Cauldron of Ghosts by David Weber, Eric Flint Page A

Mesa’s very mild climate; fires and such—and fashions.
    Yes, fashions. Most of which could only be afforded by a tiny number of seccies.
    Calling it “the Fantasy Channel,” therefore, was an exaggeration. If you set aside the barrages on so-called “terrorism,” anyway. Most of that was made up out of whole cloth. But the other half of the news wasn’t fabricated—although the Mesa authorities censored quite a bit of it. The problem wasn’t so much was what said as what was not said. You might be told, for instance—with perfect accuracy—that a given town had been subjected to flooding or an earthquake or some other natural disaster. What wouldn’t be mentioned was that the flood/earthquake/whatever had struck the seccy part of the town and due to substandard construction/corrupt business practices/overcrowding/whatever there had been considerable loss of life.
    Again, like looking through a keyhole. The problem wasn’t so much the distortion in what you could see. Some distortion was there, certainly, but you could adjust for it. The big problem were all the things you couldn’t see because your field of vision was too limited.
    Much better and less censored news was available on subscription channels. But those were quite expensive and restricted to full citizens.
    What were they not being told by the news media? There was no way to know. Not, at least, without access to information coming from outside the Mesan loop—and that was simply not available to seccies such as themselves.
    “They’re planning something, the bastards,” Stephanie half-muttered as she watched the newscasters. “They’re spending more time than usual hollering and screaming about the Ballroom. Way more time, in fact. It’s practically all they’re talking about lately.”
    Cary frowned. She knew what Stephanie was getting at. Provocation was probably the oldest trick in the counterrevolutionary book—and, unfortunately, was often very effective. If the Mesan media outlets were bombarding the populace with warnings about the imminent threat of terrorist outrages, those outrages were sure to come—carried out not by the so-called terrorists but by agencies of the Mesan government.
    It was an effective tactic in large part because it was so hard to argue against, especially when you had no access yourself to any mass media. Fine to say “people aren’t that dumb; they’ll see through it.” The historical record said otherwise. Over and again, throughout history, a lot of people had been that dumb.
    “Nothing we can do about it,” she said, straightening up. “Except . . . Do you think we ought to suspend our regular check-ins for a while? Maybe a week?”
    “No, don’t.” That came from Karen, lying on the bed. Cary hadn’t realized she was still awake.
    “Why not?” asked Stephanie. “The odds against our check-ins turning up anything are close to astronomical anyway. So what’s the harm in suspending them for a while?”
    Once a day, either Cary or Stephanie ventured outside the apartment to check one of the six dead drops they maintained in various places in the city. Four of them were in the seccy quarters. The other two were in heavily trafficked areas frequented by seccies on their way to work as servants in the citizen districts.
    The drop locations had been set up by the Manticoran agent who’d called himself Angus Levigne when he’d been active on Mesa. Months had gone by since he and his odd-looking partner had left the planet—or gotten killed, they didn’t know which. The odds against Levigne or someone else using the sites to get in touch with them again were low, of course. Maybe not astronomically low, but pretty close. Still, since they had no other means of reestablishing contact with anyone from off-planet, they continued to maintain the routine checks.
    Painfully, Karen levered herself up on one elbow. “I don’t care about the drop boxes—although we may as well check them while