Null States
Page 39
If Mishima was famous before, she is now a megastar. At least three different interactives have already incorporated the mechanics of her spinning slice kick, speedblading is the new favorite exercise on the planet, and she has been approached for sponsorship by Nike, the makers of her skates. (Child and youth sizes have been immediately discontinued pending safety upgrades.) Her auburn hair, hidden during the negotiations, has not gone unnoticed: there is extensive use of her image in ads for hair color modification products, both genetic and dye-based, and a new manga series titled “Mishima Kenshin” has been announced, documenting her supposed adventures (Mishima, who has always been something of a Rurouni fan, is secretly pleased about that one).
“… they may use the killing of that man against you, but the vid makes it very clear that it was self-defense.” She realizes Nejime is still talking.
“They?” Mishima asks.
“Well, you won’t be running unopposed.” She hesitates. “I imagine Nougaz will be interested in the position.”
Mishima puts that disturbing news aside. “What exactly would I be doing? Is this a figurehead position, a repeat of the negotiations? Because you couldn’t pay me enough…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nejime snaps. “We have plenty of money-loving celebrities more famous than you we could pick if that were the case. This is going to be a powerful governmental body. More than that, it’s going to be defining its own role for at least the next decade.” The last words echo uneasily in Mishima’s mind, with the response Will it last for a decade? but she keeps that to herself, pulls her shoulders back, and tilts her chin up.
“I’ll let you know within forty-eight hours.”
* * *
“The first kiss was incredible.” Roz and Maryam are on Maryam’s terrace, a balcony almost the same square footage as her apartment.
“Who made the first move?”
“He did, I guess. Unless you count me ditching my job in Xinjiang.”
Maryam laughs, takes the hookah mouthpiece. “And? After the kiss?”
“Just the kiss,” Roz shakes her head slowly. “I couldn’t stay alone with him long. It wouldn’t be appropriate in DarFur. But … maybe next time, he’ll come here.”
Maryam exhales apple-scented steam, passes the mouthpiece to Roz, arches an eyebrow. “Just one kiss?”
Roz considers as she inhales. “Maybe more than one kiss. But nothing below the neck.” She thinks again. “The collarbone. Nothing below the collarbone.”
“It sounds good,” Maryam says.
“It was good,” Roz says, taking one more toke and handing the mouthpiece back. “Really good. But I convinced him not to move here yet.”
“He took his job back?” Maryam asks.
“He did. People are relieved, and I think he’s happy.”
“And when is he coming here?”
Roz can’t hide her smile. “Next weekend. That’s the plan, anyway. I told him if something comes up, I might have to cancel…”
“So, next weekend,” Maryam finishes.
“We’ll see.” Roz shifts in her seat, holds her hand out for the hookah. “It has occurred to me that it’s quite possible he’s a virgin.”
Maryam thinks about that, nods. “Possible, although I see it as unlikely. And if he is?”
“We’ll take it slow.” She grins. “Or not.” Another pause. “We are so different.”
“Are you worried about religion?” Maryam asks.
“That, but everything else too. He’s barely traveled, never lived anywhere else, we care about different things…”
“So, you’ll take it slow,” Maryam shrugs.
“Or not,” Roz mutters. She’s already booked her next trip to Kas, at the end of the month. “And you? You seem to be doing better.”
Maryam shrugs, her scarf slipping off her shoulder. “You were right. Getting out to the field was just what I needed.”
Roz smiles but says nothing, taking her toke. She suspects Sanz-Vidal, but she’s not sure. She takes a few puffs and moves on. “Are you still working on the leaked data trails?”
Maryam nods slowly. “It’s going to be a while.”
“Any sense yet for how big it is?”
“Not sure,” Maryam says. “It could be just those centenals, maybe a scattering more.”
“Or it could be everywhere,” Roz finishes. “Is that even possible? It took Information years to build up this level of infrastructure.”
“Technology has improved. Besides, they probably piggybacked a lot of it. If they did it right, we won’t be able to cut them off without cutting ourselves off, too.”
Roz looks out past the lights hung around the balcony, into the darkness around them. “What do you think they’re planning to do with it—siphon off or take over?”
“Their cover is blown now,” Maryam says. “Take over or nothing at this point, I think.”
* * *
Mishima chose her apartment in Saigon for the direct sunlight, the sizable terrace, and the layout permitting two separate workstations, but also, possibly most of all, for the fact that there was a Japanese bath already installed. Deep enough to sink in to your neck, large enough for two people, temperature-controlled both on-site and remotely. She tells Ken about her meeting with Nejime stretched out in the hot water, hair knotted atop her head, nape resting on the edge of the bath. Ken, whose tolerance for near-boiling immersion is lower, is sitting on the step at the other end, chest deep. Because Mishima is now obsessed with privacy and hasn’t had time to put vid-reflecting glass in the windows, the lights are off except for a single candle on the distant sink.
“Wow,” Ken says after she’s told him everything she can from the meeting. “Are you going to take it?”
Mishima fidgets, causing ripples. “I don’t know. It’s tempting. It would be different, high stakes, fascinating.”
“All the things you love.” Ken stretches his hands into the hot water and takes one of her feet. He loves them both, so he reaches at random and ends up with the right.
“Not a bad job for parenthood, probably,” Mishima goes on. Ken grins in the darkness. He wasn’t about to say it.
“There’s something else, though.” Mishima hasn’t been able to articulate this to herself yet, but it has been percolating all day, and now, in this dark space, she’s ready. “The way she was talking about trying to control the threats to Information, these attempts to drastically change a structure that is still more or less functioning … I think Information’s system has passed its zenith, as all systems must.”
Ken’s fingers still on her instep while he digests that. Information has always seemed immutable, inevitable, timeless.
“If that’s the case,” Mishima goes on, more decisive now that she’s past the insight part and on to the doing, “as I see it, we have three choices.”
Ken starts rubbing again; he loves her analytical side.
“We can work against this decline and try to make micro-democracy last as long as possible. Two: we can try, either from within or without, to bring about a quick mercy killing, to let the world get on with it and find something new.” Option two sounds masochistic to Ken, but he waits. “Or three: focus on the transition to whatever comes next and try to smooth that.”
“There’s another choice,” Ken says after a moment of quiet and lapping water. “Jump ship.” He can’t see her frown, but he can imagine it. She doesn’t disagree immediately, though.
“You know what I’ve been thinking about?” Mishima says. “That fake job I had for a week in Singapore.”
“At Moliner?” Ken releases her right foot and reaches for her left, but she hisses. He forgot about the torn toenail. Chastened, he lets go and takes the right one again.
“Yeah. There were moments when I wanted it to be real. It was so perfect…” In all the ways that her perfect life until now has not been. “Fun, funky neighborhood. Fun, funky job. They all probably think it’s high-stress, but to me? That would just be c
hill.”
“And you’d be good at it.”
“I bet I could get them to make it real. I bet Poppy would take me on.”
“Being famous wouldn’t hurt there, either,” Ken points out.
Mishima lolls, sliding in deeper, up to her chin. “Do you think you’d like that?” she asks, her mouth barely above the water.
Ken shrugs. “I like Singapore all right.” Nice though it might be, he’s not ready to settle down. He doubts Mishima is either. But if that’s what she decides, he’ll manage.
“We could try it,” she murmurs to the steaming water. “Stop worrying about saving the world.”
Ken keeps his counsel, and they are silent for a while, imagining the alternate life.
“If it were to be one of the others, though,” Mishima goes on.
Ken goes back over the first three. “You don’t think it’s a little early to be deciding which one?”
“Maybe,” Mishima admits. “I may be exaggerating the demise of the world order.” She pokes at him with her left foot, and he takes it again, more carefully this time. “But I will say … this job they offered me? It would a good place to be for whichever of those three paths we choose.”
Quiet again, in the warmth and the candlelight.
“It could also be fun.”
“In a different way.”
“Not exactly stress-free, but…”
“A different kind of stress.”
“You want to do it.”
“So do you.”
“I guess we’re going into politics.”
ALSO BY MALKA OLDER
Infomocracy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MALKA OLDER is a writer, humanitarian worker, and Ph.D. candidate at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations of Sciences Po, 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 a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Sri Lanka, 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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
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.
NULL STATES
Copyright © 2017 by Malka Older
All rights reserved.
Cover art 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 978-0-7653-9338-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9337-1 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765393371
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First Edition: September 2017