Thousandth Night / Minla's Flowers Read online

  By day, as we fulfilled our social obligations, we reviewed the Burdock data independently. The agreement was that if either of us noticed something unusual, we should leave a signal for the other party. Since I ran the venue, my signal consisted of a change to the patterning of the floor tiles on the thirtieth-level terrazzo, cunningly encoding the time of the unusual event in the Burdock data. I’d been fiddling around with the patterns long before the Burdock affair, so there was nothing odd about my actions as far as anyone else was concerned. As for Purslane, she’d agreed to stand at noon at a certain position on one of my spray-lashed suspension bridges. By counting the number of wires between her and land, I could isolate the anomaly to within a few tens of minutes.

  We’d agreed that we wouldn’t meet in person until we’d had time to review each other’s observations. If we agreed that there was something worth talking about, then we’d “accidentally” meet each other within the next few days. Then we’d judge the right moment to slip away to Purslane’s ship. In practise, days and weeks would go by without Burdock doing anything that we both agreed was noteworthy or odd. Now and then he’d do or say something that hinted at a dark personal secret—but under that level of scrutiny, it was difficult to think of anyone who wouldn’t. And who among us didn’t have some secrets, anyway?

  But by turns we noticed something that we couldn’t dismiss.

  “This is the third time that he’s fished for information about the Great Work,” Purslane said.

  I nodded. On three occasions, Burdock had steered his conversations with other line members around to the subject of the Great Work. “He’s very discreet about it,” I said. “But you can tell he’s itching to know more about it. But don’t we all?”

  “Not to that degree,” she said. “I’m curious. I’d like to know what it is that has the lines so stirred up. But at the same time it doesn’t keep me awake at night. I know that the secret will eventually be revealed. I’m patient enough to wait until then.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes. And besides—I’ve heard enough rumours to think that I know half the answer already.”

  That was news to me. “Go on.”

  “It’s about knitting the worlds of the lines into a cohesive entity— a Galactic Empire, if you like. At the moment such a thing clearly isn’t practical. It takes us two hundred thousand years just to make one sweep through the Galaxy. That’s much too long on a human scale. We might not experience much time passing in our ships, but that doesn’t apply to the people living on planets. Entire cultures wax and wane while we’re making course adjustments. Some of the people down on those planets have various forms of immortality, but that doesn’t make history pass any less quickly. And it’s history that keeps destroying things. It’s history that stops us reaching our full potential.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” I said.

  “Think of all those myriad human cultures,” Purslane said. “To all extents and purposes, they exist independently of each other. Those within a few light years of each other can exchange ideas and perhaps even enjoy a degree of trade. Most are too far apart from that: at best they might have some vague knowledge of each other’s existence, based on transmissions and data passed on by the likes of you and me. But what can two cultures on either side of the Galaxy know of each other? By the time one gets to hear about the other, the other probably doesn’t exist any more. There’s no possibility of mutual cooperation; the sharing of intellectual resources and knowledge.” Purslane shrugged. “So those cultures stumble through the dark, making the same mistakes over and over again, constantly reinventing the wheel. At best they have some knowledge of galactic history, so they can avoid repeating the worst mistakes. At worst they’re evolving in near-total ignorance. Some of them don’t even remember how they got where they are.”

  I echoed Purslane’s shrug. “But that’s the way things must be. It’s human nature for us to keep changing, to keep experimenting with new societies, new technologies, new modes of thought. . . ”

  “The very experiments that rip societies apart, and keep the wheel of history turning.”

  “But if we weren’t like that, we wouldn’t be human. Every culture in the Galaxy has the means to engineer itself into social stasis tomorrow, if the will were there. Some of them have probably tried it. But what’s the point? We might stop the wheel of history turning, but we wouldn’t be human anymore.”

  “I agree,” Purslane said. “Meddling in human nature isn’t the solution. But imagine if the intellectual capacity of the entire human Diaspora could somehow be tapped. At the moment those cultures are bumping around like random atoms in a gas. What if they could be brought into a state of coherence, like the atoms in a laser? Then there’d be real progress, with each achievement leading to the next. Then we could really start doing something.”

  I almost laughed. “We’re immortal superbeings who’ve lived longer than some starfaring civilisations, including many Priors. If we choose, we can cross the Galaxy in the gap between thoughts. We can make worlds and shatter suns for our amusement. We can sip from the dreams and nightmares of fifty million billion sentient beings. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “It might be enough for you and I, Campion. But then we’ve always had modest ambitions.”

  “But what about Burdock?” I asked. “He isn’t linked to the Advocates, as far as I’m aware. I don’t think he’s been actively frozen out, but he certainly hasn’t spent any time cultivating the right connections.”

  “I’ll have to review the recordings again,” Purslane said. “But I’m pretty sure none of his enquiries were directed at known Advocates. He was targeting people on the fringe: line members who might know something, without being directly privy to the big secret.”

  “Why wouldn’t he just ask the Advocates directly?”

  “Good question,” Purslane said. “Of course, we could always ask him.”

  “Not until we know a bit more about what he’s involved in.”

  “You know,” Purslane said. “There’s something else we could consider.”

  The tone of her voice prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  “We could examine the records on his ship and find out what he was really up to.”

  “He’s hardly likely to give us permission to do that.”

  “I wasn’t talking about asking his permission.” Purslane’s smile was wicked and thrilling: she was actually enjoying our little adventure. “I was talking about going aboard and finding out for ourselves.”

  “Just like that, without so much as a by-your-leave?”

  “I’m not saying it would be easy. But you did make this venue, Campion. Surely it isn’t beyond your immense capabilities to engineer a distraction.”

  “Flattery,” I said, “will get you almost anywhere. But what about breaking into his ship? That won’t exactly be child’s play.”

  Purslane pressed a dainty finger to my lip. “I’ll worry about the ship. You worry about the distraction.”

  We maintained our vigil on Burdock over the coming weeks, as our dangerous, delicious plan slowly came together. Burdock kept up the pattern of behaviour we had already noted, asking questions that probed the nature of the Great Work, but never directing his queries to known Advocates. More and more it seemed to us that there was something about the Work that had alarmed him; something too sensitive to bring to the attention of those who had a vested interest in the thing itself. But since Purslane and I were none the wiser about what the Great Work actually entailed, we could only guess about what it was that had unnerved Burdock. We both agreed that we needed to know more, but our suspicions about Burdock (and, by implication, Burdock’s own suspicions) meant that we were just as incapable of putting direct questions to the Advocates. Day by day, therefore, I found myself making surreptitious enquires much like those made by Burdock himself. I endeavoured to target my questioning at different people than th
e ones Burdock had buttonholed, not wanting to spark anyone else’s curiosity. Purslane did likewise, and—even as we planned our utterly illegal raid on Burdock’s ship—we pieced together the tidbits of information we had gathered.

  None of it was very illuminating, but by the same token little of it contradicted Purslane’s conviction that the Great Work was related to the emergence of a single, Galaxy-spanning Supercivilisation. There were dark, glamorous rumours concerning the covert development of technologies that would bring this state of affairs into being.

  “It must be related to the slowness of interstellar communication,” I mused. “That’s the fundamental objection, no matter which way you look at it. No signals or ships can cross the Galaxy quickly enough to make any kind of orthodox political system possible. And the lines are too independent to tolerate the kind of social engineering we talked about before. They won’t accept any kind of system that imposes limits on human creativity.”

  “No one takes faster than light travel seriously, Campion.”

  “It doesn’t have to involve travel. A signalling mechanism would be just as useful. We could all stay at home, and communicate via clones or robots. Instead of sending my body to another planet, I’d piggyback a host body that was already there.” I shrugged. “Or use sensory stimulation to create a perfect simulation of the other planet and all its inhabitants. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Why would I care?”

  “But in two million years,” Purslane said, “no culture in the Galaxy has come close to developing faster-than-light communication or travel.”

  “Lots of people have tried, though. What if some of them succeeded, but kept their breakthrough secret?”

  “Or were wiped out to protect the status quo? We can play this game forever. The fact is, faster than light travel—or signalling, for that matter, looks even less likely now than it did a million years ago.

  The universe simply isn’t wired to permit it. It’s like trying to play chequers on a chess board.”

  “You’re right of course,” I said, sighing. “I studied the mathematics once, for a century. It looks pretty watertight, once you get your head around it. But if that’s not the answer . . . ”

  “I don’t think it is. We should keep open minds, of course . . . but I think the Great Work has to be something else. What, though, I can’t imagine.”

  “That’s as far as you’ve got?”

  “I’m afraid so. But don’t look so disappointed, Campion. It really doesn’t become you.”

  Then something odd happened to Burdock. The first hint of it was his flawless navigation of the Mood Maze.

  It was customary to sprinkle harmless entertainments and diversions through the nights of the Reunion. On the afternoon of the eight hundred and seventieth night, I opened the maze on one of the high balconies, with a modest prize for the line member who found their way through it the fastest. The maze would remain in existence until the nine hundredth night; time enough for everyone to have a try at it.

  But the Mood Maze was no ordinary labyrinth. Based on a game I had discovered during my travels, a Mood Maze was sensitive to emotional states, which the maze detected using a variety of subtle cues and mildly invasive sensors. As long as one remained perfectly calm, a Mood Maze held a fixed geometry. But as soon as the walls detected the slightest suggestion of frustration, the geometry of the maze underwent a sly modification: walls and gaps moving to block one route and open up another. The more frustrated one became, the more tortuous the labyrinth made itself. Extremes of anger could even cause the maze to form a closed-loop around the hapless player, so that they had no choice to wander in circles until they calmed down. Needless to say, it was considered very bad form to enter a Mood Maze with anything other than baseline human intelligence. Extreme faculties of memory or spatial positioning had to be turned off before participation.

  The Mood Maze was a pleasant enough diversion, and popular with most of those who took a chance on it. But I’d had more than that in mind when I set it up. I’d hoped that the maze would tell me something about Burdock’s state of mind, if only he would participate. Since it was voluntary, I couldn’t be accused of violating his mental privacy.

  But when I ran the maze, Burdock sailed through it, with the walls registering hardly any change to his emotional state. Cheating could not be ruled out, though it was unlikely: a Mood Maze was designed to detect most forms of subterfuge and punish them accordingly. And if he had that much to hide, it would not have been hard to avoid the maze entirely.

  What surprised me was the degree of frustration I saw in some of the other participants. When a group of Advocates wagered among themselves as to who would beat the maze the quickest, it was Fescue who ended up with the humiliation of being trapped in a closed-loop. His rage built to a crescendo until I tactfully intervened and allowed him an exit.

  I greeted him as he left the maze. “Challenging little devil,” I said lightly, trying to calm things down.

  “A childish little prank,” he said, spitting fury. “But then I shouldn’t have expected any better from you.”

  “It’s just a game. You didn’t have to take part.”

  “That’s all anything is to you, isn’t it? Just a game with no consequences.” He glanced at the other Advocates, who were looking on with amused expressions. “You have no idea what’s at stake here. Even if you did, you’d shrivel from any hint of responsibility.”

  “All right,” I said, holding up my hands in defeat. “I’ll forbid you from taking part in any of my games. Will that make you happy?”

  “What would make me happy . . .” Fescue began, before scowling and making to turn away.

  “It’s Purslane, isn’t it,” I said.

  He lowered his voice to a hiss. “I’ve given you fair warning. But to what purpose? You continue to associate with her to the exclusion of others. Your sexual relations verge on the monogamous. You spit on the traditions of the line.”

  I kept my voice level, refusing to rise to his bait. “All this because of a maze, Fescue? I never had you down as quite that bad a loser.”

  “You have no idea what is at stake,” he repeated. “Change is coming, Campion—violent, sudden change. The only thing that will hold the line together is self-sacrifice.”

  “Is this about the Great Work?” I asked.

  “It’s about duty,” he said. “Something you seem incapable of grasping.” He looked back at my maze, as it willing it to crumble to dust. “Keep playing with your toys, Campion. Fritter away your days in idleness and dissipation. Leave the important things to the rest of us.”

  Fescue stalked off. I stood blinking, regretting the fact that I had mentioned the Great Work. Now my interest in it was known to at least one Advocate.

  A hand touched my shoulder. “I see the old fart’s giving you a hard time again.”

  It was Samphire, pushing into my personal space. Normally I would have edged away, but for once I relaxed in his presence, glad to unburden myself.

  “I don’t think he was thrilled about the Mood Maze,” I said.

  “Don’t take it personally. He’s been acting odd for weeks, giving everyone hard stares. What’s his problem?”

  “Fescue doesn’t like me spending time with Purslane.”

  “Only because the craggy bastard couldn’t get a shag out of her.”

  “I think there’s a bit more to it than that. Fescue’s mixed up in something. You know what I mean, don’t you.”

  Samphire kept his voice low. “No idea at all. Other than that it’s a work and it’s great. Are you any more clued up about it than me?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “But whatever it is, Fescue think it’s a lot more important than the kind of lazy, self-indulgent things Purslane and I tend to get up to.”

  “Has he tried to rope you in?”

  “Not sure. I can’t work out whether he totally disapproves of me on every level, or whether he’s just bitterly disappointed that I waste
so much potential talent.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Fescue’s just a wasted old bore. His strand didn’t exactly set the island ringing, did it?”

  “Nor did mine.”

  “Difference is Fescue obviously expected more. Between you and me . ..” Samphire hesitated and looked around. “I think he was just a tiny bit economical with the facts.”

  I frowned. “You’re saying he fiddled his strand?”

  “A few details here and there. We came close to meeting around the Hesperus Veil: near enough to exchange recognition protocols.”

  I nodded. There’d been a supernova near the Hesperus Veil, and a number of us had planned close approaches to it. “That’s not enough to prove that he lied, though.”

  “No,” Samphire said. “But according to his strand he skipped the Veil altogether. Why lie about that? Because either before or after that he was somewhere else he didn’t want us to know about. Probably somewhere a lot less exciting than the places that showed up in his strand.”

  I felt a tingling sensation, wondering if Fescue might also be implicated in the Burdock business. Could the two of them be accomplices?

  “That’s a pretty heavy accusation,” I said, my mind reeling.

  “Oh, I’m not going to make anything of it. I’ve already edited down my own strand so as not to embarrass him. Let him trip himself up. He’s bound to do it one of these days.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said, not quite able to suppress my disappointment. The idea of seeing Fescue publicly humiliated—revealed as fabricating chunks of his strand—tasted shamefully delicious.