Feminine Queendom 17. © Beverly Taff

List of Characters.
Charlie Sage Maths and electronics genius.
Shirley Sage Charlies elderly mother
Chloe Charlie’s one time early school friend.
Josephine Flint Surgeon and associate of Chloe’s.
Mrs Jane Anston Director of Anston Aerospace.
Ronnie Garage mechanic at top of lane
Pauline Garage owner, Ronnie’s sister.
Briony Pauline’s teenaged daughter.
Billy Pauline’s middle son.
Abigail (Abby) Pauline’s youngest daughter.
‘Poppy’ Charlie’s little micro-runabout.
‘Doris’ The armoured mobile home.
‘Lady’ Chloe’s Sports Car.
Colonel Wilson Vindictive misanthropist doctor.

Chapter 17

It was the middle of June; the summer solstice and Charlie was preparing to fly to Australia. The past week of high temperatures had brought people out in droves and naturally all the open spaces like beaches, forests and mountains, were packed with people seeking respite from the long interminable heat. Charlie was hard pressed to find an isolated spot from which to launch upwards without being spotted. He usually chose a remote location on the coast of Devon or Cornwall where forests still occasionally ran down to the sea, and from there he could launch at midnight during the brief hours of darkness.

Knowing the problems, he had phoned Chloe that week and suggested that he did not fly that weekend. Chloe was missing him badly however so consequently he had been persuaded to fly on the Thursday to avoid the week-end summer crowds.

Having decided a strategy he had chosen a well tried and tested, remote glade of trees near the coast, and prepared to fly an hour after midnight, when the sky was at its darkest.
To his chagrin, when he emerged from out of the trees, he spotted a naval task force several miles off the Lizard Peninsular and he concluded he would have to drop down to sea-level to avoid being seen against the still feeble summer twilight of the northern sky.

As soon as he was airborne, he skimmed the treetops, then literally ‘slithered’ like a snake over the edge of the cliff and skimmed along the rocky coast to keep the Cornish cliffs as a backdrop and reduce any radar target that could be easily discerned over the flat-calm mirrorlike sea. Finally he determined himself to be far enough away to escape from any aircraft by ascending quickly into space.

To do this meant transferring from the conventional front driver’s seat to the air-tight command capsule preparatory to entering the vacuum of space. It was always dangerous to try to step from driver’s seat to command module while moving, so he momentarily stopped Doris while he evacuated the driver’s seat and ensconced himself safely in the module.

By sheer bad luck, to naval petrol helicopters were flying out to rendezvous with the naval task force and spotted the stationary Doris during the few seconds that Charlie was changing positions. Firstly they buzzed closer then quickly radioed the task force to report an unidentified flying object that resembled a box-like object. Then they managed to get some indistinct infra-red pictures of Doris before Charlie realised he had been seen.

On finally realising that he had been detected visually, Charlie threw caution to the winds and immediately ascended into space. However, Doris was not built for high speed while travelling through an atmosphere because she only had a crude plain, thickened windscreen in place of a standard car windscreen. Any speed in excess of two hundred knots through the atmosphere could implode Doris’s windscreen. However that speed could be maintained in any direction so Charlie simply ascended straight up into space.

Four of the task-force’s newest fighters were despatched to investigate the UFO reported by the helicopters and at speeds in excess of Mach three they eventually reached Doris while she was still atmospheric. They tried contacting the UFO and after zero response they eventually tried firing missiles at it. One of the missiles definitely struck the UFO but because of Doris’s thick, heavy, steel, internal shell, no serious damage was done before Doris finally reached the vacuum of space where wings, flaps, ailerons and jet engines could not effectively go. Once above the earth’s effective atmosphere, Charlie had free reign to increase the speed to twenty thousand knots and the naval jets could only watch in disbelief as the strange box-like craft streaked out of sight.

They never got close enough to get detailed pictures and the helicopter images were grainy infra-red so all they got was a seemingly clumsy box that only became fast and agile upon entering space.

ooo000ooo

Half an hour later, Doris descended into the remote cave in the Australian outback and he examined the damage with Chloe at his side.

“It’s nothing that can’t be easily fixed but it means I’m going to have to work on her for a couple of weeks, I’ll also try to replace that windscreen for some sort of super-strong glass like on aircraft. Until we strengthen that, Doris is restricted to two hundred knots in air.”

“Shall I come back with you?” I’ve got a month’s leave coming to me, and People are bound to be asking questions about us.”

“Yeah, that’ll be nice. When do you get full Australian citizenship?”

“It’s another year to go then I have full rights, and you can come out as my spouse.”

“Did you have to pretend to be single to apply.”

“They never asked. Nor do their forms ask if a woman is married. They simply presume every woman is single and the new feminista forms don’t even have a box for ‘spouse’. Legally, men lose most of their rights if they marry a woman. They almost become the woman’s property except for the right to life and liberty. When men are single they have more rights than in the UQ but not much. Marriage is even rarer than in the UQ.

“Is marriage legal down under?”

“They’re like the UQ. It’s so rare, nobody’s bothered to change the laws surrounding marriage, they just presume every woman is single. Most women choose to have daughters so the male gene pool is small but high quality. Biologically, they’ve handled the genetics problem better than the UQ. Ethically it’s worse.”

“Will they be testing our baby’s genome?”

“Only if I ask. Otherwise they only test a boy’s genome when he arrives at puberty. If he’s the right material, that is high IQ and physically healthy, no genetic flaws from inbreeding or something; then he gets a fatherhood permit.”

“And if he isn’t?” Charlie pressed.

“He doesn’t get a license to father children. The vast majority of Australian women who decide to have a baby, demand to see the man’s fatherhood license and IQ levels before they’ll accept his sperm.

Men who don’t make the cut, usually choose to go for the cut, - vasectomy that is. With that, there are plenty of women prepared to enjoy sex with sterile jocks, just for the pleasure.”

“Will I have to get a fatherhood certificate if we want more children.”

“That should be easy. As my husband they’ll be curious about you; then, but when they find out who you are, all hell will break out.”

“Ye-ess.” Charlie mused. “I’d like to see the UQ feminista faces when Australia declares that Charlie page has emigrated.”

For the rest of that auspicious weekend, Charlie and Chloe resumed expanding their subterranean home while nursing their baby. Then when the time came, Chloe joined Charlie in Doris’s other airtight capsule and returned to the UQ just to spend a month reacquainting herself with old friends. Few people except her colleagues at the university hospital had realised she had emigrated to Australia. They just presumed she had been out of circulation while pre-occupied with motherhood.
ooo000ooo

Back on the task-force, aircraft carrier the UFO debriefings served more to confuse than to clarify. Eventually the reports were filed under ‘top-secret’ as the Feminista authorities started to panic. That secrecy served Charlie and Doris well. It was to be several months later before Charlie was finally invited to give his thoughts about the ‘flying-boxes’.

By that time, Charlie had repaired the outer aluminium skin and Doris looked normal again. Only a closer inspection would have revealed the armoured, inner secrets.

Eventually, when the feminista government finally decided to admit to a possible extra-terrestrial visitation, Charlie was summoned to Jane Anston’s board room to face another clutch of suits with lots of questions.

“Box-shaped you say.” Charlie queried after they had ‘enlightened’ him. “So that implies they’re not worried about streamlining their ships. They’re not worried about speed in the lower atmosphere.”

The senior suit nodded slowly as she was forced to agree. Charlie extrapolated further.

“That implies that whatever this thing was, it was not concerned with speed and was not concerned with aggression. Did it fire back?”

“Not to our knowledge.” The suit replied.

“And yet you say you hit it with a missile, which you believe did not seriously harm it.”

“The fighter pilot believes she saw some pieces come off the target but so far we haven’t recovered anything from the sea-bed. Her gun-cameras support her observations.”

Charlie shrugged.

“You haven’t got much have you. Are you sure they are aliens and not some invention from the Asian confederations?”

“We’ve obviously considered that, but our sources have reported that they are no further than us with the antigravity science. In fact, you put us ahead with the ten-metre engine but neither side have progressed much beyond that. Have you any more ideas.”

Charlie knew better than to give point-blank ‘NO’ so he messed a bit with their minds.

“I don’t have anything concrete but I’m still exploring the materials science. I still think it’s to do with the materials that form the inducted fluxes in the coils. I just don’t seem to yet have hit on the right formula for any likely materials.”

“Do you have any other ideas.”

“Not as such,” he lied, “I’m still experimenting with numerous different compounds. There’s literally millions of different compounds though I think I’ve narrowed it down to a few thousand. Its currently a case of suck it and see. I usually run a formula through my number-crunching and if it shows promise we try some experiments. That’s all I’ve got.”

“Yes we know about your private mathematical tools, have you ever thought of learning about advanced conventional maths?” The suit suggested.

“Perhaps it would have been better if you’d said that when I was thirteen.” Charlie retorted. “And then perhaps better still if you'd taught me.”

He did not have to say anymore, the bile was there for all to see and understand. Jane Anston decided to intervene before the conversation degenerated into an unproductive row.

“Yes, well I think Mr Sage’s observations may be accurate but they take us no further. I think we are done with his help here at present.
Perhaps when you recover the bits from the sea-bed, you might have some better ideas about the construction and propulsion this craft enjoyed.”

“I don’t think it would help you much,” Charlie offered ungraciously, “if the thing carried on ascending into space, the damage can’t have been serious.”

His thoughts gave them much food for thought and they made their farewells as Jane Aston ushered Charlie into her office.

“Yes Ma-am,” Charlie inquired, once they were alone.

“You seem to have reached some sort of a log jam with your endeavours,” she observed as he stood respectfully by her desk.

“There’s a lot of stuff to get through,” he countered. “You’ve seen my notes, I bring them in several times a week.”

“Have you tried any different approaches?”

“Some. You’ve seen my notes, I’ve always explained what I’m trying to explore. The more I research the engineering the bigger the whole field seems to get.”

“Do you think you’ve got a handle on gravity.”

“Yes. Definitely; I’m sure I’ve got the theory right, it’s the bloody engineering. Carbon isn’t quite the right element but it’s the nearest crystalline string-form I can manufacture that super-conducts at ambient temperatures yet remains flexible enough to manipulate and make coils that wind in mega-fibrous helix’s.”

“That doesn’t sound that complicated, do you need more resources, more assistants?”

“Assistants? Who can I trust as assistants? The day I break through into the right solution will be the day that any and every assistants who might be a party to the knowledge will immediately be tempted to steal the idea the idea from a mere man.”

“You’re saying you don’t trust anybody.”

“I’m a man; who’s there to trust?”

“What are you implying?”

“I’m asking who is there to trust. As a man, I cannot sign any legally binding contract, at least to a woman that is. Any woman can invoke the Feminista code and have any agreement I sign in my own name, revoked in just about any court in the land. As I said, who is there for me to trust, save for my wife Chloe?”

“Your wife?”

“Yes my wife. She at least has demonstrated that she’s prepared to stand by me and invoke her female rights and thus protect what few rights I have as a man through our marital union. Her rights become my rights but I have no inalienable rights of my own. Every time I want to patent some idea or some breakthrough, my wife Chloe has to do it in her name. Even then, she invokes ridicule and condemnation from the fundamentalist feminista, what’s more, they are constantly looking for loopholes to try and disestablish her patent rights. Chloe’s been to hell and back for me. So, I say again; who can I trust save she whom I already trust?”

“So you’re telling me you don’t trust anybody, even me.”

“You’re forgetting that until I married Chloe, I never had a single day off except to bury my mother. Three days in twelve years. You exploited me all those years and your company claimed the patent rights to hundreds of my modifications. You were quite prepared to exploit me then so why wouldn’t I believe you’d exploit me again if it wasn’t for Chloe. If Chloe hadn't invited me to marry her, I would still be held as a reserve element of Anston Aerospace, in effect, a slave.”

"You cannot say that, you are paid wages."

"Yes, a pittance for what I have done for Anston. All I can say is that I thank all that is good for Chloe marrying me."

This was the first time that Jane Anston could ever remember Charlie being frank with her and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling. She was beginning to wonder where Charlie’s feelings and loyalties really lay.

ooo000ooo