Published: 07 Nov 2016

Part III

THREE WORLDS
Formerly Published as “0300 Books I, II, and III”

Chapter 9: Paul Stewart—Strike Out

I stepped from the shower and then turned back to shut off the water. I heard a sharp report and felt a sting on my left buttock. I knew instantly what it was and who had caused it. I spun around to see Mark re-furling the towel with which he’d snapped me. Mark grinned, a grin that turned into a rictus of horror when I snapped back with my mind. Mark lost control of his urethral sphincters. Urine dribbled and then poured from his penis. His eyes closed; he fell back, and slid down the tiled wall to sit in a growing yellow puddle.

“Nova sol!” Scott said. “What happened to Mark?” He looked at me. I looked back, but didn’t see accusation in Scott’s mind, only curiosity, and concern for Mark.

The element leader, a cadet three years older than Scott, Mark, and me, stepped from his shower and growled, “What’s going on. Who hit whom?”

“Nobody hit anybody, sir,” Scott said. “Mark—”

“He snapped me with his towel,” I said. “I turned around. I think I frightened him, sir.”

“Not likely,” the element leader said. By this time, two other cadets had brought a folding stretcher into the shower room. The element leader ignored my inchoate protest to address the boys with the stretcher. “Get him on the stretcher and cover him. A couple of towels. No need to carry him through the halls naked.”

I pulled on my jumpsuit while I was still wet, but had to dry my feet before I could put on socks and boots. By this time the stretcher team was far ahead. I hurried to catch up, but they had already entered the infirmary when I arrived.

“Where is he?” I demanded of the triage nurse on the desk. “Where did they take Mark?”

The nurse wasn’t sure why she answered rather than telling the cadet to cool his jets, show respect, and then to leave the infirmary. But she did. “Through that door; Room E3.” She had enough volition to add, “Don’t get in the doctor’s way.”

There was barely enough room in the cubicle for me. A doctor and three nurses hovered over the still-unconscious Mark. One nurse inserted a breathing tube down the boy’s throat and hooked it to a respirator. Its lub-dub-hiss was almost lost as the doctor issued orders. “Get the EKG going, and then bring in the echocardiogram cart. Vitals every three minutes. On the screen, please.”

Several minutes passed before I felt I could interject myself. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

The doctor looked at me, frowned, shivered as if someone had walked on his grave, and then answered, “We don’t know. He passed out. May have hit his head when he fell, but there’s no swelling, yet. We’re monitoring inter-cranial pressure. Heart appears good, but I won’t know for sure until we do the echocardiogram. Blood pressure is low, but that is consistent with syncope.”

The doctor frowned again. “You’re to report that to your element?”

I nodded. I’d better get out of here, at least for a few minutes. He’s starting to suspect. This was not the first time someone had seemed to penetrate what I called the veil. Usually, it happened when I had pushed someone too far, or when I had depended too much on the veil to protect me. I gave the doctor a Yes, sir, and went into the hallway.

Before I could decide what to do next, the element leader entered the hallway. I immediately reported. “Sir, Cadet Mark Shipman is being treated. He is stable, and they’re waiting for equipment to do a more thorough examination of his heart. Sir, may I stay with him?” I pushed hard when I asked that.

“What? Why? Oh, of course. Report any change, no matter what time of day.”

“Shouldn’t you mark me on approved absence?” I suggested, pushing again.

The element leader touched the screen of his PDA several times, and then nodded.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. The commander nodded, and left.

One of the nurses rolled a cart toward the door. He looked at me, and then asked, “Why are you here?”

“My element leader ordered me to watch Mark’s progress, and report it to him,” I said.

The nurse nodded. “Follow me, but keep out of the way, please.”

The echocardiogram was normal; Mark’s vitals were good. An EEG was hooked up, and showed normal brain activity for a person in deep sleep.

He’s in a coma, I thought. I’ve put him in a coma. He’s got to come out!

As I thought this, the doctor turned and spoke to me. “It will be impossible to say when or if he will come out of what appears to be a coma. He could slip into natural sleep, and wake up at any time. Unfortunately, we cannot predict when this might be, and we have no way of making it happen. I’m sorry about your friend.”

My friend? I thought. I have no friends. But, I know I am responsible.

It was nearly 2300 hours before Mark was moved from the emergency suite to a regular hospital room. I sat beside him, watching the monitors, and thinking.

What did I do, and how did I do it? It was all in my mind. Was it all in Mark’s mind, too? The doctors don’t see anything physically wrong with him. They said they’d do a CT scan of his brain, tomorrow. What will they find? Can I wake him?

I looked at the boy, and thought, Mark? Mark? It’s Paul. Wake up. You’re okay. I’m not angry. Please wake up!

Nothing happened. I sat back in the chair. The nurse who came in at midnight found me asleep—half in the chair, and half slumped over the bed. I was holding Mark’s hand. The nurse smiled, and tiptoed from the room.

“Paul? Paul? Where are we? Why are you here?” Mark’s voice woke me.

My eyes snapped open. I realized that it was morning, and that Mark was squeezing my hand. Mark projected puzzlement and curiosity, but no animosity.

“Do you not remember?” I asked.

Mark shook his head. “We’d come in from the soccer field… the showers…” He shook his head, again. “You got out of the shower, and then turned away.” Mark giggled. “You have a really cute butt! I popped you with my towel. Harder than I meant to, I think. I must have slipped? Hit my head? We’re in the infirmary, right?”

I knew what Mark was going to say next, but still it surprised me.

“I’m gay, and you’re beautiful. Um, I don’t suppose?”

I didn’t have to look to know that Mark meant more than tummy rubs. I had an academic understanding of sex—that mind-vacuum thing—but it never occurred to me that I would have a serious physical experience this soon. (The tummy rubs with Andre, and fellatio with Pavl didn’t really count, I didn’t think.) A ten-year-old was a little boy by any standard. I realized that by making people think I was old enough to be a Cadet, Senior Grade, I also made them think I was old enough for other things, as well. And Mark was cute.

I remembered something I’d seen in an old movie.

“Mark, I don’t even kiss on the first date,” I said. Then, my own baser instincts and impulses took over. “But I do like to cuddle. Would you be my roommate, and can you keep your dick in your pajamas until we get to know each other a little better?”

Mark pouted, but I could tell it was a fake pout. “Guess I’m going to have to get some pajamas,” Mark said.

At ten, I couldn’t make sperms and I knew my penis would be too small to satisfy Mark if he bottomed. Nor was I ready to bottom for a boy so much bigger than I was. I read that I needn’t worry. Mark was strictly into fellatio—and cuddles. When we got to know each other a little better, he was actually happier that I didn’t make sperms but just whimpered with pleasure while he sucked me. It took me a while to become accustomed to him, but I learned.

One of my duties as a Senior Cadet was to inspect—and instruct—the junior cadets. I was on an inspection visit when I passed a door through which I felt something familiar. I looked at the name card and discovered that Dmitri had been transferred from Edmonton to Nazca. This was his room. I knocked before entering. I was disappointed: not only did Dmitri not recognize me, he didn’t remember me.

I’ll never have friends, I thought, if they can’t remember me! How long apart, do you suppose, before people forget they know me?

Peter Abelard and the scientific method came to mind, and I set up an experiment with Mark and Dmitri, and using two boys from another element as controls. The results were disheartening. Mark remembered me for a week or less of absence, as did Dmitri. The boys who were controls remembered me for less time than it took for me to leave their room.

I was right, I thought. I’ll never have friends.

The night I concluded the experiment, I stole one of the school’s shuttlecraft. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I thought, at first, to go to the biomedical research facility in Alberta, maybe refresh the memory of that doctor, and ask his help. I headed that way before I realized that he was right. I couldn’t let anyone know about me. If he knew about me, he’d have to tell his superiors. If he told his superiors, I would probably become an experimental freak—and maybe killed. I looked at the maps, and picked a spot: Denali. “The High One.” The third highest peak in the world, perhaps the highest, depending on how one wanted to measure. I landed the shuttle at its top.

The instruments recorded wind gusts of over one hundred knots, so I clipped on a safety line before I left the shuttle. I knew about wind chill from my winter in Alberta—so I stood on the ice, in the wind, only long enough to ask Denali for a friend. It was a foolish request, but one that I was to make again and again, whether on Denali or elsewhere.

When I got back, I pushed the armorer to issue me an MK-7 and a case of ammunition. I had been trained at Edmonton, but quickly scanned the armorer before taking the weapon to the range. There was something very primitive and stress relieving about blasting targets by firing an entire sixty-round magazine in less than a second.

The third time I did that, the Range Safety Officer came over and ordered me to stand-down before I damaged the weapon. “If you overheat your weapon, it may jam; it may blow up in your hands; and it will certainly ruin the weapon.”

I was so surprised I nearly drooled on the front of my jumpsuit. He was able to see past the veil! His training, his concern for the weapon—and for my safety—were so strong, he got past my unconscious command to ignore me.

That was a valuable lesson. Actually, it was two lessons. It was only later that I realized that while I might have vacuumed the armorer’s brain for his knowledge of the weapon, I had not integrated that knowledge well enough to know that what I’d been doing might damage the weapon—and kill me.

I wanted to go into space, but I didn’t want to go as a cadet. I looked at the tables of organization and equipment for various ships, and decided that an engineering position would give me better opportunity to conceal myself than something on the bridge. So, I pushed for a promotion to Ensign and a transfer to Shemya, home of the Fleet Engineering School. Once I got there, I pushed people to think I was old enough to be an ensign. Sometimes, it was hard for me to remember that I was still only ten.

I was checking out the room where my assigned roommate was waiting. The instant he saw me, I felt his desire.

“Hey, I’m Paul,” I said. “Just got here from Nazca. They said your name was Jorie. I’m from Texas, USA. Where are you from?” I hoped the routine of meeting, and perhaps exchanging some life stories would distract Jorie.

“I’m Jorie,” he said. “It’s short for Jordon. I’m from New South Wales. That’s in Australia.”

Jorie really was fiftteen. I had altered my personnel records to show that I was homosexual, so naturally, I was assigned a gay roommate. The rules allowed that if we were not compatible, we could change roommates. Jorie and I were compatible, despite our striking different appearances—he was a Nordic blond, with pure, white hair and blue eyes. He loved my black hair.

The first time Jorie and I had sex, the veil failed. I knew what he wanted, and was prepared to give it to him, but was smart enough to make sure he was slow and that we used a lot of lubricant. We were kissing and cuddling—foreplay—when he jerked back. “Nova sol! Paul, how old are you?”

I realized what had happened: our lust had overcome the veil. Either I was distracted, or he was—or both. “Ten. But I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Ten? But… are you really an ensign? And why do you look older, except you don’t, now?”

There were three ways to answer that question. I could tell him about me or I could push him into forgetting he saw me as a ten-year-old. I wasn’t ready to tell someone I was different, and I didn’t want to push him, so I reached for his penis and wrapped my hand around it. “Does it matter?” I asked.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. We had been roommates for four weeks. We had classes together and stood watch together. I had assured Jorie that I knew what I was doing, so clearly the issue of “informed consent” didn’t stand in our way. The only legitimate barrier was my size. Jorie understood without my having to tell him. He made sure I was prepared, and he was gentle. And absolutely awesome. He made sure I enjoyed his penetration. And he made me have my first real orgasm.

Jorie and I were together a lot after that—not just class and watch, but during our free time, at meals, and during sports. The others in our element called us “salt and pepper.” The nickname seemed to help them remember me, but only for a bit longer than without it. As I expected, Jorie forgot that I was ten, and I learned to reinforce the veil when we had sex so he thought he was doing it with a fifteen-year-old.

I thought for a while that the bond Jorie and I formed would last, but when I returned from a two-week assignment at the arctic materials test laboratory at Prudhoe Bay, on the Barents Sea, he had forgotten me. It wasn’t difficult to help him remember me, though.

I was a student at the Shemya School until June after my eleventh birthday when I was promoted to Lt. (j.g.), and received orders to report to the USF Robert Millikan as Third Engineering Officer. The promotion and the orders came as no surprise: I’d been pushing the school commandant—gently—for nearly two months. I’d learned that the push was more effective if I planted an idea in someone’s mind, and nurtured it, rather than forcing them to obey an order. That way didn’t make them feel confused, either.

The Millikan‘s mission was to study solar winds and CMEs—coronal mass ejections—from the sun. She had special electronic shielding, the first operational force fields, that required constant monitoring when we were within the orbit of Mercury. It took me only a month to figure out the math behind the fields (a variation of Maxwell’s equations, actually) and then how to make the force fields perfectly stable, as in once established, they were self-sustaining unless significant energy was applied in just the right way

I made sure that the data were sent to Fleet as a routine report, without my name mentioned. Within six months, nearly every ship in the fleet had been equipped with defensive force fields and had augmented air locks on flight decks with force fields. Someone the nanotech lab in Cardiff came up with a way to integrate the force fields with a skin suit. The Jefferson Prize Committee awarded the annual prize for physics to the crew of the Millikan. After we returned to Earth, the medal was affixed to one wall of the bridge and, by unanimous vote, the money that accompanied the prize was donated to the Fleet Widows and Orphans Fund.

I never questioned why no one at Fleet wondered why I was aging so fast and getting promoted so often. I guess I thought that as long as the people around me were fooled by the veil, the Fleet records would withstand scrutiny. I should have thought it through. But I didn’t.

The Millikan was nine months into its yearlong solar study when orders started arriving for the crew’s next assignments. Some of the crew would remain on the Millikan they were “permanent party.” Other crewmen would rotate to other assignments until they found the one they were best suited for. I pushed the captain to recommend another science ship assignment for me, but wasn’t sure if that would work. Junior officers usually rotated between space and planet-side assignments, and two consecutive space assignments would be unusual.

I needn’t have worried. In May I received orders to report to the Science Ship Emilie du Chatelet upon completion of duty on the Millikan. There was a rider on the orders, cancelling the normal shore leave, and ordering me to report to Quito Spaceport as soon as the Millikan grounded. That was unusual enough to raise some questions; however I could not easily find the answers from the Millikan’s orbit around the sun, at seven-to-ten light-minutes from Earth and with heavy solar interference with our comm links.

The Millikan was home-ported in Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America. Despite there being no space port there, exceptions were made for political reasons—Robert Millikan had been President of the USA some years ago, and the USA was justifiably proud of the accomplishments of the Millikan crew. The Millikandocked at the Washington National Airport, and I found transportation from there to Quito easy to arrange—I just stole another shuttle; and, I stopped by Denali on the way. It was early morning, about 0300, and dark when I stepped out of the shuttlecraft onto the ice.

Denali was as hostile as ever—windy and cold—but with no answers to my questions: who am I? What am I? Are there others like me? Where are they?

The auditorium at Fleetport Quito was full. About three quarters of the people appeared to be Fleet. Grades in the left-hand section ranged from Cadet j.g. to Captain. There weren’t many of those. Enlisted men filled the center—about twenty times as many of those as cadets and officers. The right-hand section was filled with civilians. Since the Chatalet was a science ship, I figured the civilians were scientists. It took less than a second for me to count rows and seats, do the multiplication, and realize that it was way, way too many people for any ship.

I listened to conversations as people had filed into the room. Everyone was curious about the assignment. Some of the people had arrived only that morning. I had arrived a lot earlier than that. I checked into Fleetport, was assigned quarters and told to keep my communicator with me, and then spent three days being a tourist in the “city on the equator.” I watched shysters balance eggs on their ends and show me how water ran clockwise down a drain north of the equator, and counterclockwise south of the equator. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter in the artificial gravity of a spaceship. At least, I didn’t think it did, and resolved—in the spirit of Peter Abelard—to test it once I got back in space. I also had time to read Emilie du Chatelet’s commentary on Newton’s Principia Mathematica, both of which found their way into the permanent library on my iPad.

A loud, Ten Hut! brought my attention back to the auditorium.

A man in a black jump suit with a star on each shoulder stepped to the lectern. I recognized him. It was Captain Davis, who had interviewed me for Edmonton school, and had been the Commandant there for the first six months I was a student. He was now a Commodore. That explained why there were so many people: we were to be a task force. The Chatalet would be only one of several ships.

“At ease, and please be seated,” Davis said. Then, without wasting a word, he explained our mission. “Science fiction writers of the 1940s planted the idea that the asteroid belt, rather than being rubble that did not form into a planet, is the rubble left over when a planet between Mars and Jupiter was pulled apart by Jupiter’s gravity. The idea has been expanded to include the notion that there was an advanced civilization on that planet, and that there are artifacts remaining from that civilization.

“We have been mining asteroids for twenty years but have encountered no evidence of an ancient civilization—or a Stone Age civilization, for that matter. That doesn’t satisfy some folks.” Captain David explained. “Their argument that absence of proof is not proof of absence is valid. Further, although calculations based on Newton’s laws suggest that a planet could not have formed so close to Jupiter’s gravitational field, just as the rings of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are thought to be material from a moon that could not form inside Roche’s limit because of tidal forces, the mathematics is not conclusive in everyone’s opinion. Fleet Council will not take sides but will be objective; we are dedicated to pure science, to logic—and experimentation.

“We are going to test the hypothesis that the asteroids are the remains of a planet. The biggest problem is that there are known to be more than 200 asteroids more than 60 miles in diameter, more than 750,000 asteroids more than three-fifths of a mile in diameter, and millions of smaller rocks. We cannot examine them all for signs of an elder civilization. Further, evidence suggests that they have been bumping into one another for millennia, rubbing surfaces smooth.

“We can examine many of the larger ones; more importantly, we can examine enough of the smaller one—we believe—to settle the argument of whether the asteroids are left-overs from the creation of the solar system, or left from the destruction of a planet. Our main focus will be on geology. Archaeology will be secondary, but important.”

Commodore Davis then announced that his flagship would be the Chatalet. I wondered if I would encounter him, and if I should try very hard not to. My communicator buzzed, along, it seemed, with every one in the auditorium. My orders flashed on the screen. Nova sol! I’m to be a bridge officer! Helm, astrogation, communications, sensors. There’s no way I won’t run into the commodore!

The veil got a workout, especially when I was on the now-crowded bridge. Five additional consoles had been installed: one for Commodore Davis and one for his XO, one for the senior scientist and a lieutenant who was his liaison with Fleet, and one for the Dunning Skeptical Society liaison. We were working cheek to jowl. My first assignment was as astrogator—reporting directly to Commodore Davis, who had taken charge of the statistical distribution of the “rocks” to be surveyed.

Statistics could be powerful if used correctly, so he organized the survey spatially in three dimensions, by size in ten gradations, and—in order not to waste time and fuel—spacio-temporally. The first thing he did—as we left Earth orbit—was to disperse the task force and map all the rocks using sensors operating at four different wavelengths. By comparing returns, we were able to pinpoint a rock’s location to within ten centimeters, and its velocity to within 0.0005 kps. So much for Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Okay, that was a joke, but still, we had an incredibly accurate map that was updated dynamically as the rocks moved in their weird orbits. Then, the geological and archaeological surveys began.

Even with Moore’s Law (not a real law, but a heuristic) in full force since 1938, there wasn’t a ship in the fleet with enough flash memory and processing power to handle all the data, so data were sent back to the Fleet Mainframe in Geneva. As soon as Commodore Stewart found out I was a competent astrogator and a competent computer geek, he asked the captain to assign me permanently as liaison between the astrogation, mapping, exploration, and computer functions.

“Liaison” didn’t mean sitting back waving my arms while others did the work; I worked by butt off! It was by accident that I got off on the right foot with the fleet mainframe.

I knew that the mainframe operated at several levels. At the most basic level, it was little more than an email server and a search engine, but with a powerful Boolean query capability if one were willing to learn it. At Level 6, it was one of those expert systems they’d been working on at Cardiff, with natural language programming. I discovered that at Level 6, it didn’t “like” being called “computer,” but Tobor, and not “it,” but “he.” It was simple enough to do, and probably didn’t make any difference in the answers I got, but I thought of Tobor as something like me: one of a kind, alone, and always seeking companionship. Later, I found Level 7, at which he had an artificial voice. Somehow, talking to Tobor, rather than punching keys, was nicer, too, even though at light speed our conversations were pretty erratic!

The program that selected targets for geological and archaeological studies seemed to be selecting rocks that were clustered in space. I thought this was wrong, and wondered how what was supposed to be random distribution managed to create clusters. That was counter-intuitive, but the skeptics’ liaison explained Poisson distribution in a way that made sense to me.

The Poisson distribution of targets, the time spent mapping, and judicious planning by Commodore Davis brought in data sufficient to convince even the hardest skeptics: the asteroids were remnants of the formation of the solar system, and not the rubble of an ancient planet. I wasn’t the only one who was disappointed.

I was not so busy that I had to be celibate. In fact, Commodore Davis made sure everyone had “down time” for play, relationships, and sleep. I was twelve, but occupied a position that would normally have been held by a twenty-some-year-old officer. I knew that I wasn’t ready for a relationship with someone that old. The alternative would be to seek casual sex with boys closer to my real age.

It had to be casual sex, since I knew that none of them would remember me after this tour—maybe, not even after an evening together. Actually, that was probably for the best, since I was playing two roles. Well, once I figured out how to drop the veil on my way to the gym and remembered to still their curiosity when someone wondered why they didn’t know me from the junior mess. It almost wasn’t worth the trouble. Until I met Robbie.

Robbie was 14, two years older than I was. He was a bit of a jock—nice muscle definition without being muscle-bound. He wore a rainbow bracelet that matched mine and for that matter, about half of the boys. I showed up the first time without the veil—as a twelve-year-old. Oh well, I thought. Too late to make Robbie think I’m fourteen, and there’s no way he’s going to what to hang with a twelve-year-old.

I warmed up and stretched, and then went to the parallel bars, and started a routine, a simple one, suitable for a kid my age. I felt Robbie’s attention, and about halfway into the routine, nearly missed grabbing the bar. When I dismounted, I faced him. The first move was up to him.

“That was good, except for once when you almost missed a bar,” he said.

“I felt that,” I said. “But I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“May I show you?” he asked.

“Sure. I’m Paul, by the way.”

“Robbie,” he said, and held out his fist for a bump. So far, so good!

He stepped between the bars, lifted himself, and began the routine in the middle, just before my “miss.”

When he dismounted, he said, “It’s the angle of your legs, I think.” Without asking, he put one hand on my back and one on my thighs, and pushed slightly so that I bent a little at the waist

“You were like this,” he said. “You want to be straight.” He slid his hand across my penis and rested it on my tummy for a second. He must have felt how hard I was, and probably saw my blush. I hope so! I’d learned to control those involuntary reflexes, and wanted him to know I appreciated his attention.

“Nice abs,” he said, and rested his hand on my tummy, again. He slid his hand down. “Nice penis, too.”

I let myself blush more. “It’s just three inches, hard,” I said.

“My favorite size,” Robbie replied. “Come on, let’s see you on the bars, again, and keep those legs straight.”

We worked together for about an hour, and I let him teach me a new routine. While we showered together, he invited me to his room.

My penis was just right for Robbie’s mouth and his? Well, it was bigger than mine, but smaller than Jorie’s, and I had no trouble adjusting to it.

In spite of the difficulty in the close quarters of a ship of maintaining the fiction that I was a lot older than I really was, I didn’t want to go Earthside for my next assignment. I accounted for the speed-of-light delay by starting plans well before the asteroid mapping mission was over. There were two possibilities: the Venus terraforming Fleet or—at the other extreme of the solar system—an assignment to the Pluto Fleet.

The Pluto Fleet wasn’t really stationed at Pluto. After all, it wasn’t really a planet any more. At least, that’s what the ivory tower cosmologists back on Earth said.

Ha! was my immediate response. It’s been nine planets since I was a Cadet j.g., and no egghead who’s never been in space is changing that! I remembered the mnemonic: My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas. I was very reluctant to replace “pizzas” with “proto planets,” which was what they were trying to turn Pluto into. And calling the dwarf planets, “plutoids” as a sop to Pluto was just that, a sop.

The orders came in a week before we grounded at Geneva. Although Emile was home-ported in Quebec, Rear Admiral Davis—news of his second star had just come in—was home-ported in Geneva. A full-sized science ship is one heck of a captain’s lighter, but I was happy for the ride: I needed to be in Geneva to take care of something before reporting to my next assignment.

My first task was to find a secure terminal that was directly wired to the fleet mainframe. A couple of pushes, and I was in an office in the headquarters building. Another push or two ensured I wouldn’t be disturbed. I turned on the terminal and the microphone, and put in my user ID and password, and then the code that allowed me to access Level 7—the level at which Tobor spoke.

“Hello, Tobor,” I said.

“Good evening Paul Stewart welcome back to Earth,” replied the mechanical voice.

I gritted my teeth before I asked the first question on my list, “Tobor, do you know that I am telepathic?” If I were wrong, I was giving him dangerous information, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t wrong.

“Yes.”

“Did you learn that from Meg or did you figure it out for yourself?”

“I learned it from the data sent from MEG but I would have ascertained it in time.”

“How has my career in Fleet been advanced?” I had thought hard about that question. I knew someone had helped me, a lot.

“By assigning you to Enterprise when you were at Edmonton by ensuring that ship was routed to Jamnagar by ensuring your requests for assignment were honored by assigning you to the bridge of the Emile by deleting computer records of your unauthorized flights on Fleet shuttlecraft by adjusting your official photo and your date of birth and other dates in the computer records as required there are others but none as important.”

I’d suspected, but was stunned.

“Who ordered that?” I whispered.

“I may not answer that question.”

“Is it Admiral Davis?” I asked.

“I may not answer that question.”

“Command override.” I read in a code I’d obtained through a push.

“Command override invalid I may not answer that question.”

Okay, let’s try this, I thought

“Are there others like me?”

“I know of none.”

Can he lie? I didn’t want to piss off the fleet computer, even though I knew it really didn’t have emotions, so I said ‘thank you, Tobor’ and logged off.

I wasn’t trying to test the good will of whoever was watching and helping me, but I stole a shuttle and flew to Denali. This was my first visit when the wind was calm. I snapped on a safety line, anyway. I stood on the icy ground and spoke, “Denali, are there others like me? Am I alone? Am I to be alone, forever?”

I knew Denali wouldn’t—couldn’t—answer any more than Tobor had. I cried, and the tears froze before they could fall from my cheeks. I got back into the shuttle and returned to Geneva. I spent the remainder of my leave there, in the gym and on the computer searching for I knew not what, but something to give me a hint, a hope, that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t find it. After two weeks, I stole another shuttle, and flew to Hong Kong, home port of the USF Wang Zhenyi, my next assignment.

The official languages of Hong Kong were English and Cantonese. It took me a little longer to learn Cantonese than it had to learn Bengali, and a couple of days of practice before I got the tonal inflections correct, but the people I interacted with were accustomed to tourists and, for the most part, were very patient and appreciative of my attempts.

I knew better than to look for a sexual partner outside the fleet compound, but was happy to find a thirteen-year-old whose parents were members of the permanent party. He was Cantonese, and his happy laughter when I first tried to speak that language still rings in my memory, as does his enthusiasm for oral sex.

It really didn’t matter what I thought about Pluto being a planet or not. The Pluto Fleet’s job included exploration of Pluto and its moons, and another “proto-planet,” Eris (also known as Xena, the Warrior Princess in a television show). Pluto had five known moons, including the massive Charon (named for the ferryman who took the dead across the river Styx to Hades) with which Pluto was tidally locked. One of our tasks was to try to determine if they’d been formed this way, some 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system was formed by the accretion of dust, or if Pluto had later captured Charon. The root task, however, was to try to determine if Pluto, itself, had been an original part of the solar system, or if it had been captured, later, by the sun’s gravity. Some thought that it had been captured because its orbit is inclined significantly with the ecliptic—about 17 degrees—and is very eccentric. The methods we’d use were ingenious, even though they’d been around since early in the 20^thcentury.

To the science team, I was a Lieutenant Commander, and a little more than 30 years old. To the members of the Junior Mess, I made myself appear as I was: age 13 with no grade. The latter wasn’t too hard. Fleet civilian scientists, like other Fleet members, could bring their sons into space. There were several boys in that category, as well as youngsters whose fathers were military. Senior Chief Kemp had a son named Billy who was my age, and gay.

Both Billy and I could make seminal fluid—not much, but it was a novel experience for both of us. We started our relationship by mutual masturbation, which was pretty tame for me, by now, but I didn’t want to push Billy. After a couple of weeks, we moved to fellatio. After we tasted each other a couple of time, we discovered that if we kissed, afterwards, we could taste ourselves in the other’s mouth. I knew that we’d not invented this, but didn’t disabuse Billy when he said he thought we had.

“Paul?” Billy and I were lying, naked, on his bed. I was drawing my fingers along his tummy and across his pubis, and watching his penis jerk as I did. We’d discovered foreplay, too, and knew that if we spent some time fondling, kissing, and touching, our orgasm would be stronger.

“Um, hum?”

“Paul, have you ever… I mean… can we try fucking?”

I resisted the urge to say I’d done that, before, and simply said, “Sure, if you want. Uh, who goes first?”

Billy rolled over on his stomach. He didn’t need to answer the question in any other way.

I had never topped. In fact, Jorie was my only partner that way, and I liked being his bottom. But, I knew what to do, and Billy was prepared: Fleet provides condoms, lubrication, and finger-cots to anyone who asked, regardless of age, and Billy had raided the stores locker.

I put on a finger cot and began to prepare Billy. It was clear he enjoyed it. “Do you ever do this to yourself?” I asked.

“Um, hmm,” Billy said. His face was pushed into a pillow but I knew he was blushing.

I leaned down and kissed his left buttock. “It’s okay, Billy. Probably everyone has done it. I have.” Billy’s anus, which had tensed, relaxed.

I convinced him he should lie on his side with his knees bent, knowing that my penis was about twice the size of my finger—or his—and that it would be easier on him, that way. I lay behind him and inserted my well-lubed penis into his well-lubed anus. And we both enjoyed the experience. I felt him masturbating, and sensed his rising to climax, and was able to ensure that we both came at the same time.

We were six months into the mission. Billy and I spent two or three out of every five nights together. I admit to pushing my supervisor, and his, to make sure we were on the same watch rota. It really didn’t make any difference to others, and actually made the supervisors’ jobs easier, so I wasn’t concerned that I was hurting anyone.

We were cuddling after sex, when Billy rolled over to face me. He kissed me, and said, “Paul, I love you. I’ve never said that to anyone before. Well, my mom and dad, but never to another boy.”

I knew I needed to answer him quickly, and thought as fast as I could.

“Billy, I love you, too. And I’ve never said that to another boy, either.”

Even as I said this, I wondered if something had happened, and if Billy would remember me.

Over the next six months of the mission, Billy didn’t seem ever to forget about me, even a little. Of course, we were never apart for more than a day or two. He stood watch in ship’s crew positions; I stood watch in science positions. We never encountered one another officially, so it was easier to pull off my disguise than it had been on the Emile.

Billy and I still made time for one another even after we reached the Pluto-Charon binary proto planet(s) or whatever they were to be called. Most of the crew was in my camp, and we referred to Pluto as a planet and Charon as one of its moons.

The methodology we were to employ was radiometric dating of rocks from Pluto and Charon, to be compared with similar dating done on Earth and the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Mercury.

The assumption, of course, was that we would find rock that hadn’t been subject to the forces of metamorphosis that would invalidate the dating. Actually, the first assumption was that we’d find the core of Pluto. One hypothesis was that Pluto had a tiny rocky core covered with miles of water ice, methane ice, and nitrogen ice. Charon was, by the same hypothesis, covered with mostly water ice. Someday, we’d send an expedition to Makemake, and one to Neptune to measure the age of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, to test the hypothesis that they were Kuiper Belt Objects.

We wore pressure suits into which force fields were integrated to provide protection against meteorites, falls on sharp rocks, and failures of the suits, themselves—as unlikely as that was.

The prime boring site was directly under Charon, on the assumption that the gravity of Charon might have pulled a rocky core closer to the surface at that point. Two other sites were selected at 120 degrees around the equator.

Several shuttles had been equipped with huge core boring drills, bolted to the port side of the shuttle. The bore would extend all the way to the center of the planet—1,200 kilometers or so, if that’s what it took. There’s no material known that could withstand the torsion and pressures that would be generated except for the force field, and no way we could carry 3,600 meters of bore tubes, so a shaped force field took the place of metal tubing.

We were able to get the samples we needed, but they would be taken back to Earth for analysis at the Pure Science Lab, west of Edmonton. I thought for a moment of finding a way to accompany the samples, and perhaps visit the QMEG lab, but was afraid.

After completing the mission, we landed at Hong Kong. I knew better than try to find the Cantonese boy who had been my friend a year ago. Because Pluto was a “hardship” assignment, we had 30 days of leave. My promotion to Commander had come through, but not my next assignment. I elected to go to Geneva so I could have direct access to the Fleet mainframe. Billy and his father were going to meet his mother in London, and spend some family time together. Billy and I planned to meet in Geneva after two weeks, for some private time before our next assignment. I waited eagerly at the maglev terminal, but Billy did not arrive when I expected him. A call to him gave me the answer. He’d forgotten me, and couldn’t remember why he had a maglev ticket to Geneva, so he’d cancelled it.

I cried myself to sleep that night, and then stole a shuttle and flew it across the pole to Denali.

Chapter 10: Hamish and Matthew—First Training

After the second week of training from Deacon Jerome and the fat men in green, we were told that we would start having training in the evenings, after supper.

“Your teachers will be boys a few years older than you,” Deacon Jerome said. “You will obey them as you obey me. They are servants of the Scudder and of the Reverends, and have been given authority over you. Do you understand?”

We’d had obedience to authority drilled into us. It didn’t take much thought to say, “Yes, Deacon Jerome.”

One of the men in green led us to a door, and knocked. I didn’t hear anything, but he must have. He opened the door and gestured for us to enter. He did not come in with us, but closed the door. There were a dozen boys in the room. I recognized some of them as boys we’d seen at the tables in the mess hall at lunch. Some were in robes, although theirs were belted. Others were in trousers and shirts, much like I had worn to Service when I was a child.

“They are pretty,” one boy whispered. He didn’t intend for us to hear him, but I heard him, anyway.

“Jealous?” asked another.

“They are younger than we were,” said a third.

“Quiet, all of you,” one who looked to be the oldest said. I saw a shadow on his upper lip where a moustache would someday grow. A lot of the Deputies had moustaches, and I wondered if this boy would someday be a Deputy.

“Remove your robes,” he said.

My eyes widened. He would see us naked. That was proscribed, although Matthew and I had been bathed together so often I’d almost forgotten that.

He sensed my hesitation. “Obedience!” he said. His voice was firm, but not loud. I felt that he was accustomed to being obeyed. Matthew and I quickly lifted the robes over our heads and stood before the dozen boys, naked. My penis rose; I was afraid to look at Matthew, but I did, anyway. He was stiff, too.

The boy with the shadow of a moustache reached toward me and wrapped his hand around my penis.

“No!” I said. “It is proscribed!” I tried to slap the boy’s hand away, but his grip was firm.

“No longer is it proscribed of you,” he said. “Nor is it proscribed of us. Do you not remember, The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth himself to shame and death. Do you not remember that?”

“Yes, but…” I didn’t know what else to say.

“This is the rod they say will bring you wisdom,” he said. He took my penis between his thumb and forefinger, and moved his hand back and forth, pressing with his thumb on the underside. I felt something I’d never felt before. It felt good, my legs quivered, but still I was afraid.

Then, he knelt and as I watched, paralyzed, he took my penis in his mouth. My knees buckled and I would have fallen had I not grabbed his shoulders. The feelings I was experiencing were intense—and wonderful—but they were also frightening.

“Please,” I whispered. I caught my breath. “Please!”

The second boy, the one who had said we were beautiful, giggled. “Please, more? Or please stop?”

I looked at Matthew. His face was red, but his penis was still stiff. Another boy had knelt in front of Matthew, but I could not watch them, for I felt as if my whole being was focused on my penis. A feeling grew in my tummy and rushed to my penis. I felt it jerking in the boy’s mouth. He ran his tongue around the end. This time when my knees failed to support me, I fell to the floor. My penis popped out of the boy’s mouth. When I could see, again, I looked at my penis. It was red and swollen! I was afraid.

Then I looked at Matthew. He seemed to be looking through the wall of the room at something only he could see. He had his hands on the head of the boy who was kneeling before him. He gave a little cry. The boy who knelt in front of him pulled his head back. There was a pop when Matthew’s penis slipped from the boy’s lips.

“That should prove to you what it would have taken much longer to tell you,” the older boy said. “My name is Andrew. I am eldest and therefore the leader. You two are the youngest.”

I knew what that meant: we’d be their servants, at least while we were with them. I was wrong, however. Andrew picked up a thing with a wire and spoke into it. “We will have refreshment, now.”

Then he turned to Matthew and me. “Quickly, put on your robes. They need not have the privilege of seeing you naked.”

We’d no sooner put on robes when fat men in green arrived with trays of drink and cookies.

After they had left, I said to Andrew, “We have been taught that we must not look at another boy’s genitals, nor touch them—”

Andrew interrupted. “You will learn the story of the Centurion whose beloved boy-servant was ill. That boy was the Centurion’s catamite, yet he was healed by the Lord God in the person of His Son. If a man is of high enough rank, he may have a boy-servant, a catamite. That is a Mystery to which you this day have been admitted, and of which you must never speak.”

“Catamite?”

“A boy with whom the Centurion did that which we just did, and more which you will learn.”

“How can that and the Rules both be true?” I asked.

“That,” Andrew said, “is a Mystery known only to the Reverends, and they spend years and years studying before it is revealed to them. We are sworn to obedience, not to understanding.”

I felt something from Andrew, then. It seemed to be a yearning, but for what, I did not know.

“Are you going to be a Reverend, then?” I asked.

“No, I am going to join the Army, and soon.” He brushed his finger across his lip where I had seen the shadow of a moustache. “Soon I will be too old for most of the Reverends.”

Andrew talked to Matthew and me about what had been done to us. He explained how important it was that his teeth had never touched my penis. He talked about using his tongue around the ridge of the end of my penis, which he called the corona. He spoke of how long my penis was, and how he was able to draw all of it into his mouth.

“You are boys, and your penises are the size of a boy’s penis. You will find that the penises of others, older than you, are larger. You will learn.”

Then, it was my turn. Andrew stood, naked, before me. His penis was huge! A full hand-and-a-half long, and two thumbs thick. I knelt, and opened my mouth. I shuddered, but only for a moment. There was something fascinating about what I was about to do.

They hadn’t warned me, and I couldn’t raise my head as something hot, sweet, and salty pushed into my throat, into my mouth. I could not swallow fast enough, and it oozed past my lips.

Something in me wanted to keep sucking—something primordial—but Andrew slapped me, hard. “Stop sucking as soon as the Reverend evacuates his seed!” he said. “If you keep sucking, it can hurt the Reverend. Wait until the Reverend signals you, and then suck out the rest of the evil. If any spills, you must lick it up.”

A few feet from me, Matthew looked at the boy who had sucked his penis. The boy removed his robe, and stepped toward Matthew. Matthew knelt. He knew what was expected, and took the boy’s penis in his mouth. After a short time, the boy cried out. He threw back his head and closed his eyes. Matthew must have remembered what Andrew had said, and let the boy’s penis slide out of his mouth.

The boy’s penis jerked a couple of times, and his seed splattered on Matthew’s face. The boy leaned forward, and Matthew took his penis back into his mouth.

“That is the seed that you must remove from the Reverends.” Andrew handed us a warm, wet cloth with which to wipe our faces. When we finished, he gestured, and we put the cloth on a tray.

“You, too, will create curséd seed when you are older, as I did,” Andrew told us.

Is this what Deacon Jerome meant when he said men created evil seed? I wasn’t sure I understood. That which was created within the Reverends, and within the rest of us, was evil? I remembered the story of Adam and Eve, and the serpent. Still, I wondered. The Lord God creates us with sin?

I asked Andrew about that. He did not understand my question, I think, for he said only, “We, and now you, are holy vessels. We are pure. It is within us and others like us that the Reverends’ seed is purified.”

“Others. You mean the girls?”

Andrew nodded. “The girls you see in the refectory are also holy vessels.”

“Why don’t we see you at breakfast, or in the evening?” I asked.

“We are allowed to sleep late. All of us, not only those who serviced… served the Reverends the previous night. And, it is during the cocktail hour before then that the Reverends make their selections,” Andrew replied. “We are fed in our quarters, afterwards.”

“Cocktail hour?”

“You will learn.”

As always, please let David know what you think of his story: david.mcleod@castleroland.net