Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 23

Author's note:

Thank you for your patience. Apologies this has taken so long. I have been beset with work commitments and other delays. It is the longest chapter by far.

Erinaceous

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1 Physics lessons

2 Complications

3 More complications

4 Even more complications

5 Summer destinations

*

1 Physics lessons

There was a sombre mood in the Samothea Project team immediately after the Equity Court judgment that recognised the settler company, Outworld Ventures, as the legal owner of the planet Samothea.

No one knew what the decision meant for the women of Samothea. The greatest risk was that Outworld Ventures would be tempted by short-term profits to open the planet up to wanton immigration, allowing incomers to destroy the fragile culture of the planet, exposing the women of Samothea to exploitation and abuse.

With the girls from Samothea there, however, the downbeat atmosphere couldn't last. The games, teases and innocent joy-of-life of Hazel, Wildchild, Yael and four-year-old Freya always lightened everyone's mood.

The girls were vagabonds, staying mostly at Danielle and Roger's apartment, sometimes with Ezra and Annela, sometimes at Joan and Peter Mayfield's house, but rarely missing the nightly dinner at Danielle's and always begging to do chores. Yael often took Freya to stay with her friend, Kelly Mayfield, allowing Annela more time alone with Ezra to have sex.

Annela's daily medical treatment gave her inexhaustible energy and made her unquenchably horny. She was buzzing with sensual joy, her cheeks flushed with colour, skin tingling and muscles primed with sheer animal energy. Requited love and non-stop sex made her as happy as a child, content as a kitten.

It also made her radiantly beautiful, as joy-filled women always are. With shining pale-blue eyes and lustrous red-gold hair (a shade more blonde now in the bright Celetaris sunshine), her perfect complexion included a few summer freckles on the bridge of her straight nose.

Ezra, on the other hand, had the gaunt cheeks and sunken black-rimmed eyes of a marathon runner who had just completed his course. He rarely made it to the end of a family dinner without retreating to the couch for a snooze. But he always woke up to kiss and tickle Freya when she demanded his attention before bedtime. He also roused himself to listen to Yael, who had something new and urgent to tell him every single day.

Besides fucking Annela many times a day, Ezra spent many hours on the videolink to Samothea, chatting to his bedmates, his children and his friends. He also talked to business contacts on Earth, planning some things that he kept to himself for now.

The main activity of the girls was studying. Yael brought Hazel and Wildchild into her school lessons, persuading them by her enthusiasm that physics and maths were the perfect subjects to learn.

As with everything they did, Hazel and Wildchild threw themselves into the project wholeheartedly. Yael was an informal student at the Celetaris Institute for Science, so Wildchild and Hazel snuck into the theatres with her and listened transfixed to the lectures. The lessons were beyond them at first but they absorbed the atmosphere, made notes on the topics they wanted to understand and split the tasks up between themselves, studying the textbooks in the university library and in Danielle's apartment after dinner to catch up on what they'd heard.

Yael also studied with Kelly, who was nearly seventeen and preparing for the summer exams at the end of her first year of advanced studies. Yael made Kelly share her physics and maths revision. Now Hazel and Wildchild joined in those sessions, racing through Kelly's old textbooks, helping each other along, reading ahead and around the subjects.

By the time Danielle formalised the girls' lessons, starting their morning classes herself and deputising one of her graduate students to teach them in the afternoons, they'd caught up with Kelly.

Danielle was impressed. She knew how bright Yael was. The other girls were just as quick. Wildchild never showed off but Danielle thought she was the brightest of them all, revealing touches of genius, especially in mathematics, where she grasped new ideas almost before they were explained.

Nor was Hazel an intellectual slouch, but Danielle didn't know how often she re-read sections of the textbooks to herself.

When Roger asked her how she found the time to give remedial lessons in physics, Danielle said:

"I'm willing to make time for the girls. I love teaching them. They're so eager to learn. I never have to twist an idea around to fit it into a reluctant mind. It's what teaching was meant to be like. But do you know the best part of it?"

"Tell me."

"It's the relief of not having to say everything twice."

"What do you mean?" Roger asked, quick as a flash, but he wilted under Danielle's wifely death-stare, until she relented and brushed her hand through his hair, smiling indulgently.

"You know, you might have died for that joke," she said.

"What joke?"

"Ooh, you are taking a risk. You're lucky you're married to me."

"That's something I say to myself every single day."

******

Shortly after the court-case, a representative of Outworld Ventures arrived on Celetaris with a team of analysts. They rented an office and apartments in Arts City, only ten minutes away from the Science Institute by levitating ground car.

Andrew Claydon was an executive but competent, with none of the arrogance that the settler company had shown in the courtroom after the women of Samothea rejected the original compromise. Aged about forty, he was a polite but vigorous man in a conservative grey suit and plain tie. Under his stewardship, Outworld Ventures took legal possession of Samothea in a businesslike manner.

Rather than send his own team of scientists to Samothea, Andrew proposed a generous contract with the Samothea Project to co-ordinate their fact-gathering.

A sizeable donation to Eva Welwyn's Women's Support Group (usually called the 'Petticoats') secured access for Outworld Ventures to anthropological data from Samothea. The donation allowed Eva to recruit more Petticoats.

Andrew engaged the Petticoats to perform more scientific tests on Samothea, analysing the soil, the atmosphere, the ocean temperature, its salinity, pH, and oxygen levels, to fill in gaps in the data already collected.

Outworld Ventures hired junior members of the Samothea Project Team on good salaries as consultants. The company paid handsomely for the Project's data on the astrophysical anomaly near Samothea, from whose x-rays delicate electronic equipment needed shielding. Andrew also booked space in the hold of the Samothea Project's shuttlecraft for test equipment and gifts of technology for the women of Samothea.

Both sides agreed a full disclosure agreement for all scientific data collected on Samothea, including medical data.

Madam Gloria, the Prefect of Samothea, and her Advisory Council were invited to discuss their concerns directly with Andrew Claydon in a weekly videolink.

With the agreements in place, Andrew made a videolink broadcast to outline his plan. He spoke in confident well-modulated tones to the women of Samothea, the Project Team and his head office:

"Our principal task is to discover what measures we need to improve the living conditions on Samothea, to make human life comfortable on Samothea and a sustainable ecosystem. This will tell us how much it will cost to start the colonisation process again."

"Thank you all for agreeing to co-operate with my team. In a month, I'll deliver my preliminary report."

******

Danielle had a girly lunch every few weeks with three of her best friends: Doctor Rosa Silverstein, once her doctoral student and now her colleague; Doctor Joan Mayfield, Vice-Chancellor of the Celetaris Institute for Science; and Doctor Cassie Leighton, chief neuro-surgeon at the Institute's medical centre. Depending on how busy they were, the women met in one of the restaurants on campus or at a place in Arts City, often in the shopping mall.

Near the end of the summer term, there was time for a leisurely lunch away from the Institute. With everyone settled in and the wine poured, Danielle (as the habitual instigator of mischief) was invited to choose the first topic of conversation.

"Andrew Claydon," she said.

"Hey, no shop-talk at girly lunch," Cassie rebuked. Foil to Danielle, Cassie thought that someone should enforce the rules, knowing how quickly the conversation might descend into talk about work or mere gossip.

"I wasn't going to talk shop," Danielle protested. "I was just going to say how much I fancied him."

"No you weren't," insisted Cassie.

"Wasn't I?"

"No. He's not very attractive ..."

"He's all right," said Joan.

"I agree with Cassie," said Rosa.

"His voice is attractive," Danielle insisted, sticking to her guns. "Besides, all I meant was that I like him."

Cassie let this pass. Talking about men was better than talking shop.

"What do you like about him?" Rosa asked.

"He's well-organised and direct. He knew exactly what he wanted to learn about Samothea and exactly what he's going to do with the information. If there was a global disaster and we had to organise ourselves into teams to survive, then I'd want to be on his team."

Joan smiled in agreement. "You do fancy him," she said.

"I do," Danielle admitted. "He's exactly what I approve of in a man."

"What do you mean?" Cassie asked.

"I mean that he's considerate toward the women of Samothea, especially Madam Gloria. I also like how generous he's been to the Project. Best of all, though, is that I no longer need to worry about Samothea. It's someone else's burden now, someone solid and dependable, as a man ought to be. It's a huge relief."

"What's his being a man got to do with it?" Rosa asked. "Couldn't a woman do the job just as well?"

"Yes. Joan could, or Mayor Grandley ..."

"Or you, Danielle."

"I doubt it. But the fact that he's a man is relevant because we are sexual beings."

"What does that mean? Isn't that the kind of thing you say just to tease Eva Welwyn?"

"It is the kind of thing I say but I don't say it just to tease Eva. I'm serious. Everything's about sex."

"It is with you, anyway," Cassie interjected with an indulgent smile.

Danielle ignored her.

"I don't mean everything's about having sex. I mean that everything human has a sexual undertone. We can't help it. There have been two sexes on Earth for at least half-a-billion years. That's some legacy. And Eva is always despairing because psychologists can get people to ignore almost every human characteristic - skin-colour, age, nationality, wealth, social status, height, weight, looks, intelligence. Everything except sex. There are masculine characteristics and there are feminine characteristics. They always influence us, whether we rejoice in them, as sensible women do, or try to suppress them, as Eva says we should do."

"I love your theories, Danielle," Joan said, "especially those about sex. You and Roger must have a wonderful love-life."

"When I let him."

Rosa laughed.

"It's the other way around," she confided to the table, as if it were a secret. "Danielle follows Roger around like a lost puppy."

"I do not!"

"With your tongue hanging out."

Danielle laughed.

"I'm not ashamed of having a healthy libido," she admitted.

From here the conversation got sillier and more personal (if that were possible), until the friends had to go back to work.

******

If Danielle was relieved of the burden of worrying about the women of Samothea, then the business side of the Samothea Project gave her just as much relief.

Having swallowed up HyperStar Japan in a single gulp, the Nakatani Corporation worked closely with Danielle's old firm, Oakshott Industries, to implement those programs currently stalled by lack of money or because the status of the planet Samothea was uncertain.

One such project was to add a new tethered hyperspace link between Earth and Celetaris. The new beacon would be an impressive 400 metres across: large enough for mid-range passenger craft and small freighters.

The beacon needed a larger power-source, so an engineering rig and a massive array of solar collectors was being shipped to Celetaris. The solar collector would be set in orbit around Celetaris' sun. After unfurling its thousand-mile-long gold-leaf panels, it would beam power through a gamma stream to the hyperspace beacon in orbit around Celetaris.

A team of riggers from Oakshott Industries were on their way to configure the array. Danielle hoped she might know some of them. She was once an engineer with a team of riggers and often missed the simple but exciting life she had working on a space-rig.

Danielle knew that the biggest engineering project would be to upgrade the Beltway hyperspace system to the new hyperdrive technology. The main element would be new hyperspace junctions. The design for the existing Beltway junctions had been her baby. It won her an industry award and brought commercial rewards to Oakshott Industries. The project to convert the Beltway system would be even more lucrative for Oakshott Industries and the Nakatani Corporation.

Best of all (Danielle happily reflected), it was someone else's problem, so she could concentrate on the task she most loved at the moment: teaching bright and enthusiastic students about physics.

******

Three of Danielle's brightest and most enthusiastic students were Hazel, Wildchild and Yael. Unfortunately, the speed of progress was not the same for all three girls. One morning, before the start of a lesson, Hazel came prepared to make an announcement.

They were in Danielle's office in the physics faculty building. Danielle perched against her desk as the three girls sat on chairs facing her, computer tabs on their laps to make notes. The office was a plastiglass box high up on a corner of The Vortex, the twisting physics tower at one end of the Science Park. The glass wall behind Danielle and the window to her left were opaque, screening the room from the open-plan office. The wall to her right was also opaque, acting as a projector-screen, covered with scribbled equations and diagrams.

Behind the girls, the fourth window gave Danielle a glorious view of the edge of Fanshaw Park running down to the central ocean. Gold and blue, it glimmered in the late-spring sunshine.

Two of the girls facing her also glimmered with shining happy faces, eager for education, but Hazel was more solemn. She stood up, looking sad.

"Danielle," she said. "I want to stop studying physics. I know I'm letting you down but I'm struggling to keep up. I can't cope with the maths."

"You're not letting me down at all, Hazel," Danielle assured her. "Not everyone has a mathematical brain. But maybe I can help. What are you stuck on?"

"Calculus with triangles. That's what Yael calls it. She and Samothea have shown me a few times and I've gone over the chapter myself many times but I just don't see it."

"Do you mean trigonometric functions?"

"Yes."

"It's no shame to have gotten that far, Hazel; but if you can't do calculus with triangles then you'll struggle further on in physics."

"I know it," Hazel said mournfully. "I'm sorry to disappoint you."

The girl looked so contrite that Danielle had to ignore the silly rules that prevented teachers from showing human feelings to students. She pulled Hazel into a close embrace and kissed her forehead. Hazel hugged her back firmly.

"You're certainly not disappointing me, Hazel; and physics isn't everything..."

"Ooh!" said Yael, leaping up to protest.

"What is it, Yael?" Danielle asked, looking over Hazel's shoulder at her agitated friend.

"You told me physics is the only science!" Yael exclaimed. "You said everything else is social work!"

"That was an exaggeration for comic effect, young lady, and not to be used against me at exactly the wrong moment!"

"But, but, but ..."

"No buts, Miss. If Hazel doesn't want to learn physics, then there are plenty of other good subjects to study."

Danielle let Hazel go but still held her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"Hazel, every subject is worthwhile. You can study business, geography, history, economics, politics and lots of other useful things. I love physics and I want everyone to learn it but if people don't want to or haven't the right kind of brains, then it's no shame."

"You know Cassie Leighton is the best neurosurgeon in the galaxy?" The girls nodded. "Well, she wouldn't have been half so good as a physicist. So go and learn anything you like, Hazel ... except women's studies."

"Thank you, Danielle," Hazel said. "I don't know what I want to study yet but I want it to be useful for when Samothea and I become Planetary Prospectors."

That day, Hazel went to the library and collected together textbooks for every science. She spent the day poring over the volumes, seeing how far she could get into each subject before she became either confused or bored. In fact, it was quite easy to find something useful that she was both good at and interested in. She therefore had a pleasant announcement to make before the family dinner in Roger and Danielle's apartment that night.

"I want to study geology," Hazel announced.

Freya wanted to know what "jolly-jee" was, and while Danielle explained, Wildchild and Yael interrogated Hazel about her choice.

It didn't take them long to understand. Hazel had a good memory and a fastidious mind. She enjoyed making fine distinctions, of which there were plenty between minerals. She would love to learn their properties and uses.

Yael teased her for giving up physics but Hazel stood her ground, saying that her subjects were more important.

"All you're learning about is particles," Hazel said.

"Everything's made of particles," Yael insisted (which wasn't quite true but was close enough for debating purposes).

"Yes, but it is the things particles make that are important," Hazel countered. "Chemicals, minerals, gases and even people: all the things we value; plus technology, fuel, building materials - all our wealth - it all comes from minerals. You physicists are the servants of us geologists. Your job is to help us put what we discover about minerals to good use."

"Besides," Hazel concluded, with a knock-down argument: "you get to study with Rosa and Danielle but I get to study with Ezra!"

Yael laughed but Wildchild understood, showing approval on her innocent face, which reminded Danielle of something she wanted to talk to Ezra about.

The man himself, who had been dozing on the couch, exhausted from doing his sexual duty many times a day to a still-insatiable Annela, woke up at the mention of his name.

"Um, what?"

"Daddy!" Freya cried, running to jump on him. "You're going to teach Hazel how to jolly-jee!"

"I am?" he asked. "What's happened to physics, Hazel?"

"I'm no good at it. I can't do the maths."

"I sympathise," said Ezra.

"So do I," added Roger.

"How far did you get in maths, Roger?" Ezra asked.

"High school. You?"

"Same. It never held me back."

"Yes, but you won't have as deep an understanding of nature as you might have if you knew maths and physics better," Danielle said.

"Will I be missing out, then?" asked Hazel.

"No," Ezra said.

"A little," Danielle said; "but geology is a big enough subject on its own to keep you satisfied. You won't notice you're missing out."

"What am I missing out on?" Hazel asked.

"Ah, well, I can best explain that with a story," Danielle said with relish, "about how Roger and I met."

"Oh, yes!" Yael said with enthusiasm.

"Oh, no," said Roger, but everyone else sat up and paid attention.

The women from Samothea were used to a nightly feast when everyone would say what interesting things they had done that day, or they would make jokes, sing songs or tell stories to entertain the tribe. Freya called the nightly dinner at Danielle and Roger's 'the feast' and was surprised when any of their friends didn't come to it.