‘The honour is mine. I am … familiar with your work,’ Mieli says. It is not a lie: Perhonen was once caught in a Gun Club holeship blast when an oblast destroyed it, and they had to surf the Hawking radiation front to safety.
I keep hearing that word, she qupts. It’s not one I would use myself to describe a Sobornost invasion. What is Great Game going to do about it?
‘Capital! Then you will be interested to hear my news! I was just telling these gentlemen about a spot of bother we had on Iapetus recently,’ Barbicane says. ‘A most audacious break-in! An artefact stolen, irreparable damage caused to our collection. A blatant Circle violation.’ This is hardly the time and the place to discuss such matters, and it could be considered rude towards our lovely hostess, to boot. I suggest you direct your enquiries directly to the zoku itself: I note your volition cone has increased considerably, and we will listen. This qupt has a firm undertone that suggests that the conversation is over, even if the link is still there.
Mieli smiles at him. ‘How interesting,’ she says. Zinda gives her a puzzled look. ‘Do tell us more.’
We Oortians are not known for our courtesy, she qupts at Barbicane. So, is inaction simply a sign of a tired civilisation whose time has run out? Or do we just feel safe because we have the Kaminari jewel?
The quptlink wavers. Briefly, Mieli sees a flash of something unutterably alien, a twisting sheet of light, like a skin beneath the skin of the Universe, impossibly far and right next door at the same time. Then the link is gone.
Barbicane is just lifting a glass to his lips but is stopped by a sputtering cough that turns into a giant belch. A jet of vaporised champagne shoots into the air from his mouth. The Dancing Cat members duck, and Zinda stares at the zoku Elder in stark horror.
Barbicane gives Mieli a fatherly smile and wipes champagne from his sideburns with a napkin held delicately between a few of his smaller manipulator limbs. ‘My sincere apologies! I’m afraid I was in such a rush to answer the young lady’s question that I poured some of this lovely stuff right into my boiler! If you will excuse me, I shall go and perform certain urgent mechanical engineering operations to prevent an explosion that no doubt would spoil the mood entirely! It is not time for fireworks yet, hmm?’
He vanishes into the crowd, weaving back and forth a little unsteadily on his leg-jets.
‘What was that all about?’ Zinda asks. ‘Don’t tell me you were flirting with him?’ She covers her mouth with a tiny hand. ‘Disaster!’
‘Of course I wasn’t!’ Mieli protests. ‘What makes you say that?’
Zinda sighs. ‘Well, to be honest, that was the most likely explanation for all your strange expressions! Especially given that you have been living like a nun ever since you got here.’ She punches Mieli in the shoulder gently. ‘We are going to have to fix that!’ Then her eyes narrow.
‘Okay, I believe you. Unless looking angry is the way Oortians flirt. Whatever it was, it’s making you far too serious. That won’t do, not at all. Whatever you are worrying about, it can wait.’ She takes Mieli’s hand and starts leading her through the party, towards the forest.
‘Where are we going?’ Mieli asks.
‘Hunting,’ says Zinda, picking up a champagne bottle and two glasses from a passing botlet waiter.
‘Hunting for what?’
‘Treasure eggs, of course!’
There are eggs hidden all over the forest, small blue things that look like the party zoku jewel, with glowing golden numbers written on them.
‘Do you like it?’ Zinda asks, sipping her drink. ‘It’s an egg hunt lottery – every number has a prize attached to it! I figured you wouldn’t like the more mainstream games like jeepform or fastaval – they tend to be all grimdark anyway – so I thought I’d go for something simple. The more difficult the hiding place, the better the prize.’ She smiles. ‘Besides, I figured you would like to have an excuse to get away from all the people. It’s just difficult to throw a small party in Supra City, you know.’
The zoku girl’s eyes are clear and kind. She is trying to help. I don’t understand what she is doing, but she is trying.
Mieli empties her fourth glass and listens to the soft sounds of the forest, and the faraway clamour of the main party. The floating lanterns above give the forest and its leaf labyrinths and the river a fairy-tale tinge. The gold and blue twinkles of the hidden eggs in the undergrowth and in the trees tickle something deep in her belly, like the aftertaste of the champagne. The end of the world is coming, and we are going to play children’s games. Well, why the hell not?
She wonders if it is just the drink, or perhaps the strange intoxication emanating from the party zoku jewel in her hair that is making her giddy. In any case, she is, for the first time in a long, long time, pleasantly gloriously drunk.
‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m going to play. And win. Unless you are planning on cheating. Wasn’t it you who designed this whole thing?’
‘Oh no, it was the party zoku! The idea came from my volition, but I have no idea where they are, or what is in them. But let’s make it a little more interesting. If I find more eggs than you do, I get to make a wish. Not a zoku wish, just a wish, an old-fashioned one, like the ones you make when you see a star fall. What do you say?’
‘Fine,’ Mieli says. ‘I want a wish too, if I win. Let’s meet by the river in one hour. But you are forgetting one thing.’ Zinda grins. ‘And what is that?’
‘I can fly.’
Mieli spreads her wings and lets the microfans lift her soundlessly to the level of the paper lanterns. Below, the forest is full of tiny blue stars.
12
THE THIEF AND THE CRYSTAL STOPPER
There are zoku ships everywhere above the Irem Plate. I glimpse them through my q-dot bubble’s magnifying skin as pinpoints as I rise towards my ship’s geostationary orbit. Then the entanglement beams between them become visible in the thin ammonium and water vapour, turning the sky into a silver net, woven to catch me.
Transitioning into the Leblanc‘s Realm through its gateskin is perfectly smooth now, like slipping beneath the surface of cool water. The pilot’s chamber flows into place around me. Carabas stands to attention and takes its hat off with a mechanical flourish.
The ship’s sensors show over two hundred ships in Plate space, ranging from the Notch-zoku’s Replicators – tiny, blocky insects – to green dense Dyson trees, sleek, spiky, purple pseudomatter vessels of the Evangelion-zoku, and even individual baseline quicksuits, silver humanoids with large, circular waste heat fins. In spite of the diversity, they are clearly members of one temporary zoku, moving in a seemingly random dance that nevertheless covers all possible escape vectors. What did Barbicane say? A challenge for a small zoku, nothing more. It looks like the Great Game has spun off an entirely new quantum collective to catch me.
I suppose I should feel flattered.
I fire up the ship’s Hawking drive and uncloak. The distributed information attack starts immediately. Qupt probes and attack software bore into the ship’s firewall from all directions. It seems they want me alive.
‘Two hundred baseline milliseconds until firewall collapse,’ Carabas says, ‘3.07 subjective minutes at maximum clockspeed.’
I wave the cat aside, sit down at the control keyboard and brush the brass keys gently. The ship’s non-sentient presence is a calm cool armour around my mind.