A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  Tonya repressed a shiver. This reeked of more behind-the-scenes politics, which meant there were events going on she would not learn about until after the fact, if then. They sent her in blind, on purpose, so if on the off chance the wrong part of the FBI grabbed her, she couldn’t spill anything about the hidden first Focus political games. If anything went wrong she would be the perfect on-site fall guy. “That’s mildly unexpected, given my appointment.”

  “Yes, it is,” Polly said. “Take care of yourself.”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” Tonya said. False bravado, but needed. The politics involved here were deadly. In addition, both Keaton and Hancock had escaped from detention centers before. Tonya suspected it was only a matter of time before Hancock escaped custody again. If Hancock escaped under Tonya’s watch, and she hadn’t found a way to get a handle on Hancock and stop the Arm’s attacks and kidnappings of Transforms, her political career would be finished.

  On the other hand, she saw a lot of upside potential here. Getting a handle on Hancock before the inevitable escape would be a huge feather in Tonya’s cap. “Thank you, Polly. Unfortunately, I’ve got to go. I need to be in the CDC tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, of course. Go.”

  Polly paused. “Tonya? Be careful,” Polly said. “I’ve been dreaming. There’s more to this than meets the eye. The new power among the Transforms I’ve warned you about was involved in Hancock’s capture and may also be involved with the CDC.”

  Tonya’s own capabilities with the dreaming were limited at best, but Polly’s skills went far beyond normal. “You’re saying this might be a physical trap for me?”

  “Yes, I am. Keep on your toes, Tonya.”

  “I will,” Tonya said. “Thanks.” Polly’s warnings backed up her intuitions, but forewarned, Tonya was confident she would be able to handle whatever came up.

  Carol Hancock: March 17, 1968

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” McIntyre said.

  We were taking a break from the medical testing and formal interrogation, giving me some time to exercise. I wasn’t happy about my injury-limited amount of exercise, but I suspected I would be able to keep any unwanted muscle growth in check even with the limited amount of exercise I was capable of. Listening to the doctors and their measurements, I realized I had built up some slack – I had lost thirty-two pounds since my last self-checked weight in Chicago, almost all from my muscles. In addition, my time here in captivity had noticeably drained my already meager fat resources; I now, for the first time, approached Keaton’s paper-thin-skin anatomy model look.

  McIntyre, still the only member of the investigatory team willing to relax around me when I wasn’t chained up, had been gently questioning me about life as an Arm. He wasn’t interested in the details of how I hunted. He wanted to understand my motives and motivations.

  “About the juice?”

  He nodded. He sat in a wooden chair against the left wall and watched me do triceps presses. “Uh huh. I know far too many technical details about the juice, all of which I can quote backwards and forwards, but the science doesn’t give me any real understanding of what’s going on. I’m not trying to harass you with this, but, hell, I need food and water to survive but I don’t go psychotic about them when I don’t get them.”

  There was something slightly wrong with McIntyre’s psychological state, something I couldn’t put my finger on. Yes, I had won him over in a few areas, but based on what I had learned of him, I could have only won him over in the areas he already leaned my way. Which didn’t make any sense. What changed since St. Louis? Back in St. Louis, I had been little more than an animal to him. I had gutted him in my escape. In my capture, I had killed over a dozen law enforcement officers, some of them FBI and his compatriots. He should have a visceral core of unassailable hatred buried inside. I couldn’t find it. He shouldn’t lean my way on any subject.

  I did manage to dig up only one buried motivation, part of the reason he was willing to be in my cell with me: survivor’s guilt, leading to a mild death wish. Everything else remained opaque.

  “Don’t underestimate what humans are like when they’re at real risk of starving or suffocating or dying of thirst,” I said. “Seriously, though, to me juice is a stronger need than food and water. Even stronger than the need for air. If I’m consciously in control of myself – which is nearly all the time after over a year and a half of being an Arm – the need for juice isn’t strong enough to override my morality, honor or good sense.” Don’t drive my juice level down to nothing, though; it’s not me who’s in there thinking.

  “Which in my mind puts you above most of humanity,” McIntyre said.

  I turned to him and gave him a quizzical look. “What, you’ve decided you like me or something?” Why the fuck didn’t he accept my offer for sex when he had the chance?

  He leaned his chair backwards to balance on the two rear legs. “Respect, not like,” he said. Interesting, and true, based on the signals he gave off. “In St. Louis you were far too weak to respect. Something’s changed in you since, something I’ve seen before. There are quite a few ex-soldier, ex-officer Agents. The best of them are like you, and, no, I don’t particularly like most of them either. I do respect them.”

  “Credit the change to Keaton,” I said. I switched to the pull-up bar. I still couldn’t do a one handed pull-up with my left arm without risking my still healing shoulder. “You wouldn’t want her to train you, though.”

  “Wrong, Carol,” McIntyre said. “If you cut out the psychotic breaks and the petty sadism, she could charge a mint for her training, to my kind of people.”

  Oooh. Given enough time, I might still be able to convince him to break me out of here to get said training from me. Not yet, though.

  “But it isn’t just Arms who have juice issues. I’ve seen some strange juice effects on the psychology of Focuses and everyday Transforms over the years.”

  I nodded. “I can tell you what I feel, but there’s no way you can truly understand what I’ve experienced.” I switched to one-armed pull-ups with my right arm, thinking of Focus Teas and the never-ending goddamned whispers. “The juice sings a never ending song, a choir of a million voices, an endless murmuring that the juice is real, not you. The eternal lyrics murmur ‘more’ and ‘more’; and you fight the want and the more you fight the want the more those seductive lyrics dig themselves into your every thought, until the song of the juice is the only song you can hear. At that point you realize what a rough beast the juice is, what a demanding master this juice monkey is, and then you realize you belong to the juice – and the juice will never ever let go.”

  “You’re a junkie, then, and all Transforms are junkies,” McIntyre said. The front legs of his chair hit the concrete floor with a thunk. The tone of his voice implied a dark victory, victory over himself. McIntyre didn’t respect junkies, even those who could function despite their addiction.

  I met his gaze and realized I had lost him, at least for the moment. Now he understood the juice at the gut level; before, he just parroted the words. Transform Sickness was a problem; the only logical solution the total eradication of the Transforms. Yet, McIntyre was a strong man with a strong consistent internal code, able to make reasoned judgments based on his internal code in the face of complex, ambiguous and ever changing situations, and his still-human still-moral gut had qualms about such a murderous approach.

  As usual, he played me a little as I played him a lot. I too had grown to respect him, as an enemy.

  In a strange way, he had become mine.

  “Too simple,” I said, finishing my pull-up set. “What recreational drug can turn a weak defenseless housewife into what I am now?”

  I had no idea if the seed I planted with my comment would ever amount to anything.

  ---

  Focus Teas marched into the viewing area early, around 10:30 in the evening, while I finished a late evening meal.

  “Carol, let’s do it,” she said. �
�I’ve got the keys and the codes and my people have secured a path out.”

  I had never seen her agitated, but agitated she was.

  “I’m ready,” I said, and stood.

  “Come over here and accept my tag.”

  “No tag,” I said.

  She stopped in place. “But the tag is part of the agreement…”

  “No tag.”

  “I can’t help you if you don’t take my tag,” Teas said, more than a little dismayed. “And I do want to help you.” Something was wrong, and she wasn’t saying.

  I studied her intently. She contemplated violence. Toward me. I edged to my left, toward a part of my cell that wasn’t out of sight, but did use the thickness of the Monster-proof net and the obtuse angle to keep me out of firearms danger.

  “I don’t trust you to hold my tag and treat me well,” I said.

  “I promise, upon my honor as a Focus, that with my tag you will be a part of my household, and I will not only treat you well but work to preserve you in all the ways I can.”

  I couldn’t easily read her tonight because of her agitation, but I did read her people. They didn’t put much stock in any promises their Focus made. She had betrayed too many of them over the years.

  “You’ve got a deadline,” I said. She didn’t answer, but I read the answer to my question in her people as well: yes. “Did the Feds fire you?” No. “Ah. The Focus Council decided to take over?” No. “The first Focuses themselves fired you?” Yes.

  “That’s none of your business, Carol,” Teas said. “You’re making this hard for me to save your life. You must let me save you!”

  “I have a counter-proposal,” I said. “I don’t know you well enough to trust you, but there is a Focus I trust, one you work with.” I wanted out of here, too. Right now. I would do almost anything to end the whispers. “Focus Lorraine Rizzari. I’ll take her tag.” Pledging myself to Lori made me queasy. If this worked out Lori would own me, probably for longer than Keaton had, and by doing this, I might be driving a permanent breach between Keaton and me. On the other hand, I did trust Lori and her household’s mission.

  My statement still made me queasy.

  A flash of jealous rage washed over Focus Teas’ body, which I hadn’t expected. “Rizzari? She and her delusions of rebellion? She’s little more than a pawn of Suzi Schrum and she’s the last person I’d ever want to see tag you.”

  I had struck a nerve I didn’t know existed in Teas. I had pegged her as a dilettante, a flake, but in her hatred of Schrum, she was driven and fully committed. Worse, I realized that when Teas said she would use me to keep recalcitrant Focuses in line, Lori was her number one target.

  My dance with Teas had always been a lost cause. Damn it!

  “Sorry,” I said. “No tag.”

  Teas actually shook her fist at me (in a lady-like fashion). “You’re a fool! You’re making the same mistake you made when you turned down Arm Keaton’s offer to break you out of the St. Louis Detention Center.”

  So the Focuses had learned the details of my story? Crap. This also meant Focus ‘Officer Canon’ had learned the hidden parts of my story as well, would use them against me, and probably had. Double crap!

  Oh, and yes I did fully appreciate the irony of the situation. Teas was most surely correct.

  “You want me out as an ally? Release me. No tag.”

  From the far end of the viewing room, by the doorway out, Teas stopped and glared at me. I sensed a rustling in my juice, as if my juice slipped away. What was she doing to me! No! My Arm instincts kicked in and I was two steps closer to Teas when I realized the closer I got to her, the easier she could steal my juice. Until I got to her and drew her juice, my way.

  The instinct was right if there wasn’t a goddamned Monster-proof net in the way, but in this situation those instincts were flat out wrong.

  “Get your fucking hands off my juice, bitch!” I screamed and hit her with my full predator. “I’ll take your intestines out of your motherfucking eye sockets if you don’t let go!” Full predator wasn’t enough; I did something I had never done before and burned juice into my predator effect.

  I have no idea what my trick looked like from Teas and her bodyguards’ perspective, but the effects were spectacular: they panicked, screamed and ran. They even left the door to the viewing area open behind them as they fled.

  “Fuck,” I said, temper shot. I tossed my own cell, making an unholy racket and ungodly mess. The bitch and my own burn had cost me two points of juice. “Fuck fuck fuck!” I wasn’t mad at myself; I hadn’t screwed up, although if Teas had accepted my offer to release me without a tag I would have had some hard choices ahead if I wanted to keep any sort of alliance or working relationship going with her. Lori was off limits. Period. So was Gilgamesh. Hell, so was Keaton.

  Dammit. I had almost been seduced into a position where I would have to choose between my word and harming my friends. Luckily, the Focus bitch didn’t trust my word.

  I now understood Keaton’s hostile paranoia toward the leading Focuses. They were indeed poison.

  This wasn’t one of my better days.

  I predicted my coming days would be far worse.

  Gilgamesh: March 17, 1968

  The beach proper at Pacifica State Beach was windswept and sandy, pounded by high surf, with no cover at all. After a little searching, Gilgamesh realized the beach property extended over to a rocky point and into an estuary marsh. He climbed into the rocks on the slope of the rocky point, hid himself and waited, listening to the endless thunder of the surf in the night.

  He wondered why he was here. He didn’t like diplomacy. However, he had decided to get other Major Transforms involved in his problem, and letters and phone calls wouldn’t suffice. He had at least met the Skinner in person before; their prior meeting made this meeting easier, despite the horror of their first encounter. Only, she wasn’t Tiamat. The Skinner was Tiamat’s sadistic teacher, a person capable of deeds as horrific as Enkidu and the other Beast Men. She wouldn’t be ‘kind and friendly’ in the slightest, and this meeting would most likely be absurdly stressful.

  Yet, the Skinner was right, in her earlier phone comment to him. All Major Transforms were dangerous and deadly. Being scared out of one’s mind, at least for a Crow, was merely the price of entry into this game. A price he would likely repeatedly pay.

  He meditated, monitoring his metasense, until he picked up the Skinner two miles away, driving down State Highway 1 and into the State Beach. She parked, metasensed around, shrugged, grabbed a huge satchel from her car, and trotted down to the beach. Seeing nobody she began to walk toward him.

  She couldn’t have metasensed him; she didn’t possess the range. This showed her mind at work. This sort of clandestine meeting fit as much into her area of expertise as his. Anything he planned, she planned better. She possessed years more experience.

  When she reached the end of the beach, less than 100 yards outside of her metasense range from him, she scrambled up in the boulders, found cover, and began to strip off her weapons. Out came far too many knives, firearms, batons and of all things a long thin wire she kept in her back pocket. As she dumped these weapons into her satchel he realized, with a metasense scan, that she carried another two hundred pounds of weaponry and ammo in the satchel, everything from a huge automatic weapon to a rather long wide-bladed sword.

  Gilgamesh was both honored and appalled.

  After dropping her weapons she clambered up the rocks, heading toward him, stopping only when he relaxed the protection that damped his glow, flashing her metasense.

  “We should find someplace more comfortable,” she said.

  “This is fine, ma’am,” Gilgamesh said. He found ‘ma’am’ generated a better response from both Tiamat and the Skinner than any of the other honorifics he tried. “You can come up closer. I won’t run.”

  He metasensed her emotions at work: puzzlement, problem solving and growing wariness. With only a minor hesitation she clambered u
p to within fifty feet of him. She picked out a boulder, giving her good sighting all around her, and sat. “So I was wrong,” the Skinner said. “You do have physical advantages over Arms.”

  Instinct had put him on the rocky slope, not thought, but she was right. She outweighed him two and a half to one, if not more, and would have a devil of a time chasing him on this slope. He would be able to run on a steep rocky slope as easily as running on a similarly steep ramp.

  “The better to run away.”

  “The better to fight.”

  She didn’t appear to be worried, though. Hell, if he read her emotions right, she half expected a fight and, like a Beast Man, looked forward to it. In a moment of horror, he suddenly saw things from the Skinner’s perspective. This would be a perfect place for him to ambush her. Or arrange for others, say police or FBI, to do the same.

  He stood and raised his hands, showing himself to her. “All I have is a knife, a memento to remind me of who I am when the juice is low.”

  The Skinner didn’t respond. She watched him closely, then made a show of relaxing. “If you’re going to deal with us Arms, Gilgamesh, you need to start thinking like us, before you do things like set up a meeting spot in an obvious kill zone. At least you’re smart enough to realize you made a mistake.”

  He sat back down. “Ma’am. Shall I tell you my story?” No small talk, not with the Skinner. With Tiamat he craved small talk.

  “Absolutely, in the fullest detail you remember,” the Skinner said.

  Gilgamesh started. This wasn’t his best storytelling. His hypervigilance saw to that. He also followed Shadow’s list of things not to mention to an Arm: his ability to sense emotions, how many different things he could follow with his metasense, the range of his sick-up, or the fact non-Transforms tended to ignore Crows unless the Crows made themselves known.

  His story took almost two hours to complete, in the detail the Skinner wanted.

  “…and with Enkidu it’s personal. Once he knew it was me, he sprinted after me and left the other Beast Men behind. I was on the expressway by the time he caught up to me. He ran at about forty miles an hour to start with, but sped up to sixty miles an hour during his final approach. At his full speed he couldn’t turn quickly; he took fifty yards to complete his turn so he would be able to run down my truck. My truck didn’t have enough acceleration to outrun him, but when he approached I did my sick-up out the truck’s side window, the largest one I’d ever done. Enkidu ran into the sick-up and stumbled slightly, enough for me to get away.”