Chapter 5

Rolly Walters knew that he was back in Kansas.

"There's no fucking place like home," he bitched as he looked down at the cow shit on his bare foot. He had been pushed through the portal wearing only his underwear, and the warm cow pie oozing between his toes on the frosty October morning didn't help brighten his day.

The first thought that crossed his mind was whether or not he had locked the house before he entered the portal nearly two months ago, mental time. The second thought was if anyone was around to see him.

After hosing off his foot with ice cold water he hobbled across the sharp gravel of the driveway to his house and was relieved to find the door unlocked.

Note to self, move the damn portal cabinet into the house.

Rolly's first order of business after putting some clothes on was to make himself breakfast and then try to figure out what he had planned for the day.

Remembering that he had left himself a note, he headed back to the barn to retrieve it.

"Sunday family diner tomorrow, change oil in tractor, check corn and soybean prices at the co-op on Monday ... Damn I'm glad I don't have a complicated job; those trips could really screw with your short-term memory and make life a bitch."

It felt good to get outside and get his hands dirty, a month of easy living with unlimited sex was great, but being cooped up inside the whole time was starting go get to him. It had been summer on Chaos; he wondered how the seasons differed between the two planets.

That night Rolly missed having two warm bodies snuggled up to him, and he fell asleep only after pushing the image of Debora's glorious ass out of his head. She kept saying that she couldn't decide if being plowed hard from behind was better than a nice slow face to face session, but Rolly knew the truth by how fast he could make her pass out from behind. He was going to miss her in a big way. Knowing that she was going to have his baby gave him a warm feeling.

The next morning the miles flowed by under his running shoes. He hadn't felt that good in years. As the miles went by ideas for training came and went: weight training, running, weapons... Which weapons? Sword play takes too long to master. I'd get sliced up even by some idiot like Ferb. What works against a sword? I'll have to look it up. Would a bow be useful? Archery season is coming up and I could get a longbow and go after a whitetail down by the creek. They're thicker than ticks on a hound around here. Horseback riding? Probably a good idea, but that would draw attention to me. Beggars don't ride horses. How do you fight on horseback? Cutlass, shortbow...

Then visions of Debora's ass in his hands, and visions of his cock sliding between Susan's soft breasts interrupted his train of thought.

That little minx sure did take to cock sucking like a calf to a milk bottle. Debora had fun doing it but thought it was a waste of a good hard on ... Now that I'm cleaned up I might have to go bar hopping.

Sunday dinner went without incident; everyone was happy that Rolly had ditched the caveman look, especially his little sister Stephanie, who was just twelve when her handsome big brother went into the Army. His sister Paula's husband Tommy mentioned that his cousin was moving back to the area after Christmas.

"She's a looker Rolly, but she doesn't take any shit, so you might not be able to sweet talk her out of her panties the way you usually do."

"Come on Tommy, I'm not that bad."

Paula put in her two cents, "All my friends in high school wanted you, and all their daddies kept their shotguns loaded. From what I heard, going into the Army was the safest thing you could have done."

Rolly shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject, "Steph, would it be alright if I came over and rode the horses a bit. I haven't done it in a while and it might be a good way to scout out some hunting ground over at my place later.

"I'm done barrel racing so you can take Little Joe over to your place if you like. I'm thinking about getting another horse, so I might sell him cheap."

"What's wrong with Joe?"

"He's got racing suspension and rattles my teeth in low gear. He might be a smoother ride with more weight on him."

The next evening Rolly moved some of his farm equipment outside under tarps for the winter and set up a fairly roomy area in his barn for close quarters combat practice. He made some wooden dummies out of plywood and two-by-fours; sticks cut from brush served him as swords.

Over the following weeks he practiced using a chain and dagger, and a bola and dagger combination. He also practiced throwing rocks, and throwing spikes made out of steel reinforcement rods for concrete. Neither medieval Europe nor Chaos had baseball, so his eighty-five mile an hour fastball should be an unexpected weapon. He tried throwing knives, but it was difficult to get good penetration without a perfect hit. The heavy rerod spike would hurt like hell even if the angle was off when it hit.

What I need is an iron ball with dull spikes. That would tear up whatever it hit, Rolly thought.

Outside in the cold, he practiced quarterstaff moves learned from sixteenth century training manuals that he downloaded from the internet.

When he got his muscles built up he moved his training to the creek bank where he could thrash on the trees and brush.

Little Joe turned out to be a good horse for riding through the woods while swinging sticks at trees and poking lances into bales of straw. He considered buying a practice sword, but he couldn't see paying money for one, especially after seeing a shopping channel video clip where a blade accidentally snapped in two and cut the presenter. Rolly was scared of swords enough without them attacking on their own free will. All the salesman did was absentmindedly smack the blade on the table, and the next thing he knew he was bleeding all over the studio.

Rolly did special order a longbow on the internet. The archery centers in the area only sold compound bows. He bought a heavy seventy pound pull bow and felt like a wimp for several weeks until his back muscles became strong enough to hold the bow steady at full draw. He read that the English used yew longbows with half again as much pull and he had a hard time believing it.

He didn't bother with a crossbow. They were big and bulky, and reloading time was slow. A bow would give him greater firepower. Unless he was in a war he probably wouldn't encounter heavy armor so arrows with bodkin points should be enough to penetrate any bad guy.

Christmas with the family for the first time in many years was nice, but the local bars didn't pan out the few of times he went looking for women and it looked like a long winter ahead, so on January fourth at 3pm Rolly wrote himself a note at the kitchen table, stripped down to his boxer shorts, put the sapphire pendant around his neck, and stepped into his utility cabinet.

After the few seconds it took him to clear his head he saw Susan standing there looking like an anxious puppy that had been told to 'sit' and 'stay.'

His puppy quickly lost control, bounded over and threw her arms around him.

"Oh Rolly, I knew you would come back. I missed you so much."

Rolly stepped back, looked her up and down, and raised her hands to his lips for a kiss.

"Suzy Q, why are you wearing a belly dancer costume? And why do your fingers smell like pussy?"

Susan looked down blushing and dug her toe into the floor like a contrite little girl.

"I-I got excited that you were coming through. We get several hours notice."

"And the genie outfit? Is that for me?"

"Not really, I like to lie on your bed and think about the things you did to me."

"So the bed is still made up as Debby's harem tent?"

"MmHmm."

"And you probably want me to do those things to you right now, don't you?"

"MmHmm."

Sweeping her up in his arms he carried her into the bedroom.

"Well my little desert virgin. I think it's high time that you became a woman -- again."

"Mmmmmmkay."

Rolly went straight for the kill, and as soon as he slipped off her filmy pantaloons his face was buried in her sopping wet fuzzy little pussy. Like a tootsie pop it only took three licks to get to the chewy center and set off her first orgasm.

She had barely recovered when his body pressed down on hers and she felt his hard cock slide deep into her. Sixty seconds of deep slow thrusts and she was again exploding in pleasure. After that he picked up the pace with a need to satisfy his own desire, and after only a few minutes he felt the pressure rise in his balls followed by the glorious contractions as jet after jet of semen shot through his cock deep into the moist warm confines of her quivering sheath.

She cried out as she felt the hot flood splash against her cervix, and then, after her own orgasm ran its course, she fell back in exhaustion.

After a pause Rolly tried to move off of her, but she pulled him tight.

"Leave it in, it feels so good with you inside of me."

Finally uncoupled, and basking in the let down, Rolly noticed a change in Susan.

"Suzy, are you using some kind of new lotion? Your skin is so smooth it looks like it's glowing?"

"I had enough money saved to get airbrushed when I was back on Cassandra."

"You got painted?"

"No, it is a procedure that removes blemishes and smoothes out your skin. It's something all of the caretakers do to look the way they do. Some of them do a lot more to be competitive enough to get this job. A lot of primes do it too."

"Primes?"

"Primaries. Reproductive women."

"Debby's skin didn't look like that."

"Debby, was a secondary, a two."

"I'm confused, start from the beginning."

"OK. The population on Cassandra is divided into primaries, secondaries, and neuters -- primes, twos and nutes -- based on reproductive ability. Primes contain the highest proportion of hero alleles, and a primary woman can reasonably expect to have one or more children if she has an active sex life with a primary man. Usually she does everything she can to be attractive to her mate. Cosmetic procedures such as airbrushing and reshaping are pretty common, and primes also take classes at finishing academies. If their husband is a two, a prime can often have children with the help of certain drugs. If her husband is a nute she can get pregnant from a sperm donor, but there are not many of those.

"What is reshaping?"

"See these little angles on my nose? I'll probably have those smoothed out."

"Why, I think your nose is just fine, surgery can really screw things up. It's not worth taking the chance."

"It's not surgery, for little things like these they sort of melt the tissue by loosening cell connections, and then they reshape the area, like smoothing clay. I want to do it because a caretaker has a responsibility to be perfect for the damsel. She risks her life for all Cassandrians."

"I guess that makes sense. But don't mess with anything else please, little Miss Button Nose. I don't like big fake boobs. So, what are secondaries and neuters?"

"Twos and nutes can't reproduce with Cassandrian men. Neuters are sterile, and secondaries can only be impregnated by hero-Earth sperm. However, to become fertile their bodies must be stimulated in just the right way. The damsel system was the way they found to solve that problem. For the necessary levels of certain hormones to be reached she must be in fear for her life, an acute stressor stimulation, or suffer for a long period under strong mental stress, a chronic stressor stimulation. If she is exposed to key words and male pheromones before her body fully recovers from the stress, her body begins to ovulate on a more frequent basis and also represses production of the enzymes that usually inactivate sperm."

"Key words?"

"You know?"

"No I don't"

"Oh God, I didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what."

"You have to say some variation of 'I'm Hero so and so here to rescue you, ' to remove a hypnotic block put in place so she doesn't get pregnant if some Chaosian man rescues her."

"I said something like that."

"Thank God. I think the healing chamber counter acts the block too though."

"I thought that damsels couldn't get pregnant by Chaosians, they burn them."

"Chaosians are just as fertile as Earthmen. The burning is caused by the Chaosians, or more precisely, by the interaction between a Chaosian secretion and normal mucous membrane factors. The complex burns sensitive skin, starting with the man's urethra. Seminal fluid, either precome or ejaculate, starts both of them burning. It's similar to a series of bioweapons we developed during the last war, but Cassandrians are told that something was done to the Chaosians by the Mitlarians to control venereal diseases. Chaosians don't burn each other, just Cassandrians and Earthlings. Whatever it is, it serves its purpose by deterring rapes. We can't have the genes that cause the violent reaction to our pheromones getting into our population. It also prevents heroes from starting families with Chaosians."

"So only secondaries become damsels?"

"Yes, primes and nutes don't want to be damsels; primes because it's not worth risking their lives when they can have babies naturally, and nutes because it would do no good."

So there is no hope for a neuter. How many are there?"

"About a fourth of the population are primaries, half are secondaries, and a quarter are neuters, so there is a lot of pressure on the prime women to have children to keep the population stable."

"What are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I'm a nute. All caretakers are. Because Cassandrian men have less reason to have sex with us the government has ruled that caretaker positions be reserved for nutes. But there are rumors that others have falsified records to get in. There are all kinds of rumors."

"I'm so sorry, how old were you when you found out?"

"We grow up knowing. Genetic markers show it, so parents can find out during pregnancy but most people wait until after birth."