Zima Blue and Other Stories

by Alastair Reynolds

  Merlin’s hands trembled. He was acutely aware of how easily he could damage the fragile thing with a miscalculated application of thrust. Tyrant was armoured to withstand Waynet transitions and the crush of gas giant atmospheres. It was like using a hammer to push around a feather. For a moment, contact between the two craft was lost, and when Tyrant came in again it hit the aircraft hard enough to crush the metal cylinder of a spare fuel tank bracketed on under the wing. Merlin winced in anticipation of an explosion - one that would hurt the little aeroplane a lot more than it would hurt Tyrant - but the tank must have been empty.

  Ahead, the airship had regained some measure of stability. The capture net was still deployed. Merlin pushed harder, giving the aircraft more altitude in readiness for its approach glide. At the last moment he judged it safe to disengage. He steered Tyrant away and left the aircraft to blunder into the net.

  This time there were no gusts. The net wrapped itself around the aircraft, the soft impact nudging down the nose of the airship. Then the net began to be winched back towards the gondola like a haul of fish. At the same time the airship swung around and began to climb.

  ‘No other planes?’ Merlin asked.

  ‘That was the only one.’

  They followed the airship in. It rose over the cliff, over the ice-capped rim of the aerial land mass, then settled down towards the shielded region in the bowl, where water and greenery had gathered. There was even a wispy layer of cloud, arranged in a broken ring around the shore of the lake. Merlin presumed that the concave shape of the land mass was sufficient to trap a stable microclimate.

  By now Merlin had an audience. People had gathered on the gondola’s rear observation platform. They wore goggles and gloves and heavy brown overcoats. Merlin caught the shine of glass lenses being pointed at him. He was being studied, sketched, perhaps even photographed.

  ‘Do you think they look grateful,’ he asked, ‘or pissed off?’

  Tyrant declined to answer.

  Merlin kept his distance, conserving fuel as best he could as the airship crossed tens of kilometres of arid, gently sloping land. Occasionally they overflew a little hamlet of huts or the scratch of a minor track. Presently the ground became soil-covered, and then fertile. They traversed swathes of bleak grey-green grass, intermingled with boulders and assorted uplifted debris. Then there were trees and woods. The communities became more than just hamlets. Small ponds fed rivers that ambled down to the single lake that occupied the land mass’s lowest point. Merlin spied waterwheels and rustic-looking bridges. There were fields with grazing animals, and evidence of some tall-chimneyed industrial structures on the far side of the lake. The lake itself was an easy fifty or sixty kilometres wide. Nestled around a natural harbour on its southern shore was the largest community Merlin had seen so far. It was a haphazard jumble of several hundred mostly white, mostly single-storey buildings, arranged with the randomness of toy blocks littering a floor.

  The airship skirted the edge of the town and then descended quickly. It approached what was clearly some kind of secure compound, judging by the guarded fence that encircled it. There was a pair of airstrips arranged in a cross-formation, and a dozen or so aircraft parked around a painted copy of the crescent emblem. Four skeletal docking towers rose from another area of the compound, stayed by guy-lines. A battle-weary pair of partially deflated airships was already tethered. Merlin pulled back to allow the incoming craft enough space to complete its docking. The net was lowered back down from the gondola, depositing the aeroplane - its wings now crumpled, its fuselage buckled - on the apron below. Service staff rushed out of bunkers to untangle the mess and free the pilot. Merlin brought his ship down on a clear part of the apron and doused the engines as soon as the landing skids touched the ground.

  It wasn’t long before a wary crowd had gathered around Tyrant. Most of them wore long leather coats, heavily belted, with the crescent emblem sewn into the right breast. They had scarves wrapped around their lower faces, almost to the nose. Their helmets were leather caps, with long flaps covering the sides of the face and the back of the neck. Most of them wore goggles; a few wore some kind of breathing apparatus. At least half the number were aiming barrelled weapons at the ship, some of which needed to be set up on tripods, while some even larger wheeled cannons were being propelled across the apron by teams of well-drilled soldiers. One figure was gesticulating, directing the armed squads to take up specific positions.

  ‘Can you understand what he’s saying?’ Merlin asked, knowing that Tyrant would be picking up any external sounds.

  ‘I’m going to need more than a few minutes to crack their language, Merlin, even if it is related to something in my database, of which there’s no guarantee.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll improvise. Can you spin me some flowers?’

  ‘Where exactly are you going? What do you mean, flowers?’

  Merlin paused at the airlock. He wore long boots, tight black leather trousers, a billowing white shirt and brocaded brown leather waistcoat, accented with scarlet trim. He’d tied back his hair and made a point of trimming his beard. ‘Where do you think? Outside. And I want some flowers. Flowers are good. Spin me some indigo hyacinths, the kind they used to grow on Springhaven, before the Mentality Wars. They always go down well.’

  ‘You’re insane. They’ll shoot you.’

  ‘Not if I smile and come bearing exotic alien flowers. Remember, I did just save one of their planes.’

  ‘You’re not even wearing armour.’

  ‘Armour would really scare them. Trust me, ship: this is the quickest way for them to understand I’m not a threat.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure having you aboard,’ Tyrant said acidly. ‘I’ll be sure to pass on your regards to my next owner.’

  ‘Just make the flowers and stop complaining.’

  Five minutes later Merlin steeled himself as the lock sequenced and the ramp lowered to kiss the ground. The cold hit him like a lover’s slap. He heard an order from the soldiers’ leader, and the massed ranks adjusted their aim. They’d been pointing at the ship before. Now it was only Merlin they were interested in.

  He raised his right hand palm open, the newly spun flowers in his left.

  ‘Hello. My name’s Merlin.’ He thumped his chest for emphasis and said the name again, slower this time. ‘Mer-lin. I don’t think there’s much chance of you being able to understand me, but just in case . . . I’m not here to cause trouble.’ He forced a smile, which probably looked more feral than reassuring. ‘Now. Who’s in charge?’

  The leader shouted another order. He heard a rattle of a hundred safety catches being released. Suddenly, the ship’s idea of sending out a proctor first sounded splendidly sensible. Merlin felt a cold line of sweat trickle down his back. After all that he had survived so far, both during his time with the Cohort and since he had become an adventuring free agent, it would be something of a let-down to die by being shot with a chemically propelled projectile. That was only one step above being mauled and eaten by a wild animal.

  Merlin walked down the ramp, one cautious step at a time. ‘No weapons, ’ he said. ‘Just flowers. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have hit you from space with charm-torps.’

  When he reached the apron, the leader gave another order and a trio of soldiers broke formation to cover Merlin from three angles, with the barrels of their weapons almost touching him. The leader - a cruel-looking young man with a scar down the right side of his face - shouted something in Merlin’s direction, a word that sounded vaguely like ‘distal’, but which was in no language Merlin recognised. When Merlin didn’t move, he felt a rifle jab into the small of his back. ‘Distal,’ the man said again, this time with an emphasis bordering on the hysterical.

  Then another voice boomed across the apron, one that belonged to a much older man. There was something instantly commanding about the voice. Looking to the source of the exclamation, Merlin saw the wrecked aircraft entangled in its capture net, and the pilot in the process
of crawling out from the tangle, with a wooden box in his hands. The rifle stopped jabbing Merlin’s back, and the cruel-looking young man fell silent while the pilot made his way over to them.

  The pilot had removed his goggles now, revealing the lined face of an older man, his grey-white beard and whiskers stark against ruddy, weatherworn skin. For a moment Merlin felt as if he was looking in the mirror at an older version of himself.

  ‘Greetings from the Cohort,’ Merlin said. ‘I’m the man who saved your life.’

  ‘Gecko,’ the red-faced man said, pushing the wooden box into Merlin’s chest. ‘Forlorn gecko!’

  Now that Merlin had a chance to examine it properly, he saw that the box was damaged, its sides caved in and its lid ripped off. Inside was a matrix of straw padding and a great many shattered glass vials. The pilot took one of these smashed vials and held it up before Merlin’s face, honey-coloured fluid draining down his fingers.

  ‘What is it?’ Merlin asked.

  Leaving Merlin to hold the box and flowers, the red-faced pilot pointed angrily towards the wreckage of his aircraft, and in particular at the cylindrical attachment Merlin had taken for a fuel-tank. He saw now that the cylinder was the repository for dozens more of these wooden boxes, most of which must have been smashed when Merlin had nudged the aircraft with Tyrant.

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’ Merlin asked.

  In a flash the man’s anger turned to despair. He was crying, the tears smudging the soot on his cheeks. ‘Tangible,’ he said, softer now. ‘All tangible inkwells. Gecko.’

  Merlin reached into the box and retrieved one of the few intact vials. He held the delicate thing to his eyes. ‘Medicine?’

  ‘Plastrum,’ the man said, taking the box back from Merlin.

  ‘Show me what you do with this,’ Merlin said, as he motioned drinking the vial. The man shook his head, narrowing his wrinkled ice-blue eyes at him as if he thought Merlin was either stupid or making fun. Merlin rolled up the sleeve of his arm and motioned injecting himself. The pilot nodded tentatively.

  ‘Plastrum,’ he said again. ‘Vestibule plastrum.’

  ‘You have some kind of medical crisis? Is that what you were doing, bringing medicines?’

  ‘Tangible,’ the man repeated.

  ‘You need to come with me,’ Merlin said. ‘Whatever that stuff is, we can synthesise it aboard Tyrant.’ He held up the intact vial and then placed his index finger next to it. Then he pointed to the parked form of his ship and spread his fingers wide, hoping the pilot got the message that he could multiply the medicine. ‘One sample,’ he said. ‘That’s all we need.’

  Suddenly there was a commotion. Merlin looked around in time to see a girl running across the apron, towards the two of them. In Cohort terms she could only have been six or seven years old. She wore a child’s version of the same greatcoat everyone else wore, buckled black boots and gloves, no hat, goggles or breathing mask. The pilot shouted, ‘Minla,’ at her approach, a single word that conveyed both warning and something more intimate, as if the older man might have been her father or grandfather. ‘Minla oak trefoil,’ the man added, firmly but not without kindness. He sounded pleased to see her, but somewhat less than pleased that she had chosen this exact moment to run outside.

  ‘Spelter Malkoha,’ the girl said, and hugged the pilot around the waist, which was as high as she could reach. ‘Spelter Malkoha, ursine Malkoha.’

  The red-faced man knelt down - his eyes were still damp - and ran a gloved finger through the girl’s unruly fringe of black hair. She had a small, monkey-like face, one that conveyed both mischief and cleverness.

  ‘Minla,’ he said tenderly. ‘Minla, Minla, Minla.’ Then what was clearly a rhetorical question: ‘Gastric spar oxen, fey legible, Minla?’

  ‘Gorse spelter,’ she said, sounding contrite. And then, perhaps for the first time, she noticed Merlin. For an anxious moment her expression was frozen somewhere between surprise and suspicion, as if he was some kind of puzzle that had just intruded into her world.

  ‘You wouldn’t be called Minla, by any chance?’ Merlin asked.

  ‘Minla,’ she said, in barely a whisper.

  ‘Merlin. Pleased to meet you, Minla.’ And then on a whim, before any of the adults could stop him, he passed her one of the indigo hyacinths that Tyrant had just spun for him, woven from the ancient molecular templates in its biolibrary. ‘Yours,’ he said. ‘A pretty flower for a pretty little girl.’

  ‘Oxen spray, Minla,’ the red-faced man said, pointing back to one of the buildings on the edge of the apron. A soldier walked over and extended a hand to the girl, ready to escort her back inside. She moved to hand the flower back to Merlin.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you can keep it, Minla. It’s for you.’

  She opened the collar of her coat and pushed the flower inside for safe keeping, until only its head was jutting out. The vivid indigo seemed to throw something of its hue onto her face.

  ‘Mer-lin?’ asked the older man.

  ‘Yes.’

  The man tapped a fist against his own chest. ‘Malkoha.’ And then he indicated the vial Merlin was still carrying. ‘Plastrum,’ he said again. Then a question, accompanied by a nod towards Tyrant. ‘Risible plastrum?’

  ‘Yes,’ Merlin said. ‘I can make you more medicine. Risible plastrum.’

  The red-faced man studied him for what felt like many minutes. Merlin opted to say nothing: if the pilot hadn’t got the message by now, no further persuasion was going to help. Then the pilot reached down to his belt and unbuttoned the leather holster of a pistol. He removed the weapon and allowed Merlin sufficient time to examine it by eye. The low sun gleamed off an oiled black barrel, inlaid with florid white ornamentation carved from something like whalebone.

  ‘Mer-lin risible plastrum,’ Malkoha said. Then he waved the gun for emphasis. ‘Spar apostle.’

  ‘Spar apostle,’ Merlin repeated, as they walked up the boarding ramp. ‘No tricks.’

  Even before Tyrant had made progress in the cracking of the local language, Merlin had managed to hammer out a deal with Malkoha. The medicine had turned out to be a very simple drug, easily synthesised. A narrow-spectrum β-lactam antibiotic, according to the ship: exactly the sort of thing the locals might use to treat a gram-positive bacterial infection - something like bacterial meningitis, for instance - if they didn’t have anything better.

  Tyrant could pump out antibiotic medicine by the hundreds of litres, or synthesise something vastly more effective in equally large quantities. But Merlin saw no sense in playing his most valuable card so early in the game. He chose instead to give Malkoha supplies of the drug in approximately the same dosage and quantity as he must have been carrying when his aircraft was damaged, packaged in similar-looking glass vials. He gave the first two consignments as a gift, in recompense for the harm he was presumed to have done when attempting to save Malkoha, and let Malkoha think that it was all that Tyrant could do to make drugs at that strength and quantity. It was only when he handed over the third consignment, on the third day, that he mentioned the materials he needed to repair his ship.

  He didn’t say anything, of course, or at least nothing that the locals could have understood. But there were enough examples lying around of the materials Merlin needed - metals and organic compounds, principally, as well as water that could be used to replenish Tyrant’s hydrogen-fusion tanks - that Merlin was able to make considerable progress just by pointing and miming. He kept talking all the while, even in Main, and did all that he could to encourage the locals to talk back in their own tongue. Even when he was inside the compound, Tyrant was observing every exchange, thanks to the microscopic surveillance devices Merlin carried on his person. Through this process, the ship was constantly testing and rejecting language models, employing its knowledge of both the general principles of human grammar and its compendious database of ancient languages recorded by the Cohort, many of which were antecedents of Main itself. Lecythus might have been isolated for
tens of thousands of years, but languages older than that had been cracked by brute computation, and Merlin had no doubt that Tyrant would get there in the end, provided he gave it enough material to work with.

  It was still not clear whether the locals regarded him as their prisoner, or honoured guest. He’d made no attempt to leave, and they’d made no effort to prevent him from returning to his ship when it was time to collect the vials of antibiotic. Perhaps they had guessed that it would be futile to try to stop him, given the likely capabilities of his technology. Or perhaps they had guessed - correctly, as it happened - that Tyrant would be going nowhere until it was repaired and fuelled. In any event they seemed less awed by his arrival than intrigued, shrewdly aware of what he could do for them.

  Merlin liked Malkoha, even though he knew almost nothing about the man. Clearly he was a figure of high seniority within this particular organisation, be it military or political, but he was also a man brave enough to fly a hazardous mission to ferry medicines through the sky, in a time of war. And his daughter loved him, which had to count for something. Merlin now knew that Malkoha was her ‘spelter’ or father, although he did indeed look old enough to have been separated from her by a further generation.