Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief

‘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 a gevulot mask is when he speaks to Isidore. And it is clear that he is able to alter his appearance at will. Distantly, he wonders if a part of the unease he feels is fear: perhaps le Flambeur is out of his league.

He stops for a moment under one of the Avenue’s cherry trees and breathes in the smell of the blossoms to clear his head. Nothing but reputation and a certain flair separate his enemy from any common gogol pirate. Somewhere, le Flambeur will have made a mistake, and Isidore is going to find it.

Gritting his teeth, he heads for the side alleys of the Avenue, to find a Watchmaker’s shop.

‘Interesting,’ says the Watchmaker, squinting at Unruh’s Watch through a massive brass eyepiece. ‘Yes, I think I can tell you how it was done.’

The eyepiece lens flickers with digital information. The Watchmaker is a lanky, middle-aged man in a black T-shirt with ripped sleeves, blue hair, a scraggly moustache and ears stretched by implants and earrings. His workshop is a cross between a quantum physics laboratory and a horologist’s workspace, full of sleek humming boxes with holodisplays hovering around them and neatly sorted piles of tiny gears and tools on wooden work surfaces. Violent music plays in the background, and the Watchmaker bops his head up and down frantically to its rhythm as he works. After Isidore told him the story of Unruh, he was more than happy to help, although it takes some effort to ignore the occasional lewd glance he casts at the young man.

He pulls something out of the Watch with the pincers that the fingers of his gloves end in, miniature hands with fingers extending to the molecular level. He holds it up against a light. It is barely visible, a tiny flesh-coloured spider. He places it into a tiny tempmatter bubble and magnifies it: it becomes an insectoid monster the size of a hand. Isidore takes out his magnifying glass, prompting a curious glance from the Watchmaker.

‘This baby here has EPR states in its belly,’ the Watchmaker says. ‘It wormed its way into the ion traps of the Watch where the Time credits are stored, got the stuff in its stomach entangled with the trap quantum states, sent out a signal of some kind – and bamf, the states got teleported away. Almost the oldest trick in the quantum mechanic’s handbook, although this is the first time I’ve seen it used to steal Time.’

‘Where would the receiver be?’ Isidore asks.

The Watchmaker spreads his hands. ‘Could be anywhere. Qupting does not need a strong signal. Could be in space, for all I know. This little bug is definitely not from around here, by the way. Sobornost, for my money.’ He spits to the floor. ‘I hope you catch ’em.’

‘Me too,’ Isidore says. ‘Thank you.’ He looks around the shop. There is something familiar about the Watches under the glass counter, something that tickles his mind-

A Watch. A heavy brass face. A silver band. The word Thibermesnil-

Where does the memory come from?

‘Are you all right, son?’ asks the Watchmaker.

‘Yes, I’m fine. I just need to sit down for a moment.’ Isidore sits down on the chair the quantum horologist offers. Closing his eyes, he revisits the exomemories from the party. There: a bizarre sense of seeing double, just after he spoke to the thief, just before he stole Time from Unruh. Of course: if the thief used Isidore’s own identity key to pretend to be him, he has access to the exomemories created during those moments.

‘Could you turn the music down, please?’

‘Sure. Sure. Would you like a glass of water?’

He massages his temples, carefully sifting through the memories, separating the ones that are his from the ones that should not be. He looked at his Watch. That is his Watch . And there are other thoughts there too, glimpses of architectural drawings, a beautiful woman with a scar on her face, and a butterfly-like spaceship with glittering wings. Emotion, too: arrogance and self-confidence and bravado that make him angry. I’m going to get you , he thinks. See if I don’t .

He opens his eyes, head pounding, accepts the offered glass and drinks deep. ‘Thank you.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘One more question, and then I’ll stop bothering you. Have you ever seen this Watch?’ He passes a co-memory of the Watch he just saw to the Watchmaker.