Chapter 74

The next morning was a little hectic as we got things ready to have the gatherers go out with the truck and the wagon. The hay people went out to bale up the last of the canyon area and the one tractor and ATV went up to the plateau to rake what we had cut. I had designs to finish, so everyone was pretty busy. I mentioned to Bernita that we would need the hide doors soon so if she needed help she should get busy. I mentioned to Grojan that we should probably look at the hide door panels we had up for the bright time and make sure nothing was broken. We would be needing to put at least part of it up on each end soon and once the rains came we would need to close it off.

I went back to the office and chatted with Fred as I finished the designs for the milking shed. “Fred, I think we will need some windows in the hide doors for the cave entrance. Do you have any ideas concerning this idea? I’m not sure clear plastic sheeting would work because of the wind. But if the hides are inside the barrier then wind won’t bother them, or would it?”

“Bob, I think what you might want to do is replace a couple of the hides with a clear plastic sheet on the frame. There should not be much wind inside the barrier, but the cold will definitely be a problem. So you would need probably a 3 mil plastic sheet. I think I can furnish that, how many would you need?”

“Fred, I think four would do, we could put 3 windows and have a fourth as a spare. Now, I got to thinking about how I originally wanted the shed against the fence. I thought that would be best for what we would build. But since you are building this one, I think it should be about 10 to 15 feet away from the fence and we could put the windmill generator behind the shed on the fence side. The blades are up about 15’ above anything they would hit and it would keep it away from the trees in that area. What do you think?”

“Bob I think you are right. From what I see of the plans they look like something we can do. The insulation in the roof will be similar to the fabric, only better for reflecting the heat in summer and the cool in winter. For the processing room and storage rooms I think concrete and metal walls with an air gap between the concrete and the metal with a layer of the insulating fabric. But why the specific temperature range and why is it different between the two rooms?”

“Fred, raw milk straight from an animal is susceptible to bacterial changes in a warm environment. That is why they invented milking machines; they moved the milk directly from the cow to a sterile environment and started cooling it. Cow milk is usually around 100 to 105 degrees F straight from the udder. In order to control bacterial growth it needs to be cooled to at least 60 degrees. Also 60 degrees is ideal for churning cream to butter. Once the raw milk is screened through cheesecloth, it needs to be either worked for separation for cream and skim milk or the raw milk cooled to 40 degrees. Actually 35 to 37 degrees is best. But storage under these conditions allows the milk to be good for 14 days. For longer storage you need to freeze it. That is why the specific temperature ranges. Is that going to be a problem? By the way I think I will need to add an entryway where the people can change clothes and wash up before handling the milk in the clean rooms. I’ll fix that now.”

I did some rearranging and came up with a new design and Fred looked at it and said, “Bob, do you really need 20 stalls? If you drop to 15 stalls and widen the walkway back to 7.5’ and the area behind the stalls to7.5’ you will have a building that is 60’ x 40’. That would leave a 9’ x 15’ wide locker room with a 6’ walkway in the middle. You could pour the milk from each cow into 5 gallon milk cans and close the tops, and then they could be transported back for processing after the runner changes clothes. We can put a sink for washing up before donning clean clothes and a smock and hairnet. Does that sound reasonable, Bob?”

“As you can see, Fred, as you were talking I was in the process of changing the drawings. So how does it look now?”

“Bob, you are really fast at this aren’t you?”

“Yeah, when you design like this for about 15 years and you know the software, you can move along pretty quick. I think this will work perfectly. We don’t want to milk all of them anyway, I figure about 30 to 45 cows twice daily should do it. We need about 100 gallons a day to feed this bunch. So at 5 gallons a day for the average auroch, once we get them going to full production. So we would need 24 cows, so the 30 to 45 cows would suffice. But they need to be mothers, we need to catch them about 8 to 10 days after calving and start milking them until they dry up, then we need to get them bred again. We will try to breed the ones giving the most milk and try to get offspring that will produce more. But we have probably 50 calves out there as they were the ones following their mothers when we brought them in. Also if we milk the cows, we cannot use them for meat. So we need some way to mark the ones we milk, we can cut the horns but we need a better way of marking them. I think cutting the horns is going to be a very good idea, that way nobody gets speared or gored. I know a way to mark them, but it is permanent — branding. Ear tags is what they use back home, but I don’t think we would have access to that here. Branding I could do though, but like I said it is permanent and I would only have a choice of a couple or three brands. What do you think Fred?”

“Yes Bob it would seem that ear tags are the way to go to distinguish which aurochs you are milking. I will see about something like that, but first I will get started on the building for them. It is almost time for your meeting with Kilnary and his group. I will let you know when they are ready.”

I piddled around on the computer for a few minutes then I here, “Bob, are you available? We are ready here for our meeting.”

I sent back, ‘Kilnary, yes I am ready.’ Then the ghostly images of Kilnary, Trewegin, Layi’teal, Fortmers, and another gentleman of the Killjops species showed up in the office.

Kilnary started out by introducing the new gentleman. “Bob, this is Shawnee, he is the supervisor who will be accompanying you on the tour of his city. Shawnee, this is Bob the human.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Shawnee. I look forward to seeing you in real life in about 15 day’s time. It will take about 8 days to arrive there but I need to complete some things here first plus get some more information about this mission.”

“Bob the pleasure is all mine, if you can rid us of this tyrant. To mention his name in conversation is an insult to the people who hear it so I will not speak his name. I too look forward to meet you again on my world. It will mean that his reign of terror will be over soon. Thank you on behalf of our people.”

“Thank you, Shawnee, I will do my very best to make this man suffer in his death. Now, Kilnary, what words have you regarding the people around him?”

We talked for almost 2 hours about the people close to Nigeltrain and his habits. I also learned more about the 52 people left in the prisons who were the vilest of the vile. They also congratulated me on the death of Rachell. They were ruling it self-inflicted suicide. There was no one to blame, they knew she was crazy and it appeared she just snapped. Kilnary asked how I did it and I said I just took control of her mind and body and made her do the things she had done. I said I was going to try for Border tonight and see if I could do the pinpoint energy thing. After getting Fred to print out all the information we received, and double checking it, we said our goodbyes and they left.

“Bob, it won’t take 8 days to get to their home world, Capt. Snart has said he would take you there and it is only 2 day’s travel at most, why the delay?”

“Fred, I don’t want them to know my timetable. I will show up earlier and look around the city before I contact Shawnee or the others. I don’t want someone telling when I will arrive and how. That is the big advantage of a sniper; stealth, and surprise. Besides I may be able to take out some of the prison guards while I am there without having to have one of your people point them out to me. If I make each death random then there is no pattern, and no way to find a culprit if the deaths appear to be natural causes, or by accident or self inflicted. That is why I will not be caught. I will be nowhere near the victims, and no way to connect me to them. The only one I may be close to is Nigeltrain and his three henchmen. I may do one of them tonight instead of Border, but it may be too early for that. Nigeltrain could become nervous and panic. I don’t want that. Nigeltrain and Jasper are the two I will spend the most time with. They each deserve a special time with me.”

“You know, Bob, sometimes you scare me too much to be around you. You can really be sneaky and scary at times. I think I mean that as a compliment, but then again I’m really not sure.”

“Yes Fred, I understand your hesitance and believe me I neither would, nor could ever harm you without it being a life or death situation for us both. Does that help at all?”

“Yes I think so. Bob you have missed lunch because of this meeting. Barbara knows it ran long today and why, so she saved some lunch for you. Do you want her to bring it in or will you go out there?”

“I think I will go out there and radio my field people to see how they are doing. Thanks Fred.”

I left and retrieved my TAC radio and called my field people. Heagern was driving the truck today taking Keryon’s crew of gatherers, so I called him to see how things were going. He said that had traveled a long ways to get the roots and vegetables for our root cellar. They had the truck bed about half filled, and the wagon was about three quarters. Keryon said they had about another hour of gathering and then they would head home.

I ate some meat stew and drank water for my lunch and between bites I talked to Valkorla up on the plateau. He said no predators had come around and they had started on the new part right after their lunch. He said it should be about half done by the time to leave for home tonight. I thanked him and everyone up there for all their hard work. Val said he had even had a couple of turns driving the ATV. He was real happy about that.