"I had the girl's permission, or at least her tacit consent, since she was as enthusiastic about the whole thing as I was. What? Are you her father? Her brother? Her husband? Her owner, maybe? Whatever you are, you just sat there while the two of us got carried away a little. If you had a complaint, you should have aired it before the act took place!"
"Maybe so, but I still think that you owe me one."
"No, you owe me one. I transferred Ming Po over to you, and you never returned the favor."
"Would you take that maid in trade? She hasn't come up on my schedule yet, and now I don't think that I'd feel right about taking her."
"Fine. She's a good woman. But you're sure getting uppity in your old age. Remember those forty women you took home after the party? A third of them were from my staff, and an equal number came from Hasenpfeffer's. Did either of us complain about that? A few hundred of the girls went home with other guys after that party, and certainly no one objected to that! In fact, I have yet to meet a woman on this island who was either underaged, half-witted, or a virgin. These are all mature, experienced women who are in full command of their own lives. For some strange, yet to be explained reason, they all seem to want to enjoy our succulent bodies, in just exactly the same way that the all women back home didn't. It always has been the women who do the choosing, not us men. You're enough of a historian to know that! We couldn't do any getting when they weren't doing any giving, and now that they are, I say that we should take all we can get. Personally, I intend to continue doing just what I have been doing all along, and if that bothers you, tough!"
"Oh, just forget it."
"The hell I will." The waitress came back precisely on cue, the way everything happened around the island. "Mona, my fine girl, I think that you are not sufficiently appreciated around here, so if you're willing, how about coming to work for me? You could report to Barb as soon as you got through here. Does that sound good to you?"
"Why, yes, Tom! That's wonderful!"
"Good." Turning back to Ian, I said, "Now we can forget it."
I slapped Mona on the butt as she left, and said to Ian, "So. Do you want to talk about what's really bugging you?"
"No, Tom. Not just yet."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Amoebas and Our Factory
I said, "Did you ever think about an amoeba?"
"Rarely. In fact, I've been known to go whole weeks at a time without doing such a thing, even after breakfast."
"Then consider that when times are good, an amoeba duplicates itself, reproduces by fission, about once every half an hour."
"And two little amoebas wiggle off. So?"
"Well, would you consider that act of fission to be the death of the animal?"
"Certainly not," Ian said.
"Then one can reasonably say that every amoeba now on earth has been around since the very first single-celled animal came into existence, perhaps a billion or more years ago. They are immortal."
"I suppose that that would follow, yes. Interesting."
"Now consider the fact that the total number of amoebas on earth doesn't change much. That there were about as many of them a half an hour ago as there are now. Therefore, on the average, one amoeba must die for each one that is created by fission. Think about what it must be like to be such an animal. There you are, billions of years old, knowing for the entire time that there is a fifty-fifty chance that you will be dead in the next half an hour," I said.
"Well, fortunately, as far as we know, they don't know, think, or remember anything, which together makes worrying pretty much impossible."
"True. But if they could, each and every one of the zillions of amoebas in the world would be perfectly justified in thinking of himself as being a fantastically lucky individual, having won that fifty-fifty bet with death almost every single half hour for billions of years."
"I see what you mean, Tom. Each one has seen—what?—maybe ten to the fifteenth of its clones die, while it has kept on living! Every one of them is so improbable that it couldn't possibly happen, yet there they all are in uncountable numbers, immortals waiting to die at any instant. Remarkable. Does this little parable of yours have any point?"
"No, but it sure makes you think, doesn't it? So what do you want to do today?"
"I don't know, except let's not try to be amoebas," Ian said. "I think that we have just about exhausted all of the possibilities before us. Nothing comes to mind. Can you think of anything interesting?"
"Well, okay, look. Neither one of us has ever tried anything really kinky. Now, I'll bet that if we looked for it, this palace of yours will turn out to have a dungeon, complete with cages full of nearly naked slave girls in leather, eager to taste our whips and nipple clamps, or perhaps your personal branding iron."
"You know, Tom, I think that you are probably right. I mean, I truly believe that our ladies really would volunteer for that sort of thing, if we asked them to do it. But the question is, would you actually ask them to do such a thing?"
"Well, no, I couldn't. Look, I wasn't being serious. The truth is, I feel very protective toward these girls. I don't think that I could hurt one of them if my life depended on it. But I at least I came up with something original. Now it's your turn to think up something for us to do today."
"Yeah. Well, we could always go flying again. We're still a long way from earning our pilots' licenses."
"True, but somehow, I don't feel like flying today. How about if we get some horses and ride down to the factory area? We could nose around there for a while, and maybe find something interesting."
"I think that's a dull, stupid idea, Tom, but it's the best one I've heard today, so let's act on it."
We walked out of Ian's Taj Mahal, to find two dozen of our ladies mounted and waiting for us, along with the two oversized horses we would ride, Diablo and Trigger. All the girls were in jodhpurs, riding boots, and nothing from the waist up except for some oversized sombreros.
As we mounted up, I said, "Ian, have you noticed that our staffs have been wearing less and less lately? I haven't asked them to do that. Is it your doing?"
"Not guilty. Ming Po, why are all of you wearing just jodhpurs?"
"It is vera painful to ride horse with no long pants on, Ian," she said in her best try at a Chinese accent.
"You know what I mean. Why are all of you women topless?"
"It is what we wished to not wear."
"Okay, then why did you wish to not wear shirts, or tops, or whatever you call what you're not wearing?"
"It is not me, of course, for I have receive far more than I deserve, but many other have notice that the less clothes a woman wear, the more likely she is to be noticed by two of you men."
"There you go, Tom. It's all just part of our infinite local sex appeal." Ian turned back to Ming Po, and said, "If you don't feel the need for attracting me any further, why are your breasts as bare as every one else's?"
"Because when everyone does something, then it is the fashion. A woman must be in fashion, yes?"
Ian looked confused, trying to absorb that one.
I could see that he didn't want to say anything, so I said, "It's passing strange, ladies, but I for one will happily suspend my disbelief in the apparent universe, in return for the ample services rendered."
There was no point in having Ian be the only one who was confused.
It was an hour's ride to the industrial area. The distance was only about six miles as the crow flies, but except for maybe the subways, nothing went straight on our island. There weren't any real roads at all. But the ride was enjoyable, and the scenery was good, which was why we rode the horses in the first place.
By scenery, I mostly mean that the ladies on the whole island were wearing a lot less than they had been three weeks ago. Back in the states, that wouldn't have been a good thing, since most people (of both sexes) didn't have bodies that you really wanted to see stripped down. Down here, where everybody looked like they were between eighteen and thir
ty-five, and physical fitness freaks besides, well, it wasn't bad.
But why were they doing what they were doing? Was it just this business of it being the new fashion? Or were they all offering themselves to us? That was a scary thought. There were more than thirty thousand women on the island.
It is possible to have entirely too much of a good thing.
* * *
I suppose that touring factories might strike most people as a strange way to spend a day, but you have to understand that engineers like to do things like that, and we don't think that it's at all strange. It's kind of fun, actually, like visiting museums, but of the present, instead of the past. As a group, we technical types have an abiding fascination with finding out exactly how the world is made.
Because of trade secrets and insurance problems, this sort of sightseeing is difficult to do out in the real world without knowing someone on the inside who can get you an invitation. But on the island, well, we owned the place.
The factories were all big, blocky grey buildings, mostly without windows, and without any signs except for the large street numbers. Except that there weren't any street signs here, or streets either. On the other hand, in the industrial area, everything that wasn't a factory building was paved over. Maybe you could call those spaces streets, except that there still weren't any street signs. I was a long time finding out what they did about the mail.
For our tour, Ian picked a building at random, and we just walked in, followed by most of our scantily clad entourage. As had happened before, the workers paid little heed to our ladies, but all of them turned and gawked at Ian and me. The plant manager bustled over, smiling and holding out his hand for me to shake.
It was an ordinary factory, making aluminum window frames. They were very well built window frames, obviously meant to last a long time, but there was nothing very interesting about the operation, except that there didn't seem to be any need for all the windows that they were diligently making.
"I thought that all the buildings on the Island already had windows," Ian said.
"Well, well, I'm sure that they all do, sir," the manager stammered.
"I haven't seen any new construction going on. What are they going to do with all the windows you folks are making here?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir. I don't get involved with sales, you see. I just make sure that the orders are filled."
"Then show me the orders."
"As you wish, sir, but they won't tell you much."
They didn't. The purchase orders were all on the same standard form, not on forms with the letterhead of the ordering company, as would be the usual case anywhere else I'd ever heard of.
They specified which standard catalog items were to be built and shipped by what time, and they mentioned the catalog prices but made no mention of any discounts expected, a thing unheard of in the real world.
And they specified precisely which numbered shipping containers should be filled, which seemed impossible. How would anybody, except maybe for the shipping company, know which container would be available for shipment at the time the order was filled? Oh, it could be done, I suppose, if you had that particular container especially set aside and waiting, but that would have been terribly inefficient, and why would anyone bother to do such a thing?
A little checking showed that each order exactly filled one container, which was weird, when you thought about it. How would the purchaser know exactly how they would be packed, what the exact external sizes of all the boxes were, so he could know how they would fit into a standard container?
Finally, there was no mention of who was doing the buying, when they had placed the order, nor when their check could be expected to arrive.
"A strange way to do business," I said to Ian as we left. "What kind of a building job is it that always takes exactly one full container of windows to complete the building being constructed? I mean, there would usually be a few windows more or less than what was needed."
"I know what you're trying to say, Tom, but it's just about the same story we got a few days ago at that electric motor shop."
We hit three more shops before noon: an elevator company, a plant that processed frozen fish, and a clothing factory. It was pretty much the same story at each of them: standardized orders for filling particular standardized containers of particular standardized products.
The crowd of girls with us mostly just kept quiet and followed us around, trying not to yawn. Why they came along, I don't know. We never asked to be followed around by a crowd.
Ian said it was a lot like the way the Roman Patricians figured that their status was defined by how many clients each of them had in his train.
"How about we hit a Syrian restaurant for lunch?" I said.
"I don't think I've ever tried Syrian food."
"It's a marvelous cuisine built around odd spices, flat bread, and dead animals. Their best dish is mostly raw lamb's meat. Don't worry. We'll make sure that they cook your kibbie, and that they don't throw in very much in the way of spices."
Ian agreed, and, of course, there was an Eastern Mediterranean restaurant just outside of the industrial area. They had a big table reserved and all set for our party of twenty-six. The place was much like the one that I had frequented back in Ann Arbor, except that here, the black-haired waitresses all wore abbreviated belly dancers' outfits, and were as bare breasted as most of their current female customers.
I ordered the lemon and rice soup, the fattoush salad, and my kibbeh nayeh raw and spicy. And sherbert for desert. All of my girls followed suit, which seemed perfectly sensible to me. After all, it was the best food in the house.
Since I'd warned him, Ian asked for his kibbeh cooked and bland, but I was surprised when all twelve of his ladies ordered the same thing that he did.
Dedication on that level amazed me, since the spiced ground raw lamb's meat and cracked grain—floating in olive oil and served with quartered raw onions on flat pita bread—is one of the foods of the Gods! Cooked, it loses a lot. But here they all were, missing out on one of life's better pleasures, just to suck up to their boss.
I tell you, it does a boss's heart good.
Ian and I chowed down with gusto, the way we'd been doing since we'd first seen that doctor. These oversized, muscular bodies burned a lot of fuel, and somehow they did something with everything extra we packed in, because my weight hadn't changed an ounce, despite the way I'd been overeating for almost a month. After a lifetime of starving myself, and gaining weight anyway, well, eating all I wanted to was almost as wonderful as all the gorgeous ladies and free sex.
Barb signed for the meal, and we left. Thinking about it, I realized hadn't touched any money since the day before we got here.
That afternoon, we toured a shop that made wrought iron railings, and another one that made glassware. Metal working was old hat for Ian and me, but neither of us had ever had much to do with glass factories. The technology of making things out of sand heated into a gooey liquid was pretty interesting, and we spent a few hours there. They sold many of their consumer products to local shops, but mostly it was the old story of filling orders that each filled a standard container.
I was getting ready to knock off, and maybe find a good bar, but Ian insisted on touring one more factory.
The building he selected was larger that any of the other factories we'd visited, but when we went in, there was no one around. Curious, we wandered around what was mostly a big, general purpose machine shop, equipped with some of the newest, biggest, and finest machinery available. Despite the high ceiling, the place obviously had a second floor. We were heading for the stairway in the corner when Ian stopped me, grabbing my left arm.
"Tom, that small stuff by the wall! That's my shop! I recognize my equipment!"
We went over there, and yeah, it was our property, neatly separated from the rest of the plant with a waist-high fence. I mean, there were temporal swords instead of cutting bits on all of the tools, and the saws were all
just clamps that held the stock in place while letting the swords do their thing. Ian was going over each tool, making sure that nothing was missing or broken.
"I'll bet that my old electronics shop is upstairs," I said. "I'm going up there to find it."
Ian nodded, but was too busy to answer.
Half of the second floor was an engineering design shop, with dozens of drawing boards complete with parallel bars instead of the old T-squares, and even one of the new drafting machines that I'd heard about. There were a dozen glassed-in offices along the walls, with one posh and much larger office in the far corner. All of the furniture in it was oversized, and done in Danish Modern teak.
You entered the big office by first going through a nice secretary's office. The other door led to a hallway with a big restroom complete with an oversized shower, and a private elevator, so the big boss could sneak in (or out) without letting the peasants know about it.
I knew that the door at the end of the hallway had to lead to my office. It was as big as Ian's, only my furniture was American walnut, and heavily carved with a strange mixture of electronics symbols and naked ladies. I liked it.
My office had two more heavily carved doors, one that went to a secretary's room, and the other, at last, to my old electronics lab. The equipment was old and shabby, with dozens of cigar burns on the upper edges, but for the first time in weeks, I felt really at home.
As I walked in, I just automatically turned on my soldering iron and my battered but dependable Textronic 545 oscilloscope, the way every good tech does. I put my feet up on the solder-splattered work bench and debated with myself about brewing up a pot of Maxwell House coffee. I was home. I don't know how long I sat there before I got up and continued my tour.
Beyond my personal area, I found a big, well-equipped electronics shop, which took up about a third of the whole second floor. There was room there for maybe thirty guys to work with plenty of workbench space and more than decent elbow room.
Except that it was empty of people, and felt almost dead. It shouldn't be that way, I thought. It should be full of people, enjoying themselves while doing good, useful work.
Conrad's Time Machine Page 16
