Jik Dain Bedlip
Corridors spread out from the staircase and split the Regional-Partner's level into octants. Each
thoroughfare ran tall and wide, with a floor that shone warmly and walls and ceiling covered in
off-white plaster. People swarmed through it as they busily administered a geographical part of
the consortium, all tidily and scrupulously overseen by its particular Partner.
JDainB's words sprang up like a voiceover on a documentary: "where the ground was shredded shale,
slippery from its own jumble of loose bits gathered in the ruts and ridges of secret custom." In
their wake came the crackle and reek of his dementia.
However, Dain saw that they truly described this quiet tumult. Shale marked the continent's
surface, just as these industrious people represented its Collective. Shale, with its sedimentary
strata, hinted at layers of people, their many-sized direvnya, their varied cultures, their evolved
psyches. And the workers themselves, as they streamed around Dain now, brought JDainB's "shattered
bits" to life as they flowed in patterns defined by decades of political adjustments and the
posturings of vanity and deceit.
JDainB's insight into, JDB's vicious scything of, Dain's prowess with, these secret customs gave
him the capabilities to undermine it all. Starting with Za Leez.
Dain double-checked his llevar, comparing the current time and the schedule of his upcoming
appointment with the Hubei-Region Partner. He had a couple of hundred seconds yet. He glanced
around even as his tactics for this can-feel refreshed themselves in his mind.
Leez, a woman of appetites, appreciated fashion, conversation, and social maneuvering.
Dain approached a pair of full-length mirrors, bracketing this central entrance to Partner
territory.
Style comprised much of Leez's titillation. Her body yielded too easily to indulgence, and there
was only so much nano-filters in her gut and veins could prevent. So, she had evolved an intricate
set of sensual mannerisms, of sensory benchmarks, of mental scoresheets, to build anticipation for
her rare assignations with pleasure.
Dain compared the image shown him by the simple glass with Leez's current set of rules.
His head was trim, clean, almost barren of hair. He checked its pale scalp for superficial
blemishes. Finding none, he stepped back and studied his wing collar. Edged with the vestige of a
necktie, the collar topped a pressed retro-linen shirt, in turn circumscribed by a semiformal
alloform-silk coat-vest, clipped together at his waist, then swept back into a bobbed tail dangling
over his flat posterior. Under that and over the shirt, high-rise trousers reached up from his
legs to form a maroon bellyplate.
He lingered on this carefully crafted impression. The clean line of scalp over skull blurred. His
neatly defined features wavered. Visual echoes multiplied in his mind, most of them images of
himself; but, hair different, posture different, eyes the same, intruded other faces —
He sneered at these poachers, tossed his head up, then snapped it back. With that, a wave of
mental pressure rippled along the train of faces, correcting one anomaly after another. In a
heartbeat, Dain prevailed once again in his own mind.
And confirmed that he evoked Partner haute couture with flair, yet a provocative difference.
Confident, potent, Dain swung away from the mirror and stalked down the hall marked for the Hubei
Region. He ignored those who scurried about him and focused on his goal here, the first sortie in
his campaign of conquest.
At the end of the hall, Dain recognized the doorway into Leez's office suite. The ensemble,
consisting of main entrance into an open office for direct-support staff surrounding a private
chamber for the Partner, obeyed the consortium's designated Pattern, the one governing each of the
corridors radiating across this floor. He strolled through the polished-wood frame.
Inside the suite designed to keep people busy, the air chilled him; its smell also suggested a
setripuu forest. Before him, staff perched at desks laid out at regular intervals, yet adjusted to
prevent impulse conversations. Each was dressed as formally as Dain. Heads flicked randomly as
individuals tossed peeks in his direction. Only the receptionist acknowledged him, but made no
move to intercept him, a Partner here, undoubtedly, on Partner business. No one said anything as
he passed through. He knocked at the closed door of the inner chamber, the only door in the suite,
then glanced back. No one watched; all concentrated on work. He went in.
In here, the air hinted at dill.
Za Leez Doconrice glanced up from her sweeping desk, her brows pinching tracks between them. She
barely nodded in greeting: permission to perform.
Dain expected no more. In fact, he counted on this minimal opening to the meeting. He started his
act by seizing her guest chair and dragging it around. He sat beside the Regional Partner, elbow
to elbow across a wing of her desk. He showed her a crooked grin and slightly widened eyes.
"I've never seen Norma like this. Have you?" he asked briskly and waited.
Slowly, Leez said, "She does seem concerned."
"Concerned?" Dain evened out his grin and broadened it, then opened his eyes even further as
though surprised. "You haven't heard?"
Hesitantly, Leez shook her head.
"I would have thought—" Dain copied her gesture, exaggerating it to show wonder. "Isn't that
just like Norma? Conceive a brilliant idea and just give it away." He added, "To me, of all
people." He folded his arms on the desk wing and hunched forward. "That meeting yesterday really
impressed her. She feels bad about what consortium policies have done to Ganj Dareh. She
recognizes that we've been drawing down on that account without putting anything back."
He paused, but the other Partner didn't fill in the gap. He continued, "She called me over to her
place yesterday — a real meeting/can-be-felt! — and asked me to take charge of giving Ganj Dareh
an economic boost."
Leez lowered her eyes to the holoscreen built into her desk. Her fingers twitched on top of the
custom-fitted mound she used to drive her point-cursor.
"And this means?" she said after a moment.
"This means a continent-wide Notice of Hiring for jobs located in ..."
Leez's head came up with a snap. "Ganj Dareh?" she gasped.
Motionless, focused, Dain said, "And you'll be busy working the competition there."
With a quick glance, Leez snorted. "Hardly. Irwin's covering that, with Dyr Kanpachiro. That's
not what I'm worried about."
I know, thought Dain. You're a Partner who manages her budget very carefully. Enough margin to
place Hubei as the third most profitable Region every quarter, to keep her bonuses coming, but not
enough that you have to micro-manage every combine. Let your tacticians earn their pay. After
all, you have better uses for your time.
His pause drew a tight-lipped explanation from Leez: "My budget!"
"Oh." Dain feigned shock. "I had thought about the impact on shelter, food, anshin, about how we
are going to have to supplement existing supplies—"
Leez turned an exasperated face on him. "The stock is there. All we have to do is shuffle it
around, but the transport—" She bit off the sentence as though overwhelmed.
Dain cocked his head. Let her preen and strut.
"Even in these days of relaxed business conditions, we have plenty — Hamil knows! — plenty of
transport activity. Nearly fifty flights a day into Ganj Dareh's drome, most of those freighters.
Now, most of that traffic stays within the continent, but—" Leez lifted her head, her wattles
quivering, and scowled to impress Dain. "We supply the rest of the planet with many, many
essential goods, and of course, people coming and going about that business."
"Of course," Dain said earnestly.
Leez's face drooped with worry. "Then there's rail. That will bear the brunt of the travel
increase — this is going to cost me plenty!" After a pause, she went on briskly. "During the
last cycle of contract renewals, all Byukan-Hamil air-transport combines instituted a new Pattern:
no air travel without combine I.D. If you don't work, you don't fly."
So, nearly all jobseekers answering to the Notice will not fly. So, my ollomani infiltrators
mixing with them will not fly. "What's our rail capacity there?" he asked to aid both his public
and private roles.
Leez watched her hand milk numbers out of her private entrance to the Mirnaya Direvnya. "The
Ganj Dareh drome handles fourteen train routes daily within my region alone. Inter-regional routes
tack on nearly thirty arrivals and departures. There used to be more, but people haven't been
searching for jobs out of their hometowns lately, so we cut back. You understand?"
"Certainly. No use incurring a cost for no reason, no matter what the contract says." Dain froze
his features, lest they betray his apparent sincerity with his underlying sarcasm.
"Exactly." Leez seemed mesmerized by the projections playing on her holoscreen.
His prey had paraded into the trap. Faintly, JDB snorted his glee, but Dain did not need the
kibitz. He put out a tentative hand, then slid words across to his victim. "Norma did allocate
some funds. Perhaps I ..."
Leez's features sharpened. "I can set up an account for your project." She fired the words out of
thin lips. "Automated invoicing daily. What's the billing code?"
Dain reached out and patted her hand twice, then squeezed it. He sighed. "I feel accountable for
the costs, but I'd also like to coordinate the work."
Her eyes narrowed. "How?"
"Re-assign the combines to my project. Not just Transport, but also gong-she, anshin, restaurants,
whatever will bear the load of thousands of job seekers flooding into the direvnya. Let me
coordinate their extra efforts. Shuffle resources. Plan, execute, measure, and evaluate."
Eyebrows lifting slowly, Leez considered him for a moment. "That," she said with a faint smile, "I
think I can do."
Dain squeezed her hand again, then released it. "I appreciate it, Leez. I know it's a sacrifice
on your part."
"It's in Byukan-Hamil's best interests."
Exactly what he'd expected her to say. Now to complete the takeover by pushing for just a little
more closure. "Can we call the tacticians across your region now? Let me talk with them for a
moment after you inform them of the change in reporting structure?"
"Now?" Her eyes leapt to the holoscreen and jerked down through a list he couldn't see. She
sighed and without looking back, repeated her question.
"Please," he replied quietly.
She sent an appraising glance at Dain. In a moment, she smiled faintly, with a touch of pleasure
and respect. Her pointer hand began to pump on its electronic mound as she fetched another list to
help her manage the connections.
#
Dain stood, nodded farewell to Leez, then carefully replaced her guest chair. He stood there,
behind the chair, leaning on its back, eyes down in feigned hesitation. He had another question,
one he intended to ask every Partner he visited over the next two days.
Dain lifted his gaze and said, "What about this Dyr Kanpachiro?" Irwin's proposal-development
specialist assigned to Ganj Dareh.
Taut behind her desk, the bureaucrat didn't look up from her holoscreen; her interrupted work
summoned her. She muttered, "He poked his nose into my business a while back." She yielded a
concise glance up.
Dain waited, though his patience chafed.
Leez continued to watch her right hand as it hunkered on its mound. "He was developing a pattern
language for proposals." She tweaked her mouth into a tight grin. "He's a project parasite.
Dependent on a union of at least three Partners for continued funding. Not a threat."
Finished, Dain nodded acknowledgment and farewell, then strolled silently out of Leez's chamber.
The wooden door closed heavily behind him, proclaiming his departure. He ignored the discreet
glances of the Regional staff and swept through their open office.
In the hall, Dain felt clean, even aerodynamic, and steady on course.
