Chapter 90

Dear Willow and family,

For you dear sister, I'll say that I knew that you were an E-7. I just was teasing you a bit for flubbing it at the end of the last letter you sent. I suspected that something would happen to bring Erica back to you. At least I was hoping that was true. I do know this: the people (for the most part) in charge of the diaspora are interested in results not in 'kingdom' building.

I've been informed by the ship's AI that I've misinterpreted Governor Haywood's stance on rape. What I know is this: as a Civil Service Officer one of my duties is to make sure that the concubines in my township are taken care of. That includes not being abused. A sponsor is within his or her rights to send a concubine to the sleep-trainer to have a headache or other minor ailment eased. But after that the concubine had better be willing to do what is asked.

What he will not (nor will I) tolerate is violence in front of the children. We will never (at least I hope we won't) breed all of the tendency to violence out of humanity. But we can do our best to not have a culture of violence passed from father to son (and daughter... ).

We are certainly going to work on that. And if a concubine comes to me with a complaint of being abused I do have authorization to pull the records of the sleep-trainer in the pod and to ask the colony AI to review the family's med-tube usage. An unusually large number of visits to repair injuries that are too great for the pod's sleep-trainer to repair is enough for us to start an investigation.

One thing I have learned though, is to be careful not to jump to the conclusion that an injured concubine was injured by her sponsor. After all one of the major problems we've faced is getting the women to adjust to living in a poly amorous situation.

Altogether too many of them are looking to be the top bitch in the pack, so to speak. That of course leads to them using violence to eliminate (or attempt to eliminate) their rivals. So far I haven't seen any thing of that nature on this trip. But then again I'm seeing families without sponsors, so in some ways there is no one to be played up to and no one to bribe with hot monkey sex or whatever...

It might seem that with several women available a man wouldn't be vulnerable to manipulation by any one of them. Yet I've seen more than one household racked with turmoil as the concubines compete for 'first place'. I know that we cannot keep that from happening not in any realistic way. What we can do and do is tell the sponsor to do their best to not favor one concubine over the others. Often I find that I have to pull records of the home and then bring in the sponsor to watch what is happening while they are away.

I find that the solution is frequently to change the top concubine, that is the one who hands out daily household chores. This is because the current head concubine is showing favor to one of the others which caused friction in the house.

I think that for a lot of humanity we will need to return to something approaching serial polygamy. Where each instance is seen as a monogamous relationship as long as it lasts. Of course I'm young and could be entirely wrong in my assessment of human nature. But I have been reading the history of humanity and have found a great deal of conflict both in families and even in nations has been spawned by men having multiple wives. I can think of no culture that had women with multiple husbands... :P Some cultures have accepted the existence of women who live in that manner, some more than others but still it was not considered a normal thing for women to do. That men had multiple wives seems accepted far more readily. Yet I can see where that leaves many men without a 'wife' in just a few generations. Which I think is a formula that will result in much conflict between those who have many women and those who have none.

Sure we can expect the 'brothels' to take up some of that slack. But if we have a large populace of unattached males who have no investment in maintaining a functioning society that continues to shut them out, we will have huge problems!