Null States

by Malka Older

  Roz blinks away the eye-level projection of that intel without high hopes for the approaching squad. She’s pulling her shoulders back in preparation for managing them when Minzhe, trudging through the sand from the welcome platform, catches her eye with a half-nod. Roz gives him a warning look and motions toward the smoking crash site: don’t let them contaminate the scene. He rolls his eyes, duh, and keeps walking toward the soldiers, a warm smile already strung across his face.

  Roz turns to check on the rest of the team. Charles is still on the platform, apparently deep in conversation with one of the sheikhs, his hands clasped in front of him while the elderly Furi gestures and talks. Maria and Amran are gone. Glancing down, Roz finds a message waiting for her on the lower right of her vision. She focuses on it until it opens and the text flows in front of her eyes: Maria and Amran have gone back to the market to gather first-pass reaction data. Roz lets her initial annoyance dissipate; she couldn’t have chosen anything better for them to do. Maybe she has the perfect team, no need to manage them at all. She snorts, but only inwardly, and starts walking back to the platform to get to work.

  * * *

  Amran is still shaking, and Maria wonders if she should casually lead her past the butcher’s alley to give her an excuse to throw up if she needs to. She decides against it: the smell might be enough to make Maria vomit too, and she would rather not. She’s been in a number of dodgy situations during her year working SVAT, but she hasn’t gone through anything as loud and unexpected as that tsubame explosion. She nearly jumped off the platform. This is supposed to be a normal mission, laid back, up-close-and-personal Information dissemination for new citizens getting the hang of things, not a war zone. Or at least not an active war zone.

  After the few seconds of shock, when everything seemed too close and scary, Maria realized that there was probably no immediate danger. She also saw that Amran, standing next to her, was about to lose it. That would not bode well for her professional relationships with the sheikhs grieving their leader and figuring out what to do next, nor for her long-term career at Information. So, Maria grabbed the girl—Amran doesn’t look more than twenty-two, and Maria is nearer forty, so she feels justified in thinking of her that way—and pulled her toward the market.

  Now they are hurrying along past a row of printer stalls festooned with the diverse products available for manufacture, the shopkeepers hovering by their machines, Amran’s hand clammy and trembling in Maria’s. The bustle and churn of the market are needling at Maria, and she jerks away from movement at her feet, but it’s just a set of cheaply printed wind-up toys cavorting in front of a shop. Best to give her—both of them—something to do. Maria slows her pace, sets her voice to conversational. “What kind of surveys have you done here?”

  Amran has to pull herself together to answer. “Not many. I know there were polls before the election, but few. Since I got here, we’ve been working more on qualitative and background details.”

  So, people here won’t be inured to polling the way they are in the rest of micro-democracy. “We’ll have to take it easy, then, but Information”—and presumably the DarFur government as well—“is going to want to figure out who did this and what happens next. Talking to these people is one of the best ways to find out.”

  Amran stops walking. “How would any of these people know who did this? They didn’t see it. They might not even know it happened. Shouldn’t we go back to the accident site?”

  They might not know it happened? It’s been twelve minutes since the explosion, and the vid has been available all that time. It was available live if anyone had known it was going to happen (Maria makes a mental note to check whether anyone was watching). Because there are so many feeds worldwide, most are unwatched at any given moment, but it’s been twelve minutes. Plenty of time for an event of this magnitude to be filtered to the top of every news compiler in the region. Hell, the DarFur government should have sent out alerts by now (Maria checks; they haven’t). Don’t they have news compilers here? Do people not use news alerts?

  Maria puts a hand on Amran’s arm. “There will be plenty of experts there to look at the site. What we can do that no one else can is take a snapshot of what people here think of the head of state, their governor, and the government, right now. They might not have seen what happened fifteen minutes ago, but they know what’s going on here much better than we do.”

  She can see Amran struggling with her pride for a moment, wondering if this is a way of saying that she hasn’t been doing her job, then she nods. “We should start over this way. There’s a more open area in the center of the market for selling foodstuffs; people will be more leisurely and willing to talk.”

  * * *

  Roz is tempted to shadow the deputy governor, who helped Minzhe keep the militia away from the crash site and is now conveying the same message to the growing crowd of onlookers that has trickled over from the town proper. He seems like the most interesting figure around here, as well as the one with the most obvious benefit from the governor’s assassination.

  But Minzhe is already out there and can keep an eye on him, and in any case, the deputy is clearly in public mode right now. He is managing the situation and interacting with the townspeople, and everything he does will be caught on vid. Charles is working on the other sheikhs, which is definitely within his comparative advantage but also leaves a clear gap for Roz to address.

  It takes some listening, a few minutes of respectful conversation, and a hint or two, but the three sheikhas eventually lead Roz out of the sun to a well-appointed compound on the edge of town. The compound belongs to the sheikha named Thoraya, a sturdy woman in her thirties or forties whose cheek scars are thick as fingers. Her toub is a semi-translucent lavender, embroidered with light-up thread, the stitches flashing in sequence like fairy lights. The two younger sheikhas, Khadija and Tahani, are wearing iridescent rose and canary yellow, respectively, and they are quiet, mostly deferring to Thoraya. As soon as they are all seated inside the hut, Thoraya covers her face with her hands. The other two sheikhas stare at their laps; Khadija is trembling. Roz waits. A child trots in, bringing a plate of desiccated dates, and Thoraya gathers herself, snaps out an order for tea as well, extra sugar.

  “This is going to be very bad,” she says softly as the child ducks out of the hut. “Just when it looked like we had things sorted out.” She grimaces. “And there are plenty of factions, and people, who will be happy to take advantage of this.”

  “Like who?” Roz asks. She’s not expecting any eye-expanding intel here; she can find the names of troublemakers on Information, probably faster than the sheikha will be able to pronounce them. But SVAT missions have taught her that human data can be almost as important as feeds and stats in finding solutions to problems. You may not learn everything you need to know to fix the problem through interviews alone, but often people only listen to your other data because you listened to them first.

  Thoraya counts out potential threats on her fingers: “JusticeEquality, DarMasalit, of course the Sudanese would love to attack us any way they can, and the Chadians. Also 888. Then those who live here who are against the election system, and those who are against the governor—were, that is.”

  Roz takes advantage of the pause. “When you say ‘the Sudanese,’ ‘the Chadians,’ who are you talking about, exactly?”

  Thoraya pushes the bowl of dates toward Roz, and she takes one reluctantly. “The Sudanese are the Sudanese,” the sheikha answers. “They may be divided into different centenals now, but don’t worry, they still know who they are.”

  “And 888,” Roz sets this up with caution. “Do they have any specific grievance, or…” Or do you think a global government and Supermajority hopeful would risk carrying out an assassination for one lousy centenal? Even thirty lousy centenals?

  “They campaigned hard here.” Thoraya sucks the fibrous flesh off a date, spits the seed into the sand beside her rough-soled feet.

  Now the most delicate pa
rt. “Those who opposed the governor … they were against him, not against the government? I mean, did anyone hate him personally?”

  There is the clearing of a throat. Roz looks up to see a pair of feet in what appear to be—yes, Information confirms that they are—snakeskin shoes and the lower half of a white jellabiya in the open doorway. “Ladies?”

  It takes Roz only a moment to recognize the voice: the deputy governor, Suleyman. Roz can picture that small smile, shy or sly, as he calls the greeting.

  “Come on in, come on in,” Thoraya calls out, sharing a quick smile with Roz: these men, so formal.

  But Suleyman does not enter, does not even bend down. “I don’t want to disturb you,” he says, voice still warm with that unseen smile. “I wanted to inform our visitors that we will send the food prepared for the welcome lunch today to your compound.” His tone shifts. “The funeral will be in Djabal, and we will be transporting the body once it is possible.” Roz puzzles over that for a moment, then remembers the forensics team. “But the food should not go to waste. I will travel to Djabal, but I will be back late tomorrow, and then I will be happy to assist you in any way that I can.”

  Roz waits for a moment, wanting to resume her questioning, but the feet don’t move, and Thoraya makes some hand motions that the gesture interpreter helpfully glosses as a suggestion you exit. Roz leans close to the sheikha to repeat her condolences, nods to the other two women, and then rises and ducks out under the hanging. Suleyman stands there, his white jellabiya spotless even after all the sweat, kneeling in the sand, and, presumably, grief. He is not smiling, and she wonders how she could have imagined he was. “How thoughtful of you to come in person,” she says, falling into step beside him to leave the compound. He must have a million things do to. Maybe monitoring the Information intruders is still the top priority.

  “It was … helpful for me to step away for a short while,” he says, eyes on the ground, and then looks up. “But I should get back. I believe you can find your way to your compound from here?”

  It is a question that is so old-fashioned that it is a pure formality: with Information, no one is ever lost. Unless the connection here is even worse than Roz thought. “Of course,” she says, trying to match his tone. “I look forward to meeting you after your sad duty in Djabal.”

  “As will I,” Suleyman replies, holding out his hand. He takes the tips of her fingers in his, bows over them slightly, and then turns to walk back toward the landing strip. Roz watches his back for a second, then turns toward the compound. She sends a message to her team to report in for the feast and speaks a quick message for Maryam: “Hey, all okay here so far. Can you coordinate with northeast Sahel team and start a scan for any suspicious communication, likely coded, that might relate to the explosion? Everyone here seems to think it was one of the traditional enemies from outside the government. I’ll keep looking on inside. Thanks! I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Still walking, she starts a search for images of the governor’s tsubame in Djabal. There is a bit of a wait—she’s probably not the only one intensely searching the feeds in this area—and when the results come up, they seem shockingly scant. Roz frowns, then adjusts her facial expression to nod a greeting to a couple of white-robed men who are staring at her as they walk past. She blinks the search file away from her vision to concentrate on what she’s seeing: sandy dirt roads; stick and reed fences with the occasional conical roof visible behind them; in the distance down a crossroad, a tall and placid camel.

  The sun pounds down, and Roz shakes her head. Why would anyone kill for this place?

  CHAPTER 3

  When Roz gets back to the compound, Halima’s two servants have set up tables and chairs in the yard. They shuttle Roz into a corner to wash her hands with water poured from a plastic jar, then urge her to sit. Minzhe is waiting for the forensics team by the crash site—Roz spares him a thought of sympathy, but then considers that he will probably hit that barbecue in the market—but Maria, Amran, and Charles are already seated. As Roz walks over to the table, the women bring large metal platters piled high with gobbets of goat meat out from a kitchen area in the back.

  Roz contents herself with an “everyone okay?” before digging in. Nobody else starts up the conversation: they are shocked and hungry. The smell of the guano has faded to a more muted level in her consciousness, only slightly affecting her enjoyment of the goat, which is pretty good, barbecued in several different ways and served with tiny cups of pounded red chili peppers moistened with lime. She’s a bit distracted by the level of specific, illustrated data Information provides, unasked, when she looks at the meat: birth date, breeder/owner, age, date of slaughter (that morning). Roz could have done without the brief video of throat-slitting, although apparently that serves to prove the killing was halal. It feels like the Information stringers around here have too much time on their hands, and Roz glances at Amran, wondering again about her management abilities. On reflection, and with a few more calories in her, she decides it’s not so different from the more anodyne origin data Information usually provides in restaurants and supermarkets.

  Roz registers a quiet thrum in the air and looks up to see a crow pulling in over the office. She gets up, holding her greasy fingers away from her clothes, and walks over as Malakal disembarks on the office roof, throws a rope ladder over the side, and eases his way down it.

  “You’re early,” she says by way of greeting. “Have you eaten?”

  “I didn’t wait for the forensics team,” Malakal answers as he reaches the ground. “And I had some energy chews on the way.” In other words, he thought he might be parachuting into immediate danger. “Everyone’s okay?”

  “Seem to be,” Roz says, not looking back at them. “We haven’t debriefed yet.” She waits. Malakal is not her boss, but he is certainly senior to her. Plus, she respects him, and his deep knowledge of this sub-region is born of long and dedicated experience.

  “They can finish eating,” he says. “Let’s talk first.” Charles looks up as they walk over to the office, but Roz motions him to stay, and he goes back to his food. “You saw it?”

  “I was looking away,” Roz says, as they step into the office. “And I haven’t had a chance to watch the feeds yet. But I was there, for what it’s worth.”

  “I’ve seen the feeds—well, the feed.” Malakal is Nuer-dark and Nuer-tall, completely bald, with the rounded midsection of a thin man who has earned his girth with status and successes. “There was only one camera on the explosion, although there was another on the platform where all of you were.” He half-sits on one of the tables, which has to be more comfortable for him than the small metal-frame chairs. “I didn’t see anything useful, but I’ve only watched it a couple of times. Maybe there will be more in the analysis.”

  Only two feeds! But then, that landing platform is in the middle of nowhere. “I have to admit,” Roz says, knowing this verges on the offensive, “I don’t understand why people would fight over this desert.”

  Malakal looks amused. “Is it your experience that people fight over worthwhile things?”

  A fair point.

  “It’s all they’ve got,” he goes on, more seriously. “And if you’re—I don’t know, deputy governor of an obscure centenal in the middle of nowhere that just happens to be where you’re from? Then the governorship is your next step, and that’s what you’re going to kill for, if you’re the killing kind of person.”

  Roz finds this incredibly dispiriting. “So, you think it was the deputy?”

  “No, I have no idea who it is. I was speaking hypothetically. I don’t think I’ve met the deputy governor of this centenal. Why, do you think it was him?”

  Roz shakes her head, relieved. “No, I don’t think so, but he’s on our radar. Anyway, we’re talking about a governor, but also a head of state. If it is an internal power play, we could be looking at the whole government, not just this centenal.” She hesitates. “Is there anything else I should know?” Roz is wondering
why he got out here so fast, why he wanted to talk to her first.

  “We’re worried about this region,” Malakal says, with a settling of his huge shoulders. “So few areas joined the election system last cycle, and there aren’t many low-hanging fruits left.”

  “Sudan wasn’t exactly low-hanging,” Roz notes.

  Malakal nods. “It’s true; there may be other dictatorships that fall hard and unexpectedly. The question is whether they join micro-democracy or not afterward. We would love to have Darfur as a success story in our expansion efforts. There are a lot of eyes here at the moment.”

  “Surely, that’s too oblique to be a motive for assassination?”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that, just that it is a motive for investigation. We’re going to be throwing a lot of resources at this one. There’s also the humanitarian risk, of course.” He pauses. “I must admit, I feel some personal responsibility.”

  Roz looks up at him, surprised, and Malakal smiles, showing the gap between his front teeth. “I drew the centenal lines here, a few years ago.”

  Roz remembers now. That’s why Malakal was mostly absent during the dramatic events of the last election: he was here, engineering their first election. “You know centenal borders are a puzzle without a solution. No one is ever totally happy with them, no matter how they fall.”

  “I didn’t say it was rational.” Malakal blinks. “The forensics team is on site.”

  “Good,” Roz says. “Hopefully, they’ll find something and Minzhe can get back here. I’d rather debrief with the full team.”

  * * *

  Having assured himself that neither the militia commander nor the deputy governor will allow anyone to interfere with the scene of the crime—like Roz, he is convinced it’s an assassination, not an accident—Minzhe lets a few of the soldiers drag him to the market for roasted geep and liberally sweetened tea. The meal is far from cheerful; the men around the table are stunned by the loss of their governor, even if, as the oldest man says, “he knew nothing about military tactics.”