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

by Randall Farmer

He reached for me, his hands tracing lines of fire up my skin. I moaned, and he did the same. Sex combined with juice cycling was as good as you might imagine. My body left earth again, as touch and juice lifted me up to heaven. In the quiet of our overheated tent, we could visit heaven all night, or for as long as Sky lasted, first with me, then Lori, then back again until glorious exhaustion brought us all back to earth.

  ---

  “The Monster Arm’s hungry,” Sky said. I still glowed with good cheer from last night, so happy that even this desolate wilderness seemed pleasant. Lori’s easy smile gave me hope that she had finally released her grip on her pain. Sky was appallingly energetic, given his endeavors of the night. Good old Sky, the Crow gift to Major Transform sex. It took more than one night with a couple of horny women to slow him down.

  The 5 AM darkness weighed down on us, the sun not due to rise for hours. We munched on breakfast in our tent, not quite ready to tackle the day. A single flashlight remained our only light, currently sitting on a pile of bedding and carefully pointed down so not to illuminate the top of the tent.

  “We’re going to need to chase her away,” Lori said. “She makes me nervous, stalking us this closely.”

  “Can’t you call her a rabbit or two, Sky?” I asked. He glared at me. The flashlight made his face sharp with shadows.

  “That’s something we need to talk about, all three of us. I can live on pine bark, old grass and acorns, but you two can’t. Anne-Marie didn’t send us out here to starve, but I think she may have sent me out here to pressure me about something else.”

  I gave Lori a ‘what is he talking about?’ stare, and she shot back an expression that said ‘your turn to argue with him on this’. Fantastic. Arguing with the wind would be easier than arguing with Sky.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. Breakfast was nutrition bars for Lori, preserved meat for me, and some sort of zillion calorie rock-like black bread for Sky.

  “I’m a Buddhist, and unlike our friendly neighborhood Focus, it’s not the westernized watered down version of Buddhism, either. I don’t eat meat, I don’t kill people, Monsters or animals. Nor would I call meat to be someone else’s dinner.”

  I stopped my mouth before I shouted out ‘how idiotic!’ My own religious issues were just as idiotic; a primitive part of me still refused to believe Transforms weren’t Satanic in origin. The little Missouri girl in her Sunday School dress refused to go away, no matter what I learned.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll cope.”

  Sky smiled. “Thanks!”

  “Sky, you forgot the important part,” Lori said. Sky turned away, and didn’t say anything.

  “Give, Sky,” I said.

  He took a deep breath, stood, paced, all hunched over in the small tent. He turned to me and I raised an eyebrow, still waiting. He sighed, and sat back down.

  “I was raised a Buddhist and as a Catholic,” he said. “I’d mostly dropped both faiths by the time I transformed. I only picked back up on Buddhism as a way of steadying my mind after the Lost Tribe of Transforms came back to civilization. I’ve used it as a lever, to keep myself sane, ever since. Anne-Marie thinks I’m a fool for depending on a normal human religion. She thinks my faith is unnatural, not the proper way of the Transform.”

  “You still think she’s your friend? Friends don’t do things like that.” I thought Sky counted the Madonna as a friend, but friends didn’t drive a person to confront the strictures of his religion. You didn’t mess with a person’s religion, or the little lies we all told ourselves to keep ourselves sane.

  “They do if it’s important,” Sky said.

  Sky was either being too generous, or he hid inside him some serious misgivings himself about his own Buddhism. I turned to Lori, and she agreed with me. I guessed the latter, perhaps even one of those cases where he realized the change was the correct thing to do, but something he couldn’t do on his own.

  “I’m not going to force you to eat meat or hunt for us, Sky. You’re going to need to decide that all on your own.” Not that I wasn’t beyond putting a little indirect pressure on him to make his decision, of course. “I do think we need to go meet this Monster Arm, though.”

  “What?” Sky said. “You’re crazy. She’ll attack us and we’ll need to kill her.”

  “I don’t think so. We’re both Arms, even if you don’t see the benefits. Oh, and don’t forget, I’m no ordinary Arm.” I had just outfaced Keaton. I doubted I would have any trouble with any ol’ untrained Monster Arm.

  “Arrogance,” Sky said, and shook his head. “Utter arrogance. You don’t understand what sort of Transform this Monster Arm is. I do, because I can see her. She outweighs us four to one. Combined. There’s no way we can fight her without going all out. I’m not even sure you can beat her in a fair fight, no matter what. She’ll shred you.”

  “You’ll see,” I said. If Lori pitched a fit, I would back down, but she didn’t. If I couldn’t out-face her or physically kill this Monster Arm, Lori could still do her Lady Death thing. Hell, though he would do so only as a last resort, Sky could skunk this Monster Arm into oblivion himself. I stalked out of the tent, and my two compatriots followed.

  The Monster Arm didn’t run. She sidled out of her cover, uphill to my right, and padded over to what I soon discovered was a large snow-covered rocky clearing. She planted herself on a summit rock, queen of the hill style, and waited for our approach.

  Challenge!

  When I saw her a tiny part of me agreed with Sky. She was beautiful in a predatory way, and quite dangerous. A white-furred lioness, large and sleek, nearly three quarters of a ton of hungry carnivore. Like several Chimeras I knew, and unlike any Monster, she had created for herself bony body armor under her fur, a change that slowed her down but kept her safer from firearms. A pounce and leap hunter, not a run-the-prey-down hunter.

  I stopped about a hundred feet away and stared at her. She was queen of all she surveyed, but I was far more. “Come over here, lioness,” I said. “Humble yourself to me, and I’ll give you some of our food.”

  She understood what I said, even though she couldn’t speak. Not with her shape and form. I could read her, a little, even this soon after meeting her. If she thought she could take us, she would. And eat us. However, we were three human-shaped Transforms, glowing with juice, with no weapons besides knives. We attracted her curiosity, and something about her situation pained her. Lori and Sky joined me, prudently at my back. Any of the three of us could kill her.

  Because we knew it, she knew it.

  I could take her without killing her. “Now!” I said, and brought up the predator. Lori and Sky amplified it. Oooh, wonderful. Now I felt like the queen of the whole damned universe. No, there wouldn’t be a fight. The Monster Arm slunk forward to my feet, and bared her throat to me. I was way the dominant bitch here.

  “I’m your superior. You live or die at my whim,” I said, and knelt down to her face, letting her sense my power. “Become mine, serve me, and I’ll let you live.”

  She whimpered, and snuffled my hand. Suddenly, the juice moved on its own, and I had her tagged.

  Not unexpected. The auto-tag crap appeared to be a side effect of my stature, the power of my predator effect, and my desire to gain underlings, ever more underlings.

  Welcome to my army, Monster Arm.

  “So, you fed her all of your food, Carol, and she’s still hungry,” Sky said. “Now what?” We were back at our camp and the sun was finally up behind the clouds. The late morning stayed dim and gray, and I expected more snow to flurry on by, probably around dinnertime. I slowly began to get the hang of this place and recognize the messages. I even appreciated the reach of my metasense, and the volumes of new information it gave me. A little. I also loved the metasense duet between my natural metasense and the tricks associated with my Monster amulet. Enough time out here, and I might even grow to like the place.

  “You’re going to find us some prey, Sky.”

  “I thought you
weren’t going to do this to me,” he said. He feared this would be coming. Too bad.

  “I’m not going to have you hunt it down or call it to me. Just find us some prey. All you need to do is tell me where.”

  Sky sighed, and bowed to me without his normal heart-felt flourish. “Yes, ma’am oh gracious Arm mistress of the universe and goddess of my destruction.” If we didn’t have each other tagged, I would get in his face, but I deserved the comment. I pressed him. “Do you want caribou, beaver, weasel, coyote, wolf, ermine, moose, or bunny wunnies.”

  Lori snickered at the last. “How close is the caribou?” I said.

  “About thirty kilometers to the east, in the lowlands near the Mackenzie river.”

  Too far. Back the way we had come, and likely in a large and easily spooked herd. “Moose?”

  Sky smiled, and pointed upslope, further into the foothills of the Mackenzie range. “About three kilometers.”

  Dinner. I smiled.

  While Sky and I argued, Lori knelt, talking to the Monster Arm. Making friends, in her own way, with the creature. Fear? Not Lori. No, the Monster Arm knew who was boss, and could smell the tagged relationships among the three of us. All of us three were her boss. Lori turned to me, and waved.

  “Her name is Nora,” Lori said. “She’s got around a hundred IQ, and has forgotten all but a couple hundred words of English. She’ll relearn the rest, soon, and your tag will steady her enough to allow her to regain her real intellect.”

  Witch. Mind and juice games were nothing new to Lori.

  “You’re not thinking of taking her, um, Nora, with us?” Sky asked. “Are you?”

  “Of course she’s coming with us,” I said. “She’s mine.”

  Sky rolled his eyes. “Can’t you just let her stay in her own territory?”

  “I could, but she’s starving. The changes she made to herself, or what the juice did to her against her wishes, protect her from human hunters but have degraded her ability to hunt. I think she’s nearly starved herself to death each winter she’s been out here.”

  “Convince her to hibernate.”

  “Hibernate?”

  “You didn’t know that Transforms could hibernate?” Sky said, quizzical. “I must have forgotten to tell you.”

  Lori didn’t even bother with the usual ‘Skyyyy’.

  “Cuts juice usage and production down by lots and lots. You need to eat lots of food, first.”

  ‘Lots’? Sky was losing the technical and professorial vocabulary he picked up in his most recent years with Inferno. In fact, his whole hold on civilization, and perhaps even his intellect, slipped slowly into the snow. I had even caught him scratching his privates, but I hadn’t put it all together until now. It wasn’t lack of dross, but something else. I needed to keep an eye on this.

  In the meantime, we went hunting.

  Oh, I could learn to love hunting in the wilds. I easily scented the moose once we tracked closer to it. I used all my urban skills at hiding and stalking Transforms as I quietly approached the moose, plus a few other instinctive ones I hadn’t known I possessed. Unlike Nora, I was fast, even in this snow. The moose didn’t get far at all once it realized the danger. I got close to it in an instant and cut its throat. Then us two Arms feasted. We even left enough to preserve.

  Beast (1/7/73)

  Hunted. Someone had the nerve to hunt him. He sensed the truth in the clouds. The insane arrogance of someone hunting him made him angry.

  Who were these people? He clambered up a steep rocky slope to his favorite lookout and relaxed. He didn’t expect to see them, as they were days away. Instead, he called the aurora and waited for their shadows to appear.

  Instead of shadows, he found lights. He knew his responsibility. If he found their shadows in the aurora, he would have hunted them down and killed them. Shadowed enemies were rare.

  Lights in the aurora were rarer still. Mostly, the aurora didn’t care. Lights marked those favored by the aurora, as was he. Even more annoying. He would, alas, need to give them the benefit of the doubt. Let them move on him before he destroyed them.

  He hunkered down and focused his mind on his sense of smell. Picking them out of the reek of the rest of transformed humanity wouldn’t be easy, as they weren’t fully upwind of him. No, most of Asia was, providing him with many scents to ignore.

  Time passed. The aurora went away for the short day. The sky partly cleared for a few hours after sunset, followed by a subtle wind shift to the south.

  There! Three of them, two unknown Transforms and another, nearly impossible to sense, the scent of someone he knew from long before.

  Crow.

  Now why would Crow hunt him? Crow should know better. Crow did know better. Perhaps hunt wasn’t the right concept. Did Crow want to visit? Why now? Crow had grown weak, and become afraid of him. Was that why he kept those others with him?

  Beast studied the sky and the clouds rolling in from the southwest, blocking the sky. What were Crow’s companions doing? Playing with the KittyCat? Now there was a waste of time. He had chased off the KittyCat several times, she was easily dominated and purposeless, unable to control her shape or her mentality. Why bring her with them? Beast studied the sky, and thought.

  He figured it out, watching the underside of the clouds, the ones now spitting snow on him. They had tamed the KittyCat! How? If the KittyCat was anything, she was intransigent. So, were they out here to tame him? He waited, until the winds brought him their scents. Yes, that was their goal.

  This was worse than merely hunting him. He should kill them all for their affront, despite their backing by the aurora. He should free KittyCat. Then screw KittyCat. Proper payment for freeing her. Old Scales bored him. She didn’t have much of a mind left, and screwing her had become a dangerous passion. Each time he took her stuff, she lost whatever mind she had recovered since the last time he took her stuff.

  Beast studied their scents and picked up a surprise, Arm’s scent. Arm wasn’t here. No, the group had visited Arm and lived. Arm wouldn’t be working to tame him. She understood. Perhaps they didn’t want to tame him. Did they want something else from him? Play? No, he was too old to play.

  They wanted him to fight. They wanted an ally.

  Foolish people. Every summer, when the winds blew more regularly from the south, he sensed more and more like him. Transforms. Many many Transforms. At times, he sensed the stench of stuff lost in battle as the Transforms fought each other.

  Arm liked those fights. He didn’t, not any more. Too old. He didn’t want any part of them. Fighting for the hell of it was for young beasts. He wanted to stay out here, all by himself, and rest. Arm had tried to convince him to come south and fight many times before, but he always refused. She gave up long ago. Had she sent them to come recruit him? Something like that.

  So, who were these two women Transforms? He studied the clouds in the sky, searching for answers. Searched his memory for the scents. Nothing. One was like Arm, but not, as if she had become a bit of a beast herself and advanced in a different direction. The other Transform woman had the approximate scent of a Focus, but he didn’t pick up any household odors. No household Transforms. Why did the aurora choose them?

  A puzzle. He studied the clouds, meditated, and sniffed the air. All to no avail. She was a Focus and she wasn’t a Focus. The other was like Arm and wasn’t like Arm. Annoying.

  He wanted to find out. He found himself quite attracted to this Focus not-Focus thing. Curious. Her shape, bright in the clouds, was a lure. Allure. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t feel this way. He was too old to feel this way.

  But he did.

  What should he do? He could hide. He could hide, and perhaps they would go away. He hid from men with guns all the time. He was good at hiding.

  Sky (1/10/73 – 1/17/73)

  “I think you should let it grow out,” Sky said, as he entwined his fingers in Carol’s hair. She had finally stopped slapping his fingers away.

  “It’s
just hair, Sky.”

  Right, mademoiselle Arm. Just hair. Nothing is ‘just’. “I would like to see it grown out, to see if it’s changed, like Arm Haggerty’s hair.”

  “Arms aren’t Focuses.”

  Ah, yes. The crux of the matter. “They aren’t?” Sky said, a chuckle in his voice. “I will take note of that immediately.” Pause. “They aren’t Beast Men, either. Yet you were explaining yesterday about Hank’s discovery about Arms slowly changing their forms to reflect their psychological states. How surprised you were when you found out you’d grown an inch taller.”

  Carol finally slapped his hand away from her hair. “You sneered and called it old news.” But mademoiselle Arm, old news is often the best news!

  “I can’t help that when people listen to my stories, they call them silly, and ignore them. ‘Arm and I once looked eye to eye’,” Sky said, quoting himself. “‘Well, I always thought you looked like a sawed off runt’,” Sky said, aping Keaton’s voice. “I mean, the first Arm just happens to be one of the tallest women on the planet, and built like a linebacker? Didn’t this strain anyone’s credulity?”

  Carol didn’t roll her eyes, but it was close. She sat up and started to get ready for morning. She changed clothes, stretched, and looked lustfully at the remaining food supply. Sky sat up as well, as did Lori. He smiled as he studied the both of them.

  His work with Carol slowly started to have an effect, though only his expert eyes could see his results. His work? Praising Carol’s beauty and features, not of Carol as she was, but Carol as she should be. Gah! The woman was as ugly as a horse, and didn’t seem to have any interest in doing anything about her fate, save perhaps get uglier. Incroyable! He made it his job, his mission.

  He also convinced Lori of the same, though in his Focus love’s case, it didn’t deal with her shape, but with her attitude. Lori tried to be plain, but secretly enjoyed when men and women fell for her despite her best efforts. No reason to be plain out here, though. Again, the change started with the hair; Lori’s hair wanted to be long and beautiful, naturally wavy with glowing silky highlights among its inky blackness. Cutting it in a short bob, her normal style, simply murdered the effect. He had convinced her to let her hair grow, and gently leaned on her to use a little juice to encourage it to grow faster.