Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief

‘I still don’t get it,’ she says, sitting back on the couch, letting herself coast on the bubbling feeling. ‘Why is it fun?’

‘It’s a game. Did you never play games back in Oort?’

‘We race. And compete in craft and väki song.’ She misses it, suddenly. ‘I used to like it, crafting, making things out of the coral. You visualise a thing. You find the words that it is . And you sing them to väki ; it grows and makes it. And in the end you have something that is truly yours, a new thing in the world.’ She looks away. ‘That’s how I made Perhonen . That was a long time ago.’

‘You see,’ the thief says, ‘for me, stealing is exactly the same.’ He looks serious, suddenly.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asks. ‘Why are you not back there, making things?’

‘I’m just doing what I have to,’ Mieli says. ‘That’s what I’ve always done.’ But she does not want to let the darkness well up.

‘Well, not tonight,’ says the thief. ‘Tonight, we are doing what we want to. We’re going to have fun. What do you want to do?’

‘Sing,’ Mieli says. ‘I would like to sing.’

‘I know just the place,’ the thief says.

The Belly: underground streets and walkways between the inverted towers. Pinpoints of Quiet lights below, newspaper drones selling stories of the city quake earlier during the day and the strange goings-on at the carpe diem party the night before.

The tiny bar is called the Red Silk Scarf. It has a small stage; the walls are covered in feed posters of musician lifecasts that throw flickering lights across a group of small round tables. They do open mike nights. The audience consists of a few young Martians who have seen everything, wearing perpetual expressions of being unimpressed. But the thief ushers them in, getting her into the program, talking to the landlord in hushed whispers while she waits at the bar, drinking more strange-flavoured alcoholic drinks from tiny glasses.

The thief insisted she spend time getting dressed, and with Perhonen ’s assistance she obliged, fabbing a dark pantsuit with platform shoes and an umbrella. The thief quipped that she looked like she was going to a funeral. He flinched when she said it could be his. That actually made her laugh. The strange clothes feel like armour, letting her feel like someone else, someone reckless. It is all a little fake, she knows: her metacortex will flush out all the intoxication and unnecessary emotions at the first sign of trouble. But it feels good to pretend.

How’s it going? she whispers to Perhonen. You should come and join us. I’m going to sing .

On stage, a girl in oversized sunglasses is doing something that combines poetry with abstract tempmatter images and the sound of her heartbeats. Mieli can see the thief cringing.

I’m sorry , the ship says. Busy solving a high-dimensional lattice cryptography problem with a thousand mathematics gogols. But I’m glad you’re having fun .

I miss her .

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.

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.