The fast bleep of a sensor alarm and the hum and grind of the laser array turning to take aim woke her up. The guns commenced firing with a soft ‘suck-thump’ sound, clearing the path ahead. The lasers could vaporise anything from a small rock to an asteroid. After six months of acceleration they were travelling close to fifty percent the speed of light and at that speed a grain of sand took on the characteristics of an express train. The 100mm thick aluminium-titanium alloy hull might as well have been polystyrene in such a situation.

The prison ship was basically a huge rotating drum with rows of cells against the outer hull divided by corridors. There was also a recreation area, mess hall, and secure prison-warders quarters. A smaller drum within the large one occupied most of the central core and housed the gigantic fusion generators, fuel tanks and the food freezers. At the thrusting end of the great drum was the flight deck and engineering section with its control panels, computers and read-outs. The flight deck and the flight-crew quarters were separated from the main prison area by a titanium wall a foot thick, impenetrable by any small-arms weapons. The hatch linking the prison area to the flight deck was double coded and safety locked.

Each prison cell had two beds, its own washbasin and toilet, which you had to remember to close during acceleration and deceleration as the drum couldn’t spin during those times and there was literally no G force to hold things down. G-seats were bolted to the wall where the inmates strapped themselves in when the main engines fired for forward thrust. This happened eight hours out of every twenty four to keep increasing speed. Eight hours, immobilized in a seat at more than 5G, is no fun. But that’s what was needed if they were to get to their destination in their lifetime. Once thrust is cut, the lateral boosters are fired up again to spin the drum, much like the wall-of-death in an amusement park. In space however, you can walk upright on the wall quite comfortably, except for the small sideways velocity from the spin which causes you to walk at a slight angle all the time. But you got used to it. Even lying down, Dutch could feel the slight tug of the centrifuge.

Suddenly the feet vanished and a face appeared in their place.

“Would you mind? I gotta go.” Sweet Mary’s face twisted in an agony of embarrassment.

“Oh Christ.” Dutch gave an exasperated snort, turned over on her stomach, and put the pillow over her head without saying a further word.

Sweet Mary hopped lightly off the bunk and tip-toed across the cold metal floor to the toilet in the corner. This was the one thing she never got used to, and even Dutch, who was quite used to working and showering, eating and shitting in front of a bunch of tough guys, would never admit how difficult she found it to go in front of Sweet Mary. Having to go to the toilet in front of each other bred an unspoken empathy for one another, like sisters under the skin, so they did their best to pretend not to be there at those times.

As irritable as she appeared to be, Dutch had come to feel very kindly about Sweet Mary. She latched on quite early to the fact that Sweet Mary felt ugly and miserable without her makeup. She had terrible anxieties when she didn’t have any on - even when there was only Dutch there. Somehow Dutch had managed to get hold of some for her. She even managed to get hold of a contraband razor from one of the other inmates for her to shave her legs, and some other little feminine knick knacks that had Sweet Mary in tears of thankfulness.

“I like to look pretty,” she said. “It makes me feel better.”

“Sure. You look fine anyway. If anyone needs make-up it’s me. Not that it’d help much anyway.”

Sweet Mary sat up on her bunk.

“I can put some on you if you like. I think you’d look fine.”

“No thanks.”

“Go on.”

“No.”

Sweet Mary stretched down a leg and lowered herself onto Dutch’s bunk.

“Go on. There’s nothing else to do.”

“I’m thinking,” said Dutch, trying to put her off.

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh,” said Sweet Mary, loosening the cap of the precious moisturizer jar and shifted closer to Dutch, tucking her feet underneath her. “Here we go.”

Dutch just sat there with a dead-pan expression on her face, undecided whether to stop her and hurt her feelings, or just sit there and endure it.

The shock of Sweet Mary touching her face was enormous. She’d forgotten, or maybe never known, how wonderfully gentle human physical contact could be. If she had been gay she’d have fallen head over heels in love with her at that moment.

Sweet Mary’s fingers were cool and soft, the lotion was fragrant and soothing, and soon she drifted off in a delightful fantasy as Sweet Mary hummed and busied herself with beautifying Dutch’s square-jawed, big-boned, coarse-skinned face. Neither of them wanted the moment to end.

“There you go,” said a smiling Sweet Mary eventually, handing her a little mirror.

“Christ, I look like a tranny tart,” she said slapping the mirror out of her hand and causing it to shatter on the floor.

Sweet Mary was used to these angry outbursts. She quietly collected her makeup and climbed back up to her bunk.

“I don’t see the point of make-up,” said Dutch in an attempt to make it better, but only making things worse. “Only good for prostitutes.”

Dutch regretted the words before they were even out of her mouth. She felt a pang of remorse rising in her throat to choke her. It was the worst possible thing she could have said to her, because for a long time now she had her suspicions about Sweet Mary. She was almost sure she was a null-whore.

“You think I’m not a nice person, don’t you?” Sweet Mary sniffed reflectively. “But I am what I am.”

Dutch watched the feet rub self-consciously against each other.

“I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.”

“But you think it anyway.”

“No I don’t,” she argued. “Anyway, nobody’s perfect. At least you didn’t murder anybody,” she answered softly.

There was a pause and the feet fell silent for a while.

“No. But I’m still here; in prison.”

They let that truism ring around the walls for a while.

“I did things.” Sweet Mary’s voice was like a whisper in a confessional.

Dutch waited. She really didn’t want to know but she couldn’t help herself.

“What?”

“Things.” She somehow managed to squeeze the whole world of pain into that single word. “He made me…..” she stopped again.

Sweet Mary was quiet for a long time.

“Nothing,” she said. “That’s why I’m here,” she concluded.

Somehow this enigmatic statement made sense to Dutch. Sweet Mary was that kind of girl, loyal to the end. Only a whore could still love the man who betrayed her. It is pride that feels betrayed. Love lives only in the lowly.

Sweet Mary spoke again. “Anyway. He is what he is,” and then under her breath, “He did what he had to do.”

Her toe twitched briefly.

Dutch knew what these null-whores were used for. Senators and statesmen, celebrities, powerful and respectable men (and women) looking for a bit of the other. They were usually looking for someone they could hurt. Mama’s boys with an axe to grind, needing to let off a bit of steam. Jaded, bored, arrogant men, spoiled rotten and needing more and more depraved activities to satisfy them. That’s why null-whores were so popular. They were the equivalent of a human toilet. They could do anything to them and they wouldn’t resist. They couldn’t resist.

Whatever her story was, Dutch was beginning to think she’d be better off not knowing. Poor kid. The horrible thing is that the operation can only be done to very young girls (or boys). Implanting a null-wave transmitter in the frontal lobes of an adult would be fatal. So it was probably her father who had sold her down the river to supplement the family income.

The null-wave transmitter made a person unable to defend themselves from other people’s untoward advances. It forced the subject to stand (or lie down) and take the pain, humiliation and disgust of what humanity was capable of…what they all had bottled up inside of them.

Most of the time she would be normal…more or less. It was only when she was forced to do something she didn’t want to do, something that frightened her, that the limiters would kick in and suppress the neurotransmitter noradrenalin. This had an effect like a powerful sedative. Adrenaline is the body’s natural defence mechanism. The null-wave transmitter neutralises the fight or flight response of the person and leaves them wide open to abuse. They can’t defend themselves and they can’t run away. People like that are very vulnerable and probably wouldn’t survive long without a protector. Dutch stifled the spasm of outrage at what men could do to women and looked at the feet again. Jesus what a fate. And there was no way of reversing it. By now the brain had grown around the null wave transmitter and no surgery in the world could remove it.

“Hey, listen. I’m sorry. That was out of line. If you must know, I think you’re great. I think you’re a lovely girl.” That was the longest speech Dutch had ever given in her life. And, for Dutch, the inordinate amount of sentiment it contained was tantamount to a declaration of love.

She watched as the toes above her scrunched in relief that the fight was over. She knew every mood of those feet. The occasional twirl of the toes when she was happy. The swaying from side to side when she was singing.

“Did you really murder someone?”

 

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TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE