Thousandth Night / Minla's Flowers

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Don’t let him get to you too much,” Samphire said. “He’s just a sad old man with too much time on his hands.”

  “The funny thing,” I said, “is that he’s no older than the rest of us.”

  “He acts old. That’s all that matters.”

  Samphire’s revelation improved my mood, and I took great delight in telling Purslane what I had learned. Robbed of their sting, Fescue’s warnings only emboldened the two of us. Time and again, as covertly as we dared, we met aboard her ship and discussed what we had learned.

  It was there that I mentioned Burdock’s swift passage through the maze.

  “He could have been cheating,” I said. “His emotional registers were all very flat, according to the maze.”

  “I don’t see why he’d cheat,” Purslane answered. “Admittedly, he doesn’t have much prestige in the line—but there are other ways he could have won it by now, if it mattered to him that much. It’s almost as if he did the maze because he felt obliged to do so . . . but that it just wasn’t difficult for him.”

  “There’s something else, too,” I said. “I’m not sure if I’d have noticed it were it not for the whole business with the maze . . . but ever since then, I’ve been watching for anything even more out of the ordinary than normal.”

  “You’ve seen something?”

  “More a case of what he hasn’t been doing, rather than what he has been doing, if that makes any sense.”

  Purslane nodded sagely. “I noticed too—if we’re talking about the same thing. It’s been going on for at least a week now.”

  “Then it isn’t just me,” I said, relieved that she had shared my observation.

  “I wasn’t sure whether to say anything. It’s not that there’s been any dramatic change in his behaviour, just that. . .”

  I completed her sentence for her: an annoying habit I’d spent the last million years trying to break. “. . . he isn’t poking around the Great Work any more.”

  Purslane’s eyes gleamed confirmation. “Exactly.”

  “Unless I’ve missed something, he’s given up trying to find what it’s all about.”

  “Which tells us one of two possibilities,” Purslane said. “Either he thinks he knows enough by now . . . ”

  “Or someone has scared him off.”

  “We really need to take a look at that ship of his,” she said. “Now more than ever.”

  Purslane had done her homework. During one of Burdock’s visits to his ship, she had shadowed him with a drone, a glassy dragonfly small and transparent enough to slip undetected into his travel box. The drone had eavesdropped on the exchange of recognition protocols between the box and the hovering ship. A second visit confirmed that the protocol had not changed since the last time: Burdock wasn’t using some randomly varying key. There was nothing too surprising about that: we were all meant to be family, after all, and many of the parked ships probably had no security measures at all. It was simply not the done thing to go snooping around without permission.

  That was one half of the problem cracked, at least. We could get aboard Burdock’s ship, but we would still need to camouflage our departure and absence from the island.

  “I hope you’ve given some thought to this,” Purslane said.

  Well, I had: but I didn’t think she was going to like my suggestion overmuch.

  “Here’s one idea,” I said. “I have the entire island under surveillance, so I always know where Burdock is at a given moment, and what he’s doing.”

  “Go on.”

  “We wait until my systems pick an interval when Burdock’s otherwise engaged. An orgy, a game, or a long, distracting conversation . . . ”

  Purslane nodded provisionally. “And if he bores of this orgy, or game, or conversation, and extricates himself prematurely?”

  “That’ll be trickier to handle,” I admitted. “But the island is still mine. With some deft intervention I might be able to hold him on the ground for an hour or two before he gets too suspicious.”

  “That might not be long enough. You can’t very well make him a prisoner.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “And even if you did manage to keep Burdock occupied for as long as we need, there’s the small problem of everyone else. What if someone sees us entering or leaving his ship?”

  “That’s also a problem,” I said. “Which is why that was only suggestion number one. I didn’t really think you’d go for it. Are you ready for number two?”

  “Yes,” she said, with the tone of someone half aware that they were walking into a trap.

  “We need a better distraction: one Burdock can’t walk away from after an hour or two. We also need one that will keep everyone else tied up—and where our absences won’t be noticed.”

  “You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”

  “In ten days you deliver your strand, Purslane.” I saw a flicker of concern in her face, but I continued, knowing she would see the sense in my proposal. “This is our only chance. By Gentian rules, every person on this island is required to receive your strand. With, of course, one exception.”

  “Me,” she said, with a slow, dawning nod. “I don’t have to be physically present, since I already know my own memories. But what about. ..”

  “Me? Well, that isn’t a problem either. Since I control the apparatus anyway, no one else need know that I wasn’t on the island when your strand was threaded.”

  I watched Purslane’s expression as she considered my idea. It was workable: I was convinced of that. I had examined the problem from every conceivable angle, looking for a hairline flaw—and I had found nothing. Well, nothing I could do anything about, anyway.

  “But you won’t know my strand,” Purslane said. “What if someone asks . . . ”

  “That isn’t a problem, either. Once we’ve agreed on the strand, I can receive it immediately. I just won’t tell anyone until the day after your threading. It’ll be just as if I received it the same way as everyone else.”

  “Wait,” Purslane said, raising a hand. “What you just said . . . about us ‘agreeing’ on the strand.”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Am I missing something? There isn’t anything to agree on. I’ve already prepared and edited my strand to my complete satisfaction. There isn’t a single memory I haven’t already agonised over a thousand times: putting it in, taking it out again.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said, knowing how much of a perfectionist Purslane was. “But unfortunately, we need to make this a tiny bit more of an event.”

  “I’m not following you, Campion.”

  “It has to be an effective distraction. Your memories have to be electrifying—the talk of the island for days afterwards. We have to talk them up before the thread, so that everyone is in a state of appropriate expectation. Obviously, there’s only one person who can do that beforehand. You’ll have to drop hints. You’ll have to look smug and self-satisfied. You’ll have to pour lukewarm praise on someone else’s strand.”

  “Oh, God preserve us from lukewarm praise.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I know all about that.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t do this, Campion. It isn’t me. I don’t boast.”

  “Breaking into ships isn’t you either. The rules have changed. We have to be flexible.”

  “It’s all very well you saying that. It’s me who’s being asked to lie here . .. and anyway, why do I have to lie in the first place? Are you actually saying you don’t think my real strand would be interesting enough?”

  “Tell you what,” I said, as if the idea had just occurred to me. “Why don’t you let me have a look at your strand tonight? I’ll speed-dream the scheduled strand to make room for yours.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we meet and discuss the material we have to work with. We’ll make a few tweaks here and there—heighten this memory, downplay that one. Perhaps exercise a smidgeon of economy with regard to the strict veracit
y of the events portrayed . . . ”

  “Make things up, you mean.”

  “We need a distraction,” I said. “This is the only way, Purslane. If it helps . . . don’t think of it as lying. Think of it as creating a small untruth in order to set free a larger truth. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds very dangerous, Campion.”

  We did it anyway.

  Ten days was nowhere as much time as I would have liked, but if we had been given any longer the utter incaution of what we were doing would have had time to gnaw away at my better judgement. It was a false strand that had set this entire enterprise in motion, I had to remind myself. Burdock had perpetrated a lie, and now we were perpetrating another because of it. Unfortunately, I saw no practical alternative.

  Purslane’s original strand wasn’t as bad as I had feared: there was actually some promising material in it, if only it could be brought out more effectively. It was certainly a lot more dramatic and exciting than my essay on sunsets. Nonetheless, there was plenty of scope for some judicious fiddling with the facts: nothing outrageous, nothing that would have people looking for flaws in Purslane’s strand, but enough to justify the anticipation she had begun to stoke. And in that respect she excelled herself: without actually saying anything, she managed to whip everyone into a state of heady expectation. It was all in the haughtiness of her walk, the guarded confidence of her looks, the sympathetic, slightly pitying smile with which she greeted everyone else’s efforts. I know she hated every minute of that performance, but to her credit she threw herself into it with giddy abandon. By the time the evening of her threading came around, the atmosphere tingled with excitement. Her strand would be the subject of so much discussion tomorrow that no one could possibly take the risk of not dreaming it tonight, even if my apparatus had permitted such evasion. It would be the most exquisite of embarrassments not to be able to hold a view on Purslane’s strand.

  At midnight, the line members and their guests dispersed to sleep and dream. Surveillance confirmed that they were all safely under: including, Burdock. The strand was threading into their collective memories. There had been no traffic to and from the island and the ships for an hour. A warm breeze rolled in from the west, but the sea was tranquil, save for the occasional breaching aquatic.

  Purslane and I made our move. Two travel boxes folded around us and pulled us away from the island, through the thicket of hanging vessels, out to the ship belonging to Burdock. A kilometre long, it was a modest craft by Gentian standards: neither modern nor fast, but rugged and dependable for all that. Its armoured green hull had something of the same semi-translucence as polished turtleshell. Its drive was a veined green bulb, flung out from the stern on a barbed stalk: it hung nose-down from the bulb, swaying gently in the late evening breeze.

  Purslane’s box led the way. She curved under the froglike bow of the ship, then rose up on the other side. Halfway up the hull, between a pair of bottle-green hull plates, lay a wrinkled airlock. Her box transmitted recognition protocols and the airlock opened like a gummed eye. There was room inside for both boxes. They opened and allowed us to disembark.

  Nothing about Burdock’s outward appearance had suggested that the air aboard his ship would be anything but a standard oxygen-nitrogen mix. It was still a relief when I gulped down a lungful and found it palatable. It would have been a chore to have to return to the island and remake my lungs to cope with something poisonous.

  “I recognise this design of ship,” Purslane said, whispering. We were inside a red-lined antechamber, like a blocked throat. “It’s Third Intercessionary. I owned one like it once. I should be able to find my way around it quite easily, provided he hasn’t altered too many of the fittings.”

  “Does the ship know we’re here?”

  “Oh, yes. But it should regard us as friendly, once we’re inside.”

  “Suddenly this doesn’t seem like quite the excellent idea it did ten days ago.”

  “We’re committed now, Campion. Back on the island they’re dreaming my strand and wondering what the hell turned me into such an adventuress. I didn’t go to all that trouble to have you back out now.”

  “All right,” I said. “Consider me suitably emboldened.”

  But though I strove for a note of easy-going jocularity, I could not shake the sense that our adventure had taken a turn into something far more serious. Until this evening all we had done was indulge in harmless surveillance: an indulgence that had added spice to our days. Now we had falsified a strand and were trespassing on someone else’s ship. Both deeds were as close to crimes as anything perpetrated within the history of the Gentian Line. Discovery could easily mean expulsion from the line, or something worse.

  This was not a game any more.

  As we approached the end of the chamber, the constriction at the end eased open with an obscene sucking sound. It admitted warm, wet, pungent air.

  We stooped through the low overhang into a much larger room. Like the airlock chamber, it was lit by randomly spaced light nodes, embedded in the fleshy walls like nuts wedged into the bark of a tree. Half a dozen corridors fed off in different directions, labelled with symbols in an obsolete language. I paused a moment while my brain retrieved the necessary reading skills from deep recall.

  “This one is supposed to lead the command deck,” I said, as the symbols became suddenly meaningful. “Do you agree?”

  “Yes,” Purslane said, but with the tiniest note of hesitation in her voice.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.”

  “What’s got you afraid all of a sudden?”

  “This is too easy,” Purslane said.

  “I thought it was meant to be easy. I thought that was the point of going to all that trouble with the access protocol.”

  “I know,” she said. “But it just seems . . . I was expecting something to slow us down. Now I’m worried that we’re walking into a trap.”

  “Burdock has no reason to set a trap,” I said. But I could not deny that I felt the same unease. “Burdock isn’t expecting us to visit. He isn’t aware that we’re onto him.”

  “Let’s check out the command deck,” she said. “But let’s be quick about it, all right? The sooner we’re back on the island, the happier I’ll be.”

  We took the corridor, following its rising, curving ramp through several rotations, obeying signs for the deck all the while. Around us the ship breathed and gurgled like a sleeping monster, digesting its last big meal. Biomechanical constructs were typical products of the Third Intercessionary period, but I had never taken to them myself. I preferred my machines hard-edged, the way nature intended.

  But nothing impeded our progress to the command deck. The deck was spaciously laid-out, with a crescent window let into one curve of wall. It looked back across the sea, to the island. A spray of golden lights betrayed the darkening sliver of the main spire. I thought of the dreamers ranged throughout that tower, and of the lies we were peddling them.

  Mushroom-shaped consoles studded the floor, rising to waist height. Purslane moved from one to the next, conjuring a status readout with a pass of her hand.

  “This all looks good so far,” she said. “Control architecture is much as I remember it from my ship. The navigations logs should be about. .. here.” She halted at one of the mushrooms and flexed her hands in the stiffly formal manner of a dancer. Text and graphics cascaded through the air in a flicker of primary colours. “No time to go through it all now,” she said. “I’ll just commit it to eidetic memory and review it later.” She increased the flow of data, until it blurred into whiteness.

  I paced nervously up and down the crescent window. “Fine by me. Just out of interest, what are the chances we’ll find anything incriminating anyway?”

  Purslane’s attention snapped onto me for a second. “Why not? We know for a fact that he lied.”

  “But couldn’t he have doctored those logs as well
? If he had something to hide . . . why leave the evidence aboard his ship?”

  But Purslane did not answer me. She was looking beyond me, to the door where we had entered. Her mouth formed a silent exclamation of horror and surprise.

  “Stop, please,” said a voice.

  I looked around, all my fears confirmed. But I recognised neither the voice nor the person who had spoken.

  It was a man, baseline human in morphology. Nothing about his face marked him as Gentian Line. His rounded skull lacked Abigail’s prominent cheekbones, and his eyes were pure matched blue of a deep shade, piercing even in the subdued light of the command deck.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “You’re not one of us, and you don’t look like one of the guests.”

  “He isn’t,” Purslane said.

  “Step away from the console, please,” the man said. His voice was soft, unhurried. The device he held in his fist was all the encouragement we needed. It was a weapon: something unspeakably ancient and nasty. Its barrel glittered with inlaid treasure. His gloved finger caressed the delicate little trigger. Above the grip, defined by swirls of ruby, was the ammonite spiral of a miniature cyclotron. The weapon was a particle gun.

  Its beam would slice through us as cleanly as it sliced through the hull of Burdock’s ship.

  “I will use this,” the man said, “so please do as I say. Move to the middle of the room, away from any instruments.”

  Purslane and I did as he said, joining each other side by side. I looked at the man, trying to fit him into the Burdock puzzle. By baseline standards his physiological age was mature. His face was lined, especially around the eyes, with flecks of grey in his hair and beard. Something about the way he deported himself led me to believe that he was just as old as he looked. He wore a costume of stiff, skin-tight fabric in a shade of fawn, interrupted here and there by metal plugs and sockets. A curious metal ring encircled his neck.

  “We don’t know who you are,” I said. “But we haven’t come to do you any harm.”