The Clarkl Soup Kitchens (29 page)

INVESTIGATIVE AGENCY

Colin C. Rodriguez

Senior Interplanetary Investigator

             
             
             
             
             
November 4, 2410
             

Dear Professor Jernigan:

This letter represents our final account into the disappearance of over two thousand Americans in the years 2144 through 2147 on the planet of Clarkl, a minor satellite of the great star known to astronomers as Pantula.

Background

The first mention of Clarkl in the English language appears in a message in 2034 to the Nobel Laureate John J. Olsen from his primary contact on the planet of V Eta Boötes. Clarkl is described in that message as a place with few comforts and extensive famine. Its natives were also described as “absolutely frightful” in appearance, but that attribute does not have any bearing on this report.

By 2060, the American government was trading with V Eta Boötes on a very regular basis, providing food in exchange for various minerals, especially silver and platinum. The elders on V Eta Boötes told their correspondents on Clarkl about the food available in
America
, and those elders facilitated discussions in 2065 between the rulers on Clarkl and the American government.

In 2065,
America
needed various types of uranium. The several sources of uranium on Earth had either been exhausted or had been determined as too impractical for extraction. Clarkl had and still has uranium in abundance.

The discussions between the two governments originally proposed the shipment of food to Clarkl and the shipment of uranium to
America
. After several years of Clarkl spacecrafts going back and forth, the Clarklians realized they were no better off than before. Food was accumulating in warehouses because nobody on Clarkl knew how to use flour, sugar, or dry rice. Furthermore, the Clarklians most interested in food, the Drones, were the ones least interested in engaging in any real work to prepare food.

By 2070, the governments started to renegotiate the contract. The Clarklians, rich as Crœsus but hungry, wanted Americans to come to Clarkl to prepare and serve the food. They also wanted the Americans to grow vegetables on Clarkl soil from American plants and seeds.

The American government was stupefied. Whoever would want to go to Clarkl, where the temperature was too low and the living was too hard?

The American government turned to its favorite, and perhaps only, source of goodwill, the organized religious groups. Here were groups willing to send workers to strange lands in service to others. Perhaps several of these organizations would be willing to manage the Clarkl relationship.

In 2071, the American government issued a Request for Proposals to find suitable vendors. Five proposals were received: one from organized crime, two from impoverished colleges anxious to build up their endowments, and two from Christian organizations.

When the selection committee met to assign weights to its requirements, it quickly decided to value most heavily the likelihood that any Clarklians would be fed. The committee decided organized crime would figure out how to divert the food to a more profitable use, the two colleges would spend all their resources debating the best way to feed the Clarklians, and the Christians would get busy and feed the poor, as faith-based organizations had been doing for millennia.

By 2075, the two Christian organizations were running dining rooms on Clarkl. The New Christian Congregation, backed by considerable American funding, was the primary vendor, and the Fundamentalists of Christ, staffed by people interested in spreading the Christian faith, was the secondary vendor.

Problems developed between the personnel of these two vendors, but these problems never affected the quality or the quantity of the food served to the Clarklians. The problems started in the spacecrafts that took Americans to Clarkl. People
will
talk, of course, and the workers compared the monthly stipends they would be receiving. The New Christians were being paid, on average, about three or four times the amount the Fundamentalists were being paid. By the time the Fundamentalists heard this news, they were on the spacecrafts and all their papers had been signed. This significant difference in remuneration caused the Fundamentalists to consider the New Christians as profiteers and to dismiss their pronouncements of their adherence to the Christian beliefs. The Fundamentalists remained disgruntled throughout their tenure on Clarkl.

During the sixty years after 2075, the dining rooms increased in numbers and in popularity on Clarkl. In 2080, a farming unit started to grow produce using the enormous energy resources available on Clarkl to heat and cool the cultivated areas.

Problems Develop

By 2130, the Clarklian rulers knew they had a problem. Their least productive subjects, the lazy Drones, were living much longer. In 2075, the average lifespan of a Drone was 30 years. By 2130, this average lifespan had climbed to 45 years, giving the rulers an additional 15 years per Drone to provide food, clothing, and shelter for these useless entities.

Furthermore, Wolpters were living longer, too. These entities were almost as lazy as their friends the Drones, but, unlike the sterile Drones, the Wolpters spent their extra years producing more Wolpters and, sometimes, when the Wolpters mated with either Slinkers or Carriers, more Drones!

The last straw for the rulers was when a well-meaning churchwoman from America used her own money and money from her friends to open a health facility where Drones and others could be cured of those very maladies the rulers were counting on to kill the Drones off.

Taking Action

In 2144, the rulers sent a delegation to a service at the chapel run by the Fundamentalists of Christ. Here they heard, between parts of a very implausible tale of death and resurrection, glorious music unlike anything ever heard on Clarkl before. The Drones and the Wolpters clapped their hands in time with the music and appeared even more determined to avoid so much as a lick of work.

Within a few months, the rulers ordered the Slinkers to move these music makers and the longwinded storyteller to a castle near the capital. From there, the Slinkers transported the captured Americans to a more secluded home in the north where the rulers could vacation in small groups and listen to the music.

About the time when the delegation of rulers went to the service at the chapel, another group of rulers visited a dining room. Here the rulers saw many Drones and Wolpters eating food much more varied than the bowls of mush that made up the royal diet. When they tried some of this food, the royals realized the Drones and the Wolpters were enjoying a veritable feast three or four times each day while they, the rulers, were nearly starving on badly prepared gruel.

Dealing with this problem took much more time. Within three years, housing for all the Americans was built near the farms and a large dining room, suitable for royalty, was constructed. Smaller units of housing were built adjacent to each castle. Finally, in one concerted action, the Americans were moved to the new housing and forced to leave everything behind but the clothes on their backs.

On that day, all electronic communications with
America
stopped. The spacecrafts still took uranium to
America
and brought back food, but the American government was told nothing about the fate of its citizens. The American government, by 2147 critically dependent upon the uranium from Clarkl, continued to supply flour, sugar, rice, and seeds.

The Slinkers set up barricades around all the old dining rooms and their cabins so that no Clarklian could enter. When I arrived in 2410, the compounds had remained untouched for the 263 years since the capture of the Americans.

Life after the Enslavement

The Seekers worked with the Americans to automate nearly all the kitchen and dining room tasks. Together the Seekers and the Americans set up elaborate automatic food dispensing networks that allowed the Drones, the Wolpters, and other Clarklians to get hot meals at any hour of the day. By 2153, most Americans on Clarkl were working no more than four hours each day.

The rulers expected the Americans to reproduce so they could keep these slaves into perpetuity. This expectation was the major flaw in the Clarklians’ plan. Very few of the American women were of childbearing age, and, in total, only five American children were born, all males.

The doctors and Mrs. Edwards trained Seekers and Carriers to attend the sick, and their clinic is still in operation today.

The Seekers recorded everything the choir sang at the Monarchs’ home in the north, and copies of these recordings were sent to every Monarch and every Batwig. Clarklians can still buy these recordings today.

The last American died in 2207. The Carriers were charged with conducting the funerals, and they buried the Americans on Clarkl in beautiful platinum caskets brought from Noowal.

The lifespan of the Drones has been reduced to 43 years. The cheerful Drones remain useless, but the Monarchs have resigned themselves to feeding and caring for them.

The spacecrafts continue to take minerals to
America
and bring food to Clarkl.

Finally, a Personal Note

The Batwigs have invited me to build a house near the Capital, and I have accepted.

Over my life, I have accumulated sufficient resources to allow me to retire here in comfort, and I plan to spend the rest of my days with these curious creatures.

I have wired my extra funds to my children.

This will be my last report.

             
             
             
             
Cordially,

             
             
             
             
Colin C. Rodriquez