Chapter 9: Tess Educates

Tess and I were cuddled together in the afterglow of sex. I had returned from a forty-hour mission on Earth picking up some artifacts and an experienced dog handler—a medically-retired Air Force woman. The Air Force can't use anybody minus both legs, one arm and most of her face. Tech Sergeant Candice "Candi" Crossman was in medical being rebuilt. I was staving off neo-adrenaline backlash and forty-four hours of fatigue—I had been on the go without sleep for two days. I had been making love to Tess for about an hour. Now I was spooned against her back, holding a small breast with my right hand, stroking her just above where we were joined by my penis and her vagina. I was deflating but still inside. We were sweaty and breathing had returned to normal.

"Thank you, Tess," I whispered into her ear. "I enjoyed myself."

"You are quite the con artist," Tess giggled. "You are about to drop dead. I told you that I wanted some sex. Not a one-man gang bang."

"Do I owe you an apology?" I asked.

"Don't you dare apologize!"

I closed my eyes and sighed.

"Tess, remember when we first met? At the orphanage? I had a plan for educating the orphans. One place I don't have the wits for is sex education and training." I explained that education produced knowledge and training developed skill. "The textbooks are inadequate for the education part and they didn't address skills at all when I went to school. Even the adult education stuff is lacking."

"You mean porn?" Tess asked.

"Porn is what the patriarchs in Ancient Greece called Sappho's political writings," I snickered. "Those old men made love to boys but were scandalized to learn that women were physically affectionate with each other. Blasphemy! The gods would be angry!"

"Tom," Tess said, "before I became a sister I was in some porn movies."

Tess confessed that she had run away from home and had made several skin flicks. She told me that the underground adult movie industry was where Tess discovered that she preferred to have sex with other women. Her last role was wearing a nun's habit—and the studio was raided.

"I was not eighteen then," Tess said. "I lied about my age. They put me in juvie for a couple of years. It was in juvie that I found Jesus and decided to become a real nun."

"Would you do me a favor?" I asked. "Could you come up with some multi-media education and training materials that are age-appropriate? You've seen my self-defense stuff. Concubines basically are prohibited from using force on sponsors and will be executed for doing so—not even the extenuating circumstance of protecting a child will save a concubine."

"That's not right," Tess objected. "A concubine who strikes a sponsor in order to save a child's life might be executed, but doesn't have to be—and if she doesn't strike the sponsor she can still interfere."

"Okay," I said. Tess was explaining the law when I winked out. I had bizarre dreams. The last time that I laid eyes on Spot—the jaguar—and her girl Dawn was almost a month ago. I dreamed that Spot was in bed with me and her cubs were, too. It was a seamless transition from talking to Tess, falling asleep, and Dawn waking me up.

"No, you're not dreaming," Dawn told me. There were two jaguar cubs snoozing on my bare chest—and Spot's head was resting on my stomach.

"I'm glad to see you again," my voice was hoarse. "These babies of yours are precious."

"Lilith wants you at a meeting," Dawn told me. "Everybody's waiting. Leave the babies here. Jaguars leave their babies while hunting and Spots needs to be at the meeting too."

"Who is Lilith?" I asked. I couldn't remember everybody.

"She's the lady in that pyramid," Dawn explained. "Come on, my master."

Short of a spreadsheet my description of my "household" will be hard to understand—because there were almost thirty human sponsors. Then there were some specialist concubines such as the couple that took care of the horses. Then there were four-footed family—two dogs (Nana and Rex, the mommy dog and the pack alpha), a wolf named Calgary, a bear named Big Momma, the lead stallion and dominant mare, and a woman wearing only a large cobra—that snake must have been three meters long!

"I am Lilith," the woman in the snake announced when I arrived, jaguar in tow. "Welcome, warrior-king."

I wasn't firing on all cylinders. I actually stopped, looked around the room. I was the only male sponsor in the room. The other men in the room were concubines. With two or three missions to Earth per week lasting from as little as fifteen minutes to forty hours—averaging ten hours plus planning, preparation, briefing Central Command and then the After Action Report and whatever recovery operations were needed—and adding in sleep learning, real-time physical training sessions, and one-on-one family time I was very keenly aware that there were only one hundred sixty-eight hours per week. I was restricted to six sleep learning modules of 90 minutes per week because I didn't get rested when sleep learning. I looked around the room for a warrior-king and all eyes, human and other, were looking at me.

Mary's chuckle started it. In a moment, I was surrounded by human women and by animals expressing their sympathy.

"I remember you from that ship," I said when the noise abated. "Are you an avatar?"

"I am a goddess," Lilith was firm without being harsh. "My life began more than 250,000 years ago. My mission was to defend the human race and Earth until you humans grew up as a species and could take care of yourselves. Now I am alone but there used to be hundreds of us. Eventually we'll find out where they went. Right now Central Command has made a pact with me and this ship. You are to continue your duties with the Targeted Extraction Group until further notice. You will be providing special training support. While this is going on new star drives will be installed. This ship doesn't have hyperspace engines—never had them. Eventually we'll be an independent command that will penetrate deep into Sa'arm-infested space and conduct special operations as directed by Central Command."

I was silent while I digested all of that. A quarter million year old goddess? Hundreds of questions flooded my mind, thousands.

"When and where is my next mission?" I blurted out.

"Africa," Lilith said. "Be ready to leave in six hours."