Chris Moriarty - Spin State

“Why do you work for her, if that’s what you think?”

He grinned. “The party favors, darling. Now tell me about Korchow.”

And she did, in spite of Metz and Helen’s warning and the voice inside her that whispered she was risking what she couldn’t afford to lose. She told him everything. Just like she always did.

“May I smoke?” Cohen asked when she’d finished.

She nodded, and he spent the next forty seconds choosing, cutting, and lighting a hand-rolled cigar with minute concentration.

“Nice lighter,” Li said.

“You like it? I found it in the back of a drawer yesterday. Must have been sitting in there since… well, before you were born, probably.” He flipped it open again, blinked at the blue flame, and handed it to Li to look at. “Present from my second husband. He had exceptionally good taste for a mathematician. Most of them shouldn’t be allowed to dress themselves.”

Li figured she was supposed to laugh at that, so she did, and then set the lighter on the table between them.

“So,” Cohen said, toying with the lighter, “have I ever told you the story of the Affair of the Queen’s Necklace?”

“The queen’s what?”

“ L’affaire du collier de la reine .” He sounded shocked. “Don’t humans teach history in those schools of theirs anymore?”

“Slept through it.”

Cohen sniffed delicately. Li had seen an old flat film once about French aristocrats on Earth. The men had all worn embroidered waistcoats and used snuff instead of cigarettes. Cohen’s gesture reminded her of the well-bred, dainty sniffs with which those long-dead aristocrats had taken their tobacco.

“Well,” he said, “here’s the short version. Try to stay awake for it. The place is Paris. The time, the eve of the Revolution. The players, the king, the queen, the Cardinal de Rohan. Rumor has it that the cardinal was also the queen’s lover… but I’m sure that had nothing at all to do with how things ended up for the poor fellow.

“In any case, our story begins with the arrival of a mysterious Jew. It’s always a Jew, you know. I could say more about that, but I think we can postpone a discussion of the roots of European anti-Semitism to a later date. In any case, my coreligionist arrived bearing princely treasure. To wit, one fantastically expensive diamond necklace of scandalously uncertain origin. No sooner had the queen seen this necklace than she knew she had to have it. Negotiations began. Eventually the queen and the Jew agreed on a rather substantial price. Two-thirds of the gross national product of France, to be precise.”

Li choked on her wine. “For a piece of jewelry? That’s ridiculous!”

“Mmm.” Cohen looked amused. “I seem to recall you spending a good six months’ pay on a certain original-issue hand-rebuilt Beretta, O Parsimonious One. What did you call it? Sweet?”

“That’s different,” Li protested. “Professional equipment.”

He puffed on his cigar, grinning. “Well, just think of diamond necklaces as professional equipment for queens.”

She snorted.

“Quite. Anyway, the queen asked the king to buy the necklace for her. The king must have shared your opinion about the value of diamond necklaces; he said no.”

“And thus the tale ends. Not much of a story, Cohen.”

“Don’t tease,” he said, smirking at her. “As you know—or would know if you had ever applied your considerable intelligence to anything but wreaking high-tech havoc—queens in those days didn’t have much practice in taking no for an answer. Thus, the queen decided to go behind her husband’s back.”

“Go where behind his back?” Li asked. “Why didn’t she just buy it on her own credit if she wanted it so much?”

Cohen blinked, momentarily at a loss. “Right,” he said. “Um, we’ll discuss women’s rights and sexism when we have that talk about anti-Semitism, shall we?” He looked suspiciously at her. “Unless you’re pulling my leg.”

Li grinned. “Easy target.”

“Not nice, my dear,” Cohen said. But his smile took the sting out of it, and Roland’s long-lashed eyes sparkled with laughter.

This was one of those nights when Cohen was all there, Li realized. Really on . As always at these times, she felt she was at the blazing heart of a sun, basking in the heat of the AI’s personality, unable to remember the doubts and the shadows.

“Well, finish the story,” she said. She pulled out a cigarette and leaned in for Cohen to light it. “And make sure someone gets shot soon. You expect me to stay awake, you’d better play to the cheap seats.”

Cohen’s smile widened. “You’re in fine form tonight. So where was I? Ah, yes. It’s not clear whether the queen asked first or the cardinal offered first. But in the end, he agreed to buy the necklace for her on the understanding that she would repay him, covertly of course, with tax money.

“The rest of the story is brief and sordid. The upshot of it was that before the queen even got a chance to wear the infamous necklace it was stolen.”

“By who?”

“By whom, my love. No one knows. No one ever found out. But the die was already cast, even before the court case and the scandal sheets. For the cardinal, it was the end of everything. He lost his fortune, his credibility, and, worst of all, the patronage of his king. All for a necklace that the queen never got to wear and no one could pay him for.”

Li waited for Cohen to go on, but he didn’t. “So what’s your point?” she asked finally.

“Helen has asked you to produce something for her. Sharifi’s dataset, maybe. Maybe something else, something she thinks may fall into her hands once she has the data. If she’s asking you, it can only be because she can’t ask the General Assembly—or worse, because she’s already asked and gotten the wrong answer. Be careful what you pay for her little bauble. And make sure you’re not the one caught out in the cold when the bill comes due.”

Li felt her carefree mood slipping away. She dropped her head into her hands and scrubbed at her face with numb, cold fingers. “You’re telling me to steer clear of something I can’t see,” she said. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“You can’t,” Cohen said. He sounded particularly gentle; but maybe it was just the timbre of Roland’s young voice she was hearing. “Just don’t wait until you hear the surf on the rocks to start turning the ship, that’s all. In the meantime, find out who the players are, what they want—and how far they’ll go to get it.”

“That’s your advice?” she said, head still in her hands. “I could have gotten more out of a damn fortune cookie!”

“You could always resign,” Cohen said softly.

Li took her hands from her face and looked up at him. “Quit, you mean.” She felt a flush rising in her cheeks. “I don’t quit.”

Cohen put a hand over one of hers, held it there lightly. “I’m not saying you should,” he told her. “Just that you can, if things get bad. I’ll help. It’s there for the asking. Anything.”

Anything. Meaning money, of course. And taking it would make her no different than any of his other hangers-on.

“I’ve got it taken care of, if it comes to that,” she said awkwardly—and lying through her teeth, too. “And there’s other jobs out there. Security. Planetary militia. But… thanks, I guess.”

They sat for a moment, he with his hand still set lightly on hers, not quite looking at each other.

“You come here much?” Li asked, slipping her hand out from under his and scanning the room around them.

“Occasionally.”

“It’s ridiculous, you know. Everyone here’s ridiculous.”

“I know.”

“I guess you’re going to tell me that’s why you like it. Or… what was it? That I lack an existential sense of the absurd?”