“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.”