The Prince's Wedding (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 3)

Chapter 4

The lounge turned out to be a glorified waiting room at the end of the long corridor at the top of the stairs.

It was as large as a tennis court, but perfectly square, with a ceiling high enough to make you feel like you were standing in a deep pit. A set of doors led through each wall to other parts of the palace. Large, overstuffed sofas and armchairs stood in a smaller square on the marble floor. Small trees, which looked like different species of prehistoric ferns, stood at the corners in large plant pots. The most noticeable feature was the intricate frieze that ran around all four of the walls, two feet above our heads. It was carved from alabaster and had not been thoroughly finished – it was unsanded and the chisel marks were visible – to prove that it was handmade. That did not stop it from being well made, though, and the talent of the artist was obvious, particularly their grasp of perspective, which made the scenes, on stone that wasn't more than a few centimetres thick, seem to stretch away into the distance.

The frieze told the story of the J.I., starting with the first colonists from the Solar Union landing at Adiri and Ching-Tu on Titan. The seeding ships of United Earth Oil were shown next, arriving on the other moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and their biomass engineers were shown backstepping millions of years into the moons' pasts, planting genetically engineered trees that could grow under each moon's atmosphere - I realised that the potted trees in the lounge were some of the varieties pictured - and then returning to the present to find the forests extinct and vast new oil fields waiting to be drilled where they had been planted. This was followed by a long series of scenes of the indentured laborers arriving from Earth and the inner planets, and the hardship and injustice they endured while extracting the oil and building the cities of Jupiter and Saturn's moons, while UEO's executives were pictured reaping the rewards of having a near-monopoly on the manufacture of plastics, fertilisers, insecticides, medicines, food preservatives and antiseptics for the entire solar system. This came to an end with the arrival of Anthony Justinian – who, surprisingly, was shown with his original face, before the plastic surgery – pushing a corrupt UEO foreman over the safety rail on the top of an oil rig on the Sea of Galileo here on Ganymede, the incident that had sparked the rebellion. Next came more long scenes of the great moments of the independence war, the foundation of the Imperia and Justinian – now post-surgery – declaring himself emperor. The highlights of the next three hundred years followed, finishing with UEO's last and failed attempt to recapture Titan and Europa seventy years ago.

"Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Hawking and Dawkins," said Mirabi, turning in a circle as she took it in. "You'd think they'd saved the entire universe."

"The winner gets to write the history books," I said.

"No, the winners get to make themselves look like idiots when everyone else from Mercury to Pluto knows the real story," said Mirabi.

"We are guests here," I said. Mirabi had not enjoyed any of our previous visits to the highly-conservative J.I., which reminded her too much of her childhood, but getting any co-operation out of Thoth was going to be hard enough without her sharing her real opinions. "It is mostly correct."

"Erik?"

I froze in place for a split second. It was impossible, but the voice was exact. I spun around.

"Megan?"

Megan Uzume - PhD student at Oxbridge Luna, assistant on the Ancient Library Temporal Preservation Project, and the woman who'd changed my life in more ways than I could yet comprehend - came across the room towards me, looking astonished, but delighted. She was tall and slim, with wonderful long black hair and dark eyes I could stare into forever without getting bored. As she approached, she started to raise her arms, but before she could finish – and before I realised I was doing it – I crossed the room to meet her and embraced her, pulling her to my chest much tighter than I normally would. I realised this from her surprised gasp and let go.