“Sell her to that cunt?” Carol leapt out of her chair, the full predator. Flo, Ann and Sky flinched. Surprisingly, Gilgamesh didn’t. “Are you out of your mind? Lori, she’s one of the two bitches who were after me and drove me into withdrawal!”
“I have some limited contact with Focus Fingleman,” Lori said. “Yes, she wanted you neutralized. If I can believe my contact in her household, she had nothing to do with the latter.”
“What sort of contact?” Keaton said, quiet tense. Meaning ‘how good is this contact?’
Lori frowned, visibly unwilling to supply the name, grimaced and continued. “Her name’s Dahlia Woo, and she’s Focus Fingleman’s house diplomat. Focus Fingleman would have gained nothing from destroying you, Carol. She wanted you leashed, not slain.”
Hank flinched; he knew Dahlia personally, and knew she was one of the top Transforms in the country. Keaton flickered her eyes his way; he allowed her to read his mind on the subject. He had, long ago, told her the story of his first Dahlia encounter. She remembered, and shrugged.
“So, what the fuck are you trying to suggest?” Carol said, arms crossed. She hadn’t sat back down, and her predatory presence had grown to where even he felt queasy.
The Focus licked her lips. “Buy her off by selling her Rogue Focus. If we play this right, it should buy you some good will from a sizeable number of the ruling first Focuses.”
Carol’s predatory presence faded, though her grimace didn’t. After several seconds she nodded and sat back down into her chair. “This is business and I’m dealing with the mafia. My personal feelings are irrelevant.”
Both the Focus and Flo nodded. Despite her words, Zielinski knew that Carol wasn’t convinced.
“No more hunting Arms. Any tagged Arms under ma’am Keaton’s sway, that is,” Carol said. “If this is the direction we have to go, than that’s what I’m going to demand.” She realized what she had said and turned to Keaton.
“I’m not going to object. Rogue Focus is your property, to dispose of as you please,” Keaton said. She turned to the Focus. “Why are you doing us a favor? Your rebellion could also make use of this sale.”
The Focus and Flo turned to each other, non-verbally communicating Focus-style. Flo took a deep breath. “Arm Keaton, it’s a question of visibility and provenance,” Flo said, unsteady. “If the rebellion got the rewards from her, it would send a message, um, an inappropriate message, uh, that the rebellion Focuses controlled the Arms. If this Focus lived in New England, the politics would be different.”
“Twisty political machinations must be an actual Focus ability,” Keaton said, sneering. “I wonder if it’s juice powered?”
Zielinski opened his mouth to answer ‘yes’, but seeing Ann’s appalled reaction to his obvious commentary, he decided it might be best if he refrained.
“I have an observation, Arm Keaton and Arm Hancock, based on the plan as I’ve seen it,” Ann said. Hearing no objections, she pushed forward. “Won’t ‘disappearing’ the Feds protecting Rogue Focus, as you’ve planned, be too much of a signal to the FBI’s Arm Task Force about Arm participation, and that an Arm has established a territory in Houston?”
Keaton went stone face, which Zielinski interpreted as shock. She hadn’t seen this problem coming. Carol leaned forward, the predator again. “It’s a risk, but one I’m willing to take.”
“It’s too much of a risk,” Keaton said. Her comment earned her a Carol glare, non-predatory. Carol bowed, humble, to her boss.
“Any suggestions, people?” Keaton said. Zielinski hadn’t realized it before, but Keaton wasn’t exactly world-class as far as strategic thinking was concerned. Carol appeared better, but hadn’t learned how to disengage her emotions from her decision-making. He could help her with this.
They talked it over for twenty minutes, with Sky and Lori attempting to cobble together the expected far-too-complicated Crow-based solution leaving the Feds confused and inoperative.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” Gilgamesh said. Somewhere during the conversation he had disappeared from the couch into a corner of the room. Now he stepped forward from the not particularly existent shadows of Keaton’s pale living room. “Politically. With the senior Crows. Too much ‘interfering in other Transforms’ affairs’. I don’t want their attention. I’ve had too much of that.”
“It might attract Rogue Crow as well,” Ann said. The whole idea behind their Rogue Focus attack was to do the job so quietly and cleanly that by the time the Feds outside of Houston, and Rogue Crow, who everyone suspected had Fed spies in Houston, learned of the operation, the operation was over.
Gilgamesh shifted nervously, losing both his aura of fierceness and his distracted air. “Ma’ams, I have an impertinent suggestion, a possible major change to the plan. May I?”
Carol and Keaton nodded like identical twin dolls. “One of the ways we could distract the Feds without any obvious Crow involvement would be if they had another target to pursue. Such as an Arm on a rampage.” He turned to Keaton. “Ma’am.”
“You do like to volunteer people for the most hideous jobs, kiddo,” Keaton said. “Without me in the fight, you’re down your best combatant.”
Gilgamesh nodded. Unhappy.
“I’ll buy the argument, though. And…” she turned to Carol “…this will make this into a wonderful test for you, Hancock. Congratulations. You’re in charge of the attack.”
Carol, stone face, bowed acknowledgement. Zielinski could practically sense the weight of the world settling on Carol’s shoulders.
“Ah!” Keaton said, standing, then pacing. “This will work. I’ve got a better idea. I won’t just be doing ‘Arm on a rampage’, I’ll be doing ‘Carol Hancock on a rampage’, starting in Dallas. I’ll use Carol’s old fake IDs and go in disguised as what she used to look like.”
“Nobody will ever suspect Houston’s my home base afterwards,” Carol said. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Keaton said. “You’re reputation is going to be mud after this.” Carol looked pained. “Okay, I won’t do it as the California Spree Killer. But if I can’t clear a few million in bank robberies and stick your face near the top of the FBI’s ten most wanted list, I’ll eat my army boots.”
They milled around afterwards, snacking on Carol’s reheated delicacies and getting fat. Zielinski managed to corner Carol in the kitchen while Sky did some more entertaining. “You have your hard mask on,” he said.
She nodded, turning away from the sizzle of sautéing garlic. Whatever plans Haggerty had made for dinner, Carol didn’t consider them sufficient. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this. I’m only barely functional again. Who knows what sort of mental problems might surface if I’m in command?”
He suspected as much. “This is something you’re going to have to face someday. Might as well be now.”
“Thanks a whole bunch, Hank,” Carol said, turning back to stir the garlic before it burned. “I’m going to approve your request and send you off to visit Eissler.”
Where had this come from? “What? Now?”
“Yes, now. You’re too valuable to risk, and I don’t have enough muscle to protect you if Rogue Focus finds my base of operations again. Also, you’ve cobbled together enough information to make an info trade with Eissler worthwhile.”
“Okay.” Hell. He had really been looking forward to seeing Carol in action.
“That’s a funny reaction,” she said, looking up from the garlic.
He nodded. “Carol, what you’re going to be doing is what I believe you’re here to be doing. If you don’t mind me being a little mystical.” Pause. “I had hoped to witness it.”
“Mystical hell. You’re counting on the instincts of the Madonna of Montreal, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Yes I am.”
“I guess I’m about to find out how good her instincts are, then, because I am going to be in command. Let’s skip the screaming crowds of followers until later, though, f
or after I succeed.”
Now there was the Arm he knew. “Good enough for me.”
Gilgamesh: July 9, 1968 – July 11, 1968
Gilgamesh smiled at Tiamat’s joke, happy and wary, as they slipped quietly through yet a different Houston suburban community. Sharpstown, the locals called it, home of astronauts. Happy because this was his first chance to spend any personal time with Tiamat in a week, wary because they were out on a mission, stealthily approaching Focus Laswell’s household. The evening was cloudy, warm, and humid, classic Houston summer weather, and sweat soaked his shirt already. Mosquitos swarmed and he resisted the temptation to swat them. He and Tiamat were sneaking, 100 feet distant from each other, communicating by whispers.
Tiamat had been Arm busy, with no time for personal dealings. He felt bad about it, not only because he missed Tiamat, but because as a Crow he couldn’t keep up with an Arm. Without his meditation time, practice time, and his rotten egg preparation time he would be useless to Carol. Ever the realist, Tiamat hadn’t said a thing save to encourage him to keep up with his dross practice.
Tiamat spent her time recruiting people for her army and failing to establish a secure method of communicating with Focus Laswell. The recruiting took a lot of time, some of which he had helped with, getting background information on her recruits and checking their emotions for what Tiamat termed ‘cracks’, which she exploited when she did her actual recruiting. He spent much of the rest of his time talking to Crows, in person, over the phone, and in letters. He had made progress, but he still hadn’t convinced any Crows to do more than exchange letters with Tiamat. Tonight he metasensed Sky leading Hephaestus, Midgard, Newton and Sinclair three miles away, to the west, paralleling their course. The Crows would be examining Tiamat’s interactions with Focus Laswell. Tiamat didn’t know this in particular, but based on her earlier granting permission for the potential recruit Crows to shadow her while she worked, he knew she wouldn’t object.
“So, Gilgamesh, I heard Hank finally managed to drag you into his lab,” Carol said as she ducked into a shady side street. Her whisper carried past two quiet houses and a fenced back yard. “I tried to get him to spill what he was doing with you before he took off on his European trip, but he referred me to you.”
Oh. Yes, this was as awkward for her as it was for him, or so he metasensed in her emotions. He kept to the main subdivision thoroughfare, parallel to Carol’s path, walking sedately like any respectable pedestrian at 2:00 in the morning. As much as a pedestrian could be respectable at 2:00 in the morning. “We talked about many things, and he did manage to convince me to allow him to run a suite of tests on me. Did you know Newton was in the Federal prison you broke the Doc out of?”
“Hmm. I missed him,” Carol said. A late night car turned into the side street and then into the driveway of one of the dark homes. Carol disappeared into a cluster of Crepe Myrtles. “Not that I was catching a lot of things back then. I didn’t even figure out Sky was a Crow until more than a day after I captured him. So is Newton one of the Crows you’re arranging for me to meet?”
“Yes and no. He’s six months younger as a Crow than I am and has a different personality. Extremely skittish and not as serious.” Carol subvocalized ‘that wouldn’t take much’, which brought a small smile to Gilgamesh’s face. “Unless something piques his curiosity, the best you can hope for from him is a whispered conversation. Hell, I still haven’t gotten him to write an introductory letter to you.”
“Assuming Haggerty survives her training, he might want to consider being her Crow,” Carol said. “Youth and youth.”
Gilgamesh shook his head. “Unlikely. His interests lie in other areas. Besides, Midgard has already called dibs on, um, Supergirl.” Tiamat already knew the Crow name for the young Arm, and thought it humorous.
“Dibs! Well, so much for Hank’s theory about the Crows not following the crasser parts of male culture.” Gilgamesh laughed for a moment, inappropriate on a stealth mission.
He quieted himself and thought. How much should he tell Tiamat about his time with Zielinski? He had agreed to the meeting only after negotiating the same sort of agreement Zielinski had with the Arms: no publication of the information he learned without prior permission.
She had earned it, though. “Hank and I started off by talking about Sky, Lori and myself.”
“He’s an old prude. Hopefully he didn’t mess you up too much.”
The wet and sticky hot summer night started to spit tiny drops of rain. Thunder rumbled distantly, to the south. He predicted they would soon get poured on. The Houston insect and frog chorus started up around them, called forth by the mist, loud enough to drown out his whispers. “He was careful about not talking about our little problem directly,” he said, louder than he liked. “Mostly I learned about Lori and Sky’s history and how much worse a life they’d had as young Transforms than I had.” He hadn’t really been interested in hearing that. “It’s hard for me not to be sympathetic to them and their foibles. I know how warped I am, compared to what I was as a normal. And why. Their beginnings were much worse. Sky, for instance, barely remembers anything from his first years as a Crow and he’s suffered through more time with low juice than I’ve had as a Crow. The first Focuses tortured Lori repeatedly and she’s been extensively conditioned by her boss, Focus Schrum, using directed withdrawal scarring. It’s a wonder Lori can even contemplate rebelling and Sky is even functional.” He paused, not wanting to get into more details. Zielinski could be Arm brutal when he chose to. “The Doc also taught me about some of the intricacies of how Transform Sickness works.”
“Ahh. So what did the Good Doctor drag out of you in return?” Carol asked, using the well-earned Crow name for Zielinski. The Good Doctor had been quite bemused – and internally ecstatic – to learn that the Crow and still limited Beast Man community considered him the ‘safe’ doctor and researcher. The discovery hadn’t stopped him from bargaining like an Arm over the information he passed on, though. Or was it more like ‘bargaining like a Focus’, given the Good Doctor’s history?
“He wanted to measure my metasense acuity.”
“How did it come out?”
“Um, Zielinski said it was off the charts in three different areas.” He stopped walking, as the suburban thoroughfare intersected the main road at a stop light. He looked both ways. No traffic either way.
“Why are you embarrassed?” Carol asked. Gilgamesh hadn’t realized he was embarrassed, but Tiamat was right.
“Because Sky is supposed to have the best trained metasense among the Crows. I haven’t trained mine at all. Well, okay, just a little, with regard to Beast Men. And keeping track of Arms, I suppose, and…” He jogged across the main road and skittered behind a veterinarian’s clinic. The sad odor of sick animals wafted up from the back and he heard the quiet humming of a night caretaker. More suburban homes waited behind the clinic.
“Well, don’t worry about being better than all the rest. Someone has to be. So, in what areas was your metasense off the charts? Assuming Hank has seen enough Crows to have valid statistical charts.” She paused and made her own way across the main road. “Forget that statement. I keep forgetting who the hell I’m talking about. Of course Hank’s seen enough Crows to get statistical charts.”
A number that kept on growing. Just before Zielinski left for West Germany, Hephaestus and his young Crow charges had made a visit to the Good Doctor and his portable hotel-room faux-laboratory in Austin. He had taught Hephaestus how to follow his own and his young Crow charges’ juice counts, his standard numerical juice calibration lesson. In return, Zielinski had received permission to run his usual battery of tests on them. According to the Good Doctor, Hephaestus had the most detailed short-range metasense of any Crow he had tested, what Zielinski had called ‘nearly Focus like’.
“Ah, well, there’s something the Good Doctor terms ‘spread’,” Gilgamesh said. “I don’t have much degradation when I’m keeping track of something in front of me
and in back of me at the same time, which seems to be abnormal. Another was number of targets. Then…”
“Number of targets? How many can you track simultaneously?”
Gilgamesh felt himself redden. He knew he was significantly better at tracking multiple targets than Tiamat was. “As many as the Good Doctor could find.”
Tiamat whistled. “Given that our local digs are within your metasense range of all four Austin Focus households, that has to be over eighty Transforms!” For a moment, Gilgamesh saw flickers of Tiamat’s true personality, the one she kept bottled. The part of her who wouldn’t mind making him a true possession, an Arm pet of hers, locked away safe in her basement. He quieted a bit of panic to keep from bolting.
“Did Hank say why this is such an important test?”
Gilgamesh shook his head.
“His data on the subject shows that the better the untrained metasense of a Major Transform, relative to others of the same variety, the more powerful the Major Transform will be. In their trained form.”
Carol laughed, not entirely a laugh of sweetness and light. “Don’t be embarrassed about being talented.”
“How did you do, if I may ask?”
Carol laughed, again. “Let us just say I’m not likely to be clawing my way to the top of the Arm heap by dint of my raw power as an Arm.”
Focus Laswell was awake, as were four household guards, but the rest of her place was asleep. Silent now, Gilgamesh arm-signaled to Tiamat that Rogue Focus had Laswell’s household surrounded with the same dim juice patterns they had triggered around Rogue Focus’s place. As usual, he only picked them up when he was within a hundred yards of them, and only when he was looking for them.
Laswell or Rogue Focus’s? Carol signaled back. His arm signal hadn’t been clear regarding the creator of the juice patterns.
Rogue Focus’s, he signaled.
Tiamat motioned for them to back off. “This explains a lot, such as how the bitch knew I was in Houston,” Carol said, when they had retreated several hundred feet away from the household. “But if Lori’s analysis is correct they don’t have much vertical range at all. Let’s see if Rogue Focus thought to cover the nearby roofs.”
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