The Quantum Thief

Interlude. WILL

It is Isaac’s idea to break into the synagogue. But it is Paul who gets them in, of course, whispering to the clamshell-shaped white building’s gevulot until it shows them one of its doors, beneath a high arch embellished with intricate plasterwork.

‘After you, rabbi,’ Paul says, almost stumbling when he makes an exaggerated bow, face burning.

‘No, no, after you,’ Isaac insists. ‘Or what the hell, let’s go in together.’ He flings an arm around the young man’s shoulders, and they stumble into the place of worship, side by side.

They have been drinking for fourteen hours. Isaac loves the crude sensation of alcohol buzzing in his brain: so much better than sophisticated drugware. The increasingly small sober part of his mind recognises it as a meme rather than a physical thing: thousand years of a culture of intoxication, worship of Bacchus built into his Oubliette-made body.

In any case, what is important is that the world around them has an odd, twisted logic, that his heart pounds in his chest in a way that makes him ready to stand on one of the phoboi walls and roar a challenge to all the dark creatures of the Martian desert. Or to take on God himself, which is what he originally had in mind.

But as always, the quiet sanctuary of the synagogue makes him feel small. The eternal light – a bright q-dot sphere – burns above the doors of the Ark, its glow mixing with the first beams of the dawn, filtering through the through the blue-and-gold patterns of the high stained-glass windows.

Isaac sits down on the chairs facing the reader’s platform, takes his metallic field flask from his jacket pocket and shakes it. It sounds half-empty. ‘Well, here we are,’ he tells Paul. ‘What’s on your mind? Start talking. Otherwise, we’ll have wasted a lot of good booze for nothing.’

‘All right. But first, tell me: why religion?’ Paul asks.

Isaac laughs. ‘Why alcohol? Once you try it, it’s hard to give it up.’ He opens his flask and takes a swig. The vodka burns on his tongue. ‘Besides, this is the faith of champions, my friend: a thousand arbitrary rules you just have to accept, all completely irrational. None of this baby stuff about being saved if you just believe. You should try it sometime.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ Paul walks to the Ark doors, an odd look on his face. ‘The musical sound of breaking the law,’ he mutters. Then he turns around. ‘Isaac, do you know why we are friends?’

‘Because I hate you a little bit less than all the other idiots that this Martian gnat town carries on its back,’ Isaac says.

‘Because you have nothing that I want.’

Isaac looks at Paul. In the stained-glass light and through the vodka haze, he looks very young. He remembers how they met: an argument in an offworlder bar that got out of hand, Isaac’s old anger came out of him in spurts like a cough, bloomed into a fight in which he was delighted to find that the young man did not hide behind gevulot.

Isaac is silent for a moment. ‘I beg to differ,’ he says, holding up the flask. ‘Come and get it.’ He laughs, long and hard. ‘Seriously, what is eating you? I know what these intoxication marathons lead up to. Don’t tell me it’s about that girl again.’

‘Maybe,’ Paul says. ‘I did something very stupid.’

‘I’d expect no less,’ Isaac says. ‘Want me to punish you? Want God to punish you? I’ll gladly oblige. Come here so I can smack you.’

He tries to get up, but his legs refuse to cooperate. ‘Look, you daft bastard. One reason I did not smash your face in the first time we met was that I saw the addiction. I don’t know what it is that you crave, but you can’t hide from it. For me, it’s memes: brain worms, religion, poetry, Kabbalah, revolutions, Fedorovist philosophy, booze. For you, it’s something else.’ Isaac looks for the flask in his jacket pocket, but his hands feel clumsy and large, like mittens. ‘Whatever it is, you are about to throw away a good thing because of it. Get rid of it. Don’t do what I did. Cut it out.’

‘I can’t,’ Paul says.

‘Why not?’ Isaac says. ‘It’ll only hurt once.’

Paul closes his eyes. ‘There is this… thing. I made it. It’s bigger than me. It grew around me. I thought I could get away from it but I can’t: whenever I want something, it tells me to take it. And I can. It’s easy. Especially here.’

Isaac laughs. ‘I don’t pretend to understand any of that,’ he says. ‘This is some offworld nonsense, isn’t it? Embodied cognition. Many minds and bodies and all that crap. Well, to me you sound like a whiny little boy with too many toys. Put them away. If you can’t destroy them, lock them away somewhere where it’ll really hurt to touch them again. Back on Earth, that’s how I was taught to stop biting my fingernails.’ Isaac leans back in his seat and finds that he is slowly sliding on the wooden bench. He looks at the lion carvings in the ceiling. ‘Be a man,’ he says. ‘You’re bigger than the toys. We are always bigger than the things we make. Put them away. Make something new with your life, with your own mind and hands.’

Paul sits next to him and stares at the doors of the Ark. Then he takes Isaac’s metal flask from his pocket and drinks. ‘And how did that work out for you?’ he asks.

Isaac slaps him. To his surprise, he actually connects. Paul drops the flask and stares at him, one hand on his stinging ear and cheek. The flask clatters to the floor, spilling its remaining contents.

‘Now look what you made me do,’ Isaac says.