Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
Phoebe rode in her patrolcraft with the equivalent of Street Windows turned on. Its bubble canopy
marked up her view of Ganj Dareh with smears of fluorescent-blue highlighting Risk-of-Injury
locations. These bar-graphs set their heights to show the number of hurt zhee-tely and used shades
to indicate the active Stage of the anshin Response Pattern. Phoebe sat fenced in by visible
screams rising out of the flesh of her direvnya.
Amazingly, no one had died. Many serious injuries, yes, but no deaths — so far — during the most
significant jump in Incidents since the Rendezvous began. Three-hundred thirty-one percent
increase in above-normal Incidents, and the day's not over yet. What's happening here? Ganj Dareh
had been calming down. A flattening in a negative trend, true, but still an improvement.
And we're barely staffed enough for the normal Incident rate. Ideas flocked toward the problem,
fighting for attention — hiring project not underway yet, possible schedule changes, possible
realignment of duties, other possibilities — but she put them off. They didn't go easily, but she
traded one joy of her job for another.
A glance into her headset showed Phoebe the combine's current tactical numbers:
25 Incidents in Stage 1, Alert, with more still coming, though the rate had slowed over the
afternoon
29 in Stage 2, Respond
38 in Stage 3, Assess
85 in Stage 4, Stabilize
50 in Stage 5, Evacuate
114 in Stage 6, Counsel
So far, every Response Pattern had played out as planned. Phoebe had called in off-duty
personnel. Probably the end of 3-Four time. From now on, we all work overtime ... at least until
this makeshift congestion of Norma's is finished unless I — With a smile, she stuffed those
staffing ideas away again and returned to her summation of her combine's performance.
She had coordinated a few boundary Incidents. Smoothed out a few rough corners, that's all.
Mostly, though, she had just monitored her people as they calmly went about their business. Their
excellence enabled her to work as strategist, not tactician, and think ahead. A strategist must
live in the future, while keeping an eye on the present and learning from the past.
This time, the future meant addressing this trend in Incidents, not staffing and all the other
strategic issues a hard-working anshin chief like her cheerfully tackled on a daily basis. And
definitely not coddling two-bit renegade neighborhoods. She was glad to have her attention fully
engaged on real work.
As Chief, Phoebe would lead her tacticians through the final stages of the Response Pattern:
Evaluate and Prevent. And she intended to start that process at the heart of the trouble: the
Rendezvous of Futures and its tactician, Pla Cliff Derkinit. Cliff directly controlled Die
Gastarbeiter ... or at least, he controlled their immediate futures and thus could leverage their
immediate behavior. He had a better chance of toning them down than she had of reaching her
customer-base and getting them to back off. Still, she had to find a broad-spectrum approach to
preventing people from hurting each other.
Or I'll blow my budget while Ganj Dareh descends into chaos. Then Jik Dain can fire me before the
Ganj-Dareh Collective gets a chance to.
He's arriving tomorrow. I've got to show progress by then. Which means straightening out Die
Gastarbeiter ... through Cliff. So back to business.
Like any good tactician on-duty, Cliff set his llevar to auto-locate, and her agent-for-location
had found him in Tel Megiddo Neighborhood of Ar-Kansas Community. Something about setting up a
confidence course in a copse of high-canopy ironwood trees there. She could see the dense greenery
ahead.
A familiar three-beat tune broke into Phoebe's thoughts. Risk-of-Injury Alert. With the
accompanying trumpet-cry — High Multiplier — she turned to her workstation's display in her
headset. The alert panel said "Drumcree Neighborhood," also in Ar-Kansas. When she looked zhuhndí
in surprise, a splotch of navy-blue flashed between her feet.
Through this blinking overlay, Phoebe saw an Industrial Ribbon on the boundary with Quelccaya
Community, not that far from the tea shoppe she'd roared out of eight-kay seconds ago. The
Work-Community Pattern had filled the long, winding strip with a variety of businesses, including
soft-, hard-, firm-, and vacuum-ware manufacture, along with service outlets and diversions for the
surrounding residential areas. One public outdoor room, in particular, used a striped cover to
cloak the space between five rectangular buildings. The light material billowed in the breeze.
With the patrolcraft's help, Phoebe watched a pair of her constables race down a path and under the
cover. Another moving highlight magnified two more of these blisters as they hustled toward a
different entrance. Carrying dreamsticks at the ready, they disappeared from sight.
A moment later, flurries of bodies erupted from two other corners of the outdoor room. While some
of these people fled the scene, most of the others had just taken their dispute away from the
dreamsticks' respite. They wrestled. They swung fists and feet. Their heads, guts, and legs
jerked with blows. They broke apart, then staggered back together again. Some fell hard. No one
seemed inclined to break off. At this rate, some would get seriously hurt — or killed.
Cliff could wait. "Nav-gear, get me down there now!" Phoebe jabbed her finger toward a nearby
public square and lurched forward as the patrolcraft stooped. She claimed her own dreamstick from
its sheath hanging from her seat-back; her craft fell. In the next moment, her harness snatched
her backwards, secure and erect, into the seat's embrace just before the craft flared. Its wings
and fuselage reshaped themselves and demanded help from the air itself. Its engines diverted
thrust to ensure gravity's defeat. Its landing gear absorbed the remaining shock and held the
ground.
Phoebe jumped from the patrolcraft. The square's dust, swirling from her landing, tickled her
nose. The mid-afternoon suns, makers of the dust in this long season without rain, blared into her
eyes. She sneezed once for each cause, then dashed up a wide path toward the fight.
Buildings on either side blanketed the passage with shadows. As Phoebe adjusted to the gloom, she
noticed a roiling pack of zhee-tely about half-way to the tented area. They seemed to focus on one
person, a Gastarbeiter who defended herself with jabbing punchs and kicks as well as throws,
holding her own against six or seven others dressed normally. Have we come that far? Good thing
she can defend herself so well.
With a few more loping strides, Phoebe came up behind a man angling for a run at the Gastarbeiter.
She swung her dreamstick, cutting the air a full meter from his head. Immediately, he started
collapsing with a familiar shimmy.
First, the 'stick diverted the casualty's mind into natural autism, eliminating all conscious
action, expelling the external, summoning the internal. Quickly, it bypassed the four primary
stages of sleep and evoked the archetypal human-replay-dream/3b, learning how to walk. It summoned
the essential falling-down reflex, so the casualty found the safest place to crash and pointed his
padded posterior at it, folding over in the process, tucking elbows and knees together, dropping
laxly backwards. Finally, the 'stick evoked human-replay-dream/0, the womb, complete with
voluntary-muscle inhibition, leaving the casualty immobile in a fetal position.
Even as the man hit the path with a plop, Phoebe moved on, swinging. More people fell easily
around her, the Gastarbeiter in mid-throw, her grip changing to a hug on a local as the pair
settled peacefully together.
One last zhee-tel threw up her head and leaped back, away from the dreamstick's invisible reach.
Incredulous, she screeched at Phoebe, "She started it!" She tried to run, but the 'stick swept by
again and felled her. She dropped into a rolling crouch, then lay still, head bowed, arms and legs
drawn up.
Phoebe glanced back at the slumped Gastarbeiter, her skin like oft-used leather, brown and shiny.
Innocence showed in her relaxed face. No culprit there.
Shouts and blows sounded from the outdoor room. Phoebe broke into a run again and stayed with it,
though the fracas faded as she closed on the entrance to the high, translucent tent. She found a
thrashing clump of fighters just inside and waded in, laying them gently in their tracks. She
shoved her way through collapsing bodies, careful not to actually hit anyone but always working the
'stick ahead and beside her.
When she emerged from the clot, Phoebe stood at the edge of a cavernous, lopsided pentagon, flooded
with softened sunlight, carpeted with jumbled dreamers, interrupted by long benches dotted with a
few more inert bodies. People, her customers and Gastarbeiter shuffled en masse, so quiet,
slumber-like, in stark contrast with the frenzy that brought this enduced repose on them. Irony
tweaked Phoebe. She regretted imposing such overwhelming control, but neither she nor any other
anshin chief had found a better way to quell a distrubance of any size. Stop skirmishers in their
tracks with little added harm. While they're prostrate, treat their injuries, sort them out,
process them, get the justice system ready for them and them for it. All in all, everybody
benefitted and if dreamsticks also deterred violent behavior, so much the better.
Phoebe didn't like to admit it out loud, but such a complete solution to a fractious problem also
tucked neatly into her need for pastoral control. Anything less than a brawl didn't merit
dreamsticks, but they did overwhelmingly deal with those kind of problems.
On the far side of the room, a pair of constables straightened up, lungs heaving, dreamsticks held
high, their eyes scanning the tent for movement. They noted Phoebe's presence immediately, waved,
and kept searching. She acknowledged and continued her own appraisal.
In another direction, two more constables qualmed the last vestiges of violence, one leading with
his dreamstick, the other a pace behind and to the left, covering her partner's back and picking
off any strays.
After one last sweep of her own, Phoebe eased off and examined the public outdoor room itself.
Five epox-plaster walls, glimpses of taller buildings, smooth and rough, light and dark, made sides
under the filmy tent-top. Across the longest side, a holo-projector hung high, still making its
virtual magic on the packed earth below it. Off to the side, a platform held equipment and its own
handful of dreamers. The barely stirring air smelled of beer, straw, tobacco smoke, sweat, and
perfume, with even a touch of dung.
The Incident had erupted during a Shakespeareoke performance. The equipment fed words to amateur
actors, then projected their holographic images, complete with appropriate costumes. The virtual
backdrop — a primitive stage under rough timbers; on it, props representing a castle complete with
battlement — could mean Hamlet. The artificial smells lent a hint of the Old Globe
Theater. A sophisticated entertainment that held people enthralled with role-playing on stage and
in the audience, story-telling about the vérités of life, and a connection to centuries of literary
tradition.
Too bad, we had to pollute it with those other human traditions: prejudice and violence.
Phoebe caught her breath with a final deep inhale just as all her constables lowered their
dreamsticks. They had completed this stage of their response. She shouted, "Good work!"
The four blisters nodded back, then after a moment to pay down their own oxygen debts, they
sheathed their 'sticks and unholstered first-aid kits. They quickly quartered the room and stepped
into a triage sweep. Phoebe copied them and waded into the crowd of bodies, careful not to trod on
a casualty, noting injuries as she went. She paused to slap pressure bandages on the few bleeding
wounds she saw. She triggered the alert-flag on each one and moved on.
Just a moment later, her transducer announced, =Response Team on-site, southeast corner, high.=
Phoebe glanced in that direction. A constable lunged toward that wall and grabbed a dangling
tent-release cord. That section of the covering rolled itself quickly out of the way, revealing a
deep, blue sky and three of her Techniker already rappeling from the roof above. They dropped the
last two meters, freeing up the ropes for the next wave.
"Damned good work," Phoebe whispered to herself.
Two Techniker turned immediately to their duties, sighting on alert-flags, checking lifesigns, and
bringing face-huggers into play if necessary. The third — Harlan — called "Yo, Chief!" and
started in her direction.
Phoebe waved him off. "Assess, Stabilize, Evacuate, Harlan. I've got some Evaluating I have to
get back to."
Harlan nodded and headed toward another section of the room. Behind him, three more med-Techniker
dropped in.
Soon, they'd be dispatching the casualties off to clinics. Enroute, records would be updated,
criminal charges would be filed. But at the clinics themselves ... another set of problems
distracted Phoebe. Pressed by Za Leez, she had made so many cut-backs at the clinics, slicing
here, trimming there, trying not to compromise the essentials of care while saving Geld where she
could.
Patients actually needed Nurses during and immediately after med-tek procedures, so they
could do without hand-holding otherwise. Patients expected med-tek perfection, so Nurses focused
on ensuring its proper use and function, not fussing over patients. The Nurses didn't like giving
up their prime satisfaction on the job, but Phoebe had prevailed — mostly. And never mention the
latest fads in healthcare; Byukan-Hamil hadn't followed that pack in years.
Squeezed between protecting her customers while keeping her job and not protecting them
because she got fired for not meeting Partner-mandated profit objectives, she had chosen to trim
non-essential aspects of services. No wonder Gatogrebok chose to make their competitive statement
in healthcare.
Phoebe ruthlessly herded that apprehension of ideas from her mind by awakening her transducer and
calling for another status report. No new Incidents since she'd left her 'craft. Thankful, she
tred lightly on her way toward the doorway she'd come in, still minding the injuries, but
otherwise, not paying much attention to the casualties. Instead, she asked silently, =Central, has
Cliff changed his location?=
=Yessir,= said the quiet internal voice.
=Gut it! Where'd he go?=
=He's entering your vicinity.=
=Well, O.K.= She walked out of the tent-room. The path opened up between buildings, changing the
light from an ambient overcast tone to an overhead strip of bright sun that got lost in deep
shadows below. He'll probably see my patrolcraft and wait for me there.
Instead, at the other end of the alley-like path, the bright rectangle suddenly fractured with
dark, low, smoothly moving shapes. One, three, seven, and more, streamed toward her out of the
square at the other end. Phoebe could make out large, spoked wheels and some heads and shoulders.
She snatched her dreamstick to the ready even as she thought, Ped-cycle gang? Who ever heard of a
ped-cycle gangs! What's going on here? Unsure how to engage, but confident in her 'stick, she
thrust her free palm forward like a traffic cop — never had to do this before — and advanced on
the leader.
A moment later, shortened distance and adjusted vision showed Cliff riding at the pack's lead.
Reclined on a two-wheeled sling-cycle, he waved cheerily at her, braked, and set down a foot to
balance his contraption. Echeloned behind him, the others paused as well. Dressed in a variety of
gong-she garb, with tartan Rendezvous-of-Futures bandannas loose about their necks or tight as band
or cap on their heads or tucked into a pocket, they all grinned at her.
The grins infected Phoebe, but the intense scene she'd left behind her, atop her underlying gang of
problems, fought it. Those and her surge of fight instinct a moment before. Her strategist role
decided her. She wanted something from Cliff out of this can-feel, so she grinned back at them
all.
"Where's everybody off to?" Cheeriness wasn't so hard after all.
"We heard there was trouble. We wanted to help."
Phoebe sobered. "Fight or stop the fight?"
Cliff frowned back. "Stop it, of course. What did you think?"
"Sorry, Cliff." Phoebe waved off her question with a weak smile. "A lot of Incidents today, over
three times the previous high. Most of them scuffles between locals and —" she glanced at the
thirty or so cyclists around her "— Gastarbeiter."
"So I've heard," Cliff said with equal gravity. "There's a klatsch in the will-hear that's
recording alerts and rumors. That's how we knew about this one, thanks to Garvaghy here."
Gong-she clothed, yes, but the auburn-haired, dark-eyed woman was apparently also a member of the
Ganj-Dareh Collective. How well mixed is this group? At least some of us can get along.
Phoebe immediately challenged her own catastrophizing. Out of the million-count Collective, most
of them still stay out of fights.
Cliff continued, "We just wanted to stop the fighting, Chief, honest."
"I believe you." No bullshit, she did, but she must get to her larger issue. "Listen, Cliff, I
was heading to see you anyway when this Incident literally opened up under my feet. Can we talk
about what's going in Ganj Dareh? Today just emphasizes a disturbing trend."
"Of course." He shifted around awkwardly. "Quinn, take your class back to the confidence course
and finish up." He raised his voice. "I appreciate you all dropping everything and coming with
me." With a laugh, he added, "Even if it did mean getting out of class." Chuckles rippled through
the pack. "But you can get on back to your studies now. The anshin have the situation well in
hand as usual." With murmurs and rattles and footfalls, they started a calm retreat. "Thanks
again!"
When they were alone, Cliff heaved himself up off the cycle. "Do you want to talk here? I spotted
a nice from-Chosön café in the square back there."
Phoebe liked Cliff. She would've enjoyed spending a big chunk of seconds chatting easily with him
over Korean chai and food. But not today, not with her combine busting its hump to keep a lid on
the direvnya. She smiled again, sadly this time. "Sorry, Cliff, I need a pivot meeting here and
now, short, on-point, and direction-changing. We'll chat later, I promise."
The heavy man faked a gusty sigh, shook his big head so his jowls quaked, then quietly arranged his
sling-cycle so he could sit on it while they talked.
Phoebe said, "When Die Gastarbeiter started arriving seven days ago, I thought we all — my
direvnya, my combine, and me — could handle it. In fact, the day you and I first met can-feel, we
had handled a Large Square Dance without an official Incident, so I was feeling optimistic." Rue
forced her gaze away from Cliff's receptive face. "That was early in the day, though; by the end
of it, the trend had started." She confronted him again. "Above-normal count of Incidents, more
than doubling every day since ..." She bit off a sigh. "Until today: we're looking at triple,
maybe even quadruple, increase.
"My people cannot take this, Cliff. Your people have got to come back into pattern.
Open-mindedness and self-responsibility are fundamental to our society, right, Cliff? I can work
with my people — I'm not sure how yet, but I can. I can at least deliver them to their homes.
Your people, though —" She pinned his eyes with hers. "I'm thinking about shipping them to
their former legal residences. Any Gastarbeiter involved in an Incident, I dump him on the
next train to what used to be home. Maybe shut the whole thing down."
Cliff's eyes glinted; their kind twinkle had mutated into steel. When you deliver a show-stopper
in a constructive meeting, Phoebe thought, shut up. So she did.
"Listen to what you're saying." Cliff opened up a palm and gazed upon it. "On one hand, you talk
about open-mindedness, yet —" he turned up the other hand, his eyes tracking the motion "— yet
you use terms like 'your people' and 'my people.'"
Now he lifted his eyes to her, eyes that had turned haunted. "Phoebe, consider the wise Patterns
you invoked, foundation stones to our society. 'Open and Accountable' and 'Don't Bother Other
People' — along with 'Complete Standard Human Genome,' 'Gong-She,' 'Protect Your Life-Expectancy
— and That of Others,' and 'Community Connection' — comprise our Fundamental Patterns. What do
they have in common?"
He raised a professorial finger. "Fairness. Our ancestors came to this planet to be free to
practice — among other things — fairness. They set up Yeibichai's Pattern Language to promote —
among other things — fairness. Based on what?
"People are all basically the same. If you think about the mind in that other skull as one very
much like your own, with similar dreams and insecurities, and you take care of those the way you'd
like others to take care of yours, then all these other issues disappear like fog in the sun. What
you have left is fairness."
Cliff spread his hands in benediction and supplication. "Let's be fair to Die Gastarbeiter because
the Universe hasn't been —" he sighed "— with some help from Byukan-Hamil. Let's be fair to
them because if you were so long in gong-she that you had no on-contract clothes left, you'd want
some extra 'turn the other cheek.' You'd want another chance, and another chance, and still
another chance, to resurrect your personal patterns of attitude and behavior.
"Phoebe, I've put together the means to get them back on the right path. This Rendezvous has come
together well because I've spent years thinking about this kind of problem. Let's not send Die
Gastarbeiter back to what were their hometown quagmires. Let's give them a solid chance to use
this means I've provided. What do you say?" He added a hopeful grin to his otherwise somber
face.
What about my dreams and insecurities?
Phoebe ignored her own spite. Her zhee-tely were now enjoying the fruits of the Rendezvous as well
as out-of-towners. Besides, Cliff made sense, philosophically; in the long-term, she and the rest
of the continent would be better off if everyone worked themselves off the dole and onto a
contract. He seemed to believe he could teach them the skills to do that. However, in the
short-term ...
"We've got to hold down the Incidents, Cliff. We can't keep on incurring injuries, slight or
serious, because one of these times, someone's going to die; med-tek won't be able to put someone
back together again."
"Humpty-Dumpty," Cliff murmured.
"What?"
"Never mind. You've got a point. Though with the power you've got over people ..." He gestured
behind her.
Phoebe turned. Techniker were handling the pile of zhee-tely she'd left in the alley. They'd
arranged a line of Hoberman stretchers along one wall; life-support gurneys weren't necessary like
they'd been at the bio-battery Incident. Instead, these small boxes of metalloy unfolded
themselves into low-slung, adult-sized cradles with erector-set talons for walking and climbing.
Techniker gently untangled people, applied first-aid where necessary, laid them on stretchers, then
hit start-buttons. Each automaton extruded a girdered lid to hold its passenger, stalked away to
the Site's evacuation point, and took its turn climbing up to the waiting ambulances.
"With that power," Cliff continued, "you can handle a lot of trouble with few serious
repercussions."
"We anshin put 'Prevent' into our Response Pattern, not 'Mitigate' for a reason, Cliff. We've got
to do something to prevent fights. If the current trend continues—"
"Spare me your statistics, Chief. I've got a prevention tactic to offer, but you've got work to do
on your side as well."
Now we're getting somewhere. "Do tell."
"At the Rendezvous, we do this thing called 'Serious Creativity.' I highleveled it for you before;
it seems to be working out very well. We've been applying it to business processes, but we could
easily apply it to the Rendezvous itself and its effect on Ganj Dareh. We could run after-work
sessions attended by —" he suddenly stumbled over words, then with a sly grin, went on "—
attended by 'my people' and 'your people' — you could mandate attendance for the miscreants,
organizing according to Incident. I'm sure such sessions could generate some excellent new ideas
about soothing out your direvnya. And even if it didn't, we'd have combatants cooperating with
each other.
"I'd have to prevail upon some facilitators to work longer hours, train some others, and so on, but
I'm sure we could get the new sessions running by ... day after tomorrow." And he stopped talking,
gazing over at her with a smug, challenging expression.
"And what do you want from us?" Phoebe asked guardedly.
Cliff nodded briefly as though acknowledging a sign of commitment. "You've probably got your fire,
your police, your medics working overtime, right?"
Phoebe agreed.
"Isn't there another arm of your anshin force?"
"Counseling." The word popped out, but nothing followed as thoughts derailed words. Gut it! He's
right! Phoebe had to turn away in chagrin. We're just being reactive counselors, not pro-active.
Her years in that service flowed out of her memories, bringing techniques, approaches, therapies.
She turned back. Cliff waited expectantly, propped against his sling-bike like a mud-bear against
a tree stump, satiated for the moment with clingberries, but not ready for its unique isochronal
hibernation. Not ready to lie down, not any time soon, in fact. "When you're right," she said,
"you're right. We can shift to inductive counseling from deductive."
"'The Haunting of Hill House.'"
"What?"
"Expose the demon and it will vanish."
What's he talking about? "Something like that. Instead of trying to get people to behave
according to Patterns, we help people understand themselves, then extend that appreciation to
others. Golden-Rule them. Get them to be more fair, like you said." She frowned as implications
flooded over her. "That's a lot more work, a lot more time."
"You have automata that can help?"
"We have limited psych-tek in our clinics."
"Other direvnya?"
"I'll have to talk to Jik Dain about that."
"Jik Dain?" Cliff bolted to his feet. His bike fell over with a crash, but he ignored it. "Jik
Dain is your boss too?"
Phoebe nodded, puzzled by his reaction.
"How much of the consortium is he running now?" His expression turned inward. "Do you ever talk
to him?"
"Only when I can't avoid it. Three days ago, he embarassed me in front of every chief-of-anshin on
the continent, but I wrestled him into a can-hear afterwards where we made some progress on my
agenda."
"I'll bet you did!" Cliff's eyes had brightened again. "Never mind." He extended a hand. "So
we're in agreement? New effort to be fair and prevent at the same time?"
Phoebe took Cliff's hand. It enveloped hers in soft, dry flesh, then let her go.
"Deal," Phoebe said — and karoshi abruptly filled her with awareness of all the things she'd been
ignoring for the last few moments: Incidents, Response-Pattern summations, queues of action items
and requests. An image of herself high over Ganj Dareh, working, plucked at her. Then her
here-and-now re-asserted itself. "Cliff—" she started.
But he too had zoned out, present, yet absent, eyes open, but focused on other places, other times,
other people. She touched his arm. He jumped.
"Keep me advised," Phoebe said and stepped back, to let him go about his job, to start back to
hers.
"I will," he boomed and bent to his cycle. Soon, he was pedaling swiftly away.
Phoebe followed more slowly, transducing with Central to get things started on their new approach
until she could get her patrolcraft back into the air and really resume work.
