Empress of the Sun by Ian McDonald

houses and lodged in the stone folds of the statues of the Cathedral of the Brothers Christ. The staff of the Blond Bear Cafe would have closed up but for their one customer, and her insistence that a guest would join her. Charlotte Villiers turned up the collar of her Earth 3 coat and cupped her hands around the bowl of hot chocolate. It was twenty minutes since she had seen another human being in Sant Omerhauplass. The twin waiters stamped their feet and tucked their hands into theirarmpits and stood as close to the gas heater as politeness allowed.
    Ibrim Hoj Kerrim crossed the square from the Grootskanal bridge. He was dressed for a northern winter, muffled up in thick coat and scarf, the ear-flaps of his hat pulled down and knotted under his chin. He sat down at Charlotte Villiers’s table.
    ‘Could you not have found a table inside?’
    ‘I find it invigorating. Shall I order you some hot chocolate? Nowhere in the Known Worlds makes it better.’
    ‘I would love some, thank you.’
    The carillon of the Cathedral of the Brothers Christ played a snatch of a hymn tune, the quarter hour.
    ‘I find Christianity a baffling religion at the best of times,’ Ibrim Hoj Kerrim said. ‘So messy and gory, and everything is so personal. But here … Two Jesuses, one of whom went up to heaven, the other who went down to set up the embassy of the Kingdom of Heaven at the gates of hell … Bizarre.’
    ‘I’m not a believer myself,’ Charlotte Villiers said. ‘I find all religions have some core of irrationality that I simply cannot accept, but, given the nature of Earth 7 society, that part makes eminent sense to me.’
    ‘You have an alter,’ Ibrim Hoj Kerrim pointed out. The waiters, in neat white aprons, served him with a bowl and a pot of chocolate.
    ‘Everyone has an alter,’ Charlotte Villiers said. ‘Somewhere. You just haven’t met yours yet.’
    ‘Perhaps. But mine is one of the more – distinctive worlds.’
    ‘The Principle of Mediocrity would suggest otherwise.’
    ‘Well, I agree with you on one thing, Ms Villiers.’
    ‘What a novelty!’
    ‘This is the best hot chocolate in the Ten Worlds. But you didn’t bring me out here in a blizzard to drink hot chocolate in an empty cafe.’
    ‘No, I brought you out to this empty cafe to drink hot chocolate and frighten you,’ Charlotte Villiers said, taking a sip from her bowl.
    ‘Frighten me?’
    ‘My alter Charles planted a tracking device on the Singh boy’s airship.’
    ‘Of course you did not have the time to inform the Security Council about this.’
    ‘Of course. It tracks the Heisenberg Jumps he makes, and where he goes after the Heisenberg Jump. It’s quite accurate.’
    ‘Where has he gone?’ Ibrim Hoj Kerrim asked.
    Charlotte Villiers set down her chocolate bowl. ‘Everett Singh has discovered the Jiju.’
    Ibrim Hoj Kerrim spoke softly in his own language.
Is that a prayer?
Charlotte Villiers thought.
Did you ask your God to protect you? You should
.
    ‘You have succeeded in frightening me,’ Ibrim Hoj Kerrim said. ‘Who knows about this?’
    ‘Only Charles. And that fool from Earth 10, McCabe. The boy is a family friend. He knows if I keep information from him.’
    ‘If the boy has jumped to the Jiju Worldwheel, then every planet in the Plenitude is in clear and present danger. The Jiju, in control of the Infundibulum and the Heisenberg Gate? We will all die in fire.’
    ‘We have a small window in which we can act,’ Charlotte Villiers said. Snow blew across the cobbles of Sant Omerhauplass. ‘We send a task force to the Worldwheel. We recapture the Infundibulum by any means necessary. The tracking device allows us to insert a squad precisely. Surgically.’
    ‘Surgical. That is a word with blood in it,’ Ibrim Hoj Kerrim said.
    ‘If we have to kill everyone on that airship to get the Infundibulum, so be it.’
    ‘
We?
’ Ibrim Hoj Kerrim asked.
    ‘You know the Security Council will be dithering and prevaricating right