Empress of the Sun by Ian McDonald Read Free Book Online

Charles Villiers. He looked and was dressed identically to his counterpart.
    Charlotte Villiers knew the E7 etiquette – only acknowledge, shake hands, speak with the person speaking with you; if your language has a plural form of ‘you’, like French or German or Spanish, use the singular form; don’t besurprised if the other person completes what the first one begins to say; forgive them their moments of unspoken communication. It is twin telepathy.
    Jen Heer Fol were identical twins. Every operative in the Earth 7 jump-room was an identical twin. Every person on Earth 7 was an identical twin. More than identical twins, closer even than clones. They were one mind in two bodies. What one felt, the other felt; what one saw, the other remembered; what one thought, the other heard. They could communicate mind to mind, instantly, silently, completely, no matter how far apart they were. Researchers on many worlds had studied Earth 7’s twins intensely and their best theory was that they were quantum entanglement on the everyday scale.
    To Charlotte Villiers entanglement was one of the most beautiful mysteries of quantum theory. Take two particles and, using a laser, place them in the same quantum state. They become entangled, connected to each other. In some ways they are like one particle in two places. No matter how far you separate the entangled particles, in distance or in time, any effect that takes place on one will be mirrored immediately in the other, whether it is a wavelength of light away or the width of the observable universe. Everything is connected. That truth filled Charlotte Villiers with a sense of wholeness and peace.
    Quantum entanglement was routine on the scale of atoms, not so easy on the scales that registered on humansenses. That ghastly little man from Earth 10, Paul McCabe, had told her his team had succeeded in quantum-entangling two bacteria. He had presumably thought she would be impressed by such an achievement. He had yet to meet the E7ers, who achieved quantum entanglement on the scale of brains, and no one knew how it worked, except that it seemed to be a natural phenomenon.
    Whatever the explanation, Earth 7 twins – they disliked that term, Charlotte Villiers remembered – made superlative diplomats, reporters, investigators, secret agents and spies, with an undetectable line of communication across universes. Their only weakness seemed to be that they grew increasingly cranky, bad-tempered and depressed the longer they were apart.
    And there with the Jen Heer Fol twins – with him, Charlotte Villiers reminded herself; E7 twins liked to be referred to as one person in two bodies – was that same ghastly little man, skulking in that scruffy private-detective’s raincoat. Behind him was the Harte woman. Atrocious hair colour. Quite, quite inappropriate for a cross-planes diplomat, but in every other way she was much more capable than her university boss. She couldn’t be trusted – Charlotte Villiers would never forgive her the blow that struck her gun away from Everett Singh, allowing him to escape to Earth 3 and thence to the entire Panoply of all worlds. But Charlotte Villiers would study her closely. The Plenipotentiary practised the old maxim of keeping your friends close but yourenemies closer. The sooner the arrangement with Earth 10 was taken out of the hands of bumbling scientists and put on a proper diplomatic basis, the better.
    ‘Charlotte!’ Paul McCabe’s handshake was like a dead fish.
    ‘Miss Harte.’ Charlotte Villiers nodded to Colette Harte.
    ‘This is an extraordinary world,’ Paul McCabe said, not at all discouraged by the snub. ‘Extraordinary!’
    ‘Yes, some worlds are more ordinary than others. How do you find Heiden, Colette?’
    ‘It’s very beautiful.’
    You answer carefully, Charlotte Villiers thought. I do not trust you, but you trust me even less.
    Heiden’s beauty, like everything else on Earth 7, was twofold. The first beauty was its