I replied, "I don't think the Shore Patrol would like that. They'd probably arrest you."
She said, "No, they wouldn't. They know me and I've already done it before."
It was my turn to be caught with my mouth open for a moment before I replied, "Okay. You probably could get away with walking around naked, but what's the point in doing it? What does it get you?"
"Attention," she said. "I want attention. I know that much about myself. I know that much about everyone. It's no secret. Everyone likes attention. You get it the same way my father gets it. You work hard to be better than anyone else. So, why is it wrong for me to want some attention for myself?"
I said, "I guess there's nothing wrong with getting attention. Since you know what you're doing, then I guess you can dress just about anyway you want."
"I've got a hover. You want to spend the day with me?" she asked as she changed the subject quickly.
"Doing what?" I asked. "Going to bed with you?"
She replied, "You don't have to although I want you. Just kicking around though for the day would be fine if I can't get you in bed."
"I see. What do you do when you're just kicking around?" I asked.
"It depends. You have any particular interests besides swimming, hunting, military battles, getting promoted, and making money?" she asked.
"Sounds like you've been doing research on me," I answered.
She said, "So? You research everyone of your officers and crews. I know. I've seen you get their records before."
"You have?" I said, a little surprised since it had been awhile since I last picked up personnel records.
She replied, "Yes. I even know how Daddy got Captain Bleyer out of the service."
Out of my own curiosity since I didn't yet know, I asked, "How?"
She answered, "Daddy stepped in front of a basketball deliberately to get a bruise. Then he confronted the captain with his aide as a witness and told him that he was going to charge the captain with striking a superior officer if he didn't resign within an hour. Daddy told him that the aide would swear to seeing it happen. Daddy told me the captain gave him the resignation inside of ten minutes and left the base before an hour was up. That's how."
I said, "I see. Clever of your father. I appreciate him going to that length."
She said, "Not as much as he appreciates what you're doing."
"Oh? Are you here because he sent you?" I asked. I immediately realized that she wasn't from the shocked look on her face. "Okay, I'm sorry. I thought that only because of something he said to me in his office once about you. I didn't mean to insult you by saying that you're just his present to me. To show you I'm really sorry, I'll take you up on your offer to just kick around for the day."
"You will? For the whole day?" she exclaimed.
I replied, "Yes, I will. I try to always keep my word."
She replied, "Great! Come on! We'll get my hover and drive around for awhile. I'll even let you drive since everyone tells me I drive like a banshee out of hell."
I was about to correct her on the old saying, but decided that I had insulted her enough and didn't want to wind up owing her anymore apologies. I walked along with her, trying not to notice the stares she received because of the tight shorts she wore that had high leg openings up to the hips on both sides and the blouse that was simply tied at her midriff without any of the buttons in the matching buttonholes. Only the nipples of her breasts weren't showing and those were quite obvious through the thin fabric of the blouse. She was very tan. So much that I doubted she had any tan lines on her body. If she did, then she would have had to wear something even less than what she was wearing now in order to get them.
We walked across half the base to reach her father's quarters where her hover was parked. She tossed me the ignition card and we got into it. I placed the card in the ignition and the engine powered up. As soon as it lifted, I put the hover into forward and drove forward a little to see how well it handled. Then I stopped and asked, "Any particular direction?"
She answered, "No. Not yet. Let's just drive wherever you want to for now. I want to feel the wind and sun on me."
I went ahead and drove. After awhile, she pointed. I went ahead and drove in the direction she pointed. It wasn't long before she directed me off the base where the sentry saluted snappily at me as I drove out.
For most of the morning, I kept the hover on the main roads going where Annie pointed. After awhile, we were on the main highway where the speed limit allowed me to really open up on the hover as we flew along. Somewhere along that road, Annie went ahead and untied her blouse to let the wind and sun hit her chest fully as I continued to drive. The blouse fluttered back against the seat beneath her arms as she held them up behind her neck to support her head which she tilted up to catch the wind and sun on it as well. Her long blond hair fluttered and whirled about in the breeze as we went on down the highway. We must have gone on like that for most of an hour before she looked back at the scenery and then pointed at a turnoff.
I slowed down the hover for the turn and followed the secondary road for awhile until she pointed again at another turnoff onto an even less travelled road. I slowed down more as I took the road. Soon it ended beside a lake fed by a waterfall. In the center of the lake was an island.
"Drive over to the island and stop," she said.
I drove the hover across the water over to the island and stopped. I barely felt the hover touch the ground when she bounded out of the car. She took off what she was wearing and dove into the water.
"Oh! It's great today! Come on in!" she shouted at me.
I was looking around, wondering where we were and what she was up to.
"Oh, go ahead and strip! Nobody's going to see us and if they do, they'll be naked, too! And I won't try to rape you!" she hollered gleefully.
I had promised to just kick around with her for the day, so I went ahead and undressed and jumped into the water. I thought that with a waterfall feeding into the lake that the water would be chilly. Instead, it was warm and very pleasant as she stated it to be. A few moments later, she was swimming on her back underwater beneath me so that I could look down at her and see everything she had to offer. I could tell several things right then about her that I wondered about earlier. She didn't have a single tan line that I could see and she didn't have any pubic hair. Evidently, she kept hers shaved off. I wasn't sure if I liked seeing a woman without pubic hair or not. However, it also make me wonder whether she was a true blond.
When she surfaced, she said, "If you're wondering whether I'm really a blond, the answer is yes. You have that puzzled look on your face. I've seen Daddy with that same strange look before, so I know how to recognize it. And no, I'm not a virgin. I've been with men before and I've liked it each time. Oh yeah, I'm taking precautions, but I'd be willing not to in your case if you change your mind."
I felt then like she had been reading my mind. She had just answered the only thing I didn't know about her so far that puzzled me. I was also curious about why she knew so much about me. I wondered how much more she knew.
She said, "You swim well for someone from an area where they don't have much water."
Right then, I knew that she had been doing research on me. "Do you do as much research on every man you meet?"
She replied, "No. Just the one I'm interested in. The other men I had were mostly for experience."
Right then and there, I realized she had an agenda and I was it. She wasn't looking just to get laid by me. She was looking for something more. The only thing I could think of was a long term commitment, otherwise why else would she be so agreeable to my not wanting to have sex the way she tried to do last night? I stopped swimming and merely treaded water as I let my thoughts sift through the information I now had about Miss Annie Reason.
She asked, "Did you know, Captain Oden, that if the war ended today and you stayed in the military that you'd could become an enlisted non-commissioned officer just like Sergeant Clark, on
ly with more rank than him?"
I was surprised that she knew of the Sarge. I asked, "What do you mean just like Sergeant Clark?"
"He was an officer before with a temporary commission just like yours. Didn't you know that?" she asked.
I shook my head as I answered, "I don't do research on my friends ordinarily. I accept them on their attitudes and personalities alone."
She said, "You ought to look up his record. It's interesting reading. He rose to Lieutenant Commander fighting the pirates when they were real bad. He was mostly responsible for wiping them out. Then when most of the pirates were dead, the military downsized. He stayed in the service and became a sergeant."
Suddenly, I realized that Annie was a storehouse of information. She might even have information about some of the other things I'd noticed before. She had certainly told me a few things that I didn't know about.
"What do you know about that court-martial that ended suddenly with a dismissal?" I asked.
She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders before allowing herself to sink into the lake for a few moments. She came back up and looked at me. "I'm going to work on my tan. Want to sit with me and talk? Otherwise, feel free to swim all you want. Don't worry about anyone coming around and saying anything. This is my property. In fact, I've got signs all around it saying that people are welcome only if they enjoy it naked."
"I didn't see one at the road," I said.
"It probably fell down. We'll stop on the way out to put it back in place," she said as she stepped out of the water and lay down on the grass covering much of the island.
I kept learning things about her, such as her claim to own the land and lake we were enjoying. For once, I was thinking about doing some research just to see how much she said was true. Just for the heck of it, I went ahead and stepped out of the lake and sat beside her on the grass.
She said, "Don't block the sun. I don't want to look like I'm two-toned."
I went ahead and lay down beside her. "Have you ever heard of a company not being listed in the directory?" She ignored my question as if she knew the answer and couldn't tell. I went ahead and asked, "Well, how about a person not being listed in the directory?" She still ignored my question as if she also knew that answer.
Both times, her facial expression gave that much away. There was no surprise about such a thing to her. Anyone else I had mentioned it to had registered some surprise on their face when I mentioned it. If nothing else, she was guaranteed of having my company for the next few days because of what she knew, even if she wanted to come out here everyday and walk around naked. It wasn't going to bother me. I could walk around naked with the best of them.
After awhile, she turned over on her stomach to let her back get some of the tanning rays of the sun. She said, "You better turn over now or you'll get a sunburn that you'll regret."
I followed her advice and rolled over onto my stomach. I wasn't sure how she timed herself, but eventually she sat up and slapped me on the ass.
She said, "Time to get up or you'll be in pain all night. You've had enough sun. Go get dressed."
She got up herself and went over to the hover and dressed. I took her advice again and got dressed in my clothes. It was then that she surprised me by pulling a picnic basket out of the storage compartment. She walked over to some trees on her island and set the basket down in the shade. I followed along. By the time I caught up, she had lunch for two set out. We ate lunch together, silently, each of us alone with our own thoughts. Was she trying to make me fall in love with her? Or was she merely wellprepared in order to get and keep attention? I noticed that she hadn't bothered tying the blouse. It fell beside her breasts so that her nipples showed. If nothing else, it was distracting as I tried to think everything through.
***
We drove back to the base as the afternoon got hotter. The breeze felt good and I envied her ability to wear her clothing in such a manner. She didn't bother tying the blouse together until we were just a short distance from the gate. I decided not to comment on what she did or didn't do as to her appearance. The sentry snapped a sharp salute at me as we entered onto the base.
We went to supper together and the conversation was light for the most part. Then I drove her home and walked back to my quarters, stopping by a terminal on the way. I looked up her name. Truthfully, I was just a little surprised to find that she did own the property she said she owned and on which I helped her re-erect a sign stating nude visitors were welcome. She wasn't wealthy, but she did own that and some other property, enough that she could be said to be well-off. She certainly wasn't going to wondering where her next meal would be during her life.
Then, out of curiosity, I looked up Sergeant Clark. Everything she said about him was true. His decorations exceeded even what I had earned so far. It was very interesting reading to find out about the Sarge.
I don't know what made me look up the retired Admiral, but when I tried, he wasn't listed. Even his son wasn't listed for some reason. I also wasn't able to find the Sarge's wife's name listed, either under the Sarge's or the retired Admiral's last name in the directory listing.
For some reason, the mystery I stumbled into was getting larger instead of solved. It had expanded to where there were four people I knew of who weren't listed in the directory as well as the one company. Out of curiosity, I looked up Fleet Admiral Reason's directory listing and everything appeared to be normal.
Then I looked up my own and spotted an oddity. I was listed all right, but there was no reference to my being an employee of Pennyweight Shipping Company. It simply showed that I was a civilian with a temporary commission on duty with the Navy.
I next thought to look up the Thurman. Perhaps there was a cross-reference by way of the old Rust Bucket. It wasn't listed, not even as a ship drafted into the Navy. When I looked up the Edmund and the Theodore, they were missing from the registry of ships in the directory as well. Other ships from other companies were fully listed showing their company names, crew and officer lists, and other information such as tonnage and so forth. But there wasn't a single reference to the Pennyweight Shipping Company or any of its personnel except those of us who were serving with the Navy. Each of us was listed as a civilian on duty with the Navy.
I wished I had thought to look up myself before the war began. Would I have been listed then? Was I invisible to society for awhile without knowing it? If I was, then why was I invisible then? Why were these other people, ships, and the company invisible?
It didn't make any sense. None of the business we conducted was done surreptitiously that I knew of. I had seen cargoes loaded and unloaded, just like other ships at the ports. No special precautions, other than what the other shipping companies did, were used by Pennyweight. People didn't come on board for only one trip and disappear. The only people we got rid of were those we believed unsavory, but mostly we felt were untrustworthy. We hadn't been issued any secret codes or weapons. Our weapons were just like all the other companies. Our building was about like the other companies. Some of our people had worked for the other companies and some of ours later worked at some of them. It seemed like an ordinary business, except that it wasn't listed in the directory.
I finally went on to my quarters and fell asleep with most of those same questions attacking me. I must not have slept well at all that night. Annie noticed in the morning.
***
When I got up and walked out of my quarters, Annie was waiting with her hover next to her. "Want a ride to breakfast? You look tired, like you could use a lift."
She handed me the ignition card and took her place in the passenger seat. She was dressed much like yesterday, except the clothing was of different fabrics and colors. As well off as I knew her to be, I reckoned that she could afford to wear whatever she wanted and have as many wardrobes as she wished. I powered up the hover and drove carefully to the Dining Facility.
"Did you check to see if what I told you was true?" she asked.
I rep
lied, "I won't lie to you. I did."
She said, "Good! I like a man who speaks honestly when he can."
It didn't take long to reach the Dining Facility where I stopped the hover. I wondered what Annie was going to do while I went in to eat, but she took my arm and went inside with me. There were lots of stares, but no comments as we walked together to the serving line where I found out that she was eating in the facility as well. She produced a card to the cashier and had no problem getting served. We sat down together at a table and quietly ate. At least I tried to. I almost choked on some of what she said.
"I suppose you found more missing people, didn't you?" she asked as I almost sputtered a mouthful of food onto the table. "I'm sorry. I guess I should let you finish eating first. Did you check your own name?" she continued saying anyway. I started to sputter again. She finally shut up like she said she would and we managed to finish eating. We left the facility and got back into the hover.
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