Almost everything that Merlin did learn, in those early days, was due to Minla rather than the adults. The adults seemed willing to at least attempt to answer his queries, when they could understand what he was getting at. But their chalkboard explanations usually left Merlin none the wiser. They could show him maps and printed historical and technical treatises, but none of these shed any light on the world’s many mysteries. Cracking text would take Tyrant even longer than cracking spoken language.
Minla, though, had picture books. Malkoha’s daughter had taken an obvious liking to Merlin, even though they shared nothing in common. Merlin gave her a new flower each time he saw her, freshly spun from some exotic species in the biolibrary. Merlin made a point of never giving her flowers from a particular world twice, even when she wanted more of the same. He also made a point of always telling her something about the place from where the flowers had come, regardless of her lack of understanding. It seemed to be enough for her to hear the cadences of a story, even if it was in an alien language.
There was not much colour in Minla’s world, so Merlin’s gifts must have had a luminous appeal to her. Once a day, for a few minutes, they were allowed to meet in a drab room inside the main compound. An adult was always stationed nearby, but to all intents and purposes Merlin and the girl were permitted to interact freely. Minla would show Merlin drawings and paintings she had done, or little compositions, written down in laboured handwriting in approximately the form of script Tyrant had come to refer to as Lecythus A. Merlin would examine Minla’s works and offer praise when it was merited.
He wondered why these meetings were allowed. Minla was obviously a bright girl (he could tell that much merely from the precocious manner of her speaking, even if he hadn’t had the ample evidence of her drawings and writings). Perhaps it was felt that meeting the man from space would be an important part of her education, one that could never be repeated at a later date. Perhaps she had pestered her father into allowing her to spend more time with Merlin. Merlin could understand that; as a child he’d also formed harmless attachments to adults, often those that came bearing gifts and especially those adults that appeared interested in what he had to show them.
Could there be more to it than that, though? Was it possible that the adults had decided that a child offered the best conduit for understanding, and that Minla was now their envoy? Or were they hoping to use Minla as a form of emotional blackmail, so that they might exert a subtle hold on Merlin when he decided it was time to leave?
He didn’t know. What he was certain of was that Minla’s books raised as many questions as they answered, and that simply leafing through them was enough to open windows in his own mind, back into a childhood he’d thought consigned safely to oblivion. The books were startlingly similar to the books Merlin remembered from the Palace of Eternal Dusk, the ones he used to fight over with his brother. They were bound similarly, illustrated with spidery ink drawings scattered through the text or florid watercolours gathered onto glossy plates at the end of the book. Merlin liked holding the book up to the light of an open window, so that the illustrated pages shone like stained glass. It was something his father had shown him on Plenitude, when he had been Minla’s age, and her delight exactly echoed his own, across the unthinkable gulf of time and distance and circumstance that separated their childhoods.
At the same time, he also paid close attention to what the books had to say. Many of the stories featured little girls involved in fanciful adventures concerning flying animals and other magic creatures. Others had the worthy, over-earnest look of educational texts. Studying these latter books, Merlin began to grasp something of the history of Lecythus, at least in so far as it had been codified for the consumption of children.
The people on Lecythus knew they’d come from the stars. In two of the books there were even paintings of a vast spherical spaceship hoving into orbit around the planet. The paintings differed in every significant detail, but Merlin felt sure that he was seeing a portrayal of the same dimly remembered historical event, much as the books in his youth had shown various representations of human settlers arriving on Plenitude. There was no reference to the Waynet, however, or anything connected to the Cohort or the Huskers. As for the locals’ theory concerning the origin of the aerial land masses, Merlin found only one clue. It lay in a frightening sequence of pictures showing the night sky being riven by lava-like fissures, until whole chunks of the heavens dropped out of place, revealing a darker, deeper firmament beyond. Some of the pieces were shown crashing into the seas, raising awesome waves that tumbled over entire coastal communities, while others were shown hovering unsupported in the sky, with kilometres of empty space under them. If the adults remembered that it was alien weaponry that had smashed their camouflaging sky (weapons deployed by aliens that were still out there) no hint of that uncomfortable truth was allowed into Minla’s books. The destruction of the sky was shown simply as a natural catastrophe, like a flood or volcanic eruption. Enough to awe, enough to fascinate, but not enough to give nightmares.
Awesome it must have been too. Tyrant’s own analysis had established that the aerial land masses could be put together like a jigsaw. There were gaps in that jigsaw, but most of them could be filled by lifting chunks of land out of the seas and slotting them in place. The inhabited aerial land masses were all inverted compared to their supposed positions in the original sky, requiring that they must have been flipped over after the shattering. Tyrant could offer little insight into how this could have happened, but it was clear enough that unless the chunks were inverted, life-supporting materials would spill off over the edges and rain down onto the planet again. Presumably the necessary materials had been uplifted into the air when the unsupported chunks (and these must have been pieces that did not contain gravity-nullifiers, or which had been damaged beyond the capacity to support themselves) came hammering down.
As to how people had come to the sky in the first place, or how the present political situation had developed, Minla’s texts were frustratingly vague. There were pictures of what were obviously historic battles, fought with animals and gunpowder. There were illustrations of courtly goings-on: princes and kings, balls and regattas, assassinations and duels. There were drawings of adventurers rising on kites and balloons to survey the aerial masses, and later of what were clearly government-sponsored scouting expeditions, employing huge flotillas of flimsy-looking airships. But as to exactly why the people in the sky were now at war with the people on the ground, Merlin had little idea, and even less interest. What mattered - the only thing, in fact - was that Minla’s people had the means to help him. He could have managed without them, but by bringing him the things he needed they made it easier. And it was good to see other faces again, after so long alone.
One of Minla’s books intrigued him even more than all the others. It showed a picture of the starry night, the heavens as revealed after the fall of the camouflaging sky. Constellations had been drawn on the patterns of stars, with sketched figures overlaying the schematic lines joining the stars. None of the mythical or heroic figures corresponded to the old constellations of Plenitude, but the same archetypal forms were nonetheless present. For Merlin there was something hugely reassuring in seeing the evidence of similar imaginations at work. It might have been tens of thousands of years since these humans had been in contact with a wider galactic civilisation; they might have endured world-changing catastrophes and retained only a hazy notion of their origins. But they were still people, and he was amongst them. There were times, during his long search for the lost weapon that he hoped would save the Cohort, when Merlin had come to doubt whether there was anything about humanity worth saving. But all it took was the look on Minla’s face as he presented her with another flower - another relic of some long-dead world - to banish such doubts almost entirely. While there were still children in the universe, and while children could still be enchanted by something as simple and wonderful as a flower, there was still a reason to
keep looking, a reason to keep believing.
The coiled black device had the look of a tiny chambered nautilus, turned to onyx. Merlin pushed back his hair to let Malkoha see that he was already wearing a similar unit, then motioned for Malkoha to insert the translator into his own ear.
‘Good,’ Merlin said, when he saw that the other man had pushed the device into place. ‘Can you understand me now?’
Malkoha answered very quickly, but there was a moment’s lag before Merlin heard his response translated into Main, rendered in an emotionally flat machine voice. ‘Yes. I understand good. How is this possible?’
Merlin gestured around him. They were alone together aboard Tyrant, Malkoha ready to leave with another consignment of antibiotics. ‘The ship’s been listening in on every conversation I’ve had with you,’ Merlin said. ‘It’s heard enough of your language to begin piecing together a translation. It’s still rudimentary - there are a lot of gaps the ship still needs to fill - but it will only get better with time, the more we talk.’
Malkoha listened diligently as his earpiece translated Merlin’s response. Merlin could only guess at how much of his intended meaning was making it through intact.
‘Your ship is clever,’ Malkoha said. ‘We talk many times. We get good at understanding.’
‘I hope so.’
Malkoha pointed now at the latest batch of supplies his people had brought, piled neatly at the top of the boarding ramp. The materials were unsophisticated in their manufacture, but they could all be reprocessed to form the complicated components Tyrant needed to repair itself.
‘Metals make the ship good?’
‘Yes,’ Merlin said. ‘Metals make the ship good.’
‘When the ship is good, the ship will fly? You will leave?’
‘That’s the idea.’
Malkoha looked sad. ‘Where will you go?’
‘Back into space. I’ve been a long time away from my own people. But there’s something I need to find before I return to them.’
‘Minla will be unhappy.’
‘So will I. I like Minla. She’s a clever little girl.’
‘Yes. Minla is clever. I am proud of my daughter.’
‘You have every right to be,’ Merlin said, hoping that his sincerity came across. ‘I have to start what I finished, though. The ship tells me it’ll be flight-ready in two or three days. It’s a patch job, but it’ll get us to the nearest motherbase. But there’s something we need to talk about first.’ Merlin reached for a shelf and handed Malkoha a tray upon which sat twelve identical copies of the translator device.
‘You will speak with more of us?’
‘I’ve just learned some bad news, Malkoha: news that concerns you, and your people. Before I go I want to do what I can to help. Take these translators and give them to your best people - Coucal, Jacana, the rest. Get them to wear them all the time, no matter who they’re talking to. In three days I want to meet with you all.’
Malkoha regarded the tray of translators with suspicion, as if the ranked devices were a peculiar foreign delicacy.
‘What is the bad news, Merlin?’
‘Three days isn’t going to make much difference. It’s better if we wait until the translation is more accurate, then there won’t be any misunderstanding.’
‘We are friends,’ Malkoha said, leaning forwards. ‘You can tell me now.’
‘I’m afraid it won’t make much sense.’
Malkoha looked at him beseechingly. ‘Please.’
‘Something is going to come out of the sky,’ Merlin said. ‘Like a great sword. And it’s going to cut your sun in two.’
Malkoha frowned, as if he didn’t think he could possibly have understood correctly.
‘Calliope?’
Merlin nodded gravely. ‘Calliope will die. And then so will everyone on Lecythus.’
They were all there when Merlin walked into the glass-partitioned room. Malkoha, Triller, Coucal, Jacana, Sibia, Niltava, and about half a dozen more top brass Merlin had never seen before. An administrative assistant was already entering notes into a clattering electromechanical transcription device squatting on her lap, pecking away at its stiff metal input pads with surprising speed. Tea bubbled in a fat engraved urn set in the middle of the table. An orderly had already poured tea into china cups set before each bigwig, including Merlin himself. Through the partition, on the opposite wall of the adjoining tactical room, Merlin watched another orderly make microscopic adjustments to the placement of the aerial land masses on an equal-area projection map of Lecythus. Periodically, the entire building would rattle with the droning arrival of another aircraft or dirigible.
Malkoha coughed to bring the room to attention. ‘Merlin has news for us,’ he said, his translated voice coming through with more emotion than it had three days earlier. ‘This is news not just for the Skyland Alliance, but for everyone on Lecythus. That includes the Aligned Territories, the Neutrals and yes, even our enemies in the Shadowland Coalition.’ He beckoned with a hand in Merlin’s direction, inviting him to stand.
Merlin held up one of Minla’s picture books, open at the illustration of constellations in the sky over Lecythus. ‘What I have to tell you concerns these patterns,’ he said. ‘You see heroes, animals and monsters in the sky, traced in lines drawn between the brightest stars.’
A new voice buzzed in his ear. He identified the speaker as Sibia, a woman of high political rank. ‘These things mean nothing,’ she said patiently. ‘They are lines drawn between chance alignments. The ancient mind saw demons and monsters in the heavens. Our modern science tells us that the stars are very distant, and that two stars that appear close together in the sky - the two eyes of Prinia the Dragon, for example - may in reality be located at very different distances.’
‘The lines are more significant than you appreciate,’ Merlin said. ‘They are a pattern you have remembered across tens of thousands of years, forgetting its true meaning. They are pathways between the stars.’
‘There are no pathways in the void,’ Sibia retorted. ‘The void is vacuum: the same thing that makes birds suffocate when you suck air out of a glass jar.’
‘You may think it absurd,’ Merlin said. ‘All I can tell you is that vacuum is not as you understand it. It has structure, resilience, its own reserves of energy. And you can make part of it shear away from the rest, if you try hard enough. That’s what the Waymakers did. They stretched great corridors between the stars: rivers of flowing vacuum. They reach from star to star, binding together the entire galaxy. We call it the Waynet.’
‘Is this how you arrived?’ Malkoha asked.
‘My little ship could never have crossed interstellar space without it. But as I was passing close to your planet - because a strand of the Waynet runs right through this system - my ship encountered a problem. That is why Tyrant was damaged; why I had to land here and seek your assistance.’
‘And the nature of this problem?’ the old man pushed.
‘My ship only discovered it three days ago, based on observations it had collated since I arrived. It appears that part of the Waynet has become loose, unshackled. There’s a kink in the flow where it begins to drift out of alignment. The unshackled part is drifting towards your sun, tugged towards it by the pull of Calliope’s gravitational field.’
‘You’re certain of this?’ Sibia asked.
‘I’ve had my ship check the data over and over. There’s no doubt. In just over seventy years, the Waynet will cut right through Calliope, like a wire through a ball of cheese.’
Malkoha looked hard into Merlin’s eyes. ‘What will happen?’
‘Probably very little to begin with, when the Waynet is still cutting through the chromosphere. But by the time it reaches the nuclear-burning core . . . I’d say all bets are off.’
‘Can it be mended? Can the Waynet be brought back into alignment?’
‘Not using any technology known to my own people. We’re dealing with principles as far beyond anything on Lec
ythus as Tyrant is beyond one of your propeller planes.’
Malkoha looked stricken. ‘Then what can we possibly do?’
‘You can make plans to leave Lecythus. You have always known that space travel was possible: it’s in your history, in the books you give to your children. If you had any doubts, I’ve shown it to be true. Now you must achieve it for yourselves.’
‘In seventy years?’ Malkoha asked.
‘I know it sounds impossible. But you can do it. You already have flying machines. All you need to do is keep building on that achievement . . . building and building . . . until you have the means.’
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘It won’t be. It’ll be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. But I’m convinced that you can do it, if only you pull together.’ Merlin looked sternly at his audience. ‘That means no more wars between the Skylands and the Shadowlands. You don’t have time for it. From this moment on, the entire industrial and scientific capacity of your planet will have to be directed towards one goal.’
Zima Blue and Other Stories Page 26