John Brosnan - The Sky Lords

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.