The Quantum Thief

‘Have pity,’ he says. ‘You come from the stars; you will spend a few luxurious moments here and then go back to plenty, to immortality. Have pity on someone who only has a few moments of this life left, before being forced to atone for my sins, before they come and take my soul and cast it into the maw of a tongueless machine so I cannot even cry out in pain—’

Are you okay? Perhonen asks. What is happening?

Mieli tries the same basic gevulot trick as before – complete privacy – to exclude the madman from her horizon and vice versa – but the gevulot layer simply informs her that she has entered into a gevulot contract with another individual guaranteeing mutual superficial observation for the next fifteen minutes.

There is a naked madman in front of me, she tells the ship, helpless.

I thought he escaped.

‘If I could only beg you to share a few worthless seconds, insignificant slivers of your time, I would reveal all my secrets to you. I was a Count in the King’s Court, no less, a Noble, not as you see me now, but with a robotic castle of my own and a million gogols to do my bidding. And in the Revolution, I fought in the troops of the Duke of Tharsis. You should see the true Mars, the old Mars, I will give you all that for only a few seconds—’ Tears are streaming down the long, pale face now. ‘I have only dekaseconds, have pity—’ Cursing, Mieli gets up and starts walking, just to get away from the man, and notices a sudden hush. She is standing right in the middle of the agora.

Here, the Martians walk with exaggerated care. No one acknowledges anyone else. Tourists – a few Quick Ones, like fireflies, a delicate-limbed polymorph from Ganymede-zoku, and a few others, turn from inspecting the engraved names on the Revolution monument through floating smartmatter lenses to look at her.

The man is clinging to the hem of her toga. ‘One minute, even, a few seconds, for all the secrets of old Mars—’ He is completely naked now, unprotected by gevulot in the agora. She brushes his arm aside, with mere human strength instead of tearing it from its socket. But he lets out a high-pitched yelp, and collapses to the ground at her feet, still clinging to her garment and moaning. Suddenly, she is certain that everybody is looking at them, although it seems that no one is.

‘All right,’ she says, lifting her Watch, a crystalline model she chose because it looked like Oortian jewellery. ‘Ten minutes. It will take me longer than that to get rid of you.’ She thinks at the device, and the golden dial moves a fraction. The beggar leaps up, licking his lips.

‘The ghost of the King bless you, lady,’ he says. ‘The stranger said you were generous.’

‘The stranger?’ asks Mieli, even though she already knows the answer.

‘The stranger in the blue-tinted glasses, bless him, and bless you.’ A wide grin spreads across his face. ‘A word of warning,’ he says in a businesslike tone. ‘I would get out of this agora right now.’ Around Mieli, everybody, except the tourists are leaving. ‘Blood, water. I’m sure you understand.’ Then he springs into a naked run, scrawny legs carrying him away from the agora.

I am going to torture the thief, Mieli says. Blood and water? What did he mean by that?

On Earth, says Perhonen, there was this type of fish called sharks. I think the time beggars watch the public exomemory feeds, like from the agoras, no privacy there, so they would have seen you giving Time to a—

Suddenly, the agora is full of the sound of running bare feet, and Mieli finds herself face to face with an army of beggars.

I chase the boy through the Avenue crowd. He stays ahead of me, navigating the forest of legs with ease, his bare feet a blur, like the needle of a fabber. I elbow people aside, shouting apologies, leaving a trail of angry grey gevulot blurs in my wake.

I almost catch him at a spidercab stop, where the Avenue breaks into a hundred different alleys into the Maze. He stands in front of the long-legged machines, ornate horseless carriages with brass legs, curled up beneath them as they wait for passengers, looking at them in fascination.

I approach him slowly, in the crowd. He has different texture from everything else around me, sharper. Maybe it is the dirt on his face or the ragged brown garment he is wearing, or the dark brown eyes so different from those of the Martians. Only metres away—

But he is just taunting me. He lets out a faint peal of laughter as I lunge forward and slips under the long-legged cab carriages. I’m too big to follow and am left negotiating the crowd to get around the vehicles and their waiting passengers.