A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  “I hired you. You didn’t hire me.”

  “You hired them,” Lori said. “You talked me into joining you. I never agreed to tell you everything I could do.”

  “This was no personal capability.” Keaton looked the rescue team over carefully. She suspected. Sky had been expecting her to figure out his ruse since the quest started. He felt lucky his secret had lasted this long. “That was a Crow.”

  “I may have a few Crow contacts,” Lori said.

  “May?” Keaton made a grab at Lori, but Lori danced back. Keaton played. She didn’t use anything close to full Arm speed.

  “Okay. Yes, I have Crow help. The Crow won’t reveal himself near you. Crows are utterly impossible to deal with in a rational manner.”

  Sky’s sweet love would regret her comment later. Perhaps singing mice in her delicate unmentionables drawer? That would do.

  “Not as far as I’ve seen,” Keaton said. Sky almost lost himself to panic at that comment. “So, how’d you get the message?”

  “I’m a witch,” Lori said. Truthful, but not relevant. “You wouldn’t understand.” Also true. Keaton would never understand falling in love, getting pregnant, etc, etc.

  “I smell a rat,” Keaton said. Truthful as well. She strode over to Sky and the other Transforms, and to the volunteer Transforms. Sky had to repress a smile. Hiding as one of the Transform zombies would have been a perfect trick, save for the inevitable dénouement when the Arm tried to juice suck a Transform and got Monsteraide instead.

  “No rats there,” she said of the hapless zombies, and turned her eye back to the rescue team.

  The Arm stood in front of the four of them and became DEATH. Sky saw Kali incarnate and bowed on one knee. He had no idea what the other three Transforms did, or experienced. He couldn’t see them anymore. Or hear them. All was Kali.

  “Impressive,” Sky heard Lori say from somewhere in the next county. Sky had to react as himself. If he let himself waver from his hard won skills dealing with Arm, he would revert to normal Crow behaviors and blow the whole charade out the crapper.

  “A lover seeking repentance, a terrified and much more pathetic woman Transform than I’d realized, a guy who now knows how he’s fated to die someday, and a defiant asshole who’s spent too much time sucking down his Focus slash lover’s idiot ideas. Not any Crows here,” Kali said. “A real Crow would have spooked when I did that and I would have had a fun chase until the asshole sicked up on me. So, midget, you do have some method of witchy communication you aren’t sharing. I’m not surprised. I’m also not surprised a goddamned rabbity Crow can’t join our crew – Crows seem to have this chickenshit problem.”

  ‘A defiant asshole who’s spent too much time sucking down his lover’s ideas?’ Keaton had indeed picked up Sky’s unusual nature, but she had picked up the wrong thing! She realized he was Lori’s lover and thought she penetrated the whole secret. Perhaps he would escape with his freedom!

  Sick-up? Here was one Arm who had spent far too much time talking to Gilgamesh. No wonder she held such a disdainful view of Crows.

  “Midget, you’ve got one chance to keep working with me. Either way, it’s going to be time to scream. I want the information this Crow is providing you for my planning.”

  “Just signals, ma’am,” Lori said. ‘Ma’am?’ She was spooked too? Not good. Sky’s vision still hadn’t broken free of the Kali effect. Very bad.

  “Fuck. Can you go out in the woods and talk to him? Something?”

  “Let me think,” Lori said. “Perhaps I can set something up.” Sky had a bad idea about what Lori would propose. No, he didn’t want any part of that. Nope. Nuh uh. Bad move.

  “Good. Think while you’re screaming, bitch.”

  Kali was on Lori in an instant, grabbing at Lori’s left knee. She did something with her fingers and Lori gasped and turned white as a sheet, in too much pain even to scream properly. Use your juice patterns, my love, Sky urged her. She knew how to handle pain, but the Arm moved too fast for her and now she couldn’t escape her own pain. Sky wished her support, enough to allow her to build her juice pattern despite the pain. That’s all she needed. She would be able to handle this if she just got her pattern in place.

  Lori did get a pattern in place, but not the one Sky expected. Lori twisted in the Arm’s grasp and gazed into her eyes. Kali gasped. The Arm’s eyes narrowed, and she bent Lori’s lower leg forward, unnaturally so. Lori paled and panted. Kali grimaced and held her breath.

  Kali backed off, face white. “Shit. I never realized how nasty the knee move is. I’ll have to remember that for later.”

  “Everything you do to me that I feel, you feel,” Lori said, gasping. “Go ahead. Torture me. Let’s see which of the two of us enjoys pain more. I’ll bet I do. I’m the Focus who has my entire household despising me, remember?”

  Sky bit his lip, hard. He needed the pain himself to avoid running over to Lori, taking her in his arms and crying into her hair. No one should feel that way. Never. Ever. Especially not a Focus. Especially since her whole household didn’t despise her.

  Giving in to the Crow cuddles would blow the entire mess wide open, though. Instead, he forced himself to remember his own exasperation with Lori, the times when he wanted to pound on her head with a mallet.

  Kali turned away from Lori and stalked the edge of the camp. Pacing. Breathing. Controlling rage by controlling breathing. Control took her a long time. Lori spent the time sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees and drilling holes in the trees with her glare. None of the others of them dared move.

  “Hancock’s in withdrawal, people, been in withdrawal for hours,” Kali said finally, once she had her rage under control. Barely. “We don’t have much time. That’s why the ATF trick didn’t work. Everyone but the crazy wing of the FBI has written her off as dead meat. I know better. If we can get Hancock out before they euthanize her, we’re okay. They are going to euthanize her. How do I know this? I smelled one of my old sparring partners, FBI Assistant Director Joe Patrelle, on the premises, and he’s one of those who thinks the solution to the Transform problem is to kill us all. We likely have a day or two left, at most. Our big problem is the number of state police, Federal Marshals, CDC guards and FBI they’ve assigned to guard this place. None of them trusts the others, so they’re all overlapping and guarding the same things, making it impossible for us to get in. Next time we’re going in shooting and we need a plan which won’t fall apart at the last moment. Somehow, we need to find a way of coping with all these cops.”

  “That place had Lori puking when we got downwind of it, ma’am,” Sky said. “Tim almost lost it as well. Would it be too much to ask if we could physically destroy the place in the process?”

  Kali smiled at Sky. “A defiant asshole with a mind like mine. So, do you want to drive the gasoline tanker truck, or shall I?”

  Chapter 12

  In 1967 it is estimated that 12 Chimeras transformed in the United States. Of those only 1 is known to have survived 9 months past his transformation.

  “Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

  Tonya Biggioni: March 27, 1968

  The call came through at about 10:00 AM. Delia came out, apologizing for bothering her.

  “They want me now?” Tonya said, harsh. “Two days with no contact at all and now it’s an emergency?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. They didn’t say anything more.” Delia didn’t like being around her Focus when she was in a temper.

  Tonya grimaced. “All right. Tell them I’m coming.”

  The nameless young male functionary led Tonya to the ever-so-popular ratty conference room in the Professional Building. Dr. Jeffers, Leeson and the secretary sat at the table, drinking coffee and talking about the idiots on the other end of the generation gap. The stark room gave Tonya the shivers.

  “You did what?” Tonya said, appalled, after Dr. Jeffers explained the problem. “You told me you were arranging juice for her!”

  �
��We did arrange juice,” Leeson said, trying to be soothing. “The juice just took a little longer than we anticipated to arrive. A goddamned Focus grabbed our first volunteer Transform right out of our hands, ma’am. Pardon my French.”

  Tonya turned to Delia and Marty beside her. They both looked green with low juice and glared with tight lips at the fools who dared to anger their Focus. Tonya made herself control her temper long enough to adjust their juice counts back to normal.

  “Out of here,” she said, her voice low and menacing. “Get out of my range.” She could hold on to her control, but only barely, and only for so long. Marty and Delia fled the room, slamming the door behind them, no thought of protest when their Focus was in a mood like this.

  “Focus Biggioni, we…”

  “Wait,” Tonya said, cutting Leeson off.

  They all waited in silence, as Marty and Delia ran down the hall, rode the elevator, and left the building.

  Finally, out of her range, Tonya freed her rage.

  “You utter – and complete – fools,” she said to those two men, barely whispering. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with. Does it even occur to you that a Transform dies without juice?”

  “She isn’t dead,” Leeson said. “She just went into withdrawal and she’s out, now.”

  “Idiot. You shouldn’t have control of a goldfish, much less a person. Just went into withdrawal. Listen to me, you blithering excuse for a human being. When a Transform goes into withdrawal, it’s as good as death.” Tonya was so mad she could hardly speak. These fools didn’t understand the importance of juice, and they played games with the juice anyway. Might as well give a child a loaded gun.

  Whichever Focus interfered with getting the juice for the Arm was dead, if Tonya had to rip the lungs out of her body herself!

  “That Arm gave you everything you asked for. Everything. Only you couldn’t be bothered to find juice for her. ‘It just took a little longer than we anticipated.’ Do you have any conception of what this means to her? Her juice is her life. All you see is some tool we used to manipulate her. You made a promise to her you didn’t keep, you made a promise to me you now sneer at, and you proved you’re nothing but little children playing children’s games with other people’s lives. Thirty-three Transforms a day – a day – die in this country because there aren’t enough Focuses to support them. You have the gall to tell me you couldn’t get one of them?”

  “Tonya,” Dr. Jeffers said.

  “It’s Focus Biggioni to you, you bastard.”

  “Focus Biggioni, I’m sorry. She’s an Arm. A murderer. You can’t think of her as a person.”

  Tonya went white with fury. She had learned over long years to control her temper. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this angry. “Doctor Jeffers. Ten years ago the Focuses in this country decided they would no longer cooperate with you or with your research efforts. Ten years later and you still don’t understand why, and you won’t understand why until you understand what is wrong with what you just said. Why it’s wrong to consider someone non-human because of what Transform Sickness did to them. I doubt you’ll ever understand.”

  Tonya turned to face both of them. The secretary in the corner, white as a sheet, had stopped taking notes. Tonya remained as cold as ice.

  “Gentlemen, if you will excuse me? You’ve made your bed with your own stupidity and you get to lie in it.”

  Tonya turned to the door, while Dr. Jeffers behind her tried to call her back.

  “Focus Biggioni, we’re very sorry. Can you help us? Your knowledge of Transform practicalities clearly dwarfs ours. We need you. Your contract with us is still valid. Look, what if we give you $100 an hour? We’re sorry.” She reached the door, attempting to hold on to what control remained, and paused.

  She wanted to tell him exactly what he could do with his contract, and which orifice he should stick the money in, but sanity stopped her before she opened her mouth. The money she had earned so far from the CDC would be a lifesaver to her household. Her responsibility to her household spoke otherwise, and grand gestures didn’t put food and baby formula on the table.

  Furthermore, she felt a nagging responsibility to Hancock, now dying in the hands of these fools.

  Lastly, Keaton might get her thumb out of her butt, show up one of these days, and break Hancock out. After this, Tonya just about decided to help the goddamn sadist do the dirty deed. Or break Hancock out herself.

  She stopped, her long years learning to leash her temper finally coming through. She sighed and said without turning: “Give her to me.”

  “Focus Biggioni?” Dr. Jeffers said.

  Now she turned. “You’re right. I know how to bring her back and care for her.” She hoped. Hancock was an Arm. If she remained alive, she should recover. No telling what sort of Arm would come out the other end, of course. “I have no inclination to share any of my knowledge on the subject with you. Give her to me. Be done with her.”

  “Yes,” Leeson said. She realized she was spewing charisma like a tornado, unfocused and useless, and dialed back.

  Dr. Jeffers shook his head. “I can’t do that, Focus Biggioni. Assistant Director Patrelle and Chief Deputy Donovan” the boss US Marshal for the 4th district “jointly authorized an order that any attempt to move the Arm from her current location will be met by lethal force. If she dies, she’s to be cremated in place.”

  Assistant Director Patrelle not so secretly wanted to cremate all the American Transforms in place. His death wouldn’t bother her one bit, even if she pulled the trigger herself. “So be it,” Tonya said. “What do you want with me?” She glared at both Jeffers and Leeson.

  “We want you to look at what happened to her and help us figure out how to bring her back.”

  “I want to know the name of the Focus who grabbed the volunteer Transform.” Tonya put her full charisma into her demand, something she rarely did with normals. Dr. Jeffers practically had a heart attack on the spot and Leeson paled, as if he gazed into the abyss.

  He had.

  “Ah, ah, I, ah, I think, uh, yes, here it is,” Dr. Jeffers said. “A Focus Cutter of Jacksonville.”

  Cutter? Cutter was one of this year’s new Focuses. She probably didn’t even know the word ‘Arm’. She just got the Transform. “Who arranged it?” Tonya said.

  “Yes, a, um, Focus Adkins. Ma’am.”

  Tonya’s heart stopped for three long beats. For a moment, she was tempted to order the damn thing to stay stopped. The whole charade, from start to finish, became clear to her for the first time.

  Shirley Patterson, the boss of the first Focuses and supposedly Tonya’s closest ally, had ordered Wini Adkins, supposedly Tonya’s dear friend and former mentor, to kill the Arm after she squealed. Her whole mission had been a setup, arranged from on high, with Tonya as the unwitting pawn. Get the Arm to spill her guts. Kill the Arm. Cripple the Network.

  Destroy Tonya’s career.

  No wonder Teas went behind everyone’s back to talk to Hancock at night. No wonder Wini yanked Teas unceremoniously once she discovered Teas chicanery. Teas knew the plan. She just didn’t have the juice to succeed at her own scheme.

  Tonya couldn’t do anything to either Patterson or Adkins. She would just smile and take it, and see if she could survive their career assassination attempt with anything left of her stature or honor. What had she done to deserve this? As far as she knew, both Patterson and Adkins loved her!

  “I see,” Tonya said, and turned back to Leeson. Not a bit of her horror showed on Tonya’s face. Dr. Jeffers tried to approach her, smiling his smarmy welcome, but she turned from him in contempt. “Tell me everything that happened after I left.”

  “We provided the Arm intravenous liquids and tried a smorgasbord of stimulants and hormones, but the Arm never woke up. We found out that our first volunteer Transform was no longer available on the night of the 25th and we started work on another.

  “At about 3:30 in the afternoon of the 26th the Arm b
egan to convulse. Juice numbers, which had held steady in the mid-nineties for days, started to plummet precipitously, nothing we had ever seen or imagined before.” Dammit, Zielinski had been right. She even knew not to discount him and his observations. Dammit! “Nothing we tried slowed the decline. At 5:53 in the afternoon, she started to scream and thrash, causing several injuries before we restrained her again. She didn’t regain consciousness, and continued to scream and thrash until she went into withdrawal at 9:15 PM. The Arm remained in withdrawal for 29 hours, until we managed to arrange a second volunteer Transform for her,” Leeson said. “Once she got juice, the Arm ceased to deteriorate, but did not recover. She remains completely unresponsive, in a deep coma.”

  Tonya went over to the conference table and sat down again. Twenty-nine hours. Hearing the number almost made her weep.

  Arms were tougher than she realized, though. Hancock still lived. For a moment, she flashed back to a spotty memory of Wini and Shirley forcing her to cut her own heart out of her body. For years, she had believed her memory an illusion, because of the impossibility: she had lived through cutting her own heart out of her body. Today, for the first time, she believed. The event wasn’t an illusion.

  The men followed Tonya to the conference table. The secretary resumed taking notes.

  Leeson kept talking. “We’ve tried everything we can think of, but even after getting juice she doesn’t respond to anything. She’s dying.”

  “Withdrawal does permanent damage,” Tonya said. “Once a Transform goes under for more than about ten or twenty minutes, you’ve lost them.”

  “Keaton went into withdrawal,” Dr. Jeffers said. “She was in withdrawal for two hours about four years ago. She recovered.”

  Tonya raised an eyebrow; she knew the story and what the withdrawal had cost Keaton, but didn’t want them to know. “You know more than I do,” she said, a bald face lie. Right now, she didn’t give a rat’s ass. “Twenty minutes of withdrawal leaves a Transform severely retarded, if she is lucky enough to survive. Might leave her paralyzed for life. I’ve seen this. I can’t predict what twenty-nine hours might do, even to an Arm.” You might need to teach her to speak again, and potty train her, you utter dolts. Are you up for that?