Weir Annadetcall
Kanpa shut the kiva's door behind him and demanded angrily, "What's he doing here? Why now? Why
here? Why?"
"Who?" Weir turned from the roster of the Tlaxtli League he studied. "Dain?"
Kanpa displayed an anger turned more personal, in his gestures, in his voice, and in the way he
stormed about the kiva.
"Yes! He's flown in for only one inspection before this, and now, two trips in as many days,
without notice or even contact with us. I know all those other tacticians work for him now, so he
probably checked up on them, especially those who've lost contracts." He flung a look, bleak with
confusion on top of some other anguish, hard at Weir. "If nothing else, a Partner's automata
should distribute courtesy messages. We should've known he was coming. Why didn't we? Why?"
"Kanpa," Weir said, the name strange in his mouth, the first time he'd used it. "Phoeb — ah, the
Chief can handle herself. She's a chief of anshin, for Singer's sake!" With a lot more experience
than I've got. His eel of nervousness fluffed itself in his bowels, its nap definitely over. It
seemed uneasy about more than his lack of confidence.
This time, Kanpa's glare faltered, and as he dropped it, he muttered, "I know that."
Weir diverted both their attentions back to the League's roster. Relatively few of the players had
turned up as Bande Gastarbeiter. What happened to the others, over 70,000 of them? "Something odd
here," he said tersely because he couldn't be sure it meant anything more significant.
Kanpa didn't respond. Weir glanced around. Kanpa pondered Ganj Dareh there on the wall, in
abstract surrounded by the detritus of their last correlations. He dug absently at his frazzled
hairdo.
Weir went to see what was so interesting. As he approached, Kanpa's gaze drifted around. He said
in small words, "Your botfly couldn't use our data. Could it?"
Surprised, intrigued, but a touch concerned by this turn in Kanpa's attitude, Weir chose techniker
to keep things neutral. "Do you keep a master index?"
"Well, I don't," Kanpa snipped. "I'm just a visitor here, but the Chief's data-reduction team
d-bases with maximum attention ... when she doesn't have them out rounding up Bande Gastarbeiter."
More techniker than he bargained for. Weir said, "Is that an 'agreed?'"
"Yes."
"A master index described in a Yeibichai-standard data dictionary?"
"Of course."
"Accepted. Could you give the botfly some infraware to run in and the fiducia to connect to the
Chief's meeting/database?"
In answer, Kanpa searched patiently for his llevar on the shelf hidden by the botfly's display. He
completed the requests necessary, then waited silently while the botfly reached across the
kilometers for data.
Weir asked, "What are we looking for?"
"I don't know."
Frustrated, Weir tried for some kind of parameters. "Kanpa, I don't think I can work off that, and
the botfly certainly can't. Give me a design goal."
"I want proof that Jik Dain is dangerous so I can keep Phoebe out of that can-feel."
"What if we can't prove that?"
Kanpa jerked a glance full of turmoil suppressed at Weir. His bowels must plague him as much as
mine, Weir thought even as Kanpa slashed at the display around them. "Then I want to feel good
about the meeting. That she's safe."
Obviously something going on between them. Weir wanted to ask more, but realized that only
information, not questions or even sympathy, would bring surcease to Kanpa. "Let's dance then!"
Weir bellowed in a croon that tore against the sadness he was catching from Kanpa. "Correlate new
data, explore, extend, to exhaustion." He wanted the botfly to show everything it found.
The ripple spread immediately. Weir despaired of catching the changes, so settled for watching
Kanpa try it. He paced around the dome like a cat with hunger, his head nodding as if watching the
antics of a bird agitated. Then, in mid-prowl, he froze, body aligning with the path he'd been
tracing, but head taking an azimuth at odds to everything else. Weir walked over to follow the
point.
A flame, idealized, but still alarming, flickered its shades of red alongside the river that flowed
through the Laetoli Valley. Some distance lay between the warning and from the scarlet square of
the Inn overlaid by ebony lines signifying Jik Dain's and the others' visits. At this scale, that
would be quite a trek for any of those principals, but ... Weir had to smile at the botfly's
elegance. It had labeled a loop of saffron dots with two timestamps, one flame-colored, the other
darker, demonstrating how Sous Thy Pouthisat could have made the side-trip within the
bounds of her larger journey to the Inn.
Weir wondered what the flame stood for and looked around to ask Kanpa. Dark irises locked in
bloodshot eyeballs aimed right back at him.
"Firearms!" Kanpa whispered hoarsely. "Dain could have a gun."
The worst contraband possible. How could they import it? How could they hide it? The eel within
his bowels turned over completely. But all he could manage was, "Are you sure?"
"Yes, you fool. Haven't you studied anshin symbology?"
Actually, Weir had, all the common symbols anyway, but he didn't know this one. Firearms? How
could Ganj Dareh, sedate, mid-continent Ganj Dareh, need a symbol for firearms? He noticed the
pulse in Kanpa's temple and in his neck taut with fear. It seemed to be racing his own, suddenly
obvious in those same body parts.
"You don't know Thy did that," Weir said, "or that Dain got a gun from her. Why would he even know
how to use one? Even modern guns require some skill." Weir suddenly questioned his own
assertion. "Don't they?"
The flesh around the staffer's eyes relaxed. He straightened his crouch. He rocked his head to
the side in acknowledgment.
"Besides," Weir went on, as much to hear reason himself as to tell it to Kanpa. "Many others could
be responsible. We'd have to correlate every movement of every person, in the air, on the ground.
So we don't really know anything yet." Weir worked up a smile. "Let's see what else botfly came
up with."
Together they turned to the wall curving in front of them. They followed an ebony arc to Thy's
origin: nothing new. Then Lugar: nothing there, either. Weir mimicked Kanpa in turning toward
Direvnya Byukan-Hamil. Again, nothing. Methodically, they traced Dain's trips back toward the
middle again — and halted at a new symbol, lying just to the side about a third of the way along
the arc to The Laetoli Valley.
A folder, drawn in white — Weir could assign no other name to the color of death — as though
standing open, bore the legend "Age=8" with a name in smaller letters.
Weir punched the symbol, but before he could order an explanation, Kanpa shouted, "Over here!"
Two more symbols bunched next to Ganj Dareh. They showed slightly different ages on case folders
plaintively unsolved.
"Today!" Kanpa shouted. "One today. One the last time Dain visited." He jabbed a finger at the
symbol by Weir. "One on his previous trip. Every time this man flies someplace, a child dies."
Weir protested weakly, "It doesn't say 'dead,' just 'missing.'"
Kanpa batted that away. "Opportunity. She's given him opportunity."
"What?"
"Phoebe's gone out there to meet him in his aircraft, common with his other murders. And motive?"
Kanpa swung to the list of Die Gastarbeiter still hanging beside Ganj Dareh. "Easy. Phoebe's
foiled his attack on Ganj Dareh. He'll kill her for revenge, or to get her out of the way for the
next attack." He dropped his pointing hand like the last step in a semaphore. "Method: he's
killed before, and he can do it aga—"
"Method?" Weir flared his words into that foothold on logic. "There's no method here." He
dropped his gaze to his white folder. "Just how many people do you think disappear on Popovich
every day?" He patted the folder. "Even out here in the hinterlands. And in a direvnya the size
of Ganj Dareh—" He looked up to drive his point home.
Kanpa wasn't there. The sound of a door-latch and a shift in light drew Weir in that direction.
Like a departing ghost, Kanpa flowed out of the opaline dome. Weir threw himself in pursuit.
Sprinting into the stairwell, Kanpa leaped over its first step. Weir followed, already a spiral
behind. They scrambled up the steps, along the outside where the treads were wider. With every
three steps, Kanpa gained one. Once more, Weir regretted not keeping fit.
Bursting into the station's entrance room, Kanpa dodged left. Weir arrived in time to see him
pushing toward the main staircase. The crowd slowed Kanpa down, and Weir took advantage of his
wake to close the gap, but then they were climbing again, around and around, floor after floor.
Mounting to the fourth floor, Weir looked forward to an end to the chase. There wasn't a building
on Yeibichai taller than that. But the stair curved around once again. Kanpa kept going,
obviously familiar with the extra climb. Weir staggered across the landing, set a foot against
that next riser, and hauled himself upright to struggle for breath. He started up again. Why
hadn't he known the Central Station violated the Four-Story-Limit Pattern?
Kanpa's voice exploded down the stairs. "I am Dyr Kanpachiro Nitsta, on staff to the Byukan-Hamil
Partnership, and you will do what I tell you!"
The landing appeared and dropped out of his way. Weir saw the dome transparent above and two
constables working a makeshift dispatch-center under it. Both stared around at Kanpa who fought
his heaving lungs to get his message out.
"Then ... just take fifteen seconds ... of your precious time ... and tell Bre Harlan D'Grennan
that ... Chief Heejanus has gone to confront Jik Dain Bedlip ... and put a stop to things ... and
let him decide ... if he's going to do anything about it. Can you do that?"
"I suppose so, Dyr Kanpachiro," came the skeptical reply.
Kanpa spun with — Weir couldn't be sure — what sounded like a sob and plunged past him down the
steps.
Weir snagged an arm. "Where are you going now?" he demanded.
"To steal a beancounting patrolcraft and go out there myself!" Kanpa jerked his arm free and
turned a staggering fall into a spring that took him over five steps.
"I'm coming too!" Weir called after him.
Kanpa paused in his tread-skipping and raised a ghost of his impish grin. "Only if you're inside
when I lift off."
Weir allowed a snort before throwing himself to belly-slide the widely curving banister. He was
only two seconds behind at the roof door and was sitting inside the craft by the time Kanpa
finished overriding its automaton's security and jerked them toward the sky.
