by Ramez Naam
But… Ling… and even Chen Pang…
You’ll get used to it, the thing before him sent them all.
71
A Billion Weeds
Sunday 2041.01.06
“…protests have grown,” Deputy Security Minister Ho said, as the screen panned behind him. “Now more than a dozen university campuses. Four to five hundred students in the largest protests. Growth appears to be accelerating.”
Bo Jintao nodded from his seat as his deputy presented the data to the Politburo Standing Committee. The seven of them were in session, in their formal council room in the heart of the Zhongnanhai complex. Bo Jintao sat just to the right of the head of the table. At the very head was a tall, lean man; old, but erect of posture; with a strong face, piercing black eyes – Bao Zhuang, the nominal President of China and General Secretary of the Party.
The pretty face, as Bo Jintao thought of the man. The one man in recent history who’d ascended to power on the basis of popularity. The man who’d carefully juggled the middle ground between the radical technophiles and his own rational conservatives while their truce held.
“Let a Billion Flowers Bloom!” Bao Zhuang read from one of the protest signs on the display. His voice was deep and rich, even in his eighties; a voice that comforted China; a voice of both wit and authority. “I haven’t heard that in some time.” Bao Zhuang sounded amused at what he saw. The President often sounded amused, even now, after all his true power had been stripped away with the dissolution of the truce and the purge of the technophiles. His charm, his handsome looks, even in old age, his eloquent speech – they’d brought him everything.
“And there,” Bao Zhuang pointed at the screen and went on, drily. “There’s my face on a sign. And another of Sun Liu. Quite a few of Sun Liu, actually.” He turned to Bo Jintao. “I don’t see any pictures of you out there, Bo.”
Information Minister Fu Ping spoke up. “With all respect, the content of the signs is irrelevant. We are effectively filtering all of this from the net.”
Bao Zhuang turned to the Information Minister and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And are you filtering people’s lips and tongues as well? Their eyes and ears?”
Fu Ping shrugged airily. “We don’t have that capability, yet.”
Bo Jintao unfolded his hands in the space in front of him, spreading them palms up.
“And that is the problem,” Bo Jintao said. “Word has spread. Unrest is spreading…”
“Why have these protests been allowed to persist?” The voice was sharp, strident, overly loud. It cut into a pause so short in his words that it could very nearly be taken for cutting him off. Bo Jintao flicked his eyes over.
It was Wang Wei, of course. One of the other two conservative members of the Standing Committee, before they’d purged the radical technophiles and added three more of their own. Wang Wei was nominally an ally. But the man was older than Bo Jintao. He was in his seventies, to Bo’s sixties. Wang Wei had been more senior in the party, the head of the CCDI – the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection. He was, in effect, the Grand Inquisitor of the Party. He was the more logical choice to become Premier, if one of them would.
But Bo had shot past him. Had taken leadership of their faction, and the nation.
Bo Jintao looked the older man in the eye. “I made the decision in the early stages of these protests to ignore them. I believed they would lose steam.”
He scanned his gaze around the room, meeting the eyes of the other Standing Committee members. “I was wrong.”
A man admits his mistakes, his father had taught him. Always. And then he fixes them.
The men around him lowered their eyes. Except Wang Wei, who stared back without flinching, and Bao Zhuang, who raised one eyebrow, and nodded thoughtfully.
“Now it’s time to end these protests,” Bo Jintao went on. “Before they grow larger. Deputy Minister Ho has prepared our police forces to strike, with firm strength, but minimum injuries. The plan is on your slates before you. Please take a moment to review.” He paused, letting the assembled leaders look at what Ho had prepared. As he saw men nod, raise their heads, and meet his gaze, he nodded himself.
“Because of the… historical issues,” Bo Jintao said, “Your agreement to this is required…”
Hands began to rise before he even finished. Wang Wei’s was first, high and rigid. The man stared hard at Bo Jintao, as if his posture and gaze could demonstrate that he would have been harder on these protesters. Bo ignored it, kept looking around the table. Five hands up. Everyone around the table. Except his own hand, of course. And nominal President Bao Zhuang’s.
Bo Jintao slowly lifted his own hand, looking expectantly at Bao Zhuang.
Bao Zhuang folded his fingers together in front of himself and looked back calmly at Bo Jintao. “Historical issues,” he said aloud.
Bo Jintao looked around the room. People were frowning.
So be it.
“The vote is unanimous,” Bo Jintao said aloud.
“If you act in a manner that shows disrespect,” Bo Jintao explained patiently in Bao Zhuang’s magnificent presidential office, later, when they were alone. “You will force me to respond.”
Bao Zhuang leaned back in the chair behind the imposing, ornately carved desk, the picture of composure. Behind him, Chinese flags framed a three meter wide photo of the Great Wall.
“This has nothing to do with you, Bo Jintao,” he said.
Bo Jintao cocked his head from his own seat, the visitor’s seat. “Don’t play that game with me.”
Bao Zhuang opened his hands wide. “No games. You got your way. There was no doubt of that.”
“Then why bother with your theatrics?”
Bao Zhuang turned, and looked out his floor-to-ceiling windows at the water and paths of Zhongnanhai. Their offices stared at the same park at the heart of the eleventh century palace – the same ancient stone bridges and carefully spaced statues, the same waterfowl gliding to-and-fro – but Bao Zhuang’s had the better view. Despite his power being stripped away, the formalities were being observed. He remained President. He remained General Secretary of the party.
“I’m an old man, Bo Jintao,” he said. He looked back. Their eyes met. “And powerless at this point, as you’ve ensured. How will history look back at me? That seems more important now than it did even a week ago.”
Bo Jintao frowned. “So you vote for chaos?”
Bao Zhuang laughed softly, looking down at the massive desk before him. One hand came down, lifted up a photo frame, the one Bo Jintao knew was filled with a feed of his great-grandchildren.
“China’s changing,” Bao Zhuang said, his eyes fixed on the frame and the photos in it. “The Billion Flowers moment was ahead of its time, but much of it is inevitable.” He put the photos down, looked back up at Bo Jintao. “The people want new things: transparency. Freedom.”
“Freedom?” Bo shook his head. “Bao, you know as well as I do. Abstractions don’t matter. Real freedom is a bigger house in a better neighborhood. Real freedom is enough money to travel; to eat what you want, when you want; to buy the clothes you want. Freedom is a better school for your child, the best hospital when you’re sick. And more entertainment than you can watch or hear or play in a lifetime. That’s what people actually want.”
Bao Zhuang smiled softly at him. “So why didn’t you crush the protests right away?”
Bo Jintao closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. “People need an outlet at times. Dissipating frustration can be safer than meeting it head on.”
“They want more than just an outlet, Bo,” Bao Zhuang said. “More than venting. When your material needs are met, you start to want something more. That’s where our people are. They’ve gotten the bigger house, the full belly, the buying power. They crave what they don’t have. They want a say in how their lives are run. They want a say in how the country is run.”
Bo Jintao smiled. “We’ve given them a say. They have village committees now,
they choose their own precinct councils…”
“Useless, pointless bodies. Placebos. Worse than that – insults to their intelligence. Mock democracy.”
“And why should they have more?” Bo Jintao asked, his hands rising in frustration. “A ‘billion flowers’, really? Has that worked so well for India, or is it more like a billion weeds? A country still crippled by corruption? That hasn’t conquered poverty almost halfway through the twenty-first century? Has it worked so well for the Americans? Where ‘voting’ means two sides in near-permanent paralysis? Or for Europe, still trying to decide if it’s one country or thirty, or thirty countries each splitting in half, and all the while sliding decade after decade into irrelevance?”
Bao Zhuang chuckled at that.
Bo shook his head. “We’re the richest nation on Earth, Bao. That’s proof enough. Our way works. I thought you of all people would understand that.”
He stood to leave, this conversation was pointless.
Bao Zhuang’s words caught him at the door.
“Bo Jintao,” the old man said in his rich baritone. “People don’t demand a say in how they’re governed because they want to be rich. They demand it when they already are rich and crave something more. And they demand it mostly to keep power out of the hands of people like you and me.”
72
Audacity
Sunday 2041.01.06
Breece closed the door of their meeting place after the Nigerian.
“You weren’t followed?”
His friend shook his head.
They’d taken up separate hidey holes and each kept a low profile. Kate was still out there. Her plans were unknown. She may not know their new identities, but she knew their faces, knew their operational patterns, knew how they thought. Safest to not have all their eggs in one basket.
It still hurt.
It would be even safer to just leave, the Nigerian had told him, by way of the thin thread of throwaway contact addresses they’d given each other.
But Breece wasn’t ready for that. There was one more op the hacker had pitched to him. And it was a doozy.
He waited for the Nigerian to take a seat, here in neutral territory, in this spot that was neither of their hidey holes.
Then he laid out the plan for his old friend.
“It isn’t possible,” the Nigerian said, when Breece had finished.
“Anything’s possible, my friend,” Breece replied. “If you have the right resources.”
“The cameras,” the Nigerian said, pointing at a diagram. “The sensors. All these spaces are highly secure.”
“So was Maximilian Barnes’s home,” Breece said.
The Nigerian nodded at that, thoughtfully, still studying the diagrams in front of him.
“And this would be the best mission ever,” Breece went on.
The Nigerian looked up at Breece, and a shockingly white smile split that broad, dark face. “Yes. The best.”
The truck was stolen. Breece had procured it himself, changed the color and plates, and lobotomized it. It would never record anything about their travels. They took it to Baltimore, to the warehouse space Breece had secured two weeks ago, careful to minimize the biological evidence they left inside.
When the Nigerian saw what Breece had in the warehouse, he whistled.
They moved in the small hours of the night, while the Capitol slept. The cameras and other sensors, anything that could be hacked, were not the problem, or so their hacker ally had claimed to Breece.
Humans, on the other hand, were. Humans couldn’t be hacked.
Unless, of course, they could.
The chameleonware suits he’d retrieved from Barnes’s storage were the highest end he’d ever seen, higher end than he’d known existed. They bent light and T-rays, muffled sound, alerted him to sensors scanning for him, and more. The largest stretched to fit the Nigerian.
They moved towards the garage ramp of the Rayburn House Office Building. There were two Capitol Police officers at the garage entrance at this hour, plus others on patrol elsewhere.
[Ready?] Breece subvocalized to his hacker friend.
[The cameras are mine] came the reply, printed in text across Breece’s tactical display. [They will see nothing.]
Breece looked over, saw the Nigerian outlined in a man-shaped grid of green lines, and gave him the signal. They moved forward, silently, lethally.
Seconds later, there was Nexus coursing through the arteries of these Capitol Police officers. Long minutes after that, the officers were back on duty, but with new orders, new priorities.
Breece went back for the truck, while the Nigerian stayed to keep watch.
[All clear] came the signals, once from the Nigerian, once from the hacker.
He rounded a corner and eased down the ramp. The armored gate to the garage rose up, and Breece pulled the truck forward, into the enclosed space. His pulse shot up. This would be a fine time to pull the noose shut.
Nothing.
He parked it in a dark corner, and they got on with business.
The carts were things of beauty, if you liked your beauty barely visible. Loaded down with the tanks, they each weighed hundreds of pounds, but were all but impossible to see. Their chameleonware warped light as well as the suits that Breece and the Nigerian wore. Only at their wheels, where true chameleonware had been sacrificed for lower end active camo, was there a decent chance of detection. And even that subsided dramatically if they stopped moving.
They lowered the three carts down the ramp of the truck, linked them together into a chain, then closed the truck up. It was a professional delivery vehicle, that hopefully wouldn’t look too out of place here, if it were even seen at this ungodly hour. Even so, it was one of their greatest risks of detection.
The faster they moved, the better.
From the garage, they took service doors, all of which opened at their touch, which led in turn to a long tunnel. They moved down the tunnel quickly, silently, no other human in sight, slowing only to maneuver the substantial and cumbersome mass of the three carts and their tanks around the bends and corners of the subterranean tunnel network that linked this vast complex of buildings.
At the tunnel’s end, they would make one more turn, and then reach the United States Capitol.
Instead, they stopped, by a red maintenance door with a sign that proclaimed FIRE PROTECTION EQUIPMENT – AUTHORIZED PERSONEL ONLY. Breece punched in a code he’d been given, and it unlocked. They opened the double door, rolled the carts inside, and followed another hallway to an elevator, where they had to unhook the carts from one another. Then down, to another hallway, chain up again, then to another door, which opened to another code.
Breece looked around, and smiled beneath his chameleonware. The walls of the giant room were subdivided into individual panels, each of them labeled. Almost every panel had a set of tanks hooked up to pipes. Breece searched until he found the right label, above a massive panel. Then he and the Nigerian set about silently swapping the tanks they’d brought for the tanks connected to pipes there.
Kate walked slowly, silently, nearly invisibly through Breece’s Baltimore warehouse, clad in high-end chameleonware. The cameras in her visor took picture after picture, amplified the light, presented the scene to her.
She took it in, processed it, made sense of it.
The chemreactors.
The pressurized tanks.
The fittings.
The labels on the tanks.
She put it together with the blueprints and maps she’d found in his accounts.
She knew his identities. She knew his accounts. He’d been careful with everyone. But not with her. Not anywhere near as careful as she had been with him.
Kate stopped in the middle of the warehouse, turned slowly, taking it all in, imagining it in action.
Breece was up to something big. This part, at least, she approved of.
73
By Their Very Absence
Monday 2041.01.07<
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Sam sat at the terminal in her office, her face lit by the pale blue glow from the screen, her brows knit together.
Feng was long gone for the night. She’d left, herself, had eaten with the children, had played games and read stories and given baths and kisses and hugs and goodnights.
The best thing ever. There was nothing that compared.
Now they were asleep. And she was back.
Her role as an external advisor to Division Six came with certain access. A security clearance. Not a particularly high one. Less than she’d enjoyed in the US. But she needed some access to do her job.
Over the past weeks she’d slowly used that access for her own purposes, to investigate the people she dealt with, the people the children dealt with: their tutors, the domestic staff, the programmers on Kade’s team, Lakshmi Dabir, all the rest. And she’d used it to investigate their home – this campus. This strange oasis of calm in the frenzied digital boomtown chaos of Bangalore.
It wasn’t so hard. She’d trained in data archeology. That was both her most common cover as an ERD operative and a real skill she used in unraveling the webs of organizations misusing emerging technologies. She applied it here.
She ran into walls, of course. There were files she simply didn’t have access to. Records that demanded credentials she didn’t have, authorizations she hadn’t been given. Exactly where she met those barriers, and what she could read prior to them, was informative. It defined a space of possibilities, scoped out a landscape of information containment.