Chapter 31

Dearest Willow,

I suppose I should have been more careful to say things in a way that you would understand. For my purposes any uncooked pit from cherries, peachs, plums, apricots or seeds from any apple will do. I will raise seedlings and what I get is what I get for the first generation. I expect to have to program some mini (to us) drones to do the work of pollination unless I can get someone to transport a queen bee on a stagecoach. Marissa notes, and tells me to say that some of the colonies have built their own stagecoach class ship for the express purpose of returning to earth for things that the governor finds that he or she cannot live without. Apparently Atlantis-At has such a vessel either now or in the works ... Besides the 'submarine' main base will be there. So the possibility does exist. The issue is that nothing I or we want will be of any priority. I might get some access to a catalog or I might not. In a lot of the confederacy a concubine has no standing. That is why even though I did the work on some of the things that will most likely be implemented in the tank experiment that some colony is doing Marissa holds the patent.

You should warn Larry that he is going to receive a lot of harassment. Some sponsors (especially the men) look at men like me and consider them a failure. I don't see myself that way. I don't quite have the CAP score to volunteer, but I am contributing and in a very real way putting my life on the line every day. LCPL VanDuyne says that a lot of that arrogance will get knocked off of the newly picked up sponsors once they really do see the elephant so to speak. But for now I make sure that some of the marines are with me if Marissa can't be for some reason. I learned that the hard way. I won't tell you what happened but it was vastly uncomfortable at best. The worst part was that I didn't dare resist lest I be guilty of assault on a sponsor, which would have gotten me killed. I guess I know what some girls (I'm sure you know who I'm talking about) feel. VIOLATED!!!

But I don't want to concentrate on that other than to warn you for Larry's sake. The same goes for your female concubines of course. If another sponsor demands sex and you're not there to put paid to the demand they (let your girls know too) have to comply. There is no such thing as raping a concubine in the Confederacy. Any more than in old times a slave had any say in who she or he had sex with. That is our purpose. Well not really. Our purpose is supposedly breeding stock for more humans to be at the pointy end of the stick against the Sa'arm. I really think we're going to have to work that one through a bit more. There are far too many people who see us as disposable property. If Bob or Bill had been able to perform with a woman even they would have been worth keeping but they were so far up the scale of homosexuality that they were absolutely unable to perform at all. All in all a waste of resources.

There is some pressure on Marissa to get the rest of the girls pregnant. But as she noted having two sets of twins in the house at a time with no experienced parents will be a trial of the highest order. She is still apparently winning that argument as only Dana and Beth are pregnant thus far. Their babies should be about 80 days apart so far as the AI is telling us. Dana, who has some experience with pregnant women says that is weird to hear as until people started dealing with Confederacy tech we really couldn't be certain when conception had occurred. Now the AI tells you almost to the second when your pregnancy occurs.

I got a note today from Governor Haywood. Actually it was properly addressed, as all correspondence is, to Marissa. Essentially he was welcoming her and her family slash team to the colony. It seems that we are considered a very welcome addition to the growing community there. I got another download of technical stuff in a sleep training session to help me understand how to best use certain concepts I've been writing about. What was interesting and what I'm sending along with this letter whenever I decide I've written enough is some ideas of how to use inertial dampers to help make a tank less like riding inside a mostly empty can. I'm sure from your description of some of the injuries you've suffered that you know what I mean. A tank has zero (or almost zero) motion damping. So if you go over something or drop into a ditch you're thrown around and subject to have your teeth knocked out as well as breaking bones from ribs to an ulna or radius ... one of the issues seems to be not allowing the Sa'arm to capture any more of our (or the Confederacy's) technology since they do copy anything they do capture or even see to a degree. An example of that is that in places where we've managed to isolate a world and fight them and have left various types of anti personnel mines they have tried to at least copy the effect of the mines with limited success.