Pla Cliff Derkinit
Hands in his jacket pockets, Cliff braced himself against a pole and studied another swarm of
Gastarbeiter as they scurried out of the train station and across the road to his ten processing
booths. He didn't bother to watch his people in the booths; Zim supervised that activity now;
Lotte managed the training sessions in twelve centers around Ganj Dareh. But he liked to mingle
with the first couple of train loads each day, just to get a feel for attitudes and demographics.
He saw more families now, fewer singletons. He saw simpler clothing with more repairs. He saw
more downcast eyes, more depressed body postures, more hesitant mingling in the queues. He saw —
Jik Dain Bedlip!
Cliff straightened, stepped to the short canvas fence that defined the booth he stood in, and
peered at a man who strode purposefully alongside the station through Gastarbeiter laggards.
Definitely looked like the Partner-in-Charge. Cliff recalled now, at the periphery of his
attention, this man marching down the path from the aerodrome, obviously intent on reaching the
transport interchange as quickly as possible.
Jik Dain wore informal business attire: charcoal-gray coat-cape, fastened at the collarbone with
an obsidian clasp, matching loose slacks, contrasting barong tagalog, cotton-white and embroidered,
tie-less, shirt-tail out. Informal, maybe, but still far more stylish than Cliff's own baggy
jellaba and sandals, both faded and comfortable.
Urgently, Cliff grasped a stanchion, awkwardly swung first one foot, then the other over the low
wall, and hustled to intercept his boss. "Jik Dain!" he called at a distance.
The Partner swung his bald head in Cliff's direction, stopped with a quick two-step, then turned to
wait.
Cliff wrapped left hand around right fist and two paces away, announced with a short bow, "I am Pla
Cliff Derkinit, Director of Training for the Rendezvous-of-Futures." And acting tactician, he
thought, with my arms full around those responsibilities and no title to them.
"I know, Pla Cliff." Dain appeared to be leashing his face and voice with absolute neutrality.
Cliff took another step. "I would be delighted to take an impromptu meeting/can-be-felt with you
after all my requests for a meeting/can-be-seen."
Jik Dain's agate eyes bored up at Cliff for a moment, then softened by notches as he stepped into
the road and granted a smile. Cliff walked beside him back toward the processing area.
"How are we doing?" Jik Dain said.
A long yesterday, so abruptly filled with Gastarbeiter violence, flared again like a fresh wound in
Cliff's mind. A glimpse of slack bodies, dreamsticked so cavalierly, evacuated so attentively.
Panel after panel on his llevar filled with news of casualties. A short, but intense pivot-meeting
with Phoebe. Could new directions at the Rendezvous and in Ganj Dareh stem this tsunami of
violence?
How much of that do I reveal to Jik Dain? Resentment at the Partner's aloofness punched out an
answer: Best say nothing. Stick with the old complaints. Cliff covered his heartache with a
low-grade scowl. "We're catching up, considering that the whole continent had a two-day
headstart."
Jik Dain didn't look around, just kept walking. "Meaning?"
"Meaning you should have given me time to prepare before releasing that notice."
Dain sidestepped a clump of Gastarbeiter, approached the front of a booth, and stationed himself
beside it to watch the processing.
A dusty-looking man, clutching a rust-red bandanna, stepped forward. "Kal Aalit Nunaat," he
offered nervously to the man sitting at the processing table. "My wife, Kal Sara Terblast, and —
and — and our children, Marc, Marian, and Muriel."
"Gotcha right here, Kal Aalit," responded the clerk from behind his holoscreen.
"We, uh, we're grateful," stammered the man. "We weren't sure you'd let us in. We are so late.
We were so far away, without—"
Kal Sara laid a supportive hand on her husband's arm. He covered it with his rough paw and added
more calmly, "We're here now."
"And we're glad you are," the clerk said. "You'll be living—"
Jik Dain pivoted his head, pointed rehardened eyes toward Cliff, but they passed no meaning, like
jeweled drillbits spinning idly in the air. Cliff stared back, careful to keep his pique and
yearnings — and awakening despair — stifled. The only way to keep them off my face and out of
Dain's sight.
"You have your challenges, Pla Cliff. I have mine. As for your progress —" Blink by blink, the
eyes transmuted, passing from stasis to appraisal to approval. "Well done. Keep at it. I'll
approve all funding requests from now on."
"Thank you, Jik Dain." Just like that, eh? De facto authority in the guise of shrugging me off.
I should just be grateful for small favors, I guess.
"Continue reporting as you have." Dain turned to walk away. "Steady growth," he added
perfunctorily.
"Steady growth," Cliff murmured, pleased at the results of this unexpected briefing, displeased at
its lack of length and depth. Ought to be used to such behavior from Partners. Ought to be, but
not.
Relief blipped over Cliff as Jik Dain departed, taking his Partner mien, scrutiny, and whim with
him, instantly allowing room for Cliff's most recent issue with his boss to surface again.
"Jik Dain!" he called after the man. "Would you reconsider—"
"No outside income!" Jik Dain barked without turning or even pausing his steady march.
Cliff extended a hand anyway, followed it a few steps. "It's not the money. It's the work, the
satisfact—"
"Not from—" Jik Dain segued one pace into a pivot, a neat, mechanical spin that brought those
drillbit eyes back around "— our competition!"
"They're not my competition, Jik Dain. Rather, I confront despair, doubt, surrender to a
cruel Universe aided by their fellow man, so I need tools to fight with and nothing does that
better than work, hard work delivered with all your heart and paid for with hard cash, and there's
not much work available, which is why Die Gastarbeiter comes to this Rendezvous in the first
place." His long rope of words delivered, Cliff breathed and waited, hope kindled by Jik Dain's
lull.
"No."
"Jik Dain—"
"Derkinit." The Partner revealed impatience with a small step away. "I do not invoke my authority
to tell you how to do your job often. I'm doing it now, and I will continue to do so in this case
through our policyware that prevents you from taking Gatogrebok money.
"Derkinit, Byukan-Hamil is Byukan-Hamil." Jik Dain paused as though expecting to say something
else, but then spun abruptly away instead. His resumed march closed the topic without recourse.
At that moment, Cliff mourned the passing of cash, zhuhndí and anonymous and absolutely
independent, more than he ever had. Without it, he had little chance of hiring his Gastarbeiter
out. Could he somehow make barter work? Gatogrebok hadn't seemed all that interested, but —
"Getcher moldy hands away from my sister!" A sharp voice cracked through the quiet, orderly
processing.
Fear leapt from Cliff's heart to his mind, a conclusion based on yesterday's storm of violence
among his clients. Even as he reacted, he glimpsed Jik Dain jerk to a halt and start to turn his
head, but then, the twin queues at the first booth took over Cliff's full attention.
"We were jes talkin'!" Another voice, panicked, its owner hidden by the lines.
Cliff dodged behind the Nunaat children and pushed through people, throwing his weight into his
shoulders and elbows. Nascent despair upgraded fear to dread.
Walled in by a crowd stepping on each other to get out of the way, two men struggled while a woman
cowered aside, her hands covering her mouth in alarm. One man, his face snarled with rage, tall
body bronzed and muscular in t-shirt and jeans, yanked the other about. Cliff kept moving, though
he had no idea how to intervene.
"Clammers cain't talk," Adonis Enraged bellowed.
The other rode the grappling hands like a hooked eel, lanky and limp, eyes and mouth wide with
surprise and fear. Protests bubbled out of him.
Adonis renewed his grip on Eel's shirt, dragging him closer and spitting words into his face.
"Clammers mew. They bawl. They prattle. And they cain't do any that with my sister. Not back
home." He shifted weight. "And sure-as-Perdition, not here." He threw a knee into the other's
crotch.
Eel gasped, his eyes bulging further, his mouth gaping wider.
Adonis let go with one hand, stepped back, cocked his fist — and spun away, stumbling off to
Cliff's right. A constable broke out of the crowd and drove after Adonis with a baton ready for
another blow. A second constable caught Eel as he crumpled. Thank the Chief for posting them
here! And thank them for not turning on those dreamsticks, for applying them to the culprits, not
the bystanders.
Adonis' sister — Cliff dubbed her "Aphrodite," perverting the Greek myth — Aphrodite, tanned and
athletic also, jabbed out a tripping foot. The first constable stutter-stepped, slipped her baton
under the outstretched leg, up-ended Aphrodite, then caught up with Adonis. He had turned to run,
but left a hand hanging back. The constable grabbed, twisted, pushed up, then drove Adonis to his
knees using that arm as a handle.
Cliff reached Eel, grabbed him under the arms, gasped, "I've got him." With three brisk glances,
the second constable checked Cliff's face, his grip on Eel, and Aphrodite's whereabouts, then let
go and put the sister back on the ground, face down.
Bracing Eel, Cliff glanced at Aphrodite, cuffed and panting on her belly, at her brother lurching
toward the same position, then beyond. Relief salved his worries, soothing, but not curing them.
Between gawking Gastarbeiter, Cliff noticed Jik Dain, assessing the situation, eyes clicking across
the scene like an automated surveyor. Maybe he noticed Cliff watching, maybe not, but he abruptly
faced front and continued toward the road as though he had not been distracted from his march.
A stunted crag of a man, hard, jagged, solitary, Cliff thought. Maybe I'm better off dealing with
him through messages. Especially now that I don't really need him anymore.
