“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 anymore. 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 star-faring 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 the 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.”