Jik Dain Bedlip
The drome at Ganj Dareh denied Dain access. Its rote message claimed wholescale damage, even to
its ability to service business aircraft, even if they didn't want any services. Pleased at this
sign of Le Coeur's success — I will need a new name for us, won't I? Maybe "New Order" would be
appropriate, after all. — Dain told his automata to seek a landing site somewhere on the
outskirts of town, a newly plowed field, recently claimed from the fey-banyan, anywhere to get him
down and give him access to the web of public transportation — and give it access to him. Then he
sank back into cyberspace.
All the way over from the bivouac — lift-off and stay low, circle away to disguise his origin,
climb to traffic lanes, then contact the drome — Dain had toyed with the images and sounds, word
and thoughts, fears and confidence of the Ganj-Dareh Collective — not just in the central
will-hear, the core of their opinion-letting, but also in conversations, shopping, and channel
watching. His medulla modem buzzed as he massaged this virtual confluence of business and personal
and everything else that made life today possible and pleasureable. He pretended to be somebody
from the Collective, anybody from the Collective, grabbing new identities out of the membership
database every few seconds, even if that person were on-line in another part of the local Em-Deh.
He would comment on the conversation at-hand, more often on the talkers themselves. He would lash
out viciously in tone and language. He would lay down snide condemnations and depart. He would
cry and whimper, carrying on and on, at the foul inquities that stalked their paths and assaulted
their peace and made away with their children.
He hadn't bothered to find out who and how the Em-Deh had been restored. He simply rejoiced in its
re-awakening and his complete access to Ganj Dareh's cerebral reality. And he'd plunge it into
chaos just as soon as he was finished with it, in time to scuttle all anshin resistance to his
ghost-troops.
Soon enough, he had sketched out patterns, the way people talked with each other, bartering ideas,
bickering about actions, wailing about the past and future, in pairs, in dozens, in thousands. He
encoded agents to detect these patterns and fling in copies of appropriate harangues. Duplication
didn't matter, just coverage, so that everybody got something planted in her mind, but nobody took
the same bug twice. He tied the agents to the database, then he launched hundreds, like virtual
missiles of distrust.
Now if he could only find an issue to crystallize that distrust, something for the Collective to
focus on and vent, something to pull them down into the abyss of hatred and tie them up in the
dead-end of violence. Something to keep them busy until his ghost-troops surrounded them and
stopped their independent existence once and for all.
Somewhere along the line, his aircraft settled and let 1'Shuvuu know where the advance agents could
contact Dain, in can-feels only. Whoever had restored the Em-Deh could possibly follow normal
virtual meetings, though he was absolutely sure no one else, not even Pizi, could follow the skill
for tampering that jDub had bequeathed him.
Stirred by the change in motion, Dain rose from his pilot's seat and ambled back into the
aircraft's main compartment. He looked over this cozy room, with three sprawling chairs arranged
in a sitting circle, chiller and cooker close to hand — but no view.
"Cabaña mode," he ordered.
The aircraft raised one of its sides to form an awning, lowered steps beneath that, opened other
windows to provide cross-ventilation, and pivoted the chairs to face the view it had selected.
Dain blinked at the sudden flood of light, but rejoiced at returning to the open grace of the
suns. He peered outside: a rough, brown field of freshly turned clods spread out toward a country
street that swung away through flowering orchards. Above the crowns of scorching yellow and
blazing pink and flaring blue poked the tops of buildings, crenelated city fingers that comprised
urban Ganj Dareh. He turned to the other windows. More field, outlined with the mellow green of
fey-banyan, its undercarriage chopped wide open, its roof rustling very much like the canvas so
favored by the Pattern Language.
An excellent location. Dain envisioned his ghost-troops streaming out of the fey-banyan, an image
that made his heart bloom with pride and accomplishment. Yet, on the other hand, Ganj Dareh stood
exposed as well, open to his tampering with it physically as well as virtually. He settled into a
chair, closed his eyes, and returned to husbanding his agents.
Some time later, a young voice, full of excitement and assurance, said, "Governor?"
Dain smiled even before he looked. An olloman stood there, obvious from his posture and
musculature — and the adoring gaze. Swarthy and sinewy, the olloman clasped his hands in
namaste. His left hand did not fold easily into the gesture. Dain recognized the odd, stiff curve
of the fingers, just right to catch and throw an olli.
"13'Sao-La!" Dain exclaimed with bright patronage. "I am pleased that you still work for me."
"And I boon that work, Governor. May I ask, where is Governor Nu?"
Remnants of anger spiked through Dain, ragged and ripping. Still, he did not yield behavior to
this pain. Instead, he said simply, "She finalizes our work with the ghost-troops outside
Ganj Dareh. I finalize our work with ollomani within Ganj Dareh. What have you done for me today,
13'Sao-La?"
"I gander muddy secrets, Governor. You rescued me from mud. Now we must rescue these Voiceless
from a tsegi whelmed ... clogged —" The boy choked on his own revulsion.
"Explain," said Dain gently, and as 13'Sao-La told of his encounter in the park, Dain closed his
hands around each other, cradling this revelation, this kernel of corruption. We are no different
from these ... zhee-tely, only we admit our weaknesses. He savored the irony. The Tlaxtli League
had collected society's rejects; now those rejects would deliver society to its next master.
Dain also used another set of arms, virtual and powerful, to render Beobachtung, to bring back this
event described by 13'Sao-La, and see these creatures the boy labored to reveal. In his mind, he
merged these two versions of cyberspace, the modern, full of pretend and real, often
interchangeable, and the ancient, connecting the storyteller's cerebral reality with the
listener's, also full of pretend and real, the one explaining the other. The enormous humanoids in
the park were indeed amazing, unprecedented, and wonderfully wrong.
He didn't have time for strenuous data reduction, but did scythe through recent surveillance,
filtering for correlation to neighborhood. One name dominated the list: Skeinswift.
13'Sao-La concluded, "Trolls, Governor, they sully the world."
Dain beckoned the boy inside as he flung a holoscreen across one end of the compartment. He
replayed Beobachtung, focusing on the creatures. "Are these what you mean?"
"Yes, Governor."
"Thank you for pointing them out to me. I found that they seem to originate in the neighborhood
called 'Skeinswift.' Do you know it?"
"Canny as home to these trolls." The boy nodded, then his face clouded with bad memories. "Ready
Roomed near there. Sortied through it, heeded it seldom: too same for thought grenade."
Airily, Dain asked, "What shall we call them?"
"Trolls."
The name smacked too much of folkeeventyr, folk tales of faeries and the like. "Something else,"
Dain commanded.
With a dark scowl, "Father."
"Now, now, I sympathize, but others do not share your sadness."
13'Sao-La frowned with the effort of meeting this unusual challenge. We trained him for action,
not thought. "Mutant," he offered in a moment.
That does invoke a Fundamental Pattern, Complete Standard Human Genome. A bit plain, but with a
lot of history behind it.
Dain said aloud, "'Mutant,' it is, then." He converted his voice, appropriate for orders. "Find
the other agents who still roam free. Lead them to the neighborhoods around this Skeinswift. Set
them to rousing the neighbors against these mutants. All tactics permitted, 13'Sao-La, just get
people moving against Skeinswift and its occupants. Meanwhile, I will do what I can to help out."
With another namaste, 13'Sao-La started to spin away.
"However," Dain added more loudly. "Return here with the other agents at sunset. I will transport
you to join my ghost-troops. Together, we will attack Ganj Dareh in the morning."
13'Sao-La glowed. His dark skin and eyes shone. His broad shoulders flexed, each muscle a paragon
of definition, as he bowed one more time, a deep, awed obeisance. Then, so quick, so lithe, so
skilled, he sprinted toward the country street and a qi-che that had just appeared from the south.
His hard, smooth ass twitched inticingly as it pushed his legs along.
Tactical details bristled in Dain's mind, batting other thoughts aside. He held them off just a
moment and appreciated where he sat, settled in the shade, part of the bright, open world, but
protected from its worst discomforts. Not just protected, but superior to it. Reality had
returned to his grasp, like an errant knave, a cute, but naughty boy ...
Dain frowned at this bizarre idea, but he had work to do, important work started none too soon. He
rubbed his face to erase the distraction, then allowed his hands to drop as he climbed onto the
back of his medulla modem and rode it hard into the heart of virtual Ganj Dareh. He recalled all
his agents and tuned their message, featuring pictures of the mutants along with suggestions, bold
and subtle, about the harm they were doing to Ganj Dareh, its women and children. He mixed in a
broad range of demands, commands, and whines about handling the long-overlooked situation,
immediately, now, and soonest. Then he assigned the agents to different tuple ranges in the
Collective's database, overlapping those ranges so that each member of the Collective, each
responsible adult, would be visited up to seven times, enough to thwart any habit of gedogen, any
automatic blindness, any appreciation or even tolerance for these monsters.
He released the agents. They slithered away into the everyday life of Ganj Dareh, to whisper in
chats, to intrude on negotiations, to stumble onto sales calls, to gang up on classrooms, to infest
and contaminate every person in the direvnya, who, at least once during the rest of the day, was
bound to use the Em-Deh for something. Dain didn't know how soon or how many, but he predicted
that the people of Ganj Dareh would soon be thoroughly involved in cleaning up this nest of vipers,
er, mutants, in their midst.
Well done, Dain commended himself and turned to other work. He'd just see how the ghost-troops
were coming along on fetching the weapons. He shrugged to bring up a new will-see.
Nothing happened.
He strained after his virtual existence and floundered into an awkward emptiness that was ...
silent ... and dark ... and very, very still ... and nowhere at all ...
not like other lost times i had memories then didn't i and think-time didn't i now i'm
one-dimensional
barely aware
the same second again
and again
no past
no present
no future
no skills
no hope
he could but wait
and wait
and wait
