The Quantum Thief (9 page)

After several more stomach-churning leaps, the spider-cab comes to a stop. They are in front of a cathedral-like building made from glass and light, with towers and spires and organic-looking Gothic arches jutting from its sides at random intervals.

‘Well, here we are,’ the driver says. ‘Friends in high places, eh? Don’t let them quantum your brain.’

Isidore pays, watching the dial of his Watch lurch downwards in dismay. Then he picks up the box of chocolates and assesses the damage. It is slightly dented, but otherwise intact. She won’t be able to tell the difference anyway. He jumps out, slams the door of the cab harder than necessary and starts walking up the stairway to the massive pair of doors. His bow tie is choking him, and he adjusts it nervously, hands shaking.

‘Invitation only,’ says a voice that sounds like it is coming from underground.

A monster steps through the door. The material behaves like the surface of a vertical pond, rippling around the creature’s massive form. It is wearing a blue doorman’s uniform and a cap. It is almost three metres tall, with green skin, a face like a dried prune, tiny eyes and two massive yellow tusks. One of them has a clear, tiny zoku jewel embedded in it. Its voice is deep and unnaturally resonant, but human.

The creature holds out a massive hand. There are horned ridges running along its forearms, black and sharp, glistening with a liquid of some sort. It smells of liquorice. Isidore swallows.

‘I have an invitation,’ he says. He holds out his entanglement ring. The monster bends down and studies it.

‘The party has already started,’ the monster says. ‘Guest tokens expire.’

‘Look,’ he says. ‘I am a little late, but Lady Pixil is waiting for me.’

‘Sure she is.’

I’m at the door, he qupts at Pixil desperately. I’m running late, I know, but I’m here. Please come let me in. There is no reply.

‘That’s not going to work,’ says the monster. It clears its throat. ‘The Tangleparty is an important tradition representing the unity and cohesiveness of the zoku, dating back to the days of the ancestral metaverse guilds. On this day of celebration, we are as our ancestors were. They are not going to interrupt it to let a latecomer in.’

‘If it’s so important,’ says Isidore, ‘what are you doing here?’

The monster looks oddly sheepish. ‘Resource optimisation,’ it mutters. ‘Somebody has to do the door.’

‘Look, what is the worst that can happen if you let me in?’

‘Could get thrown out of the zoku, unentangled. On my own on an alien planet. Not good.’

‘Is there any way to,’ Isidore hesitates. ‘you know, to bribe you?’

The monster studies him. Damn. Have I offended it now?

‘Any gems? Jewels? Gold?’

‘No.’ Come on, Pixil, this is absurd! ‘Chocolate?’

‘What is that?’

‘Cocoa beans, processed in a very particular way. Delicious. For, ah, baselines anyway. This was meant as a present for Lady Pixil herself. Try one.’ He struggles to get the box open, then loses his patience and tears the lid. He tosses a beautifully crafted chocolate nugget to the monster: it snatches it from mid-air.

‘Delicious,’ it says. Then it tears the box from Isidore’s hands. It disappears down its throat with a shredder-like sound. ‘Absolutely delicious. Could I have the spime as well, please? They are going to love these in the Realm.’

‘That was it.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t have any more. It was just a physical object, one of a kind.’

‘Oh crap,’ the monster says. ‘Oh man. That’s way too much. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to – look, I think I can regurgitate it and we can put it back together again—’

‘Really, it’s fine.’

‘You know, it was a reflex, this body just has to conform to all kinds of narrative stereotypes. I’m sure I can come up with some sort of replica at least—’ The monster opens its mouth wide and starts pushing one of its arms in, at an impossible angle.

‘Can I just go in?’

The monster makes a gurgling sound. ‘Sure. Sure. We’ll say no more about it. I didn’t mean to be an asshole, okay? Have fun.’

The two doors swing open. The world clicks into something else when Isidore walks through. The constant tinkering with reality is something that he really hates about the Dust District. The zokus do not have the decency to hide their secrets under the surface of the mundane, but plaster them all over your visual cortex, in layers and layers of spimes and augmented reality, making it impossible to see what truly lies beneath. And the sudden feeling of openness, no boundaries of gevulot, makes him feel something akin to vertigo.

There is no diamond cathedral inside. He is standing at the entrance of a large open space, with pipes and wires in the walls and the high ceiling. The air is hot and smells of ozone and stale sweat. The floor is unpleasantly sticky. There are dim neon lights, and ancient-looking, clunky flatscreens on low tables, showing either rough animated characters or abstract dancing shapes. Loud music with a headache-inducing beat fills the space.

The party crowd is moving between the tables, talking to each other. They all look surprisingly … human. They wear homemade chainmail bikinis over pale bodies. Some carry padded swords. Others are clad in cardboard boxes. But all carry boxes with wires, or have circuit boards strapped to their belts.

‘Hey. Want to entangle?’

The girl looks like a plump, pink-haired elf. She is wearing large cat ears, far too much makeup and an uncomfortably tight T-shirt in which a large-eyed female is doing something obscene with something. She is also carrying twin phallic silvery rockets in a backpack, connected to a touchscreen phone in her hand with a thick umbilical cable.

‘Uh, I would love to, but—’ He loosens his bow tie again. ‘I’m actually looking for Pixil.’

The girl stares at him, eyes wide. ‘Ooooh.’

‘Yes, I know, I’m late, but—’

‘It’s all right, it’s not really even started yet, people are just starting to entangle. You are Isidore, right? That is so cool!’ She waves her arms and almost jumps up and down. ‘Pixil talks about you all the time! Everybody knows about you!’

‘You know Pixil?’

‘Silly boy, of course I do! I’m Cyndra. I’m her Epic Mount!’ She squeezes her tiny left boob through the pink fabric. ‘Great avatar, huh? Sue Yi, from the original Qclan! I bought her old lifestream off a – hang on, I shouldn’t tell you that, you play that “detective” game, right? Sorry.’

Isidore ’blinks at the words ‘Epic Mount’, but here in the zoku colony, the Oubliette exomemory system is silent. I really hope it’s a metaphor.

‘So, uh, could you tell me where to find Pixil?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Silly boy, can’t you tell – it’s a costume party! We’ll have to go and figure out what she is wearing.’ And before Isidore knows it, Cyndra’s sweaty hand is squeezing his and pulling him into the thick of the crowd.

‘You have no idea how many people want to meet you.’ She winks at him. ‘You know, we are all in awe. An Oubliette boy! The things you do with your bodies. Bad, bad, bad.’

‘She told you about—’

‘Oh, she tells me everything. Here, they’ll know where she is.’ Cyndra steers them to a cluster of old computers that hum and radiate heat, surrounded by bean-bags.

There are three people huddled around the machines. To Isidore’s eye they don’t look very much like he would expect Pixil to look. Two of them have beards, to begin with. One of the males, tall and lean, wears a yellow cape, a domino mask, shorts and some sort of red tunic. The other is more heavyset, in a loose blue cape with a ragged edge, wearing a pointy-eared mask.

The third is a small, older-looking woman, with thin blond hair, lined face and glasses, in uncomfortable-looking leather armour, sitting with a sword across her knees. Both men are bouncing back and forth in their chairs to the tune of tinny explosions.

Cyndra slaps the lean man on the back, triggering a thunderous on-screen blast. ‘Shit,’ he says, tearing his goggles off. ‘Look at what you did!’

The man in the cape leans back in his chair. ‘You have much to learn, Boy Wonder.’

Isidore’s mouth is dry. He is used to the gevulot handshakes that link names with faces and establish social context. But these are actual strangers.

‘Has anyone seen Pixil?’ Cyndra asks.

‘Hey! Stay in character!’ growls the pointy-eared man.

‘Oh, pshaw,’ says Cyndra. ‘This is important.’

‘She was here a moment ago,’ says the lean man, not taking his eyes off the screen, moving a little white device around furiously with his right hand. It makes clicking sounds.

‘Who did she come as? We’re trying to find her.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think she was supposed to be McGonigal,’ says the pointy-eared man. ‘She was putting together a Werewolf game in the back room. But she hadn’t changed her body that much. Lame.’

‘All right,’ Cyndra tells Isidore. ‘You stay here. I’m going to get her. Guys, this is Isidore. He is – ta-da! – Pixil’s Significant Other. He’s a gamer, too.’

‘Oooh,’ says the bearded man. The woman in leather gives Isidore an inquisitive look.

‘Isidore, these jokers are the zoku elders. They are usually more polite. Drathdor, Sagewyn and,’ – Cyndra bows slightly when looking at the woman – ‘the Eldest. They will look after you. I’ll be right back. I’m so glad you made it!’

‘Have a seat. Have a beer,’ Sagewyn – the pointy-eared man – says. Isidore sits on one of the baglike chairs on the floor.

‘Thanks.’ He looks at the can, not quite sure how to open it. ‘Looks like a fun party.’

Drathdor snorts.

‘It’s not a party, it’s an age-old ritual!’

‘I’m sorry, Pixil didn’t tell me much about it. What is it all about?’

‘You tell it,’ Drathdor says, looking at the Eldest. ‘You tell it the best.’

‘She was there,’ Sagewyn says.

‘It’s how we honour our heritage,’ the Eldest says. She has a powerful voice, like a singer. ‘Our zoku is an old one: we can trace our origins back to the pre-Collapse gaming clans.’ She smiles. ‘Some of us remember those times very well. This was just before the uploads took off, you understand. The competition was fierce, and you would take any chance to get an edge over a rival guild.

‘We were among the first who experimented with quantum economic mechanisms for collaboration. In the beginning, it was just two crazy otaku, working in a physics lab, stealing entangled ion trap qubits and plugging them into their gaming platforms, coordinating guild raids and making a killing in the auction houses. It turns out that you can do fun things with entanglement. Games become strange. Like Prisoner’s Dilemma with telepathy. Perfect coordination. New game equilibria. We kicked ass and drowned in piles of gold.’

‘We still kick ass,’ says Drathdor.

‘Ssh. But you need entanglement for the magic. There were no quantum communication satellites, back then. So we threw parties like this one. People carrying their qubits around, entangling them with as many people as possible.’ The Eldest smiles. ‘And then we realised what you could do if you combined perfect resource planning and coordination and brain-computer interfaces.’

She taps the hilt of her sword gently. It is an egg-sized jewel that looks strange compared to her lacklustre armour, transparent and multifaceted, with a hint of violet.

‘We’ve done a lot of things since. Survived the Collapse. Built a city on Saturn. Lost a war to Sobornost. But every now and then, it is good to remember where we came from.’

‘Pixil never told me,’ Isidore says.

‘Pixil,’ says the Eldest, ‘is less interested in where she comes from than where she is going.’

‘So, you are a gamer?’ Drathdor asks. ‘Pixil has been talking a lot about the games you play out there, you know, in the Dirt City. She says it’s an inspiration on something she’s working on, so I’m curious to hear about the source material.’

‘Games we play where?’

‘Uh, sometimes we call it Dirt City,’ Sagewyn says. ‘It’s a joke.’

‘I see. I think you have me confused with someone else, I don’t really play games—’

The Eldest touches his shoulder. ‘I think what young Isidore is trying to say is that he doesn’t actually consider what he does a game.’

Isidore frowns. ‘Look, I’m not sure what Pixil has told you, but I’m an art history student. People call me a detective, but it is just problem-solving, really.’ Saying it makes the tzaddik’s rejection sting again.

Sagewyn looks perplexed. ‘But how do you keep score? How do you level up?’

‘Well, it’s not really about that. It’s more about … helping the victim, catching the perpetrator, making sure that they are brought to justice.’

Drathdor snorts into his beer, blowing some of it on his costume. ‘That’s disgusting.’ He wipes his mouth with his glove. ‘Absolutely disgusting. You mean you are some sort of toxic meme-zombie? Pixil brought you here? She touches you?’ He gives the Eldest a shocked look. ‘I’m amazed you allow this.’

‘My daughter can do whatever she wants with her life, with whomever she wants. Besides, I think it would do us some good to acknowledge that there is a human society out there around us and we have to live with them. It’s easy to forget in the Realm.’ She smiles. ‘And it’s good for a child to play in the dirt, to build up immunity.’

‘Wait,’ Isidore says. ‘Your daughter?’

‘Whatever,’ Drathdor says, getting up. ‘I’m going before I catch “justice”.’

There is an awkward silence as he walks away.

‘You know, I still don’t understand how you are supposed to keep score—’ Sagewyn begins.

The Eldest gives Sagewyn a sharp look. ‘Isidore. I would like to talk to you for a moment.’ The pointy-eared zoku elder gets up. ‘Nice meeting you, Isidore.’ He winks. ‘Fist bump?’ He does a strange gesture in the air, like an aborted punch. ‘All right. Take it easy.’

‘Apologies for my zoku partners,’ the Eldest says. ‘They don’t really have much contact with the outside world.’

‘It’s an honour to meet you,’ Isidore says. ‘She never mentioned you before. Or her father. Is he around?’

‘Perhaps she didn’t want to confuse you. I like to use the word “mother”, but it is a little more complicated than that. Let us say that there was an incident in the Protocol War involving me and a captured Sobornost warmind.’ She looks at the entanglement ring in Isidore’s hand. ‘She gave you that?’