“I think that was the point. I think he wanted to conceal something that did happen. He used dullness as a deliberate camouflage.”
“Wait,” I said. “How can you be sure things just weren’t that dull?”
“Because of a contradiction,” Purslane said. “Look, when the last Reunion ended we all of us hared off into the Galaxy in different directions. As far as I’m aware, none of us swapped plans or itineraries.”
“Forbidden, anyway,” I said.
“Yes. And the chances of any of us bumping into each other between then and now were tiny.”
“But it happened?”
“Not exactly. But I think something happened to Burdock: something that had him doctoring his thread to create a false alibi.”
I shifted in my seat. These were serious allegations, far above the usual bitchy speculation that attended any private discussion about other members of the Gentian Line. “How can you know?”
“Because his memories contradict yours. I know: I’ve checked. According to your mutual strands, the two of you should have both been in the same system at the same time.”
“Which system?”
She told me. It was an unremarkable place: just another star dipping into an alien sea, as far as I was concerned. “I was there,” I said. “But I definitely didn’t bump into Burdock.” I rummaged through my memories, digging through mnemonic headers to those specific events. “He didn’t come nearby either. No interstellar traffic came close to that world during my entire stay. His ship might have been stealthed…”
“I don’t think it was. Anyway, he doesn’t mention you either. Was your ship stealthed?”
“No.”
“Then he’d have seen you arriving or departing. The interstellar medium’s pretty thick near there. Relativistic ships can’t help but carve a wake through it. He’d surely have made some mention of that if the strand was real.”
She was right. Accidental encounters were always celebrated: a triumph of coincidence over the inhuman scale of the Galaxy.
“What do you think happened?”
“I think Burdock was unlucky,” Purslane said. “I think he picked that world out of a hat, never imagining you’d visit it just when he claimed to be there.”
“But his strand was threaded after mine. If he was going to lie…”
“I don’t think he paid enough attention to your catalogue of sunsets,” Purslane said. “Can’t blame him, though, can you?”
“It could be me that’s lying,” I said.
“My money’s still on Burdock. Anyway, that’s not the only problem with his story. There are a couple of other glitches: nothing quite so egregious, but enough to make me pick through the whole thing looking for anomalies. That’s when I spotted the contradiction.”
I looked at her wonderingly. “This is serious.”
“It could be.”
“It must be. Harmless exaggeration is one thing. Even outright lying is understandable. But why would you replace the truth with something less interesting, unless you had something to hide?”
“That’s what I thought as well.”
“Why would he go to the trouble of creating an alibi, when he could just as easily delete the offending memories from his strand?”
“Risky,” Purslane said. “Safer to swap the system he did visit with one in the same neck of the woods, so that it didn’t throw his timings too far out, in case anyone dug too deeply into his strand.”
“That doesn’t help us work out where he was, though—the same neck of the woods still means hundreds of light-years, thousands of possible systems.”
“It’s a big galaxy,” Purslane.
There was an uneasy silence. Far above us, beyond layers of armoured metal, I heard the seismic groan as something colossal shifted and settled like a sleeping baby.
“Have you spoken to Burdock?”
“Not about this.”
“Anyone else?”
“Just you,” Purslane said. “I’m worried, Campion. What if Burdock did something?”
“A crime?”
“It’s not unthinkable.”
But unthinkable was precisely what it was. Gentian Line was not the only one of its kind. When Abigail shattered herself, others had done likewise. Some of those lines had died out over the intervening time, but most had endured in some shape or form. Although customs varied, most of those lines had something similar to Reunion: a place where they convened and re-threaded memories.
In the last two million years, there had been many instances of contact between those lines. Until recently, Gentian Line had been isolationist, but some of the others had formed loose associations. There had been treaties and feuds. One entire line had been murdered, when a rival line booby-trapped its equivalent of Reunion with an anti-matter device left over from the War of the Local Bubble. Nowadays we were all a lot more careful. There were formal ties between many of the lines. There were agreed rules of behaviour. Feuds were out, marriages were in. There were plans for future collaboration, like the Great Work.
The Great Work was a project—not yet initiated—which would require the active cooperation of many lines. Whatever it was was big. Beyond that I knew nothing about it. I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. Officially, no members of Gentian Line were privy to detailed knowledge about the Great Work. That information was held by an alliance of lines to which we hadn’t yet been granted full membership. The expectation, however, was that it wouldn’t be long before we were invited into the club. Among the guests on Reunion were ambassadors from other lines—some of which were in on the big secret. They were keeping an eye on us, sampling our strands, judging our wisdom and readiness.
Unofficially, there were also Gentian members who seemed to know something. I remembered Fescue’s criticism of my strand: how there were turbulent times coming and how I’d have all the time in the world to loll around on beaches after the Great Work had been completed. Fescue—and a handful of other line members—had almost certainly been tipped off.
We called them the Advocates.
But while it seemed likely that we’d be invited to participate in the project before very long, we were also now at our most vulnerable. A single error could jeopardize our standing with the other lines. We’d all been mindful of this as we prepared our strands.
But what if one of us had done something truly awful? A crime committed by one Gentian Line member would reflect badly upon all of us. Technically, we were different manifestations of the same individual. If one Gentian member had it in them to do something bad, then it could be presumed that we all did.
If Burdock had indeed committed a crime, and if that crime came to light, then we might well be excluded from the Great Work.
“This could be bad,” I said.
It was very hard to behave normally in the days and weeks that followed. No matter where I went, I bumped into Burdock with unerring regularity. Our paths had hardly crossed during this latest carnival, but now he and I seemed doomed to meet each other every day. During these awkward encounters I kept fumbling for the right tone, hoping that I never gave away any hint of the suspicion Purslane and I felt. At the same time, my mind spun out of control with imagined crimes. Like any members of a star-faring society, those of Gentian Line had terrible powers at their disposal. One of our ships, used carelessly, could easily incinerate a world. Deliberate action was even more chilling to contemplate. Members of other lines had committed atrocities in the remote past. History was paved with genocides.
But nothing about Burdock suggested a criminal streak. He wasn’t ambitious. His strands had always been unmemorable. He’d never attempted to influence Gentian policy. He had no obvious enemies.