by Malka Older
“I should have defended you, like Nougaz did, on my way to not answering the question.” Mishima says it with the soberness she feels, but she’s aware that below that, as so often happens, her subconscious is angling for something. She wants to know if Nakia has had any indication as to whether Nougaz’s support was legitimate or faked.
Nakia shrugs and repeats, “It was a bad question. And I suppose you hadn’t read up on the case.”
“I hadn’t,” Mishima agrees, “but I have now. Do you know why they did this to you?”
Nakia throws her hands up. “There was always the potential for this to happen. We knew that. We trusted the organization—at least, I did. And I knew I shouldn’t; we all know Information is never going to value our well-being over their reputation for neutrality, but what option did I have? There’s a degree of paranoia you can’t maintain if you want to live in society. So, I trusted them, and I got screwed.”
“But why you? Why now?” Mishima asks.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Nakia says. “Either it’s personal—I can’t think of anyone in the hierarchy that I’ve pissed off that much, but I could be wrong—or—or they’re freaked out about this bug in the system, their incapability of dealing with exclusionary supremacist ideologies. My downfall was a by-product of that shame and difficulty.”
“There’s something else.” Mishima waits for Nakia to focus on her. “Some of the postings that showed bias may have been planted.”
“Planted? I didn’t think AmericaTheGreat was that sophisticated.”
“Not by them. By Exformation.”
Nakia frowns. Maybe that slang hasn’t made it to North America.
“The former Information staffers,” Mishima clarifies. “The ones who disappeared two years ago.”
“Why would they…” Nakia trails off, trying to make sense of this.
“Did you know any of them?”
Nakia shakes her head. “Only by name. Why would they do this to me?”
Mishima shrugs. “Maybe they were using you to make a point about the segregation problem. Or maybe it’s a small part of their grand plan to take over the world by chipping away at our legitimacy.”
“That explains a lot. I couldn’t understand why Information would give so much credence to a group like AmericaTheGreat.” Unexpectedly, Nakia starts to laugh. She stands up and starts to pace, still chuckling. “It makes so much more sense now!” she says, to Mishima’s worried look. “Information upper management has been freaking out about when the other penny’s going to drop ever since those guys disappeared. Still, though,” she adds, more quietly, “why me?”
“You haven’t had any contact with them? Received any messages?” Mishima had been hoping Nakia would be able to explain.
Nakia shakes her head, then plops back down on the folded mattress, puts her head in her hands. “Why wouldn’t they … No, of course they wouldn’t tell me.” She looks up again. “They thought I might be working with them?”
“They considered the possibility. Still are, I think.”
“I had no idea—I hadn’t even thought about those people in ages. I was so focused on AmericaTheGreat and how Information was letting them destroy my career.” Nakia lifts her head and stares up at the wall in a way that makes Mishima think she’s trying not to cry. “The worst of it is—I was trying so hard to be fair! I didn’t make anything up or push anything. I was doing my job. Although—after the algorithmic tribunal, I did start to think I might have unconsciously…”
“It was the forged posts.”
“You don’t know that. They might have pushed it over the edge, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t already failing at my job.”
“You weren’t! You shouldn’t have been put in that position!”
Nakia doesn’t seem to have the energy to argue any more. “I loved my job, you know. I believed in Information, with all their problems.”
“And you don’t anymore?”
“I don’t know.” Nakia stands again, moves around the bare apartment. “I wouldn’t have chosen to give up my home to make this point about segregation, but it is a point that needs to be made. I wish Information would get its shit together. But I don’t know what the alternative is. Living like a null state?”
“The null states aren’t as bad as we tend to imagine,” Mishima says automatically. It’s been one her hobbyhorses since her deployment to China. “So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I guess I should say move on with my life, but even though I’m not sure that I want to work for Information anymore, it’s hard to let go of this. I guess I need—closure seems too weak a word. Vengeance?” Nakia laughs.
Mishima doesn’t.
“Maybe I’ll write a book. Or that dishy novella we were always saying someone should do on what it’s really like to work for Information.”
Mishima thinks longingly of her personal crow and the ten-hour flight to Saaremaa during which she could be completely alone. “Nakia. Can you leave the city?”
“What? Oh, you mean because of the trial? Nobody’s told me I have to stay. I probably shouldn’t leave micro-democratic territory, but…”
“What if you left micro-democratic territory but only for a short time?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Vengeance.”
* * *
Maryam holds out for one interminable day of scrying the results on tourist guides and, the next morning, goes to see Batún before he’s had his café.
“I need to go to Paris to follow up on a lead.” Maryam has never felt comfortable lying, but she convinces herself this is close enough to the truth.
“This is for what you’re working on for Nejime?” Batún asks. They are in the corridor now, headed straight for the caffeine.
“Yes”—sort of.
Batún cocks his head at Maryam to see if she wants coffee and, when she demurs, punches in his order with long-practiced skill. “I guess we’ll see you when you get back.”
It’s not like she’s gotten away with anything, Maryam thinks once the long-haul crow is over the Atlantic. She didn’t even really have to ask Batún; hierarchies within Information are typically loose and shifting as needed, and working remotely is a part of life. But Nejime is going to notice. There’s no way she won’t notice the timing, if nothing else. Given the fact that Nejime told Maryam about the assassination attempt, the whole thing is probably a trap to see what she’ll do. She is expecting a call at any moment, asking her exactly what she’s up to and where her report is, and every moment that passes without a ring or a jolt makes her more nervous, until at last she immerses herself in a reboot of Entre tu y yo.
The flight to Paris is almost direct but for a few stops scheduled in Breizh. Maryam takes Information’s advice and gets off at Brest to switch to high-speed rail. It’s partly for the novelty of it: long-haul ground transportation has proven challenging to negotiate across the variety of governments that it almost always has to cross. That is part of the appeal of mantle tunnels: if Information courts continue to rule in favor of a borderless subterrane, it will bypass all the multilateral negotiations and complex investor agreements required for train lines. The routes that are starting to revive around Europe, on the other hand, are being hailed by most commentators as a sign of micro-democracy maturing and beginning to overcome some of the early hurdles of a strange new system.
Maryam experiences an odd bidirectional nostalgia as she boards the maglev: it echoes a world she’s never experienced except through fiction, but most of the ache comes from the worry that if micro-democracy collapses, these artifacts will fall into disuse and disappear again.
Practically speaking, the train is somewhat less comfortable than a long-haul crow, although the unfamiliarity makes up for some of that, and she arrives a solid thirty minutes earlier than the crow was scheduled to. From the Gare Montparnasse, newly restored as a transport hub after years as a commercial center, Maryam walks across the bro
ad plaza, empty but for the slender spire that replaced the old high-rise, and hails a public transport crow. Convinced as she is that Nejime (or anyone else trying to track her) will already have figured out her destination, she nonetheless hesitates before tapping in Information Hub, and instead registers her destination as Jardin du Luxembourg.
Once there, she doesn’t immediately walk to the Hub but strolls the green space of the park. It’s a chilly day, with that wet cold that Maryam hated when she lived in Paris, and there are few park-goers other than a group of basketball players at the courts and a few hurried pedestrians using it as a shortcut. The jardin is a no person’s land between the surrounding centenals, and the governing charter prohibits pop-ups, so she doesn’t have to swim through the frenzy of late-stage campaign ads that color the streets around her. Because of concerns about possibility of crime, it does have feed cameras. Maryam watches herself in a small square of the vision of her right eye as she wanders aimlessly along the broad solar paths and stops to get a chocolate to warm herself at the kiosk.
This is not about throwing anyone off her trail. (She almost laughs, thinking of what Rajiv’s assessment might be, and then remembers he’s in league with the masks.) No, she is wandering in this cold park because she is nervous about seeing Nougaz. As soon as she admits that, Maryam throws the rest of her over-sweetened chocolate into the reclamation bin and turns toward the Information Hub.
CHAPTER 22
It’s an awkward flight. They try to make small talk in the main cabin. Mishima, hoping to distract Nakia from the trial, asks about her latest girlfriend. Nakia answers shortly that they broke up and asks how Ken is. Mishima answers even more shortly that he’s fine. Finally, Mishima goes to bed. Closing the door of the cabin, she sees Nakia perched on one of the bunk beds, flipping through projections of her last six months of work decisions. Mishima doesn’t sleep much, instead lying in bed and reviewing the files of the Exformation staffers while distracted by thoughts of Ken and Sayaka.
When she emerges into the main cabin twenty minutes before arrival, Nakia is curled up asleep on the bunkbed, still in her clothes. Mishima gnaws on an energy chew and watches their progress on maps projected over the darkness beyond the window. As they approach the island, Information winks out, and Mishima switches to downloaded maps. Most of the island is almost as dark as the Baltic Sea—it is very rural and does not have the energy resources to spend on things like streetlights—but there are enough lights in Kuressaare for Mishima to navigate to the mooring spot on the hotel-spa she had picked out.
Turning away from the controls, she sees Nakia rubbing her eyes.
“Where are we?”
“A once and future centenal,” Mishima answers. “Come on, let’s go find breakfast.”
“Dinner?” Nakia suggests, peering out at the darkness.
“Food,” Mishima says firmly.
“What’s the plan?” Nakia asks over muddy black coffee and sprat herb omelets in the hotel restaurant.
“Find traitors,” Mishima says, shoveling more food into her mouth. “Learn plan. Save the world. Or if not the whole world, maybe just Information; I don’t know.”
“How are you going to find them?” Nakia stifles a yawn.
“To be honest, I’m a little surprised they haven’t found us.” Mishima calls the waitress over. “Where do the foreigners stay?”
The waitress walks away without a word.
“Uh-oh,” Mishima says. “Might have to do some legwork.”
But the waitress is back a moment later. She slaps a coin-sized disk on the table. “It’s a guide. I’ll add it to the bill.”
Mishima eyes the disk suspiciously; the technology has gone out of style over the last few years and is now widely seen as a vector for viruses. But the fact that it came from the hotel, and even more that they seem to be using it to make money, reassures her. She scans it with everything she’s got and uploads the data, projecting it on the table in front of her so Nakia can see.
“What is it?” Despite the coffee, Nakia still seems half-asleep.
“The local version of Information, I guess.” Mishima pages through. It’s divided into sections—pages and pages of data on this sparsely populated island. Curious, Mishima picks a background chapter at random—native flora—and checks it against what she downloaded from Information before she arrived. Almost certainly an automated rewrite.
After that, the first section she goes to is connectivity, which is probably less a rational choice than a symptom of her addiction to Information but is still useful. After voting to leave Information, Saaremaa set up a rudimentary network, initially using abandoned Information infrastructure and eventually building a completely new if minimal system. Mishima wonders if that was out of concern over possible surveillance traps left in the Information broadcasters. On the other hand, the hyperatlas is surprisingly blunt in explaining that Russia provided technical assistance in setting up the new network, and that no assumptions can be made about them not listening in.
“I think I’m going to start with these guys,” Mishima says, jabbing at the projected guide with her fork. She flips through until she finds a signature page: XXII Century, with an address in Kuressaare. “If they aren’t who we’re looking for, they’ll know where to find them.”
“Do you need me to come with you?” Nakia asks.
“No. In fact, I’d rather you don’t. Stay in the crow.” After paying the exorbitant bill, Mishima goes back to the crow with Nakia and rummages in its kit until she finds an old-fashioned walkie-talkie and slides it on her finger. “I should be able to raise you on the radio with this. Stay alert; we may need to leave quickly.” Mishima climbs back down and heads out onto the dark street.
* * *
Maryam’s nerves only get worse as she walks down the block toward the Hub where she worked for years. As an Information employee, Maryam still has clearance for the small side door used by most of the Paris staff, and can avoid the security at the front entrance, which is a good thing because her hands are clammy and her stomach rebelling and she can’t deal with any delays. She doesn’t want to give Valérie a chance to prepare for her, but more importantly, she doesn’t want to change her mind.
She takes the spiraling west staircase to the fifth floor without seeing anyone. As soon as she steps out into the carpeted corridor, she sees Liam Iyengar, but she nods and keeps walking, quickly, and although Liam turns toward her, he doesn’t call out or follow, so Maryam ignores him and continues until she is in front of Valérie’s office door. She might not even be in, and Maryam lets herself hesitate long enough to check, but Information tells her Valérie is definitely in the building. Allowing that pause was a mistake, so without waiting longer, she knocks and opens the door.
There are three people standing around the workspace: a meeting, but not a long or formal one, just some quick discussion. Benyamin is there, and Valérie’s new deputy, Massi, but Maryam’s eyes go straight to Valérie’s face. She is gratified to see surprise there, but something more complicated surfaces as Valérie closes the meeting and asks the others to step out. Maryam isn’t sure, but she thinks she sees something brief and unsure that looks like hope.
When Valérie and Vera Kubugli broke up, Maryam was already with Núria. The relationship was long-distance at that point but heady and thrilling, the bubbly first gulp of champagne, and Maryam didn’t have to think too much about how she felt about Valérie’s breakup. She may have felt a tiny bit vindicated, or even triumphant: the rumors claimed that it was Vera who dumped Valérie, the best possible vengeance. Maryam was careful never to consider whether Valérie would have wanted her back, or whether that would be acceptable. She did not obsess over what Valérie was thinking or feeling, instead immersing herself in her own romance. She has not laid the groundwork for a psychological analysis, and now she is entirely unsure how Valérie might react to seeing her.
By the time Valérie has closed the door and turned off transmission on her workstat
ion (the way it was when they started their first, semi-illicit relationship, in this office, so many years ago), whatever emotion flickered through her face is gone, and her expression is the usual mask: a single eyebrow raised under her pale bangs. Expectations, but not high ones.
“To what,” she asks, and there is a care in the pacing of her speech that makes Maryam think she is still shaken, “do I owe the pleasure?”
Maryam doesn’t feel like she can control her tone at all. She has to take a breath. Why is she here? Then she remembers Halliday and is able to grab some of that anger. “I spoke with Cynthia Halliday recently,” she says, and is pleased at the steel in her voice.
Valérie’s brows snap together. If there’s any disappointment, it doesn’t show. “Oh? Is she considered an accurate source now?”
Maryam can feel her hands trembling. It’s been years since she’s seen Valérie except in news-compiler vids or tabloid stories or, occasionally, across a busy room, projected into a large high-level Information meeting. “She told me to ask you about the clandestine comms Heritage used to plan their secession. So here I am.”
She tacked on that last sentence as an unconsidered afterthought to fill the silence, and she watches Valérie take it in, wondering if she understands it means Maryam didn’t tell Nejime.
“I take it this is relevant to something you’re working on?” Valérie asks finally, turning to take a seat among the cluster of chairs in the corner of her office, and gesturing Maryam to do the same. Maryam follows warily: she would prefer to remain standing, but maybe this signals a long story. Or maybe Valérie is trying to unsettle her further by reminding her of everything that happened in these chairs. Maryam sees she’s redone the upholstery.
“Maybe,” Maryam says. “I take it it’s relevant for you.” Attack is her only strategy.
Valérie considers silently, then nods. “You’re right. It’s time. During the secession crisis, I discovered that Halliday was using an underground tunnel to conduct clandestine negotiations with Russia. I was never able to find out to what degree this was sanctioned by Heritage, or whether Halliday was trying to set up her own contingency plans. In any case, I was able to blackmail her into turning over control of the tunnel to me.”