by Richard Penn
‘Shani, Minah, consult with Tommy what kind of bits we need, and get out there with the torches, please. Sou, you and me to look at orbits for approach. You’re flying the gig.’
‘Room for two,’ said Sou.
‘Yes, take Tommy. He’s robot controller. Ten hundred hours departure please.’
30 Bug’s Life
There was a ridge to the southwest of the Long ship, as they were now calling it. Sou plotted a powered orbit to skim across the crater rims all the way there, not bothering to wait for the asteroid’s weak gravity to pull them around. Only a five kilometre great circle, they were hidden behind that ridge within ten minutes. They found a small crater, and simply took the shovels out and buried the gig. It was a lot smaller than Dancer, even with the shroud on.
They set the fly-laden spider out in the crater, and pulled themselves back into the gig through the small tunnel they had left in the snow. Radar looking straight down would spot them, but as far as they knew the enemy had nothing in the sky.
The whole team was assembled in the bridge on Dancer, with two screens for the spider and one for each of the flies. They saw the flurry of snow as the spider took off, and then the ship appeared in the view from the top of the ridge.
‘Find something rocky and park on it, get our bearings,’ said Lisa. She did not want to send up a cloud of snow every time they took off. The view settled down. The array of farm tunnels was shining in the distance, but the tower of the ship was right in front of the spider. To the left and down, they could see a hangar, apparently joined with the ship. Between the hangar and the farm tunnels was an open area, clearly for landing boats. A surface bus was waiting beside the field, as if a boat was expected.
‘Looks like there’s something coming in,’ said Lisa. ‘Tommy, can you land the spider on that bus?’
‘It would be risky,’ said Tommy. ‘It might be out of range, then the spider would be out of control. How if I take a look at that hangar?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Lisa. The view lifted again, this time without the puff of snow. The ridge line of the roof disappeared out of the side of the view, and they were looking at an open airlock door. They immediately saw the spider move in, then fly to one of the walls, scuttling into a dark corner.
‘Sorry to not wait for instructions, Lisa,’ said Tommy. ‘It would have been really conspicuous hanging in front of that lock.’
‘Not a problem, Tommy, good call.’ Now they had to wait. The flies needed air, and that meant waiting for the bus to return to the hangar.
‘Urgent news,’ said Sou. ‘Radar detected from overflying boat. Instruments show it five kilometres due east of here, on track for landing at the field. Over.’
‘Nothing we can do,’ said Lisa. ‘It won’t pass over your head, and there’s no reason for them to look over the ridge. Stand by. Out.’
The downward view from the spider hanging on the wall showed a change in lighting, Sou reported the radar signal had ended, then the corner of the landside bus appeared in the lock, all the windows glowing with yellow light. The outer airlock door began to close.
‘Get on top of that bus, Tommy, before it goes inside,’ said Lisa. The view changed, first to zoom along the top of the bus, then to a perch above its snout, looking forward. They saw the inner airlock door open, and the bus drove forward into the hangar.
‘Do nothing, wait,’ said Lisa, knowing Tommy would be itching to zoom onwards, but the spider would be noisy in air. They watched as four people clambered out of the bus, heading for the door into the ship. The picture was not very clear in the low light, but they all seemed to be men, in tailored jumpsuits, the kind Terpsichoreans wore for special occasions.
‘Captain, we’re going to get shut in this hangar,’ said Tommy.
‘That is correct, Mister Hansen, that is what we are going to do. You two get outside and set up the transponder on a pole, dig yourselves out and fly back here. I don’t want you exposed like this.’
‘But, we’re so—’
‘Follow orders, Tommy. Will do, gig out,’ said Sou. She understood that the boat on the field might set out again before long. It would be good to be far away before that happened. Don’t push your luck unless you have to. Not a Tommy Hansen philosophy. The transponder would let them control the bugs from back at the ship, and was much less likely to be spotted than the gig.
When they returned to the bridge, the spider was still in place, magnetised to the top of the bus, in a hangar which was now dark. Tommy took up the controls. ‘What are we waiting for?’ he said.
Lisa chose to take that as a request for information rather than a challenge to her authority. ‘Just take the spider over to a wall while we can, in case they take the bus out. Otherwise, we’re looking for something that could reasonably have flies on it.’
The view shifted again, to a downward view over the door into the ship.
‘Deeper into the corner, if you can,’ said Lisa, and it shifted again. ‘Now we wait. Do we know what time they’re on?’
‘Nothing direct,’ said Shani, ‘but their last civilised contact was in Phobos, so they are probably on Mars time. It’s about three hours into a new sol, if that’s the case.’ Shani and Minah had been gathering all the data they could about the Fred Soon empire and his disappearance. Shani had been doing historical research on unfree cultures, as well. For a further two hours, nothing at all happened.
‘Heads up,’ said Shani, putting aside her knitting. A door had opened on the right, away from the door to the ship. A person appeared pushing a broom in a desultory way. It was hard to tell, but it seemed to be a woman. She was wearing a shapeless dress that went down to the floor, and a scarf that covered her head. She continued to push the broom around, moving down the aisle beside the bus.
‘What is with the odd dress?’ asked Stjepan. ‘I’ve never seen that.’
‘I expected that,’ said Shani. ‘In cultures where women are not free to refuse sex, they wear shapeless clothes to make themselves unattractive, to deflect the attention of men. You are only seeing this woman’s face because she has low status. A high-status woman will cover her face, you will only see her eyes.’
‘But that’s…’ Tommy was lost for words.
‘Appalling,’ said Minah. ‘Yes, of course. But it is what we will see.’
‘I’m remembering,’ Sou put in, thoughtfully. ‘I have pictures of my ancestors back in Greece, in the twentieth century, wearing clothes like that. Are you saying that was a rapist society?’
‘No, not at all,’ said Shani. ‘Even when they were emancipated, the “modest dress” had become a tradition, stayed on for generations. Rape in marriage was allowed, though. Right up to a hundred years ago, in most places.’
‘In Greece?’ asked Sou.
‘I do not know exactly. Even places where people thought they were quite free, like England. There are places on Earth where it is still the law. Where anyone who does not wear “modest dress” can be raped with impunity.’ Nothing was happening on the screen, apart from the slow movements of the broom-pusher.
‘So, the women here will be used to this, will think it’s normal to be unfree?’ asked Stjepan. He was having trouble believing this could be real.
‘I doubt it, no. The men might say that it is normal, that they are upholding “traditional values” in some warped view of reality. But these women have been free, at least as girls. They lived in the Moon, on Earth stations, maybe on Mars. They have been trafficked here, stolen away by force or by addiction. Their daughters have been born to it though. It is they we will find the hardest— Hold on, here’s another.’
A man this time, but not in a neat suit like the bus passengers. He had an ill-fitting and stained version of a jumpsuit, and he was pushing a wheeled bin. He stopped by the woman and casually lit up a cigarette.
‘Here you go, Tommy,’ said Lisa, ‘Get your flies on that cart. On the underside where they can’t be swatted, if you can.’ Tommy had started issuing com
mands to the flies. Their motion was so fast, it was hard to control them in real time. It was better to give the whole swarm an objective and let the individual flies do their thing. They were programmed to act like real flies.
‘“Pesky little buggers”,’ said Shani, holding her finger to her ear to signal that she was translating. The flies buzzed away from the man, who was reaching for some kind of spray. ‘He’s speaking Chinese, the same dialect as Daisy, but lower-status, rougher.’
‘“How about you…”’ Shani stopped translating. ‘He is proposing an act of a sexual nature. She has refused.’
‘She can do that?’ asked Stjepan, ‘I thought you said they couldn’t say no.’
‘This man is low-status. She is property, but she’s not his property. It didn’t sound as if he really expected it. Sort of a joke. He could be badly punished if he was found having sex with a woman, if the place is typical. The act he asked for suggests he’s intact, though.’
At their puzzled looks, she explained. ‘In societies like this, low-status males are often castrated as boys. Testicles removed or destroyed. So that they can’t interfere with the women.’
‘But that’s—’ Tommy was speechless.
‘Appalling, again,’ said Shani. ‘We do not know if they are doing that here, though. It is possible that it is reserved as a punishment for unauthorised sex. I’ll listen out. Ah, she is asking him the time. He says it is past five, so yes, they are on Martian time. Notice neither of them has a phone. That’s another thing that will be reserved for the elite.’
Shani picked up the translation. ‘“No time for that cocksucking then”, he says cheerfully, and she goes “they’d have your bollocks for that anyway.” Yes, that confirms it’s used as a punishment. It also suggests they’re going to open up here soon. I hope he does not just store that cart somewhere.’
The cart carried on towards the ship, but instead of taking the tall door the bus passengers had taken, it was wheeled into a tight-fitting tunnel and across to a grimy goods lift.
‘Perfect, we are going to get the grand tour,’ said Stjepan. The man emptied a smaller bin beside the lift into the wheeled cart, and they took the chance to let a fly off on that floor.
‘High status will be high floors,’ said Shani. ‘But we want to find the women.’ At the next floor there was some equipment behind a mesh door, and they skipped that one. When the lift door opened on the third floor there was a solid door, and the man rang a bell beside it.
‘This is it Tommy, this floor. Wait…’ said Shani. The door opened and a woman’s hand reached out, holding a bag of rubbish. ‘Quick, through there!’ As the bag was dropped into the cart, the fly sped through and landed on the ceiling over the woman’s head.
‘Rest there,’ said Lisa. ‘Let her go.’ This woman also had shapeless clothes, but pricey-looking silk this time, and she did have a veil covering her face up to her eyes. She was upside down in the view from the fly, but it was a clear picture. As the door closed, she removed the veil.
The cart had continued up the lift, and they had two flies left. When they got to the eighth floor, there was a chute beside the lift.
‘Off here,’ said Minah, ‘that’ll be as high as he goes. The topmost floors have chutes, so they don’t have to let the guy in.’
‘Just one fly, Tommy,’ said Lisa, ‘I want one out on the street.’ The view from the third fly was an office, the windows looking across the crater. Tommy told the fly to hide, and it found a spot on top of a bookcase. The one remaining fly on the cart was treated to a view of the lift going all the way down, then the fly they had left on the bottom floor saw it go by, and out the back of the ship through another narrow tunnel.
‘Shani,’ said Lisa, ‘can we find somewhere the women get together, talk among themselves? I’m assuming they’re monitored in their harem, is that right?’
‘You’ve been doing some reading, too. Yes, probably by some kind of trusty. An older woman or a castrated man. You’re looking for the well, aren’t you?’ Shani explained to the others. ‘Women traditionally fetched the water, and the well was a meeting place where no man would go.’
The cart followed a warren of tunnels to a square, and they took the chance to hop off it, landing on a steel wall to the side of the square.
‘Aargh!’ yelled Tommy, ‘is that what I think it is?’ There was a stall on the side of the square with enormous chunks of meat, looking like something out of one of Stjepan’s videos, whole sides of animal dripping blood on the floor. Tommy ran to the toilet to be sick, and all the others looked away except Stjepan. He was used to carcasses, albeit only of humans and the occasional dog.
‘Sheep, pig and… cow?’ said the medic. ‘I’m not sure. Something big. Where are they getting these from? Certainly not the farm tunnels outside.’
Lisa had managed to drag her eyes back up, trying to immunise herself to the sight. ‘They will have brought them in frozen. They keep for years that way. We’re still looking for that water-hole. Tommy, fly around a bit, can you? Ah look, there’s a tea house.’
‘No,’ said Shani. ‘Women will not be allowed there. Women are not for polite society, they are not supposed to be seen outside the home. Hairdresser’s is no good either, the haircutters must go to them. Where do women have to go?’
‘Doctor’s?’ said Stjepan.
‘Yes, that will suffice,’ said Shani. ‘There will be a women’s clinic, with women medics. It will be the only profession they are allowed.’
‘Not a great place to park a fly though,’ said Stjepan.
They cruised their fly around the tunnels behind the square. ‘It will be in a back street,’ said Shani. ‘They will not want to be seen going in or out. There! Back up, back up. “Women’s health centre”, yes that is it. We will have to wait until someone opens the door.’ They parked the fly a few metres away, so anyone going to the clinic would not see it. When another anonymous figure turned in to it, they popped the fly through. The door was hung with plastic cords, presumably to stop the exact thing their bug was pretending to be. It fell to the floor, but luckily it was able to crawl under the bottom of the screen, and inside.
‘OK people,’ said Lisa. ‘We’ve only got one Chinese-speaker, and we need to use her wisely. I know Minah and Stjepan have been taking lessons in some of the basic words. Take a screen each and listen out for anything interesting. Tommy, take one, but try to resist the temptation to fly the thing around all the time, I don’t want it swatted. Shani, concentrate on the doctor’s office, that’s where we’ll likely hear secrets. Watching this makes me want to reach through the screen and kill someone, so I’m going to stand aside for a bit. All of you, especially Shani, take sanity breaks when you feel the need. I want you to listen for the next few hours, and we’ll debrief over lunch. Thanks.’
Lisa was on 12-and-12, so she took the chance to have a nap, trying to fight down the horror enough to sleep.
31 Intelligence
When Lisa came out to take the watch, the bug team were looking exhausted, as if they had lost several nights sleep. Sou had her arm around Minah, giving what comfort she could while still keeping watch on Dancer’s screens. Shani and Tommy were holding hands, but with a fierce tension, fingernails buried in skin. Lisa put her arm around Stjepan, a caress that was a promise for later.
‘I have the watch Sou. Get us all some lunch, will you? Everyone, half an hour, take a shower if you need it, back here to debrief and eat in thirty.’
Mutters of ‘Cap’n’ accompanied them out of the room, as the flies crept into deeper hiding and blanked their screens.
When they were back together, Lisa spoke first. ‘I know this has been hard, everyone. I’m proposing some guidelines to not to make it harder. You will all have seen awful things. Don’t show them to the group, and keep descriptions simple. Shani, you probably have the best overview, could you begin, please.’
‘Thank you,’ said Shani. ‘We have seen a lot, but there are two stories which I be
lieve cover the essentials. A young woman, we have not caught her name but she speaks Chinese, first appears in Doctor Dekker’s office (yes, the doctor is the mother of our victim), she is examined and told she is pregnant. She is distressed and asks for a termination. It seems they do not have routine testing here, so she is probably three months gone. The Doctor is very regretful but says that she cannot terminate the pregnancy without a licence. She points at the ceiling; I guess ours is not the only bug in that room.’
Stjepan had been fuming at all these violations of medical ethics, but did not interrupt.
‘The woman takes a form away,’ Shani continued. ‘We see her a few minutes later entering the ship, and then in the office on the eighth floor. The man there, we only know him as “commissioner” hears her out, lifts her veil, then says he can’t look at the form. “You must see my nephew,” he says, “room 903.” She disappears (I didn’t want to compromise the bug) and returns fifteen minutes later. I presume she had some kind of sex with the nephew. She reappears, looking shaken, hands him the form. “Oh I see,” said the commissioner, “this is not possible. The father of the child is… unless it is a boy, you must get his permission.” He throws the form away.’
‘But that’s—’ said Tommy.
‘We don’t need to keep… You said you had two stories?’ said Lisa.
‘Yes,’ said Shani. This is a little earlier, the same man, the Commissioner. A high-status woman comes to see him, something about rent, accommodation. He comes around the table, puts his hand inside her shirt, tries to kiss her. She smiles, but holds back, saying “but what would Uncle Fred say?” and again the gesture to the ceiling. He gropes her some more, but goes back behind his desk and signs her form. As soon as she is gone he presses a button behind the desk. Our bug in the women’s quarters hears a buzzer and a light comes on. There are two girls about twelve. They do a rock-paper-scissors thing and the loser gets up, puts on her veil. The trusty, an older woman calls out “Cry, he will be quicker if you cry.”