‘Thank you for the lecture. If it means so much to you, why don’t you fly down to the other side and talk to them?’
‘I’m an explorer, not a diplomat.’
‘You could always try.’
Merlin sighed heavily. ‘I did try once. Not long after I left the Cohort . . . there was a world named Exoletus, about the same size as Lecythus. I thought there might be something on Exoletus connected with my quest. I was wrong, but it was reason enough to land and try to talk to the locals.’
‘Were they at war?’
‘Just like you lot. Two massive power blocs, chemical weapons, the works. I hopped from hemisphere to hemisphere, trying to play the peacemaker, trying to knock their heads together to make them see sense. I laid the whole cosmic perspective angle on them: how there was a bigger universe out there, one they could be a part of if they only stopped squabbling. How they were going to have to be a part of it whether they liked it or not when the Huskers came calling, but if they could only be ready for that—’
‘It didn’t work.’
‘I made things twenty times worse. I caught them at a time when they were inching towards some kind of ceasefire. By the time I left, they were going at it again hell for leather. Taught me a valuable lesson, Minla. It isn’t my job to sprinkle fairy dust on a planet and get everyone to live happily ever after. No one gave me the toolkit for that. You have to work these things out for yourselves.’
She looked only slightly disappointed. ‘So you’ll never try again?’
‘Burn your fingers once, you don’t put them into the fire twice.’
‘Well,’ Minla said, ‘before you think too harshly of us, it was the Skylands that took the peace initiative in the last ceasefire.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘The Shadowlands invaded one of our allied surface territories. They were interested in mining a particular ore, known to be abundant in that area.’
Depressed as he was by news that the war was still rumbling on, Merlin forced his concentration back onto the larger matter of preparations for the catastrophe. ‘You’ve done well with these aircraft. Doubtless you’ll have gained expertise in high-altitude flight. Have you gone transonic yet?’
‘In prototypes. We’ll have an operational squadron of supersonic aircraft in the air within two years, subject to fuel supplies.’
‘Rocketry?’
‘That too. It’s probably easier if I show you.’
Minla let the orderly wheel him into one of the compound buildings. A long window ran along one wall, overlooking a larger space. Though the interior had been enlarged and re-partitioned, Merlin still recognised the tactical room. The old wall-map, with its cumbersome push-around plaques, had been replaced by a clattering electromechanical display board. Operators wore headsets and sat at desks behind huge streamlined machines, their grey metal cases ribbed with cooling flanges. They were staring at small flickering slate-blue screens, whispering into microphones.
Minla removed a tranche of photographs from a desk and passed them to Merlin for his inspection. They were black and white images of the Skyland air mass, shot from increasing altitude, until the curve of Lecythus’s horizon became pronounced.
‘Our sounding rockets have penetrated to the very edge of the atmosphere, ’ Minla said. ‘Our three-stage units now have the potential to deliver a tactical payload to any unobstructed point on the surface.’
‘What would count as a “tactical payload”?’ Merlin asked warily.
‘It’s academic. I’m merely illustrating the progress we’ve made in your absence.’
‘I’m cheered.’
‘You encouraged us to make these improvements,’ Minla said, chidingly. ‘You can hardly blame us if we put them to military use in the meantime. The catastrophe - as you’ve so helpfully pointed out - is still fifty years in the future. We have our own affairs to deal with in the meantime.’
‘I wasn’t trying to create a war machine. I was just giving you the stepping stones you needed to get into space.’
‘Well, as you can doubtless judge for yourself, we still have some distance to go. Our analysts say that we’ll have a natural satellite in orbit within fifteen years, maybe ten. Definitely so by the time you wake from your next bout of sleep. But that’s still not the same as moving fifty thousand people out of the system, or however many it needs to be. For that we’re going to need more guidance from you, Merlin.’
‘You seem to be doing very well with what I’ve already given you.’
Minla’s tone, cold until then, softened perceptibly. ‘We’ll get you fed. Then the doctors would like to look you over, if only for their own notebooks. We’re glad to have you back with us, Merlin. My father would have been so happy to see you again.’
‘I’d like to have spoken with him again.’
After a moment, Minla said: ‘How long will you stay with us, before you go back to sleep again?
‘Months, at least. Maybe a year. Long enough to be sure that you’re on the right track, and that I can trust you to make your own progress until I’m awake again.’
‘There’s a lot we need to talk about. I hope you have a strong appetite for questions.’
‘I have a stronger appetite for breakfast.’
Minla had him wheeled out of the room into another part of the compound. There he was examined by Skyland medical officials, a process that involved much poking and prodding and whispered consultation. They were interested in Merlin not just because he was a human who had been born on another planet, but because they hoped to learn some secret of frostwatch from his metabolism. Eventually they were done and Merlin was allowed to wash, clothe himself and finally eat. Skyland food was austere compared to what he was used to aboard Tyrant, but in his present state he would have wolfed down anything.
There was to be no rest for him that day. More medical examinations followed, including some that were clearly designed to test the functioning of his nervous system. They poured cold water into his ears, shone lights into his eyes and tapped him with various small hammers. Merlin endured it all with stoic good grace. They would find nothing odd about him because in all significant respects he was biologically identical to the people administering the examinations. But he imagined the tests would give the medical staff much to write about in the coming months.
Minla was waiting for him afterwards, together with a roomful of Skyland officials. He recognised two or three of them as older versions of people he had already met, greyed and lined by twenty years of war - there was Triller, Jacana and Sibia, Triller now missing an eye - but most of the faces were new to him. Merlin took careful note of the newcomers: those would be the people he’d be dealing with next time.
‘Perhaps we should get to business,’ Minla said, with crisp authority. She was easily the youngest person in the room, but if she didn’t outrank everyone present, she at least had their tacit respect. ‘Merlin, welcome back to the Skylands. You’ve learned something of what has happened in your absence: the advances we’ve made, the ongoing condition of war. Now we must talk about the future.’
Merlin nodded agreeably. ‘I’m all for the future.’
‘Sibia?’ Minla asked, directing a glance at the older woman.
‘The industrial capacity of the Skylands, even when our surface allies are taken into account, is insufficient for the higher purpose of safeguarding the survival of our planetary culture,’ Sibia answered, sounding exactly as if she was reading from a strategy document, even though she was looking Merlin straight in the eye. ‘As such, it is our military duty - our moral imperative - to bring all of Lecythus under one authority, a single Planetary Government. Only then will we have the means to save more than a handful of souls.’
‘I agree wholeheartedly,’ Merlin said. ‘That’s why I applaud your earlier ceasefire. It’s just a pity it didn’t last.’
‘The ceasefire was always fragile,’ Jacana said. ‘The wonder is that it lasted as long as it did. That’s
why we need something more permanent.’
Merlin felt a prickling sensation under his collar. ‘I guess you have something in mind.’
‘Complete military and political control of the Shadowlands,’ Sibia replied. ‘They will never work with us, unless they become us.’
‘You can’t believe how frightening that sounds.’
‘It’s the only way,’ Minla said. ‘My father’s regime explored all possible avenues to find a peaceful settlement, one that would allow our two blocs to work in unison. He failed.’
‘So instead you want to crush them into submission.’
‘If that’s what it takes,’ Minla said. ‘Our view is that the Shadowland administration is vulnerable to collapse. It would only take a single clear-cut demonstration of our capability to bring about a coup, followed by a negotiated surrender.’
‘And this clear-cut demonstration?’
‘That’s why we need your assistance, Merlin. Twenty years ago, you revealed certain truths to my father.’ Before he could say anything, Minla produced one of the sheets Merlin had given to Malkoha and his colleagues. ‘It’s all here in black and white. The equivalence of mass and energy. The constancy of the speed of light. The interior structure of the atom. Your remark that our sun contains a “nuclear-burning core”. All these things were a spur to us. Our best minds have grappled with the implications of these ideas for twenty years. We see how the energy of the atom could carry us into space, and beyond range of our sun. We now have an inkling of what else that implies.’
‘Do tell,’ Merlin said, an ominous feeling in his belly.
‘If mass can be converted into energy, then the military implications are startling. By splitting the atom, or even forcing atoms to merge, we believe that we can construct weapons of almost incalculable destructive force. The demonstration of one of these devices would surely be enough to collapse the Shadowland administration.’
Merlin shook his head slowly. ‘You’re heading up a blind alley. It isn’t possible to make practical weapons using atomic energy. There are too many difficulties.’
Minla studied him with an attentiveness that Merlin found quite unsettling. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.
‘Believe me or don’t believe me, it’s up to you.’
‘We are certain that these weapons can be made. Our own research lines will give them to us sooner or later.’
Merlin leaned back in his seat. He knew when there was no point in maintaining a bluff.
‘Then you don’t need me.’
‘But we do. Most urgently. The Shadowland administration also has its bright minds, Merlin. Their interest in those ore reserves I mentioned earlier . . . either there have been intelligence leaks, or they have independently arrived at similar conclusions to us. They are trying to make a weapon.’
‘You can’t be sure of that.’
‘We can’t afford to be wrong. We may own the sky, but our situation is dependent upon access to those fuel reserves. If one of our allies was targeted with an atomic weapon . . .’ Minla left the sentence unfinished, her point adequately made.
‘Then build your bomb,’ Merlin said.
‘We need it sooner rather than later. That is where you come in.’ Now Minla produced another sheet of paper, flicking it across the table in Merlin’s direction. ‘We have enough of the ore,’ she said. ‘We also have the means to refine it. This is our best guess for a design.’
Merlin glanced at the illustration long enough to see a complicated diagram of concentric circles, like the plan for an elaborate garden maze. It was intricately annotated in machine-printed Lecythus B, the variant of the language used for technical communication.
‘I won’t help you.’
‘Then you may as well leave us now,’ Minla said. ‘We’ll build our bomb in our own time, without your help, and use it to secure peace for the whole world. Maybe that will happen quickly enough for us to begin redirecting the industrial effort towards the evacuation. Maybe it won’t. But what happens will be on our terms, not yours.’
‘Understand one thing,’ Jacana said, with a hawkish look on his face. ‘The day will come when atomic weapons are used. Left to our own devices, we’ll build weapons to use against our enemy below. But by the time we have that capability, they’ll more than likely have the means to strike back, if they don’t hit us first. That means there’ll be a series of exchanges, an escalation, rather than a single decisive demonstration. Give us the means to make a weapon now and we’ll use it in such a way that the civilian casualties are minimised. Withhold it from us, and you’ll have the blood of a million dead on your hands.’
Merlin almost laughed. ‘I’ll have blood on my hands because I didn’t show you how to kill yourselves?’
‘You began this,’ Minla said. ‘You already gave us secret knowledge of the atom. Did you imagine we were so stupid, so childlike, that we wouldn’t put two and two together?’
‘Maybe I thought you had more common sense. I was hoping you’d develop atomic rockets, not atomic bombs.’
‘This is our world, Merlin, not yours. We only get one chance at controlling its fate. If you want to help us, you must give us the means to overwhelm the enemy.’
‘If I give you this, millions will die.’
‘A billion will perish if Lecythus is not unified. You must do it, Merlin. Either you side with us, completely, or we all die.’
Merlin closed his eyes, wishing a moment alone, a moment to puzzle over the ramifications. In desperation, he saw a possible solution: one he’d rejected before but was now willing to advance. ‘Show me the military targets on the surface that you would most like to eradicate,’ he said. ‘I’ll have Tyrant take them out, using charm-torps.’
‘We’ve considered asking for your direct military assistance,’ Minla said. ‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for us. Our enemy already know something of your existence: it was always going to be a difficult secret to hide, especially given the reach of the Shadowlander espionage network. They’d be impressed by your weapons, that much we don’t doubt. But they also know that our hold on you is tenuous, and that you could just as easily refuse to attack a given target. For that reason you do not make a very effective deterrent. Whereas if they knew that we controlled a devastating weapon . . .’ Minla looked at the other Skyland officials. ‘There could be no doubt in their minds that we might do the unthinkable.’
‘I’m really beginning to wonder whether I shouldn’t have landed on the ground instead.’
‘You’d be sitting in a very similar room, having a very similar conversation, ’ Minla said.
‘Your father would be ashamed of you.’
Minla’s look made Merlin feel as if he was something she’d found under her shoe. ‘My father meant well. He served his people to the best of his abilities. But he had the luxury of knowing he was going to die before the world’s end. I don’t.’
Merlin was aboard Tyrant, alone except for Minla, while he prepared to enter frostwatch again. Eight frantic months had passed since his revival, with the progress attaining a momentum of its own that Merlin felt sure would carry through to his next period of wakefulness.
‘I’ll be older when we meet again,’ Minla said. ‘You’ll barely have aged a day, and your memories of this day will be as sharp as if it happened yesterday. Is that something you ever get used to?’
Not for the first time, Merlin smiled tolerantly. ‘I was born on a world not very different from Lecythus, Minla. We didn’t have land masses floating through the sky - well, nothing like what you have here, we didn’t have global wars, but in many respects we were quite alike. Everything you see here - this ship, this frostwatch cabinet, these souvenirs - would once have seemed unrecognisably strange to me. I got used to it, though. Just as you’d get used to it, if you had the same experiences.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘I am. I met a very intelligent girl twenty years ago, and believe me I’ve met some intelligent people in my
time.’ Merlin brightened, remembering the thing he’d meant to show Minla. ‘That stone you had your father give me . . . the one we talked about just after I came out of the cabinet?’
‘The worthless thing Dowitcher convinced my father was of cosmic significance?’
‘It wasn’t worthless to you. You must have liked it, or you wouldn’t have given it to me in return for my flowers.’
‘The flowers,’ Minla said, thoughtfully. ‘I’d almost forgotten them. I used to look forward to them so much, the sound of your voice as you told me stories I couldn’t understand but which still managed to sound so significant. You made me feel special, Merlin. I’d treasure the flowers afterwards and go to sleep imagining the strange, beautiful places they’d come from. I’d cry when they died, but then you’d always bring new ones.’
Zima Blue and Other Stories Page 28