Chapter 5

The women had spent some time socializing, getting to know each other a bit. "Shall we get started?" Jean Stevens asked. "Let's sit down." They seated themselves around a conference table, four on a side and Jean on the end.

"As you know, the colony will be composed of nine townships, eight for those of us aboard and the one that's already there. You have all had experience educating children on Earth. You've all had the sleep training programs on the educational systems in the colonies. You know how other colonies do it. The education model that we are accustomed to is gone. We don't have to devote hours every day teaching children. The sleep trainers take care of that. We will have to drill the kids, making the information readily accessible, turning the information into knowledge. The AIs assist with that all through the day even when the children aren't in a formal educational setting.

"There are something like three thousand children aboard, from newborns to thirteen-year-olds. A couple hundred of each age. Right up our alley. Five years from now, the children we would think of as kindergartners will number something like eight thousand. The following year, another eight thousand children will be ready to start school. And the next year, and the next, for the foreseeable future.

"You know that some colonies maintain corps of cadets. When those children reach age fourteen, they are ready to take their places in the Confederacy armed forces, or at least in the colony militia. They're ready for assignments in any of the civilian fields in the colony or elsewhere in the Confederacy.

"Now imagine two hundred second graders, two hundred first graders and eight thousand kindergartners! And thousands more of pre-school age. There are only about five thousand adults. A lot of those will be at home with the truly little ones."

"How are we going to manage eight thousand kids in every grade?" wailed Nancy Singleton.

"Hold that thought, Nancy," smiled Jean. "We have five years to get ready for the onslaught. I want to tell you about what we did in Edgar, Washington. For the eighth through twelfth graders, we chucked the curriculum out the window. Instead, we..."

Bickering. Bob could tell that the initial shock of slavery had worn off. The concubines on the ship had accepted their new lot, more or less. They had uniformly become comfortable with perpetual nudity. New youthful, beautiful bodies had helped there. But suddenly being part of a polygamous family was completely at odds with their most fundamental beliefs. Many of them didn't like it. As always, it was the wives -- the former wives -- who had the most trouble.

Thankfully, not a single concubine on the ship had gone so far as to require recycling -- execution. The walls and floors of the habitat pods received the pummeling and projectiles that wives wished they could direct elsewhere.

To be sure, the now-ex-wives had serious upheaval in their lives. Their children now had three -- or more -- mothers to listen to and obey. Some of those 'mothers' were not yet mothers at all, and had no real idea how to act like one. Some were more indulgent, some more strict than the biological mother would be. Every motherly, or attempted motherly, response to her children by another that did not suit her own frame of mind at that moment grated on her. Sometimes a catfight erupted, right in front of her children. More often, the anger and resentment would be bitten back, swallowed to join the cauldron of bitterness in her belly.

That her sister concubines felt perfectly free and comfortable mating with HER man was painful. Her traitorous body, now achingly hungry for sex as never before in her life, made it all the worse. She wanted to end their bouts of sex with intimacy, cuddling, and whispered sweet nothings. Instead, he rolled off of her and onto the next one, plugging in and sawing away merrily to the gasps and moans of her competitor. If she could not have the cuddling, then she would have settled for another fucking. Instead, she had to watch the orgasmic pleasure of the interloper, orgasms that should rightfully be washing over her own body.

And it didn't stop in the bedroom. When he bent her over the arm of the sofa and penetrated her always-hungry pussy, there was a peanut gallery there to make remarks and catty comments. She watched her children reacting to her guttural sounds and facial expressions as she orgasmed right in front of them. She had to suck his dick, just to stay in competition, to more catty observations about her technique and style.

The ex-wives were not the only ones suffering. The new women grated at the 'house rules' as pronounced by the former ruler of her domain. They chafed as their childcare efforts were summarily overruled, countermanded, undermined. That wifey owned the top of the pecking order was one thing. The aggressive defense of that position, with gestures overt and subtle, was another thing entirely.

The sponsors, almost exclusively men in this situation, were oblivious to the intense infighting right before their eyes. All that each of them saw was a competition to keep his balls empty and his mind fuzzy. It never occurred to him that he had enjoyed multiple blowjobs from the woman whose last such performance was on their honeymoon. And she swallowed! He never knew how much women loved anal sex, never saw the looks between the women, thought the sounds were of pleasure, not of victory.

The children saw. The children felt the animosity between the women. The children knew that they were the prize in an intense struggle between the women. The children were helpless. The children did not understand why their dad did not intervene.

Oddly, Kathy had not fallen into that trap. Kathy's journey into the harem had begun with her boundless gratitude toward Ellen for offering to sponsor the Minters, mom and dad and suddenly-adult daughter, keeping them together, safe and loved. Ellen had revealed herself to be so deeply vulnerable beneath the veneer of confident strength that Kathy could only bend over backward to share the bounty of love and strength she had always enjoyed with Bob. Her man's love -- and sex -- were just what was needed to heal Ellen's terrible, invisible wounds.

That Ellen and Sandy identified with each other so profoundly led Kathy more comfortably into her new mindset. Kathy in her gratitude and love would not for a moment think to deny Ellen anything. Sandy sharing her virginity with Ellen -- whose own virginity had been viciously stolen -- was one of the most heart-rending moments of Kathy's life. And so they were three, bonded so uniquely and so thoroughly, sharing the love of one man.

Then came Julie, utterly defeated, afraid of everything and everyone. And then there were the victimized Mickey and her twins Mindy and Mandy, the shy and bewildered boys Eric and Steven, the downtrodden Laura, the fiercely independent but traumatized sisters Nicole and Tiffany, the younger-than-her-fifteen-years Kelly, innocence savagely snatched away, desperate for the affection she could not share.

How could she withhold an ounce of her compassion, her heart, her soul, her man, her body? All of those times she had violently fucked a keepsake of her loving Bob into her body, into her womb, had been gloriously successful. She had new life growing inside her and new life, renewed, restored, revitalized, all around her in her family. The grandest prize was that her Bob had been able to come to the stars, too -- as a sponsor!

Bob. Poor Bob, surrounded by lovely, loving, grateful women who largely had no real understanding of a stable and committed relationship, much less how to be part of a harem. So many women, damaged so many ways, or so young as to have no experience at all.

For his part, Bob watched cluelessly as one or another of the women periodically crashed and burned over some tragedy completely invisible to him. He helplessly watched as the victim was surrounded by her sisters and lovingly cared for.

This was the Bob whose sole duty to the colony was to protect, defend and enable concubines.

The AI were almost as clueless as the male sponsors. They saw what the sponsors did not see, but failed to grasp the significance. Perhaps that was mainly because the AI cared little for the problems of the concubines. If a concubine complained aloud to herself, or if concubines complained to each other, it went no further. If a concubine complained to the AI, it might offer a word or two in consolation. Only the cases where the concubines jockeying for position got way out of hand were brought to the attention of the Civil Service officer.

By the time Bob appeared on the scene, one of several things happened. If the sponsor was at home, the concubines would vehemently deny that any fracas had occurred. Pure as the driven snow, and all that. No sireee, Master, we get along just fine, don't we, sis? Bob knew better, but hoped that the sponsor would take the hint that there was trouble in his harem.

If the sponsor was not at home, Bob struggled to use his authority to enter without the sponsor's permission. If there was no blood reported, then Bob held off. He was never able to figure out what he would say to a sponsor if Bob tracked him down.

If Bob did talk to the concubines, they were not about to say anything to a man, who wouldn't understand anyway. Sometimes they did say things to him -- things that would have alerted any woman -- and watched with concealed glee as he cluelessly nodded.

Bob was helping nobody and wasting his time and energy.

As one of the few passengers who actually had a job to do, Bob's encounters sparked a lot of interest at home. Ellen, busy with planning for the medical requirements of the new colony, was interested in his experiences. She knew that trying to educate Bob in the ways of women was futile.

"Why don't you take one or two of the women with you on your rounds?" she suggested. "None of the concubines is going to tell you the truth unless she's in a life-threatening situation. Having a woman with you will help. A woman's radar is tuned to that sort of thing anyway. I know you mean well, but..."

"But I'm as clueless as every other man?" he chuckled. "I don't have any ego to protect here. I just want to help, if I can. Having one or two of our lovely ladies with me might make me the tiniest bit effective. Lord knows I'm pretty much useless now."

"That's not fair for you to say that," chided Kathy. "Let us try it and see if it helps."

So they did. Bob took Kathy with him the first time. They sat with the sponsor and his three concubines in the living room of the sponsor's pod. The ex-wife was easy to spot -- she sat next to the sponsor, while the other concubines sat on the sofa opposite.

The incident was reviewed. All of the concubines were remorseful and promised good behavior in the future. The sponsor promised to try to be more attuned to the relationships between himself and the concubines, and between the concubines themselves. The embarrassed sponsor couldn't get Bob and Kathy out of his pod fast enough.

On their way back, Kathy asked Bob, "Was that typical of what you encounter?" He nodded sadly, frustration evident on his troubled countenance. "We didn't fix anything, Bob."

"I don't know what to do or say in those situations," he whined. "Why can't those three women decide they're in this for the long haul and start working together?"

Kathy didn't know how to answer that. She could see the jealousy between the women. She could understand that. She knew she did not feel jealous of her own sisters. She did not know what she could say to the women that would make any difference.

Kathy shared her experience with her sisters. Mickey was more than willing to go along with Bob, but she was nowhere near having recovered from the beat-down from her former husband Mac. Laura was much the same, her trauma at the hands of her Bart was less physically severe but every bit as damaging. Julie was a wreck. The four teens were simply too young to be able to provide support and guidance to adult women outside their home. Even Tiffany showed no real capacity for leadership. That left Nicole, the feisty pixy.

"It's about dominance," Nicole told Bob in front of the group. "I'm pretty sure the women know better in their heads, but it's not something they can really control. It's instinctive. The instinct to protect what's hers is older than the human species." She smiled but sighed. "Imagine a lioness feeding on a kill. Imagine a couple more lionesses coming to feed on that same kill. The lioness is going to chase them off. She'll be as rough with the two newbies as she has to, but she'll chase them off.

"Now imagine the lion comes up, cuffs the lioness and forces her to share. She'll do it, but she ain't gonna like it. She'll let them know it, too. Afterward, she'll keep working them over, punishing them until they submit to her dominance and act like she wants them to."

"I see your point," Bob allowed, "but how does understanding that translate into a solution to our problem?"

Nicole shook her head sadly. "Chewing them out ain't gonna change nothing. Slapping their wrists ain't gonna change nothing. It ain't my place to tell you what to do here. I will tell you this: if you don't take strong steps, if you don't insist that the sponsor take some strong steps, then concubines are going to wind up dead."

As Bob stepped off the transporter pad on Deck 9, he saw the twins working on the wall. They used 'finger-paint' on a large 'screen' and were obviously making a sign:

Oh! Glory!
SPERM BANK
Depositors solicited!
Friendly tellers will accept your deposit!
Open early, open late!
Deck 9, Pod 49

Mindy and Mandy were giggling, trying to paint separate lines on the sign, shoving each other out of the way and having a gay old time. Their workmanship showed their lack of care but, as each word was completed, it was converted into a pleasing typeset.

"What have we here?" Bob asked evenly.

The twins screeched in surprise, saw that it was only Bob, and began laughing. "Those girls in there are getting awfully horny!" giggled Mandy.

"And they need to get settled right away," added Mindy.

"Settled! Don't make them sound like cows," laughed Mandy as she swatted her sister.

"Well, they do!" Mindy retorted. "You want me to say, 'They need to be impregnated?' That sounds too clinical."

"They need to have their ashes hauled," laughed Mandy. "Anyway, Bob, we decided we'd help them get laid. Mom and Julie are in there, helping them get set up. We're going to ask the AI to duplicate this sign on every deck on the ship."

"The sign is a pretty good idea," Bob allowed. "Very businesslike," he grinned, "except for the first line. Why did you add that?"

The twins laughed uncontrollably. "You'll have to go see for yourself!" Mindy was finally able to say.

Shaking his head, Bob walked around the corner and entered the pod housing the spare concubines. Julie cackled when she saw him enter. "Our first customer!"

"Not a chance," smiled Bob. In front of him, Bob saw an old-fashioned teller's window, complete with metal bars across the opening and a "Deposits" sign above. The counter was about six feet wide. Behind the window, a concubine sat on a stool. She wore a green eyeshade -- a clear green brim attached to a band around her head, but without the cap itself -- and ink-protection sleeves that began at her wrists and ended below her elbows -- and nothing else.

"Well let me show you how it's going to work," Julie said as she led him to the window by his elbow. "Sherry, give him your pitch."

Sherry blushed, but stood up. "Good afternoon, Mister Minter. We're glad you came in today. We hope you'll make a substantial deposit. We'll see that your deposit makes a lasting benefit for the entire community!"

"Okaaayyy," Bob smiled, "now what?"

"When you're ready," Sherry smirked, "open your pants and step to the side." She pointed down at the counter to her right. Bob saw that a previously unnoticed round hole in the upright portion of the counter had been swung open. The hole was about the size of a softball. A woman's mouth and tongue soon protruded through the hole.

"A glory hole!" Bob laughed.

"Go on!" laughed Julie, "make your deposit!"

"Julie," Bob frowned, "you know I want all of my children under my own roof. I'm afraid I can't help you."

"Bob, it's me, Mickey," said the voice through the glory hole. "It ain't my turn to get bred anyway. We gotta show these girls how it's done, and make sure the contraption works. Stick your dick in here and let's give 'er a try."

Julie was laughing as she pointed deeper into the living room. "Mickey's down under there," she giggled, "but there's a hologram of her over there." Bob could see a number of women sitting on the two sofas and the love seat, staring back at Bob but ready to observe Mickey's technique when the show began. The Mickey hologram was atop a coffee table, on her knees, facing the hole in front of her.

"I can't do this!" groaned Bob.

"Welcome to the Diaspora," cackled Julie as she dropped to her knees in front of Bob and began working open his trousers. "All the concubines are naked. There's no shame in bodies any more, no shame in sex. Bob, you've got to be a good example for the whole colony, but especially for these women. Stick your dick in there and do your civic duty!"

By this time, Julie had Bob's pants and boxers around his ankles and was working on his engorging shaft. With a shrug, he waddled over and, tentatively, pushed his cock through the hole. Mickey immediately began to worship his cock with her hands and mouth. Bob looked across the 'teller cage' and watched the Mickey hologram with what little attention he could muster -- Mickey was good, and it felt wonderful.

Sherry the teller had also turned and watched the Mickey hologram with rapt attention. "Sherry," Julie chided gently, "the teller has to pay attention to the part of the customer she can see, to make sure everything is going smoothly. Watch the hologram this time but, from now on, the teller is just as much a part of the transaction as the glory hole girl."

When Mickey was satisfied that Bob's cock was hard enough, and slick enough, she wrapped her hand around the shaft and turned her body. She aligned his cock with her well-lubricated pussy and pressed.

Bob had never actually experienced a glory hole. His cock was in heaven, but there were no other visual or tactile cues. He grabbed the far edge of the counter and went to town, pounding into the hole like a teenage boy.

Mickey had been on the receiving end of a glory hole. Bob was a considerate lover, but this was different. She knew that men did not last long that way, so she strummed her clit for all she was worth. She had not taken into account the Confederacy enhancements to the sexual nerve endings in her nether region. Powerful orgasms swept through her and it was all she could do to keep her ass pressed against the wall. The echo of her sobs and screams was eerie.

With a roar, Bob let loose a string of jets of his life-giving cream. His orgasm was surprisingly powerful. He had to step back so he could rest his face and chest on the countertop. Julie had positioned herself behind and to the right of Bob during the event. She stepped up and gently stroked his back. "You done good, Boss," she said softly. She turned her head and looked a command toward Sherry.

"Thank you very much, Mister Minter," Sherry chirped, right on cue. "You filled the deposit box to overflowing. She giggled at the novel use of 'box' -- one of the slang words for a woman's pussy. "You can decide anytime whether you would like to be introduced to the twins you've produced. You're welcome to make as many additional deposits as you like."

"How about right now, Daddy?" Bob heard. The glory hole on the other end of the teller cage had opened and Sandy's mouth protruded. "I gotta try this out for myself. That was incredible!"

"Once was enough for me!" Bob groaned. "That was almost too much. Once word of this gets around, you'll have a line of customers stretching out into the corridor!"

Julie again dropped to her knees and managed to get Bob's clothes restored. She could not resist a quick lick as she got his boxers back in place. Bob flinched, his cock still supersensitive.

"Next time," Sherry giggled, "if you like, you can ask for a Customer Service Specialist, who will gladly handle your transaction in a private room."

"This is mostly a meet-and-greet," said Doug Zaleski. "You are the mayors, if you will, of your respective townships. Each of you discussed your new role with Alex Schroeder in the moon. I would like you to get to know each other. You will be working together a lot.

"You do not have direct responsibility for education. As you know, when the new babies reach school age, the sponsors will have time for little else than supervision and training of children. The children that we already have will have an important role in training the hordes. The younger the children are now, the more important their role will be in that training. The kids that are nine or older will be adults before the first big batch reaches school age. What those kids can do is to be role models for the younger set. The more the older kids demonstrate responsibility, obedience and leadership, the more the young ones will accept those as a matter of course.

"It is all too easy to let the AI and the pod handle chores. Why pick up your toys? If the toys are left out, the pod will clean itself up. Why would you tidy the bed? The pod will refresh and straighten the linen. Food comes out of the replicators ready to eat. Why bother to cook your own? These and many more aspects of daily living are opportunities for children to assume responsibility and learn to assume the mindset of responsibility, persistence and character.

"Most of you know few if any of the sponsors in what will be your own townships. Your new neighbors were selected for assignment to this colony because they will do well in a sea of children. Many have skills in some of the other aspects of the colony, like agriculture and mining. A good number of the sponsors have a background in education. By the way, many concubines are experienced teachers, and you need to encourage your sponsors to get their concubines involved in the new education system. In any case, you need to develop strong bonds with your neighbors, a sense that your township is a community.

"John Davis here is in the opposite position. The entire town of Edgar, Washington, USA, was extracted at once. John knows every one of his neighbors, knows quite a bit about their strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, John's neighbors are here to help keep them together. Their sense of community is strong, but they aren't all outstanding parents and educators. John's challenges will be different than those of the rest of you.

"I also invited to this meeting the colony's Civil Service officer, Bob Minter, and the colony Chief Medical Officer, Ellen Waters. Bob and Ellen are both from Edgar, Washington and have a joint household with a total of twelve concubines.

"Now I want to throw this discussion open to all of you. Let's see where it takes us."

Mona spent her afternoon strolling around, taunting sponsors with her superiority over their own concubines, telling anyone who would listen what a tigress she was in bed. She made a lot of people annoyed, but she did not earn another trip to the med tubes.

The children filed into the auditorium and, aided by the AI connection in their wristbands, found their assigned seats. They had been grouped by age, the nine-year-olds in the front rows and each age in consecutively higher rows further back. The thirteens sat at the top.

Jean Stevens held her hands up and out, commanding quiet. When the noise level was low enough, she began. "You are all of the nine to thirteen-year-olds on Capricorn Clipper. You came from all over the place. We're all going to Aphrodite to live in a new colony. These other kids are your neighbors. I hope they will soon be your friends. I want to give you an explanation of what's in store for you in the future.

"Earth is in our rear view mirror, so to speak. We are on our way to our new home in the colony called Aphrodite. It is a breeder colony. Its primary mission is to produce and deliver as many young sponsors as it can, as fast as it can. We'll talk about more of that later.

"But for you, it means a couple of basic things. First, school as you knew it is over." The kids exploded in cheers and applause. Over the noise, she continued, "You will never again endure anything like the grade you just completed." She used her hands to bring the noise level back down.

"Before you came to this meeting, you had a session in the sleep trainer. Now, sometimes when you finish in the sleep trainer, you know you know new stuff. Sometimes, a sleep trainer session is more like reaching into your pocket and finding a candy. You didn't know you had it, but there it is. A third kind of result from the sleep trainer would be where you had the new learning in your brain, but your body still needs to learn to use it. It's called muscle memory. Imagine the sleep trainer gave you a song for the piano. You know every note, and you can hum the whole thing. But your fingers still need to learn," and she held her hands outward as though playing the piano, "that this finger needs to go right here to reach the note you need. You've all had lots of examples of muscle learning. That's how you ride a bike. That's how your bat meets the baseball. That's how you can jump rope.

"And so it will be with all of the learning that you get from sleep trainers. The newly-learned information will be in your heads, but you will have to practice in order to quickly access that information. For instance, stuff like multiplication tables will be planted in your brains. Instead of helping you memorize the multiplication tables, teachers and others will conduct exercises to help speed your ability to access your knowledge and use it. You guys already know your multiplication tables, but you get the point. You will know stuff that those before you struggled to learn. Your grasp and understanding will far outstrip anyone before you. By the time you have finished with your education, you will have in your heads far more information than kids ever had before. All of this on top of the amazing computer, literally at your wrist, that you can talk to.

"You will still have to learn that the facts at hand are in fact a multiplication problem. That's what story problems are meant to teach you.

"Sleep trainers will give you an enormous vocabulary. But, like multiplication tables, you must practice being able to call up the meaning of the new words. What sleep trainers will not teach you is the richness of language. What if I say, 'Blackberries are red when they're green.' Do you understand?" She watched as the meaning was reflected on many smiling faces. She waited for a couple of beats and then peered at the ceiling. "AI, does that make sense to you?"

"Negative," the AI intoned.

"If I add that strawberries are white when they're green, does that help?"

"It does," answered the AI. "In this case, the word 'green' means 'unripe.'"

"That's right," said Jean as she returned her gaze to the youngsters. You will have to learn to think for yourselves." She briefly sub-vocalized as she brought her cupped hands up in front of her, then returned to speaking aloud. "Here's an example. Bees can fly and bees can hover." She opened her hands to reveal a hologram of a hummingbird hovering right in front of her. "Therefore, this must be a bee." The children laughed.

"There's a catch. There's almost always a catch. The Confederacy contacted us, the Confederacy gave us all this cool stuff and the Confederacy is helping us to establish human settlements on new worlds, because there are some awful beings in our galaxy. Where we're going, we will be safe for a long, long time. I don't want you to worry for a moment about our personal safety.

"In the sleep trainer, you were given a program about army ants. They are relentless. They attack everything in their path. You can't talk to army ants and ask them not to do that. You can't punish army ants and teach them not to do that anymore. You can get out of the way of the army ants, or ... you can kill them. Those are the only choices. Nobody tries to kill army ants because there are too many of them, and it is easy enough to get out of their way.

"What I'm going to show you is a hologram, a three-dimensional picture. It is not real." Jean turned to look at the side of the dais. A full-sized Sa'arm appeared. Despite her warning, there was an audible gasp from the crowd of children. Jean made a point of approaching the holo, passing her hand right through its body.

"This is a Sa'arm. They are in many ways exactly like army ants. That's one of the reasons we call them the Swarm. They kill and consume everything in their path. No one can communicate with them. No one can be with Sa'arm without being immediately killed. We cannot teach them to play nice. The Sa'arm are moving from planet to planet. The Sa'arm have already overwhelmed and consumed a number of Confederacy worlds."