Jik Dain Bedlip
The qi-che from the drome pointed its nose at Ganj Dareh and accelerated smoothly. Dain rolled
with the motion, a tinge of scowl tensing his forehead. He had called a Day to Measure, following
yesterday's initial action, and here he'd seen the Propaganda Team starting fights, striking first,
right in front of him! The process for developing anything — product, service, insurrection —
involved four steps: do, measure, think, plan, and go around again and again until the job was
done. Everyone knew that. Besides, he had given an explicit order. What was Lugar thinking
about?
=Don't ya love it though, a barátom?= JDB slipped words into the center of perception. =Le Coeur
out in force! Fine, strapping ollomani wreaking their will in the zhuhndí world, not the phony
confines of a tlaxtli arena.=
The scowl eased. A smile threatened to replace it.
=They were arrested!= Dain protested.
=So what? We expected attrition.= A shrug rippled through their mind. =Casualties of war.= A
gesture moved their arm: a dismissive wave that ended with a clenched fist. =After years of
preparation, of scheming, of waiting, Le Coeur has begun its campaign. I am done.=
=Yes,= Dain acknowledged. =At last. You're right. Ride along with me.= He settled back, ready to
be shown this theater of operations, this field of victory. JDB also set himself down, just at the
back of Dain's mind, oddly quiet, almost wistful.
But when Dain turned to the open side of the rumbling minibus, the drome's berm blocked his view of
Ganj Dareh. The blank wall of dirt, paislied by morning shadows, snapped his smug mood. A queue
of action items hustled into the vacancy: first, arrange his own part of this momentous day.
He activated his llevar, then suddenly aware of the other passengers, glanced around. Caution
wrestled with disdain over the need for privacy. Caution won. He lifted his collar, snapped it
closed over his larynx. He told Kär no voice output and privacy garbling on the confines of the
holoscreen, then he requested an immediate meeting/can-be-felt with Doyle Phoebe Heejanus, allowing
for his travel time. Last-minute notice would add to the tension of the can-feel, bring additional
pressure on his chief opponent here.
An automated confirmation bleeped back at him; it mentioned that an override had been necessary, no
more than he expected, given his position as Partner. Most BH calendar automata were set up to
recognize certain names.
=You will talk to her about those elátkozott dreamsticks,= JDB said. He seemed distant,
almost disconnected, though his presence rubbed against Dain like a full bladder, secondary to his
list of action items, but hard to ignore.
Dreamsticks. Dain had hammered Lugar and Thy for months about solving the dreamstick problem, but
they had dallied.
=Non-trivial to find a final solution,= JDB gruffed.
=Le Coeur paid dearly yesterday for their lack of results!= Dain blared back. A poke brought the
Propaganda Team's will-hear into the holoscreen; its borders twinkled to remind Dain that he was
reading encrypted data. Time-stamped three-hundred seconds ago, the last entry bore Lugar's ident
and reported the five Ready Rooms had returned to a staffing level of thirty-two percent on average
with growth steadily improving; Dain ignored the rest of Lugar's compulsive statistics.
On Day One of Delivery, Le Coeur's rabblerousers had suffered massive casualties. Of the 1,515
ollomani dispatched into the direvnya, only 27% reported back to their Ready Rooms by evening.
Those who did told of quick and overwhelming response by anshin wielding dreamsticks. The
Governor's defensive kata failed every time. No improvised tactics worked either.
Surprisingly, the lost ollomani gradually appeared on the anshin's Incident Board, listed by their
Rendezvous names, not the volatile ones assigned for the mission. At least that ploy had worked.
Then, even more surprisingly, the anshin announced that all detainees would be released back to the
Rendezvous — after processing. By dawn, the ollomani started to trickle back. The Propaganda
Combine would soon recover full strength. Dain would not have to resort to Thy's ghost-troops —
yet.
Another reason for measuring after doing: take time to recover. So why the fight at the drome?
=Somebody late arriving for duty, didn't get the word,= JDB said mildly. =It happens.=
A cackle, distant and shrill, wandered through Dain's mind. JDainB, celebrating the fickle finger
of chance, not just this morning, but yesterday, not just yesterday, but every day. Echoing this
comment, unease riffled through Dain's mind, rocking him. The dreadnought of his confidence
shriveled to a dinghy, stranded on Life's vast ocean, buffeted by unseen creatures of unknown
size.
Dain grasped for an antidote to JDainB's anxious poison. =jDub,= he called. =Status report! A
simple status report!=
jDub's summary abacus blipped into view, complete with six objective-representing lines and their
progress-marking beads. Overall, they tipped preponderantly toward the left, toward Dain's total
control.
.............................|.......á...............â...œ.
(1) public and private contracts — no official change here; a single hard-right bead tolled BH's
monolithic control, but jDub now measured the contenders in Ganj Dareh's anshin competition: BH's
chance for renewal, Gatogrebok's possibility of overthrowing BH, and any yearning in the Collective
for "none of the above," modeling each as a tiny figure racing along the abacus line
Dain quickly skipped past the BH figure, still holding the lead. He registered Gatogrebok as
showing some signs of gaining. Then he glowed upon seeing Le Coeur's dark horse, fully and finally
emerged as a distinct possibility in the minds of Ganj Dareh's people. Pleased, he checked the
rest of the report.
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(2) authority over BH budgets — still weighted hard left, Dain's side of this cerebral ledger
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(3) control over BH combines — each combine appeared twice, once in cherrywood for BH's formal
authority, once in ash-gray for Le Coeur's pirate authority
The tide had shifted in this graph, for now Dain controlled more combines through overt channels
than covert. Over half fell within his span-of-control. Another twenty percent were snared by
overlapping funds and shared management. The balance would come to him only after victory in
Ganj Dareh.
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(4) alignment of BH Partners — every Regional had yielded authority in one way or another, leaving
Norma's puppet Idombruce in sycophantic opposition and Irwin in a neutral wait-state so far
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(5) influence on Norma's personal agenda — no change at all, no chance for change as Dain had
neither heard from nor seen the Senior Partner since that can-feel in her quarters ten days ago
Yet he felt her presence, somewhere, somehow, working some preposterous agenda — the Rendezvous of
Futures was only an inkling of her larger plans. He could only hope that he completed his work
before she did.
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(6) tlaxtli teams deployed at arenas — no longer a potential force, the ollomani had moved into
action
Lugar had selected two percent of Le Coeur's forces for his Propaganda Team. All were already
deployed in Ganj Dareh as part of the Rendezvous. The remaining ollomani, Thy's ghost-troops,
traveled secretly toward Ganj Dareh. One way or another, they were all at work for the cause.
Dain would never feel sorry for those who opposed him, but irony did tickle him. In particular,
the authority he had granted to Heejanus — local hiring — and Derkinit — free spending — would
do no more than distract them while he took over the town that surrounded them.
=Q.E.D.= whispered JDB.
=Isn't it wonderful?= Dain replied before he realized the weight of JDB's presence had been
relieved. =Hey! Don't you want to enjoy this? Come see!=
The qi-che passed through the berm's shadow. Forgetting JDB, Dain leaned forward for his first
glimpse of Ganj Dareh.
Nothing extraordinary. A neatly patterned nest for people, low-slung and melded with the
countryside, lining hills with buildings, allowing the valleys between to exercise their fertility
in fields and orchards, interrupting the natural jumble with geometric architecture to modest
heights. Only the Central Anshin Station broke the four-story limit with its transparent dome
peeking between fábrica-clad summits, plus a variety of High Places.
Ganj Dareh surrounded the confluence of the Missouri and Usuthu Rivers. Using minimal intrusion,
it had negotiated the release of hills and valleys from the fey-banyan that covered this part of
Popovich, from the Kashmir Mountains on the west to the eastern coastal marshes where the Missouri
merged with the Sea of Okhotsk. The drome itself lay north of the direvnya on a naturally open and
flat area, making the spot an ideal accommodation of natural beauty and interest with commercial
and social needs.
Dain settled back now and drew his attention out of the distance, from summary to detail. An
immediate shelf of buildings: rows of warehouses rippling to the horizon off to the left; a
transport interchange straight ahead, where he would switch to an inter-community trolley; and to
the right, a house-row under repair. Around this last, an ordinary neighborhood. Here and there,
an interesting combination of patterns. Seemed very calm, very comfortable. No awareness of its
position as a juncture of Destiny. No irony in that position. Le Coeur's penetration of
Ganj Dareh no more or less deep than any other Prime Direvnya, just a different mixture. If not
anshin as scapegoat, then some other combine, some other category of people.
Still, this was the place. Where Le Coeur asserted itself physically. Where Le Coeur broke out of
its secret virtual existence. Where Le Coeur carried Dain out of his servitude and established his
predominance.
Dain expected a boast from JDB. None came, so Dain crowed in his stead: =Soon a battlezone!=
But JDB remained silent, hiding somewhere in his own part of their brain. So Dain completed the
thought himself: Soon a conquest! He liked the effect, solo instead of duet, or even, the more
usual chorus of alternative voices.
Still, JDB's earlier suggestion clicked into place. Dain would use his Byukan-Hamil authority to
solve a Le Coeur problem. Using some customer-satisfaction mumbo-jumbo he'd make up later, he
would order Heejanus to quit using the dreamsticks. Yes, that would do quite nicely, supporting
the reasons he'd taken on the dual roles in the first place.
Assured, invigorated, undeniable, Dain quietly watched Ganj Dareh unfold around him.
