The Quantum Thief

‘I did what I had to do. She deserved it,’ Isidore says. ‘She is a criminal.’ The memory of the chocolatier’s death is still in his belly, cold and hard.

The Gentleman has removed his hat. Beneath, whatever material the mask is made from follows the contours of his head: it makes him look younger, somehow.

‘And you are criminally stupid. You should have shared gevulot with me, or met with her somewhere else. And as for deserving—’ The Gentleman pauses.

‘You knew it was her,’ Isidore says.

The Gentleman is silent.

‘I think you knew from the beginning. It was not about her, it was about me. What were you trying to test?’

‘It must have occurred to you that there is a reason that I haven’t made you one of us.’

‘Why?’

‘For one thing,’ the Gentleman says, ‘In the old days, on Earth, what they used to call tzaddikim were often healers.’

‘I don’t see what that has to do with anything,’ Isidore says.

‘I know you don’t.’

‘What? Was I supposed to let her go? Show mercy?’ Isidore bites her lip. ‘That’s not how mysteries get solved.’

‘No,’ says the Gentleman.

There is a shape in the one word, Isidore can feel it: not solid, not certain, but unmistakably there. Anger makes him reach out and grasp it.

‘I think you are lying,’ says Isidore. ‘I’m not a tzaddik because I’m not a healer. The Silence is not a healer. It’s because you don’t trust someone. You want a detective who has not Resurrected. You want a detective who can keep secrets.

‘You want a detective who can go after the cryptarchs.’

‘That word,’ the Gentleman says, ‘does not exist.’ He puts on his hat and gets up. ‘Thank you for your help.’ The tzaddik touches Isidore’s face. The touch of the velvet is strangely light and gentle.

‘And by the way,’ the Gentleman says, ‘she will not like the chocolate shoes. I got you something with truffles instead.’

Then he is gone. There is a box of chocolates in the grass, neatly tied with a red ribbon.

Interlude THE KING

The King of Mars can see everything, but there are places where he chooses not to look. Usually, the spaceport is one of them. But today, he is there in person, to kill an old friend.

The arrival hall is built in the old Kingdom style, a vast, grand space with a high dome. It is barely filled by the colourful crowd of visitors from other worlds, walking gingerly in the unfamiliar Martian gravity, trying to get used to the feel of guest gevulot on their skin.

Invisible and inaudible to all, the King walks through the throng of aliens: Realm avatars, scrawny Belt people in their medusa-like exoskeletons, flittering Quick Ones, Saturnian zoku folk in baseline bodies. He stops by a statue of the Duke of Ophir and looks up past the cracked features, defiled by the Revolutionaries. He can see the beanstalk through the dome high above, an impossible line shooting up at the rust-coloured sky, a pit of vertigo if you try to follow it with your gaze. Nausea assaults him: the compulsion implanted in him by rough hands centuries ago is still there.

You belong to Mars, it says. You will never leave.

Fists clenched, the King makes himself look as long as he can bear it, rattling the chain in his mind. Then he closes his eyes and starts looking for the other invisible man.

He lets his mind wander through the crowd, looking through other eyes, looking for traces of manipulation in fresh memories like disturbed leaves in a forest. He should have done this before. There is something pure about being here in person. For the King, memories and actions have almost become one over the years, and the sharp taste of reality is exhilarating.

The memory trap is subtle, hidden in the fresh exomemory of a Realm flesh-avatar whose eyes the King looks through. It is recursive: a memory of a memory itself, almost swallowing the King in an infinite tunnel of déjà vu, like the vertigo of the beanstalk, pulling him inwards.

But the memory game is the King’s game. With an effort of will, he anchors himself back in the present, isolates the toxic memory, follows it back to its source, peels back the layers of exomemory until only the kernel of reality is left: a thin, bald man with hollow temples and an ill-fitting Revolutionary uniform, standing a few metres away from him and staring at him with dark eyes.

‘André,’ the King says chidingly. ‘What do you think you are doing?’

The man gives him a defiant look, and for a moment there is an older memory that comes from deep within the King, a real memory: of the hell that they went through together. Such a pity.

‘I come here sometimes,’ André says. ‘To look out from our goldfish bowl. It’s good to see the air and giants beyond, you know.’

‘But that is not why you are here,’ the King says softly. His tone is gentle, fatherly. ‘I don’t understand. I thought we agreed. No more deals with them. And here you are. Did you really think I would not find out?’