Minla's Flowers

'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.'