Free The Causal Angel (Jean le Flambeur) by Hannu Rajaniemi

way it will be safe. Everybody happy? Hmm?’
    Everybody except me, who has hidden a spare miniature body with qupt-ready EPR states inside it. And I was going to use it to steal back my ship from the Arsenal.
    But I just smile and nod, and start thinking about a plan B.

5
    MIELI AND THE ABYSS
    Mieli is standing on a balcony. The sky above is impossibly vast, faded blue, with a white cut across it. The sunlight is bright and warm on her face, but it is diffuse, soletta-light, collected by some giant mirror in space and distilled into this gentle radiance. Strangely, it reminds her of Oort, of home.
    Nothing else does.
    The building she is in is high and white, made of organic rounded shapes like seashells, bristling with terraces and balconies. Tanned people sit or lie in the sun, surrounded by haloes of jewels.
    Below her, there is a canal. It goes on forever, a thread that vanishes into a haze somewhere impossibly far. A golden gondola suspended from two purple balloons floats leisurely above it. On both shores of the waterway, the landscape is a quilt of mismatched buildings and vistas, separated from each other by silver lines. There is a temple of onion-shaped pagodas and spires, rising from a stark field of dark circuitry; a row of coral castles; a mist-shrouded grey city in the distance. Further away lies a white-peaked mountain range, surrounded by red-winged flying specks too large to be birds. At the very edge of her vision, there is a structure almost as big as the sky, a looming broad arc with a metallic glint, held up by thin white pillars. To right and left, the world is abruptly bound by two cloud-walls, amber-hued.
    Mieli feels a touch of vertigo. She has never liked planets: they are too big for her, and the horizons and the skies here dwarf anything she has ever seen. She focuses her eyes on the blue thread of the canal. Hundreds of zoku trueforms dart along it, whirlpools and parachutes of jewels and fog, moving in flocks like birds. They suddenly remind her of the dream that brought her here.
    To Supra City.
    ‘Would you like some tea?’
    Mieli turns around. Her systems wake up, but detect no threat. It is the usagi-ronin. She is barefoot, dressed in torn blue trousers and a simple green shirt. Here, she is shorter than Mieli. Her skin is the colour of milk chocolate. Her mouth is a bit too wide to fit in the shape of her face, but her eyes are bright. She is carrying a tray with small bowls and a jade green teapot. She motions Mieli to follow her inside.
    Warily, Mieli obeys. They are in a small apartment. Its white walls are covered in brightly coloured sheets showing ancient-looking two-dimensional pictures of young people, prominently featuring the words Manaya High. There is no smartmatter: the sparse furniture is made of wood and handwoven, colourful fabrics. The simplicity of it is a pleasant contrast to the madness outside. Deliberate, of course.
    The usagi-ronin gracefully sets the tray down onto a small table. Then she sits down on the pillows, cross-legged. ‘Have some. It’s sencha. Unless you would like something to eat?’
    Mieli sits down carefully in a kneeling position: the gravity here is heavy for her, nearly the same as on Earth. In spite of that, she feels light and strong, and her limbs no longer ache from days of climbing. She is dressed as she was on Perhonen , a black toga, and Sydän’s jewelled chain around her ankle. She notices that she is holding the zoku jewel that saved her: a blue oval, smaller than her hand, pulsating with faint light, surrounded by a very faint smell of flowers. She puts it on the table in front of her.
    The usagi-ronin girl looks at the jewel and smiles. She places a cup in front of Mieli and fills it with steaming, fresh-smelling liquid.
    ‘Look, I’m sorry about the Realm,’ she says. ‘The mountain and all that. I can see now that it would have been disorienting for you. We usually try to bring orphans in through Realms, to let them work