Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
Phoebe stared glumly at her workstation's foilscreen. The virtual-window where she normally worked
now looked like an inactive slice from the complex controls of a spacecraft. Instead of her usual
rank-and-file of glyphs and panels, one modal-bully of an image dominated the foilscreen with
circular and rectangular gauges, histogram and numeric displays, slide and switch controls. She'd
studied it for more than six-hundred seconds and still didn't know how to make this rude piece of
gleest-work start.
This hacker acted just like the Ruling Elders of The Tangent: mute, secret, haughty, impenetrable,
obscur — abrupt, insistent fingers jabbed at Phoebe's spine from the inside. Avatars of
compulsion, they inflicted more of the dirge of terror that accompanied her tight loop of impulse
and reaction:
1. message to an Elder, no reply, prick of concern about the delay and issues unaddressed
2. message to another Elder, no reply, stab of fear about looming problems
3. message to the third Elder, no reply, convulsion of panic. Panic about failing to prevent
catastrophe. Panic over losing her job. If she didn't take Skeinswift under her wing, bring The
Tangent into her line of operation, incorporate them into the combine, people would die. Ibrahim
blurred with The Tangent overlapping Gatogrebok in a triple-alarm of helplessness.
4. karoshi intervened, in the form of an outside interruption or a desperate bid from her battered
reason: work, as usual, broke the compulsion's hold, enabled her to resume a composure in which
control was a moderate, beneficial aspect of her life
Three days now, three days of cycling, going around again, first a whole day to complete, then
tighter, quicker — Phoebe could feel it sucking her down and down. She glared at the hacker on
her foilscreen. In the throes of panic, she'd dragged it out of its sewer to soft-raid The
Tangent, to take an unorthodox crack at the situation. And now it locked her up, stalled her,
threatened to — she broke the crescendo of words and refocused on the thinking that had brought
her to take this step in the first place.
A different hacker, a circuit-breaker, had worked so well against Jik Dain Bedlip.
Waves of bitter emotions — isolation, frustration, a touch of self-pity — surged through her —
and deflected the compulsion. Along with this dejection came memories of the early-morning
will-see with Jik Dain. Once again, she felt thousands of her peers watching as their new boss
pinned her down like an insect on display.
A virtual kata tataki — hand on the shoulder, hot seat, a push toward the exit, whatever — in
front of every other Fated anshin chief on the whole Fated continent!
Nothing like having to break in a new boss at the start of a crisis. Things weren't bad enough in
Ganj Dareh to be obviously so to a Partner who'd apparently forgotten his days in tactician
trenches. If they were, maybe he'd keep his Fated nose out of my business! Instead, Jik Dain
thought he could handle things sitting in mountain comfort and sending people hither and thither
with the point of a virtual finger — and blame the ones who didn't jump fast enough.
Jik Dain had rained Partner-shit on her, then shut down the meeting. Phoebe immediately tried
legitimate channels to re-engage him. She even called on overrides she'd never used before. When
all that failed with blinding humiliation, she snagged the circuit-breaker out of its sewer,
intuited its user interface, plugged it into the corporate network, pointed it at Dain's virtual
office, and bored an audio-hole through all the electronic walls he and his automata could muster.
Caught off guard, just a voice — albeit a steely one — jutting out of cyberspace, Dain played
games according to Partner priorities: power, power, power. Phoebe's agenda read differently:
take care of her customers, take care of her combine, take care of herself, in that order. She
never wanted gnarled veterans from other direvnya, as Dain assumed at first. Supplies, her second
feint, would've come in handy, but she willingly sacrificed them. She'd come into the
continent-wide will-see to ask for permission to hire. Such authority never seemed valuable to a
Partner because it came with his job, but tacticians were granted it only in good times. Phoebe
had never been so blessed, had never in four years been allowed to encumber Byukan-Hamil with
employee expense. Yet, in their intimate can-hear, Dain handed it over easily, keen to placate her
with such a trivial — to him — glimmer of power.
Me, I take local hiring much more seriously. I'd much rather bring neophyte zhee-tely on-board and
train them than compensate for another chief's patterns. She allowed herself a small grin, just a
subtle twitch of her upper lip. That way, I get people who already know Ganj Dareh and pump Geld
into our economy at the same time. I get people who have a stake in their everyday decisions. I
relieve the gong-she of residents, making more room for Gastarbeiter, and I relieve my
citizen-customers of having to live gong-she. Then, once the Rendezvous is over, Ganj Dareh gets a
reserve of anshin skills that can only do us all good.
And a certain amount of gratitude goes a long way to helping new-hires see and do things my way.
Which is more than I can say about some of the people in this town.
A pattern of woes dappled her mind. She slumped under their weight. They sprang up too easily,
she knew that, especially when they fell glibly into clusters: Rendezvous of Futures, Die
Gastarbeiter, mounting uncooperation from the other BH combines, the Ganj-Dareh Collective, and
shoved to the back, her regular job as Chief of Anshin.
Which includes hosting Jik Dain Bedlip on his little "inspection tour." She slumped more and
braced her head with a shaky hand. Fates from all the Backdoor Planets! As if I wasn't busy
enough already! She would have to burn some of her dwindling personal time preparing a show for
the Partner.
I never have enough time.
Spurred by that complaint, the time she'd squandered on the hacker sliced her with regret. The
silence of the locked-up foilscreen mocked her.
Gut you! Phoebe flared. No software has the right to sneer at me. She jerked upright and batted
at the escape-zone of her keyspace. The gleest-work didn't even flicker. Stuff you! I don't need
you. And her intended target with this disadvised virtual snooper? The Elders of The Tangent?
Mount you on the wall! I don't need The Tangent either!
Her fingers of compulsion renewed their grip on her insides. They folded into an invisible fist of
alarm. Alarm demanded that she control everything. Control, envelop, protect — mother —
everyone and everything in Ganj Dareh. No matter what she had to do ... Like browbeat a young
Nurse while a child lay dying. Like late-night brooding over what might've been and what could
be. Like crashing into The Tangent's cyberspace and grabbing their undivided attention.
Those images of herself, past and present, soured with a bite that shocked her. With sudden
clarity, she saw Chief Doyle Phoebe Heejanus as a hypocritical, self-focused harridan who violated
every definition of the caretaker she had vowed to become while, their father dead, their mother
working, she tended her three younger brothers. And I did. They lead good lives now. I
lead a good life now. I just need to see it that way.
Phoebe straightened her back and glared at the jumbled foilscreen, but she saw instead those
clusters of woes. Only this time, they weren't woes; they were rosters of challenges recognized
and met, even if not overcome — yet.
* Rendezvous of Futures — still a storm of unknown depth and danger, the Rendezvous now at least
had a face: Cliff's. In their can-feel yesterday, he had seemed solid, thoughtful, responsive,
and above all, ample to the challenge
* Die Gastarbeiter — still pouring into Ganj Dareh at an increasing rate, with a matching boost in
Incidents to above normal, but no new varieties of trouble in the last day or so. Following her
example, her tacticians, blisters, and calluses had brewed new Response Patterns
Phoebe sat just a bit straighter with pride and smiled to herself. Not just one or two, but four
major changes in patterns for Collective and anshin alike. A spurt of innovation not seen around
Ganj Dareh since Byukan-Hamil had suspended research and training budgets. They had (1) expanded
the Common-Surveillance Program, invading Beobachtung shadows across Ganj Dareh; (2) upgraded
agents-for-trade to send alarms when knocked around; (3) rerouted patrols so constables reinforced
each other more often at gathering points; and (4) scattered air- and ground-ambulances more thinly
and increased readiness so stabilization med-tek was no more than three-kay seconds away anywhere
in Ganj Dareh.
Now, all we have to do is keep up with volume, which I can do by hiring locals and training them
aggressively on-the-job ... thanks to Jik Dain.
She turned more readily to the remaining clusters:
* Other BH combines — even in the best of times, combine tacticians had their spats over
quid-pro-quo and profitable slices of the services pie, but lately, the others who shared
Ganj Dareh with her had found new methods of delay, data-detours, and downright rudeness; Phoebe
needed a new way to throw anshin weight around in the local BH Team of Direvnya Tacticians ...
Could I use Jik Dain's latest "blessing" to help them work around their own hiring-freezes? That
glimmer of possibility set off plans for their next meeting, which she would call just as soon as
she found the time.
* Ganj-Dareh Collective — today's all-time-low 37% satisfaction rate, gleaned from Ganj Dareh's
will-hears, flashed hot and sullen over all her other thoughts. Some of the people out there
didn't seem to accept that things were under control. They just kept whining about strangers not
respecting local ways, like those witches after the Large Square Dance. They just kept ...
Phoebe's optimistic defiance lost headway. After all, support from the Collective determined
whether she kept her job. She fumbled after a positive spin, a sparkle in Fate's
eye-into-the-future. Around this heap of problems shone the other clusters with their up-trends in
prospects ... If I really do handle them, if I really do turn things around there, there, and there
... that should really impress the Collective. Yes! I do the job and I get to keep the job.
Which brought her to ...
* Her own job — Queues stacked with reports, requests, and proposals, wound through her cerebral
reality. For once, they gleamed with delight, the soft patina of familiarity, and the hope of
resolution.
All I have to do is get back to them. Phoebe reached for the power-interrupt switch on her
workstation. Without go-juice, even the most obstinate of gleest-work will cease to function.
"Where did you get that?" Kanpachiro squeaked in surprise behind her.
Phoebe jumped, the quick startle just as quickly squelched. Why did I call him?
The Tangent. The name skulked through her mind, leaving a slime-trail of guilt ... and hurt. The
invisible fingers started their spinal soft-shoe again.
Phoebe focused on the foilscreen. Quickly, she balled up her confusion — and her compulsion and
her dejection — and stuffed them all away — for the moment. "Thanks for coming so quickly," she
said as lightly as she could.
"Oh, I just happened to have a spare 300 seconds before I get started visiting your community
tacticians. Glad to spend it here instead of cleaning up after the past four days of munging
through Ganj Dareh data."
Phoebe ignored his sarcasm or status report or whatever it was. Have I really been that out of
touch with his progress?
Suddenly, sounds and smells flooded in. Outside her office, beyond its half-open wall, with
waist-high counter and slatted gate, the morning shift of blisters buzzed and rattled as they
prepared for work. Inside that soft barrier, Kanpachiro hovered at her shoulder, his brisk cologne
refreshing. And the hacker's image seemed embarassingly obvious, there on her foilscreen.
She fumbled for a response and the truth spilled out. "I filched this clumsy splat of logiciel out
of its sewer." She tried a glib aside, "It's an avant-garde hidey-hole I visit occasionally."
Kanpachiro just watched her. She sighed. "But I'm afraid this hacker's more than I can manage.
Why do slimeballs have to write such obtuse interfaces?"
He said, "The lofty putrid just put together what they think is necessary to get the job done;
they're not trying to be difficult. The lesser fetid, on the other hand, lay down a challenge with
every keystroke because they want to be difficult. The rest of us merely rancid types just
try to keep up. This looks like Pizi's work; he manages to redefine 'putrid' at times. What's it
supposed to do?"
"Crash virtual meetings." Too late, Phoebe wanted the words back. She braced for his response.
"Why would an anshin chief want to do that? It may not violate any patterns, but it sure doesn't
support any, either."
The Tangent. Their haughty stupidity echoed Ibrahim's adolescent disdain and hurt, but their
indifference to her needs felt more and more like Niger's rejection. Gatogrebok. Overnight
reports had shown them leasing property from The Tangent. The invisible hand closed on her heart,
sending the urge for control throughout her body and mind.
But what to tell Kanpachiro? Phoebe kept her voice low and cool while answering. "I told you
about Skeinswift Neighborhood, Kanpachiro."
"Sure did: The Tangent; isolationist sect; gap in our coverage; vulnerable to wooing by the
competition; potential for catastrophic overload of their systems; a Risk-of-Death Alarm, High
Multiplier, just waiting to happen."
"They won't return my requests for a meeting." All I want is a little cooperation. A flash of
dark hair streaked with congealed blood. Why can't they oblige me? A rash of heads, dark hair,
and blood, spreading through her life.
"So you want to pop in on them?" He nudged her shoulder. "Let me drive."
Optimism and hope flickered briefly, but the invisible hand brushed them aside. It pumped out a
thrill of victory, a gush of craving satisfied. Phoebe slipped out of her chair. She assumed a
tense post behind it. Kanpachiro, spice wafting about him, perched on its leading edge and jabbed
at the screen. He grunted, jabbed again. A low, off-key whistle escaped from his lips. He poked
once more, and a float-graph quirked into life, its many balloons inflating into irregular shapes
that finally jammed themselves together. His one-note tune climbed a notch in pitch.
"Virtual Ganj Dareh," he announced. "Using four-color cartography, a balloon per community, then
variations on the primary color for the neighborhoods within. Ar-Kansas, for example, shows shades
of blue. Rovaniemi, next to it, uses yellows. And so on."
Phoebe leaned forward. Relief at his success cleared her mind for more.
Whistling again, Kanpachiro gave the foilscreen a flurry of one-handed taps; a web graph started up
in a different sub-panel, its tendrils spreading in intricate flutterings of joints, bridges, and
prolixes. "Logical Ganj Dareh: all the electronic paths that carry its community traffic."
He danced his fingers more deliberately now, as though he knew what he was doing. A bank of
histograms flared, their various bars jerking with a perverted rhythm. "Physical Ganj Dareh: all
those packets of data photons flitting about our wired and wireless ciscos."
"Impressive," Phoebe said, meaning it, but even more, priming him to keep going. She wanted this
hacker to do everything its use-notes promised, to crash into The Tangent's cyberspace and grab
their undivided attention. Her wasted seconds no longer mattered. Kanpachiro's skill did. She
greased his desire to use it. "And I don't mean the hacker; I mean that you could crank it up so
quickly."
Kanpachiro twisted his head around, his dark puffball hair giving way to his broad, pale face,
which showed skepticism at her compliment.
Phoebe smiled into his dark eyes. He returned it shyly. A soft exchange, a quiet pool of
diversion in her frantic day — shattered in the next heartbeat by a boot of urgency. She flung a
hand at the foilscreen. "Will it do what I want?"
Resetting himself, Kanpachiro thrust his head toward the foilscreen and hunched in contemplation.
Phoebe couldn't find any other action, not even a reflection in the glare-resistant hard-foil. She
gave him a moment to think, then another to formulate a plan, then another to put together words,
but then —
"Hmph," Kanpachiro grunted. "Pizi seems to've broken through the Em-Deh's routing secrets, both
encoding and algorithm." He reached out a thoughtful finger, but didn't touch the hard-foil. "If
we knew the digital signature of a domain — in other words, a neighborhood — we could watch data
packets moving in and out of it ... hmmm ..." He tapped three times; the displays changed subtly.
"And we can now tell which carry meetings. So, if we —"
He stretched to poke a wheel-tab. "Skeinswift, eh?" he murmured rhetorically as a command-line
prompt opened up. "The Tangent, eh?" Fingers settling comfortably in the 'station's keyspace, he
typed some cryptic commands. Inactive displays folded away, replaced by fluctuating multi-line
graphs. He settled back a little, canted his head just slightly to address Phoebe, and said, "You
won't be able to eavesdrop because of encryption, but I can use their public-key to drop in on
them. They'll be able to hear you, at the least, and if I can find an active will-see or can-see,
they'll get your image as well. Their meeting automaton should convert your intrusion to an
interactive session." He pinned a pulsing line with a forefinger. "Ah, here we go!" He dragged
the stream to an intercept panel and spread his hands. "Ta da!"
A picture suddenly overlaid the foilscreen's center: a mid-shot of Okra, The Tangent's tactician,
in rapt listening mode. He frowned suddenly and demanded, "Who are you?"
Kanpachiro replied with a lilt, "Please hold for Chief Heejanus." He slid out of the chair and
held it for Phoebe.
She ignored the seat and leaned forward to glare at Okra. She'd planned on confronting one of the
Ruling Elders, Carder, Loom, or Spruce. Will my original agenda work on Okra? A tactician like
herself. Neighborhood as part of direvnya? Skeinswift as part of Ganj Dareh? Maybe, but I have
to put an everyday, down-in-the-trenches spin on everything. Just like I'd want.
But first, let's set a big-dog-to-little-dog tone. "It's rude to ignore someone's request for a
meeting," Phoebe said mildly.
"Say what? You haven't been asking me."
"No, your bosses, but you were the only one on-line this morning."
"I can't answer for them."
"Oh, I doubt that, Okra. I'm sure they don't ignore anything as big as I am without involving
you."
"What is it you want, Chief Heejanus?"
Phoebe liked the impatience in Okra's tone. It would cramp his tactics. "To talk about the
Rendezvous of Futures. We need gong-she capacity." She really couldn't speak for Cliff or the
gong-she combines, but she'd seen enough of their numbers to finesse them into an opening for
herself. "And you need help handling all the strangers in your part of town."
Okra's turn to squeeze his voice flat. "We don't provide gong-she service. You know that."
A hand on her shoulder: Kanpachiro, supporting her. "Change is in the air, Okra. Everybody has
to make room."
"Not us. We have a bargain with the Ganj-Dareh Collective: Isolated Laboratories — we gengineer
nano-med-tek — in the stead of Collective-Supported Living. Did something happen with that deal?"
"That's something to sit down together and talk about."
Okra snorted. "We don't need your help policing our paths, either." He leaned forward.
"Something you're failing at. Strangers wandering the warehouse district to our northeast. Slack
response times to fights in our neighborhood boundaries — your job, not mine. Your constables,
Nurses, and Techniker overworked and underpaid. You want me to go on?"
Her invisible hand of compulsion slapped away his counterattack. It pushed her toward her real
concern. "Is that why you struck that bargain with an alternative provider?"
"Say what?"
Kanpachiro's hand pressed more heavily, urging her to not pursue this topic. Instead,
Phoebe plunged on; the knowledge carried too much charge; it felt too good to reveal it: "You
recently leased a house-row to the Combine for Anshinkan in Ganj Dareh Neighborhoods. That's
Gatogrebok, invading Popovich."
"Oh? Really?" Okra sneered as if thinking, Is that all you
know? "You'll have to check with our realty-sharing combine about that." He reached a
determined finger toward the adjournment button.
"That's you, Okra." Phoebe tightened her voice. "I understand how The Tangent works in
Skeinswift."
"Chief! We rented an empty property to an expanding business. Something Byukan-Hamil isn't up to
these days."
That ricochet gibe stung. Phoebe didn't need any obsession for control to urge retaliation.
Flaring, she spat, "Do you really want to piss me off, Okra? After all, I am the chief of
anshin services in the direvnya that surrounds your neighborhood."
Okra leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, all the while hissing an exasperated sigh.
"We've done all right without you."
Kanpachiro's elbow dug into her back, warning against aggravating an already difficult situation.
Again, Phoebe ignored him and struck at The Tangent's greatest weakness. In a fierce whisper, she
asked Okra, "Do you really think Gatogrebok will ignore your Bears like I do? Do you think I'll
continue to do so?"
Okra's face sagged and paled. Direct hit.
Phoebe fought back a smirk while the strongest of thrills gushed through her. The invisible hand
vanished, pleased with her success. She fixed her eyes on her opponent's and pulled the trick Jik
Dain had played on her: adjourn and frustrate.
"I can see this really isn't a good time for you," she said, lightening her voice and
straightening, injecting distance into tone and position. "How about we reschedule? As I said,
I'm reviewing readiness and contingency plans in all of Ganj Dareh's neighborhoods. I'd like to
include Skeinswift. Let's sit down over lunch and talk about it."
The will-see froze, Phoebe patient as a cat with a mouse, Okra as still as a garden statue,
Kanpachiro ... his touch had left her shoulder. She wanted to turn, seek it out again. But I dare
not break off now.
Slowly, then speeding up, The Tangent's tactician extended one of his long arms and touched a spot
just off-panel. "I can free up a can-feel slot in three days." He pushed up the corners of his
mouth. "I hear that High Tea at the Knight of Elizabeth over in Bromsgrove is nice. How does that
sound?"
Satisfied with her victory, proud even, Phoebe knew enough to take it simply. She'd wring out her
spoils when they sat face-to-face. She said, "I know it. I'll be there."
"Fine. Just don't do anything I'll regret in the meantime."
Relieved of her own threat, Phoebe smiled. "I won't."
Okra fingered his screen again, then frowned when nothing happened. He glanced back with a scowl.
"You started this outlaw meeting. You have to adjourn it."
Abruptly, Kanpachiro leaned past her, his shoulder brushing her arm, and jabbed a boolean switch on
the hacker's control panel. The meeting collapsed into a swirl of pixels.
Within Phoebe, the complex knot that mixed the future (Gatogrebok) with the present (The Tangent)
and the past (Niger and Ibrahim) relaxed some. She had at least bought relief from her compulsion,
if not a solution to its thought-warping drive. Now I can focus on more immediate issues. Those
problem clusters reared again in her mind. Their challenges warmed her this time.
Kanpachiro cleared his throat. "I'll be going now."
Phoebe glanced left: not there. She twisted the other way and watched her proposal tactician push
out through her office's gate. He gave a desultory wave, followed by one of those poignant
glances; his dark eyes added a glint of hurt and accusation.
That look of pain burned, a quick, penetrating flare of shame. The word "harridan," as memory of
self-accusation, rose to meet it. Their union spurred her to reach out to him. But I have so much
to do. Turned away, Kanpachiro didn't see her gesture. Just as well. She snatched her hand
back. He has a lot to do also.
Suddenly, Phoebe realized that in her litany of challenges, in those problem clusters, she had not
listed the contract-renewal proposal to the Ganj-Dareh Collective. So like her: doing the job
mattered, not getting it. Every year, she had the same problem with caring about the proposal.
The Collective should reward her for doing a good job now, not for how well she wrote about how she
would do a good job in the future. That's always worked in the past.
This year, though, if she didn't file a persuasive proposal, she could not win. Not against
Gatogrebok. That made this one the most important proposal of her life.
And here I've trusted him with it. A former sea-gull, an exonerated hatchetman. I've let him run
with the fate of my combine and my job. That must mean there's some hope for me yet. Some relief
from her compulsion? Somewhen? Somehow? Some way?
Her workstation burbled an alarm. Her invisible hand shoved her toward it. In a flash of
appreciation, she yelled after Kanpachiro, "I'll call you!" Then she slipped into her chair and
went back to work.
