Hannu Rajaniemi: The Quantum Thief

‘Almost certainly. I still have a debt to pay, I’m afraid.’ I grin. ‘You are welcome to catch me if you can. But I think you are going to be too busy.’ I give the green creature a dark look. It is now trying to get into my lap. ‘Of course, others here don’t seem to have that problem.’

I get up. ‘I’d better get going. Mieli hasn’t killed anything for a few days now, and that always puts her in a bad mood.’

I shake his hand. ‘I’m not your father,’ I say, ‘but you are a better man than I am. Keep it that way. But if you are ever tempted by the other path, let me know.’

To my surprise, he hugs me, hard.

‘No thanks,’ he says. ‘Be seeing you.’

Can we go yet? Perhonen asks. Do we have to wait for him?

The ship sits in the walled trail of the city, near the battered and scorched Quiet wall. Mieli is outside in a quicksuit, walking her restlessness away. There are are reliefs on the wall that remind her of Oort, landscapes and rows upon rows of blank faces. She touches them and hears the faint song carved in them, inside her mind.

‘Hi,’ says Raymonde. She is wearing her Gentleman outfit, but without a mask, and instead of a suit she wears a faint foglet halo. She notices the reliefs and a look of sadness and guilt passes across her face.

‘Is everything all right?’ Mieli asks.

‘Just remembering that there is someone I need to see.’ Raymonde looks at Perhonen . ‘That’s a beautiful ship.’

Thank you, Perhonen says. But I’m not just a pretty face . Raymonde gives the ship a bow. ‘You too, have our gratitude,’ she says. ‘You didn’t have to do what you did.’

You can’t see it , the ship says, sapphire shell gleaming, but I’m blushing .

Raymonde looks around. ‘He isn’t here yet? No surprise there.’ She kisses Mieli on both cheeks. ‘Good luck, and safe journey. And thank you.’ She pauses. ‘When you opened your gevulot, you showed us your thoughts. I saw why you are doing this. For what it’s worth, I hope you find her.’

‘It’s not a matter of hope,’ Mieli says, ‘but will.’

‘Good answer,’ Raymonde says. ‘And – don’t be hard on him. I mean – be hard, but not too hard. He can’t help what he is. But he is not as bad as he could be.’

‘Are you talking about me?’ the thief says, stepping out of a zoku transport bubble. ‘I knew you would talk about me behind my back.’

‘I’ll wait in the ship,’ Mieli says. ‘We are leaving in five minutes.’

In the end, I don’t know what to say to her. So we stand in silence, on the red sand. The shadows the city casts flicker all around us, wings of light and dark, beating.

After a while, I kiss her hand. If she has tears in her eyes, the shadows hide them. She kisses me lightly, on the mouth. She stands there, watching, as I walk to the ship. I turn to wave as the ship’s skin opens, and blow her a kiss.

Inside the ship, I weigh the Box in my hand.

‘Are you going to open that thing or not?’ Mieli asks. ‘I’d like to know where we are going.’

But I already know.

‘Earth,’ I say. ‘But can you ask Perhonen to take her time? I’d like to watch the scenery.’

To my surprise, she does not object. Perhonen rises slowly and makes a turn above the Moving City, over the vein of Persistent Avenue, the green expanse of the Tortoise Park, the papercraft castles of the Dust District. The city wears a different face now, but I smile it at nevertheless. It ignores me and keeps moving.

We are halfway to the Highway before I realise that the detective stole my Watch.

It is springtime, and the Engineer-of-Souls is happy.

His guberniya virscape is a machine garden, vast and blooming. The seeds he planted during the long Dyson winter when the guberniya slowed itself down to shed its waste heat have blossomed, and now there is variety, variety everywhere.

His gogols swarm around him like a flock of white-coated birds as he plumbs its depths: plunging a billion pairs of hands into black soil where each particle is a cogwheel that fits together with its neighbours perfectly, to feel the seeds of new composite minds about to bloom. Engineer-Prime himself is everywhere, directing the culling of this memetic tree, watching that flock of genetic algorithms alight into a new parameter space from a branching process.

With infinite gentleness he pulls up a freshly bloomed shoot of a newly made gogol, one with a rare disorder that makes it think its body would be made of glass, easily shattered: something he thought lost centuries ago. Combined with an exquisite schizophrenia, it will result in a mind that can divide and recombine itself at will, integrating memories: something Matjek’s warminds will love. He splits off a gogol to carry on the mundane details of the work, and returns his attention to the big picture, letting Engineer-Prime shoot upwards to the sky, white lab coat flapping in the fresh breeze. Yes, that patch there will yield a good harvest of Dragonspeakers. In that vast labyrinth, single-minded Pursuers are already gestating: soon they will be ready to explore parameter spaces larger than worlds, mathematical ants, combing the vast Gödel universe for unproven theorems.

It occurs to the Engineer that he has never been happier: a quick search through his gogol library verifies the fact. He is more content than any Engineer has ever been, since his earliest days as a student in the University of Minsk – although one moment in time, with someone special, comes close. That, in itself, is worth splitting off a gogol and storing it into his Library, frozen in time.

So of course, it cannot last.

There is a ripple in the virscape as no less than two other Founders arrive, unannounced: waves of religious terror spread through the lesser gardener gogols, who prostrate themselves among the growing machines. A gestating warm-ind escapes its suddenly distracted handlers, a metallic spider of controlled poisonous aggression, demolishing a promising patch of Dreamers until the Engineer can stretch out one of his billion hands to unmake it. What a waste . Oblivious to the destruction they are causing, the two strangers stride towards the main concourse of the Garden. One of them is a small, unassuming Chinese man with grey hair in sober monkish robes. At least Matjek Chen, the most powerful Founder in all of Sobornost, has the courtesy not to appear in his full Founder form here.

But the other, a tall woman in a white summer dress, holding a delicate parasol, hiding her face-

Filled with sudden haste, the Engineer works quickly to contain the visitors in a subvirtual – no mean task, given that with their Founder powers, they could easily rip such illusions apart – and sends Engineer-Prime down to meet them.

The Garden becomes a true garden, with cherry trees in full bloom. There is a stone fountain in the Fedorovist style, heroic figures of a man and a woman holding a cup aloft. Lesser Engineer gogols arrange refreshments as Engineer-Prime goes to meet his visitors.

‘Welcome,’ he says, stroking his beard – a royal gesture, he thinks. He gives the two a slight bow. Chen acknowledges him with a barely perceptible nod. The Engineer tries to judge the seniority of this gogol: not the Prime, certainly, but enough of the Founder aura to hold true power.

The woman folds her parasol and smiles at him, diamonds glittering around her swanlike neck. ‘Hello, Sasha,’ she says.

He holds out a chair for her. ‘Joséphine.’

She sits down gracefully, crossing her legs, leaning delicately on the folded parasol. ‘It is such a lovely garden you have here, Sasha,’ she says. ‘It is no wonder that we never see you anymore. Why, if I lived in a place like this, I would not want to leave.’