The Fractal Prince

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.

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.