The Causal Angel (Jean le Flambeur) (25 page)

‘What did you do?’

‘What has dying always meant for us? Getting caught. I pretended to go after Chen again, just clumsily enough that he would catch me. And I made sure Joséphine would have reasons to get me out, gave her a template of myself to find from the billion variations in the Prison.’

I bow my head and squeeze my head between my fists.

‘You went to the Prison on
purpose
? Are you
insane
? Do you have
any idea
what it was like?’

He shakes his head. ‘Only in theory, I’m afraid. That was the point. But I’m hoping it will have been worth it for you.’ I throw my glass against the wall. It shatters, and the amber liquid pours down the crystal surface.

‘What do you mean, you bastard?
Nothing
is worth it!’

He looks at the shards and shakes his head. A second later, the tiny fragments rise to the air, a tiny galaxy of crystal, and reassemble themselves back into the glass in my hand. Only the whisky is gone. ‘The Gallery tries to keep things the way they are, so your temper tantrums will have little effect, I’m afraid. Except for the waste of a good drink. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.’

I roll my eyes. ‘So are you telling me that you went to the Dilemma Prison to become a
better person
?’

‘No, just different. But there are things we were never very good at. Altruism, compassion, cooperation. Or regret. I bet you’ve regretted past mistakes, tried to make up for them.’

‘But I
haven’t
—’

‘It doesn’t matter, as long as you tried. The template I gave Joséphine wasn’t
me
, precisely. Evolutionary algorithms are still one of the best ways to create new things. If you are here, if the book let you in, you are the best approximation of me – as far as I can tell – that the jewel might actually accept.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘There is one more job to do, Jean. A theft to end all thefts. Show them all. Steal the fire of the gods when it’s right under their noses. I will tell you how. And then –
change things.
The Sobornost clings to immortality that turns souls into cogs in a machine. The zoku get lost in silly games and Realms that lead nowhere. Chen always had a point. We don’t have to accept the way things are. We don’t have to do the same things, over and over and over.’ He smiles. ‘And don’t you just
hate
all those damn locks? Some bastard, a long time ago, made this Universe into a prison. I would imagine that you, of all people, would have a problem with that. What do you say?’

I sit down. I look at him, like looking into a mirror, only not. It burns in him, the sheer
wanting
, the fierce hunger of the boy in the desert. I can feel it on my face, too.

I remember
Perhonen. What are you going to do when this is over
? the ship asked me once. I think of Mieli, and Matjek.

Who have I been kidding? It’s never going to be over.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘I’m in.’

He clasps his hands together and grins. ‘Excellent! Let’s seal it with a drink.’

We clink glasses.

‘Here’s to being Prometheus,’ he says.

‘That sort of thing,’ I say, nodding.

We drink. He is right: there is a warm undercurrent in the whisky that tickles the throat and makes you want to laugh. And an afterglow that settles into a heavy feeling in the bottom of your stomach. But that’s not all: something else passes into me with the complex quantum information that encodes the taste, a liquid key. Then the
Leblanc
is back in my head, with Prime authorisation this time. I can see the firmament underlying the Gallery, software cages for past sins.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ he says.

I nod and place the glass back on the table, stretching.

‘Much better. Thank you.’

‘Now, do you want to hear what the plan is?’ He smiles conspiratorially.

‘No.’ I wink at him.

Then I punch him in the face as hard as I can.

It’s not much of a blow. It glances off the underside of his jaw, and the impact of bone on bone jars my hand painfully. But it is quite satisfying to watch him fall down, eyes rolling in his head. I take the bottle of whisky from the table and walk to the door.

He looks up at me, genuinely astonished, rubbing his jaw. ‘What the hell was that for?’

‘For a lot of things. We’re done here. I just played along to get the
Leblanc
back. I do have one last job to do, but it’s not yours. I’m going to save Mieli, pay my debts, and then it is over. No more Jean le Flambeur.’

‘You don’t know what you are saying. You are not
that
different from me. That’s just a story you have told yourself. The only way to escape the desert is to turn it into a garden. Trust me.’

‘Not trusting myself was a lesson I learned pretty well in the Dilemma Prison.’

He gets up, slowly, face dark with anger now. ‘Do you really think you can just walk away? I have protocols for scenarios like this. You are not the only le Flambeur out there. There are plenty more in the Prison.’ A shudder goes through the
Leblanc
’s systems: a sudden conflict with access rights. The partial me is attempting to regain its control of the ship.
That’s not good. The Ganimard-zoku can’t be far behind.

‘There is always a way out,’ I quote myself.

‘Not always,’ he says with a sad smile.

I grin and hold up the small golden key I stole from him when I smashed my glass.

‘Touché,’ I say. ‘Goodbye.’

Wait!’

I slam the glass door in his face and turn the key. It makes a small, final click in the lock. The glass frosts, and the other me becomes a statue, hands pressed against the door, mouth open to say words I no longer want to hear.

I stand in the Gallery, looking at the endless rows of frozen statues. I think about the other me – not the partial, the Prime who died to become me. What could have been so bad that he decided to become somebody else?

Here we are. All of us.

I could find out. All that I ever was that I thought was worth saving, past selves and identities, they are here, put in boxes like old letters that you can’t bring yourself to throw away.

I close my eyes.
He was right about one thing. It is time for a spring cleaning.

I reach out my hands and mind to the
Leblanc
, and close the Gallery around me. I hold it in my lap. There is sunlight on my face again. The world is rocking, gently. There are screams of birds, and the soft, endless sound of the sea.

‘What is it that you are reading, Monsieur d’Andrezy?’ asks a female voice.

I blink, remove my sunglasses and squint at Miss Nellie Underdown, who is looking at me from beneath a white parasol with her great dark eyes, smiling. ‘It’s just that you seem so terrifically engrossed in it, I should want to read it after you. One does get bored on this long voyage, you know!’

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ I get up and give her a slight bow. ‘Just a collection of rather weak detective stories. I could not finish it, in fact, and cannot in all honesty recommend it to you. But if you wish to be entertained, I am, of course, at your service.’ I offer her my arm. ‘How about a walk to the upper decks?’

She smiles demurely and hooks her small arm into mine. Later, standing in the bow of the ship, I make her gasp by throwing the book far into the sea. Its pages flutter like wings as it goes, and then it is lost in the foam of the
Provence
’s wake.

15

MIELI AND PROMETHEUS

The thief looks at Mieli. He looks younger than she remembers: his hair is thicker and jet-black, his eyebrows charcoal-dark. But his eyes and his arrogant smile are the same.

‘Dear friend,’ he says. ‘I am Jean le Flambeur. I steal things. Maybe you don’t remember me. I have been away a long time.’

‘Jean?’ she asks, in spite of herself. Her heart pounds.
If he made it, maybe
Perhonen
did, too.
She bites her lip. It is too early to give in to false hopes. The sting of Zinda’s betrayal is too fresh in her mind for her to have any confidence in the Universe.

The thief raises his eyebrows. ‘I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage!’

Of course. It’s just a partial, not a full gogol, just a conversation tree with a few neural states for colour.
Mieli wraps her freshly fabbed toga tighter around her, suddenly self-conscious. Barbicane is looking at her thoughtfully. They are in a featureless grey room in the Invisible Realm of the Great Game, and the Elder looks just as out of place as she does. It feels like only the thief belongs there, in his minimalistic white suit, leaning back in the metal chair.

‘Never mind,’ she tells it. ‘Go on.’

‘I freely admit I have a lot of catching up to do, especially when it comes to making the acquaintance of charming ladies. The fault is all mine.’ He leans forward towards Mieli. ‘To make it
very
clear to the entire System, I am going to demonstrate what I do. A comeback with a splash, if you will, as I already told your colleagues. Any signal boost would be much appreciated – I don’t want anyone to miss it!’

He looks at a large silver watch on his wrist and taps it with a deft forefinger. ‘In approximately fifty-six minutes, baseline time, I am going to steal all the quantum information stored in the F-ring of this planet.’

Mieli looks at Barbicane. ‘What does he mean?’

‘An excellent question!’ the thief-partial says. ‘You will have to ask your friends at the Gringotts-Zoku if you want a full answer to that one. But to put it briefly, no self-respecting zoku member wants to carry
all
their zoku jewels around all the time – a bit incovenient without Bags of Holding. And in case of wars, accidents and such, you want to keep at least a part of your q-self stashed away somewhere safe, so that if the Reaper visits, you don’t have to start again as the quantum equivalent of a level one kobold.’ He sighs.

Mieli frowns.
He doesn’t seem like himself. There is some hidden purpose behind this.
But the thief she knows is only the latest chapter in his long life, and flamboyant announcements of upcoming crimes are something that the Jean le Flambeur of times past was well known for.

‘Apparently, one hot jewel banking trend these days is that sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from nature. So if you want really long-term storage, you make your quantum memory look like natural objects. The rings are a good candidate. Introduce some rubidium impurities into the icy bodies there, couple them to the magnetosphere of Saturn, and you have a natural setting for quantum information storage. Hard vacuum, cold temperatures – a bit retro, but much more long-lived than the warm wet synthbio components the routers use. The F-ring has a few petaqubits of zoku data, mostly relating to Supra City infrastructure zokus, as I understand.’

The thief looks at Mieli from behind steepled fingers. ‘I am going to take it all.’ He glances at his watch again. ‘In fifty-six minutes! We’re in a fast-time Realm, I see. Very clever.’ He looks around. ‘Is that why the setting is so pedestrian? Or is it just traditional? Is one of you the bad cop?’ He leans towards Mieli again. ‘Is it you? You are far too beautiful to be the bad cop.’

Mieli narrows her eyes. ‘You have no idea,’ she says.

‘Ooh! Now I’m intrigued! At least it sounds like we have time to get to know each other. And by all means, think as hard as you can. It won’t help you.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Mieli asks.

‘Why does a scorpion sting? It’s in my nature!’ He purses his lips. ‘But yes, I know,
property
! How pedestrian, Jean!’ He winks at Mieli. ‘Well to be completely honest, this whole thing is a farewell gig. I have decided to retire after this one last job, and this little planet of yours caught my eye – Saturn is the god of old age, after all. And
Jean le Flambeur, King of Saturn
has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’

Mieli turns to Barbicane.

‘What are you – we – doing about this?’ She glances at the partial. It is smiling impassively, and giving her a lewd look she does not care for at all. ‘I take it can’t eavesdrop?’

‘No, we are in a sandbox here – nothing gets out.’ Barbicane plays with the coarse red hairs of his sideburns, braiding them with the tiny golden fingers of his manipulator arm.

‘My dear, the problem is not so much the nature of his crime, but certain information we believe he has in his possession. That is the reason we are involved. Please go on, my villainous friend.’

‘Thank you,’ the thief says. ‘You are far more polite than most of the people I have been speaking to. And your sandbox is hardly secure, by the way. Well, if you are a three-year-old child, perhaps—’

‘Please,’ Barbicane says, exasperated.

‘Just pointing out obvious facts! And speaking of obvious, I know what you must be thinking. You are zoku – distributed quantum minds with billions of members! What is to stop you from forming a dedicated detective zoku to apprehend Jean le Flambeur, that mischief-maker, and just throwing enough jewelled sleuths at the problem until you catch me?’

The thief inspects his fingernails. ‘How did it work out for you last time, Barbicane?’

Mieli takes a deep breath. In a way, the purpose radiating from the Great Game jewel and a touch of her old irritation at the thief make her feel clear-headed.
Perhaps this is an opportunity,
she thinks.
If I provide useful information to the Great Game, I can get closer to the Kaminari jewel again.

But it means betraying the thief.

The thought makes her gut wrench.
We had our differences, but we fought side by side. This place deserves every misery he can serve them. Is it really even him, or some other copy from the Dilemma Prison?

Or – is he still working for the pellegrini? He must be after the Kaminari jewel. He knows they have it. Then this is a distraction. I can reveal anything that does not compromise the true goal. It might even help him.