The Quantum Thief

5. THE DETECTIVE AND THE ZOKU

Isidore almost makes it in time.

The spidercab races across the rooftops of the city. It costs a hundred kiloseconds, but it is the only option to get even close. He holds on tight to his safety belt. The carriage lurches back and forth as the vehicle – the bastard child of a spider, a H. G. Wells war machine and a taxi – leaps over rooftops and clings to walls.

He drops the box of chocolates and curses as it bounces back and forth in the cabin.

‘Are you okay back there?’ asks the driver, a young woman in the traditional red, webbed domino mask of the cabbies. In a shifting city where many places are permanently hidden by gevulot, their job is to figure out how to get you from point A to point B. There is a certain amount of pride that comes with that. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you there.’

‘I’m fine,’ says Isidore. ‘Just go faster.’

The zoku colony is near the prow of the city, in the Dust District, just above where the Atlas Quiet prepare Martian sand to bear the weight of the city. It is easy to see where the colony’s boundary lies: beneath the red dust clouds the wide avenues with their belle époque fronts and cherry trees give way to fairy-tale castles of diamond, like mathematics given physical form. Evening light refracts and bounces among the buildings’ glossy surfaces, prismatic and dazzling. The zoku colony has been here for more than twenty years, since they requested asylum during the Protocol War; but rumour has it it was grown from a nanoseed in a single night. A shard of the quantum tech empire that rules the outer planets, here on Mars. Ever since he started dating Pixil, Isidore has made attempts to understand the odd non-hierarchy of the zokus, but without much success.

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?’

‘Yes.’

‘Interesting.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You poor thing. She should not have brought you here. What a mess you are.’ She sighs. ‘But perhaps that is what she needs now, to prove something.’

‘I don’t understand.’ He tries to read the woman’s expression, but the subtle cues of gevulot are not there. This is one of the things that has always drawn him to Pixil, the riddle. But in her mother it is merely frightening.

‘What I wanted to say was that you should not expect too much from my daughter. You understand, she already has a connection to something bigger than herself. That is one reason why I told you the story. She experiments, and that is fine, and so should you. But you two are not entangled. You will never be a part of that. Do you understand?’

Isidore breathes in sharply. ‘With all due respect, I would say that our relationship is our business. I’m sure she would agree.’

‘You don’t understand,’ the Eldest says.

‘If you are saying that I’m not good enough for her-’ He crosses his arms. ‘My father was a Noble of the Kingdom. And I thought one could join a zoku. What is to say that I don’t decide to do that?’

‘But you won’t.’

‘I don’t think it is your place to say that.’

‘Oh, but it is. This is a zoku. We are one.’ Something flashes in her eyes. ‘Do not be deceived by this little dress-up. This is not who we really are. You haven’t really seen her: we made her to go out amongst you and know you. But underneath-’

The Eldest’s face ripples, and for a moment, she is a shimmering statue made from a billion dancing dust motes, with a beautiful face floating within, surrounded by dazzling jewels like the one on the sword, arranged about her in complex constellations. And then she is a middle-aged blonde again. ‘Underneath we are different.’

She pats Isidore’s hand. ‘But don’t worry. These things will follow their due course.’ She gets up. ‘I’m sure Cyndra will be back soon. Enjoy the party.’ She walks into the crowd, sword swinging at her hip, leaving Isidore staring at the pixel rain on the monitors.

A while after that drinking starts to feel like a good idea, so Isidore tries the beer. It is stale and foul, and he would prefer wine, but he gets two cans down before the effects hit. The day starts to catch up with him, and he almost falls asleep watching the monitors. Two other guests – a young man and a girl wearing makeup that makes her look like a corpse – sit down and play the game. After a while, the man turns around and gives Isidore a sheepish grin.

‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Would you like to try? I’m not much of a challenge to Miss Destroyer of Worlds here.’ The girl rolls her eyes. ‘Lover, not a fighter, huh?’ she says.

‘Absolutely.’ The man looks a little older than Isidore, in his early Martian teens, with Asian features, a pencil moustache, well-tailored suit and slicked-back dark hair. He is carrying a leather shoulder bag. ‘So what do you say?’

‘I think I’m too drunk,’ Isidore says. ‘You go ahead.’

‘Actually, drinking sounds like an excellent way to save face. Sorry, mistress. You have defeated us.’ The girl sighs. ‘All right. I’m going to play Werewolf. Puny humans.’ She blows Isidore a kiss.

‘Enjoying the party?’ the man asks.

‘Not really.’

‘Well, that’s a shame.’ He picks up one of the beer cans on the table and opens it. ‘As you will have discovered, the beer here is absolutely horrible. It’s all authentic, you see.’

‘Works for me,’ Isidore says, opening another one as well. ‘I’m Isidore.’

‘ Adrian.’ The man’s handshake is clearly from the Oubliette. But it does not seem important, with the odd freedom from gevulot and sweet intoxication.

‘So, Isidore, why are you not out there, dancing and entangling and picking up zoku chicks?’

‘I’ve had a very strange day,’ Isidore says. ‘I nearly got killed. I caught a gogol pirate. Or two. With chocolate. As for zoku chicks, I’ve already got one. Her mother is a goddess, and she hates me.’

‘All right then,’ Adrian says. ‘I was expecting something along the lines of I saw a tzaddik, or I had somebody else’s dream last night.’

‘Oh, there was a tzaddik there too,’ Isidore says.

‘Now, that sounds like a story! Tell me more.’

They keep drinking. It feels right to tell the story of the chocolatier.The words pour out easily. It makes him think of Pixil. How much did we ever really talk? And without gevulot restraining his thoughts or tongue, he feels like a stone skipping on water, light and free.

‘Who are you, Isidore?’ Adrian asks, after he is finished. ‘How did you get involved in this stuff?’

‘I couldn’t help it. I have to think about things I don’t understand. I used to wander the Maze and break gevulot locks, just for fun.’

‘But why? What do you get out of it?’

Isidore sits back, laughing. ‘I don’t understand people. I need to deduce things. I don’t know why anyone says or does anything if I don’t think about it.’

‘That’s amazing,’ Adrian says when Isidore pauses to sip his beer. Distantly, he notices the man is scribbling on a little notepad, old-fashioned, made from paper. That can only mean one thing, and even through his clouded brain Isidore realises he has made a mistake.

‘You are a journalist,’ he says. The momentum is gone, and the water swallows the skipping stone. His head feels heavy. In a world of perfect privacy, there are still analog holes, and publishing newspapers is one of the most lucrative tolerated crimes in the Oubliette. They have been after him ever since his first case with the haute couture thieves. But they have never managed to breach his gevulot. Until now.

‘Yes, I am. Adrian Wu, from Ares Herald.’ He takes out an old-fashioned camera from his bag – another trick to get around gevulot. The flash blinds Isidore for a moment.

Isidore hits him. Or tries to: he leaps to his feet and swings wildly, failing to connect. His legs buckle. He grabs the nearest object – the computer monitor on the table – and falls to the floor with it with a crash. He struggles to get up, reaching for Adrian ’s camera. ‘Give me that.’

‘Oh, I will. You and fifty thousand other readers, tomorrow. You know, we have been dying to interview you since you were first spotted with the Gentleman. Any chance you’d like to tell us more about her?’

‘About her?’

‘Oh yes.’ Adrian grins. ‘And you are supposed to be the detective? The word on the street is that the Gentleman is a woman. Speaking of which – here is the lady of the hour.’

‘Hi, pumpkin,’ Pixil says. Even through the shock, anger and alcohol haze, seeing her makes Isidore feel warm. Her black lipstick makes her lopsided smile look like a comma. Her tiny body is squeezed into a tight tartan-patterned dress with leather straps that highlight her shapely dark-skinned shoulders just right. ‘Cyndra told me you made it. I’m so glad.’ She gives Isidore a kiss that tastes of punch.

‘Hi,’ Isidore says. ‘I brought you chocolate. The monster ate it.’

‘Goodness me. I think you are drunk.’

‘Better than that,’ says Adrian. ‘He’s a story.’ He gives Isidore a little bow and vanishes into the crowd.

The next hour is a blur, and after a while he forgets about the journalist. It is hot, and absolutely everything everybody says sounds funny. Pixil takes him from one zoku group to another. They talk to quantum gods who sit in circles and argue about which one of them is a werewolf. Pale-skinned super-heroes in ill-fitting latex costumes ask him questions about the tzaddikim. And it is hard to think about anything else except her small hand, warm between his shoulder-blades.

‘Can we go and find somewhere quieter?’ he finally says.

‘Sure. I want to watch the entanglements.’

They find a quiet sofa away from the main area of the party and sit down. The entanglements are spectacular. People attach their qubit containers – jetpacks and rayguns and magic swords – to huge Rube Goldberg devices with optic fibres and cables. With the primitive equipment, the entanglements do not succeed every time, but when they do, there are electric arcs from Tesla coils, thunderous sound effects and loud laughter. The smell of ozone in the air clears Isidore’s head a little.

‘I think I like you better properly drunk,’ Pixil says. ‘You just got your look back.’

‘What look?’

‘You are deducing something.’

‘I’m not.’ He is trying, but it is hard to think. Liquid anger goes round and round in his belly, refusing to settle down.

‘Tell me,’ Pixil says, tousling his hair. ‘I get to guess what you are thinking about. If I get it right, you will be my slave tonight.’

Isidore downs the rest of his drink from a plastic cup – some sort of overly sweet punch thing with guarana in it that they got from the last group, teenage girls in sailor outfits. It takes some of the drowsiness away, but also makes him jittery.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’m game.’

‘You are thinking about your tzaddik. Are you trying to make me jealous?’

‘No. It didn’t go well. I’m not going to be a tzaddik. But that’s not what I’m thinking about.’

‘Oh no.’ There is a look of genuine concern on her face. ‘What did that bastard want? You are a genius. You solved the… whatever it was, right?’

‘Yeah. But it wasn’t enough. Don’t worry. I don’t want to talk about it. Keep guessing.’ The feeling of failure is a yawning pit beneath his denial.

‘All right, then.’ She caresses his hand, tickling his palm with a forefinger. ‘You are trying to work out what is the best way to get me to bed as soon as possible?’

‘No.’

‘No?’ She makes a mock offended sound. ‘You might want to call a cab in that case, M. Detective. Why are you not thinking about that? I am.’

‘You still get a third guess,’ Isidore says.

‘Well.’ Pixil looks serious. She presses her fingers against her temples and closes her eyes. ‘You are thinking…’

‘No cheating with qupts or gevulot,’ Isidore says.

‘Are you kidding? I never cheat.’ She purses her lips. ‘I’d say you are thinking about Adrian and why I invited him here, and why did I ask Cyndra to parade you in front of the elders and why does my poor old tanglemother hate you?’ She gives him a sweet smile. ‘Does that sound about right? Do you think I am completely stupid?’

‘Yes,’ Isidore says. ‘I mean, no. You are right. So why did you?’ The anger is clotting into a tight clump inside his chest. His temples throb.

‘You are cute when you are confused.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Slaves don’t get to make demands. I won,’ Pixil says.

‘I don’t want to play just now. Why?’

‘Well, for one thing, I wanted to show you off.’ She takes his hand in her lap.

‘Show me off? I managed to offend them in the first five minutes. And your mother really does hate me.’

‘Tanglemother. No, she doesn’t. She’s just being over-protective. First child created on Mars, you know, gevulot compatibility, bridge between two worlds, blah blah blah. And they are still shocked that I end up dating one of you. They deserve to be offended a little. They still think that we are going to go back to Jupiter one day, even though there is nothing there except dust and Sobornost drones that eat it. We live here now, and no one else wants to acknowledge it at all.’

‘So,’ Isidore says. ‘You were using me.’

‘Of course I was. It’s a game. The optimal resource allocation thing is no joke. We are going to do whatever is best for each other, that’s the way it works, we can’t help it. In this case, rebelling a little is the best thing to do.’

‘So it’s not really rebelling, is it?’

‘Oh, come on,’ she says. ‘You do this stuff with people all the time. You’re good at it. Why do you think you are with me? Because I’m a puzzle. Because you can’t figure me out, like you do with them. I’ve seen you talking to people, and you tell them something, and it’s not you, it’s just something you have deduced. Don’t try to tell me it’s not a game to you too.’

‘It’s not just a game,’ Isidore says. ‘I almost died today. A girl killed her father in a horrible way. These things happen, and someone has to solve them.’

‘Solving them makes it better?’

‘It does for me,’ Isidore says quietly. ‘You know that.’

‘Yes, I know. And I thought other people should, too. You are doing well, somebody should be keeping score. So I invited Adrian, here where he could talk to you without any of that gevulot nonsense. He is going to make you famous.’

‘Pixil, that was a bad thing to do. I’m going to be in a lot of trouble because of that. Do you think you can just decide what I need? I’m not part of your zoku. It doesn’t work that way with me.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Pixil says. ‘With the zoku, I don’t have a choice.’ She touches her zoku jewel, embedded at the base of her throat, where her collar-bones meet. ‘With you, it’s because I want to.’

A distant part of him knows that she is lying, but somehow it does not matter, and he kisses her anyway.

‘You know,’ she says, ‘you did lose the bet. Come on. I’m going to show you something.’

Pixil takes his hand and leads him to a plain door that was not there a moment before. Entanglement electric arcs flare up again behind them as they walk through together.

For a moment there is another discontinuity.

They emerge into a huge, cavernous space that is full of black cubes of different sizes, ranging from a cubic metre to the size of a house, stacked on top of each other. The walls, floor and the ceiling – somewhere high, high up – are white and faintly luminescent. The illumination makes even Pixil seem pale.

‘Where are we?’ Isidore asks. His voice has an eerie echo.

‘You know we are mercenaries, right? We raid things. Well, this is where we keep the treasure.’ Pixil lets go of his hand and runs ahead, touching a cube. It flashes into transparency in an instant. Inside, is a strange, glittering beast, like a feathered serpent, swirling in the air, trapped in a cage of light. A floating spime bubble tells him it is a Langton worm, captured in the wilder virtual reaches of the Realm and given physical form.

Pixil laughs. ‘You can find almost anything here.’ She runs around, touching things. ‘Come on, let’s explore.’

There are glass eggs and ancient clocks and candy from old Earth. Isidore finds an ancient spacecraft inside one of the larger cubes. It looks like a giant’s dirty molar, brown stains marring the white ceramic surfaces. Pixil opens a cube full of theatrical costumes and presses a bowler hat on Isidore’s head, laughing.

‘Isn’t someone going to be upset if they find us here?’ Isidore asks.

‘Don’t worry, slave,’ Pixil says, grinning mischievously. She pulls the costumes down and makes a thick pile of them onto the floor, humming to herself. ‘I told you. Resource optimisation.’ She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him, hard. Her clothes dissolve under her touch. She pulls him down onto the nest of cloaks and dresses. The anger drains from him, and then he has no room for any shape but hers.