The Fractal Prince (10 page)

The
väki
in
Perhonen’s
hull responds to her. The song is almost as complex as the one she sung when she made the ship, the one that kept her up for eleven
koto
nights. But this one is a sharp song, a dead song, full of chilly abstraction and code, the song of a thief. She tries to stop herself, clamp fingers across her mouth, bite her tongue, but her body refuses to obey. In the end, she spits it out, word by word, hoarse voice rasping.

The changes the song makes are subtle, but she can feel them, in the very core of the ship, rippling outwards along its spiderweb structure and modules, all the way to its wings.

Mieli!
the ship shouts.
There is something wrong—

Cursing the thief, Mieli sends the command that shuts him down.

Jean, what the hell are you talking about
? The butterfly goes frantic in my helmet.

All my limbs freeze. Mieli is using the Sobornost body’s remote control. But she can’t control Newton’s laws: I’m still going towards the gate.

The Realmgate is a wall in front of me, black like a thundercloud. There is a flash. And then I’m both alive and dead.

‘
Perhonen
?’ Mieli whispers.

Perhonen
’s butterflies alight from their perches on the walls and dance, a storm of white motion, like Lorenz attractors. The fluttering whiteness converges into a dense cloud and forms a face.

‘
Perhonen
is not here anymore,’ it says, with a voice made of wings and whispers.

8

TAWADDUD AND SUMANGURU

The Sobornost Station is large enough to have its own weather. The ghost-rain inside does not so much fall but shimmers in the air. It makes shapes and moves, and gives Tawaddud the constant feeling that something is lurking just at the edge of her vision.

She looks up, and immediately regrets it. Through the wet veil, it is like looking down from the top of the Gomelez Shard. The vertical lines far above pull her gaze towards an amber-hued, faintly glowing dome almost a kilometre high, made of transparent, undulating surfaces that bunch together towards the centre, like the ceiling of a circus tent, segmented by the sharply curving ribs of the Station’s supporting frame.

Forms like misshapen balloons float beneath the vault. At first they look random, but as Tawaddud watches, they coalesce into shapes: the line of a cheekbone and a chin and an eyebrow. Then they are faces, sculpted from air and light, looking down at her with hollow eyes—

What am I doing here
?

The jinni yearn for bodies: that she understands. But the Station
is
the body of Sobornost, thinking matter, flesh of the true immortals. There are gogols everywhere, big and small, even in the rain, in the smart dust particles around which the raindrops form.

She breathes it in, sticky and oily, with a faint, sweet scent, like incense. The droplets cling to her clothing and skin and soil her silk dress. The soggy fabric crumples around her waist. Little deities ruin her carefully prepared hairdo and trickle down her back.

Tawaddud the diplomat.
What am I going to say to a god from beyond the sky when he arrives
? The hastily absorbed facts about Sobornost and the envoy swim around in her head. ‘I’m sorry, your brothers rained on me.’

I thought I was so clever. Maybe Duny was right. Maybe I should have stuck to pleasuring jinni
.

Her sister stormed into her bedroom at four in the morning, waking her from heavy, languid sleep. Dunyazad did not even look at Tawaddud, just walked to the keyhole-shaped window with a view of Father’s rooftop gardens, yanked the curtains open and stared out at the pre-dawn light. Her shoulders shook ever so slightly, but her voice was flat calm.

‘Get up. Father wants you to escort the Sobornost envoy to look into Alile’s death. We need to get you briefed and ready.’

Tawaddud rubbed her eyes. Abu had summoned a carpet to take them home – he
did
have jinni bodyguards, after all – and she had collapsed on her bed. She smelled of sweat and Banu Sasan, and a faint warm echo of his touch still clung to her skin. It made her smile even at Duny.

‘Good morning, to you too, sister.’

Duny did not turn around. Her hands were at her sides, squeezed into fists.

‘Tawaddud,’ she said slowly. ‘This is not a game. This is not sneaking away from Chaeremon to flirt with wirer boys. This is not some role you play for a lecherous jinn who cannot bear the phantom pains of his lost manhood. This is about the fate of Sirr. You don’t understand what you are dealing with, what you will have to do. Whatever deal you made with Lord Nuwas, I beg you to let it go. If you don’t want to marry him, so be it. We can find somebody else. If you want to play politics, we can find a way. But do not do this. I ask you in the name of our mother’s soul.’

Tawaddud got up, wrapping a sheet around her.

‘Don’t you think this is what Mother would have wanted?’ she said softly.

Dunyazad turned her head and looked straight at Tawaddud, her eyes two pinpoints of ice, and in the morning light, she did look like their mother. But she did not say a word.

‘Don’t you think I can do it, Duny?
A boring babysitting job
, is that not what you called it? I was taught everything you were, and more besides. But how would you know? You only ever come to me when you need something.’ She allows herself a half a smile. ‘Besides, it sounds like Father has made a decision.’

Dunyazad’s mouth was a straight line. She squeezed her qarin bottle in one hand, hard.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But there is no room for mistakes. And there is no running away from this one. That’s what you like to do when things get difficult, don’t you?’

‘I will have you to catch me if I fall, sister,’ Tawaddud said. She lowered her voice. ‘I think it’s going to be fun.’

Without another word, Dunyazad took her to one of the muhtasib admin buildings at the top of the Blue Shard. They climbed long, winding stairs to an austere chamber of white stone, with low couches and athar screens, where a dry-lipped, shaven-headed young man in orange robes – a political astronomer, Duny said – told her what she needed to know about the Sobornost.

‘We are confident that the Sobornost power structure is unstable and fragmented,’ he said, staring at her intently. ‘Grav-wave interferometry shows that the
guberniyas
go through periods of conflict and consolidation.’ He showed her images that looked like eyeballs, heat maps of the planet-sized diamond brains of the Inner System. ‘We know about the hsien-kus, of course. But it is the chens who seem to be the dominant power at the moment. It is them that the hsien-kus are trying to keep happy.’

‘So is it a chen they are sending?’ Tawaddud asked.

‘Probably not. It is more likely that they will send a sumanguru – or several, it could be a bodyship. They are warriors and enforcers of some sort. Policemen. Like Repentants.’

The young man’s voice was eager and breathless. ‘I must say that I envy you this opportunity. To interact with a Founder from the Deep Time. To find out more about all the big questions, even hints – the Cry of Wrath and why they are so vulnerable to wildcode, why they allow our city to exist, why they are building the Gourd, why they haven’t already uploaded Earth—’

The young man’s eyes gleamed with something akin to religious awe. It made Tawaddud’s skin crawl, and she was glad that her sister interrupted him.

‘There is no need for any of that,’ Duny said. ‘Whoever it is, you will start with Alile. You will give the envoy temporary Seals and take them to the Councilwoman’s palace: they know to expect you. All the Repentants there are with House Soarez: they are sympathetic to our cause, as is the Councilwoman’s heir, Salih. Let the envoy investigate as much as they want: I doubt they will do any better than the Repentants. But be careful: we don’t want to alert the rest of the Council to our guest’s presence just yet.’ She turned back to the young man. ‘What do we know about the sumangurus?’

‘Well, our hsien-ku sources are . . . afraid of them.’ The athar screens fill with ghosts of a black-skinned man with a shaved head and scarred face. ‘If what we know about the original is anything to go by, there is a good reason. He escaped a black box upload camp when he was eleven. Became a Fedorovist leader in Central Africa. Single-handedly wiped out gogol trade there.’ The young man licks his lips. ‘Of course, that was before he became a god.’

Dunyazad gave Tawaddud a dark look. ‘Sounds like you two should get along just fine.’

She feels foolish for mocking Duny now.
She is not going to forget that
. There was more, speculation about alliances between hsien-kus and vasilevs and instructions on how to operate the Repentant jinn ring the young man gave her for safety, Secret Names for emergencies, a Seal for the envoy. Inside the Station, all of it feels absurd, schemes of ants trying to understand the thoughts of gods. Her head aches with fatigue and anxiety.

A river of light flows to the upload platform she is standing on, carrying a group of twenty people or so: upload converts in black Sobornost unifs. Their shaved heads gleam in the rain, and they flinch at every thoughtwisp thunderclap, every scan beam lightning strike. A vasilev – an impossibly handsome blond young man she recognises from statues – shepherds them, moving quickly from one person to the next, touching their shoulders, whispering in their ears.

They all stare at the scan beam target markers – dull metallic circles on the floor in front of them – except for a skinny boy who steals a look at Tawaddud, a hungry, guilty glimpse. He cannot be more than sixteen, but his hollow temples and the grey hue of his skin make him seem older. His lips are blue, and his mouth is a thin line.

Why did you go to the temple where they told you of Fedorov and the Great Common Task and immortality?
Tawaddud wonders.
Perhaps because they said you were special, that you were clean of wildcode. They taught you exercises to prepare your mind. They told you they loved you. That you would never have to be alone again. But now you are not sure. It is cold in the rain. You don’t know where the thunder is going to take you
. Tawaddud smiles at him.
You are braver than I was
, her smile says.
It’s going to be all right
.

The boy’s back straightens. He takes a deep breath and looks ahead with the others.

Tawaddud sighs. At least she can still tell lies that men need to hear. Perhaps the envoy won’t be any different.

The air booms like the skin of a drum. The ethereal machinery beneath the Station’s dome moves, coalesces into a whirlpool. A pencil beam comes from above, incandescent finger of a burning god. Tawaddud feels heat on her face as if from a furnace. The ray flickers back and forth, as if writing in the air. She squeezes her eyes shut against the unbearable brightness, but the light only becomes red, filtering through her eyelids. Then it is gone, and only an afterimage remains. When she can see again, there is a man with the face of one of the Station gods standing on the platform.

Tawaddud curtsies. The man fixes his gaze on her with a sudden jerk of his head. The pale blue eyes and their tiny pupils feel like a blow. His skin is even darker than Tawaddud’s own, except for a purple cluster of rough scars across his nose and cheekbone.

‘My lord Sumanguru of the Turquoise Branch,’ Tawaddud says. ‘Please allow me welcome you to the city of Sirr, on behalf of the Muhtasib Council. I am Tawaddud of House Gomelez. I have been assigned to be your guide.’

She speaks out the words of the Seal, moving her hands in the ritual gestures of a muhtasib. In the athar, her fingers paint swirls of golden letters in the air. They swarm around the Sobornost man like insects and settle on his skin. For an instant, he is tattooed with fiery characters, spelling out the unique Name given to the Seal that only the muhtasibs know.

Sumanguru flinches, looking at his hands. His massive chest heaves beneath the featureless black Sobornost unif that looks like paint on his skin.

‘I have given you one of our Seals. It will protect you from wildcode for seven days and nights,’ Tawaddud says. ‘Hopefully your task will not require more than that.’
Besides, the Accord modification vote goes ahead in two days
.

Sumanguru’s nostrils flare.

‘I thank you,’ he says. ‘But a guide . . . a guide will not be necessary.’ He speaks slowly, with a rumbling voice, and smacks his lips as if tasting the words. ‘I am fully briefed and capable of carrying out my task. I will interface directly with the Council if necessary.’

Tawaddud’s neck prickles. The uploads and the vasilev on the platform are frozen, staring at Sumanguru with a look of abject terror.

‘Perhaps there has been a miscommunication. The Council feels that—’

‘There has. I will require your assistance no further.’ Sumanguru takes a step forward. He looms in front of Tawaddud, two heads taller than her. Like the Station, he is built according to a different scale. His skin has the same dark sheen as the floor, and the rain does not seem to cling to him. Tawaddud’s heart pounds.

‘But you may find the city strange,’ she says. ‘And there are many customs you will not be familiar with—’

‘You have a problem. Tell your masters I will solve it. Is that not enough?’

He pushes Tawaddud aside with a movement so quick it feels more like a blow, a stinging impact just below her left collarbone that makes her lose her balance and fall down. There are bright flashes in front of her eyes.

Tawaddud the diplomat. Stupid girl
.

She shakes her head to clear it. There is something familiar about the clumsiness in Sumanguru’s movements. The realisation almost makes her smile.

Sumanguru looks down at her for a moment, impassively. He turns to leave, but Tawaddud holds his gaze with her own.

‘It is strange, isn’t it?’ she says.

‘What?’ His shoulders shift slightly.

‘The jinni say they become different when they wear bodies. They say there is a craving that comes, afterwards. It must be very strange for you to have a body again, after so long. Being poured into a different cup.’ She struggles to get up. ‘A hsien-ku told me it is a privilege amongst your people to wear flesh again.’