“Tell me, how is this going to work? I can’t get shit for real when I spy on people here.”
Gail tried to relax, and did manage to keep herself from flittering away in one of her other Dreaming forms. She swore Keaton was more forceful in the Dreaming than in person. “Same here,” she signed. “The Madonna indicated that I should be able to see through Nancy’s eyes because of Nancy’s quirks, and that I should be able to show you how to do the same.”
“Huh.” That was a simple sign, not spelled out, but a quick opening of eight palms, her eight arms spread wide.
“Follow me,” Gail signed. She led the Arm through the Dream garden, concentrating on her mental image of Nancy. Down the brick path, then left on the gravel path and by the fishpond, up the hill and down into the forest valley. Fourth skunk cabbage plant on the left, by the tiny streamlet – yup, Nancy.
She followed the Madonna’s instructions on relaxing her mind and ceding control of vision and hearing to the person you were merging with. The Madonna had told Gail that Gail was skilled enough to be able to do this with perhaps one in twenty Focuses and said she would be, in time, able to do this with all unguarded Focuses and many Transforms. That day was a long way off, though, given her problems merging with Nancy.
Gail hadn’t been able to resist asking. Yes, the Madonna could see through Gail’s eyes, only more so. “It’s as if I’m standing in the same room as you are.” How? Many years of practice.
She popped out of Nancy’s mind after just a moment, this time successfully integrating only her hearing with Nancy’s. “Quit wasting my time!” Keaton signed, forceful enough to make Gail step back. Arm predator in the Dreaming. Nervous, and feeling Keaton’s predator at her back, Gail popped into Nancy’s mind, this time sharing all of Nancy’s senses.
“…and these boots are so waterlogged I’ve got mud between my damned toes,” Cindy Lederer said. Nancy appeared to be half-asleep. They were camped in the middle of a hardwood forest beside a wide stream. It snowed, but the ground wasn’t frozen and the snow wasn’t sticking.
Lederer complained a lot.
Across the smoky campfire, Dan argued with a short and overweight dark-skinned Crow. By a process of elimination this Crow had to be Crow Nameless. “Splitting up would be suicidal,” Dan said. He wore a thick winter coat and ski mask, while the rest of the crew wore thin waterproof jackets and no headgear.
“I’m not so sure I agree,” Crow Nameless said. He spoke with a thick Caribbean accent Gail couldn’t better locate. “We’re to be tested. What better way to be tested individually than to be split up?”
“What if the contradictory dreams are themselves a test, and…”
“There,” Gail signed. “What you need to do is visualize yourself doing whatever screwy thing I did.”
“Become that thing?”
“Don’t bother trying to tell me.”
“Wasn’t I the one who taught you that each person’s visualizations of the Dreaming are unique?” Glower. Predator. “Give me a moment. This is disgusting.”
Keaton attempted the merge four times and failed four times. She got Gail to show her again, and again Gail dove into Nancy’s mind. The fifth time, with Gail already inside Nancy, the Arm got it.
Now they were both inside Nancy’s mind, seeing through Nancy’s eyes and hearing through Nancy’s ears. Only…
How can I communicate to Keaton in this mental state? Gail thought. Is this…
Predator. To the left.
Gail instinctively looked left, which didn’t move Nancy’s head or eyes, so she lost her sync with them. Nancy’s mind appeared as an endless library full of towering shelves and dusty books. There was Keaton, and her form visualization had changed. Now she appeared to Gail as a fusty older stick-up-ass librarian. Well, with Arm predator, more a Librarian, capitalized and iconified and all.
“Why the fuck are you a librarian now?” Keaton signed.
“Uh, you’re one, too,” Gail signed back.
“Hell, ignore the shit. So that’s all of them?” Keaton signed.
“All but Sir Kevin, who’s invisible to us because Nancy’s leaning on him.” Gail named them all, not at all sure Keaton experienced the same things she did. What Gail saw through Nancy’s eyes was even more cartoony than the standard Dreaming. For one thing, she doubted Crow Nameless’s hair was a featureless black helmet in real life. “Let’s listen.”
“…logically, there’s only one option other than splitting up,” Amy said. She sat on the largest of the several logs around the campfire. “The only one who isn’t receiving guidance via their dreams is Cindy. Our one anomaly.”
“But I’m the one who’s the magic dowsing rod,” Nancy said. Nancy’s pout even had juice behind it. “Why else bring me out here?”
“You already said you weren’t having the uncontrollable feet issue, like last time,” Sir Kevin said. Gail couldn’t see any more of Sir Kevin than one hand, the one cupping one of Nancy’s breasts. Despite Nancy’s omnipresent low juice issues, he was making her interested.
Predator predator predator. Gail tuned out Nancy’s eyesight and turned to Librarian Keaton. “This is boring beyond belief,” Keaton signed.
“This was just a test,” Gail signed back. “Now that we can do this, how do you want to go forward?”
“Call me on the phone later and let’s talk. Any details we agree on here are likely to be garbage anyway.”
“Fine.”
Librarian Keaton vanished.
Gail wasn’t bored at all, though. A bit embarrassed by the sexual foreplay, but not bored. She turned to follow things from Nancy’s eyes again.
“…and this is an actual real ‘I-need-to-concentrate-on-the-juice’ ability,” Cindy said. She had Dan cleaning the mud off her left foot. Cindy’s not-very-waterproof boots dried over the fire, held on a stick by Crow Nameless. “I can sense juice miles away. I can identify plants with my eyes closed, and I can sense how healthy the plant is. That’s how I found the stream, because the plants were happier there because of the water. I can sense dross in large concentrations, and if it’s on an object, like one of Crow Gilgamesh’s dross objects, I can sense it in small concentrations. And I can sense other things people would rather I not sense.”
“And?” Amy prompted. “I know you don’t want to tell us, Cindy, but we need to know.”
“Sometimes the juice talks to me,” Cindy said, whispering.
“What does it say?”
“For instance, it says that seventeen different Dreaming Focuses are looking out of Nancy’s eyes at us right now.”
“What the fuck?” Nancy said. “How dare…”
Nancy’s anger forced Gail out of her mind. Gail waited a moment and dove back in. “…should keep them out.”
“Sorry, no, you only forced out seven of them,” Cindy said. “Don’t worry. They’re just curious.”
---
Gail yanked on the rope three times and dove back into the Dreaming. The rope led out of her darkroom, the only place where she could guarantee Dreaming access. They had tested this, and it worked. Kurt or whoever watched the other end of the rope would then signal to Isabella or whoever else was on night duty to call Arm Keaton’s answering service. If Keaton was available, which she often wasn’t, she would get the call and do whatever she did to get into the Dreaming.
Six truthfully boring days had passed since she and Arm Keaton got this system working. Gail had judged the Monster hunt that had gotten juice for Arm Haggerty and Sir Kevin not worthy of bothering the Arm, verified after a phone call the next day.
This, though…
“It’s not physical,” Amy said. “It’s a juice thing.” The group stood atop a low hill, rocky and treeless. A light dusting of snow covered brown grass and dead weeds. The apparition wavered in the moonlight, at the highest point of the hill. The green glow of the aurora surrounding Nancy had led them here and then vanished.
“It can’t be,” Dan said. “I can see it.”<
br />
“That’s a misnomer,” Amy said. “Many normals and all Transforms can see juice illusions produced by Focuses.”
“The same is true for visible dross effects, though you can tune them to be invisible to normals, Transforms, or both, if you want,” Crow Midgard said. “It’s who this is that’s bothersome.”
Cindy turned from Crow Midgard to the apparition. “So, who is this?” Cindy said. The translucent apparition was a man, probably a Crow, dressed as a policeman wearing a cowboy hat. A Texas Ranger, perhaps?
Gail sensed their fear. Nancy recognized the apparition, and retreated tightly against Sir Kevin.
“We should leave,” Nancy said.
“The secret aurora of the Progenitors led us here, and it’s gone now,” Cindy said. “I can’t believe I’m the only one with enough brains in this group to understand what’s going on.” She believed this was a test, and Gail had to agree. Cindy muttered this as she strode forward, her Arm nature winning out over her Crow nature for once. “You there, lawman, what do you want?”
“You name me correctly, for I am of the Law,” the apparition said. “What I am here to do is make you an offer. My former charges possess the method I’m offering, but they’re too fearful to use it.”
“Tell me,” Cindy said. She stood, kicked some mud off her boots, leaned forward and put her hands on her hips. “I’ll hear your offer.”
“When I walked among the living I found the Law, and it was good,” the apparition said. Shit! Information clicked in Gail’s mind – this was an apparition of Wandering Shade, the Crow enemy who had turned her wedding reception into a war zone.
Gail backed out of Nancy’s eyes, instinctively terrified. Librarian Keaton shared Nancy’s mind with her. “A Hunter-style ghost,” Librarian Keaton signed. “If it’s the same, it’s harmless save for charisma effects.”
Very well. Gail went back in.
“I also found the Greater Law, which was better,” Wandering Shade’s ghost said. “I hoped to perfect the Greater Law before Detroit, but it wasn’t meant to be. My offer to you is the secrets of the Greater Law.”
“Oh, you,” Cindy said, in sudden recognition. She shrugged. “What’s better about this Greater Law?”
“For one, it works perfectly upon anyone, Transform or Major Transform. It turns them into élan producers and holds their mind together as they grow to immense physical proportions.” He waved his hand and another illusion appeared, this time of Dan. The apparition spread his arms wide and the Dan-illusion changed and grew until it was thirty feet tall and fifty feet long, elephantine in form, save for an oversized shark head. “This is as large as élan production allows, the maximal Monster form. With it, no enemy can stand against you. With it, you can become the rulers of the world.”
“Yeah, right,” Cindy said. “So what’s the catch?”
“No catch, just perfection.”
She turned back to her companions. “Well, does this appeal to any of you?” Cindy radiated disgust.
“It might be a useful tool in our arsenal, but, no, it doesn’t appeal to me personally,” Amy said.
“I don’t want anything to do with it,” Dan said. “You lose the ability to talk and think like a human. Even if you do stay intelligent.”
“How do you know this?” Sir Kevin said. “Oh, right. Courtier instincts.”
Dan nodded.
“I’m going that way, eventually, no matter what I do,” Nancy said. “The shortcut this Greater Law offers is just wrong, though. Can’t you see it? Sorry, metasense it?”
“If you would say what you can metasense, we might be able to judge,” Midgard said.
Nancy gave Midgard a nasty slit-eyed glare. “It’s all withdrawal scarring,” she said. “You become your withdrawal scars until nothing is left but the withdrawal scars.”
“That’s what I thought I was metasensing,” Sir Kevin said. “I wasn’t sure.” He turned to the group. “It’s corruption. Even having this in our arsenal would be corrupting. It would make us as disgusting as the Hunters.”
“More so,” Crow Nameless said. “Not that I would speak against it unless the rest of you did.” Midgard nodded as Crow Nameless spoke.
Crows! “I’m not one for technology crap, one way or the other,” Cindy said. “I don’t trust the source of this, and that’s enough for me.” She turned to the Wandering Shade apparition. “Go away. We reject you.” The apparition bowed, and vanished.
“So I guess that’s that,” Nancy said. “We fail. Can we go back home, now?”
“Oh, no, dearest Nancy,” Sir Kevin said. He pointed at the aurora now dancing around the entire group. “We passed this test.”
Sir Kevin was correct. They could all see Cindy’s guiding aurora now.
“Can you tell me why you’re so upset, ma’am?” Gail asked Librarian Keaton. She paced around in Nancy’s head (or so Gail visualized), figurative steam rising from her. She had already predatorily shushed Gail once. Keaton made one hell of a pee-inducing Librarian.
“This isn’t anything like the Noble’s quest that rescued Nancy,” Keaton signed. “Save for a Dream encounter with Beast of the Lost Tribe, there was no thinking behind that quest’s opposition. It was all automatics, things worn low by time.” She cracked her knuckles and pushed her cartoony granny glasses up her nose. “There’s no way that there isn’t a guiding intelligence behind this. A smart, judgmental and devious one, at that. One who’s current on what our Transform community is doing. This is crazy dangerous, and none of them understand how much shit they’ve dived into, save perhaps Nancy.”
Gail couldn’t disagree.
---
“So, what are you offering, Arm Svensen? The first ghost offered an improved Law.”
This time, the questers sat around the campfire, on smaller logs now, barely large enough to keep their rear ends above the ground. An added place was occupied by the ghost of a fallen Arm that Arm Haggerty named ‘Arm Peggy Svensen’. She was a muscular Arm, with short brown hair and small, beady eyes. After far too many boring days, this Gail judged to be worthy of a rope pull, but Arm Keaton hadn’t yet joined Gail in Nancy’s head. Cartoon snowflakes fell on the group of questers, each flake looking like a tiny human eye to Gail. Arm Haggerty had been the first one to speak directly to the ghost of Arm Svensen.
The quest group had turned into Gail’s own private soap opera. Arm Haggerty had been taking turns sleeping with Dan, Sir Kevin and Crow Midgard. When Haggerty wasn’t exercising her dominance over the group, Dan and Cindy slept together, Nancy and Sir Kevin slept together, and Midgard and Crow Nameless slept together.
“You’re kidding. You got Wandering Shade, and he offered you the Greater Law? That’s a farce,” Arm Svensen said. “Hopefully, you weren’t stupid enough to take it.”
Arm Svensen and Arm Haggerty didn’t like each other. Luckily, a campfire sat between them. Arm Svensen’s ghost seemed chattier and more real than Wandering Shade’s ghost did.
“We didn’t. Why are you here?”
“To give you hell, dipshit,” Svensen said. “Your heroism’s gone to your head again and you’ve stopped thinking.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Gail swore she heard Librarian Keaton say ‘fucking shit!’ as she appeared beside Gail in Nancy’s head.
“I’m dead,” Arm Svensen said. “And I know I’m dead. It’s an Arm thing, I guess. I’m here to tell you what you won’t admit to yourself. You’re an Arm failure.”
“I am not lying to myself.”
“Oh, I’m so glad I’m not part of your Arm association any more,” Svensen’s ghost said. “You’re all screwed up messes. You have a Boss who won’t admit she’s the boss, a Commander who’s too chickenshit to command, an Interrogator who isn’t, and you, the bullied Hero. One failure after another.”
“I am not bullied.”
“Says the Arm sitting across the campfire from me and not admitting that I’m challenging her,” Svensen’s ghost said. “
How many understand the importance of the 16 varieties of Transforms you discovered? How many know of them at all? How long are you going to let the other Arms stop you from researching by saying ‘don’t bother me with this’?” This Svensen said in Keaton’s voice.
So the Arms are just as bad as the other Major Transform varieties in their hindrance of research. They didn’t do it by orders, but by sneering indifference. Gail hadn’t realized.
“Do you want me to go on? I could go on for hours.”
Arm Haggerty bowed her head and didn’t respond.
“Tell me why the Cause isn’t going anywhere,” Svensen said. “I know because you know. You figured it out in an analysis trance and sat on it, afraid of being bullied again.”
“The Cause isn’t going anywhere because Focus Rizzari failed at her tag tuning project.”
“She didn’t fail, now did she?”
“No, she gave up,” Haggerty said. She said this to her feet, unwilling to lift up her head. “She gave up because the research cost her household too much pain and too many lives.”
“Uh huh,” Svensen’s ghost said. “And Crow Gilgamesh. You figured out that he needed to be a Guru to be able to move forward with his dross object talents over a year ago. So why isn’t he a Guru?”
“Because Carol told me to keep my mouth shut when I told her my analysis, telling me to keep my paws off of her Crow.” She paused. “Okay, you’re right.”
Svensen’s ghost didn’t respond.
“Well?” Haggerty said.
“You understand what to do, something else you figured out but were too afraid to tell anyone.”
“No,” Haggerty said.
“Then let’s change the name people call you to ‘The Bully Victim’,” Svensen’s ghost said. “It suits you much better.”
Beasts Ascendant: The Chronicles of the Cause, Parts One and Two Page 21