Doyle Phoebe Heejanus
Phoebe slapped the patrolcraft's closed and opaque door, then ducked under it as it lifted. She
found Kanpa blinking at the sudden daylight. The rest of the bubble canopy provided black
background for a series of images.
"Roca was right," he said brusquely.
"What?"
"Get in and look at this."
"Explain yourself first."
"Get in!" he snapped back with a glare.
Somehow, the command eased her mood. Though not soothing this time, his firm voice assured her
that he intended to show her something important. Yet, as she climbed inside, her skepticism, set
on hair trigger lately, flared, And if not?
She ducked the question by closing the door. Egg-like, the dark enveloped her. Window-like, the
displays took her up and away from the area around them in a way she hadn't seen for a long time.
"Beobachtung," she blurted. "This isn't our Common-Surveillance Program? No, it's not. It's
external Beobachtung! How'd you get this?"
"Off the Em-Deh."
"Not 'where.' How?"
"I worked the Surveillance Support Center. Before it moved to BH. During my staff
indoctrination."
"We haven't gotten any decent data out of them for days."
"Right now, I want you to look at this." In the projected light, Kanpa made passes through the air
directly in front of him. The moves. almost mystical in their pacing and intricacy, collided with
and emphasized his terseness.
The large, central panel expanded and brightened. Using visual-spectrum data extracted from
Beobachtung, it displayed the river-confluence area, but not now. Rather, a legend indicated it
was about three-kay seconds ago. From a thousand meters up, Phoebe guessed. Lots of people, crews
from the Rendezvous of Futures, hunched together or swarmed in unison or trooped single file, very
much like myriad schools of minnows in a triangular pond. Familiar in kind, even if she'd never
watched this particular scene before.
So, she used its glare to peek at Kanpa's face as he focused on the picture. His firmness had bled
away, leaving only an edge of anger ... that no longer assured her.
Abruptly, he plucked the air at a specific point. Worried more about him than his show, Phoebe had
to force her attention back to the main panel. The view descended rapidly, adjusting its center
until a particular meadow, set aside by two converging runs of copalli trees, filled it. At its
narrow end, a group, mostly Gastarbeiter standing and sitting, gathered around a speaker and
listened quietly.
The picture froze. A circle of highlight surrounded a man's head just at the group's perimeter.
"Watch this guy." Kanpa flicked a finger.
The image flowed into action. The guy pulled back, wheeled around, and strode away. Kanpa
gestured and the view pulled up. The guy cut across to one line of copalli trees, then ran along
them, trotting at first, then faster and faster.
Kanpa widened the view even more and moved it. It flowed sideways with an easy, silent omniscience
that Phoebe expected from Beobachtung. The copalli-tree line stubbed out at the lower edge. The
bank of the Missouri River appeared along the top, more bluff than slope at this point. To the
left, a thick woods intruded, marking the back side of the Rendezvous Campus, as yet unexplored by
any of the crews. Between these landmarks, meadow rolled with tall grass and even taller flowers.
Two constables appeared, high and from the right, patrolling the river bank. Phoebe understood
now, understood with a hard twist in her chest.
The constables parted with friendly waves. One peeled back, finishing the small loop of his
lopsided-eight patrol. The other marched on, intent on a large loop that would take him along the
woods, still many meters away. Too far for effective backup.
A flurry off to the right. Two men wrestled flamboyantly. That constable waded into the fracas,
leaving the other one ...
The man with the yellow circle around his head — a chui now, in Phoebe's mind — darted up from
the copalli trees. He charged across grass, rapidly closing the gap with the other cop. Who
noticed, braced himself, and raised his useless dreamstick en garde, expecting a fight.
Moves well, just like he was trained. Phoebe knew it wasn't going to be enough, though.
The chui didn't attack. Sprinting, he ran over the cop, in a thudding collision Phoebe could
almost hear, could almost feel the shock. The chui rolled into a crouch, then leapt on the stunned
cop with practiced agility. He levered an arm and in full control, flopped the cop on his back.
The chui then swung his own leg high and brought it down —
The picture froze again.
Phoebe reeled back, her chest full of hard knot. "S-S-Skilled, yes," she stuttered, "but that
doesn't mean—"
"Now watch this," Kanpa said and conducted his logiciel again.
The picture blinked away, then returned with the chui standing at the seminar's edge. Then Kanpa
reversed the data stream. The group seemed to break up, the Gastarbeiter unsettling from the
grass, walking backwards, dispersing into arrival clusters. Time on the legend unwound. They
uncrossed footbridges over both rivers, unstepped onto qi-che.
But the chui didn't come by mini-bus. He moseyed in reverse toward the entrance to a neighborhood
path. Two other men with similar gaits backed into him. The three faces turned towards each
other, then froze.
"Does the number 'three' sound familiar?" Kanpa demanded.
I'm not getting this, not like he is. Phoebe shook her head helplessly.
"I'll jump back in time a little to show you something about these three — three — " Kanpa
stumbled on a word, then plunged on "— these three pattern-defiling, peace-corrupting,
duty-debasing profanities together. Then something else."
The picture scrambled, straightened. Its legend showed an even earlier time. The first chui ran
easily down a path between two vine-covered fences, then broke out into the crowd on the north side
of the Missouri River, just where they'd seen him before. Many others, einheimischer and
Gastarbeiter alike, queued patiently to cross a footbridge, but the chui wandered a bit, as though
waiting. Then the other two joined him. Without words, they presented fists, waist-high. The
chui showed one finger, the others two. Briefly, they reacted to the result: the chui twitched a
grin, the others a sulk. Finally, another, more complex hand-signal sent them on their separate
ways with a final shared look.
The picture followed the other two, now labeled "chuis" by Phoebe. They scurried across the
bridge, gathered into the same seminar as the first chui, and when he broke away, so did they, only
following the other line of copalli trees.
"A distraction!" Phoebe blurted. "They started a fight to distract the other constable."
Kanpa silently froze the picture and waited.
"You're saying," Phoebe started, but her voice caught in her throat. She tried again. "You're
saying they came here just to kill anshin, not just any anshin, but that particular one?"
"And they're very well organized in going about it. Hand-signals like that don't just happen, you
know."
Confusion writhed inside Phoebe like a snake, muscular and insolent. How could I have been so
wrong? Gastarbeiterbande do exist, but not as amateurs. Almost, no, an actual
paramilitary organization, somehow, somewhere. Why? What do they gain by targeting anshin —
"What about the other ... kills?"
Kanpa's face bore reflected light as it turned to her. When he shook his head to say No, shadows
ran like worms over his bleak expression.
"Why not?" Phoebe demanded.
He started an answer, stopped it, then said, "After I discovered that these three obscenities
belonged together, I went looking for you." He waved at the images across the darkened glass.
"Saw and heard you furlough Roca."
"Heard? How? Remote Beobachtung doesn't capture sound."
"No, but if you know how to play the data right, infra-red radiation, molecular collisions, and so
on, you can get the next-best thing."
Kanpa's anger was infectious. "So?" she said, trying to ignore her own rising fever.
"Roca was right."
"But her tactics weren't! Three constables dead — in full view of thousands of Gastarbeiter. She
needs a break. I gave it to her."
Kanpa smoldered, unspeaking, gaze sunk into the black between images.
"What are you so angry about? In a horrible, convoluted way, this is good news."
"I'm a pessimist, remember."
"You don't like that there's a 'reptile in the woodpile?'"
"No, no, that's fine."
"Then what?"
"I'll tell you later."
"Now."
"No."
Just as his pleasure at seeing her earlier had delighted her, his brooding now dragged at her,
pulling depression out of its corners and muddling her thoughts like tanglefog. She marshaled
questions, marched them against and through the emotion. What do they gain by targeting anshin?
Reduced effectiveness. We can't clean up or prevent Incidents as well as — They're also attacking
zhee-tely, causing those very Incidents! Fates, there must be dozens of them. What do they gain
by Incidents? Civil unrest. And what does that get them? Don't know. What does that get
me? Unhappy customers, ready to pick a new anshin combine. Would Gatogrebok really stoop
to this? No! Well, probably not. Who then? Le Coeur de la whatever-it-was! Prove it! Who else
is there? Prove it.
"Kanpa, who are these people?"
"I haven't had time. I'm not that fast with this logiciel. It wasn't built for ease-of-use."
"Check now."
Kanpa brought up an agent-for-identification. It gave them a "failed" message.
"How can that be?" he blurted. "No match in all of Ganj Dareh?"
"Gastarbeiter. Include the Rendezvous' Collective in the search range."
"I don't have access."
Phoebe quickly gave him those permissions. Another "failed" message.
"How can that be?" Kanpa sounded truly bewildered, even a bit distraught, as if one of his
personal truths had been violated.
"Widen the search."
"Popovich?"
"The whole Fated planet."
Another "failed."
"How can that be?" Robot words, describing an impossibility.
Phoebe, however, felt a warp in her universe begin to mend. She accepted infraware failures more
easily than her own.
"Cliff found no gangs at the Rendezvous," she mused, "but what if they really do exist? What if,
somehow, he can't detect them. What if the Bande were already organized, before the Rendezvous?
What if they were smart enough to take advantage of this mass influx, in fact, hide among
Gastarbeiter?"
"Who's Cliff?"
"Director of the Rendezvous of Futures. He 'owns' the people we're about to put our big finger
on."
Kanpa shrugged.
"We'll get where we want to get, closer, faster, and better if we work through Cliff."
"So?"
"If we're going to convince Cliff there's a problem, he needs to see these three — and the other
ones, the ones who killed the other constables. Not just here, not just today." Her voice sank to
a whisper before the enormity of the conspiracy against them. "But all the people I've
lost."
"Here it comes."
She spun to face Kanpa. "These ... these gangsters: I need to know who they are, where they are
now, where they came from, what they're up to." She added, "And this Le Coeur organization."
"Who?"
"Just declared in the anshin competition, when the Collective re-opened it for bids."
"Another one? Where'd they come from?"
"That's what I want to know. Can you do it? Find all that?"
"I can't! I've got other work to do, marketing the proposal, as you know. The selection process
ends in nine days at midnight."
"If we don't get this solved, there won't be an anshin contract to select. Maybe not even a
direvnya left to serve."
"There! You asked why I was angry. That's why. I knew this demand — and that kind of guilt-trip
— was coming, and I didn't want to do it. I came to Ganj Dareh to test my pattern language and
win a selection, not chase bogeymen out of other people's agenda."
Kanpa didn't look at her, his hard, dry eyes fixed once again on the black in-between.
She went after that look, trying to change it. "I thought we mattered to you." The words just
slipped out. "Ganj Dareh. The combine. Me."
His tears welled — and slapped her with regret. She remembered the first time, that dawn before
his initial presentation to her tacticians, when she'd skewered his lapse in pattern language.
Then, she'd glibly dismissed him as weak. More recently, when she'd accused him of spying for
Dain, he'd taken it the same way. That time, she'd seen a man who was comfortable with his
emotions, who let them participate in, but not dominate his life. She'd apologized immediately.
But now? She could but wait, hoping he'd explain, or at least, give her a reaction she could
engage openly.
"I've always been good with machines, physical and virtual," he began softly. "Logical. Immediate
feedback, maybe not always predictable, but always explainable ... with enough work, enough logic.
From programming them, I graduated to designing them, hence pattern languages.
"But I wanted to do more, more than machines. They're just plain zhuhndí, but there's so much more
to life than zhuhndí." He still didn't look around. "I wanted to do ... people. Illogical,
feedback often delayed, connection often obscured. I wasn't very good at that, professionally."
He shrugged slightly. "Or personally.
"This project started all that. I've actually done quite well, I think, working with your combine,
tacticians and constables. I've developed a good product, a winning proposal. I've built — and
kept — good professional relationships all around.
"The whole time, though, I've been vulnerable, out of my element, unsure, especially with you, yet
very, very — I wanted this so badly. Hence ..." He gestured at his eyes, then brushed at
them quickly. "I don't mind crying. I mind why I've cried around here, around you."
Phoebe found herself enjoying his speech. Something about his voice touched her again, in that
nearly physical way, a phantom caress. "I don't mind," she said, matching his soft tone.
He glanced at her. She smiled. He smiled back. She was tempted to let him go, despite her
earlier resolve to reroute his dream cavalry charge. Now, she wanted him to get what he wanted.
Besides, he could make the difference between winning and losing the selection.
It had to come a long way, but obsession came nonetheless, fast, hard, like a charcoal-gray
sandstone, whirling out of her unconscious, scouring away such indulgent thoughts, enveloping her
once again.
Ganj Dareh came first!
She'd always understood that, always started every list in her thoughts and in her speeches with
Ganj Dareh. Then her combine, and then herself. But she'd always connected them all.
Good for one priority meant good for all.
Now she had to choose: Kanpa helping the combine keep its job, helping her keep her job, and maybe
offering her something else. A personal life? Was that really possible?
Tiny, sharp edges whipped through her mind, clarifying in their odd way, simplifying her world and
everything — and everyone — in it.
Her combine would survive any selection. They'd probably end up working for the winner. No one
would disregard the wealth of their experience. She'd be the only one to walk away if the
Collective chose another anshin combine. And that just didn't matter. Its importance dwindled to
an iota, then vanished before the thoughts: Too much stands between me and Kanpa anyway: namely,
me, him, and especially, zhuhndí.
Ganj Dareh's pain welled up inside her, demanded its due. No, there really was no choice. She had
to save her direvnya. And she had to turn Kanpa to that purpose.
"Don't you see where this is going?" she asked him.
"No."
Phoebe acted confusion by flopping back in her seat. "I don't either, and that worries me. Yet
I'm relieved — or want to be."
"'Relieved?'"
Phoebe twisted toward Kanpa and put out a hand; it caught his forearm. "Yes! If someone's doing
this on purpose — if there's a conspiracy against Ganj Dareh — then it's not us." Use lofty
words. "Someone else has been skewing the odds, driving people by pricking their most
fundamental instincts, bypassing civilization and its chance to defeat those instincts. So
Yeibichai hasn't failed.
"It means that we — the regular people here — Residents — einheimischer Arbeiter — Gastarbeiter
— everyone — aren't useless excuses for intelligent beings, are still worth everything I've put
into them."
He stared back, his eyes narrowed against her calling to his most basic beliefs. He shook his
head, ever so slightly. "No. I told you: my job is marketing."
"Screw marketing! I want to know who's fucking with me — and I want to know now. You're
the only one who can do that."
"But you're losing! If they — Ganj Dareh — had to choose today, they wouldn't choose you."
Not a surprise, that data still bit at her. Yet, it paled before the very real danger of
Gastarbeiterbande. They were destroying her direvnya, killing her people, tearing up the
landscape, tromping on the very tranquility she had worked so hard to attain — and maintain. Get
rid of these gangsters and they had a chance for peaceful lives again — And give me a chance to
keep my job.
"Don't you think cleaning up Gastarbeiterbande would change their minds? Restore peace and their
own good opinion of themselves, and make heroes out of our combine."
Kanpa gritted his teeth, but his nod seemed to acknowledge her point.
"We're going to go after these gangsters, Kanpa. Maybe it will serve our purposes along the way,
but we're going to do this. Do you understand me?"
"Yessir."
Good. Now I can get things moving. "How long?" she said as she reached for a spare headset.
"To do what?"
She punched the headset's Start button. "All the Incidents: who, how, where they are now. And
this new combine."
"Be reasonable, Phoebe!"
She settled herself in her seat, pulled its harness around her. "O.K., today's Incidents, starting
with the ones here." She hooked a thumb at the incipient campus around them, hidden by the black
canopy. "How long?"
"There's no way I could put an answer to that."
She tossed the spare headset into his lap and picked up her own. "See what you can get done on our
way to see Cliff."
"What?"
"Access-gear," she growled, a grin threatening to break out. "Give me primary control. Downgrade
Kanpa to a secondary session. I'm ready to leave."
"We can't fly over there!"
Her grin slipped away. Phoebe frowned at Kanpa. "Why not?"
"These perverts — their organization, anyway — have cracked your database, Phoebe. They can read
your plans, follow your trips around town. Didn't you notice that?"
Dread returned full-force, henchman of Pandaemonium. "No," she admitted. "How can they do that?"
Kanpa avoided her gaze as he said glumly, "I have no answer to that either."
"Can you find one?"
"FIFO."
"What?"
"First-In, First-Out. You told me to investigate today's cop killings, then all the other cop
killings, then all the other Incidents since the Rendezvous began, then this new
competitor, and now, how the gangsters broke into your database. Is that still what you want done,
and the order you want them done in?"
"Uh, the competitor after the anshin deaths and before the other Incidents," she corrected
quietly.
"Then leave me to do it."
There he goes again, leaving me confused, eating his dust. Somehow, she didn't mind, even asking
the dumb question, "What do you mean?"
"Do you still want to involve this 'Cliff?'"
"Yes, of course."
"Then you have to go see him, using public, not private, transportation. Don't talk to him by
llevar or in his office. Out in the open, but in a Beobachtung shadow. Don't trust anything
virtual."
"But you've got to be there, show him the data."
"I don't have enough to show him yet, not what you've asked for."
"When?"
Kanpa twitched, the shadows tracing the lines of exasperation on his face, but he squelched a
retort, then offered, "Mid-evening. I'll have something substantive by then. Set a can-feel for
mid-evening, then get word back to me where to meet you. By courier, not
nMouseOver="myPopup.startHelp('Term:Em-Deh',this)" onMouseOut="myPopup.clearHelp()">Em-Deh."
"Where will you work?"
"Here."
"Won't the gangsters see what you're doing? I mean, if they cracked my database, won't they—"
Kanpa sent her a smug look, his eyes gleaming, his lopsided grin playing over his full lips. "Long
ago, I forged my own distinct entryway to the Em-Deh. Back when I working to boost my skills from
rancid to fetid. There are a few gleests who could break my cipher, but they wouldn't have
anything to do with perverts like this."
Walking? Riding qi-che? "I've got a job to do! I don't have time for—"
"How important is this? Do you want it done right?"
She took his points with a nod.
"Work your job through your llevar." He drummed fingertips on something in mid-air that only he
could see. "I've routed it through this 'station so it'll seem like you're spending the time
here. Not unreasonable given the circumstances."
She accepted the change, her sudden demotion to foot power. But if Cliff took the meeting, his
access and authority could make cleaning up the Rendezvous easy. Which would call for some harsh
tactics. Which could affect some einheimischer Arbeiter, if they're involved with the gangs, if
they're even close by. With the Rendezvous spread throughout the direvnya, zhee-tely would get
involved, directly or collaterally.
"What?" Kanpa demanded. "What new requirements are you dreaming up?"
"Ira," she suggested next, then explained, "Pfic Ira Hayes, Moderator of the Ganj Dareh Forum. He
should hear this too."
"Like he's going to be helpful," Kanpa snorted.
"He's been in the past, the recent path."
"Who're his stakeholders? The people of Ganj Dareh. What are they going to say when told
that well-organized gangsters are stalking around their paths, and their Chief of Anshin didn't
even know about them, much less stop them? Your friend Ira will be calling for your job,
if not your head, before you can even adjourn the can-feel."
Shaken not so much by the insight, but by her own optimism — Didn't Kanpa say that before? —
Phoebe nodded as she ventured, "Ad-hoc tactician committee? They helped me put together the
Rendezvous-Campus program."
"A camel is a horse designed by a committee."
Old, but still true.
"Harlan," she suggested more surely.
"Harlan?" Kanpa sounded aghast.
"Who would you want covering your back when facing a trio of these gangsters?"
"Harlan?" he repeated weakly.
"Definitely!" Her nod reflected her assurance. "Anybody else?"
Kanpa shrugged yet again. "I sure wouldn't want to involve anyone else—"
Phoebe barked, "Light!"
The patrolcraft cleared the canopy. Reddish sunlight flooded in softly. Outside, the Rendezvous
crews went about their business. The only reflection of the recent past came in the way they
avoided three patches of ground, no longer official Incident Sites, but respected nonetheless.
Phoebe twisted in her seat till she spotted the nearest foot-bridge, pushed her door open with a
knee, then followed with her feet before she glanced back at Kanpa. He would squeeze the
patrolcraft for all his virtual needs. He would tap into the Rendezvous around him for any
physical needs.
She had no doubts about his commitment to the upcoming meeting or his success in wringing data out
of the fabric of cyberspace. By midnight, they'd be well on their way to rooting out this
conspiracy.
And then?
She shook off the question and walked away into her direvnya, still doing her job. That was all
she had to worry about. It was enough.
