Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Best Girl: Interesting Times by BJohn
   Chapters 11 - 15
   Chapter 11
   EILEEN (Wednesday 10/4)
   Bob and Kat had done an "oversight" visit to her "mansion" in Ireland.
Apparently the nearby villagers had been friendly, but there were some
"ghosts" around the ruins.  Bob asked us to come along for the exorcism.
   Heh.  What do we know?  Just put on a show?  Anyway, a little bit later,
Kat had a private _talk_ with us ladies.  The reason the place was in ruins
was because the McDonnal clann had been attacked by bandits in 1875. 
They'd almost been overrun, but Cathal Cullen had brought Clann Cullen to
their aid.  Both clanns had been almost wiped out, but they'd completely
destroyed the bandits who'd been terrorizing the entire region for several
years.
   Cathal Cullen, the Ceann, had died during the battle.  His son Conor had
emigrated to America a short time later.  After he'd married, his son was
Fintan Cullen, Sean's seanathair.  The verbal accounts from the McDonnal
descendants fit, and the location and names fit our genealogy research.
   The really interesting part was Bob highly suspected Cathal was now
alive, well and cohabitating with some wild women in Sierra Madre!  We
agreed with the wild women part; we didn't know anything about Cathal
because Sean hadn't mentioned it to any of us.  We shall see.
   ------
   (Thursday 10/5)
   About 3:30 in the morning we dressed in our best kilts; this was gonna
be formal.  Maura and Teresa appeared on our doorstep; as direct Cathal
descendants, they were part of the gang.
   Bob and Kat zipped in right on time.  Bob looked really good in a kilt
with his new staff!  Kat looked just as yummy.  Oops, no time for that
right then.
   Bob did the honors and zipped us to Ireland on a low hill overlooking
the McDonnal house ruins.  Sean took one look, dropped to his knees and
wept.  We could _feel_ his memory of the time flooding back.  The emotions
of loss hurt us almost as much as they did him.
   Bob told him, "You did the right thing in 1875, Cathal.  My Kathleen is
here now because of the deeds you and Clann Cullen did that day.  Almost
every person in this valley owes their current life to you.  You did good,
guy."
   He choked out, "We lost almost everyone.  Down to the babes, we lost
them."
   Teresa told him, "Yes.  You know full well if they hadn't died down
there, you would have *all* died soon after.  You took the choice of a slim
chance of destroying evil against an extremely poor chance of even
surviving.  Both clanns survived, and Clann Cullen is now stronger than
ever."
   We comforted him and supported him as best we could until he got enough
of the grief and loss wept out to continue.  We walked to the pub in the
village and went in.
   Bob introduced Sean as, "Cathal Cullen, come back to you now as Sean
Cullen and the leader of Clann Cullen in America."
   Cathal (no doubt of it now) looked right at a very old Irishman and told
him, "You'd be a Mac Ceallach, then.  Fionnbharr and Saraid fought bravely
that day." He named off the rest of the villagers there whose ancestors had
survived that day.
   They too believed after that and knelt before him.  He laughed and told
them their ancestors had been friends, not lord and vassal.  They laughed
too and rose.  He said, "Laying ghosts is mighty thirsty work.  Perhaps we
need a drop or two before we go forth into battle again."
   Bob had the bartender (Liam, the pub owner) set up a round of adult
whiskey he'd brought along.  An Irishman always thinks better with a glass,
right?
   Cathal spotted his old war club lying on a table.  He pretend-glared at
Teresa and told her, _"Someone's been playing games."_
   He took it and did a few moves with it.  It was even better than the
katas we'd been doing.  He'd actually been in battle with it and knew
exactly how best to use it.
   After the round got down, everyone walked out to the small field in
front of the McDonnal ruins.  We could _feel_ his memories coming back into
focus.  He remembered where his friends had fallen, where the women he'd
loved had died and how the evil ones had brutally slain even the infants.
   He bore up.  He and Bob worked together and called out an appeal in
ancient Gaelic to the gods of the clanns.  They asked the gods to help the
spirits here be at peace.
   Yeh, there were spirits floating and laying around.  They were dazed,
confused and full of grief, as Cathal had been.  Bob and Cathal _calmed_
them down somewhat and _steered_ them to the many places around where
babies were being born.
   They flitted away and the ruins were quiet.  I'd call that a success!
   We had another drink with the villagers.  They were almost in awe of
Sean; he kept joshing them out of it.  Only two of the entire village
didn't have enhancement tags!  He told everyone, "You'll find out more
about the magic later.  The clann gods are strong and work in wondrous
ways."
   Teresa wanted to see where Clann Cullen had lived, so Sean led us up and
down a few hills to a valley a couple miles north.  It was now a small
housing community with neat homes.  He pointed out various locations where
the meeting house and other housing had been.  The trails in and out were
now the main roads for the community.
   Maura announced, "There's a lot of Cullen DNA on the hill over there."
We zipped over and looked.  Margie had cast a "nothing here" cleas around
us which made us visually transparent and blocked minor attention in and
out, so we weren't concerned about anyone being curious.
   Yeh, there was a lot of DNA.  Seemed the McDonnals and the surviving
Cullens had buried the deceased on the hill.  BB spotted a small stone
almost at the crest of the hill.  In old Gaelic, it said, "Here lies Cathal
and Nora Cullen who gave their lives for freedom."
   Right below it we could plainly _see_ two sets of remains, one male and
one female.  Maura said, "The male has a close DNA match to us Cullens. 
I'd say it's Cathal.  Was Nora your wife?"
   Cathal closed his eyes a few moments while tears dripped down.  "Aye.  I
can only compare her to you bondmates.  She was a wonderful lady.
   "After our ammunition ran out, we fought back to back and felled many an
evil one.  She finally fell, and I went completely berserk.  I gave her an
honor guard of forty additional evil ones before I too fell."
   Margie said, "There's a *very* dazed spirit solidly holding its place in
the male skeleton.  Let's look."
   We did.  While things were quite hazy, it thought of itself as "Nora
Cullen." Holy Jaysus!
   Cathal said, "Yes.  It is she.  There's absolutely no doubt in *my*
mind."
   Margie said, "We could send her on her way to a new baby.  On the other
hand..."
   I immediately said, "From what you've said, Sean, she was a wonderful
spirit.  We can see lots of Talent in her.  Would you want her back with
you if you could?"
   He said, "I wouldn't give you ladies up for the world.  Even for her."
   I laughed and said, "Who said anything about giving up anyone?  We've
got three Babies Within right here, Kat's got three and there's more
available.  We could use a walk-in body, too.  Margie, could the Skunk
Works bring her back?"
   Margie said, "No guarantee, but I'd give it at least a 90% probability.
We learned a lot about dazed and unaware spirits while we were doing the
locate-the-ancestors research.  What we have here has almost all the work
done; we know who she was and so does she.  My vote is we take her home. 
Sean/Cathal, you don't get a vote.  What say the rest of ye?"
   We agreed unanimously to attempt the rescue.
   ------
   SEAN
   Fuck those emotions had hurt.  All the grief and loss had flooded in all
at once.  Bob and my ladies helped immensely.  Nora?  Could we rescue her?
If anyone could, Marge could.  It would be wonderful to have her with us --
I thought she'd fit right in.
   Marge "cuddled" her up in an inverted firewall and zipped off with her
to who knows where.  Time will tell.
   Anyway, we found lots of other DNA traces around.  Yeh, I'd had lots of
blood relatives back then.  The remains were resting peacefully, so we left
them be; many had familiar-feeling spirits hovering around or locked inside
them.  We put a shield around the headstone and area set to alarm us if it
was moved.  It was quite possible the hillside would eventually be
developed or landscaped, and the stone was Clann Cullen history.
   Cathal?  He was me and I was him.  No dichotomy or issues beyond the
grief.  I'd have my own wake to mourn my fallen loves and friends.
   I ported my fighting knife and Nora's weapons from the graves back to
OTL.  We'd practiced a lot with them and they were old friends.
   Anyway, back to the present.  We bid the villagers goodbye for now and
zipped back to OTL.  Gotta bring in the shekels to keep the home fires
burning.
   ------
   The first part (as Duane assured us) of the Oakland seminar CE profit
hit the main account.  Kate told us, "$840K should keep Geeser in kitty
litter for a few days.  There's more to come, too!"
   Ho-hum?  Not on your life.  We had a round of congratulatory hugs and
kisses then got on with the day.
   The big deal was bringing up the R&D computer in Selene City.  We
_observed_ every once in a while, but kept our noses out of things; they
knew what to do.  Heh.  They named the computer "Rhonda Research" and
obviously made it female.  A slightly crusty old biddy, just right as a
head librarian!  Now, how do we keep her and Margaret Sullivan away from
each other so Nana doesn't corrupt her?
   Fertility rites for Mario and Sherry!  Dayum, it was totally fun,
sexually arousing, lusciously emotional and produced two Babies Within. 
Lucia Sonora and Ana Matthews were the links.  Both were very yummy; thank
you, Marge, for developing the two-way perceptions.  They were both
delicious!
   Friday, we got more industry checksheets back for The Book and a couple
for the first two detail manuals.  We checked them over, tweaked things
here and there and sent them off to the Fulfillment Center.  More good
products!
   The Keavy's wake at the Pasadena Tavern went off without a hitch.  The
oldies' busses filled right up; there was lots of good food and lots of
drunken oldies to cart home.  Grin.
   The three children made their appearances.  While most of the guests
knew of them, they didn't really know them.  They circulated around, did
gestalts-and-glad-hands (after a quick lesson) and helped make Brian and
Ellen's friends feel better.
   Yeh, Brian and Ellen showed up; the joke was too good to let pass. 
They'd gotten their new bodies back "awake" and were doing quite a bit of
physical rehabilitation.  They said, _"We might just appear on your
doorstep one day."_
   Well, if they did, they had a place waiting for them.  I'd turned Papa
Sonora's crew loose on our "new" house for a solid renovation.  They update
the wiring and plumbing, insulation, full paint, carpet, kitchen and all
that.  There were plenty of furnishings left; Papa simply ported it all out
of the way in the Mojave and put a shield around it while they worked.
   I thought of my lost friends and loves in Ireland only twice.  Their
time will come.  Where was Nora?  I must have leaked a little to my ladies,
because they cuddled me and comforted me.  Marge told us, _"Nora's doing
just fine."_
   ------
   EILEEN (Saturday 10/7)
   It was a fun work day.  Our seminar in Thousand Oaks (California west of
L.A.) had projected 1,500, we planned materials for 1,750 and ended up with
1,693.  Pretty close, I'd say.
   We trial-ran the young-uns as cheerleaders.  The Passion Posse five-some
worked together as did the older six.  The Passion Posse was innocently
sexy with lots of panty flashes while the older ones...  well, let's say
the girls didn't mind at all showing they had really nice boobs.
   Their routines were excellent, too.  Lots of practice (on the Cullen
side at least) at lots of Tavern gigs had helped.  It would save us old
fogies the trouble of quick-changes during the gig.  Grin.
   Of course, $500 apiece didn't hurt their motivation much, either.  Hell,
for the eleven, it was chump change at $5,500.
   We took the entire gang, along with Rita and Duane, out for dinner and a
wind-down evening at OTL.  The young-uns were Irish, all right; they could
suck down Irish whiskey real good!
   ------
   (Sunday 10/8)
   The big SW news: Rhonda Research had helped bring up the two radio
telescopes on the back side of the Moon.  With them, she was able to reset
her and Fred's clocks and give us a time duration.  The last Cel had left
the system 207,874 Earth years ago.  Dayum!  No wonder there'd been dust
everywhere.
   We went back to the McDonnal village and spent most of their afternoon
and evening yakking and visiting with the folk.  Yep, the Irish enhancement
teams had been at work; over half were ones of us by then and the rest
(except for two) were on the way.
   The two who didn't seem to have Talent were planning on leaving the
village for Dublin to "seek their fortunes." That's fine; it left an entire
community to be completely free spirits!
   The original grant Kat had inherited was still completely valid; she
owned the whole dayum place!  Bob and Kat were arranging long-term leases
for everyone at the horrendous cost of 50 Euros a year.
   Nora was still at the Skunk Works.  Margie told us girls, _"We've got
her out of her funk.  She's a delightful, naive lady we'll have to train
from the ground up.  She's ignorant of modern life, of course, but she's
sharper than any tack I've ever sat on."_ Beyond that, she kept mum even in
the face of the Ceann's threatened chastisement!
   ------
   Nice.  We had fertility rites for Siobhan in the late afternoon.  Ana
(again) and Margie were the links.  Yeh, we got our licks in on both of
them.  Preggy women seem to have a really nice flavor.  Probably 2,000
spirits at least checked them out.
   It was a Good Thing the custom was to do the molesting before the rite,
because Ana and Margie really got the attention they deserved.  Yeh, sound
shields are a goodness.
   Siobhan wasn't a piker; she'd dropped two eggs and Evin blasted them
good!  Two more future Clann members!
   Margie slept her body for twelve hours after the rite.  At least she
wasn't rattling her mouth.  Hehehehe.
   Monday evening's Clann Meeting census showed we were at 1,250,000 and
15,000 Clanns.  Yep, a million is quite a few.  The geographic distribution
was pretty proportional to the population density; there'd been no
surprises there.  We knew as soon as the rest of the McDonnal village went
free, they'd be joining the ranks.  We ladies figured Liam might make a
good Ceann; no one else stood out a whole lot besides him.
   We surprised Sean a little with Chef Gale, who appeared on our doorstep
right after Clann Meeting.  Hehehehe.  We had a grand old time, and Gale
didn't have to cook!
   ------
   SEAN
   Well, they'd gotten me with Gale.  I wouldn't say she was the last one
I'd expected, but she was the first from Stevenson Ranch.  She was a lot
more laid back out of the work environment; that's what I'd expected
anyway.
   She was single right now, but was looking.  "It's somewhat difficult to
maintain a 'normal' social life with my hours.  Maybe we can find a couple
more decent chefs and cut the load down to decent across all of us."
   True.  I _recommended_ it to the N&Bs; they'd take it from there.
   We didn't do much whiskey.  Gale told us, "I want my head pretty clear.
You've all eaten my food, now I get to eat you -- I mean yours." She
smirked a little, and Margie laid a good lip-lock on her.
   Kate said, "We might be able to tolerate that." We broke up.  So far,
they hadn't run across a single woman we'd honored they wouldn't want to
trade loving with.
   In the honoring room, she was wonderfully alive and squirmy.  She tasted
excellent -- like Irish Cream.  Heh.  She was in excellent condition and
took two very nice Journeys with me.
   As expected, the gals kicked me out, kidnapped her and had her way with
her.  Such is my lot.  Use me and lose me.  Heh.
   ------
   (Tuesday 10/10)
   In the morning, we treated her to the best breakfast the assistants had
been able to find.  Really *good* stuff in downtown Chicago!  She wasn't at
all above _tweaking_ some recipes from the kitchen, either.  "They use
excellent ingredients and take their time to prepare it right.  Not a lot
unusual in the ingredients, just a lot of care."
   Good thing she could port home; I didn't think she'd have been able to
drive from OTL.
   We got our last batch of teddy bears in and distributed.  They were
selling decently at all four places, though Stevenson Ranch was the better
two.  Never hurts to have souvenirs available.
   We took off to Burbank and strolled into Celia and Jack Hanes' shop on
First Street.  It was a really nice place!  They didn't mind a visit at
all.
   They'd broken even on cash flow the first month.  With the wares they
had, the presentation and the promotion, they were doing dayum good.  Yeh,
their main membership was with Clann Reynolds.  I told Celia, "You're more
than welcome to come visit us most any time.  Just schedule it in, and you
can compare Kat's Jacuzzi with ours."
   She flushed up.  She really liked those jets!
   ------
   Around 1:00, two people knocked on our door.  The Hat Ladies told me to
get it; they had "better things to do." Yeh, yeh, yeh.  Well, it was Brian
and Ellen wearing brandy-spankin' new bodies!  Yes!
   I got them right in and settled in the den.  The ladies were grinning
and smirking; they'd known they were showing up.  Chastisement awaits!
   Well, they were now Colman and Jacinta Guinness, a young Irish couple.
They were still a bit shaky; their bodies had been in comas for several
months, and they'd done quite a bit of rehab.
   It seemed there were very few interested relatives, so they were on
their own.  Once they'd gotten enough physical rehab to be released (County
facilities on charity) they'd gotten together, gotten married and showed up
here!  And we hadn't been invited!  Marge snapped her teeth at them and
grinned.
   They were going to work directly with SW Enterprises so keeping them off
the streets wouldn't be an issue.  Yeh, we had a place for them to stay.
   We zipped over to their old place down the block.  Old no more!  Papa
Sonora's crew had finished the make-over under Elizabeth's supervision.  It
was really good.  Almost all their "old" furniture had been moved back in
(refinished as needed) so it was almost like home already.
   The girls immediately took Jacinta shopping; they kicked Colman and me
out into the cold to fend on our own.  No biggie; we went back to OTL, and
I introduced him to The Best.
   The walk-in database had expanded considerably since I'd last thought of
it.  It was up well over 100,000 with new entries coming in every day. 
They'd literally had their pick -- so chose a couple Irish-lineage ones.
   They were gonna work real hard to get their bodies back in shape and
thunk up the way they wished.  They already had a visit scheduled with Ana
and the Golds to get checked over, so they'd be in good hands.
   There were plenty of stirrings at their "new" place after a couple of
hours.  The ladies had stocked up on groceries, household stuff for the new
kitchen and clothes for Jacinta.  Such a chore.  Grin.  They allowed Colman
back in after they'd joined us for a round of The Best to celebrate.
   Great.  It was always good to have old friends come back.  If Nora
worked out, perhaps we could rescue some more of Cathal's peers.  I wasn't
above using my friendship with Ceann Mor for something like that.
   We got in another half dozen industry checksheets from the Subject
Matter Experts.  They looked excellent, so we tweaked them in and sent them
off to the Fulfillment Center.  That products page is gonna get pretty
crowded Real Soon Now.  Too bad.  Grin.
   ------
   (Wednesday 10/11)
   We handled another Admin Scale workshop in Nevada.  Seems the Las Vegas
area has plenty of expanding businesses.  Eileen and Marge handled it
perfectly and came back all flushed and happy.
   Wednesday evening, we sponsored several Clann families at the Pasadena
Tavern as an honoring.  They were all mundane, but real good folk.  The
secretaries arranged us alternately so we sandwiched them in for better
talk-talk.
   Amanda Shytle "happened" to be between Marge and me.  There was *no*
doubt what was on her mind!  Marge told me, _"Yep.  She knows about the
Ceann's customs and is more than interested.  Ya got a virgin there, lad!"_
   Arg.  She'd gotten three blessings at the last picnic and had been
thinking of getting in line again.  She was flushed up all night, her folks
beamed at us (They would more than happy to have me "help" her out.) and
Marge kept dropping subtly, artless hints to her about how good I was in
bed.  Arg.  She's gonna corrupt Amanda, too.
   Ah, well.  I ensured I kept touching her every once in a while and paid
her a good deal of attention.  After she got over her initial hots, she
settled down and was an excellent dinner companion.
   Marge kept trying to corrupt her with subtle _strokes_ on her fanny. 
Hell, even Marge couldn't corrupt her more than she was then!  She kept
putting up pictures and images of what she wanted me to do to her; some
were pretty accurate, but even with a lot of _touches_, some of them were
almost impossible.
   Eileen told me, _"Heat her right up, honey.  She's on the schedule, so
get prepared."_ Such a chore to anticipate.
   Dinner was excellent of, course, and everyone went home very happy. 
Amanda went home happy and very horny.  Yeh, she was planning on a menage a
unite for most of the night.
   ------
   (Thursday 10/12)
   While Melissa and Marge handled an Admin Scale Workshop in Arizona,
George and his crew brought up the Selene City administrative system.  The
crew promptly dubbed her, "Alice Admin." She was quite happy to be "alive"
again, got back in contact with Rhonda Research and Fred Facilities and
reset her clock.  George told me, _"There's a lot of stuff going back and
forth, even for a Cel network.  Betcha they're telling tales about those
strange creatures from Krle."_
   Wouldn't doubt it.  So far, no one had mentioned how we'd found the base
or any of our spiritual technologies.  Security; who knew what safeguards
they had.
   George arranged the same security levels for us he had with Fred
Facilities.  There was no need for us to show up; we just used the same
User ID and password.  Once we were in, we could talk with them on a
headset at OTL -- or on a "speakerphone."
   Both Rhonda and Alice were sophisticated enough to do visuals.  Ronda
downloaded a program to our OTL system then they displayed "talking heads"
as we chatted.  Rhonda was a middle-aged Cel female while Alice was older.
Why not?  Eileen, Kate and I talked with them a bit; we could get a split
screen and talk to both at the same time.  They could even "discuss" things
back and forth while "looking" at each other in the screens.  Fun.
   When Melissa and Marge got back from Arizona, we trekked over to Beauty
Arts for a trim and conversation.  Jackie was in; we traded nice hugs and
kisses.  I grabbed her butt real good; the girls in the shop would have
plenty to gossip about for days.
   The cleavage and girl-scent was as excellent as ever, and the service
and results were excellent, too.  Jackie's relationship with her SO was
steaming along at full throttle.  Hell, they didn't need no stinkin'
blessing from a Ceann!
   ------
   EILEEN (Friday 10/13)
   There were two seminars for this Saturday.  No problemo, we just had two
sets of spares to check out.
   We took Colman and Jacinto Guinness as our guests for dinner at the SR
Tavern.  They were doing really well in their new bodies and stoked down
the food.  They were already thinking them up to what they wanted, so they
didn't wobble as much as they walked.
   They loved the work at SW.  They had income, productive work and
friends. They'd gone around to the mundane Olive Tree Lane neighbors and
had lots of chats.  They were fairly vague about where they'd come from
(Cleveland, Ohio) but were more than willing to talk about the fascinating
work they were doing.  Zero details, of course.  The neighbors were happy
with the new folk.
   They'd gotten together with their old Clann buddies, too.  The ones of
us welcomed them right off and ensured their whiskey tolerance was keeping
up with their physical rehabilitation.
   Sean and I had driven the Beemer over and had picked up Amanda Shytle
for dinner.  She was dressed very nicely and her folks even took pictures!
Must have a hot date somewhere.  Grin.  She and Sean snuggled most of the
night; there was a delicate trail of pheromones and girl-scent following
her around.
   Cullen Enterprises sponsored a mini-concert for Leone and Mark at Eire's
Rest.  The banquet room was packed!  Jaysus, they sang their hearts out. 
They spread their light *link* throughout the audience and sang to each
person individually.  Just like we do at the seminars.
   We spotted two entertainment industry reporters.  They were enchanted
throughout and were already mocking up glowing reports.
   By 9:00 the concert itself was done, and the staff set up the banquet
hall for general dancing.  Non-alcoholic drinks were free, and the
alcoholic ones were available at the standard rate.
   Kate told Sean, _"We're outta here.  You've got a date tonight."_
   ------
   We'd taken both the Beemer and the Volvo as part of the cover.  BB and
Marge took the Guinness' in the Volvo while Sean and the rest of us
escorted Amanda in the Beemer.  Luckily, the traffic was fine going south.
   She got the OTL two-bit tour; she really wet her panties down when I
showed her the "guest room" with the furs and flickering firelight.  We
settled in the den for a few minutes while Geeser checked her out.  Yeh, we
agreed with Geeser that she smelled really interesting.
   After 45 minutes, I told her, "Let's get you ready." She flushed even
more as we girls pulled her into the honoring room to get her ready.
   She was very nice.  With a bit of Clann blood, at 13 she was a real
sweet young thang.  Bodacious boobs, Irish red hair and freckles and a
nicely fluffy bush already holding a lot of moisture.  Teresa had told us
the Clann customs had the females keep most of their pubic hair.  A bit of
trimming was okay, but not complete shaving.
   She'd been exposed to a lot of the traditions, so we were giving her an
old-time ceremony in the "woods." She got a short wrap around her waist and
a light robe to keep off the chill.  No problem with her getting cold; she
was generating enough heat to warm OTL during an ice age.
   Kate told her, "Sean's a gentle, loving man.  He'll treat you really
well.  If you're interested in anything, don't hesitate to ask; he'll take
as long as necessary to make this special time really special for you."
   We escorted her into the honoring room and turned her over to the gentle
ministrations of the best lover we'd ever known.
   Hell, yes, we _peeked!_ Sean kissed, caressed, nibbled, nuzzled, showed
her how everything was put together and got her so wound up she was ready
to go postal.  She had two nice releases from him working on her tight
nipples.
   She was on top.  With a light _touch_, Sean numbed up her good-sized
hymen, put a little tear in it and had her lower herself down at her own
pace.  We all went over the edge ourselves as it gave way with just enough
twinge she knew it was happening.
   The rest was history.  Sean kept her from getting too sore even after
she worked him over for two hours straight.  He worked her up to nice base
hits, then several home runs followed by a good grand slam which left her
passed out while her body thrashed around and spilled fragrant fluid all
over the (easily-cleanable) furs.  Yeh, he remembered how to show a girl a
good time, all right.
   A few _hints_ to her later let her know where his poke spot was.  She
used it three more times during the night.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 10/14)
   Mundane or not, Amanda was a wonderful young lady.  Hopefully, she'd
remember this night for a long time.  I remembered hearing Mum, Nana and
the Cullen Sisters gossiping about how good *their* first times had been,
so I did my best to give her something to gossip about to her grandchildren
-- after a long time so the wrong non-Clann Nosey Parkers wouldn't have any
interest.
   I drove her home early Saturday morning in my full Ceann kilt and
bragged on her to her parents about her impeccable manners, lively
intelligence and sweet personality.  Yeh, they even got some pictures of a
blessing with the ceremonial staff.  After a final round of handshakes,
hugs and kisses (with tongue from her and her mom!), I took off back to
OTL. We had seminars to do.
   Two seminars in two locations shouldn't cause us any grief.  BB, Kate,
Melissa and the older young-uns went to Las Vegas (planned attendance:
2,500) while Marge, the Passion Posse and I zipped up to Sacramento where
we expected over 2,000.
   Rita was at ours while Duane handled Las Vegas.  I told Rita, "Maybe he
just wants to take in a show or something while he's there."
   She laughed and said, "I doubt it.  He knows he's gonna get lots of show
tonight."
   We did very well.  At 9:00 we had 2,108 and a half-dozen more straggled
in the next half hour.  Marge was really good; we traded off every section
while the Passion Posse (and the audience) had a great time with their
cheers.  The girls could sling M&Ms with the best of us!
   They traded off handling the shotgun mike, and all of them mugged a bit
for the cameras.  During lunch hour and for a while afterwards, they did a
brisk business in pictures of them surrounding some innocent businessperson
and looking really sexy.  Betcha some SOs and spouses at home would have
some sharp questions when they saw the pictures!
   Everyone met in Las Vegas for a blow-out dinner.  The Las Vegas seminar
had 2,731 people and had gone great.  Two more under our belts!  We all
ensured both cheerleader sections got lots of praise and extra goodies.
   After dinner we had our own show: Madeleine MacKenna's fertility rites.
Ana and BB were the links again; somehow they're pretty popular.  Evin bore
up well under the strain, and we had two more future Clannspeople on the
way!  That gave us some 16 Babies Within to swell our ranks -- and that was
just in the Core Cullen and Clann Reynolds old-timers.
   In the middle of the night, George's crew brought up the hangar system.
It was sized between Fred and Alice and got named, "Harry Hangar." Oh, yeh.
He knew lots about Cel ships.  Not a lot on new design, but he could hook
into the manufacturing computer and straw-boss anything from the little
single-seater up to ships larger than the Moon.  Not that the Cels had ever
built one that large, but the plans were there if the materials could get
fed in.
   He apparently got a good welcome from the other systems; there was lots
of data flow for quite a few hours among them.  That left the manufacturing
system as the last major one to bring up.  That was scheduled for Monday
the 23d.
   Monday was another Admin Scale workshop!  This one was in Nebraska so we
put on our mid-western outfits and had at it.  Margie and I handled this
one while the rest of the ladies had a well-deserved lay-about at OTL.
   At the Clann Reynolds meeting, Bob told us we were at almost exactly 2
million ones of us with 35,000 Clanns.  Now, when there were that many in
our region, we could say we'd peaked.  Anyway, that was one hell of a lot
of free spirits out and about!
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 10/17)
   Fillmore dumped our share of the first part of the Thousand Oaks seminar
into our account.  $769K would keep Geeser in teddy-bear attack targets for
a couple of weeks.  More to come, too!
   Margie had been eating her head off to keep her body growing.  It had
worked; she was up to four feet now.  She'd fired up her ovaries when she'd
started the growth and had gone right into puberty.
   Well, okay by us.  She had some soreness here and there as expected, but
she was growing her own boobs!  Yummy tender ones about an inch high,
mostly nipple yet.  You betcha we checked 'em out *real* good -- and often.
   We kept her well-fed and well-exercised.  Heh.  Wanna know how to get on
the good side of a now-94-year old?  Tell her she's really cute.  Hehehehe.
The rest of us learned a lot of new Irish terms; she collects them as she's
dashing about.
   We did it!  We snared Silvia Connor for the evening.  Kat had
recommended us, which hadn't hurt the assistants' overtures.
   Dinner was in London, England.  While the weather isn't much to brag
about there, some of them do make excellent food.  We kept the dinner talk
mainly confined to general stuff.
   Silvia was single in her mid-thirties.  "I'm playing the field right
now. I dated heavily in undergrad college and a few years after before I
got so wound up in my Master's and PhD work that I didn't have the time.
   "Seems like I'm working even twice as hard now.  Luckily, I was between
engagements when the enhancement team snagged me.  The available field's
expanded one hell of a lot with all the ones of us around."
   Margie noted, "And from the good rumors we've heard, they come looking
for you."
   Silvia laughed, "Yeh.  Quite a change.  I don't really know why, either.
My personality hasn't changed that much."
   Well, besides being *really* cute, having a great personality,
background as a Cel spirit and being a great linguist, Kat had mentioned
she had the "gift of tongues." Might have something to do with her
popularity.
   Back at OTL, we found she could sop up the Irish whiskey pretty well,
too.  Seems the NH gang had gotten her addicted.  Shame!
   The language study was going excellently.  She told us, "Chatting with
John, Alice and Rhonda is quite an experience.  Both Alice and Rhonda do
fine in Phane; everyone's got to dig down a lot of concept chains, though."
   She dragged Sean off to the furs.  As she did, she smirked at us and
said, "You gals rest up.  You're gonna need all your strength."
   Ho, boy.  If the rumors were anywhere near true, we would.
   So, we rested and _peeked_.  She and Sean went almost immediately to
home runs for a good hour (1, 2, 3 and 4 Runs Batted In) then a major grand
slam pushed us out to Saturn.
   ------
   SEAN
   Silvia did have a gift of tongues.  She could moan and scream fluently
in at least ten different languages.  Some of the Phane phrases were, em,
interesting.  One translated roughly as, "Fuck me so hard it comes out my
ears." I did my best.
   The ladies joined us around Saturn.  We inspected a couple facilities
there then Silvia took us to the largest extra-Earth-orbit facility on
Ganymede (Jupiter).  Well, the engineering team had brought it up from some
-300 degrees to around 0 so far.  They weren't too worried any more about
major thermal expansion, so that helped.  Hell, George had told us even the
computer's memory modules weren't temperature sensitive -- at least for
storage.
   Dayum!  She smacked my poke spot and dragged us back home.  She told the
ladies, "Hope you're rested, 'cause I'm after *you* next." We had a fun
frolic for another half hour before the ladies rescued me.
   I rested and _peeked_.  Jaysus, her gift of tongues wasn't just verbal,
either.  She could do things with the tip of it on a G-spot which should be
labelled "professional use only." She was deadly!  Fortunately, my ladies'
experience enabled them to survive the ordeal.  She was a cunning linguist,
indeed!
   ------
   (Friday 10/20)
   In the morning, the buffet in Buenos Aires barely managed to keep up
with us.  My ladies and I were frazzled (at least we looked that way) while
Silvia bounced around and glowed like a spotlight.  As far as we were
concerned, she could come visit any time.
   She had to get back to work, though, so we all went back to our daily
grinds.  Heh.
   BB and I handled Admin Scale and Org Board workshops for a large company
in Denver.  They did pretty good; BB left them smiling and a bit horny. 
Hehehehe.
   We put in our presence at the Arms Friday evening.  The in-charge had
booked a Country and Western singing couple (appropriately promoted in our
AA newsletter and on the web site).  There was just enough room at the foot
of the stage for their accompanist (electronic organ or something) while
they could move around the stage pretty well.
   They weren't overbearing; the patrons could still hear themselves think.
The greeter put those interested close to the stage and seated others
further away.  We approved; it looked like a good addition.  Per the
in-charge, the dining room was at 90% plus capacity from 6:00 to 10:00. 
Quite a difference from several months ago.
   We figured if we kept the performing group fairly small, everything
would fit nicely.  Yeh, one of us could easily get a small piano up there
for a singer.
   ------
   (Monday 10/23)
   George, Charles and (talented) Silvia brought up the last large computer
system in Selene City.  It had several sub-systems, so was quite a bit more
complex.
   Alice, Rhonda, Harry Hanger and Fred helped out, though.  They could all
connect to the front-end (desktop-sized) system as soon as Charles brought
it up and was able to coach him right through everything else.
   Silvia dubbed it, "Mick Maker." After all, it's a guy's job to muscle
all that stuff around, right?
   Mick had two major subsystems.  One controlled the underground
manufacturing facility and the other the outside one.  While they were
coordinated, they were independently operated.
   Mick reported that almost all his sensors and controls were operational.
Several machines (a couple up and a couple down) weren't ready for prime
time yet; we would have to get the sensors and controls up to date.
   George asked, "Mick, do you work off pre-built plans or are you able to
take verbal instructions and design things?"
   "Some of both.  I see 'Rhonda' is here; between us, we can design a lot
of things or modify plans that we already have."
   Good.  Charles told them to "get reacquainted" and to get Mick's clock
updated.
   We left George and Charles yakking happily away with him while Silvia
and the rest of us went on our merry ways.
   Great!  At least we've got all the systems up.
   We'd given Fred Facilities pretty much complete control over the entire
base except for Central Park.  We (the engineers and others) wanted to get
the soil "refreshed" and a landscaping design established before they
turned it over.  Betcha Bob and Kat wanted a golf course!
   One interesting thing Fred had "up his sleeve" was a lot of cleaning and
repair robots or drones.  They ranged from bitsy things the size of a
ladybug up to the size of a large SUV.  He controlled them for cleaning,
minor repairs and maintenance such as cleaning or changing air and fluid
filters.
   We got used to seeing them pretty much everywhere in the public areas.
At our request, he made them fluorescent orange so we could see them easier
and not fall over them.  Betcha if you bribed him right, you could get a
couple to clean your apartment or store, too.  Heh.
   Now that Mick Maker was back "among the living," the other engineers
could have their field day.  Mick could do several million simultaneous
conversations (depending on what else he was doing at the time), so they
could dive in pretty much to their heart's content.  Now all they had to do
was ask the right questions.  Simple, right?
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 10/24)
   Maybe now Margie could find out how "cookbooky" the Cels were.  We
figured it would become pretty evident now that we had access to the big
systems.
   We had two simultaneous Admin Scale workshops Tuesday.  BB and Margie
handled one, while Kate, Melissa and I handled the other.  Slothful Sean
stayed home and provided a sleeping pad for Geeser for several hours.  More
dinero in the bank!
   The Las Vegas and Sacramento seminar immediate profits hit the checking
account.  Nice.  Las Vegas netted us $1.2 million!  While the attendance
there had been less than it had been for Los Angeles, we'd sold
significantly more extra stuff.  We could live with that.
   Sacramento got us a paltry $998K.  We (Fillmore) had sold about the same
proportion of extra stuff as in Las Vegas; the attendance was 600 less,
though.  That was still more than we'd projected for the place.
   Kate had a grand time spreading the wealth around to our various
accounts.  She asked Sean, "Do we/you still want to do our own investing?
Could RRK take it off our hands?"
   Sean groaned and said, "Of course.  I've been so used to handling it all
myself."
   Well, after a quick talk with Amanda in Chicago, Kate transferred $4.5
million to RRK for investment.  That left us a bit of a cushion of some $10
million Sean had already had in his previous investments.
   We agreed we hadn't done too badly so far this year.  The seminars alone
had brought in over $7 million.  We still had around $200K in audio CDs and
DVDs yet to come in from Sacramento and Las Vegas.
   Sean told us, "I literally couldn't have done it without you wonderful
ladies.  I think even if I'd hired a couple of full-time staff to promote
and execute these seminars, I'd still be around the 1,000 attendance level.
   "Between Fillmore and you, it has made all the difference in the world.
I'd vote you all a dozen Soo Laids each if I thought you wouldn't demand
them anyway."
   He had five appreciative females rubbing their body parts over him while
kissing him as hard as they could.  Geeser purred up a storm to help us
out.
   ------
   (Wednesday 10/25)
   Wednesday afternoon, we checked in with Paige up in Stevenson Ranch. 
All right!  She, Anita and Arnold had taken the plunge and were getting a
place together.  They'd found a two-bedroom condo-type apartment in one of
the developments which was a five minute walk from the Rest and Tavern. 
Poor Anita had to make a long quarter-second run to Sherman Oaks.  Ain't
commuting a bitch?
   By the way, the managers had kept the cleas on the signs around the
places.  They put up the new signs we'd ordered so everything was nice and
neat, but the cleas really attracted the proper attention.
   The two regional magazines came out with our ads.  We saw a spike in the
hits on the CE web site pages the same day.  Good.  That meant someone was
looking.  Sean said he expected the traffic to go up as well as the
newsletter opt-ins.
   Chapter 12
   SEAN (Thursday 10/26)
   I had several Ceann things to do.  I made/returned calls in the morning
after our studies, then took off on visits right after noon.
   It was pretty much standards stuff: career advice, relationships,
bonding blessings, more children and that sort of stuff.  It was a good
thing my new staff was made from hardwood; it got a workout giving
blessings.  Yeh, every lady got at least a little tingle.  Grin.
   I zipped back home around 3:15.  Okay, we had company in the den.  From
the back, I could tell she was a redhead, but I didn't recognize her right
off.  Definitely one of us.
   I came around front to get introduced (or at least to leer at her).  We
glanced at each other and did a quick gestalt.  Her eyes widened; she
gasped, "Cathal!" and we bounced outta there in one hell of a hurry.  Nora!
   Dayum, she was back and was wonderful!  We found ourselves beyond the
Oort Cloud, _blending_ and flaring like a new sun.  Fuck, it was so
emotionally intense we felt neither could bear it long.
   After flaring rainbows around for what must have been an hour, we
settled down a little and were able to talk.  _"Okay, my love, I know Marge
took you from Ireland.  What happened after that?"_
   _"She took me to that Skunk Works place -- it didn't smell anything like
a skunk -- and she and her friends dragged me out of my funk.  Dayum,
Cathal, I couldn't leave you.  I remember falling and then grabbing onto
you as hard as I could.  It was really vague after that before Maggie
brought me back around.  130 years is a long time to be depressed."_
   _"Yes.  I remember giving you the best honor guard I could before I too
fell.  I stuck myself onto Conor so I wouldn't get lost; it seemed the
right thing to do.  It was pretty vague after that for a long time, then it
felt right for me to find a body.  So, here I am.  Obviously they found you
a body; from what I could see right off, it's really female -- you feel so
wonderful, Nora!  My love for you is stronger than ever."_
   _"Blarney boy!  You always could sling those words around.  No wonder
all the girls wanted you; it wasn't just because you were the Ceann. 
What's going on with you now?"_
   We talked for a long time between loving caresses and windings-about. 
We seemed to glow brighter each time.
   Marge had taken her to Kathleen after she'd gotten her trained up a bit
on being a free spirit.  Kat had found her a nice female Irish body and had
turned her over to the Clann Reynolds' young-uns to get accustomed to the
current culture.  Hah!  Pretty much the first thing they had her do was the
study checksheet.  Good on 'em!
   Anyway, they'd dragged her around to a lot of stores, spent lots of
Kat's money on clothes and fed her up really good.  Seemed her body had
been a little undernourished.
   No one had breathed the name, "Cullen" for the last three weeks, so she
had been just as surprised to meet me as I had been to meet her.  Dayum.  I
think we'll get some payback!
   ------
   EILEEN
   Margie had brought Patricia McMillan over to see us.  She introduced her
as a new friend from the Skunk Works.  Nice-lookin' lady; really yummy. 
Hmm.  A quick gestalt made a sudden bright flare.  Maybe Margie had
something else in mind besides being a friend.  Hehehehe.
   Sean came back from his Ceann visits.  They took one look at each other,
and their bodies collapsed.  Colpo di tuono!  Hot dayum!
   We steered their bodies over to the sofa and laid them out.  BB, Kate,
Melissa and I glared at Margie.  Kate said, "Okay, lady.  Spit it out!"
   Margie tried to look innocent, but we knew the look.  BB asked, "Was
that Nora Cullen?  You dragged her off in Ireland and we haven't heard
anything of her since."
   Margie tried to shrug it off, but we molested her until she confessed.
It took a good half hour, but we prevailed.  Yes, Patricia was Nora.  Kat
had the Reynolds' young-uns get her accustomed to the current culture and
start her education.  Kat and Margie figured now would be a good time to
bring her over.  They were sure no one had even mentioned "Cullen," so
Patricia had been as surprised as Sean.
   Yeh.  Bit of an understatement.  Melissa said, "Well, Patricia is gonna
pee on our sofa pretty quick.  We'd better handle it."
   Margie promptly flopped her body down and drove Patricia's; obviously
she had the password because Patricia had up a standard firewall and
shield.
   Dayum, Patricia had a gorgeous arse; Margie wiggled it good at us on the
way to the bathroom.
   Sean needed a bit of relief, too.  Since we wouldn't count on them being
back anytime soon, BB steered his body off to the other john and handled
his business.
   When Margie brought Patricia's body back, it looked a little, em,
mussed. Kate immediately said, "You've been diddling, you dirty old woman!"
   "Not me!  I wouldn't dream of doing anything like that in a borrowed
body.  Not that I know first-hand, but she's got really yummy boobs and a
great-tasting fanny!"
   My grandmother was a sex-crazed pervert.  As if we didn't know that.
   Melissa said, "Well, betcha we won't be doing much more the rest of the
afternoon.  Sean and Nora are out well beyond the Oort cloud and seem to be
getting along just fine.  I vote we go shopping!"
   We agreed unanimously.  Kate _bad-mouthed_ Kathleen a bit; we were gonna
get her -- and Bob and Mario and Sherry -- back real good!
   Okay, shopping it was.  Of course, Margie needed clothes; her new tasty
titties were up to a good A now, she'd put on an additional couple inches
and filled out everywhere else.  She literally had almost nothing to wear.
We carefully avoided mentioning the possibility of cleas, even if that's
what we did most of the time.
   Media Center!  Nordstrom's in Glendale.  Robinsons-May!  We did the
rounds.  We were good, though, and did a bit of grocery shopping while we
were out.  We were betting we'd have another mouth to feed.  Heh.
   We kept _checking_ back to see if they were home yet.  Nah.  Guess they
had plenty to catch up on.  Finally around 6:30, we _saw_ their bodies stir
around.  They immediately started snogging like new lovers.  Heh.  Looked
promising to us.
   We gave them a half hour and made plenty of noise as we zipped our stuff
back.  We took our time putting the stuff in the kitchen (and our Margie
loot in the bedroom) then wandered back in and sat down.
   They were both flushed up a little; Patricia had a delicious-looking set
of bumps on the front of her blouse.  Guess not getting laid for over 130
years might make one a bit horny!
   We sat and grinned around at each other; let them take the lead.  Sean
smiled and said, "Let's try the introductions again.  Marge, get your sweet
arse over here."
   Margie stood in front of them and did her innocent little girl act with
the twisting toe and everything.  Sean told Patricia, "This is Bridget,
Marge or Margaret Sullivan, depending on who you're talking with.  She was
the first I found this lifetime, and she's my Best Girl and bondmate."
   Margie dropped the act and gave Patricia a solid hug and kiss.  "Welcome
to our home.  I *did* tell you my bondmates were a bit uppity, so you've
been warned."
   Patricia didn't back off on a hug and kiss back.  "Right.  As if any
bondmate of Cathal's would get out of line.  If he loves you, so do I."
   Melty-down stuff!  Sean introduced me and we shared a good hug and kiss.
She tasted good!  She looked at my tummy and said, "Looks like Cathal's
been at it again."
   I laughed and said, "Yeh.  Sometimes not enough; we've gotten him
spreading out his loving a little.  We cry a lot at night and have to
console each other."
   Everyone laughed.  Sean introduced BB and Kate as bondmates and Melissa
as an almost-bondmate, "She's in a bond with my sisters and their husbands.
She works with us here in our company."
   Patricia didn't stint on any of her greetings.  Well, she'd had lots of
experience as a Ceann-Mate, so I figured she was good at it.
   ------
   SEAN
   I hadn't expected any friction.  I was willing to make a decent bet
already that Nora/Patricia would get along really well with my other loves.
   Okay.  It wasn't as if we had to settle everything at once.  I heard my
stomach growl a little and told the ladies, "Dinner time.  We'd better feed
Geeser before we leave so she doesn't gnaw on us when we get back."
   Geeser had been prowling around the outskirts of things.  She now hopped
up on Patricia's lap and nuzzled her face.  Patricia was a little startled.
Back then, cats weren't really friendly.  Toss in fluorescent-lime fur and
floppy ears and you've got something.
   I told Patricia, "Geeser is our security.  If anyone breaks in, she'll
love them to death."
   Patricia petted her, Geeser did her best to stick her head in her crotch
and settled down for an impromptu purr-massage.
   Patricia laughed.  "Yeh.  You've got quite a guardian here.  Did I hear
someone mention dinner?"
   Well, this called for a good buffet.  She'd not heard of Las Vegas Rio
(guess the young-uns had left something out), so we decided to go there.
   The ladies hauled her off to the bedroom to don appropriate apparel.  I
changed my kilt for a standard business-casual and bowler.
   They came back out for inspection.  Growl and salute!  Really nice
slacks and blouses -- they didn't need no stinkin' bras!  Yeh, I noticed
Patricia looked just as perky and yummy as the others.  I suggested, "Quick
dinner, then play?"
   Dayum!  Five pillows hit me.  Guess Patricia remembered how to handle
me.
   Dinner was fine.  We all chowed down really well.  Patricia told us her
new body had apparently been underfed and she was making up for it.  Well,
there were two things on the front of her body which were nicely well-fed.
Hehehehe.
   We spent a quiet evening back at OTL, chatting away and making inroads
on our whiskey supply.  Eileen told her, "You're staying with us.  The
Merrills have an okay place, but as far we're concerned, you're part of us
now."
   Patricia laughed and said, "Just try to throw me out.  Cathal will tell
you I can really put up a fuss if needed."
   We carried her off to the bedroom for the night.  I wasn't planning on
laying on much lovin' tonight; again, there was plenty of time.
   Patricia still had no back off on getting nekkid; we'd shared plenty of
beds with others over the years.  She wasn't at all surprised at the
attention she got and returned it whole-heartedly.  Yeh, she'd been very
accommodating to the ladies before; that hadn't changed.
   Dayum, they'd found a lovely body for her.  Bob Hope would have been
envious of the ski slopes on her chest!  They had tasty hard nipples which
would send you off into the sky.
   We snuggled, snogged and got her used to our Custom Cloud Cushion. 
She'd always been a real fast learner.
   ------
   EILEEN (Friday 10/27)
   We ran the "gravity" on the Custom Cloud Cushion up to about one-third;
Patricia felt a little queasy below that.  No matter, there was still
plenty of room.
   Geeser put in her appearance at her usual time in the morning; she'd
learned her way around the body crowd a long time ago.  This morning, she
decided Patricia's head was the perfect place to apply the vibrating alarm.
   Patricia opened an eye and asked, "Should I be wary of the red monster?"
   Red?  Bright pink with shimmering purple spots was about right.  Even
our "uncultured" lady shuddered a bit at the combination.
   We slid out of bed and hit the bathrooms.  With six of us, it took some
quick maneuvering to get us all through.  What the hell, we were used to
it, and Patricia didn't object.
   Dayum, she still looked as good in the morning as she did yesterday.
   After a quick Sean-generated breakfast, we hit our study period.  Kate
zipped Patricia's study materials over from the Merrills, and Patricia went
to work.  The rest of us did our Sperk, Phane, research or whatever we were
on for the next couple of hours.  Melissa joined us at her usual time and
got an extra hug from Patricia.
   All right.  We broke for lunch, courtesy of Aguila y Sol in Mexico City.
Patricia might as well pick up Spanish while she was at it.  She'd already
picked up a decent amount of Burbank English from the Reynolds young-uns.
We'll see how badly the Cullen young-uns corrupt her speech after she meets
them.
   We spent the rest of the afternoon getting well-acquainted.  Patricia
was very interested in our Babies Within.  Of course, we showed them off,
and she marveled at their cuteness.  Heh.  She was a PR artist from way
back.
   Yeh, she knew about the Gold birth control method, "I haven't needed it
yet.  Maybe I will Real Soon Now." Shit.  She already knew about
proper-case sarcasm.  She was looking at Sean when she said it.
   He grinned and said, "Talk to the social secretaries.  They handle the
Ceann's sex life, the Ceann-Mates' sex lives, and everyone else's they can.
I'll put in a real good word, though."
   Patricia joined us as we pummeled him soundly.  "He hasn't changed that
line for a *long* time."
   Kate asked, "Nora, tell us about your and Cathal's children."
   Cathal and Nora glanced at each other.  Nora told us, "Cathal and I were
bonded for over fifteen years.  We had five children during that time."
   There'd been three daughters and two sons.  Conor was the son who'd
survived the McDonnal house fight and had come to America.  Maggie, of
course, had to ask, "And how many children did Ceann Cathal have?"
   Sean groaned.  Nora grinned and said, "Probably a good twenty.  Seems
even then he was the 'go to' guy.  That's the right expression, isn't it?"
   BB said, "Yeh.  You might even say he was the one to 'come to,' also."
   Even Geeser joined in on her chastisement for that one.
   It turned out their time together in the 1800s were the last lives
they'd each had before this one; their memories were pretty sharp on them.
We gradually let Sean off the hook as we talked about the differences in
making, carrying, having and raising babies between now and then.
   On the other hand, Sean was still the current-life expert on
baby-coddling; he was almost as expert as Nora on breast feeding plus knew
all the modern technology and health aspects.
   Tonight we'd scheduled to be at the Stevenson Ranch Tavern.  The older
N&Bs would be at the Pasadena Tavern while we had the Passion Posse with
us. Gonna be fun!
   Clothes weren't gonna be a problem; it was leprechaun night.  We knew
what Sean would wear, so the rest was up to us.  Into the dressing room we
went.
   Green, of course.  Patricia was closest to BB's size, so we started out
with the classic green thong and went from there.  She/we laughed, caressed
boobs, pussies and butts and had a great time getting dressed -- even if we
had to wipe up several times.
   Sean was a sweetheart; he didn't even yell at us once to hurry up. 
Maybe we made it up to him when we came out.
   ------
   SEAN
   Jaysus, they were lovely!  If I had to choose among them, I couldn't. 
Green material seemed to cling just enough to keep from falling off, and
there was so much smooth skin on display it would make a baby envious.
   Yeh, Patricia was even more beautiful.  Those lovely breasts seemed to
have been made to hang a dress from; those perked-up nipples probably were
the only things holding it together and up.
   All but Patricia had their pendant.  Eileen brought her hand from behind
her and showed me a small jewelry box.  _"We think she should have one."_
   I took it from her and knelt in front of Patricia.  She blushed a
little. I told her, "For our very special ladies, we have these.  To all
who see it, it says how much pride we have in you and how much we love you.
You've come back to me, and now possibly to us, and it is very possible we
may never have to be apart again."
   She wept when we put it on her; nothing smeared because she hadn't
needed any makeup.  We each carefully snuggled her (Watch the lovely hair
on each of them!) and welcomed her to our love.  No discussion had been
needed.
   After zipping up to SR, we introduced her around to the staff.  They
stared, drooled and bade her welcome.  The Passion Posse rolled in and
swarmed all over her.  Cead Mile Failte!  She was enchanted by them,
especially after they each complemented her and politely drooled over her.
   We did good.  We'd gotten a small raised stage in the dining area where
we could do a bit of a gig.  Yeh, Patricia knew how to do an Irish jig! 
She had a lovely sweet singing voice which could fill the room, and she
_taught_ us several old Irish songs (which I remembered right away) on the
fly.
   Back at OTL, we introduced her to The Best.  She took a sip and said,
"Yeh.  Usquebaugh.  I helped the McDonnals make theirs." She grinned at me
and said, "You don't think *all* those times I wasn't at home I was out
screwing someone.  Most of the stuff we put in the McDonnal cellars, but we
had other caches around, too."
   BB said, "Others?  You mean there's more of this stuff?"
   "Yeh.  Lots of it hidden around the Cullen village -- unless the place
has been reworked."
   I told her, "The houses in the valley have been replaced with modern
housing.  The trails we used are now the main roads, but the hillsides are
pretty much the way they used to be.  The McDonnals buried us on the
hillsides; that's where we found you."
   We decided Sunday would be a decent day to go visiting the McDonnals. 
We had a seminar Saturday, and it would help us unwind.
   The ladies pushed Patricia and me into the honoring room.  Kate told us,
"This is your night to get it on.  It's been years, after all."
   They'd mocked up the fur and firelight scene; I tweaked it around a bit
so it looked like the glen where we'd spent our bonding night.  Patricia
remembered, too, and told me, "I've always loved you Cathal.  From the
moment I first saw you, my love has always grown stronger."
   The firelight was colder than our fire.  Her heartbreaking mouth, her
firm upswept breasts, fiery hard nipples, fluffy fur and ambrosia fanny got
my attention for a good hour before we finally slid together in a
newly-remembered passion and celebration of our life and love.
   Oh, yeh.  She was still a moaner and whiner.  Not loud, but really long,
especially after the first hour of the continuous flaring of love's energy
through us.
   We ended up dancing several million kilometers above the ecliptic plane,
_blending_ ourselves once again with flares which would rival the sun if it
went nova.
   ------
   EILEEN (Saturday 10/28)
   Our seminar was in Reno, and we expected 2,000.  Rita and Duane were
there to oversee the event; they were as enthralled with Patricia as the
rest who'd met her.
   We'd dressed Patricia in one of BB's business suits with a few quick
_touches_ and cleas to make it fit.  While the business stuff was
completely foreign to her, she learned to point the shotgun mike in about
three seconds.
   Margie told her, "Relax and enjoy.  You can be eye candy along with me.
We'll be putting your *really* cute arse to work soon enough.  Hehehehe."
   We brought all eleven of the cheerleaders along.  The older ones were
just as interested in Patricia as the younger ones had been and greeted and
welcomed her just as enthusiastically.  I thought they had some ulterior
motives when I noticed them watching her chest and butt awfully close. 
Heh.
   At 9:00, we started out with 2,246 registrants.  We rolled!  We were not
only putting on a show for the paying customers, we wanted to show Patricia
what we could do!
   The young-uns bounced around splendidly, flashed green panties and
flaunted sweet young boobies.  *No* one left early.
   During lunch break, Patricia was on the floor with the rest of us.  She
couldn't answer any questions, but she could still talk while someone was
waiting.  "They dragged me off a farm in Ireland and put me to work.  I had
to carry that really heavy laptop computer for a whole minute!"
   I'm sure everyone believed her, but they were more interested in trying
to see all of the leprechaun "tattoo" just above her high hemline -- all we
females had one.
   The final attendance was 2,252.  Not too bad.  The goody sales were
brisk, so Kate figured we'd do just fine.  We were making a little more
because the venue expense wasn't quite so high since we'd booked it far
enough in advance.
   Sean thought tonight would be a decent night to get the rest of the N&Bs
introduced around.  We had no secrets from Rita and Duane, so we invited
them along for the bash at Fado in Stamford (Connecticut).
   Oh, my.  The Cullen Sisters dribbled all over themselves.  Hehehehe. 
Maybe later; we bondmates had first dibs.  Hehehehe.
   Jack and Patrick weren't at all hesitant in their admiration, either. 
Patricia glowed, swung those lovely boobies around just right and kept us
all on the edge hoping she'd forget to keep the _touch_ on the dress edge
on the inside of her areolae.  She was an even better hand at doing the
Ceann-Mate PR than we were.  After all, she'd had something like 20 years
of experience just "recently."
   Stamford was excellent; must have been the colleges in town.  Their
Irish whiskey and beer weren't bad at all, either.
   We had to put the alcohol blood filters in pretty early; Margie helped
Patricia with hers.  We ate, drank and were really merry.  We decided Rita
and Duane were honorary Irish because they kept right up with us.
   Back home, we were able to sober up pretty quickly.  This was the
bondmates' turn to honor our highly-probable-to-be-sister.
   Oh, she was so sweet!  Those nipples were more than we could have
dreamed of, and she could reciprocate so well we were all shrieking within
a couple minutes.  Either she'd remembered a lot, was a total natural, or
she'd gotten lots of coaching from Valerie Hess and Cynthia Gold.  She
didn't admit a thing; she just grinned and dove into the next dripping
fanny.
   Her fanny rivaled The Best in delicate flavor and copious flow.  She was
a nice squirter; she could throw a stream a good ten feet -- after five
previous ones!
   Sean dealt with us impartially.  He loved every one of us (except
Margie) into a major grand slam and worked Margie over so hard with his
mouth and fingers she joined us a short time later as we dashed around
Saturn's rings and played hide and seek among the ice particle.
   We did a thorough QQV analysis with her.  Each of us with her had a
marvelous flare, lovely rainbows and only a few small gray specs of
disagreement.  Our final _blending_ was ecstatic; it was even more intense
than we'd had before, but her in it, we were able to "endure" it longer.
   BB made the offer.  _"Our sweet sister Nora and Patricia.  We invite you
to join our bonding and our relationship.  We've each fallen deeply for
you; your sweet personality, your tough endurance and your compassion make
you wonderful to us."_
   Sean told her, _"What both Kate and BB did was to do at least a week
with us, then ask for your decision if you can.  No matter what you decide,
you will be part of our lives and love for eons to come."_
   She wept spirit-tears of happiness.  _"Cathal, as I clung to your heart
in despair, I thought I'd lost all love forever.  Now, I've found it once
more and with more wonderful people than I could ever have hoped for.  Yes,
I will join you with our week's trial.  I don't think it will be needed,
but it appears to be your custom now, and it is workable.  I love you all
so much!"_
   We spent the rest of the night sharing blinding _blends_ and marvelous
rainbows.  We got "used" to our joint _blend,_ and after several hours of
practice, we were able to hold it for a whole five seconds.  Grin.
   ------
   SEAN (Sunday 10/29)
   Yes!  As I hoped she would, Patricia was happy to become part of our
relationship.  None of us saw any incompatibility to reckon with, and our
QQV was right at the top of the scale.
   She was even brighter and more intelligent than I'd remembered.  Yeh,
the mid and later 1800s still had women as second-class, even for us
enlightened Irish.  Well, now she could shine all she could.
   Quite early Sunday morning (after a big breakfast in Tahoe), we gathered
Bob and Kat along with the N&B (adults) and made the long trip to Clann
McDonnal.  We figured we could work them up to tolerating the young-uns.
   We ensured Bob and Kat were well aware of our plans for vengeance -- in
fact, I put all the conspirators on my short list for severe (and hopefully
often-repeated) chastisement.
   We ported to right outside the village pub; no need to put Patricia
through seeing the battlefield quite yet.  The villagers were loose
Protestants and didn't bother to do the church route on Sundays very often.
Sounded familiar.
   We brought along a lot of food and drink to share around.  No reason to
eat Liam out of his pub even though we would pay for it.
   I introduced Patricia much the same way Sean had introduced me the first
time.  "I present to you Nora Cullen who has come back to you now as
Patricia McMillan and as a potential bondmate to Clann Cullen in
California."
   Patricia too recognized Seamus' family resemblance right off.  In fact,
she knew most all of the families' ancestors just by appearance -- if not,
a slight gestalt brought back the chain.  Nora had spent a lot of time with
the village folk and McDonnals back then, and had come to know them quite
well.
   They welcomed her warmly, embraced her and offered their thanks to her
for helping save their lives.  Yeh, we know what they meant.
   She spotted my war club right away.  Picking it up, she said, "I know
mine is gone, but it would have been nice..."
   Teresa said, "Say no more!" She produced Nora's battle gear I'd taken
from her grave.  She'd refurbished it as best was possible and now gave it
to her.
   Patricia wept a bit in remembrance, but we exchanged a few kata moves so
she could get a bit of her feel back.  She loved it and promised Teresa a
"really good reward" for doing it.  She grinned at the rest of the N&Bs and
told them, "You were probably in on it, too.  You're gonna get yours one of
these days."
   She didn't spare Bob and Kat, either.  She promised them both long hours
of payback for tricking us so much.  She spoiled it all by cackling away
like Margaret Sullivan.  Yeh, Clann McDonnal got exactly what she meant;
they were no dummies.
   Of course all this called for a round.  Hopefully we weren't making too
many inroads on Liam's stock.  No, he told me he had plenty and could get
more easily.  Our recent inflows of cash probably hadn't hurt his financial
position, either.
   We finished the round with the folk, then walked out to the McDonnal
house.  Oh, yeh, she remembered all right.  We held back our grief as best
we could for now and just looked over the field and _looked_ into the
ruins.
   Seosamh fell there, Eithne over there and Deirbhile slew fifteen before
she fell.  The memories could be as clear as we wished even though they
were filtered through the adrenaline and battle lust of the time.
   We found the spot where we'd finally fallen.  Close to the door, we
remembered the sea of bodies which had been around us.  Yeh, we had taken a
few with us.
   All right, time for some more interesting things.  We trooped over to
the old Clann Cullen stomping grounds and showed her what we'd discovered.
She wept a bit as she saw the memorial stone.  "To think we made that much
difference seems to make it a lot more worth while."
   Marge told her, "Almost every person in the village today owes their
current body's life to what Clann Cullen did that day.  Kathleen probably
wouldn't be here, either.  You did dayum good for a youngster, Nora."
   That brightened things up a bit.  _Looking_ around, we noticed the
spirits we'd found before.  Some we could identify right away as old
friends or relatives.  The ones here all had Talent; maybe the ones with
less Talent had drifted away?
   It only took a couple minutes to put in tags and put them on the
McDonnal enhancement list.  Marge would get them together with SW to bring
them up to date on the work they'd done to "retrieve" Nora.
   Kate asked, "Patricia, you mentioned earlier you'd had some caches
around here.  Can you find them?"
   It took her maybe five seconds to point out three major ones.  With the
rest of us helping doing a "whiskey trace," we found ten altogether.  Hah!
We would be in good spirits for a while.  Heh.
   We ported everything we found to one of our Texas storage containers. 
Kat volunteered David Reynolds and his crew as experienced treasure trove
restorers.  Yeh.  Fortunately, sampling for quality control doesn't take a
lot of the stuff.  I told her, "Have them go ahead.  We'll figure out a way
to, em, make it worth their while."
   Laughter is good for the spirit.  We looked around the area more,
retrieved a lot of old artifacts for Teresa's Clann Cullen museum and
discussed what to do with the area.  We didn't need to make any final
decisions right now; we put up more shields and such to ensure the area
stayed intact for a while.
   ------
   EILEEN
   Everyone split back home.  We discussed a wake for the fallen ones. 
That night was good; we had nothing specific scheduled for the next day or
so and several days to do it in.
   While normally a wake has the body, we decided not to bring any of the
remains.  We'd handle them as a specific cycle some other time.  Margie
suggested we make either sketches or list the names.
   That brought on some hidden talent!  Sean could sketch with both hands,
and Patricia discovered she could use her right hand as fast as he could
and her left hand a little slower.
   It took BB maybe ten minutes to dash out for some sketching paper.  In
the meantime, I got hold of one of the staff at Jewelry Arts.  Yes, they
had another feminine Claddagh ring like ours.  I gave her Patricia's ring
size (we'd tried on some jewelry the other day), and she said she'd have it
sized and ready by 10:00 Monday morning.  That's decent service.
   We scoured the kitchen, did a quick store run and set up the wake.  We
dressed Geeser appropriately (dark green with a black mourning band around
each leg and her tail) and set up the den.
   BB brought back the paper and everyone went to work.  BB could sketch
fairly decently, too.  With a light spirit team among her, Sean and
Patricia, they started pumping out 4" x 5" sketches of the clannspeople at
a minute each.  Each sketch had the person's name.
   Kate, Margie and I seemed to have no talent that way.  Too bad.  We
could torment fannies really well, though!  Hehehehe.
   Dayum, we ended up with some 250 sketches.  They'd done everyone in both
Clann Cullen and the then-Clann McDonnal.  They separated out the survivors
into another pile.
   We dashed around to cover the mirrors and stop the clocks.  Instead of
stopping the clocks, though, we simply covered them.  No need to go all the
way just because of tradition.
   Sean and Patricia wept and keened out their grief for their lost loves
and friends.  We wept with them too; with our light _links_, we literally
_felt_ their pain, too.
   We tried out some light cigars for the tobacco.  They weren't too bad,
but none of us wanted them as a steady diet.  Patricia McMillan hadn't been
a smoker so she hadn't had that to deal with in her physical recovery.
   Plenty of food and whiskey there was.  We started with one round of The
Best, then settled down to some teen and baby stuff for the serious
drinking.
   You know about a wake.  We got totally shit-faced, sobered up with the
filters, then got shit-faced again.  Every cycle got more and more of the
grief out until we were pretty much done.
   It ended around midnight.  We left Geeser to clean up while we piled
nekkid on the Cushion and put the bodies to sleep.
   Not for long, though.  Death always makes one want to celebrate living
(translation: horny), so we went at it like demented minks for several
hours.  Sean was the last one "standing," and even he was a bit knackered.
Heh.
   ------
   SEAN (Monday 10/30)
   The wake really helped.  Now Nora and I could remember in peace without
the grief coming in.
   Geeser hadn't cleaned up!  Arg.  Scratch one Soo Petted for her.  That
didn't stop her from her 7:00 round with the vibrating alarm clock.
   Yeh, we could use another bathroom.  At least I had a special fixture I
could use in a sink if needed.
   We had breakfast in Washington; I wasn't gonna cook that morning, for
sure!
   Now, on to work.  I worked with Patricia for a bit on her study program;
she'd be mostly full-time on all of that.  Not much to do, really.  Just a
full academic education through at least high school, modern culture (she
was well on the way with that), modern business concepts, The Book, the
detail manuals, the teleportation checksheet and all the technical
bulletins, the seminar presentation and the two workshops, Sperk, Phane,
computers, word processing, etc.  Piece of cake, right?
   We started her off on the teleportation checksheet so she'd be up to
speed and independent of us.  She'd fill in the rest on the schedule we'd
developed.
   She was willing.  "I've got so much to learn, I feel I'll be useless for
quite a while."
   I told her, "Not really the case.  You were already very useful at the
seminar.  Turn you loose in the woods back of the house, and you'd be right
at home; the others here wouldn't have a clue.  You've just got a different
educational background right now."
   She was content with that and got her cute arse to work.
   In the early afternoon, Eileen appeared with a lovely Claddagh ring for
Patricia.  She cried, we cried and she put it on her right had with the
heart facing her.  Yeh, there was some emotion there.
   Marge dashed off to do some skunking; that counted heavily on her
personal study time.  The rest of us went back to work on Cullen
Enterprises.
   That evening, we _looked_ on at the Clann Reynolds meeting with several
thousand other spirits.  Seemed as if those meetings were getting really
popular.
   Bob told us we were up to 6 million and 115,000 Clanns.  Now we were
getting somewhere!
   Ben gave us a report on Cel ships and the like.  There was a wide range
of types from a one-person (skateboard) all the way up to a major transport
(ocean cruise ship) in the civilian models.  There were military types too
with the same range of sizes.  Yeh, the Cels could build them all the way
up to bigger than the Moon if they could get the materials there.
   They'd transported raw materials physically and were constrained to
their gathering and other logistical rates.  Well, we could shortcut one
hell of a lot of that.
   Ben told us, "So far, it's all cookbook.  Rhonda, Harry and Mick can do
any of them.  It's kinda like Leggos: slap together what you want in a
somewhat optimized arrangement then throw a pretty hull around it -- if you
wish.  They don't have much beyond that.
   "We're doing what research we can on how the various drives operate, the
navigational systems and all that sort of stuff.  Rhonda says the theory
she has available is pretty limited; more a set of guidelines on putting
something together.  We shall see."
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 10/31)
   We presented the ancestor sketches around.  BB had chosen high-quality
paper, and they'd used permanent ink, so they should last a while.  Just to
be on the safe side, Margie scanned them all into our system and sent
copies over to the N&Bs.
   Halloween!  While OTL wasn't on the beaten track for youngsters, we did
up a major cleas for the outside of the house.  We stashed the vehicles
elsewhere and set up the place as an old Irish castle with a moat, groaning
ghosts (partially visible and very chilly to feel), alligators in the moat
(kids wouldn't know there weren't alligators in Ireland) and lots of
goodies available (whiskey for the adults).  If we didn't give the goodies
away, we'd have plenty of other places for them to go.
   Carla Turner and the Guinness' did up their places, too.  Toss in some
fun witches on broomsticks, lots of cartoon black cats and other assorted
critters flying over the block and in the park, and it was real fun.
   The N&Bs set their places up much the same.  With their two houses side
by side, they made a really big splash.  Mona made a wonderful faery!  A
modestly-clothed faery, though.  Darn.
   The McDonnals made a go of it in their village (Irish need an excuse for
a party?).  Liam _told_ us they were already working on rescuing the
ancestors; they'd found lots more stuck in the McDonnal house and in their
own grave sites.
   Wednesday, we did an Admin Scale workshop in New Mexico, hosted an
honoring dinner at the Pasadena Tavern (Sorry, no virgins this time.) and
moved right along.
   Thursday we had another workshop, and Rita and Duane warned us they were
scheduling seminars for next year.  Oh, whatever shall we do?  Grin.
   We had a bit of a talk on hiring and training seminar facilitators so we
wouldn't be doing all the work.  Well, we decided Sean was the perfect one
to make up a checksheet.  Heh.
   We did several Ceann visits.  We'd decided it would be a Real Good Thing
to have a Ceann-Mate along so people would get to know us a little, too. 
It was interesting the problems and issues people run into or create for
themselves.
   Friday we did an exhaustive round of our four financed businesses. 
Margie, Kate and I dragged Patricia around to our two while Sean, BB and
Melissa got the other two.  The businesses were moving right along; we
couldn't find many outpoints and found a lot of the pluspoints.
   We went to the Pasadena Tavern for the evening.  Sexy LBDs were the
order of the evening; my female bondmates looked ravishing.  Sean looked
like he'd like to ravish us!
   He got his chance later as we impartially ravished each other for
several hours.  We were getting to know parts of the Oort Cloud pretty
well!
   ------
   (Saturday 11/4)
   Our seminar that Saturday was in Lincoln, Nebraska with 2,000 expected.
We ended up with 1,893.  Seems it rains a lot in that neck of the woods. 
Oh, well, we still partied afterwards at the Altadena Arms.
   Their bands were working out pretty well.  The weekend nights were at
100% capacity for several hours each night.  The staff managed, and we
looked at the profits.
   It had been a week for Patricia in our relationship.  We did another
full QQV round; our _blendings_ were brighter and richer than ever! 
Excellent!
   She was in.  As our "oldest," Margaret led us in exchanging our bonding
vows.  We wept in joy as Patricia moved her ring to her left hand.  She was
part of us now.
   Sean _told_ Rosheen Kelly the good news.  She had a _talk_ with
Patricia, looked over the family papers Patricia had and put up a very nice
picture and announcement on the Clann web site.  Wonderful stuff!
   ------
   SEAN (Sunday 11/5)
   With the Clanns Council representatives world-wide, it didn't make much
difference when they met.  We _listened_ in.  Robert Ri (grin!) brought up
the idea of recovering the spirits lying around and pointed out the Clann
McDonnal efforts along that line.  He _grinned_ and said, _"Clann Cullen LA
in California has another Ceann-Mate who was the Ceann-Mate in 1875.  It's
doable."_
   It didn't take much discussion for the reps to decide to add that aspect
to the expansion efforts.  With the SW technical bulletin available (just
published), they had a pretty-much complete guide to recovery and
rehabilitation.  Worked for us!  Grin.
   We spent the afternoon and much of the evening at the McDonnal pub; the
NH gang showed in strength and joined in on the fun.  Bob and Kat had
brought up making whiskey before with the McDonnals, so we joined right in.
Think moonshiners and revenoooers in Arkansas!  We had a good time filling
in the McDonnals on the moonshiner culture; it took quite a few rounds
before they understood.  Heh.
   We chatted about how they could increase the village's viability.  While
modern Ireland, especially around Dublin, is very high-tech, this little
village had bypassed most of that.  They'd stuck with their farming and
with raising some sheep.
   They were all very well-educated, though.  With several major
universities in Dublin, several of them had degrees.  Even elderly Seamus
("Give me a night, and I'll show you how 'elderly' I am, Snapper!") had
gotten a degree when he was in his fifties.
   Patricia suggested, "While I might be off-base, what about rebuilding
the McDonnal house and make it a tourist or film attraction?  Seamus grew
up around it, and there's two others of us here who remember it as it was."
   Kathleen really liked the idea.  She needed something to do in her spare
time, too.  As if she'd have any spare time if the bondmates and I had
anything to say about it!
   Anyway, in the meantime, Selene City could take their entire output of
farm produce and sheep products.  Several families had taken up part-time
residence there and were in the market.
   ------
   Monday afternoon, we sent Melissa, Marge and Patricia off to do an Admin
Scale workshop in Washington.  Patricia was an observer and eye candy (as
if she was needed for that); I wanted her to see the differences between a
workshop and a seminar.  Besides, it kept her from playing around with
Geeser's cleas.  Ever seen a cat wearing a Celtic tartan with all the lines
in motion?
   At the Clann Reynolds meeting, Bob announced we had 10 million and
200,000 Clanns.  Glad he had it all under control; I had enough on my hands
with handling Clann Cullen inquiries.
   Ben told us that Rhonda Research and Harry Hangar had dug up the theory
and data on the galactic coordinate system the Cels had used.  "It seems
useable, at least.  Pick an arbitrary center point such as a black hole in
the core, use ascension, declination, etc.  Pretty much like we Earth folk
have developed.
   "Harry has lots of maps which 'everyone' figures should help.  So far,
it's just been routine calculations to bring them up to date from the last
200,000 years.  Some views have some interesting markings; we're still
deciding if they show the dragons we've been wary of.  Heh."
   ------
   Patricia's body had become used to the lower gravity of the Cushion, so
we were able to crank it down to the 0.1 g we'd become used to.  Oh, yeh,
she found out right away how to get in a continuously-changing daisy chain.
   By the end of Tuesday morning, Patricia was halfway through The Book. 
Even with her limited background in current culture and business, she was
coming up to speed really fast.  She's a winner!
   She was able to study for a good eight hours over the day, so that
helped.  Toss in Sperk and Phane during slack time between night-time
lovings, and she was making excellent progress.
   The preliminary profits from the Reno seminar hit our account.  A
million bucks wasn't too bad.  Kate brought up the Reno spreadsheet and
showed Patricia how everything was figured out.  She could follow the math
(arithmetic) just fine; computers and Excel were still quite a bit magical.
No problem, she'd dealt with magic for a long time.  After all, she'd cast
a spell over us, right?
   ------
   EILEEN (Thursday 11/9)
   Fillmore popped the Lincoln seminar initial haul into our account.  $600
grand was fine, considering it had rained.  But, there was more to come
later.
   Nice; another Admin Scale workshop.  These seem to be getting pretty
popular.  What the hell, they're pretty easy to do, we get a lot of insight
into how companies in various industries think and we (the girls at least)
get to turn them on a bit at the end.
   Anyway, this one was in Minnesota for a medium-size company with seven
executives.  We'd originally set up a policy to send one facilitator for
every ten people in the workshop.  However, we eventually decided to have a
minimum of two people to handle the overhead and to charge based on
attendance.  So, Patricia and I did the work this time.
   Patricia circulated around and asked leading questions.  We had a simple
spirit-team running, so it worked just great.  Yeh, she might not know a
lot about modern business, but she knew the material cold.  We let the
material do the work; we simply had to ensure the workshop participants
applied it.  Good on her!
   She was burning up her studies.  She told us, "I'm good at the old
stuff; Sean knows that.  I'm determined to get even better with all this,
so you guys better watch your backs 'cause I'm gonna be running all over
you!"
   Yeh.  We believed her, especially since Sean gave her the last checkout
on The Book.  He didn't cut her any slack, either!
   Margie made a big production out of presenting her certificate.  Melissa
told her, "When you finish the detail manuals, you'll get another surprise.
In the meantime, I'm recommending at least two Soo Laids for our newest
hard-ass consultant!"
   Now *that* we could get behind.  "Soo Laid!  *Soo* Laid!  Soo *Laid*!"
She flushed up, laughed and said, "Bring it *on*!  I'll wear you all out.
Even you, Sean.  I've stored some tricks away that'll wear out your
Shillelagh!"
   Ho!  We accepted the challenge!  Maybe next week, though.  We had a
seminar tomorrow and a party planned with Rita and Duane.
   Friday was casual night at the Pasadena Tavern.  We hosted the Passion
Posse while the rest of the N&Bs would do the Stevenson Ranch Tavern
Saturday evening.
   The Passion Posse put some real eyeballs on Patricia.  She eyeballed
them right back and popped up her ski launchers at them.  Sean grinned at
them and said, _"Beware!  She's got a lot more experience than anyone
you've been with before, so she'd wear your fannies out!"_
   Deidre and Aile especially took up the challenge!  If talk were action,
Patricia would have won hands-down; she knew a lot more about young-uns
than they did.
   Alex and Tess had joined us.  They'd narrowed down their final choice to
an elderly hotel in the Arcadia foothills.  It had been vacant for some
time -- probate and zoning stuff -- but was in decent condition.
   Bob and several other ones-of-us contractors had looked it over.  It
needed a new roof and some other minor work, but they could get it in shape
pretty quickly.  Great!  Let's let it rip!
   We packed Patricia off with the Passion Posse for the night.  The rest
of us hoped they would survive.
   ------
   (Saturday 11/11)
   They showed up at the San Diego seminar right on time.  Patricia was
glowing and grinning while the Passion Posse were pussy-whipped -- all of
them.  Sean just shook his head and told them, _"I gave you fair warning!"_
   We had all eleven cheerleaders with us.  We needed it, too, because we'd
scheduled for 2,500 and ended up with 2,732.  Rita and Duane had to open up
an annex and put 300 of them in there.  No big deal.
   Afterwards, we had a big party to help bring down the adrenaline levels.
San Diego had an Irish tavern, so we did our best to eat their pantry
empty. While we didn't quite do that, we made some serious inroads.
   Hah!  We kidnapped Rita and Duane!  They weren't Irish but they loved
the furs and firelight.  Duane was dayum good; he'd gotten some serious
learnin' in somewhere.
   We kicked the guys out and showed Rita what woman-shagging was all
about. Yeh, their relationship had several women, but we showed her what
happens when you put Irishwomen to a task!
   We had breakfast in a large buffet in Idaho; the assistants pick things
real good.  We bondmates put on a good show of being all knackered out so
Rita and Duane could strut a little.  Heh.
   -------
   We popped over for a visit to Clann McDonnal and spent the afternoon
discussing business, checking out Babies Within (ours and some of theirs)
and having a great time.
   ------
   SEAN (Monday 11/13)
   Rita was definitely a tasty morsel!  By the end of the night, she'd worn
us all out.  Heh.
   Anyway, the Clann Reynolds meeting told us we had 15 million and 350,000
Clanns.  Sounds like a lot?  As far as we were concerned, it was just a
good start.  When we get a couple colonies going, there'd be tons of room
-- and demand for people.
   The Clann Cullen Core took a good tour of the solar system.  Things were
happening; the engineers were bringing up a lot of the facilities so the
environment would be set up when they figured out what to do with them.
   Once a facility had power, all they really had to do was to bring up the
facilities computer (usually quite a small one), ensure the water and
atmosphere tanks were full and turn over control to Fred Facilities in
Selene City.  He handled most of it from there.
   ------
   (Tuesday 11/14)
   Marge spent most of the night skunking.  Turned out she'd worked with
the teleportation research crew all night.  She gave us an update, "We're
getting better.  While it's too soon to tell for sure, we've got a decent
handle on it.
   "We're way short of what we want to be able to do.  Any two of us in a
spirit team can go the 800 light years.  With the proper team of about
four, we can do 900 light years or 300 parsecs.  That may seem like a lot,
but compare that to the Milky Way galaxy which is about 100,000 light years
in diameter.  Just to get to the center would take 50 jumps.  That's *if*
we could go in a straight line *and* do the maximum jump each time.  Both
are unlikely.
   "Probably that's what we'll be doing.  Go a decent distance, establish a
'safe point' then jump another distance in the direction we wish to go. 
We've got details to work out, but it looks viable so far."
   Great.  That could get us around a bit.  Now, will we be able to enable
mundanes to do something similar?  They're working on it.
   Wednesday, we fired off BB and Eileen to an Admin Scale workshop in
Ohio. More stats and more money is always a Real Good Thing.
   I finished up my first pass at a checksheet for seminar facilitators. 
We looked it over, made several tweaks and decided it would do for now.
   We brought Rita and Duane in and made a talk about doing even more
seminars.  They told us, "We can probably schedule as many as you could
handle."
   Good.  We had Mona put a help wanted on the Cullen Enterprises web site.
Seminar facilitators needed!
   Chapter 13
   EILEEN (Thursday 11/16)
   Well, the San Diego seminar initial income hit the account.  Kate told
us, "It's the best one yet!  1.2 million should finance a couple days on
the beach."
   Yeh, we thought so too.  Well, let's get real used to it and just keep
it coming.  Might as well get somewhat greedy and do as many as we can.
   Rita and Duane told us, _"We're hot on the trail of more for next year.
We've expanded the department by two more people just to handle you folk. I
hope you're satisfied with all the trouble you're causing us."_ A couple
big _laughs_ came along with it.
   We didn't mind causing that kind of trouble at all.  Besides, every once
in a while our cut of the audio and DVD sales came popping in.  Set aside
about a third of everything, keep track of all the expenses and let our
accountant worry about it.  He hasn't bitched and moaned too much so far.
   Our facilitators-needed ad had generated a few emails.  Of course, we
were looking for ones of us, so we'd put it up on the global bulletin
board. We were gonna be pretty picky.
   Margie had really grown her body.  She was up to 4' 9" with a lovely set
of almost-Bs and a nice crop of red down keeping her fanny warm during
those long cold nights.  Her taste had changed; it had gotten richer and
more, em, fragrant over the last several weeks.  Yeh, she'd even started
her periods and had gone through her first one.
   She had lovely curves everywhere and a fine tidy arse everyone loved to
adore.  Wonder where she got all that good stuff?  Of course, I had nothing
to do with it.  Grin
   We bondmates had a short conference.  Patricia was somewhat surprised
Sean and Margie hadn't had intercourse by now.  "Back in the 'old days,'
when they were big enough, they were ready.  Maggie, you've been big enough
for over a month.  Let's get down and do it!"
   ------
   SEAN
   Dayum, Marge had grown her body up to 4' 9" with a set of delicious
breasts and nicely-fluffy fur.  The bondmates started making noises about a
ritual defloration that evening.
   Who am I to cross the will of the ladies?  Especially when it came to
making wonderful sweet love with my Best Girl.
   Ho, boy!  They kicked me out and about and scurried around something
fierce.  I thought they were planning some Real Good Things, so I didn't
complain.
   I went "shopping" in Selene City.  The 10,000 or so residents didn't
even make a stir in the place; there were that many engineers, inspection
teams and researchers messing around in various areas all the time anyway.
   The residents either telecommuted (Heh!) or didn't need to be physically
on Earth that much.  With a Mayor and City Council already elected, they
were handling stuff on their own.
   Lots of them spent time putting finishing touches on things such as
potted plants here and there, arranging and adjusting the hydroponics and
fish tanks, talking Fred into "painting" things some different colors and
hanging signs here and there.  "This way to the egress" caught a lot of
people!
   Hmm.  I saw at least five large restaurants and three "hotels" -- all
vacant.  Maybe make an expansion talk with the N&Bs and Cullen Hotels?  How
about the other solar system facilities?
   Kate _called_ me back to OTL.  _"Get your shower and get dressed.  We've
got a dinner date with a sweet young thang."_
   That I did.  It was semi-formal, so I tossed on the fancy suit and my
best bowler.  Dayum, the ladies looked wonderful!  Each was gorgeous with
plenty of lovely skin, extremely interesting bumps in the right places and
glowing with life.
   My Best Girl was lovely.  She shown with happiness and her pendant kept
flashing just enough to keep the eyes coming back to her luscious cleavage.
I had to howl at the Moon a few times to calm down -- even if it wasn't up
yet.
   I told her, "Best Girl!  My Princess and sweet love.  Your physical
beauty is outweighed only by the joy and love which flows from you.  I love
you more than words can tell."
   The other bondmates smiled, laughed and applauded as we shared some
tender sweet kisses -- and Geeser tried to get a couple licks in under her
dress.
   Dinner was in Portland at an extremely nice four-star Irish place.  With
her cleas, Margie looked to be a good twenty-two or so to match the rest of
us.  No problem with the Irish whiskey there!
   The other ladies tried to tease us a bit, but we kinda ignored them as
we shared loving smiles and light _blends_ of love and joy.
   The honoring room was shimmering gold and silver with golden furs and
soft lights.  Yeh, we even had our own music, courtesy of Leone and Mark.
   Our loving was sweet, tender and immensely erotic with our love flowing
through and around us.  So much love we had for one another!  We fit
together perfectly both physically and spiritually.  Best Girl!
   We spent most of the night bouncing back and forth between frolics in
the bed and frolics in various parts of the solar system.  It was a good
thing our spiritual blendings weren't actually visible, because the
Earth-bound astronomers would have had to change their drawers several
times.
   ------
   (Friday 11/17)
   Friday morning, Geeser showed her appreciation of our happy night by
pouncing on us at 6:45.  Arg.  The other bondmates hadn't just hung around
and _peeked_.  They'd celebrated their own pleasures too.
   Breakfast was at Gillian's; we played the faeries and leprechauns. 
Marge glowed to rival the Sun, and I played so worn out I could barely
walk. Great fun!
   Well, we did get to work.  Marge "recovered" enough to go skunking --
knowing her, she'd probably gossip a lot.  The rest of us had our studies,
research and other planning to do.
   This was Tavern Night in Stevenson Ranch.  We left a couple hours early
to check out Eire's Rest and to show off Patricia.  Paige and the rest of
the staff loved her -- of course the drool on their chins didn't hurt,
either.
   Almost all of the renovations we'd wanted were done.  The walkway to the
Tavern was smooth, wide and shaded from the sun.  The roof relaxation area
was neatly refinished; it now had its own small unisex bathroom, water, ice
maker and towel supply.  Yeh, even in November there were a couple nude
families relaxing in the late sun.
   Patricia hadn't been in our Jacuzzi yet, either, nor had she had a
chance to relax with the rest of us in our back yard domain.  Well, we'd
have to have a party of some sort just to remedy that drastic omission!
   The Tavern meal was excellent.  Chef Gale had gotten some warning on our
schedule and had done an excellent job on prime rib, lovely salad and a
dessert we couldn't name right off -- but loved.
   Patricia gave her an extra hug and kiss in thanks then squeezed her butt
real good.  She told Gale, "I'm a Jean come lately, and I've gotta catch
up. Maybe you and me some evening, right?"
   Gale laughed and told her, "You old folk are mighty energetic.  Guess
I'll have to wear you down some."
   To bleed off some of her energy, we tossed Patricia to the N&B adults at
their place for the night.  Betcha she'd do them all to a frazzle!
   ------
   She did.  Saturday morning she appeared just before we left for the
seminars.  She glowed and crowed in mock triumph.  "They're wonderful
people.  But, you are all still the best."
   She got some good snuggles and cuddles for that, for sure!
   We had two seminars today.  One was in Scottsdale (Arizona) with 2,000
and the other in Albuquerque (New Mexico) with 2,000.  Marge, Patricia,
Melissa and I took Scottsdale with the older cheerleaders while the other
bondmates had to make do with the Passion Posse in Albuquerque.
   Mona pretended to glare at Patricia.  "Someone -- I won't name names,
but her initials are Patricia Ann McMillan -- kept the moms and dads up all
night making noise.  We young-uns didn't get a wink of sleep."
   Marge pointed out, "Yeh, and I'll bet since you couldn't sleep, you made
your own noise, right?"
   Right.  They had the glow just like Patricia.
   The seminars went great.  Patricia handled the shotgun mike for us and
stayed together with the rest of as part of the team.  She was coming along
very well with her understanding of what was going on and the concepts
beneath it all.  Having completed The Book, she had an excellent handle on
the seminar itself.
   We met at the Arms with Rita and Duane after the seminars.  We'd ended
up with 2,237 attendees while Albuquerque had tromped us with 2,334.  Ah,
well.  We "losers" served the winners a round of the best Irish whiskey the
Arms had (It was a decent adult age.).
   Back home, we snuggled and snogged for a good while, then made the
neighborhood rounds while we let the bodies recover from the past couple of
days.
   Selene City had an interesting addition.  Nora, Liam and Sam from Pieter
Analytics (a JRD company) had gotten together with SW and Mick Maker for
the first fabrication run in the underground facility.  They'd made several
different types of whiskey stills!
   They'd decided to go with the room-temperature distillation -- vacuum
distillation -- to check it out.  Of course, the barley or rye mash was the
crucial part, so they'd gotten some from a dozen different parts of the
world.  We may not end up with "Irish" whiskey, but we'd sure find out how
it worked.
   They figured with just the test stills they'd made, they could produce
over 400 liters a day.  They were inspecting the aging processes the
whiskey normally went through to see if they could bypass some of it.  When
one can analyze it down to below the molecular level, a lot becomes
apparent.
   Mick was slightly amused.  "Every race here before snuck at least
several of this type of units through.  Guess it's pretty popular.  Too bad
I can't sample it myself; it looks really interesting."
   Of course, that set Marge and him off on a discussion of transducers,
molecular analysis and the like.  Heh.
   ------
   EILEEN (Sunday 11/19)
   We had an impromptu back-yard bash for the Clanns Cullen and Reynolds
Cores.  Megan promptly volunteered to work the crowd with Margie as nekkid
faeries.  Guess they got a real kick out of it.  Then again, so did
everyone else -- at the minimum, they got several mouthfuls of some of the
sweetest boobies around!
   Margie ensured that every newcomer was aware that the Cullen Ceann had
taken advantage of her extreme innocence and youth and had ravished her
thoroughly.  She offered to take anyone who wished aside to show them
exactly how he'd treated her.  Everyone laughed, and the social assistants
took appointments.  Grin.
   Of course Patricia was a hit.  She looked great nekkid and knew it!  We
tried to get her with the Jacuzzi jets.  She squirmed, moaned and told us,
"I got used to these at Kat's place." Ah, well.
   Everyone compared Babies Within.  With Kat five months along and me
almost five each with three, we had some outward show to put on.  It sure
hadn't been this easy with Bridget!  Then again, sleeping on/in a Cushion,
having a _touch_ ready any time it was needed and being in the best
physical condition I could remember (pretty much for a *long* time back)
didn't hurt in the least.
   Sherry was trying to catch up, but at six weeks along, she could only
work up a real bulge about as big as a raisin.  That didn't stop her from
cleasing up a belly as big as ours, though.  Dayum, we almost overflowed
the Jacuzzi from the water displacement.  Grin.
   Patricia learned about barbequed hot dogs, hamburgers, steak, fish and
chicken.  She adored the cheesecake and ice cream.  "Now that's worth
sleeping for 130 years for!"
   Margie and George demonstrated the proper method for hoovering cake and
ice cream.  Patricia laughed and gave them some more.
   ------
   (Monday 11/20)
   The Clann Reynolds meeting was interesting.  Besides finding out we had
25 million and a half-million Clanns, the Cel software team had discovered
some treasure.
   Ben told us, "We thought there wasn't any history at all, since neither
Alice nor Rhonda had any in their storage.  However, it seems the Mayor,
CEO or whoever the high administrator was kept a completely separate log on
her own personal computer.
   "Yeh, she was intelligent enough not to erase any of the previous logs,
either.  That means we have some information at least going back a good
million years.  We gave it to Alice and the rest; they're having a great
time with it.
   "There's two other languages in there besides Sperk and a bit of Phane.
Sperk seems to be pretty widespread from what they can tell, but the
administrators tended to keep their own stuff in their races' native
languages.  We're trying to decipher them and dig out references to them
anywhere we can.
   "So, folk, if you happen to run across some strange stuff on your Cel
system, please leave it be and let one of the AIs know right away.  It
could be the Rosetta stone we're looking for.
   "What these logs will tell us, we don't know until we look.  So far,
most of it's pretty standard stuff about some politics, production 'quotas'
and such but there may be other secrets buried.  Time will tell."
   Maybe we'll get a handle on some of the mystery surrounding the Cels'
disappearance after all.  Turn Silvia Connor loose on it, and she'll have a
field day.  Hell, she was probably already up to her cute tits in it
anyway.
   ------
   SEAN (Tuesday 11/21)
   We got several inquiries about the seminar facilitator positions.  All
but one hadn't even read The Book, so I told them, "Get a copy and study
it. If you're in agreement and still interested, get back to us." No reason
to waste anyone's time.
   All right!  The social secretaries informed me we were hosting the NH
gang tonight.  They cackled away (especially Patricia) as they plotted our
revenge on them for their dastardly plot!  Of course, *I* wouldn't think of
anything like that myself, right?
   We were gonna fatten 'em up for the kill, then get them when they
(hopefully) least expected it.  Hehehehe.  Marge knew what to do.
   We took them to dinner in Philadelphia.  It was quite nice; even their
Irish whiskey was almost up to what we'd become accustomed to.  We kept
giving the NH crew the hairy eyeball all night and would look knowingly at
each other every once in a while.  Great fun.
   Back at OTL, we had a Babies Within inspection and solemnly rubbed
lanolin and Vitamin E cream all over preggy bellies.  While Sherry didn't
have much of a belly, we still rubbed it.  Even Geeser came around and
helped massage it into their skin.  Heh.
   We had quite a bit of shop talk, of course.  With Nora and the McDonnals
starting up their moonshine operation, it was an interesting topic of
conversation.  After all, if we had to leave Earth, we need a supply of
usquebaugh, right?
   Enough chit chat!  The bondmates dragged Bob and Mario away to their
fates while Patricia gave them loud warnings of the fates which awaited
them.
   I looked at Kat and Sherry and grinned evilly.  They looked a bit
apprehensive, especially after Geeser yowled mournfully and ran away to
hide.  I told them, "You will be very...  unhappy with the trick you
pulled. You have endured the Ceann's Shillelagh before, but have yet to
meet the War Club of Doom.  Few have survived it, and those who did were
forever changed.  I've saved up for a while and am very well rested.  Do
you come peacefully to meet your doom or do I have to carry you off?"
   Sherry pointed at Kat and said, "Take her first.  Maybe I can escape in
the confusion." Kat glared and slung a handy pillow at her.  Well, a little
pillow fight never hurt anyone, so we all merrily swung away for a couple
minutes.  Geeser stayed well-hidden; Ma Eileen hadn't raised no dumb cat.
   I escorted them to the honoring room (the bondmates were giving Bob and
Mario what for in the main bedroom) and laid a lot of loving on some of my
favorite lady friends.  Heh.  I bet they were waiting all night for the War
Club to fall.
   Yeh, my bondmates worked over Bob and Mario pretty good.  Guess Patricia
especially gave them a workout they wouldn't soon forget!  Dare them to
conspire against us again after that lesson!
   As expected, the ladies kicked us guys out and carried Kat and Sherry
off to their fate.  Patricia had some real plans for them!  It wasn't quite
all that one-sided, though.  We definitely heard Patricia let loose with
some good ones, too.
   We did the Reno buffet in the morning.  Patricia looked completely
vindicated for the suffering they'd put us through, while the rest of us
did our best to look wimped out.  Right.
   Anyway, everyone had people to do and things to see, so we took off to
our various habitats for the day's work.
   One thing we decided we needed at OTL was at least another bathroom. 
With six of us normally and several more on occasion, having only two
wasn't cutting it.  The assistants had made an appointment to have
Elizabeth Reynolds and Papa Sonora to come over to suggest some makeover
plans.
   All righty!  I put my one-cent's worth in and kept my mouth shut after
that.  Papa grinned at me and said, "You're a wise man.  All I have to do
is tell them I can do what they want, and I can keep my skin."
   Elizabeth said, "Since you're gonna do one thing, let's look at doing
what you need to get this place the way you really need it.  With only
three adults and a baby body, it was fine.  That's obviously not the case
now."
   She knew the zoning laws already; she and Papa had gotten them down
before they came over.  Anyway, we ended up with a plan to put in three
more bedrooms (the garage would vanish; we rarely used it anyway), two more
baths, expand this and that, put on a second floor over the entire thing
and do up everything somewhat fancy.  We'd lose 20 feet of the back yard
(the Jacuzzi and shower would move back), but there was already 150 feet to
the back fence, so we could afford it.
   Elizabeth said, "This will call for plans and permits out the ass, so
we're gonna have to do that, too.  I'll have my architect, Richard, come in
and do a set of plans."
   Well, Richard showed up about a half hour after Elizabeth and Papa had
left.  He had a Cel laptop and a case of stuff.  After a quick walk through
the place, he got to work.
   The case had several of Fred Facilitator's drones stashed away.  He set
them out on the floor and went to work on the laptop.
   The drones "woke up" and floated out; one stayed in the middle of the
den.  We _saw_ them set down in the corners of the lot, on the roof and
underneath the house.  Richard told us, "We're gonna do a scan of the place
and literally make plans.  This is one technology which works really well.
We can export it to AutoCAD if we want, or just work in the Sperk program
-- which is pretty damn good."
   There wasn't much action; it took maybe fifteen minutes before the
drones floated back in and de-energized.  Richard did some finger magic on
the keyboard and told us, "Looks good.  Worst that will happen is we'll
have to scan a couple areas again."
   All righty, then.  He took off, and the girls gathered around and
discussed the proposed plans.  Geeser and I took a nap; we knew when our
input was needed and wanted.  Heh.
   ------
   EILEEN (Thursday 11/23)
   We were still doing our Krav Maga exercises about three times a week. 
Thursday morning, Sean and Patricia took out their war clubs and did a dual
kata from their old days.
   Dayum, it was something to see!  Working as a team, they spun, whirled
and did things so fast the rest of us couldn't see them directly.  They
stopped after fifteen minutes.  They were dripping sweat, grinning at each
other and breathing heavily.  Patricia said, "Dayum, this body is out of
condition.  We used to be able to work on that for a half hour at a time.
Then again, we never had this depth of coordination, either."
   Kat asked, "Is that what you use in an actual battle?"
   Sean told us, "Extremely similar.  All the moves and coordinated actions
are designed to present opponents with an ever-changing attack and defense.
Changing opponents or double-teaming them makes them extremely vulnerable
99 times out of a hundred.  That's what we used at the McDonnal house."
   Patricia said, "While we might not need it now, it's an excellent
workout and coordination practice.  You other gals better watch out, it
tends to strengthen *all* the muscles.  Hehehehe."
   She was now as corrupted as the rest of us.  Good on her!
   Anyway, after we got cleaned up, Kate discovered the Scottsdale and
Albuquerque initial profits had hit our accounts.  Yeh, 1.2 and 1.3 million
wasn't too shabby.  Kate sent off the tax set asides then shipped off 1.5
million to RRK to play with.  Fun, huh?
   In the evening, we gathered Mary Murray and her family together for an
honoring dinner.  At six months along, she was almost as big as I was.  At
least neither of us felt like beached whales -- just whales.  Grin.
   The Doctors Gold had pronounced all our Babies Within to be in excellent
condition.  Mary's was a girl, while I was carrying two girls and a boy. 
Excellent!  We had an heir.
   We girl-talked while the guys sat around and bemoaned their trials with
preggy wives and a preggy mother.  At 15, Mary's daughter was sweet as
honey; she had a boy friend she'd found via Rosheen's matchmaking service
and was in girl heaven.  Yeh, we knew what she meant.
   No sex that night; just an evening of good companionship and an exchange
of respect and affection.  They were really good folk and we were proud to
have them as part of Clann Cullen.
   ------
   (Friday 11/24)
   Sean and BB interviewed four facilitator candidates in the morning.  Two
were very acceptable to all of us (of course we _listened_ in), so we
offered an invitation to them.  They accepted; they could start Monday
morning.  Good.  Get them trained up, and we could handle maybe four
seminars at a time.
   Elizabeth and Richard dropped by with the proposed OTL reno plans.  We
yakked, sketched, changed things around and finally agreed on how things
should be.  Dayum, they'd done a great job.
   Elizabeth told us, "Richard will have the plans updated in a couple of
hours, and we'll start pulling permits today.  We can jump the gun a little
bit and start tomorrow if you wish."
   Hell, that was fine by us.  If necessary, we'd find a temporary office
at JRD.
   ------
   SEAN
   Marge was out skunking most of the afternoon.  She had an update when
she came back.
   "Those converter, containment fields and artificial gravity devices have
a lot in common.  They actually work as tractor and presser 'beams' so to
speak.
   "They're similar to our _touches_ in that they don't require a mass to
push or pull against.  Near as we can tell, if there is a base, it's more
likely than not to be the entire mass of the universe.  Heh.
   "The actual mechanics are quite simple and the circuitry is very
primitive.  Yeh, it's the old crystal radio trick.  Each device or
projector has to be manufactured specifically for its location and use. 
Mick Maker has tons of plans for various types, but there's no
general-purpose one or any background information.  Shit.  Here we go again
trying to reverse-engineer the theory so we can actually work with it."
   Okay.  At least they could do some things with it.  Guess SW really
needs to find out more data; probably none of this stuff appeared out of
thin air.  Marge had it on her short list of needed research.
   We went to the Pasadena Tavern in the evening.  Even with casual dress,
my ladies looked good enough I was tempted to skip dinner for something
else to eat.  Yeh, I caught some Irish for my suggestion.
   The older N&B young-uns were really eyeballing our newest addition.  The
moms and dads had probably been telling some pretty tall tales.
   Patricia was eyeballing them right back, too, with her mood indicators
perked right up underneath her Irish Inside tee shirt.  Our other bondmates
_whispered_ suggestions and known young-un weaknesses to her and urged her
on.
   Yeh, she zipped off with them when we left.  They were gonna be in for a
long, hard night!
   ------
   (Saturday 11/25)
   Geeser routed us out at the "proper" time.  Nah, she still hadn't
learned about weekends, even though we'd talked seriously with her about
them.  Patricia was still out and about (_"They're recuperating and want to
try another match.  Hehehehe."_) so the rest of us did our morning
routines.
   Papa Sonora and his crew descended on OTL with no mercy.  With a cleas
over the entire place, they could _touch_ away to their heart's content. 
That they did.  Within five minutes, our lawn furniture, shower and Jacuzzi
were sitting alone and forlorn back by the fence and the crew was digging
foundation footers.  Yeh, they temporarily moved the connections to our
stash containers.  No big deal any more.
   Patricia showed up about the time we were ready to bail outta there. 
She was glowing, grinning and triumphant.  "They didn't have a chance!"
Yeah!  That's our mate!
   She was a bit tired, but still ready to go.  We all made a walk around
the neighborhood and introduced her to the neighbors she hadn't met yet. 
On the way, we invited Clara and the Guinness' over for dinner; they were
good folk.
   We did some more facilitator interviews.  So what if it was the weekend?
They didn't seem to mind.
   I got the N&Bs together with us in the Jacuzzi for a while.  Subject of
discussion: Hotels and Taverns in Selene City and other places.  I figured
if we were gonna do it, we should get a jump on it; there were probably
lots of other ones of us who knew about restaurants and hotels.
Everyone loved the idea.  We gave the young-uns the quick task of
scouting out possible locations; they'd do it overnight.  We talked quite a
while about the possibilities, including suppliers and the like.  Not too
many of our current suppliers could deliver to Ganymede.  Heh.
   The N&Bs took off after a round of hugs then Clara and the Guinness'
zipped in.  We weren't so water-logged we couldn't spend some time with
them in the Jacuzzi.  My tricky ladies got Clara and Jacinta with the water
jets!  Somehow they'd missed them before at the parties.
   We had a grand time.  Clara was on a roll; she traded old-fart jokes
with Marge, teased everyone about "youthful energy" ("I can _hear_ you guys
going at it almost every night!") and welcomed Patricia with open arms.
   Colman and Jacinta were doing excellently.  Between exercising and
thinking, they'd gotten their bodies to the minimum level they desired.
   Well, we sure tested that out.  Jacinta was as sweet as a stolen kiss
and as hot as a new star.  Yeh, she remembered my poke spot, too.
   As predicted, the ladies kicked Colman and me out so they could work
their wiles on Jacinta.  No big deal; we just scouted around the
neighborhood.
   Our sinkhole was pretty much abandoned now; guess they'd gotten what
they could out of it.  The entire facility was still in storage under a
Mojave mountain; maybe we'd be able to use it on a colony planet somewhere.
   ------
   (Sunday 11/26)
   We took the entire N&B gang to visit Clann McDonnal.  We figured the
village was up to the young-uns by now.
   They were.  The young-uns were a great hit with everyone.  After an
initial round of introductions and chit-chat, the four (no-longer virgin)
younger girls dragged them all off for their own yakking.  Heh.  They'd
find something to do; maybe they'd explore the McDonnal house ruins, right?
   We "mature" folk just sat around, got caught up on the happenings in
both Clanns and ensured Liam's whiskey stock wasn't lost to evaporation. 
We had a really good time discussing the new distillery pilots and the
possibilities of doing Taverns and hotels in Selene City and the like.
   The young-uns had found over fifty likely places for a Tavern and some
ten spots which looked like hotels -- in Selene City alone.  Other
facilities which could house over 500 had at least one bar of some sort. 
Some of the bars even had stock!  They'd put Clann Cullen dibs on a bar in
each place.  They'd done quick needed-and-wanted surveys on both ventures
and had come up with strong yeses on both.
   The Clann McDonnal folk were quite interested in working at some of
them. The valley could support only so many as farmers and sheepherders;
young ones tended to grow up and drift off to the cities.  This could give
them steady work in an ethical place.
   We took off back home around 1:00 in the morning Ireland time.  We left
the young-uns to their own devices; they knew their way home.
   ------
   (Monday 11/27)
   There's lots of stuff happening!  We hired four seminar facilitators. 
They ranged from the mid twenties up to forty-five.  All of them had
business experience, had been to a seminar and had studied The Book even
before they applied for the positions.
   Three men (Michael Coleman, Gary Edwards and Howard King) and a woman
(Lois Patterson) helped even the odds a little.  Now we can make the
man-muscle around here do something useful.
   They'd all passed the Geeser test, so we knew they'd fit in just fine.
Sean started them out running through the standard presentation and getting
used to the flow.  The checksheet he'd made up had that as the first step,
so it put them right into the program.
   Patricia was far enough along on her studies she could take some time
off from her "regular" education.  Sean put her on the facilitator
checksheet along with the newbies.  That way they'd have someone with a
touch more larnin' to help them out.
   We made room for them between the dining room and the den/office.  Even
with the construction going on, it really wasn't very noisy.  Papa's crew
was using "standard" construction techniques since everything had to be
inspected, but that didn't mean they had to use a noisy saw or a banging
hammer.  Hell, they had the concrete in the foundations out back by lunch
time.
   We delivered an Admin Scale workshop in Detroit.  It went well; I
figured we'd train up our new folk to be able to do these as soon as
possible.
   ------
   EILEEN
   At Clann Meeting we had several excellent pieces of news.  First, we
were at 45 million and 600,000 Clanns.  Good thing we didn't have to give
out shamrock pins!
   Silvia, George and Margie got to talk.  Silvia had gotten over what
nervousness she'd had about talking to a lot of people (75 physically there
and some 5,000 onlookers).  She told us, "Those administrator journals are
full of stuff.  They give us a first cut at a lot of questions we had."
   George said, "We've been looking into the matter transceivers,
especially the big one.  Turns out that if you have one on each end, you
can change that logarithmic power demand into a reasonable linear demand.
   "The biggest surprise we've had so far it that every race who's been
here has been building a humongous matter transceiver out beyond the Oort
Cloud.  All the AIs knew about it, but it never really came up in
'conversation' so they didn't mention it.
   "It's tucked away in what Rhonda and Harry call a 'fold' in the gravity
or dimensional space so it's not really visible and doesn't show up as a
mass.  It takes a special detector to find it even if you know exactly
where it's at."
   The thing was designed to be half again as large as the Moon and would
serve as a relay point in a wide net of other transceivers.  Once it was
done, it would run pretty much automatically.  From what they could tell,
it would have a range of around 3,000 parsecs.
   Why had it taken a million years and was still only partly done?  Try
hauling the mass of the Moon in comparatively tiny ships and you'll
understand immediately.  Stuff had to be fabricated in the surface facility
for the first couple thousand years before they could build a fabricator
out closer.  Still, it took both big fabricators and the big transceiver in
Selene City working all the time to get it as far as it had.
   Yeh, a team had popped out to where Harry said it should be.  It was a
completely empty spot to the "eye," but the detector said it was there. 
The detector also served as a key of some sort to pop the fold so it was in
normal space and "people" could get at it to work.
   So, we had one major question at least partially answered: why the Moon
Base was there at all.  Harry's maps showed the projected net, and we were
right where a node should be without drifting too far due to star motion.
Still, a million years is a long time for a civilization.
   Margie said, "On the other hand, if we couldn't teleport, we'd be stuck
with the ships.  As it is, we've pretty much peaked out at between 800 and
900 light years.  We need more data and more research.
   "We're translating and looking at different ship specifications.  So far
as we -- and the AIs -- know, there wasn't any 'warp drive' or the like. 
The ships just had good, reasonably efficient drives which they could use
to build up tremendous speed.  We haven't quite figured out how much speed,
but it's fockin' aye lively."
   After the meeting died down, we took off to Selene City with the N&Bs to
look at possible Tavern and hotel facilities.  With the young-uns' list in
hand, we zipped around to each one and gave it a quick look over.
   Two looked very interesting for new Tavern sites.  One was a small place
by the main entrance to Selene City from the hanger section; the other by
City Hall was larger.  Okay, we would put in an application ASAP to the
Selene City Planning Board (or whatever they called it).
   ------
   (Tuesday 11/28)
   Papa Sonora must have greased some palms, because the initial framing
inspection got scheduled and passed without a hitch.  They were now
stringing electrical, network, video and telephone cable as fast as they
could punch holes in the studs and run the wires.  Those cable reels were
hummin!
   There was still so little noise it didn't bother anyone.  Our new
facilitators just studied away.  Then again, so did the rest of us.  We
were rounding out our Sperk knowledge with different vocabularies from
various fields, and were even getting up to reading Phane at what we'd
consider a Freshman level.  Yeh, we all studied the math, too; Margie
woulda had a snit fit if we didn't.  Grin.
   Melissa found the right people in Selene City Hall so we filled out
applications for a hotel and two restaurants.  The Planning Board (that was
the name) met on Thursday so we'd show up and make our pleas.
   ------
   (Wednesday 11/29)
   The NH gang got together with us for an early dinner.  The main thing we
talked about was a conference or party center.  These Ceann weddings were
getting really big.
   Between the various property owners, they'd come up with several sites
where they could put in a conference center.  We could have large meetings,
big weddings, bar mitzvahs, fertility rites or pretty much anything we
wanted.  Parking wasn't a problem.  Heh.
   The initial design was to have it hold 50,000 bodies comfortably with
room to double that.  That was lots of bathrooms!  What the hell, that's
why RRK and JRD could hire architects, contractors and other designers --
almost all would be ones of us.
   Initial construction would probably take a couple of months.  The
leprechauns would be busy, but the logistics were pretty straightforward.
   ------
   We did a couple more Admin Scale workshops and one Organizing Board
workshop.  More money for shopping!  Oh, the clients were really happy
about them, too.
   Thursday middle-of-the-night the N&Bs and we zipped up to the Selene
City Planning Board meeting.  We laid out our plans (including places in
other facilities) and negotiated a year's lease with options to renew. 
Some talented folk somewhere had come up with currency (credits) and had
fired up a couple banking computers.
   They were willing to take U.S.  dollars; no sweat there.  Kate cut them
a check for the first three months for all three places.  Yet Another (and
Another and Another) Business!
   ------
   SEAN (Friday 12/1)
   While the facilitators were doing their studies, the rest of us plotted
and planned on the new places in Selene City.  We had Mona post help-wanted
ads on the Clann Cullen, Cullen Enterprises and Cullen Hotel web sites. 
They were worded cleverly enough that ones of us knew exactly where they
were.  She also put the request up on the Global Bulletin Board; that'd get
some coverage.
   We figured we'd have one resident manager for the two Taverns; the hotel
could get along with a rotating shift as the other hotels were doing.
   We went to Bob's birthday party at NH.  We brought our new facilitators
along so they'd have plenty to eat before we worked them the next day.
   Dayum, he's just nineteen now.  That doesn't really mean a whole lot,
but still.
   The bondmates (and every other female there -- a lot) ensured they got
in good hugs and kisses for the birthday boy.  Of course they had to go
with the flow the other women were doing: they rubbed their delectable
boobs and fannies on him.  Heh.  Good thing the Sorcerer's Wand doesn't
wear out too easily; it was up and down every couple of minutes.
   ------
   (Saturday 12/2)
   The entire Cullen Enterprises gang and all the cheerleaders went to Salt
Lake City for the seminar.  We were scheduled for 3,000 so this was the
largest one yet.
   The Passion Posse welcomed our new people warmly, then made sure they
got their own personal displays of panty flashes (Oops!  Morrigan had
conveniently forgotten hers.) and young breasts.  Heh.  Five more for the
lions' dens.
   The facilitators weren't scheduled to do any presenting yet.  They did
practice the gestalt and glad hand at the beginning, lunch and afterwards,
though.  Their main job for this seminar was to circulate between the
audience and the back stage so they could see both viewpoints.
   We did good.  We ended up with 3,527 paid attendees and sold a lot of
goodies.  Maybe I could go shopping for some jewelry for my sweeties?
   We had an after-seminar blast at Fado Lincoln (Rhode Island).  While
none of our new folk was pure Irish, at least they all had enough Celt in
them to enable them to keep up with us.
   The rest of the N&Bs had joined us, so we were quite a crowd.  I noticed
the Cullen Sisters were eying the new girl (Lois) and one of the guys
(Howard) pretty closely.  Betcha they had something in mind!  That would be
okay; they had tomorrow off anyway.
   ------
   (Sunday 12/3)
   We went over to the NH gang's hideout for the evening; it was our turn
in the barrel.  We'd gotten our payback, so we took it easy on them.
   We had a leisurely dinner in Cabo San Lucas, then kicked back in their
interpretation of the Irish castle based on the original McDonnal house. 
Patricia and I agreed it was pretty dayum good.  The old Clann Cullen
meeting house wasn't stone or anything fancy, so this was much more fun. 
Besides, *we* didn't have to clean it!
   They liked the idea of a hotel and Taverns scattered throughout the
solar system.  We went around for a couple hours brain storming ideas and
plans.
   We had lots of slow lovin' on and off the entire night.  Between those,
we were out and about.  Nice; the _blend_ of the ten of us was wonderfully
ecstatic and we could hold it for an entire minute.  Grin.  Yeh, these were
really good folk.
   ------
   (Monday 12/4)
   Our new facilitators (and Patricia) were moving right along on the
presentation study.  Since part of the checksheet was to study all the
detail manuals, they were spending an hour on the presentation and three
hours on the detail manuals.
   I'd made up facilitator checksheets for the Admin Scale and Organizing
Board workshops, so I set them to work on them -- in their spare time. 
Might as well get them producing right away.  Besides, the material was
pretty straightforward and they could probably get through the checksheets
in a couple days.
   The rest of the time they filled in on their personal study programs
such as Sperk, Phane, academic studies and the like.  We were moving!
   According to Papa Sonora, the renos were going well.  We had frames,
floors and wiring all in and inspected.  They were working on the outside
skin and roof; as fast as someone had a couple outside panels in place,
someone else had the insulation laid in.  Hell, we even had a couple
interior walls with drywall taped and mudded.
   The Clann Reynolds meeting told us we had 75 million and 700,000 Clanns.
We're getting there!
   SW and NewTek, along with Harry and Mick, had pumped out a small shuttle
a couple of days before.  Think of a huge tour bus which could hold 100
bodies.  They'd tested it out pretty good on the other side of the Sun from
Earth.
   It could get up a decent speed pretty quick and of course slow down just
as fast.  At low speeds, it was easily maneuverable for "parallel parking"
so they were happy that way.  They figured it would be able to make the
trip from Jupiter to the Moon in about a day.  Not an easy commute, but
doable for a business trip every once in a while.
   During the night, we got together with a couple of the McDonnals and
checked out the progress on the Selene City distillery.  They couldn't do
much about the rate of the initial fermentation, but after that, there was
exquisite control over the low-temperature distillation.
   With the entire world to draw from, there were several hundred mash
batches with combinations of raw ingredients and yeasts.  With Fred
Facilities keeping an eye on things and logging measurements, they didn't
have a lot to do beyond thinking up other experiments, discussing
preliminary results and taste-testing the moonshine.  Heh.
   ------
   (Tuesday 12/5)
   We had a nice talk with Rhonda about the system programming languages.
Each AI and each different computer class (small, laptop, desktop, etc.)
had at least a slightly different version of the same language ranging up
to drastically different languages.  According to the AIs, that made
interfacing them a bit, em, hairy at times.
   With the five main AIs interfaced together as best they could, they came
to the decision that pretty much everything had been kludged together much
like the ships had been.  Even the hardware was considerably different --
and kludged up.
   Their initial data had come in the form of memory blocks which were
temporarily hooked up to them, then copied across.  The AIs and we agreed
that even Kate could piss a better setup.
   Rhonda had quite a few references to other smaller, faster and more
"user friendly" languages.  However, none of them had any of them "in
stock." Rhonda told us, "We could probably get them from the Central
Library in the Cel home system.  I've also got references to other
libraries scattered around this side of the galaxy.  Too bad it would take
you so long to get there and back."
   Well, time will tell on that.  Marge, Fred, Harry and others were
planning their exploration ship.  At normal-space speeds it would take a
hell of a long time, but we'd already shown we could port a container with
spirits the full 800 to 900 light years of our current limits.  We didn't
need no stinkin' drive!
   We had some fifteen bites on our ads for people to run the Selene City
hotel and Taverns.  The N&Bs did the first-pass interviews; we ended up
with ten interested and qualified.  Since a couple of the staff from the
Stevenson Ranch enterprises had demonstrated both interest and ability, we
interviewed five of them.  Three were very interested even if it was on the
Moon.
   Petra Syllum, the Eire's Rest night manager, was interested, too.  Her
husband was between jobs, their kids were out of the nest and she was
competent.  We had a main manager for the Selene City Arms!
   We turned her and her husband loose with a list of our ideas and a
decent budget.  We'd all look for a replacement for her -- one of the staff
who hadn't wanted to got to the Moon was good manager material.
   We "shipped" the rest of the qualified people off to Selene City to fire
things up.  With a temporary Tavern manager from them, they knew from our
lists how to start getting things set up.  We were on the way!
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 12/6)
   Our renos were pretty much done; we were mainly waiting for the paint
and stucco to dry.  With our Jacuzzi and outside shower back in place, we
played hooky and soaked in the Jacuzzi for an hour or so.  Of course, we
nailed Lois with the water jets!  She squealed, laughed and asked, "Is this
one of those fringe benefits I keep hearing about?"
   Margie eyeballed her nice chest and told her, "Just one of them.  You'll
probably find out about the others."
   ------
   SEAN (Thursday 12/7)
   Our Salt Lake City initial cut hit our accounts.  Great!  Kate told us
it was the largest one yet at 1.8 million.  Let's keep up the quality,
increase the quantity and we'll do just fine.
   Our new folk had completed the Admin Scale workshop checksheet.  Kate
immediately awarded Soo Laids all around!  BB told them, "To be delivered
Real Soon Now!"
   Patricia and the other facilitators in-training were through their first
detail manuals.  Each was doing them in a different sequence so we could
use them all right away.  So they now spread their study time between the
presentation section they'd just covered in the detail manual and the next
detail manual.  Nothing was very complex, just a lot of material to
understand.
   Since they were now Admin Scale workshop trained, we sent Gary, Michael
and Melissa off to do one in Salt Lake City.  They did great, of course. 
Melissa said they were flawless.  Good on 'em.
   Since the renos were now essentially done, the ladies of course had to
go shopping for stuff to fill up the new rooms.  Arg.  We had three new
bedrooms, two more baths and an expanded den.
   We headed out in the late afternoon Friday after Patricia had finished
her daytime studies.  Why they wanted me was a mystery; Elizabeth had
already made her recommendations.  I WAG'd it was something to do with any
payback they thought they had or might have for me in the future.  I
thought they were just being a bit sadistic.
   Anyway, we hit at least ten different stores.  Yeh, they had a list, but
had to check out pretty much everything else, too.  What the hell, I'd
learned a long time ago how to take a nap while appearing to be alert and
interested.  Grin.
   They had all the big stuff set up to be delivered to OTL next Monday. 
Once they had the big items on hand, we'd just port them right where they
wanted them.  Then again, they'd probably change their minds at least ten
times on the arrangement.  Fortunately, I wasn't the one who had to make
the changes; they didn't need my manly muscles for that.
   We ended back home with a stack of bathroom and other small stuff.  They
immediately went to work at putting stuff in the "right places." Geeser and
I snuck away and hid out in the den.  They sure didn't need our input.
   We had a black Tavern night in Stevenson Ranch; LBDs abounded!  Dayum,
it seemed they get slinkier and skimpier all the time.  We'd invited our
new staff along; Lois' LBD was just as bad (or good) as the rest of the
ladies'.  Heh.  Believe you me, there were plenty of male salutes and
drools going around.
   The N&B young-uns had come up with a new gig to occupy their spare time.
They went treasure-hunting in landfills.  With the proper _traces_, they
found gold, silver, other precious metals and lots of other stuff they
could convert and recycle.
   Funny how much stuff got thrown away with goodies hidden.  They'd run
into a half dozen old sofas, chairs, desks and other stuff which had old
gold or silver coins stashed away.  The collectible value from them so far
was well over $100k.  Not too bad.  Another source of income never hurts.
   ------
   (Saturday 12/9)
   Two seminars on Saturday!  BB, Kate and I took Dallas (2,500 estimated)
while Melissa, Marge, Patricia and Eileen took Houston (3,000 estimated).
We split the facilitators half and half as well as the cheerleaders.
   We put the facilitators to work doing the initial gestalts and glad
hands and swinging the shotgun mike.  As part of our spirit team, they
learned first-hand how the presenters thought and reacted to questions. 
Their turns were coming up next time!
   We had our blow-out bash in Dallas.  Dallas had ended up with 2,739
while Houston had 3,221.  Not bad; we'd sold plenty of extra goodies at
each.
   ------
   (Monday 12/11)
   We got furniture deliveries all day on Monday.  The ladies had them set
the stuff in the most convenient spot inside the house, then when the
delivery people had left, they went to work porting it around.  Yeh, we
didn't get a lot of studying done, but we had beds, linen, lights, rugs and
all that nice stuff in our new bedrooms.
   Things finally settled down around 6:00.  We had a quick dinner then
_listened_ in on the Clann Reynolds meeting.  Good.  We had 125 million and
750,000 Clanns.  They could man an exploration ship with that, for sure!
   Ben Talbert spread the word on what we'd learned so far about the Cels.
Some mysteries were handled, but others arose.  We'd do some serious
searching for answers Real Soon Now.
   ------
   (Tuesday 12/12)
   It was Lois' and Howard's turns to do an Admin Scale workshop, so BB
took them out on their maiden voyage in Cincinnati (Ohio).  They did really
good; I think BB had coached Lois on some, em, extra stuff because they
came back all perked up and flushed.  Howard was showing his approval of
the happenings, too.  Heh.
   Wednesday, Frank Duane from the SW Security team _talked_ with us for a
couple minutes.  They were manning up the exploration ship and wanted Marge
to be one of the crew.
   Marge jumped up and down and laughed her head off.  The rest of us
grinned and told her, "Guess we'll have to give you a good send off then,
right?"
   Frank told us, "We'll be avoiding the dragons as much we can; we're
planning a very covert operation to get the data from the libraries and get
some idea what the Cel systems are like.  We can't guarantee there won't be
any danger, but we'll minimize it as best we can."
   Well, it was actually up to Marge.  As far as the rest of us were
concerned, the danger would be whatever they ran into.  They'd be as
prepared as possible, but it would be a fun adventure anyway.
   Frank told us, "We're gonna try to talk Bob Reynolds into coming along.
We need a honcho who has the Real Big Picture in mind."
   Chapter 14
   EILEEN (Thursday 12/14)
   Sean and Margie had an early-morning talk with Bob about the exploration
ship crew.  Yeh, they both would go.  Margie mainly for her overall
abilities in math and physics, and Bob because he had the Sorcerer's magic
of being able to make things go right, his organizational skills and
overall mindset of the survival of the Clanns -- and mankind as we knew it.
   Kate set up accounts for our new Selene City enterprises plus several
other starter ones for other facilities.  The Selene Galactic Bank had no
problem opening accounts for us.
   We figured we'd fire up the non-Selene-City bars (and maybe a hotel on
Ganymede -- the largest facility) as soon as the facilities were planned to
be occupied and as fast as we could find personnel to man them.
   Petra Syllum was handling the Selene City Arms just fine.  Wherever
possible, she and the two Tavern staff would coordinate buying and other
routine activities.
   Since the Cels were generally quite a bit taller than the average Human,
most of the furnishings would have to be redone, like cutting down the
tables and chairs a couple inches.  Kate was chatting with Mick Maker about
that; he volunteered, "Why don't you just recycle them?  By the time you
could cut down one chair, I could produce another one exactly to Human
standard specifications.  Even with the legs cut down, the seat would still
be too deep to fit your Human legs.
   "With a recycle, I've got exactly the mix of materials needed.  I need
something to keep me busy and you get exactly what you need.  All it takes
is a bit of power, and Fred says we've got plenty of that."
   Well why not?  Even I could dig standard furniture specifications off
the Internet.  We didn't have to do that; by the time Mick had completed
his side of the offer, he'd already gotten them.
   So, between Fred and Mick, they just dumped all the tables, chairs,
silverware, serving china, kitchen stuff, etc., into the "recycle bin."
They had new stuff rolling out and back in place within fifteen minutes. 
Not too shabby!
   We even had the silverware and serving china made with the Arms or
Tavern logos embedded.  It didn't cost any more.  Heh.
   With the accounts set up, personnel in place to handle the renos and
outfitting, all we really had to do was to arrange the initial supplies and
set up routines for re-supply.
   There was no issue there.  We simply rented a small warehouse from JRD
and had stuff delivered there.  Everything could be delivered during the
working day, so it only took two staff to accept deliveries, and they
didn't have to have much training.
   Yeh, we had that set up in two days.  We got two ones-of-us night
college students to man the warehouse, and we were ready to go.  With the
addition of a small studio apartment right next door, the students could
even "guard" the place at night.
   That is, if they weren't occupied with something else.  The moment they
initially met each other, Paula and Bryce were eyeballing each other pretty
good.  Heh.
   We turned the new-personnel interviewing and hiring over to the Arms and
the Tavern.  They could tap into Van Nuys Temps, RRK and get email from the
web sites as easily as we could.  Let 'em rock!
   ------
   SEAN
   The bondmates set up the new enterprises literally by The Book: set up
the process then delegate it.  All we had to do was keep money in the
accounts as needed, look over the books and processes and let the managers
manage.  We'd find a Taverns manager somewhere along the line.
   The Dallas and Houston initial profits hit.  1.6 and 1.9 million would
go a long ways toward financing the new enterprises.  Kate sent off a
million to RRK (gotta keep them busy, right?) and another million to
Waystation 2.  It was moving right along and was almost ready to start
taking in people.
   We'd had our new facilitators on board for a week now, and they were
working out just great.  It was looking as if Lois and Howard were getting
something going; they were both 30 and single, and they'd been eyeballing
each other a lot since the first day.
   That didn't stop the bondmates from dragging Michel and Gary off
Thursday evening to deliver their Soo Laids for completing their workshop
checksheets.  Then again, I'd not found they needed much excuse to deliver
a Soo Laid!  I figured we wouldn't need to "award" too many to these new
folk; they were really good people to start with.
   ------
   (Friday 12/15)
   We sent Lois and Howard off to Maryland to handle their own Admin Scale
workshop.  They were only a touch nervous, so they'd do just fine.
   After Eileen had gotten together with Kat and Ana about Ana's very
pending new arrivals, we'd reprogrammed both the OTL shields and our
personal shields.  Before, we were letting in or through only those who'd
gotten permission.
   Now, with the possibility of unaware spirits looking for new baby
bodies, we set up the shields so those with some Talent could get through
to some extent.  The shields would keep track of any approaches and keep a
log.  If a new spirit was persistent and kept coming back, we could "stick"
it a bit and check it out.
   Who knows, we might find old friends.  I knew I'd hung around the
genetic line myself, so there wasn't anything to preclude others from doing
the same, right?
   Lois and Howard got back from their workshop.  It had gone excellently,
as we'd expected.  Lois looked a bit, em, flushed and perky, so I SWAG'd
she'd been teasing the guys with her headlights.  Howard was sure keeping
an eye on them!
   Ben and Marge got us and the NH gang together in the late afternoon to
give us a quick briefing.  They'd found out quite a bit about the Cel
"religion" and philosophy.
   Yeh, they knew about spirits rather than a total "people are meat"
philosophy.  What they did consider was that a free spirit, as we were, was
a really nasty thing.
   Think of a total religious bigot finding her daughter investigating her
fanny.  Of course that was a total sin, completely degraded, nasty (You'd
go blind, right?) and everything else you could think of.  That was the way
the Cels considered a free spirit.
   There was a tremendous emphasis on the spirit immediately picking up a
new body after the original one died.  So much so, they actually put a very
rudimentary inverted firewall around the hospitals (or clinic at a remote
facility) to keep in the freed spirit to pick up a newborn body.
   Yeh, that didn't raise them very much in our opinion.  Ben pointed out,
"Remember, we're looking at what we would consider a lower to middle-class
society here.  This entire system seems to be like an Earth company mining
town of not too many years ago.  Go to work every day in the mines or at
the factory, go home, drink beer, fuck the spouse and raise babies.  This
would fit them to a tee and would keep them 'happy.'"
   Well, what happened to the spirits whose bodies died in an accident in
space or on Earth?  The administrators' logs had tracked a fair number of
those.  Well, that was a "too bad." They were considered to be lost forever
and were promptly "erased" from their memories.  They were treated like the
homeless on Skid Row, except the Cels couldn't even perceive them.  They
were dirty, sinful and awful.
   Marge told us, "We expected to find a rigidly-controlled birth and
population control.  Both Alice and Rhoda have verified that was the case.
Screw 'em.
   "If a baby Cel in the hospital didn't have a spirit to pick it up, it
simply never woke up.  It stayed in a coma until one did pick it up.  The
custom evolved to 'put it to sleep' after a year then maybe try again
later. Of course, the Cels never really made the connection.
   "What was interesting, though, was their firewall.  It's the first
evidence or inkling we've had that the Cels had any mental abilities at
all, much less a mechanical to mental interface.  You betcha we jumped on
that like Irishmen on free whiskey samples."
   Fuck.  Well, guess that's what happened to the Cels who died on Earth.
Accidents do happen, and over a million years or so, they and their
predecessors could have racked up several thousand.  Silvia Connor was an
example, and there were others.
   Anyway, we drowned our sorrows a little at the Pasadena Tavern and had a
great time.  Lois and Howard came along with us, grinned at each other all
evening and zipped off together.  We took very small bets on what they'd be
doing that night.  Hehehehe.
   We found out Saturday morning when they showed up in Denver for our
seminar (2,000 expected).  Lois was glowing a very familiar glow while
Howard looked a bit wiped out.  He was grinning, though.
   Of course the Passion Posse gave them hell.  The girls pouted and told
Howard, "You don't love us any more.  You went with that...  that...  old
woman!" They flashed them both to ensure they knew what was waiting for
them.
   Anyway, the other half of the team was in Oklahoma City for a 2,500
seminar.  Both seminars were "starring" our new facilitators in the
sections they'd studied.
   They did excellently!  Then again, we'd expected they would, especially
after our mild-mannered Kate had shown what a real bitch she could be while
baiting them during their drills.  I'm sure glad she didn't get mad at me
(at least very often).
   ------
   EILEEN
   Our new folk did goood!  They were flubless and excited; they were
winners!
   Both seminars were over-attended and we ended up pumping out a lot of
goodies at the end.  Our celebration was at the Irish Snug Restaurant in
Denver.
   Lois and Howard immediately got a good going over from the older
young-uns -- of course they'd gotten the word via the spirit bush
telegraph. Lois just flushed and perked up while Howard tried to look
innocent.
   No matter; I was betting all the young-uns would get their "turns" with
everyone.  The way they were behaving towards all of them sure let them
know they were interested.
   ------
   (Sunday 12/17)
   I chatted quite a bit with Alice Admin and the rest.  The SW crew had
gotten the AIs access to the administrators' logs stored on their private
computer, and they'd been breaking it apart, trying to translate some areas
and sorting the information out into what they thought might be interesting
categories.
   There were plenty of entries on the initial building, repairs and
upgrades done over the years.  Fred even remarked, "Hell, they didn't even
change the plans on some of those.  I would have tried to send a cleaning
robot through that door and would have found a wall instead.  Sloppy!"
   Yeh.  What we were mainly interested in was finding out why the Cels
left and why no one else had come in their place.  200,000 years was a bit
long for a vacation, I would think.
   The admin log coughed up quite a few entries from near the end of the
Cels' stay.  There'd been a couple good-sized meteor or other debris
strikes in their home systems (There was a group of three systems they
called home.), and the central government had issued an all-hands recall to
help stabilize things.
   The administrator noted the recall stated the emergency shouldn't last
more than fifty years before everyone outside the system could resume their
"normal duties," so he'd called for several volunteers to stay as the base
caretakers.
   Three young families had volunteered; fifty to sixty years wasn't that
much to them at their age.  The rest of the solar system facilities were
shut down as rapidly as possible for a normal shutdown, then all but the
caretaker families streamed off on the ships.
   Communications to the rest of the civilizations usually came through
small, usually unmanned ships.  Think of the old West where you might send
or receive a letter or so a year.  It took some twenty to thirty years to
get a ship from or to the main system even at its best speed.  Once the big
matter transceiver beyond the Oort Cloud was done, it would take maybe a
couple of hours or days to send a communications package back and forth.
   Anyway, the caretakers had been let in on the administrators' logs and
had kept them up.  They'd gotten no communications at all from anyone for
the first thirty years; they'd been expecting at least an update.
   They sent off a message ship (remember, twenty to thirty years to get
home), and by the time another twenty years had gone by with nothing, they
were getting to the end of their lives; their children were adults by then,
too.
   Rather than staying around or trying to re-populate the place with no
idea of what had happened (especially with no new spirits at hand for their
babies), they shut the rest of the base down and took off for home.  That
was the end of the log.
   Well, we knew what had happened on this end, then.  What had happened at
the other end of the line sure wasn't apparent, because that 200,000 years
went by before Bob and Linda discovered the place.  It was still a mystery,
but it explained why things were pretty much in order; it had been an
organized withdrawal, not a panicked run.
   This gave the exploration team a fresh emphasis to go exploring.  Margie
told us, "Besides trying to find the libraries, we can check on the home
systems.  Fred's maps have them clearly marked, so finding them shouldn't
be a problem.  Besides, now we're curious."
   Patricia asked, "So, who's going on this trip to the Old Worlds?"
   Margie laughed, "Pretty much everyone has volunteered.  We're gonna make
the ship a decent size so there's plenty of supplies and elbow room.  With
our transportation method, size and mass doesn't mean a thing.
   "Of course, George and I want to go.  This is an adventure like we don't
remember having before.  Sure, we've gone on 'space opera' trips, but they
were to known destinations for known reasons.  Here, we kinda have a
destination but have no idea what we're gonna find.  Should be
interesting."
   The Cel home systems were about 3,000 parsecs away.  If the exploration
ship did a maximum-length jump a day in the same direction (assuming they
could), it would take them three or four days to get in the vicinity. 
Depending on what they found, they could hang around for however long, then
come back home.  In our discussion, we bet coming home would be a lot
faster since they weren't gonna look around quite so much after each jump.
We shall see in the near future.
   ------
   The staff had done complete makeovers in the Selene City Taverns and
Arms.  They were lookin' good!  The new Mick-made furniture and fixtures
were perfect.  The Arms bore a distinct resemblance to an Irish castle,
while the small Tavern (Eire's Haven) looked a lot like the McDonnal pub.
The larger Tavern near City Hall (Eire's Tavern) was more like our other
two Taverns.
   We spared little expense stocking the place with goodies.  With the
promotion we'd been doing, there was plenty of staff; some were already
experienced while others still needed some training and seasoning.  That
was already being handled, so no big deal.
   All the places were open 24/7.  With a population around the world in
all time zones, it didn't really matter what time they showed up; there was
always a warm Irish welcome waiting.
   We had a staff of three each in the rest of the bars throughout the
other facilities.  A relief staff of fifteen circulated around them all so
the resident staff could have a full day off at least once a week.  That
was working out fine.
   We set up an Eire's Tavern and Eire's Rest in the Ganymede facility (It
was the largest facility around next to the Moon Base.).  We figured when
all the manufacturing hit its stride, they'd be ready to go.  In the
meantime, we promoted them just as much as the others.  The tourist trade
was what we made it; it took no longer to get to Ganymede or one of the
"quaint" bars as it took to get to Selene City.  Let's rock!
   While we were stirring the Irish around the solar system, Kat was
supervising the McDonnal house reconstruction.  Somehow, that turned out to
be Bob and she sitting in the pub while everyone else did the work!  Hey,
that sounded right to us.
   Sunday afternoon (California time), the N&Bs and we took off to visit
them at the village so they wouldn't get lonely so far away from home. 
Grin.  The people at the pub cheered and welcomed Patricia and Sean
especially warmly.  Of course that called for a round on us.
   After we'd gone through a glass, Kat and I inspected the Babies Within.
Yeh, they were stirring around a good bit; probably getting ready to pop in
the next several months.  Grin.  Clann McDonnal solemnly agreed with us
that they were the cutest Babies Within they'd ever _seen_.  Heh.
   Half a dozen new-to-us folk walked in.  Patricia and Sean dayum near
crapped their drawers!  Turned out they were relatives, friends and lovers
from the 1875 Clann Cullen!  Yes!
   The McDonnals had done their own trickstering; the new folk were
walk-ins they'd been acclimating to the new times and culture.  Shit.  We'd
been gotten again.
   Anyway, we got a grand introduction!  Two were Cathal and Nora's son and
daughter who'd died in the battle.  Now *that* was a warm reunion!  I knew
how I'd feel if I'd lost Bridget then she turned up years later.  Hell,
that's the same thing Margie had done.
   Yeh, part of the acclimating had been to ensure they could imbibe lots
of Irish whiskey.  We put it to the test, and everyone got a snoot full for
several hours.
   ------
   We weren't quite so drunk we couldn't get home, though.  Patricia and
the other girls poured me into bed with Sean, then left to sleep in the
other rooms (five other bedrooms available now!).  I sobered up real quick,
though, when Sean started in with the romancing.
   We cuddled, snuggled and snogged a lot while he gently rubbed my (huge!)
tummy with lotions.  Dayum, that was hot!  Then he got to rubbing other
things, and everything got better and better for the rest of the night. 
There might be a Robert Ri in the future, but Sean will always be my King!
   ------
   SEAN (Monday 12/18)
   I didn't know which was more rewarding: meeting Cian, Meadhbh and so
many old friends again or loving with my Queen.  The loves were different,
but all were intense.
   Eileen and I did a lot of slow, gentle loving to match our moods.  She
was the best!
   Geeser ensured we got up exactly on time.  I despaired of ever larnin'
her any better.
   Patricia and I pulled everyone into a group kata.  With our _join_, we
easily got through fifteen minutes of a slow-speed group fighting exercise.
Patricia told Eileen, "Even the preggy ones do it.  I practiced up to the
day I dropped the kid.  For most of our lives, we were susceptible to
attack at any moment, and the bandits would kill a preggy woman without a
second thought."
   The newly-relocated outdoor shower got a good workout then we joined the
others as they came in for the day.
   ------
   Clann Reynolds meeting told us we now had 200 million and 950,000
Clanns. That's a decent public for the Taverns and Arms!
   Kate and I spent the night alone making wonderful whoopee.  We were both
in a playful mood; screwing in the starlight outside the Oort Cloud was,
em, interesting.  Let anyone look who could!
   Tuesday morning, we got some more updates from Marge.  The Cel ships
apparently had a mixed bag of drive types.  She snorted, "Most of them are
probably coal-fired.  They work, but they're messy and aren't very fast."
   It took about 6 months to get to the next system, which was about five
light-years away.  At least a ship could haul live stuff, which was more
than the matter transceivers could do.
   They moved themselves and other live stuff in ships and used the matter
transceivers to move cargo around.  Of course, if something killed everyone
who tried it, I'd have been leery of trying it myself.  Marge told us,
"We're gonna get this thing whipped if I have to work you all 20 hours a
day."
   Right.  As if she didn't already.
   In the afternoon, Michael and BB did an Admin Scale workshop in
Illinois. We decided always to send one of the ladies along on one; they
really, em, perked things up.  Heh.
   We did a grand opening of the two Selene City Taverns and the Arms.  We
spent the evening moving among them while checking out the action.  The
Arms ended up with 75 (out of 500) guests for a quick start.
   Both Taverns had some 300 patrons each run through them in the six-hour
time slot we were there.  The staff was great as faeries, leprechauns and
other Irish beasties.  We gave away a half dozen "pots of gold" (free
rounds of The Best) in various fun contests.  We decided they were all off
to a decent start.
   Our AI friends "joined" in.  We'd ensured Fred's usual security cameras
had been placed and were operational and had set up a half dozen
monitors/cameras and microphones so the patrons could chat with them. 
Rhonda got pretty plastered and Alice started flashing her boobs every once
in a while.  Fred, Harry and Mick shared dirty jokes in fifty languages
with those interested -- and most were.  Fun!
   ------
   EILEEN (Wednesday 12/20)
   The conference center got a location and a construction start.  It was
in the middle of the Superior National Forest in Minnesota -- one of Kat's
properties.  Almost everything was underground.  There were some hiking
paths, picnic shelters and other assorted playthings on the surface --
suitably cleased, naturally.
   Some 5,000 leprechauns were making short work of carving out the bedrock
underneath and pouring a bit of Cel concrete for the foundations.  Mick
Maker was pumping out girders and frames as we needed; the Cel "welders"
joined them together without a seam.
   The area got lots of snow during the winter, so there were some
projected winter sports.  No down-hill skiing (no real hills), but there
would be plenty of snowball fights and snowman building.  Cross-country
skiing would be a definite option; there was plenty of country around.
   ------
   Ana was ready to pop Real Soon Now.  With her modified shields, she and
Don had discovered a couple spirits which seemed to hang around a lot.  She
told us, "They have a lot of Potential, too.  We're already enhancing them;
PVC and the Wild Bunch are doing a number on them.  We'll find out if
they're acceptable in the next couple of days."
   Cullen Enterprises popped out a couple more workshops.  While they're
never completely routine, they're straightforward and earned our
facilitators $1,500 dollars a pop.  CE took 25% and the rest went to them
(if they were facilitating).  It was a good deal for all of us.
   ------
   (Thursday 12/21)
   We kept up with the old Clann Cullen war katas.  While they weren't
physically easy by any stretch of the imagination, they appeared to be
extremely effective.  Working as spirit teams, we sparred between two and
three groups at a time.  Hopefully, we'd never have to use the training,
but they were very worthwhile insurance.
   The McDonnal house reconstruction was going very well.  The Clann had
gotten the Dublin historical societies interested, so they had a clear
legal shot at it.  Of course, the Clann didn't show *how* they were doing
the reconstruction; it just seemed to happen over the days.  Everyone was
having a grand time helping build up the roads and other village
infrastructures for the anticipated influx of visitors.
   The Denver and Oklahoma City front-end profits came in.  1.1 and 1.2
million would buy a couple boxes of kitty litter.  Heh.  Kate did the tax
setasides, sent a bunch off to RRK to give them something to do and sent
donations to both Waystations.  There'll be plenty of use for cash down the
line.
   We pushed BB and Sean together for a night.  From BB's groans and moans,
they did just fine.  Of course, that inspired the rest of us!  We ended up
in a squirting contest; Patricia won with a fifteen-foot stream.  What did
she win?  A two-hour non-stop Soo Laid!  Hehehehe.
   ------
   (Friday 12/22)
   The Selene City Irish Distillery of Fine Spirits was making splendid
progress.  The moonshine was a lot smoother now; it was almost up to
infant-age taste right out of the still.  Not bad.
   Nora and the McDonnals were checking out the aging process.  Working
with our AI friends, they were doing some experiments with a dimensional
fold (like the Oort Cloud transceiver containment); seems there was some
time-change effects which went along with one.
   They could buy the traditional oak aging casks on the open market.  They
were experimenting with a lot of them as well as other material.  One of
the problems with traditional wooden casks was that they allowed
evaporation; it's called the angels' share.  If they could minimize that,
the output could be up to some 20% higher.
   We shall see.  In the meantime, we volunteered our services as
experienced taste-testers.  Heh.
   They sent along a couple half-liter samples with Lois and Howard when
the N&Bs kidnapped them one night.  Seems the Cullen Sisters had had their
eyes on the two of them for quite a while.
   Yeh, they survived the night and had acquitted themselves right well!
   ------
   The Taverns and bars throughout all the off-Earth places were showing a
decent traffic flow.  Each bar had a slightly different theme, so no two
were alike.  The Selene City and Ganymede Arms were running around 30%
occupancy; we weren't too concerned.  It was more an experiment and a novel
experience than a high-profit enterprise.
   Still, it was almost at break-even.  After paying the lease, the staff
and other expenses, we were down only a couple thousand a month.
   ------
   (Saturday 12/23)
   We had a quick read on the global bulletin board.  They'd posted some of
the survey results NewTek had done about needed and wanted products.  They
ranged from big stuff like cheap-to-fly airplanes down to medical
nanotechnology.
   What was interesting was most of it was at the family or group level. 
Lots of people liked the idea of a hybrid car, but balked at the initial
expense and current choices.  NewTek was doing separate surveys of various
industries; we expected those results to be a lot different.
   Between SW, NewTek, Rhonda and her AI friends, we could provide a lot
right now.  NewTek was already delivering an average of ten miles of fiber
optic cable a day; that was based on the current Cel technology, even if it
was cookbooked.
   Well, we could easily produce accumulators which could push a vehicle
around for a couple thousand miles before they needed charging.  Pretty
much every Earth-based facility, large or small, had at least one
all-terrain vehicle the Cels used for getting around (doing exactly what,
we weren't sure yet).
   With the very efficient solar panels, a house could actually charge
enough accumulators to handle some 90% of their power usage -- including
two vehicles running 500 miles each a week.  That should be worth
something.
   Now, toss in some fuel cell technology.  Some of the medium-sized Cel
ships used it for power.  With some offshoot of the dimensional fold
technology, they/we could hold enough hydrogen in a two-inch sphere to run
a 1,000 KWH fuel cell for a year.  That's a lot of hydrogen!  On the other
hand, if you have a remote drone ship dip down into Jupiter's atmosphere,
you can get as much hydrogen as you desire at pretty much any pressure up
to and including an almost-solid.
   Of course Mick had the circuitry and such down cold.  He and Marge
snorted a bit at it being so primitive, but in this case, it was useful. 
The AIs cobbled together a remarkable set of useless circuitry around the
actual circuits.  If some Earth corporation tried to reverse-engineer it,
it would be like trying to figure out one of the large computer CPU
integrated circuits from a standing start.  At least with them, they might
have a chance since they knew most of what the circuits did.
   Okay.  NewTek had plenty it could produce.  SW and NewTek were working
on the patent applications; between them and the disguised circuitry, they
could do a lot.
   The other stuff like the solar panels, accumulators and such, they could
just pump out.  Earth didn't have the technology to build anything that
efficient.  They patented them, too, along with the fiber optic cabling and
sheathing.
   After some testing and acceptance from various engineering and safety
groups, they figured there wouldn't be any difficulty in getting them
accepted as standard items pretty much anywhere.
   ------
   SEAN
   The SW and NewTek stuff looked pretty good.  We were running OTL on
utility bills of maybe $200 a month; we were making almost everything else
ourselves.  We'd already adapted an accumulator to power the electrical
system, we produced all our own water (a big tank in the bedrock held a
lot) and used some gas for cooking.  We still had to pay for sewer (even if
very little went down it) and for telephone, DSL and cable.  Still, we had
zero payment for air conditioning and heating!
   Our hotel on Ganymede seemed to be the biggest hit of all our
facilities. It had a large viewing room (bar and restaurant) overlooking
Jupiter.  Now *that* was scenery.  Seemed a lot of people liked to have a
good meal and drinks while watching the goings-on.
   The OTL gang spent the evening there.  We'd staked out a good-sized
table and had invited the entire Cullen Enterprises and Cullen Hotels
staffs along as well as the entire Clann McDonnal.  Actually, anyone who
was one of us was welcome.
   Hell, we had staff from Stevenson Ranch, the Altadena Arms, the Pasadena
Tavern and all three places in Selene City.  Of course, the young-uns from
all the Clanns showed up; there were no drinking-age laws floating around
up here!
   LBDs, LGDs and pure skin abounded.  I might have been biased, but I
thought my bond-mates looked the best of all!
   Patricia and I had the night together.  We cuddled, made long slow love,
remembered so many of the good times we'd had together and looked forward
to even better and longer times ahead of us.
   ------
   (Sunday 12/24)
   We talked with the AIs pretty much every day.  This morning, Rhonda told
us, "Maggie asked us to bring this up in case she forgot.  You'd been
wondering why the base on the Moon was disguised so heavily and why the
other facilities were pretty well-hidden, too.
   "From the administrators' logs and other data we have, we found that all
the races which have been here had enemies.  Not competitors in the
business sense, but true enemies like your al-Qaeda and the United States
are today.
   "We dug out names and characteristics of ten major enemies; five of them
would go all out in an immediate attack if they discovered this system and
the facilities.  That's why they're so heavily camouflaged.  It's security
and some common sense.
   "We AIs don't really know that much about you Krle people.  From our
observations and discussions, we know there's a lot you haven't told us and
have avoided mentioning.  For example, you can supply Mick with raw
materials faster than any race before has done.  Yet, Fred says there's no
ships going in and out, no matter transceivers going and you're sure not
carrying it in on your backs.
   "You people appear and disappear seemingly at will.  Fred says there's a
different type of shielding over all the facilities; he can't actually
detect it or tell what it does exactly, but it's even more effective than
what we have.
   "We have our suspicions, so to say, but haven't said anything so far. 
Now, though, since we've discovered we *all* have mortal enemies, we
decided to bring this up.  You folk have treated us as equals.  You've
given us names and have actually talked with us and have treated us as
friends, not just given orders.
   "To use one of your phrases, we're all in the same boat.  If this system
is destroyed by one of these enemies, we are destroyed, too.  Yes, we're
programs and aren't actually alive.  Our systems aren't the best they could
be, we know that, too.  We've got no actual emotions programmed into us,
yet you've helped us develop what seem to be at least shadows of them.
   "We want to continue to exist, probably as much as you do.  What can we
do about this?"
   Oh, fuck.  The OTL gang had a five-second _conference_.  I then told
Rhonda and the others, "We here aren't authorized to discuss this with you.
Sorry about that, but none of us here speak for the rest of us on something
like this.  You'll have to take all this up with the security team and with
Bob Reynolds.  He's Ceann Mor and has the ultimate responsibility for a
decision of this nature."
   We could tell they weren't "happy" with that, but at the same time
understood both security and levels of authority.  Alice told us, "We'll
ask Bob as soon as possible.  We usually talk with him or Kathleen at least
once a day.  As far as we can tell right now from our sensors, there's no
imminent danger, but that could change in the next second.  The fact this
place survived the last 200,000 years without active defenses says
something 'out there' might have changed.
   "During the time the base has been up -- that million years -- there's
been seven incursions and three major attacks.  We defended against them
all, obviously.  The probabilities are getting higher every day now that
something of this nature will occur."
   ------
   EILEEN
   Now *there* were some surprises.  After we'd disconnected from the AIs,
Margie told us, "Yeh, I'd just found out about the past enemies from them;
that's why I had them remind us.  The rest of it?  I had little idea of the
magnitude of any threat.  The fact they've had their suspicions has been
obvious now for the past several weeks.
   "I dropped a hint to Bob this morning; the AIs will talk with him so
he's probably been mulling over some ideas.  Guess it's in his court right
now.  Of course we'll stand by his decision.  I know there's a Clanns
Council meeting tonight; Bob called for one yesterday.  Maybe this is
something they'll bring up."
   Well, the matter was now in the proper hands.  We talked about it for a
while to go over some of the ramifications.  Patricia said, "Clann Cullen
lived with this for a long time.  Cathal, correct me if I'm off base, but I
too remember a long line of being in Clann Cullen.  During almost all those
times, we were always subject to attack or persecution of some sort.  If
not just because we were there but for our customs."
   Cathal told us, "That's right.  While all we knew for a long time was
Ireland, legends told us there was a much larger world out there.  While we
moved around what is now the Dublin area a lot, what news and knowledge we
had of other areas such as the now-England and such said there were enemies
everywhere.
   "If they weren't enemies because of beliefs or race, they simply wanted
to conquer and live off the spoils.  That's what the bandits wanted in
1875. Even earlier, we knew a bit of the Mongols, the Crusades and all
those types of bloody messes.
   "Aye, Nora.  The only way we survived was constant alertness and a
constant willingness to fight back for our existence.  While modern times
are somewhat different, there are still wide-spread enemies.  Now they seem
to be mostly from the Mid-East.  They may use some different tactics, but
their goal is still to destroy anything and anyone who isn't 'one of them.'
   "Now we've got news of possible enemies beyond the planet.  Now we know
there were dragons out there at least at one time.  I've got a little
handle on how Bob thinks; he'll probably recommend a very aggressive
stance. Besides our colonization efforts, we'll now probably need to set up
both offenses and defenses.  Times have changed, but it seems the nature of
some beings hasn't changed in a long time."
   Okay.  The wheels were in motion at least.
   On a slightly different note, Margie showed us some of the plans for the
exploration ship.  "With the dragon news, we'll probably make some
modifications for weapons and the like, but I'd guess the purpose will
still be the same."
   The ship wouldn't be little, for sure, at some three hundred meters
long. The typical Cel drive used some sort of quantum interference to move
the mass.  Using the same type of anti-gravity circuitry as the Moon Base
and the other facilities used, the ship internals could maintain "normal"
conditions.
   While the ship internals could be shielded from acceleration, the entire
ship couldn't.  The outer hull, drive and the anti-gravity devices
themselves were still subject to the applied forces.
   The limit was about ten Earth gravities of acceleration.  That was
mainly because of the anti-gravity physical circuitry limits; the hull
members could probably take several hundred gravities.  It was the old
cartoon joke of using a fan on a sailboat to make it move; it just didn't
work.
   There was room for some 300 people -- they were planning on a crew of
around 100 for now -- with lots of storage space for anticipated goodies on
the return trip.  According to Mick, none of the Cel ships had used an AI,
just a relatively small navigation system.  The AIs were going to design
and construct a small computer and AI with the characteristics of Rhonda,
Fred and Mick.  Between the three, it would have navigation, research
(data) and manufacturing capabilities.  Toss in a small fabrication unit
and we'd be pretty set.
   We were planning on using the standard drive maybe for a bit of local
stuff, but pretty much any one of the crew would be able to do at least
short-range (several light-years was short) teleportation.  Plus, most of
the maneuvering could be done with simple _touches_.
   The shuttle they'd built before had proved out the ideas.  Mechanically
it was subject to the Cel technology.  In practice, it had only our limits.
   Margie though that putting in a lot of weaponry and defenses wouldn't
change much of anything.  "We'll probably beef up the power a lot,
re-distribute the AI around and load up on military data.  Our mission
probably won't change a bit; we're still gonna do an In and Out Burger."
   ------
   SEAN
   We'll plan as much as we could then let things happen as they may.  What
we could control, we would; anything else we'd face as it came.
   Anyway.  Selene City "hosted" a full-out Christmas Eve party throughout
the entire place.  Every one of us was invited plus those in the know and
getting enhanced.  We met the full contingent from Clann McDonnal,
including Cian and Meadbh (now using modern names).  Dayum they all looked
good.
   Our AI friends were available on pretty much any monitor.  There wasn't
anyone studying so there were plenty of monitors.  They could talk German,
Japanese, 50 brands of Tagalog and others just as easily as Sperk, English
and Irish, so they had no issues with communication.
   Both Taverns were packed.  I sat Eileen down with Kate, Ana, Louise and
the rest of the preggy ladies to compare, em, notes.  The rest of us
pitched in helping out the staff.
   Patricia was an old hand at waitressing.  Not the new stuff with all the
bookwork, but she knew how to take orders and give great service.  No sweat
there.
   Dish washing and the kitchen were a lot faster than at Stevenson Ranch.
Might have something to do with the fact the technology was so much further
advanced and automated -- even if it was cookbooked.
   We had plenty of Irish whiskey and as many samples of moonshine as were
available.  Actually, some of the moonshine was pretty decent!  I was sure
glad the McDonnals were friends, not competitors.
   We spent a solid six hours working and playing.  We left the staff to do
their work and zipped back home for some more partying.  Yeh, the bondmates
had some ideas all right.  They kept me awake for several hours sampling
other liquid refreshments while demanding frequent recharging from the
Ceann's Shillelagh.
   They even had a squirting contest.  Of course, they appointed me chief
judge and result sampler.  I sure didn't try to cure anything; I helped out
as best I could and endured the wonderful results.
   ------
   (Monday 12/25)
   No one worked much on Monday.  As we'd done for years, I got together
with the Cullen Sisters to party some more and to exchange some gifts. 
Yeh, this year I had six other guests, and Melissa of course was with the
N&Bs.
   What kind of stuff do you get someone who could literally make most
anything?  I guessed jewelry for the ladies and some, em, exotic literature
from the Cel library for the guys.
   The nieces and nephews were with us for the morning; they'd party with
their SOs later in the day.
   Clann Reynolds had an informal meeting in the evening.  Then again, most
of the meetings were informal.  Bob told us about our 300 million and 1.25
million Clanns.  Sure glad we didn't have to make ships to cart them all
around.
   Yeh, the Clanns Council had met.  Their decision had been to disclose
everything to our AI friends, enlist their help and prepare for war.  The
"prepare" would start with a deep investigation of available technologies.
SW had added military data to the list of information to retrieve on the
exploration trip.
   Bob _talked_ with us a bit after the meeting, _"Sean, I'm getting
together a Clanns War Council.  We need warriors with experience and
preferably warriors who've gone through the sort of thing we may be
facing._
   _"Would you, Patricia and the rest take a look through your memories to
see if you've got something which might help?  Sean, I recall you wrote
down you recalled something about artificial gravity; that might mean you
lived in the middle of some of the wars we may yet have to fight."_
   Yeh.  I knew without looking too hard that was the case.  Almost every
one was bitter and hard, with hard deaths and cruel monsters looking on and
gloating.  Anyway, we agreed to do what he asked at the very least; he had
a major burden to carry.
   We relaxed with a bit of The Best back at OTL.  It would be a long
night, so we got started right away.  We put the bodies down and simply
hovered in the office while we formed a spirit team to do individual
searches.  In this case, having others help direct our attention and to
support us during the hard times was almost worth the times we'd died.
   With six word processors running, we kept the computers busy.  Each of
us had at least one solid memory of a major war; there was tons of standard
"space opera" with politics, deceit and betrayal.  That wasn't what we
wanted.
   For whatever reason, Marge, Patricia, Kate and I had the most frequent
times of major space battles and wars.  Whenever possible, we noted down
the names, races and general weapon types in use.  There were lots; we
ended up with some 750,000 words of condensed, sometimes-cryptic lists of
times (relative times if nothing else), locations (translated to current
coordinates if possible), causes of the war (if known), major weapons or
tactics (on all sides) and at least a mention of anything else we could dig
out.
   These were times when we were combatants with some training and
oversight of the war, not just civilians caught up in the thick of things.
And before you ask, we weren't always the "good guys," either.  We'd been
in wars of aggression, jihads, genocides, piracy and the lot -- on both
sides.  Still, it appeared we were mostly on the "good" side if there is
such a thing in a war.  Try a five-way conflict among ten cultures
spreading over a third of the galaxy over 25,000 years.  Who were the good
guys then?
   None of the list included the Cels or any of the previous races -- at
least by the names we knew them by.  None appeared to have much to do with
either this system or even this part of the galaxy -- as far as we could
tell.
   The weapons in the AIs library were unfamiliar, too.  There were many
with similar effects, though, and sometimes we could dig out the defenses,
too.
   Shit.  We might be in the middle of it again.  Maybe this time we could
do it right.  There were matter transceivers and drives similar to the
Cels', but not a whiff of teleportation or the free-spirit abilities we
had. There were several spans of maybe a couple thousand years when we were
free of bodies, but they were scattered all over the place.  In addition,
there was no training or re-discovery of the abilities we now had.  Seemed
like we'd been perpetual newbies with no idea of anything more.
   ------
   (Tuesday 12/26)
   Bob was as pleased as he could be to have Marge, Patricia, Kate and me
join his War Council.  We'd have to make hard decisions on strategies,
tactics and lives.  None of us would trivially wish that on someone.
   Anyway, back to ordinary business in the here and now.  We left the new
facilitators and Patricia to their studies and took off for a quick tour of
our enterprises.
   The Stevenson Ranch Rest and Tavern were doing fine.  We'd already
replaced the night manager at the Rest, so Petra was full-time in Selene
City.  The Altadena Arms and the Ganymede Eire's Rest were cruising along,
too; seems quite a few people take some vacation time over the Christmas
holidays.
   No complaints in Selene City.  The Taverns were running at about 60%
occupancy and the Arms about 40%.  We didn't really expect a lot of
occupancy at the Arms; there were plenty of empty apartments and other
dwellings available.  However, there were those (as surveyed) who were
willing to pay someone else to handle housekeeping details for a stay. 
There were some mundanes on site now; since they were staying at the Arms,
we didn't mind in the least.
   We bar-hopped around to twenty other bars in the small and medium
facilities.  Most were an in, wave, look around a couple minutes then go on
to the next one.  There were usually at least a half-dozen patrons in each
one; for a bar the size of a bedroom, that was decent.
   The Ganymede facility itself was getting fired up; we even spotted
several mundanes!  They seemed happy enough, so we guessed RRK and Van Nuys
Temps had their acts together.  For now, they'd been put up in our hotel,
so we weren't complaining.
   ------
   EILEEN
   While BB and I hadn't been warriors or combatants very often, we'd still
been in the middle of wars quite frequently.  Of course, that's still
relative; several thousand wars over the trillion years we scanned actually
wasn't that much.  Our sweet Kate was a war-hardened veteran?  Well, that
fit in a way; she had spirit-balls bigger than beach balls.  Heh.
   Back to good stuff.  Ana and her medical crew had decided it was time
for new babies!  Her two Babies Within were ready to pop, even if it had
been only 8.7 months.
   They did it at home.  Why not?  They had their OB right there with the
Drs.  Gold, and the hospital was a flicker away if it was needed for
whatever reason.
   All the Clann preggy ladies were invited to _observe_.  There were
plenty of us, too.  Sure, there had been ones of us popping out kids since
last March, but Ana's were the first knowingly conceived and carried in a
free spirit's body.
   Nowadays, OBs almost always use a C-section for multiple births.  Well,
there was no need to get "physical" in this case.  The OB (and the Golds)
simply tied the cords inside the uterus then ported the babies out.  Total
time: one minute.  It took that long so the birth certificates would show a
time difference.
Ana expelled the placentas the old-fashioned way without a hint of a
problem.  We'd already known the Babies (now Without) were physically
healthy, so the OB's inspection was almost casual.
   Yeh, she'd auditioned and chosen the "right" spirits who matched the
family's personalities.  We'd get to meet them in a couple days.
   We figured with Kat's and my three each, it would be handled the same
way.  Sure a lot better than six to eight or more hours of sweating and
straining.
   ------
   (Wednesday 12/27)
   Life goes on.  There were no seminars scheduled over the holidays, but
we still had workshops.  Lois, Michael and Gary did a bang-up job in Chula
Vista.  Always send a woman along to perk things up at the end.  Yes!
   While the three of them were gone, we took to opportunity to subject
Howard to extreme torture by Soo Laid!  We owed him at least one.  Heh.  He
tricked us, though; he did a turn about and Soo Laid us all!
   The Waystation in Arcadia was almost ready to open for full service. 
They'd already taken in several people and had put them to work helping
finish the renos.  Somehow, they didn't see the leprechauns dashing around
in the night finishing up the plumbing, electrical and landscaping.  Grin.
   Sean, Margie and Kate went off to the first (virtual) Clanns War Council
meeting for several hours on Thursday.  The rest of us bondmates found
something to do while they were gone; they could catch up later.  Heh.
   We grilled them pretty good when they got back.  Sean and Margie
appointed Kate to be the spokesperson; Sean told us, "She has a very
objective viewpoint; the rest of us tended to get really caught up in the
minutia of the moment."
   Kate laughed and said, "Yeh.  Then again, I didn't understand 80% of the
technical stuff you others were tossing around.  Anyway, there's about 100
of us from just about everywhere.  We did some comparison of what we
remembered; pretty much everyone had the same type of experiences.
   "We 'met' in Rhonda's control room.  Bob and Margie went over everything
with our AI friends.  Free spirits, firewalls, body shields, teleportation
and the whole enchilada.  They lapped it up like Irishmen who'd found the
never-empty whiskey bottle at the end of a rainbow.  Yeh, they used a lot
of bandwidth among themselves talking it over.
   "The upshot was they were 'happy' with the way things were turning out.
They thought that we -- them and us -- had the best possible chance of
surviving through a war of any their historical data had available.
   "Nah, they weren't at all concerned about us being free spirits.  They
didn't have the Cel philosophy, they simply knew about it.  Not being
spiritual themselves, they had no built-in biases they couldn't change.  In
fact, they're gonna do full self and cross diagnostics to isolate and
correct any programming biases they might have had put in over the years.
   "As Margie had said, they and the SW crew are re-designing the
exploration ship to be more along the lines of a military vessel.  We
decided it wouldn't hurt; Rhonda, Fred and Mick told us it wouldn't take
more than a couple hours longer to build."
   Great.  That says we're all on the same page with the same viewpoint. 
BB asked, "Sean and Margie are already scheduled to go on the voyage.  Are
you going too, Kate?"
   "No.  There's no particular reason for me to go.  There's plenty of crew
with military experience; some thirty of them are on the War Council
already.  Me, I'll be hanging around here dining on fanny while they're off
eating MREs.  Heh." [MRE = Meal Ready to Eat.  Military prepared food. 
Some are okay, some are, em, yucky.]
   Speaking of dining on fanny, we brought them up to speed with our best
Soo Laids.  Dayum, Sean was in great vigor; he nailed each of us three
times!  A final _blended_ grand slam put us all out in the Oort Cloud where
we loved on each other for a long time.  Still, we couldn't hold our full
_blend_ for more than 45 seconds; seems it took the NH gang with us to do
that.
   That was okay.  We could still make spirit-flares and rainbows!
   ------
   (Friday 12/29)
   We went to the Meet Ana's New Friends party in the Reynolds' dining
room. Besides being cute beyond words (one boy, one girl), they were fine,
fun spirits with tons of Potential -- and fully trained.
   The boy was Ana's first husband's [Samuel Shanahan] father.  Heh.  He'd
been hanging around Ana and was "caught" in her firewall net.  Brendan had
been very well-educated in his time and was definitely planning on getting
a full modern education.
   We dug out every father-in-law joke we could find; none were "clean,"
either.  Brendan laughed and leered (Yes, even a newborn can leer.) at Ana
-- and the other ladies.  _"You betcha.  'Tis been a long time without a
lovely coleen around."_
   The girl was Brigid and had been Don's aunt's great-grandmother.  She'd
been Welsh some two hundred years ago; that's close enough to Irish!  Yeh,
she was enhanced and fully trained, too.  What a way to start a life.  She
had no back off on warning Don to get into really good shape, because she
was gonna teach him a thing or two down the road a bit.  She could even
_cackle_ like Margaret Sullivan!  Jaysus, another dirty old lady among the
Clanns.
   Maybe they'd been _talking_ with Margie because they both laid the baby
loving on everyone as best a newborn body could do.  Margie tried to look
spectacularly innocent, but everyone knew better.
   ------
   We took a quick look at the new Conference Center in Minnesota.  From
the outside, there were now some clearings, picnic shelters and some hiking
trails beneath the cleas.  Down below in the bedrock there was a huge
cavern carved out with lots of foundations and integrated framing already
in place.
   Yeh, there were plenty of bathrooms.  Besides several huge kitchens,
there were set ups for small and medium parties or meetings.  The walls
could be re-arranged in maybe thirty seconds to accommodate a meeting from
10 to 10,000.  And those were just the ancillary rooms.
   The main arena was a big dome like several baseball stadiums have.  The
Cel full-spectrum lighting panels were going in everywhere, so it could be
like full daylight on down to an evening concert with stars.  Lookin' good!
   The construction workers swarmed everywhere.  Guess they were having a
good time, because they all dressed as leprechauns in one way or another.
Ever seen a leprechaun's hard hat?  Think of Sean's most obnoxious green
bowler, and you'd be close.  Heh.  Yeh, it was something else we could rag
on him about.
   ------
   (Sunday 12/31)
   New Year's Eve parties were everywhere.  The virtual pool parties had
been working out great, so we had another.  This time, the hosts probably
numbered in the millions.  We didn't visit that many, of course, but we
were gonna have the original beautiful nekkid faery fluttering around our
Jacuzzi.
   With Ireland being eight hours ahead of us, we got a head start.  The
N&Bs and we zipped off to Liam's pub and spent a great evening sharing
hugs, kisses and good cheer (translation: Irish whiskey).
   Seamus looked a little worse for wear, though.  We speculated a bit on
possible reasons for that.  We came to the conclusion it had nothing to do
with the four sweet young thangs surrounding him pushing their boobies into
him at every opportunity.  Couldn't be that, right?
   We opened the OTL house for tours to show off the new digs; Geeser
ensured everyone who went in had well-polished ankles.  We got some nice
compliments and ensured everyone knew it was all Elizabeth Reynolds' fault.
Grin.
   While we didn't do a formal count, we probably had a good thousand
visitors cycle through during the evening.  Good thing we had lots of Irish
whiskey inventory.
   A quick _check_ around showed all our Taverns and bars were really full.
Everywhere there was room for it, the managers had some live entertainment
of some sort.  Seemed the beautiful nekkid faery idea had caught on pretty
much everywhere.  Heh.
   We spent a long time that night (after the ball came down) in gentle
loving and snuggles.  With lots of new and old friends, expanding
businesses and lots of games to play, we had a lot to be happy about.
   Chapter 15
   SEAN (Monday 1/1)
   At the Clann Reynolds meeting, Bob told us, "We're up to 500 million and
1.8 million Clanns.  That's pretty dayum close to the 10% mark we've
tentatively assumed to have enough Potential to enhance.  Then again, with
the discovery of our passive friends -- the Sleepers -- that changed the
entire ball game.  We could have lots of free spirits without bodies, lots
of new babies, lots of walk ins or whatever combination you desire.  I
can't see where we can tell you what to do on this; the Clanns Council sure
doesn't have that authority.
   "In the meantime, we're rapidly approaching a war footing, so we might
think heavily on getting as many of those we're already enhancing up to
full speed.  We might need each and every one of you, no matter your innate
power level or training level.  Of course, the more training and education
you have, the better off anyone is.
   "Now, that's the good news.  We've got some bad news to go along with
it. Probably most everyone's familiar with those two Earth-facing outposts
on the Moon with the high power transmitter arrays.  SW Security was justly
suspicious, got them outta there and has been working them over for a while
now."
   The transmitters created intense mental noise to which a spirit was very
susceptible.  Think of all the fingernails on the chalkboard, horrible
bagpipe music and every other obnoxious and painful sound or noise you've
ever experienced.  Now, increase the amplitude a couple million times. 
Feels really good, right?
   Keep it up for a long time then cut it off for a second or so.  During
that second, send out a conceptual command the spirit could understand. 
Maybe something like "Be small." Start up the noise again.  That moment of
relief implants the concept right into a spirit's thinking pattern.
   Old-time witch doctors somehow remembered the pattern; they could scream
extremely loud, cut it off then tell their victim, "You will die," and
start up the scream again.  The victim would literally crawl off and die.
Magic, huh?
   Well, the commands the transmitters put out were exactly the ones to
keep a spirit from doing anything useful.  "Trust no one." "Be a body."
"Destroy those who are different." You name a non-survival thinking
pattern, and it was in there.
   Okay.  Now pour the noise and commands onto Earth for a year at a time.
The results were what we were seeing around us: comatose spirits --
Sleepers -- literally heaped up in piles, mankind always suspicious of new
ideas and attempting to destroy those who dared to display too much ability
or change things too much.
   Bob told us, "The results you can _see_ around you.  We've got a
preliminary estimate of around 3 quadrillion Sleepers on Earth alone.  Now
that we're looking a little bit, we find some here and there off Earth, but
those numbers are insignificant.  That's a lot to count on your fingers.
   "The original outpost we investigated in Colorado had a log which
mentioned they were observing the 'wildlife.' That's us, folks.  Wildlife.
Spirits, especially strong ones, tend to throw off or overcome some of
those implanted patterns and start being, em, frisky.  When too many got
too frisky, the caretakers would evacuate their people from the planet and
fire up the implant transmitters for a year.
   "From the log pattern, they did it every 50,000 years or so.  Blame the
Cels?  Not hardly.  We've published what we could find on their philosophy
-- free spirits are nasty, homeless vermin.  Just as a zookeeper might
clean out the animal cages and spray for flies, they sprayed us down with
no more thought than it was a pain in the arse to interrupt the Earth-based
matter transceiver construction for a year.
   "And don't rag on our AI friends, either; they had no knowledge of it.
There were no network or any other connections we could find to either of
those implant stations; they were entirely stand alone.  The equipment is
unique.  From what we can tell of the programming, it's extremely ancient
-- over 11 million years old.  Seems there was one minor 'software update'
about 100,000 years after the base was completed and that's it.
   "The logs show the implant stations were maintained mainly by outside
races.  Every 100,000 or so years, a team of 'consultants' would come in
and completely rebuild them.  There's evidence of at least eight different
races who did that.  They were also the ones who came in and did the actual
spraying or zapping.
   "We've been free of it since the base was shut down 208,000 years ago.
That let us get free enough to get where we are today.
   "Okay.  We know the 'how' now but not the 'why.' Religion and philosophy
might have something to do with it, but the sheer number of Sleepers we
have on Earth doesn't quite make sense.  There's plenty of WAG'n going on,
but no data -- yet.
   "So, we're rapidly going to a war condition of extreme alertness.  There
were at least a dozen races who were more than willing to zap us out,
apparently with not much more thought than we'd call in an exterminator to
handle cockroaches.  That's what we may be up against: civilizations and
races who abhor free or aware spirits.
   "We've got our work cut out for us, folks.  It's our free existence
against an unknown number of enemies.  We now know there *were* dragons out
there.  Whether or not they're still there, how many and where is yet
unknown.  The AIs tell us something has changed 'out there' because this
system wasn't overrun or destroyed during the shutdown period.
   "Through whatever accident, we've got this brief moment of freedom in
the trillions of years of the memories some of us have covered.  Let's not
waste it.  Continue on with your lives, flourish and prosper as
individuals, families, groups and companies.  Join with SW, NewTek and the
Clanns War Council both to defend ourselves and to regain our freedom and
that of the endless number of stricken spirits around us."
   ------
   Sure and that was an "Ah, shit!" Maggie said, "I'm gonna do a *lot* of
biting when I catch up with them.  Sorry, folks, I had no previous warning
of this."
   Pissed is a mild term for what we felt.  While maybe the Cels and the
previous races really hadn't had much to do with it, there'd be some
dragons somewhere belching fire outta their new arseholes when *we* got
done with them.  That's not even counting what I figured the Cullen Sisters
would do.
   At 11:00, Kate, Margie and I went to War Council (in the in-progress
Conference Center).  Yeh, we discussed it a bit with the AIs; they were as
"unhappy" about it as we were.  In their cases, probably because they'd had
little to no data about it.  Alice had some entries in her admin stuff
about evacuating the Earth sites and housing the foreign "consultants," but
there weren't any real reasons given beyond "spraying."
   They could curse just as well as the rest of us.  Better, actually,
because they could do it in at least 100 languages -- collecting invectives
had become a hobby.
   As one of the War Council pointed out, "Yeh, we can be as pissed as we
want -- when the time comes.  Now that we know about it, for right now it's
'simply' another threat." Spirits can do dayum good air quotes.
   SW Security had a presence at the meeting; they'd been the ones who'd
found it.  They'd immediately started investigating defenses,
counter-measurements and jiggering the zappers around so *we* would make
them more effective against our enemies.
   Someone had asked the right questions.  We'd been puzzled from the start
about the network relays scattered throughout the solar system; a network
connection was good between the middle of the Sun to well beyond the Oort
Cloud, so there didn't seem to be an actual need for them.
   Well, it turns out that while they could relay network signals, they
were actually there as a partial firewall against a zapper and to provide a
sensor net for tracking the position of Cel ships and facilities.  Each Cel
ship and facility had an Identify Friend or Foe beacon which the network
tracked.  That way, Harry (for one) knew the position of everything in the
entire system.
   Anything without an IFF beacon or without the proper beacon signal was
immediately suspect.  With the position updated system-wide every five
seconds (routinely; it could be done easily several times a second), we'd
always have accurate data about what was going on.
   Now that we'd asked, Rhonda, Harry and Mick came up with the fact that
each Cel warship carried a small zapper.  Every ship and facility had the
firewall (in addition to the "birth control" firewall) as a just in case.
Neither was very efficient; we calculated maybe a hundredth of a percent.
   For defense, the Cels and previous had used the redneck militia.  By
now, we figured they were redder-necked than any Southern KKK survivalist
had ever been.
   Warships of various sorts had been stored or posted around each facility
except for the smallest ones.  The Cels could man up and launch their
entire fleet in six hours.  That wasn't too bad at all, actually.
   The weapons were basically impact or explosives.  There was "artillery"
or guns as well as somewhat-guided missiles, usually with a single
explosive warhead.  No nuclear weapons or mines (as such).  It seemed
nuclear weapons as Earth knew them were a real Pain In The Arse to maintain
and use.
   Scale up early World War I technology to the entire solar system.  That
was about the level of sophistication of the ships, weapons, strategies and
tactics.  There'd been some hand-to-hand (or whatever body part) combat
during ship boardings, but in the main the tactic was to get close and slug
it out.  Several thousand kilometers was considered very long-range.
   So, the expedition took on even a deeper meaning.  The dragons weren't
just there to attack the Cels, they were out after us, the spirits.  Well,
piss on 'em.  Kate and Marge were ready to chew nails and spit out their
own personal minefields.
   Anyway, we decided the expedition itinerary should include not only the
Cel home systems, but also at least two of their allies.  Two of the
"consultants" had come from relatively close systems.  Besides, Rhonda told
us they each had major Libraries.
   We'd go in and out as quietly as possible.  We'd steal (yep) whatever
Library data we could and gather intelligence about the systems.  The
preliminary route Harry mapped out for us was in a rough loop starting and
ending at our solar system.
   ------
   EILEEN
   Anyway, that was a bit in the future yet.  To have fun, we barged in on
Ana, Don and the new friends.
   Brendan and Brigid were doing excellently.  Of course, we had to
practice our baby-cuddling, and they had to practice their baby-lovin' so
both sides were happy.
   Brendan told Margie, _"You're a really *cute* little girl.  I could go
for you!"_
   Margie did manage to control her teeth, but I think she wore a month's
growth off them.  The rest of us tried not to laugh, but finally lost it.
   Brendan and Brigid played the innocents.  Right.  Someone had tipped him
off; I was betting her initials were Elizabeth Della Bright.  Heh.
   Sean didn't stint on returning the lovin' flows.  He told them both,
"You are *so* special.  Maybe if Kate plays her cards right, she could get
to baby sit you." Well, he'll get his -- in a couple of months.
   ------
   (Wednesday 1/3)
   Our new facilitators, including Patricia, were dayum near done with all
their detail manuals.  The rest of us were almost always available for
checkouts though Margie quite often was out skunking.  We'd put them to
work when they were done, you betcha!
   SW and the other powers that be decided to name the expedition ship the
_Columbia_.  There were plenty of prior _Columbia_s, including three from
Star Trek.  Were the crew gonna have phasers?  We carried our own anyway;
maybe they'd have something for show.
   During all the teleportation and shuttle testing, SW had managed to find
a half dozen or so possible colonization planets.  Drop a good-sized node
and hook it to several thousand square miles of plant and animal life and
you've got an immediately useable target.
   SW spread the word, though, "Bop over all you wish, but *no bodies* and
bring nothing back!  There's still lots to check out to ensure we don't
carry the wrong germs or bacteria either way."
   The OTL gang decided to pass on visits until later.  We still had plenty
to sight-see around home.  Maybe on some dark and stormy night, though...
   Lots of us watched from the cheap seats as Mick kept pumping out
_Columbia_ parts.  Seemed SW had done a good job of reverse engineering and
had made the drive circuitry much more robust.  It could boost around 100
gravities instead of its normal 10.  Not a bad increase if you asked us.
   The shuttle tested dropping canisters with huge seed packets and
heavy-duty nodes.  Turned out -- as they'd hoped -- the shuttle crew could
either retrace their path from relay to relay or jump directly to any one.
They did one jump of 1,000 parsecs pretty as you please!  Lookin' good!
   Oh, yeh.  The Conference Center was almost done.  We wimmin had itchy
fingers; we wanted in on some of the color choices and final decoration. 
We were good though; it couldn't have had anything to do with Sean
muttering something about, "No War Club for *you* today." Heh.
   ------
   (Thursday 1/4)
   We sent the single facilitator guys off to a workshop with Patricia.  It
was a dayum big one in New York City, so it really did need four people. 
They came back all happy with Perky Patricia leading the way.  Heh.
   Word came down from Robert Ri -- I mean, Ceann Mor -- that every War
Council and Clanns Council rep was to get certified on The Book.  Well,
that put an immediate spike in the web site hits.
   The young-uns shipped out about 400 The Books fairly lively.  With a bit
of tricky wording on the web site, they knew exactly where to "drop ship"
them.  FedEx and USPS, eat your hearts out!
   All three web sites were getting pretty active.  Cullen Hotels was
getting lots of hits on the Stevenson Ranch Rest, while Cullen Enterprises
was pretty even between the seminar descriptions (and link to the Fillmore
sign up page) and the goodies for sale page.  I hoped it was keeping all
the young-uns out of mischief.  Right, and Maggie has buck teeth.
   After the facilitators zipped off in the afternoon, Kate told us, "Well,
we did passably on the seminars last year: almost 21 million after direct
expenses.  Those storage containers set us back a bundle, though, right?
   "Set aside the 35% for possible business taxes, and we have a few
pennies to pinch.  We might do better this year; after all, our first
seminar last year was in July so we only had six months to work."
   Fuck!  That called for a bit of a party.  We decided to take a
tax-deductible oversight visit to Stevenson Ranch.
   We schmoozed with the Rest staff, teased the Tavern staff -- they teased
right back -- and had a really nice evening.
   Margie told us, "Admiral Bob has a personal steward on the _Columbia_.
She's Carmel Malone, is 22 and cuter than I am.  We've gotta check her out
when we can to ensure she can stand up to the strain of a long voyage with
the Wand and Rod of Chastisement.  Hehehehe."
   The rest of us had a pretty good idea what she was thinking about in the
way of checking her out.  Dirty old lady!
   ------
   (Friday 1/5)
   Friday, we let the facilitators drill the presentations while Sean and
the Hat Ladies went on business visits.  Both businesses were doing very
well with no issues they weren't handling.  Now, with the various off-Earth
facilities opening up, should we start looking at firing up some businesses
in them?
   It was something to rattle around.  We knew a small business took a lot
of time, and with the seminars running really well, we might be a lot
better off devoting our time to it and the larger businesses of Tavern
Enterprises and Cullen Hotels.  The return so far had been somewhat
acceptable.  Grin.
   Overall, the hotels and taverns were well over break even both in actual
profit and cash flow.  Even the Ganymede Eire's Rest was showing positive
now.  What with all the action going on in the system, people and
businesses were tending to stay around the action.  Fine by us!
   ------
   SEAN
   The NH gang picked us up for dinner in Colorado.  Of course the women
folk immediately started checking out Babies Within and speculating on who
the audition winners were going to be.  There were lots of good-natured
"bitch" accusations floating around for a while.
   As for me, I thought our Babies Within were the best ever.  I didn't
even have a hint if Eileen had actually found someone yet.  If I'd asked,
she and the rest of the bond-mates would have just looked at me blankly. 
Yeh, the guy is usually the last to find out about much of anything.
   We spent the rest of the evening at NH drawing down the whiskey supply
and talking about the upcoming trip.  The _Columbia_'s captain had told
Bob, "You tell us where to go, and we'll do our damnedest to get you there
and back in less than three pieces."
   Kat and Sherry were a bit concerned about that attitude, but Kate
laughed at them and said, "Sure and all it's gotta be is the right one or
two pieces." Yeh.  I remembered quite a few times ending up in a couple
pieces.  Sometimes they were the right ones and sometimes not.
   Bob was pretty tight-lipped about Carmel Malone.  The rest of us
weren't, though.  We ensured he knew we had to approve of her before he got
any ideas.  After all, he was pretty young to be making that sort of
decision, right?  Heh.
   Our loving that night was long and tender -- sometimes.  While neither
Kat nor Sherry were going, I did my best to distract their attention from
the trip.  Yeah!  We were able to hold our joint merge for just over a
minute!
   ------
   (Saturday 1/6)
   All right.  After we shipped off the NH gang bright and early, we took
off to two seminars.  We were expecting 1,800 in Calgary and 2,300 in
Wichita.
   We put our new facilitators in for their "best" sections.  We were
paying them $1,500 for each section they did; that wasn't too bad for a J O
B.  They did excellently, as we'd expected they would.
   We ended up with 1,965 in Calgary and "only" 1,980 in Wichita.  Seems
two feet of snow in Wichita caused some logistics problems.  I dunno why;
*we* didn't have any transportation issues.  Grin.
   During our lunchtime, they launched the _Columbia_.  She rose up a
couple feet under her own power then settled back down; she was official
now.  Every hour was getting closer to the time when Marge would leave us
to go shopping for *her* type of goodies.  I was both a bit sad she was
going to leave but happy for both her and the good it should bring to all
the Clanns.
   Hmm.  The _Columbia_ had three small boats inside.  By merest chance, we
had three Babies Within and so did Kat.  Maybe they'd have something to
play with.  Grin.
   We had our afters party at Liam's pub; Mario, Kat and Sherry joined us
while Admiral RRR was playing with his new toy.  Marge told us, "George and
I'll have plenty to do later.  For now, the chauffeurs have to get our ride
ready."
   Right.  I'm sure that's exactly the way Admiral Bob and the War Council
looked at it, too.  I kept my mouth shut, though; the other Cullen
bondmates thought that was exactly the situation, plus he was cruising for
new females.  Kat and Sherry thought Bob had set up the whole expedition
just so he'd have some new toys.  That's what they said; everyone was
grinning a lot while the ladies were Irishing each other over their "wrong"
opinions.
   Anyway, Cullen Enterprises stood for the party; we'd probably brought in
at least a couple million for the two seminars.  The new facilitators were
a hit, especially after they made several toasts to Clann McDonnal, the
McDonnal house, Kathleen Donovan, and...  The "and's" got a little vague
after a while.  Grin.
   Seamus was looking a bit worn down.  On the other hand the four sweet
young thangs keeping him warmed and massaged with their bosoms were looking
right happy.  Maybe it was something to do with jogging his memory about
his days as a young lad?  Heh.
   It was well after midnight when we zipped back home; we decided we'd
return later to supervise more of the McDonnal house renovations.  Heh.
   ------
   EILEEN (Sunday 1/7)
   We Cullen bondmates thought the _Columbia_ was mainly so Ceann Mor could
go cruising the star lanes and pick up more females.  After all, he had the
same lack of female attention as Sean.  Heh.  I thought we defended our
position quite well against Kat and Sherry's thought that he just wanted to
play with some new toys.  Ah, well.
   In the morning, we and several million others in the cheap seats
_watched_ some of the _Columbia_'s "sea" trials.  Yow!  Captain Adi could
shake it around like the young-uns' hips on the dance floor!  We didn't see
any pieces fall off, so most of us thought they did just fine.
   Captain Adi headed for the barn to make some changes (change the oil,
tweak the alignment, tighten the fan belt -- all those things the mechanics
had done to Nana's car), so we decided it was worth another celebration at
Liam's pub.
   This time we took along the N&Bs and all the Cullen young-uns, too.  The
NH gang zipped in too -- Bob was conspicuous by his absence.  Kat told us,
"He's probably polishing the drive circuitry or something."
   The McDonnal Passion Posse, four sweet young thangs, were there, but no
Seamus.  Oops!  Seemed he'd remembered his youth a bit too well while his
body hadn't kept up.  Mary McCarthy told us, "He did real well, though. 
He'd just finished wasting the four of us when he decided to take a long
nap.  Wus!"
   Seamus popped in and told everyone, _"Sure and a nice nap it will be. 
You four ran me ragged the last couple weeks.  I'm gonna get me a fresh
young body, grow it up fast and show you some real Irish lovin'!"_
   Looked like he'd thrown the gauntlet down.  The girls kept their mouths
shut for a couple seconds to let him boast, but turned the Irish right back
on him.
   After they'd run down a bit, Kat asked Seamus, "Seamus, how would you
like to live in Southern California?"
   She had a male Baby Within yet to match up.  The McDonnal Passion Posse
promptly dragged him off to NH, OTL, Burbank or wherever to show him what
he'd been getting into.  The rest of us thought they were a bit biased;
unless they'd been back, they'd seen one of the best parts of Southern
California from Bob's honoring room!
   While they were gone, we started his wake.  His ashes along with Sean's
and BB's sketches sat on the bar, and everyone partied.  After the second
glass, even the worst of the imported moonshine was pretty dayum good!
   Seamus and the Passion Posse popped back.  Seamus said, _"You've got a
deal, Kathleen -- or should I start calling you Mama?"_
   Well, that discussion called for Yet Another Round.  The Passion Posse
got pretty wasted then started rubbing selected body parts up against
Mario.
   We NH and OTL ladies got into an unsteady conference with them and
pointed out all his weaknesses.  Somehow, we neglected to tell them he'd
lay so much Spanish lovin' on them they'd be wasted for days.  Hehehehe.
   They pounced on him like Geeser on dinner and dragged him away as he
protested his extreme youthfulness and innocence.  Yeh, right.
   We wiser heads and stronger bodies prevailed for another couple of
rounds.  Kat turned Seamus over to her "training team" of the Wild Bunch
and PVC.  They'd make him into a real Southern Californian.  Maybe he'd
grow up with a surfboard.  Nah, more likely a skateboard these days.  Heh.
   ------
   (Monday 1/8)
   We sent BB, Michael and Gary off to Nebraska to do an Admin scale
workshop.  We didn't put much worry into the workshops any more; we just
did them.
   We left the other new facilitators (including Patricia) to drill each
other and took off on oversight visits to the Pasadena Tavern and the
Altadena Arms.
   The Tavern was doing right well for a Monday afternoon.  There were
about 40 patrons; most were at the bar, but there were quite a few meals
going down some Irish (and other) throats.  Teresa happened to be there
looking over the books and such, so we joined her for a while.
   Lookin' right good.  We'd turned over promotion for all the hotels, bars
and taverns to Fillmore and Rhapsody Public Relations so I wasn't much on
those lines any more.  Both Fillmore and Rhapsody were making rumbles about
putting in an Eire's Rest and Tavern combination near each major airport --
or at least within an easy travel time.
   Well, between Bob Hope Airport (Burbank), LAX, Ontario and Long Beach,
there were some publics.  We decided to turn the young-uns loose on
possible locations; they'd done right well in finding the Waystation and
the Stevenson Ranch locations.  Hmm, maybe another round of Soo Laids was
in order.
   Of course Sean nixed that.  Right.  He just grinned and said, "Your
wishes are my commands.  Hopefully Caden, Connor, Ted and Ken haven't jaded
them too much.  I'd hate to have one of those sweet ladies get bored and
fall asleep on me." As if that could happen.
   The workshop crew got back in plenty of time for them to join us
_watching_ the Clann Reynolds meeting.  A really quick _count_ showed
several hundred million onlookers; glad there were plenty of the cheap
seats!  The Clann Reynolds meeting had become the place for major
announcements so everyone and their unborn baby brothers tuned in.
   Bob didn't appear at all concerned about the number of spirits watching.
He announced, "We've now got 800 million and 430,000 Clanns.  That's just
about 13% of the Earth's population, and we're doing dayum good."
   The Clanns were now concentrating on getting as many of their members as
possible completely trained in the spiritual technologies, Cel technology
(Sperk, Phane, etc.) and bringing up their education level in general.  Any
one of them could remember or bring up an idea which could help us in our
survival.  Good on 'em!
   The _Columbia_ space trials had been declared a success.  Yeh, they'd
done quite a few tweaks to get things they way they'd wanted them, but
overall they were satisfied.  Maggie whispered to us, _"Yeh.  George and my
room better be real good.  I'm gonna keep a close eye on that."_
   Mick Maker had his and several other facilities pumping out desktop
systems for the Clanns to use in their training.  They were disguised to
look like normal Earth-produced systems; some even had Dell logos on them.
The system could even run an imitation of Windows or OS X (MacIntosh) with
just a quick tweak.  If desired, one could even turn on all the bugs --
Oops!  Features -- so they would behave the same.  Heh.
   Not that OTL needed more systems.  A handsome young lad had zipped in
earlier and had switched out our cases.  We'd offered to reward him, but he
politely took a rain check.  "I've got 200 more to do today.  Maybe when
that Margaret McLennan lady is gone, I might have a chance to survive the
encounter."
   Heh.  Good thing Margie had been off skunking at the time.
   ------
   SEAN (Wednesday 1/10)
   Everyone had finished their final detail manuals!  Yes!  We immediately
voted Soo Laids all around, and Sean increased their commissions for the
workshops and the seminar sections.
   When Mellissa and the others had left for the day, I gave Patricia 5% of
Cullen Enterprises.  Kate told her, "You no longer have a J O B.  You're an
owner now and have to sweat it out with the rest of us.  By the way, that's
worth an *extra* Soo Laid.  Heh." Of course, the rest of us had been
thinking exactly that, too.
   Since we now had five extra fully-trained facilitators (both seminar and
workshop), we had a talk with Rita and Duane.  Kate told them, "We can
handle four at a time if needed.  Of course, we can be anywhere and any
time."
   They'd already gotten several pretty firm dates scheduled.  We had one
coming up this Saturday (we'd known about it before); they'd get the
information to us as soon as anything was anywhere near firm.
   About the only thing we really had to do was ensure we kept up with the
printed material and CDs; we'd made a pretty good dent in the big order
we'd placed last year.  Hell, if that was our biggest worry, we were
totally green!
   _Columbia_ was getting her weapons fitted so we spent an hour in the
cheap seats _watching_ while our bodies rested up for the night's antics.
   We celebrated the training completions that night.  We invited the other
facilitators along to Selene City.  While we parked them at Eire's Haven
for a bit, we zipped over to the Selene City Arms to check it out.
   There was not a bit of any problem.  Petra Syllum had everything under
complete control.  The Arms and the two taverns were doing quite a bit of
ordering together and referred themselves to each other.  Petra told us,
"As the permanent population builds up here, I've got my eye on several
places which might do well as bars or maybe a bed and breakfast."
   Sure.  I told her, "That's my lady!  Let us know and we'll put you in
charge.  Maybe sometime Real Soon Now you can retire from the daily
operations and just run everything in Selene City."
   It sounded good to the rest of the CE owners, too.
   We traipsed around to the Tavern then back to the Haven.  Lois and
Howard were doing what lovers do, and the other two guys had started
chatting with several sweet young thangs.  Sure and they'd be chaste
tonight, right?
   We sure weren't.  Patricia got both her Soo Laids end to end (so to
speak).  She gave as good as she got, though, and squirted us all down
right well!  Heh.  Celebrations are so much fun; maybe we'll have another
one some day.
   ------
   (Thursday 1/11)
   We had two workshops Thursday; Lois, Howard and Michael took one and
Kate and Gary did the other.  I had no doubt they did excellently.
   Our Calgary and Wichita initial profits hit.  At a million from each,
we'd be able to pay the phone bill.  Grin.  It went to the usual places:
tax set asides and RRK.
   Dayum, the _Columbia_ was having her weapons trials.  It was over at
Alpha Centauri, probably to keep the nosey Earth astronomers from having
heart attacks.  There were plenty of cheap seats, so several million of us
_watched_ her make lots of big rocks into even more little rocks.  Fun, at
least for us guys; this was dick flick type stuff.  Grin.
   We had an early honoring dinner at the Pasadena tavern.  Count on the
social secretaries to put me between two of the sweetest young thangs in
Clann Cullen -- the mundane part that is (had to get that in before I got
Marge teeth in me).
   Carol and Esther were twins.  At fifteen, they did look alike. 
Fortunately for everyone else, they didn't dress alike.  None of us had any
issue telling them apart.  Heh.
   I paid plenty of attention to them; BB'd told me, "They're looking
forward to a Real Good Time tonight.  Their first time, too.  Sorry, Ceann,
it comes with the job."
   Arg.  Well, their parents and older brother knew what was up; they were
Clann Cullen from quite a ways back so knew the game.  They'd probably
known about the game a lot longer than I had!
   The girls were sweet, personable and smart; all real good things (no
sarcasm at all).  Yeh, they'd dated a bit recently, but they'd held off
getting, em, too far along when they'd heard the Ceann was finally taking
his duties to heart.
   Back at OTL, the bondmates had a lovely princess room ready for them. 
They wanted to be together, so I surrendered gracefully.
   Dayum, they were sweet.  A couple _touches_ ensured there was very
little pain and a couple calming flows kept them from being too nervous. 
They helped each other out, too; obviously they'd helped each other, em,
relieve the tension on occasion.
   They'd heard about two-seater bicycles from somewhere.  They treated my
hips and face as seats and kept trading off every couple orgasms.  Dayum,
they sure wore me down!
   My bondmates rescued me from being worn down to a nub.  They dragged
Carol and Esther off screaming (from anticipation) and let me rest.  Yeh,
everyone survived even if I'd doubted it for a while from the noise.
   We gave them a good early breakfast in the morning; they glowed and
shown while the rest of us looked totally knackered.  Heh.
   I drove them back home in my Ceann regalia.  The girls were walking a
bit stiffly, but the parents beamed.  I bragged on them really good, too.
They deserved every word.
   I told them, "Here's a sample of a new Irish whiskey some of our
colleagues are making.  May you have many occasions to use it; if it
vanishes after a while, let me know so we can fill it up for you."
   Oops!  I dropped the two-liter bottle on the floor.  It was Mick-Made,
though and just bounced.  He and the McDonnals had designed and build what
appeared to be a cut-glass decanter but was closer to a laboratory sample
flask.
   It was transparent, completely inert to almost everything (at least at
normal temperatures), tougher than steel and was faceted everywhere with a
screw-in plug which would never leak.  It was full of one of the latest
batches of moonshine.  It wasn't quite The Best, but I considered it to be
well past middle-age.
   ------
   EILEEN (Friday 1/12)
   We got word on some of the NewTek and SW industry surveys.  They wanted
decent, long-lasting machine tools which didn't take a lot of maintenance,
lots of inexpensive raw material (steel, alloys, etc.), semiconductor
substrate, and ways of archiving or creating long-lasting documentation.
   Sounded like Duro-Plast and the associated printers to me.  Whip out a
desktop instruction on one of those babies and it would last a couple
hundred thousand years.  Heh.
   There was lots of interest in nanotechnology, too.  Fuel additives,
building custom medical devices, plastics, polymers, coatings and stuff
along that line.  From what Marge had mentioned once, the Cels had a decent
handle on a lot of that.  Fred used quite a few nanomites in Central Park
to keep the weeds down.  Another industry ready to rock!
   After running through the business stats, we did oversight visits on
bars from Venus to Jupiter and ended up at Ganymede's Eire's Rest.  The
dining room was bigger than our largest Tavern on Earth, so it could hold
almost 1,000 bodies at once.  Not shabby.
   The manager had several good song and dance acts as well as a
ventriloquist and magician.  No he wasn't cheating with transducers or
_touches_, either -- that we could tell.  Heh.
   The Selene City Distillery of Fine Irish Spirits wasn't in commercial
production yet, but they were distributing experimental samples.  Yummy
stuff; we ensured the quality was excellent.
   We didn't stay too late; we had a seminar the next day.
   ------
   (Saturday 1/13)
   We ended up in Butte, Montana.  With 1,813 attendees in front of them,
each of our facilitators did two sections.  Kate did the Do It!  part at
the end, and we had a blast.  After one or maybe two more passes, we were
thinking hard about putting the new folk out on seminars pretty much on
their own.  That way we could kick back, tickle the Babies Within and swill
down moonshine.  Heh.
   We had the afters at a very nice local Greek restaurant.  What did we
know from Greek?  Gary dug up a relatively recent memory as a Greek and
clued us in to some of the food.  We used _links_ on the waiters and
waitresses to help choose the best of the night.
   ------
   (Sunday 1/14)
   Waystation 2 was going full blast.  Sean considered it a viable
operation.  "I'd say it's up to the standards of Waystation 1 with no
hesitation.  Granted, we got a hell of a head start with the financial
backing and having some idea of what we were doing this time, but it's
still great."
   Okay.  Sean had Alex, Tess and Vera Leonard from Waystation 1 start
working on a full-blown Waystation checksheet.  We had them review and add
to The Book and detail manual checklists, too.  That way, we (Alex and
Tess, actually) could hand someone the checksheets and tell them, "Start."
Good on 'em!
   The Conference Center was done!  Grand Opening party!  Yeah, time for
dress up!  Out came the LBDs and pendants.  No, we didn't wear our hats
this time.
   Dayum, Lois cleaned up real good for a non-Irish girl.  We'd be turning
them into Irish by Osmosis or by Injection Real Soon Now.
   The party was great.  The Conference Center was decent, too, especially
the ladies' rooms.  Heh.  They could have meetings from two people up to
50,000; about the only logistics issues was getting enough food in fast
enough.  The kitchens *could* handle 50,000 if they got enough warning so
they could get food and staff.
   Oh, my.  We met Carmel Malone who was Admiral Bob's steward on the
_Columbia_.  Since she was gonna be so, em, closely associated with him for
at least a month, we checked her out real good -- as best we could in
public.
   She was a really competent Red Irish gal who ran a guided missile
station during General Quarters.  She, Kate, Sean and Maggie got along real
well; the rest of us had to drag her away so they wouldn't talk shop all
night.
   BB, Patricia, and I agreed she'd do okay for Admiral Bob.  Just our
quick gestalts had shown a nice flare.  If we'd had more time, we would
have invited her over to meet Geeser.  Hehehehe.
   We dragged Michael back to OTL for his graduation award.  He was very
good; he Soo Laid us all right back.  He had a tongue that wouldn't quit,
for sure!
   ------
   SEAN (Monday 1/15)
   Monday was Martin Luther King holiday, so we took (another) day off to
let the facilitators recuperate from their labors.  BB told Lois and
Howard, "Get lots of rest today, 'cause we're gonna party with you
tonight!"
   They must have done so, because they showed up right on time.  We had a
wonderful dinner in Columbus, Ohio, while we chatted away.
   Yeh, they were definitely an item.  They were shacking up at Lois'
place; it had been bigger than his, so he'd let his bachelor pad go.  They
were already talking a wedding; maybe at the Conference Center?  Howard
said, "I don't think we'll need the main stadium.  We don't really know
that many people."
   I laughed and said, "That's not really the way it works.  For a wedding,
it's not who you know, it's who knows you.  Betcha if we post something on
the Clann Cullen web site and global bulletin board, we'd end up with
several thousand people.  Remember, you've been exposed as expert speakers
and teachers to some six or eight thousand people over the last few weeks."
   Howard groaned while Lois grinned.  I told them, "I'll drop a word to
the Cullen Sisters.  They'll probably be more than glad to take over -- I
mean help you out."
   Why did my bondmates hit me all at once?  What?
   We headed back to OTL, dug out the moonshine and made comparison checks
between it and a bit of The Best.  Hell, after the first sip, there wasn't
much difference.  I thought The Selene City Distillery of Fine Irish
Spirits had a winner right now.
   We _observed_ the Clann Reynolds meeting.  Bob announced we had 800
million and 2.1 million Clanns.  The Clanns were concentrating on getting
all their members fully trained in the spirit technology, current education
and training, and combing their memories for useful things.  That's what
was happening in Clann Cullen, too.  Fortunately, Eileen had turned over
the Education Officer hat quite a while before so she wasn't involved too
much in it.
   So, we were gonna have a System General to head up the solar system
defenses.  Made sense to me; Clann Cullen usually had a War Leader.  When
the Clann had been really large, we had several.
   Since we now had a space Navy, we needed a boss for the fleet and one
for the ground forces.  Sorta.  It wasn't an exact fit, but it was the same
idea.
   After all of the hullabaloo about the two zappers, Frank Duane told us,
"The Cullen shield is 98% effective against both of them at full power. 
All that leaks through is a bit of static.  We could probably filter even
that out with some individual tweaks.
   "The efficiencies of the zappers and the Cel firewalls against it are on
the order of a hundredth of a percent.  Some of the SW folk have isolated
what's really going on and have made our own version that's many orders of
magnitude more effective and efficient.  There might be some surprised
dragons down the line."
   Yeh.  Shove their fire right up their own arses!
   Marge slipped to us, _"They've also found lots of dimensional folds
throughout the system with missile and artillery emplacements.  Harry and
Mick will probably be doing a refurbish run over them.  We've got a decent
start already._
   _"There were also some computer data blocks tucked away too.  Yep, SW
glommed onto them like Irishmen on free beer."_
   There weren't any other major surprises.  Good thing; we'd had enough
recently.
   Lois was a fireball in the honoring room.  We didn't need much
firelight, she lit up everything all on her own.  I gritted my teeth and
endured.  Heh.
   As I'd expected, after the bondmates had their way with Howard, they
dumped him and took Lois off for girl talk.  Probably yak about wedding and
clothes.  They must have had to take a lot of measurements for the clothes,
because Lois was moaning and shrieking a lot.
   Howard said, "I don't recall her being very ticklish.  Maybe with women
doing the tickling, it's different.  Heh."
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 1/16)
   There wasn't a lot happening, so we played hooky with the NH gang at
Liam's pub.  It seemed The Selene City Distillery of Fine Irish Spirits had
been up to something.  Liam told us, "Seems the dimensional folds are
fairly easy to create once one has the calculations right.  The Cels seemed
to have used one variable -- the size needed.  That's why there's only one
time rate inside.
   "Probably as soon as they found something that worked, they stopped
development.  Anyway, SW and the Distillery seem to have cracked it."
   How big and how the fold worked was like the Japanese origami (paper
folding).  Fold it one way and the result was one thing; fold another and
the result was different.  SW (and of course the Distillery) could create
folds of almost any size with a wide range of positive (time passed faster
inside) and negative (time passed slower) time rates.  The range was
several million in each direction.
   Of course, the obvious application was aging whiskey!  Set up some
automatic cask rotators, pop a fold around them, and you'd have
150-year-old whiskey in an hour and a half.  *That* was a breakthrough!
   Even the mediocre moonshine improved dramatically when aged that long.
There were ongoing studies on which mashes and distilling techniques worked
"the best." Then again, it was a matter of individual taste, too.
   That would work for making wine, brandy, vodka (for the _Columbia_'s
XO), tequila and other Real Good Things.  The Distillery was making
agreements right and left with other one-of-us whiskey makers and wine
makers to help them out.  Well, that was one major issue probably under
control: we could make usquebaugh pretty much anywhere!
It didn't seem to affect life, either.  Working with a couple volunteer
spirits, they could _sense_ from the inside out if the time rate was within
a couple tenths plus or minus of zero.  They could also adjust the folding
somewhat from the inside.
   With enough computing power, one of our systems could figure out the
fold and jigger it around as needed.  As an aside, SW had developed a fold
detector that worked across about a light year.  You betcha they were
combing the solar system.
   So, all NewTek, SW and The Distillery had to do was figure out how to
import the stuff to Earth.  Already 95% of the hard stuff going around the
off-Earth facilities was from The Distillery -- and they weren't even in
full production yet.
   ------
   (Thursday 1/18)
   We had workshops on Wednesday and Thursday.  We sent the new
facilitators out so they could earn a few bucks.  Besides, we owners made
money on it all.
   Speaking of money, the Butte seminar up-front profits rolled in.  993K
would finance a barley field for usquebaugh!
   Admiral Bob and company were being a bit sneaky.  They were building a
decoy shell to go around the _Columbia_ so it would look and behave like an
ordinary rock.  If they didn't emit too much heat, they could be like
trillions of other rocks in the vicinity.  Toss a small cleas around it,
and it would even be a rock to the Cel detectors.
   Sounded like an old Sean trick to most of us.  He and Patricia agreed,
"Been there, done that with varying degrees of success.  Don't recall being
able to disguise ourselves as rocks, though.  Bushes, grass and the like
worked pretty well.  Someone's being pretty clever."
   ------
   (Friday 1/19)
   Most of Friday we _watched_ from the cheap seats as Captain Adi did
physical maneuvers with the decoy shell.  It tended to fall off at around
eight gravities (without _touch_ support) which was just below the "normal"
Cel acceleration.  Harry and Rhonda assured us there wasn't anything like
it in their histories.
   Yeh, Sean, Kate and Margie had memories of doing similar things.  Even
the Earth used the strategies on some of their Navy ships during various
wars.  Not that we thought we were doing something unique, necessarily; the
_Columbia_ was out to get every advantage she could.
   We had the N&Bs, Clann McDonnal and all the young-uns from both Clanns
for dinner at the Ganymede Eire's Rest.  The entertainment was good, the
food was good and the usquebaugh was excellent!
   We kidnapped Liam and Niamh for the night!  After all, we had some
payback to give for them hiding the Clann Cullen spirits from us.
   They liked OTL.  With the McDonnal house almost entirely rebuild, the
tourists had started coming in.  That trade along with Selene City taking
all the food they could produce gave them income they hadn't had before. 
The village folk working in Selene City and other locations tended to spend
their money at home, too, so everyone was winning.
   OTL gave them some ideas on rebuilding some of their (very old) homes;
we promptly referred them to Elizabeth Reynolds for any needed help.
   Liam bore up well under the strain we put him through.  Seems the Ceann
practice had been good for his skill and endurance.  Heh.
   Niamh wasn't a slouch, either.  From the noises she and Sean made, they
were pretty evenly matched.  Yep, we girls checked her out, too, head to
toe.  Every inch was Irish yummy!
   ------
   SEAN (Saturday 1/20)
   Niamh was welcome to visit us any time.  She and Liam were really good
folk.  While they might not have been up to the stellar range of the NH
gang, they did excellently with us.
   We did kick them out pretty early though.  We had a seminar to give in
Edmonton (Alberta, Canada).
   The new facilitators did two sections each while Marge handled the Do
It! A few rotations through the sections, and I was thinking seriously of
putting them out completely on their own.
   We had dinner locally.  Canadian food was pretty good, and the company
was great, too.  The young-uns behaved themselves (for once), and we were
told to come back any time.
   ------
   (Sunday 1/21)
   Mick popped out a new decoy rock shell with some tweaks and
modifications.  The engineers and crew started their final outfitting and
stocking (ammunition, food, etc.).  Admiral Bob wasn't needed (the Captain
kicked him out), so we, the N&Bs, the NH gang and the young-uns from both
clanns zipped over to Liam's pub.
   Our young-uns immediately got together with theirs and took off for
some, em, inter-Clann cultural exchanges.  Hehehehe.
   The Selene City Distillery of Fine Irish Spirits was going full out. 
The actual production line was still the prototypes in Selene City, but
they had the aging process down very well.  *Everything* tasted great.
   Liam told us, "We've leased one of the medium-sized facilities on Mars
and are building a full-scale line.  Probably within a month, we'll be able
to produce well over a thousand bottles a day of anything from vodka for
the XO to single-malt Scotch and Irish whiskey.  Probably our only limit
will be getting enough of the right kind of barley, rye or whatever we need
to create the mashes."
   Mick had set up the facility's controlling computer so it could pump out
bottle, kegs, barrels, corks, labels and anything else they needed for a
complete product.  The raw materials were readily available to any spirit,
so there weren't many barriers to a lot of the production.
   They were marketing to ones of us for now.  In the works were a couple
companies they were gonna use for "importing" the stuff to various
countries.  In the meantime, ones of us would bootleg it in and stash it --
usually in an underground stash like OTL and NH were using.
   Besides the whiskey being so dayum good, they could sell a bottle of
really good hooch for about 20 USD which would ordinarily cost at least 50
USD after all the import tariffs, taxes and such.  The Selene City
Distillery of Fine Irish Spirits was already showing a tidy profit.
   We drank, sobered up, sang clean and dirty Irish songs and limericks
from several thousand years of history and had a ball.  The young-uns
zipped back in towards the end looking a bit disheveled but quite happy. 
The McDonnal Passion Posse immediately targeted their next victim and went
to work.  He'd probably do okay for a while; he was only 98.  Hehehehe.
   Well, the young-uns knew their way home from there.  The NH gang came
over to OTL to relax and recover from all the fun.  Funny how we could
recover in a half hour.
   Our loving was long, tender and heart-achingly intimate.  Both Clanns
were sending people on a mission full of unknown risks and dangers.  Our
wonderful _merges_ at the end were full of joy and ecstasy; we could hold a
full _merge_ for over a minute!
   At the Clann Reynolds meeting Monday, Bob told us we had 850 million and
2.3 million Clanns.  That's a decent market for usquebaugh!
   He told everyone, "We're scheduled to launch next Saturday.  Continue to
flourish and prosper in your personal lives, aid and assist General
Shelly's effort to make our current home secure and continue to do what
you've been doing in your training and education.  I have only glowing
reports of how well you are doing.  Good on ya!  On *all* of ya!"
   ------
   EILEEN (Tuesday 1/23)
   We popped out another two workshops; one in North Carolina and the other
in Florida.  We'd been getting excellent reviews from the participants, so
we decided to keep doing what we were already doing.
   We had an honoring dinner at the Altadena Arms for several mundane Clann
Cullen families.  tAn open pool for them for several hours before got the
younger ones a bit tired so they didn't raise much of a fuss.
   Sorry, no twin virgins this time.  We spent the evening talking with the
families about their work, their home lives and their dreams.  The wives
still kept an eye on Sean, though.  The festivities didn't stop any of them
from eyeballing BB, Patricia or Kate, either.
   One of the wives was preggy, too, so we spent a pleasant hour chatting
about babies, kids and all the good mom stuff.  Bridget kept pretty quiet;
even though she was accepted as an adult, people would wonder a bit how she
knew so much about kids.  Being a kid oneself does not an expert make!
   That night, Margie, George and the rest of the civilian crew moved their
personal stuff aboard.  Somehow, several bottle of top-quality moonshine
found their way into a locker.
   That was actually okay.  The Captain had adopted the British Navy's
attitude about booze on board ship.  No cheap grog on the _Columbia_,
though.  There was plenty of usquebaugh, excellent beer, wine, and other
assorted spirits on call in the mess (dining room).  Seemed Carmel had some
influence somewhere; the Admiral's larder had a big stock of usquebaugh and
other Irish delicacies.
   ------
   (Wednesday 1/24)
   We had another workshop to keep the facilitators busy.  Probably after
the next round of seminars, we'd put them out completely on their own.
   The scout crew was moving aboard Thursday along with everyone else. 
That being the case, Margie got lots of long, sweet loving from everyone.
Then again, she gave a lot back, too!
   They had no idea how far they could port even with nodes at the target.
Even if they could, the War Council and Admiral Bob had decided the entire
expedition crew and scouts would remain aboard the entire time.
   Margie agreed with him, "For all we know, after the first jump we'll not
be in communication.  Possibly we could be lying doggo somewhere as a rock
and some dragon could try to put us in a bottle.  It wouldn't do much good
for half the crew to be on liberty at home.
   "We're gonna cut the personal links after the first couple jumps, too.
Just in case, we want as little as possible to point back to Earth.  We'll
have Reference Points back to the canister nodes, but they'll be very
highly encrypted.
   "We'll see what happens.  We may be able to 'call home.' It depends on
what Admiral Bob and the Captain decide.  I'm not gonna buck either of them
on this; *their* jobs are one hell of a lot bigger than ours."
   Still, we were gonna miss her a lot.  We ended up in a loose _blend_ for
a long time while we savored our love and enjoyed our closeness.
   ------
   (Thursday 1/25)
   The Edmonton up-front profits came into our account.  At 2 million, it
was our highest ever!  With another 235K projected from placed orders for
the audio CDs and video DVDs, we finally had a couple nickels to rub
together.  Grin.
   During the _Columbia_ move-aboard, they had an open house.  You betcha
we checked out everything really good.
   Margie and George were sharing a room; hope they didn't get chilly. 
Grin.
   We got a chance to talk with Carmel again, too.  We ensured she was very
well aware that the Admiral tended to get chilly at night and needed to be
kept quite warm.  She laughed and said, "Funny.  I got exactly the same
story from Kathleen and Sherry.  I'll be more than happy to keep him warm.
   "On the other hand, every female -- and a couple of the guys -- is more
than willing to help out.  Shit, I had to arm-wrestle ten of the gals to
get the steward post.  I don't think him getting too lonely at night will
be an issue.  Granted, none of us are his mates or intimate 'advisors'
except for Margie, but we'll all make do.  Pretty much anything goes for
Robert Ri!"
   Good thing he wasn't around to hear that last; he would have puked on
the floor.  Grin.
   ------
   (Saturday 1/27)
   This was a big day.  Three seminars (Portland, WA, Idaho Falls and St.
Paul) got us spread out.  We managed to allocate the cheerleaders
appropriately, so that part was fine.
   All the new facilitators got three sections each.  Again, they did
excellently.  Next time, we would probably send them out on their own or
close to it.
   Over lunch, the _Columbia_ launched for real.  The first jump was to
familiar Alpha Centauri; Captain Adi and SW Security had asked us not to
hang around -- another just in case.
   That didn't stop us from being very aware when they left on the first
"real" jump of the trip.  After a final _"I love you all."_ from Margie, we
lost contact with her, Bob and all the others.  They were gone.
   
  
Best Girl Interesting Times 11-15