Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 28

"Because it's the custom here."

"Sometimes there can be too much respect for custom," Yael said with the prim voice she used when she wanted to make a wrong thing seem like a right thing.

She snuck into the men's changing room alone. Standing quietly in a corner behind the lockers, she saw the naked men going to and from the showers. It was just as fascinating as she said it would be, until someone noticed her.

"Yael!"

"Oh! Hi, Ed."

"You can't be in here."

"That makes no sense. I'm definitely in here."

"I mean you oughtn't to be in here."

Yael looked at Ed with her head tilted, a puzzled frown on her lovely face, as if the word "oughtn't" made no more sense than "can't". He rapidly covered himself up with a towel around his waist.

"Why not?" she asked, gracing him with one of her million-watt smiles.

"Because there are naked men in here."

"I know. That's why I came in. I want to see what you all look like. I've seen Ezra, Ryan, Rod and you naked. Even poor old Roger. You're all so different. You're hairier than Ezra. Ezra's hairier than Rod. And Rod's hairier than Ryan. It's fascinating and I want to learn."

"Well you can learn from books, like everyone else."

"How boring! Besides, that's not how we do it in science. Scientists make direct observations."

"Yael, you're embarrassing the blokes here."

"You Earthers are such prudes! I don't care when you see me naked."

"Come on, Yael: out you go."

"But I haven't done observing."

"Out, or I'll throw you out!"

"Ooh! You wouldn't dare."

"Want to bet?"

She laughed as he marched her to the door.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" she asked. "Rod said you were showing your family around the planet."

"So I am. They're having a quiet lunch at the Ocean City marina, so I came here for some exercise."

He pushed her to the threshold of the changing room and gave her a shove to send her on her way. Kelly was waiting outside.

"I told you you'd get in trouble," she said.

"It was worth it," Yael said, completely unashamed.

******

When it was time to leave, Yael went to fetch Annela, who was still luxuriating in the radium bath, relaxed and serene. She sank up to her chin in the pool, leaning her head against its sloping edge, her eyes shut, hot water bubbling around her cheeks.

Steam condensed into droplets on her face and on her hair, which shone with a copper lustre in the artificial light. Fragrant oils periodically injected into the frothing water changed its colour and perfume, giving rich scents of orange blossom, lemon balm, heady eucalyptus or rose petals.

Yael quietly spoke her name but Annela did not stir. She knelt, leant over and kissed Annela on the lips from above.

Annela opened her eyes. Yael's lovely face (upside down, caramel blonde hair hanging like a curtain, huge brown eyes and absurdly big nostrils) dominated her field of vision.

"Hello, sweetie. What's up?"

"We're going home," Yael said.

"No."

"What you mean, 'No'?"

"I mean I'm not leaving here. This is my home now."

"You can't stay here forever," Yael protested with a laugh. "What about Freya?"

"You can have her."

"That's very kind, but I'm not sure what I'd do with her. Besides, what about this little one?"

Yael put her hand on Annela's bulging belly.

"You can't have her here, in the radium bath."

"I don't see why not," Annela protested. "I won't have any trouble keeping her warm."

"None the less," Annela relented with a sigh, "I'm getting all wrinkly, so I suppose I'd better get out."

She shifted around and held out her arms.

"Pull me up."

Yael heaved with all her strength and helped her friend climb steadily out of the pool.

******

On the day of the trip to the water park, the new videolink that Michio brought to Samothea re-established the comms signal between the Cloner City and the outer tribes.

That day Danielle went to her office to play with her newly-upgraded computer, so Ezra took Solanj and Ciashara to her flat to talk to his friends on Samothea through the hyperspace comms receiver.

After a detailed update to Madam Gloria, Ezra had a short chat with Yumi, who could barely express how contented she was. Her conversation was significant more for what she left unsaid than for what she said; but Ezra read between the lines.

"I liked Michio when I met him," Ezra said, making Yumi smile with pleasure. "I like him even more now."

When they were patched through to the Forest Camp, so he could talk to the Woodlanders, the first on the comms system was Madam Mirselene.

"Good morning, Madam Deputy Prefect," Mirselene said, paying her respects to Solanj. "May I see her?"

"Good morning, Sister," Solanj said. She held Ciashara up to the holoscope.

"Delightful," Mirselene judged. "She has Ezra's nose and chin."

"She does, the poor mite," Solanj agreed. "Let's hope she has a good personality to make up for it. Is all well with you?"

"We have bad news about Lenta. I'll let Sharne tell you."

Mirselene summoned Sharne, the athletic black woman who had been Ezra's second bedmate on Samothea. She was the mother of 12-year-old Pepi and three-year-old Clara, her daughter with Ezra. Her mother, Lenta, was the oldest woman on Samothea. From Mirselene's serious introduction and Sharne's mournful look, Ezra guessed the bad news.

"Mum took to her bed a week ago, feeling cold and tired," Sharne said. "She's been there ever since. Someone always sits with her, even when she's asleep."

"I'm so sorry, Sharne," Ezra said.

Sharne continued as if she had not heard him speak, as if she could not break the story without breaking down.

"Mum cherishes every moment with Pepi and Clara. She used to sing to Clara, but now she just holds her. Parvin's there half the day, just holding mum's hand. Recently, Mum's been asleep more than awake. Sometimes she only smiles and doesn't speak."

"How is Pepi?" he asked.

"Inconsolable. She never cries in front of mum but she cries in her bed at night. She spends all her spare time with mum. Pepi's old enough to understand but she just won't believe that mum will die."

Ezra understood. Pepi was such a vital girl, so active and lively, so cheerful and uninhibited, that she could not really understand illness or death. She could not believe that one-day she would never see her grandmother again.

"Sharne, forgive me."

"What for?"

"For not being there to help."

"You can't help. It's just nature. Mum's 71 years old."

"I know but I'm working on a project I've told no one about. It's been delayed, and costs have grown beyond what I planned. If I'd concentrated only on it, rather than all the other things I thought I had to do, then I might have finished it before now."

"What are you talking about?" Mirselene asked.

"I asked the medical centre here to design a rejuvenation pod, like the emergency escape pod that saved Annela's life, but specifically to give rejuvenation treatments to the women of Samothea, to reverse the premature aging due to cloning."

"Is that difficult?"

"The pod was quite difficult to design and it will be very expensive to make. There are two problems. The nanobots are self-replicating. In the wild, they could devastate the ecology of Samothea. That's why we need to contain them in the rejuvenation pod rather than send the molecular nanotechnology for Parvin to administer."

"It's the same with the cloner kits, isn't it?" Mirselene said. "They use scarce elements in rare combinations in case the nanobots escape."

"They do. The other problem is that the rejuvenation therapy will remove the natural protection from the x-rays all you women have developed."

"I understand," Mirselene said. "The lack of x-ray protection is why Annela can't come home yet."

"The new pod will incorporate the DNA repair treatment that has been developed for Annela. The problem is that the nanobots are experimental and not very efficient. They're taking a very long time to work."

"Do you think your rejuvenation pod could save Lenta's life?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry, Sharne. It may be too late."

"But it's not too late to try," Mirselene insisted.

"I will try, I promise, but I discussed the pod yesterday with the design team. It's delayed again and the costs have increased."

"There's another complication," he added. "Anyone who receives the rejuvenation therapy must be fully protected from the x-rays for months before the DNA repair nanobots have done their job. It's easier in the Cloner City because people can stay indoors, though metalloplastic roofs are not perfect shields for the x-rays. It's impossible in the Forest Camp, the Beach Settlement and the Herder Camps."

"Is there no other answer?" Mirselene asked. "I doubt Lenta can be moved to the Cloner City, even with the help of the Herders."

"I may have an answer for the shielding problem," he said carefully, "but I don't want to raise false hopes."

"I'm don't know how many times I've explained that we're tough women on Samothea, ..."

"Yes, madam, I know ..."

"... so tell us everything, both the bad and the good. Don't spare our feelings."

"We can shield the roofs of buildings with heavy metals but they are expensive to buy and transport. We need a very light material to use as roofing tiles instead, so I had a ceramoplastic designed with thick layers of crystals that react to the x-rays by becoming opaque and - I hope - blocking them."

"This is new to me, ..." Mirselene said.

"And to me, Sister," Solanj added.

"... can you explain?"

"Do you remember the sunglasses Brad wore when he visited the Cloner City? They were black in bright sunlight but turned lighter indoors or under a tent roof, out of direct sunlight."

"I understand," Mirselene said.

"The Petticoats have similar glasses and gave some to the Herders as presents," Solanj said.

"It's the sunlight itself that makes the glasses turn dark," Ezra explained, "depending on the intensity of the light. The process with x-rays is not straightforward because the frequencies are so much higher. The solution is a laminate made from many layers of crystals. The top layers deflect the x-rays onto crystals in the lower layers that are the right size and shape to absorb the radiation, making the laminate opaque to x-rays.

"It's a technology that will work only on Samothea because the radiation from the black hole is pure and smooth, all at the same frequency. Laminate roof tiles of about four inches thick can have a few dozen layers of crystals to absorb x-rays throughout the day when their angle of incidence changes."

"You've made some of these laminate roofing tiles?" Mirselene asked.

"Not yet but I had good news yesterday. The material has been successfully tested in the laboratory. All I need now is a some more funds and a slot in the production schedule of a space factory to have the sheets manufactured. Then I can send a batch to Samothea and you can roof the hut and the veranda that connects the huts. Those who have the rejuvenation treatment must stay in the huts or under the veranda."

"When will the sheets be ready?"

"If I get the funds and a production slot, then some units might be ready in time for the next shuttlecraft visit in three weeks or so."

"And when will the pod be ready?"

"I can't say, probably more than three weeks, though a prototype already exists."

"So send the prototype."

"I can't, Mirselene. It needs shielding from the x-rays, which will make it too heavy to go in the shuttlecraft. It's already heavier than an ordinary escape pod. The reason for the extra cost and delays in production is the need to miniaturise the production model's components and to use lighter materials. I've used up all my spare money on the pod and the laminate tiles; but I'll find a way, I promise."

"Isn't that women's group supposed to be paying for rejuvenation therapies?"

"Elspeth Bereded's organisation, the Women's Business Initiative, agreed to pay for rejuvenation treatments on Celetaris or on Earth. I've approached them but they're still gathering funds and have none to spare for me. Danielle and Roger are also tapped out, and the richest man I know here, Edgar Fanshaw, has little money of his own that's not in shares or in trust. He offered all he had anyway."

"Is that all you can tell us?"

"Only that I'll put all my effort into getting the production model of the pod ready to ship out as soon as possible."

Ezra tried his best to comfort Sharne, who at last smiled to reassure him, though it was not a happy smile.

To cheer him up, Mirselene summoned all the Woodlanders presently in the camp, so he could talk to his bedmates, his daughters and his friends.

When Ezra left to get on with some other work, Mirselene and Solanj had a private chat.

"He's exhausted," Mirselene said. "You can hear it in his voice."

"I knew he was pursuing projects but not what they were, nor how draining," Solanj said. "But even without those worries, he barely sleeps. He's trying to get Ash and Kalyndra pregnant, plus Annela is close to popping, and Ciashara has good lungs. She wakes us up many times a night."

"You make Ezra sleep with you?"

"I can't make him, Sister. I ask and he complies because he wants to."

"That man's soft heart will be his downfall."

"True. I prefer his hard part, but I thought you approved his soft heart."

"For sure I do. Think what a tyrant he could be to us if he had any cruelty or domination in him! Look how attached to him his bedmates are, or how potty those Cloner wenches went over Brad."

"If there were more men to choose from, then maybe us potty women would be choosier," Solanj said with a smile.

"Maybe, but I don't want more men here."

"We may have no choice."

"In which case, I want them to be soft-hearted like Ezra or temporary visitors like Brad."

"I don't know how we can guarantee that, Sister," Solanj said.

******

There was lots to talk about on the journey home from the water park. An interesting item was that Kalyndra's new friends in the swimming club invited her to their 'splash night'. It was a swimming gala in which anyone could compete.

"I'll bring Hazel and Wildchild," she said. "They're good swimmers. I'll teach them how to tumble turn."

Kalyndra waited three seconds for Yael to make her inevitable protest - "What about me?" - before interrupting her, to say with a sly smile:

"Yael, I'd love for you and Kelly to join my team for the gala."

Yael laughed. She did not mind being teased by Kalyndra, who almost never teased anyone.

When they got back to Ezra's apartment, Yael began the tale of their adventure to the water-park, but there were so many details to relate, and more people than Yael to relate them, that for once the enthusiastic girl did not dominate the conversation. That was why she clean forgot to tell anyone about meeting Ed.

More pressing than telling Ezra and Solanj the story of the water-park was the friendly communal grooming the women of Samothea did after bathing, when they brushed each other's hair and gave massages. This was the custom of his bedmates that Ezra thought was the most beautiful.

For the women from Samothea, especially for Mariner women such as Kalyndra, who worked in the salty ocean, it was a necessary ritual at the end of a work-day, when the regimen of massaging moisturizing cream into each other's skin became a deeply relaxing pleasure and sometimes a turn-on.

Annela went to fetch towels for the girls to lie on. Ash collected the ointments. Yael was the first to strip naked.

"You won't believe me," she said to Ezra, as she wriggled out of her clothes, "but at the spa and pool, the changing rooms were next to the showers, which were next to the crappers."

"I believe you. It's quite common here."

"And there were hot air dryers but you had to brush your hair in front of a mirror, which means doing it yourself, which is no fun. But there was nowhere to lie down for a massage."

"Celetaris is not as civilised as Samothea."

"It's certainly not. Annela, can I do you?"

Smiling, Annela stripped and lay down on her back on the towel. Yael took a handful of lotion and began to smear it over Annela's belly, working it down on all sides, to her thighs and over her chest.

Kalyndra and Ash were also naked. Kalyndra lay on her front and Ash ladled oil over her shoulders and began to rub down to her bottom.

Freya and Tahnee imitated the adults, giggling and making a mess on their towels without getting much massaging done.

This left Kelly. She had been friends with Yael for ten months, often sharing her bed in an innocent way. She also spent a month on Samothea, including a week with the Herders, sleeping in a pile of other naked women in a tent on the savannah, sharing their body-heat on the freezing nights. So the practises of the women of Samothea were no oddity to her, but she remained clothed for a reason that Solanj understood.

"Ezra, your daughters could do with your help," she said, wrapping the sleeping Ciashara in a blanket and depositing her on the sofa. "If you take them to the bedroom, then Kelly won't be shy about getting undressed with us."

"Right you are, Madam. Come along, girls. I'll oil you up next door."

Freya and Tahnee jumped up and ran to their father.

Solanj had understood seventeen-year-old Kelly exactly. The girl stripped off and lay on a towel to be smothered in cream.

******

Danielle joined the extended family for dinner in Ezra's apartment that night, but she was quiet at first, suffering the brain-fazed, boiled eyeball feeling of hackers who spend too much time on their computers. Pretty soon she recovered and was lively again, enjoying yet another account of the adventure of the water-park.

Shortly after dinner, Solanj took it on herself to organise the party's sleeping arrangements. She had not before used her authority on Celetaris as Madam Deputy Prefect, preferring to get her way by the simple method of politely asking for what she wanted. For some reason, no one ever wanted to disappoint her.

Seeing Danielle begin to yawn, she said: "Danielle, can Yael and the girls stay with you tonight?"

"With pleasure," said Danielle.

Though it was early, Yael had a long walk back through wet cold streets to a lonely Student House, so she was happy to go to Danielle's to help look after Freya and Tahnee.

Annela and Solanj kissed their daughters and sent them off with Danielle and Yael.

"It's time for bed," Solanj announced. "Ash, I know it's your night with Ezra, but I want him to sleep. You can go to bed with Kalyndra instead. You can have sex if you want."

"I want," said Ash.

She took Kalyndra's hand and led her to the spare bedroom. Kalyndra silently followed, confirming Solanj's easy assumption that she would be happy to sleep with Ash. After all, Kalyndra could say 'no' if she wanted to.

Kalyndra said nothing because she liked Ash. But it made her think how different her relationship with Ezra was from the relationship between Solanj and Ash. Although she considered Ezra her master, who might want to control whom she slept with, he had never given her any orders about female bedmates. It was obvious that his bedmates might have to sleep together; and, for the women of Samothea who were of age, to sleep together implied kissing and cuddling, if not outright sex.

Ash was slave to Solanj and had to ask Solanj's permission to have sex with another woman, though Solanj rarely refused. Sometimes she allowed Ash to have sex with other women but forbade her to come, which was a deliciously frustrating torment for the eager girl.

Kalyndra was more a slave to Ezra than Ash was a slave to Solanj. At least, Kalyndra could not conceive of disobeying Ezra. She had done so only once, deliberately to test his limits. But Ash disobeyed Solanj all the time, for the fun of being punished. It was something for Kalyndra to puzzle over that night.