The Quantum Thief

I know. We’ll get her back.

‘Mieli? You’re up.’ Mieli flinches. Got to go. Got to sing. She suppresses a burp.

‘I can’t believe you talked me into this,’ she says.

‘I get that a lot,’ the thief says. ‘You know, you are the only person I can really trust here. So don’t worry. I’ve got your back.’ She nods, feeling a lump in her throat, or his, perhaps. A little unsteadily, she gets on stage.

The songs come out of her in a flood. She sings of ice. She sings of the long journey of Ilmatar from the burning world, of the joy of wings and the ancestors in the alinen. She sings the song that makes ships. She sings the song that seals a koto’s doors against the Dark Man. She sings of home.

When she is done, the audience is quiet. Then the handclaps start, one by one.

Much later, they walk back together. The thief has her arm, but it does not feel wrong, somehow.

Back in the hotel, when it is time to say good night, the thief does not let go of her hand. She can feel his arousal and tension through the biot link. She touches his cheek and pulls his face closer to hers.

Then the laughter comes, bubbling up from her like the song earlier, and the hurt look on his face makes it impossible to stop.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, doubled up, tears in her eyes. ‘I can’t help it.’

‘I apologise,’ says the thief, ‘for not seeing the humour.’ His face is so full of hurt pride that Mieli thinks she’s going to die. ‘Fine. I’m going to get myself a drink.’ He turns to leave with an abrupt twist on his heel.

‘Wait,’ she says, sniffing and wiping her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you for the thought. It’s just … funny. But really. Thank you for tonight.’

He smiles, a little.

‘You’re welcome. See, sometimes it is good to do what you want.’

‘But not all the time,’ she says.

‘No.’ The thief sighs. ‘Maybe not all the time. Good night.’

‘Good night,’ Mieli says, suppressing one more giggle, turning to go.

There is a sudden lurch in her gevulot, a sudden recollection that there is someone else in the room.

‘Oh my,’ says a voice. ‘I hope I am not interrupting anything.’

There is a man sitting in the thief’s usual balcony seat, smoking a small cigar. The sudden pungent smell is like a bad memory. He is young, with black, swept-back hair. He has draped his coat over the chair, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up. He grins, showing a row of sharp, white teeth.

‘I thought it was time that we had a little chat,’ he says.

14 THE DETECTIVE AND THE ARCHITECT

Isidore looks at Unruh’s dead body for the second time. The millenniaire looks less peaceful in death than the previous night: his pale face is twisted in a hideous grimace, and there are red marks on his forehead and temples. His fingers are curled into claws.

It is cold in the crypt chamber and Isidore’s breath steams. The locked-up gevulot here makes everything feel unreal and slippery, and the silence of the three Resurrection Men who escorted him here does not help. The red- robed figures, faces hidden by gevulot and darkness, stand unnaturally still, without fidgeting or, it seems, breathing.

‘I appreciate you letting me come down here,’ he says, addressing the one with the golden infinity symbol at his (or her?) breast. ‘I realise that this is somewhat … unusual.’

There is no reply. He is almost certain that the Resurrection Man is the same one he spoke to earlier at the Resurrection House, after realising what the thief was planning to do. After the city quake, they brought him here, to show him what had happened, but so far no one has spoken a word.

It was the only logical conclusion: the only reason to steal such a small amount of Time was to give it back, to carry out something criminal in the underworld. Poor Unruh. The pieces do not fit, and it makes him uncomfortable.

He studies the scene with his magnifying glass. There are two different types of body preservation gel on the floor, in different states of coagulation: Unruh’s and someone else’s. That fits with his theory of how the thief got in: by somehow pretending to be dead, then opening an entrance to a heavily armed accomplice. He makes a mental note to check the exomemories of all the memento mori agoras where the Time beggars go to die.

There are also traces of bizarre artificial cells – far more complex than anything from an Oubliette synthbio body – under Unruh’s fingernails, clear signs of a struggle. And the marks on his head and the trace damage in his dead brain indicate a forced upload.

‘Would it be possible to bring him back, just for a minute?’ Isidore asks the Resurrection Men. ‘We could use his testimony, to figure out exactly what happened here.’ He is unsurprised that the red-robed underworld guardians only reply with silence: they are not willing to compromise the resurrection laws for any purpose, even to solve crimes.

He walks around the room, thinking. One of the Resurrection Men is treating the damaged Quiet the thief’s accomplice attacked. Isidore has already inspected the bullet, a little sliver of diamond. Whatever internal structure it once had, it has fused into a solid mass.

The thing that bothers him is the lack of motive. The incident at the party, and now this: it has nothing in common with the gogol pirate cases he has either read about or been involved in. By all accounts, the thief made no attempt whatsoever to gain access to Unruh’s gevulot. It is a non-crime. Some Time was stolen, and returned, with two separate copies of Unruh’s mind – which, of course, are completely useless without his gevulot keys to decrypt them. And how was the Time stolen in the first place?

‘Do you mind if I have a look at this?’ He picks up Unruh’s Watch, carefully disentangling its chain from the millenniaire’s hand. ‘I want to have this investigated.’

The Resurrection Man with the infinity sign nods slowly, takes a little unadorned Watch from his pocket and touches it and Unruh’s Watch with a Decanter. Then he places the new Watch exactly where the old one was and gives Unruh’s sleek black timepiece to Isidore.

‘Thank you,’ Isidore says.

The Resurrection Man shoves his hood back and opens his gevulot a little, revealing a round, friendly face. He clears his throat.

‘Apologies … we spend so much time with … our Quiet brothers, that it is hard to …’

‘That’s all right,’ Isidore says. ‘You have been very kind.’

The man takes something from his pocket. ‘My partner … down there …’ He points at the floor. ‘When un- Quiet … he was a … fan.’ He coughs. ‘So I was wondering … could you … perhaps … an autograph?’

He holds out a newspaper clip covered in tempmatter film. Adrian Wu’s article.

Sighing, Isidore takes it and digs out a pen from his pocket.

Isidore blinks at the daylight, glad to leave the dark facade of the Resurrection House behind. The wind on Persistent Avenue feels hot after the chill of the underworld, but the sound of human voices is refreshing.

The optogenetic attack at the party left him feeling disoriented, with a mild headache. A med-Quiet inspected him along with the rest of the guests, but found no permanent traces of an infection. It was able to isolate the virus, and when Isidore and Odette searched the grounds, they found the discarded flower that had been used to spread it. Isidore carries it with him in his shoulder bag, safely wrapped in a smartmatter bubble.

He has not slept, but the thoughts racing through his head won’t let him rest. And whenever he thinks about the thief, there is a tingle of shame in his belly. They were so close, face to face – and he stole both Isidore’s countenance and the entanglement ring. How the identity theft was accomplished is yet another mystery. As far as Isidore knows, there is no way the thief should have been able to gain any access to his gevulot.

Not that the thief left any traces of himself in the garden exomemory either: the only time he appears without