“He could have been cheating,” I said. “His emotional registers were all very flat, according to the maze.”
“I don’t see why he’d cheat,” Purslane answered. “Admittedly, he doesn’t have much prestige in the line—but there are other ways he could have won it by now, if it mattered to him that much. It’s almost as if he did the maze because he felt obliged to do so… but that it just wasn’t difficult for him.”
“There’s something else, too,” I said. “I’m not sure if I’d have noticed it were it not for the whole business with the maze… but ever since then, I’ve been watching for anything even more out of the ordinary than normal.”
“You’ve seen something?”
“More a case of what he hasn’t been doing, rather than what he has been doing, if that makes any sense.”
Purslane nodded sagely. “I noticed too—if we’re talking about the same thing. It’s been going on for at least a week now.”
“Then it isn’t just me,” I said, relieved that she had shared my observation.
“I wasn’t sure whether to say anything. It’s not that there’s been any dramatic change in his behaviour, just that…”
I completed her sentence for her: an annoying habit I’d spent the last million years trying to break. “. . . he isn’t poking around the Great Work anymore.”
Purslane’s eyes gleamed confirmation. “Exactly.”
“Unless I’ve missed something, he’s given up trying to find what it’s all about.”
“Which tells us one of two possibilities,” Purslane said. “Either he thinks he knows enough by now…”
“Or someone has scared him off.”
“We really need to take a look at that ship of his,” she said. “Now more than ever.”
Purslane had done her homework. During one of Burdock’s visits to his ship, she had shadowed him with a drone, a glassy dragonfly small and transparent enough to slip undetected into his travel box. The drone had eavesdropped on the exchange of recognition protocols between the box and the hovering ship. A second visit confirmed that the protocol had not changed since the last time: Burdock wasn’t using some randomly varying key. There was nothing too surprising about that: we were all meant to be family, after all, and many of the parked ships probably had no security measures at all. It was simply not the done thing to go snooping around without permission.
That was one half of the problem cracked, at least. We could get aboard Burdock’s ship, but we would still need to camouflage our departure and absence from the island.
“I hope you’ve given some thought to this,” Purslane said.
Well, I had, but I didn’t think she was going to like my suggestion overmuch.
“Here’s one idea,” I said. “I have the entire island under surveillance, so I always know where Burdock is at a given moment, and what he’s doing.”
“Go on.”
“We wait until my systems pick an interval when Burdock’s otherwise engaged. An orgy, a game, or a long, distracting conversation…”
Purslane nodded provisionally. “And if he bores of this orgy, or game, or conversation, and extricates himself prematurely?”
“That’ll be trickier to handle,” I admitted. “But the island is still mine. With some deft intervention I might be able to hold him on the ground for an hour or two before he gets too suspicious.”
“That might not be long enough. You can’t very well make him a prisoner.”
“No, I can’t.”
“And even if you did manage to keep Burdock occupied for as long as we need, there’s the small problem of everyone else. What if someone sees us entering or leaving his ship?”
“That’s also a problem,” I said. “Which is why that was only suggestion number one. I didn’t really think you’d go for it. Are you ready for number two?”
“Yes,” she said, with the tone of someone half-aware that they were walking into a trap.
“We need a better distraction: one Burdock can’t walk away from after an hour or two. We also need one that will keep everyone else tied up—and where our absences won’t be noticed.”
“You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”
“In ten days you deliver your strand, Purslane.” I saw a flicker of concern in her face, but I continued, knowing she would see the sense in my proposal. “This is our only chance. By Gentian rules, every person on this island is required to receive your strand. With, of course, one exception.”
“Me,” she said, with a slow, dawning nod. “I don’t have to be physically present, since I already know my own memories. But what about…”
“Me? Well, that isn’t a problem either. Since I control the apparatus anyway, no one else need know that I wasn’t on the island when your strand was threaded.”
I watched Purslane’s expression as she considered my idea. It was workable: I was convinced of that. I had examined the problem from every conceivable angle, looking for a hairline flaw—and I had found nothing. Well, nothing I could do anything about, anyway.
“But you won’t know my strand,” Purslane said. “What if someone asks…”
“That isn’t a problem, either. Once we’ve agreed on the strand, I can receive it immediately. I just won’t tell anyone until the day after your threading. It’ll be just as if I received it the same way as everyone else.”
“Wait,” Purslane said, raising a hand. “What you just said… about us ‘agreeing’ on the strand.”
“Um, yes?”
“Am I missing something? There isn’t anything to agree on. I’ve already prepared and edited my strand to my complete satisfaction. There isn’t a single memory I haven’t already agonised over a thousand times: putting it in, taking it out again.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said, knowing how much of a perfectionist Purslane was. “But unfortunately, we need to make this a tiny bit more of an event.”
“I’m not following you, Campion.”
“It has to be an effective distraction. Your memories have to be electrifying—the talk of the island for days afterwards. We have to talk them up before the thread, so that everyone is in a state of appropriate expectation. Obviously, there’s only one person who can do that beforehand. You’ll have to drop hints. You’ll have to look smug and self-satisfied. You’ll have to pour lukewarm praise on someone else’s strand.”
“Oh, God preserve us from lukewarm praise.”
“Trust me,” I said. “I know all about that.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do this, Campion. It isn’t me. I don’t boast.”
“Breaking into ships isn’t you either. The rules have changed. We have to be flexible.”
“It’s all very well you saying that. It’s me who’s being asked to lie here… and anyway, why do I have to lie in the first place? Are you actually saying you don’t think my real strand would be interesting enough?”
“Tell you what,” I said, as if the idea had just occurred to me. “Why don’t you let me have a look at your strand tonight? I’ll speed-dream the scheduled strand to make room for yours.”
“And then what?”
“Then we meet and discuss the material we have to work with. We’ll make a few tweaks here and there—heighten this memory, downplay that one. Perhaps exercise a smidgeon of economy with regard to the strict veracity of the events portrayed…”
“Make things up, you mean.”
“We need a distraction,” I said. “This is the only way, Purslane. If it helps… don’t think of it as lying. Think of it as creating a small untruth in order to set free a larger truth. How does that sound?”
“It sounds very dangerous, Campion.”