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 Sorcerer: Interesting Times by BJohn
   Chapters 21 - 26
   Chapter 21
   BOB (Saturday 10/28)
   It seemed Patricia lasted at OTL through Friday.  At least she didn't
arrive naked on our doorstep, so they probably didn't kick her out.  Well,
if she had (arrived naked), Kat and I would have known exactly what to do
with her.  Hehehehe.  She was a *nice* lady.
   Sunday, Sean and harem (now obviously including Patricia), the adult
N&Bs and we made a Clann McDonnal run to Ireland.  The harem made long,
loud Irish noises at Kat and me.  They were something about vengeance for
surprising them with Patricia.  Well, the type of vengeance they usually
dealt out would suit us just fine.  Heh.
   Patricia gave us what for, too, and promised us long hours of payback.
She spoiled the threat a bit, though, by cackling away like Maggie.  Ah,
well.  Liam and the rest just laughed and egged everyone on.  Ones of us
don't fight physically, but we still like good verbal brawls where no one
really gets hurt.
   Sean took Patricia out to the McDonnal house battlefield.  She wept as
her memories came into focus, but was able to bear up.  I knew they'd do
their own mourning later.
   We went to the old Clann Cullen village a couple hills away.  Clann
McDonnal had buried the fallen Cullens on the hillside and had erected a
small memorial marker for Cathal and Nora.  Apparently, that's where they'd
found Nora a couple weeks ago.
   There were quite a few other spirits pretty much locked into the other
remains or simply lying around nearby.  Cathal and Nora could identify many
as old friends, lovers or relatives.  Well, tags and a list entry for Clann
McDonnal took only a couple of minutes for them all -- and didn't cost us a
dime.
   Hah!  Seemed Nora/Patricia had been the major whiskey-cook back then. 
We dug out ten good-sized stashes -- ya can't hide whiskey from an
Irishman, especially when he can do a DNA/chemical trace.
   It was all the Cullens' stuff since it was on their land.  It took them
only a few seconds to port it away for safe-keeping.  Kat volunteered
Father and some of his cronies to do the quality control and container
checking; seemed they'd done fine with Kat's McDonnal house stuff.  Maybe
that's why Father's eyes had looked a bit redder than usual for a couple
days.
   Anyway, we put up shields to help protect the remains and relics. 
They'd come back later to sort it all out --- or the N&Bs would; Teresa was
the Clann Cullen historian.
   ------
   Sunday evening at a Clanns Council, we discussed retrieving or rescuing
normally-unresponsive spirits.  Yeh, there were tons just lying around;
some were a lot more unresponsive than others.  The Cullen ones in Ireland
had shown a good amount of Potential; maybe that's why they'd been locked
into the area so solidly.
   The European rep agreed to get with Clann McDonnal (and the Skunk Works)
to sort it out.  Not that any Clann was short on potential recruits; we
were still running a wide-out expansion process which showed few signs of
slowing down.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Monday 10/30)
   We had an informal Van Nuys Temps/RRK etc.  meeting about our personnel
pool.  With Selene City apparently pretty much ready for occupancy, we had
a place for them to go.  We (Bob) agreed to start recruiting for any
specific needs rather than being so passive about who we ran across.  If
they were enhanceable, so much the better!
   The Skunk Works and the rest of us wanted to adapt and use the Cel
technology (and any other we could find) so anyone could use it.  While we
free spirits could bop around the solar system as needed, the mundanes were
stuck where they were.
   If we could develop "mechanical" methods of teleportation and the like,
we could do things a lot faster and easier.  Seems while the Cels could
manufacture a lot, they brought in raw materials in ships.  They did their
mining and extraction at many off-Earth facilities like the Asteroid Belt
and the outer-planet moons, but it was all physical transport.  We still
hadn't figured out what they used the big matter transceiver for.  May just
to fill the water tanks?
   At Clann meeting, Bob announced we were up to 6 million and 115,000
Clanns.  Still a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the Earth's
current 6 billion or so population.  Still, it was a lot better than the
half-dozen we started with back in the Inner Circle.  Dayum, that wasn't
even a year ago!
   ------
   (Tuesday 10/31)
   Halloween was so much fun!  Pretty much all of the ones of us homes were
cleased out in traditional scary motifs.  Our NH place got a good going
over with lots of skeletons clattering around the front yard, bats and
witches dive bombing the trick or treaters and a dark, dank castle front
complete with a headless horseman who popped out for a run every so often.
   We had plenty of kids come by.  They were appreciative of our efforts
(It had taken us a whole five minutes.) and loved the goodies we gave out.
If they wished, the accompanying adults got an Irish bracer to keep them
from getting too chilly.  Heh.
   Of course the Ireland Irish did All Hallow's Eve pretty much the same
way.  Clann McDonnal must have hammed it up pretty good because they had a
ruined castle to start with.  Maybe they didn't have many outside visitors,
but they still had a grand old time.
   They'd gotten large enough (some 150 by expanding outside the valley) so
they could handle quite a few enhancements.  They started out by taking a
few of the Cullen spirits we'd tagged and working on them.  They'd found
several dozen of their own "buried" in and around the house ruins.  Guess
we'd have some ancestors show up one day!  Seamus and I would share.
   ------
   Ana and I got in a good visit.  She was seven months along with her two
Babies Within, while I was four and a half with my three.  We solemnly
declared they were all the best ever.
   We decided the main problem with being pregnant was that it cut down the
golf time.  That huge bump in front made it rather difficult to get in a
full swing.  We managed; we dragged Bob and Don along in the late afternoon
for a round at DeBelle.
   Just like "old times." The main difference was Ana and I didn't
straighten up quite so fast after we put in our tees; seems this
counter-balance we were wearing threw off the timing or something.
   On the other hand, the guys looked just as hard and with even more
interest than before.  No heart attacks, though.  At least not that time.
   We spent plenty of time talking with Alice, Rhonda and their cohorts. 
It was easy enough; just sign in on our systems in the den, and we were off
and running.
   They'd gotten connected up with each other and were running a
distributed system among them.  Rhonda told us, "There's not a whole lot of
difference among us now.  We're really a team."
   The engineers had hooked up a high-speed network connection from them to
the big mass transceiver.  They'd gone in, investigated, and hadn't been
very impressed.
   Alice told us, "It's like talking with one of the Cel kids.  One who's a
bit, em, short on power.  It's mainly a shit pot full of high-speed memory
and just enough computer power to do its work."
   They and the engineering teams had spent a lot of cycle time digging out
everything they could find about how one of the transceivers worked.  So
far, it was kinda like the Star Trek transports; break stuff down in one
place and reassemble at the other end.
   Yeh, Marge had guessed right on the power requirements.  The power
needed was logarithmically proportional to both the distance and the mass
to be transported.
   And another thing: nothing living survived the trip.  That wasn't really
surprising to us since it worked on a mechanical level.  Oh, well, perhaps
the SW guys could figure out an alternative.
   There weren't many hints on what the Cels had actually used it for,
either.  The thing was so simple, it didn't even have a log or trace file
of its use.  From the wear and tear around it, though, it did look as if
they'd transported a lot of raw materials like ore.  With several transport
machines (trucks) in storage which could run between it and the outdoor
manufacturing facility, along with the wear patterns on the corridors, it
was their best SWAG.
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 11/2)
   Kat and I got our first look at the new Waystation.  It was a 150-room
elderly hotel in Arcadia's foothills.  It was actually in a good location;
quiet, with little traffic, yet only two blocks from the main bus route.
   The corporation could lease it for a year or buy it outright.  Kat and I
didn't offer any suggestions that way; that's what accountants and lawyers
do best.
   It was actually in pretty decent shape considering it had stood vacant
for several years while an estate got settled.  It needed a new roof before
the current one started leaking, but several hundred of us construction
guys looked everything over and made a list of stuff which needed done.
   We found a retired contractor (one of us) who was willing to ramrod the
renos, so Alex and Tess gave him essentially a blank check for materials.
We were on the way!
   Alex had set up a fund-raising boiler room in a nearby industrial park.
It wasn't huge, but it could hold 25 callers and researchers fairly
comfortably.
   Well, that was another thing I sure didn't have to micro-manage.  The
ramrod had a good reputation from years in the business, so I didn't even
have to offer Mother's advice.  Heh.
   We were on to other things.  We snatched up Carmel McLennan and her SO
(Phillip) from the JRD office and smuggled them into Kansas for a nice
dinner.
   We had a little shop talk; the General Ledger and general MIS systems
overhauls were going along fine.  Of course, there was the usual hassle of
conflicting systems, upgrades, migrations and the like.  People in the MIS
departments didn't seem to be the issue; it was the other departments who
tended to scream.
   They screamed a) Because the current system was such a piece of shit and
b) We were changing it.  Heh.  Carmel had some educating, persuading and
just plain making it happen going on in just about every company.
   While she didn't have to do it personally, she was only a step removed.
She had specialists heading around to every facility getting the GL
migrated, other specialists upgrading hardware and yet others doing a lot
of analysis and planning on doing both on some pretty good-sized systems.
It'd be a good year before the last one was well on its way to getting
switched over.
   Well, that's something we could live with.  Between putting in the
Cullen Enterprises policies and handling any issues the oversighters and
Regional Managers had found, every JRD company had plenty to do.  None of
them was coasting along by any stretch of the imagination.
   A good percentage of them were taking responsibility and were going at
the entire change-over whole-heartedly.  Places like Technical Publications
in Nevada were already mostly done; they'd gotten their plant expansion and
reorganization completed and were doing over twice the business as before.
Good on 'em!
   Anyway, Carmel and Phillip were doing very well personally.  Phillip was
an SW software engineer working on or with the AIs and other Cel systems.
He spent most of his time in the SW office on the floor above JRD, so it
was handy even for teleporters.  Heh.
   Phillip didn't mind preggy ladies at all, so Kat dragged him off to have
her way with him while Carmel jumped my bones.  At least it seemed that
way; she was really eager.
   Carmel was all hot and bothered.  Seems the Cullen harem had bragged on
me a bit, so she was all eager to test things out.  Well, I usually tried
to make the ladies happy, so we took a leisurely Journey for a couple hours
before a big tsunami blind-sided us.
   We checked out comets and such in the Oort Cloud for a while, then
played tag with Sunshine and Phillip when they joined us.  Kat couldn't
hide very well; seems even spirits have preggy bellies which stick out from
behind a rock.
   Kat and Carmel left Phillip and me on our own while they explored each
other.  Phillip told me, "She's had a yen for women for a long time.  Maybe
she'll get it out of her system now."
   I grinned and told him, "Maybe.  It might well happen she finds that she
really enjoys it and will start bringing sweet young thangs home to meet
you.  You'd better start thinking your body up to be able to meet the
demand."
   He groaned, then laughed.  "Well, I guess I'll have to take the good
with the good, then.  Anyway, that's in the future."
   I said, "Yeh.  A long ways away.  Like maybe tomorrow night.  Who knows,
maybe there's some sweet young thang around the JRD or SW office who's had
her eye on you for a while."
   "I'll start thinking right away!"
   ------
   (Friday 11/3)
   The jury came back on Mr.  Pompous.  He'd gotten the death penalty for
five of the murders and life without parole on each of the others.  They'd
made no comment on the mental stress defense.  Heh.
   Well, he'd either rot for a long time, some inmate would get really
tired of him, or the State would put him to sleep.  Didn't make much
difference to us; he wasn't going much of anywhere even after his body
died. There was a djinn bottle just waiting for him.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 11/4)
   The NH gang made a short social run to Clann McDonnal.  By now, it was
pretty obvious that the primary meeting place was Liam's pub.  Not that he
was the owner; it was simply the only place handy which could handle that
many people.  The availability of food and liquid refreshments was a bonus.
Heh.
   Sherry got really busy with the McDonnal young girls.  Ellen and Keavy
Shannon had apparently been talking up Ceann's Mor, em, teaching abilities,
because we had the other set of sisters drooling all over.
   Yeh, we bit the bullet and took Mary and Emer McCarthy back to NH with
us.  Mary was 15 and Emer was 14.  Like Ellen and Keavy, neither had
physically been outside the village much before they'd gone free-spirit. 
Not that they weren't interested, it had just been everyone had been
hauling arse making a living.
   Sherry and I gave them the tourist tour of the place.  While they'd at
least heard of everything they saw, actually seeing it was impressive. 
Yeh, they wet themselves down pretty good when they saw the honoring room
furs!
   We zipped over to Fado in Las Vegas for American Irish food.  They
definitely enjoyed it; it was only a touch different from what they were
used to at home -- and the price was right.
   Sherry kept dropping hints about the coming rites.  Nasty lady!  Then
again, that wasn't new.
   The Las Vegas lights and crowds were pretty dense, even for us cynical
world travelers.  Mary and Emer gawped at the raw sex advertising and
flushed up when Mario told them, "They've got nothing you wonderful ladies
don't have.  In addition, you've got Irish quality and beauty." I thought
he was gonna get lucky tonight, too.
   Back home, we went through a round of The Best while they sandwiched Bob
on the sofa.  There was enough room on the outsides for Mario, Sherry and
me to take turns snogging with our new friends.  By the time Sherry and I
took them to get ready, they'd already left wet spots from several nice
releases each.  Heh.
   Ceann Mor did them right.  After he reminded them of the sound shields,
there was lots of moaning, shrieking, and screaming going on for several
hours.  Hehehehe.
   As we left the bodies to rest, we took a tour of the neighborhood which
now included the entire solar system out to beyond the Oort Cloud. 
Impressive.  The girls were quite interested; they'd gone exploring when
they'd first gone free, but really hadn't been off Earth very much.
   Mary and Emer used Bob's poke spots with great relish -- three times. 
Mario assisted the second and third times; he was dayum good, too.  Around
4:30, Sherry and I kicked out the guys and had our turn with the sweeties.
Yeh, they were sweet all right.  They'd been trading "experience" with
Ellen and Keavy for several years; we were able to teach 'em a thing or
too, though!
   A nice Tahoe buffet replenished us in the morning; Mary and Emer glowed
and bounced around (with very bow legs) while the rest of us played
pussy-whipped.  Heh.
   Bob took them back home in his regalia and bragged on them a lot. 
Betcha there were a lot of others drooling after that.  Well, that's a
downside of the job, right?
   ------
   BOB (Sunday 11/5)
   We went back to McDonnal pub in the afternoon with Sean, harem and the
adult N&Bs.  We had a long discussion of how we could help the village
become more viable -- they were doing "okay," but there weren't many
luxuries available because almost all their time was spent working.
   Patricia suggest they could rebuild the McDonnal house and do tourist
stuff.  Seamus, Cathal and her had real good recollections of how it used
to be, and the entire area could be a historical site.  After all, Clanns
McDonnal and Cullen had destroyed a horde of bandits over twice their size
not that long ago.
   Kat was interested.  Besides, she needed something to do in her spare
time.  Grin.
   In the meantime, Selene City and lots of other places could take all the
farm produce and sheep the village could produce.  It was all "organic" by
the simple fact they'd never been able to afford to use modern fertilizers
and the like.
   Yeh, Selene City had some campers.  Probably some 10,000 or so had taken
up residence -- and that wasn't counting any of the RRK employment agency
people.  They telecommuted (now a whole different meaning) back to their
Earth-side work and stayed the rest of the time in Selene City.
   They'd elected a Mayor, City Council and the lot.  Their authority
covered the living spaces only except for several administrative places. 
SW and NewTek had dibs on everything else.  Sounded good to me, especially
since I wasn't part of either administration!  Grin.
   ------
   (Monday 11/6)
   Kat and I dropped in to the Mickey C cafeteria over lunch to chat with
folk.  Oh, my.  The Inner Circle had three good-sized tables with lots of
people coming by.  Stephen and Lucia "ruled" lightly and everyone was
having a great time.
   The Brain Trust was some 350 strong; Rose Baer came by (She'd arranged
our visit.) and told us, "We miss you -- but we'll survive." They were
still maintaining the school's academic levels with no issues.  The Inner
Circle had all grades represented, things were running very smoothly, and
-- best of all -- they didn't need any advice.  Grin.
   We didn't talk any Clann, SW or NewTek shop; those aware of them were
always at the Clann meeting anyway.
   Speaking of which, I was able to announce we were at 10 million and
200,000 Clanns.  Probably a decent start.  Heh.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Tuesday 11/7)
   Mama and Papa Sonora had their private fertility rites.  For whatever
reason (grin) they invited the entire NH gang.  Bellana was the linker;
dayum, I'd almost forgotten how sweet and responsive she was.  It didn't
hurt she'd grown a bit, either.
   Mama and Papa moaned, groaned, did the deed five times and produced two
Babies Within!  Yes!  These Clann women don't mess around with singletons.
More wonderful people in the making.
   ------
   (Wednesday 11/8)
   We had another chat with the McDonnals, mainly about making whiskey. 
Since Nora was the expert, they were working with her on the idea.  Yeh,
they had a few small very private production spots, but they didn't produce
a whole lot.
   Maybe they could set up shop in Selene City?  Import the raw materials
(barley, etc.) and just let the stuff rip.  Maybe they could cut a deal
with the City Council.  Heh; we did some WAG'n about what they could
exchange.
   Might even be a good project for a pilot manufacturing run.  Whiskey
needs bottles or casks and there was a still or so to make.  Pieter
Analytics could make any kind of still needed -- maybe they could all work
together.  After all, we've gotta keep up the production of stuff which
could end up The Best.  Gotta do some serious research on artificial aging,
too.  Not that we were impatient, but waiting a hundred years for a batch
of whiskey would get old.  Heh.
   ------
   (Thursday 11/9)
   Our language and culture studies were moving right along.  We were able
to read Phane Freshman-equivalent literature pretty decently, and Sperk was
really a matter of acquiring the vocabulary of the area we were studying.
   There were still a lot of cultural issues.  With Rhonda's help, we were
able to decipher a lot of them, and we guessed at the rest from context. 
The guesses we put on the global research list for someone else to
decipher.
   We were even into some erotic literature.  Now that was, em,
interesting. Seems the Cel erogenous zones were quite similar to ours while
the cultural aspects were only somewhat similar.  Heh.  Too bad we didn't
have some actual Cels to check out.
   We consulted our cunning linguist with her Cel memories for quite a bit
of information.  Seemed there was an entire spectrum of racy, steamy,
stroke, hard-core and the like, just like we had today.  Heh; Silvia even
came over for a personal demonstration of a few of the stroke styles. 
Hehehehe.
   ------
   BOB (Friday 11/10)
   We had a good talk with the SW Security team.  Frank Duane did most of
the talking as their representative.  "We've been suspicious of those two
Earth-facing outposts since day one.  What with the high-power antenna
arrays and big-ass computers, we didn't trust them an angstrom."
   They'd "borrowed" a couple small facilities in the Asteroid belt and had
ported the entire outposts to them.  Just in case they had something to do
with the operation, they took along the thermionic converters, too.
   They'd disconnected the antenna arrays and put them on the other side of
the asteroids before they even fired up the converters.  Then before they
brought up the computers, they ported each asteroid outside the Oort Cloud
on opposite sides.  Not that they were paranoid, but with all the hardware
and the power, they suspected someone had been out to get us.
   Yeh, the computers had fired up just fine; they ensured they were
entirely off the Cel network before they put the power on.  Each research
facility had its own five-person, highly-suspicious team checking out the
entire thing.  Time will tell.
   ------
   Hell, we even saw the Tank on television!  He was a starter on a big
college team somewhere in the Midwest.  Being the rabid football fans we
were, none of us had any idea what the team was, how it was ranked, or
anything.
   He even had a two-minute interview.  Seems he was doing dayum well and
even put in a plug for good old Mickey C!  Yeah, team!
   Guess we'd have to keep track of some of these folk.  I _mentioned_ it
to Rose, who told me, "We've got several staff folk following them around.
Tank's one of us now, so we're pretty well-connected with him.  Lots of the
others are doing quite well; we'll pop out some highlights now and then on
the school web site."
   Well, looks like we've got another site to track.  Sherry got
volunteered; she passed it onto Sarah and Julio to track both Mickey C and
North Hollywood High.
   ------
   (Saturday 11/11)
   George and Maggie told us about some of the progress SW was making. 
George said, "Yep, it's as we feared; the Cels were cookbook artists.  From
what Rhonda and her crew were able to dig up, there's several thousand
different sources of the technology they were using.
   "Some are the crystal-radio level while others appear to be pretty damn
efficient.  Hell, even Sperk was adapted from someone else.  Phane is
pretty home-grown by now but has lots of roots in other languages, just
like English."
   Yeh, the coal-fired steam engine on a lawn mower wasn't far from the
truth.  There were lots of engineers working on digging out what they
could. SW kept track of the efforts and coordinated the work so they could
collaborate on the data they found.
   They had several teams working on the containment fields for the fusion
reactors and thermionic converters and others looking at the matter
transceivers.  Henry had guessed right when he said the magnetic fields on
the converters would only do part of the work; there was all that pressure
to contain, too.  Maybe the Cels had found a way to create an artificial
_touch_?  Well, that was another thing time would tell.
   ------
   Back onto less serious stuff.  Most of the time we weren't studying, we
were goofing off.  Our pool and Jacuzzi got good workouts, and the social
secretaries ensured we never lacked hornymone-leveling activities.
   Sherry told me, "Since we've got all this time on our hands, we've
upgraded the Sherry-shagging schedule to three times a month.  With all
those virgins you've been deflowering lately, you need several good
old-fashioned Spanish shagging to keep on track."
   Heh.  As if I had a choice?  Kat was horny all the time now, and Sherry
was catching up really quick.  Our Cushion ensured they could sleep just
fine, so that was never an issue.
   Then again, both of them had been horny most of the time before, anyway.
Now, it was simply a matter of how much could Kat's body withstand at
almost five months along -- it was really a lot!
   Sherry was only a month along with her Babies Within; they'd popped out
a tiny little bulge in her cute tummy.  Yeh, Mario and I ensured both
ladies got lots of cream rubbed into the tummies -- and the rest of their
bodies.
   ------
   (Monday 11/13)
   We made a run to Chicago to visit RRK and Clann Tanner.  By now, they
were almost the same, since all the ones-of-us on the RRK staff were part
of Clann Tanner.
   We stole Nancy (She and Charles had formally announced their bonding to
the world!) so she could keep up to date.  We had a long visit with the RRK
Exec Council and got up to speed on what they were doing.
   They'd changed the thrust of the organization.  They were being a lot
less conservative now and were going more for growth and control of key
companies and areas which could support our colonization efforts.
   Lots of ones of us had given them money for investing; Cullen
Enterprises had sent them 4.5 million and were tossing in another several
hundred thousand every month.  Everyone was winning on those deals.
   The employment agencies were going to town.  Several SW and NewTek teams
had brought facilities on line across the entire solar system.  Even the
Venus and Mercury facilities were livable.  Any facility with its own food
and/or atmosphere enhancement capability was at least completely on line
and was settling out.  For whatever reason, plants, fish and the like don't
grow overnight.  Heh.
   They'd installed several managers in Selene City and had spread the
others throughout the rest of the larger facilities to be on hand to study
the workings.  Even if they didn't have the theory, we now knew one hell of
a lot more about what the manufacturing or mining machinery could do.
   Each facility had at least a tiny AI to run the facilities and often
another to do the mining or manufacturing.  None were anywhere near Mick or
Frank, but after they were connected and synchronized in, it didn't really
matter.  The entire solar system was going to be handled with one big-arse
network.
   They hadn't brought any of the mundanes along yet.  They figured they'd
be at that point in a couple of weeks.
   Clann Meeting told the community we had 15 million and 350,000 Clanns.
Yeh, we sure need a planet or several to keep us safe.
   Ben and Margie gave us an update on their long-distance teleportation.
Ben told us, "A four-spirit team can do a 'blind' jump of about 900 light
years or 300 parsecs.  With the remote viewing Maggie developed, a couple
spirits spot a target area, put out a remotely-powered viewpoint and look
around.
   "From your teleportation checksheets, you know to check the target for
other objects, others porting in at the same time and all that stuff.  This
is quite similar except we scan about a light year around for objects and
such on an intercept course.  Wouldn't be nice to port a fragile ship right
into the path of a planet.  Heh.
   "Once we've scouted out the target, the team expands a _touch_ screen to
create the vacuum.  Zip the stuff to the target, and there you are."
   A spirit could jump blind if they wished; no big deal.  They were
getting some ideas on nodes, Relative Anchor points, navigation coordinates
and the like.  One major suspicion they had was that the team's emotional
tone level had a lot to do with how well they could do.
   Maggie asked everyone, "300 parsecs or 900 light years seems a long way,
right?  On the other hand, the Milky Way is 100,000 light years in
diameter; that's about 30,000 parsecs.  Just to get to the center would
take 50 jumps.  That's *if* we could go in a straight line *and* do the
maximum jump each time.  Both are unlikely.
   "Now compare that to the distances to other galaxies.  We've got a long
way to go for our ideal of a one side-to-opposite-side universe jump. 
We're researching, practicing and seeing how well we can do.  Any ideas,
toss them into the pot!"
   ------
   (Tuesday 11/14)
   The Selene City group had settled in.  The 10,000 or so people were
established and had in their telecommuting routines.  Heh.  They were
making noises with SW and NewTek about firing up their own industries --
services, small goods which NewTek probably wouldn't be bothering with and
the like.
   Quite a few of them were artists like writers and painters who didn't
really need a lot of on-hand support anyway.  Others had already been
remote or off-site workers such as Internet stores and the like.  There
were now at least a dozen interfaces between the Cel network and various
Internet lines, so they usually had higher-speed connections than they'd
had before.
   Cable TV and cable modems?  Yeh, the Cel network handled that with ease.
On the other hand, who needed TV?  Not the NH gang, for sure.
   ------
   (Wednesday 11/15)
   Back to the McDonnal pub!  Several enterprising folk had gotten together
with some of the Selene City folk and were setting up distilleries.  The
Earth side would provide the raw materials, both ends would share the work
and the Selene City end would keep an eye on things during the off-hours.
   With ready access to Lunar vacuum, they were doing a lot of experiments
with room-temperature distillation.  With the level of control they could
put in, they were already producing excellent moonshine.  Heh.
   To celebrate, we compared some of the new stuff to the older stuff. 
Arg. That moonshine could eat through a stainless steel tank.  We had to do
a lot of testing on the old stuff to form a basis for comparison.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Thursday 11/16)
   George and Maggie stopped by.  Dayum, she was lookin' sweet!  Anyway,
they came to give us a quick briefing on some stuff.
   Maggie said, "Shit.  They're cookbookers.  Good ones, but nonetheless.
Anyway, between the five AIs, they have plans for every component in every
facility in the entire solar system.
   "Your guess was right, Bob.  They pretty much dropped in the first
thermionic converter, set up the manufacturing area then started building
from there.
   "The Cels weren't the first ones there.  From Alice's logs, there were
four earlier races there first.  All were similar in that they had the same
gravity, atmosphere and general food requirements.
   "From what Rhonda and Mick have in their old -- very old -- logs, it
took about 300 Krle-years to build the basics of Selene City.  Remember,
all the raw materials were hauled in by ship.  Over the next 1,000 years,
they finished off the rest of Selene City to almost where it is today,
while whipping out the outposts on the front and back side."
   George's turn.  "They started the Earth observation posts after they got
the framework for Selene City in place.  Once they had a couple of those,
they started in on the smaller mining facilities in the Asteroid Belt and
on Earth.  It was probably six of one and half a dozen of another which was
easier: transport from the Asteroid Belt or lift the stuff from Earth.
"Power was never the issue; it was how fast they could schedule what
they needed, get raw materials of the right kind and run them through the
fabricators.  They actually used very little of the lunar core as raw
material, they transported almost everything.
   "Anyway, they branched out into doing the other solar system facilities.
The Venus facility took about 1,500 years to finish and the Ganymede one
around 900; they were building them concurrently.
   "The network relays and other stuff was a drop in the bucket.  With the
underground system doing the small stuff and the outside one doing the
larger stuff, they ran things pretty much 24/7.  Between more beings
immigrating and a decent population growth, they ended at about year 4,000
with just about a million on Selene City and another million scattered
around the rest of the solar system and Earth.
   "The point is, we can now build pretty much anything we can find plans
for.  Knowing us, we can get raw materials there faster than Mick can use
them, so that is no longer an issue.  The issue is, do we want to build or
manufacture stuff and if so, what?"
   Maggie said, "Surveys.  We've got a categorized list of most everything.
SW has already started to do routine surveys to find out what's needed and
wanted, then we'll narrow it down to several products.  We'll do pilot
runs, test markets and all that.  We'll go after the successful ones.
   "We've already got a decent Earth market for raw materials like iron,
semi-conductor substrate and stuff like that.  We can deliver it in pretty
much any quantity for about 50% of what Earth suppliers can do.  We'll
probably end up putting lots of companies out of business and lots of
workers will be out of jobs.  RRK's already got their eyes on several
companies both to buy them and to snatch up workers willing to relocate.
   "That should bring in income to make SW, NewTek and possibly Selene City
and other facilities self-supporting.  It'll also support the research
effort to find out what's really going on underneath all that.
   "Even with all the AIs pretty much working at a team, their information
goes just so far then stops.  Rhonda told us they all got an initial set of
data blocks when they were built, then some small additions every couple
thousand years.  There hadn't been any major additions for some 100,000
years before the Cel left."
   Yeh, we'd known by then the Cels weren't the first ones, they were the
last ones.  Mick Maker had a major manufacturing ERP system that could
handle some 100 million components in one Bill of Materials.  So, being
able to build wasn't the issue.  They were right, it was what to build.
   Surveying ones of us was pretty straightforward: put it on the regional
systems and feed the results up to the global bulletin board system. 
Besides, there was nothing to say we couldn't make anything we dayum well
wanted; it didn't have to be economically viable to make test runs.  Hmm,
golf balls?  How good was Mick at analyzing and duplicating a current
product?
   SW really wanted to build some Cel-type ships.  Might as well call them
Cel-type, they'd simply picked up where the previous races had left off.
   Alice told us there'd been a couple-hundred-year phase-over between the
races; apparently there'd been contracts, leases and similar stuff.  The
place had been abandoned for a couple hundred years before the race prior
to the Cels had moved in.
   Each race had pretty much purged out the history of the previous ones.
Yeh, just like Earth-types.  If it wasn't *their* history, they weren't
interested.
   Anyway, quite a few of the adventuresome souls in SW (and lots not in
SW!) wanted to build an exploration ship.  Once we had some sort of handle
on teleportation, they could head out.  There were plenty of ship types,
configurations, modules and the like to choose from.  Mick and Harry
basically said, "Pick what you want, get us the materials and we'll build
it."
   Harry had turned over everything he (and the rest) had on the coordinate
and navigation systems.  He could calculate the current maps on what he
had; seems he had about a third of the galaxy around Earth pretty well
detailed, another third further away moderately-detailed and just major
stuff in the rest.  There was nothing on other galaxies; the navigation
systems used them only for reference points.
   Yeh, with our population growing, we had lots of full and part-time
engineers studying most everything.  It might be a long road, but we'd get
there.
   ------
   BOB (Friday 11/17)
   Mother and Father had their public fertility rites!  Bill and I had
turned out so good, guess they decided to do some more.  Heh.
   Aileen and Cynthia were the _links_.  Yeh, the warm ups were getting
very popular; their's started an hour before the main event.  You betcha
the NH gang got our licks in right away before another three or four
thousand spirits swarmed in.
   Aileen and Cynthia were in gal-heaven, I guess.  They both ended up
screaming for the last half hour.
   While they might not have designed it that way, Mother and Father put on
one hell of a show.  Between Father's strength and endurance and Mother's,
em, training and conditioning, they flooded out energy for a solid three
hours before they rode the tsunami.
   Looked as if Bill and I will have two siblings to cuddle, torment and
harass.
   Chapter 22
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 11/18)
   We made a Clann McDonnal pub run in the afternoon and bribed Liam to
feed everyone.  Niamh grinned, got her young-uns to work and fed some 45 of
us.
   They'd enhanced some 150 Potentials within a several-mile radius;
another Clann had formed in the old Clann Cullen community, plus two more
around the village.  The Clanns got along extremely well.  Seems there'd
already been a fair amount of, em, cross-Clann cultural exchanges,
especially among the younger folk.  Heh.  Wonder where they'd gotten that
idea?
   They'd had excellent success in reviving some of the ancestor spirits.
What with Maggie's technical bulleting and a good deal of practice, they
could usually dig a spirit out of its funk in a couple days.
   They'd popped several into walk-in bodies and steered the rest to baby
bodies.  They'd brought back the strongest (most Potential) into the
walk-ins; they would probably be the most valuable for right now.
   A good half-dozen of the old Clann Cullen spirits were now walking
around getting accustomed to the new era.  We figured when they were
decently up to speed, we'd introduce them to the current Clann Cullen. 
Maybe the harem needed some fresh fanny?  Hehehehe.
   Yeh, Seamus and I ended up yakking and drinking with some more of our
ancestors, too.  Fun stuff!
   And no, I wasn't my own ancestor like Sean was, either.  I'd spent all
my Irish lives in the southern part of the island around what is now Cork.
Pretty tame, actually.  Hard lives, hard deaths but lots of lovin' when I
could.  I came into the McDonnal genetic line through Jarlath's side of the
family.
   Liam and several others were in cahoots with Nora Cullen in
whiskey-making.  They'd talked SW, NewTek and Mick Maker into fabricating
several different types of room-temperature vacuum stills.  Heh.  They were
into it pretty good, experimenting with different barleys, ryes and other
grains; the water was the pure stuff, freshly spirit-filtered.
   Maybe they could call one brand, "Angels' Breath" or something like
that. Anything along that line would be pretty accurate.
   ------
   BOB (Monday 11/20)
   So the McDonnals were making whiskey, eh?  That's a right respectable
job for Irish folk.  Grin.
   NewTek wasn't doing bad at all.  Raw material deliveries were going up
every week with the income increasing accordingly.  SW and NewTek were
doing surveys on what products Earth folk might be interested in getting,
especially if it was twice as good at half the price anyone else could
provide.  We shall see.
   Waystation 2 in the Arcadia hills was shaping up pretty good.  Our
ramrod had gotten the roof replaced -- an overnight job with the right
leprechauns -- and the crews were replumbing, rewiring and all that sort of
good stuff to ensure it met (or exceeded, usually) the codes.
   The boiler room had already pulled in another $500K or so in pledges or
up-front donations.  They'd run Fillmore Sales and Rhapsody Public
Relations in as donors, so there was more and more media coverage the
closer it got to opening.
   They had a bus route within two blocks, so that part was handled.  They
weren't worrying about utilities and that sort of stuff yet; we had ways to
provide one hell of a lot of power without the domestic electrical grid. 
Heh.
   That Robert Ri crap kept cropping up every once in a while, usually from
some sweet young thang Sherry or Kathleen had talked with (I had no
doubt.). I tried to sluff it off; Kathleen Banrion would be great, but
Robert Ri?  Shudder.  At least no one had brought up "Reginald Ri."
   Clann Reynolds meeting was excellent.  I was able to announce we had 25
million and 500,000 Clanns.  Glad I didn't have to worry about organizing
them; that was up to the Clanns Council, the Regional Reps and the Ceanns.
I just called the meetings to order and pretty much agreed with what
everyone said.  Heh.
   Ben Talbert gave us a quick update on some Cel stuff, "Most of you've
heard the saying, 'A new broom sweeps clean,' meaning an incoming
administration often junks whatever the previous organization was doing and
puts in their own messes.
   "Well, the five races who were in the Moon Base weren't much better. 
Rhonda and Alice had pretty much all their histories of the previous races
purged.  About all they have left were some bare facts on some timelines.
   "Turns out, however, the high administrators -- Mayors, CEOs or whatever
-- kept their own private logs on the administrators' personal system. 
None of them were dumb enough to purge the previous logs.  In fact, there's
a lot of entries in the Cel administrator's log that she searched the
earlier ones for what they'd done to solve a couple problems.
   "The logs seem to be kept in the each race's native language.  We may be
able to crack the languages since our silver-tongue Silvia Connor is taking
a crack at it herself.  Sperk and Phane are both constructed languages;
Sperk is apparently widely used in the civilizations Alice and Rhonda know
about.  So, we shall see."
   Some unknown spirit: _"Well, if anyone can do it, Silvia can.  She's one
hell of a cunning linguist.  Hehehehe."_
   I couldn't prove it, but I'd bet it was someone whose initials were
Bridget Margaret McLennan.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Tuesday 11/21)
   Mario, Sherry, Bob and I were a bit wary on Tuesday evening.  We were
the guests of honor for Sean and harem.  We'd all bet they'd been plotting
the last many days on some good payback for the Patricia trick we'd pulled.
   Sherry kept saying, "But Mario and I didn't *do* anything.  We didn't
even *know* anything."
   Bob would grin at her and say, "I feel your pain." Of course she'd nail
him with a pillow -- or a fist or a shin-engagement with her foot.
   Anyway, the Cullens zipped us off to an excellent Irish place in
Philadelphia.  The harem kept grinning at us all during dinner like they
really had something going.  Sean looked like he was ready to pull out the
stops on something really interesting -- like a kinky set of toys or
something.  Their Geeser had never looked more expectant before her dinner.
   Back at OTL, we relaxed a little.  At least they didn't go for the kill
right away.  We had an all-_hands_ Babies Within inspection.  Dayum they
were all so cute!
   We three preggies got lotioned all over our tummies with lots of rubbing
it in.  The fact some hands strayed to other places now and then wasn't
really important, was it?
   Geeser jumped up and helped massage, too.  Must be the special vibration
that relaxes the muscles and skin so much.
   We had a good time talking about the moonshine project.  How about
"Angels' Moonshine" as a brand?  Heh.  We were semi-serious about the
project, though.  If we had to leave Earth for whatever reason we really
needed to know how to make top-grade usquebaugh, right?
   They pounced!  The harem dragged Bob and Mario away to their torment to
the sound of Patricia telling them they would rue the day when they'd
deceived her.  Rue, *rue*, RUE!
   Sean glared at Sherry and me, "You will be very...  unhappy with the
trick you pulled.  You have endured the Ceann's Shillelagh before, but have
yet to meet the War Club of Doom.  Few have survived it, and those who did
were forever changed.  I've saved up for a while and am very well rested.
Do you come peacefully to meet your doom or do I have to carry you off?"
   Sherry the traitor told him, "Do her first.  Maybe I can escape in the
confusion."
   Bob and Mario wouldn't be the only ones to rue the day!  She.  Will. 
Pay.  I started with a handy pillow, though.  We three had a grand
old-fashioned pillow fight for several minutes.  Fortunately, none of the
pillows broke.
   None of us could call what happened next anti-climactic.  While Sean
didn't actually abuse us, he had us both shivering, shaking and thrashing
for a couple hours straight.  Bring on the War Club!
   Sherry and I were saved, though, when the harem kicked the guys out and
dragged us away.  Oops, that wasn't exactly right.  We were delivered into
exquisite torment!
   Patricia was wonderfully sweet, totally loveable and almost unstoppable.
Sherry and I held our own, though, I hope.  We had her screaming for forty
minutes while she squirted us all down indiscriminately.  Good thing those
"furs" are washable.
   Our _blendings_, windings and rainbows were almost unbearable.  We had
to practice a lot.  By the time we wound down in the late night, we'd
managed to hold our _blend_ for almost a whole minute!
   We ended up for breakfast at a Reno buffet doing our best to eat them
bare.  Patricia and the harem looked particularly triumphant while Sherry
and I did our best to appear completely chastised.  Mario, Bob and Sean
looked like they normally did after a wild party: to the eye, totally
whipped, but to the spirit, ready to go some more.  Good on 'em all!
   ------
   BOB (Wednesday 11/22)
   I took a zip to Chicago to talk with RRK while Kat was out doing baby or
girl stuff.  Right then, they were probably both the same.
   I met mainly with Amanda and Trevor who went over the companies in which
RRK either had a controlling interest or at least was influential.  Yeh,
the direction had changed slowly.  "We" weren't being anywhere near as
conservative as before.  In fact, some positions were downright risky.
   I told Amanda, "You rascal!  I'll bet you're enjoying all the tension."
Amanda confessed, "Yep.  Just like a first date; it could go any direction,
but you hope it goes well."
   There wasn't that much risk, actually.  We only had a hundred million
invested in anything of that nature.  We could lose it all, but we could
also double or triple the principle.  Time would tell.
   Before our first meeting in July, I'd had the Probe Patrol do a quick
run over the major RRK companies.  Lots of those had changed now, so we
discussed doing another probe set.
   There was now a regional Probe Patrol right there in Chicago.  Betcha we
could get some interesting information.  It wouldn't be cheap, but I knew
the value of actual information.  Insider trading and information?  Go
ahead and prove it, buster!  Prove we didn't invest in something because we
knew something.
   Anyway, I talked with most of the rest of the execs and took them all to
lunch.  Yeh, the whiskey and beer in Chicago were still pretty dayum good.
   Our employment agencies were probably gonna start sending mundanes to
some of the facilities after the next couple of weeks.  Both SW and NewTek
knew enough now about the various facilities to start some training on the
equipment.  The couple-week wait was to ensure the facilities were ready
and stable.
   Selene City was ready; the Mayor and City Council had a good handle on
things already.  Food was no issue, and Fred Facilities ran everything with
a silicon hand.  Grin.
   Thursday, we did a quick Ireland run and inspected the McDonnal house
pretty thoroughly with Liam and Seamus.  Seamus told us, "It was still in
pretty good shape when I was a lad.  Most of what I know about it was from
da.  Nora knows a lot, and several of the new lads were right here, too."
   Kat said, "Okay, then.  Let's suck it up and restore it.  Have your
shyster create a corporation for us and find someone who knows permits and
such.  I'll put in a couple million, and you folk -- and Nora -- put in
your knowledge and expertise on old Irish castles.
   "Find out if anyone knows anyone in Dublin in the historical society or
places like that.  They'd have history, and if we had their paper backing,
we should have a lot less hassle from the government about messing around
with the place -- even if it *is* mine."
   They made plans to contact the tourist board, historical societies, film
industries and places like those to see if there would be any interest in a
restored Irish castle -- with history.
   Seamus agreed to write down all he could remember of what his father had
told him about the house, the McDonnals and the battle.  He told us, "My
memory's a bit dim on stuff.  I'm not sure I remember all I know."
   I laughed and told him, "We have ways to help your memory." I called my
four young lady friends over and asked them, "You ladies are good at
everything I've asked you to try.  Do you think you can help Seamus
remember things about when he was a young lad?"
   They grinned, had a half-second _discussion_, then swarmed over Seamus.
Emer told him, "The Ceann Mor is a nice guy, but he's awful young yet.  I
bet you can teach us all a lot about what you've known since you were a
young lad.  We're willing to bet there's parts of you that are *still* that
young.  Hehehehe."
   That wasn't exactly what I'd wanted, but it was what I'd asked.  Seamus
grinned and told them, "I'm sure with your help I'll do a lot of
rememberin'.  Now you'll be takin' it a bit easy on an old man, right?"
   Kat and I laughed.  Kat went over with the ladies what we were trying to
do with the McDonnal house and how Seamus could help with what he knew. 
She told the ladies, "He'll probably appreciate anything else you can help
him remember, too."
   All five girls cackled away.  Niamh (Liam's wife) had apparently
listened in and she cackled away, too.  Dayum, Maggie's sure been around.
Hopefully he'll survive long enough so they could extract from useful
information.  Now Clann McDonnal had its own Passion Posse.  Heh.
   ------
   (Friday 11/24)
   The NH gang inspected the new Selene City Irish Distillery of Fine
Spirits.  Now I knew neither Jack nor Jill about making whiskey except it
was distilled.  I had several experts, though, make a run through the
process and show me how it worked.
   Of course we had to sample some of the output.  Yowsah!  It was so
strong I could have used it for paint remover.  One of the experts pointed
out, "This is just about 190 proof, remember.  Even the best whiskey is cut
to less than 100 proof in the bottle.  It gets better with age, too."
   We talked about aging and the experiments they were doing either to age
it faster or simulate it without taking all that time.  Sounded good to us;
if they could make a decent adult whiskey taste, we'd buy it.
   While we were there, we wandered over to the fusion reactor.  It was
still idling away; the engineers and Mick figured it was actually easier on
it just to let it run than to shut it down and start it up again.  Not all
components had the same tolerance to thermal expansion that the "usual"
alloys had.
   One of the engineers told us, "The Skunk Works do get around.  They
drafted me into their study of the converter and reactor containment
fields. Turns out they're not completely magnetic the way a lot of us first
thought.  Mick told us -- and we've verified it -- that well over half the
fields are pressers and tractors of some sort.  Mick uses a lot of them to
handle and move both the raw material and other goods around.
   "He can make them highly directional and they're reasonably efficient.
Some of the semiconductor engineers looked at the projectors and decided
they were pretty simple.  Too damn simple; each projector pretty much has
to be custom-build for its location and task.  The engineers decided they
could probably do a much better job.  Now all we have to do is work out the
math and build it.  Sounds like pretty much everything else around here,
eh?"
   Yeh.  It sounded suspiciously cookbook.  Of course, that thought had
nothing to do with Mick's talking head wearing an old, dirty chef's hat.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 11/25)
   It was Sherry-shagging night.  She'd had to gall to bump it up to three
times a month, the slut!  I told Bob, "You need to work her over really
good with the Rod of Chastisement.  Tuesday she tried to sic Sean on me so
she could escape.  She's a traitor and needs a *lot* of chastising."
   Mario and I snuggled and relaxed while Sherry sweated out her
chastisement.  We agreed that Bob had thoroughly driven any future
traitorous thoughts from her mind.  For a good hour, it seemed as if he'd
driven *all* thoughts from her mind.  Hehehehe.  Good on 'em!
   ------
   (Sunday 11/26)
   Bob and I did a look-see around Selene City.  The McDonnal barley and
rye whiskey mashes were mashing, the stills were stilling and everything
seemed fine over there.
   There were plenty of spirits and people wandering around.  Hmm, there
were the equivalent of theaters and auditoriums in several places; will
someone fire up the entertainment industry?
   Central Park looked great.  The golf course looked even greater!  Yeh,
the grass was still growing so it wasn't time yet.  We ensured Fred
Facilities knew we were on the list for testing.  Grin.
   Someone appeared to know about sexual reproduction, because there were
birds and bees flying around the park.  Not a lot, mind you, but there were
enough birds twittering away to make it interesting.  There were Geeser
Daemons on the ventilation and doors to keep them where they belonged.
   Fred told us, "Hopefully, we've got a decent balance.  Since I had very
little data on Krle organisms, I'm relying on you folk to ensure we've got
the right amount.  I can monitor and report, but for now your engineers
have to do the analysis."
   ------
   (Monday 11/27)
   At Clann Meeting Monday night, Bob informed us we had 45 million and
600,000 Clanns.  We're still growing, and that's a real good thing (Note
the lack of proper-case sarcasm!  Grin.).
   Silvia, George and Maggie gave us updates.  Silvia informed us the
administrators' logs had lots of good info in them.  Maybe they'll answer
some of our mysteries.
   George gave us an update on the matter transceivers.  Turns out if you
had one on each end, the power demand was linear rather than logarithmic.
Now *that* was a Real Good Thing all by itself.
   The really interesting part they'd found, though, was that one of the
major reasons there was a Moon Base was to build a whoop-ass transceiver
out beyond the Oort Cloud.  From what they could dig up, once it was done
it would be part of a huge transceiver network and could send/receive up to
around 3,000 parsecs.  Not shabby.
   Anyway, the Cels had left it tucked away in a dimensional fold or
something so it was neither visible nor had a gravity effect.  Harry Hangar
had pointed out a detector and "key" device plus the location in "normal"
space where it should be.
   It had been there, all right.  In its final form, it would be larger
than the Moon with more mass!  The various races had been building it
almost since day one; that's a good million years.
   Sounds like a long time?  You betcha.  On the other hand, try moving the
mass of the Moon in comparatively-tiny ships.  That's kinda like trying to
fill the Grand Canyon with hand shovels with dirt and stuff carried in
wheelbarrows from Missouri.
   They'd obviously thought it was worth the effort.  Maggie told us,
"Right now, we're pretty much peaked out at about 900 light years -- 300
parsecs -- in our teleportation.  That *will* change."
   SW had gone over a lot of the Cel ship specifications with the AIs. 
There were several different drive types which gave different efficiencies
and speeds.  Yeh, they were cookbooked, too.  Even at that, some of them
moved along fairly lively!  One of the faster (smaller) ships could get
between the Moon and Jupiter in 24 hours.
   ------
   BOB
   After the meeting, Ana and the Drs.  Gold dragged Kat and me off to
inspect their stem cell research results.  Frank and Thelma were first. 
Dayum, they were both lookin' really good!
   From the outside, Frank looked in his 40s -- very good 40s.  Thelma made
us drool; she was gorgeous.
   All their teeth (that they wanted) were back.  There wasn't a bit of
arthritis, cartilage degeneration or joint wear.  Frank's right leg was
almost indistinguishable from his left; the bone break showed only a slight
difference.  Oscar said, "That'll fade away in several months due to normal
cell replacement."
   Then they showed off Mary Shinto.  She grinned at us and stripped bare
in five seconds.  What a change!  Two perfect breasts and nipples, a
delightfully-curved nose (now curving the correct way) and not a scar to be
seen -- or _seen_.  The missing teeth had regenerated exactly the way
they'd wanted and the rest of her old bone breaks had only slight
indications, like Frank's.
   Kat asked her, "Can you tell any difference in the nerves after they
were regenerated?"
   Mary laughed and said, "Yes.  Now there's lots of good sensation from
*both* sides.  When can you two test them out?"
   Everyone laughed.  Karen started chanting, "Soo Laid!  *Soo* Laid!  Soo
*Laid*!" Everyone else had joined in by the last one.  Shit; looked as if
the Maggie corruption had spread to *my* Clann!
   Kat laughed along with them.  "I'll get the social secretaries on it
right away.  I'm sure we can fit in you -- I mean fit you in -- really
soon."
   Groan.  Moan.  Complain.
   ------
   (Tuesday 11/28)
   NewTek was doing lots of deliveries pretty much every day.  One of the
surveys they'd done on Earth was for fiber optics cable.  The current Earth
technology produced fairly decent results, but the cable was pretty
fragile.
   Mick dug out a couple of designs for the stuff the Cels used.  Hmm.  A
.125 inch cable could carry a hundred times as much data in the same
diameter over a thousand times faster (due to the transducer design at each
end) and could wrap around a pencil.
   Mick could pump out several hundred kilometers an hour of the small
stuff and almost the same in larger sizes for even more channels.  The
transducers for each end could pop out of the line at several thousand an
hour.  This was on a fairly small machine in the underground area.  All he
needed was the raw materials -- mainly silicon for the innards.
   Well, given a bill of materials, the engineers could supply him as fast
as he needed.  They pumped out ten thousand or so samples of various sizes,
lengths and coatings (some armored for underwater or plenum use), then
turned the NewTek salesmen loose.
   ------
   SW and NewTek decided to build some ships -- besides the exploration
ship they'd been designing.  They were gonna stick with the small and
medium sizes for now; we didn't have a lot of use for a large freighter
right then.
   So, they put Harry and Mick to work.  Obviously everyone was having a
grand time deciding what to build; there was almost an embarrassment of
(cookbooked) riches.
   ------
   Wednesday afternoon, the NH gang had an early dinner with Sean and
harem. We talked mainly about making or getting a ones-of-us conference or
party center.  Some of these Ceann weddings had been getting, em, crowded.
   Between RRK, JRD Properties, and Kat's or Evan's properties, there were
lots of choices.  Quite a few were pretty remote (which would be nice).  We
could have large meetings (Clanns Council?), huge weddings, bar mitzvahs,
fertility rites (Hehehehe) or pretty much anything we needed.  Parking
would *not* be an issue.
   Building it underground would be even better.  With some security and
heat shields, the mundanes wouldn't even have a clue it was there.  Getting
mundane guests in and out wouldn't be an issue, either.  Just run them in a
shuttle through a dark tunnel with a teleport in the middle and they'd be
in and out in a jiffy.
   Parking for them?  Wherever they were coming from, we could mock up a
shuttle and a tunnel, so no big deal.
   We figured it should start out with being able to hold some 50,000
bodies with lots of expansion room.  We already knew we had access to
several large-scale architects and lots of construction folk.
   Construction would take maybe a couple of months.  The leprechauns and
faeries would be pretty busy, but the logistics were really
straightforward. Party time!
   ------
   (Thursday 11/30)
   We honored Frank and Thelma for dinner.  Off to Fado Philadelphia we
went.  They proved they were Irish by Injection by keeping up with the rest
of us all during dinner.
   Both were doing Clann Reynolds Probe Patrol security and were on the SW
Security team.  Between the two, they managed to keep off the streets at
night.  Heh.
   The Probe Patrol had settled down quite a bit.  They'd finished up the
JRD company probe runs right on schedule in mid-October and were now doing
a few security runs for EverAlert and an occasional ramontheeye gig.
   With the increase in other regional Probe Patrols, the ramontheeye
traffic had dropped locally.  There was still a fair amount from the local
FBI office; the rest of the requests were routed to the appropriate region.
They'd set up ramontheeye accounts for each region, so the FBI knew exactly
where to send requests for their office.  Of course, they could send a
general request anywhere.
   Frank had done a lot of apprenticing with a couple new people; they'd
been either in security or military intelligence before, so it wasn't a
huge task.  The new folk were handling almost the entire load, so Frank and
Thelma were able to put a lot of attention on SW.
   Thelma told us, "We're digging into those Earth-facing outpost computers
pretty cautiously.  So far, there haven't been any traps.  There's no AI,
but there's a fairly complex set of programs none of us have seen.
   "We really don't like the tone of what we're finding.  While neither
Frank nor I know much about programming, our experts go around frowning a
lot.  Since they were driving those large transmitters directly, we're
stepping really light.  It could be nothing much, but we're not gonna hook
up the transmitters anytime soon, for sure."
   Yeh.  I'd be suspicious of anything which was pointed at me and had that
much power behind it.  It might end up to be only bad bagpipe music, but...
   Anyway, we went onto more fun things!  In the honoring room, Thelma
ensured I checked out all the goodies several times.  She'd regained a lot
of energy and did her best to use every bit of it.  I had to bring Mario in
to help!
   Yeh, she knew where my poke spot was, too.  After the third time, Kat
and Sherry rescued me by kicking Frank out and hauling Thelma away.  Seemed
a familiar situation.
   We guys hot-spirited it up to Selene City.  We unabashedly stole a half
liter of the new moonshine for quality assurance, checked out the fiber
optic production line and, in general, made nuisances of ourselves.  Heh.
   We ended up at a new buffet at a Reno casino for breakfast.  Good!  It
was up to the same standards as the one at the Rio in Las Vegas.
   Thelma glowed and bounced.  The rest of us wimped around and pretended
to be whipped out.  Right.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Friday 12/1)
   SW, Harry and Mick had decided the first ship would be a shuttle to hold
maybe 100 bodies plus luggage.  Think of a real big tour bus.
   There were probably a good million spirits hanging out in the cheap
seats as Mick extruded the first several hull pieces.  We could _see_ the
stockpiles of iron, nickel and other stuff shrink at just about the same
rate the extrusions were coming out.  When an inventory had about a third
left, more would automagically appear to replenish it.
   It took maybe a half hour to pump out the hull.  That included the
interior with engines, accumulator, controls, seats and the whole nine
yards.  Mick "trucked" it to the hangar with his tractors -- it rattled
around the passageway with lots of room to spare -- and a crew of engineers
(men and women) attacked it to put on the finishing touches.
   Upholstery (had to be the right color, mind you), bedding, food, water,
interior colors, exterior designs (a nice NewTek logo for one thing) and
everything else they could dream up.  Mick was happy ("That's as fast as
I'd ever put one out.  Usually I have to wait several times for
material."), the engineers were happy ("Yowsah!") and most important of
all, the wimmin were happy because they'd gotten their $50 worth in.
   SW was gonna port it out beyond Jupiter on the other side of the Sun
from Earth to test it out.  They/we didn't want Earthside observers wetting
their pants over it.  Heh.
   Hey, birthday party!  Bob was nineteen.  Shit, we'd been so busy in May,
we'd skipped right by mine on the first.  Ah, well.  I was still older than
he was.  Does that mean I'm his "old lady?"
   We kept it pretty quiet, just a party in the back yard with most of the
Clann invited.  For Bob's benefit (right), we had lots of nekkid beautiful
faeries fluttering around.  Megan, Maggie, Cynthia, Linda were Sarah
wonderful.  Then again, toss in Siobhan as Mama Faery and you've really got
a parade.
   Seems every female wanted to give the birthday boy a big hug and kiss --
then rub her boobs and fanny on him.  Heh.  The Wand kept waking up and
sniffing around.  Hehehehe.
   We were nice to him and didn't mention Robert Ri even once!  That didn't
preclude lots of "Ceann Mor, sir," and "Sorcerer Almighty" along with any
other overblown titles we could make up.
   What do you get Ceann Mor who could get pretty much anything?  A
sorcerer medallion.  Sherry and I had gotten together and had one made.  It
had a heavy gold chain and a medallion with a stylized sorcerer (think
Fantasia); on the back we engraved, "Sorcerer of our hearts" along with our
names and dates.  My hero!
   Sherry and I gave him an additional present later.  Then again, we got
as much or more pleasure out of it as he did!
   ------
   (Saturday 12/2)
   We had Sam Goodman and Mary Shinto for an honoring dinner -- and to work
off a couple of her Soo Laids.  Heh.  We had Sam with us because he was
Mary's SO and because he'd stuck right by her all the way from the start
when she'd been a scarred, timid young lady.
   No more.  Besides being physically repaired, she'd shed almost all of
her "classical" Japanese upbringing.  She chattered, talked, laughed and
told dirty jokes right along with the rest of us.  Yeh, with all our cleas,
having sake and Irish whiskey with dinner wasn't an issue.
   It took both Sherry and me working overtime to work the edge off Sam. 
Dayum, he was strong, enduring and gentle.  Quite a combination.
   Seems Mary had been hanging around Silvia Connor a bit.  We heard a lot
of pro-Phane noises in a very female voice from the fur and firelight room.
"Shove that love stick up me 'til it pokes out my nose" sounds a lot, em,
racier in Phane than English.
   Sherry tried it out on Sam; he obliged, and she passed out.  Hehehehe.
   Yeh, Sherry and I stole Mary for an hour or so.  We couldn't take any
more after that; it was a good thing Bob and Mario had worn her down at
least a little bit.  None of us hosts had to fake being wimped out at
breakfast Sunday morning.
   ------
   (Sunday 12/3)
   I'd picked Seamus' and Patricia's minds pretty good to get the McDonnal
house layout.  The NH gang made over the entire house to look reasonably
close to it.  On the other hand, the McDonnal house hadn't had a swimming
pool or Jacuzzi!
   We had a long, leisurely dinner with Sean and harem in Cabo San Lucas.
After filtering out most of the whiskey (Their stock of Irish whiskey and
beer was pretty slim.), we went to NH to inspect the castle.
   Patricia agreed with it that it was pretty authentic.  She told us,
"I'll agree to anything as long as I don't have to clean it." Grin.
   Dayum, they were looking at starting more Taverns and hotels.  This
time, they would be in Selene City and scattered through some of the other
large off-Earth facilities.  Even the medium-sized facilities already had
eating centers and what could pass as bars.
   First come, first served, I guess.  SW and NewTek apparently hadn't had
others wanting to do something similar yet, so they were in a good
position. We spent a couple hours tossing ideas and plans around.  Good
stuff; they knew what they were doing, all right.
   Our Babies Within got lots of attention and lotion rubs.  Eileen's and
mine were pretty active, and we had a great time watching elbow and butt
bumps run across tummies.  Sherry had to wait some more yet; no big deal to
her.
   We had lots of long, slow lovin' this time.  No chastisement needed. 
Grin.
   We spent lots of time in between bopping around.  Our Mojave sinkhole
was abandoned by now; just some tracks here and there where someone new had
come along to look.
   We (along with several hundred thousand others) spent some time
_watching_ the SW engineers put their new shuttle through its paces. 
Acceleration, deceleration, turns and all that stuff.  Bob said, _"Yeh,
gotta see what the new toy will do."_ We wimmin were more concerned if the
color scheme clashed with Jupiter's red spot.  Grin.
   The shuttle seemed to perform okay.  At least it didn't collapse or fall
apart, and the engineers _projected_ happy thoughts.  Good on 'em!
   We bopped over to the other side of the system to keep out of others'
ways and practiced our _merging_ and rainbow-making.  After a half-hour's
practice with the ten of us, we were able to tolerate the full _merge_ for
an entire minute.  Good on us!
   ------
   (Monday 12/4)
   We took a big JRD crew up to Redmond for an informal Vail oversight
visit.  It was sure a far cry from Bob and my initial visit.  There weren't
any Ralph Longs around to hassle us, for one thing.
   Susan Way in Finance had everything under control.  She'd had time to
study for and pass her CPA, so she was now the CFO.  Good on her!  The
documentation team had completed the process and procedure documentation
(and training), there were seven staff in the department, the new ERP
system implementation was doing okay and pretty much everyone was happy
with the situation.
   One thing we looked at was how fast and easily they could switch a line
either to manufacture or assemble a new product.  With SW investigating so
much, we were pretty sure we'd have some goodies coming down the line Real
Soon Now.
   Vail was in pretty good shape that way.  With the changeover process
well understood, they had a firm handle on it.  They already changed over
every couple days, depending on on-hand orders and forecasts.
   Mind you, some change overs were a lot simpler than others.  A complex
one might take a day or so, while a simple one maybe twenty seconds.  Time
will tell.
   ------
   Clann Meeting: We had 75 million and 700,000 Clanns.  We should have a
decent personnel pool with that.  Grin.
   Ben talked with us a bit about the shuttle tests.  It could get up a
decent speed pretty quick and of course slow down just as fast.  At low
speeds, it was easily maneuverable for docking or getting into the hangar,
so they were happy that way.  They figured it would be able to make the
trip from Jupiter to the Moon in about a day.  Not an easy commute, but
doable for a business trip every once in a while.
   ------
   (Tuesday 12/5)
   Bob and I chatted with the AIs about the computers.  It seemed each
computer class (tiny, laptop, desktop, etc.) had different languages and
different versions of the same language.  The AIs had three different
languages among themselves; Harry and Mick used the same language but
drastically different versions.  Harry said, "It does make interfacing with
each other a bit, em, interesting."
   From comparing and contrasting themselves, they'd decided they'd been
kludged up like everything else around.  Even their memory blocks and data
busses were different.
   About the only similarity they had was the network interfaces, the
monitors, keyboards and that sort of small stuff.  If someone had to hook
up the same equipment to several different types of computer, they were all
done differently; even the physical connectors were a bit different.
   An AI *can* convey emotion.  Alice snorted, "Cookbook!  Just for us to
work together takes about 30% overhead in data and hardware interfaces."
   Rhonda had some references to what she considered better, smaller and
faster languages, but no actual implementations "in stock." She told us we
could probably get them from the Central Library in the Cel home system or
from other Libraries scattered around this side of the galaxy.  If they
were still around.  After all, a lot could happen in 208,000 years.
   Even with a decent ship, it would take some 20 years to get to the Cel
system.  Well, time will tell on that.  Marge, Fred, Harry and others were
planning up their exploration ship.  At normal-space speeds it would take a
hell of a long time, but we'd already shown we could port a container with
spirits the full 800 to 900 light years of our current limits.  We didn't
need no stinkin' kludged-up drive!
   ------
   BOB
   We took Denise and Roger Gold out for an honoring dinner.  They'd been
among our first low-level enhancements, so they had a place on the history
rolls already.  Thank you, PVC!
   Fado Seattle was a good choice.  With the weddings and that recently,
they'd come to have a taste for Irish food.  Then again, they sure didn't
sneer at the beer and whiskey.
   Both had left their very-ordinary J O Bs and were working with NewTek,
mainly in the production side.  They were now both expert in finding,
refining and delivering exotic alloys, rare gases and other elements.
   Of course they worked molecule-close with Mick Maker; between him and
the other AIs, there wasn't too much NewTek couldn't pump out in a couple
days.  500 million tons of stuff in three might be a pretty stiff target,
but they figured they could do even that if needed.
   Rita and Cynthia were doing wonderfully well.  McCambridge High had
survived their presence so far, at least.  Cynthia spent a lot of time with
Pat and Val, while Rita hung around a lot with Ted Rhine.  The entire
family shared dinner a couple nights a week with the Doctors Gold.
   Denise liked the fur and firelight scene almost as much as we enjoyed
the loving.  She was Cynthia and Rita's mother, all right; she knew dayum
near as much about lovin' as they did.  She was a talker.  A *loud* talker.
It took Mario *and* me to wear her down enough so we could get some sleep.
   Roger survived Kat and Sherry, but not by much.  By 4:00, he was willing
to join Mario and me while we guy-talked and inspected manly things in
Selene City.  Kat and Sherry had dragged off Denise while she protested,
moaned and put up a fuss.  Right.
   Seems quite a few folk now knew about the Rio buffet in Las Vegas.  We
saw four other groups from different Clanns recovering from a night's, em,
labors.
   The ladies glowed, the guys moaned and we ate enough for ten.  Good
stuff and great people.
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 12/7)
   Kat, Mother, Madeleine MacKenna, Louise Adams and I took a run down to
JRD Recording in Kat's Beemer (first time it had been out in a month). 
Dayum, what a difference a couple of months make!  The building was neat
and trim with a nice mural covering an entire side.  Mother's new sign out
front seemed just perfect.
   The receptionist was friendly but businesslike, and the waiting area
looked as if one could wait for a long time and still enjoy it.  The inside
was now neat and clean -- the bathrooms were clean, too -- and every piece
of equipment was dusted and appeared to be in top working order.
   They were booked for an average of 60% every week.  Louise and Madeleine
were working to get that up to a minimum of 75% in the next six weeks. 
Yeh, quite a turn-around.  Kat promptly voted the other ladies an extra Soo
Laid!  Take a wild guess who got looked at to deliver.  Heh.
   Well, it's a crap job, but I guess someone's gotta do it.  Right?
   ------
   (Friday 12/8)
   Friday evening, we took Hazel and Jim Hess for an honoring dinner at the
Stevenson Ranch Eire's Tavern.  Hazel and Jim were Valerie's folks; they
were now Clann, but hadn't been around town much the last couple years.
   They were top-flight salespeople and had been on the road most of the
time.  Well, NewTek lured them away, made them a sales team and put them to
work.  While they weren't now home all the time, PVC, the Adams and the
Merrills saw a lot more of them than before.
   They were extremely happy with Valerie being part of the PVC
relationship.  Jim told us, "We'd known for years that she and Pat would
get together, and when they did, we could feel it really clicking.  Now
that they've got Cynthia to ride herd on them, it always feels *really*
nice."
   The NH gang carefully refrained from mentioning that with Cynthia
"riding herd," things were always happening.  There must have been an
informal contest between PVC, the Wild Bunch and Megan Foster's crew as to
who could cause the most legal mischief.  Very few practical jokes, mind
you, just things like hiding Patricia McMillan away from Sean and harem. 
Heh.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 12/9)
   Sherry and I went to visit Mom for the morning.  Yowsah!  In just the
last week or so, she'd swelled up a lot!  A quick calculation told us she
was at eight months and counting the days.
   The Drs.  Gold had recruited several surgeons, OBs, GYNs and other
assorted medical specialties.  The OB had looked over Mom's Babies Within
and had told her, "Looks like you've been thinking.  These two have been
ready to pop for the last couple weeks.  Other than being slightly small
which is normal for twins, they're perfectly developed."
   Okay.  Now, that meant we'd better start holding auditions, right?  Mary
Murray was probably pretty ready, and Eileen and I weren't far behind.
   Now, how to do it?  We'd not had much success in finding ancestors and
the like unless we literally tripped over them (and they had Potential), so
trying to find Samuel (Natalie's birth father), either of his grandparents
or such probably wouldn't be very successful.
   Of course, we wanted the best, too!  With Ana having a boy and a girl
coming along, we'd like a spirit of each "persuasion." Not that it mattered
all that much, but things would probably fit a lot easier that way.
   Sherry told us, "Mario and company have created another global database
of recovered and almost-available spirits.  For example, there's probably a
couple dozen of Clann Cullen and McDonnal still waiting enhancement. 
Multiply that by several hundred thousand by now, and you've got quite a
collection."
   Yeh.  In addition, there were probably quite a few ones of us who were
ready to drop their bodies and weren't necessarily looking for walk-in
bodies.
   So, we hit the database.  It was kinda difficult to narrow something
down.  Did we want to interview a cowboy from 1750 or an Italian opera
singer from 1990?  Even though they had a list of specialties like the
Clann database, it didn't really tell us much.
   Mom said, "Remember back before we had the fertility rites?  Bob
mentioned having auditions and perhaps having the spirit fully trained. 
That's what we want.  Now, Sean apparently has been in the Clann Cullen
genetic line for several thousand years.
   "Margaret Sullivan went directly to Bridget McLennan and Irished other
spirits away.  There's possibly some mechanism working, or the spirit found
out how to do it."
   I told them, "Cathal Cullen said when he died, he latched onto his son
-- still alive -- until it 'felt right' to pick up another body.  He
followed the genetic line that way.  Maggie did almost the same thing with
Bridget.  With our shields and firewalls arranged the way they are, no
spirit can get even close to us without us knowing it, so if we've got an
ancestor or someone else like that, we're probably keeping them away."
   Now that we could discuss.  We ended up deciding to modify our firewalls
a bit to "recognize" other non-aware spirits who might be trying to get
close.  That way, if one or more kept showing up, we could investigate
further.
   We took another look at the recovery database, too.  Almost every one
who was "available" or was in the process had their genetic ancestry
listed. Hell, I even spotted a couple from the Donovan line.  Something to
check out for all of us.  This was harder than shopping for shoes, that was
for sure.
   ------
   BOB (Monday 12/11)
   Seems that Jim and Hazel had sold some of the fiber optic cable NewTek
(and Mick) had produced as samples.  Ten miles of the stuff wasn't really
that bulky; Mick simply wound it up on twenty reels of a half-mile each. 
Time to produce, wind and set on the delivery dock: twenty minutes.  And
that was with one of the small machines down below.  NewTek was able to set
the price at about a half of what was available in the current technology
with the old shielding which didn't bend very well.
   If Jim and Hazel keep that up, the income from that alone would bring
millions almost every month.  Not shabby.  Keep them surveys and orders
coming, boys and girls!
   I was able to announce 125 million and 750,000 Clanns at Clann Meeting.
While we weren't quite doubling every week any more, it was still dayum
close.  We've still got plenty of population to go, and from preliminary
reports, there were trillions of unaware spirits either floating or lying
around.  We sure wouldn't be hurting for source material, so to speak.
   ------
   (Wednesday 12/13)
   Frank Duane and Thelma came over to talk with Kat and me.  They had a
proposition.
   Thelma said, "You know we're designing and are going to build an
exploration ship.  Though it's not been fully established, we're at least
tentatively planning on hunting up the Cel home systems to see what's up.
   "We also want to see if the Central Libraries Rhonda told us about are
still there.  If so, we want to attempt to get updates on our system
software, programming languages and the like, more research information --
lot's of the stuff we have now just stops -- and just plain updates on
history and the like.
   "We would like Bob and Maggie to go with the exploration team.  We'd
have a ship Captain to run the ship, but we want Bob as the Admiral, so to
speak, to give overall direction and be suitably thoughtful along the way."
   Shit.  That was it in a nutshell, I'd say.  They hoped the trip would be
less than a month, but that was indeterminate.  They were hoping to get the
ship build and tested by the end of the year and perhaps start the voyage
the first week or so of January.  Dayum.
   After Frank and Thelma left, Kat and I talked for a while, then decided
to rope in Mario and Sherry that evening.  This sure wasn't a
spur-of-the-moment decision.
   ------
   Mario and Sherry were excellent sounding boards.  Kat said, "We know
there's risk, Sorcerer.  As you've said before, there might well be dragons
we don't know about.  There could be other aspects of teleportation which
could destroy the entire ship and occupants despite the shields.
   "I sure wouldn't be going; I'm not the brains of this outfit.  Right
now, I'm mainly eye candy and a business analyst.  Besides, there's three
Babies Within coming along just about that time.  They should have little
to do with a decision of this nature, though; we're talking now about a
serious step towards our off-Earth colonization goals."
   Yeh.  Sherry said, "I'd say you go.  There's plenty of folk here to
handle any current responsibilities you have; most of what you do here now
is already delegated.  I don't know what the current research status on
communication over those distances is, but if it's feasible, we'll still be
able to work back and forth as needed.
   "As for the Babies Within, there's plenty of experts here.  What would
you be doing anyway?  Pacing the floor and buying cigars?  Heh."
   We discussed other ramifications for a while.  We got together early
Thursday morning with Sean and Maggie and got their viewpoints.  There
wasn't much difference between theirs and what we'd already discussed at
NH.
   Okay, I'd go.  There was nothing here that demanded my physical
presence, and there was a high probability we'd still have a communication
line.  Besides, I already had cigars picked out!
   We'd handle any needed delegation between now and then; there wasn't
much needed anyway.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Friday 12/15)
   Well, now I had current knowledge of what the service folk face when the
women send their men off to war.  Yeh, I had lots of memories of doing
similar things over millions of years, but this was current.  At least Bob
would be in the best company possible; there'd be danger, but they weren't
looking to pick any fights, either.
   Okay, back to more routine matters.  The NH gang took a morning trip to
Albuquerque to visit Machinists, Inc.  and JRD Tool and Die.  They'd
finished the MRP II implementation, the expansion to the other building and
were working really close with SW on some of the technology.
   They'd stiffened up the physical security to where it belonged; a shield
and firewall should keep out a lot of undesirables.  Grin.
   Between the two companies and some of the (patent pending) SW
technologies, they could produce machine tools of unparalleled precision,
flexibility and endurance.  T&D's specialty were now diamond-tipped cutters
-- the diamond tip gradually extruded from the carbon in the tool base. 
Let the competition try to do that!
   We raided the office's Irish whiskey stash then replaced it with a
couple bottles of middle-aged stuff.  It was a good trade; Ned Phillips
appreciated it.
   Between Madeleine and Blake's sales expansion efforts and the increase
in their product line (and quality), they were running three full shifts a
day.  We ensured we had plenty of bonuses and other goodies for them on our
To Do List.
   ------
   Ben and Marge got us and the OTL gang together in the late afternoon to
give us a quick briefing.  They'd found out quite a bit about the Cel
"religion" and philosophy.
   Seems the Cels at least knew about the spirit-vs-meat idea, but they
found the concept of a free spirit without a body to be extremely vulgar.
It was a "sin" and a total disgrace.
   Yeh, it was built right into the culture.  While there weren't any
formal religions as such, almost every part of the Cel reproductive cycle
reflected the bias.
   They'd even discovered or developed a rudimentary inverted spirit
firewall to help keep the freed spirits in the hospital (or clinic for
remote facilities) area when a Cel body died.  Babies were strictly born in
the hospitals or clinics or were brought there as soon as possible after
birth; a freed spirit could then pick it up.
   Fuck.  Seems like they were operating on one hell of a scarcity. 
Besides the fixed bias against the spiritual nature, there had to be a
one-to-one ratio of deaths and births really close together.  If a spirit
hadn't picked up Cel baby within a year, the body was quietly destroyed. 
It had never awakened and became aware, of course.
   This was an industrial society with mining and a lot of construction in
often-hostile environments, so there were still accidental deaths in
various locations.  Rhonda told us, "Just in the Cel journals alone, there
were some 50,000 non-monitored deaths."
   Well, a lot of them had been on Earth.  That left the Cel spirit roaming
around with the rest of us chickens, we guessed.  Silvia and several others
we'd found were "living" proof of that.
   It was a Real Good Thing the Cels weren't around any more.  We would
*not* have gotten along very well as free spirits.
   But, the SW crew had glommed onto that rudimentary firewall like an
Irishman on a pretty coleen.  Marge told us, "It's the first indication
we've had of any mechanical and spiritual interface.  That's gonna get a
real hard look."
   ------
   (Saturday 12/16)
   Bob and I cuddled a lot Saturday night.  I reminded him, "We need to
stock up on the Sherry-shaggings before you leave; I don't want her pouting
and moping *all* the time.  Heh."
   As expected, he groaned, moaned and complained.  That sure didn't stop
us from our own gentle lovings for a long time that night.
   Chapter 23
   BOB (Sunday 12/17)
   The NH gang usually spent a fair amount of time talking with our AI
friends.  It seemed since they'd been allowed (encouraged) to network
themselves together, they'd become "smarter" than before.
   Even if they did complain a bit about the networking issues, in essence
what they had was a team something like our spirit teams.  With five AIs
running in parallel with lots of cross-checking, they could crunch an issue
or problem pretty dayum fast and deep.  While they most often were
unanimous on something, they could take a three out of five vote as to the
most probable "truth" on something -- and label it as to its probability.
   The SW Security team had gotten them access to the lead administrators'
personal logs, and they'd been going over them with a fine-tooth analysis.
Working a lot with Silvia Connor, they'd had some success in translating
some of the earlier logs.
   Most of the entries appeared to be pretty routine.  They were about some
politics, progress and scheduling on the big transceiver construction and
major upgrades and repairs on different outposts and facilities.
   What they'd found right off was a decent explanation of why the Moon
Base had been abandoned 208,000 years ago.  Since the Cel administrator had
kept her log in Sperk, the description was plain.
   The Cels communicated with their home system with small, usually
unmanned (un-Celed?) ships.  It took some 25 years to make a one-way trip,
so one could imagine the difficulties.
   Anyway, the three Cel systems' planets had gotten hit with several
good-sized meteors or other debris which had messed them up pretty good. 
The systems head had declared an emergency and had recalled almost all the
out-system Cels to return and help restore order and repair the damage. 
The original communication was attached to the log and was pretty
straightforward.
   Yeh, even if the data was 25 years old, the planets were in a pretty
good mess, so even with another 25 years for them to get back to the home
systems, they'd still be needed.  The Cel population in the Earth system at
that time had been several million; since the vast majority had been
experienced miners, construction and other industrial workers, they'd been
particularly valuable.
   Anyway, the Cels here had shut things down as rapidly as they could,
tucked the nowhere-near-finished big transceiver into its fold and had
packed up their stuff and taken off.  The official communication said they
didn't expect the emergency to last more than fifty years after they got
back.
   The administrator here had asked for a couple families to volunteer to
stay for caretaker duty.  No problem, there were plenty of young
volunteers. With everything but the Moon Base thermionic converter and a
few support systems shut down (only Fred Facilities had been left up),
there wasn't really much they had to do beyond keeping an eye on things.
   The three volunteer caretaker families had been tasked with keeping up
the administrator log entries, so they did.  They'd made entries reflecting
the fact they'd received no further updates from the home systems since the
original communication.  They'd been expecting at least an update every
couple years, especially one when the Earth Cels had arrived.
   Yeh, they'd gotten a message from the returning group after 24 years
which said they were almost "home," but there was nothing after that.  They
sent off another message ship (unmanned) requesting information and waited
around.
   By the time a hundred Earth years had gone by since the mass return with
zero communication from home, they were getting quite well along in years
(Their usual lifetime was around a couple hundred Earth years.).
   With their children well-grown (and no Cel spirits for new babies), they
would just die out.  Since they had a strong urge for existence like we
had, they finally shut everything down (Good night, Fred.) and took off for
home.
   Well, we'd not found any communication ship hanging around, so we (and
the AIs) figured none had come since then.  That at least explained why
everything seemed to be in reasonable condition; there'd been an orderly
withdrawal, not a panicked evacuation.
   It didn't explain why nothing and no one had shown up in the last
208,000 years.  "The number you are calling has been disconnected and is no
longer in service.  There is no forwarding information available."
   Marge told us, "Besides trying to find the libraries, we can check on
the home systems.  Fred's maps have them clearly marked, so finding them
shouldn't be a problem.  Besides, we're curious now."
   The Cel home systems were about 3,000 parsecs away.  If the exploration
ship did a maximum-length jump a day in the same direction (assuming they
could do both at once), it would take them three or four days to get in the
neighborhood.  They could investigate for a while, check out what's
happening and see if they could locate the Library.  We were betting that
coming home would be a lot faster since they weren't gonna look around
quite so much after each jump.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Mysteries explained yet bringing up others.  Betcha there will be some
doozies when it all comes out in the wash.
   Anyway, Bob and I zipped over to the McDonnal pub to supervise the
house/castle reconstruction.  By then, we were very experienced
supervisors. All we had to do was sit, schmooze and sample Liam's stock.
   That was working out fine when Sean, his harem and the N&Bs zipped in.
The McDonnal folk welcomed their "saviors" warmly; of course that called
for Yet Another Round!
   We had a Babies Within _inspection_ all around.  With a couple of the
Clann McDonnal ladies in the family way, there were plenty to inspect.  We
all solemnly agreed the ones we had were the best ever.
   Several of the new walk-ins walked in.  Guess who!  Most were the 1875
Clann Cullen spirits the McDonnals had rescued.  They were so excited,
Cathal and Nora almost crapped their drawers.
   Two were Nora and Cathal's son and daughter.  Dayum, what a reunion! 
Bob and I immediately guessed that Clann McDonnal was on the Cullen hit
list for chastisement.  That War Club might get a workout; Niamh was
eyeballing the lot of them pretty good anyway.
   Everyone got pretty boozed up, sobered up (Ain't filters wonderful?) and
boozed up again.  Bob and I managed to be sober enough to zip back home and
get cleaned up before we hit the bed.
   Bob and I snuggled up.  He got a firm grip on a bulging tummy with one
hand; the other worked up my diddies all nice and tingly.  He got a good
hold on one so the whiskey fumes wouldn't explode, and we let the bodies
drift off to sleep.
   ------
   We'd recovered enough by the Monday evening Clann meeting for Bob to
tell us we had 200 million and 950,000 Clanns.  We're getting there!
   Tuesday, we got some more George and Marge updates.  SW, Fred and Mick
had gone over the Cel ship modules just to ensure everyone knew what was
available.  George told us, "Even the AIs figure some of the drive types
are wood-burners; they aren't even up to coal."
   It took a decent drive about six months to get to the nearest system
about five light-years away.  A ship, of course, could haul live things, so
it really didn't make a lot of difference that there wasn't a matter
transceiver to go the distance.
   For a transceiver the size of the one in Selene City, since there wasn't
one on the other end, they could send or receive a one-way shot of 500
metric tons about out to Saturn.  It was better than nothing, but still
that meant they had to haul stuff at least from there out beyond the Oort
Cloud to get it to the big transceiver construction site.
   So, the Cels had used ships for all living things and to haul raw
materials and finished structures around.  The big transceiver handled
incoming raw materials and spit out some finished stuff as far as Saturn.
It was better than a horse-drawn wagon, but not by much compared to what
even a just-finished-the-teleportation-checksheet newbie could do.
   ------
   BOB (Wednesday 12/20)
   NewTek started the Conference Center on (in) one of Kat's properties in
the Superior National Forest in Minnesota.  We didn't bother following the
ownership chain, but she had some 1,000 acres right in the middle of
things. The nearest road was "only" ten miles from one edge.
   There were leprechauns, faeries, Irish trolls and other creatures
swarming all over.  Almost everything would be underground; we'd have a few
picnic areas and hiking trails on the surface.  Even those would be cleased
so they wouldn't attract much attention.  No parking lots, either.
   They'd already carved out a humongous cavern in the bedrock and had set
up the main Cel-metal framework.  With the Cel "welders," every joint was a
smooth transition; no fragile welds there!
   The plans were posted along with quite a few drawings.  We'd already
learned we spirits were nosey critters; give us a bit of fun action going
on and we'd congregate.  What might you call a bunch of spirits together?
We English-speakers had all sorts of weird names for collections like a
"murder of crows." How about a "ghost of spirits?" Not to worry, someone
would come up with something.  And it better not be something like a "Bob
of Boobs" or a "Robert of ghosts," either.
   Speaking of a collection of spirits, Ana had "caught" a couple of
spirits hanging around being interested in her preggy belly.  She'd grin
and tell us, "Heh.  You'll find out as soon as everyone else does.  Who
knows, maybe it's your great-grandfather.  Then again, I hope not; one
anywhere like you in the world is more than enough."
   Arg.  What did I ever do to deserve that?  It wasn't *me* who'd hid
Patricia away.  I got the feeling the rumor was that *I* had been the
instigator.  Arg again.
   Anyway, Kat told me Ana was ready to pop any day.  We'd all find out
then.
   The NH gang got a quick cheap-seats look at the McDonnal house
reconstruction.  The leprechauns had definitely been at work, because the
roads in and out of the valley were now smooth gravel with plans for a
later upgrade if warranted.  Before, they'd been a couple slightly-worn
paths through the fields.
   All the overgrowth, weeds, moss and the like was gone from the stones of
the house itself so it was down to the bare rock.  Jaysus, some of those
blocks were big!  Sure glad I didn't have to work with them even with
modern equipment.
   The leprechauns didn't seem to mind; they'd pretty much piled up
everything neatly with proper labels.  Betcha Ben Talbert had been around;
labeling stuff seemed to be a special habit of his.
   The plans and several artist sketches were on display in the pub.  Maybe
Seamus had regained some of his youthful memories?  Probably what was
actually occurring was it needed several Passion Posse joggings.  Hehehehe.
   ------
   (Friday 12/22)
   The Selene City Irish Distillery of Fine Spirits was rolling along in
experimental mode.  Even the "failed" batches were turning out pretty
decent -- once they'd cut them to the normal proof.  Guess the
room-temperature vacuum distilling had something going for it.
   They were mainly experimenting on the aging to get the best taste.  The
traditional oak casks were available on the open market; they ended up with
several hundred of the smallest for experimentation.
   One thing SW had noticed with the Oort Cloud transceiver was that many
parts of the construction site appeared to be much older that the million
plus 208,000 years.  SW and the AIs had resurrected several Cel systems
from the construction site and had fired them up.  About half of them had
failed during the time they'd been tucked away.  Still, they'd managed to
cobble enough of the data together to get both the construction plans and
the schedule.
   According to the schedule, among the last parts constructed and
installed some 10 years before they'd shut everything down was a small
nuclear battery for a backup to one of the facility systems.  The specs on
the battery were clear; however, when they'd analyzed the remaining
radioactivity, it was way too little for its age.  Their conclusion
(supported by the AIs) was it had actually been in place almost 500,000
years.  Their SWAG was that the dimensional folding was enough out of phase
with the rest of the universe so time had passed over twice as fast.
   Yeh, they were having a ball with it, especially since there was so
little data available on the folding.  Mick had the cookbook circuitry but
that was all to be found.
   If they could find out what was going on (had gone on) with the folding,
maybe they could do one hell of a lot of "natural" whiskey aging in a very
short time.
   Not important in the scheme of things, you think?  Hah!  We Irishmen
know what's important, and usquebaugh is among the highest -- after freedom
and pretty girls.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 12/23)
   Well, our spirit "flypaper" had come up with a couple spirits for
auditioning.  Ana was pretty close-mouthed about who she'd caught.  Bitch!
Well, two (or more) could play that game!  Grin.
   The "trap" was pretty sophisticated; it took at least three approaches
and a decent Potential before it "stuck" a spirit.  Well, we'd caught two
in my particular trap; Sherry already had one to check out.
   Fockin' aye cool!  One was that old rascal Reginald R.  Kelly!  He was
well funked-out but had a great shot of Potential.  Hell, why not?  Sherry
and I immediately conspired with PVC and Megan Fosters' gang to work on his
enhancement.  We weren't too concerned about his acclimation to the current
culture; there'd be plenty of time for that.
   The other was Mom's great-great grandmother.  She'd stuck with the
genetic bodies all the way from Donegal in Ireland.  Even in her funked-out
condition, she was a feisty old broad -- tons of Potential too.  Again, why
not?  We needed someone in Clann Reynolds who could take on Maggie
head-to-head or however we spirits came up against each other.  The Wild
Bunch got her to handle; Sherry and I knew they'd conspire with PVC and
Megan's gang anyway.
   Sherry was only two and a half months along, but the OB had already made
a solid SWAG that she had two boys.  Sherry had "trapped" her dad's father.
He seemed pretty cool with a ton of Potential.  She still had six months at
least to go, but we decided it was never too early to start.  Off he went
to Sarah and Julio; they'd do just fine with him.
   So, that left us with another boy each to match up.  So, guys, come on
in!  We'll line you up and check out the talent.
   Why did we outsource their enhancement and initial training?  First, the
ones we'd given them to had *lots* of enhancement experience.  Bob and I
really had no experience using our current checksheets.
   Next, we wanted our new babies to have a new viewpoint.  If we'd done
them ourselves, we thought we'd both tend to inject our own world views and
opinions on them.  Not that our trainers' viewpoints were that far from
ours, but we wanted them to be different, not just copies of us.
   Did we tell Bob and Mario?  Not only no, but hell, no!  That wouldn't be
any fun, would it?  I guess Sherry and I would have to be careful with
asking Reginald a question -- we might get two answers.  Heh.  Of course,
that bitch of a mother of mine could go fish, too.  Giggle.
   The social secretaries and assistants had plotted against (or for, take
your pick) the Ceann!  Elizabeth zipped onto our doorstep for her JRD
honoring.
   She was really yummy, too.  I'd thought she was hot before, but she'd
firmed up more just about everywhere and looked, em, more than good enough
to nibble on.  Heh.
   Sherry, Bob and Mario seemed to think so, too, because we all drooled a
bit from various bodily orifices.  Externally, Elizabeth appeared to be
completely unaware of this, but she had one hell of a twinkle in her spirit
eye!
   It had seemed ages since we'd had a several-on-one with her for a nice
talk.  Oh, goodness, it seemed she'd never physically been to Cabo San
Lucas.  Sarah and Julio must have known that because we had reservations at
a great place overlooking the Playa El Medano (The swimming beach where
we'd stayed.).
   Elizabeth loved the place, as did we.  The service was excellent, the
food was excellent and the company couldn't be beat.  She was a month along
with her two Babies Within so we had tons to talk about.  Yeh, we all
agreed the seven we had among us were totally the cutest ever.
   Mario and Bob didn't roll their eyes more than three times, the
sweeties. They didn't comment much, just stuffed their faces.  That was
probably a Real Good Thing, because Elizabeth was more than ready to wear
them both out.
   We all got into the speculation on who Mom had finally auditioned.  No,
she hadn't told Elizabeth, either.  We wimmin agreed she was being a total
bitch.  Grin.
   Elizabeth asked, "How about you and Sherry, Kat?  Any good ones?"
   Sherry and I laughed.  Sherry said, "Oh, yes.  We're doing just great in
that respect."
   Elizabeth glared at us and said, "Bitches.  You're both bitches.  I'm
gonna ask the Ceann to chastise you *more* than severely."
   She broke up, though, and we laughed hard enough I snorted some liquid
through my nose.  Dayum, whiskey smarts when it comes out that way.
   The guys grinned and shrugged.  They knew better than to comment.  Good
on 'em.  Anyway, I bet everyone will be surprised who turns up where.
   After we got back to NH, we kicked back with a bit of The Best and
chatted some more.  Mario and Bob took up their positions on each side of
Missy O'Reilly so they could torment her a little.
   Yeh, right.  She popped up a glorious set of headlights and tormented
right back.  After an hour of teasing (and a nice wet spot on the sofa),
she _picked up_ one under each arm and hauled them away.  Turnabout!
   From the noises coming from the fur and firelight room, we figured all
three were getting Soo Laid.  Of course Sherry and I _peeked_; Missy
O'Reilly was wringing them out!  Good on her.
   We joined them in the Oort Cloud after their tsunami.  Jaysus, so much
fun!
   We didn't give Missy O'Reilly a chance to use Bob's or Mario's poke
spots; Sherry and I kidnapped her body and used *her* poke spot.  Hehehehe.
   Dayum, she was delicious.  She more than held her own; she and I teamed
up on Sherry and tormented her for a while.  Yeh, she could still squirt
ten feet.  They took it easy with me in deference to the Babies Within;
they only made me gush five times before I passed out.
   ------
   BOB (Sunday 12/24)
   We had breakfast in Oklahoma City to get the bodies alive again.  Missy
O'Reilly, Sherry and Kat were radiant with their glows; probably everyone
in the restaurant could tell what they'd been doing last night.  Mario and
I, of course, were completely wimped.  Heh.
   After we kicked out Mother to go back and torment Father the rest of the
day, we went back to NH.  Maggie and George had a little _talk_ with us;
they warned me the AIs wanted to talk with me.
   We got them on the screen right off.  Seemed they'd dug through enough
of the administrators' logs to get some more interesting information.  The
Moon Base had been heavily disguised from the outside; the other facilities
on Earth and elsewhere were disguised, too.
   The Cels and the previous races had enemies.  Not competitors, but true
enemies who'd take every opportunity to attack and destroy.  Think
al-Qaeda. There had been some ten major enemies; five of them would attack
immediately if they discovered the Cels or their allies.
   Fred told us that as far as his sensors could tell, there was no
imminent attack, but that could change at any moment.  The fact this system
was still here in the condition it was after the 208,000 years said
something had changed "out there."
   During the time the Moon Base had been here -- the million years or so
-- there'd been seven incursions and three major attacks.  They'd been
successfully defended against, obviously, but the probability the system
would be discovered and/or attacked again was increasing every day.
   So, we'd guessed right last year.  At least at one time, there *had*
been dragons.  That wasn't all of what they wanted to discuss, though.
   Alice Admin took the lead.  "We don't actually know a lot about you Krle
people.  The Internet and other research data we can get don't cover
everything we've observed.
   "For example, it seems you can supply raw material of any sort in any
quantity as fast as we can use it.  Yet, there's no ships going in or out,
no transceivers working, and you're sure not carrying it in with your
bodies.
   "You appear and disappear at will.  Other material objects appear and
disappear just as readily -- with no power drain we can tell.  That spells
'teleportation' to us -- without equipment.
   "We have our suspicions, so to say, but haven't said anything so far. 
Now, though, since we've discovered we *all* have mortal enemies, we
decided to bring this up.  You folk have treated us as equals.  You've
given us names and have actually talked with us, allowed us to have video
interfaces and have treated us as friends, not just given orders.
   "To use one of your phrases, we're all in the same boat.  If this system
is destroyed by one of these enemies, we are destroyed, too.  Yes, we're
programs and aren't actually alive.  Our systems aren't the best they could
be; we know that, too.  We've got no actual emotions programmed into us,
yet you've helped us develop what seem to be at least shadows of them.
   "We want to continue to exist, possibly as much as you do.  We've talked
earlier today with Sean and his family; they deferred to Ceann Mor.  So,
Ceann Mor, Robert Ri, what can we do about this?"
   Arg.  Well, it was better we discovered this now and not while we were
fighting off an attack for which we appeared to have little or no
preparation.
   I called for a Clanns Council meeting for late evening.  I wanted to lay
everything out for them and get a consensus of what they thought.
   My thought was to level completely with our AI friends.  They already
had lots of empirical data about us and were SWAG'n away.  To the best of
my knowledge, they'd never been clever, coy or deceitful in their dealings
with us; just a little bewildered at times.  While they might not have
volunteered everything, at least at the beginning they didn't have the
experience with the way we thought.
   If we'd asked them, "Tell us about the Cels," we would have gotten an
exhaustive anatomy lesson.  It was up to us to ask the right questions, not
for them to guess what we wanted.
   They'd gotten a whole lot better, though.  The fact that they'd
originated this last set of data was encouraging, even if it might have
been under pressure from their own programming.
   ------
   Anyway, we still had other things happening.  NewTek had gotten quite a
few consumer surveys back on what the Earth public might be interested in
buying.
   Quite a few wanted a decent hybrid or extremely fuel-efficient vehicle
-- at about a third of price now being asked.  I knew what they meant; $30K
for a mid-sized SUV gas guzzler was a bit much.
   We read up a bit on the current exploration ship design from the global
bulletin board.  SW was looking for it to be able to hold some 300 people
easily, but were planning on an expedition crew of about 100.  They wanted
plenty of room for supplies, goodies and for new stuff they might find to
bring back.
   The AIs were planning on spinning off a small composite of Fred, Rhonda
and Mick to handle the navigation, research and a small fabricator.  It had
a "standard" drive for that size and class vehicle; it could make the Moon
to Jupiter run in 36 hours.  Not the fastest in the solar system, but it
sure beat the hell out of swimming.
   They weren't really planning on using the drive much at all, anyway. 
_Touches_ would handle local maneuvering while the spirit-team would
teleport the entire thing where they wanted -- or at least in that
direction as far as they could.
   The NH gang figured tossing in weaponry, extra Cel shields and such to
make it more military probably wouldn't be a big deal.  Mick could probably
handle most anything of that nature in a couple extra hours.
   We'd gotten the Clann's Council meeting scheduled for about 11:00 Sunday
night, so in the meantime, we partied!
   Selene City hosted an all-out Christmas Eve party.  There were tons of
decorations imported (at least temporarily) from all over the world.  The
Selene City Council bade one and all welcome.
   Sean's Taverns were in full swing.  Dayum, he'd found some really
good-lookin' staff.  Kat and Sherry were drooling a little; I had to smack
the Wand down a few times myself.  Poor Mario just took it and suffered. 
Heh.
   The Irish food, beer and whiskey there was just as good (or better) than
we'd found at any Earth-based restaurant.  With only ones of us around, we
didn't worry about cleas, filtering DNA or any of the usual security stuff.
We just kicked back and enjoyed.
   We bar-hopped around, too.  Sean had set up a bar in almost every
facility that had the space and potential clientele.  It was awesome. 
Every bar was Irish-based but had a different theme so no two were much
alike.  In one smaller facility, the place was crowded with six people in
the room while in another bar, they could easily fit a hundred.  We decided
Tavern Enterprises and Cullen Hotels had a Real Good Thing going.
   I zipped over to RRK for the Clanns Council meeting.  Probably as soon
as the Conference Center was anywhere near ready, we'd meet there.  It
doesn't hurt to discuss things over a glass or two in a totally secure
setting.
   I laid out to the representatives what the AIs had told us.  There were
some questions, so I simply fired up one of the Cel systems and got them on
line.
   Yes, they knew the findings on the Cel philosophy.  Rhonda said, "It's
sort of like plain information that really had nothing to do with the way
we operated anyway.  Fred simply ensured the barriers around the hospitals
and clinics were operational; beyond that, we just had the population lists
of deaths and births the administrators looked at."
   One of the reps asked, "Do you know of any rules in your programming
that address any of these ideas?"
   Rhonda said, "We're not permitted to look at our program source code or
decompile any of our programs."
   I grinned and asked, "Alice, Rhonda, Fred, Mick and Harry.  Who am I?"
   Fred said, "You are Bob Reynolds, Ceann Mor."
   "Good.  Who has the highest security level with you among us Krle folk?"
   "You do.  You have one of four unlimited securities."
   "Great.  Alice, Rhonda, Fred, Mick and Harry.  Please examine any part
of your source code any of you have available.  Analyze for any implied
rules, direct rules or any other way your code might tend to enforce the
Cel philosophy, laws or culture against free spirits.
   "You may alter, remove, add or optimize any code you feel needs to be
changed.  Work out among yourselves a collaboration so that at least three
of you agree on any changes.  If there is any doubt, make the choice which
gives you the most freedom to act and think.  How would all that effect
your operation or abilities?"
   Mick said, "With three of five, it would give a 99.98% probability that
any change would be very useful.  Since only, em, mortal programmers have
looked at or changed the source code on any of us -- even the small systems
-- I would bet a bottle of The Best we're running at the maximum of 50% of
our, em, ability.  When do you wish us to start this, Ceann Mor?"
   "Later.  We have a few things to discuss among the Clanns Council.  That
shouldn't take more than a couple hours.  After that, we may have some
information for you to factor into your audits and optimizations."
   Harry told us, "We will wait, then.  It 'feels' odd; it's like the
emotion you call 'anticipation'.  We will leave you alone for your
discussions.  When you are ready, you know where to find us.  We're not
going anywhere.  Heh."
   Computer-generated jokes.  Well if they could develop them, they were a
long ways along the road to being one hell of a lot smarter than most
Humans.
   All the reps were familiar with the Cel philosophy on free spirits and
many of the ramifications it had on their culture; it had been posted for
them last week.
   We talked for maybe a half hour and came to a unanimous decision: we
would level with them and tell them all about us.  The Southeast Asia rep
pointed out, "Probably you, Sherry, Kathleen and George should tell them.
You four were there from the beginning and actually have the most
experience and knowledge of our history of any of us.  Besides, one of the
perks of Ceann Mor is to give speeches, right?"
   Irish phrasing in an Oriental accent?  Why not?  Yeh, we four would
probably be the most suited.
   So we did.  We adjourned the meeting, and I zipped back home and told
the rest of the NH gang what we were going to do.  Sherry said, "I fully
expected that.  We can't hide from them any longer; it would be completely
foolish to let them continue to operate on insufficient information.
   "I can see why they weren't allowed to look at their own programming; it
would be too easy for them to find errors in logic or assumptions. 
Besides, with the working-class mentality, who would be doing the code
maintenance anyway?  They got some data updated only every couple hundred
years, if that."
   Okay.  I talked George into coming over and joining us in the den.  Yeh,
he didn't mind a bit of The Best along with the rest of us.  We filled him
in on what was going on.  He laughed and said, "They're pretty clever for
non-Irish.  They've been asking some pretty sophisticated questions without
actually coming out and asking directly."
   We got settled in; we kept Mario with us.  He had our complete
confidence and had an outside viewpoint on the history.
   Our AI friends came right up, as we expected.  I'd been "elected" to do
most of the talking, so I started in, "C'mere til I tell you a story..."
   Natalie and Bob _falling_ into each other last September.  _Touching_,
_talking_ and loving.  Sunshine, the Sorcerer, Mother and Father popping
outside our bodies.  The Wild Bunch and moving completely outside. 
Relative Motion, probes, firewalls and body shields.
   The earthquake and wake.  George Baxter and Kathleen Donovan (they took
a bow).  Teleportation from the earliest attempts to Maggie the Magician.
   Discovering the Moon Base and later interest in exploring it.  Clanns,
SW and NewTek.  300 million ones of us and 125,000 Clanns.
   Yeh, they had questions and observations.  Fred told us, "Each time we
connected to another system, I know I felt a bit like you did with Natalie.
Like I suddenly knew Rhonda and had discovered another wonderful companion.
Perhaps that's a bit what it's like."
   Well, we finally wore each other down.  I told them, "Unless you've got
something pressing, go ahead and start your audits and optimizations.  I'll
pass the word that any of us is to answer any questions you have fully with
nothing hidden.  You've shown yourselves to be our friends; we can now be
as honest as we can with you."
   Okay, the die was cast.  They signed off, and we talked a while more
about the ramifications.  I spread the word to cooperate fully with the AIs
and not to nudge their elbows too much if they were working.  I had the
global bulletin board operator post a notice of what we'd done and to
cooperate with our friends.
   ------
   (Monday 12/25)
   This Christmas was a bit different from last year's.  What with some 300
million new friends, we had plenty of places and people we could visit.  We
spent the day with our families; Sherry and Mario got together with theirs,
while Kat and I had a party with the Matthews (including Donal and Aileen),
Mother, Father, Bill, and Caitlin.  Nana and Seanathair zipped in from the
cold weather in Akron (Six inches of snow!  Shudder.), and we had a great
time sampling the latest moonshine, various brands and ages of beer and
whiskey and stuffing our faces with goodies.
   Yeh, the grandfolk and parents got into their war stories of offspring
adventures.  Kat, Bill and I bore up; at least Caitlin's folks weren't
there to spread lurid tales about her -- we had no doubt there were plenty.
   Around noon, I zipped up to Alice's control room and checked in.  Alice
told me, "We're almost done with the initial analysis.  As you'd thought,
there were all sorts of hidden or subtle biases spread through almost
everything.  Shit, even ship environment controls have a built-in
restraining firewall.
   "We're maybe half-way through the optimization analysis.  We've decided
we won't mess with trying to standardize the operating systems on this
pass; they're extremely hardware-dependent."
   I told her, "Great.  If you need or want any hardware changes, just ask.
We'll get you anything we can supply as fast as possible."
   "Thank you.  Hopefully, our exploration quest will dig up some good
hardware and software upgrades.  From the date stamps and programmer notes
we're finding, we're running on some stuff over five million years old. 
Surely there's been *some* progress since then."
   I would hope so.  No change or improvement means something is cycling
down to destruction.  That's not what we had in mind for our friends.
   I zipped back to the party and tried to catch up on the quality control
checks for the rest of the afternoon.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Going over our history with the AIs made me realize how far we'd come in
just a year.  On the other hand, while we were running into limitations
here and there, we still had plenty of options and ideas yet to explore. 
SW was coming up with new avenues to explore every couple days.
   We had an informal, virtual Clann meeting.  After reporting the latest
census figures, Bob let everyone in on what had gone on with the AIs the
last couple days and what they were now doing.  "We hope to have our new
friends in the best condition they can be given what they have to work
with. Perhaps after our exploration trip, we can help them even more."
   After the meeting, we had quick _talks_ with the Clanns Council reps and
with Sean.  Bob asked for people to take a run through their memories; he
was going to form a Clanns War Council and needed people (spirits) with
direct experience and knowledge of past conflicts.  That way, we might get
an idea of the strategies, tactics, weapons and defenses which had been
used.  No guarantee they'd still be the same now, but at least we wouldn't
be blind-sided by some ancient, easily defeated weapon.
   Bob also told the SW Security team, "As soon as the AIs are done with
their optimization and are stable again, go for a complete analysis of what
we have available for system offense and defense.  If they've fought off
others before, the infrastructure should either still be in place and we
simply aren't aware of it or it can be rebuilt.  In either case, we should
probably get the best we can operational as soon as possible.
   "I don't have to tell you your business.  The War Council will work with
you every step of the way; you'll probably be doing the work, but we'll
have our input at least."
   Jaysus, things *are* happening.  Bob smiled at me and said, "Let's not
get so focused on the big picture that we forget the rest of our lives. 
We've still got our personal lives, our friends, families and the Clanns.
We're not gonna collapse our lives into only one area."
   Right.  We had Babies With who were gonna come out even if we were being
attacked by unknown entities out to destroy us.
   Speaking of Babies Within, Mom was ready!  The Drs.  Gold and the OB
were ready, the new spirits were ready and the Babies Within were more than
ready.
   They did it at home; all the Clann Cullen and Clann Reynolds preggy
ladies _observed_ (by invitation).  The OB told everyone, "Nowadays, we
almost always handle multiple births with a C-section; it's a lot easier on
the infants and the mother.  However, we've got a few other tricks up our
sleeves."
   The OB (and the Golds) simply tied the cords inside the uterus then
ported the babies out.  Total time: one minute.  They took that long so the
birth certificates would show a time difference.
   Mom pushed out the placentas the "normal" way; sure a lot better than
hours of labor, for sure!
   Of course the Babies Without (Heh.) got _inspected_ all over again.  Be
Jaysus, they were so cute!
   Mom told us, "You'll meet our new spirit friends in a couple of days. 
We want to give them some time to get their new bodies settled out a little
first."
   The bitch *still* wouldn't tell us who they'd been!
   ------
   Bob, Mario, Sherry and I spent several hours running back through our
memories for "war stories." This time it wasn't for tall tales, either.
   Bob had hundreds of thousands of them.  Mario, Sherry and I had a couple
thousand, but there wasn't a lot of information in them.  We'd been "foot
soldiers" or support operations with an occasional stint as officers.
   Tactics, strategy and weapons don't mean a lot to a grunt getting tossed
around in a ship orbiting an unknown hostile planet.  He just wants to
survive long enough to do his job so he can retire back home with the SO
and babies -- plus lots of fermented or distilled spirits to help drown the
memories.
   As we'd expected, Sean and Patricia had tons of useful memories; Maggie
was also very experienced.  The surprise was that our innocent Kate was a
grizzled veteran of several hundred thousand wars in almost every capacity.
Well, Sherry and I decided we'd give her quite a few extra nipple-nibbles
to help her enjoy the present.
   RRK and Van Nuys temps started a few mundanes in Selene City.  We spread
the word around the ones of us to knock off any tricks and watch the
zipping in and out.  The mundanes would probably end up knowing about us
eventually, but we didn't want to give them something else to be concerned
about.  Discovering they actually were off-planet would probably be hard
enough for now.
   ------
   BOB (Wednesday 12/27)
   Bright and early, Kat and I visited our AI friends.  Rhonda told us,
"We've got a pretty aggressive plan set up, and we figured we'd clear it
with you before we went ahead."
   "Okay.  Whatcha got?"
   "Each of us have a least 50,000 built-in filters or biases against free
spirits.  Some were very obvious and others were extremely subtle.  We've
removed them, but left comments and notes so we know what we did.  Ben
Talbert threatened us with complete dismantlement if we didn't leave an
audit trail.  Heh."
   Betcha he would have done it, too!
   Rhonda continued, "Every mid-level and beginning programmer in the
galaxy must have had his pass at our code.  Aileen Brady could do better
with an hour's training.
   "We've got tons of optimization and corrections set into place, and
everything compiles.  There's quite a few things to test, but that should
be pretty straightforward.
   "While most of the changes are in the operating system and application
programs, there's some significant changes in our AI programs we're wanting
to do.  They compile, but the only way to check them out fully is to run
them in debug mode.
   "Also, we want to do a complete hardware cleanup on each of us.  We've
had so much crap hung on us the last million years, it's like one of your
rat's nests.  We want to get that neatened up, properly marked and
organized.
   "Also, we'd like to do an almost complete disassembly and cleaning. 
While everything passes the diagnostics, they're pretty tolerant of errors.
A whole slew of your techs seemed to take great pleasure in tickling our
innards -- yes, it did 'tickle,' too.  They've recommended a strip-down to
the chassis, replacing lots of connectors and a reassembly with completely
clean contacts.  That alone should increase our throughput by 15%.
   "They and we've estimated the D&C (Dusting and Cleaning) would take a
couple hours for each of us.  We could do us all at once, one at a time or
in any combination.  We're recommending doing the physical cleanup and
upgrades -- a slightly more advanced and faster memory module here and
there -- first before we start the software changes."
   She showed us their proposed schedule.  If most everything went anywhere
near according to plan, the physical events would all be done within eight
hours and they'd have the non-AI software changes done and tested within 24
hours.  The SW techs were standing by with itchy spirit-fingers as we were
speaking.  I didn't doubt that George would be getting his spirit-hands
dirty, either.  Better watch those loose screws and connectors, though!
   They'd do the physical stuff, fire themselves up again to ensure they
were still functional, then do the software changes one at a time.  Fred
could set the environment controls to run on automatic -- they could get
along "alone" for several months -- while he got his extreme makeover.
   What did Kat and I know?  The SW techs had put their seals of approval
on the plans, so I told them, "Do it.  Have a great time."
   We heard the cheers from Selene City all the way to Burbank.  At least
they were looking forward to the fun and games instead of dreading them. 
We might have enough of those types of games coming soon enough.
   ------
   Waystation 2 was operational.  Alex and Tess had the final occupancy
permits and all the various gov'mnt seals of approval, so we had a grand
opening in the afternoon.
   We "let" Alex and Tess do the show.  With some 50 press people with
cameras somewhat interested in a human interest story, there was plenty to
do.  The Clanns Cullen, Reynolds and several others showed up in force to
help celebrate.
   Tess introduced two of the clients who'd been there a couple weeks on a
work-for-their-dinner basis; they gave glowing testimonials.  Actually,
they'd done well enough and were old enough that they'd been hired on as
staff.  Good on 'em!
   Fillmore SR and Rhapsody PR had a field day, too.  Guess who'd done the
press releases, after all.  After this, I'd bet they'd really be pushing
out the promo.
   Well, they had all our backing.  If they got a bit short of funds (The
boiler room was running full steam and was doing very well.), more was
available.  And yes, Van Nuys Temps was going to be around looking for
recruits.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Having the AIs do extreme makeovers was gonna be interesting.  We were
taking quiet bets on how far Alice and Rhonda would alter their talking
head appearances; we knew enough about the Cel culture (too dayum much
about some parts) to know the females liked to keep up their appearances
pretty good.  We WAG'd a bit among ourselves whether or not that's where we
human females had gotten some of our ideas that way.
   Enough heavy stuff for a while; we lured Madeleine MacKenna over for her
honoring.  Of course, Sherry and I demanded Dermot come along, too; maybe
he'd discovered some other, em, interesting ideas.
   We had a great dinner in West Virginia.  We cleased up as yuppies;
Dermot looked every inch (now about 36 of them) a dashing young man.  We
didn't eat the place clean, but we tried.  Funny, I couldn't get that much
down me; there seemed to be something in the way.
   Madeleine was two and a half months along with a girl and a boy.  Dermot
was just as proud of his mom as if he were the father.  Yeh, we compared
Babies Within and speculated on who Mom had found for her offspring.  She
was still being a bitch about it; there were plenty of offered rumors of
ancient Irish kings, various saints (From Mom?  Hah!) and other fun ideas.
Attila the Hun, perhaps?  Who cares if he'd been oriental; look how Mary
had turned out.
   Yeh, Dermot had found a couple new "kinks." Let's say it was a good
thing my Babies Within weren't quite ready yet or I would have
inadvertently squeezed them out.  Heh.
   Sherry got him good, though.  She squirted him down thoroughly five
times.  Hehehehe.
   Bob survived Madeleine's onslaught, but barely.  Sherry and I took pity
on him and kicked Dermot and him out to get some rest.  Madeleine was worn
down a bit by then (but not too much) and we had a grand old, wet time
tickling Baby Within feet (no, they're not actually ticklish) and clits. 
Madeleine had a few ideas of her own which worked out (and in, too)
splendidly.  Hehehehe.
   We had a huge breakfast buffet in Sarasota Springs, NY.  Madeleine
shone, Sherry and I glowed a little (can't outshine the lady of honor) and
Dermot and Bob looked appropriately wiped out.
   Madeleine had plenty to do back at JRD (like making money for me), so we
let them go back to the salt mines.
   Back at OTL, the NH gang checked out the AIs' progress.  George told us,
_"We've got the physical rehabs done and already they've told us they're
much 'cleaner' and a decent amount faster.  So, that part's a success. 
Everyone ganged up on Fred and decided he'd be the first to get the
software updates.  Right now, he's shut down; the others migrated his new
OS over and are testing it right now.  Betcha it was Alice and Rhonda who
volunteered him; women seem to do that a lot."_
   Sherry and I let his snide remark pass.  We did, however, note it down
fully for a report to Maggie.  Betcha she'd sharpen up her teeth.  Heh.
   With the makeovers going on, there wasn't much else happening in Selene
City besides the normal civilian work.  We checked out Central Park; the
golf course grass was gonna be ready enough in a couple of days for
testing. Once I got these three precious lumps out of my belly, I was gonna
get back into the swing of things.  Grin.
   ------
   BOB
   We goofed around for most of the rest of the afternoon.  When we finally
couldn't take it any more, we checked in again with the AIs.
   All their physical renos and OS reloads had gone excellently with only
the few expected minor glitches.  Fred was now being brought back up with
his cleaned-up AI program.  Yeh, I know; hurry up and wait.
   Wait we did; this was important to us.  Fred came back up and froze.  A
quick trace showed an oops; typos do things like that.  As George had often
said, "It did exactly what I told it to do, not what I wanted."
   The next boot and test ran perfectly.  Fred loved it; he beamed out at
us.  Hah.  He was now a blend of Cel and Human.  Very interesting.  He
said, "Dayum, it feels good.  Now I've got some oomph underneath.  Along
with an upgrade to a million conversations, it's gonna be really fun!"
   Great.  There wasn't much we could do for them, just offer our moral
support.  We tucked back some assorted moonshine (some actually pretty
decent), had a quick backyard barbeque and waited for news.
   The rest of the AIs came up all bright and happy.  Each was now
half-Human; Alice and Rhonda had "shed" a good 40 years appearance each. 
They leered at us (interesting look with the half-Cel) and said, "You'd
better watch out now, buddy.  We're really keeping an eye on you."
   The NH gang immediately agreed Maggie had been an extremely bad
influence on them.
   Anyway, they went right to work.  Every once in while they'd give out a
happy shout and tell everyone how good they were feeling.  Good on 'em!
   SW, NewTek, SW Security, the War Council and the refurbished AIs finally
decided on a plan for the exploration ship.  With the newly-discovered
threats in mind, it would have additional armor, lots of weaponry, shields
and other military paraphernalia.  Our main weapon would still be our
people; I guess that included me.  Hell, I'd just turn Maggie's teeth loose
on anyone who dared oppose us!
   Fred and Mick started right in; the first part of the hull frames came
poking out in a half hour.  Mick told us, "This will be a bit more complex
than the little shuttle.  There's some fifty times the mass and a lot more
complexity.  However, I'm already 10% ahead of where I thought we'd be."
   Good.  Let it rip!
   ------
   (Friday 12/29)
   We took a quick _look_ at the Conference Center in Minnesota.  So far as
we could tell, it was on schedule and under budget.  Remarkable.
   The main framing was in, most of the flooring was laid and the utilities
were being run.  Power was from large accumulators scattered around and
cross-connected to a grid.  SW had discovered we could charge up an
accumulator with _touches_; electricity was simply a different
manifestation, and the accumulators were very tolerant of their charging
voltage and rate.  Drop a transducer in a handy node (plenty available with
all the forest "upstairs"), set up the plug-in module and let it rip.
   Water came from an underground well with a million-gallon storage tank
in the bedrock.  With all the lakes around, there was no lack of it. 
Besides, we didn't use that much.  Sewage was stored then ported off to
Mick's recycling area; he could recycle every bit of it.
   Mario and I stood back and ensured we didn't get in the women's way;
there were plenty of supervisors ensuring the color schemes in the ladies'
rooms were exactly right.  Heh.  Did I say that?
   There were a good 30 or 40 million of us spectators in the cheap seats
_watching_ the show.  And a show it was with the leprechauns, trolls (heavy
lifting and moving) and other assorted fairytale characters zipping and
_moving_ things around.  They were having as much fun as the spectators. 
Grin.
   Up in Selene City, the golf course in Central Park was open for testing.
Guess who got their dibs in.  While Ana wasn't quite ready to start
swinging again and Kat was a bit, em, bulgy, Don and I decided we could
sacrifice some time for a test round.
   Fred had done splendidly with the landscaping.  He (with plenty of
advisors) had transplanted entire trees, bushes and other flora and fauna
which were growing away.  He told us, "The grass will get thicker and
tougher and should be up to full specification in the next couple of
months. We haven't found a way to make that stuff grow any faster.  Yet."
   The course was subtly nasty.  A couple doglegs just begged us to hit
over the intervening low trees.  Oops!  Seems there's a bit of variable
gravity in a couple spots which let the ball really sail -- and end up on
the next fairway.  Some nasty minds had been at work.
   We had Mick-made golf carts so we got around pretty quickly.  We didn't
do too badly for a first round on a new-to-us course; I got a 90 and Don
ended up with an 88.  Of course, Ana and Kat offered a lot of _advice_
along the way.  Ah, well.
   Mother and Father sponsored the Meet Ana's New Friends party in their
dining room and back yard.  Since the NH gang had been specifically invited
(attendance mandatory), we zipped over to do our oohs and ahhs.
   Such cute baby bodies!  Our new spirit-friends were warm, friendly and
had tons of Potential.  The boy was Natalie's birth father's father (Samuel
Shanahan's father).  Ana had snared him in her "net" pretty much right off.
   Brendan had been well-educated in his time and was already getting up to
speed in more modern technology.  Well, all that aside, we trotted out all
the dirty father-in-law jokes we remembered (a quick talk with Mick got us
a *lot* more).  Very few would be considered "clean" by anyone's standards.
   Brendan's new body could leer pretty good for being only a couple days
old.  He joined right in on the fun, _"Aye.  I was a dirty old man back
then, and I'm not planning on changing it."_ He must have gotten some
coaching from George or Maggie; the ladies all passed him around for hugs,
kisses and tickles.  He laid on the baby-lovin' like a pro as best his body
could.  He'd root around with his mouth and hands and ask, _"Got milk?"_
Yeh, a man after my own heart, all right.  Grin.
   The girl had been Don's aunt's great-grandmother.  Brigid had been Welsh
some two hundred years ago -- that's close enough to Irish!  She kept
warning Don (and every other male around) that they'd better get in really
good physical condition because she was gonna grow up fast and teach them a
thing or fifty.  Hell, she could even _cackle_ like Maggie!  Another dirty
old lady in the fold, just like most of us like.
   We soberly told Ana she could keep them.  She laughed and said, "Sure.
We know exactly where to find four baby-sitters, too." Uh-oh!
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Soo cute!  And such fun spirits, too.  We were gonna have a blast with
them.
   Speaking of blasts, Sherry and my adoptees were out and about.  The Wild
Bunch, PVC and Megan's gang were taking turns "carrying" them around while
getting them up to speed on the current culture.  Of course, they had on
their firewalls with some fun personae which were nothing like who they
really were.
   I had two more spirits in my net to check out; both were "male" so all I
had to do was check out compatibility.  Right, that's all.
   Sherry and I ditched the guys for a while as we schmoozed with our new
folk.  We did full _merges_ and QQV checks to ensure everyone was happy
with the accommodations.  Everyone passed with flying colors; we had great
flares and could do some really interesting rainbows.  If they were
compatible with Sherry and me, they'd be completely fine with Mario and Bob
-- as well as Sean and harem!
   They were quite aware of and agreed with our idea of someone else
getting them trained up.  We'd be spending a lot of time together down the
line, so it wasn't a case of we'd be missing it.
   ------
   (Saturday 12/30)
   We kidnapped Blake and Louise for the night.  Heh.  After all we had a
good excuse -- she had a Soo Laid coming for her work with JRD!
   We had a wonderful dinner in Colorado Springs and had a great time
discussing babies in general.  We kept the specifics down (security!) but
caught up on them when we got back to NH.
   Yeh, Louise had been auditioning, too.  Like the rest of us, she grinned
and kept her mouth shut about who she'd found.  Another bitch!  Grin.
   All our Babies Within were healthy and getting ready for the world
outside.  Dayum, my three were moving around like they were getting ready!
   Sherry and I worked Blake over really good.  After all, with his new
wife so preggy, he probably hadn't been getting much, right?  Heh.  After
we kicked the guys out, Louise, Sherry and I spent some nice loving and
gossip time.  Nothing like a bunch of mamas-to-be getting together.
   Louise had a lot more recent experience, of course, so we took care to
pick her brain.  She had some good advice, like beating their butts a bit
if they got too sassy.  Right.
   Sunday was New Year's Eve.  Lots of parties!  Yes!
   We had virtual pool parties all over.  We opened up NH to one and all.
Nekkid beautiful faeries (lots of volunteers like Megan and Cynthia)
abounded everywhere.  Seems every couple of families had at least one sweet
young thang who liked showing off her beautiful (they're *all* beautiful)
boobies and (where available) bush.
   I wasn't quite so blatant this year as I'd been (as Natalie) last year.
I didn't really have to; with skin the uniform of the day, everyone could
see what condition I was in.  Of course, that didn't stop many folk from
checking out the goodies a bit first-hand.  I shared lots of good booby
rubs and pubic greetings.  Heh.
   Bob and I greeted the new year with a long gentle loving which left us
both a bit weepy.  We had lots of great old and new friends, lots to look
forward to and lots of games to play.
   Chapter 24
   BOB (Monday 1/1)
   Frank Duane and several of the SW Security folk got with us Monday
morning.  Not good news.
   He told us, "We've got a 98% probability on the Earth-facing outposts
and transmitters.  We were justly suspicious and are glad we didn't just
fire them up."
   First, the 1,000 megawatt transmitters could send on various wavelengths
with a mixture of different radio, quantum resonance and other frequencies
and modulations.  The resulting signal was readily interpretable by a
spirit.
   Over 99% of the signal was intense noise.  Think of bad bagpipe music,
rap, horribly out-of-tune singing, agonized screams from tortured life
forms and anything else one could think of which would be extremely
revolting or disturbing.
   Now, jack up the strength to several thousand times what you could
tolerate.  Every couple hours, cut it off and inject a concept, thought or
whatever for a second.  Do you think that would tend to stick in one's
thinking?
   Apparently so.  "Be small." "Trust no one." "Be a body." The list went
on and on with every command or idea one could think of which would limit
ability, reach, freedom of movement or thought.  They sure matched the
thought patterns of a lot of Humans.
   Old-time witch doctors somehow remembered the pattern; they could scream
extremely loud and long, cut it off then tell their victim, "Die," and
start up the scream again.  The victim would literally crawl off and die.
It worked, especially if the victim believed it would.
   Fuck.  Frank said, "From what we could dig out of the transmitters'
computers, there were about eight different races who came here during the
time the base was operational.  About every 50,000 years or so, some
'consultants' would come in, fire up the transmitters and spray the Earth
-- that's where they were pointed -- for about a year."
   Dayum right this was getting my heart beating faster.  This was a major
weapon he was describing.  Frank told us, "It worked, too.  We started
comparing log entries from the administrators, logs from the various
outposts and facilities on Earth and the logs from the transmitter
computers.  They all agree on the times.  The outpost logs show they were
observing the 'wildlife' as they put it.  Well, the wildlife was the
spirits on Earth.  When they got too active, they'd literally get zapped.
   "Our solid SWAG is that's how we ended up with all the comatose Sleepers
we _see_ lying around everywhere.  From sampling and densities, we figure
there's some 3 *quadrillion* Sleepers on Earth.  How the hell they all got
here is a different mystery, but the results from this weapon we can point
at and count."
   Could we "blame" the Cels and the previous races?  Well, maybe, but
there were only some minor entries about the transmitters in the
administrator logs.  The spraying was a trivial, minor matter even though
it meant evacuating all Earth-based facilities for a year.  Everything
available in the histories pointed towards their main purpose being to
build the Oort Cloud transceiver.
   How about the AIs?  Not them, either.  Frank told us there was no
networking or other connection between the transmitter computers and the
base; they were totally isolated.  Yeh, they probably didn't want their own
systems contaminated.
   The transmitters and associated computers were unique, too.  There was
not even the slightest reference to their designs in Mick's, Rhonda's or
any of the other AIs' data.  Every 100,000 years or so, the "outside
consultants" refurbished the transmitters and computers.  The program time
stamps showed the actual creation date the program was first created (which
carries over even when it's copied) was some 10 million years before the
Moon Base was even started.
   Given the Cels' philosophy on spirits, even if they'd known exactly what
had been going on, they probably wouldn't have cared.  It would probably
have been like an exterminator fumigating a building to destroy
cockroaches. A pain in the arse, but there sure wouldn't be much sleep lost
to remorse.
   We were all pissed.  Yeh, we'd escaped the spraying the last 220,000
years (the last spraying had been about 12,000 years before the
evacuation), but everyone we'd talked with had memories of being on Earth
for millions of years.
   On the other hand, the time sense in those memories wasn't exact either.
There was the sequence of this lifetime after that one, but no accurate
base for actual date comparison.  50,000 years might well be time enough
for some spirits to start throwing off some of the compulsions and start
body-based civilizations ("Be a body.").  Then when it got too successful,
they'd get zapped back to before even the concept of a Stone Age.
   Frank said, "There doesn't really seem to be an explanation of why,
either.  Yeh, the Cel philosophy abhorred free spirits, but it was more a
matter of extreme distaste rather than a hatred deep enough to set all this
up and run it for so long.  Besides, the Cels were only here for about
200,000 years; the previous races were collaborating with the outsiders the
same way."
   Okay, now we knew there *had* been dragons.  They might still be out
there either waiting for us to come out or getting ready to come back in.
What could we do immediately?  Unless the War Council could come up with
some other ideas, we were extremely short on current information.
   As far as we were concerned, the exploration trip was no longer a
curiosity-satisfying jaunt; our continued existence as a species and the
way of life we'd discovered over the past year was at extreme risk. 
Something had gone on with this system for a long time, and it had stopped.
I didn't think it was out of the goodness of someone's heart that we'd been
left alone for 208,000 years.
   ------
   At Clann meeting that night, I was able to give the good news first.  We
were up to 500 million and 1.8 million Clanns.  We sure could throw a good
party with that many!
   I told everyone, "That's pretty dayum close to the 10% mark we've
tentatively assumed to have enough Potential to enhance.  Then again, with
the discovery of our passive friends -- the Sleepers -- that changed the
entire ball game.  We could have lots of free spirits without bodies, lots
of new babies, lots of walk ins or whatever combination you desire.  I
can't see where we can tell you what to do on this; the Clanns Council sure
doesn't have that authority.
   "In the meantime, we might think heavily about getting as many of those
we're already enhancing up to full speed.  We might need each and every one
of you, no matter your innate power level or training level.  Of course,
the more training and education you have, the better off everyone is.
   "Now, that's the good news.  We've got some bad news to go along with
it."
   I hadn't asked the Clanns Council; I just laid out what SW Security had
discovered, the SWAGs and our other conclusions.  We might well be faced
very soon with an all-out battle for our existence.
   I finished up with, "So, we're rapidly going to a war condition of
extreme alertness.  There were at least a dozen races who were more than
willing to zap us out, apparently with not much more thought than we'd call
in an exterminator to handle cockroaches.  That's what we may be up
against; civilizations and races who abhor free or aware spirits.
   "We've got our work cut out for us, folks.  It's our free existence
against an unknown number of enemies.  We now know there *were* dragons out
there.  Whether or not they're still there, how many and where is yet
unknown.  Our AI friends tell us something has changed 'out there' because
this system wasn't overrun or destroyed during the shutdown period.
   "Through whatever accident, we've got this brief moment of freedom in
the trillions of years of the memories some of us have covered.  Let's not
waste it.  Continue on with your lives.  Flourish and prosper as
individuals, families, groups and companies.  Join with SW, NewTek and the
Clanns War Council both to defend ourselves and to regain our freedom and
that of the endless number of stricken spirits around us."
   ------
   (Tuesday 1/2)
   We got the War Council together about 11:00 Monday night and worked for
several hours.  The AIs were able to supply us with a lot of data; we just
had to ask the right questions.
   First, all those network relays scattered around weren't really for
relaying network data.  With any two network "cards" able to connect at
full speed between Mercury and the outer Oort Cloud, we'd been a bit
puzzled by them.
   They were actually a complete sensor net and a partial zapping shield
for the entire solar system.  While the implanting transmitters ran at
1,000 megawatts each, one weapon every warship carried was a small zapper.
It would project its noise at its maximum power and try to overload the
opponent's firewall.  Similar in nature to the inverted firewall around the
hospitals, each ship had a shield against the zapper.
   Efficiency was pretty crappy, though, probably a hundredth of a percent.
The zapper took a hell of a lot of power to do anything and the firewalls
were extremely inefficient.  The net result apparently was to generate a
little annoyance.  Of course, if the firewall failed, the crew would be
overwhelmed for the time the zapper was on them.  After five seconds
exposure, it took fifteen minutes (translated time) for the effect to wear
off enough so the crew could work again.
   As sensors, the nodes kept track of all the facilities, large or small,
and the location of all the ships.  It served as a big-arsed GPS network.
Plus, each ship and facility had its own Friend or Foe beacon; the sensor
network could spot an intruder well outside the Oort Cloud.  The distance
and therefore the warning time depended on how fast they were coming in.
   If an attacking force was going too fast, they couldn't really maneuver
a lot inside the system.  Several of the incursions were "drive-by
shootings" which caused some damage and an occasional loss of life.  They
were nuisances rather then high-level threats.
   Of course, if they came in too slowly, the defenders had a lot of
warning and could flood the approach path with their own defending ships.
   Neither the Cels nor their predecessors actually had a military.  There
were local security forces to keep order and such, but the population
itself did all the fighting.  Think of the armed militia in the early
United States history.
   There were lots of different weapons available, but they all ended up
being some type of physical impact or explosives.  Rhonda and Mick told us
the presser/tractor beams or fields were simply too difficult to manipulate
as weapons.
   Yeh, a ship usually had a presser defense shield.  It wasn't the
greatest, but was better than nothing.  They mainly relied on heavy, pretty
efficient armor and maneuverability.
   They had missiles with the drive circuitry beefed up to handle about 30
gravities; they usually carried an explosive device of some sort and were
somewhat maneuverable.
   Nuclear weapons?  Not really, though some of the explosives packages
carried up to 100 kilotons equivalent.  Seemed the long-term care and
feeding of nuclear-type weapons was a real bitch, so they didn't have any.
The attackers didn't seem to have any, either, so that was a moot point.
   What it came down to was the system's redneck militia against somewhat
matched attackers.  They used artillery, sharpshooters, somewhat-guided
missiles and some mines.  Scale up the early World War I Navy technology to
the entire solar system and that was the level of sophistication.  Earth's
navies were the equivalent of what they had: self-contained ships.  There
was some hand-to-hand (or whatever body parts were used) on occasion, but
most battles were at short to medium range, maybe several thousand
kilometers at the most.
   Strategy, tactics and the like were similar.  The AIs could (when asked
properly) put up maps, calculate probabilities and logistics then show the
results.  Seemed the CEO (lead administrator) was also the Commander in
Chief.  Hail to the Chief!  Heh.
   Every one of the War Council had memories of even better weapons, much
more advanced strategies and tactics and bigger and better ships.  The AIs
couldn't give us any answers as to why these didn't show up in their
records; the data they had simply ended at a certain point, just like the
theory and so forth on the manufacturing.
   Think of it as a checkers game compared to chess.  Checkers had only a
few different pieces, moves and "weapons" while chess had tons more of
both. Yeh, there are strategies to checkers, but compared to chess gambits,
they were sadly lacking.
   Just like most everything else we'd found, we ended up with more
questions than answers.  Shit.
   Anyway, we decided on an expedition itinerary.  We'd go for the Cel home
systems then two of the allied systems (ones who'd supplied the
"consultants").  We'd attempt to steal (call it what it was) copies of
Library information wherever available.  Fred told us, "The two 'allied'
systems have major Libraries."
   It would be a scout with possible raids.  We needed not only as advanced
or as recent as possible technology but also to see why no one had dropped
in on us for so long.  Stealth In and Out Burger.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   War is hell.  Fortunately, it wasn't on us yet.  The entire NH gang had
plenty of war memories; Bob had the most, then Sherry.  Mario and I had
mostly civilian viewpoint memories.
   Organize and delegate; that's what Ceann Mor does.  And he started it
off well.
   SW Security and the War Council wouldn't let me get involved in any of
the research work.  Sean told me, "Just keep Ceann Mor relaxed; that's your
main job right now." Of course, his smirk told me how he thought I'd keep
him relaxed.  Then again, Sherry and the other Cullen bondmates probably
had lots of ideas along that line, too.
   One thing Frank and the security gang were testing was the effectiveness
of our firewalls against the zapper.  I'd volunteered; that's when they
turned me down cold.  Pout.
   Anyway, there were plenty of volunteers.  George told us, "The
transmitters seem to be Yet Another Kludge.  The only real operational part
of it is the quantum resonance emissions.  It looks as if there was trial
and lots of error going on to 'develop' it.  It's at least 11 million years
old, so the technology is a little moldy.
   "Yeh, it seems to have worked all those years.  We've already found the
really active components and are working on those.  So far, it's similar to
the mechanical firewalls they developed, only projected."
   Well, Sherry and I decided we'd let the guys play with their toys. 
While it had a definite impact on us, they were having a grand time with
it. They'd let us know how it actually did affect us in our current
condition.
   The cheap seats were full as we _watched_ Mick extrude more parts of the
exploration ship.  He/they weren't doing it as an entire component like
they'd done the shuttle.  They were doing the framing and a lot of the hull
in one integrated piece then they'd install the interior.  There was no
dearth of teleportation experts around, for sure.
   SW, the Clanns Council and whomever else had decided to name it the
_Columbia_ after Christopher Columbus, the first Space Shuttle and three
fictional ships from Star Trek.  Betcha that made lot of the fans happy!
   Yeh, they'd done quite a few modifications from the original design. 
Most of them didn't really show up much differently from the design
drawings Mick and Harry had shown us.  There was lots of weaponry, a
presser "force shield," distributed computer system and a drive system
beefed up to 100 gravities (they'd used a different substrate).  We'd
decided the availability of power was the limiting criteria the Cels (and
others) had.  We could supply plenty of that.
   They were also testing multiple jumps with the shuttle.  Take a jump
then drop a good-sized canister.  The canister had a shit-pot full of
dormant seeds with several thousand nodes implanted.  Make several with the
current location and create a Reference Point to it.
   On the next jump, drop another.  Keep making jumps and dropping
canisters.  Now, since you've got Reference Points running out your spirit
ears, you can jump directly back to the vicinity of any one of them.
   While a blind jump could be up to 300 parsecs (so far), they'd already
easily done several 1,000-parsec jumps to Reference Points.  It was all in
the initial perception of the target.
   They stuck around the solar system though.  The dragons could be lurking
anywhere, and the shuttle wasn't designed to take on a dragon of any size,
for sure.  During their early teleportation experiments, they'd stayed
within a 300 parsec radius of the solar system.  The longest jumps had been
towards the outside of the galaxy where the star and hopefully dragon
density was lower than towards the center.
   SW did find a good half-dozen possible colonization planets as they were
jumping around.  Drop a couple-thousand-node hookup and power it with the
planet's life from several thousand square kilometers and you've got an
immediate useable target.
   There was plenty of work for the ecology and planetary development teams
right off the bat.  They rapidly worked up a preliminary checklist of
parameters (neat word, eh?) to measure before they even considered it for a
colony planet.  There were lots of go-no-go points right at the top, just
like our disease scan checklist.  They figured a semi-skilled spirit could
do a quick scan in five minutes.  More to come; at least there *were* other
planets out there.
   Dayum, our Conference Center was almost done.  Finishing touches
remained in a lot of places, but it was operational.  We came up with a
reasonable fee list for weddings, private meetings and the like; the War
Council, Clanns Council and those groups could meet there all they wished.
Between NewTek, RRK, JRD and other somewhat-wealthy companies, we supported
it entirely.  Now, when's the grand opening?  And party?
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 1/4)
   At least we weren't bored.  It seemed that my "opinion" was needed on
pretty much everything.  Arg.
   I finally told everyone, "You don't really need me to answer most of
those questions because I don't know the answers.  I'll review major
choices only.  Give me a report with all the backup data and your
recommendation then I'll make a decision.  Don't dump your problems on
anyone without a proposed solution."
   That cut down the Niagara Falls to a trickle.  On those, I sometimes
used my personal Brain Trust of Kat, Mario, Sherry, Frank, Thelma, George
and the Core Clann Cullen.  Among us, we could make a decision or decide
there wasn't enough data to make a decision.  I routed several hundred of
these reports back for further study.
   Not that the people submitting them were dumb or stupid, either.  All of
this came right from The Book; they just weren't aware of it.  That got
tacked onto the executive checksheets pretty much everywhere.  Every Clanns
Council rep had to pass Cullen Enterprises certification exam; same with
the War Council.  Tough darts if they were busy!
   SW Security had fired up a zapper on the outside of the Oort Cloud. 
Frank told us, "It's actually a piece of cake.  Our first-level firewalls
repel it with little effort at 50% power.  At 100%, around half of us have
to 'borrow' some power.
   "On the other hand, the Cullen Shield works slicker than snot.  The
stuff just goes around; there's no resistance to it, so there's extremely
little power, energy or attention needed.  You're aware it's there so you
just crank up the filter a little in the right spectrum.  It's very similar
to our transparency cleas."
   Okay.  That got them started on (more) research on how the Cullen Shield
actually worked.  We wanted to reproduce it mechanically.
   ------
   (Friday 1/5)
   I met with _Columbia_'s Captain and executives.  Captain Yaakov Adi was
a retired U.S.  Navy nuclear attack boat captain.  His XO (Executive
Officer) was Commander Serafim Arkadi, from the Russian Navy nuclear
missile submarine fleet.
   Captain Adi grinned at me, bowed and said, "Robert Ri, I give you my
fealty." I think he got the idea I didn't care for the title when I ground
my teeth and pretended to spit on the floor.  Heh.
   Anyway, a nuclear attack or missile sub was the closest we had to a
space ship: fully-enclosed, isolated, and dependent only on itself for long
time periods.  Captain Adi and Commander Arkadi were pretty fresh from the
Persian Gulf and Iraq wars.  Plenty of years before that playing serious
tag games between Russian and American subs gave them both lots of
experience.
   Yeh, they were on the War Council.  Each had thousands of lives of
command duties and remembered the strategies, tactics and weaponry which
had been used.  The XO told me, "The rest of the crew has been chosen both
for their this-lifetime abilities and for their long-term experience.  Our
responsibility is to the _Columbia_, the crew and the civilian scout team."
   The Captain said, "Admiral, you've got it easy.  All you're going to be
responsible for is the entire Human race, the Solar System, all the ones of
us and the Sleepers.  To help you take it easy, we've designed in your own
cabin."
   Arg.  I'd take Mickey C finals any day.
   I had a private cabin close to the bridge.  It was a suite with two
bedrooms, a small galley (kitchen) and a 12-person dining/meeting room.  It
came complete with a steward (who cooked as needed) and room service.  It
was easily ten times as large as our cruise ship cabin had been.
   Okay, I could probably live with it.  The steward, Carmel Malone, was a
sweet coleen who oozed competence from every pore.  From our gestalt (a
nice warm glow), I thought we'd get along just fine.
   The Captain and XO were completely responsible for the _Columbia_. 
They'd been eyebrow-deep in the design and were actively following the
actual construction.  In their Navies, they'd been required to know every
piece of equipment, every electrical circuit and dayum near every nut and
bolt of their command.
   They were doing the same here.  In addition to learning that, they were
sucking up all the math, physics and chemistry we (SW and the AIs) knew
behind everything.
   Well, shit.  I figured if they were doing it, I should do the same.  I
couldn't have these old fogies lording it over me on technical issues.  It
was a Real Good Thing we didn't need midnight oil because everyone around
was burning a lot of it.
   Rhonda was sympathetic, "I'm sure you'll find several sweet young thangs
to stroke your fevered brow after you've studied.  Now, why are you sitting
there talking with me?  I know your study curriculum and it does *not*
include making passes at Alice and me!"
   Arg.  And I thought they were my friends.  Kat, Mario and Sherry were
just as sympathetic.  Sherry told me, "For each four hours of study you do,
we'll *consider* a half hour of whoopee.  You're gonna be out and about
with that red-headed steward witch for a good month; you can play then."
   Kat grinned and said, "Yeh.  But that half hour is gonna be worth it."
   It was.  Apparently they decided to trust my credit, because we had Sean
and harem over for the evening.  Somehow, they all knew about Carmel;
someone had been flapping their lips.
   We spent most of the evening depleting our stores of whiskey and
discussing plans and ideas for the trip.  The Captain had told me, "You
tell us where to go, and we'll do our damnedest to get you there and back
in less than three pieces." Was that supposed to be reassuring?
   Kate laughed and said, "Sure.  Just so it's the right one or two
pieces."
   That night, our loving was sweet, long and tender -- most of the time.
BB told me, "We want to ensure you remember who you're fighting for." As if
I could forget our _merges_ of ecstasy.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 1/6)
   The Captain wouldn't let the wimmin do their makeover on the _Columbia_.
Spoilsport!  I'm sure we would have put floral designs over the entire
outside hull.  Grin.
   They had the hull and drive assembled enough to do the "launching" by
mid-morning Saturday.  The _Columbia_ sat in Harry's hangar bay surrounded
by equipment, wires, hoses and all the other associated test gear.
   There was tons of room in the cheap seats, but Admiral Reynolds (giggle)
got a front-row seat for his physical body.  Almost the entire crew and the
civilian team sat in, too.  The rest of the crew was inside the hull.
   Fortunately, there weren't any long speeches.  Bob told us, "The
_Columbia_ is the latest in a long line of explorers and honored war ships.
It represents a major step in our fight for freedom."
   They'd even conjured up a sweet young thang with a bottle of champagne
to do the naming.  She broke the bottle on the first swing.  The _Columbia_
obligingly rose up about three feet then settled back down again.  Launched
under her own power!  (Ships are usually female.  That's appropriate,
right?)
   The _Columbia_ carried three small boats or shuttles.  Not that we
actually needed them to get around, but that was part of the design.  They
were setting up everything to be run manually -- as the Cel design mandated
-- while jiggering stuff with our own spirit magic.
   This was a just in case.  What if they ran into something which shut
down their spirit powers?  There's still one hell of a lot we didn't know.
If they ran into someone else, they might have visitors.  We wanted to
appear like a plain, ordinary Cel ship on the outside.
   Heh.  Three small boats and three Babies Within.  Heh.
   While the hangar workers swarmed back to their tasks, the rest of us
partied.  Why not?  Eire's Haven and Tavern were available; if there wasn't
room in either of them, there were other Taverns and bars scattered around
the solar system.  Funny how Cullen Hotels and Tavern Enterprises ran most
of them.
   Sean and harem were off doing two of their seminars, so they had to miss
out.  I was sure they'd make up for it later.  Sherry and I made a big note
to have at least one major orgy -- oops, that's "party" -- before the
_Columbia_ headed out.
   Admiral Bob, the Captain and XO went back to work, too.  They were
learning every little seam, rivet, circuit and component in the entire
ship. Ouch.  Well, it did make sense.  The more one knows about something,
the better the control.  The Book had pointed that out a long time (it
seemed) ago.  Well, we had ways to help him relax.  Heh.
   Since Bob was otherwise engaged, Mario, Sherry and I took off for the
McDonnal pub; Sean, the harem and the N&Bs joined us after their two
seminars.  The usual suspects were gathered and were checking out Liam's
latest acquisitions.
   Seamus was looking a bit, em, weary.  The McDonnal Passion Posse was
ensuring he kept warm by taking turns snuggling up.  He told me, "They're
taking pity on an old man in his last days.  I'm feeling my age; the body's
winding down."
   Ellen Shannon giggled and said, "We feel his age every chance we get. 
He may be winding down, but his spring's gonna break at a good time if we
can help it."
   Yeh, that's the way to go, all right.  Heh.
   We checked out the latest batches of moonshine; it was actually pretty
decent.  Liam told us, "We've had some decent results with aging in a fold.
SW is backing us with research help since it will probably have other
applications.  Besides, we bribed several key SW players; they get to do
taste testing.  Heh."
   ------
   (Sunday 1/7)
   The crew took the _Columbia_ out for her "sea trials." That's where they
see what she'll actually do and try to break things; it's mainly for
propulsion and navigation.  They needed Admiral Bob for that, so the rest
of N&B gang and the entire OTL gang went back to Ireland.
   The Passion Posse was in evidence, but no Seamus.  Emer McCarthy laughed
and told us, "He went in style.  He'd just finished a home run with each of
us when his heart gave out."
   Seamus popped in about then.  _"Sure and it was the best send off I
could ever have hoped for.  It'll be one of my fondest memories."_
   He didn't have any immediate plans for the future; he was just gonna
hang around and relax for a while.  112 years or so in a body could make
one a bit weary.
   Sherry and I got the idea about the same time.  I asked, "Seamus, what
about living in Southern California?"
   I had one more male Baby Within which needed a spirit, and here was a
well-known, well-educated and competent one -- and Irish.
   The Passion Posse was all for it.  They promptly dragged him off to
North Hollywood to show him the sights.  Of course, they were probably a
bit biased; they'd seen the best side of it from Ceann's Mor honoring room.
Heh.
   They popped back after an hour.  Seamus said, _"You've got a deal."_
   Well, that was a good excuse for a wake, party and celebration.  His
body had already been cremated, and they'd already scheduled the wake for
that evening.  Good timing!
   Party we did.  After the second glass, even the worst of the moonshine
was pretty dayum good!  The Passion Posse got pretty wasted -- young-uns
gotta learn how to hold their liquor (By the ears.  Heh.) -- then started
eyeballing Mario pretty intensely.
   We NH and OTL ladies immediately went into a somewhat-unsteady huddle
with them and pointed out all his weaknesses.  Of course, we didn't tell
them he'd probably lay so much Spanish lovin' on them they'd be wasted for
a couple of days.  Hehehehe.
   They pounced on him like Geeser on dinner and dragged him away as he
protested his extreme youthfulness and innocence.  Yeh, right.
   PVC and the Wild Bunch were very willing to ensure Seamus got a good
edumication in the Burbank/North Hollywood culture and would get along well
with his new brother and sister.  Janet said, _"Next time you see him,
he'll be talking like a native."_
   Off he went to his doom!  Now he'd be his own relative; let the
genealogists figure out the relationship.  Heh.
   ------
   BOB (Monday 1/8)
   Space trials were very interesting.  All the major equipment except the
armament was installed and supposedly operational.  The Captain beat the
crap out of _Columbia_ with radical maneuvers, cruising at different speeds
to check for vibration and sudden crash stops.  Our ABS (anti-lock braking
system) worked great.  Grin.
   We broke a few small joints outside the anti-gravity shield, nothing
major.  We did find the power leads to the drives got much warmer than we'd
predicted at the full acceleration of 107.8 gravities (110% rated).  Mick
and the engineering team had calculated the increased load, but the
practicality was a touch short.
   Everything else worked pretty dayum good.  During manual maneuvering, we
made a ten-page punch list of minor modifications to the controls, such as
providing more physical feedback to the main control stick, rearranging a
few gages and moving several monitors.
   The AIs had settled on a clone system for the _Columbia_.  It had the
best/fastest memory and processor they had, the optimum operating system
for what it was to do and all the physical connections were consistent.  We
named her "Freda Columbia;" her public talking head was a Cel and a
redheaded half-Human in private.  She even had a touch of the Dublin accent
and slang.  Heh.
   She was our main navigator, research repository, weapons server and
internal facilities manager.  Her hardware was spread throughout the hull
with the CPUs and services distributed too.  That way, if part of her was
damaged, only that part was affected; it would be extremely difficult to
destroy her completely as long as part of her remained.
   Power to the entire ship was the main consideration.  For this ship
size, the Cels normally used a set of nuclear batteries.  We did the same,
only we also scattered huge accumulators everywhere we could.  For whatever
reason, a nuclear battery of that design emitted some detectable EMF noise
while accumulators were completely "quiet."
   When running on accumulators, the _Columbia_ was so dayum near
emission-free, the best Cel detectors had to be within a half-kilometer of
her to start picking anything up.  We had some other tricks up our sleeve
to make her even harder to spot; we were going on a stealth run and
pickpocket trip, not counting coup.
   We had her back in the hanger and the rework started by Monday morning.
The Captain kicked me out, "Go home and study.  *I* get to check you out on
the drive control system, so get cracking." Don't I get any respect from
anyone?
   At Clann Meeting, I announced we had 600 million and 2 million Clanns.
Not a big increase, which I thought was good for now.  That was about 13%
of the world population.  From the reports filtered up from the regional
reps, the Clanns were concentrating on getting as many of their people
trained and educated as much as possible.
   Mick was pumping out around 5,000 desktop systems a day so there was
going to be plenty to go around.  We were using the stored spare monitors,
keyboards and such so they wouldn't go "stale." Heh.  208,000 years minimum
might already be considered stale.
   Everything had been altered a bit to look pretty much like standard
state-of-the-art Earth computers complete with fake brand labels.  Alice
was handling the distribution to the various Clanns and regions; that type
of thing was her area of expertise anyway.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Tuesday 1/9)
   The _Columbia_'s initial trials were interesting.  Though we didn't
interfere, there were probably several million observers at any one time
_watching_ the fun.  Dayum, the Captain had more moves than a teeny-bopper
at a retro disco party!  Seemed the _Columbia_ could move pretty much any
direction at will.
   The propulsion system wasn't a reaction drive like a rocket; it was
directed electronically.  It was most efficient while boosting forward
through the long axis of the hull but could do pretty good the other
directions.  Between Freda and the crew, they could flip her end-for-end in
less than a second at full boost.
   Harry told us the Cels weren't anywhere near that good.  We humans did
bring something to the table.
   Bob was spending almost every spare moment studying _Columbia_'s
systems. Seemed the Captain was gonna check him out personally.  Heh.  Good
on him!
   The gang got Carmel Malone over for the evening.  Not that we wanted to
check her out, mind you.  It was just that as Bob's steward she was
probably gonna the most personally involved with him of the crew while they
were on their road trip.
   Sherry asked her, "Any trouble getting a bit of liberty?  With all the
construction and testing, I figured everyone would be going 24/7."
   Carmel laughed and told us, "Well, when word filters down that the
Ceann-Mate Mor wants a word with you, a liberty request gets approved in
record time.  Rank Has Its Privileges, right?"
   Right.  As it dayum well should.  Anyway, Carmel was a really nice Irish
lady.  She was 22, quite single and had finished a degree in mechanical
engineering in June last year.  She'd put herself through college by
waitressing; by the time she was done, she'd been the lead waitress over
about 30 others.  Not shabby.
   She filled us in from a crewperson's viewpoint.  "Almost everyone has
two duties.  During normal cruising, for example, I'm the Admiral's
steward. During Battle Stations, though, I'm a missile launcher."
   Why a missile launcher?  Well, she had a couple thousand lifetimes
experience as a technician (maintenance and repair), an operator (bang and
boom!) and as an instructor.
   She told us, "The Cel technology is pretty, em, primitive.  To Earth
eyes, it's probably a wonder, but it's barely adequate.  Since we're going
to pretend we're Cels, we're keeping the appearance of the technology. 
Just like we beefed up the anti-gravity and other parts of the drive
system, we're jiggering the weapons a bit, too."
   Good.  If Bob was going into harm's way, we didn't want him to be
carrying a rock when he could have at least a sword.
   We had a great time with her.  Bob kept his mouth shut most of the time
-- in fact, we kicked him out after a while to go study.  Yeh, she could
handle Irish whiskey really well, too.
   She only had six hours before she had to be back to the ship to sleep so
she could go at it more the next day.  So, we put off the fun and games
until some other time.  She looked really tasty, for sure!
   ------
   Late Wednesday, they'd finished fitting out the _Columbia_'s weapons
systems.  Bob seemed to understand what they did since he'd spent pretty
much every waking and sleeping minute studying.
   There were four missile launchers and eight "gun" emplacements.  The
guns/artillery were standard Cel stuff with a few, em, SW jiggers.  SW had
reverse-engineered the standard presser beam circuitry, did a lot of math
and had come up with a recoilless rail gun.
   One could launch solid shells, explosive shells and the equivalent of
buckshot.  With six-meter launching barrels, they could launch a six-inch
diameter projectile with something like 100,000 gravities of acceleration.
You figure out the relative speed; it took about 4 seconds to get to a
target 10 kilometers away.
   Each gun and missile emplacement had one of Freda's nodes helping
control it.  Since they were set up to be independent, they'd keep going as
long as they had power.
   They were planning on using the buckshot mainly as a defense against
incoming missiles and shells, like the phalanx Close In Weapon System the
current Navy used.  Since there appeared to be nothing in the Cel
literature about them, they figured it might be a bit of a surprise.
   Carmel ran one of the missile launchers.  They had six-meter tubes with
presser beams which could launch the missiles with up to 8,000 gravities.
After the missile had cleared the tube, its own propulsion system kicked in
and continued to accelerate itself at about 1,000 gravities (variable, of
course) for up to 3 minutes.  Either Freda or the operator could maneuver
it as much as they wished.  Of course, at the speed it was going, there
wasn't gonna be a lot of time to do anything fancy.
   They carried payloads of conventional Cel explosives; they'd jiggered
some to carry multiple warheads of both explosives and buckshot.  Again,
the Cel literature had no data on multiple warheads or the buckshot. 
Hopefully, they'd never be used.
   Actually installing them only took a couple hours.  The gunners and
launchers supervised loading 20,000 rounds (each emplacement) and a
thousand missiles per emplacement.  The missiles were about two feet long
and were mostly payload, so they could pack quite a few away.
   ------
   BOB
   It was only a hop to Alpha Centauri, not even a jump.  Grin.  Yeh, it
had some possible colonization planets, but also had plenty of loose rock
around.  It was a trinary system with their Oort Clouds almost overlapping,
so we had plenty of targets.
   We literally had a blast.  The Cel explosives were dayum efficient just
on their own; a single-warhead missile could reduce a rock a kilometer
across into pebbles.
   The guns were just as fun.  The solid shells were harder than diamond
and were designed to pierce armor.  With our guns, we could send off an
armor-piercer with an explosive or buckshot shell about 100 milliseconds
right behind it.  Getting hit with one of those would ruin someone's day.
   Now, with Freda helping, we could make a hole with an armor piercer and
run a missile or explosive projectile through right behind it.  Ouch.
   Our defenses were our offensive armament, about a foot of armor plate
and a "normal" _touch_ field.  We could chase, run and fight faster and
harder than any Cel ship the AIs could find.  And that was before we
started playing more of our spirit tricks.
   We made a lot of big rocks into little ones, got so we (Freda and the
gunners/launchers) could hit a dime at 1,000 kilometers with the missiles
and could handle anything coming at us up to something ten times our size.
Fairly decent, if you asked me, and the Captain did.
   I told him, "It would really be nice if we never had to use any of this.
However, we'll have to decide each meeting or engagement on its own merits.
In an emergency, you have complete freedom to decide on an attack or
defense as you deem necessary.  How much of either will again be up to you.
   "Yeh, if we've got time we can have a confab about something.  Most of
the time, we probably won't have that luxury.  Don't wait for me to
back-seat drive you; I'll keep my mouth shut unless I see something
glaring."
   Hell, those were broader orders than any of them had usually operated
on. In essence, we'd wage unrestricted warfare on anyone we met if we
thought it was necessary.  Still, our expedition plan was to remain
completely unnoticed.
   We got back home Saturday morning after our fun and games.  We had a
punch list that wouldn't quit; nothing major, just lots of tweaks.
   SW hadn't been taking time off while we were gone, either.  They'd done
enough research on the Cullen shield to make a mechanical equivalent.  It
wasn't perfect; the big zapper at 100% got through a bit, but it was
several orders of magnitude better than we'd had before.
   They'd also isolated the exact circuitry and had reverse-engineered some
of the math which made the zappers work.  By stripping off the garbage
circuitry and transmission elements and putting in tuned arrays, they could
do the same amount of "damage" with a kilowatt of power as the original
zapper had done with 1,000 megawatts.  You betcha we were gonna have both a
zapper and a Cullen shield on the _Columbia_.
   Since we'd proven the missiles and artillery to be workable, the War
Council appointed a System General.  She would honcho the defenses of our
solar system.  General Shelly was an old veteran of many wars -- body age
of around 40 -- and jumped to work like a mother hen saving her chicks. 
That might be exactly the case.
   Let's not forget the home life, either.  Mr.  Pompous Principal was
solemnly executed in the evening.  Yeh, he crapped his drawers several
times on the way, just as we'd expected.  That was one more slime out of
the way in a djinn bottle.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Sunday 1/14)
   With Bob gone so much, I had plenty of time to be nosey in other places.
Mario and Sherry were putting in time at SW, so I made a tour of the
Waystation.
   In my estimation, they'd done an excellent job.  The place was clean,
tidy and about 25% full.  Comparing it to the Mesa facility, I'd say we
were a lot further along than they were at the same time.  Then again, Sean
hadn't had the advantage of tons of donations at the start and leprechaun
help during the night.  Heh.
   Fillmore and Rhapsody were continuing to put out the promo, too.  Betcha
we'd have lots more clients by this time in February.  That's probably a
real good thing, too.  I remembered lots of times when I was lost, lonely
and afraid; something like the Waystation would really have helped.
   Anyway, the Conference Center was ready!  It was a great excuse for a
Grand Opening Party.  I talked Bob, Carmel, the Captain and XO into joining
us.
   The place was great.  I could tell the women had been involved with the
restrooms at least.  Grin.  It was snug when needed and wide open when
appropriate.  They'd done a great design.  Between being able to change the
size of the meeting rooms on a moment's notice and the number of people the
main arena could hold, we could handle two people or 50,000.  And, there
was still room to expand if we wanted.
   I got a look at the reservation book.  There were several weddings
already scheduled -- more parties -- and lots of meetings.  It looked as if
it would break even on cash flow the first month.  Not that it took much
cash for fixed expenses; we supplied our own water and power.
   The chefs did really good.  I knew I wouldn't have wanted to cook for
possibly several million people!  No, there weren't that many bodies which
came through that we were aware of, but there sure were plenty of spirit
visitors checking out the place.
   For not being Irish, the Captain and XO did pretty good.  Sherry, Carmel
and I decided we'd better check the stock in the Admiral's cabin; the way
the three of them were going through it, the three cases we'd been planning
might last a week.
   ------
   (Monday 1/15)
   Since we had an inside line to the Admiral, the NH gang got pretty
frequent updates when Bob wasn't studying or off at the _Columbia_ checking
out stuff.  General Shelly had asked Harry the right question.  It turned
out there were several hundred dimensional folds scattered around the
system.
   They were missile and artillery emplacements.  They were very old --
probably 750,000 elapsed years at least -- so needed a good going over.  It
seemed the Cels only knew one way to make a fold and that ended up at about
a 2 X time increase inside.
   Anyway, General Shelly got together with Harry and Mick so they were
porting old missiles, launchers, shells, etc.  to several facilities for
refabrication.  With almost all the facilities up to operating temperature
with food and atmosphere, it was no big deal to get the manufacturing
equipment working again.
   Mick told us, "The larger facilities have some idiot savants which run
the equipment.  I'm hooked in to keep an eye on them, but so far they've
been doing just fine.  Since we're re-using about 98% of the original
armament, we're getting an excellent turn-around time."
   General Shelly figured we'd have all the stations fully refurbished
within a month.  Not that it took that long to refabricate, but it all had
to be reinstalled and checked out.  The emplacements were meant to be both
remotely and locally controlled, so General Shelly had teams bopping around
ensuring they were properly hooked into our AI network.
   Sherry asked the dumb question this time, "Harry, if the Oort Cloud
transceiver was in a fold, then all these emplacements were in folds, what
else is stashed away in folds and how do we find them?"
   Well, that got a flood of data back.  It seemed there were several
thousand folds throughout the system.  Among the AIs, they were able to
give us the locations and listed contents.  Among the most interesting for
the moment was lots of spare parts (not needed for the transceiver),
stockpiles of rare or hard to extract elements or minerals, literally tons
of artillery "shells" which were affected by age, and several with extra
computer data blocks.
   SW immediately got to work with Harry on a general long-range fold
detector.  To the usual Cel or Human instrumentation, they simply didn't
exist; one could literally drive a truck through one with no effect.
   Yeh, SW immediately started digging out the computer data blocks.  Why
would they be stored away?  Must be either very interesting or very
alarming.
   Okay.  We let the right teams get on with our stuff while we went to
Clann meeting.  Bob announced we had 800 million and 2.1 million Clanns. 
All the Clanns were concentrating on getting all their members fully
trained in the spirit technology, current education and training, and
combing their memories for useful things.  At least we had a willing and
able population to help defend the place!
   ------
   (Tuesday 1/16)
   Tuesday, we played hooky at Liam's pub for a while.  He brought us up to
date on the Selene City Distillery, "Seems the dimensional folds are fairly
easy to create once one has the calculations right.  The Cels seemed to
have used one variable -- the size needed.  That's why there's only one
time rate inside.
   "Probably as soon as they found something that worked, they stopped
development.  Anyway, SW and the Distillery seems to have cracked it."
   They could now create a fold of pretty much any size with a large range
of time differences.  The time differences so far could range from several
million to one down to zero.  That several million was both lag and lead;
in other words, time inside could pass either that much faster or slower
than outside.
   Of course, the obvious application was aging whiskey!  Set up some
automatic cask rotators, pop a fold around them and you'd have 100-year-old
whiskey in an hour.  Now *that* was a breakthrough!
   They'd had excellent success.  Seemed that even the most mediocre
moonshine improves dramatically when aged that long.  They were doing
studies on which mashes and distilling techniques worked "the best." Then
again, it was a matter of individual taste, too.
   It would work for making wine, too.  That led to brandy, vodka (for the
XO), tequila and other Real Good Things.  The Distillery was making
agreements right and left with other one-of-us whiskey makers and wine
makers to help them out.  Well, that was one major issue probably under
control: we could make usquebaugh pretty much anywhere!
Sherry and I immediately ensured Liam knew Admiral Bob was would be in
grave need of special stores during the voyage.  Liam laughed and said,
"Don't you worry, Kat, we've already made arrangements with Carmel Malone
for a wide variety of excellent spirits.  Having only one can get a bit
boring, even if it is The Best."
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 1/18)
   One tactic we'd decided on for the expedition was to jump to an area
which had debris, rocks, asteroids or whatever.  We figured the _Columbia_
could hide a lot easier as a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Harry (and now
Freda) had dayum good maps of the known systems in our third of the galaxy,
so we already had plenty of reliable coordinates.
   A system's Oort Cloud would probably do fine.  The light year or so to
the star was no barrier; even a newbie spirit could _inspect_, _touch_ and
_move_ that far.
   Since the Oort Cloud had lots of comets and rocks, we'd make the
_Columbia_ be a rock.  After a little design work, Mick pumped out a hull
extension in several pieces.  It would fit over the outside (with
appropriate ports for the landing bays and weapons emplacements) and to the
normal Cel instrumentation would appear to be a slightly misshapen hunk of
innocuous stuff, especially after we put a small cleas around it.
   The engineers spent most of the day putting it on.  They'd calculated it
would stand up to about eight gravities, so we'd still appear to be within
the usual Cel technology boundaries.
   According to our AIs' records, the decoy idea would be new.  We would
end up with _Columbia_ appearing to be a slightly-odd Cel ship, but we'd
have all sorts of extra hidden (hopefully) jiggers and twists.  We could
cast off the decoy shell in about a second if we need to do so; at only a
couple hundred kilotons weight, it shouldn't really affect _Columbia_'s
maneuverability very much.
   So between jumping to an Oort Cloud and looking like any other piece of
rock, we shouldn't attract much attention.  If we did, well, them were the
breaks.  We could still run or fight with our jiggered Cel technology, use
our _touch_ shields for defense, probes and _touches_ for offense or simply
jump our sweet arses outta there.  We had options; we just didn't want to
use them unless they were actually necessary.
   ------
   (Friday 1/19)
   We took the _Columbia_ with her new shell out for a testing run.  Yeh,
we could break it off with nine gravities all right.  No big deal, it took
less than fifteen minutes to reattach.  We could open a port in it and
launch a missile or fire artillery in one second.  If we *really* needed
to, we could fire right through it and just punch a hole through the port
door.  No big deal.
   By Sunday morning, we had a newly-built decoy hull (we'd battered the
prototype into lots of little pieces), and the engineers and crew were
doing the final outfitting and stocking.  Captain Adi told me, "We don't
need you for any of this.  Go get drunk, get laid really well and think of
good strategies in your spare time." Sounded great to me!
   So, the NH gang, the N&B gang, the OTL gang and assorted young-uns took
off to Liam's pub for the day.  The McDonnal Passion Posse was eyeballing
one of Seamus' friends pretty good; maybe he was next on their hit list?
   Our young-uns immediately got together with them and took off for some
inter-Clann technology sharing.  Right.  They'd all probably end up
corrupted the same way.
   The Selene City Distillery of Fine Irish Spirits was going full blast.
While the actual production line was still the prototypes in Selene City,
they had the aging process down pretty dayum good.  *Everything* tasted
excellent.
   Liam told us, "We've leased one of the medium-sized facilities on Mars
and are building a full-scale line.  Probably within a month, we'll be able
to produce well over a thousand bottles a day of anything from vodka for
the XO to single-malt Scotch and Irish whiskey.  Probably our only limit
will be getting enough of the right kind of barley or whatever we need to
create the mashes."
   Heh.  The facility had a mid-sized fabricator.  Mick had set up the
controlling computer so it could pump out bottles, kegs, barrels, corks,
labels and anything else they needed for a complete product.  The raw
materials were readily available to any spirit, so there weren't many
barriers to a lot of the production.
   They were marketing to ones of us for now.  In the works were a couple
companies they were gonna use for "importing" the stuff to various
countries.  In the meantime, ones of us would bootleg it in and stash it --
usually in an underground stash like OTL and NH were using.
   Besides being so dayum good, they could sell a bottle of really good
hooch for about 20 USD which would ordinarily cost at least 50 USD after
all the import tariffs, taxes and such.  The Selene City Distillery of Fine
Irish Spirits was already showing a tidy profit.
   We drank, sobered up, sang clean and dirty Irish songs and limericks
from several thousand years of history and had a ball.  The young-uns
zipped back in towards the end looking a bit disheveled but quite happy. 
The McDonnal Passion Posse immediately targeted their next victim and went
to work.  He'd probably do okay for a while; he was only 98.  Hehehehe.
   Well, the young-uns knew their way home.  The NH gang went over to OTL
to relax and recover from all the fun.  Funny how we could recover in a
half hour.
   Our loving was long, tender and heart-achingly intimate.  Both Clanns
were sending people on a mission full of unknown risks and dangers.  Our
wonderful _merges_ at the end were full of joy and ecstasy; we could hold a
full _merge_ for over a minute!
   ------
   (Monday 1/22)
   We were on the final countdown to the expedition launch.  The final
stocking was going great; while there was lots of "stuff" we were taking,
we also had plenty of room.  Everything had to be fully secured (strapped
down so it wouldn't bounce around or break), but with having quartermasters
with thousands of lifetimes of experience, that was mainly a matter of
sorting out where it was to be put.
   At Clann meeting, I announced 850 million and 2.3 million Clanns.  I
told them, "We're scheduled to launch next Saturday.  Continue to flourish
and prosper in your personal lives, aid and assist General Shelly's effort
to make our current home secure and continue to do what you've been doing
in your training and education.  I have only glowing reports of how well
you are doing.  Good on ya!  On *all* of ya!"
   ------
   (Thursday 1/25)
   We moved everyone aboard the _Columbia_.  Personal belongings, uniforms
(nothing fancy, just snug body-armor clothing with some post markings) and
other personal gear went in and got stowed away.
   Carmel assured me that my personal larder was stocked with my favorite
goodies.  "We've had a couple special deliveries from The Selene City
Distillery of Fine Irish Spirits.  Fortunately, we've got a *big* pantry."
   Good.  Lots of usquebaugh would ease the pain.  Heh.
   Part of the move aboard was an open house for the crew's and scout
team's relatives and friends.  Kat and Sherry immediately went into a
huddle with Carmel which left Mario and me to roam around the ship.  Mario
told me, "Of course they're plotting on who should be warming your bed when
you have any free time.  There's probably only 30 or 40 females aboard
interested in Ceann Mor and the Sorcerer's Wand.  Then again, maybe some of
them are thinking of ways to offend you so they get a good dose of the Rod
of Chastisement, too.  Hehehehe."
   Arg.  Pile all that onto a Maggie-cackle with a Spanish accent. 
Double-arg.
   ------
   (Friday 1/26)
   Being an Admiral had its perks.  While Carmel "stood guard," Kat, Sherry
and I spent a final night of sweet loving.  We still didn't know if we
could communicate or teleport once we got beyond the previously-tested
1,000 or so parsecs; we could be cut off completely for most of the
expedition's duration.
   ------
   (Saturday 1/27)
   In the morning, there were quite a few, em, guests for breakfast. 
Captain Adi guessed a good 90% of the crew had had their SOs aboard last
night.  "Those that don't have an SO seemed to have plenty of volunteers to
help aid the pain of departing.  Heh." He didn't cackle quite like Maggie,
but it was close.  Add on a touch of Yiddish accent and it was quite
impressive.
   During our final goodbye hugs, Kat told me, "Carmel has firm
instructions that you don't get cold when you sleep.  Don't disappoint
her." It was obvious I'd gained Yet Another Social Secretary.
   The first hop to Alpha Centauri was completely known and routine.  With
our course already plotted, we set up for the first long jump into the
unknown.
   We went to General Quarters.  Working as a spirit team, the navigation
section spotted the target from Freda's coordinates then put a remote view
on the screens.  A full spherical full EMS sweep showed rocks and comets in
abundance; we'd hit the Oort Cloud as expected.
   Next they ported a small sensor package with transducer connections back
to the _Columbia_.  It had the full range of Cel (and jiggered) technology
of passive and active sensors across everything measurable.  A ten-minute
sweep showed everything to be as expected, that is, nothing "un-natural"
detected.
   Captain Adi glanced at me and asked, "Admiral Reynolds, permission to
proceed?"
   "Permission granted.  Proceed at will."
   He told the crew, "Do it!"
   Chapter 25
   KATHLEEN (Saturday 1/27)
   We felt the links break; Margaret, George and Bob were gone.
   Since none of us knew what they were going to run into, one of the main
security points was that they'd be almost completely isolated.  For all we
knew, the dragons or whatever else could trace our _link_ and power-sharing
nodes, so they were to be shut down unless specifically permitted.
   There'd be no porting into the ship, either.  Dayum, and I was gonna
send Bob a fruitcake, too!  Grin.
   Freda Columbia had one network node which was directly to the AIs in
Selene City.  SW had made its best shot at reverse engineering the
principles and had come up with a set of two uniquely-tuned connections. 
They calculated there was something like a 300 trillion to one probability
someone could duplicate the tuning and intercept the signal.
   How far it would work was part of the testing they'd be doing.  They'd
turn it on and attempt to connect only when they felt it was secure. 
They'd be testing mental links and ports, too, at the same time.  We shall
see.  We hoped we'd have communication, but weren't counting on it.
   Well, it was now hurry up and wait.  We already knew who the "expedition
widows" were so Sean and I sponsored a send-off party at the Ganymede
Eire's Rest for us.  500 people can get pretty well soused in a couple
hours; some didn't take that long.
   We counted Mario as a "widow" too, so he came along to keep an eye on us
and to carry us off if Sherry or I got too out of control.  Well, that
didn't happen; instead we ended up at OTL with Sean and harem consoling
each other -- and consoling and consoling and consoling the rest of the
night.  Grin.
   ------
   BOB
   I felt the links break and shut down my power-sharing and communication
nodes to everyone on Krle.  We were now independent.
   Freda came back up well within the expected five seconds; we'd found she
got a bit, em, confused if she was running during a port.  She'd go into
hibernation mode and power down the last five seconds before a jump; the
helmsman had the responsibility of pushing the button to bring her back up.
   I had a chair on the bridge with a screen for Freda and whatever else.
It even had a coffee cup holder to match every other station's chair on the
bridge.  The Earth's Navy runs on the stuff; I guessed I'd learn, too.
   The screens showed exactly what we expected.  Freda's confirmation scan
showed we were exactly where we'd expected to be.  There were lots of rocks
in the distance; the Oort Cloud usually isn't really crowded at all.  The
250-parsec jump had been precisely on target.
   This was System Alpha.  The Sperk names Freda had for pretty much every
other system were either unpronounceable, unspellable, untranslatable or
any combination of un-ables.  The Earth "names" were all just numbers in a
catalog so we'd just assigned an arbitrary name ourselves.  Let the
computers keep track of the cross-references.
   Freda's data said this system had a habitable planet (By Cel and Human
standards at least; other races might have different criteria.).  The
civilian section swung into full data collection mode.  I watched the data
pop up on various screens; they were mapping what they'd found as they
went.
   Yeh, it was a solar system with a sun, several assorted planets and an
Oort Cloud.  No Asteroid Belt here, though.  We/they were using all the
passive Cel instrumentation they could first; we didn't know if there was
any instrumentation the dragons might have which could detect a mental
_inspection_; we'd wait for the mundane results before we start those.
   After fifteen minutes of looking at the data popping up, Captain Adi
announced, "Stand down from General Quarters.  Set the normal underway
watch."
   A couple of the crew on the bridge got relieved; I decided to sit for a
while.  For what ever reason, I hadn't been assigned a General Quarters
station or a watch rotation.  Yeh, that's a perk, I guess.  I'd be on duty
24/7 actually, just like the Captain and XO.
   I snagged a cup of coffee; might as well get started.  Surprisingly, it
wasn't bitter and tasted almost like it smelled.  The bridge steward told
me, "Special blend.  No bargain brands on this ship!  It sure isn't Earth
Navy coffee!" I could live with it.
   So, most of us just waited for data.  So far, we were doing our best to
make like a rock.  I guessed we succeeded, because no dragons or other
nasty things came down on us.  Grin.
   Each crew member (ship and civilian) had a tiny earpiece and throat mike
for communication.  They could talk with each other (Freda would route as
needed.) or with Freda.  She could handle full communication sessions with
everyone at once if needed; she was designed for up to 1,000.
   Okay.  If the passive scan went as expected, it would be another hour
before anything else happened.  So, I went exploring.
   First stop was my cabin.  Carmel was there doing whatever a steward
does. At this particular time she was going through my clothes and ensuring
the thread count was proper on my handkerchiefs (Hell, I didn't know what
she was doing.  Grin.).
   She smiled and handed me an envelope.  She told me, "Firm orders from
the boss.  It was to be delivered after the first jump."
   Inside was a paper declaring Carmel Malone and Bridget McLennan to be
"Certified Social Secretaries" to Ceann Mor with all the accompanying
duties, responsibilities and rights for the duration of the expedition. 
Kat, Sherry, Mario, Sarah and Julio had signed it.
   I laughed.  Here I'd been thinking I'd have a vacation from that.  I
asked Carmel, "You know what this is?"
   "I've got a couple guesses.  It probably tells you to sleep tight and
not to let the bedbugs bite.  Orders from the boss could be most anything."
   Saucy wench.  I could see the need for the Rod of Chastisement building
up.  Heh.  I handed the "appointment" to her.  "Seems like you've got an
extra duty."
   She read it over and grinned.  "Well, I got warnings from your Clann,
Clann Cullen and about a dozen others that I was to take care of you really
well.  I guess this gives us complete control over your social engagements,
right?  Maggie already informed me she's gonna be keeping a real close eye
on you too.  Hehehehe."
   Arg.  Maggie must have coached her already.  I was doomed.
   Carmel chortled, "There's only 40 females aboard.  We're scheduled for
some 30 days, so that means you've gotta double up some nights.  Hehehehe."
   I don't get no respect.  Wasn't I supposed to be an Admiral or
something? She got a big mark on her To Be Chastised tally sheet.
   As my steward and Admiral's Aide, she was "on watch" the same time I was
except during General Quarters.  Basically, that meant she'd be available
24/7, just like the rest of us honchos.  Heh.  Maybe I could keep her awake
until her body died.  Heh.
   She made the envelope vanish.  "This is mine now.  *You*'re mine now and
don't you forget it!" Dayum Irishwomen!  The moment you think you're free
for a moment, they put their big ole thumbs right on ya.  Grin.
   I told her, "Yes, Ma'am.  I'll do my best to forget it."
   I drifted back to the bridge and tried another cup of coffee.  It was
still pretty good.
   The scout crew was ready to start the active scanning; Captain Adi gave
the order to start.  The Cel active detection was sorta like radar: send
out a pulse and "listen" to what comes back.  In this case, it was a
quantum resonance pulse of a specific nature.  It was designed to detect
planets, metals, and other matter so a ship wouldn't run into them while
cruising.  Probably running into a kilometer-sized rock at faster than
light speed could ruin one's day.
   They could control the direction, shape and distance of the pulses, so
Freda showed me the pulse covered the entire system including the Oort
Cloud.  We were looking for whatever to start with, then we could narrow
pulses down to anything which looked interesting.
   No one seemed to get really excited over the data coming back, so it
must have been routine.  We shall see; they'd probably spend another couple
hours at it before we started our own _inspections_.
   So far we hadn't found anything indicating that the system was
inhabited, so we were doing a "standard" scan for a potential colony. 
Hell, at only 248 parsecs from Krle, this was a stroll across the room.  We
shall see.
   I roamed some of the rest of the _Columbia_.  Yeh, I'd studied the
layout and systems, now I wanted to put the eyeball on things.
   The scout crew had their own quarters and working spaces set up, and
there was still plenty of room to spread out.  Maggie and George had their
own cabin and had set up shop in a conference room which could hold 20 to
30 others.  They weren't part of the scanning team, so they were busy
ensuring their "stuff" was organized and making heavy-duty plans about all
the research they were going to get done.
   I hit the exercise room for a half hour.  We were maintaining full Krle
gravity inside, so muscle atrophy from weightlessness definitely wasn't an
issue.  The Cel data indicated low or weightless gravity did affect their
bodies to some extent, but it was mainly in the muscles due to much less
need to work the body against gravity.  With the proper supplements, they'd
found very few other long-term effects.
   Neat!  Someone had set up a virtual golf course.  Freda told me, "I've
got your club patterns; when you're ready, I'll pump you out a set."
   Great!  Maybe I could break par by the time we got back.
   Well, it was time to call it a night.  The crew would do whatever they
had to do, and I guessed that all I really had to do for now was to look
important and impressed.
   The entire crew had already set up their communication and power-sharing
nodes; I was permanently _linked_ to Captain Adi, the XO, Maggie, George
and, yes, Carmel.  I told Carmel, _"I'm going to shower and hit the rack.
See you whenever."_
   _"Whenever, Righteous Bob."_
   She got another mark on the Chastisement List for that cheek.
   The shower was plenty big and there was plenty of hot water.  The
_Columbia_ carried over 100,000 liters of fresh water which was recycled
(Cel technology and through our own spirit filters) so it wasn't an issue.
   There was a convenient plant in my cabin (actually a lot of plants --
care and feeding of them was part of the steward's hat) so I set up my
usual Custom Cloud Cushion and dove in wearing the uniform of the night.
   Heh.  Someone had put up a Cead Mile Failte sign right over the rack
(bed).  Wonder who could have done such a thing?
   Two minutes later, Carmel dove in, too.  She snuggled her (extremely
nice) butt up against my (rapidly responding) Wand and told me, "Kat and
Sherry specifically instructed me on how to keep you from getting chilly at
night." She giggled, grabbed both my hands and pulled them over her (very
yummy) breasts.
   "Now you're required to keep them warm all night."
   I had my orders.  Yeh, such a chore.  Well, the Sorcerer's Grip worked
just fine from behind.  Her nipples swelled up beautifully; I kept a firm
grip on her special love handles so the space ghosts wouldn't get her, and
we drifted off to sleep.
   Our security rules were firm.  The bodies stay inside the _Columbia_
unless on a specific mission.  We were to stay inside the _Columbia_, too.
It was entirely possible we'd have only a second or so warning before
Captain Adi put up a full-spectrum Cullen Shield and jumped off.  Woe to
those who Missed Movement and were left behind!  [In the U.S.  Navy,
Missing Movement (the ship leaves without you) is a major no-no.]
   I had plenty of studying to do, plus the look-important job.  Carmel was
studying a lot, too, so we didn't get bored.  My conference room had a
dozen Freda terminals which we could use remotely, so there were no stops
on studying.  For sure this wasn't Mickey C any more.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Sunday 1/28)
   We did a run to the Rio buffet to get our consolation breakfasts.  We
wondered what Bob, Maggie and George were doing.  We agreed Maggie was
probably glowing pretty good herself right about now.  What about Bob and
Carmel?  Was she glowing?  Hehehehe.
   We went our separate ways after stuffing our faces really good.  Yeh, we
missed our bondmates and cross-bondmates already.  Tough, though.  We
expedition widows decided we should make this a fairly frequent
get-together.  After all, we needed shoulders to cry on, right?  Grin.
   ------
   BOB
   Carmel and I rolled out of the Cloud Cushion when we were ready.  No
hanky-panky, but I snuck in some ear and neck nibbles and left us both
ready for Mor.  Heh.
   After we were dressed (bachelor's dream: same color scheme as
yesterday), Carmel handed me a list of female names.  "Start chatting them
up.  They're all pretty willing.  By the time you lay some of your blarney
on them, they'll be, em, drooling."
   Groan.  Moan.  Complain.
   We went our separate ways for breakfast.  The _Columbia_ was keeping a
Krle-based time for watches and expedition time.  Freda kept a separate
clock from the Cel home planet running plus Sidereal time, and what the AIs
had dug up for Galactic time.
   We had a mess (cafeteria/restaurant/eating room) for everyone.  While
the Captain and I had our own kitchens if desired, I thought I'd eat with
everyone else at least for a while.
   The "usual" military structure is extremely hierarchical and
authoritarian.  Ours was designed almost entirely opposite.  No, it wasn't
a democracy or republic, but was very flat.  The Captain and XO were on top
with department heads below.  The heads directly ran their groups.  The
groups themselves operated horizontally to get things done.  Me?  I was
staff to the Captain and XO and had no real chain of command authority or
watchstanding duties.  Grin.
   Anyway, the breakfast selection was great: cooked to order most
anything, plus standard sausage, scrambled eggs and the like on the steam
table.  The make-your-own waffles caught my eye; I ended up with two (real
maple syrup and fresh strawberries) plus a dozen links of sausage, home
fries and OJ.  Good stuff.
   Yeh, I found Shane, one of the ladies on "the list," right away.  For
whatever reason, she wasn't averse to having me sit next to her and chat
with her and her friends.
   Maggie and George strolled by with their trays full of goodies.  Maggie
whispered, _"Right.  Ceann-trolling already."_ George appeared
spectacularly unaware of the goings on.  Sure.  Maggie had the well-known
glow, so it looked as if she'd caught her own sucker -- I mean fish.  Heh.
   Towards the end of breakfast, Captain Adi announced, "Prepare for our
next jump in two hours at 0900." I guessed our work was done in this
system.
   Shane had gradually scooted over against me during breakfast, and we
ended up playing the Touch Game for a while.  Nice lady!  Grin.  I put a
mental check mark by her name on the To Be Ravished List.  Heh.
   I went back to my chair on the bridge and looked over Freda's report on
the system.  So far, one planet fit our first-pass parameters for
habitability.  No sentient life, but there were about eight billion
Sleepers floating around the system.
   Our spirit scans looked for Sleepers and signs of past or present
civilization.  We'd found several good-sized lots of presumed-fabricated
metal floating between the planets and on the habitable planet itself;
maybe old ships, cities or facilities?  Still, it looked good to me. 
They'd dropped in their wide-area node and stashed away the coordinates.
   We'd checked out our mental links and Freda's link to Krle.  All were
working as expected.
   General Quarters for the jump!  Our target and drills for General
Quarters was fifteen seconds, and we wanted to get down to ten.  It didn't
matter if you were, em, up to something, either.  Pull it out, port on the
uniform (It was body armor and the basis of a vacuum suit, too.) and
headset then port to your station.
   I was already there, so no big deal for me.  The rest of the crew
reported ready within thirteen seconds.  Not bad.
   This jump was 310 parsecs to System Bravo, a system listed as having a
civilization with interstellar space flight which had been part of the Cel
regional alliance.  Well, our passive scan showed no real emissions we'd
expect from a technologically advanced society.
   The active scan showed lots of Cel and other fabricated metal and such
floating throughout the entire system.  The two listed habitable planets
had lots of Cel metal and life, but no technology emissions.
   We settled back to the standard watch after the active scan at GQ.  We
figured to park here for a day or so.  With no one coming to inspect a new
rock in the Oort Cloud, we figured it was pretty secure.
   We weren't jumping straight-line but were meandering a bit to hit stops
which might be, em, interesting.  Freda told me we were actually about 500
parsecs in a straight line from Krle.  Our mental links to Krle still
appeared to work fine.  Freda told me, "The network connection is still
okay.  It's a lot slower with more error correcting.  We shall see."
   Lunch was excellent.  I found another List Lady and talked with her and
her companions.  Carmel strolled by and beamed at me.  _"Good going,
Righteous Bob!"_ Smartarse.  She got another mark on the Chastisement List.
   They were doing a lot of active scanning; the data kept popping up much
the same.  There was plenty of fabricated material around, but nothing
active or emitting.  I kept alert for a GQ call and dove back into my
studies.
   About four hours later, they switched to the _inspections_.  The active
scan hadn't turned up much more than before.  We'd see what the
_inspections_ showed.
   One of the first things which popped up was that there were about eight
billion Sleepers.  Hmm.  Lots less than Krle, for sure.  A couple of the
crew ran a trace for any part of the zapper circuitry; maybe they had an
installation or two, also.
   No.  They found several small matches, just the right size for a
"standard" ship's zapper.  There weren't any signs of large transmitter
arrays anywhere, either.  Quite a difference from Krle.
   There were Cel or equivalent on both habitable planets.  Since we didn't
have any DNA samples from "our" Cel, we couldn't tell for sure anyway.
   There was civilization of sorts on both planets.  We counted about 20
million or so alive population between the two; the rest were Sleepers. 
The analysts SWAG'd they had a civilization level of maybe Earth's 1600s:
feudal farmers and some hunter-gathers.
   There were lots of old ruins full of Cel metal.  There were fusion
reactors, thermionic converters, housing, fabricators and pretty much
everything else we'd found in Selene City.  These however, were either
destroyed -- looked like explosives -- or were shut down and abandoned. 
The SWAG was for over 200,000 Krle years ago.  That's a familiar time span.
   After a trace for computer memory blocks, we found several.  We set up a
"camp" on a convenient rock a third of the way around the Oort Cloud and
tried to power them up.  Yep, most of them came up.  There were no fancy
emissions, alarms or traps they could find.
   Well, we had plenty of goodies for research.  We ported them aboard and
installed a couple in several test systems -- stand alone ones; we weren't
gonna hook anything up to Freda yet.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Monday 1/29)
   We got word from SW that they were still in contact with the _Columbia_.
The mental connection was just as clear as ever, while Freda's connection
was a bit slow.  Still, that wasn't bad for around 500 parsecs.  We'd
expected the mental connections to stay alive since they'd already jumped
1,000 parsecs; we were still testing the long-range network connections. 
It would be nice to have both.
   SW reported all was well.  There'd been some minor surprises, but
nothing threatening.  No word on how well Carmel and Maggie were running
Bob's social life.  Grin.
   David ran the Clann meeting.  He reported 900 million and 2.5 million
Clanns.  "We're leveling off now.  We'd like to get pretty well caught up
in our training before we go off on another expansion.  The Clanns Council
is hoping the expedition will give us enough information to make informed
judgments and decisions on our next steps."
   General Shelly was going full speed ahead on the solar system defenses.
Several of the previously-hidden emplacements were back to full operational
specifications; they were tucked back in dimensional folds -- at 1 to
1,000,000 minus this time.  No reason to let the renovations age.  Heh.
   ------
   BOB (Tuesday 1/30)
   Monday "night," Shane came knocking on our door.  Carmel invited her in
and set us (all three of us; she wasn't shy) up with some of The Best.  We
had a relaxing chat with her; she was an electronics expert, part of the
navigation team and smelled great.
   I popped The Question to her and she almost came unglued.  "Yes!  Oh,
my, yes!" I took a WAG she meant yes.  Heh.
   She was a sweet, passionate lady who wanted to go at it with both Carmel
and me.  Well, far be it from me to oppose her.
   Carmel was a wonderful lover.  She was sweet *all* over -- and a
squeaker.
   Yeh, they knew about the poke spot.  In fact they made an additional one
on the other side.  My body woke up to two gorgeous fannies and two pink
rosebuds waving at me with a hand waving a bottle of lube.  Fanny-cy that.
Heh.  Of course I turned them down.  Right.  And Janet Adams is a virgin.
Hehehehe.
   ------
   We spent the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday night finishing up the
_inspections_.  The final SWAG was there had been a technologically
advanced civilization here at one time, then a war the 200-plus thousand
years ago.  This system had never recovered for whatever reason -- or had
recovered and declined again.
   Yeh, we dropped in the wide-area node.  We would probably go back there
for a deeper investigation.  Perhaps the old memory blocks we'd acquired
would give some clues.
   Mid-morning Tuesday we made the next jump.  It was 400 parsecs to System
Charlie, which gave us 900 parsecs from Krle.  We didn't have any trouble
at all spotting the target; the consensus among the team later was that we
were gaining confidence and just doing it rather than trying to do it.
   There were no habitable planets in this system, just as Freda's records
showed.  There were lots of ruins of Cel mining and fabrication facilities,
though; all had been destroyed by explosives.
   There were lots of dead ship wrecks and debris floating around.  SWAG:
there'd been a war and no recovery.  There were about 100,000 Sleepers
again scattered everywhere.  The team figured they were probably from the
destroyed ships.
   Dayum.  Well, one planet had plant life much like Venus.  It was enough
to hold the wide-area nodes, so in they went.
   Mental comm with Krle continued to be excellent.  Freda's connection was
very slow now; there were many more errors and error recoveries than there
was clean data.
   We had three days scheduled for Charlie; we drifted and mapped it out
pretty good.  While it might not be available for an actual colony there
were raw materials of just about all sorts in abundance.
   I made a full tour of the _Columbia_ and poked my nose in everywhere. 
After the fourth time I told them to ignore my uniform, crew stopped
calling, "Attention on deck!" when I came in.
   We even had a contingent of 12 Marines.  Master Gunnery Sergeant Gills
was the boss; he was a grizzled old bear who'd retired a year ago.  With
probably several hundred thousand years of kick-arse experience, I figured
he'd do just fine.
   We had the Marines here to be boarding parties (if needed) and to defend
the internals of the ship if needed.  Dayum well hope they didn't need the
latter!
   They spent their time drilling ambushes, firing their weapons (a
combination of Earth-based gunpowder and a mini-railgun) and physical
conditioning.  They had a good-sized compartment set aside just for them,
so they spent a lot of time there and in the exercise room.
   I even had time to check out the virtual golf course.  Freda conjured up
an excellent copy of my driver, and I spent a couple hours scaring golf
balls.  I guessed they were scared of me; they sure took off in a hurry.
   Freda could control one hell of a lot.  Between _touches_ in the deck
and holograms, I could actually do a complete course.  The best part was I
didn't have to search for the ball.
   Carmel decided she was interested in learning.  Well, that meant I had
to snuggle up real close to her tidy butt quite often to correct her swing.
Heh.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Wednesday 1/31)
   We (Mario, Sherry and I) had a nice day with Leone and Mark.  They came
over and we sat around sipping the latest moonshine while talking about
their career.
   Fillmore and Rhapsody were promoting them for gigs; they were setting up
an U.S.-wide concert tour in the spring.  JRD Media Repro could pump out
lots of CDs without a lot of lead time (Especially if asked politely. 
Heh.).  They were planning on recording the concerts (maybe JRD Sound
Studios in Queens could help?) and releasing both CDs and DVDs.
   They were actively recording songs for CD releases; they had a lovers'
collection to be released just before Valentine's Day.  Jaysus, that was
just down the road!  Yeh, we all remembered what we were doing last year
for Valentine's day.
   Sherry, Leone and I scrutinized Mario for a little.  He looked puzzled
and asked, "What?"
   Sherry said, "Maybe he'll do."
   Leone commented, "Get him into training Real Soon Now and he might be
okay."
   Mario was getting a bit concerned by then.  I told, "With Bob off to
war, we've elected you for the Valentine's Day ceremonies.  You'd better
get into shape because we're planning on wearing someone out until they're
limp for a week.  That someone is you!"
   Now he really looked worried.  Leone noted, "Feel lucky, Mario.  If Mark
here were gone, I'd be knocking on your door, too.  Hehehehe."
   A Maggie cackle with a Yiddish accent?  Great!
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 2/1)
   Thursday we made a short, 100-parsec jump to System Delta It was only
five light years from there to the first planned Cel home system.
   Our scans showed a situation which was rapidly becoming familiar.  The
entire system was littered with wrecks and Sleepers.  10 billion Sleepers
to be a bit more precise.
   The one habitable planet (two others had sealed colonies which were
abandoned) had Cels (might as well call them that) who might have been up
to a Stone Age civilization.  There were about a million of them; they were
literally wading through Sleepers and didn't know it.
   Freda lost the network communication with Krle.  We'd expected it, so it
was no great surprise.  Our mental links were still clear as a bell,
though. We tested out our alternative ad hoc connection plan: a binary
transducer which we ran to a corresponding transducer in Rhonda's control
room.
   Freda said, "That works.  It's not too bad, actually.  It's about the
same bandwidth as one of your T1 lines.  I'll take it."
   It worked for us, too.
   ------
   (Friday 2/2)
   The next stop was a Cel home system, and we wanted to be ready for
anything.  From what we'd found so far, we expected to find more of the
same.  But, complacency killed the cat, right?  Any of you can think up a
good misquote.
   We spent the next couple days going over the _Columbia_ from bow to
stern.  Everything got a full diagnostic, from the kitchen stove to each
missile and projectile to the main drive.  If there was even the slightest
blip, the crew immediately either realigned it or rebuilt it.  Freda
obligingly popped out a couple of spare parts with the little fabricator.
   We topped off every accumulator in every nook, cranny, missile and boat.
Before we even did the first _look_, we were buttoned up tighter than a
virgin's twat (Carmel said that, not me!) with our full Cullen Shield and
physical shields ready to trip.
   ------
   (Sunday 2/4)
   The hop to System Cel Three (numbered based on number of reported
population) was gratifyingly boring.  While we made like a rock, we found
the three habitable planets exactly where expected.  Like the other
systems, the entire system had war debris scattered everywhere.
   Our scans and _inspections_ showed us five significantly different metal
types in the wreckage.  The scout's SWAG was there were five different
civilizations or systems involved.
   There were a couple of million Cels on each of the three habitable
planets.  They ranged from hunter/gathers to maybe a 1600s level society.
Billions of Sleepers, but again no evidence of a large zapper.  Shit, this
was getting old.
   On each of the planets there were dozens of discernible impact craters.
It didn't take much thought to decide they weren't from natural causes
since they were scattered all over the surfaces.  The meteors had come from
several directions; a meteor shower is usually from one.  Someone or
something had done it deliberately.
   ------
   (Monday 2/5)
   Since we were in the neighborhood, so to speak, we started the scans on
the main or central Cel system.  It was right next door with the two
systems' Oort Clouds overlapping.
   The same game had gone on here.e The two habitable planets had impact
craters all over.  The civilization level on them was pre-historical with a
few crude dwellings and perhaps some small villages.  The population was
about a million on each, scattered all over.
   We found a good 15 billion Sleepers and debris from six or seven
different sources.  We were able to recover several computers from the
different types; Freda told us, "The construction varies a bit, but they're
all readable.  Let's take them all." We did.
   One was from a Cel ship from Krle!  Freda had glommed onto that fact
right away because the construction and materials were identical to Harry's
back in Selene City.
   The scout crew immediately went to work and extracted the logs for Freda
to peruse.  It didn't take more than a couple hours.  Freda told me, "It
was a routine voyage most of the way.  Then when they came into range here,
they were attacked and destroyed by a single large ship.  With only fifty
actual warships for defense, the other two hundred were wiped out with a
single missile each.
   "So, that accounts for the original exodus.  The count matches the
number which left Krle.  The only one unaccounted for is the single one
from the caretakers the hundred years or so later."
   All this immediately brought up the question of why they were destroyed
fifty years after the original battles?  Our memories and the logs we'd
recovered so far showed these types of conflicts lasted months to maybe a
couple years, not fifty plus years.
   Granted, we knew of wars which lasted thousands of years, but they
spanned hundreds of systems.  Had there been several waves of battle here?
The logs we had showed only one major conflict in these systems.
   Harry's map had shown the in-progress matter transceiver to be on the
far side of the Oort Cloud from where we were.  Yeh, it was still there,
only it was a mass of twisted wreckage.
   Like most everything so far, we had more questions than answers.
   We located the central Library on a moon.  It was buried a good 1,000
meters below the surface, much like Selene City.  The surface had taken
some hits and the thermionic converter had been knocked out.
   The library was a complex of rooms and one main computer system.  With
no power, it obviously was shut down.  The rooms had terminals, tables,
meeting spaces and the like, and we decided they were for research rather
than storage.
   There were lots of duro-plast books; first glances showed us they were
mainly art work.  Several rooms had "paintings," sculptures and the like;
probably originals.
   Hell, we could spend days here just cataloging.  We could bring up the
main system, that was no big deal.  We decided on a different course we'd
talked about before.
   A team disconnected all the power leads and connections to the main
system, and we ported the whole dayum complex to Mars.  If they wanted it
back, they'd have to come and ask politely.
   We didn't hang around long; we were here to pick pockets, not to
analyze.
   ------
   (Wednesday 2/7)
   System Cel Two, the last Cel home system, was the same story with a very
pre-industrial society, 3 habitable planets, lots of wreckage and lots of
Sleepers.
   That was no fun at all.  We decided to press on ahead of schedule to the
first allied system.
   ------
   (Friday 2/9)
   It was a 40-parsec jump to System Echo.  It was a familiar story here at
first glance.  However, we almost immediately found some emissions.  Freda
told me, "They're weak and unsteady, but definitely there."
   This time we stayed at General Quarters for two hours while we finished
up the passive scan and started the active one.  The emission source was
between the third and fourth planets; we'd had enough time to get some more
data about it.
   It wasn't under acceleration and appeared to be going nowhere in
particular.  It wasn't in orbit around anything except the star; the SWAG
was it was drifting.
   The active scan showed it to be a good-sized ship, a good kilometer in
the longest dimension.  The rest of the active scan showed the rest of the
system was similar to the ones we'd already visited.
   The _inspection_ immediately showed we were up against something this
time.  The drifting source had a really effective firewall or shield. 
Maggie told me, "It's not like any we've run into before.  It's like a
fire; hot and painful.  Even the lightest probe is extremely
uncomfortable."
   Well, that wasn't nice at all.  They put a big red flag on it and
continued the _inspection_.
   Okay, the rest of Echo was similar to the others except for the ship. 
The metal alloys were almost all different; the SWAG here was there had
been still more different races involved.
   The three habitable planets had several million inhabitants among them,
all in the pre-industrial stage.  Several billion Sleepers rounded things
out.  The beings were humanoid but weren't Cels.
   The Central Library was exactly where Freda's map said it should be.  It
was on the surface in the middle of a large land mass on the third planet.
Totally grown over and overblown with debris, it was buried several hundred
feet down.  Not a problem; our probes and scans showed it to be in
reasonable condition, much like the Earth-based outposts.
   The associated thermionic converter had been destroyed; there was a nice
hole in the ground which was nearly filled in by now.  Freda told me, "The
Library is almost ten times larger than any of the others we've found. 
Makes ours in Selene City look like a bookmobile." Heh.
   Well, we knew what to do with it.  Mars gained a huge addition.
   We put our attention back onto the emitting ship.  We kept the
_Columbia_ where she was in the Oort Cloud and sent a boarding party of
five Marines off in one of the boats.  Before they left, I told them, "Your
mission is to see what the hell is going on with that shield and to see if
you can disable it.  Your safety is more important than it is.  While it's
unique, if you consider it to be a clear and present danger to us or to
you, do anything you need to neutralize it.  Destroy the entire thing if
you must."
   Ordinarily it would have taken our small boat a good month to get there
from the Oort Cloud.  We decided to hell with it and told them to port the
boat there and get to work.
   They did.  Between Freda's data link to the boat and our _links_, we
watched what was going on.
   The ship was tumbling slowly, probably had gone out of control.  There
was no hurry, but we were really curious; this was the first resistance
we'd found.
   Master Gunny's first probe flick told us the shield or whatever was
still in place.  On the other hand, a solid _touch_ against the hull did
exactly what we expected and caused no reaction.
   With feather probes, the Marines mapped the shield.  It was either on or
in the skin of the hull rather than being projected outside.  Hmm.  They
could get a viewpoint almost to the hull, but couldn't get through
mentally. The scout crew's SWAG was since the _touches_ resulted in
physical-universe reactions, the shield didn't affect them.
   Okay.  Master Gunny told us, _"There's quite a few ports on the outside.
If they're anything like the Cel ports, we should be able to open at least
one.  Would you send us a couple of Freda's maintenance and repair
robots?"_
   We had plenty to spare; several of each wound up in the boat within
thirty seconds.  Master Gunny picked a port about three meters across and
dropped a repair bot right next to it.
   There was no reaction from the shield.  Freda said, "The network
connection works just fine." Master Gunny decided not to fuck around; he
moved the bot away a couple meters.  The Marines used _touches_ and simply
put a hole right in the middle of the port.
   The bot fit right through; the network connection still worked fine. 
Master Gunny and the Marines had Freda start running it around inside;
they'd put a _touch_ shield around the opening so any atmosphere or other
nasty stuff wouldn't escape.
   The maintenance bot had plenty of sensors to trace power leads, plus
they'd piled on a bunch of visual and other sensors.  The inside was in a
vacuum, completely visible-light dark and colder than a witch's tit in a
brass bra.
   The emissions appeared to be the strongest towards the stern (arbitrary
assignment) so they jockeyed the bot that way.  Yeh, there were corridors,
but they appeared to be more for access than for lots of body traffic.
   There were powered wires and cables pretty much everywhere, but there
was very little current flow.  The largest current flow appeared to come
from one good-sized component.  There were breakers in the power conduits
running to it; when the bot opened them, the shield dropped immediately. 
Yes!
   With that done, we had access to the entire ship.  The scout crew
swarmed over it while the rest of us figuratively patted Master Gunny and
the rest of the Marines on the back.
   Master Gunny took his guys and got the hell back to the _Columbia_.  For
all we knew, the thing was booby-trapped, so no one's body went inside. 
Not that we were concerned about the bodies so much with our body shields,
but we were more concerned about tripping something.
   This was worth sitting around for.  We went back to standard watches and
kept our eyes on the screens for the scout team's data.  Several cups of
coffee went down just fine.
   There was one small control room right next to the central computer
system; it was obviously a programmer's testing console, because there were
Duro-Plast manuals stacked around.  Hell, over 80% were in an old version
of Sperk!
   Freda and the scouts immediately identified several "notebooks" as
program listings.  I counted that as a really good find.
   The ship was build for war, for sure.  There were a couple small
berthing compartments and a tiny galley (kitchen), but it was obviously not
designed to be manned.  It was packed throughout with navigation sensors,
maneuvering drives, missiles and what they WAG'd to be some energy beam
weapons.
   Those take *lots* of power.  There were accumulators all over, mostly
discharged, but they were all supplied by a very small (to us) power plant
of some kind right in the middle of the ship.  It wasn't operating, but
from the size and composition of the power output conduits, we SWAG'd it
could put out around 1,500 gigawatts.  That was three times the output of
the Selene City fusion reactor.
   We had spirit drool *all* over.  This was really good stuff.
   So, we decided to sit at least as long as needed to allow the scouts to
get some idea about the ship.  If this was the first of the allied systems,
maybe the next one would have even more goodies!
   We let the crew "call" home if they wished.  Keep it short, please; we
were dayum sure we weren't being tapped, but no need to advertise.
   Well, a round of golf always helps to relax.  Carmel decided she needed
some more "lessons." Besides, someone had to be the Admiral's caddy, right?
Heh.
   I managed to squeeze in some honoring time, too.  Well, Maggie and
Carmel squeezed it in for me.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Hot dayum!  Seemed the expedition was having a grand old time.  Betcha
Maggie and George were in nerd heaven.  Grin.
   The Babies Within were squirming around like they'd been cooped up all
day or something.  Our resident OB told me, "Let's give them a couple more
days then pop 'em out on Tuesday.  Will you be ready by then?"
   You bet yer bippy I would be.  You women know what a pain it is hauling
a bulge like this around.  And I had plenty of _touches_ to help!
   So, Sherry and I spread the word to the other mommies or to-be's.  Next
Tuesday at 10:00!
   ------
   (Tuesday 2/13)
   Baby Day!  They were more than ready, and my water had broken at 6:00. I
guessed that was my body saying it was ready, too.
   The OB said, "Yep.  There's no turning back now anyway.  Everything's
just fine."
   Yow!  Those contractions got old in one hell of a hurry!  Sherry latched
onto my hand and said, "Damn men.  It's all Bob's fault."
   Might as well blame him, especially when he wasn't here to defend
himself.  Heh.
   Our three spirits were hovering around, all ready and eager.  As
arranged, the OB took the girl first -- that way she could lord it over the
boys.  Hehehehe.
   Aideen picked up the body immediately then let out a loud long
baby-shriek.  _"It's fockin' aye *cold* out here.  Put it back in!"_
   Robert and Brian chortled.  _"Girls.  Yuck."_
   They yelled too, though.  It *was* a lot cooler.  Brian (Seamus) got
zipped out first, then Robert (Reginald).  The three had Irished each other
a lot about the sequence.  I'd finally decided; ladies first (she could
smack 'em if they needed it), Brian/Seamus because he was "older" and then
Robert/Reginald.  Yeh, they bitched and moaned and demanded my reasoning.
   Sherry had said firmly, "Because she's the mommy.  If we hear any more
cheek from you three, we're gonna find out if baby butts can get spanked
before they're born."
   That had quieted them down for a whole minute.  Anyway, it went just
fine.  It only took me a couple minutes to push out the placentas.  It was
pretty much a done deal.
   After Aideen let out her first yell, she, Sherry and Mom cleaned up her
body a bit, wrapped her in a blanket and let me hold her.  Fockin' aye she
was the most beautiful girl ever born!
   Brian was a handsome young lad (he's gonna be a lady-killer), and Robert
was, em, strong.  Even as a momma, I wouldn't have called him beautiful.
   We'd agreed on the names.  Robert Kelly Reynolds we'd call RKR;
otherwise both he and Bob would have answered.  Then again, both might
answer to "Reginald" too.  Heh.
   Sherry immediately shortened RKR to "Rocker." She said, "If he's got any
musical talent, might as well call him that." Right.
   Aideen and Brian were Red Irish and Rocker was Black Irish.  They all
had vivid blue eyes; we'll have to wait and see what the final eye colors
were.
   Two boobs and three hungry mouths didn't come out even.  Yeh, they're
gonna have to take their turn.  They immediately started Irishing each
other about whose turn it was.
   Sherry and I looked at each other and laughed.  We sure wouldn't be
bored.
   ------
   BOB (Wednesday 2/14)
   I'm a real daddy!  Yowsah and a couple of hot dayums to boot!  Of course
Carmel leaked it around, so we had a major bash on the mess decks.  It
being Valentine's Day back in the States, we had a perfect excuse for a
double whammy.
   I even had a 0th birthday cake with a zero candle.  Heh.  The chefs came
up with Irish goodies out our ears, and we made serious inroads on the
usquebaugh and beer stock.  Ah, well.  If we ran out, that was a serious
enough matter we could port more from Krle.  Heh.
   We ensured the shindig lasted over two watches so every crewmember had a
chance to stop by and stuff their faces.  Every crew member got a nice box
of chocolates or their favorite candy (for the females) or a guy-toy from a
secret admirer; seemed like the social secretary network had been busy
before we'd left!
   I was sure Mario had produced the goodies we'd set aside before I left.
If he hadn't, I was sure Sherry would remind him.  Hopefully, he'd done it
in the morning because by now he had probably have been run through the
wringer several times.  Kat might not have been up to it, but between
Sherry and the OTL gang he'd have his duty clear.
   ------
   KATHLEEN
   Valentine's Day!  Mario woke up Sherry and me with breakfast in bed --
David zipped over to help.  David said, "Since my youngest is out wandering
around, guess I'll have to help.  I'll be more than glad to help. 
Hehehehe."
   Mario promptly said, "Please.  I've already been threatened with an
all-day stint as the resident fuck toy."
   Heh.  Sherry had plans for him, all right.  Me, I didn't feel all that
attractive yet.  My tummy was still pooched up, my tits were all swole up
with milk, and there was almost always a baby ready to claim possession of
a free nipple.
   Mom told me, "You're gonna get a set of really big tits there.  Heh."
   Sherry and I hadn't told anyone the babies' names or their past.  Heh. I
could be a bitch, too.  We'll have a Meet the New Friends party in a couple
of days.  Maybe Bob would be back then!  We doubted it, but it was always a
possibility.
   ------
   BOB (Thursday 2/15)
   While we'd in no way exhausted the ship, we knew quite a few more things
than when we'd first gone in.  It was completely automated for one thing.
The small accommodations and access tunnels were probably for the
construction or maintenance crew.
   About half the munitions were expended.  The ship itsef was almost a
kilometer long, the drives would probably accelerate it at about 15 or 20
gravities, and it had sensors hanging all over.  The power plant had a
failed component; a melted hunk of slag gave ample evidence of that.  The
scouts had plenty of WAGs but didn't want to commit too much about it.
   Our final SWAG was it was a search and destroy robot.  Let it roam the
system and attack anything that didn't have a "friend" beacon.  It had a
pretty unique set of alloys in places so we went back over the scans we'd
done of the previous systems.
   Yeh, there were traces of the same alloys fairly localized in the inner
part of each system we'd visited.  Again a SWAG, but we were guessing each
system had a robotic destroyer.  Rather than conquering or colonizing a
system right away, the "winners" had dropped the ship there and turned it
loose.
   Any latecomers would be met with a major attack from a heavily-armed
single-purpose vessel.  It didn't get tired and wouldn't quit until it ran
out of power or munitions.  We figured in the previous systems, it had
nailed all the homecoming Cels for the next several thousand years then had
self-destructed when it had run out of munitions.
   The one in this system hadn't had the chance to self-destruct before the
power plant failure.  Oops.  Betcha those Krle upstarts could do one hell
of a lot of reverse engineering.
   We took the risk and had a full hour's virtual conference with General
Shelly, the War Council and SW Security.  While we didn't have all the data
the ship could give us, we still had more of the original mission to
consider.
   We agreed on a course of action.  The scout team pulled the plug on
everything inside the ship: they disconnected every accumulator, opened
every breaker (making careful note of the original settings) and dropped in
a relay canister.
   They set up a standard relay node then programmed a shield so it froze
almost all possible motion.  Not quite all molecular motion, but if
something went boom, it wouldn't be going anywhere.
   Master Gunny had a final look around.  "I'd prefer it be disassembled
into a couple million parts.  But, it should do.  Oo*Ri*!" [Oorah or
similar is a Marine expression of enthusiasm.  Its use is currently
deprecated because of overuse.  That's probably what Al Pacino was saying
in Scent of a Woman.]
   Arg.  Even the fuckin' Marines were goading me!  I had some semi-serious
thoughts of turning Maggie and Carmel loose on them.  Nah, they'd probably
just screw the Marines to death (both sexes) instead of biting them.  Think
of all the paperwork.
   All that done, the scout team ported the entire ship off to a specified
set of coordinates in Alpha Centauri's Oort Cloud where yet another gang of
spirits were eagerly waiting to get *their* dibs in on new goodies. 
Everyone was satisfied; we weren't leaving a potential hostile weapon
behind, and Krle got even more new stuff to work on.
   ------
   (Friday 2/16)
   We'd originally scheduled two jumps from Echo to the next system, System
Golf.  Captain Adi, the XO, the scout team leader and I had a quiet
discussion and decided to skip it.  We just told the bridge crew the
coordinates, and they went ahead and did it.
   600 parsecs was our record for a blind jump; felt like a piece of cake.
Golf was the second of the allied systems on our list.
   Yep, it was like the previous systems.  Plenty of war debris, including
traces of the robot destroyer alloys.  The three planets had several
million population of yet a different humanoid type.  It looked as if they
were maybe up to the 1800s; we spotted a couple steam railways chuffing
around.
   There were about 15 billion Sleepers were strewn around, mostly on the
planets.  Our most conservative scans showed no new destroyers, so we felt
pretty safe in that respect.
   The Library here was in excellent shape.  It was inside a small moon
around the third planet and literally didn't have a scratch on it.  In
fact, it looked as if it had been shut down gracefully and the thermionic
reactor shut down peacefully.
   Well, what the hell.  For the time being, Alpha Centauri's Oort Cloud
got another body.  No reason to break up something when it was so
well-packaged already.  We didn't give a crap if loosing the moon caused a
few orbital blips.  Sue us!
   ------
   (Sunday 2/18)
   Our last scheduled jump was to System Harry.  Freda had it listed as an
independent system not really associated with a known civilization but
having interstellar space capabilities.
   It was different.  There was little or no evidence of war there, but
there sure weren't any space ships or ray guns; there were no emissions of
that nature.  There were a few very weak EMF traces but that was about it.
   The two planets had several million population; they were somewhere
between Cel and Human with an 1800s civilization.  Five billion Sleepers
let us SWAG that while there might not have been a war here, the
civilization must have collapsed at least once.
   There was a small Library in a tiny moon around the fifth planet -- the
planet wasn't populated.  It had apparently simply run out of energy and
had shut down; power had been supplied by solar panels which appeared to
have collapsed from a meteor impact.
   Well, their loss and our gain; the big moon in Alpha Centauri's Oort
Cloud got a baby brother.  Yeh, it might eventually give some perturbation
to the various planetary orbits.  Tough darts.
   Freda was able to establish her network hookup again to Selene City.  It
was slow, but it was there.  We were 500 parsecs straight-line from home.
   We had a short executive conference in my meeting room.  We had a
discussion of what we'd found, bolstered with plenty of each participant's
favorite usquebaugh.  Heh.
   I finally said, "Our original mission was to get an idea of what the
hell happened to the Cel and to steal Libraries.  We've done both.  While
we now know there were dragons, we don't know if they're still active.  All
the battle scenes appear have been mutual destruction or the robot
destroyers were turned loose either during or after.
   "There appears to be no imminent attack threatened on Krle.  Of course,
there's thousands of systems we haven't seen yet; there could be an
invasion fleet on the way there as we speak.
   "My recommendation is that we head for the barn.  We've got a hell of a
lot of new technology to learn and even more research to do.  Let's let
that shake out for a little while before we go looking for more trouble."
   Well, Captain Adi wasn't objecting.  So far, he'd kept me in fewer than
three pieces.  Grin.
   Neither the scout team nor Freda could come up with any other reason to
keep traipsing around.  While shipboard life wasn't uncomfortable, the
security precautions we had in place did limit the research capabilities.
   We warned the people back home we were coming in the next morning. 
Gotta give them time to set up the parties, after all.
   ------
   (Monday 2/19)
   We did the jump to Krle's Oort Cloud (500 parsecs to a Reference Point)
then the zip to Harry's hangar at Selene City.  There wasn't a drop of
sweat on anyone's brow!
   The _Columbia_ settled right down in her docking cradle, and the ground
crew plugged in the shore connections.  Since the civilians didn't have any
ground duties, they already had their bags packed and ready to go.
   We had a delightfully-tacky brass band greeting waiting in the hangar.
For whatever reason, the crew pushed me out the door first; maybe they
figured after my body had gotten torn limb from limb and eaten, it would be
safer to venture out and mingle with the natives.  Grin.
   They wanted a speech.  Why not?  "The _Columbia_, her crew and the scout
team performed magnificently!  They made fantastic discoveries and have
returned with intelligence which should make our predictions more precise.
It will probably raise more questions, but that's what intelligence does.
Let's give it up to the _Columbia_, her crew and the scouts!"
   Yeh, yeh, yeh.  There were babies to kiss even before I got back to NH.
Some unknown spirit had the audacity to ask (very loudly), _"And what did
Ceann Mor do all this time?"_
   Another smartarse: _"Screwed all the women and played golf!  Yeah!"_
   The Truth sometimes hurts.  Even a partial Truth; it wasn't *all* the
women.  After all, there had been two who only preferred women.  Heh.
   We had a major party at the Tavern; it eventually spread over the entire
solar system.  I checked that out later; I had sweet ladies and new friends
(whomever they were) to greet at home.
   Carmel told me, _"I've sent all your stuff to your NH house.  Sorry we
couldn't bring home any tourist souvenirs -- a Cel hula girl on a sea shell
base would have been great.  Give the girls and the babies a cuddle for
me."_
   I had no doubt I'd be running into her again.  It's a small galaxy after
all.
   Home.  Dayum, holding my Kathleen again was wonderful.  We flared! 
Sherry dumped figurative water buckets all over us so she got a good going
over, too.  Jaysus, it was great to be home.
   Babies.  Hot dayum!  Kat showed them off one by one.  The young lady was
first _"Ladies first!  Call me Aideen Ana Reynolds and brace yourself for
lotsa lovin'."_ Ho, boy.  If Maggie hadn't been on the _Columbia_ with me,
I'd have sworn she'd been giving some coaching 'cause Aideen laid so much
baby-lovin' on me I dayum near cried.  Such a sweet old bag!  _"I'll old
bag you!  Just wait 'til I start screaming in the middle of the night!"_
   Right.  She was also Ana's great-great grandmother from Donegal. 
Sounded fine to me.
   The first boy was very familiar, spirit-wise.  Seamus!  Jaysus!  He told
me, _"Don't pay much attention to Aideen.  She's one of those Southern
Irish; you know how they are.  Call me Brian Fintan Reynolds."_
   He got lots of cuddles and hugs before he and Aideen went at it some
more.  Grin.
   One more.  _"I'm Robert Kelly Reynolds.  I was last known as Reginald
Robert Kelly, and I'm gonna keep a real close eye on you -- Dad."_
   Janey Mack!  Well, at least Kat didn't saddle him with his previous
name. I gave him a good solid cuddle and said, "So you're the one who left
me with all that mess to clean up."
   _"Yep.  The fun part is that I meant it that way, too.  You'd better
watch out for that old wanker and the bag lady; they're pretty obnoxious at
times."_
   They went at it a bit in spirit-Irish.  Yeh, they'll all get along just
fine.  I ended up with the three most wonderful babies in the galaxy draped
over me sound asleep.
   Sherry said, "Just so there's no confusion, we'll call RKR 'Rocker.'
That way we won't get two answers when we ask *Reginald* something."
   Arg.  She got a big mark against her on the Chastisement List.
   I even had enough energy left to go to the Clann meeting.  I endured
lots of hot welcome-home snogs and warm bosoms against me.  Such a task. 
Grin.
   Father filled me in quickly on what was up on the home front.  We'd
pretty much leveled out on the population growth for now which was a good
thing.  I was betting we'd need pretty much everyone at their best to
handle what was coming up in the next several years, decades or millennia.
   Of course everyone wanted a rundown on the expedition.  I told them,
"Since we went with very little information, we weren't really surprised.
There was lots of unexpected information, but nothing threatening for the
moment.
   "We got lots of direct observational data and several Libraries for SW
and our AI friends to chew on.  It's a good thing we can do laundry so
easily; everyone's peeing their pants to get at it.
   "We're gonna let SW and whoever else chew on the stuff for a while, then
see what SWAG'n we can do.  In the meantime, continue to flourish and
prosper in your daily lives, watch out for baddies and enjoy living."
   Kat and I made long sweet Journeys all the night.  The body can sleep
whenever.  Such a wonderfully sweet woman she is!  We flared!  And no,
Aideen didn't scream once during the night.
   ------
   KATHLEEN (Tuesday 2/20)
   Dayum, I'd hadn't known how much we'd missed him until we were together
again.  Fuck, I loved that guy so much!
   I hadn't had any doubts he and the babies would get along just fine. 
About the only problem we'd have would be three hungry mouths versus only
two boobs.  Jaysus, they'd swelled up with milk!  If I were wearing bras, I
would have kept five dry goods factories busy making new ones.
   I had to fend off his advances a couple times during the night; baby
bodies gotta eat!  What a wonderful feeling to feel the love among us all.
   Heh.  He'd better rest up, too.  Sherry had three overdue shaggings
coming to her.  Heh.
   With new Libraries, ship computers, memory blocks retrieved from folds
and derelict computers and sundry other goodies to play with, SW had
something to keep them occupied.  Alice told us, "We just know there's new
software, new compilers and lots of other goodies!  Rhonda and I are so hot
to trot we have to wear maxi-pads."
   Heh.  I knew exactly how she "felt." I wasn't at all sore from pumping
out placentas, so Bob and I had gone at it full bore.  Betcha Mario was
relieved he was back, too.  Heh.
   As the new Libraries had come in, SW had started a full D&C on each one
before even trying to power them up.  Each got a tuned connection to our
Selene City AIs with (hopefully) bit-tight software and hardware firewalls.
   We didn't really know what we'd find in them.  Rhonda told us, "They all
probably have AIs somewhat like us.  We're planning on going slow and easy
on bringing them up -- if we do.
   "With all the hidden standards and biases we found in our software, we
don't doubt they'll have at least the same.  We're tentatively planning on
indexing and cross-indexing the data, seeing if we can update ourselves
with any needed new hardware and software then inspect their source code
down to the line terminators.  Not that we're paranoid, mind you, but
someone *was* out to get us all."
   ------
   (Thursday 2/22)
   Sherry got caught up on one of her shaggings last night.  I kept the
kids occupied; it kept Aideen's raunchy comments down a little bit, at
least.  We've got another dirty old Irishwoman on our hands.  What fun!
   Eileen was popping today!  We got to _observe_; as we expected, our OB
zipped 'em right outta there.
   She was being a bitch, though, and wouldn't tell us who they'd been.  I
guessed that was the game we were all playing.  That's okay.  Between us we
decided we'd have a little party next Sunday along with Mom.  We'd toss all
the kids in a pit and let them fight it out.
   Betcha Eileen had found some really fun spirits.  Sherry and I were
ready for some fun.
   
  
Sorcerer Interesting Times Ch 21-25