Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
Phoebe pushed through a glass door. Behind her, the back stairs buzzed with normal comings and
goings, voices and doors and feet. Ahead of her, out on this one of many rooftops in Central
Station, lay a quiet and hot late-afternoon. In between, an eddy lay completely open to the bright
splash of sunlight, though protected so far from its direct heat by a canvas roof. It seemed cool
compared to other outdoor places, so cool that it prickled her arms beneath the short sleeves of
her jumpsuit. Or perhaps, she'd finally found a place to ease her agony.
And a person? The one person in Ganj Dareh's million who might help?
Out there on the rooftop, combine gardeners had parked raised beds with vegetable crops and shrubs
while providing meandering paths with bench sanctuaries. At her back, but closed away by a heavy
door, the building's interior focused on business. Here, though, in a few square meters, they'd
used a cross-pattern, combining a Private Terrace and an Outdoor Room, setting up a transition
between containerized nature and the combine's tense artificiality.
In this purposeful eddy, Kanpachiro had set up his office. Looking cozy in a sweater, the staffer
studied a foilscreen while a hot-cup steamed within reach. Apparently, he hadn't heard her come
out.
Phoebe hesitated, unsure that she should've come here. Shards of her recent past jumbled in her
mind, sharp, repetitive pieces differing only in backdrop, places she'd passed through since
leaving that Fated tea shoppe.
Her patrolcraft coursed high over her direvnya, making available a pastoral vision normally so
restorative. Yet all she could do was replay the moments with Okra. They'd met as planned and
settled to a table.
In other fragments, she walked, her patrolcraft muted behind her, an electronic stopgap between her
and her job. Once, she trudged through the júzi orchard behind her cottage. Leaves and fruit and
bugs and birds, and sunlight speckling all that life. Yet she relived that can-feel, all the while
its end-game gnawed inside her. Settled at a table, she'd ordered tea to lend a more relaxed tone
than their last meeting.
In another walk, she toured alongside the brooding Missouri River. Yet she went over the meeting
again, trying to smooth over her pain. Settled, tea ordered, Okra pleasantly acquiesing, she'd set
the agenda.
Finally, exhausted, unrelieved, guilty of neglect, burdened by reenacting, she'd let her
patrolcraft bring her to the Central Station. Yet enroute, she couldn't shake the reruns.
Settled, ordered, agenda set, she'd reviewed Okra's plans, complimenting and suggesting.
At the station, fleeing her obsession, she stalked her domain. Nearly every floor in the complex
swarmed — or lay empty because its occupants were hustling through assignments somewhere else.
She'd caught most of her senior staff in mid-sentence or mid-meeting or mid-problem-solving and
left them uninterrupted. Blisters hustled through Station-based tasks. Calluses focused on their
work with zhee-tely. She'd even surprised a gathering of community tacticians in one of the
can-feel rooms.
Yet: settled, ordered, agenda set, topic opened, she'd looked up at a man entering the shoppe.
Not just a man: her competition, who sought to take away her job, hence her life. He'd come to
join Okra, invited by Okra to confront her, make it plain they worked against her. They — she
didn't give them the satisfaction. She banished Skeinswift Neighborhood from Ganj Dareh and left
— to wander in regret.
Kanpachiro worked quickly with great concentration. Panels saturated his foilscreen's geography.
Active overlaid inactive. Colors randomly braced against others with little concern for
aesthetics. His hands never paused: when his fingers weren't plunking away, filling the current
panel with characters, one thumb drove the cursor glyph around his logical representation of
cyberspace; the other thumb rapped like a metronome just outside the keyspace.
Busy. They were all so busy. Too busy for thought, just reaction. She hadn't taken scheduled
time for strategy in days, even though that was part of her job as Chief, just making it up as she
was forced to, like with Cliff yesterday. The rest of her combine must not be reflecting on things
at all. Concern nudged aside obsession with her latest can-feel: What mistakes are we making?
What trends are we ignoring? What failures are brewing under our very noses?
In fact, Kanpachiro represented their only investment in the future. And she'd borrowed him!
Under protest even ... a protest long since stuffed away as one of the stupidest things she'd done
in a long time. So, I ought to just leave him alone.
Phoebe stepped back and swung toward a retreat.
"Can I offer you some qahwah?" Kanpachiro said behind her left shoulder.
She let the door fall shut. A surf-wave of relief, unfamiliar but welcome, washed over her. While
Kanpachiro watched her reflected in his foilscreen, she dragged out a stool stashed alongside a bed
of ferns. Relief retreated, leaving her agony scrambling back across the beach of her psyche.
Still, she accepted a filled mug from him, though without meeting his eyes.
Phoebe sampled the mug's warm, moist vapors. She sipped from it. The hot liquid blessed her
palate as well as her nose. She purred approval, surprising herself that such a simple distraction
infiltrated her obsession.
Kanpachiro swiveled around in his chair. His shock of black hair seemed less kempt than usual, and
his round, dark eyes looked at her above hints of bags. "One of the rewards of working at
headquarters," he responded modestly. "The best mukha blends from Nikolayev. I've taken the
liberty of stocking each hot server in the building and dropping a big supply in the
basement."
"'Let them drink qahwah?'" A dig she regretted instantly, a spark thrown off by her agony.
He jerked his gaze back to the foilscreen. "No. More like trying to show some sympathy for the
people who make my job possible."
"Well parried."
The mug wafted its steamy veil as long as she held it to her mouth. She allowed the aroma to fill
her head, smooth, rich, untainted by the stimulating bitterness of the brew itself. She hoped the
moments would smooth that hint of her personal turmoil. She decided not to take it out on
Kanpachiro anymore.
But who else could she talk to? Everyone else in the building worked for her — unless they were
zhee-tely, in which case she worked for them. Outside her combine, she had nothing, no one. Kanpa
was an outsider, yet she felt comfortable with him, with her concept of him. Who else was
there?
Don't unload on him. He doesn't deserve that.
"What's troubling you?" Kanpa asked like he really wanted to know.
She told him. From the chance opening with Foxfire at Qohey House-hill all the way through her
blunder early this afternoon. "Was what I did all that bad? Was it terrible? Was it?" Panic
twinned with agony and choked her silent.
"Nothing hurts worse than a moment gone, slipped out of reach into the past," Kanpa said with
sympathy, even a touch of painful experience. "Whether you filled it with stupidity or nothing.
Nothing is so unfixable or so close as time gone by." He shared a shy smile with her. "Chafes,
doesn't it?"
Why doesn't he just answer my question? "Was what I did all that bad?" she asked again.
He started a shrug, then caught his raised eyebrows and shoulders and settled them back down. He
brought back his sympathetic smile. "No, it wasn't. Quite reasonable, it seems to me now. I
didn't understand it the other day when you had me crash that meeting with Okra, but now I do." He
straightened. "Does that help?"
"A little." Phoebe did feel some slack inside her.
"What can you do to feel better?"
The agony clamped down again, like a steel cable wrung taut around her heart. "Me?" Why pick on
me? It's them. They did me wrong.
"You," he insisted gently. "You alone can change you. Everyone else is a gamble. You had power
over yourself in the past. You have the power to make yourself different in the future."
"Want to bet?" Phoebe snapped.
"Yes." So calm, so sure.
"Like what?"
"Apologize. Take it back. Say you're open to resuming the old deal."
"What if Okra rejects me again? What if he cut a deal with Annadetcall because of what I said to
him?"
Kanpa waved his hand back and forth. "Not a meeting," he said. "A message, one-way, from you to
him. Just say you haven't changed protocols after all. Say you're open to talking with him again
at his convenience. That way, you've done everything you can to repair the situation." He leaned
forward and said with calm intensity, "You've done everything you can. After that, it's up to him,
out of your control, out of your mind. Get over it and on with your life."
"You don't understand."
"Yes, I do." Kanpa pointed at her llevar. "Go on. Get it done."
Distrusting her voice, she typed the words, so clear, even loud, in her mind. She had to force
herself, like wading into a storm-driven surf, but she got it done. Short, to the point, launched
into cyber-space. At the end, she felt different, lighter somehow, nudged down an unfamiliar
path. But not cured, she knew. That awareness frightened her, even more than the step itself.
"How'd your can-feel with Partner Bedlip go?" Kanpa changed the subject, like he had clinched a
deal, signed and tucked away as zhuhndí.
Phoebe yelped as that meeting surged back to her from where she'd stuffed it, then with a
grin, she handed over her empty mug for a refill. "Typical," she said. "The way can-feels with
Partners and staff always go." She let the confession tell Kanpa that he didn't count as staff
anymore. "I talked too much; Jik Dain said too little. I wavered, showed weakness; he dominated,
pushed his agenda over mine. He tasked me with a full Partner Briefing delivered every noon!"
Kanpa dismissed that with a wave. "We'll automate it. Won't cost you a second."
Phoebe smiled in thanks, then flashed him a what-about-this-one stare. "He told me to stop using
dreamsticks. Dreamsticks!"
"Well?"
"'Well' what?" she huffed.
"Are you going to stop using dreamsticks?"
"Of course not! But how do I tell him that?"
"You don't. The Briefing will, and if he asks, you just claim tactical override. What can he do,
fire you?"
Fear crashed on her, a torrent of emotion surrounding, flooding, swirling her over and over, just
like old times.
"He can't," Kanpa was saying. "He won't."
Doesn't he know what those words did to me? "Why—" Phoebe swallowed, but the lump didn't move.
"Why not?"
"Appearances. A Partner thinks about every one of his actions in terms of appearances. He's right
to do so, of course, because a lot of people are watching. However, the farther they roll
downhill, the less important those actions or their appearances are." He batted away that aside.
"Jik Dain won't fire you because it'll look weak to the other Partners; in the middle of Norma's
Rendezvous, they'll think he should fix you instead of dump you. He also won't fire you because
the Ganj-Dareh Collective won't like it, so close to the selection. Should I go on?"
The words, rational, steady, opened Phoebe's mind like a whiff of ammonia. "No, I understand,
thank you," she said, knowing it wouldn't last. Still, she enjoyed the respite, the appearance of
calm anyway.
She took some more qahwah and propped the mug in both hands on top of her knees. She stared down
at the steady black circle, tinted by a zig-zag of rainbow. Deep inside her, she heard her crone
mewling. She'd heard the whine before, during the can-feel with Jik Dain, but zhuhndí had drowned
her out since then. Now, though, the nag came back more clearly: danger, danger ... somewhere in
that alcove-bound conversation. She just couldn't find it though, not then, not now. Explore the
source then, she told herself.
Phoebe raised her eyes. Kanpa's were waiting. Below them, his lips were taut as though damming
words.
"What do you know about Jik Dain Bedlip?" she said.
A moment passed, though his dilated eyes held the steady light of a processor hard at work. "He's
ambitious," Kanpa said finally. "He's solitary. He works hard, unlike some of the other
Partners." He blinked finally and shifted in his chair to get more comfortable. "I overheard Jac
Irwin say once — let me get this right; it was real good — 'That Dain is like a sock full of
shit: he takes the shape of whatever he's slapped up against.' Do you like that?"
"That means you can't trust a thing he says or does."
"I — well, I guess so." His rueful grin also seemed a shade cheated, like he enjoyed the joke and
didn't see why she had to interpret it so ... crudely.
"Is that why his request for a can-feel caused my calendar primitive to override my schedule?"
Kanpa smirked. "That's the way they write them."
"What?"
"You got your automata from headquarters, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"So you got them from the toadstools in the caves of BH Direvnya. And they backdoored everything
with Partner overrides."
Phoebe stabbed the younger man with a cross look, then waved his hurt-tinged surprise away.
"Sorry, I just don't like being stabbed in the back by my own tools. You understand?"
He nodded.
Speaking of back-stabbing ... "During the can-feel, Jik Dain asked me about all the troubles we're
having with Gastarbeiter, like he'd heard there'd been a lot and he was just confirming it. Or
like he knew there'd been some and wanted to see how I explained it."
"Have there been?"
"You've been here."
"I've had my eyeballs buried in the past," he answered with exasperation and a flip gesture at his
workstation. "The past few real-time days haven't exactly been important to me."
"So it wasn't you that told him?" Like the words had been planted by Jik Dain, rigged to explode
between her and Kanpa. "Wait! Don't—"
Kanpa flinched, spinning around in his chair, away from her, but not before she saw his tears well
to wash away his hurt, purge and express and distract all at once. She lunged forward, caught his
elbow, dragged his face back. She changed her grip to his forearm, sinewy under the corded
sweater. He gazed back, his dark eyes blurry.
"Partner booby-trap," Phoebe blurted, hoping he shared this piece of field jargon. "I realize now
that he purposefully hinted that you, ah, you were spying on me, and I — and I was juggling so
much else that it slipped through. I didn't discount it enough." She squeezed his arm. "I'm
sorry. I know you wouldn't do that, not anymore." Those last words plunked her into another
marsh. Habits of thought die so hard, like tree-roots twining in your septic field. "Sorry, I—"
"Don't fret." Kanpa struggled to smile while swallowing and wiping his eyes. "Actually, reporting
on your combine's mental state was part of my mission statement, but I started neglecting
that like on Day 2." He cleared his throat. "What about Gastarbeiter?"
Phoebe shifted back to the topic, pleased with the effect of her apology. "Our activity numbers
show some elevation, but nothing that can't be accounted for by sheer increase in population.
Until yesterday. A real spike in disturbances. When he brought it up, I thought he was going to
fire me on the spot."
"How'd you handle it?"
She grinned with sudden pleasure as the memory surged inside her. She squeezed his arm one last
time and sat back. "I hit him with the old underling one-two: grins and graphics. I hauled out
the llevar and drew lines in the air with it, then I clarified each one with a confidential grin.
Works everytime with sea-gulls." And she knew he knew she didn't mean him.
Kanpa leaned forward. "Sounds like you satisfied him that you're taking care of the situation.
How's the Collective reacting to all this?"
Curious change-of-subject. Then his foilscreen, littered with graphs and pictures and words,
reminded her: That's his job now, understanding the Collective.
"Oh," she said, "they're definitely reacting. Lots of talk, calls for action, calls for inaction.
Service-level reviews on four of the bigger combines, but not mine." That hadn't sunk in before.
"Maybe our customers do realize that we're doing a good job considering the situation." Phoebe
went back to the can-feel. She replayed Jik Dain talking about the increase in Incidents,
How do you explain all this? Now why did he ask it
that way?
"How do you know what they're thinking?"
Surprised, Phoebe focused on Kanpa. He sat straighter now. His eyes snapped with interest. He
waved a hand at his foilscreen. "Nothing I've seen tells me what these people are thinking, except
those angry enough or bored enough to actually file a customer-comment form. Those I can account
for, but they aren't the majority who select a bidder for a contract.
"And I haven't the time to plow through all the Ganj Dareh will-hears." His voice dropped to a
mutter. "Even if I could get into them. How do you keep up with it all?"
"Take this." Phoebe slipped off the stool, handed him her mug, and reached into his keyspace. So
close, his cologne reached her like a sea-breeze. She created a new virtual workstation based on
her own profile and pointed at the lone, martyr-red panel on the freshly opened display in the
middle of his foilscreen.
"What's that?" he asked.
"My ear to the virtual ground. It's a — I think Tidhar called it a 'personality' — anyway, it's
a lot more complicated than an agent. Takes a lot of juice to run it."
"Bis Tidhar Holong?"
She nodded. "He came over to help on my first renewal proposal. Fresh out of the desert, but he
sure knew the low roads of the Mirnaya Direvnya. As a going-away present, he left this with me."
She grinned at him. "And he's 'puked' it up a few times since."
"Never met him, but I saw him around the Byukan-Hamil campus a few times," Kanpa said as he studied
the black lettering. "It says that people aren't particularly satisfied with the way you're doing
your job."
"Yes-I-know." That earlier hint of optimism whiffed away as his words sliced across her own
self-inflicted wounds on the topic. "What's it say today?"
"Nineteen percent."
A scold heated her next words; she didn't like anybody else seeing that little graph of
unhappiness. "You're right. I couldn't monitor all the interactions. People gabbing or arguing
or spilling their guts about everything from their pets' ailments to the meaning of life. The Ear
does tell me about the sound of their hoofbeats, so to speak, by processing all new comments and
inferring an Index of Satisfaction from them. It even pulls out some notable excerpts so I can see
what the Collective is actually saying. The way they're saying it.
She turned the conversation around on him. "Isn't there some way you could delve in further?
There's stuff in there you'll never find in official complaints."
He studied the red panel, but there was a stiffness about his pose. When a sigh escaped his nose,
she recognized someone finding a whole new wing to a house he thought he'd already finished mopping
out. She decided to wait for him to talk next.
After a moment, he said without looking around, "What's this 'Discussion Groups Active?'"
"That tells me how many dialogs the Collective has going out there, most of which I know nothing
about. The Ear did consider all those forums and klatsches, but highlighted only the bits you
see. I've given it some guidelines on reporting, though how it gets from them to what it displays,
I have no idea."
"Tidhar called it a 'personality?'"
"Uh-huh."
Kanpa poked at the foilscreen, made some panels appear she'd never seen before. "Will you give me
access to this? Assign me a proxy so I can view the will-hears? I won't write anything in them, I
promise." He spun around, his face gleaming. "Using the source code Tidhar left here, I just
might be able to put together a profile of this Collective I — we are trying to please."
Phoebe returned his frank and excited gaze. Ever since she'd turned him loose on her combine seven
days ago, he'd canvassed every tactician who worked for her, fitting almost painlessly into their
schedules, summarizing his daily impact on their work. He'd met her in can-feel a couple of times,
slipping into her office at her convenience, quickly highlighting his progress and outlining his
plans. He'd reacted promptly whenever she called him, like he did four days before. And the rest
of his seconds, as far as she could figure, he'd spent here, at this workstation, shaping a
document that probably held the only chance of saving her combine's future. She had no idea when
— or if — he ate or slept.
When she didn't answer right away, Kanpa looked up at her, his face sympathetic and close. "I know
it's tough down here with customers in your face and headquarters on your back. My job is to get
down beside you and help you make things better."
She realized with a sigh, he's got his trench to dig and I've got mine. "O.K.," she said and a
smile broke out on her face. He did seem so earnest, so talented, so ... cuddly. What? She
pushed the thought aside by focusing on her agent-for-security and setting up the proxy. When she
was done, she relinquished the keyspace.
He returned her qahwah mug. "Thank you."
"So what do you think Dain meant? When he said about yesterday's increase in Incidents, 'How do
you explain all this?'"
"That's a typical Partner question. It puts you on the spot without them having to think hard
enough to be specific."
"Why do I get this feeling —" she hunched her shoulders to resist a shiver of fear, a different
kind of fear this time, one that pointed outside herself "— this feeling of danger. Do you think
he's up to something?"
Kanpa's face shifted into ponder. "He's in complete charge of this Rendezvous-of-Futures program.
Lets everyone know that he was chosen by Har Norma for the job." He held up a finger. "He's using
her imprimatur to take control of every combine that can possibly be construed to have anything to
do with the Rendezvous."
"I know. I work for him now."
"It is the first significant restructuring of the hierarchy in —" he fingered a frown of
concentration "— I guess, since Har Norma's parents died and left her a Partnership." He left his
curved hand in place and peered out of the finger cage. "I'm afraid my consortium history is
rusty."
"That's more than I ever knew. Any bottom line here?"
Kanpa smoothed out his face, but didn't move his hand. "If he carries it off, he'll finish this
program with more power than anybody in the Team of Partners except Norma. What else could he
want? What else is there?"
Phoebe shook her head. The movement seemed to push aside her bewilderment about Dain; now she
thought about Ganj Dareh, about the distress she saw behind its calm pursuit of equilibrium. That
spike of Incidents yesterday: was all the change saturating her people? Were they getting sick of
it, sick from it? Change could do that to people. Were they ready to strike out, at Die
Gastarbeiter, at their neighbors, at themselves?"
The crone in her mind commenced mewling again, a low, drawn-out wail of unspecific caution.
Suddenly, her eyes ached, her shoulders ached, her lower back ached. No matter what was going on,
she, Doyle Phoebe Heejanus, Chief of Anshin, would have to defend her Collective, her combine,
maybe even herself, from it.
Phoebe slipped from the stool and restored it to the ferns, saying, "Thanks."
"Phoebe?"
She looked back around. "Yes?"
Kanpa leaned forward, like he was about to push himself to his feet. His neck bent, he looked up
at her, his blackish eyes glistening for a moment. Then, he settled back in his chair and said,
"Thanks for coming by."
"Sure," she said and left the rooftop garden. The future opened like sunlight breaking through
storm-clouds. Strategic work that she'd neglected caught the light and begged her attention.
She'd never get ahead of this Incident trend — rising despite today's reprieve — with tactics
only. She had to race ahead of it by improving her direvnya's ability to avoid it and by expanding
her combine's capacity to handle trouble.
She had sought psych-tek from other chiefs. She would follow up those messages with will-sees.
Within her own bailiwick, though ... she'd brainstormed some idea yesterday, constant overtime,
rearranging schedules. No, I need more than that now.
Get out there and hire people. Gut it, stuff it, and mount it on the wall! No more excuses!
To hire, she'd need recruiters and trainers. No blisters to spare, so calluses and even her meager
staff would have to work that. All had field experience; she didn't allow anyone else in those
crucial positions. How to replace them at their current duties? Kanpa appeared in her mind, with
his dismissive wave. "We'll automate it," he'd said. Ask him to help there? No, he's too busy.
She had other Techniker, maybe not as fetid as Kanpa, but definitely capable. Forget their
maintenance and development duties for now. The combine would have to violate some patterns about
personal contact with customers, but compromises were needed here, by everybody. Make that
transition happen first thing tomorrow — no, make that happen right now. She turned down the
stairs.
Retired anshin. Another idea, eager like a puppy chasing a ball. She'd abandoned the idea of an
active reserve three years before when budgets nipped even her on-duty staff. Now, Jik Dain had
given her that freedom again, more than he probably understood. Retirees could recruit and train
as well. Patrol? Fight fires? Counsel? Not now, but maybe later — if demand grew.
Phoebe dove through a closing door with a rush of purpose and joy in that purpose. She took all
that into an office and grinning down at an astonished callus, started directing new life into her
customers, her employees, and herself.
