The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

didn’t even have to ’blink you,’ the girl says. ‘I read Ares Herald. You help the tzaddiks. You found the missing city. Have you met the Silence?’ She seems unable to stay still, hopping up and down on the couch pillows.
    ‘Élodie,’ the woman says threateningly. ‘Don’t mind my daughter: she has no manners.’
    ‘I’m just asking.’
    ‘It’s the nice young man who is here to ask the questions, not you.’
    ‘Don’t believe everything you read, Élodie,’ Isidore says. He gives her a serious look. ‘I am very sorry about your father.’
    The girl looks down. ‘They will fix him, right?’
    ‘I hope so,’ Isidore says. ‘I’m trying to help them.’
    The chocolatier’s wife gives Isidore a weary smile, excluding her words from her daughter’s gevulot.
    ‘She cost us so much. Foolish child.’ She sighs. ‘Do you have children?’
    ‘No,’ says Isidore.
    ‘They are more trouble than they are worth. It is his fault. He spoiled Élodie.’ The chocolatier’s wife runs her hands through her hair, one hand clutching the cigarette, and for a moment Isidore is afraid that the silky hair is going to catch on fire. ‘I’m sorry, I’m saying terrible things when he is … somewhere. Not even a Quiet.’
    Isidore looks at her, calmly. It is always fascinating to watch what people do when they feel they can talk to you: he briefly wonders if he would lose that as a tzaddik. But then there would be other ways to find things out.
    ‘Were you aware of any new friends that M. Deveraux might have made recently?’
    ‘No. Why?’
    Élodie gives her mother a tired look. ‘That’s how they operate, Mom. The pirates. Social engineering. They gather bits of your gevulot so they can decrypt your mind.’
    ‘Why would they want him? He was nothing special. He could make chocolate. I don’t even like chocolate.’
    ‘I think your husband was exactly the kind of person the gogol pirates would be interested in, a specialised mind,’ Isidore says. ‘The Sobornost have an endless appetite for deep learning models, and they are obsessed with human sensory modalities, especially taste and smell.’
    He takes care to include Élodie in the conversation’s gevulot. ‘And his chocolate certainly is special. His assistant was kind enough to let me try some when I visited the shop: freshly made, a sliver of that dress that arrived from the factory this morning. Absolutely incredible.’
    Disgust twists Élodie’s face into a mask, like an echo of the chocolatier’s death. Then she vanishes behind the blur of a full privacy screen, jumps up and runs up the stairs with three hasty, low-gravity leaps.
    ‘My apologies,’ says Isidore. ‘I didn’t mean to upset her.’
    ‘Don’t worry. She has been putting on a brave face, but this is very difficult for us.’ She puts out her cigarette and wipes her eyes. ‘I suspect she will run off and see her boyfriend and then she’ll come back and not talk to me. Children.’
    ‘I understand,’ Isidore says, getting up. ‘You have been very helpful.’
    She looks disappointed. ‘I thought … that you would ask more questions. My daughter said you always do, that you always ask something the tzaddiks never think of.’ There is a strange eagerness on her face.
    ‘It is not always about the questions,’ Isidore says. ‘My condolences again.’ He tears a page from his notebook and scrawls a signature on it, attaching a small co-memory. Then he hands it to the woman. ‘Please give it to Élodie, as a form of apology. Although I’m not sure if she is a fan anymore.’
    As he leaves, he can’t help whistling: he has the full shape of the mystery now. He runs a finger along it in his mind, and it makes a clear sound, like a half-full glass of wine.
    Isidore eats octopus risotto for lunch in a small restaurant on the edge of the park. The ink leaves interesting patterns in the napkin when he dabs his lips. He sits and watches the people in the park for half an