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

by Randall Farmer

  “We’re going to need, we guess, two hours…”

  “Not today,” Gail said.

  Van loomed.

  “I said, not today.” Gail growled at her husband, and he backed off a step. “Don’t let yourself get caught up in this crazy Hank scheme.”

  “It’s not a ‘crazy Hank scheme’,” Van said. “Connie and I are the ones dragging him along. He seems to think he’s working a desk job for you and acting like you’re his boss Arm or something.”

  “Good,” Gail said. “Now, get lost, I have work to do.”

  She waited until Van left, then picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Borealis Barony.”

  “Is Courtier Freeman available? I would like to speak with him, please.”

  Gail had her own schemes to scheme today.

  Not Healing (1/12/73)

  “What are Crows like?” This time it was a reporter with a cameraman next to him, one of a dozen reporters gathered outside of the St. Louis City Hall. Somebody not part of the Midwest media contingent, because Gail didn’t recognize him. The question about Crows would likely be coming a lot, Gail suspected. Of all the forms of Major Transforms, the media understood the least about the Crows.

  Cars passed by, and traffic jammed up behind badly parked media vehicles. The scene looked like they caught her by surprise on her way out of City Hall to her car, but they knew she would be coming, and Gail expected them to be there. The old, stone City Hall looked more like a cathedral than a government building, and made a wonderful backdrop. The place reminded her of St. Luke’s, where her household had lived years ago. “Well, that’s a tough question,” Gail said. “They’re people, so they’re all different. They’re all men, of course. The ones I’ve met have mostly been decent people.” At least so far. Some of the letters she received, in her Crow letter-writing persona, Pencil, chilled her soul. The bad Crows were as bad as any of the bad Focuses. “They don’t usually care for publicity and attention…”

  Something punched her hard in the lower back, cutting off Gail’s words.

  Crack! The sound came after she felt the first punch. Gunfire!

  Her training kicked in with a surge of adrenaline, and she caught herself before she fell, and turned in a fighting crouch with Carol’s gift Luger in her hand.

  The crack of the shot still echoed as she heard shots from around her as her own bodyguards returned fire, pop pop pop. John and Vic tackled her, but as she went down to the ground against her household’s car, another shot ripped into her chest.

  “Over there!” she said as she went down, but Sylvie saw the flash too, and her shots went fast and accurate into a shadow in the fifth story window of the office building across the street and a half-block down.

  She was shot, damn it! Some idiot shot her! Yeah, nuts had shot at her before, but even so, it was unbelievable. What kind of nutcase would shoot a Focus just because she gave a news conference about saving more lives?

  These were the same strain as the lunatics who would beat up Transforms just for the fun of it, or who threw broken bottles at her and her household when they marched for the right of Transforms to hold jobs. Bigoted fools looking for someone to hate, as incapable of ignoring their disgust as a child faced with a mound of overcooked lima beans. She hoped at least that Sylvie got this one.

  The only thing Gail saw was wet pavement, a black tire, and John’s overcoat, pasted across her face. She heard screaming, but no more shots. She smelled the stench of road salt, left over from last week’s storm, before the start of the early January thaw. Did her people shoot the sniper? Was the danger over? It sounded like it.

  The baby! Oh, hell. The attacker had aimed the first shot right for her womb. Damn it, he aimed for the baby! She had announced her pregnancy yesterday, at a televised Transform Rights meeting with the Mayor of St. Louis, and so now some lunatic shoots at her, specifically aiming for the baby.

  She quickly took stock of her wounds, all while she fought the instinctive panic to protect the baby. Two torso shots, one high and one low, both from small sniper bullets, not the massive Monster-killing behemoths that it would take to threaten a Focus. Unfortunately, the upper one had shredded her subclavian artery, just above the aorta.

  Shit! She stopped her heart and pumped herself from her juice buffer, focusing her healing on artery reconstruction. This wasn’t something she could do for long, not because of any threat to her – the juice would see to that – but because of a threat to her baby. Oh, please, God, don’t let me lose the baby, she prayed. She had no way to tell if the baby was safe or not, not while doing this directed healing.

  How long would it take her to reknit an artery to allow it to hold blood? Too long. What she needed was a big fat blood clot right before the remains of the artery. There! She would need a healing trance later, but she thought she could keep going for now.

  “Let me up!” she said, hollering into John’s coat. Her voice was strong, so the bullet did miss her lungs.

  “Gail, are you all right?” John said as he shifted off her. Around her, Kurt dealt with the reporters while Sylvie and Autumn scanned for other snipers and John, Vic and Melanie sheltered her against the car. John opened the car door and then the three of them hurriedly attempted to bundle Gail inside without exposing her to a shot through the window.

  Gail almost stopped them. The danger appeared to be over, but there was still a large collection of reporters watching the entire scene. It made her heart ache to leave a scene as ripe with potential as this one was. Maybe she might even be able to extract some sympathy for the Transforms out of this, though she had hoped for that before and achieved remarkably little success. She wasn’t badly injured, at least not for a Focus. If she remained in training with Carol, Carol would sneer at her injury and make her run another ten miles. But Carol wasn’t here, she was in the Yukon on her mission to civilize the near-mythical first Chimera, Beast.

  She almost started giving orders before she thought about her appearance. A woman with two gunshot wounds, covered with blood, some bright red and clearly arterial, and she wants to continue a press conference? The reporters would think she was some kind of ghoul, raised from the dead. Or at least a full-fledged lunatic.

  She let her people bundle her into the car, and Vic drove them off, leaving Kurt and Sylvie and Autumn to deal with the reporters and the cops. So much for the remainder of the Transform Rights meetings and protests. Her people would need to take her back to Chicago.

  Just so long as the baby was all right. It would all be fine, so long as nothing happened to the baby.

  Gail let herself fall into her healing trance.

  ---

  Smack! Carol hit her, threw her in the air. Pain blossomed through her for a mere instant as Gail hit a spiked metal torture device that Carol hung from the wall in her blood-soaked basement. Five spikes in all, one of them long enough to go right through Gail’s stress-thinned body, all the way out through her chest. Gail gasped, terrified by the sudden pain, and the shocking sight of a metal spike protruding from her chest. A metal spike! Right through her body! Nailed to the wall like an insect in an adolescent boy’s bug collection! She trusted Carol, dammit, and it was only coincidence that the spike missed her spine and heart.

  Well, okay, not a coincidence. Carol was an Arm. Still…

  Oh, right, I’m reliving the past, Gail thought, fighting her way semi-conscious out of a particular set of memories she didn’t want to relive. Similar wounds and all.

  Gail wondered what her screwy subconscious tried to tell her this time. She relaxed and let the healing trance fall over her again.

  “What?” she thought, back in the past. It felt so wonderful, being able to tap her own juice buffer. High juice, for the first time in her life as a Focus. Now she understood why her Transforms always looked at her that way when she gave them high juice. Now, perhaps, she would be able to talk to them about it. They never talked to Focuses about such things, not ever, knowing that Focuses c
ould never experience high juice. Tears dripped down her face.

  Carol stood, shook blood like a dog, and strode over to Gail. The Arm resembled a demon out of the pits of hell, covered in blood from the floor where they had been rolling, with mad eyes and a wide evil smile. She lifted one of Gail’s eyelids and then the other, and then made a clucking noise with her tongue. She let Gail know that Gail looked about the same – as she slid a knife into Gail’s abdomen.

  Where was that damned juice pattern that let her control the pain? She needed it now – gut wounds hurt much worse than other wounds. Why the fuck was Carol doing this?

  Carol gently picked her up off the metal spike and laid her on the floor again.

  “How’s your juice count?” Carol said. Gail’s vision blurred, and the bright red of blood danced like flames around Carol’s face.

  “What are you doing?” Gail said, her voice reduced to a whisper.

  “I’m keeping you from going Monster,” Carol said. “You’re supposed to turn that thing off before you send yourself into Monster.”

  “Oh,” Gail said. This wasn’t an attack. Well, this was one little episode she wouldn’t mention in her next letter to her parents. “Yeah.” They had talked about the potential problem earlier, but Gail lost track of her juice count in the unexpected and overwhelming pleasure of high juice.

  “Now why don’t you finish healing yourself up, and next time we do this, you can use that juice pattern that lets you read your own juice count, and you’ll stop before you become a Monster, right?”

  “Right,” Gail said, her voice still weak. “I did it, though, didn’t I?”

  Carol grinned a fierce demon’s grin. “You did it.”

  Gail healed, and sat up, hungry, ravenous, with less juice than before. Her head swam from the juice roller coaster effect.

  “Again,” Carol said. Ever the stern taskmaster.

  Gail started. It took two tries, but she got it on the second attempt this time. This time, she stabilized the juice buffer access, at a high juice count. She luxuriated in the juice, in the strange and wonderful feelings, sensual and sexual feelings, coursing through her wounded and aching body.

  “There,” Carol said. “That’s it.”

  “This is different,” Gail said. Much more of a cat’s purr than actual words.

  “Oh, I’ll bet it’s more than different,” Carol said. Gail took Carol’s hands in hers, and in a moment, their bodies entwined.

  “Don’t fight the juice,” Carol said. “Your first time with high juice can be overwhelming.”

  Gail gave up on words and just purred. She had no intention of fighting the juice, and despite the location, she let sensation overwhelm sense. It was so much easier to love an Arm than fear one.

  Even if she finally did what Van called her on before, and she had denied.

  What Van didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  ---

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Lori?”

  Nobody else in the Inferno household had the nerve to call Lori by her first name, except Ann Chiron. Gail tried to figure out where she was. The Branton. Inferno quarters. And there’s Van in an oversized chair, with Lori sitting on his lap. Kissing him. One hand on his crotch.

  Did this happen, or am I having a hallucination, Gail thought. When did this happen?

  Lori’s hand vanished from Van’s crotch at the sound of Ann’s voice. She slowly backed out of the clinch as well.

  “Exactly what it appears like,” Lori said, baring her teeth in annoyance.

  More of the world came into view; this was one of those ‘I am standing here like a ghost’ Dreaming states the Madonna once told Gail about. Something the Madonna could do but nobody else could. Well, it appeared Gail could when she was asleep for real. This was the Inferno common room four, formerly a corner suite, new converted into a general gathering area. The Focus, as they called Lori, often rested here as the suite held about a fifth of the house library (most of the rest packed away in storage) and a snack bar. Normally, because this was Lori’s hangout, only the younger Transforms and normals would ever gather here. The youngster contingent was Lori’s real household, the ones she doted on and loved in an appallingly standard Focus fashion. They weren’t here now, despite it being well before midnight.

  The idea of Lori and Van together shocked her. No wonder she repressed this until now.

  Ann stalked over, grabbed Van by the hair, and got in his face. “How are you doing this?”

  “She called me here,” Van said. He grabbed at Ann’s arm, and tried to remove it from his hair. He might as well have been trying to move a steel I-beam. “She wanted to learn about my progress with Dr. Bob.”

  Ann slapped Van’s head in disgust. “Lori. Lori. Lori. Why?”

  “This isn’t anything I want to talk about,” Lori said.

  “Too bad, because I’m pulling rank and saying you’re going to be talking about it, whether you want to or not.”

  Gail’s Dreaming presence circled the scene clockwise about 120 degrees. This wasn’t anything healing-trance-Gail could control. She now understood when this event occurred: after she and Lori tagged each other, but before Lori went with Carol and Amy to visit Keaton.

  “Tell me why this is wrong?”

  “Sleeping with the husband of another Focus? Are you insane? How could this ever be right?” Ann paused. “How can you even be interested?”

  “This isn’t the first time.”

  “What!”

  “I was Gail at the time.”

  “Dammit! Sky! Attaque! Get your…”

  Sky’s voice appeared. “I’m here, Ann, my love.”

  Dreaming Gail saw his voice, but not him. Healing trance Gail wanted to strangle Sky for this. A trick like this meant he had metasensed Gail’s Dreaming presence and chose not to do anything about it, or to say anything about it later.

  “What’s wrong with Lori? Who’s attacking her? Gail?”

  “More like empathy and a guilty conscience, and, well, our Focus’s desire to be more of a normal human being than she already is.” He paused. “Van’s the innocent in this, save for the foolish mistake he made when he married a Focus.”

  “I can make them go away,” Lori said, to Van.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if that might not be a wise idea,” Van said.

  Ann reined in her temper – with what appeared to be subconsciously borrowed SO – superorganism – charisma. Aha! That’s why my crazy subconscious wanted me to see this, healing-trance-Gail thought. The Inferno Transform leader scraped over a normal sized chair from the card table and sat next to Lori and Van.

  “Van,” Ann said, now attempting to be reasonable instead of shouting. “You’re under the effect of Focus charisma.”

  “Two Focuses, two Crows and one Arm,” Van said. “Any other bits of obvious information you want to share?”

  Oooh. He was in a mood.

  “Lori is a lesbian.”

  “Except when she’s not,” Van said. “Why are you so hung up on labels, anyway?”

  “Because she’s mine,” Ann said. She paused in shock, and her face reddened with embarrassment. “She’s my Focus, I mean.” Lori had made the moves on Ann in at least one Friday night session, and Ann refused. Ann labeled herself as a heterosexual. So she was one. Her personality type was into labels. “You’re messing up my Focus.”

  “She’s never slept with a normal man before?”

  “I’m right heee-eeeer, guys,” Lori said. She said it like she was a helpless tween ignored in a conversation, not someone who could push away, flatten or kill everyone in the room. Gail wondered if this was real or fake, but after Lori winked at Dreaming Gail, decided it was fake.

  Shit! Dreaming Gail – that is, healing-trance-Gail’s own subconscious – had arranged this scene.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Ann said.

  “When she tagged Gail she fell in love with her in some crazy Major Transform fashion,” Van said. He
turned to Lori. “Is that right?”

  “Uh huh, and in falling in love with Gail I fell in love with Van. He was feeling lonely tonight, and I decided to do something about it. Besides,” Lori said. “He’s fun to talk to.”

  Ann wheeled on Sky. “This is all your fault! Without this household tagging crap, this wouldn’t have ever happened.”

  “Charisma,” Sky said, the standard ‘curb your charisma’ warning Focuses received, as if Ann was a Focus. Ann froze in place.

  “You’re saying you’re feeling unconscious charisma flashes from me?” Ann said. Sky nodded. “So there’s an upside to this insanity?”

  “Apparently. Consider that, instinctively, you are repelled by Gail’s Transforms at the personal level. Still.”

  Ann nodded.

  “Who, then, can serve as the go-betweens between households? The answer is obvious: the normals.”

  “That makes sense,” Ann said. She paced around Sky, oblivious to the fact that Lori had picked Van up and carried him out of the room several comments ago. “This means we’re closer to superorganism use than we thought, and that people like Van – who’s probably an immune, given his amount of juice and dross contamination – have a point in households.”

  “Yes,” Sky said. “They’re juice conduits for juice signals, as well as…” He froze. “Say, Ann?” He made a twirly finger motion with his left hand. “Aren’t we missing a couple of someones?”

  Ann froze in place for a moment, glanced around and failed to find Lori and Van. She put her hands on her hips and screamed “Lori!”

  The vision collapsed and Gail woke from her healing trance. Funny thing, Van had never mentioned word one about Lori screwing him silly. No wonder her loveable loser husband was so hot on the uses of the superorganism these days.

  Fruitcakes (1/16/1973)

  “Hey there,” Gail said, opening her eyes and chasing away a dream of walking through an endless snowstorm. She wasn’t sure when she was, but she rested in her own bed, Gilgamesh lay next to her, and daylight streamed in through the windows. She felt like crap, typical for a long healing trance. She hadn’t been shot that bad, though. She could have forced herself to finish the press conference if she wanted to. Why so messed up?