State Tectonics
Page 37
“You acted under pressure. And you saved us.”
Amran mumbles something and draws more designs in her rice with the spoon.
“No need to go back to it if you don’t want to,” Mishima repeats. “There’s plenty of other work to do.” Assuming they all still have jobs tomorrow. “Hey, Maryam and Núria are coming up to the crow later for tea; do you want to join?”
Amran nods, brightening. “Sure. I think I’ll go to the hotel first to freshen up.” She is still in the clothes she was wearing during her imprisonment.
“Come up to the Hub roof and whack on the mooring line when you’re there,” Mishima says. Information is still glitchy in the Hub and its immediate vicinity. “I’ll get an alert and we’ll come down to get you.”
Mishima stays at the restaurant after Amran leaves to finish her tea, and then orders some bourbon, which is discreetly delivered in the same teapot.
She’s on her fourth cup of alcohol when a middle-aged woman slides into the seat across from her.
“Congratulations,” the Chinese agent says. “You survived.”
Mishima has learned from experience that it’s better to say as little as possible on these occasions.
“If you happen to be looking for a job…”
“I’m not a fucking hired gun,” Mishima says.
There is no noticeable hesitation, and yet Mishima senses a minute recalibration of approach from her interlocutor. “Of course not,” the Chinese woman responds. “You work for what you believe in. But to be happy, you need to do the work to which you are most suited. You need to use your talents.” Had she been slightly more drunk, Mishima would have put her head down in her arms at this point. “Information cannot give you that anymore. They never really could, as they did not respect your unique abilities. But we can. As a superpower—”
“The world doesn’t have superpowers anymore,” Mishima says, trying to feel certain of something.
“Of course it does. One superpower is falling, which means another will rise.”
“Not necessarily. There could be a, a”—Mishima wishes her alcohol-impaired brain could come up with examples, wishes she hadn’t accepted the premise—“a warring-states period.” Ugh, that was worse than no example.
“Maybe briefly, but I doubt it. The world wants a leader.”
“It won’t be you.”
“Oh, we think it will. We’ve been watching how you do it.”
Now Mishima wants to bang her head against the bar. “People will want something different.”
“We know.” The woman tilts her head. “Why are you so prejudiced against us? Has it occurred to you that most of what you know about us might be propaganda?”
“Did you know that Heritage was involved? Did you know where they were planning the raid?” She stands up, still leaning on the table. “Did you send me to Saaremaa to distract us from the real danger?”
The woman doesn’t answer. Instead, she reaches her hand out to Mishima’s unbandaged shoulder, which sways under her touch. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mishima blurts. “I’m going to bed. I can tell that if you ever want to talk to me again, you’ll know how to find me.”
“Indeed,” the Chinese woman murmurs.
* * *
On the way back from the bar, Mishima’s attention is caught by a pop-up from one of the new data providers. NEW SUPERMAJORITY MIRED IN SCANDAL! 888 cache of secret communications found in mantle tunnel. Mishima stares at the pop-up while it scrolls gently, urging her to read on. Then, as she watches, the familiar annotation appears, disputing mired and scandal although not the substance of the sub-headline. It unrolls slowly, letter by letter, and Mishima can picture the exhausted, confused Information grunt, unable to leave their post, doggedly correcting each new headline. In that moment, the thankless work of that grunt, the lowest on the Information hierarchy, seems far more important and worthwhile than any mission she’s ever been assigned.
* * *
Nougaz and Taskeen have joined Nejime in her office. Nougaz is sipping at a tumbler of whiskey; Nejime has indulged herself in a cheekful of qat, which she got a taste for while running the Sanaa Hub decades ago. Taskeen is drinking tea.
“So, that’s that, I suppose.” Nejime has been saying some version of this since she saw the modification to the voting mechanism, but she can’t get over it. They were so close. Or maybe not; maybe Mishima was right and the Secretariat would only have made things worse.
“You should be grateful, you should be singing with joy”—Taskeen sniffs—“that of all the plans to overthrow Information, mine was the one that succeeded.”
Nougaz offers only an icy smile, but Nejime shuffles her shoulders in something like acquiescence. “I suppose one can hope that this chaos will eventually work its way into something better.”
“‘Hope!’” Taskeen scoffed. “‘Work its way into!’ You’ll be the ones working on it, I should think. You must have at least ten years left before retirement, no? And look at what I’ve managed to accomplish from the sanatorium. There’s still plenty for Information to do. You’ll be far better off moderating and watchdogging independent sources of data than you were producing it all.”
“I’m not sure the world will see it that way.”
“Even if you’re right, the end of Information isn’t the end for you. You two are eminently employable. I’m sure you’ll find lots of interesting ways to shape world history.” Taskeen is enjoying this a little too much.
“Shouldn’t you have shriveled up by now, running around in the present like this?” Nougaz’s tone is more amiable than her words.
“Modernity isn’t kryptonite,” Taskeen answers, her voice just as mild. “I have cultivated physiological changes in my body through the mental practice of time capsule therapy. They’ll last me for as long as I need to visit this time and place.”
“So, you’re going back?” Nejime asks.
“My work here is done,” Taskeen says judiciously.
“You’re going to leave us to deal with this mess while you retire to your safe little nostalgia-haven,” Nougaz offers.
“By mess I presume you mean democracy?”
“We know what will happen,” Nejime says. “This is not some bold experiment. People will hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe. That’s not democracy, or at least not any useful form of democracy. That’s anarchy.”
“That’s already happening even with Information,” Taskeen points out. “Might as well have it without the enormous unelected powerbroker in the room.”
“Are you talking about Information or yourself?” Nougaz asks.
Taskeen chuckles. “Whatever happens next, it will be fun to watch.”
* * *
They gather in the crow. Even Roz comes, glancing at her wrist monitor every five minutes.
“Do you think the election results are going to stand?” she asks. 888 won the Supermajority, but the news of the illegal data tunnels is breaking now, and there is talk of a challenge. On the other hand, no one knows if the hidden comms are still illegal.
“Probably,” Mishima answers. “There’s only so much upheaval we can take at a time. Besides, I think the voting was … as legitimate as voting ever is.” With the help of some concentrated hydration pills, she partially sobered up, and now she’s working on getting drunk again. She and Ken and Roz and Núria are drinking plum wine; she made tea for Maryam, Amran, and Suleyman.
Núria turns to Maryam. “Our centenal went for Liberty.”
“What?” Maryam blinks open the results. “When I saw 888 won the Supermajority, I assumed they had kept power there. I didn’t even look!”
“I won’t live in a Liberty centenal,” Núria says.
“Me neither,” Maryam agrees. “Where do you want to go?” She projects a small map of La Habana between them, spins it to check the post-election government affiliations.
“Actually,” Núria says hesitantly. “I was t
hinking. I don’t know how happy you’d be working remotely, but … I’ve been thinking I’d like to get away from all of this. Just remove a little from the whole Information tussle. What do you think about the Independentista territory?”
“It’s amazing how many of these new intel services already exist,” Roz is telling Ken. She shows him the infographic she’s set up; the numbers jump even as they watch.
“So, what do you think?” Ken asks. He respects Roz’s opinion second only to Mishima’s, and Mishima’s been unwilling to talk about it. “Anarchy and misinformation, or competition and accountability?”
“I really don’t know what to think yet,” Roz says, hand on her belly, “but I’m in a mood to hope for the best.”
“With this many services, there must be a wide range of professionalism.”
“Hopefully some of them are quality.”
“Information should reinvent itself to keep an eye on them,” Nakia comments.
“Hopefully one of them will fill the SVAT niche for personalized services.” Roz shakes her head. “It’s so important. Maybe if we’d done more of that…”
“I wonder who’s coming up with all these different services.”
“We met one of the investors, in Kuressaare,” Mishima says. “People are jumping in to try it. They think they’re going to make money off of data peddling.”
“Half of them won’t last a month, I bet,” Ken says.
“Still, they could be incredibly useful.”
“If they’re any good,” Mishima says. “Someone needs to weed out the ones that were tied to the Heritage plot.”
“Like the one I worked for,” Amran says, so quietly that no one answers.
“Maybe we could work on accountability,” Ken suggests.
“For the data services?” Maryam asks, interested.
“Or we could build our own?” Amran says it, and so it has an uncertain inflection, but they latch on immediately.
“More open.”
“More human.”
“More humane!” Nakia says.
Mishima catches Ken’s eye. They were both in that meeting, and she knows he is thinking what she is: This is what they thought when they created Information. But they have to do something, even if it’s incremental, even if it’s the tiniest increment, and so she adds her voice in agreement.
“Better.”
“Ours.”
ALSO BY MALKA OLDER
Infomocracy
Null States
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MALKA OLDER is a writer, humanitarian worker, and Ph.D. candidate at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations studying governance and disasters. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than eight years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali. Her debut novel was 2016’s Infomocracy. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Also by Malka Older
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
STATE TECTONICS
Copyright © 2018 by Malka Older
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Will Staehle
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9947-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9946-5 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765399465
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First Edition: September 2018