Beasts Ascendant: The Chronicles of the Cause, Parts One and Two

by Randall Farmer

  “We’re missing something,” I said. “This is another of their damned tests. We shouldn’t give up. We should solve the test.”

  “What are you thinking?” Amy asked him.

  I closed my eyes and nearly fell back into my healing trance. How much of our problem was due to our overall weakness from the two month quest? “The ghosts. We need our ghosts to fight their ghosts.”

  “You’re talking about the ghosts we encountered that held us in place long enough for the snipers to find us?” Amy asked. “We solved that test by surviving ‘the man’ and his snipers.”

  “What if that wasn’t the test?” I asked. “What if the Transform ghosts we encountered were the real test, and the man and the snipers external interference?”

  “Are you saying we should go back and try and get them?”

  “It’s the only idea I can think of.”

  “That may not work,” Nancy said. “Consider – the only ones who got anywhere with the ghosts were Nameless and me, and all we did was get a few of them to bow to me. If our analysis is correct, and you and Sir Kevin couldn’t touch the spear because you didn’t pass your tests, then the test Sir Kevin failed was the one with the ghosts. If you remember, we all did think at the time that he was the one up in that test, and he did work the hardest of any of us, and never got…”

  I fell back into my healing trance as Nancy spoke, my case unproven.

  I awoke to the odor of meat browning in its own fat and to the sound of Sir Kevin and Amy growling and howling at each other outside the tent.

  I knew that sound. “So, they found both food and juice?” I said. As a reward for my quip, Cindy shoved some browned liver, perhaps a large teaspoon full, in my mouth. I ate. “More.”

  “Nuh uh,” Nancy said. “You would just vomit it up. Here. Have some partly thawed applesauce.”

  The cache. The radio! “You make the call?”

  “Uh huh,” Cindy said. “It took a while to get through to them, but they’re on the way.”

  “Shit!”

  “You think we still had a chance?” I nodded. Cindy shook her head. “Our predators weren’t convinced.”

  Another failure on my part. I had needed to stay awake. My gut said that this was a disaster, that even if Lady Death succeeded this would mess up the benefits of the quest. No, this wasn’t magical thinking, but psychological thinking. We are the Predecessors. We weren’t earning the right to be the Progenitors. Someone would, eventually, perhaps the wrong people. In the meantime, the fallout from this incomplete quest would cripple this Cause thing.

  Was it too late? Was I too late? I sucked on a lump of frozen applesauce. A little food informed me I was correct. It was too late to change the course of the quest. We were almost where we needed to be, and part of our failure stemmed from the fact that we hadn’t sacrificed Midgard and Cindy. What the Progenitors wanted and needed was one Arm, one Chimera, one Focus, one Crow, one whatever-the-fuck-I-was, and a household of Transform ghosts.

  Too many fights, too many wounds, too little juice, and too little understanding of what we had been really doing. Definitely too late for us, and too early for whoever the correct people were. The real answer? We needed to go back and try to gather those Transform ghosts, and if we failed, to go the fuck home, report our findings, and wait until the Progenitors called the next group. The real winner here was the man. He didn’t kill us, but he did stop us from getting the spear.

  Anything else, from his perspective, was gravy.

  ---

  They came in two planes, both set up to land on skis. The Inferno people had radioed and given instructions for what they needed us to do to make an appropriate landing strip. I didn’t know anything about ski planes, or the idea of planes with retractable skis, or the like. Technically, these were ‘bush planes’, configurable to land and take off on water, snow, ice and normal runways. These two bush planes turned out to be Britten-Normal Islanders, which I doubt would be considered flightworthy in the United States. They were big suckers for bush planes, two engines each, with a high cantilever wing attached to the fuselage and the wing landing gear jutting down below each of the two engine nacelles.

  Eight people each piled out of the two planes, bristling with weapons. I was barely mobile, even five days after I woke and got fed. I tried not to think about what my body was doing, as the healing on the right side of my body had been apparently affected by élan contamination. Dan Freeman, the part-Monster. Alphabet was most amused at my distress.

  I tried not to think about what the financial ability to rent the use of these two planes meant about Lady Death and her household, Inferno. Or my part in this.

  Yup, Dan Freeman, lab rat, sold by my loyal questmates to Lady Death and her household for research purposes. They seemed to think this was a step up in the world for me, as they held her in the highest esteem. For someone who had been a normal less than six months ago, this rankled.

  “You’re Freeman,” the short woman said. The Focus. Lady Death herself. She came up on me unnoticed, while I was woolgathering, watching the planes. “Follow me.”

  “No,” I said. “Not until we have a little discussion about what I’m signed up for.” Around us, people were unloading supplies from the planes, and a steady stream of people hauling crates passed by us. Arclights powered by gasoline generators illuminated the darkness, and the hum of engines seemed like something from another world after our long silence in the wilderness.

  She looked at me and motioned with her eyes. She was a tiny thing, about four eleven, and she hadn’t bothered with anything more than New England style winter gear. She wasn’t even half as beautiful as Focus Rickenbach.

  She motioned with her eyes, again, and this time I could even feel her damned Focus charisma attempting to play with my mind.

  I didn’t move.

  She sighed.

  “I’m a Focus.”

  I nodded. My initial reaction to her was typically male: oh, look, she’s tiny and weak. My instincts, though, said size didn’t matter for a Focus and her tricks. My instincts still were a font of annoying surprises.

  “I don’t kill my experimental subjects.”

  “The Monsters here beg to differ.”

  “We’ve never killed a Monster that didn’t first kill a human being,” she said. “My household Transforms are all volunteers. We don’t allow them to join up until they realize that what we do is so dangerous we can’t guarantee their safety.”

  “I’m not joining up.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to visit and let us examine you and let us see how you work as a Goldilocks.” She stopped and took a deep breath. Her bodyguards suddenly seemed a bit more menacing. I focused my mind and made them back the fuck off. The Focus noticed, but didn’t say a word. “I’m offering you training. And juice. I can make you far more-than-human than you already are.”

  “Let me see your hand,” I said.

  She complied, but only after she glared down her bodyguards. She was fearless. They tried, but they weren’t.

  I sniffed her hand. She wasn’t lying, and she was as powerful as a Focus as my instincts said. “Agree to call me a Courtier and I’m in,” I said. I was going to get sold down the river – to quote Nancy – no matter what I did. Lady Death at least told the truth and would be strong enough to protect me. My instincts also said I could get along with her.

  “Amy,” Lady Death said. She smelled like fresh soap and recent bathing, a distant memory for the rest of us on this quest. Lady Death and her people contrasted painfully with the ripe odor of unwashed bodies inside the tent.

  She didn’t notice, or at least pretended not to notice, but several of her people winced when they entered. Then the Focus took off her coat and hat, and I got the shakes again. Under her severe and understated beauty lay a killer and a Focus of devastating power. Next to her, Focus Rickenbach was little more than a nice young lady. Both Cindy and Nancy knew our Lady Death and had dealt with her bef
ore, and they were wary but not terrified. Amy and Midgard relaxed, the most relaxed I had ever seen them. Sir Kevin and Nameless, though, looked ready to shit their britches. Alphabet and Elisabeth hadn’t been invited inside the tent. “I don’t want to step on your toes. I know you called me in, but looking at your group and the price you paid to get this far, anything I do here will involve toe stepping. I can offer you everything I brought with me – food, fuel, whatever. I can offer you a ride home. The only thing I can’t offer you is very much time.”

  “How much time do you have, Lori? Hours?”

  “Days. Five of them.”

  Amy nodded and relaxed some more. “Sir Kevin’s picked up two local Monsters for his household. They’re not anywhere as massive as they look, but I don’t know how much space you have and how tight your weight allowance is.”

  “Details. We’ll dump the supplies we brought if we need to.” She paused. “I don’t see a Crow Master here, though. Who gentled them?”

  “Dan did.”

  “I see,” Lady Death said. She looked me over and I could practically feel the heat of her metasense scan. “Tell me what’s been going on, and what chewed you up so bad.”

  We went out into the endless night, Lady Death giving ground to Amy when she didn’t have to. I sensed a complex history between the two of them, one where they had always been allies, but also one where their friendship had come and gone several times. Lady Death could have easily invoked ‘right by power’ and taken over. She instead cleared every step she took ahead of time with Amy.

  She didn’t need to be told who was in charge of the quest.

  “Monsieur Freeman?” a short man, my height, asked. “May I inquire about the élan and dross you are carrying? That can’t be healthy for you. Why haven’t your companions removed it? And how, pray tell, did you acquire it?”

  “I suspect, Crow Sky, that the élan in me is the only thing keeping me alive right now,” I said. We hadn’t been introduced, but who else could he be? “As far as the dross, I believe our Crows are too busy with more serious issues.” I paused. “I can only guess as to how it got on me.” A correct guess, but I wasn’t giving away freebies today.

  “Have you noticed any physical or mental abnormalities?”

  “I’m healing as if I’m a Major Transform, albeit slowly.”

  He snorted. “You’re good at not saying all you know. Your skill at dissembling might even be enough to keep you alive.” With that he vanished – here one instant, gone the next.

  So much for my ability to keep track of Crows.

  We reached the inuksuk and the Eskimo spear, and as we did the clouds above us parted and the auroras kicked in, on high. “Ominous,” Lady Death said. “I can’t even tell what here is illusion, and what’s not.”

  I saw no illusions here.

  The Monster ghosts stepped forward to block the way. “Seriously?” Lady Death said, her voice suddenly deep Boston Irish. She turned to Amy and her voice returned to normal. “Please don’t take anything I do from here on as any form of criticism of you, your skills or, well, anything. They got to your minds.”

  “I know that, Lori. I’m hoping they can’t get to yours.”

  “I’ve got an entire household juice buffer filled with reasons why that isn’t going to happen,” Lady Death said. If I read Amy’s reaction correctly it was ‘take that you suckers, you are about to lose.’ Interesting.

  “To start with, you might not want to follow me,” Lady Death said. She stepped forward, her head twisting from one ghost to the next. The Monster ghosts parted Red Sea like around her.

  Nancy followed Lady Death, and neither I, nor Amy nor Sir Kevin could stop her. Cindy and the Crows didn’t try. Nancy glowed aurora green.

  Lady Death reached the Eskimo spear. “Interesting,” she said.

  “You haven’t earned the right to own it,” Nancy said. She spoke in the distant way she had spoken when she stood before the sacrificial altar. The Progenitors spoke through her again.

  “Have you earned the right to stop me?” Lady Death said. She turned to Nancy. “As far as I can tell, at least half of those you’re backing have become evil, insane, or both. Green eyes is green eyes.”

  “This is different.”

  “Does that mean that you’re different?” Lady Death said. She put her hands on her hips and stuck her face near Nancy’s. “Are the questers correct in their ‘faction’ hypothesis? That you represent the Progenitors, and the Predecessors are a different group?”

  “Different and not different. There is overlap in thought, deed and constituents,” Nancy said. “They came before. We came later. Some are in both.”

  Both Lady Death and one of her bodyguards danced a little jig, making high signs to each other. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “So, how do I earn the right to own this?” Lady Death said when she finished her celebration.

  “You can’t. Not like this. You’re too flawed, too impure. Too untested.”

  “And what’s to keep me from banishing you from Nancy’s mind and just taking it?” Lady Death said.

  “If all you desire is a fancy stick to hang on a wall as a trophy, nothing,” Nancy said. “That is all the guarded one will be if you claim it in such a fashion.”

  I envisioned five days of tedious discussions and many different dangerous attempts to prove Lady Death’s worthiness. And finally, failure. The only way to gain the Eskimo spear would be to start over and allow the Progenitors to test her.

  Lady Death disagreed. None of this talking and discussing for her! She neither backed off nor stopped.

  “I represent a group who is looking for a way to allow us to survive the time when everyone becomes a Transform,” Lady Death said. She gathered to her the pissed Focus ‘goddess-glow’ Focus Rickenbach showed once or twice, only Lady Death’s glow was patterned, not all a uniform white. It took me a moment to understand the pattern – they were the outlines of her many household members. About fifteen of the shadow patterns moved in real time, mimicking the movements of the Inferno household members here. “We seek the secrets of how to survive as Transforms for multiple generations. I’ve given my life to this, I and my people. What more right could you possibly want?”

  Everyone but Lady Death’s household, two of the Crows and me got down on their knees and bowed to the Focus. The two unbowed Crows, Sky and Midgard, came over to me, intrigued.

  Why?

  I was supporting them, and they knew it.

  Why not Crow Nameless, though? I found him writhing in the snow, eyes vacant and green. Possessed.

  “Immaterial,” Nancy said. No, she hadn’t bowed, either. Then again, she wasn’t exactly herself at the moment. “You are correct, though. The way to your survival most likely lies through the lessons of the guarded one.”

  “Then I pledge my life to you, to the Predecessors, if this is the way to our survival,” Lady Death said. “I certainly wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Also immaterial.”

  “My pledge is not enough? The juice is not enough?”

  “Your life to this cause is not enough.”

  “I’ll pledge my life to you!”

  “You possess the power to break such a simple pledge. Now, go away.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” Lady Death turned away for a moment. She eyed the spear. She would take it to keep others from getting it. “Ann?” she said, to the woman who had danced the same jig as her Focus. “Do you concur?”

  “Leave and wait for a new, more proper crew, to be called? That might take years, and we don’t have years,” Ann said. “No, do what we talked about. What you talked me into. You’re right. The gamble is worth it.”

  The Focus hadn’t let down her goddess-glow. She turned back to Nancy, bared her belly, and took out a nasty looking hunting knife. She slit open her belly, reached inside, and offered her intestines to Nancy. “Here’s my life. Take it now or take it later. Your choice. Just give us the right to own the spear.”

/>   Nancy didn’t react. The Focus’s intestines steamed in the air, rapidly cooling. Her heart stopped. She stopped breathing. Her goddess glow began to fade.

  She didn’t fall.

  Two hands grabbed my shoulders, Midgard and Sky’s. I looked at Sky, first, than at Midgard. They no longer hid their fierce power.

  There, finally, was the answer to the question I had been asking myself for over a month – what was different about Midgard? He was a Crow with the balls of an Arm.

  Figuratively speaking.

  He had been playacting his fear the entire time.

  I turned back to Lady Death, who would soon be in reality what her name said. Spots swam in front of my eyes.

  “Don’t forget to breathe,” Sky said. To Lady Death, who began to breathe again. And to me.

  I got down on one knee and bowed with the rest. The Focus had finally gotten to me, a goddess in truth.

  The Progenitors waited until Lady Death began to wobble due to blood loss. She hadn’t cut very neatly. “When you die so does your household.”

  Lady Death fell to her knees, one hand on the icy ground, the other holding up a loop of her intestines. The rest fell to the ground. “I offer their lives to you as well.”

  The Progenitors didn’t respond. Lady Death’s life ebbed out of her, and she fell to the ground, limp.

  “Very well,” the Progenitors said, through Nancy. “We accept your life and that of your household. We will claim it later.”

  Nancy fell over, foaming at the mouth and thrashing. Lady Death shoved her intestines, or the hash she made of them after some of their viscera froze tight to the ground, back in her belly before Nancy landed on them. She reached out and grabbed the spear.

  The ghosts and auroras vanished, as did the clear night sky above. An instant snowstorm enveloped us, and from the inches of snow on the backs of the people bowing to Lady Death, a snowstorm we hadn’t noticed for far too many minutes.

  A new illusion sprang up, this time from the spear. An illusion of a tribe of Eskimo Transforms, men, women and children. The way forward, the way to survive TS for multiple generations.