by Malka Older
“Third attempt?”
“This time they didn’t try to do it all themselves.”
“Is that what you’re doing here? Helping them?”
“On occasion,” Domaine says. “If by helping you mean providing services for payment, and only in fairly unimportant ways. Most of the heavy lifting gets done by people who used to work with you.”
“What are they after?” she asks, making an effort not to stomp her feet in place to try to revive her toes.
Domaine looks her up and down, but rather than suspicion, his eyes glitter with combined approval and desire. Mishima has to stifle a laugh. Not because she finds his regard ridiculous but because it has been so long and now they have fallen into the same strange relationship of antagonism and attraction. Also because the cold and four cups of coffee are pressing on her bladder.
“The usual,” Domaine drawls. He’s leaning in now, one hand on the wall she’s leaning against, although far enough from her head to keep it from being obnoxious. “World domination. Revenge. Dinero.”
“And you?”
“Something much simpler.” His eyes flick up and down again.
This time, Mishima does laugh. “Ahh, fuck this,” she says. “Want to go get a drink?”
* * *
It took some time before Roz could check the PhilipMorris cable to see if that, too, was compromised. She was busy and Hassan was busier, stretched between preparing for Election Day and decrypting the null state data, which Roz suspected he did in his spare time. She thought he might be stalling the trip because he didn’t want to relitigate their discussion about whether or not to report the illegal comms, but in any case he and his team were close to peak volume of work.
Eventually, when irritation at not knowing began to outweigh the urgency of other demands on her time, Roz solved the problem by asking Djukic to accompany her instead. There was no conflict this time, since Djukic wasn’t working on the project (and had never, a bit of due diligence showed, worked on any PhilipMorris infrastructure). Besides, she wants to test Djukic’s reaction to the idea.
“Possible,” Djukic declares, when they are alone in the crow and Roz has explained where they’re going and why. She thinks about it. “In our tunnel, my team prepared the sensor cable, but there was input from some of the other engineering teams. The threading was handled by the primary contractors, and it was somewhat ceremonial—politicians with their hands on the wheel, you know, nobody else getting too close. A few comms cables added in wouldn’t have—” She stops. “You don’t suppose—” Djukic cuts herself off again, eyes narrowing. “You do suppose.”
“I do more than suppose,” Roz answers, convinced that Djukic isn’t playacting. “I know.”
“Those bastards! Those slimy, smarmy, double-crossing, lying, obfuscating scum! Of course they found a way to use the environmental assessment for their own benefit; of course they did! Why am I even surprised? And you!” For a moment, Djukic seems ready to start in on Roz. She grapples with her annoyance and then, perhaps remembering whose crow she’s in, lets it go. “You saw it on our cable?”
“Hassan did. I was the distraction.”
“You didn’t confront them? They still don’t know you know? It’s not public?”
“Hassan wanted time to listen in on the comms, try to break the code.”
“You could have stopped the construction right there!” Djukic is resentful but no more so than Roz herself.
“He has a point,” Roz says, justifying it to herself as much as to the other woman. “We don’t know who is talking along the cables or about what. As soon as we make it public, they’ll shut up—maybe even try to withdraw or destroy the comms capacity—and we’ll never know whom to prosecute or where to look for their next attempt.”
“Enigma,” Djukic says thoughtfully. “Still…”
“I know,” Roz sighs. “If either of them get past the injunctions and actually start digging, I’ll zap them with this before they can clear a meter of dirt.”
“Good,” says Djukic, but she’s shaking her head. “The more contact I have with Information, the less I feel like I know.”
It takes Roz a beat to work through that, but when she does, she’s struck: she’s gotten so used to Information hiding things that she almost doesn’t notice anymore.
* * *
“First, we need to set the scene. Make it clear to the audience just how boring and taxing and thankless it is, analyzing their data.” Misra projects out story panels with vid clips of Information drudgery. Vincent has gone to get food and coffee.
In her guise as Idil, the content designer and hostage, Amran nods. Inside, she is cringing, because being an Information grunt is awful, and she is one of the lucky few to escape it. Her time as field lead for the DarFur government was hard and at times could have easily been described as “boring and taxing and thankless,” but she never would have traded it for life as a data analyst. She still feels unwarranted guilt about getting a field job so quickly. Is that what this is about? Workplace dissatisfaction?
“Dangerous, too.”
Amran almost laughs at that: occasional assassination attempts excepted, Darfur wasn’t dangerous, but it was more dangerous than working in some climate-controlled Hub.
“Like Nakia Williams, all data analysts are at risk of being attacked for doing their jobs! Not to mention the isolation and the stress. Information assigns humans tasks better done by machines, like sorting and compiling, and treats us as if we are robots!”
Amran, still obediently tracing the preliminary outlines of a storyboard, mentally notes that the use of humans for data management is partly a mass-employment program. People forget the history of Information.
“Meanwhile, the jobs that should be done by humans—data collection and field observation—are left to machines! That’s why so much data is missing from Information right now. Feeds can’t capture everything! And stringers, who should be the most important people in the organization, are paid a pittance and expected to work without contracts, and even so, they don’t hire nearly enough of them.”
With this, Amran wholeheartedly concurs. It makes her antsy because she would really prefer to hate everything about these people. “So you organized?” She knows she should keep her mouth shut and let Misra talk all she wants, but she can feel the precariousness of her situation pressing against her mind, and she’s not sure how long she can stave off the panic.
Misra, apparently also of the opinion that Amran should keep her mouth shut, gives her a long look. “At first, such organization was localized,” she says at last. “It’s not as easy as you might think to create bonds across far-flung hubs.”
Amran hides her scorn, while as Idil she reflexively starts cultivating an idea for a novela featuring star-crossed lovers based in different hubs.
“There was disagreement about what direction to take. Some people wanted to agitate for better working conditions, others for a full restructuring. Others wanted to overthrow Information entirely. Even among the last group, there were differences in approach. And there were mistakes.”
“I’m going to need some more detail in this section,” Amran ventures. She’s interested in mistakes.
Misra waves her hand. “We’ll get to that later. I prefer to sketch the broad outline first and then flesh it out. Suffice to say that as part of one of the divergent strategies, an unsavory group was contracted and called attention to our subtler initiatives through a series of violent acts poorly disguised as accidents.”
At this point, Amran should leap up on the table, reveal her true identity with a roar, and dive forward to cut Misra’s throat with the tiny billaawe hidden under her clothes, crying vengeance. But Amran is not much of a hand-to-hand fighter and she doesn’t think the tips Mishima gave her will substantially change that. Moreover, while the assassination of the DarFur head of state known as Al-Jabali—for surely that’s what Misra is referring to—seriously complicated Amran’s life, Al-Jabali wasn’t
her head of state, nor even her friend. Besides, cutting down Misra is no guarantee of an escape. She has no idea how many other people are in this compound. She’ll do more good by listening than by getting killed. “And then?”
“Our cover was blown. Eluding Information is difficult anywhere, but as Information staff it is worse. We activated our emergency protocols and fled to the null states.”
* * *
Domaine leads the way to a spot several blocks away (nothing is much more than several blocks away in Kuressaare). Most of the room is taken up by long common tables in the same light wood as the ceiling and fixtures, but Domaine finds them a tiny table in a nook by the window. Mishima uses the bathroom, tucked under a flight of stairs in the back, before she sits down, and is relieved to see Domaine hasn’t ordered for her.
“Vodka?” Mishima asks, settling on the backless wooden box of a chair.
Domaine blinks. He probably didn’t expect her to want to drink with him. “Sure. Or they have reasonably good shōchū if you—”
“Done!” Mishima says, and taps in the order. The room is warm, and although it’s still early, there are enough drinkers scattered along the common tables to create a convivial buzz of background conversation. Mishima had been on the point of characterizing these other bar patrons as locals, but she catches the assumption and wonders how many of them might be ex-Information staff or Russian operatives instead. Without public Information, it’s hard to guess.
“Hmm?” she says, realizing Domaine was talking at her.
“I said, your career has been easy to follow recently.”
“Mmm,” Mishima says, not wanting to show him just how much she hates being famous. “You better tell me about yourself then.”
She’s not surprised when that fails as a conversational gambit. The drinks come and Mishima sips cautiously, then with more confidence. “You mentioned you were consulting, or contracting? So was I, coincidentally.”
Domaine downs half his glass in one. He knew this bar, so he’s probably been practicing. “Yes, since the election, I’ve been working for a number of different—”
“Did the fact that micro-democracy survived the election debacle depress you so much, you moved to the null states?” Mishima’s not sure exactly how she got into this cut-the-shit mood, but she sees no reason to rein it in.
“As you may recall,” he answers, leaning on his dignity a bit, “I made a few non-Information enemies.” Oh, yeah. That stupid vid he made. And then the other stupid vid, the one featuring Mishima saying something taken out of context. “Combined with the number of people at Information who hated me, that left few options.”
“What about your old group? Are they still flailing around?”
Domaine growls under his breath. “Mostly disbanded after the election.” A pause. “It was demoralizing, you know.” He sucks down the remains of his shōchū, looks at her inquiringly, and taps in the order for another round. “After a series of critical election errors like that, we really believed that people would see the problems with Information, with micro-democracy. But most groups are so invested that there is a desperate need to believe…”
“I suppose,” Mishima says, not caring. It’s the system they have, it works reasonably well, they are always working to improve it. She still hasn’t heard any better suggestions from him. “So, about these former Information staff…”
“Oh, yes,” Domaine says. As he gets drunker, his gestures are getting more extravagant, his emphasis more marked. “Saving the world, overturning authority, blablabla. Suffering for the cause, you know.”
Mishima’s laugh spurts out unplanned. “Are you telling me,” she asks when she can speak again, “all this time, they’ve been thinking of themselves as heroic rebels?”
Domaine draws himself up. “I was a heroic rebel before these people realized they were working for the enemy!”
“And how is the rebellion treating them?”
He flops down toward the table. “You have no idea. The motherfucking intrigue! The drama!”
Mishima, who has spent the past years living novelas and interactives by night and Information internal politics by day, is not impressed. “What’s their story, then? The nano-version, please.”
“Oh, they’re righteously angry about Information”—funny to hear such scorn, when righteously angry about Information is Domaine’s middle name—“not so much because of what it does but because they think they could do it better. And they aim to prove it.”
Mishima scoffs, only partly to keep him talking. “Takeover? For how long do they think they can take over Information? That’s like saying you’re going to conquer Russia: fine, conquer it, but what are you going to do with it then? It takes us an army just to keep the lights on.”
“As I said”—Domaine takes another swig—“they are so sure they can do it better. But they aren’t aiming to hold on to Information forever, per se. The idea is to break your monopoly long enough to allow free competition to flourish. Although I suspect they believe they will be able to win that competition and thereby rule the world, so maybe it comes to the same thing.”
There’s a silence during which Mishima thinks about but does not enumerate the ways in which Information is not a monopoly, and also drinks. “Why are you telling me this?” she asks finally. “You must be rooting for them.”
Domaine shrugs. “I’m a free agent.” Mishima checks her translator to make sure he didn’t say rōnin and quells her eyeroll. “Do I want your monopolistic, holier-than-thou, hidebound organization to face competition? Yes. But I don’t want you to go to war when it happens.”
“We wouldn’t—” Mishima stops. She’s not going to predict what Information will or won’t do.
“Always the idealist.” The words are fond, but Domaine is looking at her hungrily and Mishima feels the sparks of the old attraction rising on the thermal current of his desire. She doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, but something in her face must encourage him, because he leans forward, his fingers touching hers on the smoothed wood of the tabletop. “You don’t know what it’s been like, seeing you everywhere,” he murmurs. “No matter how I tried to forget you, I couldn’t avoid you. In vids, in interactives, in tabloids, all over the news compilers…”
That knocks her out of it. Mishima leans back, angry. “That wasn’t me. Those mediated images have nothing to do with me.” She realizes that Domaine has never been close enough to have any idea what she’s like beyond her image, and draws more strength from that. “You’re not the only one who sees them, who wants some stupid idea of me because I’m everywhere, so don’t pretend it’s some kind of link between us.”
Domaine backs off, hands up. “Look,” he says, cool again. “I always liked you. You know that. Seeing you everywhere just made it more difficult to ignore.”
“Try harder.” Mishima stands up, wavering only slightly, and heads for the bathroom again. It’s a cramped space, and the wood-plank walls dampen but do not entirely block out the voices from the bar. When she gets back to the table, Domaine stands, face all contrite.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll shut up.”
“A little late for that,” Mishima mutters, slinging herself into her seat. “Keep talking, but talk about something useful.”
“Do you remember how five years ago I warned you about problems in your own house?”
Mishima does remember. “You said, ‘Be careful of your friends.’” In the heated atmosphere of the election, it had made her suspicious of Ken. She had known Domaine far longer than Ken at that time. And he had been right, but he wasn’t talking about Ken. It had been her own unwillingness to trust herself that had turned her on her paramour.
“Your friends have, I think, borne me out in the meantime,” Domaine says, not inaccurately. “And these former colleagues of yours hate Information with an intensity that makes me look like a dilettante.”
Mishima snorts, only half-listening. She knows Ken much better now. Or she thoug
ht she did. It was the shock of his accusations that has so upset her, as much as the substance: he had never before tried to control her or complained about her job or—
“Right now you need to watch out for the governments.”
Mishima snaps out of her reverie. “The governments?” She laughs, hoping for more details. “What, all two thousand of them? Or are you talking about null states?”
Domaine shakes his head. “I’m saying, your ex-staff hate you, but even with the reluctant backing of a couple of null states, they don’t have the resources. It’s when they connect with one of your big governments that you need to worry.”
“Which one?” The large governments have their own military forces; they have legitimacy and devoted citizens.
“I don’t know. I stay as far away from the violent element as I can.”
Mishima’s nerves dance on the word violent. “And the part you’re involved in?”
“Can’t talk about that,” Domaine replies immediately. “Clients. Plus, they’re right.”
Doubtful. “Where’s Rajiv?”
Domaine blinks at her, probably disoriented by the idea of talking about someone other than himself. “Who?”
“Rajiv Lama? The most recent Information defector?”
Domaine slurps his drink. “Sorry, I can’t keep track of them. But they all hang out at XXII Century.”
“Tell me something, Domaine,” Mishima says. “That American cleric you annoyed so much with your vid five years ago—”
“I didn’t annoy him,” Domaine says, offended. “I exposed him! And, along the way, the hypocrisy of Information…”
“Right, right,” Mishima says. “Wasn’t he recruited a few years ago to head up AmericaTheGreat?”
“Exactly my point!” Domaine hits the table with his fist. “Unbelievable hypocrisy! I don’t know which is worse: the priest for joining micro-democracy after years of railing against it; those idiots for hiring him; or Information for letting it all happen!”
“So, you took steps to reduce his influence.”