“And Godel?”
“She's not from Migdala, of course. She's a name and a face, nothing more. So far as I know, she has no redeeming features whatsoever, no one who believes she is, or once was, a good person.”
“Understanding Kane's history doesn't alter my opinions of him.”
“No,” whispered Myrced, “I know. Has anything you've seen made sense of what happened to you?”
“I thought seeing the world that produced him might help.”
“But it hasn't.”
“No. There are good people and bad people and people who are a bit of both here. Same as anywhere, I guess.”
Myrced had a blanket bundled around her shoulders, which she opened to Selene to share the warmth. She was naked underneath it. “Come and sit. You won't need that blaster.”
“Sorry.”
“It's okay. You did well to switch off for so long.”
They sat together, legs dangling over the side of the building, breathing the air. Some nocturnal hunter flitted through the night, its echolocation chirps audible to Selene's left ear.
“What were you thinking about?” she asked.
“I was looking up at the stars and thinking how they never change. Whatever happens down here, whoever dies, whatever horrors take place, the stars simply continue shining, indifferent to it all. I was feeling small, unimportant, powerless. And then I thought of you and I thought I'd ask you to stay, join with us, fight Concordance on the ground. Look at it all, the galaxy is too large to be saved. I think we need you. I think maybe I need you.”
Selene lay her head on Myrced's shoulder. Should she stay? Could she? There were worse worlds, worse places to be. She and Ondo could alter her appearance permanently, and she could make Migdala her home. There was a fight to be fought here.
Instead she said, “They do move. The stars I mean. We just don't see it because the galaxy turns so slowly. And the stars are not the only things up there.”
A trio of lights, a little triangle, moved rapidly down the night sky, sinking into the west. The three orbiting Cathedral ships. She thought about the Refuge, and the Depository with its impossible blue star, and the mysteries of Omn somewhere out there in the heart of the galaxy.
“Concordance,” said Myrced.
“I can't stay, as much as I'd like to,” said Selene. “There are bigger battles to fight out there, among the stars. But you could come with me. We could leave together, leave now.”
“Come and live on Ondo Lagan's mysterious Refuge?”
“You know about that?”
“The name only. The rumour of it. Is it a ship? The Refuge is something of a myth, like a fabulous place in the sky where all dangers and evils are banished.”
That amused her. “Well, it's no paradise, but there'd be room for the two of us. Will you come?”
Myrced didn't reply for a moment.
“Myrced?”
The answer took some effort. “I can't, Selene, tempting as it is. I have friends here, a life. I've made promises. I need to stay and finish what I've started.”
“You'll get yourself killed, most likely.”
“I know that, but that's true out there as well, isn't it? There's no peaceful, quiet life anywhere unless you accept the control of Concordance. In other days, I would jump at the chance to come with you, but I don't think I can right now. I'm sorry.”
“I get it.”
Myrced smiled. “Perhaps one day.”
“Perhaps.” They both knew the chances of that were small. These were the things you said to each other to make farewells easier.
“You're leaving now?”
“Maybe not immediately,” said Selene. “Concordance will be distracted for a few more days as the celebrations build to a climax. I can lie low here for a while. That is, if you'll have me.”
Myrced sounded amused. “Oh, I'll have you. Come on, it's getting cold. Let's go back to bed.”
They saw no one else for the best part of three days, save when Myrced slipped out for supplies of food and drink. They ate and they made love and they drank and they slept. It was a welcome hiatus, a shutting out of the world and the galaxy, and everything beyond themselves.
They also read: Myrced had a collection of forbidden books on the shelves of her little room, paper volumes she'd collected over the years to keep them from Concordance's fires.
“Why do they ban them?” Selene asked one sunlit afternoon, dappled shade filtering through the shutters. “Most of them are fiction, just stories of other worlds and adventures in space.”
“Because of that, precisely. They're heretical, they give people dreams of other possibilities. And some are factual, too.” She also had a collection of dusty, dog-eared historical tomes, all very old. One, in particular, was her prized possession: a history of Migdala that documented how life had been before the arrival of Concordance and the twisting of the Revelation Temples into their current form. An Age of Angels: a Brief History of Migdala, it was called. Despite its title, it was a weighty brick of a book, over a thousand pages long. Selene loved to flick through it, thinking about all the other people who had done the same over the centuries. It described at length the cultural and economic links Migdala had once shared with other star-faring cultures. Myrced had explained it was a story that had been buried, that she wasn't allowed to teach the children in school. They just got to hear about military threats from other worlds, threats that Concordance protected Migdala from. It was clear why Concordance would want such books destroyed.
Each evening, the celebrations continued in the city centre across the lake, and from the screams and detonations it was clear that there were also more flashpoints between the rebels and the forces of Concordance. Selene and Myrced stayed away, nursing their wounds. It was a moment of respite, of simple pleasures and joys stolen from the horror. At times, it seemed like she'd
