Read Online Conventions of War by Walter Jon Williams - Free Book Online

words in search of inspiration. “Ah,” she said. “Hah.”
    At the top of the text she called for a larger font, and added the single word “Resistance.”
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    T he first copy of Resistance went to Spence, just to see if Sula’s program still worked, and the copy arrived on Spence’s hand comm a half second after Sula touched the icon marked “Send.”
    The next ten thousand copies were sent to citizens chosen randomly, by a sorting program Sula had written, from among those who had done business with the Records Office within the last three years. The program rejected the recipient if he lived outside of the Zanshaa metropolitan area or if his species was indicated as Naxid.
    Sula sent Resistance in mid-afternoon, at the peak of Records Office activity, on the assumption that a slight delay on the broadcast node would less likely to be noticed than if she sent in the dead of night. The entire broadcast took less than twenty-five seconds.
    It had occurred to her, as she prepared her message, that if her program removed the code that identified the Records Office broadcast node as the point of origin, she could as easily substitute another code. She’d looked through Rashtag’s correspondence and found a note from a colleague at the Hotel Spartex, a building in the Lower Town, near the funicular, that had been requisitioned by the Naxids to house their constabulary. The code for the hotel’s node was easy to pinch and insert into all ten thousand copies of Resistance as the newsletter’s point of origin.
    She smiled as she thought of the Naxid authorities turning the Hotel Spartex upside down in search of the minion of the secret government. Especially as every possible suspect was a Naxid.
    Sula rewarded herself with a cup of tea while she monitored Rashtag’s incoming messages. Nothing alerted him to misuse of the broadcast node, and she began to feel a certain impatience. After all her hard work, the actual experience of sending Resistance had been anticlimactic. She wanted the enemy to panic now.
    Ten thousand copies, she mused, wouldn’t go far among Zanshaa’s three and a half million population, not to mention the further three million in the metropolitan area. Perhaps another ten thousand were in order.
    She sent fifty thousand copies before her nerve finally gave out. There were no alarms flashing in the Records Office, but she had begun to feel exposed, and she decided that the experiment had run enough risks for the day.
    She shut down her desk computer and rose. Spence was working on assembling the bomb with Macnamara’s help.
    Sula walked across the room and leaned out the window with her hands braced on the sill. The street swarmed below her, and the air was scented with the aroma of cilantro, garlic, and hot pavement. Her muscles tingled with the release of tension. She searched the crowd carefully, but nobody seemed to be reading their displays. She wanted to demand of the crowds below, Did I just change the world or not?
    She turned to the rest of her team. “I declare a holiday,” she said.
    Spence and Macnamara stared at her. “Are you sure?” Spence asked, in a tone that meant Are you sure you’re feeling all right?
    Sula had never showed an interest in holidays before.
    â€œYes. Absolutely.” Sula shut the window and moved the spider plant to the right-hand side of the windowsill, the position that meant No one’s here, approach with caution. “Clean up your homework, get on the streets, have some fun.” She reached in an inner pocket and handed them each a few zeniths. “Call it a reconnaissance. I want you to take the pulse of the city.”
    Spence seemed dubious. “Can I leave as well? Because—”
    â€œYou walk well enough until you get tired. So see that you don’t get tired—take cabs everywhere.”
    Spence gave a yelp of joy and leaped to her feet. Bomb