The Fractal Prince

9 THE THIEF AND THE TIGER

A discontinuity. A new world slaps me in the face, and I fall to my knees in the sudden gravity. Chilly air fills my lungs. It smells of wet earth and smoke.

I am standing in the middle of a clearing in a white forest. There are straight trees with pale, birchlike bark and impossibly symmetric foliage shaped like crowns or hands in prayer. Dark, ragged creatures with fluttering wings dart amongst the branches. The sky is grey. The ground is covered in white particles too grainy to be snow, a few centimetres deep. The Realmgate is behind me, a silver arch – a perfect flimsy semicircle. Good. At least I still have a way out.

I get up and wince at the sudden pain at the soles of my bare feet. The white stuff feels like powdered glass. I grunt and scrape some of the particles away. They look like cogwheels with sharp teeth, spilled innards of tiny clocks.

The sting reminds me that I have changed, too. Zoku Realms do not just transfer, they translate, turn you into a software construct that best approximates you in whatever constraints the virtual world imposes. Here, it seems to mean my shipboard attire of a jacket and slacks, barefoot – and no trace whatsoever of my Sobornost body’s more superhuman capabilities. At least my lost hand is back, even if it quickly goes blue and numb in the cold.

My stolen Realmspace sword has also translated – as it should have. Made by the Martian zoku whose specialty is raiding lost Realms, it adapts to whatever environment you transfer it into. I blow at my hands, rub them together, and pull it out from its scabbard.

Here, its blade is white bone, curved like a claw. The hilt is an intricate spiky design made from cold iron, heavy and uncomfortable in my hand. When I raise it, it whispers to me in a voice that is like chalk screeching on a blackboard. Small Realm. Archetypal objects and avatars. Generative content. Damaged. Dying. It makes sense. My clumsy attempts to open the Box have left the environment here broken. I wonder what it was originally: some sort of fairy-tale forest, perhaps.

Then I realise that Perhonen’s butterfly avatar is missing: it should have come through the gate with me. Damn. I look around. Something moves among the trees, through the black-and-white patterns of the shadows. Instinctively, I raise the sword, but the shape is already gone.

‘Perhonen?’ I shout. There is no answer. But near the trees, there are bare footprints in the cog-snow, leading into the woods.

With slow, painful steps, I follow them.

‘And what are you supposed to be?’ the butterflies whisper to Mieli. ‘You don’t look like his creature. Too simple. Too plain. Who do you work for?’

‘Myself,’ she says and flips into the spimescape. The ship’s systems are a chaotic tangle. A web of commands stretches through all of Perhonen’s Sobornost systems, originating from a new vir running in its Oortian smartcoral brain. And there is a dense datalink between the ship and the router, with traffic flowing back and forth—

She blinks back to her body and reaches for the zoku jewel. A q-dot bubble seizes it and pulls it away from her grasp.

The butterfly face gives her a grin that is not entirely human, more like a snout with fangs.

‘You lie badly,’ it says.

Mieli? whispers Perhonen in Mieli’s head. Her heart beats faster with sudden relief. But then she hears the pain in the ship’s thought-voice. It got me. Help.

‘Who are you and what have you done to my ship?’ she hisses.

‘I am Sumanguru, eighth generation, Battle-of-Jupiter-that-was branch, a warmind and a Founder of Sobornost,’ the butterfly beast says. ‘And as for your ship, I am eating it.’

I push tree branches aside, and they whip my face and back painfully. My feet are thankfully numb. My breath feels ragged: it feels like I’m breathing in the tiny cogs, and they are tearing the soft tissues of my lungs. It is darker now, and the stark contrast of the white and the black is blended into twilight greys and blues.

The prints lead to another clearing. There are roughly hewn stone statues in the middle: squat animals that could represent a bear and a fox, although I’m not sure. At their feet, where the tracks end, is a dark puddle, with something glittering in it. I approach carefully and squat down to have a closer look. Blood, and a piece of jewellery: a glass hairpin, shaped like a butterfly. Perhonen. My guts tie themselves into a knot. Bile burns my throat, and I have to take a deep, shuddering breath.

A whisper. A gust of wind. Something goes past me. A light touch on my back, like a teasing finger. The sound of fabric tearing. Then, a whiplash of blinding pain. The force of the blow hurls me against the bear statue and leaves me sprawling on the ground. More red stuff spatters on the ground, and this time it’s mine. The Realmspace sword flies from my hand. I try to get up but my legs give way, and I end up on all fours.

That’s when I see the tiger, watching me.

It is half-hidden by the trees, back arched. Its stripes blend with the shadows of the branches. It is a monochrome creature, absences of colour and dashes of darkness, except for the blood on its muzzle. Its eyes are mismatched, one golden, one black and dead.

It lifts one paw and licks it with a pink tongue.

‘You . . . taste . . . different,’ the tiger says. Its voice is a deep, halting rumble, like an engine starting. It pads softly into the clearing, tail swaying back and forth. I edge my way ever so slightly towards the fallen sword, but stop when the tiger lets out a growl.

‘You taste younger. Smaller. Weaker,’ it purrs. As it speaks, its voice becomes more human, familiar. ‘And you taste of her.’

I blink and sit up slowly, brushing tiny cogs from my jacket lapels. My back is on fire and warm blood trickles from the wound, but I force myself to smile.

‘If you are talking about Joséphine Pellegrini,’ I say slowly, ‘I can assure you that our relationship is merely . . . professional.’

The tiger looms over me and pushes its muzzle close to my face. Its hot breath washes over me, a mixed stench of carrion and metal.

‘Traitors like you and her belong together,’ it says.

‘I’m not sure I know what you are talking about.’

This time I can feel the growl as well as hear it: it is so deep that it echoes in my chest.

‘You broke your promise,’ the tiger roars. ‘You left me here. For a thousand years.’

I curse my past self again for his blatant disregard for his own future.

‘I admit it’s not a very attractive setting,’ I say.

‘Torture,’ the tiger whispers. ‘This was a place of torture. The same things, happening over and over again. Foxes, bears, monkeys. Tricks and plots and follies. Stories for children. Even when I killed them, they would come back. Until things started breaking down. I suppose I should thank you for that as well, le Flambeur.’ Its good eye flashes. I swallow.

‘You know,’ I say, ‘this situation really invites a philosophical debate about the nature of identity. For example, I actually lack most of the memories of the individual you are talking about. I don’t remember breaking any promises. And as a matter of fact, I am here to get you out.’

‘I made a promise, too,’ the tiger says. ‘After I waited long enough.’

I swallow.

‘And what was that?’

It backs off a few steps, circling me, tail swishing back and forth.

‘Get up,’ it hisses.

Painfully, I stumble to my feet, leaning on the stone bear.

‘Whatever the old Jean le Flambeur may have told you,’ I say, ‘the new one recognises that we have common interests. Especially regarding causing discomfort to Matjek Chen. Isn’t that the promise you made? To get revenge?’

‘No,’ the tiger says. Its words turn into a roar. ‘I promised I would give you a head start.’

I take one look at its gleaming eye, grab the Realmspace sword and start running.

Running through the forest is a nightmare. My back wound bleeds. The cog-snow sticks to the gashes in the soles of my feet. I leave a red trail behind. My breathing is a painful wheeze. The tiger is a shadow, never far: if I try to slow down, it makes a dash at me, silent and vengeful, enough to wake up my monkey fear and send me off stumbling madly across the tree roots and thickets again.

So I’m not surprised when I collapse on the edge of the opening where I started from and see the tiger, between me and the Realmgate, resting, cradling something between its front paws.

It takes a while for it to come to me, and when it does, it seems almost reluctant: soft paws on the clock snow, tiny glittering wheels in its whiskers like raindrops. Death in black and white, like a chessboard.

And for the second time, like with the Hunter thing, I feel the lines of force between us, and let them guide me towards the right move.

I step into the clearing.

‘Well, here we are,’ I say. ‘And I told you. Here is your way out. Humanity waits on the other side. What are you waiting for?’

The tiger hesitates. It looks at the gate suspiciously. In spite of all the pain, I want to smile.

Realms translate. Realms have rules. For the old, complex ones, the rules and narratives have become too intricate to understand, no one knows how they began. But the one in the Box is only a small Realm, a place of animal stories, perhaps for zoku children. And I’m betting the tiger has been here for a long time, soaking in the way things work. The fox and the bear. The monkey and the tiger.

‘I don’t think I’ll believe you, this time,’ it says. ‘Perhaps you should go first.’

My heart jumps with sudden hope. I take a step backwards, shaking my head. Don’t throw me into the thorn bush. But then the tiger lets out a depressingly human laugh. ‘Le Flambeur,’ it says. ‘Let’s stop playing. I just wanted to see you run. I’m not going to let you through the gate. I’m not going to try to go through either. You’ll have some surprise for me on the other side, no doubt. But you are right: you did give me a way out, this time.’ It moves aside, and I see what is lying on the ground.

In life, she had blue dreadlocks and pale skin that stands out even against the white snow. She looks younger than I expected, or perhaps it is the laughing eyes and the piercing in her lower lip. But when I see the black and red ruin that her body is from neck downwards I have to turn away and retch.

‘She came through first,’ the tiger says. ‘I made it quick. Not very satisfying, of course, not much meat. But there were EPR states inside her, for qupting, for connecting her to your ship. Perhonen, I believe she is called. Or was.’

I try to get up. ‘Bastard. I should have let you rot here.’

‘Thinking about you gave me the strength to keep going. You and Chen and death.’ The tiger’s grin is somewhere between human and animal. ‘But it’s your turn first. We’ll go somewhere else to have a little talk.’

The forest melts like snow. For a moment, we stand in the bone-white of the firmament, running in Perhonen’s synthbio core. Then the tiger roars its Founder code at the vir – dead children and rust and fire and blood – and rewrites the world.

Mieli does not need combat autism to blanket her rage. She rides it, blinks into the spimescape, fires her ghostgun at the ship’s walls, launches Gödel bombs into Perhonen’s systems. The weapons. The self-replicating logic of her attack software burns through the infected systems like wildfire. The butterfly thing – Sumanguru – is too fast for her: it isolates the synthbio core from her attack. But that’s not what she is aiming for.

For a moment, the weapons systems are hers. She thinks a q-dot torpedo around the ship’s last remaining strangelet bomb, subatomic fury and chaos she can fire with a blink.

She opens her eyes.

‘I don’t care if you are the Dark Man himself,’ she says. ‘I’ll take out the router and both of us with it if you don’t let Perhonen go.’

Sumanguru’s butterfly face looks more human now, heavy jaw and forehead and nose and what look like scars, sketched by flickering wings. But the eyes are hollow.

‘Be my guest, little girl,’ it says. ‘Go ahead. I don’t have much to live for. Do you?’

The trigger burns in her mind like a candle. It would be so easy. One thought, and the strangelet will end it all, wash her away in gamma ray and baryon rain.

‘Here’s the deal,’ Sumanguru says. ‘You disarm whatever trap le Flambeur has on the Realmgate. I come out. You get your ship back. Everybody is happy. How does that sound?’

What happens if she dies here? The pellegrini will bring another Mieli back. Choices like precious gems. It could all be up to someone else, not her. Saving Sydän. Dealing with the thief. Another her could do it, and it would not make a difference to anyone.

Except to Perhonen.

She feels the ship’s pain, its systems seething with an alien presence, her song defiled. I can’t let her down.

‘Well?’

‘You win,’ Mieli says.