Pla Cliff Derkinit
Cliff paced out the lot he'd rented from the drome combine. The suns had cleared the horizon
behind him, climbing into a blue sky that seemed deep enough to cover those moons he loved to
invoke. The train station across the road slumbered again. Off to its north, a dapper mound at
the junction of two short runways, the aerodrome for passengers sat quietly also, despite its
nearly twice the normal traffic of the station. No Gastarbeiter would come that way, though, by
Byukan-Hamil decree.
But they will come, by train, by the thousands. Not yet, but soon enough. One booth got us
started — a day late — but it won't handle the peak flow. It's my job to stay ahead of these
things, so the people doing the work have the wherewithal to do it.
His paces, 28 across by 43 deep, roughly confirmed the cyber-survey of the lot showing on his
llevar. He stopped, bent over the small foilscreen, and started pushing panels around. He pulled
a blueprint of his processing booth on top of the survey, then shrank it to the same scale. He
touched a glyph representing an architectural logiciel and told it to replicate the booth across
the lot, obeying all pertinent patterns. He watched as the drawing squirmed with the process.
We're still playing catch-up because Jik Dain unleashed the foxes before we hounds even knew there
was a hunt. Not that I should expect anything different from a Partner. Rumor had it that
in-processing for a Partner included a med-tek lobotomy that severed all previous experience in the
strategist-tactician synergy, which surely they must have learned, to climb that high in the
consortium. Each strategist took care of a combine's future and its context so the tactician could
concentrate on the job at hand. Every project required layers of these pairs, from the most
focused worker, like Lotte and Zim, tacticians for in-processing Die Gastarbeiter, with Cliff
working as their strategist, up to the combine's tactician, like Cliff, who directly reported to a
Partner and strategist, only that part never seemed to happen. Hence, Cliff had to worry about two
sets of futures and contexts, his people's and his own. So far, he'd found time for only one of
those: his people's.
Cliff inspected the logiciel's result, then he tapped the foilscreen again to produce a list of
materials to build that many booths, then once more, to connect that list to a procurement
automaton. Finally, with another tap, he approved the expenditure.
That done — overdue, but done now — Cliff drifted back toward his one existing booth.
Buying more stalls was easy. Finding the people to run them wouldn't be. Well, not really, since
there were people with nothing to do all over the place. Then, training them in the proper
patterns of welcome and assimilation — that wouldn't be easy. But, Cliff, that's what you're
supposed to be good at. Moons, don't I know it.
He approached the booth. Out in front, about twenty people stood patiently in line. The second
load. The first train, as it turned out, had delivered only thirty-two Gastarbeiter. The second
train, four-kay seconds later, brought around forty, half of them already welcomed, processed, and
sent off to gong-she. He decided to chat with the ones still waiting, especially those whose
charms were not apparent.
Even as he headed in that direction, sounds reached him from aloft. He glanced toward the
aerodrome, saw nothing, and realized that the noise, all wrong for an airliner, came from the
south, the direction of Ganj Dareh, not either of the normal approach patterns. He turned around
to look.
Low in the southern sky, a small, droopy-nosed aircraft sailed toward him across the flat horizon
of the drome's isolating berm. Its wings hunched to plow the air more deeply. Their upright tips
stretched back and up till they met over the tail. It seemed to negotiate with the elements as it
went, balancing gravity, lift, and power. It sounded like a determined wind driving its way
through a thick hedge of brambles. After a few moments, Cliff recognized the red-and-white
stripes: an anshin patrolcraft — landing on his hired lot.
Problems? Or a response to my invitation? He changed directions and ambled toward the landing
point, waving a greeting.
The patrolcraft touched down and immediately silenced itself as it rolled a few meters and
stopped. A door opened in its transparent nose, and a woman stepped out. He recognized her from
her pictures: Doyle Phoebe Heejanus, Chief of Public Safety, tactician for Byukan-Hamil's anshin
combine here in Ganj Dareh.
Red hair, truly red, not that strawberry dilution, but very like that Scots girl he'd known —
before Trina. Braided round her head like a cap — or a halo. Tall, thin — rangy, Cliff
decided. She didn't just walk; she loped, long strides covering a lot of ground, an aggressive,
commanding advance. She wore a jumpsuit that reminded him of the dawn, though a couple of tints
lighter, and there was a trace of steel in the color that lent her a flavor of purpose and even
authority. Yet, under all that, her body hinted at curves, a roll of hips there, flares of
feminine allure here and here. Long, graceful neck, finely featured face, fair, almost milky
skin. Delightful.
They stopped two meters apart and greeted each other formally. Cliff laid one hand over the other,
placed them both on his plump stomach, and inclined his head and torso in an abbreviated bow.
"Chief Heejanus, thank you for coming. I am Director Derkinit."
Heejanus matched his namaste exactly. "Thank you for inviting me, though I would have visited you
anyway."
Certainly lives up to her reputation as a mother hen. Cliff smiled. Involved, concerned, but
supposedly, not meddling. Good; that gives me room to run my show. He swept an arm around to
invite her into the booth.
"We've set up here," he said, "so that we can welcome everyone attending the Rendezvous as soon as
they arrive."
Heejanus fell in beside him. "Why not just post some customized agents-for-trade inside the
station? Wouldn't that be more efficient?"
"Probably, but also very impersonal. Our main constituents have been living off the Collective for
a while. They're tired of being rejected, angry at their situation, unsure about themselves. If
they're to properly use their talents, we must provide a friendly, stimulating, and
reassuring environment right here, when they get off the train."
Heejanus halted abruptly. Cliff stuttered to a stop and swung back to face her. She stared across
at him, her wide, hazel eyes steady as her mind whirred away behind them.
"And then what?" she snapped.
Cliff settled on his heels and crossed his arms, but said only, "Pardon?"
"Where do they spend their days? More importantly, where do they spend their nights? Or are you
just some sort of overpaid traffic cop?"
Cliff took another moment to examine those intense eyes, earnest, apprehensive, defensive. Not the
kind to take anything on faith. He lifted a fleshy index finger and crooked it at Heejanus, then
turned away toward the booth. "Let's listen in."
They stopped outside the short wall just behind Zim's station. She was talking to a couple
standing before her. Four boys played paper-rock-scissors behind them. "O.K., Dib Farafenni, this
should get you settled." Zim reached down by her side, then produced a sheaf of flimsy,
biodegradable hardcopy. "Yu Supha, if you would ..."
The woman touched each of her children gently to quiet them, then turned back and slipped her hand
inside her husband's arm. They both showed interested faces to the staffer.
Zim pointed to the sheaf. "Because of the number in your family, we have allocated a house to
you. This top sheet gives you the address on Foster Trail. There's also a map with qi-che routes
and the paths to get there. Then you'll find, on the next sheet, the location of the clothier who
can issue and clean clothes for you."
Zim flipped over another flimsy. "I have assigned both of you to the same group for the initial
serious-creativity workshop. This third sheet explains your assignments and shows you where to
meet with the rest of your group. We'll expect you to join them in three days. That gives you
time to settle in, look around, and get some rest." The staffer lowered her voice to
emphasize the seriousness of her next statement. "We expect some good work out of you."
The couple nodded.
"Finally," Zim went on in her previous light tone. "The last two sheets are questionnaires, one
for training and one for avocations: sports, music, games, hobbies, that sort of thing. Before
you report to work, we want you to find a public entrance and answer these questionnaires so we can
get you together with others who share your interests and allocate meeting times in community
workshops. The questionnaires tell you how to do that.
"Any questions?"
"Schooling for the kids?" Birgitte asked.
"Right." Zim poked at her keyspace and started talking again even as she reached down for more
hardcopy. "We don't expect your children to understand the local Network of Learning, so we've set
up classrooms." She passed over another set of sheets. "Here are their assignments. Please see
that they start work the same day you do." She smiled again. "O.K.?"
"Got you," said Christen as he took the flimsies and turned away. That acceptance and a final
command from Zim transferred the identities of Christen and his family from their former direvnya
to the Rendezvous. From now on, that database held the key to those lives, at least as far as the
Mirnaya Direvnya was concerned. In every way — physically, logically, virtually, and morally —
they were in Cliff's hands.
"Tashe delek," Zim said. "Next?"
Cliff tugged on the chief's elbow, drawing her away. At a discreet distance, he paused, stepped in
close, and stared into those eyes again, now glistening, attentive, receptive. "I'm taking care of
these people, day and night. They'll cause no burden for you or your combine, Chief."
"Our gong-she are nearly full, Director. What—"
"Precisely 93.6% full, Chief. I have already authorized the gong-she combines to rent additional
space for shi-tang and su-she."
"They—"
"Will be spending my Geld, Chief. They will make the arrangements. Ganj Dareh offers
plenty of eating and sleeping room for us to use and pay for."
Is that a twinkle in her eye? Is she enjoying the confrontation — or my answers?
"And during the day? 'Serious-creativity' sounds like make-work to me."
Moons save me from specialists who think their discipline defines the world!
Mustering patience, Cliff said, "Absolutely not, Chief. Edward de Bono developed 'Serious
Creativity' in the late Twentieth Century. It involves a series of activities, like lateral
thinking, asymmetric patterns, and several others, designed to take the mystery out of creativity.
It's fundamentally important to our goal of developing new services and products. Among other
things, it challenges the pattern-matching — and therefore, stuck-in-a-rut — tendency of the
human mind. You understand patterns, don't you, Chief?"
"Uh-huh." She ignored his gibe. "What about my zhee-tely already sitting around the gong-she?"
Who? Where's she going now? "Pardon?"
Heejanus tapped Cliff's chest with a knuckle. "You said the gong-she are nearly full, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"The people who are making them 'nearly full' are—"
Her message sank in, taking Cliff's confidence and initiative down with it. "By the myriad moons
of Yeibichai!" he muttered.
"You see?"
Cliff dragged his gaze back to Heejanus. He lifted a hand and wagged it in defeat. "Yes, Chief, I
understand. I will incorporate the zhee-tely already in your gong-she into my program."
He sighed. "As soon as I possibly can." Where will we find the time? Rob Peter to pay Paul, like
usual.
He added, "I'll just hope Die Gastarbeiter arrive slowly enough—"
"What did you call them?"
"'Die Gastarbeiter.'"
Heejanus lifted her shoulders as though shuddering. "I don't like giving them a name. It makes
them seem so, so foreign, and they're not really." She turned away, to hide her troubled
eyes; her slumped shoulders showed her misgivings. "Though, I suppose, it's inevitable."
His assurance returning, Cliff said, "Listen, Chief, a name affords me an easy way to give them a
sense of cohesiveness. After all, they're coming here from all over the continent. Different
accents, different cultures, different flavors of the same culture. Getting them to feel
comfortable with each other and work together is going to be a major problem."
"I guess, of all possible labels, 'Die Gastarbeiter' — The Guest-Workers — isn't all that bad."
She shrugged, a slow, balletic gesture that told Cliff that she released one burden and assumed
another. "And people in my Collective have already started applying it, so I guess I'd better get
used to it." She lifted her head with a smile.
"That'll make it easier for me," Cliff said.
"Good." Heejanus pulled herself erect once more. "Director—"
"Please call me 'Cliff.'"
Her formal smile shifted into a grin. She held out a hand. "I'm 'Phoebe.'"
Cliff returned her grin and shook her hand, enfolding it; her fingers felt thin and papery. "You
were saying?"
"Cliff, I'm glad we talked. I like your commitment and intentions. Keep it up and I'll see that
you get maximum cooperation from my combine."
"Thank you, Phoebe. That's certainly good news." Especially since we'll probably be breaking some
rules later on. What with all these Gastarbeitern flowing under our umbrella.
Phoebe held the grip for another moment, then released it, saying, "I'd better resume my patrol."
"I look forward to seeing you again."
Phoebe nodded and turned away. Cliff admired her straight back and rolling hips, more obvious from
behind, as she left the booth and returned to her patrolcraft. A moment later, the striped
airplane leapt into the air. Chuckling, he gave a final wave.
As a strategist, he had to respect Phoebe's technique. Drop out of the sky with authority oozing
out of every pore and challenge my fundamental competence. Then, you listen closely and openly as
I defend myself — with some fire and elegance, I must admit — then drive home your specific
agenda, using my own words against me. Finally, you offer me the courtesy, equality — and
recognition — of your familiar name, while getting me to make the first offer. He shook his head
in admiration.
As a tactician, though, Cliff regretted the visit and the extra work it would cause him.
Eventually, though, he'd come out ahead, in a working relationship with the local anshin chief.
Sighing, he wandered up behind Lotte. A young man, not long out of his Passage years, stepped away
from her, his hand clutching flimsies. Another, somewhat older, but not much, moved forward. His
face looked tanned, and muscles bunched beneath his simple shirt. A farm worker come to try his
luck in the city, Cliff speculated.
"Ern St'von Rathkristall from Broken Glass," the muscular young man said.
"Another one?" Lotte commented as her fingers flew.
"Yeah," the man grinned broadly. "We're traveling together. Wanted to check out the town and the
opportunity."
"What an interesting pin," Lotte said. "Just like your companion's."
Cliff followed her reference. The man wore a shiny glyph on his collar, its oval metal face tinged
with crimson and etched with some quick, dark strokes. What, a caricature of a human heart? A
schematic of their direvnya? A couple more singletons behind him wore pins just like it.
"Thanks," the man replied. "We were having a festival back home. Planting season, you know.
Vareppolo seeds." He lifted his hand toward his collar. "Like this."
Vareppolo seeds don't look like that, Cliff thought.
"You'll stay together here at the Rendezvous," Lotte said as she passed across flimsies. "Part of
the pattern set up by the Partner-in-Charge. These show you how to get to your gong-she and the
organizing meeting/can-be-felt. Good luck!"
Rathkristall smiled his thanks even as infraware spat his virtual identity from one cyberspot to
another. Cliff could almost hear the ka-chunk as the Rendezvous database took in another life.
"Oh, Cli-iff!" Zim hailed him from her station.
Cliff answered with a receptive smile.
Glittering eyes and a crooked grin gave Zim's doll face an impish cast. She waved at the woman
standing in front of her. "This zhee-tel wants to talk to you about putting on a seminar at the
Rendezvous."
Cliff glanced at the woman: medium-height, too thin with the jaundiced complexion of a dedicated
Xhosan ascetic, but her eyes gleamed hugely with passionate intelligence. Lateral thinking, Cliff
reminded himself, comes from considering unrelated ideas.
"Send her back," he boomed, "when she's done with in-processing."
In the next idle moment — the last for quite a while — Cliff checked on Lotte again. A new
singleton stood before her, no longer wearing his pin. Neither did the man behind him.
Probably didn't want to seem like rubes. Cliff turned away to interview his new seminar leader.
