Thousandth Night (5 page)

“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 veracity 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?”