The phoboi are hybrid biot/biological weapons, breeding themselves through billions of virtual generations and then modifying their own design accordingly. The Oubliette has been at war with them for centuries. And when the Moving City does not move, they can smell blood.
Mieli assesses their weaponry. Her countermeasure gogols are tailored to be used against zokus, not likely to do well against the phoboi’s simple chemical brains. So brute force appears to be a more realistic option: q-dots, antimatter, lasers, and – if it comes to that – the remaining strangelet: although she is worried about what the latter would do to Mars itself.
All right, Mieli says. The plan is simple. You slow them down. I go get the thief. You pick us up. Just like last time.
Understood, the ship says. Be careful.
You always say that, Mieli says. Even when you are about to drop me on a dying city.
I mean it every time, the ship says. Then it wraps Mieli in a q-dot bubble, grabs her with an EM field and fires her at Mars.
Metacortex fully active, Mieli steers with her wings, aiming towards one of the Persistent Avenue agoras. She fires nano-missiles at the city at a considerable fraction of c. She wears armour and carries an external weapon this time, a Sobornost multipurpose cannon – a sleek cylinder full of destruction. The missiles send back fragmented imagery before evaporating: the gevulot system is not fast enough to stop them from transmitting. Her metacortex pieces them together into a coherent picture of the city below.
Bloody faces, stains on white uniforms. Gogol pirates with their upload tendrils out, attacking anything that moves. Young and old Martians locked in battle, wielding makeshift weapons. Military Quiet, cordoning off streets. Tzaddikim, fighting Quiet and humans both, blocking gunfire with utility fog shields. The zoku colony under a q-dot bubble, surrounded by particularly heavy fighting. There, in the centre of the Maze, a black needle that was not there before. And almost directly below her—
The Gentleman is fighting in the Place of Lost Time, harried by a flock of assault Quiet. Her foglet shapes crackle under heavy fire.
Mieli takes the Quiet out with autonomous missiles with a quark-gluon plasma payload. They sweep half the square in an arc of nova-bright flame, illuminating the invisible foglet shapes momentarily: they look like exotic coral, blooming out from the Gentleman.
Phoboi report? Mieli asks Perhonen. The ship shares its senses with her. It is dancing above the seething mass, lobbing microton AM warheads at the phoboi. The sky of the city blinks in synchrony with them, like impossibly bright lightning flashes; the booms follow seconds later.
Not good, the ship says. We really need a viral weapon of some kind. I’m slowing them down, but pincer number two is going to hit the city any minute now.
Mieli slows the descent with her wings but still hits the ground hard. Stone cracks beneath her q-armoured feet. As she gets up from the small crater, she sees Raymonde. A cloud of foglet blades hovers around her, ready to strike.
‘Which one are you?’ she asks. ‘Mieli or the other one?’
‘The one who tells you that you are going to have a phoboi problem in a few minutes,’ Mieli says.
‘Oh, hell,’ Raymonde mutters.
Mieli looks around at the destruction. There is more gunfire down the Avenue, and a distant explosion. ‘Is this supposed to be a revolution?’
‘It went bad an hour ago,’ Raymonde says. ‘The cryptarch-controlled started executing everyone who had the co-memory infection, and then they brought in the military Quiet as well from the ramparts. We have been arming the survivors. As long as the resurrection system survives, we can bring everybody back. But at the moment we are losing. And the real problem is that.’ She points at the needle above the Maze.
‘What is it?’
‘That’s what Jean made,’ Raymonde says. ‘He is inside. With the cryptarch.’
‘The phoboi are coming,’ Mieli says. ‘We need to get this under control now or you are all going to find out what permanent death feels like. You need to get the city moving again. I take it the zoku is not doing anything?’
‘No,’ Raymonde says. ‘I can’t reach them anymore.’
‘Typical,’ Mieli says. ‘All right. You need to get inside that thing, get the cryptarch out and make him stop the fighting so we can deal with the phoboi. I am coming to get the thief out. So it looks like we are going to the same direction.’
Mieli spreads her wings. The tzaddik takes to the air next to her. They fly over the burning city, towards the black needle.
‘You were the ones who disrupted things,’ Isidore says. ‘You have to help us. We are going to have a civil war unless the cryptarch is stopped. The tzaddikim cannot do it alone.’
‘No. Our first loyalty is to ourselves. We have healed; we are strong again. It is time for us to go.’ Around them, the treasure chamber is almost empty: only the silver portals remain.
‘You are running away,’ Isidore says.
‘Merely optimising the use of resources,’ the Eldest says. ‘You are free to come with us, although you will find that your current form will not be appropriate.’
‘I’m staying here,’ Isidore says. ‘This is my home.’
A part of the Eldest’s shimmer forms a miniature city. The streets are full of tiny people. There are flashes of light and flames. Isidore sees the conflict between the cryptarch-controlled and the memory-inoculated. He tastes blood and realises he is biting his tongue. And near the ramparts, white waves, crashing against them, lapping at the legs of the city. Phoboi.
‘You may wish to reconsider your decision,’ the Eldest says.
Isidore closes his eyes. It is a shape that is different from a mystery, rapidly changing, shifting, not static like a snowflake that can be examined from different angles and understood.
‘The cryptarchs,’ he says. ‘The cryptarchs could still end this. They could get the city moving again, stop the fighting. Raymonde thought they were going to go there, with the thief—’ He points at the needle in the miniature city, sticking up like an arrow in its heart.
‘The ring,’ he says. ‘The thief stole my entanglement ring. Pixil, that ghost thing you did, would it work inside that?’
‘Maybe, depending on what that is,’ Pixil says. ‘We just need a Realmgate to find out.’ She starts towards the nearest silver arc.
‘The zoku will not allow this,’ the Eldest says.
‘Just get me through it,’ Isidore says. ‘That’s all I ask. I can’t just stand here and watch.’
Pixil touches the zoku jewel at the base of her throat. She squeezes her eyes shut. For a moment, her face twists in pain. The jewel comes off, like a small creature being born. She holds it up with bloody fingers. ‘The freedom we always have left,’ she says, ‘is the freedom to leave. I’m out. I was born here. I’m staying.’
She takes Isidore’s hand. ‘Let’s go.’
‘What are you doing?’ the Eldest says.
Pixil touches the gate. Honey-coloured daylight pours out. ‘The right thing,’ she says. Then she steps through, pulling Isidore in after her.
20
TWO THIEVES AND A DETECTIVE
The darkness rebuilds us. For a moment, I feel like I’m being sketched by a pen, feeling returning to my flesh and skin and limbs, one by one. And then I can see again.
A cat stares at me. It is standing on its hind legs, wearing boots and a hat. A tiny sword hangs from a broad belt. Its eyes look glassy and dead, and I realise they are glass, glinting golden and bright. Then the cat moves jerkily, takes off its hat and bows with mechanical flourish.
‘Good afternoon, master,’ it says with a whirring, high-pitched voice. ‘Welcome back.’
We are in the grand gallery of a palace. Paintings hang on the gilded walls, and crystal chandeliers glitter in the ceiling. There are wide windows opening to an Italian terrace, with golden, late afternoon sunlight pouring in, giving everything an amber glow. I am on the same level as the cat, hunched on the floor.
A small mercy, my leg is no longer a stump. Like le Roi, I’m dressed in a costume of some ancient courtier, with coattails, brass buttons, ridiculously tight hose and a ruffled shirt. But it is to him that the cat is bowing. And he still holds the revolver in his hand.
I tense to leap, but he is faster. He strikes me across the face with the butt of the gun, and bizarrely, the pain is more real here than in the real world. I feel the metal digging into my flesh and cheekbone, and I almost pass out. My mouth fills with blood.
Le Roi gives me a nudge with his foot. ‘Take this creature away,’ he says. ‘And find me something to wear.’
The cat bows again and claps its paws together. The tap is barely audible, but there are distant foosteps, and a door opens.
I struggle up to a sitting position and spit blood at le Roi’s feet. ‘Bastard,’ I say. ‘I was prepared for you. There are traps here you don’t know about. You’ll see.’
‘Now, that is a pathetic attempt, not worthy of either of us,’ says le Roi. ‘Be grateful that I find it amusing to keep you around. As a distant memory, perhaps.’
He gestures with the gun, and strong, unyielding hands lift me off the floor and start dragging me away. Wax figures: a man in an early twentieth-century suit, with a thick moustache, and a woman I don’t recognise, dressed as a maid. Both have glass eyes and yellow, clumsily sculpted wax faces. I try to struggle, but I am no match for their mechanical strength.
‘Let me go!’ I shout. ‘He is not your master, I am!’ But clearly, the gun grants le Roi more authority than I can muster here. ‘Bastard!’ I shout. ‘Come back and fight!’
The creatures drag me down a corridor with open doors. There seem to be hundreds of them: inside, silent wax figures enact scenes in slow motion. They strike a chord: a young man in a prison cell, reading a book. A dark tent, with a woman sitting in a corner, humming to herself, preparing food over a pitiful fire. I glimpse a wax-faced nude Raymonde, playing the piano with slow, clumsy fingers. They are all dead and mechanical, and suddenly I realise what a distant memory could mean.
But it is not until they take me to the workshop, with the moulds and the pool of hot wax and the sharp instrument that I start screaming.
There is a discontinuity. When it ends, Isidore is still holding Pixil’s hand. He blinks. The air smells of dust and wax. They are in what looks like a torturer’s workshop, but with high, ornate windows opening to a garden. The thief is strapped to a long table, with fairy tale creatures looming above him: a wolf in the clothes of a woman, a moustached man and a maid in costumes from ancient Earth history. They are holding sharp, curving knives in paws and waxy hands.
Pixil leaps forward. Her sword comes out of its scabbard with a zing and slices left and right, through wax and brass. A furry head flies into the air; cogs and metal spill out of the back of the man’s pierced cranium. The wax creatures fall to the floor in pieces. Then she places the tip of the blade gently on the thief’s throat.
‘Don’t move,’ she says. ‘This is a Realmspace sword. As you can see, it adapts to this place quite nicely.’
‘I was just going to say thank you,’ the thief wheezes. Then he grins at Isidore. ‘M. Beautrelet. Delighted to see you here. We have met before. Jean le Flambeur, at your service. But – obviously – your lady friend has the, uh, advantage of me.’
‘What is happening here?’ Isidore asks.
‘The cryptarch – le Roi – controls this place, I’m sorry to say.’ He blinks. ‘But how did you get here? Of course, your zoku ring,’ he says. ‘It is amazing how useful kleptomaniac habits can be, sometimes – watch out!’
Isidore turns. He catches a glimpse of a furry creature, darting across the floor. ‘Catch it!’ the thief shouts. ‘It has your ring!’
Here they come, Perhonen says. I can’t hold them anymore.
She can feel the impacts of the flying phoboi on the ship’s skin, draining its armour. ‘Get out of there.’ The ship rises up, and Mieli sees the phoboi tide hit the disorganised Quiet wall like a scythe, pouring over it. She blinks the ship’s view away and returns her attention to firing at the cryptarch-controlled assault Quiet.
A yellow constructor Quiet brought her down by filling the air with fabbed construction dust, temporarily blocking her wings’ microfans. The Quiet keep throwing themselves at her and Raymonde stubbornly, turning their advance towards the black needle into a crawl.
‘The phoboi are getting through,’ Mieli shouts at the tzaddik. Even through the dust and the silver mask, Mieli can see the despair on her face.
Mieli! Something is happening! She slows time and sees through the ship’s eyes again.
The bubble around the zoku colony disappears. Howling ghosts made from shimmer and diamond and jewels ride out, raining coherent light on the phoboi horde, cutting through it as if it wasn’t there, moving faster than human eye can see. Wildfires start in their wake – self-replicating nanotech weaponry – and circles of flame spread through the seething mass. What made them change their minds? Mieli wonders. But there is no time to reflect.
‘Come on!’ she tells Raymonde. ‘There is still time!’ Gritting her teeth, she extends a q-blade from the cannon and rushes the mass of Quiet ahead.
*
The zoku girl cuts me free. The detective is already running after the cat, and I race after him. The creature is no longer in sight, and I dash madly onwards in the direction I think it went, passing more memory automata.
And then I see it, in a small gallery, sitting on a one-legged table made of dark wood: a black, unadorned object that could hold a wedding ring. The Schrödinger Box. It is just as tempting as it was twenty years ago, when I found out that the zoku colony had it, and I can’t resist. Warily, I enter and grab it, expecting a trap. But nothing happens. I squeeze it in my fist and return to the corridor.
The detective and the zoku girl are running back.
‘I’m sorry,’ the detective says. ‘It got away.’
‘Are you looking for this?’ says Jean le Roi. He looks different now, younger, much more like me. His face is smooth, his hair black, and he has a pencil moustache. He is wearing a black tie, white gloves, and an opera cloak draped over his shoulders, as if before a night out on the town. He carries a cane. A cluster of zoku jewels floats around his head, flashing in hues of green and blue. But the sneer is still there.
He holds up the ring, a silver band with a blue stone. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be needing it anymore.’ He waves his hand like a conjuror and the ring vanishes in a puff of flash powder. ‘You can all stay here, as my guests.’ He brushes invisible dust away from his lapels. ‘I have found a body I’m going to wear, I think. It’s time to leave all this strife behind.’
The zoku girl lets out a wild cry, and before I can stop her, she swings her sword in a wide arc at le Roi. With a movement too fast to follow, he twists the head of his cane, and a blade comes out in a bright flash. He parries her blow, then drops and lunges. The swordcane’s tip blooms out of her back, an evil, sharp flower. He pulls it out in one smooth movement. She falls to her knees. The detective rushes to her side, holding her up. But I can tell it is already too late.
Le Roi nudges her fallen sword with his own. ‘A nice toy,’ he says. ‘But mine are much nicer.’ He seems to notice the detective for the first time. His eyes widen.
‘You are not supposed to be here,’ he says quietly. ‘What are you doing here?’
The detective stares up at him. There are tears on his cheeks, but his eyes are brimming with anger. ‘M. le Roi,’ he says with a steady voice. ‘I am here to arrest you for crimes against the Oubliette, and in the name of the Revolution order you to turn your exomemory key over to me immediately—’
‘No, no.’ He kneels next to the boy. ‘You have it all wrong. I thought you were a memory he turned against me. I didn’t mean for this to happen.’ He looks at the girl. ‘We can bring her back if you want. And my key, here it is, if you want.’ He drops his cane and fumbles for something i
n his pocket. ‘Here. You have it.’ He presses something in the detective’s hand. ‘Take it. I’ll send you back. It is only right that the prince will inherit the kingdom—’
The detective strikes him across the face. He leaps up and picks up his swordcane, pointing at him. Then he shakes his head. ‘Enough.’ He gestures with the weapon, and the detective is gone, in a flash of light.
‘You are breaking all your toys,’ I say, holding up the Realmspace sword. ‘Want to try me as well?’
The sword is talking to me, showing the underlying structure of everything around us. This is a little Realm, a virtual world that serves as an interface for the picotech machine around us. I am a software entity, containing all the information of the matter of my body the palace disassembled. And there is something blue inside my belly, like a ghost—
Le Roi’s eyes narrow. ‘The boy is not broken,’ he says. ‘He turned out well. He outsmarted you. I will come and visit him in a hundred years.’
‘No thanks to you,’ I say. ‘And he is right. You have to pay for what you have done.’
He salutes me with the swordcane, sneering. ‘Then carry out the sentence, if you can. Let’s finish this.’ He assumes a fencer’s stance, his eyes a reflection of my own.
I raise the Realmspace sword with both hands and plunge the point into my stomach. The pain is blinding. The sword cuts through the software construct that is me.
And lets the Archon loose.
It comes out with my blood and guts, spilling out in a flood of data. It spreads into the walls and the floor of the palace. They start turning into glass. The walls of the cells come down between me and Jean le Roi, and as I give birth to a Dilemma Prison, I start laughing.
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