Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 26

"Da, dinner is fine. I not interrupt your - I not know the English of moshennicheskiy ..."

"Swindling."

"Spasiba. I leave you to your 'swindling'."

Viktor grunted as he stood up to make a polite bow over Tatiana's hand.

"My apartment. Eight o'clock. My heart will ache until tonight."

"Yerunda, you old fraud."

When Tatiana left, Viktor called Hui-Lin and Jia-Li.

"My lovely partners," he said, "we have a business opportunity to discuss. Also, our friend Tatiana is coming for dinner."

The girls gave him their technical support before going shopping ("yet again," Victor complained) to prepare for the evening's entertainment. He spent a few hours with business contacts, sourcing minerals and pricing manufacturing services, so he had a provisional offer for Tatiana that evening, which they discussed late into the night.

As Tatiana could not tell exactly how Viktor was swindling her, she shook hands on the deal. She refused a bed for the night, so Viktor walked her (huffing and wheezing) to her ship, Sunrise, in the dock. Tatiana left early next morning on another mining mission to the magnetic star and its molten moons, happy about her prospects for a successful business venture.

2 Andrew Claydon

Grounding the shuttlecraft was a problem for Outworld Ventures as well as for the Samothea Project because Andrew Claydon, the representative for the settler company, was booked on the next flight to Samothea with six of his team-members.

After proposing his plan to sell a million stakes on Samothea, Andrew wanted to see the planet for himself, to make personal contact with Madam Gloria, her Advisory Council and the women of Samothea. He wanted to meet them face-to-face, to hear their opinions.

He knew it would be difficult to tell the women of Samothea that their lives would never be the same again. The latest news from the planet, that modern technology was even less viable than previously thought, only increased the costs to the settler company. Factories and workshops would have to be built underground and the kind of life on the planet would be more primitive and less attractive to settlers.

Even so, he was sure a million inhabitants of dirty, over-crowded violent cities on Earth would pay to come to a clean, healthy and crime-free planet, even if it would be a rugged nineteenth-century style of life, with no modern amenities and few electronic devices. But they would pay less for their stakes on the planet.

There were costs to consider for Outworld Ventures, who had to invest in shuttlecraft, houses, roads, maybe an astroport. None the less, settlement was viable and the company intended to press ahead with colonisation, starting with 1,500 of the descendents of the original lost settlers. Where exactly they would live was a question Andrew would decide only after he had seen the planet for himself.

For now, there was only one shuttlecraft flying and there were the usual rotation of Petticoats to transport, plus a hold full of old-fashioned heavy hand-tools and bench-tools. Andrew was asked if he wanted to wait another month and take his team on a future flight, or take the next flight out in the only spare seat.

He chose to go alone.

******

At the next full Council Meeting, Sarah Wandasdaughter Cloner resigned as Madam Scientist. Instead, she was appointed Special Advisor to Madam Prefect but she lost her vote at council meetings.

When Gloria proposed that she offer the vacant position to Yumi until the elections at the Cloner Fair, it was Madam Deputy Prefect, Solange Malkasdaughter, not Madam Lawspeaker, as expected, who declined to make the council's agreement unanimous.

The motion passed none the less and, afterward, Gloria and Solange stayed behind for a chat.

"Do you have an objection to Yumi?" Gloria asked Solange.

"Not at all. She'll be an excellent Madam Scientist. I hoped only that Sally would stay on until Samothea Galateasdaughter was ready."

"Samothea has a lot of spirit and is quite brilliant, but she won't be ready for a place on our council for many years."

"I know, and Sally Scientist has many good years left in her. I'm worried that if Yumi takes the job, then we'll have nothing to offer Samothea to bring her home."

"You heard Hazel's story of what she and Samothea did last month? The thrill and the danger they faced. Why would Samothea want to come back here to preside over a heap of broken machines?"

"Gloria, you make it sound like we should all leave."

"I understand what motivates young people to go exploring."

"So what will bring our young adventurers back home?" Solange asked.

"Family."

"Perhaps, but when colonists come and the population expands, we won't live in each other's pockets, as we do now. A daughter will leave home and live anywhere she likes. What will keep her in her mother's hut if she can have a concrete house of her own? And when men come, she'll never sleep in her mother's bed again."

"But that's all we have to offer our girls, Solange: a mother's love and the love of her tribe."

"It may be enough to make them want to take holidays here, as Yael Eloisesdaughter did, but it won't be enough to keep them here. That's my worry."

"Yet you want men to come here."

"I do."

"Men will cause the biggest change to our society: one that can never be undone."

"They will."

"So what's your plan to keep our society together, to keep our girls here, or persuade them to come home after their adventures?"

"I don't know. I'm thinking about it."

"So am I, Solange. And I can't see any answers."

******

Gloria spoke to Yumi a day later, to offer her the position of Madam Scientist, saying:

"This appointment is testimony to how we feel about you."

"I don't know what to say, Gloria. I love the women of Samothea and I'm happier here than I was on Earth; but there's also a life for me at home with my family and friends ... and others."

"Michio's a good man. I thought that making you Madam Scientist would entice you to stay here with us, but if your happiness lies elsewhere, then I understand."

"It's a great honour and something I would want to do if I was committed to staying here. I don't know what to decide."

"Take the job until the Cloner Fair, when the position is up for election. Then you can decide if you want to stand or not."

Yumi was tempted by the affection of the women of Samothea. It weighed strongly in the balance against the possibility of a reignited love for Michio and her love for her family, especially her brother Itsuki. She nodded.

"One more thing," Gloria said. "You cannot be Madam Scientist without being a member of a tribe. You don't have to make a decision yet."

"I'd like to join the Farmers," Yumi said. "I think my work will help them the most."

"Good choice, Madam Scientist."

******

Before he left Celetaris, Andrew Claydon had two conversations. One was with Ezra, who gave him personal advice about how to treat the women of Samothea, especially what to expect from the chiefs. He also told Andrew to take light clothes and a good hat.

Andrew's other conversation was with his wife, Marta, who came to see him off.

"Do you really not mind that I'm going to Samothea, to be the only man among more than 100 adult women?" he asked her.

"Why would I mind? What are you planning to do there?"

"Have very long detailed discussions and, according to Ezra Goldrick, answer endless personal questions."

"And that's supposed to make me jealous?"

"You know what I mean. If you want me to, I'll wait until the rest of the team can come with me."

"Are you the same man I trusted when I married you?"

"I am."

"Then what's the problem? Go and spend a month as the only man on a planet of sex-starved women. And behave yourself. You can do that, I suppose?"

"Alright, already. I'm going. I'll miss you."

"Of course you will," she said, kissing him.

******

Andrew Claydon sat in his window-seat on the shuttlecraft, Petticoat II, with a white ten-gallon hat on his lap. His neighbour, one of the original Petticoats, well-used to the journey, made a little small talk then nodded off, catching up on her sleep. Eventually she rested her head on his shoulder.

Andrew smiled. He liked the Petticoats. He thought of them like soldiers on furlough. After working hard for eight weeks, they had four weeks off, which they spent with their families, or like the girl next to him, partying hard. They returned to their jobs happy but exhausted.

Andrew looked out of the projector-window most of the flight, enchanted by the journey, especially after the shuttlecraft emerged from the hyperspace beacon and detached its hyperdrive unit in a 3,000-mile orbit of Samothea. The descent to a planet's surface was always exciting.

After a bumpy entrance to the atmosphere, it was a smooth glide eastward across a vast blue-green ocean to a kidney-shaped continent.

It was really a large island of a few hundred-thousand square miles, the only inhabited land on the planet. From 50,000 feet, it looked like a 2d map, coloured green, white, gold and a few smears of dirt-brown. The spine of the continent was a frozen white massif, a volcanic mountain-range that ran north and south, bulging out eastward like an over-stuffed belly, pushing out cartwheel arms westward to the sea. The arms embraced a large forest and split a long green coastal plain into two parts.

The well-watered plain was bordered to the north by desiccated highlands, where nothing much grew, and to the east by a fertile forest. It was cut by a slow wide river. Verdant but weathered volcanic mountains to the south separated the inhabited northern plain from its larger pristine neighbour to the south.

The shuttlecraft turned north to follow a long fringe of golden beach that ran 100 miles along the western edge of the continent to the silver river. A small human settlement of square white houses with green-roofs hugged the southern bank of the river. This was Cloner City, where some sixty women and children lived: the largest concentration of the planet's current population.

Andrew contemplated the vast region that supported only about 150 people. He knew the history. This was the only continent presently capable of colonisation because the engineers had been halted in their work by the catastrophic formation of the nearby black hole. Their success was visible in the living green abundance, compared to the patchy green of the other continents and the green fringes of the polar regions, showing that some life had made the journey.

Seeds and spores had blown across on the winds. Coconuts and other fruits had floated on the ocean. The wind had carried insects and birds, and the birds had carried snails and other molluscs. Andrew smiled again, thinking that, some day, human design would add to this natural colonisation. People would live and build all over the planet.

Even without modern farming machinery, the inhabited continent could easily sustain many thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands, though it might never become a fully sustainable ecosystem if mammals could not reproduce naturally; nor would the standard of living reach that of the developed galaxy.

With modern machines, a million people could live comfortably between the mountains and the ocean, with lots of land to spare. Andrew frowned. Appealing as the vision was of a teeming human population, living, working, building and farming on an abundant continent, their impact on the women of Samothea would be devastating.

He could not say what the answer was but it was in his good nature to listen to every objection and consider every viable alternative.

******

The women of the Cloner City greeted Andrew with their usual enthusiasm toward any stranger, especially a man. They were interested in his clothes, his accent, his family, his wife, Marta, his ten-gallon hat and his opinions on everything. He was mobbed by the women so much and so often that the Council could not get him alone to discuss business.

Expecting this reaction, Madam Gloria left Andrew to the mercy of the women of the Cloner City for a whole day and sent him off next morning to stay with the three outer tribes. If he spent a few days with each tribe, to see how they lived, then he could return via the farms upstream of the city and spend his final week in the Cloner City, giving plenty of time for a public discussion of his plans for the planet. This would give all the women who could make the journey plenty of time to assemble in the Cloner City.

As Andrew could ride well, the Herders lent him their tallest horse and he set off on a bright morning with a posse of Herders, led by their chief, Galatea, whom he recognised as Wildchild's mother.

His choice of a big hat was a good one. It kept his head cool and gave the women something to laugh at. At least it was not as ridiculous as Ezra's old hat made by the Mariners, with its leather cap and scrappy curtains for his neck.

Andrew was entertained royally by the Herders, who brought him to their Northern Camp. He joined the braves who followed the herd about on the boiling hot plain, admiring their hardiness and skill. A few days later they reached the Southern Camp, a few hours' ride from the Southern Mountains, where sheep grazed on the hillsides and the air was fresh and cool.

Either out of loyalty to Ezra, or in recognition of Andrew's faithfulness to his wife, the lusty Herders, despite their reputation, respected his decision not to take part in their orgies and did not try to tempt him.

The visit to the Mariner tribe's Beach Settlement was also without sexual temptation, despite the unsurpassed beauty of the Mariner women, who worked naked and rarely wore more than a short skirt and a kind of leather bra.

Andrew finished his tour of the three Outer Tribes with a week in the Woodlander Camp, where he helped by chopping wood and repairing huts. Galatea, chief of the Herders, and Calliope, chief of the Mariners, put Andrew to work but saved their arguments for the big meeting at the Cloner City. But Mirselene questioned him closely and was dissatisfied with his answers, not wanting life on Samothea to change at all, neither by more settlers nor by more men visiting. Andrew expected a full-blown argument at the Cloner City in a week or so.

With a visit to the Farmer Tribe, who sowed, reaped and weeded in the foothills of the White Mountains, it was time for him to return to the Cloner City and face the ruling council with his scheme to change their lives forever with a million settlers from Earth.

3 Hendrik Jakovs

The Samothea Project continued to advance while Andrew Claydon was away.

Since Roger had his useful insight of applying the holographic principle to the monster equation, which defined how Danielle's new technology would work to upgrade the Beltway Hyperspace System, progress had been slow but steady. Danielle was certain about the x-ray crystal signalling system, and the upgrade to the Beltway junctions would be ready soon. When it was ready, it would be the most commercially rewarding enterprise currently in astrophysical engineering.

Viktor Bogdanov brokered a supply of the viable x-ray crystals at a good price for Oakshott Industries on Earth, whose field-tests of the new hyperspace technology were progressing well. Danielle, Rosa and Cho tweaked the design of the hyperdrive motor in response to the results. Also on Earth, Jonathan Wright and Li Qu Yuan worked on configuring the beacon components of the Beltway junctions.

Meanwhile, the Nakatani Corporation made good profits selling stand-alone and tethered hyperspace systems to distant planets and remote space stations. Argus Space Station, where Victor lived, would soon have a direct hyperspace link to its sister Space Station near Capella, and thence to Earth. Another tethered link was planned between Argus and Celetaris, the richest planet of the Outworld League.

Ezra and Tatiana's mining venture promised to bring them a handsome income, one which would be vital if Ezra were to partner Danielle in her plan to buy the planet Samothea from Outworld Ventures (assuming the settler company would agree to sell at a reasonable price).

Despite all the earlier setbacks - despite the fact that progress on the Samothea Project for Danielle was always two steps forward, one step back - she secretly and cautiously allowed herself to hope, to believe that not everything that could go wrong would always go wrong.

Danielle took regular relief from her burdens by teaching advanced physics to Wildchild and Yael, which was pure pleasure for her. Sometimes, the three sat in her office, companionable and silent: the girls doing their homework: Danielle catching up on the latest papers.

On one such morning, Professor Hendrik Jakovs knocked on the door and came in.

"I have a spare hour," he said to Danielle. "I'll take your students, if you want."

"Thanks, Hendrik," Danielle said. "We're not in a lesson at the moment."

The girls went silently with Professor Jakovs to his office, aware of what a great honour it was that the head of the Astrophysics Department agreed to teach them personally. Impressed by their abilities and attitude, Hendrik paid the girls' school-fees out of his own pocket. Now he planned to bring them up to speed in general physics, to fill in the gaps between the specialised areas in which they were patchily proficient.

When they left, Danielle visited Rosa in her office.

"Can I borrow your Hendrik jumper, please?" she asked.

"Sure. It's in my drawer."

A 'Hendrik jumper' was a thick warm sweater that many students wore to endure the Arctic climate that the professor maintained in his lecture theatre. Hendrik Jakovs loved the cold and hated the heat. His office was even colder than the lecture theatre.

His students joked that the man himself was even colder than his office.

The jumpers were necessary because, despite the late-autumn weather, the girls came to the Institute dressed for the beach. Yael was in her usual short skirt and slip top, her legs and feet bare. Wildchild had on her favourite khaki shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt. She was also bare-legged and shoeless.

Five minutes later, armed with Rosa's thickly-woven multicoloured Jersey and her own long blue woolly that went down to her knees (with a polo neck she could cover up to her chin and ears, and long cuffs to keep her hands warm), Danielle went to the professor's office to check on the girls.

Knocking and entering, she saw something completely unprecedented.

Yael sat cross-legged on the leather couch, perfectly comfortable with a computer tab on her lap. Wildchild stood at the holographic projector-board, writing down equations.

The professor himself had doffed his jacket, waistcoat and tie, undone two buttons at his neck and rolled his shirtsleeves all the way up past his elbows. He was explaining the basics of physics to the girls and, for the first time in all the years that she had known him, Hendrik had turned off the air-conditioning. Danielle was astounded.

"You won't need these," she said, holding the jumpers in her arms. "Sorry to disturb you."

She wandered back along the corridor, trying to understand exactly what virtues the girls of Samothea possessed to cause this apparent miracle. Hendrik Jakovs rarely invited women into his office. He never gave students remedial lessons. He never took off his jacket and tie. And he absolutely never turned off the air-conditioning.

The girls from Samothea were bright, keen and a joy to teach; but there were other students with those qualities. They were also nice to look at, but Danielle could not believe that was Hendrik's motivation. She had never seen him pay attention to a woman's appearance. She had no answer. Her best guess was that Hendrik had mellowed with age. She was not absolutely certain she wanted him to mellow. She liked the scowling old brute just the way he was.