their own tank. The juvenals will be carefully nurtured on grass grown under artificial lights. Then, once the first generation has grown, my own daughters would be suitable egg layers. After a few more generations, the offspring would be genetically very like me."

Bronki said, "Most of that sounds very good. But about using your own daughters, well, there might be some genetic problems with double recessives, and so on."

"True, but we will be carefully testing all of the offspring, and culling anything inferior. We'll just sell the substandard ones for food. That will clean the gene pool in a few generations."

"Or we could always eat them ourselves."

"Yes, that might be best, in case someone finds out what we're doing. We wouldn't want anything superior to get into someone else's army," Kren said.

"Kren, to come up with so much, all at once, well, it's simply unprecedented. I've never heard of anything else like this ever happening before. There's nothing like it in the literature. But, you know, the literature on vampires is very limited, for obvious reasons. Those who do this sort of thing aren't likely to write scholarly reports about it."

"No, but you have had flashes of creativity, too, and if our experience is common among vampires, then it is probable that many of the rich and powerful are secretly like ourselves. Which leads me to another thought. Perhaps the reason why vampirism is so frowned upon is that those in power don't want the competition."

Bronki said, "And if that is true, then you and I are treading on very dangerous ground."

"The world is a very dangerous place. But if we wish to climb to the top of it, we must be prepared to take some risks."

"Very well, then. I wish you the very best of luck in your endeavor."

Kren was not about to let Bronki bow out and leave him without her expertise and advice.

"We will, of course, be very cautious and very secretive until we are very powerful. You have called yourself my partner. If that is so, I will be expecting some help from you," Kren said. "First off, I want to form a corporation to own and develop the land that we have bought this day. Since you have formed many corporations in the past, I want you to handle this one for us. You will issue shares with a par value of one million Ke each to me for my contribution of a gross billion Ke, and to you for the billion Ke that you have earned as a commission for putting this deal together, and for the billion Ke paid by you to your friend Sala in the form of a bribe."

"There was also the twelve million Ke I paid as your half of the fee to the Bonding Authority."

"That seems excessive!"

"They are guaranteeing the performance of both parties to the agreement. That means that if Duke Dennon reneges, then the Bonding Authority might have to go to war with him to ensure compliance," Bronki said. "Considering the quality of Dennon's army and the cost of wars, two dozen million seems very reasonable."

"Oh, very well. Anyway, it has already been paid. Set us up with a corporate bank account, as well. Two signatures will be required on every check, one of which must be mine."

"I will file the paperwork for the corporation this evening, and take care of the bank in the morning. What would you like to call it?"

"I think that something very ordinary sounding would be best," Kren said. "We'll call it the Superior Food Corporation. And voting by the board of directors will be in proportion to the number of shares that they own, not one person, one vote."

"Kren, that's so undemocratic!"

"When did I ever claim to be a democrat?"

Bronki had only paid to Sala the half billion Ke that the accountant had requested. Duke Dennon had an outstanding credit rating, despite his current financial problems, since for thousands of years, he had honored all of his contracts and paid all of his debts. Because of this, the total fees required by the Bonding Authority had been only twelve million. Bronki thought that the stock that she would be issued would be quite acceptable. Anyway, it looked like an interesting operation, and being a world leader might be fun.

When they got home, Kren called Dol to his sitting room and explained everything that happened, and all of his thoughts for the future.

"So you see, we are going to need your engineering expertise on a number of projects." Kren said, "We are going to need a large grass-mowing and collecting machine. We are going to need several large experimental buildings. We are going to need an efficient system of sedating and boxing up juvenals for shipment. But the first thing that we are going to need is a fence that goes around the entire property, one that lets juvenals enter, but stops them from leaving."

Dol had listened, fascinated by everything that Kren had told her, but now she had to say, "Kren, we can't do that. Planetary law is very specific about the building of fences. It is illegal to inhibit the free motion of juvenals. Except for fields licensed for the growing of long grass, all fences must have an ungated opening wide enough for an adult to pass easily through, at least once every two gross yards."

"I know that, and our fences will have those openings. Here, look."

Kren took a sheet of grass paper and drew a vertical line of half circles on it, with the concave sides to the left and the convex to the right, and with the wingtips almost but not quite touching.

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"Kodo once read a study on the migration patterns of juvenals," he said. "When they come to an obstacle, like a fence, and they want to get to the other side, they follow along it. When the fence ends, they just keep on walking in the direction that they have been going, having apparently forgotten why they were following it in the first place. Now, when a juvenal comes to the convex side of one of these semicircles, she will follow along the fence until she comes to one of the openings, and then she will go through. But if she comes to the concave side of a semicircle, she will follow it around until it turns her back in the direction that she was coming from, and she will walk right back into the middle of our field. Since there are two gross yards between the openings, and the openings are only a yard wide, only once in two gross times will she happen to come directly to the opening without hitting the fence first."

A human would have recognized Kren's invention immediately as a fish weir. But for someone living on a planet without any fishes, Kren had come up with a brilliant innovation.

"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."

 

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