“Worse than you suspect and better than you can hope,” Mizar said. He patted her on her shoulder, quite gently, and winked at Dowling. “The Hunters are an abomination, enslaved to the juice, the antithesis of everything a true Transform society would have to offer. Their sorry illusion of a civilization must be eradicated.” Auroras figuratively danced around his head.
Dowling’s eyes grew wide.
Mizar was someone you would follow anywhere. The chosen one of the Progenitors. The pure cold of the north, a purity almost too strong to stand.
He was going to get them all killed.
---
“You were right, your grace,” Rose said. The four of them sat around a dinner table back in the covered area behind the main building, while several of the household Transforms served them a late dinner. Very polite Transforms, more polite than ever. Mizar had driven off in an unmarked white van about an hour before.
“Eh?” Ellen said, and sighed, staring at a Stone Point wine bottle in the middle of the table. “All this wonderful wine, and for us Transforms, it’s nothing but grape juice. Did you sense Mizar before you got back?”
Fred nodded.
“Great! I was starting to have the feeling that we’d just had a visitation from Zeus. All powerful and all seeing, along with Zeus’s flaws as well.”
“Did he treat you improperly, Countess?” Fred said.
Ellen smiled at the use of her infrequently heard honorific. “You’re talking droit de seignior? Nothing like that. He was very polite, but extremely forceful and imperious, and he was mucking with the Transforms’ minds so that they saw him as just a normal. I will admit that he did have ‘the eye’, and tallied me up in his mental little black book like some men do,” she said, and elbowed Fred. “But he’s old enough to be my father, for gosh sakes! I can’t imagine what Lori’s thinking, getting involved with an older man like that.”
“You talking calendar age, Transform age, or both?” Crow Master Zero asked.
“Both, I’m fairly sure,” Ellen said.
This sort of girl talk was a little embarrassing, so Fred turned to Crow Master Zero. “What did you think of Mizar?”
“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” Zero said, in an atypical for him Crow whisper. The table quieted, as they all turned to the Crow. “He took one look at me and said ‘scat’. Then he laughed when whatever he did to me with his charisma made me hop back six feet or so.”
“Then he chuckled,” Ellen said. “I was so mad I was about to spit nails. I wanted to do something stupid to teach his arrogant ass a lesson, when he winked at me. Suddenly, everything was okay.”
“He rolled you,” Rose said.
“Yah, he rolled me, like he was some goddamned senior FB.” She sighed. “I guess it’s to be expected that he’d live up to his original name. Although I’d predicted his beastliness would have been more, well, savage and predatory. Instead, he’s like an aristocrat with delayed adolescence.”
“I knew a bank executive like that, once upon a time,” Zero said. “I guess you’d say it’s typical behavior of traditional men with power.”
“Old men,” Rose said.
“So we’re stuck with this old guy, it seems,” Ellen said. “I sort of liked being run around by the Commander, even if she didn’t consider me or my household worth spit in a hurricane. At least I understood where she was coming from, and how I could improve myself. With Mizar as boss, I’m not sure I count at all, or whether Focuses and Crows even count as people in his eyes.”
“He’s not going to be replacing the Commander,” Rose said, flagging one of the attending Transforms for another plate of the bay scallops. “Did you catch his talk with us? He asked us about our defenses and ideas, and didn’t offer any organizational suggestions, preparation strategies or anything.”
“I see it,” Fred said, and carved himself another wide slice of pork loin. “He’s a civilian, not a military officer. It’s too easy to stereotype him as a predator and think military. But that’s the same mistake you make if you look at Focus Biggioni, see ‘Focus’ and think politician. She’s got a hell of a good military mind, very good in a fight. She’d make some Noble a hell of a fighting Pack Mistress.” If the Noble could learn to cope with her appallingly strong charisma, that is. “I predict the Focus Council under her is going to be quite a bit more spit and polish than it was under Focus Keistermann.”
“So Mizar is Focus Keistermann’s replacement, sort of?” Crow Master Zero said.
“I think so,” Fred said. “No, that’s not right, either. He’s something new, something we’ve never had before. A visionary leader.”
“I’m going to puke,” Ellen said.
“You don’t like the idea of a Chimera leader?”
“Our society acknowledges male leaders and spits on woman leaders, Fred. No, I don’t like it. We might as well knuckle under to Enkidu, if you want real old-fashioned male leaders.”
Rose grunted. “We don’t have the luxury of liking it or disliking it,” she said. “Besides, I can’t see the Commander disappearing into the background. Sky and Lady Death? I can see them fading into the background, especially since Focus Rizzari never wanted to be in the limelight to begin with. But the Commander? Never.”
“So where is the Commander, anyway?” Ellen said. “I’d expect her input on our defensive ideas.”
“You didn’t catch that?” Rose said. “We’re Focus Rickenbach’s wedding party, save that the wedding is likely only a few days or weeks from now, down in San Jose. The Commander wants us to be doing what we would normally be doing if we had no hope of reinforcement. We’re not going to know what’s really going on until the fight starts. Mizar was here to write ‘target’ all over us.”
“That sucks,” Fred said.
“It does, at that,” Crow Master Zero said. “But it does clarify our responsibility. So, besides leaning on Focuses, what else are we going to be doing to prepare?”
Rose used her juice-drawing capabilities to draw a glowing map of the Bay Area on the table, and the four of them leaned forward and started to plan in earnest. “To start with, we need to lean on Inferno some more,” Rose said. “Get more of them involved, with more of us. For instance, your grace, we need an Inferno representative with us when we’re out leaning on Focuses. They do carry a lot of weight in the local Focus community.”
“Van Schuber, perhaps?” Fred said. The non-Transform diplomat was an antidote to the usual conflict of interest complaints they got when doing Focus diplomacy.
“That will work,” Rose said. She outlined the location of several recalcitrant Focus homes on the map. “Start with these.”
Fred nodded and took notes. This was going to be a long planning session.
Dolores Sokolnik (3/23/73 – 3/25/73)
“You’re not happy, are you, Scout?” Del said, one eye on the road, the other on the two Crows riding with her. They were going east on US-12, just a few miles south of the Snake River. The day was clear and cool, and the wind whipped her short hair as she drove. Even as her eyes watched the road, her metasense watched Arête. Every time she looked at him, she was astonished at how beautiful he was.
As far as physical appearance, he was more ordinary. Medium height, medium build, long, narrow face. His only unusual feature was red hair, several inches long and completely straight, standing away from his head like he had been electrocuted. The hair was something she thought of as part of the physiology of a great many Crows, an aspect of Crow-ness only she recognized as real. He rode next to her in the passenger’s seat, and every once in a while Del glanced over at him and considered the idea of sleeping with him. The idea appealed, but Del couldn’t tell whether it was because the juice decided to make her suddenly interested in men, or because she was still comfortably high on juice and anything looked good.
“There’s something fitting about this,” Scout said. His voice was sad, and a little frustrated. “First it was Wrangler, now you, Arête.”
>
“Wrangler?” Del asked. “That’s Arm Sibrian’s Crow companion, isn’t it? What about him?” Crow relationships were as convoluted as the Focuses, not too surprising. Just to make them more opaque, they had their own male twist. On first glance each Crow stood alone, but when you dug beneath the surface, dozens of Crows appeared out of nowhere. Always.
“Uh, well, Del,” Scout said, stammering. “He was the first Crow to set his eye on you, back when you were Kali’s student. He lost track of you in the Pittsburgh mess, and when he found you again, he found me as well.”
“So what’s the problem?” As far as Del knew, a single Arm could produce enough dross to keep three or four Crows happy. She found herself tapping restlessly on the steering wheel and made herself stop. She had been doing that sort of thing a lot lately, and it bothered her. Now that she was losing her robotic self-control, she found she occasionally telegraphed every thought with her non-verbal reactions, not exactly the path to a pleasant existence for an Arm. Here she was almost a year past her transformation, and she needed to learn remedial self-control like some baby Arm. Amy, Del was sure, would find the problem hysterical.
The juice, Del decided, was just plain aggravating. She didn’t want to have to relearn basic skills. What’s more, she resented what the juice did to her sexuality. She was a lesbian, she liked women, and she didn’t want the juice to change her just because of a juice infatuation with one guy.
Even if he was beautiful, engrossing, distracting, and she couldn’t imagine living her life without him.
“You didn’t have a territory or home base, and kept moving around all the time,” Scout said. “It meant that there wasn’t enough dross to go around. Wrangler and I could make do, but only because we could leech off of the dross the rest of Supergirl’s army produced.” Supergirl was western Crow slang for Haggerty. Del barely suppressed the urge to giggle – she had the sudden mental image of a pride of lions leaving signs for the buzzards saying ‘carrion here!’ as they hunted. “The other reason it’s fitting,” Scout said, leaning his crossed arm on the back of the front seat and resting his chin on his hands, “is that Arête’s another of Chevalier’s coterie, same as Wrangler. I’m a follower of Hephaestus – rival groups, sort of.”
Hephaestus was one of the Crow Gurus who joined Amy’s band, supposedly freed to do so by his boss, Arpeggio. In the old days, he had been one of the Commander’s Crow friends. If Scout hadn’t told her of his connection, Del would have never guessed it. She had seen Scout and Hephaestus in the same room several times, and they never even acknowledged each other. Not at all how Arms or Focuses behaved. What’s more, Del didn’t understand how Crow hierarchies worked. The only thing she was sure of was that they weren’t anything an Arm would recognize as a hierarchy. Mentors and Gurus, for instance, didn’t appear to rank each other when dealing with anyone other than Crows – Thomas the Dreamer and Arpeggio, both of whom Sinclair referred to as Mentors, had introduced themselves as mere Gurus and never ordered the other non-Mentor Gurus around. Except, there was nothing ‘mere’ about a Guru. Guru was a significant title, with enough status associated with it that even the Crows thought it worth sharing with the outside world.
“So, Arm Sokolnik, have you decided on a territory?” Arête said. He had been extremely formal and careful with her since they bonded. Del wondered if he thought she would disappear on him if he didn’t take special care. He would relax enough to call her ‘Del’ eventually, Del decided, but in his own time, not on her schedule.
However, she didn’t have to go through all the preliminaries with him that she went through with Scout. Arête was a Crow Guru, and not only did he have steel nerves, he also had a steel spine. When Amy’s band headed out on the road this morning, for instance, Arête sat himself in the passenger seat of Del’s car. No invitation, no permission. He simply claimed the position.
Del wondered if he found their attraction as distracting as she did. Possibly he managed some level of self-control that was beyond her. Or possibly that impossible, magnetic attraction was as great for him as it was for her. Maybe he was sitting there watching her with his metasense as intensely as she watched him.
Maybe someday they would even talk about it.
“No,” she said. “There’re several possibilities, all of which have problems.”
“May I suggest Phoenix, then? I already know the Focuses and Crows in the…”
Del cleared her throat.
“I apologize, Arm Sokolnik,” Arête said. “May I ask which places you’re considering?”
“I’m considering Houston, Dallas, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Phoenix only if I can’t get any of the others. I’d prefer Los Angeles, but I’m not a senior Arm, and both Arms Keaton and Hancock have claimed Los Angeles as a home base at various times.” Del was surprised about how easy it was to talk about so personal a subject with the two Crows. There was something about them that invited openness – the attentive way they listened, maybe, or the way they were completely non-threatening. Communication was easy. Natural. As if Crows and Arms needed to confide in each other.
Which meant that Del had an obligation to help the two Crows in return, and she didn’t know squat about Crow politics. She needed to figure that out if she was going to be able to help her Crows. “These days, population size in an Arm’s territory is a measure of the Arm’s status and personality.”
“Do any Arms live in Los Angeles at the present time?” Arête said.
“Arm Webberly has a follower holding the place. Duval. She graduated from her training a couple months ago. Don’t you Crows know that already? I thought Crows knew everything.”
Arête laughed. Even his laugh was stiff and formal. The juice may have generated love, but trust was going to take a little longer. “It’s only been about three months since Kali held Los Angeles. It takes some time for information to pass through the Grapevine, especially in times of conflict.”
“Grapevine?” Del had found the term in Ma’am Keaton’s notes, and never understood it.
“The Crows’ loose equivalent of the Focus Network,” Arête said. “Though it’s little more than a convoluted letter writing circle, Arm Sokolnik.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Some of us are even brave enough to use telephones.”
Del let that comment sit for a while, and drove in silence. It was possible, she told herself, that she didn’t have half the understanding of Crows she thought. “So can you and Scout get along, or are you going to fight it out?” Del asked. With one Arm and two Crows from different factions, they were just asking for dominance issues, and Del wanted any such problems resolved early.
The two Crows looked at Del as if she was from another planet, an assessment Del didn’t bother to argue with. “It shouldn’t cause us any problems once you settle down,” Arête said. “In the meantime, we’ll cope.”
Well, they were Crows, not Arms. Del shrugged and moved into the passing lane to go around an old camper that was traveling slower than even Beth’s rattletrap household. A couple of Corpseriders slipped between Del and the camper, and Mickey the Motorcycle Mama waved at Del and sped ahead.
“So, Arête, since you’re a Crow Guru, what do you teach?” Del said. She knew far too little about Crows, especially Gurus, and if the juice was going to make her fall in love with them, she needed to fix that.
She wasn’t the only one who was curious about Gurus, Del noticed. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Scout lean forward. Guru curriculums apparently didn’t cross faction boundaries very well. Del added the tidbit of information to her small but growing pool of knowledge about Crows.
Arête nodded solemnly. “Business opportunities open for Crows. Mental stabilization techniques to allow Crows to interact with normal humans in business situations. Crow charisma uses.” He paused. “What I teach doesn’t sound like much, but without help, the average Crow needs about seven to ten years as a Crow under his belt before he can naturally cope with more stressful interactions
with normals.”
“Stressful?” Del said.
“For instance, obtaining a driver’s license. That sort of thing.” Del winced. “A great deal of what I teach involves self-analysis,” Arête said. “I help Crows figure out their personal strengths and weaknesses, both regarding personality and how their Crow transformation has altered them.”
“So do you have a lot of students?”
“I have four followers in Phoenix who consider themselves in my orbit, and I have two or three Crows coming through each year as official students. Also, I help others through letters and phone calls. As far as Gurus go, I’m relatively mundane, as opposed to someone like Hephaestus.”
Oh, really, Del thought. “So, Scout, what does Hephaestus teach?”
“Uh, good question,” Scout said. “All I really know is that whatever it is, I’m not ready. Hephaestus has me working on several exercises involving dross movement and separation, and when I can keep thirty dross pieces acting independently, I’m supposed to go back and visit with him. I’m up to three, so far.”
Ouch. “What’s your connection with him, then?” Del said.
“When I woke up as a Crow, he and two of his followers were there. They found me, somehow, during my transformation. He passed me over to Focus Rone, and she and her household cared for me while I got started.”
“You started off in a Focus household?” Arête said, his voice so high he squeaked. “I knew Hephaestus worked on radical Crow acclimatization techniques, but I didn’t know they involved Focuses.”
“Before the Commander and Shadow went public, it was all hush-hush, because there were too many Focuses and Crows who would go apeshit if they knew,” Scout said. “Rone is sort of a renegade Focus – she stays out of Focus politics and apparently lies to the other Focuses all the time. This wasn’t anything like Sinclair’s arrangement with Focus Hargrove – I was just a student, and except for the bit about consuming dross, they treated me like any other new male Transform. In any event, a couple of months after I transformed, the shindig in Pittsburgh started, and Hephaestus dragged his whole crew there to observe, including me. I found Arm Sokolnik in Patterson’s compound during the cleanup, and it was like she was the missing piece of an almost solved puzzle. I asked permission to follow her, and Hephaestus thought this was a grand idea.” Scout licked his lips. “I should also warn you that I’m sort of a test case. He’s been teaching new Crows the ropes for years, but he only started working on his new baby Crow research project about eighteen months ago. How to reduce the young Crow panics, what causes it, that sort of thing. Apparently, half the Crows in the country already know of me, because he wrote me up and spread the info all over. I guess I was some sort of success.”
An Age Without A Name (The Cause Book 5) Page 22