by Malka Older
“I just don’t understand.” Ken looks away. “I know you love to take risks, but surely there’s a limit?” He shakes himself. “Maybe I got used to the idea that you couldn’t go undercover anymore.”
“I need something else,” Mishima says. “The politicking wasn’t it, but I’m sure I can find something.”
“There’s going to be plenty of opportunity. Remember how we talked about Information ending?” Ken asks. “It’s happening now.”
* * *
Maryam expects to find the Doha Hub a disturbed anthill, like after the null-state debate attack, but it’s eerily quiet instead. As she climbs the stairs that zigzag up the edge of the atrium, she starts to see why: everyone is fully immersed in their workstations. The disturbance was subtle and threatening, and no one understands it enough to talk about it yet.
She goes to Hassan’s office first. “What do you know?”
He blinks at her. “Hi! I didn’t realize you were here. Is La Habana…”
Maryam remembers suddenly that she hasn’t been where she was supposed to be. Of course there’s no reason Hassan would have checked. Nejime might have, though. She wonders if the locators are retroactively blanked. Seems unlikely; way harder to delete than to block.
Hassan is still waiting for an answer to his undefined query about La Habana. “Uh, same,” Maryam says, hoping it’s true. “Do you have anything yet?”
“Not much. Software attack, we think, although we’re having difficulty verifying hardware status. We’re not sure whether they achieved what they were aiming for. Locators are out, and coverage is still spotty in some areas, but most services are up and running fine—it’s not like five years ago.”
“Al hamdu’illah,” Maryam murmurs automatically, and then wonders if they were better off when the damage was obvious. She’s not confident that this attack failed.
“We’re working to check if there are specific segments that have been blocked off or if there was a spate of comms hidden by the brief brownout, but so far, we haven’t found anything definitive.”
“And voting?” Maryam asks. She glances up at the countdown clock projected on his wall: 122 minutes to voting.
Hassan flips his hands palms up, helplessly. “As far as we can tell, everything is fine! I can’t find any change to the vote casting, collecting, and counting mechanisms. But that is all dependent on the assumption that we are getting good data from our network.”
“Are you pinging—” Before she can finish the question, Hassan has projected a window showing a long string of ping responses, and Maryam laughs. “You’re way ahead of me.”
“Not at all,” Hassan says modestly. “Oh, by the way, there is one bit of good news—we were able to crack one of the encoded comms.”
“Really?”
“Get this: you know how people used to type?”
“Mmm.” Maryam makes a wiggling motion with her fingertips, imitating the click-clacky typing she’s seen in old films and series.
“The code was based on transposing the letters on an old keyboard. Easy to break once you see it, but almost impossible for someone today to notice.”
“Wow. How did you find it?” And as soon as she says it, Maryam can guess the answer.
“You know Taskeen Khan? Nejime suggested I send samples to her, and she cracked it almost immediately.”
Maryam is too confused to speak at first. It’s not sinister, she tells herself. Nejime proposed Taskeen as a resource for her; there’s no reason she wouldn’t suggest her to Hassan. Maryam tells herself not to be jealous that someone else has access to her special contact. “What—what did the messages say?”
“A lot of talk about timing and guarded references to events or operations that the people involved must have already agreed upon. We haven’t been able to figure out who’s talking. Here.” He throws a file to her. “Take a look, if you have time.”
“Thanks. Do you know if Roz is in?” Maryam needs to talk to someone about what happened with Valérie.
“I think she’s pretty much working from home at this point.” Hassan’s hands describe a large half-sphere in front of his belly.
Roz’s apartment isn’t far, and the more she thinks about it, the less Maryam wants to see Nejime, so she leaves and walks there along shaded streets. When she knocks, the door is answered by a portly middle-aged woman. Maryam gapes at her, and she smiles back.
“Are you one of Roz’s friends?”
“Uh, yes…”
“Maryam!” Roz scrambles up from the daybed and edges past the older woman to throw her arms around her friend. “What are you doing here? This is my mother, Elizabeth. Come in! Did you just arrive? Do you need to eat?”
“Sorry,” Maryam mumbles. “I should have called first.”
“Not at all,” Roz’s mother says, patting her arm. “You’re very welcome.”
Roz ushers Maryam into the room, introduces her to her father, who is occupying what Maryam is pretty sure is Suleyman’s favorite chair, and keeps her moving until they’re out on the balcony. “Is everything okay?” she asks once the door is closed behind them. “I’ve been trying to listen in on the intranet when I can, but…”
“I don’t know,” Maryam says. “I just got in, kind of on the spur-of-the-moment.”
“Tell me,” Roz says, and Maryam does.
“Wow.” Roz is leaning against the balustrade (“I spend way too much time sitting these days”), and Maryam has collapsed into one of the lounges. Every once in a while, she catches a peripheral glimpse of Roz’s mother drifting by the door to check on her daughter, but they have the awning up and a breezeway in the airscaping, and it’s not too hot.
“I don’t know Nougaz as well as you do—” Roz blushes. “I mean, of course. But I barely know her at all. I have no idea. But claiming your new girlfriend is spying on you is out of line.”
Maryam nods, miserably.
“Unless she has hard evidence,” Roz adds. “Did she say anything substantive?”
“No,” Maryam answers. “Just that she’s worried about me, and that she wasn’t trying to ruin my relationship.”
Roz makes a rude noise, but Maryam doesn’t smile.
“Do you think she might be?” She asks.
Roz sighs and puts her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “I can’t tell you for sure that Núria isn’t a spy. But even if she is, I don’t think she’s spying on you.”
“Really?”
“Look, let’s say, even though it’s terribly improbable, that she hooked up with you initially because of some confusion over your level of influence and access. Do you really think she’d have stuck with you this long? She’d have to know by now that she’s not getting anything out of you.”
Maryam’s traitor heart lifts. “Maybe…”
“Maryam, I was there when you met,” Roz says. “Nothing that happened looked calculated.”
It didn’t feel calculated. It felt stunning.
“And I met her first, remember? I didn’t think she was acting strange in any way. Listen, I think Nougaz was … Even if she had your best interests at heart, her analysis may have been swayed by her personal feelings for you.”
Maryam manages a laugh. “Maybe.”
“And—sorry to get back to work, but are you sure Nougaz didn’t know about the additional cables in the tunnel?”
“She definitely wasn’t faking that,” Maryam says, and then looks a little sheepish. “I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned it, since it’s not public knowledge yet.”
“That’s nothing,” Roz says. “This morning I told Veena Rasmussen that there are seven comms cables in the PhilipMorris tunnel.”
“Wait, what?” Maryam sits up. “There are comms cables in the—what PhilipMorris tunnel?”
“The scanner cable,” Roz explains. “The one they put through to run tests on the proposed route? The one that is supposed to address all the ecological concerns?”
“Wallahi,” says Maryam. “And nobody knows
?”
“We chose not to go public until we could analyze the comms.” Roz’s voice is threaded with resentment.
“And you told Veena.”
“Yeah.” Roz laughs. “Not likely to keep it quiet, is she?”
“Well, people need to know,” Maryam answers. Part of her indignation is in support for her friend, but most of it is genuine. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have thought twice about this kind of international, espionage-related intel quarantine, but now it seems grotesque.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, and at the same time, Roz starts, “You know—”
They both stop. Roz makes a small motion with her head, and then her fingers bobble. A moment later, she sends Maryam a quick-typed message by line-of-sight: Would it be such a bad thing?
Maryam almost smiles, but she’s nervous. People believe line-of-sight is less likely to be hacked than comms that go through Information, which is true as far as it goes, but these messages still leave footprints on both the sending and receiving systems. At least Roz’s phrasing is oblique. She writes back I’ll be almost disappointed if in the next few days and then, when she sees Roz reading, adds out loud, “Nothing changes.”
Roz laughs and nods. “True,” she agrees. “I think. The question is, what should we do about it?”
Maryam can’t believe they’re having this conversation, however obliquely. She tries to remember Rajiv’s lessons, but that was all about moving around cities, avoiding casual surveillance, hiding her critical messages in a mess of mundanity. None of it applies to sitting a few feet away from her best friend on a dark balcony, plotting sedition. “I don’t know,” she says seriously. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.”
Roz hesitates, her hands absently drawing patterns along her belly. “That can’t be right, Maryam. Look at us, where we are, what we do. We—” She stops, but Maryam gets the picture. She thinks suddenly of the camaradas. Their talk of revolution always seemed so fictional and far away.
“Maybe you’re right,” Maryam says. “But I still don’t know.” She types: what to do.
“It might not mean…” Roz stops, thinks, then gestures with her hands: a total upheaval.
“Let’s hope not?” Maryam says, but it turns into a question as it comes out. She pauses, then types: I think there might be someone I can talk to.
Roz thinks. “Mishima?”
“With her new job?” Running for Information rep in the Secretariat certainly seems like a commitment to the status quo. She types: someone you don’t know. I’ll let you know if it works out.
“Mm,” Roz agrees. “Let me know?” She sends another message: How can we talk?
“I don’t know,” Maryam says again.
“But we’re on the same page?” Roz asks, and their eyes meet.
“I think so.”
They’re quiet for a few minutes, but Roz’s parents are waiting on the other side of the glass and Maryam keeps thinking about the file of decrypted messages and possibly compromised voting and everything else she should be getting into at the office.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a place to stay.” Roz breaks the silence at last. “My parents were planning on coming out for the birth anyway, and when this happened they got nervous about whether I’d be able to get in touch with them and took the first flight out.”
“That’s all right,” Maryam says, blinking to make a hotel reservation. The mechanism glitches once, but then she’s able to get through. “I should get back to the office.”
“Let me know if anything happens?”
“You too,” Maryam says, nodding significantly at Roz’s belly. Roz glances at the wafer on her wrist and sighs.
“Nothing yet.”
CHAPTER 25
As she leaves Roz’s apartment, Maryam sends Taskeen a message. There’s no immediate response, and Maryam calls the sanatorium to ask to be connected, but the receptionist tells her that policy is not to connect to residents’ phones this late at night except for family emergencies. Maryam considers arguing that it is a family emergency, on the reasoning that Information is Taskeen’s baby, but hangs up instead and walks into the Hub.
Zaid waves her on into Nejime’s office without a wait. Nejime is standing at her workstation, frowning at some global projection, which she closes without hurry when Maryam enters. “I didn’t realize you were here,” she says.
Maryam is faced with the sudden temptation not to tell her about her detour to Paris, about Nougaz. She’ll find out; they always do, she thinks, and is surprised by the spurt of anger.
“I came from Paris.” She throws it out like a challenge. “Nougaz knew about the Heritage tunnel.”
She expects Nejime to be disoriented by the shift in crises, but she processes it quickly. “How long?” Then: “That’s why Halliday tried to kill her?”
Maryam nods. “She blackmailed her into letting her take control over the comms.”
“Oh, Valérie,” Nejime murmurs to herself.
Maryam’s eyes snap up. She’s never heard Nejime use that name before, or talk about anyone in so gentle a tone. Could Nejime and Nougaz have been a couple once?
“There are other types of affection.” Nejime has come back from her memories and sounds amused, but Maryam blushes to realize her thoughts were so legible. “What has she done with these comms?” Nejime’s fingers flutter on her workstation: setting up a recording, or maybe opening a file to take notes or prepare a message.
As Maryam opens her mouth, Nejime jerks suddenly, and her eyes refocus in front of her face: a message or a projection. Her mouth moves slightly, and then her fingers twitch: calling up some other file. Twitch. Twitch. Then she staggers.
“It’s over,” she whispers. “We’re done.”
* * *
“So you basically stole this crow?” Ken asks. They have ceded the bedroom with its single bed to Nakia and are lying side by side on the top bunk bed in the main cabin after persuading Sayaka to fall asleep on the lower one.
“Borrowed?” Mishima tries. “I’d really prefer not to give it back.”
Ken laughs. “Maybe with all the problems they’re having they won’t notice.”
“So, these alternative datastreams are already online?”
“That’s what Veena said,” Ken answers. Mishima has thrown her leg across his stomach, and he lets his fingers play along her shin. “She claimed they were all over the place in Rome. I haven’t seen them myself, but I haven’t been outside in public space since early this morning. And you saw where they are making them?”
Mishima considers that. “I think so. At least, they were doing some of the work there, although it seemed too small to account for this level of disruption. There may be other incubators as well. Anton sounded like he was expecting competition.”
“They are using the data transfer stations they attacked before to get these streams out on Information infrastructure?”
“I don’t know,” Mishima said. “If so, maybe we can still shut it down.”
Ken doesn’t answer immediately, and Mishima turns her head to look at him. “Or not,” she says.
Ken turns to look back at her and grins. “Who do we want to win?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Mishima admits. “Speaking of which.” Mishima checks the time. “It is now officially Election Day.”
“Oh, good,” Ken says. “We should vote, then.”
He doesn’t sound enthusiastic. “Do you know how you’re going to vote?” Mishima remembers suddenly how they went into separate rooms to vote five years ago, when she and Ken had only just met. Now she thinks nothing of asking him outright, which is fortunate because at this moment, how Ken wants to vote might be her main criterion for deciding her own.
“I think I’m going to go with Policy1st after all. I know you think they use me”—Mishima drops her eyes: once again, Ken has been reading her far better than she gave him credit for—“but … yeah, I don’t know. Even after all this, I guess I can’
t shake the feeling that they’re the good guys.” Mishima can make out faint squint lines beside Ken’s eyes: she’s been telling him for months to get his vision recalibrated.
“Fair enough,” Mishima says, and opens the voting mechanism. She had been planning to vote for Free2B because she can’t think of any way Policy1st would make her centenal better and there are a few ways it could make it worse. The idea of voting for a small government with no chance in the Supermajority race is strangely appealing, as if it were incredibly transgressive to think only about the best outcome for herself and several hundred thousand of her co-citizens instead of the whole fucking world.
But Geoff Forth’s bullshit has been more annoying than usual lately, and she feels an irrational need to demonstrate loyalty to Ken in any way she can, so Policy1st it is. In her own race, she throws Gerardo Vasconcielos a vote that is only partly sympathy: he’s got the right skills and he believes in the system, for whatever that’s worth. She expects the usual smug congratulatory message after she punches that one in, but instead she gets another voting screen.
Who should control your data?
1. Information
2. Whomever you choose
Mishima rereads it twice before slamming her hand against the wall.
Ken jumps.
“Did you finish voting yet?” Mishima asks him through clenched teeth.
Ken blinks back into his ballot, and a moment later, she gets to watch his face open in shock—eyes, mouth, even the tiny corkscrewed spikes of his hair seem to be leaping apart. “What?”
And of course the Information intranet is down. She was one of the first to vote; only a couple of million people have seen this yet. “They’re making it official.”
“What now?”
“I’m not sitting this out,” Mishima decides. “We’ll be in Doha in three hours.”
* * *
Maryam is at Nejime’s elbow. “What is it? What happened?” She is expecting a terrorist attack, mass casualties, the armed revolution she has feared from childhood.