“What about emergencies?”
Lori paused, and shrugged. “Hell. In an emergency, I’ll eat the pain. Emergencies are different.”
“Huh.” Keaton turned away. “You still owe me for this, Focus. Later. We need to get out of here. Tina, you and I are going to have some fun when this is all over.” Tina blinked and caught her breath, interested and afraid at the same time. They all knew what an Arm needed after drawing juice; if they hadn’t known before, they did after Sky gave them many graphic descriptions of exactly how horny an Arm could get after a kill. He didn’t think they believed the bull moose story, though.
Lori just shook her head. “Later today we need to see about getting some ATF uniforms,” she said. “We need a new approach to this problem and I have the solution.”
Keaton grunted, apparently agreeing with the idea. “Just cool your hot little head,” she told Lori, then, improbably, smiled. High on juice. “I’ve figured out exactly what I’m going to exact from Tonya. She gets to hold the tagged Transforms while I feed them to Hancock. Lots of them.”
“Why?” Lori said.
“Because I’m betting Hancock’s going to be in withdrawal before we can get her out of this mess.”
Sky’s heart quailed when Lori shrugged, refusing to take that bet.
Gilgamesh: March 25, 1968 – March 26, 1968
Clarity grew in Gilgamesh. If he wanted to be an active Crow, he must gain control of himself. Specifically, control of the panic. Sky suggested practice and meditation. He didn’t think he was quite up for any practice today. So, meditation.
He stocked himself up on dross and meditated.
At first the meditation did nothing for him, but after forty five minutes, he realized he had opened up his metasense to a whole new range of perceptions. Raw, kaleidoscopic perceptions that dipped and swirled like the aurora, that hummed and bubbled like the cheese on a hot pizza. They engaged all his senses, out of his control, all highly random and inconstant. He noticed a definite ‘downwind’ component to the new sensations, so part of some of them clearly came through his sense of smell. The extra sensations reacted to daylight; they had to be electromagnetic, like shortwave radio. The two brightest sources he metasensed-at-range were the two Arms, but he had no sense for range. When he ‘metasensed something’, was it next door? A hundred miles away? A thousand?
He turned his sense into himself and was shocked at what he found. He was a juice producer, just like a female Transform and the Housebound. Like the Housebound, though, his innate Transform capabilities used juice, in fact, used more juice than he produced. What innate Transform capabilities used juice at that rate? After experimentation, he realized his metasense ate the most juice. After a few minutes of work, he figured out how to turn off his metasense.
Well, ‘off’ lasted all of 15 seconds. The panic attack he induced by turning off his metasense lasted nearly two hours. From this, he decided that his metasense was always on, even if he didn’t pay attention, and if a nasty enemy came into range he wouldn’t miss him, no matter what. Interesting information but no progress in controlling his panic.
Next, he tried practice. He tried again to produce his controlled dross effects in an uncontrolled environment and had no more luck than before. He kept trying. He might master this with practice, but he feared he would die of old age first.
Next, he tried walking up to a random person’s house, a random normal person, attempting to do door to door sales. The fiasco with Focus Gladchuck would be his last, he vowed. He picked up a bunch of magazine subscription offers from a drug store magazine rack and walked a city street in San Jose trying to sell magazines.
He worked on this, off and on, until he could canvas an entire block before hitting the edge of panic. Of course, he never sold anything. In between attempts, he played with meditation, trying different tricks to use meditation to reduce his panic.
What he found disturbed him. The first meditative state he found, the metasense kaleidoscope, didn’t at all help reduce his panic. The metasense kaleidoscope actually made his panic worse. Four or five hours of the kaleidoscope meditation left him jumpy and unable to deal with other humans at all. It felt like a preparatory step for a fight, or at least a Crow’s fight, which meant run, run, run.
The more he did the kaleidoscope meditation, the easier it became. He didn’t know if this was a general Crow property or something specific to him. In fact, kaleidoscope meditation sounded exactly like the sort of thing he shouldn’t write about in his letters.
The third time he meditated kaleidoscopically, he started to pick up on locations a little, big map dots. The fifth time he meditated kaleidoscopically he managed to spot a third Arm. He placed her somewhere in Canada, around Calgary or Edmonton.
For his next trick, he paid far too much money and attended a transcendental meditation seminar. Although he hid in the back of the room, he learned enough from the lesson to realize that their trick, to meditate upon a mantra, did reduce his panic. He meditated the rest of the night and found he had reduced his panic enough to, for instance, sit through a movie in a crowded movie theater without panicking.
His discovery was nothing to sneer at. One of the most common complaints among Crows, in the letters he received, was their inability to see movies save at odd hours, just before the movies finished their movie theater runs. All the art they were missing! A tragedy.
Also, nearly always a prelude to another attempt to deconstruct some other Crow’s manifesto on Marxist-Leninist critiques of imperialism and colonialism.
After a trip to the Skinner’s graveyard to draw dross, he realized what Crow panic was. Crow panic wasn’t fear of the unknown or fear of a specific external unknown or external threat. Crow panic was an internal conflict between his conscious self and his subconscious self. The animal part of him, trumped as a normal human, had come crawling out from under its subconscious rock using the power of juice and taken over. Fight or flight in a Crow trumped rationality. Any enemy within sick-up range got the dross attack (fight), any enemy outside of sick-up range got the fleet feet response. In response, rationality fled to the uppermost reaches of the conscious mind, where the Crow mind would endlessly digress upon such things as whether photography should be considered a coequal branch of the creative arts with painting and drawing, or why cosmologists from the Western cultures couldn’t come up with any basic theories that did not ape Judeo-Christian biblical sources.
Gilgamesh concluded, at least for him, meditation upon a mantra subordinated the biochemical and instinctive aspects of the brain to the wishes of the ego, and tamed, or at least worked to tame, his animal part. The animal part should be subordinate to his conscious responses, else he lose all claim to being at all human, conscious and self-aware.
Meditation tricks wouldn’t be a quick fix, though. In a young Crow such as himself, the animal part dominated everything.
Just as with the Arms.
“Have you learned anything?” Gilgamesh said into the phone, whispering despite the fact that he remained safe within his apartment. He had rented a tiny apartment in a rundown building, inhabited by drifters and the down-and-out, four miles from the Skinner’s lair. The stress of waiting for the Skinner to return with Tiamat was getting to him. The Skinner, the Housebound Rizzari, Sky and the rest of their entourage had left Boston, but as of just over a day ago, according to Sinclair, they hadn’t yet made any attempts on the CDC. Worse, Sinclair said Tiamat had fallen into a coma and neared withdrawal.
He missed Tiamat. He hadn’t thought he would be so lonely without her. It was funny and sad. He expected to feel more vulnerable without her. He never expected to miss her as a person.
“I haven’t learned anything new,” Shadow said, his voice thin with distance through the old black telephone.
“The Skinner made her real solo attempt four days ago, and as we predicted, she failed.” Gilgamesh huddled in a corner of the sparsely furnished single room that was the whole apartment, which
he found to be a good place to meditate. “Nothing since.” The dim light in the ceiling cast shadows everywhere, but he found the dimness comforting. Headlights shone through the dusty window to sweep the room like a strobe light with every passing car. “They need to be quicker! Tiamat’s going to go into withdrawal and it doesn’t look like the authorities will be providing her any more juice.”
“It won’t help anyone if they act too quickly and get themselves captured. You’re just going to have to be more patient, Gilgamesh.”
“Yes, Shadow. Thank you, Shadow.” Gilgamesh hung up the phone, crossed his legs, and meditated. Anything to calm himself.
Tonya Biggioni: March 26, 1968
Tonya sat on her tiny balcony stroking Stalker and stared out into the blustery March morning. Her house was an old turn of the century estate, converted into apartments, and she had an apartment on the second floor. They had lived here for nearly two years, a long pleasant time to enjoy the peace and to accumulate money for the next move. They should have been able to enjoy their home for a little while longer before they needed to move.
Not going to happen. A big part of the reason she sat on her balcony was to try to relax enough to allow her nagging, low-key headache to go away. Her nagging, low-key headache meant the entire place was starting to go bad.
It had been so good for so long.
The first few months had been good, and normal. The place had gotten steadily worse at the expected rate. For over a year, the building didn’t seem to get worse at all. In the last six months, the place got worse by the day.
No reason. No explanation. There never was. Places got worse, or not, at whatever rate fate decided, and the Focus and her household just had to live with it. Moving too often drove some households into bankruptcy. The doctors and researchers barely even believed the problem existed. The only difference Tonya had ever sensed was Keaton’s bloody juice and blood mess, after the Philadelphia Massacre. Keaton’s exudations made the problem worse.
Philadelphia Massacre. A Crow term, dammit. Tonya couldn’t even use the term with any other Focus besides Rizzari.
Tonya ached with worry and responsibility. She had been a Focus for nine long years. Nine long years of unending responsibility, trying to keep the household solvent, trying to keep her people happy, resolving disputes, passing judgments, and managing the day-to-day life of a household of more than fifty people.
The responsibility never stopped. Never enough money. The endless fights and disputes among her people, forced to live too close, in too much stress. Her projects, the men and occasional women beyond the capabilities of their own Focuses to handle.
Day by day, year after year.
There ought to be more than this. Nine long years and she craved more than this. A terrible emptiness grew inside her, as if she was going through the motions, that she had missed something somewhere, left standing on the dock when the boat of life departed.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed.
She was so tired.
When she thought of Hancock, now her responsibility, she became even more tired. What a futile effort this turned out to be! Tonya had followed her orders, and followed them well. She broke Hancock. She gave everyone exactly what they wanted. If Tonya managed to find a way to get Hancock out of the CDC, Hancock would be the Council’s first full-time dedicated Arm.
Tonya’s soul ached, to do this to another Major Transform.
Her phone didn’t ring with Network issues any more.
Something still nagged at her about how this turned out. She had waited for Keaton near the CDC for a half day, but Keaton never showed. Lori had vanished off the face of the planet days ago, but no escapes from the CDC occurred. The end of the world, as predicted by the Crow, did not occur, either. Shunned by the other Focuses? Well, that would be just one more story about the Wicked Witch of the East. She shouldn’t feel guilty. Hancock was a criminal, a murderer who did terrible things. She killed non-Transforms for fun!
And yet…
And yet, Tonya knew the Focuses had possessed flaws of their own when they started out. They had been locked up in Clinics and Detention Centers, quarantined to prevent the spread of Transform Sickness, and to keep the victims of Transform Sickness safely locked away, out of the public eye, and where they couldn’t hurt anyone. People did crazy things in those days. No one knew how to make a household work or how Focuses should behave. The doctors never liked what the Focuses figured out, when they started to make progress. Focuses disobeyed orders, conspired, and finally flagrantly broke laws to get their households out of those Clinics and Detention Centers.
The early Focuses hadn’t killed anyone, except by accident and in self-defense. They may have been hard on their people, but they hadn’t been murderers. She didn’t think. The first Focuses morality became ‘whatever it takes’ in those days, a phrase that still sent shivers through Tonya’s juice. If they had needed to, they would have murdered.
The normals hadn’t understood the first Focuses. They called them criminals, and worse. Now they didn’t understand Arms. Called them criminals. And worse.
Tonya shook her head. She read too much into this. The Arm was a murderous predator. Tonya did the right thing by working with the normals to bring her down. Some other Major Transform had done the real dirty work, setting up the Arm for capture. Tonya just followed the recently established precedent.
And yet…
Sky: March 26, 1968
“We could just go in the daytime,” Eileen said. “Like right now.”
Someone opportunistically smart would be able to figure out the three Major Transforms comforted the three non-Major Transforms. Each pair claimed a tent in a separate campsite in the campground.
First off, Keaton was busy with Tina, working off her post-kill lusts. Busy with Tina all day; as far as Sky could tell Tina was having the time of her life. Sex as fun, not simply release. Before she started in on Tina, Keaton had told Lori to go procure the damned ATF uniforms since this was Lori’s idea. Lori wasn’t about to leave Keaton alone with Tina, so she sent Sky and Eileen out to do the procurement. They would leave on their next attempt on the CDC facility as soon as the sun set. “How the crap are we supposed to pull this off without revealing my capabilities?” Sky had whispered to Eileen when the Arm was thoroughly distracted.
“How the crap are we supposed to pull this off without your capabilities?” Eileen had answered. Neither of them possessed the skills to do the job cleanly and maintain Sky’s disguise. So they would use Sky’s Crow tricks and hoped not to be called on the subject.
Lori counseled Tim. This involved a lot of physical contact, hugs, staring into each other’s eyes, chaste cheek kisses and long backrubs. Tim was having a hard time with Keaton. He wanted to go berserko and gun Keaton down. Lori messed with Tim’s mind; he needed, and asked for, a mental boost to his Arm tolerance. Sky tried not to listen when the topic of conversation turned to their respective interests in men, what they liked in a man. He didn’t meet either of their criteria.
Eileen wanted to make babies. In their small tent, fifty feet from her Focus, she wanted to seduce Sky for the simple reason that she might catch. “First off,” Sky said, in a quiet whisper, “Keaton’s ears are as nearly as good as mine. If we get involved, even if she’s otherwise occupied, she’ll notice. Second, an Arm’s sense of smell is good enough to pick up on, well, intimate bodily fluids. So, we can’t cover it up. What possible reason can you come up with to explain to Keaton what we are up to?”
“Why would she object?” Eileen said.
“Object? Not hardly. Consider us fair game for her bed, yes.”
“Oh,” Eileen said. “You said ‘first’. You have more objections?”
“Yes. Lori would have my privates stuffed and mounted. She misses nothing about her Transforms.” Like all the Focuses Sky knew, Lori lived much of her life through her Transforms, despite the amount of time they spent apart.
“Bu
t I asked her before Keaton showed up.”
“And she said…” Sky said. Gazed into Eileen’s beautiful eyes. What the hell, the Arm was going to notice, anyway. No, Sky, no!
Eileen’s face fell. “Oh, all right. I guess the Focus implied ‘but only if I’m otherwise occupied’ in her statement. Calming Tim down doesn’t count, not really.” She sighed. “I guess.”
“Eileen, please don’t slap me for saying this,” Sky said, “but the odds for catching are not good, which means relationships, not one night stands.”
Eileen grimaced and turned away for a moment, to stare at the pair of rolled-up sleeping bags and duffles of clothes and gear.
“Lie down,” Eileen said. She turned back and tossed Sky down on the canvas floor of the tent, face down. Despite Inferno’s training, he was still a sack of spuds. She started to rub his back. “I figured that out. I also figured out you probably won’t be interested in having too many of these relationships, no matter how many of us are interested. You being a chaste Buddhist and all that.” She giggled softly. “I just wanted to get in a claim before one of the more aggressive women started after you.”
“More aggressive?” he said. “Than you?”
Eileen poked him.
“Sorry,” Sky said. “The only time I’ve actually seen you around Inferno is when you’ve joined us on these little missions. Not counting Friday nights.” She did give a good backrub.
“That’s because I’m going to college. I’m tired of just being a soldier. Believe it or not, that’s all I was until last year. A shooter. Woman soldier in the Inferno army.”
“So,” Sky said. As usual, appalled. How did they get the money to send Eileen to college? He didn’t remember a single Canadian Transform who had been through college as a Transform. “What are you studying?”
“Economics. Statistics. Eventually, I want to get an MBA and an executive position. Run a company.” She paused, and ran her hands through his hair. “You have interesting hair, Sk—Sam. Uh, strange hair.”
A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Page 26