Chapter 3

Intrepid - 3755 C.E.

As a woman outnumbered by men in the Intrepid's senior staff, Second Officer Sheila Nkomo made a special effort to befriend her fellow female officers. She wasn't in a position to get to know Captain Kerensky particularly well. This was partly a consequence of relative rank, but also because her captain was a lesbian. It wasn't that Sheila held any prejudices against homosexuals, but she did feel nervous given that the captain was so obviously attracted to her.

So the only woman with whom Sheila was comfortable in befriending was Petal Chang, the Chief Science Officer. She was a tall slim oriental woman whose role on a mission such as this was unusually important. However, she wore her rank lightly and warmly welcomed the Second Officer's overtures of friendship.

At first, Sheila thought that she and Petal had more in common than just gender and approximate rank. She'd believed that Petal Chang was also a fellow Uranian. This was a welcome reminder of home in a company of fellow officers made up of Saturnians, Neptunians and Martians. The two women shared cultural ties and the same orbit in the Solar System. However, when Sheila discussed what Captain Kerensky had told her about encounter with the slave ship that masqueraded as a commercial leisure cruiser she was surprised to find something about her fellow officer that she'd not suspected before.

"I was once transported in a slave ship like that," Petal told her. "I was sold into slavery by the rogue colony where I was born."

Sheila couldn't have been more astonished. "I thought you came from Umbriel."

"I do," said Petal. "That's where I've lived most of my life. But my childhood was spent in deep space somewhere between Neptune and the Kuiper Belt. I was born in the rogue colony known as Double Rainbow."

"I've never heard of it," admitted Sheila.

"That's not surprising," said Petal. "There are thousands of rogue colonies and Double Rainbow isn't especially notable for either its culture or its achievements."

"How did you happen to be transported on a slave ship?" Sheila wondered. "Is Double Rainbow a slave trading colony?"

"Not really," said Petal. "It's a hereditary dictatorship. It's a self-professed anarcho-syndicalist commune, ostensibly like Godwin, but something must have gone badly wrong during its history. As a child I was told that the leader of the colony, Cherry Deng, was the latest in a line descended from Double Rainbow's founder and that he carried the beacon of good governance and order from his eminent ancestor. His title was Shining Beacon, rather than President or Secretary or King or whatever, because anarchist societies aren't supposed to have leaders but that was effectively what he was. I also discovered after I'd escaped from the colony that his ancestor, Lavender Deng, wasn't the founder of Double Rainbow at all. He was someone who'd usurped the leading role nearly a century after Double Rainbow had been established."

"So the colony was originally a genuine anarchist colony?"

"Maybe it was once upon a time," said Petal. "We were instructed in individual freedom and how to work together as a community, but more than that we were instructed in the wisdom, benevolence and greatness of the Shining Beacon. This was an anarchistic society whose police force was known as the Freedom Facilitators; an aristocracy known as the Syndicate Representatives; in which rigorous censorship was imposed by the Truth Providers; and where propaganda and education was jointly disseminated by the Committee of Open Knowledge. Double Rainbow is a rigid society where unquestioning obedience to the dictator's whims takes precedence over everything else. And despite his pleasant sounding name, Cherry Deng was in actual fact a cruel sadistic dictator."

"In what way was he cruel and sadistic?" wondered Sheila.

"There were monthly purges," said Petal. "Every month, one in fifty of the population was purged. The term for this was Cultural Cleansing. The victims of the purge would be of one pupil from every classroom, one worker in every syndicate and one minister in every cabinet. From the top to the bottom of our society, there was a monthly ceremony in which someone or other was chosen to be purged. In a colony which emphasised the need to bear children and where those women or men least capable of providing children were invariably amongst those to be purged, there was always a ready supply of young and eager people to fill any position that became vacant. The justification for the purges was that it rid Double Rainbow of antisocial elements who threatened to destabilise the colony's harmony and compromise the true spirit of anarchism. It was also a way of enforcing conformity through terror and fear."

"What did purging entail?"

"For most men, it was a painful, prolonged and agonising public execution," said Petal. "It was similar to what the Holy Crusaders inflicted on one another before the Intrepid was attacked and they got flushed away. Sometimes the community was could choose the punishment that would be inflicted on the person to be purged, but as most communities were deemed too lenient the method of execution was usually dictated by the Central Syndicate. Generally very little expression of imagination or creativity was permitted in Double Rainbow. Those who exhibited much evidence of individualism were almost always the most likely victim of the next purge. But in the means and methods of torture and immolation, there was an outpouring of ingenuity and inventiveness however much it was very vicious. There were many kinds of dismemberment and disembowelling inflicted prior to the inevitable death, but this was itself often preceded by days or weeks of cruel public punishment in which ordinary people were invited to participate by throwing stones or cutting off chunks of flesh or other such acts."

"Did you have to participate?" wondered Sheila with genuine horror.

"I was a child," said Petal. "I didn't know any different. But if I didn't, I'd have been purged much sooner than I was."

"So you were purged?"

"Yes, but as a young girl who was deemed to be marketable I was spared public execution and instead sold as a sex slave."

"A sex slave. How horrible! Surely you'd have preferred death."

"Not really," said Petal. "You really have no idea how cruel and obscene the public executions could be. In any case, I didn't know when I was selected to be purged that this was to be my fate. No one on Double Rainbow was aware that this happened to most of the women and children who were purged. It was assumed that my fate would be much the same as those who were publicly immolated, but which in deference to the sentiments and feelings of the community was executed in a private space such as a dungeon. In actual fact, my fate was simply to have my clothes taken from me, to be bathed and deloused, and then marched into the hold of one of the slave ships that docked at the colony every month to collect a fixed quota of slaves. And the only slaves the space ships were collecting were sex slaves."

"Women and children?" gasped a horrified Sheila.

"Don't ask."

"Did you become a sex slave?"

"Fortunately not," said Petal. "My virginity and that of all the women and girls on the slave ship was kept intact for good commercial reasons. I believe we were due to go to somewhere called Holy Contemplation: a monastic retreat in the Inner Solar System; though what use monks have for sex slaves I don't know. However, the slave ship developed engine trouble in Uranus orbit and I was rescued before all the human cargo was jettisoned into deep space."

"They were throwing live people out of the ship?" wondered Sheila aghast.

"Slavery is illegal in international law, Sheila," said Petal. "The slave traders would expect to be prosecuted by the Interplanetary Union if they were found to be in possession of thousands of slaves shackled together in the hull. As it was, if help hadn't come within hours rather than days then the slaves would all have been exterminated. I knew nothing about this at the time. It was only after we were rescued that I learnt about the circumstances that accompanied our rescue. We weren't exactly kept informed about what was happening, any more than those who were thrown off the ship. We knew nothing about anything. We didn't know where we were, where we were headed to, or what was going to happen to us when we arrived. We were shackled in cubicles where we could defecate into a space below us and could eat and drink from a dispenser that was approximately at eye level. We had no freedom of movement and were unable to talk to one another."

Sheila never again discussed Petal's earlier life or the circumstances of her slavery. The whole thing disgusted and rather upset her. However, her respect for the Chief Science Officer was now greatly enhanced. She now appreciated how much more difficult it had been for Petal to rise from her early years in Umbriel to the senior position she now held. Petal was nearly twice Sheila's age of forty years, but neither of them looked much older than a thirty year old might even though Petal had only been able to benefit from modern life-extending medicine at a rather later age than had Sheila.

Petal was the nearest thing Sheila had to a close friend on the Space Ship Intrepid. Sheila always kept a distance from the men on the space ship. She didn't want to be party to the frivolous love affairs that so many other crew members indulged in. Perhaps it was her upbringing in orbit around Sycorax, but she believed that a sexual relationship should never be divorced from emotional commitment. This wasn't an attitude shared by Petal who was quite happy to have sex with any number or combination of men, but this wasn't a topic the two women normally discussed. Nonetheless, Sheila still wondered whether the Chief Science Officer's professionalism was compromised by her having had sex with both the Chief Petty Officer and the Chief Medical Officer.

"Shall we go for a swim, Sheila?" suggested Petal who appeared unexpectedly at the door to Sheila's apartments in the officers' quarters.

"A swim?" wondered the Second Officer who had no plans. "I don't see why not. Where do you suggest?"

"I was thinking that the lake on the fifth level would be a good choice."

"What about the dolphins?"

"They've been temporarily confined to allow some opportunity for the fish to breed," said the Chief Science Officer. "We'll more or less have the lake to ourselves. That is, except for the turtles and herons."

"I'll just get my swimming costume," said Sheila.

"Oh, yes, you do that," said Petal, subtly reminding Sheila that the Chief Science Officer didn't own anything like that at all. Umbriel was a much more liberal community than Sycorax and public nudity was never an issue for Petal. Sheila wondered whether the same had been true of Double Rainbow, but as the rogue communities who practised the most perverse and appalling sexual habits were often those most censorious she wouldn't be surprised to discover that despite Petal having been sold as a sex slave her childhood had been severely sexually repressed.

The fifth level lake dominated the landscape. It was two or three kilometres across and in the middle, a whole kilometre from the shore, was a two or three hundred metre wide island. There were also other smaller and nearer islands that Sheila and Petal could swim to. The two women strode to the lake from the entrance past villas where scientists were living in luxury. When not in their homes, the same scientists were busy researching and analysing the Anomaly, but as the Chief Science Officer remarked in passing there'd still been no breakthrough with regards to understanding the extraordinary phenomenon.