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

by Randall Farmer

  That put the light in Gloria’s eyes.

  “You want what, Count?” Gerry said. The class had finished, but Gail kept Gerry and Ellen after. For Dowling lessons. They didn’t take much convincing, although Ellen didn’t do more than nod. She still hadn’t cracked a smile or let her true emotions, whatever they were, out of their cage. She still followed Dowling around like a lapdog, though.

  “My goal is to set up a household involving all four varieties of Major Transform,” Count Dowling said. He, however, turned uncharacteristically nervous. Gail wondered if she had put him in a position of weakness with what she was doing. Not that she minded, of course. “I need a Focus who’s talented at witchery, who can fight if she needs to, and has one of those top-end Focus households with a reputation and a name.” He shrugged. “Or that’s my goal. What I’m betting is that, with my help, we can turn a good Focus household into a top-end Focus household.”

  Gerry slumped in chagrin. If anything, Ellen’s icy demeanor grew icier.

  “My ladies?” the Count said. “Did I offend you in some fashion?” Neither answered. He turned to Gail. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong, Director. Please?” His hands shook, again uncharacteristic of him.

  “Be a little less forceful. Save the details until later.”

  Dowling tried for a stone face, mostly got it, and turned back to Ellen and Gerry. “I’m sure you heard the story about my last and most famous attempt at putting together a household. And how badly it went.” He had romped with Tonya, only to see her pair up with Shadow less than a day later and reject his household offer. “Again, I apologize. There are no Rules for this, as of yet.”

  “Rules?” Gerry asked. “Pretend I didn’t say that.” She sighed. “The issue for me is going to be the Arm.”

  “The Arm?” Count Dowling said. “I’ve approached several Arms on the subject, and they all showed at least minor interest. Although I do think there may be something instinctive going on. Each of the Arms told me not to bother talking to her until I found a compatible interested Focus.”

  “My Arm is Stacy Keaton,” Gerry said.

  Dowling leaned back for a moment before steadying himself. Now, he was able to do the stone face. “For real?” he asked, voice artificially mild.

  “For real. Tags and everything. Tonya brought me in to help stabilize Stacy’s mind. Stacy’s still recovering from the Patterson fight, but I think the idea of mutual tags with the leaders of Tonya’s corporate circle is doing wonders. I heard…” Gerry paused. “Oh. Unless I leave Tonya’s corporate circle and strike out on my own, I don’t qualify, do I?”

  “Gerry, this is me, chewing on my foot,” Count Dowling said. He and Gerry gave each other sad looks. He turned to Ellen. “Ma’am, if I may ask, why are you so upset?”

  “I’m looking to get rid of my household, or most of them,” Ellen said. Figurative ice crystals dripped from her words. “As far as household dynamics go, I’m about the opposite of what you want.”

  He held his hand out to her, and she took it. “Perhaps I was a fool for even mentioning that criteria,” he said. “My instincts now say otherwise.”

  “Perhaps then we do have some room for discussion,” she said. “Gail, come along with us please. I feel a visit to the Littleside cafeteria is in order.”

  Gail hid her smile. Ellen’s icy demeanor didn’t crack in the slightest, and she outwardly showed about as much interest in Dowling as she would show interest in a cricket, but her feet and her right hand said otherwise. The hurt in her also said otherwise, the hurt that showed up only when Dowling mentioned his household criteria.

  She would play chaperone and keep Dowling from doing to Ellen what he did to Tonya and allow them to court each other in a preliminary and proper fashion. Good practice. She and Gilgamesh had a whole bunch of Crows and Focuses to play matchmaker with, as well.

  Gerry waved ‘bye’, along with a tightened posture and welcoming smile that said ‘if you strike out with Ellen and want some fun tonight, come visit me’ to Dowling.

  ---

  “…and it’s like I can hear destiny itself calling me to step up and do something,” Ellen said. “Something important. It’s a palpable emotion, and since I’m not one for supernatural explanations, I think I’m picking something up from the Transform community itself.”

  Count Dowling nodded, solemn. “I’ve been there, though I find it difficult to get a feel for whether the Transform community as a whole is making the call, or a group of individuals within it. Is this something any of you overly brainy types understand?”

  Said overly brainy types included Van, Sylvie, Daisy and Connie. Oh, and of course, Zielinski, interrupting his half-assed wooing of Vera Bracken. All now sitting with Ellen, Dowling and Gail at the long Littleside cafeteria table, snacking on some weird Inferno concoction involving dried fruit and nuts. They had all been piqued by the ongoing and now two hour long mildly flirtatious intellectual discussion between Ellen and Count Dowling (“Call me Fred, Ellen”). The only one of the audience who wasn’t amazed that a Noble could have an intellectual discussion was Zielinski. Gail repressed the urge to short him just for being a meddlesome fool, but only barely.

  “I’ve dealt with this many times,” Connie Yerizarian said, picking out a couple of cashews from the bowl. The Inferno head of household had wandered over initially thinking Gail was the one making the play for Dowling, probably to sabotage the idea. When she realized what was really going on she shut down her own desire to arrange for a fun romp with Dowling and got engaged at a far more intellectual level. “The analogy I use when I run into this is the popcorn in a popcorn popper.” She popped the cashews up in illustration and caught them again, then ate them. “If you pop only a handful of kernels, they’re going to pop and end up everywhere, but if you pop a whole bunch, you get a nice regular mound. If the feeling of destiny is yanking you around, it’s from an individual or small group. If it’s a slow, steady and unstoppable feeling, it’s from a much larger group.”

  “Then it’s the same as the instinctive versus learned thing we talked about earlier,” Ellen said. “Why isn’t this the same as the ‘overt’ versus ‘instinctive’ split seen in the 16 varieties theory?”

  Van smiled and answered. “One is affecting you, the other is how you affect the world.” Ellen had better watch herself, Gail decided. If she wasn’t careful she would end up with Van in her household. Given the tension Gail felt from her husband ever since Carol left, she was convinced Van’s patience with her wore thin.

  “That’s what it means, but is there any way of coping with the call, or whatever it is?” Count Dowling said.

  “You can always just refuse it,” Gail said. That earned her a glare from everyone except Van and Daisy. “Look, we’re always being influenced by hundreds of juice currents or whatever you want to call them rippling through our unconscious minds. Meditate, find one that suits you better, and concentrate on that.”

  Count Dowling frowned and reddened, and took a breath to compose himself. Gail suspected he was very glad he hadn’t succeeded at bedding her and getting all entangled in her life. “You can’t play with Responsibility like that! It’s not right!”

  “Why not?” Gail said. Now everyone at the table looked at her as if she was a loon. “Look, it’s just an extra emotion, not a deal with the Devil. We’re all human, here. We’re always messing with our own emotions. It’s like Arms and their territories – it hurts them to give up a territory, but it’s done.”

  Dowling’s eyes opened wide as he figured out what she meant. “Then you’re saying it’s not something to do lightly, but it isn’t something to ignore as a possibility.”

  “Exactly. It’s like a Focus who’s supporting a Transform that’s, say, a thief and a murderer but not plying his trade inside the household. Her emotions say that she must support the Transform, no matter what. The Focus needs to know it’s not impossible for her to cut Mr. Evil Dude loose. However, no Focus, not even the utter hard-cas
es like Tonya, can do anything like that without a lot of thought and angst.”

  “You would make a terrible Shaman Focus, Focus Rickenbach,” Dowling said.

  Gail nodded, as did Sylvie and Van. There was nothing symbolic about the way she thought. “This doesn’t mean you should refuse the call, Ellen. It’s just that you do have a choice.”

  “This was fun, but I think I need to get some air,” Ellen said, about a half hour later. The topic had moved on to speculation about how Bass would be influencing the Hunters. “Count, would you like to join me?”

  “I would be happy to, my lady,” the Count said, standing and offering his arm. Ellen stood, took his arm, and let him lead her off. Nobody at the table said a thing until they were out of Major Transform hearing range.

  “Smitten,” Connie said.

  “Which one, the beauty or the beast?” Daisy said.

  “Both, of course,” Connie said. “Focus O’Donnell isn’t showing a thing. Or at least not physically. But if you’ve talked to her enough to know how reserved she is normally, her interest shows up in what she’s saying.”

  Gail nodded. “He’s far more smitten. I’m not sure he even realized Focuses like Ellen existed. It’s gotten him all serious and made him put away the breezy façade he normally shows the world.”

  “So, Gail, did you give any thought to the household tagging experiment proposal?” Connie asked. She leaned forward, eyes fixed on Gail’s.

  “Did you read through Arm Haggerty’s research notes?” Gail asked. She leaned forward as well. Connie nodded. “I think there’s a bigger fish to fry. Her unknown enemy is here in Chicago, messing with us. That’s what we need to be concentrating on.”

  Connie turned to Zielinski. “So this is your fault?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “I think both issues need to be worked on, ma’am, and ma’am.”

  “Traitor,” Connie said, shaking her head. “Our time and resources are stretched rather thin at the moment. We can’t do both.”

  Gail nodded. “I’m not sure we can even do one of them, but trying to stop the man is a higher priority. He’s a threat to our combined household.”

  “Are you sure about the priority?” Van asked. “Amy’s notes tie together the 16 Varieties theory with the personality type hypothesis as well as Hank’s odor cue hypothesis and the superorganism theory. This is likely as big a breakthrough as the Household Redefinition Project.”

  “Which took how long to complete, from start to finish?” Gail said. “I understand the dream – the idea of household Transforms wielding borrowed Major Transform abilities. The reality is that within six months there’s going to be Hunter armies on our doorstep. Likely far sooner than six months. ‘The man’ is likely here to backstab us in some appalling fashion, within a few weeks, something that will make us more vulnerable to the Hunters. He must be taken care of now.”

  “We don’t even know whose side he’s on, who if anyone is backing him, or why he’s doing what he’s doing,” Sylvie said. “I’d love to work on getting the SO borrowing up and running, but we’re so far away from that…”

  She stopped cold when Connie sent over a bullshit! via the Inferno juice signaling trick.

  “Consider that I didn’t even need to teach you how to receive the juice signal, nor how to translate it,” Connie said. “It’s instinctive now, because of the fact our households have each other tagged and you and I are household leaders.” She paused. “This is our time to strike. We have more leverage on this than anyone ever before; nobody’s ever had two joined top-end households working together the way Inferno and Abyss are, right now.”

  “Yes, you’re right, but would the household redefinition project ever have succeeded without Carol’s involvement?” Gail asked. “We’re missing our Arm and her incredibly powerful and different way of looking at Transform society.”

  Connie backed away, nodding. “I know, I know. How about, instead, we do some minor poking around with both projects and see if anything shows up?”

  “Go for it.” Poking around would be easy to stop.

  ---

  “So, if I may ask, how did it go last night?” Gail said, after prodding with her charisma to chase away the other people sitting at one of the small cafeteria tables in Littleside. Gail had worked all night, only visiting the Branton at about two in the morning to move the juice. Her rest was little more than a short nap until about five, in one of the unoccupied Littleside patient rooms. She had showered, changed clothes, worked a bit, then gotten hungry for food and gossip when she metasensed Ellen’s arrival.

  Ellen smiled and spread cream cheese on her bagel. “Come on, open up,” Gail said.

  “Let’s just say that Fred found a Focus for his experimental household.” From Ellen’s tone and demeanor, you would think she talked about the weather. However, Ellen was Ellen. The ‘Fred’ told all.

  “Very good,” Gail said. “Congratulations. One question, though, and a touchy one – did he introduce you to Crow Master Zero yet?” Ellen disliked Crows, one in particular, Sky. They were far too compatible, likely falling in love with each other even though Sky had been firmly attached to Focus Rizzari at the time. Gail didn’t know if they ever went beyond acknowledging the Shakespearian tragedy of their existence, but she suspected they had during one of Gilgamesh’s ‘up’ periods with Lori, which made their enforced parting hurt so much more.

  “Yes,” Ellen said. “He’s a very quiet man, humble and formal.”

  Gail nodded. “Uh huh, a standard Crow, save for being a Crow Master.”

  “What does a Crow Master do, anyway? I’ve never understood how they fit into things.” Ellen nibbled on her bagel, cucumber cool.

  “Crow Masters are Shamans and do symbolic dross manipulation,” Gail said. “They’re in charge of the dross and élan of the Barony, the same way we’re in charge of our household’s juice. Pretty much everything we can do with the juice a Crow Master can do with the dross and élan, only they direct the changes with symbols. They can discipline, if they need to. They preserve the minds of the, ahem, commoners during élan draws. They teach young Nobles how to maintain their minds when they change shape. They help the older Nobles enforce the Rules on themselves and, more importantly, on the younger Nobles. They maintain the household tag, which is harder than it sounds.”

  “That sounds a lot more active than what I imagined for someone like Master Zero.”

  “Uh huh, he’s just a short little guy who speaks softly and fades into the background. Still, have you ever seen Linda do her thing when one of her people upsets her?”

  Focus Linda Cooley made a good analogy to Crow Master Zero. Linda was short and motherly, a bit on the breezy size and not one given to serious thoughts unless pressed. “God, yes! One of her bodyguards had been harassing one of Rita’s Stepford Women.” Focus Rita Cagle’s bodyguard crew was all women due to some bad experiences she had with her household, and her women were all emotionally shuttered sociopaths with a tendency to carry as much weaponry as an Arm. “Linda froze him in place with a juice hold, made him get down on his knees and humiliate himself, apologizing to the bodyguard, and then did something I didn’t recognize that made the man keep his left index finger on his closed mouth for an hour.” She blinked twice. “You’re saying Crow Master Zero can do the same?”

  “Uh huh, and can do it with a recently converted Hunter, too.” It was always fun to trade stories with a fellow Major Transform who instinctively statue-ized people when startled. She found talking shop with Crows made them far less jittery around her.

  “Hmm,” Ellen said. “I think I’d better get on a first name basis with him, too, and soon.”

  Gail waited until Count Dowling showed up, which he did with Lady Sharon, his Warden, before she got down to business. She even waited for the two of them to sit down at the table with their breakfasts, and for Dowling to introduce his Warden to ‘their Focus’. Lady Sharon became both polite and overawed.

 
“I’m going out of town next weekend to a big Transform Rights meeting in St. Louis,” Gail said, waving her fork. “With Arm Haggerty and her people gone, and with the Blue Ridge Barony now on the way west to chase them, I need someone to cover Chicago for me while I’m gone. I was hoping you two would be willing.”

  Count Dowling and Ellen looked at each other. Ellen didn’t react, but Count Dowling reddened, hideously embarrassed. “I have two things that may make this worth your while,” Gail said. “First, you’ll need to coordinate the Chicago defense with Arm Naylor, and since she’s one of the Arms you haven’t met, Count Dowling, it will give you a chance to size her up as a potential housemate. Second...” Gail paused overly long, enough to get Ellen tapping the table with a fingernail. “I was thinking of offering the two of you the Branton’s honeymoon suite. Since there aren’t any other VIP guests in town, it will be free.” Gerry was using it for herself and her leadership team and bodyguards, but they would be going with Gail to St. Louis.

  “There are times, Gail, when I fear for the future of the Transform community with you in charge,” Ellen said.

  “Afraid we’re losing our edge?” Gail smiled. “You probably won’t be saying that after today’s juice music lesson.” Today she was introducing the personal identifier. Sweat was going to roll.

  “You didn’t come home last night, again,” Van said. He stood in front of her desk in her recently confiscated office. Dr. Quintero now shared an office with Dr. Riddelhauser. Without Carol to watch over him, Riddelhauser, damn it, was taking to the bottle again. Gail hoped Quintero would at least force him to slow down some.

  Gail checked her wristwatch; she had a half hour of work to finish before she started teaching. “Busy.”

  “We’ve made some progress on how to control the odor cues and set up a household Focus tag, and…”

  “You need me?”