Minla's Flowers

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 drawn on the patterns of stars, with sketched figures overlaying 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 civilisation; they might have endured world-changing catastrophes and retained only a hazy notion of their origins. But they were still people, and he was amongst them. There were times, during his long search for the lost weapon that he hoped would save the Cohort, when 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 already 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 aboard Tyrant, 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 forwards. '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 land masses 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 with 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 across tens of thousands of years, forgetting its true meaning. They are pathways between the stars.'