Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 15

"So if a suit requires a supply of compressed air, might it work if one jumped from an aeroplane or a high building?"

"Yes, that would work. We'd still need to miniaturise the beam emitters, of course, and attach a power-supply. ... I tell you what, husband, I'll work it out and build you a self-powering air-suit. We'll call it the 'Roger Harcourt Microwave Air-Suit'."

"I don't approve the name but I'll hold you to that, Darling," he said.

Danielle was sincere and she would have kept her word if something far more interesting hadn't diverted her attention, blanking her memory.

What caught her eye was an actual solid machine, not a model or hologram. At a distance, it looked like a standard hyperdrive engine: a fusion-powered fuel cell in front, a cone-shaped ion-drive in the middle tapering to a point. and the concentric ribs of a waveguide at the rear. Up close, however, there was little standard about this engine. Danielle had never seen anything quite like its waveguide.

"Come and look at this, Roger," she said.

"A fancy hyperdrive engine," he observed.

"I'm a little out of touch with hyperdrive technology"- her speciality was hyperspace pathways - "but I know enough to see there's real innovation going on here. The power seems to be focussed in the wrong place, around the waveguide, not in line with it."

"And that's good, is it?"

"It may be."

She beckoned one of the robot assistants, who glided over and politely bowed.

"Can you tell me about this engine, please?" Danielle asked.

"Yes, Madam."

The robot spoke English with a faint American accent.

"It's the Nakatani Corporation Hayai C1 prototype hyperdrive unit. A power-base for small to medium-size hyperspace traveller technology, giving unprecedented jump yields from standard fusion cell architecture."

It was meaningless sales blather.

"What can you tell me about how the machine works?" she asked.

"The Hayai C1 prototype utilizes the latest in concentric ring-pulse technology to stabilize the plume at unprecedented rates of transverse power. ..."

More babble. Danielle was unimpressed and waved the robot to silence.

She tried a few more questions and even found an English-speaking human to help her, but all she learned was that this prototype was on permanent exhibition here after passing all its field tests in a manner beyond expectations. It was unveiled a month ago by Mr. Nakatani himself.

"I'll have to get the information I want elsewhere but it's tantalizing," Danielle complained.

"It's similar in many ways to the engine we need for our Samothea Project. I wish I knew how it worked. Even so, it's giving me ideas, a different track from the one we've been following. I need to think about it. ..."

She was talking to herself as much as to Roger. Because he never interrupted her when she was deep in thought, she noticed his silence.

"All right, Darling," she said. "Geek-fest is over. It's time to do something you want. Where are you taking me tonight?"

"I get that. A wife's duty is to let her husband please her?"

"Exactly. Come on, what delights do you have for me?"

"Actually, I've booked two things. First, dinner, then a concert. Guess who's playing with the Tokyo Philharmonic tonight?"

"Tell me."

"Mercedes Sator."

Mercedes Sator was Roger's favourite violinist.

"How wonderful!" Danielle enthused. "What's she playing?"

"Sibelius' violin concerto."

"Interesting: a Japanese orchestra playing Scandinavian music. What will that be like?"

"It'll be good. There's a long history."

"You booked this before we left for Japan?"

"I did. Oddly, it's my last chance to hear her before she goes to Celetaris for three months."

"Well, it's an excellent idea. Let's go."

On the way to dinner by levitating ground car, Danielle consulted her pocket computer and dredged up some details of the Nakatani prototype engine. This got her brain going even faster. There was an insight, she knew, just out of her grasp.

Being well brought up, she put her computer away during dinner, but it was out again immediately afterward and evidently supplied her with some answers and a puzzle. She sat in the car on the way to the Shibuya district, and then in the Orchard Hall, where they took their seats twenty minutes early, tapping with her fingers, staring into space. As for Roger, he loved to see his wife think and, besides, a good dinner with plenty of warm sake left him comfortably relaxed.

The concert began and all through the overture, Danielle thought about her engine problem. Then it was the Sibelius and the famed soloist. A roar of applause welcomed Mercedes Sator onto the stage. An athletic and graceful figure, she wore a sheer black dress with no straps - for ease of performance as much as for glamour. Her blonde hair was pulled severely back and tied tightly. She wore no jewellery and little make-up. A look of unsmiling seriousness on her face as she bowed to acknowledge the audience suggested that this would be a performance to remember.

Immediately the first lonely aching notes of the violin filled the auditorium, Roger was spellbound, transported to the misty lakes and frozen pine-forests of Finland. It took Danielle longer to settle down. Her brain was still fizzing from the excitement of thinking about the hyperdrive engine; but when the virtuoso repeated the second theme, backed by the full warmth of the orchestra, it was like a sunrise over the tundra. Danielle felt a tingling in her spine and lost herself in the sumptuous music. She forgot to think about her engine. That was when her ideas began to fertilise themselves, combining and recombining in her subconscious as the music washed over her.

The applause at the end of the concerto lasted ten minutes, bringing beaming smiles from Miss Sator and showers of roses from the audience. The concert finished with Sibelius' fifth symphony, which was also a triumph.

Afterward, Danielle and Roger walked hand-in-hand back to their hotel, taking the moving pavement so they could smell the oily air and feel the buzz of the city. Danielle broke the comfortable silence to say only one thing:

"Darling, it was perfect!"

As they walked, the detailed memory of the concert faded into a dream, until only the feeling of serene joy remained. As the memory faded, Danielle's suppressed ideas began to bubble up. By the time they reached the hotel, she was again in the grip of her problem.

In the bedroom, Roger's expectations were firmly up. It was Saturday night after all; but Danielle pricked his bubble. She came out of the bathroom in a fluffy white robe, her hair tied up with a towel, a toothbrush in her mouth.

"Darling," she said, "I know it's our honeymoon and I know it's anal sex night but my head's buzzing with ideas for this engine. Do you mind if I try to write them down? I'll make it up to you in the morning."

"It's all right, Darling," Roger said, hiding his disappointment. "You do what you need to do."

"After all," she added, "it was you who said I won't remember things unless I write them down."

"True enough. You go ahead and work. I'll have sex with robo-geisha."

"All right, but don't wear her out. We need her to make us breakfast tomorrow."

She kissed him goodnight and sat in the bathroom, using her communicator to project a scribble board against the wall, sketching components and writing equations.

"No, no, I was joking," Roger said to robo-geisha, who had stepped out from its corner to ask him if he wanted her naked.

Roger realised that the robot had been designed to provide a very comprehensive range of services, including those that human maids generally don't provide. He wondered what the manager thought of them for requesting a robot, though they had not done so for its sexual functions.

Three hours later, Danielle had written down her idea, checked it twice and was at once relieved, happy and very horny, as she always was after hard mental exercise. She fetched something from her washing kit and returned in the dark to the bedroom, where she could hear Roger breathing. She thought for a second that she ought to let him sleep, but she decided against it, reasoning that, because she'd married such a forgiving soul, he couldn't practise the virtue of forgiveness unless she gave him something to forgive her for. Really, she was doing him a favour.

Danielle shook her husband awake, saying:

"Wake up, Roger. It's still anal sex night. Come on, husband, fuck me in the arse."

Roger was instantly awake. In fact, he'd only been dozing and quite expected to be disturbed sooner or later. He sat up, pulled her to him, and laid her on her back, but he didn't kiss her or suck her tits. He went straight for her pussy.

Only after Danielle was moaning hard and sopping wet - back arched, thighs shaking from an intense orgasm - did he kiss up her belly to her tits, working in the reverse direction from normal, ending up at her lips, where she could taste the savour of her pussy on his tongue.

Now it was time. He lifted her legs up so her ankles were beside her ears and held them there.

"Ready?" he asked.

"God, yes!"

"I need the lube."

"I brought it back from the bathroom. It was in my right hand."

He felt around the bed but she'd dropped the tube of lubrication a while ago. Now it was on the floor. He was going to get up to turn on the light but Danielle said:

"Robo-geisha can get it. She can see in the dark."

The cybernetic maid woke up and stepped toward the bed. It reached down and picked up the tube.

"Would you like me to apply it, Madam?" the robot asked.

"What?"

"I can apply the lubrication to your anus, Madam."

"Is she serious, Roger?"

"I think it's a good idea. Saves me moving."

"No, Darling! She's a robot!"

"It's a machine. You can ask it to do anything."

"Oh, God, Roger. I don't know."

"Let it try. It's no different using from a sex-toy."

"I suppose."

"Come on, Danielle. It's not like you to dislike machines."

"All right, all right. Go ahead."

"Apply the lube," Roger commanded the robot.

Robo-geisha squeezed out a slug of lubricant onto its fore-finger and warmed its hand internally, then it began to smear the lube around Danielle's tight hole, pressing lightly.

However uncomfortable Danielle was with a machine's intimate touch, the robot's tiny hands and delicate fingers were a real turn-on as they massaged her anus, working round and around.

"Oh, God! Oh, God! That's wonderful," she moaned.

The robot removed its fingers to apply more lube.

"No, don't stop," Danielle begged.

Robo-geisha rubbed lube on the palm of its other hand and began to work Danielle's tight hole again, pushing a tiny finger inside and rotating it.

"Oh, God!" Danielle said again, beginning to buck from the erotic action.

At the same time, robo-geisha began applying lube generously to Roger's cock. He stiffened:

"God, that's good!" he groaned.

"Roger!"

Danielle didn't think the robot should be servicing him as well, but her protest was cut short when robo-geisha pushed in two fingers and swivelled them around.

"Ahh! Oh God! Oh good God!"

Roger's cock was nicely lubricated so the robot concentrated on Danielle, massaging her perineum with the other hand as it pushed a third finger into her anus and lightly stretched its fingers.

"Oh my God!" Danielle exclaimed, then she came, thrusting involuntarily, swallowing all of robo-geisha's fingers into her hole, fucking herself on the robot's hand.

"Bloody hell!" she cried as she bucked hard, swallowing robo-geisha's hand up to the wrist.

"She's ready for you, Sir," robo-geisha said, pulling its hand slowly from Danielle backside.

"Fuck me!" Danielle exclaimed, breathing out heavily.

"Yes, Dear," Roger said. He lay on her, pushing his hard cock into her warmed-up arsehole and began thrusting slowly and carefully. Pretty soon, she was demanding faster and harder. He let her legs down and she crossed them over his back. He gripped her waist to fuck her harder. Danielle cried out for joy, moaning deeply.

In their passion, they didn't notice robo-geisha rinsing its hands in the bathroom and going back to its corner of the room, where it closed its eyes and went back into sleep-mode.

In the darkness, Danielle arched her back so far only the top of her head and her elbows touched the bed. As he thrust into her, Roger folded an arm around her thin waist and sucked hard on a tit. His other hand was on her pussy, rubbing her clitoris. She moaned wildly, then he stuffed two fingers into her snatch and got the right spot. That shut her up for a second; then it all erupted. She shrieked and came hard, shaking and squirming, muscles straining, heart pounding.

He kept up the stimulus on her g-spot and her clit with his fingers and thumb. She soon came again with another full-body shake; then she lay back, arms and legs spread wide, moaning with every thrust. Small ripples of leftover orgasm coursed around her body. She arched again and rose to another peak. He was nearing the end himself. He held her shoulders for the last few frantic thrusts and then it was all over. He kissed her hard as his throbbing cock shot spunk into her arse in nerve-shredding pulses.

Afterward, they lay together, warm, quiet and content, recovering from ecstatic peaks that were a fitting coda to a day of pleasure and discovery.

******

Early on Monday morning, they took the maglev train to Kyoto, then a ground car to their hotel in the cooler north of the city. Ordering the car to wait for them, they checked in. The manager bowed and asked whether they preferred a human maid or a robot maid. This time, in Kyoto, the city of temples, shrines and peaceful gardens, they preferred to be waited on by a real-life woman.

Her name was Aiko and she spoke perfect English in the pretty accent Japanese women have when they speak English well. She was an educated young woman, accomplished, elegant, meek and attentive. Dressed in Western clothes, she was not a traditional geiko but specialised in serving foreign guests. She wore a kimono only in the evening, when she served dinner and played music for her guests.

Aiko unpacked their bags while they washed and changed into more formal attire, despite the hot whether. On course to be twenty minutes early, Danielle and Roger took the ground car to the head offices of HyperStar Japan. Danielle remembered to send a message to say they were on their way. Even so, they urged the vehicle to go faster.

The ground car descended gently to the pavement from its ten-foot-high running level. Danielle and Roger got out at the street entrance to the HyperStar head office. A receptionist came to greet the visitors with a bow. As they returned the bow, someone cried out:

"Goldrick! I say, Goldrick!"

Danielle turned and saw Stephen Oakshott, her ex-boss, owner-manager of Oakshott Industries, the man who tethered Danielle to his company by paying her a retainer and sponsoring her PhD students. He was standing at the curb by his taxi.

"Stephen!" she cried and ran, arms outstretched, to hug him.

It was a girlish gesture he found utterly charming. Stephen warmly returned the hug and congratulated Danielle and Roger on their marriage.

"How did your wedding go?"

"It was perfect," she enthused.

"And how are you enjoying married life?"

"Oh golly! I can hardly tell you how wonderful it is!"

"I'm very pleased for you, Goldrick."

"Roger!" Danielle called to him. "Stephen's come all the way to Japan to congratulate us on our marriage."

Roger had been keeping a gentlemanly distance to allow his wife and her ex-boss to enjoy an intimate moment. Now he approached and Stephen grasped him in a firm two-handed shake.

"Congratulations, my boy!" Stephen said at his most avuncular, nearly shaking Roger's arm out of its socket. "I consider you the luckiest young man on Earth."

"Thank you, Sir. I think I'm the luckiest man in the whole galaxy."

"Well, if you must include the barbarian realms as well. ... Talking of which, I was relying on you to persuade Goldrick to stay here on Earth, where she can be useful."

"It was Goldrick who persuaded me that we'd both be more useful on Celetaris," Roger said.

"Our girl is very persuasive," Stephen agreed.

"Yes, Sir, she is."

"Come now, Roger, my lad. You know me well enough now to call me Stephen."

"Thank you, Stephen."

"And I suppose I've got to call Goldrick by a new name as well."

"Yes, you can call me 'Danielle'," she said.

"Certainly not. I call all my eggheads by their surnames."

Danielle was about to protest that she was no longer one of his eggheads, but she rather liked that he treated her as one of the lads.

"Should I call you 'Harcourt'?" Stephen enquired.

It was Roger who replied.

"I think Danielle would be pleased if you keep calling her 'Goldrick'. It's her professional name."

"'Goldrick' it is."

Another receptionist came out to greet Stephen. After bowing, the visitors were escorted inside and sent up in a lift to the top floor, where Ryota Miyazaki, Chairman and Founder of HyperStar Japan, waited to welcome his guests. He was accompanied by his chief engineer, Mr. Yamada.

Stephen Oakshott was visiting HyperStar Japan to discuss the business partnership with his company but he'd deliberately timed his visit to coincide with Danielle's. She was here to present her idea for a special kind of hyperspace drive. Introductions done and business cards exchanged (an amazing survival in these days of electronic communicators), the two chairmen sat in an office while Mr. Yamada took Danielle and Roger on a tour of the engineering department.

On the shop floor, Danielle met a team of five engine designers. After admiring their work, she explained the concept of what she called an 'inside-out' engine, a hyperspace drive that enhanced its own power with power from the beacon. She projected her calculations onto the wall with an outline of the engine's design.

Danielle was met with silence. Clearly, the Japanese engineers were too polite to say how incredulous they were. She found she had to hold up both sides of the conversation.

"Yes, I know that the engine requires us to communicate with the beacon through the plume;" she admitted, "and I know that everyone says communication through the plume is impossible; but my team and I think we've found a way. We've checked the calculations. It's theoretically possible. I just need to know if an engine of this type can be built."

Still the men were silent. They waited for Mr. Yamada to let Danielle down lightly - all except one, a young engineer called Haruki, who looked like he had something to say.

Haruki looked over at the chief engineer, who was studying the calculations a second time, and waited. Mr. Yamada breathed out and said:

"I find no errors in the calculations."

Emboldened, Haruki said:

"I think the calculations are correct and I can see how an engine like this might work in theory but I don't know if it can be built."

With general agreement that the calculations were correct but the engine would not work, the discussion became two-sided and the engineers began filling in Danielle's outline, adding and replacing components, treating it as a theoretical exercise.

Haruki became Danielle's champion, emphasising everything positive about her engine and, with the implicit approval of Mr. Yamada, trying to find ways to work around its problems.

It was Haruki who commented on the most novel feature of the waveguide and wondered how Danielle had thought of it.

"I stole it," she said, and was again met with uncomprehending silence, plus shock.

"I mean I was inspired by something I saw yesterday on a Nakatani Corporation engine," she corrected.

"Ah, the Speedy C1," Haruki said. "It works in a different way from your design."