They have gathered around him, the Prince and the Green Soldier and the Princess, and the little lightkraken dancing in the air. They say goodbye, and vanish. The Princess comes last. Her hair smells of smoke and her smudged lips beneath the wooden mask are dry when she kisses his forehead.
‘I’ll come back,’ he says. ‘I promise.’
Then he packs his bag, puts the beemee away and leaves to fix the world, before his mother’s next holiday.
‘There you have it,’ Matjek says. ‘Thank you for your company, but it is time for me to wake up and meet myself. The more innocent one you so kindly delivered to me. We will open the jewel together and make things right. And then no one will have to die.’
‘No one will have to die,’ echoes the thief. In the evening light, his features start changing. They flicker through all of Matjek’s faces, all contained within each other, an infinite corridor of mirrors.
‘You did guard yourself well,’ they say, in a chorus that rises like an angry sea, and suddenly it feels like his own mouth is speaking the words as well.
‘But you did not listen. I told you in the beginning. I told you in the end. I am not Jean le Flambeur. You see, the name Joséphine here gave to the Hunter was not the thief’s.’
‘You should really be more careful with the things you make, Matjek,’ Joséphine says. ‘Little boys should not play with fire. And you should know me better than to think that I would bet all on one gambler, even a high roller like my Jean. I needed an ace in the hole. So I made sure there was one, hiding inside him.’
‘All-Defector,’ says Matjek’s mouth, but his head is already full of mirrors.
‘All-Defector,’ the thing echoes. And now its voice is coming from behind him, dusty and papery and whispering, and Matjek knows that if he just turns around and looks he is going to finally wake up—
29
TAWADDUD AND THE AUN
It is only Tawaddud, her father and Dunyazad who go to the desert, clad in mutalibun robes, rukh staffs in their hands. They leave the city through the gate of Bab, the gate of the treasure-hunters.
They walk in silence across the rough terrain of the Wrath, the angular shapes of buried Sobornost machines, until the proper desert begins. The Shards are a vertical starry sky behind them, against the evening blue.
‘This is the story of Zoto Gomelez, the father of my father,’ says Cassar finally.
‘When Sirr fell, the Aun came to him. The Chimney Princess. The Green Soldier. The Kraken of Light. The Flower Prince.
‘They told him that they used to live in the flesh: they were copied painfully from mind to mind, ghosts and shadows, hardly any awareness but what their hosts gave them. They would find tricks to ensure that they were remembered. Promises of immortality and the heavens. And so they prospered for a time, and were called gods.
‘But when the humans made fire and wheels and electricity and started to make immortals of their own, they had to hide in stories. The Goddess. The Mentor. The Shapeshifter. The Trickster. And they knew that when they were found out, they were going to die.
‘Except that, before the Collapse, there came one who set them free. The Prince of Stories. The One in the Jannah. And in the world of uploaded minds, after the Collapse broke all old things, they came into their true power.
‘They made Earth their flesh. Wildcode is a part of them. They move through it like shadows, and hear it when we whisper their names, see it when we write them in the Seals.
‘They told Zoto that they could take his people amongst them, to turn them into stories. But Zoto had a wife, and did not want to live without flesh. So he made a deal. He would allow the Aun to see the world through human eyes again, through the people of Sirr. They would learn the Secret Names and shape their world and stay safe. And in return, they would give the Aun something they had not had for a long time: worship. This is the secret of the Gomelez.’
‘So, how are we going to speak to them?’ Tawaddud asks.
‘Tell them your story,’ Cassar says, ‘a true story. They are always listening.’
He spreads his hands wide, as if embracing the desert.
‘I am Cassar Gomelez,’ he says. ‘I loved my wife so much I turned away from my daughter who bears her face, because I could not stand to look at her for the memories she would bring. I almost gave my city away because I was so afraid to lose it. I made my other daughter carry all my hopes and dreams. I am Cassar Gomelez, and I would speak with the Aun.’
And then they are there, written into the air: the little girl in a mask, the old man in green, and the thing that shifts and glows and dances.
‘What do you seek?’ asks the Princess, the Chimney Princess, the Princess of Stories.
‘A boon,’ Tawaddud says.
‘The price is always the same.’
Tawaddud nods. She sits down on the sand and pulls her robes closer to her against the wind. She smiles at her father and sister. ‘This might take a while,’ she says.
She takes a deep breath and begins.
‘Before Tawaddud makes love to Mr Sen the jinn, she feeds him grapes.’
The story takes a long time to tell, and when Tawaddud finishes, there is a strange, bright star in the sky. The winds have risen, and in the horizon, there is a glare, a tall, burning pillar of flame.
‘We accept your gift,’ the Princess says. ‘What is it that you would ask of us, daughter of Zoto Gomelez?’
‘I ask you to save my people from the Sobornost, from the eternal undeath of the gogols. Rise up against them, like you did before. Set us free, and we will honour you.’
‘It is too late,’ the Soldier says in a gentle, gruff voice. ‘It has already begun.’
The sky is stitched with falling meteors. The new star is now bigger than the moon, and on its surface, Tawaddud sees the rough features of a face, not a kindly Man in the Moon but something older and colder. The earth beneath their feet shakes.
‘They are eating us,’ says the kraken in a small, sing-song voice. ‘We are powerless against them, empty ones, dark things that are many.’
‘It is not such a bad thing to end,’ says the Princess. ‘We are tired and old. And all stories end.’
‘You promised us a boon,’ Tawaddud says. Tears run down her cheeks, mixed with sand. ‘Can you not give us the choice of Zoto again? Can you not take us away?’
There is a boom in the distance, and then a hot wind blows over Tawaddud, filling her eyes and mouth with sand. It can’t end like this, she whispers. It is not supposed to end like this.
Then the Chimney Princess gives her her hand, small, strong fingers around hers, and helps her up.
‘Our brother has returned to us,’ she says. She is smiling behind her mask.
The wind rises again. A man in a dark suit and blue glasses stands before her.
‘There is always a way out,’ he says.
30
THE THIEF AND THE STORIES
We fall and burn in the guberniya dawn.
The white incandescence of the Hunter is gone, and yet I remain. I feel strangely light, like an old man of the sea was gone from my back. I almost start laughing, until I see wildcode twist my hands sapphire claws. The Hunter components are dead, too, taken by Earth’s powers-that-be, drifting around like dead insects.
Perhonen tries to brake with her wings. They catch fire and are torn away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I was wrong.’
So was I, the ship says.
The wildcode is everywhere now. The ship’s systems are full of white noise. Its hull twists and curls like burning paper as we fall. Earth reaches for us like a giant’s hand.
The butterflies are all around me. It is hot in the cabin, and they catch fire, tiny candles, flame and dust. I reach for one and close my jagged hand around it.
As the avatars burn, they form a face, the face I saw in the tiger’s vir, a pretty girl, skin like snow.
You get out of everything, Jean, she says. Tell her that I l
ove her. Look after her. For me. Promise.
‘I promise.’
She kisses me, lightly, a butterfly kiss. Then she is gone. Ashes fall on my face. I close my eyes.
In the end, there is a sound that fills the world, and then only black.
They are like serpents of light, all around me, woven into each other so it is hard to say where one ends and another begins. They are old. They wear many faces. And I know them, or a part of me does. The Flower Prince.
The girl from the ancestor vir is there. She takes off her mask and kisses me on the forehead.
Welcome back, brother.
‘Bastards,’ I tell them. ‘Why did you not save Perhonen as well? She deserved it more than I did.’
We could not see her. We can only see ourselves. There is a grief of ages in her voice.
‘Damn it. It’s not fair.’
When was it ever fair? It doesn’t matter. We will go back to Father and be with him for ever.
The old thing inside me wants to say yes. To be with the Prince of Stories again. But something pulls me back. Perhonen. A promise.
I keep my promises.
Whatever the serpent things are, I am something else. I remember reading a book in a cell. I remember a door opening. That’s when I was born, out of the crystal stopper. A creature made from La Bouchon de cristal, a boy from the desert and an old god.
Come with us. Come with us, brother.
‘My name is Jean le Flambeur,’ I say. ‘And we have work to do.’
I smile at Tawaddud.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I got you into trouble. I tend to do that.’
To her credit, she seems to take my sudden appearance in a stride. Tawaddud Gomelez, a lover of monsters. ‘If you want to make it up to me, you had better find a way to save my city,’ she says.
‘Chen is using things called Dragons,’ I say. ‘It’s going to take some drastic measures. I think there is a way to get everybody out. But you might not like it.’
Cassar Gomelez gives me a look I’ve had from many fathers. ‘My daughter now speaks for our people,’ he says, placing a hand on Tawaddud’s shoulder. ‘She decides.’
‘It may require a . . . transformation.’
‘Do it,’ Tawaddud says. ‘Zoto Gomelez said no. We say yes. All together.’
I shape my wish into a thought and give it to the strange beings who claim to be my brothers and sisters. They whisper together for a moment with voices like hissing sand. Then the one called Princess nods.
The world goes mad.
The storm of wildcode rises and washes over Sirr. When it reaches Tawaddud, she feels herself being lifted up, expanding, becoming a part of the hurricane of jinni. She watches with a godlike eye as the city turns into sand, as the heavens rain dragons upon the Earth.
The Aun come and take the minds of Sirr, turn them into stories, compress them into a form that is like a seed that can bloom in any mind, an eternal life in the space of a book, between blue covers like The Book of Nights. And as the book closes, she feels the Axolotl and Dunyazad and her father there next to her.
Chen’s Dragons are eating wildcode and jinni and everything that makes up the bodies of the Aun. But there is one place on Earth they are not going to touch.
It turns out there is a reason why they call it the Lost Jannah of the Cannon.
A 150-kiloton thermonuclear explosive device in the midst of reaction mass, under a giant shell, an impact shield of boron. A hardened vir running inside a Wang bullet of steel, a 3000-ton projectile with a full-blown spacecraft inside.
The vir inside is tiny, but stories do not take up much space. The only running minds are a boy called Matjek and me. It was him who came up with the design. It is a bookshop, bright and airy, with inviting shelves and nooks and crannies for reading.
Before we launch, he takes a book from one of the shelves, with a blue and silver cover. He looks at the first page and then closes it.
‘I want to read it,’ he says. ‘But I can never remember the stories in my dreams when I wake up.’
‘Something tells me that this one is different,’ I tell him. And then I press the red button in my head.
We sit together and drink tea as the jet of plasma underground takes us up, thousands of Gs and ten times the escape velocity. We are past the Moon before Chen realises we are gone. Then I deploy the solar sails and take us to the Highway.
Mieli is still out there. I made a promise to Perhonen, and I plan to keep it. I am small again, barely more than human. But that doesn’t matter. I just need help from a few friends, and without Joséphine in my head, I know where to find them.
There is a smile on my lips as the prince and I steer the ship of stories towards Saturn.
Epilogue
Joséphine Pellegrini watches the All-Defector sitting on the beach. The thief disguise is gone, like a discarded skin, and now the creature wears the childlike shape and the serene smile of Matjek Chen. But there is no trace of the Prime in his eyes: only infinite hunger remains. She shudders, turns away and looks at the sea.
‘I always thought you were going to take me, too,’ she says.
‘I’m going to take everything, in the end,’ the All-Defector says. ‘But I still need you.’
He is holding the Kaminari jewel in his lap, like it was a rock he picked up on the beach, space and time in the form of two hands in prayer. ‘Chen was wrong. There was a reason why it did not open for him. It was made to open for you.’
He holds the jewel out to Joséphine. She looks at it: the ultimate zoku jewel, the secret of the Spike, the key to Planck locks. She accepts it hungrily. It opens like a flower in her hands.
Something white flutters to the sand. Joséphine picks it up. A small rectangle, made from paper. A calling card.
She reads out the text written on it with a beautiful cursive hand.
Jean le Flambeur
Gentleman-Burglar
Will Return when your Zoku Jewels
are Genuine,
it says. And then it, too, is gone, dissolving like a dream.
Mieli is alone in the dark. She watches the guberniya arrive in orbit around Earth and the tidal forces it creates. Its presence alone tears the Gourd apart and makes the blue globe’s white clouds boil. It is raining black things down on humanity’s home, von Neumann machines or worse. Continents change shape and a dark shell spreads over the marble of the planet.
Chen is eating Earth, she thinks. So much for Sirr and all its stories, so much for the lost jannahs.
‘See what you did?’ The pellegrini seethes with rage inside her head. ‘I’m going to tear you apart for this. No Sydän for you, ever, no death, no alinen. I told you I’m not a gentle goddess. When my sisters come for me, I will—’
‘Do your worst,’ Mieli says. ‘I don’t work for you anymore.’ She steels herself for the pain. A part of her looks forward to it. She deserves it, for Sydän, for Perhonen. Perhaps even for the thief.
Something glints in her field of vision. A blue oval, smaller than her hand. Even in the vacuum, it smells faintly of flowers.
The zoku jewel. Perhonen shot me out with the zoku jewel.
It whispers to her, and the pellegrini’s voice becomes like distant rain.
Take me home, she thinks at it. Take me where I really belong.
The jewel glows brighter. Everything is still for a long time. And an eternity later, there is a ship, a zoku ship. Strange beings surround her. Glittering wheels, with faces in the middle, rings of jewels like miniature solar systems. They look like angels or figures from tarot cards. They remind Mieli of someone.
‘Mother,’ Mieli says and drifts to sleep, perfectly happy, in the moment just before it’s time to go home.
Acknowledgements
This was a tough one, for many reasons. So thanks first and foremost to Simon Spanton for his sharp editorial eye and enduring faith.
Willing or unwilling victims of thought thievery include Andy Clark, Douglas Hofstadte
r, Maurice Leblanc, Jan Potocki and the thousand nameless storytellers of The Arabian Nights.
As for people with names, ones I owe a sincere thank you to include:
My agent John Jarrold for being a solid rock and a foundation of advice, as always.
Sam and Lesley, for friendship and support during interesting times.
Esa Hilli, Lauri Lovén, Phil Raines and Stuart Wallace for discussions, careful readings of early drafts, candid feedback, comments and bug-hunting.
Writers’ Bloc – including Alan Campbell, Jack Deighton, Morag Edward, Bram Gieben, Mark Harding, Gavin Inglis, Helen Jackson, Jane McKie, Stefan Pearson, Charlie Stross, Andrew Wilson and Kirsti Wishart. Special thanks to Andrew Ferguson for introducing me to the Axolotl.
Antti Autio for his flowing Finnish and keen eye for details and plot holes.
Sabrina Maniscalco for friendship and quantum physics discussions.
Jakko Ojakangas for musical inspiration.
Darren Brierton for first exposing me to philosophy of mind, and Sami for being a tough sparring partner on related topics (as well as a good friend).
Anni, Antti, Eino, Panu, Sanna, Lauri, Jaakko and Tuija for hospitality and friendship.
My parents Mirja and Mauno, for making sure there is a timeless place called home.
Zuzana, for the best true story I could wish for.
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