Null States

by Malka Older

  “And if she finds out without us telling her?” Roz puts it there, then waves her hands at him. “Out! I’m going to sleep for a few hours. Go to the militia station if you can.”

  Lying in bed, Roz still can’t sleep. The hut lets in a lot of light in the daytime, and she stares at the ceiling through a linen-colored haze, wondering where her exhaustion went. Minzhe seemed to have a great rapport with those militia guys. Amran said they liked him. What could he have said or done to make them that furious? What did they find that made them suspicious?

  Maybe it’s true. Roz remembers at least two occasions when Minzhe found reasons to stay at the compound in the evenings while the rest of them went out, despite his professed love of the village and the market. Was that so he could transmit intel to his mother? But how could he get it to them without being spotted? Especially in this low-data environment. Anything unusual that he sent over Information would be instantly noticeable.

  Bringing in a spy is a nightmare scenario. Information is supposed to be impartial; much of its power rests on that reputation, and yet its whole purpose—intel-gathering—suggests espionage hiding on the flip side of the coin. Information staff go through a rigorous vetting process, and they’re supposed to undergo mental-emotional scans every quarter, but Roz knows from personal experience how often that gets pushed back by supervisors who are trusting, understanding, or busy.

  She wants to trust her team. Right now her job is to trust her team so that she can give Minzhe all the support he needs. If they did find something really damning, it will come out, but while the government is against him, she has to back him up.

  She can’t help wondering, though.

  * * *

  The border station is at the entrance to Huanhuaxi Park, presumably so that visitors’ first experience of China is greenery, tea pavilions, and fishponds rather than industrial wasteland. There’s no line, and after presenting her visa, Mishima is quickly ushered through the impressive door into a courtyard holding area. The path along the walls to the exit gate goes through three stations: a more thorough check of her visa; a standard body scan; and then finally a Sherlock scan, analyzing minute particles from her hair and clothes to track her recent movements. Anticipating this, both Bamako and Geneva were built into her cover story (narrative production work at the gala and a vacation). Her handlers hope the scan won’t go any further back than that. At least it’s been a long time since she’s been to Tokyo, Mishima thinks, eyeing the exit gate. It’s an arch, apparently open although she’s sure some kind of barrier would crash down if she tried to rush it. The top is all pagodaed out, and the lintel and sides are ornate with curlicuing designs in green, blue, and red, tiny mirrors winking out from the curves.

  Mishima blinks, replaying what she just saw in slow motion, zooms in on the mirror that shifted.

  She looks back at the two uniformed immigration officers hunched over the readout from her scan. Is that entire arch inlaid with cameras?

  Mishima has spent almost all of her adult life, certainly any of it that occurred in the public sphere, in front of cameras. You get used to it; you count on the improbability that anyone could be watching your particular feed at any moment (unless something newsworthy happens, in which case they’re guaranteed to be watching the recordings).

  But the density of cameras in that arch … She blinks again, risking another replay. Yes, there’s another movement. And another. If all of those mirrors are cameras, what could be the purpose of having so many? What can they learn with all that overlapping data that Information misses with only a few feeds directed at any one point?

  Did the compound image show her blink? Does it allow them to analyze the image projected against her cornea? Will she give herself away if she doesn’t react to it?

  Will she give herself away if she does?

  Mishima doesn’t let herself show biometric signs of stress. She wraps the knowledge up, locks it away, shoves it in the back of her consciousness to think about later, leaving only the reminder: no camera can read your mind.

  The officer in front of her looks up, meeting her eyes.

  Maybe people can.

  But no, he is line-of-sighting her the visa stamp from his station. Mishima bows slightly in thanks, and then asks with a tilt of head and hands whether she should proceed. He nods, waves her on; the two officers step out of her way with bows. Mishima follows the path to the elaborate archway and steps through.

  * * *

  By the time Roz wakes up, Minzhe’s mother has discovered his arrest. She did not come to Kas personally; that would have been unworthy of her dignity and would have weakened her position by looking too much like an emotional, personal plea, too much like begging. She has sent, instead, a phalanx of representatives: lawyers, security officers, diplomats; some ethnic Han, some high-ranking Fur, some sent from the regional 888 headquarters to show that this issue goes way beyond a personal, centenal-to-centenal squabble. The entire weight of the third-largest government in the world is behind it.

  When Roz gets back to the militia station, she finds herself hovering on the margins. Minzhe’s cell is witnessed to the barred gills, and the militia commander will be having long, meticulous discussions for the foreseeable future. Roz is surprised not to see Suleyman there; she wonders if that was part of why she came, knowing as she did that she wouldn’t be needed. She almost bursts into the station when she sees the image the 888 lawyers have been allowed to take of Minzhe: his face is almost unrecognizable, purple and swollen. The lawyers talk her out of it, reminding her that this is their game now and a show of anger from her would be counterproductive, and reassuring her that none of the injuries are expected to have lasting effects.

  Back in the office, she puts her worry and sneaking doubts about Minzhe resolutely to one side. She has work to do. The excitement creeps back to her as she reopens her workspace to the files she was looking at yesterday. Yes, finally, an outlier.

  A consultant group that didn’t get paid. That seems terribly unlikely.

  Immersed again, Roz is triple-checking the project proposal against Information’s budget and doesn’t hear Malakal until the second time he says her name. When she finally looks up, he is smiling, if tiredly. “Did you find something?”

  “Maybe—I think so—I need to…” How can she confirm this? “I need to talk to someone in the centenal government, I think.” She blinks at him. “What’s going on?”

  “Do you have a minute?”

  Roz disengages from her workspace and walks over to where he’s sitting. The office is empty; a blink gives her the message board, which tells her that Amran is at the militia barracks, probably trying to wring more intel out of her informants. Maria is there as well, compiling polling data while she provides an Information presence.

  Malakal rubs his eyes and leans with his elbows on his knees. “The security team is here because of an anonymous tip about plastic guns.”

  “I thought they were here because of Minzhe,” Roz says. She had been a party to all the back-and-forth messages about the logistics of the security visit the night before, but it hadn’t occurred to her that they were coming for any reason other than the arrest.

  “That pushed the departure forward, obviously, but the team was already prepped, planning to come in today. It’s not in the deployment message for obvious reasons, but you can see it in some of the later documents.”

  Roz grimaces, makes the universal gesture for inbox full. “I thought I saw a plastic gun here, once, when we first arrived, but I couldn’t be sure.” Malakal is silent. “Wait—was Minzhe the source of the tip? Is that why they arrested him?”

  “I don’t know,” Malakal says, heavily. “It was anonymous.” Information has a heavily veiled anonymity mechanism for staff wishing to pass along confidential intel. They say it’s impossible to break short of massive force, but Roz suspects someone has a back door into it. “The DarFur government hasn’t announced any charges—according to their laws, they have
seventy-two hours—”

  “Seventy-two?”

  “Yes, it’s long. But with the 888 reinforcements, I’m confident we’ll get him out before then, at least temporarily.” He pauses. “You should know that it was 888 that requested the initial SVAT team involvement. Specifically, the 888 centenal in Nyala.”

  “What?!”

  “It’s not unusual for governments to suggest a SVAT intervention may be necessary for their neighbors.”

  Roz knows that. “But still, given the uneasy relationships, and 888’s relative … sophistication compared to a new government…”

  “I know,” Malakal says. “But SVAT teams are not supposed to be punitive, or even investigative! They don’t come in and look for wrongdoing or—or guns, for that matter!”

  Roz has to think back to the beginning of the conversation. “The guns.”

  “Yes.” Malakal clears his throat. “It’s a major stash.”

  “In the barracks?”

  He nods. “There will be investigation as to whether they were used entirely in self-defense, which would lighten the penalty, but in the meantime, the security team is going to melt them.”

  “That’s not going to help government-Information relations here,” Roz observes. She takes in Malakal’s expression. “Wait—you don’t expect me to be the one to tell them about it, do you?”

  “No, no—the governor has already been informed. They know they weren’t supposed to have them in the first place.” He shakes his head. “I made it clear, again and again and again during the run-up to integration. I went over the procedures for requesting security subsidies. I told them…”

  Roz puts her hand on his arm. “You did a good job. You did!” when he shakes his head. “I can see it here. The way you designed the centenal for the nomads, the knowledge people have about Information…” She trails off, trying to think of other examples. “It takes time.”

  “Sure,” Malakal says. “Let’s just hope they don’t give up on us.” A pause. “Have you thought about wrapping up here after the election?”

  “And the assassination?” Roz asks, trying not to show her dismay.

  “A lot of that will be remote work now. You’re pretty convinced they weren’t locals, right? Amran can handle any legwork, with higher-level visits as needed.”

  “Makes sense.” Roz nods, telling herself that it does.

  * * *

  The centenal hall is a high one-story, concrete-columned building doing its best to look imposing. It’s pretty much the last place Roz wants to be right now. She still feels the insistent magnet tugging her toward Suleyman, the faint and fluttering eagerness to see him, but this does not promise to be a pleasant conversation. But Roz can’t figure out any other way to move ahead on her investigation. She has already tried contacting Mishima to talk her theory through with her, but she’s unavailable, completely absent from the system, which makes Roz queasily nervous about what could be happening in the rest of the world. So, she’s here to check the intel against the ground by asking the people who were really there.

  She finds Suleyman outside the hall, under a woven screen suspended over the front door that provides shade and depletes the intimidation factor of the building. He is sitting with a few other white-robed men, and when she walks up, he stands to take her hands with his usual warmth. He seems happy to see her, Roz thinks, as they rattle through the greetings, or at least not angry or suspicious. She keeps an eye on the other old men sitting on the stoop and nodding.

  The governor’s office is even worse than the building’s façade: thick rugs, maroon drapes, stuffed falcons. Well. He probably didn’t choose the décor himself. Despite that public show of support out front, Roz is not sure what to expect from Suleyman. She’s already seen how dramatically he shifts between personal and professional; with all that’s happened, she’s expecting something significantly chillier than professional, but his smile as he turns to her is still warm.

  “How are you? Is everything okay? What can I do for you?”

  “Fine, and you?” Roz answers automatically. She wonders if he expects a petition for Minzhe’s release, a harangue about the illegal weapons. He looks tired, and she remembers that two nights ago, he was fighting for his city. She wishes she could see that vid. “It’s about the assassination. I’ve been looking at the lists of groups and individuals from outside the government that could have come in contact with the governor’s tsubame.” She throws up the projections. “There are quite a few of them, even over the last three months, which is the period we’re focusing on.”

  “The head of state believed in getting as much assistance as possible with the challenges we’re facing,” Suleyman says, the statement modulated almost into a question.

  “Right. Can you tell me anything about this group?” Roz highlights a name: IntelliStream.

  Suleyman frowns, thinking. “I believe those were the fellows working on transformative nano-resilience? No, no, wait, those were these other ones.” His forefinger hovers over another name. He thinks some more. “IntelliStream must be the people who came to work on criminal justice. Is that right?”

  Roz has a flash of the militia cell where Minzhe is being held. “Did you talk with them at all?”

  “I don’t think I even met them. That was something Abubakar wanted to work on. It was government-wide. I saw some specific plans for this centenal, but I wasn’t really involved in the design. Do you think they might have sabotaged the tsubame?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I find it odd that they weren’t paid.”

  “They weren’t paid?” If he’s faking his surprise, he’s doing a good job at it: not shock, but a mild befuddlement. This makes no sense to him, but he’s also not sure why it’s important.

  “There’s no record of it, neither from here nor from Information.”

  “Let’s check with finances.” They walk down the hall and into a significantly more cramped office, where a very young woman in a brightly patterned silk headscarf and eyeglasses is hunched over a tiny projected calculation sheet.

  Suleyman shows her the name and asks their question, and she frowns, then brightens. “Oh, yes, I remember. They said there was no payment because they’re a nonprofit consultancy.”

  “But the other nonprofit consultancies were paid for their time and expenses, usually through a voucher that Information made good on,” Roz points out. She’s fascinated by the woman’s eyeglasses, trying to gauge the distortion of the lenses to figure out whether they’re retro-fashion or actually corrective. AISHA is etched into the bright red frames; she must have had them custom-printed, which argues for fashion, but they do seem to be magnifying.

  “Yes, that’s true. I figured this group was self-funded or something.” Of course, she wasn’t going to argue with someone asking not to be paid.

  “Did you meet them while they were here?” Is it possible they don’t have corrective eye surgery here? Surely, in Nyala at least …

  “Oh, I rarely meet anyone. Everything is done through messages or calls. So, I really do appreciate you coming by.” She gives Roz a grin. “It’s nice to see someone in person.”

  “Did the calls use vid?” Roz asks, last-ditch.

  She flutters. “I never use vid. It seems so wasteful.”

  “Thank you,” Suleyman says to the puzzled accountant, and makes to leave, but Roz raises her hand.

  “Sorry, there’s one other thing I wanted to ask you about.” She has been trying to figure out how to phrase this question. “What did you do with the excess money from the feeds that weren’t installed?”

  Aisha—assuming that is her name, and not a romantic gesture or something—looks confused at first, and Roz thinks she’s going to have to push further or maybe project the agreements and budgets, but then she looks up with a smile. “You’re talking about the emergency fund!”

  “Emergency fund?” Roz asks.

  “There was a moderate harvest failure last year,” Suleyman says. “We used the
funds for that.”

  “The emergency fund,” Roz repeats.

  “Yes.” Aisha’s slightly magnified eyes are darting back and forth now between her boss and this stranger from the most powerful organization in the world. “Of course, the money was supposed to be for more feeds, but the governor—sorry, the previous governor—he explained that there was a margin of leeway for emergencies.”

  “Of course,” Roz says, nodding with as much reassurance as she can summon.

  “We wanted to use it for something more productive in the long term,” Suleyman adds. “But the situation at the time was too urgent. Abubakar said he would look for ways to share out funds from other centenals or find new sources elsewhere.”

  “Of course,” Roz says again, mechanically; this may be the least matter-of-course thing she’s ever heard. “Thank you again,” she tells Aisha, and they turn back to Suleyman’s office. Roz stops outside; she’s desperate to get back to the hunt.

  “These consultants. They did it?” Suleyman asks, his fingers tight on the head of his ebony walking stick.

  “We don’t know yet,” she cautions, and seeing the tension in his face, presses on. “There’s no evidence that they did anything other than volunteer their time. We don’t know that they came in contact with the tsubame, or that they had any reason to harm Al-Jabali.”

  “But it is suspicious,” Suleyman insists. “No one has seen them; no one knows what they did. I don’t know what they did.”

  “It is still tenuous,” Roz repeats, although what she really wants to do is touch his hand, smile at him. “I’m going to look at feeds and see what I can find out.”

  “You will tell me?”

  “What’s going on with Minzhe?”

  He has the grace not to turn away or go cold. “We are looking at the evidence.”

  “So are we. I guess we’ll talk when we can.”