Null States

by Malka Older

  Or so Roz thinks until the candidates file in from a cut in the back and settle themselves into chairs on the low wooden stage. The conversation level in the tent falls into a respectful hum.

  Malakal offered to moderate the debate, but the Council opted for a low-intervention format and tapped Suleyman to manage it. Quite the vote of confidence in his impartiality, thinks Roz, studying his serene countenance from the back of the tent. Or maybe the powers-that-be want his opinion known. Either way, she’s impressed by the mantle of gravitas he has gathered around himself. He emanates dignity. She wonders if this is what everybody means when they talk about his being born to lead.

  Roz herself is very happy to be standing along the back wall of the tent, watching for reactions rather than working the annotation or moderating the debate (another possibility they had floated). Maria and Maryam are back at the compound, working together on the instant polling and crunching the reaction data while supervising Amran, who is managing the annotators. Charles and Minzhe are sitting up front, watching the debaters closely and liaising with Maria and her team.

  * * *

  Ken offers to stay for the rest of the assignment, but Mishima convinces him that he doesn’t really want to lose his job at Free2B. She’s fine, and having him there, while pleasant, would be a distraction she can’t afford, so he flies back to Saigon after their second night. That afternoon, she gets an invitation from Switzerland. Not wanting to spend another night running through the wilderness (and to demonstrate the status she was lacking last time she crossed the border), Mishima borrows an Information crow to get there.

  “After two days, I didn’t think you were going to get him,” she says as Donath escorts her down from the rooftop landing site. She wasn’t sure she’d recognize him in the daylight, but she remembers the lines of his face well enough, even if she couldn’t tell how blue his eyes were during that dark night. She’s washed the black out of her hair, and she notes his surprise when he sees her, although she’s pretty confident he will attribute the changed color to the earlier darkness. Mishima’s surface reason for going through the difficulty of undyeing and redyeing her hair is to look as different from Kei as possible, to prevent problems in the very unlikely case that Kei and Donath should ever meet. She’s also aware of a curious wish for Donath to see Mishima in all her intimidating and idiosyncratic reality. This is probably due to some sort of physical attraction, a by-product of all the excitement the other night.

  “You can ride in the front this time, if you like,” the cop says, opening the door for her with a flourish.

  “Actually, I thought I’d drive,” Mishima says.

  The Swissman’s eyebrows go up.

  “It’s a classic car,” she says, gesturing at the vehicle: a peeling Peugeot this time. His Renault must still be out of commission. “We don’t get much opportunity to practice shifting on our side of the border.”

  The cop shrugs, tosses her the keys. “Be my guest,” he says gruffly.

  Mishima had no intention of driving before he gave her the line about sitting in front, but now that she’s behind the wheel, she’s accomplished two things: she gets to drive this amazing car, and the ease with which he gave way quashed any interest she might have had in Donath.

  “So, tell me about this suspect,” Mishima says, pulling out onto the street and shifting into second. She doesn’t even care if her clutch use is clunky. She hasn’t done this in so long, it feels rare and exciting, like riding a horse down the streets of Tokyo. “How did you find him?”

  “Her,” Donath says, one hand gripping the dashboard. “Take the second right.” They are in Martigny, some small city not too far from Geneva. It’s strange to Mishima not to have to think about centenal borders. “It was simple, really. We used the vids of that road—we do have some, you know. There were few cars, and it was easy to eliminate most of them.”

  “Eliminate them how?” Mishima asks, wary of prejudices and preferences.

  “By their routes, the times in between cameras,” Donath explains.

  Mishima makes the turn, sees a stretch of road without traffic lights, and upshifts.

  “This is a school zone.”

  “It’s Saturday.” She takes them into fourth.

  “This car doesn’t actually go so fast,” the cop says, frustrated.

  “Maybe not, but the shifting is fun.” She takes them down into third. “What kind of times between cameras are we talking about?”

  “The cameras are spaced approximately twenty kilometers apart.”

  Bleeping Switzerland. Anything could happen in that amount of time. “So, you picked up the suspect.”

  “We did. And she freely admitted to having given the perp a ride. Turn left up ahead.”

  “Let me guess,” Mishima says, downshifting again. “Hitchhiker.”

  “No, indeed,” Donath answers. “It was all planned beforehand. But he couldn’t have been involved in that terrible bombing; he was the nicest man.”

  “She knew him?”

  “The large building on the left. There is a parking lot entrance just before it. No, she said she didn’t know him before she picked him up, so this is based on the conversation they had in the vehicle. She was so disturbed to hear he was dead. She’s quite hostile toward us now.”

  Ah. “I’m the good cop?”

  Donath winces. “I doubt either of those descriptors apply.”

  Touché. “The nicest man based on the conversation they had in the car and … the recommendation of whoever asked her to give him a ride?” Mishima pulls into a space, turns off the car.

  “That is exactly the point we would like you to illuminate. Please remember to leave the car in the lowest gear when you turn it off.”

  * * *

  “… and continue my husband’s legacy as only I know how to do,” Fatima announces.

  Roz darts a glance at Amal, whom she noticed earlier in the rear of the tent, but her expression doesn’t change from the small set smile she’s been wearing all evening, and her hands are relaxed in her sunset-colored lap.

  There is a brief pause after the last of the candidate statements. There was very little about policy beyond the vaguest platitudes, but Amran and the annotators did a good job of bulking it out with overlays reminding everyone of the stated policy positions, projected within the tent and in the marketplaces of this and every other DarFur centenal for anyone who doesn’t have a personal projector. In Roz’s professional opinion, the militia leader Hamid Mohamed gave the best performance, independent of policy: he was clear, matter-of-fact, and coherent, and he projected his authority clearly without being overbearing. The two sheikhs from the more remote centenals were obviously reading from notes at eyeball level, and Abdul Gasig’s speech was informal and wandering. But it is Fatima who gets the biggest reaction, even though her presentation was quiet and almost self-effacing. Maybe that’s what they want from a candidate, at least if that candidate is the widow of the former leader. Roz has long since given up on understanding why any given population will choose one person over another to be their leader.

  On the stage, Suleyman stands, offers another brief invocation, and then invites questions.

  Roz steps away from the post she had been leaning against, shifting into security mode. They did body scans at the entrance to the tent, but almost every adult male was wearing a knife, as Suleyman had predicted beforehand. The candidates had unanimously supported his petition that knives not be forbidden from the tent, and Malakal reluctantly agreed. Roz was more worried about the raised stage (why, when everyone else was sitting on the floor and they would have chairs? But apparently it was a necessary bit of pomp) and had it swept three times for explosives. She means to keep a close eye on any questioners who get agitated or aggressive.

  * * *

  Swiss holding cells are significantly nicer than Mishima’s very low expectations. Maybe they have special accommodations for potential witnesses. Daisy Lepont, the woman sitting in the low
, padded chair, is not quite what Mishima imagined from Donath’s briefing. She is spare, dressed in a tasteful paneled sheath with a neat jacket, and her hair is pulled back into a harsh bun.

  Mishima shakes out her own hair, unbuttons her jacket, and walks in. “Hi!” she says, holding out her hand. “I’m Jun”—one of the identities she uses for casual cover-ups, with the public Information to match. “I work for Information, and we’ve been asked to provide some outside oversight for this case.”

  The woman’s eyes pop. “Information? I didn’t think you had any jurisdiction here.”

  “We don’t,” Mishima says cheerfully. “But we’re sometimes asked in as a third-party watchdog, to make sure there are no misunderstandings with the Swiss police. After all, one suspect has already died in this case.” She wonders if Donath, still in the observation room, is cringing or nodding approval of her strategy.

  “I’m—I’m not a suspect,” Daisy says, one hand at her breastbone. Suspect? Moi? “Just a witness.”

  “Ah,” Mishima says, making a show of blinking some intel up in front of her vision. “Is that what they told you? Suspect in providing assistance, plotting violence, and impeding an investigation is what I have here.” She’s grateful to the hub in Paris for providing, via Donath’s nifty antenna, the correct legal terms under the Swiss system. It wouldn’t have been a simple thing to look up.

  “I didn’t—” Daisy shakes her head. “I’m sure this will all be cleared up.”

  “No doubt,” Mishima agrees. “And as you know, Information can help with that, especially if you give us some pointers on where to look. Now, how did you arrange to meet this passenger?”

  “As I told them,” Daisy starts, but her voice is already wavering, “it was on one of those anonymous ride-matching services.”

  Mishima shakes her head slowly. “That doesn’t match our records.” She has no intel on this; Swiss law, unfathomably, protects the data of those services, even from the police, and she doesn’t have the time or inclination to hack through their robust security. But she doesn’t see this buttoned-down, well-dressed woman taking that kind of risk for a paltry amount of money.

  Daisy doesn’t lose her composure as she takes the hook. She looks down for a moment, then meets Mishima’s eyes. “I don’t know who he was. And I still don’t believe that young man had anything to do with the bombing in Geneva.” But her voice falters again there—she is starting to believe, even if she doesn’t want to. “My friend assured me that this was just a simple favor…” She lets it drift off before she loses it completely.

  “Of course,” Mishima says, soothingly. “That’s hardly a punishable offense. And your friend probably didn’t know any more about it than you did.”

  “I’m sure,” Daisy says, struggling now not to cry. “I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything illegal.”

  “He was probably misled,” Mishima agrees. “And the person who did that to him, that’s who we’re after. The sooner we find that person, the sooner your friend will be out of danger.”

  “You think he could be in danger?” That startles her, and Mishima watches as her stunned brain slowly pieces together the links in the logic: if her friend is in danger for setting this up, then she could be too.

  “Quite possibly,” Mishima says. “Which is why it’s imperative we get in touch with him as soon as possible.”

  Daisy is still reluctant, and repeatedly asks for assurances that he won’t “get in trouble,” but she does eventually cough up an address. A physical address in Aubonne. Mishima doesn’t have access to Information, but she took a good look at the maps before crossing over again, and she can picture the town, to the north of what remains of Lac Léman. Big enough for a stranger not to be too conspicuous, close enough to Geneva to go back and forth. “No other contact details? How did you get in touch?”

  “We would meet for drinks, lunches.” Daisy lowers her eyes, and Mishima puts some effort into showing no reaction.

  “You must have communicated to set the dates, though.”

  Daisy shook her head. “He was … He told me he was on a break from virtual interactions. When I wanted to see him, I would go by his place, and he would be working in the garden or painting. It was … refreshing.”

  Indeed. “Where did you meet, then?”

  “At the lake,” Daisy says; her voice and expression tell Mishima the encounter was suitably romantic. She can already picture the man scouting for a single person with a vehicle and the right attitude; the easily arranged chance of beach towels laid side by side on the grass.

  “When was this?”

  “Early summer,” Daisy says, as if she doesn’t remember the exact date and time. Mishima lets it go. Donath can get it out of her in the follow-up if he wants, but early summer is already enough to rearrange Mishima’s assumptions about the case. Excluding some lucky opportunism or an extraordinary level of contingency planning, early summer means this has been in the cards for months. Has the secession, and its opposition, been in play for that long? Or was there a different reason for the target?

  * * *

  Almost all of the debate questions are aggressive, starting with an old woman who pulls herself to her feet with a cane, offers a blessing, and then starts imprecating all of the candidates, together and individually, for not saying more about what they will do for children and the elderly. After their (for the most part still-vague) answers about school-building and hospitals, a minor sheikh stands up and asks about taxes and why he and his constituents have to pay them and why some have to pay more than others. Roz can almost feel Amran’s panic as the annotations get longer and longer, and then Maria’s calming influence as they start to sort themselves into a branching summary of the rationale, history, and political economy of taxation. Meanwhile, the candidates are dabbling in numbers or at least ranges of numbers, which is encouraging. A young man stands up and makes to talk for a long time about the assassination of Al-Jabali and what it means, but Suleyman cuts him off with unassailable politeness and tells him to come to a question. At which point he asks, still long-windedly, what the candidates will do to protect them from the pernicious elements that surround their wonderful government. The militia leader comes out best on that one as well, although Fatima plays gracefully on her bereavement before coming back with a rousing (if vague) proclamation of fierceness toward their enemies.

  Apparently, these answers don’t satisfy everyone. “What will you do about Information?”

  The shout comes from the crowd, out of order, and Roz sees Suleyman craning to identify the speaker as she runs the replay in front of her left eye, zooming in on that section of the audience. By her second replay, Maria’s team has haloed and identified the speaker as one Omer Jibrail, and Suleyman has asked him, in the same courteous tone, to clarify his question.

  “They make you spend all that tax money you just talked about on ways to watch us! And for what? So they can tell us what to do? How is that different from being under the Sudanese?”

  Roz jerks forward in alarm. The audience turns restless, and as her view shifts through the marketplace projections in centenals around DarFur, she sees people standing and gesturing, and more voices join in across the linked feeds.

  From Djabal: “Send them home!”

  And from Garsila: “No need for Information here!”

  “So, what I want to know,” the original shouter goes on with some satisfaction, “is what all of you are going to do about it!” He is echoed by an approving murmur from the crowd.

  Roz is balanced on her toes and considering evacuation logistics, but no one has reached for a knife yet (Maria’s team will be watching closely for that), and Suleyman has nodded and turned to the candidates.

  The sheikh from Jebel Marra tears into the question eagerly, expostulating about how he will kick out Information (by which Roz supposes he means withdraw from the micro-democratic system) and restore the independence, self-determination, and proud historic culture of DarFur, and how
this will allow them to assert their traditional dominance and protect their borders and generally make everything better.

  Roz knows that this kind of vague rhetorical gobbledygook can appeal to voters or incite violence, but she’s glad he’s saying it. Having a single, low-polling candidate come out strongly for an issue will provide great polling data, and she’s very curious indeed to know more precisely how DarFuris feel about Information. Also, unless she is badly misreading, the murmur in the debate tent has taken on a distinct tone of discomfort. People are wary of Information but none too eager for upheaval, either.

  When Abdul Gasig gets the nod, he leans forward and shakes his finger at young Omer Jibrail directly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Information is our best opportunity to connect with the world and build our status. Their ways seem strange to you because they’re new here, but most of the world is completely accustomed to them. Information is the way business is done! Do you want to turn us into a null state, backward and isolated? That is not the way to revive our heritage, not in today’s world.” He knocks his walking stick against the platform, and Roz startles even though she expects the hollow thunk. She glances at her crew. Malakal is impassive, Charles has a slight smile—if Abdul Gasig is supporting them, the wind must be blowing in their favor. Minzhe, however, is listening to the merchant’s answer with an expression that looks like suspicion. Maybe that’s his default debate face: when Abdul Gasig finishes speaking, he turns his intense gaze on the militia commander.