Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
Phoebe finished the proposal's Executive Summary, then looked up from her llevar and around at
Kanpa. He was occupied with the sunset just kindling above one wall of the artificial karongo that
isolated the ring road from Ganj Dareh. They sat in the open-air section on top of the
inter-community trolley as it carried them toward Rovaniemi. So far, the trip had gone smoothly,
none of the usual breakdowns.
The breeze stirred his long, thick hair and reminded Phoebe of scenes from old films, only there it
was the girl whose hair danced with the vehicle's motion.
She called over the road noise, "This last revision is a big improvement, very direct, very clear
about our new approach to the job."
He glanced over. "Thank you."
"But."
"Yes?"
"Do you think the Collective will have as hard a time adjusting to the changes as I did, as my
whole combine did? Completely mobile med-tek, self-administered or by Nurse, including elective
surgery. Deputies recruited from each Neighborhood to patrol that Neighborhood. Enough other
radically new services, different delivery mechanisms, less centralization in the combine
structure, more responsibility for the zhee-tely, to make for big changes — very big changes."
He shifted in his seat to level his gaze on her. "Anything wrong with the words you see there?"
"No. I just want to talk about what they say."
"Phoebe," he sighed. "It's too late to change anything substantive, so why talk about it? You and
your community tacticians agreed to this days ago. You certainly reworked my proposals enough to
make them your own. It's bad enough you spent most of the trolley ride with your nose buried in
your llevar."
Puzzled, Phoebe asked, "Isn't that why we're out here?"
"No." Kanpa reached over, plucked the llevar from her hands, folded it, and tucked it into one of
his pants' thigh pockets. "We're here to get away from the job and relax. Talk to each other.
Find out more about each other. Capisce?"
She looked away. No, she didn't understand. She found a dark corner beneath the seat in front of
her. She'd headed out with Kanpa expecting a working session, talk business while they traveled,
while they ate, with a little sightseeing on the side. That's why she spent most of the day
putting together an ad-hoc team of tacticians — instead of reviewing the proposal — and making
precious little progress because the very crisis she wanted to work on consumed their interest and
time.
"I've been comparing Ganj Dareh to other direvnya," Kanpa said. "I've been all over the world, you
know, for my studies of pattern languages."
I do have the authority, Phoebe thought, to put together such a team. From at least six global
patterns, another two at continental level. Not to mention the Byukan-Hamil policy manual —
"There's a lot about Ganj Dareh that's familiar," he said. "Of course, the basic approach to
direvnya design is the same all over. That's what the Yeibichai Compact was all about, to provide
a single, global set of suggestions for everybody to draw on. Still, each Collective usually chose
a subset of patterns, forming their own pattern language. And, over time, interpretations of
specific patterns have diverged. That's my thread at the University these days."
Huh? "University?" Phoebe looked around at Kanpa. "You're studying at the University? I thought
you people on staff already knew everything."
Kanpa slowly turned a narrow-eyed gaze on her. The open-air section of the bus was fun, especially
with the day cooling down nicely the way it was. But it did have its drawbacks, what with noise
and wind and dust.
"We do," he said solemnly. Suddenly, as though he'd seen his own expression, he widened both eyes
and grinned. The gesture was so spontaneous and innocent that Phoebe had to grin back.
He added, "I'm teaching the thread."
Mild shock broke over Phoebe. Was this true? Had she overstepped the traditional rudeness between
consumer-direct and consortium staff? Should she apolo —
A smirk crept out of hiding just as he pulled his face back to the western view. That left his
shoulder hanging out as a perfect target. She punched it hard. He rocked forward, then back,
keeping up his staunch sightseeing.
After a moment, he pointed off to the side. "Like all this," he went on in a slightly didactic
tone. "The ring road. Your berms are different, different materials, different slopes, different
decorations. I particularly like these murals. What community are we passing through?"
"Just leaving Suribachi." Phoebe essayed a smile to encourage him. "Just entering Rovaniemi.
"Mantiqueira and Rovaniemi. Right. And interchanges." He waggled a hand behind them. "Organized
confluences of different modes of transportation, from the high-speed inter-community ring roads to
the intra-community qi-che routes to the paths for legpower, whether wheeled or soled. Common
around the world."
Phoebe dropped her gaze again. I did stir something, though, in each of the tacticians I called.
Guilt, pricks of duty —
Kanpa raised his volume and pitch. "But this place we're going to — Phoebe?"
"What?"
"This place we're going to?"
"Large Square Dance."
"Large Square Dance ... Square Dance? They don't do this too much in other places, at least not
so's a business traveler like me noticed it."
"There are others," Phoebe commented, then recognized their turn-off. "Here we go!"
Their bus shifted direction and velocity. Phoebe checked ahead of them and found that the
countryside had crept up on her. Wrested from the fey-banyan, a potpourri of imported flora
sprawled around them as they rose out of the bermed roadway and slowed. It obscured the horizon
with its unruly line of treetops, leaving only the indirect light of a dying day above its
corrugated skyline. Slowing, the vehicle slipped into the intricate loops of the interchange that
served this part of Rovaniemi Community and let its passengers go.
As Phoebe showed the way along a path that penetrated the treeline standing like a border between
dusty structures and cooling reprieve, Kanpa walked quietly alongside. She noticed a few other
people headed in the same direction. Odd.
After a few moments, they broke out of the woods. A valley spread before them, its sides sculpted
with karongos, its floor focused on a large, flat rectangle, with banks of seats on both sides and
canvas-topped pavilions at the near end. People formed staggered clumps on the grandstand, lined
the dance floor, and crowded the pavilions.
Kanpa halted. "I thought you said I missed the Large Square Dance."
Baffled, Phoebe answered, "You did." She took his elbow, steered him toward the crowd. "Something
else must be going on. I wonder what."
"Now this is what Yeibichai is all about!" he crowed.
"What do you mean?" Phoebe searched for clues to what was going on — and the peaked hats of her
constables. Any gathering meant trouble these days.
"Groups of people coming together, some to perform, some to appreciate the performance. Sometimes,
the audience pays for the performance — in one way or another — and then we call the audience
'consumers' and the performers a 'combine.' And sometimes, nothing passes between them except
recognition in both directions. Because one couldn't exist without the other."
Phoebe faltered, looked around at Kanpa. He beamed, his arms spread as though for a benediction.
She, well, she was touched by the sentiment, she had to admit. There was something succinct about
it, a pattern so general to cover all of life, but specific enough to have meat. But she couldn't
say anything like that to this, well, he was a sea-gull, even if he were a reasonable,
sympathetic, and hard-working one.
She said instead, "This way to the food."
"Buy me something local," Kanpa said as they marched toward the pavilions.
Phoebe flicked her thoughts ahead, trying to remember what they sold here. But a pattern in the
crowd below triggered in her mind: blue-gray crowns surging through hairy heads like grayfins
following a scent. She stopped. Kanpa bumped her. She automatically thrust him away, making
maneuvering room.
"Phoe—"
"Stay here!" she commanded, then shouldered into the crowd, arrowing for the action. A boulder
breached the flow of pedestrians. She scrambled up it and immediately pinpointed the Incident.
One constable earnestly questioned a woman, stocky, a Seven-Niner, clothes obviously gong-she, her
face hard and resentful. Off to the side, two other women stood together: one bled from a mouth
corner, the adjacent cheek scarlet from a blow; the other wrapped a comforting arm around the
injured one. The second constable enforced an isolating circle of grass around the scene.
"Can't you ever be off-duty?" Kanpa cried angrily.
Phoebe dropped her gaze. The sea-gull stood beside the boulder, his shoulders even with her
knees. His nose pointed at the constables.
For a heartbeat, she searched for a different answer to his complaint, to give it just a trace of
credence, but the majority of her mind, conscious and unconscious, rational and intuitive, calmly
and utterly made her say, "No."
"So your guys can't handle a little scuffle without you supervising?" His face, flat and cold with
anger, now focused on her.
She recognized his vulnerable zhuhndí position and dropped to his side to remove the temptation to
plant her foot in his face. "What's the matter? A little reality interrupting your good time?
After all, you'll be gone tomorrow and whatever is running loose in Ganj Dareh won't be your
concern anymore."
"Are you solely responsible for the care and feeding of the whole direvnya?"
"Aren't I allowed to enjoy my job? Aren't I allowed to care for the people I'm hired to care for?
Does the mountain air detach your brain from your heart?"
He broke their staring match. "We do manage some perspective," he said to her and added with a
snarl, "Stuff your eyeballs back in your face, lowlander; they're liable to get dirty."
What? He can't say that to me. Abruptly, Phoebe noticed spectators, clumping up around them, out
of reach but within earshot: her customers, listening in, and Nitsta had scolded them.
"You people really don't care about us, do you?" She kept her voice low, though her compressed
fury shook her throat and words. "You hang together in your mountain caves, feeding off our sweat,
and giving us back only shit, like we're no more than subroutines in your infraware."
He snapped his face back to her. "I'll tell you what I've already given you: a radical new
proposal, the one you insisted was required to renew your contract even though you couldn't
make it happen before I came along. As for tomorrow, that's when I'll start giving you something
else: the Byukan-Hamil approvals — from right there in Vampire Direvnya, as you call it —
without which, you wouldn't be allowed to deliver that proposal. Then I'll fly back here to
complete the job, to sell the proposal to your Collective. And from what I can
tell by experiencing Ganj Dareh's will-hear, you need all the sales help you can get. I won't be
needing any of your precious time for that part."
He pointed a finger at her. "And I'll give you one other observation, gratis. I'm the pessimist
here, and you're the optimist."
Phoebe snorted. "Hardly."
"No, no. You don't think life can get any worse, which means you can use up all your concern and
anger and dirty words right now." He turned to leave, but kept his eyes fixed on hers. "I, on the
other hand, know how much shit zhuhndí can hand me, so I try to stay calm and save my
curses for the really bad stuff."
On that exit line, he swung away from her — and bumped into the boulder. He backed off, twisted
full around — and faced a bank of curious, even appreciative onlookers. "Out of my way, bug
faces," he snarled.
The wall parted calmly. He strode through the gap and disappeared into the crowd.
Phoebe traded looks with the spectators. With a wry grimace, she said, "This show's over, folks.
Go watch the people dance — or whatever they're doing out there."
She didn't wait for them to move out of the way. She pushed through them toward the Incident and
demanded a report from the senior constable.
