Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Sorcerer: Interesting Times by BJohn
   Chapters 6 - 10
   Chapter 6
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 6/10)
   Yes!  A wedding!  We'd done the last-minute rushes on Friday to get all
the dresses their final fittings but everyone was ready to rock.
   The Masonic Temple in Glendale worked out just fine.  It was easy to
find and there was plenty of parking.
   The wedding women (Elizabeth, Ana, Eileen and me) showed up right at
8:00.  Louise had put it on our heads or we had simply taken over so we
really wanted to ensure things went right.  I brought Bob and Mario along
in case there was some guy-stuff needing done.  Yeh, I had all my
construction experience as Natalie, but what good's a man if you can't put
him to work?
   The Wild Bunch and Steven were part of the wedding itself so we made
them stay home to get dressed.  Janet and Bellana were helping Louise;
Henry and Blake were doing whatever guy-things they needed like learning to
tie a bow tie.  PVC showed up around 8:15 and volunteered Art, Dan and
Megan's services.  Grin.
   The caterers were due at 9:15, the ceremony was at 10:00 and the
reception right afterwards.  We were doing the ceremony in one of the halls
and the reception in the ballroom.
   The Clean Place had come in very early, given everything a final going
over then set up the chairs, tables, decorations, centerpieces, stage,
sound system and everything else.  Dayum, we really didn't have anything to
do except go around and move an occasional chair or table an inch or so. 
It was the perfect time to feel useless because everything we could see was
done competently.
   Okay.  We left Bob there to kick ass if needed and everyone else popped
back home to dress.  We women had a lot of stuff to do.  We'd figured a
minimum of an hour, but we were all back in 45 minutes.  Guess we were
eager.
   Of course the caterers showed up promptly and went right to work.  They
diplomatically kicked our arses out their way and did what they were
supposed to do.
   Majella, the JP, appeared at 9:30 along with the first guests.  We
descended on her and fluttered around with questions.  She looked at us
sternly and said, _"Settle down, ladies.  You've taken care of the
logistics, let me do my job."_ Dayum, in the last week, she'd been
enhanced, was firmly one of us and wasn't taking any crap.
   We heard Sean say behind us, "Is there a problem, Majella?"
   Turning around, we saw Sean and the rest of his harem.  There was a
drop-dead-gorgeous platinum blonde with them.  Maggie, relaxing in Sean's
arms, scowled at us a little.
   Elizabeth told everyone, "No, I guess not.  We were just concerned about
the ceremony."
   Maggie laughed at us.  _"Ya want me to trot out Margaret Sullivan? 
She'd tell you to relax and let the pro do her work."_
   The wrath of Nana Sullivan was one thing none of us wanted to face. 
Besides, Maggie was demonstrating she had lots of teeth now and was
clicking them together quietly.  Told us off, they did!
   Eileen told us, "Guess I just got taken down a peg or two.  Everything
seems to be taken care of, so let's just let it roll.  Now, I want everyone
to meet Elizabeth Bright.  For obvious reasons, she goes by 'BB' and is now
part of Cullen Enterprises."
   BB had a physical and mental presence to match her beauty.  In heels,
she was as tall as Sean.  I immediately zeroed in on the pendant she was
wearing -- an emerald-filled shamrock which matched the ones Eileen, Kate,
Maggie and the Cullen Sisters were wearing.
   BB smiled at us and said, "Oh, yes.  They've taken in a poor lonely
little girl and said they'd take care of me for a little while."
   Yeh, right.  She looked as if she could take on the entire city and come
out on top.  Eileen introduced everyone else to her.  "She's provisionally
part of our bonding, like Kate was at the beginning.  If we play our cards
right, she'll consent to join us before she learns how badly Sean abuses us
all the time."
   Uh, huh.  The entire harem had that extremely-well-laid glow I'd been
seeing a lot of lately.  Neither Elizabeth nor Ana bought it either. 
Elizabeth said, "If abuse makes you look that good, I'll have a talk with
my husband."
   Everyone laughed a little while Sean tried to look appropriately
innocent.
   ------
   Bob and I circulated around doing the gestalt-and-glad-hand route.  We
knew almost everyone from the Clann meetings or from the wedding last
Saturday.  The ones we didn't know were from the office building where
Blake and Louise worked.
   Good.  There were a couple Sensitives ready to pop.  Obviously Blake and
Louise had been proselytizing a bit.  We "marked" them for follow up.
   Bob and I _felt_ the wedding party pop in a minute before 10:00. 
Majella glanced at him and nodded.  Bob _linked_ lightly with the assembly
and announced, "There's going to be a wedding.  Take your places, please."
   They did.  Majella told the assembly, "I recognize almost everyone here.
For the friends who work with Blake or Louise in Studio City, welcome. 
This is the Clann Reynolds.  While neither Blake nor Louise are Irish, they
are integral members of the Clann.  We won't be doing a lot of Irish things
today, per se, so you don't have to be concerned about it."
   Our choir was PVC, Art, Dan, Megan, Aaron, Barbara, Leone, Mark and
Julio.  PVC, Leone and Mark had "dusted off" an extremely ancient wedding
song and brought it up to date with their own interpretation.  With the
choir _singing_ sensations and emotions at a very low volume at the same
time, it was hauntingly beautiful and made me tear up.
   As they were singing, Steven brought Louise down the aisle.  Jaysus, she
glowed!  Her gown, hair and jewelry were perfect!
   Janet and Bellana followed them while Blake waited at the front; David
was his Best Man.  They stood in a semi-circle half-facing the assembly
while Majella faced them.
   Majella spoke to us all, "A marriage or bonding is the spiritual
association for the optimum survival of the people involved.  Blake and
Louise have asked you here today to witness their commitment both to the
spiritual and legal aspects of their bonding.
   "For millions of years, there have been customs and legal implications
in the institution of marriage.  Today, Clann Reynolds begins some of their
own customs.
   "A bonding is always based on mutual love and respect among the people.
Who affirms this love and respect?"
   Steven said firmly, "I do."
   "Thank you.  Throughout the ages, we've found people grow throughout
their lives.  Bond-mates grow together or grow apart.  Our wishes today are
they grow together more each day of their lives.
   "As people change, their bonding also might change.  They may find
others to join them or might choose to dissolve their bonding.  All these
changes must come about by the mutual agreement of the bond-mates; no other
opinion or permission is needed.  The legal aspects of these changes are
completely separate from the spiritual bonding and are dependant upon the
current laws of the land.
   "Louise Rebecca Adams, do you accept Blake Henry Merrill to be your
husband and bond-mate?"
   She cried some; we cried some.  She said firmly, "I do."
   Majella asked Blake the similar question and received a firm, "I do."
   Blake put the ring on Louise's finger and said, "With this ring, I bond
and wed thee."
   Louise did the same with him.  Majella told the assembly, "I pronounce
these people bonded as man and wife." She didn't have to tell Blake, he
kissed Louise really hard.
   We clapped, cried and smiled smiled smiled.  As they walked back down
the aisle, our choir gave us another wonderful song/_song_, full of joy and
hope.  Jeez, weepin' wimmin all over, including me!
   Bob announced, "Thank you for coming, all of you.  The reception will
start in the ballroom as soon as you get there.  Have a wondrous day!"
   ------
   BOB
   We partied all right.  I think Blake and Louise's office friends got a
little overwhelmed after the thirtieth person called them by name and
seemed to know their exact relationship to Blake and Louise.  Too bad. 
Grin.
   Blake and Louise were radiant.  Of course, we all laid on the "Mrs. 
Merrill" pretty good.  Janet was glowing, too; the guys paid her a lot of
compliments.  Steven and Henry looked good, too.  After all, after a guy
puts on a tux, what more can you want?
   Good food; the caterers came through really well.  There was plenty of
booze for those interested; Father, Mother, Donal and Aileen did a lot of
quality control checks.  From the way the four of them were looking at each
other (along with some probably-deliberate _leakage_) I'd say they had
something planned for the evening.  There were plenty of cross-currents
among others, too.  Gonna be a hot time in the Old Town tonight!
   We didn't stay real late.  Kat dragged me off about 7:00, "We've got
some partying of our own to do!" Whatever could she mean?
   We had some wonderful loving for a couple hours.  She told me, "I can
_feel_ several eggs ripening up.  Should we go for triplets?"
   Hey, whatever works!  I told her, "Anything worth doing is worth
overdoing." We made several practice runs; never hurts to rehearse.  We
could _feel_ lots of others practicing, too.
   I figured with the caterers and The Clean Place taking care of
everything, I wouldn't have much to do for our wedding except to show up.
On the other hand, I'd be prepared for pretty much anything.
   ------
   (Sunday 6/11)
   The JRD Exec Council met at 10:00 with Maggie for the Admin Scale and
Org Board Workshops.  No mercy!  She ran us through the wringer time and
again.  She told us, _"The Admin Scale is the basis for all your
activities. If you've got it aligned, everything else falls into place. 
It's the stable elements you check everything against."_
   It took us an hour and a half.  That's a *long* time when you're
communicating at spirit-speed.
   The Org Board was pretty straightforward.  Yeh, we had holes to fill,
especially in our IT area.  Mario and his assistant (now full-time) held
everything from above.  Mario was the Global IT Manager; we planned on
getting at least a couple Regional IT Managers in.  Hmm, how about Carmel
McLennan?  She's plenty experienced; maybe we could steal her.
   Maggie praised us, _"Good on ya, guys!  I'd say you've got it pretty
well under control.  Look the Admin Scale over before any major decision to
make sure it aligns.  If it doesn't, you've gotta change the decision or
change the Admin Scale.  Changing the Admin Scale is not to be done
lightly._
   _"Now, we've still got a half hour at least before you guys go back to
your partying -- hehehehe.  Since the Clann Reynolds officers and others
are here, wanna take a pass at the Clann Admin Scale?"_
   We took another half hour.  This was a bit easier since we had all the
terms defined and understood by now.  I'd say we had an 80% done by noon.
   As we were finishing, Maggie told us, _"Now you know how to do an Admin
Scale.  Get it in, check out your policies, processes and procedures then
get them aligned.  Once you've worked it out once for JRD, you should be
ready to look at a sub-company.  Once you've done a couple of them, it'll
be a walk on the beach -- I mean, in the park.  Hehehehe."_
   The Owners talked with Maggie a bit after the others had gone.  She told
us, _"We got a few nibbles for instructors from our web site.  Mona
forwarded them to you, Siobhan."_
   They had a big The Book seminar scheduled for July 8.  We had a brief
discussion then told her, "We'll send all the instructors to the seminar
plus the executives from Vail, JRD Recording and EverAlert.  That'll give
us a good start plus we won't have to train the instructors on giving the
seminar, just on establishing and running a course room."
   Sounded fine to her.  She handed us a dozen cards with the registration
web site address and told us, _"This'll get you a 10% discount."_ Why not?
Every little bit helped.
   ------
   We had a "surprise" bachelor party!  Kat and Sherry had disappeared over
to Mother's so I figured Kat was getting one, too.
   Good time!  Lay back, shoot the shit, play a few cards (why didn't they
trust me with the deck?) and watch a couple dirty movies.  Sean brought
over a chick flick just in case we had the taste.
   Oh, shit, they got some strippers!  Four of them, to be precise, from
quite young to adult.  They wore small masks across their eyes, so "of
course" we didn't know who they were.
   They exuded "sexy willing slut" from every pore and orifice.  By the
time they'd taken about three dance steps, every guy in the room was
saluting them.  Completely in synch, they danced to some wild Irish tune in
the stereo.  Bit by bit, clothes came off.
   They teased and tormented me while brushing hard/soft/sweet body parts
against me; each took a turn while the other three waved and bounced body
parts at the other guys -- plus tormented them, too.  You've heard of a lap
dance?  Well, they barely touched me.
   Each had a gold tassel dangling from between their cheeks; by now, that
was all they had on except for their masks.  We all could smell the sweet
perfume -- they were probably as horny right then as we were.
   With a final shake of beautiful breasts in front of my face and light
brushes of hard nipples against my mouth, they sashayed off through the
door.  Wonder who they were and would I ever meet them again?  The oldest
lady seemed familiar.  Hmm, who do I know who has red hair and is around
25? They were all familiar -- and I wasn't gonna ask.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Girl-party time!  We gathered at Elizabeth's and had a great time.  We
discussed school (finals this week!); boys; clothes; boys and men; jewelry;
boys, men and older men; shoes; boys, men, older men and younger men along
with our favorite foods.  For some reason, they all expected me to have
some input about all ages of the male half of the species.
   We sent Madeleine, Valerie, Cynthia and Megan (lots carefully drawn from
volunteers; which was every female) over to Bob's party to do a stripper
routine.  They came back some 45 minutes later dripping sweat and pumping
out pheromones and sex smell.  Apparently, everyone had a good time.  Nasty
girls!  Of course, I'd been on the volunteer list myself.
   They got me a stripper!  He was one of us, for sure, but had up a stout
mind shield and a persona of worshipping women -- and a mask over his eyes.
Long red hair top, bottom, chest and back, a really nice beard, nicely tall
and built like -- well, him I could start comparing to Bob.  *I* sure
didn't recognize him.
   Yummy, he got down to a Speedo so small he had parts sticking out all
over.  He draped himself all over every girl there at least once without
actually touching them then concentrated on me.  Jaysus!  My nipples tore
holes through my blouse, and I drenched the chair through my skirt.
   Finally his Speedo vanished; he made his tool dance around in time to
the wild Irish music (lots of moans from everyone!) as well as making his
muscles writhe gently all over.  Yum!
   He finished with a tender kiss and told me in Irish, "You're a fine
coleen, Missy Lillian; a man would risk his life to steal a kiss." He
wasn't at much risk even while he stole another then glided away like a
proud cat.  Hot dayum!
   No one else recognized him nor admitted to any part in finding him. 
Megan said, "After all, he was wearing a mask!" However, we decided he
could come see *any* of us most any night.
   We had to air out the place.
   Okay, we peeked at the young-uns get-together.  They were supposed to be
getting a basic checklist together, and we wanted to be sure they were
working, not playing.  Right.  We'll stick to that story, too.
   Well, dayum, they were working and working hard, too!  We did notice,
though, there was a long line of butterfly clips in the middle of the
table.
   We broke up at a decent time; we started finals the next day.
   At home, Mario was more than willing to fill us in on the four strippers
who'd shown up for Bob.  No one really knew who they'd been; they'd worn
masks.  Right.
   Of course, Sherry had to spill the beans about my stripper.  Bob and
Mario stoutly claimed it wasn't one of the Clann Reynolds men -- they'd all
been at his bash.  It couldn't have been one of the Clann Cullen men, we'd
seen them in their pelts and Sean, Patrick and John had been at Bob's party
all the time.
   He probably wasn't a really new one of us because he'd been mentally so
smooth and polished plus had teleported in and out of the house.  We
decided *maybe* he was an import from Clann Way or Fuerte.  There were
gonna be a lot of women eyeballing every male guest at our wedding looking
for long red hair and a body which made us drool.
   ------
   The finals Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty straightforward. 
No real tricky things, just straight application of what we'd learned.  The
Inner Circle folk mentioned they'd heard only one person grumble about how
badly he'd done; he'd never been a Brain Trust "client" so tough darts. 
The rest of the students were satisfied they'd given their best shots even
if they knew they hadn't done really well.
   We'd see Thursday afternoon when the grades come out.  No school on
Thursday here; the teachers finish grading the finals then turn in the
grades.  The school computer (heavily protected and not on the Internet)
cranks out the students' final grades and class standings.
   They would be posted on the school web site; we could find out our
grades using our Social Security Number.  Graduation was Thursday night so
parents could attend.  If you didn't graduate, of course you didn't have to
show up.
   Anyway, after school Wednesday, Elizabeth asked us to come on over;
Bob's grandparents from Ohio had arrived for the wedding!
   Bob and I popped right over about 4:00.  Jaysus!  Mick and Nora were
ones of us!  We shouldn't have been surprised since David and Bob had been
empaths and the Potential seems to run in families.
   Nora told us, "David 'got to us' several weeks ago.  Seems our youngest
grandson happened onto some interesting stuff."
   Bob laughed.  "I humbly apologize for not getting to you months ago.  My
only justification is these guys keep running me ragged."
   The elder Reynolds were in their early 70's.  Mick was big and had the
male Reynolds' sculpted, hard body; still yummy.  Nora wasn't a tiny lady
either.  Sporting flaming-red hair with a couple gray strays, she was right
up there around my height.  Both were in excellent physical shape -- with
no disclaimer about their ages.
   We had a wonderful, sit-down dinner.  We yakked, laughed and had a great
time.  Mick and Nora -- along with David and Elizabeth -- trotted out early
stories of their offspring's mis-adventures.  We had lots of laughs.
   Yeh, both Mick and David had gone through the same kind of puberty blues
as Bob.  Apparently one reason they'd gotten into construction and
renovations was they kept having to repair the damage they'd done to
various habitats!
   ------
   BOB
   We had a wonderful time, almost as if we were family.  Nana and
Seanathair welcomed Kathleen heartily without any reservations.  Seanathair
and Kat eyeballed each other pretty good; I could see "dirty old man" ran
in the family.
   Father and Mother told most of the stories about our adventures. 
Kat/Natalie filled in various lies about how I'd done so much.  Me, I'd
just tossed the meat on the table, and the others had chewed it up.
   They were duly impressed with the Natalie-Sunshine-Kathleen tale.  Nana
said, "I can see that raises some interesting possibilities."
   We discussed it a few minutes.  I mentioned finding potential take-over
bodies was on the Skunk Works' To Do List.  That brought up the Clann
Reynolds.  I tried to explain how I'd been railroaded but to no avail. 
Seanathair just said, "Makes total sense to me.  Who else is there of the
right caliber?" Argh.
   Mother trotted out the Clann customs so Nana and Seanathair could look
them over.  Nana told us, "Makes complete sense.  While we have a family
history and have been close and helpful, the Reynolds haven't actually been
a formal Clann.  This is an excellent way of doing it, especially with the
ones of us."
   Mother pulled out the confidential customs; she and Kat leered at me
when Nana looked me over speculatively.  Seanathair laughed and said, "Hey,
it comes with the territory."
   Mother told them, "Yeh.  Wait'll you see some of the territory, Mick. 
You'll have to carry a spare handkerchief to wipe off the drool.  Nora, the
guys will lust after you -- and show it."
   They were quite interested in JRD, of course.  We took them on a quick
virtual tour of the JRD offices, the audit room and the research lab.  We
took a quick look at JRD Recording and a couple of the other companies.
   Father had told them a bit about Clann Way and Fuerte.  We brought in
Clann Cullen who was "just down the road a piece." They immediately decided
they'd look hard at firing up a Clann in Akron.  Seanathair told us, "We've
found about a dozen others with Potential already; just stumbled over them.
With this as a model, we should do right well."
   Nana grinned and said, "We'll find some young lad to be Ceann and a
young lass for the Ceann-Mate who can bear up under the strain of all that
honoring.  Of course as Founding Members, Mick and I'll get lots of
honoring.  Besides, they gotta practice.  Right?"
   Kathleen told them, "Bob seems to 'bare' up okay.  We've had a fair
amount of practice but are still willing to learn." Good for a nice laugh.
   We talked for another couple hours then popped back home to put the
bodies to sleep.  The family gathered around 11:00 and went exploring.
   We introduced Nana and Seanathair to jet-engine spinning and kamikaze
dives.  They loved it, just as we had.  Nana said, _"Akron's airport has
grown up considerably over the years.  We'll have plenty of fun."_
   ------
   (Thursday 6/15)
   Plenty to do Thursday.  We popped over to Mickey C for the cap and gown
fittings then Kat and Sherry took off for the final fittings on their Prom
and wedding dresses.
   Ronnad's wedding dress had fit Kathleen really well to begin with; the
Clann Cullen dressmaker was making the final tweaks on everything.  Kat and
Sherry had found nice Prom dresses, shoes and jewelry from Ronnad's
collection -- guess they were in girl-heaven.
   Mario and I just lay around and were lazy.  From something Maggie had
said at the last Clann meeting, we decided to check out different buffets
in Las Vegas.  Why should Mother have to cook?
   That being asked, we spent an hour looking over everything we could
find. An Internet site gave us maps, different casinos and hours.  Okay. 
The Rio sounded good to us.
   We picked up on a few loose ends at the JRD office.  It looked as if the
temps were making a lot of progress; the stack of stuff to be looked at and
handled was a lot smaller by now.  More things for Kat and Evin to check
out.
   I poked around the research lab a few minutes.  Ana told me, _"Nothing
to do today, right?  Well, we're doing just fine.  The Golds and I figure
in another week we'll call the Frank and Thelma run a success.  We'll do
our write up and run it past the committee and see what they think."_
   _"Still looking at doing Mary next?"_
   _"Right now, don't see any reason why not.  We'll see what the committee
says; it'll be in our recommendation."_
   _"Sounds fine to me."_
   Henry checked in with me.  "Yes, Ceann, we *did* get a preliminary
training list made up Sunday.  We're gonna schedule several more meetings
over the next month to fill in details.  We're gonna shanghai Ben into
doing the reviews so it'll be in good shape.
   "The new Clann Cullen lawyer brought up a really good point about email
being very insecure.  We're gonna find and pull all the copies of the
confidential material then issue serialized prints to be logged out and
teleported.  Our first pass of the newbie checklist is on your keyboard at
your place."
   It was.  Jaysus, there was a lot of stuff once you listed it out.  There
were several entry points depending on where the newbie started out --
"spontaneous emission" (like Ben), gradual, enhanced by others, etc.  Once
a spirit was outside, there was a pretty linear training line.
   They'd divided it into several phases.  Phase 1 dealt with establishing
the firewall, body shield and sound barrier, leakage prevention (spiritual
and sound) and the first parts of Relative Movement.  That would keep
someone fairly well under their own control so they weren't a security
hazard.  The later phases gradually added more techniques and ended up
blending right into the teleportation checklist.  Looked great to me!
   Henry told me the Skunk Works would work on the security and ciphered
language aspect as their next priority.  "We agree it's already an issue.
We've got enough printed copies of the teleportation checklist and
confidential customs floating around already.  While we normally run
fast-flow this is one thing we want to fix even before it breaks.
   "We might take a quick run through the Moon Base, too.  The language
probably won't be English and it would probably be able to handle technical
issues.  No reason to reinvent the wheel completely."
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Our fittings had gone excellently, as I'd figured.  We're gonna be
lookin' *good*!
   We had a decent crowd for an early dinner.  We got Ana, Don (who had no
Senior class exams to grade), Mario, Sherry, Sam and Mary together with us
then popped over to the Rio in Las Vegas for the dinner buffet.  Totally
cool!
   We stuffed ourselves, of course.  Mario popped up a sound shield around
us; not opaque but it made us sound both quiet and unintelligible to
outsiders.  The parents and grandparents told us more tales of progeny
pranks and problems.  Mom didn't spare Natalie, either.
   Ana said, "Well, I've got a tale.  It's not fun like we've been
telling."
   Of us there, about half of us knew the story she told of the Akron
Strangler.  Mick and Nora especially were amazed.  Nora said, "Dayum!  We
were shaking in our boots for a good three months -- and it was you two who
brought him down!"
   Ana claimed no responsibility, "I was just there.  I would have died
completely if Bob hadn't appeared."
   Bob just shrugged.  He said, "Well, I was there and it was right.  I owe
a lot of it to Seanathair and Father; he probably would have killed me,
too, if I hadn't inherited your strength."
   Well, maybe.  Mary told her tale of Unpleasantville and how Steven and
Lucia had literally dug her out of her shell -- then how Elizabeth and
David had taken her in.  I was busting with pride about the family I was
formally joining a couple of days.
   We popped back home and checked out the school grades.  Each student had
the option of making any of their statistics private except for the
Seniors' final class standing.
   The Senior Valedictorian was Leone!  Yes!  The local girl done good. 
Apparently last year's "tutoring" had really taken hold.  Grin.
   Bob, Sherry and I were in the Top Ten.  Mine had a note explaining it
wasn't really official since I'd transferred in from an "academic program"
with non-comparable metrics.  Fancy talk for having a lawyer relative and
private tutors.  Rose and I had talked about it and decided I'd have an
unofficial standing.  No sweat; JRD had accepted my credentials and I got a
high-school diploma.  Big grin.
   Back home and off to Graduation.  I guess you'd call it typical;
standard "Pomp and Circumstances" music, walk across the stage then the
Valedictorian speech.
   Leone did great.  She filled the hall with her presence (wonder how she
did that?  Grin), and wasn't at all trite.  She emphasised both
self-responsibility and teamwork.  "No one is really an island in today's
society.  Even the 'hermit on the hill' nowadays depends on the outside
world to some degree.  The more you interact and work with people to help
and serve them, the more successful you can be."
   ------
   (Friday 6/16)
   We filled the entire morning and afternoon with Prom preps.  Harvard was
having their year-end dance then, too.  They didn't call it a Prom, but it
was the same thing.
   Sherry and I'd sponsored hair and nails for anyone interested -- guys
included.  Bob sponsored corsages as he'd done before.  David escorted Bob
to get a haircut and a manicure.  He cooperated -- he's learning.
   Bob ensured our Prom goodies were ready for the show.  All was well.
   We had an early dinner with the entire family, including Sherry and
Mario's families.  Dayum, one big bunch of people!  The Castaway barely fit
us all in.
   ------
   SHERRY
   Good food.  I was planning on plenty of dancing so I stoked up pretty
good.  We'd gotten Mario and Julio special dispensations to come as
non-Mickey-C students; no way was I going alone or with someone else!
   Dessert was to-die-for vanilla and butterscotch swirl ice cream.  It
would fill in the cracks just right.
   I was gonna leave the last third or so, but Mom glared at me and said,
"Finish your dinner young lady." Okay, okay, okay!
   What the hell?  There was a distinct clatter in the last spoonful.  I
investigated -- it was a ring!
   Mario was on a knee beside me.  He took my hand and asked, "Sherry
Stapley, Mi Enamorada, will you marry me?"
   Yes!  He'd done it!  I think he understood my answer when I did my best
to smother him with my mouth.  YES!
   Everyone was grinning and clapping.  The Castaway's strolling musicians
gathered around and played romantic music while we hugged and I showed off
the ring (suitably washed by then and a perfect fit).
   I eyed Kat pretty good and accused her, "You were in on this, I betcha!"
   She smiled widely and told us, "Not really.  Bob had a Ceann-talk with
him; I just encouraged it.  Bet it was my mom and Elizabeth who did most of
the plotting with him." They were looking spectacularly innocent so of
course they were guilty!
   ------
   We went back home to dress for the dance.  Sarah was dressing at home
with Mom helping so she was handled.  Kat and I had to make do with just
each other.
   Over the past month or so, I'd "thunk" my boobs up a couple inches so
they were nice and high.  Obviously I liked them that way.  Mario, Bob and
Kat hadn't seemed to mind; they'd checked out the anchorages thoroughly
several times.
   Kat hadn't done anything with hers.  She hadn't needed it in any way and
I could attest to it!
   We'd gone through Ronnad's clothes several times.  It had been an
embarrassment of riches; there were so many each of us liked really well.
It was almost a case of close the eyes and point at random.
   From the pictures I'd seen of Ronnad, she'd been build pretty much like
Kathleen so of course everything fit her almost right away.  My boobs
weren't as big around as hers at the base so I had the top tweaked just a
bit.
   Topless, strapless and backs scooped to the ass crack.  Medium-full
skirts so we could kick up our heels as much as needed.
   Bras?  We didn't need no stinkin' bras!  Nor could we wear any, either.
Let 'em figure out how they stayed up on their own.  The Inner Touch and
_touches_ left a couple inches cleavage without being too generous.  Kat's
freckles were especially yummy.
   The fabric was thin enough we had to wear dental-floss thongs, mainly to
hold a panty liner on -- we were planning on getting plenty wet.  However,
it didn't take long for us to figure out we didn't need the thongs, either.
A subsidiary _touch_ held the pads on.  Damn, we were nasty!
   After I _licked_ Kat's nipples a few times (and she'd returned the
favor) we decided just enough would show through to be, uh, interesting.
   Kat had me practice flaunting my ring, prancing and looking smug.  Shit,
yes!
   Mario and I tooled over to my folks; they wanted pictures.  Why not? 
Bob and Kat went to Ana's for the same reason.
   Sarah was looking yummy herself.  Not quite as much cleavage displayed
as me, but she still had plenty of bosom to show off.  Julio looked good in
a neat suit.
   Sarah and I _plotted_ a couple seconds.  By the time Dad had taken the
second picture, we'd rubbed our boobs against our guys' arms and diddled
another spot so they had a couple good stiff ones.  Maggie's corrupting
even me!  Hehehehe.
   "Somehow" none of the Inner Circle had ended up on any of the dance
committees so all we had to do was show up.  Ana, Don, Elizabeth and David
had chaperone duty.
   I rode shotgun while Mario chauffeured us in the Audi.  In the back
seat, Julio was a gentleman; he kept his hands on the outside of Sarah's
dress at least.  I did hear quite a bit of snogging though.
   Mickey C didn't have a separate Prom for Seniors or anything like that.
Just like the Christmas and Spring Dances, it was for everyone.  We arrived
at a good time; plenty of people around I could flash my ring at!
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Sherry was in her element!  She flounced, strutted, waved her hand to
make her ring flash and was over the top.  All in great fun.  Mario looked
appropriately "hooked" and humble.  It went over great.  Of course, I kept
steering girls towards her.
   The chaperones were already here.  Mrs.  Baer had invited Mick and Nora
along to help (Seniors and Clann have some privileges) so they were dressed
in their finest.  Lookin' good!
   Bob had on a full black coat-and-tails tuxedo with a top hat and cane.
He told me, "Mick loaned them to me.  He's quite the dandy -- even when he
was younger." Fred and Ginger, eat your hearts out!  Ginger wasn't
permitted to show as much as I was that night.  Plus, we were in full
color, not black and white.
   Some of George's old cronies (non-Clann) were videoing the entire thing.
Bob and I made sure of the hookup; we were gonna do some things we didn't
want to show up on a recording.
   Jaysus, it was great!  Bob _linked_ up quickly to everyone and
introduced Leone and Mark as the featured singers.  "You're going to hear a
lot more of these two.  They've started recording at JRD Recording so this
summer you might hear them on the radio or maybe see them in concert.
   "You can tell your children and grandchildren you went to school with
them, heard them and saw them live!  Everyone, welcome Leone and Mark!"
   Dayum they were good.  They were at a great peak and were singing and
performing their hearts out.  With a light _link_, we could _feel_ their
passion -- and it didn't go unnoticed.  Even the simplest song got tears
flowing from someone.
   They sang oldies, newies (that's a word?) and classics from all genres.
This was Mick's and Nora's first exposure to them; they were both crying a
little from the happy memories they brought back.
   Yeh, Bob and I danced.  East Coast Swing, Cha Cha/Mambo, Nightclub Two
Step, Nightclub Foxtrot and Swing along with straight shuffle-the-feet and
feel-the-woody-and-boobs.  Seems like a lot of folk had been taking lessons
from somewhere because we had lots of company besides Elizabeth's students.
Nice.  *Really* nice.  Maybe there's hope for us younger generation yet!
   Dayum, even Tank was in on the action!  For a man-mountain he was really
light on his feet.  I snuggled up to him real good -- he had a spot of
Potential and someone had been enhancing him a bit.  Wonderful!  If anyone
deserved it, he did.  He put the "jock" stereotype to shame.
   I told him, "I still remember the day last year you and Toro saved my
gringo pechos from that cutre.  These pechos don't remember but still
appreciate it." I ensured he felt every square inch of them possible
against his chest.  Oh, yeh, he had a tranca worthy of the rest of his
body. Hmm; maybe he'd be interested in joining the Clann?
   He'd had fifteen full-ride scholarship offers from various colleges both
in football and basketball.  Shaquille O'Neil, watch yer ass!  A 3.5 GPA
(Brain Trust had helped) sure hadn't hurt.
   Under the spotlights, I gave him a lip-lock that wouldn't quit.  "Ladies
and gentlemen!  I give you Emilo Raphael Phillipe Hernadez, a *true* macho
man!"
   ------
   BOB
   Dayum!  All these beautiful women!  Too bad I didn't have a week to pay
attention to each one of them as they deserved.
   Kathleen was completely gorgeous.  Even allowing for my built-in bias,
she was hands-down the most sexy broad around -- without even flaunting it.
   Sherry was right up there with her.  With her I'm-in-love-and-engauged
glow, she exuded her Spanish fire all over.  Girls flocked to ogle her ring
and guys flocked to dance with her.  The Sherry was on a high-speed roll!
   ------
   We had some Approvals to do.  I snatched up Michelle Bonds while Kat
glommed onto her SO, Michael.  Yeh, I'd given her a good approval before
but wanted to reaffirm it.
   I told her, "You're lookin' really good, Michelle.  From everything I've
been hearing, you're doing wonderfully well, too.  Is that Michael guy
treating you well or should I have a little talk with him?"
   She snuggled up good; she was a lot more relaxed than before.  "You're a
real sweetie, Bob.  Your Kathleen Sunshine is a wonderful lady; she just
glows when she looks at you.
   "Oh, yeh, Michael treats me really good.  Not a hint of shame or blame
for my past; he just asks every once in a while if I know about 'X,' then
we try it out.  He's wonderful."
   She'd been my greatest challenge.  She'd started out a real whore for
all practical purposes, but with Sherry and George's help, I'd recognized
the depth of the true being beneath all that.  Even a small spot of
Potential which I recognized someone was enhancing.  Good on 'em and her!
   I gave her a firm, full kiss under the spotlights.  "Ladies and
gentlemen!  Again I give you Michelle Bonds, a blazing example of courage
under fire and of the true goodness which dwells within us all!"
   ------
   Kat snatched up Todd Marks while I spirited Janine Baer away from her
admirers.  I told her, "You're a wonder, Janine."
   "I owe it all to you, Sorcerer."
   "Nope.  All I did was point you out a little.  The rest of all your
achievements was completely yours.  *You* are a true winner!"
   She got an excellent round of applause (as did Todd).  She and Todd had
bootstrapped themselves from losers to true winners; it was all their
accomplishments as a team.  Hope the cafeteria table could hold all the
Inner Circle next year; there was gonna be a *lot* of them.
   ------
   Sarah Stapley almost fainted when I snatched her up.  She told me, "We
also-rans can only hope to achieve what you real Clann people have done."
   "Not true, sweet Sarah.  You've shown your Talent to us all.  While you
may not have the sheer power others have, your devotion and love for Julio
and for us tells us all you are worthy.  You both are completely worthy of
respect and worthy of admiration.  Never, ever put yourselves down."
   For a good five minutes I whispered sweet nothings in her ear about how
sexy she was, how her breasts against me filled my heart (and something
else) with desire and how her attitude towards life made her truly a
wonderful spirit.
   Bull shit?  Nope.  Every word was true.  The old adage of "those also
serve who only stand and wait" didn't even apply to her and Julio.  They
were vastly beyond that in their efforts, stability and love for their
friends and each other.  I'd trade a thousand "brilliant stars" who waxed
and waned for one who had their steadfast loyalty and ethics.  A true
winner indeed.
   She got a long round of applause from the Clann and her friends when I
kissed her under the lights.  Yeh, she peed her panties a little; no big
deal.
   ------
   SHERRY
   Even before the half-time break I was a bit tuckered out.  Better get
some more conditioning from Mario, Bob, Kat and the rest of the gang!
   Damned glad I had the panty liner.  I had to change it three times
before the half-time.  Seems every gal around wanted to snatch up Mario (he
was "safe" for one thing) and almost every guy I knew -- and several I'd
never met -- wanted to snuggle up.
   Guess being engauged meant something.  It said both "someone thinks
you're really desirable" and "yes, I agree you are very desirable." I had a
lot of woodies rubbed up against me.
   What the hell, I rubbed my mound right back.  With only one layer of
fabric, I could feel really well.  I rubbed my refurbished tits and steel
nipples right back at them.  I got flows from pure lust to total
admiration. Everyone congratulated me on my engaugement.  Nice.  *Really*
nice.
   ------
   After our 20-minute half-time, Bob and Kat were on.  The dance
committees had scheduled them for a thirty-minute gig -- without prompting
from any ones of us.
   Leone and Mark brought people back in with a light, happy song.  Bob was
up on the stage which was a good six feet or so above the dance floor.  In
his coat, tails, top hat and cane, he was looking good!
   He told the audience, "That's Leone and Mark!  They've contributed their
time and talent to our entertainment, so let's give it up for them!"
   They got a solid round of applause.
   Bob faced the audience.  "Lots of us are gonna be gone when school
starts again in September.  However, there'll be lots of new faces, new
talent and new friends coming aboard.  You'll be in very good hands with
Steven Adams and Lucia Sonora."
   I led another several seconds of loud applause.
   Bob continued, "Now the dance committee chairman said I was on now for
some sort of magic show.  Only problem is, I can't find my magical
assistant -- she's *really* magic and there's no show without her.  That
girls' restroom seems to swallow more females than Nordstrom's with a
75%-off sale."
   We women cheered.  When was that sale?  How come I hadn't heard about
it?
   Bob called loudly for Kathleen several times.  We finally heard her
voice from way up high, "I'm up here, Sorcerer.  Last I knew I was waiting
in line for the john; now I'm up here.  You'd better get me down in a hurry
and get this over with or some other things besides my teeth will be
floating."
   The spotlights searched around for a couple seconds then spotted her
perched high in the rafters.  No way she could have gotten there without
major scaffolding!
   Bob looked nonplussed for a moment then called out, "I'll get you down
sweetheart.  Not quite sure how, but I will."
   He inspected the inside of his coat a few seconds then pushed his arm
into his top hat and pulled out a large, battery-mounted light.  He turned
it on, put it on the floor and pointed the light so it shown on her.  Kat
called out, "Thanks, Bob.  Now you're shining a light up my skirt, what's
next?"
   Bob said, "Well, there are probably plenty of mirrors in the restroom,
guess we need some smoke." He swirled his cane around in the light beam for
a few seconds; smoke came streaming out of it.  He waved the cane and
fanned with his other hand until the smoke reached the rafters where Kat
was holding on with both hands.  The light beam was now plainly visible.
   He called out, "Slide down that, sweetheart."
   "How do I know you won't turn it off when I'm halfway down?" She
launched into a good stream of Irish invective.  Even those who didn't know
a lick of Irish understood she was casting extreme doubts upon his human
ancestry, his virility and his status with the IRS.
   We Clann women gave her a good round of applause.  Bob said, "Trust me,
Kathleen."
   Kathleen called out, "Last time a guy told me that, I was still a
virgin!" More Irish invective.  Must have struck a chord with the girls,
because they cheered and encouraged her.
   Anyway, she maneuvered herself onto the beam so she was straddling it
face-down.  She finally let go of the rafter and slowly slid down the light
beam.
   We clapped and cheered for her.  When she was about ten feet from the
stage she seemed to loose her grip; she shrieked loudly as she slid the
last part with her arms flailing and her skirt blowing up.
   She ran right into Bob who was straddling the beam to help her.  She
promptly knocked him over then ended up sitting on his face with her skirt
spread around her.
   She grinned, rocked her hips several times and shivered "loudly." Bob's
arms and legs waved weakly while we heard muffled groans from beneath her.
   She stopped moving then yanked up the top of her dress.  It had slid
down until the goodies were almost out in the open.
   She pounded Bob's stomach a couple times with her fist then clambered
off.  They got to their feet and awkwardly adjusted their clothing.  Bob
glanced at her, put his hand between his mouth and her and asked the
audience, "Should I tell her she forgot to put something on?"
   There was an equal mixture of laughter, yays and nays.  Bob told the
audience, "By the way, she *is* a natural redhead."
   Kat obviously heard him that time because she glared at him and promptly
kicked him really hard in the butt.  He rose up in the air a couple feet,
flailed around for a couple seconds then crashed face-down to the stage
with a loud thud.  The girls cheered and waved their arms while the guys
groaned in sympathy.
   Bob carefully got to his feet, dusted himself off a little, picked up
his hat and cane then asked her, "What?" She Irished him again.  He
shrugged a little and twirled his cane like a cheerleader's baton.
   He stopped twirling it and it went completely limp; it draped over his
hand like a piece of old string.  Kat pointed at it, laughed and told the
audience, "Now *that* I've seen before."
   Everyone groaned this time.  Kat reached out and touched the limp cane
with the tip of a finger.  With an audible snap, it straightened right out.
They grinned at each other and did a high-five while we cheered.  The night
was saved!
   They started dancing -- a neat soft-shoe with twirls of the cane and
hat. The music changed to a faster tempo; they started spins together.
   They did a long, very fast spin then snapped apart facing the audience
with their arms and legs apart.  Another spin and snap.  Bob felt his head
and Kat reached up -- she was wearing the top hat.  They glanced at each
other then spun again.
   This time Kat had the hat and the cane.  Bob quirked an eyebrow.  Kat
asked, "What?" Bob shrugged and they spun again.
   Kat now had his coat-and-tails too over her dress.  Bob wore wide
suspenders with shamrocks.  They spun again.  Kat was now wearing his shirt
and tie beneath her dress.  The girls cheered and called out, "More! 
More!"
   They spun.  Kat now had his trousers on beneath her dress; Bob wore
white boxers covered with shamrocks.  More cheers and encouragement from
the girls in the audience.
   Bob looked at Kat.  She grinned and spat out a short Irish at him. 
Everyone "knew" it translated as "chicken!"
   They spun again for several seconds.  Cool!  Kat was fully dressed in
Bob's outfit (with her heels) while Bob wore her dress!  Figure that out,
suckers!
   They got loud cheers and applause.  Kat bowed and Bob curtseyed while
hiding his "cleavage." After the applause died down a bit they went into
another long spin.  Suddenly Bob fell flat on his butt!  Kat had vanished
-- the old "vanishing assistant" routine!  He was back in his full
coat-and-tails.
   Bob looked around carefully and told us, "I guess I'd better find her.
We've got a wedding tomorrow and there are two mothers here who'll be
*very* upset if I misplaced the bride."
   Mario and I knew this part from the Tavern.  He did his magic light
which obviously didn't find her.  He put the light from the lantern up on
the rafters where Kat had appeared before; no Kat.  The lantern choose that
moment to dim out and die.  Bob told us, "Good thing I got her down
earlier, right?" We agreed.  He tossed the dead lantern out over the
audience; we ducked but it promptly vanished.
   Bob told us, "I'd better pull something out of the hat.  If I don't, I
won't live through tomorrow." He explained how his grandfather had loaned
him the hat and cane.  He said, "This is called a 'stovepipe' hat because
the sides are straight and it's hollow." He showed us how hollow; it didn't
have a top.
   He said, "Notice if I put something in through the top, it just goes
right on through." He spun the hat in the air where it hovered with the top
up.  He dropped the cane in the top and caught it when it came out the
bottom.
   "On the other hand, something going the other way doesn't come out." He
pushed the cane upwards from the brim.  It promptly vanished as it went in.
He pulled it back out again.
   "It does do some peculiar things." He slowly lowered it into the top
until there was only an inch remaining outside; the rest stuck out the
bottom.  He pushed the bottom up into the hat until his arm was almost
buried.  Of course, the cane outside the top remained the same.
   He pulled on the top part of the cane.  It came out okay, but was only
an inch or so long -- and limp as a noodle.  Bob looked at the audience and
asked, "Every have one of those days, guys?" He got lots of agreement.
   He dropped the remnants of the cane in the top and caught the full,
stiff cane as it came out the bottom.  "That's better, right?" The ladies
agreed enthusiastically.
   He gave the hat a little tap on the side with the cane.  It flipped over
and rested easily with the brim up.  He asked, "Could she be inside?" He
stuck his arm in and felt around.  He came up with a large Barbie doll --
red-headed of course.  We got the "hot girlfriend" and "shrinkage" routine.
   He carefully set the doll and cane in the air beside the hat and went
exploring again.  He pulled out the water-and-ice-cube glasses and went
into the juggling routine.  Of course one crashed to the stage and broke.
   He pulled out a large Pooh Bear towel from the hat.  He explained,
"Kathleen packed, not me." Yeh, right.
   We got the "lady peeing" routine and Kat magically appeared drinking the
water.  She apologized for disappearing, "Bob kept going on and on so I
went."
   We did the stuffed animal routine.  This time they were little Mickey
Mouse dolls with a tee shirt which had an "M." Guess what it meant.  Bob
and Kat streamed them out so everyone got one; the entire Clann folk helped
the distribution.  We girls, at least, thought they were really cute.
   Bob and Kat pulled the hat open widely and pulled out a large doll
dressed like a baby with diapers.  Bob tossed it to Mom and told her,
"Better get practicing.  You'll be doing it soon enough." Our Lead MILF
grinned and cuddled it.  She announced, "If it turns out anything like you
or Kathleen, we'll be plenty happy!"
   The Irishman's drunken hat routine went over really well.  It nuzzled
several cheeks and bumped up against several bottoms -- young and old. 
Lots of fun.
   Now they danced for real!  A wonderful waltz; they appeared to float. 
They did float, actually, right off the stage onto the dance floor.
   Leone and Mark sang out their version of "The Tennessee Waltz." Instead
of heartbreak, it was heartache for happiness; the lovers were together and
sharing their love and joy.  More magic and such smooth, wonderful
movements full of love and grace.  We _felt_ their love and we almost wept
with the intensity.
   Their love and happiness blended with Leone and Mark's until most of us
*were* crying; it was almost unbearable.
   Bob handed his coat, hat and cane to Steven.  The band swept into a
really nasty Tango!  Yowsah!  We could feel the heat!  Kat oozed sex so
much it puddled all over the floor.  By the time they were done, we girls
were wet on the bottom and hard on the top.  Lotsa guys were gonna get
lucky tonight!
   We clapped and cheered for several minutes; wonderful.  Absofuckinlutely
wonderful!
   ------
   We all danced, laughed and had a great time!  It was everything we could
have imagined for our last school dance.  There'd be more romance to come
but this had been really special.
   Back home, Mario and I made a long slow loving.  So sweet and so full of
joy and happiness we wept again.  My Mario!
   Yeh, we got nosy later.  Bob and Kat were "saving up" for tomorrow so we
didn't get anything good out of them.  However, pretty much everywhere else
we _looked_, girls were getting *really* lucky!  Very little just fuck-fuck
but tons of sweet, happy celebrations of life, love and joy.
   Chapter 7
   BOB (Saturday 6/17)
   I'd say we pulled it off pretty good at the dance.  Hopefully, lots of
people would have lots of fond, happy memories -- and would remember they
saw and heard Leone and Mark live!
   We snuggled and cuddled all night.  Kat told me, "Yep; got three eggs
coming down.  Karen and Oscar told me by tomorrow night, we'll be ready."
Yes!  We got all hot and bothered but managed to restrain ourselves.  That
didn't stop me from giving lots of oral and tactile admiration to various
Kathleen Lillian Donovan body parts!  Gotta keep her warmed up, right?
   We were due at Mother's house pretty early to ensure the last-minute
stuff was under control.  We popped in about 8:00.
   Nice!  Bill was there -- and was one of us, too.  He grinned at me and
said, "Can't let little brother beat me out too badly.  Father and Mother
have been working on us for a couple months now."
   Us?  He introduced us to Caitlin Canavan, his finacee.  Dayum, he's been
a busy boy!  She was a gorgeous Red Irish gal full of life -- and one of
us. Leave it to Bill to find a jewel in the wilderness of Northern
California.
   Kat and I ensured they both got plenty of hugs and welcomes from us.  We
chatted a little; Father had filled them in on Clann Reynolds and the
customs -- all the customs.  They owned a custom software shop in Redding,
and it was doing very well.
   Caitlin told us, "It's got civilization without being NYC and is
relatively close to Silicon Valley and to here.  We're definitely looking
at starting a Clann; there's lots of good people there, and we've already
spotted a good dozen with Potential." She eyed me pretty good and
continued, "We've gotta get some cross-culture going from Los Angeles. 
We've heard some pretty wild stories."
   She must have been talking about Bill, he's the wild one.
   Anyway, I guessed things were under control because Mother shooed us
back home to get dressed.
   ------
   ANA
   I'd been "assigned" to be Mother of the Bride.  That meant Don was the
Father; everyone was happy with the roles.
   My baby's getting married!  Our sweet Natalie/Sunshine/Kathleen and that
wonderful man are gonna tie the knot.  I'd been getting weepy a couple
times a day the last couple weeks -- and loving every moment.
   Sherry and I helped her get dressed.  Not that she needed help, but it's
part of the game.
   Her mother's wedding dress fit perfectly after a few deft touches from
the Clann Cullen dressmaker.  And those diamonds!  God, they looked
gorgeous on her; she was big enough they worked great.  At every breath
they sparkled and shown.
   She'd already picked out a reception dress from Ronnad's stash -- she'd
change after their first dance or so.
   We didn't worry about Bob or Don.  They knew how to handle a tux and tie
by now.
   Sherry and I each had a Ronnad dress.  So nice to have a wealthy
daughter with lots of clothes!  Grin.  I had to buy shoes, though.  Too
bad.
   It was time!  We'd been put strongly in our places at Blake and Louise's
wedding so weren't gonna risk the wrath of Margaret Sullivan by harassing
Majella this time.  I still shuddered every time I thought how narrowly
we'd escaped with the skin on our butts still intact.
   Steven was Bob's Best Man; the first choice had been George, but we
couldn't see how we could swing it at a public ceremony.  Anyway, Steven
would hold George so we'd all be satisfied.
   We ported in exactly on time.  Don was ready; he gave Kathleen a firm
hug and kiss.  "I'm so proud of you, sweetheart.  Back in Ohio, we couldn't
even dream of such a wonderful event."
   Our Clann choir was singing and _singing_.  Already I felt shivers
running up and down my spine.  Yeh, Don, Sherry and Kat felt them too.
   Sherry and I rushed to our places; Don would take things from then on.
   Don and Kathleen came down the aisle as the _singing_ increased in
volume -- a wonderful ancient _song_ of love lost then found.  Yeh, I cried
along with the others.
   Kat and Bob locked eyes; I don't think they saw anyone else.
   Majella got them facing her as she'd done with Blake and Louise.  She
spoke to us, "Welcome, friends.  By now we can call you all friends.  A
marriage or bonding is the spiritual association for the optimum survival
of the people involved.  Robert and Kathleen have asked you here today to
witness their commitment to the spiritual and legal aspects of their
bonding."
   She went through the ceremony.  I wasn't seeing very much by then, I'm
afraid.  No one dropped the rings so that was okay.
   They finally kissed and we all _felt_ their love and devotion.  Dayum,
I've gotta get these tears out of the way!
   After they'd exchanged their luck money, they walked slowly back down
the aisle.  The choir gave us a final _song_ of love, happiness and wishes
fulfilled.  I was crying so hard I had to sit down.
   ------
   Don got me dried off a little and into the reception room.  Glad it
wasn't much of a walk.
   It took me a couple minutes to settle down; Sherry wasn't in much better
shape.  She finally nudged me and said, "We did good with those youngsters,
right?"
   Too much.  That brought me out so I could laugh instead of cry.  I told
her, "Yeh.  I remember the first time I saw him in that painty boiler suit
with that blue bandana over his hair.  He looked dayum near as good then as
he did today."
   Sherry's turn to laugh.  "I was there when they first met.  They just
fell into each other in an almost complete _merge_.  It worried me, it was
so intense."
   Steven announced firmly, "Let's greet the bond-mates!  Ladies and
gentlemen, Mr.  and Mrs.  R.  Robert Reynolds!"
   Everyone stood, applauded and cheered as they strode slowly in grinning
so hard I was sure something would break.  Her dress looked even better
now. Bob looked at her like she was the most precious thing he'd ever seen
in all his lives.  To him, she probably was.
   They went right into the first dance.  Leone and Mark sang; PVC _sang_
-- a song of their lives together.  The first joy of meeting and loving
fading to the bleakness of possible loss.  Then a gleam of hope, rising and
flowing more as their love grew.
   Bob and Kat's dance matched the words and emotions; they shared the
emotions they'd felt and their movements conveyed the same emotions.
   A sudden burst of joy from the hope realized then a wonderful period of
happiness.  Then sudden loss, despair and grief.  They barely moved for
several long moments.
   There suddenly came a bright stream of joy!  That which was thought lost
for ages was again found!  Bob and Kat moved faster while their joy flooded
us along with PVC's _song_!  Faster and higher and happier they all went
until they were spinning for several long seconds together a foot off the
floor.
   Jaysus!  Sherry and I cried again.
   We cheered and clapped and cried.  I knew there wasn't a dry eye
anywhere.
   All righty then!  Now we all could dance.  Don swept me away; his eyes
weren't dry either.  He told me, "You did really good with those two,
sweetheart."
   Yeh.  It was all my doing.  Right.
   We ate; lots of Irish wedding food.  We drank Irish whiskey and beer. 
We laughed, danced and talked our heads off.
   Yes!  Sean Cullen and his harem (giggle) was here!  Dayum he found
gorgeous women!  BB made my mouth water, and they all made my pussy drool.
Shit, he'd found another one since last week!  Obviously, she was BB's
sister except she had jet-black hair.  Wonder what they did while Sean was
"busy"?  Need any help?  I'm sure Maggie was corrupting us all.  Hehehehe.
   Sean snatched me up for a slow dance.  He snuggled me right in and said,
"Missy Maureen!  Such a pleasure to share a moment with you!"
   My knees almost collapsed, but his strong hand on my ass kept me up.  He
moved it up but immediately put it back when I hissed, "Get your hand back
there.  *Now!*"
   Dayum he was built.  No, he wasn't the stripper, either.  I observed,
"Your ladies sure glow like they're happy."
   He smiled like the sun.  "They glow because they're some of the most
wonderful women in the world.  Maybe you should spend a couple months with
us and you'll find out why we're all so happy."
   I had to change my panties and put in a liner after that dance. 
Lecherous Irishman!  Now, how could I swing something like that?  After
all, I was already getting horny from being "with babies."
   Of course I snatched a dance with Bob; actually he snatched me.  He
whispered in my ear, "Too bad you were already taken.  Natalie wouldn't
have stood a chance if you'd been single." Fuck!  I finally figured out I
could wring out my panty liner every couple minutes and port the wetness
away.
   I got a nice belly-rubber with Mark.  I told him, "You two are marvelous
together!  I get chills every time I hear you two sing."
   He smiled and said, "Thank you.  We mean to do just that; if someone
doesn't have an emotional response, we haven't done our job properly.  Now,
I see Don is holding his own this time."
   Leone had Don in her patented Leone-clench.  This time, though, he
wasn't backing away but had a shit-eating grin a mile wide.  Mark
whispered, "Hmm.  He seems quite interested.  How's the Mother of the Bride
doing?  Gonna be too tired for a little, em, adventure tonight?"
   I had to port another pint away.  I put a couple bruises on his chest
and told him, "We've got a big bed and a spare bedroom.  9:30?  A few
drinks, a few laughs, tune in on Bob and Kat making babies?"
   He _talked_ for a half second with Leone.  He told me, "Agreed.  I think
Don just had a heart attack."
   ------
   SHERRY
   Sean had added *another* gorgeous lady to his harem.  There was no doubt
Melissa and BB were closely related.  Except for their hair color and a
slight age difference, they could have been oriental twins.  Gotta check
out BB's platinum-blonde pelt some day (or night.  I was easy)!
   Sean claimed Melissa wasn't part of their relationship.  Maybe so, but
I'll bet she wouldn't be spending many nights sleeping alone.
   Though this was Kathleen's night, she kept encouraging me to flaunt my
ring.  Of course, I resisted for about a quarter-second.  Damn lotta fun!
   We'd scheduled the consummation/baby-making "show" for right around
10:00 that night.  I was the designated _linker_ so I didn't drink a drop
of booze.
   I had a chat with Maura and Teresa about it.  Maura said, "That'll be
fun.  We heard about Ana's time; sounds like a total turn on."
   They told us about Sean's fertility rites with Mary Murray.  No *that*
was interesting.  Maybe Mario and I could figure something out.  Wonder if
the Spanish have anything like that?  Make up our own rites?  Why not?
   Teresa said, "With Bob and Kat, the show will be mainly, em,
entertainment.  On the other hand, when Eileen starts ovulating, Clann
Cullen will do a Core show to confirm it's the Ceann's child -- or
children. I think the multiple-birth idea is completely valid.
   "Every other woman Sean is with is on rigid Gold birth control; the
bond-mates especially except for Eileen.  While Mary Murray might have a
male child from Sean, he would be a contingency heir.  The lineage descends
through the publicly-avowed mates.  At any rate, until we have a
firmly-established line, we're gonna be pretty careful."
   ------
   Hell, I was more nervous than Kat was about the show!  Mario had to
relax me for a solid hour before we even started the setups.
   Right about 9:30, Sarah, Rita, Alyssa and Riona popped in, kidnapped me
and cuffed me to the bed.  Sarah told me, "The precedent has already been
set.  The _linker_ gets restrained so she doesn't diddle herself and loose
contact.  Hehehehe!"
   Mario stuck his head in the door, eyeballed my very hard nipples and
clit then took pity on me.  He put several towels under my ass.  "If you're
really good, we'll let you up to pee.  Otherwise, just port it away."
   He's gonna get *his* turn in the restraints, that's for sure!
   Around quarter til, spirits started _linking_ in.  Jesus, there's a lot
of them!  Between the four established and two future Clanns there were
well over a hundred all linked through me.
   At least every other one commented about my attire or situation as they
_linked_ in.  Of course, no one would think of taking advantage of me; I
only screamed for five minutes as several unknown phantom fingers, mouths
and tongues worked me over.
   ------
   We'd gotten Kat's hair brushed up really nice.  Ana and I had dressed
her in her black teddy (yes, she'd gotten one) and translucent black gown.
Completely, totally delicious!
   No one cared how Bob was dressed or undressed; we just told him to show
up.  Grin.
   PVC gave us a soft wonderful song.  I linked to Bob and Kate and told
them, _"Show time!"_
   Kat had three eggs almost to the end of the fallopian tubes.  She was
ready.
   Oh, God!  They teased and tormented each other (and the rest of us) for
a good forty-five minutes.  We got a really good idea how tasty that
wonderful clit of hers was -- of course I knew already.
   Yeh, it was a one-way _link_ from them, but there was lots of _sharing_
going on outside.  Every time Kat came, I came along with a lot of others.
No one bothered to count; this wasn't a contest.
   They put a thick pillow and towels under her hips then took a slow walk
on the beach for another thirty minutes.  Just like their dancing;
perfectly marvelous to experience.
   They sped up, and Kat started shrieking every time she came.  It got
more and more intense until her stomach muscles locked up solid on each
release; we could _see_ her uterus dipping and sucking, looking for the
fluid.
   No doubt in anyone's mind now she was a screamer.  With a final shudder,
Bob let his seed loose inside her, right up against the sucking cervix.
   I came of course and had to block out the feedback I was getting from
outside.  Fuck!  I had bruises from the restraints for two days!
   Yes!  In the next minute, Kat's cervix sucked up at least 80% of the
fluid!  Even as she was still shaking and screaming, we saw the eggs
inundated (with just a _touch_ of help)!
   A long minute went by then it was done!  A sperm burrowed itself in an
egg; we had a conception!
   We waited another five minutes but no luck on the other two eggs.  Oscar
and Karen reminded everyone, _"Still got a good three days left.  More to
come; don't touch that dial!"_
   I did "let" them take a fifteen minute break.  I toned down the link to
almost nothing and damned near collapsed myself.
   Mario (the snake!) came slithering in.  He got between my legs and told
me, "I've been getting some pointers from Lucia and Linda."
   He slowly pushed a finger inside and gently stroked my G-spot!  Holy
shit!  I just knew I was gonna piss all over him.  He kept his finger
going, and I got higher and higher until it all exploded.  Yowsah!
   I squirted!  A solid heavy pussy-juice stream came right out and caught
him smack in the face.  Showed him the dangers in tormenting me, I did!
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Jaysus H.  Christ on a crutch!  Making a baby is some experience!  The
fertilized egg promptly started dividing so we figured it was a go.  I
didn't _touch_ it; it still had to get out of the fallopian tube to attach
itself.  Things still could go wrong.
   We took a short break.  Sweety Bob toweled my face off and we drank
plenty of water.  Making babies is hard work!
   We went back to it slowly; time for a real Journey.  _Peepers_ beware;
if they couldn't take our heat, they didn't belong in our kitchen.
   We built it up slow and steady with several great home runs.  Even after
three hours, we still had some observers to follow us up the tsunami out to
Pluto's orbit.  We laughed, played hide and seek with everyone then made a
kamikaze plunge back to Earth.
   The eggs had gotten another thorough soaking but no go.  Must be Irish
eggs; they were dayum hard-headed.
   We dozed off and on the rest of the night with lots of slow, ecstatic
loving.  Bob "saved himself" though; Oscar had recommended a few larger
shots rather than a lot of smaller ones.  Still plenty of time.
   ------
   BOB (Sunday 6/18)
   My Sunshine's such a wonderful lady!  That Kathleen girl wasn't too bad
either.  Grin.
   We had a huge breakfast in Tahoe.  We scarfed down lots of carbs (gotta
keep the energy levels up!) and made sheep's eyes at each other.  I gave
out lots of _hints_ to people so they'd notice her wedding ring and her
glow.  Yeh, she got complimented fifteen times so I guess it worked.
   We strolled around the shops for a couple hours; of course Kat found
*something* she could buy.  Then we looked at each other and announced,
_"I'm horny!"_
   We popped back home and made wonderful, tender love for three hours. 
All the eggs were out the tube now so we drenched them again.  *YES!* We
nailed another one!  Great Father's day present!
   We told Oscar; he laughed and told us, _"Keep drenching them down; you
might catch the third one."_
   We let the bodies sleep for several hours then ported off to New York
City to see the sights.  There were plenty of tourists on summer vacation.
   There were also plenty of nice shops.  Kat managed to find something
suitable at Sak's Fifth Avenue.  Took a lot of looking, though!
   We strolled the sidewalks, window-shopped then took one of the bus tours
around Manhattan.  Plenty of fun sights to see.
   We had an early leisurely dinner of prime rib to fuel the furnaces then
ported back home.
   We slept for several hours then took a wonderful long Journey on the
deep ocean of our love.  The final tsunami tossed us well out into the Oort
Cloud.  Such a beautiful sight.  Billions of cubic kilometers of empty
space yet plenty of comets and other interesting rocks and ice.
   Yeh, Sedna is real.  It's a good ways out there but still way, way
inside the inner part of the Oort Cloud.  There'd been some speculation it
had been captured from another star so we checked it out pretty good.
   Well, it sure had a mix of elements different from the comets and stuff
we looked at.  Our "informed" opinion was it had been captured since it was
so unlike the rest of the solar system bodies.
   ------
   ANA
   Mark and Leone showed up right on time.  We relaxed, flirted, had
(another) drink and enjoyed the after-dinner show.
   Jaysus!  Making babies on the other side of the viewpoint was almost as
intense as doing it ourselves!  Between the wedding and after-dinner show,
Don and I were more than ready to do some baby-making practicing ourselves.
Didn't matter we already had two in the oven!
   At eleven weeks along, our Babies Within were firmly attached.  Karen
and Oscar had told us we didn't have to worry much about our lovemaking for
another several months.
   Good thing!  I had a severe case of the hornies!  Don promised he'd "fix
me up" if he couldn't handle the load for some reason.  Not an issue at
all; I'd already had several offers of assistance including the one right
here!
   Leone dragged Don off, saying, "You are *so* gonna get it!  I've been
waiting for you to make me feel welcome for a *long* time!"
   Mark laid a lip-lock on me that wouldn't quit.  He told me, _"I've been
watching the Lead MILF since the Christmas Dance.  Now brace yourself,
Honey, this might hurt!"_
   It did.  It hurt *real* good!
   Anyway, the four of us managed to find things to do (and do and do) to
tide us over the night.
   At 10:00 Sunday, the stem-cell research group got together at the lab.
Funny how all us girls had the same kind of glow!
   We'd already gotten the go-ahead from the oversight committee and Bob so
we knew what we had to do.  We'd already cultured a batch of Mary's blood,
so I put her on a drip to put in 200 ccs of the high-octane.  We'd done 10
ccs each with Frank and Thelma.
   Sam gave her a big smooch and looked quite concerned.  Mary told him,
"I'll be fine."
   Sam said, "That's not what I'm worried about.  If this fixes you up too
well, it might kill me.  I barely survived last night as it was."
   We laughed while Mary tried unsuccessfully to kick him.
   Well, the larger initial dose let the concentration build up faster; in
an hour she was up to 4 in 100 million in her bloodstream.
   All righty, then!  We'd rehearsed the next steps.  We were gonna
"extract" the four broken teeth then plant nerve and bone buds.  Karen
numbed the nerves on the right side of her face then Oscar ported out both
broken teeth on that side while I transplanted the buds.
   Yeh, it took a whole ten seconds; we were lazy and took our time.  Not
that it had to go that speed; we'd just decided to do it that way.
   We didn't numb the left side where the other two teeth were; we'd
decided to see what sensations we produced.  Karen stood by with a ready
_touch_ over the nerves, though.
   That side went just as smoothly.  Mary told us, "Only thing I felt was a
sinking sensation as the teeth left the gums.  No pain at all.
   Within fifteen minutes we had a 200 concentration around the root sites
and new buds.  We got an immediate start on regenerating them.  Excellent!
   By the end of four hours, every bit of scar tissue was surrounded by
stem cells doing their job.  The concentration seemed about 1,000 around
the larger scars while maybe 100 on the smaller ones.
   Every bone break and crack had their share at around 1,500.  Not shabby
at all!
   We reminded her to increase her fiber intake as well as taking her
vitamin and mineral supplements.  No problem; she'd already taken her first
batch.
   Now it was wait and _see_.
   ------
   BOB (Monday 6/19)
   Yeh, Kathleen and I had survived Sunday though neither of us was quite
sure how.  For whatever reason, we woke up around 5:00 and went at it hot
and heavy.  Hot dayum and Janie Mack!  We nailed the third egg, too!  Dayum
she's good!
   Breakfast in Reno that morning.  A round dozen people noticed her new
ring and glow.  Grin.
   ------
   Hopefully we'll solve a bit of a mystery this morning.  Brenda Quinn had
asked the Reynolds family (now including Kathleen) to meet with her after
our marriage, so we'd arranged for this morning.  Bill showed up with
Caitlin.
   We sat in Brenda's conference room before we met with her.  The other
women started quizzing Kat about how her weekend had been.  Kat said
lazily, "Kinda sic sempre, ya know?  Got married, got laid a *lot* and got
pregnant -- *three* times over."
   The girls shrieked, laughed and hugged each other while we now-redundant
males tried to stay out of their way.
   They settled down after a couple minutes.  We exchanged questions among
us but no one knew exactly why we were there.  Mother told us, "Brenda
asked me to bring this brooch and tell you all about it; maybe it has to do
with this."
   We looked it over.  It was an ivory cameo of a lady's face set in
beautiful gold and was a good two inches high.  On the back was engraved,
"Please name a son after me.  Reginald Robert Kelly."
   Mother told us, "Reginald Kelly was my great-grandfather.  When my
father died right after Bill was born, apparently Reginald Kelly's will
cropped up again.  It bequeathed this cameo to his first-born
great-grandchild who was me.  David and I had it appraised; it's got some
collectible value and is worth around $3,500.
   "David and I discussed it.  Reginald Kelly asked for the name 'to
possibly inspire a son to be ambitious and of strong moral fiber.' Since it
was a specific heritage, a reasonable request and the brooch was so
beautifully-designed, we decided to saddle Bob with the names.  So far it's
worked out fine; besides, it had a nice alliteration to it."
   The arseholes all grinned at me; I rolled my eyes and groaned.
   Mother continued, "A couple weeks after Bob was born, Brenda's father
popped up and handed us a check for four million bucks -- taxes paid.  He
said it was a 'thank you' from Reginald Kelly and not to talk about it to
anyone until we were informed it was okay.  Brenda said it's okay now. 
Anyway, we weren't poor Irish trash even back then, but we used it to start
up Reynolds Construction."
   Brenda came in and smiled at us.  She said, "Before I get into anything,
I need the identification papers I asked you to bring.  We've got some
specific issues to go over, and I must be extremely precise."
   She collected everything.  Kathleen gave over her birth certificate,
driver's license and our marriage certificate.  I coughed up my driver's
license and birth certificate; so that's where "Reginald" came from!  I
pretended to glare at Mother and Father, but they just grinned.  Everyone
else turned over their birth certificate and driver's license.
   Brenda looked hard at them all and checked several things on another
paper she had.  She had her assistant make copies of everything; while he
was doing that, she got started.
   "Okay.  It looks like everything's in order so I can talk with you now.
First, meet Reginald Robert Kelly, born in 1840.  He was one of the minor
robber barons of the century and amassed a great deal of wealth in oil,
railroads and other activities.  He was Elizabeth's great-grandfather which
makes him Bob and Bill's great-great-grandfather."
   Kelly'd given each of his three sons today's equivalent of a million
dollars when they'd reached 18.  He told them to make what they could of
it; it was their entire inheritance.
   Anyway, they'd all frittered it away in ten years on "strong drink,
dissolute lives and loose women." Even by today's standards, Kelly was
still very wealthy when he died in 1891.  Instead of turning the rest of
his money over to his sons, he set up a small trust fund of $500 (1891
dollars) to request a great-great-grandson be named after him in the hopes
a later generation would turn out better.  That's where Mother and Father's
bankroll came from.
   The third son's (Fergus) second son was Sean Kelly, my great-grandfather
and Mother's grandfather.  When he died in 1986 -- after Bill was born --
Reginald's will popped up again and the cameo bequeath was delivered.  His
will said it was to be delivered with the request after his grandson Sean
had died; he hadn't cared for the way Sean had been turning out.
   Brenda told us, "I see you've looked over the brooch and the request on
the back.  Obviously David and Elizabeth took the request to heart, because
Reginald Robert Reynolds was born in December of 1987.
   "Reginald Kelly had made specific provisions for his company and the
assets he owned besides the $500 account he'd left for the 'thank you
money.' It was a private company with 1,000 shares; he owned all the
shares. We're here today to talk about that company and those shares.
   "The lawyers who handled the Reginald, Fergus and Sean wills were my
great-grandfather, grandfather and my father.  My dad instructed me to
check into the provisions of the will very thoroughly; it was part of the
original instructions.
   "That I did.  I found out all the provisions and gathered data --
somewhat behind your backs.  Reginald Kelly's instructions and provisions
were to start taking affect when the brooch was delivered to his eldest
great-grandchild.  That was the first provision.
   "If the instructions and provisions weren't met within 150 years after
his death, the company would be dissolved and the entire proceeds given to
charity.  Let's look at the rest of the provisions.
   "The second provision is to have a great-great-grandson or later be
named Reginald after him; remember, in the late 1800's, property passed
strictly through the male line.  That provision was met with Reginald
Robert Reynolds' birth in 1987; you're sitting right here now, Bob.
   "The third provision is that Reginald be living independently of his
parents; Reginald Kelly's kids hung around the place until he literally
threw them out.  That's been met; Bob's driver's license shows he lives in
North Hollywood while David and Elizabeth live in Burbank.  Plus, I've been
on one of the inspection tours of your new place.
   "Moving right along.  Any questions so far?"
   Mother said, "Why don't you just keep on talking.  So far we know
there's a company or something with some pretty specific provisions that
we've met so far."
   The rest of us agreed, so Brenda kept talking.  "The fourth provision is
Reginald be at least 18 -- an adult.  That's been met.
   "The fifth provision is Reginald have his own income of at least $20,000
a year in the current money; he couldn't be 'kept' in a separate household
either by his parents or anyone else.  Aaron at JRD has shown me enough
evidence to prove Bob has met that provision.  So far, so good.
   "The sixth provision is Reginald have completed at least the tenth grade
in the upper third of his class.  In the late 1800's, the tenth grade was a
decent education.  Elizabeth gave me a copy of your McCambridge final GPA
and class standings, Bob.  They show you have a GPA of 3.91 and a class
standing of 5 out of 300.  That's well in the top third so that provision
has been met.
   "The seventh provision is Reginald have a net worth of greater than
$10,000 in the current money.  Reginald Kelly hated personal debt; this
ensured the great-great-grandson or later was solvent.  I won't mention
Bob's net worth given me when writing up the prenuptial and will, but it
well exceeds that already.
   "The eighth provision is Reginald never have been convicted of a major
crime.  Reginald Kelly's sons were always in trouble with the law.  So far
as any investigation has found, Bob's never been arrested or charged with
anything.  Bob, those three parking tickets don't count.
   "The last provision is great-great-grandson Reginald either be engauged
with his fiancee pregnant or be married.  He didn't want to leave anything
to a bachelor.  Well, I've got a marriage certificate here showing the last
provision has been met plus I was at your wedding.  In addition, I just
witnessed the Reynolds' genetic line being extended.
   "So, since all the provisions have been met, the company shares now go
to Reginald Kelly's beneficiaries.  75% of the shares go to Reginald Robert
Reynolds.  Since Bill is engauged now, the other 25% percent gets split
equally between him, David and Elizabeth.
   "Reginald Kelly thought any male sibling who was at least engauged,
lived independently and had an income deserved to split part of the shares;
since Elizabeth has assured me there are no other siblings, Bill meets all
the qualifications to get 12.5%.  The parents get 12.5% because they raised
the great-great-grandchildren properly."
   Okay.  We thought that over a bit.  Father asked The Question, "So,
Brenda, what are we talking about here?  I gather it's not a couple hundred
bucks of shares or you wouldn't have taken the time to get us all together.
A wily Irishman like Kelly wouldn't have messed around with a couple grand;
he'd have just given it *all* to charity."
   Brenda smiled at us.  "You've got the right idea, David.  The 1,000
shares have a book value of $10 each.  Bob's inheritance, then, is $7,500;
you'll probably have to pay income tax on that amount.  Same with the rest
of you.  It's probably taxable income.
   "Now, the company directors were instructed to invest in long-term
investments; no speculation.  They were to invest with at least a 20-year
viewpoint.
   "Well, the company directors took that to heart.  They invested in land,
hard assets like gold, silver and platinum and in the stock market.  No
direct company ownerships because Reginald Kelly didn't want them to run
the companies.
   "Okay.  As I said, Kelly was comfortable, even by today's standards, and
his will put almost all of it into the company when he died.  It's been
almost 115 years now.  The directors were really conservative -- the
company has paid all income taxes, capital gains taxes, state and federal
fees or other management expenses over the years and has never declared a
dividend to the shareholders because Reginald Kelly still 'owned' all the
shares; all earnings were reinvested.  The directors had proxies to vote
the shares, but those proxies now revert to the new shareholders -- you
folk.
   "With the extreme conservatism, taxes, etc., the average return was only
around 8% a year for the last 114 years.  Bottom line is the net worth of
the company as of last Friday was a bit over two billion dollars.  That's
billion with a B in current dollars.
   "His last request is the company give you a bit of cash to help you get
familiar with the company operations."
   She passed out envelopes.  Mine had a cashiers check to me for $750,000.
   Em, we had to absorb all that for a couple minutes.  Kat finally nudged
me and stage-whispered, "Buy us all dinner tonight, honey?"
   I did.  I threatened them with Mickey D's but relented when Kat pointed
out I had to sleep some time; if I wanted to wake up with any hair left on
my head, I'd come up with something better.  Okay; they settled for Las
Vegas.
   ------
   We got back in plenty of time for the Clann Meeting.  None of the ladies
at Brenda's meeting had whispered a word so Kathleen got to wave three
fingers in the air while patting her belly.  Lots of screaming women then!
It gave Sean and me a chance for a meeting while the hens clucked away.  As
each additional woman came in, the clucking started all over again.
   After things settled down we got started.  Ana reported on Mary's
stem-cell work; Mary waved and smiled.  It was going exactly as expected.
   Ana told us, "We now have Alejandro and Linda in residence at our place,
so there's gonna be a lot more a-hoopin' and a-hollerin' going on.  Now I'm
not saying the young-uns are boisterous, but I'm glad the lab animals
aren't there any more; probably half of them would die from fright."
   We gave them a good round of applause.  We expected the actual visas in
a couple weeks.
   Ben gave us a rundown on what the Skunk Works was doing, "We spent most
of yesterday and last night poking around the Moon Base.  We decided it had
been abandoned about 150,000 years ago.  There's no real sign of
destruction as if there'd been an explosion, cave in or anything like that.
   "Not much organic material left we could see.  No paper as we know it
but there appears to be books or the like with plastic pages so we might be
able to find something out.
   "It's pitch black, around 100 or so degrees below zero and there's about
five pounds of nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere with the same ratio as earth
atmosphere.
   "Basically, looks like they pretty much powered down everything, turned
out the lights and quietly left.  We're gonna have a *great* time!"
   Maggie brought up what Sean and I had talked about.  She called it
"human race life insurance." For several thousand years, Clann Cullen had
established evacuation routes and alternate living spots in case of a
catastrophe.  She told us, "We might wish to look at this now ourselves. 
My guess is there's a little over a hundred ones of us right now who could
survive a global catastrophe.  We need a hidey hole for the human race
somewhere.
   "The Moon Base is a good start for a technology.  I'm not necessarily
recommending we rebuild it; we might actually want something or even
several somethings a lot further away.  I'm gonna recommend the Skunk Works
keep this idea in mind as we're working."
   Dayum!  She (and George) were talking fluently.  A bit slow and hesitant
here and there, but what the hell!
   I meditated a moment, then said, "Sean and I have been thinking..." with
the expected results.  I just grinned at them and continued, "We agree with
Maggie.  We are at risk.  With our numbers this low and concentrated mainly
in the Los Angeles, Cabo and Redmond areas, a major incident of some sort
could deal us a heavy blow.
   "So, several things.  First, let's all start a massive recruiting
campaign to increase our numbers.  So far, we've found around 10% of the
population have the Potential to be ones of us, plus we've had decent
success enhancing others.  We've got the training route laid out with
reasonable security -- which will improve -- so that's not an issue.  Be
secure, be sure of them and their ethics, but let's go for a broad
expansion.  Dig out your notes from the Probe Patrol on any Sensitives or
Potentials you've found and follow up.
   "Mick and Nora are looking seriously at starting a Clann in Akron.  Same
with Bill and Caitlin in Redding.  Blake and Louise have some possibles
where they used to work.  Charles Tanner's somewhere in Illinois; maybe
he's already starting one.  Anyone you know, check them out.  Actually, the
further from here, the better, so we get some geographical dispersion.
   "Second, the Skunk Works, as part of their ongoing investigations,
should locate and implement a reasonably secure method of data transfer
among us; we've almost shot ourselves in the foot by sending confidential
information through normal email.  We need something for routine daily use
and some way, probably not as convenient, for a disaster scenario.
   "Third, all of us have past memories; some appear to be more readily
available.  Start checking them out and noting technologies, ideas,
concepts and other things which could contribute to our and perhaps even
mankind's survival.  Note them down -- just a note they exist for right now
-- and port them over to one of the Skunk Works folk.  Ben should be able
to coordinate them so they can be investigated further.
   "It's the dragons we can't see and don't know of right now which may
bite us in the ass.  What we can do is be as prepared as possible so if
they start snapping we've got some options."
   ------
   (Tuesday 6/20)
   We were decadently lazy Tuesday morning and let the bodies sleep until
8:30.  Kathleen found my calloused poke spot and prodded me unmercifully. I
chastised her severely; we decided to keep giving the Babies Within (thanks
for that term, Ana!) a drenching every so often to see if it would speed up
gestation.  Hey, all in the interest of science, right?  All three looked
as if they were attaching properly; Kat programmed in a light _touch_ for
several days to help out.
   Kat and I'd had a discussion during the night and I had a plan.  Sean
and his harem were willing to come see us, so around 10:00 we stole Mario
from JRD for a while, and we had a meeting with Sean's group, Mario, Sherry
and the others who'd been at yesterday morning's meeting.  Bill and Caitlin
had already left for Redding but had been okay with what I wanted to do.
   After the harem finished screaming and hugging the preggy one we got
down to business.  Kat and I told the tale of Reginald Kelly and his
dissatisfaction with his offspring.
   Kat took *great* pleasure in rattling off my three names.  Sherry almost
split a gut while Sean and company looked sympathetic.  I hoped she pissed
her pants.
   Sean looked impressed at the two billion with a B figure.  Melissa
noted, "Not too shabby.  Might have a little influence.  Now maybe you and
Kat don't have to fight so much over money."
   Right.  My thought exactly; she still wasn't spending much more than I
was -- and Sherry was a slacker, too.
   Sean asked, "So, my young, wealthy, new gonna-be father, what's the plan
and why are we here?"
   Kathleen said, "When I discovered I was the majority owner of JRD, one
of the first things Evin, Barbara and I did was rope Bob and Sherry in as
shareholders.  Evin and Barbara knew they didn't have the spark actually to
run the show, and I knew these two had it in spades."
   I told Sean, "I want to diversify the ownership in much the same way. 
Mother, Father, Bill and Caitlin aren't gonna be very active; they've
already got their own companies to run; Evin and the other JRD folk are
full-time staff.
   "I need Kat with me to keep me in line so I want to sell 50 shares or 5%
each to Kat, Mario, Sherry and to Cullen Enterprises.  That'll get me some
competent, trustworthy compadres yet still leave me control."
   Mario and Sherry looked very surprised.  Maybe Sherry peed her pants
again; I don't know for sure.  Cullen Enterprises didn't even twitch --
yeh, I remember Sean played pretty good poker.
   Kate ask, "That's a great honor, but why us?  Why not others from Clann
Reynolds; I'm sure there's lots of capable, trustworthy folk there."
   I told them, "There are.  Many.  Having you with us diversifies things
even more *and* you've already proven your business expertise.  Plus, I
already trust any of you with my life, Kat's life and the lives of three
two-day-old Babies Within.  The fact you're all ones of us doesn't hurt; I
won't hold it against you." Grin.
   Sean said, "Let us talk a moment." He and his ladies locked eyes and had
a _conference_.  They turned to us; Sean said, "You've got some business
buddies."
   Yes!  We got in lots of hugs and handshakes.  Mother and Father took off
("We leave things in your capable hands."), and the rest of us talked for
another good hour about our initial plans.  Everyone had good ideas to put
in.
   I knew Maggie was sharp even without direct business experience her last
life.  While the other four CE women may not have the current-life
experience, they had a good grasp of how a business should work (with The
Book under their belts) plus were at least somewhat Real World experienced.
   And, if they were anything like Pat and Val, they'd had plenty of
previous experience.  Not as if they were babes in the woods.
   I had a _talk_ with Ana.  _"I've got a gig for the Probe Patrol.  Get
hold of Brenda Quinn; I want to do an exhaustive dossier set on RRK, Inc.
and she knows the most about it.  Get me a preliminary estimate and I'll
cut a check for you."_
   She didn't bother asking any further questions; Brenda knew who, what
and where.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Wednesday 6/21)
   Jaysus!  Now we've got two major companies to run.  Glad we could work
24/7 if needed.
   Mick and Nora had ported back to Akron Tuesday evening.  We planned on
getting together with them for the afternoon and evening to plan a Clann.
   Our basic plan had been to do two JRD oversight visits a week over the
summer.  Not that summertime really had anything to do with it; we were
footloose even if not fancy-free.
   Guess Reginald Kelly just threw a wrench in the works; we now had to
check out RRK, Inc.  too.  Dayum we're gonna have fun!  Bob, Mario and
Sherry had been kidding me for months about being the JRD "boss." Now I
could finally do some turn-about.
   RRK, Inc.  was still an unknown.  About all any of us, including Brenda,
really knew was it was basically a private, very conservative holding
company.  We'll have a better idea after the probe run.
   Our general plan was similar to what we'd done at Cabo; travel lightly,
port any needed stuff back and forth and have fun.  We figured to take the
Beemer along and to drive between locations if the schedule wasn't too
tight.  Gotta play sight-seer too!
   While the audit team and Probe Patrol hadn't anywhere near finished all
their work on the JRD businesses, the initial audit run hadn't spotted
anything really unusual with them.  It had been pretty obvious something
had been wrong with Vail.
   Anyway, JRD had never visited some of them.  We were gonna show the
flag, do some glad-handing and do a surface check.  We'd pull Mario in as
needed for any of the IT work and Sherry to be suspicious.
   Anyway I spent most of the morning checking out and arranging clothes,
undies, makeup, shoes, purses and other necessities so I knew where they
were so I could get at them when needed.  Wanker Bob just checked out his
underwear and socks (all clean) and slept in a chair by the pool.
   Around 1:00 we loaded the Beemer and headed off to Akron.  We had quite
a pleasant trip; five minutes to find quiet takeoff and landing sites and a
leisurely 350 milliseconds between them.
   Mick and Nora's place was a nice older Craftsman home.  Bob told me,
"We've done renos every ten years or so to keep things up to somewhat
modern standards.  Electric, double and triple-pane windows, extra
insulation, that kinda stuff."
   After a nice late lunch, we took a walk in the park.  Bob put on his
poker face and pointed out the bus stop and phone booth where Mom had been
taken.
   We looked into the park from there.  Bob pointed and said, "We came from
there.  I walked fast.  He didn't walk at all." Yeh.  Plenty of rough
ground with gravel, dirt and grass.
   We walked in and poked around a bit.  Bob said, "It was here." We nosed
around; Mick _pulled_ a scrap of cloth out of the bushes.  We agreed;
probably part of Mom's blouse.
   Yeh, it was peaceful now, but Bob still carried the scar -- I wouldn't
let him get rid of it.
   ------
   Mick and Nora took us on an Akron tour.  Bob was somewhat familiar with
the town; he'd been coming here all his life.  Anyway, there's a university
and an airport -- and tire companies.
   We gathered the (prospective) Clann around 5:00.  One guy -- big, long
red hair, nice beard -- smelled really familiar.  He grinned at me.  "Missy
Lillian!  Such a pleasure to meet you!"
   Oh, yeh!  Now I knew where our stripper came from!  He pointed at Mick
and told us, "It's all *his* fault!  He and David arranged it all."
   His wife Joan said, "And he protested for an entire five seconds."
   Kieran and Joan Flanagan were Red Irish with the peaches and cream
complexions I'd kill for.  Late twenties and very relaxed.  They'd been the
first Mick and Nora had "found" right after David had enhanced them.
   We ended up with three more couples and four singles.  The singles
ranged from fifteen to thirty.  Some Irish, Hispanic and just "plain" WASP.
   We had a really nice dinner out (our treat) and gathered back at Mick
and Nora's.  Subject up for discussion: A Clann in Akron.
   Mick served as chairman for the time being.  Bob and I trotted out
copies of how Clanns Reynolds, Way and Fuerte were put together.  We had no
heredity chain to be concerned about so far as anyone knew.
   Okay.  Everyone was interested so far.  Nora told them, "Now, that's all
for public consumption.  Here's a set of confidential customs four Clanns
are using right now with very minor variations."
   Bob passed around six sets of our newly-serialized documents.  We had
reactions from belly laughs to a couple grins.  I told them, "We've found
so far it's worked wonderfully.  I admit I'm a bit prejudiced since I'm the
Ceann-Mate.
   "On the other hand, we've found it completely workable.  Since it's
completely consensual, no one gets taken advantage of.  These are samples;
something to think about.  You can use none, some or all of them; they're
separate from the Clann configuration customs.
   "On the other hand, if you do adopt them, the Ceann and Ceann-Mate might
be quite busy.  You might take that into consideration when you elect a
Ceann."
   ------
   BOB
   We/they discussed everything for several hours.  We told them about the
hereditary Clann Cullen, "They already had at least three hundred Clann
members.  Now they have a Core of around thirty and are expanding from
there.  In their case, the formation and Clann membership customs are a bit
different, but they've adopted the confidential customs just as you see
here -- consensual."
   We talked about age ranges, prospecting, training, invitations, pretty
much everything.  About 11:00, Mick asked, "Okay then.  I see two separate
questions here.  First, do we form a Clann here and second, what public and
confidential customs will we work with?"
   Everyone was in agreement to form a Clann and to use the public customs.
Mick said, "Great.  I'd say the first order of business is to elect a
Ceann. Nominations?"
   After three seconds, everyone pointed at Kieran.  He rolled his eyes and
shook his head slowly.  Joan elbowed him and whispered, _"You'll love it!"_
   No one else was nominated.  Mick took a vote -- Kieran got railroaded
just like I had.  He and I laughed together.  I told him, "Suck it up,
fella."
   Joan promptly said, "He will.  He *likes* sucking it up!" Oops!  We got
treated to a blushing Irishwoman.
   Anyway, Kieran took over the meeting.  They elected a VP (Mick), a
Secretary (Nora) and a Treasurer (Albert).  We had Clann Flanagan!
   They decided to meet again the next day to look at the confidential
customs.  I logged out the serialized documents to the new Secretary.
   I left Evin's card along with Ana's, Siobhan's and several others so
they could look at forming a non-profit organization and would have
communication lines with some old hands.  Mick and Nora had met them all so
could vouch for them.
   ------
   Mick and Nora put us up in their guest room where I'd spent many a
night. Before, I hadn't had a sweet, warm, cuddly lady to keep me warm so I
got to take full advantage of the circumstances.
   We spent Thursday lazing around with Nana and Seanathair and doing some
more tourist stuff.  Nana and Kat had a lot of girl-talk about babies (with
lots of laughs and giggles), and probably how they put stuff over on us
long-suffering men-folk.
   Seanathair and I caught up on the house and neighborhood status and
important stuff like that.
   The Clann Flanagan meeting that night went fine.  The main discussion
was about how the confidential customs worked in practice.
   Kat told them, "At the beginning, most of us thought the younger
sexually-active ones -- which was all of us -- would really go at it.  That
didn't happen.  Granted, there were quite a few Butterfly Games, but the
adults appeared to be more active than the younger ones.
   "If there were any orgies anywhere, I'll really be pissed 'cause *we*
weren't invited!"
   We talked about social secretaries (Joan and Nana immediately appointed
themselves), Butterfly Games and honoring.  Kat told them, "Beware of
preconceived ideas.  For a couple months we thought new relationships
wouldn't accept an honoring.  Exactly opposite; each and every one
considered the honoring to be completely outside their relationship and
said they'd be *very* interested."
   More talk, more discussion, all to the better.  They were on their way.
The women were eyeing Kieran pretty good while Joan was looking over the
guys with that predator's look.  Betcha which way most of them will vote.
   The final thing we brought up was the human race life insurance.  We
requested them to expand as rapidly as they could.  "Don't be shy.  If
someone's good, grab 'em.  We've found the younger or older members tend to
have a bit more schedule flexibility to be able to train newbies since they
don't have a full-time J O B.  Especially over the summer."
   ------
   Evin and Siobhan had arranged the visit schedule.  Our first visit was
in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Tuesday.  From Akron, it's a three-day run on
the interstate.  We decided what the hell; we can always cut it short if we
got tired of it.
   We took off from Akron early Friday morning after a final round of hugs
and snuggles.  Nora didn't mind at all when I copped a nice feel of her
bum.
   It was a straight shot on the interstate to St.  Louis.  The Midwest was
a lot greener than most of Southern California.  Wonderful scenery.  We
chatted, made baby plans and simply cruised in silence while we enjoyed
each other's company and the scenery.
   Chapter 8
   ANA (Monday 6/26)
   Mary was doing wonderfully!  She'd been hungry as hell starting last
Monday so we'd sent her and Sam off to places like Black Angus, Outback
Steak House, Sizzler (well...), etc.  every evening to stoke up really
well. We wanted both protein and carbohydrates so they moaned, groaned and
went at it.
   Lots of her small scars were gone by now.  The bone breaks were probably
50% repaired, including her cheekbone, and the scars inside her vagina and
rectum were almost gone.
   Her thumb had budded up and was expanding.  It was working a bit
differently than our mouse, which had extruded its joint and claw.  Mary
started a little bud which turned into a miniature joint and thumb and was
growing all at once.  No big deal on *how* it was regenerating, just that
it *was* doing it!
   Of course she and Sam inspected everything frequently.  All in the
interests of science, mind you.  Once she started eating a lot, her energy
level had steadily increased, and she put on more weight.  Now she was
nicely padded where a girl should be padded -- including a new nipple and
nerves coming right up.  It was regenerating in a combination of scar
replacement, breast tissue replacement and a nipple bud all at once. 
Fascinating to see.  She and Sam reported the nerves were growing in, too,
so it already had some feeling.
   Her new teeth were growing about the same rate as Thelma's had.  She
told me, "It's rough chewing meat at times.  Too bad."
   I told her to get the good cuts and not to mess around with the lesser
qualities.  "It's all part of the research budget, so don't stint on it."
   We did a blood test every day, mainly for minerals.  At the rate bone
was being replaced, we didn't want to run out of calcium.  A tweak here and
there on her supplements every couple days, and we were running full
throttle.
   ------
   Brenda had come up with a preliminary roster for RRK, Inc.  They were
out of Chicago; the initial roster had 150 people listed.
   Okay.  I put one probe shift on a general smash-and-grab to find out
what the hell we were doing.
   After looking the reports over, Frank told me, "It's mainly a
conservative private holding company.  Lots of long-term securities and
quite a bit of real estate and hard assets like gold, platinum and other
precious metals.  No speculation, day trading or stuff like that.  Think of
all the staid English lawyers you've read about and double the
conservatism.
   "There's a bit of mystery about the only stockholder; he's been dead
well over a hundred years.  They're just waiting for the heirs to show up.
Betcha the Sorcerer's involved in all of this somehow."
   Well, we now had a list of 175 people in the company itself -- they'd
found a few more peripheral staff -- and a list of the major securities
they held.  Bob told me, _"Do a full company probe set, a quickie on each
company they have 10% or more holdings in and a quickie on the real estate
and the hard assets companies.  If it's a mutual fund, get a quick set on
the managers._
   _"They're probably not storing gold and that kind of stuff themselves,
so check out those companies mainly for their storage security.  I don't
really suspect anything; I just want to ensure everything's on the up and
up.  Of course, if you find a string, pull it as hard as you need.  You've
got an initial budget of $500,000; if it starts getting close, let me
know."_
   All righty, then!  I scheduled a full four-some Probe Patrol for two
shifts on Tuesday night.  After Frank and Thelma finished their analysis,
I'd see what more was needed.
   ------
   Alejandro and Linda were fully moved in by now.  No, they weren't noisy
-- around the house at least.  Not to say what they and the Sweet Six were
up to; Alejandro and Linda spent most of the days and evenings with them
getting "culturized" and studying their butts off.
   A couple times a week, they'd have a sleepover somewhere (or invite
someone here).  I don't think they were lacking in the entertainment
department.  Then again, Don and I were providing some entertainment of our
own most every night.
   Don claimed he had lots of backup so he seemed more than willing to help
me out with my condition.  Yes!  Bring 'em on; I'll wear 'em *all* out!  I
had the terminal hornies, and it was getting worse all the time.
   Ramon and Elisa started an evening class at Glendale Community College
on Tuesday and Thursday nights.  They were looking at a general business
Associates Degree.  It was a bit tough, but they had the study checklist
under their belts and lots of tutors available at the drop of a sombrero.
   They'd "commute" in fairly early and go out to dinner with Alejandro and
Linda.  I figured Don and I would host them every once in a while at least
for a home-cooked meal.  On the other hand, they probably wouldn't get
bored with eating out for quite a while.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Monday 6/26)
   Saturday was the run to Amarillo, TX, with more good scenery and loving
company.  Things were a bit browner towards the south.
   We did a bit of checking in on various cycles going on.  Collectible
Arts called; they'd found a show in July at the Los Angeles Convention
Center.  They wanted to display several of our cards and comics as part of
their display.
   No problem.  I told them to decide which ones they wanted and I'd supply
them.  I warned them, "Once you get them there, I might have my own hidden
security so don't plan on taking them out of the display cases without
warning me."
   Blake and Louise were now on board with JRD.  They had plenty to do
getting familiar with the companies they'd been assigned, but Siobhan told
us they were doing great.
   Sunday was the home stretch with more interstate through Texas to the
middle of New Mexico.  Piece of cake.  We got in around 5:00, found our
hotel (already reserved) with instructions from the on-board GPS system and
settled in.  We'd look around Albuquerque Monday and show up at Machinists,
Inc.  Tuesday morning.
   Bob and I popped back to the Reynolds' for the Monday Clann Meeting. 
Lots of interesting things happening.
   PVC had done another scan across the county and the U.S.  Pat told us,
"The first one we did was at the start of March.  For this one, we did
similar areas but took Los Angeles and San Bernardino County together. 
Here's what we got this time; they don't include known Clann or those being
enhanced."
   In LA and San Bernardino Counties (2 counties where the first census was
only for LA so there's some skewing), Sensitives were at 15,000; up 50%. 
Partially outside (extended or occasionally fully outside): 200; up 60%. 
Outside he counted 5 where before there were none (George Baxter had been
seen before).
   In the U.S.  (excluding the two counties and known spirits): 250
Sensitives; up 50%.  15 partially outside; up 200%.  Outside: 3 with none
before.
   He told us, "That tells me the Cullens' little escapade in early May had
a significant impact.  There's 5 more Ben Talberts right here in River
City! Find 'em.  In the U.S., there's 3; one is Charles Tanner in Illinois
whom you know.  The other two are close so he may be recruiting.
   "Sensitives and partially outsides should be easier than ever to find so
just look around.  The U.S.  Sensitives and partially outsides seem to
cluster around Akron and Chicago.  Since Charles is in Chicago, it might be
his influence.  Something to check into."
   Jaysus!  Aileen commented, "I'm not necessarily recommending it, but how
about the next fertility rite we have, we take off all the shields and let
it leak!"
   We busted a gut for a good couple minutes while we considered the effect
it might have.  Nasty, but interesting.
   Bob grinned and said, "Fertile territory, guys.  Over 15,000 possibles
right around here.  Happy hunting!"
   Bob announced, "In case you haven't heard it on the bush telegraph yet,
there's a new Clann in Akron, Ohio!  It's the Clann Flannigan.  As an
oh-by-the-way, ladies, the newly-elected Ceann Kieran has long red hair, a
beard and can dance *really* well."
   Every female pretended to swoon.  Cynthia announced, "I'm gonna pay a
welcome-wagon visit!  He can ride in *my* wagon any time!"
   Megan asked, "When are we gonna start the cross-clann cultural
exchanges?"
   Louise pointed out dryly, "From some of the sounds I've heard recently
in Janet's room, you and a couple of the Clann Fuerte members have already
started."
   Linda rubbed it in a bit with a big fist pump and an enthusiastic,
"YES!" She's really getting acclimated to the Southern California culture.
Whether or not that's a good thing isn't the issue.
   Anyway.  Bob steered the over-sexed crowd onto the next subject by
asking Ben to tell us about the Skunk Works adventures.
   Ben was a good speaker.  "We got the first plastic page from the Moon
Base warmed up successfully, and it's completely legible to the human eye.
It's a basic map to the base.  First, understand Bob initially reported the
size as about 2 cubic kilometers.  That could be understood by us
math-challenged folk as a cube about 1.25 kilometers on a side.  That's
*big*.  To put it another way, if you had a 10 meter or 30 foot ceiling,
you'd have a floor 14 kilometers on a side.  You can pack a *lot* into
something that size."
   They'd decided what Bob had originally found was living quarters and
administration.  They'd traced tunnels and power cables for several nights
(and were looking for something resembling schematics) and had discovered a
space ship hangar about a kilometer square with what appeared to be
maintenance and repair facilities, a manufacturing/construction facility
(SWAG) around 100 square kilometers, a power plant (SWAG) and several
observation outposts (YASWAG -- Yet Another SWAG) on both the back side and
front side of the Moon -- yeh, they'd watched the Earth.
   From what they could tell, the power plant and construction facility
were the first built.  Ben told us, "At first and second guess, they built
the power plant, imported some of the construction machines and ships then
built everything else.  They probably had a way of powdering or extracting
or teleporting rock so they excavated tunnels, space for the living
quarters and hangar and used the material to build the living/admin space
and more ships.
   "We've not any guess yet how long it took to build, when it was built or
how long it was operational.  Could have been several hundred years to
build tens or hundreds of millions of years ago and been used however long;
there's a lot of wear everywhere and in some spots hundreds of layers of
patches or repairs.  On the other hand, our guess at when it was abandoned
could well be low by a factor of several hundred; we guessed 150,000 years
by the dust."
   The Skunk Works needed talented people in every engineering field,
documentation or technical writers, teachers and linguists (to deconstruct
what appeared to be textbooks in classrooms) and just about every other
field you could imagine.  Maggie told us, "We could easily use over a
thousand spirits on the front lines 'getting their hands dirty' 24/7 and
another couple thousand doing analysis and logistical support.  There's
only eight of us right now."
   Donal said, "That says to me we need to recruit from that 15,000; we can
sure put them to work."
   Ben had some more.  "That's what we need.  Recruit, recruit, recruit. 
Now on another note, we've looked at finding spirits we've known before
like our grandparents, old friends and the like.  As we know, most spirits
pick up another body and simply forget who they were.  That's the rough
part.
   "However, we figure 'The Shadow knows.' The spirit doesn't really
forget; it suppresses memories.  We've got a few techniques we're trying in
our copious free time, and they look promising.  No guarantees, but there's
progress."
   ------
   BOB
   Kat and I talked with Sean and his ladies after the meeting.  Eileen
told me, "During our wedding and reception, we spotted at least 20 people
with Talent.  We'll start looking them up.  Seems I've been 'elected' the
Clann Cullen Education Officer and have to keep track of their training. 
You have someone doing that?"
   We didn't that I knew of.  I said, "No, but I know the perfect person.
Megan Foster has plenty of time on her hands since it's summertime now."
I'm sure she'll appreciate it; I called her over and we talked a bit.
   She said, "Gee, thanks, Bob.  What do I get for all this extra work?"
   Somehow the Cullen contingent thought this was funny; they started
chanting, "Soo Laid!  *Soo* Laid!  Soo LAID!" Argh.  Even dumb Bob could
figure that one out.  Megan flushed, laughed and said, "Agreed!  I'll talk
with Kat and Sherry and arrange it right away."
   Groan.  Complain.
   Megan did get back to the subject.  "Not really an issue.  I've got the
Inner Circle's personnel database anyway; I can either add on to it or
start another.  Barbara's keeping track of the new members since she's the
Secretary, but not much more."
   BB asked about the personnel database.  Megan gave them a quick rundown
then told them, "I know the Wild Bunch gave the setup to Mona and her crew
for their Inner Circle.  Now, since we're talking about it anyway, the main
reason for the database is to keep track of special talents or training. 
How about we all look through the key words and see if we can come up with
some of the new people we just talked about needing?"
   Yes!  Great idea.  I roped in Lucia for the Mickey C database -- it had
been continuously growing for some six years now -- and Sean agreed to pass
the request on to his folk.  Kat said, "I'll talk with the Ways, Fuertes,
Flanagans and Bill.  Besides, we need to find out what mischief Bill and
Caitlin are up to.  Bet they haven't been idle.  Ya know, since Megan
suggested it, I do believe she deserves *another* Soo Laid."
   I was outvoted.  Then again, I never really had a vote, did I?
   Sean mentioned his Clann gave the newbie-trainers $50 for each person
they trained.  "My five nieces and nephews are on our Org Board as the
'official' trainers.  I'd say it's a separate duty to maintain the members
list and the training list -- with tons of security.  It's not that we
don't trust the trainers; a different viewpoint will often find things
which might drop through the cracks.
   "I'll check with Vera at Waystation 1, too.  Bet they're firing up a
Clann there.  We might want to create a checklist for starting a new Clann,
too.  That's a good task for Maura and Kat, I'd say."
   Yeh.  Sean and I agreed that as Ceanns, we could volunteer someone. 
Grin.
   ------
   (Tuesday 6/27)
   Kat and I spent several hours during the night looking around Machinists
Inc in Albuquerque.  We spotted and made lists of questions to ask and
areas to look at.  No probes; it was locked up and no one was there.  Yeh,
physical security was an area to ask about.
   Machinists Inc had around 500 employees and made mid to high-end machine
tools such as lathes, milling machines, precision grinders and that sort of
stuff, mainly for working metals.  Their associate company, JRD Tool and
Die, was right beside them.  In fact, they had a couple joining doors.
   JRD Tool and Die made special tools and dies.  They'd be the ones to
make the cutting bits, special drills and that sort of stuff.
   Any colony would very likely need machine tools to create and build
other machinery, so we had a very vested interest here.  We kept it in mind
as we went through things.
   The shop opened at 8:00; our visit was scheduled for 9:30.  We spent an
hour doing quick probes and dossiers plus looking for Potential.  Yeh!  The
CEO had plenty as well as the CFO and the Shop Foreman.  There were four
others with a touch; they might be enhanceable.
   We found no real outnesses during the probes.  There were some "fringe
benefits" such as some people taking material home for their home
workshops. No biggie, we could handle that just like we'd done office
supplies at JRD Recording.
   We really had to set up several enhancement teams and at least one Clann
implementation team.  Kat and I were gonna be running by lots of people and
couldn't really hang around to do either.  That went right on the To Do
List.
   Ned Phillips was the CEO; we started with him right at 9:30.  We chatted
a bit; with the probes we'd done, we did the equivalent of the
gestalt-and-glad-hand routine.
   Not to be sexist, but I did the shop tour while Kat went into the admin
areas.  I had a lot more experience with mechanical stuff.
   I asked nasty questions about physical security (needed more), machine
maintenance and job scheduling and process flows.  Since I already knew
most of the answers, I asked a lot more questions about things they had a
good handle on already.  That helped show him we weren't just looking for
outpoints.
   They made good stuff.  They had a server-based MRP II system they were
implementing to get better efficiency.  We talked with the consultants
installing it; good folk -- and one had good Potential.  [MRP II is
Manufacturing Requirements Planning which (hopefully) integrates
Purchasing, labor requirements, machine requirements and material ordering
for efficient manufacturing.  The next step up is Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) which integrates and automates all the departments; it is
used in much larger companies.]
   Kat and I took the executives, Shop Foreman and the consultants to
lunch; our treat.  Ned and his crew had some good plans for further
expansion as well as increasing promotion and sales.  There was a large
building in the same block they were seriously thinking of buying; they
could use the back alley for back-and-forth transport.
   I'd say Kat and I were the most qualified JRD people to do these visits.
Even though I'd had only small-business experience (my contract work and
Reynolds Construction), both Kat and I could talk the talk and walk the
walk when it came to machinery and administration.  Even with only The
Book, we could see what needed to be done in the administration.
   I fed Kat concepts as needed (and likewise) so she could ask intelligent
questions and keep up with the technical shop talk.  Worked out great.
   Okay.  Back to work.  Ned and I stuck our heads through the door to JRD
Tool and Die and got a quick introduction.  Kat and I would do our "formal"
visit to them tomorrow.
   Ned and I spent the rest of the afternoon walking the floor and talking
with people.  We spent the last hour with the executives, mainly getting
what they needed and wanted from JRD.
   Kat passed out a couple Sean-seminar cards.  She told them, "This is
gonna be a requirement for all the executives.  We've gone through it
ourselves and highly recommend it." We ensured the two consultants got
cards, too.
   Back at the hotel, we wrote up our Findings and Recommendations (F&Rs)
and sent them to Sheila.  Portable computer?  We don't need no stinkin'
portable computer!  Remote logon worked just fine.
   ------
   SIOBHAN
   We stole Carmel McLennan.  Even if she did live in Van Nuys, it was only
a half-hour's drive or a quarter-second teleport commute to JRD.  She'd
been the IT manager for an aerospace company for years and was really ready
for a change.
   Mario told us, "Carmel should be the Global IT Manager.  She's got both
the training and the experience while I only know one relatively small
network.  She could train me up a lot more and maybe one day I'll be able
to move up the ladder."
   I made her an offer she could refuse if she wanted.  $150K a year base
plus JRD performance bonuses was hard to refuse and she didn't.
   She told us, "I'll give notice right away.  My assistant is more than
able to fill my position so there shouldn't be any trouble.  In the
interim, I'll come over here in the evening and nose around with Mario. 
That is, if I can lure him away from Sherry."
   Mario grinned and told her, "I'll invite her along to chaperone.  On the
other hand, knowing her inclinations, you might not be safe anyway."
   Carmel flushed up a little and sighed, "Oh, well.  My mother always told
me I'd run into people who'd want to 'take advantage' of me; looks like I
*finally* have."
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   We had the Clann Cullen Ceann's fertility rite to attend Tuesday night.
Dayum, they did it up good!  I got in a good spirit-nosh on Kate's puffies
and a lick or two on her flaming bush; there was lots of competition.  Now
all we gotta do is find a way to get direct feedback on those remote
_touches_.
   It was hot from the moment it started.  They had fake fur all over,
making it look like a love nest outside in a glade.  Firelight, ancient
drums and flutes, chanting in the ancient Gaelic and _songs_ which sent
quivers all through us.
   Just before they got at it, Bob and I felt a great spiritual _presence_
around them.  The Clann Cullen gods?  Who knows?  Fuck!  Sean and Eileen
pushed themselves outside even before the eggs were fertilized.  Not to
worry, they had plenty of helpers.  Eileen ended up with three Babies
Within trying to latch on to her uterus wall!  Company and companions for
ours!
   We _felt_ them far away flooding out their joy and happiness for another
good hour.  Bob and I had a wonderful post-rite celebration.  Love,
tenderness, sweet slow lovin' then a wonderfully-hot humping to drench our
Babies Within.  Hope they'll appreciate all the trouble we're going through
for them.  Grin.
   ------
   Since we'd talked with Liam McLennan and knew he was a long-time tool
and die man, Bob and I hired him for our Wednesday visit with JRD Tool and
Die.  Sounded like a fit to everyone; it didn't hurt we offered him $500 an
hour as a consultant.  He'd meet us at our hotel in the morning and we'd go
in together.
   Overnight, we had a short Ceann meeting.  We _met_ with Bill and Caitlin
earlier; they'd already enhanced six other people and were rarin' to go on
a Clann of their own.  That set the tone for the meeting.
   Bob went over the concerns we had about safe havens, colonies, Clann
expansion and the Moon Base research.  Everyone was interested in
everything.
   Bill brought up, _"As a start, how about each Clann look for a safe
haven here on Earth.  With the sneaky lawyers we already have, we should be
able to find and develop a place which might hold up to 500 people or so as
a bolt hole if nothing else.  Completely clandestine and under the radar.
The only real issue is paying for it."_
   Bob said, _"We're working on ideas for that.  A colony especially is
gonna cost Really Big Bucks.  Even if Kat and I liquidated everything we
have at top dollar, it would be less than four billion dollars.  That's a
drop in the bucket for what's needed._
   _"My Clann provides services for income.  Not even small potatoes in the
big picture.  With some of the technologies our Skunk Works is looking at,
I'll bet we can figure out something really large-scale which will bring in
the dollars.  We'll probably do a joint venture.  Whatever it is, it'll
probably require a one of us ability to carry it off."_
   Sean had a possibility.  _"In my wanderings around the Asteroid Belt,
I've seen lots of metal in varying degrees of purity.  I'm not just talking
iron and nickel but palladium, platinum and all the rare ones.  If we can
develop that filter, I'll bet we can develop a very large-scale metal
delivery anywhere on Earth -- or the Moon -- for just about anything. 
Implementation is left as an exercise for the student."_
   Yeh.  I could imagine what JRD Tool and Die would do with a custom alloy
at probably 50% below what they were paying now.
   Sean continued, _"Also, who knows what kind of technology the Moon Base
will give us.  By the way, maybe we should give the poor thing a real name.
I'll propose RRRville, Bobsville, Reynoldstown or something like that." Big
smile._
   I _felt_ Bob _groan_ at the name suggestions.  Of course, that just set
everyone else off with similar suggestions and _smiles_.
   They really liked the idea of 'official' Org-Boarded trainers (paid),
Clann Education Officers, enhancement teams and a Clann implementation
team. They got a good kick out of Aileen's idea of leaking a fertility rite
to jump start Potential in their areas.
   Since we were on the subject, I asked, _"During the em, festivities
earlier, I felt a huge spiritual presence.  Was that the Clann Cullen gods
you were invoking?"_
   Sean and Eileen basically said they'd _felt_ the presence, too, but had
no real idea what it was.
   Bob said, _"Hmm.  Kate, how many spirits would you say were linked in
about that time?"_
   Kate told us, _"Around 150.  Everybody and their distant relatives, it
seemed."_
   Bob told us, _"Might run it by the Skunk Works, but what would you get
with that many spirits having a lot of attention and admiration flowing
into one area?"_
   Yeh, made total sense.
   Susan Way said, _"I like the way it was set up.  Besides the unique
physical setting, linking through one person makes a lot of sense. 
Besides, Raymond liked the preliminaries.  Do you pass the restraints
around?"_
   We laughed while Raymond protested, _"Hey!  I wasn't the only one
getting my licks in."_
   Alona Himenez (Rodrigo Fuerte's mate) suggested, _"Si!  An excellent
snack!  Might I recommend we have something similar quite often?  Doesn't
have to be a fertility rite, either.  Maybe for a Ceann meeting like this
or some other event or even as a special treat?  I nominate Elizabeth
Bright for the next one!"_
   Apparently I wasn't the only one with lewd and lascivious thoughts about
exploring her gloriously-exotic pelt!  I noticed BB didn't demur.  We had a
short, somber discussion (while laughing our spirit-asses off underneath)
and decided it was a Real Good Idea.  Next victim, em, sacrifice, em,
recipient of honor was TBD.
   Okay.  The meeting broke up for tonight.  There'll probably be plenty
more.
   Bob and I gave the Babies Within a couple more good drenchings.  Dayum
good thing they're solidly attached!  And yes, the Asteroid Belt has gobs
of metal floating around for the taking.
   All righty, then!  We wanted to be at JRD Tool and Die right at 9:00. 
With only 45 people, our quickie probes didn't take long.  Yeh, the IT
Administrator had the Potential.
   Liam met us exactly as planned.  We filled him in on what we'd found out
about Machinists Inc and their relationship to JRD Tool and Die.  He said,
"It should be fun.  I've kinda missed the environment even if it's been
years."
   The visit went extremely well.  They were implementing the same MRP II
system as Machinists Inc with the same consultants.  Of course one of the
system requirements was electronic purchase orders from Machinists Inc.
   Liam and Bob did the tour while I checked out the back office.  The
implementation was going well, so I didn't worry too much about it.  Their
books were in decent shape and there wasn't any hanky panky (business-wise)
going on.
   Their main thrust was quality over quantity.  The VP Admin told me,
"While our tools do break if improperly used, our goal is to provide the
longest-lasting, best-operating tools in the industry.  Yeh, one of our
cutting bits might cost $500 or more, but if it outlasts three $200 bits,
everyone's ahead."
   A colony would need very long-lasting tool bits so this might well be a
priceless resource.
   We did lunch with them and passed out Sean seminar cards with the same
spiel.  Liam had a great time!  Nothing like machine-oil-smell,
guy-shop-talk and male bonding, I guess.
   After lunch, Liam popped back home.  Bob and I wrote up our F&Rs,
checked out and headed for Nevada to our next visit.
   Interstate all the way again; fire up the cruise control.  Our target
for the day was Flagstaff, AZ for an overnighter.  Scenery was always
interesting; even the flat desert was entertaining if one looked at it with
the right attitude.  Jaysus, the U.S.  is big!
   As we went down the road, I _met_ with Maura on a Clann implementation
checklist.  Some things were pretty obvious like presenting the two customs
sets, electing officers and presenting the possibilities of doing a
non-profit organization.  We added in the full study checklist, Sean's
Admin Scale and Organizing Board articles, forming Brain Trusts and Inner
Circles, a copy (structure only) of the personnel database, a formal
training team and a full briefing on security.
   We spent a while with Mario on security.  He told us, _"I know the Skunk
Works is working on encryption and things like that.  In the meantime, the
JRD server is completely secure.  We have no public web site so there's no
external network access.  Outlook Web Access from the Internet is the only
outside interface and is pretty damn secure with SSL (Secure Socket Layer
-- just what it sounds like) so we can use our Exchange Server for
inter-Clann and other email.  Since none of the inter-Clann email even
leaves the Exchange Server, it doesn't pass through the Internet so is
never stored in an Internet server.  In fact, we could put an additional
server to handle all the Clann accounts in a completely secure, unknown
location so it'll be physically secure._
   _"People will have to be concerned about security at their end, but
this'll give us secure internal communications.  All this, of course, is
subject to approval by the JRD Owners."_ Big grin.
   Well, that was easy to handle.  Big grin myself.  I had a JRD Exchange
account so I told Mario to write up his proposal and send it to me.  I'd
look it over, approve it and route it to Siobhan for implementation.  Rank
Has Its Privileges.
   Maura and I spent an hour _typing_ up the checklist on a secure system
at the JRD office.  Yeh, it was confidential, too.  When we were done, I
made a note to myself to route it.
   I let Maura go raise some estrogen levels with their new sweetie (she
told me all about Melissa.  Nice!) while I checked over my email.
   Mario'd written up his proposal very well.  I endorsed it and routed it
to Siobhan.
   At Flagstaff, we checked in, had a nice dinner and settled in for the
evening.  The hotel channel had a good chick flick (Bob didn't even roll
his eyes once, the sweetie) so we cuddled up and watched.  Of course we had
to do our own love scenes; that's what a chick flick's for, isn't it?
   We went to bed, cuddled some more and let the bodies go to sleep.  About
11:00, though, all hell broke loose when the Skunk Works spirit-napped us
and dragged us off to the Moon Base (Robert's Roost?)!
   ------
   BOB
   They wanted me to look at the power station.  For some reason, they'd
decided I knew more about that sort of stuff than any of them.  Hell, if it
had nuts and bolts, I could hack it, but when it came to twiddling
electrons, George was *the Man*.  George, though, said, _"This is probably
a combination, so we unanimously thought of you."_
   Ben had said they probably built this as one of the first things.  Well,
they apparently hadn't wanted it too exposed to cosmic debris strikes
because it was buried a good 1,000 meters down in the bedrock.  We could
see the original access tunnel (now filled in) to the surface.  Yeh, it had
several surface access tunnels, a long tunnel to the rest of the complex
and power lead conduits to the different areas.  It was probably as big
inside as the Mickey C main building.
   Maggie told us, _"Near as George, Don and I can tell, it's a thermionic
converter.  For those who didn't take Don's physics class, pretty much any
metal will produce a voltage if you put a temperature gradient across it.
This thing has something like 5,000 elements going down insulated channels
to -300 degree or so bedrock another 100 meters below and meeting at this
end in this chamber._
   _"Now, where's the heat on this end?  Tons of heavy electronics around
it, but no real heat source we can see."_
   Yeh, true.  About the only moving parts were a lot of big-ass circuit
breakers and even more smaller ones scattered around.  They were quite
simple -- and probably still in working order.
   George said, _"I smoke-tested them all.  No smoke because there's no
power.  They make and break cleanly so I'd say they're operational.  I left
them all open the way they were."_
   Kat claimed she didn't know jack about this kind of stuff and looked
around.  She and Ben pointed out a big diagram on the wall and several
plastic sheets in a holder just below it.  Ben told us, _"I'm not very
macho, I guess.  The first thing *I* look for are the instructions."_
   Can't see the forest for the trees, all right.  It was a shit-simple
graphical set of instructions for bootstrapping the power station from what
was probably a cold shutdown like we had here -- at 100 degrees or more
below zero.
   Basically, it showed a solar antenna pointing at the sun, flip a switch
and away it went.  The arrows didn't have heads like ours do, but the
pointy ends still pointed.  We discussed it a lot, _looked_ at the
equipment a lot and came to conclusions.  Might be wrong, but we weren't in
doubt.
   One conclusion was this was probably a right-to-left written language
because the diagram started with a big arrow pointing to the upper right.
The arrows after that mainly went left.
   We guessed the heavy-duty electronics around the chamber was a plasma
containment and pressure containment device for what was inside.  From the
looks of some other electronics, when we flipped the switch, the power from
the solar antenna would fire up the containment.  There was a small,
built-in mass receiver which (according to the diagram) would lock on and
port some material from the Sun into the containment.
   Even a chunk of material a couple microns across would be both hellishly
hot and would last for a very long time.  The containment circuitry
probably let just enough heat escape to power the converter.  Of course, if
the containment failed, well...  them's the breaks.
   Since the voltage produced is proportional to the temperature gradient,
we bet there'd be a decent voltage.  With some 5,000 elements (and around
20,000 spares stored away), there'd probably be a decent amperage, too.
   It would produce direct current (like a battery) but no biggie.  There
was a huge set of solid state converters to create multi-phase, pretty
dayum smooth alternating current (for more efficient distribution than
direct current).  Of course, there were big circuit breakers on each side
of the converter.
   Maggie asked The Question, _"So, Mr.  Bob, as mayor of Bobsville, are we
gonna do the deed?"_
   Shit.  Well, that's why they pay me the big bucks, I guess.  I told
them, _"Lots of conditionals here.  Is the antenna still operational?  Are
the breakers open at the other end of these feeds?  Do we just do it, or do
we move all the material we can out of the rest of the place first?  Let's
have a vote on the last."_
   Lots of chromium-steel balls on these spirits.  They unanimously voted
to fire it up if the antenna worked and if they could open the breakers on
the other end.
   Okay.  I told them, _"Let's do it, then."_
   George led half the crew to check breakers on the other ends of the
feeds while I tagged along with the other half to check out the antenna.
   Turned out there were four of them; take your pick, the diagram made no
differentiation.  Two were buried on the Earth side and two on the back
side where we were.  Our side (the back) was about a third into the
sunlight so we picked one on the back side.
   Pulling it out was pretty simple.  Several "guys" in vacuum suits could
do it by hand.  There was another set of graphical instructions with it. 
Set it up, lock the feet, open it up, point it at the Sun, wait for an
indicator light then flip a switch.  Wait a little until another indicator
light came on then close the switch feeding down to the power station --
which had yet another breaker on the other end.
   We set it up and pointed it.  There was a butt-simple viewfinder for
aiming; even I could get it right.
   George reported, _"Everything's clear at the other end of the feeds.  We
cycled every breaker a couple times; they're all operational and are
open."_
   Apparently his crew wanted in on the action because they swarmed back up
with us.  I asked, _"Okay, who does it?"_
   No one volunteered.  Maggie said, _"I offer Sean Cullen and/or his harem
for three Soo Laids to the one who does it."_
   Everyone immediately volunteered; guys, too.  I _pointed_ to Cynthia and
told her, _"I hereby volunteer you.  Do it."_
   The first indicator light was on -- we figured it showed the antenna and
circuitry had warmed up in the sunlight -- so she _flipped_ the first
switch.
   Nothing for several seconds.  Okay.  Lights started coming on at several
spots around the base then the antenna itself moved through several arcs on
each axis.  Probably a self-test.  After five minutes, it pointed back to
the Sun, and the proper light came on.  Cynthia _flipped_ the next switch.
   George told us, _"There's a couple hundred volts at the other end of the
feed now.  I'd say this step's successful."_
   Back to the power station.  After a final look around, our designated
switch flipper did her duty.  We immediate _saw_ various lights come on
across a big control panel.  Yep, something was happening.
   Okay.  Probably doing a warm up on this end, too.  George figured it
might just take a good Earth day or so to raise the temperature around the
chamber up to where the thermal shock wouldn't break something.
   Well, let it rip, then.  We went exploring while Don remotely "kept an
eye" on things in the power station.
   Well, if we can get this place powered up, we'd have a good old time. 
At the hangar, we found a half-dozen ships ranging from what looked like a
one-being runabout a couple meters long up to a cargo ship (with a huge
hold) at 500 meters long.
   Patrick said, _"I doubt if they're junkers.  There's pipes, a power lead
and several other wires running to each one, just like a naval ship at the
dock."_
   Well, that invited some more exploring.  The ships were beautiful.  Not
really streamlined as far as any of us could tell, but wonderfully curved
as if they were artwork in and of themselves.
   More solid state.  Val said, _"Looks like the power's a nuclear battery.
There's radioactivity sealed away inside."_
   No idea yet as to the propulsion principle; all the ships appeared to
have similar units in the same general location.  The larger ships had
larger units.
   There were obvious control rooms, berthing areas (Henry said, _"Probably
'artificial gravity' since there's a definite up and down orientation."_),
kitchen?, shower?, bathroom?, storage areas, and lots of instrumentation.
Should keep a couple engineers busy for a few days.
   Don told us, _"By the instructions, the next light is blinking now. 
Time for another switch."_
   We zipped back to the control panel, and Cynthia _flipped_ the
designated switch.  We could immediately _feel_ a vibration in the
equipment which got higher in frequency until it stopped.  Kate said,
_"There's a huge magnetic field in the chamber.  In my ignorance, it's the
containment field."_
   The instructions showed the next light would be on the control panel and
by the breakers leading to the converters.  We waited; no idea how long it
would be.  The containment field seemed to continue to build up in
intensity and various-colored lights went on and off on the control panel.
   The antenna appeared to be powering both the containment field circuitry
and charging several accumulators (non-chemical rechargeable "batteries")
located throughout the station.
   Suddenly there was a definite thump in the equipment.  We _felt_ a
humongous mass inside the field.  Don said, _"Guess we have our heat
source. There's probably a couple million kilotons of matter in there."_
   There was some sort of controls around the thermionic elements because
we _saw_ them extend closer to the containment field.  They all stopped at
about the same distance.  Yeh, the field weakened just a tiny bit; we could
_feel_ the heat on the ends of the elements.
   A minute later, the next indicator light blinked.  Henry said,
_"Probably warming up and testing the converter.  I can feel the 'trons
twiddling."_ Cynthia _flipped_ the next two switches from the diagram; we
waited for the next light and so on for several more cycles.
   All right.  The last light on the diagram started blinking.  Don said,
_"We have AC power out of the converter.  Close the output breaker and
we're gold!"_
   Cynthia _closed_ the breaker.  We had power to the main distribution
panels everywhere.
   Yes!  Nothing blew up.  We celebrated with lots of _high-fives,
butt-bounces_ and _hugs_.  For some reason they thought Kat and I had
something do to with their success, because they swarmed over both of us
for several nice long minutes.  Yowsah!  Even as a spirit, Val knew how to
turn a guy on!
   The Skunk Works decided the next thing to get going was lights.  They
swarmed around the distribution panel to the admin/living area, _traced_
circuits and found several lighting subpanels.  We guessed they were lights
because they led to lots of really big, flat panels scattered across the
ceilings.  George said, _"Basically they're LEDs.  Probably have a couple
million hours life and there's some 25,000 spares in a storeroom."_
   They _traced_ more circuits, _opened_ breakers in subpanels then
_closed_ one breaker on the main distribution panel.  Nothing appeared to
blow up, so our switch flipper _flicked_ one closed on a subpanel.
   Yep, it was a light all right.  Scattered panels lit up in the ceiling
all across the admin area.  Mario said, _"Turn on more and you'll get more
intensity.  There are individual lights in most of the 'offices' so there's
control down to that level."_
   George said, _"Near as I can tell, it's right around the human visible
light spectrum so it's usable for now.  Visible light will tend to give us
more indication of what they considered valuable or critical."_
   Well, they seemed to have it under control, so Kat and I took off to
pick up where we were before we'd been so rudely interrupted.  We left them
happily _tracing_ circuits and _flipping_ light switches.  Don't think
they'd run out of power for a while!
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Since I was "up" already, I checked my JRD email.  Mario'd left me a
note he'd set up all the Ceanns (and Bill/Caitlin) with Exchange accounts
and had _told_ them their User IDs and passwords.
   We still had to get a couple volunteers for the implementation team.  Of
course I volunteered Maura; after all, she'd helped create the checklist
and had just gone through an implementation herself.
   I routed the checklist and recommendation to the Ceanns for comment and
information.  Progress!
   ------
   (Thursday 6/29)
   We were up and outta there at a decent time.  We headed pretty much
straight west towards Henderson, which was right near Las Vegas.  Next
stop, Casino Equipment, Inc.
   While I drove, Bob _talked_ with Sean; he had a victim, em, subject for
the Clann implementation pilot.  It was Vera Leonard at Waystation 1 in
Mesa.  She and her family were all ones of us, and they'd enhanced seven
Potentials in the last several days.  Good on her!  They'd actually formed
a Clann already, but were more than interested in ensuring they had all the
bases covered.  Sean said he'd get with her and see if she was willing.  He
told Bob, _"No reason she wouldn't be willing; she's pretty
adventuresome."_
   The rest of the day was driving on cruise control, watching (mostly
desert) scenery, and _chatting_ with various people.  Sean told us Vera and
family were more than willing to be guinea pigs for us.  _"I agree with
having Maura be on the team.  She needs a lot more to keep her busy and out
of my hair."_
   The rest of the Ceanns agreed.  Clann Way volunteered Shirley Way
(Susan's daughter) to be part of the implementation team.  Since there were
no other recommended changes to the checklist, I sent it to Henry for
secure production then _told_ Sean the team and materials were ready.
   All we had to do was get Maura and Shirley together and let them rip. 
That took maybe five seconds and it was a done deal.
   We got settled in the hotel in East Las Vegas, had some dinner then
watched the Vegas lights for a while.  We were both antsy, though.  Bob
grinned at me and said, "Okay.  We can go back."
   Yes!  We popped back up to the base (Reggietown?) around 10:00, but the
Skunk Works and several of the gang were already there _tracing_ circuits
and _flipping_ light switches.  Valerie told us, _"Ben's in pig heaven. 
He's been doing documentation for twenty years and hasn't really had much
chance to get his 'hands dirty' so he's making up for lost time._
   _"He's really mean, though.  He's making us label each circuit as we
trace it; he keeps mumbling something about 'do it once.' He keeps
threatening us with cancellation of our next three Soo Laids if we mess it
up."_
   They had pretty much all the areas lit with at least half the available
panels.  The hangar, maintenance and repair shops and the construction
areas were just bright enough to see somewhat decently in our "normal"
range.
   Ben told us, _"No more major breakthroughs yet.  The other sets of
instructions in the power station are for changing an element -- an
indicator comes on if one needs changing -- and doing a shutdown to cold
status.  You don't wanna just pull the plug on *that* baby."_
   Maggie had taken a whole load of books back to the Skunk Works shop in
the research lab to warm up.  She said, _"Looks like text books; lots of
copies like for a class.  We've picked out what look like the simplest
'cause that's where we'll start.  Got any linguists on tap yet?"_
   Henry mentioned, _"LA County should be a pretty fertile place for
engineers.  With all the aerospace, JPL and military around, we should be
able to find most anyone we need.  Maybe you old folk could take a few
minutes in the evenings to start checking out the Sensitives Pat told us
about while *we*'re working our fingers to the bone.  Hint, hint."_
   Could well be.  Bob and I figured maybe we could "assign" the Donovan
and O'Banain young-uns to the enhancement and training cadre while the
Skunk Works was so busy.  That would take some load off PVC and the Wild
Bunch.
   Anyway, they were having loads of fun, were making progress and weren't
blowing up anything so we figured we'd better get out of their way or Ben
would put us to work.
   ------
   (Friday 6/30)
   Our probes on Casino Equipment didn't turn up much.  No Potential to
amount to much, either.  They manufactured casino supplies like cards,
chips and a small line of slot machines.  The Nevada Gaming Commission had
given them a clean bill of health last month.
   275 people could pump out lots of card decks.  From the books, it was
reasonably profitable, so we'd let it run for now.  It wasn't really
aligned much to any of the other JRD companies, so I put it on the short
list for possible sale.
   We did lunch with the executives -- good folk -- and passed out seminar
cards.  We packed up around 1:00 and headed for Boulder City.
   Technical Publications was a different story.  With fifteen people, they
specialized in short-run books of all sizes along with general printing. 
The best part was there were three people with enough Potential they were
extended beyond their bodies and the other dozen had a good shot of
Potential.  Now that was exciting!
   With all the stuff at the Moon Base (Bob City?) coming up, we'd probably
need hard copy stuff; this might well be exactly the place to get it done.
   John Beal, the President, showed us an example.  A client needed 100
soft-cover books for a technical manual.  They'd provided the print-ready
PDF so all Tech Pubs had to do was design the simple cover (one minute) and
let it rip.
   The first book was in the box in ten minutes and the entire job was
completed and packed in a half hour.  Not too shabby.
   John said, "We have two UPS pickups a day.  If it's a good-sized order,
they just bring a semi.  It's been working out well for the past 10 years."
   Yeh.  They had plenty of warehouse room for paper and supplies storage,
and since they were pretty well out in the boondocks, could double or
triple their physical plant fairly easily.  JRD owned fifteen acres around
them, and it was zoned commercial so we figured they could double their
plant size in about a month.  John told us the major slowdown would be the
lead time on getting the new equipment delivered and installed.
   "We've got a fair amount of people come around looking for work and a
lot of them are pretty qualified.  Most of the employees have families and
there's at least a dozen children who are able and willing to work.
   "We're doing quite a lot of overtime even on two shifts.  We use the
third shift for cleanup and logistics."
   Hmm.  I told him, "Good.  In your copious free time next week after the
holidays, send Louise Merrill, our Regional Manager, a proposal; maybe for
a phased development.  Right off the top of my head, it looks good to me.
Next week, we could get our Global Sales Manager to assist you in
promotion; it's gonna be her responsibility anyway." I gave him a Louise
and a Madeleine card.
   We talked about the Sean seminar and give him several cards.  "It's
getting to be short notice but get there ASAP.  The data will be invaluable
in planning your expansion and optimizing your processes."
   Since our extra enhancement team had accepted our "volunteerment," I
told Riona, _"You've got a bunch of hot ones here.  Fifteen to start plus
probable families plus another two shifts and so on.  Might well be the
start of a Vegas-area Clann.  I'd recommend top priority."_
   She told me, _"Right.  We'll start on it right away -- yeh, good stuff,
all right.  We'll put the oomph to them and maybe some of them will be
having lots of fun by Sunday."_
   It was getting well along in the afternoon on a holiday weekend Friday,
so we let John go -- for now.  Bob told him, "I can see lots of exciting
change ahead for all of us.  I'd recommend you not be surprised at
*anything* happening in the near future."
   As we drove off into the sunset, we agreed we had some winners here. 
Dayum, we're gonna be great!
   As soon as we were out of sight, we stopped and ported everything back
home.  We'd come back Wednesday for another visit.
   Chapter 9
   BOB (Sunday 7/2)
   Lots of Real Good Things happening.  Betcha the enhancement teams and
Clann implementation team won't be just sitting around with nothing to do.
   Kat and I spent Saturday just loafing around and checking out the
happenings.  Being out-of-state the last week really hadn't hurt anything;
as I'd thought, they could get along quite well without me for a while. 
Grin.
   Sunday morning, Riona told us, _"Tech Pubs is going to work out just
fine.  Lots of the families or relations have Potential; there's around 40
at last count._
   _"We popped John Beal and two others yesterday morning -- for some
reason they didn't mind their holiday weekend getting interrupted.  They're
pretty well trained up now and have the nodes into several others enhancing
them._
   _"They know the drill on how to do it themselves and how to train. 
They've got a training checklist and will be working on the study checklist
probably Tuesday.  Teleportation checklist coming soon.  Of course we'll be
standing by if they need any help or have questions._
   _"You guys did pretty good for being on vacation."_
   Not too shabby.  I would expect by next weekend we'd need the new-Clann
implementation team to pay them a visit.
   One of the things we looked at was the Skunk Works room at the lab.  It
was packed with reference books, books from the Moon Base (Lindaville?) and
often with bodies.  Hmm.  Time for a talk with Ana.
   Ana told me Mary was doing excellently.  Mary agreed and had her clothes
off in five seconds to show us.  Lookin' really good!  She'd actually put
on weight, which didn't hurt at all.  Neither Kat nor I minded admiring a
nipple-bud for a while; of course, we had to compare it to the other one.
And yes, there was some feeling in it.
   Her thumb was budded up the same way.  They were estimating another week
or two for everything to be fully operational.
   Anyway, they told us, "Actually, unless we come up with something really
big, we don't have a lot to do right now.  The filtration system is the
next big item on the list; I figure the Skunk Works will get to that when
they can."
   Okay.  I asked, "So, do you need all the room here?  Could we scavenge a
bit more space for the Skunk Works?"
   "I'd say so.  From some of the goings-on the last couple days, we're
gonna get at least another ten or fifteen bodies in here fairly lively. 
Once the recruiting gets really ramped up, I'll bet we'll have to find a
way to host several hundred.
   "In my ignorance, we can handle another maybe twenty here before we run
out of good working space.  After that, they'll be cheek to jowl.  While
some might appreciate the opportunity, it's not the best for doing
research."
   Yeh.  Kat suggested, "Let's ask Evin if it's time for another company.
Even if the medical research here is winding down, it doesn't look as if
we'll have room for a lot of expansion here."
   The Donovan and O'Banain clanns were being lazy around their pool and
invited us over.  We stripped down to match their apparel state (nada),
grabbed some chairs and relaxed.
   Kat laid out our concern about the Skunk Works, and I asked for advice.
Siobhan popped up (Voice.  Her nipples were already popped up.), "I noticed
the entire rest of the floor JRD is on is gonna be available next week. 
Plus, the floor above will be, too.  There's room for maybe 150 to 200
bodies and computers."
   Hmm.  A good possibility.  We talked that over a bit and brought Ben
over to join the confab (why weren't we surprised he'd been at the Moon
Base?  Or is it Elisaton?).
   He agreed with our diagnosis.  "We'll need lots of people.  R&D folk are
usually an odd lot.  They either want to be left completely alone or get
together and hammer stuff out like the Skunk Works does now.
   "Just because we might end up with several thousand doesn't mean we have
to house them all or even a lot together.  You could have smaller groups
scattered around the entire world if you wish.
   "Mario and Carmel McLennan have decided there's several secure and
reliable approaches to creating a secure Wide Area Network -- quite a few
are dirt cheap to free, too.
   "I see lots of engineers working from home -- secure machines, of course
-- with occasional conferences or groups getting together.  Probably by the
time they need much of those, we can run it just like a Clann meeting with
virtual attendance."
   Okay.  Made sense.  Ben also told us, "You're gonna need a decent
administration infrastructure Real Soon Now.  I'm a facilitator, not an
administrator.  Sure, I've run projects before, but now we're talking
hundreds of projects with hundreds of people.  You need an administrative
structure for that.
   "I'm going to the Cullen Enterprises seminar next week.  Let's find us
several administrator types among our recruits, send them too, then set up
something formal.  Hallway meetings and decisions are fine for a group our
size now, but as soon as you get more than a dozen or so, you're gonna have
issues fairly lively."
   Made even more sense.  Evin said, "Sounds like it's time for another
company.  Let's call it, say, SW Inc.  Skunk Works Inc.  Hopefully it isn't
taken."
   Madeleine offered, "Obviously it'll be a combination of R&D *and*
production of some sort.  Just seeing the books from the Moon Base -- or
should it be Robert City?  -- I can see a market.  If they've lasted this
however long and are still very legible, there'd probably be a broad market
for archival materials and techniques.  We're gonna have new technologies
falling in our laps every day.  If we're serious about raising big bucks
for safe havens and colonies, that would be one way of going about it."
   Yeh.  We discussed a possible structure for a few minutes, then
shanghaied Sean and harem for advice.
   Sean pointed to Maggie and told us, "There's the expert on academic
research.  Bet she's got experience on development, too."
   Maggie grinned and told us, "Sure I'm the expert.  Ben's right, though.
R&D folk work just like that.  Academics tend to work towards publishing
and tenure, but their work habits are similar.  We can create a model Org
Board fairly easily.
   "What I'd suggest, though, is we have a straight R&D company and a
separate manufacturing or product company.  Heavily interlaced, of course.
We're looking at a multi-billion if not multi-trillion operation here. 
Either that or be prepared to spin off the actual manufacturing at the drop
of a hat."
   True.  We talked for another hour and made some tentative decisions. 
Evin would whip up an R&D company and a manufacturing company with products
TBD.  Probably the manufacturing company would either lease rights, pay
royalties or something similar to the R&D company.
   The CE gang had a one-second conference then told us, "Cullen
Enterprises will pledge a million dollars between the two.  I see the R&D
company being entirely self-supporting after a very short time and the
manufacturing company going out the top."
   Well, we dragged the entire JRD Executive Council together.  Just to
make it interesting, we asked the Nolans and Bardons over, too.
   We brought everyone up to date on what we were considering.  Since none
of us were out to screw anyone, we decided each company would have 10,000
private shares each with a $100 book value.  That would let pretty much any
one of us be a shareholder.  The million CE was pledging and any other
capital we'd take as loans.  We wanted the companies private, not public.
   For now, we decided to limit shares to one per one of us.  The remaining
shares, we'd just hold for now then sell at a share a pop to other
individuals as they enhanced.  That'd get everyone with pretty much an
equal voice.  No one complained about the good deal.  There were still lots
of ones of us out there who'd probably want in on the ground floor.
   Sean told us he'd run across one new one of us who'd had lots of
executive experience.  "Maybe she'd be interested.  She's gonna retire in
just a little while and will probably need some game to keep from going
stale.  She's already been around the Moon Base -- or is it Bob City?  --
and thinks it's cool.  Her husband's a retiring operations engineer, and
she's already a Bob City widow."
   Okay.  We decided to do it step by step.  Evin would get the
corporations fired up, we'd put some money down to hold the spaces at JRD
and we'd go from there.  All Real Good Things.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Our house gang popped back home.  While we did a quick inventory for our
part of the party tomorrow (at Evin's place this time), we talked over what
we were getting into.
   Bob pointed out we still didn't know much about RRK, either.  "It may
turn out to be a burden or a blessing.  I'm betting we could draw cash if
we need or we may have enough stock in some companies to bend them to our
advantage.  We should have the major Probe Patrol results through Frank and
Thelma's analysis by Wednesday afternoon.
   "In any case, I doubt if we'll get sucked into the operations anywhere
near as deep as we are at JRD."
   ------
   (Monday 7/3)
   Nice July day!  We zapped our contributions (meat of several kinds) over
to Evin's then popped over ourselves at 9:00.
   There were already lots of Clann there.  The young-uns were raising hell
in the pool while the more stogy of us relaxed in chairs and lounges.
   Of course we women had to catch up on all the neat things.  Two Ana
Babies Within got examined closely (not much to _see_, of course, but still
exciting), six *new* Babies Within to squeal over and two recent fertility
rites to dissect.  The fact Eileen's was more "rite" than Bob and my
exhibition just meant we had more to dissect and discuss.
   Bob and Mario did guy stuff with Evin, Aaron, Henry and (It's still
alive!) Ben.  Probably inspecting reverberations in sound shields and stuff
like that.
   We ate.  We swam.  We cooked in the sun then ate some more.  Yeh, more
shop talk.  The rest of the JRD Exec Council had read our F&Rs and were
satisfied with our recommendations.  When we told them about Riona's report
on the Technical Publications spirits, they cheered and clapped.  Fresh
recruits!
   Most of the young-uns vanished for a while -- Butterfly Games, probably.
Then again, I noticed Ben and Sheila Farley (our new JRD Global Manager)
getting pretty chummy, too.  Since we were all nekkid, their interest in
each other was pretty obvious.  Aah, old folks and love!  Isn't it sweet?
   After another round of food, we had an informal Clann Meeting.  Evin
passed out lots of envelopes.
   He told us, "Vail came through some more.  We recovered an additional
ten million which had been embezzled in one way or another over the past
several years, mostly by the same characters who pulled the last trick. 
That means more bonuses for the original Probe Patrol!"
   Yes!  We'd given out an additional $25K to each of them.  For some
reason, the recipients decided the JRD Owners needed a good working over
because of it.  Fine by me!  Grin.
   We passed out more envelopes.  This was from JRD Recording; $1,000 each.
We passed out bonuses to the Skunk Works (Ben had some sparking money,
now), the enhancement teams, and everyone else we could think of.  Everyone
got something.
   Ben started it.  He said loudly, "I think the JRD Executive Council who
decided on these bonuses deserves a Soo Laid.  Each and every one of them!"
   Janet immediately started chanting, "Soo Laid!  *Soo* Laid!  *Soo
Laid*!" The rest of them picked it right up and we got three verses. 
Dayum, Maggie McLennan has corrupted them all!
   Okay, more announcements.  Leone and Mark told us they'd finished six
recordings, and they were now at Fillmore Sales Relations.  Yes!  We gave
them a good round of applause.  I put in my two-cent's worth, "Soo Laid!"
etc.  Leone blushed, but Mark told us, "She's all for it.  I'll bet she can
take any ten of you on -- male and/or female -- and wear you out!" There
was some immediate quiet _discussion_ of how to choose the lucky ten.
   Ben reported for the Skunk Works, "Mainly due to Maggie McLennan, we've
got a general-purpose filter worked out.  We didn't spend *all* our time
playing around in New Bob City!
   "It works very much like a very localized version of the DNA search. 
Basically it's a mesh of _touches_ sensitized either to accept or reject
what you're looking for.
   "For example, we can take sea water and produce 99.9999% pure H2O. 
There's tons of different contaminants in sea water, so one sets the mesh
to filter H20.  It filters it, ports it out to wherever you wish and there
you are.
   "Set the mesh as coarse or as fine as you wish.  Gas, liquid, solid,
makes very little difference.  Once you've got it set up, it's fast.  Very
fast.  I'm not a techie, but I was able to produce 100,000 gallons of pure
H2O in fifteen seconds.  Henry's extracted 24-caret gold from old jewelry.
Ana filtered out five specific germs from a hamster in five seconds.
   "Not too shabby.  Let's give it up to the Skunk Work nerds!"
   Yes!  This time it was Ana who led the Soo Laid chant -- while grinning
at Don.
   Don got to talk about the Moon Base a bit.  "First, we need suggestions
on a name.  A formal name, please.  'Bobstown' sounds great to me, but we
need a consensus.  So, email your suggestions to Valerie.  We'll whittle
them down and do some more voting.
   "Now, if you've been out of the solar system the last several days and
haven't heard, we've got power!  Bob and George figured it all out and our
Cynthia had the guts to flip the switches.  At first look, the power
station will supply enough power to power all of New York and New Jersey --
and still be at only 50%.  Pretty, good, I'd say."
   They had lights all over and tons of circuits marked, mostly in the
living/admin area.  Don told us, "Everyone's having a great time playing
tourist.  Totally fine; no one gets in the way.  The Skunk Works have some
books 'thawed out' and are taking a gander at them.  We're not too
concerned about translating anything yet; we've got several linguists on
the training line who we expect will dive in one hell of a lot deeper than
we could.  Real Soon Now."
   They expected the next major step would be at least a partial
understanding of the language.  After that, get some heat and air in.  Don
said, "Everything's around 100 below zero.  Just from looking at pipes,
we've decided they used liquid water just about the way we do.  So, they
operated at least above freezing.
   "I don't know if we were extremely lucky in firing up the power plant
from that temperature or if it was simply designed that way, but our main
concern is that trying to fire up any of the other equipment at such a low
temperature will destroy it.
   "If we're really lucky and the linguists can break the language, we can
get things going fairly lively.  If we're not so lucky, it'll take months
or years.
   "Either way, we're counting on tons of engineers inspecting lots of
equipment and deducing how they operate.  Once we know the how, we just
might be able to re-engineer our own.  That will be a *major* milestone."
   BOB (Tuesday 7/4)
   We got set up for the collectables show for Wednesday through Sunday. 
We popped over to see Francine and Francis and discussed which collectables
they wanted.  Yeh, as we'd suspected, they wanted the six comics in the
vanity-published series and several of the cards no one had been able to
identify conclusively.
   Well, we shall see.  We took a drive to the Convention Center where they
showed us around the hall where it would be held.  Francine told us,
"Setup's tonight and tomorrow morning, then the exhibits will open
Wednesday afternoon.  Sounds pretty tight, but that's the way the shows
work; they do pretty good at logistics."
   We talked security.  There were the normal door and roaming security
patrols plus each vendor supplied whatever security they desired.  Maybe a
gig for EverAlert?  Who pays?  24-hour or only during the exhibit hours? 
We discussed all that.
   We went back to the Collectible Arts store.  Francis showed us the
display cases they'd be using.  "The larger ones are for the more common
items we pull out and let the attendees look at.  We want to put your goods
in a private case."
   He showed us a much smaller case which stood alone.  "We'd keep it
locked all the time.  They can look all they want through the case." It had
heavy tempered glass with a built-in alarm system.  It would probably do
okay by itself, but we had a few tricks ourselves up our spirit-sleeves.
   We made a quick _talk_ with Dan and Art then Kathleen told them, "Okay.
We'll have someone bring them by tomorrow morning to the exhibit hall. 
Here's a card; give him a call when you're ready, and they can be there in
five minutes.  Do your arrangement in the case, lock it up and it stays
that way until Sunday afternoon at the close of the show.
   "Don't even think of moving the case or opening it between times. 
Here's my card.  If you absolutely need to move or open it, call me.  I'll
make arrangements."
   We'd arranged with Dan and Art to do the delivery, toss a seed packet
inside and set up a node and shield.  We'd put our own nodes in then and
power the shield.  They'd do the pick up on Sunday, too.  No problem!
   We popped back home and did laundry.  Neither of us had a lot, but we
decided to get it done now before we got "on the road" again.
   We had a long discussion with Mario and Sherry about the Skunk Works
companies.  With enough shares around and no one being greedy, we thought
all the ones of us could get in on the ground floor.  Little or nothing
might come of the shares financially, but we wanted to give the possible
life-saving technologies the best shot we had.
   ----
   All right!  Bill and Caitlin were scheduled for Clann implementation
this evening.  They'd invited Kat and me up as well as the implementation
team.  Why not?
   We popped up to Redding at 6:00, before the scheduled meeting at 6:30.
They greeted us warmly and we shared hugs and kisses.  Caitlin was *very*
friendly.  Mine is not to reason why; mine is but to do -- if the social
secretaries arranged it!  Then again, we've got those ad hoc honorings,
too.
   Maura and Shirley showed up with several copies of the implementation
checklists, one training checklist and several of the customs sheets.  Kat
and I sat on the outskirts; we were there only for questions, not to steal
anyone's thunder.
   Bill and Caitlin had enhanced five other couples and seven single people
over the last several weeks.  All it had taken was a bit of direction from
Father, and they went for it with a no-holds-barred attitude.
   All the new folk seemed fine to us; three of the couples and four of the
singles worked in Bill and Caitlin's software company.  The others were
either neighbors or family members.
   Shirley went down the checklist and everyone discussed each point for a
couple minutes.  When they got to the decision point, Maura asked everyone,
"So, are you interested in forming a Clann in this area?"
   A unanimous yes.  Shirley said, "You need officers, then.  Ceann,
Secretary, Treasurer, everyone you need for a proper organization. 
Nominations for Ceann?"
   One of the young singles pointed at Caitlin and said, "I nominate
Caitlin."
   She looked surprised while Bill and I grinned.  Why not?  It got an
immediate second with no other nominations.  She got a unanimous aye vote.
   Bill smiled at her and asked the assembly, "I picked a good one, right?"
They agreed.
   Okay, Caitlin ran the show.  They elected the rest of the officers with
no contests; Bill was "elected" to be Head Schmoozer in Charge.  His job
description included keeping the Ceann very relaxed.  Of course, he was the
Ceann-Mate with the attendant privileges and "duties." Hehehehe.  Betcha he
gets to be one of the social secretaries, too!
   They adopted the Clann Reynolds' membership customs and tabled the
confidential customs discussion and vote to the next night after everyone
had a chance to study them.
   Shirley went over the security set ups for the various checklists and
materials until everyone understood the need.  They decided to form three
enhancement and training teams of two people each.  The first task everyone
had was to go over the training checklist and ensure everyone had it down.
Several of them noted this was the first time they'd seen some of the
items. Well, that's why we developed a checklist.
   By now, it was well after 8:00.  Caitlin opened the floor for questions.
   One lady asked, "We've got people from three other Clanns here.  From
what I understand, although Clann Cullen is hereditary, all the sexual
customs and the honoring customs are really the same.  Shirley, your
mother's the Ceann in Redmond; how do *you* think the honoring custom is
working out?"
   Shirley looked thoughtful for a moment then said, "Splendidly.  While
you can see from the colleagues you have here that ones of us are usually
pretty damn good folk, you're still a group of people with basically only
one thing in common: you're all free spirits.
   "We started out that way, too.  Mom and Raymond Steele got together as
spirit-partners then got me and my brothers up to speed.  As a group, we
were just 'there' with nothing much else going for us.  As we added more
and more free spirits, and Mom started honoring, we became a cohesive group
who recognized others as really special people above and beyond being free
spirits.
   "I've grown to trust my Mom completely, and that's rare nowadays.  If
she says someone's worthwhile, I believe her without any doubts.  If she
honors them, I know they're really special and would trust them with my
life; I'd probably trust them with my child's life, if I had one."
   Maura went over the roles of the social secretaries.  "It's been almost
a necessity, though it started out almost as a joke.  The Ceann has enough
on their plate without being concerned about whom to honor next.
   "Clann Reynolds has Kat and Sherry Stapley as social secretaries; that
evolved directly from their Inner Circle and Bob's Seal of Approval.  Clann
Cullen has six; the four Ceann-Mates, my sister and me.  We do the
worrying, what there is of it.  So far, it's worked out great.  I don't
think any of the Ceanns has turned down an arranged honoring yet.
   "Remember, age and their current relationships have little to do with a
person being willing to be honored.  Don't fall into that little trap."
   We all threw our two cents worth in.  I talked for several minutes about
how Kat and Sherry had 'splained things to me down in Cabo.  Kat went over
the survey they'd done of all the Clann Reynolds women and what they
thought of the honoring.
   I think they got the idea it was a Real Good Thing for them, too.
   Kat and I bailed out about 10:00; they could get along just fine without
us.
   ------
   (Wednesday 7/5)
   We were scheduled to visit JRD Industrial Construction in East Las
Vegas. We took along Mother, Father, Papa and Mama Sonora, Mario and
Sherry. With 500 staff, we had a lot of looking to do.
   The initial audit review and Probe Patrol reports hadn't come up with
much dirt on anyone.  There were the usual illegals, lapsed or
almost-expired licenses and the like.
   Most of the actual construction was subcontracted with a good number of
day laborers and independent contractors.  The JRD staff mainly ran
logistics (purchasing, equipment maintenance and the like), payroll,
promotion and sales.
   There's plenty of construction going on all the time around Vegas -- not
even counting new casinos and renos.  Quite a few businesses had settled
there.
   Nice.  We found the Deputy CEO had some hot Potential along with several
foremen, the marketing and sales department heads and about three others
scattered throughout.  We put tag nodes in them (as Marge had suggested)
and put their names on the enhancement list.
   ------
   Back in Los Angeles, Dan and Art did their magical appearing act at the
Convention Center with the collectables.  They inspected the case in its
final display location, handed over the stuff and watched the Fs and Simon
arrange them inside the case.
   When the Fs were satisfied and had locked the case with their locks, Dan
ported a couple packs of seeds inside.  They set up a connection node to
hold the shield and set it up solidly.  The shield extended through the
concrete floor to bedrock and for ten feet around.
   Art found a handy length of heavy pipe and gave the glass a couple heavy
smacks.  The Fs almost didn't believe it when it bounced without leaving a
mark.  Simon asked, "How'd you do that?"
   Dan replied, "Advanced technology and enhanced techniques.  Magic."
   ------
   At JRD Industrial Construction, Mario and Sherry ensconced themselves in
the back of the main office in IT and sales.  The rest of us spent the
afternoon around various sites.
   Father and Mother were right on top of things.  They were able to list
pluspoints and outpoints on their remote computers just as fast as they
could spot them -- either spiritually or visibly.
   The Sonoras spent a lot of time with the Hispanic workers, drawing them
out and finding out what issues they had.  Kat and I mainly wandered
around; I asked a couple questions, and Kat was eye candy.  Ouch!  Why'd
you hit me so hard!
   We all met back at the central office.  We passed out a lot of seminar
cards and told them, "Get there if you can this weekend.  If not this
weekend, as soon as you can."
   We bopped back home, wrote up our F&Rs (the others would do theirs and
put them with ours) and were lazy for a while.
   Well, the collectables show was in full swing.  The Collectible Arts
booth had lots of people running through paying a lot of attention to Kat's
stuff.  Good thing the shield was watertight; there was lots of drool.
   The Fs and Simon were passing out cards, promoting their dealers site
and having a blast.  Happy campers.
   Speaking of happy campers, Karen and Oscar Gold came visiting!  Yes!  We
took them, Mario and Sherry to a nice restaurant in Tahoe for dinner.
   Sherry warned the Golds, "You'd better get lots of fuel.  The Wand and
Cauldron of Fire take a lot out of you." They took her at her word and
stoked up.
   We had some shop talk, obviously.  Oscar told us, "Karen and I are
concentrating on recruiting medical people.  We could use nurses, admins,
surgeons and specialists of all sort, everyone.  We're mainly looking at
research specifically on the Moon Base -- or is it Reynolds on the Back
Side?  or up the Back Side?"
   Yeh.  No one had asked me what *I* thought about it -- and probably no
one would, either.  They knew they had a good line to run with for a long
time.
   In the honoring room, Karen was a lovely, peppy lady.  She told me, "We
haven't done much of this sort of stuff for ages.  We've always been so
busy we've had very little time to party.  Now, with you folk, we have
exciting things to do, wonderful people to be around and no pagers to go
off.  That means we can both track down those sweet young thangs and put
our anatomy knowledge to work.  Now, let's get down to some serious
fornicating!"
   We did.  For a long time.  She'd "thunk" her body into excellent
condition and was more than willing to test it out.  Dayum, passion with
experience is a tough combination to beat!
   We _peeked_ at Kat and Oscar, of course.  Oscar was doing some serious
experiments on oral clitoral enlargement; maybe he'd gotten some of the
same emails I'd been getting the last couple years.  All in the name of
science, of course.
   Kat seemed to be objecting loudly.  Or maybe she was egging him on?  At
any rate, Oscar gave a whole new meaning to the phrase, "You said a
mouthful."
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Thursday 7/6)
   Oscar was a wonderful gentleman and really knew his way around a female
body; at least mine.  Yow!  We ended up exploring the Asteroid Belt a
couple times and visited a couple small comets on their way in from the
Oort Cloud.
   Brenda had given us a referral to a colleague in Chicago (went to school
with her, too) to set up a meeting with RRK Inc in Chicago.  Nothing real
deep for right now, just to get an overview of the company.  We decided
Bob, Sean, Eileen, Mario, Sherry and I would represent the new
stockholders.
   Neither Frank, Thelma, Bob nor I could find any major issues from the
Probe Patrol reports so we'd play it by ear for now.  Brenda's referral was
a securities and corporate specialist so she'd probably know the right
things to ask.
   We popped over to Nancy Samuelson's office in an office building in west
Chicago.  Yow!  Brenda knew how to pick them, all right.  George had gotten
together with his dad as soon as we'd started pushing the clann expansions.
Charles had gotten busy; he'd found Nancy a couple months ago, and they'd
recruited five more by now.  Yeh, Charles and Nancy were getting trained on
the new checklists; they would be handling their own recruits from there.
   Nancy was Brenda's age, early 40's.  She'd gone through most of law
school with Brenda, and they'd kept in good touch over the years.  She and
Charles were doing a line together; we old hands could tell she was happy
as an Irishman who'd won the whiskey lottery!
   Yep, they were going to do their own Clann as soon as they had their
original five fully trained -- Real Soon Now.  Good on 'em!
   Anyway, Brenda had ported a CD over to Nancy (eyes only!) with all the
Probe Patrol dossiers, Frank and Thelma's analysis and everything else
Brenda had on RRK.  It included all the will and inheritance data and scans
of all the documents available.
   Nancy'd looked over all the stuff (Bob's check for $50K hadn't hurt) and
now told us, "I did a cross-check on the will, inheritance and all that
with a specialist.  He told me it all looks really tight, especially since
every other branch of the family line is specifically mentioned as not
sharing in it.
   "From your dossiers, RRK looks fairly decent.  Since it's a private
company, there's very little public data available.  However, I've got a
couple, uh, friends who specialize in company research.  They've told me
pretty much the same thing as the security summary said -- about twice as
conservative and stuffy as you could ever imagine.  The principles have
spotless records and excellent local reputations."
   We talked over what we wanted to do with RRK.  The dossiers had spotted
ten of the RRK staff with Potential so we made a target of getting tag
nodes in on all of them; Charles and Nancy would handle them from there.
   Today, we wanted to meet the major players and get some idea of how they
interacted, their organization and their basic investing philosophy.  Nancy
had talked with the CEO last Thursday about an overview/oversight visit
today so we weren't just dropping in.  We figured we would let RRK guide
the visit today, but we'd ensure we got our questions in the pipeline.
   The RRK offices were in Evanston, a college town (Northwestern
University) about 10 miles north of Chicago.  A couple minutes before
10:00, we ported up to a conveniently-empty hallway in the building.
   Nancy loved it.  She and Charles were just starting the teleportation
checklist so this was her first "experience."
   The receptionist/switchboard operator was ready for us and got us into a
good-sized conference room right off the reception area.  So far, the place
looked nicely-maintained without being ostentatious or showy.
   There were several people waiting for us; we did the
gestalt-and-glad-hand routine.  Surprised them quite a bit, you bet! 
Especially since each of us mentioned a different fact about them.  Yeh,
they immediately started wondering how we'd known and how much we knew. 
Better them than us.
   ------
   BOB
   Amanda Anderson, the CEO, had lots of Potential.  I put in the tag node
and put her on Nancy's list for enhancement.  She was in her early fifties,
very healthy and smarter than any whip I'd ever run across.  I "begged" her
to call me Bob, "Please, not Reginald."
   She smiled and told me, "I can understand that, Bob.  Not really a
currently-popular name."
   The CFO was Richard Thiess, about 40.  Another with Potential.  Kat had
already put a tag node into him.  Married with two children.  Hmm, maybe
room for expansion here.
   Last but not least was Trevor McEvoy, the CIO.  Yeh, Irish.  We rattled
away at each other in Irish for a bit (the others from my gang did the
same).  Potential running out his ears; Mario was gonna have a good time
with him.
   Okay.  There were three other staff members with them; the head
Securities Analyst, the corporate lawyer and Physical Assets (real estate,
precious metals, etc.  vice securities).  There was Potential in all of
them.  One of the others must have thought so too, because they already had
tag nodes before I got to them.
   I introduced everyone around as shareholders.  I told Amanda, "Guess I'm
the majority owner.  Nancy told me she'd informed RRK of the share
distribution.  The other four shareholders told me to look out for them
since they couldn't make it today.  That doesn't mean at all they're not
interested."
   Amanda started us out with a PowerPoint presentation.  Why not?  It
started out with RRK in 1891 with the high points of Kelly's policies for
the company.
   Yeh, long-term and conservative.  In 1891, they were about 50-50 into
securities (stock market, bonds, etc.) and hard assets such as real estate
and precious metals.
   They'd ridden out every stock market crash since then.  Kelly's policies
were very clear; don't panic, avoid selling and carefully buy more because
securities were on sale!
   By the end of every crash and recovery, RRK was bigger and wealthier
than before.  By staying in the market with large blue-chip companies,
their stock was worth more than ever -- each time.
   From the beginning, most of the RRK staff were families.  Amanda's
great-grandfather had been the CEO in 1891, and it had been passed down. 
It wasn't exactly nepotism, either.  Being raised "in the business," each
succeeding officer or staff member already had Kelly's philosophy ingrained
in them.
   By following Kelly's policies during the hard times as well as the good
times, the key people knew the policies worked.  While other companies
failed around them during the depressions, the entire RRK staff was
gainfully employed.  Many took voluntary pay cuts during the hard times,
but Kelly's policies restored them retroactively when the good times came
again.  They were loyal to a fault.
   Currently, about 50% of the value was in directly owned real estate, 15%
in precious metals and the rest in securities.  And indeed, the net worth
was just over two billion with a B.
   There was 75 million basically cash on hand.  Most was in money market
funds (very stable, very liquid but only enough return possibly to cover
inflation), and the rest was cash in the bank.
   This was maybe 4% of the value.  Kelly's policies said to have plenty
available to be able to take advantage of "good deals."
   First major note: cross-reference all the properties against Evin's and
Kat's.  Especially if they were adjoining, they would be more valuable to
us together.
   No, they didn't hold any pedestrian rights to the Golden Gate Bridge. 
No swamp land in Florida, exactly, but there were 255 acres near Orlando
which would be perfect expansion room for Disney's Epcot Center. 
Negotiations were in progress with a minimal 500% gain expected.  Not too
shabby.
   We had lunch in, standard lunch fare, and continued while we ate.  We'd
covered the holdings, so we got into the company and staff itself.
   RRK had always been around Chicago.  They'd set up in Evanston while
Kelly was still alive; he'd liked having a university around so he could
pick brains as needed.  They'd moved several times as buildings became
outmoded and currently owned this one outright.  They had two of the five
floors and made a net profit overall leasing the rest.
   Probably 80% of the staff with degrees got them from Northwestern.  With
Chicago and Evanston campuses and Northwestern's work/study programs,
usually by the time someone got their degree, they were already very
familiar with RRK and were ready to start out running when they went full
time.
   We went on a suit tour (Nancy's instructions/request had been normal
business-casual dress) of the facilities.  The entire operation was here in
the building (Diversify?  Disaster recovery from a tsunami in Lake
Michigan? Computer backups?).  While there were a couple prairie-dog farms
(by choice), most of the spaces were open so someone could turn around and
consult with someone on the spot.
   They were running a couple AS400s for the major archival data storage
with a server farm for the last 10 years of activity.  Each analyst (75 of
them) had a high-end personal computer system which was upgraded every
couple years; they did a *lot* of number crunching and research.
   Based on Kelly's policies, the investing philosophy was value-based. 
Before investing in a company, land or other hard asset, they'd do a
thorough research project.  It might take a year before they decided to put
out the money.  They passed up five opportunities for every one they took.
That didn't count the quick looks at mid-sized companies who weren't in the
blue-chip range yet but which they were tracking.
   They did direct investment in companies and bonds as well as mutual
funds.  While the analysts did track the Wall Street reports,
recommendations and such, they did their own research and made their own
recommendations.  Yeh, I'd call that conservative.
   The Board of Directors was the five of them in the meeting, so we could
talk turkey right away.  Per the bylaws, every stockholder was
automatically part of the BoD with a vote proportional to the shares held.
   Guess that made me another honcho.  Shit.  Oh, well.  Someone's gotta
push the air through the first trombone; we all can't be the cymbal player.
   Amanda was currently Chairman of the BoD.  Her (and the rest of them)
biggest concern right now was how we were going to change the way things
ran.  With us now having all the shares and pretty much all the votes, we
could kick them all out, liquidate the entire company, completely change
the operations or pretty much anything else.
   I asked, "Since pretty much everyone's here, let's have a Board meeting.
I've got the other shareholders' proxies so we've definitely got a quorum."
   Yeh, they were nervous and with good reason.  They'd never even heard of
us before (no wonder there), and all they really knew was I was Kelly's
descendant.
   Amanda called an emergency Board meeting on the spot.  She officially
confirmed the transition of the shares and the revocation of their proxies.
That part was a done deal.
   Kat said, "I make a motion the current Board of Directors is confirmed
in their current positions."
   I seconded the motion, and we discussed it.  I told them, "We're not
here to make waves, second-guess you or make trouble.  Right now, we're
simply gathering data.
   "Each one of us has at least one major company we're associated with
right now full-time.  Sean and Eileen just sold eleven companies of their
own while the rest of us either work with JR Donovan in North Hollywood
full time or have their own full-time businesses.
   "There's not going to be any 'new broom sweeps clean' here.  From what
we've seen, you folk are doing a bang-up job.  That being the case, why
should we change something, especially when we don't have the data to make
an informed decision?"
   We could _feel_ their relief.  In their own research, they'd run into
lots of companies which had changed management and had re-staffed.  Maybe
one out of five had done any better, and three had gone out of business
within the next couple of years.
   There was very little other discussion.  We passed the affirmation
motion unanimously.
   I had Sean and Eileen pass out seminar cards (zero discount).  I told
the "old" BoD members, "This is going to be a required attendance seminar.
It's tomorrow in Los Angeles so I don't expect any of you to show up on
such short notice.  Sean can tell you about other ones coming up."
   Sean went over the current seminar plans.  While not fully scheduled
yet, Fillmore was setting up three more in the next three months.  He gave
a very short description and emphasised the fact Cullen Enterprises had
thirty companies with no failures.  He said, "Granted, these were sole
proprietorships, but everything scales up.  JRD is going to have each of
its 28 companies do the seminar and get the policies in.
   "These are organizational policies, not operational.  As far as I can
see without studying them, Kelly's policies were mainly operational. 
Nothing wrong with that at all."
   I made the comment the BoD would probably authorize all expenses for the
staff and families to attend.  "We'll expect the entire Board and the other
executives to do it.  Make a weekend of it; we'll even show you around some
of our companies.  They'll be really small potatoes, but Sean can show you
how well his companies are running.  That'll give you some idea of how
effective these policies are and why we want you to know them and implement
them down the line."
   I got that they were interested because we were.  The fact Sean had
thirty companies, and we were implementing in 28 larger ones gave them some
feeling of safety.  So far, they were going to reserve judgment.
   Amanda asked, "Now, what can we do for you?  How can we help you?"
   We trotted out our list of issues.  Kat said, "There's three bullion
storage companies we're using where we've got some concern about the
security.  We feel there's some weak spots.  Granted, they've all got
insurance, but if something happens, rates can go up, and it's probably a
real hassle for them and us.  Plus, the insurance only covers about 25% of
the value."
   Physical Assets was immediately and deeply concerned.  She looked over
our reports and speculations for a minute then asked, "How did you come up
with this?"
   We just grinned.  Eileen said, "For now, it's like the military.  Don't
ask and we won't tell.  Don't take our word for it; go ahead and check it
out.  As clients, you've got the right to inquire and do some inspections."
   We'd found several properties where there was some slippery stuff going
on RRK should probably be aware of.  One fairly remote one had a staging
point for some drug smugglers; we figured if RRK handled it and tipped off
the authorities, it would cover their butts.  Of course, ramonetheeye was
always willing to help, but we didn't tell them that -- yet.
   We had ten other issues in companies in which RRK had a large position.
The Probe Patrol had found the irregularities (embezzlement, SEC
violations, labor violations and similar stuff), and had found the entry
points to start pulling the strings.  Given the entry points, the RRK staff
could ferret them out pretty quickly.  Correcting them ahead of time would
result in a much better stock position than if they were discovered from
the outside.
   Again, don't ask and we won't tell.
   I had one final thing.  I produced a card for Waystation 1 (Vera's).  I
handed it to Amanda and said, "Everyone has their pet projects; here's one.
Charitable contributions are always welcome."
   Amanda glanced at the card and asked, "How much are we talking here?"
   I took the card back and wrote, "$1 million" on it.
   She didn't turn a hair.  I said, "I'm sure you can find a way to make it
the best tax advantage you can.  Not to tell you your business, but perhaps
donating stock it can sell rather than cash might be to both your
benefits."
   The RRK corporate lawyer got a shark's grin.  Yeh, he already had
several ways to do it.
   There being no further new business, Amanda adjourned the meeting.
   We made dinner arrangements.  Those with families were urged to invite
them; the receptionist made reservations at a local restaurant.  We had two
hours before it happened, so we took our leave, ducked around the corner
and ported back to Nancy's office.
   Nancy told us, "I think everything will go just fine.  Amanda's going to
pass the word to the staff you're maintaining the status quo and there'll
be no 'new broom.' That'll go a long way towards relieving some stress from
the last week."
   We L.A.  folk popped back home to dress for dinner (shirt and tie for us
guys) and relax a few minutes.
   We kicked back and talked a bit.  We all agreed they were good folk and
by enhancing the Talented ones, we'd have a tremendous advantage.  Mario
asked, "Granted we have only a little information right now, how can we use
them to the best advantage for our safe haven and colony research?  Right
now it seems those have a fairly high priority."
   Sherry came up with, "One of the papers they gave us listed the
positions they hold.  Right now, the highest percentage of the target
companies stock they hold is 10%.  Perhaps once they get enhanced and learn
about the effort, we can start picking up more stock in appropriate
companies or even buy some outright.  Of course, JRD could do the same.
   "Down the line, then, if we pick the right ones, we could control or
influence suppliers and manufacturers.  Just from what I've heard from the
Skunk Works, I'll bet we'll have some really interesting products for some
semi-conductor manufacturer.  Products could be for sale to the public or
just for us depending on what they are.
   "Just as a thought, I'd prefer we stay out of military-only products;
DoD regulations can be a real bear as we found out at Vail.  The really
advanced stuff we should probably get produced as components then we have
someone else do the assembly.  Maybe the spiritual multi-media record and
playback will be an actual physical device.  If that's the case, we'll be
'in the market' for thousands for our own use and zero for public use.
   "I can't see how we could explain them to the public beyond 'magic.'
We'd probably have every government agency, foreign government, consumer
group and what have you on it like brown on rice."
   Yeh.  That'll require some planning.  Toss it on the list for the Skunk
Works.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   We popped back to Evanston for dinner with the RRK folk.  Nice
restaurant.  Amanda (or whomever) had the RRK families interspersed with us
so we could talk and eat at the same time.
   Bob and I sat with Trevor and his fiancee, Joan Brannigan.  Yep, she was
Irish and had lots of Potential.  Why weren't we surprised at either?
   Sean and Eileen sat with us so we rattled away in Irish.  The Chicago
Irish had a slightly different accent with some different slang.  We had a
real good time exploring some of the slang differences.
   When I told them everyone from our gang spoke Burbank Irish (grin), they
weren't quite sure if they believed us.  They changed their tune after
Mario and Sherry rattled away with them for a while in
Irish-with-Spanish-influence.  We shrugged it all off with, "That's another
don't ask and we won't tell -- yet.'"
   The Bob gang did a solid gestalt-and-glad-hand with the family members
we hadn't met yet.  If someone from RRK got to wondering (mentally) how we
knew so much, we sent them a couple _don't worry about it_ thoughts.
   While RRK had a lot of family descendants and relatives, it wasn't run
like a family business.  It was more on the stricter functionalities of a
"normal" business.  What was really good, though, was similar to Madeleine
with JRD.  Being family brought a lot of in-built loyalty to the table.
   Being Trevor's fiancee didn't stop Joan from eyeballing Bob -- and Sean,
Eileen and me -- pretty good.  I saw her looking at my boobs and
_wondering_ how they'd be in her mouth and hands.  My nips promptly rose to
the occasion.  I grinned at her and winked.  _"Who knows what arrangements
can be made."_ She blushed all the way down into her blouse.
   Dayum, am I getting as predatory as most of the women who looked at Bob?
Maybe, but Joan was a right fine package of Red Irish lady!
   Back home, we decided the day was a success.  Bob said, "I think we'll
find some firm business and personal allies there.  Besides, I saw Joan
giving you the bi-eye." Big Bob-smile.
   "Yeh.  None of the women held back much looking *you* over, either. 
Stud!"
   ------
   (Friday 7/7)
   Kind of a relax day.  We looked over the latest and greatest at the
Skunk Works and chatted with Ana.  Evin had put down a $5,000 hold on the
lease at the JRD office building; we were waiting to fire up a corporation
or two before we got into it.
   The books the Skunk Works brought back were warmed up, and there were
several people looking them over.  Of course we put our eyeballs on them
too.
   With the idea the language was right-to-left and top-to-bottom, the text
looked, em, interesting.  There was a definite repetition of symbols, and
the letters(?) were plain rather than decorative or pictographic like
Arabic or Chinese.  On the other hand, we had no experience of a
non-Western language or fonts, so what did we know?
   There were lots of pictures to go with the text.  They'd decided already
the books started at the "back" and went to the front to go along with the
right-to-left.
   Henry told us, "This one looks a good deal like a child's primer.  The
'A is for Apple' type." Yeh, there was a picture of something (Who knows?
an animal of some sort?) and a short phrase below it.  About 50 pages
later, there was an obvious numeric section.  A blank picture, a symbol. 
One dot, another symbol and so on up to 10 symbols.  11 dots and the second
and first symbol together.
   Henry said, "Probably base ten.  They've got a zero, and base ten is
really easy to shift the decimal for an order of magnitude.  Notice what
I'd say are page numbers run along the bottom just as the symbols do. 
Should be straightforward if the premise is correct."
   Valerie told us, "We found a linguist, too.  She should be in here
tomorrow; she'll wet her panties when she sees this stuff."
   Amanda called Bob on his cell phone.  Of course I _listened_ in through
his ear.  "The documents to transfer a million dollars of various shares
just went out to Mesa.  With all the tax messing around, we'll both make
out like an Irishman on St.  Patrick's day; in this year's taxes alone,
we'll save over a half million because we don't have to pay the capital
gains.
   "This may turn out to be a viable way to make money by giving it away.
Any other new ideas?"
   Bob told her, "Keep that idea in mind, Amanda.  We might well be setting
up another Waystation here in Los Angeles County.  It would probably be
able to use a hefty injection of funds."
   ------
   BOB
   Megan appeared for dinner.  I somehow got the idea my social secretaries
wanted to cash in her Soo Laid before it gathered too much interest.  Me
complain?  Hardly.  I'd had my eye on those sweet-looking hills on her
chest for several weeks.
   She was doing great!  Especially with her memories flooding back, her
maturity had been soaring ever since she'd been enhanced.  She told us, "I
know I'll still be going to school.  My folks are pretty mundane, but I've
been pumping them up for a couple weeks.
   "They're exchanging thoughts and concepts between them; they just think
they're really getting along well.  They think very little of me running
around with the Brain Trust and really like Dan and Art.
   "Yeh, they have some thoughts I might be doing the deed with them, but
they're not really worried.  Bob's reputation goes a *long* way.  They
haven't had one racist thought about Dan being Black or Art being Hispanic;
it's never come up."
   They had a threesome enhancement team running.  They'd run five newbies
through the mill already up to the teleportation checklist, had six they
were working with on the training checklist and a dozen they were
enhancing. She told us, "No lack of work, for sure.  We kids really
appreciate the income, too.  Not big bucks like you guys, but it buys some
nice clothes and rents some DVDs."
   She sure wasn't spending it on bras.  If she was, she'd have to have
been buying a larger one every couple days.  She was delightfully, em,
enhanced without being top-heavy in any respect.
   I quietly put The Question to her.  She laughed, flushed and told me,
"YES!  Don, Art and I have been practicing since school's been out. 
They've been very selflessly dedicated to ensuring I was ready for the
Sorcerer's Grip and Wand.  Maybe, if I'm really 'unlucky,' I'll run into
the Rod of Chastisement too."
   Answered that unasked question.
   In the honoring room, she was wonderfully sweet and fiery.  I thought
I'd have to be extremely careful with her 11-year-old(!) body, but she
squirmed herself right down onto the Wand without a moment's hesitation. 
Dayum, she was tight!
   Taking the Cullen analogy, we started right out with some solid base
hits and graduated in a half hour to wonderfully-intense home runs.  We
stretched it out to a very nice walk on the beach where we surfed some
gentle waves from the ocean of admiration and love.
   Her sweet breasts were perfect handfuls for the Grip and delicious
mouthfuls for taste-testing.  They tasted and felt wonderful!
   She specifically asked if Kat could join us.  "I've only tried Valerie
this lifetime, and I've been having some, em, interest."
   Well, Kat wasn't all averse to helping a sweet young lady expand her
horizons.  Megan almost went delirious when she got around Kat's
ready-and-willing clitoris.  "Yes!  Pretty please!  Can I kiss it?"
   Permission grudgingly (yeh, right) granted, she demonstrated either a
lot of native talent, good coaching or some really good memories.  Kat was
in full scream within ten minutes.  Seems Megan's tongue was quite long,
somewhat prehensile and unerringly located her G-spot.  Yeh, the grand slam
took us on the start of a good tour of the Asteroid Belt.
   Chapter 10
   KATHLEEN (Sunday 7/10)
   We did our best to be lazy, but it was a challenge.  Bob and I studied
the RRK holdings reports Amanda had supplied.  Dayum, with all the real
estate it controlled plus the real estate the temps were finding (probably
more in the in-basket), we had land, land and buildings, farmland, desert,
swamp and just about any other combination you could think of scattered
around the world.
   Mario snatched us a summary from the JRD server on what they'd found so
far of Evin's and my properties.  In about an hour, we had a map of the
U.S. with points in green, red and blue for JRD companies, Evin's and my
holdings and RRK holdings.
   Not bad, there were clusters around Las Vegas, Dallas and Albuquerque.
Sherry pointed out, "For what it's worth, they're all in year-round
climates -- summer heat doesn't stop transportation -- and near major
airports and Interstates.  Something to keep in mind for manufacturing and
distribution.  R&D locations could probably be most anywhere since we're
not talking much transportation."
   Yeh.  While there was no real reason everything had to be based in the
U.S., at least we were somewhat familiar with it.  On the other hand, Asia
had very cheap labor, and we had some land there.  Well, that's why we have
experts; hire 'em and let them make a recommendation.
   Mario tucked the information back on the server and everyone took off
for some fun.
   Bob and I popped out to Moorpark for a round of golf.  He behaved
himself and only _licked_ me three times.  At least it wasn't while we were
running full-speed in the cart.
   I pulled off an 88 while he tagged along with a 95.  He got that because
I was able to coach him in some course management.  Grin.
   We popped back home, got our showers and relaxed in the Jacuzzi.  Note:
Get a bigger pump for the water jets.  Real big grin.
   Seemed the Collectible Arts show was successful.  The staff looked worn
to a frazzle, their display shelves were almost bare, and they'd collected
500 or so dealers for their online catalog.
   Dan and Art did their magic and retrieved my stuff.  Since they were
nice enough to bring it to our house, we snagged Megan and took everyone to
dinner.
   Bermuda wasn't bad, even if it was a bit humid.  Megan and I eyed each
other and grinned a lot.  She whispered to me, _"They're gonna get lots of
workouts -- starting tonight.  Hope we'll have time for the enhancements;
we've got 75 on the queue now."_
   Dan and Art were blissfully unaware of the fate in store for them. 
Lambs to the slaughter!
   Riona and the other Education Officers had talked Mario into setting up
an enterprise-wide member database on the very-secure JRD server.  Knowing
Riona, I figured she'd offered him some interesting, em, fringe benefits.
   With about 25 dumb, cheap computers on a dedicated network, as someone
got enhanced, the trainer would enter their information directly into the
database.  Since the trainers had spent time with each newbie, they'd
gotten a good idea of any special talents or training so those could be put
in at the same time.  That was the main reason for the database.
   Ben or any of the Skunk Works folk could do a quick query on the
database and come up with anyone available who had expertise in, say,
electrical power systems.  Mario said, "They've tentatively structured
about twenty different teams so far.  Some might have only one or two
people and the largest one so far has been ten.  *Everyone*'s hot to trot."
   Anyone could also use one of the "terminals" for queries, logging
confidential materials in and out, entering/updating our confidential
material and so on.  Mario and Maggie were handling backups so we weren't
concerned about those.
   Yeh.  Speaking of hot to trot, our Babies Within got a good drenching
that night.  Must be doing something right, because they were really
growing!
   ------
   Monday morning, Bob and I ported the safe deposit box from the Arizona
bank to our dining room table.  Bring the mountain to Muhammad!
   It was one of the big ones and was stuffed full.  Dayum, more real
estate deeds and papers, gems, two hundred bars of platinum, more comic
books and cards and $250,000 in cash.
   Well, we knew what to do with the papers; they went to our temp team's
in-basket.  The platinum, cash and gems (a couple million bucks?) went into
our stash below the house, and we bundled the collectables to take over to
Collectible Arts for the Fs to drool over.
   I ported the empty box back and made a note to close the account.  No
reason to spend the money for an empty box.
   I got the information and keys to the other three storage areas Evin had
discovered.  Mario, Sherry, Bob and I popped over to the one in Phoenix
with the automobiles.
   The door was very stubborn like it hadn't been opened in a long time. 
It groaned and complained but yielded to our _touch_.
   Furniture and four automobiles up on blocks.  Okay.  The furniture
looked like collectables; everything was very ornately carved and inlaid.
We ported a couple pieces to the back yard to photograph them.
   Bob said, "The automobiles are obviously collectables.  Even I know a
Cord is valuable.  There's an Edsel, a Rolls-Royce and a Jaguar.  Probably
dayum near mint condition if I had to take a guess."
   All righty, then!  We closed the place up and popped back home.  Bob
took pictures of the furniture there and ported it back.  Sorry, they were
too ornate even for us wimmin's tastes.
   One by one the automobiles appeared then disappeared after a long
scrutiny.  Bob and Mario drooled over them while Sherry and I soaked up
some sun.  Everyone has their toys.
   We decided the titles, bills of sale, etc.  for all the stuff was
probably in one of the piles of paper from the various safe deposit boxes.
There was another box in New York City to exhume; we'd get to it next week.
   Okay.  We'd slacked off on studies after graduation but had some more to
do fairly lively.  The four of us decided to spend a couple hours a day
scanning the CE detail manuals then doing a formal study.  If we were
insisting on getting them into JRD, RRK and the new SW companies, we should
know what we were advocating.
   We had a quick _talk_ with Eileen.  In their opinion, the first seminar
had been a tremendous success.  She told us, _"We're all still a bit high
from it."_
   She was more than willing to sell JRD ten sets of detail manuals.  I
_talked_ with Siobhan who cut a check and ported it over to them.  In five
minutes total elapsed time, we had four sets sitting on our den table. 
Beat that, UPS!
   We found spots for them in the den bookcases and spent several hours
skimming.  Lots of *good* stuff!
   ------
   BOB
   Clann Meeting time.  Mother's dining room was packed with at least 60
bodies and over 100 spirits _looking_ over shoulders.  Must be something
interesting gonna happen.  Me, I'm just the Ceann and am usually the last
to get informed of anything.  Grin.
   Mary Shinto was first up.  "Well, the stem cells seemed to have done
their job." She showed off her right thumb.  "We think the nail will
toughen up more and the strength will go up as I exercise it.  I'm
carefully avoiding 'thinking' so it'll be a fair test."
   She pulled off her blouse and displayed two perfect breasts.  "Yeh, the
nerves and everything are back.  If you can drag your eyes off my boobs,
you'll also notice all the scars are gone, the nose and cheekbone are
'normal' and the skin is pretty damn good."
   Unknown spirit: _"And you can rest assured Sam is running stringent
Quality Control checks *very* frequently."_
   Good chuckle.  Mary flushed a little and said, "Well, this is R&D,
right? You've got to monitor the experiments and gather the proper
metrics." Five people around Sam patted him on the back and complimented
him on his dedication to science.
   Mary continued, "So, this gives us successful runs on older bodies and
pubescent bodies.  As far as we can tell, a lot can be done with the
decision process before the stem cells are needed.  We'll probably use the
stem cells for replacing major items.
   "For now, we're calling the stem-cell regeneration a qualified success
-- time will tell -- and recommending the 'think' process to start
anything. How about a good round of applause for Ana, the Drs.  Gold and
the oversight committee!"
   Yes!  They really got a round for a good minute.
   Ana got up for a bit.  "Remember that Frank, Thelma and Mary risked
quite a bit doing this.  That's why we do clinical studies.
   "Now on another note.  You recall Ben talking about the _touch_ filters.
We've done successful experiments on our long-suffering animals.  We can
install filters by the liver, heart or pretty much anywhere in the body to
filter out blood-stream organisms or compounds.  If there's a specific
location needing attention such as genital herpes or an internal cancer, we
can run a filter over it several times -- so the body can recover between
passes -- and remove it completely.
   "Start coarse then get finer.  Especially in the blood-stream filters,
we've successfully stacked or ganged several filters in series so an
organism such as a virus and its toxic byproducts are removed at the same
time.
   "Looks like we've got another winner!  We probably won't do it often;
our studies on the limited population of old-timer ones of us indicates the
body will handle a *lot* of stuff even without 'thinking' it away or with
stem cells.  Probably with the general predisposition towards good health,
a minor illness will simply run its course.
   "We're keeping a close eye on Bridget, George and Dermot whether they
know it or not.  Lots of children have the 'usual' childhood diseases and
develop resistance through antibodies.  We're not gonna shortcut that
natural process.
   "Being in control of themselves and to a great extend their bodies,
we've decided to let the bodies do what's needed.  Any of you folk with
kids know what a trial it appears to be to go through some colic, an ear
infection and similar childhood diseases.
   "Both George and Bridget have had ear infections.  A 'normal' baby would
have been screaming for a couple days.  George and Bridget reported a minor
pressure discomfort and a small amount of pain.
   "Baby bodies seem to have three levels of comfort.  Completely happy
baby, very mild discomfort like being a bit chilly and I'm-dying-in-agony.
Has little to do with what's actually happening.
   "So we're recommending a quick checkout for an illness.  If it's a
'natural' one, we'll recommend letting it run.  If it's a new one or
extremely virulent, we'll do something about it.
   "So, the moral is, your bodies are not invulnerable.  We've got
protection against physical trauma and general diseases but are still as
susceptible as anyone else to fast-acting neurotoxins or chemicals and some
biological warfare.  Be smart and don't swallow sewer water!"
   Maura Nolan told us about the Waystation project, "We've found some
decent sites and have at least lip support from a lot of organizations and
municipal governments.  When Sean established the Mesa project, he spent a
solid four months of his own time.
   "Granted, it was a pilot, and we know one hell of a lot more now.  Lots
of 'ifs' here in L.A.  though.  None of us can afford to spend full-time on
the project, so we're gonna have to train and delegate, probably to
mundanes.  Clanns Cullen and Reynolds will probably have some more
discussions on how to go about it.
   "The surveys definitely show it's both needed and wanted along with some
desirable locations.  On the other hand, with our drive for Clann
expansions, we might just run across the perfect match for someone to head
it all up.  Keep it in mind while you're training or tagging someone and
ensure it gets into their special abilities list on the database."
   Well, it was time to talk a bit about RRK Inc.  I gave them a quick
rundown on the inheritance chain while carefully leaving out The dreaded
Name.  Sherry was depositing tiny amounts of liquid waste into her panties
while she tried not to laugh.  Maybe she was plotting some payback for Kat
and me plopping her bare butt on the bathroom floor?
   I told them, "So, we now have another possibly very valuable resource.
There's several Potentials in the current staff, the BoD is entirely
Talented and Charles Tanner is already starting up a Clann in the area. 
With interlocking executives, we'll probably be able to coordinate a lot of
effort between RRK and JRD.
   "My long-term outlook is towards the safe havens and colonies.  The
consensus among the JRD Exec Council and the new RRK BoD seems to be the
same.  Sean appears to have much the same think if I'm not mistaken.  Just
like an Admin Scale, the business decisions we make will need to align with
that goal."
   Maggie had requested some time, so I gave her the floor.  She climbed up
on the table (while giving everyone a good look at her cute butt in green
panties) and talked a bit.  No cuties right now, just "plain" Bridget.
   "George and I are pretty much the same right now.  We've 'thunk' our
bodies into some advanced physical maturity so we can walk, talk and pretty
much pass as Little People -- with a little _touch_ help.  Not too bad for
seven months old, right?"
   Her hair went very-curly blonde, and she gave us a quick rendition of
Shirley Temple's "Good Ship Lollypop." Really fun.
   "We're not gonna push it much from now on.  We're pretty mobile and can
fake a lot of stuff so there's no reason to force things.  Yeh, we probably
could do some drastic growing, but it really wouldn't gain us much.
   "Anyway, how many of you tuned in on the Cullen fertility rites?" We got
an affirmative from everyone there.
   Maggie continued, "Notice the sound and the visual enhancements?  Those
were all mentally created."
   She talked briefly about holograms and transducers.  Holy crap!  She
wasn't done yet, either.  Remote viewing with transducers and/or nodes and
two-way _touches_!  Yowsah!  Just what some of us had been looking for!
   She cautioned us, "We did some research and decided there is a
discernible difference between the two-way _touches_ and physical
perceptions with bodies.  Each will have its uses."
   The Skunk Works would be putting out "technical bulletins" on technology
like these they'd discovered.  While they wouldn't be required as part of
initial training, they'd be Real Good Things to know about.
   She had a last note, "We've got a lot of technical stuff.  The main
thing we wanna caution you about is cookbooking.  Look at a cookbook
sometime.  An amateur cook, which most of us are, would look at a recipe,
substitute something and give it a shot.  Sometimes it'll work and
sometimes it won't.  Pure rote work.
   "With these technologies, we want you to *think*.  The training,
teleportation and other checklists are designed to enable you to
*understand* the technologies from the ground up without cookbooking the
results.
   "For example, the filters Ben and Ana talked about.  The technical
bulletin will cover them from the ground up with all the theory.  Don't
short-cut the understanding; look at it with your own viewpoints of
applying it.
   "The Cullen bond-mates, for whatever reason, seem to end up in the
Asteroid Belt fairly frequently.  Hehehehe.  Sean noticed there's lots of
metal from plain iron up to the extremely rare elements.  Can we use a
filter to extract and purify?  Probably.  What if we could supply
semiconductor manufacturers with a ready-to-go custom semiconductor
substrate at a tenth of the cost they're currently paying with maybe a day
or so lead time?  Custom alloys?  Pure water from asteroid ice?
   "I'll toot my bond-mate's horn here!  This is one reason Kate Hanlon is
part of the Skunk Works.  She has very little technical background but
always looks at fundamentals and basics when she asks her 'dumb' questions.
BB, CE's resident 'dumb blonde,' does the same.  Look at fundamentals,
basics and whys.
   "We've all bopped around the Moon Base -- or is it The Sorcerer's
Palace? -- and marveled at the technologies.  Yeh, it is impressive.  It
may take longer, but we're gonna find out by hook or crook the underlying
principles behind everything we can.
   "If we can make our own equipment, we might start with attempting to
replicate or reproduce something.  We're not gonna cookbook anything,
though.  There's mechanical teleporters up there.  We're gonna find out how
and why they work, not just duplicate.
   "These are interesting times and hopefully it won't be a curse, either.
Look at things from your own viewpoints.  Make the data, knowledge and
understanding your own.  Truth is what works, and any one of us could be
the one to ask the question or make the observation which gives us a
quantum leap."
   Yeh, we gave her a two-minute ovation while she turned into a miniature
torch singer with huge boobs and cleavage and belted out a short song in a
wide-spectrum voice with a full orchestral accompaniment -- the kettledrums
rattled the room.  Wouldn't match Leone, but it was fun for everyone.
   Ben got his turn.  "Thank you, Maggie!  Here's a few quick notes on
Skunk Works progress.  We've got three linguists at work on the language;
they're making excellent progress by anyone's standards.
   "There's three engineers looking at bringing the atmosphere equipment
back on line to warm the place up and get the air back to what's normal for
us.  Just one question from Kate gave us a tremendous jump start; she
asked, 'We warm up our Jacuzzi and air inside our home shields with our
_touches_.  Would that work up there?' Guess what?  We're porting air in
gradually and have brought the pressure up several pounds.
   "We're taking it pretty slowly so the equipment will warm up gradually.
Just dumping in air from Death Valley at over 100 degrees has raised the
air temperature thirty degrees already.  Probably once we get the pressure
up to 'normal' we'll start _touch_ warming.
   "Looked like they made their own atmosphere from water, rock, etc.  --
extract the oxygen and use the hydrogen and other gases for other things --
and other basics; once we get things up to a reasonable temperature, we'll
be figuring it out.  We're having a great time!"
   They'd also made more real estate discoveries.  "Two more power plants.
The circuits trace to the manufacturing area and hangar.  One is very
similar to the original one we found and brought up; the other one looks
like it might be a fusion reactor.
   "From the size and composition of the conductors, the fusion reactor
could probably supply the entire United States in the middle of the biggest
heat wave we've ever had.  Either the manufacturing machinery just takes a
lot of power or they have a lot running at once.  There's stuff in there
from the size of a pen up to overflowing a sports arena -- seats, parking
lot and all.  Lots of engineers are crapping their drawers."
   He reported on the spiritual-multimedia, physical training and
self-defense.  Any of us could probably play back our perceptual memory or
"borrow" someone else's.  For now, that would suffice.  They had some hints
already some of the Moon Base technology had a two-way thought and physical
interface.  We shall see.
   They'd "collected" or cataloged several people's physical training
routines.  Technical bulletin to follow.
   For self-defense, they'd provisionally decided to recommend the Krav
Maga.  "We're actively looking for an expert with Potential we can enhance.
Even if we never find or develop a 'mechanical' thought device, we could
still probably bring someone up to a decent level in an extremely short
time.  Work is in progress."
   Jaysus, still more stuff!  Evin told us, "You've probably all heard the
spirit-rumor we're gonna set up the Skunk Works as a company then spin off
a manufacturing company.  That's still in the plan."
   He and the other one of us lawyers had decided to create the companies
off-shore.  Between the security -- keeping attention off Clann members --
and taxes, there were lots of advantages.  It would just take longer to set
up.
   No big deal right now.  He told us, "JRD's leased the rest of the floor
it's on plus the entire one above it.  We can legally sublet down the line
after our companies are set up.  In the meantime, there's space for the
initial Skunk Works R&D with a couple hundred people in residence; we've
already outgrown our medical research lab."
   Pat had something to say, too.  "Valerie and I did another scan of Los
Angeles and San Bernardino area yesterday.  Sensitives are now at 20,000
and that's excluding the 1,400 we've already tagged for enhancement."
   He scowled at the Cullen Sisters and glared at Maggie.  He asked, "Now
how did that happen?  We'll bet there was some leakage from the fertility
rite a couple weeks ago!"
   The three accused pointed fingers at each other and loudly (but not very
convincingly) proclaimed their innocence.  Right.  And Megan Foster's a
virgin.
   ------
   After the general meeting, we had a Clanns Council meeting with all the
Clann heads (plus Charles and Nancy from Chicago with John Beal and his
wife from Tech Pubs).  Yeh, they were already seriously considering
creating Clanns.  Plenty of work for the implementation team!
   We had the decision-makers from each Clann -- the Ceann and usually the
mates.  Yeh, Sean had his entire harem.  I'd asked them to get together to
ensure we were all agreed on our priorities.
   I said, _"Welcome to everyone and thank you for attending.  I'd like to
ensure we're all aligned in what we're doing.  The Skunk Works we'll just
let run; JRD will fund the initial startup since we can put it right in our
building before the corporation chain's set up._
   _"Everyone familiar with what most of us have decided our long, medium
and short-term goals are?"_
   They were.  We had maybe a ten-minute discussion and decided: a)
Expanding our size and membership was both in progress and very desirable.
Let it run full-tilt.  b) Each Clann needed a safe haven on Earth, even if
it was only for a month or so.  c) Off-planet colonies should be actively
investigated (long-term), planned and implemented.  d) At the same time we
were getting ready to bail out, we wanted to make this world better by
being here.
   John Beal (Las Vegas area) asked, _"I like the idea of the Skunk Works
and the associated manufacturing company.  Now, when we come out with
something like a home-size fusion reactor for $5,000, lots of governments
and companies will be extremely interested in how we managed it.  Any
thoughts on how we're going to present these advanced technologies?_
   _"I suppose we could use Maggie's holograms and have some of our
youngsters float down in a spaceship as little green men.  Plenty of Sci-Fi
stories about that."_
   I thought it was an excellent question.  That brought up the possibility
of governments finding out about the Moon Base (from energy emissions? 
Normal exploratory flights?), and how we'd handle it.  Do we "own" the Moon
Base by right of possession?
   Caitlin suggested, _"Let's put our lawyer-types to work on the ownership
issue; that's right up their alley.  In addition to the technologies John
mentioned, if we're supplying 100,000 tons of pure nickel, how do we
deliver it and account for it?  Someone's gonna get nosy."_
   Yeh.  Vera pointed out with the massive membership expansion, our
existence might well be inadvertently compromised.  _"I'm surprised
Burbank, Altadena and the rest of Southern California hasn't been totally
invaded by psychic investigators already.  I suppose it's even possible to
deduce our existence just from the phenomena._
   _"If so, and Homeland Security tries to pick some of us up, what's our
plan?  While we could simply disappear from custody, that's rather hard on
the home life.  Just plead ignorance and ask for our lawyer?"_
   Sounded like another job for the lawyers.  What the hell, Evin just sits
around the office and flirts with his secretary anyway.
   Nancy Samuel said, _"Sounds as if we legal beagles have some work to do.
As a request, if any of your members are legal folk or as you run across
them, get them in contact with me ASAP.  Sounds as if we have plenty to
organize on that front."_
   BB brought up, _"Seems like we have a 'Supreme Council' or Clanns
Council here.  Since the individual Clanns have a Ceann or leader, we
should have a set of officers, too, just to get in some organization.  I
nominate Bob Reynolds of Clann Reynolds in Burbank for Ceann Ceann. 
Hehehehe."_
   Rodrigo Fuerte promptly seconded the nomination.  Kat whispered to me,
_"You will *not* decline.  You wouldn't like what I'd do to you."_
   No other nominations.  I got elected Ceann Squared or whatever.  Eileen
sympathized with me, though, _"Guess someone has to be the first violinist.
We can't all play the triangle.  Hehehehe."_ Shit.
   We elected Rodrigo as VP (gotcha!), Eileen as Secretary and Bill (got
you, too!) as Treasurer.  Guess we've got another non-profit corporation to
set up.  Dayum, I thought I had it bad when the only thing I had to worry
about was fighting off the Clann Reynolds women!
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Sherry was gonna bust a gut!  Grand Pubah!  Most High Supreme Leader. 
Betcha she, George and Mario'd think up a lot of good titles -- not to
mention Maggie and the rest of us clowns.
   It wasn't that I wanted my hubby to be the boss; I thought he was the
most qualified of all the people I knew.  We'd privately discussed a lot of
these topics over the last several months so I figured he had the best
handle on the issues.  In my mind, his integrity was not the least in
doubt.
   Okay.  Bob assigned Nancy to be the lead lawyer for the moment and to
get as many of her colleagues as she desired working on the issues.  What
do we do if a foreign government or a big corporation attempts to kidnap
one of us?  We needed a common plan of action, for sure.
   I was nice to him; I didn't rub it in -- then.
   The game was sure getting bigger all the time.  Some wild sleigh ride,
right?  And the hill was getting steeper, and we were going faster.  Guess
we do have a choice; we could opt out and ignore the entire situation. 
Yeh, right.
   ------
   Tuesday was a golf day.  Why not?  Everything was delegated.  We
gathered Leone, Mark, the Drs.  Gold, Ana and Don, and Bob and me together
and headed out.  Two foursomes wasn't bad.
   Bob and I teamed with Leone and Mark.  We were nice and didn't _tease_
them.  Besides, they'd _tease_ right back!  We started at the familiar
DeBell course first thing in the morning then popped out to Hanson Dam in
the afternoon.
   Not too shabby.  Both Leone and Mark were 80's players while Bob was
getting there.  He pulled off a 92 on the first round and a 93 on the
second.  I'll bet he'll get a lot better after he reads Peltz's book on
course management.  I was almost hesitant to recommend it; he might beat
me! As if it really made a difference.
   I ensured the rest of the golfers were aware of Bob's new High
Muckity-Muckness.  They got a great laugh out of it and immediately started
coming up with Pointy Haired Boss jokes as well as good titles for him.  I
still liked "Reynolds Palace" as a good name for the Moon Base.
   We took everyone to dinner on Catalina Island since it was only a hop
(no skip nor jump) away.  Good seafood and a lovely steak.  The Golds each
had a little wine to settle things down.
   We were definitely relaxed around each other.  Having made torrid love
with someone for a night either makes things scary or really loosens
someone up.  Guess which was the case.
   Mark told us Fillmore was almost ready to show them a promotion plan for
their music.  "We thought they liked what they heard.  It's pretty hard to
shine us on." Great!
   Karen asked The Question I'd been mulling over most of the day, "So,
Mark.  Are you two gonna be shacking up for the next year or so or can we
plan another wedding soon?"
   Mark turned a little pale while Leone fixed him in place with a familiar
predatory look.  His mouth moved a few times, and he scratched his head. 
He said, "Well, we've talked all around it.  What with the recording
sessions going on and getting with Fillmore, we really hadn't had a chance
to talk."
   The waiter was bringing desert -- mud pie -- so we stopped a moment to
let him deliver it and leave.
   Leone wasn't quite sure if she should kill him right there or wait until
she had a better chance to hide the body.  Then again, she had four friends
right there ready to help her at least move the body.
   Oscar said, "Eat your deserts before it melts and runs onto your lap."
   We picked up our forks and started.  Leone was staring down at her plate
and wasn't doing anything; we looked at it.  There was a glistening ring
standing upright in the mud pie.
   Mark said, "Leone, sweetheart, best student I've ever tutored...  will
you marry me?"
   There's a first time for everything; she was speechless for a couple
seconds.  She climbed all over him while kissing his face off!  Guess
that's a yes.
   We applauded!  Yes!  Very well-done!  Obviously the Golds had been in on
the whole thing.  That didn't stop Bob and me from laughing, though.
   Leone fished out the ring, gave it a little flip (cleaning off with a
_touch_) then slipped it on.  It was a little large, but it immediately
shrank a half size and fit perfectly.
   She glared at Mark.  "Nebish zhlub!" (nerd, looser and a crude,
unrefined person).  She Yiddished him pretty good for a while.  Then she
glared at the rest of us.  "Bet *you* were all in on it, too!  Kucker
momzers!" (shit-head bastards).
   We got some of her Yiddish wrath for a while.  Of course we took it
stolidly -- I dayum near peed my pants for laughing.  Bob and the Golds
were wetting down their undies right along with me.
   Ah, well.  Such an interesting life with friends like these.  Bob and I
kept our mouths shut; bet Oscar still had a line or so.  He did, "Wedding?
When do I get to dance with the bride?"
   Leone and Mark looked at each other.  Mark grinned and said, "Most any
time.  Better not wait too long or I'll be dancing with four at once when I
dance with Kat.  And...  no more three weekends in a row!  I couldn't even
walk for three Sundays!"
   Leone laughed and told him, "Good thing you don't have to be anywhere
tomorrow morning because you won't be walking then, either!"
   We finished up with a round of quiet applause and toasted them with
sparkling cider.  Good.  Another match made with the Sorcerer's skill!
   Good news spreads fast on the spiritual bush telegraph.  Hopefully Leone
and Mark wouldn't get interrupted too often during the night for
congratulations.
   ------
   Riona and Alyssa had done some of the genealogy research on the Reynolds
and Donovans.  Don't know how they'd found the time between school, Probe
Patrol, horny SOs and now being on enhancement teams.
   Anyway, Evin and I had turned over all the stuff from the safe deposit
boxes which might be related.  They'd picked Evin's, Siobhan's and
Madeleine's brains for all they remembered and had latched on to copies of
birth certificates and other available memorabilia.
   With the Reynolds, Elizabeth's male line was pretty clear back to
Reginald Kelly; they'd scavenged data from Mick and Nora about David's
side.
   They'd roped the O'Banain SOs in to help, of course, and had gotten
together with Rosheen Kelly (not related to RRK -- that we knew so far) to
agree on genealogy programs and other conventions.  That way, they could
exchange hints, tips and have file-level compatibility.
   Doug told me, "Henry's already got his eye on a huge plotter for the
Skunk Works so we'll probably use it for the final layout.  In the
meantime, we're making do with a wimpy-assed tabloid printer at JRD."
   What they did have was a viewer program.  They sent Bob and me the
program and data file across a (computer) VPN; we installed it on my home
laptop.  The tree displayed just like a tree with names.  Click on a name
and it popped up data like birth and death dates, parents and offspring,
observations ("Actual father suspected to be Ralph Cline."), occupations
and a bibliography of the references used.  Probably pretty normal stuff
for hard-core genealogists and family history pundits.
   They'd joined several family history societies, including the New
England Historic Genealogical Society and the Irish Genealogical
Foundation. They'd also tapped into (legally, for a wonder) the
International Genealogical Index of the LDS.  A couple visits to the Family
History Library in Salt Lake City were on their schedules, too.
   What they had was interesting, at least.  Nothing really startling so
far; no witch-burnings, outright outlaws or other "colorful" stuff.  As
expected, Elizabeth's grandparents' families were a bit, em, eccentric. 
From what they'd found, "wild women" and "dissolute lives" were just part
of their characters.
   Dermot was working with them on tracing the jewelry and furniture
histories.  I turned over the location of the ornate stuff we'd discovered
in the storage room; might be more authentication papers and such in the
other safe deposit box.
   Hope they weren't abusing him too much.  I'd heard some delicious
spirit-rumors from several women about something called the Dermot Special.
Maybe he'd be interested in a camp out some night?  Hmm.  He and Madeleine
are on the list.  Hehehehe.
   Anyway, they were all making progress in their copious free time.  It
still probably didn't keep them off the streets at night!
   Bob and I shanghaied Mom and Don for another round of golf; we had to
drag Don out of the Moon Base (Sorcerer's Realm?).  We hit the Verdugo
Hills Golf Course off the I-210 and had a great time.
   Babies Within!  Mom and I _touched_ up our bellies to basketballs and
wobbled them around at the guys.  At three months along, Mom's belly had a
neat little bulge!  Me, I wasn't even a month along so had nothing to show
for all the work Bob and I had put in.  Grin.
   Yeh, we _looked_ Mom's Babies Within over good.  Mom said, "Dunno what
sex we've got; it'll probably be another month before we can tell."
   I asked an obvious question, "So, Mom.  Is Don keeping up?"
   Don assumed an extremely haggard look.  Mom laughed and said, "Not
really.  I've had to get several emergency horniness 'assists' from some
friends.  David cringes every time I look at him."
   Bob grinned and said, "Maybe he'll get an idea of how I feel at times."
Of course he got a sound pummeling for that!
   I told Mom, "Maybe Dermot would be interested in a couple camp outs. 
Between you and Linda, you could probably keep him entertained."
   She brightened up and smiled broadly.  "Yes!  I've heard some
interesting rumors about his camp outs."
   Bob suggested, "How about Tank?  He might be interested in an early
start on his football conditioning.  Endurance training is a part of that."
   Hmm.  We could tell Mom was making mental notes.  I told her, "You've
got an entire couple schools full of horny young men who might be willing
to do the Lead MILF a small favor."
   Bob said, "And horny young and 'old' women all over the place, too.  If
Sherry told me correctly, there doesn't seem to be much of an issue there."
   Don looked extremely relieved and Mom laughed, "And maybe I should try a
bribe to the Clann social secretaries, too.  I've got a good line into the
Clann Cullen social secretaries, too; we could probably use some more
cross-clann cultural enhancements."
   Bob pointed out, "It would have to be cultural.  No cross-fertilization
possible in your case." We had a good laugh on that.
   Mom, Don and I ended up in the 80s while Bob eeked out a 93.  Guess he
owed us lunch.  We hadn't thought of having the low scorer pay for lunch
before we'd started.  Much.
   Mom and I put on huge bellies with several pounds of water inside,
swollen preggy boobs and a couple moles and other facial disguises.  Bob
and Don grew pot bellies which strained their shirts.  That being done, we
popped over to Havana for a leisurely lunch.  Passports?  We didn't need no
stinkin' passports!  If the local cops took too much of an interest in us,
we'd literally slip through their fingers.
   Mom and I loved waddling along.  We dayum near had to so the bellies
wouldn't sway so much!
   No one took much of an interest in us as Americans so we didn't have to
do any slipping.  We got plenty of eyeballs on the tits, though, and the
restaurant had no qualms about accepting crisp U.S.  twenties for payment.
Gotta harass Maggie about getting out the hologram technical bulletin; we
could have tons of fun with the full spectrum.
   After lunch, we popped back home and relaxed in the Jacuzzi.  Mom loved
the water jets!
   Which reminded me.  Bob and I made a quick _talk_ with Papa Sonora.  I
told him what I wanted, and he gave our setup a quick _look_.
   He said, _"Hmm.  The 'cuzzi looks like about the same size as the
Cullens' in Sierra Madre.  No problem.  How about a pump twice as powerful
as the one you have with variable speed and pulsation rates?"_
   Jaysus!  Mom accepted before I could get a word out.  Papa told us,
_"Fine.  There's a setup in stock in Arcadia; we could get in by tomorrow
afternoon.  Can you ladies wait that long?"_ The arsehole didn't even
_grin_.
   We supposed we could survive that long.  Papa said he'd get on it right
away.  He didn't break the connection soon enough so we _heard_ him
laughing his spirit-butt off.  He'll get his!  Which reminded me to get
them on the honoring list fairly lively.
   ------
   BOB
   Yeh, even with a heavy-duty pump, betcha they'll still harass me.  Could
be worse, though; I could be doing renos all day with no sweetheart in
sight.
   Since we were doing a sound studio in New York on Friday, we _talked_
with Madeleine for a while about JRD Recording.  The renos were mostly
completed; they had several artists doing murals on three sides of the
buildings.  Free, because they could put their name and contact information
in a prominent place plus we posted a picture and the same information in
the reception room.  Session bookings were up 30%, income was up, the staff
was happy and -- most importantly -- the clients were happy.
   We popped over for a quick tour so we'd have something to compare the
New York facility against.  Lookin' good!  With fresh clean paint, new
floors and refurbished, clean bathrooms it was really attractive even to a
guy.
   We ticked off plus-points and out-points from Sean's list; there was
only one minor out-point of some tangled cables stored in one of the sound
stages.  Dayum, we were running green!
   Popping back home, we put in several hour's study on the newly-delivered
detail policy manuals.  Mario and Sherry were doing the same on their own
schedule.  Jaysus, it was good stuff!  Just from the visits we'd done so
far, we could see everything being applied.
   The Baxters appeared on our doorstep.  Yes!  The social secretaries had
arranged dinner in Denver at a mountaintop restaurant; we popped over early
so we could lounge around outside and admire the view.
   George was in full Little Person mode with a short beard, mustache and
long, stylish hair.  Maybe Marge was a fashion advisor, too?
   Andy and Patricia were doing great at JRD.  Between studying The Book
and the detail manuals and getting down and dirty with the companies they
supervised, they had plenty to do.  Andy said, "With George pretty much
independent, we have the best of both worlds.  We've got both a handsome
young, healthy baby to show off and a close, adult friend."
   Patricia told us, "Maybe we can do even better next time." Of course
that set Kat and her off into admiring our Babies Within, child-raising and
all the good mom stuff.  Andy, George and I suffered along while we admired
the view outside the windows and talked about important things such as
office layouts, computer networks, apartment/house maintenance and
plumbing. Grin.
   After Kat and Patricia wound down a bit, George brought us up to date on
some things.  "Maggie's gonna finish up the hologram technical bulletin
tonight so it should be available tomorrow morning.  One thing we've found
is the programming can be like a traditional computer script language; it
applies to all the other technologies we've found since last September,
too, such as the firewalls and _touch_ shields.
   "That's almost a step jump in itself.  We can now simply 'pass out'
modules, train on the interfaces and the users can go as deep into it as
they wish.  With the transducer interfaces especially, we can have a
plug-and-play installation with unlimited end-user customization."
   That's nice, George.  Wish I knew what the hell he was talking about. 
The plug-and-play sounded great to me.
   Andy and Patricia seemed to know what he was talking about though; he
and Maggie probably filled their ears with it.
   The Skunk Works had moved into the JRD building spaces already.  George
told us, "We're already looking at stealing Mario for the IT department.  I
could do it, but it's a time-eater.  With eventually thousands of remote
systems, it's gonna be a full-time post."
   They'd recruited three linguists to look at the books.  Yes, the one
lady had wet her panties.  With what appeared to be a full range of
school-grade text books, they didn't really anticipate an arduous task.
   George commented, "The one keeps muttering about how it looks so
familiar.  As a hunch, I bet she has some memories of it.  Just 'cause they
were alien bodies doesn't mean the spirits hadn't hung around Earth."
   They'd decided to call the plastic pages "duro-plast" for "durable
plastic." Why not?  If the term's good enough for the Sci-Fi writers, it's
good enough for us.  While it wasn't actually a plastic as we knew it, it
was close enough.
   The printing on the pages was embedded deeply into the surface.  "It's
not gonna wear off.  The colors are probably just as bright as they were
when they were made; they're not pigments, they're a different molecular
structure of the base material so it reflects the light on specific
wavelengths."
   Just for fun and games, they'd done several structure _traces_ of the
duro-plast over the Earth and had found something like 500 major
concentrations.  "Probably installations of some sort.  Our first couple
SWAGs say they were observing, mining, harvesting or manufacturing stuff.
There's extensive matches on the same alloys used on the Moon, mostly at
the same spots.  So, we've got another project to check them all out; maybe
we'll find some operational installations and can get a jump start."
   Speaking of fun and games, we had some of our own to do.  I left Kat to
Andy and George's tender mercies while I dragged Patricia off to my den of
iniquity.  Hehehehe.
   She was definitely interested.  It was a good thing her fingernails
weren't any longer than they were; my body shield cut in a couple times.
   "We should call you Tigger, Patricia.  Is Andy permanently scarred?"
   "No, but not through lack of trying."
   We had a completely wonderful loving time.  Of course we _peeked_ at Kat
and the guys -- seems like George knew the Dermot Special, too!  From the
volume and frequency of Kat's screams, we bet she wasn't antipathetic about
being on the receiving end.
   After a very nice joint walk on the orgasm ocean, we ended up in the
Asteroid Belt.  Getting really familiar out here.  Of course we guys had to
try out the _touch_ filters to extract various metals.  Worked like a
charm! We ported about 300 kilotons of various base (iron, etc.) and rarer
(platinum, rhodium and the like) metals to the manufacturing area of the
Moon Base (Lindatown?).  Maybe they could use it.
   ------
   (Friday 7/14)
   In the morning, Kat and Patricia were grinning and glowing while Andy
and George looked a bit shop-worn.  That's my girl!  The buffet at the Rio
in Las Vegas worked perfectly; we'd have spent as much in food alone if
we'd had breakfast at home.
   Andy and Patricia popped off to work while George popped off to meet
Dermot for some hell-raising.  Apparently it was really convenient having
the Skunk Works right next to JRD; they could race back and forth and all
around while they oggled all the women.
   Off to Queens, New York!  JRD Sound Studios was similar in many ways to
the North Hollywood company.  However, while they did have recording,
mixing and Foley Stages, they specialized in on-site videos, documentaries
and recordings.
   Good!  The President, Lead Engineer and several production engineers,
and the CFO all had good Potential.  Tag and list!  Not our problem if the
enhancement teams got overloaded.
   The place needed a good cleanup and remodel.  Not quite as bad as North
Hollywood, but it needed to be more attractive.  There was some equipment
"loaning" to the employees, but nothing major.
   The Lead Engineer (same as a Chief Operations Officer in this
organization) took us out to a site in the Bronx where they were setting up
to record a classical music concert.  Dayum, it took two hours to get there
from the studio; traffic was almost as bad as Los Angeles.
   On site, it was organized chaos.  It was similar in many respects to a
construction site with stockpiles of "material," a temporary office and
lots of people running around madly.  Maybe not so madly, they all knew
exactly what they had to do and were doing it.
   We didn't do a lot of gestalt-and-glad-handing; the people were much too
busy.  The show was most of the day on Sunday; maybe we'd pop back for a
bit.
   The LE told us, "Not much difference between a heavy-metal head-banger
concert and a top-end classical opera.  Mainly, we use half again as much
security for the rock stuff; some of them get a little wild.  Other than
that, the technical issues are the same."
   All right.  Looked good so far.  Kat told him, "We're gonna look around
the city here and maybe go into the City for the evening.  We'll find our
own way around." He was a bit concerned for us since we were "foreigners,"
but we talked him out of it.  Might have had something to do with Kat
picking up a 150-lb spotlight in each hand.
   I told him, "She'll protect me."
   We wondered around the corner and ported down to Battery Park for a
Statue of Liberty boat tour.  Evin must have found a magician somewhere to
support our tour, because we had tickets in our pockets and didn't have to
stand in line.
   Fun.  It was a nice warm day with a good breeze.  The Statue looked
impressive (still commando under there!) and Ellis Island looked in really
good shape.  Probably our ancestors had come through there; something to
check specifically.
   We had a leisurely dinner in Chinatown (Mandarin was a bit tricky to
pick up), a carriage ride around Central Park (horse farts are almost as
bad as mine) and a late-evening snack in Hells Kitchen.
   Broadway and Times Square at night are, em, interesting.  I'd guess
you'd call the guy talking loudly to the air "colorful," but all he really
had going on was he was stuck in a memory of five years ago.  No Potential
or we would have helped him out.
   Tourist junk stores of all sorts, sidewalk vendors with genuine Rolexes
(Rolexi?) for $75; you name it and it was there.  At least there was only
one guy handing out fliers for a strip show; in Vegas, we could walk on
their shoulders for several blocks without touching the ground.
   Yeh, an interesting place to visit; we'll take the back waters of North
Hollywood and Burbank, though.
   
  
Sorcerer Interesting Times Ch 06-10