by Malka Older
“And the other thing?” It’s both a relief and a disappointment to be talking about something other than her relationship, but Maryam leans into the feeling of withdrawal.
“The mantle tunnel mess.” Roz shifts in her seat. “Do you think maybe we could use something to go with the oysters? Toast with chutney or something? The date chutney they make here is really good.”
Maryam grins and pulls up the menu page from the building kitchen to put in the order. How many nights have they spent here over the years, ordering late-night snacks and talking? Or, in her case, whining about her love life. “And how is that going?” she asks.
“Ugh, it’s a mess,” Roz says. “Horrible legal issues that are totally new and have to be thought through for the first time, horrible environmental issues that no one can fully predict, angry people on all sides.” Permission to start excavating the first mid-haul travel tunnel through the mantle was granted almost two years ago, but the project was halted almost immediately by a series of challenges from the governments it would pass under, and the battles have been ongoing ever since. “I’m going out to Berlin next week—you know 888 already broke ground there for the tunnel connecting to Istanbul?”
“Even with the PhilipMorris tunnel stuck in red tape?”
“Yup. Nothing to stop them excavating their own territory on spec. It’s only when they cross under the border that the problems start. I guess they are hoping for momentum.”
“Hell of an investment,” Maryam says, sipping. “And that’s a lot of travel for you, isn’t it?”
Roz shrugs, hands curled around her belly. “They let me use a crow, so it’s pretty manageable. And it’s just Rome, Cairo, Berlin, and Istanbul, nothing very far.”
“Still, it doesn’t exactly sound relaxing.”
“Well, I’m just doing high-level analysis,” Roz says. The real reason she’s stayed on the project, as they both know, is her fierce distrust of highly technical, insufficiently understood infrastructure projects. This still surprises Maryam: because that anger is rooted in Roz’s personal history, she had long avoided mixing it with her professional life. Maryam suspects that Suleyman convinced her to get involved.
There’s a silence, but it’s as swollen with unseen meaning as Roz is.
“Have you been following the Williams trial?”
Maryam, who thought they were not-talking about Roz’s environmental conflicts of interest, looks up in surprise. “Of course,” she says. “The headlines, anyway.”
Roz is fiddling with the microbiome scanner, beeping it across the balustrade, the armrest of her chair. “What do you think?”
Maryam has to take her time with that. Especially over the last few days, focused on her mission, she’s been skimping on the detailed reporting, but everyone in Information, plus most of the rest of the world, is riveted to the case. Nakia Williams, a midlevel Information analyst based in the New York City hub, has been accused of tinting the presented interpretation of data in accordance with her own political beliefs.
“It’s a tricky one,” Maryam says finally. “I don’t feel like I have enough of the data to make a judgment. It’s not like Blanton or Yadav.” Both Information officers who, in the past, have been convicted for using their influence to amass personal wealth. “It makes me grateful that I’m on the tech side and not dealing directly with live data.” She shifts in her seat. “What about you?”
“It’s … worrying,” Roz says slowly. “Of course, if people do something like that, you don’t want to let them get away with it. But it’s also a problem if analysts self-censor.”
A bell dings, and Maryam goes to get the food from the dumbwaiter in the corner, ignoring Roz’s halfhearted offers to get up and get it herself.
“I met her once,” Roz adds, after she’s spread some chutney and taken a bite.
“Williams?” Maryam asks.
Roz nods around another bite. “Did some SVAT work in the Hudson Valley after the last election. She was our liaison to the local hub.” Before the semi-sabbatical of approaching maternity leave, Roz frequently worked on Specialized Voter Action Tactics teams, which use direct in-person approaches to extend Information’s data outreach to the most recalcitrant—and conflict-prone—voters. The last election, almost five years ago, spawned a plethora of missions for them.
“What was she like?”
Roz shrugs. “She’s cool. Helpful, competent. She’s a friend of Mishima’s.”
That brings it closer to home. “Do you think she did it?”
“I don’t know,” Roz says, putting down her half-eaten toast in dismay. “It’s— We can’t be completely neutral, obviously. No one can. So I guess they’re asking whether she skewed the data on purpose and— That’s not a clear line, you know; she could have sort of known it was coming out on the side of what she wanted but thought that was just the way the data pointed…”
Maryam waits, surprised to see Roz so worked up. When Roz doesn’t go on, or go back to her toast, she ventures a guess. “You’re worried you can’t trust yourself?”
“I’m worried I can’t trust this organization!” Roz bursts out. “Especially…” Her voice drops again. “Especially on the mantle tunnel. Everyone knows how I feel about it. Maybe I should request a transfer.” Another pause. “I guess I am worried about trusting myself, a little. Both.”
“I don’t understand,” Maryam says. “Information analysts have always had to walk this careful line, right? You have processes?”
Roz nods, mouth full again: the crisis has passed.
“So, what happened? Why are they suddenly cracking down on this one person?”
“Maybe because there have been accusations against Information’s neutrality…” Roz trails off, because there have always been accusations. “There’s a SVAT team out there now, trying to calm the situation down.”
They munch quietly. The light breeze brings the sound of music from somewhere in town.
“Have you heard anything about the—all those people who left?”
Roz turns to look at her. “No, nothing official. Although I think about them every time we go to Kas and I see how the new Information infrastructure is coming along.”
“Has it changed much?”
“Immensely. It’s almost like normal now.” When Maryam was there, Kas had been notably lacking in cameras, feeds, and handhelds. “But I always think about all the other projects they had planned with the feed money. Power generation, irrigation.”
“Doesn’t quite make up for assassinations, though, does it?” Maryam says.
“Of course not.” Roz shifts her weight. “Wait, are you asking because they’re back? I thought that was over.”
“Erm.” Maryam hedges. “Some people suspect they’re behind these transfer-station attacks.”
Roz shudders. “I saw an alert about that and avoided it. There’s only so much awful news I can take at a time.”
“And with the election coming up, there’s sure to be a surplus.”
* * *
The next morning, Maryam boards a commercial crow for La Habana. It’s usually a good bet, since there are only a few possible stops between Doha and La Habana, but they get stuck with a stop in Praia, another in Montserrat, and three in eastern Cuba, and the journey is two hours longer than usual.
Even once they arrive there’s a long line for municipal public transport crows, so Maryam takes a taxi. It lurches annoyingly through the heavy evening traffic, windows all rolled down and no breeze.
At least she knows from her locator that Núria is home. As she drags her suitcase down the hall, though, she is assaulted by what is first a premonition, then a suspicion, then a certainty. The apartment is in an old building, and while the plumbing and floors have been renovated to modern standards, the walls still efficiently transmit the sound of eager chatter.
There’s nothing to be upset about. Núria didn’t know exactly when she would get back. Yes, she could have checked, but crow ETAs are unreliab
le, changing as additional passengers board at drop-off points and the algorithms are updated. What was she supposed to do, send her camaradas home in the middle of a tertulia?
Maryam pushes open the door to the apartment, and light and laughter flood out into the dim hall. “Oh, hi,” Maryam says, pulling her bag into the living room after her. Her first impression is of a crowd, but it’s only four extra women, eighty percent of Núria’s band of revolutionary friends. Magdalena stands by the window, tumbler in hand; LaForet is on the barstool, long bare legs twirled together; Zipporah and Carme are on the sofa; and Núria is curled beside them, her feet tucked up under her and almost touching Carme’s thigh.
“Darling!” Núria jumps up and dots a kiss on Maryam’s travel-chapped lips. “Welcome home! You must be exhausted.” She tugs at Maryam’s bag, her soft curls briefly obscuring Maryam’s view of the other women and their chorus of hellos.
“I got it,” Maryam says, wishing she’d been quick enough to properly return the kiss instead of just receiving it. “It’s— It’s fine, I’ve got it.”
“What do you want to drink?” That’s LaForet, slipping off her stool to slide to the liquor cabinet. The camaradas never remember that Maryam doesn’t take alcohol.
“I’m feeling pretty grimy; I think I’ll get a bath first,” Maryam says, and drags her suitcase out of sight of their smiling, relaxed gazes. Safely in the bathroom, she runs the water long and hot, then slides in. Baths are another great advantage La Habana has over Doha. Even here, though, it doesn’t do to waste water, and she and Núria usually soak together. She lingers in the tub, hoping the ladies will take the hint and go home, or that Núria will leave them to their chatter, but the door to the bedroom doesn’t open, and occasionally the laughter from the sala is exuberant enough to be heard over the lapping of the water.
Maryam drags herself out when the water is already a shade too cold and she has lost the glow of its initial warmth. Hopefully not a metaphor, she thinks, wrapping herself in a robe. She sits on the bed for a while, debating whether to get dressed again and go pretend to enjoy the soiree, but she is exhausted from the flight and the disappointment. She pulls on her pajamas—black, of course, and pseudo-silk—and, after dithering, slips out the door and through the sala to the kitchen to get a glass of water. She pauses in the archway to the kitchen, unwilling to cut through their talk again, unwilling to be the loser who goes to bed, but unable to join in.
“Information is still ignoring marginalized perspectives, though,” LaForet is saying. “I heard they did another algorithm-scrubbing last year, and yet…” With a gesture of the hand not holding the wine glass, she throws up two rapidly overlapping piles of vidlets and articles, one set committing the failure—racism, misogyny, assorted phobia—the other set identifying and excoriating it.
“And that poor woman in New York,” Zipporah puts in, hand over her heart. “Can you imagine what she has already gone through in her career to get to where she is, and this?”
The sad relaxation of the bath falls away as Maryam’s shoulders tense up. She does not want to defend Information on the Williams case, and she doesn’t understand it well enough to add nuance. To avoid drawing their attention, she turns back to the kitchen and adds some more water she didn’t want into her glass.
“They’re going to fire her for—what? Doing her job?”
“Firing her would be the least of it; she could be thrown in jail!”
Maryam turns back to the doorway in time to see a projection Carme has put up showing diversity stats in the grunt and middle-management ranks of Information compared to those at the top. “But you have to unpack this,” she adds, pointing at the numbers in the executive rank. “Okay, yes, there is some multiculturality up here, but if you look at these people’s status in their own cultural-national paradigms, they are usually near the top in wealth, social capital, and whatever the relevant ethno-racist categories are.” Maryam feels her face go hot and has to turn back to the kitchen again. She shouldn’t take this personally: she is hardly executive-level at Information, and based on the fashions the camaradas regularly wear, they are far richer than Maryam has ever been, absolutely or relatively. And yet it stings. At least Carme was incensed enough to sit up, incidentally increasing the sofa space between her and Núria.
“The question,” Magdalena says—she has moved to the divan, and Maryam can hear the coldfactor clink in her glass as she gestures, “is how do we hold Information accountable when they are the only game in town?”
“They could be a lot worse,” Núria says. Maryam glances toward the sala in time to see her not looking at anyone.
“Of course they could be, but ‘could be worse’ is not enough of a standard, don’t you think?” LaForet works for a news compiler and so is arguably part of the system, but it is a somewhat fringe organization that (according to their mission statement, plastered beside LaForet’s head in her public Information) aims to draw attention to underserved populations and stories.
“It’s well past time for a revolution,” says Carme.
“After twenty-five years?” Zipporah asks. “That’s not a bit quick? The United States got two and a half centuries, the People’s Republic of China got nearly a century, the French Fifth Republic seven decades.”
“History is speeding up,” Carme answers with a wink.
Tertulias about Information’s faults are Maryam’s least favorite kind of tertulia. How long are they going to stay? She blinks up the time, but it’s only 10:32, barely early evening by La Habana standards. Her eyes are tipping shut because of the long flight and the jet lag, but she feels like a pathetic girlfriend instead of an international jetsetter.
“Well, I’m off to bed,” she says as she walks through the sala, and immediately wishes she hadn’t. They all stop their conversation and trill out versions of “Good night!” LaForet even gives her a little wave. Then Maryam shuts the door, the cool dimness of the bedroom so soothing to her gritty eyes that she crawls right into bed, sure she won’t be able to stay awake any longer.
She’s wrong, and spends most of the next two hours listening to the dim sound of laughter through the door, the large bed empty around her, until she finally dissolves into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 3
Jetlag wakes Maryam up early. She is relieved to find Núria’s arm around her, quiet snores against her cheek, and wishes she wasn’t. Enjoy it, she tells herself, but after a few moments of immobility she eases herself out of bed, quietly pulls on the first clothes she finds, and goes out to get breakfast.
There is food in the kitchen, but Maryam likes taking advantage of that first effortless early morning of jet lag to soak in some Habana life. True, a majority of the inhabitants are still sleeping off the pleasures of the night before, but early hours after dawn offer another side of the city. Delivery bots trundle by with their loads. The clack of dominos calls from the glassless window of a café. Joggers and speedbladers cruise along the sidewalks around her, heading in the direction of the Malecón, the recreational course along the high parapet that has been erected against the encroaching seas. Maryam considers following them, but it’s a moderately long walk and she still has that lightheaded jet-lag feeling of consciousness slightly detached from her body.
In the park, a group of people slow-motion their way through a tai chi routine, a bright government logo projected into the air above them: this is an 888 centenal, and the government has been trying to brighten its corporate branding with a number of soft-power social programs. Next to her favorite bakery she finds more evidence of prosperity: a new construction site, several orders of magnitude quieter than the one in Dhaka. An early-twentieth-century building is being renovated and reinforced, and the dense coverage of microbots cleaning its façade winks in the sunlight.
There’s a line in the bakery even at that hour, although most people go straight to the pickup side for orders they placed ahead on Information. Maryam prefers to look at the options in person, so she
waits her turn and orders two pasteles de queso, two de guayaba y queso, and, after checking the chain of origin on Information to reassure herself that they are 100 percent beef, two de carne. She adds two café cubanos; the espresso never seems to come out the same from the cafetera at home, and she likes the tiny recyclable ceramic thermoses they serve takeaway orders in. On her way home, she detours to find the sugarcane vendor, a pushcart with a hand-crank machine that cores the caña, pulps the inside, and pours it back into the hollow stalk, which is then sealed for easy transport. She orders one straight and one with a squeeze of lime for Núria.
The apartment is still quiet when she gets back. Maryam begins setting out plates without being too subtle about it, and before she’s done Núria wanders out of the bedroom, dark curls adorably rumpled. “Ooh, breakfast!” she says, and kisses Maryam briefly on the lips before settling onto the high stool by the counter. “Thanks, amor.”
Maryam feels her nerves flutter under her skin. She caught the undercurrent of morning breath when Núria kissed her and it didn’t even dilute her desire, a chemical phenomenon she will never understand. “No problem. I miss this stuff when I’m away.”
“Me too!” Núria says fervently. “You know I just got back myself.”
“Where from?”
Núria glances up through her eyelashes: Maryam could have found out if she wanted to. “West Africa.” It’s a staggeringly vague answer, and Núria amends apologetically: “A tour, five centenals in three days.”
“Wow,” Maryam says, wondering what a soldier can accomplish in such a short time.
“I was advising on security plans, that sort of thing,” Núria says, as if reading her mind.
“After all that, I’m amazed you had the energy to hold a salon.” Maryam takes a sip of sugarcane juice, hoping she didn’t sound too jealous.