by Malka Older
Maryam realizes her mouth is open. She can’t believe this is real.
“At first,” Valérie continues, “I pretended to be Halliday, using the tunnel to draw Russia out. I had the idea that they might be attempting to negotiate independently with micro-democratic governments, and that I could use what I learned from the tunnel to protect us.”
“But you didn’t tell anyone about it.” Maryam doesn’t understand why Valérie is volunteering all of this, but it makes her nervous. She doesn’t want to let her wiggle out of any of the culpability.
“I didn’t,” Valérie agrees. “I thought it was too risky, and the opportunity for intel outweighed our transparency mandate, at least temporarily. I was only planning to use it for a few days, see what I could find out about Halliday and Heritage and, of course, Russia before I shut it down. It’s possible”—she looks down at her hands, but maybe she’s only signaling sincerity—“that all of that was just an excuse. I had a secret channel to an almost-unknown null state, and I wanted to know. I wanted the leverage that knowledge would give me. I wanted to understand what was going on. If I had made the channel public, it would have been closed. Also, it is likely that many Heritage supporters would have taken it as a threat, pushed harder for secession. As I said, these are excuses. But in any case, it is done.”
“No wonder she wanted to kill you.” Maryam is starting to recover. This is not so bad: questionable, yes, a possible firing offense, but not treasonous.
Valérie barks out a laugh. “Sore loser. The problem, of course, was that once she disappeared so publicly, I could no longer claim to be her.”
“And you started talking to them as a representative of Information,” Maryam says, sinking.
“Very, very cautiously. At first, it was perhaps one communication per month, or every six weeks. Keeping the channel open, that’s all it was. I had set up an alert to let me know when a message arrived at this end of the cable, then I would fly to Zurich and ping them back. Sometimes I initiated. No intel was exchanged, just a back-and-forth of greetings. You can read them, if you like; I saved them all.”
Maryam shakes her head silently. That offer proves Valérie feels guilty, and she has trouble imagining Valérie feeling unnecessary guilt.
“A little over a year ago, that changed,” Valérie goes on. “A message came through, requesting data. Nothing specific,” she tells Maryam, smiling slightly into her shocked face. “They wanted a selection of innocuous content, commonly available news, and so forth.”
“You gave it to them.” Maryam is underwater with shock.
“I did. I judged that engagement of this type would, in the long term, support the eventual inclusion of additional territory into micro-democracy.”
“But you didn’t tell anyone! You didn’t even bring it up with the other directors. Did you?”
“That is perfectly within my prerogative,” Valérie says sharply. “I have complete control over decisions within my area of responsibility.”
“That doesn’t—” Maryam was about to say that doesn’t include foreign policy, but she’s not sure that’s true. The Information charter and the rules that have been formalized since its establishment have little to say about foreign policy.
Valérie waits for a moment, then goes on. “In exchange, I received intel from Russia.”
Maryam finally explodes. “You had intel on a null state that you didn’t share?”
“All of it unconfirmed and unverifiable,” Valérie says. “None of it particularly useful for anything more than satisfying idle curiosity.”
“As far as you know,” Maryam grinds out. “There could have been someone else hiding similar intel that would have confirmed yours. There could have been someone running espionage who needed to know some of those details to carry out their missions!”
“I’ve seen to it that I’m well informed about all the null states surveillance programs,” Valérie says.
“So why do it?” Maryam asks, frustrated. “If you were found out, no one would understand. You’d lose your job, at the very least. Why take the risk?”
“Rapprochement,” Valérie replies, as if that explains everything. Maryam scoffs. “You have to understand.” Valérie’s voice gentles, bringing back all sorts of memories that are worse than useless to Maryam. “Information as we know it is over. Oh”—waving dismissively at Maryam’s shocked face—“I said as we know it. It will continue in some form, most likely. But if we’re going to manage this change, we have to face it.”
Maryam sucks in her breath. It’s one thing to hear this at a party from a tipsy radical she never liked, and quite another to hear it from Valérie in her Information Hub corner office. “So, what?” she asks. “You’re just giving up on it?”
“Whether I give up on it or not will not change the outcome.”
“Why run for the position on the Secretariat, then?”
“It’s the aspect of Information I think is most likely to maintain any influence.”
“Really?” Maryam has trouble seeing the usefulness of the Secretariat now, let alone in this uncertain future.
“Anyone can collect data. Governing how it is used is going to be important.”
“And you don’t trust Mishima to do that.”
“Mishima is formidable, certainly. But she is young.” Like you hangs in the air between them, and Maryam wonders how Valérie managed to switch the dynamic in their relationship to make her age the problem. “She is still idealistic. She would try to be fair, which is all well and good, but the system is inherently unfair. The large governments—the corporates, 1China, even Policy1st now—they all have excessive power, and they are all trying to grab more. For a fair result, we need to balance out their unfairness. Meanwhile, the null states will become more aggressive. She would want a solution that keeps everyone happy and productive. In short, I don’t think she’s up to it.”
“So, Information is over.” Maryam tries to sound as blasé about it as Valérie did. “What happens now?”
“That,” Valérie says, “is what I am working on, and what you should be working on, too!”
Maryam’s spine tenses as though frozen into a sudden column of ice. She does not want to work with Valérie.
Valérie is silent for a few seconds, as though gauging her reaction, then goes on with the story Maryam had assumed was over. “A few months ago, I received a different sort of message from my Russian counterpart: a warning. According to the message, the ex-Information staffers living in Russia are planning a coup during the election.”
“A coup?”
“Some kind of takeover. The source—assuming they were speaking in good faith, which I don’t—wasn’t specific on the details.”
“Surely, this kind of threat should be shared with others in Information,” Maryam argues.
“And I shared it,” Valérie snaps back. “With the appropriate cautions and without revealing my source. Of course they haven’t been able to decide what, if anything, to do about it. It’s amazing Information has lasted this long. With all the warning they had, InfoSec couldn’t even manage to prevent the attack on the null-states debate.” She leans forward in her cushioned seat. “I’m glad you came to me now. We are at a crisis point in history. The next few days could be very dangerous, especially for people with your skills.” Maryam is still recovering from that when Valérie goes on. “I wanted to warn you, but … your new paramour, she is a soldier?”
“You’ve forfeited your right to comment on my love life.” It’s a line Maryam has honed and practiced late into the night, a defense against the moments when Valérie’s voice took over her own worries. She had imagined delivering it at some formal, social, stilted occasion, with Núria on her arm in a gorgeous gown or full dress uniform. This will have to do.
“I’m not talking about your love life!” Valérie’s tone is so sharp that Maryam can’t tell what’s behind it: jealousy or manipulation or actual concern. “Has it occurred to you she may be a spy?�
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Maryam laughs spontaneously, but it sounds wrong even to her. “That’s ridiculous,” she says, and then has to think hard for a reason, a good, logical reason, in response to Valérie’s raised eyebrow. “I’m not important enough for anyone to spy on.”
She thinks back to the night she met Núria: the smoky autumnal air of Shida Kartli, the disruption of that time of assassinations and war and mystery. She remembers the first sight of her, when Roz introduced them: dark hair bound up tight soldier-style, that tailored uniform. Even in that microcosm, Roz had been the important one, the one in charge, the one finding the answers. Maryam just helped her along. But as she remembers it, she doubts. She flew in to help in a moment of crisis; could it have been unclear who was in charge? And Roz had just begun her whirlwind romance; maybe Maryam was the opening, the only option, the fallback plan. And Maryam is the techie. Anyone would know that.
They’ve been targeting Information’s infrastructure.
“Don’t worry. You taught me to expect my lovers to use me.” Awkward and acrimonious, but the best Maryam can manage at that moment. Then she remembers something.
“It might be,” Valérie says, breaking into Maryam’s thoughts, “that I’m just not suited for a long-term relationship.” Her voice is strained taut in a way Maryam has only heard twice before. “I’m not sure why that is—maybe you could tell me—but the point is, I am not trying to keep you from having one without me.”
Maryam is so far from being able to deal with that statement that she ignores it. “You used the tunnel to communicate with an unidentified Russian interlocutor. What about the other cables?”
Valérie looks blindsided, and in the space before she answers, Maryam has time to replay her last comment and realize that it was emotionally significant. “Other cables?” Valérie repeats.
Maryam finds she cares more about world peace than Valérie Nougaz’s vulnerability. That seems healthy. “How did you access the tunnel comms?” She presses. “Through a terminal?”
“In Pressman’s house.”
“There were dozens of cables in that tunnel, some of them still transmitting. All of them encrypted, all with different codes.” Maryam is trembling, but she stills herself long enough to deliver the thrust. “Halliday played you.”
Then, because she can’t handle sitting in that office any longer, she stands up and walks out.
* * *
After losing Misra, Amran feels desperate to get something of value to her investigation. She sits in a tea shop in the Liberty centenal and listens to gossip until she hears two young civil servants talking about the governor’s brother’s plan to skim data off their next satellite, writes it down, and sets up a meeting with Vincent for the next day.
When she walks in, Misra is sitting next to Vincent.
“Oh! You!” Amran says. It’s not a slip. It’s the only way she can think of to cover her previous slip.
The other woman gives her a questioning look.
“I saw you on the street the other day, and I thought I recognized you.”
“Did you?” Misra asks.
“You looked familiar,” Amran says. “I thought I must know you. But then I remembered that we had passed in the street a few weeks ago. In Guelph.” It’s a lie, and a verifiable lie, but not easily verifiable. A casual search will uncover that she and Amran were in Guelph at the same time. Hopefully Misra won’t look any further.
“Ah,” Misra says, without introducing herself.
“You had something for us?” Vincent asks.
Amran line-of-sights him the file, cringing at how slight an excuse it is. But Misra starts talking to her without reading it.
“You’re a content designer?”
“Yes.”
“What have you worked on?”
Pulse escalating, Amran names the novellas with uncredited writers’ room–style staffs they added to her backstory.
“You’re on the narrative-disorder scale?”
Amran nods. “I’ve been diagnosed at two,” she says, which is what her backstory claims, two degrees lower than her actual test results.
“We need someone to communicate our story. Are you trustworthy?”
Reluctance is less suspicious than eagerness. “Look,” Amran says, letting her eyes dart between Misra and Vincent. “I was told this was a part-time job. I’m not going to tell anyone, but I don’t want to get involved in something…” Amran can’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to fake being terrified.
“Don’t worry.” Vincent still has that goofy, ecstatic smile. Amran wonders if he’s on drugs, or if that’s just the way he is. She shudders again. “We’re not going to hurt you. We just thought you could help us.”
“We have a proto-storyboard,” Misra says, ignoring Vincent. “All the material is there: vid clips and stills of our history, even some location shots for the events that are going to take place over the next few days. But we don’t have anyone with the experience or aptitude to put it together in a professional way, and we need the initial product to roll out immediately. After that, we can hire other people to build off of it and expand through the media spectrum—at that point, resources shouldn’t be a constraint.”
“When you say ‘immediately,’” Amran responds, “how much time would I have to do this?”
“Thirty-six to forty-eight hours,” Misra says. “Depending on how events play out.”
Election Day.
“It’s going to be hard to get that done in that amount of time.” Amran quavers a little as she comes to the end of the sentence.
“We’ll make sure you don’t have any distractions.”
That knocks the wind out of her.
“Don’t worry,” Vincent says again, just as cheerfully. “We’ll send a message to your studio.”
“We’ll pay you for your time, too,” Misra says. She leans in. “If you’re really good, we’ll even offer you a job.”
CHAPTER 23
Mishima passes four people on the street before she realizes why that feels strange: nobody seems to recognize her. Even the waitress at the hotel looked at her with perfect boredom.
Maybe that’s the answer: spying in null states.
As if Ken would countenance such a thing.
If she’s honest with herself, it doesn’t appeal much to her either. She remembers her time undercover in China: the lack of connection, the oppressive sense of distance. And she wouldn’t be able to discount the likelihood that someone in government leadership with a clandestine Information connection would recognize her.
Still, she files it away as a possible option if Ken leaves her.
Mishima pulls her woolen hat down against the chill. Her heated jacket is keeping her core warm, but the cold is seeping in against her trousers and boots. She wishes she had thought to bring more warm clothes, but it’s been a while since she’s been this far from the equator.
“Mishima!”
She turns, taking a few large steps back to set her back against the stone wall of the house on the edge of the garden she was passing, finds her stiletto. A tall figure is coming toward her out of the dimness, and she hears a low laugh.
“It’s been so long.” Movement in the darkness delineates a smile.
Another step and Mishima distinguishes the features. “Domaine.” Of course. Domaine. “What are you doing here? Isn’t your party about to lose this jurisdiction?”
He laughs again. “The rumors of the resurgence of Information may yet prove to be exaggerated,” he answers. “And you? I’m sorry to tell you, but you aren’t going to find the votes you need in Saaremaa.”
Mishima is annoyed to feel herself flush. Why did she ever agree to run for office? “I’ll be better off without them.”
Domaine looks bigger than she remembers, although Mishima guesses at least part of it is his leather trench: it must have been scaled up to hide the bulkiness of climate control and maintain those stylishly clean lines. It’s not often Mishima feels dowdy,
but cold weather does that to her, especially, she finds, after nearly five years in Saigon.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Domaine says. He is still smiling, and it’s making Mishima dissociate, as though just the fact of their meeting again after many years has fundamentally changed their antagonistic relationship.
“How did you know I was here?”
He pulls out a handheld and a detachable extended antenna. “We’re not that far from Information territory, you know. You’re all over the news compilers.”
“Oh, right.” Mishima sighs.
“No interest in how your desperate campaign gambit is playing?”
Mishima ignores him. “Who are you working for?”
He tut-tuts softly. “Working for myself, Mishima. Working for a better world.”
“XXII Century?” she tries.
“You’re too late, you know,” Domaine says, and he turns as if to draw her into walking beside him in the direction she had been headed, but she doesn’t move, and he turns back to face her again. “That’s where you were going, right? Come on, I’ll show you around.” He gestures again for them to continue.
“Why don’t you just tell me about them instead?” He seems eager to get her there, and she’s not interested in following whatever script he’s got.
He blows out a blustery sigh: frustrated with her already, Mishima notes with satisfaction. “Obviously, a local network was necessary once Information pulled out…”
“Was voted out,” Mishima corrects. “Micro-democracy, if you recall, is voluntary.”
Domaine glowers. “Oppression by the majority,” he snaps out, and goes back to the story. “XXII Century is the third attempt at providing the service, and the most successful.”
“So successful that they’ve expanded into other markets?” Mishima guesses.
Domaine shrugs his broad shoulders. “There are a lot of places that are interested in a lighter, less surveillance-intense version of connectivity.”
