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The Little C.E.O - Part 1
🕑 Added 2023-01-14 07:39:05 +0000 UTCThis week's short story.
SUMMARY - After his parents died in a mining accident, Cyril became CEO of their mining and geological exploration company. While he has graduated from college, he is relatively small and looks young. So much so that he finds it difficult to convince potential clients that he is capable of completing their contracts. After he starts to dress as a young girl he is far more successful, since as Cybill he is able to control people and manipulate them to his advantage.
I have never been able to figure out why I grew up so small. My parents were perfectly normal in height, not huge, but average; my Dad was 5'9", my Mum 5'5", but I'm a mere 5'0", or to be honest 4'11", a ridiculous height for a grown man, especially since I am slight of build into the bargain and weigh well under 95 pounds. And to make it worse I have a baby face.
And as for clothes, I am quite unable to buy anything to fit except in the boy's departments of the bigger stores. No one sells suits with a 28-inch chest for men, or pants with a 22-inch waist and 22-inch inseam. It is all very well buying boy's jeans, but a business suit? It makes me look like a kid. And what is more is my name, Cyril Tallman, can you believe it?
Needless to say, with a build like that I am no athlete. At school I was always the last to be chosen for team games; I never really learned to throw a ball properly, and everyone said I threw like a girl. The other boys teased me as 'Atlas', 'Titan', or 'Ogre'. My only recourse was my books, and I achieved a reputation as a nerd, a dreadful fate for a boy at school, but not bad for future careers. At least, that was what I hoped. I was not without friends, however, for I deliberately courted the biggest, toughest boys in my class and helped them with their homework. This bought me protection and friendship of a sort with the football players and I became something of a team mascot.
Mum and Dad were both consulting geologists and spent much of their time in the bush. They own their own company, Tallman Consultants Inc. When I was younger I was rarely left alone since one of them always stayed at home while the other was away, but once I turned 13 they would often go on a project together, leaving me alone; I am an only child, with no brothers or sisters. In this way, I learned by trial and error to keep house, and I became a proficient housekeeper, keeping the place neater and cleaner, to tell the truth than Mum ever did.
Like most boys around puberty who are left alone, I experimented with wearing my mother's clothes. I did not find it much fun, however, for not only were the clothes all far too big for me, but she had little in the way of what I would consider sexy clothing, chiefly her working clothes. Even her lingerie was drab cotton.
I was a good enough student in my bookwork to enter university at the age of 17, and I chose to follow in my parent's footsteps, majoring in geology, specifically in mining geology, with the intention of joining the family company. At the age of 21 that is just what I did. I had not reckoned on the physical demands of the work. It is all very well to go down a mine and observe, but that is not all of it by any manner of means. When a load is drilled to establish the grade of gold, for instance, the core of rock that is extracted must be examined in detail and logged. Then sections are removed, split in two, and half sent away to be assayed. That is fine for a strong man, but the core boxes weigh 80 pounds, and I could not even lift one by myself. Sure, I was tough and wiry, but still, an 80-pound core box was beyond my capabilities. Even Mum could manage one by herself, but not me.
Inevitably, I always had to make myself scarce when we made a presentation to a client, or he would take one look at me and say something to the effect that he did not want that kid on his site: I was not merely small, but I looked years younger than my age. So I had to rely on my parents to obtain the contracts, and just carry out those parts of them that were within my physical grasp. The worst insult came when one repeat client, whom I had never met, told my parents that if he gave them another contract he would expect them to keep their kid at home.
I was 22 and rising 23 when we were all three engaged on a mining contract in Chile. I was the first to descend the mine, leaving Mum and Dad on the surface to meet the mine manager and complete the paperwork. I was beginning to hate this work, thinking that I had made a wrong career decision, and this mine horrified me. As soon as I returned to the surface I reported to Dad.
"This mine is a death trap, Dad. I think we should insist on better safety before any of us goes down again."
"Really, Cyril? Can you be more specific?"
"Firstly, this mine has been in operation for almost a century and I don't believe any of the old pit props have ever been replaced. The roof is sagging in places and the pit props look rotten."
"You'll often see that in old mines, Cyril, but it's rarely as dangerous as it looks."
"Yes, I know, Dad, but this is by far the worst I have seen. Then the rock is badly faulted."
"Well of course it is. It's along the faults that gold accumulates. You should know that, Cyril."
"But at least one of these faults is active, Dad. The floor of the shaft where it cuts through it at the 3,500-foot level is covered with rock fragments and I saw more crumbling away when I just touched it with my knife."
"That really is bad, Horace," said Mum.
Dad looked grim. "I think you and I had better go and look at it, Jean."
"I'll come with you and show you," I said.
We descended into the cage, running past the other stops without stopping. These stopes were the older shallower workings where earlier I had seen the rotting pit props and the sagging roofs. The cage stopped at the 3,500-foot level and we all stepped out. Mum and Dad looked around to see the newer props, and Dad stuck his knife into one of them, finding it sounds, as I knew he would.
"You see, Cyril, there is nothing wrong with these." Dim light bulbs were strung along the tunnel at fifty-foot intervals.
"I know, Dad, but you haven't seen the older workings."
The two of them pushed on, their helmet lamps illuminating the tunnel ahead, and I tagged along behind. They stopped at one of the faults. Dad stuck his knife into the sheared rock, "Was this the active fault, Cyril?"
"No, Dad, it's about another hundred yards along."
They moved on and I was just about to follow when I noticed a gleam in the fault where Dad had just removed his knife tip. I took my geological hammer from my belt and, slipping the halyard over my wrist, attacked the rock, pried out the gleaming piece, and looked at it with my hand lens. It was gold right enough, a big nugget, perhaps two ounces, the biggest I had ever dug out. Just then I heard a rumble and the floor of the tunnel shook under me, throwing me to the ground. An enormous wave of dust overwhelmed me and I blacked out.
I do not know how long I remained unconscious, but when I came to I was in complete darkness, buried in a layer of dust and debris. With considerable effort, I managed to free my arms and then struggled to sit up. I bumped my head on something, and only my miner's helmet saved me. I felt for the switch of my helmet lamp. Fortunately, it was not broken, and I finally had some light, enough to see that either the roof of the tunnel had partially collapsed onto me or else I was lying on a pile of rubble and debris. In any case, my whole lower body was buried. My geological hammer was still attached to my wrist by the halyard and I used it as a pick to free myself, a task that took me more than an hour.
Finally, I was free. There was only room to crawl on top of the debris, but I tried anyway to reach where I thought Mum and Dad might be, but it was hopeless. The available space under the roof soon narrowed to zilch, and I had to crawl back to get out. I walked back towards the cage as soon as there was room to stand, noting that the pit props were buckled badly, and even in the highest points of the tunnel the roof was now lower. No cage at the bottom of the shaft. And no cable either. The phone line was out too, as well as the power line. I had better conserve the batteries for my helmet lamp. I felt around for the steel guide post for the cage and hit it hard several times with my hammer, keeping the rhythm as steady as I could.
I hammered, stopped to listen, hammered again, and stopped again. It seemed like a couple of hours before I got any response, but my luminous watch showed that only three minutes had passed. The next time I stopped I heard an answering thumping in the guidepost. Someone was answering from above, 3,500 feet away. I felt another tremor and staggered. I coughed as I breathed in more dust. I waited for the dust to settle before I switched on my helmet lamp again, and found that the tunnel was now completely sealed off. I scrabbled like a man possessed as I thought about Mum and Dad in there. I refused to believe that they had been killed.
It was four hours before I was rescued and four days before the rescue teams managed to reach Mum and Dad and the miners who had been at work further along that shaft. Altogether 47 people died in that collapse. When I examined the active fault, where my parents had died, I discovered that it had shifted only about six inches, but that had been enough to start an earth tremor that was no more than about 4.6 on the Richter scale, small enough to cause little damage on the surface, but enough to kill all those people.
The mining company paid the full value of our contract, as well as the indemnity called for in case of injury or death to any of our personnel, but of course, that was no solace to me. When I finally returned home with the embalmed bodies to cremate them locally and scatter their ashes in the valley that they loved, I found that their lives were insured for two million apiece.
Thus this contract in Chile earned the company over nine million but cost me the lives of my parents. We had made a bad bargain. I comforted myself with the thought that Mum and Dad had died doing the work that they loved and that they had died instantaneously with no long-drawn-out illness, but that thought actually did little to console me.
I somehow picked up the pieces of my life and tried to continue the business. The first task was to recruit two more geologists to replace Mum and Dad. They had to be experienced people even though they would nominally be working under me. I might be the boss, but I did not have the experience to conduct the sort of contracts that were the bread and butter of our company - my company now. Nor could I do a good job of negotiating contracts, since clients invariably treated me as a kid. Sure I had the contacts and we had all sorts of lists of possible clients in our files, but I could not negotiate new contracts, but I could write a contract: it was an easy job to adapt one that was in the computer. But I had to have someone on staff who could convince clients that as a company we had what was needed.
I was never going down a mine again if I could help it but I would conduct my work on the surface. There is no shortage of contracts in Canada for this sort of work, usually on a short-term basis. Canada still uses the old system of staking claims. A single claim is only 40 acres, making 16 claims to a square mile. To stake a claim to the mineral rights of an area all that is necessary is to buy a set of claim tags from the government office, write your prospector's registered number on them and start. The first stake must be knocked into the ground at the northeast corner, and the date and time are written on the tag and noted in your log book. Then you walk or run to the northwest corner and put in a second stake and tag the same way. The claim is completed when you have put in the third and fourth stakes and reached the first stake again, where you must write the time once more. All that is necessary now is to register your claim with a copy of your log-book entries. The fee is only $25.
You pay no rent on a claim, but you must carry out work to the value of $400 each year on each claim and register it with the government office before the anniversary date of the staking. Of course, if you have, for example, ten claims adjacent to one another, you may do $4,000 of work on just one of these claims and spread the value over the remainder. If you slip and fail to register the work by the 'filing date' - the anniversary of the original staking - then the claim is forfeited or lapsed, and the first person to retake it then holds it.
This is where my company comes in. It was my idea when I first began working for the company, when I was still a student, to maintain a database of the 'filing dates' and owners of all the claims in northern Ontario and the Northwest Territories. Then three months before this filing date for any claim the computer generates a notice warning the owner of the forthcoming deadline and offering to carry out any necessary work under contract. This generated a large number of small contracts for us, work that could be carried out during the summer by student teams - third or fourth-year geology students - or in the winter by more mature employees.
For the time being these contracts would have to be our bread and butter. But I still needed two professionals on staff, both to meet clients and to head up the teams in the field. I placed an ad in The Northern Miner and posted it on the web, receiving over fifty applications from all over North America, and even two from Europe. I ended up interviewing seven of them, three locals, and four from other parts of Canada. Two of them told me that they could not work under 'a kid' and asked to see the boss, looking incredulous when I told them I was the boss. Two asked for far too much money, and one said she did not fancy spending half the year living in tents in the north. That left just two, who had in effect selected themselves for the jobs.
Joe was a great bear of a man, 6' 5" at least, and, unusual for a geologist, clean-shaven. I learned later that he shaved even in the bush: most geologists grow a beard, at least for the field season. Christine was a burly woman, not unlike a larger edition of my mum. At 5' 8" and 150 pounds of bone and muscle, she looked as if she would be able to throw core boxes around. They both had doctorates in geology and experience in the business of gold exploration. I engaged them on the spot. Christine was a local girl and lived at home with her parents. She told me that there was little point in acquiring a home of her own since she spent at least half the year in the field. Joe came from Toronto and so would have to find somewhere to live. It seemed ridiculous to me that he should buy or rent a house since he too would spend little time there, so I offered him my old room, as a temporary measure at least, while I moved into the master bedroom of my house.
The first contract that Joe negotiated for the company was in the Northwest Territories. Our client had over 600 claims scattered around in eleven blocks, each of which needed work to be filed. That meant eleven different operations, one for each block, totaling about a quarter of a million dollars. The three of us set off up there taking with us three teams of four students each. Our principal task was to map the geology of the claims and then to make another detailed map of the magnetic field. The presence of iron in rocks leads to anomalous readings of the local magnetic field, and most important mineral deposits contain iron along with other metals such as gold.
The base camp for this work accommodated 15 people, twelve students, and three of us professionals. We had a mess tent, a tent that served as a laboratory, and eight sleeping tents. Christine had a tent of her own but the rest of us shared; Joe and I had a tent between us, and the students paired up as they chose, and that varied week by week. There were four girls among the students and eight guys, so plenty of opportunity to switch around.
The base camp was near the center of the largest block of claims, but it was just that, a base camp. Other temporary camps were established for work on the outlying claims, usually occupied for no more than a few days at a time, but the result was that the base was rarely full.
I enjoyed watching the mating rituals of the students, none of whom had ever met before. Two of the male students were obviously gay, and they soon paired off, though they never objected when one of them was sent to one of the satellite camps. It seemed as if I was the only virgin there. I imagined that Christine and Joe had had a sexual experience in the past, though neither of them seemed to be involved in any affair at the moment, all the students, without exception, were enjoying themselves. The noises coming from the tents in the evenings gave plenty of evidence of that. But I had never slept with anyone, man or woman. And I had never even masturbated. I do not know why this was, but I never did, and instead had frequent wet dreams.
Joe of course noticed; we were sharing a tent. One night - it was about our third week in camp, and half the people were away - that I suddenly awoke to a sensation I had never had before, a man's hand on my cock. Apparently, Joe had heard me moaning and seen me writhing in my sleep, and had correctly diagnosed what was happening. He decided to help me and slipped into my sleeping bag taking my cock in his hand and starting to jerk me off. I was in a panic at first, not knowing what was happening. "Ssh, Cyril; just relax and enjoy it."
I tried to push him away, but I was enjoying it too much, and soon did as he suggested. After I came I just rested my head on his chest and enjoyed his warm sweaty smell. None of us bathed very much in camp, because of the general belief that old sweat deters mosquitoes that are much more likely to bite a newly washed person, so Joe was pretty fragrant. But it was somehow a friendly aroma. Joe stroked my head. "There, wasn't that better than a wet dream? There's no need to be lonely. I can always help you." I burst into tears, thinking of my loneliness since Mum and Dad were killed. These crying jags had been frequent since Chile, but I had tried to hide them until then.
That was how it began; I have never had a wet dream since. For the rest of that week, Joe and I slept together, and Joe jacked me off every night. When I tried to return the favor he pushed my hand away. Almost every night I cried myself to sleep thinking about my parents.
That weekend Christine returned to camp and Joe took a party off in the other direction. I don't know whether the two of them had talked about me, although I suppose they did, for that night Chris came to my tent and to my sleeping bag, where she jerked me off, just as Joe had done. She seemed to have no wish to fuck me, just to jack me off. I rested my head on her ample bosom and once more wept over my parents. If anything I wept harder than I had with Joe; perhaps the release was greater. Or perhaps it was easier to let go in front of a woman.
The third night that this happened Christine eased her left breast out of her flannel night dress and offered it to me to suck, like a mother quieting her child. It certainly seemed to calm me down. After that, she did not even wait for my weeping, but each evening immediately after she had tossed me off she offered me her breast.
For the rest of the time of that contract, which only finished with the first snows near the end of August, I slept with one or other of my lieutenants, literally slept with them that is, in the same sleeping bag, masturbated by one of them every evening, suckling on Christine's breasts but never anything else. They treated me like a little child. After the first few weeks, I finally got over my crying jags and was able to accept my parents' death more readily. I was more in need of gentle companionship and comfort than any sexual release.
