The New Space Opera

by Gardner Dozois

  As to how people had come to the sky in the first place, or how the present political situation had come into being, 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 overlaid on the patterns of stars, with sketched figures overlying 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 civilization; they might have endured world-changing catastrophes and retained only a hazy notion of their origins. But they were still people, and he was among them. There were times, in his long search for the lost weapon that he hoped would save the Cohort, that 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 aleady 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 in Tyrant, with 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 forward. “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 landmasses 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 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 acro
ss 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 toward your sun, tugged toward 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 Lecythus as Tyrant is beyond one of your propellor 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 the case. 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 toward one goal.”

  “You’re going to help us, Merlin?” Malkoha asked. “Aren’t you?”

  Merlin’s throat had become very dry. “I’d like to, but I must leave immediately. Twenty light-years from here is a bountiful system known to the Cohort. The great vessels of my people—the swallowships—sometimes stop in this system, to replenish supplies and make repairs. The swallowships cannot use the Way, but they are very big. If I could divert just one swallowship here, it could carry fifty thousand refugees; double that if people were prepared to accept some hardship.”

  “That’s still not many people,” Sibia said.

  “That’s why you need to start thinking about reducing your population over the next three generations. It won’t be possible to save everyone, but if you could at least ensure that the survivors are adults of breeding age . . .” Merlin trailed off, conscious of the dismayed faces looking at him. “Look,” he said, removing a sheaf of papers from his jacket and spreading them on the table. “I had the ship prepare these documents. This one concerns the production of wide-spectrum antibiotic medicines. This one concerns the construction of a new type of aircraft engine, one that will allow you to exceed the speed of sound and reach much higher altitudes than are now available to you. This one concerns metallurgy and high-precision machining. This one is a plan for a two-stage liquid-fueled rocket. You need to start learning about rocketry now, because it’s the only thing that’s going to get you into space.” His finger moved to the final sheet. “This document reveals certain truths about the nature of physical reality. Energy and mass are related by this simple formula. The speed of light is an absolute constant, irrespective of the observer’s motion. This diagram shows the presence of emission lines in the spectrum of hydrogen, and a mathematical formula that predicts the spacing of those lines. All this . . . stuff . . . should help you make some progress.”

  “Is this all you can give us?” Sibia asked skeptically. “A few pages’ worth of vague sketches and cryptic formulae?”

  “They’re more than most cultures ever get. I suggest you start thinking about them straightaway.”

  “I will get this to Shama,” Coucal said, taking the drawing of a jet engine and preparing to slip it into his case.

  “Not before everything here is duplicated and archived,” Malkoha said warningly. “And we must take pains to ensure none of these secrets fall into Shadowland hands.” Then he returned his attention to Merlin. “Evidently, you gave this matter some thought.”

  “Just a bit.”

  “Is this the first time you have had to deal with a world such as ours, one that will die?”

  “I’ve had some prior experience of the matter. There was once a world—”

  “What happened to the place in question?” Malkoha asked, before Merlin could finish his sentence.

  “It died.”

  “How many people were saved?”

  For a moment Merlin couldn’t answer. The words seemed to lodge in the back of his throat, hard as pebbles. “There were just two survivors,” he said quietly. “A pair of brothers.”

  The walk to Tyrant was the longest he had ever taken. Ever since he had made the decision to leave Lecythus he had rehearsed the occasion in his mind, replaying it time and again. He had always imagined the crowd cheering, daunted by the news, but not cowed, Merlin raising his fist in an encouraging salute. Nothing had prepared him for the frigid silence of his audience, their judgmental expressions as he left the low buildings of the compound, their unspoken disdain hanging in the air like a proclamation.

  Only Malkoha followed him all the way to Tyrant’s boarding ramp. The old soldier had his coat drawn tight across his chest, even though the wind was still and the evening not particularly cold.

  “I’m sorry,” Merlin said, with one foot on the ramp. “I wish I could stay.”

  “You seem like two men to me,” Malkoha said, his voice low. “One of them is braver than he gives himself credit for. The other man still has bravery to learn.”

  “I’m not running away.”

  “But you are running from something.”

  “I have to go now. If the damage to the Waynet becomes greater, I may not even be able to reach the next system.”

  “Then you must do what you think is right. I shall be sure to give your regards to Minla. She will miss you very much.” Malkoha paused and reached into his tunic pocket. “I almost forgot to give you this. She would have been very upset with me if I had.”

  Malkoha had given Merlin a small piece of stone, a coin-shaped sliver that must have been cut from a larger piece and then set in colored metal so that it could be worn around the neck or wrist. Merlin examined the stone with interest, but in truth there seemed nothing remarkable about it. He’d picked up and discarded more beautiful examples a thousand times in his travels. It had been dyed red in order to emphasize the fine
grain of its surface: a series of parallel lines like the pages of a book seen end-on, but with a rhythmic structure to the spacing of the lines—a widening and a narrowing—that was unlike any book Merlin had seen.

  “Tell her I appreciated it,” he said.

  “I gave the stone to my daughter. She found it pretty.”

  “How did you come by it?”

  “I thought you were in a hurry to leave.”

  Merlin’s hand closed around the stone. “You’re right. I should be on my way.”

  “The stone belonged to a prisoner of mine, a man named Dowitcher. He was one of their greatest thinkers: a scientist and soldier much like myself. I admired his brilliance from afar, just as I hope he admired mine. One day, our agents captured him and brought him to the Skylands. I played no part in planning his kidnap, but I was delighted that we might at last meet on equal terms. I was convinced that, as a man of reason, he would listen to my arguments and accept the wisdom of defecting to the Skylands.”

  “Did he?”

  “Not in the slightest. He was as firmly entrenched in his convictions as I was in mine. We never became friends.”

  “So where does the stone come into it?”

  “Before he died, Dowitcher found a means to torment me. He gave me the stone and told me that he had learned something of great significance from it. Something that could change our world. Something that had cosmic significance. He was looking into the sky when he said that: almost laughing. But he would not reveal what that secret was.”