The Quantum Thief

Complete destruction reigns in the room: shattered furniture, glass and dead fog. The tzaddik stands in the middle of it, holding her cane. But she, too, is merely human now. To her credit, she reacts quickly, and comes at Mieli fast, with a kendo fighter’s shuffling steps, cane raised high.

Without getting up, she tries to sweep the silver-masked woman’s legs from under her. But she just leaps up, lightly, impossibly high in the low gravity, and aims a blow right at Mieli. She rolls aside, follows through with a somersault that takes her upright, aims a blow at the tzaddik, only to find it painfully blocked by the cane—

‘Stop it. Both of you,’ the thief says.

He is holding a weapon, a primitive metal thing that looks ridiculously large in his grip. But it is clearly dangerous, and his aim does not waver. Of course. He spent a lot of time with firearms in the Prison. And the remote control of his Sobornost body is just as dead as the rest of her systems after the tzaddik’s attack. Typical.

‘I suggest we all sit down – if you can find somewhere to sit – so we can all have a chat about this like civilised people,’ he says.

‘The others will be here soon,’ Raymonde says.

My head is ringing and I’m trying not to cough at the dust in the apartment. But I can recognise a bluff when I hear one. ‘No, they aren’t. I’m guessing Mieli took your cute fog stuff out. And vice versa, given that I am still walking and talking. Actually, that would be my cue to escape, if it weren’t for my damn honour.’ Mieli snorts. I gesture with the gun. ‘Find somewhere to sit.’

Keeping an eye on Mieli, I take a sip from the one champagne glass that has miraculously survived the destruction. It helps my throat a little. Then I sit down on a wall fragment. Mieli and my ex-girlfriend look at each other, then slowly position themselves so that they can keep an eye on both each other and me.

‘Now, it is flattering to have women fight over me, but trust me, I’m not really worth it.’

‘At least we agree on something,’ Raymonde says.

You know, says Perhonen, I’m about four hundred ks up, but I can still burn your hand off if you don’t drop that gun.

Ouch.

Please. It’s an antique. It probably doesn’t even work. I’m bluffing. Please don’t tell Mieli. I’m trying to resolve this without anyone getting hurt. Pretty please?

For such a fast-thinking gogol, the ship considers its response for an uncomfortably long time. All right, it finally says. One minute.

Time constraints again. You are worse than she is.

‘Raymonde, meet Mieli. Mieli, meet Raymonde. Raymonde and I used to be an item; Mieli, on the other hand, tends to treat me like an item. But I have something of a debt of honour to discharge to her, so I don’t complain. Much.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Raymonde, it was nothing personal. I just need to have my old self back.’ She rolls her eyes. She looks achingly familiar now.

I turn to Mieli. ‘And seriously, was this really necessary? I had things under control.’

‘I was about to tear your head off,’ Raymonde says.

‘I suppose the safe word is one of the many things I don’t remember,’ I say and sigh. ‘Look. Forget about you and me. I am looking for something. You can help me. You are a tzaddik – very cool, by the way – so I’m betting there is something we can help you with in turn. For example, gogol pirates. Lots of them. On a platter.’ They both look at me for a moment, and I’m certain the fighting is about to start again.

‘All right,’ Raymonde says. ‘Let’s talk.’

Breathing a sigh of relief, I toss the gun to the floor with a clatter, and thank Hermes that it doesn’t go off.

‘I don’t suppose we could have some privacy?’ I say, looking at Mieli. She looks like a wreck: her toga is in tatters again, and her wings look like a pair of ragged, bare tree branches. But she still looks threatening enough to tell me what she thinks without words. ‘Forget I asked.’

Raymonde stands in front of the shattered window, hands shoved in the sleeves of her gown. ‘What happened?’ I ask her. ‘Who was I here? Where did I go?’

‘You really don’t remember?’

‘I really don’t.’ Not yet, anyway. The new memories are still reassembling themselves in my head, too much to take in at a moment’s notice; I can feel a strange headache coming on with them.

She shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I left something here. Secrets. Tools. Memories. Not just the exomemory, but something else, bigger. Do you know where?’

‘No.’ She frowns. ‘But I have an idea. It’s going to take something bigger than just gogol pirates to get me to help you, though. And your new girlfriend owes me a new apartment.’

Interlude WISDOM

It is only a few steps from death back to life. There is light ahead: but every step is like being immersed in water, slow and heavy, and Bathilde feels herself floating upwards, rising out of her quicksuited body. She sees herself struggling forward below, brass helmet gleaming in the light. It seems right, for some reason. She lets her body fall away and rises towards the light above. Finally, she thinks—

—only to step into Martian twilight, almost falling down, but supported by a pair of strong arms. She gasps for breath, blinking. Then she looks back at the Hallway of Birth and Death; a low, long, rectangular structure printed by builder Quiet. It sits in a low ditch a mile away from the city’s path, in Martian desert proper. It is nothing but gravel and sand glued together with bacterial paste, with thin slits and peepholes on its sides. Close to the hulking phoboi wall of the Quiet, it looks like a child’s construction block. But inside—

‘Oh my,’ Bathilde says, drawing a deep breath.

‘So, what did you think?’ asks Paul Sernine, the architect of her brief death. He supports her gently, guiding her away from the exit as other dazed guests emerge. Her protege is grinning triumphantly behind the glass of his helmet. ‘You look like you could use a drink.’

‘Oh yes,’ says Bathilde. Paul offers her a champagne glass in a little q-dot bubble. She takes it and drinks, glad of the clear taste in the dry air of the helmet. ‘Paul, you are a genius.’

‘You don’t regret your patronage, then?’

Bathilde smiles. All around, the party is getting started. She is glad that the publicity campaign was successful; viral co-memories of the intense moments in the Hallway. And it was a nice symbolic gesture to have it outside the Wall, to add a tiny bit of danger to the proceedings.

‘Not in the slightest. We’ll have to get the Voice to incorporate something like this in the city permanently. It would do us a world of good. Whatever gave you the idea?’

Paul arches his dark eyebrows. ‘You know how much I hate being asked that.’

‘Oh, please,’ Bathilde says. ‘You love talking about yourself.’

‘Well, if you must know – I took inspiration from Noguchi’s Hiroshima piece. Birth and death. Something we’ve forgotten how to face.’

‘Curious,’ Bathilde says. ‘That is not that different from something that Marcel over there’ – she points at a young black man looking at the Hallway’s yawning black exit with a disdainful look – ‘proposed to the Voice a few months ago.’

‘Ideas are cheap,’ Paul says. ‘It’s all in the execution.’

‘Indeed,’ Bathilde says. ‘Or perhaps your new muse helped.’ A red-haired woman in a dark quicksuit is standing a short distance away, touching the rough surface of the Hallway.

‘Something like that,’ Paul says, looking down.

‘Don’t waste more time talking to an old woman,’ Bathilde says. ‘Go and celebrate.’

Paul grins at her again, and for a moment she almost regrets that she decided to be professional with him. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he says, gives her a slight bow and vanishes into the quicksuited crowd, an instant centre of