The Quantum Thief

André sighs. ‘A change is coming,’ he says. ‘We can’t survive much longer. The Founders have been weak, but that won’t last. They are going to eat us, my friend. Even you can’t stop it.’

‘There is always a way out,’ the King says. ‘But not for you.’

Out of courtesy, the King grants him a quick truedeath. A flash of a zoku q-gun, a breeze through exomemory eradicating all traces of the person once called André, his friend. He absorbs all of André that he needs. Passersby flinch at the sudden heat and then forget it.

The King turns to leave. Then he sees the man and the woman, the first in a dark suit and blue-tinted glasses, the second hunched in the gravity like a crone. And for the first time in the spaceport, the King smiles.

4 THE THIEF AND THE BEGGAR

The Moving City of the Oubliette, the Persistent Avenue on a bright morning, hunting for memories.

The streets here shift and change as walking platforms join or leave the city’s flow, but the wide Avenue always comes back, no matter what. It is lined with cherry trees, with streets and alleyways leading off it to the Maze, where the secrets are. The shops that you find only once, selling Kingdom toys or old tin robots from old Earth, or dead zoku jewels that fell from the sky. Or doors that only show themselves if you speak the right word or have eaten the right food the day before, or are in love.

‘Thank you,’ says Mieli, ‘for bringing me to hell.’

I lift my blue-tinted shades and smile at her. She is suffering visibly in the gravity, moving like an old woman: she has to keep her enhancements down while we are temporary citizens.

I have been to few places that look less infernal. The deep indigo of the Hellas Basin sky above, and clouds of white gliders, huge wingspans clinging to thin Martian air. The tall, intricate buildings, like belle époque Paris without the burden of gravity, spires of red-tinted stone, wearing walkways and balconies. Spidercabs scampering up their sides, leaping across rooftops. The shining dome of the zoku colony near the Dust District where the red cloud raised by the city’s feet billows upwards like a cloak. The gentle swaying, if you stand very still: a reminder that this is a city that travels, carried on the backs of Titans.

‘Hell,’ I tell her, ‘is where all the interesting people are.’

She squints at me. Earlier, in the beanstalk, she had that bored déjà vu look that told me she was running virs, preparing. ‘We are not here to sightsee,’ she says.

‘Actually, we are. There is another associative memory here somewhere, and I need to find it.’ I wink at her. ‘It could take a while. So try to keep up.’

Muscle memory is back, at least, so I put distance between us, easing into the low, gliding John Carter lope of the tall Martians all around.

Fashions have changed while I’ve been away. Fewer people now wear the nondescript white shirts and trousers, based on the old Revolutionary uniform. Instead, there are Kingdom frills and hats and flowing dresses, alongside abstract zoku smartmatter creations, not so much clothing as geometry. Almost no one hides beneath a full gevulot privacy screen here. This is the Avenue: you are supposed to flaunt it.

The one constant, of course, are the Watches – in all shapes and forms, in wristbands and belt buckles and necklaces and rings. All measuring Time, Noble Time, time as a human being – time that you have to earn back through back-breaking labour as a Quiet. I have to suppress pickpocket instincts.

I stop at the Revolution Agora to wait for Mieli. It is a square where one of the Revolution monuments stands, a low slab of volcanic rock, sculpted by the Quiet. It is engraved with the billions of names of the gogols who were brought here from Earth, in microscopic script. Small fountains play against its sides. I remember being here, many times before.

But who was I? And what was I doing?

The Martian wine brought memories, but in no discernible patterns: just dashed them across my brain like spatters of paint. There was a girl called Raymonde; there was something called Thibermesnil. Perhaps Mieli is right: I should not rely on my old self to magically reveal where to go next, and to approach things in a more systematic fashion. I have a debt to pay to her and her mysterious employer, and the sooner I can get that sorted out, the better.