by M. G. Herron
Ming took a deep breath to steel his nerves. Then he turned and entered the door. Inside, he stopped in front of the security checkpoint. They swept his clothes for bomb residue and scanned him for metal and weapons. As usual, the scanners picked up the metal clip holding the bandage on his hand. The security guard on the other side of the scanner gestured at him to come forward. Ming passed the rotund woman his water bottle around the scanner. She set it aside without a glance at it and examined his bandaged hand, careful not to move it too sharply (the first time she checked him last week he yelped, attracting stares from the whole room). She finally nodded, satisfied. He picked up the water bottle and walked briskly on, breathing deeply.
He passed the touring offices—closed, of course—and the accounting department. He needed to check in and retrieve a visitor’s badge the first time he came here, but as a magistrate he had an ID that let him come and go as he pleased on official business. Ming turned a corner and moved deeper into the building, his blurry reflection pacing with him in the polished floor. He reached a wide lobby beyond which no media personnel could travel. Reporters weren’t allowed in the senate chambers during sessions, so they waited here to accost elected officials as they came and went. Most people who worked in the capital avoided this hallway whenever they could, taking circuitous routes to back entrances to keep from being hounded by the press.
As Ming had hoped, Senator Khan stood in the press lobby at a clear plastic lectern, a group of fawning journalists pressed around him. His pale, heavyset, mustachioed deputy chief of staff—a man named Henry or Harvey or something equally bland—stood nearby at the wall, juggling an armful of electronic tablets, a thick folder of printouts, Khan’s navy suit jacket draped over one arm, and two water bottles with blue labels just like the kind Ming carried.
Senator Joseph Khan was a big, jovial man with an easy smile. He stood a head taller than anyone else at a party, and was the kind of man to attract attention at a party with the force of his personal gravity. Khan stood the same way now, wearing a satisfied expression. If you saw his face on the news wearing that expression, and you hadn’t been in Enshi lately, you might not believe that soldiers patrolled the edge of the lawn in front of the Capitol building. Yet more blood had been shed in the streets of the eponymous city this week than almost any stretch of time in the Republic’s century of existence.
It was up to Ming to show the country that Joseph Khan was not the man the public perceived him to be. He crunched the soft plastic of the disposable water bottle under his fingertips.
Khan’s jovial smile faded from his face as a reporter in the middle of the crowd that surrounded him shoved a microphone forward. “How do you think the president should respond to the protestors’ demands of resignation?”
“It’s not my place to recommend anything to the president. But I think he’s right to refuse. The president didn’t start the protests. The whole country is suffering through the food crisis. He’s only doing what has to be done for the country, and I agree with him. But mark my words. What happened in Telerethon Square yesterday was a tragedy. The deaths of those poor people were caused by the actions of domestic terrorists—” Khan seemed to chew on the words. “Not citizens. And the only effective way to respond to terrorism is with overwhelming force.”
When Khan paused, the reporters all shouted at once and pushed closer, clamoring to be heard. Khan held up his hand, and began to walk away, working his tongue in his mouth. He elbowed his way out of the knot of reporters and stepped past a pair of guards who parted their black machine guns like a gate to let him through.
Harvey hurried after him, ducking around the guards with less grace than the senior senator. At a gesture from Khan, the deputy fumbled his pile of things and handed over one of the water bottles.
Khan squirted a stream of water from the sport lid into his mouth.
Reflex caused Ming to raise the water bottle in his hand and uncap it. He paused, worked his dry mouth, and resealed the cap with a click that seemed to reverberate off the marble walls and floors.
CHAPTER 21
CONGRESS
Ming loitered outside the entrance to the Senate. The door stood ajar since the session hadn’t officially started yet. The light bulb over the door that indicated whether the senate was in session remained dark. The senate chamber was never exactly a quiet place. Even during a break between sessions, like this one, the ruckus poured through the door like carbonated froth from a shaken bottle.
After a few minutes, Senator Bohai hurried around a corner. Bohai was a relatively new senator and husband to the sister of Dr. Li. As he approached, he clasped Ming’s shoulder.
“My wife just called. Po is shaken, but otherwise unharmed. Kylie says she sat vigil all night for some poor sick chap that she dragged in with her. They’re all resting now.” He shook his head. “Poor girl.”
“Shouldn’t you go home to check on them?” Ming gestured to the door. “A lot of senators have family in the city. They’ll understand.”
Bohai nodded earnestly. “I already called Captain Wallace. He said he would send a unit over to check on them. Kylie is a capable woman—I trust her to take care of them until I can get home.”
“Good. I’m glad Po’s okay. Who’s the guy?”
“Kylie said she isn’t sure. He’s got some sort of biotech in his head, so facial recognition didn’t pick anything up when she scanned him with her phone—even with my security clearance.”
The bulb over the door to the senate flickered to life.
“What was it you wanted to discuss?” Bohai asked.
“Not here.”
Bohai looked both ways down the empty hallway. Senate staff drained into the main chamber, but a few stragglers hung around, whispering into headsets or rapidly inputting data through a holodevice. Bohai nodded in understanding and led the way through the door indicated by the shining light and onto the noisy senate floor. Ming followed.
While it wasn’t exactly disallowed, it was unusual for a magistrate like Ming to attend senate sessions. As a simple civil commissioner, he wouldn’t have been allowed past the press area unless he scheduled a meeting and signed out a visitor’s badge, so Ming was thankful at least that his appointment to magistrate had been confirmed in an official capacity after the accident. Not that the city had much choice. Who would want his job now?
With food stores bottoming out and the protests summiting a new peak of violence, the senate floor was a zoo. Men and women in rumpled suits clamored to be heard—often shouting across the aisles at each other.
Ming had to cross one such quarrel as he entered the vaulted chamber along a path that separated two sections of theater-style seating. An imperious blonde woman jabbed a finger at an African man wearing a patterned orange formal dashiki and matching Kufi cap. In response to her threats, the man shifted in his seat so that his stoic, silent back was to her. His motion so enraged the blonde that she leapt across the aisle, hands outstretched. She tore the man’s hat from his head. It took four people to drag her back to her seat. Someone handed the man his hat back across and he straightened it onto his head with an affronted glare in her direction.
Ming recovered from the tussle and hurried after Bohai, who had passed through the aisle before the blonde’s outburst, then taken a left to skirt the edge of the senate floor. Ming climbed into a hillside of desks and stopped, fifty feet up from the floor where Bohai’s name plate marked his seat in the senate. Ming took the extra seat reserved for Bohai’s deputy or assistant.
As usual, when Ming looked out over the senate from this vantage point, he was surprised by the variety of people in attendance. African, Arabic, White, and Indian faces mingled among the majority of Chinese men and women in a calico array. While there were patches of monotone, like the nationalist cluster of Chinese men around Khan, the color was fairly distributed.
The Republic was a country of immigrants. Word of its open border policy and growing economy had made it the destinati
on of choice for refugees dodging civil wars, fleeing rising oceans, and traveling away from land infected by nuclear fallout for a few decades prior to the food shortage last year. The western style of dress was common, but there were kimonos, turbans, and a few yarmulkes present as well.
At the center in the second row of desks, Ming picked out a middle-aged Chinese woman of average height, with forest-green hair that was gathered into a bun on top of her head. The new hairstyle, a chameleon dye that changed color depending on the wavelength of the light in the room, was all the rage among upper class women lately. She sat calmly, wearing a casual suit, with her fingers steepled on her desk. The placement of her seat indicated her seniority—Senator Fuquan had been serving in the government since Ming entered university.
“Have you heard anything more about Fuquan’s food aid application?”
“I know it’s not going well,” Bohai said. “The UN’s been pouring a ton of resources into India.”
“What’s India got to do with us?”
“There’s only so much aid being sent east this year. The UN sets limits by region, and apparently our region is over quota.”
Ming grunted. “Typical.”
“If anyone can make it work, it’s her.”
A few rows behind and to Fuquan’s left, Senator Khan whispered into the ear of his mustachioed assistant. When the burly man nodded his understanding, a bead of sweat dripped off the tip of his nose and splattered onto a tablet in Khan’s lap. Khan snarled, pushed the assistant away roughly, and wiped the tablet on his shirt to dry it.
“She can do it,” Ming said. “And when she does, someone else will be running the Agricultural Committee.”
“What are you getting at?” Bohai whispered.
A door near the front of the senate opened and a bespectacled man of Persian descent strode in. The entire senate stood as Vice President Ali Ghorbani took his chair.
Ming waited for the vice president to walk behind the table of clerks and conduct the opening pledge and ceremony.
After the formality was over, under the noise of the crowded chamber shuffling themselves into their seats again, Ming whispered, “I have proof that Khan has been stealing rations.”
“Kai, I know he shamed you after your accident, but you’ve got to let it go.”
When the vice president spoke next, the crowd hushed and Ming was forced to hold his tongue. The memory of the lecture Khan had given him in front of the Agricultural Committee when Ming had failed to deliver the rice seeds replayed on a bitter loop in his mind.
“I’d like to express sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the protest yesterday. It is a tragedy that such violence could not be avoided. Let us all take a moment of silence to honor the dead.”
Kai waited patiently in the quiet and considered his response. He knew Bohai wanted to end the food shortage crisis and stop the riots as much as did—Bohai had even more at stake with his wife and two nieces still in the city—but Ming had to approach him with caution. No career-minded politician would take what he was about to suggest lightly, and Bohai was more ambitious than most.
“Now,” said the vice president, “to begin the day’s business, all senators with immediate proposals submit them at the front.”
Khan’s sweaty assistant waddled down to the front table with surprising agility for his size, and dropped a folded slip of paper onto the clerk’s desk.
While the clerks sorted the gathered slips of paper, Ming kept his voice low and spoke close to Bohai’s ear.
“Look, I understand your hesitation. A couple weeks ago I would have been in the same boat. But now? Forty-three people were killed yesterday. That blood is on all our hands.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” Bohai snapped. “My niece was out there yesterday, too, you know.” He exhaled steadily through his nose to calm himself.
“I do. But if you think Khan gives a damn about Po, you’re fooling yourself.”
Bohai gave him a stern look that would have withered a healthy house plant. A look that said, “Don’t test me.” He had every reason to be upset, but Ming also knew that now was the time to push him. If Po was still out there, he never would have agreed to this plan. But now that she was safe? This was his best opportunity. Ming needed allies. Even if he was willing to take the fall if things went sideways, he couldn’t do it on his own.
Vice President Ghorbani cleared his throat in the microphone. They had chosen the first speaker. “Senator Khan, the floor is yours.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vice President,” Khan said as he stepped down from his seat. He turned to address the senators gathered in the amphitheater.
“What happened yesterday is inexcusable. I can see in your faces that you are here today because you believe in this country. You believe that we can make it through this crisis if we stick together. But the men and women out there on the streets face more danger than we ever will inside these stone walls. And do you know the real reason why hundreds died yesterday, and thousands more on both sides were injured? Because from the safety of these stone walls, we tied the hands of the people whose job it is to protect us.”
Senator Khan paced up and down the floor, hoisting an accusatory finger.
“Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m for freedom and liberty as much as the next man—I’ve spent the last ten years serving in this honorable chamber fighting for those rights. You’ve seen me. You know that’s true.” He swept his eyes around the room, then smiled that infectious smile.
Ming grimaced.
“But before that, as you may remember, I served in the army. I was a captain of the infantry, and I patrolled our borders for over twenty years. I know how hard it is to protect people who don’t want to be protected—and to what extreme lengths rebels will go to get what they want. I know what it’s like on the ground, in a firefight. And I intend to prevent what happened yesterday from ever happening again.”
Khan stopped. He looked down in his hands in a mock show of pity.
“We called the army in for a reason. The Enshi Police Department was overwhelmed by the terrorists who call themselves Citizen. The Police don’t have the manpower or the training to fight a guerrilla war. And yet the worse tragedy by far happened under watch of the army. Why? Was it their fault? Of course not. It was our fault! We bound their hands. Don’t use force, we said, either to hurt people or to protect people. Well, we can’t have it both ways. As a military man myself, I know that. It’s a hard truth to learn and those of you who have never served might not be willing to hear it, but I’m going to say it just the same. You can’t protect people without the ability to protect them! That’s why the proposal I’m putting forward today grants the use of force to all military personnel fighting against the terrorists who call themselves Citizen.”
A copy of the bill showed up on Bohai’s tablet. They bent over the screen together. It was a dense document with twisted language—on purpose, Ming was sure, to make reading and understanding the nuances more difficult. But the tone was clear. Essentially, Khan’s proposal would declare Enshi a battle ground. The army would get blanket use of deadly force to fight the rebels. The rubber bullets the army had used to contain the protests yesterday would be replaced by live ammunition—the same kind that killed those 43 people despite the strict orders not to use real bullets to contain the riots.
Ming’s first thought was not, But how would they tell the rebels from the civilians? Dozens of senators near the floor rose to their feet in anger, shouting at Khan. Ming glanced down and saw that the spritely form of Senator Fuquan had risen and was standing in quiet protest. Meanwhile, a faction of jingoistic senators, mostly Chinese and mostly men, flanked Khan and shouted back at Fuquan’s faction. Khan himself took his seat and interlaced his fingers on the desk while the argument escalated around him.
Khan’s faction was small, but strong. A two-thirds majority vote would enact his bill, and many senators were scared enough of the riots that sixty-six percent wo
uld be an easy acquisition for them. The vice president remained silent during the debacle, proving to Ming that he would back Khan’s proposal. Ming could see in his defensive, arms-crossed stance and the hollows under his eyes that he was as tired and scared as everyone else in the room.
Ming thought, This is my opportunity.
Bohai jumped to the end of the document and squinted through his glasses as he skimmed through the last few pages. After a moment, he leaned back in his seat, his skin a shade paler than it was a moment ago.
“This bill is one stray bullet from martial law,” Bohai said.
“And what if your niece was out there still?” Ming said. “Would you trust a soldier with an AK-47 to bring her home safely?”
Bohai stared straight ahead.
“I have a plan.”
“What you’re suggesting is treason,” Bohai whispered, wiping damp palms on his slacks. “Besides, Khan’s too careful. How would you ever get him to admit that he stole the rations?”
“He won’t say anything if he knows we’re listening. But what if he doesn’t?”
CHAPTER 22
TALKING TREASON
Ming set the water bottle on Bohai’s desk.
“That’s your plan?”
They sat in the quiet of Bohai’s office now, a small room far removed from the senate floor. Bohai had silenced any conversation with a stern shake of his head on the fifteen minute walk through the echoey halls. When they finally arrived, his first action was to turn on an audio-dampening device he kept in his desk—a smaller version of the hardware used to jam cell signal and attempt to hamper Citizen’s communications in the city—and crank the volume of the television news up to max, just in case.
On the news, a reporter was interviewing a large brown woman wielding a wooden spoon. A memorial for the forty-three people killed yesterday was being held in the semi-permanent camp the protestors had established in Telerethon Square. Tents had been erected to keep people out of the sun, much of the rubble from the clash with the army had been cleared, and what little food they had was being cooked and passed around.