Mammoth Books presents Merlin's Gun by Alastair Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page A

weapon for the first time. If he felt any elation on seeing his gun for the first time, none of it was visible on his face. He looked, instead, ashen – as if the years had suddenly reclaimed what the Waymakers had given him. “All they could do was keep the stars in check, keep them from spiraling any closer. So they built the Brittlestar, a vast machine with only one function: to constantly nudge the orbits of the neutron stars at its heart. For every angstrom that the stars fell toward each other, the Brittlestar pushed them an angstrom apart. And it was designed to keep doing that for a million years, until the Waymakers found a way to shift the entire binary beyond the Galaxy. You want to know how they kept pushing them apart?”
    Sora nodded, though she thought she half-knew the answer already.
    â€œTiny black holes,” Merlin said. “Accelerated close to the speed of light, each black hole interacting gravitationally with the binary before evaporating in a puff of pair-production radiation.”
    â€œJust the same way the gun functions. That’s no coincidence, is it?”
    â€œThe gun – what we call the gun – was just a component in the Brittlestar; the source of relativistic black holes needed to keep the neutron stars from colliding.”
    Sora looked around the room. “And these people stole it?”
    â€œLike I said, they were closer to the Waymakers than us. They knew enough about them to dismantle part of the Brittlestar, to override its defenses and remove the mechanism they needed to win their war.”
    â€œBut the Brittlestar . . .”
    â€œHasn’t been working properly ever since. Its capability to regenerate itself was harmed when the subsystem was stolen, and the remaining black-hole generating mechanisms can’t do all the work required. The neutron stars have continued to spiral closer together – slowly but surely.”
    â€œBut you said they were only a few thousand years from collision . . .”
    Merlin had not stopped working the controls in all this time. The gun had come closer, seemingly oblivious to the ordinary laws of celestial mechanics. Down below, the planetary surface had returned to normality, except for a ruddier hue to the storm.
    â€œMaybe now,” Merlin said, “you’re beginning to understand why I want the gun so badly.”
    â€œYou want to return it, don’t you. You never really wanted to find a weapon.”
    â€œI did, once.” Merlin seemed to tap some final reserve of energy, his voice growing momentarily stronger. “But now I’m older and wiser. In less than four thousand years the stars meet, and it suddenly won’t matter who wins this war. We’re like ignorant armies fighting over a patch of land beneath a rumbling volcano!”
    Four thousand years, Sora thought. More time had passed since she had been born.
    â€œIf we don’t have the gun,” she said, “we die anyway – wiped out by the Huskers. Not much of a choice, is it?”
    â€œAt least
something
would survive. Something that might even still think of itself as human.”
    â€œYou’re saying that we should capitulate? That we get our hands on the ultimate weapon, and then not
use
it?”
    â€œI never said it was going to be easy, Sora.” Merlin pitched forward, slowly enough that she was able to reach him before he slumped into the exposed circuitry of the console. His coughs were loud in her helmet. “Actually, I think I’m more than winded,” he said, when he was able to speak at all.
    â€œWe’ll get you back to the ship; the proctors can help . . .”
    â€œIt’s too late, Sora.”
    â€œWhat about the gun?”
    â€œI’m . . . doing something rather rash, in the circumstances. Trusting it to you. Does that sound utterly insane?”
    â€œI’ll betray you. I’ll give the gun to the Cohort. You know that, don’t