A Pleasant Social Event
Kren took a book at random from the bookshelf within reach of the cot he was lying on. He had been quite sure that he could read, but he had never before actually had the opportunity to do so. He was delighted to find that the words and the thoughts came to him from the printed page without any difficulty at all.
The book he read concerned the history of a period eight gross thousand years before, when the planet had first become completely populated, and population pressures were forcing the first dukedoms into existence.
After about an hour, Bronki came in with a stack of books under her arm.
"Do you enjoy reading Koki?" she asked.
"Very much," he said, somewhat confused. He had to look at the cover again to see what she was talking about. It was a moment before he realized that she was referring to the author of the book. He had never before considered that each book had some person who had written it. In all of his memories of them, books simply were. They somehow just came out of nothing, or perhaps had always been there.
"I think perhaps that Koki might be a bit specialized for you to start with. I suggest that you start your study of history with Samsid, here, which is a generalized overview of history. That is, of course, if you've never read him. I mean, it's a very popular book, and you must have had a library available to you in the military."
"Have you ever seen a military library?" he asked, sitting up, and putting his feet on the pleasantly decorated orange and red carpet.
"No. In truth, I have had very little contact with those in your profession."
"Then let me enlighten you. A library suitable for an entire battalion would fit easily into this room. At least half of it would consist of military regulations. These books are feverishly read by miscreants who are looking for a way out of being punished for the crimes that they have committed.
"Perhaps a third of it will concern truly military subjects. Books on war, tactics, weapons, and so forth. These are often checked out by junior officers who carry them around, wishing to impress their superiors with their diligence. Few show any evidence of ever having been actually read.
"There will be a few shelves of so called 'fine literature,' donated by local literary academics who wish the soldiers to improve their minds, or by poets who are otherwise unable to dispose of their thin books of bad poetry. These are all in pristine condition, having been neither checked out nor read.
"Then there will be a half shelf of the crudest possible humor, usually left behind by dead soldiers. These books are inevitably worn to tatters."
Bronki laughed.
"At least your literary impoverishment has not ruined your sense of humor! Look here. I've also brought you general books on the sciences, mathematics, and the arts, as well as a novel called The Soldier's Life. It has been well reviewed, but perhaps you could tell me if it is really accurate or not. I'm considering using it in my contemporary literature class next semester."
"I would be happy to give you my opinions on it, once I've read it."
"Thank you. For myself, well, I usually live a sedentary life, and today's long walk has left me tired. I shall read for an hour, and then go to sleep. Please do as you wish. My home is your home."
"You honor me beyond my deserts," Kren said. "I think that I will stay right here and read one of your books."
Kren started to read The Overview of Mitchegai History, which started some three and a half million years ago, and stopped on this planet within a gross years of the present. It started with their earliest beginnings in the myths and the archeology of a planet over a thousand light-years away from the one he was living on. It discussed the beginnings of agriculture, and the strange animals that had existed back then, many of which the Mitchegai had actually eaten!
Kren shuddered at the very thought of it, but continued reading late into the night until sleep closed over him.
It was late morning when he awoke and went outside to relieve himself. He was drinking from the fountain in the living room when Bronki came in from one of the study dens.
"You slept late, my friend."
"I was up late. Your history book was very interesting," Kren said.
"We are a remarkable species. To think that we made it from living in primitive huts to launching ourselves into space in only a million and a half years! It was an amazing accomplishment!"
"I suppose it was, but actually, I haven't gotten that far yet. I will read some more of it in the afternoon, if I may. I wouldn't want to overstay my welcome here."
"That is something that you couldn't possibly do. I enjoy your company. You are someone as new and refreshing to me as I am to you. But for this afternoon, well, I haven't eaten lately, and country grown food is so much better than what is available in the city. What would you think of a hunt? Have you eaten recently?"
"Not nearly enough. Yes, a hunt would be wonderful!"
"Good! And bring your spear along."
"A spear? To hunt a juvenal?"
"I want to see if you are really as good with that thing as you claim."
Only a half mile from the house, they spotted a large juvenal grazing, about a gross three dozen yards away.
"Could you hit her from here?" Bronki asked.
"It's a long shot, even with a running throw. I'd only give myself half a chance of hitting her."
"Try it anyway!"
Kren dropped his cloak, took three running steps, and let fly. The spear arched high in the sky and came down perfectly on target, going right through the startled girl, and nailing her to the ground. She was screaming, and spinning about in circles, but unable to free herself.
"That was lovely! You are a master of your art!" Bronki shouted.
"Hardly that! It didn't even kill her!" He shouted back as he ran up to retrieve his broad bladed spear. He gave the child a casual kick in the head to silence her, and then pulled out his spear.
The overlapping, flexible plates of the Mitchegai cranium make for a much weaker skull than that of humans. Furthermore, the motile brain cells are less firmly connected to each other than those of any earthly species.
This results in making Mitchegai rather easy to knock unconscious. At the same time, the motile brain cells readily reconnect, and thus a blow to the head will rarely kill a Mitchegai.
With humans, the force required to knock one unconscious is very nearly that required to knock him dead.
Kren said, "Did you want this one? Or should I kill you another?"
"I had thought that she would be big enough for both of us."
"I can see that academicians have smaller appetites than soldiers do. How would you like the small one out there?" He pointed at another juvenal as far away as the first had been.
"I think that I would prefer the little boy down there." She pointed to one half again farther.
Mitchegai eyesight is extremely good, superior to that of an earthly eagle.
"That's really pushing it, but I will try."
Luck was with him, and Kren caught the little fellow cleanly in the neck.
"Truly, you are a great master! Let me pace off the distance of that throw. I shall E-mail the university's athletic director about you right after we wake up."
"Thank you. I hope that I will be as lucky in my demonstration for him as I have been in this one for you."
"Kren, you must learn to cease hiding your light under a basket. Come on, let's carry these children closer to the house before we eat them. Otherwise, we'll end up sleeping it off in the fields, and wake up chilled to the bone."
Mitchegai are nominally cold-blooded. However, through the use of clothing and various behavioral traits, the adults usually maintain a body temperature slightly higher than humans do.
It was two days before Kren felt up to doing more reading, and a week before he finished his first book.
A semi-sentient housekeeper came by every other day, shook out the carpets, washed all of the floors and windows, and trimmed back the barely encroaching grass, but never touched anything on a table or a desk. She never spoke a word, but brought fresh linen, changed the beds, and took away Kren's cloak for cleaning. She had an arrangement with Bronki, which involved getting the use of a small, nearby house with the utilities and taxes paid.
Kren simply moved to another room whenever she appeared anxiously at his doorway, and that was sufficient.
Bronki spent most of her time writing a book on her general-purpose computer, rattling her claws on the hardened metal keyboard. She had contracted to finish the last volume of her history of the computer before the next semester, and she was worried about fulfilling it.
As with all contracts among the Mitchegai, there were severe penalty clauses for late delivery. In the worst cases, they would sometimes not eat you alive, a bad end for a Mitchegai.
Kren was struggling through a book on mathematics, something which none of his victims had prepared him for, when there was a shout from outside the front door.
He went to answer it, but Bronki got there first. Two older ladies with large heads were standing there in brightly colored academic cloaks. They had a naked young girl tied at wrists and ankles, slung under a long aluminum pole that they supported between them on their right shoulders.
"Bronki! We heard you were back! We've come to welcome you home to the civilized world!"
"Zoda! Sava! Come on in! And what is this that you have brought me?"
Zoda shouted, "Party food, of course! Isn't she lovely? Just the right age, soft and tender, and not a mark on her! It took us all day to find one this good!"
"She is lovely! She looks almost too good to eat! Maybe, I'll keep her and have her eat me when her time is right!" Bronki said.
"Not a chance!" Sava said, "We've carried her for three miles, and we're going to eat her! Who's your friend?"
"Have it your way," Bronki said, and introduced Kren to her friends. They were both university professors on ten-year-long sabbaticals, and living a few miles away.
The Mitchegai neither smoked tobacco nor drank alcohol, probably because they lacked tobacco plants and the yeast to make beer or wine. A wide variety of illegal, synthetic drugs had been developed, but these were frowned upon by polite society.
Yet all intelligent beings need to get together to talk and socialize.
During such functions, some method to release the inhibitions is desirable, and with drunkenness an impossibility, the Mitchegai used the stupor brought on by eating. Eating a very large meal put you to sleep too quickly, but snacking lightly throughout the evening proved efficacious.
"How is the book coming?" Sava asked Bronki.
"Poorly! It's way behind schedule!"
"Mine too! What's more, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do next, but at least I've got a year before it's due. Tell you what. How about if I stay here and help you out, and then if you have time, you can do the same for me?"
Bronki said, "You'd do that? You're a blessing from the duke! Yes, by all means! Help me! Help me!"
The two academicians brought their gift straight into the living room, and tied the struggling girl to a low ceramic tiled table with raised edges that was obviously made for this purpose. Several small, decorative knives were put on the table as well, and the group sat down on couches around it.
"So, Bronki, will you do the honors of the first cut?" Sava said.
"But surely, it is your gift, so you should do it."
"No, no. You know the rules. You are the hostess."
"But Kren is a special guest. He should have the honors," Bronki said.
"I am but a soldier, and unfamiliar with civilized ways," Kren said. "I would probably do something improper, and flub the whole thing."
"No, you won't," Bronki insisted. "We're all friends here. Just take a knife and cut off some small part. Actually, most party goers start with the fingers and toes, and work inwards as the night goes on. Just don't let her die too soon."
"As you wish," he said. He took a knife which was none too sharp and stretched out one of the girl's fingers. Apparently guessing what he was about to do, she struggled and screamed, such that when he cut the finger off, he didn't slice cleanly through the cartilage at the joint, but had to lean heavily on the knife and took off a bit of bone as well.
The girl screamed again, much more loudly this time, and longer.
"That was really good, Kren," Zoda said. "The pitch and timbre were wonderful! I'll have to remember that! Always take a bit of bone off on the first cut!"
The Mitchegai have very little sense of rhythm, and thus music and dance have no place in their pantheon of art works. But extracting pleasant sounds from their party food is considered to be an honored art form, and a lot of fun besides. In addition, it always put the guests in a very good mood.
"You are the computer expert here, Bronki," Zoda said, cutting off a finger for herself. When the screaming stopped, she continued, "What do you think of Kem's suggestion that it might be possible to build a computer with real intelligence?"
"I think that it is pure and utter nonsense! Computers can only do what their name implies. They can compute. The so called artificial intelligence programs are exactly what their name says they are. Artificial! They can't really think!" She stabbed the girl's forearm to emphasize her point.
"Exactly right," said Sava. "Computers have been around for millions of years, and if it were possible to make them truly intelligent, somebody would have done it by now."
The long evening was most pleasant for the four of them. Kren was quizzed at length about the military, and he asked as many questions about their lives at the university.
"So tell me, why are we so often at war?" Bronki asked the group, when the conversation hit a lull.
"That's easy," Sava said. "Because they're fun!"
"Having participated in a number of them, would you mind if I disagreed with that opinion?" Kren said, playing his role to the hilt.
"Disagree all you like. That's what makes parties fun," Sava replied.
Zoda said, "They may not be fun for those who must fight them, but they are tremendously exciting for those who don't. And it's the ones far behind the lines who start the wars, direct the wars, and profit from the wars. But from a larger perspective, wars have other advantages. They eliminate surplus populations. The grass has to be trimmed and eaten, or it will turn rank."
Bronki said, "More importantly, they eliminate the ruling class of the losing side, and their ancient brains along with them. When the brain gets too old, it often gets too set in its ways. The artisans, the academics, and the soldiers have their own ways of eliminating the inefficient among them, but warfare is the only dependable method of doing this with the aristocracy."
"I'll have to think on that," Kren said.
The conversation drifted through six dozen subjects, with several surprises and a lot of laughter.
Later, Sava asked, as she crunched on a bit of ankle bone that she had bitten off, "Tell me, Kren, how was it that you learned the language of Keno?"
"In truth, I never did learn it, in the ordinary way of speaking. During the last war, another division took so many casualties at one point that they could not give them all a proper sendoff, and my unit helped them out a bit. I'd never met the soldier that my squad ate, but the next day, I found myself speaking Keno. I never learned how our dinner happened to know it, because shortly thereafter, we were attacked, I was hospitalized, and most of my squad was killed. Then it was the other division's turn to help us out."
"You make it sound like a very adventurous life."
"Adventurous? I suppose so, but being an academic sounds much more interesting to me," he said as he flayed the skin off the girl's lower leg.
The girl moaned and cried in the most delightful fashion until they had her trimmed down to her upper body cavity and head. Then they played the finger game, a variation on the human game of scissors-paper-rock, to determine who would get the brain, and Sava won.
Lastly, they tore the rest of her apart with their claws, ate it all, and licked up the blood. Then they each went to their separate bedrooms and locked the doors, laughing all the while.
Falling asleep, Kren marveled once more at how wonderful intelligent, civilized company was.