“I heard about that.”
“Well—we’re under control now. Things are going pretty smoothly.”
“They’ll be better here,” Mullins said. “Now that Douglas is gone.” He shrugged. “I hope the Boss doesn’t send him back. He’s hard to handle and he makes discipline a problem.”
“Could you tell me—or would it be violating security?” Kennon said. “Why do you have a Class II installation on full war footing out here?”
Mullins chuckled. “It’s no secret,” he said. “There was a commercial raid on this place about fifty years ago. Seems as though one of our competitors didn’t like us. Alexandria was on a war footing then and managed to hold them off. But it scared the Old Man. You see, our competitive position is based on Lani labor. Our competitors didn’t know that. Their intelligence wasn’t so good. Up until that time, we’d been keeping the males out here in what was hardly more than a stockade. Those people could have taken a few dozen females and a couple of males and they’d have been in business. But they didn’t know. They tried to smash Alexandria instead. Naturally they didn’t have a chance. And after it was over the Old Man got smart. He still had the tapes for Alexandria so he built a duplicate out here and spent a few millions on modern armament. The way we’re set now it’d take a battle group to hurt us.”
“But how about security? Don’t the others know about the Lani now?”
“It’s a moot question. But it won’t do them any good. They can’t crack this place, and without males, all the females on Flora wouldn’t do them enough long-term good to pay for the force they’d need to be successful.”
“So that’s why the males are isolated.”
“There’s another reason—two of them in fact. One is physical. Even the best male is a dangerous beast. They have a flair for violence that makes them useless as labor and their training doesn’t help matters. And the other is mental. The females on the main island believe that we humans are responsible for the continuation of their breed. This tends to keep them in line. We have a great deal more trouble with them out here once they know the truth. We’ve had a number of cases of females trying to engineer a male’s escape. But they’re never repeated,” Mullins said grimly. “Actually, it would be an interesting life out here, except for the abattoir.” He grimaced. “That’s an unpleasant chore.”
“You mean—” Kennon said.