Conventions of War def-3

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Not in such quantity,” he said.

  “Don’t underestimate yourself. You juggled quite a number of us, back on Zarafan.”

  He looked at her again. “It’s not Zarafan anymore.”

  Now it was Chandra’s turn to look away. Her eyes passed over the chubby children. “Still,” she added, “it’s a good deal more cheerful than what the captain has inhis private quarters.”

  Martinez told himself that he wasn’t interested in what Chandra had seen in her visits to the captain’s chambers. “Is that so?” he found himself saying.

  “Oh yes.” She raised an eyebrow. “It’s nothing like what he’s got in the public areas.”

  Pornography, then,Martinez concluded. The thought depressed him. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  “Oh,” Chandra said, “I don’t have anything to do. I’m not on watch for hours yet.”

  “Ihave work,” Martinez said. Chandra gave a shrug, then braced to the salute.

  Martinez again called up the tactical display. Chandra left the room.

  Martinez glanced at the display and saw nothing new. In fact he had no work, not until the squadcom found a task for him or something unexpected turned up on the tactical display.

  He wished there were more to do. He very much wanted a task in which he could lose himself.

  The alternative was to think about what might happen to Termaine if the system’s governor refused Michi’s demands. Or to think about his marriage. Or think of Chandra, near, available, and dangerous. Or, worst of all, to think about Caroline Sula.

  In an attempt to fill the hours till supper, Martinez called up hypertourney on the desktop computer and tried to lose himself within a game of strategy and abstract spacial relationships.

  He played both sides, and lost.

  FOUR

  This is the official newsletter of the loyalist government-in-exile. A loyal friend has suggested that we send this to you. We hope that you duplicate this document and share it with other loyal citizens.Do not send this through electronic mail! We distribute this notice through safe means, but you cannot. If you send this electronically, the rebels will trace this message to its place of origin and you will be caught.

  If you can, reproduce this newsletter using scanners and duplicators that cannot be traced to you. Remove the image and/or text from the duplicator’s buffer afterward, if you can. Share it with friends, or display it in a public place.

  If you can’t reproduce this material physically, share this information with friends you can trust.

  What We Owe Our Government

  The fact that we are under occupation by an invader has caused even loyal citizens to question their actions and to wonder what is required of them. They do not know how to respond to the rebels who have seized the capital and whose demands on the population are backed by threats of arrest, torture, and violence. They are uncertain how to respond to the invaders’ demands for loyalty. We of the secret government offer the following as a guide.

  As loyal citizens, we owe the government-in-exile our trust. We trust that they are fighting on no matter what the Naxids tell us through their controlled media. We trust that our government will return, defeat the rebel forces, and restore legitimate rule. We trust that the rebels will be punished along with those who helped them. Likewise, we trust that those who resist the Naxids will be rewarded by a grateful government after the restoration.

  What else do we owe our government?

  We owe it to our government to stay alive! We can’t resistthe usurpers if we’re dead. Therefore we should avoid any unnecessary acts of confrontation that will result in our being captured or killed. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t resist the Naxids, just that we should resist wisely, and on our own terms.

  In order to resist, we must first organize and share information. Sharing this newsletter with your family and with trustworthy friends is a beginning. If you possess information that may be of value to the secret government, try to pass it to someone who may be able to make use of it. If you discover anything that the Naxids wish kept secret, spread the secret as widely as you can.

  We owe the government the use of our minds!Keep track of rebel activities. Note which Naxid gives which orders. Note which of your neighbors and colleagues follows those orders, and with what degree of enthusiasm. Keep your memories clear and fresh. After the war you may be required to testify.

  We owe the government our service against the rebels!The enemy can be attacked. Not simply through force of arms, but through other means. Rebel placards can be defaced. Loyalist slogans can be painted on walls. The latest anti-Naxid jokes can and should be circulated.

  If you can, you are allowed to attack Naxid officials. They are mortal, and they can die. But remember that you are not required to risk your life needlessly-make sure of your escape route, then strike!

  What Do We Owe the Naxids?

  We owe the Naxids only what they take at the point of a gun!The Naxids’ rule is based on threat of naked force. Therefore we will cooperate only when that threat is clear and unambiguous.

  If a Naxid demands an oath of loyalty, giveit. An oath extorted under threat of arrest or dismissal is meaningless. You will not be penalized after the war for taking such an oath, so long as you cooperate with the enemy only when you must.

  If a Naxid asks you for directions, you are not required toknow the answer.

  If a Naxid asks you to identify a friend or a neighbor, youare permitted to feign ignorance.

  If a Naxid asks you for information you are known to possess, give the information if you must.Act only according to the letter of your instructions: provide neither more nor less than what is asked for. You are not required to volunteer any additional information that may be in your possession, and if the information contains errors that cannot be traced to you, you cannot be blamed.

  If you are asked to inform on a colleague,you are allowed to tell the Naxids that your colleague is their friend. Unless of course heis a Naxid sympathizer, in which case you are allowed to cast suspicion upon his activities.

  If you are asked to participate in a roundup or arrestof those believed to work against the Naxids, you can hardly be blamed if your information is incorrect, so that the arrest goes wrong and the victim escapes.

  If you are asked to work for the Naxids, youare permitted to make mistakes, particularly if the mistakes can’t be traced to you. Improper maintenance can result in the destruction of machinery or vehicles. Deliveries can be sent to the wrong address, or to the wrong continent. Food can suffer spoilage or contamination. Videos can accidentally be erased. Labels can be confused. Weapons and explosives can vanish from inventory and appear in the hands of loyalist volunteers.

  If you are asked to believe the Naxids propaganda, don’t.They say the legitimate government is on the brink of surrender, but it isn’t. They say that the Fleet has suffered one defeat after another, but it hasn’t. They say that the secret government of Zanshaa has been destroyed, but they lie, and you are looking at the proof right now.

  Remember that the rebel government will not last. We owe them only our enmity.

  Remember that the legitimate government will return. We owe them our trust.

  Remember that you can help the enemy fail. Do what you can to undermine the rebel authority.

  Remember to circulate this message as widely as you can.

  Remember that the secret government is in more places than you know. Know that we are always working against the enemy, and on your behalf.

  Remember that our victory is assured.

  Sula glanced once more over the text. She bit her lip as she read through some of her more preposterous declarations-“the secret government is in more places than you know”-and she wondered how many lives her words would claim.

  Her own misrepresentations aside, she had far less confidence in the legitimate government than her message alleged. So far they had bungled e
verything, and any success the government could claim was the result of a few individuals lucky enough to be in the right place, and talented enough to be able to act effectively against the enemy. And-come to think of it-those individuals were so few that she knew most of them personally.

  Her newsletter was intended to encourage citizens to act against the Naxids, though she suspected that few would. And of these, many would fail, and be arrested or killed. Most of the rest would probably be totally ineffective.

  Even so, she thought she had little choice. The secret government and almost all its military had been tortured to death. Her task, assigned by the government in which she had little faith, was to mobilize opposition to the Naxids. She couldn’t mobilize soldiers, and so civilians would have to do.

  If they died, they died.Human warmth not my specialty.

  Sula turned to Spence, who was looking at the text from over her shoulder. “Can you think of anything we’ve missed?”

  Spence shook her head. “I think it’s marvelous. It’s everything we could think of.”

  “The newsletter still needs a name.”

  Macnamara, who was in the kitchen pouring out bottles of iarogut into the sink, called out, “Our last bulletin wasThe Loyalist. ”

  “That title’s bad luck,” Sula said.

  “‘The Staunch,’” Spence offered. “‘The Anti-Naxid.’ ‘The Faithful.’”

  Macnamara, carrying three reeking bottles in a sack, passed through the room on his way to the front door. “You could just call it ‘What We Owe,’” he said. He tossed a sheet over the bomb to hide it from anyone in the corridor, then opened the front door and placed the empties in the hall for pickup.

  Sula’s plan for discouraging the neighbors’ questions was to give them the answer to a question they hadn’t asked: the bottles placed outside the apartment every day marked them as alcoholics unworthy of further curiosity.

  “‘The Fighter,’” she said. “‘The Clarion.’”

  “‘The Tocsin,’” said Spence.

  “That’s good,” Sula said. The last time the population of Zanshaa had heard the sound of the tocsin was when the accelerator ring had been destroyed.

  Macnamara closed the door and sat with crossed legs in front of the disassembled bomb that sat on the small table in front of the sofa.

  “‘The Bomb,’” he said.

  The Saboteur,Sula thought. “‘The Anarchist,’” she said, and laughed. “Why not? That’s what they callus. ”

  She looked at the text again, her eyes skimming words in search of inspiration. “Ah,” she said. “Hah.”

  At the top of the text she called for a larger font, and added the single word“ Resistance.”

  The first copy ofResistance went to Spence, just to see if Sula’s program still worked, and the copy arrived on Spence’s hand comm a half second after Sula touched the icon marked “Send.”

  The next ten thousand copies were sent to citizens chosen randomly, by a sorting program Sula had written, from among those who had done business with the Records Office within the last three years. The program rejected the recipient if he lived outside of the Zanshaa metropolitan area or if his species was indicated as Naxid.

  Sula sentResistance in mid-afternoon, at the peak of Records Office activity, on the assumption that a slight delay on the broadcast node would less likely to be noticed than if she sent in the dead of night. The entire broadcast took less than twenty-five seconds.

  It had occurred to her, as she prepared her message, that if her program removed the code that identified the Records Office broadcast node as the point of origin, she could as easily substitute another code. She’d looked through Rashtag’s correspondence and found a note from a colleague at the Hotel Spartex, a building in the Lower Town, near the funicular, that had been requisitioned by the Naxids to house their constabulary. The code for the hotel’s node was easy to pinch and insert into all ten thousand copies ofResistance as the newsletter’s point of origin.

  She smiled as she thought of the Naxid authorities turning the Hotel Spartex upside down in search of the minion of the secret government. Especially as every possible suspect was a Naxid.

  Sula rewarded herself with a cup of tea while she monitored Rashtag’s incoming messages. Nothing alerted him to misuse of the broadcast node, and she began to feel a certain impatience. After all her hard work, the actual experience of sendingResistance had been anticlimactic. She wanted the enemy to panicnow.

  Ten thousand copies, she mused, wouldn’t go far among Zanshaa’s three and a half million population, not to mention the further three million in the metropolitan area. Perhaps another ten thousand were in order.

  She sent fifty thousand copies before her nerve finally gave out. There were no alarms flashing in the Records Office, but she had begun to feel exposed, and she decided that the experiment had run enough risks for the day.

  She shut down her desk computer and rose. Spence was working on assembling the bomb with Macnamara’s help.

  Sula walked across the room and leaned out the window with her hands braced on the sill. The street swarmed below her, and the air was scented with the aroma of cilantro, garlic, and hot pavement. Her muscles tingled with the release of tension. She searched the crowd carefully, but nobody seemed to be reading their displays. She wanted to demand of the crowds below,Did I just change the world or not?

  She turned to the rest of her team. “I declare a holiday,” she said.

  Spence and Macnamara stared at her. “Are you sure?” Spence asked, in a tone that meantAre you sure you’re feeling all right?

  Sula had never showed an interest in holidays before.

  “Yes. Absolutely.” Sula shut the window and moved the spider plant to the right-hand side of the windowsill, the position that meantNo one’s here, approach with caution. “Clean up your homework, get on the streets, have some fun.” She reached in an inner pocket and handed them each a few zeniths. “Call it a reconnaissance. I want you to take the pulse of the city.”

  Spence seemed dubious. “Can I leave as well? Because-”

  “You walk well enough until you get tired. So see that you don’t get tired-take cabs everywhere.”

  Spence gave a yelp of joy and leaped to her feet. Bomb components vanished into hidden compartments that Macnamara had built into the furniture, and everyone changed into clothing more suitable to a night on the town. At the door to the apartment, they separated like the flying fragments of one of their own explosive devices.

  They had been in the same small room far too long.

  Sula went toward the entertainment district along the old canals below the High City. She visited a series of clubs and cafes, sitting at the bar where she could encounter people, or at a table where she could overhear others. A number of men wanted to buy her drinks. She sipped mineral water, let them talk, and tried to steer the conversation toward the Naxids.

  All showed prudent caution about the topic-one never knew who might be listening-but alcohol eventually loosened their tongues. Several had new Naxid supervisors, but said it was too early to know how that would change things. One man had been demoted, his place in the Transportation Ministry taken by a Naxid: he was on his sixth or seventh drink and in the midst of a deep melancholy. Most were eventually willing to admit they were furious that the Naxids had taken hostages.

  “But what can we do?” one said. “We’ve got to cooperate. The whole planet is hostage now.”

  None seemed to have encountered the first issue ofResistance, let alone absorbed the wisdom Sula had so hopefully packed into it. By now she herself was depressed, and her steps brought her to a derivoo club, where she could be comforted by the existence of folk with worse problems than hers.

  The derivoo singer, face and hands whitened, stood straight beneath her spotlight and sang songs of sorrow. Betrayal, shattered hearts, death, violence, accident, suicide, horror-the derivoo’s palate was cast entirely in dark colors. The point was not so much that thes
e griefs existed as that the derivoo was still able to sing about them. Oppressed by every imaginable catastrophe, weighted down by every fearful memory, the derivoo still stood straight and broadcast a message of defiance to the universe.I am beaten, I am bloody, but still I stand…

  Watching the performance was like observing an unforgiving war between passion and control. Too much passion, and the work would tip into melodrama and become absurd. Too much control, and the songs became soulless. The singer tonight was able to walk perfectly the knife-edge between fire and ice, and Sula felt her blood surge in response. She had seen the Home Fleet burn at Magaria, torn to ions by Naxid antimatter. She had brought her team out of the wreckage of the Axtattle ambush as Naxid bullets chewed the building to bits around them. She had watched her comrades die by torture.

  Sula had inflicted tragedy as well as endured it. She had killed five Naxid ships at Magaria along with all their crews. “It was Sula who did this!” she had called to the Naxids at Magaria.“Remember my name!”

  She had claimed the Sula name then, made it her own, even though Sula had not always been her name. Once, when she was very young-when her name had been Gredel-she’d pressed a pillow to the face of Caroline, Lady Sula, and afterward claimed the dead girl’s name, her title, and her small fortune.

  It was not clear in Sula’s mind whether that was a tragedy or not. Probably it was for Caro Sula, though it wasn’t likely Caro would have survived much longer anyway. She had already overdosed once, and would have again.

  Whether any of this was a tragedy for her was as yet unclear to Sula. She was inclined to think not. If there were tragedy involved, she intended that it would be a tragedy for the Naxids.

  She left the club feeling as if she had gained possession of some primal fact of the universe, something both despairing and joyous, and the elation carried her all the way home. Not to the apartment where she met with her team to plan assassinations and to plunder the resources of the Records Office-that was intended to be used only for meetings-but to a one-room place she’d acquired for herself.