bBook Author's Pixie

 

 

Doyle Phoebe Heejanus

     "Who is this guy?" Nitsta muttered as the Incident Brief started in a video panel. He sat upright in the patrolcraft's other seat, tactical kit in his lap, photon spouts sending the virtual display straight onto his retinas.
     Behind him, the communities of Ganj Dareh scrolled past. Flying over them, the patrolcraft surrounded Phoebe and Nitsta with muted throbbings and the floating feel of aerodynamic lift. His brisk scent filled the close quarters.
     "Freezeframe," Phoebe ordered. The video stopped. She scanned Harlan's meaty features. "Bre Harlan D'Grennan, Response-Team Tactician. He's on-site. Look and listen beyond his appearance, Nitsta. I've had to protect him more than once from headquarters review, but without him — and many others like him — this combine would be running at a loss, in customers as well as profits."
     "If you say so ..."
      "I do. Now listen. It isn't far to the Site."
     The sea-gull had avoided her since the tactical meeting early yesterday, though he had been busy setting up appointments with all parts of her combine. Before he went much further, Phoebe must decide whether to help or ignore him, whether she would respond to the Gatogrebok competition with his help or despite it. Chasing some trespasser through the guts of a factory? Yes, that could settle the question about whether she could depend on Nitsta's determination, insight, maybe even courage — or not.
     "Continue Incident Brief," Phoebe told her craft. She'd promised Harlan an intra-structure search team, had mentioned bringing Nitsta along, but hadn't said she and the sea-gull would make up that team.
     "Jefe, Honored Guest," Harlan said from a recorded-image panel, hovering all by itself on a background set to noon-sky-at-summer-solstice.
     Nitsta opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. Phoebe had dismissed her normal virtual panoply so he could concentrate on the Brief. Apparently, he was trying to.
     Harlan continued: "Incident occurring in Ar-Kansas Community, subculture boundary between the Hajdú-Bihar and Wielkopolska Neighborhoods, at the Sviatopluk-Combine Fábrica, a three-rise factory, terrific access to a Ring Road. Muy agradable. The people are nice, too. They make hygiene components, strictly utility-grade, but ship 'em all over the world.
     "A zhee-tel — one Glo Jean Todacheene — came in early this morning, to work on a custom order. Went to get his morning juice and found this ragul." Harlan made an elaborate show of pointing to his virtual left: a panel sprang up there with an anshin-style freezeframe, full face set next to a profile, both in sharp contrast against a neutral background. A thin woman with harried eyes and flyaway hair glared back at them. "Going through the food in their chiller. Glo Jean challenged the intruder. Who fled—" this time, his finger pointed above his right shoulder "— like so."
      "This fellah likes to have fun," Nitsta muttered.
     A video played in a long rectangle at the azimuth Harlan indicated. Phoebe recognized the surreal cast that invaded the visible spectrum when it was filtered from Beobachtung observation data.
     They looked down on a gaunt figure, clad only in a shapeless bag, leaning into an open chiller. Phoebe assumed that this was the ragul, the thief, identified by Harlan, therefore a woman, though that wasn't obvious.
     "Where'd—" Nitsta started.
      A man wearing tidy coveralls entered from the bottom of the scene. Glo Jean Todacheene.
     Harlan's voice picked up. "The Sviatopluk Combine participates in our Common-Surveillance Program, so we've installed full Beobachtung throughout the building." He chortled. "But only in the places where people normally go."
     In the playback, Glo Jean rudely disputed the woman's presence. She, in turn, didn't even look around, but leapt squirrel-like to the chiller's roof, then out of the picture through the ceiling of the room. The man ran to the spot and stood staring up off-camera with his mouth open. After a bit, Phoebe realized that it was freezeframe.
     Harlan's image resumed its motion. "The zhee-tel called Alert. Who dispatched the neighborhood constable — from Hajdú-Bihar, a nice touch, Jefe, since much of the combine lives there. Who tagged me. The mountain trolls responded promptly to my request. Which is—"
      "Freezeframe," Nitsta ordered. "What does he mean, 'mountain trolls.'"
     "Two years ago, Byukan-Hamil consolidated Beobachtung processing for all anshin combines into a Surveillance Support Center up there in BH direvnya. If we want to get anything out of the public data or out of our own CSP data, we have to go to them."
     "I remember now. They work in Infrastructure Technology." He lifted a hand and added, "Continue Incident Brief."
     Harlan revived: "— how we got the identification." With a big grin, he made the left-pointing finger again. "Which gave us this history."
     A life-history in standard anshin format scrolled in the panel beside Harlan's image. Foreboding pinched the top of Phoebe's stomach.
     The Site Tactician ticked off fingers as he talked. "Wa Zamaya Shikata. Born on Continent Schirra. Enrolled in Networks of Learning for twenty-three direvnya on six continents. Studies incomplete by puberty onset."
     Phoebe remembered faces on playgrounds, several of which resembled this Shikata, children standing at the edge of games, out-of-sync, but not adrift, close enough to watch, but not close enough to play. She had focused on these cast-offs, needful, reachable, capable of working within the system. She had rescued so many.
     Harlan: "Expelled from two Societies for Passage."
     Phoebe's memories took on a harder cast. Later in her career, later in their lives, some people wouldn't settle in, hadn't adapted to one of the myriad patterns suitable to life on Yeibichai. So easily, she squandered her time on these square pegs and skimped those who, with some rough edges, could easily have shaped themselves into productive lives.
     Harlan: "Exiled from Continent Titov. Exiled from Continent Carpenter."
     Harsh experience as anshin chief rippled through Phoebe, smothering compassion, alerting defenses. Life presented so many challenges even when people worked at it. They didn't need remora like this sapping their strength, skulking through the refuse of active, useful lives. She served to protect her Collective from them.
     Harlan: "Registered in Ganj Dareh 1.6-Sevener ago on strength of interviews scheduled with two combines. She had good experience and good references, and of course, her Exiles were secured anshin-only."
     Phoebe chafed again under the pattern that allowed up to three Exiles when lesser offenses were involved. For once, the global wisdom failed its Collective. She glanced at Nitsta. He sat erect, chin lifted slightly, like he was open, even interested in the briefing. No pattern — the words snapped in her mind — the young sea-gull just has no life context to judge by.
     Harlan: "Started work here not too long after, but then she was released by the combine less than a Sevener later; 'sloppy work habits and unreliability' to quote the tactician. Who also took a personal attack by our ragul, on the premises."
     The Site Tactician waved over his shoulder at the freezeframe of gaping Glo Jean. "Common Surveillance supplied data on that assault-and-battery. The Community Collective tried, convicted, and sentenced Shikata to a Sevener off the dole. Which, apparently — now that Data-Reduction went back and looked — she spent in-between walls of the fábrica. Word around here is: pilfering from the combine's chiller has been reported since —" he rocked a hand at his audience "— about the time Shikata was sentenced. There has also been abnormal shrinkage in inventory during the same timeframe. Though how someone could live off stolen hygiene components, I haven't figured out yet.
     "External Beobachtung shows she's not left the premises, Jefe. She's here and waiting for the search team." He tapped an eyebrow with two saluting fingers. "And your Honored Guest." Cut to black.
      "This is one of your best?" Nitsta broke the ensuing silence.
     "'Effective,' not 'best' necessarily," Phoebe corrected brusquely. "You've got a lot—"
     "To learn." Nitsta turned his gaze to the outside. They were descending. "Yeah, I know," he added curtly.
      Just as they were touching down, Nitsta spoke again, in a brisk voice. "Explain 'off the dole.'"
     Phoebe waited while the craft settled, then said, "The formal term is 'Sanction.' Very simple, actually: no agent-for-trade will recognize a sanctioned person."
     She pushed open her door and left Nitsta to think about that. If he had any smarts, he would trace back through today, for instance, and remember every time he had to shake hands with one of those specialized agents. The economy provided nothing without that intimate process. If you had money earned on a job or even sustenance credit supplied by a Collective, you couldn't spend it without an agent-for-trade, rugged, reliable, ubiquitous, identifying you and tending to the electronic transaction. If an agent couldn't "see" you, you didn't exist logically. Physically, you had problems, too.
     Unless, of course, your family or friends carried you. This ragul didn't seem to have such a support system.


     Phoebe sighted Harlan waiting outside the factory. A fresh dawn-gray jumpsuit lay crisply on the Site Tactician's plump body.
     When Phoebe walked up, Harlan squinted up at her, then past her, probably at Nitsta. He cast a skeptical eye at the sky, then pegged Phoebe with a glare. "Where's the intra-structure team?"
      "You're looking at them," Phoebe said.
     "Jefe, you know in-between isn't built for humans. Those cagada automaton engineers don't allow for much beyond what their macro-, micro-, and nano-widgets can handle."
     Phoebe grinned at his concern. "Harlan, I know I didn't do well as a med-techniker the other day, but this is police work. You know I've gone in-between and other places many times since I became chief."
     "I know." He shifted his neck and shoulders as though wrestling with a weight. "I'm going along then."
     "No."
     Harlan glanced at the sea-gull once, then again, his dark eyes bulging with the effort to send a signal to Phoebe.
      She said, "Nitsta, go inside. I'll be there in a moment."
     With a curious glance that covered both anshin, Nitsta ambled away through the short shadows of hauhau trees that bracketed the factory entrance. Phoebe noticed that Nitsta carried a tactical kit, but she couldn't do anything about that now. Frowning, she turned back to Harlan.
     He spread his feet, settled himself on them, then leaned forward slightly. Yet he didn't whisper as he said, "Jefe, the whole combine's worried. Klang has it that this Huevones sea-gull wants to take you out of action. I don't think I should just let the two of you go in there."
     Moved by his concern, Phoebe reached out to Harlan. "The threat was never physical." She smiled to reassure him more. "I did think Nitsta came here to hatchet me out my job, but—" the next words surprised her "— I've changed my mind." She nodded to confirm the shift in thinking, frowned to help herself accept it. "Now I've got to find out whether we can trust him on the renewal proposal." Her heart quickened to refute her calm voice. "He could be more help than any of us expected."
     She patted Harlan's arm again. "I'm going in there and drive that ragul into a corner." Typically, her people called a suspect, perpetrator, or other opponent a "chui" — to remind themselves to be careful of and with the person — but here, she took on Harlan's word to make him more comfortable with her demands. "Then I'm going to bring her out. On the way, I'll see how fast this sea-gull can adapt to things while hanging from wires. Let him fill in the blanks with minimal help from me. Maybe he's got something to offer us besides a proposal pattern language." She grinned. "I'll be O.K."
      Harlan yielded, his shoulders twitching with the effort. "Yessir."
     "Thanks. Let me borrow your sight-tek." Phoebe accepted a pair of enhanced spectacles from the worried Site Tactician, then walked past him, under the hauhau trees with their new buds like strings of babies' fists, and into the factory's entrance room.
     Nitsta's tactical kit lay open. He stood beside it with flex-armor draped over his body. The trousers bagged at hips, knees, and ankles. The matching jacket hung open loosely. He was settling the helmet on his head.
     Phoebe waggled a finger at him.
     "What? Am I doing this wrong?"
     "No, you're doing it fine, but we don't wear armor around here."
      "But it's dangerous in there. Your Site Tactician said as much."
     "Yes, he did, but think about what we look like, all bundled up against zhuhndí, impervious to harm — and to interaction with our customers. Even if the zhee-tel in there isn't long for this Collective, I cultivate an open and accountable attitude among my people, and armor does not help that."
     With some trepidation, Nitsta dragged the helmet off his head. His hair struggled back toward its normal puffball.
     Suddenly, Phoebe appreciated the way he wore it; without his stand of black hair, he had looked very vulnerable. Probably why I was so terse with him. Now he seemed more capable, struggling to get along, just doing his job. She stepped over and helped him stuff away the flex-armor.
      "All set then?" she said.
     He picked up the synth-leather jacket he'd abandoned for the armor. He'd worn that today with corduroy pocket trousers to fit better with the workaday anshin uniforms. "Is this acceptable?"
     Phoebe nodded, then added, "Oh, we do stoop to things like this." She handed over Harlan's sight-tek, watched Nitsta slip the translucent near-goggles over his eyes, then clip the thick bows together in the back.
     She slipped her own sight-tek out of a sleeve pocket and arranged them on her face. Unstarted, they simply passed all visible light through, so they didn't help much when she moved over to glance into the hexagonal hole over the chiller. Dark and dusty up there. She looked back around: Harlan stood ready at a distance; Nitsta hovered nervously at her side. Friend and foe. Harlan would cover her back with everything he had. Nitsta could slam a hatchet into it and accept kudos from Za Leez afterwards. Phoebe's charity toward him vanished.
     "You," she said to the sea-gull. "Follow me."
     "Yessir," he answered in a tone so neutral she had to rein herself back to keep from demanding what he meant by it.
     Instead, she stepped to the ladder Harlan had set up. For protocol's sake, she tested the transducer clipped, as usual, into her hair. =Central, I'm going tactical. Reroute all emergencies Requests to my alternate.= She started to climb. Central chimed acknowledgment just as she crouched and swung a foot onto the cooler. From there, she straightened into the ceiling hole. The air challenged her nose, dust tickling it, an acrid odor biting it.
     A shadowy space fanned out in all directions, its shape more suggested than defined by a crosswork of metal. Crowded with tubes of varied sizes, the shallow volume ignored the layout of rooms below it except when it ended in murky walls or fell into abrupt canyons. The tile displaced by the ragul rested at a slant just inside the hole.
     Phoebe pressed her sight-tek's start-button, then told it to augment ambient visible spectrum. In the spectacles' soft, coherent glow, she looked for disturbed dust. She found multiple trails through the warren, so she asked the tek to show human-debris spectrum. The chamber suddenly dimmed again as the light translated for her switched frequencies and the sight-tek snugged up to her eyes. With its help, she could see fresh smudges of skin oil and new flecks of skin itself that marked the route the ragul had taken that morning.
     She reached for a brace and lifted herself to stand on the in-between's frame. "Don't step on the ceiling," she warned Nitsta, then wriggled after her quarry. She could hear the sea-gull and the crosswork complaining as he followed.
     Picking and twisting through the scramble of metallic shapes, Phoebe kept one lens in ultra-visible to show the spoor while the other worked with amplified visible so she could tell where to grab and step. She climbed steadily, with little thought to anything else. There were narrows where both she and the building protested her passage. There were ascents where their combined body weights loudly stressed the framework's design load.
      No way are we sneaking up on this ragul.
     Warmed by the climb, Phoebe emerged through a narrow slit into a tall, wide bay. She settled herself on its side with a long, deep breath, then looked around. Hanging from stable, though narrow, hand- and footholds, she peered down three stories into a dusky basement. She craned to look up for a ceiling in the murk another story above her head and found a chimney-like loft threaded with flues that flared with multi-stage scrubbers. Interrupting the volume between top and bottom, platforms jutted from every wall at staggered elevations. These decks carried pieces of the factory's mechanical infrastructure. She saw few moving parts, but took impressions of heat and cold and pressure. The chill air wafted a m lange of smells, sweet and bitter, bold and subtle.
     Phoebe clung to the side of a dark, cold, deep hole.
     She spotted no ladders, located no platforms within reach, at least for her. Could the ragul really be part squirrel?
     Nitsta stepped up beside her. Phoebe hushed him while going to two ultra-visible lenses. No traces. "I can't figure where she went from here," she said quietly as she turned off her sight-tek. Don't forget who you're talking to, she had to remind herself. Don't lead him. See where he goes.
      "How do you know she came here?" Nitsta said.
     Phoebe judged his face in the uneven light. Breathing heavily, sweating in the stifling air, his cologne surging with his body heat, he seemed calm enough looking around their perch. She started talking, using anshin jargon — if he wanted to play, he'd better speak the lingo. She briefly explained the spoor and its reflection at certain frequencies. She concluded with, "Vision range is limited by the technology."
      "You mean you don't know where she went from here."
     Did the weird acoustics hide his sarcasm? She couldn't be sure, and she couldn't spend the time worrying at it: they had a candidate for Exile to track.
     Nitsta leaned into the bay and twisted to look around. "Let's go back to basics," he mused. "How does a human get across a canyon? Jump, for one, which brings us to those distances you were just talking about. Our game is human? So she couldn't jump farther than you can see with those fancy spex of yours?"
     Phoebe rolled her eyes at the man and found him watching her with a face that hinted at a smile. She nodded, though her lids did drift closed with impatience.
     "Then there're bridges. Nothing permanent here. How about portable?"
     Phoebe ordered amplification again, leaned forward to search, but hesitated. Nitsta studied her while clumsily trying to copy her. She reset her sight-tek, then turned it on and set its function with a verbal commanded. On his third try, his sight-tek darkened, and he straightened once more, looking around with quick, alert glances.
     He had followed her through the warren with his eyes working only on ambient light! I like that.
     Phoebe turned back to her search. In a moment, she said, "Nothing. If she pushes a bridge back and forth, we're stuck here. I don't like that, so give me another option." Though we might have to come back here if everything else proves fruitless.
     "She could swing across." Nitsta paused, as though probing for consequences. "Which would call for a hanger." He pointed into the arrangement of platforms above them. "Right about there."
     When she leaned against him, he shifted to give her a better look along his arm. Overhead, she saw an eye-bolt protruding from the underside of an oblong grid that had to be close to the ceiling. A cable, pulled tight along her line of sight, dropped away from the pivot to a platform fastened to the opposite wall. Its floor teased her by being just above eye level and jutting with flaps of packing material, taped and stitched together.
     Phoebe surveyed the makeshift fence. A ragged rectangle showed dark near one end. Odd glimmerings broke the black. Familiar glimmerings. "There," she said and stretched out her arm. "About a meter from the right side, low down, a gap in the barricade."
     Nitsta followed her point. "What?" he asked.
     "Eyeballs."
      "Don't you have something on your belt that can get us over there?"
     Phoebe made her voice curt. "Let's try to talk her down first." She unclipped her llevar, telling it to amplify her voice. When she pointed it toward the platform, words thundered from it. "Wa Zamaya Shikata, come with us." Echoes in the murky bay.
     A new sound joined them, a warble that blended well with the natterings of the loft's machinery. It hardly seemed intelligible. Phoebe dismissed it and tried again.
     "Wa Zamaya Shikata, surrender to us."
     This time the odd sound had a source. A face heaved itself above the flimsy wall. Pale originally, it molted now in sympathy with the uneven light of the chamber. Only the tooth-trimmed gap of a mouth was recognizable as it repeated a phrase.
     "No Exile! No Exile!" Shikata chirruped. "No Exile!" Then she was gone.
      "At least she could get a job on another continent," Nitsta murmured.
     Phoebe didn't stare her disdain at his ignorance: she owed him that much. Instead, she lowered her llevar and focused on Nitsta. "You really don't understand how the Collective keeps itself clean, do you? We're refuse collectors, among other things. And there are places for remora like her."
      He looked around with a raised eyebrow.
     "We won't send Shikata off to another continent this time," Phoebe went on with satisfaction while keeping watch on the ragul's hideout. "She goes to the Islands." She held up a hand to forestall the next question. "The Islands of Exile. Nobody comes back from the Islands. There the only thing the Global Collective provides is food, what you might call 'survival rations.' The Exiles have to provide everything else themselves."
     "Everything?"
     "Everything."
      "This place is looking better and better."
     Phoebe suddenly worried they'd wasted too much time. This sea-gull had been given enough lessons in anshin reality. She reached back and flicked open the lid of a belt bracket hanging below her right kidney. She plucked one of three spheres from its cradle there and produced it, palm borne, where Nitsta could see it.
     "Do you think you can hit that platform with this?"
     "What is it?"
     "Dreamball."
      "Dreamball?"
     "Like a dreamstick, only more powerful. Instant paralysis, lasting up to 2000 seconds. Once armed, a good bump sets it off. Unlike a dreamstick, it leaves you with a headache because it's louder and quicker. No other after-effects."
      "What's the range?"
     "Three meters."
     "What do we do after it goes off?"
     "We swing over there and carry her back."
     "There's an access hatch at ground level." He dropped a gesture in that direction. "We could take her out that way."
     "Good point," Phoebe acknowledged with just a trace of the bite she'd wanted.
     Nitsta pitched the ball underhand. It curved in a nice lob, rising quickly, then slowing as it arced and started down — and disappeared into a slurry of lights and darks. Suddenly, Shikata rose above her fence, up there, above them, shifting her lanky form as though setting up for some action.
     "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she wailed. Her right arm lifted, cocked, then straightened toward them. "I used to make these things!"
     Exposed, vulnerable, Phoebe could see nothing in the air, yet the ragul's action pattern triggered her own — run!
     Nowhere to go but back. Phoebe twisted toward the slit she'd emerged from. She started a retreat in-between, futile though it may be.
     At her side, Nitsta also jerked into motion. His left arm grabbed behind his head for the scruff of his jacket, then jerked it off over his head. Wobbling on his footholds, he slipped an arm out of a sleeve, turned the jacket upside-down, then thrust it like a cape out in front of them. A second later, something hit the jacket with a soft crump, then the loose sleeve straightened, reaching toward Phoebe, but too tired to touch her. It collapsed again with a sigh. Nitsta clutched a handhold and used his coat-covered arm to brace her and himself.
      "It could hit on the way down," he warned her.
     He'd diverted the dreamball, slowed and redirected in the soft jacket. When it hit far below them, Phoebe heard a shrill burp; a tingle raced up her spine.
     Nitsta bent to look for Shikata again. "Now what?"
     "Reinforcements," Phoebe announced, then spoke to Central through her transducer. =Create meeting/can-be-hear — =
     "Will she be hurt?"
     "Probably."
     "Let's try something else first."
      "Like what?"
     "Now that I can see in the dark, I found a path." Nitsta pointed to vague supports that could lead along the bay's walls. "The installing mech-Techniker left a backdoor. I can circle around and distract Shikata. You toss in a dreamball when I do that." He turned back around and explained, "I climb rocks for a hobby."
     Phoebe realized she was staring at him, the non-nonsense quirk to his mouth, his dark, intense eyes. She jerked her attention away and focused it on the ragul's nest. "The 'ball will put you down too. You're not protected."
     "I know, so you've got to wait till I'm standing on the platform with her."
     "Not much room for error." Meaning his.
      "I trust you to do the job right."
     Phoebe looked at Nitsta. He had shed the trousers along with the jacket, draping them neatly over the edge of the slit behind them. He wore loin-hugging briefs and matte-brown shoes as he tested the first holds on the skimpy route.
     Compassion. Trust. Feelings that she'd been measuring out too meagerly of late ... perhaps. Feelings that should weigh heavily in the upcoming proposal. When is a sea-gull no longer a sea-gull? When he comes to stay and add value.
      Phoebe said, "Be careful, Kanpachiro. I'll see you when you recover."
     "You'd better," the proposal tactician replied with a grin. "And call me 'Kanpa,' will you? The other sounds too formal for people working closely together."
     "Take it easy."
     With a nod, Kanpachiro pulled himself up and away, and Phoebe knew he caught both meanings of her last words.
     Phoebe brought out another dreamball and hefted it while watching Kanpachiro's pale form clamber from hold to hold. She remembered his last statement — not the presumptuous quip about his name, but the line about doing the job right. Shikata reared, screeching, in her nest as Kanpachiro poised to drop onto it. Maybe he applied both tactical and strategic meanings to those words. Maybe he expected as much from her as she demanded from him. Kanpachiro jumped. Phoebe tossed the dreamball behind Shikata, flinched as it discharged. She hoped Kanpachiro's headache wouldn't be too bad; after all, they had a proposal to develop.
     When she called him, Harlan came in through the ground-level access hatch to help evacuate the casualties.