Imagine, if you can, a planet based solely on peace, a planet where war and religion have been banned, and is ruled by a strict code of ethics, a planet whose beauty is already a legend among the other planets.

We don't need to imagine it. We live on it, and are extremely intolerant of visitors.

When the human race fled the Kandaskan invasion, many saw this Diaspora as a chance to begin anew. With such a vast range of planets within our galaxy this was pretty easy to do. I heard of a group of Muslim fundamentalists who colonised a planet they called Taliban, where non-Muslims were not allowed on pain of death.

A group of Basics took with them only the technology required to get them to a new planet, where they went back to the soil and to hunting for survival, with science a banned activity. Another group, which proclaimed themselves genetically pure, settled on a world where culling the imperfect in animals and in humans was not only legal, but mandatory.

Our small band of Peaceniks settled on our ideal planet, which we immediately named Imagine, after the music of an old time peace lover named Lord Lennon, whose songs inspired our movement. We set ourselves a monumental task, in that we are attempting to eradicate words like war, murder, God, religion, genocide and violence from our dictionaries and literature in the hope of eventually eradicating them from our minds. We have the hope that if the minds of our young are not introduced to such concepts then they cannot commit them.

We have severed all ties with other planets, so that such abhorrent ideas cannot be imported, and our scholars are constantly scouring the books we brought here, discarding any that speak of war or religious concepts.

We will not achieve such Nirvana in my lifetime, perhaps not in the lifetime of our children, but we are working for the good of future generations.

Imagine therefore, our shock when the body of Amy Collier, who lived on the homestead across the valley, was discovered by her husband John with a hole in her neck, lying in a pool of her own blood. He found her lying beside the well where she'd gone to draw fresh water, and called me, as his closest neighbour and a member of the Council, sobbing incoherently, to tell me what had happened.

I called that year's leader, Amos Carter, and he arrived by flying scooter within minutes. He crouched beside Amy, her yellow jumpsuit stained red with her blood, and shook his grey head.

'It can't have been a big cat,' he declared. 'They scratch and slash. The hobgoblins might have done it with their spears, but then they'd have dragged her off and eaten her. No, I think we have to accept that one of our group actually killed her. A snake in our Eden!'

'We can't announce that!' I protested in alarm. 'We have to say it was an accident. We can't tell the youngsters that there is such a thing as murder. Do that and we might as well give up altogether.' Then my brain caught up with his last comment. 'And drop the biblical references. We don't want to try explaining snakes and Gardens of Eden to curious kids.'

'Sorry Brett, I got carried away. But we can't allow a murderer to remain unpunished. What if he does it again?'

'We have to find out who did it and deal with him.'

'But how?', asked Amos. 'Brett, we couldn't keep him locked up forever for the safety of the colony. People would want to know why, and it would eventually come out that he'd killed someone.'

'And if we don't, he might do it again.'

"But we have to keep him away from everybody. What do you suggest?"

'We could always execute him.'

'That's still murder. We can't do that. Get rid of your Earth thinking and come up with something original. But no killing,' he added sternly.

We sat there with the distraught John Collier in the shadow of the majestic snow capped mountain, debating the issue for a couple of hours, but all we settled was that we'd pass off the killing as the work of hobgoblins, and say that John had disturbed them before they had a chance to make off with her body.

John was uneasy with the decision, but reluctantly agreed that anything further would risk the destruction of our colony. 'But for Amy's sake, let me have a hand in deciding what's to be done with whoever killed her,' he begged.

I caught Amos's eye and nodded slightly. As his closest advisor, he sometimes listened to me, and so it was today.

'Very well,' he replied to John. 'But we may never find out. Don't forget, we didn't bring any police officers with us, so our resources are limited.'

'But why would anyone want to hurt my Amy?' moaned John, in obvious pain.

Amos and I just looked at each other helplessly. After telling John that we'd arrange for Amy to be buried the following day, we helped him to make her presentable for the inevitable sympathisers who were bound to start arriving when the news got out, then Amos and I left him alone on his mountainside with his grief.

We never did find out who did that to poor Amy Collier, and I often feel guilty about lying to everybody about her death, especially as nobody questioned our announcement.

Two things came of it though. We surveyed the other side of Imagine and found the ideal spot to which to banish wrongdoers. It was a large island with plenty of natural resources, but far from land, and surrounded by treacherous seas, so that without a scooter flyer nobody could leave it. One or two of the council wanted to call it Purgatory, but commonsense prevailed, and it became known as Coventry.

The other result was the virtual eradication of the local predators we had named hobgoblins. Not out of a biblical concept of vengeance, of course. "But if we let them live, it will happen again."

I never once mentioned the word uppermost in my mind, genocide, but I did start thinking about getting off world to a planet where a spade was called an honest spade. Ethics and peace are fine concepts, but when the drawback is intolerable guilt, it's time to move on. I wonder how long it will be before they need to rename the planet 'Hypocrisy'?

© Sandy Parkinson, April 2006. Word count 1093