We have to find her, before someone else does. And several baseline days have already passed.
Even if I knew where she was, getting to her would not be easy. Our good ship, the Wardrobe, is little more than a tangle of carbon nanotubes inside a cherry-sized blob of primitive smartmatter, tugged along a Belt branch of the Highway towards Saturn by kitelike solar sails. It hatched from a 3000-ton Wang bullet. I lit a 150-kiloton nuclear explosive under it to escape a dying Earth. Fragments of the shell that protected the ship still float around us, a three-dimensional puzzle of steel and boron, and a wispy mess of used anti-acceleration gel that trails the ship like a stream of toilet paper from a car window. It’s not the vessel I would choose for a high-speed System-wide chase.
And if I do find Mieli and she finds out what happened to Perhonen, there will be blood. Mostly mine.
I take Matjek by the shoulders gently. ‘That’s right. Everybody.’
‘I want to help Mieli, too.’
‘I know. But right now, you will help her best by being quiet and reading a little bit more. Can you do that?’
He pouts.
‘The Princess said we were going to have an adventure. She didn’t say anything about you having to work so much.’
‘Well, the Princess does not know everything.’
‘I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I thought you were my friend.’
There is a sudden, hollow feeling in my chest.
I hate to admit it, but my motives for bringing Matjek along were selfish: his jannah was the only place that Chen’s Dragons were forbidden to touch.
And then there is a fact that not too long ago, I was ready to steal his soul.
‘Of course I am your friend, Matjek. What was it about the book that that upset you so much?’
He hops from one foot to another. Then he looks at me with those clear eyes.
‘Is this place like Narnia?’ he asks. ‘Are we both really dead?’
I stare at him.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It makes sense, when you think about it. I remember going to Mr Perenna’s white room. I was really ill. There was a bed, and then I was on the beach, and felt fine again.
‘I never thought about it when I was there. I just kept playing. Mum and Dad said I could play a little longer. They were going to come back, but they never did. It was like I was dreaming. But Mieli came and woke me up.
‘So maybe I was ill and died in the real world and the beach is Narnia and you’re Reepecheep the mouse.’
Matjek was four years old when his mind was copied into the jannah. The last real thing he remembers is going to the upload insurance company with his parents: the rest is a never-ending afternoon on the beach. As far as he knows, one of his imaginary friends, the one he calls the Flower Prince, came back and took him on an adventure. I can’t bring myself to tell him that his parents have been dead for centuries and that the world he knew was eaten by Dragons that his future self made.
‘Matjek—’
For a split second, I consider my options. I could roll his gogol back a few days, make him forget all about me and The Last Battle. I could recreate his beach. He could keep playing forever.
I take a deep breath. For once, Mieli was right. There are lines that have to be drawn. I’m not going to turn Matjek into an edited gogol like me. And there is no way I am building a prison for the boy.
I take Matjek’s small hand in my own. I squeeze his fingers gently, looking for words.
‘You are not dead, Matjek. Being dead is different. Believe me, I know. But things can be real in different ways. Your parents never believed in us, did they? In me, the Princess, the Soldier and the Kraken?’
It takes some effort to speak the names in a steady voice. Matjek’s imaginary friends – or their distant descendants, the Aun – make me uncomfortable. They claim I’m one of them, and saved me from being eaten by wildcode in Earth’s atmosphere. But they did not save Perhonen.
Matjek shakes his head.
‘That’s because we live in a world they can’t see, the world of stories. Once we find Mieli, I promise I will take you back to the real world. But I need you to help me first. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ He sniffs. I suppress a sigh of relief.
Then he looks at me again.
‘Prince?’
‘Yes?’
‘I always forget the stories in my dreams. The children always forget Narnia. Will I remember you when I go back?’
‘Of course you’ll remember.’
The word echoes in my mind like thunder. Remember. That’s it! Grinning manically, I lift Matjek and hug him tight.
‘Matjek, you are a genius!’
I have been looking for Mieli’s trail in public data sources that have been compromised by unknown forces. But there is one place in the Solar System where they remember everything. And keep secrets better than anyone else.
Setting up an anonymous quptlink to speak to the King of Mars is not easy, but I work feverishly now that I finally have a plan. I’ve encouraged Matjek to tackle an algorithmically generated, neuroadaptive fantasy book from the late twenty-first century next: I’m hoping it will keep him busy for a while.
We are several light-minutes away from Mars, and so I slow down my subjective clockspeed to simulate a real-time conversation. I create a slowtime sub-vir and step inside: nothing fancy, just a fragment from my visit to the hsien-kus’ ancestor simulation of old Earth, a basement bar in Paris, full of calm, friendly expatriate bustle.
I pause for a moment, savouring a screwdriver cocktail. Technically, the detective and I were adversaries, and I would hate to ask for his help even if he wasn’t my ex-lover Raymonde’s son. I make a last-minute effort to think of other options, conclude there are none, and send the first qupt, making sure to attach a grin.
How are you, my King?
Don’t call me that, the answer comes. You have no idea what it’s like. The qupt carries the gritted teeth feel of frustration, and I smile.
It’s a title you earned, Isidore. You should embrace it.
What do you want, Jean? I did not expect to hear from you again. Don’t tell me you want your Watch back.
Clearly, the boy is growing teeth.
You can keep the Watch. I seem to recall you had trouble with keeping appointments, or so Pixil said. I would like to let him ponder that for a while, but time is short. I need something else, though. Your help. It’s urgent.
What happened on Earth? There is a hunger in his query. Did you have something to do with it?
It’s better that you don’t know the details. As for what happened – that’s what I’m trying to find out.
I send him a quick summary of my efforts to find Mieli, adapted to the Martian co-memory protocols.
Isidore, someone has been tampering with all the public data I can find. The Oubliette exomemory may have slipped past them: if your encryption schemes are too much trouble for the Sobornost, they will give anyone pause. I need all the Earth and Highway observation data you have from this period.
Isidore’s reply is full of feverish enthusiasm. This is almost like the Kingdom, forging the past, but on a much larger scale! I’ll have to use the Cryptarch Key to get all this. Why would anyone go to so much trouble?
Perhaps someone is really afraid of a Dragon infection. That is the best idea my minions found amongst Highway chatter. Or to keep anyone else from finding Mieli, I think to myself. Although why anyone would deploy such resources to hide one Oortian, even a servant of Joséphine Pellegrini, I have no idea.