A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  Enkidu had talked to the Wandering Shade about what they would do with Focuses when they got them. He never imagined he would see a Pack Mistress so soon. How did the Wandering Shade arrange this? The deviousness of the Wandering Shade never ceased to amaze Enkidu. He couldn’t imagine what he would do without his Master.

  “Shall I name her, then, Master?” The love of Joshua toward the Wandering Shade was apparent to all of them. With this gift, the Wandering Shade bought not only Joshua’s life and love, but also his soul.

  “Yes,” the Wandering Shade said.

  Joshua strode forward, and grabbed the wild-eyed yet strikingly beautiful Focus by her hair. He roiled her internal juice. “I name you Delilah, and claim you as my Pack Mistress.” The juice moved, an immense amount of juice, and Joshua’s élan as well, binding the new Pack Mistress to Joshua and his pack as severely and permanently as any of the Pack were bound to any of them.

  Delilah’s eyes cleared. “Master?”

  “I am Joshua,” he said.

  “I will serve and protect you, Hunter Joshua,” Delilah said. “I am yours.”

  Enkidu smiled. Oh, this was fine, to see a Focus Bitch brought so low. With her, they would be able to keep male Transforms alive. Eventually, Pack Mistresses would enable Enkidu’s dream of juice and élan enslaved normals in number to serve as cannon fodder in his army. Then the world would shudder as it felt his righteous wrath.

  Enkidu’s smile became a hungry smile.

  Enkidu knew exactly what payment he wanted from the Wandering Shade next. Oh yes. He looked at Joshua’s Pack Mistress with lustful admiration. Oh yes.

  Tonya Biggioni: March 30, 1968

  Tonya invited Polly Keistermann down from Long Island immediately after getting back to Philadelphia. Tonya held herself away from her household, and her bodyguards, and the household leaders. They deserved the story, but not yet. The invitation to Polly was for a full spread, for Polly and her entourage, full honors for the Council President. Rhonda, her new house financial officer, almost died on the spot when Tonya told her the cost. Tonya covered the spread out of the last of her personal money. After this, she was bankrupt.

  Financially and morally both.

  Not to her surprise, her phone stayed silent.

  She and Polly did pleasantries and entertainment, and finally a meeting in a basement corner where Tonya made sure were no wiretaps, bugs or eavesdroppers.

  “Here,” Tonya said. She dropped a box of paperwork down beside Polly. “I’m resigning. It’s high time I become one of those useless Focuses like Allison Spivey and Gwen Crushank. I can read the handwriting on the wall and I have no desire to fight my fate.”

  Polly stood, God looking down on Moses. “Like hell you will.”

  “Polly?” Tonya said. Polly rarely went after Tonya with her charisma.

  “You’re not allowed to quit just because you ran into a few minor difficulties. You think you’re the only one with problems like this?”

  The world swam in Tonya’s vision. Around her, she metasensed agitation in her household. Tonya consciously fixed up the juice flow. Stressed, she instinctively started pulling juice from them like a yearling Focus with no self-control. “Minor difficulties? Wini set me up to fail, Polly. She wants me out of my Council seat. Without her support, I’m nothing.”

  Polly laughed. Tonya felt about two inches high. “Lest you forget, Wini doesn’t control your Council seat, Suzie Schrum does. Suzie thinks you did a fantastic job.”

  “Which part? Telling the idiots at the CDC how to break Hancock? Or helping Keaton fix Hancock afterwards? I’ve betrayed everyone I could possibly betray, Polly. Even you.”

  “You lived, Tonya.” Polly sat back down, grabbed Tonya’s hands, but didn’t let up on her charisma one bit. “Normally, you’re good enough not to get caught up in messes like this, but messes happen. I’ve been put through the ringer several times myself and I haven’t quit yet. Tonya, we need you. Nobody can handle the sheer range of problems you can.”

  “I failed.”

  “You found out Hancock wasn’t the one killing household Transforms. Once you proved her innocence, it didn’t matter what you did with her. Yes, I would have liked you to have gotten her physically under our control, but if she isn’t the one grabbing the Transforms, it means Rizzari was right and Hancock is part of us already.”

  “She won’t be. Not after this.” Tonya paused. Polly’s eyes were like augers, digging deep into Tonya’s soul. “She didn’t recover consciousness, Polly. When she does eventually recover, I’m dead, if I can be found. She’ll take me and my household, and I can’t do a damn thing to stop her. That’s the way Arms think.”

  “You’ll find a way, Tonya,” Polly said. “You always do. And you’ll ‘find a way’ from a Council seat.” Polly let go her charisma, and sat back, a smile on her face. “Do you think they always agree on everything?” ‘They’ being the first Focuses.

  Tonya shook her head. The first Focuses often disagreed. Their boss, everyone’s boss, Shirley Patterson, didn’t always reign in her peers. Her mind often worked in a different level of reality than the other Focuses, and her spiritual and religious interests often trumped whatever political causes she still pushed.

  “Her nibs didn’t have a strong opinion on the subject at hand. Nobody nabs Transforms from her household! When Shirley doesn’t care, the other strong ones start playing. This time, Adkins and Fingleman wanted Hancock dead, while Claunch and Teas wanted Hancock alive. Schrum wanted you to remind the world that Focuses are strong and terrifying.” Well, okay. Perhaps she had succeeded at Suzie’s mission. “They all wanted to stab each other in the back.” And her. “No one else gave a hoot.”

  Tonya stared at the wall of the basement room. Rank after rank of National Geographic magazines filled rickety wooden shelves. “This fiasco wasn’t an accident. Shirley had to have given Wini the go-ahead for the Transform snatch, perhaps for the whole thing. Five years I’ve been dancing to their tune. Someone had a grudge and all of a sudden they don’t care how loyal I’ve been or how well I’ve served.”

  “Tonya,” Polly said firmly, “these things happen.”

  “No,” Tonya said. “They don’t just happen. The first Focuses don’t like their underlings to become strong. This is why you do the ditz routine in public. Then I didn’t stop the exposé of Marcia Abernathy’s Mutie Mill. They thought I should have buried the whole business once things became clear the first Focuses backed her. I’d become too strong and independent. I even started to worry about minor details like right and wrong. Of course they had to yank my leash.” Suzie Schrum in particular. Suzie was behind the Mutie Mill. Tonya suspected that once she reminded everyone about how terrifying a Focus could be, Suzie made sure Tonya wouldn’t be receiving any rewards for her efforts.

  ‘A weak little housewife, too used to doing what she was told.’ She had told her tale to Deborah, but her situation hadn’t changed. The only changes were a succession of masters. Her husband, once. The doctors. Her household. Now the first Focuses. Had she ever not been someone’s pet dog?

  Polly looked at Tonya for a long time while Tonya bored holes in the National Geographics with her gaze. “I’m going to do you a favor,” Polly said eventually. “I’m going to forget you ever said this. You know better than to express thoughts of this nature, even to me. Especially to me. Now let me try this again. These things happen.”

  It was long moments before Tonya let her gaze fall. “These things happen,” she said with a sigh.

  “Good. You got chewed up? Get over it. Pick up the pieces and go on.”

  Polly wouldn’t let her quit. Suzie Schrum, her boss, so handy with the leash, didn’t want her recently humbled and well leashed subsidiary Focus to quit, either. Tonya resigned herself to her fate: more time on the Council. Fighting the first Focuses was a losing cause. “It would be nice to have the support of Claunch and Teas for once.” Both of the two had undermined Tonya for years. They thought of her
as an impediment in their attempts to deal with Arms – which meant ‘deal with Keaton’.

  “I didn’t say that. Claunch’s pissed off because you told the CDC how to break Hancock, and Teas… You know Teas. Anything connected to Suzie Schrum must be evil and twisted, and she includes you in that cadre. Both of them understand Hancock’s withdrawal wasn’t your fault and would have happened even if she hadn’t broken.” Polly took a long look at Tonya. “So, what did Keaton do to you, anyway? You look half broken, yourself.”

  “You don’t want to know,” Tonya said. “I’ll tell you if you want, but you’ve never wanted the details of my dealings with the Arms before. The details aren’t pretty.”

  Polly went flat faced, emotions totally masked. Arms were uncivilized and did uncivilized things. Polly didn’t like ‘uncivilized’. “I think I need to, this time. At least the basics.”

  Tonya sipped tea as she took firm control of her emotions. “After the rescue, after Keaton dislocated my hip for backtalking about how she trained Hancock, Keaton decided the only way to save Hancock was to feed her clinic Transforms. Hancock sucked them down as fast as we could provide them for her, stuck in the Arm version of the Focus healing trance. I provided the Transforms, making damned sure I took only the riff-raff and those without hope. Keaton made me tag them – real household tags, dammit – before Hancock juice sucked them. Hancock took them while tagged so I could feed her juice out of my household juice buffer. My juice buffer is so low now I need to keep my entire household barely above periwithdrawal just to keep them alive.”

  Polly’s face went white. “How many?” Polly had lost two of her household Transforms once, when the trailing car in her entourage had slid off a road in a snowstorm. Polly had been incommunicado for weeks, afterwards.

  “Seven, before Keaton let me go. In two days.”

  “Oh, Tonya, that’s so horrid!” Polly stood and gave Tonya a rather dry and limp hug. “You’re a treasure. I don’t think there’s a Focus on the planet who could have stood up to this sort of treatment without going insane.”

  At least Polly mixed in a little empathy with her icy backhanded compliment.

  “Tonya, there’s one other thing I need to talk to you about.” Polly still hugged Tonya, and whispered in her ear. “About the daughter of yours you’re visiting in Queens.”

  “How do you know about her?” Tonya pulled back from Polly, her face pale.

  “I dream, sometimes,” Polly said, voice soft.

  “Damn,” Tonya said. Polly’s dreaming capabilities were legendary, but Tonya never imagined anyone would be able to pick up such detail in the Dreaming. “Who else knows?”

  Polly shrugged. “I haven’t told anyone. But I’m not the only Focus who dreams.”

  “Does Suzie?” Tonya thought of Deborah and her unborn baby as pawns in Suzie’s games, and her stomach twisted. Suzie would latch on to them the minute she found out. They were so close to her. They would be a leash better than any other. Threaten them and Tonya would jump. Hurt them to punish Tonya, whenever she wanted to. Suzie liked punishment.

  “Suzie doesn’t dream,” Polly said. “I can’t say that none of the first Focuses dream. I do suspect some of the Focuses Suzie controls dream, and some are better than you.” Which wouldn’t take much. “The inner circle first Focuses control a lot of other Focuses. Some of them dream.”

  Tonya nodded, her stomach sick. “Thank you for the warning.”

  Polly waved her hand, dismissing the thanks.

  “There’s something you’re going to need to know,” Tonya said, her voice dropping to a whisper. Polly nodded, quizzical. “Something I picked up off of Lori, something she certainly didn’t want me to find out. Polly, she’s going to rebel. Formally and soon. Hancock’s treatment was the last straw. Like you’ve feared for years, there’s going to be a Rizzari Rebellion, and because of her brilliance, this is going to be a bad one. I’m afraid we won’t be able to talk her out of rebelling; the only question is whether her rebellion will be media-based, political or military, or some combination of the three. Worse, right in front of me, Rizzari asked Keaton to join her…and Keaton said yes.”

  “Not good news at all,” Polly said. “I hoped never to have to push you on this, but I need to hear absolutely everything about what happened in the Arm Flap, every last detail.”

  “Congratulations!” Tonya said. “How big is the baby and how are you doing?”

  “The baby’s six pounds, eleven ounces, and you should see her. She’s beautiful! She’s got this little wrinkly face and her head is pointed, but the doctor says that’s okay and all babies look like that. She was born at nine o’clock this morning, and I was in labor for eight hours, and it was horrible, at least until they gave me gas, but it was wonderful, too. I’m fine. They’re going to let me out of the hospital in a few days. So when are you coming to visit? You’ll love her. She’s wonderful.”

  Tonya had taken the call in her office, with the door tightly shut. Her mouth was dry and she twisted a pencil in her hands. Around and around. Around again.

  “I may not be able to visit you for a while, Deborah. I’ve run into a few snags on my end.”

  “Mom? I thought you wanted to meet your first grandchild.” Deborah’s voice acquired an edge. Suspicion.

  “I do. You don’t know how much I do.”

  “So then, what’s the problem?”

  “Look, I don’t want to go into details, but this isn’t a good idea right…”

  “You damned well better go into details!”

  “Deborah, maybe this isn’t a good time…”

  “You came into my house. You told me you wanted to be a good grandmother. I believed you! Don’t you dare run away again!”

  Tonya snapped the pencil in two with a crack. “It’s too dangerous,” she said, her voice low.

  “What do you mean, dangerous?”

  “Dangerous. I’m sorry. I’m involved in some pretty dangerous things right now and I don’t want you to get caught up in my problems. Some of my competitors would want to hurt you to get to me if they…”

  “Garbage, mother, just another damned excuse for running away again. ‘Oh, no. I’m just too dangerous for my own children. For their own good, I have to stay away from them.’ Your excuse is getting old. You said you were sorry you stayed away the first time and I believed you, but now you want to do the same thing again.” Deborah’s voice slowly rose as she spoke. By the end, her throat was so tight she could barely speak.

  “Deborah, no! I’m serious. There’s real danger. I don’t want you or your daughter hurt.”

  “Garbage, garbage, garbage.” Deborah’s voice was a whisper and Tonya could hear the tears. “I believed you and all you do is run away. You promised me you had come back. You promised.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tonya said. “I’m so sorry.” However, Deborah was gone and Tonya was speaking to a dial tone.

  Henry Zielinski: March 31, 1968

  “Jesus, Zielinski, you’ve actually got them talking?” Special Agent Bates said. Bates was visiting here to brief Zielinski for an interview on network television that he had arranged, and was shocked to find out about the Crows.

  Bates paced Zielinski’s cell, or what was ostensibly his cell. The place resembled a one-room apartment more than a traditional prison cell. Zielinski’s cellmate, Rick Goldstein, laughed from where he sat on his bed.

  “You wouldn’t believe them until you saw them with your own eyes,” Goldstein said. “Thing is, they only whisper. They never speak louder than a whisper.” Goldstein had run afoul of a Federal prosecutor in Kentucky for defending a male Transform up on Federal interstate flight charges. The prosecutor, one of those who believed Transforms didn’t deserve their day in court, had bent rules, leaned on his IRS cronies, and managed to get Rick charged and convicted on shaky tax evasion charges.

  Zielinski nodded. He and Tommy sat at the small table. “It’s a pure information trade, except we also satisfy their urge for dr
oss. Whatever dross is. Dammit, Tommy, I’d kill to get a lab in here. Then I could actually prove my suspicions.” He had lost a little weight after he left Inferno and quite a lot more hair. Enough hair to convince him to give up on the comb over. He now had more bald spot than hair. Stress wasn’t good for him, not with his half-transformed adrenal gland.

  Bates smiled, looked around the so-called cell, but didn’t laugh. “Uh, Hank, this is a Federal penitentiary, despite all our little games. No way can we get you a lab in here. Hell, with the hammering the Network’s been taking, we’re going to be lucky to keep even this scam going. Patrelle and his Romanians still want your hide nailed to the wall, if you don’t remember.”

  “Oh, I remember,” Zielinski said, deadpan. “Truthfully, I don’t mind not getting a lab. I’m surprised the FBI’s Network members were able to set even this up.”

  The original agreement was to surrender into the custody of the Network’s FBI agents, who would detain him indefinitely as a material witness. The detention was to protect him from everyone who wanted to kill him – meaning he agreed not to fight the indefinite detention and his FBI contacts agreed to use their influence to quash any prosecution aimed at him.

  Their agreement hadn’t lasted. All holy hell had come out of the woodwork after the destruction of the CDC’s Detention Center. Despite the fact the New York Times article on the Arm flap the day after had only mentioned him by name twice, and only in passing, his name stirred up notice in Virginia, Washington, Boston and – to his utter disbelief – Mississippi, where Federal prosecutors were all now after his hide. The latter prosecutor, a crony of an old time segregationist named Bull Conner and one of the staunchest of the Romanians among the Feds, had indicted Zielinski and twenty seven others for their alleged misdeeds.

  Instead of a room in one of the regional FBI offices the Network’s FBI people controlled, he was stuck at the Addi.

  For a Federal pen, the Addi was, well, different. Not at all what Zielinski expected.