The Fractal Prince (18 page)

Sumanguru’s pale eyes do not blink. ‘So how does Tawaddud of the House Gomelez feel?’

Tawaddud looks down. ‘That justice should be done.’

‘Interesting notion.’ Sumanguru squeezes the bridge of his nose, then blinks and lowers his hand. ‘Is it possible that whoever killed Alile did not care about the Accords but wanted this Name you saw? Do you know what it does?’

Tawaddud shakes her head. ‘Some of them can only be spoken in certain places, at certain times. I think this is one of them.’

Sumanguru gives her a sharp look. ‘The only two possible reasons for the killer to steal the qarin – or to prevent us from having it – are this Name and the possibility that the bird knew the killer’s identity. Think carefully: is there anything else you saw in the qarin’s mind?’

Tawaddud swallows.

‘I think you are protecting someone, Tawaddud of House Gomelez,’ Sumanguru says gently. ‘If you are, consider this: whoever they are, they want to fight a war with the Sobornost. And at war, you often find yourself becoming a twin of the enemy, just as bad as the thing you fear.’ He leans back and looks up at the Gourd, wispy lines now obscured by fluffy afternoon clouds, the Shards like a curtain in the horizon.

‘How much do you know about Sobornost history?’

‘I’ve only ever met hsien-kus.’

‘Hsien-kus are a small clan obsessed with the past. They would love nothing more than creating another Earth, a simulated Earth, for everyone who ever existed. They like to look back. But most of us look forward. Even when it comes with a price.’

‘What do you mean?’ Tawaddud asks.

‘After the first war, we realised that this,’ he taps on his temple, ‘was not enough. Human cognitive architecture only gets you so far with the Great Common Task. Sure, there are some fundamentals that the chitraguptas say are universal. Recursion, thoughts within thoughts. The basis of language, self-reflection, consciousness perhaps. But a lot of it is modules, inefficiently strung together by evolution. A kind of Frankenstein.’

‘A what?’

‘I keep forgetting, no fiction. Never mind. The point is, we started experimenting. And we ended up with Dragons. Beings with no consciousness, no modules, just an engine, a self-modifying, evolving optimiser. We could never destroy them: we could only put them inside virtual machines, box them off. What do you think the
guberniyas
are for? They are cages for monsters. Everything else is just surface.’

‘Are you sure you should be telling me this?’ Tawaddud thinks about the young man in orange, the political astronomer. She is sure no one in Sirr has ever heard anything about this.

‘Are you sure I shouldn’t be?’ Sumanguru’s mouth twitches.

‘And then what happened?’

‘We fought them. A war that lasted thousands of years, in
guberniya
Deep Time. They had no eudaimon, no inner voice. Intelligence without meaning. And we were losing. Until we started cutting things out from ourselves as well. Body language. Theory of mind. Empathy. To fight Dragons, we made gogols that were mirror images of the bastards.

‘Gogols like me.’

Tawaddud looks at Sumanguru. His smile is cold. ‘Oh, I can fake social niceties perfectly well, but it is just slave gogols moving my face, you understand. My emotions are outsourced. My private utility functions and pleasures are . . . quite different from yours.

‘So when you keep your secrets, Tawaddud Gomelez, think about two things. Is whoever you are protecting worth protecting or have they crossed a line?’ He leans closer and the machine oil smell in his breath is so strong that the food moves in Tawaddud’s stomach and bile rises into her mouth. ‘And do you really want to lie to someone who kills dragons?’

He picks up Tawaddud’s unfinished tajini bowl and spoons the remaining food with gusto.

They wait in silence until the shadow of a carpet appears: it descends slowly into the square, carrying Dunyazad and a tall, spiky Repentant thought-form. Tawaddud’s sister is clad in formal Council robes, Gomelez colours, black fabric and a gold chain in her hair.

She curtsies to Sumanguru, clasping her hands together, a look of horror on her face. ‘Lord Sumanguru,’ she says. ‘Are you badly hurt? We will take to my Father’s house immediately and tend to your injuries.’

Sumanguru shrugs. ‘Flesh will heal,’ he says. ‘If not, it will be cut off.’

Duny curtsies again and turns to Tawaddud.

‘Dear sister,’ she says, giving her a tight, quick embrace. ‘The Aun be praised that you are alive!’ But when she holds Tawaddud close, she hisses in her ear, ‘Father wants to see you. It might have been better to run away again.’

Duny pulls away and gives them both a radiant smile. ‘Please follow me: we have
so
many things to talk about.’

15

THE THIEF AND THE SAUNA

The day before the thief leaves for Earth Mieli prepares an Oortian meal. He is in a good mood, lecturing, flashing smiles. But every now and then, from the corner of her eye, she sees something different on his face. Something savage.

See
? the pellegrini whispers. She has been there all the way through her preparations, watching them.
Have faith and it all works out in the end
.

She ignores the goddess and continues setting up the table. Spider eggs in small food nets. Peeled pumptree fruit. Drinking bulbs. She has already started warming up the sauna.

‘This all seems somewhat elaborate,’ the thief says. ‘Should we not spend the time getting ready, for, I don’t know, sneaking into the most well-guarded planet in the System?’

‘We
are
getting ready,’ Mieli says. ‘Earth is a dark place, a place of pain. We have to purify ourselves.’

‘I can certainly get behind
that
. In fact, I’m going to purify myself internally.’ He swallows some of the contents of a drinking bulb and makes a face. Mieli snatches it back from his hand.

‘It tastes like tar,’ the thief says.

‘The taste is not important. It is to honour the dead. And the meal is only for after the sauna, so control your instincts.’

The thief looks at her. ‘I don’t know about the dead, but I’m kind of looking forward to this. I’m glad we finally see eye to eye.’

Mieli says nothing. She sees the pellegrini smiling and closes her eyes. The face of the goddess does not go away.

‘Let’s go to the sauna,’ she says.

The sauna is housed in one of
Perhonen’s
storage modules. In her years of service to the pellegrini, Mieli has only used it a few times: it makes her too homesick. But if you really want to cleanse yourself, it is the only way to do it, and the ship has reassembled it for the occasion.

It is a tiny, spherical room of wood, with a large bubble of water in the centre, held in place by a semi-permeable membrane and
väki
threads, like a raindrop in a giant spiderweb. You take hot rocks from small braziers with tongs and throw them into the bubble. It creates a rush of steam. The rocks swirl around in the bubble and make it dance like a living thing.

Perhonen
has connected the module with the main living area of the ship and the wooden hatch looks inviting. The thief looks at it suspiciously.

‘So, how does this work?’ he asks.

‘Get out of your clothes,’ Mieli says.

He hesitates. ‘Now?’

‘Just do it.’

He takes a sharp breath, looks away and fumbles at his jacket and trousers. ‘Don’t I get a towel?’ he says. But Mieli has already let her toga fall aside and is in the warm rush of
löyly
.

The thief comes in hesitantly. His eyes flicker across her body. Then he settles on the other side of the sauna bubble, pushing his feet into the wooden handles and settling on the seat. The hatch that opens into space on the other side has a glass window on it, and starlight and the light of the glowing
kiuas
rocks makes the thief’s face look very young.

‘Throw some
löyly
,’ she says. Gingerly, he takes the tongs and picks up one of the smallest rocks in the metal-netted basket in the wall.
Kiuas
rocks are precious in a place of comet ice and dust, but this is a good one, round and black and shimmering with heat. The thief casts it into the bubble. It vanishes with a pathetic hiss.

Mieli sighs and picks up her bundle of pumptree branches, beats herself on the back gently: her wing scars tickle in the gentle heat. The suction cups of the leaves cling to her skin pleasantly.

‘I know self-flagellation is your thing, but I did not realise you took it
that
literally,’ the thief says.

‘Ssh,’ Mieli says and glares at him. Then she picks up one of the bigger rocks with her bare hands and throws it in. This time, the rush of
löyly
washes all over her from head to toes like
koto
morning light and makes her skin tingle all over. The thief lets out a muffled scream, tries to hide from the steam, turns his back to it but that only makes it worse. He scrambles towards the hatch, but it is firmly locked.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he grunts. ‘This is a punishment, right?’

‘Not punishment. Forgiveness.’ She throws one of the blue stones in. A gentle mint smell fills the sauna, but the heat is even more intense. The wood sweats tiny amber beads of sap that stick to her skin as she leans back. For a surprisingly long time, the thief says nothing, just breathes heavily.

‘So,’ she says finally. ‘
Perhonen
tells me we finally have a target and a plan.’

The thief hunches down on his perch, elbows on his knees, looking at the rock inside the water as its glow fades.

‘Let’s start with the target, shall we?’ he says. ‘I still don’t know exactly what it is or what it does, but it has something to do with the Spike. The . . . tiger called it the Kaminari jewel.’ He pauses and carefully tosses a bigger rock in. The water hisses. The wood groans: it is the only thing between them and the Dark Man. Suddenly, Mieli feels strangely at home.

‘Matjek Chen has it,’ the thief says. ‘The pellegrini wants it. We are going to get it for her. That’s what it boils down to.’

‘And Earth?’ she asks.

‘Well, to steal anything from Chen, you have to
become
him. Except that you can’t. We don’t have any source for Chen’s Founder codes like the Box. Last time, I tried to steal them from him directly, and that did not work out very well. So we have to find another way. And that’s Earth.

‘You see, somewhere down there is a gogol of Matjek Chen. Not one like the current ruler of Sobornost, not a god-king. A child. An insurance policy. But enough of Chen in him for us to figure out his Code.’

‘And how do you know that?’ Mieli asks.

‘Your pellegrini and I go way back. I used to work for her, much like you do now, when she was still a human woman. She was sort of a patron for the Founders, early on, Chen in particular. So before getting into bed with him, she had me look into his past, very carefully. I found out some interesting things. How much do you know about the history of uploading?’

Mieli says nothing.

‘All right,’ the thief says. ‘I guess this is a bit touchy for you Oortians. But the fact is, afterlife became a big business in the 2060s. For a lot of money, you could buy yourself a heaven – or a hell, if you were so inclined. I’m not talking about the corporate uploads here – their lives were nasty, brutish and very, very long – but those who could afford to buy a custom-made high-fidelity vir, running on ultra-secure, reversible-computing hardware, geothermally powered, guaranteed to keep going for at least a few millennia, built in a secret location for maximum security.

‘Chen had what you could call overprotective parents. A beemee star and a quantum hedge fund manager. Wealthy beyond belief. When Chen was seven, they had him uploaded into a custom insurance heaven. They never told him about it, and most of the data from that period was lost in the Collapse. So that useful fact only remains in my head.

‘The problem is, I never found out where his heaven was. Chances are it survived the Collapse. Most of them did: the muhtasib families of Sirr are digging them up all the time. Fortunately, the hsien-kus are obsessed with history. I’m going to bluff my way into their ancestor virs they run in the Gourd array around Earth and see what I can find. It shouldn’t be hard: everybody is afraid of sumangurus.’

‘Not everybody,’ Mieli says.

‘Well, the hsien-kus are, anyway.’ He squirms and rubs his neck. ‘What do you do to cool down in here?’

Mieli gestures at the other hatch. ‘Vacuum,’ she says. ‘The Dark Man’s kiss, they call it. You should be able to take it for a few seconds.’

‘Thanks, I’ll pass,’ the thief says.

Mieli looks at him, giving him a smile that says that a dive into the dark might not be optional. He continues hastily.

‘So. I’m going to find out where the target is. In the meantime, you’ll need to get into a position to retrieve the package. Sirr is always hiring offworld mercenaries: that should be a perfect cover for you. It’s also the best way to get Seals. Earth is a weird place, you can’t move around without protection from this tech that the Sirr ruling families – muhtasibs – have without being attacked by wild nanites. So we’ll need those. Once I have the information, we’ll rendezvous, and get little Matjek out from his paradise. He’ll give us a way to reconstruct big Matjek’s Codes – and then we are almost there. How does that sound?’

‘Awfully convenient,’ Mieli says. ‘Disappearing into Sobornost networks with a perfect disguise. Why should I expect to ever hear from you again?’

‘You are underestimating Joséphine – the pellegrini,’ the thief says. ‘You of all people should know she is very, very good at coming up with incentives to do what she says. I’m not going to escape from her that easily.’

‘You are not telling me everything,’ She picks up a red-hot stone with her fingers, holds it up. ‘I could make you talk.’

The thief spreads his hands. ‘You could.’ He looks tired, suddenly. ‘But you are not going to. That’s not who you are.’ He knocks on the wooden wall of the sauna. ‘
This
is. You still have this to go back to. Don’t throw it away.

‘We have had our differences. But I do keep my promises. We have that in common, at least. I said I would do this thing for you, and I will. You got me out of a prison. Let me get you out of this one. Let me make sure you get to go home.’