Synopsis

Beware! The synopsis tells the whole story, including the end.

A novel's synopsis enables the prospective editor to judge whether:

1. you really know how to tell a novel-length story, and
2. you can spin an enticing yarn about that story.

If the editor likes the synopsis and likes how you write in the sample chapters, then perhaps — allowing for marketing needs and other "corporate" factors — you'll be asked to send in the whole manuscript, another magical step in the whole arcane process of getting published.

    You might think that Phoebe faces just a minor crisis. After all, every job, public and private, on the Planet Yeibichai is subject to annual competition. And practically every adult, whether part of a combine or not, has lost out to a competitor sometime or other. So, why should DOYLE PHOEBE HEEJANUS, tactician (manager) of over a thousand employees, responsible for the legal, mental, and physical safety of a million-plus citizens, dread the outcome when a combine from another continent makes a bid for her contract renewal? Unfortunate in life and love, Phoebe plowed her intelligence, determination, and talent for caring into her career protecting Ganj Dareh, one of the largest direvnya ("village" in Rooski) allowed by their common law, a language of intersecting Patterns tuned to fundamental human psychology by the Founders who fled Earth 75 years ago.
    The news surprises Phoebe because her combine, like every other on the Continent Popovich, belongs to BYUKAN-HAMIL CONSORTIUM ("BH" to its friends and foes), and HAR NORMA BYUKAN, most Senior on the Team of Partners, doesn't like competition. Sensual, powerful, demanding, Norma feels more than affronted by this insolence. She vows to throw aside this Pattern-Language nonsense and take the special bond between her and the people of Popovich to a whole new level: she shall reign as their Queen. However, she cannot get that done in the 30 days left before Ganj Dareh awards the new contract. She must ensure that BH wins their votes again. And if she can disrupt BH's power structure in the process, so much the better. She has just the man for the job.
    JIK DAIN BEDLIP appears ambitious, clever, and more dangerous than any other Partner, so she's restrained him till now. Norma decides to unleash Dain on this problem, enable him to gut the other Partners, defeat the competition, and then order her lover to kill him. If the lover does well, she just might make him prince consort.
    But neither Norma nor anyone else realizes that Yeibichai's diverse and challenging culture victimized Dain as a child. Ravaged by the Network of Learning, a pattern of education that typically inspires and enriches, Dain dissociated into multiple personæ. As the host ego, Dain craves to re-write the patterns of life, especially those that splintered his mind, by taking over the continent, legitimately if he can, by hostile means if he must. To this end, along with two other Governors, he nurtured an athletic league till its teams of societal discards number more than 70,000.
    Elsewhere, GATOGREBOK, a large affiliation of combines, has selected WEIR ANNADETCALL to challenge BH for its desertion of their common heritage. Idealistic, dedicated, attuned to the patterns that govern the planet, Weir leads his Crew-for-Selling to Ganj Dareh to fine-tune and sell his proposal. He arrives in a swell of response to what Norma calls a Rendezvous of Futures.
    BH's ossified domination has led to recession. Jobs and Geld have dried up, putting many people "on the dole." The Pattern Language guarantees them food, shelter, and clothing, via gong-she ("commune" in Zhongwen (Mandarin, we call it)), confident that people want to work ... if they can find it. Norma announces over the Em-Deh (Cyrillic initials of "Mirnaya Direvnya," the planet's virtual global village) that she will sponsor a gathering to invent jobs and train workers to do them. People head toward Ganj Dareh on every train available. These Gastarbeiter ("Guest Workers" in Deutsch) flood the town, giving it such a large taste of change that its Collective will shy from choosing a different anshin contractor, or so Norma plans.
    Phoebe already works hard, obsessed with ensuring that Ganj Dareh gets the anshin ("peace of mind" in Kyotsu-go, aka Japanese) services they contracted for, but now she must also come up with a new proposal. Phoebe distrusts the expert, DYR KANPACHIRO NITSTA, sent by the Team of Partners. She also gets distracted by THE TANGENT, a religious sect isolated by choice within Ganj Dareh. Her obsession looms, expanding into a palpable presence within her mind and body. In a flurry of mood-altering pique, she pesters The Tangent's tactician, OKRA, for a meeting.
    Dain darts about, consolidating power within BH and kick-starting his mutiny. He sets roles for the other Governors. One, a professorish Teutonic — call him Governor Inside — will lead a team of 2,000 into Ganj Dareh under cover of the Rendezvous. Their mission: push bigotry and violence to a fact-of-life there, enabling Inside to enter the competition. Meanwhile, Governor Outside, a squat, androgynous sociopath. will spirit the remaining players — "ghost-troops" she calls them — to Ganj Dareh's vicinity and lie in wait just in case.
    The Rendezvous shaping up around him, Weir opens clinics to introduce his combine to the Collective. Arranging for realty brings him to Okra, eager to do business outside BH. He offers more and more help to Weir, becoming a one-man keiretsu because no other combine (BH, remember) will work with him. Weir compromises his supply line to keep on schedule, but Okra's secrets bother him.
    Phoebe, with an opponent no more specific than a shifting mob, battles its clawing attempt to drag her city down into anarchy. Similar instincts within her draw her toward micro-management, but aided by her obsession, she works hard instead on strategies to improve the context of the situation, not just its symptoms. However, every step of progress somehow lapses, driving her into a tightening spiral of try, try, try. She does give up on The Tangent, however, when she catches Okra and Weir meeting. She even sends Kanpa off to get their proposal approved at headquarters with a snarl instead of a smile.
    Dain does know his opponent and assaults her programs constantly through BH and his mutiny. He also contracts with a gleest ("intestinal worm" in Rooski, means "hacker") to defeat Phoebe's greatest advantage, the dreamsticks that easily quell fights, and to undermine the Em-Deh. These dual fronts torque Dain's psyche, and he integrates his alter egos, assuming their memories and traits. Thus, he can kill another Partner to help Norma in a boardroom drama and use his medulla modem to surf the Em-Deh.
    Phoebe catches a break. The Open-and-Accountable Pattern prescribes surveillance of all public places, called Beobachtung (Deutsch for "watching"), and complete access to that data via the Em-Deh, but Dain had leached that access. Kanpa finally finds time to apply his techniker skills to this barrier and proves that Gastarbeiterbande really do raid her town, though gleest-work obscures his ability to pinpoint them.
    Phoebe gathers a team that finds the gangs' hide-outs, then focuses her combine, every constable, counselor, and Nurse, on the round-up, risking Ganj Dareh, yes, but she needs the numbers. All goes so well that she realizes that she should shut down her obsession, that she could get a life. She can't just quit, but she can take some time off now, truly off, out-of-touch even, in Kanpa's arms.
    But Governor Outside has been busy. Finished hiding her ghost-troops under the leafy sea of fey-banyan surrounding Ganj Dareh, she plans to close the direvnya's drome and its physical access to the world. However, the Inside people to do the job have all been arrested ... except for a few escapees who've turned to her for help.
    No longer content with virtual harassment of Ganj Dareh and the unproductive violence in the physical direvnya, Dain escalates. He's finished with the Em-Deh, so using skills gleaned from his cyber-alter, he shuts it down around the town's ears. He also shuts down both the other Governors, killing this time more brutally than poison, taking Outside after she orders the attack on the drome.
    Weir works at marketing, a disgusting, but necessary chore to sell the proposal he has submitted. He checks on a nearby siren in time to see coaches from a high-speed train spew, as though aimed, out of an approach tunnel and slam down on parts of the drome. Hundreds of people are killed or injured. Weir goes to work, not hands-on, but managing other hands and the matériel they need. He commits his whole team, demands help from The Tangent, and negotiates resources from a tactician of the anshin raiding Gastarbeiterbande in a nearby warehouse.
    The news about the drome falls on Phoebe like a blade as heavy and sharp as a spiteful mother's tongue. Rising from the ashes of a tryst, she reluctantly accepts Weir's offer to work with Kanpa to figure out whether there's more threat coming. Kanpa and Weir retreat to a data kiva to coax some useful information out of the public data spreading around them like the silt of civilization.
    Dain's personal journey from splintered psyche to one nearly whole has brought him to full power within the mutiny — and a conviction that only violence will truly lead him to full external power as well. He orders the ghost-troops to retrieve cached firearms, totally illegal on Yeibichai, and be ready to attack at dawn, then heads into Ganj Dareh to tend last-minute details.
    Kanpa and Weir implicate Dain. Phoebe storms out to confront him, just arrived in town. Delving harder, Weir and Kanpa discover the ghost-troops and chase after Phoebe.
    But Dain's newly re-unified mind isn't after all. The vilest alter takes over, but the others stop his rape of Phoebe, change their brain to kill him and his hatreds, and escape together. The process leaves Phoebe and Kanpa wounded and Weir to rescue them. They face the threat that surrounds them. Weir demands they bring in the Yojin Suru, a "catcher in the rye" hired by the Planetary Collective to take care of boundary conditions that arise in this free-for-all economy, but the local anshin chief must officially request their help. Phoebe is willing, but Dain has sabotaged the policyware; she no longer has the authority. She must hire Weir, then get herself fired by the Collective, so Weir can make the call. After it's all done, she thinks having a real life will be worth it.
    Having lost in Ganj Dareh, Norma continues her work to become Queen of Popovich. She tells her lover to kill Dain. At peace finally, Dain does not submit to execution, but flings himself over his favorite precipice. He tries to fly, as best he can, for as long as he can ....
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