Chapter 5 - Private Lessons
The day after the Great Barney Clusterfuck, as it came to be known, we awoke and the girls all left smiling, although some left with sore pussies.
The men were all smiling too as we took the time to bathe and clean up. The dining hall was pretty empty by the time we got there; a few women sat drinking tea and as the ten of us came in they gave us a round of applause. After breakfast I had checked up on the mules with sore feet and found that they had been cared for and would be ok after some rest. Astral had taken me to see the feed barns and the vegetable greenhouses where her mother worked. Her mother Betty was about forty years old and handsome if not pretty. She kissed me like a son and introduced me to all her colleges in the green house.
We left the green house and Astral took me to see the pottery kilns and the machine shop. I found that while they had full machine shop they didn't have many machinists because the tool bits necessary to train them were limited. There was a coal mine near by and they used coal for their pottery kiln and to fire up the boilers of a steam generator to run the shops but the cost of transport made it prohibitive to use the generators much and besides the wear and tear were of great concern.
Astral took me out to show me the nearer fields which were rotated and included pasture for small dairy herd of cows and goats. Once away from people Astral slid my arm around her and told me of the trail of the goatherd which she had taken the last five years, and how they had lost two fine rams to a Grizzly bear last summer.
I told her of when I had been in the middle of a stampede of Bison near Porterville. I was only saved by a very stout old pepper tree. I had her attention and we were in each others arms so I kissed her. Her head snapped back with a look of horror and said, "Oh Josh!"
"What," I said.
"There is the lunch bell,"
I kissed her again and she let me, well more than let me, encouraged me really, to stick my tongue far enough down her throat to check her ovaries. But at last she backed away laughing, "I'm already pregnant, no need to check."
I trapped her arms and pulled her up to me and kissed her on each cheek. "Astral, I hope you are carrying my son. I'll never really know him so tell him that I very much hoped the best for him." I cried a tear and my nose got stuffy but Astral just kissed me. I felt hot tears on my cheek that weren't mine and an eager mouth and I finally broke the kiss and just held her until we both regained control. She wiped her eyes with her shawl and then wiped my eyes while I pulled out my kerchief and blew my nose.
After that romantic interlude there was no option but to lunch with the whole community. We wandered back up to the mess hall meeting up with some friends of Astral on the way and she introduced me. The girls shook my hand and all looked at me with awe, I thought it was because they weren't used to seeing men without keepers.
We weren't too late but the Mess hall was filled and noisy. I noticed that my team was spread out, Oh a few of our girls sat with Chief Mercer and Sue with men of the Black Brotherhood at a table away from the kitchen. But the guys and some of the women of my team were spread out mingling with the locals.
Astral was looking over the crowd and saw her mother waving. She pulled me across the room and introduced me to all the Aunties that had gathered around us. A couple of them were definitely Milfs but I kept my hands to myself and eventually we all took our places and the food started to arrive and questions started coming my way. I answered them as best I could and tried to duck some pointing to my full mouth. I ate so much that Betty made a joke about me eating for five, me and my four sons.
That set off a round of questions about my sons and I ended up admitting that I had only ever seen two of them, the others being born after I had left Redding and gone back to Davis. The women all said that was too bad but, I should still be proud and to love the ones I had met. I told them that I did and they believed me. "I know more of my girls because they are all at the crèche at the University where I work," I said.
"Oh you have girls too?" Auntie number 13 asked.
"47 girls and four sons as of last Christmas," I said immodestly.
You would have had to throw an enraged wolverine in the midst of a flock of turkeys to get a bigger reaction.
In truth Scouts don't worry about their sons too much until they get to be about 13, then they make sure that they join the Kiva where they can get male companionship and learn the skills necessary to live well in world of women. I was way too young to be at that point but it was coming and I wrote a letter to each of them around their birthdays.
I noticed that all our men were all surrounded by Aunties and were seated with one or more of the girls they had covered last night, Raule sat between Morgan and the brunette. Their mothers on the other side of the table pushing food Raule's way. Raule had taken that same tactic I had but was up to his ears in Sweet Corn Fritters as a result.
Betty patted my arm, "Josh if you'd like, you can come to our house and have dinner with us some night."
"I'd like that," I said.
"I have to get back to the radishes," Betty said and got to go. I got up and gave her a little hug, "It was a pleasure to meet you." She grinned up at me and squeezed my ribcage in a massive hug, her head on my chest. She stepped back and took a deep breath and just smiled and turned to Astral, pecked her on the cheek and said, "I'll see you at dinner."
Astral and I took that as our cue to leave also and started making our way out. There were the "Hello's" and "Goodbyes" and "This is Josh" and so on as we made our way through the thinning after lunch crowd. I saw Audrey across the room and she pointed me out to someone. I waved at her and told Astral I'd meet her outside.
I made my way through the room to Audrey. Audrey looked different with her clothes on. She wore her hair in a bun with elaborately carved hair pins and had on loose fitting pants and a shirt also of plain light cloth but I saw the same flashing eyes and eager grin that I remembered from last night. Audrey came forward to meet me and said, "Oh Josh, there's some one I want you to meet." She pulled me by the hand and presented me to an aging grandmotherly type seated next to the wall of the mess hall. "Mother, this is Josh Perkins. Josh this is my mother Evelyn Riley." Audrey stepped back and smiled at me. I reached for the old ladies hand and said "Pleased to meet you" She looked me up and down then beckoned me and said, "Come closer young man. These old eyes are weak."
I knelt on one knee in front of her chair and she leaned in and looked me up and down. Her face was as composed as if she were inspecting a manure heap; she reached out and touched my face. Her hands were smooth, warm and soft. I moved closer thinking "she must be almost blind" and her other hand touched my face feeling the eye ridges and hollow of my cheeks down to my chin then back up touching my nose and feeling my lips. Delicate as a butterfly, while I leaned closer to her watery eyes. Her hands smoothed back my hair then she kissed me soft as a butterfly. Then her hands turned my head and she kissed me as a woman briefly.
I was cool about it and smiled at her and kissed her hand on the palm. "Very pleased to meet you Ms. Riley." Sarge would have been proud of me.
"So this is the young man I have heard so much about?" She still had her hands on me but just, she smiled and pushed me away soft as a butterfly. As I stood back up the Aunties cackled to each other and smiled.
Audrey came up and grasped my arm smiling up at me, "Yes Mother isn't he wonderful?" she actually hopped a coupled of times smiling at me so much it hurt my face. I turned back to her mother who smiled but not too convincingly. "Yes he is indeed wonderful." Her face wasn't smiling when she asked, "My boy is it true that you have sired 51 children?"
All of Audrey's Aunties gasped, Audrey looked at me shocked then glee spread over her face the she hopped a couple of times and looked at me for an answer.
What could I say? I simply said, "Yes."
Audrey smiled at me and hugged me. Ms. Reilly laughed and stood up and hugged me. "You are a man," she said, "We haven't had anyone as potent as you around here in twenty years, Welcome Josh, Welcome." All The Aunties were chattering. Audrey kissed me and hopped again, kissed me and I held on to her just to keep decorum in the mess hall. She threw her arms around my neck and looked me in the eye smiling about to burst. "You didn't tell me last night. I thought you had only four."
"Only four sons but 47 girls too, 51 as of Christmas, but how did your mother know?"
"Oh mother knows everything; she is the head of the whole Administration." Audrey said. "Damn I have to get back to work, we are castrating goats today and we are only half done. If I'm going to bathe and make Dinner I have to go." She kissed me again and asked, "I will see you at Dinner?"
"Sure, I'll look for you. I have the day off and no duty until tomorrow morning." I let her down and she kissed me somewhat ostentatiously then skipped off to castrate her goats. I turned to say goodbye to Ms. Riley but her chair was vacant and all the Aunties had moved on to interrogate someone else.
I made my way outside and found Astral talking with some women and girls. The young ones looked at me and smiled. A few tittered behind the women's backs. Astral introduced me and I shook hands all around. We left to see the library. As we were leaving I heard one of the girls squeal, "51 and he hasn't been at it five years!" Astral's reaction was to smile, grasp my arm and laugh. We laughed a lot on the way to the library and met half the village before we entered another Beehive dome complex larger than the bath house.
The entry way of the library was another half dome like the Bathhouse but the entrance to the Library stacks was thru a heavy wood wall with an impressive set of doors. An office set in one corner, a sky light above let in good light on a desk. A woman leaning over several layers of heavy paper stood half turned to us. "Goodness Come in Astral and who is this?" She said as she stood up and shook out her dress beckoning us to come to her. "This is Josh Perkins, Josh this is Margaret Black, she was my first music teacher and will be my thesis mentor if I'm lucky." Astral said.
Margret reached out her hand and looked at me over her glasses and said, "Pleased to me you Josh," then she looked at Astral and back at me smiling then looked at Astral, "OH Josh?" she asked and Astral nodded. Margaret took my hand and got as far as "Oh Josh," the she laughed and laughed again bending over and hanging on to Astral who had exploded as well.
I didn't see the joke but I laughed with them and finally they caught their breaths and were hugging and whispering so I gave them some space. Finally they came up wiping their eyes. Margaret took my hand and shook it then turned her hand and brought mine to her lips and kissed it. She looked at me with laughing eyes, "Oh thank you for that moment I haven't laughed like that, well in years. Although," she said shaking her hair back, "I can't for the life of me explain why."
Margaret was Head Librarian and she explained to me that the stacks were not really in the building. "No there are far too many books in the true stacks, they are all under ground. We access them but most of the books never leave their chambers." We make our primary education books and of course a lot of paper. We have two printing presses and cast our own type, but we just don't have the right inks or thread to make silk screen techniques work."
Astral had chattered and I had listened and asked many questions, finally we left the Library and started walking out to a lookout point above the village.
The terrain was steep and I had to help Astral up the last incline. When she came up over the ledge I pulled her into my arms and held her a little too long. I backed away embarrassed at my familiarity with a woman I hardly knew.
"What's wrong?" Astral asked, but I just smiled and looked out over the valley and down the canyon to the west. The sun was lowering to the Horizon and I knew that there only a few hours left of my day off.
Astral came up and took my hand and kissed it. "What's wrong, you held me then you pushed me away?"
I looked down at her face and smiled, "You are so pretty, and I wanted to ... Well to hold you and never let you go, but it would be wrong." I looked down into the village pointing, "They require discipline, and I can't forget my mission."
Astral looked puzzled, "What Mission?"
"To help mankind recover from its own insanity. To break the effects of the residual damage of the plague."
"You take it very seriously then," Astral said releasing my hand.
I looked at her for a second, "Serious as Death." I said slowly.
