lining, waited for them outside as the kicked-up snow blew away.
He held up a phone and took a picture of each of them as they stepped out of the helicopter. “Welcome to Thule,” he said, shaking Roo’s gloved hand. “The picture is a public-record file of your arrival. The Dutch Navy already paid your entrance fee, so you’re welcome to travel where you wish. The fee paid for two weeks of temporary Thule citizenship. As a citizen of Thule you have the following right:
“The right to travel anywhere in Thule you wish, or to leave Thule whenever you wish. Hindrance of free movement of any other person is prohibited.
“All other rights and laws are determined by the demesne you are physically in.” The various entities that made up Thule were called demesnes, each allowed to create its own legal and political system. Last count, Anika recalled there being some forty mini-countries within Thule, each an experiment in whatever its founders considered the most optimal way to thrive. “Violation of any law that doesn’t involve physical bodily harm to the victim results in demesne expulsion. Violating a standing demesne restraining order results in revocation of Thule citizenship and banishment. Do you accept and understand your rights?”
They all nodded.
“One last thing,” the customs official said. “All of Thule is in full little brother protocol mode due to the blockade by the G-35 nations. Just so you’re aware.”
“And what is that?” Vy asked.
“One hundred percent two-way surveillance,” Roo cut in, smiling. “All public camera feeds and monitoring services are open to the outside world to peruse. All outgoing phone calls, even the meetings by the leaders of the demesnes, are broadcast out. Nothing is secret, anything that happens next will be seen live by the entire world.”
“Right,” the customs official said. “Radical public transparency, or sousveillance, if you will. All of our drones are broadcasting what they see. We have mites in the air and in the water, and they’re broadcasting the location and shape of whatever they’re sticking to by networking to each other and passing the data back however they can to Thule’s servers. Anything we know about military action around Thule, the world is witness to.”
Albus Petersen smiled thinly and turned back to scrape one of the midges off the helicopter. He held it up between his fingers, and Anika could see that it glinted where it wasn’t covered in some sort of goo. “Well, you have just made my return trip that much more complicated,” he said, thoughtfully. “These are everywhere?”
“You will find a declaration and the codes to access what information we’re gathering on our public pages,” the official said.
Albus sighed. “I have to figure out what they are going to want me to do for the return trip.” He nodded at everyone. “Good luck.”
He got back in and shut the door and started talking to the pilot. A heated conference between them began on the other side of the window.
“You’re here to find the missing nuke?” the official asked, almost casually, pointedly ignoring the commotion between Albus and his pilot.
The engine began to whine behind them. The rotors slowly began to turn.
Anika turned to stare at him. He smiled back. “Little brother protocol. You came in on a military copter with intelligence agencies covering your entry fee and request to land. And when intelligence officials gave the leaders of our demesnes information, they shared it with everyone. Pytheas’s dictator is waiting to meet you. I guess you’re expected. In other countries they might get annoyed by outsiders coming in to muck around, but we welcome any and all help in resolving this fucking mess. You’ll find we do things a bit differently in Thule.”
Yeah, thought Anika.
Very differently.
The words “Pytheas’s dictator” sunk in, but she ignored them as the helicopter’s blades kicked snow and cold air at them in a miniature gale. They hurried away from the landing pad and into the warmth of the Thule airport’s swooping glass and steel embrace.
32
A six-foot-tall woman with startling blue eyes and pale hair waited for them inside the warm and bright airport terminal. She wore large, white fox furs and grinned with diamond-crusted teeth—which sort-of ruined her otherworldly, almost elfin look, Anika thought. She had a jet-black cane held in one hand, with what looked like an impossibly large diamond on the top.
The flow of people moving to leave Thule passed around her: a stream flowing around a white rock. If Thule was as open as the customs agent indicated, and Anika imagined it was, then everyone knew there was trouble, and the packed mob crushing every inch of the airport terminal was part of a rush to get out of here before things got worse—human rats leaping from a sinking ship.
“Wynter: the dictator of Pytheas,” Roo said to Anika. “And that’s ‘Winter’ spelled with a ‘y.’ I used to know her as Beverly Smithwyck, back when she was a vice president of a mobile factory business. What worries me is … why she’s here personally.”
“Why?” Anika asked. But now Wynter was close enough to overhear them, and she got no answer.
Anika moved to shake the woman’s hand, but Wynter made no such move. “You are all posing a rather annoying dilemma for me,” she said. “Come.”
Four men in cream suits waited outside by a chrome-accented all-white limousine with triangular snow treads instead of wheels.
Once everyone climbed in, Wynter tapped the glass partition with her cane, and the limo rattled into motion.
“My problem is that you’re asking me to give up people who’ve used the submarine docks to enter Thule,” Wynter said, her teeth sparkling in the rope lighting of the limo’s interior. “My people are going to cry bloody murder. The demesne I run has utter privacy as rule of law. Violet, you understand. You’ve used the docks before.”
“There’s a nuclear bomb somewhere in Thule, doesn’t that trump everything?” Anika interrupted.
Wynter craned her head to the side and stared at Anika. “Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither,” she said. “What else will the Pytheas demesne hand over in order to find this nuclear device? Shall I have you all search house by house? Will my demesne even exist after this?”
“It won’t exist if a nuke goes off,” Anika pointed out, amazed.
Wynter shook her head. “But we cease to exist if we drastically change the nature of what makes us … us. If I do this, the demesne falls apart as I’m accused of turning against the core principles that founded the demesne. My citizenry believes they should not be tracked. Looking at the makeup on your faces; Anika I must ask, surely you understand the inherent value of privacy?”
“And the bomb?” Vy asked.
“There’s always some threat that asks us to sacrifice freedoms to combat it. The only truly safe environ is a one-hundred-percent-controlled one. Not a free one.” Wynter leaned back against her seat and sighed. “It is a great, modern dilemma.”
“I thought you were the dictator of Pytheas, right?” Anika asked. “How are you the dictator if you can’t even do this small thing to help us?”
“I’m a
They continued on in silence, through a streetscape of wide plowed sidewalks and buildings that sat on pylons. Anika was missing having sunglasses; she could use a heads-up display right about now. They’d be popping up little tags telling her what the street was, what demesne they were in, and help her feel a lot less lost.
The leather seats crinkled as Roo leaned forward. “Your citizens understand that business and travel are
