Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 26

The reporter asked Elspeth why she was visiting the Science Institute.

"I'm here to learn more about the Samothea Project," she explained, "which is currently the most prominent technological enterprise in the galaxy led by a woman. The Initiative gives personal and commercial support to women in business. We help by sharing our experiences and offering advice. Sometimes we invest in an enterprise or use our contacts to raise funds."

"Will you be investing in the Samothea Project?" the reporter asked.

"That's to be determined, young man," Elspeth said, keeping secret the plan to buy the planet Samothea.

There were a few more questions before Elspeth and her assistant were invited into a private meeting with Eva, Danielle, Ezra and Roger.

They went through the accounts of the Project, with Elspeth asking questions and her assistant taking notes. Elspeth wanted to know liabilities and costs so she could estimate potential future earnings. As this was all written down or fresh in Danielle's mind, she could give precise answers or good estimations.

Elspeth made no explicit statement about the finances but only nodded in an inscrutable way, yet Danielle felt that the ancient woman was satisfied with the business accounts. At any rate, when her questions ran out, Elspeth sat back in her chair and shut her computer tab with a flourish.

"Now we've done bean-counting," she said, "can we discuss other matters?"

"We can," Danielle said. "Everyone here is party to the plan to buy the planet Samothea."

"I have some bad news," Elspeth said. "Some of our more radical members are fearful of the bad publicity Eva generated. I doubt we can do anything about them but we have a good body of support from the core members. They joined the Initiative to help other women, not to express their feminism or ride a political hobby-horse."

"Does that mean you can't support our venture with investment funds?" Eva asked.

"It will make it less likely. On the other hand, the condition we previously proposed, to make Samothea a woman-only planet, might get the more radical members back on-board."

"Some of our group are unhappy with that condition," Danielle said. "Besides, we haven't asked the women of Samothea themselves if they want their planet to be woman-only."

"I understand that; and it won't help you if my organisation makes it a condition but does not come through with the support. So we'll leave this question until I've reported to my board and we make a proposal. Meanwhile, there are other kinds of support we can give."

"What are they?" Roger asked.

"Loan guarantees; good publicity; all the skills and services that a club of diverse businesses can provide. Some of our members are consultants to politicians. There are few of them, however, and none are core members. Most of the core members joined the organisation for the sake of networking or for its social benefits. Like a stag club, we do charitable works and have big dinners."

"Do you dress up in fancy outfits and give yourself honourable titles?" Ezra asked, thinking of the women of the Cloner Council on Samothea.

"That would be ridiculous, young man. However, I can tell you're only joking. Men do all that dressing up. Our social nights tend toward gossip and dancing."

"Now," Elspeth continued, "I'd like to meet some of the women from Samothea."

"We've arranged lunch at my apartment," Danielle said. "Three of our friends from Samothea will be there. They don't yet know of our plan to buy the planet. If you're ready?"

Annela was at her teaching job. Freya was at school. Ezra had work to do and Roger wanted to go over the footage with the reporter, but Hazel, Samothea and Yael were in Danielle's apartment preparing lunch. The men said goodbye to Elspeth and her assistant.

It was a warm late-autumn day and Elspeth wanted some fresh air. They walked across Fanshaw Park to the apartment blocks.

Hazel and Wildchild had been Juniors in the Cloner City for a year. Yael spent a couple of weeks in the Cloner City when her bedmate, Carlin, was a Junior, so she picked up some of the Juniors' way of doing things. It seemed completely natural to the three girls to greet the venerable lady with curtseys.

Elspeth was enchanted.

"You're the girls from Samothea we admire so much," she said.

"We're the girls from Samothea," Wildchild said.

"Are all the women on Samothea this polite?"

"Most of us, Madam," answered Hazel. "Please sit here."

Danielle and the girls served lunch. When everyone was comfortable, Elspeth said to the girls:

"Do you have anything you'd like to ask me?"

"Yes, Madam," Yael said. "How old are you?"

"Yael! That's not a polite question," Danielle said.

"Isn't it? Sorry, Madam."

"What's your name, young lady?" Elspeth asked.

"Yael Eloisesdaughter Woodlander."

"Well, Miss Eloisesdaughter-Woodlander, the truth is that there's an age women reach when they no longer bother to count the years."

"What age is that, Madam?"

"In my case, about thirty. Though, if I had your beauty, I would continue counting into my seventies."

"If you think I'm beautiful, you should meet my bedmate, Carlin Erinsdaughter. She's got curves and dimples."

"Has she? Is a bedmate a girlfriend?"

"More than a girlfriend: a lover."

"I see. Well I think I was 94 at my last birthday, but I may be wrong by a year or two. Anyway, I'm very old and ought to be beyond personal vanity; but one never quite is, you know."

"You're not very old, Madam. I have a friend who's 113 and he's only recently retired."

"Thank you, Yael. What's your role in the Samothea Project?"

"I'm not sure I have one."

"She's decoration, Madam," Wildchild said.

"Hey!" Yael protested.

Danielle smiled.

"Hazel, Sam and Yael are valued members of the Project," she said. "They are students at the Institute. Hazel and Sam are training to be Planetary Prospectors. Yael's forte is physics. We don't know yet what she'll do but it will be magnificent."

"Prospectors and a physicist? I'm not sure you'll be able to pursue those careers on Samothea. Are you planning to return there?"

"We are," Yael said with conviction.

"What about other people going to live on Samothea? What do you think about that?"

"It depends on the people. We're taking our boyfriends home with us."

"You've got a boyfriend, Yael? I thought you said you had a girlfriend."

"I've got both: a girlfriend and a boyfriend."

"I see: the best of both worlds."

"Exactly!"

"And you girls feel the same?" Elspeth asked Hazel and Wildchild. "You want your boyfriends to live on Samothea?"

"We do," Hazel said.

"So what if, hypothetically, the majority of women on Samothea say they don't want men to live on the planet? What would you say to that?"

"You mean like Madam Mirselene?" Yael asked.

"Who is she?"

"She's the Chief of the Woodlander Tribe. Madam Mirselene is happy to make an exception for Ezra and my boyfriend, Ryan. I think she'll make exceptions for Ed and Rod as well. But she thinks more men will disrupt our society too much."

"I understand her concerns and I sympathise with them," Elspeth said. "Does Madam Mirselene have a lot of influence on Samothea?"

"Yes. Though she's only one of six tribal chiefs, she has what Danielle calls a 'formidable personality'."

"She sounds like someone I would enjoy meeting. Are there many on Samothea who share her view?"

"Madam Lawspeaker and Madam Recorder."

"Are there some there who want men to settle on Samothea in unlimited numbers, not just a few exceptions?"

"Madam Deputy Prefect and Madam Scientist."

"Are there any other opinions about whether men should be allowed on Samothea or not?"

"All of Ezra's bedmates want at least one man on Samothea but some would probably tolerate many more," Yael asserted.

"All of Ezra's bedmates? How many bedmates does he have?"

"Thirty, Madam."

"That information was not in the news reports I saw about the Samothea Project."

Now Yael saw the hand-signal that Danielle had been making to her and she shut up, but Elspeth did not pursue the question of Ezra's bedmates. Instead, she checked the time, received a nod from her assistant and got up to leave.

"Thank you for lunch," she said. "It was very pleasant to meet you all. I'll talk to my committee and send you an answer via Eva."

******

Esther Grandley, Mayor of New Exeter, sat in her office in the Town Hall of New Exeter City, reading the latest news reports on the Samothea Project and the progress of the Beltway Hyperspace System upgrade. She made some notes and set her computer to do a calculation.

Her keen young political assistant knocked on the door and came in.

"Yes, Nigel?"

"Your meeting with the business consortium is in ten minutes, Ma'am."

"Thank you, Nigel. Wait one minute."

She handed him a stack of forms she had signed.

"I want you in the meeting with the consortium," she said.

"Yes, Ma'am."

Esther looked at the calculation done by the computer and made another note, nodding with satisfaction.

She got up and walked to the window. She wiped the condensation with her elbow and looked outside at the freezing planet. The sky was painted with grey cloud. It met the snow-covered fields somewhere on a grey horizon, though the fields and trees outside the city were beginning to show patches of green, as grass and leaves bravely emerged from their deep winter sleep. Nowhere in the Anglosphere had winters like New Exeter.

She gazed at the city. The squat snow-covered buildings looked warm and comfortable from the fourth floor of the giant Town Hall, a monstrous edifice out of proportion to the low-rise, steep-roofed homes and shops of the city.

Directly below her, lying facedown in front of its pedestal beside the steps up to the Town Hall, was the twelve-foot-tall statue of Alexander Marazon. When the tyrant was exiled, the people toppled the statue to express their wrath at the man who plundered their planet. Now children climbed over its smashed head, and merchants laid their wares out on its back and legs.

Esther looked down at the market square, pleased to see the bustle. Tourists and traders in synthetic parkers or thick fur-coats bought and sold energetically, clapping their hands or stamping their feet to keep warm, their breath condensing into steam as they haggled.

It was good to see the planet thrive. The condensation on the windows was proof. With the economic growth of the last year, the appropriations committee had sanctioned the use of ceramic heaters in the government offices. They cost pennies to run but it was the symbolism that was important.

While New Exeter paid off its debt to the settler company, government employees were expected to sit in unheated offices to save money. Esther led by example. Until recently, the three floors of the Town Hall in which her stripped-down government performed its necessary functions were unheated, while the ground floor was an indoor food market and the ten higher floors were leased out to commercial businesses who could afford to make themselves comfortable with thick carpets and central heating.

The great generator designed to warm the planet was idle. The appropriations committee, influenced by the fur trade representatives, and from good old-fashioned English and Yankee cussedness, refused the money to import hydrocarbon fuel. However, to reflect the economic growth and burgeoning prosperity brought about by Mayor Grandley's policies of zero taxation and no welfare state, government employees were now graciously permitted not to freeze to death at their desks.

Hence Esther could be comfortable in her office in a tweed suit, her synthetic parka with artificial fur lining hanging on a rack by the door next to her warm gloves and thick scarf, while a small ceramic heating-pod valiantly convected its one-kilowatt of warmth for sixteen hours a day, steaming up the windows.

There was a knock on the door and six members of the business consortium entered. These were the men whom Esther had persuaded to invest in a tethered hyperspace link to Celetaris using Danielle Goldrick's new technology. It cost a lot of money but ultimately brought good dividends, gaining the Mayor credit with the mining enterprises, fur-traders, gem-traders and sports tourism businesses. Even the hunting tourism industry admired her acumen, despite her disapproval of hunting.

"Welcome, gentlemen," Esther said. "I assume you've been keeping abreast of the news reports, so you know how well Doctor Goldrick's new hyperdrive technology is working on the Beltway system?"

They admitted they did.

"As the first commercial use of the new technology was our very own tethered link to Celetaris, which you'll agree has been a good investment, it makes sense that we should look favourably on all Doctor Goldrick's works."

The businessmen agreed to that.

"In which case, I would like to know what investment your consortium plans to make in the Beltway upgrade?"

They had no plans because the shortest distance to the Beltway system was at the Hydra spur but it was more cost-effective to take the existing tethered link to Celetaris and join the Auriga spur there, though it was a much greater distance. When a new tethered link was made between Earth and Celetaris, or between Capella Space Station and Celetaris, the long way around would be even cheaper and quicker.

"I know money is tight and we haven't yet paid off our debt to Outworld Ventures," Esther said, "but I think we can be a bit more ambitious now."

She made the case for a direct link to the Hydra spur. She also had figures for how profitable the Beltway upgrade itself might be, were investors to get in on the ground floor.

The businessmen politely listened to Mayor Grandley telling them (as a friend of business, not as a busybody politician, of course) just how they should spend their own money.

At the end of an hour, with every commercial or financial objection bulldozed away by Esther's indefatigable faith in Danielle's technology, the consortium agreed to consider investing in the Samothea Project. Even the fur-trade representative agreed.

******

Michio Nakatani, son of the Chairman of the Nakatani Corporation and Director of the company's transportation division, sat in his father's office as a pretty secretary poured out two glasses of vintage Scotch whisky.

"Drink, my son, drink!" Touma Nakatani said. "You've earned it."

The occasion was the first operation of a new Beltway hyperspace junction.

Michio copied his father and downed the glass. He tried not to cough but struggled, going red in the face, trying to hold it in.

Touma Nakatani laughed and slapped his son on the back.

Michio spluttered but managed to swallow down the fiery liquor.

"It's very good," he said, breathlessly.

Touma Nakatani laughed again.

"You'll love it when you're forty," he said.

Since the Board of Directors forced Michio to allow the new hyperdrive technology onto the open market in the form of tethered hyperspace pathways, the transportation division had been thriving. Now that the long-awaited Beltway Hyperspace System upgrade had begun, transportation would likely become the most profitable division in the company.

Michio's relationship with his father was the best it had been in years. Six years ago, Touma Nakatani tricked his son into abandoning Yumi on Capella Space Station, trapping his son at home on Earth. An arranged marriage to Sakura, the beautiful daughter of a rival businessman, cemented the partnership of the two companies.

Although Michio tried to love his wife, Sakura felt the marriage was not what he wanted, so she refrained from having children. After Yumi was discovered alive on Samothea, Sakura realised Michio longed for his lost love. They began to live separate lives. Sakura was a party-girl, but discrete, and Michio was an honourable man, dedicated to his business. He never blamed Sakura and never questioned her relationships, her girlfriends who liked to drink and her boyfriends who took her dancing.

At a signal, the pretty secretary refreshed their glasses, bowed and left the room. Now Touma spoke softly to Michio.

"My son, you're unhappy."

"I'm happy, father."

"No, I can see. ... My boy, I know about Sakura."

Michio hung his head.

"Sakura is not a respectable wife, my son. She shames you."

"No, father. It's my fault. I've not been a good husband."

"You gave her wealth, social position, importance."

"She had those already. I gave her only a straight-jacket."

"Michio, she goes partying with other men."

"You've had her followed?"

"I protect what's mine. Your honour is mine."

"Sakura can't be blamed. She was forced into our marriage."

"You mean that you were, too?"

Michio stood up to his father once before, over the frivolous lawsuit against the Samothea Project. Now he stood up to his father again. Actually standing up to make his statement.

"Father, I've never blamed you for making me marry a woman I barely knew. I honestly tried to love Sakura, but I really loved Yumi and I still do. You were wrong to separate us."

Touma shut his eyes a moment; then he spoke quietly.

"Your great-grandfather built our company with his bare hands, working in a shed in Akihabara electric town. My father expanded the Nakatani Corporation to become the foremost industrial and electronic business in Japan. It was easy for me to take over and expand further. Now we are among the greats of the whole galaxy. Part of our greatness is the partnership with Sakura's father."

"But if you and Sakura divorce," Touma said, "so that her father is ashamed and splits up our company just as we embark on our biggest ever project, then you'll be the first of our family to contract our business rather than expand it."

"I will leave the company rather than harm it, father. Sakura and I will divorce when Sakura wants it. Then I will go to live with Yumi on Samothea, if she'll have me. And I will be a father to my son, your grandson, Hayate."

"I have photographs. If you show them to your father-in-law, then he will disown Sakura. You can divorce her and stay in your job."

"I refuse, father. I cannot be so cruel. Sakura doesn't deserve it."

"You are a moral man, Michio," Touma observed coldly.

"Are you not a moral man, father?"

"I'm a practical man. I do what's good for our family and our company."

"Was it practical to trick me into abandoning Yumi?"

"She was a poor girl from Kyoto who ensnared you. Her father is a temple cleaner."

"And my great-grandfather worked with his bare hands in a shed in electric town. Maybe Yumi would also break out of her class and begin a wealthy dynasty."

Touma did not answer.

"Father, I will ask Sakura for a divorce and I will ask Yumi to marry me. If you want me to leave the company, then I will do so. But I will not dishonour Sakura or abandon Yumi again, even if the company splits in two and everyone in Japan laughs at me."

******

Tatiana trained the pilot of the mining vessel that she and Ezra chartered in her technique of making microjumps to the safe sides of the molten moons around the magnetic white dwarf star. Satisfied that they were proficient and bringing in good harvests of minerals, she took a cargo-load to Argus Space Station.

She called on Viktor Bogdanov to discuss their business partnership. The jovial fat man said the income from the mining prospect was growing, with large profits likely and the space factory was embarked on a major production run of the x-ray crystals.

There were also tethered hyperspace links under construction between Argus, Capella and the nearest node of the Beltway Hyperspace System, which will reduce transportation times and costs.

They toasted the success of their business venture and got onto more speculative topics.