The Fractal Prince

18 THE THIEF AND THE GOURD

I meet Hsien-Ku 432nd Generation, Early Renaissance Quintic Equations Branch, in a Viennese café in the 1990s. True to my nature and role, I don’t touch my Black Forest gâteau, even though it looks delicious. Instead, I maintain the stern businesslike visage of the sumanguru.

She, on the other hand, eats hers with relish: a short plain woman in a period dress, a faint smile on her round face, making appreciative noises as she spoons in the chocolate. I wait for her to finish. She wipes her mouth with a napkin.

‘Coffee?’ she asks.

‘I’d rather stay focused on the matter at hand,’ I say.

‘Very well. Lord Sumanguru, in all honesty, I took the time to speak to you since your visit is somewhat irregular. We have not received any updates to the Plan that would necessitate a review of our operation.’

I pick up a spoon in my large, black hands and bend it slightly. The hsien-ku winces.

‘The Plan can’t prepare for all the enemies of the Great Common Task.’ The soft metal twists, no doubt faithfully modelled by the ancestor sim’s physics engine.

I hold up the spoon. ‘It’s a good vir. Down to the quantum level, is that right?’

There is a sudden panic in the hsien-ku’s eyes.

‘We simplify things wherever possible,’ she says hastily. ‘There are no unnecessary quantum elements. All the minds are strictly classical. Whenever we have to make quantum corrections, it is only in the experiments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and then we ensure we carefully run all quantum aspects classically, in sandboxed virtual machines. I assure you, Lord Sumanguru, there is no contamination here.’

‘You misunderstand me.’ I place the twisted spoon on the table. ‘My brothers and I commend you. We find embodiment . . . useful for questioning the enemies of the Task.’

A faint look of fear flickers across her eyes. It is easy to see why I chose this disguise last time. My greatest concern was that the chen would have notified the others that this particular Founder code was compromised – but that would have harmed the carefully maintained illusion of Founder infallibility.

‘And surely you do not expect to find any such here?’ she asks.

‘There is a concern that your operation has gotten too close to the flesh; that much of it has to do with matter.’

‘That is not by choice,’ the hsien-ku says. ‘Our interpretation of the Task is as valid as that of the other Founders – and it demands us to recover the lost souls of Earth.’

‘Then why have you not already done so?’

‘There was an attempt to scan and upload Earth’s biosphere and matter more forcefully some years ago, but it was a failure.’

‘Absurd. Why should a planetary environment like that pose any problems? Especially given the kinds of resources the Plan has deployed here.’

‘Wildcode,’ the hsien-ku says, embarrassed. ‘Something happened there after the Collapse. A mini-Singularity of sorts. Not on the scale of the Spike, but a merging of the noosphere with the native biosphere. It resulted in something the natives call wildcode, complex self-modifying code. It permeates Earth’s matter and it’s a pain to get rid of. While our imagers are capable of partial reconstructions, most of the key minds are in the upload heavens.’

‘Which you have access to through trade, is that correct?’

‘Broadly speaking, yes. We trade with the natives. It’s a slow process, but we are archaeologists. It has proven more effective than our previous attempts.’

‘Soft. Your copyclan lives up to its reputation,’ I say.

‘We will find a way to counteract the wildcode effects. If the Plan was to grant us more resources—’

‘—you would find another way to waste them. Already, our conversation has given me enough to raise this matter with the Prime. However, perhaps there is something you can do to help us both. I understand you have . . . detailed records of our glorious past.’

‘As our interpretation of the Task dictates, our aim is to give life to all those who lived on Earth before the rise of Fedorovism. It requires a detailed study of matter and historical records, as well as mind archeology.’

‘I don’t care about your interpretation of the Task. I require access to the ancestor virs. Full access.’

‘Surely, you understand that I need to follow the Plan to get you anything of the sort. Otherwise, where would we be?’

‘Your . . . rigour is admirable. But not wise.’ I give her a sumanguru smile, a tiger grin.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Scholarship can distract you from important events. Pellegrinis and vasilevs. There are serious tensions. Serious enough for us to take notice.’

She places her own spoon on her plate with a nervous clink. She is probably searching her Library for moments of greater self-confidence.

‘There were also some . . . irregularities with the Experiment I am looking into.’

‘That was centuries ago in our frame,’ she protests.

‘Crimes against the Task do not get old.’

‘I understand,’ she says. ‘Perhaps a limited period of access could be arranged.’

‘Good.’ I try the gâteau. It is excellent, but I force myself to make a face. ‘It would be a shame to feed such a wonderful creation to the Dragons.’

The ancestor vir of the Gourd, where the hsien-kus of Sobornost make history. It is a giant puzzle, fragments of the past glued together with simulation. The hsien-kus observe and measure, search the memories of gogols bought from the soul merchants of Sirr, or stolen from the Oubliette – and run ensembles of simulations to find histories that match the observations. Averages over possible event sequences instantiated, culled and tweaked until they conform with what the hsien-kus think history should be.

The interface is overwhelming at first. I am a bodiless ghost in a four-dimensional world. A god-view and a new sense that allows me to step backwards and forwards in time. I hate the incorporeal aspect of it – I need to touch things – but there is no embodiment here, just the chill of watching processes unfold in gogol brains. The hsien-kus cheat as much as they can: in spite of my accusations, not everything is simulated down to the molecular or even cellular level to allow true physics-equivalence.

What do the gogols here think of their existence? Whole worlds spawned and wiped away and rewritten, just to fit a newly discovered fact of history. Only those who really existed have the right to live. The others are just sketches, erased when they are no longer needed. Poor bastards.

To avoid attention, I go all the way back to an obscure corner of seventh-century Britain – a muddy field shrouded in rain – before I let Joséphine out. She hacks the physics engine with the practised ease of a Founder and makes herself a face out of the raindrops.

‘Well, Jean,’ she says. ‘Now you know the plan. I would have given it back to you eventually. But a part of me likes it when you make me mad. The question is, do you have the balls to go through with it this time?’

‘You never did give me the why of the plan. Why does Chen want an ancient gogol of himself so badly?’

She smiles. ‘Don’t we all want to be children again?’

‘I have no problem being a grown-up. Tell me.’

The rain woman laughs. ‘You’ll need a few more centuries before you are a grown-up.’

Then she tells me what she saw in Matjek Chen’s vir, on a beach.

‘So. Innocence,’ I say when she is finished.

‘That’s what you have to steal, and not the way you usually do it,’ she says.

I swallow. A part of me is rationalising already: it’s Matjek Chen, the great monster lord of the System, there is nothing I can do that he has not already done a thousand times.

And I want to be free.

‘Are we talking,’ I say, ‘or are we stealing?’

She gives me a wet kiss on the cheek. Then she vanishes into the rain like the Cheshire Cat, off to make mischief for the hsien-kus, to take over the systems of the Gourd.

I look at my reflection in the puddle at my feet. It gazes back at me, and there is an accusation in its eyes. Abyss. Monsters. That sort of thing.

But I am a better thief than a philosopher, and it is too late for that anyway. I need to find Matjek Chen, and I need to start somewhere. And the only thing I remember is the fire-eater in Paris.

Chen has come to the banks of the Seine to watch the fire-eater, and Jean le Flambeur has come to watch him.

It is evening, a sharp tinge of autumn in the air, Notre Dame looming on the other side of the river like a great stone spider, dwarfed by the silver spires of the Cité Nouvelle in the sky. The fire-eater is an old, bare-chested Brazilian man whose muscles look like bundles of ropes. Firelight from a dozen torches spinning in a metal wheel plays on his deep brown skin. He picks one, bends his neck, and slowly thrusts the torch between his lips. A great gout of flame like the backlash of a blast furnace rushes out, and the fire-eater’s cheeks and throat glow like a jack-o-lantern.

Chen stares, mesmerised, as the old man licks the air with scintillant tongues of red and orange. Intense eyes, prematurely grey hair tousled by the wind. The father of Fedorovism as a young man.

The young Jean stands on the other side of the crowd, watching him. He is here on behalf of Joséphine Pellegrini. I step into his head. He is a blank gogol, just part of the crowd, but as I follow his movements, the memories come back.

When the fire-eater finishes, I go to him.

‘Do you like the circus, Monsieur Chen?’ I ask.

He looks at me sharply. ‘Fire-eaters more than clowns,’ he says.

I take a slight bow. ‘I like to think of myself as more of a magician. But perhaps I can make you laugh.’

He smiles a cold smile. ‘I doubt it.’

‘I represent someone who has taken an interest in your . . . activities. A wealthy someone. They have a proposition for you.’

‘That’s not funny.’ He turns to leave.

‘I know it was you behind what happened in the Iridescent Gateway of Heaven,’ I say. ‘That wasn’t funny either.’

He gives me a look that is so cold that even across the centuries I feel my guts turning into ice. I wave a hand hastily.

‘Don’t worry, I have no intention of turning you in. That would be professional discourtesy. Hear me out. At least let me buy you a drink.’

‘I don’t drink,’ he says.

‘Then you can watch me drink. I know just the place.’

I take him to a bar called Caveau, next to Palais Royal, a few steps off a narrow street of empty windows. We take a few steps down the stairs into the basement bar, order a mojito from the shaven-headed barman from San Francisco. Chen watches me. His stare is intense, and I note with some respect how he is trying to get through the web of agents I have spun around him.

‘My employer is curious,’ I say. ‘Why are you doing this?’

He smiles faintly.

‘It’s simply that I don’t like the way the world is. Is that so hard to believe?’

‘I understand you didn’t like the Heaven either.’

The Fedorovists rescued minds from black box software camps, coordinated attacks by fabbed drones, remotely piloted by activists around the world. Too bad the liberated minds took over the infrastructure of Shenzen and crashed it. Living computer viruses, crazy from pain, able to break into any automated control system and make copies of themselves.

‘The Heaven was just a start,’ he says.

‘Fedorov saw this coming. The next revolution will be against death. I don’t like death. I thought that we would agree on that at least, Monsieur le Flambeur.’

I raise my eyebrows. Obviously, he is better informed than I thought. But then, having countless liberated slaves on his side gives him certain advantages.

‘I’m having enough trouble avoiding the police, let alone death. I’m not interested in ideology. What I do is just a game.’

‘It is not a game to me.’

What is it? What changed him? What made him who he is? The pearls of Martha Wayne. Uncle Ben. Whatever it is, I’m not going to find it here.

I wish I could see into his equipment, the primitive upload cap he wears, synchronising versions of himself into the cloud. But that data is forever lost in the Collapse. Come on, young Jean, you can do better than that.

‘My employer can see that. So she is offering to help you. Equipment. Money. Whatever you need, it’s yours.’

‘And what is their price?’

I smile. ‘Immortality, of course.’

I leave my past self and the chen drinking and contemplating the world that is coming. Unfortunately, this is going nowhere. There must be something else that I found before, something that convinced me there was a lost gogol of Matjek Chen on Earth. I instantiate a blank gogol in the vir and ask the barman to mix me a screwdriver. The embodiment and the alcohol feel good, but do not provide any answers.

A touch on my sleeve. A wooden mask looks at me, painted with faded colours, a grinning monster. It is made less threatening by the fact that the person who wears it is a little girl, in a dirty dress covered in soot stains, barefoot.

I blink.

‘What—’

She lifts a finger to her wooden mouth.

‘Ssh,’ she says.

I flip out of the temporary gogol to the 4D view. She is still there, a presence that does not belong. In four dimensions, she is an infinite chain of mirror images, a serpent. She motions me to follow.

‘I will help you,’ she says, ‘if you tell me a story.’

‘Who are you?’

‘A sister. A mother. A goddess. A princess. A queen. Tell me a story and I will take you to what you seek.’

‘What kind of story?’

‘A true story.’

On Mars, I left myself a memory trail, something triggered by my presence. Perhaps this is something similar. In that case, it’s best to play along.

Her ember eyes gleam behind the mask, full of curiosity.

‘It’s quite a long story,’ I say, ‘but I guess we have time.’

I order another drink and begin.

‘As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small talk.’

‘Thank you,’ she says when it’s over. Her voice is barely a whisper, wind blowing in a chimney. Then the world changes, and I am alone with three ghosts.

A dark-skinned man in a neat beard and a suit sits behind a table, looking at a young couple. A handsome young man with thick blond hair in jeans and a T-shirt, a tiny Asian woman who can’t stay still. She keeps touching the man’s forearm.

The man behind the desk smiles at them. Don Luis Perenna, Jannah Corporation, sales representative, director. A serial entrepreneur who has come up with yet another business model for the hyper-rich. I suppose I did the same thing, until I met Joséphine.

He gives them an understanding look.

‘I have children myself,’ he says. ‘A boy and a girl. They are already in the program. I can’t tell you what comfort it gives me, every night. The old nightmare of a parent. They say that after you have a child, every night is full of fear. We want to help you to carry that fear, to take away the fangs of death.’

‘I’m still not sure about this,’ says the man, Bojan Chen, Matjek Chen’s father. ‘There are just so many philosophical issues—’

‘Of course, I understand,’ says Perenna. ‘There is philosophy – loving wisdom – and then there is love. We at Jannah are more interested in the latter.’

‘We talked about this already,’ the woman says, firmly. Her grip on Bojan’s forearm tightens. The sensors in the office are good enough that I can watch the decision-making processes unfold in their brains. Perenna has them hooked.

‘All right,’ the young man says. ‘Let’s see it.’

The screens show structures that look like underground bunkers. ‘Powered by geothermal energy and fusion. With a unique backup feature. Secret location.’ Damn it. I’m going to go through Jannah’s records in more detail.

‘We can guarantee absolute security. It will survive even an asteroid impact. The clockspeed within will be slow by default, with periodic synchronisation—’

I was right. There is a secret gogol of Matjek Chen, buried somewhere on Earth. That’s going to be the key to the operation. That, and the body thieves. I craft a coded message to Mieli and send it out, into the Sobornost thoughtwisp network.

The vir freezes.

‘What an interesting discovery,’ Hsien-ku Quintic Equations says. ‘Extraordinary! Quite a scholarly achievement for somebody from your copyclan.’

‘What do you want?’ I say in Sumanguru’s growl.

‘I was merely making sure that you found whatever it was that you were looking for. I couldn’t imagine anything like this. How did you come across it? A new fragment of the lives of the Chens.’

‘I would not advise you to interfere,’ I say. The bitch set me up.

She nods politely.

‘Of course not. However, I would ask you for a favour.’

I get it: it’s going to be a blat game. The problem with central planning is that you always end up getting out of sync with it, and there are alternative ways to get things done. I should have known. The hsien-kus are sufficiently far from the deep guberniya time that they play fast and loose with the Plan.

‘There is a small matter requiring attention in the flesh-realm of Sirr, and your assistance would be much appreciated . . .’