by Malka Older
Not something, someone. A large man in a cotton shirt and trousers, grizzled chin, not much hair on top, stands in his path. “You’re not a citizen, are you?”
Ken has a pungent flashback to the early years of high school, when his strange Brazilian accent and un-Japanese mannerisms got him beat up more than once. It’s about to happen again, and he opens his mouth with the hopelessness of the inevitable. “I’m not, no,” he says, trying for a smile. “I was trying to find my way back to Policy1st. It’s—this way, right?”
The man guffaws, his laughter echoed by two men leaning against a building to the left. Ken can’t believe he didn’t see this coming. “Well, we can escort you to Policy1st. Make sure you get there okay.” The man nods to his friends and they fall into formation around Ken, each of them at least half again Ken’s weight.
“Work for Policy1st, do you?” asks one, his hair a stiff bristle and his denim shirt unbuttoned to the breastbone.
Ken has barely opened his mouth when the third man, slender but hard, speaks up. “I bet he’s a spy from that 888 group they were talking about.”
This wild leap catches Ken so by surprise that he responds. “What? No, I don’t know anything about—”
“That’s the Chinese one?” asks the first man, running his eyes up and down Ken. “Sounds about right.”
“I’m not even Chinese,” Ken protests, although he knows perfectly well that 888 has plenty of staff who are not Han Chinese. “I work for Policy1st. Our centenal is right next door. Look”—he flicks to the ID view in his handheld. “Policy1st. Campaign staff. See?”
The first man takes the handheld from Ken and peers at it as if it were a greasy playing card. “Anyone could have doctored this,” he says, passing it to his companions. Ken realizes he’s made a tactical error.
“Hey, this handheld doesn’t have the Liberty intranet adaptor,” the slim man says. “Maybe instead of taking him to Policy1st, we should bring him to HQ so he can get one.”
“I’m not a Liberty citizen,” Ken explains, trying one last time for dignity. “I’m surprised that you would treat a guest…”
They’re already laughing, such loose and relaxed laughs that the heavy blow to the gut takes Ken entirely by surprise. He folds over, gasping for breath. He didn’t even see which one hit him—maybe the image was pulverized by the impact. He’s still wheezing desperately when the next punch comes, right across his cheekbone. He stumbles down onto one knee. If he stays up at all, it’s not from misplaced valor, but because he’s too confused to figure out what to do. There is a slight breather, long enough for his thoughts to gather and his hearing to coalesce on the laughter and taunts surrounding him. The side of his face feels huge, and he reaches up to run his hand along his cheek. He hears a trill, then another. When nothing hits him immediately, he risks looking up. The men are staring at their handhelds. The guy with the denim shirt is looking back and forth between his own handheld and Ken’s, mouth ajar.
Ken wants to ask what’s going on, but he doesn’t dare. He watches them, wondering if he should run. They’re distracted; he might get a good start. But he’s nauseous and he still can’t fill his lungs all the way. And they have his handheld.
“So, Information’s back up?” the slim man asks.
“Can’t you read?” the first guy, the leader, responds. “Information’s not up, but it will be soon.”
“But we can vote,” the slim man says uncertainly.
“Voting and personal communications,” denim shirt says. A pause. “So, I guess we can call people?”
“How long do you think it will take to get full service?”
“What do I look like to you, an Information grunt?”
Ken tries to swallow, pushes at the ground until he’s on his feet. “Look, gentlemen,” he starts.
They look over but don’t seem to care that he’s gotten up. “Hey,” says the slim man. “We can call people. Let’s call Policy1st and see if this guy is who he says he is.”
“Use his handheld,” the leader orders.
Denim shirt hands it over and the thin guy looks for the Policy1st office details. “Kinda funny you don’t have it in saved in here,” he sneers.
“It’s there,” Ken blurts. “Let me find it!” He holds his hand out. The Beirut office number is there, as part of his mission prep, but he’s not sure anyone briefed them about his mission. If they give him the phone, he can call an office in another country; they’ll vouch for him …
“Nah, I got it.” The man is staring at Ken’s handheld, waiting for the call to go through. Ken remembers himself in that Information meeting, fighting for communication for the masses. Very noble, and he’s about to get screwed for his troubles.
“Nothing,” the slim guy says. “No one’s answering.”
“Must be an overload,” Ken suggests. He’s trying to edge away from these guys without them noticing.
“Call 888,” the leader says. “Let’s see if they know him.”
“You got the number?”
“Why the hell would I have a number for 888?”
Ken takes a deep breath and bolts. He can feel the dust sliding from the road into the air behind him, hear their shouts: “Hey!” “What the—” But they don’t sound worried, just surprised. His lungs are already rasping, and a second later, a huge body tackles him, and then he hits the ground, hard. There’s a weight on his back and the sharp pain of a boot striking his ribs. A heavy fist slams into his ear. Ken coughs; his fingertips rake at the dusty pavement. His head is ringing, and everything he hears is garbled.
There’s another voice now, a woman’s voice, but he can’t understand what she’s saying. Something angry. The weight lifts off of him, an incredible relief. He cradles his head in his arms, concentrates on breathing and on listening for the next blow.
Ken’s not sure how much time passes before he looks up, but it feels like coming out of a fever dream. He lifts his head slightly; no one is standing over him. A foot or two away, there’s a woman in a white dress yelling at his attackers, but he still can’t make out what she’s saying; all he hears are random syllables, harsh tones with no meaning. Could he be brain-damaged? He whispers, “I’m okay,” and it makes sense, at least to him. As he climbs to his feet, he realizes that they must have broken the translator slotted inside his right ear. He groans.
The woman turns her attention to him. She addresses him in a very different tone from the one she used with his assailants—apologetic and warm. She hands him his handheld. The three men, meanwhile, are slinking away, not without some grim glances his way. Ken clears his throat, tastes blood.
“I can’t understand you,” he says, as loudly as he can. “I think they broke my translator.” He says it in Portuguese, just to make sure he still can.
The woman’s face shows consternation, then thought. “English?” she asks. Ken nods in relief and immediately regrets it. His head is splitting. He glances after the retreating men to make sure they’re gone—even moving his eyes hurts—and then focuses on her. She’s very attractive: long dark hair threaded through with gold filaments, big dark eyes, and a lovely curve from waist to hips. Her dress is simple cotton but with a herringbone pattern done in micro-cutouts. “I’m so sorry about that,” she says, in smooth but accented English. Nice to hear accents for a change, Ken thinks. “They got a little carried away. Everyone is so nervous, stressed because of these problems.”
“Yeah,” Ken says, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth to check for loose teeth. “Uh, thanks for your help.”
She smiles at him. “The least I could do for a colleague.”
Ken has never felt so confused. “Um…”
“They didn’t believe you work for Policy1st, but I told them it’s true. I’ve seen you before.”
Ken can’t remember ever meeting her. “Really? Where?” He remembers the vid that caught him in the Tokyo office after the earthquake. It seemed like such a big deal back then.
She
is squinting. “Ah. Where? Kiev? Budapest?” He shakes his head. “No, it was warmer … wait, I know! Lima.” She is nodding. “You visited that funny woman, the profesora.”
Ken’s jaw drops, painfully. “You were the Liberty … scout?”
She laughs. “Yes.” Holds out a hand. “Camille Saad. I went back to the woman a few days after my first visit and she told me you had been there and that you were very persuasive.” She wags a finger at him teasingly. She’s beyond attractive. Ken wonders if she would stab him in the leg.
“Small world,” he croaks. He decides she probably would. Maybe better not to ask her about all those weird pop-ups and the intranet devices.
She’s started walking, and he follows her a few steps before he realizes it’s the wrong direction.
“Where are we going?” he asks. “I need to get back to Policy1st.” And maybe a clinic. At least a bed.
“Oh, I was going to take you to the government headquarters so you can make a complaint about those men.” It seems like a very reasonable idea when she says it.
“No I—I have to get back.” He backs away.
She seems about to argue, then nods and follows him. “I understand. I’ll walk you out.” A dazzling smile. Ken is feeling more and more nervous, but maybe it’s leftover adrenaline from getting beat up. “So, this is your home centenal?” he asks.
“For now, yes,” Camille says. “What are you doing here?”
“I came in to do some election monitoring for Policy1st, got stuck here.” He tries a disarming look, but he’s pretty sure it doesn’t make it through the bruises. “I was going stir-crazy, so I came out for a walk. Didn’t think I’d end up taking such a beating.” He leaves a pause. “Is this sort of thing happening a lot?”
“Oh, they are just … as you said, stir-crazy? Everyone is worried. What will happen next? Will Information ever come back or are we back in the forties, you know?” She shivers. “It’s scary.”
The shiver is a little much. Ken’s left eye is swelling shut, and he falls back to put her on his right where he can see her. “I’m sure it will come back on,” he says, trying to sound more comforting than confident. “Especially now that the voting is up. So, this intranet thing—did that come from the Liberty global government?”
“Of course not! We haven’t had any contact with the global government since Information went out.” She peers at him. “Have you?”
“No, no,” Ken says. “I thought maybe it was a contingency plan. You got it up so fast.”
“We have some good people here. You should consider making the switch,” she says, and winks. Ken is glad his black eye prevents him from any temptation of winking back.
“Yeah, heh heh, maybe next election.” They have reached the border with Policy1st. “Okay, well, thank you again. How crazy to meet you in person after all that campaigning.” He laughs nervously again. “So, I think I’m going to go get myself an icepack or something.” He can’t quite wish her good luck. “Take care!”
“Okay, you too!” she says cheerfully. “Maybe we can get together sometime after all this smoothes out.”
“Sure, yeah.” Ken turns away and tells himself not to look back. He is feeling nauseous and every breath is painful, but he makes himself walk straight for three blocks before he turns. As soon as he is sure he is out of sight, he calls in the crow.
CHAPTER 28
The powers-that-be at Information have decided that there’s no point (other than tradition) in waiting for midnight on the international date line to roll around, and within half an hour of the techies’ declaring the voting system unbreakable, they open it up. Messages go out to every handheld and tablet in the world: Welcome back! Voting has reopened as of [local time to the second]. You have twenty-four hours to make your choice! We are happy to Inform you that personal communications are now functioning, and we are working to bring all Information back at your disposal as soon as possible! The text is adorned with animations of fireworks and culturally appropriate celebratory motifs; there was a small team of techies dedicated to preparing that. In centenals without one hundred percent handheld and tablet penetration, the message is projected in town squares and displayed on public billboards.
The ballots do not immediately pour in; it seems most people want to make use of the personal comms before bothering to vote. About an hour in, however, the numbers start to climb, and by the end of the third hour, the totals are close to what they were four days earlier. Mishima, like most analysts, is tasked with watching for discrepancies as they come in. It’s a far more difficult job now, with no Information about what’s going on in the centenals.
“How can we know if something is unusual when we don’t know what people have been doing for the past hundred hours?” “Sure, this jump in the incumbent’s numbers could be a discrepancy, or it could be that they’ve been campaigning nonstop ever since they realized we couldn’t police them.” Mishima, back at her post by the espresso machine in the Information office, watches the complaints in the analysts’ section of the intranet. She doesn’t disagree with them, but she’s too busy to join in. She’s tracking a different dataset: as the votes come in, she’s comparing them with the initial votes from the abortive election four days ago. It’s a difficult problem: she sees totals by centenal but has no way of knowing which vote comes from which person. Different percentages now may mean that a lot of voters have changed allegiances, or that different people are voting. For the moment, she doesn’t see any huge shifts, but it’s too early to tell.
* * *
When the comms went out, Yoriko thought it was only on Amami Ōshima and spent twelve hours cursing the backwardness of the tiny island before finally realizing that the problem might be broader. This was partially because she knew almost no one on the island. If she turned her translator off, she even had some trouble understanding the dialect, especially when the locals spoke quickly. In her efforts to keep her kids (and, incidentally, herself) occupied without recourse to Information, she ended up interacting with more people than she would have otherwise. Amami is quite old-fashioned in that a lot of the service jobs are still done by people. Yoriko was at first annoyed to have to deal with humans at the ice cream parlor, the beach chair rental, and the projection arcade. But once she got used to it, she found she enjoyed the quaintness. It also meant that she eventually heard the rumors that people getting off the ferry hadn’t been able to access Information at their points of origin, either.
She can’t help worrying about her friends on Okinawa. She had called almost no one to tell them about her sudden move. When she finally gets the message about Information coming online, her first thought is to call her friends and let them know she’s alive. She only considers voting once her need for long-distance interaction has been slaked. She is no less angry with Suzuki than before; if anything, more so. She almost doesn’t vote at all. If she is going to vote, she needs to choose a new party; after talking to the locals, she has decided 1China is too frightening to vote for, even as a meaningless gesture. She thinks about voting for SecureNation, to prevent any recurrence of this ridiculousness with the communications, but for some reason, she can’t find them on the ballot. Finally, she taps YourStory and closes the program in disgust.
* * *
Nobody told them to let Domaine out of the holding cell, so he is still there. However, voting rights are inviolable, and once the system is online again, a guard comes down and gives him his handheld and ten minutes of privacy. Domaine has no intention of voting, but he uses the time to doctor the data from the autothief he used on Mishima’s handheld and the sensor he had recording their conversation, and sends it out to a couple of key people.
* * *
“What were you even doing in the Liberty centenal?” Nejime asks. Ken starts to explain: the initial message from Amuru, the hints during the debates … “The short version,” Nejime cuts in, glancing at her handheld. Five hours into the election, there are a lot of demands on her time; the fa
ct that she is personally debriefing Ken is an indication of how worried they are about Heritage.
“Heritage was fine,” Ken says again. “I don’t know if they had anything to do with the outage, but the centenal felt completely normal. But you should be worried about Liberty. We’ve been tracking them for weeks because of those vague threats, and now they’re going berserk. I don’t know what you can do, but you better do something.”
“Could it be confined to that centenal? Maybe something to do with the centenal government or localized conflicts with their neighbors?” Roz asks. Her eyes don’t rest on Ken’s very long, reminding him that his face is a mess. He got his diagnostics checked and washed off the blood and dust in Beirut, but he still looks pretty bad.
“I don’t know; there were all these advids. And that projection of Fabré? That had to be made after the outage happened, and they got it there somehow. Not to mention the crazy handheld attachments. The Liberty spy I met told me that it wasn’t centrally coordinated, but I’m sure she was lying.”
“Liberty spy?” Roz asks.
Ken waves his hand. “Long story.”
“Do you think they could have caused the outage?” Nejime asks. “Are they trying to steal the election?”
“I don’t know.” Ken looks at Roz with his good eye. “I guess … I hope we’ll find out by watching the votes.”
“All right,” Nejime says. “Get me a full report, and we’ll deal with it after the election.”
“After the election may be too late,” Ken says, but she’s already beckoning other people into her office from the corridor, and Roz shepherds Ken out.