Chapter 9: This Isn't Stable

After I'd been out at Jupiter for long enough that the days were beginning to run together, Doc Sorenson came out with his team of implant-adjusters. Diana and I were sending emails back and forth, sometimes two or three times a day. In one of them she asked me to see if I and a couple of trusted buddies could be at the station to meet them. Sure, I can bring several of the guys I work with. Why? Do they need porters for their equipment?

She wouldn't say, and I never found out why until the shuttle showed up. We had been getting more people out here every day, with the shuttles dumping 10, 15, or even 20 out before, so the crowd that popped out in the transporter room wasn't any big surprise, but one particular person was.

That shuttle had the becoming-normal dozen or so new recruits, people to run miners and build structures and learn ships. Doc Sorenson brought a second doctor, one from the Air Force. Colonel Weiss had specialized in controlled-environment medicine like our space stations and some of the Air Force's classified programs that no one admitted existed, and he should be very helpful out here. Doc also brought out a half-dozen rather competent-looking men for security, since his mission out here was likely to cause some trouble.

I didn't hear any of the introductions, though. One of the last people to step off the pad was Diana, wearing that form-fitting pink suit and looking better than she ever had, even when I first met her. I didn't pay any attention to anyone else for a while.

There was an old Rock singer named Joe Cocker who recorded a song about a woman doing a strip tease, named "You Can Leave Your Hat On." Every time I saw Diana I thought of the refrain from that song. "You give me reason to live!"

When I started noticing my surroundings again, a dozen or so men were all saying the obvious: We need women up here. Well, yeah. Duh. I'd dealt with that all my married life. Anywhere we went, the men wanted their own Diana.

Guys drooling in Diana's general direction weren't a serious problem in Norfolk or Bremerton, or even Kings Bay or Groton, because anyone who wanted could go off-base and conduct their own talent search in their free time. Here, though, that wasn't an option. I let Diana go a little, and asked "What have the guys been doing, back down at Freighter 2?"

Diana was still working for Admiral Kennedy, and since she was dead like me she had to stay up there on the freighter along with most of the crew. "The ones who can are going home every night. The ones who can't are getting cranky. And I've been propositioned more times than I can count. That's why I'm here now, so I don't have to deal with questions about why I sleep alone."

I stated the obvious. It's what I do as an engineer and safety inspector. I point out problems that people are ignoring, hoping they'll go away. "This isn't stable. Men need women. You and Ginger and the Admiral are going to have to do something to get women up here."

"We're trying, but your test is making it almost impossible. Any women who pass your test are happily married like me, or they have a good reason not to be like Ginger."

I stiffened. The test was still a secret, up here. Everyone who had been sent up after me knew, as they had had to pass the test and convince the Admiral and the AIs that they could be trusted just to get here, but the 80 or 90 men who arrived before me still knew nothing about it.

"We'll talk about that after Doc has done his job, okay? We've got to do something, though. This isn't stable." Which is engineer-speak for "That machine is about to start throwing pieces out. Why aren't you hiding behind something solid?"

"Ginger has a bad solution for the problem, and she's trying to get the Admiral and the AIs to authorize it once as a test. Since this is a UN operation, she wants to have someone from their headquarters up in New York go out and hire about twenty ladies for a weekend party. There has to be someone up there who knows how to do that, and we all know there are women who make their living doing that."

She continued "If we hire twenty 'escorts' for the weekend, we can send them up to Freighter Number Two. They'll get screened for medical issues and asked to find someone on the ship that they'd like to spend the weekend with. We don't know how it would work after that, but if some want to stay we should be able to allow it. Any of them who want to go home can go back in the med-tubes and forget all about where they've been."

I could see all kinds of ways that that experiment could go wrong, but things were going to go wrong anyway, if we didn't start getting women up here somehow. "Bad solution is right, but that's the traditional way of handling servicemen far from home, you hire a bunch of hookers to keep them happy. Has the Admiral pointed out to the AIs that this is the normal method we use, for dealing with this problem?"

"Yes. We have a tentative agreement to run it as a one-time experiment and then analyze the results. If it doesn't cause too much trouble we'll see if we can get more on a longer-term agreement and send them up here for you men. That's the real reason I'm here on this trip, to make sure you don't forget about me when all those paid dates show up."

I pulled her tight again. "There's no chance of that, honey."

"I hope not. I'm pregnant again. It's not nice to get a girl pregnant and then leave her."

My wife is pregnant again! I ignored everyone else for awhile again. When we came up for air again I told her the truth. "It's what sailors do, honey. We get women pregnant and then leave. It's okay if you track me down, though. Thanks for coming."

Doc Sorenson and Doctor Weiss got everyone else organized. The new recruits who came out with them could help, since they knew the whole story about the UN vs NATO issue. There were a couple of people we expected to have trouble with, starting with the man in charge out here, Rear Admiral Andrews. I stayed out of that. I was just another officer sent out here to learn about alien ships. I know nothing about political shenanigans, nope, not me! Only... "Honey, what's your job out here?"

"I don't have one. I'm here to make sure you remember me when all those sluts with their new 24-year-old bodies come up here looking for husbands. Officially, if anyone asks, it's a fact-finding junket. I need to know what-all you people are doing up here so I can send you who you really need instead of who we think you need."

Hmmmm... "Oh. Well, in that case, I need to give you a tour of the facilities so you know what-all we are doing. You'll have to stay by my side the whole time you're up here to make sure you get everything I'm trying to show you."

"Dear, I've already had everything you're going to show me, but I'll happily let you give it to me again."

That was great. While the doctors were dealing with all the panic over implant malfunctions, I was in my little cubby helping my wife with her exercise program and verifying that I was still healthy. I don't think Diana really saw much of Jupiter Station, or even Freighter #12 for that matter. She got a pretty good view of the overhead in my berthing cubby, though.

Col. Weiss stayed with us to finish the "implant job", with a couple of men for security. The next morning, though, Diana got on the next shuttle with Doc Sorenson and the rest of the security guys for the long trip back to Earth. Col. Weiss would find something else to work on when the implant job was done.

I don't think that Admiral Andrews was pleased to find out about his remote-control implant, but I was off his radar for this. I was just a Captain, one of several learning how to run alien ships, and he was too professional to vent to his subordinates about any issues he had about his superiors. I bet Admiral Kennedy got an earful, though. Admiral Andrews did start pushing NATO solidarity instead of UN leadership.

When I got back to my little cabin after seeing Diana off I almost had a heart attack. All the walls were a bright yellow, with pretty flowers painted every few inches like some kind of wallpaper. I knew the walls could change, we had messed with that a little when we were back on F2, but I hadn't bothered doing anything up here yet. It wasn't important to me. Diana admitted in her next email that she had set it up with the AIs several days before, but she waited until she got there and saw for herself that I hadn't done anything to decorate my cabin before she authorized it.

Okay, okay, I'll do something, but not THAT! I ended up with everything back to the basic off-white, and a 'window' on one wall that looked like it was in a cabin, showing a mountainside meadow in the Smokey Mountains. You could see birds and rabbits, occasionally a deer. I don't think it was live, but I don't know. Did the Confederacy buy some land and put a camera on it, just so I could have that view?

I asked if I could have an underwater view of a Darjee ocean but the AIs refused. They wouldn't even tell me if the Darjee home world had oceans or not. Well, I tried.

A week or so later, we started getting women out there at Jupiter. Here was where I saw some leadership from Admiral Andrews. He had clearly been doing some thinking on top of all the talks with the AIs and Admiral Kennedy back at Freighter #2. What he did was post a note in the mess-decks of each ship or facility: - The ladies are here to both help us and make a better life for themselves. - The ladies will make their own choices. Discussion is encouraged. Threats and/or force are not acceptable. - The ladies will not return to any particular partner until ALL of the men have had an opportunity to impress them. - The ladies can take every other night off. If they choose to do so, they will not be bothered in any way. - Absolutely no permanent or long-term relationships will be permitted until the ratio of women to men at Jupiter Station is at least 4:5. - The AIs have been authorized to monitor this. Don't be possessive. Don't be rude.

The bottom of the notice had a couple of numbers: Jupiter Station currently has 216 men and 26 women.

Something that Diana had NOT bothered to tell me was that they had a guide with them, to make sure they were taken care of. The shuttle brought us 25 beautiful women all wearing white spacesuits that showed off their figures. The 26th woman was Ginger, looking just as good as any of the others but in a pink suit like Diana's.

Ginger had come along to help with any confusion. These were the second group of "escorts" hired in New York City for us by the UN headquarters. They were all exceptionally good-looking, but there are a lot of hookers in New York City and the UN headquarters probably only hires the best. Besides, it turned out that they had all had 'makeovers', courtesy of Freighter #2's medtubes. Or maybe it was LTI's medtubes. I knew that LTI had an office in New York City, and they were working on opening one in other cities, too.

The first group had been a short-term test; it was only a dozen or so women and none of the ladies had gotten any farther than Freighter #2. Most of those hookers had elected to stay up there, away from the pimps and the drugs and the diseases and the abuse and the cops. If they had to keep a couple of men happy, that was still a far better deal than what they had on the street. If you were grading, that test was a success.

Some of the women, however, didn't want to stay. There wasn't much we could do about that. Those who had a good reason, like "I have to go take care of my children" got put on Ginger's recall list for later, when we were organized enough to deal with children and whatever other issues they had.

The ladies who were going back were first given memories of a fun party with a bunch of businessmen who were in town for a big deal and had been very easy to please. After that, they were sent back to LTI's New York office -where their "scheduling managers" had delivered them in the first place- with $2000 in cash for each one as payment for their services during the weekend-long party. LTI had a video of every woman, either saying they wanted to stay or that they wanted to go home. It was none of our business how long they managed to hold on to that $2000.

This second group, after hearing about that 'weekend party', was all willing to go work for the UN for a couple of weeks. Actually, the group had started out even larger but Diana had diverted some of them to Freighter 2, to try to make sure that she didn't get bothered at night.

Ginger had come out with these ladies to make sure we understood that if there was any mistreatment, the ladies would go back home early and there would not be any further shipments. When coupled with the deep understanding we already had of how well we were monitored by the AIs, that kept the enthusiasm under control. There were still some fights, but as long as they were between men we could understand that.

The women had been offered free plastic surgery as a side-benefit if they would do this. With Ginger making the offer, it was easy to accept. All of her requested changes were complete and she looked stunningly good. The women may not have been up to doing navigational math in their heads, but they knew what men liked. If the company was willing to pay to have them look as good as Ginger it was a good deal for them even if they didn't get paid a bonus for good behavior at the end.

Ginger's people in New York had given the ladies the trustworthiness test under the guise of a new massage treatment that toned skin and muscles. As expected, none of them were the kind of people the AIs wanted to work with, but as long as they were contract laborers with a limited-time contract and failure-to-perform payment penalties, the AIs could accept them.

Some of the women seemed unhappy that they had been tricked into going on ships, but a good many of them weren't what you would call rocket scientists. I heard that one of them had asked, seriously, why the ship didn't rock. I heard a lot of complaints about having to wear that suit. By the time they got out to us, after 20+ hours in the shuttle, they were all pretty cranky.

Ginger spent the night with me, saying that I had to get her pregnant before she could leave. She and Eric had never had any children and she wanted some. Her age was no longer a problem, and it didn't appear as if supporting a family would be, either. I had gotten my senior wife pregnant, and it was time to get my junior wife pregnant, too.

I did the best I could. It had been a week or so since Diana had left, and in my restored health I was going crazy. There was no doubt about it; I could tell the AIs truthfully that without women we men weren't very stable at all. We needed women, if we were going to be any use to them.

And having Diana and Ginger tag-team me was probably a good idea. With my restored health I wanted to act like a fifteen-year-old, screwing everything in sight at least once an hour. Ginger got her chance to get pregnant probably three or four times that night.

I asked the AIs once if any of the races in their Confederacy needed companionship the way we did; if splitting them up caused trouble. They didn't go as far as telling us that anyone in the Confederacy was like us that way, but they admitted that it was a social issue that they were familiar with. They accepted that our men could not be sent out without women for too long.

They were aware that it was a very loose variable. Some men could go without for years. Others became irritable within days. And, if we were going to create actual colonies, we would need both men and women for them. Whole families, once we got really going. And if they thought that these women were trouble they were in for a rude awakening when they started dealing with children.