Evening turned to night. Floating paper lanterns glowed in the warm air, casting lozenges of pastel colour on the revellers. As was Gentian custom, everyone wore a costume that, subtly or otherwise, reflected the content of their dream. We wore carnival masks, the game being to match the dreamer to the dream before the masks were ripped away. I wore a moon mask and a simple outfit patterned in sunset shades, with a repeating motif of half-swallowed suns. Purslane wore a fox mask and a harlequin costume, in which each square detailed one of her legendary adventures. It didn’t take very long for people to work out who she was. Once again, she was tormented by questions about the false strand, but she only had to keep up the pretence for a few more hours. Soon our deception would be revealed, and we would beg forgiveness for weaving a lie.
“Look,” I heard someone say, pointing to the zenith. “A shooting star!”
I looked up sharply enough to catch the etched trail before it faded from sight. A shooting star, I thought: a good omen, perhaps. Except I didn’t believe in omens, especially not when they were signified by pieces of cosmic grit slamming into our planet’s atmosphere.
Purslane sidled up to me a few minutes later. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“Yes. In less than a day, every ship you see here will be on its way out of the system. We do it now or we forget about it forever.”
“Maybe that would be easier.”
“Easier, yes. The right thing—no.”
Another shooting star slashed the sky.
“I agree,” she said.
Upon midnight, the revellers assembled on a high balcony flung out from the side of the main tower on an arm of curved ivory. They had all cast their votes and my system had tallied the winning strand. Shortly it would push the information into my head, and I would deliver the much-anticipated announcement. One of us would leave the system heady with the knowledge their dream had moved us like no other, and that they had been honoured with the design of the next venue. Whoever it was, I wished them well. As I had discovered, the praise burned off very quickly, and what was left was a dark, ominous clinker of responsibility.
I looked down on the assembled gathering from a much higher balcony, watching the masked and costumed figures slow in their orbits. The atmosphere of the revellers became perceptibly tense, as my announcement drew nearer. There was a palpable sadness amongst all the gaiety. Friendships made here must be put on hold until the next reunion, two hundred thousand years in the future. Time and space would change some of us. We would not all be the same people, and not all of those friendships would endure.
It was time.
I stepped from the side of my balcony, into open space. There was a collective gasp from the revellers, even though no one seriously expected me to come to harm. As my left foot pushed down into thin air, a sheet of white marble whisked under it to provide support. As my right foot stepped below my left, another sheet whisked under that one. I took weight from my left foot and stepped down again, and the first sheet curved back under me to meet my falling foot. Stepping between these two sheets, I walked calmly down to the lower balcony. The effect was everything I could have wished for, and I tried to look as quietly pleased with myself as I ought to have been.
But not all the eyes were upon me. Masked and unmasked faces were caught by something above. I followed their gaze to see another slashing shooting star, and then another. In quick succession, six more cut the sky from zenith to horizon. Then more. A dozen in the first minute, and then two dozen in the second. I smiled, realising that this must be the surprise I had arranged for Thousandth Night. A meteor shower!
Easily done, I thought. All I would have needed to do is shove a comet onto the right orbit, shatter it and let its dusty tail intersect the orbit of my planet at the right point in space and time . . . here, tonight. Now that I thought of that, there was a twinge of familiarity about it. . . the memory of doing so not completely erased.
By the standards of some, it was very low-key, and for a moment I wondered if I had misjudged the effect. . . but just as I was beginning to worry about that, people started clapping. It was polite at first, but soon it built in enthusiasm, even as the stars quickened their display, flashing overhead too quickly to count.
They liked it.
“Bravo, Campion!” I heard someone say. “Tasteful restraint. . . beautifully simple!”
I stepped onto a low plinth, so that I was head and shoulders above the crowd. I forced a smile and waved down the applause. “Thank you everyone,” I said. “I’m glad things have gone so well. If this reunion has been a success, it has far more to do with the people than the venue.” I looked over my shoulder, at the central spire rising behind me. “Although the venue isn’t half bad, is it?” They laughed and applauded, and I smiled again, hoping I looked and sounded genuine. It was hard, but it was vital that no one suspect I had anything else up my sleeve.
“Every strand is to be treasured,” I said, injecting a note of solemnity into my voice. “Every experience, every memory, is sacred. On this Thousandth Night, we gather to select one strand in particular that has touched us more than others. That is our custom. But in doing so, we do not denigrate any other strands. In the totality of experience, they are all equally vital, and all equally cherished.” I singled out Mullein, and smiled sympathetically. “Even the ones with an unusually high mud content.”
Mullein laughed good-naturedly, and, for a moment, he was the star of the show again. The gentle mocking of one of our number was also part of tradition. Of all us, Mullein could relax now.
“In a little while, we will return to our ships,” I continued. “We will travel back out into the Galaxy and seek new experiences; new strands to be woven into the greater tapestry of the Gentian collective memory. None of us will leave here the same person he or she was a thousand days ago, and when we return, we will have changed again. That is part of the wonder of what Abigail made of herself. Other Lines favour rigid regimentation: a thousand identical clones, each programmed to respond to the same stimulus in exactly the same way. You might as well send out robots. That wasn’t how Abigail wanted to do things. She wanted to gorge on reality. She wanted to feed her face with it, drunk on curiosity. In our bickering diversity, we honour that impulse.” I paused and laced my hands, nodding at the nearest faces. “And now the time has come. The system has informed me of the winner . . . the name I am about to reveal.” I pulled a face that suggested amused surprise. “The name is . . . ”
And then I paused again, and frowned. The crowd tensed.
“Wait a moment,” I said. “I’m sorry, but. . . something’s wrong. I’m receiving an emergency message from my ship.” I raised my voice over the people who had started talking. “This is . . . unfortunate. My ship has a technical problem with drive containment. There’s a small but non-negligible risk of detonation.” I tried to sound panicked, but still in some kind of control. “Please, remain calm. I’m ordering my ship to move to a safe distance . . . ” I looked over the heads, beyond the island to the forest of parked ships, and counted to five in my head. “No response . . . I’m trying again, but. ..” The heads started moving, their voices threatening to drown me out. “Still no response,” I said, tightening my face to a grimace. “I don’t seem to be able to get a command through.” I raised my voice, until I was almost shouting. “We’re safe here: in a few seconds, I’ll screen the island. Before I do that, I recommend that you order your ships to protect themselves.”
Some of them already had. Their ships trembled within the vague, wobbling shapes of anticollision screens, like insects in spit. After a few seconds, the screens locked into stable forms and became harder to see. I allowed myself a glance in Purslane’s direction. She responded with the tiniest encouraging nod.
It was working.
“Please,” I urged. “Hurry. I’ll raise the island’s own screen in ten seconds. You may not be able to get a message through once that happens.”
More a
nd more ships wobbled as their screens flicked on. Peals of thunder, distant and low, signalled the activations. Doubtless many of the people were wondering what was going on: how it just happened that it was my ship that was threatening to blow up, when I was already the centre of attention. I just hoped that they would have the sense to put up their screens first and worry about the coincidence later.
But some of the largest ships were still not screened. I could not delay the screening of the island any longer. I would just have to hope that the necessary commands had already been sent, and that those ships were just a bit slow to respond.
But even as the island’s own screen flickered on—blurring the view all around us, as if smeared glass had dropped into place—I knew that my plan was coming adrift.
Fescue spoke, his deep voice commanding instant attention. “The danger is passed,” he said. “My own ship has projected a secondary screen around yours, Campion. You may lower the island’s shield.”
My answer caught in my throat. “My ship may blow at any moment. Are you sure that secondary screen is going to be good enough?”
“Yes,” Fescue said, with withering authority. “I’m more than sure.”
The gathered revellers looked out to my ship, which remained stubbornly intact within the envelope Fescue had projected around it.
“Lower the island screen, Campion.” And even as he spoke, Fescue’s ship pushed mine up and away, into the high atmosphere, until it was lost among the stars.
The meteor shower was over, I noticed.
“The screen,” Fescue said.
I gave the necessary commands, lowering the screen. “Thank you,” I said, breathless and distraught. “That was . . . quick thinking, Fescue.”
“It must have been a false alarm after all,” he said, his unmasked eyes piercing mine. “Or a mistake.”
“I thought my ship was going to blow up.”
“Of course you did. Why else would you have told us?” He made a growl-like sound. “You were about to announce the winner, Campion. Perhaps you ought to continue.”
There was a murmur of approval. If I’d had the sympathy of the crowd five minutes ago, I had lost it completely now. My throat was dry. I saw Purslane, the fox mask tugged down, and something like horror on her face.
“Campion,” Fescue pushed. “The winner . . . if it isn’t too much trouble.”
But I didn’t know the winner. The system wasn’t due to inform me for another hour. I had delayed my receipt of the announcement, not wishing to be distracted from the main business.
“I. . . the winner. Yes. The winner of the strand . . . the best strand winner . . . is . . . the winner. And the winner is . . . ” I fell silent for ten or twenty seconds, frozen in the gaze of nearly a thousand mortified onlookers. Then my thoughts suddenly quietened, as if I’d found an epicentre of mental calm. I seemed to stand outside myself.
“There is no winner,” I said softly. “Not yet.”
“Perhaps you ought to stand down,” Fescue said. “You’ve arranged a fine reunion; we all agree on that. It would be a shame to ruin it now.”
Fescue took a step toward me, presumably intending to help me from the plinth.
“Wait,” I said, with all the dignity I could muster. “Wait and hear me out. All of you.”
“You have an explanation for this travesty?” Fescue asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
He stopped in his tracks and folded his arms. “Then let’s hear it. Part of me would love to think that this is all part of your Thousandth Night plans, Campion.”
“Something awful has happened,” I said. “There has been a conspiracy . . . a murder. One of us has been killed.”
Fescue cocked his head. “One of us?”
I scanned the crowd and pointed to Burdock’s duplicate. “That’s not Burdock,” I said. “That’s an impostor. The real Burdock is dead.”
The duplicate Burdock pulled a startled face. He looked at the people surrounding him, and then back at me, aghast. He said something and the onlookers laughed.
“The real Burdock is dead?” Fescue asked. “Are you quite sure of this, Campion?”
“Yes. I know because I’ve seen his body. When we broke into his ship . ..”
“When ‘we’ broke into his ship,” Fescue repeated, silencing me. “You mean there was someone else involved?”
Purslane’s voice rang out clear and true. “It was me. Campion and I broke into the ship. Everything he’s told you is the truth. Burdock was murdered by proponents of the Great Work, because Burdock knew what they had done.”
Fescue looked intrigued. “Which was?”
“They destroyed an entire culture . . . Grisha’s people . . . a culture that had uncovered Prior data damaging to the Great Work. Wiped them out with Homunculus weapons. Burdock tried to cover up his discovery, for fear of what the Advocates would do to him. There was a discrepancy in Burdock’s dreams . . . an error.” Purslane’s control began to falter. “He said he’d been somewhere he hadn’t. . . somewhere Campion had been.”
“So it was Burdock’s word against Campion?” Fescue turned to the impostor. “Does this make the slightest sense to you?”
The impostor shrugged and looked at me with something between pity and spite.
“Hear us out,” Purslane insisted. “All Campion was hoping to do was provoke the raising of anticollision shields. The ship that destroyed Grisha’s people . . . we had data on its field resonance, but we needed to see our own fields before we could establish a match.” Purslane swallowed and regained some measure of calm. “I’m broadcasting the resonance data to all ships. See it for yourselves. See what those bastards did to Grisha’s people.”
There was a moment, a lull, while the crowd assessed the data Purslane had just made public. She had taken a frightful risk in revealing the information, for now our enemies had every incentive to move against us, even if that meant killing everyone else on the island. But I agreed with what she had done. We were out of options.
Except one.
“Very impressive,” Fescue admitted. “But we’ve no evidence that you didn’t forge this data.”
“The authentication stamp ties it to Burdock,” Purslane said.
Fescue looked regretful. “Authentication can always be faked, with sufficient ingenuity. You’ve already admitted that you broke into his ship, after all. Disavow your involvement in this, Purslane, before it’s too late.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t.”
Fescue nodded at a number of the people around him, including a handful of senior Advocates.
“Restrain the two of them,” he said.
I fingered the metal shape under my flame-coloured costume. My hand closed on the haft and removed Grisha’s particle gun. The crowd silenced as the evil little thing glinted in the lantern light. Earlier, unwitnessed, I had primed the weapon onto Burdock. I squeezed a jewelled button and the gun moved as if in an invisible grip, nearly dragging itself from my fist. It swivelled onto Burdock and locked steady as a snake. Even if I released my hold on the gun, it would keep tracking its designated target.
“Stand aside, please,” I said.
“Don’t do anything silly,” Fescue said, even as the crowd parted around Burdock’s impostor.
The moment closed around me like a vice. I had seen the real, dying Burdock aboard his ship—at least, I believed I had. When I squeezed the trigger, I would be killing a mindless automaton, a bio-mechanical construct programmed to duplicate Burdock’s responses with a high degree of accuracy . . . but not a living thing. Nothing with a sense of self.
But what if the dying figure on the ship was the impostor, and this was still the real Burdock? What if the whole story about Grisha and the assassination agent had been the lie, and the real Burdock was standing in front of me? I had no idea why such an elaborate charade might have been staged . . . but I couldn’t rule it out, either. And there was one possibility that sprang to mind. What if Burdock had
enemies among the line, and they wanted him dead, with someone else to pin the blame on? Suddenly I felt dizzy, lost in mazelike permutations of bluff and double bluff. I had to make a simple choice. I had to trust my intuitive sense of what was true and what was false.
“If this is a mistake,” I said, “forgive me.”
I squeezed the trigger. The particle beam sliced its way across space, piercing the figure in the chest.
Burdock’s impostor touched a hand to the smoking wound, opened its mouth as it speak, and fell lifeless to the floor. The crowd screamed their horror, revolted at the idea that a member of the Gentian Line had murdered another.
My work done, I let go of the particle gun. It remained floating before me, as if inviting me to take another shot. Burdock’s impostor lay on its side, with one dry hand open to the sky. He had touched the wound and there had been no blood. I allowed myself a moment of relief. The others would see that the thing I had killed was not a man, but a bloodless construct. But even as these thoughts formed, the body retched and coughed a mouthful of dark blood onto the perfect white marble of the terrace. Its face was a mask of fear and incomprehension. Then it was still.
The crowd surged. They were on me in seconds, swatting aside the gun. They pulled me from the plinth and smothered me to the ground. The breath was knocked out of me. They began to pull at my clothing with animal fury. I heard shouts as some of the revellers tried to pull the others off me, but the collective anger—the collective repulsion—was too great to be resisted. I felt something crack in my chest, tasted my own blood as someone smashed a fist into my jaw. I thrashed out, survival instincts kicking in, but there were too many of them. Most of them were still wearing carnival masks.
Then something happened. Just before I was about to go under, the attack calmed. Someone landed a final punch in my chest, sending a bolt of pain up my spine, and then pulled away. I received a desultory kick, and then they left me there, sprawled on the ground, my mouth wet, my body bruised. I knew they hadn’t finished with me. They were just leaving me alone while something else attracted their attention.