Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 25

1 Return to Celetaris

Tatiana, Hazel and Wildchild were the first set of adventurers to return to Celetaris. They left the spaceship, Sunrise, docked to an engineering station in high orbit around Celetaris, for repairs and refitting for the next mission. Tatiana fretted that the work would eat into the profits of the venture, but Ezra (who was underwriting the mission) made no comment when she sent him the bill.

The three of them caught a shuttlecraft down to the surface and landed at Ocean City Astroport, where Ed and Rod waited for the girls. Before they had a chance to leave messages for their friends, the lads bundled them all into a jetcar. Dropping Tatiana off at a hotel in Arts City, they whisked the girls away, keen to make the most of the time before the new University year began.

Tatiana made herself comfortable in her hotel room, where she sent a report to Ezra on Earth by videolink and waited for his own report. Tatiana's report praised the girls and asked him not to tell Danielle the details of their near-disaster. In his reply some hours later, Ezra updated Tatiana on his meetings with the mining and manufacturing companies. They made more commercial plans together and discussed sending fully equipped mining vessels to the white dwarf star.

The lads whisked the girls away to Rod's family cabin in the forested mountains north of Arts City. On the way, Wildchild signed to Hazel:

"You know I love Rod."

"I do."

"I've never told him so."

"Why not?"

"I think it would be disloyal to you."

"You're nuts. You don't think I'm disloyal to you because I love Ed."

"No."

"Well then?"

"Well then ... I'll tell him tonight."

Ten minutes after arriving at the cabin, having settled who got which bedroom, the girls were in bed with their boyfriends, giving them the best shagging of their lives.

They were at it all night and most of the next morning. Hazel was the noisiest. Wildchild was the most inexhaustible, riding Rod (who lived up to his name) for hours. Ed also had pretty good stamina, but it was the boys who slept in late and the girls who got up the first day to make lunch and compare notes.

Wildchild had still not told Rod that she loved him. The opportunity did not come up (unlike Rod, who came up so many times that his balls ached; so much so that he doubted they would ever work again).

For most of the next two days, the couples stayed in bed, reconnecting in the best possible way.

When they left their bedrooms, the girls walked around the cabin in their knickers. They met in the kitchen or in the living room for an occasional chat, using their sign-language if the boys were present. Other times they shared a kiss, a caress or a fondling hand to the waist or a pat on the bottom as they passed. It made the girls happy and it teased the boys, keeping everything nicely on the boil.

Everyone was finally satiated on the third day. They sat in the living room with large mugs of hot soup and Hazel told the story of their adventure, including the near-disaster and the fascinating visit to Argus Space Station.

"Do you know Viktor Bogdanov?" Hazel asked.

"No," said Rod.

"He's a famous merchant," said Ed.

"How come Ed's heard of him and you haven't?" Wildchild pretended to be let down by her boyfriend.

"The advantage of reading around a subject and not just doing the bare minimum of work," Rod said.

Wildchild shook her head at him.

"We met Viktor in the merchant's hall on Argus Space Station," Hazel said. "We like him very much. He bought our cargo, paying 7.5% over the odds so that he could ask Sam and me some questions. Then he took us on a tour of the station, bought us dresses, paid for our hotel room and gave us dinner."

"What did you tell him?" Ed asked.

"Nothing, we think. We don't really know anything."

"He must have thought you do. Merchants like Bogdanov don't waste their money. They have lots of schemes running at the same time. I bet you told him something useful, even if you don't realise it."

"Is that what you two want to do," Wildchild asked: "become merchants like Viktor Bogdanov, growing rich and fat?"

"Yes," said Rod, "especially fat."

"I don't mind if you grow rich," Hazel said to Ed, "but please don't grow as fat as Viktor. I don't think it's healthy."

"All right, I won't. Do you know why Viktor lives on Argus? He's rich enough to live anywhere he likes."

"We didn't ask him. Maybe it's so he can be with his girlfriends. He has two gorgeous Chinese bedmates who look after him."

Hazel described Hui-Yin and Jia-Li, the delicate porcelain dolls who seemed to adore Viktor.

"They tease him and spend his money but I think they love him," she said.

Although the lads had no entertaining stories to tell their girlfriends, they did have a surprise: two long brightly-wrapped oblong boxes.

Presents were such a rare treat on Samothea that Hazel and Wildchild received even the smallest gift as if they were the richest jewellery. They tore off the wrapping-paper with childlike delight and opened the boxes to reveal bows and arrows. There could be no better presents.

With a shared wink, the girls leapt on their boyfriends and dragged them to their bedrooms to show their joy. In the afternoon, they went hunting in the forest.

The cabin was in an isolated spot in a thick temperate forest. It was cool, humid and peaceful under the canopy. Shy deer roamed freely among the trees and bracken. It was open season for bucks.

Hazel and Wildchild quickly got used to the bows, which were lighter and more powerful than their wooden bows at home. The arrows were long and flew straight. Their metallo-plastic arrowheads were even sharper than Wildchild's glass arrowheads.

Although they managed to stalk some deer and even came in sight of a buck they could shoot, neither girl had the heart to kill such a graceful and timid creature. The boys had rifles, but seeing the reluctance of the girls, also spared the buck. Instead, they found some pigeons to shoot, although no one could explain why deer were more worthy of mercy than birds.

That evening they built a fire outside the cabin and cooked the pigeons. After dinner, they sat around the dwindling flames, sharing blankets, enjoying the magic of the sputtering embers and the dancing shadows, as the forest around them went to sleep.

In bed, both couples made love to a nocturnal rhythm, slowly and gently, in sympathy with the tender night that descended on the forest like a soft blanket.

Next morning they went to an outdoor supplies shop in the local settlement. It was a large wooden shack with a stock of weaponry, tents, tools, fishing gear and clothing.

In the store, the girls found trousers in camouflage grey and green, with multiple pockets and legs that could be unzipped to make cool shorts, plus jackets with removable arms to match: the perfect outfits to replace the short dresses they bought on Argus Space Station.

Although Hazel preferred a short skirt or short dress when she was not hunting, Wildchild always wore trousers on Samothea, even men's trousers. The hunting trousers suited her perfectly, with her perky buttocks and the gap between her thighs. She wore them all the time.

Back at the cabin, Rod said: "I think it was a mistake buying her trousers. Now we'll never get her out of them."

"Really?" said Hazel. "All I need to do to get her out of her trousers is to say: Sam, let's make love."

Rod laughed heartily, to Hazel's relief. It was only as she spoke that she realised he might have taken her joke to imply a competition between them over Wildchild. But Rod had never shown her any jealousy.

Wildchild did not worry that her girlfriend and her boyfriend would compete for her. They had naturally fallen into an unspoken agreement, that the girls had sex with their boyfriends when the boyfriends were there and they had sex with each other when they were not.

It was an answer to a question that no one had asked. To the girls from the Woodlander Tribe, where strict custom prevented bad feelings from threatening the relative harmony of the Forest Camp, it seemed obvious that threesomes of either variety would be forbidden; yet it left open a different question. How well would the boys cope with the absence of their girlfriends?

This worry was partly behind what Hazel and Ed talked about in bed that night after vigorous sex.

"I will always love you," he said, "however complicated this relationship may become."

"By 'complicated' you mean being separated for too long?"

"Yes. Rod and I originally planned to go to Earth after we graduated, to join firms, to get some experience and maybe earn our fortunes."

"For how long?"

"Five or ten years, maybe longer. I don't mind giving up my plans for your sake. I could stay on Celetaris and find a job here while you finish your course at the Institute. But what use would I be if I didn't pursue my career and make something of myself?"

"I want you to make something of yourself, Ed. I don't want you to give up your ambitions for my sake."

"You're my ambition, Hazel, though I also need to make a living."

"We can meet up often, can't we?"

"Not easily. Long-distance travel is very expensive, despite Doctor Goldrick's new technology. Also, you and Samothea will be away prospecting for months. It was hard enough missing you when you went away for just five weeks."

"Is this about sex?"

"Sex is important."

"Yes, it is."

"I don't mean I can't do without sex for five weeks but I wouldn't want to do without it for six months and I certainly couldn't do without it for a year when I could be here with you."

"I don't want you to give up your chance of a successful career by staying on Celetaris."

"I don't think I'll be missing out. Many businesses are coming here, drawn by the Science Institute and by increasing trade with the Sino-Russian sector, whose colonies are beginning to grow again. The Outworld League is the place to be for interesting business opportunities."

"And afterward?"

"I know you want to go back to Samothea."

"Sam and I both do."

"I'll come with you, if there's a place for me."

"There will always be a place for you."

******

Rod, the over-sexed man-whore (though an honest cad, not a cheat or a brute), never once complained to Wildchild that she had left him alone for five weeks. Rather, when she lay on him in bed, breathing heavily, buzzing from their climaxes, he said:

"I love you Samothea."

"You're all right, Rod," she said, stroking his light-brown hair.

He laughed.

"Do you think I mind that you can't say it yet?" Rod asked.

"No."

"Or do you think I mind that you love Hazel more than me?"

"It's a different kind of love."

Rod did not tell the maths genius that she had just admitted to loving him.

"Samothea, it's enough for me that you're here. What you've accomplished at the Institute and as a Prospector is so remarkable that to come back to me must feel like a let-down."

"It doesn't. Besides, you'll do amazing things yourself, and when you come back to me it will feel the same."

"How does it feel?"

"Have you ever been mountain-climbing?"

"Yes."

"At home, I climbed a peak in the White Mountains. I was there with Yael and our friend, Carlin, searching for Yael's mother. One afternoon I was angry and Carlin tried to comfort me, which made me even angrier. I snapped at her and ran off."

"I climbed over rocks and up gullies filled with loose pumice, where there were only a few clumps of grass to grab onto. At the top of the gully, there was snow up to my knees. The peak seemed to recede from me. Every time I thought I was near, there was a higher peak beyond."

"When I climbed through cold wet clouds and the snow was up to my thighs, I lost sight of the peak altogether; but I was suddenly above the clouds and it was bright sunshine and an easy stroll to the finish, with an amazing view over five valleys, spread out like fingers, with mist flowing like foam between them."

"I could see the great plain, green and lush, and the sea beyond, which was covered in clouds. To my left was a big volcano that we'd climbed a week earlier, belching a column of steam into the sky. Behind the volcano and all the way to the horizon was the forest where we began."

"It sounds amazing," Rod said.

"It was my greatest adventure up to then. But the feeling I'm talking about happened to me when I was at the peak. I sat on my backpack in the snow to feast my eyes on the scenery, staring to the horizon."

"I'd worked off all my anger already but I think it would have dissipated anyway from the serenity of that mountaintop. What I felt was how I'd earned that view. I felt a kind of ownership."

"I understand," Rod said. "I know that feeling, of deserving something after a great effort. Do you really feel that way about me?"

"Yes."

"You can tell me this but you can't say you love me?"

"No."

"You're an odd proud girl, Samothea Galateasdaughter Woodlander."

"I know."

"As for me," Rod said, "to love you is like climbing a mountain ten times higher than I've ever climbed, with a sheer cliff-face. It's a blood-pumping, muscle-aching, mind-tearing feeling of achieving something heroic."

Wildchild looked at him with laughter in her electric green eyes, an enigmatic smile haunting the corners of her mouth.

"Yes, I know," he admitted. "I'm a hero only in my own story. See what you've turned me into? A love-sick loon, spouting gibberish. If I start writing you poetry, then you're to take me to a vet and have me put down because I'll have completely lost it."

"You're funny when you're sentimental," Wildchild said. "Shall I tell Ed that you write poetry?"

"He won't believe you. No one would."

"Hmm."

******

At the end of the week in the cabin, making love, hunting, laughing and snuggling under blankets around the campfire, as owls hooted and hedgehogs rustled in the undergrowth, the girls were as happy as they could be. On the journey back to Arts City, they sat opposite each other in the jetcar and talked in their sign language.

"You still haven't told Rod you love him, have you?" Hazel said.

"No."

"But you do love him."

"Yes."

"Well, what's stopping you?"

"I don't know."

"That's not like you, Sam, not to know your own mind."

"I'm trying to understand it myself. ... You and I fell in love with Ezra, the first man we ever met."

"We still love him."

"We do. Then we fell in love with Rod and Ed, the first boys to ask us out."

"I see. And Yael fell in love with Ryan, the first boy she properly knew. ... Do you think there are better men out there for us?"

"There may be but I don't want anyone better. I want Rod."

"So what's the problem?"

"I don't know. ... Man-love is different from woman-love."

"It's more sexual."

"It is, wonderfully so. Not in the sense of having more sex but in the sense of the way the sexes interact. I always know what you're thinking but I never know what Rod's thinking."

"Yes, you do: Rod's thinking about sex."

"But in the five minutes a day that he's not thinking about sex, it's a wonderful mystery."

"Haven't you ever asked him what he's thinking about when he goes quiet?"

"I don't want to hear him say: I'm thinking about you, my love."

Hazel laughed.

"Rod wouldn't say that," she signed.

"Have you asked Ed?"

"Yes. He said: the Austrian business cycle."

Both girls now laughed.

"We know you're talking about us," Rod said.

"We're just comparing you two as lovers," Wildchild said. "Hazel's commiserating with my disappointment."

"Sorry I spoke," said Rod.

"Hazel, I've made my decision," Wildchild signed.

"Yes?"

Hazel knew which decision Wildchild meant, the question of their future: the question whether Wildchild was strong enough to risk losing Hazel if they went adventuring again.

"I want us to be Prospectors," Wildchild said. "I want the adventure, even if it comes with risks. I want the risk."

"I know you do."

"I want you and I want Rod and I want maths, physics, prospecting and everything. I'll never be scared again."

******

Danielle and Roger were the second set of travellers to return to Celetaris, two weeks before the start of the Autumn term at the Science Institute. While Roger went to the Institute's library to write up his notes, starting to make his new videobook, Danielle returned to her office in the Physics Faculty, with its views over Fanshaw Park and the central ocean.

She planned to attack the major problem discovered by Cho Lim, the young Nakatani Corporation engineer from Singapore, which was how to make the new technology work with the Beltway Hyperspace System. When a hyperspace spaceship (called a 'traveller') met a Beltway junction to be directed off along a spur or to continue around the Beltway, the signal from the beacon was scrambled, sending the traveller in any old direction.

While she was away, Danielle let the problem simmer on her mental backburner, hoping for a new insight to bubble up when she returned. Nothing came.

Another good way to conjure up new ideas was to perform mundane tasks. Danielle did her paperwork for the new term, read some recent physics papers, answered messages from work colleagues and checked on the progress of her brother and friends who had also made journeys away from Celetaris.

She was pleased to know that everyone was well. Ezra, Annela, Freya, Edgar Fanshaw and the nurses were relaxing at her parents' house in Australia. Yael, Kelly and Ryan were still on Samothea, soon to return with Robyn Bradford and a rotation of Petticoats.

Eva Welwyn, the director of the Petticoat Team (which she insisted on calling the 'Women's Support Group'), intended to come for a visit at the beginning of term. She and Robyn Bradford were conducting an interesting new study and asked Danielle for her help.

Tatiana, Hazel and Wildchild were already back, though the girls took off for another week's holiday with Ed and Rod. Danielle was relieved they survived the unnecessarily dangerous mission Ezra sent them on.

She saw an earlier message she missed: a request for her advice on what Hazel and Wildchild should tell a merchant on Argus Space Station who was asking questions about the Samothea Project.

It was too late but Danielle replied to say there were no secrets in the Samothea Project, not even the problem of the Beltway Junctions. Rather, by publicising the problem, they might inspire other scientists to discover a solution.

Her answer was not entirely true because there was a secret that Danielle was keeping from almost everyone. This was that she and her husband, Roger, with the support of her ex-boss, Stephen Oakshott, planned to buy the planet Samothea from its legal owner, Outworld Ventures.

The ability to buy the planet depended on a big payout, which required solving the Beltway junction problem; and still no new insight came to Danielle as she made preparations for the upcoming start of the Autumn term and a new intake of students.

It was a Thursday, which Roger called 'Tie up my wife and fuck her' night.

After dinner, Roger did his duty to Danielle with admirable keenness. She wallowed in the pleasure of being restrained and forcibly used. As she moaned and wailed in happy submission, her mind was a pink cloud of fluffy numbness.

It seemed that kinky sex was the right kind of distraction to send her mind off on a galactic journey, releasing her store of intuitive insights.

An hour into an exciting hard shagging, Danielle's legs were tied up by bands across her thighs and shins, her arms were crossed behind her back and tied tightly, her mouth was gagged and her eyes blindfolded. She was on her back at the edge of the bed. Roger thrust deeply into her soaking pussy while she wailed and moaned, panted and chirruped until, at last, the magic happened.