Walter Williams - The Sundering

Hong nodded. “That’s a possibility, Four-Nine-One,” he said. “Some of our people are keeping a few potential targets under surveillance. But the lord governor has decided that maintaining civilian morale is the best deterrent against people cooperating with the Naxids. We must inform the population of the existence of the secret government, and countering enemy propaganda, so the first priority has to be the distribution of the first issue ofThe Loyalist. ”

The Loyalistwas the less-than-inspiring title of the covert newssheet that the government intended to distribute in Zanshaa city. Newssheets were normally distributed by electronic means, and printed locally either by subscribers or at a news café. Unfortunately a covert newssheet could not be distributed this way, for the simple reason that the entire electronic pathway from the publisher to the subscriber was under the direct supervision of the government.

Computers were ubiquitous in the Zanshaa environment: they were in furniture, in walls, in floors, in kitchen appliances, in ducts and utility conduits, in clothing, in audio and video receivers, in every bit of machinery. Not all of these computers were very intelligent, but still they amounted to a couple hundred computers for every citizen. The Shaa had been perfectly aware of the potential for mischief in a computer network that they didn’t control absolutely, and so every computer built over the last ten thousand years was hardwired to report its existence, its location, and its identity to a central data store under the control of the Office of the Censor. A copy of every text or picture transmission went to the same place, where it was scanned at high speed by highly secret algorithms that attempted to determine whether or not the message had subversive content. If such content were found, an operator could determine the route of the transmission—which computer had sent it, which had received it, which computers had played its host en route. Officers of the Legion of Diligence could be sent on their way to make an arrest within a matter of minutes.

The Legion of Diligence had been evacuated along with the government, but it was only reasonable to assume that the Naxids would soon have its equivalent, and that meantThe Loyalist could not be distributed by electronic means. A printing press had been procured somewhere outside the capital, and stocks of paper, and a distribution network set up into Zanshaa. An entire branch of the secret government, Action Group Propaganda, was devoted to this purpose.

So assassination was out. Playing news agent was in.

And, Sula thought, who was to say that the Lord Governor wasn’t right? Even if the Action Group managed to kill a few of the newly appointed administrators, who would know it? The Naxids controlled all media, and if they didn’t choose to inform the population, no one else would. Not unless the distribution channels forThe Loyalist were working.

“The first number ofThe Loyalist will have important news,” Hong said. “A Midsummer Message from the Lord Governor, of course, but also news of a victory. Chenforce has destroyed ten enemy ships at Protipanu.”

The other officers gave a cheer while Sula’s heart gave a sudden lurch at the knowledge that Martinez had been present at the battle.

Ten enemy ships. Martinez was making a habit of knocking them down by tens. Maybe he liked round numbers.

Sula suppressed a sudden, foolhardy burst of laughter. It was ridiculous how thoughts of Martinez could turn her perfectly organized mind into a seething, useless stew of anger and undirected passion.

“Were any of our ships lost?” someone asked.

“There were no losses reported,” Hong said, which did not quite answer the question. Sula suspected that if it had been another bloodless victory, as at Hone-bar, the news would have been trumpeted to the skies. There had been loyalist casualties, then.

Sula was confident that Martinez hadn’t been among them. She could trust his luck that far, at least.

The bastard.

The rest of the meeting was devoted to discussing strategies for distribution of the newssheet. Sula contributed little, just sat on her chair, drank the excellent coffee that Ellroy passed out, and nibbled anise-flavored cookies handed round on a platter.

If Hong knew of this victory over the enemy, she realized, if details were to appear in the newssheet, then that meant that Hong, or the governor, or someone in the chain of command had a means of contacting the government, and receiving information from them. Since the accelerator ring was gone, and since the Naxids couldn’t be expected to permit messages through whatever normal channels remained, then they had to have managed it some other way.

Sula let a bite of the anise cookie melt on her tongue and considered how it could be done. You could reprogram some of the communications satellites in orbit so that they could send messages without the authorities knowing. If the signal was strong enough, and the transmission accurate enough, they could go through the wormhole without having to use the wormhole repeater stations.

But at that distance, a laser signal would be subject to some scatter, and the wormhole station might well detect the message. So to avoid that, you’d send your signal to a satellite constructed so as to be invisible to radar and placed somewhere near the wormhole, not between it and Zanshaa like the relay station but well out to one side, perhaps even on the other side of it. The satellite would receive a message from Zanshaa, then retransmit it across the wormhole, as it were, the beam moving at an oblique angle to another satellite similarly placed on the other side. If the satellite were placed correctly, the message would be undetectable.

And if such a means were used, what the head of Action Group Blanche would require in order to report directly to the Fleet Intelligence Section would be a laser transmitter and receiver, and an apartment with a south-facing balcony.

Sula noted the summer sun streaming in through the balcony doors, and afterward, when the team leaders left individually or in small groups to avoid attracting attention, Sula remained to the last and took a stroll on the balcony. And there was the transmitter—Hong hadn’t even taken it indoors after his last transmission, just packed it in its case and put the receiver under a chair, and leaned the laser attachment, in its waterproof case, in the corner behind a potted dwarf pear.

The object didn’t seem worthy of comment, so Sula didn’t mention it when Hong joined Sula on the balcony. Sula thanked her superior for his excellent coffee, and asked him how much he had left.

“Not much,” he said, and shrugged. “I can always buy more, though the price is going up.”

“I have a contact,” Sula said. “Let me see what I can do.”

While the summer burned on and newly appointed Naxid bureaucrats settled into their offices, Action Group Blanche and the other action groups were involved in the old-fashioned business of picking up newssheets and distributing them around the city. This required more time and organization than one might expect: Action Teams 211 and 369 found private garage space for the Group Propaganda trucks that moved the sheets from the printing plant, and then the amazingly heavy crates—labeled “fruit preserves,” with two layers of genuine fruit preserves packed around them in case anyone checked—were unloaded, and bundles of newssheet were passed on to the other action teams. Sula, whose team had been provided a Hunhao sedan, filled the car with so many papers that it sagged on its suspension.

In their garage Sula and Team 491 filled briefcases, shoulder bags, and rucksacks with papers and tottered away on their errand of distribution. Piles of sheets were left on the doorsteps of bars and cafés, where patrons could pick them up, some sheets were placed on benches in parks, some taped to lampposts. Each newssheet bore the plea, “Please reproduce this sheet, and share it with loyal friends. It would be dangerous to transmit its contents through electronic means.”