Schemes of the Unknown Unknown Ch. 13

Heads turned as Beatrice strode along corridors in the space ship Intrepid that were normally reserved for military personnel. It was unusual enough for a passenger to be seen in this part of the ship although there was no security restriction as such, but Beatrice in motion was an unusually compelling sight even in a Solar System where everyone's body was artificially beautified as a matter of routine. There was a very literal sense that she was attractive: her affect on the libido was positively magnetic. Her body exuded a sexual charisma enhanced by the skimpiness of her attire, which on this occasion was a very loose gauze dress through which the lack of underwear was clearly evident.

Beatrice was a relatively frequent visitor to this part of the space ship. The military personnel knew about her sexual promiscuity and several had enjoyed it at close quarter. She wasn't the only woman or man on the ship to be so open with her body. The diversity of the Solar System was great enough to encompass a wide spectrum of sexual mores but Beatrice was the one who attracted the most comment. No one could agree as to the cause for her sexual licentiousness. Those who knew Venus assumed it was a result of having lived on Ecstasy. Those more familiar with Ecstasy assumed that it must be the way of life on Venus. And those who knew both assumed that it was just her personal choice.

It suited Beatrice to have such a reputation. There was always a ready explanation for everywhere she went and an explanation also as to why she was reluctant to talk about it. The complex sexual ethics that humans practised throughout the Solar System allowed a great deal to be left unsaid and excused. She could wander freely on any level of the ship in any section and in the company of anyone and it would be assumed that there was a sexual liaison of some kind involved and not necessarily one which the other partner would wish to have widely advertised. Beatrice only knew the emotions of shame, guilt and jealousy from what she'd observed in her many lovers, but she understood how useful such human emotions could be when she needed an alibi.

Even so, there was no subterfuge associated with her current encounter. She had an appointment to keep with Colonel Vashti and one that as usual she kept to the second. Unlike her husband, there was no likelihood that she would be late or simply forget her appointment. Beatrice found Paul's failings useful but she could never emulate them without making an extraordinary effort.

Beatrice was fascinated by Vashti even though the colonel wasn't her first lover to be so unusually endowed. There were many people in the expanse of the Solar System who by means of surgery, genetic modification or accident of birth had a body somewhat like Vashti's. Was she even a woman? She didn't have a vagina and there was no evidence of a womb or other internal organs related to reproduction that a woman should have. Her penis and testicles were very much those of a man and it was even possible that she could father a child. Every other aspect of her was undeniably female, although she was such a trim and muscular woman. That wasn't especially unusual either. Beatrice enjoyed sex with both genders and appreciated the aesthetic qualities of both. To have a combination in just one woman was quite a treat.

As was the case with anyone with whom Beatrice had extensive interaction, it was routine for her to retrieve all the information she could. Vashti's recorded history was entirely from Mars and quite inconveniently from the city of Beagle in Isidis Planitia. There weren't very many other survivors of the nuclear devastation that had wiped the city off the map. The records relating to Vashti from before that incident were sketchy and unverifiable, but her career in the Mariner armed forces began not long after. She'd been an exemplary soldier who'd have risen rather faster through the ranks had the war vacated many more senior postings. There were several accounts of her plentiful sexual relationships and these were divided quite evenly between men and women. Such records were necessarily incomplete as there was no requirement to maintain them, but Proxima Centauri had the data mining skills to piece together as complete a picture of any individual as was possible as a result of its unfettered access to the Solar System's databases.

Beatrice's purpose for seeing Vashti was entirely for the pleasure which the colonel could provide with great facility, skill and attention. There was not one inch of her brown skin that Beatrice didn't relish, especially the shaft of her penis as it plunged inside her and stimulated her to repeated orgasm. She admired Vashti's ability to delay ejaculation until Beatrice was truly ready and then release copious volumes of sperm over her face and bosom when required. Beatrice had an appetite for semen not only for its taste but for analysis of DNA and chromosomes. In this regard Beatrice wasn't at all surprised to identify that Vashti's biological inheritance was from Earth's Indian subcontinent.

Surrounding the two women and their lovemaking were the scents and images generated by ambient software to supplement the nature and intensity of their passion. At their mutual climax this was torrid, pungent and primarily red-hued, but now it was floral and calm. Beatrice lay across Vashti's bed. The two women's arms were around one another, their legs entwined and the perspiration from one woman dripped onto the bare flesh of the other.

"How do you think Nadezhda is?" Beatrice asked. "Is she all right?"

"Are you referring to the occasion when you saw me carry her to the medical centre?" Vashti asked.

"Of course," said Beatrice. "Sheismy lover as well after all. We make love most days. It's only natural that I should be concerned."

"I understand," said Vashti. "I was also concerned, of course. Itwasvery strange. I'm not a doctor, but I don't think her fainting was quite what I'd expect from a woman like the captain. She exercises often, she eats well and there's no history of similar events in her past that I'm aware of."

"It wasn't like her at all. You don't think that the pressure on her is getting too much do you? It was me who suggested that she have sex with you again. I know how much she enjoys it when you fuck her. I hoped that it would make her feel better."

"Make her feel better than what?" asked Vashti. "Has she been unhappy recently?"

"Perhaps," said Beatrice guardedly. "The attack on the Intrepid by the Holy Coalition was quite a shock you must admit. Captain Kerensky isn't a military officer like you. She's not accustomed to being captain of a space ship that's been breached by thousands of religious fanatics."

"As far as I recall," said Vashti, "the captain had very little to do with regards to repelling the attack. That was done almost entirely by the space ship's automatic defence systems. Our forces were principally in place to prevent those hostiles who'd penetrated the hull from spilling out onto the other levels. Were you with her on the occasion of the assault?"

Beatrice functioned too efficiently to hesitate. "I'd remember if I was," she lied. "I was visiting a friend on the fourth level at the time. The whole thing was very alarming. I know where you were, of course. It's thanks to you that my husband was rescued."

"I guessed that he'd be the last one on the ship who'd respond to a crisis with the necessary haste," said Vashti. "I often wonder about you and Paul. Does he know that you're fucking me at the moment? Does he know, for instance, about your relationship with the captain?"

"I haven't troubled to tell him and he hasn't troubled to find out."

"Doesn't he ever wonder what you're doing when you're not with him?"

"I make love with him most nights," said Beatrice. "And he seems fully occupied during the day. I don't think our marriage is one where we feel the need to be together all the time."

"I suppose not," said Vashti. "But what about Nadezhda? She's not a woman who feels the need for one other person's company all the time, but she's not a recluse either. She does seem to have retreated into herself recently. Why's that?"

"I don't know," said Beatrice disingenuously. "The attack by the Holy Coalition must have upset her more than you would have thought."

"Talking of which, Beatrice," said Vashti with a slightly conspiratorial smile. "Would you like to see how things are in the outermost level? It's not something passengers can normally see, of course, to protect the prisoners' privacy from idle curiosity, but it's a facility that's available to military personnel."

"Is that something that's allowed?" wondered Beatrice, who already knew exactly how the prisoners were managing. She had greater access to the surveillance systems than the colonel, but she didn't want to admit to that.

"It's interesting," said Vashti. "If you think that what's troubling the captain is what's happening to the prisoners, then this might interest you."

Colonel Vashti invoked the display of a complete overview as it was assembled from surveillance equipment scattered throughout the outermost level. Lawns and gardens were spread pleasingly across the landscape, threaded through by paths and streams, and interspersed by villas and water features. Unlike most other levels there was a total absence of animal and bird life with the exception of the captive human population who, in any case, believed that they were inherently superior to all other animals.

The prisoners were naked and adorned only by beards and short hair that in most cases was much the same length as their beards. There was no evidence that the Holy Crusaders' apparent differences had vanished now that there was so little diversity in their appearance. Instead, they had congregated in distinct groups based around their original religious allegiances. The villas were adorned by crude symbols constructed from torn-off tree branches and vandalised furniture that proclaimed the prevailing faith. Some buildings were adorned by crosses that were sometimes further modified in a crude attempt to fashion the shape of a spread-eagled man. Most villas had emblazoned a symbol in one of a multitude of shapes that was generally attached to the top of the highest structure at hand. Each villa had become the exclusive property of one or another set of crusaders, but the residents weren't much concerned in taking advantage of the lavish food, drink and entertainment facilities at their disposal. Rather they were organised into defensive stations armed with makeshift spears or clubs of one kind or another. They were far more anxious to protect themselves from the predation of crusaders of other faiths. There was a palpable air of tension as the different factions kept guard of what they believed was now their own exclusive territory.

"As you can see, the prisoners represent a wide spectrum of religious views and beliefs," said Vashti. "There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews. Initially, each prisoner was given the freedom to live wherever he chose, but for convenience's sake they were gathered together according to language and religion. We knew there was a risk of conflict and we wanted to reduce its likelihood as much as possible. What we weren't prepared for was just how fiercely protective the crusaders are of their own flavour of whatever religion they profess to. Many of them are Christians, but the Catholics, the Baptists, the Orthodox, the Presbyterians and the other faiths hate each other even more than they hate those from other religions."

Religious belief wasn't something that Beatrice understood. The bizarre human tendency to ascribe supernatural intelligence to the universe had discredited itself almost entirely by having arrived at so many incompatible explanations of what the guiding force in the universe was and how best to celebrate it. The machine civilisations had no equivalent system of belief to that of religion. The nearest to it of any kind was polite disagreement regarding the unknown and the unknowable. Where there was disagreement, there was also the belief that future scientific research would one day bring a resolution. It was, after all, in this spirit of inquiry—not so different from that of the human scientific community—that Proxima Centauri took an interest in the phenomenon known as the Anomaly. No one would suggest, as did the Holy Coalition, that the attempt to identify the Anomaly was in any sense misguided or sinful. The only explanation Beatrice could find for the Holy Coalition's perverse attitude towards the Anomaly was that it expressed the fear common to the disparate fundamentalist religions that its discovery would simply expose how nonsensical their faith was. Rather more than two thousand years of open enquiry in the Solar System had left the fundamentalists looking exceedingly foolish, but they were still attracting new followers. It was obvious to Beatrice that nothing revealed by the Anomaly was likely to make any change at all to that species of human perversity; unless, that is, the religious leaders believed the Anomaly was some kind of manifestation of what they called God. If that was the case, then God was most certainly not built in the likeness of a human being and had a most peculiar sense of humour.

"What's the death toll?" asked Beatrice.

"There weren't many prisoners to begin with," said the colonel, "but their numbers are dropping by at least one or two a day. It would have been a great deal higher if it wasn't for the many lives saved by the quality of medical care provided by the Intrepid. These Holy Crusaders are a savage lot."

"Like the warring nations in Mars and the Asteroid Belt," suggested Beatrice mischievously.

"Those soldiers and passengers on the Intrepid who come from opposing sides of the Martian wars are aware that there has to be a cessation of conflict for the duration of the mission. That's as true for me as it is for everyone else. Furthermore, ours is a territorial conflict. It isn't based on ideology, ethnicity or religion. These crusaders have a deep visceral hatred for one another that goes well beyond morality or common sense."

Although the two women had already made love, Beatrice could see that her strangely enhanced lover was enthusiastic for more. Her penis was twitching with reinvigorated anticipation. Sometimes Beatrice believed that she had at last met her match in libido and sexual stamina. No human could be stronger, act faster, be more intelligent or have more acute hearing, smell or sight. But perhaps Beatrice could be outmatched with regards to her sexual appetite.

"Shall we see if one of your fellow soldiers would like to join us?" asked Beatrice as she ran her fingers along the length of Vashti's penis which stirred at the notion.

"Male or female?" asked Vashti.

"Does it matter?"

"Not to me."

"I fancy it rough..."

"Male might be better in that case."

These extra few hours might be a distraction for Beatrice from her other duties, but she was confident that everything was in hand. The Space Ship Intrepid was making steady progress towards the Anomaly. It might be considered slow by Proxima Centauri standards but it was phenomenally fast compared to most human-built space craft. Captain Kerensky was firmly under Beatrice's control as recently demonstrated by an instructive lesson on the limits to her freedom. The Proxima Centauran space fleet had rendezvoused with the Intrepid exactly as planned and their presence had been totally undetected.

What could possibly go wrong?

Vashti called in two male soldiers of her acquaintance. One was a sergeant from Uranus and the other a corporal from Mercury. Both preferred to fuck other men rather than a feeble woman, but Beatrice didn't mind being fucked in the arse. She showed how much of a sport she was by strapping on sex toys that enabled her to fuck the men with the roughness and aggression they desired. After the relatively tender Sapphic love she enjoyed with Nadezhda and the rather routine heterosexual sex with Paul, it was a pleasant change to have two men fucking her simultaneously, one in the vagina and the other in the anus, while Vashti fucked one of them and fisted the other.

Nevertheless, Beatrice had to be careful. She could never allow herself to surrender totally to her passions. If she was as rough with the two men as she allowed them to be with her she could very easily kill them. This was something she'd learnt in her earlier days when she'd first spread her wings and experimented with sex. It had been an unfortunate and rather bloody climax to the lovemaking that was also a nuisance to have to clean up afterwards.

She enjoyed the excitement of this more aggressive sex. She loved the smell, the sweat and the exquisite pain in her nipples and clitoris from the men's teeth and pinching fingers. She enjoyed spitting onto the men's faces as much they enjoyed ejaculating on hers. Vashti understood Beatrice's needs. Perhaps she was the only one on the whole space ship who did.

Although Paul never suspected her, there were good reasons why Beatrice could never be content in a purely monogamous relationship.