Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
Phoebe walked slowly into her office. It hunkered around her in darkness, as though it, too,
shared her feelings of siege and despair. Even the dawn lightening the sky outside her windows
didn't alleviate any of that.
She had things to do before the tactical meeting began, as it did every sunrise these days. She
approached her awakening workstation, its foilscreen brightening in its eagerness for her
attention, but unwilling to proceed without her fiducia. She typed quickly in its keyspace.
Suddenly, chirrups, ranging from alarms to reminders, broke across her from the 'station. She
blinked at sudden eruptions of bright colors as queues flashed for her attention, as her
action-item list, long since overgrown its priority scheme, sprawled before her, as even her
calendar automaton patiently blinked its Belize-offshore-blue panel.
Curious, she tapped the calendar. It told her that Kanpa was coming back. It even supplied an
updated verification of his late-afternoon arrival time. She started to move on, but her eyes
wouldn't leave the unobtrusive panel. Its words were simple, familiar, yet oddly attractive — and
took her back to their last talk.
"Are you solely responsible for the care and feeding of the whole direvnya?" he had said. And she
made sure he didn't explore the topic further by blazing back with, "Aren't I allowed to enjoy my
job? Aren't I allowed to care for the people I'm hired to care for?" Then there was something
about "mountain air" and its effect on the brain-heart connection. After another exchange or two,
he accused her of being an optimist.
What did he mean by that? And why does this little panel entice me so?
With the questions, skin on her nape ruffled. Just in the middle, just where her red hair started
its wispy climb, a patch that had not been caressed in ... she couldn't remember when.
As she groped for some memory of a personal life, her eyelids drooped — the fatigue-scrubbers
weren't keeping up; even mugs of chicory no longer helped much — and dropped a sheet of heavy-gray
across the scene. In the delicious dark, she let the past five days whirl around her like a desert
wind, dry, hot, and sluicing through Ganj Dareh, the direvnya suddenly a forest, tinder-dry and
spotted with flames. She battled their spread with every second of every day.
The dreamsticks had gone dead, and her people started dying. Not just zhee-tely, but anshin as
well. Her people!
Each anshin death diminished her capacity to prevent more people from dying. Tanglefog had slowed
that erosion despite its problems. In fact, its lack of discrimination even enabled her to regain
some ground. Her recruits, drawn mostly from the Rendezvous, didn't need as many skills. As long
as psych-tek approved their self-esteem quotients — and even tweaked a few despite the
Alter-Your-Own-Moods Pattern — she could put them onto the paths, responding, interviewing,
dispatching victim and chui alike. So she had been able to stay strategic enough to get new
programs planned, approved — and started! That announcement two days ago still ignited fireworks
inside her, a neural shower of pride and accomplishment, all sodium-yellow and barium-green and
copper-blue and strontium-red.
And through all that, she had watched The Ear's barometer fall toward the ignition point of zero
faith in her, then surge back again as the Collective took charge of their lives and curved away
from chaos.
Chaos!
A dark specter struck across her tentative pride: the Herald of Pandaemonium loomed over her,
faceless, remorseless, its shroud a pastiche of scenes ripped from Ganj Dareh's paths. Scenes that
proved the sheer randomness of their troubles. Random unless she factored in human nature. A
nature that remained perverse despite their careful cleansing of genes and memes. How else could
she explain the chaos welling up around her, welling and welling and welling?
People are still just plain mean. She hated to admit that. All her life she'd believed in people,
their goodness, encouraged by the Pattern Languages of Yeibichai. But now, the evidence swamped
her faith.
Wounded by zhuhndí, yet defiant, she glared at her illustrated foe, there in this dream. At least
I've held you at bay time and again: innovation in the face of adversity.
In rebuttal, the Herald opened myriad eyes — eyes dark and innocent — and shrieked at her with
the scolding voices of the one-thousand, six-hundred, and sixty-one zhee-tely she had let die.
Below their shrill torrent, three-hundred seventy-six anshin also bassooned particular laments.
I — let — them — die! Because I didn't do enough, didn't work hard enough, didn't
control enough.
An aggregate ghost, those individual failures loomed over her, speckling her with its slavering,
hobbling her every moment, awake or not, with its foul breath and promise of more. More? How
could they — how could she — handle more?
Terrified, Phoebe popped her eyes open again. Nothing moved in the murky corner above her
foilscreen. She sat back, and her eyelids sagged closed again.
This time, she saw Kanpa, a very bizarre image of Kanpa. Clad in blue-serge uniform, he sat
astride a prancing black steed. A cavalry ensign flapped over his head — without a staff!
Oversized teeth glistened in his distended grin. A saber glittered at his hip. A lance jutted
from his elbow and between the horse's ears. Ridiculous!
Working quickly, Phoebe fixed up the image. She wiped out lance, saber, uniform, and horse. That
left his face, features shrunk to normal, peeking out of a crate, with the words "Spare Eyes —
Extra Brain — New Perspective" stenciled across on its sides.
Forget marketing the proposal. I should put him to work on this emergency — just as soon
as I can. That meant picking him up at Ganj Dareh's drome — and re-arranging her afternoon so she
was free to do that.
Phoebe spun away from the workstation, ignoring its wealth of information. It would shut itself
down, save its store for another time, even as she left her office. Outside, she charged toward
the terraced bowl that held the tactical meeting. She had some delegating to do.
