by Robert James
“Milton” My use of his name surprised him “If this young man, or, better still, yourself, for you would remember far more than this brave youngster” I told him “Would be kind enough to lead me to your village, I would know more of you” I asked respectfully “I wish you to tell about yourselves and what the Supreme Family has done to you” I told them “There may be some way that I can atone for the past sins of my family” I added. The old man looked at me for the first time, his grey eyes studied me for ten seconds or so. Then he got to his feet and got himself ready to speak.
“With all the respect due to one of Divine birth such as yourself Lord Robert” Milton’s high pitched gravel voice was firm, but without feeling “It is beyond my comprehension that you know us not Lord Robert” He stated curiously. I looked at each of them “The truth is sometimes the hardest thing of all to believe” I said, rising a metre off the ground “But the simple truth is, I lost my memory and found my conscience” I told him “Now tell me of your people Milton, show me trust, take me to your village. Hold nothing back” I urged him “I must hear it all to judge how I can best return to you what my family has stolen” The man could not mistake the sincerity in my voice. Wise old eyes watched me. “You would hear of that which you yourself have done to us Lord Robert?” Milton asked me meaningfully.
“Not by choice no, but that’s what I am here for” I answered, adding “I sense that I may hear much that will sadden me, but naught will anger me, this I pledge to you” I promised him.
“Given that we live or die by your will, it would seem prudent to do as you wish” The old man’s eyes seemed to smile “Please honour us by following me Lord Robert” He and the tallest one put their beautiful craftwork on the ground and led me to a tunnel at the back of the terminal cave, some twenty metres from where I just blasted them some more ‘office space’. We entered a three metre wide, but just a metre and a half high passage way, I had no choice but to stoop. Noticing that, the old man apologised.
“We have not needed a passage with more height before Lord Robert, you are the first of your people to visit this place”.
“The first from my family you mean, right?” I asked.
“No my Lord” Came his reply “None but Bramadin people, such as ourselves, m’Lord” He replied. There was a growing light at the end of the passage. Suddenly, we came out into yet another movie set. Though I’d seen such ‘beehive’ dwellings, carved out of the side of a mountain before, here, we were at least a kilometre underground! From quite high on the side of the enormous, kilometre square cavern, the place actually looked like a model, except that there were a lot of people moving around. As they caught sight of the three of us, they began to gather at the bottom of the steps we were descending.
The steps ended on a small landing, with more steps from both sides, they led to a much larger courtyard. The courtyard was packed full by the time we got down there. My arrival was hardly a cause for celebration, on the contrary, Milton was being criticised for bringing me to this place. I even heard words as strong as “traitor” being used. The old man walked to the front of the first landing and raised both arms . Gradually, the hub bub died down.
“My beloved fellow Bramadin” He called out to them “You all know me, and know that I would never act to harm any of my Brothers and Sisters, even if it should cost me my life”. His old grey eyes moved over those nearest to us. Despite the earlier comments, Milton quite obviously had the affection and respect of his people.
He told them all what he and the others had seen and that, if I so wished, they would already be dead. He tried to explain my memory/conscience story to them, which was hard, because he didn’t really understand it himself. After about ten minutes, he led me through all the still scared yet curious people, to the largest of the many block houses that were spread all around the floor of the enormous cavern. Just before we went in, I stopped and looked around in a complete circle. There was barely any space left of the cave’s walls. Row upon row of identical homes, entrances without doors, windows without shades, were connected by hundreds of stepped pathways. The floor of the cavern was clearly for business, the block houses were clearly workshops.
Stooping to enter, I was given their largest chair, still a little small for comfort but the biggest they had. It was a throne-like affair that belonged to their leader Borony, who was ill and near death, even though still quite young. They had no concept of medicine or doctors. They worked hard and did all they could to stay fit, but, if they got real sick, they died. Milton was the oldest of some two thousand people who lived in this cavern. I felt that a different kind of miracle was needed here. Nine men, mostly in their forties, joined Milton, who was around sixty, and myself in the plain sandstone block room. A beautifully carved stone table sat in the middle of the single roomed building, with five craftsman fashioned, straight back, wooden chairs on either side.
Once all were settled with a hot mug of honey flavoured tea in our hands, I pushed back my chair and stood up.
“As a way of showing to the Bramadin people that I come to make restoration” I declared “I decree that Barony is now well and shall remain that way till he is older than Milton here” I stated as a certainty. Milton smiled knowingly; the others neither moved nor spoke. Within less than half a minute, a small cheer from the near side of the cavern spread to a deafening roar of celebration. The chant “Barony” rippled out and, to the delight of the ten men, their leader strode purposely towards our block house. His long hair flowed freely, he was powerfully built and as tall as the tallest of the Bramadin I’d me so far. I went out to meet him.
“Lord Robert” Barony looked hard at me “My recovery is your doing?” I nodded, turned and we re-entered the block house together. When Milton had done his very best to explain, Barony was still just as confused, but he was clearly grateful for his recovery, and the promise that the inequity would hence forth cease. Like so many others that I had met, their tale was one of absolute disregard for their rights or the lives of their people, nor for those of any of the peoples around them.
“Once there were farmers and fishing villages all around here and far to the North” Barony told me “We Bramadin stayed in the hills, so we all had our place and met only for trade” He went on.
“So you’ve always lived inside these mountains?” I asked
“No” Milton replied sharply “We used to live on them. But the Supreme One ordered that we should live where we work and we had to build these villages twenty years ago” He told me bitterly. There had been over a dozen Bramadin gatherings, as they called them. Loosely interdependent, they had all been both miners and craftsmen, working whatever they mined into utensils and craft work. This they sold to farms and fishing villages for sustenance. Till Lord Peter and I had discovered the gold mountains. According to Barony, that was the whole reason for the railway. He knew nothing of the train’s visits to farms and fish factories to their North and South, he knew only of their mountains. They mined an almost luminescent slate, in thin sheets, which they then fashioned into the beautiful wares I’d seen at the terminal.
Other gatherings mined a black stone, which was also used for making practical items and crafting decorative home ware.
“But it is the gold” Affirmed Milton, with unhidden sadness “Once you knew of our gold mountains, everything became controlled by the heavily armed Supreme Guard” He added. At the end of our four hour, lunch-interrupted meeting, I said I’d remove the guards.
“You must then go and meet with those who farm and fish. All of you must decide on how you wish to rebuild your cultures. Your produce and wares will fund this reconstruction” I told them “I will send business people with much experience, to assist you. But, it is only the will of your people and the will of your neighbours that will decide the future of the Northern lands from this day”
Declining an invitation to stay for the celebrations, partly because everything was so small it made me feel like Gulliver, and also because I had
a hot date on top of a downtown Port Rualé building, I left. I felt confident that all could, with time, be restored to how it once was here in the North. I was not near so confident about the future of the South East of this continent however.
Chapter Eleven
“How do I look?” I asked Sharon, doing a turn to show off my party outfit.
“I think you pass for a human” The brainy beauty grinned at me.
“I’ll ignore that” I shot back “Now let’s go”. Smiling happily on my arm, Sharon led me from our rooftop rendezvous to the elevator and, once on the street, to a tiny two seater car, which looked like a large bubble on wheels. Though the car was silent, Sharon certainly was anything but, she was full of questions and opinions as usual. We soon went into an underground car park, with hundreds of similar tiny cars. Then a super fast elevator took us up to the party, which turned out to be in the penthouse right on top, with a great view of the harbour.
It was clearly a very slick, high class affair. Soft lights, soft music that seemed to come from everywhere, thick carpet, a marble bar, huge glass doors leading out onto a wide balcony with fantastic views. As you’d expect, the forty or so guests, tall drinks in hand, were all virtual fashion plates. The men in ultra chic casual and the women, who seemed to come from every corner of the planet and were, without exception, extremely attractive, all dressed in ultra chic sexy! Even though Sharon’s new party dress was just as skimpy as her last one, she was one of the more modest. Also, I could not help but notice that there were more than twice as many women than there were men.
My date introduced me around, mostly to women, two of whom I already knew. Sharon watched her colleagues, Julia and Lois very closely, as she made the introduction, neither thought me familiar, but both were clearly very interested in working in Centropolis.
“I’m exclusively involved in electronics” I told the two disappointed women. Perhaps because they so outnumbered the men, the women at this party were extremely, often surprisingly, forward. When Sharon left me for some minutes to go ‘tidy up’, I was approached by several women, one of whom thrust my hand under her dress to cup her naked breast.
“Feel good?” She asked me softly.
“Certainly does” I replied, reluctantly withdrawing my hand.
“You know what to do if you want some more” She whispered sexily into my ear. Then the uninhibited woman rejoined the dancers in the middle of the large and luxurious entertainment room. When Sharon returned, she seemed quite unperturbed by the fact that I had a half naked, obviously willing black girl on my right, and her little blonde colleague Lois, now very much more relaxed and also barely clothed, pressing up against me on my left. More than a little overwhelmed I sat down in the large armchair.
“You’ve met Lois” Sharon’s voice was chatty “This is Selma” the cool black creature leaned down to brush her thick soft lips against my cheek, her dress falling forward to reveal a truly stunning body, all the way down to her ankles.
“Hi LR” That was my assumed party name “D’ya like what you see?” She asked, eyes inviting as she got back up. Sharon gently planted her bottom in my lap and patted the two wide leather arms of my chair. Both girls sat down, one arm around behind me, the other in front, their hands playing gently with both of our hair. The music began to gain volume as the lights lowered. Framed by a well shaped pair of legs on each side and Sharon’s ample breasts below, I watched as the party started to hot up. At first, I thought the many girls dancing with each other was due to the shortage of men there, I soon found out that I was mistaken. The mixed couples on the floor were already performing virtual sex while still clothed, though the women’s brief dresses had a wonderful habit of falling down, and sometimes they fell completely off.
But now the girl-girl dancers were starting to resemble those Indians girls back at Sentoria. While cool hands stroked my neck, I looked down to see a smooth black hand high on Sharon’s right leg, and a dainty white hand gently caressing her breasts under her gossamer thin dress. I was in the middle of a most promising four way love tryst! Sharon smiled warmly over at me.
“Enjoying yourself LR?” She asked, her sultry voice now matched by wanton blue eyes, she writhed her gorgeous body against mine.
“Is every Port Rualé party this uninhibited?” I whispered, when she turned her head around to hear my reply
“Only the good ones my love” Sharon replied, grinning widely. “And the fun is just beginning” She laughed gaily.
“There are no rules here, it’s all about the party” Sharon went on, still looking round at me. Then she brazenly pulled up both Lois and Selma’s flimsy skirts, almost to their necks, and slowly ran each hand over their naked breasts and down into their lacy panties. While Sharon and Selma played, the once seemingly so demure Lois pulled her dress right off, thrust her breasts in my face and my left hand down over Sharon. With the whole place now looking like the set of a sex movie, and Sharon’s rythmetic undulations on my lap having the obvious result, the rest of that evening became a mind numbing blur of ever changing partners, in ever changing combinations. The men, all muscled and young were clearly there to service the women! This was their party.
Watching the oh so elegant Julia being transform into a naked and writhing, multi partnered sex fiend, was a trip all on its own. As we went to leave, now fully dressed, well I was anyway, Selma and her “special” friend Lin, an exquisite Eurasian woman in her late twenties, both still nude and embracing each other , pleaded to come with us and join Sharon and I at her apartment. A dour look from me had reluctantly persuaded my beautiful hostess to say
“Not tonight honey, LR and I got some business to talk about” She snuggled in possessively as we returned to her car. Minutes later, we were at her apartment. It was small, feminine and very much hers. Tired as I was, I really needed some answers
“How come only me and three other men?” I asked, adding “Those young boys were hired right?” I asked Sharon. She turned around, deliberately dropping her dress off her shoulders.
“Oops, I’ve lost my panties” She giggled, looking down.
“Be serious for a moment will you woman?” I said hotly. There was good reason for the frustration in my voice. Sure this was a wild scene, but, unlike Sentoria, there seemed no logical reason for this port city to have such a debauched upper society.
“Ninety percent of the men in Port Rualé are married with children” Sharon finally replied, almost sulking “None of us women who work in the Government can marry or ever have children. We are too valuable to let us stay home and be wives and Mothers, so we party” Sharon told me defiantly, then went to make us some coffee.
That provided yet another example of the Supreme House creating distortions in the planet’s societies, by regulating the right to child birth. With marriage and Motherhood impossible, the young women in this town had turned into party animals. These highly trained, extremely intelligent women, knowing their good looks can’t last forever, pack in as much good loving as they can, while they can! By the time they have retired, at forty, there would certainly be very few eligible and even less desirable men left, and even fewer who wanted a forty year old barren wife. Despite her trying to make light of it, Sharon, like Susan, could not hide her real feelings about the future she faced.
“I suppose, if the right man had come along at the right time” She told me “I might have wanted to have his children, but, hey, I’m not complaining” Sharon smiled up at me “Now, it’s time for your sleeping pill Lord Robert” She grinned lustily and rolled over onto her back, pulling me with her, our lust rekindled. The woman was insatiable. As I drifted off into a peaceful sleep, I made a mental note to feature the issue of birth regulation, in my speech to all the National leaders, here in Port Rualé. In the past, women have been barred from highly trained jobs, because they could get pregnant. Now they were barred from pregnancy, because they’d been highly trained! Perhaps soon we may see the rebirth of some sanity, reason and balance.
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As we hadn’t got to sleep till dawn, Sharon and I slept through till the afternoon. We ate a brunch of cereal and fruit then, despite the blonde beauty’s very strongly stated desire to party some more, which she reinforced by her rubbing her perfectly formed naked body all over me, I resisted. Heading up to the roof of her harbour-side apartment, as discreetly as one can do such things; I donned my red kaftan and shot straight up into the sky above Port Rualé. The land South of the port had been decreed as wild lands and no-one ever crossed the two kilometre “safety band” some twenty kilometers South of the city. I thought a quick look might be an idea so I headed South and came down to a hundred metres or so, in order to get a better look. Once over the deserted sandy strip, I found myself flying over thickly forested rolling hills. An occasional stream ran between.
Some of the hills had lost all the vegetation from their tops, so they looked like bald heads. I saw deer, foxes, rabbits and squirrels, but not a trace of human beings. After travelling two hundred kilometres down the coast I went inland a hundred or so kilometres. Still I found no-one. I started on back to Arc Island, staying inland till I was due east of Port Rualé. It seemed strange that such an obviously bountiful part of this planet should be home to no-one. I marked it down for further investigation, after the mission was complete. I was quite anxious to see if all was going to plan. In fact, it was going better than expected. Both the Governors of Sentoria and Alpine Grand had asked to be picked up by Zoran and the Captain’s T.T.V.s respectively, so now I would have four of the New World leaders who were on side right there.