‘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.