The Quantum Thief

there is too much type IV here, you can tell from the texture.’ Suddenly, all the hesitation and fragility seems to be gone from her. ‘How did you know? What happened to my dress?’

‘That’s not important. What matters is that you must not sell this one. Keep it safe. Also, please give me a small piece of that? Yes, that’s good – a wrapping will do. Don’t lose hope: you may still have him back.’

Her laugh is bitter and dark. ‘I never had him in the first place. I tried hard. I was nice to his wife. His daughter and I were friends. But it was never real. You know, for a moment, it was almost easier, like this. Just the memories and the chocolate.’ She opens and closes her hands, slowly, many times. Her fingernails are painted white. ‘Please find him,’ she says quietly.

‘I’ll do my best.’ Isidore says. He swallows, somehow relieved that the conversation is not etched in the diamond of exomemory, just in the mortal neurons of his mind.

‘By the way, I was not lying. I really do need something special.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I am going to be late for a party.’

The door opens, suddenly. It is a teenage boy, blond and remarkably handsome, with regular Slavic features, maybe eight Martian years old.

‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Sebastian,’ Lindstrom says. ‘I’m with a customer.’

‘It’s all right; I don’t mind,’ Isidore says, making a polite offer of gevulot to unhear the conversation.

‘I was just wondering if you had seen Elodie?’ The boy gives the assistant a radiant smile. ‘I can’t seem to reach her.’

‘She is at home, with her mother,’ she says. ‘You should give her some space now. Be respectful.’

The boy nods eagerly. ‘Of course, I will. It’s just that I thought I could help—’

‘No, you can’t. Now, would you please let me finish here? It is what Elodie’s dad would have wanted.’

The boy looks a little pale, turns and flees the shop.

‘Who was that?’ Isidore asks.

‘Elodie’s boyfriend. A little sleaze.’

‘You don’t like him?’

‘I don’t like anyone,’ Lindstrom says. ‘Except chocolate, of course. Now, what is this party you are going to?’

When Isidore leaves the shop, the Gentleman is nowhere to be seen. But as he walks along the Clockwise Avenue, he can hear its footsteps, stepping from one shade to another, away from the bright sunlight.

‘I must say,’ the tzaddik says, ‘I am interested to see where this is going. But have you considered that the theory you presented to her might actually be correct? That she could, in fact, be responsible for stealing her employer’s mind? I assume that it’s not her pretty smile that makes you think otherwise.’

‘No,’ says Isidore. ‘But I want to talk to the family next.’

‘Trust me, it will be the assistant.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘As you wish. I just received another lead from my brothers. There have been traces of a vasilev operation nearby. I’m going to investigate.’ Then the tzaddik is gone again.

The exomemory guides Isidore to the chocolatier’s home. It is in one of the high white buildings that overhang from the Edge, providing a glorious view of the Hellas Basin’s rolling desert, patched with green. Isidore descends one of the stairways that connect the outwards-facing facades to a green door, feeling a mild vertigo glimpsing the City’s legs through the dust cloud they raise far below.

He waits in front of the red door of the apartment for a moment. A small Chinese woman in a dressing gown opens it. She has a plain, ageless face and black silky hair.

‘Yes?’

Isidore offers his hand. ‘My name is Isidore Beautrelet,’ he says, opening his gevulot to let her know who he is. ‘I think you can guess why I am here. I would appreciate it if you had time for a few questions.’

She gives him a strange, hopeful look, but her gevulot remains closed: Isidore does not even get her name. ‘Please come in,’ she says.

The apartment is small but bright, a fabber and a few floating q-dot displays the only nods to modernity, with a stairway leading to a second floor. The woman leads him in to a cosy living room and sits down by one of the large windows on a child-sized wooden chair. She takes out a Xanthean cigarette and removes its cap: it lights, filling the room with a bitter smell. Isidore sits on a low green couch, hunched, and waits. There is someone else in the room, obscured by privacy fog: the daughter, Isidore guesses.

‘I should really get you – a coffee or something,’ she says finally, but makes no effort to get up.

‘I’ll do it,’ says a girl, startling Isidore with the sudden opening of her gevulot, appearing next to him as if out of nowhere. She is between six and seven Mars years old: a pale and willowy teen with curious brown eyes, wearing a new Xanthean dress, a tubelike affair that vaguely reminds Isidore of zoku fashion.

‘No, thank you,’ Isidore says. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I didn’t even have to ’blink you,’ the girl says. ‘I read Ares Herald. You help the tzaddiks. You found the missing city. Have you met the Silence?’ She seems unable to stay still, hopping up and down on the couch pillows.

‘Elodie,’ the woman says threateningly. ‘Don’t mind my daughter: she has no manners.’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘It’s the nice young man who is here to ask the questions, not you.’

‘Don’t believe everything you read, Elodie,’ Isidore says. He gives her a serious look. ‘I am very sorry about your father.’

The girl looks down. ‘They will fix him, right?’

‘I hope so,’ Isidore says. ‘I’m trying to help them.’

The chocolatier’s wife gives Isidore a weary smile, excluding her words from her daughter’s gevulot.

‘She cost us so much. Foolish child.’ She sighs. ‘Do you have children?’

‘No,’ says Isidore.

‘They are more trouble than they are worth. It is his fault. He spoiled Elodie.’ The chocolatier’s wife runs her hands through her hair, one hand clutching the cigarette, and for a moment Isidore is afraid that the silky hair is going to catch on fire. ‘I’m sorry, I’m saying terrible things when he is … somewhere. Not even a Quiet.’

Isidore looks at her, calmly. It is always fascinating to watch what people do when they feel they can talk to you: he briefly wonders if he would lose that as a tzaddik. But then there would be other ways to find things out.

‘Were you aware of any new friends that M. Deveraux might have made recently?’

‘No. Why?’

Elodie gives her mother a tired look. ‘That’s how they operate, Mom. The pirates. Social engineering. They gather bits of your gevulot so they can decrypt your mind.’

‘Why would they want him? He was nothing special. He could make chocolate. I don’t even like chocolate.’

‘I think your husband was exactly the kind of person the gogol pirates would be interested in, a specialised mind,’ Isidore says. ‘The Sobornost have an endless appetite for deep learning models, and they are obsessed with human sensory modalities, especially taste and smell.’

He takes care to include Elodie in the conversation’s gevulot. ‘And his chocolate certainly is special. His assistant was kind enough to let me try some when I visited the shop: freshly made, a sliver of that dress that arrived from the factory this morning. Absolutely incredible.’

Disgust twists Elodie’s face into a mask, like an echo of the chocolatier’s death. Then she vanishes behind the blur of a full privacy screen, jumps up and runs up the stairs with three hasty, low-gravity leaps.

‘My apologies,’ says Isidore. ‘I didn’t mean to upset her.’

‘Don’t worry. She has been putting on a brave face, but this is very difficult for us.’ She puts out her cigarette and wipes her eyes. ‘I suspect she will run off and see her boyfriend and then she’ll come back and not talk to me. Children.’

‘I understand,’ Isidore says, getting up. ‘You have been very helpful.’