The Fractal Prince (30 page)

There is a boy playing near the water, building a sand-castle. He looks up when Mieli approaches. A smile lights up his tanned face.

‘Hi,’ Mieli says. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m building a castle for my friends,’ the boy says.

‘Why don’t you introduce us?’

‘This is the Green Soldier,’ the boy says, holding up an old plastic warrior, battered by salt water and the sun. ‘This is the lightkraken.’ He points at a blob of transparent putty in one of the towers, with a cartoon face. Then he picks up a little doll made from sticks. ‘And this is the Chimney Princess. The Flower Prince should be here, too, but I can’t find him. He likes to run away, sometimes.’

‘Nice to meet you all,’ Mieli says. ‘But what is
your
name?’

‘Mom told me not to speak to strangers.’

‘And do strangers ever come here?’ The boy reminds Mieli of Varpu and her leaps of logic.

‘No,’ the boy says uncertainly.

‘Then I can’t be a stranger, can I? My name is Mieli.’

The boy considers for a second. ‘I’m Matjek.’

‘How long have you been here, Matjek?’

‘I came in the morning, with Mom and Dad. They just left and said that I could play a little longer. It’s almost time to go home, but not quite.’

Mieli swallows.
Can I really take him out of here? Out of a childhood memory? The thief claims he will never know. We can leave him running after we are done, for ever if need be, it will be all right, he will never tell the difference
.

That’s the kind of thing Sobornost always says
, she thinks. But I just fought side by side with my other selves and won, and they all died willingly, just like I would have done. Perhaps Sobornost are not wrong about everything.

And even if they are, you are the only one who can take me to Sydän, little Matjek
.

‘It’s time to go, Matjek,’ she says. ‘Your mother and father are worried.’

‘But I haven’t finished building the castle.’

‘Don’t worry. It will still be here tomorrow.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise,’ Mieli says.

She holds out her hand to the boy. Together, they start walking away from the sea.

She is back in the metal shaft. Above, there is fire and thunder. Her metaself flashes her a series of staccato updates. Nuwas’s mercenaries are attacking, and her other selves are defending the entrance against them. She checks her systems. A copy of the jannah is running in her metacortex. She starts the ascent, spreading her wings.

‘I’ve got the package,’ she tells
Perhonen
. ‘I need extraction.’

The pellegrini got us a Gourd orbital hook we can deploy. Just hold on
.

She rises past the circle of her other selves and salutes them just as the tendril from the sky crashes through the dome and carries her up and away.

27

THE THIEF AND MIELI

Perhonen
and I watch in awe from orbit as Mieli fights an army by herself. Around us, the Gourd boils with conflict: we barely made it out of the Teddy Bears’ station alive. The pellegrini copies I seeded the ancestor vir with have activated, and are taking on the hsien-kus everywhere. The surface of the vast Sobornost structure seethes like a disturbed anthill. So we go up, to a Lagrange point, hiding amongst the technological debris there, calculate a trajectory to pick Mieli up.
Perhonen
is in full stealth mode, getting ready for the Hunter – although there has been no sign of the bastard yet.

I taste the story in my mind. It feels like a loose tooth. It wants out, wants to be told.
Almost there
, I tell it.

I still don’t like this, Perhonen
says.

‘Any other suggestions are welcome, but it
is
getting late in the game. Mieli’s stunt was impressive, but it’s going to bring the whole Sobornost down on our heads. I doubt even Chen can afford to ignore what’s going on.’

No kidding
, the ship says and shows me the spimescape view.
He’s only a couple of hours away. It just appeared. It had some sort of massive metamaterial cloak before that
.

There is a new star in the sky. A
guberniya
is approaching Earth, one of the major Sobornost megastructures, moving. It is using a Hawking drive, lighting up half the Solar System behind it. A halo of countless raions and oblasts surrounds it. It has been coming for days. The pellegrini is gambling with high stakes, inviting him. Clearly, Chen wants something very, very badly, and he’s not going to be subtle about taking it.

For a moment, my gut goes cold. I fab myself two fingers of whiskey. Drinking it wakes up an older voice in my head, a wiser voice.
The scale does not matter
, it says.
It has never mattered. A con is a con, a heist is a heist. Even gods fight stupidity in vain. Or, to put it another way, the bigger they are, the harder they fall
.

Mieli has the gogol
, the ship says.
She is on her way up
.

I swallow the rest of the whiskey and let it burn in my throat.

‘Let’s pick her up. The show is about to begin.’

The familiarity of
Perhonen’s
main cabin and the feeling of its systems enmeshing with her mind almost makes Mieli cry. The thief watches her breathe it all in for a moment, and grins.

‘Now you know what it feels like to die a thousand times,’ he says. ‘Not my favourite experience in the world. But you got the job done – and everything else is in place. Let’s see the goods.’

Mieli holds up the mind-bullet she has copied the Matjek gogol into. “Here he is. He is . . . on a beach. He is very happy. It was hard to leave.’

‘The afterlife designers of the old upload corporations were pretty damn good,’ the thief says. ‘We can admire it later. Just give it here. I’ll be in and out before he knows it.’

We are expecting company, Perhonen
says.
Chen and the Hunter, not necessarily in that order
.

‘I’m afraid things are going to get a little difficult for the people of Earth,’ the thief says. ‘They don’t deserve this. But before you get pangs of conscience, this really was not our fault. It was an anomaly that they were able to survive this long, just that crazy wildcode thing. The way things are going in the System, it’s going to come down to the Sobornost and the zokus, and once we are done with this job, we are at least going to be free to choose sides. No offence, but I’m not including Oort on my list. A bit too chilly for me. Or too hot, with the saunas. Now, hand the kid over so we can make retirement plans.’

Mieli hesitates.
Happiness. Just before going home
. Surely, that cannot be the Founder Code of Matjek Chen.

‘There is something you are not telling me,’ Mieli says. ‘What exactly are you going to do to him? It’s not the Code, is it? It’s not even something he knows. He’s a child. Innocent. What are you going to do to him?’

‘You really don’t have to worry about it,’ the thief says. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

Mieli grits her teeth. ‘I just fought half the mercenaries of the System and the whole wildcode desert to get this. Don’t push me, Jean. I told you I can make you talk if I have to.’

Mieli, maybe he is right, Perhonen
says. One of its butterfly avatars tickles Mieli’s cheek.
Maybe you should let him do his job, that’s what he is here for. We need to move. I can’t keep us hidden when that
guberniya
gets here
.

‘Not you too,’ Mieli whispers. ‘I told you. I don’t want you to protect me. If I make mistakes, they are mine to make. Now, thief,
tell me what you are going to do with this gogol
.’

‘Mieli, you do realise this is Matjek Chen we are talking about? Do you
really
care about what is going to happen to him?’

Her scar burns with rage on her cheek, like a fiery tear. She gives the thief one look with all her anger in it.

‘All right,’ the thief says, massaging the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m going to tell him a story. It’s not going to hurt. But it’s going to insert me and the pellegrini into his mind. That was another reason we needed to go to Earth. I had to find out how to do that.’

‘You are going to
become
him? You are going to wear his skin?’

‘I wouldn’t put it that way, the whole entwinement thing is far more complex than that, you should talk to this woman called Tawaddud—’

‘The woman you had arrested for murders she did not commit?’

‘Never mind, that was a bad example—’

‘You are going to steal his consciousness? His soul? His self?’

‘I would say it’s more like
borrowing—
’

‘No. Absolutely not. We are not going to do this. This is where I draw the line. You will find another way.’

‘I don’t see what the problem is,’ the thief says, exasperated. ‘We know what Chen wants – a childlike version of himself. So we are going to give it to him.
Your
job is done. It’s my show from now on.’

‘The answer is no. We do something else.’

‘Something else is what I tried
last time
, Mieli. It got me arrested and I died more deaths than you can imagine. Your doppelgänger experience down there was nothing compared to what I went through. I’m never going back. And this
will
work. I’m doing it not just for me, I’m doing it for you, for Sydän.
Perhonen
told me the story—’

You did what
? Mieli screams at the ship in her mind.

I’m sorry, Mieli, he had to know so we could—

Mieli shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. My people – we don’t do this. We have—’

‘Your
people
do not augment themselves with a metacortex, let themselves be uploaded into Dilemma Prisons, kill gogols with ghostguns built into their hands or with lasers from orbit, am I right? Do they turn themselves into
entire armies
and then just
let their other selves die
? Face it – you have crossed a line, we both have, and there is no coming back.’

‘That’s not what Jean le Flambeur would say,’ Mieli says.

‘Perhaps I am not Jean le Flambeur.’ The thief covers his eyes with both hands.

‘Look, the stakes are high. The pellegrini needs this. It’s the only way out for both of us. And that’s not all. If what I saw in the Box before you broke it is true, then the System itself is not going to be a happy place if the chen gets what he wants.’

‘Perhaps it would be better to die before that,’ Mieli says.

Then the pellegrini is there, a white figure standing by the thief’s side.

‘Stop this tantrum right now, Mieli. We are going to go ahead with Jean’s plan. Or have you forgotten what happens when you disobey me?’ She raises her hand. Her ring glints, sharp and bright.

Mieli closes her eyes.

This is why I had to die a thousand times. To be here and not be afraid anymore
.

‘Now I see what you both are,’ she whispers. ‘You are just the same. You will never change. If you change, you will die. And you will always be afraid of the Dark Man.’

She can feel the pellegrini unfolding in her head, a dullness spreading into her limbs.

‘I’m sorry,
Perhonen
,’ she says.

Then she screams a fragment of the song that made the ship, the last note she sang, the song of ending.
Perhonen
’s systems respond and send a cry across the System.

Jean le Flambeur is here
.

She watches the pellegrini letting the thief loose from his chains, trying to escape. The thief stares at her, blank-faced, tears in his eyes.

The Hunter comes. Beams of light cut through
Perhonen
. The knife-things are everywhere. One of them hovers in front of Mieli, its point sharp like the final note of her song.

I’m sorry too, Mieli, Perhonen
says.
I always loved you more than she did
.

The ship’s EM field grabs her. The acceleration is black light in her eyes. And then the Dark Man kisses her hard.

All my constraints are gone, but it’s too late. The Hunter comes fast and furious, this time. I watch Mieli disappear, and feel a strange sense of relief. Then I’m too busy being burnt alive.

Get us out of this and you will be free
, Joséphine whispers.

Perhonen!

Burn, you bastard
.

The atmosphere. The Hunter can’t handle the wildcode
.

Neither can we
.

Let’s take our chances. Please
?

The ship fires its antimatter engines. We dive into the blue globe, enveloped by a swarm of Hunters. I watch the clouds and the seas and the continents as white light takes me apart, cell by cell, atom by atom—

28

THE PRINCE AND THE MIRROR

‘And that’s how I got caught the last time,’ the thief says, leaning back on the sand. The dream vir’s sky is full of images: Earth ablaze with white fire, the Gourd torn apart around it, the
guberniya
’s huge diamond eye.

‘The Hunter came, and here I am.’ He looks at Matjek. ‘That’s exactly what I would have told the other Matjek in the jannah, you know. You might as well drop this charade. Trying to be more innocent is not going to get the Kaminari jewel to accept you just like that.’

‘Being innocent suits me,’ Matjek says. ‘It was a good excuse to go through my Library. And your story was a wonderful attempt to hack into my mind. Unfortunately, I have a
very
good metaself that has been looking out for any signs of a le Flambeur self-loop.’

‘It must have been a blow to your ego to be rejected by the Kaminari jewel,’ the thief says. ‘The zokus have their eccentricities, but they did hit on something with the whole extrapolated volition thing. Calculating the effects of your wish on the maximum happiness of the whole zoku. I guess no gogol of yours so far has met the criteria the jewel has.’

‘We’ll see,’ Matjek says.

The old woman comes to them with tired steps. Her face is lined and wrinkled, ancient and withered, but there is a proud look in her eyes.

‘Gloating does not suit you, Matjek,’ she says and sits down on the sand wearily. ‘You
are
being very careful: a vir within a vir within a vir. Still, you might have some trouble with the creatures they call the Aun.’