Infomocracy Page 17

  Keerthy grins in sympathy as he massages his jaw, and invites him to come back to the office for the postcampaign party. Ken wavers, but only for a moment. If the election started now, he would want to stay and watch the results with these people he’s worked so hard with, but being here for the enforced idleness that is Preelection Day sounds awful. Relaxing at a remote ocean resort with Mishima sounds pretty good. He thanks Keerthy for her help, tells her to stay in touch, and heads for the port, detouring only briefly to grab a quick bite at his favorite thosai bar.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ken’s speedboat, a colorfully striped fifteen-foot sloop with large high-efficiency engines hanging off the back, is less than an hour out of Chennai when he gets a call from Xavier.

  “Hey, I wanted to thank you for all your help,” Xavier says. His face looks slightly different over the feed, and Ken realizes it’s because the man has actually relaxed. His jaw has loosened enough to allow a breath or two between sentences, and the earpiece is gone. His default expression is a hazy smile. The Preelection Day campaign ban is a wonderful institution. “We appreciate you coming out. It was good to have fresh eyes, and I know you put a lot of effort in when you must have been exhausted.”

  “No problem,” Ken says. How nice of this guy to call. He guesses, though, that relaxed though he may be, Xavier’s probably still too amped up to sleep. “It was my pleasure, really. You did a great job.”

  Xavier laughs shyly at the praise. “Well, let’s wait for the results. Oh, and by the way, congratulations.” Ken perks up. “I hear Suzuki’s going to make you his personal assistant in the new government.”

  Ken can’t speak for a moment, and Xavier, sensing a faux pas, coughs. “Well, that may have been only a rumor … Anyway, I’ll be sure to tell him how impressed I was with your work here.”

  Ken mutters his thanks and clicks off while still parsing his reaction. Yes, he’s disappointed. What did he expect, exactly? A real job, he tells himself, disgusted. Something official, in the government. Obviously not a ministry, obviously not a centenal governorship; he’s far too junior for that. He thought he’d be sent to some remote centenal for one of those jobs that seems boring, but you know that later you’re going to see how much you learned from it, ground-up stuff. It would be rough for a couple of years, but he would know that Suzuki was investing in him. If he had been given his choice, he would have picked something at the government level that would keep him bouncing around like he’s doing now. Well, as Suzuki’s personal assistant, he’ll be bouncing around all right. But before, when he was nominally a driver, wasn’t he doing everything a personal assistant would? This is a promotion in name only.

  If he takes it.

  But what else can he do? This is the problem with not having a real job; when you want to look for another one, nobody knows what you’ve done. His only currency is in the people who interacted with him directly.

  Maybe he can ask for a centenal-level job with Xavier or Natalia.

  Maybe Mishima can help.

  If nothing else, it makes him feel justified in blowing off Preelection Day. And not letting Suzuki tell him whom he can and can’t see.

  The boat speeds out of the Palk Strait, the lights of Colombo gleaming and then fading off to the left. In the open sea, the swells climb higher, and the prow slams down on them, sending spray up into Ken’s face, slapping him out of his thoughts. Good. He’s on vacation.

  * * *

  Shamus wouldn’t have taken Domaine’s suicide-mission job in any case, but it helps that he’s already working on another contract. Another one based on illicit recordings, in fact, although of people who are less likely to seek retribution. Suzuki hired him to leak Yoriko’s recording of the Liberty head of security in a way that will get a lot of press but will be untraceable—“minimally traceable,” Shamus corrected him; “nothing is one hundred percent untraceable”—to Policy1st. It’s a sketchy job, especially because Suzuki wants it to run through Preelection Day, a clear violation if it comes from the Policy1st campaign office.

  “Look,” Suzuki said when they were working out the deal. Suzuki had come to Addis in person; he didn’t want to discuss this over a comms link. “This is data that needs to be out there before the election. It would be wrong to hide it. But because of … of politics, you understand, because of perceptions, we can’t do it ourselves. And Information, you know … first of all, they’d attribute it to us, and secondly, it would get lost in the morass.”

  “You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” Shamus answered. “Just pay me.”

  That’s not strictly true, but Shamus likes projecting a tough-guy, in-it-for-the-money vibe, especially to fallen idealists, which is definitely how he reads this nutter. Also, he has no love for Liberty or its component multinationals, most of which have at one time or another created an advid that offended Shamus’s African pride, professional standards, or both. “Fucking colonialists,” he mutters while prepping the audio recording, even though Suzuki hasn’t given him the background.

  He listens through it a couple of times. This is a bit more of a challenge than he expected. The interrogator was careful not to suggest anything illegal, and without video, it’s hard to get a sense for how threatening he’s being. Still, Shamus decides he can put the viewer—because of course he’ll add images—in the place of the poor sucker the guy is harassing, and play up the contrast between the title “Liberty” and the emphasis on incarceration. While he’s editing, he slaps up a geographic strategy based on Suzuki’s budget and the latest projection globe he’s seen.

  * * *

  Mishima times it perfectly, gets in right before Ken does, and is still having her welcome drink (fresh jackfruit–passion fruit juice, with a cluster of rambutan glowing red in a bowl to accompany it) in the resort lobby when Ken stumbles up from the dock. He looks like she feels, with the addition of five hours on a speedboat. “Hey,” she says, and then, because he seems so worn, she puts her arms around him and holds him for a couple of long breaths. She feels as though she should ask how it went but decides not to. She doesn’t want to hear anything about the election, not for the next eighteen hours, anyway. “Let’s go to the room.”

  Each suite in the resort used to be on its own island; now each is elevated on pylons on its former island, with one to three meters of clear aquamarine water between sand and flooring. A bellboy takes them out in a small launch and starts to explain the system of flag signaling they have for ordering room service and so on. Mishima cuts him off, tells him they’ll read the manual, gives him a huge tip, and sends him away. Ken wanders the airy rooms, trying to feel happy to be there. But it’s almost midnight, the night here is as dark as any he’s ever seen, and all he can feel is tired.

  “Ooh, there’s an airbed,” Mishima calls. “Come check it out.”

  Ken drops his bag and walks into the bedroom, which has the expected thin linen curtains and turquoise ceramic touches in all the right places. Mishima is hovering above the mattress, fiddling with a handheld control screen.

  “Try it; it’s great!” she says. “There are separate controls for your side of the bed.”

  Ken, who has never heard of an airbed, finds that the phrase “your side of the bed” sticks in his mind in an interesting way. He sits down gingerly on the cushion of air.

  “Lie back,” Mishima says. “Let it calibrate.”

  He leans back. The sensors get to work, and suddenly he feels—well, like he’s floating. The air pressure adjusts to his body, aligning his spine and allowing every muscle to relax, and then it feels as if every individual part of his body is floating separately and in harmony.

  “It’s true; it’s amazing,” he murmurs.

  “Try the massage,” Mishima encourages him. She’s hoping it will serve as subtle fore-foreplay, but when she glances over, he’s already asleep. As bad as Information is before an election, working on a campaign must be even worse. She brushes the hair off his forehead and lets her disappoint
ment slide into exhaustion. She punches in a gentle rocking pattern for her side of the bed and curls up with her face against his shoulder.

  * * *

  On Preelection Day, with his last advid already taking advantage of the air empty of government-sponsored pollution, Domaine is free to enjoy his work and amuse himself needling idealistic voters. Despite a frigid wind, he wanders through New York City with a swing to his step. Most of the population of the formerly United States continues to vote in automatic swathes of Democrat or Republican, and every election season produces some variation of a political cartoon in which blinkered Statesers examine a narrow choice of governments while congratulating themselves on their democratic traditions. It’s an exaggeration, of course; there are numerous shady governments branching to the left and the right of both venerable trunks. SecureNation always gets a fair amount of votes, and owns most of the centenals on military bases; LaRaza and ElNuevoPRI battle over wide areas; and StarLight tends to do well. Still, the stereotype has some truth, and most governments don’t bother campaigning in the heartland.

  New York City, on the other hand, has fully embraced the micro-democracy concept. In a way, it’s the perfect place for it: a city already divided into boroughs and then neighborhoods of tightly knotted communities, each as different from the next as two countries half a world apart.

  Unfortunately—and Domaine can’t help snickering about this—these communities rarely divide cleanly into that magical number of one hundred thousand people. The result is a set of centenals nearly as angst-ridden with internal conflict as Asia Minor after Sykes-Picot. Centenals that split their vote between RastaGov and Chabad; between (the retro-ironically titled) HipstaLand and the Universalist Church; between OrgulloDominicano and 888 and Académe. For the most part, these rivalries are low violence, although there are always a few threatening to teeter into open warfare every election season. The city is full of rancor and complaints, especially before an election, and Domaine feels right at home.

  There are several submunicipal coalitions, and they’ve even managed to keep the old subway system running, skipping the stops in the centenals that don’t tax in to pay for it. There is a relatively strong movement for shifting to a true municipality-wide system, but it’s never made much headway, because it’s not so much a movement as movements, a collection of poorly organized and ineffectual advocates who can’t even agree on where the municipal limits are or should be. Still, Domaine applauds their efforts. He spoke at one of their events a month ago and considered meeting with them again, but decided it wouldn’t be worth the aggravation, although he tips his flat cap in solidarity whenever he sees one of their picketers.

  He’s enjoying himself so much that it takes most of the morning (a leisurely brunch with kumquat mimosas and runny quail eggs dripping with hollandaise, then a long walk in Manhattan) before he can pinpoint his unease. He keeps checking over his shoulder, which is not how he likes it; Domaine prefers to be the pursuer. Once he thinks about it, he knows what’s bothering him. He’s already seen his “people you love to hate loving to hate elections” ad twice, and the ex-US might not have been the best place to be when it dropped. The American theocrat in the ad had the most to lose from being outed as antielection, and even if New York City isn’t exactly his turf, there are no oceans between them. Not that any of the other strongmen will react well to being used for publicity. Domaine begins to consider investing in a pair of antennae, or maybe a radar attachment.

  * * *

  They sleep late and spend most of the day having sex, swimming, diving, and eating. Despite the archaic system of ordering, the service is speedy and the food is luscious. There are brief moments when Ken thinks he never wants to leave. But neither of them gets too distracted to notice when four thirty hits and voting starts.

  “We won’t know anything for a while,” Mishima says.

  “It’s way too soon,” Ken agrees.

  The voting day is twenty-four hours worldwide, midnight to midnight on the international date line. Few centenals register enough votes to be sure of the winner before the last six hours of the election, and many can’t be called until voting closes.

  “I’m going to vote now, though,” Mishima says. “To get it out of the way.”

  “It’s a good idea,” Ken agrees. “Just in case.”

  Out of tradition, rather than necessity, they split up to vote, Mishima in the bedroom, Ken out on the dock, swinging his bare feet above the waves. When he’s done, he leans into the front room to leave his handheld there and slips into the water. Mishima joins him a few minutes later.

  Neither of them thinks they’ll be able to sleep that night, and they climb into bed late after a last dark dip in the rising sea. The combination of residual exhaustion, a day of sun and swimming, and the excellent sea-skate curry proves them wrong. Ken falls asleep first, but even Mishima, with her chronic insomnia, is out before she hears his snores.

  * * *

  Suzuki shipped Yoriko’s taxi to Amami for her. She is using it as a personal car, because she’s not sure she can be a taxi driver in a completely new city. Once she sees how small it is, she realizes it won’t take her very long to learn. Only 250 kilometers north of Okinawa, Amami Ōshima is familiar enough in terms of climate, island culture, and food. Yoriko imagines that Naha itself might not have looked much different at some time in its troubled history: a harbor edged by a cluster of pale multistory buildings, windows darkened against the sun. But Amami is much smaller. Yoriko has never been in a place where the human environment is so overwhelmed by nature; most of Okinawa is thickly populated, and even on the beach, you can feel city looming behind you. Amami feels like nothing more than an outpost against the green of the jungle.

  She was worried that her kids would hate it—only one outmoded projection arcade, barely a downtown to speak of, none of the buzz of Naha. She almost chose Kagoshima City instead, but she was nearly as spooked to be in Satsuma territory as she was to be around Liberty centenals. And so far the kids seem happy. They still think they’re on vacation. The house here is much nicer and larger than what she could afford in Okinawa, even outside of the capital. She takes her children to the beach. It’s not much, compared to Okinawa, but she’s trying to embrace idleness while she decides what to do here.

  She’s watching them splash and trying not to sniff at the lack of banana boat and Jet Ski options when she hears a bored voice: “The offense carries a sentence of five to seven years normally, ten to fifteen in the election period.” She jumps out of her lounger and spins around, pulse pounding. After a long moment in which the beach seems no firmer than the surf, she finds the advid, projected among a stream of others by the seawall. The bored drawl of the interrogator is replaced by a deep, threatening voice, overlaid on an animation of a barred door slamming shut: “They’re known as Liberty, but their arbitrary laws will strip away your freedom.”

  Shaking, Yoriko collects her things, shrieks at her children until they come in from the waves, gathers them up into her erstwhile taxi, and takes them back to their unfamiliar house. With the kids ensconced in front of their favorite projections, she paces back and forth. She gave the recording to Suzuki to use against Liberty, yes, but she thought he would use it privately somehow. Send it to the election commission or make an obscure complaint to Information. She didn’t expect to hear it, to have everyone else hear it, too! And what were they doing advertising in Amami, anyway? (Shamus’s tech outsourcer made a typo in the projection address.)

  In a fit of pique, she opens her voting application. She had wanted to forget it was Election Day; now she wants to take her revenge, however pointless (it’s not like her vote matters in this centenal) on all of them, Suzuki, Liberty, even the stupid 平和亜紀. She clicks defiantly on 1China, knowing that hers will almost certainly be the only vote on all of Amami Ōshima for that government and probably won’t even show up in the postelection data breakdowns except as a tiny sliver marked OTHER. Still, she closes her han
dheld with a feeling of vague satisfaction. She’s not ruling out the possibility that Suzuki or that creep from Liberty could, by illegal means, find out how she voted, and if they do, that will show them.

  * * *

  Mishima wakes up and stretches on her air cushion. Her first impulse is to reach for her handheld, check the time and—the election standings!—but although her hand jerks, she calms herself. From the angle of the shadows, she can see it’s still before noon. Yes, Information will be overflowing with numbers and analysis, but she knows as well as anyone that little of it will mean anything yet. She reaches for Ken and tickles him awake. They’ve already discovered that the airbed is terrible for sex. It adjusts too slowly for rapid changes in position and misinterprets rhythmic bouncing. Mishima hits the button to shut it off and drops them down to the mattress, but turns it back on afterward. It is perfect for afterglow.

  “Do you know how they invented this?” Mishima asks, drifting on her cushion of warm air.

  Ken shakes his head. As he strokes her hair, he notices a few strands of grey. It’s surprising, because he assumed her dark red hair was a genetic modification, and most people who do that get the grey taken out at the same time. He wonders absently if she might be both Japanese and foreign, like he is.

  “It was when the emperor was dying—Emperor Suisanmono. They did everything they could to prolong her life. Eventually, they tried to disassociate her from the physical world while keeping her in it. They devised the most gentle and nourishing of gasses to ease into her lungs. They experimented with creating a vacuum around her—that didn’t go well—and wrapped her in cushions of different kinds—milk, honey, air—to reduce friction on her skin cells.”

  “Of course it didn’t work.”

  “Of course it didn’t work. Well, not forever. Whether it kept her alive a few seconds, hours, days, or years longer than she would have survived otherwise, I don’t know. Either way, it gave us this small piece of wonderful technology.”