The ship’s lasers flash. There is a blinding antimatter explosion in the distance. A torrent of gamma rays and pions gives me a headache.
The locks of my Sobornost body snap back to place. Mieli floats next to me, tendrils of black blood around her like Medusa’s hair. Then the pain of the hand comes, and I scream.
Mieli takes care of the thief’s hand as the fires die away and the ship seals the tears in the hull. The cabin is full of the sickly sweet smell of burnt synthbio flesh, mixed with ozone and smoke and ashes from the bonsai trees. A bubble of liquorice tea floats near Mieli like a grey, stinking ghost.
‘That hurt,’ says the thief, looking at his stump with distaste as the tissue seals itself. ‘What the hell was that? It was not made by gogols who deal with cuddly slowtime monkey people.’
He is a miserable sight. The left side of his face is a red ruin, and burn craters make his upper torso look like a planetary surface. Mieli does not feel much better. She is drenched in sweat and her stomach and head throb as the repair nanites of her body work overtime. Except for her brain, her biological parts are almost redundant, but they are a part of her, and she’s not going to let them rot.
‘Whatever it was,’ Perhonen says, ‘I’m afraid there is more. It dumped a lot of bandwidth. I traced the vector. There is something else out there. Something that does not follow the Highway protocols. Something big. A whole swarm of the little bastard’s brothers, thousands of them, and by the looks of it they plan to intercept us.’
‘How long?’ the thief asks.
‘A day or two, maybe three if we really push it,’ Perhonen says. ‘They are fast.’
‘Damn,’ Mieli whispers. ‘The pellegrini warned me. I need to talk to her.’ She reaches for the goddess in her mind, but finds nothing.
The thief looks at her with his one good eye.
‘My guess is that she is going to be hiding until we get rid of our tail,’ he says. ‘This is big, bigger than either of us. Maybe even bigger than I used to be. To be completely honest, if I were you, I’d be looking for another line of work. It’s going to get ugly.’
Mieli raises an eyebrow. They both look like broken dolls. Her garment is in tatters and stained in blood. The thief’s face is still red and raw. Only clumps of white medfoam excreted by his body’s repair systems hide the terrible burns on his torso, legs and arms.
‘Well, uglier,’ the thief says. The undamaged side of his face grows serious. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. I know who your boss is, and what she wants. The stakes are high enough for the Founders and Primes to take notice. This whole affair – it’s part of some conflict between them. And we are right in the middle of it.’
‘Thanks to you,’ Mieli says.
‘Touché,’ the thief says. ‘So. Can we run?’
The damage from the battle with the knife-flower is superficial, and Perhonen is already fixing it. But she knows exactly what her ship can and cannot do. The fear needles of the battle are still in her belly. She finds herself clinging on to their sting.
‘No,’ she says. ‘But we can fight.’ Perhaps this will be a good way to end things. Fight an unbeatable enemy, hope for a honourable death.
The thief looks at her incredulously. ‘As much as I have come to respect your ability to kill things,’ he says, ‘I’m starting to wonder if Oortian schools teach basic mathematics. Just one of these things nearly killed us. Are you sure fighting a few thousand is a good idea?’
‘This is my ship,’ Mieli says. The jewelled chain around her leg feels like it’s burning. Sydän. Could it not be another me who gets her back? She closes her eyes. ‘It’s my decision.’
Mieli, whispers Perhonen. That was really tough sobortech. I expended a lot of weaponry on Mars. We are good, but we are not that good. What are you doing?
‘Mieli?’ the thief says. ‘Are you all right?’
Mieli takes a deep breath of the stinking air. She opens her eyes. The thief is staring at her with a look of concern. ‘Come on,’ he says with a soft voice. ‘Let’s think about this. There is always a way out.’
‘Fine,’ Mieli says finally. ‘What do you suggest?’
The thief is quiet for a moment. ‘It seemed to want me pretty badly,’ he says. ‘Maybe we can use that.’
‘Make a gogol of you and sacrifice it?’ Mieli says in disgust.
A cloud passes over the thief’s face. ‘No, that’s not possible. Looks like Joséphine does not want more than one of me running around. There must be something else—’ His good eye flashes. ‘Of course. I’m an idiot. That’s what it’s for. If the cop thing wants me, I need to become someone else. I need a new face.’ The thief tries to scratch the red ruin with his missing hand, then looks at the stump in dismay.
‘Not to mention some other bits and pieces. But I think I know where to find one. If Perhonen is right, we have less than two days to open the Box.’
‘And how are we going to do that?’ Mieli asks.
‘How is anything really important ever done? With smoke and mirrors.’
‘No games, Jean. Please.’
The thief gives her a broken smile and takes out a small amber egg from his pocket. A zoku jewel.
‘How quickly can you find us a zoku router?’
6
TAWADDUD AND THE GHUL
The district of the Banu Sasan lies around the Sobornost Station. It used to be the Sobornost model city: high, heavy buildings, squares, statues, upload temples. But ever since the Cry of Wrath, they have stood mostly empty, apart from the logistics hubs where the otherworldly goods Sobornost trades for gogols are distributed to those who can afford them. And it is here that the small and the weak of the city hide from wildcode.
Tawaddud watches Abu carefully. She would have expected the gogol merchant to turn his nose up at the dirt and the poverty but, instead, he wears a look of detached fascination, even when they pass the Takht al’Qala’a square, where the spider woman lives. She has spun a huge tent of spider silk from the glands the wildcode has grown in her breasts. Little statuettes and jinn bottles hang from the wispy strands, like strange fruit.
The air is dry, with the faint smell of ozone everywhere, mixing with the pungent odour of unwashed bodies. There is music, shadow-players who create images on the sides of high pillars, cafés with old men with faces marked by wildcode playing chess. Chimera acrobats in silk robes, sapphire-enhanced muscles gleaming.
Abu stops to give a few sobors to a man who has a chimera beast in a cage, a fetus-like pink thing the size of a dog, with a blue transparent shell and sharp spider legs. The man bows to him many times, loudly proclaiming to his audience that the creature is a prince of Fast New York, transformed into this shape by the Aun, and that it understands holy texts. It spells out answers to questions with a sharp tap-tap-tap of its legs on concrete. In the athar, Tawaddud sees the chains that make the creature an extension of the handler’s mind.
‘You should be careful, Abu dear,’ she says. ‘I don’t want you to become one of my patients.’ And no doubt you have jinni bodyguards following us that would stop you if you tried to do anything stupid.
‘What a terrible fate that would be. I’m sure there are those who go to the desert just so they can be treated by you.’
‘I warn you: my medicines can be bitter.’ She pats her doctor’s bag.
Abu looks at her curiously. ‘Why do you do it? Come here, I mean.’