Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
What's next? Phoebe glanced at her keyspace. The flat, glowing volume of air showed letters,
numerals, and function glyphs she used to communicate with her workstation. There was always
something else for her to work on. She jabbed the virtual key that asked what it was.
The foilscreen shined its gibbous, squarish moon in the darkness of her office. Beyond, the anshin
station, empty except for the late shift of calluses in the other wing, hunkered like a brooding
honey-jug plant around its feast of shadows.
A queue for Primary Review of Performance Appraisals wriggled into screen-center, appearing as an
echelon of finely lined pictographs. A tenth of her Community Tacticians, fourteen this time, had
once again met their schedules and filed reviews of all their personnel. She was supposed to read
and comment on each one, reject a certain number to "ensure improved effort" on the rewrites, then
approve the rest and forward them to her boss, Za Leez, for Secondary Review.
"Gut it," Phoebe muttered. She didn't have time right now for such bureaucratic
snipping-and-clipping. "Stuff it," she snapped with more gusto. She ought to get home, get a
work-out, get a bath. "And mount it on the wall!" She snarled with a smile and lunged for the
queue's Approve-All button. A quick touch and she could return every appraisal to its writer,
along with approval for whatever raises, promotion, and/or awards it had recommended, bypassing the
Partner's signature.
Better not, she thought. Kanpachiro, with our help, just might put together a winning proposal,
and I'd still be around to answer for such recklessness. She smiled, sincerely this time, over a
future where she still had to worry about her boss' opinion.
So, Phoebe shifted her fingertip to the Forward-All button and sent all the listed appraisals on up
the corporate ladder. Za Leez would reject a certain percentage, of course. Maybe more than usual
because I didn't make any comments, much less crowd the margins with them.
Typically, Phoebe arranged her job so that she met with at least five of her tacticians every day,
one in can-feel, the rest will-sees. They met not as superior and subordinate, but as partners
with the same objective: care for the direvnya and the combine. They talked about their jobs as
tacticians, theoretical and actual. They pored over the requirements for the blisters, calluses,
Techniker, counselors, and Nurses who worked in each community. They reviewed work-performance
often and thoroughly, in person, the way it should happen. Granted, she saw each tactician just
once every twenty-nine days, but that way, she didn't need to inspect annual reports to know what
was going on or that they were well-written and accurate. Even if the Team of Partners says I
should.
Relieved of work and frustration by her impulsive gesture, Phoebe dismissed her keyspace with a
wave. It vanished, taking the workstation's operations with it. In quick succession, queues and
glyphs blinked out until one martyr-red rectangle remained. Stubbornly, it refused to go away,
just like she'd told it to whenever her own performance rating had changed, the only appraisal she
cared about, from the people of Ganj Dareh, based on their daily comments in the direvnya's
meeting/will-be-heard.
She peered at the black letters against red background. In the space for "Anshin Performance," it
read "43% Satisfied." A drop of two points, the first drop in twenty-three days.
Phoebe sagged in her chair, fatigue a sudden, distracting presence in her body and mind. The
Rendezvous of Futures! Change, disruption of patterns, new faces on the paths. As much as she
cared for the people of Ganj Dareh, they were still human. They had to blame someone for their
ills. And, given the daily impact of her combine on their lives, they often blamed her. Just look
at that man and his wife outside of Qohey House-hill. They condemned Phoebe for that bio-battery
accident and the upset it caused. It was bad enough that recession had taken its toll on their
approval, gradually sapping their satisfaction over the past eight years, even before she had taken
the job as Chief. But now this Rendezvous of Futures. Unemployed people from all over the
continent had already started trickling into town.
Even if we handle every Incident, smooth every ruffled feather, we'll still get criticized. Every
day, this number right here will tell me about how much the Rendezvous is disturbing Ganj Dareh.
What was Har Norma thinking? Does she know what she's doing to Ganj Dareh? To my combine? To
me?
Where will they all stay? Phoebe stared at her foilscreen, then willed her arm to follow the
question. She didn't bother with a new keyspace, but tapped the screen to make her way toward
data.
First, she checked the count of new arrivals. Eight-hundred thirty-six, an increase of
four-hundred eighty-eight over normal. Since the announcement, more than a thousand extra people
in just two days. And the gong-she already saturated by the recession.
So, she checked on the gong-she. The panel that flared into the dark office showed the standard
schematic of Ganj Dareh, this time sprinkled with little crimson dots spread evenly around the
direvnya. Only a few blank puddles of pearly white: neighborhoods that had bargained an exception
to the Pattern Language and provided no form of Collective hospitality, whether it be Travelers'
Inn or Family Waystation or Singleton Community or Honeymoon Haven.
One of the puddles was named "Skeinswift." The Tangent, Phoebe knew from her research, had adopted
Isolated Laboratories, a pattern few Collectives favored, in trade for gong-she, to keep strangers
out of their neighborhood.
Pugwash next door did support several gong-she. One of its reddish dots flashed at her. Curious,
she answered its alert with a touch. An agent-of-limited-questions unfolded its crisp, monochrome
panel and gut-punched her with its information.
Gatogrebok! She'd forgotten the agent she'd set up to watch for them. Now she noticed that
thirteen other neighborhoods on the map also blinked, swelling and shrinking their glyphs
regularly. The highlighting throbbed on her foilscreen like a bloodsucking cancer already
spreading through her extended body.
With morbid curiosity, she opened all the reports. Eighty-two Gatogrebok people altogether, no
more than she'd expected. A little on the light side, actually. But zhuhndí nonetheless. Maybe
just a vanguard for this marketing phase. Many more back on Grissom, waiting for a successful
bid. Very zhuhndí indeed.
Another tiny hope inside her winked out, allowing more room for melancholic bleakness. First, the
one that believed competition of any sort would never arise. Then the one that argued that the
Ganj-Dareh Collective would never allow anyone else but her to bid. Then the one that Har Norma
would pay any bidder to just go away. And now, the one that the virtual threat would never go
zhuhndí. How many more hopes do I have left?
Kanpachiro, even with his Proposal Pattern Language and the best of intentions, even with all her
combine's help, seemed quite inadequate against this intercontinental threat.
She came back to the Pugwash report. So close to The Tangent. She scanned the names and found
"Weir Annadetcall," Gatogrebok's tactician — their leader, their driving force full of strategies
and authority.
Phoebe twisted her head away, fighting the ghoulish fascination with those innocent symbols and the
awful possibility they represented. But those pulsing blips pushed through her skull and into her
mind. Thirteen small hecklers and one big one, generating awful questions.
Is there any significance that Weir Annadetcall himself chose to stay in Pugwash? Right next to
Skeinswift. Right next to The Tangent, whose elders never called her back. Does it really mean
anything?
She dragged herself out of her office without an answer more definite than dread.
