by Ken MacLeod
The following morning Myra got up and dressed, and packed. She had most of her luggage sent on to the airport. She loaded stacks of old files, in formats going back all the way through floppy disks to actual paper, into a couple of crates, sealed and diplomatic-bagged and sent off to another destination. Then she began stripping her flat, with a kind of rage at herself. She commandeered some kids from the militia to take the stuff down the stairs—physically, she wasn’t up to that, and she knew it.
The bedroom’s contents went first, all the cushions and throws, the tatting and trim, the lacework and lacquer and lapis lazuli—out, all of it, into big black plastic sacks that went straight to the nearest craft-market stall for a derisory sum. Let them make their own way again, let them travel the circuits like trade-goods, like cowrie shells and crated Marlboros, back to the Camden Locks and Greenwich Villages of the world. The posters on the walls went next, to another stall, for other collectors. The vinyl records and the compact discs—that was what they were called, she thought with a smile, as she hefted their stacked bulk—to a third.
And then the books. That did hurt, but she went on with it; grimly, grimily hauling them down from their shelves, sorting and stacking. Again and again tempted to sift, to stray; now and again lost in a book, or in the reminiscences it provoked. Blink, knuckle the eye, slam the covers shut, sneeze out the dust, move on. Her eyes reddened, her fingers blackened and her shoulders ached.
Most of the books, too, went to the bazaar. The remainder she had loaded in the back of a small truck. She washed herself and looked around the echoing emptiness of her flat. It was still habitable; it was a place to which she could return; but in it nothing of herself remained.
She shoved her 2045 Library of Congress and her other libraries and concert halls, art galleries and archives into the top of her overnight bag, and distributed her knives and pistols about her belts and pockets. The lads who’d lugged her stuff to the market came back one by one, with sheaves of money. She peeled off more than enough to pay them, one by one.
The truck with the books went ahead of her, well ahead, as she hefted her overnight bag and herself on to the horse, and rode out for the last time to the camp.
“Open up!”
Myra yelled, rattling the iron gate. The truck had parked itself in front, waiting with robotic patience for the obstacle to clear. Any electronic pleas it had made had evidently been ignored.
Myra could see why. There wasn’t much left of the camp but the fence, and away to one side—too far away to be useful for her—she could see men taking it apart with wire-cutters and rolling it up in great bales and wheels. Nothing but grass and roadway stretched ahead of her for a few hundred metres. Where the huts had been she could see only clumps of dark material on the steppe, with men and women wandering around and children racing about. The factories were not gone, but they were visibly shrivelling, as though their construction were being run in reverse.
She flipped down her eyeband, upped the gain, gazed at the scene. Nobody’d heard her shouts. Damn. She eased her old New Vietcong knock-off Glock from its holster, steadied and soothed the horse, and fired not into the air but carefully at a tussock a few tens of metres distant. The mare shied and the bullet ricocheted anyway, but the shot got the result she wanted. A figure detached itself from the milling crowd and marched towards her. Kim Nok-Yung, carrying a rifle.
“Hi, Myra.” He couldn’t stop smiling. He tapped a code into the lock’s plate. The gate creaked open, and he left it open. Myra led the horse through, and the truck followed, then kept pace beside her. Nok-Yung hopped on the running-board and hung on with one hand, flourishing the rifle triumphantly with the other, as if he was riding a tank into a liberated capital.
Isn’t this great!”
She got caught up in his enthusiasm.
“Yes, it’s wonderful. I’m so glad it’s over, Nok-Yung.”
They passed one of the factories, vanishing before their eyes, crumbling back from its edges into curiously ordered dust, dust that trickled like columns of ants along paths on the remaining machinery, or on the grass. Some of the dust heaped itself up into blocky stacks that hardened into colour-coded cubes, inert, from which the wind blew not a speck. Other lines of dust coalesced into glassy spheroids, obsidian-black or crystal-clear, that lay in the tall grass like gleaming pebbles and stones and boulders.
“Control components, computers and so on,” Nok-Yung indicated. “The cubes are construction material.”
“Will anyone collect them, I wonder?”
The Korean laughed. “We’ll take some of the control parts with us—they might be valuable, where we’re going.”
“Oh?”
He glanced sidelong at her, almost apologetic. “Semipalatinsk,” he said. “To the Sheenisov.”
Myra restrained herself from reining in the horse. “What? Why, for God’s sake?” She waved an arm, wildly, around and behind. “You can stay with us—you’re welcome here, in our republic or anywhere in Kazakhstan. Hey, man, Baikonur will take you on, think of that!”
He shook his head. “Some of the prisoners will setde here, of course. But I and Se-Ha and the others, we are going to the Sheenisov. Some of us have friends and family with them already. There is no other place for us. Even with Mutual Protection—” he turned aside and spat on the grass “—gone, we still have the debts, and the black-lists. No work to be had back home but debt-bondage. Among the Sheenisov we will be free.” He grinned, no longer apologetic but feral. “And there is work to be done there—work for us. They are the future.”
“But you don’t know anything about what they’re really like. Just because they call themselves communists doesn’t mean they’re nice—you should know that!”
Nok-Yung laughed harshly. “They have no Great Leader or Dear Leader, you can love it or leave it, and we’re going to try it.”
By this time they had reached the edge of the crowd. Myra reined in the horse and signalled the truck to stop. Nok-Yung jumped off the running-board. What had seemed from a distance like aimless wandering resolved itself into people moving about purposefully, retrieving and stacking their possessions from the self-disassembling huts. Most of them ignored her arrival. Myra was not surprised or put out. The benefits of her oversight were easy enough to overlook, and the camp committee itself was not a popular body among the prisoners, elected though it was. Like a company union, it had partially represented the interests of the labourers, while often enough relaying the will of the owners.
She noticed Shin Se-Ha, dapper in a sadly dated sarariman suit which he’d probably worn for the first and last time at his trial, but which for now signified his new freedom. He carried a small case through the scooting children and trudging adults. By now other vehicles and beasts were trundling or plodding into view, summoned by phones restored to their proper owners.
Myra stood, fondling the mare’s neck, quieting it, as the Japanese mathematician picked his way towards her. She tried to search her memory of what he’d been sent down for: misuse of company resources or some such pretext—he’d run refinements of Otoh’s neo-Marxian capital-reproduction schemata, primed with empirical data, on the university’s computers. The real reason was his results, which he’d indiscreetly spread-sheeted around: the sinister algebra of the Otoh equations added up to complete breakdown in two more business-cycles.
That had been one boom and one slump ago.
“Hello, Myra,” he said. He put the case down. Probably contained all he owned, he was that sort of guy. Frightening, in his way.
“Hi, Se-Ha. Nok-Yung tells me you’re going—” she nodded forward “—East.”
“I am. Sorry if you do not approve.”
Very direct! The sun shone in her face like an interrogation-lamp and the wind made a constant white noise. It was a time for telling the truth or facing worse ordeals.
“Whether I approve or not is not the point,” she said. “You’re free, and I have no say in what you do. But I should
warn you that the Kazakhstani Republic will resist the Sheenisov, and so will I. We will not be rolled over. I would be sorry to be on the opposite side to you in a battle, but—”
She shrugged.
“I would be sorry too,” said Shin. “But ‘so it goes’, ah-so!”
“Ah-so indeed,” she smiled, and suddenly realised how Reid had been able to keep up his no-hard-feelings enmities for so long. “Meanwhile, I have something for you.” She waved a hand at the truck. “This, and everything in it.” She tossed him the truck’s control-panel, which he deftly caught. “Go on, have a look.”
Doors clicked open, banged shut. He came back. He caught her hand; he bowed over it, as though about to kiss her knuckles, and stepped back.
T am in your debt,” he said, stiffly. Then he spread his hands, looking Western and abashed rather than Eastern and indebted. “What can I say, Myra? You’re very kind.”
“Ah, don’t be silly, my friend,” she said. “You and Nok-Yung and the others made my work here a lot more rewarding than it would otherwise have been. I owe you it, if anything.” She shared with him a conspiratorial chuckle. “And a library of revolutionary theory might just come in handy where you’re going, eh?”
Tes. I don’t know if I can take the responsibility.” He shook his head, thinking about it. “There are books and documents in that van which have never been scanned in.”
Myra patted a pocket. “Not even in the 2045 Library of Congress?”
“Not even that!” He seemed to find the thought awesome, a violation of the order of nature. It gave pause even to Myra’s resolution, as half a lifetime’s easy assumption that everything was archived, that every jot and tittle lived unchanged in silicon heaven, was suddenly confronted with the reality that some thoughts might only face eternity in the frail ark of woodpulp, and that she was responsible for them. Her commitment rallied.
“Oh, well. I should have read them by now, and if not, it’s too late for me.”
The bustle around them was increasing. Vehicles were whining, horses and camels were whinnying and spitting. Some children, even some adults, were in tears at leaving this place, which for all its duress had not imposed any too severe privation, and which was familiar. Some folk were assiduously picking up the glassy stones, whether as talismans or as trade-trinkets Myra couldn’t tell. The thousands of former prisoners were dispersing to all the round horizon.
Half a dozen other men were converging on where she stood, gathering around, talking in Korean or Japanese, smiling at her and climbing into the back of the truck. Nok-Yung came up and shook hands.
“We’ll keep in touch.”
There was so much to say, so much that could not be said.
“We’ll meet again.” Myra said. “All the best, guys. Good luck with the commies.”
“Hah!” Nok-Yung raised a clenched fist and grinned at her. “You’ll be with us some day, Myra, you’ll see. Goodbye, and thanks!”
He threw his bag in the truck and sprang into the driving-seat, then laughed as Shin Se-Ha climbed through the opposite door and flourished the control-panel under his nose. Still shouting and waving, the men drove off, bumping across the steppe, resolutely north-east.
Myra watched them out of sight and then mounted her horse and rode back to the town. Only once did she look behind, and saw that there was nothing left to see.
The airport of the capital of the International Scientific and Technical Workers’ Republic had only one terminal building. It was a big, open-plan space, dotted with franchises. They’d never bothered with Customs, or Immigration Control. Between the floor-to-ceiling windows—with their charming views of steppe, runway, apartment-blocks, gantries and more steppe—hung equally gigantic posters of Trotsky, Korolev, Kapitsa, Gagarin and Guevara. The idea, many years ago, had been to make the concourse look Communist: a bit of macho swagger. Right now it had the look of a place about to fall to the commies, rather to Myra’s disgust. Crowded with people sitting on too much luggage, their expressions flickering between impatience and resignation with every change on the departure screens. For heaven’s sake, thought Myra—Semipalatinsk was a hundred miles away, they were over-reacting.
Her own flight’s departure-time was not for another hour. She confirmed her booking at the check-in, made sure her luggage was on board, and declined the offer of waiting in the first-class lounge. Instead she made her way to the old Nkafe franchise, and sat down with a coffee and a cigarette, to rest her feet and indulge in a little nostalgia.
In the good old days before the Third World War she’d sipped many a coffee here, with many a man on the other side of the table. Always a different man, and almost never one that she’d liked: ugly, jowly military men for the most part, jet-lagged and stubbled, in creased dress uniforms heavily medal-lioned; or diplomats or biznesmen, sleek and shaven and cologned in silk suits. And always, hanging around a few metres away, outside the glowering ring of bodyguards, would be the photographers and reporters, there to record the closing of the deal. The ISTWR had never gone for secret diplomacy—openness was the whole point of tradable nuclear deterrence.
It had worked fine, until the nuclear war.
The Germans had launched the War of European Integration without a nuke to call their own. This hadn’t been an oversight—it had been essential to the element of surprise. Once their first wave of tanks was safely over the Polish border they’d made Myra a very generous offer for some of her tradable nuclear deterrence. Myra’s frantic ringing around her clients had found no one willing to deal: not for any amount of money, on the entirely rational basis that the Third World War was not a good time to sell. Myra had considered cutting them out and selling the Germans the option anyway, but her business loyalty had got the better of her. It had also got the better of the German occupiers of Kiev, and the German civilians of Frankfurt and Berlin. She still felt guilty about that.
For want of company, she flipped down her eye-band and summoned Parvus. For a laugh, she sat his virtual image in the seat across the table from her. The construct triangulated his apparent position, saw the joke and smiled.
“What can I do for you, Myra?”
Tell me what you think of the General.” She wasn’t bothered by appearing to talk to empty air; she wasn’t the only person in that cafe area consulting a familiar or a fetch.
“That is a tricky one,” said Parvus. He ran his fingers through his thatch, rummaged in his crumpled jacket for cigarettes. Lit up and relaxed; the addictive personality was part of the package, an aspect of how the thing hung together. “There are of course rumours —” dismissive smoketrail “—that the FI has long had access to a rogue AI. Or the other way round, according to its opponents.” Parvus showed his teeth. “It goes back to when AIs of that sophistication were rare—before the Revolution, or the Singularity.”
“This is the Singularity?” It was Myra’s turn to wave a cigarette. “Not like you’d notice.”
“It’s one of these things you don’t notice, when you’re in the middle of it,” agreed Parvus. “Like the mass extinction event that’s going on around us right now.”
“But that’s slow, that’s the point. The Singularity’s supposed to be fast on something more than a geological scale.”
“It was.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to take this discussion any further. “Anyway, back to the General, and what you make of him.”
“Ah, yes. Well. Very dangerous, in my opinion. His use of face and voice is remarkably effective at getting under the skin of… people with skin. Count yourself lucky he can’t use pheromones, at least not over the net.”
“You’re impervious to his charm yourself, I take it.”
“Yes,” Parvus sighed. “Fortunately for me, I lack self-awareness.”
Myra was still gaping at her familiar’s unexpected remark—surely ironic, though she wasn’t sure on what level—when Parvus’s place was occupied by a Kazakh man with smooth clothes and a lined face. He had a
distracting small child in tow, and a silently accusing puffy-eyed woman behind him. The woman took another chair, held the squirming toddler in her lap.
Myra blinked Parvus out of her sight, vaguely hoping that the AI wasn’t offended, raised her eyeband and smiled at the man and his family. His returning smile was forced.
“Good morning, Madame President. Why are you leaving us?”
Myra looked around. Nobody else seemed to have noticed her. The cult of personality was another strategic omission from their socialist democracy. Just as well—she didn’t want to be mobbed on her departure. “I’m not leaving you,” she said earnestly, leaning forward and speaking as though confidentially. Her mission had not yet been publicly announced, but she had no objection to starting a truthful rumour in advance. Only the details were sensitive, and at that level secrecy was pointless—she was confident that her full itinerary was already circulating the nets, buried among hundreds of spurious versions, all of equally authoritative provenance. I’m going to the West, to get help. Economic and military assistance.”
The man looked sceptical. “Against the Sheenisov? But we haven’t a chance, against them. We have no defensible borders.”
“No, but Kazakhstan has—and it’s on behalf of Kazakhstan that I’m going.”
Tor Chingiz?” The man’s face brightened; he glanced at his wife, as though to cheer her up. “So we are going to drive the Reds out of Semey?”
“We can’t bomb Semey,” Myra said, repeating exactly President Suleimanyov’s words to her. “But we can hold the pass east of Lake Zaysan, and we can stop any further advance in the north-east. If we get help soon. The SSU forces are unlikely to try anything for some weeks, because they’re stretched. And they don’t like frontal fighting. As long as the Kazakhstani Republic stays hostile to them, they won’t come in.” She grinned encouragingly. “And I can be sure our own republic will stay hostile.”
She was not sure at all. There was enough social discontent, understandable enough, in her redundant workers’ state for the Sino-Soviets to work on. No doubt the first agitators were already drifting in, among the first refugees from Semipalatinsk. But the man took her words to heart.