Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 22

"You know how keenly I follow every detail of the Samothea Project, ever since Brad returned safely? I've watched the ups and down of good and bad publicity and the result of the conference and I've long I thought I'd like to be more involved. So I put a proposition to Brad and he agreed."

"I think I know what's coming, Hestia," Danielle said.

"You're right. Brad sold me his share of the Samothea Project for his original 25,000 Galactic pounds."

"It's a risk Hestia. I hope it wasn't all your savings."

"I reclaimed the deposit on my Cotswold cottage and I sold half of my stake in the Goat and Compass. Also, I'm not having any rejuvenation work done this year; perhaps never again. I don't know what the future holds, Danielle, but it's got to be more exciting than my life at the moment. I'm very interested in Samothea, Danielle. I think we women should help each other, and I'm trusting to your brilliance."

"Well, there's your biggest mistake."

"Nonsense, Danielle! Don't be modest. I'm convinced every shareholder in the Samothea Project will someday be extremely rich."

******

With the faster communications link between Earth, Celetaris and Samothea, Michio's daily conversations with Yumi were easier and more convenient for both and, consequently, far longer. They had an undeniable effect on Michio.

Despite his honourable intention of never letting his personal disappointment with Yumi affect his marriage to his wife, Sakura, he could not help his remorse from leaking out in a way that she could easily see.

As the wife of an important Japanese industrialist, Sakura had not expected Michio's complete sexual loyalty. She knew how things were in Japan for the wives of elite businessmen. Sakura was pleased, therefore, that Michio was completely faithful.

Michio was as loving a husband as any woman in an arranged marriage might reasonably expect. He honoured their business deal. Sakura felt the same herself. She hadn't expected to receive his complete devotion as a loving husband but while he pretended to love her, she pretended to love him back. It made things easy. Or even better than easy. Sometimes they had a very good life together.

During their honeymoon, when they discussed their hopes in a few moments of heartfelt intimacy, Sakura explained that she was content to be his trophy wife in public, until she was certain that he truly loved her. Meanwhile, she couldn't commit to having children, nor give up her job to become a housewife, as was still traditional in Japan, even among the wealthy ruling-class.

In the four years of their marriage, Sakura had never found a reason to change her mind. Perhaps it was her reticence, not his, that kept them distant and prevented her from being certain of his love. Yet she was young. There was plenty of time. Sakura and Michio rubbed along pretty nicely. It was the kind of stable partnership that the corporate world expected to see: a reflection of the stable partnership their family businesses enjoyed.

When Michio told Sakura the story of Yumi, admitting that she had been pregnant when he abandoned her on Capella Spaceport, and that he now had a three-year-old son on Samothea named Hayate, he expected a response even worse than he thought their parents would react. In fact, Sakura remained studiedly neutral. She couldn't blame him for his prior relationship with Yumi, so why blame him for a child that had been concealed from him?

However, as time went on, because big changes in life often have a delayed reaction, when conscious knowledge percolates into the deeper recesses of the soul, Sakura found herself drifting away from Michio. She was less inclined to spend all her time with him but was more available to her girlfriends for the lively parties that she'd enjoyed before marriage.

It was not the child himself but an unconscious realisation that, however honourable Michio wanted to be, having a child with Yumi made a difference, reinforcing his attachment to his old love, even if she was no longer available to him.

Despite Michio insisting that his love for Yumi was past and done-for, Sakura knew long before Michio himself that he could not keep up the pretence of love for his wife, no more than she could keep up her pretence of love for him. They liked each other as friends and had shared many passionate and beautiful moments together but they were business partners, not a union of two souls.

They had the friendship two prisoners might have locked together in a cell who, luckily, liked each other; but they weren't a family. Sakura realised this when she asked herself why she didn't want children with Michio, despite parental pressure. She hadn't wanted them even before she knew about Yumi and Hayate.

In the end, it was Sakura who left Michio. They separated quietly, to live discretely separate lives. Maybe divorce would follow but, for now, they were careful to avoid any publicity or scandal. Michio told no one and certainly not Yumi. He was too ashamed.

Even so, Yumi noticed the change in him. She knew Michio thoroughly and it did not take her long to discover the cause. She sympathised and told him he was not to blame, which was something he did not believe but was a profound comfort none the less.

As for Yumi, she tried not to let the news affect her judgment; but she couldn't help being influenced by his sincerity and his restraint. Michio quite clearly wanted her back: at the very least, he wanted to be a father to his son.

One topic that never came up between them was Yumi's relationship with Ezra. Michio knew that Yumi and Ezra had been bedmates on Samothea. It had cost him a lot of money and many favours to have that section of Brad Formast's injudicious report suppressed before it was seized upon by unscrupulous Earth politicians keen to maximise the scandal of Ezra's behaviour in their propaganda campaign against the Samothea Project.

Michio never once mentioned the story, never once criticised Ezra or asked Yumi what she currently felt about him. Michio had no right to say anything, of course, but it seemed to Yumi that he practised a superhuman kind of sensitivity toward her. If anything showed how Michio had grown in courage and manliness, then it was his delicate care for her feelings and his stout resistance to making any kind of judgment on her.

Yumi found herself falling for Michio again. She told Ezra and he warmly supported her. Then she changed her mind and decided she didn't love Michio. Ezra supported that decision as well. After a few more roller-coaster dips, Yumi finally confessed the obvious.

"Ezra," she said. "I don't know what to do about Michio."

"From what you tell me," he said, "Michio is a kind and decent man, who made one big mistake and regrets it. If you can forgive him that, then take him back and be a family.

There was no question of jealousy on Ezra's behalf, she was pleased to see, though it left one question open.

"You know how I feel about you, Ezra?" she said.

"I know. I feel the same about you."

"But a bedmate isn't a husband."

"No, he's not."

"If it were just you on Samothea, then I'd be happy with things as they were."

"I understand. Do you want to stay on Samothea?"

"I don't know. I think so."

"Then Michio will have to commute, that's all," Ezra concluded.

7 A dinner party

Mayor Esther Grandley visited Celetaris to meet its President and open the Waterfall City Airsuit Trials. At Waterfall City, she was introduced to Hazel, Wildchild and Yael, who were modelling the airsuits live in the Nakatani Corporation exhibition. She asked them questions about life on Samothea and seemed to be satisfied with their answers.

The girls stayed in Waterfall City for the whole week of the airsuit trials but Mayor Grandley went on next day to Arts City, to visit Roger and Danielle. That night, Danielle arranged a dinner party so that Esther could meet the Samothea Project Team and some of their friends.

They went to a family-run bistro which had rustic wooden tables, wicker chairs with comfortable cushions and food so good that the restaurateur left the lights on so patrons could see what they were eating.

Besides Mayor Grandley, Danielle and Roger, there was Annela, Ezra and Eva Welwyn. They all arrived early. Next came Paul Kessler and his wife, Cassie Leighton. They brought Peter Mayfield, husband of Joan Mayfield, the Vice Principal of the Institute. Peter apologised for Joan, saying that she was delayed by a meeting with the Institute Board of Directors.

Rosa and Herman came straight from the Science Institute.

Mayor Grandley relished having an informal celebratory dinner after so many formal engagements. She commanded everyone to call her 'Esther'. Her young political assistant offered to wait in their limousine, but Roger told him not to be so daft and to pull up a chair and have something to eat.

Introductions done, seats taken, drinks brought and food ordered (Peter Mayfield chose conscientiously for his wife): so the party began.

Waitresses placed thick white napkins on diners' laps or helped tuck the napkins into their shirts. It was a place where food was encouraged to be fun. Messy spillages were expected.

The main topic of conversation was the Project, of course, but when Danielle and Eva were together, another topic always percolated to the surface. While they were working on the Petticoat mission, the two women had agreed to disagree about feminism and the academic twaddle (in Danielle's words) known as 'Women's Studies'; but now things were going well and they could relax, the unresolved conflict between them naturally emerged. This long-standing and usually friendly argument had become the pattern of their relationship.

"I see what you're doing," Eva said to Danielle as an aside.

"What am I doing, Eva?"

"You're trying to show me up."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that here is Mayor Esther Grandley, neurosurgeon Doctor Cassandra Leighton, astrophysicist Doctor Danielle Goldrick, with university administrator Doctor Joan Mayfield on her way. All four women at the top of male-dominated fields and not one of them is a feminist."

"Don't forget Rosa. She's going to be the best of us."

"All right, Rosa as well. I don't know her opinion on feminism, but I expect you've been a bad influence on her. I'm also surprised Professor Dorothy Martlebury isn't here."

"I invited her; but her husband is coming back from a conference this evening and she wanted to be at home to cook his dinner."

"Unbelievable!" Eva said.

"Completely believable," Danielle retorted, pretending to misunderstand. "Dot adores her husband. She doesn't think that being one of the best mathematicians in the galaxy is incompatible with being a dutiful wife and mother. But I didn't invite anyone here just to show you up, honestly, Eva. These are my friends."

"Besides," Danielle added, "Joan and Esther aren't in male-dominated fields. There are many female politicians and more than half the university's administrative staff are women."

"I can't believe you said that to me!" Eva exclaimed.

"What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean, Danielle. You think that women in political or academic authority are mere tokens, put there by chauvinistic men to get us feminists off their backs."

Danielle had the good grace to look guilty and Eva laughed and relented a little.

"At least Doctor Mayfield isn't a token woman," Eva admitted, "though she's no friend to us feminists."

"Why? What did she do?"

"Doctor Mayfield has consistently refused to allow a women's studies department in her university."

"Well, it is a scientific institute," Danielle said with a teasing smile, to which Eva replied with a sarcastic smile of her own.

"I know how Joan and I disgraced ourselves in the eyes of feminism," Danielle said; "but I have no idea what Cassie might have done."

"You don't know that Doctor Leighton famously said that any women who used misogyny to explain why she hadn't reached the top of her profession was making an 'excuse'?"

Danielle laughed but she had to know if it was true from Cassie herself. When Danielle told Cassie what Eva and she were talking about, the table went quiet and everyone attended to their discussion.

"Yes, I said that," Cassie admitted in a somewhat defiant tone.

"But I agree with you completely, Cassie!" Danielle insisted. "And your profession has even fewer women in it than mine."

"Yes, more than half of us medical professionals are women but only 10% of surgeons are women, only about 5% of specialists and fewer than 2% of neurosurgeons are women. I don't think it's that women are disinclined," Cassie concluded. "I think we're not up to it."

There were protests from Eva and from all the men at the table.

"Come on, Cassie!" Peter said "Women doctors are just as intelligent and dedicated to their profession as men."

"I don't deny that," Cassie said, "but men and women generally use their brains differently. Women are not as single-minded as men. Most of us can't concentrate for hours at a time on just one thing, the way that most men can. Danielle and I are alike. Give us a problem to pick at in our own specialist fields and you'll lose us all day; just as a fisherman will spend all day just staring at a rod and line. You don't get many female fishermen, do you?"

Mayor Grandley spoke up with a chuckle.

"Quite right, Doctor Leighton. I'm with you. Someone today showed me a scale-model of Waterfall City that a man had made out of matchsticks. It was an amazing construction; but I don't know of any sane woman who would spend weeks or months painfully gluing tiny pieces of wood together, however admirable the product. Women are more practical."

"That's a difference between the sexes, I believe," Cassie said. "If you want someone to concentrate for eight hours straight on cutting out a small piece of brain-tissue, then ask a man."

"Or an exceptional woman," Paul said with pride because Cassie would not boast on her own behalf, even when she deserved to do so.

"How about you, Esther," Danielle asked Mayor Grandley. "For what sin did you incur the wrath of the feminist movement?"

"My crime was to strike down all the equality laws of the previous regime when I became Mayor."

That needed explaining.

"There's a difference between equality before the law and equality of conditions," Esther said. "Equality before the law is where the law is the same for every individual. Equality of conditions is where every individual has exactly equal wealth, property or social standing. The two kinds of equality are incompatible, even opposites."

"In reality, no society ever achieves equal conditions for everyone, so governments pander to those special-interest groups that shout the loudest or whinge the most. I inherited lots of progressive legislation from the tyranny of Alexander Marazon, who made laws to show how much the government cared about women, tenants of the settler company, unemployed immigrants and other vocal wingers, giving them handouts from the taxpayers. Marazon even forced hiring quotas onto private companies, which added to employment costs for New Exeter businesses. The resulting unemployment and low wages caused far more hardship to the general population than the supposed injustices the laws were designed to remedy."

"Anyway, I annoyed the progressives, especially feminists, on my first day in office when I outlawed all government intervention in the economy, revoked every hiring quota and abolished every hand-out."

"I think what riled your opponents most, Esther, was the relish with which you struck down the equality laws," Roger observed.

"True, I did enjoy it. We had a big party and cheered every time a regulation was struck off the law books. But I had a personal motivation as well as a political principle to uphold."

"What personal motivation?" Eva asked, who had remained admirably quiet all this time.

"I'm not having anyone say that I - or any other woman on New Exeter - got to her position because the damn government helped her! I find it insulting. Any woman of spirit would do so."

"How has it worked out for women, though, allowing discriminatory practises?" Eva asked.

"Business has thrived and we have full employment," Esther said proudly.

"I believe any woman with talent can get to the top of a company on her merits alone," she continued, "but if a woman thinks there has been discrimination, that her talents have been unfairly neglected just because of her sex, then she is free to start her own business and prove that women are just as good as men. I'd support her in a personal capacity - as any woman would - so it's curious that so few women bother. Women are happy to moan about a perceived injustice when there are government available but, when the playing-field is truly level, they never put their money where their mouths are."

From here the argument expanded to the whole table, with Danielle and Roger doing their hostly duties to make sure every voice was heard, though some diners, like Rosa, Annela and Herman, preferred to listen for now.

Soon Eva was fighting a rear-guard action against Esther, Cassie and Danielle, who contended that the main reason women were over-represented in the soft sciences was that most women were not mentally up to the task of competing in the hard sciences.

It was a tongue-in-cheek argument on Danielle's behalf, so she didn't mind when Roger came to Eva's defence.

"Danielle is teasing you, Eva," he said. "She doesn't really think women are mentally inferior to men. Just that they make different life-choices and have different academic preferences. After all, vets are as well-trained as physicists but 90% of them are women."

"I don't deny that women can be as intelligent as men," Danielle said, just to keep the argument going, "but we're much less rational."

This brought protests from all the men present.

"Oh, come on, Danielle!" Roger exclaimed.

"I mean it," she insisted. "I admit that the scattiness of women (which you chivalrous men pretend to find attractive) is just the flip-side of our capacity to multitask; but what if a problem requires us to single-task rather than multitask? What do women do? We act scattily and get a man to do it for us!"

Danielle was trying to scandalise Eva; but Esther and Cassie laughed at the look at consternation on the faces of the men at the table and, with a wink, teamed up to expand on Danielle's tease.

"Of course women are less rational than men," Cassie said. "That's why I'd much rather work with men than with women."

"God, yes!" Esther agreed. "The first question I ask when there's a social function I have to attend with my cabinet is: Will wives be there?"

Eva gave up trying to defend feminism. It was not that she couldn't take on three women at the top of their professions (who insisted that women were not disadvantaged, that they didn't need special help and, anyway, they preferred working with men), but Eva realised there was something in Danielle's world-view that was missing from her own.

Her academic field of Women's Studies was almost exclusively female and should therefore exude the female virtues; but Eva recognised that her profession and her feminist ideology sometimes sucked all the gaiety, the frivolity, even absurdly the femininity out of her life; the kind of femininity that Danielle delighted in, with her teasing, her mischief and her sheer girlish mayhem.

Eva went quiet to think through the implications of this counter-intuitive result (at least, counter to her intuitions) and was so distracted that she didn't feel patronized when Roger, Peter, Ezra and Paul rose stoutly to her defence, taking the anti-feminists to task for not appreciating the special talents of women, for ignoring male stupidities and for glossing over the irrationality of men. Male irrationality was just as great as female irrationality and far more destructive, with its competitiveness and aggression.