The Quantum Thief

Interlude. THE HUNTER

It is springtime, and the Engineer-of-Souls is happy.

His guberniya virscape is a machine garden, vast and blooming. The seeds he planted during the long Dyson winter when the guberniya slowed itself down to shed its waste heat have blossomed, and now there is variety, variety everywhere.

His gogols swarm around him like a flock of white-coated birds as he plumbs its depths: plunging a billion pairs of hands into black soil where each particle is a cogwheel that fits together with its neighbours perfectly, to feel the seeds of new composite minds about to bloom. Engineer-Prime himself is everywhere, directing the culling of this memetic tree, watching that flock of genetic algorithms alight into a new parameter space from a branching process.

With infinite gentleness he pulls up a freshly bloomed shoot of a newly made gogol, one with a rare disorder that makes it think its body would be made of glass, easily shattered: something he thought lost centuries ago. Combined with an exquisite schizophrenia, it will result in a mind that can divide and recombine itself at will, integrating memories: something Matjek’s warminds will love. He splits off a gogol to carry on the mundane details of the work, and returns his attention to the big picture, letting Engineer-Prime shoot upwards to the sky, white lab coat flapping in the fresh breeze. Yes, that patch there will yield a good harvest of Dragonspeakers. In that vast labyrinth, single-minded Pursuers are already gestating: soon they will be ready to explore parameter spaces larger than worlds, mathematical ants, combing the vast Gödel universe for unproven theorems.

It occurs to the Engineer that he has never been happier: a quick search through his gogol library verifies the fact. He is more content than any Engineer has ever been, since his earliest days as a student in the University of Minsk – although one moment in time, with someone special, comes close. That, in itself, is worth splitting off a gogol and storing it into his Library, frozen in time.

So of course, it cannot last.

There is a ripple in the virscape as no less than two other Founders arrive, unannounced: waves of religious terror spread through the lesser gardener gogols, who prostrate themselves among the growing machines. A gestating warm-ind escapes its suddenly distracted handlers, a metallic spider of controlled poisonous aggression, demolishing a promising patch of Dreamers until the Engineer can stretch out one of his billion hands to unmake it. What a waste. Oblivious to the destruction they are causing, the two strangers stride towards the main concourse of the Garden. One of them is a small, unassuming Chinese man with grey hair in sober monkish robes. At least Matjek Chen, the most powerful Founder in all of Sobornost, has the courtesy not to appear in his full Founder form here.

But the other, a tall woman in a white summer dress, holding a delicate parasol, hiding her face-

Filled with sudden haste, the Engineer works quickly to contain the visitors in a subvirtual – no mean task, given that with their Founder powers, they could easily rip such illusions apart – and sends Engineer-Prime down to meet them.

The Garden becomes a true garden, with cherry trees in full bloom. There is a stone fountain in the Fedorovist style, heroic figures of a man and a woman holding a cup aloft. Lesser Engineer gogols arrange refreshments as Engineer-Prime goes to meet his visitors.

‘Welcome,’ he says, stroking his beard – a royal gesture, he thinks. He gives the two a slight bow. Chen acknowledges him with a barely perceptible nod. The Engineer tries to judge the seniority of this gogol: not the Prime, certainly, but enough of the Founder aura to hold true power.

The woman folds her parasol and smiles at him, diamonds glittering around her swanlike neck. ‘Hello, Sasha,’ she says.

He holds out a chair for her. ‘Joséphine.’

She sits down gracefully, crossing her legs, leaning delicately on the folded parasol. ‘It is such a lovely garden you have here, Sasha,’ she says. ‘It is no wonder that we never see you anymore. Why, if I lived in a place like this, I would not want to leave.’

‘Sometimes it is tempting,’ says Chen, ‘to ignore the realities of the world at large. Unfortunately, not all of us have such luxury.’

The Engineer gives the old Founder a curt smile. ‘The work I do here is of benefit to all of Sobornost, and the Great Common Task.’

‘Of course,’ Chen says. ‘You are uniquely qualified for that work. Indeed, that is why we are here.’ He sits down to the edge of the fountain, touching the water. ‘This is all a little excessive, don’t you think?’ The Engineer remembers that Chen’s own realms tend to be abstract, Spartan places, with bared-down physics and barely enough detail to stay out of the valleys of the uncanny.

‘Oh, please, Matjek,’ says Joséphine. ‘Don’t be such a bore. It is beautiful here. And can’t you see that Sasha is busy? He always strokes his beard when he is eager to get back to work but is too polite to say so.’

‘He has gogols aplenty to do his work,’ Chen says, ‘but very well.’ He crosses his hands and leans across the table.

‘Brother, we have a slight problem with one of your creations. The Dilemma Prison has been breached.’

‘Impossible.’

‘See for yourself.’ The virscape wavers as Chen passes the Engineer a memory: for a moment, he sees the Founder gogol as he truly is, the voice of trillions of Chens, stretching across all the vast guberniyas and oblasts and raions of the Sobornost, not so much a person but a limb. Then he is holding a frozen gogol that he recognises as his own handiwork instantly, a little experiment with games and obsessions he had almost forgotten about. An Archon, he called it, made to hold the mad ones and bad ones of Sobornost somewhere far away. He peels it open like an orange, and absorbs its memories.

‘How strange,’ he says, watching the Prison spit out three minds into a fragile matter shell. He feels a sting of admiration for the little thing in the Oortian ship that manages to fool his own creation, and makes a note to make sure that the next Archon generation has the ability to distinguish between different layers of reality.

‘We would not have even noticed,’ says Chen, ‘if they had not made a mistake. But they did: they were supposed to take out two gogols, not three. The third one is quite interesting, as you can see.’

‘Ah yes,’ says the Engineer, feeling grandparental pride at the Archons’ creation. ‘The defector. Fascinating.’

‘Founder codes. Somebody opened the Prison with Founder codes. We need to know why.’ Chen slams a fist against the table. ‘We are at war, all of us, between ourselves, some of us even against ourselves. But there are some things we agreed not to do.’

‘Perhaps you did, Matjek,’ says Joséphine, running a finger along the rim of her glass of water. ‘Somebody else clearly did not.’

‘We need those gogols back: we – I – need to know what they know.’

‘And have you not gogols aplenty of your own to accomplish that?’ asks the Engineer, feeling satisfied that he can hold the older Founder’s gaze for a moment. ‘There are greater works to be begun and completed.’ He can feel Chen’s irritation gathering behind the gogol’s calm veneer, like static electricity in the air.

‘Sasha,’ Joséphine says. ‘We are not children. We – I – would not come to ask if we did not need you.’ She touches his hand, and smiles: and even after three centuries and billions of branchings, the Engineer finds it difficult not to smile back. ‘Matjek, perhaps you should let me talk to Sasha alone.’ She holds the old Founder’s gaze for a moment. To the Engineer’s surprise, he looks away. ‘All right,’ Chen says. ‘Perhaps a child can talk some sense to another child. I will be back soon.’ He leaves the virscape ungracefully, pulling the gogol avatar into a rupture in space so violently that the Engineer has to struggle to smooth it out.

Joséphine shakes her head. ‘We all talk about change,’ she says. ‘There are some things that do not change.’ Then she looks at him, luminous eyes aglow. ‘But you have. I love all these things you have built. It’s amazing. I wonder – did you always have it in you, even back then? Or did you grow up?’

‘Joséphine,’ he says. ‘Just tell me what it is that you want.’

She pouts. ‘I’m not sure I like this grown-up Sasha. You are not even blushing.’

‘Please.’

‘All right.’ She looks up and takes a deep breath. ‘They are killing me. The others. Things have changed during your last Winter, changed a lot. Anton and Hsien are together now. Chitragupta is… well, it is itself. But me – they never liked me. And I am weak, weaker than you can believe.’

The Engineer stares at her in disbelief. ‘Gogolcide? Have we come that far?’

‘Not yet, but that is what they intend. Matjek is my only hope, and he knows that you will listen to me. It is not really about the Prison, you understand: he just wants a weapon against the others. And your support.’

‘I could…’ He hesitates. ‘I could protect you.’

‘You are sweet, but we both know you could not. This place is something that the others give you because you are useful. If that ceases, so will this. Help Matjek, and he will help us both. Make something that will catch the little runaways. It is a small thing, but it will show him that you listen to me. And that will make me valuable to him.’

The Engineer closes his eyes. He can feel his Garden, alive and growing, his billion hands in its soil: all inside a mighty guberniya brain, eating matter and energy from the sun itself, a diamond sphere the size of old Earth, containing his trillion gogols and the Dragons within. And yet he feels small.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘Just this once. For old times’ sake.’

‘Thank you.’ She kisses his cheek. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

‘Don’t let it get too far, with him,’ he says.

‘I know Matjek, as much as it is possible to know him. I can handle him, for now. I may have… other options, but those will take time. So I thank you for this gift.’

‘It is nothing.’ He smiles. ‘I will make you a hunter. Would you like to watch?’

‘I always love to watch you work.’

He lets the garden vir dissolve around them. In her Founder form, she is equally beautiful, a creature of spun silver woven from many gogols. He guides her through the Factory to the Orchard, where his favourite things grow. Taking quiet pleasure in the astonishment she radiates, he loses himself in the work. This is a task for a different scale, no longer supervision but craftsmanship: the cognitive modules of the new thing he is making are vast atlases around them, symphonies of neural pathways and thoughts.

With some pleasure he is able to incorporate his new discovery in the design. This Hunter will not be one, but many: able to split itself into many parts and become one again. He gives it a single-mindedness he found in an Oortian sculptor, and the coordination ability of a concert pianist, seasoned with more primitive animal forms from the older libraries: shark and feline. He gives it enough cognitive rights to be intelligent, but not enough to have latency, and allocates a fragment of the guberniya smartmatter to it, so it is ready to be launched when its new mistress commands.

The finished thing does not speak, but regards them both silently, observing, waiting for a target. It has the kind of beauty that weapons often have, the kind that lures you to touch it even though you know that its sharp edges will cut.

‘It’s yours,’ he says. ‘Not Matjek’s. Yours. Just tell it what you want to be found.’

Joséphine Pellegrini smiles, and whispers a name in the Hunter’s ear.