The Quantum Thief

him want things he did not have was not difficult.

But it did not last. He went back to her, content not to even remember who Gilbertine was, chased after Raymonde to Nanedi and back. She accepted it as the way of things. But this, this she won’t accept.

Paul looks at her with a detached look on his face. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I didn’t have enough from you before.’ To her horror, she can feel something eating through her gevulot.

‘But you are quite right,’ Paul says quietly. ‘Paul Sernine could never leave. But he is staying here, you see, inside you and the others. Whereas me – there is somewhere else I need to be. Stealing the fire of the gods. Being Prometheus. That sort of thing.’

‘I don’t care,’ Gilbertine says. ‘You have a child with that girl.’

He flinches. ‘I would have remembered that,’ he says. ‘No, that does not seem right.’

‘Damn right it doesn’t,’ Gilbertine says, filling her voice with as much venom as she can draw from the old hurt.

‘You don’t understand. I would have not forgotten that.’ He shakes his head. ‘In any case, it doesn’t matter. We are not here to talk about me. This is all about you.’

Gilbertine pulls her shoulders back, reaching for the exomemory. ‘You are insane.’ A tingling sensation crawls across her scalp, and suddenly there is just a wall where the part of her that is connected to everything else should be. It is like having a phantom limb, trying to convince you that it is not gone, only inside her mind.

Paul stands up. ‘I’m afraid I’ve cut off your exomemory link. Don’t worry, you’ll get it back in a moment.’

Gilbertine takes a step back. ‘What are you?’ she hisses. ‘A vampire?’

‘Not at all,’ Paul says. ‘Now stay still. This will hurt a little.’

Gilbertine runs. It is hard to think, with the hole inside her head. The Watch. Whatever he is doing, it must be through the Watch. She claws at her wrist, to get it off—

—but she is not really running, it’s just a memory of running, and she is still standing in front of Paul whose eyes look a lot like those of the puss-in-boots—

He holds up the box. ‘See? I found out about this from the dreams of a poor boy hurt in the Spike. I took it from the zoku: they will never miss it.’

‘What is it?’ Gilbertine whispers.

‘A trapped god,’ Paul says. ‘I need to put it somewhere. That’s why you are here.’

The box starts to glow. It disappears from Paul’s hand. And then it is inside her head.

She remembers abstract shapes, a data structure like a vast metallic snowflake, sharp edges pressing against the soft parts of her mind. A flood of alien sensations passes through her exomemory. For a moment it is like a hot metal rod being pushed through her temples. Then the pain is gone, but a sense of weight remains.

‘What did you do to me?’

‘The same thing I did to all of you. Put things in a place where no one will look for them. In your exomemories, protected by the best cryptography in the System. In a place that will claim a price if I want them back. That was the last thing I had to dispose of. I am sorry about the discomfort. I hope you can forgive me.’ The not-Paul sighs. ‘For what it’s worth, your Paul had nothing to do with this.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Gilbertine says. ‘It’s not all about memory. A part of you is Paul, no matter who you think you are, no matter what you have done to your brain, no matter if he was just a mask you wore. And I hope he burns in hell.’ She wants to claw at his face. But the faint foglet halo around whatever the creature wearing Paul’s shape tells her that violence would be useless.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ he says. ‘I can’t let you remember any of this, of course. I hope you can comfort Raymonde in some way.’

‘Do what you want to my memory,’ she says. ‘I’m going to make sure she hates you forever.’

‘Perhaps I deserve that,’ he says. ‘Goodbye.’

He touches her forehead, and a wind blows through her mind—

*

Gilbertine blinks at the bright Phobos light. She is standing alone in the robot garden. She feels disoriented, and it takes a few moments to remember meeting Raymonde. What did she do after that? She ’blinks at the last few minutes, but finds them empty. Damn. Must be another Spike legacy glitch.

For some reason, she remembers the dream she had last night: a puss-in-boots, a closed door. Did she have a dream?

For a moment, she considers ’blinking the dream, too, but decides against it. There is too much to do in the waking world.

17 THE DETECTIVE AND THE GORDIAN KNOT

It takes Isidore the rest of the day to recover. The Quiet medics refuse to let him go before he is pumped full of synthbio nanodocs. His thoughts are a confused jumble, racing in all directions at once: but when he gets home, the exhaustion takes over and he collapses in his bed. He wakes up late after a long, dreamless sleep.

Frustratingly, rest does not offer any solutions, so he sits at the breakfast table for a long time, staring at the world through the kitchen window, trying to grasp where everything belongs, where the seams are, where everything fits together: the tzaddik, the thief, Time, the memory palaces. The wallpapers are a complex Escheresque jungle again, garish in the bright, mixed daylight. His thoughts are interrupted by a cheerful gevulot request.

‘Good morning,’ Lin says.

‘Hnnh,’ Isidore grunts. His roommate is wearing a more careful attire than usual, jewellery glinting in her ears. She smiles at Isidore and starts making breakfast with the fabber, a Spanish omelette.

‘Coffee and sustenance?’ she asks.

‘Yes, please.’ Isidore realises that he is starving. The hot food restores some of his fortitude. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it. You look like you need it.’

‘You know, I gave your creature a name,’ Isidore says, between mouthfuls.

‘What did you call him?’

‘Sherlock.’

She laughs. ‘That’s a good name. Do I dare to ask how the detective business is going? You were in the Herald again. Parties, thieves and death. You have an exciting life, M. Beautrelet.’

‘Well.’ Isidore massages his temples. ‘It has its ups and downs. Right now, I don’t really know what I’m doing. It is all very confusing. I can’t figure out what this thief is doing, or if he is really a thief in the first place.’

Lin gives his arm a little squeeze. ‘You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.’

‘What about you? Did something happen? You look … different.’

‘Well,’ Lin says, running a finger along the wood grains of the table surface. ‘I met someone.’

‘Oh.’ There is an odd twinge of disappointment that should not be there. He ignores it. ‘That’s great.’

‘Who knows? We’ll see how it goes. It’s kind of been there for a while, you know, and we just … decided to stop stepping around it.’ She grins. ‘But I’m hoping it’ll last long enough that we can have some sort of party here. If you could bring your girlfriend over, we could all cook together. Or do zoku people eat? Just a thought.’

‘It’s a little bit complicated at the moment,’ Isidore says. ‘I’m not sure I can exactly call her my girlfriend anymore.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Lin says. ‘It’s funny, no matter how smart you are, these things always get so tangled. I think after a while you just have to treat it like a Gordian knot. One cut, that’s it, and it’s open. Not so complicated anymore.’

Isidore looks up and stops chewing. ‘You know what? You are a genius.’ He swallows, gulps down the rest of his coffee and runs to his room, grabbing his coat. He pats Sherlock on the head and rushes to the door.