Gilgamesh (3/26/73 – 3/27/73)
“Gail, that’s another seat rest you’ve ripped apart.” The airplane vibrated with the hum of the engines, and Gilgamesh couldn’t help attempting to figure out how many seconds they would take to hit the ground if something went wrong. The pilot said 21,000 feet. That was a little over four miles, which meant that they would hit in about three minutes.
He was a Crow, dammit. Didn’t the Commander remember that Crows hated planes?
Gail looked at Gilgamesh, then down at the cushion of the cramped airline seat, which was in tatters. “Sorry,” she said, and futilely tried to mash the seat rest back together. “I’ve got to be driving you crazy.”
“We’re all crazy already. I think this flight officially puts the Commander in debt,” Gilgamesh said. Ying, the Commander’s majordomo, had chartered a plane for them, large enough for the fighters and support staffs of the entire household, along with the same from Focuses Martin and Nicosia’s households. He could be wrong about the debt, as neither Ying nor Tom would share the financials of Carol’s broken monetary empire with him. And this wasn’t the only plane they chartered. They were the last of the Commander’s reinforcements out of Chicago. “But a lot of what the Commander does seems crazy.”
The idea of flying the combat effectives of Gail, Tonya, Focus Mann, Focus Martin and Focus Jahnke’s households to the west coast didn’t strike him as the most brilliant idea he had ever seen. The worst was Darla Nicosia and her completely combat incapable household, because Abyss didn’t trust that lot out of their sight. And the Commander’s personal organization, not all of them fighters. The group’s combat effectiveness remained depleted from the fighting around Chicago, save for Focus Martin and her so-called fighters, who had showed up late for the Chicago fights. A cross-country airplane flight followed by a rushed drive to the combat wouldn’t help. These were household Transforms, not the 82nd Airborne! They would be doing well if they got their forces looking effective.
Worse, Keaton had already flown west on her own chartered cargo plane with all the Arms, Nobles, Commoners and Monsters who could still walk.
The only good thing about this whole situation was that the Commander was in charge. Gilgamesh didn’t need to add ‘but the Commander’s crazy plans often work’.
What he said, instead, was: “Van’s going to recover.” That was what really ate at Gail.
“They wouldn’t even tell me what happened to Daisy and him!” Gail said, her voice high pitched and wailing. Hands reached between the seats, Gail grabbed them, fingers between fingers, and squeezed. Kurt, who sat with Sylvie behind them, winced at Gail’s strength, but didn’t say a thing.
“We know Daisy got killed,” Gilgamesh said. Gail froze for a moment, but then nodded. Gilgamesh was sure Gail kept repressing the memory with her charisma, not wanting to face the loss of her sister-in-law. “The Commander said she got to Van’s side within an hour and made sure he’d live.” Quieting Gail during the day’s ordeal practically drained his supply of dross. She loved her husband so much, and if Van didn’t recognize this, after Gail’s Chicago ordeals, Gilgamesh was going to make him feel about two inches tall. Or worse.
I’m enough of a realist to know that anyone who was able to take down a Noble and an Arm wasn’t shooting handguns, Gail signaled, exhibiting far more control than Gilgamesh expected from Gail. That almost made him weep. The attackers were using Monster ammo. That’s the reason why Daisy died. Near misses can kill normals.
The Commander wouldn’t lie to me on a subject like that, Gilgamesh signaled back. I love you.
Love you too.
Gilgamesh wept.
“And that’s such an amazing outfit, Gail,” Tillie Martin said. “I just love your shoes. They match your eyes so well, they almost make them glow!”
If this had been Focus Martin’s opening line, Gilgamesh would have ignored it. For one thing, the chatter took Gail’s mind off Daisy’s death and Van’s wounding. But the Focus had been brown nosing in this vein for well over a minute, and Gail was beginning to get a little aggravated.
“So, what’s really bothering you, Focus Martin?” Gilgamesh said. Her excess agitation was easy to read.
Tillie blinked for a moment. “I need some advice, and you and the Director are the absolute best at giving advice. I know you’re under a lot of stress, and if there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.” Gail didn’t react, her eyes glazed and staring off to Tillie’s left. Gilgamesh gave Tillie ‘the stare’, the one his students knew to mean ‘stop wasting my time’.
“Perhaps I can get you another sandwich?” Tillie said.
“Advice?” Gail said, finally and thankfully forcing the issue. “What sort of problem’s come up?”
Tillie blushed. Falsely, Gilgamesh read. “We’re going into a real serious situation, aren’t we, Gail? Worse than when the Hunters attacked Chicago?”
Gail nodded. Focus Martin hadn’t showed up until they were already in their Manteno camp, and she and her people only participated in one fight, the Hunters’ unsuccessful attack on the camp.
Tillie shivered, and this time, she didn’t feign her reaction. “I know a few tricks I’ve been sitting on, things I’m worried will bother people if they knew about them. Should I be thinking about revealing them, Gail?”
Well. Gilgamesh suspected this was a build up to a bit of reluctant bragging, but what he metasensed in Tillie’s nervous mental preparations made him suspect he had been mistaken. This is real, he sent to Gail.
Sure, whatever, she sent back. Can you tell if it’s something she can miss-aim and take out the pilot and copilot?
It looks internal to me.
“What sort of tricks are we talking about, here?” Gail asked. Focus Martin hadn’t been cleared for the juice buffer access juice patterns, but was one of the few Focuses who could squeeze extra juice out of her juice buffer for personal use by force of will. According to the Abyss house research, this trick normally led to the Focus being able to access her juice buffer using juice patterns by her fifth year as a Focus. If Tillie, less than 3 years out as a Focus, could master this, she would be one of less than a half dozen Focuses to ever do so.
Tillie’s nervousness increased. “Let me show you.” She slowly reached out her hand and put it on Gail’s arm, then concentrated and sent what metasensed as a tiny amount of Arm-style healing energies into Gail. Then Tillie changed her mental Focus and, using Crow style dross manipulation tricks, moved the tiny amount of dross off of Gail’s arm and on to the seat arm.
Was this real? Gail sent to him.
Real, and emulated, not borrowed, Gilgamesh sent back. I don’t know whether to be flattered or terrified, but I’m fairly sure I’m the Crow she learned it from. It metasensed as my style of dross manipulation.
“Could you metasense what I did?” Tillie said. “I tried to use almost no juice. I wouldn’t want to alarm anyone.”
Gail nodded. “What are the limits to this?”
“Practice time, and whether I can understand what the other Major Transform is doing.”
“Why don’t you have full juice buffer access, then?” Gail asked. “I mean, you’ve metasensed me doing it a hundred times.”
“I don’t have permission, Gail,” Tillie said. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “But I do know how.”
“We’ll talk about this after the Hunter war is over,” Gail said. “This is important, Tillie, but be careful. Experimenting with this sort of thing could be very dangerous.” She paused. “But if there’s anything you can do to keep you and your people safer during any fights you end up in, or anything you can do that harms the enemy and not anyone on our side – do it. You don’t even need to clear it with me ahead of time. Just do it. You have my permission.”
“Thank you, Gail,” Tillie said, taking Gail’s hand in hers. “You’re the best Focus leader we’ve ever had, you know. Do you want any coleslaw? Lillian, my cook, makes the meanest…”
Gilg
amesh tuned out Tillie’s words, put his hand on Gail’s arm, and with their shared metasenses, scanned Tillie as carefully as he could. He found nothing out of the ordinary. However Tillie was accomplishing her tricks wasn’t at all obvious to him, and, hopefully, to anyone else.
But, damn. If they could properly get this trained up, and break Tillie of her endless brownnosing habits, they might be able to turn her into a real Major Transform power in a few years. He would need to mention this to Carol.
---
They didn’t touch down at the San Jose International Airport until almost three in the morning. Gilgamesh felt Carol’s amazing new strength long before they touched down, and he made sure his hand was in Gail’s so she could feel it as well, bubbling into her dreams. Despite Carol’s unstated problems with Mizar and her time in the Yukon, she had gained both presence and stature. The Arm was alone, the rest of their family off elsewhere, working. No rest for the weary, for any of them.
Keep her on the plane until everyone else is off, Carol juice signaled. I’m still dealing with Focus Biggioni and her crew. Gilgamesh smiled. Four days ago, she couldn’t use their private signaling tricks. She had needed to put in the time to learn it, but where had she found the free time?
The Commander always pulled off miracles. Miracles were her style.
He watched the others leave the plane. Carol talked with Focus Biggioni as Biggioni’s people offloaded supplies from the plane sitting next to them on the tarmac. He could barely make out the words through the open door. The topic was Focus Webb’s household; Carol had looked the situation over and come to the same conclusion as everyone else: Focus Adkins wasn’t salvageable and needed to die. Even though she remained totally under Focus Webb’s control, her presence in Webb’s household was a cancer.
Gilgamesh saw the look of pain on Focus Biggioni’s face and turned his attention away. He didn’t want to hear the conversation. Focus Biggioni still had a soft spot in her heart for the first Focus. A small soft spot, but there, nevertheless.
Gail slept, dreaming, reliving the day in January when some lunatic tried to assassinate her.
Guilt clawed at him, his constant companion since the Hunters’ attacks started. Guilt that he let Enkidu live, that he engaged in so much fruitless diplomacy, that he helped the Chimera through his transformation. That he couldn’t do anything more than skunk – gods, just skunk, like a baby Crow – the Hunter in the Battle in Detroit. That he hadn’t been strong enough during the Clearing of Chicago to confront and somehow, impossibly, kill Enkidu. He did try during the Manteno attack, but Enkidu had grown as well, far too strong for Gilgamesh to affect from a distance. Like Crow Mentors dueling, it was too late for the simple things, such as direct dross attacks and cunning diplomacy.
Enkidu was out there, close. Within ten miles. Arranging his forces for some epic world-shaking TV-news-shattering battle. Already, the other Crows would hardly talk to Gilgamesh in person any more. Even Shadow said he was too fierce and bloodthirsty. After what he was likely to need to do in this battle, his fierceness would only get worse.
Fine. He would repent later.
Enkidu needed to die.
“Take a fucking number and wait in line.” Gilgamesh looked up. Carol stood in the aisle of the now mostly-empty plane, practically glowing with power. Six foot tall, with the muscles and grace of a panther. With the fine fur coat, too, though blond rather than black. He smiled at her. He wasn’t at all put off by Carol’s mind reading capabilities – he couldn’t conceive of anything he would want to hide from her these days.
“How bad is it?”
“We’re facing the entire Hunter Empire’s effectives, at least fifty full Hunters and well over a thousand of their followers,” Carol said, leaning backwards against the bulkhead wall. “Including Del and Sinclair, who’ve gone over to the Law. And Bass, who the Hunters know of as Hecate. The only thing we have going for us is that the Madonna is convinced there’s dissention among the Hunter ranks. Oh, and, let’s not forget to mention, Haggerty found a way to remove nearly all the external Crow support from the Hunters, so as far as Crow support is concerned, all they have left are their crippled Shamans.”
Carol was proud of Haggerty’s work. Gilgamesh was just happy he wouldn’t need to face any powerful enemy Crows.
“Do they know you’re here, yet?”
“I sure as hell hope not, or we’d best put the Law on us ourselves and surrender. I’ve fought when I’ve been outnumbered before, but this is ridiculous,” Carol said, with a growl. “We’ve got to surprise them, a lot, or we don’t stand a chance.”
“Surely it’s not that bad?”
“You want bad? I just spent all day dragging Lupe Rodriguez and her screwy coterie of Hispanic Focuses up here to give us a hand, only to find out that a different group of Hispanic Focuses and Chimeras that Haggerty conjured up out of the sand are their mortal enemies. They’ve been skirmishing, actually skirmishing, around the Inferno Rest Home for hours.”
“Mizar,” Gilgamesh said. That sounded like exactly the sort of problem Carol, Lori and Sky spent nearly four months in the Yukon for – dragging down a powerful enough Chimera to convince the disparate idiots on their side of the fight to cooperate for once. God knows no one else on their side had the gray haired eminence to pull that miracle off.
“Mizar,” Tiamat said, teeth clenched. “Our only hope is that he can somehow bring them together.” Hmm. She didn’t like delegating any of her authority and responsibility to Mizar, eh? He began to see why the Madonna of Montreal had been so adamant about sending Carol and crew off. Would he and Gail have been able to learn and earn their current stature and experience if Carol had been breathing down their necks and ‘helping’ them?
Clearly not.
“Carol?” Gail said, waking up. “Carol!” Gail leapt into the Arm’s arms. She sucked comfort as if through a straw, and several points of juice as well, likely without noticing it. Carol buried her head in Gail’s hair and rocked her, then continued to carry her as Carol walked off the plane.
It was entirely possible, Gilgamesh noticed, that with her recent gain in height and muscle mass, Carol was now as strong as back in Chicago, before her incarceration. Plus, since this was Carol of the near-infinite mood swings, she was capable of even more love than Gilgamesh had ever seen, before. Though hidden, those were tears she shed into Gail’s hair.
When he factored in the effects of the Madonna’s plans, Gilgamesh realized, he needed not to forget the personal benefits that Carol, Lori and Sky gained on their quest.
“Tell me,” Gail said. “We’re going to the hospital, right?”
“No, the Inferno Rest Home,” Carol said. “Hank’s been doing follow-up healing.” Carol carried Gail through the night-quiet airport and no one noticed them.
It bent Gilgamesh’s mind to think of Hank as a Transform healer. The West Coast Transforms in the Cause had accomplished so much while he and his crew had been twirling in circles and defending Chicago. It was now his turn – all of their turns – to pay them back.
“On Van?” Gail said. Worried.
“On Van, Webberly and Dowling,” Carol said. “Dowling’s the worst of them all; I think we recovered less than half of him. Though Webberly’s going to be out the longest, because she took a ricochet to the brain. It took Hank two hours to extract the bullet.”
“My God!”
“Who was behind the attack?” Gilgamesh asked.
“No idea. They fled when the police showed up and took their dead with them. Established Monster hunters, Transform hunters, and they clearly knew what they were doing. If either Dowling or Webberly recognized them, well, you know what happens to Transform memories in situations like that.”
“Gone. They’ll never remember a thing,” Gilgamesh said, and smothered an internal curse.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Carol said. “I can’t investigate the fight scene now, but I’ll get to it if we survive the fight against the Hunters.”
Carol paused, a beat too long. “If Van won’t go back to you, I’m going to propose marriage to him,” Carol said. Gilgamesh blinked, and backed off a step. Carol was up to something.
“That’s too weird for words,” Gail said. “Why?” By this time, they were outside the airport, passing a line of taxis ferrying people to and from their red-eye flights. Gilgamesh saw Ying, standing by a shiny new rental car. Carol walked toward Ying.
“Why not?”
Gail chewed on that. Gilgamesh suspected Carol played some dirty trick on Gail, something to put a little more bend in her spine when Van was around, but Gilgamesh didn’t know how this would help.
“You haven’t said a thing about what happened to Van,” Gail said.
Ying dropped the keys into Carol’s hand, and they all got into the rental car and took off. Ying sat in the front passenger seat, and Gilgamesh sat with Gail in the back. Carol drove, of course. “I didn’t want to upset you.”
“How bad?”
“Without Webberly’s healing? Dead.” Carol wove past an elderly couple in an elderly car. She didn’t look at Gail.
She didn’t give Gail any support at all, Gilgamesh noticed. Instead, she was subtly undercutting her through the tag. Gail didn’t fall apart, just gritted her teeth and stared at Tiamat. Definitely Tiamat.
“What else?”
“They were firing Monster guns, .707 Nitro Express rounds. One round went through Van’s right arm. Severed it, and Dowling found it thirty feet away. Instant death from hydrostatic shock. Blew his right eye out of his forehead.”
Gail passed out. Clean cold passed out, directly to healing trance, do not pass Go do not collect two hundred dollars.
“Tiamat Crow Rescuer, That Was Uncalled For,” Gilgamesh said. “If you wanted Gail ready for front-line duty in the coming fight, this was not the way to do it.”
Tiamat snorted. “You and Gail have a special assignment in this fight – preserving our way out. Neither of you are going to be on the front lines.” Gilgamesh frowned. After Chicago, he thought they would have proven themselves to Tiamat. Then he got it, and nearly passed out as well.
An Age Without A Name Page 30