Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
40
I left my heart…
I’M A POOR COUNTRY DEMON with no particular claim to sophistication. Having been alive for four thousand years did not mean I was all-knowing. Remember? Not omniscient? In fact, I’m sure I’ve forgotten something significant I should have told you. Still, I felt like a rube when I accompanied Maureen to the Bank of California where she said ‘our’ money would be safe.
We opened an account for the Goídel Glas Winery and deposited the check and an equal amount in coins from the sales by the glass we’d made that I carried in a heavy canvas bag. Maureen also ‘transferred’ her personal account of some $2,000 to the winery account. I wasn’t sure how all this finance stuff worked, but I figured I needed to equal her investment, so I pulled $2,000 in gold coins from my satchel and deposited it. With more than $10,000 in the bank, we joined the ranks of their large depositors, and Maureen employed the bank as an agent to lease her pub. We left an awed bank manager behind us and I wondered if I would ever see any of that money again.
I took Maureen down to the crossing where the girls had left a small boat anchored for me. We rowed out to Goat Island—I rowed. Maureen sat with her hat and a parasol over her head like a fine lady. The girls were waiting there with the barge and our wagon.
They greeted Maureen with a knowing look and we made our way to the far shore of the bay to drive the team up to our vineyard. Maureen inspected the entire operation, made a few suggestions of how to make it more efficient, and went straight to work on our inventory and accounts. When she was done scratching out numbers with a pen and paper, it appeared that the Goídel Glas Winery was a near million-dollar undertaking.
I wanted to go into the infinity room to celebrate, but didn’t trust my new partner not to seal me in it. That was a source of some tension on my part. Issa had once warned me that it wasn’t a good idea for two of our kind to be in the same area, so I began working on a plan to return to San Francisco, perhaps leaving Maureen to manage the vineyard where she was instantly happier than she’d been in the city. I liked my time running a trading post and had the idea of opening a store of some sort in San Francisco. I realized that since I met Maureen, I’d let her make all the decisions.
“What inspired you to call our endeavor Goídel Glas Winery?” I asked as we lounged together one night. I’d called it Bob’s Wines when I had to give a name. As soon as we were back at the winery, my girls disappeared through the gateway to the infinity room. Except for the trips when I wanted highly trained warriors with me, I did not staff the winery with citizens of the infinity room. There were plenty of laborers available for hire. Once the English arrived, there were many Mexicans and Indians who had been driven out of their homes and needed work.
“Ach! Goídel Glas is who it was that drove the snakes from Ireland.”
“I thought that was St. Patrick.”
“No! St. Patrick, may his soul burn in hell, was a murderer who went through Ireland centuries later and killed anyone who would not convert to his Catholic religion. There have been hard feelings in Ireland ever since then. It was an Egyptian explorer named Goídel Glas who rid the island of snakes and brought it the Gaelic language spoken there. I know this for a fact as I had fled to the island to get as far from Israel and Rome as I could go. But what was I to do when he drove the snakes from the island? I wasn’t exactly human. The man was a good man, and after some negotiations, he allowed me to reside on a small isle off the coast. It was from there that I eventually set sail for America.”
“I wonder that I never met nor heard of the man. But then, I spent the first millennium after Issa appeared in India and Asia. I visited the isles of the Britons a long time before that. Did you ever run into a god named Manannán Mac Lir? Fine fellow. We got on well.”
“You’re the deamhan he spoke of? Liked you, he did. I think that may have been why he was willing to have me on his island. I’ve you to thank for that. Come here and fuck me again so I can thank you properly.”
I did. It was the kind of business partnership that we had.
In many ways, dealing with Peninnah reminded me of the demon woman Maureen so many years ago. I learned a lot about modern finance from Maureen and we agreed that I would open a store in San Francisco and she would stay at the winery. I’d known ‘bankers’ before, but it seemed they were simply men with money who loaned it out to the poor in exchange for the very lives of the unfortunate. Maureen said it was still true and bankers had eaten more souls than she had. But we were on the other end of the scale now and it was the bankers who owed us money.
Well, if it meant someone had to consume the soul of a banker, I’d leave that to her.
Peninnah—You do remember my new wife in the twenty-first century, don’t you—knew more about the dealings of high finance than I could ever possibly learn. By this time, I knew how to manage millions in investments and capital. Peninnah knew how to manage billions.
“How do you know this at such a young age, Peninnah, my wife? You aren’t by any chance a demon, are you?” I asked as I made myself comfortable between her legs and probed the inner recesses of her sex. She sighed.
“No, Bob. I’m no demon. I’m every bit as mortal as all those other beautiful women in your palace. But my former husband, Benaiah Dugganaiah, married me when I was quite young, not to despoil my virgin body, but rather to facilitate the transfer of all his wealth. He never touched me inappropriately, so you found my sex as pure as it was when I married him. He had many other women to entertain him, which is why he died of leprosy and venereal disease. The doctors couldn’t make up their minds regarding which had killed him. But he did like me to run around topless so he could watch my breasts develop. I think he was as proud of that as of my facility with numbers. I learned at his knee, so to speak. He taught my tits. Oh, it was me he taught, but he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off my breasts while he spoke.”
“I understand. I have difficulty taking my eyes off your breasts, too. But you are a remarkable young woman, Peninnah. I don’t know how I would ever manage this without you.”
“Thank you. Tomorrow, we need to lay out a plan for your long-term goals, including where you want us to live. We don’t need to stay here because of your housing development. We can divest that or put it under a management company if you want to. We could live anyplace in the world.”
“San Francisco,” I said immediately. “If we can live anyplace, I would like to return to San Francisco.”
“Then we shall begin moving your wealth around and finding a place to live in San Francisco tomorrow,” she said. “But that is tomorrow. Tonight, make love to me again, my husband.”
I lost myself in my dear wife as I sank into her treasured warmth again. Not only was she beautiful, loving, and kind, but she would let me go live in San Francisco again!
It would not be just if I did not tell you more about Peninnah. I asked about her name and she said it was Biblical, but that Doug had given it to her to make her immigration to Dubai easier. Her real name had been Ariel, currently her middle name. She may have been northern European, but she had no recollection of her parents or life before the orphanage in Venice where Doug found her.
I know I have not described every woman in my life in great detail, because I consider what a woman looks like when I am undressing her to make love to be a matter of interest only to the two of us. But Peninnah was a work of art, begging to be described.
She was about five feet and four inches tall, but unless she was in bed, I seldom saw her with less than a five-inch heel on her shoes. The effect was to lengthen her legs and shape them exquisitely. She had light golden skin that spoke of being a sun worshiper, until you saw her naked. Then you realized that if the color was a gift of the sun, she’d been bathing naked in it all her life. There was not the least bit of paleness anyplace one might think would be covered by a bathing suit. The rich healthy tan of her skin was flawless.
Her breasts were full, firm, and round, standing out proudly from her chest, and it was easy to see why Doug had been so fascinated by them. It must have killed him to have them so close at hand and still consider them untouchable. I found it almost impossible to keep my own hands and lips and tongue off of them. The areolae and nipples were only a shade darker than her skin. The pea-sized buds were always hard and erect.
I was not unfamiliar with the practice of depilation, though few of my women bothered with it. The goddess’s priestesses had all been smooth, the hair between their legs being plucked from the time it first appeared. My own priestesses, learning of the fashion, also adopted it, but used a razor to smooth the area. Liz—remember Liz? Bra burning feminist of the late 60s?—had always shaved her legs and under her arms, but did not remove any hair around her pubis. Peninnah was completely smooth between her legs and on her mons. Her legs were like silk and her underarms showed no sign of having ever had hair. Even her eyebrows were perfectly and elegantly shaped. She said she’d had laser hair removal and it lasted longer than the practices of waxing or shaving. All I knew was that I never felt the least scratch against my tongue or my cock.
Her nose was straight and narrow, telling me she might have some Greek ancestry in her mixed heritage. She had a narrow waist that flared into beautiful hips and a lovely round bottom.
Her hair, I discovered, was not the dark brown I had seen in Dubai. When we reached America, she had it bleached out to what she said was her natural honey blonde. Her piercing blue eyes seemed like they could look straight through a person and I was reminded of Ningrum in Indonesia, who could look into one’s soul. I believe in Dubai, even in her burka, her eyes would have stood out to even a casual observer.
Peninnah did not eschew makeup. I never saw her apply it, but the accent of her eyes, the perfect amount of powder and rouge, and her perfectly defined red lips told me this was an artform and she was an artist.
As to clothing, she loved to show off her smooth toned abs and long legs. So, her tops were always short enough to show ample skin between the top and her belt. Her skirts were never longer than mid-thigh. She had a way of making this all look professional by tossing on a jacket that typically hung from her shoulders to below her crotch, but was always open in front.
My summary, based on 4,000 years of experience, was that she was a walking wet dream.
What was even better, though, was that she knew when to tease and when to stop teasing and get serious. We left the office and spent our nights in the infinity room, where she was a hit with all my wives and concubines. She was fairly worshiped by my five possessions. Though she loved to touch and be touched by all my women, she only turned to me for sexual satisfaction. I found myself falling deeply in love with her.
While Peninnah was soft and sensual and loving, when it came to business, she was no-nonsense.
“You want to live in San Francisco? Have you been to San Francisco lately?” she asked.
“Well, no, not recently. It’s been twenty or thirty years, I suppose,” I said.
“In order to meet the parameters you’ve set, we’re going to need two or three properties, spread along the Coast. There are no five-acre mansions with a gated wall in San Francisco. Houses are built right next to each other if they are stand-alone at all. To get the kind of views you want, we should look at a penthouse condominium like what I have in Dubai,” she said.
We hadn’t sold Peninnah’s apartment in Dubai. She had suggested that we would probably want houses in several parts of the world in order to manage our empire. We shouldn’t need to stay in hotels more than once or twice if we decided to do business in a particular area.
“Wouldn’t it be awfully expensive to have houses in so many areas?” Yeah, here’s me, Bob the country hick.
“Bob, if we spent a billion dollars on houses so you could have a different house every day for a year, we’d still spend less than two-tenths of a percent of your registered wealth. That doesn’t include anything you have squirreled away in the infinity room.”
That certainly put things in perspective. There was a guy once…
Well, I was sailing up the West Coast of Africa, you know, after my adventures in Australia, when I came across a very prosperous empire I was told was called Mali. When I talked about my voyages around Africa and Asia, I was asked to appear before the king, one Mansa Musa. He was fascinated by the tales of my travels. It seemed his brother had set sail west with 2,000 ships and had never been heard from again. I regretted having not arrived soon enough to join that expedition!
The king was a devout Muslim, a religion I had not had much interaction with before, but I found the basic precepts to be generally in keeping with the honored precepts of most religions. He was also devoted to education and learning and had dreams of creating a great university near his palace in Timbuktu. When he found that I had built temples (I did not specify to what gods), he pressed me for details of how to construct a massive mosque when there was no abundant stone and no trees for wood. I told him I had learned a technique for building out of mud and straw in such a way that the walls would stand for hundreds of years.
At that, the king rolled out plans for his mosque and I agreed to build it for him under two conditions. First, all laborers on the holy structure must be free men who were paid and provided for in exchange for their labor. This, I proclaimed boldly, was to honor Allah who was the only master suited to own humanity. Second, I requested access to his library that I might read (and duplicate) all his books. Both of these things, Mansa Musa granted me.
I discovered in the course of the three years that it took me to build the mosque, that Mansa Musa was very wealthy. His palace was built of imported limestone and polished to a high sheen. Even his slaves in the palace wore gold brocade uniforms. He had paid a poet for the plans for his new mosque the sum of about 400 pounds of gold. While I worked to lay out and build the mosque, I was privileged to stay in a suite of rooms in his palace that was as big as a palace itself. Servants were constantly running in and out to be sure my needs were met. The rooms were adjacent to Musa’s library where I often spent my nights.
No one knew the number of binding spells I whispered over the mud walls as they were constructed. I was pleased and at the end of three years, the first services were held at the mosque with the king prostrating himself in prayer.
“Bob,” he said as we sat at dinner that night, “it is time to make our pilgrimage to Mecca. We will leave on the next full moon.”
That was not what I wanted to do. Going all the way back to Arabia across the desert sounded like torture to me. I had a lot of star charts that I’d studied, and I estimated that by the straightest line—which would cut directly across the largest desert in the world—it would make a journey of some 4,000 miles. The king was excited to make the journey. Me, not so much.
“Your majesty, I have been to Mecca and yearn to return now to the sea. Please grant me your favor to return to my voyage.” It was only a small lie. The city had not been there when I was wandering around in Arabia, but I’d been close to where the city would one day be.
“Bob, you have done a great work for Allah. May he bless you on your journey. I will give you twenty camels and six sacks of gold to take with you. Choose among my slaves for twenty of the finest and they shall be yours. You shall have tents and provisions for your journey back to the Coast. Go with my blessing.”
It was an easy thing for me to accept six sacks of gold dust and twenty camels. These would go directly to the infinity room when I was able to arrange it. But it was considerably more difficult to choose twenty slaves. In general, Musa treated all his slaves well. They worked hard, but they were fed well, housed well, and were beaten only for cause. I felt he kept with the best parts of the code I’d established under Ninra. But as I slept in the rooms Musa had provided for me, the task was taken from my hands. The servants who had attended me for the past three years gathered by my bed.
“Bob, you have been a kind and gracious master. We love our king, but have come to love you as well. Please take us with you when you depart this palace,” spoke Esafa, the woman who had been in charge of my staff.
“Is this true?” I asked. “Do you each wish to join me on my endless journey?” I asked the question of each one individually and read no hesitation in any of their minds. “Then I shall ask the king for his blessing.”
As a result, I left Timbuktu for the 1,500-mile journey back to the coast and to my little ship. Along the way, I talked to the slaves and told them of my home and how they could become a part of it, or that they could be free, no longer slaves and I would give them each a portion of the gold dust we carried.
“Bob, there is so much gold in Mali that a portion of what you carry would not last us long here. We would just end up slaves again and might suffer under an unkind master. Take us to your palace and let us serve you there,” Esafa said.
I consented and we managed to integrate the former slaves as free women in the infinity room.
I later found that when Mansa Musa started his journey of 4,000 miles to Mecca, he took all his court, servants, slaves, and local craftsmen and their families with him. 60,000 people! Let me correct that. 60,000 men, plus their women and many children. All were dressed in gold brocade. Each of the 12,000 slaves carried a four-pound bar of gold. Eighty camels carried about 300 pounds of gold dust each. He was liberal in giving out handfuls of gold to the poor he met along his route. In Cairo, he gave away so much gold that it destroyed the economy of Egypt for over ten years.
It turned out that Mansa Musa was the richest man who had ever lived, with his worth being estimated at the equivalent of $400 billion today.
“Bob!” Peninnah called me back to the reality of our planning session. “You are richer than Mansa Musa! We want to use your wealth more wisely. Let’s not go about destroying the economy of America by simply giving it all away. You have a goal to fly to the stars. Let’s focus on that. Believe me, we will need homes around the world.”
Richer than Mansa Musa! And I knew Peninnah was referring only to my acknowledged wealth. Long gone were the days when I could simply reach into the satchel for a handful of gold and pay for whatever I wanted. Now there were taxes and records and accountants and people I didn’t even know who were managing my money.
But I agreed to the plan of multiple houses, and the first thing we did was buy a penthouse condominium in San Francisco where I could look out over the bay and the mountains. It wasn’t very large as mansions go, but when it came down to it, Peninnah and I were the only official residents. She employed a staff to clean and cook. When they went to their homes at night, I would open a gateway to the infinity room. We would go in to play, or occasionally, some of the women would come out to see the sights of San Francisco.
We bought my five-acre mansion with a wall and gate in Monterey, overlooking the ocean. This was where I truly felt secure in spending time in the infinity room with my lovers and my people.
“Now we need to go to work on acquiring your spaceship,” Peninnah said. “We’ll trade for equivalent ownership in Space Pioneers with shares in the oil fields. With energy being such an iffy investment these days, we need to diversify into a variety of different industries across the board. There are places around the world where we can invest in real estate development and leverage that ownership into technology, communications, and industry so that when you disconnect from earth, no one will actually be out anything.”
“Oh, you know, I bought a bunch of technology shares in the computer industry back in the 80s. They must be worth something by now,” I said proudly.
“Have you kept transferring the ownership appropriately?” she asked with a horrified look on her face.
“I met this guy who was a financial consultant and he created a holding company for all my stocks. That’s the only company I’ve had to keep transferring to the new me. What was his name? Warren something. Nice guy.”
“Oh, my.” Peninnah was rapidly tapping across the keys of her computer and looking at numbers streaming by. “Not bad,” she said at last. “You chose good stocks to buy and forget about. Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Intel. Osborne should have been sold when it was worth something. That comes up to about another half billion.”
“Dollars?” I said. I didn’t remember investing anywhere near that amount.
“If you want me to convert that into Emirati Dirham, it will take a few minutes,” she laughed.
“Wow. Um… while we’re at it, I want to sign over my shares of Goídel Glas Winery to Maureen. She won’t be going with us and I want her to have clear title.”
“Who? I don’t see a Maureen among the shareholders.”
“Of course. She changes identity as often as I do. I believe she is going by Sylvia Glass now.”
“Oh. I see her. Sounds like there’s a story to be heard here.”
“Demon business,” I said mysteriously. I knew she would get the story from me eventually, but I hate just being an open book. Maureen and I owned the largest and oldest winery on the West Coast.
“Now, you need to start actually talking to the chief executive of Space Pioneers and design your ride to the stars.”
I took Peninnah home and to bed at once.
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