Thousandth Night
Alastair Reynolds
Originally published 2005
Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone, and has also sold to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spectrum SF, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space, was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; it was quickly followed by Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, and Century Rain, all big books that were big sellers as well, establishing Reynolds as one of the best and most popular new SF writers to enter the field in many years. His most recent book is a novella collection, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. Coming up is a new novel, Chasing Janus (published as Pushing Ice). A professional scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, he comes from Wales, but lives in the Netherlands, where he works for the European Space Agency.
Here he takes us to a distant future where our remote descendants have become immortal supermen who possess the powers of gods, for a riveting tale of murder and intrigue that proves that even for those who have everything, there’s always a little bit more to reach for that’s hanging just out of reach. . .
It was the afternoon before my threading, and stomach butterflies were doing their best to unsettle me. I had little appetite and less small talk. All I wanted was for the next twenty-four hours to slip by so that it could be someone else’s turn to sweat. Etiquette forbade it, but there was nothing I’d have preferred than to flee back to my ship and put myself to sleep until morning. Instead I had to grin and bear it, just as everyone else had to when their night came around.
Waves crashed a kilometre below, dashing against the bone-white cliffs, the spray cutting through one of the elegant suspension bridges that linked the main island to the smaller ones surrounding it. Beyond the islands, the humped form of an aquatic crested the waves. I made out the tiny dots of people frolicking on the bridge, dancing in the spray. It had been my turn to design the venue for this carnival, and I thought I’d made a tolerable job of it.
A pity none of it would last.
In little over a year machines would pulverise the islands, turning their spired buildings into powdery rubble. The sea would have pulled them under by the time the last of our ships had left the system. But even the sea would only last a few thousand years after that. I’d steered water-ice comets onto this arid world just to make its oceans. The atmosphere itself was dynamically unstable. We could breathe it now, but there was no biomass elsewhere on Reunion to replenish the oxygen we were turning into carbon dioxide. In twenty thousand years the world would be uninhabitable to all but the hardiest microorganisms. It would stay like that for the better part of another hundred and eighty thousand years, until our return.
By then the scenery would be someone else’s problem, not mine. On Thousandth Night—the final evening of the reunion—the person who had threaded the most acclaimed strand would be charged with designing the venue for the next gathering. Depending on their plans, they’d arrive between one thousand and ten thousand years before the official opening of the next gathering.
My hand tightened on the rail at the edge of the high balcony as I heard urgent footsteps approach from behind. High hard heels on marble, the swish of an evening gown.
“Don’t tell me, Campion. Nerves.”
I turned around, greeting Purslane—beautiful, regal Purslane— with a stiff smile and a grunt of acknowledgement. “Mm. How did you guess?”
“Intuition,” she said. “Actually, I’m surprised you’re here at all.”
“Why’s that?”
“When it’s my turn I’m sure I’ll still be on my ship, furiously re-editing until the last possible moment.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “I’ve done all the editing I need. There’s nothing to edit. Nothing of any consequence has happened to me since the last time.”
Purslane fixed me with a knowing smile. Her hair was bunched and high, sculpted like a fairytale palace with spires and turrets. “Typical false modesty.” She pushed a glass of red wine into my hand before I could refuse.
“Well, this time there’s nothing false about it. My thread is going to be a crashing anticlimax. The sooner we get over it, the better.”
“It’s going to be that dull?”
I sipped at the wine. “The very exemplar of dullness. I’ve had a spectacularly uneventful two hundred thousand years.”
“You said exactly the same thing last time, Campion. Then you showed us wonders and miracles. You were the hit of the reunion.”
“Maybe I’m getting old,” I said, “but this time I felt like taking things a little bit easier. I made a conscious effort to keep away from inhabited worlds; anywhere there was the least chance of something exciting happening. I watched a lot of sunsets.”
“Sunsets,” she said.
“Mainly solar-type stars. Under certain conditions of atmospheric calm and viewing elevation you can sometimes see a flash of green just before the star slips below the horizon . . . ” I trailed off lamely, detesting the sound of my own voice. “All right. It’s just scenery.”
“Two hundred thousand years of it?”
“I’m not repentant. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
Purslane sighed and shook her head: I was her hopeless case, and she didn’t mind if I knew it. “I didn’t see you at the orgy this morning. I was going to ask what you thought of Tormentil’s strand.”
Tormentil’s memories, burned into my mind overnight, still had an electric brightness about them. “The usual self-serving stuff,” I said. “Ever noticed that all the adventures he embroils himself in always end up making him look wonderful, and everyone else a bit thick?”
“True. This time even his usual admirers have been tut-tutting behind his back.”
“Serves him right.”
Purslane looked out to sea, through the thicket of hovering ships parked around the tight little archipelago. A layer of cloud had formed during the afternoon, with the ships—most of them stationed nose down—piercing it like daggers. There were nearly a thousand of them. The view resembled an inverted landscape: a sea of fog, interrupted by the sleek, luminous spires of tall buildings.
“Asphodel’s ship still hasn’t been sighted,” Purslane said. “It’s looking as if she won’t make it.”
“Do you think she’s dead?”
Purslane dipped her head. “I think it’s a possibility. That last strand of hers . . . a lot of risk-taking.”
Asphodel’s strand, delivered during the last reunion, had been full of death-defying sweeps past lethal phenomena. What had seemed beautiful then—a whiplashing binary star, or a detonating nova— must have finally reached out and killed her. Killed one of us.
“I liked Asphodel,” I said absently. “I’ll be sorry if she doesn’t make it. Maybe she’s just delayed.”
“Why don’t you come inside and stop moping?” Purslane said, edging me away from the balcony. “It’s not good for you.”
“I’m not really in the mood.”
“Honestly, Campion. I’m sure you’re going to startle us tonight.”
“That depends,” I said, “on how much you like sunsets.”
That night my memories were threaded into the dreams of the other guests. Come morning most of them managed to say something vaguely complimentary about my strand, but beneath the surface politeness their bemused disappointment was all too obvious. It wasn’t just that my memories had added nothing startling to the whole. What really annoyed them was that I’d apparently gone out of my way to have as dull a time as possible. The implication was that I’d let the side down by looking for pointless green flashes rather than adventure; that I’d deliberately sought to add nothing useful to the tapestry of our col
lective knowledge.
By the afternoon, my patience was wearing perilously thin.
“Well, at least you won’t be on the edge of your seat come Thousandth Night,” said Samphire, an old acquaintance in the line. “That was the idea, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Deliberate dullness, to take you out of the running for best strand.”
“That wasn’t the idea at all,” I said testily. “Still, if you think it was dull. . . that’s your prerogative. When’s your strand, Samphire? I’ll be sure to offer my heartfelt congratulations when everyone else is sticking the boot in.”
“Day eight hundred,” he said easily. “Plenty of time to study the opposition and make a few judicious alterations.” Samphire sidled a bit too close for comfort. I had always found Samphire cloying, but I tolerated his company because his strands were usually memorable. He had a penchant for digging through the ruins of ancient human cultures, looting their tombs for quaint technologies, grisly weapons, and machine minds driven psychotic by two million years of isolation. “So anyway,” he said, conspiratorially. “Thousandth Night. Thousandth Night. Can’t wait to see what you’ve got lined up for us.”
“Nor can I.”
“What’s it going to be? You can’t do a Cloud Opera, if that’s what you’ve planned. We had one of those last time.”
“Not a very good one though.”
“And the time before that—what was it?”
“A re-creation of a major space battle, I think. Effective, if a little on the brash side.”
“Yes, I remember now. Didn’t Fescue’s ship mistake it for a real battle? Dug a ten kilometre wide crater into the crust when his screens went up. The silly fool had his defence thresholds turned down too low.” Unfortunately, Fescue was in earshot. He looked at us over the shoulder of the line member he was talking to, shot me a warning glance then returned to his conversation. “Anyway,” Samphire continued, oblivious. “What do you mean, you can’t wait? It’s your show, Campion. Either you’ve planned something or you haven’t.”
I looked at him pityingly. “You’ve never actually won best strand, have you?”
“Come close, though . . . my strand on the Homunculus Wars . . . ” He shook his head. “Never mind. What’s your point?”
“My point is that sometimes the winner elects to suppress their memories of exactly what form the Thousandth Night celebrations will take.”
Samphire touched a finger to his nose. “I know you, Campion. It’ll be tastefully restrained . . . and very, very dull.”
“Good luck with your strand,” I said icily.
Samphire left me. I thought I’d have a few moments alone, but no sooner had I turned to admire the view than Fescue leaned against the balustrade next to me, swilling a glass of wine. He held the glass by the stem, in jewelled and ringed fingers.
“Enjoying yourself, Campion?” he asked, in his usual deep-voiced, paternalistic, faintly disapproving way. The wind flicked iron-grey hair from his aristocratic brow.
“Yes, actually. Aren’t you?”
“It’s not a matter of enjoyment. Not for some of us, at any rate. There’s work to be done during these reunions—serious business, of great importance to the future status of the line.”
“Lighten up,” I said under my breath.
Fescue and I had never seen eye to eye. Among the nine hundred and ninety-three surviving members of the line, there were two or three dozen who exerted special influence. Though we had all been created at the same time, these figures had cultured a quiet superiority, distancing themselves from the more frivolous aspects of a reunion. Their body plans and clothes were studiedly formal. They spent a lot of time standing around in grave huddles, shaking their heads at the rest of us. They had the strongest ties to external lines. Many of them were Advocates, like Fescue himself.
If Fescue had heard my whispered remark, he kept it to himself. “I saw you with Purslane earlier,” he said.
“It’s not against the law.”
“You spend a lot of time with her.”
“Again . . . whose business is it? Just because she turned her nose up at your elitist little club.”
“Careful, Campion. You’ve done well with this venue, but don’t overestimate your standing. Purslane is a troublemaker—a thorn in the line.”
“She’s my friend.”
“That’s clear enough.”
I bristled. “Meaning what?”
“I didn’t see either of you at the orgy this morning. You spend a lot of time together, just the two of you. You sleep together, yet you disdain sexual relationships with the rest of your fellows. That isn’t how we like to do things in Gentian Line.”
“You Advocates keep yourselves to yourselves.”
“That’s different. We have duties . . . obligations. Purslane wouldn’t understand that. She had her chance to join us.”
“If you’ve got something to say, why not say it to her face?”
He looked away, to the brush-thin line of the horizon. “You did well with the aquatics,” he said absently. “Nice touch. Mammals. They’re from . . . the old place, aren’t they?”
“I forget. What is this little pep talk about, Fescue? Are you telling me to keep away from Purslane?”
“I’m telling you to buck up your ideas. Start showing some spine, Campion. Turbulent times are coming. Admiring sunsets is all very well, but what we need now is hard data on emergent cultures across the entire Galaxy. We need to know who’s with us and who isn’t. There’ll be all the time in the world for lolling around on beaches after we’ve completed the Great Work.” Fescue poured the remains of his wine into my ocean. “Until then we need a degree of focus.”
“Focus yourself,” I said, turning away.
Things began to improve in the afternoon, when interest shifted to the next evening’s strand. Purslane found me again, attending to a whimsical redesign of one of the outlying towers. She told me that she had heard about an orgy on the fiftieth level of the main spire, very exclusive, and that I should join her there in an hour. Still stinging from Fescue’s criticism, I told her that I was in no mood for it, but Purslane won me over and I agreed to meet when I was done with the tower.
When I arrived, the only other person there was Purslane.
“Wrong floor, I take it?”
“No,” she said, standing on the perfectly transparent floor of an out-flung balcony, so that she appeared to float two kilometres above the sea. “Right floor, right time. I told you it was exclusive.”
“But you didn’t tell me it was this exclusive,” I said.
Purslane disrobed. As they stepped away, her clothes assumed the texture of weathered stone and froze into sculptural forms from deep antiquity. “Are you complaining?” she asked.
My own clothes broke up into a cloud of cherry blossom petals and scudded away across the floor. “Not exactly, no.”
Purslane looked on approvingly. “I can tell.”
We rolled around on the glass floor, which softened and hardened itself in perfect consideration of our needs. As we made love, I tried to remember whether I’d designed the glass floor to be transparent in both directions—and if so what kind of entertainment we were providing to the line members who might be looking up to the fiftieth floor from below. Then I decided that I didn’t care. If we outraged them, so be it.
“You were right,” Purslane said, when we were lying together afterwards.
“Right about what?”
“The sunsets. Every bit as . .. challenging . . . as you said.”
“Go on. Kick a man when he’s down.”
“Actually I admire your nerve,” she said. “You had a plan and you stuck with it. And some of the sunsets were actually quite nice.”
She’d meant it as a compliment, but I couldn’t help looking wounded. “Quite nice.”
Purslane conjured a grape and popped it into my mouth. “Sorry, Campion.”
“It’s all right,” I sai
d. “At least I won’t have people pestering me for the rest of the carnival, trying to get at the memories I edited out of the strand. At least they’ll know that’s precisely as exciting as it gets.”
It was true: the pressure was off, and to my surprise, I actually started relaxing and enjoying the remaining days and nights. The last time, my submitted strand had been so well received that there’d been mutterings that I must have spiced things up for effect. I hadn’t— those things really had happened to me—but I’d still spent the rest of the reunion in a state of prickly self-defence.
It was better now. I enjoyed feeling my mind filling with bright new experience; multiple snapshots of a dizzying complex and teeming Galaxy. It was the euphoria of drunkenness combined with an absolute, crystalline clarity of mind. It was glorious and overwhelming: an avalanche of history.
At the last count there were ten million settled solar systems out there. Fifty million planet-class worlds. Entire upstart civilisations had risen and fallen since the last reunion, several times over. With the passing of every reunion it seemed impossible that the wilder fringes of humanity could become any stranger, any less recognisable. Yet they always contrived to do so; oozing into every cosmic niche like molten lava, and then carving out new niches that no one had dared dreamed of before.
Two million years of bioengineering and cyborg reshaping had equipped humankind for any possible physical environment. Twenty thousand distinct branches of humanity had returned to alien seas, each adopting a different solution to the problem of aquatic life. Some were still more or less humanoid, but others had sculpted themselves into sleek sharklike things, or dextrous multi-limbed molluscs or hard-shelled arthropods. There were thirteen hundred distinct human cultures in the atmospheres of gas giants. Ninety that swam in the metallic hydrogen oceans under those atmospheres. There were vacuum dwellers and star dwellers. There were people who lived in trees, and people who had, by some definition, become trees themselves. There were people as large as small moons, which fostered entire swarming communities within their bodies. There were people who had encoded themselves into the nuclear structure of neutron stars, although no one had heard much from them lately. Against all this change, the nine hundred and ninety-three members of the Gentian Line must have appeared laughably quaint and antique, with our stolid adherence to traditional anatomy. But all this was just convention. Prior to arrival on the planet, we were free to adopt whatever forms we chose. The only rule was that when we emerged from our ships we must assume the forms of adult humans, and that we must bring our minds with us. Minor matters such as gender, build, pigmentation and sexual orientation were left to our discretion, but we were all obliged to carry the facial characteristics of Abigail Gentian: her high cheekbones, her strong jaw and the fact that her left eye was green and the other a wintery, jackdaw blue.