Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 23

"Can I visit Samothea?" Annela asked.

"Not yet, unless you want to live in a cave."

"What about Freya?"

"Again, we need more research, but you're the only one who has had rejuvenation treatment. Freya should be fine. However, we'd like to do some tests on her. May we?"

Annela nodded agreement.

"I will ask the other girls from Samothea and Ezra for samples," Doctor Leighton said. "The Petticoats are already requesting samples on Samothea and testing themselves. I'd especially like to know the conditions of Yumi Takahashi's son, Hayate."

"Annela, I'm sorry," Cassie added, "but there's something more. The board of the Medical Centre are keen for us to investigate the problem because it has real scientific interest but they won't yet commit to giving us the money to work on a treatment. I'll ask Joan to badger them, but if anything will delay the solution, it will be wrangling over funds."

"I see. Thank you for all you've done for me, Cassie. I need to go home and think about it."

"Will you tell Ezra?"

"Yes. I'll tell him today."

******

Ezra knew something serious was going on because Annela didn't jump on him that afternoon, though she felt as hot to him as usual. They normally had vigorous sex in the afternoon to give her sex-drive a few hours' respite during the family dinner at Danielle and Roger's. Today, however, Annela simply sat next to him on the couch and talked.

He listened but there was nothing he could say that didn't feel like a platitude or cliché.

"We will fix this together," he said. "And if it means we both stay on Celetaris, then this is where we'll stay."

"I know you love me ...."

"... I will always love you."

"And we've confronted worse than this before. Ezra, I can face it. I'm going to stop the rejuvenation treatment for a while. My hormone levels and sex-drive will return to normal. The doctors will monitor the effects. ... I'll be fine. You don't need to stay here with me. You should go home to Samothea. They need you there."

They made warm, sweet, cosy love, with Annela on top, lying on him, mouth-to-mouth, skin-to-skin, slowly bucking her pelvis, making it last.

In the final moments, with his strong hands on her thin waist, thumbs massaging her tight stomach muscles, just as she liked, his lips on her neck, her hard nipples rubbing his chest-hair, she shut her eyes and moaned sweet happy moans. Her pussy quivered and she felt the warmth break over her whole body, tingling and fulfilling.

Afterward, safe in his arms, sexually sedated (for a few hours), Annela was comforted and temporarily forgot her problems.

******

Wildchild and Yael came with Hazel to the next flying lesson. Yael refused to be left out of anything. "What about me?" was her refrain.

In preparation, Wildchild and Yael studied the shuttlecraft manual.

They set off from the airport on a fine day. Hazel took off first, flew a smooth and controlled circuit to practise her manoeuvring. She landed well and it was Wildchild's turn.

It was a disaster. For the first time since he met her, Ezra found something that Wildchild was not naturally talented at. She flew in a jerky style, with harsh movements on the controls and no real sense of height and angle. She climbed too steeply and descended too quickly. Her throttle control was jumpy and she flew too close to the ground, causing Ezra to say:

"Head north and climb to 10,000 feet."

He hoped they'd be safer if they were outside the Astroport's airspace and got some altitude.

Wildchild pushed the throttle forward and the ship climbed quickly.

When they were at 10,000 feet, Wildchild levelled off and trimmed for straight and level flight. Now there were no wobbles as she flew through a clear blue cloudless sky, banking occasionally to follow the course of a great river far below between craggy granite cliffs.

There was relief for Ezra now, at least for a minute. He was preparing to give Wildchild some advice when she suddenly cut the power, heaved back on the stick and put the ship into a stall. As they began yawing, she kicked the rudder left and they turned nose down in a spin.

"Wildchild!" Ezra warned, serious concern in his voice. Wildchild ignored him and let the controls flap uselessly. They were falling helplessly out of the sky, spinning faster.

"Wildchild!" Ezra shouted. "Give me the controls!"

The airframe juddered as they accelerated. The turbo-jets screamed. G-forces pushed them into their seats and the ground loomed large and frightening a few thousand feet below. Curiously, Hazel and Yael didn't seem worried. It was Ezra who was at the edge of panic.

"Wildchild!" Ezra shouted again and made a grab for the controls. Now she responded. Wildchild gave the ship full throttle, pulled back on the stick and righted the rudder. She sparked the manoeuvring rockets with a full boost and stopped the spin only a thousand feet up.

Smiling, she straightened up from the dive and began a good climb. Soon they were straight and level again at ten thousand feet.

Hazel and Yael laughed at the look on Ezra's face. Clearly they were in on the secret.

"What the hell was that?" Ezra asked Wildchild, feeling an insane mixture of anger and admiration.

"Something I read about in the flying manual. I wanted to try it out. It was fun."

"Fun? Frightening me half to death? Wildchild, you're a little minx!"

She laughed.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at you," he added. "I don't believe there's anything you can't do. Did you really learn how to recover from a stall spin just by reading the manual?"

"And from Hazel teaching me the controls."

"All right. It's a good lesson. Hazel hasn't learned it yet, so give her the controls and we'll let her have a go. Then it's your turn, Yael."

*****

Since their date, Hazel and Wildchild had hung out with Ed and Rod on a park bench between classes, played football with them in the park, danced with them in the garden of a noisy pub and had dinner with them at Danielle and Roger's apartment. The dinner was a great success. The lads had been witty and charming. The girls had sparkled. Ezra enjoyed the evening as well, though he had to leave early to take Annela home and shag her until he was exhausted.

Even so, Wildchild hadn't decided what to do about Ed and Rod.

The girls liked the boys more the better they got to know them, but there were a couple of reasons why she hesitated. One reason was Ed. He was always good company and never missed an opportunity to meet up with them, but sometimes he was quiet and pensive. It was as if he was holding back, unlike Rod, who was always witty and lively.

Rod was the other reason Wildchild hesitated. There was nothing wrong with the lad himself, who was charming and fun. The problem was that it was impossible to go anywhere with him without some bubbly girl waving gaily and calling out "Hi, Rod!" with a giggle.

They were his ex-girlfriends and it was a good sign that none of them was jealous or resentful. But what started out as amusing soon became boring and, finally, irritating. They found themselves avoiding places where Rod's ex-girlfriends were known to hang out or to work. Instead, they went mainly to the pleasure gardens in Fanshaw Park, to sit on a bench under a jasmine or wander among the roses: subtle beauties with delicate fragrances, opening to full bloom in the early summer.

They did meet lots of new people by going out with the lads, which was fun. Rod and Ed had a large cohort of friends, of both sexes. Hazel was an outgoing girl who always enjoyed making new friends. Wildchild was more circumspect but she never disliked anyone at first sight. An exception to the universal friendliness, however, was a particular girl whom they bumped into more often than anyone else. She always scowled at the four of them. It was when she was there that Ed became introverted.

Her name was Angie and she was Ed's ex-girlfriend, the girl who dumped him just before the end-of-year exams, after she'd spent most of the year copying his assignments and piggy-backing on his brain. Now she seemed angry.

Angie was a thin brunette, very pretty, with a lovely olive complexion and flashing black eyes. Well-dressed on a small budget, she was gorgeous in a showy but natural way. With her face in high colour, animated by constrained rage, Angie proved the old adage true, that women are ravishingly beautiful when they're ferociously angry. Angie seemed ferociously angry every time they saw her, which was every day that the exams were on.

4 Even more complications

According to the disclosure agreement between Outworld Ventures and the Samothea Project, Cassie shared the results of Annela's tests with Andrew Claydon and his team. The results were soon confirmed by more data from the Petticoats on Samothea and from tests on Hazel, Wildchild, Yael, Freya and Ezra.

The upshot was that standard rejuvenation treatments would expose any long-term resident of Samothea to potential health risks from the x-rays. This meant that the cost of developing a new kind of rejuvenation therapy would be vastly higher than any previous estimate, with a profound implication for the costs for settling Samothea.

After a month of hard work, Andrew Claydon was ready to share his preliminary report. There were videolinks to the Council Chamber on Samothea, to the huts of the tribal chiefs there and to Joan Mayfield's office in the Science Institute, where Danielle Goldrick and her team gathered.

The report was half science, half accounting and wholly bad news. Every cost had been underestimated.

The osmium-alloy shielding to protect delicate electrical circuitry from the black hole's x-rays needed to be thicker than had previously been calculated. This meant that existing electronic devices would begin to fail sooner than expected and new devices would be heavier, adding to the transportation costs.

What to do about rejuvenation therapies for the 120 women of Samothea and for all future settlers was a problem. Every option entailed significantly greater costs.

Other costs of making life on Samothea sustainable had to do with ecology. The largest problem was that mammals could reproduce only female offspring, but self-sustaining ecosystems of the type that settlers from Earth wanted required a large variety of mammals. Cloning was impractical for wild animals, which meant expensively transporting male mammals to Samothea.

An ecosystem that was in dire need of mammals was the oceans. This was news to the women of Samothea and the Project Team but Andrew provided the facts and was clear in his exposition.

"The oceans on Samothea are dying," he explained, "because they need large deep-diving mammals. On Earth and other terrformed planets, whales dive beneath the thermocline, bringing down oxygen-rich water from the warmer levels and bringing up nutrient-rich water from the colder levels. This feeds the plankton, who support the whole food-chain."

"It's not practical to clone whales, so we must either invent robot whales or import whales to Samothea. Both choices are prohibitively expensive."

There was a delayed response, then the voice of Calliope, Chief of the Mariner Tribe on Samothea, was heard via the speaker.

"Excuse my interruption, Mister Claydon, but there are plenty of fish here. We can catch dozens on a simple line with brightly-coloured lures. We don't even need to use bait."

"Yes, Madam," Andrew replied. "There are lots of small fish for now. But in fifty years' time there will be fewer. And in one-hundred years there will be none and the ocean will be covered by a thick raft of algae."

With other examples of how almost every original calculation of the cost of re-starting the settlement of Samothea or making the current population sustainable was an underestimate, Andrew Claydon gave his unwelcome conclusion:

"This is our projection: the economic stability of Samothea will require at least a million settlers."

There were gasps all around and a host of questions, with everyone speaking together.

Andrew waited for silence.

"I know the plan was to restart the colonisation with just the relatives of the original 3,000 settlers, but now we know how much it will cost to make life on Samothea sustainable, we need to sell at least a million stakes. A smaller number of settlers couldn't maintain the advanced technological society required to build the commercial and industrial infrastructure we will need."

He highlighted a table of figures and accompanying graph.

"This is the tipping-point," Andrew said. "A population smaller than a million will not produce enough revenue to sustain itself when we take into account the cost of roads, houses, factories, offices, an astroport, imported mammals and a large hospital with a clinic for rejuvenation therapies, all with x-ray shielding for electrical devices."

"Why do we need rejuvenation therapies?" asked Madam Lawspeaker.

"To counter the bad effects of cloning, Madam," Andrew replied. "New settlers will also expect it, so that the living conditions and life-spans on Samothea are up to Anglosphere standards; otherwise, no one will want to emigrate there."

"This presumes that the doctors can cure the problems we found with Annela's rejuvenation treatment," Cassie added.

"Yes," Andrew said. "I have tried to factor in the cost of developing a cure for Annela."

Madam Lawspeaker's rasping voice was heard again.

"So the benefit of the hospital and the other - what did you call it, 'infrastructure'? - is to make Samothea more attractive to potential settlers?"

"Yes, Madam, exactly."

Mirselene, Chief of the Woodlander Tribe, asked the obvious question, in a tone of incredulity:

"Are you saying, Mister Claydon, that you need to expand the settlement of Samothea, completely changing our way of life, just to make things better for more settlers?"

"Yes, Madam."

"So why not abandon the plan of settling the planet and leave us be?"

"Money," answered Paul Kessler, the Project Team's lawyer, sounding more cynical than he intended.

"Yes, Paul, that's true," Andrew agreed. "My company is entitled to make a profit on its investment."

"There's also politics," Paul said.

"That's true, as well," Andrew said. "Earthside interests see Samothea as a viable destination for mass colonisation. They are entitled to. Many businesses and some governments on Earth consider themselves stakeholders in Samothea, having invested in the original discovery and terraforming and never getting a payout. Earth also finances the military protection of all the Outworld colonies."

"But even without Earth claiming a stake, the best future for Samothea - perhaps its only future - is as a colony in the Anglosphere, which requires Samothea to have an Earth-normal living standard and to keep Anglosphere laws."

"Without the dirt, pollution, noise, crime, over-crowding and political corruption," Paul added.

"What do you mean, Paul?" Gloria asked.

"I mean that a million settlers from Earth will bring with them the social problems that Earth suffers from."

"A million settlers will profoundly change the existing society on Samothea," Andrew agreed, speaking with honest concern, "but it's just the population of an average city on Earth, spread over a planet the same size as Earth. The population-density will be less than on Celetaris."

Gloria's voice came quietly over the videolink again.

"Are there any alternatives, Mister Claydon?" she asked.

"These are my preliminary findings, Madam Gloria. They'll be subjected to number-checking, but I believe my recommendation will stand up to scrutiny."

"Will you look into other alternatives?"

There was a pause.

"I will," said Andrew. "My team and I will examine every scenario. And we will take every objection seriously."

The meeting continued for a little while but reached no happy result. The only hope for the women of Samothea was Andrew Claydon's seemingly genuine assurance that mass colonisation would not be as bad as everyone feared and that it would bring some benefits.

Benefits or not, a million Earthers on Samothea would mean the end to its current way of life. The women of Samothea could not view that prospect with contentment.

Also, the idea that the women of Samothea could take part in the vetting process for the candidates for colonisation was dashed.

The Advisory Council on Samothea had already agreed to welcome the relatives of the original lost colonists (or those to whom they sold their stakes, properly vetted). The portions of land the original settlers owned were marked out on the original plan. All the women of Samothea wanted was some control over the additional applicants.

As the dominant Outworld colony, Celetaris had only 1,200,000 citizens after two-hundred years of settlement because the self-governing planet severely vetted immigrants, insisting on their good moral standing (as vouched for by official letters of recommendation), plus academic qualifications, professional credentials and wealth.

The women of Samothea had neither the resources nor the capacity to vet a million colonists. They would have to trust the settler company, who had no economic incentive to be strict: the opposite, in fact. Proper vetting was expensive, so Outworld Ventures was liable to accept quotas from Earth countries who had an over-abundance of population they wanted to get rid of. Other than checking that candidates had neither criminal records nor diseases (which records could be faked anyway), the settler company was likely to take anyone who could pay his way.

Danielle remained quiet throughout the video conference, thinking mostly unwelcome thoughts about how everything seemed to be stacking up against her at the moment.

5 Summer destinations

With the end-of-year exams under way at last, Danielle was free from her official workload for eight weeks. Her only pupils were Wildchild and Yael. But even their swift progress and dedication couldn't distract her from the problems of the Samothea Project and the women of Samothea, which seemed intractable to her.

Besides, the girls had plans for the summer, although only Yael knew what her plans were. She would return to Samothea to prepare for the visit of Kelly and Ryan. Joan Mayfield persuaded Kelly to spend the summer on Samothea. She would be the first of the 'Samothean Juniors': a girl from Celetaris who would live with all the tribes and learn their ways. It would be character-forming.

Ryan needed no persuading to go to Samothea to be with Yael. The fact that he would also be with Carlin, Yael's girlfriend, was something for Joan to think about and Ryan to anticipate with mixed feelings. In any case, Ryan and Kelly needed to finish their exams, so Yael was going first.

Robyn Bradford, Team-Leader of the Petticoats, was back with the old shuttlecraft, CSS 'Petticoat I', which her co-pilot would take to Samothea in a couple of weeks, with Yael and a rotation of Petticoats.

Meanwhile, Ezra officially handed over the new shuttlecraft, CSS 'Petticoat II', to Robyn, so she could get used to her quirks. ('She recovers well from a stall spin', Ezra told her.) In a month, Robyn would take five new Petticoats to Samothea, with a hold full of tools, technology, food, seeds for the farmers, clothes, books and other things that were mere trinkets for the people of Celetaris but luxuries for the women of Samothea. She would also give Ryan and Kelly a lift.

Ezra had a plan for Hazel and Wildchild but no amount of pleading, teasing or even threats could make him tell them what it was. This was frustrating but the girls trusted him completely. They let him have his fun and continued with their physics and geology lessons.

******

Annela's sexual heat gradually died down as the growth hormone and nanobots drained from her system. She was left with the normal excited sexual urge of a woman from Samothea, slightly enhanced by her pregnancy, which made her crave sex no more than two or three times a day.