The Quantum Magician

by Derek Künsken

  He moved between rows of cabbage and rye, towards the side wall, leaking a slow but steady current from his electroplaques into his magnetosomes. The throbbing tides and darting flows of magnetism and electricity pressed at him. Engineers thrived under predictability, regularity and tolerance. Electrical conduits ran in straight lines, repeated themselves at regular junctions, feeding predictable doorways and sensors. Belisarius’s slow walk felt like walking through an artery, squeezed every so often by peristaltic flexing.

  “Mister Arjona, hurry!”

  Belisarius stopped at a door with a small white sign that said Égouts.

  “The water reclamation system,” Saint Matthew said behind his ear.

  “The door has been tampered with,” Belisarius sub-vocalized.

  “Is she digging her way out with a spoon?” Saint Matthew demanded, an edge of panic slipping into his tone. “She knows there’s a hard vacuum on the surface, doesn’t she?”

  “I hope she’s not doing something dumber,” Belisarius whispered, pulling open the door that ought to have been bolted shut. Behind it, machinery and pumps droned, but without any of the rhythmic electrical and magnetic regularity of the engineered works. Here, too, cabling had been re-routed and security feeds moved. An acrid smell thickened the room, unlike any that should have been present in a water reclamation station. He stepped in, edging around machines, towards the sound of quiet voices.

  “Mister Arjona,” Saint Matthew whispered in his implant, “I don’t recognize the organics in the air, but some are toxic to you. We can’t stay here.”

  “Marie may be here, and we don’t have much time,” Belisarius sub-vocalized.

  Belisarius peeked around a great aluminum and steel pump.

  Three big people in orange reformatory jumpsuits—two women and a man—towered menacingly over a similarly-dressed smaller woman. The smaller woman, Marie, stood between them and a table. Behind her, trays of small pink cubes were stacked in rows, drying on pieces of oily paper like so many pieces of fudge.

  “They’re still not stable yet,” Marie said in insistent français 8.1. “You’ve got to wait two more weeks.”

  “We can’t wait two weeks,” the tallest woman said. “How unstable?”

  “Your-arms-and-legs-part-company unstable,” Marie said impatiently.

  The woman grabbed the front of Marie’s jumpsuit and tried to shove her into a row of pipes. Then the taller woman was on her knees, with Marie twisting one hand behind her back. The blurry-fast movement had raised Marie’s sleeve, revealing the bottom edge of a Congregate naval NCO tattoo on her forearm. The other two prisoners advanced. Belisarius came from behind the pump.

  “Hold it right there,” he said in his best 8.1.

  The two other prisoners spun, pointing crude knives at him.

  Marie gaped. “Bel?”

  Belisarius had no weapon, but held his hands out beside him. The prisoners didn’t know what that meant. Marie did.

  “Bel! Non! Trust me, you don’t want to do any tricks here.”

  “Who is this?” the man with the knife demanded. “You ratting us out to the guards?”

  “He’s not a guard,” she said. “Put the knives down. If we fight, we draw the guards. How did you get in here, Bel?”

  “Come on, Marie. Let’s go,” Belisarius said.

  “This is a prison break?” the man with the knife said.

  Alarms sounded. Orange light bathed them.

  “Shit!” yelled the man. “Blown! Let’s go!”

  Marie released the tall woman she’d been holding down. She rose, huffing, and pushed Marie.

  “We can’t,” the woman said. “They’ll find this lab. We have to take the explosives now.”

  “They aren’t stable yet!” Marie said.

  “You’re making explosives in prison?” Belisarius demanded.

  “Do you know how boring it is in here?” Marie yelled at him over the alarms. “I had to find a hobby! It’s not my best work, though! They wouldn’t give me magnesium salts!”

  “Let’s go,” Belisarius said, pulling her by the arm. “I don’t know if our virus can keep hiding us while the alarm is on.”

  Marie pulled free of his grip, ran around her fellow prisoners to the stacks of pink cubes and took as many as would fit in her hands, like a child scooping from a candy bin.

  “We don’t need that! You just said it was unstable,” Belisarius said.

  Marie looked uncomfortably at the little cubes overflowing her small hands. They daubed tiny grease stains on the front of her coveralls.

  “Can you leave them?” Belisarius demanded.

  “I really want to see how well they work.”

  “Oh, for the love of—Come on!” he said in exasperation, waving her on. He opened the door into the hallway and she followed him. “How unstable is it, really?”

  “Well, if you’ve become electrically incontinent, we’re both in trouble,” she said.

  “Incontinent?”

  “Hey! Have you got Saint Matthew with you?”

  “It wouldn’t be like old times if I didn’t.”

  Theatrically loud, Marie whispered, “Is he still crazy?”

  “I told you she would be like this, Mister Arjona!” Saint Matthew said.

  “Do you really care, Marie?” Belisarius said. “He’s the one who broke the codes to get me in here.”

  Saint Matthew spoke into his ear. “We’re about to lose the virus! We’ll be fully visible to the reformatory’s security AIs.”

  Belisarius stopped. “They won’t be depending on visible scans,” he said. “Can you mimic a guard’s ID signal?”

  “Already done.”

  Belisarius took Marie’s arm. “Come on. You play prisoner and I play guard. This is still Plan A.”

  They rushed along the hall until he saw the guard hut. He telescoped his eyesight. Several people were in the hut. Red and orange lights flashed.

  “Merde,” he whispered.

  “Mister Arjona,” Saint Matthew said, “four drones are approaching. Alert systems see us now. We’re no longer hidden.”

  “We weren’t supposed to attract the drones,” Belisarius said quietly. “The virus was supposed to redirect them.”

  “We would have had time if Miss Phocas had actually been participating in her rehabilitation instead of making second-grade explosives for criminals,” Saint Matthew said.

  “I told you!” Marie said. “They wouldn’t give me magnesium salts. How am I supposed to do my best work under these conditions?”

  “Plan B retreat routes?” Belisarius asked the AI.

  “The security system is alert now, looking for infection,” Saint Matthew said. “At close range, they’ll be double-checking with photo recognition, and they’ll no doubt take Miss Phocas from us, which actually solves some of our problems.”

  “I solve problems,” Marie said, delicately pressing one of the pink cubes against a heating vent near the floor.

  “You said that stuff is unstable?” Belisarius asked.

  “Yeah. It’s better if you back up a lot,” she said.

  Four rolling figures appeared down the hallway, red lit, as if angered. Marie pressed another cube into the grating, but then eyed it slowly, as if considering the color scheme.

  “Are you doing anything, Marie?” Belisarius whispered urgently.

  “Better be a little more,” she said, pressing in a third cube.

  Then she grabbed his sleeve and ran back with him. Belisarius understood what she wanted. He measured the distance. The four drones had nearly reached the pink dough. Belisarius knelt by the next vent and prepared to touch it.

  “I should probably back up a bit from you,” Marie said. “I’ve still got a handful of this stuff.”

  “How crazy is she?” Saint Matthew asked.

  “Obviously sane enough to stand trial,” Belisarius said.

  Marie had withdrawn a dozen meters behind him as the drones reached the vent where she’d pressed in
the explosive.

  Belisarius hated this part. The electroplaques built into the Homo quantus, backed with the right training, were tools of exquisite delicacy, surpassing the sensitivity of piezoelectric materials. They were also durable fingers, shaping the electromagnetic world to navigate hours and days in the quantum fugue. But some jobs didn’t need a scalpel. They just needed a hammer.

  The world convulsed as industrial-strength amperage burst through the carbon filaments running from his electroplaques and out of his fingertips. The high-voltage charge leapt into the metal frame of the vent, electrifying the duct all along the hallway.

  The air shook and hit him.

  Deaf. Ringing.

  Concussive confusion.

  Bursting sparks behind eyelids.

  Then Marie was hauling him to his feet one-handed, hugging her pink cubes in the other as she peered into the smoke.

  “If only I’d had another week to dry them properly,” Marie said.

  “She nearly killed us!” Saint Matthew said.

  “I can make a bigger blast. I’ve got enough for another try,” Marie said helpfully. “What’s your plan again?”

  Belisarius leaned on her steely arm and staggered forward. “Play along,” he whispered. “This is going to be delicate.”

  “I’m always delicate,” she said, kicking a piece of flaming drone down the hallway.

  Several faces watched them approach from inside the hut.

  “Is their communication to the warden still being blocked?” Belisarius sub-vocalized.

  “I doubt it,” Saint Matthew said into his ear. “The security posture of the entire Maison is inflamed.”

  “Activate the Scarecrow virus,” Belisarius sub-vocalized.

  A moment later, the red and yellow alarm lights shifted to blue.

  A sepulchral voice boomed from all the speakers in français 7.1, the Venusian French of a century ago. The wall screens edged in blue and flashed the words: Alerte Épouvantail. Scarecrow Alert. Marie’s grip tightened on Belisarius’s arm, although she didn’t say anything.

  “Guards and prisoners of la Maison d’éducation correctionnelle d’Epsilon Indi, prepare for arrival of Indi Scarecrow Unit. Prisoners, return to cells. Guards, secure prisoners. Maison directors assemble in the Warden’s office and await further instructions. Scarecrow agents within la Maison, reveal yourselves, show authentication codes and issue orders to prepare for my arrival.”

  An echoing silence followed. Belisarius waved at the drifting smoke, and with a fistful of Marie’s sleeve, he marched to the window of the hut. The faces inside showed confusion. Belisarius passed his service band in front of the reader. Private Lavigne’s eyes widened behind the thick glass, while the others—some corporals and a sergeant—stood uncertainly.

  “Authenticate my codes,” Belisarius said in French.

  The private turned to the sergeant, who paced to the controls and watched the holographic message twice. Belisarius’s face appeared in the hologram, surrounded by rows of tight script.

  “Authenticated, monsieur,” the sergeant said.

  “I am a captain with the Inspector-General’s Office,” Belisarius said, “on assignment with the Indi Scarecrow Unit.”

  Their eyes turned stony at the mention of one of the Congregate Presidium’s independently functioning security units. Scarecrows were rare, typically only one in an entire solar system, but they each had hundreds, if not thousands of human covert operatives who were dangerous in their own right.

  “The Epsilon Indi Scarecrow has planted this informant within the reformatory, an ex-naval NCO,” Belisarius said, trying to shake Marie. “On the authority of the Indi Scarecrow, I hereby inform you that you are under special orders until otherwise released. Any breach of my orders will constitute an offence under the Code for Service Discipline and the Official Secrets Act. Do you acknowledge and understand?”

  The sergeant nodded slowly.

  “Section 14 of the Official Secrets Act requires me to offer you the opportunity to re-authenticate my credentials,” Belisarius said. “Do you wish to re-authenticate?”

  “Uh, non, monsieur.”

  “Cycle us through and await the arrival of the other Inspector-General Units,” Belisarius said.

  The sergeant activated the lock. Belisarius and Marie passed through both doors and marched onward.

  “There’s not really a Scarecrow, is there?” Marie whispered.

  “Shut up,” Belisarius whispered back, moving briskly.

  “You had me worried for a minute,” she said.

  “How long have we got?” Belisarius asked.

  “Probably twelve minutes on the Scarecrow virus,” Saint Matthew said. “The external sensors are showing a Congregate frigate that will be in a position to send drop ships in forty minutes.”

  Two running guards passed them, sparing a brief glance for the captain escorting a prisoner. They walked into the bay and found ground crew standing uncertainly, speaking to several guards with sidearms. The guards moved to intercept. Marie clutched her mushy cubes and looked like she wanted to throw them. Belisarius held her arm.

  “Transmit authentication,” Belisarius said to Saint Matthew.

  Moments later, holograms sprang to life over the service bands of the guards, with Belisarius’s head surrounded by blue letters—clearances. The guards backed away.

  “The virus has lost access to the command areas,” Saint Matthew said in Belisarius’s ear implant.

  Belisarius pointed at one of the deckhands. “Give me a shuttle,” he ordered. “My orders from the Scarecrow are to rendezvous immediately.”

  The deckhand jogged to an airlock hard-sealed to one of the shuttles in the vacuum area. She palmed the pad beside the door, causing the airlock to cycle open.

  “It’s fueled, monsieur,” she said quickly.

  “Good,” Belisarius said. He pushed Marie ahead of him and made to close the lock. Marie pushed him aside and hurled her pink putty cubes across the deck. Then she pulled the sidearm of the stunned guard from its holster. The guards drew their weapons.

  “Marie!” Belisarius whispered, grabbing her arm.

  But her arm was as unyielding as a piece of steel. She squinted as she took aim and fired an invisible laser. Belisarius’s brain constructed its trajectory before her finger finished squeezing.

  One of the pink cubes exploded, spattering chips of floor around the bay, knocking down some of the guards, forcing others to retreat. None would dare fire on a Scarecrow agent, even if his companion was firing at them.

  Marie waved at the flattened guards.

  “It’s okay!” she yelled, waving the gun. “I’m reformed. But next time somebody wants magnesium salts, I want to see some hustle!”

  She took one more shot at another of the pink cubes, blowing a second shallow depression into the floor and filling the bay with dust. Then she shut the airlock.

  “Did you have to do that?” Belisarius demanded.

  She looked at him in bafflement. “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” he said. “Row in the same direction!”

  “This is rowing!” she said, waving around the laser pistol and punching a code to cycle the airlock with practiced movements. “It’s nice to see you and all, but do you have a better plan than that one to get away from the reformatory? They’ve got external sensors and weapons.”

  “Saint Matthew uploaded a virus to foul up their external sensors and give them false readings, including the incoming frigate.”

  “Oh!” she said. “That’s a good idea. If I’d’ve known, I guess I wouldn’t have exploded anything in the bay. I thought we were going to get caught, and I wanted to get my shots in while I could.”

  The airlock opened onto the shuttle. They hurried through.

  “You take pilot,” he said. “Saint Matthew will tell you the course that will keep us in the fabricated sensor readings.”

  Marie strapped herself into the pilot’s s
eat and shut down the computerized pilot.

  “It’s good to see you again, Bel,” she said. The shuttle disengaged from the airlock and moved to the bay doors, faster than the regulations stipulated. He strapped himself in hurriedly. “You have a job, don’t you? Can I get in on it? How big is it? What do you need blown up?”

  “You don’t have enough explosives to blow up what we’re after,” Belisarius said. At the end of the bay, Marie used far more thrust than needed as Saint Matthew issued a stream of expletives and navigational vectors.

  “Yes, I do!” she said, over Saint Matthew’s instructions. “If they’d given me some radioisotopes, I really could have made a mess.”

  “We’re not blowing anything up,” Belisarius said. “I need your technical skills.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “She’s going to blow things up!” Saint Matthew said. “None of her physiological markers show acquiescence.”

  Belisarius sighed, rubbing his eyes, trying to head off a migraine. “I know.”

  Marie began whistling.

  Chapter Seventeen

  CASSANDA FELT LOST in all the movement and noise. And the dirt. And the ugliness. Bel had leased an abandoned mine on the dwarf planet Ptolemy. Coming from the serene, living beauty of the Garret, with its whispering birds and low green hills, the mine in Ptolemy was hell. She didn’t know where to sit. What to do. She wasn’t learning or discovering anything and that itched in her head.

  And she didn’t understand what Bel was doing. She understood the facts individually, but not in relation to each other. Bel had leased several used wormhole-capable cargo ships, three asteroid mines and a shipping concern on the Port Stubbs side of the wormhole. His AIs had been gathering equipment too—powerful computers, industrial robotics factories, bioreactors, and protein and DNA synthesis machines. None of this was bringing her any closer to the data he’d promised her, and it didn’t fit into any patterns that would calm her engineered Homo quantus brain.

  And Bel was a stranger. Gone was the brooding penitent who’d come to the Garret. Gone was the intense, brilliant researcher she’d known as a teenager. He was worldly, bigger than his skin. He gave orders. He persuaded and cajoled. He mediated between incomprehensible people. But how did any of this help him? What did he learn from any of this? How could he stand not plumbing the depths of the laws of the cosmos, and instead turn his genius to... this?