Endrek Contract (second edition)
Contract Marriage #2 (second Edition)
Contract marriage is an adult dystopia examining the issues of marriage. Like 1984 and Brave New World, Contract Marriage treats the relations between the sexes as a fundamental aspect of how a society is formed and, thus, how a society can go wrong.
Unlike those dystopias, Contract Marriage isn’t all horrible all of the time. The characters for the most part have a good time and get along in their society. But the issues of sexuality, of marriage or not, monogamy or not, faithfulness or not, and gender roles… keep coming up and causing tension and conflict and joy and pain.
My desire is that my readers would be thinking along with my characters about these issues and perhaps even arrive at the same place (minus the flying cars).
See Intro for more Introduction :)
This is the second edition posted of this scene. I changed several things based on reader comments. Thanks to my readers for their comments.
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Room 412 turned out to be an open-plan room with a few chairs in the middle facing a screenie and a chair at the front. The room was fronted with transparent aluminium so she was able to see the man at the front before she went in. He was short, for a man, a bit darker than she was, had a tightly cropped black beard, and a serious look on his face when he saw her coming down the corridor.
He got up and opened the door for her, then gave her the bow, “Preparing to Instruct.” She bowed back, “Ready to be Instructed,” and he waved her to a seat.
“First of all, do you know anything at all about Liberta’s laws?” he began, rather shocking her with his brusqueness.
“No, not at all,” she replied, annoyed that she hadn’t even had a few minutes to look them up between these two interviews!
“Well, perhaps that is better. Now, do you have an en-drek contract?”
“En-drek contract?” she asked, shocked. “No! Does anyone nowadays?”
“Here on Ephemera, very few. Vanishingly few. Perhaps one-half of one per cent, and most of those live rural. On Libertas? 100%”
“What? All of them?”
“Yes.”
“So… I will stand out then…”
“No. It is the law on Libertas that everyone be in an en-drek contract.”
“What? Even exo’s?”
“Indeed, one might even say, especially exos. So we can stop this briefing right here if that is not possible for you.”
“I don’t… I don’t know where I would get a man to contract with me and come exo.”
“That is not a problem. Their system will provide you with an en-drek from their population.”
She stared at him. “But… surely… I don’t understand. An Endrek contract is a sexual relationship! How can I possibly consent to something like that before even going and meeting the man?
“You are not required to accept this posting. However, if you do decide to accept it, you will be required to abide by their mores. Which do not include the idea of ‘consent’. Everything on Libertas goes by Code, Custom, Command and, most importantly in your case… contract. The Endrek contract includes routine sexual access. Both partners have the right to routine sexual access. Which is defined in the contract.
“And in your case, you will also need to understand that this will mean having more children.
“Oh, I don’t have to worry about that! I had my tubes tied…
She broke as he was shaking his head. “You will need to have that undone and provide the immigration office with a certificate. Except for certain serious medical issues, every woman is required to be fertile.
“But surely if a woman already has her child… he was shaking his head, and she tried… but if I was an abstinate?”
“Well, first of all, I looked up your file, and you are hardly an abstinate. And I sincerely doubt you would be willing to be for your entire tour. But even if you were, it is forbidden on Libertas. Abstinates are required to emigrate if they are truly unwilling. By accepting this contract, you would be assuring them that you are willing to…”
“But that’s… that’s horrible! How can they live like that?
“I’m sure they say the same thing about us. Now, are you done? Can we end this interview? I told the nomination supervisor that it would be impossible to find any female to take this posting. It is hard enough for a male.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t take it!”
“Ephemera Lines will be required to put forward a bond to your good behaviour. Our last Trade Master lasted just past the time when we would have been in default. I have no desire to send them an emotional female who will break down in tears after…”
“How dare you!”
He leaned over the table and stared her in the face. “It is my job. It is literally in my job description, and in the snip that you sent you specifically waived any possibility of complaint in the sexual area. My job is to make sure you can handle this posting. And so far, nothing that I have seen indicates that…”
Fenestra quailed. She should have read that snip before she sent it! She didn’t want to fail this nomination because of a stupid failure to do her own due diligence. If the posting was difficult, then it was indeed his job to challenge her on her attitudes. If the planet made archaic sexual differences, then it was his job to reflect that attitude in his briefing. “Surely you can’t object to my raising reasonable questions about the posting?” she tried, trying to defuse the situation.
He grinned and took a step back, defusing a bit. “It is not your questions that are the problem, Dear. The values of Libertas differ dramatically from those of Ephemera, and it is my job to slap you in the face with them. To rattle your cage. To make you face the idea that your two-year-old child might wander off from your house to the neighbours… and everyone would congratulate him on his initiative instead of bringing him back to you in a panic or calling the enforcers on you for being such a bad mother. Or your endrek might come home, take one look around your house, and beat you for not keeping it clean enough to suit him. And the world would expect you to thank him!”
She stared back, thoughts fighting in her head. “The beautiful house that comes free with the posting.”
“Yes, that house. That you will share with a male who will have the right to….”
“Yes, yes, I understand! You have made that part abundantly clear, and I suppose I will be studying up on it before I go. I have always wanted to be a trade master and go exo. I have always known it would involve cultural differences wherever I go. I just foolishly didn’t prepare myself adequately. No matter what the differences, I will meditate on them before I put in my request. Now, can we get onto the rest of the briefing?”
“Very well…” he said, “If you want to waste both of our time…”
“Wait… what about my daughter?”
“She too will, of course, be required to follow their customs. Although, as far as becoming an endrek-a, and all of the sexual issues that involves, she will be required to have a return ticket to Ephemera, and the company will be posting a return bond. So if, when she reaches the appropriate age, she wishes not to participate in their system, she can return here even without you.”
“Before that, she will be required to be completely sexually abstinate. Strictly so. Even flirtations are punished, possibly with death. This will very much involve her. Is that a problem?”
“Of course it is a problem!”
“Well, then, we can just end the briefing here…”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it… I said it was a problem. I will have to think about it.”
“Very well. Now that we are past that, the issue that makes it almost impossible for us to recruit for Libertas, let me give you a more generic briefing. You know that all planets have their own rotational periods, both for the planet around itself, as it were, and for the planet around its primary?”
“Yes… we call them days and years. But I can’t say I know much about it.”
“Well, what you will need to know for Libertas is that the day there is much longer than here on Ephemera. Thus, for the first few days… probably about forty days or so, you will struggle every day to stay up till bedtime, and you will be tired and cranky pretty much all the time. Brew will help, obviously, but your body will still struggle to adjust.”
“I see,” she said, almost yawning involuntarily.
“For your daughter, there will be several changes. For one thing, their schooling will be very different…”
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Links
Contract Marriage Intro
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SEP 11
Trade Master
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SEP 18
I would like to give credit for the genesis of many of these ideas to the Liaden series by Mr. and Mrs. Steve Miller, which is available for free on the web. They do a great deal of cultural exploration, although they rather dramatically skip the moral exploration. (And their math doesn’t work.)
Other concepts were taken, in one form and another, from the book Freehold by Michael A Williamson.
Watch your formatting. There are several places that should have quotation marks that don't.
This is quite a bit more explicit than the previous version, which is quite helpful.
Once again, a *lot* of changes to go through for a job. I am sort of wondering if she will actually be allowed to perform that job.
Having a marriage contract that specifies when and how much sex is required would solve many modern problems. I assume the prerequisites would be that the man protects the woman and their children.
You've created an interesting system.