“Arm Webberly’s called a meeting this morning to go over the results of the Chicago battles,” Hank said. He missed drinking morning coffee, as his newly Transformed body inexplicably made him immune to caffeine. Which annoyed him greatly.
“Not for us,” Daisy said. Tall for a woman, she towered over Hank while sitting. Her breakfast included a large stack of pancakes and, currently, the remains of one rasher of bacon. Her comment came accompanied by a mild glare. “Just you leader types.”
“Given the circumstances” their personal connections to the Chicago crew “I’m sure I can get both of you in.”
Daisy rolled her eyes, and Van shrugged. “I’ll probably get an invite, later, via more normal methods than your invite,” Van said, tapping the side of his head. As a normal, he didn’t have access to the household superorganism-based schedule. “Have you made any progress figuring out why us normals aren’t connected to the schedule? We know Focus Fingleman’s household’s normals were able to pick up on such things.”
One of the passersby stopped, turned, and decided to join them at their breakfast table. “How do you know that?” the woman, Ann Chiron, said. She sat, smoothed her blue jeans, and began to pick at her breakfast of yogurt-doused granola. She said it with a hint of Focus charisma in her voice, which Van, with long experience resisting his estranged wife’s powerful charisma, ignored. For the moment, he sipped coffee and nibbled at the fruit in his fruit cup. Ann, as always a bit annoyed at Van, waited him out. The two had become quite competitive in their attempts to intellectually one-up the other.
“Two ways,” he said, after finishing his fruit cup. “The most important is what you witnessed in San Diego.” He referred to the superorganism-directed joint suicide of part of Focus Fingleman’s household, which included several normal non-Transforms. Nobody else in Inferno would discuss this topic. Ann nodded.
“The other?”
“Dahlia Woo chewed me out a few days ago for not responding to a question she sent to me via the superorganism,” Van said. “She didn’t realize the Inferno normals couldn’t do more than feel the presence of the household.”
“Interesting,” Ann said. “Dahlia’s been very reticent. She doesn’t like to talk about her former household, and won’t say anything about their superorganism capabilities.” Ann found Dahlia frustrating to deal with, Hank knew. Which he sympathized with. Dahlia, before her transformation, had been a spy, a femme fatale, or something close to it. Although in her late 40s, she aged well, one of the Transform benefits he had seen in a few, and one he feared to write up for publication. Dahlia appeared stuck in her late 20s or early 30s in apparent age.
“I’m not sure that’s a superorganism thing,” Daisy said. “You know my hypothesis on the subject.” They all nodded. Daisy suspected they missed an axis of Transform capabilities, some method or methods of Transform juice interactions beyond that of the household superorganism. Why? Her most embarrassing assertion that her orgasms felt different and more intense in Inferno than during her time as a member of Focus Rickenbach’s household, the Abyss. She didn’t have any Inferno superorganism access at all, and couldn’t even ‘feel the household’ as Van could. Yet, according to her, her orgasms felt different.
“You need a better test case,” Ann said. Daisy smirked.
Hank shook his head. Daisy’s smirk, though, triggered a few memories of his own on the subject, which led him to an unexpected realization that, as a true Inferno household leader because of his household research and combat experiences, he was now a leader among all Transforms. But how? He hadn’t been a Transform for long enough, and compared to Ann, one of the few people he knew of smarter than him, he remained ignorant about too much of Transform life. Yet, according to his gut instincts, he was such a leader.
He caught Ann looking at him. Reading him. “Anyone who’s a Savant is a true Transform leader, Hank,” she said. “Regardless of their experience.”
Ann’s comment elicited a snicker from both Van and Daisy, not at his discomfort, but at the ‘Savant’ term. ‘Savant’ was Ann’s term for a Transform who had mastered at least some aspect of the art of borrowing Major Transform abilities. Nobody else used the term. Ann ignored the snickers. “Don’t denigrate yourself, Hank. Yeah, you’re a short-timer here,” everyone expected the Commander to reclaim him as soon as she returned from the Yukon, “but you’re making amazing progress at superorganism access. Plus, your research is extremely important to Inferno.”
He wasn’t the only one with short-timer syndrome sitting at the table. Ann, he knew, was getting bored with Inferno; her position as behind-the-scenes household leader was based on the need for someone to interpret and ‘manage’ their old Focus, Lori Rizzari, a need currently superfluous. Ann needed a new challenge in her life. “I think…”
Van interrupted. “Here’s another one, Ann.”
“Another what?”
“Another example of something Transform that falls outside of the standard superorganism definitions.” He smiled. Ann smiled back. The two of them smiled at each other for far too long, their smiles getting falser by the moment. Eventually, Van gave in without any further prompts by Ann. “Cold brewed coffee.”
Hank frowned, not understanding the reference.
“It was okay, but not that good,” Ann said. Hank’s frown turned into a smile. Daisy laughed.
“No, not the coffee, but people’s reaction to it,” Van said. “Back in the Abyss, I couldn’t even get fridge space for it. Everyone thought cold brewed coffee was just wrong. Everyone, normals and Transforms alike, with amazing uniformity. Here, though, not only could I get fridge space for it, but also I could get people to try it, both normals and Transforms. It’s even become one of the staple Inferno drinks. A tiny minority here even like it. Now that I think about it, I suspect these reactions were and are juice-based.”
Ann studied Van for a moment, her head gliding a bit to the left and right, a snake eyeing a prey mouse. “You’re right. That’s beyond the ambit of the household superorganism. Either we’re wrong about how the household superorganism works or we’ve got a new phenomenon to study.”
---
“Do you have a moment?” Van asked. He followed Hank out of the dining area. Daisy followed Ann, giving Ann more graphic details about Daisy’s orgasm observations. Hank was glad to be out of hearing range of that conversation.
“Of course,” Hank said. He looked around for a place to settle and found the parlor off the entryway, saving them the long trip back to his cramped office.
Van and Hank settled into a couple of comfortable Queen Anne chairs in the tastefully decorated parlor. It was a beautiful place – Mrs. Ardoin had been busy, despite the chaos in the rest of the world.
“What’s up?” Hank said.
Van leaned back and peered over his glasses. “Gallup just finished a survey a couple of days ago. They were putting together figures on people’s attitudes toward Transform Sickness. I have a friend who knows someone who works for Gallup.”
“You’ve got the results?”
Van took papers out of his small document portfolio and spread them on the table between them, at the foot of the beautiful Japanese style arrangement of dried flowers.
Hank looked at the figures and frowned. “This doesn’t look good. People are starting to panic.”
Van shook his head. “We knew this would happen as soon as we hit the public consciousness. No way around it, not after Calgary and Chicago. Look over here at this figure.” Van shuffled through the papers and pulled one to the top.
Hank shook his head. “I don’t see it. What’s wrong with these results?”
“Not what’s wrong. What’s right. Look, over here. The question about ‘all Transforms should be confined for public safety’. That’s twenty-two percent.”
“That doesn’t sound good to me,” Hank said.
“It’s expected. Contrast that with ‘The Hunters are a clear danger to humanity’. That’s over fifty!”
“Yes,” Hank said, and frowned. He didn’t understand Van’s insight.
“Yeah, well, the difference is significant. This means people are differentiating the Hunters from the rest of the Transform community. Given how recently the Hunters hit the public eye, it’s fabulous. It’s also critical. It means that we might be able to avoid being tarred by the evil crap the Hunters do. If we’re real lucky, we might even come off as the good guys, because we’re ‘the other side’.”
Hank nodded. “The television appearances are working.” Including his. Hank flipped through to another barely glimpsed page. ‘Arms are a clear danger to humanity.’ “This one is seventy-three.”
“They didn’t ask this question a year ago, but I bet if they did, the response would have been over ninety. Somewhere out there, Hank, twenty-seven percent of this country doesn’t think Arms are a danger to humanity.”
“Yes, but seventy-three percent does. We have a long way to go,” Hank said. Still, Van did have a point. Given the history of the early Arms, it surprised Hank the number wasn’t a hundred percent.
“Yeah. We’re going to be fighting attitude issues until the Transform population takes off. But we’re a hell of a lot better off than I thought we would be right now.”
Hank pulled the papers into his lap and started leafing through them. Bad, yes, but better than he expected. Probably good for a few more survivors, when the real panic hit. Maybe one or two percent.
“Hank?” Van said.
“Yes?” Hank put the papers down.
“What do you think of Mimi’s progress?”
“I’m quite pleased. She’s gaining confidence and expertise quite nicely, and so far seems to be avoiding the wild swings of temperament we’d initially feared. Why?”
Van took his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt. “So how human is a Focus, anyway?”
Ah, Hank thought to himself. There was a lot festering underneath Van’s little question, difficult emotions regarding Gail. Love, fear and anger, the same emotions Hank felt toward the young, now so-important Focus. It didn’t help that Mimi’s earlier trauma made her less emotionally attached to Inferno than a Focus normally would be. Despite the fact she had physically helped defend the household, and thus gained her the undying adulation of well over 90% of the household members, the empathic closeness wasn’t there. “You know, I have a mental model of Major Transforms I’ve been using for the last five years or so that’s stood me in pretty good stead.”
“Which is?”
“I think of a Major Transform as a complete human being, with a few extras mixed in. They’re not less than human, they’re more.”
Van leaned back and put his glasses back on. “So do you think they still love the way a normal does?”
Hank sighed and ran his hand over his bald spot. He had worn his toupee for so long he felt odd to be without it, or to wear his now snowy white hair undyed. Now, exposed in what turned out to be a nationwide television broadcast about the Cause, he no longer bothered with the toupee. No more living as a secret identity for him. “You’re thinking about Gail, right?”
Van shrugged. “Gail, Mimi, and Denise.” Focus Denise Pitre was the second Focus currently attached to the Inferno household. Broken by Arm Keaton, she slowly recovered from her earlier suicidal state. “And the Commander.” Van paused. “I talked to Gail before the attack in Chicago.” Not the first phone conversation between the two of them, and hopefully not as bad as some. Van wouldn’t elaborate, Hank realized, but knowing Gail and Focuses, he heard the imagined conversation in his head – Van was vulnerable, and needed to be somewhere safer than with Inferno. Somewhere without Transforms. “I couldn’t understand where she was coming from. She wasn’t being very logical.”
Hank nodded. “The emotions are all still there. Sometimes even more so. Carol certainly loves. Passionately. With Arms, it isn’t the same as normals, but it’s still there. The Focuses are only now learning how to love, because they’re only now escaping from the hell of low juice. However, in my experience, they love more when they come to themselves. More people, more passionately.” Gail had been a human tornado ever since she got access to her juice buffer and a reasonable juice count. Sufficient juice turned her into a hugger, not Hank’s favorite variety of person, but he had definitely noticed the beneficial effects of this on the Abyss, Gail’s household. For one thing, their household had remained nameless until Gail’s transformation into a hugging Focus.
Unfortunately, the person who named the household, Van, now sat across from Hank, estranged from both Gail and the Abyss.
“But locked into patterns defined by their Major Transform juice structure,” Van said, pushing his glasses farther up his nose.
A subject dear to Hank’s heart. “Among those Major Transforms who’ve gained control over their juice and have left their instincts behind, the spread of personalities has proven to be wider than the personality spread between the Major Transforms. Someday soon, I predict we’ll see a Crow as predatory as an Arm, and an Arm as skittish as a Crow.” His long association with Cindy Lederer, the Arm-Crow Sport, spoke to that. The power of humanity was to rise above the physical, and Hank doubted the stereotypes, the physical restraints of the Major Transforms, would be able to hold them within the tiny buckets the physical defined.
Van stared at the marble sculpture on the other side of the room and didn’t answer. Beside it stood a glass case, and in the glass case, the Eskimo Spear, no longer hidden away in a shielded box, at Gail’s demand-like request. Even Chevalier couldn’t convince it to spill its many secrets, though he revealed more of the first memory than anyone else. Hank walked over to it and opened the case. “Touch it. Take it in your hands.”
“That’s a Crow thing,” Van said, hesitating, but then he reached toward it, prompted by Hank’s charisma. “It won’t do anything…”
Van stopped talking, because after he picked it up he had seen. The spear itself was recovering, growing over time to become both what it had once been, and something new, besides. Normals were no longer immune to its larger message.
The Eskimo Spear was the heart of The Cause.
“It’s true that all we see when we pick up the Eskimo Spear is the one memory of the last Crow shaman who used it. Yet, even that one tiny vision is enough. They may have been primitives, but those Eskimo Transforms thrived, along with the normal tribe members. The survival program the Cause promulgates does work.
“If we take this household redefinition to its logical conclusion,” Hank said, “and we get households with four Major Transforms, think what that will mean. A Focus is equipped to love a Crow, a Chimera, an Arm, and all the Transforms of her household. I suspect they have enough in them to love husbands, too.”
“That’s an awful small piece of a Focus to be left with, after she’s divvied up the pot to so many other people.”
Hank nodded. “But it’s an awful big pot. Major Transforms, especially top quality Major Transforms, are bigger than us more normal people – and they’re still growing. For instance, they can’t yet make things like what you hold in your hand.”
Van didn’t answer.
Hank took a moment to look again at the small gap between his right thumb and index finger, and the tiny static sparks he metasensed running between them. Healing! The possibilities for helping others seemed almost endless. Guru Chevalier hadn’t been worried about the display, which used almost no juice. He did worry about the psychological effects on Hank of being able to heal others. ‘Giving a Crow an unnatural capability to satisfy his desires is almost always hazardous, if not fatal,’ the older Crow Guru had said, in warning. Of course, the Crows were overly paranoid.
---
The last thing Hank expected from Arm Webberly was a long presentation. Not that he found her presentation boring; she spent over an hour at the chalkboard, going over the military maneuvering involved in the penultimate stages of the Chicago battles, emphasizing the effects of attrition an
d reinforcement on both sides of the fight. The details of General Enkidu’s slow retreat and the failure of the Hunter ghost trick to allow a small number of senior Hunters to hold Chicago was new to everyone in the room. Hank hadn’t been the only Inferno household leader to squeeze a few extras into the meeting, and the Oak Valley meeting room ended up being the only room large enough to hold the crowd.
The casualty lists were sobering, though.
“Although Enkidu remains in the wind, uncaptured, I believe the Hunter momentum is now spent,” Arm Webberly said. She was tall, and black, and heavy with muscle, but even in front of a chalkboard, she moved with an Arm’s athletic grace. “He was forced to slink away from a defeat for the first time since the start of their vile offensive. I suspect General Enkidu and the Hunters will need to regroup. They may need to return to their Montana mountain strongholds for several weeks, if not months, before they’re ready to strike at us again. By that time, I am assured that the Commander, Focus Rizzari and Guru Sky will have returned from the Yukon, and the Hunter Empire’s brief window of opportunity will be forever shut.”
Hank breathed a sigh of relief. Since the fall of Focus Patterson two and a half months ago in the Pittsburgh battle, and his transformation, the one question that never left Hank’s mind was ‘where will the Hunters strike, and how hard?’. First came the probing attacks, including in San Jose. Then came their first major strike, on Calgary, not only chasing Arm Armenigar out of her long-held territory but also taking over the town from the normal authorities, running them around like puppets. Next, the full force of the Hunters fell on Chicago, an initial victory that led to their eventual defeat.
Van, sitting on the other side of Daisy, raised his hand. Hank caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, the unfamiliar expression on Van’s face, and Daisy’s studied wince.
An Age Without A Name (The Cause Book 5) Page 2