The Quantum Thief (5 page)

That, in itself, is a testament to the chocolatier’s success. The red-brick building with a huge mural depicting cocoa beans sits in one of the most desirable locations of the city. A green space with low, rolling hills perhaps three hundred metres across, like all the interlocking parts of the City, the park is carried by a walking robotic platform. The green fields are dotted with tall, graceful, Kingdom-era villas that the young Time-rich of the Oubliette restore and incorporate into the city. Isidore has never understood the need of some of his generation to burn their Time fast on material goods and services, spending their Noble lives in brief opulence before the long, back-breaking labour as a Quiet. Especially when there are mysteries to solve.

Even though the park is an open space, it is not an agora, and walking down the sandy pathways, they pass several gevulot-obscured people, their privacy fog shimmering like the morning dew of the grassy fields around them.

Wanting to be alone with his thoughts for a moment, Isidore walks fast, holding his hands inside his overcoat sleeves against the chill: with his long legs, he usually manages to keep a distance between himself and others. But the Gentleman stays with him, seemingly without effort.

You are bored, aren’t you? Pixil’s qupt is abrupt. Along with her voice, it brings a tangle of sensations: a taste of espresso, the odd too-clean smell of the zoku colony.

Isidore massages the entanglement ring he wears on the index finger of his right hand: a silver band with a tiny blue stone, speaking directly to his brain. He has yet to get used to the zoku method of qupting. Sending brain-to-brain messages directly through a quantum teleportation channel seems like a dirty, invasive way to communicate compared to Oubliette co-remembering. The latter is much more subtle: embedding messages in the recipient’s exomemory so that information is recalled rather than received. But as with everything else with Pixil and her people, it is all about compromises.

I can’t believe it. Your tzaddik friend snaps its fingers and you leave me behind, to get ready for the party, all by myself. And now you are bored.

I’m not bored, he protests, too quickly, and realises that it is the wrong answer.

I’m glad. Because you will never hear from me again if you don’t make it here in time. The qupt comes with an unmistakably erotic sensation of smooth fabric on skin, like a caress. I’m deciding what to wear. Putting clothes on, taking them off again. I’m thinking of turning it into a game. I could use some help. But, your loss.

Last night was one of their better nights, in Isidore’s small Maze apartment; no distractions, just the two of them. He cooked; afterwards, she showed him a new bedroom game she had designed, which was both intellectually and physically stimulating. Still, he lay awake while she slept, the wheels of his mind turning without traction, looking for patterns in her hair, falling across her pale back.

He tries to think of the right thing to say, but he is still caught in the shape of the dead chocolatier. It’s just gogol pirates, he qupts back, attaching a careless shrug. It won’t take long. I’ll be back in no time.

The response comes with a sigh. This. Is. Important. My whole zoku is going to be there. The whole zoku. Coming to see me, the rebel. And to see my stupid primitive Oubliette boyfried. You have two hours.

I’m making real progress here—

Two. Hours.

Pixil—

I could spoil your game, you know. I could tell you exactly who your tzaddik is. How would you like that?

He is almost certain that the threat is a bluff. Her zoku’s q-tech does give her abilities far beyond the Oubliette’s old calmtech, but the tzaddikim guard their identities well. But even the thought of not finding out if he could, not putting the final piece in place on his own, makes him afraid. Before he can stop it, his terror goes down the qupt as a heartbeat, quick and thick.

See? That’s what really matters, isn’t it? Have fun. Bastard. And then she is gone.

‘And how is young Pixil?’ asks the Gentleman.

Isidore does not reply and tries to walk faster.

The chocolate shop is in one of the wide shopping streets of the Edge, a gently curving avenue that follows the southern rim of the city. The platforms here are relatively large, and the layout stable, so maps exist. Hence, it is where many offworlders come to catch a glimpse of the Oubliette. The restaurants and cafés are just opening, lighting heaters to make the chilly Martian air palatable to early customers. Purple and green biodrones cluster around them, holding their spindly limbs out for warmth.

The Gentleman stops in front of a narrow shop window. Remarkable objects are on display: a football-sized sphere that looks like a scale model of Kingdom-era Deimos, dotted with multicoloured candy, and an intricate chandelier hanging from the ceiling, both made from chocolate. But a large object next to them is the one that draws Isidore’s attention. It is a dress: a sober, high-collared affair with a sash at the waist and a flowing skirt, frozen in a swirly chocolate snapshot.

The tzaddik opens the door, and a brass bell rings. ‘Here we are. As your lady friend might put it – the game is afoot. I’ll be nearby: but I’ll let you do the talking.’ He fades out of sight, suddenly, a ghost in the pale morning sun.

The shop is a narrow space with a long glass counter on the left and display shelves on the right, brightly lit. There is a pleasant, sweet smell of chocolate and caramel, not at all like the raw leather of the factory. Beneath the counter, moulded pralines glitter, like bright-carapaced insects. The showpieces are on the right, ornate chocolate sculptures. There is an arching butterfly wing as tall as a man, with an etching of a woman’s face, and what looks like a death mask, impossibly thin, made out of chocolate the colour of terra-cotta.

For a moment, Isidore is captivated by a pair of red shoes with flowing chocolate ribbons. He files them away for future reference: Pixil’s current mood may require some offerings on his part.

‘Looking for something special?’ asks a voice, familiar from exomemory. Siv Lindström. She looks more tired than the memory, lines in her pretty face. But her blue shop uniform is smooth, and her hair carefully arranged. Their Watches exchange a brief burst of standard shop gevulot, enough for her to know that he does not really know much about chocolate but has Time enough to afford it – and for him to glimpse public exomemories about her and the shop. Her gevulot must be hiding an emotional reaction of some kind, but to Isidore she presents a perfect facade of good service.

‘We have a very nice range of macarone, fresh from the factory.’ She motions towards a counter, busily restocked by a synthbio drone Isidore saw earlier, placing the colourful chocolate discs in neat rows.

‘I was thinking,’ says Isidore, ‘about something … more substantial.’ He points at the chocolate dress in the window. ‘Like this one. Could I have a closer look at this?’

The assistant walks around the counter and opens the glass panel that separates the window from the shop. She walks in with that abrupt, shuffling step of old Martians, flinching in the absence of Earth’s gravity: like a dog that has been beaten too many times, expecting a blow when receiving a caress. Up close, Isidore can see the intricate details of the dress, how the fabric seemingly flows, how vivid the colours are. Maybe I’m wrong about this. But then he can feel her gevulot shifting, just a little. Or not.

‘Well,’ she says, tone unchanged. ‘This is certainly something very special. It is modelled after a Noblewoman dress from the Olympian Court, made from Trudelle-style chocolate: we had to try the mixture four times. Six hundred aromatic constituents, and you have to get them just right. Chocolate is fickle, it keeps you on your toes.’

‘How interesting,’ says Isidore, trying to affect the world-weary tone of a Time-rich young man. He takes out his magnifying glass and studies the hem of the dress. The swirly shape becomes a crystalline grid of sugars and molecules. He probes deeper into his fresh chocolate memories. But then the shop gevulot interferes, detecting an unwanted invasion of privacy, and turns the image into a blur.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Lindström, staring at him as if seeing him for the first time.

Isidore frowns, looking at the white noise.

‘Damn. I almost had it,’ he says. He gives Lindström his best smile, the one Pixil says turns older women’s bones to water. ‘Could you please taste it? The dress?’

The assistant looks at him incredulously.

‘What?’

‘My apologies,’ he says. ‘I should have told you. I am investigating what happened to your employer.’ He opens his gevulot just enough for her to know his name. Her clear green eyes glaze over for a moment as she ’blinks him. Then she takes a deep breath.

‘So, you are the wonderboy they keep talking about. Who sees things the tzaddikim don’t.’ She walks back to the counter. ‘Unless you are going to buy something, I’d appreciate it if you left. I’m trying to keep the shop open. It’s what he would have wanted. Why should I talk to you? I already told them everything I know.’

‘Because,’ says Isidore, ‘they are going to think you had something to do with it.’

‘Why? Because I found him? I barely had enough of his gevulot to know his last name.’

‘Because it fits. You are of the First Generation, I can see it in the way you walk. That means you spent almost a century as a Quiet. That can do strange things to a person’s mind. Sometimes enough to make them want to be a machine again. The gogol pirates could make that happen, for a price. If you did them a favour. Like helped them to steal the mind of a world-famous chocolatier—’

Her gevulot closes completely, and she becomes a blurry placeholder for a person, wrapped in privacy: at the same time, Isidore knows he is a non-entity for her. But it only lasts for a moment. Then she is back, eyes closed, fists pressed against her chest as if she’s holding something in, knuckles hard and white against her dark skin.

‘It was not like that,’ she says quietly.

‘No,’ Isidore says. ‘Because you had an affair with him.’

His Watch tickles at his mind. She offers him a gevulot contract, like a cautious handshake. He accepts: the conversation over the next five minutes will not go into his exomemory.

‘You really are not like them, are you? The tzaddikim.’

‘No,’ Isidore says. ‘I am not.’

She holds up a praline. ‘Do you know how hard it is to make chocolate? How long it takes? He showed me that it wasn’t just candy, that you could put yourself into it, make something with your hands. Something real.’ She cradles the candy, as if it were a talisman.

‘I was in the Quiet for a long time. You are too young, you don’t know what it’s like. You are yourself, but not yourself: the part of you that speaks is doing other things, machine things. And after a while, that is the way things should be. Even after. You feel wrong. Unless someone helps you find yourself again.’

She puts the half-melted praline away. ‘The Resurrection Men say they can’t bring him back.’

‘Miss Lindström, they might be able to, if you help me.’

She looks at the dress. ‘We made it together, you know. I wore one like it once, in the Kingdom.’ Her eyes are far away.

‘Why not?’ she says. ‘Let’s have a taste. In his memory, if nothing else.’

Lindström takes a small metal instrument from behind the counter and opens the glass door hesitantly. With infinite care, she carves a small chip from the hem and puts it in her mouth. She stands still for almost a minute, expression unreadable.

‘It’s not right,’ she says, eyes widening. ‘It’s not right at all. The crystal structure is not right. And the taste … This is not the chocolate we made. Almost, but not quite.’ She hands another small piece to Isidore: it dissolves on his tongue almost instantly, leaving a bitter, faintly nutty taste.

Isidore smiles. The feeling of triumph is almost enough to wipe the lingering tension of Pixil’s qupts from his mind.

‘Can I ask what the difference is, from a technical point of view?’

Her eyes brighten. She licks her lips. ‘It’s the crystals. In the last stage, you reheat and cool the chocolate, many times; you get something that does not melt in the room temperature. There are crystals in chocolate: there is a symmetry there, that’s what keeps it together, made from hot and cold. We always try to make type V, but there is too much type IV here, you can tell from the texture.’ Suddenly, all the hesitation and fragility seems to be gone from her. ‘How did you know? What happened to my dress?’

‘That’s not important. What matters is that you must not sell this one. Keep it safe. Also, please give me a small piece of that? Yes, that’s good – a wrapping will do. Don’t lose hope: you may still have him back.’

Her laugh is bitter and dark. ‘I never had him in the first place. I tried hard. I was nice to his wife. His daughter and I were friends. But it was never real. You know, for a moment, it was almost easier, like this. Just the memories and the chocolate.’ She opens and closes her hands, slowly, many times. Her fingernails are painted white. ‘Please find him,’ she says quietly.

‘I’ll do my best.’ Isidore says. He swallows, somehow relieved that the conversation is not etched in the diamond of exomemory, just in the mortal neurons of his mind.

‘By the way, I was not lying. I really do need something special.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I am going to be late for a party.’

The door opens, suddenly. It is a teenage boy, blond and remarkably handsome, with regular Slavic features, maybe eight Martian years old.

‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Sebastian,’ Lindström says. ‘I’m with a customer.’

‘It’s all right; I don’t mind,’ Isidore says, making a polite offer of gevulot to unhear the conversation.

‘I was just wondering if you had seen Élodie?’ The boy gives the assistant a radiant smile. ‘I can’t seem to reach her.’

‘She is at home, with her mother,’ she says. ‘You should give her some space now. Be respectful.’

The boy nods eagerly. ‘Of course, I will. It’s just that I thought I could help—’

‘No, you can’t. Now, would you please let me finish here? It is what Élodie’s dad would have wanted.’