A few years after the twins were born, we were overjoyed to discover that I was pregnant again to Beverly and this time it was triplets-, two girls and a boy. With my bio-prosthesis company now doing excellent business and Beverly's spaceship manufacturing business expanding to every continent and planet as trade around the solar system expanded logarithmically, we thought all our problems were over.
A viable colony had been established on Mars where millions of meteorites had been plunged onto the planet progressively increasing its mass. Each huge meteorite having been carefully crashed into the planet with stupendous force and heat so as to penetrate through the crust and melt into a metallic core. All this was done under controlled conditions so as not to disturb the planet's orbit or that of its neighbours. Eventually Mars's gravity was increased sufficiently to capture and hold an artificially enhanced envelope of imported gasses effectively condensing the thin atmosphere to an insulating greenhouse of breathable air. Water was then introduced and moderated the planets temperature variations thus calming the ferocious dust storms.
Once Mars was successfully made habitable the massed efforts of human kind were next devoted to taming the planet Venus and also making it habitable.
Fortunately the solar system proved to be an excellent quarry'. Little was required of Earth in terms of material. She was a planet already running short of resources anyway. Taming Sol's other planets without the planetary quarry' would have bankrupted Earth.
Instead, Earth provided the newfound skills whilst the asteroid belt and the remote outer planets provided virtually limitless supplies of water, essential gasses and minerals. Almost every week, exploration teams discovered water ice mountains and vast lumps of meteoric metal or minerals amongst the countless millions of asteroids in the belt between Jupiter and Mars. More importantly, several of Jupiter and Saturn's minor moons also proved to contain vast deposits of water ice.
Huge spacecraft were then assembled in space, and they now ploughed between the planets transporting many thousands of cubic kilometres of raw materials mainly to Venus where it's cruel envelope was gradually being substituted with a suitable atmosphere to partially reflect the suns lethal rays whilst allowing essential light to filter down and radiate the surface. Mankind was finally rid of the oppressive notion that it was forever shackled to its home planet and condemned to suffer the same fate as the Amphs. Beverly had effectively done for humankind as she had done for the amphs.
The Solar System had become the new `Western prairies' but this time there were no indigenous stone aged tribes to exterminate. Human kind now had two whole new planets to colonise and this time with the benefits of a little wisdom and considerable research. It was a second chance to get it right.
Mankind however, was still denied the secrets of Beverly's space warping. For all practical purposes, they were limited to the bounds of Sol's gravity and could only ever expect to visit the nearest stars in their own galaxy. Even then they had to be prepared to endure journeys lasting several tens of years.
I knew that many envious (and official) eyes turned towards Cold Albatross every time we plunged into deep space amidst a violent flash of swirling light and energy before disappearing instantly from view.
Cold Albatross's secret was well kept however; Beverly had finally admitted to me that she had hidden all the records of her work on a remote isolated planet located far across the universe.
This planet and its star did not even share the company of a galaxy of neighbours. The planet was an airless freezing satellite of a dead frozen black dwarf star where temperatures approached absolute zero and no radiation escaped to reveal it's location. Its nearest neighbours were many hundreds of light years away and it must have been just about the most remote and desolate lump of matter in the whole universe. Beverly had chosen her hiding place well! As added protection, she had never taken anybody (including me) to see her hidey-hole and I only knew of it from her descriptions. For my own protection, that was all I wanted to know. What I didn't know couldn't be extracted forcibly from me.
This of course did not stop endless attempts to persuade or trick Beverly into revealing some miniscule nugget that might lead the questioner to a possible solution of the warping question. Their efforts invariably failed. Beverly could be a tight-lipped secretive individual when she wanted but more importantly, there was just too much maths and complex theory involved.
She once told me that if conventional maths were used without a computer, then the paperwork would run to several thick volumes of treatise.
As an uneducated, wounded teenager without access to any computers, she had been forced to invent several completely new mathematical tools to get around the problem and she frowned as she rationalised the irony of her brutalised childhood and neglected education.
"You see Ruby, if I had been force-fed the ordinary mathematics of mankind, my mind would have been locked into the tramlines of their conventionality and I would never had expanded my original crazy ideas. It was the lack of education coupled with my paranoia that allowed my brain cells to range free."
Sometimes I had to admit that Beverly and I shared the weirdest `pillow talk'.
After recognising the perverse aspects of her inverted success I could only acknowledge her irrational genius and then cast it temporarily from my mind until the next time Beverly chose to resurrect it. The very idea of space warping and subsequent time travel caused my head to ache. The sad part was that despite travelling through time, it was still extremely difficult for Beverly to predict during the first voyage, an arrival time or destination with any degree of accuracy. Once the voyage was profiled however, it was easy to repeat.
During the initial voyage however, we could just as easily have ended up with the Victorians, the dinosaurs or the `Big Bang'.
Strangely it proved very difficult to go forward a long way in time. Beverly admitted her maths didn't handle it well and the fabric of the future universe seemed to be accessible only if events were soon to happen and virtually inevitable. Beverly confessed that she had never knowingly gone forward more than about six months but even that idea made me shudder just to think about it. Space warping without time travel was more than enough for me.
Her blasé confession about `her maths not yet being up to solving accurate time travel', was, to say the least, bizarre! It simultaneously demonstrated her weird genius, whilst somehow still failing to reassure me.
Nevertheless, once mankind (and other alien acquaintances of Beverly,) knew that space warping was a possibility they naturally put much effort into its solution.
Despite their efforts, none of them managed to crack the secret and it was the efforts of an unknown species that led to my next adventures with Beverly.
We were returning back to the solar system after a brief visit to her erstwhile friends the Amphs when Beverly detected a distinct ripple in the space-time continuum. At first she thought it was caused perhaps by Cold Albatross having passed too close to (or even through!) an un-charted black hole.
It was only on returning to our own space that we realised that humankind was under scrutiny from another alien species. Beverly didn't recognise them and openly admitted to me that she had by no means covered the whole universe in all her vast journeyings.
"I don't know who they are Rube'," she warned, "but they're out there well beyond Pluto. They've somehow managed to create a crude warping device but it's even more rudimentary and inaccurate than the Albatross. They've got no accurate navigation system and it appears they are re-materialising nearly a light year out from Sol.
It's weird. If they materialise too close to Sol they know they will be detected by Mankind and they seem to be avoiding a confrontation."
"Why would that be?" I asked.
"I dunno. It looks as though they're gathering their navy together; accumulating enough forces to launch an attack."
"Are you going to pay them a visit?"
"Not with the kids on board. We'll return them to Earth then I'll investigate it myself."
"What about me?" I protested.
"It could be dangerous. That's not a picnic they're organising. The portal they've created is huge but clumsy and slow."
"But why us?" I pressed. "Why mankind. We're just a minor species living beside minor star in a mediocre galaxy."
"Yes, but with more accurate Space warping technology," finished Beverly.
"But that would make them more afraid of us than we of them." I countered.
"Perhaps, but I think they have been watching us a long time. They probably know about me and realise that I have not shared my warping secrets with the rest of mankind. I'm just not sure. Perhaps I'm being paranoid or conceited."
"So what d'you intend doing?" I asked.
"I haven't a clue yet, but I'm not going to be blackmailed into revealing the warp. I still don't think humankind is ready for it."
"But if you don't give it to us, how will we defend ourselves against this alien attack? I think you letting your childhood abuse experiences run away with your common sense. Your abusers have been named, shamed and punished."
"Well I'm still not too sure. I'll need to make a few reconnaissance visits and find out about them. God knows what they're up to."
By now we had arrived at Sol and changed drive to antigrav. As Earth grew in our viewing window we paid our respects to a departing space liner and skirted one of the unimaginably huge `freighters' waiting patiently above the Earth before we slipped down to our cottage in New England. Even from our cottage, the vast freighter could be seen like some secondary moon as it held a geo-stationary position prior to delivering a fraction of its cargo to some space dock near New York.
Passports and immigration controls had long since been made redundant, as every soul on Earth could find gainful work taming the planets of Sol. All the planets and their moons had been declared international property as per Beverly's demands and therefore every human had an absolute freeborn right to visit them and or emigrate to them.
Consequently, we had entered Sol's space and the Earth's atmosphere with no fanfare or officialdom. Space was absolutely free. It was now only patrolled by a very efficient interplanetary Police Force that ensured justice, fair play and peace.
After depositing the children and me at the cottage, Beverly prepared to depart again.
"I'll visit all the alien species I deem safe and try and find out if anybody else has been visited by this species."
"Well you be careful!" I begged. "We can't afford to lose you!!"
Beverly shrugged and pulled a wry smile.
"My oh my Ruby! How things have changed. Fifty years ago I was trash, rubbish destined for the garbage tip, not even a proper grave."
"Yes," I agreed, "but that's all in the past. Please let me come with you."
"You'll have to look after the kids."
"Why?" I objected. "They've got all the care they'll ever need."
Unexpectedly, Beverly paused for a moment then suddenly changed her mind.
"OK then. Come on. This trip shouldn't be dangerous. Just a quick peek and then on to the Amphs"
The Cold Albatross was nothing if not a second home and it was no problem to simply step into her and go. There was no packing required for every thing we needed was always to be found on board. I left some instructions with the children's nannies and joined Beverly in the control cabin.
"So what changed your mind?" I asked.
"You." She replied enigmatically.
I quickly grasped her meaning and grinned knowingly. If the journey were to be a long one Beverly would want company- and sex!
After establishing what the aliens looked like we next visited the Amphs and checked what they knew. They had nothing material to offer about this new species but they gave us some useful advice about dealing with aliens. The suggestions they offered seemed to have merit and Beverly invited Thlom and his new `wife' to join us on our search.
Since the advent of Beverly's help the Amphs had painfully started to modify their social structure and Thlom had naturally been a leader in this (for them) strange new development of marriage. Thlom's new wife was also a biochemist.
I couldn't immediately see where Beverly's mind was going but she quickly explained that Thlom was already well versed in biological techniques and they both thought that this was one important avenue to be explored.
I then realised Beverly's reasoning. In HG Wells' book, War of the Worlds, it was microbes that did for the alien invaders. I pointed out that if this species had been studying us then they would definitely have addressed the viral threat. Beverly grinned sagaciously and tapped her nose. I knew I would have to wait.
We then journeyed to several other planets before we finally got a lead on the unknown species.
In a far away galaxy there was a pair of stars that formed a loose binary system. Both stars had their own planetary families upon which evolution had been parallely successful. Strangely, about every thousand years the extreme outer planet of each system mutually swapped orbits and exchanged stars.
As life evolved in each system their science eventually advanced to interplanetary travel. With the advent of another forthcoming predicted exchange each species had anticipated the event and despatched an expedition to witness and if possible, experience the event. Thus both species had inadvertently become interstellar passengers as the planets crossed over.
It seemed that in one system a particularly aggressive insectoid species took slaves just like certain ant colonies back on Earth. It was basic to their instinct but with their evolution over the usual millions of years they had also developed intelligence. They had become a particularly hostile and aggressive dominant species that had turned their slave foraging into a fine interplanetary art.
Then, because the stars were extremely close in interstellar terms, the aggressive species had managed to cross to the next planetary system during an exchange.
We discovered this from a second more peaceable insectoid species from the neighbouring star system who had endured their depredations for countless millennia. The two stars were uniquely less than a light year apart and shared the same characteristics. Consequently, their planet types were similar and very stable having never suffered a meteor or comet strike because of the strange gravitational perturbations caused by the binary profile of the stars.
. Evolution had followed similar paths around both stars with no violent upheavals thus the earlier life forms had evolved to intelligence before dinosaurs and mammals had evolved. The primary life form had evolved from these ant-like insects.
It seemed that the aggressive `slaver ants' never actually destroyed the slave colonies because they would always need to raid for new slaves. It was the red ants and the black ants again, but on an interplanetary and interstellar scale.
I learned that the slave ant' colony had recently evolved a genetically enhanced soldier ant' thanks in part to a brief single previous visit by Beverly. However, Beverly had never actually met the aggressive slaver ants' because she had arrived and left during a quiet period'. This explained why she had not immediately recognised them back at Sol.
These new genetically enhanced soldiers were in themselves extremely ferocious individuals who proved to be almost as dangerous to their worker brothers as the invading slaver foragers.
Whilst the slave ants had been vegetarian, their new genetically enhanced soldier ant' big brothers were greedy carnivores who would devour just about anything that moved. Even their own larvae were not immune to being eaten and the submissive female nurse ants' were utterly incapable of defending the nurseries from their hungry soldier brothers. Only the queen ant and her princess daughters seemed able to control her giant wayward sons by their sheer size and powerful pheromones.
Despite this minor genetic hiccup, the victim slave colonies were still infinitely thankful to Beverly for her previous visit and her help in developing an effective defence force. The down side was that now the `slaver ants' were forced to look elsewhere for their slaves.
Their previous experience with short interstellar journeys between the two close neighbouring stars had taught them a little about gravity and space thus preparing them for space warping. Eventually they managed to evolve a crude technique.
With the advent of their discoveries they eventually detected Beverly's warping activities as Cold Albatross left telltale `tracks' streaking through the space-time continuum.
Eventually after some patient detective work, the aggressive `slaver ants' had narrowed the origins of Cold Albatross down to the planets of Sol. Armed with this information and their crude, clumsy, slow, warping technology they had finally started turning up piece-meal on Sol's doorstep.
We now had a lever on the invaders and a basic understanding of the enemy. The `slave ants' even offered to ally themselves with us but frankly, we all four were slightly afraid of the new super soldier ants. Unlike their brothers and sisters, they weren't very bright and Thlom likened them to Hannibal's African Elephants in the wars with the Romans. They were OK until they ran amok and killed their own troops. Then they had to be killed by a spike through the brain driven into the backs of their skulls by their mahouts. The mahouts nearly always ended up dead as well.
There had to be another way.
For several weeks we worked alongside the peaceful slave ants best scientists to research some options. Sadly for us, (though not for them,) their insectoid nature made them almost impervious to all but a few extremely virulent and dangerous viruses. It seemed that we would have to look for another solution.
Fortunately, the slave ants had a few slaver ants held prisoner in a compound since they had been captured in the last unsuccessful foray. This was the final attack that had been driven off and caused the slaver ants to look elsewhere for slaves.
These prisoners provided Thlom and his wife with an excellent gene pool to work their research and they gathered enough information to develop some plausible hypothesis.
As we resumed our journeying we visited several more species then finally returned to Sol after nearly a year of travelling with me little the wiser and no less hopeful.
Fortunately Cold Albatross was not immediately detectable to the `Slaver Ant's' crude devices. They could only just detect the remains of the warp after Albatross had passed. We successfully reconnoitred their efforts without immediate detection and were long gone by the time the ants could react.
We thus learned that their invasion preparations were well advanced and Beverly realised she had little time.
I was returned to our cottage and deposited without ceremony amongst our children, whilst the other three returned back to space. I had to admit I was glad to be with my children again and they were more than glad to see me.
For several weeks I heard little from Beverly and Thlom until reports began to filter back to Earth from the space ship captains returning with their ships.
It seemed that some sort of faint eerie glow was developing somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Eventually their reports were made self-evident for a thin line of light started to appear in the Milk Way. As it gathered intensity with each passing night an investigation task force was despatched to investigate it.
They returned a very chastened lot. It seemed that many thousands of millions of miles beyond Pluto's orbit a strange force field had evolved. When the task force's ships had penetrated it, a strange envelope of energy had overwhelmed them and when they recovered they discovered that they were all women.
Fortunately the sex changes that had affected the men so completely also affected their sexuality so that all the individuals felt happy with their new bodies and newfound sexual orientations. Nevertheless, for mankind, the discovery came as a severe shock. It seemed that nobody could leave the Solar system without first becoming a woman or being a woman to begin with.
I immediately began to smell a rat but I had to wait several more weeks before the whole truth came to light.
Beverly and her Amph friends had finally arrived at a perfect solution to the threat from the Insectoids and when she explained it to me I was filled with admiration.
Once again as we cuddled up in bed, she explained.
"When we left you Ruby, we visited several other species to accumulate ideas and science. Then we had a sort of communal brainwave. We tested it on some of the prisoners from the `slave ant' planet and it worked perfectly.
After that, it was only a matter of expanding the idea to make a complete force field that would envelope the whole solar system.
The force field is an intensive particle dissipater that creates a powerful miniature space warp and causes opposite polarities to evolve before rearranging the traveller's molecules.
We scanned body profiles of all the species we knew about and adjusted the force field to include a series of tight concentric waves where each individual wave would affect a specific species.
The field generators are located inside the envelope so that they are safe from direct attack. Any extraterrestrial visitor passing through the field would be changed into the gender or type of that particular species that is the least belligerent or aggressive."
I was beginning to get the drift of her tale and giggled to myself as I anticipated her next words and squeezed her to me.
"That's right Ruby," continued Beverly as she anticipated my understanding. "For example, the slaver ants' gathering outside our system are all soldier ants' with a primarily male gender. Although they are in effect sterile males, they are still aggressive and powerful.
The slaver ants also have sterile females that are particularly submissive and obedient nurse ants that care for the larvae and clean out the colonies. There are also worker ants that are virtually sexless but started out as female eggs. So in effect Ruby these insectoids have five different genders!"
I smiled a nervous smile as Beverly expanded her description of the colonies.
"There are the queen ants, usually a queen and few virgin daughter princesses in each colony who are cared for by the nurse and worker ants. The queen produces eggs whilst the princesses live a life of idle pampered luxury.
There are the male ants that usually number one to a colony. Call them Kings if you will for their only function is to service the queen.
Next there are the sterile female nurse ants that care for the larvae and young. These are a particularly submissive and not very bright group who seem to have a nursing fixation like contented cows. Then there are the sexless worker ants that do all the mundane work and direct the slave ants to maintain the colonies. Finally, there are the soldier ants who are sterile males that do the foraging and warmongering. These are the aggressive bastards who are sitting out beyond Pluto gathering their forces. They want human slaves but more importantly, they want the Albatross's warp secrets.
Apparently if a soldier ant is a particularly successful general, a princess will show interest in him and her pheromones will turn him into a fertile king ant. She leaves the colony with him amidst much hoo-haa and ceremony to form a daughter colony. Nowadays, these colonies are to be found on other planets."
"This is all very interesting Beverly, but how does this affect our chances of defeating them?" I asked.
"Think darling," smiled Beverly as she snuggled up to me, "when those soldier ants pass through the envelope they will be turned from sterile males into sterile females. That is from Soldier ants into nurse ants.
Not one of those sterile soldiers is a fertile male, a king ant, so none of the invaders will be turned into queens.
What will arrive in our system will be an army of submissive, sterile, obedient nursing female ants tailor-made to become nannies and child minders. D'you follow?"
I smiled nervously anticipating how humankind would react to finding themselves endowed with an alien species of childminder tailor-made to liberate our women. Then I wondered about our own men ever leaving the Solar System and mentioned my concerns. Beverly had already addressed that issue and grinned as she explained.
"Well firstly Rube, I don't anticipate anybody leaving the system for many decades yet but if they do, then there will be a series simple, properly controlled portal gateways at strategic positions throughout the envelope.
Cold Albatross isn't affected of course. She already circumvents the envelope by warping before she reaches it. She's already out of the envelope's space-time continuum before she's affected."
I nodded ignorantly for I would never understand how the Albatross warped. I also wondered how could any such alternative gateway' through the envelope be described as simple'. I glanced bemusedly at Thlom who wagged his head apologetically and shrugged his tiny amphibian shoulders. It was a strange gesture that he had learned from Beverly and I grinned at its exaggerated motion as his shoulders moved at least a foot up and down. Amphs had no scapulars and their pectoral girdle was remarkably flexible.
Another thought crossed my mind.
"So what about those poor souls who were changed to women?"
"No problem," shrugged Beverly, "we're building a reciprocal force field generator that can reverse the condition. It'll be here in few weeks."
"So who built that?" I demanded almost anticipating the answer.
"Same people who helped design the envelope. It's going to become a standard protective device for each star system where there's life to protect from alien invasions."
I imagined Beverly whizzing between galaxies making connections and swapping information. It was obvious that neither she nor Thlom were going to divulge any more information so I would have to wait until the `gender correction device' arrived from wherever it was coming.
As to the sexually altered crew of the expeditionary force I was lucky enough to visit them and sound them out. Strangely several of the single crewmembers confessed to being quite happy in their new roles and had no intentions of changing back. Most married members however wanted to return to their spouses except for a tiny few who were happy with the new marital situations. Gay marriages were now fully legal of course.
Gender differentiations were becoming even more blurred as mankind learned of other alien species even if they hadn't met them.
When mankind finally met the insectoids (as they were now certain to do,) there would be a quantum shift in mankind's perspective of sexualities and genders.
Beverly told of at least one alien species where there were eight organisms that combined to make a whole individual. Reproduction was a bizarre process involving sixteen separate acts of fertilisation before a sentient intelligent individual was conceived. We giggled as we tried to accord the concept of gender to such a complex individual. Even Thlom was bemused by the description.
The nearest earthly life form Beverly could compare to it was the Portuguese `Man of war' jellyfish and that only comprised four different organisms.
With examples like that, mankind was certainly going to have to revise its ideas of sex, sexuality and gender. That night my juices flowed perversely as I tried to wrap my mind around the concept of sixteen different sex acts before hitting the bulls-eye. The other fantasy that wet my appetite (and other parts,) was of course the new `gender correction' device, but more of that in another tale.
Suffice to say that when the brutal, aggressive, insectoid soldiers did invade, they had a delightful shock as they passed unwittingly through the force field and arrived in the solar system as bemused, submissive, obedient, affectionate and caring nurses.
Beverly could be quite delightful in her perversity.