Lori nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“Everything?” The Madonna of Montreal was Anne-Marie Sieurs, the world’s first Focus, a secret to all but a few.
She nodded again. “I can sense her juice work on you; I’ve never seen anything so delicate and intricate. She even put my juice signature into it; if anything, it appears like I tagged you.”
“Is that what she did?” Zielinski whistled. Focuses couldn’t tag normals, but the Madonna of Montreal played by her own rules. Much of what Annie had done she did while he slept and she hadn’t explained a thing about any of it.
“Some of what she did,” Lori said. She sighed. “Okay, okay. My instincts say not to trust you because of this, but if I start distrusting her I might as well start distrusting myself.”
“So she’s been teaching you?” Zielinski said. That explained a lot.
Lori glowered at him. “Henry, this is difficult for me. Don’t make this any harder with your far too perceptive observations.” She tensed and his headache returned. “Why are you here?”
“Annie warned me not to chase down Carol,” he said. With a sudden twinkle in his eye he continued: “She seemed to think an arrogant bastard like me wouldn’t fit well with an Arm of Carol’s age. She didn’t think I’d have any problems fitting in here and dealing with you.”
Lori tensed. “You’re sitting there and purposefully provoking me so you can learn to better resist my charisma! Are you insane?”
He didn’t answer. This time he had resisted Lori’s overwhelming charisma.
Provoking Lori kept his cheating emotions at bay, the traitorous ones that thought amorous thoughts and wanted him to act on them.
Lori sighed and turned away. “Over time I can turn you inside out.”
“I’m counting on you trying.”
Zielinski prided himself at being an expert at hiding his feelings and emotions from others, an expert at putting on false fronts, and an expert at observing other people and reading them. Back in the Korean War, fresh out of medical school, he had developed a reputation as a killer poker player, someone to avoid if you wanted to stay attached to your money. Those talents hadn’t gotten worse in his years of normal medical practice.
Back then, he had been another medical doctor, but over time, he found himself involved with Transform Sickness epidemiology, then several Transform patients, then Transform Sickness itself. Later, he left standard practice and joined the medical research community, job-hopping from one research post to another, dealing with Transforms and Focuses. Those Focuses called themselves the first Focuses now, and many of them had developed a rather nasty distrust of any medical professionals. After they had noted his reluctance to sacrifice the well-being of his Transform patients in the cause of research, they had introduced him to the Network and he had picked up Network support for his research. Over time he became an expert on Focuses. After the first public example of Armenigar’s Syndrome in the United States manifested, he had angled his way into the more esoteric research effort of trying to understand and help Arms. He hadn’t been nearly as successful as he wanted, but his dealings with Focuses and Arms had forced him to greatly improve his already decent abilities at covering himself and reading others. With the Arms, it was a matter of survival. He had cadged training from many Focuses over the years, but none in Lori’s class.
“This is how you’ve gained that most annoying resistance to charisma, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps I’ll pick up enough new tricks while I’m here to keep Tonya from getting to me over the phone,” he said. “I’m getting real tired of that.”
Lori winced at his dig. “I’m rather rough, you know. Too academic and unpolished. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Being seduced by an Arm was rough. Being punished by an Arm was far worse. He suspected Lori didn’t know ‘rough’.
Of course, as Keaton would vulgarly point out, he might be making assumptions based on arrogance.
“As to why I’m really here? I’m not sure,” he said. “I’d thought with my Harvard career gone I was done with research, but she seemed to think I was just starting.”
“Oh, that’s just dandy,” Lori said, still steaming. “You want to take a gander at a Chimera hand? I got it from Carol.”
He nodded. “Connie told me the story and told me to keep it quiet.”
“Good. Do so,” she said.
Zielinski winced in pain. Nope, he couldn’t resist Lori’s charisma in any area related to household security. He made a mental note of that.
“I had a different idea,” he said. “Because of the first Focus’s contract on my life, working in your Boston College lab would be too much of a strain on your security.” He knew better than to even attempt that fight.
Lori gave him a raised eyebrow.
“Instead, I’d like to work on enhancing the Transform training techniques you use.”
Ann Chiron, Lori’s aide and Inferno household anthropologist, had mentioned that the Inferno Transforms felt they were underutilized, despite being the best-trained Transforms in the Northeast Region. Major Transforms had all these intriguing capabilities and the Transforms did not, and that didn’t seem fair. He agreed to look into it. Find the limits of what Transforms could do.
This wasn’t a question he could answer without a lot of groundbreaking work and research. In the early years of the Transform Sickness, people thought the Transforms mildly disabled, like people with more normal chronic diseases. Later, people figured out Transforms were healthier than normal, and also able to go without food and water for longer than normal, but with strange side effects.
“Ann’s talked to me about that, once or twice,” Lori said. “You’re thinking people-intensive work, not theoretical, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“Connie won’t let you do that. It would be too disruptive to the household economy.”
He understood. The household needed its people out earning money, not frittering away time on a low-probability research project. “Not if I worked with your teens and off-duty bodyguards who don’t have outside jobs.”
She opened her mouth to say ‘no’, but turned away and studied the Agatha Christie collection. “I have a world-class researcher on Transforms telling me he wants to research improved Transform training methods, which if he succeeds would greatly improve my household. You…you came up with this simply to see if I could resist, didn’t you?”
Lori was a Focus, and the household protection instincts lived deep in all Focuses. He had tailored his idea to match the situation at hand.
“I do believe in paying my own way,” he said.
Lori glanced at him, in challenge. “I certainly hope you can,” she said. Or she would think about selling him to the first Focuses, she didn’t say. He had successfully annoyed the Focus.
This gave a completely new meaning to the ‘publish or perish’ cliché, didn’t it?
Sky: November 3, 1967
Sky kicked the mud off his boots again and cursed the incessant rain. Rain didn’t bother him, but it made clean up so much harder. He had spent several of his earlier years as a Crow in the wilds of northern Canada. Cold, damp and wet hadn’t bothered him in so long he barely remembered what cold felt like. Once he cursed the rain sufficiently, he cursed his mission. If not for the mission, he wouldn’t be caught dead at this medievalist society campout. Tournament. Whatever these young kids called it.
What in the name of the blessed Buddha were a Focus and her entourage doing at such an event, anyway? At first, finding out they planned to attend seemed like pennies from heaven. Attending would give him a chance to appraise Focus Rizzari in neutral territory, let him get a feel for her before making his formal approach. Normally, he wouldn’t go to so much work to set up a first contact with a new Transform, but he was more than a little wary of Focus Rizzari. Given the seriousness of his mission, he didn’t want to blow the initial contact with any sort of Crow-ish panic, terror or crude japes.
Sky
stood about five ten, appeared stocky but weighed little. Despite his looks he wasn’t much of an athlete, save for the get-away capabilities possessed by every Crow. In the last several years he had let the rest of his wilderness-honed physical talents fade away. He had long straight black hair, which he now wore in a ponytail, to help blend in with his fellow young men and hide some of his exotic ancestry.
He went back to stringing leather thongs on the plywood mess that passed as a practice shield in these parts. He had borrowed a helm to use in the fighting, essentially a heavy-gauge steel pot with eyeholes, and padding inserted on the inside. His sword was rattan, wound with duct tape, like the others in the tourney. He didn’t want to think about the work required to produce the boiled leather armor many of these medievalists wore. If medieval armorers made armor the same way back in the old days, he was glad to be living in modern times. All this work would allow him to fight in the tournament and maintain the local color of his disguise.
He had planted his tent a little over a hundred yards from the Focus and her entourage, barely out of her range. He had no difficulty disguising himself from his target, but he slept a lot easier with the extra distance. He had decided against an in person conversation with his target for now, and interacting with her at a distance helped calm his terrors. Sky expected to be able to move from writing letters to an actual phone conversation after this.
It wasn’t his fault he fell head over heels in love with the Focus upon first seeing her at close range. These things happened. He had fallen head over heels for quite a large number of women since his transformation. There was no accounting for the juice. He had never fallen for a Focus before, though, and he had dealt with many Focuses in his career. Focuses were cranky, had Herculean jobs, shuttered their emotions, and were impossible to deal with. So, what was different about this Focus?
So far, he had no idea. If anything, she felt crankier than most through her exceptionally tight emotional shutters.
Sky shook his head and realized he had messed up the shield again. As he undid the leather thongs, his acute hearing picked up on an ongoing argument in the Rizzari pavilion. They wanted to push the issue of women fighters, and questioned the wisdom of doing so. Although openly here as Transforms, they worried that standing firm on the issue of women fighters would make Transforms unwelcome. Focus Rizzari’s group had cause to worry. Relative to the number of Transforms in normal society the medievalists had attracted far more than their share. He had overheard several normals among the medievalists carping about the Transforms taking over their society. The Transforms were clearly altering it. If what he heard was correct, football helmets had been good enough to protect the head last year. They certainly weren’t good enough when some athletic Transforms showed up to play. Of course, last year there had been too few medievalists on the East Coast to stage a tourney and they had to go all the way out west to UC Berkley. This year, they managed to hold a Boston Halloween tourney. The medievalist society’s popularity was growing.
Marde! One of his target’s Transforms headed his way, rather directly toward him. Sky quieted his momentary panic and wondered how he had screwed up, and whether he should do anything about it. He fought down his urge to run and ignored the woman coming up to talk to him.
“Hi,” she said, when she came to where he sat in front of his tent. “Mistress Evelyn.” She introduced herself by her society name.
“Lord Kasim Akbar El’Haj,” he said, giving his society name. All Christendom needed Moors like him to defeat, although his one-quarter Algerian heritage stretched the definition. His exotic appearance came from the one-half Thai. Or the quarter French. It didn’t matter; his fighting talents were that bad. Even with Crow senses and reaction time he hadn’t found anyone so awful at rattan sword-whacking, not counting a couple of underage MIT boys who should have still been in high school and perhaps hadn’t gone through puberty.
The Transform woman sat on a log about five feet away from him. Her voice was musical, her ratty brown hair hung in two long braids, and she dressed like Heidi. Like many of Focus Rizzari’s women, she was sturdy, almost overweight. Her Household certainly didn’t have any of the normal Focus household food problems. “So, Lord Kasim, we have a bet going on over in our pavilion. My lady says you’re a Transform hidden under a powerful Focus’s protections. Mistress Elaine says you’re a Goldilocks. I say you’re a Crow. Which of us nervy wenches is right, oh exotic one?”
He loved to listen to admiring women talking about his exotic features, his long face and strong jaw. He had never heard of a Goldilocks, though. “I must say that you and your compatriots have the advantage on me, m’lady, for all I know is that you and yours are fine flowers of womanhood, who have melted the heart of a wandering minstrel so far from his home.” He smiled. “Are your companions going to attend the open melee later this soggy afternoon, where brave and valiant fighting men are going to wade knee deep in mud to prove our worth as warriors?”
She blinked at him. “Crow.”
Calisse de crisse de tabarnak d’ostie de ciboire de testament! Now what? His mission wheezed like a new Transform trying to flee from an Arm. He needed some time to think and quiet those panicky urges to run.
“Of course,” Mistress Evelyn said, “having seen your fighting capabilities in the lists, I think all you’re going to be doing is cleaning mud off your helmet and armor as you watch the rest of the fight with us.” She smiled back at him, prettily, not meaning a tooth of her smile.
Then again, one could always choose to run.
“You are a lively one, aren’t you,” Sky said, watching his intricate plans go sinking deep into the mud of the tourney site. “Tell you what. I will admit to you freely that I am what you claim, yet at this time I will admit to being quite hesitant to introduce myself to your lady. How’s about we make a deal. You don’t tell your lady I’m a Crow and I will personally promise you I will get my nerve up and introduce myself to her posthaste, afterwards. For if you can guess that I’m a Crow, m’lady, you must also know that personal introductions are often hard for Crows, especially when Major Transforms are concerned.” If he didn’t get control of the situation right quick he would end up making a scene he would take years to live down. He might be a sturdy old Crow, but the panic always lurked in wait, itching to leap up and make his life miserable and Crow-like.
“What’s in this deal for me?” Mistress Evelyn asked. “Information would be best, cash if you have it. I’m bribable, but I don’t have infinite patience.”
This sort of grief he didn’t need. The way American Transforms dealt with each other was simply impossible. Ah. There was always distraction. “Mistress Evelyn, I find your manner both delightful and forward,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Surely there are many activities that could engage our more delicate natures besides fighting. For you are correct about…”
Lady Evelyn’s face turned beet red, and of all things, dross began to leak from her right abdomen, just under the rib cage. “What the fuck are you doing!” she said, dropping any medievalist pretenses. She grabbed his tunic and pushed her face right up against his. “You piece of shit,” she said, nose to nose. “Get the fuck out of my mind or I’m going to rip you apart limb from limb.”
Oops. Who did she think she was, an Arm?
“Uh, m’lady, I was engaging in nothing more than flirtatious banter while I fought down my panic and tried to come up with a usable plan B.” At this point, Plan Flee looked like the only available plan right now.
“You fucking rolled me.”
“I what?” What the hell did ‘rolled’ mean? The Canadian Transforms didn’t use the term. What had he done?
“You made me sexually interested in you.”
“Well, that’s what flirting is supp…”
She slammed him into the mud, a Crow made of matchsticks. “I’ve had it with you and your damned juice tricks.”
Juice tricks? He hadn’t done a thing, and certainly not with any of his dross
constructs. And why did that dross leak remind him of something?
He took a deep breath, fought down the urge to skunk the entire tourney site, and tried to stand. Instead, Mistress Evelyn picked him up like a sack of flour and slung him over one shoulder. Then she strode off back to her lady’s pavilion. He protested but Mistress Evelyn didn’t answer.
The stalk attracted hoots and catcalls and Sky’s face turned red. If he fought back, he would totally blow the assignment. Not an option. If he struggled, he would most likely get nothing more than a face full of mud. And yet more hoots and catcalls. If he used any number of his immense collection of Crow tricks, the results would be beyond calculation, likely ending up in a Major Transform vs Major Transform fight. He had no idea where a fight between a Crow of his current talents and a Focus of Rizzari’s talents would lead and he had no particular desire to find out. Even considering the possibility brought about a futile bit of Crow panic…and yet more hoots and catcalls. He took a deep breath, then another, to force the panic away.
Besides, this looked interesting, or at least good for some decent stories. If his luck continued in this vein, he would likely collect as spectacular a horror story as the one told by the last volunteer sent on this mission.
One thing was for certain. Lady Evelyn had him convinced the Society needed to allow woman fighters.
“I was right,” Lady Evelyn said, dumping him to the dirt at the Focus’s feet. The Focus’s men, um, in American terms, her bodyguards, brought down the canvas sides of the pavilion for privacy sake. Only the bodyguards weren’t all men. The white canvas enclosed almost a dozen people, all in their medieval costumes, a few canvas camp chairs, and a large assortment of imitation medieval weaponry in various states of repair.
“Perhaps,” Focus Rizzari said. She wore a long white dress with some sort of burgundy colored shorter dress over it, and her voice dripped sarcasm, as tough as her reputation foretold. His appearance didn’t improve her already bad mood. “Tell me what happened, Sadie.”
All Beasts Together (The Commander) Page 10