Chapter 1, "Day -31", Scene 1

Doyle Phoebe Heejanus

     Doyle Phoebe Heejanus told her boss, "I am sorry." Better to beg forgiveness than ask for permission.
     "In fact," the tiny hologram of Za Leez Doconrice rattled on, "you haven't been under budget all year. Fortunately for you—"
     Phoebe shifted her focus slightly. Her boss' image vanished, and she saw, two-thousand meters below, a city like an island in a sea of honey-locust-green leaves that defined the horizon, a city that provided homes to a million people. Their safety, not Consortium profits, defined her duty.
     "— you've stayed within your contingency limits, so policyware prevents me from resolving your poor performance the way I'd like." The woman sounded disappointed, even wistful.
     By firing me, Phoebe interpreted the manager's idiom. Unconcerned by the hint, confident she met the letter, if not the spirit, of the Consortium's practices and procedures, she let her eyes drift over the city below.
     "I can, however, reduce your personal salary for your failure to meet the Consortium goals you agreed to last year."
     Phoebe lifted one shoulder minutely, a small shrug to dismiss the penalty. As long as she could keep paying her combine what they deserved. Over a thousand people down there worked for her. They patrolled this rambling pastiche of agricultural valleys, intervening urban fingers, web of public transportation, and all the other Patterns that made up this direvnya called Ganj Dareh. Her combine cared for lives and property in the direvnya, and she cared for her combine.
      "Plus, I can direct you—"
     Phoebe lifted her gaze. The blue sky offered only a summer-close double-suns and the bone-white faces of three moons ascending in temporary echelon.
     "— to implement next year's budget immediately."
     Phoebe jerked her attention back to the virtual meeting. "We haven't determined next year's budget yet, Za Leez."
     "I have. The delta we've applied to contract renewals for the last four years," said her boss. "Six percent increment in charges to the Collective and a ten-percent decrement in services with associated reduction in personnel and expenses."
     "My customers don't deserve this! My combine doesn't deserve this! We can't go on ignoring the recession, Za Leez. More people need our health services, more people need our counseling, more people need our watchfulness — not fewer."
     "The whole continent shares these problems, Phoebe. Costs are up. Productivity is down. We've got to charge more to maintain our margins. I expect you, as a Combine Tactician with profit/loss responsibility, to understand that. I expect you to pull your weight in my region because I haven't got time to soothe your conscience. If you don't, I'll just have to put someone in your job who doesn't need her hand held. Just give me a reason to do it."
     Words tumbled through Phoebe's mind, insubordinate words that would get her fired on the spot, passionate words about commitment and kindness that would fall on deaf ears, frightened words about her life without this work that she would never say to anyone. She picked through them for something to say and found only, "I understand."
     "I want the new numbers in effect tomorrow."
      "We won't get an official renewal for another thirty days."
     "The Notice of Competition expires today—"
     "Midnight. There's still time for—"
     "There will be no other bidders, Phoebe. The renewal's ours. There's nobody but Byukan-Hamil on this entire continent."
     "But if there were—"
     "What?"
     "Nothing." That's how much chance we'd have of being renewed. If the Collective had any choice at all, they'd pick our competition, and I wouldn't blame them. The specter of that remote possibility chilled her.
      "In that case, I'm finished." Za Leez's image vanished.
     Immediately, a clamor of alerts jammed the cockpit of Phoebe's patrolcraft. The demands of her job, blocked during her meeting/will-be-seen with Za Leez, rushed in, but Phoebe's gaze shied away from her virtual workspace. She turned instead to the view beyond, drinking in the teeming direvnya, the rippling river confluence, the surrounding sea of fey-banyan that defined her bailiwick — sips of pastoral satisfaction to restore her balance, her resolve.
     Za Leez managed Hubei Region, one of seven used by Byukan-Hamil Consortium to administer its domination over all contracts on the continent. The Consortium chose to operate only on Popovich, wallowing in their monopoly, retrenching during the current recession, ignoring flourishing business on the other eight continents of the planet. Elsewhere on Yeibichai, alone among the Backdoor Planets, all services, public and private, were delivered via contracts opened to competition every year. On Popovich, however automatically the same rules were followed, no one else had come along in more than a decade to contend Byukan-Hamil's lock on business.
     So, its Team of Partners — including Za Leez and her fellow Regional Partners, plus three General Partners and the Senior Partner — Har Norma Byukan herself — had nothing to do but hone their control of the continent's market niches and leach out the last microGeld of profit.
     Phoebe would have long ago given up dancing through the shadows cast by the Partners' silly rules ... if it weren't for the thousands in Ganj-Dareh Direvnya who depended on her every day for their safety and well-being ... if it weren't for the wonderful people who worked for her ... if it weren't for the rewarding work itself.
     After a moment, a shudder stirred Phoebe, shaking away the dregs of her boss' disdain. Phoebe twisted to her left and refocused on the job at hand.
     Down there, at the center of the orbit flown automatically by her craft, visible through its bubble canopy, a stadium seemed to be drawn with multi-colored and moving sand, each grain a human head. Only the elliptical outline tracing the structure's bowl lent any geometry to the site.
     Too many people in the direvnya sat around without jobs, so they tried to keep themselves busy — and sometimes sheer volume overwhelmed even the peaceful citizens of Ganj Dareh. Too many had crammed into this facility for a futsal game. They had threatened to boil over into a chaos of injuries and property damage, generating a Risk-of-Injury Alert, High Multiplier.
     Her combine had responded smoothly. Two Community Stations shared responsibility for the stadium, their tacticians running everything according to the appropriate Response Pattern, while Phoebe observed from her post high overhead. All she'd done was approve a few requests for support from outside the area, though she did wonder if the sight of her patrolcraft aloft made any difference to her people while they worked.
     The blurry picture down there seemed calmer now, more orderly. Time to check on the rest of her people.
     Phoebe allowed herself to gaze on Ganj Dareh one more time, then set her eyes in line with pupil-narrow streams of light that presented her view of the planet's cyberspace. Message queues demanded her attention. Status panels flickered with changes. But only one request claimed to be urgent. She agreed to take its meeting/will-be-seen.
     Two faces appeared, the Community Tacticians responsible for the Risk-of-Injury Incident below her now.
      Before either could speak, Phoebe told them, "Five seconds each. Alaxxchia, you first."
     The tactician for Brome-Missisquoi Community, his skin dark like tarnished copper, said, "My ambulances are coming back dirty and with supplies depleted. I'll need budget relief from Roca."
     The other tactician, responsible for Sungaipenuh Community, her skin dark like polished mahogany, spoke up. "Phoebe, I'm tapped out. This is my third Risk-of-Injury for the accounting period, and we're not even halfway through it."
     All her people were pushing their limits, in budget, in energy, in patience — a fact of their lives, scarring, taxing, but not fatal. Anyway, as Chief of Anshin Services, Phoebe did not believe in depriving her subordinates of their responsibilities — or authority.
     "Work it out yourselves," Phoebe snapped while watching their faces carefully. A muscle bunched in Alaxxchia's dark jaw, while Roca twitched a shoulder, so Phoebe added more gently, as reward for their self-discipline, "I'll warn Accounting to help you file journal entries to reflect the settlement." That would eliminate the grit work involved. Both tacticians relaxed some, Alaxxchia more than Roca. Now, all they had to do was square it with each other.
     "O.K.?" Phoebe said.
     Alaxxchia's image vanished, and Roca took over the whole meeting panel. "Chief?" She seemed worried and afraid, now that she was alone with her boss.
      Phoebe nodded.
     Roca plunged into a speech, "I realize that Sungaipenuh doesn't face the worst unemployment challenge, but Phoebe, we are in the top four! Our sleep-and-eats are crowded, and the combines running them won't rent additional space despite my suggestions. Everybody's restless, even those with jobs. People complain and squabble more than I've ever seen. My constables, Nurses, counselors, and Techniker are putting in double overtime — at regular pay because I can't afford more. And there's no end in sight.
     "Then this incident." She paused. "Alaxxchia's Station worked well with us, but now I have to pay for that help." She fluttered a hand around her chin. "I just don't know how to handle it."
     Za Leez, part memory, part inference, whispered advice about cutbacks in services, delays in payments, even long work-shifts. Phoebe smiled sadly at the Regional Partner's presumed words and swept them away. To Phoebe, moments like this made her job as Combine Tactician worthwhile. How many times had she helped somebody, one on one, soul to soul? She loved being able to give to others that way, but this way, here and now as the Combine Tactician, she would help thousands by guiding Roca. The multiplier effect blessed the dilemmas and stress of this job.
     "Roca, I understand, and I appreciate your concern. If you could go through this without worrying, I'd be the one in real trouble. Let me point some things out to you.
     "First, the bottom ten Communities have some slack in their budgets. I'm sure I can persuade them to share with you." Phoebe smiled knowingly, impishly.
     Roca smiled back.
      "Second, the combine's contingency budget—"
     The four-beat warble of a Risk-of-Death Alert snapped her sentence. A short trill followed, noting a Several-Multiplier. Startled, Phoebe broke out of the meeting and glanced at the urban landscape below. Somewhere down there, a crisis threatened lives.
     "Keyword?" she asked her patrolcraft.
      "Toxic gas," it answered.
     "Show me!" Phoebe looked back at Roca and said to her, "Request a can-feel with me tomorrow. We'll work it out then."
      "Right, Chief. I'll let you go check on that alert." The meeting panel blinked away.
     Phoebe scanned her craft's transparent nose and found a fluorescent-yellow circle superimposed on the physical landscape beneath her. The Incident Site lay to the east, in a neighborhood near the direvnya's transportation drome.
     Excitement danced along her spine — people needed help. A cool, metallic stream of self-discipline flowed out of her depths and washed away that thrill — she no longer gave help directly. The local Station's Response Team ought to handle the alert just fine. Still, she would make herself available nearby, just in case she had to coordinate support from other communities.
     "Take me there," she ordered the aircraft.
      It broke from its patrol orbit, banking smoothly to the left.
      She added, "Maintain coordination altitude."
     That altitude belonged to her as Combine Tactician. Descending would invoke the Scope-of-Authority Pattern: "Like the commander of a craft, the tactician remains in charge of his or her bailiwick, regardless of who visits it." She didn't want to intrude down there.
     Phoebe respected Pattern Languages, which defined the rules of the planet's society. Patterns were decisions already made, filters for a chaotic world, leaving time and thought for the real issues of life. In this case, the Pattern reinforced her instincts and her experience in managing people.
     They settled into a new course, straight toward the climbing glare of Anu with En-ki nibbling at its edge. Phoebe turned back to her work. She glanced over her request queues, topped by Risk-of-Abuse Exemptions. She moved on to project plans to be reviewed, headed by a project to inoculate all Ganj-Dareh communities against a new mutation of Gë influenza. And there were other things to be done ...
     Risk-of-Death Alerts triggered a new level of accountability for Phoebe and her combine. Her customers, the Ganj-Dareh Collective, doubled the emphasis on the Life-Expectancy Pattern by making local deaths a specific metric in Phoebe's annual evaluation. Whenever there was anything her combine could've done to save a life that was lost prematurely, she heard about it immediately, with the annual total a major factor during contract-renewal negotiations.
     Abruptly, Phoebe ordered, "Combine Summary!" I have to know what's going on down there.
     The display of queues dissolved into a wall of plaque-like boxes, each titled for a service that her organization, the Byukan-Hamil Combine for Anshin Services in Ganj-Dareh Direvnya, provided:
      — "Health," both "Communal" and "Personal"
      — "Safety," both "Accidental" and "Intentional"
      — "Justice," both "Regulatory" and "Criminal"
     All slates appeared busy, but only the "Accidental" rectangle under "Safety" pulsed with an active alert. The words "Ar-Kansas Community" showed dark against a background of semolina brown. Phoebe focused on this blinking strip and said, "Details."
     The display reworked itself into a stack of horizontal panels ordered according to the combine's Response Pattern. She skimmed down:
     Stage 1 — Alert — started with the Incident itself. The panel showed a handful of lines, one for each automated or volunteer call telling the Community Station that something had happened.
     Stage 2 — Respond — began with the Risk-of-Death Alert, initiated by the Station Tactician. This stage continued even as she watched. Time-stamped lines cascaded down the panel, reporting events, including departure of a Response Team.
     She glanced at the summary graphs on each panel. Pie charts showed running totals of expenditures associated with this Incident, as a percentage of amounts budgeted for a Risk-of-Death. So far, costs were minimal, although the figure for Stage 2 climbed steadily. She sighed at the allocations, fixed by the highest levels of the Consortium. How puny her control really was!
     But the response did seem to be going according to the pattern. Satisfactory. Phoebe could let the Response Team progress, just as she let the members of her combine progress every second of every day, by themselves, doing their jobs, all over Ganj Dareh.
     The patrolcraft changed around her. The subtle tremors of its passage softened as it arrived at the specified destination and started an orbit.
      She looked down.
     A house-hill dominated the scene. Its tiers of apartments stepped up the side of an enormous bank of earth. Wreathed with gardens, striped from crown to toe with trees, glittering with solar-electric converters, the structure resembled a stack of boxes in fancy wrap, with a meager park making a puddle of green at their feet.
     Across that green, the outline of a building under construction — too few of those around these days — jutted up across the orderly background of a house-cluster. Next to the bare framework, a crane's tall stick canted back at the tiered house-hill.
     And, on the back side of the apartment terraces, beyond their earthen buttress and insulator, the drome that handled the direvnya's traffic — airborne and surface — stood atop its packed-earth grounds like a string of hunkering sculptures arranged on a groomed beach.
     Directly below, Phoebe saw some people, mere grains at this distance, hurrying away from the house-hill.
     "Magnify," she said. She returned to the display offered by her flying workstation. She searched its picture of the scene, studying the open front of the terraces, looking for casualties. She found them, their bodies sprawling. Their stillness called out to her. What happened here?
     She brought up the Response Pattern again, reading details this time. Ruptured bio-battery, sized for a house-hill. She hunted for a cue-mark associated with this Incident Cause, a mark that would indicate a virtual pointer to the Response Protocol for handling such a cause. Nothing.
     Surely the Station Tactician hadn't failed to post the cue? She told her automata to find the appropriate Response Protocol. The words "None found" appeared in a background of diaper-rash red.
     Aghast, incredulous, Phoebe called for her combine's Training Schedule. Highlighted on a calendar panel, the class on the bio-battery response protocol hung in the middle of next year. A neat, compact remedy to her people's current problem, sitting there, in the future. Perhaps this time she'd relied too much on their inventiveness. Perhaps this time she should have fought Za Leez when the boss insisted on a cut in training costs. Burning with regret, Phoebe needed to compensate, to help somehow — and now!
     "Nav-gear," Phoebe addressed that part of her craft's automata. "Assume monitoring altitude." Immediately, the patrolcraft slowed and dropped. Phoebe surged forward in her safety harness. From now on, her automata would notify the Community Tactician about all her actions, including this one: "Comm-gear, create meeting/can-be-heard between me and the Site Tactician here, initiator 'Phoebe to Site,' terminator 'Phoebe out.'"
      She activated that meeting, "Phoebe to Site."
     "Si, Jefe?" The immediate response in a familiar rasping voice afforded Phoebe some comfort. Bre Harlan D'Grennan — one of her most competent Site Tacticians. Phoebe was glad he directed this Response Team.
     "What are you using for a Response Protocol?" Phoebe searched back along the parallel roads that crossed the community below. She spotted two of her combine's low-slung, red-and-white-striped emergency vehicles racing along.
     "I don't know!" Harlan answered from one of those vans. "It's not like we've been trained on these Huevadas."
     The vehicles slowed, turned, and bustled down a green street toward the house-hill, the grass-covered lane already crowded with construction transports. Phoebe let Harlan vent. It would help clear his mind for the job itself. Besides, he had nothing better to do till his Team arrived.
     "But I do know that cagado contraption over there released methanethiol, a gas muy venenoso. Then the wind plastered it against the east end of this house-hill. I know I've got casualties. And I know how to respond to them and that I have to do it rapido!"
     Phoebe expected nothing but straight answers from Harlan. She asked quietly, "Have you talked to the combine installing the thing?"
     "Both of its members were on-site. Neither answers messages. That's probably them lying out on the path. We're here, Jefe."
     "Yes, I know."
     "Oh. I do love oversight."
      Grinning, Phoebe said, "Carry on. Phoebe out."
     But then she frowned. Concerns multiplied in her mind. Holding them off, she pulled herself straighter in her seat and refocused on the now-closer scene below, no headset this time. Her people erupted from their vehicles. Their blue-gray chemical-hazard suits glinted. Their emergency med-tek kits hunched on their backs. They ran toward the visible casualties — eighteen still figures — sprawled on walks, on steps, on lower-level balconies.
     Paths on the house-hill's perimeter flooded with residents. The people of Ganj-Dareh Direvnya — her customers — fleeing their homes. Doubt flashed up from her belly, apprehension about the downstream impact of this Incident on their attitude toward her, their anshin chief, toward her people, toward the renewal of their contract.
     Nibbling a lip, she scanned back along the paths, trying to gauge numbers, levels of panic. The closer the fleeing residents were to the house-hill, the more hysterical they acted. Jostling broke up the thick stream with brief, furious eddies. A few injured fell by the wayside.
     Abruptly, Phoebe roiled with impatience. Enough of these layers between me and doing real things! "Nav-gear, supervisory altitude!"
     The patrolcraft reconfigured itself for less airspeed and a smaller orbit, retarded its engines, and banked toward the house-hill's green street.
     Now she was working for Harlan. He expected independence, initiative. All tacticians in her combine did. As the housetop climbed past her on the left, Phoebe returned to her headset, looking for resources to help with crowd control and first-aid. The graphic summaries for surrounding communities showed that they could spare few people.
     She sent them a message anyway. "We've got panic in the paths over here. Send all constables working routine patrol and administration. I will supervise—"
     A comm-alert sounded once, again. She'd set the alarm for urgent messages only.
     Phoebe told the craft, "Answer alert. Audio." Outside, narrowing horizons had replaced the rest of the direvnya.
     In the first message, Harlan requested air-ambulances. Phoebe caught sight of the construction crane's boom, stock-still in front of her; a cable dangled from its tip. She approved the expenditure as she followed the line down to its broken end stirring in the wind. Meters below, the rest of the cable snugged around a massive column. Intended for the construction site, the honeycombed ceramic pillar lay across the shattered case of a vehicle-sized bio-battery.
     As her craft continued its circle, Phoebe twisted in her seat to keep the battery in focus. It resembled a giant confection. Its thick brown shell seemed strong, but within its jagged-edged rupture, glimmers hinted at a spongy mass barely contained. On the ground, a pool of fluid shone like creamy sap.
     She glared at the mess. Why aren't these Fated things stronger? Aloud, she snapped, "Take Note, under 'Regulating Justice,' seek costs and damages from bio-battery combine." The craft chirped acknowledgment.
     Why hadn't those battery makers done a better job? Empathy for the guilty combine surfaced, then fell away before sympathy for the victims. She yearned to reach out to the sufferers once more — rather than just support those who were supposed to do that job. How many times had the explosive sobs of a troubled child in her arms faded to rhythmic, sleeping breaths? The muscles in her arms and shoulders stirred with those memories.
     Brusquely, Phoebe shifted herself away from the wreckage, away from the yearning to help — not my job anymore. She found herself peering over a row of trucks into the construction site. People in there — two, maybe more — injured, motionless on the ground.
     "Phoebe to Site."
     "No time to report!" Harlan answered.
     Phoebe pushed herself to the top of his priorities by continuing, "Two people down in the construction site, out of sight behind the trucks. Get somebody over there now!"
     "Ay, Dios Mio!" He sounded distant, as if other, unspoken thoughts occupied him. "Can't spare anybody."
      "Harlan—"
     "Assess — Stabilize — Evacuate. Next steps in the Response Pattern, right? Well, Jefe, I'm Assessing and the Techniker are Stabilizing — over here. You Assess and Stabilize over there."
     "These people need more help than I can give them." Phoebe had no direct medical experience; her background was psychological counseling, starting with children in adventure playgrounds, ending with groups of grief-stricken adults, before starting up the rungs of management. If the med-tek couldn't handle someone's injuries, she had only first-aid to fall back on.
     "You do it or nobody does! Sorry, Jefe."
     How many times had she stroked, murmured, and smiled, until the terrible brow-lines of anger or pain smoothed into a sign of calm? Her eyes brimmed again as those feelings flashed over her.
     "Hey, Jefe, I need ambulancia aeria from other Stations. You want to approve that now? Jefe? Jefe?"
     For the record: "I approve direvnya-wide support for casualty transport." For Harlan: " You just remember to send a Techniker this way."
     "Yessir."
     For herself: I did sit through medical-Techniker's training. I can handle this. Probably.
     Aloud: "Nav-gear, get me down there now!"
     Her obligations seized her again. She was the Combine Tactician, responsible for everything the combine did, especially expenditures versus budget. That reality bullied excitement aside. As the patrolcraft sank toward the ground like a preying owl, Phoebe made one last check on her bailiwick.
     The display showed that air-ambulances had lifted off in response to her approval, two from Central Direvnya headquarters and another from nearby Suribachi Community Station. New messages erupted as ground-ambulances reacted. More teams doing their jobs. She popped the display back up to the combine summary. Four new alerts flashing —
     A cowl of sadness rose from her heart and veiled the crisp display.
     How many times had she been able to do no more than hold a hand as it released the tension of life for the last time, but had sat there steadfastly until the need was gone? Her throat convulsed as poignancy replayed in her mind. She owed these people at least that much.
     The patrolcraft rocked itself to a landing. Phoebe freed herself of harness and reached for her chemical-hazard suit, customized to her willowy frame. Around her, the craft shut itself down, yet sounded the comm-alert one more time. She glanced quickly into her headset. An urgent message waited. She called for it.
      "Station to Response Team: chemical-hazard dissipated. Isolation suits no longer required."
     Phoebe dipped her head, acknowledging the station's efficiency, and stripped off her headset, a wide tiara that aligned its photon spouts with her off-center gaze. She replaced it with her tactical relay, a Broca-Wernicke transducer that clung to the red hair above her right ear. She pushed open the patrolcraft's door and stepped out.
     A current of foul air snatched her breath away and stung her eyes. Tears welling, she fumbled to the external equipment bays, snared two emergency med-tek kits, and raced toward casualties. What was the chant taught the first day of Techniker training? Oh, yeah, 'blood then plug.'
     Phoebe dashed past the crane's base. Slowing, she started her search among the shafts and girders that outlined the factory. They quartered the sky and intersected the broken ground with crisp shadows. Light and dark confused structure and occupants. She saw the glimmer of a hard-hat. She took two quick strides and dropped to her knee beside a slumped figure. She found no blood. Relieved, Phoebe carefully pulled the casualty's mouth open.
     She turned to a med-tek kit, plunged her bare fingers through the hermetic skin of one of its chambers, and clutched the shapeless sac inside. The face-hugger shivered as though awakening. Pulling it free, she carefully slid its endotracheal probe, as translucent as gut, into the casualty's mouth. She felt a tug as the breathing tube adhered to the throat, then a steady pull as it sought its path through the vocal cords and into the trachea. The device's sac splayed over the man's face. Its fringe of automated feelers uncurled and sought out scalp, temple, eardrum, and throat.
     Twisting back, she reached into the other kit for a chest-hugger. She laid the hefty pad over the casualty's chest, then poked its start-button. The chest-hugger unfolded and wrapped itself gently around the man's torso, working itself between flesh and ground. Even as heart rhythms appeared on the pad's front, Phoebe sought the next casualty.
     =Site to Jefe.= The tactical relay induced the words inside her brain. =Harlan here. Did you approve my request for ambulancia aerea?=
      =Of course.= Phoebe answered the same way.
     =Then where are those meat wagons anyway? I've got five face-huggers with flags up over here!=
     Phoebe waited a heartbeat in anticipation. In the silence, she heard the sounds of engines high in the air. Through the open framework of the unfinished building, she caught sight of aircraft sweeping their wings up for a vertical landing. They answered Harlan. And the sight of quick, high-tech response spiked her pulse as she bent over the next casualty: no blood; out and down came the face- and chest-huggers.
     Again, Phoebe didn't linger for diagnoses. She spun, blinked away a vagrant sting in her eyes, ducked under a catwalk, and froze.
      A child lay in a jumble, the sorry end of an unplanned descent.
     "Ibrahim?" The word escaped her lips.
     Shocked, Phoebe drove herself toward him. His blood had turned the underside of his yellow coverall to a splotchy maroon and coated the raw earth beneath him. Islands of clotted blood surrounded him.
     She peered down at his face, its blondish eyebrows and smooth, fair skin. No, it wasn't Ibrahim. Couldn't have been. Ibrahim died years ago.
     This child lay so still, just like Ibrahim, already cooling when she found him.
      =Phoebe to Site. I've got a real bad one over here.=
     =Handle it, Jefe. We've got bad ones over here too. Harlan out.=
      Phoebe shook herself. On-site, she worked for Harlan, suffered his curt words, but later —
     Urgently, she delivered her third face-hugger. The sac lurched upright as its respirator went to work. The sensate probes homed on their targets. One burrowed into the jugular; the supply pouches wilted as their contents drained. At once, a stiff red flag popped up, lifesigns documented with glaring numerals on its face, the boy's name and medical history in a less demanding font. The face-hugger needed help.
     This child seemed so exposed, just like Ibrahim, enraged by his mother's untimely death.
     Kneeling, pressure pounding in her ears, Phoebe popped snaps on the bottom third of a kit and laid open its pockets. A line of instruments glittered. She scanned them, hoping for inspiration. She seized a power scissors and slid it down one side of the child's coverall, then up the other. She laid open the garment and rocked back on her heels.
     This child required so much from her, just like Ibrahim, yet she had concentrated on his father, Niger.
     Multiple wounds split this child's flesh. All oozed blood. One gory furrow, bottom streaked with white, tracked the length of a twisted thigh. Phoebe snatched up a pressure bandage and slid it under his leg, lapped it over itself, and punched its start-button. The device flowed to conform to the misshapen limb, then swelled.
     At least she had a chance with this one. Ibrahim had been alone on her playground when he fell — and died — while she and Niger made love.
     This child's chest then: ribs jutted, gleaming pink in the meager light. Phoebe hesitated with another pressure bandage in her hand. Frustration jerked her focus to the falling numbers on the face-hugger's flag. She wrapped her arms around the void of helplessness opening inside herself. Like before, when she couldn't save her lover's child.
     Ibrahim's death had driven away Niger, who blamed her. With him had left her hopes of a normal life: husband, family, a job to round things out. So, she had searched out a career, this one, that consumed and distracted her, where she could — should — take care of everything. She hated to fail at that.
      "Allow me."
     Phoebe's head snapped up. On the other side of the casualty stood a woman, her gloved hands forward with the offer, a Nurse-in-Training uniform around her, her body slender in soft contrast to the building's skeleton. Over her right shoulder towered another, larger figure, a man-shaped backdrop coated in rectangular shadows. He carried boxes of equipment and supplies.
     A Nurse? Where'd Harlan get a Nurse to help me?
     "Glory in the Lord, we heard your alert," the Nurse-in-Training said. "Our clinic sits beyond that house-cluster, in Skeinswift Neighborhood. I already tended another casualty." She gestured. "Behind that wall. Probably the master for this apprentice."
     Skeinswift? Still on her knees, Phoebe gave a curt nod of permission. Harlan didn't send this Nurse.
     Immediately, the woman reached into Phoebe's pack for another face-hugger, then squatted over the child. The spongy sac, carrying separate pouches of red, milky, and clear fluids, along with bulbs of other colors, filled her small hands. With swift, gentle movements, she set the fresh device in place.
     Of course Phoebe wanted help for this child, wanted to put into place the skills that would save him. But where did she come from?
     The Nurse-in-Training worked quickly, taking devices from the boxes held by her assistant, acting to stanch the seeping away of life, to fend off trespassing death.
     "What's your name?" Phoebe asked.
     "Foxfire." The young woman tossed her head at her helper. "This is Grizzly." She returned quickly to her patient.
     Strange names, totally unfamiliar. "Do you," Phoebe fumbled toward more data, "work for me?"
     Moving with quick assurance, Foxfire sealed another wound. "No."
     Phoebe suddenly connected different bits of memory. The easy hosanna. Skeinswift Neighborhood. A Nurse not on her payroll. Then, this "Grizzly" would be ... She lifted her eyes.
     The boy was huge. He cast a man-sized shadow, but his chubby face and absent-minded smile seemed much younger than that. He stood calmly, legs apart, bulky med-tek kit clutched effortlessly under each arm. He held his chin up and off like he was listening to distant music. His bulging eyes were nearly closed and his large, intricate, furry ears waved slightly beside his short hair.
     Phoebe had heard of these children, non-standard humans, "mutants" in some unkind mouths, called "Bears" by their own people for some obscure reason. But she had never actually seen one before. He seemed harmless, even adorable, yet somehow creepy.
     Foxfire rose easily to her feet. Her nut-brown face, framed by a cap of glistening black hair, was serious but no longer intense. "Glory in Life, he's stabilized, but needs immediate evacuation."
     Phoebe stood as well. Relief gushed within her, but the tingle of recognition and the thrill of opportunity bulled it aside. "You're with The Tangent," she asserted.
     "Right." Foxfire returned Phoebe's calculating gaze with dark-eyed calm.
     The Tangent had haunted Phoebe ever since she had taken over the anshin combine four years before. Their Neighborhood, Skeinswift, never stopped casting its compact shadow on her map of Ganj Dareh. The Tangent didn't allow her constables to patrol there, didn't need her clinics, didn't ask for help of any kind — and normally didn't give any. Around since the Founding of Yeibichai, they tended to stay in their own neighborhood, focusing on their own business and their sectarian observances. When they came out, they respected others, made honest deals and kept them, obeyed all pertinent patterns — if you ignore the Bears, which everyone did.
     All within their rights, of course — except Phoebe worried. How could they possibly achieve the level of service her combine did? Would one of them suffer, even die, sometime, because they tried to do everything themselves? Why did they exclude her when all she wanted was to help them, just like she did every other neighborhood in Ganj Dareh? A whole set of concerns nagged at her, low priority, but never settled, like The Tangent were a cluster of Ibrahims, secretive, furious, ill-fated. Even a couple of meetings with their ruling elders, cordial, but unproductive, had not set her mind to rest.
     Ibrahim wouldn't let me close enough to help him, but maybe I can start prying open The Tangent right here and now. Punch just a tiny hole in their independence. Her fingers twitched. And take back control of this situation at the same time, even if I have to break some rules to do it.
     Phoebe sought leverage for negotiating. The boy lay at Foxfire's feet, the digits of his lifesigns flickering but stable. Another moment or two won't harm him. I can use him to force a deal on this girl, but I'd better make it quick!
     Decided, she said, "Let me pay you for this service." Definitely forbidden by policy. "A consulting fee." The Team of Partners prohibited funds from leaving the Consortium. "How about it?"
     Foxfire said, "No, thank you."
     Push harder! The face-hugger's flag scolded her. Hurry! Phoebe snatched up her med-kits, turned her back, and snarled, "Then evacuate him yourself!"
     "I cannot take him to my clinic." A soft-voiced declaration.
     Phoebe manufactured a glare and flung it over her shoulder. Foxfire, Grizzly, and the casualty posed amid a crosshatch of shadows and light. "Why not? Your Bear friend there can easily carry him back to your clinic. You saved him. Now, you can care for him."
     "We are not prepared for Ausländer."
     Limits are good. They stay within their budgets. "All the more reason I should pay you to care for him."
     Foxfire twisted with the pressures. "The elders would not let me! He is one of you. You care for him!"
     Grinning, Phoebe swung back around. Nearly there.
     "I agree, so I should pay you for stabilizing him. I'll make it easy—"
     Grizzly barged forward, his voice trilling, "Your robot calls." A boy soprano with vibrato.
      Phoebe jerked, twitching her gaze his way. "What?"
     Then, her tactical relay broke in: =Site to Jefe. Harlan here. I need help with these familia Miranda. They want back in their homes, but I'm not sure it's safe enough to advance to that step in the Pattern yet.=
     Phoebe concentrated on her tactician. He used slang in his neighborhood language, Castellano Chileno; "familia Miranda" meant "noisy onlookers." She answered him, =I requested crowd-control assistance already. Hasn't anybody showed up?=
     =No,= Harlan answered with exasperation. =Jefe, I'll divert a tech to your casualties if you'll get these Huevones off my back.=
     =I'll be right there, Harlan. Phoebe out.= She whirled back to close the deal with Foxfire.
     They were gone, all of them, the boy casualty as well.
     To the clinic! Phoebe peered in that direction. In the dappled undercarriage of the unfinished building, Grizzly wove his way through the outcroppings of equipment and matériel. A tuft of blond hair peeked out above one elbow. Though gentle with his burden, Grizzly easily outdistanced Foxfire, who struggled with their med-tek kits. As Phoebe watched, the strange child bounded out-of-sight.
     Let down, but not shut out. Phoebe would follow up on this encounter. She'd send an ambulance to collect the boy later, then after a day or two to let them wonder and worry, she'd call on The Tangent's elders herself. And turn this little tête-à-tête into a major new relationship. She pointed herself toward Harlan. Or at least more than I've got now.
     But one other thing bothered her: How had Grizzly known about Harlan's call? All anshin communications used encrypted radio frequencies. How could he listen in?

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