She felt ashamed. “I’m sorry, Milo. I acted like a child.”
“No. You acted like a stupid woman.”
Anger flared up in Jan but she bit back her words of protest. She had no right to defend herself. She had behaved stupidly. Finally she said, haltingly, “Well, are you going to leave me?”
There was no answer from Milo. The silence went on so long she began to think that he had already gone, moving so quietly she hadn’t heard him go. Then, unexpectedly, she felt his hands grab the cloth of her Japanese jacket. He slammed her backwards and then his weight was on top of her. “You owe me,” he told her coldly.
Automatically, she started to resist but then she stopped struggling. Again, he was right. She did owe him, monster though he was. And she knew that without him she would never get out of the blight land alive. There was no choice but to let him have what he wanted.
So she didn’t resist as he roughly stripped her of her weapons harness and clothes and then, equally roughly, entered her. She lay there on the putrid fungus and the cold slime of the crushed worms’ bodies, trying to rein back the physical revulsion she had for Milo and hoping that it would all be over quickly.
It wasn’t. She realized, eventually, that she should have anticipated that Milo would be unlike poor Prince Caspar in his love-making; the eager and over-excited Caspar could never last very long before firing off his juices inside her but Milo wasn’t liable to such lack of self-control. On the contrary. As Milo had had so many of his bodily functions improved by those long-dead genegineers she guessed that his sexual prowess had been similarly ‘enhanced’. He took her again and again in a variety of positions, climaxing every time but coming erect again almost immediately.
She tried to let herself go—tried to give herself over to the experience—but though her body responded to a certain degree her mind remained locked off from what was happening to her. Even when she tried to pretend it was Prince Caspar making love to her with a cold skill he had never achieved before she failed to overcome her basic revulsion. So instead she simulated enjoyment—as she had sometimes done with Caspar—crying and moaning and shuddering in a way that she hoped would convince Milo.
Finally he climaxed with an intensity that went far beyond his previous orgasms, giving a piercing scream as his body underwent a series of convulsive muscle contractions. Then he slumped down beside her and Jan could hear him panting. She waited for a time then said, “That was wonderful. …”
The slap that came out of the darkness took her completely by surprise. It seared her cheek and rattled her teeth. Then, before she could react, Milo’s hands gripped her neck. “Bitch,” he hissed. “Who do you think you’re dealing with? Do you think you could ever fool me?”
Not since the time in the wicker cage with the other captives had Jan spent such an uncomfortable night, perched precariously as she was high up in a fork in the tall tree. It was impossible to sleep because she knew if she did she would have surely fallen. She had almost fallen when relieving herself. Even eating and drinking had been a risky operation as she really needed both hands to hold on to the tree.
Adding to her discomfort were the state of her clothes, which remained sticky and smelt putrid, and the soreness around her throat that made swallowing painful. For several terrifying moments she had been convinced that Milo was going to kill her, but just as she began to lose consciousness he’d let go of her throat and told her brusquely to get up and get dressed. Since then he’d said very little to her, apart from announcing that he’d found a suitable tree and giving some words of advice on how to climb it.
One of the rare occasions he spoke was when they heard something very large approaching the tree. “What is it?” she’d called anxiously to him. Milo, who was on a branch a short distance below her, replied that it was a particularly large reptile.
It was so heavy it made the ground shake and Jan had to hold even more tightly on to the tree. She could hear other trees being knocked down and guessed that the creature was so enormous it was simply creating its own path through the blighted forest. “Milo …!” she’d cried, expecting the thing to knock their tree over at any moment. But he’d called back, “Don’t worry, it’s going to miss us. Just.”
Milo was right. Jan had a brief impression of an impossibly large bulk passing by very close and then the sounds of its ground-shaking footsteps began to recede. “It must have been huge,” she said.
“It was. Biggest dinosaur I ever saw. A brachiosaurus, by the look of it … not that any of those things are real dinosaurs. Their genetic base isn’t even reptilian, it’s mammalian. Canine, in fact. Yeah, those so-called dinosaurs are really just overgrown dogs. …” He gave a harsh laugh and then became silent again.
Apart from that close encounter with the giant beast they had no trouble with any other creature during the long night, though from all the cries and shrieks that could be heard at regular intervals it was clear that this area of the blight land was well populated with something. Jan felt very relieved when it finally began to grow light. Her back and neck were stiff and her limbs ached from the strain of maintaining a grip on the tree.
The dawn illuminated a depressing but familiar scene. Blight land in all directions. Fungus everywhere. Hanging from the trees like pieces of rotting shroud, rising from the ground in various bizarre shapes. Some of the growths were of different colours—Jan saw several giant puffballs that were bright red—but most of the fungus was a dirty white. It was a colour she associated with death and decay. The air smelled of decay too, a strong odour of mustiness which she knew came from the fungus. And it would get worse when the fungus was warmed by the sun.
“I’m going down,” she told Milo. “Another minute in this tree will drive me crazy.”
Her muscles protested strongly as she began the long climb down to the ground. She expected Milo to descend ahead of her, but instead he moved out of her way and then began to climb towards the top of the tree. “What are you doing?” she asked, pausing.
“Want to get my bearings. Got disorientated last night. Should be able to see the city from the top.”
Jan continued down. On the ground she walked off a short distance and relieved herself behind a rotting tree. When she returned Milo was there. His expression was grim. “Not good. We flew further off course in that damn glider than I thought.”
“How far away is the city?”
“Too far. I could just make out the towers on the horizon. It’s going to take us days to get there travelling through this mess.” He took out a rice cake from the pouch inside his jacket and began to eat. Between bites he said, “Trouble is, we don’t have enough food or water.”
“I don’t, you mean,” she said, remembering what Ceri had said about Milo surviving in the sea while his companions had died of thirst and starvation. “You don’t need food or water to stay alive. Ceri told me.”
He frowned at her. “It’s true I can slow down my metabolism, in the same way I can speed it up, but that means going into a form of hibernation. I can’t walk and hibernate at the same time. I need nourishment and water just as much as you.”
“So what can we do?”
“Just keep going and hope something turns up. Maybe we’ll run into some marauders or wanderers and I can kill them for their supplies. But somehow I doubt if we’ll see any other humans this close to the city.”
Jan took out her water bottle and shook it. It sounded less than half full. She had one mouthful and put the bottle back inside her jacket. “Any sign of the Sky Lords?”