No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5)

by Randall Farmer

  Hephaestus took a step back, catching Gilgamesh’s implications about the coming demographic catastrophe. The older Crow’s forward and back motions were a perfect metaphor for the Cause, Gilgamesh decided.

  Despite the progress, they had a long long way to go.

  Carol Hancock: July 14, 1968

  “They’re here,” Gilgamesh whispered. “No Shadow, though.”

  Unfortunate, because he was the Crow I most wanted to meet. I didn’t know if he was Wandering Shade, and the possibility bothered the hell out of me. Odds were against it, because there were at least six senior Crows and only one Wandering Shade, and because of the help and friendship Shadow had offered Gilgamesh. My estimation of the odds went back to one in six because Shadow hadn’t showed.

  Of course, if Shadow had showed and he was Wandering Shade, my odds for survival or freedom weren’t high. Given Wandering Shade’s suspected impersonation talents, however, this risk existed when talking to anybody. I had to count on his Crow paranoia.

  I had to count on something.

  We had agreed to meet in a dark and secluded corner of Memorial Park. The calm of night was best for a meeting like this, for the Major Transforms owned the night. As much as they owned anything. I didn’t mind the heat or humidity of the Houston summer, but its monotony already wore on me, and months of summer remained. A chorus of frogs and cicadas surrounded us, as well as far too many mosquitoes. Arm predator didn’t work on mosquitos. Dammit.

  Gilgamesh glided off, vanishing from my metasense. He was getting better at that. I wished I knew enough to properly train him, but I wasn’t Keaton and I didn’t have her instinctive feel for the strengths of Major Transforms, what they needed training in, and how to best train them. I sat at the base of an old live oak, utterly cool and calm, a perfect statue, trying not to exude any Arm-ness at all. I heard distant whispering but couldn’t understand the words, drowned out by the critter chorus and the faint rustling of trees overhead from the slight breeze. I smelled the faint remnant of charcoal from someone’s afternoon picnic and smiled, happy to catch the small bit of normalcy. Mirroring what he had done for Keaton, Gilgamesh kept me always juiced up. No juice monkey problems for me.

  “Tiamat, I am Hephaestus.” His barely audible whisper came from the trees to my left.

  “So the Tiamat name is not just Gilgamesh’s?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “Do all the Crows call me that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “No need for the ma’am,” I said, with a chuckle. “Tiamat is just fine. Have the Crows decided whether my boss is better named Kali or the Skinner?”

  “Sky is persuasive and the name does fit her personality. Kali has many hands in many schemes, and, um…” Hephaestus let his voice tail off, having already said more than was politic.

  “My boss is dangerous, true.” More than I suspected the Crows understood. For one, she had started her false-Hancock robbery spree today. Her spree hadn’t made the national news. Yet. For another, she wasn’t happy with Crows in general except for Gilgamesh, and had nothing but contemptuous dismissal for my meeting with them tonight. I had a bad feeling her attitude about Crows was going to be a big problem sometime soon. “I’ve been told you’re a new Guru, which makes you the senior Crow here. Does this make you in charge?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. This one would take work to unbend around me, I realized, despite the fact enough talented Crows hovered close by to turn me into Monster Hancock ten times over. “I teach, not command. Most other Gurus follow the same pattern. And I do wish to correct your earlier supposition – Sky is senior here, although not a Guru. Few enough over the years have been interested in what Sky teaches for Sky to need formal Guru status. At the moment only your companion Gilgamesh is his student.”

  “Not true,” a musical voice whispered. This also came from the left, near Hephaestus but farther away. “I’m his student also.”

  “Mademoiselle Arm, that would be Newton, who would run at the mere mention of the name of your boss if I weren’t here steadying him.” Sky. Also at whispering distance. Sky was behind me. The skin on my back crawled uneasily, but I resisted the urge to turn. Calm, I told myself, the Buddha seated at the base of my own Bo tree.

  From what I gathered, nobody directly commanded the Crows. A Guru’s suggestions, however, often were taken as orders by other Crows. I hadn’t realized Guru status was real, at the juice level, and required formal recognition. Interesting.

  “Thank you,” I said, speaking to the cluster of trees twenty feet in front of me, where as far as I could tell, there were no Crows. I heard the nighttime hum of passing cars on the nearby freeway, but at this late hour the park was otherwise empty. “I’m looking for help in capturing Rogue Focus. Not in combat or fighting, but in information gathering. Metasense use. Lifting the fog of war as you Crows can do best. I’ll supply the walkie-talkies, if you agree. Understand that there will be ally Focuses and their households involved, but I won’t ask you to contact them in any way, unless you volunteer to do so.” Would I need to negotiate with all of these Crows individually? Gilgamesh had intimated I might.

  “Ma’am, off the shelf walkie-talkies are too easily intercepted,” said Hephaestus from his safe distance. He would probably want me to provide acid vats to dispose of them afterwards, too. “However, my training as a Crow includes modern electronics, and if you supply the walkie-talkies I would be willing to modify them so special equipment would be needed to intercept our messages.”

  My eyes lit up. “Wow. Thanks. I certainly accept.” I had talked over the next with Gilgamesh, and despite my trepidations he said my offer wouldn’t be considered crass. “I’m not asking for volunteers for my battle. I’ve learned of the problems hindering Crows, and so I’ve decided to donate ten thousand dollars to each Crow who helps me in this endeavor.” I would be cooking and cleaning for Keaton for the next year if my offer got accepted by a hundred or more Crows. I was counting on Gilgamesh’s view that for Crows, money was good but didn’t hold the importance or social meaning cash did for normals, and wouldn’t attract them like dried pancake syrup attracts flies.

  “Few would turn down such a generous gift, if they understood the evil of Rogue Focus,” Hephaestus said. “I recently made a trip to visit Guru Shadow in New York and Occum in Boston, to learn more of the history of the situation and the stakes involved in your work. From my visit I learned of Gymnast, um, Focus Rizzari, and her Cause. I did not find myself converted to her Cause, but neither did I find the Cause objectionable. Gymnast, on the other hand, is an amazing Focus, which gave me the idea for a gift to you and your companion.”

  “What sort of gift?”

  “Artwork. Dross art. I tuned my creation so it’s visible to all with a metasense.”

  “I’d love to see it.”

  For the first time I metasensed Hephaestus, standing only fifty feet from me, to my left, as I had thought. Unmasked, his metapresence was bright enough to drown out everything else around me. He waved his hands and a fountain of dross sprang into the air and settled toward the ground, dancing and glowing, ever changing. The dross art arranged itself into a representation of Lori and her beautiful juice structure.

  “When you settle on a Houston headquarters, if you wish, I can recreate this in your headquarters and make it last.”

  I smiled and relaxed against my tree, taking in the beauty. “This is beautiful, Hephaestus.” He stepped forward, visible, to stand beside his artwork, a big smile on his face. I realized what I had done – I had relaxed enough to react as a normal person, not as an Arm holding herself back in a negotiation.

  Ah hah! This was the secret to dealing with Crows. Now that I understood the secret, I doubted I would ever have to worry again about panicking Crows by accident.

  I sighed. “I get so wrapped up in seeing everything as weapons and dangers I forget Transform Sickness amplifies the whole lot of our existence, the good with the bad.”

  “The Crows are the
opposite,” Hephaestus said. He was a muscular man, about my height, with long black hair in a ponytail. “Most of us would rather think of the beautiful or the philosophical than worry about weapons and dangers. The Crow instinct is to run away from danger or ignore it.”

  A bit of Zielinski here would help Hephaestus immensely. “All Major Transforms have the choice not to follow their Transform-based instincts. Your instincts make good reflex actions, for situations where reflex actions are needed. They don’t need to do your thinking for you in all situations.”

  Hephaestus’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “Ma’am.” He bowed, honoring my wisdom.

  “I can’t take credit for this bit of philosophy. A normal who I work with” own, at least from my Arm perspective; the more I learned the more I suspected that from Zielinski’s perspective he owned me “a Dr. Henry Zielinski, taught this to me, and I’ve found his advice useful on many occasions.”

  “Ah, the Good Doctor,” Hephaestus said. His voice held a smile; he had visited Hank in Austin, and I didn’t react when I realized that Zielinski had already won him over. I was getting better at my non-reactions. Zielinski was always good for these sorts of little surprises.

  “If I may be so bold, mademoiselle Arm, might I suggest that many in this moot may consider access to the Good Doctor worth as much if not more than your earlier gift.” Sky. I heard quite a few whispered mutters of agreement in the distance.

  All Crows hated all doctors and researchers, until one Crow decides to pal up with one, as Sky did. Poof! Now, all the Crows liked the person. They also preferred be up front about dealing with him rather than going behind my back. Probably too stressful for them.

  Crows were strange. I certainly had to think about the ramifications of these tidbits of information.

  “My friend Zielinski is quite willing to meet and talk with any of you, and I have no desire to restrict Crow access to him.” I would if he asked or Keaton ordered me to, so my comment wasn’t a lie. “However, he didn’t get to be the Good Doctor by operating blindly; he’ll want payment in information and tests.”

  “Your requirement should be no problem at all,” Hephaestus said, further illuminating the strange psychology of Crows. “Ma’am, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to introduce to you the Crow Nameless. He invited himself here and I can vouch for his good intentions.”

  Meaning he wasn’t a Guru or impressively powerful. “I’d be glad to meet him.” Nameless, though? His name said a lot about this Crow, whoever he was.

  The Crow Nameless stepped forward. Unlike Hephaestus, who was a non-descript Crow of perhaps mixed Latino heritage, Nameless was not a Crow who would blend in with a crowd. He was a short very black man, five three, portly, with close-cropped frizzy black hair.

  “I am Nameless, and I follow an old Crow path not linked to power. I’m a mystic.” Nameless spoke with a muted Jamaican accent with a Canadian lilt added in.

  “What can I do for you, Nameless?” I said.

  “All I ask is that you accept me into your information gathering corps,” he said. “The Focus you are calling Rogue Focus is an abomination, who if not checked could grow into as large a national threat as your other enemy, Rogue Crow. She already possesses suborned Focuses in New Orleans and Pensacola, which drew the attention of one of the many Gurus who advise me, Guru Snow. Although Guru Snow has issues with the elder Arm, he advised me that helping you in this cause would not be inappropriate.”

  Translated: I’m Guru Snow’s spy and my Crow friends would rather see you rot in Hell, but although they think Keaton’s as large a danger as Rogue Focus they’re willing to test your word and your actions with me, a Crow who’s relatively young and disposable. This was the first hard edge I had seen from the hidden Crow leadership; I suspected Snow was one of the six senior Crows on the list of possible Rogue Crows.

  As far as hard edges went, this one wasn’t bad, as long as Nameless wasn’t going to turn his coat in the middle of the fight. I didn’t think he had it in him, though. A proper Crow coward, this one; he wouldn’t have ever approached me without Hephaestus’s cover. He also gave me new information about Rogue Focus.

  “I gladly accept your offer,” I said. “I understand I’m daunting to face, but if you come up with any other advice, mystical or otherwise, I would appreciate it if you passed your information along to the other Crows, so they could pass it along to me.”

  Nameless bowed and took a couple of steps back.

  Two other Crows walked forward out of the shelter of the trees, Sinclair and another Crow, a six-two brown skinned young man with his head shaved bald.

  “Sinclair,” I said. I liked Sinclair, mostly because he was the first Crow I had met who was naturally grumpy and cutting, someone who had to put work into curbing his temper. I sympathized a lot. “Glad you could make it.” As if he wouldn’t. I already knew, from talking to him when I handed over the Chimera, that this was personal for him. He had been Gilgamesh’s companion in Philadelphia and anything that helped me, a known enemy of Rogue Crow and the Hunters, was for the better. Although just a little older than Gilgamesh as a Crow, his skills were different. He was an animal master, enough so that when he approached, the mosquitoes vanished (I was jealous). Gilgamesh thought Sinclair would soon join Occum as a Beast Master. I wished him all the luck in the world.

  “Arm Hancock, I’d like to introduce to you the Crow Midgard.”

  Oh ho. I took a moment to pay close attention to the Crow who had ‘dibs’ on Keaton’s baby Arm. Yes, the panic ruled him less than the other Crows. From Gilgamesh, I knew that Midgard had transformed a year before Gilgamesh. All I picked up on was, like Gilgamesh, he carried a small backpack filled with dross rotten eggs.

  I also learned from this that Sinclair used the Focus pleasantries, which meant he in some fashion dealt with Focuses. Which one, or ones, though?

  “Crow Midgard. I’m glad to meet you. You and Gilgamesh have had quite a few adventures over the years, haven’t you?”

  Midgard nodded. “I’m…” He paused. “I’m honored to meet you and flattered you know of me. I’m just a wandering Crow, willing to lend a hand when needed. I have some news you might wish to learn.”

  “I’d be glad to listen.”

  “Wandering Shade, who if Gilgamesh’s suppositions are correct is also Rogue Crow, deals with at least three Beast Man groups, each with different personalities. The oldest group, the Mountain Men of the mountains west and north of Denver and Salt Lake City, are the strongest as individuals but they cannot work together at all. There are at least five of them, but the older three cannot talk. The second oldest group, the Patriarchs, are centered in and around Kansas City. They are currently fewest in number and although intelligent and best able to integrate themselves into the normal world, they suffer from severe psychological problems, I believe caused by repression of their primal predatory natures. I believe only one mature Patriarch is left at this time. The Hunters, your enemies, are the newest and fastest growing group. The three established mature Hunters are shepherding at least five other Hunters on their way to maturity. They scour this country and Canada for recently transformed Beast Men to recruit; it’s a miracle they didn’t grab the Houston Beast Man before you subdued him and sent him off to Occum.”

  I nodded. “Thank you. I have not forgotten Rogue Crow.” Not even slightly. “What we are doing here in Houston is quite important, as far as opposition to Rogue Crow goes. If we learn to cooperate as Major Transforms we stand a far better chance of defeating him and his Hunters.”

  Midgard nodded. “The Cause illuminates us all,” he said, surprising me. He, too, had fallen for Lori. What was her secret? If we could bottle and sell it, it would revolutionize the romance industry, at least at the street level. “I speak on the Cause as I travel, and although few choose to listen at least the Cause is becoming known.”

  “Glad to have you on board, then.” I gave him a big smile.

  No other Crows stepped forward. Sky
and Newton held back, nice and safe, but I included them in my short course on signaling. This had gone well.

  I had thought I was happy until I saw Gilgamesh. He bounced. To him, this was his biggest success, and he was definitely full of it now.

  I got happier.

  Chapter 12

  Transform Authorities Deny Rumors

  The CDC’s Transform Response Team denied reports today of a growing threat by Male Monsters in the Chicagoland area. “As of today there have been no fully verified sightings of any Male Monsters in the Chicago area, as have been verified in the Minneapolis area. The rumors and hysteria these rumors have caused are entirely without merit.”

  “Hunter Activity Near Chicago and Media Responses”

  Gilgamesh: July 20, 1968

  Gilgamesh fought nerves, panic, fear and half a dozen Crow-ish worrisome emotions he didn’t even have names for. Sky echoed him, a mile distant, from his position atop a recently constructed medical professional building. Luckily Hephaestus, haunting the park-like grounds of Rice University with his students, treated this adventure as purely business, and his steadiness buoyed the other Crows who hid and watched. Despite his wonderful piece of dross art based on Lori, he hadn’t forged a true emotional connection with the Focus.

  The connection with Lori was why he and Sky had the super-willies. Lori was here with fifteen of her best combatant household members (twelve Transforms, three normals), pregnant, pissed at life because one of the ruling first Focuses had exposed six of her household members as Transforms and cost Inferno four more jobs, and staggering under the weight of the political machinations she and Focus Ackerman were arranging for the Rogue Focus job. He ached to go comfort Lori, as did Sky, but duty called. The Focus contingent and their people were not supposed to be here in Houston long enough to attract attention. Tiamat called them ‘blocking forces’ and ‘emergency reserves’, although the two Focuses were responsible for an important piece of Tiamat’s attack: their job was to convince the two Transform Clinic Focuses and their Transforms to stay in the Transform Clinic.