Thousandth Night Read Free Page B

“Not that there was much about it worth remembering.” Burdock was a quiet, low-profile line member who never went out
of his way to make a show of himself. He’d threaded his strand a few weeks
earlier. It had been uneventful, and I hadn’t paid much attention to it. “It
was almost as if he was trying to upstage me in the dullness stakes.”
    “I
think he lied,” Purslane said. “I think Burdock’s thread was deliberately
altered.”
    “By
Burdock himself?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why
would he do that, though? The strand still wasn’t very interesting.”
    “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