Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 22

"You want what?" Ezra asked.

"We want to be Planetary Prospectors, like you," Wildchild explained. "When the court-case is over and things have settled down on Samothea, Hazel and I want to do what you and Brad do: jump around the galaxy, discovering new planets to colonize and having adventures."

Ezra thought about it for a few seconds.

"There will be a lot of training," he said. "You'll need to learn how to fly a spacecraft. It will be useful to have a technical skill as well. Better yet, a degree in a science subject."

"You're not encouraging them, Ezra?" Danielle exclaimed. "Why don't you tell them how risky the prospecting life is?"

"I think they know that, Sis. That's exactly what appeals to them."

"But you're right," he added, responding to the look Danielle gave him. "There are more dangers in being a prospector than in most other professions. It won't hurt to be thoroughly appraised of the problems."

The girls smiled at this. Danger and exciting adventure were exactly what they wanted. Nothing Ezra said would put them off. More likely, it would increase the appeal of being a prospector. Wildchild winked at Ezra, knowing he understood her completely, but she changed the subject to save him from Danielle's admonishments.

"Danielle," Wildchild said. "While we're here, can we buy airsuits? The Petticoats taught us how to fly them."

"I'm happy to give you airsuits," Danielle said.

"We want to pay for them," Hazel insisted, "though we've got no money."

"So how ..." Danielle started.

"Yael told us she earns money modelling," Hazel explained. "We thought we could get modelling jobs, too."

"You certainly have the looks for it; but it's not that easy to find modelling work," Danielle said gently. "Also, Yael's occasional ten pounds for a few photographs won't bring in anywhere near enough money for an airsuit."

"Could they model for Outdoor Trends and get paid in airsuits?" Roger asked.

That was such a good idea that Danielle immediately went to make a call to the CEO of Outdoor Trends, the production partner for her airsuit business, which sold the airsuits on Celetaris and the outworld colonies.

She was gone for twenty minutes and had both good news and bad news when she returned.

"The bad news is that Outdoor Trends is closing down its manufacturing operation for the airsuits on Celetaris," Danielle said. "The good news is why. They sold the license to make airsuits in the outworld colonies to the Nakatani Corporation, which currently makes the suits under licence on Earth."

"Why didn't they tell you this until now?" Roger wondered.

"Apparently, they did. Weeks ago. It's my fault. I've not been reading the messages from Outdoor Trends. So long as the dividends came in, I barely took any notice."

Roger gave her a look.

"Yes, I know, darling," Danielle confessed. "Stephen Oakshott would say I've been out of the business world too long and have lost my touch."

"So are the Nakatani airsuits much better?" Ezra asked.

"Yes. They'll easily outsell the locally-produced models on cosmetic details alone. Ours are grey. The new suits come in many colours, from stylish black to luminous pink, with every cuttlefish shade in between."

Again, Roger studied her closely to see if she was serious.

"However, more important are the safety improvements," Danielle said, smiling at her husband.

"Instead of the simple hood and gloves of the original suits, the Nakatani suits have special collars and cuffs that create force-fields to protect the head and vulnerable joints. So the mad youths who like to plunge into the lake beneath Waterfall City, or throw themselves around the ice-flows upstream, are in less danger of damaging themselves from whiplash or wrist and ankle sprains."

"Outdoor Trends is happy to surrender production to the Nakatani Corporation because they will make more money retailing the Nakatani suits than by making their own," Danielle explained.

"The new airsuits will be delivered here in a few weeks, brought by the Nakatani marketing team, who plan a full spate of publicity events with Outdoor Trends, culminating in an official launch at the Waterfall City Airsuit Trials."

"To ensure our guests get modelling contracts with the Nakatani Corporation, however, I will need to make another call."

"Please can I be an airsuit model as well?" Yael asked.

"Of course you can, Sweetie," Danielle said. "I'll arrange for you to have flying lessons. ... Ezra, can I talk to you for a moment?"

Danielle took Ezra into her bedroom for a private chat.

"It's about Yumi," Danielle said. "I want to ask Michio Nakatani for a favour, but feel I can't do it while I'm concealing from him the fact that he has a son. Also, I find I now avoid talking to Yumi's brother, Itsuki. We used to talk every few weeks about the project and about his work. But because I don't like deceiving him, I find it's easier to keep my messages short and leave long gaps between them; which is not fair on either of us. Don't you think it's about time that Yumi let her own family know about her son?"

"Yes, I do," Ezra said. "I admit, I've neglected talking to Yumi about her problems. It's a poor excuse, saying that I was distracted by the conference; but she's comfortable on Samothea and well-liked, so I understand her conflicting motivations. Family is important to Yumi and she's ashamed that she deceived her parents by trying to elope with Michio. Now I'm not sure she knows what she wants to do; and I've no idea what advice to give her."

"But surely she wants to stay on Samothea," Danielle suggested. "Otherwise, why conceal her son? If she goes back to Earth, everyone will know; and if she stays on Samothea, why should she care who knows, even Michio? She should at least tell Itsuki about Hayate. We know Itsuki can keep a secret."

"You're right, Sis. That's what I'll say to her."

That night, Ezra joined Gloria in her hotel room and took part in her video call to the Advisory Council in the Cloner City. Before the council got down to business, Ezra asked for a private chat with Yumi. Solange summoned Yumi and ordered all the women out of the Council Chamber, leaving her alone to talk to Ezra.

After some gentle persuasion, Yumi saw the logic of Danielle's argument. She agreed to no longer conceal the existence of Hayate. Yumi already knew what she had to say, so she composed herself and Ezra recorded a video message to her family, another private message for Itsuki and a message for Michio Nakatani, which Itsuki would pass on to him.

******

While Ezra and Roger were with Gloria in her hotel room, Danielle and her guests visited Joan and Peter Mayfield for the evening. There they put the idea of visiting Samothea to Joan's sixteen-year-old daughter, Kelly.

"I'd definitely like to go to Samothea," she said, "but I'm not sure I'd want to be a Junior. It seems like hard work."

"That's exactly why you should go," Joan said.

"It'll be fun," Yael insisted. "Hazel and Wildchild were Juniors and my future bedmate, Carlin, is a Junior at the moment. I'll come with you, if you want."

Kelly still looked doubtful but she liked how Hazel and Wildchild described their duties and she liked Yael very much. She was at that point in her teenage years when she wanted to be taken seriously as an adult but didn't yet want the stress and responsibility of adulthood. Going away to another planet sounded adventurous and independent but being a kind of servant had little appeal to her.

"We'll discuss it later," Joan said to her daughter, seeing that Kelly had gone quiet.

Ezra and Roger arrived in time for dinner, after which they went to the living room; but they were such a large party that there were more people than seats, so Kelly joined Annela, Freya and the three Woodlander girls on the floor, where they chatted, laughed and had the kind of fun they usually had after feasts in the Forest Camp. They sent Kelly to bring them a scarf and invited Joan and Danielle to take part in one of their Forest games.

They used the scarf to blindfold Freya and the women sat around her in a circle. They span Freya around until she lost her sense of direction, then they took turns to kiss her, tickle her, smack her bottom or blow in her ear, and Freya had to guess who was teasing her.

"Mummy!" Freya said gleefully after Annela kissed her. That was an easy one. She could also tell Yael's kisses from Danielle's. She guessed Wildchild's spank because that's the sort of thing she expected Wildchild to do; but she was too consumed by giggles to guess who was tickling her. Eventually she collapsed on the floor laughing hysterically as everyone took a hand in tickling her.

When their dinners had gone down, Hazel asked for some dance music and Joan conjured up a swing band from the entertainment set. Yael and Hazel starting dancing immediately, holding each other by waist and shoulder, swinging their hips. Freya led Annela into the middle of the room to skip and stamp holding hands.

Kelly joined them. She had a twisting kind of style with her arms behind her back or held up over her head.

"Come on, Ezra," Wildchild said, sashaying over to him, wiggling her bottom.

Danielle was sitting next to Ezra. "My brother doesn't dance," she said.

"Sure he does," Wildchild replied, "if you ask him properly."

She hooked a finger into the top of his shirt and, still wiggling her bottom to the beat of the music, sashayed backward. Sure enough, Ezra proved his sister a liar by standing up, almost without hesitation, to join Wildchild. He gave Danielle an apologetic smile as her eyes boggled.

"I don't believe it," Danielle said as she watched, impressed that her brother moved in time to the music, even quite gracefully. "You always told me you couldn't dance!"

"Sorry, Sis. I can dance, I just don't like to."

"You seem to be liking it now."

"I have elegant persuaders."

"So I see."

After each of the women had taken a turn to dance with Ezra, he did his chivalrous duty and stood up with his sister.

"The number of times you took me to my dance classes and went for a walk outside or stood at the sides watching when you could have helped us out by joining in!" Danielle protested. "You know we were always short of men! Are you going to tell me now that you're not really scared of horses and can ride as well as me?"

Ezra was twelve years older than Danielle and often transported her to her lessons when she was a teenager.

"I've learned a lot since I've been on Samothea, Sis," he said. "I'm sorry I never told you I could dance. Mum forced me to learn. That's why I hated it. ... I can ride, but not as well as you or these girls here, and I'm still scared of horses but I don't let my fear stop me."

When they sat down to rest, Joan offered Hazel and Wildchild a room, to save squeezing in at Danielle's apartment.

"You'll have to share a bed, I'm afraid," Joan said.

"That's all right," said Wildchild. "Hazel and I have been bedmates almost two years."

"Bedmates? Oh,... Oh! I see!"

Joan recalled what Yael had said at dinner.

"Yael, what did you say the name of your future bedmate was?"

"Carlin."

"And a bedmate is a kind of girlfriend?"

"More than a girlfriend," Yael said, innocently: "a lover!"

"I see," Joan repeated. "And does Ryan know about Carlin?"

"Yes. He's going to love Carlin when he goes to Samothea. Everyone does."

Joan raised an eyebrow to her husband, Peter, but he had nothing to say on a topic that was outside his experience.

"When is Ryan going to Samothea, Yael?" Danielle asked.

"For the summer holiday; and he's going to live there permanently when he's qualified."

"Is he," asked Joan.

"Well, I suppose he might change his mind when he gets there," Yael said, "but that's his plan at the moment."

"I see," said Joan for the third time. Then she relaxed and smiled to herself, knowing how few teenage plans came to fruition. Meanwhile, she decided to schedule a heart-to-heart chat with her son.

"Now that Carlin is going to be with Ryan," Annela said to Ezra, "you and Erin can be bedmates."

"Oh, yes!" Yael happily agreed. "She deserves it."

"You want Ezra to have another bedmate!" Danielle said, equally surprised that Ezra's thirty bedmates weren't enough for him and that Annela would want to share Ezra with yet another rival.

"Erin hasn't been Ezra's bedmate yet because she couldn't be if Carlin was also a bedmate," Annela explained. "The law of Samothea forbids a mother and her daughter to the same man. Because our tribe wanted more children, Chief Mirselene thought it best for Ezra to wait until Carlin was eighteen. But now Carlin is going to be bedmates with Ryan, Erin can be Ezra's bedmate. Cassie told me Erin's not too old to have another child if she comes here for a rejuvenation treatment."

There was lots to process in this statement, not least Annela's firm conviction that Ezra was going back to live on Samothea and that Erin would want Ezra rather than a man of her own.

Once again the sexual conventions of the women of Samothea gave their friends lots to think about.

******

Danielle forwarded Yumi's video messages to Itsuki, who shared one video with his family and forwarded another onto Michio Nakatani.

Despite what had passed between their families, Itsuki remained friends with Michio, who was now deputy-chairman of the Nakatani Corporation, After he earned his computer science degree, Itsuki accepted a job with the Nakatani Corporation. Now the two young men worked in the same building and Itsuki gave Michio every piece of news about Yumi that his sister would permit him to share.

Telling Michio about his and Yumi's son had a catalytic effect on the relationship between Itsuki, Danielle and Michio. Itsuki never for a moment blamed Danielle for keeping Yumi's secret. He was overjoyed and promised that, for his first holiday from work, he would go to Celetaris so he could talk directly to Yumi and his nephew. He would bring his parents and sister. It would be a family holiday. Someday, he said, he would visit Yumi on Samothea.

As for Michio, he was grateful to Danielle for her role in getting Yumi to communicate with him. A quiet man by nature, Michio had an introspective look in his eyes when he spoke to Danielle. She could see how deeply affected he was by the fact that he had a son. She saw the hint of contentment underneath his obvious loneliness.

Michio was happy to help with the airsuits and modelling contracts. He sent a message to the head of his publicity department about hiring the girls from Samothea as models. The publicity department quickly contacted Danielle to arrange screen-tests for the girls and to take their measurements.

The three girls had a day out in Ocean City. The visit to a studio to have their screen tests done, including hair and make-up, took hours. Wildchild said she definitely would never want to be a full-time model. Nor did she much like the shopping trip Yael took the girls on afterward; but she enjoyed meeting Ryan in a bar near the university in the evening. She and Hazel danced to a live band in the bar while Yael and Ryan became soppy with each other.

Meanwhile, the Nakatani publicity department leapt at the opportunity to find roles for the girls from Samothea. They were a big story at the moment. The Samothea Project's own publicity team had secured a copy of the friendly videographer's recording of Hazel and Wildchild's arrival on Celetaris and went into overdrive to make Yael and her girlfriends the official symbols of Samothea throughout the outworld colonies.

They beamed the video of the girls, with their sexy sashaying walk and big joy-filled smiles, around the outworld colonies, but especially on Earth, melting female hearts and raising male pulses.

The Nakatani publicity team made sure everyone in the galaxy knew who their latest recruits for the airsuit adverts were.

******

Danielle had told Roger that so long as the dividends from her airsuit partner, Outdoor Trends, kept appearing in her bank account, she was content and did not follow the details of the business. She recognised this non-commercial neglect was symptomatic of a more academic mind-set, so when she had a spare moment, Danielle went over her finances properly. She discovered something interesting.

The tethered hyperspace link from Celetaris to New Exeter was more successful than she expected. When she told Roger, it reminded him that he hadn't spoken to Esther Grandley, Mayor of New Exeter, for a while. He sent her a videochat request.

Roger and Mayor Grandley had become friends a few years ago when he interviewed her for a follow-up to his first videobook on 'The Three English Revolutions', in which he researched how some Anglosphere colonies had fared after independence. New Exeter had one of the more colourful of such histories, from economic depression that left terraforming incomplete, through Alexander Marazon's tyranny, to settled membership of the Anglosphere again with the most liberal government in the galaxy. Under Mayor Grandley, New Exeter had zero taxation, complete separation of economy and state and the fastest-growing economy in the Anglosphere.

One cause of that growth was the tethered hyperspace link between Celetaris and Samothea using Danielle's new hyperdrive technology, the second of its kind (after the link to Samothea) and the only one in regular commercial use.

When Mayor Grandley videocalled Roger, he mentioned the unpredicted success of the hyperspace link.

"I know all that, Roger," she said. "I always knew the link would be a success, but I didn't expect it to be such a success so soon, and not for the reasons I thought. I'm surprised you haven't noticed."

"The Samothea Conference consumed all my time," Roger confessed. "Please tell me what's changed."

"Tourism, young man, that's what's changed! I thought the most business for the new hyperspace route would come from exporting minerals from the mines and quarries, and maybe the fur-trade. But it's tourism that's making the profits; which is better than the mineral trade because it puts money in the pockets of local hoteliers, shops and small businesses as well as the big consortia."

"Hunting tourism?" Roger asked, knowing Mayor Grandley's personal aversion to animal-cruelty.

"No. That's the best bit," she said exultantly. "Geek tourism and adventure tourism."

"What do you mean by 'geek tourism'?" Roger asked.

"I mean the science fans. They come here to ride the new hyperspace pathway, to experience your wife's technological marvel. We expected a few of them, even coming all the way from Earth. We didn't expect quite so many. Nor how many would also be adventure tourists."

Roger was very pleased, especially at the compliment to Danielle.

"What kind of adventure tourists?" he asked.

"Thrill-seekers. Boys mostly - foolhardy, reckless, lovely boys - who come here to go ice-boarding, and it's your wife who made it possible."

"I don't know what ice-boarding is."

"It's a new thing, invented here on New Exeter."

"Go on, Ma'am."

"Well, it was the science geeks who started the tourist trail to our freezing planet. They mostly stay indoors and then go straight back home but those of them who have hoverboards and airsuits find that our cold dense atmosphere is perfect for stunt tricks. Apparently they can get bigger 'kicks' at the bottom of a dive and do sharper rolls than on any other planet."

("I'm up to speed on the airsuit lingo," she added as an aside, "for a reason that you'll never guess.")

"So since last year, New Exeter has become a fixture on the adventure sports trail. Thrill-seekers visit your Waterfall City to frolic on jetboats, hoverboards and the new airsuits. Then they come on here, where they want somewhere exciting to perform their stunts - and they found the perfect places in our quarries."