Seeds of Disaster: Chapter 24, Day Minus-8 -- Incident at the Drome -- Section 1

Weir Annadetcall

     A sound broke into Weir's office and demanded his attention. He flicked his gaze up and away from his holoscreen to listen better. The blare fluctuated, high, then low, and repeat, like a siren of alarm would if such things were ever needed.
     What awful thing is happening out there in Ganj Dareh? How is Phoebe handling it? He reminded himself: Not my job yet.
     Weir let his gaze linger on the vine, grand with age and vitality, that defined the ceiling and walls of the outdoor room he'd moved into. Its walls transparent met the spirit of the pattern for half-private offices. He also used the house's frontroom for can-feels and other business for the combine in general. The rest of the house, including the innermost room with its port to The Tangent's Our Circle, he reserved for storage and expansion in the future. That way he hoped to keep that and other secrets to himself, at least until Ganj Dareh's selection of a contractor anshinkan forced him out of his current marketing limbo. Selected, he could incorporate his promise of protection into his contract, and Skeinswift would become just another neighborhood. Not selected, well, then secrets would be exposed as he wrestled Günter into keeping that promise, as unprofitable as it may be.
     Speaking of the selection ... He dragged his attention back to their ad campaign. With their proposal two days submitted, his combine turned to touting their virtues and sampling the response of the Collective. Spout, then listen, then change the spout and listen again. High activity, then low, like that siren out there.
     He knew he should ignore it, as he'd been ignoring all the challenges to peace in Ganj Dareh except when they walked in his clinics' frontdoors. That's what he'd been told to do, by his advisors, and most recently, by Günter himself. Besides, the polls showed increasing interest, positive reinforcement for the current campaign, which he needed to expand.
     But he'd never heard a siren before, much less one this close by. He sent a look out the clear walls of the room. The suns, past their meridian, glanced brightly through the vine. He squinted against the dazzle. Nothing just outside, of course, so no need for action. When our time comes, will we respond well? Better than Phoebe? He scolded himself: Agreed, we will.
     Weir pulled his attention back to their surveys most recent. They also showed progress for another competitor, Le Coeur de la Patrie, suddenly robbing both Byukan-Hamil and Gatogrebok of approval. So, it was even more important for him to focus on marketing.
     Maybe we're in danger, he thought abruptly. A very good point, good enough to check out now.
      Glad for the excuse, Weir shouted out through the open door of his office, "What's that?"
     "A siren," Ford answered.
      "I know that." Weir popped into the frontroom.
     Ford hunched over a makeshift desk that consisted mostly of infraware huddled together as if sharing a secret. On top of the tangerine-colored cases, he'd settled three foilscreens, a clutter of infoplates, and at least two mugs. A shoulder of crockery hinted at another mug behind one of the screens. Weir had co-opted Ford to get the combine back into the Mirnaya Direvnya. He'd hated dragging his friend out of team leadership back into his former specialty techniker, but the project depended on them staying in touch with each other, the Con-Hominium, and the situation in Ganj Dareh.
     Weir went on with a smile, "I thought you said you had a Browser Beobachtung running." He wandered closer, trying to understand what the screens were showing.
     "Running and showing me something useful are two different things," Ford said with tired exasperation. He kept his fingers hustling in the keyspace common to the screens except when he darted them to one of the foil surfaces, command or tap, whatever it took to drive the automata more quickly. "Our maccready just took up station-keeping four-kay seconds ago. It re-established connection/Em-Deh easily enough, but I've had to walk it through each connection/clinic. Everybody's on-line now, by the way."
     "Good work." Weir decided a little more attention was due this feat techniker. He played dumb tactician. "Maccready? What's that?"
     Ford flashed a look impatient, either at Weir's ignorance or at the interruption or both. "Aircraft that flies by itself for a long time cheaply. Gives us a sub-orbital relay that we can launch quickly and relocate easily. You wanted something to get us re-connected to the Em-Deh without paying the fore- and hind-limbs Uncle Günter wants for using bandwidth on his satellite. That's a maccready." He refocused on his screens.
     Weir let dawn a smile of appreciation just in case Ford noticed. Unexpected demands had indeed tapped his coffers hard. Deep within him, that eel of nervousness shook itself awake again as an image erupted unwanted in his mind. His funding, dumped figuratively into his hands by Günter back home, sluiced through his fingers. So many decisions, each reasonable, each unplanned, added up to an avalanche that threatened to cost him his job even if he won the selection. Günter had trusted him —
     Weir jerked his head, sent his gaze after a distraction, anything. Ford's concentration drew him. Weir forced himself to follow Der Techniker's gaze to the screens. He recognized administrivia, for the lattice on one screen, for the project on another, but the third ... He stepped closer until he could make out a direvnya running over hilltops per the Pattern Language of Yeibichai — and split by rivers joined into a meandering Y. "That's Ganj Dareh!" he protested.
     Ford flapped a hand at the screen. "Yeah, yeah, but it's being difficult. I canno' get it to focus." He waved at the project screen. "Right now, I'm linking the coags/clinic back to coag/Gatogrebok on Continent Carpenter. Next step in the pattern for installations will—"
     Lotche, his clinic's Nurse-in-Charge, burst through the frontdoor. "We think the siren's coming from the drome. And something else."
      Weir raised his eyebrows, asking for more.
     "Another sound, rushing, natural-like. Sier says it reminds her of a santanna wind dropping down through the Gushing Canyons on Continent Glenn. Of course, we cannot see anything because of the berm."
      "Has anybody climbed up it to have a look?" Weir asked.
     Lotche sent a look imploring to Ford while he said, "We're not supposed to get involved with peace management, remember. And a siren definitely means trouble unexpected."
     Weir ignored Lotche's pretend-whining, sniping at the boss in an aside that was passive-aggressive. Out in the open, where Weir could hear it, it meant Lotche accepted the situation without any real complaints. He remarked wryly, "As though trouble were ever expected. I've never heard a siren used before. Have you?"
      "Oh yes." Lotche bobbed his head. "On Shepard, tornadoes can still sneak up on us."
      "Me, too," Ford said. "Tsunami from off-shore volcanoes."
     Oh, yes, he grew up in a direvnya coastal on Gagarin. "I guess I had it easy on Carpenter. We track our daaih-fung quite closely from when they form, as they turn into depressions tropical, then storms tropical, then—"
     Weir caught a movement behind Lotche's shoulder. Foxfire peeked inside the frontdoor, her brown face frowning with confusion. She checked the others with glances, then fastened a gaze, concerned and silent, on Weir.
     Weir stared back, at first puzzled, then his lackadaisical collapsed with a pang that seemed to stop his heart. An eel of nervousness the size of a henakandaya squirmed below his navel. He dropped his gaze. We forgot! We actually forgot! His much earlier fear crackled through his distress. Here we are, idling over marketing while people could be suffering out there! He hauled his gaze up again. Foxfire continued her rays of guilt.
     Weir glumly nodded acknowledgement, then caught Lotche's elbow, dragging him closer, into a can-feel suddenly intense. He included Ford with a stab of his hand.
     "Some anshinkan we are! Sirens in our own backyard, and we're comparing patterns of weather in our hometowns. Lotche, get up on that berm and tell us what you see."
     The Nurse bulged his eyes, but spun toward the door.
     Weir turned to Ford. "Abort your pattern for installations and get me some Beobachtung. Is there any way to link straight to the drome's combine through our Em-Deh relay?"
     Ford turned a frown toward a screen, but his fingers flickered in the keyspace. He'd heard; he worked on it à la techniker. "No need," he said in a moment. "They're still part of the Em-Deh. Connection distinct from Ganj Dareh. Do you want me to call them?"
     Connection/Em-Deh right in our backyard? "Uh, Ford, could no' we have, you know, borrowed a cup of bandwidth from them instead of flying in our own relay?"
     Ford rolled his gaze back to Weir. "Number one, they're working through a completely different far-lattice than we or the town is because they're a drome. Number two, they're Byukan-Hamil, and we're not. Number three, their contract probably details performance and penalties, which they would not risk by jeopardizing a resource as critical as their connection/Em-Deh. The contract may even specifically forbid them to share bandwidth. Number four, if they will no' work with their own direvnya, why would they lend us a bitstream?"
     Weir recalled Günter's condemnation of the degeneration of patterns on this continent and grimaced at this sample so nearby. And that's the arena I've chosen to play in. Competing for this contract will just be the first in a long line of challenges. Aloud, he said, "How can they even walk when they canno' see past the ends of their own noses?"
     Ford, immersed in his work again, just shook his head, as though saying, "What else could you expect around here?"
     Weir felt Foxfire's wide eyes on him, tweaking his guilt up another notch. As tactician, he shouldn't have been lulled by advice and orders. He should have watched, interested in trends emerging into patterns, intrigued by Phoebe's reactions, successes, and failures, playing his own scenarios against her zhuhndí harsh. He should have! Now, he needed to catch up, and that required data, even the meager data his own eyeballs could gather.
     And I can call the drome on the way. Wait, Ford asked me about that.
     Ford's fingers darted about the screen filled with the Browser. When Ford resorted to point-and-tap, it meant he really didn't know a logiciel. Now he burned through the guide for users, trying to make up for it. Leaving him to it, Weir patted a hunched shoulder with appreciation and assurance. "I'm going outside. Holler when you can see something. And do no' bother with the drome; I'll call them."
     Not expecting an answer and not getting one, Weir darted toward the frontdoor. Foxfire fell back as he dashed past. There was Lotche — just walking! Weir didn't try to warn him, but ran past instead, snatching at his llevar on the way.
     The device rested comfortable and solid in Weir's hand. He told it, "Respond by voice, no screen. Agent." It bugled the first blip of the triplet starting the "Drill&March" call, so he'd know it heard. "Meeting/will-be-seen." Second note. "Tactician for the drome at Ganj Dareh." The last of the triplet initial, plus the next two, then more of the peppy call as it made the connection.
     A step later, using its flat voice, the llevar relayed what the Em-Deh fed it as it worked through menus, "Welcome — Please choose — Schedule-and-Fares — Connecting to tactician."
      Lotche caught up with Weir, and without a word and sharing a grin, they ran faster.
     A new voice came from the llevar: "Your call is important to us." A typical message from a can, so the llevar tooted a few notes from "Charge!" as it retried the call — a will-see meant leaving no messages for a call-back.
     As Weir and Lotche burst through the hard-puff trees, Foxfire matched their speed, her shorter pace all the more furious. Together, the three of them started up the steep ten-meter climb with a leap.
     About two-thirds of the way up, though, Weir's ability, though not his enthusiasm, flagged. All those sessions for exercise on his schedule unattended, the very Pattern for Maintaining Your Own Body ignored, the bouts of Dan-Colora notwithstanding, ever since he took this job for Günter. If I'm so easily whelmed before we win the contract, even before we set foot in this marketplace, how can I hope to succeed? He pushed the doubts away by concentrating on lifting his feet up and putting them down, as Pa would always say.
     Lotche took the summit first, then Foxfire. Finally, Weir reached the top. He slowed, a final couple of steps with legs aching. The whole drome rose into view. His lungs scoured his throat with air as he scanned quickly, trying to pinpoint the source of the siren, but the sound pelted at him from everywhere.
     "Can you tell where the siren is?" he gasped at the others. They shrugged helplessly as they too craned in searches sweeping.
     Weir's llevar interrupted by bugling "Recall;" it would try again in thirty seconds. Lotche sent a questioning look. Weir explained through gasps, "Drome tactician is no' taking calls. He's probably trying to figure this out, too. Let's hope he's doing a better job. You said something about a noise of wind rushing?" Weir could barely hear something like that over his own body sounds, definitely not well enough to locate it.
     Lotche twisted a hand toward the mid-distance, filled with the train station, but Weir couldn't see anything moving there. He did notice the path that curved away from the station, ran below them, then off to the right, up to and through the berm. It connected the drome with Skeinswift's transportation interchange, the one he used to get into Ganj Dareh.
      The path lay empty, so no trains had arrived recently. What about air travel?
     Weir looked farther east, his gaze drawn by the terminal for air-freight, large and close. Its landing range filled the drome's southeastern corner with earth, tannish-gray and packed hard. Two dark lines, more suggestions than runways, crossed at right angles. Near there, an air-freighter tucked in its owl-like wings as it trundled toward the terminal. A bay, one of many scalloping the sprawling oval, spread its banks of conveyors in anticipation of the load incoming. All activity there seemed normal.
     He turned to the other corner, swinging his gaze diagonally across the drome. In the northwest, another range with similar lines marked the landing zone for air-liners. Near their nexus hunkered the terminal for passengers. Very quiet there — of course. Byukan-Hamil had restricted air travel to business, and combines local weren't getting a lot of business done lately.
     But Gastarbeiter still flocked to Ganj Dareh, which meant the train station should be busy. He focused on this pair of terminals stretched diagonally across the drome's square, perpendicular to a line imaginary between the aero-dromes. Connected by a concourse of lacy cermalloy, the domed buildings squatted before runs of track leading out of tunnels where the trains slowed from cruise speeds. Weir couldn't see the south tunnel well, facing away from him, just a shrug of earth furred with grass and edged with rock.
     The north tunnel, though, gaped at him, an oval, dark and squat. His whole combine had arrived through that hole not so long ago. He remembered the moments final of that trip, the ten cars of his train careering through the dark, between walls that seemed solid, hard, and uncaring. Around him, though, people of Popovich sat relaxed in their acceleration harnesses as the arrival revived them with expectation. He had carefully covered his concerns, tiny voices that doubted the results of this dash, idiotically occurring underground, because he was afraid more of drawing disdain from the others. That's when he had first started trying to believe in these people. He still hadn't gotten the knack of it.
      Lotche jostled his arm. "See? Running from the tunnel."
     Indeed, about seven figures in coveralls orange scurried back toward the terminal, intent on little else than covering ground. The last two staggered as though pushed from behind by something invisible. A wind? A wind from the tunnel? Was that what produced the rushing sound? Why would wind gush from that tunnel and not the other? Or was it coming from both? The workers in orange ran from the one tunnel only.
     Data! I need more data. Weir hefted his llevar and punched the function-key programmed to connect to his combine's will-hear. As an almost-sound told him that the connection had been made, he blurted, "Ford!" With the Em-Deh restored, this meeting continual should be working again. Weir pushed aside the anxiety transmitted from those scrambling figures. More calmly, he went on, "Ford, you get that Browser working?"
     "Sure, Weir, not hard once I knew where to tap on the foilscreen."
     "Anything at the drome?"
     "Bird's-eye view of what you're seeing, probably. Nothing definitely wrong. Canno' tell yet where the siren's coming from — the Browser function for sound is awkward. Some activity around the north terminal for trains from what I can see."
      "I see that too. Workers running ... away from something, I think."
     "Did find something else, though." Ford rambled easily, apparently not touched by the scene. "Our competition is orbiting Ganj Dareh with three patrolcraft. Just droning in circles."
     Weir focused on this data, connecting instantly with Phoebe and her predicaments. "Lattice for communications anshinkan?"
     "Agreed. About time too. Just over a day since the local Em-Deh crumbled."
     Defending his fellow tactician, Weir said, "We did no' do much better, Ford."
      "Agreed, but — hey! — we're working from another continent."
     "Phoebe is not getting the kind of help from her consortium that we are. Byukan-Hamil believes in making each contract pay its way, a profit line that's positive at all times. I'm sure they're not providing her any support. They probably do no' even know she's dropped off-line. Can you make contact with the combine anshinkan?"
     "Denied. They're using antennas directional, handshaking encrypted, frequencies unknown, probably shifting. Shall I go on?"
      "No."
     A bang cracked through the siren's monotony, a flat thud unlike anything he'd ever heard. Is this the kind of thing I'll come to know too well? Weir asked himself as he peered anxiously back at the train station.
     Nothing new showed there. A second passed, then another. Each one peeled away a layer from the future, but didn't make it any clearer. Another second ticked by, an empty second except for the thudding of his heart and the panic jabbing at his mind.
     The future arrived in the abruptness of the next second. The tunnel's mouth filled with glint skittering across a curve that became a train-coach. Still coming fast, too fast, it burst free. Nor did it nose-down onto the track as it should. Instead, it erupted straight out, cutting a harsh slice across the gap, driving hard until it disappeared into the terminal that shuddered, then ripped open. The roof's smooth curve exploded with pieces, large and ragged, among a fanfare of debris. Only then did the sounds reach them, a complaint, jangling, wrenching, as though the building cried out.
     "Mary, Mother of God!" Ford cried as well. Beside Weir, Lotche swayed, blurting "Tawakalt ala Allah." And Foxfire, just beyond him, dropped to a knee, crying out "Glory in the Lord!" as though demanding that everything be put back the way it should be. A moment later, the will-hear clammored from his llevar as other voices demanded, "What's going on over there?"
     A second bang ripped through the air and brought with it a growl of rubble. One side of the tunnel's mouth blew outward, tearing its dark symmetry into a sneer that widened and widened until another coach broke through it. The car, an oval flat and wide and glassy, soared out of the new gap as though stretching for the sky. It faltered, though, well above the gash left by the first car, and nosed over into a smooth arc ending in the terminal for air-freight. It caught the scalloped wing of a bay, tumbled, and skidded, gouging the roof like a butterknife along a taut, crisp shichimencho breast. The skin of ceramalloy split as though overcooked. Slowed by its path of destruction, the coach toppled onto the newly arrived freighter. They sank together into a heap of walls ruptured by their own braces.
     Inference suddenly whirred up to speed in Weir's mind. People, packed in and vulnerable, rode those coaches. There would be no fire because the materials around them would self-extinguish. There would be no explosions because the engines and galley stoves would implode their caches of volatiles. But there would be bones snapped, flesh ripped open, blood spurting, bodies overwhelmed by zhuhndí. There would be screams, cries, moans, unlike anything Weir had ever known in life.
     But, from his practice preparing for this job, he knew how to put resources to work here. To do that, he would need data on potential casualties — and eventually, a measure of his effectiveness. First, he whispered to his llevar, "Start clock for elapsed time." The llevar acknowledged with a single note, low and brief.
     Then, Weir said, "Agent," The llevar started "Drill&March" with an abrupt note. "Limited Questions." Note. "Passenger list for train just arrived at Drome Ganj Dareh." End of triplet, the start of another. "Forward to Ford." Quiet.
     Weir pursued his need. "Ford, are you getting this?"
      "Yes." A soft word stretched with distress.
     "Feed the Beobachtung into our analyzer for predicting casualties. Feed it the list of passengers I just sent you. Get it to tell me what kind of resources to respond with."
     "You got it."
     With a snap, Weir focused on the drome again. As he expected, no fire blazed, no smoke spewed or oozed into the air so it could be visible from a distance. Buildings and machines continued their laments, and Weir thought he heard shrills of agony from humans, too — spine-shuddering though faint — but he recognized that none of the sounds was large enough to breast the berm and alert the direvnya — and its anshinkan. Without the Em-Deh, how would Phoebe know? We've got to get a signal out. Our own fire, our own smoke, could do that. He lifted his llevar to make it happen.
     A third coach exploded from the intact side of the tunnel amid a geyser of fragments. Odd, Weir noted, Coaches are normally linked tightly right up to arrival. This is like they are being separated and aimed. Flipped onto its side by its trajectory, the car bounded like a wheel, once, twice, then burrowed into the south terminal, wedging the roof into groaning flares of ceramalloy.
     Staring at disaster piled on disaster, his llevar already there, Weir shouted, "Melha, get Nurses over to the train station! They'll need, uh—" The terms for specific med-tek failed to rise to his lips. He glanced toward Lotche for help, but the Nurse-in-Charge bounded down the berm toward the scene, his arms flailing for balance. Weir opened his mouth to call the man back — he could better serve back here, equipping the other Nurses, coordinating help from the other clinics — but Foxfire filled in.
     "Triage-tek, for victims where we can see them," she shouted. "Face-huggers, chest-huggers." He relayed the words as the Nurse-in-Training hopped toward him.
      Melhe responded with "Denied, in-stock, in-stock."
     Foxfire stared up with eyebrows cocked in disbelief. "No triage-tek?" Weir shook his head No. She went on, "Rescue-tek? Specific for vehicles? Specific for buildings?"
     At the same time, Melha objected through the box, "Denied, Weir. We don't have rescue-tek, for vehicles or for buildings. We're equipped for marketing, not disaster major."
     Foxfire kept listing, as if charting their deficiencies, "For the victims buried inside, we'll need locate-tek to find them, dig-tek to open a way to them, pene-tek to get at them —" her voice drooped with discouragement "— stabil-tek to get them ready for transport, extract-tek to get them out. And to avoid problems for the rescuers, toxi-tek and brace-tek."
     Weir echoed her demands and Melha replied in a whirlwind of words in which "Denied" occurred too often.
     By now, Foxfire stood beside him, her list exhausted. She stared sullenly at his llevar as though willing it to spray the scene with med-tek. Weir was about to ask her for alternatives when the loudest bang so far seized their attention.
     Earth and rock spouted skyward, clutching another coach. This one spun as it gained altitude, a fierce gyration that sent it higher and higher even as it leaned back and back, then dropped an edge, tilted on its side, and plummetted — into the terminal for passengers. The car-turned-rocket thrust fast and deep, rending this roof with a spurt of debris and a crunch that wrenched Weir's stomach.
     "Ford—" A pop from the train station cut him off. He saw nothing change. Another pop, and another, and the north tunnel collapsed, its torn mouth puckering, the dark behind it vanishing — but not before the nose of a fifth coach, this one a dull-gray, slammed into the gap remaining, as though trying to escape. It failed in a rending collision that buckled the earth and cracked the coach like an egg.
     Weir could not react more. This final act fell on a numb heart, freeing him to focus on reaction zhuhndí. "Ford ..." Weir exhaled hard to keep his voice under control. "Ford, get these pictures to the anshinkan. We have to tell the Chief!
     "Weir. Boss. I told you I canno'. Tek do no' respond to wishes. Besides—"
     An image of smoke billowing from the back of the clinic. "Our own fire—" Weir interrupted, then cut off the order when he realized Ford had started to say something else. He should listen: he valued all input from his people, and it might change his planning. "Sorry. You were saying?"
     "No anshinkan on the paths."
      "Explain that."
     "I went looking for constables-on-patrol, thinking to connect physically, not virtually. I did no' look around here because the Chief pulled back from Skeinswift, but pushing out to the neighborhoods next over, and nothing. I scanned four other communities at random: no cops there either. The paths are empty of anshinkan, Weir. The ring roads, too: no vehicles official."
     "Where are they?" Weir said absently. What's Phoebe working on? What could be worth abandoning all levels of service? His talk with Prokopowicz sprang to mind. Gangs! The advisor had never confirmed his guess about gangs of ruffians among Die Gastarbeiter, but if Phoebe had discovered a scheme organized within the Rendezvous, gangs, maybe even a union of gangs, large enough to account for all the violence on the paths ... Large enough to challenge her whole staff in numbers. Removing a threat of that magnitude would justify a diversion, complete, but hopefully brief, of everything she had.
     Weir lifted his eyes to the drome and its tek, large and small, so tidy a moment ago, now asunder with chaos. Despite materials designed for safety, smoke, thick and greasy, threaded up from the different parts of the rubble. And screams — now Weir heard many screams, of pain, of fear, of loss. Did Phoebe miss her grab? Or just not make it soon enough?
     Ford was answering his spoken question. "I do no' know, Weir. I just started my search six deca-seconds ago. Not a bad crop of data considering I'm still learning this bbuhni Browser."
     Weir dumped his speculation and moved on. Phoebe decreed her future and met it boldly. Too bad zhuhndí had bigger ideas — and left room for me to act.
     First, point Ford beyond his mindset techniker. How quickly he forgot how to be a team-leader. No, even that mindset would no' have led him here. "Ford, you're right, but now I need more from you. Look for concentrations of anshinkan, four, six, maybe more. Vehicles running hard between stations anshinkan and sites tactical. They're raiding homebases for gangs, large gangs."
      "B!uhnuhnu! Who would've thought — oh! You did, and the Chief did. I'll find them, Boss."
     "Good. Go!" Next, Weir stretched himself toward actions more strategic. Attracting Phoebe's attention no longer played; zhuhndí had taken that chore, though he doubted it would work. Phoebe grappled with her part of the future; now he had to handle the rest of it. He just hoped this was all there was to it.
     Weir glanced down at his llevar and punched another function-key, bringing up the will-hear reserved for his team-leaders. "Acknowledge," he commanded with another long breath.
      "Kam."
      "Rick."
      "Steg."
      "Han."
      "Ann-Lin."
      "Martin."
      "Camp."
      "Grove."
      "Ever."
      "Berl."
      "Desch."
     "Bill." Ford's alternate team-leader.
     "Melha." Weir's own alternate.
     "Close down your clinics. Get everybody over here, Nurses especially, but everybody else too." He glanced at Foxfire, her face drawn with distress. "Bring any and all med-tek."
     "You don't have the right tools," Foxfire whispered, her eyes filled with tears.
     "And how do we get them here?" objected Camp over her quiet complaint. "Qi-che will take forever."
     Stuff this continent: no vehicles personal! "Call the combine qi-che," Weir said. "Demand access exclusive, access emergency, whatever it takes to get them to dedicate a vehicle."
     Ann-Linn snorted. "They don't do things like that around here, Weir. Besides, they can barely keep up the routes they've scheduled here. I don't think they—"
     "A fábrica nearby has freighters," Berl blurted. "Want me to commandeer a few and bring people that way?" He sounded half-serious.
     Training and experience lifted Weir's thought to the impact of that action over the longer term. "We canno' be stealing vehicles. Work a deal, Berl, right now. As many as you can get. Cover the other clinics, too. Pay what they want. Let us know."
      Suggestions for other transport poured into the meeting.
     Enough planning. Time to get things done. Weir said, "Everybody," and the will-hear went silent. "Get people and equipment headed this way by whatever means you can. Burl, get those freighters moving. Everybody else, look for other vehicles to hire and get going."
     Another chorus of "Agreed," the will-hear went quiet, and Weir spun toward his clinic. Three Nurses — Sier and two new ones flown in just yesterday to handle their increased load — trotted out of its entrance, med-tek carts trundling behind them. They headed toward the path and its cut through the berm. Surprised initially, Weir realized that route made more sense than up-and-over the berm like he, Foxfire, and Lotche had gone.
     Lotche! Weir pictured him wading into the destruction with nothing but his hands to help. Weir checked his llevar: a panel for tracking showed Lotche talking virtually to Sier, already coordinating their efforts, so Weir resisted the temptation to make his own check. His Nurses knew their jobs, and his call would only interfere. If they needed anything from anybody else, they'd let Weir know. In the meantime, as tactician, he should be funneling resources to the problem: people and equipment.
      "Melha, we need more bodies. Anybody else in the clinic?"
      "Some patients. A dance class. They're civilians, Weir!"
     "They can still help. Ford, have we uncrated the llevars for coaching?"
     "I know where they are. It'll take just a hundred seconds or so."
     "Melha, route our customers past Ford to get fitted with coaches, then coordinate with the other teams for their Nurses to drive those coaches remotely while they're en route."
     "Agreed."
     "Weir!" Foxfire blurted.
      Weir looked down at her.
     She pointed out across the neighborhood behind them. "We've got Nurses and other medically trained staff at our Neighborhood Health Concern. They can help — with Okra's permission. If I can reach him—"
     Weir couldn't help his grin. He hefted his llevar. "No, I'll talk to him. He owes me." He jerked his head in the same direction as her finger. "Go get your people started."
     Foxfire blazed back with a grin that nearly stretched into rictus. Determination had almost defeated fear in that expression, and action would help her finish the job.
     Weir touched her shoulder. "Thanks," he said, then gave her a push. She dashed away, her arms and legs churning as she cut diagonally along the berm.
     Weir had forced a promise from Okra to stay in touch. Now, he told his llevar to find The Tangent's tactician. He stared at its indicators meager as though he could crank up its workings. Its rendition of "Fatigue Call" played to completion, then started again.
     "Found them!" Ford interrupted, his voice blasting into the air atop the berm.
     Flow broken, Weir reared back and looked around. He stood alone there, trying to ignore the screams that pelted him from people in trouble, trying to breathe without tasting the smoke, acrid in his lungs and eyes, trying to help by swinging everything within his control toward the drome.
     He sucked air in through his mouth, then said as calmly as he could, "Explain." He appreciated the interruption so he could fill seconds waiting for Okra with progress elsewhere.
     "You were right. The Chief has dedicated every shrink, stroke, and stick of hers to some kind of massive raid. Five locations around the direvnya. Once I found one, I fed it into History Beobachtung and soon found them all. Anshinkan surrounded these places early this morning, then about, oh, eight-point-two-eight-kay seconds ago, they stormed inside. Except for some traffic vehicular since then, they're all still handling whatever it is they're handling. I've seen a small stream of cells leaving each place, but no freeing up of resources anshinkan."
     So I was right. So the matter is criminal, not medical. He spoke his next conclusion aloud, "So we could use their med-tek, their rescue-tek?" Lingering in his mind, though, the question, But did she get all the criminals?
     "Maybe you could send somebody to ask them." Ford still seemed incredibly calm as he kept pumping out data pertinent. "One of the Sites is right over there in the warehouse district."
     Weir swung his gaze from the drome to the direvnya it served. "Where?"
     "Due east, the other side of the transportation interchange."
      "Surely they heard the sirens," Weir muttered as he cocked his head in that direction.
     The berm ran due east, a ridge, broad and grassy, crossing the path from the drome, then outlining an area sprawling with warehouses, flat-roofed and pastel-colored. On that far ridge, a figure, her jumpsuit the pinkish-gray adopted by Phoebe for her tacticians, faced the disaster area, arms waving as though she were talking to someone not there. A couple more figures, wearing uniforms constable, hustled down the berm toward the warehouses.
     His llevar tooted "Boots&Saddles" — his will-hear with Okra. Pushing himself into a run, Weir ignored the call and told the active will-hear, "Ford, check on our other teams. When I come back to you, I'll want to hear progress." He glanced in that direction and noticed Melha leading a stream of civilians from the clinic, each one shouldering the lump of an llevar for coaching. That effort took all his resources local, except for Ford who was needed to pull the rest of his combine together.
      "Agreed," Ford said.
     Weir overrode the complaints of his muscles, legs and chest, stiff from his sprint up the berm, though he did settle for a jog this time. Next, he would mobilize his keiretsu local. For that matter, The Tangent comprised his entire chain of suppliers. With obligation and money on his side, Weir expected only logistics to stand in the way.
      He spoke into his llevar, swinging with the rhythm of his pace moderate, "Where are you, Okra?"
     "Hold on, Weir, our regular get-together is not scheduled until later today."
     Weir immediately reached for all the leverage he could grab. "Okra, if you ever wanted Gatogrebok's appreciation, now's the time."
     "Well, of course, Weir, whatever we can do. Hey, are we not looking at each other today?"
     Jogging along the berm, his face swinging in and out of focus with his stride? Weir thought not. "Not now, Okra, just listen closely. I'm hiring every Nurse you've got, on- and off-duty. All your med-tek too. In fact, send me anybody who can even spell 'medical.' They all work over at your clinic — what do you call it? Neighborhood Health Concern? Get them over to the drome with all due haste, and get the clinic ready to receive casualties. Accident with a train, damage extreme, injuries many and severe, and the anshinkan are otherwise occupied. We're the best hope these people have got." Weir grinned to lighten the tone of his order. "Move it, please."
     "No."
     Tripped by the unexpected, Weir stumbled. He shot out a hand, pushed off the ground, caught his balance again, and managed to stop while still upright. He glanced around at the path just below and at the tactician anshinkan he was aiming toward. The jumpsuit had turned from shoulder-on to chest-on, its occupant stocky enough to be male more likely, his face a brown smudge topped with black, apparently curious about Weir's approach.
     Down at the drome, the screams continued, maybe abated some, by death or by aid, he didn't know. One of his Nurses slipped out of a gash in the train station, snared a satchel of med-tek, and dragged it back inside. Still gamely hustling, the squad of civilians had split in three to cover all the scenes.
     Weir glared down at his llevar and focused on Okra. "Explain."
     "He-he," Okra chuckled briefly. "I mean, I'd like to help, but I cannot spare anybody, Weir. I have people, uh, sick people, to take care of in the neighborhood."
     "People are dying at the drome, Okra. They need our help now. Surely, your sick can get by for a while."
     "Multiple traumas, Weir? In train coaches?"
     "Yes."
      "Extreme traumas, Weir?"
     The delay, the manipulation, sucked at Weir like the loose sand at the edge of a desert shih's pit-trap, but he grunted, "Yes."
     "I do not think my people and machines could handle that. They are not trained, Weir. They are not experienced. I just do not like sending them into places where people could die if they make mistakes, where a mistake can come out of being too slow. Make sense, Weir?"
     Weir sent his gaze back to the drome. A double handful of civilians, their only experience being whispered into their ears and flashed as holographs by their shoulders, burrowed into the wreckage of coach-torn stations.
     "No," he snarled. Okra's glib tongue had steered him before, away from secrets and into areas where both combines shared the gain. No longer. "What are you hiding, Okra?"
      "Nothing, Weir, of course not."
     Wait, I do no' want to snap this off at the bark, as Pa would say. So, let's just take Okra through a little tour of what he thinks he's offering us. "Gatogrebok expects full compliance with patterns global."
     "Of course." A warranty broad and good-natured.
     "Your Nurses learned what my Nurses did, else you could no' call them 'Nurses.' Isn't that right, Okra?"
      "They are fully certified." A note of offense taken.
     "Your med-tek meets standards set by Yojin Suru ... unless you brought in sub-standard from off-planet. We like people who buy-Yeibichai, Okra."
     "Hey! Weir! Why would I — I do not have the Geld for something like that. And ... and I would not cheat my own people."
     "You're obligated by pattern to protect life-expectancies, yours and that of other people."
     No retort, glib or otherwise, came back. Finally, Okra admitted, "Well, yes, but the pattern does say 'yours' before 'others,' and I've got a lot of lives on the line over here."
     Piqued, Weir spat out, "What comes around goes around."
      "What?"
     "Surely, Okra, somewhere in your 'Lives within the Lord' —" Weir couldn't help the sarcasm tweaking the words "— you believe something about doing things for others that you'd like them to do for you."
     "Hey, unfair, Weir."
      "No Golden Rule in The Tangent?"
     "Of course there is." Okra's voice cracked with stress. "We say, 'Draw near to trouble, for another, friend or enemy, may need your help.' But there are other considerations. Can you not just take 'no' for an answer?"
     Weir floundered for just a second, a second lost into a past that would never help the casualties, then snapped the panic out of his mind. As Pa also said when we were harvesting via airship, "Cut the line, son; do no' go down with the tree." He glanced at the tactician anshinkan, whose wait was breaking into impatience. But first, one last plunge at the truth.
     "Let's work this out, Okra, or we'll never work anything again."
     "Weir, I—"
     "Do you have a problem with your people coming over here to help?"
     "I cannot send all of them."
     "How many will you send?"
     "Eighteen available now, another twenty-two in two-kay seconds."
     Weir put off a status-check. He'd work the deal first and worry about whether he'd met the casualties' needs later. "Done," he said. "Get them started. Do you have—"
     "No deal yet."
     Weir squeezed his eyes shut, but barely held onto his patience. "Do you have a problem with renting us med-tek?"
     "I'm not in the rental business. At standard rates, I could barely replace the consumables, not repair the tek."
      "Bill us for any repairs."
     "Well, alright."
     "Deal?"
     "Not yet."
      "What's the deal-breaker, Okra? Just come out and tell me."
      Okra's breath rushed down the connection, then he gasped, "No injured come back to our clinic."
     "But the Pattern for Clinics says 'Treat until Well.' If you send Nurses, you take the patients!"
      "Exactly."
     "Oh." Weir squinted out across Neighborhood Skeinswift. It appeared normal, except for those few modifications to the pattern language he'd noted before. He hadn't actually walked through their paths. He hadn't ever been invited, by Okra or Foxfire, and he'd never broken loose from the harness that traps all tacticians: demand on time always exceeds supply. For some reason, they just didn't want strangers in there. He could live with that now, but later — if he were still here later — he would find out why.
     So he answered, "Agreed." Something they didno' want strangers to see? Or someone they didno' want to see strangers? Then he told himself, Later, and moved on.
     Okra crowed, "We have a deal! Foxfire will lead Nurses and med-tek your way in just a few moments. Weir, you sure do not take 'no' for an answer, do you? I have to admire—"
     "Speaking of med-tek," Weir interrupted and read his list. "How much of that can you provide?"
     "Practically no rescue-tek. A single cart, I believe. Is that enough?"
     "Send what you have." Disgust crept into Weir's voice, so he snapped, "Adjourned!" to end his talk with Okra.
     I'll just have to secure that rescue-tek somewhere else. Weir darted his gaze to the tactician anshinkan, to the sole representative of Byukan-Hamil he could access, to the only other source of the equipment he needed. He started trotting along the berm to show the tactician that it was his turn. More than ever now Weir needed help from the anshinkan, facilities and tek if nothing else.
      But he had to prepare for the meeting. "Ford," he said to his llevar, "I need numbers now."
     "Train consisted of 10 coaches, typical these days. Count of passengers varied, but all coaches ran above normal for a total of 591." Not surprising. "We should expect 425 severe casualties, 124 moderate, and the rest can get themselves to the clinic." Worse than I feared. "So, according to pattern, we'll need 244 Nurses on-scene." Stuff 'Treat until Well.' We'll have to compromise there. "Speaking of which, our teams are all moving, first arrivals expected in four-hundred seconds, last arrival two-kay seconds. At that time, we'll have 106 Nurses on-scene." Infraware recorded my deal with Okra, and Ford found it, good. "I see you're closing on the anshinkan. We'll need 138 Nurses from them. And med-tek, though we've got a good start on that. And rescue-tek — we're far short in that. Good luck!"
     "Thanks," breathed Weir and halted for his next meeting, a can-feel this time. His first direct contact with an anshinkan as fielded by Byukan-Hamil. He didn't count his brush — literally — with Chief Heejanus. Will zhuhndí live up to reputation? They've done so well with so little.
     The other tactician, stocky, brown a few shades lighter than Weir, said as way of greeting and meeting convene, "Bre Harlan D'Grennan." He squinted into the suns beaming above Weir's shoulder.
      "Weir Annadetcall."
     "Si, I know you." He passed a hand at the drome. "What can you do about this?"
     Weir quickly considered his answer. The question pricked an attack: who's job is it anyway? The situation — the casualties — demanded response, timely and adequate. To achieve that, he needed data ... and coöperation, which required straight talk, not an attack in either direction.
     He said, "I'm moving people and med-tek. Four Nurses on-scene now, plus civilians with coaches. Another 102 on their way, arriving within two-kay seconds. Insufficient med-tek and practically no rescue-tek. What are you doing?"
      "Coaches?"
     "Llevars equipped to ride a person's shoulder, transmitting sight, sound, smell to an expert remote, who can then coach the student through procedures." Weir repeated, "What are you doing about it?"
     D'Grennan scowled as he brushed one hand over his hair, dark and curly. Weir couldn't read the expression or the gesture. Abruptly, D'Grennan spat, "Nada. You help them if you can." Batting dismissal, he broke away, heading down the slope.
     Not acceptable! Weir stepped forward, reached out and down, and grabbed the man's shoulder. "We—"
     D'Grennan spun left, away from the hold, into the more difficult counter-move. He dropped his near shoulder and leaned into a lash-punch, side-fist rising.
     Without thinking, Weir turned the punch with a slap-parry, then retreated with a shuffle-step right, away, but to the opponent's backside. He thanked the Celestial Singer for the recent sessions of Dan-Colora. As D'Grennan finished his spin, Weir threw up both palms, open, unthreatening, set his face to echo the gesture, and waited.
     D'Grennan shuddered to a halt. His face bunched as though refilling with passions stuffed away time and again. In that storm, his eyelids narrowed to trap hints about the inner turmoil, but only for a second. Then they flared as D'Grennan snarled, "You brought this about, all of this destruction and all of the fighting and all of the killings and all of the other troubles on our paths. Friends died — comprendé? — on-the-job and off. Neighbors fought, tearing up cultures nurtured for decades."
     Guilt crinkled Weir's gut, but he answered it, Denied. In that calm, he continued listening because he might learn something important.
     D'Grennan thundered on, "You flare in here on virtual wings, like a ratonero verdad, telling the Collective you want to bid. Bid? When you do not know us, do not live among us? Yet the global patterns allow it — no?"
      Exactly, Weir thought. And for good reason. He let his hands drop.
     "Like a stone that nudges a rock that tumbles a boulder that brings down a mountain's side, your poco message rouses Cabrona Grande Byukan herself. We had achieved a balance with her, you understand? She and her can-feelgood Partners would rant at us, and Jefe would nod, all without changing anything, then they would go their ways and we would go ours, taking care of Ganj Dareh as best we could — and managing quite well, improving little by little even as the consortium stole capabilities and the direvnya let them."
      Fooling yourselves even now.
      "So La Cabrona Grande invents the Rendezvous of Futures—"
     That stung Weir. He had rued the coincidence, but to think Har Norma had constructed an obstacle so massive, had flung people innocent at him to complicate, to sway, to ruin the competition? Never. Not our fault! But is it? No — Weir broke the dialog: duty demanded he pay attention. He pushed his focus back out to D'Grennan, caught up with his words.
     "— and buries us in strangers, innocent and foul. We worked on the demand. We improvised patterns. We ... we ... And strangers, more strangers than any of us — or them! — had ever known. They churned up old ways. They stomped out new ways. They violated einheimischer and Gast alike, so that none of us could hold against the flood of fear and hatred that we'd turned our backs on when we escaped Gë.
     "A flood that hid evil, that let it get inside our direvnya, an evil that incited and destroyed and killed. But we discovered it! Si! We found them out, Gastarbeiterbande, and we've got them." D'Grennan waved a hand back at the warehouses to pinpoint his problem, then sighed, "And they've got us. Nearly two-hundred gangsters, all skilled, desperate, and dangerous, immobilized — for now — over there." His gaze strayed to one of those warehouses, Weir couldn't tell which. "Not quite that many of us. Some calluses, Technikers, recruits, who don't know how to fight hand-to-hand. Any gangster would kill them. Processing as fast as we safely can, but over half not in cells yet. The tanglefog is breaking down — as we expected, but faster all the time, which we didn't — so I can't spare a single person for the drome. We just have to work through it to the end."
     His attention snapped to Weir. "And you brought all that down on us." He drew a breath to go on.
     Weir blurted, "Denied!" When D'Grennan pursed his lips toward another "You," Weir threw in, "Denied, denied, denied." That wall of words stopped the other tactician.
     Weir needed the pause. In his mind, he swatted at reactions swarming like yellowjackets defending their nest. Obstacles of emotion, obstacles of tactics, obstacles of competition, obstacles of perception. He couldn't take time to decide competence relative and absolute, of D'Grennan, of Heejanus, of The Tangent, of himself and his Crew-for-Selling. He needed leverage, a fulcrum to wield against the obstacles, something to sift the urgent-now and the urgent-if. That was his job as tactician. He needed to meet his match.
     He cleared his face as best he could and asked as pleasantly as he could, "Where's the Chief?"
      D'Grennan furled his scowl even more and turned away.
     Aghast, even stunned, Weir said, "The Chief's not available?"
     D'Grennan kept walking, the slope taking him down and away.
      "Alternate tactician? Surely, there's someone acting as tactician for your combine."
     D'Grennan looked around. "I've talked with him. Everyone's busy, holding the same end of the shit-stick that I am. We didn't know enough going into the situation, and now we can't shake loose of it, not enough to help here. Sorry." He started down again.
     Weir sorted through his needs, tek and people, basically. Permissions no longer applied. D'Grennan said his people couldn't break free, so ... "Can you supply tek to us?"
     D'Grennan paused, lifting his head, past the warehouse, toward the sky and a decision. He just stood there, focusing on the future, holding back any good one, letting the bad one unfold around them. Seven long seconds later, he turned just his head. "Rescue-tek and med-tek won't deploy themselves."
     Weir jumped down the slope to match gazes with D'Grennan. "I'll drive. I'll get others to drive. Get me vehicles, tell me where to go, get the policyware to coöperate." Some permissions still applied at low levels.
     A light broke loose in D'Grennan's eyes. He twisted his body into their can-feel and met Weir straight-on. "Done. Let's go." He leaned away toward implementation.
     Decisions had spurred action, but Weir wanted more, a chance of greater success, worth another few seconds. "Your people," he said, holding still.
      D'Grennan reared back, the light so fresh in his eyes fading. "I told you—"
      "Accepted," Weir broke in, "but you locked down the gangsters once. Why canno' you do it again?"
     D'Grennan's mouth snapped open for a retort, then hung there quiet. Finally, he leaned forward, taking up his job again, his eyes eager, a grin actually forming on his lips. Nodding, he said, "We can do that." He brought up his llevar, boxy and brown. "Yes, we can do that."
     "You've communications?" Weir wanted to confirm their guess about the patrolcraft orbiting over the direvnya, if they were going to be working together.
     "Just voice."
      "We've Em-Deh back," Weir said — and regretted instantly.
     D'Grennan jerked as if slapped, his skin blanching under dusky as his face worked from frustration specific to anger general, with maybe a tinge of sadness, maybe even embarassment. Weir guessed that the competition between their combines had reared in his mind, but something dampened its mix of territory and pride. "Gatogrebok," D'Grennan growled, or at least it sounded like that.
     Probably our reputation for wealth and technology.
     But D'Grennan recovered. With visible effort, he re-engaged, shedding anger, opening his mind. "Good. We can use that. You've contacted the drome combine?"
     "They were putting out a message recorded." He'd no "Boots&Saddles," no call of any kind from his llevar. "We canno' get through. Let's see what Ford knows from Beobachtung."
      "You've got Beobachtung?" D'Grennan said. "You can read Beobachtung?"
     D'Grennan reached for the llevar, then hesitated. Weir handed it over, then remembered he needed to re-select one of his will-hears, decided he wanted just his team-leaders to eavesdrop on the rest of this meeting, so he punched that key.
     D'Grennan held the device gingerly and said, "Bre Harlan D'Grennan here, Site Tactician. Any other Commotion in Ganj Dareh?"
     "No, the other neighborhoods seem pretty quiet," Ford said. "You from the warehouse? What's going on with you guys?"
     "Ford," Weir cut in before their dialog took a tangent. "D'Grennan is working with us now." The other tactician widened his eyes, then settled into a nod of agreement. "We need him to join our will-hear. Can you add his llevar to our connection/combine?"
     "Sure, but that will merge the combines virtually. He'll hear everything we do, and we'll hear anything he does."
     Pleased that Ford had anticipated his next question and with such a sweeping answer, Weir said, "That's fine," while questioning D'Grennan by raising his eyebrows.
     D'Grennan accepted less readily now, but accepted nonetheless.
      "Hold your llevars within mating distance," Ford said.
     The men complied. Weir's llevar, shimmering and curvaceous, flicked its holoscreen out. D'Grennan's llevar, lumpy and dark, opened its foilscreen more slowly. Shapes danced on the two surfaces until they matched. During the process, Ford said, "Activating ... hey, interesting! I like that structure for relays, but I'll get back to it later. Complete."
     Weir retrieved his llevar. It felt oddly heavier, more substantive. D'Grennan gathered his in as well, his expression churning with a mix of feelings that Weir couldn't even begin to guess. He also felt the change, in their combines, in their competition, even in the direvnya itself.
     Weir told the llevar to add D'Grennan to his will-hear for team-leaders, then asked him, "What kind of resources are you bringing in?"
     "Eighty-one constables, forty-seven Nurses, and thirty-four counselors."
     Weir added up the numbers quickly, found totals well-suited to his needs. But so many people needed control firm and specific. He said, "We need a single source for authority and a single sink for responsibility. Do you agree?"
     D'Grennan hesitated, but in the silence, sounds struck at them, casualties screaming as they struggled alone and rescuers shouting requests as they struggled against zhuhndí too, too many against too few. "Si," D'Grennan said.
      "I'm here, I'm ready, and I've got nothing else to attend to, so I'm Site Tactician. Agreed?"
     "Si." A little easier this time.
     "I delegate to my team-leaders, 14 of them, who will arrive with their teams any second. Your people will split up to support them and take direction from the team-leaders. Agreed?"
     D'Grennan said, "Si," as if he meant it and was ready to get on with it.
      "You'll bring tek for everybody?"
     "All I've got at the Community Station should be here in one-kay or so after my vehicles depart. Beyond that, I don't know."
     "What about the other Site Tacticians?"
     D'Grennan drew himself up. "I can guarantee my people and my Community's tek. All I can do is talk to the others. I'm violating our Response Pattern here. I don't know if they will."
     Weir closed the deal by clapping the other man on his shoulder with a hand that rested easily, unlike the last time they'd touched. "Do what you can. I'm sure you'll get the job done."
     D'Grennan nodded in acknowledgment.
     Weir gave him a push, insistent while gentle. Until he moved, D'Grennan hadn't committed, so every word and gesture had to work that end. "Let's get to work."
     "Si." D'Grennan sprinted away, down the slope while shouting orders into the llevar he held before his mouth. Weir appreciated the man's energy and intensity. He appreciated the help even more, help his team-leaders were already figuring how to use.
     That delegation done, Weir turned back to the others still working. Though the drome with its view macabre plucked at him, Weir looked instead for his other teams, due as he had said. He picked up the ring road that fed into Ganj Dareh from the district of warehouses and traced it. Quickly, he discovered a freighter, low, wide, and enclosed, scurrying toward him. And another not far behind the first, and another. He counted nine in sight with more bound to appear soon. Good progress here.
     He checked his clinic next. A trickle of gurneys, covering ground in their careful ways, dotted the path from interchange to the entrance. A Nurse trotted alongside each gurney, swollen with atmosphere benign, undulating with treatment in-process. Progress here, too, but he had to get more Nurses on-scene to replace those tied up with patients in the clinic. And what to do with overflow? He hadn't shattered all the obstacles yet, not even close.
     Suddenly, the air high and to his left screamed. Dots — a pack of dots — drew streaks through the sky's clear blue, streaks that took his gaze down toward a warehouse. In the last few seconds, the dots maneuvered, odd twists and turns as they surrounded the structure, flat and yellow, then dived inside through windows and doors. A moment to validate results, another to set direction, then a dozen rows of anshinkan ran in seried order toward the berm and the tunnel for freight through it.
     Weir waited a moment for vehicles anshinkan to appear. When they didn't, he jumped back to putting Harlan's people to work. He spoke to the will-hear for his team-leaders, standing open all this time. "Team-leaders, pick up reinforcements from the local anshinkan at the tunnel through the berm. D'Grennan, wait for them there." Deploying people where they could take the best effect would be up to them.
     But then he took his impatience off-to-the-side. "D'Grennan," he asked in a can-hear, "why aren't your vehicles moving?"
      "They were full of cells. We're off-loading them now."
     The best future stalled off again. Weir scrambled to improve the one he was stuck with. "As soon as you can, D'Grennan," he muttered and hardly waited for acknowledgment before throwing his thoughts in other directions.
     What next? Overflow from my clinic. Right. He spun in that direction, then paused. How long have I been working this? "Clock," he called to his llevar, "tell me elapsed time."
      The voice, too mild in the midst of it all, said, "Three-thousand, three-hundred seconds."
     Weir took the report like another kick in the gut that awoke his eel of anxiety. Five times as long as the Collective would allow, according to the specifications I just bid against. Seven times as long as the promises I made in the proposal just submitted. But — He sent his gaze in a quick survey of the freighters and his clinic — and the flurry of bicyles carrying Nurses and med-tek out of Skeinswift across his sward toward the path into the drome. Oddly, a couple of men trotted next to the lead bike way out in front, large, bulky men. We'll need those muscles. He ended his sweep regarding the drome, its damage and the casualties inflicted by it.
     "But nothing," Weir said aloud to no one but himself. "How many died down there because I wasn't ready?" The eel scuttled through his bowels, relishing that self-blame. "How many—"
     A myriad of faces broke out of his memory: his Pa and Günter in the forefront, his Ma and others who had guided and taught him through his life supporting them. They all scolded him, though their smiles of pride softened the blame. "You didno' cause the accident. You didno' inflict the harm. You were no' responsible for responding. You did send all you had immediately. You did rise to the challenges and defeat them. You did weld together disparate teams and muster sufficient resources in due time. You did assume responsibility and will continue to wield it. You did very well, considering, and you canno' afford to wallow in self-doubt now of any time. Now get to work!"
     "Right you are," Weir responded, and the eel slipped away, with a final fillip that seemed to say it could easily return. He allowed just one moment of peace and pride, then returned to his job.
     The clinic needed more treatment space. He could open up the rooms behind his office — and hope to protect The Tangent's secret in there. They could also move things around in a few of the other houses, but those moves wouldn't gain them enough. He lifted his eyes to the neighborhood behind the clinic: Skeinswift. No, he couldn't expect a solution from that quarter despite the help he'd contracted for. He scanned right: more Skeinswift, but other neighborhoods did lie just beyond. Maybe there. He scanned left, past the transportation interchange — too much work for permissions with too little room gained — to the warehouses. Now there ...
     Weir lifted his llevar yet another time and started an agent to find out just whom he had to talk to about using some of the warehouses. After that, he could check in with the rescuers to see if they needed anything else from him.
     After that ... Will there be anything after that? This disaster was no accident. Will the gangs attack again? Can the gangs attack again? Has the Chief cleaned them up, just too late to stop this? Or has she missed an even greater threat? Has she? Would I have? He pulled away from the temptation of self-doubt. What can I do to ensure she's taken care of the problem? I owe Ganj Dareh that, just for being here and being capable of making sure. Yes, I will take that on. That serves the Collective better than any marketing campaign. His llevar bugled. But first, more immediate matters.