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."
