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 Sorcerer: Interesting Times by BJohn
   Ch 16 - 20
   Chapter 16
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 8/19)
   We were getting closer and closer with the Cullens.  We fit together so
well it sometimes was almost too much to bear.  Having my big ol' clit up
inside Maggie was some experience, too, you betcha!  Getting to nosh on
Kate's tender puffies, snuggle up to BB's pelt and to nuzzle a lot of
everything on everyone wasn't too shabby, either.  Grin
   The best, though, was the loving.  The gentle loving, sharing and just
being together with ones you love makes life really worth the work.
   The Geeser came around real early (7:00) and demanded breakfast.  I
learned really quickly that a cat's tongue on a clit is, em, not a
goodness. I paid her back good with some fierce snuggles and pettings.
   French toast (made with Bailey's Irish Cream) in the Virgin Islands is a
good way to get your body's energy levels back up.  Mario, Bob and Sean
didn't appear to be too overworked, so we social secretaries plotted
another orgy, em, cultural enhancement encounter, in a couple weeks.  Of
course, we also decided a formal schedule didn't in any way preclude the ad
hoc encounters we might be able to fit in.  Grin.
   Anyway, around 10:00, the SW engineers were gonna bring up the fusion
reactor outside Selene City.  They'd set up Pieter's wide-band
instrumentation package with an accumulator and it's own Standard
Temperature, Pressure and Gravity (STPG) _touch_ bubble, plus a set of
standard alpha and neutron detectors.  We'll see what we've got.
   Funny how quickly word spreads, isn't it?  By five 'til ten, we had a
good thousand spirits perched in the "grandstands" around the reactor. 
Selene City had been evacuated of physical bodies, just in case.
   Yep, the Cullens were there with everyone else.  Henry acted as the
personal liaison (RHIP) for Bob and me as well as the Cullens, so we had an
inside track on things.  Having George and Maggie right there sure didn't
hurt, either.
   PVC and the Wild Bunch darted around "selling" goodies.  In exchange for
a spirit-hug or kiss, you'd get a flavor bite of tenderness, sweet love and
a touch of sexual joy.  Kinda like one of PVC's songs all encapsulated in a
jelly bean.
   The engineers had fired up the thermionic converter next to the fusion
reactor.  The converter furnished the start up power for the fusion reactor
as well as housekeeping power to the manufacturing areas.  The deuterium
and tritium tanks were full, everything was warmed up to around 70 degrees
or so, and we were live!
   The fusion reactor was to generate a plasma flux which would heat helium
(gas) which in turn would run several turbine-driven electrical generators.
Almost like a "standard" nuclear power plant which ran on steam.  There was
a tremendously-strong electromagnetic (some arcane mixture) field which
contained the plasma but let the helium in and out so it could heat.
   It was very similar to the containment field in a thermionic converter.
According to Henry, they hadn't quite figured it out; it appeared to be
insufficient to do the job fully.  Maybe the Cels had figured out the
equivalent of a spirit _touch_?
   Anyway, they set up the containment field with no problems.  They
weren't satisfied with the leakage (several big spikes on the
instrumentation package) so they collapsed it and started it up slower. 
That helped a lot, though there were still some spikes.  Maybe we need a
stealth start up?
   The plasma flux was initially generated with the tritium.  The engineers
just followed the instructions and there it was.  Henry noted, _"We've
known the theoretical math on all this for years; this is the actual
application."_
   They rolled the helium turbines for a few minutes then started
"exciting" the generators.  That just means they slowly energized the
control circuitry to produce voltage.  We spirits have our own exciting
generators!
   Nothing blew up, so they gradually brought up the output voltage to what
they'd decided was the normal rating -- some 400,000 volts alternating
current.  No DC-AC converters needed, thank you.
   The engineers gradually shifted the generator output onto the
containment circuitry.  Now, the fusion reactor was running completely on
its own.  Henry told us the control and containment used maybe 10% of the
output.
   They switched the fuel from tritium to deuterium.  The plasma changed
"color" but was still pretty dayum hot!  Several million degrees is nothing
to sneeze at.  The deuterium reaction was less efficient than the tritium,
but deuterium was a lot more plentiful.  Worked for us.
   To load the generator more, a couple spirits _touched_ the output into
the Sun.  Varying the _touch_ intensity varied the load.  Sounded good to
me.  The entire system simply increased its output and sang along.
   Henry told us, _"The original thermionic converter powering Selene City
is the largest we've found so far.  The smallest fusion reactor we've run
into has five turbine-generator sets while this one has fifteen.  So, we've
got a range of power available from micro-volts and micro-amps up to the
400,000 volts we've got here and no real idea of the actual amperage. 
Should light a few pilot lights, though."_
   The engineers kept firing up turbine-generators, loading them and going
on to the next.  Henry told us they were going to hold the load at about
50% for several days while they checked everything out they could, then see
if they could take it right up to the "redline" of 120% rated.  Guess the
fun was over for now.
   After a flavor bite from Cynthia, we took off back home.  Bob went off
on some Ceann Mor stuff while I zipped over to visit Mom and Karen Gold.
   My Babies Within were doing just great!  Karen, too, solemnly agreed
they were the cutest fetuses they'd ever seen.  We also agreed Mom's were
the cutest, too.  Her belly was nicely pooched out, and she waved it around
proudly.  Me next!
   They even laughed at the alcohol filters I'd set up in the placentas. 
We tweaked them in to give alarms for various other chemicals,
bio-organisms and other nasties.  Karen promptly had Mom install filters in
herself, too.  "Shouldn't hurt anything.  In fact, we'll even trace the
blood chemistry on both sides of the placenta wall; that's something the
medical field's been trying to do for years without lots of fancy
equipment."
   Mom and Karen decided this was worth a Skunk Works project.  "If we can
set up the right transducers, we might be able to record the information on
standard equipment.  That'll make data-gathering both tremendously easier
and continuous." Sure, why not?
   Bob was still doing administrative stuff so I zipped my clubs out to a
convenient driving range and practiced getting the ball within a small
circle.  Try hitting a ball over 250 yards and having it end up in a circle
five feet in diameter.  With no cheating!
   Different clubs, shorter distances and smaller circles.  Practice,
practice, practice.  I imagined the Babies Within applauding each good
shot. Grin.
   A couple hours was enough.  I zipped everything back home, got a shower
and worked on Sperk.  Great stuff.
   ------
   BOB
   Good on 'em for getting the fusion reactor up!  They'd gotten several
thermionic converters up in extra-Earth facilities but this was the first
fusion reactor.
   From talking with Henry, Ben and George, getting a piece of the Sun
inside a thermionic converter around Jupiter was a bit more involved than
doing the ones on the Moon.  The Moon had lots of direct sunlight, so the
antennas (actually solar panels) could charge up the accumulators and other
circuitry enough to create the containment field.
   Not the case as we got further away from the Sun.  The outposts on Earth
had connections to charge their accumulators from a ship (SWAG) or vice
versa.  The power plants in the Asteroid Belt and beyond used charged
accumulators to create the initial containment and transfer the Sun matter
in.
   The SWAG was a ship would stop by, charge up or install a charged
accumulator then the converter could be fired up.  It looked as if the
matter receiver was taken along, too, since there didn't appear to be any
permanently installed at those places.
   Every accumulator was plainly marked with a "model number" and each
holder was marked, too.  Finding the portable matter receivers had been a
piece of cake, too; there were several stored in the hanger maintenance
area and a couple hundred in one of the storerooms.
   Find a facility you wanted to start up, note the accumulator model
number, pull one out of storage in Selene City (several thousand of each
model were available) and charge it up from the Selene City thermionic
converter.  In our case, port the charged accumulator and matter receiver
to the site and swap out the accumulators.
   Each matter transceiver (SWAG'd they could both transmit and receive
since it actually pulled matter to it) had an associated antenna just to
spot the Sun and lock in on it.  If you had line of sight, you were in. 
Just flip the switches as the graphic instructions showed and it did its
job.  Voila!  One operating thermionic converter.  Basically, it was a
simple jump start, right?
   The start up accumulators got larger the further out the facility was.
SW was SWAG'n the matter transceiver had some distance limitations and
required more power over a longer distance.  That information should be in
the computers somewhere.
   I "let" Kat zip off for some golf while I schmoozed with several of the
other Ceanns who'd shown up at Selene City; sort of an informal Clanns
Council.  The consensus was we'd hit some 10,000 ones of us by Monday
night. Who was collecting all that data?  Sure wasn't me.
   No security issues anywhere.  According to the various enhancement
teams, the central confidential-material setup in Selene City was working
out fine.  Charles (Charles Tanner from Chicago and the RRK area.  Local
Ceann for RRK) told us, _"We're just letting it run.  The newbies
especially do a lot of exploring and 'just happen' to run into some nasty
things going on.  Seems that rotting balls and numb fanny stuff is really
contagious.  Of course, Chicago is a nice, peaceful community, so there
isn't much happening anyway, right?"_
   Right.  Seems even the non-Irish are picking up the Irish phrasings.
   Caitlin (Bill's fiancee) told us, _"It's pretty much the same in
Redding. Ana trained us up a local Probe Patrol so we're going along with
that flow, too.  Ana had ramontheeye set up regional email accounts for the
more local stuff.  We've got the same type of security phrasing as the
original ramontheeye and haven't had a bit of trouble with it."_
   Before we broke up, Caitlin lightly rubbed a set of hard spirit nipples
up against me.  _"See you soon."_ Yeh.  Even a spirit can get a hard on.
   Anyway, I popped back home and spent a lot of time on the Sperk
tutorials.  Phane is coming soon.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Sunday 8/20)
   The four of us spent several hours in the morning working on the Sperk
tutorials.  Bob told us, "This has a high priority.  While we're working on
our own spiritual technology, understanding how the Cels did what they did
should give us a tremendous jump.  It might enable us to create a lot of
legitimate wealth rapidly and to get our arses off this planet."
   Mario said, "Yes.  Some of my memories show planets and systems being
destroyed or sterilized as easily as we disinfect a kitchen counter -- and
for the same reason."
   My two cents was, "Besides, it's one hell of a lot of fun on the way. 
We might run into ring worlds, other civilizations and other fun things. 
The more data we have about the universe, the better we'll understand it
and the better we'll survive.  Somehow I think the work Maggie and the rest
of her teleportation team are doing will contribute a lot to our
understanding of the spiritual technology."
   And Sherry, "The combination of the two will get us a long ways down the
road to long-term survival.  I've got vague memories of millions of years
of below-savage bare existence.  No fun at all.  Here, we're using
technology to gain the time we need to study real issues of life and
livingness, not just 'where is my next meal coming from?' or 'will I
survive the cold season?'"
   Enough said and it all rang true.  We already had a very high confidence
of continued existence as spirits.  The main question was what kind of
existence.  Grinding unhappiness or joyous life?
   Speaking of joyous life, Bill and Caitlin showed up at 1:00 for some
cross-Clann cultural exchange.  We immediately popped ourselves in the
Jacuzzi and introduced Caitlin to the water jets; she was *very*
appreciative and settled back with Sherry and me for a bit of, em,
self-regulated hormone enhancement time.
   We had an Irish barbeque.  That's standard American supplemented with
Irish whiskey and beer.  Besides that, we talked a lot.  Bill and Bob
hadn't had too much time together over the past several years even if
they'd been living in the same household.  Both had been going to school
and had a lot of extra-curricular stuff going on.
   Caitlin's Clann (She was the Clann Redding Ceann.) was up well over a
hundred by now.  The general Redding area had eight other Clanns firmly
established with several more coming.  The others were smaller but were
growing rapidly.
   Caitlin told us, "I figured we'd saturate the area right around us so we
can pick and choose who we want and get our Clann up.  We've found several
people with Potential who we don't really want right now because of their
personalities.  Somewhere along the line, they went wrong; a couple are
even criminal.  They might be smart, but they're sure not our kind of folk.
The area Probe Patrol and ramontheeye had a good time with them; they've
got a permanent tag node saying, 'Do not enhance!'"
   Yeh.  We hadn't run into any like that.  In fact, this was the first
actual report we'd gotten confirming Bob's suspicion that having the
Potential didn't guarantee good ethics.  Well, at least now we knew.
   Bill's software company was expanding.  It had developed and was
marketing a mid-system-size Business Intelligence system which let the
executives, department heads and anyone else who needed it to look at their
key statistics.  Made a lot of sense; if you knew the statistics you could
at least narrow down your activities.  The Book went into statistics and
there was several detail manual articles on how to create and monitor them.
   I showed them our copy of Sean's stuff.  Bill was immediately
interested, especially after we told him we were putting the entire work
into all our JRD companies.  He said, "If my little brother thinks it's
worthwhile, that's a good-enough recommendation for me."
   Of course a personal tour of the JRD building and Skunk Works was on the
agenda.  Halle Berry's butt seemed to be a popular poster around the SW
room.  Then again, there were several posters of good-looking guys.  Me, I
preferred Halle; I had my own gorgeous guy.
   Bill was much like David and Bob.  He had a tremendously hard body, was
tremendously loving and had a tongue and dick which never went limp.  He
definitely knew his way around a pussy and proved it by screwing both
Sherry and me out of our bodies -- three times each.
   Caitlin really liked girls, too.  Even after Bill had our ways with us,
we had a wonderful Journey with her.  She knew exactly what to do and how
to do it.  I wouldn't say my clit was sore, but it sure knew it had gotten
some attention.
   ------
   BOB
   It was nice catching up on things with Bill.  With his software company
doing so well, studying Sperk and working with Clann Redding (including
being Ceann-Mate!), he sure wasn't sitting around being bored.
   We had lots of shop talk, but then again, it was all intimately tied in
with our personal lives.  Bill and Caitlin's wedding was on September 16,
so the social secretaries made a special note of it.  Gonna have another
Ceann wedding!
   Bill and I popped around to several of our old stomping grounds.  He
approved of the minor changes at McCambridge, mainly the re-painting and
other maintenance and earthquake repairs going on over the summer.  He was
quite happy Rose Baer was one of us, "Maybe we need to do some cultural
exchange there, too." Yeh.  I had a sneaking suspicion Rose and Henry (her
husband) wouldn't mind at all being ambassadors of good will!
   Trivial chat, reminiscing, just hangin', all the good stuff.  Caitlin
was a great match to his personality.
   Cabo San Lucas was a good place for dinner.  Bill and Caitlin used an
innocuous Norte Americano cleas to match the rest of us.  The local Spanish
came back right away so we fit right in.
   Dancing, too!  While Sherry had always claimed she was a klutz when it
came to dancing, she did a dayum good job of hanging on to me.
   Caitlin was quite a good dancer, too.  Of course Mother had taught both
Bill and me so he'd passed it on.  Hmm.  I felt quite a bit of Valerie Hess
and Cynthia Gold in some of the moves she was making.
   In the honoring room, I immediately confirmed my hunch that the Clann
Redding women had gotten coaching from Valerie and Cynthia.  Caitlin wrung
Mario and me out!  Not completely dry, but the "rode hard and put away wet"
kind of action.
   She was completely loving and sweet when needed, though.  Mario and I
took her on a very nice two-hour Journey which left us parked out around
Pluto somewhere.  Hell, she was young; she'd survive!
   She knew about the poke spots, too.  Such trials I have to go through
for good public relations.  Groan.  Moan.  Complain!
   Mario, Bill and I got a break when Sherry and Kat absconded with Caitlin
for some girl-talk.  Right.  Sounded like none of them talked intelligibly
the rest of the night.
   -------
   (Monday 8/21)
   The Rio buffet in Las Vegas was just fine for breakfast.  The ladies
glowed and we guys pretended to looked knackered.  I thought of suggesting
we go back for another bit of cultural enhancement, but we all had stuff on
our schedules.  Oh, well.
   Back home, Mario took off for the Skunk Works while the rest of us
worked on Sperk.  Kat and I finished the tutorial we were on; the
checksheet Maggie had made up for the Ceanns (Mario and Sherry, too, since
they studied with us) had us start on Phane, so we did.
   It was different, for sure.  Besides the different font, it had a
different structure.  There were a lot words similar or identical to Sperk,
but they were usually pronounced more softly.  This was an emotional,
experiential language, not a formal one.
   Yeh.  The grammar was formal but allowed immediately for variations. 
Now, since it was so emotional, we had to figure if Cels and Humans had the
same emotions.  We had a quick discussion and decided for the moment to
assume we did, since a) Emotions are a spiritual response, not physical,
and b) We knew at least three Human spirits who had been in Cel bodies.
   We didn't spend a lot of time; we had an oversight visit in Pasadena. 
Business Education was a good-sized company which held classes in, em,
business education!  What a surprise.  We dragged Don along to help him
rest up from helping Ana keep herself, em, endorphin-satisfied.
   They were a mini junior college and offered online, instructor-led and
laboratory/workshop courses in standard business skills such as typing,
computers (operating system, word processing, spreadsheets, presentation
software, etc.), transcription, adding machines/keypads, operating office
machines like copiers and faxes, and pretty much any other task one could
imagine needing in an office environment.
   Didn't everyone take typing in school?  How hard is it to run a
computer? Well, not every school offered courses and some people just
couldn't afford a computer.  The 125 staff kept pretty busy developing,
updating and delivering these.  A business could send an administrative
assistant or even a mid-level executive for a workshop -- and lots did so.
   The online training wasn't as extensive as the instructor-led courses or
workshops.  Since most of the skills were actually learned hands-on, it was
pretty difficult for someone to learn them just reading about them.  There
were plenty of CDs on the market offering training in Office and the like;
BE didn't even attempt to compete with those.
   Yeh, it was almost like studying The Book and the detail manuals.  We'd
gotten through them, but getting Sean's checksheets with drills and
practicals would make them hands-on.
   Anyway, the online part was still successful enough to keep it going and
up to date.
   The workshops were especially interesting.  Most copiers are fairly
straightforward, but can do lots more than expected.  Each brand was
slightly different with different capabilities.
   The Office Machines workshop was the most popular course they had with
ten different copiers (black and white and color), three faxes, several
large-format copiers, book binders (comb binding etc.) and just about any
other office machine one could imagine.  We spotted a couple of the Skunk
Works people in the class.
   For whatever reason, only two of the staff were ones of us or tagged for
enhancement.  That was fine, since they were the President and Director of
Education.
   We took them to lunch in Cancun.  Why not?  They had plans on increasing
the promotion, expanding with a couple more class offerings and several
other things.  The instructors currently had a fairly light load so they
had plenty of capacity.  Sounded good to us; we made sure to include
informing the rest of the JRD companies about them in our F&Rs.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Julio had left me a message; they'd located someone who might be
interested in heading up a Los Angeles area Waystation!
   I _talked_ briefly with them; Alex and Tess Adams were a retired couple
living in Arcadia; they were right down the road.  They were interested in
a get-together, so I coordinated it with the Cullens to meet Tuesday
evening with the entire crowd.  Gonna be interesting!
   At Clann Meeting, Bob announced we had about 10,000 ones of us with
around 200 known Clanns.  We were moving right along on expansion.  Caitlin
told us about the, em, unacceptable Potentials they'd run into and
reiterated Bob's earlier security cautions.
   The confidential material display in Selene City was working out just
fine.  There'd been about 20,000 _visits_ since Henry'd first put it up. 
Sure handled some distribution and security issues!
   ------
   (Tuesday 8/22)
   This oversight visit was in Culver City.  Your Leisure Time was a
good-sized company with about 1,000 staff.  They placed live-in domestics,
nannies, au pairs and people like that.  Some of the people had been with
their clients for years.
   There was staff spread out across the U.S., Mexico and Canada with au
pairs from around the world.  With a public of upper middle-class and up,
there was a continuous demand since that public was increasing daily.
   YLT checked out the potential clients pretty carefully, too.  They ran
pretty much a continuous satisfaction check on both sides so everyone was
happy.
   Yeh, there were several illegals to get cleaned up.  And yeh, there were
some client-employee affairs, too, but all were mutually consensual so no
big deal.
   The President and Treasurer were both ones of us with probably another
75 scattered throughout the staff who were either getting enhanced or were
already out and about.  They'd started using the Clann Reynolds Probe
Patrol to do background checks on new clients and staff.
   I told them, "Save your money on the current clients.  JRD will be doing
a probe run in about a month on everyone anyway."
   Fine by them.  They were stable, expanding and looking good.  We passed
out Sean seminar cards and were on our way.
   ------
   Right at 6:00, the Cullen crew (Sean, harem and the N&Bs) appeared on
our doorstep.  After a few nice hugs and a few gropes, we zipped over to
Mesa to meet Vera Leonard and the Adams.
   North Phoenix had the Dubliner Irish Bar and Restaurant where Vera'd
made reservations.  No, they weren't Irish, but enjoyed it anyway.
   Alex and Tess had worked for the last 20 years in various positions of
several non-profit organizations.  Alex was more a back-office type
specializing in fund-raising and Treasury.  Tess was the front-lines lady
who'd done a lot of set up and organization.  Just on the surface, they
were perfect.
   They'd been enhanced just recently and were working on their
teleportation checksheets, so they were in good condition.
   Patrick Bardon went over the surveys they'd done for the Los Angeles
area.  Tess remarked, "That's half the work done already."
   After dinner, Vera took us on a mass tour of Waystation 1.  It had
filled up to 90% occupancy since our last virtual visit and was lookin'
good!
   The Adams' liked the deal.  They were experienced, were free spirits,
would work with other ones of us and had a sane organization to create. 
They were in!
   I gave them a couple JRD checks for initial salary and other expenses.
I'd have Evin set up a non-profit corporation under Clann Cullen (they were
closer to the surveyed location) and start the tax-exempt status paperwork.
   Patrick gave them copies of all the surveys and other stuff they'd done.
We traded email addresses and phone numbers.  Vera had pushed The Book
during the tour, so they agreed to work on the general checksheet to create
drills and practicals for a "rehabilitation center."
   Great!  We were on a roll!
   ------
   (Wednesday 8/23)
   The Krav Maga exercises were getting tougher now.  They took smaller
movements and combined them into a disarming, attack or defense move.  It
wasn't so much the complexity which made it tough, but we were now spending
a good hour each time in pretty much all-out movements.  About the only
muscles they didn't seem to work were the ones which moved the ears -- and
maybe they'd be covered later.
   We were fully immersed in the Phane tutorials now.  Mario had come in
last evening and caught up with us with Sherry's help.
   Around the house, we spoke Sperk (nice alliteration, right?) the best we
could.  When we got caught without a word or concept, it went on the list
to research ASAP.
   From what Silvia Connor had told us, we might find almost any subject
written about in either language.  For example, one could probably find out
about oral sex in Phane with what to expect as feedback, but in Sperk it
would be very clinical.  Both had their purposes; might want to research
the same subject in both.
   Phane already felt better for expressing everyday chit-chat.  There was
some hint at slang, but the beginning tutorials didn't mention it.  Good
thing, a lot of slang is based on deep assumptions about a culture.
   Anyway, we ended off around 9:30 and headed off with Don, Mario and
Sherry to Maxi Medical Instrumentation in Azusa.  Similar in some respects
to Pieter, it manufactured surgical instruments and general hospital
equipment.  While there were some electronics and such involved, Pieter
Analytics had the lead in analytics.  They sure weren't competitors.
   We thought Don might be interested because they did a lot of lab
equipment like distilling units, beakers, test tubes and the like.  Pretty
much anything made of glass which could be heated, bent, blown, welded or
merged into a metal fitting was on their list of "can do's."
   Of the 350 staff, there were 40 either already ones of us or tagged,
well within the expected 10 to 15%.  Yeh, the upper executives were ones of
us.  Perfect.
   ------
   BOB
   Cool stuff, all right.  One main interest we had with Maxi was the
instruments.  Several of us mechanical types had checked out the Cel hand
tools, controls and the like in Selene City.  They were usable, but just
barely.  The Cel hands had three fingers and a thumb and tended to be a bit
larger than human hands.
   So, Maxi might be able to reproduce some of the more frequently used
handles, fixtures and the like to fit us better.  Yeh, we'd probably be
able to get the manufacturing facility to produce the "proper" fits, but
that could be years down the road.
   Well, Paul and Marsha (President and VP R&D) had already started some of
that.  They'd reproduced a couple of the more clever hand tools with human
handles.  Marsha told us, "Patent Pending through SW Enterprises.  We're
stockholders."
   Kat and I loved them.  They were light (when appropriate) and fit our
hands perfectly.  Beautiful work.  Paul told us, "First cost guess would
put them about 20% above the Craftsman and SnapOn brands.  Toss in the same
limited lifetime warranty and we can compete on innovation and quality."
   Sounded great to us.  Paul and Marsha were more than willing to go into
production any time.  They were already working with Blake Merrill on a
roll-out plan.  SW had probably thought of it already, but using existing
companies for manufacturing and/or distribution was probably as viable as
having NewTek do it all.  It's all coordination.
   Don loved the lab equipment.  R&D had licensed the design of several
esoteric glass instruments SW had found in Selene City and were planning on
rolling them out, too.
   We treated the execs to lunch at the Atlantic Fado pub.  It was just as
good as the Chicago branch, so we added it to our list.
   Especially with several of the SW patent licenses, Maxi was poised for
some good expansion.  They were already busting at the seams at the Azusa
plant and were eyeing locations elsewhere, mainly for the large-volume
manufacturing like the tools and glassware.
   Well, Blake was well-informed of JRD's "in" with several industrial
property owners around the world.  He and Maxi were already looking over
possible facilities.  Good on 'em.
   We checked out Fado's whiskey collection, chatted a lot about the Clanns
and passed out Sean seminar cards.  All the execs were members of a Clann
centered around Azusa.  Marsha told us, "Currently we've got 35 members,
around 75 family members we're enhancing and a couple hundred from the tag
list who live in the area.  We should be able to get some good expansion
going."
   Yep.  A couple lived closer to other Clanns so were members in them.  No
big deal; just get them in and coordinated.
   After lunch, everyone zipped back to wherever for their afternoon's
activities.  Kat and I ported up to Selene City to check out the action.
   The engineers had the fusion reactor "steaming" along at 110% rated
power with all the generators on line.  Everything appeared to be well
within the expected ranges, including the particle and electromagnetic
emissions.  The _touch_ shield around the area handled even those, so the
entire area was indistinguishable from the rest of the lunar surface.
   Almost every area had a Cel laptop or something set up showing the
area's status, projections and findings.  Got to give an attaboy to whoever
thought that up; sure beats bugging the local engineer for information.
   It was similar to some construction sites for major projects.  Put up a
spectator area, keep them informed, let them look all they wished and
everyone was happy.  We spirits were *nosy* creatures!
   Mario tracked us down and joined us.  He _showed_ us the confidential
material posting room where a team had set up several large Cel monitors.
We had a global bulletin board!
   They displayed events, lists like new Clanns and Probe Patrols, new
checksheets and technical bulletins and a list of known Clanns.  The
displays were in English, Spanish, French, German, Mandarin and a couple
others I didn't recognize.
   Mario told us, _"One of our geek teams -- self-labeled, by the way --
figured out how to configure something like a web page.  The development
tool is very configurable, so we were able to get left-to-right as well as
different fonts._
   _"They even cobbled together an interface to upload and modify our
computer fonts.  Quite a trick, if you ask me.  Seems that Kanji was
particularly interesting since you need a special keyboard just to work
with it."_
   The team was scheduled to be suitably rewarded; seems like several
hundred young ladies and men had volunteered to serve as cross-Clann
cultural enhancement teams.  They must have met Maggie.  Hehehehe.
   Mario took us into another large room nearby.  "We try to put as few
bodies as possible in the confidential materials room so there's fewer
distractions.  We're setting up this place for our global network."
   Yet another team had clustered several Cel systems together with several
hundred terminals.  "Global network.  By Cel standards, it's probably like
a pile of semi-organized cardboard boxes with loose papers, but it's still
an order of magnitude faster with more capabilities than we could come up
with using Earth technology."
   The team had set up a standard database template so each Clann would use
the same setup.  Make a copy of the template to their own Clann's directory
and go to town.  The Clanns could use remote operation, put a body up here,
or hook in to the network through a configured Cel system.
   Each Ceann was getting a setup like we had at their homes or wherever
they wanted it.  For physical security, each setup had a _touch_ shield
with a pre-programmed teleportation target.  In a security situation, the
entire system could vanish in less than a half second.  The SW security
team had bought the idea, so it was okay by me.
   The team had used the same interface for uploading a Clann's current
databases.  Since well over 95% had been using the McCambridge Brain Trust
database template, it took maybe fifteen minutes to transfer the entire
data to this network.  Since it was a one-shot conversion, it was no big
deal.
   Yeh, they'd set up a regional/global search capability, too.  Kat did a
search for "cunnilingus" as a specialty and got 500 hits.  Yeh, both male
and female.  Sorry, honey, Silvia Connor hadn't listed that as one of her
specialties -- not to say she wasn't good or interested, though.
   Mario _showed_ us how George had set up the system at our place to hook
up to this network.  All Real Good Things.
   ------
   At 4:00 Blake and Louise appeared on our doorstep.  Honoring time! 
Mario and Sherry were off skunking, so it was the four of us.
   The social secretaries had set up dinner in Piraeus, Greece, overlooking
the Aegean Sea.  With our cleas, we fit right in as American tourists.  It
was a very nice place and had great food.
   Kat grinned at Louise and asked, "So, how's married life?"
   She flushed right up.  "Better than we ever imagined.  The public
commitment really made a difference.  *And* we've got a Baby Within!"
   She and Kat immediately went into full girl mode.  Blake and I shook our
heads, rolled our eyes and listened.
   They'd had their own private fertility rites a couple weeks ago.  They'd
invited only the Wild Bunch plus Steven and Lucia.  According to Louise, it
had been completely romantic and tremendously exciting.
   I wasn't at all put out that we hadn't been invited.  Blake told me, "I
got advice from Valerie and the Sean harem.  Among all of them, we managed
to come up with something which seemed to be successful."
   Yeh.  With advisors like that, it couldn't help being a success.
   Of course we made the appropriate noises over all the Babies Within. 
They sure were cute!  If Kat tried real hard, she could show off a tiny
bump below her navel.  At 10 weeks, we really weren't expecting much of
one, either.
   Okay.  Back home, we kicked back and chatted.  Louise had the same blood
filters as Kat, so she accepted an Irish beer.  I'd come to the conclusion
it was the only decent kind.  Grin.
   As JRD Regional Managers, they'd split the JRD companies into two parts
based on a rough formula including company size, location, sales volume and
current condition.  That way, they had about the same work load, at least
in theory.  They cross-coordinated activities, training and the lot so each
knew at least something of what the other was doing.  Collaboration?  What
a novel concept!  Grin.
   They'd gotten all our F&Rs and were implementing a lot of them.  Blake
told us, "We're not getting much resistance, especially with the execs who
are already ones of us or who have done the Sean seminar.  That
slave-driver Siobhan is making the entire office go to the Oakland one in
September."
   Too bad.  Grin.  The office ladies were already planning on making it an
entire weekend of both work and play.  With things running so smoothly, it
wasn't much of a deal to take most of Friday off and stay through Sunday
night or Monday morning.  Catching flights back and forth was *not* an
issue.
   After every oversight visit Kat and I had made, either Blake or Louise
had set up their own visit with the executives.  They went together mainly
to show the company there was an alternate RM who could work with them. 
They'd go over the F&Rs and establish some planning on getting the needed
recommendations in place.  Yeh, while Kat and I were owners, neither Blake
nor Louise blindly followed the F&Rs.  Good on 'em!
   In the honoring room, Louise liked it long and slow; apparently that's
the way her hormones were acting.  That didn't stop us from being
blind-sided several times with wonderfully-hot peaks which forced us
outside.
   Louise and I did some wonderful _merging_, explored the Cel facilities
in the Asteroid Belt and made some delightful rainbows.  She hammered my
poke spot and forced me to do it all over again.  Groan.  Complain.
   While she wasn't as bi as Janet, she did enjoy girls.  Blake and I
_listened_ to Kat and her discover each other while we let our bodies rest
and bopped around the various sports arenas checking out the celebrity
sweat.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Thursday 8/24)
   The little slut had snuck in a fertility rite and hadn't invited us. 
Bitch!  We laughed a lot as we traded insults in Irish, Japanese, French
and what little Phane we knew.  We could see already that insults in Phane
could be a really fine art.  Betcha Maggie would work on that.
   Blake was either naturally talented or had gotten some good coaching,
because he was really good.  He had endurance, too; two trips around the
world tired him out a bit, but we survived.  Grin.
   Louise had already _shown_ me at dinner where his poke spot was.  I used
it twice; dayum, having horny-hormones is fun!
   Louise and I kicked the guys out while we had our own time.  She was
wonderfully sweet-tasting and could tongue-diddle almost as well as
Valerie! She confessed she'd gotten quite a bit of coaching from Janet,
Bellana, Valerie and Cynthia.  I sure didn't object.
   Both of us had thunk our tongues a lot longer.  With a little work, we
could get the tips on each other's cervixes at the same time!  Put in a
little _touch_ on the G-spot at the same time and it was, em, exhilarating.
   We had breakfast at the Flamingo buffet in Las Vegas.  Louise and I
grinned at each other while the guys pretended to be knackered.  Right. 
Louise had already told me Blake (and several others) would be getting
really lucky really often Real Soon Now.  Me, I consider myself to be
getting lucky all the time.
   ------
   We did a full meeting at RRK with all the owners.  We had all the Cullen
Enterprises folk, Mario, Sherry, Bill and Caitlin along with David and
Elizabeth to keep Bob and me company.  Amanda, Trevor and Richard filled in
the RRK side while Nancy kept an eye on all of us.
   We brought in Mike and Cheryl from our temp team and JRD Properties so
we could get an update from them.  Yeh, Mike and Cheryl were firmly
together; one could tell that at a glance.
   Properties.  Cheryl brought up a map of them.  Dayum, there were lots of
dots all over the place.  While most of them were in the U.S., there were
several of Evin's/mine scattered around Canada and the rest of the world.
   Cheryl suggested we put up a map/list of the properties on the Clanns'
global site in Selene City.  With our recent experience at Maxi, that made
sense.  Richard noted other Clanns could add what they or some of their
members controlled so we'd have more networking going on.
   Mario said, "I'd recommend a database similar to the Clann personnel one
as well as a map.  We could add in industry and company data world-wide. 
We'd be able to find anything available right off; even if a Clann had a
member who only worked at a company, with a bit of the right data, we could
locate the industry and area, and we'd have a bit of an 'in' to start
with."
   Made sense to us.  Especially since it would benefit all the Clanns, Bob
gave a Ceann Mor authorization.  Mario said, "Good.  It'll be up in a half
hour.  Mike and Cheryl can load what they've got, and we'll open it up to
the rest as soon as it's set up."
   Good.  We'd let the database sit for a while after that.  Both SW and
NewTek would be aware of it and be able to factor the information into
their plans.
   As an aside, Mike told me the temp team had at least identified all the
properties mentioned in all the wills and discovered in the various safe
deposit boxes.  Title clearing and transfers were in progress.
   Trevor brought us up to date on the personnel search and training. 
"We've got about 100 middle-management and above in full-time training. 
Van Nuys Temps has around 500 'regular' staff types either getting specific
training or on the shortlist.  From what I've seen, at least, there's a
couple facilities on Venus, around Jupiter and in the Asteroid Belt which
now have power and at least temporary atmospheres.
   "I'd say it's a security decision now to let them in on what we've got.
There's about 40 who're studying Sperk on Cel systems; they're all ones of
us so that's not an issue.  It's the mundanes I'm concerned about; we're
planning on using them on off-Earth facilities since, from what I've been
told, we're not going to be using any Earth-based facilities."
   Yeh.  Bob said, "Guess it's time for a Clanns Council meeting with the
SW security team to decide that issue.  You're working with SW and NewTek
on the actual personnel placements, right?"
   At least for the ones of us, they were.  The agency and Van Nuys Temps
were working hand in glove (I could think of another metaphor; actually,
several metaphors.) with both of them.
   Caitlin offered, "As a suggestion, I'd recommend the ones of us in
training get their final assignments and have them start working on
selecting the rest of their needed staff from the pool.  That way they
could start getting to know each other.
   "Since none of the spaces are livable full-time, a reasonable time-table
should include having a facility that way *before* we introduce the
mundanes so we don't have to worry about them 'escaping' back to Earth. 
That's dependent on the SW teams knowing enough of the language and
technologies to get the systems up and debugged."
   Bob agreed.  "I'll see if we can set up a meeting with SW, the security
team, NewTek and the personnel agencies.  They can come up with a
recommendation to present to the Clanns Council.  I think it should be the
Clanns Council decision on the time table."
   So spoke Ceann Mor.  Grin.  At least Bob and I didn't have to be there
for the preliminary stuff; that's an advantage of being management, I
guess.
   Sean told us, "As a by the way, we've worked up a general checksheet
with drills and practicals for The Book and the Admin Scale and Org Board
workbooks.  We expect to have general checksheets for the detail manuals
done by the end of next week.  All these are pilots right now, but it
shouldn't take long to get them grooved in."
   He told us about creating industry-specific checksheets, too.  Cullen
Enterprises already had over 75 unique industry Subject Matter Experts
working on drills and practicals for them, starting with The Book.  Dayum,
that's quick; he'd first told us about them a bit over a week ago.
   Trevor asked, "We're going to have checksheets for starting and running
a Cel manufacturing facility, right?"
   We all laughed pretty good.  Eileen told us, "Sure.  Margie here has an
'in' with George -- or is that the other way around?  -- who's right in the
middle of all that with Mario.  We'll make sure to keep up on progress, so
as soon as they have a good understanding and have brought up a few, we'll
have drills and practicals, too."
   Good.  Gotta keep the admin up with the technology.
   Anyway, Bob popped for lunch for all of us at the Austin Fado.  Another
excellent place; looks as if Fado is a winner for us.  We tried to have
another Irish-vs.-non-Irish drinking contest, but it came out a draw.
   ------
   BOB
   Everyone went on their merry ways after lunch.  I had a quick _talk_
with Mercy (CEO SW Enterprises) about the meeting we'd talked about.  She
sassed me, _"You management types are getting slow.  We've got that
scheduled for tomorrow night.  We'll just add in the personnel teams for
their input."_
   I get no respect; maybe I'd better pass the word she needed some
chastisement.  Then again, maybe that's what she was after anyway.  I
decided to leave that all up to the social secretaries; they'd done a
splendid job so far.
   We had a quick meeting with Alex and Tess on the Waystation.  Several of
the other attendees looked very familiar; didn't I meet the same bunch of
gorgeous ladies earlier today?
   Alex and Tess had already gone to work.  Evin had the paperwork
submitted for the corporation and expected it to be ready early next week.
He'd gotten good at it and knew exactly which person in Sacramento to run
it through.  It didn't hurt the gal was Irish and he had an inside line on
well-aged Irish whiskey.  Grin.
   Alex and Tess had started pinning down potential locations.  During
their surveys, the young-uns had spotted several possibles; some were still
available and new ones had come on the market.
   With Waystation 1, it worked out just fine to get a school with a
pre-built kitchen and other group facilities.  Alex and Tess had looked for
schools, small hotels and the like.  Sean gave them Ted's contact
information and told them, "He runs the ones who did the initial surveys.
Just tell him what you want and he'll get it done.  I pay, Bob pays or
Clann Cullen pays.  When we get the corporation, it can pay.  For now,
don't worry about the money."
   That helped.  I knew Sean had needed to gather a decent-sized group to
start, just to get enough hands to do the initial stuff.  From looking at
many of the JRD companies' histories, they too had needed to get a
"critical mass" of enough people to get the job done.  No need to let this
thing flounder at the start when it wasn't needed.
   Vera and her staff were more than willing to work with them, of course.
Yeh, they were already planning on a client collaboration; sometimes you
need to get someone *way* away from the environment they were in so they
could get things untangled.
   Good.  They'd gotten enough information from the surveys so they knew
what was needed and wanted, what kind of model we were after and now knew
we'd back them with both cash and resources.  We were on the way!
   ------
   (Friday 8/25)
   After our morning exercises, we spent an hour and a half on Phane and a
half hour drilling and expanding the Sperk vocabulary.  Kat and I
concentrated mainly on organizational vocabulary while Mario and Sherry dug
into the technical side.
   Yet Another Oversight Visit.  JRD Adhesives in Glendale made specialty
adhesives and coatings.  Need something to bond aluminum and plastic?  A
tank coating to withstand acidic fuel?  They could do it.
   With 500 staff -- most in R&D and Manufacturing -- they were a
good-sized place.  Yes, we found the expected number of ones of us and
tagged people.  Again, most of the executives were already ones of us.
   We schmoozed with the President, Treasurer and Director of Manufacturing
for an hour.  They were all part of a new Clann centered a couple blocks
from the plant and had 30 members so far.  They'd worked with the Clann
Reynolds' Probe Patrol to get some training and had done a complete probe
run within their own organization and customers.
   They hadn't found any major stumbling blocks; the usual illegal
immigrants, a few people dipping into the till and things like that.  The
main areas they were concerned about was Sales -- the salesmen were
promising stuff they knew couldn't be delivered on time -- Inventory and
Manufacturing.
   The Dir Manufacturing knew they didn't have their processes nailed down,
what they had weren't being followed very well and the scrap and reject
rates were growing worse every month.
   One thing they'd found was the high turnover among the Manufacturing
workers ended up with a poorly-trained work force.  The finished goods
inventory was a mess; a lot of the adhesives and coatings had a very
limited shelf life and stringent storage conditions.  They figured they
were loosing a good half the "stock" inventory to simple expiration or
spoilage.
   Yeh, sounded like a job for APICS.  Seems we keep running into that.
   Anyway, we did the plant tour; the warehouse where the inventory was
stored was a real mess.  Even without _looking_ very hard, Kat, Sherry,
Mario and I spotted over a hundred containers of various sizes with no
markings at all to indicate what was in them.  Big ouch!
   Mario and Sherry ducked off to the IT area while the Treasurer took Kat
and me to look over the books.  They had everything on the computer, which
was a goodness.  Since it *was* on the computer -- with everything else
FUBAR'd so much (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) -- it was an immediate
alarm.
   The Treasurer had been there only a couple months.  He told us, "Every
month for the last five years, we've had to make adjusting entries of at
least $50,000.  Sometimes we're low, sometimes we're high.  The entire GL
account map needs a major audit and probable rework and the accounts
scrubbed.  I've just gotten to the point where I have some idea where the
issues are."
   Okay.  At lunch (at an interesting steak house in Nevada), Mario told
us, "Messy.  The entire computer system's almost a joke.  The main hardware
is over fifteen years old, slower than a student with a misunderstood word
and with completely inadequate disk space -- which can't be expanded.
   "The MRP system's an antique patched together with go-tos and the fixed
assets and accounting modules are so old they have moss growing on the
printouts.  They could probably do a better job running the place with a
pencil stub on the back of a couple envelopes.  It needs some *major*
work."
   Yeh.  The interesting part was even with all the troubles they were
having, they were still very profitable.  That was with actual cash in the
bank, too, not just "on the books."
   Shit.  Well, we had our work cut out for us.  Get in APICS, get the
executives to the Sean seminar and develop a plan and program to get things
back on the rails.  All the executives were new within the last year and
had stepped into the situations.  Time for a change.
   We spent a solid two hours writing up our F&Rs.  We sent them off to
Siobhan, Madeleine, Louise (RM for the company) with an urgent flag for
immediate attention.  A bit of a bummer.  We didn't know enough to fix it
ourselves, but we sure knew we could find and hire people who did know!
   ------
   We were done just in time to snatch Riona and Douglas off our doorstep.
Enough business, time for some fun!
   I'd been giving Riona lewd looks and licking my lips every time I'd seen
her for the past several months.  She'd flush, shiver and wet herself down.
I didn't think either of us would need much warm up, especially if she was
anything like her mother.
   We went off to Capri (an island off Italy).  It was pretty touristy, but
Sarah and Julio had found us a great four-star place right on top of the
mountain looking towards the mainland.
   Since Riona and Doug had hung around the Sonoras a lot, they were
already pretty well-versed in Italian -- including the gestures.  We
blended right in.
   We had a lovely dinner; it was nothing like Pizza Hut, for sure. 
Service was great and the ladies were radiant.  We didn't hurry through it.
We knew what was coming and let the tension build.
   Riona and Doug were working their butts off over the summer.  They'd
done a thorough run through all the returning and new North Hollywood High
students they knew about and had gotten over 100 of them already trained up
for the Brain Trust.
   Doug told us, "Our fearless leader here is a ball of fire.  We've found
four other excellent people for the Inner Circle -- all Clann Reynolds now
-- and we've hopefully gotten our organization worked out pretty well. 
Riona's a real winner."
   The rest of us thought so, too.  In the honoring room, she was hotter
than any pistol I'd ever run into!  Dayum, it was all I could do just to
keep up for the first two hours until we'd worn the edge off a bit.
   Good thing I was in condition, because she made me work every moment. 
Then again, it sure wasn't a chore because she was such a lovely woman.
   Three nice Journeys we took before she knackered out.  Yeh, I was glad
to rest for a bit while we made bright glows and brilliant rainbows with
our _mergings_ well beyond the Oort Cloud.
   Chapter 17
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 8/26)
   Doug was nicely skilled, very romantic and knew how to treat a lady.  He
must have gotten some coaching from an accountant somewhere, because he
checked out *every* account -- several times.
   We kept hearing this awful racket from Bob and Riona.  Doug laughed, "We
love each other to pieces, but Bob's in a class of his own.  With the three
of us reminding her every so often the last couple days of her appointment
with the Ceann, she's been in perpetual heat.  We pretended to be too tired
to help her out, so she's really got some energy stored up.  Good thing
Bob's strong."
   Guess they were both strong.  A bit after midnight, we kicked the guys
out and had our own fun.  She was sweeter than a stolen kiss and was nicely
nasty at the same time.
   Riona and I glowed in the morning while Bob and Doug pretended to be
pussy-whipped.  Right.  We fed them up good at breakfast -- we didn't do
too badly ourselves -- then forced them to pander to our needs again until
mid-morning.  So much fun and love!
   Doug finally dragged Riona away while promising her all sorts of fun and
games later.  They're really *good* folk.
   Bob and I reviewed our calendar with Mario and Sherry.  While we weren't
really in a foursome relationship, we were close.  Mario had matured a lot
more over the past couple months and was able to hold his own with the best
of us.
   The Sherry was still as ornery as ever and sweeter than honey.  Yeh,
it's a cliche, but it's a great way of describing her.  She and Mario had
formed a well-lubricated (that way, too) machine in checking out networks,
Sperk technologies and IT business processes.  Not shabby for a
self-proclaimed non-techie.  Then again, a lot of George had rubbed off on
her from before.
   Anyway, we still had still had two more oversight visits next week,
several weddings, a Labor Day party, a Waystation to get up and lots of
honorings we could do.  This being out of school and on our own is lots of
work!  Good thing we had Sarah and Julio helping out or we'd be spending
half our time organizing and scheduling.  Good on 'em!
   Sunday afternoon, we lured Charles Tanner and Nancy Samuelson down from
Chicago for a private, em, consultation.  Yeh, that's what to call it. 
Mario and Sherry were out skunking, so we handled this one by ourselves.
   After an early dinner in Avalon (Santa Catalina Island off Long Beach,
CA), we went back home and relaxed in the Jacuzzi for a while.  Nancy
appreciated the water jets as much as Sherry and I had our first time.
   Clann Tanner was going strong.  With all the enhanced RRK staff being
members, it had well over 50 ones of us.  Nancy told us, "We've got lots of
Clanns starting up around the area, and we're finding and enhancing more
people.  Yeh, we've started running across some baddies, too.  Damn
surprising; they've got all this Potential locked up inside them, but it
seems directed mostly inwards."
   The area enhancement teams were taking great care in checking out the
Potentials, so we weren't really concerned.  The baddies were only a
fraction of a percent of the Potentials we'd found; they had a tag in them
and the Regional Probe Patrols kept their spirit-eyes on them.
   Anyway, back to fun stuff.  Charles and Nancy were definitely items;
they'd declared their bonded status several weeks ago, so Nancy was the
official Ceann-Mate.  She told us, "We aren't the youngest around, but we
manage.  I have to keep working on Charles' endurance so he can keep up
with all those sweet young thangs we keep running into."
   Charles didn't even twitch.  Bob said, "Ya get used to the burden after
several times." I didn't even bother to smack him, but _told_ Nancy to
chastise him severely later.
   Charles commented, "My Nancy here doesn't seem to mind all the attention
she gets, either."
   Nancy flushed up and said, "God!  I never knew I could do so much, so
long and so often.  I used to be the wham-bam type before Charles and the
others done taught me better.  Seems lots of the guys enjoy screwing over
the lawyer for once."
   Yeh, I could sympathize with her.
   Anyway, Charles had been a computer system consultant for years and had
specialized in implementing Oracle installations.  That was the main reason
he'd been gone so often back when.  He'd semi-retired when he moved to
Chicago in January and before he'd run into Nancy.
   Now, he was part of George's SW team studying Sperk and the Cel computer
technology and was working with the team bringing up the larger computer
systems in Selene City.  He told us, "George has really come up in the
world.  He used to be a bit, uh, shy about being in the spotlight, but now
he seems to be willing to get right into things.  I'd say he turned out
okay."
   Bob grinned and said, "Can we understate that any more?  Seems we're all
proud of him."
   Nancy was our Chicago lawyer, of course.  About 50% of her office's time
was involved in working with the RRK corporate lawyer, Brenda (our family
lawyer here) and with the Clanns Council lawyer coalition.  That, along
with keeping Charles out of trouble and working with Clann Tanner, kept her
busy.
   Charles must have done his homework really well, because he kept right
up with me.  He was gentle -- when needed -- and a real tiger the rest of
the time.  Really nice.
   Nancy was a sweet piece of work, too.  Seems all the female Ceann and
Ceann-Mates we'd run across so far were bi; sure makes it twice the fun!
   ------
   BOB (Monday 8/28)
   Nancy was a loving lady.  She'd thunk and worked her body up to do a
*lot*; two good Journeys barely slowed her down.  Clann Tanner had a Real
Good Thing going with Charles and her.
   After a fairly early breakfast at the Rio buffet, Charles and Nancy took
off back to Chicago.  Kat, Mario, Sherry and I had an oversight visit in
North Hollywood.
   Fidelity Bank was JRD's bank.  Most of us execs/owners had several
accounts with them so we had several vested interests in their operations.
   It was a private bank and offered all commercial services to the JRD
companies.  In fact, every JRD company had its main account with them so we
had immediate access (subject to the banking laws) to their information.
   With 250 employees scattered around the U.S.  (they had a branch in each
city which had a JRD company), they weren't a small operation.  They didn't
promote much to the public, and had just enough public business to comply
with the federal regulations.  Their main customer was JRD and its
companies.
   Yeh, the President and several others were ones of us and were part of
Clann Reynolds.  How did that happen?  Grin.
   Mario and Sherry took off to the IT area while Kat and I shot the bull
with a couple of the executives.  Hell, we didn't know enough about the
banking industry and all the associated regulations to ask intelligent
questions.
   Not really a problem; Aaron and Barbara had a good handle on things. 
Kat and I mainly showed the flag and ensured they knew we appreciated their
hard work.
   We had lunch at Fado in Columbus, Ohio.  Kat and I held our own with the
eating; no booze this time around.
   Sherry told us, "The only nit-picking we could find was a few procedure
documentations out of date.  Ben's old group should be able to handle
that."
   Sounded good to us.  Fidelity was competent and profitable so we
couldn't ask for much more.  We probably wouldn't use them much for any of
the SW Enterprises or NewTek work; they were too tightly connected to Clann
Reynolds via JRD.  The bank executives agreed, "What with all the
regulations, any bank examiner any time could call an audit.  They have
full access to everything, so any connections would be completely exposed.
Keep the stuff offshore like you're doing now; that'll keep a lot of the
routine nosey people out."
   We passed out Sean seminar cards.  They were ahead of us; they were
already registered for next weekend in Seattle.  Good.
   Clann Meeting was excellent.  We were up to 23,000 ones of us and were
in Africa, Asia, several old Russian countries, China and South Africa. 
More to come, too.  Every week gets us safer.
   The fusion reactor had passed its full-power tests with no issues.  Now
we had to find out enough about the manufacturing facility to use the 500
gigawatts it could produce.  In the meantime, the engineers were letting it
idle along on two generators.  No big deal; deuterium is cheap, right?
   ------
   (Tuesday 8/29)
   Golf time!  While in Avon yesterday, we'd spotted the Catalina Island
Golf Course, so Kat, the Golds and I zipped over for a round.  It was a
really nice place with all the ocean scenery.
   On the driving range, we had tons of fun bouncing balls off the bases of
the practice flag poles; the game was to use the most subtle _touch_
possible without it appearing obvious.
   We weren't totally out for blood, but we didn't cut each other a lot of
slack, either.  Yeh, we gave "gimmies" for balls within four feet of the
hole to move the game along, but not much more than that.
   Ho!  I came in a stroke under Karen!  Finally beat someone!  Now, when
is the Selene City golf course gonna be ready?
   Alyssa and Colin appeared on our doorstep in the late afternoon.  Nice!
Mario and Sherry were out and about, so we four zipped up to a nice
restaurant in Denver, CO, where we spent a pleasant couple hours feeding
our faces and looking out at the mountains.
   Alyssa and Colin were getting ready to go back to school.  They were
working their enhancement team queue down so it would be empty by next
week.
   They were more interested in the Cel culture than the technology.  Colin
told us, "Everyone's got to learn enough Sperk to read the instructions for
the computers and the kitchen gadgets, but we're concentrating a lot more
on Phane.  Between looking at Earth's anthropology studies and contrasting
it to what Cel studies we've been able to understand a little, we keep
busy."
   Alyssa remarked, "Sorting out the nuggets of truth in the Human stuff is
the hardest part.  Earth folk seem to have some really strange ideas about
themselves -- and some just might be true."
   They both agreed Riona would end up an excellent Inner Circle leader;
she had the chutzpah and charisma to carry it off.  As soon as school
started, they were planning on starting a full Brain Trust recruiting sweep
through the students; there were probably a few new ones who'd signed up at
the last minute.  Good; the society can always use capable people.
   In the honoring room, Alyssa was a fireball who wouldn't burn out until
she collapsed.  Kept me, em, alert, she did!  After two extremely nice
Journeys, we ended up exploring Saturn's rings and moons with Kat and
Colin.
   Yeh, there were a couple small Cel installations on the moons.  Someone
had tagged them already, so they were handled.
   Alyssa and Kat nailed our poke spots, so we had to go back home and
attend to the business at hand -- and other body parts.  After a very nice
hour's frolic, Kat and Alyssa kicked us guys out to cool our heels while
they explored how many ways they could fit their bodies together.
   Must have been quite a few, because Colin and I spent several hours
checking up on odds and ends.
   Three of the grad students at the Mojave sinkhole had been enhanced and
were out exploring the bedrock and other interesting places.  Now what were
they going to say on their papers after they found out what had *really*
happened?
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Wednesday 8/30)
   Colin was very good and Alyssa was completely yummy!  We cousins did a
lot more than just kissing; she left me no doubt she knew her way around
(and inside) a female body.
   Of course we girl-talked a lot.  She, Colin, Doug and Riona were in a
tight four-way relationship.  She told me, "We fit together really well in
pretty much any combination.  We're all bi with a good lean towards the
opposite sex so there's lots of loving to go around."
   Madeline and Dermot had fit into the Donovan household like a tongue in
a pussy.  She told me, "Mom, Dad and Madeline are solidly together; they
really flame when they _merge_.  It's a glorious sight to see.  Dermot gets
lots of invitations for 'campouts.' Hehehehe."
   Good on 'em!  They deserved all the happiness they could find.
   We raided a Lake Tahoe casino buffet for breakfast then took off.  All
right!  Our last (yes, *last!*) oversight visit was to Holly Limo in
Hollywood; what else would you name it?  We pulled Mario and Sherry along
with us.
   Forty staff ran some twenty vehicles of various kinds.  They used
several stretch limos plus lots of Lincoln Town Cars and a couple of luxury
SUVs; people have different tastes.
   Their books, computer systems and staff were all in good shape so we
spent the morning cruising in a Town Car around Hollywood.  The chauffer
demonstrated all the courtesies they'd been trained in and told lots of
funny stories about some of the clients they'd had.  Seems lots of romantic
rides had gotten really romantic; they had the upholstery treated every
month to resist stains.  No, we didn't test it out.
   Being Hollywood, there was plenty of business.  They had a working
collaboration with several other limo services to handle overflow business;
call it friendly competitive collaboration.
   The place was nicely profitable and fit the locale.  It might not
contribute directly to our colonization efforts, but it contributed well to
the Scheme of Things.
   Bob passed out Sean seminar cards at lunch.  Seems the Regional Managers
had already passed the word down because the execs were already
pre-registered.  Good.
   ------
   Friday morning, we stole Don and Ana for a round of golf with the Golds.
The Dayton Valley Golf Course in Nevada was a tough one; none of us got
less than 80 -- no cheating, of course.  It had beautiful scenery and we
had a great time.
   In the afternoon, we had a JRD Exec Council meeting to see where we
stood.  It was dayum near the entire office staff by the time we got
everyone together.
   We went over the F&Rs we "oversighters" had turned in over the summer.
So far, nothing had fallen through the cracks; at the minimum, we (the
Regional Managers, etc.) were getting more data on each issue and assigning
priorities.  I told them, "Now, just because we mentioned something doesn't
necessarily mean it's 'gotta be fixed.' You work with the companies all the
time and can judge for yourselves what's important, has priority and the
lot.  And just because we didn't put something in the F&R doesn't mean it's
*not* important; you've gotta be the judges on that.
   "With the Cullen Enterprises system under our belts, you shouldn't need
an Exec Council decision on too many things.  You know what JRD needs; with
each company getting in its Admin Scale, you know what they need.  You've
got the authority, responsibility and control to do whatever you need.  If
you do need more horsepower on something, route it up and we'll take a look
at it.  We're not gonna micro-manage; it's all yours."
   I knew they took the hint: don't bug us unless it's really needed.
   The companies we'd hit earlier were already showing improvement since
they'd had longer to work on the issues we'd found.  Then again, the
various JRD managers were getting better because they were running into
many of the same issues as they went along -- usually the handlings were
similar.
   Many things were being handled by pushing in The Book as the general
policy then incremental application of improvements based on the detail
manuals.  We were handling technical issues such as manufacturing
operations with people who knew the area -- they're called consultants. 
Grin.
   We'd not been expecting an immediate implementation of anything. 
Company cultures take time to change, and not everyone was one of us,
either.  Makes a difference.  While each company had an improvement plan,
they were putting in one or two things at a time rather than everything at
once.
   Probably most first passes would be done within a year.  We reviewed
each company's overall plan and decided to sell Casino Equipment Inc.  in
Nevada.  It didn't really fit into our structure anywhere.
   The result of what improvements we had done showed in the Profit and
Loss (P&L) statements over the months.  Vail, of course, had shown a huge
jump right at the start then a reasonable increase as Madeleine had gotten
in some order in the sales area.
   The longer it had been since we'd started implementing change, the more
the P&L had changed for the better.  We had to watch out for seasonal and
business cycle variations, though.  Clean Pools, for example, had always
gotten busier as the warm weather approached and owners started using their
pools more.
   We'll see in mid-September.  We'd have the third-quarter results and
could do some comparisons.  The audit team and Probe Patrol had a company a
week scheduled through mid-October, so we still had those investigations
and analyses to do after that.  Still, we had a lot better handle on how
each company was doing things and had started them moving towards a common
set of policies.
   Carmel McLennan, Barbara and Aaron had decided on a common ERP
(Enterprise Resource Planning) system for the manufacturing companies.  The
vendor had smaller (read that to mean less expensive) systems for
non-manufacturing and lower-volume companies.
   For example, Vail manufactured electronic components while The Clean
Place, Clean Pools and EverAlert were service industries.  We didn't need
the same sort of operations management for all of them.  However, we could
use the smaller systems to handle purchasing, accounts payable, general
ledger, fixed assets, inventory and the other modules all businesses had in
common.
   Carmel and her crew had a good grasp on what it would take to get the
appropriate system into a company as well as how long it would take.  It
was no surprise that the larger, more complex manufacturing companies would
take a lot longer than a fairly simple service industry.  They figured
several months for the smaller companies and well over a year for the
larger ones.  Some consultants had better pack their bags!
   ------
   BOB (Saturday 9/2)
   So, JRD was moving along well.  All the companies were making us money,
and we were gonna unload the one which didn't fit.  While it wasn't yet
time to sit back and party all the time, it was moving in that direction.
   With the Labor Day weekend, we put off most of the business stuff and
let people party.  We were gonna have another virtual pool party on Monday
plus Kat and I were going on a week's cruise starting the 11th.  Maybe we'd
be able just to kick back and soak up some sun.  Doubtful, but we could
always hope a little.
   We did nose around a lot on Saturday and Sunday.  Our sinkhole crew was
off for the weekend; there was only a caretaker left to watch over the
equipment.  We doubted the grad students were working on their papers over
the weekend.
   Despite -- or because of -- the holiday weekend, almost every Cel system
around had someone on it.  Mario, Sherry, Kat and I spent two three-hour
shifts both days working away at home.
   I wouldn't say we were fluent in Sperk, but we were cruising along
pretty well with fewer word and concept chains we had to clear up.  Maggie
had insisted even us executive pukes had to study the Cel math up to
Earth's equivalent of Advanced Placement high-school calculus.
   Arg.  She had a lot more teeth now at nine month's body age; sure there
were enough to tear big hunks out of our arses!  Anyway, she'd told us,
"The Cels had some interesting views on a lot of stuff.  We have the same
fundamentals like arithmetic, standard geometry and the like, but we start
diverging by the time we get into The Calculus.  Neither of us is
completely correct nor completely wrong, just different views.
   "As we're doing our teleportation research, we're finding the different
views are helping us figure things out.  Then, too, all their technology is
based on their math, so you'll have to have some grasp of it to follow what
we're talking about."
   Most everyone had taken to using Sperk around the house and the JRD and
SW offices.  It worked for a good 80% of the business or technical issues
we discussed; we were beginning to think in it to unravel an issue.  Wonder
if Sean and harem are gonna translate The Book.  Seems like a likely
candidate for their spare time.  Grin.
   Phane was a different story.  Silvia Connor (SW linguist) had developed
a pretty convoluted checksheet for us.  It had to be convoluted because
almost all the basic concepts depended on an acquaintance with the Cel
culture; at least the culture in our solar system.
   Sunday afternoon, we stocked the back yard for the Labor Day party. 
Yeh, Irish barbeque was on the menu.
   ------
   (Monday 9/4)
   Our virtual pool parties seemed to be working out great.  Clann Cullen
was having their own blow-out at one of the Altadena parks so we were
"alone." We still passed the word that any Clann member from anywhere in
the world was welcome to drop by.
   Mario had worked up a cleas program for the back yards which showed
people playing, eating and swimming like any "normal" family -- in bathing
suits.  He'd put in random actions, so it wasn't just a repeated play,
either, which gave the neighbors something to look at they could accept. 
The Sims game didn't even come close to what he had.
   Skin was again the order of the day.  The various chefs wore aprons
because...  well, chefs always wear aprons with clever sayings, right? 
Mine said, "Chefs do it outside."
   We bribed Megan Foster to be our nekkid beautiful faery; she did
wonderfully.  She was a bit clumsy, though.  Seems she kept missing her
hugs and pushed her nipples into faces quite a bit.  Grin.  People were
tolerant, and no one complained much.  Hehehehe.
   Mostly the Ceann-Mates did the visiting.  Made sense; the Ceann host
stayed home where he or she could be found.  Sunshine zipped around the
United States for several hours; even a few European Clanns had taken our
Labor Day as a good excuse for a party.
   Jacuzzis were always a hit wherever they were.  Seems most hosts had
their pumps upgraded a bit.  Hehehehe.
   We had Clann Fuerte members pop by; they had a good business excuse. 
Dayum!  Linda looked better every time I saw her.  From the way she
snuggled up to me, she didn't mind being around.  I had host duties to
attend to, so I couldn't show her exactly how I felt about her.  The social
secretaries will catch us up.
   Guerrero Construction was going full tilt.  Ramon and Elisa had paid Kat
back completely and were doing a lot of work.  They were up to 75 people
now in the company and were providing income for lots of families around
the area.  Good on 'em!
   Yeh, they'd found water and oil where I'd expected.  Evin, Rodrigo
Fuerte (lawyer) and others were well on the way to owning or controlling a
lot of land in the area.  The oil and water were inside knowledge; not for
public use yet.  If someone later didn't like that, tough darts!  They had
all the conventional technology at hand to discover them.
   They'd drilled the water well in the middle of a thousand acres they
controlled on a long lease.  Using that as an excuse, they leased several
hundred acres up north a little ways, drilled for water, and were extremely
surprised it turned out to be thick and dark.  The Mexican government was
*very* interested!
   Of course they nationalized it.  They were "nice" enough to give
Guerrero Construction a few million pesos to buy out their lease.
   Ramon promptly contracted with the government to lay water pipe up to
the oil area.  Strange how easily that went!  I'd say within a year the
entire area would be under construction.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   I dragged The Sherry along for the party visits.  That way, we could
double-team the Ceanns with hugs!  Nasty.  Maggie's corrupted us both,
right?
   We didn't get to all of them; hell, there were over 300 Clanns in North
and South America alone!
   We laid good ones on Kieran Flanagan in Akron.  He's a yummy Irish bear!
Gotta do some, em, cross-culturing soon.  Mick and Nora Reynolds didn't
escape us either.  Clann Flanagan was doing extremely well and was
expanding almost daily.  Good.
   We attempted to visit Clanns in every region -- a lost cause.  A lot of
the Ceanns I'd already met at Clanns Council meetings, but it was always
great to press the flesh.  Sherry and I ensured the flesh was quite
well-pressed.  Of course, Sherry was the one egging me on; I'm so quiet and
shy all the time, right?
   We had enough room at our NH home to have the Clann Reynolds meeting
there as part of the virtual party.  There were lots of good announcements.
   Bob told us our population was up around 50,000 now with around 700
Clanns.  No wonder Sherry and I had been so busy earlier!  We were still
doubling every week.  Yeh, it won't keep up forever, but we still had the
10% potential of a couple hundred million across the world.  We shall see.
   Bob talked about the Los Angeles Waystation quite a bit.  "There's one
successful Waystation in Mesa, Arizona.  When we get this one up and
operating, we'll have two good examples.  The Adams, Leonards and Clann
Cullen have agreed to create checksheets on setting one of these up, so
they'll be available probably in a couple of months.
   "This isn't a patented or copyrighted idea in any way.  You'll be able
to get The Book and a checksheet from the Cullen Enterprises web site and
roll your own anywhere you can.
   "Remember, we're not abandoning this planet and people for our off-world
colonies; we're expanding our options and population and making the Earth a
better civilization while we're doing that.
   "We've still got a lot to learn about history.  The Cels left here
probably a couple hundred thousand years ago; from what little we've been
able to understand of their history, there might well be many other
civilizations 'out there.'
   "We want to present the Earth culture as the best it can be.  Yeh, it's
possible what we have now *is* the best it can be, but we don't know that
as a fact.  Make yourselves more able and let's help our Earth kin become
more able at the same time."
   Keep the home fires lit, make things better and keep several escape
routes handy.  We'd talked about that quite a bit with Sean.
   We needed several off-planet locations like yesterday.  With our body
shields, any of us could survive the climate and conditions pretty much
anywhere, but the bodies need to be fed.  That was the sticking point; we
could buy/import food from Earth for a while -- if it was still here. 
These weird Humans could fuck themselves up pretty much any time.
   Good thing we had SW and NewTek working away.  Betcha we have ranchers
and farmers in our global database; professions are a preference, not a
necessity.
   Bob and I spent the night cuddled up and enjoying being with each other.
Mario and Sherry were doing the same down the hall so we had a happy
household.
   ------
   (Tuesday 9/5)
   Bob and I made the long half-second trek to RRK along with Mario,
Sherry, David and Elizabeth.  Yet Another Meeting; guess that's the life of
an executive.
   We went over the various companies and teams.  The recruiting was our
major interest; it was going along just about as fast as we wanted.
   We didn't want to get too many people ready to go off-world then have
them sitting around with their heads up their arses while SW and NewTek got
off their arses and fired up some facilities.  That's one reason we were
all studying so much.
   Kate had come up with the idea of recruiting from our Waystations.  Hey,
by the time someone was ready to "graduate," they were usually in pretty
good shape.  We immediately decided (with Vera's concurrence) that we'd
have a definite "in" with the Program Director at every Waystation.
   How about other shelters that weren't ours?  Yeh, the agency and Van
Nuys Temps would start checking them out.  There were probably some good
people who were willing to work in a land somewhere over the rainbow.
   We did lunch at Gilligan's in NYC.  We held the pranks down; with our
cleas set to faeries and leprechauns "in disguise," we were on reasonably
good behaviour.
   Bob and I decided I'd be involved in every Ceann Mor activity I could.
He told me, "I need someone to keep my head from swelling up and to poke
holes in my ideas.  I figure between you, Mario and Sherry, you'll keep me
somewhat honest."
   No problem at all on keeping his head from swelling; The Sherry and I
would see to that.  On the other hand, there was another head we didn't
mind swelling up a lot and quite frequently.  Hehehehe.
   We had Ben Talbert and Sheila Farley (JRD Global Manager) over for
dinner.  They were a nice change of pace.  Both had their feet firmly on
the ground and their heads in the galaxy.
   As I'd suspected, they were really an item.  Ben spent a lot of time in
the SW office and Sheila was literally right next door.  Ben joked, "She's
a *great* Girl Next Door.  Besides being so damn good-lookin' and smart,
she keeps me alive."
   Yeh, it was alive!  He'd been without a relationship for years, and
Sheila hadn't been in much better condition.  They'd found a tremendous
amount in common and had moved in together.  Yep, another couple living in
sin.
   We had a great dinner in Palm Springs at a four-star restaurant. 
Outside, it was almost 100 degrees, but it was plenty cool inside.  We had
our body shields to air-condition us as needed, but it was nice not to have
to use them.
   Sheila, the Global Sales Manager (Madeleine) and the Region Managers
(Blake and Louise) were working a lot together.  With the backlog of
deferred maintenance (policy-wise) in all the companies and the F&Rs to
work through, they had plenty to keep them busy.
   Ben was going off and on all day and night.  Now that we were
world-wide, he might have an early-morning meeting (3:00 AM) with people
from Europe or Asia.  He told us, "No rest for the wicked, right?  Then
again, we righteous people don't need any."
   I didn't know for sure where Bob and I fell in that.  We hadn't had much
rest since JRD snagged us up.  Hopefully our boat cruise next week would
help; our Cabo vacation had turned out to be a working vacation.
   Back home, we had a bit more shop and personal talk.  As the main
facilitator, Ben was in on a lot of things.  "You're pretty well up to date
now.  With Mario and Sherry going over things, and you staying so, em,
close to Maggie McLennan, you've got a solid line to almost everything
that's happening."
   So, we didn't have much more shop talk.  Ben was very attentive and
eager to help me have the best time possible.  "I heard a rumor from Kate
Hanlon that redheads have a different sort of fire than just their tempers.
Maybe we can stoke up the fire and see what happens."
   He must have lots of great memories or had a lot of great coaching
because he lit up the Cauldron of Fire right away.  He came up with a few
really interesting (kinky?) twists (that, too) which he applied with Tender
Loving Care; "it" was definitely alive!  Sheila had a great one!
   Sheila and Bob seemed to get along just fine.  Ben told me, "She usually
doesn't make that much noise.  You *go*, gal!"
   After a few sweet Journeys, we took a quick tour of the solar system to
see what was going on.  The Venus facility was now cool and comfortable and
was ready for the next steps in the activation process.  Ben said, "We just
need to learn more.  We know there's lots of hydroponics in the major
facilities, but haven't much idea yet how they work.
   "Yes, the Cels definitely ate meat.  They seemed to tend a lot towards
seafood; there's several really big fish-raising 'farms' in Selene City. 
Unless they grazed them in Central Park, they probably raised or harvested
meat animals directly from Earth."
   We'd found several hints about that in our studies so far.  Probably
we'd know Real Soon Now since there were a good 200 engineers and others
working on the food issue alone.
   We agreed the smaller facilities wouldn't be self-sufficient, unless the
Earth-based ones lived off the land.  That was a good possibility, given
that the logs from the first outpost had talked about the "wildlife." Guess
we'll find out.
   If Ben hadn't had a poke spot before, he got one then.  We had another
fun frolic for a half hour before Sheila and I kicked out the guys and had
our own fun.
   She and Ben were interested in children together but were letting the
work situation settle out just a bit more before starting any.  In the
meantime, they were practicing plenty.
   Sheila liked girls.  She told me, "Ben didn't even blink an eye when I
got invited to one of Siobhan and Madeleine's Ladies Nights.  Now that was
a lot of fun.  No Kieran Flanagan dance, though.  Darn!"
   We got along really well together.  We had a good blend of pheromones,
and she was nicely tasty.
   ------
   BOB (Wednesday 9/6)
   Sheila was a delightful lady.  She and Ben were so much in love it was
almost sickening.  Almost.  Kat and I were that way, too.
   We had a good breakfast buffet in Reno.  The gals were glowing so Ben
and I appeared appropriately wiped out.  Grin.
   Kat and I got in a round of golf in the morning.  Sarah had picked it
out, given us coordinates and a reservation time then turned us loose.  I
didn't even know where it was geographically or the name of the place.
   It didn't matter; Kat still beat me by two strokes.  I didn't even
cheat!
   ------
   We spent Thursday on quick Clann visits and visiting Regional Probe
Patrols.  With well over 700 Clanns and increasing every day, there was no
lack of people to visit.
   The Clanns Council was fine up to maybe 100, but with this many, we'd
have issues.  The Clanns had done well in coordinating their regions, so we
did an informal survey on creating a Regional Ceann.  It would be similar
to a republic in that any group of Clanns could elect a representative to
the Council; they didn't have to be a Ceann.  Yeh, they still wanted Ceann
Mor; there was some loose talk about creating a monarchy.  Right, just what
we needed, a Ri or King.
   Kathleen was all for it, of course.  From the comments we got, they had
someone in mind already.  She'd be the Banrion (Queen), and she gushed a
bit about wearing a crown and fancy clothes.  Kathleen Banrion.  The
problem was, I wasn't at all sure she *wasn't* joking.  Betcha she'd ring
in The Sherry on it.  Arg.
   ------
   The spirit bush telegraph works really great.  Someone somewhere heard
something on the radio, and the word got to us within five seconds.  We
tuned into the local Los Angeles oldies station and heard Leone and Mark in
an excellent rendition of Patsy Kline and Jim Reeves in "I Fall to Pieces."
The disk jockey commented she thought they were actually better than the
originals!
   Within the next fifteen minutes, the global bulletin board had a link to
various regional radio station phone numbers.  With four cell phones and a
land line, we spent 20 minutes calling the Los Angeles area stations
requesting L&M in any form.  Being Los Angeles and Southern California,
there were at least fifteen stations of various sorts.
   The link for Los Angeles had classical stations (L&M had duets in five
languages), contemporary adult, classic rock, oldies, Country & Western --
something about a dog and a rattlesnake -- Spanish, nostalgia.  You name
it, L&M had something available.
   Betcha JRD Media Repro and Fillmore Sales Relations will have some fun
with it.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Even on a cheap AM radio, L&M came through wonderfully.  We learned
later that JRD Recording, Fillmore and Media Repro had developed different
CDs for the various media.  AM radio had limited tonal range, while FM was
a bit better.  Of course, a home CD had the best range possible.  Each CD
distributed had its songs optimized for the medium.  The social secretaries
immediately agreed we needed another L&M honoring in the near future!
   We had something new to talk about when we (Mario, Sherry, Bob and I)
went to Olive Tree Lane to, em, visit the Cullens.  They had a mockup of an
Irish mansion.  Eileen told us, "We cheated.  Kat owns an old mansion in
Ireland, so we copied a few rooms and did a bit of renovating."
   Yeh.  Looks like we've got some visits to Ireland coming up.  With their
"renos" it looked and felt really comfy.
   With six people in their office, there were several different tastes in
music.  We filled them in on L&M's different abilities; they'd done their
own radio station calling earlier.  With six cell phones and a land line,
they'd put out some Good Words for them.
   We had a wonderful dinner in the Bahamas.  With the time zone
difference, the dinner crowd had died down, and we had a nice private room
to ourselves.  Not that I'm that good an accountant, but Cullen Enterprises
could charge it off as a business dinner.  Every bit helps.
   We touched briefly on the RRK operations since we were jointly involved.
Even with our cleas and garble shields, we didn't discuss much Clann or SW
business.  Security was starting to reign supreme.
   Back at "my" Irish manor, we did talk Clann and SW business a bit. 
Between the snuggling and snogging.  I brought up the idea of a "monarchy,"
and the Hat Ladies glommed onto it with a vengeance.
   They had some great ideas about clothes, rituals and ceremonies for the
Ri and Banrion (King and Queen)!  With spirit-tongues firmly in cheek we
had a serious discussion about adapting Clann customs to include anyone in
the world for the Ri and Banrion.
   Sean, Mario and Bob rolled their eyes, sighed and did their usual
moaning and complaining.  While jabbering about it was fun, I had plenty to
do just as Ceann-Mate and Ceann-Mate Mor!  Naturally, I tucked a few
interesting ideas away to discuss with The Sherry later.  Maybe we could
make Sherry a Lady in Not Waiting and Mario a Knight of the Royal Bed!
   Eileen brought out an old bottle.  She told us, "The young-uns went
nosing around your mansion and found these buried in what used to be a
cellar.  They may be several hundred years old."
   Well, Bob was the mechanical wizard, so we made him open it.  He gently
_pulled_ out the cork -- it was quite fragile.  He took a sniff and said,
"Whiskey." He poured a bit into a shot glass and took a sip.  "Tolerable."
   Good enough!  He set us all up a round of shots.  I took a sip;
tolerable it was *not*!  It was ambrosia!  Slightly thick with a wonderful
odor and a taste which simply took over your entire mouth for a minute.  It
was almost a brandy.
   Everyone had the same reaction.  Kate said, "We only have two bottles.
There's still an entire cellar packed away underneath the ruins.  Who knows
what else you've got under there."
   Jaysus!  The Sherry and I immediately agreed to set up a bar and put
this as the very top shelf.  No label, just a little sign which would say,
"The Best."
   We nursed our shots for almost a half hour.  Maggie (who'd had a half
shot) suggested, "This isn't for drinking; it's the original Irish
usquebaugh, the water of life.  This is for enjoying and celebrating; only
one shot a night.  Otherwise, we'd loose the flavor."
   Yeh.  From the mouths of babes and very old ladies.  Kate broke out some
baby whiskey -- only 50 years old -- and we worked on that for a while.
   Now we talked shop and personal stuff.  The Cullens' Rest and Tavern in
Stevenson Ranch were going strong; they'd had an excellent Labor Day
weekend.  Sean told us, "Probably a good 50% of the staff were new, so we
pitched in a bit.  My sisters, their crew and the Hat Ladies did all the
work while I hid in the kitchen and snogged with the chef."
   ------
   BOB
   Somehow we didn't believe Sean had hid away.  The Hat Ladies loudly
lauded his efforts and his organizational skills while suggesting if he
would work that hard on them, they wouldn't be so, em, wanting all the
time.
   Sean just shrugged it off.  He told me, "I think they're wanton, not
wanting.  Bob, perhaps you need to apply the Rod of Chastisement to them.
After all, they've been getting pretty sassy lately."
   I looked them over.  They tried to appear shocked, but Maggie cackled,
"Yeh.  Let's work 'em all over really good, Sorcerer.  A few swats with
that Wand of yours will bring anyone into line."
   I asked them, "A line, eh?  How about Maggie?  She's implying the rest
of you are the smart-arses while she's as innocent as a lamb."
   BB promptly said, "She's the worst one.  She keeps making catty remarks
about us in the old Gaelic which she knows Liss and I don't understand very
well.  While she may not be able actually to take the Rod of Chastisement,
I think she still needs to be chastised vigorously.  Her mouth's outgrown
her body by a long ways."
   Kate and Eileen agreed, while Maggie tried to appear pissed off.  Pretty
hard to do when she was leaking scent and pheromones all over the place.
   I suggested, "Maybe 20 Soo Laids in a row?  Would that quiet her down
for an hour or so?"
   Maggie looked extremely interested while the rest of the ladies
discussed her capacities.  They came to a WAG'n conclusion that the only
way to quiet her down for long would be to lock her away somewhere so she
couldn't work her mouth -- physically or spiritually.
   Maggie laughed and looked proud.  No back off from her!
   BB said, "Hmm.  How would you lock a spirit away?  We're running into
baddies now; could we lock them up somehow until we could learn to handle
them?"
   Mario and I promised her a thorough caressing of every hair on her body
for that question.  We might get to it tonight, but we had a lot of general
chastising to do.
   So, discussion.  We decided an inverted firewall might do the deed.  We
wanted to keep them in place so they wouldn't wander off and cause more
hate and discontent.
   Those of us with long memory streams had noted we'd had pretty much the
same personality traits for many lifetimes, even though we'd not actually
remembered the ones before.  Once a baddy, always a baddy -- unless we
figured out how to snap them out of it.
   If the body died, the baddie would simply pick up another one and start
its nastiness again.  That said killing the body -- even if we would do it
without extreme necessity -- wouldn't protect the rest of society or us
very much; it would just delay some of the activities.
   But, if we had a firewall to keep them inside and perhaps limit their
abilities to influence others, it might just do the job.  Keep them in jail
until we could rehabilitate them.
   Well, that took fifteen minutes to write up and send to the SW security
team.  Maybe they already had something similar, but it didn't hurt to
suggest it again.  We were careful to say it was coming from Bob, Kat and
friends, not Ceann Mor.
   Okay.  Some of the business was done, but there was a lot of Chastising
which needed done.
   Ten Soo Laids barely slowed Maggie down.  She was too small for the Rod
of Chastisement (She told us, "I'm working on it; Sean gets the first adult
crack at the crack.  Hehehehe.") so we had to figure out other ways to
torment her unmercifully.  Fortunately, Mario and I had three other Hat
Ladies who literally knew her inside and out.
   The Rod of Chastisement had a lot of work to do.  Even being applied
twice made them confess to only a few of their sins.  We didn't have time
for us to subject BB's pelt to a hair-by-hair caressing, but we managed to
get everyone singing their own special songs of contentment.
   Janey Mack!  Each time _merging_ and being with these people was more
wonderful than before.  We could fit all nine of us in a wonderful _merge_
which was just short of being intolerable.  Think of being just on the edge
of the strongest orgasm you'd ever had -- and holding it there for over an
hour.
   Mario noted, _"We know how to work in teams under a common firewall and
that sort of stuff on the Probe Patrol.  That was mainly because we found
too many spirits in a merge got, em, Fucked Up.  The team idea worked great
for the Probe Patrol.  Now, have the SW security team, Ben in his meetings
or other committees worked as a mental team?_
   _"Most of the team meetings I've been in have been just like every other
mundane meeting.  We offer up opinions, Bright Ideas and such, but it's
always been a discussion and resolution -- most of the time -- rather than
a team like we have in the Probe Patrol."_
   Well, shit.  It only took us a couple minutes to fire off an email to
Ben Talbert.  Then, we applied the team idea to Maggie for another hour of
Soo Laids.  Fifteen home runs wasn't bad for an hour's "work," right? 
Buwahhahahaha!
   After several rest breaks while we explored the goings-on in the solar
system, we decided the ladies had been chastised enough -- for tonight
only; there was still plenty of sass they had stored away.  Wouldn't have
it any other way, either.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Friday 9/8)
   Sherry and I teamed up and tried to show Sean how a couple Clann
Reynolds' girls handled an upstart male.  It didn't even start to settle
him down!
   Sherry and I took turns teaming with Sean "against" the other girl. 
Yowsah!  A combination light _merge_ and team got some results, all right!
   Sherry and I got pushed outside our bodies at least five times each. 
Definitely party time!
   What the hell, we could sleep in tomorrow.  If Sean and harem had to
work, that was their problem, not ours.  Hehehehe.  Bob and Mario seemed to
be holding up okay in the other room; not that I'd ever seen Bob not being
able to handle anything tossed his way, mind you.
   This required a major breakfast buffet.  The Los Vegas Rio buffet staff
knew us by name by now.  Yeh, we had appropriate disguise cleas and all
that, but we also had "standard" names we used, too, as part of the
disguises.  By now, Little Person Maggie didn't even get a second look
beyond the "there's one right fine lady."
   ------
   I zipped over to the Golds so they and Nurse Mom could look at my
innards.  We all agreed both Mom's and my Babies Within were unmatchable in
cuteness over the entire known universe.  If you happen to disagree, I've
got Ceann Mor to expunge his wrath upon you -- and Ceann Sean has one
wicked war club he's willing to use to help defend my honor!
   Mom and the Golds were really happy with the monitoring tags.  Oscar
said, "We've got data never before gathered or thought of.  Just by
monitoring the bloodstream on either side of the placenta, we've been able
to track the gradual development of the placenta membrane, then the
differing and similar developments in the mother and the embryo.  The stem
cell differences start showing almost as soon as the placenta membrane
becomes stable."
   Hey, fine by me.  They didn't think I needed a stem cell "upgrade." Our
Babies Within were doing just fine, and I was getting laid often enough to
keep my hormones under control.  What mom could ask for more?
   Maybe my mom.  Trot out every "how horny are you?" joke, and she more
than beat them.  Dayum!  Hmm.  Maybe Sean and harem could settle her down
for a night.  Maybe turn the N&B young-uns loose on her?  The full Wild
Bunch?  Not that she'd never thought of them herself, mind you.  Hehehehe.
   The doctors were happy, the R.N.  was happy, and I had a belly bump to
show off.  'Nuff said for now.
   I made a visit to our temp team.  Cheryl and Mike were really an item by
now.  They'd moved in together and were another couple contemplating a
formal bonding.  Hmm.  Maybe Bob needs to do a set of interviews like Sean
does.  Then again, maybe we could push that off onto the Clann Priest.
   We don't have a Clann Priest?  Fuck me 'til my toes fall off!  Majella
Canavan would do just fine.  She was willing, so let it rip!  She, Bob and
Sean could work out the details.  If someone needed Ceann Bob's blessing or
insights, the social secretaries' assistants would let us know.
   Anyway, despite Cheryl and Mike's extra-curricular activities, the temp
team had worked through the pile in the in basket.  Net result was that
from both sets of grandparents' estates as well as J&R, Evin and I ended up
about equally split in ownership.
   Net value of the ownership?  We didn't really care right now.  BB had
been right; I owned a mansion in Ireland.  The temp team had all the
ownership transfers in progress, so we'd be the legal owners (or control
the stuff) when the bureaucracies of the various countries, including the
U.S., were done doing their things.
   An updated map showed a couple more properties close to RRK and JRD
properties.  Okay, let the joint team rip!  Since all the temp team had
offers from either RRK or JRD, we kept one part-timer at JRD to follow up
on the ownership transfers.  Ireland seemed to be a lot faster than Mexico
for whatever reason.
   ------
   BOB
   We had a wedding!  Leone and Mark had come through big time! 
Professionally, they had their art on the airwaves with lots of other
promotions (gigs) happening, and personally they'd helped out enhancing
quite a few artists.  Seems some artists are a bit peculiar -- not quite
the "you don't have to be crazy to be an xxx, but it doesn't hurt," but
still peculiar.
   Some artists seemed to think they had to suffer in life to be able to do
their art.  Well, L&M were able to straighten them out.  You've gotta live
the part of life you're trying to communicate to be really successful.
   Now, when you're one of us, you can actually experience the trials,
troubles and ecstasies of that upper-class (or middle-class or whatever)
person and find the emotions to convey in your own art.
   L&M had the various styles down pat.  Their glory was in conveying and
showing both the thought and emotions behind what was going on.  Each
audience had a different criteria (New Wave, C&W, etc.) for both style and
content.
   Since L&M could _know_ the people who actually lived the lifestyle of
the medium, they could nail the technique and the emotional content. 
Dayum, I was glad to know them!
   While this wasn't a "Ceann" wedding, the spirit bush telegraph had
spread the word.  We rapidly overflowed the old Masonic Temple in Glendale
and had to do some virtual pool parties.
   No sweat on our side; our place was set up in a half hour with goodies,
barbeque (That's what the walk-in freezer in the basement was for.) and
Irish whiskey -- we hid the top shelf stuff for the time being.  Mario and
Sherry hosted while Kat and I pressed the flesh at the Temple.
   Yeh, Megan Foster was bribable as the nekkid faery.  She did great! 
While the bribe wasn't specifically specified, I'll bet the social
secretaries had a large say in it.
   You've been to a one of us wedding before.  Suffice it to say the music
was personal, fitting and exquisite.  They weren't so modest that they
wouldn't use their own songs, either.  Each fit perfectly the exact phase
of the ceremony.
   As the Ceann, I got to call the Clann to order.  Do I need a ceremonial
staff like Sean's?  Yeh, they'd gotten Majella to be the priest.  She
rendered the now-classic bonding ceremony while everyone either cried
(female and semi- male) or teared up (macho male).
   The reception(s) were great, too.  Seems we're getting this virtual
party down pretty good.
   I finagled a dance with the bride.  She still had those classic Leone
moves of snuggling up and rubbing.  No harm, no foul!  I told her, "You are
a wonderful person.  You and Mark make a wonderful team; if there's
anything Kat and I can ever do to help you, you let us know."
   She sighed and told me, "You and Sunshine have been so good to us.  It
was only through your help we found JRD Recording and Fillmore and were
able to get this far."
   Yeh.  "Sweet Leone, you and Mark are each one in a million.  While
together you make wonderful music, each of you alone is worth a million
'ordinary' people.  You have taken yourselves to this level; all we've done
is perhaps introduced you to a few people.  It's you and Mark who've done
this; we're glad to have helped."
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   What a great wedding!  Majella had the bonding ceremony down pat by now,
and she could wring tears of joy from everyone.
   With a virtual party, there could be lots of guests.  At least from
Southern California, there were a good 1,000 guests who'd heard them on the
radio.  Not too shabby!
   Someone had quickly arranged well over a hundred virtual hosts for the
reception.  Word spreads rapidly; by the end of the night, L&M had well
over 3,000 spirits celebrating their nuptials.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.
   We didn't do a whole lot of our own partying; we had Sean's seminar
tomorrow.  The entire JRD staff was scheduled to attend; they faced
Siobhan's wrath if they didn't show!
   The NH crew (Mario, Sherry, Bob and me) zipped up to Oakland after the
wedding receptions had died down.  We'd decided be "normal" attendees and
get a good feel for the atmosphere.
   Chapter 18
   BOB (Saturday 9/9)
   The NH gang zipped up to Oakland Friday evening to spend the night with
the JRD staff.  The entire JRD staff was in the same hotel; we were
scattered around a little, but no big deal.  We could always locate each
other.
   Every one of the staff here was either one of us or a high Sensitive. 
We were hoping the two high Sensitives would pop one of these days; we kept
feeding the power into them pretty strongly.
   Anyway, Kat and I had a king bed, room service and a view of San
Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge.  With a couple bottles of infant (less
than 25 years), baby (up to 75 years), teen (75 to 80), adult (81 to 100)
and middle-aged (100 to 125 years) whiskey tucked away in our stash, we
would manage.
   The balcony was just large enough for the two of us to sit and stretch
our legs a little; short walls on either end gave everyone some privacy.  A
couple towels and mini Cloud Cushions gave us plenty of comfort while we
wore the uniform of the evening.
   Being on the 12th floor, if someone could see the Sorcerer's Wand,
Cauldron of Fire or the Cioch Banrion (Breast of the Queen), they deserved
it.  We let it all hang out.  Not that I minded looking at Kathleen's
delicious diddies, mind you!  Just to be secure, though, we put up a simple
cleas of an empty balcony and dark room.
   Kat and I kicked back, sipped some whiskey and watched the lights for a
while.  Boats/ships on the Bay, vehicles on the Bay Bridge, lights on the
bridge, that sort of stuff.
   We were nosy; if something looked interesting, we'd zoom right in.  One
small cruise ship on the Bay had a couple standing by the railing
supposedly watching the lights.  Naughty, naughty!  They were actually
doing the deed very quietly (sound-wise).  They had a little thing about
public sex; do it and not get caught!  Hmm.  Kat glared at me for a couple
seconds then grinned.  "Ya never know, Sorcerer, when I might take
advantage of you."
   The gang partied a little; nothing like a wedding to get one in the
mood. The girls gathered in Siobhan's room for a gab-fest while the guys
crowded into my room.  Since Aaron and Barbara were next to us with a
connecting door, we had plenty of room.
   Yeh, we guys unabashedly _peeked_ at the girls every so often; nekkid
ladies were always high on our delights lists.  Not that they were up to
something (this time), but they sure looked good.  They could _peek_ at us
all they wanted.
   Guy stuff.  Apparently Oakland has some college and professional
football and basketball teams, because the television was going on about
them.  Me, what did I know about that stuff?  I hadn't played in school --
didn't dare and the PE coaches had hinted I shouldn't -- and really wasn't
interested.  I'd had plenty of group activities to keep me busy.
   We got several card games going with very stringent no-_touch_,
no-_peek_ and no-teleport rules.  Still, they wouldn't let me deal, and I
could use only the thumb and third finger of my left hand to look at my
cards.
   Dunno why; don't they trust Ceann Mor?  It couldn't have had anything to
do with the twenty minutes of card tricks I'd just done, could it?  Grin.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Fun and games!  Bob and I hung out on the balcony for a while and
invaded at least one couple's "privacy" on a cruise ship.  Voyeurs!  So sue
us; Evin knows lots of good lawyers.
   We girls got together in Siobhan's room and expanded into Sheila and
Ben's room next door.  The guys gathered in Bob's and Aaron's rooms; we
_peeked_, got a bit horny at the handsome male bodies on display and
giggled a lot.  I brought in a couple bottles of teen whiskey, and other
girls brought in other goodies.  We were tolerant; we permitted non-Irish
stuff, too.
   Louise and I showed off our bulges; I was 12 weeks with three and she
was 4 weeks with one.  Louise didn't really have a bulge, but cleased up a
little one anyway.  I wasn't quite a beachball yet but a basketball would
have rattled around some.
   Everyone _looked_, ood and ahhed, then agreed they were the cutest
they'd ever seen.  I didn't even have to invoke the potential Rod of
Chastisement if they hadn't agreed.  Heh.  Only reason they wouldn't have
agreed was because they hadn't thought of it!
   I asked loudly, "Louise hid hers until we caught her out.  Anyone else
preggers?"
   No one there, at least.  We speculated a lot about other girls we knew;
how about the rest of the Sean harem?  They hadn't mentioned it, at any
rate.
   We had two unattached girls with us.  They got a good grilling on SO
prospects and got lots of "helpful" suggestions.  We put their names on the
Clann Cullen web site; it pays to advertise!
   Louise asked, "Anyone planning?"
   Siobhan and Madeleine promptly shot up their hands.  Barbara, Sheila and
Sherry just lifted theirs a little bit.  We got into a deep discussion of
public vs.  private fertility rights, if and when and so on.  Of course,
the same speculated girls as before got their share of attention.  Hope
their spirit-ears weren't burning.  None of the subjects was still in
school; they weren't *that* hot to trot.
   Leone and Mark?  They hadn't hinted at any, though we agreed that with
Leone's character, it would probably be quite public!
   We came to an "agreement." Siobhan and Madeleine would have public rites
(Clann Reynolds and invitees), Barbara and Sheila would have private rites
(by invitation) and Sherry would address the issue after she and Mario were
married (Bwaak, bwaak!  Chicken!).
   For the public ones, we discussed who we could draft to be the link. 
Siobhan suggested, "How about BB?  Or Maggie?  Sherry and Kate have already
had their turn so we should spread the wealth a little.  Elizabeth was a
link, but didn't get all the, em, attention she deserved.  Betcha every
young-un would offer their services.  They're all yummy."
   Yeh, they sure were yummy!  It was common knowledge that Bob and I were
doing some intense cultural interchanges with Clann Cullen, so I
reluctantly (Hah!) described some of our methods of sharing customs.
   Everyone was interested in BB's pelt.  Everyone was interested in Kate's
puffies.  Everyone was interested in Eileen and the possible Ceann heir. 
Everyone was interested in *everything* about Maggie.  Madeleine reminded
us Kate already had a lot of general Soo Laids on account; maybe she could
work some of them off.
   Uh-huh.  Siobhan said she'd ask Maggie, and Madeleine agreed to ask BB.
Sherry reminded everyone, "Ana Mathews would agree to do everyone's.  She's
the horniest pregger lady I've ever heard of."
   Yep.  No reason we couldn't have two linkers, was there?  Hehehehe.  We
cackled a lot and speculated on who would be doing what to whom and how
much.  We solemnly agreed to request the Clann buy several sets of
restraints; they were a linker requirement.
   Sheila asked me, "What's this baby-grow routine?  I've been hearing some
interesting rumors."
   Well, she'd asked the expert.  I kept from cracking up while I explained
the theory and practice behind helping babies grow big and strong.  The
girls were good; no one laughed even if there were lots of suppressed
smiles.  They all agreed such a practice would be essential.
   With quite a few mothers there, we got into how they'd handled their
hornies.  Louise said, "My then-hubby wasn't too helpful; that was one
underlying reason we're not together now.  Lots of fingers, lots of toys."
   Yes!  We had a good discussion subject.  Were toys and accessories
useful?  What kind, where to get them and how often?  Good positions in
general to get around the preggy bellies.  I had my own boy-toy, so hadn't
needed any toys or accessories yet beyond some butt lube.  On the other
hand, they sure sounded like fun!
   We broke up around midnight and went back to our rooms.  If the rest
were like me, they were gonna get some action!  Our two unattached girls
got several offers to help them out -- they accepted.
   Since we girls were done talking, that meant the guys were done too,
right?  Bob was more than willing to dispense the growth elixir; he'd thunk
his body up (in self-defense) to be able to provide a dozen doses a night
if really pushed.  We used four before we let the bodies rest.
   ------
   BOB
   I didn't cheat and won the average number of hands at cards.  There were
lots of sharp eyes on me, though.
   Kat was horny when she got back and so was I.  We made a good match for
several hours.  Such a wonderful lady she was!
   Siobhan had spotted a good buffet when she'd made the hotel
reservations, so we all met there in the morning.  Girls glowed (especially
our two unattached ones for some reason), guys looked whipped and everyone
packed in the food.
   We split up into our usual couples or groups for the seminar.  We
circulated around the attendees beforehand doing gestalts and trading
business cards.  Never hurts to have a network.
   This was quite a bit different from the private seminar we'd had.  For
starters, there were well over 2,000 people, mostly mundanes.  Cullen
Enterprises put on quite a show to keep them entertained and informed.
   Only fifteen minutes went by before someone asked about the hats (A
ringer?).  Maggie was the speaker, so the other four Hat Ladies dashed out
on stage.  We had Irish cheerleaders!  After a quick cheer, BB called out,
"David Tremain from San Francisco!  You're a winner!" She did a spin and
tossed a bag of M&Ms (plain) across the room right into his hands.  Green
panty flash!
   Kat muttered something about, "Tasty furry fanny." Yeh, I remembered it
was all of that.
   Things went really well.  Within twenty minutes, they had an excellent
gage on how fast the audience responded and their education levels.  Lots
of gestalts at the beginning sure hadn't hurt.
   During lunch, one at a time would slip away to get a bite.  The rest
stayed available down on the floor for questions.  Out front, Fillmore was
doing brisk sales of pretty much everything.  Everyone was making money!
   After lunch, they generated enough excitement to keep everyone's
complete attention.  Hmm.  If nothing else did, those leprechaun "tattoos"
by their panty lines kept the audience alert.  Hehehehe.
   Eileen ended up with a "do it and do it and do it until the job gets
done" talk; hell, Kat and I were ready to go out and light some fires under
some JRD and RRK tails!  No real need to; we had lots of RRK and JRD
companies represented.  We'd keep an eye out, though.
   Kat and I drifted by briefly as they were answering questions and
signing manuals.  We shared quick _hugs_ and spirit-kisses while we told
them we were off on our cruise for the next week.  I'm sure they could bear
up without us for that long.
   The JRD gang got together for dinner and discussed (mainly) the seminar.
We agreed this presentation had been effective and well worth every penny.
The Irish whiskey at the restaurant was newborn stuff, but okay; no one
else seemed to object too much.
   After dinner, we zipped back to NH to get packed for tomorrow.  We were
taking a couple bags each for show and arranged the rest of our goodies for
easy access.
   Kat was a good packer.  Since she could get anything she needed pretty
much any time, she didn't have to agonize over what to take.  She could
have it all!  An hour sufficed for the both of us.
   We gathered money (cash, cards plus a cash stash at NH) and passports
then decided what to wear in the morning.  No big deal; I guess you could
say we were somewhat experienced travelers by now.
   ------
   Okay.  We had a Clanns Council meeting around 11:00.  I had two main
items: regional representatives and opening the off-planet sites to
mundanes.
There were no real issues against doing a region-represented Clanns
Council.  I got several volunteers from each major geographic area and
requested them to have at it.  They could post their findings and
recommendations on the global bulletin board, and we'd either vote on it or
take it as-is in two weeks.
   Opening the off-planet sites took a bit longer discussion.  The vast
majority wanted to wait until the sites were self-sufficient with air,
water and the like along with having food available.
   If someone didn't like the fact they were really off-planet, we'd ship
them back home with a gag order or something.  As soon as we had a colony
planet, we could keep them there.  Definitely need a colony ASAP!
   We didn't want a prison, but didn't want someone just deciding to go
home, visit the old girlfriend or boyfriend, get drunk and tell the world
where they'd been.
   Enough stuff for now.  With the global bulletin board and lots of
information available, everyone was keeping up pretty well with the SW
operations.  Since that included all of the Earth-based and off-planet
outposts and facilities, it covered a lot.  Most of the current research
status on other things was on the bulletin board, too, so we didn't need to
go over it.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Sunday 9/10)
   We were up and outta there by 8:30.  We'd invited Mario and Sherry along
weeks before; they'd politely declined, citing SW work and saying we needed
a real honeymoon alone.  We'll see how this turned out.  If it was good, we
were thinking of giving them a cruise for their own honeymoon.
   The cruise was on Mexico's Sea of Cortes; eight days and seven nights.
We figured it was enough to get "unlaxed" a little.  It started at the Los
Cabos International Airport; a familiar place.
   No, we didn't fly down.  We simply zipped our bags to the appropriate
baggage delivery line and ourselves into convenient landing spots.  We
wanted to look just like the rest of the tourists.
   There was the standard madhouse of people looking for their luggage.  We
had no problem seeing ours; besides being able to _see_ the stuff, how many
pieces of luggage do you think are bright green and decorated with
shamrocks, leprechauns and faeries?
   The Old Road down to Cabo San Lucas was very familiar.  We gave a big
wave to El Tule as we passed through.
   We boarded the ship directly from the busses.  Yeh, our tickets and such
were right where I'd put them.  The baggage would follow as it could; it
wouldn't get too lost with a node in each one stashed in a seed packet.
   The secretaries' assistants had gotten us a deluxe cabin on the upper
deck.  A bit over 4 grand each wasn't too bad; both our checking accounts
had been screaming for relief from overcrowding the past couple months --
Aaron had been screaming, too, about how much we weren't spending.  Dayum
near the entire summer had been directly on the JRD tab.
   Anyway, we had an escort to show us the way.  Joaquin Escobedo and his
wife, Bianca, were the cabin attendants for the four deluxe cabins on the
upper deck.  Very nice.  He had a nice dose of Potential!  By the time we
got to our cabin, Joaquin had a tag node, and we'd already started pumping
him up.  We'd see about Bianca when we met her.
   The cabin wasn't bad.  Two twin beds (Who needs them with a Custom Cloud
Cushion programmed to a handy plant?), about 13 by 18 with a very small
bathroom and a closet.  There was just enough floor space in the middle to
move around easily.
   There weren't any windows; the door opened onto the outside passageway.
No biggie; we could _see_ whatever we wanted to, anyway.
   Joaquin showed us around the room (passable English) and took our
luggage tags (_stolen_ from the Burbank airport).  His accent was extremely
familiar.  Bob said, "Sounds like you're from this area." In the local
dialect, of course.
   Joaquin grinned, "Yes.  My wife and I live this side of El Tule.  You
know the area?"
   Bob asked, "Yeh.  You know Guerrero Construction?"
   "Oh, yeh!  *Every* local knows them by now."
   Bob pointed his thumb at me and said, "She's a silent partner."
   We rattled away for a couple minutes then he had to head back down to
the incoming area.  He and Bianca would meet and escort the incoming
tourists to their cabins next to us.  Three of the four were filled on this
run.
   We nosed around the cabin a little then headed out for some exploration.
   The sun deck (the top deck where our cabins were) had a fore and aft
section.  The front section was just in front of the bridge where the
Captain and his bridge crew navigated the ship.
   Hmm.  There was a medium-sized section with a six-foot translucent
screen which had a sign saying, "Nudity allowed." Guess where *we* were
gonna be!  The bridge windows were elevated probably six feet; guess the
Captain had a say in where the nude area was.  Grin.
   The aft section had a small swimming pool, game boards, chairs and that
sort of stuff.  This wasn't a huge ship; maybe it would hold a couple
hundred people besides the staff.
   That's all we needed to see right then.  We watched from the sun deck
rail as the ship put to sea; our first stop was the next day at Isla
Espiritu Santo near La Paz.  The coastline up to San Jose del Cabo did look
different from the sea side.  We waved again at El Tule as we went past.
   We _knew_ Bianca was in our room putting our clothes away, so we walked
back to meet her.  Great, she was a Potential, too, so we placed her tag
and started her enhancement.
   Her English was even better than Joaquin's, but we talked away in the
local Spanish anyway.  Her brother worked with Ramon and Elisa.  She told
us, "They saved their lives.  So many of us were actually starving around
there.  The soldiers captured El Gordo and his crew, Ramon started up his
business and now my brother is working six days a week -- at more than he's
ever made before.  You're Ramon's partner?"
   I told her, "More an investor than a partner.  I had a few extra pesos I
loaned him to get going, and he's paid it all back already.  They're good
people." I left out all the equipment loans, and if the Guerreros wanted to
tell them about their "adventures" with us, that was up to them.
   Joaquin and Bianca were in their third year with the cruise line.  They
had one cruise on, five days off, then started preps for the next cruise.
From our gestalt, they made okay wages; at least it was reasonably steady.
Most of their discretionary income came from tips.
   They were in their mid-twenties, had been married five years and had two
boys and a girl.  While they were on a cruise, the children stayed with
either Joaquin's or her brother's families.  We had a nice chat; we'd have
more later.
   The other two rooms' occupants were out and about.  We'd check them out
later.  In the meantime, it was time for lunch!  Vacationing is such hard
work.
   The dining room was quite nice.  It was obviously used for shows, too;
the 30 by 20 stage had sufficient wear to show it was used often.  Tables
seated four to many; only the Captain's table was assigned seating.
   We grabbed a table for eight so we could get to meet some neighbors and
have some chatting.
   ------
   BOB
   Dress was casual during the day.  The cruise brochure said there was a
small show and dancing at night; one could wear most anything.  The first
night's dinner was dress if at all possible.  Good thing I'd "packed" my
suit!
   For lunch, Kat wore a sundress which left only a bit of doubt in
anyone's mind that she wore anything beneath it; our Babies Within were
endearingly obvious.  The dining room was air-conditioned, which gave her a
good excuse for some, em, light fixtures in the front of her dress.
   Two couples and four younger people (kids around eight) joined us. 
Introductions (and gestalts) all around told us there were two families
with two kids each.  The parents were already having a bit of a hassle
chasing after the kids.
   Sorry, no Potential there.  Just to keep track, though, we put a tag in
each kid; at that age, they tend to wander off and get lost.  The kids,
dads *and* moms all admired the extra light fixtures.  The kids stared
unabashedly and one asked his dad if Kat had something wrong with her.  He
grinned, looked over the display (Kat sat up real straight so he had a
clear view.) and told him, "Nothing wrong with her, Ken.  Absolutely
nothing at all."
   We had a good laugh all around.  Kat smiled at Ken and told him, "It's a
common reaction among girls when they meet a handsome man like you." That
went over pretty good.  The light fixtures went to high intensity for the
duration while Kat playfully flirted with Ken.
   Service was excellent.  Our table had two and sometimes three waiters.
Kat and I picked up the accents; they were El Tule locals, too.  Rattling
away with them for a couple seconds got us their opinion of the lunch menu.
   The food was very good, and everyone relaxed quickly.  After all, this
was vacation.  One family was from Kansas and the other from Oklahoma.  As
I recall, there wasn't much water in either of those places.
   The cruise brochure said it wasn't necessary to tip all the time; if one
wanted to tip, it was usually done at the end.  That didn't stop us from
leaving $10 when we left, just in case.
   We went back up to the sun deck.  We were cruising by desert, and there
was lots of sand but not much else.  There wasn't much wildlife in the
water for the moment, either.  Kat said, "Sunbathing!"
   The nude area screen had a jogged opening so no one had to open a door
or anything.  Kat picked out a couple lounge chairs while I grabbed a
couple towels.  She casually turned her back to the bridge while she
unfastened and dropped her dress.
   As she bent over to arrange the towels, the two binocular-toting
lookouts on the bridge snapped to.  They got a good five-second shot of the
finest red-furred fanny in the world.  The Captain had been forewarned of a
possible marine hazard, so he was checking out the view, too.  Rank Has Its
Privileges.  None of them bothered to look at me.
   The lounge chairs weren't uncomfortable, but a couple innocuous
_touches_ made them very comfortable.  We sprawled out, closed our eyes and
unlaxed.  Kat "innocently" had her feet towards the bridge; the lookouts
were very alert and ensured the potential hazard was kept under frequent
observation.
   After a couple minutes a deck steward came by and said, "Excuse me,
please.  I must warn you the sun is very fierce and can burn you badly."
   We cracked our eyes open.  Another local.  I rattled off an explanation,
"We understand that.  Usually, we Irish are very sensitive, but for
whatever reason, both of us just tan a little.  Neither of us has gotten a
burn in years."
   Kat and I rattled back and forth a bit with Phillipe.  This was his
assigned deck area for the afternoon; there was another (lady) steward in
the morning.  Anyway, he offered to get us something to drink.  Fine by us.
We had a mild cleas which made us look well into our twenties so we told
him, "Bring us something cold that packs some punch."
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   It had been very chilly in the dining room.  Grin.  Out here in the
direct sunlight, the extra lighting wasn't needed, so they went out -- for
a while.
   Yeh, the bridge crew got some good shots.  Gotta keep some interest up;
they didn't really have much else to do other than stand around, steer the
ship a little and look at the ocean, right?
   When Phillipe brought our drinks back, we sat up and moved the chairs
around a bit.  The bridge crew now had a three-quarter view of the hazards;
the Babies Within just relaxed and enjoyed along with us.  Grin.  There was
enough variation in the ocean breeze temperature to cause the headlights to
turn on every once in a while -- after all, maritime hazards need to be
identified and marked, right?
   Whatever Phillipe had brought us, it packed a decent punch.  We let it
relax us more but kept the blood alcohol filters finely tuned.
   Looking around, we had maybe a dozen people taking advantage of the
area. Everyone eyeballed each other; the females really eyeballed Bob.  I
ensured everyone got at least one good shot of the hazard zones during the
afternoon.
   Date night!  Dinner and a dance.  We decided an LBD for me would do just
fine; Bob had plenty of warm-weather suits so we imported a black one.  I
put on some dancing shoes and a bit of jewelry (cleased) and was ready to
go.  I adjusted the Inner Touch bra just right and the dress adjusted
itself to meet the demands.  Funny how that works out.
   The dining room was cool again, which gave me a good excuse to pop up
the lights.  Not that I needed an excuse, mind you.  We got at a table for
six this time with two other couples.
   One was from Los Angeles and the other from Washington.  They were nice
folk; none of us minded looking each other over pretty good.
   Dinner was excellent; all that hard work on the deck had given me an
appetite.  Great prime rib and a lobster tail went down real easy.  I
didn't eat as much as I could; even with the body control I had, the
innards were getting a mite crowded.
   The staff gently shooed us out to set up for the after-dinner show. 
After a half hour, they let us back in.
   The show was a couple singers, a mariachi band and a stand-up comedian.
They were all good.  The tables had been moved a bit closer together so
there was room to dance by the stage.  Wonderful!
   Yeh, Bob and I danced.  There was quite a bit of Spanish salsa, a
nicely-done tango and several slow numbers for the old folks.  Bob and I
took it easy out of respect for my condition.  We circulated, gestalted,
planted a few tags and had a great time.
   We messed up the sheets pretty good on one of the beds then used our own
Custom Cloud Cushion.  Lovey time!  The four rooms had common interior
walls to two others; apparently the ones in the other two rooms were
feeling the urge too, 'cause things got rather noisy after a while.
   Since it wasn't a contest, really, Bob and I kept it down to the
medium-shrieking level while the Babies Within got three good nectar doses
over the next hour.  We outlasted both of the others!
   ------
   BOB (Monday 9/11)
   We slept in an extra half hour.  While Kat couldn't eat a lot at any one
time because of the shortage of interior housing, she made up for it in
frequency.  We hit breakfast time just right for some steak and eggs.  Good
stuff and good company.
   Isla Esprititu Santo was an interesting island with exotic plants all
over.  Kat and I walked around and enjoyed the differences from dry
(usually) Southern California.
   They had snorkeling, too.  Well, we knew exactly how to handle that.  We
played the game with the masks and mouthpieces but didn't let them get in
the way of our fun.
   The water was crystal-clear with lots of fish, interesting rocks and
assorted critters.  I didn't know if Kat's bikini was a cleas or not.  I
wasn't gonna ask; speculating was a lot of the fun.  The water was cool but
not cold.  Must have been a bit dark, because Kat's headlights turned on. I
thought of some interesting games we might play under water, but there were
lots of other tourists around us.  Dayum.
   Guess we're incurably nosy.  By lunchtime, we'd finished a quick probe
of everyone on the ship.  No illegal aliens; we were the aliens!
   There weren't any outright criminals, but one of the tourists was really
good at cards and wasn't above cheating to win.  Seems several card games
had started up here and there.  With pots in the thousands, it was serious
business to them.  We shall see.
   ------
   We _observed_ the Clann meeting from afar.  Father does just fine at
that kind of stuff; besides, it gave the women someone else to ogle and to
wave their boobs at.  Didn't affect him at all -- much.
   Hot shit!  We were at 98,000 and 1,300 Clanns.  Glad *I* didn't have to
keep track of them.  I was thoroughly in favor of Sean's policy of
non-micro-management.  There wasn't a lot of other stuff happening, so Kat
and I bailed early and had another noise duration contest through the
walls.
   Tuesday morning, we made a point of meeting the other two couples from
the sun deck cabins.  Both were in their late 50s and had retired early. 
They were reasonably affluent and were having a great time on one of their
four yearly vacations.
   They were neighbors to each other in Alabama.  Yeh.  A bit more than
just neighbors, they were!  Being in the Bible Belt, they'd kept it really
quiet for years.  They were just the opposite at night in the cabins; the
men's voices had changed cabins a couple times last night.  Hehehehe.
   There was only a small touch of Potential in them, but it was enough to
get them a tag and a position on an Alabama Clann enhancement list.
   Today was marine life watching as the ship continued northwards.  The
whales weren't migrating, so we only saw a couple in the distance.  They
were pleasant, small spirits just getting along.
   There were lots of fish, some dolphins and, of course, birds of all
types.  The birds especially were used to the ship and tagged along hoping
for handouts.  They didn't get to bomb us; a very light shield kept them at
a distance.
   Of course Kat and I lay in the sun.  The morning bridge crew was very
alert to potential hazards and kept a keen eye out for dangers to the ship.
   As we were being ambitiously lazy, Kat jumped a bit.  "We've got
movement!" Ho!  The Babies Within were stirring around.  Not much at four
months, but it was fun.
   Mary was the morning shift nude area steward.  She wasn't nude herself
since she had to travel the rest of the deck, but would have been an
extremely pleasant eyeful if she were.  Kat and I admired her and let her
know we were (somewhat) harmless.
   We chatted with the other people in the area.  Some simply loved the
sun, others were confirmed nudists while most just wanted to watch.  No big
deal; they had plenty to watch.  Yeh, the Wand behaved itself unless some
sweet young/older thang was obviously flirting in fun (a little gestalt let
me know for sure).
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   One of the Babies Within had twitched a little.  *I* knew it was from
the growth supplements they'd been getting.  Grin.
   The rest of the day was casual.  We spent another hour in the afternoon
in the nude area.  Seems the ship was in a quite hazardous area, because
there were three sets of binoculars on the lookout.  One was female -- and
cute!  Yeh, the sea breeze went really cool for a few moments every so
often.  Grin.
   During our informal probe run, we'd put in ten enhancement tags and tags
in every youngster; they do tend to wander around.  Some folk were very
nice, others were so-so and there were only a couple slimy ones.  Not
criminal, necessarily, but two guys were there only to get some tail. 
Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but they were still slimy.  Well,
they weren't about to get any of *my* tail!  They were gonna be quite
disappointed this trip; a week's impotence would slow them down.
   At dinner, I bragged on Bob for being a magician.  "Actually, he's a
sorcerer, but sometimes he does a bit of straight magic." The rest of the
table looked right at him, of course.  He held his hands up, shrugged a bit
and produced a rose from each hand.  The other two ladies at the table got
them, while I got a dozen from under the table.  Gushy!
   We let everyone know we were on a belated honeymoon.  Bob would tell
them, "She worked me every day all summer!" Sure, everyone believed him and
eyed my belly bulge as they had plenty of thoughts of *how* I'd worked him.
   That night we just snuggled and enjoyed while we listened to the night
sounds.  If one _listens_ just right, there were plenty; and not many were
from outside the ship.  That's what vacations are for, right?
   Wednesday we explored some smaller islands.  We hiked, yakked with other
folk, enjoyed the scenery and went snorkeling.  Since I didn't want to wash
and dry a swimming suit, a cleas worked just fine.  Yeh, Bob kept looking
and wondering a bit -- and so did quite a few others.  I must have lost
concentration a couple of times; I had a couple brief wardrobe malfunctions
which none of the other folk around seemed to mind.
   We spent an hour in the morning and in the afternoon sunbathing.  There
was plenty of binocular lens polishing on the bridge.  Grin.  I ensured
they got plenty of rewards for their due diligence.  Hehehehe.
   We had a short show and dance every night.  We were told that Thursday
night we'd have a talent night and everyone who wished was invited to do
their thing.  Well, we had a few gigs we could trot out.
   Thursday we visited Loreto Mission.  The place was relatively old (built
that morning in comparison to Selene City) and was fairly interesting.  We
had a good time looking, walking and chatting with several other people.
   We had a chance to yak with Joaquin and Bianca who happened to be in our
room at the same time -- how did that happen?  We'd been pumping them up
the last several days, and they were ready to pop.
   Pop they did and quite nicely!  They were a delightful couple; we'd
prearranged with Clann Fuerte to get them trained, so they were gonna have
lots of fun.
   Bob "mentioned" that Alejandro and Linda were living with my mom while
they were going to school.  Oh, yeh, both Joaquin and Bianca knew them and
were delighted for them.
   We talked about school in general.  I told them, "By the time your
children are ready for school, there will probably be enough population
restored in El Tule and the area to get some decent schools going.  Talk
with the Guerreros; they're really interested in getting the area improved
in every way they can."
   Talent night!  Bob conjured up an Irishman's drunken hat, and it made
the rounds.  We spent five minutes walking through the tables doing
close-up magic; every youngster got an appropriate toy (produced from my
tummy) and the ladies got a small flower.  Doing magic in shorts and a
short-sleeved shirt got quite a few thoughts of "how'd they do that?"
   Ken (the young man from the first day) got a close-up shot of me; I had
a temporary wardrobe malfunction, and he then knew exactly what a puckered
nipple looked like.  Hehehehe.
   One of the young (early thirties) couples was pregnant.  We had a good
chat.  Susan was three months along with a nice little bulge.  We exchanged
preggy stories, and I informed her of the "discovery" we'd made about
growing babies really well.
   She was appropriately solemn while thinking how often she could get
hubby to believe it.  We decided to meet a bit the next day to yak some
more.
   ------
   BOB
   Friday was some more islands.  Los Islotes was a seamount with caves
worn by the sea action.  It was lots of fun watching the waves swish
around. We went to another island and went kayaking, hiking and lay on the
beach for a while.  Seems Kat's bikini bottom slipped a bit; there was a
tantalizing amount of lovely red bush peeking out the top.  Hmm, maybe a
nooner?
   A nooner there was!  The crew on the bridge above got an earful; they
were quite attentive (again) when we went for our afternoon sunbathing.
   Kat had talked Susan (the preggy lady) and her husband into at least a
brief excursion in the nude area.  Susan blushed a bit as she peeled down,
but she was game.  Her hubby and I pretended to leer at her; I told her
quietly, "You're a lovely woman, Susan.  Remember, Hispanic men are turned
on by pregnant women; it reminds them how macho they are.  Don't look too
hard, but the bridge crew is very appreciative."
   She blushed some more and perked up a nice set of nipples.  Kat coached
her in where and how to sit so the bridge crew and her hubby could get the
best view of the natural art.  The Wand stirred appreciatively; of course,
Kat had to point it out.  Susan got redder, and not from the sun, either.
   That afternoon, Kat and I spotted the card cheat going at it.  Well,
we've got a handling for that.  He was the dealer and had stacked the deck
so his hand was marginally better than anyone else's.  He ran the pot up to
over ten grand before someone called.
   He flipped his cards over and went to rake it in.  Oops!  Seems his
stacking wasn't as good as he'd thought!  Too bad.  This trip was gonna
cost him.
   For some reason after that, he was a bit clumsy.  He just couldn't get
the cards to go "right" for him.  By the time the cruise was over, he was
down a good $50,000 -- on top of the cruise cost.  Too bad, right?
   Seems all of us on the top deck were a bit, em, excited that night.  The
night bridge crew got a lot of entertainment for several hours.
   ------
   BOB (Saturday 9/16)
   Of course we skipped out to attend Bill and Caitlin's wedding in
Redding. So they wouldn't worry about us, we warned Joaquin and Bianca we
wouldn't be around for most of the day -- and why.  They were happy for us
(and B&C) and were eager to get onto the teleportation checksheet
themselves.  Kat pouted a bit at missing the shopping in La Paz, but said
she'd survive the ordeal.
   Dayum nice place they'd found.  Kat and I were in our full Irish kilts;
yeh, the Cullen ladies had corrupted us; Mother had found a kilt her
grandfather had gotten.
   I needed a staff or something to make it look more official.  Sean had
one, why couldn't I?  It was my turn to pout.
   I called the ceremony together right at 9:00 sharp.  People seemed to
believe me, because the first music started at 9:01.
   Majella Canavan did a great job and had us all crying.  Leone and Mark
sang for them; Leone had overlapped Bill a year in high school so she knew
him a little.  The women cried, the birds sang and we guys made manly
tears. Wonderful!
   I used my influence to muscle into a dance with Caitlin; Bill could fend
for himself with the women.  She was one snuggly lady!  She was really
happy!  "Ya know, Bob, this Irish Clann stuff makes all sorts of sense. 
Kinda makes me want to join one myself."
   Playing it that way, eh?  "Caitlin, it's fun and games most of the time,
really.  If you could con Bill into joining a small Clann somewhere, you'll
both probably have a Real Good Time."
   "We might just do that.  I hear there's so dayum many Clanns around the
world they're finding a King.  I think that would be soo interesting.  I
could bow and scrape and maybe flaunt my boobs at the Ri.  Yeh, the
Banrion, too.  Betcha I could do some, em, influencing."
   She grinned and rubbed the aforementioned accouterments on my chest. 
Good thing my shirt was thick or she would have scratched me.
   "Sweet Caitlin, I can't believe you could do anything *but* influence
someone.  There's something about your, em, personality which just seems to
make guys want to do what you ask."
   Jaysus!  They still on that monarchy kick?  Maybe they'd find some
suckers, em, volunteers for the job.
   At least fifty people during the rest of the day called me, "Robert Ri."
Arg.  At least "Kathleen Banrion" fit better; she sure was a queen in my
book.  If nominated, I will decline.  If elected, I will not serve --
unless The Sherry and Kat thought differently.  I sure hoped it wouldn't
come to that; I was doing okay just where I was.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Sunday 9/17)
   Last cruise day!  We were scheduled to leave after breakfast, so we were
in the dining room plenty early.  We'd met lots of new good friends and had
lots of good food and good talk.  We ensured pretty much everyone had cards
from us, and we collected as many as we could.
   We cruised right by the Los Arcos arches and docked at Cabo San Lucas.
Guess we were done.  We had a final chat with Joaquin and Bianca, gave them
50,000 pesos as a crew tip and a final hug and kiss.  We zipped our bags
home and went down the gangway so they could officially sign us out. 
Enough of the tourist crap; we ducked around the corner and zipped up to
NH. It had been a wonderful vacation, but it was great to be home.
   Mario and Sherry weren't there, but they'd left a flower arrangement for
us -- and a bottle of adult whiskey.  Good on 'em!
   Why spoil a winning streak?  We soaked in the Jacuzzi (hello, jets!),
sipped the whiskey and lazed around the rest of the day.  Monday, we'd see
what we missed.
   ------
   BOB (Monday, 9/18)
   We showed up for Clann Meeting.  We'd decided to keep it at Mother and
Father's; that'd keep a lid on the physical bodies at least.  I didn't care
how many _onlookers_ we had.
   Lots of people seemed glad to see us.  The wimmin dragged Kat away for a
hen party; I kept hearing things like, "They've grown so much!" Kat would
say something and the rest would look at me and giggle.  Hens!
   Jaysus H.  Christ!  We'd more than doubled our size to 205,000 and 2,700
Clanns.  We should take vacations more often!  Good thing the Clanns
Council was going to regional representatives; a crowd even half that size
would never get anything done.
   Tuesday morning we had a JRD Exec Council meeting to go over the
third-quarter financial reports.  Maybe in a year or so, we could have them
done in a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks.
   The audit team had made up another set of graphs showing the statistics.
Yeh, we could trace last year's oddities, Vail's jump then a gradual
improvement of everyone as the third quarter ended.  Considering how much
change we were going through, it was excellent.
   Sean had cautioned us that as changes went in, the profits might fall
because of the extra time, expense and labor needed to make the changes. 
The larger the change, usually the more the expense.  Yeh, we could see the
dips here and there.  Since we could trace them to the time we'd started
the changes, we weren't worried.
   There'd be more changes, especially in the larger companies, as the new
accounting systems and policies got implemented.  Still, we were in good
shape; JRD had liquid assets of over 350 million -- and we might need a lot
of it.
   Tuesday evening, Leone and Mark came for dinner -- and other things,
hopefully.  They were lookin' really good!
   Over dinner, they told us of their adventures -- besides a five-day
honeymoon.  They'd had gigs in lots of different places, more recording
sessions, and several PR appearances and interviews.  Mario and Sherry told
them, "We've been hearing you all over the place.  The word spreads pretty
quickly around here."
   Kat and I hadn't heard a thing, of course.  That wasn't to say they
didn't have CDs in Spanish being spread through the underground around
Cabo. They've got some friends down there.
   Leone was rambunctious.  All the hard work was starting to pay off and
we celebrated.  A lot.  We sailed three wonderful Journeys of the ocean of
delight before we rested for a while.
   Selene City was swarming with engineers and students.  Seems the more
folk we recruit, the larger the crowd gets.  Wonder why that is?  Grin.
   Yeh, they were still gonna attempt to bring up the facilities computer
next week.  Mario, George, Charles and Carmel were all over the place
checking things out.
   Mark and I got our ribs hammered to get our attention; the ladies were
rested up!  Yeh, yeh, yeh.  We had a brisk romp for a half hour before Kat
and Sherry kicked out Mark and abducted Leone.  She laughed and went right
along with them.
   Mark and I spent several hours checking out various places before they
let us back in.  Hope Kat and Sherry survived!
   Apparently they did.  In the morning, the girls glowed; Mark and I
groaned.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Wednesday 9/20)
   Wednesday, we checked out the Waystation progress.  Alex and Tess Adams
had narrowed their facilities search down to three places and were doing
the final decisions.  Way to go!
   The Cullen Ladies stole me for a couple hours in the late morning to go
see their cabinet maker.  They wanted to create a ceremonial staff for the
Clann Reynolds Ceann and Ceann Mor.
   I cackled right along with them as we progressed in our plot.  There was
some really beautiful wood which would probably last for a long time.
   We spent a half hour sketching out the design.  I had no trouble showing
him exactly how big Bob's hands were, "They fit over these perfectly!" I
ensured he checked several times to ensure he got it right.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   The social secretaries and assistants pulled it off!  We'd convinced
Silvia Connor to join us for the evening.
   Yeh, she sure looked good.  She talked really well, too.
   Over dinner, we talked about the language progress.  She told us, "Most
everyone who's been around a bit is decently up to speed in Sperk.  The
newer ones tend to learn it faster now that we've got a fairly decent
translation dictionary."
   Phane was doing better than she had expected.  "With so many people
studying it, we're making tremendous progress.  Most of us can read
elementary school level stuff and actually understand it.  The cultural
differences are what make it difficult.  But, we shall endeavour to
persevere." Big laugh.
   The various engineering teams had quite a few technologies pretty well
in hand, at least for recipe book actions.  Maggie and several other
mathematicians were hot on the trail of the math and physics stuff behind
it all.  "Maggie's found some high-level math and physics wizards.  Not the
theoretical ones, either.  They're the dyed-in-the-wool applied types.  I
think we're gonna have some real breakthroughs very soon now."
   Back home, she enjoyed the Irish whiskey as much as the rest of us.  Bob
got her aside and quietly put her to The Question.  She promptly shrieked
and wrapped herself around him.  "Just try to get rid of me the rest of the
night!" We took that to mean, "Yes." Grin.
   Mario, Sherry and I shared a bed and grinned a lot while listening to
her squeak and groan for a long time.  Apparently we'd trained up Bob real
good!
   We joined them after he'd hit a good grand slam which popped them out to
Jupiter.  We darted around to the various facilities and checked them out.
Silvia hadn't actually been further than the Moon because she'd been so
busy, so she really enjoyed checking out the various installation types
from the very small two-being stations up to the largest one on Ganymede.
   We popped back home where the bodies were resting.  Silvia grinned and
asked, "Are you ladies up to a little frisking around?"
   All RIGHT!  Yeh, she hadn't listed it as a specialty, but she was one
cunning linguist!  She didn't need a tongue _touch_ at all (unless it was a
dayum good one) to reach our G-spots, and she could wrap it around Miss
Clitty and pulsate it.  I don't know how long she and Sherry worked me
over, but she hit five good home runs on me alone before the grand slam!
   She'd worn us all out; Bob put on a great show of it in the morning,
too. She glowed; we looked wilted -- at least until after a huge breakfast.
   She was welcome back *any* time!  No appointment needed!
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 9/21)
   Ho, boy!  Silvia was a winner.  Smart, extremely congenial and sexy as
hell.  She scooted off to SW after breakfast to ramrod some more language
break-throughs.  Glad she's on our side!
   On Thursday, we rested.  Sherry and Mario took off and left Kat and me
to do our executive stuff.
   As we'd suspected, RRK had survived without us.  They had lots of people
in hot standby just waiting for their first assignments -- the ones of us
only, though.  They'd started lots of the mundanes on studying Sperk; it
was just another language where they'd be going.
   The social secretaries brought over Megan Foster for dinner; seems
everyone had enjoyed her nekkid faery gigs and they/we wanted a special
treat (hopefully) for her.
   She was bright and happy.  Besides school going really well for the
Inner Circle and the Brain Trust (Harvard Middle School), she'd met a guy
who'd transferred in the first day of school.
   He was one of us by now and was *very* interested in Megan.  She told
us, "Dan and Art keep talking with him; I think they're urging him on. 
Hell, I'm urging him on; he just needs to get over a bit of shyness.  I'll
have him exactly where I want him this weekend.  Hehehehe."
   Yeh, she'd been hanging around Maggie too much.
   She'd thunk her body up really nice.  At one glance, she was a standard
nine-year-old, but at the second you sure thought differently.  Those
lovely breasts fit in our mouths just perfectly!
   Friday evening, the NH gang made a run over to Eire's Tavern in
Pasadena. We'd heard a nice rumor about a couple singers who were gonna be
there.
   We'd heard right.  Leone and Mark grinned at us, smiled at everyone else
and sang their hearts out.  They even managed to shanghai Kat and me to do
a bit of dancing.  Yeh, I'd say they were well on their way.
   Chapter 19
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 9/23)
   Bob, Sherry and the assistants checked out my Ireland mansion pretty
thoroughly.  Bob told me, _"It'll need a complete rebuild.  The cellars are
still whole, but the foundations are collapsing.  We need to get the
goodies outta there ASAP."_
   It took them maybe fifteen minutes to modify some caverns beneath the
Mojave mountains to take the goodies.  There were well over 100 barrels and
some 500 bottles.  It was gonna take some solid quality control to get it
sorted out.  Grin.
   Siobhan invited me over for a girls' night at the O'Banains' place; I
eagerly accepted.  I left firm instructions to Evin, Aaron, Bob and David
to ensure the new treasure trove was in good condition.  It might keep them
out of mischief while I was getting into it.
   We had tons of fun right from the start.  We lounged nekkid around the
pool, flashed the pink at each other a lot and took an occasional dip.  We
had a thorough discussion of the upcoming fertility rites; Ana was more
than hot to trot on being a link for anyone and everyone -- even if they
weren't doing a fertility rite.  Maggie had agreed to work with Siobhan and
BB with Madeleine.
   I reminded them, "Sherry and Mario will probably have theirs Real Soon
Now, too.  We're gonna have a great time."
   We checked out the Babies Within; they were flourishing.  The girls knew
about the special treatments already and were planning on frequent
applications when their times came.  Hehehehe.
   I gave them the whole Kathleen Donovan trial with the pubic hair jungle.
They moaned in sympathy and insisted on a thorough investigation of the
current situation.
   We spent a very, em, worthwhile evening finding out how well we fit
together.  Wonderful ladies, they were!
   ------
   I let my body rest late that night while I went to the first Clanns
Council representatives meeting with Bob.  Yeh, I'd say it would work out
just fine.
   Quite a few of the reps were on the monarchy kick.  I _heard_ at least
ten references to the Ri.  "Robert Ri" _sounded_ pretty good to me.  I'm
gonna have to make a talk with The Sherry to see what she thinks.
   Saturday morning, I discovered the work crew had done a thorough rehab
of the treasure trove.  All the casks were now completely tight and some
hundred bottles had their contents transferred into new containers.
   Bob told me, "There's not a bad batch among the lot.  Some are better
than others; we marked each container with the grading."
   We set up the NH bar with a couple small casks and several bottles of
various grades to keep The Best company.  It apparently had been very
difficult to find anything to compare to the original The Best, but they
kept doing it until the entire job got done.  Grin.
   I ported several barrels and bottles over to Olive Tree Lane.  I thought
they might be able to put them to good use.
   ------
   BOB (Monday 9/25)
   Monday's Clann Meeting told us we had 385,000 and 5,350 Clanns.  Of
course, almost all were still in training, but that hadn't stopped SW or
NewTek from aggressive recruiting.  There were lots of the right type of
people for the research they were doing.
   Around 10:00 Wednesday, George asked if we wanted to observe them
attempting to bring up the facilities computer in Selene City.  Well, why
not?
   We bopped up and arranged ourselves around the room with Sean and harem.
We'd keep our "mouths" shut for the most part and simply watch.
   There were several sections to the system: a front-end desktop-like
system, a control section and an interface section.  George, yummy Silvia
and Charles Tanner brought them up with a few minor glitches.  There were
some sensors off-line; Silvia told us it was no biggie.
   The monitoring screen could show us various systems such as atmosphere,
power, gravity and such.  They appeared to be useful to find out the
current conditions.
   The control section where one could make changes in the systems had a
few glitches, too.  Again, no big deal; Silvia said it would work
acceptably with only 30% of the controls, and they had something like 99%
available.
   Charles fired up an Artificial Intelligence program; he said it was more
of a super-duper search engine and on-the-fly programming.  Yep, it came
right up and asked, "Hello.  How may I help you today?" In Sperk.  We
_cheered_.
   Silvia and the team went back and forth with it for a while.  "Computer"
really didn't have a name beyond the software version.  Silvia gave it the
name, "Fred Facilities" and designated it as a male.  After all, handling
stuff like air and power was a guy's job, right?
   Fred seemed to "like" the name and designation and "his" voice became
deeper like the Cel voices we'd heard in the tutorials.
   There was no security.  When he'd been last shut down, whoever had done
it had removed it all.  Probably there had been no way to tell who would be
restarting it.
   Fred could see the team with cameras in various spots.  He observed that
George, Silvia and Charles weren't Cel and didn't appear concerned.
   George told him we were from "Krle," the Cel name for Earth.  No sweat.
He did seem a bit concerned that he couldn't contact the other larger
systems (Admin, R&D, hangar, and manufacturing).  Silvia told him we'd be
bringing them up Real Soon Now.
   Fred told them, "Good.  I would miss them." Hmm.  It was sounding to me
there was more on the "Intelligence" side than we'd suspected.
   Anyway, they had Fred check out various systems.  He told them the
atmosphere generation system was off-line since there wasn't water (break
it down into oxygen and for humidity) and other gases available.
   There was a humongous water tank below Selene City which served as the
water supply.  There were other tanks around for the other gases he needed.
Charles sent out a _call_ to get them filled; within fifteen seconds, the
water tank started getting a deluge of pure water.  Someone was on the
alert with a filter!
   By request, Fred took over control of the power system, atmosphere and
gravity.  Yeh, there was artificial gravity; Charles had him adjust it up a
bit until it felt right to them.  Good.
   Things seemed to be going great, so we observers took off for other
things.  Later that day, George told us, "You two are cleared for full
access to Fred.  We showed him your pictures; just zip up there sometime,
get identified, and you're in.
   "If you get a User ID and password, you can get to him from any Cel
system through the network.  Probably wouldn't hurt for you to get that set
up."
   It didn't hurt at all.  Fred talked with us just as readily as he'd done
with the original team.  I asked him, "How many 'conversations' can you do
at once?"
   Fred told us, "I was designed for about 200,000; since I'm usually just
controlling stuff which stays pretty static, there isn't much use for a lot
of interaction."
   He volunteered, "The R&D system was designed for about a million
simultaneous conversations.  Same with the administrative and manufacturing
systems.  The hanger system can do around half a million.  Those don't
count any interaction we systems have among ourselves."
   Seemed as if it would do for now.  Grin.  We though the system
interaction would be interesting.
   Fred had started up all the facilities systems he normally controlled,
including the waste disposal.  The water was recycled back to storage and
the solids and gases were dumped in tanks for use in manufacturing.  For
all practical purposes, there was zero waste.  Central Park had its own
closed-cycle system so it stayed off line for then since the engineers
wanted to get the soil rejuvenated and the desired landscaping (Give us a
golf course!) set up before it went onto automatic.
   ------
   Henry had a _talk_ with us about the SW security.  BB and the other
Cullen gang had recommended an inverse firewall to help handle the baddies
we were running into.  Hmm.  Sounded like BB needed some extra, em,
recognition.
   Anyway, put a node in the spirit and put in an inverted firewall.  Lock
the spirit into the current body, limit his output to almost zero and he
wasn't gonna do much as a spirit.  Yeh, he could still move the body
around, talk and all that stuff, but the effects he could create were a lot
less without the "charisma" and intention a spirit normally projects.
   When the body dies, the firewall clamps down even harder.  Now you've
got a djinn in a bottle!  When we figure out how to rehabilitate his evil
purposes (if we can), he could be retrieved.
   The firewall was internally powered and was the "Cullen" type that
Eileen, Marge and the Cullen Sisters developed way back when.  Mind
control? Arbitrary?  You betcha!  Until we can find a way to change their
minds and have them stop harming others, they needed to be isolated.
   Anyway, it sounded like a good short-term handling for now.  For what it
was worth, I told Henry I approved.
   ------
   KATHEEN (Saturday 9/30)
   Time for Sherry and Mario's wedding!  We promptly overflowed the
Glendale Masonic Temple and started packing bodies into the virtual party
sites.  The wedding planners had pre-arranged them so it was cool.
   I cried and Bob teared up.  One of our best buddies was getting hitched!
Majella and the choir got us all weepy.  The bride was beautiful and the
groom was handsome; what more could you ask of a wedding?
   We gave the couple a week's Alaska cruise.  I'd hinted at Sherry not to
make many too firm honeymoon plans, so it fit right in.
   Our NH place was part of the action.  Megan had "insisted" she be the
nekkid faery again.  Maybe it was time to introduce her to a half-shot of
The Best?  Other possible rewards immediately went on our To Do List. 
Hehehehe.
   We partied and hosted the rest of the day.  Sherry and Mario spent a
couple hours at the Temple reception, then zipped around to the various
parties.  I'd say they had a great time; we sure did!
   They had their tickets, a (gift) reservation for the night at a ten-star
hotel and would be off to Alaska on Sunday morning.  Bob and I thought
they'd have at least as much fun as we had.
   ------
   (Monday 10/2)
   JRD got a solid bite on Casino Equipment in Nevada.  It was a decent
price, so we went ahead and accepted the offer.  It would take a couple
weeks to finalize, but no big deal.
   In the afternoon, we had a talk with Sarah, Julio and Henry about the
long-distance teleportation research.  Julio told us, "We've bogged down a
little.  From what Maggie and the other wizards are saying, the Cel math
and physics seem to go only so far, then stop."
   Henry said, "We're getting the suspicion the Cels were cookbooking a
lot, exactly what Maggie warned us against.  Then again, we're using just
the research information available to us on the desktop-level network. 
Fred Facilities is connected to the same network, but has no data on
anything deeper.  He'd never needed it.
   "Hopefully, the R&D computer will 'know' more, otherwise we're on our
own.  That's not to say we haven't made tremendous advances, mind you.  Our
'test subjects' have gone out well over 800 light years."
   Sarah remarked, "It gets a tad fuzzy beyond that; there's a ton of stuff
going on all at once we have to sort out before we're confident of making
the leap."
   Well, okay.  Henry told us they were planning on bringing up the R&D
computer on Thursday, so we'd find out after that.  We gave them all some
good hugs and thanks for all the work they'd been doing.
   Ben filled us in later on some other technical stuff.  With the
spiritual long-distance work going on, a couple teams had been exploring
the mass transceivers.  "So far, it appears that the distance they can move
or port something is inversely logarithmically proportional to the mass
they're doing as well as the distance.  The more of either, the more power
it takes.
   "The big transceiver in Selene City can be supplied directly from the
fusion reactor, so it can take a lot of juice.  Most of the actual
circuitry appears to be a simple, very fast computer.  They've powered it
up to check it out; it's dumb as a brick.  It isn't even up to a tenth of
the smarts Fred Facilities has even without his AI.
   "The smaller transceivers used to jump start the remote stations are
similar.  The circuitry isn't at all complicated; it looks as if it uses
brute force most of the way.  Yeh, it appears to use quantum techniques of
some sort like the computer 'wireless' network, but it isn't very
sophisticated at all.
   "But, they're more sophisticated than the big transceiver.  Most of the
team is of the opinion that once the Cels found something that worked, they
just used it and didn't develop it further.  That'd be something like using
a coal-fired steam engine on a lawn mower.  It'd work, but it would be one
hell of a blivit."
   There wasn't much in the desktop references about the transceivers
beyond "fire it up and let it rip." No math or physics references behind
it. Well, hell.  We'll find out more, hopefully, after they bring up the
R&D system.
   ------
   BOB
   I didn't worry about what Henry and Ben had told us.  I couldn't do much
about it anyway beyond encouraging them to do whatever they needed to do
and help scare up any support they needed.  Nothing had come up to Ceann
Mor level so far; these folk had themselves pretty well organized and so
far had handled everything at their levels.
   Of course it didn't hurt that Mercy knew how to run a bunch of
independent geeks; she'd done that for years.  Ben could get crude oil and
water to mix -- and like it -- by asking the right leading questions. 
Hell, he could always call on Kate and BB for some "dumb" questions.  He'd
done it several times already.
   I'd control what I needed to and could; the other stuff I'd let run and
let the organization handle it.
   Clann Meeting gave us some 500 onlookers.  Dayum, it's a good thing
spirits don't really take up room or we'd have some serious crowd control
to handle.
   690,000 and 9,000 Clanns as of Monday afternoon.  There weren't any
reports of it tapering off any time soon, either.  There were more reports
of baddies floating around, but the percentage overall was still way down
in the decimal percentages.  There were about 635 inverted firewalls in
place, and only one djinn in a bottle; she was a serial killer who'd been
executed in Albania.  I wasn't concerned where they'd "stored" her, that's
the SW security team's worry.
   ------
   (Tuesday 10/3)
   On to much more fun things!  Tuesday morning, Kat and I dug up a pack of
papers and went to Ireland.
   We didn't bother with passports, just some mild cleas.  The visit was to
Kat's "mansion" of The Best fame.  We zipped onto a hillside about a half
kilometer away from it.  With an 8-hour time difference, it was about 5:00
in the afternoon there (same day as California).  It was next to a very
small village near Kildalkey (near Dublin).
   Kat looked it over and said, "Looks like a pile of rock to me." That it
was, and an pretty overgrown one, too.  The village was about a kilometer
away on the other side.  We zipped up a little closer and walked in as if
we had some business being there.
   We saw several youngsters around and a couple of adults.  They knew we
were strangers right away, but didn't seem concerned; they just kept an eye
on us.  A gestalt told us they were curious, but that it was none of their
business.
   Small it might be, but it had a pub!  We went in; there were several
very elderly men playing checkers, and the owner was behind the bar doing
what bartenders do.
   He was curious, too.  He called out, "Welcome!  I don't recall seeing
you here before." The accent was quite different from what we were used to,
but we managed.
   We _linked_ in and started picking up the accent and the local slang.  I
told him, "Your memory is very good.  This is our first time here.  We're
from the United States." I gave a quick introduction around.  The "Donovan"
made his ears and eyebrows pick up a little.  We were both obviously Irish,
so he didn't comment on it.
   The checker players watched with interest; there wasn't much excitement
in this place.  If this were the U.S., we'd classify it as beyond the
boondocks.  The nearest place of much size was some 40 kilometers away.
   It was "proper" for ladies to be in the pub if they were accompanied. 
So, we bellied up to the bar.  The $20 bills I laid down on the bar in
front of us brought a smile.  He said, "Sure, and it isn't just
conversation you're wantin', is it?"
   Kat and I had whiskey; we _picked_ a decent bottle from him and ordered.
Kat laid down two more $20s and said, "You and your friends here might join
us if you wish."
   That brought some smiles and some activity for a couple minutes.  We
joined the checker players at their table, and we chatted away.  It was a
bit about the weather (it had been a wet year) and a few other innocuous
subjects we'd _found_ to be safe to discuss with strangers.
   Finally, the oldest man (well over a hundred) asked, "So, what brings
you here?  The last Americans we saw was five years ago and they were
lost."
   Kat grinned and said, "Well, it's the old McDonnal place out there. 
What can you tell us about it, Seamus?"
   Seamus shuddered a little, downed the last of his whiskey and said, "I'd
stay away from there if I were you.  The McDonnal ghosts have come back."
   We kept quiet while I slid another pair of 20s to Liam (the owner) and
nodded my head around for another round.  Liam beckoned a young lad in from
the front door and whispered to him, "Get the others.  We've got someone
going on about the McDonnal place."
   Well, Seamus had several sips from his fresh glass and thought a little
while people started to slip in through the doors.  I slid $100 across to
Liam; he got the picture right away and started setting up for the
newcomers.
   We did a quick gestalt round.  Jaysus!  All but two of the twenty-five
had an excellent shot of Potential.  Well, the tags went in fairly lively,
and we fed them power.
   Seamus got started after everyone was pretty much settled.  "When my
seanathair was a young lad -- getting real interested in the girls, he was
-- the McDonnals had the house on the hill and farmed the land with the
rest of us.  They weren't lords or anything, just somewhat well off.
   "This village was a lot newer then and was the gathering place for
several leagues around.  Aye, the McDonnals were good folk, they were.  If
a man got laid up, they made sure his wife and children were taken care of
until he got back up again.  There were thirty of them up in the house, all
good people."
   We paused while people got settled in with their drinks.  While that was
happening, I whispered to Liam, "Do we have enough for supper for all
*these* good people?" I knew the answer, of course.  $160 slid across to
him; he, his wife and daughters started getting things ready.
   Seamus' story continued, "Aye, Seanathair was a, em, lusty young lad and
cast his eye on one of the McDonnal daughters.  Seems she was interested,
too, and they got together.  To hear him tell the tale, he just swept her
away.  Now that I look at it, there were so many McDonnal daughters they
were probably getting desperate for husbands.  Heh."
   The rest of the folk grinned and nodded knowingly.  Liam's wife quietly
started serving out dinner.  Some of the people had heard some of the story
before, but most hadn't heard it all.
   "They got married all right and proper, and soon my father was coming
along.  Begging your pardon, Mrs.  Donovan, but she was about as big as you
when it all happened."
   "This area wasn't all civilized back then like it is now, with the Guard
keepin' things peaceful.  The bandits came.  Seanathair said there were
hundreds of them.  They were after the womenfolk to slake their lusts. 
Aye, they would kill everyone else; many a town had been found with only
bodies to tell the tale.
   "Everyone took to the McDonnal house to fight them off.  Mind ye, there
was some 150 of the village folk and McDonnals but only 50 or so men who
were able to fight.  The bandits broke in several times but even the
McDonnal women -- young and old -- and the old men and boys fought for
their lives.  'Twas better to die fighting than to be slaughtered like a
pig or raped and enslaved."
   Seamus took some time to get some food into him.  The rest ate and
talked quietly among themselves and with Kat.  When he was fortified with
solid fuel and had a refill on his liquid fuel, he went on.
   "Nana killed three bandits herself.  She was young and they would have
made her a slave.  It didn't matter at all she was with child.  Better to
die than that.
   "Seanathair was sorely wounded and all seemed lost when they heard a
dreadful screaming from outside.  It sounded like the hordes of the devil
were coming.
   "It was Cathal Cullen and his clann come to their aid.  Nana could see
out the window; she told my father later the hills were red with their hair
and lust for battle.  They fell upon the bandits with their swords,
pistols, shillelaghs and war clubs.  The entire clann had come, even to the
youngest carried on the back of the women.
   "Blood there was throughout the afternoon and into the night.  When
quiet finally came, not a bandit remained alive.  Cathal Cullen and his
mate fell after slaying more than a hundred evil ones themselves.  Only a
dozen of the McDonnals remained alive; Nana, her brother and Seanathair
among them.
   "Clann Cullen was decimated.  Only Conor Cullen, Cathal's son of ten
years, and four older cousins remained alive.  The rest gave their lives to
help the McDonnals."
   We wept; the village people keened out their grief.  Another round went
out to help ease the pain.  Seamus told us, "Many of us here are those
McDonnal descendants.  Though Conor Cullen was still young, he had to
assume the role of Ceann.  After the burials and wakes, Nana asked him,
'Why did you come to our aid?  It was no concern of yours.'
   "Conor was wise even at that tender age, 'You have been our friends
these many years.  We could not stand by, do nothing and permit you to die.
If the bandits were victorious, in a few short days they would have come
over the hills to us next.  Ceann Cathal made the only choice; attack now
when surprise was in our favor and the bandits were tired, or wait until
they were rested and healed.  Fight then or fight later.'"
   We thought on that a while.  Liam said, "My seanathair knew Seamus'
seanathair several years after that.  He tells the same story."
   Seamus had a bit more to tell, "The McDonnal house was destroyed.  Stone
is hard to break, but the ghosts which remained wept for both joy and for
sorrow so much no one could live in it.  The remaining McDonnals moved from
the house and into this village.  Other Irish folk gradually came by and
settled and now we are here.  Some of us left for America and did right
well, so we've heard.  But now the ghosts have returned to the house after
being gone for over a hundred years."
   After yet another round, Kat asked, "Seamus, what happened to Conor and
the rest of Clann Cullen?"
   "A few months after the battle, they left for America to try their luck
there.  Nana had a chance to hold the Ceann's war club for a few minutes;
she made a fair copy with the exact braiding on the handle." He pointed to
the wall over the fireplace.  "It hangs there so we will remember the true
friends who came to our aid when we most needed it.  We've not heard of
them since."
   Kat and I _looked_ at it.  It was very familiar.  Kat and I _asked_
Teresa a quick favor; she agreed immediately.  I stepped outside to the
outhouse, then ported a package over and took it back inside.
   I laid it on the table and slowly unwrapped the Cullen tartan.  It was
the Cullen war club; we'd remembered seeing it at Sean's wedding.  The club
on the wall matched it so well they could have been made by the same hand.
   Teresa had given us a quick rundown on the Cullen genealogy; the names
and locations fit.  And, I'd bet a lot that Cathal Cullen now lived on
Olive Tree Lane with four lovely ladies.
   The village folk gathered around and marveled.  It took another couple
rounds of discussion (and drinks) to agree it was probably the original
Cullen war club.
   Seamus asked the obvious question.  I told them, "It belongs to a very
close friend of ours, Sean Cullen.  He's the Clann Cullen Ceann in
California, very near to our clann."
   I sketched out the line.  "Cathal Cullen and Conor Cullen.  Conor went
to America with his cousins.  His oldest son was Fintan.  Fintan's son
Aiden, then son Sean.  Fintan and Aiden died in the World Trade Center in
2001."
   Kat told them, "Sean is married and they have three new Cullens on the
way.  He's a major businessman and is very successful."
   Well, that called for lots of cheering and several rounds while they
marveled at the war club and the wonderful news of the Cullens.
   Liam asked us, "So, what brings you two here?  Sure you didn't come just
to bring the good news."
   Kat opened her pack of papers.  She pulled out the bottom one and laid
it on the table for all to see.  "This is a copy of the original grant to
the McDonnals some 250 years ago." It covered the McDonnal house property
and several leagues around.
   Kat said, "The ownership is completely traceable right up to 1875, when
the McDonnals were attacked.  Seamus, was your Nana's brother's name
Ronan?"
   Seamus said, "Yes.  He was a year older than Saraid.  He was left as the
McDonnal heir.  Unfortunately, he left for America, too, when the times got
hard."
   Kat grinned.  "Seems a lot of us Irish did that.  Anyway, Ronan's son
was Liam, his son was Brian and his son was Colman.  All were born in
America.  Colman had a daughter, Ronnad McDonnal, who was my mother.  Looks
like we're related, Seamus."
   One of the elderly ladies cackled, "And it looks like you'll have
another relation pretty soon, too." We had a good laugh.
   Kat patted her tummy over the Babies Within and told them, "Actually,
there'll be three new relatives."
   That called for another round.  I slid another $100 across to Liam.
   A sharp-looking middle-aged man said, "So unless there's some legal
issues then, you'd be the McDonnal house owner now, right?"
   Kat smiled.  "Yeh.  Legally you could say that.  So far as all my
lawyers can tell, the property boundaries are still the same as the
original grant.  All the paperwork is in order; even the Irish lawyers
agree the ownership is clear."
   Liam looked at the original grant and the accompanying (modern) map.  He
said, "Looks like we're sitting on your property now."
   Kat smiled and said, "True.  I have no intention of changing things
right now.  We *could* say that legally, you all are trespassing on my land
with your homes and fields.
   "What I'd like to do, however, is arrange a long-term lease for each of
you and keep the legal ownership the way it is now.  With Dublin and all
the area growing so much and swallowing up the land, having one owner for
all of this is a tremendous advantage.  If some developers cast their eyes
here, I've got millions of Euros to defend it.  Better me than each of you
individually."
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   I'd known before we came that I "owned" the whole dayum place.  It
wouldn't do anyone any good to kick everyone out and take over, so I
proposed an alternate solution.
   They looked both relieved and thoughtful.  Yeh, it called for another
round.  Liam brought out some snacking goodies with it and everyone thought
a while.
   A middle-aged man asked, "And I suppose you'll want my first-born or at
least a leg for the lease rights?"
   I stayed somber somehow.  "Aye.  I'll charge you 10 Euros a year.  Find
yourselves a cheap lawyer to represent you all and let him arrange it."
   They thought that was pretty funny.  By now, there'd been so many rounds
everything was funny.  Grin.  Several of the older folk had nodded off to
sleep, but Seamus was hanging in there.
   I asked, "So, what about the McDonnal house ghosts?  They giving you any
grief?"
   No one could actually say they had beyond giving them really strange
feelings.  Many of them had felt them around the house and other land over
the last month or so.  Maybe the young-uns hadn't been too discreet in
their maunderings.
   The younger folk here were decently educated.  Even Seamus at 112 had a
good amount of knowledge.  Many old superstitions and folklore die hard,
though.
   I asked, "Bob here is a sorcerer of some renown in our area of
California.  Perhaps we could talk him into laying these ghosts to rest?"
   The four young girls present had a different idea about what Bob should
lay, but kept quiet.  Bob told me, _"This should be a job for the priest."_
   I told him, _"Who better to do the job than the Sorcerer and Ceann Mor?
Maybe we could ring Sean and harem in on it, too." Grin._
   _"Arg."_
   Those still awake and sober enough to understand thought that would be a
Real Good Thing.  I told them, "How about we come on Thursday around
noontime?  The ghosts should be resting then, and we'd have a better chance
at getting them all."
   The last three awake agreed.  Liam and his family were still pretty
alert and could take care of the rest.
   We'd dropped several hundred dollars into his hands; probably more
revenue than a normal month.  Well, maybe we could find a way to get this
place stirring a little more.
   ------
   (Wednesday 10/4)
   Teresa _told_ me Bob's new ceremonial staff was ready.  I zipped over to
the cabinet maker with her and looked it over.  Impressive!  Oak, ebony and
rosewood made a beautiful pattern.  It had a braided hand grip (just the
right size) about Bob's shoulder height, a long plume of feathers and fur
at the top and a stout rubber bumper at the end.  He could thump lots of
heads with it!
   They'd made Sean a new war club, too.  Dayum, I sure wouldn't want to be
on the angry end of it.  It looked deadly just lying there on the counter.
   We split the cost as gifts for both the Ceanns.  I took the staff and
zipped it right into our room at NH.  We'll have a surprise!
   ------
   We had Ben and Sheila over for a quick visit in the late afternoon. 
When Mario and Sherry got in, we presented Bob with his new staff.  Ben
said, "Fit for a king, it is!" and we laughed as Bob grimaced and moaned.
He did really love the staff, though.  The way he twirled it around made me
think he had some war chief history, too.
   Ben and Sheila were doing great together.  They were firming up their
plans for their own bonding Real Soon Now.
   Ben gave us a quick briefing on the Cel technology; that's why he was
here.  "The engineers have replaced all the faulty facility sensors and
controls, so that's running along just fine.  We're right on schedule to
bring up the R&D computer tomorrow.  If Fred Facilities had pants to pee
in, he would.  He's pretty talkative once you get to know him; he doesn't
really have a lot to do since most everything is as automatic to him as
breathing is to us.
   "One other thing we've found out is about the manufacturing systems. 
From what we can tell, we can feed in almost anything in the way of raw
materials and get most anything out.  If needed, it will break stuff down
into the original atoms and sometimes the sub-atomic particles and put it
together as needed.
   "The more it has to break down and rebuild, the more power it takes and
the longer it takes.  If we supply the right elements, though, it can spit
out one devil of a lot of stuff in very short order -- with a surprisingly
small amount of power input.
   "That tells us that asteroid mining would help out the manufacturing. 
We can find, refine, transport and supply pretty much anything faster than
it takes to build it from the sub-atomic components.  Hell, with the right
filters, we could filter most any element we need from sea water; that's
where we got the deuterium and tritium for the fusion reactor anyway.
   "That's what it looks like for now.  Once we get the R&D and
manufacturing systems up, we'll have a lot better handle on how 'cookbook'
the manufacturing is.  Near as we can tell, the Cels built ships, too, so
that's a whole other technology to explore.
   "Maggie will be very disappointed if the Cels were simply amateur cooks.
She and the rest of her team want things smaller, cheaper, faster and more
efficient.  Plus, they want to understand what's going on, not just throw
things together."
   Made sense to us.  Bob solemnly waved his staff and concurred.  We
laughed at him and reminded him even a king puts his pants on one leg at a
time.  Well, he proved us, em, incorrect by floating in the air while
pulling on his shorts -- both legs at once.  Grin.
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 10/5)
   Well, now I had me a staff to wave around.  I didn't have to pout
anymore.
   We had some ghosts to lay in Ireland.  Neither Kat nor I had told Sean
about what we'd found, only that we had an exorcism which needed his help.
We did tell the harem, though.  They got quite a kick out of the idea!
   Since this was a "formal" ceremony, everyone would wear their dress
kilts.  I'd noticed several of the villagers wearing kilts, so maybe they
wouldn't think we'd "gone Scotch."
   We met at Olive Tree Lane at 3:30 AM (11:30 AM in Ireland); Maura and
Teresa came along; they wouldn't miss this for a Nordstrom's sale!  All the
duds were in order so we zipped to a low hill overlooking the McDonnal
house ruins.
   I'd fucked up.  When Sean saw the valley and the ruined house, he fell
to his knees and wept.  Yeh, Kat and I thought he'd be Cathal Cullen, but
never expected that big a reaction.  When Natalie had died, there was
grief, but we'd known there was hope.  None of the rest of us had really
re-visited a location where we'd died so hard.
   I told him, "You did the right thing in 1875, Cathal.  My Kathleen is
here now because of the deeds you and Clann Cullen did that day.  Almost
every person in this valley owes their current life to you.  You did good,
guy."
   He choked out, "We lost almost everyone.  Down to the babes in arms, we
lost them."
   Teresa told him, "Yes.  You know full well if they hadn't died down
there, you would have *all* died soon after.  You took the choice of a slim
chance of destroying evil against an extremely poor chance of even
surviving.  Both clanns survived, and Clann Cullen is now stronger than
ever."
   The ladies comforted him until he got himself under control.  We walked
into the village pub and met our hosts.
   I introduced the Cullens, "My friends, this is Cathal Cullen, come back
to you now as Sean Cullen and the Ceann of Clann Cullen in America."
   Well, they hadn't been enhanced and trained, so I didn't really expect
them to believe me.  Cathal looked right at Seamus and told him, "You'd be
a Mac Ceallach, then.  Fionnbharr and Saraid fought bravely with us that
day." He named off the rest of the villagers whose ancestors had survived
that day.  Guess a bit of superstition doesn't hurt; to a one, they
accepted him in wonder and knelt before him.
   Sean came back and told them, "Get along wit' ya!  That went out
hundreds of years ago.  Your ancestors were my friends."
   They laughed and rose.  Sean said, "Laying ghosts is mighty thirsty
work. Perhaps we need a drop or two before we go forth into battle again."
   I'd brought several bottles of adult whiskey along.  Liam set us all up,
from a bit for the lad of five to Seamus with a good glass.  Sean spotted
his war club on the table where it had been on display.  He pretended to
glare at Teresa and told her, _"Someone's been playing games."_
   He had it in his hand in an instant and did a few quick moves with it.
Jaysus!  The difference between that and the katas we did was night and
day. He did the moves with the full knowledge they'd be effective and would
kill or disable his opponents.  Guess some would call it the "killer
instinct," but it was years of previous training and hard-won experience.
   Anyway, after the bracer, everyone walked out to the small field in
front of McDonnal house.  I could _feel_ his memories coming back into
focus.  He remembered where his friends fell, where the women he'd loved
had died and how the evil ones had brutally slain even the infants.
   He bore up, though.  He drew in the power of his lineage, then Cathal
and I spoke an appeal in the ancient Gaelic to the gods of the clanns to
let the spirits here be at peace.  Actually, there were many spirits
wandering around the area all dazed and confused.  We _spoke_ to them
briefly and showed them the way to where babies were due to be born.
   No fireworks or other gimmicks, though.  These people didn't need it. 
They all _felt_ the easing of the pain and rejoiced with us.  The McDonnal
house was no longer a place to be avoided but was a symbol of the fight we
all must wage to keep our freedom.
   Kat and I left the Cullens there to celebrate a bit with the village. 
We'd be back, though.  This was too nice a place to let languish.  Besides,
they were real good folk.
   ------
   Alex and Tess passed me the word they'd narrowed down the Waystation
location to the one they wanted.  Acquisition and control were in progress!
   Anyway, the big stir Thursday morning was bringing up the R&D computer
in Selene City.  Kat and I figured that they'd call us if they needed us
for some unfathomable reason.  No need to have another set of spirits
looking over their shoulders, so we stayed home and out of the way.
   Besides, we had some fertility rites this evening.  Mario and Sherry
were literally gonna do the deed!
   Kat and I (with lots of help from the Sonoras), mocked up the honoring
room as an old, very fancy Spanish hacienda.  PVC was supplying the music,
while Lucia Sonora and Ana were the links.  Gonna have a fun time!
   Right at 7:30, Siobhan, Madeleine and Mother "dragged" Lucia and Ana
into the smallest bedroom and cuffed them to the bed.  That way, they could
look at each other and bemoan their fate.
   And fate it was.  By 7:45 they were shrieking and screaming while
several hundred spirits played really nasty games.  I'd say every
micrometer of Lucia's body got caressed while Ana got diddled so much she
almost passed out.  Hehehehe.  Of course, *I* wouldn't stoop to such
antics. Heh.
   PVC put out some wonderful Spanish music.  No mariachi for them!  Sherry
glowed in her long dress which threatened to fall off any second, while
Mario look positively grand in his black and silver-trimmed suit.
   He seduced her -- or was it the other way around?  Anyway, probably over
1,000 spirits _watched_ her two eggs get fertilized the good old-fashioned
way.  PVC kept right on going, and so did Mario.  To give them a good head
start, he dosed them down two more times before they popped themselves out
of their bodies to Jupiter.
   Lucia and Ana survived.  This time.  Hopefully, Ana would last a day or
so with her hormones calmed down.  On the other hand, Lucia seemed like she
had some unfinished business with her mate.  Hehehehe.
   Friday evening, we took in Leone and Mark's gig at the Stevenson Ranch
Tavern.  Dayum, they were good.  We cheered, clapped and urged them on.  Of
course, we bought them dinner.
   Leone glowed even more than usual.  The NH gang guessed married life
suited her well.
   Chapter 20
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 10/7)
   Early Saturday morning, Maggie _knocked_ on our shields.  _"May I pay a
quick visit?"_
   Fine by us.  Maybe we could slip in a little lovin' while she was
visiting.  She ported in about six inches above Bob and flopped down on his
chest.  He obligingly whoofed for a couple seconds and said, "You're
getting to be a big girl there, Sweety!"
   She was.  She and George had gotten clearance from Ana and the Golds to
grow their bodies; she was probably eager to get samples of Sean's
Shillelagh and the Sorcerer's Wand.  Hehehehe.
   Hell, she was almost four feet tall now and had massed up her body
nicely.  She'd obviously pubertized it (It is a word.  It *is*.) because
she was sporting a pair of breast buds with nicely stiff nipples.
   She rubbed aforesaid buds on Bob's chest and squirmed her mound (with a
few red hairs sprouting) around on his tummy.  She told us, "Yep.  I'm
almost eleven now."
   I almost peed the bed from laughing.  Bob tried not to find it amusing,
but couldn't hold it very long.  Bob caressed her bum and said, "Maggie, I
don't think I could take it when you do turn eleven.  Little girls at that
age get strange ideas.  Tell you what; you keep rubbing those delicious
things on me, I'll explore your backside, and we'll see what comes up. 
Hehehehe." He could hold his own in the teasing department when he had to.
   Maggie squirmed around more, moaned appreciatively and started blinking
her eyes innocently.  "You know how much I love you folks..."
   I said, "Sure.  Now, little girl, you want something.  Better spit it
out or Bob'll do a bit more to your butt than rub it."
   We laughed and settled down.  Yes, she did want something.  After Bob
and I had helped Sean de-ghost the McDonnal house, the Cullen crew had gone
over to where the Clann Cullen village had been.  They'd found the remains
of Cathal, Nora (his then-wife) and quite a few others from Clann Cullen.
The McDonnals had buried them there and had left a nice memorial marker,
"Here lies Cathal and Nora Cullen who gave their lives for freedom."
   They'd spotted Nora as a spirit solidly attached to Cathal's skeletal
remains and in a deep daze.  The Cullen ladies had demanded they "rescue"
her and see if they could help bring her back.
   Maggie had _pried_ Nora loose and had taken her to the SW office where
they'd been doing the lost-ancestor research.  Turned out Nora had lots of
Potential, and it hadn't taken too much work at all to get her out of her
daze and to give her a little training.
   Maggie said, "She's a really sweet spirit besides having lots of Talent.
Now, I figured I'd come to the masters at new bodies and culturization --
her culture ended in 1875 so she's got some catching up to do."
   Hah.  Bob asked, "And what does Sean think of all this?"
   "I told him we'd have about a 90% chance of getting her back with some
decent memories.  After all, she knew who she was, and that's over half
that battle.  Other than that, I've kept my mouth shut.  I've told the
other girls she was doing okay, but haven't told Sean a thing."
   Bob observed, "So, you wanna pull a Kathleen Sunshine on him?  See if
you can make him crap his drawers or something?"
   Maggie looked soo innocent.  "Would we do a thing like that?"
   Unanimously, *"Yes!"*
   Okay.  It was pretty much time to get up anyway.  Finding a body
shouldn't be an issue; there were some 125,000 plus the last time we'd
glanced at the walk-in database.  Who to get her up to speed on the
culture? Well, I knew several young-uns who'd done that before.
   We groaned our way out of bed and met in the den.  Bob and Maggie
diddled the keyboard for a couple minutes and narrowed the search down.  Of
course, we wanted an adult Irish female!
   Macabre?  Ghoulish?  Not to me; I'd done it before, remember.  This was
like looking for a good, low-mileage used car; new models didn't have what
we wanted.
   Well, they narrowed it down to one from Colorado.  The "owner" had
apparently fallen in one of the very cold rivers just yesterday and had
drowned.  She'd been dead for maybe forty seconds when a couple wandering
spirits had fished her body out and revived it.
   The spirits had found her ID in the back pocket of her jeans.  Patricia
McMillan had lived in Derby Junction, a small place in Colorado.  They'd
taken her to her home and tucked her in bed for the body to rest.  Yeh, the
spirit had bagged it; it had probably thought the body was a total gonner.
Not to fault it, either; they'd dug her body out from the bottom of a
waterfall pool.
   So, we at least had a preliminary match.  Bob put his Ceann Mor dibs on
it.  I told Maggie, "Well, there's one possibility.  Of course, Nora Cullen
has to agree, too.  How much training has she gotten?"
   "The basics.  Shields, movement, where babies come from and such. 
She'll have educational issues after that.  As Margaret Sullivan, I think
she's a real fine lady."
   Well, bring her on!  Maggie bopped out and came back a few seconds later
with Nora tagging along.  Maggie introduced us and was obviously careful to
introduce Bob as the Clann Reynolds Ceann *and* Ceann Mor.
   Nora was really sweet.  Even her spirit talk had an Irish accent!  The
quick gestalt we did with her caused a nice flare of energy.  Yeh, if she
fit that well with us, she'd probably really fit in with the Cullens.
   Okay.  Let's get to work.  Maggie, Nora and I zipped up to Colorado to
check out the possible host body.  Nora wasn't squeamish; she'd seen lots
of dead bodies before, plus her SW trainer had taken her around to a couple
maternity wards.
   It was female; no doubt there.  Early 20s, medium-red hair, peaches and
cream complexion and nicely tall.  It was probably a medium build, but we
could count the ribs easily; looked as if she'd gone through some hard
times.
   A routine health scan showed a few odds and ends, mostly nutritional
issues.  Well, that would be easily fixed.
   It looked as if she lived alone in a cheap studio apartment.  It was
neat and clean, but very worn.  Not a lot of clothes, and most were
waitress uniforms.  A look at her checkbook showed small paychecks from a
"Ralph's Diner" with a balance of $200.  A quick _look_ showed us it was a
little hole-in-the-wall way off the beaten path in a tiny town.  Not much
business there; she'd probably been slowly starving.
   Other papers implied she'd been in foster care for a long time; probably
an orphan.  There were very few pictures and just a couple entries in her
little phone book in a purse with $10.  Maggie said, _"Probably no one will
miss her.  One call to Ralph's to quit, close the checking account and
quietly move out.  It's a lot easier to have an established identity than
to fake one up from scratch."_
   We ensured the place was secure and nothing would spoil for a couple of
days.  The fridge was almost empty anyways.
   The other spirits had gotten Nora in the body, and she was looking
around.  "Dayum it feels different.  Not awkward or anything, but
different. And *hungry*!" She had a great Irish voice with a lilting accent
reminiscent of the McDonnal village folk.
   I asked, "Well, wanna go for a test drive?  You're not stuck with it. 
It appears to be in passable shape and just needs some good feeding up."
   "Test drive" she didn't quite understand, but she caught on quick.  We
gave our new spirit friends a quick _hug_ and thanks.  I told Maggie, "I
know you guys have a seminar today, so you don't have to stay.  I'll handle
everything from here."
   "Great!  Patricia, you couldn't be in better hands.  Better watch out
for Kathleen, though, she's got a yen for good-lookin' coleens."
   Patricia flushed a little (bodies do that) and grinned.  "Em, that
hasn't been an issue for a long time now."
   Maggie and she shared a hug, then Maggie took off to make some guys
drool over her at the seminar.
   Patricia and I looked around.  She was handling the body just fine.  She
didn't know what most of the stuff was; she could identify the bed, clothes
and most of the furniture, but the radio, kitchen and a lot of the stuff in
the bathroom was a complete mystery.
   Well, she didn't have to learn everything in one day.  I told her, "Get
a quick shower and then food!  Maggie got us up early and I'm hungry too!"
   I found a decent set of jeans and a blouse for her, and she looked yummy
even before she put them on!  Maybe I'd keep her for myself!  Grin.
   Her new stomach promptly growled in agreement.  I showed her how the
shower worked; the best she'd known before was a pan path or a dip in a
cold stream.  She would have stayed in there a long time, but her stomach
kept growling at us.
   Well, Gilligan's in New York City would do just fine for breakfast.  I
told her what I was gonna do, then put on disguise cleas.  No need to get
too noticed.
   She knew about teleporting, but was still in awe of it.  Not so with
breakfast!  She ate at least three and had to loosen her jeans.  We spoke
in Irish; she probably thought my accent and slang was just as unusual as I
thought hers was.  We had no difficulty understanding each other, though.
   She belched nicely, looked at me and asked, "Now what?  I know I was
just floating around in a real funk for a long time.  I just didn't want to
leave Cathal.  I'm here, now, though.  I really appreciate what you and
Maggie have done for me.  She's a really sharp young lady."
   I laughed and told her, "Maggie is almost 94 years old.  She went from a
93-year-old grandmother to a new baby girl in two days.  Her body's about
10 months old but she's been growing it for the last six.  She's got teeth
you wouldn't imagine and goes around collecting Irish swear words.
   "As for what now, how about I get you with a bunch of our tutors and
teachers?  They've just got done educating a couple young Spanish people
who didn't have much more idea of American culture than you do.  We'll get
you educated a bit, brought up to current time on some cultural issues,
then work that cute arse of yours off!"
   She laughed and said, "Aye.  Not that it feels like it needs working
off. This body isn't skinny, it was just underfed."
   I put in a call to the Wild Bunch, PVC, Alejandro and Linda to see if
they could meet us at our NH place.  They were already up and about, so we
met around 7:30.
   They were prompt in giving Patricia hugs and welcomes.  I gave them a
quick run-down on what had happened (I _whispered_ not to tell Sean or the
harem a thing!).  They weren't surprised; it was their kind of joke anyway.
   Cynthia told Patricia, "I think we've got a project.  Alejandro and
Linda went through a lot this summer getting used to us, and we've still
got all the school lessons they had to do.  I volunteer them to help with
your 'culture' lessons."
   Henry said, "I'll ask Mom and Dad, but there shouldn't be any issue with
her staying in Dad's old room.  That way, Mom and Dad won't keep her awake
at night with all the stuff they do."
   Yeh.  As if Blake and Louise made all the noise around that place. 
Anyway, Patricia was willing to go along with it.  She did have a choice;
she could have walked out the door with her $10, but that wasn't the way we
wanted it.
   So, I gave them a couple grand for clothes shopping (her hair needed
some work, too), then the gang took off with their new student.
   ------
   BOB (Sunday 10/8)
   Kat told me later what they'd done with Nora/Patricia.  I was aghast! 
"You turned over an innocent spirit we're gonna present to Sean to *those*
people?  They're almost as bad as Maggie McLennan.  She'll come out the
other end as a horny old woman."
   She didn't appreciate my viewpoint.  Then again, someone could turn out
a lot worse than the Wild Bunch, PVC and the Spanish Mafia kids.  Jaysus,
if Val, Cynthia and Linda taught her much of anything, Sean'll be up to his
eyeballs in wild women.  Ouch.
   Ah, well.  Guess we've got another project on our hands.  Kat had her
teeth into it, and I wasn't gonna oppose her on it.  Hope Patricia turns
out civilized, at least.
   Sunday, George, Charles, Silvia and their gang brought up the R&D
computer system.  Shoulda known; she got named, "Rhonda Research." She was
a seemingly good AI like Fred, only she had access to a lot more data. 
Then again, she *was* the librarian!
   Her clock had been reset too.  She recommended we bring up the two
back-side outposts with the radio telescopes.  That way, she could get star
readings and get an accurate time frame.
   That she did.  The last Cel had left the base some 207,874 Krle-years
ago.  Guess that's why it's so dusty.  Even at that, things were in great
shape for having been literally frozen for almost that long.
   ------
   Joan and Trevor from Chicago joined us for the evening.  We had a
wonderful dinner and an after-dinner show!
   Siobhan had her fertility rites.  Supposedly, it was invitation-only,
but Ana and Maggie shouted and screamed for quite a while beforehand. 
Seemed there were some 2,000 spirits literally getting their licks in on
them.  Maggie's new (really cute!) breast buds got lots of goings over
while Ana was targeted with just about anything one could imagine.  They
both loved it!
   Siobhan wasn't a slacker, either.  She and Evin created two new Babies
Within, and Evin gave them several extra doses of the magical elixir. 
Hehehehe.
   Joan and Trevor found out how the pioneers on the West Coast did things.
Guess the gossip hadn't spread everywhere; Joan wanted to practice that
elixir thing almost the entire night.  I should complain?
   They raise 'em good in Chicago.  Joan was a wonderfully sexy,
affectionate lady who didn't quit until our first grand slam.
   She did know about the poke spot.  Maybe that's racial memory or
something?  Anyway, she got a couple more injections then she and Kat
kicked us mere men out while they did girl-stuff.
   Yeh.  Talk was not on their minds.  Trevor and I left them to their
pleasures while we checked out the good stuff going on in Selene City and
the rest of the solar system neighborhood.
   ------
   (Monday 10/9)
   Mario and Sherry got back from their Alaska cruise.  They were grinning
up a storm, so it must have gone well.  Nothing was pressing, so we four
settled back for a gab-fest.
   Mario said, "Leave it to Sherry to find the nude area within fifteen
minutes.  It was enclosed, so even though the air outside was chilly, we
weren't."
   Yeh, they'd found several good Potentials and had put in the appropriate
tags.  They'd watched glaciers calve, some whales and other wildlife and
shuffled their feet a lot on the dance floor.
   Sherry told us, "It was a slightly larger ship than your Mexico trip. 
Probably held around 500 guests.  Our cabin was great, too!"
   They'd done some duration contests during the nights; they'd won
hands-down.  Practice does that, right?
   Sherry and Kat got into their girl talk while Mario and I loafed around
the pool.  He asked, "So, what's new?"
   I told him about Nora Cullen and how Maggie and Kat had thrown her into
the lions' dens.  He laughed for a couple minutes then said, "It'll kill
her or bring her up to speed really quick.  Knowing the young-uns, they'll
have her doing the latest dances and get her expert on American Idols."
   Yeh.  That they probably would.
   ------
   NewTek made their first raw materials delivery Monday morning: 50,000
metric tons of iron, 10,000 of nickel and another 35,000 in assorted alloy
metals like chromium.  Funny how it got delivered in just the right size
and shape for the cranes and fork lifts to move it around easily. 
Hehehehe.
   I dunno what NewTek charged, but it sure didn't cost them a whole lot.
Betcha it took a couple spirits an entire thirty minutes -- and most of it
was waiting for the delivery point to be clear.
   I _peeked_ in on Patricia.  She was studying away on a grammar school
reader.  She told me, "They made me start out with that study checksheet.
Dayum, they worked me!  Then, last night they dragged me off to this
totally degraded public sex display.  It was all I could do to let go of
Maggie's nipple.  Hehehehe."
   Shit.  She'd been corrupted; she could cackle like Maggie already.
   The young-uns had taken her clothes shopping at the Media Center and had
spent a fair amount of Kat's money.  Now, despite being some 130 years out
of date, Patricia wasn't a country bumpkin.  She and Cathal had been to
Dublin several times, so she wasn't entirely ignorant of what a city was.
   Still, there was even more culture shock than Alejandro and Linda had.
At least they knew what an automobile was.  Anyway, she and Linda were
really close; they had a continuous link like the language trick during the
evening and night, so Patricia could get as far down into something as
needed to understand something.
   Linda had to get help several times, too.  Even though she'd gone the
route herself, there was still a lot of stuff she didn't know she didn't
understand.  Maybe Sean's gonna acquire another "dumb redhead" to help make
breakthroughs.  Grin.
   We had some excitement at Clann Meeting.  For starters, we were at
1,250,000 and 15,000 clanns.  Dayum glad I didn't have to manage them all.
The representatives, regions and individual clanns were doing just fine. 
Seems the customs and organization was clear enough to suit most everyone.
No assassins, yet, so I guess my doing the least Ceann Mor activity I could
get away with was okay.
   The young-uns deliberately kept Patricia away from the Clann Meeting,
just in case the Cullens showed up.  They usually at least _looked_ on, so
it would have been dicey.
   Lucia gave us a quick talk about Unpleasantville.  "Seems most of the
baddies are where they deserve.  Of course, they're all sterile, in the
slammer and very much abused.  Our Mr.  Pompous has a nice wife named
Albert who's about 250 pounds to his 110.
   "The DAs had asked for the death penalty for almost everyone involved.
We -- Bellana and I -- haven't been asked to appear yet.  There's only one
person left of my attackers, and he's been unconscious in the medical ward
for the last month.  Seems bouncing a head against the concrete floor does
ungood things to one's brain.
   "Turns out that Bellona's attackers were heavily involved with the drug
sales and child kidnapping rings.  The attempted rape charges are a drop in
the bucket to the other charges they've got.
   "Mr.  Pompous' trial starts tomorrow morning.  We're wondering if he'll
be alive long enough to last the couple weeks the trial is expected to
take. He does have an excellent defense council; he was in the lower third
of his graduating class this last June!"
   Well, as far as most of us were concerned, they could all rot.  We'd
like to _see_ Mr.  Pompous strapped down to the table, the needles slid in
and the solutions slowly pumped in.  He'd have enough time to regret some
things.  The only thing we'd like better would be to watch the wild dogs
eat his guts while he watched them.
   Not that we're bloodthirsty, mind you.  Yeh, Lucia told us pretty much
every person had a strong tag and a date with a djinn bottle.  So far, the
feeling was even if they didn't have Potential, they needed to be
restrained.  Maybe someone will get around to sorting them out in a couple
hundred million years.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Tuesday 10/10)
   George popped in to NH and set up some small cameras on our Cel
monitors. We could then make faces at Fred and Rhonda while we talked. 
Heh. I don't know if they appreciated it, but they kept closes "eyes" on
us. I figure they were learning the gestures and facial motions we Krle
people used.  Now, how were they doing with the Sonoras in Italian?
   George talked with us out of "earshot." He told us, "Probably someone
will start teaching them English and several other Earth languages.  Don't
be too surprised if they start Sperking and Phaning with an Irish accent."
   One of the things a team was on was the programming languages.  They'd
had a good start with the desktop systems, but now they could get into real
detail with Rhonda.
   ------
   (Wednesday 10/11)
   I thought Patricia was doing wonderfully.  She was eating plenty and had
already put on a couple of pounds.  She needed it, too.
   The youngsters had zipped her back to her apartment and shut it down. 
Patricia called Ralph and quit her J O B.  Good on her!  She paid up her
back rent, packed up her couple pairs of shoes, and donated all her
uniforms to the local Goodwill.
   The youngsters zipped her papers and other memorabilia back to the
Merrills'.  There was plenty of room; Blake had moved most of his clothes
into Louise's room.  With that done, she had no known ties with Colorado.
   No one had leaked anything about Sean, either.  Not that she would have
known the name, but the less said, the better.  Maggie had stopped in
several times; she'd told her, "My bond-mates are a little uppity, so we'll
get you up to speed before you meet them.  You're gonna wow them!"
   Of course, Linda had to explain what "wow" was.  Grin.
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 10/12)
   More of the same.  The administrative system got named, "Alice Admin."
Per George, she, Rhonda and Fred spent a lot of network bandwidth
exchanging data.  Probably telling wild stories about those strange beings
from Krle.  Rhonda and Alice were a lot "better" in Phane than Fred was. 
Fred really hadn't had a need for Phane, and it hadn't been programmed in.
Guess that made us better than he was.
   Alex and Tess Adams had gotten the final Waystation location nailed
down. It was an elderly hotel in the foothills of Arcadia.  Sean wouldn't
have touched it as a commercial venture, but it apparently suited a
Waystation's needs just fine.
   Evin got the corporation set up under Clann Cullen.  RRK promptly gifted
$2 million in securities.  Betcha the corporate lawyer and CFO had shark's
grins -- again.  JRD promptly matched the donation with cash, so they had a
nest egg to work with.
   Safe havens were still on the agenda.  With our increase in numbers, it
would be a major undertaking.  Quite a few Clanns, including ours, were
waiting a bit to see how Selene City worked out.  It was doubtful we'd all
need to bail out at once, and Selene City could pack in quite a few in a
pinch.  Time will tell.
   NewTek made several more deliveries.  Special alloys, special shapes
(Betcha there were some engineers trying to figure out how they'd been
machined.) and variable quantities.  A couple million in the NewTek coffers
made a good start.
   ------
   Patricia was doing surprisingly well.  Seems the youngsters hadn't made
her cynical, at least.  Maybe it's time for a little party for and with
her.
   We had that chance Friday night.  Ensuring none of the Cullens were
there, we took her to the Pasadena Tavern.  Dayum, someone had been
teaching her lots of girl stuff!  That LBD almost fell off a couple times.
Yeh, she'd obviously been taught the breast trick, too, because they were
tastefully presented to all who would look -- which was pretty much
everyone.
   She loved the Irishman's drunken hat!  It came up and nuzzled her a
couple times, and she giggled and laughed right along with everyone else.
   Kat and I kept our _links_ with her really light.  We didn't need
another flare-up on our hands; I don't know if the Tavern patrons could
have taken it.  Patricia's a *really* sweet lady.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   The NH gang made the run back to the McDonnal village in Ireland to
spend Saturday evening.  Nice.  By now, everyone was one of us; the two
mundanes had split for Dublin.
   They welcomed us warmly and took to Mario and Sherry right away.  It
didn't hurt that Kat told them Mario and Sherry were really good friends
with the Cullens, either.
   Yep, they were gonna do the Clann route.  They were just at the point in
the checksheet where they elected the Ceann and other officers.  Since we
were there, we volunteered to finance the meeting.  No objections being
heard, I handed Liam's wife $500.  It should get us through a couple hours
with a bit of dinner.  Grin.
   Being the oldest around, Seamus had been running the discussions.  He
was a wise old coot, for sure.  Anyway, after he asked for nominations for
Ceann, almost everyone shouted out, "Liam!" Heh.  Liam was quite surprised,
even though we weren't.
   Bob and I could tell we was gonna decline, but when his wife whispered
something in his ear ("If you decline, you're sleeping alone for the rest
of your life."), he kept his mouth shut.
   There was a second to the nomination and no further nominations.  Liam
got elected unanimously.  Even his kids voted for him!  Heh.
   I whispered to Niamh (Liam's wife), _"Of course you couldn't pass up the
Ceann-Mate duties, right?"_
   She grinned at me.  _"Furthest thing from my mind."_
   So, Liam got to run the show while Seamus gracefully retired and got
another glass.  They were on the way!
   The Clann unanimously agreed to be "Clann McDonnal." The fact Liam was a
McDonnal descendant didn't hurt.  The actual McDonnal inherited lineage was
in America; we thought they wouldn't mind if some of their relatives in
Ireland used the name.
   Liam and Niamh were in their late twenties so they could bear up under
the burden.  Bob gave Liam his, "I feel your pain" speech.  Right.
   Sherry had been busy talking with some of the younger folk and their
parents.  Four of the young girls had had their eyes on Bob since the first
day we'd shown up.  During a meeting break for food and fuel refills, two
of them came up to Bob, curtsied quite nicely and said, "Robert Ri, welcome
to our Clann."
   Of course Mario, Sherry and I laughed while Bob glared at us.  Sherry
told him, "A bit too much cheek there, right?  I think they need some
chastisement."
   Yeh, Sherry had told the girls exactly what form the chastisement would
take.  They immediately blushed and told Bob, "We beg your pardon.  We did
not mean to offend you, but are ready to bear your punishment."
   I immediately told Bob, "I know exactly how you are spending the night."
He shook his head and gathered the girls to him.  "I will chastise you
severely.  Hopefully I will survive the encounter with two such lovely
coleens who have so much fire in their hearts."
   They melted against him and dripped.  Then again, Sherry and I did, too.
   Sherry had already made tentative arrangements with Keavy and Ellen
Shannon's parents.  She nodded at them and they smiled widely.
   Anyway, back to the meeting.  Clann McDonnal elected the rest of the
officers and unanimously adopted the membership and confidential customs --
they'd already gone over the confidential ones a couple nights before.
   We zipped Keavy and Ellen back to NH with us.  Might as well get some
other cross-culturing in while we were at it.
   Keavy was 15 and Ellen was 16 and as virginal as they come.  Not through
lack of interest, just there weren't many young men around the village.
   We got their overnight bags situated and gave them a quick tour.  Yeh, a
touch of culture shock, but they were fine.  The honoring room was a plain
bedroom right now, but we could fit it out as almost anything in just a
couple of seconds.
   They'd never heard of a Jacuzzi before.  Sherry and I grinned evilly.  I
told them, "We'll put the men to work feeding us properly while we girls
get wet and talk.  We've got an 8-hour time difference from Ireland, so
you've noticed it's just late afternoon here.  Plenty of time to rest up a
bit before Robert Ri -- I mean Ceann Mor -- chastises you."
   They blushed again then blushed deeper when we told them the Jacuzzi was
for nekkid bodies.  They were willing, though.
   I got the guys doing up a bit of dinner while we girls got nekkid and
wetter.  Ellen and Keavy were right fine bits of stuff.  Classic Red Irish
with lots of nice freckles.  Yeh, they didn't shave their pubes, just a bit
of a trim.  Lovely boobies, all nice and perky with puckered pink nubbins
probably already aching for lovin'.
   Sherry and I got them positioned just right on the Jacuzzi seats then I
hit the water jets.  Yowsah!  They forgot all about their spirit abilities
and just shrieked for several seconds before they remembered enough to let
the shields cut in.
   Bob yelled, "Sherry and Kat!  Are you abusing our guests?  Do you need
chastising, too?"
   Sherry and I said, "Yes.  To both!"
   Sherry told him, "You've got special guests tonight.  I guess Kat and I
will have to wallow in misery while we await your chastisement some other
time -- Robert Ri."
   Bob groaned while the rest of us laughed.  Mario told him, "*I* don't
feel your pain.  Fortunately." That got more laughs.
   We settled back for a half hour and girl-talked while Bob and Mario
dutifully worked away.  The four young girls went to school in a small town
about 10 kilometers away; it was an hour's ride in the school bus each
direction.
   There were young men at the school, but none who appealed to any of
them. Ellen told us, "Now that we're free, we can look around further. 
Especially since we're now a formal Clann, we can promote cultural
exchange. Hehehehe."
   Shit.  Maggie must have been back to the village and had already
corrupted them!  Gotta have a chat with that young lady.
   We took a good _look_ at the Babies Within.  The girls marveled at them
and assured us we had the cutest Babies Within they'd ever seen.  Right. 
They knew all about the Gold birth control method so they could plan their
own.
   Bob dragged us out of the Jacuzzi to eat.  He carefully dried off Ellen
and Keavy while they blushed again and puckered up more.  Yeh, everyone
admired all the tits on display while we ate.  Ellen and Keavy simply
blushed, puckered up even more and looked right back.
   We kicked back in the den and had a round of The Best.  Ellen said, "To
think this was buried in the McDonnal house all this time.  Our da has a
small still, but doesn't make anything like this."
   Bob said, "Well, maybe some memories will come back.  It's probably a
bit of a lost technology nowadays.  With the shields and cleas available
now, you might be able to run some small businesses on the side.
   "Who knows, with the right filters, we might be able to 'age' it faster.
It could be another source of income for you folk."
   They liked The Best and were interested in income.  They were normal,
for sure.
   Sherry and I had fixed up the honoring room with the standard furs and
firelight in the woods.  We took Ellen and Keavy off and dressed them in
their wraps and light robes.  Sherry asked, "Do you want to be with the Ri
together or separately?  Your preference."
   Keavy and Ellen looked at each other.  Ellen said, "Together.  We're a
little nervous."
   I grinned and said, "Yeh.  I know what you mean."
   We led them to the Ri's room and ushered them in where Bob was waiting.
Mario, Sherry and I adjourned to their room where we _watched_ a bit.
   Oh, yeh.  Bob was good, all right.  Guess he'd had some talks with Sean
about virgins because they soon lost every bit of shyness and got so wound
up they were panting for it.
   Keavy, the youngest, went first.  Dayum, she was a squeaker like
Cynthia. Ellen didn't hesitate at all to help by pulling nipples, showering
kisses and diddling her backside.  Guess they'd had their own good times
before.
   Well, Bob could take care of himself.  We tried to make Mario treat us
like virgins, too, but we got too impatient and nailed him almost right
away.  Yeh, he could take it; he'd been thinking his body up like the rest
of the guys had been doing.
   We had a lovely night.  Keavy and Ellen learned about Bob's poke spots
and used them several times.  Between frolics, we went out and about to
inspect the various goings on.
   Our sinkhole crew was down to just a caretaker.  Guess they'd milked it
for what they could.  We wondered how the grad students had done on their
papers.  Yeh, we had a great time showing the girls what the team had done
when the bloom had been discovered.
   They weren't ignorant of the world, just inexperienced at a lot of it.
They loved Selene City and enjoyed speculating at a lot of the same things
we did.  Bob told them, _"Since you're now a Clann, Liam will probably get
a Cel system for the Clann to use for study.  If you ask properly, you can
study and learn a lot."_
   Ellen giggled and said, _"We know exactly how to ask him.  He hasn't
minded watching our boobs and butts for the last several years.  Now that
he's Ceann, maybe something will happen."_
   We all cackled away for a while before all we girls hit the appropriate
poke spots for another round.
   We fed them well in the morning at the Rio buffet.  They glowed like the
sun while Bob and Mario faked up the "rode hard" look.  All good fun.
   Bob put on his full regalia and zipped them back home where he bragged
on them to the entire Clann about how beautiful, intelligent and personable
they were.  Good PR never hurts; the other two young girls (Mary and Emer
McCarthy -- another pair of sisters!) panted and drooled in their drawers.
   ------
   (Saturday 10/14)
   We _watched_ the George gang bring up the hangar system with no major
glitches.  He got dubbed, "Harry Hangar" and the usual suspects got access
to him.
   He was Sperk-only, like Fred.  No surprise there.  They had a talk about
the ships, hangar and maintenance.  Yeh, the Cels built ships; that wasn't
their major product, but they built them as needed.  Apparently they did a
bit of export business, because quite a few left and never came back.
   Harry and the manufacturing computer could work together on designing
and building ships.  Apparently the design consisted of selecting modules:
"one from column A, two from column B" etc.  They'd collaborate on hangar
space constraints, and the outdoor manufacturing area would pump out the
basic hull and engines.  The Cels would move the hull to the hangar and do
the finish work with parts from the underground manufacturing area.
   No, he couldn't tell them where the module designs had come from; they'd
been input as part of his original data set.  The Cels hadn't really
created any design changes or improvements since he'd been built -- some
million years before the Cels had left.
   Fuck.  Well, that gave us a quick handle on how old the base was.  No
wonder there'd been so many repairs.
   ------
   Madeleine and Evin had her fertility rites Saturday evening.  It was a
"private" ceremony with Ana (who else?) and BB as the links.  They seemed
to be quite popular, because there was quite flock of spirits (is the
proper word for a group of spirits?) clustered around for the
"preliminaries."
   Siobhan and Barbara had restrained them in their spare bedroom a good
forty minutes before the planned start.  We were learning that the warmups
were just as popular as the rites themselves.  Bob and I jumped the queue a
bit and started tormenting them both the second they got into the bedroom.
Dayum!  One of these times we'll get through cataloging the hairs on BB's
pelt.  Hehehehe.
   Madeleine and Evin obligingly produced two Babies Within accompanied by
a lot of external spiritual applause.  That gave us 16 Babies Within
between the Core Cullens and Clann Reynolds.  Not too shabby.  Maybe I'd
make a talk with Sean about baby car seats as gifts; seemed he'd found a
really fancy one himself when Bridget first came on the scene.
   ------
   (Sunday 10/15)
   Patricia was doing great!  Between eating five good meals a day and
doing Krav Maga exercises along with several Clann Cullen war katas and
proper "thinking," her body was shaping right up.  She had luscious
ski-slope boobies with nipples pointing up so they'd launch you really
good. Yum!
   She'd gotten through the basic physics and chemistry education that the
Guerreros had gotten, and was on the teleportation checklist.  She still
had a ways to go on the academic program Rose had set up for her (borrowed
heavily from Alejandro and Linda's), but good whiskey isn't made in a day.
Plenty of time for all that.
   She'd kept her innocence and sense of wonder even being around the
young-uns so much.  Yeh, Clann Cullen in 1875 hadn't necessarily been on
the forefront of worldly ways.  Still, she'd been around 35 when she'd died
as Nora Cullen; that's no youngster, especially for those days.
   I'd make a talk later, but I figured she'd be ready to dump into the
Sean and harem lions' den next week.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   (Monday 10/16)
   Monday, JRD finalized the Casino Equipment sale.  Good.  It was out of
our hair, and we'd gotten a good price for it.  Granted, it had fit the Las
Vegas area industry, but it just hadn't seemed right for us.  Anyway, that
dropped our company list down to 27.  Maybe time to acquire more companies?
After all, we owners didn't have to do the work.  Grin.
   Jaysus, our Clann Meeting had the usual 60 to 70 bodies with now about
1,500 _onlookers_.  Clann Reynolds is growing!  None of us had noticed any
issues with having so many; maybe spirit flocks worked differently from
human groups.
   World-wide, we were up to 2,000,000 and 35,000 Clanns.  That was a lot
in one respect, but still less than a drop in the world's 6-plus billion
current population bucket.
   Mr.  Pompous' trial had gone to the jury that afternoon; they started
deliberating tomorrow.  According to Lucia, his defense council had made
the standard defense of "the Devil made me do it because I had such a bad
childhood." Hmm.  Maybe a life sentence in a psych hospital would do?  Nah.
It would be a lot more merciful to kill him off.
   George and Maggie had a quick visit with us later.  George told us,
"Rhonda and we were able to cobble up a network interface between a Cel
system and an Earth computer.  She and Alice bitched and moaned about how
slow it was and how primitive the software was, but we managed to figure it
out.  They're now sitting on the Internet via JRD's T1 line and are getting
edumicated.
   "Yeh, Silvia's helping teach them Earth languages.  Just like the
problems we have learning Phane, they keep running into cultural issues. 
It'll happen sometime.
   "*Someone* has been teaching them Irish, too.  I won't name names, but I
suspect the initials are MM.  *I* think teaching an innocent computer Irish
swear words should be worthy of chastisement from Ceann Mor.  Don't you
agree, Kat?"
   Maggie looked soo innocent.  Yeh, right.  Alice had trotted out a Pat
and Mike joke on us earlier today, and we'd talked over the cultural issues
underneath it.
   It seemed the Cels hadn't even thought of networking the AIs themselves
together; while the systems could interact through the network, it had been
simply for data queries.  Silvia had given them explicit permission and
encouragement to "share" among themselves all they could.
   So that said if Rhonda learned something, Alice, Harry and Fred learned
it, too.  Fine by us.  Both Harry and Fred were "learning" Phane from Alice
and Rhonda; it was really just a matter of dropping in the proper data
files and getting it integrated.  No need to keep Fred and Harry
illiterate, was there?
   It was fun all around.  With us Irish, all the systems faked up a light
Irish accent on both Sperk and Phane.  Probably they did the same in other
languages.  In English, they'd adopted a standard "accentless" Midwest
newscaster mode which even we Californians could understand.  Good on 'em!
We sure weren't working them hard on other things.
   They were supporting plenty of research and data exploration with all
the engineering teams.  They seemed very willing to help, but had to be
asked the right questions.  They were getting really good at guessing what
the researchers were after, though.
   ------
   BOB (Tuesday 10/17)
   The ecologists, landscapers, atmosphere engineers and Fred Facilities
had come up with a plan for Central Park.  Yeh, somewhere they'd gotten the
Real Good Idea that a golf course would fit right in!
   Fred had told us that Central Park was an integral part of the
atmosphere processing.  Just like Earth, the plants exchanged carbon
dioxide with oxygen and helped keep the air fresh.  All the medium and
large facilities off Earth had at least some hydroponics both for food and
atmosphere.
   Fred had helped the engineers rejuvenate the Central Park soil.  They'd
exchanged several million tons of soil and had mixed in new Earth topsoil
with all the accompanying organisms.  Our engineers had simply supplied the
new stuff.  Fred didn't even ask now they'd gotten it up there so fast.
   The engineers could have done almost everything with _touches_, but Fred
had lots of specialized landscaping robots he controlled, so they let him
have at it.
   Yeh, they even figured out the fish farms and hydroponics.  Fred had the
full specifications tucked away so all we had to do was supply the water
(already available) and the required trace minerals and such.  Seemed the
Cel metabolism worked pretty much like the human does with most of the
trace mineral and vitamin requirements.  We supplied a lot of expertise
from our side and got all the known human requirements into Fred so he'd be
able to maintain it.
   So, that meant in a short time, Selene City might be almost
self-supporting.  Yeh, the Cels had raised some meat animals in Central
Park, but not a lot.  The engineers decided to forego them for now; they
had plenty to do just balancing out the insect (including honey bees and
butterflies), bird and micro-organism ecology.
   The place was probably like a lot of big cities on Earth.  Food, water
and other raw materials were imported (think Manhattan and Los Angeles) and
finished goods and services flowed out.
   We still had to discover what the Cels were actually doing there in the
first place.  Fred told us, "We were definitely busy.  The population was
pretty stable once it came up.  Of course it went down at the end when they
left."
   We'd have to ask Rhonda and Alice the big why questions; Fred hadn't the
faintest idea based on the data he had.
   ------
   (Wednesday 10/18)
   Well, Mr.  Pompous' jury found him guilty on all but one of the fifty
charges.  Since the DA had been seeking the death penalty in fifteen of
them, probably at least one would stick.  Penalty phase would start the
next day.
   Two of the "suppliers" had turned State's Evidence and had told of
supplying him with five of the girls.  He'd probably get the death penalty
at least on those.  We shall see.
   Johnny Fargo didn't make it to trial at all.  Seemed he'd accidentally
impaled himself on a concrete reinforcement rod in some obscure room in the
jail basement.  Too bad it was so far away from the rest of the population;
the coroner said it had taken him almost three days to die.  Yeh, he was a
djinn in a bottle, too.
   ------
   (Saturday 10/21)
   We had a wonderful evening (and night) with Kieran and Joan Flanagan. 
They zipped over about 4:00, and the girls assumed the appropriate
positions in the Jacuzzi.  Mario, Kieran and I did the manly duties of
exposing mammal, poultry and fish flesh to the heat of the grill.
   Yeh, they got Joan with the water jet.  She squealed a lot then said,
"Kieran, we've *got* to get us one of these."
   Kieran rolled his eyes a little and agreed.  He muttered, "Now we'll
have every sweet young thang in Ohio having an excuse to come visit." I
sympathized with him while we laughed together.
   We introduced them to The Best and speculated on starting up a decent
Irish whiskey distillery in Selene City or one of the other facilities. 
Guess we'd have to do some research; none of us knew much about how it was
made.  Maybe Patricia (Nora) or Cathal knew.
   We told them about Nora/Patricia.  They liked the joke and were
interested in the retrieval.  Joan said, "We've concentrated on spirits in
bodies up to now.  I know I've seen millions of non-responsive spirits just
kinda lying around everywhere.  One gets used to them so much they're like
the blades of grass.  You recognize the lawn but don't look at the grass."
   Well, that was something to discuss at Clanns Council.  Maggie had told
us there were quite a few of the Cullen spirits still around the buried
remains in Ireland.  Maybe that could be a project for Clann McDonnal?
   Joan loved the firelight and furs.  She dayum near wore a hole in them
dancing her squirmy little arse around.  Hehehehe.
   Yeh, Kat and Sherry kicked Mario, Kieran and me out after a while and
went after Joan.  We bemoaned our fate, rested our bodies and poked around
the solar system for a while.
   Fado in St.  Louis got our breakfast dollars.  Joan beamed and bounced
while the rest of us pretended to be knackered out.  Yeh.  Bet Kieran and
Joan do the same thing for their honorings.
   ------
   (Monday 10/23)
   Yet Another Week gone by.  The system team brought up the manufacturing
system in the morning.  Mick Maker was a real meat-and-potatoes kind of
guy. Even at that, he was "delighted" to get back in touch with the other
systems.
   Well, that'd give Maggie and the other engineers something to do in
their spare time.  If there was manufacturing data available (the theory
and background, etc.), between Rhonda and Mick, they should be able to dig
it out.
   ------
   Patricia McMillan was doing just great.  Even though it had only been
two weeks since Maggie had brought her to us, she'd really come a long
ways. Yeh, being an old-hand Ceann-Mate, she had no back off on much of
anything.
   Heh.  The young-uns had introduced her to Butterfly Games.  Cynthia
claimed, "Her education would be sadly neglected otherwise.  Besides, she's
taught us quite a few things, too.  Those Old World folk were pretty
sophisticated even back then."
   Well, if things went the way Kat expected, we'd find out personally. 
Kat was planning on "delivering" her to Sean and harem on Thursday.  We
shall see.
   Dayum, our population keeps on growing.  3,500,000 and 60,000 Clanns was
nothing to sneeze at.  Gotta get at least one off-planet colony going
somewhere; Selene City couldn't accommodate us all.
   ------
   (Tuesday 10/24)
   Mr.  Pompous' penalty phase was still moving along.  Lucia told us the
jurors had decided over half of them so far.  They were "saving" the
death-penalty ones until last.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Wednesday 10/25)
   We plotters figured Patricia was ready to "spring" on Sean and harem.  I
dragged her over to Jackie's Beauty Arts and had them give her a full
touch-up.  I'd spread the word beforehand not to mention Sean or any of the
other Cullens.
   She ended up looking great!  The staff decided the only makeup she
needed was a touch of strawberry lip gloss.  She simply glowed with life.
   Her hair was down below her shoulders with some light curls.  We and the
staff spent a half hour bringing her up to speed on doing it different ways
with a brush, comb and maybe a hair dryer.  The female young-uns had
coached her real good on body maintenance and enhancement, so she was fine
that way.
   She'd put on a much-needed ten pounds, too.  Her boobies were so dayum
perky, she barely used her Inner Touch bra.  Still, being able to control
them had lots of advantages in an LBD.  Anyway, they were up to solid Cs
which fit her 5' 10" body really well.
   Maggie and I decided she'd bring a "new friend" over to OTL to introduce
on Thursday afternoon.  We figured the NH gang would keep our noses out
until our next cross-clann cultural enhancement.  Heh.  That should give
them time to get themselves sorted out.  Besides, if we showed up with
Patricia, they'd smell something right off.
   Maggie took off to see Patricia to ensure she didn't make too many plans
for tomorrow.  Heh.
   We chuckled and laughed over the prank we were pulling.  We doubted Sean
and harem would suspect a thing before it was too late.  Probably Patricia
would end up being the most surprised; we hoped Maggie hadn't taught her
too much about revenge.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   There wasn't a lot happening with either JRD or RRK we needed to put our
attention on.  We had the direction we were going well-established, the
cross-company and team communication lines were very operational (even the
extra-curricular ones!) and everyone was taking responsibility for their
areas.
   RRK was still ramping up on the training for our new off-planet
associates.  With Selene City coming up Real Soon Now, we'd be able to put
a lot of the managers to work there.  Once we figured out more of the
actual industries involved, we'd bring in more of the line people.
   Given that, we could start firing up the other facilities.  We decided
to leave the sequence and other decisions to the SW and NewTek teams; we
sure didn't have to be involved.
   -------
   (Thursday 10/26)
   Maggie was due to take Patricia to OTL for a "visit" about 3:00.  The NH
gang stayed alert.  Sure enough, about 3:30 we got a millisecond blast of
joy that echoed around for several seconds.  Guess Cathal and Nora had
discovered each other.  Hehehehe.
   At 4:00, Kate told us, _"We're gonna get you guys back!  We tortured
Margie into telling us the truth.  Patricia's and Sean's bodies are dead to
the world, and they're out somewhere beyond the Oort Cloud celebrating. 
They left us here all alone.  Guess we've got to go shopping with Mellissa
to dull the pain."_
   Yeh.  Knowing them, it would take a lot of shopping to relieve the pain.
I offered to go along, but BB said, _"No.  We're playing at being mad at
you and Sherry."_
   Ah, well.  Bob and I found something to do for several hours.  The
Babies Within got several very nice elixir doses.
   ------
   (Friday 10/27)
   Mario and Sherry ducked off to do some skunking, so Bob and I did our
studies, talked with the Selene City AIs and were as lazy as possible. 
Things were happening; we were a part of them but didn't have to be
involved in all the minutia.  People would tell us if they needed us.
   
  
Sorcerer Interesting Times Ch 16-20