Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
The dream nagged at Phoebe's attention even as last night's disrupted sleep pestered her body with
dull aches. Unsettling images of Ibrahim, lying crumpled and still, his face turned away,
fluttered through her thoughts about approvals and work schedules and expenditures, past and
future.
Keyspace situated above her thighs, ankles crossed, Phoebe sprawled before her 'station. Her work,
with its queues and charts and panels, spread out across the foilscreen. Even between keystrokes,
her arms hurt like she'd been inoculated against five strains of cold virus. Her legs protested
every position like they were bruised. Each step of logic, each decision, creaked through her
mind, as though her brain suffered the same ague. The nightmare returned again and again, casting
shadows, stirring in sorrow, spiking her thinking with false memories of hunkering over the boy's
lifeless body, trying to protect it from the pecking attacks of a sea-gull.
The morning, reserved for administration, crept along. Phoebe finished tasks, and they disappeared
from the foilscreen. She had just fixed her mind on Alaxxchia's performance review when the
workstation burbled a time-alarm. She reluctantly glanced over.
A glossy panel flashed the name "Dyr Kanpachiro Nitsta."
Phoebe scrambled to sit up. Protocol demanded she meet this emissary from consortium headquarters
at the front door. Habit from four years as combine tactician dismissed the keyspace. Habit from
two-and-a-half years as the combine's counseling coordinator brought her feet under her. Habit
from 13 previous years within Byukan-Hamil's hierarchy, since her first job as playground
tactician, turned her toward the office door.
The dream stopped her, the dream and all that it symbolized. Her gut clenched, her lips
compressed, her chest countered with a pang. Phoebe dropped back into her seat and pivoted toward
her windows.
She had caught herself about to run out front to meet this sycophant from Byukan-Hamil staff. He
thought he could stride in here, sweep his bright eyes over everything, and snap out a new way of
doing things. Well, maybe he could, but she wasn't going to carry his baggage while he was doing
it. He could just find his way in here by himself!
"Chief Doyle Phoebe Heejanus?" a reedy tenor voice said from behind her.
Startled, she swung around. A man — just above average height and weight; broad shoulders and
narrow waist, but nothing impressive; younger, but still not a physical challenge (barring martial
skillset yet unknown); wearing a semi-formal business suit; but his sculptured stand of black hair
added height and a hint of cuddliness, like a soft porcupine — stood there, the expression on his
vaguely familiar face patient and cordial. Phoebe raised her eyebrows in return.
"I am Dyr Kanpachiro Nitsta." He bowed slightly over his clasped hands. "I believe we have an
appointment."
Well, he certainly wasn't a twisted, stunted troll, wrinkled and foul-bodied and -mouthed from the
rotting staff caves of Byukan-Hamil Direvnya. That she had to admit.
"I am Chief Heejanus," she said.
"I understand that you're busy — a Chief of Anshin Services always is — but if we don't spend
some time on this new proposal soon, you could have nothing but time, empty time, staring you in
the face."
"Lovely speech. What selling course did you clip it out of?"
"Pardon?"
Shaking her head, Phoebe sat back and beckoned to him. Keyed up, expecting a fight, wanting a
fight, she watched his every move. Blood pulsed in her throat, counterpoint to the lingering ache
in her nape.
Nitsta pushed open the gate in the low fence that separated Phoebe's office from the flow of
traffic and walked through. His robot case followed, taking a hit from the closing gate without
hesitation.
Phoebe found her eyes drawn to the self-mobile luggage. Tacky, overdone technology.
"Something wrong?" asked Nitsta, standing beside the guest bench.
She turned her gaze on the man, then pulled herself erect to accent the confrontation. "We carry
our bags around here."
Nitsta immediately pulled a stylus from an inside breast pocket and squatted by the upright case.
He flipped up a small panel, tripped a couple of switches with the stylus, and reached for the
handle that emerged in response. He straightened, lifting the case, then sat. Phoebe noticed that
the robot's spongy wheels had been sucked out of sight.
"I understand," Nitsta said. "I'd appreciate any tips like that."
Phoebe stared. Frustration crinkled her urge to fight. A small voice from the back of her mind
approved the sea-gull's reaction to her complaint.
Nitsta waited, motionless once more.
Phoebe blinked. Nitsta projected unthreatening readiness. No hint of underhanded power play, of
the kind they pulled on each other in that direvnya in the mountains. Nothing else in his manner
for her to resist, to challenge. Her posture softened. Time to accept his help, to — the thought
stuttered — to depend on this sea-gull —
The dream surfaced, enveloping her mind with sight, sound, and dread. Ibrahim's corpse, wormy with
consequences, stoked her insight into this man's motivations, how he'd been sent by Za Leez. The
flapping, squawking spectre of a bird reminded her of his threat to her job, to the core of her
existence. Nitsta's polite presence did not change any of that.
Take action. Phoebe bolted to her feet. Put my plan for this sea-gull to work. She strode past
Nitsta. No time for chit-chat. "Follow me to the Map Room," she said and hoped her voice hadn't
quavered. She shoved through her gate.
A common room spread out before her. Unevenly round, topped by a lofty, arched ceiling, the large
room provided a collecting point for the blisters who worked the surrounding community. Any of her
people who embodied the interface between combine and its customers, who conducted business on the
customer's turf, not the combine's, who took rubbing from both sides — they were called "blisters"
and earned Phoebe's respect and appreciation every day.
Through several wide doors, Phoebe could see some of the passages and alcoves that made that wing
of the building a cozy warren for blisters during their downtime. Empty now in mid-morning, the
spaces appeared lonely, clouded with dusky overtones.
She normally didn't think about Ibrahim — and his father Niger — she only dreamed about them.
The last such nightmare about the child's death marked her promotion to combine tactician, as it
had punctuated her every step up the hierarchy; she realized the size of the change in her life by
the vividness of the dream. Last night's edition, though, arrived at no such transition in her
life. And there was the added motif of an attacking bird!
Phoebe breathed deeply to steady herself. She turned left into the station's entrance room.
With an even higher ceiling, this reception area opened itself to the suns and the Collective.
Transparent doors, set under tall windows, spanned the front wall and enabled a wide view of the
verdant grounds and the steady stream of zhee-tely approaching on converging paths. As they
entered, these customers crossed a terrazzo floor toward counters and half-private offices that
filled the building's other wing. Staffing these service areas, more combine members, called
"calluses," used the support of structure and staff to accustom themselves to the rubbing between
demand and supply.
Reassured by the cheeriness of the hubbub, Phoebe angled toward the back of the room where the
tower staircase dropped down to the terrazzo. She approached an impromptu meeting. With murmured
greetings, Angins and Aelmc parted to make a path. Ysnyder, sitting on the first broad step,
scooped up an infoplate and lifted a thigh out of the way. Ertcree pressed herself against the
outer wall and smiled back. Finally, Kkero nodded, said, "Chief," but didn't stir from where he
leaned against the curving banister. As a blister, he wore a blue-gray uniform, unadorned except
for a glyph-like silver badge on his chest and the powder-black dreamstick on his hip, in pointed
contrast with the calluses, including Phoebe, in their dawn-gray jumpsuits.
Phoebe nodded at each of them and kept climbing easily. Her feet chuffed on the marble-surrogate
treads. Her legs enjoyed the exercise. Her ears noted Nitsta's steady tromp behind her.
Ibrahim. Niger. If only — what? she demanded from herself. The time-worn fight between "what
if" and "I couldn't have done more" quickly resolved to a knotted impasse of heart and mind deep
within her. As usual, she groped for a distraction. Sunlight bounding down the tower gave it to
her. She hurried her steps to reach it.
She crossed the second landing and started up the next flight. She returned greetings regularly as
people, anshin and civilians alike, passed in descent. Soon, the curved alabaster walls of the
stairwell changed to glass. The building's U-shaped roof spread out on opposite sides, covering
Central Station with gardens. Flowerbeds and shrubs, blooming in the advent of summer, defined
paths that led away from the third landing. Beyond them, newly planted vegetable plots and even a
dwarf orchard, fresh with blossoms, lined the outlying wings.
The zhuhndí vista beyond the station delighted Phoebe. At this height, she could see only the
surrounding neighborhood. That was a beginning, as it was in every direvnya on Yeibichai.
Direvnya meant "village" from-Rooski, but when the Founders adopted the word from the Russian
language of Earth, they applied it to the Pattern Language for a settlement.
Even the smallest of the rural direvnya consisted of at least one neighborhood, complete with
homes, work, shopping, and play, everything people needed for a satisfactory life. The Pattern
Language saw to that, prescribing the configuration, structures, and attitudes that should be
used. A particular Collective did not assert every Pattern in the Language, but used enough to
round out their lives and make their particular direvnya familiar but distinctive.
Like the way Phoebe's home neighborhood of Lochmaben specialized in Adventure Playgrounds, but
didn't have much in the way of Traveler's Inns or Self-Governing Workshops and Offices. In fact,
people from all over Frelinghetti, Lochmaben's encompassing community, even some from other parts
of Ganj Dareh, brought their children to Lochmaben. Where she'd started her career.
Phoebe passed the fourth landing, a lip of standing room circling the glassy tower. At this
height, she could see more neighborhoods, their boundaries marked by Ring Roads or Industrial
Ribbons or Markets of Many Shops or Sports that Join Communities.
By keeping collections of neighborhoods small, the Community-of-7000 Pattern gave its power to
people. As they combined their neighborhoods into a Mosaic of Subcultures, they could be more
selective in the Patterns they applied to their own existence. With numbers came diversity; with
diversity came strength and rich lives. Where a community was complete unto itself, enhanced by
the surrounding countryside, pleased with its integrity, connected to the rest of world physically
and virtually, it, too, was called a direvnya.
Eighteen years ago, Wole Niger Soyinka had moved from Ukhaa Tolgod, just such a
community-as-direvnya, to Ganj Dareh, with more than a hundred communities. He enrolled his son,
Bab Ibrahim, in Phoebe's playground, her first job after graduating from the Society of Passage.
Maybe Niger didn't understand how Adventure Playgrounds worked. Maybe Ukhaa Tolgod hadn't asserted
this Pattern or worked it right. Maybe the feisty boy, acting out against the recent loss of his
mother, was just more than a playground tactician could be expected to handle.
Adventure Playgrounds did not lie open as unstructured, barely noticed arenas for childhood play
dramas. Carefully supervised, they stimulated children and instructed them in the Yeibichai
culture. Avoiding, among other things, the conceptual, symbolic, and abstract thinking required by
automation like the Em-Deh. Stressing, in the Steiner-Monke-Talbott manner, contact with the
physical world, learning through doing, socialization, and exposure to artistic aesthetics and
other fluid instruction.
Care of young minds and bodies demanded great skills, and Phoebe possessed the fundamental
qualification: she cared without smothering. Maybe that trait, flowing from deep within her,
attracted Niger to Phoebe. Will he be the only one in my life?
However, the Adventure-Playground Pattern acknowledged that risk was a necessary part of
challenge. Each tactician trained to manage these risks appropriately, predicated on the age and
skill of the children involved.
One day, after closing, after a bad combination of minor events, with his dad, with other kids,
with the Network of Learning, Ibrahim broke through security in the rope castle and in his rampage,
managed to get very high before he lost his balance and plunged to the rock-covered floor.
After Phoebe, coming in early, had found the dead child, after the helpless rescuers had withdrawn,
after there was nothing left to do but go on with life, Niger knelt alongside his son's body, one
hand on the bloody head.
Niger spoke without looking up. "If you'd been here doing your job, and not fucking me, he'd still
be alive." He stood up, the small body dangling in his arms. "How many more children have to die
before you get it right?" He walked away.
Phoebe paused on the fifth landing, at the entrance to the Map Room, which topped off the tallest
structure in Ganj Dareh. At this height, the sunny day allowed her to see more than ten kilometers
in every direction, enabled her to scan the rooftops of all the communities, all the neighborhoods,
in this direvnya that had consumed her life since Ibrahim had died and Niger had left.
Ibrahim, alone in a crowd of his peers, in danger. Skeinswift, also alone, yet surrounded by a
community of other neighborhoods. Is The Tangent really in similar danger? I better gather them
in before they get there.
Her heart swelled, filling, seeming to strain her chest. Her eyes blurred with tears. A million
people out there, as many as The-Distribution-of-Towns Pattern allowed in any one zhuhndí
direvnya. Only the Mirnaya Direvnya, the Global Village, was bigger, and it existed in
cyberspace. Can I stand to lose my relationship with Ganj Dareh?
No answer came from deep within her. It was too much work to even try to think about it.
Instead: I'll do whatever I have to, even if my only lifeline takes the shape of a chalky-skinned,
puffy-haired, young mushroom from consortium headquarters.
But no way was she going to be led by Nitsta. No way was she going to let him toss out some
standard, generalized bullshit proposal. No! She would make sure he knew and understood her
people, her customers, her city first, before he laid down a single word. And if that
understanding came hard, then so be it!
Phoebe heard Nitsta catching up with her. She turned with a grim smile and a probing gaze.
The sea-gull looked around, affecting no ill effects from the climb. Indeed, his hair flared above
a cool, high forehead. But his upper lip gleamed faintly with sweat and his chest rose and fell
quickly.
Phoebe allowed herself a touch of smugness, then led the way onto a floor that was a level
foilscreen. It displayed a symbolic diagram of Ganj Dareh, a high-level directory straight from
the Mirnaya Direvnya, oriented to align with the zhuhndí direvnya it represented. A clear weather
dome arched overhead. In between spread a holoprojection volume that asserted itself only when
someone on the floor requested data.
She set her right foot on the tower's symbol, looked over at Nitsta, and started her briefing by
calling on the station's automata: "Central, Ganj Dareh statistics."
Numbers appeared in the air before her at chest level.
She continued, "Ganj Dareh is the Prime Direvnya for Byukan-Hamil's Hubei Region. It currently
provides residence for 1,061,382 people of all ages. Four Prime Direvnya are slightly larger, two
smaller." She pointed at a spot knee-high between them. "Demographics like so — Central,
population profile by age, by my point." A graph appeared with axes labeled 'Age' and 'Count.'
The curve followed a classic bell with a broad mid-range. "Central, cancel."
Phoebe raised her hand and passed it along the horizon. Nitsta followed her canvass.
"The underlying topography is hilly, long, gently rolling hills, once the Founders got under the
fey-banyan to see. They encouraged that singular tree to withdraw enough for us to make a
nice-sized town here. You can get a great view of everything from those bluffs over to the
southeast there." She paused as memory of that vista warmed her. "We have a major river
confluence over there. As you can see, the direvnya itself follows the traditional interlaced
city-and-country pattern. Urban development, business and residential, follows the hilltops, but
sometimes spills down into passes. Most of the lowlands, though, are farms, pasture, groomed and
primeval forest, and a good number of orchards, with a lace of rural housing at two-kilometer
intervals.
"We provide anshin services through centralized stations, one for each of the 143 Community
Collectives." Images of stations flicked through her mind, each bright, familiar, pleasing. "The
communities . Nearly all of the neighborhoods follow traditional dispersions of population by age,
industry, and so on. We do have one or two exceptions, which we can talk about later." Like The
Tangent in Skeinswift. Why won't those Elders answer my requests for a can-feel?
Refocusing, Phoebe hooked a finger at her guest and led him out to a blank part of the floor near
the solid, transparent wall.
She turned to face the dome's middle and called, "Central, overlay workplaces."
The schematic on the huge foilscreen didn't change, but the holoscreen displayed another layer of
diagrams a centimeter or so above it. These blockish symbols threaded themselves into lines that
darkened the hilltops, but also sketched in neighborhood boundaries.
"Traditional industrial template," Phoebe commented with her arms folded. "With workplaces
scattered all over. A lot of manufacturing, representing nearly all categories in the
Mirnaya-Direvnya Marketplace. Finished goods funnel along special lanes in the Ring Roads." She
poked an edifying finger in several directions, then swung it to a large black sprawl on the
north. A long mound separated it from the rest of the direvnya. "To the drome." She lifted her
finger, now a beacon of pride, toward the sky. "And then to destinations worldwide."
Phoebe tucked the wandering hand under her arm again and surveyed the schematic. "Services are
largely local and localized. Our products, physical and virtual, carry our expertise, so we don't
get many visitors for other types of business. Or for touring either, except to participate in the
Large Square Dance — our callers have a global reputation. You'll have to catch that. And
there're some specialty restaurants."
She found herself staring at one corner of Nitsta's mouth. It rose and fell and stretched flat in
apparent commentary on her lecture. The rest of his face remained serious and attentive.
She pulled her own attention back to the room-sized map surrounding them. A good place to live.
Zephyrs of emotion stroked the thought: camaraderie for the entire Collective, pride in her
combine, even, she recognized, satisfaction with herself.
But the dream returned like a cold front. It stirred up her determination about the future of
Ganj Dareh and its layers within layers, communities, neighborhoods, combines, individuals.
She turned to Nitsta. A scent, brisk, spicy, clean, drifted on the air around him. "Why don't you
immerse yourself in the data? Then we can get back together sometime."
"Tomorrow."
The time word connected with recognition of her schedule and her plans for this sea-gull. "Yes!"
she shot back. "Tactical can-feel — what you'd call a 'staff meeting' — first thing." She
pinned him with gaze and finger. "That's daybreak, Nitsta, in your seat and ready to talk. I want
the plan laid out and estimates of your demands on our time."
"Daybreak?" His voice broke slightly with surprise. "As in dawn?"
"That's when this combine's tacticians start work, sea-gull, not just for the tactical
meeting/can-be-felt every fifth day, but every day." Her own days began even earlier and
stretched into evening with hardly any time off from the combine's and direvnya's needs. "The only
people working regular 3-Four shifts are the blisters. Constables, Techniker, firefighters,
rescuers, inspectors, Nurses, counselors." And she wouldn't be able to protect them anymore when
the new contract, pared down to meet competition, kicked in.
Nitsta dropped his chin, swept a hand off to his side, and bowed from the waist. "Yes, m'lady."
His eyes lifted to hers. "And where will all this take place?"
Phoebe looked for, but found no hint of sarcasm, just compliance. Still, she walked past him —
that clean fragrance again — and stabbed a hand toward the center of the building complex. "In
the courtyard," she said without slowing or looking back.
Three steps down the stairs, Phoebe paused. She swung around to catch Nitsta following her or
catching a quick meeting via his llevar. Instead, he paced the floor, head bobbing as he matched
its diagram with surrounding zhuhndí. He seemed earnest, sensitive —
The dream swelled again, except this time, the bird didn't flap like a gull, but swooped like a
vulture. She couldn't see Nitsta's face on it, but who else could it be? How else could she have
treated him, except as an invader? Even when he didn't act like one?
No answer came. Even the question sounded hollow. Don't the unofficial laws of the consortium
apply anymore? Is everything changing? Phoebe walked away down the stairs with her mind
clouded by dour questions.
