The Quantum Thief

by Hannu Rajaniemi

  The realisation sends a chill down Isidore’s spine. Perhaps some otherworldly force has indeed chosen Unruh as its target.

  After a walk in the garden – where a white-haired man in blue coveralls is working on Unruh’s flowers with the help of a Quiet servant – he goes through all of the castle exomemory he has access to, looking for other gaps. He sits in one of the library chairs, remembering. Unruh has had a regular life for the past year, almost hermit-like, apart from the occasional small party. There are times when exotic courtesans from Serpent Street pass through the memories, making Isidore wonder what Adrian Wu would make of his new patron. But mostly Unruh spends his time in solitude, receiving antique dealers, eating alone, and spending endless hours immersed in study in the library.

  He is almost ready to give up – the amount of detail is too much to absorb on one sitting – when he decides to cross-reference the memory with the book Unruh was reading, the lifecast of Count Isidis. The last time Unruh read it was four weeks ago. And in the memory—

  It takes a few moments to take in. Then he leaps to his feet and goes to find Odette. She is overseeing preparations for the party in a small office in the eastern wing of the chateau, surrounded by floating spime invitations, like a flock of birds frozen in time.

  ‘I want to see M. Unruh.’

  ‘I’m afraid that is not possible,’ she says. ‘Christian has only a few days left, and unless he tells me otherwise, he is going to spend them how he pleases.’

  ‘I have some questions for him.’

  ‘If I were you, M. Beautrelet,’ Odette says, ‘I would be content to play your part in this little drama of his.’ She touches a virtual sheet in the air. It becomes a young woman’s face: she studies it, touching her lips lightly with the tip of her pen. ‘A lifecast artist,’ she says. ‘I don’t think she would fit. Sometimes I think I should have been a musician. Organising a party is much like composition: considering how different instruments complement each other. For me, you are another instrument, M. Beautrelet. Christian trusts me to be the conductor of his final day. So please, save your dramatic revelations for the party. Comedy is all about timing, I’ve always been told.’

  Isidore folds his arms. ‘I heard a quote once,’ he says. ‘Tragedy is when I slip on a banana peel. Comedy is when you fall into a hole and die. I do wonder what I would find if I spent more time investigating you.’

  She holds Isidore’s gaze for a long time. ‘I have nothing to hide,’ she finally says.

  Isidore smiles, saying nothing. She is the first to look away.

  ‘All right,’ Odette says. ‘I suppose he could use some light entertainment.’

  Unruh greets him at one of the galleries of the chateau, wearing a dressing gown and a chilly expression. Isidore sees someone walk past along a corridor, blurred by gevulot, wondering what activity the millenniaire interrupted to see him.

  ‘M. Beautrelet. I am told that you have discovered something.’

  ‘Yes. I am convinced that your concern is real, and there is an offworld force of some sort at work here. I will help you to make appropriate preparations for the party.’

  ‘I suppose I should thank you for not agreeing with Odette and claiming I wrote the letter myself,’ Unruh says. ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. The local exomemory has been manipulated in some fashion, but I cannot determine how or by who. But that is not what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh?’ Unruh raises his eyebrows.

  ‘When going through the exomemory and looking for gaps, I noticed you had frequently studied the Isidis lifecast, and went back to its first appearance. I realise that I was, perhaps, abusing the powers that you had given me, but I felt it was important to study all the elements of the case from all possible angles.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I could not help noticing your … reaction to the text.’ Unruh had screamed, thrown the book across the room, flung other books from their shelves, toppled the orrery with violence that seemed to overflow his thin frame, before collapsing into a heap in his reading chair. ‘If I’m correct, soon after that you made up your mind to enter Quiet early. What was it that you saw?’

  Unruh sighs. ‘M. Beautrelet, I should perhaps clarify that it is not a generic investigation you are carrying out here. I did not empower you to pry into my private life, or the reasons to my actions: merely to protect my property and my person from what I felt was a threat.’

  ‘You hired me because you wanted to solve a mystery,’ Isidore says. ‘And I think it was not just the mystery of the letter. I also ’blinked Count Isidis.’

  ‘And what did you discover?’

  ‘Nothing. I can’t find any references to a Count Isidis in the public exomemories. As far as the general public is aware, he never existed.’

  Unruh walks to one of the gallery’s large windows and looks out. ‘M. Beautrelet, I admit I have not been entirely honest with you. A part of me was hoping you would spot certain things on your own as you have done.’ He presses a pale hand against the glass. ‘A strange thing happens when you are very rich, even when one’s wealth is as artificial as in our society. You develop a solipsism of sorts. The world yields itself to your will. Everything becomes your reflection, and after a while looking into your own eyes is dull.’

  He sighs. ‘So I sought to find more solid ground in the past, in our origins, our history. I doubt there are many of our generation who have put as much effort into the study of the Kingdom and the Revolution as I have.

  ‘At first it was the perfect escape. So much richer than our bland existence, with real struggle, real evil, ideas triumphing over oppression, despair and hope. Count Isidis, plotting against a tyrant. Drama. Intrigue. And the Revolution! I bought memories from Time beggars. I remember being there, in Harmakis Valley, tearing Noble bodies with diamond claws.

  ‘But after a while I realised that something was wrong. The deeper I delved, the more inconsistencies there were. People who appeared in lifecasts I bought from black market dealers, memories that contradicted each other. The Isidis lifecast was when I had the first revelation, and you … saw how I reacted.’

  Unruh clenches his hands into fists.

  ‘I lost my faith in the past. Something is wrong with it. Something is wrong with what we know. That is why I didn’t want you to study the texts in the library. I would not wish this feeling on anyone. Perhaps the old philosophers were right, and we are living in a simulation, playthings of some transhuman gods; perhaps the Sobornost has already won, Fedorov’s dreams are true and we are merely memories.

  ‘And if you can’t trust history, what should you care of the present? I don’t want any of it anymore. Merely Quiet.’

  ‘Surely, there is a rational explanation,’ Isidore says. ‘Perhaps you have been a victim of forgery; perhaps we should investigate the sources of your library texts—’

  Unruh waves a hand in dismissal. ‘It does not matter anymore. You may do what you want with this knowledge, once I am gone. One perfect moment for me, and then I’m done.’ He smiles. ‘I’m glad I was right about le Flambeur, though. That encounter should be entertaining.’ He touches Isidore’s shoulder.

  ‘I am grateful, M. Beautrelet. I wanted to discuss this with someone. Odette is many things to me, but she would not understand. She is a creature of the moment, as I should try to be.’

  ‘I appreciate your confidence,’ Isidore says, ‘but I still think—’

  ‘We will say no more about it,’ Unruh says firmly. ‘The only thing you need to worry about now is the party, and our thief. Speaking of which – any security arrangements I should ask Odette to make?’

  ‘We could demand full gevulot disclosure at the entrance, or set up a series of agoras in the garden—’

  ‘How gauche! Absolutely not!’ Unruh frowns. ‘Being robbed is one thing, lack of manners another.’

  10

  THE THIEF AND THE SECOND FIRST DATE

  Raymonde is having her lunch near the pl
ayground when we meet again for the first time. She has sheets of music in her lap and spread across the bench and studies them while eating an apple with a kind of ferocity.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say.

  She comes here every day and eats from a small tempmatter bag, in a hurry, as if she feels guilty about allowing herself a moment of peace. She watches the children in the high elaborate climbing racks where they move like monkeys, the toddlers playing with the round and colourful synthbio toys in the sandpits. She sits on the edge of the bench, graceful long limbs folded uncomfortably, ready to spring away.

  She looks at me, frowning. Her gevulot is open just a little, showing the forbidding expression on her proud, angular face. Somehow that makes her even more beautiful.

  ‘Yes?’ We exchange a gevulot greeting, brief and sparse. The gogol pirate engine is scanning for gaps, but there aren’t any, not yet.

  Perhonen and I looked for her in agoras and public exomemories, and after hours of work, there she was: a sudden vivid memory of a girl in a neat cream-coloured skirt and a blouse, passing through an agora, her stride purposeful. She did not wear the mask-like expression that Martians so often do in public places, but looked serious, lost in thought.

  The day before I stole a sheet of music from her, wearing a different face. Now I hold it up.

  ‘I believe this is yours.’

  She accepts it hesitantly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You must have dropped it yesterday. I found it on the ground.’

  ‘That’s handy,’ she says. She is still suspicious: her gevulot withholds even her name, and if I did not know her face already, I would forget it after our conversation.

  She lives somewhere near the edge of the Dust District. She does something involving music. Her life is regular. Her wardrobe is modest and conservative. Somehow, that feels strange to me: it is at odds with the smile in her picture. But a lot can happen in twenty years. I wonder if she has been a Quiet recently; it usually causes young Martians to hoard Time with excessive care.

  ‘It’s very good, you know.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The music. The sheet is analog, so I couldn’t resist reading it.’ I offer her a little gevulot. She accepts. Yes.

  ‘I’m Raoul. I’m sorry about the intrusion, but I have wanted an excuse to talk to you for a long time.’

  It’s not going to work, whispers Perhonen.

  Of course it is. A woman can never resist a good narrative. A mysterious stranger on a park bench? She is loving it.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you found one,’ she says. A little more gevulot: she has a boyfriend. Damn; but we’ll see how much of an obstacle that one is.

  ‘Is someone patroning you?’ Another gevulot block. ‘Apologies for prying, I’m just interested. What is it about?’

  ‘An opera. About the Revolution.’

  ‘Ah. That makes sense.’

  She gets up. ‘I’m meeting a student. Nice meeting you.’

  There you go, Perhonen says. Down in flames.

  Her perfume – a hint of pine – goes right to my amygdala, triggering a memory of a memory. Dancing with her in a glass-floored club in the Belly, until dawn. Was that when I met her the first time?

  ‘You have a problem with the a cappella bit,’ I say. She hesitates. ‘I can tell you how to fix it if you meet me for dinner.’

  ‘Why should I take your advice?’ she asks, taking the music sheet from my hand.

  ‘Not advice, merely suggestions.’

  She studies me, and I give her my best new smile. I spent a long time practising it in front of the mirror, fitting it to this new face.

  She flicks a lock of her black hair over a pale earlobe. ‘All right. You’ll have to convince me. But I’ll decide where we are going.’ She passes me a co-memory, indicating a place near the Revolution memorial. ‘Wait for me there, at seven.’

  ‘Deal. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she says, gets up and walks away past the playground, heels clicking on the pavement.

  While the thief is out in the city looking for love, Mieli tries to force herself to interrogate the vasilev.

  The ghostgun bullet – barely the size of a pinhead – has just enough computational power to run a human-level mind. She weighs it in the sapphire casing that keeps it dormant, tossing it up and down, still unused to the novelty of gravity. Even the tiny thing feels heavy, like failure; small impacts on her hand, again and again.

  This is war, she tells herself. They started it. What else can I do?

  The hotel room feels too small, too confined. She finds herself walking out to the city, the bullet still clutched in her hand, wandering the now-familiar Persistent Avenue in the afternoon lull.

  Perhaps the restlessness comes from the thief’s biot feed. She has not dared to suppress it after the thief’s escape attempt – especially now, with his reluctantly granted permission to change his face and mental makeup. So she is painfully aware of his excitement, a constant phantom itch.

  She stops to eat some of the rich, flavoured food here, served by a young man who keeps smiling at her, throwing suggestive co-memories at her, until she wraps herself in gevulot and eats in silence. The dish is called cassoulet and leaves her feeling bloated and heavy.

  ‘How is it going in there?’ she asks Perhonen.

  He just got her to agree to a first date, the ship says.

  ‘Great.’

  You don’t sound enthusiastic. Not very professional. ‘I need to be alone for a while. Keep an eye on him for me.’

  Of course. You should follow him yourself, though. It’s sort of entertaining.

  Mieli cuts the link. Entertaining. She walks, trying to emulate the light stride of the white-clad Martians, wishing she could fly again. After a while, the sky feels too big. The nearest building is a church of some kind, and she walks in, trying to find shelter.

  She does not know the god they worship there, and has no wish to find out. But the high arches of the ceiling remind her of the open spaces of the temples of Ilmatar in Oort, ice caverns of the goddess of the air and space. So somehow it seems appropriate to sing a quiet prayer.

  Air mother, grant me wisdom,

  daughter of sky, strength provide

  help an orphan to find a way home,

  guide a lost bird to the land of south

  Forgive a child with bloody hands

  a poor shaper who mars your work

  with ugly deeds, and uglier thoughts

  with cuts and scars befouls your song

  Repeating the apology makes her think of home, and of Sydän, and that makes it easier. After sitting quietly for a while, she returns to the hotel, darkens the windows and takes out the ghost bullet.

  ‘Wake up,’ she tells the vasilev mind.

  Where? Ah.

  ‘Hello, Anne.’

  You.

  ‘Yes. The servant of the Founder.’

  The vasilev mind laughs. Mieli gives it a voice, not a child’s voice but a vasilev voice, male, smooth and low. Somehow, that makes it easier, ‘He was no Founder. Clever enough to deceive us. But no chen, no chitragupta,’ the mind says.

  ‘I’m not talking about him,’ Mieli whispers. ‘You are done,’ she says. ‘You have hindered the Great Common Task. But out of mercy, I give you one opportunity to speak out of your free will before oblivion, to redeem yourself.’

  The vasilev laughs again. ‘I don’t care who you serve; you are a poor servant. Why waste words to find what is in my mind? Get it over with, and don’t waste a Founder’s time with your prattle.’

  Disgusted, Mieli shuts the thing up. Then she pulls the surgeon gogol from her metacortex and tells it to begin. It traps the vasilev into a sandbox and starts cutting; separating higher conscious functions, rewarding and punishing. It is like some perversion of sculpting, not trying to find the shape hiding in a stone but breaking it to pieces and reassembling them into something else.

  The surgeon gogol’s outp
uts are cold readouts of associative learning in simulated neuron populations. After a while she shuts them down. She barely makes it to the bathroom before the sick comes, the remains of her lunch, stinking and undigested.

  She returns to the vasilev with an acid taste in her mouth.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ it says, in an odd, euphoric tone. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘You can start by telling me everything you know about Jean le Flambeur,’ Mieli says.

  Raymonde arrives late, taking care to walk across the small agora, hand in hand with a tall, handsome man with leonine hair, younger than her. He gives her a goodbye kiss. Then she waves at me. I get up and hold the chair for her as she sits down. She accepts the gesture, slightly cockily.

  I have been sitting at the small restaurant she chose, outside by the heater. It is a strange little place, with plain glass doors and a blank sign; but the inside is a riot of colour and exotica, jars filled with exotic taxidermy, glass eyes and lush paintings. I have been replaying our first meeting, thinking about what she reacted to – not the mystery, but the banter. I have even altered my appearance subtly, nothing that could not be expected with more revealing gevulot, but appearing ever so slightly more mischievous. It is enough to warm her smile a degree.

  ‘How was the class?’

  ‘Good. A young couple’s daughter. Lots of potential.’

  ‘Potential is what it’s all about. Like your music.’

  ‘Not really,’ she says. ‘I’ve been thinking. You are bluffing. There is nothing wrong with that piece. I’ll have you know that this is the Oubliette, and I am a beautiful girl. That means this stuff happens all the time.’ She cocks her head, letting her hair hang loose. ‘A mysterious stranger. Serendipity. Seriously? Old hat.’