The Coalition Man

by Alec Saracen

  “Interesting,” Harod said. “FreeSpeak as a co-opted government tool. I could buy that.”

  Tetaine had logged off FreeSpeak and was idly swiping through the legitimate net. “These people sure love letting off steam,” he said. “Check out what they're playing.”

  Zhai scanned the list of the most-played games on Tor. There were a lot of violent-sounding shooters with names like Slaughterhouse 4 and Guns of the Stars. Grinning, Harod nudged him.

  “Remember playing Day of Valor back at Alleker? All those late-night tournaments?”

  Zhai remembered. He'd been terrible at them. Harod had been a demon, dancing around the war-torn VR environment with a deadly grace that made Zhai look like a lost penguin who’d been given a gun. Zhai had never even held a real gun, and he had no intention of doing so. In his experience, words penetrated deeper than bullets.

  “Tournament is a kind word,” he said. “I wouldn't necessarily draw a line between political repression and a people who like shooting things, though. I think everyone likes that.”

  Shorthand inputs rattled across Fleischer's screen, a jumble of jargon and data. One of her AI modules gathered it up and spat out an answer, visualised as a thin red line slashed through a bevy of data points.

  “Actually,” Fleischer said, “turns out you can draw a line. There's a correlation.”

  “Boom,” Tetaine said smugly.

  For a moment, Zhai considered asking about shopping malls and Geminist services.

  “All right, fine,” he said instead. “I don't care. I want to know more about FreeSpeak. Who's running it? If our hypothesis is true, it's someone the government is willing to turn a blind eye to. Probably someone with connections.”

  “And someone who's got the goods,” Fleischer added. “This takes expertise.”

  “And resources,” Harod said.

  “The question is,” Zhai said, sitting back, “if we're right, are they with the government because they support it – or because they want to undermine it?”

  Harod tipped his head back until he was staring at the ceiling. “Maybe one, then the other. This is a time of opportunities, after all.”

  Zhai had been thinking along similar lines. Prop them up during the good times, then yank away the chair when things get rough. Could be an ally, could be another headache.

  Twins, he wished he knew what Chang was thinking right now. Zhai don't even know what side he was on, what he got down to it. Chang in, Chang out, Chang sideways, Chang head over heels... he needed friends, and he didn’t even really have enemies yet.

  FreeSpeak. ResTore. Roshi Comet, TruthTeller, Chang, Hactaur, Cadmer, Thier... and Zhai. Crashing the party with the Coalition at his back and no fucking clue what he was trying to do yet. Embassies were supposed to come with connections already made, a pre-existing infrastructure to work with. Zhai had nothing. Send two people to the mall occupied a full third of his staff.

  Maybe he should have turned Sekkanen down. At least he knew what he was doing on Megereth Station.

  Movement caught his eyes. Sam had frozen and had raised his hand to his ear, a habit Zhai knew his assistant cultivated out of politeness whenever a call came in.

  He listened for a few seconds, then turned slowly to Zhai. Whoever he was speaking to merited formality. “Yes, this is the Coalition embassy. Samaly Oryov, personal assistant to Ambassador Zhai, speaking.”

  Chang? Zhai mouthed, and Sam nodded, his eyes narrow with concentration.

  Well, he thought. Well well well. Round two, Governor?

  “Thank you. I'll inform Ambassador Zhai.” Sam muted the call, then said to Zhai: “Chang's office. Encrypted call. What do you want to do?”

  “Put it through to my watch,” Zhai said, after a moment.

  Sam nodded, tapped his own watch a few times, then mouthed good luck.

  “I’m speaking to Ambassador Zhai?” an unfamiliar voice said in Zhai's ear. The directed sound waves emanating from his watch were audible only to him.

  “You are,” Zhai said.

  “Please hold, sir.”

  There was a slight electronic hum.

  “Ambassador,” Governor Chang said, drawing out the word. He sounded too jovial. “Settling in well?”

  Zhai glanced around the chaotic concrete tomb that was his embassy. “All things considered, yes. How can I help you, Governor?”

  “You and I should meet, hash a few things out man to man. This afternoon?” Chang paused, then clarified: “A private meeting, obviously.”

  And that finally got Zhai's blood pumping the way it used to. He really was an addict.

  “Of course,” he said. “I'd be delighted.”

  12

  Zhai politely refused the offered car and took the embassy's instead. At least he knew that one wasn't bugged.

  This time, Harod stayed behind to oversee the embassy. This was going to be a one-on-one bout. With him were Ceq and Sam, the trainer and corner man to Zhai's ageing prizefighter, but he would be stepping into the ring alone.

  “Sam,” Zhai said, after a few minutes of silence. Sam's head jerked up from his watch as if yanked by an invisible puppet string. “I want you to start looking into a meeting with Grigori Thier.”

  “In Landing or Macard?” Ceq asked. Zhai could see the security risks exploding in her head like fireworks.

  “Landing. He won't come here.”

  Ceq chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. “I don't want you in Landing. Too dangerous. E-meeting?”

  Zhai shook his head. “No.”

  “It's secure.”

  “It may well be, but it's not enough. You aren't really talking unless it's face to face.”

  “It's the same fucking words, boss,” Ceq said, and Zhai chuckled. Besides Ceq's habit of saving his life too often for comfort, the trait he valued most in her was her total disinterest in what he actually did. Compared to virtually everyone else Zhai knew, people who couldn't even go to the bathroom without considering the political implications, she was a breath of fresh air. The price of that outsider perspective was her startling political and historical ignorance.

  “They're the same words,” he said, “but not the same meanings. You can't read someone through a screen. You can't see every little movement, the micro-gestures, the signals – it'd be like a restaurant critic covering every course with salt before tasting the food.” He saw that Ceq was about to object and raised a hand before she could open her mouth. “Take my word for it. I don't even do it consciously. I just know when it's there and what it's saying.”

  Ceq shook her head and sat back. “It's my job to keep you alive, boss,” she said, “but if you suffocate because your head's too far up your own ass, I can't do shit.”

  Zhai laughed out loud. “You know, there's another reason you need me alive, Ceq.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Because if I get killed and you have to find another job in the Coalition, you're going to get fired in about five minutes, no matter how good you are. You're too honest to work for a politician.”

  Ceq shrugged. “Not for you.”

  “You'll find that most people in my line of work are a little touchier. Which is great for me, of course. I get to fill my staff with the brilliant assholes nobody else wants.” Sam glanced up, looking hurt, and Zhai guiltily added: “Except Sam, who's just brilliant. But even he'll tell me if I'm being completely unreasonable.”

  “Not that it ever makes a difference,” Sam said, with the weariness of experience. Thinking back, they had only been working together for seven years, Zhai realised, but he could barely remember a time without Sam hovering just on the edge of his peripheral vision, doing his invisible work of handling Zhai's messages, schedule, and personal logistics. He was easily the best assistant Zhai had ever had. Zhai was capable of managing his own professional life for about a week on his own, but after that it tended to spiral rapidly out of control, paralysed by an unmanageable knot of clashes and missed communications that only a returning Sam
could untie.

  “Well, no,” Zhai conceded. “But this is an unreasonable line of work, and we all have to deal with unreasonable demands. For instance: get me that face-to-face with Thier.”

  “I'll get it,” Sam said. He will, too, Zhai thought, with a touch of pride.

  “In private, of course,” he added.

  Ceq frowned. “Couldn't Thier just tell everyone you tried to meet him?”

  “Very easily,” Zhai said. “But if the government thinks I'm not going to talk to him, they're mad. It just has to be done with a certain – subtlety. If Thier rejects me and trumpets it all over Landing, we can plausibly deny it. The government will know it's true, but if they have any sense they'll accept it as a standard diplomatic gambit. Now, if I walk into Chang's office and tell him I'm talking to Thier, well, that's a different matter.”

  “But why?” Ceq demanded. “It's the same fucking thing!”

  “The one thing a diplomat can never do is tell the truth,” Zhai said. “Not the whole truth, at least. They expect me to lie to their faces. If I don't do that, the whole game starts to break down. It'd be like playing cards with half your hand face-up on the table.”

  “I don't get it,” Ceq said. And I don't want to get it, her body language added. Rather than try to explain further, Zhai acquiesced.

  “I don't understand a fraction of the security work you do,” he said. “And the Twins know I've got no idea what Sam does all day, but whatever it is, it works. I'll trust you to keep my life intact, and him to keep my life in order – and you should trust me to lie.”

  Ceq looked out of the window, resting her cheek on her fist. “I think that's the only thing I do trust you on,” she said. “How much of you is real, boss?”

  It was Zhai's turn to shrug. “How much of any of us is real?”

  “I know how real I am,” Ceq said, and Zhai could hardly object to that.

  The security rigmarole was looser this time, though still suffocatingly tight. The stop-start checkpoints and scans added at least fifteen minutes to their journey. Fifteen minutes he could have spent actually doing his job.

  At last they reached that same cavernous subterranean parking lot, and once again Zhai was escorted into the elevator by silent security people. As they ascended, Zhai finally realised what subtle wrongness about them had been gnawing at him. He recognised a face from last time, but it was matched to the wrong body. They were all wearing skin-tight smartmasks, their real facial features covered up by false ones. Suddenly, their uniform level of attractiveness – blandly middling, faces to forget in a crowd – made sense. Zhai could always identify a smartmask from its uncanny motion when its wearer talked. When they were silent, it was almost perfect.

  Zhai suppressed a shiver. How could smartmasks possibly help security? Surely it just made it easier for an outsider to slip unnoticed into the ranks – though Zhai had no doubt that there were more security measures than he could ever identify. Perhaps it was psychological. If anyone was going to try to eradicate its personnel's personal identities in the name of state security, it was the FPA.

  Surrounded by faceless, nameless, wordless guards, they rose in silence.

  This time, the elevator took them to a different floor. This one was still quiet but no longer eerily deserted. Doors opened and closed, and occasional harassed-looking underlings passed by with eyes glued to watches or the multiple coffees they carried, walking so fast they were barely short of breaking into a run. No matter the government, its highest echelons were always something like this, and Zhai began to feel more at home.

  As their ghostly escort vanished back down towards the parking lot, a pale man with hunted eyes and stubby fingers came trotting towards them and introduced himself as Chang's personal assistant, though the name he gave was hurried and about eight syllables long. Shortfingers, as Zhai mentally named him, led them down two windowless corridors which terminated at an impressive set of double doors, guarded by two more smartmasked nobodies. Expressionlessly, they checked Zhai's credentials, and let him in.

  “Good luck,” Sam hissed, an instant before the door severed Zhai from the outside world.

  Governor Chang's office was a world apart from Sekkanen's. It was downright opulent. Zhai instantly recognised the style, which was drawn from the century-old Alliance guidelines for making forceful first impressions. In theory, he was supposed to be cowed into submission by the place, or at least rendered more pliable. Only the Alliance could have cooked it up.

  The office was rounded at the back into a broad curve, dominated by floor-to-ceiling false windows. Actual windows were too much of a security risk – Zhai suspected that Chang's office was as far from the exterior walls as possible – but still a dogmatic component of an impressive office. These ones imitated natural light almost perfectly. Zhai wondered if the sparkling view of Macard they gave was touched up.

  An enormous, dark purple oval rug ran the length of the office, emblazoned with the official seals of both the Alliance and Tor. At the other end of it was Chang's desk, an elegant mahogany mesa, and between it and Zhai were a cluster of cream-coloured chairs. Paintings adorned both side walls. On Zhai's right there were ten or eleven different pieces, varying in size and style. On the left, however, a single painting dominated the entire wall, at least eight metres from side to side and four metres from top to bottom. If Chang had been orchestrating the scene for maximum visual impact, he would have been standing at the window, hands clasped behind his back. Instead, he was looking up at the enormous painting, with only a brief sideways glance at Zhai to acknowledge his presence.

  So, Zhai thought, that's the game, is it?

  Chang had set the board for what Zhai liked to call Diplomacy By Heavy-Handed Symbolism. As he stepped forward, his footsteps loud on the hardwood floor before he reached the deep silence of the rug, Zhai saw the painting more clearly, and knew that he had read Chang's play right.

  The painting depicted the Battle of Calce, as was evident by the city's famous Ocranesque towers smouldering in the background. The artist had attempted to render the entire six-week siege of the Volmais capital in a single still image, which compressed the combat to a ludicrous scale. Thousands upon thousands of angular Chetic tanks and grey-clad soldiers charged into battle from the left, met by the more bulbous Volmais tanks and forest-green uniforms on the right. Overhead, hundreds of fighter planes clashed in the sky as bombers decimated the city – an inaccuracy, since the Volmais air force had been all but destroyed by that stage of the World War – and on the river winding through the background, the artist had squeezed duelling flotillas of full-sized battleships. One sunken ship's stern barely poked above the water, which seemed unlikely to Zhai given the average depth of a river.

  Despite the war being effectively over by this point, prolonged only by the fanatical refusal of the Volmais generals' refusal to surrender their ancient capital, the artist had managed to depict it as a relatively even battle, as if the Volmais could yet have won the day and turned the tide against the Chetic Empire. However, the Chetic army had one weapon to which the Volmais had no reply. V-fire, rendered as blinding white beams, carved tanks apart and immolated entire Volmais regiments; V-shields, which in the artist's hands looked like soap bubbles, turned away Volmais artillery shells; V-force blew fortified Volmais positions away like a sweep of an invisible giant's hand.

  That was inaccurate too. Though the Coalition had mostly been aligned with the Chetic Empire, they had only ever field-deployed V-able personnel a handful of times during the entire eight years of the World War. In fact, the rebel Order of the Star and Sword had thrown all its surviving loyalists into the Battle of Calce. All the V-able in that battle had been on the Volmais side.

  Even so, the facts didn't matter. Popular history ignored the Coalition schism and painted the World War as the final clash of magic and technology, a battle between the Coalition-backed Chetic Empire and the independent Volma. The reality was far more complex, as reality always was. Zha
i, with an amateur historian's zeal, had always argued at dinner parties that the role of the Risian-Galian Geminist schism in both nations' overseas colonies was criminally understated. But there were degrees of reality, and Zhai knew that the perceived reality was far more important than the reality which had actually burned its destructive path across Home two hundred and fifty years ago.

  The closer Zhai came to the painting, the more flaws he saw. Little kinks in perspective drew the eye everywhere. One foreground soldier's face was contorted bizarrely. An ejected pilot wasn’t connected to his parachute. Shadows went one way in the background and another way in the foreground, and neither seemed to mesh with the low evening sun in the gold-streaked sky. Zhai could forgive a few slips of the brush given the sheer size of the damn thing, but now everywhere he looked he saw something wrong or clumsy. It was impossible to consider the whole thing now. Rather than a flawed work of art, Zhai just saw a jumble of flaws. In fact, now that the impact of its size had faded, he realised that he really didn't care for the ugly thing.

  Zhai's inner diplomat and art critic wrestled for supremacy, and the diplomat retained his title by technical knockout.

  “An impressive work,” Zhai said to Chang. “It must have taken years.”

  “Months,” Chang said.

  The size of his office should have made Chang seem smaller. Instead, the opposite was true. It amplified him, like a giant in his lair. He had the body of a sportsman. His jacket clung tightly to iron muscles. Even his neck was sculpted. On a whim, Zhai imagined Chang lounging on billboards advertising fashionable underwear, and the image stuck uncomfortably in his mind. A model governor.

  Zhai forced his mind back to the Chang standing next to him, and the titanic painting before him. “So little time?”

  “Sixteen people worked on it.”

  “An unusual model.” Poor choice of words, he admonished himself.

  “Damned effective, though. Three months from the day I commissioned it to the day it was hung here.” Chang was looking up at the painting with something approaching rapture. “No single artist could have done that.”