The Fractal Prince

blackmail your lord and master to stay out of their way.’

‘An interesting theory,’ the pellegrini says. ‘Of course, it has one flaw: no one blackmails Matjek Chen.’ She touches her lips, suddenly. ‘Although. . . you have just given me an idea.’

She turns to the singularity of her temple. ‘Perhaps it is time for me to move more directly against those who would destroy me.’

Mieli bows her head.

‘You do understand that our technology will not survive in Earth’s atmosphere for long? That you are condemning those other selves of yours into a painful death?’

‘I am not afraid of death,’ Mieli says. ‘So none of us will be.’

‘Very well,’ the pellegrini says. ‘I am pleased. Perhaps you are growing up after all.’

She touches Mieli’s cheek. The goddess’ ring is cold against her scar. ‘It is only now that I’m taking your gogol,’ the pellegrini says. ‘No matter what Jean might tell you, I am not cruel. And you do remind me of someone I knew a long time ago.’

Then she is gone and Mieli is back on the bridge of Nakir, watching the Lost Jannah of the Cannon below.

Mieli steps forward and places a q-dot blade across Abu Nuwas’s throat.

‘I claim this jannah in the name of Josephine Pellegrini of the Sobornost,’ she says.

Abu Nuwas stares at her with his one human eye.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he asks.

‘I am Mieli. The daughter of Karhu of Hiljainen Koto, the beloved of Sydan of Kirkkaat Kutojat.’ She points at the sky with her free hand. Up in the dark blue of evening, between the arcs of Gourd, there is a cloud that flashes golden in the sunset light. ‘And so are they.’

There are machines within the Gourd, built over decades by the hsien-ku, gogol factories and smartmatter moulds and picotech fabbers. The pellegrini tells them to make angels.

The metacortex in Mieli’s brain lights up, becomes more than just a layer on top of her frontal lobe, a metaself. She feels the echoes of her other selves, moving with a unified purpose, a goal, exchanging rapid bursts to synchronise differences between mind-states, spreading their wings and diving towards Earth.

They enter the atmosphere in their thousands, smartmatter armour flaming in the re-entry. Already, they feel the kiss of wildcode that brings death, but that is what they are here to embrace.

They sing songs of Oort as a choir as they fall.

Mieli’s viewpoint on the bridge of Nakir shatters into a kaleidoscope. The words of Oort arrive before her other selves do, by a fraction of a second, a thunderous roar from a thousand throats.

The fractal angel storm cuts through the mercenary fleet like a blade. Rukh swarms evaporate before synchronised cannon fire. Munkar veers to one side.

‘This is a place of the Aun,’ Abu Nuwas shouts as the ship sways. ‘Your machines will be eaten. Without the Secret Name, they will never let you in.’

‘I told you my name,’ Mieli says. ‘That had better be good enough for them.’

She pushes the muhtasib aside and dives towards the jannah, joining the battle song. The wildcode desert rises to meet them.

They fight their way through the desert city. They take out wild jinni with codeweapons, destroy chimera beings with plasma and fire. The jannah itself turns against them. A tower becomes a nightmare worm. A mieli takes it out by detonating her fusion reactor in its mouth. The combined force of their wings creates a pillar of dust that hides the mercenary fleet above.

The deaths of her other selves are hammer blows in Mieli’s mind. The hot twisting burn of the wildcode. The tearing claws of chimera beasts. The pure white of a fusion explosion. The quick sharp self-destruct that some choose, before the wildcode turns them against their sisters. Mieli is there through every last moment, every final darkness, and there is a strange joy in each one, a purity that makes her feel like a brass bell, ringing.

This is what I was made for. This is what I am.

In the end, the Lost Jannah of the Cannon is silent, full of fallen angels and shattered sapphire and dead towers like broken teeth. A domed building in the centre remains, a beautiful structure with an arced entranceway.

Remind me to never make you angry again, the thief says in Mieli’s head.

‘Get ready,’ she says. ‘You are going to have your prince soon.’

Flanked by her other selves, Mieli enters the building.

There is a metal disc on the floor beneath the dome, ten metres in diameter. There are three figures waiting for her in front of it. There is a man in green, a strange glowing creature that looks like an octopus made of light, constantly shifting shape – and a little girl in a sooty dress and a wooden mask.

‘You have come for Father,’ the little girl says. ‘Our brother told us about you.’

Mieli blinks. The figures do not show up in spimescape, but they appear fully real. She can see the grains of the wood and the flaking paint in the girl’s mask.

‘Perhonen, are you getting this?’ Mieli whispers.

As far as I can tell, you are alone down there. Except for all the other Mielis, of course. The pellegrini has access to all the Gourd ghost imagers now. The jannah is directly below you, at the bottom of a long drop through a salt rock layer, almost a kilometre deep. There is a really big chamber down there, and lots of other stuff – geothermal power sources. Lots of chemicals, boron and hydrogen and radioactives. A layered representation of the underground facility flickers in Mieli’s field of vision as the ship speaks.

‘Are you going to try to stop me?’ Mieli tells the desert ghosts. ‘It’s not going to go well for you.’ She still has almost a hundred remaining selves – battered, wildcode-ridden, armed only with makeshift weapons and flickering, failing q-blades – but they are all battle-ready.

‘We should ask you for a true story,’ the girl says. ‘But we already know yours.’

Then the three are gone, leaving Mieli with a strange, yearning feeling. She shakes her head.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ she says.

With the help of her other selves, she cuts away the metal, revealing a cylindrical shaft. She descends slowly on her wings, lighting up her armour to illuminate the passage.

It is hot at the bottom. There is a round chamber with a ledge around its base, hardened terminals in the walls, ancient touchscreens and ports for jacks that haven’t existed for centuries. Mieli lets her software gogols loose on them, pushes q-dot tendrils into the guts of the ancient machines.

Then she is inside the jannah’s vir, and everything is bright.

Mieli is standing on a beach.

It is not exactly like the hard physics-based virs that the Sobornost use, but something softer, more dream- like. Mieli stops to look at the sea: she has never seen one like it. The blue expanse seems endless, and her gaze gets lost in it for a moment. Its soft crashing on the sand feels soothing after the madness of battle.

There is a boy playing near the water, building a sand-castle. He looks up when Mieli approaches. A smile lights up his tanned face.

‘Hi,’ Mieli says. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m building a castle for my friends,’ the boy says.

‘Why don’t you introduce us?’

‘This is the Green Soldier,’ the boy says, holding up an old plastic warrior, battered by salt water and the sun. ‘This is the lightkraken.’ He points at a blob of transparent putty in one of the towers, with a cartoon face. Then he picks up a little doll made from sticks. ‘And this is the Chimney Princess. The Flower Prince should be here, too, but I can’t find him. He likes to run away, sometimes.’

‘Nice to meet you all,’ Mieli says. ‘But what is your name?’

‘Mom told me not to speak to strangers.’

‘And do strangers ever come here?’ The boy reminds Mieli of Varpu and her leaps of logic.

‘No,’ the boy says uncertainly.