When he finally called a stop to the procedure, Amy collapsed in tears with her head in her hands and Parker walked over and sat by her with a glare at Zielinski. At one point about three quarters of the way through he thought she almost got it for a brief moment, even with his harassment, but she lost it again. Zielinski took another blood sample and ran both through the juice sampler. Right down through the Tuesday levels. He wrote down the results and asked Einstein, the normal kid on clerk duty for him, to go get the Focus. This was important.
Lori normally spent early Sunday afternoons in seclusion and woe to anyone who interrupted her thinking and meditation. Einstein would be okay; if Lori didn’t consider the interruption sufficiently important she would take her anger out on Zielinski, hopefully by assigning him more work. Neither Lori nor Connie understood how much they underutilized him. Working only as hard as the rest of Inferno was a vacation for him; whatever criteria Lori used for cherry picking her household Transforms, far-end workaholic wasn’t one of them.
Watching the faces of the Transform trainees as they tried to figure out what the crazy doc was up to this time, he was able to pick out when Lori came into the gym without turning. He timed it perfectly, assuming she would be peeved and long striding just about to…
“Breakthrough,” he said, and turned to Lori. “Transforms have a training optimum and I know how we’re going to find it.”
Lori stopped cold, only a few feet away. “Tell me what to do,” she said. She seemed bleary, distracted, her mind not at all engaged. Her presence reminded him of a lesser Focus, one whose household wheeled out of her closet to move the juice once a day, touching one triad at a time.
“How exactly can you control someone’s juice levels?” he asked.
She rubbed her temples for a moment to gather her thoughts. “I can sense down to four one thousandths of a point, if I use feedback juice pattern 52.”
Zielinski blinked in surprise. It took a full lab juice reader to measure so precisely. A Focus able to control juice to that precision shocked him. “Einstein, go wheel over the portable EKG unit,” Zielinski said. “Amy, we’re going to wire you up again.”
She looked up at him, wiping tears from her eyes. “Didn’t we do this last week, Doc?”
He nodded. “Lori, would you set up that juice pattern, please? Between your charisma, the EKG and the juice level, we should be able to find the optimum rather quickly, now I know what I’m looking for: minimum juice use at a constant training effort.”
They put the electrodes on Amy’s head. “What am I going to train this time?”
Parker frowned. “You don’t have to do this, Amy.” She shrugged.
“Same as before,” Zielinski said. Now Amy frowned.
“Okay. Let’s make this more interesting, since we have a crowd: three person juggling exchanges between you, me and Parker.”
“You? You juggle, Doc?”
“You’ll see,” Zielinski said. He tried not to smile. He didn’t like to talk about his own talents, but surely someone besides Lori should know his original medical specialty had been surgery, a subject he had taught at Harvard as recently as eighteen months ago. Juggling was one of the standard maintenance techniques he used to keep his hands and mind on the same page.
They juggled.
Lori adjusted juice and watched Amy’s face. Zielinski did behind the back and under the legs juggling passes, showing off and having a wonderful time doing so, all the while watching the EKG.
“There,” Lori and Zielinski said, together. They ran the exercise through the same point five more times, to make sure they had the right number.
“Thirty seven percent of the way between the functional optimum and the stimulation optimum,” Zielinski said. He felt like dancing. He had cracked it. He really cracked it. Three months of work, depression and stress, but he had cracked one of the biggest discoveries since Anne-Marie learned to move juice.
“You’re really going to be able to improve Transforms because of all that you did to me?” Amy asked.
“Yes, we really are.”
You want to train a Transform? You have to stick their juice numbers at the training optimum or they don’t train well at all. They trained worse than a normal if the numbers were well off the optimum, and when far off the optimum, training ate juice like an Arm ate breakfast.
Lori walked around like a zombie, shaking her head in disbelief. He couldn’t blame her. He had worked hard, for three months, to crack this tidbit of Transform life.
In this time he could have trained two baby Arms to viability, if he had the Arms and the access.
“We need to make sure it’s the same for everybody. Your turn, Jim.” Jim walked over, gave Zielinski the fish eye.
“How yah gonna torture me, Doc?”
“Flat footed baskets from a moving cart,” he said. Jim winced.
---
Lori walked with Zielinski around the back of the estate. Silent, deep in her thoughts, she clearly wrestled with something important. Cold drops from the morning’s rain dripped from the trees and Zielinski put his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. The rain hadn’t quite washed away the snow and now the temperature plunged again. They would probably get snow again tonight.
Before the walk she had focused her mind enough to cook up an elaborate juice pattern to allow one of her leadership crew to set a Transform at the training optimum when she wasn’t present. By setting the juice level with a juice pattern instead of in person the efficiency was terrible, which limited use to only three trainees at a time, and only six juice resets a day. Zielinski hung on her every word as she had explained, as juice patterns were normally a top-secret talent of the Focuses, not one he had ever penetrated in depth. He hadn’t known juice patterns could be triggered by Transforms, or by code words uttered by people like him. These patterns weren’t a panacea. For instance, if Lori didn’t reset the patterns weekly they would fall apart. You couldn’t run a household without a Focus, no matter what tricks you tried.
The Focus wore her ever-present shorts and halter top.
“What’s bothering you, Focus?” Zielinski asked.
The Focus didn’t answer. Zielinski let her think, brood, and stew.
“Have you ever wanted to just kick yourself?” Lori said, about five minutes later, as they passed the cabana for the third time.
“Many times,” Zielinski said. “Most recently, when dealing with the Arms.”
“I didn’t think your idea would work.”
Zielinski winced. “Why did you let me try, then?”
“I thought it would keep you occupied until something real came up.”
A shiver ran through him. “You thought you’d figured out as much as there was to figure out on the subject, didn’t you?”
Lori nodded, picked up a wad of soggy snow, made a snowball, and launched it at a fence. It fell short. “Why do you keep working on the Arm problem like you have, year after year, failure after failure, when you could just sit back and rip off discovery after discovery about Focuses and Transforms?”
“You, my grad students, my wife, my dean, half a dozen colleagues, and even Keaton have all asked me the same question: why not stay with Focuses?” Zielinski smiled. “My answer is always: if not me, then who? The catty answer is that it’s too dangerous with the first Focuses suppressing research.”
“But?”
Zielinski shrugged. “You already know the real answer: your cause. All of the Major Transforms need to get on their feet and contribute before the Apocalypse point arrives, before the number of Transforms take off. The Arms are a huge piece of the puzzle. What use is an Arm, anyway? Why should Arms exist? Nothing as improbable as an Arm should exist in nature. If you and Van Reijn’s theories are correct, Arms evolved, or were domesticated, if you look at it a different way, long after our ancestors learned to talk and had elaborate social organizations. Consider how tricky it is to develop an Arm to maturity. Their worth has to be commensurate to th
e pain the Arms, and those helping them, go through.”
He couldn’t even put into words how much he wanted to be out helping Carol.
“Yet you failed. The system destroyed you.”
“No. I succeeded with Hancock. Then the system destroyed me,” Zielinski said. “Not surprising, considering the power of the Arms.” He paused and closed his eyes for a moment, willing to confide in an area where he hadn’t been willing before. “Back when the Focus Council told the Network ‘no more research into personal Focus capabilities, stop here’, after the Julius rebellion, I realized no matter what I did, I would eventually run afoul of the first Focuses. It actually took longer than I originally feared.”
Lori scuffled damp snow and pushed it in little mounds.
“I know your worries,” she said. That she would sell him out. “Given what the other Focuses have done to you over the years, I didn’t expect you to believe I would never do such a thing. Now, though…”
“Yes?” Zielinski asked, quiet.
“Your success here has bought you a lifetime membership in Inferno,” the Focus said. For a second she raised her eyes to the heavens. “I’m hoping you can finally relax around me.”
“I’ll try, Focus.”
Lori sighed. “What you want is a way to help the Arms, especially Hancock.”
He suspected he was that easy to read right now.
“I can’t lie to you,” he said. “If I could help, I would.”
“Give it some thought, then,” the Focus said. “Not about leaving Inferno, but what Inferno and I can do to help the Arms.”
“Thank you.” He had earned himself a big favor.
Now all he had to do was think up some way Inferno might be able to help the Arms.
Enkidu: January 23, 1968 – January 26, 1968
The shack in the forest was long gone. In its place, Enkidu had built a crude stockade of logs, forty feet square. He and his Gals had leveled and tamped the dirt down inside. All he needed for shelter was a lean-to in one corner and another lean-to in another corner for his Gals. Beasts they were and beasts they would remain.
The setting sun cast long shadows into the stockade. Enkidu smiled and watched as Heidi and Sue fought. Both screamed at the other, clawing, biting and snarling. Once he had needed to keep all of his Gals but Cleo penned up. Those days were also long gone. These days his Gals were bound to him through Cleo. He no longer had to fear them running, escaping.
Progress.
Heidi went after Sue’s neck and got a good grip with her teeth. She shook Sue’s neck, trying to break it, but to no effect. Both were Monsters, Heidi one of the big chimps, Sue a four legged scaly thing like a giant lizard. Sue’s hind claws ripped at Heidi’s gut and laid it open. With a yelp, Heidi fell back, Sue at her neck.
“Hold!” Cleo said. Both stopped at the sound of Cleo’s voice. “You win, Sue.”
Heidi whimpered, still on her back. Sue hissed, threatening and superior. Cleo looked over at Enkidu, and he nodded. “Heidi, go to the Master for healing.”
Heidi crawled to Enkidu, leaking blood into the dirt of the yard. Without healing Heidi would die. The Wandering Shade said older Monsters healed like Hunters but more slowly, at about twenty percent of Hunter speed at best, but none of his pack was that old. It took almost two and a half years before a Monster showed any enhanced healing abilities.
Heidi stopped at Enkidu’s feet. She whimpered, pleading.
“I’ll heal, if you agree to stop stealing the other Gals’ food, Heidi.”
Heidi nodded. Heidi would never speak again, but the new Laws let her understand spoken words without difficulty. Her mind hadn’t become inhuman, just her vocal apparatus. Nothing a Monster needed, anyway.
Enkidu knelt and mounted Heidi, visualizing her as whole as he did so, the same trick he used when he healed himself. By the time he and Heidi finished their yowling pleasure, he had patched her back together. Not fully healed, but healed enough so she wouldn’t die, and would heal normally like any other Transform.
The Gals appreciated this method of healing much more than his other, where he bit out their wounds.
Either form of healing cost élan, but even with only six Gals he had more than enough élan to heal. These days.
---
“So, what’s this about a visit?” Cleo said. The iridescent scales around her eyes glistened in the moonlight. She cuddled up against him in the cold of the night, under the shelter of his lean-to. Neither of them cared about cold, but the companionship was comforting in the still darkness. In the other lean-to, the Gals mostly slept, in their own companionable pile, while the night noises of rustling trees and small wildlife drifted in from outside.
Cleo might look like a lizard-woman, but inside, according to the Wandering Shade, she was still a warm-blooded mammal. She was only part Monster, stabilized so she could still speak. Quite intelligent – but she had been that, even before the recent changes. Now, she was flat-out brilliant. She could read as well as Enkidu, for instance, better than she could as a normal woman. Same as Enkidu.
“I saw it in the cold winter sunset, smelled it on the wind. The Wandering Shade is coming, and this time he’s bringing someone important with him.”
“Another Chimera? Like Torma?” Cleo found Torma, the fallen Stalker, quite intriguing. She liked the monstrous side of creatures.
“No. Someone else. Something else.”
“Who else is worthy?” Cleo said. Growled. She feared competition.
She had always been his best Gal. Now, she had become something more, something they had no name for. Enkidu, experimenting during an élan draw and trying to prove his worth to his Master, had found a way to give Cleo the entire Law. The Wandering Shade knew of Enkidu’s trick, but the Shade had never seen Cleo in her new form, with her new mind and capabilities. These days she had power as well as smarts; like an apprentice Hunter she feared losing any newly gained status.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to find out. Are you going to behave?”
Cleo laughed, an oddly human sound to come from so monstrous a mouth. “Me? Why should I? I like what you’ve helped me become. I’d rather be dead than go back.”
“I like it, too. But the Wandering Shade may not like it.” The Wandering Shade never had anything good to say about women. He hated the Arms and the Focuses, and most especially the way some Focuses enslaved their Transform men.
Cleo growled. “That’s not for him to say. You’re my Master.”
“I’ll protect you as best I can,” Enkidu said. “But the Wandering Shade’s my Master. What he says, I do.”
“You can argue with him, the way I’m arguing with you.”
“True.” That had been the biggest change, after he gave Cleo the entire Law. Her slavish devotion to his every word had gone away. Now they were more like husband and wife. If she disagreed with a suggestion, he would hear about it. She would obey, eventually, but he had to listen. She had good suggestions, too. Sometimes.
---
The Wandering Shade arrived three hours after dawn, wearing the uniform of a state trooper, the first time he had dressed so, as far as Enkidu remembered. He always dressed as a lawman, though. His companion was another man, a tall saturnine fellow, what Enkidu would have called black Irish in the old days, before he transformed. They both entered Enkidu’s stockade as if they owned the world.
“Master,” Enkidu said. He bowed, sniffed, and growled. The other man, dressed in hiking boots, jeans and a dingy blue winter coat, was a Crow.
Enkidu hated Crows. What the hell was the Wandering Shade doing with a Crow?
“Your friend here doesn’t like me,” the newcomer said.
“Stand,” the Wandering Shade said, to Enkidu. “Show proper respect for my friend.”
Enkidu stood. Cleo, two paces behind him, stood as well. The rest of the Gals retreated to their lean-to. “If you insist, Master. What respect do you deserve, Crow?”
The newcomer turned to Wanderi
ng Shade. They signaled to each other, with their bodies, in some manner foreign to Enkidu. Disquieting and annoying. Enkidu wondered again what form of Major Transform his Master was. He refused to say, always. Enkidu suspected there were other types of Major Transforms who remained hidden, the rare ones. The True Masters.
The Wandering Shade certainly hid well. Enkidu only saw him if the Wandering Shade permitted.
After the non-verbal confab the newcomer turned to Enkidu. “I’m named Athabasca, Hunter. I’m a Crow Guru.”
An older Crow, then. Enkidu backed off in sudden fear. Instincts. Older Crows were dangerous to a Hunter, at least in the opinion of Enkidu’s instincts. He hadn’t actually ever met one.
“I’ll cause you no harm, sir. My claws…” Enkidu said, about to finish ‘remain sheathed’. Instead, Athabasca turned to Enkidu with a glazed half-distracted stare and Enkidu’s muscles turned to water. Enkidu fell to the ground with a thump.
“Hunter, you’re putty in my hands,” Athabasca said. “You will cause me no harm because to me, you’re harmless. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Crow Guru, sir,” Enkidu said, horrified, able to talk only with difficulty, forcing the words out one at a time. Athabasca smelled faintly of fear and Enkidu understood. Athabasca was terrified of him. He had to prove his control, violently, to quiet his Crow-ish fears. Whatever the Wandering Shade was, he had no Crow-ish fears.
“Stand, then,” Athabasca said.
Enkidu stood.
“Master?” Enkidu said. “Is this Crow your master?”
The Wandering Shade laughed and laughed, while Athabasca waited, puzzled.
“In your terms, Enkidu, I’m his Master. In his terms, he’s chosen to follow me. Neither of us are Beast Men and we work differently,” the Wandering Shade said. “He isn’t bound by the Law, as are the both of us. I’ve asked Athabasca to examine you and the unexpected things you’ve done, to give me an independent set of eyes and ears. I’m also here to pass along some news.”
All Beasts Together (The Commander) Page 25