They’d won the first battle.
Prabir said, ‘How? How did you do it, Maddy?’
She sat back and looked at him. He was grinning with amazement beneath the soggy mask, as if she was the one who’d risen from the dead.
‘It was something you taught me. Something you learnt from them.’ She reached down to stroke his forehead, then smiled.
‘Life is meaningless.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Of the many sources I’ve drawn upon in writing this novel, I am particularly indebted to The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace (Oxford University Press), The Spice Islands Voyage by Tim Severin (Little, Brown), and the documentary Guru Busters (Channel 4), a portrait of the Indian Rationalists Association.
Thanks to Caroline Oakley, Anthony Cheetham, Juliet Ewers, John Douglas, Peter Robinson, Kate Messenger, Diana Mackay, Philip Patterson, Ben Hall, Russell Galen, David Pringle, Lee Montgomerie, Gardner Dozois, Sheila Williams, Francis Lustman, Ellen Herzfeld, Dominique Martel, Wolf-gang Jeschke, Bernhard Kempen, Pedro Jorge Romero, Ivan Adamovic and Carlos Pavón.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © Greg Egan 1999
All rights reserved.
The right of Greg Egan to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10546 1
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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