Weir Annadetcall
Weir and Kanpa split up for lunch. After a morning of dead-ends, sometimes long and painful to
give up, they had produced no correlations significant, although they did feel replete with
factoids, data snips, and trivia about the people of Popovich. Kanpa had punctuated his
contributions, often energetic and insightful, with snipes of frustration. He'd left on just such
a note, excusing himself to the combine's refectory on the station's garden level. As for Weir, he
should take his "last chance to sample cuisine in the surrounding neighborhoods."
Weir had allowed himself no leisure to eat. He'd bought a bag of "Ganj Dareh's freshest and
firmest" fried catfish and hush puppies from a vendor on a nearby path, his cart an amalgam of
fish-farm, vegetable-bin, and deep fryer, all balanced and greased well enough for one man to push
along. Then Weir had hustled back to work. Grateful the hidden door leading down from the
entrance room recognized him, he'd pushed his way back into Kiva #3, only to find Kanpa already
there amidst the dusk-gray of an agent in hibernation.
Light peeked over Weir's shoulder, caught at Kanpa's eyes, and glanced back with a message that
linked their realities cerebral. "We must render zhuhndí here," Weir read in that look. "Squeeze
it for data, cook it into enough sorts of information until we can extract knowledge from it,
knowledge that we can distill into the wisdom that will save Ganj Dareh, for we have assumed a duty
here, not just to those who live and work here, but also to ourselves. Especially ourselves."
Then Kanpa blinked, cutting the link. Weir had to wonder whether he'd imagined it.
Especially when Kanpa actually said, "I hear there's still unrest on Ganj Dareh's paths, virtual
and zhuhndí. According to our constables, the will-hear's practically vibrating with fear and
speculation about further attacks, including rumors of monsters being bred right here in town.
Packs of people roam the physical paths, looking to stop trouble, but only stirring it up
themselves. No major violence yet, but that's just because their fear hasn't closed their minds
completely. The Chief has called everybody back to work. Are you going to produce here or not?"
Weir took a moment to realize that a question had been snapped at him. He set his lunch on the
shelf, sucked heavily on the air lush with its hunger-plying smells, then turned slowly, brushing
his hands together as though inspired, hoping that he could stir a cause by pretending its effect.
"Proving a negative," he started, not knowing where he'd end, "is not impossible, as many people
say, just nearly so. Working from the bottom up, we haven't detected any lingering threat to
Ganj Dareh, or even that Gastarbeiterbande was anything more than a conspiracy opportunistic, ah,
an opportunistic conspiracy."
Did I say "from the bottom up?" He stared at Kanpa, at his stand of hair mussed from fingers
prodding at ideas, at his resistance driven by concern, competition, and maybe even some jealousy
professional. And grabbed for the most leverage he could find to stifle that challenge.
Weir said, "Let's try it from the top and go down." He changed to a croon, "Correlate Byukan-Hamil
Partners."
"Cancel!" Kanpa ordered, his warble matching Weir's surprisingly well. "Why them?" he demanded
stiffly.
All their seconds together this morning had shown Weir a lot of depth and intelligence in Kanpa.
Yet, he realized, Staff-lackies must have loyalty painted on the inside of their eyelids and
recorded on their eardrums and — Weir cut the clichés and readied himself for a debate typical of
such drones. He asked patiently, "Does anything happen on this continent that the Partners don't
approve?"
"They don't control everything."
"They control all the jobs and thus, all the people who work, which covers every member of every
Collective. Right?"
"They don't pay that much attention to the details of everyday life."
"We're not working on everyday life here. We're working on something extraordinary, maybe even an
insurrection. Do you think someone could get such a large-scale movement going without a Partner's
involvement?"
"A thousand people isn't all that many."
"Think of the power represented even by Bande Gastarbeiter. Surely, the Team of Partners couldn't
resist being involved with that much power. And what if it's more than a thousand?"
Kanpa abruptly broke from his rigid stance and paced the kiva. "Do you know what you're asking me
to hypothesize? That the very foundation of my culture invested in its corruption. That the Team
of Partners of Byukan-Hamil Consortium defied every Fundamental Pattern."
Weir recognized this kind of pain, not of a mindless staff-lackey after all, but of a person who
believed in higher causes, much like himself. "Maybe not the whole Team," he said gently. "Maybe
just one renegade Partner, or two, three at the most." He couldn't help a smile, just a nudge at
his lips. A committee with arbitrary and absolute authority and little responsibility should not
be running a combine, much less a whole consortium. Günter served only as co-ördinator and then
only at the bidding of the stockholders and combine tacticians. Theoretically, anyway. I'll find
out for sure if we win here and I'm granted a tactician's imprimatur.
Kanpa whirled on him. "Are you joking around here?" he flared.
Weir regretted his flippancy. "One last slice at the data and if it proves negative, we'll
consider the future safe from hostility, at least the organized kind. We can use that conclusion
to calm the paths."
"I'd rather not consider it all. Let's just tell the Chief we couldn't find any further
conspiracy, say it doesn't exist."
"Afraid of what we'll find?"
"Yes," Kanpa whispered.
Weir sprang on that admission. "Why? What do you know? And why didn't you say something
earlier?"
Kanpa gave a grin that was mostly grimace. "A shift in patterns, descriptive patterns.
Nothing I can deduce anything from. Just shifts." He narrowed his eyes cagily. "I was hoping
this botfly of yours would prove me wrong. It hasn't." He sighed, then turned back to the dome
covered in opaline, all the agent had displayed before Kanpa cancelled it. "Go on," he said,
spread his feet, and settled in to see information he feared existed. Or maybe he was more afraid
of not finding anything concrete here either.
"Correlate Byukan-Hamil Partners," Weir crooned to the agent.
The data-film rippled with a quick wave that left behind an ill-defined patch of scarlet with
squares of the same color scattered around it, about shoulder-high. Then, it started sketching in
saffron, arc after arc after arc, ending in scarlet circles, until abruptly, the graphics froze.
The agent sounded a raspberry rejecting the effort and wiped the dome clean of the pale-yellow. It
did leave a thick moat of that color around the patch and squares, implying connections to
everything else that weren't worth detailing.
Weir pointed at the patch. It appeared far away. "That should be the Byukan-Hamil Partnership,
but it ought to be more sharply drawn. In fact, those squares around it should be sitting right
next to each other." He turned to Kanpa. "What's going on here?"
Kanpa gave a wry smile. "Har Norma dissolved the Team of Partners 8 days ago. Surprised
everybody. One of those shifts I mentioned."
"Who's running the show now?"
"Har Norma, of course, as Senior Partner. Jik Dain as President of the Rendezvous of Futures,
including all combines across the continent directly supporting it. And Za Leez as chair of the
Popovich Preserve, which takes in everything else.
"So who does Phoebe work for now?"
"The Chief reports to Jik Dain."
Astonished at this convulsion in an organization known for stability — too much stability — Weir
whispered, "Where have I been?"
"Trying to take our jobs away," Kanpa said as if he shared Phoebe's fate with her. He tried to rub
out some of the comment's sting with a shrug.
Will that help or hurt this search? Weir wondered, then added his own shrug, to push off any and
all anticipations, then said wearily, "Accepted." So far, this tack didn't seem to differ much
from the morning's. With that nudge, he did recall the design goal for the whole investigation.
"Correlate with Ganj Dareh," he ordered.
The moat of too-much data vanished. Two saffron lines soared out of the scarlet patch and curved
across to the circle that stood for Ganj Dareh, so often lashed with correlations useless that Weir
expected it to be chipped and worn. The agent didn't allow for that perception, of course.
Weir moved in to catch names attached to the identical arcs' origins: Jik Dain Bedlip and Za Leez
Doconrice. Har Norma Byukan apparently hadn't dirtied her hands within any form of Ganj Dareh's
reality. The power and distance of delegation.
Hoping for something to tell the Partners apart, Weir asked for properties of the connections.
Small cobalt words appeared along the lines. "Virtual. Logical," he read for Leez, but Dain had
made virtual, logical, and physical connections. The agent didn't show anything more.
Ask some reasonable questions, Weir told himself. Could someone start an insurrection with nothing
more than bits between him and the soldiers? Could —
"Fighting and killing are zhuhndí," Kanpa said beside him. "And zhuhndí means physical." He
crooned, "Remove Za Leez. Remove Har Norma. Remove those ex-Partners too." One square remained:
Jik Dain Bedlip.
Kanpa peered at that box, leaning forward as though intimidating it to give up secrets. The room's
real wall probably rose just a centimeter from his nose, but the data point looked to hang a meter
or so away. Kanpa leaned toward the display, growling, "Do you really think this path will lead to
good answers? Jik Dain holds more power in this consortium than anybody except Har Norma. Surely,
he's not—"
Weir lost patience with the staring contest. He grabbed Kanpa's arm and hauled him back upright.
"Let's try to keep the process we used this morning, even if it didn't pay out very much. The
developers of the botfly told me that a data-dance should work like brainstorming, completely
spontaneous. We generate questions, pure and simple. The botfly supplies answers. Let's try not
to shape those answers by fudging the questions, especially not now when we're desperate."
Kanpa nodded stiffly and waited.
Weir tried for some perspective by skimming along the wall toward the circle named "Ganj Dareh."
Dain's arc touched Ganj Dareh, then took three bounds, uneven in length, toward him, each one more
recent.
"Jik Dain made several trips to Ganj—" he said.
"Of course he has!" The words brought Kanpa forward. "He's the President of the Rendezvous of
Futures, like I told you."
Weir ignored Kanpa's vehemence as a sign of his turmoil inside, probably the instigator even of
this morning's rancor. Instead, he pointed out, "The rendezvous has brought a lot of strangers to
this direvnya."
"Of course. Die Gastarbeiter."
Weir sighed as long seconds of correlations futile flooded up from the morning. "Let's try them
again, from a new direction," he suggested, then raised his voice in command. "Correlate Jik Dain
and other non-residents who've traveled to Ganj Dareh."
As a ripple worked its way down the dome again, Kanpa raised his face on a neck tilted by anger and
quipped, "Like Jik Dain doesn't know anybody else on the continent."
New people/squares peppered the dome in heaps all over the continent. Saffron flocked the dome,
making the connections to Ganj Dareh at the same depth as Dain's. Hundreds, even thousands,
arrived here along with Dain.
Kanpa spun away, but there wasn't much of anyplace else for him to go, so he veered toward the
qahwah. On the way, he complained, "I don't see how we can find anything meaningful here. Lots of
people traveled to Ganj Dareh for the Rendezvous. Just because they were here at the same time as
Jik Dain doesn't mean much."
Fatigue and frustration forced a sigh out of Weir. Where to go? He followed the pale-yellow trail
back to the square where Dain started each time, Byukan-Hamil Direvnya. Could he make such plans
right under Norma's review? Could he organize a para-military operation like this all by himself?
Did he even have anything to do with it?
Ignoring the despair, Weir backed up through the questions. He removed Die Gastarbeiter from
consideration, then asked for all of Dain's zhuhndí trips, plus all correlations with the stops on
those trips.
Dain's arcs morphed, split in two, adding another location, connecting that scarlet circle to
Ganj Dareh's as well as Byukan-Hamil. Then that short hop thickened as more arcs linked new
squares around Ganj Dareh to the same destination. Finally, two longer arcs developed from other
parts of Popovich.
Weir moved for a closer look, but Kanpa beat him to it.
"The Inn at Laetoli Valley?" His finger hovered by the circle with those words inscribed. It lay
south-southeast of Ganj Dareh. Three lines of yellow met the thick thread from Ganj Dareh, then,
later on, two of the long lines came together there. "Who are all these people?" he said with
sudden impatience. "I want names." So he crooned that order.
Scarlet circles appeared, filled with names in letters of cobalt. Kanpa frowned at the ones
clustered around Ganj Dareh. He asked for combine affiliations and titles; he got them. He asked
for time-stamps; they too appeared. He slumped with confusion.
Feeling left out of his own data-dance, Weir asked, "What have you found?"
Kanpa covered the circles with spread fingers. "These tacticians run important service combines
here in Ganj Dareh. They all work for Jik Dain now, but at the time they met with — ah, traveled
to the Inn while Jik Dain was there — at that time, Har Norma hadn't made that decision yet. They
worked for different business lines, hence different Partners. They had no business reason to meet
yet, especially not in a can-feel, which they had to travel to. Expenses, you know." He patted a
hand through the circle labeled The Inn of Laetoli Valley, then traced one of the other lines.
"'Sous Thy Pouthisat,'" he read. "Who's that and why is her square white?" Without waiting for an
answer, he caught the third long line leading to Ganj Dareh. "Uh-oh," he whispered.
Weir caught up with Kanpa. He saw the name "Ges Lugar Sailie." He hovered, hoping that would
prompt Kanpa to go on.
"Remember the Bande-Gastarbeiter leader, the one we found dead."
"Agreed," Weir said, then guessed, "Ges Lugar Sailie."
"Right. A direct, if coincidental, connection between Bande Gastarbeiter and Jik Dain. Can we
narrow this down?"
Weir sighed. "We could go back to the Em-Deh and look at transaction records, mini-buses,
eateries, that sort of thing, and maybe get a finer correlation, but the dance isn't intended for
that kind of scrutiny."
"What good is it then?"
"It clears away the jetsam of everyday data and gives you something to follow up. You can
of course find out whether Jik Dain and these ... others actually walked the halls of the Inn at
the same time, though you can't prove they talked to each other, much less conspired."
"Indoors away from Beobachtung," Kanpa explained out loud.
"Exactly. Personally, I'd rather pursue anomalies."
"Like what?"
Weir dragged them back a step. "I'd like to know why this square is ivory. I'd call it
ivory, not 'white.'" The box reading "Sous Thy Pouthisat" practically glowed. Pointing
with his gaze, he crooned, "Symbol explanation, this place."
A panel carrying a legend opened off the coast of Popovich. Its faux-3D shades of carbon —
diamond, graphite, and coal — gave an odd taste of artificiality.
Kanpa was closer, so he scanned its series of monochrome squares, then read, "'No subsequent
transactions. Noted because of the unusual nature of this null union. Normally, time criteria
expire before transactions, not vice-versa.' Better than average documentation, Weir."
"Thanks."
"What does it mean when someone stops generating transactions?"
An answer crept up on Weir. He shuddered as he said, "She's dead." He fought the statement with a
savage shake. "Well, of course, there are other explanations. We'd have to see what her last
transaction was. That might explain it. Maybe she's in hospital or seclusion or ..."
Kanpa started pawing through the projection, probably for his llevar to check out that datapoint.
"Wait!" Weir called him back. "Let that go! This exercise wasn't intended for minutiae,
remember. Let's keep going here."
Kanpa yielded reluctantly.
Weir remembered how a data-dance should go. "We 'like' these correlations, don't we?"
"Lose the tacticians," Kanpa said with a backhand at that rash of boxes. "I've met them. Not a
true power merchant among them. Greedy, maybe, but not smart enough to be a chief executive in
this conspiracy, whatever it is — if it is."
Weir gave that instruction, then reconfirmed, "Accept these correlations? Finally something
tangible?" When Kanpa nodded, he turned the phrase into a command.
All saffron lines changed to ebony. The sudden tracery was startling, not because they were
meaningful, but because they made definite their suspicions.
"On with the dance," Weir said, then crooned, "Explore combinations of those three names."
A ripple began almost immediately, sweeping down across the walls like a tidal surge of
information. But when it was done, Weir couldn't find any change in the display.
"Here," Kanpa announced. He tapped the air at a point on Popovich's Sicilian peninsula. Saffron
lines from Lugar and Thy met there. He returned Weir's gaze with, "So what?"
Weir started a shrug, then realized that the botfly's correlation engine kept a history of their
session, a history it referred back to whenever it got a chance. Given the relative speeds of
human and automata, it just had plenty chance. "It's teasing us," he said.
"What?" Kanpa's voice piqued with amazement.
"I asked it to 'explore,' which it did, but the next set of correlations, shown here, aren't the
important ones, which it knows, but since I didn't ask, it can't show those important ones. You
see, it keeps around old sets of correlations. We may have forgotten them, but it hasn't."
"So what is it suggesting may apply here?"
"I don't know. Let's find out." He crooned, "Extend."
A panel, long and drawn with carbon's three shades, unfolded next to Ganj Dareh, its border traced
with auric filigree. The same color formed gutters between columns that filled with names almost
too small to read, but that wasn't important now. When this list settled down, a squadron of arcs
sprang out of it, not saffron, but turquoise, the color he'd told the botfly to signify
duplication. They curved off to that same southwestern peninsula where a smaller list in similar
monochrome uncurled and allowed itself to be pricked where names duplicated those for Die
Gastarbeiter. An ebony square sprang up beside this list.
Being closer, Weir read the title of Ganj Dareh's list, "Die Gastarbeiter."
Kanpa darted to the other list. He read, "Tlaxtli League, registered in Ynys M“n." Another panel
in turquoise grew out of the list. Kanpa read on, "Board of Governors: Sous Thy Pouthisat,
Founder; Ges Lugar Sailie, Administrator; and ... down here, buried in a list of sponsors, Jik Dain
Bedlip." He dismissed coincidence with a fevered look and the words, "Otherwise, he couldn't have
done anything with their policyware."
"Let me see those names."
Weir jumped at the abrupt demand from behind him, then whirled around, already knowing who'd asked
it. "Which names?" he asked, gulping through the startled lump in his throat.
Phoebe waved her arms, tracing the blue-green rainbow connecting Ganj Dareh and Ynys M“n, but Kanpa
was already crooning, "Enlarge duplicate names."
The agent stepped names in crisp cobalt across the arch. Phoebe peered more closely, then started
ticking off name after name with her finger. The agent followed her gestures by staining the words
with a verdant trim. Phoebe also started a whispered refrain that grew louder and louder.
"Gastarbeiterbande. Gastarbeiterbande. I applied my whole night and this morning to getting
indictments against these Bande Gastarbeiter. I just finished and wanted to see how far you'd
gotten. Where'd you say they came from? Ynys M“n? No, don't remember it."
"That's where the headquarters is located," Kanpa said. "The players probably come from all
over."
"No, just five direvnya, at least that's how they registered at the Rendezvous, confirmed by the
continent's identity database, though none of those direvnya really exist zhuhndí. Meaning: none
of them came from where they said they did." Phoebe arrived at the far end of the bridge of names
and stared at the side-panel listing the Governors. "How they corrupted the identity database, I
have no idea," she added absently and reached for the llevar hanging on her hip.
"Phoebe," said Kanpa quietly as he stepped close to her. "What are you doing?"
She ignored him as she poked at her filmscreen.
Kanpa craned over her shoulder. "No," he urged. "Don't go see Jik Dain. You've got to stay in
town."
Name, location, and time clicked for Weir. He jerked toward the logical Ganj Dareh at his
shoulder. An ebony line bounced toward him. Dain's travels, its last date today. "She won't—"
he began.
Phoebe's llevar trumpeted, and she crowed, "I will. He's here and he's agreed to a can-feel." She
turned, gently elbowing Kanpa out of the way, and took a step as her arm mechanically returned the
llevar to its belthook. She scanned first left, then right, looking right past Weir.
"Where's the Fated door?" she demanded.
Weir reached out and pulled the door open. Opaline spilled out into a vague indoor dusk.
"Phoebe." Kanpa came alongside her, protesting. "The correlations aren't that clear. You can't
accuse a Partner based on a few lines on a projection."
Phoebe gave Kanpa the courtesy of an impatient look. "Jik Dain's involved, don't you agree?"
"Yes, somehow, but we're not sure how."
Phoebe punched out her next words: "If Jik Dain's involved, he's in charge. Don't you agree?"
Settling back on his heels, Kanpa replied, sharp and concerned, "That certainly is true."
"Then I'm going to talk to him, face-to-face. Do a little feeling in this can-feel if
necessary."
"But what are you going to ask him?"
"I'm going to see why he's in town, if everything's O.K., if I should be worried about Ganj Dareh
anymore."
"Phoebe—"
"Call me if you figure out anything else." Phoebe settled a palm on Kanpa's cheek, quite to Weir's
surprise. Once again, he had to set aside assumptions, this time about the relationship in front
of him. Speculation sparkled in his mind, but he tried not to let it bloom into supposition.
With a gentle smile, Phoebe said to Kanpa, "Maybe I'll settle this before you do." She marched out
past Weir with a murmured, "Thank you."
