The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1)

by Randall Farmer

  Friends! Aargh. Arms can’t be friends. She deluded herself into thinking we were friends, or had ever been friends.

  There was something wrong with Arm dominance contests, and this was good proof of the problem. We did them wrong nearly every time. Only I had no idea what we needed to do to improve them.

  “You’re going to back-burner Keaton’s top projects,” Haggerty said. “You’re working for me, now, of course, not her.” Keaton’s top projects were ‘re-establish the Arm hierarchy’ and ‘get Hank to figure out why I (Keaton) popped my cork and how to fix it so it doesn’t happen again’. Hank made slow but steady progress on his end, and I made some progress on mine.

  Keaton was going to ream me for this, but if she wanted me to give those projects a higher priority, she would need to beat Haggerty and tag her. Fat chance of that. We all knew Keaton would win if Haggerty challenged her, and Haggerty would win if Keaton challenged Haggerty. As I said, the Arm challenge system didn’t work. “To start with, though, I want you to use your charisma and get everyone who attended today’s meeting back together. I’m going to be getting them to help push the Cause.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “May I stand now, ma’am?”

  Amy helped me to my feet and put her arm around my shoulder, giving me a hug. “We’re going to win this, Carol,” she said. “We’re going to change the world!”

  Both Hank and I thought heroism was addictive for Major Transforms, and Haggerty was our number one addict. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. What else could I say?

  ---

  “Okay, now that I’ve got you here, we need to talk about where we’re going with this,” Haggerty said, back in Room D. I stood behind her, the dutiful lieutenant. I doubt anyone missed the livid bruises on my face and arms. I had managed to corral all the attendants to the presentation except the Madonna of Montreal. To balance my failure I managed to find Sky, who hadn’t attended the presentation, instead ministering to the fallen from the quest. “I see two possibilities. On one hand, we can force the Cause, do the research and development we’ve all been putting off, and convince the Transform community our way is not just the right way, but the only way. On the other hand, we can declare victory in the Cause and slink off into the corners to do our own preparations for the Transform Apocalypse.”

  Lori stood. “Who put you in charge, Arm Haggerty?” Boss of the Cause was her position. She liked Amy as a peer and follower, but she hadn’t liked Amy the last time Amy thought dominance over me gave her the right to order Lori around, and, well, she still didn’t.

  “This did,” Amy said. She picked up the Eskimo Spear and went into a stalk, threatening to shove the pig-sticker into Lori. Lori settled into a defensive combat stance, met Amy’s eyes, and dueled, Arm dominance style. After twenty seconds of non-verbal dueling, Lori relaxed out of her combat stance.

  “Fine. Good point,” Lori said, humbled.

  I wanted to shake the two of them. ‘That’s my Focus you’re messing with’, I wanted to say to Haggerty. ‘Lori, you’re a Focus, why are you acting like an Arm?’ I wanted to say to Lori. This was severely screwy, even on a day filled with the severely screwy.

  Lori sat down, ever so much the junior Arm humbled by a dominant superior.

  “Madam Arm, may I ask your goal in this?” Guru Shadow said. The senior Crow appeared worried, not by Lori’s challenge, which amused him, but by this whole arrangement. As always in a social situation he hid his power and presence, appearing as a calm and contained normal young man, with dark hair and an olive complexion.

  “My goal?” Haggerty shrugged and turned to me. “Carol, do you have a better way of saying what I want?” She thought ‘push the Cause’ and ‘do the research’ said it all.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. If there was anyone in the audience who hadn’t caught the dominance fight and its aftermath, well, now they knew. “The goal of the Cause, from an Arm’s perspective, is to grab the right to research and spread new Transform techniques and technologies. Because of those who oppose us, the more tangible effect of this effort will be a necessary Transform ‘revolution’ against those of the old guard who block the research and the dissemination of research results.”

  Tonya and Shadow exchanged glances. “This is extremely hazardous, if not suicidal,” Tonya said. “The first Focuses, and perhaps the Council, will attempt to stop you, both politically and militarily.” Focus Keistermann, the president of the Focus Council, continued to knit, giving no indication of her support or objections to Tonya’s point.

  “The senior Gurus among the Crows, save for myself, will also oppose this,” Shadow said. “Madam Arm, is this what you want?”

  “Bring it on,” Haggerty said. She stood up straighter and I swear puffed out her chest. Some people thought Haggerty’s penchant for making friends with many other Major Transforms, including other Arms, made her weak. Those people were sorely mistaken. She was the strongest of us all. Or at least so I thought, that day.

  “Do you speak for Arm Keaton on this subject?” Tonya said. As the boss Arm, Keaton’s position was critical.

  “Certainly not,” Haggerty said. She turned to me and motioned for me to explain.

  “Arm Keaton has been pushing us in this direction for years,” I said. And I had been the one arguing against such a course. Silly me. Amy and Stacy in agreement. The world shuddered. “She wants us to go much farther, if possible, than a mere ‘revolution’. All of the senior Arms save myself have argued in favor of ignoring the restrictions of the senior Focuses and Crows on the subject of research and information dissemination. Today I find myself convinced otherwise” I displayed the bruises on my arms “and I’m now on board as well.” I took a deep breath and met the eyes of as many people in the audience as I could. “Until today, the Cause had been based on suppositions, hope, and dusty theories. The fact we now know we’re right not only proves the Cause to be correct, but also gives us a psychological edge over our opponents. Why? Now we know they’re wrong.” Now I knew I was wrong.

  Hope. Despite the humiliation involved in changing my mind, I now did have hope. And, yes, I was an Arm and I relished the idea of a good fight. I had quite a few first Focuses I wouldn’t mind torturing to a slow agonizing death. Focus Adkins of Detroit, for one.

  “If we agree to this, there’s one thing I and the other Arms are going to want, as a price of our participation,” I said. I wasn’t stepping on Amy’s toes or even Keaton’s toes. This was one of the few things all the senior Arms agreed on. “We don’t want to hear any whining about the danger. If we agree to this we will be threatened, and people will die. Enter into this understanding the danger.”

  Haggerty nodded. So did the other Arms in attendance. Amy’s mind was strange. She was brilliant, highly organized and detail oriented. She wrote the most amazing and complete reports and papers. She also had a good feel for what Hank termed visionary leadership. Everything in-between, from simple people organizing to supervisory leadership to managerial leadership, was terra incognita to her.

  “Show of hands,” Amy said, raising the Eskimo Spear as she voted ‘yes’.

  Nobody voted ‘no’. Nobody could.

  Of course Haggerty had a project list. Some of her projects were obvious. “Master Occum, a year ago you promised me the Noble equivalent of the Hunters’ Pack Alphas. Where are they?” Abandoned because the Crow Masters couldn’t cope with all the dead experimental victims, that’s where. Creating new Noble households and training Nobles was far safer. “Lori, you, Ann and Dr. Zielinski now have enough data to write a publication quality paper on the Transform Apocalypse, the real numbers.” Focus Suzie Schrum, the corrupt first Focus who held the Northeast Region presidency, had told Lori never to publish such a thing, or else, even sub rosa. Despite the threat, Lori nodded, without pause. “I want it. I’ll even pay.”

  Other projects were devious and unexpected. “Gilgamesh, your dross housecleaning crews are up and running, and even earning a little money. It’s
time for you to work on something else. I’ve heard you complain many times about how you don’t have time to work on dross constructs, and can’t get any better on your dross object creation tricks. And about how you’re not convinced you can take dross object creation much further, anyway. Well, the Eskimo Spear here says otherwise – it’s a dross object. Dross objects can be a huge part of the Cause if they’re properly developed; for instance, imagine making a housecleaning dross object that a dross sensitive Focus can use. There are a lot more of them than the Focuses admit.” I hadn’t thought of the connection, nor had anyone else, even Guru Shadow, who heartily agreed to assign Gilgamesh the proper training tasks and agreed to help Gilgamesh master the more dangerous tricks.

  Other projects were just obnoxious.

  “Carol,” Amy said, waving a finger under my nose. I noticed Amy’s unchipped fingernail polish. The first thing she did when she got back to civilization was take a shower and paint her fingernails. Then she fought me in a dominance fight and I hadn’t even made her chip the polish. “Whatever happened to the project to get juice from a Focus?”

  “Ma’am,” I said, attempting not to focus on Haggerty’s fingernails. “Frasier’s still recovering from the last time I killed her and brought her back.”

  “If she’s not dead, stop your foot-dragging,” Amy said. All of us Arms are cavalier about other people’s lives. Killing security guards didn’t bother me; that’s what they signed up for, in my mind. Amy felt the same about Focuses and FBI agents who got in her way. She wasn’t the Focus community’s favorite Arm. Unless a Focus’s body was chewed up beyond reason, she generally came back to life. “If she can’t do the job, find a better Focus. You, for instance, Cooley.”

  Focus Linda Cooley, also of Chicago, paled to the color of a bloodless corpse. “Ma’am,” she said, more cowed than normal. “Amy, I’m the wrong type of Focus for the juice moving project. You’re going to need a Focus with native juice pattern talent, which isn’t me.” Focus Gloria Frasier wasn’t a top-end Focus, but she had started doing juice patterns natively about the same time her charisma came in. I had convinced Lori to give her the full course of secret juice pattern training, up to where Gloria topped out, which wasn’t far.

  “You just haven’t applied yourself,” Amy said, implying Linda was lazy, a true complaint. “Do so.” To my amazement, Linda didn’t balk. Amy turned to me. “One year. I want you to either prove it’s impossible or succeed within the next year.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I knew what I would be doing, now didn’t I?

  Haggerty next got obnoxious with Lori. “Lori, I hate to say this, but you and Sky, wherever he is, need to finish up your secret whole-household tag tuning project.” Sky stood right beside Lori, holding her hand. Only Focus Keistermann, the Crows and I knew where he stood.

  I knew nothing about the tag tuning project. How in the hell did Haggerty know more about my Focus’s activities than I did? Lori shook her head. “That project?” Lori said. “The project’s dangerous, time consuming and may not work.” Exactly. ‘Dangerous, time consuming and may not work’ appeared to be Haggerty’s selection criteria.

  “You told me eight months ago you were one big push away from finishing. So what if this project’s killed a household Transform or two in the past. They’re all volunteers anyway. I’m sure they’ll volunteer for your tests.” Haggerty had little empathy for the emotional devastation the loss of a household Transform inflicted on a Focus. Lori nodded in agreement and didn’t fight Amy’s orders.

  Only with this did I realize that everyone else had been as loop-knocked by the appearance of the Eskimo Spear as I had. I thought this was just an Arm thing. We had an entire room filled with stiff-backed senior Major Transforms, all with PhDs in stubborn foot-dragging intransigence, now all doing the ‘subservient junior Arm’ routine to Amy, save for the groveling. I wondered if she even noticed.

  Other projects made no sense, at least initially. “Mary,” Haggerty said, to Mary Sibrian, now the only Arm in my hierarchy. “I have a strange one for you. Arm tags on normals don’t work the way I would expect them to, if you analogize them to Focus tags on Transforms. There’s far too much variation, and at times they work differently on the same person when reapplied at a different points in time. I don’t think we’re doing tagging correctly, and I’d like you to look into this.”

  Mary flickered her eyes to me, as both Haggerty and I had her tagged, and she didn’t want conflicts. I hadn’t thought this was a problem of the tags, but a feature. “Ma’am,” I said, to Amy. “I’ve seen these variations myself, including Arm tags on Transforms and Arms.”

  “I haven’t seen anything of the sort,” Haggerty said. “You’re going to need to show me some examples on this.” Pause. “Continue.”

  Right. Data. If I ever heard Haggerty’s ‘the plural of anecdote is not data’ aphorism again I would have a psychotic break myself. “If Mary finds a way to codify the differences and make them repeatable, we might have a new bag of tricks to work with. Remember my story about Focus Teas’ discovery of juice patterns? She first found them by ‘tagging air’.” Amy gave me a big grin; yes, she was thinking along the lines of ‘perhaps this is the way for Arms to do juice patterns, or something analogous’.

  To Focus Keistermann, Amy said: “Polly, I know, by description only, of a bunch of forbidden Focus tricks involving multi-Focus work and tags. How politically dangerous are these, anyway?”

  Focus Keistermann frowned. “I’d call them a declaration of war on the first Focuses.”

  “Pushing the Cause isn’t?”

  “Not to start with,” Polly said. She put down her knitting and took a sip from her omnipresent glass of sweet iced tea. She wasn’t wearing her Sunday finest, as she normally did at a Focus Council meeting, but instead one of the pseudo-military catering uniforms her household used. “Depending on what gets exposed, and how, it may never be. My gut feel, though, is that if ramping up the Focus support numbers requires Crow participation, it will be.”

  “How about you work on codifying these forbidden tricks, so if an emergency happens you can spread them around quickly? If we’re going to be at war, we need to be ready with everything possible.”

  Polly nodded. “I can do that.”

  Amy turned to me. “Is politics holding back Hank’s big project, or is it science?” She meant the juice pattern codification project, something most of the people in the room didn’t know existed.

  “Something else entirely, I just learned,” I said. “Active sabotage. I need to pass some new information along to him; when I do I’ll ask how much my current discovery helps.”

  “Can you make sure the project stays fully funded, and he spends more time working on it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Then there were the screwy projects that Haggerty assigned to all of us, as they were all extremely speculative in nature. She had over a hundred and fifty of these, all, at least for now, lower priority. Many were obscure and likely not very useful, such as a rumor about a Focus being able to work at double her normal range if she worked through a second Focus at the normal end of her range. Others were, well, unbelievably magical, such as some Crows’ supposed abilities to talk to the auroras, and other Crow’s supposed abilities to cast fire and lightning using something the crazy Crow termed ‘cosmic power’. Others were well known but outside of Haggerty’s mindset of possibilities, such as rumors of Focuses holding dream conversations, which I knew of as a standard mature Focus trick. Super long-range metasense? We ended up with a roomful of embarrassed Crows hemming and hawing and finally admitting their long-range metasense existed, but only worked at random times. Why? The Crows didn’t know, and admitted to long conversations on the subject, and more than a few experiments. They agreed to try more.

  Haggerty’s screwy project list took the longest to chew through, and no, I wasn’t the only one who dozed off part way through.

  ---

  Stacy Keaton pack
ed up her Detroit house, or at least her Arm students packed. I had phoned Stacy with the news from the North Tonawanda meeting, and she politely requested I come to Detroit to go over the meeting in detail. She had to request these days. After I backed her when she publicly lost her marbles, I won free of the obligation to show up once a month to explain myself.

  An impressive student Arm who looked days away from graduation let me in with a proper “Ma’am.”

  “You are?”

  “Student Meredith Bartlett, ma’am,” she said, eyes firmly on my feet, her voice perfectly deferential.

  I got in her face, challenging her. “Your graduation exercise?”

  “Espionage, ma’am, against the Bay Area Focuses.”

  With my left hand I yanked up her chin so I could take in her eyes. The Student Arm managed to meet mine without flinching or challenging. Well taught. In a few years this one would be an asset, another of the so-called ‘speed Arms’, joining Rayburn and myself as Arms oriented toward speed and stealth, not going toe to toe with Chimeras in their beasty combat forms.

  “Very well. Don’t fuck up.” I let go of her chin and she went back to studying my feet, properly terrified.

  The living room was stark and empty, except for a white rug and a pile of boxes in the corner. I sensed another baby Arm, one barely out of her transformation, packing upstairs, but no Keaton.

  I felt a presence as I followed Bartlett across the living room, and turned to see Stacy Keaton behind me.

  Something was wrong with her. She stood too still, and the look in her eyes was of death and madness.

  Shit! She was having another psychotic episode, probably due to the pain of abandoning her territory, and she had me trapped in her damned house. She stood between me and the door, and I would need to navigate too many obstacles to make my way safely out the back. Bartlett’s eyes grew wide in terror and she ran for the stairs, but Keaton was focused on me, not the student, so I wouldn’t escape that way.