The Quantum Magician

by Derek Künsken

  “That keeps you going?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Behavioral questions are astonishingly multivariate.”

  “But they’re not real! They don’t matter! The answers change from person to person. Nothing is generalizable or graphable.”

  “And that’s why I can go years without being drawn to the fugue,” he whispered with an almost pleading tone in his voice.

  She felt pity softening her unexpectedly. The thought that he would leave sciences to study people drove home more than anything how scared he must be of the fugue. She thought guiltily of what Iekanjika had said weeks ago in the commissary, that Bel had almost died in the fugue. Cassandra had thought that Bel had fooled the major.

  “We’re cursed, Cassie, just like the mongrels and just like the Puppets.”

  “We’re nothing like them.”

  “Our geneticists built us a new way to starve, Cassie. The mongrels die if they leave the pressure of their oceans. The Puppets die if they’re too far away from the Numen. You know what we need, Cassie.”

  The sinking, aching feeling of not enough intellectual stimulation was suffocating. Not enough air.

  “It makes us more, Bel. We learn. We grow.”

  “No, Cassie. They gave us another way to be unhappy. That’s not fair. Life is heavy enough. No one asked us if we wanted to carry this too.”

  “I miss home,” she said.

  “Home is where the mind is. And soon, you’ll be seeing so much, your brain will be full.”

  She looked away. Sometimes Bel’s eyes had an intensity like Iekanjika’s. He had nerve, nerve enough to leave the Garret, nerve to live among strangers. She couldn’t do it. When this was over, she couldn’t go home fast enough. And yet, she’d survived so far. Maybe she was more durable than she’d thought.

  “Do you think you could ever come home, Bel?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it better out here?” she asked, gesturing at the old plastic and metal of the tiny kitchen.

  “I didn’t leave because I would be more comfortable in the wide world. I’m not. There’s too much stimulus. Too little beauty. And people don’t care about the things I care about. Why? Do you want me back?” He looked sheepish, uncertain, but there was a daring hopefulness in his eyes.

  “You didn’t break my heart when you left, Bel. You almost did, though.”

  “Are you over it?”

  “Long scarred over,” she said.

  “I broke my own heart in leaving.”

  “Are you over it?”

  “Long scarred over.”

  “I don’t think I can ever understand why you left, Bel. Not inside.”

  “Is accepting enough?” he asked.

  “I need trust for that.”

  Bel nodded, but there was something crestfallen and vulnerable in him.

  “I’m not trying to make you ashamed of yourself, Bel.”

  “I know.”

  He smiled. And some of the weight on her chest lessened, until she realized that his smile was a lie, to make her feel better, and that only a month ago, she wouldn’t have known the difference between a smile and its imitation.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  PRESSURE ALARMS SOUNDED in the penthouse. Lights blinked. Internal comms. She sighed. She went to the wall, and tabbed the audio.

  “Why am I being disturbed?” she demanded, making an effort to uptown her français 8.1.

  “Apologies, ma’am,” came the reply. “The system is showing alarms. We wanted to make sure you’re safe.”

  “I’m perfectly safe. There’s nothing dangerous down here, except my temper. Do you know how much I’m paying to not be disturbed?”

  “We completely understand, ma’am, but the Grand Creston Constabulary has sent down a team to make sure that everything is okay.”

  “You’re sending police down here?”

  “They’re coming down to ensure your safety. They’re accompanied by a repair crew to take any actions to assure your safety and that of the other guests.”

  “Listen, Puppet,” she said. “I’ve got some very important Congregate officials down here. We picked this spot for a sensitive diplomatic meeting with a nation I can’t mention. If any of your guys see anything down here, you’ll be putting the Theocracy into an international incident the likes of which you will deeply, deeply regret.”

  The pause stretched into minutes. Marie didn’t press her luck. She checked the elevator status. One deep elevator was descending.

  Bel was not going to be happy.

  She huffed.

  Who cared what Bel thought?

  She drummed her fingers on her thigh.

  But Bel wouldn’t not be happy if she solved this quietly, before he ever found out. He had other things on his mind. This could be a little secret between her and Stills, an opportunity to bond with fish-face, like buddies. Or maybe she’d just handle this herself. Stills didn’t need to know either. She didn’t want to be buddies that much.

  The elevator descended fast. The little constables were going to be littler if they didn’t mind their descent. Going from one atmosphere to four in a hurry could be painful. They might need first aid. Marie yanked open the lid on the box of medical supplies. She didn’t remember much first aid, but how complicated could it be?

  Chapter Forty-Four

  SHIT. MIERDA. SCHIESSE. Zarba. Merde.

  Stills swam hard through the crushing ocean, dragging behind him close to three tons of explosives divided into four bales along a rope. They were heavy as fuck and the ocean as anoxic as any he’d swum in. His big gills churned, but his amped up hemoglobins were fucking the dog instead of scraping him up shit to breathe. He could slow down, but then he’d miss his deadline.

  And the fuckers would get him.

  Three drone subs, built for deep diving and fast moving, followed two kilometers back, pinging like they wanted a foursome and weren’t in the mood to buy him dinner first. The only thing going for him was that he and the bales of explosives reflected sonar poorly. Squishy targets made shitty images.

  The subs would be pissing off the hotel. As thick as they were, hotel windows were as tight as tympanic membranes, making every sonar ping boom in every luxury hotel room two kilometers up and down the Grand Creston. But the drones were pinging often enough that blurry sonar shadows would paint enough of a picture. A loud picture.

  Stills swam upward, calming his own thinking, and his gulping, starved breathing, and concentrated on Oler’s magnetic field, navigating to the first target spot. He hadn’t picked the spots. That wasn’t his job. He wasn’t that kind of muscle for the prancy quantum ass-licker. The braintrust knew what he wanted targetted. Stills’ special contribution was getting the right package to precisely the right spot, under a thousand atmospheres of anoxic ocean, getting past whatever defenses the Puppets’ messed up little minds had put down here.

  The three drones angled upward, pinging as they went. Their propellers moaned below him, closing. They were faster because he was carrying all this shit. He poured it on, flexing his body harder, adding a bit of speed as he climbed, but grinding his reserves down. A wall of ice loomed dark ahead of him, shining back sound echoes. He had rounded one lobe of Blackmore Bay and a kilometer of ice separated him from some of the Puppet micro-states.

  Stills raced along the ice face, making small, low sounds, listening for changes in the reflections, looking for a good anchor-point for the explosives, while also paying close attention to his electrical sense and Oler’s magnetic field, for the placement of the marker.

  The fucking drones were gaining on him.

  Stills stopped and drew out an industrial hand-laser. Yellow flared in the particulate silt as he melted a tube several centimeters deep into the ice. He put the laser back into his pouch and withdrew one of the markers Belisarius had given him. It was some sort of long-distance receiver, and would be able to retransmit a local signal to the detonator. It fit into the hollow he’d mad
e.

  He pulled a crinkly plastic bag of anhydrous crystals from the pouch. The pressure had crushed the plastic against the crystals as if it had been vacuum-sealed. He jammed this into the hole and then pierced it with the sharp end of a screw-driver. Water mixed with the hyper-dried crystals in the bag, starting a quick chemical reaction, endothermic enough to plug the little channel with newly frozen ice. One marker planted.

  And the Puppet subs pinged, closer.

  He darted away, sideways and up a few hundred meters, until he found what he needed, a big rounded crevasse eroded by churning, shifting currents. A cave big enough for him. He unhooked the first bale of explosives and shoved it into the hole, then hurried to pack the little sacks of crystals around some of the edges before piercing them. The ice forming wouldn’t hold the bale there forever, but it would prevent the bale from floating out for a few days, which was all they needed. Lastly, he pulled out a two-pronged detonator and stabbed it into the cold-hardened putty.

  The pinging neared. Three more bales to go.

  He darted off, carrying the stupid bales of experimental explosives, swimming hard, gills gulping. The dumb drones had probably marked this position by now. He had to give them a reason not to come here. He pulled out a detonator and a screw-driver from his pouch, holding them wide in his hands. The next ping reflected hard echoes back at the drones. The items were small, but more echo-reflective than ice, and hard enough for sonar to pick up course and speed. Stills put them back in his pouch as he changed course, and the pings changed direction and intensity.

  Fuckers were mad now.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  CASSANDRA, BELISARIUS, MAJOR Iekanjika and Saint Matthew approached the Orbital Traffic Control zone of the Free City in the Boyacá.

  “You can’t know what the Puppets are thinking from that pattern,” Saint Matthew was saying.

  “Sure I can,” Bel said.

  Cassandra leaned closer to look at the old-style monitor. She saw lots of patterns. The defensive fortifications were outlined in red. General and secure communications were outlined in green. Habitat systems were wrapped in blue. Speckling the habitat and communications systems were pixel clusters in bright yellow, indicating areas where, in the last forty-eight hours, the interference noise of processing had decreased notably.

  “Saint Matthew’s computer virus is a little like any virus we might use for genetic engineering,” Bel said to Iekanjika. “Among its other effects, it increases the efficiency of systems it has infected. That’s like a reporter gene in a virus, so we can know where it has penetrated.”

  “It has penetrated habitat and communications, but not fortifications,” the major said.

  “Yes, and its infection of habitat and comms is very selective. The distribution suggests to me that it has infected support systems.”

  “That’s not random,” Cassandra said.

  “No.”

  Cassandra had a brief urge to recalculate the p-value to verify the non-randomness, but Iekanjika wouldn’t care and Bel would already have calculated it.

  “The infection pattern doesn’t follow the systems architecture, but this pattern could have been made by selectively shielding critical systems prior to infection,” Bel said.

  “So the Puppets know something is up,” Cassandra said.

  “Definitely.”

  “Then the mission is off?” Saint Matthew said. “Turn the ship around.”

  “On the contrary. The Puppets know about your virus, but they infected their systems anyway.”

  “Why?” the AI asked.

  “They’re setting a trap.”

  “This isn’t good.”

  “The Puppets think they’re holding a winning hand. They’re committing to a big bet. We’ll know how big when we see how they deploy their defensive forces.”

  The AI didn’t look convinced, but didn’t argue.

  Bel and Iekanjika went into the holds to check the cargo one last time. Cassandra strapped herself into the pilot seat. She didn’t often get to see the stars through a single layer of glass. The slowly bobbing holographic head of Saint Matthew watched the stars silently too as she found geometric patterns in the starscape. After a time, she spoke.

  “Do you know Belisarius well?”

  “Sometimes I think so,” he said, turning his bearded, brush-stroked face towards her. “Most of the time not.”

  “I don’t think I know who he is.”

  “No one does.”

  “Marie does. William does. I thought you must.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “He told me he rescued you after leaving the Garret. You spent time with him.”

  “He was just a boy then,” the AI said, “sixteen years old.”

  “But you must trust him now.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then why are you here?” Did anyone trust Bel?

  “I have faith that he’s leading me to something important. That’s different than trust.”

  “And you think Bel will get us there?”

  “The world has its own mysteries. We only begin to understand what they are after they’ve already passed.”

  “That’s a very quantum thing to say. Can’t you tell me anything about Bel?”

  “I’m not sure I should.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m responsible for his soul, and I don’t know that you’re good for him.”

  “What?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “He doesn’t even have a soul.”

  “You both do.”

  “And I thought I was speaking to a rational AI.”

  She expected the AI to argue back, but he watched her with a thoughtful expression painted more than a thousand years ago. The stars stared back at her too, unwinking, infested with the orbital traffic and satellites around Oler. Out there, everything was mathematical precision and clean lines. Not like inside.

  “Why wouldn’t I be good for him?” she asked.

  “He didn’t walk away from the Garret. He ran. For his life. I’m not sure going back would help him.”

  “Of course going back would help him!” she said. “The doctors there are made to care for the Homo quantus, to help them in and out of the fugue safely.”

  “Going back is good for him or good for you?”

  “For both of us.”

  “You say Mister Arjona has no soul,” Saint Matthew said, “but I can point at something essential in him and call it a soul, even if you call it something else. What I’m pointing at is a collection of fragments that have not been together since he was a boy. He needs to be healed. There are many things I don’t know about Mister Arjona, but I know that he’s trying to be whole.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  STILLS HAD SWUM his ass off for an hour. He was probably faster than the drones, but after lugging the explosives, he couldn’t sprint anymore. He’d fixed three of the bales of explosives to the ice, each one close to the little buttons Arjona was so worried about. He gulped at water more anoxic than the ocean he’d grown up in on Indi’s Tear. He’d pass out if this kept up.

  So he was playing smart. Their pings had gradually told him the kind of kit that was hunting him. They sounded like programmed defensive tech in mid-sized torpedo casings. He’d built a profile of their sense-and-search algorithms based on their pings and positioning, slowly improving his diversions and using cover better.

  Above him, ice fragments, some the size of his fingers, some the size of factories, tinkled against the icy ceiling of the ocean, an irritating atonal symphony of bells, perfect for shitting on his ability to picture the world using echolocation, but also perfect for doing the same for his pursuers. The wash of the current never ended, so the icy gravel rolled tirelessly against the ceiling, the reverse of a river, eddies collecting all the detritus in the lobes of Blackmore Bay. The other parts of the Bay, where he’d placed the first three bales of explosives, had been largely clear, heated just enough to shrink th
e collecting ice.

  But this last lobe, what the Puppets called Blackmore’s Nose, was newly constipated with big blocks of ice. The blockage hadn’t been on last month’s surveys. An iceberg the size of a small mountain had jammed into the bay. The gaps between it and the walls of this lobe of Blackmore Bay had jammed with shit. No, not shit. Icy boogers had solidified into a whole lot of crustiness. The explosives and Arjona’s transmitters had to be placed about two kilometers higher than this giant snot plug.

  The mother-fucking pings loudened, still closing.

  Shut your damn yam-holes. I’m trying to think.

  Blackmore Bay breathed, like water wheezing over gills gummed up with mucus or a fungal infection. Kind of erratic and panicky. The flexing of the icy crust of Oler was imperceptible most of the time; a sub-sonic creaking of gravitational squeezing that heated the rocky core of Oler more than the crust itself. But here, between giant-sized boogers jammed into a god’s nostril, the water rushed through the gaps, moaning.

  Louder pinging. Closer.

  Stills swam into the cavernous gap, a few hundred meters below the slushy field under the main iceberg itself. In several places, the ceiling was clear of slush, and although he couldn’t see it, he could feel the why in the thrumming. Water surging through narrow gaps had vacuumed up the slush.

  Strong currents probably meant channels wide enough for him to fit through. But currents could also split, blowing through branching tunnels in great three-dimensional sieves, and then he would be fucked. The real problem was Venturi. The mongrels didn’t like constricted spaces because when water flowed fast, pressure dropped. When it flowed fast enough, the pressure could drop enough to make a mongrel go splat. The Venturi effect.

  Pings just below.

  Fuckers.

  He flexed his flukes, edging closer to the rim of what looked like the biggest of the channels.

  Pings closing.

  Mother fuckers.

  This wasn’t going to be pretty.