Something tickles my nose. I brush it aside and open my eyes. A white butterfly flutters away, into bright light.
I blink. I’m aboard a ship, an Oortian spidership by the looks of it, in a cylindrical space perhaps ten metres long, five in diameter. The walls are transparent, the dirty hue of comet ice. There are strange tribal sculptures suspended inside them, like runic characters. Spherical bonsai trees and many-angled zero-g furniture float along the central axis of the cylinder. There is starry darkness beyond the walls. And small white butterflies, everywhere.
My rescuer floats nearby. I smile at her.
‘Young lady,’ I say. ‘I believe you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.’ My voice sounds distant, but mine. I wonder if they got my face right.
Up close, she looks awfully young, genuinely so: her clear green eyes lack that rejuvenated, seen-it-all look. She wears the same simple garment as in the Prison. She floats in a deceptively comfortable angle, smooth bare legs outstretched, relaxed but ready, like a martial artist. A chain made from multicoloured jewels snakes around her left ankle and up her leg.
‘Congratulations, thief,’ she says. Her voice is low and controlled, but betrays a hint of contempt. ‘You have escaped.’
‘I hope so. For all I know this could be some new Dilemma variation. The Archons have been pretty consistent so far, but you are not paranoid if they really have you imprisoned in a virtual hell.’
Something stirs between my legs and banishes at least some of my doubts.
‘Sorry. It’s been a while,’ I say, studying my erection with detached interest.
‘Evidently,’ she says, frowning. There is an odd expression on her face, a mixture of disgust and arousaclass="underline" I realise she must be listening to this body’s biot feed, a part of her feeling what I’m feeling. Another jailer, then.
‘Trust me, you are out. It required considerable expense. Of course, there are still several million of you in the Prison, so consider yourself lucky.’
I grab one of the handles of the central axis and move behind a bonsai tree, covering my nudity like Adam. A cloud of butterflies alights from the foliage. The exertion feels strange as welclass="underline" the muscles of my new body are still waking up.
‘Young lady, I have a name.’ I offer her my hand across the bonsai tree. She takes it, dubiously, and squeezes. I return the grip as hard as I can. Her expression does not change. ‘Jean le Flambeur, at your service. Although you are absolutely right.’ I hold up her ankle chain. It squirms in my cupped hand as if alive, a jewelled serpent. ‘I am a thief.’
Her eyes widen. The scar on her cheek goes black. And suddenly, I’m in hell.
I am a bodiless viewpoint in blackness, unable to form a coherent thought. My mind is trapped in a vice. Something squeezes from all sides, not allowing me to think or remember or feel. It is a thousand times worse than the Prison. It lasts for an eternity.
Then I am back, gasping, stomach heaving, vomiting bile in floating gobbets, but infinitely grateful for every sensation.
‘You will not do that again,’ she says. ‘Your body and mind are on loan, do you understand? Steal what you are told to steal, and you may be allowed to keep them.’ The jewelled chain is back around her ankle. Her cheek muscles twitch.
My Prison-honed instincts tell me to shut up and stop throwing up, but the flower man in me has to speak, and I cannot stop him.
‘It’s too late,’ I gasp.
‘What?’ There is something beautiful about the wrinkle that appears on her smooth forehead, like a brushstroke.
‘I am reformed. You got me out too late. I’m an evolved altruist now, mademoiselle, a being filled with goodwill and neighbourly love. I could not possibly dream of taking part in any sort of criminal activity, even at the behest of my lovely rescuer.’
She stares at me blankly.
‘Very well.’
‘Very well?’
‘If you’re no good for me, I’ll just have to go back for another one. Perhonen, please bubble this one up and throw it out.’
We stare at each other for a moment. I feel stupid. Too long on the train of defection and cooperation. Time to jump off. I’m the first one to look away.
‘Wait,’ I say slowly. ‘Now that you mention it, perhaps I do retain some selfish impulses after all. I can feel them coming back as we speak.’
‘I thought they might,’ she says. ‘You are supposed to be irredeemable, after all.’
‘So, what’s going to happen now?’
‘You’ll find out,’ she says. ‘My name is Mieli. This is Perhonen: she is my ship.’ She makes a sweeping gesture with one hand. ‘As long as you are here, we are your gods.’
‘Kuutar and Ilmatar?’ I ask, naming the Oortian deities.
‘Perhaps. Or the Dark Man, if you prefer.’ She smiles. The thought of the place she put me in before does make her look a little like the Oortian dark god of the void. ‘Perhonen will show you your quarters.’
When the thief is gone, Mieli lies down in the pilot’s crèche. She feels exhausted, even though the biot feed of her body – that has been waiting for her with Perhonen, for months – tells her she is perfectly rested. But the cognitive dissonance is worse.
Was it me who was in the Prison? Or another?
She remembers the long weeks of preparation, days of subjective slowtime in a q-suit, getting ready to commit a crime just so she could be caught by the Archons and enter the Prison: the eternity in her cell, mind wrapped in an old memory. The violent escape, hurled through the sky by the pellegrini, waking up in a new body, shaking and raw.
All because of the thief.
And now there is the quantum umbilical that connects her to the body the pellegrini made for him, a constant dull awareness of his thoughts. It feels like lying next to a stranger, feeling them moving, shifting in their sleep. Trust the Sobornost goddess to make her do something guaranteed to drive her crazy.
He touched Sydän’s jewel. The anger helps, a little. And no, it’s not just because of him, it’s for her as well.
‘I’ve put the thief away,’ says Perhonen. Its warm voice in her head is something that belongs to her at least, not something that was tainted by the Prison. She takes one of its tiny white avatars and cups it in her palm: it flutters, tickling, like a pulse.
‘Feeling amorous?’ asks the ship, jokingly.
‘No,’ says Mieli. ‘I just missed you.’
‘I missed you too,’ says the ship. The butterfly takes flight from her hand, fluttering around her head. ‘It was terrible, waiting for you, all alone.’
‘I know,’ says Mieli. ‘I’m sorry.’ Suddenly, there is a throbbing sensation inside her skull. There is an edge in her mind, like something has been cut and pasted in place. Did I come back the same? She could speak to her Sobornost metacortex, she knows: ask it to find the feeling and wrap it up and put it away. But that’s not what an Oortian warrior would do.
‘You are not well. I should not have let you go,’ Perhonen says. ‘It was not good for you to go there. She should not have made you to do that.’
‘Ssh,’ says Mieli. ‘She’s going to hear.’ But it is too late.
Little ship, says the pellegrini. You should know that I take care of my children, always.
The pellegrini is there, standing above Mieli.
Naughty girl, she says. Not using my gifts properly. Let me see. She sits down next to Mieli gracefully, as if in Earthlike gravity, crossing her legs. Then she touches Mieli’s cheek, her deep brown eyes seeking hers. Her fingers feel warm, apart from the cold line of one of her rings, exactly where Mieli’s scar is. She breathes in her perfume. Something rotates, clockwork gears turning, until they click into place. And suddenly her mind is smooth as silk.