The Sky Lords

Chapter One

Not far away, something began to shriek in terrible agony. Jan looked at the guard. The guard shrugged her tanned shoulders and said, “Sounds like a big reptile’s been caught by a whip tree.”

Trying to ignore the nerve-jangling screeching, Jan turned her attention back to the panther. “I’ve told you,” she called down to it. “We don’t need a cat, but thanks anyway.”

The black panther made no move to go but remained sitting on its haunches looking up at her. “I work good for you, catch vermin, patrol your walls at night,” it said in its high-pitched, hissing voice.

Jan studied the animal more closely. It was a powerfully built beast seemingly in good health. Conditions in the blight lands must be getting really bad if such an animal was willing to demean itself by offering to work for humans. She noticed a long scar down its right flank. It looked fresh.

At her side Martha said nervously, “Don’t like. Make go away. Martha don’t like. …”

Jan patted the chimp on the head. “Don’t worry. It can’t hurt you.” The guard hefted her cross-bow. “Shall I put a bolt through its shoulder to speed it on its way?” she asked Jan.

Before Jan could answer the panther turned its head towards the guard and said, “Fire weapon and I be up wall very fast. Take your throat away with me. That mesh like grass to my claws.” Then, in a calculated display of indifference, it sprawled on its side, exposing its belly to them. Jan saw that it was male. She raised her hand to the guard, who had reddened at the panther’s threat and was likely to do something foolish. “Don’t, Carla. Leave this to me.” Martha, meanwhile, had started to whimper.

The panther eyed Jan with what might have been feline amusement. “You very young to be boss-man.”

“I’m not a boss-man,” said Jan. “I’m the daughter of Headwoman Melissa and it’s my turn to be in charge of the wall defences this week.”

The panther gave a human-like shrug of its powerful shoulders and said, “Like I say, you boss. So why you not let poor cat into settlement?” Its pronunciation of the word ‘settlement’ was preceded by a long hiss.

“We have a strict policy as to what animals we allow to live with us,” Jan told the panther. “You must know that.”

“Times are hard. Getting harder. We need to work together. Like old days. When my forefathers served your forefathers.”

“Foremothers,” corrected Jan indignantly. “And that was a long time ago. When you big cats could be trusted.”

“You don’t trust me?” The panther tried to look innocent.

“Of course not. I’d be foolish to. In the same way that a carrot could trust me not to eat it.”

“So,” said the panther. It quickly got up. “You make mistake,” it said as it turned and, swishing its tail in annoyance, stalked off down what remained of the trail that had led to the corn fields before the blight lands had overwhelmed them. The panther soon vanished from view. Martha jumped up and down with excited relief. “Nasty cat. Nasty. Martha don’t like. …”

Jan sighed and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. A glance at the sun revealed she had at least another hour of duty to go. She looked at Carla, who was frowning. “You should have let me shoot it, Mistress,” she told Jan. “Arrogant beast. Arrogant male beast.”

“You think it’ll come back?” Jan asked her.

“It had better not. It’ll get my bolt between its eyes instead of its shoulder.”

Jan doubted if Carla would find it so easy to despatch the sly carnivore, but she didn’t voice her reservations. The wall guards needed to indulge in such bravado—Jan knew it helped to keep up their morale in what was an increasingly discouraging task.

“Sound the alarm if it returns,” Jan told her. “I’ll be on the east side.”

Carla gave her a perfunctory salute as Jan, followed by the still excited Martha, headed off eastwards along the wooden parapet. It was only then that Jan realized that the reptile, if that’s what it had been, had stopped screaming. She wondered why the encounter with the panther had disturbed her so much. It was a bad omen, she told herself and whispered a quick prayer to Mother God.

There was only one more incident during Jan’s last hour of duty. An elephant creeper had penetrated the mesh barrier on the east perimeter and was threatening to bring down a section of the wall. Jan had supervised the squad of fifteen guards who, with flame throwers and axes, had destroyed the slowly writhing tendril, which measured over four feet in diameter at its widest point. Afterwards she watched as Martha and the other chimps clambered up the mesh fence and, with their customary speed, repaired the damage caused by the vine. Just as they were finishing, Alsa arrived to relieve Jan. Jan was only too glad to hand over to Alsa the gold-plated branch of authority which she’d kept tucked in her belt.

“It’s all yours,” she told Alsa gratefully. “I’m exhausted.”

Alsa surveyed the repair work in the fence. “Been busy?”

“No more than usual.” Jan beckoned to Martha who scurried down the mesh, putting her pliers away in the tool-bag tied around her waist as she came. “We go home?” she asked.

“Yes.” Jan patted her on the head. Then to Alsa she said, “You may have a visit from a smooth-talking panther. Wants to work for us in return of shelter. Be careful of him. He’s not a happy cat. He may try something desperate.”

Alsa smiled at her. “Don’t worry. You know me. I never take chances. Coward to the core.” She leaned forward and embraced Jan, kissing her on the lips. “Take care, little one.”

As Jan climbed down the ladder leading from the parapet she couldn’t help bridling over Alsa’s use of that embarrassing term. She knew that, as always, it had been meant affectionately but she was sensitive about her size. It hadn’t been bad when she was younger; she’d believed her mother when she’d said that she would eventually catch up with her contemporaries but now that she’d reached eighteen it was clear she was not going to grow any taller. Alsa and her other friends towered over her by some four or five inches. It was galling for her to be the same height as the average man.

The sky was clear of clouds and the sun was hot as Jan and Martha cut through the vegetable gardens that were crammed into every available space between the wall and the outer buildings of Minerva. Martha, Jan noticed, kept glancing nervously upwards.

“He’s not due for another two weeks,” Jan said, “so relax.”

“Can’t help it. Sky Lord scare Martha. Don’t like.”

“You’re not alone there,” said Jan grimly. She was dreaming about the Sky Lord almost every night now. The dream took the form of her first childhood memory of the Sky Lord Pangloth. It had seemed to fill the entire sky above Minerva and, as it descended closer to the town, its great eyes had fixed on the five-year-old Jan as she cowered beside her mother on the official dais in the tribute square. She had screamed and screamed in terror and had tried to bury herself under her mother’s kilt … but in the dream her mother disappeared, leaving her alone.

Jan found herself automatically scanning the empty blue sky. I’m being as silly as Martha, she told herself guiltily. Pangloth was nothing if not punctual. It was, as her mother said, all part of the Sky Lord mystique.

A shrill, shouted obscenity distracted her. They were passing near the male chimp compound and several of the male chimps had come to the bars to shout insults. Most of them were directed at Martha but a few of the more reckless chimps hurled abuse at Jan as well. Martha chittered angrily back at them, jumping up and down and waving her arms. Jan said, “Don’t waste your time on them. Come on, I’m in a hurry. I badly need a wash and a cold drink.” She continued on. Martha, after a final, angry riposte complete with gestures, followed her. It was a pity, Jan reflected, that the male chimps, unlike the female ones, became so unpredictable after a certain age. Not all of them, true, but enough to ensure that every adult male had to be segregated for safety’s sake. It hadn’t always been like that, she knew; once male chimps had remained as reliable as the females, but about forty or fifty years ago things began to change and the first signs of male chimp unpredictability had appeared.

How unlike human males, she thought. They remained totally predictable all their lives. Every man she knew was of a placid and cheerful disposition, forever being relentlessly optimistic. Even the approaching crisis with the Sky Lord didn’t seem to bother them over much. Why, she wondered—not for the first time—had the Mother God made Minervan men such uncomplicated creatures compared to women? When She had removed the evil from their souls surely She could have made them a bit more interesting at the same time.

As if to prove her point she saw Simon ahead of her. He was one of a party of six men working on a small potato patch. Seeing her he dropped his hoe and hurried to meet her, a wide grin on his handsome and totally open face. “Jan! How good to see you! How are you?”

She felt a flush creep up her neck. Simon was the only male she’d ever made love to. The experience had been interesting but not especially exciting, yet the memory of her intimacy with him made her uncomfortable. “Hello Simon,” she said brusquely. “Sorry I can’t stop to talk. I’ve just got off the wall and I’m dead tired.”

“That’s okay. Maybe we can meet in the tavern tonight.” He was staring at her with such undisguised pleasure he was making her feel even more uncomfortable. She frowned. “Have you forgotten the Council meeting tonight?” she asked him irritably. “There won’t be any time between it ending and your curfew.”

He looked momentarily crestfallen, then the grin was back on his face. “Tomorrow, then?”

“Possibly,” she said and walked past him. In two weeks Minerva might be destroyed and all he could think about was socializing. Men.…

She and Martha entered the town and hurried along the narrow, alley-like streets. There had been much more space until about four or five years ago when the inhabitants of the outer farming settlements had been finally forced to move into town after losing their long battle with the blight lands.

Now newer, and smaller, wooden dwellings jostled next to the older stone buildings, destroying the careful architectural harmony of the original town. But otherwise everything looked deceptively normal. There was no visible sign of all the preparations that were feverishly taking place throughout the town.

Jan and Martha parted company when they came to a long, low building with no glass in its many windows. It was the female chimps’ dormitory, housing over forty of them as well as several baby chimps of both sexes. They said their farewells and Jan continued on towards her home near the centre of Minerva.

Her mother was there when she arrived. She was hunched over a map of the town spread across the kitchen table. As Jan entered she looked up, brushed her silver-dyed hair from her face and gave Jan a weary smile. “Hello, darling. How were things on the wall today? Any problems?”

“Nothing serious.” Jan leaned over her mother and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll tell you later. First I must change out of these smelly clothes.” She poured a mugful of water, drank it quickly, then filled a bowl and took it into her bedroom. She wished there was still sufficient water for baths or showers but now that Minerva had been reduced to only three wells such luxuries were out of the question.

She hurriedly pulled off her thick gauntlets and then thankfully unstrapped and removed the heavy, steel breast plate. Next came the weapons belt with her short-sword, dagger and hatchet. Followed by her knee-length boots, vest, kilt and underwear. Then she washed herself all over using a wet cloth and one of her few remaining pieces of precious soap.

She didn’t have to towel herself dry. It was still so hot that the moisture swiftly dried on her skin, but by the time she donned her favourite blue cotton robe she was feeling greatly refreshed.

When she returned to the kitchen her mother had put away the map but the look of strain remained on her face. As she prepared a meal of potato cakes and salad Jan told her of the day’s events on the wall. She dwelt on the incident with the panther and her mother noticed her uneasiness. “What was it about the beast that troubled you so much?”

Jan frowned. “I don’t know. It was as if it was an. …” She didn’t continue. She didn’t want to tell her mother that she believed the black panther was an omen. It would only upset her and make her angry. She would again accuse Jan of being weak and negative, of letting her down in this time of crisis. Instead she asked Melissa how the preparations were coming along.

“On schedule. Just.” She rubbed the sides of her forehead with her fingertips. “The only problem now is getting the final decision from the Council. If it goes against us tonight everything will have been a waste of time and Minerva will be doomed.”

Hesitantly, Jan said, “I know you’re right, mother, but all the same I wish there was another way. When I think of what’s going to happen I get so, so. …” She stopped but it was too late.

Melissa came over to her and held her face between her hands. “Jan, you are my daughter. You have a position to uphold in Minerva. You cannot afford to be frightened. You mustn’t let yourself be frightened. And you must give me your full and total support!”

“But of course I will support you, mother. You know I will vote on your side tonight. …”

Her mother’s eyes were fierce. “That’s not what I mean. You must be behind me all the time. A few words of doubt to one of your friends and those same words will be used as ammunition against me in the council hall.”

“I haven’t said anything to anyone, mother,” protested Jan. She tried to pull free of her mother’s grip. “Mother, you’re hurting me. …”

Melissa released her but her eyes remained fierce. “I have to win the vote tonight otherwise all is lost. Don’t you realize that?”

Jan gave a fearful nod. “Of course I do. Don’t worry, mother, you’ll win the vote. I know it.”

“If I don’t we will return here after the meeting and fall on our swords together. Better a clean death such as that than what will happen to us if Minerva falls to the Lord Pangloth.”

Jan stared at her mother. Was she really serious about their committing suicide? She couldn’t be! … But the look in her eyes told Jan that she was.

After an uncomfortable meal eaten in silence Jan retired to her room. She’d intended to have a few hours sleep but found that impossible. Finally, she got up, put on a leisure tunic and went out. It was dusk now. In two hours’ time the Council meeting would begin but Jan wanted to put it, and its implications, out of her mind for a while.

She went to the men’s compound. She found her father in the workshop. He was soldering the seam along a sheet metal tube that was about six feet long and four inches wide. He put down the soldering iron when Jan approached his bench and smiled broadly. He was a handsome man with a wide, expressive mouth; attractive grey-blue eyes and thick black hair. Jan knew that, physically at least, she took after him more than she did Melissa. Her mother, under the silver dye of her office, was blonde and her body was long and slim, whereas Jan was short and dark like her father, with the same coloured eyes and black hair.

“Hello Jan,” he said happily and reached out to hug her. She didn’t resist his quick embrace even though physical contact between, fathers and daughters was socially frowned upon. In fact, any contact between them was socially frowned upon. It was never actively discouraged—that would have gone against the constitution of Minerva—but there were subtle, hidden pressures that Jan had been aware of ever since she was a small child. She knew that her mother disapproved of her relationship with her father even though Melissa had never explicitly said so.

Her father looked closely at her. “You’re tired,” he told her in a gently accusing tone. “Aren’t you sleeping properly?”

“I’ve been on wall duty. It’s always hard to relax afterwards. And there’s the meeting tonight. …”

For a few moments her father looked uncharacteristically troubled. Then he smiled reassuringly and said, “I’m sure everything will turn out for the best. Melissa and her supporters will win the day, you’ll see.”

Jan nodded. She wanted to tell him of Melissa’s threat to have them both commit suicide if she lost the vote but decided against it. He wouldn’t know how to handle such information. “Yes, I suppose so. But what then?” Jan ran her hand along the metal tube. “You really think these are going to work?”

Again he looked momentarily worried. Then he said firmly, “I have every faith in Melissa. She knows what she’s doing. If she said we can destroy the Sky Lord then we will. And don’t forget, we have the Mother God on our side. She will deliver us.”

“Of course she will,” said Jan, but without conviction. She knew the thought was blasphemous but she couldn’t help wondering why the Mother God had waited so long to deliver Minerva from the reign of the Sky Lord. It had lasted over three hundred years now.

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “Poor Jan. You’re so young yet you act as if you carry the cares of the whole world on your back.”

She managed to give him what she hoped looked like a brave smile. Poor father, she told him silently. I may be only eighteen and you are over eighty but you are the child. And you always will be. She envied him the security of his trusting naivety and wished she’d been born a man.

Jan told her father she had to return home and prepare for the meeting. He embraced her again and repeated his belief that everything was going to be all right.

Outside it was getting dark. As she hurried homewards she couldn’t help glancing up at the night sky, expecting to see the stars blotted out by the bulk of the Sky Lord, who had somehow learned of their planned rebellion and arrived ahead of schedule to punish them.

Out in the blight lands something screamed. Whether from pain or rage she couldn’t tell.

Chapter Two

The fungus that was slowly killing Headwoman Avedon was deceptively pretty. It was a bright red growth that covered the left side of her face like peach fuzz. Jan couldn’t help staring at it as Avedon, the oldest of the Headwomen and therefore leader of the Council, was summarizing Melissa’s plan and the opposition faction’s case against it. Jan forced herself to look away and transferred her gaze to the spectators’ gallery that encircled the Council chamber. She spotted Simon in the Men’s section. He was staring down at her with his usual puppy-like grin fixed on his face. She sighed inwardly.

Avedon completed her summing up and handed the Speaker’s baton to Headwoman Anna, who was Melissa’s chief opponent. Jan’s stomach gave a queasy flutter as Anna began to speak. If she managed to persuade the Council to overthrow Melissa’s plan Jan didn’t want to think of the consequences, yet at the same time she shared Headwoman Anna’s misgivings about the proposed action against the Sky Lord.

But Jan’s immediate survival was her main concern. Incredible as it seemed in the familiar surroundings of the Council chamber with its ancient murals on the walls, she knew that her mother was serious about them killing themselves that night if she lost. Jan thought about trying to drive the point of the sword, that now hung by her side, into her chest … No, she could never do it. It would be impossible! And when she refused what would Melissa do? Surely her mother wouldn’t kill her? It was unthinkable! But these were not normal times. Anything was possible. …

She suppressed a shudder and tried to concentrate on Anna’s words. Anna was standing in the centre of the circular floor of the chamber and pointing an accusing finger at Melissa, who glared back at her with grim eyes. “… And I say again that Headwoman Melissa’s plan will bring about the destruction of Minerva!” Anna was saying in ringing tones. “It is foolhardy in the extreme to think we can bring down a Sky Lord, or even drive him away. If it was possible it would have been done before by either our foremothers or by some other community. No, the Sky Lords have ruled the world for nearly three and a half centuries and it’s going to take more than Headwoman Melissa’s fireworks to alter that fact. I say we should scrap her plan immediately, halt the preparations and destroy the rockets before it’s too late!”

There was a murmur of approval from both the inner circle of seats where the Headwomen sat and from the outer circles where their daughters sat. Melissa’s expression grew more grim and for a second she locked eyes with Jan, who was sitting almost opposite her. Jan found herself looking into the eyes of a stranger. Her mother had vanished and in her place was someone else. Someone frightening.

Melissa raised her arm and was granted permission to speak by Avedon. She stood up and said, “We have no alternative but to follow my plan. Otherwise we will all die of starvation during the coming winter. You all know that if we meet the Sky Lord’s customary quota of tribute all our grain bins will be empty. As for the so-called invincibility of the Sky Lords, that is a myth. We all know that some fifty or sixty years ago a Sky Lord crashed during a storm in the north lands. It was struck by lightning. Well, we will strike Lord Pangloth with our own lightning!”

This brought Melissa her own murmur of approval and Jan saw several heads nodding in agreement throughout the chamber. But Anna waved the Speaker’s baton, which gave her the right to interject whenever she wanted. “We don’t know for sure that ever happened. It was just a rumour spread by travellers. But even if it did happen it was through the grace of the Mother God, who used her natural forces to destroy the Sky Lord. How can you know that your rockets will do Lord Pangloth any harm?”

Melissa turned to Avedon. “Permission for Sister Helen to address the chamber?”

Avedon nodded and Melissa then gestured to Helen, who was sitting in the front row of the gallery. Helen rose, looking uncomfortable. Small, though not as short as Jan, and wiry, she was in charge of the foundry and had been instrumental in making Melissa’s plan reality. She knew much arcane lore, including, it was suspected, too much about the forbidden and evil sciences of Man. As a result she was not popular, but this never seemed to bother her.

“Tell the Council again what I have tried to tell them on past occasions,” commanded Melissa. “Perhaps hearing it from you, the expert, will finally convince the doubters amongst us.”

Helen swallowed nervously and, in a thin voice, said, “The Sky Lords are kept aloft, as you know, by gases which are lighter than air. There are two such gases—hydrogen and helium. Once the Sky Lords were filled entirely with helium because it is safest. It is an inert gas whereas hydrogen is flammable. Over the years the Sky Lords have lost much of their helium, through natural leakage, accidents and so on, and haven’t been able to replace it. They’ve been forced to use hydrogen as a substitute in many of their gas cells. Hydrogen, unlike helium, can be manufactured relatively easily by means of a process called ‘electrolysis’ which is—”

Melissa cut her short with a wave of her hand. “Never mind the details,” she said. “What we want to know is whether the Sky Lords contain a great deal of the dangerous gas.”

Helen’s face went bright red. “Uh, yes, Headwoman Melissa, I would say that all the Sky Lords now contain much more hydrogen than helium.”

“Which makes them very vulnerable to fire?”

“Very vulnerable.”

“So our rockets with their fire bombs in their tips will inflict serious damage?”

Helen cleared her throat and said, loudly, “I believe we stand a very good chance of destroying the Lord Pangloth completely.”

An excited murmur spread through the chamber. But it stopped when Anna interjected with, “Can you be sure they haven’t found a way of making the safer gas? The helium? If they can make the other gas why can’t they do the same with the helium. Or maybe they have invented an entirely new gas?”

“No,” said Helen firmly with a shake of her head. “That’s impossible. Scientifically impossible. If you’d let me explain—”

This time Avedon herself interrupted her. “Enough talk of Man’s science in this chamber. We will take your word for it. Sit down, Sister Helen.”

She sat down hurriedly, her face redder than ever. Anna took advantage of the moment to declare loudly, “Man’s science … that is our problem here. Melissa’s plan is tainted with it. Rockets!” She spat out the word contemptuously. “Such weapons are not only against the constitution but are blasphemous. The Mother God will turn her face from us if we use Man’s weapons!”

“The same thing was said when we started using the flame throwers but there is no sign we have affronted the Mother God,” said Melissa.

“Really? If that it so how is it that our crop-lands have been overrun by the blight? What good did those weapons do us?” asked Anna.

“If we hadn’t used them the fungus would be growing all over the town by now. The flame throwers are the only effective weapon against the spores. Not to mention against many of the larger beasts that threaten our perimeter in increasing numbers.”

“Yet still Minerva is faced with destruction,” persisted Anna.

Melissa sighed. “If we can defeat the Sky Lord we will have enough grain to see us through the winter. Perhaps by then we will have managed to reclaim some of our land from the blight. But if we succumb to the Sky Lord our fate is sealed.”

“We could try talking to the Sky Lord. We could explain our situation. It will, after all, be, obvious to him from the air!” cried Anna. “We offer him, say, only a third of the expected tribute and promise to make it up to him later. We throw ourselves on his mercy.”

Melissa gave a bitter laugh. “When has a Sky Lord ever shown mercy? You know how they regard us land dwellers. Literally as the scum of the earth. We are less than human to them. Just a part of the blight left by the Gene Wars. Better to ask mercy from one of the giant lizards. No, our only chance is to burn the Lord Pangloth out of the sky. It is time that we, the sisters of Minerva, freed ourselves from the reign of Men!”

That did it. Jan could physically feel the tide of emotion in the chamber turn irrevocably in Melissa’s favour. She had won. And, a short time later, the vote confirmed it. A count of hands gave her a majority of twenty-three. Jan relaxed. She was not going to die. Not yet, anyway. She had at least another two weeks.

The two weeks went by with frightening speed. Jan had wanted to savour them but there had been no time. Melissa had kept her, and everyone else, working to exhaustion on the final preparations. Jan had been put in charge of one of the many three-woman groups that would fire the rockets. They practised the firing routine endlessly, positioning the rockets in their stands, removing the camouflaged netting that concealed the launchers and pretending to light the fuses before taking cover behind a makeshift barrier.

The rockets were, according to Helen, fairly simple devices. They were propelled by gunpowder and were capable, as the series of test firings had proved, of reaching a height of about a thousand feet. When they hit something a plunger was depressed, which activated a chemical fuse. This set off a charge that ignited the alcohol in the nose cone and spread it over a wide area. No one asked, publically anyway, how Helen came to possess the knowledge to make gunpowder, a substance that was high on the proscribed list. Jan suspected that Helen had probably invented the stuff from scratch.

Even though Melissa was now theoretically in charge of Minerva Anna kept up her campaign of opposition almost to the very end. The most significant confrontation between them occurred at the start of the second week. Anna, her daughter Tasma, Headwoman Jean and Adam, spokesman for the men, appeared that evening at Melissa’s house. Melissa admitted them with ill grace and told Jan to fetch drinks. Anna said not to bother as this was far from being a social call, so Jan remained in the hallway.

“Is it true,” Anna asked Melissa accusingly, “that you told Avedon you want the men armed?”

“It is true,” said Melissa, and waited.

“Is there no limit to your blasphemy?” cried Anna. “For a man to carry a weapon within the borders of Minerva is against everything we hold sacred. The founding sisters of Minerva must be crying with shame in heaven!”

“The founding sisters of Minerva were realists,” replied Melissa. “And so am I. We’re going to need everyone available to defend Minerva next Monday. Even if we set the Lord Pangloth on fire there may still be time for units of Sky Warriors to descend upon us.”

“Better that than to offend the Mother God in this fashion!” cried Anna. She turned to Adam, who was trying to keep behind Jean and Tasma. “Tell Headwoman Melissa that you, as the spokesman for all the men, refuse to bear arms.”

Reluctantly, Adam emerged from between Jean and Tasma. He regarded Melissa worriedly. “It’s not so much that we refuse, Headwoman Melissa, it’s that arming us would be a waste of time. The men of Minerva, as you well know, are not fighters. The Mother God saw to that. What good would we be in a battle with Sky Warriors?”

“You’re going to find out,” Melissa told him brusquely. “When a Sky Warrior comes at you with the intention of splitting open your skull with an axe or skewering you on a sword you will have the choice of trying to stop him with a weapon of your own or letting him do what he wants to you. Don’t expect the sisters to protect you. We will be too busy defending ourselves so it’s up to you. The choice is yours.”

Adam had gone pale. “But … but all our lives we have had it instilled in us that it is absolutely forbidden to touch a weapon or to use a tool in a threatening way. You can’t suddenly expect us to overcome such training.”

“He’s right,” said Anna. The other two women nodded.

Melissa shrugged. “All I know is that I have the authority in these circumstances, according to the constitution, to take whatever extraordinary measures I see fit to ensure the survival of Minerva and that I am ordering the distribution of weapons to every male over the age of twelve. Whether they use them or not is up to the individual himself. And that is that.”

Anna scowled and opened her mouth to protest but obviously thought better of it. With an angry swirl of her robe she headed for the front door. The others followed her, with Adam bringing up the rear. He was the only one to mutter an apologetic “Good night” as they went out.

When they’d gone Jan said to her mother, “Do you really think any of the men will fight?”

Melissa shrugged again. “Some may do. Self-preservation is a strong drive. We shall see. But I’m hoping it won’t be necessary. With any luck the Lord Pangloth will be destroyed before the Sky Warriors can be deployed.”

“If some of them do fight,” said Jan slowly, “then they might develop a taste for it, mightn’t they? We’d never be able to trust them again.”

“Superstition,” said Melissa. She walked out of the hallway and into the front room. She sat wearily on a puff-ball sack. Jan followed her inside.

“But isn’t that the reason they’ve always been forbidden to handle weapons?” she asked her mother. “For fear of awakening the taint of the Old Men that still dwells within them?”

Not looking at her Melissa said, “The Mother God changed them for good. They can’t revert back.”

“Then why the law against weapons? Why the separate compound? Why the curfew? Why are we still afraid of them?”

“Tradition. And that is how it should be. Even the men of Minerva, changed as they are, cannot expiate the sins their ancestors committed against our foremothers for untold millennia, or the sins that the Sky Lord Pangloth commits against us now. That is why the men must worship in the Cell of Atonement in the cathedral every Sunday. They lost the right to be our equals a long time ago and can never retain it. Now go to your room and leave me be. I have much to think about.”

Jan did as she was told. As she sat cleaning her sword for the third time that day she pondered what would happen to the men after Monday if Melissa’s plan to destroy the Sky Lord was successful. Would there be a movement among the sisters to expel the men completely from Minerva? It was highly likely, and highly likely that she herself would support such a movement, but at the same time she didn’t like to think of her father being banished from Minerva. Or even Simon, for that matter. And what would the future of Minerva be without any men at all? The next breeding time was less than three years away. …

That Sunday—the day before the coming of the Sky Lord—the cathedral was packed with worshippers. None prayed harder to the symbol of the Mother God, carved from the trunk of an ancient and sacred oak tree, than Jan. She prayed that she would wake up the following morning and find that everything was back to the way it had been when she was younger; when the crop-lands hadn’t been overrun by the blight, when the rooftops of the town were not concealing weapons to be used against the Sky Lord … but most of all she prayed that the cold and ruthless woman that Melissa had become would vanish and that her mother would return.

Jan did not sleep that night. At first she spent the time restlessly pacing about the empty house—Melissa was out conducting a final inspection of the rocket positions—looking and touching familiar household objects in an attempt to convince herself that everything was normal, and would continue to be normal, even after tomorrow. Then, at around two in the morning, she heard a distant bellowing followed by a thunderous crash. There were shouts, screams and then came the strident clanging of one of the wall alarms. She hastily buckled on her armour and weapons belt and, taking one of the cold light lamps with her, hurried outside.

The narrow street was already filling up as other sisters rushed out of their homes and headed towards the source of the alarm. Jan joined in the rush. As she ran she speculated on the nature of the emergency. From the sound of the crash it was obviously serious—one of the big reptiles perhaps. She hoped the wall hadn’t been breached. Since her last tour of duty she hadn’t given much thought to the dangers beyond the perimeter defences, being too preoccupied with other worries. It would be ironic if Minerva were to be overrun by the denizens of the blight lands before the arrival of the Sky Lord.

She gave a start as something touched her bare thigh. She looked and saw that it was Martha. The chimp, her tool bag secure around her waist, was keeping pace beside her. “Martha, you scared me.”

“Sorry … Mistress…. ” She panted as she ran, using all four limbs. “You know why … alarm?”

“No. Probably a lizard. A big one.”

Jan was proved right. When they arrived at the wall they saw that the massive west gate had been flattened and lying in the splintered wreckage was the monstrous form of one of the giant reptiles. It was tangled in the steel mesh from the upper barrier and it was this that had obviously prevented it from getting any further into Minerva. Cross-bow bolts protruded from its body but it continued to jerk and writhe. Jan saw that it was of the type that walked on two legs like a human—a type noted for its ferocity.

She pushed through the growing crowd, looking for Alsa, who she knew was on wall duty tonight. She spotted her friend with a group of guards. They were gathered round something on the ground.

As Jan drew closer she saw it was a body covered by a blood stained robe. “Who is it?” she asked Alsa fearfully. Alsa turned and gave her a dazed look. She didn’t seem to recognize Jan at first, then her expression cleared and she said, “Oh, it’s you, little one,” then turned her attention back to the body on the ground.

The dying reptile gave a tremendous thump with its tail, causing Jan to jump with alarm. As she turned she saw one of the wall guards step dangerously close to the beast and put a bolt into one of its eyes. It gave a convulsive shudder and went quiet, though its chest continued to rise and fall. Jan turned back to Alsa. “Who is it?” she asked again.

“Carla,” said Alsa. She leaned down and pulled back the blood-sodden robe a short way. Jan felt her stomach turn over as she looked at what lay beneath the robe. Carla’s one remaining eye seemed to stare at her from her ruined face. Jan was suddenly filled with the irrational conviction that Carla was still alive, even in that terrible condition, and could feel everything that had happened to her body. Jan wanted to run screaming back to her house and hide under her bed covers until the world returned to normal—returned to what it had been like when she was a child, when she didn’t have to see things like this … when she didn’t have to know such things even happened. She had actually taken a step backwards before she managed to regain some control of herself. You’re the daughter of Headwoman Melissa, she told herself, you can’t disgrace yourself!

“We were together on the gate,” Alsa said as, to Jan’s relief, she covered up the thing that had been Carla again. “I jumped clear just in time but she stayed at her post. She was crushed under the collapsing gate when the lizard broke through.”

“What happened?” Jan asked her. “What made it charge the gate that way? The big lizards have been known to blunder into the wall occasionally but none has ever acted like this before.”

Alsa massaged the side of her face. Jan saw that a large purple bruise was forming there. “I’m not sure … but I think it was chasing something.”

“Chasing something?”

“I only got a glimpse but I think it was a cat. A big cat. Black. It was running just ahead of the lizard, then it sprung to one side and just disappeared.”

“A big cat?” said Jan. “A panther?”

“It could have been. I told you I only got a glimpse.”

Jan remembered the day the panther had asked for sanctuary. It had been at this very gate. And Carla had been with her at the time.

Giving the reptile a wide berth Jan went to the gaping hole in the shattered gate and peered out into the darkness beyond. “Careful,” warned a nearby guard. “No telling what’s been attracted into the vicinity by all the noise, not to mention the smell of blood.”

Jan ignored her. She was intently scanning the trees for any sign of movement. And then she saw the eyes. They were staring down at her from a high branch, glowing green in the reflected light from the many lamps, but the panther’s body remained completely invisible.

“Give me that!” snarled Jan, snatching the cross-bow from the hands of the startled guard. She raised the weapon towards the branch where she’d seen the eyes, but they were gone now.

“What’s wrong? What’s out there?” asked the guard.

Jan didn’t answer. She was listening for a sound—any sound that would give her an indication of the panther’s position—but all she heard was the rumbling of distant thunder. Then, on the horizon, she saw lightning flicker.

After a long pause she handed the cross-bow back to the guard and muttered, “There’s a storm coming.”

Chapter Three

The storm had come and gone but the sky was still grey with low cloud. It was cold too, and Jan pulled her cloak tighter around her as she stared anxiously from the rooftop into the town square below. The square was the traditional place where the Sky Lord picked up his tribute and now, an hour before noon, its perimeter was piled high with bales. Except that Jan knew on this occasion that the bales contained not grain but sand and straw.

Melissa and the other Headwomen were gathered in front of the dais where, in the past, they sat to give group obeisance to the representatives of the Sky Lord. This time the dais would provide the signal for the launch of the attack when Melissa sent a red flare into the air.

Jan looked around. People were visible on many rooftops but this was normal. A visit from the Sky Lord customarily brought out many spectators; the Lord Pangloth may have been loathed and feared by the sisters of Minerva but there was no denying that the spectacle he presented was hard to resist.

She looked at her watch. The Sky Lord was due at noon. Less than an hour to go. At her side Martha fidgeted nervously, toying with her tool kit. There was no reason for the chimp to be on the rooftop but she pleaded with Jan to be allowed to stay with her and Jan had relented. Martha, bedraggled from the rain, looked very unhappy indeed and Jan gave her a reassuring rub behind the ears. Martha made a half-hearted sound of appreciation then said, “Martha scared, Mistress. Very scared.”

“Don’t worry,” Jan told her automatically. “There’s no need to be. Everything is going to be all right.”

“The men-chimps say not. The men-chimps say Sky Lord make Minerva no more. Say Sky Warriors come down, kill sisters … rape sisters. …”

“Shush!” cried Jan, shocked. It was the second time she had heard that blasphemous word this morning. “You know it is not permitted to say that word, Martha!”

Martha hung her head. “Sorry, Mistress.”

Jan sighed. “Just don’t do it again.” She still hadn’t recovered from the first occasion she’d heard that blasphemy earlier in the morning, nor from the shattering circumstances surrounding its utterance.

It had been just before dawn when Melissa came home. Jan was in the kitchen toying with her breakfast while at the same time trying to erase the ghastly image of Carla’s remains from her inner eye. What little appetite she’d had vanished completely when she saw the expression on her mother’s face. Melissa looked more exhausted than anyone Jan had ever seen before but at the same time she wore an expression of terrible resolution. It was the sort of look, thought Jan fearfully, that a corpse, brought back to life for some unholy purpose, would wear.

Melissa stared down silently at Jan for several moments then placed a small metal tube on the table in front of her. It was around three inches long and about an inch in diameter. Jan looked at it and then at her mother’s disturbing face. “What’s that?”

“A fire bomb. Helen made it. She made several. She’s very clever,” said Melissa in a dead voice. She picked up the device and showed Jan one end of it. “See this section? You twist it in the direction of the arrow and thirty seconds later it will explode.”

Jan took the cylinder and studied it. She tried to look impressed, as Melissa obviously expected her to be, but couldn’t comprehend what possible use such a small weapon could be against the Sky Lord. She held it out for Melissa to take back but Melissa shook her head.

“That’s yours. You will keep it with you from now on.”

Jan frowned. “But what will I do with it. I mean, do I throw it at the Sky Lord or what?”

Melissa gave a sigh that was more like a shudder. “If things go wrong this day and we lose the battle then that little bomb will be our final chance of achieving vengeance. If you are still alive you will let yourself be captured by the Sky Warriors and taken up to the Sky Lord. Then, at the first opportunity you get, you will place that device in a spot where it will cause the greatest damage to the Sky Lord, preferably next to an area containing the inflammable gas, hydrogen.”

Jan’s mouth dropped open with astonishment as she listened to Melissa’s words. “Mother, you can’t be serious!”

“Of course I’m serious, you little fool!” snapped Melissa, making Jan flinch.

“But I couldn’t do that!” she protested, her mind reeling at the implications of what Melissa had said. “I could never let myself be taken alive by the Sky Warriors! It’s unthinkable! And the idea of going up into the Sky Lord itself. …” She shook her head.

“The choice is not yours,” said Melissa coldly. “I am ordering you to do as I say. If you survive the battle, and I want you to take great pains to ensure that you do, you will surrender. You must, do you understand?”

Jan started to tremble. She looked again at the small cylinder she held in her hand. “It’s ridiculous,” she said in a weak voice. “Even if I were taken up to the Sky Lord how could I hope to destroy it with something as small as this?”

“Hopefully you won’t be alone. I told you, Helen has made several of these bombs. They have been given to selected individuals, of whom you are one.”

“But why me, mother? Why me?” she cried.

“That should be obvious. You are my daughter. If my attempt to destroy the Sky Lord fails today it is crucial that my daughter be involved in our final act of rebellion. You will be avenging not only Minerva but your mother’s honour.”

Jan looked into her mother’s eyes and saw that there was no hope of reasoning with her. But just as despair began to overwhelm her a possible way out occurred to her. “Mother,” she said slowly, “even if I were able to survive the retribution of the Sky Lord if our attack fails today, and even if I were taken up into the Sky Lord as a prisoner, how could I possibly conceal this from the Sky Warriors?” She held up the bomb. “You know how thoroughly the Sky Warriors search our bales of grain before they’re hoisted into the Sky Lord. They would be sure to find this in my clothing.”

A tic had appeared in Melissa’s left cheek. She said, “It won’t be in your clothing, it will be in you.”

“You expect me to swallow this? But—”

“Don’t be obtuse!” snapped Melissa. “A second’s thought will tell you how you will conceal it within you.”

Jan almost dropped the cylinder, but remembering that it was a bomb managed to keep hold of it. A wave of disgust spread through her as she stared at the object, seeing it in a new light. “I couldn’t. …”

“You will, like all the others who have been chosen to try and smuggle these devices on board the Sky Lord. It’s doubtful that the Sky Warriors would think to carry out such an intimate search but let us pray none of them tries to rape you.”

“Mother!” gasped Jan, profoundly shocked at hearing the obscenity of obscenities spoken aloud.

Melissa leaned forward and gripped her shoulders hard. “Jan, you can’t afford to be squeamish. You must face reality. This is war. Things that are better left unsaid, or not even contemplated, in normal times must be faced up to now. You are no longer a child!”

“And you are no longer my mother.” She had said these words without meaning to, but they had come out of her mouth even as they formed within her mind. She was not surprised when Melissa’s hand caught her a stinging blow across the cheek. Tears filled her eyes. She wanted to apologize; to beg her mother’s forgiveness, but now her mouth wouldn’t work at all.

“Go to the bathroom and do as I have instructed, now,” said Melissa in a voice that trembled with either barely suppressed fury or barely controlled pain. Without a word Jan got up from the table and went into the bathroom.

She could feel the bomb now as she stood anxiously on the rooftop of the tavern; it was uncomfortable and heavy, and it made her feel sick. She had been tempted to throw the thing away as soon as Melissa had gone but felt so guilty over what she had said to her mother she couldn’t bring herself to disobey her. Even now, as she watched her mother’s distant figure in front of the dais, she wanted to rush down to her and ask her forgiveness.

Instead she squared her shoulders and turned to face her rocket team, which consisted of Paula, a wall guard, Lisa, who worked in the bakery, and Peter, a man. The latter was still looking very sheepish about the hatchet he was obliged to carry in his belt. Jan had mixed feelings about the weapon; she doubted that Peter would be capable of using it and would therefore be useless if it came to hand to hand fighting, but at the same time the idea that he might be capable of using it profoundly disturbed her.

She gave them what she hoped looked like the calm and confident smile of someone relaxed in their authority and said, “Well, do we all know what we’re supposed to be doing, or shall we have another run-through?”

Paula answered for the others. “I don’t think it’s necessary, Mistress. Besides, it might not be wise to remove the camouflage at this late stage. The Sky Lord might be early.”

Jan winced mentally. The guard was right and had shown her up in front of the others. Yet more proof that she was unsuited for command. If her mother hadn’t been Melissa she’d probably be a weaver or a seamstress instead of walking around in armour pretending to be a warrior.

She nodded benignly at Paula. “I take your point. The Lord Pangloth has always been punctual in the past but you can’t be too careful.” Then she went and made a show of inspecting the rockets in their earthenware launch tubes under the fabric screen, which had been painted to resemble part of the roof when seen from the air. When the signal was given the camouflage would be removed, the wooden frame supporting the launch tubes put into a vertical position and then the fuses would be lit. …

Behind her she heard the hatch in the roof being opened. She turned and saw Alsa emerge on to the roof. “What are you doing here?” she exclaimed in surprise. “You should be at your post.” Jan knew that Alsa’s launching position was near the alcohol-producing plant on the other side of the town.

Alsa smiled at her. The bruise that Jan had seen forming earlier in the morning was now a purple stain that stretched from her right temple to her jaw. “I had to come and see you, little one. To wish you luck, to tell you to be careful.” She embraced Jan and kissed her.

Jan let herself enjoy the comfort of those familiar arms. Alsa had been her first lover and she remained the closest of her friends despite her often patronizing manner towards Jan of late. But then, as their kiss lingered, Jan felt herself losing control. She was in danger of bursting into tears; of clinging to Alsa and begging her not to go. …

Jan disengaged herself from Alsa’s embrace and took a step backwards. She forced herself to smile at her, though she could feel her lower lip trembling. “Be careful yourself, Alsa. And when it’s all over let’s meet downstairs for a drink.”

“It’s a date, little one. But only on condition we have the drink in one of the private rooms. We’ve been apart too long.”

“I’d like that,” Jan said, sincerely. She and Alsa hadn’t been lovers for nearly a year now but suddenly all of Jan’s old sexual feelings towards Alsa had come back with a rush. Her need for Alsa was positively intense. She couldn’t wait for the next few hours to pass and for the moment to arrive when their bodies would be entwined beneath the covers of one of the tavern’s large and cosy beds. But even as she relished this thought, a cold, dispassionate voice, coming from a dark recess of her mind, was saying: “You will never see Alsa again.”

Masking the anguish that this premonition caused her she smiled at Alsa and said, “Until later then. Take care.”

Alsa gave her an affectionate kiss on the cheek. “You take care too, my little one.”

As Jan watched Alsa climb back down through the hatch she couldn’t help wondering if she was also carrying a hard and heavy cylinder of death within her.

It was one minute to twelve. Everyone was looking west towards the range of low hills on the horizon. It was from behind these hills that the Lord Pangloth always appeared but today, because of the low cloud and the showers of rain that were falling on the blight lands between Minerva and the hills, it was difficult even to distinguish their outline.

Jan fiddled nervously with the hilt of her sword as she peered in the direction of the hills. Merciful Mother God, she prayed silently, send us a miracle. Don’t let the Sky Lord appear. Let him be gone forever, struck down by lightning in the storm like that other Sky Lord of years ago. …

Twelve o’clock.

There was still no sign of the Lord Pangloth.

And then Jan felt a strange sensation. The air around her suddenly felt different. It wasn’t like a breeze but more as if the air had abruptly become heavier.

Instinctively, she looked up. “Mother God …” she murmured.

The Lord Pangloth was directly overhead. He was descending through the layer of low, grey cloud. As his vast bulk emerged from the cloud it swirled around him in agitated streamers. Seeing him made Jan feel as insignificant and helpless as when she’d first seen him as a little girl. How can we possibly destroy something that is so big? she asked herself despairingly.

“Mother God, save us. …” That came from Lisa. The others were looking up as well. From neighbouring rooftops came similar exclamations of surprise and fear. Martha huddled herself in a corner of the roof and wailed.

There was something very wrong, thought Jan, as she watched the Lord Pangloth continue to descend. His mile-long body began to fill the sky, blotting out everything else. Why had he changed his traditional way of arrival? Why hadn’t he come from the west as usual? Did he suspect what they planned to do?

As he came ever lower Jan was gripped by an atavistic fear that she’d experienced before on these occasions. It seemed that the Lord Pangloth was going to settle right on top of the town, crushing them and their buildings under his weight. Jan fought to control a growing sense of panic. Martha’s high-pitched keening didn’t help.

The Lord Pangloth stopped descending. He remained suspended some fifteen hundred feet above Minerva, his great eyes staring down. As usual Jan believed they were staring straight at her.

There was a loud hiss, then a crackling sound. Then a voice that boomed like thunder began to speak: “I AM THE LORD PANGLOTH, MASTER OF THE SKIES AND ALL THAT LIES BENEATH MY SHADOW. SEE ME AND TREMBLE! (Click!) You ARE MY SUBJECTS TO DO WITH AS I PLEASE! I COULD DESTROY YOU LIKE THE EARTHWORMS THAT YOU ARE BUT I AM MERCIFUL.(Click!) IN RETURN FOR THE TRIBUTE YOU ARE ABOUT TO OFFER UP TO ME I SHALL SPARE YOUR LIVES. THEREFORE MAKE THE SIGNAL THAT YOU ARE READY TO OFFER UP THAT WHICH IS RIGHTFULLY MINE. (Click! Crackle!) FAIL TO DO SO AND MY RETRIBUTION WILL BE SWIFT AND TERRIBLE … TERRIBLE … TERRIBLE. …” The voice stopped abruptly.

Jan frowned. Lord Pangloth’s ultimatum was the same as usual but the clicks and crackling sounds, as well as the repetition of the last word, were new. These additional changes from the normal pattern of events bothered her as well.

She tore her gaze away from the Sky Lord’s frightening mass and watched Avedon light the fire on the dais that was the signal to the Lord Pangloth that the tribute was ready to be picked up. Her heart began to pound. Not long now.

As the smoke rose from the symbolic pyre she returned her gaze to the Lord Pangloth. She tried to remember what her mother had told her, that first time when she was a little girl: “Don’t be scared, dear. It’s only an airship. A left-over toy from the Age of Man’s Wickedness. It looks big and powerful but there’s hardly anything inside it—just a few men and a lot of gas.”

It’s only an airship. Jan repeated those words to herself. But in vain. The Lord Pangloth may have been only an airship but it was an airship over five thousand feet long and nearly a thousand feet wide. Jan knew its dimensions only too well. And telling herself that its awesome bulk was a kind of illusion—that it was mostly filled with gas—didn’t help. It had when she was a child but no longer.

An airship? No, it was a floating city. A floating fortified city. She could see the barrels of the death machines called cannons protruding from various points of the hull like stubble on a giant’s chin. She could see rows of windows, decks, hatchways—and the barrel-shaped engines, each one the size of a wheat silo, which made a powerful, disturbing hum that was almost like the rumble of distant thunder. How many sky people lived within that monstrous flying machine? No one knew for sure. A thousand, perhaps. Or even two thousand.

The sound from the Lord Pangloth’s engines changed pitch. Jan saw the engines suspended beneath the great stabilizing fins at the rear swivel round on their axis. …

The Sky Lord stopped descending. Jan estimated it was now at an altitude of only six hundred or so feet. Well within the range of the rockets. She glanced down at the dais again. Any moment now.

“Get ready,” she told her team. Her voice sounded like a stranger’s. “Martha, shut up.”

“Here it comes!” cried Lisa. Jan looked up. A large section of the Lord Pangloth’s hull had become detached and was being lowered towards the ground on cables attached to its sides. Jan knew that it was the ‘tribute’ cradle. She also knew that it would contain a squad of armed Sky Warriors whose job it was to search all the bales of grain before they were hoisted upwards. She could see one of them leaning over the rail and looking down. The cradle appeared to be dead on target for the centre of the square even though it was swaying about in a stiff breeze that had sprung up. Jan hoped the wind wouldn’t affect the rockets. It certainly had no apparent affect on the Sky Lord, who hung rock-steady above the town. She guessed its many engines served to compensate for all but the strongest of winds.

The descending cradle was now only about a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. The Sky Warriors, looking like giant crustaceans in their layered, carapace-like black armour, could be plainly seen. Jan glanced anxiously at the dais. What was her mother waiting for? Had she lost her nerve …?

There was a flash on the dais and then something was rising into the air trailing red smoke. For a few seconds Jan just stared at it, her body paralysed, then she managed to turn and scream at her team: “Now! Now!…”

They ripped away the camouflaged cover and hauled the launching frame upright while Jan worked frantically at her flint wheel, trying to get a good spark. “Ready, Mistress!” cried Paula. Just then Jan succeeded in setting light to her taper, to her intense relief. Shielding the flame with her hand she knelt down at the base of the tubes and applied the taper to each fuse in turn. When she was sure all three were spluttering she yelled, “Take cover!”

The others, including Martha, were already huddled behind the wooden barrier at the far end of the roof as Jan skidded round its corner and flung herself flat.

For a few long moments nothing at all, and then came a deafening whoosh!

As the sound faded away Jan, ignoring the sparks that were showering down on the roof, got to her feet and looked up. The air seemed filled with rockets as they rose from every part of Minerva. Hundreds and hundreds of them, and all heading directly for the Sky Lord.

She saw two of the rockets hit the bottom of the cargo cradle. They exploded and suddenly the cradle was on fire.

We’re going to win! she told herself joyfully. We really are!

Chapter Four

They made their final stand at the hospital.

Partly because it was the only sizable building in Minerva still more or less intact but mainly because it was where all the survivors had automatically headed after the bombing.

Strategically, it was an ideal place to stage a last stand, if the word ‘ideal’ could be applied in such circumstances. It was set in its own grounds—one of the few buildings in Minerva to enjoy that luxury—and surrounded by a low wall; both hangovers from the bad old days when quarantines had been necessary.

Altogether there were eighty-six Minervans within the hospital and its grounds. Forty-seven of them were suffering serious injuries and were unable to fight. Of the remaining thirty-nine, all of whom bore injuries of varying degrees of severity, eleven were men who couldn’t be depended upon to fight. That left twenty-eight women, of whom only eighteen were professional warriors. One of the latter was Jan.

She stood at the hospital wall watching the Sky Warriors approach up the avenue. She held a loaded cross-bow. Blood was running down the side of her face from a gash on her head and there were lacerations on her arms and legs. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion that had sent her falling through the roof of the tavern, so she didn’t hear the warning yelled by the woman next to her. It was only when the woman yanked sharply on her elbow that she turned and saw that everyone else had taken cover behind the low wall. Slowly Jan sunk to her knees and rested the cross-bow on top of the wall. Everything seemed unreal. So much had happened during the last hour that her senses had become overloaded. The series of shocks had left her numb and feeling disconnected from what was going on around her. She felt no fear as the front line of advancing Sky Warriors halted and aimed their long-barrelled, single-shot rifles at the Minervan defenders. Jan knew about guns and was well aware of their destructive power but it was only when the woman beside her gave her arm another hard jerk that she lowered her head beneath the wall.

The sharp cracks of the rifles penetrated the buzzing in her ears. Chips of stone exploded from the top of the wall less than a foot away from Jan’s head. Further along the wall she saw a woman clutch at her face with her hands and fall backwards.

“Now!” yelled someone very close by. Jan remembered what she was supposed to do. She raised her head above the wall again and picked up the cross-bow. The Sky Warriors were approaching at a run. Many had attached knives to the ends of their rifles. They were yelling as they came. Jan placed the butt of the crossbow against her shoulder and picked out a target. She waited. The armour worn by the Sky Warriors wasn’t made of metal but it was strong enough to deflect a cross-bow bolt unless it was fired at very close range.

When her target was about twenty feet away she pulled the trigger. The cross-bow twanged and kicked her shoulder and her target was slammed backwards. I’ve just killed another human being for the first time in my life, she told herself but the realization drew no emotional response. Then she saw that her target wasn’t dead after all. He was writhing about on the ground, the feathered end of the bolt protruding from his left shoulder. His blood looked very bright against his black armour.

There were several Sky Warriors on the ground along with Jan’s victim, many of them not moving at all. Their companions were already retreating back down to the avenue. The women behind the wall gave a brief cheer. Someone yelled out something that was obviously a rude comment about the Warriors, though Jan couldn’t make out the words, and a few women actually laughed.

Jan thought that was very strange as she mechanically reloaded her cross-bow. More and more Sky Warriors were pouring into the avenue and she knew there was no hope of stopping their second charge. She looked round for the Sky Lord. It was now some two or three miles to the east of the town, hanging low in the sky like some vast fish. A break in the clouds illuminated the silvery, scale-like objects that covered the upper half of its hull and added to its fish-like appearance. The one great eye she could see at the bow seemed to have an anticipatory gleam within it. She wished she could fire the bolt from her cross-bow all the way to that terrible eye and blind it forever. But even if she had such a powerful weapon she knew the bolt would never reach the Sky Lord, just as none of the rockets had.

After the bombs had fallen and Jan had been in the square trying to find Melissa she had stumbled into Helen, who appeared to be walking aimlessly in circles. She had lost her right arm below the elbow and though someone had tied a tourniquet tightly around her upper arm the stump still dripped blood. She was clearly in shock but that did not prevent Jan from seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her roughly.

“What happened?” cried Jan, then choked as another cloud of thick black smoke came drifting across the square. On all sides the buildings were burning and the heat from the crackling fires came in waves whenever the smoke briefly cleared. When Jan got her breath back she again shook Helen. “What happened, damn you?”

But the only response from Helen was a blank look. Jan let her go and she staggered away into the smoke. Jan gave a sob of frustration. It wasn’t fair. She had to know what had gone wrong when victory had seemed so certain. …

The rockets had behaved perfectly, with the exception of a few that had spun off out of control shortly after take-off. But these few duds, which Helen had calculated for, didn’t matter, for the majority of the rockets were clearly going to hit their target.

And then, when the first of the rockets was less than a hundred feet or so from the hull of the Sky Lord, everything went wrong.

Beams of light—very bright beams of turquoise light—flashed out from numerous points on the Sky Lord’s hull and every one of them made contact with a rocket. That was the really uncanny thing, that every beam of light touched a rocket. What kind of people were they who could aim weapons—for it quickly became clear that the beams of light were weapons—with such unerring accuracy at moving targets? For even as Jan was asking herself this question the rockets exploded. Each and every one of them—instantaneously.

A glowing fire-ball marked the position of each rocket and then she saw burning debris start to fall from the sky. The Sky Lord, meanwhile, had started to ascend. The loading cradle, which was still burning fiercely, was no longer being winched upwards. As she watched she saw a Sky Warrior, enveloped in flames, jump over the side.

“What happened? What were those lights?” asked a stunned voice. It was Paula. The question served to snap Jan out of her paralysis. “Reload the tubes!” she ordered briskly. “Quick, before the Lord Pangloth is out of range.”

As her team hurriedly prepared another three rockets for firing nearby whooshing sounds told Jan that others had reacted more quickly than her. She glanced down towards the dais but there was so much smoke about from the rockets’ exhausts she couldn’t make it out. She wondered what was going through her mother’s mind at this instant.

Something crashed down on to the roof beside her and she jumped back with a cry of pain as her left leg was spattered with sparks. She saw that it was the burning tail section of a rocket. She used it to light her taper then told the others to take cover as she applied the flame to the fuses. …

As she’d feared it was all a waste of time. Again the turquoise beams of light flashed down from the Lord Pangloth and again the rockets, far fewer this time, disappeared into balls of fire too far from their target to do any harm.

The Sky Lord continued to rise. As it did so the burning loading cradle was cut loose—either that or the cables supporting it had burnt through—and it fell, trailing sparks, to earth. Jan watched it crash behind some houses on the other side of the square.

For a time after that, perhaps five minutes, nothing happened. The Sky Lord reached an altitude of about four thousand feet and stopped ascending. Partly obscured by the low cloud it just hung there motionless in the sky, a malign, silent presence.

“What are we going to do now?” asked Paula, a tremor in her voice. Jan had been asking herself the same question. She looked again towards the dais in the square in the hope that somehow her mother would pull a last minute miracle from her sleeve even though she knew that no such miracle existed. Martha emerged from her hiding place under the discarded camouflage screen and wrapped her arms around Jan’s legs. “Mistress, Mistress,” she wailed as she buried her face into Jan’s kilt.

Irritated, Jan tried to pull herself free from the chimp’s powerful grip. She was feeling too frightened herself to spare the time to reassure Martha.

“Look!” It was the man. He was pointing up towards the Sky Lord. Jan looked and saw several small dark objects tumbling downwards. As they got closer she could hear them making a whistling noise. …

When the first of them landed in the square directly in front of the tavern and sent a geyser of smoke and soil high into the air Jan knew that the objects were bombs. She had heard stories about these weapons of the Sky Lord when she was a child—they were the means by which the Sky Lords had subdued the ground dwellers after the Gene Wars—but she had never seen them being used before.

More bombs landed and suddenly the whole universe seemed to Jan to be filled with nothing but noise and blinding lights. She was knocked off her feet by a shock wave. It felt like being hit with a huge, invisible pillow. She lay stunned, on her back, for an indeterminable amount of time before she was able to roll over on to her hands and knees and crawl to the parapet at the front of the roof. Her eyes swam with tears at the sight that greeted her.

Minerva was being murdered. Fires were raging in every part of the town and still the bombs kept falling. She saw a great ball of fire rise up on the other side of town and knew that the alcohol plant had been hit. “Alsa …” she whispered to herself. The square was a mass of craters. Where the dais had been was just a pile of blackened, smoking timber. She had to get down there; she had to find her mother.

“You bloody cowards!” someone shouted behind her. She turned and saw Lisa, the wall guard, standing and brandishing her sword at the dark bulk of the Sky Lord overhead. “Come down, you male bastards! Come down and fight us like women!” Because of what happened next that image—of the muscular, golden-haired warrior making her brave but futile gestures at the monster above them—was imprinted in Jan’s mind. …

She actually saw the bomb hit the roof. It was just a dark blur of movement and then a hole appeared magically in the roof behind Lisa. The bomb didn’t detonate immediately. It must have passed all the way through the tavern until it hit the stone floor of the basement and exploded. Jan saw the rear section of the roof leap into the air then vanish. Lisa vanished too. Then Jan began to fall as her section of the roof collapsed beneath her. As she fell she heard Martha shrieking with terror. She never saw the chimp again, or any of the others who had been with her on the roof.

Her fall was broken by something soft. It was a bed. One of the tavern’s famous large and cosy ones. It might even have been the same one that Alsa and she would have had for their rendezvous that evening—if the day had turned out as Jan hoped it would. Later, when Milo, during one of his many discourses on bizarre topics, told Jan of the concept of alternative universes she often thought afterwards that somewhere, in one of these near-identical worlds, she and Alsa did keep their romantic rendezvous that evening.

She didn’t stay on the bed for very long because it started to tilt as the floor began to give way. She jumped from it and clung to a window ledge. Looking over her shoulder she saw that the whole rear of the tavern no longer existed. It was as if a great blade had come down and cut the building in half.

The bed picked up speed, slid to the edge of the sagging floor and disappeared. She heard it crash into the basement. She looked up and saw she had fallen two floors from the roof. Rubble was continuing to fall through the gaping hole overhead. She had to get out.

She climbed on to the window sill and looked down. The roof of the veranda that extended along the front of the tavern was only feet below her. She lowered herself on to it, then swung down from the guttering until she was standing on the veranda balcony and then jumped the rest of the way. And was immediately knocked over again by the concussion wave of an exploding bomb. She lay at the foot of the veranda, her face pressed into the dirt and hands clamped to her ringing ears, until the bombs ceased to fall. Only when she was certain that the bombing had really stopped did she rise and head across the ruined square to search for her mother. It was here that she encountered the dazed and stumbling Helen.

She never found Melissa’s body. Or if she did she failed to recognize it. There were parts of bodies scattered about but she didn’t have the stomach to examine these too closely. She did, however, find the corpse of Headwoman Avedon. Her face was badly burnt but the fungus on the side of her head was still plainly visible. Better to die this way, Jan reflected, than suffer a slow, painful death from the fungus. At least one of us has got something good from this foul day.

The square was filling up now. People who had nowhere else to go to escape the flames of the burning town. Jan saw Headwoman Anna in the distance and, relieved to see someone she knew well, even if it was her mother’s chief rival, hurried over to her. “Anna!” she called as she ran, not caring about formalities in such grim circumstances.

Anna turned as she heard her name being called. She frowned when she saw it was Jan. As Jan drew close to Anna she was astonished to see the Headwoman draw her sword and rush towards her, intention plain. “Filth!” cried Anna. “Spawn of the mother-devil who has murdered us all. Your mother may be dead but at least I will have the satisfaction of spitting you…!”

Filled with dismay, Jan retreated and drew her own sword just in time to parry Anna’s first vicious swing at her head. “Anna, don’t! I don’t want to fight you!” Jan pleaded but she could see it was no use. Anna’s eyes were wild and frightening. There was no way that Jan could reach her. She parried another blow—so strong it jarred her whole arm—and continued to retreat. She realized she stood a very good chance of being killed by Anna. Her hysterical rage was providing her with unnatural strength.

“They’re dropping more bombs!” screamed someone nearby. This and cries of alarm from other people were enough to make Anna cease her attack and look up. Jan felt momentarily safe to do likewise. The Sky Lord was moving, and as it moved it issued out a cloud of small black objects into the air, like a female frog squirting eggs into the water of a pond. At first Jan thought too that these were more bombs but then she saw strange shapes blossom out above each object which had the effect of slowing down their rate of fall.

And as the objects drew closer to the ground Jan saw that they were Sky Warriors. Hundreds of them.

It had been Jan’s hope that many of the descending Sky Warriors would land in the fires started by the Sky Lord’s bomb and burn to death but they were obviously very skilled at manipulating the black canopies of cloth that billowed out above them. None of the Sky Warriors landed within the town itself but around it, in the space between the edge of the town and the wall. Then they had begun to move in on foot from all sides at once.

“Here they come again!”

A solid wall of black armour was rushing up the wide avenue towards the hospital wall. Jan knew it was hopeless but she still felt no fear. Her only emotion was an unfocused hope that it would all be over soon and that her death would be quick. She aimed her cross-bow again and waited. The black tide advanced. She fired, saw her target fall along with many others but this time the Sky Warriors kept coming. Some were firing their long rifles as they ran. Jan could hear the fizzing noises the bullets made as they hurtled through the air. One of them seemed to pass by her head very closely. There was not going to be enough time to reload the cross-bow so she dropped it and drew her sword and her hatchet, backing away from the wall as she did so. The others were doing the same. The woman on Jan’s right suddenly grunted and fell backwards. Jan could only spare her a quick glance. There was a neat, round hole in her forehead. Jan envied her the quickness of her death.

The Sky Warriors were coming over the wall. It was the closest Jan had ever been to them before. She could even see their eyes behind the narrow slits of their shiny black face masks. They were yelling very loudly as they came. Jan, her hatchet in her left hand and her sword in her right, went to meet them.

Chapter Five

A weight was lifted from her lower body. Then a boot, planted against her left side, rocked her back and forth. She groaned and tried to open her eyes but the lids were crusted shut. The throbbing in her head was more than she could bear and she was terribly thirsty.

“This one’s still alive,” said a voice. A man’s voice.

“Not for much longer by the look of it. Might as well do the earthworm a favour and cut her throat.” Another voice, also male. She groaned again, more loudly this time, and tried to sit up but her body refused to move.

There was a creaking sound and then she felt her chin gripped by gloved fingers and her head was turned roughly from side to side. She waited for the knife blade to slice into the exposed flesh of her throat.

But then the hand released her chin and the fingers began to prod her in her stomach at the base of her breast plate. “Can’t see anything serious. All that blood can’t belong to her,” said the first voice, very close now.

“Probably came from this poor bastard here,” said the second voice. “See, looks like she got him in the armpit with a lucky thrust.”

It wasn’t lucky, thought Jan resentfully through the red haze of pain that filled her head. When the Sky Warrior had raised his arms to brain me with his rifle butt I made a perfectly good lunge.

“So what do you think?” asked the first voice.

“I still say we cut her throat.”

“The orders were to bring back prisoners and so far the pickings have been slim.”

“The orders were to bring back some important prisoners so that the Aristos can punish them personally for their treachery. Does this bitch look important to you? Besides, she’s too young.”

“Well,” said the first voice slowly. “She might be important. Maybe under all that blood she’s an earthworm princess. That armour looks expensive, sort of.”

There was a long pause before the second voice said, “If she’s a princess I’m Lord Pangloth, but I guess we might as well take her. If she’s not important enough for the Aristos to play with we can claim our rights and sell her as a slave.” Gloved hands gripped her wrists and she was hauled roughly to her feet. The violent movement made the pain in her head explode into even greater intensity and she cried out. She still couldn’t open her eyes and, overcome with dizziness, she would have fallen if her invisible captors hadn’t held her upright. Then her wrists were pressed together and she felt rope being tied around them. “Come on!” commanded the second voice and there was a jerk on the rope. Blind, sick with pain and shock, Jan had no will to resist and took her first stumbling steps towards her uncertain fate.

It wasn’t until they reached the square that she was able to open her eyes. It had begun to rain, quite hard, and the cold water had washed away the dried blood that had sealed her eyelids. She found herself looking at the black armoured back of a Sky Warrior. The rope binding her wrists was slung over his shoulder. Beside her, on her right, was another Warrior. He turned his head toward her when she looked at him. “See again, can you?” he asked coldly. She saw blue eyes peering out from the ugly helmet. “Good. A blind slave isn’t worth two cents.”

She tried to answer but her throat was too dry. So she tipped her head back and opened her mouth to the rain. The cold water tasted so wonderful she briefly felt glad to be still alive. Then she glanced about and the crushing despair returned.

Little that was recognizable remained of Minerva. The fires had been extinguished by the rain but they’d had long enough to do their work. What hadn’t been blasted apart by the bombs had subsequently burnt down. She could see Sky Warriors poking about in the ruins, looking for salvageable loot. By the look of the piles of different items in the square they’d already had good fortune. She even saw several grain sacks lying about, which meant they’d found the underground storage bins. Sky Warriors were loading their loot into two loading cradles identical to the one that had earlier been destroyed. Jan guessed that the Sky Lord was directly overhead again but the downpour made it impossible to see. The cables on the loading cradles just seemed to fade into nothingness some fifty feet above the ground.

Jan saw that she was being taken towards a large wicker cage that looked very crudely built. Tied to its top was a single rope that, like the cables on the cradles, vanished upwards into the greyness. There were about twenty people in the cage. As she drew nearer she saw that none of them were relatives or close friends. In fact she recognized only a few of them. If these were truly the only surviving Minervans it meant that everyone she’d ever loved or been close to was dead. Her mother, her father, Alsa, all her friends … even Simon was gone. It was all too much to comprehend. Until now she had only lost one close relative through death and that had been Pola, her older sister, who had been born at the breeding time before Jan’s. Pola had died in a battle with a band of marauders while on guard duty at one of the outer farming areas some six years ago. It had taken Jan a long time to come to terms with Pola’s death. Now she was faced with the death of her whole world.

“What have you got there?” asked a Sky Warrior standing by the cage as her two captors came to halt. The one who was holding the rope began to untie her wrists.

“Not sure, sir,” said the other Warrior, the one she thought of as ‘first voice’ and the slightly more sympathetic of the two. “By the look of her armour we thought she might be a high ranker. Maybe even a princess, sir.”

A third Warrior made a sniggering sound as he stepped nearer for a closer look at her. “The amazons don’t have princesses, soldier. Or rather they didn’t. Liked to pretend they were all very democratic. But they did have a ruling class of sorts. …” Jan saw, as he thrust his helmeted face close to her own, that he was dressed differently to the other two and was obviously an officer. “Well, what about it, amazon?” he demanded. “Were you anyone important in this earthworm town?”

The rain water had eased the dryness in her throat and she was able to answer. “No,” she said hoarsely. “I was just a warrior.” Then she remembered that around her neck she wore the chain and medallion which signified that she was the daughter of a Headwoman. It was hidden under her armour but this officer seemed knowledgeable about customs.

“Just a warrior,” repeated the officer sneeringly. Then he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the side of the cage. “You in there!” he bawled. “Do any of you know who this girl is?”

The Minervans, who were all sitting slumped against the sides of the large cage, looked at Jan. Their faces were grey with shock and fatigue. She saw that more than half of them were men. “Well?” demanded the Sky Warrior.

The occupants of the cage all shook their heads. Jan felt relieved. She still didn’t care whether she lived or died but from what the other two Warriors had said she didn’t care to fall into the hands of the ‘Aristos’, whoever they were. The thought of torture terrified her.

“That’s that then,” muttered the officer, sounding annoyed. “Get that armour off her and stick her in the cage with the rest of the earthworms.” He gave her a shove towards the other two.

They unbuckled her breast plate. A flutter of panic stirred in her lower belly. The officer was certain to spot the medallion around her neck. And as the armour fell free he did.

He stepped close to her and took hold of the medallion in his gauntlet. “Now that’s interesting,” he said. “Looks like solid gold. What’s its significance?”

She swallowed dryly. “It’s … it’s a medal. I won it. For bravery. On the wall. I stopped one of the big lizards getting in. …” As she spoke she felt a wave of self disgust. Lying pathetically to these bastards to save herself. If her mother could hear her. …

She gasped as the officer unexpectedly pulled the medallion from her neck, snapping the chain. He slipped it in a pouch on his belt. “Quite the brave little amazon, aren’t you? And you are little, for an amazon. You’re about the same size as one of their eunuchs.”

“Er, we thought we’d put a claim on her ourselves if no one else wants her,” said ‘second voice’ hesitantly. “See if we can sell her to one of the slave guilds.”

“I see no problem,” said the officer. “Though I’d expect a percentage.”

“Oh, of course, sir,” said ‘second voice’. “Goes without saying, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said the officer dryly. “Now finish with her and rejoin your unit. We’ll be pulling out soon.”

“Yessir.” They made her remove her gloves, boots and weapons belt, then ‘second voice’ ran his hands over her clothes, presumably searching for any hidden weapons. She recoiled at his touch, fearing that this might be a prelude to rape.

The bomb was still there inside her. She could feel it tightly secure within its cloth wrapping. She wished that she had somehow lost it during the battle, or when she was unconscious.

But the search was quickly over and then she was being pushed towards an entrance in the side of the cage that one of the Sky Warriors had opened. She was shoved through it and heard the door swing shut behind her. “Make yourself comfortable with your friends while you can. Very soon you’ll be going on a very interesting ride,” said the officer and laughed.

Thankfully Jan sat down between two of the women. She felt very weak and her head still throbbed with appalling pain. As the officer and the two Warriors walked away, one of the latter carrying her breast plate and other equipment, the woman on her right said, “You’re the daughter of Headwoman Melissa, aren’t you? The one responsible for all this.”

Jan looked at her. She was vaguely familiar but Jan didn’t know her name. For a moment Jan was about to deny being Melissa’s daughter but decided against such a cowardly action. “My mother wasn’t responsible alone. The majority of the Council voted with her on two occasions.”

“All the same, it was her idea to defy the Sky Lord. And look what it’s gained us.” The woman raised a limp hand to indicate the smoking ruins of the town.

Jan sighed. She didn’t have the strength to argue. “Why didn’t you tell the Sky Warrior who I was?”

“I wasn’t sure at first. Now I am.” The woman’s glazed eyes regarded Jan with a cold contempt. Jan remembered the way Anna had looked when she’d attacked her. If it hadn’t been for the distraction afforded by the arrival of the Sky Warriors Anna would have surely killed her. Jan felt the weight of her despair increase even further. Not only was she in the hands of her enemies but she was hated by her own people. She glanced around the cage. Those who had overheard the woman’s words were staring at her with the same contempt, even the men. She closed her eyes. Let them do what they wanted.

It wasn’t fair, she reflected bitterly. It wasn’t fair that she was still alive. By all rights she shouldn’t be. She had been certain that she was going to die in the final battle at the hospital. The defenders had been swiftly overwhelmed and she had suddenly found herself alone in a sea of Sky Warriors. One of them was in front of her, raising the butt of his gun to club her, and she had lunged. After that she couldn’t remember anything. She presumed the butt had hit her as he fell, knocking her unconscious. With his body and blood covering her she’d been taken for dead until the heat of the battle was over and the Sky Warriors had started thinking about prisoners. She wondered what had happened to all the helpless wounded in the hospital, and then shut her mind to what she knew must have occurred. …

After about half an hour the rain eased off. She opened her eyes and looked up. The Sky Lord was still concealed in the grey murk but she sensed it hovered very low above them and she fancied she could hear the hum of its many engines. There were very few Sky Warriors in the square now and only one loading cradle remained. She guessed it wouldn’t be long before they would be leaving. She was puzzled why the cage hadn’t yet been hauled up into the Sky Lord. She looked again at the single rope tied to the top of the cage. It was thick but frayed. She didn’t relish the idea of it having to support twenty-one people, even for the short trip up to the Sky Lord.

A short time later the remaining loading cradle lifted off, carrying with it the rest of the Sky Warriors and their loot. But the cage continued to sit there in the bomb-ravaged square. Jan found this disturbing. What was in store for them?

With a protesting creak the wicker cage finally rose into the air. Jan and the others had to grab quickly for handholds as the cage began to rotate back and forth on the end of the rope which was also making creaking sounds of protest. One of the men cried out in alarm. Jan didn’t blame him.

Very soon they were enveloped in the greyness of the low cloud. Jan couldn’t even see the woman next to her. She clung harder to the wicker bars as the rotating got worse. She felt dizzy and shut her eyes but that didn’t help. As much as she feared having to go on board the Sky Lord she prayed to the Mother God that the journey up to it wouldn’t take much longer.

After what seemed a very long time the cage emerged from the cloud. Jan opened her eyes and looked up. Overhead, as frightening as ever in its sheer immensity, hung the Lord Pangloth. It was some two to three hundred feet above them. The rope attached to the cage looked as substantial as a piece of cotton trailing from the belly of the vast airship. Then Jan realized something that nearly made her void her bowels in terror.

The cage was rising as the Sky Lord continued to rise but it wasn’t being winched upwards. The cage was being allowed just to dangle at the end of the rope. A look down at the receding surface of the cloud layer below the cage confirmed this fear. They were rising rapidly above the cloud but not getting any closer to the Sky Lord.

The others had begun to notice this as well. “What’s wrong?” wailed one woman. “Why aren’t they pulling us up?”

The cage, still spinning back and forth, continued to make its alarming creaking noises. Jan wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole thing fell to pieces around them. The woven floor, through which she could see the clouds below, looked especially insubstantial. She decided to climb a short way up the side of the cage and hook her arms and legs through the gaps of the weave. It wasn’t very comfortable but she felt more secure.

“We’re still not moving!” cried someone. “What are those bastards up to?”

“They’re going to cut the rope! I know it!” cried another, her voice rising in panic. Someone else, a man, began to sob.

Jan had been thinking the same thing. Either that or Sky Warriors intended leaving them down here in the cage until they died of thirst, hunger, exposure or all three. But what had been all that talk of selling her into slavery?

Her teeth were chattering. It was getting colder the higher they went and she, like the others, was soaking wet. Oh well, she told herself, I’m going to get my wish after all. I’m going to die. …

But when, a few minutes later, the woman who had recognized her said: “One of us should climb up there and untie the rope. Better to die at our own hand than at the hands of those male monsters”—Jan had quickly objected. She still wanted to die but not that way. She couldn’t bear to think of the long drop down through the clouds to that final awful impact far below.

The woman sneered at her. “So much for the honour of Melissa’s family. Her daughter is a coward.”

“I’m not! You don’t understand … it is for the honour of Minerva and my mother that I must reach the Sky Lord alive.”

“Oh yes?” said the woman, giving her a sceptical smile. “And why is that?”

Jan already regretted her words but she had no choice but to go on. “My mission is to … destroy the Lord Pangloth.” As soon as she spoke she knew how absurd she sounded. She wasn’t surprised when the woman laughed, as did a few of the others who were within earshot.

“You’re going to destroy the Sky Lord? And how will you achieve that small feat, daughter of Melissa?”

“I … I have the means hidden … on my person. A weapon. Made by Helen. …” She felt foolish. She knew she was saying all this just to stay alive a while longer. She didn’t really think there was any chance of doing even minor damage to the Sky Lord with Helen’s tiny fire-bomb. She never had. Besides, the plan had been for several Minervans carrying such bombs to get on board the Lord Pangloth.

The woman laughed again. “A weapon? What kind of weapon? And where is it? Perhaps it’s a pin hidden in your hair. You plan to use it to let all the gas out of Pangloth? Fool! You are as mad as your mother, girl!”

Before Jan could think of a suitable reply one of the men cried, “We’ve stopped rising!”

Jan saw it was true. The Sky Lord was no longer ascending but was now starting to move forward at increasing speed. Very soon the cage was being buffeted about in a strong wind, making speech impossible. And ahead of the Sky Lord Jan saw something that made her feel certain that the flimsy cage wouldn’t stay tethered to the sky giant for much longer. It was a huge, black thundercloud and the Sky Lord appeared to be heading straight for it.

Chapter Six

The flight through the thunderstorm was the most frightening thing Jan had ever experienced. It was already getting dark as the Sky Lord approached the seething mountain of storm clouds but once inside them everything became pitch black. The buffeting the cage and its occupants suffered was staggering in its intensity. Sometimes the cage was lifted in a violent updraft only to drop with a sudden, sickening lurch. On each occasion Jan was certain the frayed rope had snapped and she screamed.

Then came the appalling thunderclaps followed by the flashes of lightning. To Jan it seemed they were in the very centre of the storm and she expected to be struck by lightning at any second. She had never in her life felt so insignificant and helpless, her arms and legs locked together through the wicker-work of the cage, her eyes screwed shut, prayed and prayed to the Mother God for salvation as she was blown by the winds, drenched by the rain, deafened by the thunder and dazzled by the lightning.

When she had convinced herself that the rope had snapped long ago and that the cage was on its own within the storm clouds to be endlessly tossed about by the winds without ever falling to earth the buffeting suddenly ceased. She opened her eyes to see that the cage was now suspended in clear, still air and she could again hear the powerful whine of the Sky Lord’s engines. She looked up and saw that the vast underbelly of the airship was ablaze with rows of lights. She unlocked her hands and legs from the wicker-work and let herself drop to the floor of the cage. It was freezing and her limbs ached but she was too exhausted to care. She slept.

She awoke in bright sunshine. Through the cage floor she could see that the ground was very close. They were passing over blight land, with its deceptive riot of bright, clashing colour. The tops of the trees and the bigger fungi seemed only feet below her.

She sat up and found that every muscle in her body was stiff and exceedingly painful but the sun on her skin felt wonderful. And she realized she was very hungry. How long since she had eaten? Twenty-four hours at least.

She was hemmed in by sleeping forms, or so it seemed at first, but when she touched a nearby man on the shoulder to wake him up she discovered, with a shock, that he was cold and stiff. Dead.

For a moment she was under the impression that she was the only one left alive but, to her relief, when she shook the shoulder of a woman she found it warm. The woman stirred and groaned, then opened her eyes. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “The mad daughter of Melissa. Leave me alone and let me sleep, fool.” Jan hadn’t recognized the woman as her accuser. The woman’s face seemed to have shrunk during the night. It was gaunt and her eyes were ringed with black. Jan wondered if she looked any better.

“This man,” said Jan hoarsely. “He’s dead.”

The woman raised herself with difficulty into a sitting position and gave the dead man a brief look. “He’s lucky,” she said. “I envy him. He’s with the Mother God now. If he’s led a blameless life she will give him rebirth as a woman and he will be a step nearer to paradise.”

Jan knew this to be true but it made her feel no better about being wedged next to a corpse. She reached over the dead man and tentatively touched the leg of the woman lying alongside him. She recoiled immediately. The woman was dead too.

The cage gave a lurch. Jan gasped and grabbed for a handhold. It lurched again. She looked up. “We’re moving!” she cried. “We’re going up!”

As the cage was hauled up towards the great belly of the Sky Lord several others stirred and sat up in the cage. Jan saw that seven didn’t. She guessed it was the cold that had killed them, or possibly shock. And once again she found herself among the living. Perhaps it was meant to be. Perhaps she did have a mission after all. Was the Mother God keeping her alive in order to carry out Melissa’s instructions? Jan didn’t find the idea reassuring.

The survivors eyed one another fearfully as the bulk of the airship filled the sky above them. Jan could see that they were being drawn up into a square opening in the hull. Her heart thumped painfully as her apprehension increased. What awaited them within the Sky Lord? What new horrors did the servants of the Lord Pangloth have in store for them?

The cage was pulled up through the opening in the hull and Jan saw that they were in a large, darkly-lit room with a high ceiling from which were suspended several pieces of machinery, including the winch that had hauled up the cage. As Jan’s eyes adapted to the dimness she saw that there were a large number of people in the room.

With a sighing sound the opening in the hull slowly closed and then the cage was lowered, with a jarring thump, to the floor. The figures in the shadows converged on the cage and Jan saw that they were all men. Several were dressed in black and carried weapons; they were obviously Sky Warriors without their armour. The others wore baggy one-piece suits of varying colours but all drab. Overcome with fear, Jan couldn’t help trembling. Intellectually she had known that the Sky Warriors were men, but hidden behind their armour and face-masks she was able to keep that awareness repressed; now, however, she had no choice but face up to the knowledge that she was surrounded by men. Men who were not like the men of Minerva but men who were the unchanged descendants of the Old Men—the monsters who had subjugated and brutalized women for thousands of years, who had raped the world with their greed, aggression and evil technology and then finally all but destroyed it with the Gene Wars. All her life she had been taught to fear and revile these creatures and now she was at their mercy.

The Sky Warriors and the other men were regarding the occupants of the cage with a mixture of contempt and amusement. “Yo, Amazons!” called one of them. “Lost your taste for fighting now, have you?”

“Let us out of here and we’ll show you!” called back the woman who was Jan’s accuser. Jan wished that she had possessed the courage to say those words.

Then, from among the Sky Warriors, emerged two people whose appearance was very different from those around them. Jan was also surprised to see that one of them was a woman. The man, who led the way, wore a blood red jacket with sleeves that ballooned out all the way to the wrists. The jacket stopped just below his waist and instead of trousers he was wearing what appeared to be very fine, and very tight, white stockings that showed up the musculature of his legs. Jan was sure that the shape of his sexual organs would have been revealed too if they hadn’t been covered by a prominent red pouch made of hard leather. His black hair hung to his shoulders and his long, arrogant face seemed to be covered with a white powder while his lips were the same colour as his jacket.

The woman looked even more bizarre. She too was dressed in red, but her gown was of a type that Jan had never seen before. It was so tight around her waist that Jan wondered how she could breathe. The unnatural narrowness of her waist served to accentuate her hips and her upper torso, of which Jan could see a great deal thanks to the front of the gown being cut so low that it exposed most of her rather prominent breasts. And to add to Jan’s bemusement she saw that under the gown the woman was wearing some kind of restricting halter that pushed her breasts upwards and together.

Like the man the woman also had her face covered with white powder, and her lips painted red, but her hair, which was blonde, was piled high on her head and kept in place by a number of jewelled pins.

It was only when the man began to speak that Jan managed to tear her eyes away from the apparition that was the woman. “I am Prince Magid, the Lord Pangloth’s High Chamberlain,” he announced in a high, reedy voice. “I am here to inform you of the Lord Pangloth’s decision regarding your fate. For daring to rebel against the just rule of the Sky Lord you have, of course, forfeited all the rights the Lord Pangloth generously graced you with. Your community first broke the prime law of the Sky Lords, by making devices capable of flight when you knew that the sky is the sole domain of the Sky Lords and forever barred to you groundlings. And then you dared use these devices against the Lord Pangloth in a treacherous attempt to destroy your sovereign. That the attempt was doomed to failure in no way diminishes the enormity of your crime.

“The other members of your community have already paid the price—now it is your turn. You have two choices: death or slavery for the rest of your life. What is it to be. You have a minute to make your decision.”

There was silence. Jan turned and looked at the others. Of the original twenty only thirteen remained alive. Nine women and four men. Of the seven who had died during the night five had been men. As Jan expected, her accuser was the first to speak. And Jan knew what she was going to say even as she opened her mouth. “I say we choose death,” she said. “For the honour of Minerva’s memory and for our dead sisters.”

“Yes, let it be death!” agreed another woman loudly. Three other women murmured their agreement with less enthusiasm. The four men looked anxious. “Well, what does the daughter of Melissa say?” demanded the woman coldly as she turned towards Jan.

Jan didn’t know what to do. Her wish to die had vanished when she had awoken that morning to the sun’s kiss on her skin, yet at the same time she dreaded the idea of submitting herself to the men of the Sky Lord for even a minute, much less the rest of her life. And then there was her mission to consider. She doubted she had even a small chance of success but now she felt honour-bound to make the attempt.

“Just as I thought,” said the woman when Jan didn’t reply.

“Your time is up,” said the man in red. Two Sky Warriors stepped forward and unlocked the cage door. Others drew their swords. “Out, and announce your decision.”

Slowly they climbed out of the cage and formed a line in front of it on the shouted orders of the Warriors. Jan cast a brief glance back at the seven pathetic forms lying in the cage.

“Well, what is it to be?” demanded the High Chamberlain with his high, strained voice. It was as if he was not used to talking so loudly. “Those who choose death step forward.”

Jan’s accuser stepped forward without even a moment’s hesitation. Four other women followed after only a brief pause. Then one by one, and with obvious reluctance, the remaining four women joined the others, leaving only Jan and the four men standing in the original line. Jan felt humiliated. She wanted to take that crucial step forward but couldn’t.

Her accuser looked over her shoulder at her. She said nothing but the contempt in her eyes was plain. Jan looked down at the floor.

“So many of you eager to die?” asked the High Chamberlain. He sounded surprised. And from the surrounding Sky Warriors came disappointed mutters. Jan guessed they had a financial interest in the outcome. Yet if the Sky Warriors wanted them as slaves why had they been so careless with their lives in the cage?

“Better death than the ultimate dishonour,” said Jan’s accuser. Jan continued to envy her. If she had said those same words she was sure she would have sounded merely silly. “All we ask is that our deaths be clean and that our bodies are not despoiled by your touch beforehand.”

“Your deaths will be clean,” said the High Chamberlain, irritably. “And you won’t be molested. But what of that one? Why does she not share your irrational desire for destruction?”

Jan looked up and saw he was pointing at her. Jan’s accuser glanced at her and said coldly, “She’s our secret weapon. She is going to destroy all of you and your Sky Lord single handed. At least, that is what she told us. …”

The High Chamberlain, his female companion and all the other sky men laughed and Jan felt her cheeks grow hot. She wanted to die—but she didn’t want to enough, she knew shamefully, to step forward and join the others.

When the laughter subsided the High Chamberlain sighed and said, “Very well, let us end this distasteful matter. Those of you who choose death will get back into the cage.”

Jan avoided the eyes of the nine women as they filed slowly back into the cage. The four men also stood with their heads bowed. Then Jan was pulled to one side by a Sky Warrior. He had a large black beard. Jan had never seen a beard like it before. Minervan men rarely grew beards.

There came a whine of machine from overhead and the cage rose a few feet from the floor. As it swayed on the rope there was a rumble and the opening appeared beneath it again. Jan felt even sicker. She knew what was going to happen. So did those in the cage. Some of them began to pray aloud to the Mother God. Jan shut her eyes.

“Daughter of Melissa!”

She opened her eyes and saw her accuser glaring at her through the bars of the cage. “Daughter of Melissa! Why are you so modest about yourself? I’m sure that your masters would be flattered to know that you are—”

The cage dropped. There was no warning. It just seemed to vanish. Jan guessed that someone had simply hacked through the flayed rope. She swayed dizzily and for a few moments thought she was going to pass out but the feeling passed. Suddenly she found herself face to face with the High Chamberlain. Waves of a very strong and sickly-sweet perfume filled her nostrils, making her want to gag. The woman was close behind him, staring over his shoulder at Jan with intense curiosity.

“What’s your name, girl?” he demanded.

“Jan. Jan Dorvin.”

“What was that woman talking about just then?”

Jan shook her head. “I don’t know. She didn’t like me. She thinks … thought I was a coward.”

The High Chamberlain stroked his small, pointed beard thoughtfully then said, “For your sake you had better be a coward. For that way you will remain alive. Commit any act of disobedience and you will immediately share the fate of your late compatriots. Understand?”

“Yes,” said Jan in almost a whisper.

“Good.” The High Chamberlain then turned to the four Minervan men. “The same applies to you, though from what I know about you eunuchs disobedience is not in your nature. Even so you have been warned. Understand?”

They all nodded. Jan had a feeling of contempt for them which she quickly stifled. She was in no position to accuse others of cowardice. Nor could she be sure they were cowards. She had seen several Minervan men fighting alongside the sisters during yesterday’s battles. They hadn’t fought well, and had been swiftly cut down by the Sky Warriors but they had made the effort and she had respected them for it. At the same time, however, the sight of Minervan men wielding swords had filled her with deep unease … just as she had expected it would.

The High Chamberlain was glancing about enquiringly. “Presumably some of you have claimed slave rights on these survivors? If so, state your claims.”

“I, Gregory Tanith of the Third Battalion, and on behalf of Warrior Martin Sundin, also of the Third Battalion, claim the slave rights on this female Minervan,” said the Sky Warrior with the black beard who was still gripping her by the arm. Jan, surprised, realized he was ‘first voice’.

The High Chamberlain nodded impatiently and said, “Do you have official verification of this claim?”

“I do. Officer Kaplan of the Third Battalion will verify the claim.”

“Very well, the claim is recognized. Who do you intend selling her to?”

“We were thinking of Guild-Master Bannion. He’s had some losses among his glass walkers.”

The High Chamberlain gave an approving nod. “Good. If there is still any fight left in this amazon, working with Bannion’s mob will soon knock it out of her.”

“Oh Basil, it seems a waste to put her among Bannion’s louts. She’s such a pretty creature. Why not buy her for me? I could have her trained to be my maid.” It was the woman, who hadn’t spoken before. She spoke in a very cautious way. To Jan it seemed as if she was trying to imitate a little girl.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the High Chamberlain irritably. “I’m not letting you have an amazon for a maid. Besides, we don’t know yet if she’s carrying any infections. If she is, let Bannion’s scum be the sufferers.”

The woman nodded meekly and said no more. The High Chamberlain then turned his attention to the claimants on the four Minervan men. Jan was distressed to hear that they were being sold to different ‘Guild Masters’, whoever they were. She didn’t want to be separated from the only other surviving Minervans, even if they were men. But suddenly she was being pushed through the crowd by her black-bearded ‘owner’ and all at once she felt very much alone.

She was marched to a wide doorway that had a sign saying DECONTAMINATION above it. In the room beyond a bored-looking man with very pale skin sat at a table. On one side of the table was a pile of clothing. A spark of interest showed in his eyes as he saw Jan. He leered at her. “And what have we here? One of those Minervan amazons?”

“The only one,” said Tanith. “The rest of the women opted for the drop. Apart from her there’s only four of their men left.”

“Wasteful,” said the man at the desk with a disapproving shake of his head. “So who’s she going to?”

“Bannion. Joining one of his hull crews.”

The pale-faced man grinned when he heard this. It was not a pleasant grin. The more she heard about Bannion and his people the more her anxiety increased. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Jan,” she muttered.

“Well, Jan, get your clothes off. Everything.”

It was what she had been dreading. “You’re going to … to—” she forced herself to say the hateful word—“rape me.”

The two men exchanged a glance and laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself, earthworm. Do you think we’re crazy? God knows what vermin you’ve got crawling about inside you,” said the man at the desk scornfully. “My job is to make sure that at least the outside of you is clean. So get your clothes off.”

Slowly and reluctantly Jan removed her kilt, vest and underclothes. Apart from her acute embarrassment she was terrified that they would subject her to an intimate search. She was painfully aware of the bomb inside her. It seemed to have expanded in size.

“Jeez, look at those muscles,” said the desk man as he got to his feet.

“All the amazons are—were—built like this,” said Tanith, trying to sound blasé. “But she’s smaller than average.”

The desk man kept running his eyes up and down her. Jan wanted to do two things—to punch him very hard in the face and to vomit. “Pity to waste this on Bannion’s creeps,” he told Tanith.

“Yeah. Look, I got to get back on duty soon so could you hurry things along?”

“Well, I don’t want to but I will, soldier.” He gave Jan a wink then, taking a stick with a hook on the end of it, picked up her clothes and dumped them into the opening of a chute in the wall beside his desk. He pulled a lever. Jan guessed that her clothes were now fluttering towards the ground. “Go through that doorway, girl—move,” he ordered, pointing at a narrow door at the end of the small room. When Jan hesitated he said, “Go on, you won’t come to any harm. Not in there anyway.” He laughed.

Jan approached the door warily and opened it. It led into a long shower stall. She felt relieved that they had made no attempt to search her. Being thought of as a disease ridden savage had its advantages.

She went and stood under one of the shower nozzles. She looked up at it expectantly and suddenly she was hit in the face with a jet of white liquid that both stung her eyes and smelt horrible. She gasped, rubbing her eyes, and stumbled blindly towards the door. All the nozzles in the stall were obviously spraying out the vile liquid and some of it got into her mouth, making her retch. She reached the door and turned the handle. The door wouldn’t open. She banged on it. “Let me out!” she cried. “Help!” The fumes were getting worse. She was finding it hard to breathe. She sagged, coughing and retching, to her knees.

The hissing from the nozzles died away. Jan looked about with streaming eyes. The white liquid was draining away through grills in the floor but she was covered with the stuff. She got up and tried the door again but it remained locked. The nozzles came to life again and she turned round in alarm but this time it appeared they were spraying out ordinary water.

Experimentally she extended her hand under the nearest stream, then licked it. It tasted musty but it was definitely water. She stepped under the spray and gratefully washed the stinging, and stinking, white liquid from her body. When she had finished the water stopped and the door sprang open.

She walked back into the room. Both of the men were regarding her with malicious amusement. She spat on to the floor, partly to clear her throat of the lingering taste and partly to express her anger. “Bastards,” she said. “You could have warned me. What was that stuff?”

Tanith walked over to her and casually hit her across the face with his gloved hand. The force of the blow knocked her down. “Rule number one,” he said, looking down at her. “You must never be insolent to a Sky Warrior or any Freeman. You can behave however you like with your fellow slaves but if you deliberately insult a Freeman again it will be the drop for you. Understand?”

Jan nodded silently as she clutched her throbbing cheek. Blood trickled from a slit lip. “The white liquid was just a powerful disinfectant,” continued Tanith. “Your skin and eyes will remain sore for a few days but you will suffer no long term ill effects.” He bent down and helped her up.

The desk man approached, still grinning, with a bundle of clothing in his arms. He handed it to Jan. “Put this on.”

She let the clothing fall open and saw that it consisted of one of those baggy, one-piece suits she’d seen earlier. As she climbed into it—marvelling at the strange fastener down the front of it that didn’t feel sticky but joined together like magic—Tanith said to her, “How old are you, Jan?”

“Eighteen.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Is that all? Well, it’s time to see your new world. The place where you’ll be spending your remaining one hundred and eighty-two or so years—if you’re lucky.”

Chapter Seven

It was the smell that made the most powerful impression on Jan initially. Never before had she encountered so many unwashed human bodies in such close proximity. And there were other smells too—all of them bad. She noticed piles of animal dung on the straw matting that made up the surface of the ‘road’ and wondered why the people didn’t bother to gather it up and simply throw it out of the airship.

As she followed Tanith along the road she had to keep reminding herself that she was indeed on the Sky Lord. If it hadn’t been for the low ceiling with its bright-as-day lights she could have been walking through the main thoroughfare of some crowded but incredibly dirty town. There were shop fronts and a variety of other building façades with entrances and windows built into both sides of what she realized was a very wide corridor. And it was also a very long corridor—Jan felt as if she’d been walking along it for hours but knew it was probably only fifteen minutes ago that she and Tanith had emerged from the small, moving room that had carried them up from the decontamination section.

Her first close look at how people lived within the Sky Lord had come as a shock. None of her many imaginings since childhood about what went on inside the vast airship prepared her for the squalor or filth that greeted her when she stepped out in to the ‘street’. Apart from the crowds of people in their drab clothes—some were little more than dirty rags—there were many animals; goats, pigs, chickens and even sheep. There were also numerous children about, to add to her surprise, and of varying ages, which meant that the Sky People didn’t have a fixed breeding time. …

Jan attracted attention along the way, most of it antagonistic. Men, and quite a few women, jeered at her, calling her ‘amazon’, ‘earthworm’, ‘earth-scum’, and worse. At one point an angry man stepped in front of Tanith and demanded by what right he brought a disease-ridden earthworm into the centre of their town. Tanith put his hand meaningfully on the hilt of his sword and told the man to get out of their way. The man did so, but not before spitting at Jan.

A short time later Jan was caught off her emotional balance when a woman stepped up beside her and said to Tanith, “The child looks famished, soldier. May I give her this?” And she extended a large, red apple to Jan. Jan’s stomach immediately started to rumble, though at the same time she was suspicious of the gesture. Was there something wrong with the apple? Was it poisoned?

Tanith gave a shrug. Jan took the apple and mumbled her thanks to the woman. She studied the apple suspiciously but her stomach overruled the misgivings of her head and she bit hungrily into it. It was full of juice and tasted delicious. At that moment she didn’t give a damn if it was poisoned.

She was just finishing the apple when Tanith came to an unexpected halt in front of her and she bumped into his back. He took hold of her wrist and said gruffly, “Through here. …”

They had stopped in front of an open doorway which had a sign above it reading: THE GUILD OF GLASS WALKERS. Jan realized that this might be her last chance to try and escape from Tanith; despite her weakness from lack of food she was confident she was still capable of knocking him unconscious with a quick, surprise blow. The problem was where could she possibly escape to after that?. Swift recapture would be almost certain, and then would come the long drop. …

So she allowed Tanith to push her through the doorway and into a dimly-lit lobby. Two men were lounging on a low bench against a wall while a third sat behind a big desk made of wicker work. All three men were heavily built and dressed in black one-piece suits. Unlike the other sky people Jan had seen so far they were heavily tanned.

The one behind the desk put down the cup he’d been drinking from and said cheerfully, “Is this our new earthworm, Warrior Tanith?”

Tanith gave her a shove forward. “She is indeed.”

The man looked Jan up and down in the same slow way as the man in the quarantine room had. This time, at least, she wasn’t naked but it felt as if his eyes could see right through her clothing and her skin crawled just the same.

“Benny,” said the man. “Take them through to the boss.”

One of the men sitting on the bench got up and beckoned that they should follow him. Jan noticed that his only weapon seemed to be a small club hanging from his wide leather belt. He led them down a short corridor, then through a doorway and into a large room filled with a haze of perfumed smoke. The walls were hung with crude tapestries and large cushions covered most of the floor. Sitting on a pile of these cushions in the centre of the floor was the fattest man Jan had ever seen. To be totally accurate he was the only fat man Jan had ever seen—obesity being unknown among the Minervans. She supposed he must have weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. His one-piece garment, decorated with coloured designs, revealed massive rolls of fat around his stomach, chest and thighs, and his neck was so fat he seemed to have no chin at all.

But he wasn’t the only odd sight in that room. Kneeling behind the fat man on the pile of cushions, and gently massaging the back of his huge neck, was a young girl who, at first glance, appeared to Jan to be entirely naked. However Jan then saw that the girl was wearing a very small loin cloth that was little more than a few strips of leather. Her lack of clothing, and the obsequious expression the girl wore as she kneaded the fat man’s neck, made Jan feel both ashamed for her and disgusted.

“Aha, the amazon!” exclaimed the fat man in his deep voice as Tanith pushed her forward. “And a meaty little item she is too, by the look of her.”

As he leered at her Jan had the horrible thought that he was going to make her undress as well but to her relief he simply chuckled and said to Tanith, “She’ll make a dandy glass walker. Are there any other amazons to be had?”

Tanith explained what had happened. The fat man made sounds of regret then reached under one of the cushions and brought out a small leather bag that jingled metallically when he shook it. “Your agreed price, soldier,” he said and tossed the bag to Tanith. “You may go now.”

Tanith slipped the bag into his belt pouch without checking the contents. “Thank you, Guild Master,” he said then turned and exited quickly from the room. Jan felt a mild regret to see him go. He may have been her captor but he had been a tenuous link with her former life. She stared anxiously at the fat man, who had now picked up a wooden implement from a bowl in front of him and was sucking on it. Smoke poured out of the end, to Jan’s wonder.

“Well, amazon,” he said, “I hope you appreciate your position and don’t intend any displays of disobedience. I trust the consequences of such behaviour have been explained to you?”

She nodded and tried to look meek.

“Good. You look as if you’ll be a valuable worker. I’d hate to lose you too soon. And mind you obey whichever of my male slaves ends up with you. I hear you’ve been trying to keep up any of that Minervan foolishness and I’ll have you whipped. You live in a man’s world now, amazon, where women have no power at all.” He suddenly laughed. “Not that my late wife ever did accept that fact of life.”

The other man laughed too but abruptly stopped when the fat man’s expression grew serious again. “Hmmm, it occurs to me that a spicy little piece of meat like this may cause trouble among the slaves. Benny, when you take her to the quarters you’d better stay awhile and supervise the argument over who gets her. Try and make a decision that will cause the least friction.”

“I understand, boss.”

Jan was wishing now that she had gone back into the cage with the other women. There was no way she was going to become the carnal property of some brutish male slave. She would have no choice but to defend herself, an action which would end, sooner or later, in her death. The sooner she could find a way of setting off her bomb, the better.

The fat man was reaching again into the bowl from which he’d extracted the smoking implement. This time he took out a small metal rod with a star on the end of it. The star was glowing red. He sighed. “I’m afraid there is a slight unpleasantness to attend to before you can be on your way, amazon. Please come here and kneel before me.”

Jan saw at once what he intended to do, though she didn’t know where exactly he intended to do it, and took an instinctive step backward. Immediately a powerful hand closed around the back of her neck and she was stopped from moving any further.

The fat man shook his head, making all the fat beneath his mouth wobble obscenely, then said sadly, “You must never ever disobey me, girl. But as you have just arrived I shall be lenient. Benny, just a quick touch of your razzle stick, if you please.”

Before Jan knew what was happening she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the man apply the tip of what she had thought was a club to her upper right arm. She discovered instantly it was no club. Every nerve cell throughout her entire body seemed to burst into flame. She experienced agony infinitely beyond anything she thought the Mother God would allow to exist in Her universe. She screamed. …

Then the pain was gone and she was on her knees and retching fluid on to the floor. She’d emptied her bladder too, she realized, but nothing mattered now that the terrible pain was gone. And when Benny then dragged her closer to the fat man, who deftly applied the red hot, star-shaped brand to her right cheek, she didn’t even make a sound. She just stared into the empty eyes of the other girl who continued to massage the fat man’s neck even as he applied the brand. Jan no longer felt contempt for her. To avoid being touched again by that black stick she was prepared, at that moment, to take the girl’s place and do exactly the same.

The fat man put the glowing metal rod back into the bowl and said, “You are now marked as a slave. For life. Like her. See.” He indicated the naked girl’s face. For the first time Jan noticed the small black star on her right cheek. She thought it actually looked rather pretty. “You can only enter and move about within those parts of the Sky Lord that are marked with similar black stars,” continued the fat man. “If you are ever discovered outside these designated areas you will immediately be ejected from the Sky Lord. Understand me, amazon?”

She said yes, anxious not to upset him again.

“Good. Benny, you can take her to the slave quarters now.”

As Benny pulled her to her feet the fat man added, “Hopefully, if you turn out to be clean, we can get to know each other much better. Would you like that?”

Jan swallowed and said, “Yes. I would.” The girl, showing her first sign of independent life, frowned at her. The fat man chuckled and made a dismissive gesture with one of his pudgy hands. Jan was hurried out of the room by Benny. She glanced down and saw that the black stick was, thankfully, again hanging from his belt.

He took her into a very narrow corridor that was more like a tunnel. It was badly lit and smelt foul and Jan had to hunch forward to avoid hitting her head on the roof. They hadn’t gone far when Jan saw a large rat ahead of her. It watched them approach with no sign of fear and then, when Jan was only a few feet from it, suddenly vanished into a hole in the floor.

Finally the tunnel widened out and became better illuminated. It ended at a kind of junction with different corridors leading away in different directions and one that led straight down. Coming out of the latter were the sound of raucous male voices and dreadful cooking smells.

“Go on, climb down it,” ordered Benny, indicating the ladder that led down into the tunnel. Jan did so, with Benny following her. After a short distance the ladder emerged from the ceiling of a narrow but very long room. Jan hesitated and looked around at all the faces that were staring up at her. A silence had fallen over the room as she’d made her appearance but then someone, a man, yelled loudly, “Don’t be bashful, darling. Come on down!” Then came a burst of laughter, followed by jeering and catcalls. Jan’s initial reaction was to climb back up again, but when Benny gave her a sharp knock on the top of her head with the heel of his boot she had no choice but to descend the rest of the way.

There was another brief spell of silence when the occupants of the long room saw Benny emerge from the hole in the ceiling after Jan, but as she reached the end of the ladder the jeering and laughter broke out again and she was immediately caught in a press of male bodies. For a moment she thought the room contained only men but then she glimpsed several women on the edge of the throng. From their expressions they were definitely not as happy as the men to see her.

She was relieved when Benny joined her at the base of the ladder and cleared a space around them simply by unhooking the black stick from his belt and pressing a switch in its side. The jeering and laughter subsided again. Then a man called out, “Hey, Benny, who’s your pretty little friend?”

“She’s from that amazon town we flattened yesterday,” Benny told them cheerfully. “And she’s come to join you. …”

There was a roar of laughter that made Jan flinch. Benny held up the black stick for silence. “Now the thing is, you bunch of hull scrubbers, that the boss doesn’t want you fighting over this little amazon. Too many of you have died, or been maimed, in brawls during the last year and he’s not happy about it. You’re valuable to him and he doesn’t like losing his valuables for no good reason. Are you with me?” He looked around.

There were mutters of assent. Benny continued “Right, so let’s do this sensibly. Hands up all of you who think you deserve this little item here.”

A lot of hands shot into the air and there was a great deal of laughter again. Benny scowled. “I haven’t got forever, you idiots, so give me a break.” He pointed the stick at a man almost directly in front of him. “You, Barth! What are you holding your hand up for? I know for a fact you have two women. What do you need another one for?”

Barth, a big man with a spectacular growth of beard, grinned and said, “Why do you think?”

More laughter. Even Benny smiled briefly but the scowl was soon back into position. “Put your hand down, Barth,” he ordered. “And the rest of you who have women, no matter how much you think you deserve a spare, pull your hands down as well.”

Reluctantly and slowly a lot of hands went down. But a lot still remained. It was obvious that the slave quarters contained many more men than women. It was then that Jan noticed a man standing apart from the rest. He was leaning against a wall next to two women who were looking at Jan and muttering to themselves. He had his arms folded and was watching her with studied indifference. She had noticed him because, unlike the other men, he was not only beardless but completely bald as well.

Her attention was wrenched back to her immediate predicament when one of the men stepped forward and grabbed hold of her left buttock, giving it a painful squeeze, “Only checking the goods,” protested the man when Benny waved him away with the pain stick. “Hard to see what she’s like under those overalls. Why not make her take them off, Benny?”

There was a chorus of bellowed agreement from the surrounding men. Benny didn’t look amused. Frowning, he scanned their faces then seemed to come to a decision. He pointed the stick and called out, “Hey, you, Buncher! Come here!”

The throng parted as a huge man stepped forward. He had an unusually long lower jaw and reminded Jan of a chimp in the way he looked and moved. “Yeah, Benny?” he said in a low voice.

“You don’t have a woman any more, do you? Not since what’shername did the long slide a few months back when her safety rope broke. …”

“Ol’ Buncher cut that rope himself,” said someone and laughed.

“I did not!” said Buncher angrily, turning to see who had made the accusation.

“Never mind that!” snapped Benny. “I told you I haven’t got all day to waste in here. Buncher, you want this item?”

There were cries of protest. Benny waved his pain stick meaningfully and said, “You idiots would take forever to settle this so I’m making the decision for you. Buncher gets the amazon. You got any complaints, take them up with the boss.” He turned back to Buncher. “I’m presuming you do want her, Buncher?”

Jan looked at the huge man with a sinking feeling. He was staring at her. His eyes were small and unintelligent. In fact, Jan had seen more intelligence in the eyes of the average chimp. He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I want her.”

“Good,” said Benny. He gave Jan a push towards him. Buncher took hold of her upper arm with one of his large hands and grinned down at her. There was applause, more jeering and several obscene suggestions. “You others leave this happy couple alone,” ordered Benny. “I hear there’s any trouble I’ll be back to give those responsible more than a quick taste of the old razzle stick.” Then he was climbing quickly back up the ladder. Once again Jan felt a sense of abandonment, even though she had feared Benny and his pain stick much more than she had Tanith.

“Come on, we go now,” said the man called Buncher. He propelled her through the laughing crowd and down the long room. She glimpsed a row of what were obviously open ovens. Steaming pots were sitting on most of them but one had a young pig cooking on a spit. Her gorge rose. As she’d always feared, the Sky People were meat-eaters. …

“Back off, you hear!” bellowed Buncher suddenly, swinging round and almost jerking her arm from its socket. He was yelling at the group who were following them. They laughed and called out insults but when Buncher pulled her along again she noticed they stayed where they were.

After a long open section Jan saw that room abruptly narrowed because of a series of makeshift cubicles on both sides constructed out of a variety of materials but mostly consisting of dyed cloth stitched together into patchworks. She guessed that these were individual living quarters and was proved correct when Buncher stopped at one of them and pulled open the blanket that concealed the entrance. “Inside,” he ordered and gave her a shove that sent her sprawling on to the dirty straw matting. A chicken gave a squawk of alarm and ran out past her. Jan looked around. The cubicle was about eight feet by ten. There was a dirty mattress against one wall. The only other large item of furnishing in the place was a large wicker-work trunk with a padlock on its front. The floor was strewn with unwashed food utensils, soiled clothing, bones and other food scraps. The smell was foul.

Buncher let the blanket drop back into place, listened suspiciously for a time for any sound from outside then came and stood over Jan. “You’re pretty. I like you,” he told her in a flat, emotionless voice.

Jan got up. She saw there was a spark of light in his eyes now and knew what it signified. This time there was no way of avoiding the inevitable. “You want to make love to me?” she asked him shakily.

He frowned. “Make love …?” Then his face cleared. “Oh, yeah, yeah, we’re going to make love.” He reached out for her. She stepped back. “What if I said I didn’t want to?”

Now he looked profoundly puzzled. “Eh? I don’t get you ….” He reached for her again. This time she didn’t back away. One of his beefy hands gripped her shoulder, the other began to tug at the opening of her suit. She moved closer to him and brought her right knee up very sharply into his groin. He made a whooshing noise and started to double over, his face twisting up with pain and shock.

As he folded over she rammed her fist into his chest above the heart then pulled free of his now weakened grip. He fell on hands and knees to the floor, wheezing and groaning. She stepped quickly around him, kicked him in the side of the stomach then raised her arm to deliver what she hoped would be a death blow across the back of his exposed neck. But before she could bring the edge of her hand hurtling down towards its target her wrist was suddenly seized by someone behind her.

An amused voice said, “Very impressive but not very smart, little amazon.

Chapter Eight

She turned quickly. It was the bald man she had noticed earlier. He was smiling at her as he continued to grip her by the wrist. Despite her shock and anger at his sudden appearance she was surprised to see that his eyes were of different colours. One was blue, the other green.

She drove her free hand, the fingers out stiff, at his throat. The next thing she knew he was holding her by both wrists. He was only lightly built and not much taller than she, but he was much stronger than he looked.

“Calm down, little amazon, and use your head,” he told her gently. “That way you may get to keep it. Trust me, eh?”

“Trust you?” she hissed contemptuously. “Why should I?”

“Because, for the time being at least, I’m your only hope of staying alive.” He released her left hand. “I’ll let your other hand go if you promise not to try and hit me or do anything silly like running off. All right?”

After a pause she reluctantly nodded. She had, she realized, no choice at the moment. “Good,” he said and released her. He went over to Buncher, who was still on his hands and knees and groaning, and helped him to stand. When Buncher’s pain-racked eyes focused on Jan his face contorted with rage. “I’ll … kill her!” he gasped and tried to rush her but the bald man held him where he was with what seemed little effort. Jan’s first impression was confirmed. He was stronger than he looked.

“Easy, Buncher,” cautioned the bald man as he guided Buncher over to the mattress and sat him down on it. “Kill her and Bannion would be pissed with you.”

Buncher, clutching at his groin, glared at Jan with rage-filled eyes. “Okay, I won’t kill her … I’ll just break all her joints, slowly.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re starting to use your imagination, Buncher,” said the bald man lightly. “But if you give the matter some further thought you will see that the outcome will be the same. A glass walker who can’t walk is no use to Bannion. No, I have a much better solution. Give the amazon to me.”

“What?” Buncher turned and looked at the bald man, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Why?”

“Well, you’re obviously not compatible while I, on the other hand, have had experience with such females in the past. I know how to treat them. Don’t worry, I’ll soon have this one broken, but without having to break her body. She’ll still be able to do her work for Bannion.”

“You try and break me and I’ll kill you,” Jan told the bald man angrily.

“Shut up,” he said without looking at her. “Well, Buncher, what do you say?”

Buncher shook his head. “No way, Milo. Benny gave her to me. And I’m keeping her.”

The man called Milo sighed. “Well, that’s unfortunate, because I’m taking her, Buncher. And I want to take her with your blessing.” He sat down beside him on the dirty mattress and put his arm around the big man’s shoulders. Buncher tried to pull away. He looked alarmed. “None of your tricks, Milo. I know you. …”

Milo smiled sadly at him. “I don’t think so. But don’t worry, Buncher, no tricks. Just tell anyone who asks that the amazon was too much trouble and you gave her to me.”

“No,” said Buncher. He was still trying, and failing, to dislodge the smaller man’s arm from around his shoulders.

“Be reasonable,” said Milo in the same quiet tone of voice. “Do what I say and I’ll owe you a couple of favours. And you know how useful my favours are, don’t you, Buncher? On the other hand …” Milo’s grip tightened. Buncher winced. Jan saw his face go white and then the veins stood out on the sides of his thick neck. “You’re a sorcerer, Milo!” he gasped. “Everyone hates … you. We’ll kill you one day … you’ll see. …”

“How many times has it been tried? My safety rope has been cut three times and I’m still here, aren’t I, Buncher? Even the poison in my food didn’t work, and as for that clumsy attempt by Bronski in the latrine. …” Milo shook his head in mock sorrow. “I wonder whatever did happen to good old Bronski. But enough of nostalgia, back to the matter at hand.” His grip tightened. Jan heard something go snap inside Buncher. He made a high-pitched mewling sound then he nodded frantically. Milo let him go. Buncher shrank away from him and wrapped his long arms about himself as if he was cold.

“Take her, take her …” he muttered, not looking at Milo.

Milo smiled at him, and even Jan felt a shiver of unease as she sensed the wrongness of that smile. Perhaps Buncher was right; maybe this man Milo was a sorcerer.

Milo said, “And you will say, if anyone asks you, Buncher, that you gave me the girl of your own free will?”

“Yeah, I will. I swear it.”

“Good man.” Milo gave him an approving pat on the shoulder. Buncher flinched at his touch, Milo stood up and smiled at Jan. “We can go now.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Jan told him.

“You want to stay here? With him?” Milo indicated the dazed Buncher, who continued to stare at the floor, his arms still wrapped about himself.

“No,” admitted Jan. “But I certainly don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

He sighed, then asked what her name was. She told him. “Well, Jan, be reasonable. You have no choice but to trust me. I’m your only chance of survival. I’ve already saved your life once. If you’d killed Buncher here the others would have torn you into pieces. And I mean that literally.”

“Why do you want to help me?”

“Because you can help me.”

“How?”

“That we can discuss in more private circumstances. Come on.” He held out his hand to her. After a long hesitation she said, “All right, I’ll go with you, but I warn you that if you try to touch me I’ll kill you.”

He smiled at her. “Long-lasting relationships have been established on even less romantic initial understandings.” He seemed to think he’d said something amusing but Jan didn’t get the joke.

His own cubicle was almost at the end of the long room. Compared to Buncher’s hovel it seemed immaculate. It had furniture too. A bed, a small table and a chair; all made of intricate wicker-work. The straw matting on the floor was relatively clean and there was no sign of any food scraps. There was even a painting on one of the ‘walls’. It was suspended from the cane rod that supported the cloth partition. It was a strange painting. It was a swirling jumble of colours that seemed to form a specific pattern but Jan couldn’t distinguish what it was. It was like seeing something out of the corner of your eye.

Milo sat down in the wicker chair, which creaked loudly, and gestured at the bed. She sat down cautiously, keeping her eyes fixed suspiciously on him.

“Relax,” he told her. “I’m not going to spring on you and rip your clothes off.”

“I know you’re not. You’d soon be dead if you tried.” She said this with a conviction she didn’t feel. After what she’d just witnessed in Buncher’s cubicle she knew she would be powerless against him.

He was obviously thinking the same thing because he seemed amused, then he said, “Poor little amazon, you’ve certainly been through the wars by the look of you. That’s a bad gash on your head. And that bruise on your cheek. Who gave you that? It’s fresh, isn’t it?”

She told him about the Sky Warrior punching her. He made a sympathetic sound. “Any other injuries apart from the visible ones?” he asked.

“Just some cuts on my arms and legs but they’ve stopped bleeding.”

“And what about internally? Any pains or other symptoms?”

“My stomach hurts,” she admitted. “It’s been sore ever since I threw up after that man Benny touched me with that pain stick.”

Milo scowled. “He used a razzle stick on you?”

“Yes. It was horrible. How does it work? Is it magic?”

“Of a kind.” He ran one of his hands over the top of his bald head as if brushing back hair. “Look,” he said, “I know quite a lot about medical matters. I could examine you if you like.”

Her guard, which she’d lowered slightly at his display of sympathy for her, immediately went up again. “I told you you’re not going to touch me. Not for any reason.”

“All right, all right,” he said hurriedly, holding up both hands to ward off an invisible blow. “Forget I said it, okay? Let’s change the subject to food and drink. Are you thirsty? When did you last eat anything.”

She was thirsty, and very hungry. Reluctantly she admitted as much to Milo. He went to a wicker chest similar to the one in Buncher’s cubicle and unlocked it. He took out a canteen and tossed it to her. It was half full of water. She drank from it greedily.

“Nothing fresh to eat, I’m afraid,” he told her as he rooted about in the chest. “How about some dried salt beef?”

She put down the canteen. “Is that meat?”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Let me guess. You’re a vegetarian.”

“Of course I am. All Minervans are ….” She paused. For a moment she’d forgotten that Minerva no longer existed.

Again he must have sensed what she was thinking, because he said gently, “I have some biscuits here. They’re quite nourishing. No meat in them.” He tossed over a small package. Her eyes brimming with tears she undid the greasy wrapping and took out one of the biscuits. It was crudely made but tasted fine.

As she was starting on a second biscuit Milo said, “Would it bother you too much to talk about what happened?”

She shook her head. “I’d like to.”

“First tell me something about Minerva. I confess I know little about its more recent manifestations; I’m only familiar with its historical origins. I’m even surprised you still speak basic Americano. I’d have thought you would have evolved your own feminist language by now.”

She frowned at him. Little of what he said made any sense to her. In the months to come she would find this a very familiar situation. “Minerva’s historical origins …? What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know how Minerva started?”

“Of course. After the Mother God punished the Old Men for ruining the earth she set up Minerva so that women could be truly free.”

Milo looked at her then said quietly, “Jesus Christ.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you another time. Look, didn’t you have any history books in that town of yours?”

“Books?” she said blankly.

He sighed. “Yeah, some hope. The fungus would have destroyed all the paper ages ago. But what about other records? Electronic stuff. Computers. You have any computers down there?”

“I don’t know what a computer is but we didn’t have any of Man’s evil devices down there.”

“So you don’t know anything about anything.” He shook his head in wonder. “My God, you’re even more innocent than you look.”

She wasn’t sure but she felt she’d just been insulted. “So how do you think Minerva began?” she asked him huffily.

“I don’t think, I know. It was a state in old America. Or rather it was one of the main states that old America broke up into in the period leading up to the Gene Wars. You have heard of the Gene Wars, I trust?”

“Of course I have.”

“But you’ve never heard of the United States of America?”

She admitted she hadn’t.

“America,” he began to explain, “was once a great empire. With another huge empire, the Soviet Union, it formed a powerful alliance—the Soviet-American Alliance—which practically ruled the entire world for over fifty years in the twenty-first century.” He paused and looked at her. “Do you understand any of this?”

“No,” she said truthfully.

He sighed but continued anyway. “Well, the Alliance finally ended and the two empires began to break up into a number of autonomous states. Minerva was one of them and it was quite big. Within Minerva was a smaller state that was exclusively female but Minerva at large permitted male citizens. However, men could only become citizens if they agreed to certain conditions—they had to agree to undergo a complete genetic modification of their bodies and brains. This genetic ‘rewiring’ had the effect of softening, not to mention eradicating entirely, certain unwelcome masculine traits. One of the changes they underwent was that they became smaller, while at the same time Minervan females were modified to grow larger. Thus at a stroke the natural physical superiority of the human male—and the prime cause of the traditional exploitation and subjugation of women by men throughout history—was el—” He stopped.

Jan was yawning.

Milo said, “You’re not interested in the origin of Minerva?”

“That’s not how Minerva began. You’re talking nonsense.”

“Talk of the Mother God setting up Minerva Herself isn’t nonsense as far as you’re concerned?” he asked, with amusement.

“No, of course it isn’t.”

“If that’s the case—that the Mother God established Minerva so women could be truly free—how do you explain this?” He gestured at their surroundings. “For hundreds of years Minerva, along with all the other ground communities throughout the world, has been under the thumb of the Sky Lords. That’s not what I call freedom. Your goddess seems to have short-changed you.”

“She’s not our goddess,” protested Jan, annoyed. “She’s the one, true Mother God, creator of everything. And she didn’t give absolute freedom to Minerva—she left the Sky Lords as a symbol of Man’s evil so that we would never be complacent about its danger.”

“Some symbol,” murmured Milo. “It pulverized your town into the dirt yesterday.”

She winced. “You don’t have to remind me.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m just trying to make my point. Your Mother God seems to have gone to unnecessary extremes to make her point about Man’s evil. I presume not many of you survived.”

Jan bowed her head. “No,” she said in a subdued voice. “I’m the only one. The only woman, that is. There are four Minervan men on board as well. …” She covered her face with her hands and began to cry.

Milo waited patiently while she cried for a time, then said, “You don’t know for sure you’re the only female survivor from your town. The Sky Warriors aren’t infallible. They more than likely missed quite a few when they were searching the ruins.”

She took her hands away and stared at him. “You really think so?” she asked hopefully.

“I believe there’s a very good chance of it. And there’s something else for you to keep in mind—your Minerva wasn’t the only one of its kind.”

She stared at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you know? There’s more than one Minerva. I know of at least one other town almost the same size as yours which is within the jurisdiction of the Lord Pangloth. It’s also called Minerva and lies less than a quarter of a day’s flying time to the east of here. And I have heard there are other such Minervan communities.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled at her expression of astonishment. “So you see, you’re not as alone as you thought you were.”

Chapter Nine

The communal latrine was as bad as Milo had warned her it would be. A long, foul-smelling place with rows of dirty sinks, urinals and sit-down toilets in cubicles without doors. Fortunately, there was only one other person in there as she entered, a woman who was just leaving one of the cubicles. She gave Jan an unreadable look as she hurried past her.

When she had gone Jan stepped into a cubicle. She was nervous and hoped Milo would be as good as his word and stay by the entrance to the latrine. She’d told him she didn’t want any man to see her naked—which was true—but the other reason was that she intended to remove the incendiary bomb. She just couldn’t carry the thing inside her any longer. It had become much too uncomfortable.

She quickly climbed out of the one-piece baggy suit and, feeling exposed and vulnerable, extracted the bomb. Then, sitting on the bowl to evacuate her bowels, she unwrapped the cloth from the bomb and examined it. When it was inside her it had felt huge but now, resting in the palm of her hand, it seemed ridiculously small for the task it was supposed to achieve. She sighed and put it in one of her suit’s many pockets.

Despite her anxiety about her immediate fate on the Sky Lord she was feeling in better spirits now. The revelation from Milo about the other Minervas had changed everything. At first she couldn’t bring herself to believe him. It seemed impossible that no one in her Minerva knew about these other Minervan communities but Milo was convincing in his explanation. “I told you that originally Minerva covered a very large area. As the blight began spreading across the country the state of Minerva, like all the other states, became fragmented with the various parts becoming isolated from each other. As you Minervans didn’t believe in using such ‘evil’ devices as radios I imagine communication ceased between your different communities ages ago.”

The thought that somewhere there existed another Minerva, even though it was full of strangers, made all the difference. Somehow she would get there … some day. But first she had to perform the simple task of destroying the Lord Pangloth, not to mention trying to stay alive long enough to make the attempt.

Beside the toilet there was a worn looking lever protruding from the floor. When she was finished she pulled it, presuming it worked the flush. But there was no flush; instead there was a hiss of air from the bowl. The lever, she realized, operated some kind of air pump that sucked out the waste matter and no doubt ejected it from the Sky Lord to be deposited on the ground below.

She dressed hurriedly and emerged from the cubicle. The latrine was still empty. She went to one of the filthy sinks and turned on its tap. Only a trickle of brown water appeared. Milo had told her that water was scarce on the airship and strictly rationed. This water was for washing with only. She yearned to take another shower—as Tanith had warned her the white liquid had made her skin itch and feel uncomfortable—but had to be satisfied with just washing her hands and face.

As she headed back towards the latrine’s entrance she heard the sound of raised voices. In the passageway outside she found Milo facing three men. They looked angry but she noticed they kept their distance from him.

“… You heard Benny’s order, Milo!” one of them was saying. “The amazon was to go to Buncher. What are you doing with her?”

“I told you,” said Milo in his usual calm voice. “Buncher said I could have her. He changed his mind. I guess he’s scared of picking up an infection.”

“Balls!” cried another man. “You forced him to hand her over, admit it!”

“Why don’t you go ask Buncher if you don’t believe me?”

“We already have. He said the same as you.”

“Well, there’s no problem then.”

“Something’s wrong with him, Milo. He doesn’t look good. We reckon you hurt him.”

“Me? Hurt Buncher?” Milo laughed. “Nonsense.”

“We know how you operate, Milo. You’re going to have to give her back to him.”

Milo folded his arms. “No. She’s staying with me. And if anyone tries to take her from me I’m going to be very displeased. And we wouldn’t want that, would we, lads?”

Each of the three men was bigger than Milo but none of them made a move towards him. There was a long, tense silence then one of them said angrily, “Sooner or later we’re going to get you, Milo. Your luck can’t hold and you know it. And then she goes back to Buncher.” He pointed at Jan. “And when he’s finished with her the rest of us will have some fun with her. We’re not having an amazon around here who hasn’t been taught her place.”

“You can leave the lady’s education in my capable hands,” said Milo. “And now if this stimulating social exchange is over we’ll be on our way. Come on, Jan.”

For a few moments the three men didn’t move then, as one, they abruptly turned and left the short corridor. “They’re scared of you,” Jan told Milo quietly as they followed the three men back into the main room.

“They’re superstitious,” he said. “Just ignorant fools. Most of the slaves here were originally marauders. Having had enough of the struggle for life in the blight lands they signalled the Lord Pangloth that they wanted to come aboard, even though they knew it meant slavery.”

They returned to his cubicle. Jan could now hear sounds from the adjoining cubicles through the thin partitions. The speakers seemed to be deliberately keeping their voices low.

Again Milo motioned for her to sit on the bed while he took the chair. “You look better,” he told her approvingly.

“I feel better, thanks to you,” she replied, her tone guarded. Suddenly the bed tilted slightly and she had to grab hold of its edge to keep her balance. “What’s happening?” she asked, alarmed.

“It’s all right, just a change of course,” he assured her.

The floor levelled out again. Jan relaxed. “It’s incredible. Until then I’d hardly felt anything. I have to keep reminding myself that we’re in the air. …”

“Most of the time the Sky Lord is a smooth ride, even in fairly turbulent conditions. Of course, when someone makes the stupid decision to fly it straight through the centre of a thunderstorm, as happened last night, it can get pretty rough.”

“That was terrible,” she said, shuddering at the memory.

“And it was all for your benefit,” he told her. “You and your fellow Minervans, that is. The aristos were putting on a show to knock whatever stuffing you still had left in you well and truly out. However, they have more faith in the Sky Lord’s anti-lightning system than I have. And I’ve heard the buffeting caused damage all over the ship. They won’t do that again in a hurry. But you Minervans gave them a hell of a fright with your rockets yesterday so I guess their over-reaction is understandable.”

“Our rockets,” said Jan bitterly. “A lot of good they were.”

“It was an admirable effort and it almost worked. Though I would have had mixed feelings about the outcome if it had,” he added dryly.

“But it didn’t work. Those beams of light destroyed every single rocket. We didn’t have a chance.”

“You weren’t to know of the existence of the Sky Lord’s automatic laser defence system. In fact it came as a big relief to a lot of people on board that it still worked. It’s been years since it was last activated.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“The beams of light are called lasers. They’re a special form of light that doesn’t exist naturally. They make good weapons. The Sky Lord’s are under the control of a computer—a mechanical brain, let’s say—which uses them to shoot down anything approaching the Sky Lord that the computer decides presents a danger.”

Jan struggled to understand what Milo was saying. The idea of a ‘mechanical brain’ seemed especially far-fetched, as did the notion that light could be used as a weapon. But she had seen for herself the rockets being destroyed by the turquoise beams. “But if the Sky Lord has such terrible power,” she said slowly, “why didn’t he use it to destroy Minerva? Why drop those bombs on us instead?”

“Like I said, the system is automatic. It’s not under the control of the aristos, as much as they’d like it to be. The computer that operates it is sealed off and hidden somewhere. It’s separate from all the other computer systems—those that are still working, that is—and if the technos in the original group who took over this airship never succeed in getting into it then this lot of technological regressives don’t stand a chance.”

Jan stared at him blankly.

He took a deep breath. “Okay, let me put it this way—the beams of light are purely defensive weapons that operate independently of the Aristos. Also the beams only work against inanimate objects—non-living things like missiles or other projectiles. They wouldn’t destroy a bird, much less a human being.”

“Why would the Sky Lord behave so mercifully in this respect and so cruelly in all others?” she asked, totally baffled.

“Because, my innocent little amazon, in their original form the Sky Lords performed a very different service for mankind … and womankind too,” he added hastily. “In fact they used to be called Sky Angels, partly because of the nature of their work and also because of their origin in the heavens.”

“The heavens?”

Milo pointed towards the low, grey ceiling. “The heavens. Outer space, to be exact. They were built in a giant orbiting space factory nearly a thousand miles above the earth’s surface.”

Jan gave him a suspicious look. Was he making fun of her or did he really believe in these fairy stories he was telling her? “How would anyone have managed to build a factory so high in the sky, and what would have prevented it from falling to the ground?”

Milo rolled his eyes in an exaggerated mime of exasperation. “I don’t have the time to educate you in the basic laws of nature right now. You’re going to have to take my word that in the old days we had the means of getting into outer space. In bigger versions of those rockets you fired at us yesterday. And you’ll also have to take my word on the fact that if you go up high enough you no longer feel the pull of gravity. It was the lack of gravity that led to the Sky Angels being constructed in outer space. The special alloys and materials that go to make up the airship’s skeleton and outer skin could only be manufactured in weightless conditions. They are incredibly strong but ultra-light.”

“I see,” said Jan, nodding.

Milo chuckled and said, “Do you? I doubt it. You Minervans have been living in your cosy cocoon of ignorance for centuries. And I’ll tell you something else that you will find fantastic. We not only had factories in space but cities too. In orbit around the Earth and also on the moon and Mars.”

“I’m beginning to think you’ve been drinking some very strong beer today.”

He laughed again. “Well now, so you know about beer. I’m glad to hear you amazons have one vice at least. Did much beer-drinking go on in Minerva?”

“Quite a lot,” she admitted. “Though when the grain supplies grew short we had to stop brewing it. There wasn’t much left in storage by yesterday and rationing had been imposed. We did have an alcohol-manufacturing plant but it didn’t make the kind you can drink. We used it for fuel. For cooking and heating and so on.”

“Propanol, was it? Or butanol?”

She shrugged. “We just called it alcohol. It came out of these big vats in the plant. They were filled with brown stuff that was alive. You fed in anything—like leaves, grass, food scraps or whatever—and this stuff would turn it into alcohol.”

Milo nodded. “Yes, I know what that was. A genetically engineered synthetic bacterium designed to convert organic matter into either propanol or butanol. Pity genetic engineering is a lost art these days. A bit of tinkering with a few of those bacteria and you could have had a vat that produced ethyl alcohol as well. The kind you can drink.”

Jan was shocked. “You think we would have committed the blasphemy of doing such a thing, even if it was still possible?”

“I don’t see why not. You were already taking advantage of ‘evil’ science by continuing to use your production plant all these years.”

“But I’m sure no one knew in Minerva that the plant was the work of genegineers … ” protested Jan.

“Originally, someone must have known it was.”

“No Minervan would ever deliberately make use of anything that had been produced by the genegineers—those men were more responsible than anyone for turning the world into what it is today.”

“What hypocrisy!” laughed Milo. “For one thing a lot of those genegineers were women. And Minerva used genetic engineering extensively in its early years, the results of which are still around. Look at your Minervan men … look at yourself for that matter.”

“Myself?”

“You’re what used to be called a Prime Standard according to the United Nations Genetic Ruling of 2062. That gives you a lot of advantages over all the previous generations of humanity. For one thing you have a life-span of two hundred plus years, and you’ll never get any older physically than thirty-five—and you won’t even reach that age for at least another forty years. You’ll thus be spared all the horrors of old age while your eventual death, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be quick and painless.

“You also have a phenomenal immune system,” Milo continued. “You are immune to all conventional infections and to the diseases, such as cancer, that plagued humanity for so long. Admittedly you are vulnerable to most of the more insidious designer viruses unleashed during the latter stages of the Gene Wars, and to some of the mutated species of fungi that are spreading at the moment, but those are handicaps you share with all the Prime Standards and overall you’re very fortunate. You have incredible powers of recovery—your bones knit very quickly when broken and your central nervous system has the power to regenerate. Injuries that could paralyse a pre-Prime Standard type for life you are capable of shrugging off in a matter of weeks. And on top of that you don’t menstruate, except at twenty-year intervals, if you don’t become pregnant during your period of fertility.”

Jan’s mind was reeling. “I don’t—what?”

“Menstruate,” said Milo, smiling at her confusion. “In pre-Prime Standard times women menstruated every month from puberty to the menopause.” When he saw she wasn’t understanding what he said he paused. “What did they teach you back in Minerva? About your body, I mean?”

“I was taught to harmonize with my body,” she told him. “By meditating and letting the spirit of the Mother God flow. …”

“No, no,” he said quickly, interrupting her. “I mean were you taught about how your body works?”

“Yes. Of course I was.”

“You know about your reproductive system, then? That when you’re born you’re carrying eggs inside you?”

Jan nodded that she did.

“Do you know how many eggs.”

“A hundred or so, I think.”

“Correct. But in pre-Prime Standard days a female child was born carrying half a million eggs in her ovaries.”

“Oh, really …” she said, disbelievingly.

“It’s true. And when a pre-Prime Standard girl reached puberty, which in those days meant the age when her reproductive system had become functional—an egg was then released every month into her uterus to be fertilized. If the egg wasn’t fertilized within two weeks it was ejected from the uterus along with the lining. This was called menstruation, and though it affected women differently most found it an unpleasant experience. Apart from the bleeding involved it could also be painful, as well as emotionally upsetting. Hormones were the culprit, as usual. When the egg was in the uterus hormonal changes caused an alteration in the surface of the uterus in preparation for the fertilization of the egg. These drastic hormonal changes were the cause of all the discomfort that women suffered.”

“I can’t believe any of this. The Mother God wouldn’t have let women suffer so much.”

“Your Mother God wasn’t around in those days,” Milo said drily. “God the Father was running the show and he evidently had it in for women.”

“The Mother God has always existed, and always will,” Jan told him firmly.

“Whatever you say. Anyway, when the genengineers around the middle of the twenty-first century finally solved the problem of how to switch off the molecular timer that caused the cellular self-destruction known as the ageing process it meant immortality was within reach at last. But, of course, if all humanity became immortal the Earth’s resources would have been rapidly depleted so it was decided to impose a limit on just how long anyone could be genetically re-programmed to live. The debate went on a long time before the United Nations finally imposed the two hundred year plus law. In those days the United Nations still had weight, because it was backed by the Soviet-American Alliance.”

“What was the United Nations?” she asked.

He waved an impatient hand. “Another time. The point was that if people were going to be allowed to live a two hundred year plus life-span they couldn’t be allowed to breed as freely as before because, once again, the world’s resources would be endangered. So it was also decreed by the United Nations that women could only become fertile for one year in every twenty.”

Jan frowned at him. “Are you saying that before that time women were fertile continuously?” she asked in amazement.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. And these two decrees by the United Nations not only changed women’s reproductive systems but the world itself.”

“How come?”

“Because of all the opposition to the decrees. Much of it came from religious fundamentalists … The Islamic nations were dead set against the whole idea of genetic meddling with the human body. It was, they said, against the law of Allah. …”

“Allah?” asked Jan.

“Another very masculine God. You wouldn’t have liked Him. Anyway, it wasn’t just the Islamic nations, there was fierce opposition from the Western religious fundamentalists as well, Catholic and Protestant—and don’t ask me what they were; it would take too long to explain. Just take my word for it that the whole argument got pretty bloody.

“You see, when the United Nations made the two hundred year plus decree they decreed at the same time that every individual in the world, provided they weren’t too old to be genetically modified, was entitled by international law to have their life-span thus expanded. So you can imagine the result—people living in a country that had vetoed the longevity treatment for religious reasons were understandably tempted to move to a country where it was allowed. Well, all hell broke loose, and when the dust finally settled all the maps of the world had to be redrawn. Most of the bigger nations, including the Soviet Union and America, had fragmented into a number of new, autonomous states, such as your Minerva.”

“You make it all sound so convincing,” said Jan wonderingly.

“It’s convincing because it’s true,” he told her. “Minerva owes its existence to genetic engineering despite whatever myths about its origin you’ve been fed. And Minerva’s inhabitants weren’t just satisfied with the Prime Standard model—they added all the modifications that they could under the then still-existing international laws. The early feminists, for reasons of dogma, were loath to acknowledge that most of the psychological differences between men and women were genetically inspired. The idea smacked too much of ‘biological determinism’, a very politically unpopular concept at the time.

“However, by the end of the twentieth century research into the working of the human brain had proved that biological determinism was a much stronger force in human affairs than anyone had previously wanted to accept. And, of course, the feminists took full advantage of these discoveries when they came to set up Minerva decades later. …”

Jan shook her head. “I’m sorry. You’ve lost me completely now. I can’t even understand half the words you’re using. What, for example, were these feminists you keep mentioning?”

To her annoyance this question amused him greatly. He threw back his head and laughed so loudly he provoked angry muttering from the surrounding cubicles.

Finally he said, “Very well, we’ll leave it for the time being. I shall continue your belated education in the history of our unfortunate planet at a later date. Now let’s talk about something else—the price for my on-going protection and support.”

“Price?” she asked, puzzled.

“Yes, price, my little amazon. I told you before we would make a deal. In return for my help you will help me. By giving me something I need.”

“But I don’t have anything to give you.”

“On the contrary. You have yourself,” Milo said and smiled at her in the same way that he’d smiled at Buncher.

Chapter Ten

“You’re saying that you’ll only continue helping me if I agree to have sex with you?” Jan asked angrily. She felt shocked and betrayed. After all his apparent sympathy for her she had begun to trust him.

He shrugged. “You have to be realistic, Jan. You can’t get something for nothing in this world. Especially in this world up here. And as much as I feel sorry for you I am not, by nature, an altruist. Now I find you very attractive and charming and I feel that, despite your appalling ignorance, you might make a stimulating companion. To be frank, I need a woman. But I am fastidious in such matters and, as you have already seen, the women in this floating zoo leave much to be desired.” He sighed and continued, “Since being captured three years ago I have had only a few brief and unsatisfactory couplings. I need something more and I believe you can provide it for me.”

She had shrunk back on the bed. “You intend to have sex with me even though I don’t want to,” she accused him.

“That’s putting it rather bluntly, but, well, yes. …”

“That’s rape.”

“No, no, not at all,” he protested. “I’m not going to force you to make love to me. It won’t be rape.”

“What do you call it then? You’re saying you’ll hand me over to the rest of the animals in here if I don’t allow you to penetrate me. That’s rape as far as I’m concerned.”

He regarded her coolly. “I assure you there’s more to my love-making than mere penetration, young woman. But again I stress I will not be taking you by force.”

“Just because you won’t be using physical force doesn’t make it any less a case of rape,” she told him.

He ran his hand over his scalp and said, “Look, think of it merely as a business proposition. You have to do something you don’t want to do in order to get something you need.”

“I see. I let you rape me and you let me live. Is that what you call a business proposition?”

He looked annoyed. “I’m not going to rape you and, yes, selling your body is a business proposition. It’s called prostitution and it’s one of the oldest businesses in the world. Women—and men—have been selling their bodies for money or food or other favours for time immemorial.”

“If someone doesn’t want to have sex with someone else but is obliged to do so for reasons of survival then that’s rape,” she said firmly.

“No, you’re being too pedantic,” he told her. “Take, for example, a woman who wants a more comfortable way of life and who therefore sleeps with a man in order to attain it even though she feels no sexual attraction towards him—that’s not rape, is it?”

Jan frowned. “Perhaps not, but I said ‘for reasons of survival’ and that’s not the same as your example. A woman obliged to sell her body just to stay alive is being raped by the men who take advantage of her situation, no matter how much money or food they may give her. They are rapists, pure and simple.”

“I don’t think …” he said, and faltered.

“What you’re offering me is the survival proposition,” she said quickly, pressing home her advantage, “sex or death. In other words, rape.”

He glared at her. “Enough of your Minervan dogma,” he said irritably. “What we have here is a problem of semantics and further argument is futile. I will give you my ultimatum. You have exactly a week to decide whether or not to accept my proposition. If you agree to it you will give yourself to me willingly with no talk of rape or any other Minervan nonsense. If at the end of the week you do not accept my proposition I will withdraw my protection and you will be on your own here. And you know what that will mean. Do you accept the terms?”

Jan was silent for a time, then she said, “I have a week to make my decision?”

“Yes. I guarantee it.”

“Very well. I’ll tell you in a week.” She leaned back against the flimsy wall and folded her arms. He seemed to relax. “Good,” he said and smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.

She had made her decision and felt relieved about it. Before the week was up she would have placed the fire bomb where it would do the most damage and blown the Sky Lord out of the sky.

After her apparent acquiescence to his sexual blackmail Milo once again became sympathetic and, superficially at least, charming. He offered her another biscuit, saying that they would eat something more substantial after they had slept. Then he took the thin mattress off the wicker-work bed and laid it out on the floor. “You can sleep on that. It will be more comfortable than the bed.”

She thanked him and stretched out on it. She felt exhausted but at the same time not really sleepy. She realized that the idea of going to sleep scared her. She was afraid of what she might dream.

He stood over her, looking down. He said, “You can remove your garment if you wish. I won’t bother you. I gave you my word.”

“I’ll keep it on.”

He shrugged and undid the fastener on his own pair of baggy overalls. As he stepped out of them she gave his body only a brief, mildly curious glance before rolling over on her side and closing her eyes. It had been an unremarkable body, as male bodies went. Completely hairless, true, but then Minervan men had very little body hair as well. His sexual organs seemed normal, though she was well aware that her familiarity with male sexual organs rested on her one experience with Simon. The only odd thing about Milo’s body was that it didn’t look very powerful. Certainly hot powerful enough to have done what she had seen him do to the heavily-built Buncher.

She heard the bed creak as Milo lay upon it. Through the thin walls she could still hear the murmuring of voices. Somewhere, a long way off, a woman sobbed. She wondered if the lights were ever turned down or off. She could see the glow through her closed eyelids.

The glow from the ceiling lights turned red. She saw leaping flames as Minerva again burned. She heard screams, heard the sounds of the bombs, saw Helen again, dazed and staggering while she clutched an arm that ended in a bloody stump. …

Jan opened her eyes. As she feared, the nightmare of the last two days was waiting for her inside her head. Even before she was asleep the images were pushing their way out. If she slept she would have to live through it all over again. But she was getting sleepy now. There was no way she would be able to stay awake for very long, despite the unpleasant itching of her skin as a result of that white liquid. Against her wishes her eyes closed again.

Who was screaming? It was an awful sound; high-pitched and penetrating. It shredded the nerves. Jan looked anxiously around but there was too much smoke. The screaming continued, getting closer. Then, out of the smoke, Jan saw Martha running towards her. The chimp’s hair was alight, from head to foot. As she got closer Jan could hear the crackling of her burning flesh. “No!” cried Jan as Martha, in her panic and fear, leapt up at her. She started to scream as well as the chimp’s powerful, burning arms hugged her in desperation. …

Jan screamed and screamed as she struggled to get free of those arms but she couldn’t, they were too strong.

“Shush, amazon,” said a voice in her ear. “Calm down, it’s just a dream. You’re all right …”

The feel of the flames on her flesh faded away, though the powerful arms continued to hold her tightly. She realized where she was; in Milo’s cubicle, though it was darker now. She stopped screaming.

“For Christ’s sake, shut that bitch up, will ya!” a man yelled from another cubicle.

“Feeling better?” Milo asked her gently.

“I … I … don’t know. What’s the matter with me?” Her body was shaking violently, her limbs trembling so badly she seemed to be having a convulsion. She was filled with a feeling of nameless terror, as if she was about to fall off the edge of a bottomless abyss.

“It’s just a delayed reaction to all you’ve been through,” Milo told her, still holding her tightly. She, in turn, clung tightly to him. She felt that if she didn’t hold on to him the force of her terror would sweep her away and she would be lost forever.

“Relax,” he whispered. “Breathe deeply and slowly. One … two … One … two. …”

Gradually the awful feeling of panic and terror diminished, the trembling subsided. Milo released her. She felt drained; sick. In the dimness she saw him go to his trunk and take out a small box and his canteen. Kneeling before her on the mattress he told her to hold out her hand. When she did so he placed a pill in her palm and said, “Swallow that. It’ll make you feel better.”

“What is it?” she asked suspiciously.

She saw the flash of his teeth in the gloom. “You’re already sounding like your normal self. But don’t worry. It’s just a synthetic hormone that will stimulate your brain into producing more of a specific encephalin. It will calm you down and allow you to sleep peacefully. You’d better take it before I change my mind. Those things are as rare as hen’s teeth these days.”

She frowned. “But all hens have teeth. …”

“Forget it. An archaic saying. Just take the pill.”

Doubtfully, she put the pill in her mouth. He gave her the canteen and she washed the pill down with several welcome swallows of water. “I don’t feel any different,” she said as she gave the canteen back to him.

“You will.” He put the canteen and box back into the trunk. He turned and faced her again, remaining on his knees. “Jan,” he asked quietly. “What’s that you have in your pocket?”

“What?” she asked. For a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about. Then she remembered the bomb. Her mind went blank. “Er … it’s … I … don’t know …” she said lamely.

“You don’t know what you have in your pocket?” he asked. He leaned towards her and reached out. She didn’t resist as he deftly plucked the bomb from her top pocket. She watched him examine it in the dim light. “It’s heavy,” he said. “So what is this thing you didn’t know you had, eh, amazon?”

Oh Mother God, she thought as she watched him handling it, if he should twist the top. …

“Give it back to me,” she demanded, holding out her hand. “And I’ll tell you.”

He hesitated for a long time before handing the cylinder back to her. “Well?” he insisted quietly.

Something was happening to her. She realized it must be the pill. She was beginning to feel … wonderful. All her worries and fears—even her grief—were falling from her like old scabs from a healed wound. She felt both euphoric and pleasantly relaxed.

“Tell me what it is, Jan,” persisted Milo in the same quiet, encouraging tone.

Why not tell him the truth, she wondered? What did it matter? But at the last moment she decided not to tell him. Instead she said, “It’s a sacred object. Very sacred. All I have left of Minerva. My mother gave it to me.”

“Your mother?”

“My mother was a Headwoman in Minerva. Very important. The people you call the Aristos don’t know that … kept it a secret from them … you won’t tell, will you …?”

She leaned back on the mattress, resting on one elbow. She was feeling very sleepy now. Wonderfully sleepy.

“I won’t tell them,” said Milo softly. “But what is that object?”

“I’m tired,” she said drowsily. “Want to go to sleep.”

“In a moment, amazon. First tell me what it is.”

“Very sacred.”

“You said that. I want to know why.”

“It’s a rod of authority. One of several given to our fore-mothers by the Mother God.” The pang of guilt Jan experienced as she spoke this blasphemy was so slight as to be almost nonexistent. “Swore to my mother I would look after it. Protect it with my life.”

“I see,” he said slowly. “But how did you manage to get it on board?”

“Hid it.” She was struggling to keep her eyes open. It felt as if she was sinking into some deep, cosy bed. She felt like a child again; a glow of reassurance was washing over her from some unknown source.

“But how? Surely your own clothes were destroyed.”

She giggled. “Hid it in me. …”

“Oh,” he said, understanding. “Of course.”

“Sleep now,” she said and let her head drop on to the mattress. Within seconds she was asleep.

Milo remained where he was, staring down at her. When he was certain she was in a deep sleep he reached over and again removed the cylinder from her overall. He studied it thoughtfully for some time then returned it to her pocket. He got up and went to his bed. As he lay there he concentrated on damping down the sexual desire that the girl’s presence had induced. Eventually he slept and for the first time in decades he dreamed of Miranda.

The feeling of well-being was still with Jan when she woke up, though not as intense as before. She sat up. Milo was already awake. He was dressed and sitting on the edge of his bed, looking at her. “Feel better?” he asked.

“Yes,” she admitted. “Thank you.” She looked around. The lights were back on. Then she remembered what had happened just before she’d fallen asleep and quickly felt her pocket. The bomb was still there.

“Don’t worry,” he said wryly. “I haven’t stolen your precious heirloom.”

She felt herself blush. “What was in that pill you gave me?” she asked, changing the subject. “Some kind of Old Science drug?”

“A product of Old Science, yes, but not a drug in the sense that you probably understand the word,” he told her. “As I tried to explain to you last night, the actual drug that makes you feel better is produced by your own brain. The pill contained a substance that stimulates the specific part of your brain into producing large amounts of the ‘drug’.”

She frowned at him, trying to make sense of his words. As before, she was unsure if he was deliberately spinning her a tall tale or telling the truth—or what he believed was the truth. “You are saying there is a drug in my brain that caused that marvellous feeling I had before I went to sleep last night?” she asked. “But that can’t be, otherwise I would have felt like that before.”

He gave a small sigh. “You wouldn’t have experienced the effect as intensely before because your brain had never before released so much of the relevant encephalin—‘drug’—into your nervous system.”

She continued to look doubtful. Milo said, ‘“You are familiar with the drug called morphine?”

“Yes. It comes from the poppy. A gift from the Mother God. It deadens pain. …”

“Well, a long, long time ago scientists discovered that the human central nervous system possessed its own version of morphine, which explained how some people could suffer serious injuries and not feel any pain—at least not immediately. And as research into the biochemical workings of the brain continued more and more substances were discovered that were analogous not only to narcotics and anaesthetics but also to a large variety of other mood-changing drugs. It became apparent that human thought was the end result of a veritable chemical cocktail. Identifying all the different chemical participants and pinpointing their exact function took many years and along the way several interesting discoveries about human nature were made. One of them concerned depression. You know what the word depression means, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. It means to feel sad or miserable.”

“Do you feel that way often?”

“Well, not often, but sometimes. More so lately. …”

He smiled. “But not at this exact moment, right? Even though your present situation is a bleak one you feel mellow, at ease—yes?”

She admitted she did. He said, “The lingering effects of the hormone I gave you. But you are physiologically incapable of experiencing depression of the kind familiar to many pre-Prime Standard people, thanks to the genetic modification your ancestors underwent. In the days before the genetic era many were prone to a condition known as manic depression. The condition was regarded as an illness—the result of either a psychological flaw or a physical one. It was then considered ‘normal’ not to suffer such a state of mind; that the natural state of the human mind was a kind of emotional equilibrium with an innate leaning towards an underlying feeling of well-being and vague optimism, depending on exterior circumstances, of course.”

“But that’s natural, isn’t it?” she asked.

“That’s the point,” he said. “The scientists had made the discovery that Nature had ensured that human beings were continually drugged up to the eyeballs, in a manner of speaking, in order to cope with life. The normal ones, anyway. The abnormal ones, those prone to manic-depression or other chronic mental problems, did indeed suffer from an organic malfunction in the brain, but their brains were failing to produce enough of the neurotransmitters to ensure that they possessed the somewhat rosy, if distorted, outlook on life experienced by ‘ordinary’ people. As a result these abnormal individuals apparently experienced a more objective viewpoint of reality, given the human condition as it is. …”

She shook her head wonderingly. “You do talk a lot of nonsense.”

“Well, that’s exactly what a lot of people said when this theory was first made public—that it was nonsense. It is human nature for an individual to believe that his, or her, perception of reality is objective. But the sad truth is that our perception of anything—and everything we think and feel—is at the mercy of our genetic programming, which in turn controls the manufacture of all the hormones that in their turn dictate the play of the chemical activities within our brains. Even our very perception of time itself is a product of these processes. The human concept of time is a biologically-induced illusion; there is no such thing as linear time, instead time is. …” He looked at her and didn’t continue. “Forgive me,” he said wearily. “My need to be able to talk to someone again got the better of me. I keep forgetting that for all your native intelligence you’re still a savage, like the rest of them in this place.”

“I’m no savage!” she protested.

“No? So you understand what I’m saying?” he asked, teasingly.

“Well, not much of it,” she admitted. “But I do know that you are wrong about the mind. It is part of the Minervan creed that the mind is separate from the body. It is the property of the Mother God and when we die she reclaims it. She will either keep it as a part of her in paradise or if it needs a further spiritual cleansing she will send it back to Earth to live out another life.”

“So much for Minervan theology,” he sneered. “Heaven and Earth reduced to a giant laundry.”

His words infuriated her. “It makes more sense than all that rubbish you speak!”

“My poor little amazon, you yourself are a product of all that so-called ‘rubbish’. As I told you before, your very own Minervan genegineers saw to that. Your ancestors were modified past the specifications set down in the Prime Standard ruling. Both physically and mentally you are different, not only from the pre-gene era women of the past but also the women on this airship. Your female ancestors, thanks to the genetic tinkering with the hormonal balances, became not only bigger physically but slightly more masculine in emotional outlook. Your men subsequently underwent a more drastic modification. The end product was a smaller, non-aggressive, non-competitive, non-threatening human male—in short the feminist ideal of what a man should be.”

“It’s unthinkable that any Minervan would ever make use of genetic engineering but it’s true, I admit, that Minervan men were changed,” said Jan.

“By magic, eh?”

“The Mother God changed them. After the Gene Wars a group of them came to Minerva and begged forgiveness. They also begged for sanctuary. The Headwomen asked the Mother God what they should do. The Mother God spoke to them and said she would transform every man who truly begged forgiveness, and their sons would be transformed as well and their sons too and so on. …”

“Like I said, by magic.” Milo stood up and slowly stretched, raising his arms straight above his head. “But have it your way. At least we agree that Minervan men aren’t normal men. Nicer men, maybe, but not normal. And the big drawback for your early Minervans is that the idea didn’t catch on outside the Minervan state. Sure, a lot of men, who supported the Minervan ideal of a feminist state, gladly volunteered to be modified, but the majority of the world’s male population didn’t show any inclination to join the queue.

“The problem was that to rewire a man’s brain to the point where all the unwanted masculine traits could either be tuned down or eradicated completely you had to radically alter his sexuality—the hormonal programming for masculine sexuality and masculine behaviour traits are one and the same. So your transformed Minervan man, though still physically male, was very undersexed compared to the average untransformed man. Which is why they became known as ‘eunuchs’, and even worse, by the outside world.”

“They’re not eunuchs,” said Jan quickly.

He raised his eyebrows. “You speak from personal experience, do you?”

She felt her face grow hot. “That’s none of your business.”

“On the contrary, everything to do with you is my business now, little amazon. But no matter. Tell me instead how you felt about Minervan men in general.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I liked them. My father I loved.”

“As much as you loved your mother?”

“Well, no. …”

“What was the main difference between Minervan men and women? I don’t mean the obvious physical differences—I mean temperamentally.”

Jan frowned. “Well, I suppose the men were less … less complicated than all the women I knew. Their attitude to life could be a little annoying at times—they were always cheerful, placid, happy. …”

Milo gave a triumphant grin. “Which proves my point, and goes back to what I was saying about the manipulation of mental states. Your genegineers were obliged to up the dose of those natural happy drugs we’ve all got in our heads as a way of keeping your men contented with their changed lot in life. You Minervans may not have actually cut their balls off but you neutered them just the same.”

“All I know is that I’d rather be with a Minervan man than with you.”

He grinned down at her. “You don’t find me stimulating company?”

“No Minervan man has ever raped a woman in the whole history of Minerva.”

“Have I threatened to rape you?”

“Yes,” she said coldly.

His grin turned into a scowl. “Oh, not that again.” He gestured that she should get up. “Come on. We’ll go and get some food. There’s only an hour or so before we’ll be taken up top to go to work.”

She got to her feet. “What is our work? I heard the overseers say that I was going to be a glass walker. What is that?”

“I’ll tell you after we’ve eaten. I don’t want to kill your appetite.”

Chapter Eleven

“Don’t look down if it disturbs you,” said Milo.

“I can’t help it,” Jan told him weakly as she clung to the support bar with all her strength. It was almost as bad as it had been in the wicker basket hanging beneath the Lord Pangloth. They were crammed with several other slaves into a glass-sided box that was slowly rising within a vast, sagging cavern like the stomach of some gigantic animal.

What intensified Jan’s feeling of vertigo was that the glass cage and its heavy human cargo was supported by two strips of narrow black tape that looked as substantial as hair ribbons. Jan couldn’t understand why the tapes didn’t snap under all that weight and Milo’s brief and puzzling explanation that the tapes were made of an extra-strong material that came from beyond the sky gave her no solace at all.

“Relax and enjoy the view,” said Milo cheerfully. “It’s quite a remarkable sight, you must admit. I’ve been seeing it for three years but it never fails to impress me.”

Jan forced herself to look around. She shuddered. The great, flesh-like walls were undulating slowly as if alive. “I don’t understand. There’s nothing keeping it all up. Why doesn’t it collapse on us?”

“I’ve already tried to explain to you,” said Milo. “We’re surrounded by gas. Helium. Millions and millions of cubic feet of it. You can’t see it because it’s invisible, like air. This gas bag, and all the others like it, is what keeps the Lord Pangloth flying. Think of it as like being inside a giant version of a toy balloon.”

“A what?” she said blankly.

“Ah yes. I forgot. No toy balloons. Not even kites allowed. The law of the Sky Lords. …” He rubbed his chin. “Okay then, think of it as being like a giant soap bubble. You do know what a soap bubble is, don’t you.”

She gave him a disdainful look. “Of course I do. But it doesn’t look like a soap bubble. Soap bubbles are round.”

“And so would this be if it was completely inflated with gas. It isn’t, though, because when a Sky Lord goes higher the surrounding air pressure drops and the gas in the cell expands. If you put too much gas in the cell when it’s at a low altitude the gas would rupture the cell at a higher altitude. Understand?”

“I think so.”

He chuckled patronizingly and made to ruffle her hair but she ducked. One of the other slaves sniggered, but he soon went silent when Milo turned and looked at him.

Jan said to Milo, “You gave me a week to decide, remember? You promised not to touch me in the meantime.”

“I was being friendly, that’s all,” he said, sounding hurt.

“Some friend,” she said bitterly.

The glass cage was almost at the top of the gas cell. Jan saw what seemed to be an inverted glass dome attached to the ceiling of the cell. As they neared the dome an opening appeared in it and the cage, still climbing up its impossibly thin twin lengths of black tape, entered. The dome swung shut beneath the cage and then Jan saw another opening appear in the material of the cell itself. “Gas lock,” explained Milo. “Prevents the gas from escaping.”

The cage came to a halt in a dimly lit space above the gas cell. The doors of the cage slid open. “Out!” ordered Benny. The slaves spilled from the cage. Jan stared about wonderingly. The grey and shadowy space between the floor and the low ceiling seemed to stretch in all directions forever. A maze of struts and spidery girders connected the two surfaces.

“We’re between the inner and outer hulls,” said Milo quietly.

“No talking!” yelled Benny. “Get your gear and get topside, glass walkers!” He came up to Jan. “Amazon, you can use Milroy’s gear. He sure won’t be needing it again.”

Several of the slaves laughed as they headed towards a row of wooden lockers standing nearby. Milo led Jan to one and showed her how it opened.

“What happened to Milroy?” she asked as she gazed at the bewildering collection of objects within the locker.

“He was careless,” said Milo. He pulled out a quilted jacket and handed it to her. “This goes on first. You’ll need it. It’s going to be cold out there.”

It was too big for her but Jan was grateful for it. It was already much colder up in this strange place than it had been way down in the slave’s quarters. Milo was meanwhile pulling other things out of her locker. “Put this on over the jacket,” he instructed, giving her a kind of harness made of leather. She allowed him to help her do up its many fastenings, trying to ignore the feel of his hands when they touched her body. She wondered what the metal loops on the harness were for. Next came a pair of boots with thick soles made of a strange rubbery substance, then a pair of leather gloves. Both boots and gloves looked well-used and had a pungent odour. Then Milo handed her a large coil of cord with metal clips at each end. He showed her how to carry it over her shoulder, with the aid of a loop on the harness. Finally he gave her a stick with a clump of cloth strips on one end.

She stared at it. It’s a mop, she told herself disbelievingly. What was she supposed to do with it—clean the outside of the Sky Lord? The idea was absurd. Surely the hull was kept clean by rain showers and the wind.

“Move it, you lazy bastards!” roared Benny, moving among them. “Last one topside will get a kiss from my razzle stick!”

Jan cringed mentally at the memory of the unbearable pain she’d experienced when the thing had touched her before. She looked desperately towards Milo who had gone to a locker at the end of the row and was hastily donning his own equipment. She hurriedly joined him. “Where are we supposed to go?” she asked.

He jerked his head. She looked and saw a ladder extending down from the ceiling. The others were already moving towards it. Benny was pushing a lever at the base of the ladder. A panel in the upper hull slid open and Jan saw bright sunlight and felt a rush of cold air. She went to the ladder, anxious not to be the last up it but every time she tried to get on it one of the other slaves blocked her way. She began to feel panicky. Anything would be better than to feel the effects of that magic stick again.

But they continued to block her way until the last of the other slaves, grinning, ascended the ladder ahead of her. She glanced apprehensively towards Benny and then realized that Milo was holding back behind her, waiting for her to go up. With relief she got on the ladder. As she climbed she looked back over her shoulder. Milo was following. Benny was scowling at him but made no move to touch him with the pain stick.

Had Milo deliberately put himself at risk on her behalf or had he known Benny was only bluffing, she wondered? But then she emerged through the hatchway and all such thoughts vanished. For a few moments she was so disorientated she froze on the ladder but then she felt a sharp tap on her leg and Milo said curtly, “Out, amazon. Plenty of time for sight-seeing later. Too much time. …”

She slowly climbed the rest of the way out and stood beside the hatchway, bracing herself against the stiff wind that blew over the airship’s hull. Airship. She had forcibly to remind herself that she was indeed standing on top of the airship. So immense was the hull she had got the impression she’d been magically transported to some other world. She couldn’t see the ground, all she could see was the curving, alien landscape of the Sky Lord’s vast back in all directions.

Feeling insignificant and vulnerable she went and took a firm hold on the rail that formed a large circle around the hatchway area. The other slaves, oblivious of the view, laughed and joked loudly over the whistling of the wind. “Quite a sight, eh?” asked Milo, joining her at the rail. “I know how you feel. I felt the same way when I first came topside. But you’ll get over it.”

Jan didn’t believe a word he said. She couldn’t imagine him feeling the way she felt at the moment, nor did she imagine she would ever get used to being a flea on this giant’s smooth and shiny back. She looked more closely at the surface of the hull. It seemed to be covered with countless close-fitting pieces of hexagonally-shaped, dark grey glass. She remembered watching the Sky Lord from the ground and thinking that its upper half was covered in fish scales. She asked Milo what they were.

“Sun-gatherers. At least that’s what these sky people call them. Actually, they’re. …”

He was interrupted by Benny yelling at them to get moving. The slaves started to head out on to what seemed to be a kind of pathway, bounded by low hand rails, that appeared to stretch along the spine of the hull all the way back to the huge tail fin. Jan figured that the towering structure of the fin was at least a third of a mile away, but distances were hard to judge in this bizarre landscape.

She kept hold of the rail as she and Milo followed the others on to the pathway. Benny brought up the rear. He was whistling.

“The sun-gatherers are what used to be called solar cells,” Milo continued. “They absorb the sunlight and convert it into electrical energy. That’s where the power comes from for the Sky Lord’s engines, for the heating and light—everything. When they finally all give out the sky people will be, as we used to say once upon a time, up shit creek without a—”

“Give out? What do you mean?” she asked.

He gestured at the glass pieces. “These are Old Science. The members of the Sky Lord’s Guild of Engineers, the nearest thing to intelligent people on board this giant bag of gas, can’t duplicate them. They contain a genetically engineered substance that is similar to the chlorophyll in plants. Very efficient and in theory will continue to work indefinitely, but I wouldn’t bet on it. These airships have been knocking around the world for hundreds of years now and the wear and tear is really beginning to show. I wouldn’t be surprised if a large percentage of these cells are no longer functioning properly, or maybe have become disconnected from the power grid. The engineers don’t even know how that works so until the lights go out one day they won’t have a clue about the real situation. …”

“Okay, hold it!” ordered Benny. “This is it, section five. Where you work today, glass walkers.”

Jan looked and saw a large figure ‘5’ daubed to the left of the pathway. The red paint covered several of the ‘sun-gatherers’. Jan asked Milo, “Don’t tell me we’re supposed to clean all these things?”

“Can you think of any other reason to be out here with mops?” he said with a grin.

“But why do they need cleaning?”

“Fungus. There’s a particular species that likes to make its home on the glass. The air-borne spores lodge in the cracks between the cells. Eventually the fungus covers the whole cell, preventing it from absorbing the sunlight.”

Jan looked down at the glass segments in front of her. “They look clean to me,” she said.

“These may be but this isn’t where we’ll be working. Come on. …” He helped her over the railing. The other slaves, and Benny, were already over and heading towards the left ‘horizon’. As she walked after them with Milo she almost immediately became aware of the curvature of the hull under her feet. Walking along the footpath had created the impression that the hull’s surface was perfectly flat. A queasy feeling stirred in her stomach. She didn’t want to go any further from the path but knew she had no choice.

“See those two carrying those tanks?” Milo asked her, pointing at two male slaves who were carrying bulky metal cylinders on their backs. “They’ll spray the affected areas with solvent ahead of us then we simply wipe it off.”

“So why aren’t they spraying yet?” she asked anxiously.

“Because we haven’t reached the allotted area yet. All this part of the upper hull—the easily accessible sections—are taken care of by other slave units. But Guild Master Bannion’s glass walkers get the more difficult jobs. That’s why Bannion is rich and we live better than most of the other slaves.”

“We live better?”

“Believe it, we do.”

They were now on a definite downward slope but there was no sign of the group slowing their pace. How much further could they go before the slope became so acute they would all lose their footing and start to slide down the side of the hull?

“How much further?” she asked Milo worriedly.

“Quite a way, I’m afraid.”

“But surely we can’t go much further,” she protested.

“Why do you think we’re carrying these ropes?”

“Oh Mother God. …” she sighed.

Jan had been curious as to where Milo planned to obtain the food he’d mentioned. She’d become more curious as she followed him down the rows of flimsy cubicles and into the main communal area. The pair of them attracted angry glares from the few other slaves already up but no one said anything. Milo led Jan to the spiral stairs. “Up you go,” he said.

She was surprised. “We can just leave? I thought we were prisoners here.”

“We’re prisoners, all right, but we can go where we like on board the Pangloth. As long as it’s anywhere bearing the sign.” He pointed at the black star on his cheek. “Bannion must have told you that when he branded you.”

“Oh, yes, I think he did,” she said as she mounted the stairs. “But I wasn’t paying much attention at the time.”

“That’s understandable. Meeting Bannion for the first time is not a pleasurable experience for any slave. I imagine it must be much worse for a woman.”

“Yes. And I remember now something else he told me—that if I turn out to be clean he’d like to get to know me much better.” They were now walking along the tunnel Benny had brought her down. Milo said, “What he meant was that if whichever slave you slept with didn’t turn into a mass of cancers from some sexually-transmitted virus he would give you the honour of letting you become one of his personal slaves. Not a bad job. Plenty of good food and other luxuries. Of course you’d have to endure certain indignities, like getting his whip across your backside at frequent intervals. Bannion enjoys hurting women. Apart from making money I would say it’s his chief pleasure in life.”

Jan remembered the girl with Bannion. The thought of being like her was revolting. “How can anyone enjoy hurting someone else?” she asked Milo.

“That’s an interesting question. The evolutionary value of sado-masochistic traits has attracted a lot of speculation but I shall spare you my own theories … Let’s just say that you will find staying with me a much more agreeable fate.”

Another question had occurred to her. “You’re willing to make love to me right away. Why aren’t you afraid of getting a disease from me, like the Guild Master is?”

“Because he’s a superstitious cretin, like most of the sky people. The chances of your community harbouring any of the fatal viruses are very remote these days but the belief lingers on among these fools. The only really dangerous places still are the cities. Even though there are no people some of the plague spores were designed to live indefinitely. The ground itself is unhealthy.”

Jan said, “There haven’t been any plagues in Minerva for a long, long time. Very occasionally someone will die from the fungus but that’s all.”

“So you see, I’m not being brave by wanting to sleep with you. Just rational. And I think it’s irrational that we should wait the full week.”

“You promised,” she told him. “We made an agreement.”

“And I’m not breaking it. I’m simply asking you to reconsider. Surely you too will do the rational thing and accept my demands. It would be irrational of you to do otherwise.”

She said nothing and they spent the rest of the journey in silence. Their destination turned out to be the enclosed ‘town’ that the Sky Warrior, Tanith, had escorted her through the day before. There weren’t so many people about this time, which she presumed was due to the earliness of the hour. Nor was she subjected to the abuse she’d received on the previous occasion. She wondered why. She was still the same ‘disease-ridden earthworm’ that she’d been the day before. What had changed? Was it Milo’s presence? Or was it the star-shaped brand she now displayed on her cheek? Most likely it was because everyone knew she was now the property of Guild Master Bannion. …

Milo stopped at a stall selling melons. The woman running the stall was obviously not happy about serving Milo—she scowled at him and muttered something under her breath—but she took his money just the same.

As he gave her the melon to carry she said, “Where did you get the money?”

“From Bannion. He gets paid a lot of money for our services and he pays us a pittance. Just enough to stay alive on, plus the occasional luxury.” He stopped at another stall. This one sold long tubes of what Jan suspected were made of dried meat.

“I’m not eating any of that,” she told him.

“You won’t be. It’s for me. One of those rare luxuries I told you about.”

They stopped at three more stalls where he bought some unfamiliar-looking vegetables, some wizened fruit—oranges and pears—and finally some bread. Then they returned to the slave quarters. The communal area had filled up in their absence. Women were cooking at the stoves while the men were seated around the low tables or reclining on the dirty straw matting. The chatter that had filled the air as they’d descended the stairway vanished as soon as they’d reached the bottom. The feeling of hostility was palpable, but no one made a move against them as she and Milo walked by.

“Hope you weren’t expecting a hot meal,” said Milo softly. “But I think it would be wise to keep out of the way of the others until things cool down a bit.”

She agreed with him. The less contact she had with the other slaves the better she felt.

Unimpressive as the food was she was grateful for it and told Milo so when she’d finished eating. He shrugged and cut off another sliver from the tube of dried meat. “You’re welcome.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“I certainly hope so,” he said, looking directly at her. His meaning was clear.

“I meant I’ll repay the money.”

“There’s no need to—once our arrangement comes into practice.” He put the sliver of meat into his mouth and chewed contentedly, his eyes still on her.

She looked away. Her gaze fastened on the painting on the wall. “Who did that?” she asked, anxious to change the subject.

“I did.”

She stared at the swirling colours and shapes. “What’s it supposed to be?”

“If you mean what is it supposed to represent, the answer is nothing. It’s an aid for, well, relaxation. By concentrating on it I can more easily enter a neutral state of mind. Which means I trigger a set of those neuro-peptides I was telling you about—those natural happy drugs in our brains.”

“I see,” said Jan slowly. The painting looked anything but relaxing. To stave off what she feared might be another of his long, nonsensical lectures she asked him where he’d lived before coming on board the Lord Pangloth.

“On the ocean,” he answered. “In a sea habitat.”

“A what?”

“Call it a floating town. Used to be a lot of them once upon a time. Mine was probably one of the last in existence. The oceans have their own form of blight. They’ve become too dangerous. Too dangerous for human life, anyway.”

She asked him in what way.

“Squids, for one thing. They’ve practically taken over out there, thanks to the damn Japanese.”

She told him she didn’t know the meaning of either term.

“The Japanese were, and maybe still are, an island race,” he told her. “They loved eating squid. Squids are a kind of fish. A primitive kind with very soft bodies and lots of tentacles. Look like something out of a bad dream but to the Japanese they were a delicacy. Well, not to just the Japanese; other people ate squid as well but the Japanese were obsessive about it. Their favourite kind of squid was a species called surumeika. They bred these in huge squid farms in the seas around their islands. Then they started playing around with their genes to produce larger, faster-growing surumeika … and the inevitable happened.”

“Which was?”

“Some of them got out of the farms and into the open sea. They bred with natural surumeika and the resulting hybrid was a new species of super-squid. Fast-breeding, tough—and smart. This new squid has thrived at the expense of most other types of fish. But the surumeika are not the only hazards out in the oceans and finally we had to admit defeat and move to what we mistakenly thought would be safer waters close to shore. …” He shook his head sadly.

“Lord Pangloth?” she asked.

“Yes. Out in the ocean we rarely saw Sky Lords. If one was spotted we did the same as when a bad storm threatened the habitat—we submerged it a few hundred feet below the surface. At that depth we were safe from bombs as well as storms. Thankfully the art of making depth charges has been lost by the armourers of the Sky Lords. But when we were forced into shallow waters we could no longer protect ourselves in that way. We couldn’t descend deep enough, so when Lord Pangloth appeared, told us we were now within his territory and demanded tribute, we had no choice but to try and fight back.”

“Why didn’t you pay his tribute?”

“We were in the same situation as your people were. We subsisted mainly on fish and plankton farming and were barely able to feed our own population, so we couldn’t spare any food. Once we had machines that could extract certain ores and chemicals from the sea water but most of those no longer functioned. They had been cannibalized for parts to keep our most precious machine working—a solar-powered unit that converted sea water into fresh water. So we resisted. We had some primitive cannon and harpoon guns that we’d been using against the surumeika and the giant sea worms but it was useless. The lasers destroyed the shells and harpoons like they destroyed your rockets.

“And, of course, we were a sitting target for the Sky Lord’s bombs. The habitat’s flotation chambers were ripped open and down it went. I was one of the few survivors. I got picked up and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Three years, you said.”

“Yes, three years. And it seems like thirty. But I know one thing for certain—I’m not going to spend another three years in this aerial zoo.”

That’s true, she said to herself as she thought of the bomb concealed in her overalls. Hastily she said, “How long did you live on that floating town?”

“Since I was born. Nearly two centuries ago.”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “That means. …”

“Yes,” he said, “I’m nearly at the end of my allotted span. By my reckoning I’m one hundred and eighty years old. Which means, as you were about to observe, that I have a minimum of fourteen years of life left, and a maximum of nineteen. It was thoughtful of our re-designers to provide us with the five year ‘uncertainty’ period at the end of our lives. It would be in extremely poor taste if we knew the exact day that we were due to genetically self-destruct, relatively painless though the process may be.” He smiled bleakly.

“I’ve never met anyone as old as you before,” Jan said as she gazed at him with new interest.

“No? But surely you have,” he said, puzzled. “There must have been people in your town who lived out their full span of life.”

“No. Not now, anyway. Avedon is … was … one of the oldest. She was over a hundred. But my mother said that when she was a young girl she remembered many Minervans who reached their day of Passing Over.”

He made a face. “Trust you Minervans to call it that. I suppose it’s another sign of the times, though, that your people weren’t making it to the target year. The increasing harshness in living conditions down there on the ground is boosting the rate of natural wastage. Then again, I have yet to meet anyone as old as me up here. The Aristos may be a different kettle of fish. They sure don’t put themselves at risk if they can help it so I expect their average survival rate is high.”

She was regarding him thoughtfully. “That’s why you know so much about the old days—because you’re so old.”

He laughed. “I’m not that old. No, history was my hobby. We had a well-stocked library of electronic records on the habitat. And there was plenty of time to study. Life on the habitat used to be fairly safe and uneventful—up until about thirty years ago when all that accumulating genetic shit passed its critical mass and suddenly we were up to our eyeballs in squid, mutated seaweed and those damn sea worms. …” He stopped, picked up the canteen and took a long drink from it, as if trying to wash away the sour taste of his memories. When he put the canteen down he was smiling again. “I’m surprised you think I know ‘so much’ about the old days—I was under the impression you thought I spoke nothing but rubbish and nonsense.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. Instead she said, “Doesn’t it worry you? Being so close to your day of … of Passing Over?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But not much. Not yet at least. I’m sure it will in ten years time, if I live that long. Then I’ll start cursing those damn twenty-first century politicians and their two hundred year ruling. When you think we had the secret of immortality in our grasp and did nothing with it … Madness. And now we’ve lost it.”

Her expression was a sceptical one. “Could we really have been made immortal?”

“Indeed. In the same way that the human life-span was extended from an average of seventy years to two hundred. It’s the same mechanism—the genetic prevention of cell maturation. The secret was discovered through cancer research. Unlike normal cells, which usually die after fifty divisions, cancer cells are immortal. They can keep on dividing forever because they never reach maturation and therefore the molecular clocks within their nuclei are not activated. When the genes responsible were identified it was possible to apply the changes to normal cells—except that instead of our cells being immortal their maturation has simply been delayed.”

“Was anyone ever made immortal?”

“Oh yes. Many people underwent the necessary genetic modification. The rich and very powerful. It cost a lot because it was absolutely forbidden by international law. And the penalties for all concerned were very severe. But, of course, a lot of people were prepared to take the risk.”

“So there might be immortals still alive?”

“No. The ones that survived the Gene Wars were killed in the purges that followed. As the perpetrators of the Gene Wars and the immortals tended to be one and the same the mobs killed two birds with one stake.”

“Stake?”

“It was a fad at the time—driving wooden stakes through the hearts of suspected immortals. Originated, I think, from vampire folklore. Of course, a lot of people who probably weren’t immortals died the same way. They were confused times.”

There was a loud clanging sound. Milo frowned, then started to put the remains of the food away. “That’s the signal. Time for us to go to work. But first we may have some trouble with Benny and the other overseers.” He reached down and helped her to her feet. “Just stay close by me and let me do all the talking.”

She looked worriedly into his disconcertingly mismatched eyes. “What’s going to happen?”

“Nothing. I hope.”

Chapter Twelve

They had been waiting for them. The other slaves and the overseers. As Milo and Jan entered the communal section the slaves parted to let the three black-clad overseers through. Benny led the way. His two companions looked familiar to Jan and she guessed she’d seen them in the Guild Master’s headquarters. Benny stopped in front of Milo and put his hands on his hips. The pain stick dangled a few inches from his right hand. He said, “So what the hell are you playing at, Milo?”

“Playing at?” Milo asked with exaggerated innocence.

“With her,” said Benny, inclining his head towards Jan. “I gave her to Buncher. So how come you’ve got her?”

“Why, Buncher gave her to me, Benny. We came to an understanding.”

“That’s a damned lie!” One of the male slaves had stepped forward. Jan recognized him as being one of the three who had confronted Milo outside the latrine. “He did something to Buncher; made him hand the amazon over, somehow.”

Milo regarded him calmly. “I did nothing to him. Show me a mark on Buncher’s body that he says I put there.” Milo glanced around. “Where is friend Buncher anyway? Let him make these accusations if they are going to be made.”

“Buncher won’t come out of his cubicle,” said another slave. “Keeps to his bunk. Been coughing up blood too.”

Milo turned back to Benny and spread his hands.

“Well, there you are then,” he said. “No wonder Buncher lost interest in the amazon. He’s not feeling well.”

Benny stared hard at Milo. “So Buncher just came up to you and said, ‘Here, Milo, my old friend, take my amazon’?”

“Not exactly. I asked him for her. We haggled and, as I told you before, we came to an understanding.”

“You paid Buncher for her?”

“No. I’ve agreed to do him a few favours in return,” said Milo.

“What kind of favours?”

Milo shrugged. “That will depend on Buncher.”

Jan watched Benny’s face closely. His suspicion, and open dislike of Milo, was plain to see. But there was something else. A wariness. A hint, even, of fear.

“If you wanted her,” persisted Benny, “why didn’t you say anything to me when I brought her down?”

“I hadn’t made up my mind,” said Milo easily. “Besides, even if I had asked you I doubt whether you would have given her to me, Benny. Am I right?”

Benny ignored the question. “Why did you want her, Milo?”

Milo turned and looked Jan up and down and then he drawled, “Well, I should think that’s obvious, Benny.” This got a response from the other slaves but Benny’s angry, sweeping glare quickly silenced the sniggers. When he turned back to Milo Jan saw that he was barely keeping his anger in check. He wanted to lash out at Milo but something held him back. “Milo,” he rasped. “You know your days are numbered, don’t you? The next wrong step you make and Bannion is going to make you take the long drop.” There were mutters of approval from many of the slaves.

“I find that hard to believe,” replied Milo with a confidence that Jan envied. “I’m too valuable an asset for Bannion to dispose of so casually. I do the work of at least three of any of his other glass walkers. Nor have I ever done anything wrong. I’ve never been disobedient to you or any other overseer, nor have I ever brawled with any of my fellow slaves. Correct?”

“You’ve just never been caught at doing anything,” said Benny, his scowl deepening. “But people around you have a funny habit of getting hurt. Sometimes fatally.”

“I can’t be blamed for other people’s bad luck.”

“Word is you cause that bad luck. Word is you’re a sorcerer.”

Milo laughed. “But, of course, an intelligent man like you, Benny, laughs at such rumours. You’re a Freeman and the silly talk of superstitious slaves is beneath your contempt, isn’t it?”

Benny didn’t know how to answer that one. Finally he growled, “You’ve got one last chance, Milo. Remember that. And I’m going to be watching you.”

“As I have nothing to hide you are welcome to watch all you want,” Milo told him.

Benny made a grunting sound and started to turn. “Oh, one thing, Benny,” said Milo. Benny turned back to him. “What?”

“Does this mean I get to keep the amazon?” Milo asked politely.

Benny glanced at Jan. He seemed to have forgotten she had been the point of the whole conversation. He frowned, then gave a sneering grin. “Sure. Why not? Enjoy her, Milo. Enjoy her while you can.”

After that Benny and the other two overseers divided the slaves up into three groups. Jan wasn’t surprised that she and Milo ended up in Benny’s group. Then, after leaving the slave quarters, the three groups went off in three different directions. Jan had been intrigued by the journey up through the Sky Lord, though there had been little to see except bare corridors and narrow spiral staircases. Then they had arrived at the glass cage and the nightmare ride up through the vast gas bag had followed.

One of the things that Milo had explained to her during the ride was the meaning of the large sign next to the entrance to the cage. It has been an illustration of a flame with a black line across it. “It’s forbidden to bring anything capable of causing a flame or even a spark beyond the lower section of the Sky Lord. That whole section is sealed off from the gas cells but from here upwards there’s always the danger of hydrogen leaks. One spark could cause a tremendous explosion.”

Jan immediately became more aware of the weight of the bomb in her breast pocket. “What happens if someone forgets?” she asked as the cage had climbed up its narrow thread like a spider going up its web. “I mean, if they forget they’re carrying a flint or something?”

“The penalty is death by torture. And that applies to the Aristos as well as the slaves and Freemen. I will spare you the details of how the sentence is carried out. You’re already looking a little green. Don’t you like heights?”

“No,” she answered and tried to put the bomb out of her mind. It was too late now, anyway.

“… THEREFORE MAKE THE SIGNAL THAT YOU ARE READY TO OFFER UP THAT WHICH IS RIGHTFULLY MINE. (click) FAIL TO DO SO AND MY RETRIBUTION WILL BE SWIFT AND TERRIBLE … TERRIBLE … TERRIBLE … TERRIBLE. …”

Lord Pangloth’s familiar words didn’t sound so loud and intimidating from Jan’s vantage point on the upper surface. She was a long way down the slope of the hull but there was still a vast curving grey expanse below her which was blocking off her view of the ground directly beneath the Sky Lord as well as muffling Lord Pangloth’s speech to his subjects. When Jan had learnt that the Sky Lord was stopping to pick up tribute from a farming community she had become very excited, hoping that it was another of those lost parts of Minerva that Milo had told her about. But he said it wasn’t—Minerva lay far to the south and they had been travelling north.

Jan was feeling more confident as she scrubbed at the sun-gatherers with her mop. She now trusted the harness and cord enough to work with both hands; before she had kept one hand tightly gripping the cord, in case it should suddenly start to slip through the loops of her harness despite the locking mechanism.

She stood with her feet braced against the hull, which at this point was angled steeply at about forty degrees, and with her body leaning backwards. If she looked up she could see her cord disappearing over the curve of the hull to its distant anchor point. Some fifteen feet to her right Milo was working level with her. To her left, and slightly below her, was another slave. They were spread out along the hull in a ragged line, slowly making their way downwards. The procedure was to work sideways as far as the lines permitted and then descend further down the lines to a fresh section of the hull. The slaves with the solvent sprays had gone on ahead, soaking the sun-gatherers with the foul-smelling liquid.

“Everything okay?” Milo called to her. Even though the Sky Lord had come to a halt there was still a swift wind blowing over the hull and it was hard to hear him. “I’m fine,” she called back though the muscles in her legs, back and arms ached intensely. She wondered how long this ordeal would continue. She also wondered what was happening on the ground and what the community being taxed by the Sky Lord was like. All Milo had had time to tell her was that it was a farming community and quite large. If she looked over her shoulder she could see rolling hills in the distance that appeared to be free of the blight. She hoped that the ground dwellers didn’t have anything planned along the lines of Minerva’s abortive attack on the Sky Lord. She felt vulnerable enough dangling as she was on her thin length of cord without finding herself in the middle of a battle.

She had cleaned as much as she could of this section; it was time to descend further down the line. Sticking the mop handle under a strap of her harness she took a firm grip on the cord with her right hand and prepared to release the brake mechanism with her left. She told herself not to worry. Even if she lost her grip on the line the brake mechanism, as Milo had explained to her while showing her how the system worked, would close automatically when the line started to move too quickly through the loops of the harness.

She released the brake and slowly started to step backwards down the slope of the hull, feeding the line through the loops a few inches at a time. She had marvelled at the agility Milo and the others demonstrated as they moved about the hull, but then they’d had more practice.

When she decided she’d descended far enough she set the brake and then pulled her mop free. At that moment an unexpected gust of wind pushed her against the hull, and she almost dropped the mop as she put her hand out to prevent herself banging her face against the sun-gatherers. Then it happened. …

Her line went slack. She started to slide downwards.

She screamed. She let go of the mop and tried to dig her fingernails into the hull in the hope of getting a purchase on the narrow gaps between the sun-gatherers, but the thick gloves made it impossible. Nor could she slow her descent by applying the supposedly ‘non-slip’ soles of her boots. The angle of the hull’s slope was too acute. She began to pick up speed.

The faster she fell the more time seemed to slow down, giving her ample opportunity to feel the increasing heat through the gloves; to examine her rippling reflection on the passing sun-gatherers with its wide ‘O’ of a mouth; to listen to the terror in the high-pitched scream that was coming from that same mouth.

The angle of her slide became increasingly acute and then suddenly she was falling vertically and she lost her tenuous contact with the hull. Nothing now but empty air until she hit the ground.

Thump. An awful jarring sensation that sent the air whooshing out of her lungs, cutting off her scream. Confusion. Had she hit the ground already? But she was still alive. …

She saw a flash of silvery-grey hull, then blue sky, distant hills. She realized she was spinning on the end of her line. It must have got snagged by something on the hull! But her feeling of relief was only momentary as the hopelessness of her situation sank in. The line could pull free long before anyone could figure out a way of rescuing her.

She extended her arms carefully and managed to slow her rate of spin. She saw that the hull was a depressingly long distance away from her. She was well below its mid-point and it was now curving inwards. She could see a row of large windows but they might as well have been a thousand miles away for all the good they could do her. She could also see one of the huge thrusters. It was level with her but about fifty yards away towards the tail of the airship.

The line jerked and, thinking she was about to fall again, panic squeezed Jan’s heart and she shut her eyes. But then she realized she was moving upwards. Someone had hold of her line and they were pulling her back up.

Progress was slow and punctuated by a series of jolting stops. With every jolt she thought she was about to fall again, but it didn’t happen. She forced herself to stay calm, taking a series of deep breaths, and told herself she would soon be safe. She tried not to look down but couldn’t help it. The town below was a sickening distance away. She tried to distract herself by studying it and its surrounding lands. It was smaller than Minerva but more haphazardly laid out and the buildings seemed crudely constructed. But there was no wall around the town and the farm lands were plainly untouched by the blight. Apart from wheat fields she saw what appeared to be extensive vineyards.

Her shoulder bumped into something. She looked and saw that she was in contact with the hull again. She turned so that she was facing inwards and tried to get a grip on it with her hands and toes as she continued to be hauled upwards. She failed, but it made her feel less helpless to be doing something instead of just dangling on the line.

The slow journey continued. She passed the outermost curve of the hull and then she saw what had saved her. Milo. Somehow he had covered the fifteen feet of space between them and reached her rapidly falling line before the end of it had shot by. He’d grabbed it (she didn’t want to think of how little line there’d been left when he reached it) and then started pulling her up. She knew he was much stronger than he looked but she couldn’t imagine how he had managed to halt her fall without having both his arms pulled out of their sockets. …

The other slaves had stopped work to watch but none of them had gone to his assistance. On the contrary, when Jan appeared into view they began to jeer and catcall. Jan’s dislike and distrust of them suddenly boiled over into pure hatred. Whatever worries she’d had about the harm she would cause the Sky Lord’s slave population when she succeeded in setting her bomb off disappeared. They would deserve everything they got.

As the curve of the hull became less acute she was able to gain a purchase on the sun-gatherers and take some of the strain off Milo. She was close enough now to see the effort it was costing him etched on his face. They were now only yards apart. He gave her a forced grin. “Hello again, amazon,” he called to her. “Enjoy the view?”

She even managed to smile back at him. “Very nice,” she gasped. The gap between them narrowed. Then he had hold of her arm. Relief swept over her. She was only dimly aware of him tying her line to his harness. “Here, put your arms around my waist and hold on,” he instructed. She did so. The jeers from the other slaves intensified. Milo began to haul himself up his own line. Clinging to him, her face pressed against his back, Jan did her best to get footholds on the sloping glass.

“What happened?” she asked him.

“At a rough guess I would say Benny cut your line,” he told her over his shoulder. “He was the only one up there.”

“But why?”

“To get at me. Teach me a lesson.”

“You saved my life.”

“Just. It was a near thing.”

The slope of the hull decreased to an easy twenty-five degrees. Milo told her it was safe to let go of him. They were nearly at the point where the lines had been anchored to small metal loops protruding from the hull. She could see Benny standing about ten yards away, his face grim.

Keeping a firm grip on Jan’s arm, Milo continued towards him. “Ho, Benny, all in a day’s work, eh?” he called cheerfully.

The overseer said quickly, “Her line snapped. Nothing I could do, was there?”

“Oh, I think you did enough, Benny,” said Milo in the same cheerful tone. He let go of Jan and went over to the loop that Jan’s line had been attached to. He squatted down and examined the short length of line that remained. Then he looked at Benny.

“I say it snapped,” growled Benny. “You want to say different, Milo?”

Milo got to his feet and walked towards him. “I agree, Benny. It snapped. Problem is, the amazon dropped her mop over the side. I think it might be a good idea if you went down and fetched it.”

The colour went from Benny’s face. He took a step backwards, reaching for his pain stick at the same time. “You keep away from me, Milo!” he bellowed, fear breaking through into his voice.

Milo stopped and raised his hands. “It’s all right, Benny. I’m not going to touch you.”

“You threatened me! I heard you! You know the penalty for that!” Benny was pointing the pain stick at Milo.

“Me? Threaten you?” asked Milo, sounding astonished. “The very idea is absurd. I was merely suggesting you attempt to recover a missing tool. I know how fussy Guild Master Bannion is about such wastage. After all, I imagine he’s going to be more than a little annoyed that he almost lost his new slave on her first day.”

Benny lowered the pain stick. “I’ll tell him her line snapped. He’ll believe me.”

“Of course he will,” Milo assured him, smiling.

Milo entered the cubicle and sat down in the wicker chair. He looked at Jan, who was lying on the bed, and gave her a smile of self-satisfaction. “I saw Bannion. Told him what happened. He’s not happy.”

“He believed you?” she asked, surprised. “I would have thought he’d have accepted Benny’s version.”

“He did—officially. He can’t be seen to take a slave’s side against the word of one of his overseers. Be bad for discipline. But he knows those lines don’t just snap and he’s been losing too many slaves that way. It’s become a common method among the slaves of settling scores and Bannion is pissed about it. The last thing he needs is an overseer getting into the act as well. He’s not happy that Benny tried to kill a valuable slave—you—just to get even with me: So our friend Benny is in for a hard time.”

“Good,” she said, with feeling.

“Oh, and something else to cheer you up. Buncher died during the day, so I’ve just heard. Coughed up a few pints of blood and keeled over.” Milo put his hands behind his head and leaned back. His expression was serene. “That friendly little hug I gave him must have put a splinter of rib into one of his lungs.”

Jan stared at him.

That night, after the lights had dimmed and they had gone to bed, Jan lay awake on the mattress and wondered what to do about Milo. She owed him her life. If he hadn’t somehow caught the end of her line—and she still couldn’t understand how he had managed to reach it in time—she would now be lying dead back in that town, her body nothing but pulped flesh and bones. Not only had he saved her but he had enabled her to persevere with her plan to destroy the Sky Lord. If she had died all chance of Minervan vengeance on the destroyer of her town, family and friends would have died with her.

And that put her in an awkward dilemma. Because she now owed him so much she felt an obligation to give him the only thing she had that he wanted—her body. Several times she’d been on the verge of waking him and telling him her decision but she hadn’t gone through with it. The thought of having sex with him scared her. Her only previous experience of making love to a man had been her one time with Simon. It had been strange and interesting, if not particularly pleasurable, but not painful or distressing in any way. However she had known Simon well and had been in control of the situation. He had, after all, been a Minervan male. Making love to an ‘unchanged’ man like Milo might be very different. The thought of him inside, possibly hurting her, and she not having the power to do anything about it, frightened her.

But the other thing was that she was scared of Milo himself. He may have saved her life but there was something about him that disturbed her profoundly. She remembered the accusations that both the slaves and Benny had made against him—that he was a sorcerer. It was easy to believe. She glanced over at his apparently sleeping form. He just wasn’t big or muscular enough to have done the things she had witnessed him do. The way he’d halted her fall … the way he had actually crushed Buncher to death, finally, by a simple squeeze round his shoulders.

Jan shuddered and turned away. No, she would not offer him her body despite her debt to him. She would have to find some other way of repaying it in the time left before she achieved her goal of setting Lord Pangloth alight.

Chapter Thirteen

It had taken all of her resources of willpower to go out on to the hull again the following day and trust her life to that thin line, even though Milo had assured her that the new overseer—Benny had been absent—was unlikely to repeat Benny’s mistake. As she’d cleaned the sun-gatherers, her fear had threatened several times to overwhelm her and become pure panic. She’d wanted to close her eyes and just cling to the hull, crying, but she forced herself to keep working. She had to remain part of a glass-walking squad—she couldn’t afford the luxury of a complete breakdown. She had to become totally familiar with the environment of the upper hull, and especially that limbo land between its two skins. It was vital to the plan she had begun to formulate as to how she would plant the incendiary.

By the second day it wasn’t so bad out on the hull even though Benny had reappeared. He was subdued, his face puffy, and he walked stiffly. Whatever punishment had been inflicted on him by Bannion had, for the time being at least, tamed him.

On the fourth day after the incident Jan was feeling confident and excited as she stepped into one of the glass cages with the others. She had finalized her plan of action. If all went well, tonight would be the night. …

The particular glass cage they were riding didn’t travel up through the centre of one of the gas cells like the first one. Instead it operated in an area between two of the cells. “We’re travelling up through one of the transverse frames,” explained Milo, pointing at the passing hexagonal patterns of spidery metal-work. “They form the basic skeleton of the Sky Lord. There’s a transverse frame between every two gas cells. The elevator was moved here because the cells on either side are full of hydrogen. The Guild of Engineers feared that there was a chance the elevator mechanism might produce the odd spark if it was left in the cell.”

The news that they were surrounded by hydrogen both disturbed and cheered Jan. It boded well for her plan, she told herself. She deliberately wouldn’t think beyond the moment of setting the bomb and activating it. At the back of her mind was some unformed idea of getting out on to the hull and running as far away from the point of ignition as possible, but after that it was all a blank. She knew that her chances of survival were negligible.

Jan had learnt a lot about the Sky Lord during the previous few days. One important fact was that nearly two thirds of the huge gas cells were filled with the inflammable hydrogen now. Helen had been right. Milo confirmed that whenever helium was lost, either by accident or natural leakage, it was irreplaceable, whereas hydrogen could be manufactured from water. Milo also told her about the origin of the Sky Lords; his account bore only a marginal similarity to the Minervan stories of those long ago events. Jan was beginning to realize, with extreme reluctance, that the Minervan version of history had many gaps in it, while Milo’s appeared to form a seamless whole. She didn’t want to believe him but was becoming increasingly fascinated by what he had to say.

According to Milo the Sky Lords had originally been called Sky Angels. They had been built by the organization known as the United Nations for a dual purpose. One was to provide a cheap and clean means of transporting cargo between countries, mainly the countries of the poorer ‘third world’; the other was to provide relief in times of natural disasters—they could ship in vast amounts of emergency supplies to areas stricken by famine or, in the event of earthquakes and floods, act as floating sanctuaries for the victims of the disasters, providing beds, food and shelter within their huge dormitories.

Thus it was only natural, in the chaotic aftermath of the Gene Wars, that the survivors should attempt to escape the plague viruses and other threats by retreating to these great sanctuaries in the sky. The trouble was that a lot of people had the same idea and for a time fierce fighting raged in and around each of the Sky Angels as the various groups struggled for possession. In the process two of the airships were destroyed. Finally the victors emerged from the carnage and life on the Sky Angels stabilized. But when the emergency supplies that each of the airships carried began to run out the people in them were obliged to turn their attention to the ground again. They needed food and other raw materials and so they forced those still living on the ground to provide it for them. The reign of the Sky Lords had begun.

At first there was no organization. The Sky Lords were rivals for the same food-producing lands and great air battles between these behemoths of the air were common. When another two Sky Lords had been destroyed a truce was agreed. This was followed by a conference between the rulers of each Sky Lord and the world was divided up into territories for the remaining airships. The idea was that each Sky Lord would never move out of his allotted territory and this rule had been followed ever since. But according to Milo it was unlikely to hold for much longer. …

“The blight has got the upper hand across the world now,” he had explained. “Too many of the ground communities are going under. When a Sky Lord discovers his official territory no longer contains enough food-producing communities to supply his needs it’s obvious he’s going to start poaching in the territories of the Sky Lords. It’s rumoured that there have already been aerial clashes between Sky Lords. Eventually it will turn into a full-scale war.” He seemed pleased at the prospect.

She said, “It’s so stupid. Men will go on fighting each other while the Mother Earth dies around them. Why don’t the Sky Lords and the ground people work together to try and stop the spread of the blight before it’s too late?”

“Old habits are hard to break,” he replied. “The sky people have traditionally regarded the ground dwellers as less than human. For them suddenly to start co-operating with the ‘earthworms’ on an equal basis at this stage is mere wishful thinking. Besides, I don’t see what the Sky Lords could do to help stop the blight.”

“Those lights that burn. The beams that destroyed our rockets—surely they could be used to burn the blight lands clean?”

“Well, they could,” he admitted slowly, “but as I told you, those laser weapons aren’t under the control of the sky people. They only operate automatically, and only against non-living dangers to the Sky Lord.” Then he’d given her a patronizing smile and said, “Anyway, what’s a good little Minervan doing considering the use of devices created by Man’s Science, eh?”

She had replied stiffly, “If such devices were put to the task of purifying the world I’m sure the Mother God might consider that Men weren’t completely beyond redemption.”

Jan received an unpleasant surprise when she climbed out on to the hull. There were several Sky Warriors standing about in the area surrounding the hatchway. They were all armed with their usual long-barrelled rifles and were scanning the skies. At the first opportunity Jan asked Milo the reason for their presence.

“Hazzini,” was his reply. “We’re flying over Hazzini territory at the moment. Will be for the next twenty-four hours or so. See, those are their nests.”

She looked and saw, ahead of them, a number of tall structures rising up from a row of low, blight-covered hills. They resembled huge, twisted tree trunks. Jan realized with a shock that they had to be hundreds of feet high.

“What are Hazzini?” she asked as she hooked the end of her line into a hull support. Today they were working on the bow of the Sky Lord and the view this position offered was spectacular.

“You never had any Hazzini raids on Minerva?” Milo asked.

“Not that I know of,” she called back.

“Well, you’d certainly know if you had. I guess Minerva was out of their range. Think yourself lucky. Hazzini are genetically engineered killing machines, pure and simple. One of the big corporations created them for use as a private army way back. Basic genetic material was from the insect kingdom. The things have wings. Most can’t fly this high but you get the occasional odd high-flier, so I’m told.”

“Oh,” she said. They were closer to the ‘nests’ now and she could see just how enormous the structures were. There were ledges protruding from the sides of the things and she thought she could see black dots swarming across them. Milo and she, like the other ‘wipers’, were waiting for the squad spraying on the solvent to get far enough ahead before they started work. The Lord Pangloth had, as usual, slowed down for the sake of the various slave squads out on the hull, but even so the rush of air sweeping over the bow was quite powerful and Jan had difficulty in keeping her balance. “So the Sky Warriors are guarding us then?” she asked Milo.

He laughed. “Us? Who cares about a bunch of slaves? No, the Warriors are there to guard the hatches and other possible points of entry on the hull. And you’ll notice that our friend Benny has left us to our own devices today.”

She looked back over her shoulder. The overseer had stayed with the group of Warriors around the hatchway. “You think we’re in danger from these creatures?” she asked. She looked down towards the ground again. The black dots were in the air now and some were growing uncomfortably large.

“I’ve worked over Hazzini territory lots of times,” said Milo, “and never seen one of them get even close to us. But if you believe the rumours there have been instances in the past when glass walkers have been snatched off the hull by Hazzini.”

“Are they intelligent?”

“If you mean self-aware, I would say no. But they’re certainly cunning. They’re programmed to do two things—kill their enemies and reproduce—and their designers provided them with enough built-in ingenuity to be very efficient at both. And as they’re also designed to live on practically anything, they can eat even the most toxic fungi. So they’re thriving in the blight lands. My guess is that the world will eventually be covered with blight and Hazzini. …”

Jan spent an uncomfortable day out on the hull, constantly looking behind her in case one of the Hazzini had managed to fly as high as the Lord Pangloth but though there was a lot of activity every time the airship flew over a Hazzini nest none of the swarming black dots far below them seemed to come any closer.

The presence of the Hazzini on the ground made Jan have second thoughts about her plan to detonate the fire bomb that night. But she told herself that she was just looking for an excuse to postpone the moment of no return. The aim was to destroy the Lord Pangloth and all those on board—what difference did it make how the sky people died? Whether they died by fire, by falling to the ground, or became victims to the Hazzini, it was all the same. Nor could she allow the fact that the Hazzini would reduce her own slim hope of survival to vanishing point to influence her. No, she had no choice—it had to be tonight.

With working conditions so difficult Jan’s body was a mass of aching muscles by the end of the long shift. During a short break in the middle of the day she had complained to Milo that the sky people were foolish not to make use of chimps as hull cleaners. “They’d make perfect glass walkers,” she’d told him as they’d sat side by side. “Be a lot quicker than us too.”

“True,” he agreed. “But the sky people never make use of any of the ‘altered’ animals. Against their religion. They consider them to be unclean—tainted. Yet another part of the cultural fall-out from the Gene Wars. You Minervans weren’t the only ones to develop some strange ideas about the Old Science.”

She ignored the gibe. She was too exhausted to get angry with him. “We didn’t make use of any Old Science, true, but there was no law against using the animals. It wasn’t their fault they’d been altered. Once, long ago, we had all sorts of animals in Minerva but by the time I was born we only had the chimps. The others had all become unreliable. Even the male chimps couldn’t be trusted any more. We had to cage them up when they reached a certain age.”

“Interesting,” he said. “But it’s only to be expected. There was no way the genetic engineers could ensure long-term stability in their designer chromosomes. Mutations can’t be prevented so bugs are going to get into the program. More and more throwbacks will occur. Like you.”

“Like me?” she said, surprised.

“Of course. You’re unusually small for a Minervan. You’re obviously a throwback. Oh, I’m sure that in all other ways, apart from your size, you’re a genetically sound Minervan—you certainly have the typical Minervan physique and features: androgynous body with long legs, small breasts, muscular build, olive skin and a very attractive face. It’s probably just the genetic material relating to your growth that’s affected, but it would be interesting to see any of your children that resulted from a union with a non-Minervan male.”

His clinical appraisal of her body annoyed her, even though she had been vaguely flattered by the reference to her ’very attractive’ face. But what hurt most of all was his mention of her having children. No chance of that, she thought grimly. No chance of anything after tonight.

There was a considerable distance between the hatchway and the place where the glass cage was waiting to take them down, which suited Jan’s plans perfectly. She lagged behind the strung-out group of slaves as they made their way through the structural confusion that was the environment in the space between the two hulls. Milo had told her that the clutter and chaos of the Lord Pangloth’s interior was the work of the succeeding generations of sky people. “For years they’ve been making their increasingly clumsy repairs,” he said. “And various other alterations, such as converting cargo storage areas into living quarters. I doubt if one of the designers of the original Sky Angels would recognize the interior of any of the Sky Lords today.”

Jan seized her chance. She ducked behind a slanting girder then quickly retreated into the protection of the shadows. Moving as quietly as possible she intended to put as much distance between herself and the others before her absence was discovered. It was Milo who worried her the most. He would surely be the first to see she was missing, and he was certain to be the most persistent in searching for her.

The further she ran the darker it got. Only the areas regularly used had been provided with illumination. She halted and crouched down, listening. She could hear the voices of the slaves receding into the distance. Then came silence, disturbed only by the creaking of the hulls. She continued on. Because she was heading towards one side the curvature of the floor soon became more acute and finally she was obliged to stop again for fear of slipping and hurting herself in the dark. She clung to a strut, panting. Then she heard a distant shout. It was her name. They were looking for her.

She had no idea how long she waited there in the almost total blackness. At one point one of her searchers seemed to get quite close. Or at least his voice sounded loud as he shouted her name. She was sure it was Milo. If anyone found her it would be him. His sorcerer’s powers probably enabled him to see in the dark. …

But Milo didn’t find her, and when all became silent again she knew she had achieved the first part of her plan. She started moving again, having to feel her way along. She retraced her steps a certain distance, until the slope became less acute, then tried to proceed towards the bow.

She was disorientated now. She would have to establish the position of the forward hatchway before she would know exactly where she was. She headed in what she hoped was the right direction. She was relieved when she eventually saw the glow of lights ahead of her. Then, to her dismay, she heard the murmur of voices. She dropped to a crouch and proceeded cautiously. She saw that she had indeed found her way back to the hatchway but a group of Sky Warriors were sitting around the ladder, their helmets off.

For a moment Jan thought they had remained to search for her but then she realized they were still on guard duty because of the Hazzini.

Having pinpointed her position she headed back into the darkness again, moving parallel to the pathway between the hatchway and the spot where the glass cage emerged from its shaft. Her destination was one of the entry-points into the network of catwalks beneath the inner hull that permitted inspection of the membrane of the gas cells. When Milo had told her about these a couple of days ago, pointing one out, she knew she had found the perfect place to set off the bomb.

She had intended to go down the nearest entry-point but with the Warriors at the hatchway she would have to use one much further away.

When Jan decided she was a safe distance from the Warriors she lifted the thin, circular hatch of the entry point she had chosen. A short ladder extended below. She climbed down. At least the inspection tunnels were well-illuminated by the strange ‘cold’ lamps that Milo had told her contained living cells. She closed the hatch and began to move along the tunnel, her body bent forward to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling. The walls of the tunnel were actually the membrane of the huge cell whose top she was crossing like some tiny insect. It gave her a queasy feeling to think that below the thin metal mesh of the catwalk floor, and the membrane pressed against it, there was a drop of over a thousand feet.

She came to a halt. Here was as good a place as any. Jan took off her overalls, squatted down and removed the bomb from her vagina. She had been obliged to conceal it within herself again after Milo had warned her of the spot checks carried out by Warriors to see if anyone was carrying anything capable of producing sparks or flames in the forbidden area. There was the chance, of course, that they wouldn’t recognize it for what it was but she couldn’t afford to take that chance. There had been no checks during the last four days, however, and now it didn’t matter.

Jan unwrapped the device and gazed at it. She remembered her mother’s words—twist the end in the direction of the arrow. Simple. Then she would jam it between the mesh and the surface of the membrane. Thirty seconds later it would detonate, spewing out burning liquid. The cell membrane, she had learned from Milo, was very tough—like all the components of the Sky Lord that had been made in that factory in space she still couldn’t really believe in—but she was confident the contents of the bomb would burn through it. And on the other side of the membrane waited millions of cubic feet of hydrogen. …

She took a deep breath, gripped the cylinder firmly in her left hand and prepared to twist the top with her right.

She couldn’t.

She tried to. She kept trying to. Tears mingled with the sweat running down her cheeks but she just couldn’t make her hand do her bidding. She couldn’t twist the end of the cylinder. She couldn’t be responsible for the deaths of all the people on board the Lord Pangloth, no matter how much she hated them. Oh yes, she had no qualms about helping to fire rockets at the Sky Lord from the roof of the tavern but that had been different. That had been war; a fight for survival. And she hadn’t been alone.

There was Milo to consider as well. Jan didn’t like him, and he was quite possibly a sorcerer, but she did owe him her life. It wasn’t fair to him that she had given him no warning of what she’d planned to do. She had thought of doing so but, of course, if she had he would have stopped her.

And then there was herself. She didn’t want to die.

Jan bowed her head and began to sob. She had betrayed her mother. Alsa. Minerva. …

Finally she stood and dressed and put the bomb in her pocket. She would have to dispose of it somehow. Flush it out of the latrine, perhaps. As Jan made her way back to the entry-point she tried to think up a story that would explain her disappearance. Maybe she could say she went back to fetch a piece of forgotten equipment and got lost. …

She climbed out through the entry-hatch. Now what, she wondered bleakly. Go and give herself up to the Warriors by the hatchway? No, she wasn’t ready to see anyone just yet. She wanted to be by herself. She would head towards the cage shaft and wait until the others arrived to start the next day’s shift. She had no idea how many hours away that would be but she was too depressed to care.

A flicker of red light in the darkness ahead distracted her from her pain. Jan frowned, wondering what it was. Engineers doing repair work? But surely, if that was so, the whole area where they were working would be well-illuminated. She went closer, not caring if she made a noise or was spotted. It didn’t matter now.

The nearer she got to the source of the flickering red glow the more puzzled she became. It seemed to be at floor level. She also got colder. There was a stiff breeze coming from somewhere. An open hatchway? But there wasn’t one in this part of the hull.

The red light was making a sizzling sound. Then she saw sparks fly out. Sparks. The significance of this suddenly hit her. Someone was using naked flames in the forbidden area. If there was a leak of hydrogen. …

The light flared and in the expanded red glow she got a glimpse of a figure crouched beside the light. The figure wasn’t human.

Jan was now less than twenty feet away from the flickering light. She started to back away, once again trying not to make a sound.

Clang.

She had collided with a support strut. It reverberated with appalling loudness. The red light abruptly winked out. She turned and ran. And almost immediately collided with another obstacle, bounced off it and fell. She lay there, listening for any sound of approaching footsteps. She heard none, but there was a strange rustling sound that was growing louder. And it was coming from the ceiling.

She got up and started running again, one hand held out in front of her for protection. She had a good idea now what was pursuing her. A Hazzini. And maybe more than one. The brief glimpse she’d received of the thing was more than enough to convince her that Hazzini were definitely bad news.

There was light ahead of her. Jan was approaching the narrow illuminated section again. She made a decision. When she reached the pathway she would turn left towards the hatchway where the Warriors were waiting.

Something dropped down from the ceiling in front of her. She skidded to a stop. It was about nine feet long. Its body was segmented. Folded, transparent wings hung down its sides. It had six limbs. It was using the two rear ones to stand on. One of the forelimbs held a bulky object that was glowing slightly. Two of the other forelimbs shot forward. One grabbed her by the upper arm; the other seized her by the ankle. She screamed as the razor-sharp claws dug into her. She was jerked off-balance and fell on her back. The thing loomed over her, still holding her firmly. She could feel blood pouring from her arm and ankle. She screamed again as the Hazzini dipped its head towards her and she got a clearer look at it. It was as if the head of a horse had been crossed with that of a mosquito. Instead of ears, hairy antennae sprouted from behind the eyes, which were far too intelligent to belong to any insect. Its colour was a mottled black and grey and there were tufts of spiky black hair protruding in a random pattern all over it.

Jan struggled, but she was held fast. The head came still lower and she gagged as the odour of the creature washed over her. Then, through watering eyes, she saw the ‘mouth’ of the thing split into three segments and a tube appear out of it. What looked like the teeth of a saw extended from the tip of the tube. The whole tube was slowly rotating.

I’m dead, thought Jan, though she still struggled frantically. This is my punishment from the Mother God for failing to avenge Minerva. …

The rotating tube continued to emerge from the mouth. The teeth on the tip glistened with fluid. Jan guessed it was poison, or some sort of digestive chemical. But whatever the thing was about to do to her, the outcome would be the same.

Then she remembered the bomb.

With her free hand she plucked it out of her pocket, gripped the end between her teeth and twisted it sharply. It made a satisfying click! Then, with all the force she could muster, she jammed it up the end of the descending tube. The Hazzini’s head flinched back, then shook from side to side, trying to dislodge the blockage. Thirty seconds! was the silent scream that echoed in Jan’s mind.

The creature’s efforts to dislodge the bomb became more frenzied. It gripped its feeding tube with its free hand, or claw. At the same time it dropped the device it had been holding. Then it released Jan’s shoulder, so that three of its four front limbs were engaged in the task of trying to clear the blockage. But the fourth claw maintained its grip on her ankle.

Jan rolled on to her stomach, grabbed hold of a strut and tried to pull herself free, but the thing tightened its grip until she could feel the bones crunching under the pressure. She screamed and almost blacked out from the pain.

How many seconds left?

The creature flipped her over on to her back again and pulled her closer to it, even as it continued simultaneously to shake its head and claw at its mouth. She saw that the end of the bomb was no longer visible in the tube and guessed that the Hazzini had involuntarily sucked it in. But would it explode in time to save her? Then came a sound like a massive, muffled fart. The Hazzini’s entire body gave a convulsive shudder then went rigid. Smoke began to pour out of its mouth and then from other, hitherto hidden, orifices. Skreeeeeeee! screamed the dying, perhaps already dead, Hazzini in a pitch so high it was barely audible.

The pressure went from Jan’s ankle. She began to scramble backwards away from the thing. She wasn’t fast enough. The claw that had held her ankle lashed out, opening up her body all the way from the base of her throat to her lower belly. Then, with black smoke pouring out of it, the Hazzini toppled over with a loud crash.

Jan felt as if she’d been plunged into ice water. She tried to sit up but then saw how badly she’d been hurt and lay back on the hard deck, wrapping her arms about herself in the hope of keeping her body from falling apart.

When black oblivion finally closed in on her consciousness it was very welcome.

Chapter Fourteen

Jan thought she looked ridiculous and said so.

“Nonsense!” cried Mary Anne in her high, trilling voice. “You look absolutely beautiful!” Then she added, in a lower tone. “All things considered.”

‘All things considered’ meaning, thought Jan wryly, that for a physically deformed amazon, not to mention a tainted earthworm, she was passable. Though passable was not a word that Jan would have used to describe her present appearance. She continued to stare at her image in the full-length mirror. The only thing she liked about it was the lovely shade of deep blue of the gown she was wearing. The gown itself was bizarre, as was her shape. Thanks to the variety of constricting undergarments that Mary Anne had insisted she wear, her waist was ludicrously narrow; but below it the gown ballooned out over her hips, forming a bell-shape that extended all the way to the floor.

If she was totally concealed from the waist down the situation was almost entirely opposite from the waist up. The tight-fitting fabric on her upper torso was cut low at the front in a deep curve that exposed her breasts almost to her nipples. But even with the halter she was wearing, designed to push her breasts upwards, there was no way she could match the expanse of mammary being displayed by Mary Anne standing next to her. These people, Jan decided, definitely had some kind of odd obsession about breasts.

To complete her bizarre appearance were the billowing sleeves of the gown, the black ribbon around her throat, the white powder on her face, the red dye that stained her lips and the jewelled tiara on her hair. Mary Anne surveyed her handiwork with a satisfied smile. “Even your own mother wouldn’t recognize you,” she assured Jan.

“If my mother had ever seen me looking like this she would have run me through with her sword,” Jan said grimly.

“Ooo, don’t say that!” cried Mary Anne, looking shocked. “You must put that awful amazon way of life you led out of your mind, Jan. That’s all far behind you now. Instead, look forward to your future with us. From now on your life is going to be very different.”

“It certainly seems so,” agreed Jan softly. Once again she experienced a strong feeling of unreality—as if she was in a dream. These feelings had come often during the last twenty-four hours since she had been brought into the Aristo section of the Lord Pangloth. But then she’d been having similar feelings ever since regaining consciousness after being attacked by the Hazzini. She glanced down at her exposed chest. The scar had faded to a thin white line. The crude stitch marks were almost gone as well. But perhaps she was really dead after all. Maybe this was all a dream that the Mother God had created for her as an ante-room to Paradise. The meals she’d had, the scented baths, the luxurious bed she’d slept in—all had had a feel of paradise about them.

“I’m still alive?” had been her first surprised words, in faint whisper, when she’d opened her eyes and seen Milo leaning over her.

“Barely, little amazon,” he’d told her, with a smile. “The members of the Medic Guild on Pangloth are little more than butchers but at least they are capable of stitching up wounds, even one as long as yours. None of your internal organs were damaged. It was the loss of blood, and shock, that almost killed you. But the worst is over. With your powers of regeneration you’ll pull through all right. And won’t even have a scar to show for it.”

She had murmured, “The Mother God is with me,” and fallen into a deep sleep.

The next time she woke Milo had given her some water to drink from his canteen. She became aware of her surroundings. She was back in his cubicle. She tried to lift her head to see what condition her body was in but she was too weak. “I … don’t … feel any pain,” she whispered.

Milo held up a device she recognized. A hypodermic needle. There had still been a number of them at the hospital in Minerva. “I’ve been injecting you with a hormone that activates your internal pain killers. Cost me a lot to get it. A Freeman in the village has a direct supply route from one of the Aristo pharmacies.”

“Thank you. …”

“My dear little amazon, don’t mistake my generosity for altruism,” he said, grinning. “Remember our agreement. I have almost as much interest in you in getting that young body of yours back to normal.”

She’d managed a faint smile.

“So do you feel strong enough to tell me what happened?” he asked.

“Got lost …” she whispered. “Wandered around … for hours. Then saw … Hazzini. Chased me. Clawed me … Thought it had cut me in two. …” She couldn’t go on.

He ran his fingers though his non-existent hair and regarded her silently for awhile. Then he said, “Do you know that you are a heroine? The general assumption is that you came across the Hazzini, grabbed its Old Science cutter and incinerated it with it.”

She frowned. “Cutter… ?”

“The thing it had used to cut through the outer hull, and was about to cut through the inner hull with when you interrupted it. The theory is that a Hazzini nest selected their best flyer, equipped him with a cutter that they must have found in some old ruin, and instructed him to sneak into the Pangloth and sabotage one or two of the gas cells so that the Pangloth would drop in altitude and be within reach of the other Hazzini. Trouble is that the creature didn’t realize that the cell it was about to penetrate was full of hydrogen. The Hazzini would have got quite a surprise when the Pangloth had fallen out of the sky in a ball of flames and landed right on top of a bunch of their nests.”

He suddenly clutched her shoulder, his eyes cold.

“I know what really happened up there. And I know what you planned to do. You and the Hazzini had a similar goal in mind that night,” he told her harshly.

“What do you … mean?”

“You know what I’m talking about. It involves that precious Minervan relic of yours—the ‘rod of authority’ that you were going to protect with your life. You appear to have lost it.”

“Have … I … ?” She was finding it hard to think now. She wanted to go back to sleep.

“Oh, stop pretending. I was suspicious of the thing all along but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. And in return for my trust you planned to incinerate me along with everyone else when you set off your bomb. For sheer ruthlessness you Minervans can probably teach the Sky Lords a thing or two.”

“No … no …” she protested weakly, trying to shake her head. “I couldn’t do it … when the time came. Couldn’t. So I gave up. …”

He stared hard at her. Finally he said, “I suspect you’re telling the truth.” His expression then softened. “So having given up your mission you then blundered into the Hazzini. You must have used your bomb to kill the thing. The idea of you grabbing that cutter from the grip of a full-grown Hazzini and using it on him is absurd.”

“Yes …” she said and told him what she’d done. He started to smile again. “Right up his proboscis, eh? How apt. If he’d penetrated you with that thing he’d have sucked you inside out. Human blood is a delicacy for the Hazzini.”

“Will … will they find the pieces … of the bomb?” she asked.

“Don’t worry. No one performed an autopsy on the creature’s body. It had obviously been burnt to death and the cutter was lying nearby. When the Warriors, who heard your screams, arrived on the scene they jumped to the obvious conclusion. The Hazzini has been dumped overboard, so there’s no chance now of anyone else discovering the truth.”

“Good …” she murmured. She couldn’t keep her eyes open.

“Sleep,” he told her and she did.

There was a knock on the door hidden by the pink drapes that covered the walls and the ceiling. “Yes?” called Mary Anne. Ceri, Mary Anne’s hand-maiden, entered the dressing room through a gap in the drapes. Ceri, like Jan, was an ex-slave and wore the same tattooed circle around the black star on her cheek. But though an ex-slave, Ceri wasn’t a Freewoman either; Mary Anne had said she was a Bondswoman and as far as Jan could see this was just another term for slave. The difference was that being a slave in the Aristos’ section of the Sky Lord was far preferable to being a slave anywhere else on the ship. She had liked Ceri at first sight. The hand-maiden was a slim girl with very fair hair and green, attractive eyes. Her face displayed both intelligence and sensitivity, two qualities that Jan already knew were in short supply on board the Sky Lord. But she had to admit she rather liked Mary Anne as well, even though the woman was patently stupid.

Ceri inclined her head respectfully towards Mary Anne and said in her soft, pleasant voice, “Prince Magid wishes to know if you and your guest are ready yet, Mistress. He is waiting in the saloon.”

“We’ll be out shortly, Ceri darling,” Mary Anne told her.

As Ceri withdrew Mary Anne fussily tucked a stray hair back under Jan’s tiara. “Not long now before your moment of glory,” she said breathlessly. “You must be feeling very excited.”

“Oh, very,” said Jan and smiled at Mary Anne’s reflection in the mirror.

Prince Magid, Lord Pangloth’s High Chamberlain, looked just as absurd to Jan as he had when she’d seen him on the day of her capture. With his long, somewhat skinny legs clad in red-and-orange striped tights and his voluminous, puffed-up jacket, he reminded her of some bizarre bird. And she found it hard not to smile whenever she glanced at the bright green leather box that covered his genitals. Knowing the thing was called a ‘cod piece’ didn’t help.

He was standing at one of the windows with his back to them as they entered the saloon. He turned and said, in his usual reedy voice, “Ah, here you are at last.” Fingering his pointed beard, and with his other hand resting on the hilt of his ceremonial sword, he made a great show of inspecting Jan, walking all around her and making odd noises through his nose. She considered how easy it would be to grab him by the throat, whip out his sword and stick it through his heart. But apart from a brief satisfaction such an action would achieve nothing, so instead she gazed out at the magnificent view through the row of outward slanting windows that made up one entire wall of the saloon. The sun was setting behind a distant mountain range and clouds were lit up in a brilliant red.

“Well, I suppose she’ll do,” said Prince Magid reluctantly.

“Oh, Phylus, I think she looks absolutely splendid!” cried Mary Anne, clasping her hands together.

“For an amazon she is suitable,” he said pointedly. “Now let us go. We don’t want to keep Prince Caspar waiting.”

“You mean you don’t want to keep Lady Jane waiting,” she said with a sniff. Prince Magid glared at her and she visibly wilted under the intensity of his look.

As she accompanied the pair of them along the wide, carpeted corridor Jan said hesitantly, “Ah, Prince Magid, I thought I was going to meet Lord Pangloth himself tonight. …”

He gave an exaggerated sigh and said, condescendingly. “There is no Lord Pangloth, girl.”

It was the fourth or fifth period of wakefulness. “What are you doing to me?” Jan asked as she surfaced out of the deep well of sleep. Milo was bending over her.

“Calm yourself. I’m just changing your dressing, that’s all. I’ve given you another shot of pain-blocking hormone so you won’t feel much.”

“Want to see,” she said trying to raise her head.

“I wouldn’t advise it.”

But, stronger now, she was able to lift her head and look down along her exposed body. “Oh Mother God …” she sighed and let her head drop back on to the hard pillow. What she had seen was a ragged incision running down between her breasts all the way to her lower stomach. The sides of the incision were held together by crude, black stitches which looked as if they’d been inserted by someone who was very drunk at the time. Jan felt that if she sneezed or made some other too-violent movement the stitches would break and her body would simply open up, spilling out her intestines and other organs. …

“Mother God,” she murmured again and closed her eyes tight. She tried to take very shallow breaths.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Milo told her.

This information did nothing to cheer her. “Leave me alone and let me die.”

“No, really. You’re healing fast, which is to be expected. The stitches can come out in a few days.”

“No!” she cried, alarmed. “Those stitches are all that’s keeping me together!”

She found Milo’s ringing laughter quite hurtful.

But Milo was right. Three days later Jan was strong enough to get out of bed and, with Milo’s help, walk all the way to the latrine. She was also able to switch from the strong broths he’d been feeding her to solid foods.

She was glad to be partly mobile again because she’d come to resent both her total reliance upon him and the enforced intimacy this had produced. At the same time she had to admit that he hadn’t taken even the slightest advantage of the situation and was actually a very skilled and efficient nurse. But once again Jan found herself sliding even deeper into his debt and she didn’t like it. Eventually she would have to repay him, but the price was getting bigger all the time.

She was grateful, though, for his company as she lay there recuperating. He’d explained that he’d been excused duty to look after her. The order had come from the Aristos, not Bannion, he stressed. “You’re the flavour of the day with them,” he told her. “It’s something we might be able to take advantage of. …”

On the fifth day Milo pronounced her sufficiently healed for the stitches to be removed. Because the supply of pain-blockers had been exhausted Jan found it an uncomfortable experience. She shut her eyes and put her thumb between her teeth, trying not to cry out.

After what seemed hours Milo said, “I’m finished.” She raised her head and looked. The long wound had changed drastically in appearance since that first day. It still looked red and ugly but it had definitely healed to the point where it now seemed to be just a superficial incision. The wounds on her ankle and upper arm had similarly healed. “Thank you,” she said.

“My pleasure.” He said it in a teasing tone of voice. Then Jan became aware that he had left his hand resting on her left thigh. She suddenly felt naked and exposed under his gaze. She pushed his hand away and hurriedly pulled the thin blanket up to her chin.

He regarded her discomfiture with amusement. “Now that you’ve changed your mind about blowing up the Lord Pangloth, and me along with it, I see no reason why you shouldn’t fulfil your side of our little agreement. Can you?”

After a long pause she said, in a small voice, “No. …”

“Good. When you’re completely well I shall expect your full co-operation.” He got up from the bed. “Now try and get some more sleep. I’m going to the village to buy food. I won’t be long.”

It took some time before Jan was able to slip into a troubled sleep. When she woke it was to find the gross and wheezing bulk of Guild Master Bannion looming over her.

Chapter Fifteen

What the Aristos enjoyed, at the expense of the other inhabitants of the Lord Pangloth, was the luxury of space. That became clear to Jan soon after her arrival in the Aristo section of the airship, but was confirmed beyond doubt when she entered the ‘Grand Saloon’. The room was huge. It was hundreds of feet in length and, at its broadest end, equally wide. Jan realized it was located in the bow of the Sky Lord, probably not far below the airship’s actual nose. Two rows of tall windows, much bigger than the one in Magid’s quarters, converged at a rounded point at the far end of the room. Jan could see wisps of white cloud passing by the windows.

There must have been about three hundred people present but so vast was the floor space that the room didn’t seem the least bit crowded. The majority of the people, judging by their clothes, were Aristos but there were a large number of servants, or slaves, passing among them carrying trays of drinks or food. As Jan stood at the top of the short staircase, flanked by Prince Magid and Mary Anne, she again felt a wave of unreality wash over. The feeling intensified when the crowd below her all turned in her direction and silence fell over the hall-like room.

Then someone started to applaud and before long everyone, apart from the servants, were clapping. With a sense of shock Jan realized they were applauding her.

Prince Magid touched her elbow, a signal that she should move forward. She did so. Magid and Mary Anne accompanied her down the stairs. When they reached the bottom the assembled Aristos, still applauding, split into two groups so that a wide corridor was formed between them stretching all the way to the end of the room. In front of where the rows of windows met to form their rounded point stood a small dais. On it were seated two figures; a man and a woman.

Jan knew who they were. The man was Prince Caspar. The woman was his mother, Lady Jane. As far as Jan could gather they reigned supreme within the Sky Lord.

She had been surprised to learn that Lord Pangloth didn’t exist. There had been a Lord Pangloth a long time ago. Several, in fact, but from the small scraps of information that Magid had reluctantly given her on the way to the Grand Saloon it appeared that the Pangloth dynasty had been wiped out centuries ago by a rival Aristo family. She wondered if the present day Aristos were still prone to similar power struggles.

As she passed among the clapping Aristos, with Magid and Mary Anne one step behind her, Jan saw that Prince Caspar was much younger than she had expected. In fact he was nothing more than a youth and she guessed he was her age or even younger. He was also, she observed with interest, the prettiest male she had ever encountered. His long, angular face was framed with shoulder-length black hair, his smoothly textured skin was very white, and he had brown eyes that she could only describe as enormous.

Lady Jane, seated further back on the dais, was an older version of her son. She had the same long, handsome face with its immaculate cheekbones and very white skin, but her eyes were blue instead of brown. And unlike her son’s, they were cold eyes.

When Jan, Magid and Mary Anne reached the dais Prince Caspar and his mother stood. Both were dressed entirely in black except for the white lace collar and cuffs worn by the Prince and a blood red jewel that hung between the breasts of Lady Jane. The Prince raised his arms and the clapping abruptly ceased. He looked down at Jan and smiled. It was a beautiful smile which stirred something somewhere inside her. She smiled back. Then she felt Magid poke his finger sharply into her back and she remembered what she was supposed to do. Awkwardly, she dipped her knees and bowed her head as Mary Anne had instructed her to do.

Prince Caspar said, “Jan Dorvin of Minerva, all of us here owe you a great debt of gratitude. If it hadn’t been for your act of bravery against the Hazzini intruder the Lord Pangloth might well have been destroyed.” He spoke in a soft but clear voice. “We therefore take pleasure in pardoning you for all past crimes against us and grant you both freedom and the honorary status of an Aristo. This means you will enjoy all the rights and privileges of being one of us, with the exception of being able to marry into an Aristo family. Welcome, Jan Dorvin. And thank you.”

“Thank you, your Highness,” said Jan in as sincere a tone as she could manage.

Prince Caspar raised his arms and the applause resumed. Jan dipped her knees and bowed again. She tried to fight back her tears. She was filled with shame. Mother God forgive me, she prayed. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t mean to save the Lord Pangloth!

While Jan was being presented at court Milo was lying on his bunk and dreaming. …

His armoured flipper had landed on the gravel courtyard in front of Kagen’s mansion. As he got out, a two-legged cyberoid paused and turned in his direction for a few moments then, satisfied, resumed its patrol alongside the wall. Kagen himself, accompanied by a blank-faced clone warrior, came hurrying out of the house to greet him. He was obviously very excited. Milo watched his approach with wry amusement. Kagen had had himself modified to the extent that no physical trace of the old Kagen remained, but his gait betrayed him. He still walked like the fat man he had been. The little fat man.

“Glad you could make it, Haze. You won’t be disappointed!” he said as he shook Milo’s hand. “Come and see. …”

“Didn’t think it was going to work,” he said breathlessly as he ushered Milo in through the front entrance. “Lost the first three foetuses during the growth acceleration process. Struck lucky with number four. The white coats celebrated for a whole week straight.”

Kagen took Milo down into the basement. The journey ended at a metal door guarded by another clone warrior. Kagen pressed his palm on the indentilock and the door slid open. It was dark beyond. “She doesn’t like the light,” he explained. In the dim light from the corridor Milo saw the outline of a figure sitting on a bed. A woman and, by the look of it, quite ordinary in shape. Two arms, two legs, one head. …

Then Kagen turned the light on.

The woman – girl, really—gave a cry and covered her eyes with her forearm. Milo stared at her.

“Unique, eh? A real collector’s item,” said Kagen proudly.

Her skin was transparent. Beneath it, clearly visible, were pulsing arteries and veins, layers of fat deposits, muscle fibres. …

“Girl, take your hand away and look this way!” commanded Kagen.

Reluctantly she did so. Frightened eyes stared out through transparent lids. Two green pools of life set in what appeared to be a flayed, raw skull.

Kagen turned to Milo. “Well, what do you think of her?”

Milo woke and sat up. He clutched his head and moaned. Then he leaned forward and threw up on the clean floor of his cubicle.

Jan was relieved when the twittering Mary Anne finally said good night and left her alone in her bedroom. She removed the rest of her underclothes—Mary Anne had helped her out of the garment called a corset—and then put on a robe made of the sheerest material she had ever felt before. She sat on the soft bed with a tired sigh and stared out at the starless night through her single window. The presentation at court had exhausted her. All that smiling and being polite to the Aristos while her inner voice had kept repeating to her ‘These are the people who murdered your mother, your father, all your friends … the people who destroyed Minerva.’ But I have no choice! she had argued back. I must do as Milo said and take advantage of the situation. He has a plan.

She had been terrified that day when she’d woken up and found the huge Guild Master in Milo’s cubicle. At first she’d thought she was alone with the creature and feared the worst, but then saw Milo and one of the overseers behind him. She feared that Bannion had come to take her away with him but instead he was only on an errand. An errand for the Aristos. Pompously, he told her that Lord Pangloth had graciously decided to reward her for her heroism by granting her freedom. When she was well enough she would be taken to the quarters of the Lord Chamberlain, Prince Magid, which would be her new home for the time being. Then he’d patted her on the cheek and said wistfully, “What a waste, my dear. I had other plans for you.”

When he’d manoeuvred his bulk out through the cubicle’s narrow entrance she had stared with astonishment at Milo. He looked cheerful. “Congratulations,” he said and sat down in the wicker chair.

“I don’t want to go and live with the Aristos,” she told him.

“You want to stay here as a slave? You want to keep working as a glass walker and end up as Bannion’s plaything?”

“No,” she’d admitted. “But. …”

“Ah, I know what it is. You don’t want to leave me.”

“Rubbish,” she said, then regretted having spoken so quickly. But Milo was still smiling. His reaction puzzled her. “You don’t seem very upset about my imminent departure. I thought you had ‘plans’ for me too.”

“And I still do. But they’re no longer the same ones.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I no longer have plans for your body, but for your new exalted position in our airborne society. You’re going to be in a position to do me a great deal of good.”

“Like what?” she asked, suspiciously, having visions of herself smuggling various luxury items out of the Aristo section for Milo.

“Like enabling me to achieve what I’ve been trying to do for the three years I’ve been on board this thing. And if you do that I promise you two things that are closest to your heart.”

“And they are?”

“Your freedom; and vengeance on the Lord Pangloth.”

There was a tap on Jan’s door. She groaned under her breath, presuming that it was Mary Anne coming back. But when the door opened she saw it was Ceri. She was dressed in a white shift and her hair was tousled. Jan guessed she’d come from her bed. “The Mistress asked me to see if you needed anything,” she told Jan. “From now on you are to regard me as your servant.”

“I don’t need anything, thanks, and I’m certainly not going to treat you as my servant,” Jan said firmly.

“I find it’s best to do as the Mistress says,” said Ceri. “It makes for a quieter life.”

“Does she mistreat you?”

Ceri gave a slight shrug of the shoulders. “No, not physically. But she can be very tiresome when she doesn’t get her own way.”

“What about Prince Magid?”

Again the slight shrug. “It’s best to keep him happy too,” she said cryptically.

Jan patted the bed beside her. “Come and sit down. I’d like to talk to you awhile. Unless you’re anxious to get back to your own bed.”

“No.” Ceri came over and sat down. They looked at each other. “You’re very pretty,” Jan told her.

“Thank you. So are you.”

They were silent for a time then Ceri asked, “Did you enjoy yourself tonight?”

Jan made a face. “It was an ordeal. The Aristos are strange people. Everyone I talked to only talked about themselves. They’d ask a token question—usually asking if I’d fully recovered from the attack—and that was the only interest they showed in me; the rest of their conversation was about their problems. Not that they seemed to have any real ones.”

“No, they live in a world of their own. Anything that lies outside of it is of no interest to them. They spend their time playing games, watching their ‘entertainments’, having sex and flattering Prince Caspar and his mother,” said Ceri. “Were you presented to them, by the way? To the Prince and Lady Jane?”

“Oh yes. And later I had a brief chat with him. He’s invited me to their private quarters tomorrow night for dinner. I don’t want to go but I suppose I have no choice.”

“What was your impression of him?” Ceri asked.

“Very beautiful. For a man…. ” The implication hung in the air between them. Jan suddenly realized she had an overpowering urge to embrace Ceri. She badly needed the comfort of another woman’s arms around her. It had been so long. …

She gave way to the impulse. She leaned forward and hugged Ceri, burying her face against her neck. “Hold me, please,” she begged.

Ceri put her arms around Jan but not tightly. They stayed in this position for awhile and then Ceri said quietly, “You want me to sleep with you?”

“Oh yes, yes,” sighed Jan. “More than anything.”

Ceri gently disengaged herself from Jan’s arms, stood up and pulled her white shift up over her head and dropped it on the floor. She wore nothing beneath it. She stood there and looked at Jan. Then she said coolly, “You are certainly learning fast.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jan, puzzled by her attitude.

“Learning how to treat me as a servant. At this rate you’ll make a fine Aristo.”

Jan gasped. “You think … you think I’m forcing you to have sex with me?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No! Of course not!” Jan was shocked that Ceri could have thought that of her. “I just assumed you wanted to.”

“I’m not a Minervan, Jan,” Ceri said quietly.

Comprehension dawned on Jan. She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t realize. I mean, I just. …” She felt embarrassed. “You don’t like women? I mean, you don’t sleep with women?”

“I sleep with women. When I have to. And since I’ve been working for the Aristos I’ve slept with quite a lot of women. And a lot of Aristo men too.”

“You mean they make you?”

She shrugged. “Let’s say I have no choice in the matter. Unless I want to return to being a common slave again. At least the living conditions are better here.”

Jan didn’t know what to say. Her emotions were in confusion; she felt embarrassed, hurt; indignant on Ceri’s behalf … and still sexually aroused. She said hurriedly, “Please put your shift back on. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.”

“That’s all right.” said Ceri as she bent down and picked up the white sleeping garment. As she slipped it over her head and pulled it down Jan said to her, “Please stay, though, and talk to me a while longer. But only if you want to, as my friend. Not because you think you have some obligation to.”

Ceri gave her a searching look then smiled. “I’d be happy to stay for awhile, as your friend.” She sat back down on the bed beside Jan.

Jan said, “How long have you been on the Lord Pangloth, Ceri?”

“Three years. Before that I lived at sea. On a sea habitat. Do you know what that is?”

“Why yes. The slave who, well, befriended me—he lived on one as well. He said it was like a floating town.” A thought occurred to her. “Maybe you both lived on the same one! Do you know a man by the name of Milo?”

At the mention of Milo’s name Ceri’s expression darkened. “Milo? That’s the man who befriended you?”

“Yes. You know him then? He’s a strange man, but he saved my life. More than once, I suspect.”

“I know Milo all right,” said Ceri with a slight scowl. “And I don’t like him. It was thanks to him our sea habitat got destroyed. He finally convinced the Council that we should move close in to shore. It was true that conditions had worsened out in the ocean but we could have survived out there for many more years to come. Don’t ask me what his motive was but ever since he arrived at the habitat he kept trying to persuade people that the habitat needed to be moved close to the mainland.”

Jan was puzzled. “Since he arrived? He told me he was born in your floating town.”

“He told you that?” Ceri shook her head. “No. He arrived about ten years before the Lord Pangloth sank us. He was in a strange, floating capsule. It was sealed and apparently very hard to break into. There were three bodies in the capsule with him. They’d been dead for weeks. Milo was in a deep coma and it was presumed he would soon die as well, but he suddenly regained consciousness.”

Jan frowned. “I wonder why he lied to me? I don’t understand. …”

“Milo was a hard one to understand, I grant you that,” said Ceri. “And no one really liked him, but because he knew so much, especially about machinery and electronics, he was a welcome addition to the community. Until he lured us to our destruction, that is. I lost everything. My parents. My husband. …”

“We have much in common then,” Jan told her softly. She wanted to touch Ceri again but decided it would be wise not to. Her thoughts turned back to Milo. “He told me so many things. I wonder how many of those were lies too.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, about the past. Early history. About before the Gene Wars and the like. He said he got it from the history machines you had in your sea town.”

Ceri shook her head. “Another lie. All we had left in our library were some technical manuals and novels on tape, and a few holographic fiction movies. No historical stuff left at all.”

Jan was about to ask what the terms ‘novels’ and ‘holographic fiction movies’ meant when an awful thought occurred to her. “There’s something else he told me … you’ve got to tell me he was telling the truth about that.”

Ceri regarded her with concern. “What’s the matter? You’ve gone pale.”

“Milo said that my town was only part of Minerva,” said Jan anxiously. “He said there were other parts that I didn’t know about … towns just like my own. He was telling the truth, wasn’t he?” She stared at Ceri with pleading eyes. Ceri looked down at her hands which lay clasped together on her lap. “I’m sorry, Jan,” she said quietly. “I know of no other surviving parts of Minerva. Your town was the only one.”

Jan sucked in air then expelled it with a single, convulsive sob. She started to tremble. The knowledge that Minerva continued to exist in another form had been of profound importance to her. It had provided her with the will to keep going, knowing that somewhere the spirit of Minerva was being kept alive by others of her own kind. But now. …

Now she again had to deal with the awful realization that she was the last living Minervan woman. Her body shook as she cried. It was too much to bear.

Dimly, she became aware that Ceri was holding her, rocking her gently back and forth in her arms. “Hey, come on Jan, take it easy,” she heard Ceri croon in her ear. “Everything is going to be all right. Jesus, you’re just a kid, aren’t you …?”

Jan clung desperately to her. After a long time her sobbing stopped but she continued to hold on to Ceri. Eventually Ceri said, “Come on, Jan, time you went to bed.”

Reluctantly, Jan let go of her. She didn’t want to be alone but she couldn’t make any more demands on Ceri. She watched as Ceri pulled back the bed covers for her then meekly slid under them. To her surprise Ceri slipped into bed beside her.

“Wha …?” she began but Ceri put two fingers on her lips and said, “Shush. What I’m doing is what I want to do. As a friend. All right?”

Jan smiled. “All right.”

“No more talk,” said Ceri, taking her in her arms.

Milo was leaning on the railing, staring down at the blight land that the airship was passing over. He looked round when Jan emerged on to the narrow, open observation deck where they had arranged to meet. He grinned as he looked her up and down. “Fancy dress suits you,” he told her with amusement.

“It was the simplest thing I could find to wear,” she said coldly. She was wearing a plain, full-length grey and black gown and, despite Mary Anne’s protests, was wearing nothing underneath it. She couldn’t stand that constricting underwear and had made up her mind to only wear it on formal occasions.

Milo regarded her plunging neckline with obvious appreciation. “You’re healing well. I can hardly see the scar.”

She folded her arms across her chest.

“So how did it go last night? Were you a social success? Did you meet Lord Pangloth?” he asked eagerly.

“Milo, our arrangement is off. I don’t know what you want but I’m not going to help you get it. I never want to see you again. I never want to speak to you again. That’s the only reason I came here today—to tell you that.”

He looked surprised. “What’s eating you? What happened last night?”

“I found out that you lied to me. There are no other ‘lost’ parts of Minerva. My Minerva was all that was left. And it’s gone. Everything you told me was a lie.”

Milo shrugged. “It seemed the best thing I could do for you at the time.”

“It was what?” she asked in astonishment.

“You were in a bad way emotionally. Close to losing the will to live. You needed something to boost you up—give you hope and all that—so I told you what can be described as a remedial lie. And you’ve got to admit it worked.”

Jan clenched her fists. She wanted to smash that arrogant, smug expression from his face. “You bastard—you don’t know what you did to me!”

“I did what I thought best. And I still think it was the right thing to do. Now, enough of this foolishness. You must stick to our agreement. I told you what was at stake. If I succeed we’ll both have our freedom and the Lord Pangloth will be in our power.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “You think I’m going to believe anything else you tell me now? Mother God, it was probably all lies. Everything you said, about the past—about your past.”

He shook his head. “No, I swear it wasn’t.”

“Really. That’s not what Ceri told me.”

His eyes became wary. “Ceri?”

“You might remember her. You lived in the same floating sea city. She certainly remembers you. She doesn’t like you very much.”

“Yes, I remember her,” he said slowly. “You’ve spoken to her, then?”

“We’ve become very good friends. She told me how you were found in a capsule with three dead bodies just ten years before you were captured by the Lord Pangloth. A rather different story to the one you told me.”

He sighed. “All right, I admit I lied there as well, but only because you wouldn’t have believed the truth if I’d told you it.”

“And what is that?” she asked sceptically.

“That capsule was an emergency survival pod. It came from a spaceship that had crashed into the sea.”

“A spaceship?”

“A craft capable of travelling through space. From planet to planet. The spaceship had come from the planet Mars.”

“Mars?” she said blankly.

He pointed upwards. “Mars. You’ve heard of the planet Mars?”

“Yes, of course. Are you saying …?”

“Yes, I am. I come from Mars.”