Chapter 2, "Day -30", Scene 3 = "Step toward the Future," Section 1

Step toward the Future

Doyle Phoebe Heejanus

Sections of project plan cluttered Phoebe's foilscreen. She stared glumly at the last one to be written. Its title, "Actions Contingent on Loss of Contract," mocked her above a blank panel. She left her fingers unmoving in the keyspace. She could form no words for them to type. Only a dire fog of impending loss passed for thought.

Phoebe let her gaze drift down and away from the screen. It fell on a jumble of darts. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and picked up one of the three. She hefted it; its compact weight felt good. A gleam of delight pricked through her gloom and she went after it.

In one smooth flow, Phoebe spun in her chair, cocked her right arm above its shoulder, and launched the dart toward its target across her office. It thunked into the red-and-white circle nicely, solidly, but not close enough to the center. She glanced back at her foilscreen; a small panel there reported a "70," out of a possible "100." She frowned briefly, then laughed.

Darts demanded enough focus and control that during each brief contest, she forgot the job and its stresses. And there was nothing like a bull's-eye to improve her spirits.

Phoebe reached back for another dart. Its polished, hand-carved shaft rolled easily between her fingertips. Its colorful fletching, three trimmed and stiff tsiroot feathers, flashed. Its steel tip glared with sharp bite. Its simple elegance inspired her. She lifted the dart, brought her arm back, and —

"Yo, Chief!"

The dart went wild. Phoebe heard it hit, glanced hopefully at the target — no second dart — then looked around.

One of her rookie constables stood just beyond the gate to her half-open office, his hands nervously rotating his uniform cap, a blue-gray circle with a dull-black bill.

"What can I do for you, Weard?" Phoebe said.

"Chief, your 'station has been refusing meetings." His tone carried respectful rebuke.

Back to the job. Phoebe waved toward her visitor's bench and smiled. "Despite appearances, I'm on deadline for Har Norma."

"I understand, Chief." His hat stopped as Weard firmed his pale jaw. "But you also made yourself the only one who can approve a Risk-of-Complaint Exemption and I needed one."

"The Consortium wants tight controls, Weard."

"Yessir. I made the exemption myself when I couldn't reach you."

"Come in and tell me about it."

While the youngster made the short trip, Phoebe went looking for the stray dart. Her office offered only one solid wall, lined with three stacks of built-in drawers, for office supplies and equipment, and a closet where she kept two fresh changes of her dawn-gray uniform. The target hung on the outside of the closet door.

The second dart jutted from the front of a drawer beside and above the target. Phoebe pulled the missile free and turned around. On her right, a half-open wall, with waist-high counter and slatted gate, revealed a short passage; Weard had come in that way. Straight ahead, a glass-brick wall gave her a fragmented view of the station's entrance room. On her left, two tall windows, with wide seats inside them and flower boxes outside, showed the grounds leading from the street to the station's entrance.

In the corner, between two physical openings on the world, hunched her workstation, another kind of window — into the planet's virtual analog in the Mirnaya Direvnya. Even across the room, Phoebe could feel the cold suck of an incomplete project plan. With a backhand thrust, she jammed the dart into the target's outer rim and marched back toward the workstation.

"Sit down, Weard. I can give you 45 seconds, in just a moment."

Phoebe leaned over the project plan. The empty section gaped at her from the foilscreen; its blankness vaguely mirrored her angular face and red plaits. She dismissed the unfilled form by touching its Close button, then tapped the plan's Produce glyph. That symbol flared into a panel already set up with Har Norma as its primary electronic destination. A distribution list in second place included many others in the Consortium, including Phoebe's boss.

As Phoebe moved her finger across to the Send option, a shot of spite arose within her. So what if she was dispatching the plan late and unfinished? No one would read it. No one would help her with zhuhndí, in this case, the actual skull and back work of competition. All she would get out of this bureaucratic hoop was more bureaucratic, regularly scheduled hoops to be jumped through in her "spare" time.

With a push on the monitor's glowing foil, she released the plan into the Mirnaya Direvnya, then steeled herself. I'll deal with my supposed failure, when and if it comes, in front of the Team of Partners if necessary.

That thought drew her eyes to the pond-scum-green panel hibernating just off dead center: her attendance at the on-going Team-of-Partners meeting; the color meant her agenda item was next. All this fuss with plans and meetings was just costing her time she should be spending on the competition. Yet the very thought of having to compete soured her stomach. Losing this contract was too real, too frightening.

Withdrawing mentally and physically from the screen, she turned back to the constable. He rested just on the edge of the bench abutting her desk, his dreamstick a streak of black by his blue-gray leg, his cap once again in motion. The silver badge on its peak flashed past regularly.

"What are we talking about here?" she prompted as she sat down.

"You said you wanted to know about any Incidents with The Tangent."

Ah, yes. Phoebe shifted smoothly to the new agenda. Late yesterday, she'd posted a general notice to her entire combine. Any and all encounters with The Tangent, especially events that normally didn't make it into status reports; this morning, she'd launched an agent to summarize those. She wanted ammunition for that meeting with the elders.

"Yes, I did," Phoebe said.

"Well, today, Okra brought in a boy for registry with the Em-Deh."

"Okra?"

"Ya, Chief, Okra." With a shy grin, Weard leaned forward, like he sensed her ignorance and relished the chance to fill it with his personal slant on things. "He's a tactician or something over there. Don't know if The Tangent sets up the way we do, but whenever they come out of Skeinswift Neighborhood to do business with The World, Okra's usually there. I've seen him a few times since the training rotation sent me and Duobazha to Ar-Kansas Station."

"Go on."

"Okra and the kid — I didn't get his name, probably 'Knothole' or something weird like that — they had one of the big ones with them." The rookie gave Phoebe a knowing, somewhat worried look. "You know about them?"

An image of Grizzly loping through a grid of shadows. Dismissing it, Phoebe let some impatience show. "Yes, Weard. Get on with it."

Weard grimaced an apology and plunged on. "Her name was 'Honey.' While Okra and the boy went into the registration cubicle, Honey had to wait outside. She, uh, she stood there for a while, then, somehow, got into line for vehicle licensing.

"One of the zhee-tely there objected, but Honey wouldn't move. She kind of, uh, planted herself in the way. The zhee-tely decided to, uh, enforce their objections. When Duobazha and I got there, four of them had grips on some part of Honey and were pushing and pulling for all they were worth. Not going anywhere, of course."

The workstation started a low moan. Phoebe threw a glance over her shoulder: the meeting glyph had changed to white. "Did you resolve the situation, Weard?"

"Yessir. It was, uh, easy. As soon as Honey saw us — the anshin uniforms, really, I think — she smiled and waved. We asked her — in simple words — to go back to where she was supposed to be. And she went, just like that. We got the zhee-tely quieted down even though we did ignore their requests for charges. That's where the exemption comes in."

Phoebe nodded approvingly. "Very good, Weard. I'll authorize your exemption when I open up my workstation for messages." She indicated the foilscreen with a hand. "After I'm done with this meeting/can-be-seen." Where she would sit physically separate, yet electronically visible and logically accountable to Byukan-Hamil's Team of Partners. Nicknamed "can-see," these kind of meetings regularly connected the far-flung portions of the Consortium.

The constable's expression mixed pride, relief, gratitude, and another question.

Phoebe raised her eyebrows. The can-see loomed behind her, yet Weard, in his rookie craving for understanding, needed more time. Too bad I can't stuff people into neat little packets of seconds.

"Chief, I thought we, uh, the planet had a Pattern, uh, we permit Complete Standard Human Genome only?"

"We do."

"Then why do you let these transmutes run around?"

Were his ignorance and prejudice talking here? That prospect chilled Phoebe. No, probably another "organizer." "Where'd you get that word, Weard?"

He had the grace to blush. "A new guy on our shift. Passing out infoplates about a club he belongs to, 'Heart of the Country,' or something."

Different name, same story: bigotry. Phoebe kept her voice mild, a neutral stare leveled on Weard's eyes. "His name?"

"Al Yega Nehsoup."

"Thanks." She'd fire this Nehsoup as soon as she got the chance. Out of the combine, out of the direvnya if possible. In the meantime, she had damage to mend. She added flint to her voice and look. "Gedogen, Weard, gedogen. It's a word from-Nederlanden. It names the tolerance our culture has adopted for things that lie between what is forbidden and what is permitted. To me, specifically, it describes a way to balance conflicting Patterns.

"You see, I believe that the 'Mosaic of Subcultures' is more fundamental in the Yeibichai Pattern Language than anything about genomes, regardless of its place in the Fundamental Patterns. It starts, 'Do everything possible to enrich the cultures and subcultures of your direvnya.'" She let the words trail off and their implications brew. She wasn't — by which she meant, her combine wasn't — going to harass any peaceful zhee-tel by narrowly defining one Global Pattern over another, richer one.

The meeting's siren climbed into urgency. Too soon, Phoebe had to wrap up this crux in Weard's development. "Constable, why don't you see what you can learn about gedogen? Write an essay on it for your fellow recruits, and send me a copy. Then do your best to incorporate the concept into the way you do your job."

"Yessir," Weard mumbled and scrambled away.

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