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.”