Chapter 5: Venus - 3732 C.E.

The scorching wind that blew sluggishly across the Venusian plain made progress difficult enough for Beatrice, but much worse for Laurent and the others in his team. Although she could have taken the lead, Beatrice tactfully trailed the rest of her crew as they struggled with immense effort in their thick-shelled space suits across fifty metres of dimly lit superheated soil to the crumpled wreckage of the crashed shuttle. It had fallen victim to weather conditions dramatically worse than those anticipated by the meteorological office when it embarked on a routine flight from the Penderecki dome toward the construction site of the new Nabokov dome. Several hundred engineers and architects had been on board and nearly a quarter of them were now dead.

Beatrice had been leading a truly idyllic life on the planet ever since she'd married Laurent and become employed by Venus' Emergency Services. She enjoyed assisting her husband in the daily challenge of saving lives. It assuaged the conscience with which she had been equipped to calculate that she had now saved more lives than were lost as a result of her dramatic arrival seven years earlier.

Life on Venus couldn't really be much better. Her husband was a man who loved her with a passion that truly flattered Beatrice even though it was an emotion she didn't really understand. The considerable satisfaction she got from her vocation wasn't at all diminished by the many unfair advantages she had over her human companions.

She had made many friends and enjoyed the company of many lovers. The former she shared with Laurent and the latter she kept secret from him. Beatrice had only belatedly realised how fundamental monogamy was to human relationships on Venus. Her considerable sexual appetite made it difficult for her to conform to human convention, but for Laurent's benefit she maintained the appearance of fidelity as best she could.

The first year or so of Beatrice's relationship with Laurent was almost as fraught as it was a pleasure. There were so many subtleties to human sexual relationships that Beatrice didn't understand. Chief of these was the expectation of sexual exclusivity that Laurent held in such high regard. It puzzled her at first that Laurent became so upset when Beatrice brought her lovers home with the intention of sharing their bodies with her fiancé. The interminable quarrels with her husband and some independent research convinced her that if she were to stay with Laurent, which she very much wanted to do, she had to practise a policy of deceit for which her training in Proxima Centauri hadn't prepared her.

It was so dark across the Venusian plain that it was only through the monitoring equipment that trundled ahead that the rescue party could determine the extent of the damage to the grounded shuttle. The most seriously compromised sections were beyond hope. Even a small breach in the hull would have resulted in the sudden agonising death of any survivor. Elsewhere, however, the shuttle's emergency systems had attempted to shield the passengers from the fatally adverse weather conditions in a cocoon of inflatable foam. The rescuers' task was essentially to drag these cocoons out from the wreckage and carry them off to safety in the Emergency Services' flying ambulances.

Laurent's crew wasn't the only one called to the accident. Two others were already busy salvaging survivors from the wreckage. There was no way to gain direct access to the victims. That would involve compromising the shuttle's defences which would only serve to admit a lethal combination of crushing air pressure and searing heat. Medical assistance could only be applied once the survivors were safely in a hospital ward. Only robots could handle the sealed cocoons and Beatrice's role was less to apply medical help than to monitor their activity.

"It's fucking carnage!" exclaimed Daphne, the only other woman in Laurent's crew.

Beatrice could only agree. The dead bodies that she examined through the ultrasound viewer in her helmet had lost all human form. What hadn't been burnt to a cinder was crushed flat by the massive air pressure. The deaths might have been rapid, but they would also have been very painful. Burning unbreathable air that was hotter than it was poisonous would have scorched the lungs before the flesh ignited.

Beatrice was exceptional at her job. She was at her best in the more temperate conditions inside the domes where the duty of a rescue mission was to save the lives of those tangled in the wreckage of a systems failure. Emergency surgery was often required to extricate the survivors' bodies before a breach in the hull let in the certainty rather than the mere likelihood of agonising death. Beatrice had no difficulty in disengaging her empathy towards the victims whose limbs she amputated. She also had the physical strength to hold up the collapsing masonry that would otherwise have crushed the unfortunate survivors.

Laurent gave his wife an affectionate kiss when they returned to the Emergency Rescue Station many hours later.

"You were truly wonderful," he said. "As always."

"Thank you," said Beatrice who genuinely appreciated Laurent's praise.

"You're almost superhuman," he continued. "I've never before had the privilege to work with someone so focused on the job and who can think so fast. Only you could have recognised that the pilot's cabin still had people in it. There are at least five people who'd have suffered an agonisingly drawn-out death if it hadn't been for you."

"I was told you were good," said Alfonso, who was a new member of the crew, "but until I saw you in action today I didn't know just how good. You were fucking amazing. When the robot failed and you stepped in ... That was brilliant. A second longer and the life-support capsule would have plunged to the ground."

"I told you I wasn't exaggerating," said Laurent proudly as he placed an arm round his darling wife.

Much as Beatrice loved her husband's compliments and revelled in the depth and quality of their lovemaking, she was conscious that her harmonious married life wouldn't last forever. This wasn't only because she was unable to restrain her lust. She'd learnt well how to cover her tracks. It was because she was now about to deliberately pursue a lifestyle of blatant infidelity and gross sexual abandon that was specifically designed to rock her marriage asunder.

In fact, her marriage would soon become as wrecked and unsupportable as was the shuttle that had been carrying a crew of engineers and architects when its systems failed.

It wasn't because her sexual desires exceeded what any man could possibly satisfy that this had to be done. Beatrice's career in the Emergency Services might be rewarding, but that wasn't the duty that was her highest priority.

It wasn't long after she first arrived on Venus that she first made contact with Proxima Centauri Intelligence Services. This wasn't in person, although there were at least a dozen other agents on Venus, but through communication channels so highly encrypted that no human had even identified them as such. The receiver and transmitter she used were embedded deep inside her skull.

Her assignment was fairly routine to begin with. She was there simply to monitor and observe. Proxima Centauri couldn't rely on communication intercepts alone to research and study human society. Such information could never be as comprehensive as that gathered on the ground, even though Beatrice's reports were never much more than an upload of the sensory data she gathered simply by leading an outwardly normal life. Sometimes she was required to enter certain chambers or to speak to specific individuals, but generally all she had to was lead as ordinary a life on the planet as it was possible for an android to do.

It was also of paramount importance that an agent's activities should not attract any suspicion, as this would necessitate the mission's immediate termination. This was exactly what had happened to the cover of a Proxima Centauri agent on Ecstasy. Even the slightest suggestion that an agent was not quite what he or she seemed could endanger not only that operative's mission but that of all agents in the Solar System. It was imperative that humans should never learn about the alien presence that was so much in their midst.

As Beatrice's profile was well suited for a mission to Ecstasy, it was decided that she should now relocate her operations and proceed to the outer Solar System. But first she had to make her motive for departing Venus seem verifiably plausible.

Beatrice reasoned that the emotional upset resulting from the messy break-up of a previously idyllic marriage provided good cover. Since infidelity was the most common reason for such a rupture, Beatrice decided that she need no longer hide her many indiscretions from her husband.

"I just can't understand it!" sobbed Laurent when he discovered Beatrice in their bed with Daphne. His colleague fled in acute embarrassment as a trail of vaginal fluid dripped down her pale freckled legs. "I thought you were a changed woman. What have I done to deserve this?"

Of course the answer was that he didn't deserve it at all. He'd been an exemplary husband. He was still, despite everything, extraordinarily forgiving and understanding. But this couldn't be allowed to stand in Beatrice's way even if she did go through the motions of trying to achieve a kind of reconciliation with her devoted husband.

There was a sense in which Beatrice enjoyed every moment of her campaign of open infidelity even though it pained her to see the anguish it caused Laurent. After the tragic death of his first wife, he thought that he could at last let her memories rest in peace. However, he was certain that Magdalene would never flirt so openly with Alfonso. Beatrice even had an affair with Manfred, who was the only member of Laurent's crew still in active service from the fateful day when Beatrice was rescued.

Daphne was Beatrice's favourite lover. Her exquisite pale skin was liberally sprinkled with freckles. Her long red hair cascaded over her shoulders and had a faintly straw-like smell that enchanted Beatrice when she buried her nose inside. She would bring her lover to a choking vocal orgasm during which her juices squirted over Beatrice's cheeks. Her fingers and tongue probed deeply into Beatrice's shaven pubes. The couple pressed their crotches against each other in tribadic ecstasy. Daphne's perspiration dripped onto Beatrice's thighs which she licked off in an expression of worshipful devotion.

"This is so wrong," said Daphne. "I love you. But Laurent does too. I shouldn't be doing this."

"Don't be silly," said Beatrice. "And anyway you're not my only lover."

"I know. I know," said Daphne sadly. "Alfonso. Manfred. It's not right, you know. We work together. We can't all be rivals in love. Manfred got really upset when he learnt that Alfonso's been fucking you too. I didn't want to tell him that I was sharing your bed too."

"I don't know what's so wrong about that," said Beatrice.