Kim Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below

“No one suspects you of anything?”

“Not of anything more than marital alienation. There are some friends who know about that, sure. But that’s been going on for years. No. People have no idea.”

“Even if they’re in the business of having that kind of idea?”

“No. They think they know it all. They think I’m just… But it’s gone so far past what they can know. Don’t you understand—the technical capacity has expanded so fast, no one’s really grasped the full potential of it yet.”

“Maybe they have. You seem to have.”

“But no one’s listening to me.”

“But there could be others like you.”

“True. That may be happening too. There are superblacks now that are essentially flying free. But hopefully we won’t run into anyone like that trying to stop us on this. Hopefully they think they’re completely superblack still.”

“Hmmm.” Counterintelligence, wasn’t that what it was called? Surely that would be standard. Unless you thought you were an innermost sanctum, the smallest and newest box in the nesting boxes, with no one aware even of your existence. If her husband was in something like that, and thought his secrets were entirely safe from an estranged wife who did nothing more than sullenly perform her midlevel tech job…

They sat side by side in an uneasy silence. Around them the city pulsed and whirred in its dreams. Such a diurnal species; here they were, surrounded by three million people, but all of them conked like zombies, leaving them in the night alone.

She nudged into his shoulder. “I should go.”

“Okay.”

They kissed briefly. Frank felt a wave of desire, then fear. “You’ll call?”

“I’ll call. I’ll call your Khembali embassy.”

“Okay good. Don’t be too long.”

“I won’t. I never have.”

“That’s true.” Although not quite.

They got up and hugged. He watched her walk off. When he couldn’t see her anymore he walked back up the levee path. A runner passed going the other way, wearing orange reflective gloves. After that Frank was alone in the vast riverine landscape. The view up the Mall toward the Capitol was as of some stupendous temple’s formal garden. The smell of Caroline’s hair was still in his nostrils, preternaturally clear and distinct. He was afraid for her.

Frank drove back to NSF and slept in his van, or tried to. Upstairs early the next morning, feeling stunned and unhappy, he looked at the disk Caroline had given him. Clearly he had to do something with it. He was afraid to put it in his computers. Who knew what it would trigger, or wreak, or report to.

He could put them in a public computer. He could turn off his laptop’s airport transmitter permanently. He could buy a cheap laptop and never airport it at all. He could …

He went for a run with Edgardo and Kenzo and Bob. When they got to the narrow path that ran alongside Route 66, he tailed behind with Edgardo, and then slowed a little, and then saw that Kenzo and Bob were talking about some matter of their own, in the usual way of this stretch.

He said, “Edgardo, do you think the election matters?”

“What, the presidential election?”

“Yes.”

Edgardo laughed, prancing for a few strides to express his joy fully. “Frank, you amaze me! What a good question.”

“But you know what I mean.”

“No, not at all. Do you mean, will it make a difference which of these candidates takes office? Or do you mean are elections in general a farce?”

“Both.”

“Oh, well. I think Chase would do better than the president on climate.”

“Yes.”

“But elections in general? Maybe they don’t matter. But let’s say they are good, sure. Good soap opera, but also they are symbols, and symbolic action is still action. We need the illusion they give us, that we understand things and have some control. I mean, in Argentina, when elections went away, you really noticed how different things felt. As if the law had gone. Which it had. No, elections are good. It’s voters who are bad.”

Frank said, “That’s interesting. I mean—if you think they matter, then I find that reassuring.”

“You must be very easily reassured.”

“Maybe I am. I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“You’re lucky if you are. But—why do you need reassurance?”

“I’ve got a disk back in my office that I’d kind of like to show you. But I’m afraid it might be dangerous.”

“Dangerous to the election?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Oh ho.” Edgardo ran on a few strides. “May I ask who gave it to you?”

“I can’t tell you that. A friend in another agency.”

“Ah ha! Frank, I am surprised at you. But this town is so full of spooks, I guess you can’t avoid them. The first rule when you meet one is to run away, however.” Edgardo considered it. “Well, I could put it in a laptop I have.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“That’s what it’s for.”

“Do you still have contacts with people at DARPA?”

“Sort of.” He shook his head. “My cohort there has scattered by now. That might not be where I would go to get help anyway. You could never be sure if they weren’t the source of your problem in the first place. Do you know what the disk has on it?”

Frank told him what Caroline had said about the plan to fix the election. As he spoke he felt the oddity of the information coming out of his mouth, and Edgardo glanced at him from time to time, but mostly he ran on nodding as if to confirm what Frank was saying.

“Does this sound familiar?” Frank asked. “You’re not looking too shocked.”

“No. It’s been a real possibility for some time now Assuming that it hasn’t already happened a time or two.”

“Aren’t there any safeguards? Ways of checking for accuracy, or making a proper recount if they need to?”

“There are. But neither are foolproof, of course.”

“How can that be?”

“That’s just the way the technology works. That’s the system Congress has chosen to use. Convenient, eh?”

“So you think there could be interventions?”

“Sure. I’ve heard of programs that identify close races as they’re being tallied, close ones but just outside the margin of error, so there aren’t any automatic recounts to gum up the works… Embed a tweak that reverses a certain percentage of votes, you know, just enough to change the result.”

“Might you be able to counter one of these, if you saw it in advance? Some kind of reverse transcription that would neutralize the tweak without tipping off the people deploying it?”

“Me?”

“Or people you know.”

“Let me look at what you have. If it looks like it might be what you think, then I’ll pass it along to some friends of mine.”

“Thanks, Edgardo.”

“But here we come to the bike path, let’s change the subject. Give me what you’ve got, and I’ll see what I can do. But give it to me at Food Factory, at three, and let’s not talk about this in the building.”

“No,” Frank said, interested to see how Edgardo appeared to assume that the building might be compromised. So the surveillance was real after all. Of course he had known that; Caroline had told him. But it was interesting to get data from a different source.

Back at work, showered and in his office, checking the clock frequently and then setting his alarm for three so he didn’t forget, Frank saw in an e-mail from Diane that Yann Pierzinski was on the first list for the expanded Grants for Exploratory Research program. He smiled, but then frowned. The new climate studies institute in San Diego had been approved, and the old Torrey Pines Generique facility rented to house it; and Leo Mulhouse had even been hired to run a genetic engineering lab. It all added up to good news, which of course he ought to call and share with Marta.