Minla's Flowers

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.'

'I used to like the look on your face.'

'Tell me about the stone,' she said, after a silence.

'I had Tyrant run an analysis on it. Just in case there was something significant about it, something neither you, I nor your father had spotted?'

'And?' Minla asked, with a note of fearfulness.

'I'm afraid it's just a piece of whetstone.'

'Whetstone?'

'Very hard. It's the kind you use for sharpening knives. It's a common enough type of stone on a planet like this one, wherever you have tides, shorelines and oceans.' Merlin had fished out the stone earlier; now he held it in his hand, palm open, like a lucky coin. 'You see that fine patterning of lines? This kind of stone was laid down in shallow tidal water. Whenever the sea rushed in, it would carry a suspension of silt that would settle out and form a fine layer on the surface of the stone. The next time the tide came in, you'd get a second layer. Then a third, and so on. Each layer would only take a few hours to be formed, although it might take hundreds of millions of years for it to harden into stone.'

'So it's very old.'

Merlin nodded. 'Very old indeed.'

'But not of any cosmic significance.'

'I'm sorry. I just thought you might want to know. Dowitcher was playing a game with your father after all. I think Malkoha had more or less guessed that for himself.'

For a moment Merlin thought his explanation had satisfied Minla, enabling her to shut tight that particular chapter of her life. But instead she just frowned. 'The lines aren't regular, though. Why do they widen and then narrow?'

'Tides vary,' Merlin said, suddenly feeling himself on less solid ground. 'Deep tides carry more sediment. Shallow tides less. I suppose.'

'Storms raise high tides. That would explain the occasional thick band. But other than that, the tides on Lecythus are very regular. I know this from my education.'

'Then your education's wrong, I'm afraid. A planet like this, with a large moon . . .' Merlin left the sentence unfinished. 'Spring tides and neap tides, Minla. No arguing with it.'

'I'm sure you're right.'

'Do you want the stone back?' he asked.

'Keep it, if it amuses you.'

He closed his hand around the stone. 'It meant something to you when you gave it to me. It'll always mean something to me for that reason.'

'Thank you for not leaving us. If my stone kept you here, it served a useful purpose.'

'I'm glad I chose to stay. I just hope I haven't done more harm than good, with the things I've shown you.'

'That again,' Minla said, with a weary sigh. 'You worry that we're going to blow ourselves to bits, just because you showed us the clockwork inside the atom.'

'It's nasty clockwork.'

He had seen enough progress, enough evidence of wisdom and independent ingenuity, to know that the Skyland forces would have a working atomic bomb within two years. By then, their rocket programme would have given them a delivery system able to handle the cumbersome payload of that primitive device. Even if the rocket fell behind schedule, they only had to wait until the aerial land mass drifted over a Shadowland target.

'I can't stop you making weapons,' Merlin said. 'All I ask is that you use them wisely. Just enough to negotiate a victory, and then no more. Then forget about bombs and start thinking about atomic rockets.'