Identification.Proper credentials were the key to survival in a world occupied by the enemy, and the key was in her hand. For a person’s identification card provided more than just a picture and a serial number. The identification card in Sula’s pocket held medical, employment, clan, and credit history, and tax records. It was used as a driver’s license for anyone with the proper qualifications. It could be used in bank transfers, could carry cash in electronic form, was used for travel on trains and buses.

 Incidentally, it was also used as a library card. Even before the Naxid rebellion, the Shaa Empire had always been interested in the sorts of books and videos that people checked out of or downloaded from the library.

 The official IDs weren’t foolproof, and there were always forgeries. But it was always possible for the forger to make a mistake, and by far the best and most foolproof of false identity cards were those issued by the government.

 Those issued by the Records Office.

 Sula had used her command of the Records Office computer to issue her team multiple IDs. At present she carried the identity card of Lucy Daubrac, an unemployed math teacher evacuated from Zanshaa’s ring before its demolition. Macnamara and Spence were Matthew Guerin and Stacy Hakim, a married couple, also from the ring. Being from the ring explained why they were new in the neighborhood.

 Sula checked to see if a High City identity badge had been designed, but found that if it had, it wasn’t as yet in the computer.

 As long as she was in the computer, she downloaded every file they had on High Judge Makish and his family. He’d had a lackluster career at the bar, apparently, but his status as a Peer of the highest class had eventually got him a judgeship in one of the lower courts. The arrival of the Naxid rebels had resulted in his promotion to the High Court, where his sentencing of the two-hundred-odd loyalists to torture and death had been his first official act.