Hannu Rajaniemi - The Quantum Thief

‘I did teach you well, didn’t I?’ she says.

‘You did. Were we… you know, alone?’

‘Oh, you are worried about hurting poor little Mieli’s feelings? How nice of you to get attached to her. I admit I’m a little sentimental about her as well. It’s like having a favourite pen or a lucky charm.’ She stretches. Even the scar looks different on her face, more mischievous. ‘But don’t worry, she is with the ship. We are all alone. I have you all to myself. I should have done this sooner, but there are only so many of me, you know.’

‘It’s hard to believe that I don’t remember you,’ I say. ‘Except – when I came out from the Prison, there was a flash. Another prison, on Earth. I was reading a book-’

‘That was the first time we met,’ she says. ‘You were a street apache, back then, in the big city, with desert sand between your toes. So rough, so brave. And look at you now. A diamond. Or you will be one again soon. And then-’ she smiles – ‘and then you can thank me properly.’

‘You heard what I told Mieli, right?’ I say. ‘I don’t approve of what you are doing with the cryptarchs.’

She waves her hand. ‘Nonsense. Jean, you don’t know anything about what is really going on here. They have done a good job with this place. The Oubliette works . They are happy here. Even you thought you were happy here when you came here, last time.’ She looks at me, with a hint of poison in her eyes. ‘I think your idealism has less to do with politics than with a desire to impress that freckle-faced little bitch.’

‘A prison is a prison even if you don’t know it is one,’ I say. ‘And I have a problem with prisons.’

‘Poor baby. I know you do.’

‘And do you know what else I have a problem with? Breaking promises.’ I swallow. ‘I know I owe you. And I will pay my debt no matter what. But I’m not going to go back on my word, not even for you.’

‘And how are you going to keep your promises, my little flower prince?’

‘Well,’ I say. ‘I promised to be a good boy. So I’m going to start by getting arrested.’

‘What?’

‘You know that q-spider I made? The time-stealing trick? Well, I made two.’ I look at my Watch. ‘This would never have worked on Mieli: I have to say it seems she knows me much better than you do. And you were much more susceptible to certain… distractions: you should have seen the charm I turned on her last night, with no results. But you? You are about to run out of Time.’

She moves, faster than I can see. Her knee presses painfully in my stomach. Her hands are around my throat. Her face is a mask of rage. I can’t breathe. I can see the dial of her Watch, ticking towards zero-

‘I’m – going to-’ she screams.

There is a little brass ting from her Watch. She becomes a black, still statue. Whatever you say about Oubliette technology, the temporary gevulot system they give visitors is pretty good, almost like military-grade utility fog. You don’t go to the Quiet, but it cuts you off from the rest of the world, shuts your vital functions down. Her grip on my throat loosens and she topples off the bed, a winged statue of black marble, unmoving.

I shower and get dressed, whistling to myself. Down at the hotel lobby, I tip my hat to the white-uniformed immigration official and the two large Quiet with him: I love it when civil servants do their jobs efficiently.

Outside, it is going to be a beautiful day. I put on my blue-tinted glasses and go looking for Raymonde.

I send Raymonde a co-memory to meet me at the park, on our vantage point near Montgolfiersville. The reply comes quickly: I remember she will be there. I make my way through the Maze in a full gevulot wrapping, hoping that Perhonen ’s new anti-cryptarch co-memory will do its job according to plan.

She is there before me, sitting on our bench with a temp-matter coffee cup, watching the balloons. She raises her eyebrows when she sees I’m alone.

‘Where is your Oortian chaperone? If you think this is going to be another one of your romantic encounters-’

‘Ssh.’ I flick the viral co-memory at her. She accepts it and wrinkles her nose. Her expression changes from a frown to pain to astonishment. Good. It worked . The only side effect I noticed was the lingering bad smell.

‘What the hell was that?’ She blinks. ‘I have a headache now.’

In words and co-memories, I fill her in on the results of the Unruh operation, the visit from the cryptarchs and my disagreement with Mieli’s employer – although I leave out a few more intimate details about the latter.

’You did this?’ she says. ‘I never thought you would-’

‘You can do whatever you want with it,’ I say. ‘Stage a revolution. Give them to the other tzaddikim as a weapon. I don’t care. We don’t have a lot of time. When Mieli comes back online, she is going to shut me down: if you have any pull with the immigration Quiet, please try to get them to slow the process down. I need to find my secrets before that.’

She looks down. ‘I don’t know where they are.’

‘Oh.’

‘I was bluffing. I was angry. I wanted to show you… what I had become. That I had moved on. And I wanted some leverage.’

‘I understand.’

‘Jean, you are a bastard. You will always be a bastard. But you did good this time. I don’t know what else to say.’

‘You can let me remember being a bastard,’ I say. ‘All of it.’

She takes my hand. ‘Yes,’ she says.

They are her memories, not mine. But when she opens her gevulot, something clicks . It is as if a flower opens in my head, fed by what she is giving, blooming, growing; parts of me joining with parts of her, making something more. A shared secret, hidden from the Archons.

Mars, twenty years ago. I am tired. There is a weight that comes from years and transformations, from being a man and a gogol and a zoku member and a copyfamily, from living in one body, many bodies, in particles of thinking dust; from stealing jewels and minds and quantum states and worlds from diamond brains. I am a shadow, thin, faded, stretched.

The Oubliette body I wear makes things simpler, a heartbeat in unison with the ticking of a Watch, making things delightfully finite. I walk along Persistent Avenue and listen to human voices. Everything feels new again.

A girl sits on a park bench, looking at light dancing among the balloons of Montgolfiersville. She is young, and has a look of wonder on her face. It looks like a reflection. I smile at her. And, for some reason, she smiles back.

It is hard to forget what you are, even with Raymonde. Her friend Gilbertine gives her lover a look that I want to steal. Raymonde finds out. She leaves me, and goes back to her slowtown.

I follow her, to Nanedi City, where white houses climb up the sides of the valley like a smile. I ask for forgiveness. I beg. She doesn’t listen.

So I tell her about the secrets. Not all of them, just enough that she understands the weight. I tell her I don’t want them anymore.

And she forgives.

But it still isn’t enough. The temptation is there, always, to take on a different form, to escape.

My friend Isaac tells me about memory palaces and the nine Dignities of God.

I make a memory palace of my own. It is not just a mental space to store memorised images. My secrets are heavier than that. Hundreds of years of life. Artifacts stolen from the Sobornost and the zokus, minds and lies and bodies and tricks.

I craft it from buildings and human beings and entangled qubits; out of the fabric of the City itself. And most of all, my friends. They are all so trusting, so open, so accepting. They suspect nothing, not even when I give them custom-made Watches, my nine Dignities. I fill their exomemories with things that belong to me. I put picotech assemblers stolen from Sobornost in nine buildings, to remake it all if I need to.