One Million A.D.

by Gardner Dozois

  It was customary to sprinkle harmless entertainments and diversions through the nights of the Reunion. On the afternoon of the eight hundred and seventieth night, I opened the maze on one of the high balconies, with a modest prize for the line member who found their way through it the fastest. The maze would remain in existence until the nine hundredth night; time enough for everyone to have a try at it.

  But the Mood Maze was no ordinary labyrinth. Based on a game I had discovered during my travels, a Mood Maze was sensitive to emotional states, which the maze detected using a variety of subtle cues and mildly invasive sensors. As long as one remained perfectly calm, a Mood Maze held a fixed geometry. But as soon as the walls detected the slightest suggestion of frustration, the geometry of the maze underwent a sly modification: walls and gaps moving to block one route and open up another. The more frustrated one became, the more tortuous the labyrinth made itself. Extremes of anger could even cause the maze to form a closed-loop around the hapless player, so that they had no choice to wander in circles until they calmed down. Needless to say, it was considered very bad form to enter a Mood Maze with anything other than baseline human intelligence. Extreme faculties of memory or spatial positioning had to be turned off before participation.

  The Mood Maze was a pleasant enough diversion, and popular with most of those who took a chance on it. But I’d had more than that in mind when I set it up. I’d hoped that the maze would tell me something about Burdock’s state of mind, if only he would participate. Since it was voluntary, I couldn’t be accused of violating his mental privacy.

  But when I ran the maze, Burdock sailed through it, with the walls registering hardly any change to his emotional state. Cheating could not be ruled out, though it was unlikely: a Mood Maze was designed to detect most forms of subterfuge and punish them accordingly. And if he had that much to hide, it would not have been hard to avoid the maze entirely.

  What surprised me was the degree of frustration I saw in some of the other participants. When a group of Advocates wagered among themselves as to who would beat the maze the quickest, it was Fescue who ended up with the humiliation of being trapped in a closed-loop. His rage built to a crescendo until I tactfully intervened and allowed him an exit.

  I greeted him as he left the maze. “Challenging little devil,” I said lightly, trying to calm things down.

  “A childish little prank,” he said, spitting fury. “But then I shouldn’t have expected any better from you.”

  “It’s just a game. You didn’t have to take part.”

  “That’s all anything is to you, isn’t it? Just a game with no consequences.” He glanced at the other Advocates, who were looking on with amused expressions. “You have no idea what’s at stake here. Even if you did, you’d shrivel from any hint of responsibility.”

  “All right,” I said, holding up my hands in defeat. “I’ll forbid you from taking part in any of my games. Will that make you happy?”

  “What would make me happy . . .” Fescue began, before scowling and making to turn away.

  “It’s Purslane, isn’t it,” I said.

  He lowered his voice to a hiss. “I’ve given you fair warning. But to what purpose? You continue to associate with her to the exclusion of others. Your sexual relations verge on the monogamous. You spit on the traditions of the line.”

  I kept my voice level, refusing to rise to his bait. “All this because of a maze, Fescue? I never had you down as quite that bad a loser.”

  “You have no idea what is at stake,” he repeated. “Change is coming, Campion—violent, sudden change. The only thing that will hold the line together is self-sacrifice.”

  “Is this about the Great Work?” I asked.

  “It’s about duty,” he said. “Something you seem incapable of grasping.” He looked back at my maze, as it willing it to crumble to dust. “Keep playing with your toys, Campion. Fritter away your days in idleness and dissipation. Leave the important things to the rest of us.”

  Fescue stalked off. I stood blinking, regretting the fact that I had mentioned the Great Work. Now my interest in it was known to at least one Advocate.

  A hand touched my shoulder. “I see the old fart’s giving you a hard time again.”

  It was Samphire, pushing into my personal space. Normally I would have edged away, but for once I relaxed in his presence, glad to unburden myself.

  “I don’t think he was thrilled about the Mood Maze,” I said.

  “Don’t take it personally. He’s been acting odd for weeks, giving everyone hard stares. What’s his problem?”

  “Fescue doesn’t like me spending time with Purslane.”

  “Only because the craggy bastard couldn’t get a shag out of her.”

  “I think there’s a bit more to it than that. Fescue’s mixed up in something. You know what I mean, don’t you.”

  Samphire kept his voice low. “No idea at all. Other than that it’s a work and it’s great. Are you any more clued up about it than me?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “But whatever it is, Fescue think it’s a lot more important than the kind of lazy, self-indulgent things Purslane and I tend to get up to.”

  “Has he tried to rope you in?”

  “Not sure. I can’t work out whether he totally disapproves of me on every level, or whether he’s just bitterly disappointed that I waste so much potential talent.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Fescue’s just a wasted old bore. His strand didn’t exactly set the island ringing, did it?”

  “Nor did mine.”

  “Difference is Fescue obviously expected more. Between you and me . . .” Samphire hesitated and looked around. “I think he was just a tiny bit economical with the facts.”

  I frowned. “You’re saying he fiddled his strand?”

  “A few details here and there. We came close to meeting around the Hesperus Veil: near enough to exchange recognition protocols.”

  I nodded. There’d been a supernova near the Hesperus Veil, and a number of us had planned close approaches to it. “That’s not enough to prove that he lied, though.”

  “No,” Samphire said. “But according to his strand he skipped the Veil altogether. Why lie about that? Because either before or after that he was somewhere else he didn’t want us to know about. Probably somewhere a lot less exciting than the places that showed up in his strand.”

  I felt a tingling sensation, wondering if Fescue might also be implicated in the Burdock business. Could the two of them be accomplices?

  “That’s a pretty heavy accusation,” I said, my mind reeling.

  “Oh, I’m not going to make anything of it. I’ve already edited down my own strand so as not to embarrass him. Let him trip himself up. He’s bound to do it one of these days.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said, not quite able to suppress my disappointment. The idea of seeing Fescue publicly humiliated—revealed as fabricating chunks of his strand—tasted shamefully delicious.

  “Don’t let him get to you too much,” Samphire said. “He’s just a sad old man with too much time on his hands.”

  “The funny thing,” I said, “is that he’s no older than the rest of us.”

  “He acts old. That’s all that matters.”

  Samphire’s revelation improved my mood, and I took great delight in telling Purslane what I had learned. Robbed of their sting, Fescue’s warnings only emboldened the two of us. Time and again, as covertly as we dared, we met aboard her ship and discussed what we had learned.

  It was there that I mentioned Burdock’s swift passage through the maze.

  “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 . . . b
ut 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.”

  We did it anyway.

  Ten days was nowhere as much time as I would have liked, but if we had been given any longer the utter incaution of what we were doing would have had time to gnaw away at my better judgment. It was a false strand that had set this entire enterprise in motion, I had to remind myself. Burdock had perpetrated a lie, and now we were perpetrating another because of it. Unfortunately, I saw no practical alternative.

  Purslane’s original strand wasn’t as bad as I had feared: there was actually some promising material in it, if only it could be brought out more effectively. It was certainly a lot more dramatic and exciting than my essay on sunsets.
Nonetheless, there was plenty of scope for some judicious fiddling with the facts: nothing outrageous, nothing that would have people looking for flaws in Purslane’s strand, but enough to justify the anticipation she had begun to stoke. And in that respect she excelled herself: without actually saying anything, she managed to whip everyone into a state of heady expectation. It was all in the haughtiness of her walk, the guarded confidence of her looks, the sympathetic, slightly pitying smile with which she greeted everyone else’s efforts. I know she hated every minute of that performance, but to her credit she threw herself into it with giddy abandon. By the time the evening of her threading came around, the atmosphere tingled with excitement. Her strand would be the subject of so much discussion tomorrow that no one could possibly take the risk of not dreaming it tonight, even if my apparatus had permitted such evasion. It would be the most exquisite of embarrassments not to be able to hold a view on Purslane’s strand.

  At midnight, the line members and their guests dispersed to sleep and dream. Surveillance confirmed that they were all safely under, including, Burdock. The strand was threading into their collective memories. There had been no traffic to and from the island and the ships for an hour. A warm breeze rolled in from the west, but the sea was tranquil, save for the occasional breaching aquatic.

  Purslane and I made our move. Two travel boxes folded around us and pulled us away from the island, through the thicket of hanging vessels, out to the ship belonging to Burdock. A kilometre long, it was a modest craft by Gentian standards: neither modern nor fast, but rugged and dependable for all that. Its armoured green hull had something of the same semi-translucence as polished turtle shell. Its drive was a veined green bulb, flung out from the stern on a barbed stalk: it hung nose-down from the bulb, swaying gently in the late evening breeze.

  Purslane’s box led the way. She curved under the froglike bow of the ship, then rose up on the other side. Halfway up the hull, between a pair of bottle-green hull plates, lay a wrinkled airlock. Her box transmitted recognition protocols and the airlock opened like a gummed eye. There was room inside for both boxes. They opened and allowed us to disembark.