No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5)

by Randall Farmer

  Erica extended one hand and helped him to his feet, then grabbed both his hands and met his eyes. A moment later, he was no longer hungry. “The first lesson I learned was self-control. Control over my own hunger.”

  “You have to eat, yes?” he said. He wished his German was better. She nodded.

  Major Transforms could do all sorts of tricks, but the only one that worked on normals was charisma. This would be the second, unless this turned out to be a charisma variant. He indeed would go home with a lifetime’s worth of mysteries to puzzle over.

  Zielinski paused for a moment. Something was missing. Yes. There. Erica’s stench no longer bothered him. Now, she smelled normal. Yet something more to add to his list of puzzles.

  “I eat when I need to.” Erica gave him a strange frown, almost half a smile. “How is your courage, Henry Zielinski? Can you hear horrible things about me and not run?”

  “I won’t run. Promise.” He noted that he didn’t have to struggle to control his reactions anymore. He was at ease around her. She had stolen his wariness, somehow. Her theft of his wariness was the most frightening thing she had done so far. He wasn’t scared because of her actions, though. Bothered, intellectually, but not scared. It reminded him of some stories he read about Indians as a kid – hunters able to calm deer, casually walk over to them, and slit their throats. Yes, this bothered him, intellectually.

  “Come. Sit beside me.” He didn’t see her move, but she appeared, sitting on the rock overlook over the beautiful and awe-inspiring valley. He walked over and sat beside her. She curled up next to him, grabbed his right arm and slung it over her shoulder. Human contact. She must be starved for human contact. Contact of the only kind she could tolerate, on her terms, under her control. The situation reminded him of his first meeting with that strange first Focus who hid her name from him, long before he managed to gain any immunity to Focus charisma. He was deep inside Erica’s control, the same way he had been under the control of that nameless first Focus, with her long white blonde hair and a dreamy sleepwalker’s vulnerable expression on her face.

  “I only need to take juice about once a month. Taking juice is tied to my womanly cycle now, and if the authorities give me a Transform early, my womanly cycle comes early.”

  “How?” Did he want to know? His subconscious already did, and gave him fair warning. “The American Arms need juice more often. Every 13 days, maybe. Juice is a big problem for them.” He didn’t think either Carol or Stacy actually had ‘womanly cycles’ anymore.

  “I’m sure it is,” Erica said. “They are living in the modern world and I am not. My solution wouldn’t work in the modern world. My solution is too, um, Paleolithic.” At first, Zielinski did not recognize the German word she used, but he puzzled out the meaning from the word roots. “Your Arms will need a more modern solution, at least a Neolithic solution.” Erica paused, wary of Zielinski’s reaction. “I eat my victims. Brains supply quite a bit more juice than what you get by the normal juice drawing methods. You can’t cook them, though. It destroys the juice.”

  A distant and deep part of Dr. Zielinski wanted to run, run fast, run and hide and never encounter another Transform. Change his name, go run a gas station. His conscious mind, though…

  “It saves lives,” he said. “An elegant solution to a difficult problem.”

  Erica sighed. “What I do disgusts everyone I talk to about it, even you. I don’t blame you – what I do disgusts me, as well. It’s the right thing to do, though. For me. Transforms are about all I eat, these days. In the winter, I’ll pull down a few deer because I need more food in the winter. Other than the deer, I’ve become little more than a carnivore preying on unwanted Transforms. No grain, no vegetables.” She met his gaze again, her eyes showing no weakness or remorse. “Even so, you aren’t overcome by my information, as many are. Strong man. Tell me what you have learned about Crows.”

  Zielinski complied. His talk took about an hour, with Erica’s pointed questions interrupting on a regular basis. He told her far more than he realized he knew. Then he told her about the two US Arms, Keaton and Hancock. Whatever she wanted to hear, he told.

  “I don’t know why they have these muscle problems,” Erica said. “I control my hunger, and I don’t eat enough to grow all these extra muscles. Starvation works, it seems. They worry too much about juice, too. You can’t get too much juice.”

  He frowned. “Too much juice and an Arm becomes a Monster.”

  She frowned back. “You’ve seen this?”

  “No. Common sense.”

  Erica laughed and shook her head. “I’ve taken too much juice. The juice just falls off. Arms are predators. There’s no such thing as too much for a predator.”

  He understood her point. It was analogous to the Focuses, who couldn’t drive themselves into withdrawal; when they approached it their juice tricks just stopped working. No, withdrawal was the real danger for Arms.

  “So, what are these Chimeras, anyway? I’m not sure we have any in Europe.”

  He told her about them, as much as he remembered, which turned out to be more than he imagined.

  “They understand less about themselves than any of the Major Transforms,” Erica eventually decided. “They are going to be a big problem, later, when they learn.”

  Then she told him about her dreams. “I find other Transforms in my dreams. Images in the mind. I understand where they are, and about how far away, but there’s very little precision. Lesser Transforms, including lesser Major Transforms, only show up in my dreams when they are close by. Most Major Transforms I can find when they are less than a few tens of kilometers away. A few I can find no matter where they are, such as the other mature Arms. Not all the time, though. Some nights, they are all invisible. They’re always invisible during the day, even if I’m dreaming. I can’t find the lesser Arms, either. In America, only one Arm is visible. There’s another in Canada, another in Spain, two in Russia. That’s all. No other mature Arms on Earth. None at all.”

  Zielinski told her about the American Focuses, a great deal of information, and properly technical. Erica grew frustrated because of the language problems, and told Zielinski to stop. “Further information trading is worthless until you learn technical German. Or, perhaps, I learn English. I can probably learn English faster than you can learn the technical German. For our next meeting.”

  “Next meeting?” Zielinski had assumed they would never meet again.

  “Of course. You’re mine, at least when you come to my mountains. Your Arms don’t work this way? Territory is everything. Ownership comes from territory. You belong to your Arms when you are in their territory; you belong to me when you are in my territory. You belong, or you are an enemy. Saying ‘you are mine’ means you are a friend, not an enemy. You thought it backwards? Hah. I bet Focuses work the same way, giving you many bosses. That will be a big problem for you, someday. A hazard to your life if you end up owned by both Arms and Focuses, unless your Arms and Focuses learn to share, learn to work together. Own each other. Perhaps that’s the Neolithic solution.” She paused. “Someone is going to have to invent the modern civilization solution, as well, someday. Otherwise we will tear the world apart – as the Madonna has said, the Arms and Focuses need a real Commander. Not for me, though. I can’t stand modern fabrics. Gives me a rash.”

  With that, Erica vanished. After she left, Zielinski realized she had somehow augmented his mind, enhancing his thought processes and memory by contact with her body. Now that was a neat trick. She had also been doing some hefty mind control on him, as well. Nasty. He counted his blessings that she hadn’t decided to kill him on the way out.

  Henry Zielinski cursed as he began his long walk downhill, on the steep unmarked trail, back toward Murnau, the prize contained in his memories and his life still his own. Erica never did tell him how she did her vanishing and appearing tricks!

  Henry Zielinski: June 2, 1968 – June 3, 1968

  “Before she left she did something
to me to keep me from telling anyone but the two of you her story,” he said. The three Arms followed his every word with rapt attention. Their only reaction came when he told them about Erica’s juice draining habits. Hancock had paled, Keaton got annoyed, and Haggerty puked around her gag. Zielinski sympathized with Haggerty. The stench in Keaton’s basement was enough to tempt him to vomit himself, even before he brought up Eissler’s cannibalism. Keaton ignored Haggerty and growled at Zielinski. “That didn’t work when I tried it. Why not?”

  Hancock paled farther, though the slightly clenched fists meant she already knew part of Keaton’s story. Haggerty puked again, and started thrashing, running in place in an uncontrolled panic. Keaton stalked over to Haggerty, told her to shut up, threatened to kill her, broke her arms with a swift chop of each hand, and then manipulated the breaks to enhance the pain. Haggerty moaned and sobbed, but Keaton ignored the sobbing and returned to her seat. She nodded at him.

  Hieronymus Bosch, nothing. This place was something out of the inner circles of Hell.

  He focused on the clinical, trying not to let Keaton’s behavior disturb him. “I can hazard a guess if you want to try an experiment. Erica claimed to be a pure carnivore, not eating anything except meat. She can’t be fully correct, however, as meat doesn’t have the necessary nutrients. However, if she also ate various organs such as the kidneys, liver and spleen, her diet might suffice, given the other biochemical alterations associated with the Arm transformation. One possibility worth considering is that modern foods, especially processed foods, are a subtle poison to an Arm. Another possibility is the Arm transformation has a much wider range of possibilities than, for instance, Focus transformations. I do know that Carol’s…”

  “Improper,” Keaton said, then paused, thinking. “Impolite,” she said, fifteen seconds later. She turned to Hancock. “Ma’am Hancock?”

  “That would do,” Hancock said. Zielinski repressed a sigh and the urge to suggest the term ‘Lady’. Too cheeky, he decided. He would use whatever honorific they suggested. Haggerty still moaned and sobbed, but the baby Arm’s reactions didn’t seem to bother the other two Arms. He suspected that Keaton even enjoyed Haggerty’s pain.

  “Ma’am Hancock’s original quick muscle growth rate and large climax muscle disposition was at the far end of the bell curve for observed Arm development. This appears to have been reset by going through withdrawal.” Hancock covered her pain well. “On the other hand, Ma’am Haggerty…”

  Sotto voice from Keaton: “That’s a waste of an honorific if I ever…”

  “…is on the flattest muscle development curve I’ve seen among American Arms. If she follows the standard development path, she’ll be about 20% leaner than Ma’am Hancock is currently.”

  Zielinski checked whether he needed to elaborate any further and Hancock waved him on. He carefully dragged his attention away from where Haggerty still sobbed miserably.

  “Questions?”

  Keaton’s barrage of questions was eminently predictable. Paranoid and technical. Did Eissler show any interest in leaving Europe? Did she know any of us by name? Can you estimate her strength? How high could she leap? Etc. Her questions went on and on.

  Hancock wanted to know if Eissler had any long-term plans, showed any sign of juice withdrawal, or any general mental quirks. Zielinski did have to admit that her fine blonde pelt could have been a juice withdrawal recovery side effect, but he doubted it. Hancock also wanted to sniff at his mark from Eissler, sniff his blood, and similar scent-oriented Arm tricks. Intense, but not damaging. Negative on all of these. Negative on the licking clean his wounds and healing them, too. These appeared to be tricks developed by training, not standard Arm skills.

  The surprise of the afternoon came when Haggerty unexpectedly spoke up around her vomit-soaked gag. “Doctor Zielinski?” she said. Her voice was only barely comprehensible through the gag and the remnants of tears. He almost welcomed the interruption, as he had been stuck subtly trying to talk Keaton and Hancock out of trying to physically slice Eissler’s mark from his chest, but he didn’t expect much from her. Brand new Arms, as he knew well from experience, were all hormones and little intellect. He only hoped her lack of sense wouldn’t lead to yet more horror in this abattoir of a basement.

  Keaton grabbed Haggerty’s hair and put her knife at Haggerty’s throat. “You have something to say, asshole? This had better be good.”

  With Keaton’s hand at Haggerty’s throat, the best Haggerty could do through the gag was grunt. Keaton ran her knife up the side of Haggerty’s neck and sliced through the gag, removing it.

  “You slice my throat, you’ll never hear it,” Haggerty said. Zielinski didn’t know how Keaton responded, but Haggerty screamed.

  Zielinski winced. This was no way to control a baby Arm. A baby Arm’s thought processes were dominated by the absurd testosterone levels so common in new Arms. You had to grab their minds, not their hair.

  He walked over and stood beside Keaton. “Tell me,” he said, to Haggerty. Maybe he would be able to turn this little tableau into something useful, instead of yet another exercise in gratuitous torture.

  Haggerty gathered herself. “Her capabilities are not an accident,” she said. “But I refuse to say what I know unless she quits torturing me! This is…” Keaton backhanded her face, not hard enough to break her jaw, but close. Haggerty stopped talking.

  Zielinski cleared his throat and glanced at Keaton. She growled and glowered back at him. Keaton’s problem was with the baby Arm, not with him. He flickered his eyes at Haggerty and motioned at Keaton’s knife. Keaton met his gaze, shrugged, and gave him her knife.

  Carol didn’t appear pleased at his willingness to help them with Haggerty. However, he suspected it wouldn’t take Hancock long to remember where she first met him and the depth of his experience with baby Arms.

  “I know an extensive amount about new Transforms with Armenigar’s Syndrome,” Zielinski said to Haggerty, in his cold doctor voice. “Even if you end up a little less developed than Ma’am Hancock, as I suspect, you’re still in danger from your muscles.”

  He gave Haggerty a very serious doctor smile.

  “You’re likely stiff from your immobility,” Zielinski said, walking right up to Haggerty, avoiding the vomit on the floor. “Here, here and here,” he said, using Keaton’s knife as a pointer. “These stiff points are caused by immobility; they’re stiff because your body isn’t building muscles there, but is instead taking raw materials away. However,” he said, pointing out several places, such as the backs of her calves and her abdomen, “you can already feel extra muscles growing here. Once these muscles get too far out of proportion relative to your other muscles, you’re doomed. No amount of exercise will be able to save you. You’ll die when your chest and abdominal muscles grow so large they go into spasms and contract, shattering your ribs and ripping apart your heart and lungs. Of course, long before that, you will have gone mad from pain – as an Arm, you’re immune to all pain killers, and you won’t go into shock or unconsciousness unless you’re in a safe environment.”

  He leaned right up to Haggerty’s sweat-streaked face. “So if you aren’t going to cooperate, you’re as good as dead. No one is going to bother to teach an uncooperative new Arm how to survive things like these muscle problems. Since you’re going to die anyway, you might make a nice experimental subject. That’s my specialty; I’ve seen more Arms die under my care than your two captors here have killed. Perhaps I can convince your two captors to help me with a little vivisection project, as they’re as interested as I am in seeing how a living Arm ticks. From the inside.” He paused for a beat. “On the other hand, you could just decide to cooperate.” Throughout Zielinski’s entire speech to Haggerty, he held his tone of voice blandly neutral, until the last line, which he made sound pleasant.

  He backed away from Haggerty and offered the knife hilt first back to Keaton. She took the knife without a word. Hancock backed away a few feet, her face stone. She hadn�
��t liked it when he had been a hard-case doctor when she was a young Arm, either.

  “Okay, okay, fine,” Haggerty said, to Keaton, her gaze avoiding Zielinski furiously. “My point about Eissler is that if you add her capabilities together, they look like she developed her tricks because she’s being pursued by a powerful enemy, most likely a Transform enemy. Someone more powerful than Eissler herself. She has speed and stealth for avoidance. She didn’t go for power and strength. The enemy’s got to be an older Arm.”

  That explanation would work, Zielinski decided, though he doubted that Eissler’s enemy was an Arm. He predicted her enemy was one of the male Major Transforms, with their metasense range advantages. Haggerty’s was quite an insight, especially from a young Arm only a few days past her transformation. He studied the two older Arms. Keaton gave Haggerty a subtle fish-eye, implying that Haggerty would live, too valuable for her mind to kill outright. Hancock gave him a similar look, hopefully for the same reason. Neither wanted to talk about the implications of Eissler having an enemy powerful enough to endanger her, given that she had been an Arm for longer than Hancock and Keaton combined.

  After the question and answer session ended, Zielinski followed the two mature Arms upstairs from the basement, soaked in sweat, and took a long breath of fresh, sweet air. Handling Keaton and Hancock together reminded him of the day the full Focus Council had grilled him. He suspected Major Transforms synergized when they worked together, an as yet unproven hypothesis. Their force of personality wasn’t just a linear sum, but involved a significant multiplicative term. He had worked out a curve for the Focuses, based on his best guess that seven Focuses had about the same force of personality when working together as about ten to twelve individual Focuses, measured in what he termed individual Focus units (IFU). Putting today’s stress value into the equation didn’t work; the non-linear term increased too quickly, noticeable with just two and a fraction Arms. He ran through several possible alterations, discarding them one after another. He eventually found one that fit the data and did the math in his head. His hypothesis would work if the synergistic effect turned out to be about three times…