That night I sneaked out to the Museum, only to wander aimlessly through the rooms, remembering Jonah and hating myself for being who and what I was. It felt empty now in a way it never had previously, like a fossilised shell abandoned by life. I sat amongst the statues and cried, then I thought about the pictures on the walls upstairs and shuddered. What had Jonah said?

‘We chose to go out and be slaughtered … slaughtered by our own weapons in front of the Martians…’

After a long time sitting thinking about it, I made myself go up. It was the first time I’d been in the galleries since Halley and I had found them. Flashing my tilelight around, I saw Halley’s staircases of books. The pictures were as gruesome as I remembered; my imagination didn’t have to heighten their terror, they really were the stuff of nightmares. Then, for the first time, I saw what Halley must have failed to see too. High above the dragomansk and metamansk filling the air, small and high up in the clouds like ancient gods inspecting the scene for their own amusement, I could just make out exaggeratedly bug-eyed Martians sitting in ships which looked very like primitive versions of the Byd’s own landing craft. One of them was even performing our salute. With so much else going on in the picture, you would certainly have missed them if you weren’t looking for them. The Martians looked on as the monstrous creatures attacked the very side which had developed them to this, their final and deadliest form. In the face of such horror, the idea that Jonah and his colleagues, the last survivors on this part of Earth, would sooner sacrifice themselves than give up the secret which might have saved them, was haunting and tragic. I’d soon had my fill and descending to the great hall again, I went to the fossil room. I felt ready to say some of the things I should have said to Jonah that last time, even though it was too late. If a trace of his consciousness still survived, it didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

Settling myself in the middle of the crinoid circle, I read all our poems aloud one by one, but the images merely floated away and vanished in the cold, empty air. There was no audience.

‘Jonah,’ I began. ‘There’s a slim chance you may be listening … if you can hear me, all I’m asking is that you listen. Give me a chance to explain something. You know what I am and you know where I come from, but Jonah, you should know as well as I do how much I love Earth. And there are plenty of people on Mars who love it too…’

I sat quietly for a moment. I felt nothing, no other presence, yet I felt compelled to continue.

‘I didn’t know that we were enemies, your people and mine. They’ve never told us that, I mean it’s not generally known on Mars, I mean… We knew about the War for Earth of course but… For a long time after, the people from my planet didn’t come back here not for hundreds of years. I guess the War must have drained our resources. Gradually, the cities on Mars became bigger and more and more Domes were built. That’s where we live, mostly dug into the ground under these great glass Domes full of air we can breathe because outside we’d … we’d … anyway, about ninety years ago, the missions started…’

My voice faltered. If Jonah was listening, it was going to be hard to tell him the next part.

‘These missions are surveys, you see? The ones in charge want to take what they failed to take all those centuries ago. Only they want more. This time they won’t stop until they’ve taken it all. But this world can never be recreated, no matter how much DNA they collect. The interconnectedness of everything, you couldn’t replicate that. Everything we can possibly learn from Earth will be gone and, you see, this is where I come from too. It’s where my ancestors lived once upon a time. Jonah, despite the way I look to you, I don’t just come from Mars, I come from Earth too.’

I dissolved into tears. No one was listening and no one cared. I could scream and wail about the unfairness of everything as much as I liked, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Halley was right – about that, at least.

‘Bree?’

I scrambled to my feet.

‘Who are you talking to?’ Doc Carter stepped from the shadows. He shone his tilelight full at me so I couldn’t see him properly. How long had he been standing there? How much had he heard?

‘No one.’ I tried to swallow my tears.

Carter came to the edge of the crinoid circle and I had to squint at him through the blinding light. When he lowered his tile, I could see that his expression was a mixture of fear and suspicion.

‘How do you know all these things,’ he asked slowly, ‘about the War for Earth?’

‘There are pictures upstairs,’ I faltered. ‘It shows it all. The Earth humans being attacked. The Mars humans in ships in the sky. It’s not exactly the way we’ve been told.’

‘You worked all this out from the pictures upstairs?’

I nodded, biting my lip, shaking. There was a long pause.

‘The human mind can be fragile, Bree.’ He couldn’t disguise the nervous quiver in his voice. ‘You know how strong our people’s feelings are for the motherplanet, even though unlike us they’re never going to come here. For the good of the people, the decision was taken long ago never to reveal these … details…’

‘Details?’ I cried, tears cascading down my cheeks. ‘We were the enemy! We were the ones who fought them in the War for Earth. We watched them die! These are more than just “details”.’

‘Earth humans were stupid and self-destructive,’ he countered. ‘They could have saved themselves. If they’d handed over the code, we had the technology to destroy their weapons.’

I shook my head and looked at him with revulsion. ‘If they’d handed over the code we would have overrun them anyway.’

‘Who’s Jonah?’ he said.

The question pulled me up short. ‘It’s just the name I gave… It’s what I started calling the energy. That face on the screen.’

‘Really?’ Carter looked unconvinced. ‘In a couple of days the celephet will be ready,’ he said.

The more I tried to control my sobs, the more I trembled. ‘The celephet won’t do any good,’ I blurted out.

‘And why’s that?’

‘Because Jonah, I mean the energy, will not submit to torture. That’s all the celephet does. I’ve told you before. It’s an instrument of torture.’

Carter stepped into the circle, standing right in front of me, almost in the same place where Jonah normally sat. I saw his face twitching.

‘Bree…’ His voice was unsteady. ‘The celephet is going to work and do you know why? I’ve devoted the past ten years of my life to it, that’s why. It’s my whole reason for being here. It will work.’

‘It won’t work,’ I said in a small voice.

‘IT WILL WORK!’ he shouted in my face. I was terrified. His nostrils flared and his shoulders heaved. I shrank from him but in the shocked silence which followed, only punctuated by my shaky breathing and gulping, he made a big, visible effort to regain control of himself.

‘What I heard you say a few moments ago was highly treasonable. Were I to report it to Core Panel, it would certainly spell the end of your school career and that would just be the start.’

I stared at him.

‘And you don’t think I bought that story about the celephet getting caught on something, do you? I’m not a fool. You deliberately destroyed it and put the future of our Great Quest and Purpose in jeopardy.’

I continued to stare at his flawless, plastic good looks, at strange odds with his mean mouth and the tic at the corner of his eye. I hadn’t the strength to deny what he’d just said and I knew that my silence condemned me as much as an admission of guilt.

‘I thought so.’ He nodded. ‘Another treasonable offence. This isn’t looking good for you. Or your family.’

‘Lock me up then,’ I mouthed in spite of myself, in spite of the dreadful fear which had clutched me hearing those last three words.

Carter took a deep breath. ‘I could order that,’ he said. ‘We can do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way, but the result will be the same, I promise. Despite all you’ve done to try to wreck my plans, I’m willing to give you one last chance, but you’ll have to promise, promise, to co-operate this time.’

Why was he giving me this choice? Knowing for a fact that I’d deliberately ruined his experiment once before, why would he try to get me to co-operate again? I knew the answer: he still thought I was stupid, didn’t he? To him, I was as I had always been, a silly girl of low intelligence he could manipulate, if not as easily as he’d originally thought, to fall in with his plans. Doing it his ‘easy way’ would be preferable because it wouldn’t attract any negative attention from the rest of the crew: Pico, Lana Leoni, my friends, people who I guessed would still argue for recolonisation of Earth if they got the chance.

‘So.’ His voice was suddenly warm and hushed. His finger stroked the curve of my cheek, a hair’s breadth from my skin. My body stiffened. ‘Will you wear the celephet for me again, Bree? Willingly?’

I looked up into his red-rimmed eyes. He knew he’d won. What could I do? I swallowed. I nodded.

‘Is that a yes, Bree?’

It took some effort to part my lips in the shape of a ‘yes’.

‘All right then.’ I tried not to flinch as he laid his hands on my shoulders, massaging his thumbs backwards and forwards in a loving and forgiving manner, claiming me as his own once more. ‘That’s it. That’s good. Good girl.’

I let him guide me from the fossil room, back through the hall, his arm firmly around me. All the time he talked in that special low, reassuring tone of his, promising that there was no danger and that back home we were going to be famous and our names would go down in history. I nodded from time to time, feigning acquiescence. But although pretending might buy me some time, I was so, so sick of pretending. My stomach felt queasy and I was still trembling as we replaced our hoods and visors and I automatically headed for the class one parked at the top of the steps.

‘No.’ He pulled me back. ‘You’re coming back to Base with me, Bree. No more night-time jaunts for you. You’ll be here again soon enough.’

I had no choice. I climbed into his sleek machine and he lowered the roof. I hadn’t been in one of these more modern, entirely voice-operated amphibicals but I appreciated the smoother, faster ride straight away. Once he’d set the autopilot, we negotiated speedily and effortlessly thorough the dark maze of the humped landscape and then he spoke to me again.

‘This place can get to you. You’ve been up on that site for too long. Tell you what, how would you like to go out for the day tomorrow? I’ll get Halley to take you somewhere. You’ll feel better for it, I guarantee.’

I said nothing.