“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.
“You also have a phenomenal immune system,” Milo continued. “You are immune to all conventional infections and to the diseases, such as cancer, that plagued humanity for so long. Admittedly you are vulnerable to most of the more insidious designer viruses unleashed during the latter stages of the Gene Wars, and to some of the mutated species of fungi that are spreading at the moment, but those are handicaps you share with all the Prime Standards and overall you’re very fortunate. You have incredible powers of recovery—your bones knit very quickly when broken and your central nervous system has the power to regenerate. Injuries that could paralyse a pre-Prime Standard type for life you are capable of shrugging off in a matter of weeks. And on top of that you don’t menstruate, except at twenty-year intervals, if you don’t become pregnant during your period of fertility.”
Jan’s mind was reeling. “I don’t—what?”
“Menstruate,” said Milo, smiling at her confusion. “In pre-Prime Standard times women menstruated every month from puberty to the menopause.” When he saw she wasn’t understanding what he said he paused. “What did they teach you back in Minerva? About your body, I mean?”
“I was taught to harmonize with my body,” she told him. “By meditating and letting the spirit of the Mother God flow. …”
“No, no,” he said quickly, interrupting her. “I mean were you taught about how your body works?”
“Yes. Of course I was.”
“You know about your reproductive system, then? That when you’re born you’re carrying eggs inside you?”
Jan nodded that she did.
“Do you know how many eggs.”
“A hundred or so, I think.”
“Correct. But in pre-Prime Standard days a female child was born carrying half a million eggs in her ovaries.”
“Oh, really …” she said, disbelievingly.
“It’s true. And when a pre-Prime Standard girl reached puberty, which in those days meant the age when her reproductive system had become functional—an egg was then released every month into her uterus to be fertilized. If the egg wasn’t fertilized within two weeks it was ejected from the uterus along with the lining. This was called menstruation, and though it affected women differently most found it an unpleasant experience. Apart from the bleeding involved it could also be painful, as well as emotionally upsetting. Hormones were the culprit, as usual. When the egg was in the uterus hormonal changes caused an alteration in the surface of the uterus in preparation for the fertilization of the egg. These drastic hormonal changes were the cause of all the discomfort that women suffered.”
“I can’t believe any of this. The Mother God wouldn’t have let women suffer so much.”
“Your Mother God wasn’t around in those days,” Milo said drily. “God the Father was running the show and he evidently had it in for women.”
“The Mother God has always existed, and always will,” Jan told him firmly.
“Whatever you say. Anyway, when the genengineers around the middle of the twenty-first century finally solved the problem of how to switch off the molecular timer that caused the cellular self-destruction known as the ageing process it meant immortality was within reach at last. But, of course, if all humanity became immortal the Earth’s resources would have been rapidly depleted so it was decided to impose a limit on just how long anyone could be genetically re-programmed to live. The debate went on a long time before the United Nations finally imposed the two hundred year plus law. In those days the United Nations still had weight, because it was backed by the Soviet-American Alliance.”
“What was the United Nations?” she asked.
He waved an impatient hand. “Another time. The point was that if people were going to be allowed to live a two hundred year plus life-span they couldn’t be allowed to breed as freely as before because, once again, the world’s resources would be endangered. So it was also decreed by the United Nations that women could only become fertile for one year in every twenty.”
Jan frowned at him. “Are you saying that before that time women were fertile continuously?” she asked in amazement.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. And these two decrees by the United Nations not only changed women’s reproductive systems but the world itself.”
“How come?”