I remember the gun, pointed at my head, my double image in the All-Defector’s mirrorshades, just before he pulled the trigger. Always mirrors. And in the small and naked reflection of my memory, there is the faintest glimmer of an idea.
I grab Joséphine’s hand, hard. ‘Remember,’ I tell her. ‘If you have a chance, get out. Promise me you will get him to Mieli.’
‘I promise,’ she whispers.
Time lurches into its normal course. Suddenly, All-D is facing us, looking at Matjek curiously.
‘That was interesting,’ he says. ‘I would like to know how you did that.’
‘Ask your mum,’ Matjek says tartly.
All-D takes a step forward and stretches out a small hand towards Matjek.
‘I think I will take you now,’ he says. ‘It will be interesting to see if you and the Prime are any different.’
I shove Matjek behind me and raise the fake jewel.
‘No,’ I say. ‘If you want to play, play with me.’
The All-Defector looks at me curiously.
‘You know,’ I say, ‘something I often thought about while in the Prison. What would it truly be like to play Prisoner’s Dilemma with myself? Not just a copy, but me. A perfect predictor of what I am going to do. What should I do? Obviously, I should cooperate, since we are going to think of the same things, and make the same decisions. Obviously, I should defect, since no matter what I do, it’s not going to affect what you do. But you will have thought of that as well.
‘Why don’t we find out? Put your money where your mouth is. Let’s make it a formal game.’ I make the jewel dance between my fingers. ‘It should be more or less equivalent to the Dilemma. I decide when and if to open the jewel, and you try to predict it. If you can really be me, the moment I decide to open it, you erase me. Perfect correlation. And if I don’t – well, we are back to where we started.’
‘And what if I just erase you anyway?’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Well, then you will have been wrong. Surely, that’s a smaller payoff. What do you say?’
‘All right,’ he says. ‘One more Dilemma, for old times’ sake.’
He stretches and blurs and becomes me, in a white tennis shirt, shorts and mirrorshades. ‘All right, loser.’ There is a gun in his hand, a sleek silver automatic pistol. ‘Would you like a gun, too? Or are you happy with your toy?’
Carefully, I summon the chen-gogol whose mind I stole earlier closer to the surface, close enough that I can become it with a simple mental trigger, open the fake jewel with a mental command and unleash the Dragon-thing within.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
‘It would have given you some extra points for style.’
‘Look who’s talking. You lose style points for threatening little boys.’
He raises the gun. ‘I think you and I are playing different games, Jean.’
‘Oh yes. So we are. Boom boom.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Déjà vu.’
I stare at my reflection in his mirrorshades, and think about opening the jewel.
I look for a trigger in my memories.
A boy in the desert, getting caught.
When the first blow lands, I will open it.
The man with the silver watch raises his hand. All-D’s gun hand twitches.
I smile. No. Sitting in a cell, reading a book. When the door opens, I will open the jewel.
No, not that.
Another Prison. Another me. The mirror image of a mirror image. When he pulls the trigger, I will open the jewel.
I can tell he doesn’t like that. His finger tightens on the trigger.
Well. Plenty of memories left. He is caught in the game now, back in the frame of the Prison. Good. Need to keep moving.
I’ll do it
when Mieli breaks the wall of my cell.
when I push the sapphire shard through my hand.
when Raymonde, sitting naked at the piano, plays the first note.
when Isaac shatters the third bottle.
when I reach the end of the Corridor of Birth and Death.
On and on it goes, a thief’s life, random memories and associations. The All-Defector is very still. I can tell it’s working. Theory of mind. Modelling the behaviour of others. I’m trying to create a problem that is Jean le Flambeur-complete, that will require him to run a full simulation of me, not just one, but many and many and many.
The jewel opens
when Xuexue stops smiling.
when I hatch from Sumanguru’s mind.
when the story Tawaddud is telling ends.
when the Collapse begins.
I can’t defeat him alone, but those simulations have to run somewhere in the guberniya, and there is a way out of every box, an escape from every prison. If I do this right, I’ll have a billion chances, and I only need one.
when the first star falls above Noctis Labyrinthus.
when Matjek closes his book.
when the Cannon of the Jannah booms.
when the warmind pulls the trigger—
The All-Defector fires.
Time slows down. The muzzle flash is a flaming flower. The bullet is a slow train, first stop my head, travelling on invisible rails. Is it Matjek? Is he trying to buy me time? But it is too late. The bullet does not matter, it is just the vir’s shorthand for All-D reaching out to end me.
Cracks appear in the All-Defector’s mirrorshades. They spread down to his face. His mindshell shatters, turns into a hole in the vir. He is swallowed by the blind-spot blankness of the firmament beneath.
And replaced by another me, young, dark-haired, grinning.
He reaches out and catches the bullet in mid-air.
The other me holds the bullet up, like a magician.
‘That was quite a gamble,’ he says.
‘Hey. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?’
‘We still needed a high roll.’
There are other firmament flashes along the beach. More Jean le Flambeurs are arriving. Their faces are all mine, but different, a gallery of past lives and moments. I smile. It is good to see them, for one last time.
I turn to Joséphine and Matjek. ‘Go,’ I tell her. ‘That trick will only work once.’
The other Jeans are doing something to the vir, creating encrypted firmament layers to keep the vir under our control. It’s not going to help us for long: All-D has the entire guberniya under its control.
Time is running out.
‘Jean, you don’t have to—’ Joséphine begins. I cut her off.
‘Yes, I do.’
I kneel and hug Matjek, hard. His hair smells of the sea.
‘Be good, okay? Tell Mieli I said goodbye.’ I squeeze his shoulders, and run out of words again.
I turn to Joséphine. ‘And you. You stay away from Mieli. Leave her alone? Do you understand?’
She nods. I kiss her. Her lips are papery and dry, but there are other kisses beneath them, serpent lips of a goddess that taste of roses and open doors and beginnings. It is hard to let go.
‘He’s coming,’ one Jean says. ‘He is in us,’ the other whispers.
‘Now,’ I tell Joséphine. She and Matjek raise their hands in a silent goodbye, and then they are gone, in a firmament blink.
I turn to the assembled ranks of Jean le Flambeur.
‘How much time do we have?’
The dark-haired young Jean looks at his pocket watch. ‘Twenty seconds,’ he says.
I nod. I don’t have to say anything to them. They already know.
I walk down to the waterline and dig my toes in the warm sand. I cradle the dragon jewel in my hands. I never realised how beautiful it is, shaped like a butterfly, made of liquid light.
The sea sighs and the water pulls back, leaving behind a dark grin of wet sand.
I close my eyes.
When the wave reaches my feet, I will open the jewel.
20
MIELI AND THE KAMINARI JEWEL
&nbs
p; In the Invisible Realm, Mieli and Zinda watch the chen guberniya die.
It begins with a sudden confusion among the raion clouds around the Sobornost diamond world, like a shift in weather. Sobornost ship formations near the guberniya lose cohesion and break before smaller zoku forces. A ripple goes through its surface. At first, Mieli thinks it is an optical illusion, but a touch of the spime shows them the proud statues and thoughtwisp fountains and antimatter furnaces of the diamond sphere’s surface.
A wave is travelling across the adamantine vastness. Where it passes, only a smooth, featureless surface remains, an endless, shining plain, a nothingness. The constant neutrino roar of the guberniya is silent, suddenly.
The dragon jewel, Mieli thinks. Did the boy Matjek open it? Did the thief fail?
Kuutar and Ilmatar. Killing one guberniya won’t be enough. We need the Kaminari jewel.
The ragged remnants of the zoku fleet gain a brief respite as the Sobornost forces deal with the guberniya’s death. But it does not take long for the other Founders to regroup, and soon, whatever power struggle the chens’ sudden departure caused is over.
And the sunbeam mirrors are still moving.
Mieli looks at the spime and thinks of giving in to the battle call of the Great Game jewel. The dull eye of the brane tanglematter sphere stares at her, mockingly. She takes Zinda’s hand. The zoku girl squeezes her fingers.
An alarm rings in her mind. There is a thoughtwisp in the approach vector the thief gave her, with the signature of a qupt data package. It is escorted by three pellegrini oblasts, three killer whales guarding a fleck of plankton. They are transmitting declarations of neutrality, announcing that the pellegrini guberniya will withdraw from battle, on the condition that the contents of the thoughtwisp are routed to—
A Realmgate opens, and a boy of twelve steps out. He has just a hint of grey in his hair. He has grown since the last time Mieli saw him, on a beach, in the Lost Jannah of the Cannon, on Earth.
A tall woman with auburn hair follows him.
‘Hello, Mieli,’ the pellegrini says.
Mieli ignores her. She looks at the boy. ‘Matjek,’ she says. ‘Do you remember me? We met on a beach, once.’
Matjek nods. ‘I remember you.’ His mouth is a straight, serious line. ‘Jean says goodbye.’ His voice breaks, but he presses a fist against his mouth, refusing to cry.
Mieli offers him her hand, thinking of little Varpu, her koto sister. ‘Ssh,’ she says. ‘It will be all right.’
Then she turns to the pellegrini. The scar on her cheek burns.
‘I suppose you are here to tell me that Sydän still wants me back, and that you will give her to me in exchange for the Kaminari jewel,’ Mieli says.
A faint smile flickers across the pellegrini’s rouge lips. ‘No, Mieli,’ she says. ‘I am here to say goodbye, and to thank you for your service. I made a promise to Jean to leave you alone, and I plan to keep it.’ She sighs. ‘A pity. You were just beginning to show potential.
‘Now, I suppose I will have to watch as my brothers and sisters destroy you. Jean hurt the All-Defector, but it is still in many gogols across Sobornost, not as high-ranking as Matjek-Prime was, but it hasn’t given up. But by all means, give a quick truedeath to as many of them as you can. It will make things easier for me, afterwards.’
‘Perhaps I will surprise you,’ Mieli says.
‘Nothing would please me more, Mieli, daughter of Karhu. Good luck, and goodbye. I release you from your oath to me. Go free.’ She turns and takes a step towards the Realmgate.
‘Wait,’ Mieli says. The pellegrini looks at her over her shoulder.
‘Did you ever love him, truly?’ Mieli asks. ‘The thief. Or was he just a tool?’
The pellegrini closes her eyes. A veil of sadness passes across her face.
‘Of course I loved him, Mieli. There is no greater love than a maker’s for the things she makes. Especially when they grow to be something she never imagined.’
She blows Mieli a kiss and walks through the silver gate. Mieli feels something on her face, a touch of lips. She touches her cheek. It tingles under her fingers.
‘Mieli?’ Zinda says.
‘What is it?’
‘Your scar is gone.’
*
The Zweihänder takes the Liquorice-zoku and Matjek to the yin-yang moon of Iapetus, taking advantage of the disorder caused by the withdrawal of the pellegrini fleet. On the way, Mieli has to convince Sir Mik that engaging the four oblasts that are exchanging fire with Gun Club holeships is not a good idea.
‘ButMyladyMieli!’ the diminutive warrior protests. ‘NoGreaterHonourForKnightThanFightingGiants!’
Mieli sighs. What would the thief tell him?
‘Except a sacred quest,’ Matjek says. ‘We seek the Holy Grail!’ Zinda has taken the boy under her wing, and one of the first things she did was to make the young chen a member of the Liquorice-zoku.
‘WhyDidn’tYouSayFirst?’
Wearing a heavy metacloak, the ship takes them down near the equatorial ridge. Mieli wears the body and the weaponry she created for her mission to Prometheus. In spite of her claims of having a combat alter, Zinda is unarmed, in a simple q-suit. Anti-de-Sitter-times-a-Sphere wears her incomprehensible four-dimensional form. Sir Mik, of course, is armed to the teeth. Matjek carries the tanglematter sphere, guarded by heavy botlets under Mieli’s control.
The lightning flashes of the battle above make their long, sharp shadows flicker as Matjek leads them to a sheer face of the colossal cylindrical mountain range. He touches the rock, and a disc-shaped area of it dissolves, revealing the eerie blue of the Arsenal’s pseudomatter wall. The boy qupts a large quantum state at the impossibly smooth surface and it, too, opens, revealing shifting folds that part before them.
Zinda creates a q-dot bubble to carry them through, and then they are in the giant blue-green tunnel of the Arsenal.
*
It does not take them long to find the ekpyrotic cannon. Mieli stares at it: it reminds her of some monster of the void of Oortian tales, a thing with a four-lobed eye made of black holes.
‘Algorithm termination: undecidable,’ Anti-de-Sitter-times-a-Sphere says.
‘Do you really have to do this, Mieli? How can you go inside that thing, and ask us to fire it into Saturn?’ Zinda’s eyes plead until Mieli has to look away.
Mieli smiles. ‘I’m afraid that the waiting will be your job, this time,’ she says. She turns to Matjek: the boy is already busy feeding the tanglematter sphere’s contents to the monstrous weapon. ‘Matjek, can you—’
A lightning bolt strikes at her through her Great Game jewel, like the All-Defector’s blow on Hektor, only inside her mind. Around her, she sees the other Liquorice-zoku members shimmer into their trueforms, frozen in place like huge snowflakes.
‘This is not how the Great Game is played,’ Barbicane says, shaking his head.
The Great Game Elder is alone, wearing his brass cyborg form. His Game jewel shimmers in his hand: the others orbit his stovepipe hat in a dimly glowing halo.
‘We don’t take the easy way out! We don’t use cheat codes! Would you risk all of reality for one insignificant war?’ Barbicane gestures at Zinda with her gun hand, exasperated. ‘And you, little girl! I made you to keep her sane! What were you thinking?’
Barbicane winks. ‘My apologies. I am being facetious! You are all doing exactly what I wanted you to do. Sobornost infiltrators who broke into our most secure fortress during a time of crisis, and destroyed the Kaminari jewel! That’s the official version! Why do you think I let you know where it was, pretended to overlook Zinda’s twinking?
‘I always wanted to do it myself, but the volition of the Great Game would not let me. It was too tempting for too many. I kept a balance of indecision for a long time, managed at least to hide it on another brane.
‘But now, our mutual friend Jean has set us all free! It has been forever since I did not feel the volition of the zoku in my head. It is lik
e playing a new game! I am finally free to do what the zoku needs, not what it wants!’
He gestures at an iridescent cube floating behind him. ‘A strangelet device. It will go with you all into the cannon. It should cause a Big Crunch on the Planck brane. Ah! A grand truedeath for all of you! I almost wish I could share it!’
Mieli, comes a quiet qupt from Mieli’s Liquorice jewel. It’s Matjek. I can move. And I still have access to the gunscape. I don’t think he knows I’m not Great Game. Can you keep him talking?
‘There won’t be anyone to remember our deaths,’ Mieli says. ‘The Sobornost is about to wipe out Supra City if we don’t use the jewel.’
‘Oh, there will be survivors, my dear! Like I said, it is time to start a new game, and I look forward to the challenge! We had grown too powerful. But being the underdog again, a rebel, one of the few ragged survivors of a great empire, fighting a vastly superior force. What a jolly Great Game that will be!’
I’m almost ready, Mieli, Matjek says. He pauses. Are you?
Mieli casts a quick glance at Barbicane, hovering in front of the ekpyrotic cannon.
You can’t be serious, she qupts.
The entire Arsenal is a linear accelerator. I will fire you at Saturn. The rest of us will be fine. Just promise that you will come back.
‘We could end that game, here and now, if you just let me,’ Mieli shouts.
Ten seconds.
‘And are you so arrogant that you think the jewel will accept you, Oortian?’ Barbicane growls. ‘You are nothing special, no matter what le Flambeur thinks. I had to dangle you in front of him to goad him into desperation, into breaking the volition system. I even filled his ship with tools! I suppose I should thank him. After all, it was his Collapse that created the Great Game Zoku in the first place, to make sure it would never happen again!’
His face darkens. ‘Then again, there are parts of me that remember what I lost on the day it rained fire. So I must admit it gives me some pleasure to think that his attempt to rescue you was in vain.
‘Perhaps I will allow myself the indulgence of taking care of you personally. It will not make a difference in the end, after all, and may teach a lesson to incompetent little Zinda here. Discipline amongst the newbies is far too lax these days, that’s what I always say!’