I order the most expensive beverage the hotel fabber can make, virtually grown Kingdom wine, and offer Mieli a glass. ‘And you, ship! Well done with the quantum magic.’
I believe I should think of myself as the loony expert type who likes blowing things up, Perhonen says.
I laugh. ‘She knows pop culture references! I’m in love!’
I’m finding interesting things in the data, by the way.
‘Later! Save it for later. We are busy getting drunk now.’
Mieli looks at me oddly. Again, I wish I could read her, but the biot link only goes one way. But to my surprise, she accepts the offered glass.
‘Is it like this for you every time?’ she asks.
‘My dear, wait until we spend months planning a guberniya brain break-in. This is nothing. Just sparkles. That’s the real fireworks. But I am a thirsty man in a desert. This is good.’ I clink my glass against hers. ‘Here’s to crime.’
The thief’s elation is infectious. Mieli finds herself getting happily drunk. She has carried out operations involving elaborate preparation and planning before – getting the thief out of the Prison, among other things – but there has never been an illicit thrill like the one that radiates from the thief. And he did play his part well, like a koto brother, without any sign of rebellion, a different kind of creature entirely, in his element.
‘I still don’t get it,’ she says, sitting back on the couch, letting herself coast on the bubbling feeling. ‘Why is it fun?’
‘It’s a game. Did you never play games back in Oort?’
‘We race. And compete in craft and väki song.’ She misses it, suddenly. ‘I used to like it, crafting, making things out of the coral. You visualise a thing. You find the words that it is. And you sing them to väki; it grows and makes it. And in the end you have something that is truly yours, a new thing in the world.’ She looks away. ‘That’s how I made Perhonen. That was a long time ago.’
‘You see,’ the thief says, ‘for me, stealing is exactly the same.’ He looks serious, suddenly.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asks. ‘Why are you not back there, making things?’
‘I’m just doing what I have to,’ Mieli says. ‘That’s what I’ve always done.’ But she does not want to let the darkness well up.
‘Well, not tonight,’ says the thief. ‘Tonight, we are doing what we want to. We’re going to have fun. What do you want to do?’
‘Sing,’ Mieli says. ‘I would like to sing.’
‘I know just the place,’ the thief says.
The Belly: underground streets and walkways between the inverted towers. Pinpoints of Quiet lights below, newspaper drones selling stories of the city quake earlier during the day and the strange goings-on at the carpe diem party the night before.
The tiny bar is called the Red Silk Scarf. It has a small stage; the walls are covered in feed posters of musician lifecasts that throw flickering lights across a group of small round tables. They do open mike nights. The audience consists of a few young Martians who have seen everything, wearing perpetual expressions of being unimpressed. But the thief ushers them in, getting her into the program, talking to the landlord in hushed whispers while she waits at the bar, drinking more strange-flavoured alcoholic drinks from tiny glasses.
The thief insisted she spend time getting dressed, and with Perhonen’s assistance she obliged, fabbing a dark pantsuit with platform shoes and an umbrella. The thief quipped that she looked like she was going to a funeral. He flinched when she said it could be his. That actually made her laugh. The strange clothes feel like armour, letting her feel like someone else, someone reckless. It is all a little fake, she knows: her metacortex will flush out all the intoxication and unnecessary emotions at the first sign of trouble. But it feels good to pretend.
How’s it going? she whispers to Perhonen. You should come and join us. I’m going to sing.
On stage, a girl in oversized sunglasses is doing something that combines poetry with abstract tempmatter images and the sound of her heartbeats. Mieli can see the thief cringing.
I’m sorry, the ship says. Busy solving a high-dimensional lattice cryptography problem with a thousand mathematics gogols. But I’m glad you’re having fun.
I miss her.
I know. We’ll get her back.
‘Mieli? You’re up.’ Mieli flinches. Got to go. Got to sing. She suppresses a burp.
‘I can’t believe you talked me into this,’ she says.
‘I get that a lot,’ the thief says. ‘You know, you are the only person I can really trust here. So don’t worry. I’ve got your back.’ She nods, feeling a lump in her throat, or his, perhaps. A little unsteadily, she gets on stage.
The songs come out of her in a flood. She sings of ice. She sings of the long journey of Ilmatar from the burning world, of the joy of wings and the ancestors in the alinen. She sings the song that makes ships. She sings the song that seals a koto’s doors against the Dark Man. She sings of home.
When she is done, the audience is quiet. Then the handclaps start, one by one.
Much later, they walk back together. The thief has her arm, but it does not feel wrong, somehow.
Back in the hotel, when it is time to say good night, the thief does not let go of her hand. She can feel his arousal and tension through the biot link. She touches his cheek and pulls his face closer to hers.
Then the laughter comes, bubbling up from her like the song earlier, and the hurt look on his face makes it impossible to stop.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, doubled up, tears in her eyes. ‘I can’t help it.’
‘I apologise,’ says the thief, ‘for not seeing the humour.’ His face is so full of hurt pride that Mieli thinks she’s going to die. ‘Fine. I’m going to get myself a drink.’ He turns to leave with an abrupt twist on his heel.
‘Wait,’ she says, sniffing and wiping her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you for the thought. It’s just … funny. But really. Thank you for tonight.’
He smiles, a little.
‘You’re welcome. See, sometimes it is good to do what you want.’
‘But not all the time,’ she says.
‘No.’ The thief sighs. ‘Maybe not all the time. Good night.’
‘Good night,’ Mieli says, suppressing one more giggle, turning to go.
There is a sudden lurch in her gevulot, a sudden recollection that there is someone else in the room.
‘Oh my,’ says a voice. ‘I hope I am not interrupting anything.’
There is a man sitting in the thief’s usual balcony seat, smoking a small cigar. The sudden pungent smell is like a bad memory. He is young, with black, swept-back hair. He has draped his coat over the chair, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up. He grins, showing a row of sharp, white teeth.
‘I thought it was time that we had a little chat,’ he says.
14
THE DETECTIVE AND THE ARCHITECT
Isidore looks at Unruh’s dead body for the second time. The millenniaire looks less peaceful in death than the previous night: his pale face is twisted in a hideous grimace, and there are red marks on his forehead and temples. His fingers are curled into claws.
It is cold in the crypt chamber and Isidore’s breath steams. The locked-up gevulot here makes everything feel unreal and slippery, and the silence of the three Resurrection Men who escorted him here does not help. The red-robed figures, faces hidden by gevulot and darkness, stand unnaturally still, without fidgeting or, it seems, breathing.
‘I appreciate you letting me come down here,’ he says, addressing the one with the golden infinity symbol at his (or her?) breast. ‘I realise that this is somewhat … unusual.’
There is no reply. He is almost certain that the Resurrection Man is the same one he spoke to earlier at the Resurrection House, after realising what the thief was planning to do. After the city quake, they brought him here, to show him what had happened, but so far no one has spoken a word.
It was the only logical
conclusion: the only reason to steal such a small amount of Time was to give it back, to carry out something criminal in the underworld. Poor Unruh. The pieces do not fit, and it makes him uncomfortable.
He studies the scene with his magnifying glass. There are two different types of body preservation gel on the floor, in different states of coagulation: Unruh’s and someone else’s. That fits with his theory of how the thief got in: by somehow pretending to be dead, then opening an entrance to a heavily armed accomplice. He makes a mental note to check the exomemories of all the memento mori agoras where the Time beggars go to die.
There are also traces of bizarre artificial cells – far more complex than anything from an Oubliette synthbio body – under Unruh’s fingernails, clear signs of a struggle. And the marks on his head and the trace damage in his dead brain indicate a forced upload.
‘Would it be possible to bring him back, just for a minute?’ Isidore asks the Resurrection Men. ‘We could use his testimony, to figure out exactly what happened here.’ He is unsurprised that the red-robed underworld guardians only reply with silence: they are not willing to compromise the resurrection laws for any purpose, even to solve crimes.
He walks around the room, thinking. One of the Resurrection Men is treating the damaged Quiet the thief’s accomplice attacked. Isidore has already inspected the bullet, a little sliver of diamond. Whatever internal structure it once had, it has fused into a solid mass.
The thing that bothers him is the lack of motive. The incident at the party, and now this: it has nothing in common with the gogol pirate cases he has either read about or been involved in. By all accounts, the thief made no attempt whatsoever to gain access to Unruh’s gevulot. It is a non-crime. Some Time was stolen, and returned, with two separate copies of Unruh’s mind – which, of course, are completely useless without his gevulot keys to decrypt them. And how was the Time stolen in the first place?
‘Do you mind if I have a look at this?’ He picks up Unruh’s Watch, carefully disentangling its chain from the millenniaire’s hand. ‘I want to have this investigated.’
The Resurrection Man with the infinity sign nods slowly, takes a little unadorned Watch from his pocket and touches it and Unruh’s Watch with a Decanter. Then he places the new Watch exactly where the old one was and gives Unruh’s sleek black timepiece to Isidore.
‘Thank you,’ Isidore says.
The Resurrection Man shoves his hood back and opens his gevulot a little, revealing a round, friendly face. He clears his throat.
‘Apologies … we spend so much time with … our Quiet brothers, that it is hard to …’
‘That’s all right,’ Isidore says. ‘You have been very kind.’
The man takes something from his pocket. ‘My partner … down there …’ He points at the floor. ‘When un-Quiet … he was a … fan.’ He coughs. ‘So I was wondering … could you … perhaps … an autograph?’
He holds out a newspaper clip covered in tempmatter film. Adrian Wu’s article.
Sighing, Isidore takes it and digs out a pen from his pocket.
Isidore blinks at the daylight, glad to leave the dark facade of the Resurrection House behind. The wind on Persistent Avenue feels hot after the chill of the underworld, but the sound of human voices is refreshing.
The optogenetic attack at the party left him feeling disoriented, with a mild headache. A med-Quiet inspected him along with the rest of the guests, but found no permanent traces of an infection. It was able to isolate the virus, and when Isidore and Odette searched the grounds, they found the discarded flower that had been used to spread it. Isidore carries it with him in his shoulder bag, safely wrapped in a smartmatter bubble.
He has not slept, but the thoughts racing through his head won’t let him rest. And whenever he thinks about the thief, there is a tingle of shame in his belly. They were so close, face to face – and he stole both Isidore’s countenance and the entanglement ring. How the identity theft was accomplished is yet another mystery. As far as Isidore knows, there is no way the thief should have been able to gain any access to his gevulot.
Not that the thief left any traces of himself in the garden exomemory either: the only time he appears without a gevulot mask is when he speaks to Isidore. And it is clear that he is able to alter his appearance at will. Distantly, he wonders if a part of the unease he feels is fear: perhaps le Flambeur is out of his league.
He stops for a moment under one of the Avenue’s cherry trees and breathes in the smell of the blossoms to clear his head. Nothing but reputation and a certain flair separate his enemy from any common gogol pirate. Somewhere, le Flambeur will have made a mistake, and Isidore is going to find it.
Gritting his teeth, he heads for the side alleys of the Avenue, to find a Watchmaker’s shop.
*
‘Interesting,’ says the Watchmaker, squinting at Unruh’s Watch through a massive brass eyepiece. ‘Yes, I think I can tell you how it was done.’
The eyepiece lens flickers with digital information. The Watchmaker is a lanky, middle-aged man in a black T-shirt with ripped sleeves, blue hair, a scraggly moustache and ears stretched by implants and earrings. His workshop is a cross between a quantum physics laboratory and a horologist’s workspace, full of sleek humming boxes with holodisplays hovering around them and neatly sorted piles of tiny gears and tools on wooden work surfaces. Violent music plays in the background, and the Watchmaker bops his head up and down frantically to its rhythm as he works. After Isidore told him the story of Unruh, he was more than happy to help, although it takes some effort to ignore the occasional lewd glance he casts at the young man.
He pulls something out of the Watch with the pincers that the fingers of his gloves end in, miniature hands with fingers extending to the molecular level. He holds it up against a light. It is barely visible, a tiny flesh-coloured spider. He places it into a tiny tempmatter bubble and magnifies it: it becomes an insectoid monster the size of a hand. Isidore takes out his magnifying glass, prompting a curious glance from the Watchmaker.
‘This baby here has EPR states in its belly,’ the Watchmaker says. ‘It wormed its way into the ion traps of the Watch where the Time credits are stored, got the stuff in its stomach entangled with the trap quantum states, sent out a signal of some kind – and bamf, the states got teleported away. Almost the oldest trick in the quantum mechanic’s handbook, although this is the first time I’ve seen it used to steal Time.’
‘Where would the receiver be?’ Isidore asks.
The Watchmaker spreads his hands. ‘Could be anywhere. Qupting does not need a strong signal. Could be in space, for all I know. This little bug is definitely not from around here, by the way. Sobornost, for my money.’ He spits to the floor. ‘I hope you catch ’em.’
‘Me too,’ Isidore says. ‘Thank you.’ He looks around the shop. There is something familiar about the Watches under the glass counter, something that tickles his mind—
A Watch. A heavy brass face. A silver band. The word Thibermesnil—
Where does the memory come from?
‘Are you all right, son?’ asks the Watchmaker.
‘Yes, I’m fine. I just need to sit down for a moment.’ Isidore sits down on the chair the quantum horologist offers. Closing his eyes, he revisits the exomemories from the party. There: a bizarre sense of seeing double, just after he spoke to the thief, just before he stole Time from Unruh. Of course: if the thief used Isidore’s own identity key to pretend to be him, he has access to the exomemories created during those moments.
‘Could you turn the music down, please?’
‘Sure. Sure. Would you like a glass of water?’
He massages his temples, carefully sifting through the memories, separating the ones that are his from the ones that should not be. He looked at his Watch. That is his Watch. And there are other thoughts there too, glimpses of architectural drawings, a beautiful woman with a scar on her face, and a butterfly-like spaceship with glittering wings. Emotion, too: arrogance
and self-confidence and bravado that make him angry. I’m going to get you, he thinks. See if I don’t.
He opens his eyes, head pounding, accepts the offered glass and drinks deep. ‘Thank you.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘One more question, and then I’ll stop bothering you. Have you ever seen this Watch?’ He passes a co-memory of the Watch he just saw to the Watchmaker.
The man considers it for a moment. ‘Can’t say I have. But this looks like something that old Antonia would have made, two streets down. Tell her Justin sent you.’ He winks at Isidore.
‘Thank you again,’ Isidore says. ‘You have been a big help.’
‘Don’t mention it. It’s difficult to meet young people who appreciate Watches these days.’ He grins, putting his gloveless hand on Isidore’s thigh. ‘Although if you really want to show your appreciation, I’m sure there’s something we can come up with—’
Isidore flees. As he hurries down the street, the roar of the music starts again, mixed with laughter.
‘Yes, I remember this,’ says Antonia. She is not old at all, at least not in appearance: in her third or fourth body, perhaps, a petite dark-skinned woman with Indian features. Her shop is bright and orderly, with Xanthean designer jewellery displayed alongside the timepieces. She immediately printed out a tempmatter instantiation of the co-memory, weighing it in her hands, tapping it with a bright red fingernail.
‘It would have been years ago,’ she says, ‘twenty Earth years maybe, judging by the design. The customer wanted a special little mechanism, you could hide something inside it and open it by pressing a combination of letters. A gift to a lover, probably.’
‘Do you, by any chance, remember anything about the person who bought it?’ Isidore asks.
The woman shakes her head.
‘It’s shop gevulot, you know – we rarely get to keep that sort of thing. I’m afraid not. People tend to be very private about their Watches.’ She frowns. ‘However – I’m pretty sure there was a whole series of these. Nine of them. Very similar designs, all for the same customer. I can give you the schematics, if you like.’