Weir Annadetcall
Time-management, Weir realized, is one of those skills whose reward was all gratification
delayed. He sighed to summon endurance as he wandered along behind his team's house-row. Dusk
stole brightness from the westering suns and promised a pleasant evening.
Time-management put him into gardens like these — or a similar solitary — every day at this and
two other times. He used to enjoy these interludes since they connected him with the rest of
Gatogrebok, but the morass of demand and impotence he had stumbled into had worn off that luster.
Now he spent the time begrudgingly only because avoiding the work only made it worse.
"Hey, Weir!"
He looked up. Foxfire, coasting on her bike along the path behind the house-row, waved. He waved
back.
"Thanks for the night off!" she called.
"You deserve it!" he shouted back. "Enjoy!"
Weir was glad to give her a break. She worked hard, with compassion and enthusiasm, even while
recovering from mugging injuries. She brought him valuable insights into Ganj Dareh's
idiosyncrasies. And she was as responsible as any of his team for the procedural changes that
enabled them to handle the increasing flow of patients caused by the accelerating unrest in town.
She really did deserve a break.
After another wave, Foxfire put muscle into pedaling. The path took her across a green street and
behind an ungainly pile of trash, materials for recycling that hadn't been picked up for days now.
Once neatly stacked, the heap now sprawled into the street as a constant reminder of Ganj Dareh's
problems.
With a shudder, Weir settled onto a garden-seat, then focused on answering messages, a trick that
let his mind relax from everyday tactical intensity. After that, he could tend more diplomatically
to relationships that were long-distance but important, like those with his advisors.
Today, he didn't get finished before his strategic duties called, literally: a scheduled will-see
as requested by Prokopowicz, his peace-management advisor. As "Boots&Saddles" faded, Weir crossed
his legs, rested an ankle on a knee, raised his llevar for viewing, twiddled with the holoscreen's
appearance, took the call.
Prokopowicz lowered his head in namaste most formal and said, "Tactician Annadetcall."
Weir returned the gesture. "Advisor Prokopowicz, you have results for me?"
"Ah, I see from your calmer face that you have taken some of my advice. Has the situation also
relaxed since we last talked?"
"Denied," said Weir. "I am no less concerned, but I have altered my own priority scheme so the
work fits better into my day. Besides, sitting in a garden at sunset helps."
"Yes, it does. Good. Especially since—"
Something clattered inside the house-row.
"Wait!" Weir interrupted and pulled himself around to peer through the nearest window. People
inside went about their business normally. Just then, the constable on clinic patrol turned the
corner. Weir called to her, "Is there a problem?"
The woman, one of Rowl's cadre flown over three days before, sent back, "Oll Korrect! Just knocked
over a chair setting up for dance therapy." She would've checked the status of all clinic systems
via her headset, invisible in the dusk, before answering.
Weir relaxed and turned back to Prokopowicz. "No' a problem, after all. Go on."
"What happened?"
"I thought the power-grid had failed. That happens often these days, and I just like to make sure
our reserves come on-line properly. But it was nothing after all. Constable-on-patrol said so."
Pride in the extra coverage tweaked a grin from him.
"The power-grid fails? Often?"
Weir nodded.
"Incredible." Prokopowicz grimaced, then fixed Weir with a stern look. "I have some, uh,
additional disturbing news."
"Go on."
"I have analyzed recent incidents in Ganj Dareh individually and cumulatively. I have compared
them with incidents arising from situations that are somewhat similar, though you find yourself in
a very unusual time and place." Prokopowicz raised his eyebrows. "The resulting statistics do
seem to indicate that an outside force is, at the very least, aggravating the violence."
The river of his project, already run to rapids, plunged into a cavern. It wrenched at his paddle,
plucking at his control of situation, combine, and self. He fought back with doubt. "You can tell
these things?"
"Let me eliminate a few possibilities that should be obvious first." Prokopowicz paused with his
eyes resting somewhere else on his screen. "Ganj Dareh acknowledges the Pattern to Appreciate Our
Differences, does it not?"
"Agreed, by reference through the continental Pattern Language."
Prokopowicz nodded as though he expected nothing different. "I realize that the village is not
prosperous. There seems to be nowhere on Continent Popovich that is—"
"Except Direvnya Byukan-Hamil," Weir thrust in with a snarl.
"Exactly. But is Ganj Dareh teetering on the verge of depression? Are its businesses starving?
Are its people starving?"
Weir looked away while the answer formed in his mind. "Every neighborhood seems to be a lot like
the one here, where my own team settled. No growth, true, but everything that is here seems to be
well-maintained, at least until recently. People seem to be getting along with each
other. However, we didn't have any problems leasing realty from any of the Collectives
Neighborhood, and the gong-shes were busy even before Die Gastarbeiter started arriving."
Prokopowicz nodded again. "Malthusian stimuli uncertain." His eyes shifted to his list
off-screen. "One other thing: these people coming into Ganj Dareh, they are Complete Standard
Human, are they not?"
"Everyone on Yeibichai is." Weir frowned. "Aren't they?"
"Yes, but I try not to overlook assumptions." Prokopowicz paused again. "Despite our espoused
tolerance, I feel that mutants, flying in the face of society's preferences, could stir up
violence. Since that's not the case, we then consider the Refugees-from-Kosovo Extrapolations."
He shook his head. "Despite mitigation of human behavior offered by those insights, I must step up
to the conclusion that someone is deliberately stirring up trouble. Any other time, when
zhee-tely have migrated from one part of Yeibichai to another, to and from a massive project, away
from a disaster, that sort of thing, we have not seen this much distress. Of course, those changes
were all less severe than the one you're experiencing. Maybe on other planets ..."
"Why would anybody do something like this?"
"Power."
"Well." Weir's composure jittered a little at the hard, short answer. "Sure. I mean, in history
Human, there were those who sought power for itself, but here on Yeibichai? We, uh, we're not like
that."
"Everyone is like that, young man, if the circumstances allow. Complete Human Standard is Complete
Human Standard. Tyranny, brutality, bigotry are all built into our genetic stock and not easily
corrected the way we eliminated physical defects and added disease resistance. To compensate on
this planet, we cultivate the Patterns for Good in the human psyche. We attempt to
eliminate conditions where the Patterns of Failure can exert themselves ... and weed out when we
fail."
Somewhere deep inside him, a kink of intestine complained about this load of pomposity, inside and
out. "Agreed," Weir answered curtly and squirmed on the bench to ease the cramping.
Prokopowicz returned a sour grin and a hand brushed aside Weir's rebuke. "Sorry for the lecture,"
he said. "However, I do not want the idealism of your youth to cloud your mind to the
possibilities that zhuhndí presents to anshinkan everywhere. And yet—" he pointed with a finger
that carried his years and experience across the megameters separating them "— I do not want to
scare you under your bed either.
"We have some symptoms here, more statistical than empirical, that exceed numbers taken from
different places and different times. We may, therefore, be seeing ghosts in the data, shades of
inferences that are unreasonable yet appear by dint of too much processing power."
More kinks twisted inside him, adding their twinges to the disharmony of blockage, inside and out.
Ignoring this everyday bout, Weir pointed to another explanation, also mundane, "Are you
sure there couldn't be, well, one or more gangs of ruffians among Die Gastarbeiter,
organized more or less spontaneously, feeding off some sick pleasure in hurting other people?"
Prokopowicz gazed back at Weir from the screen, then answered slowly, "Such phenomena are rare on
Yeibichai." He paused as though sorting through words. "Yes, that could explain the numbers I'm
seeing. Interesting." Abruptly, he waved off his distraction. "Regardless, the disruption of
society — and the danger to your combine — is very real."
Weir's bowels grumped their agreement. "So what do I do with it and about it?" Weir was pleased
with the trace of exasperation in his voice, despite its true source. After all, he was the
consumer here and Prokopowicz the servicer. Lectures — he may need lectures, but he didn't need
scolding.
"Basically, keep your heads down and do your job — and let your competition do their job."
"That's difficult."
Prokopowicz nodded in sympathy. "One more thing: prepare yourself for taking over that job, which
appears to be much broader and more demanding than you planned, when you are selected as the
follow-on contractor."
Well, that display of positive-thinking certainly induced waves of dread. "Thank you," Weir
managed to say.
"A pleasure to be of service," Prokopowicz replied, then was gone, out of the picture, literally
and virtually.
The suns' overlapping disks slipped from view, their ricochet rays suddenly little comfort in the
open garden. Weir shivered. Could he really keep his combine safe in the middle of all this?
Could he really just wait for Chief Heejanus to get the situation under control?
He gathered his feet to go inside. He could try, he told himself, but when he tried to stand, his
knees buckled. The future weighed on him. Dark, invisible, unknown, like the cavern
metaphorically engulfing his project, the future threatened to overwhelm everything he and the
others had ever planned on.
So much so that Weir chuckled. Such worries are not only unbecoming, they're downright silly. He
stood again, with no problems, and marched inside to seek a toilet.
