But I am a better thief than a philosopher, and it is too late for that anyway. I need to find Matjek Chen, and I need to start somewhere. And the only thing I remember is the fire-eater in Paris.
Chen has come to the banks of the Seine to watch the fire-eater, and Jean le Flambeur has come to watch him.
It is evening, a sharp tinge of autumn in the air, Notre Dame looming on the other side of the river like a great stone spider, dwarfed by the silver spires of the Cite Nouvelle in the sky. The fire-eater is an old, bare-chested Brazilian man whose muscles look like bundles of ropes. Firelight from a dozen torches spinning in a metal wheel plays on his deep brown skin. He picks one, bends his neck, and slowly thrusts the torch between his lips. A great gout of flame like the backlash of a blast furnace rushes out, and the fire-eater’s cheeks and throat glow like a jack-o-lantern.
Chen stares, mesmerised, as the old man licks the air with scintillant tongues of red and orange. Intense eyes, prematurely grey hair tousled by the wind. The father of Fedorovism as a young man.
The young Jean stands on the other side of the crowd, watching him. He is here on behalf of Josephine Pellegrini. I step into his head. He is a blank gogol, just part of the crowd, but as I follow his movements, the memories come back.
When the fire-eater finishes, I go to him.
‘Do you like the circus, Monsieur Chen?’ I ask.
He looks at me sharply. ‘Fire-eaters more than clowns,’ he says.
I take a slight bow. ‘I like to think of myself as more of a magician. But perhaps I can make you laugh.’
He smiles a cold smile. ‘I doubt it.’
‘I represent someone who has taken an interest in your . . . activities. A wealthy someone. They have a proposition for you.’
‘That’s not funny.’ He turns to leave.
‘I know it was you behind what happened in the Iridescent Gateway of Heaven,’ I say. ‘That wasn’t funny either.’
He gives me a look that is so cold that even across the centuries I feel my guts turning into ice. I wave a hand hastily.
‘Don’t worry, I have no intention of turning you in. That would be professional discourtesy. Hear me out. At least let me buy you a drink.’
‘I don’t drink,’ he says.
‘Then you can watch me drink. I know just the place.’
I take him to a bar called Caveau, next to Palais Royal, a few steps off a narrow street of empty windows. We take a few steps down the stairs into the basement bar, order a mojito from the shaven-headed barman from San Francisco. Chen watches me. His stare is intense, and I note with some respect how he is trying to get through the web of agents I have spun around him.
‘My employer is curious,’ I say. ‘Why are you doing this?’
He smiles faintly.
‘It’s simply that I don’t like the way the world is. Is that so hard to believe?’
‘I understand you didn’t like the Heaven either.’
The Fedorovists rescued minds from black box software camps, coordinated attacks by fabbed drones, remotely piloted by activists around the world. Too bad the liberated minds took over the infrastructure of Shenzen and crashed it. Living computer viruses, crazy from pain, able to break into any automated control system and make copies of themselves.
‘The Heaven was just a start,’ he says.
‘Fedorov saw this coming. The next revolution will be against death. I don’t like death. I thought that we would agree on that at least, Monsieur le Flambeur.’
I raise my eyebrows. Obviously, he is better informed than I thought. But then, having countless liberated slaves on his side gives him certain advantages.
‘I’m having enough trouble avoiding the police, let alone death. I’m not interested in ideology. What I do is just a game.’
‘It is not a game to me.’
What is it? What changed him? What made him who he is? The pearls of Martha Wayne. Uncle Ben. Whatever it is, I’m not going to find it here.
I wish I could see into his equipment, the primitive upload cap he wears, synchronising versions of himself into the cloud. But that data is forever lost in the Collapse.
‘My employer can see that. So she is offering to help you. Equipment. Money. Whatever you need, it’s yours.’
‘And what is their price?’
I smile. ‘Immortality, of course.’
I leave my past self and the chen drinking and contemplating the world that is coming. Unfortunately, this is going nowhere. There must be something else that I found before, something that convinced me there was a lost gogol of Matjek Chen on Earth. I instantiate a blank gogol in the vir and ask the barman to mix me a screwdriver. The embodiment and the alcohol feel good, but do not provide any answers.
A touch on my sleeve. A wooden mask looks at me, painted with faded colours, a grinning monster. It is made less threatening by the fact that the person who wears it is a little girl, in a dirty dress covered in soot stains, barefoot.
I blink.
‘What—’
She lifts a finger to her wooden mouth.
‘Ssh,’ she says.
I flip out of the temporary gogol to the 4D view. She is still there, a presence that does not belong. In four dimensions, she is an infinite chain of mirror images, a serpent. She motions me to follow.
‘I will help you,’ she says, ‘if you tell me a story.’
‘Who are you?’
‘A sister. A mother. A goddess. A princess. A queen. Tell me a story and I will take you to what you seek.’
‘What kind of story?’
‘A true story.’
On Mars, I left myself a memory trail, something triggered by my presence. Perhaps this is something similar. In that case, it’s best to play along.
Her ember eyes gleam behind the mask, full of curiosity.
‘It’s quite a long story,’ I say, ‘but I guess we have time.’
I order another drink and begin.
‘As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small talk.’
‘Thank you,’ she says when it’s over. Her voice is barely a whisper, wind blowing in a chimney. Then the world changes, and I am alone with three ghosts.
A dark-skinned man in a neat beard and a suit sits behind a table, looking at a young couple. A handsome young man with thick blond hair in jeans and a T-shirt, a tiny Asian woman who can’t stay still. She keeps touching the man’s forearm.
The man behind the desk smiles at them. Don Luis Perenna, Jannah Corporation, sales representative, director. A serial entrepreneur who has come up with yet another business model for the hyper-rich. I suppose I did the same thing, until I met Josephine.
He gives them an understanding look.
