Mammoth Books presents Merlin's Gun Read Free Page B

he’s impersonating the historical figure we know as Merlin, he’s gone to extraordinary lengths to make the illusion authentic. All the logs confirm that his ship left Cohort-controlled space around ten kiloyears ago, and that he’s been traveling ever since.”
    â€œHe’s back from somewhere. It would help if we knew where.”
    â€œTricky, given that we have no idea about the deep topology of the Waynet. I can search the starfields for recognizable features, but it’ll take a long time, and there’ll still be a large element of guesswork.”
    â€œThere must be something you can show me.”
    â€œOf course.” The familiar sounded slightly affronted. “I found images. Some of the formats are obscure, but I think I can make sense of most of them.” And even before Sora had answered, the familiar had warmed a screen in one hemisphere of the suite. Visual records of different solar systems appeared, each entry displayed for a second before being replaced. Each consisted of an orbital map; planets and Waynet nodes were marked relative to each system’s sun. The worlds were annotated with enlarged images of each, overlaid with sparse astrophysical and military data, showing the roles – if any – they had played in the war. Merlin had visited other places, too. Squidlike protostellar nebulae, stained with green and red and flecked by the light of hot blue stars. Supernova remnants, the eviscera of gored stars, a hundred of which had died since the Flourishing, briefly outshining the galaxy.
    â€œWhat do you think he was looking for?” Sora said. “These points must have been on the Waynet, but they’re a long way from anything we’d call civilization.”
    â€œI don’t know. Souvenir hunting?”
    â€œAre you sure Merlin can’t tell you’re accessing this information?”
    â€œAbsolutely – but why should it bother him unless he’s got something to hide?”
    â€œDebatable point.” Sora looked around to the sealed door of her quarters, half expecting Merlin to enter at any moment. It was absurd, of course – from its present vantage point, the familiar could probably tell precisely where Merlin was in the ship, and give Sora adequate warning. But she still felt uneasy, even as she asked the inevitable question. “What else?”
    â€œOh, plenty. Even some visual records of the man himself, caught on the internal cameras.”
    â€œSorry. A healthy interest in where he’s been is one thing, but spying on him is something else.”
    â€œWould it change things if I told you that Merlin hasn’t been totally honest with us?”
    â€œYou said he hadn’t lied.”
    â€œNot about anything significant – which makes this all the odder. There.” The familiar sounded quietly pleased with itself. “You’re curious now, aren’t you?”
    Sora sighed. “You’d better show me.”
    Merlin’s face appeared on the screen, sobbing. He seemed slightly older to her, although it was difficult to tell, since most of his face was caged behind his hands. She could hardly make out what he was saying, between each sob.
    â€œThousands of hours of this sort of thing,” the familiar said. “They started out as serious attempts at keeping a journal, but soon deteriorated into a form of catharsis.”
    â€œI’d say he did well to stay sane at all.”
    â€œMore than you realize. We know he’s been gone ten thousand years – just as he told us. Well and good. That’s objective time. But he also said that eleven years of shiptime had passed.”
    â€œAnd that isn’t the case?”
    â€œI suspect that may be, to put a diplomatic gloss on it, a slight underestimate. By a considerable number of decades. And I don’t think he spent much of that time in frostwatch.”
    Sora tried to remember what she knew of the methods of