“More?”
Zielinski paused. “Yes, ma’am, but only anecdotal.”
“Which you were ordered not to talk about, so don’t.” He nodded, worried about Keaton. Not me. I licked my lips and thought bad thoughts, blood thoughts. “I’d like to know more about what the scientific community knows about any similar Transform anomalies.”
“I will do so, Arm Hancock.” He presented papers for the next three hours while I stripped his refrigerator of all edible food. I learned a lot, but nothing I learned was directly relevant to the Monster Arms episode.
When he started to repeat himself, I threw in the towel. “I’ve had enough of your science for one day,” I said.
He nodded and passed me a note. “Just in case you want to call me later,” he said. I knew the routine and made it vanish. I couldn’t believe how pushy…
“Don’t forget, you motherfucking two legged God complex, you need enough food for two Arms when they come visiting.” Keaton’s voice, not mine. I practically jumped out of my skin. I turned to where Keaton’s voice came from and found her standing in the corner of the library as if she owned the place. I had no idea she was here, or for how long. Keaton, damn her, was full of nasty tricks way beyond my capabilities.
Zielinski didn’t jump a bit. Instead, he tried to ease off his stool, but Keaton moved faster. Before he got his feet firmly planted under him, she had him by the chin. I relaxed. This was the way Keaton should behave. No hug this time.
“I’ve got an assignment for you, Hank,” Keaton said.
“From Focus…”
“Don’t interrupt,” Keaton said. Zielinski shut up, a little more wary. “A new job, Network approved and everything. The pay’s miniscule, there aren’t any fringe benefits, and it’s dangerous as all get out. Luckily for you, it’s all you’ve ever wanted in life.” There was that damned ‘Network’ again. I heard about it often, but Keaton refused to explain. My muscles corded.
“I’m going to help you train Arm Hancock?” he asked, licking his lips in anticipation.
“No,” Keaton said. “I don’t need any help with training Hancock.” Dr.-no-longer Zielinski’s face fell. “Hankie, old friend, you’re working for Hancock now. You do whatever she wants.”
Well, that was a surprise.
“And you, ma’am?” Zielinski asked, a bit nervous-like.
“She works for me.”
Zielinski nodded. He understood. I found his easy acceptance of Arm psychology quite impressive, despite his most annoying arrogance.
“I’ll want a full report on everything the two of you do. From the both of you. They’d better match, too.” Keaton smiled. “Hancock, since he’s now ours, I order you to give him whatever information he asks for. Hank? As with my old agreement with you, you can’t publish anything you learn about Hancock. If you breathe so much as a word about us you’ll die screaming for mercy as your body is carved away one piece at a time. Understand?” He nodded. It irked him, but he nodded.
“Hancock owns you now.” Zielinski nodded. He understood the Arms’ concept of ownership, possibly better than I did. “I’ve purchased your services from the Network. Be careful of the consequences.”
Now Zielinski turned ashen. He had held himself together for hours, but no longer. No one faced Keaton, in a mood like this, without knowing terror down into his bones, and whatever trick she managed involving the Network was no small part of it. “Yes,” he barely managed to say. “Yes, ma’am.”
I worried, all the way back to Philadelphia. Zielinski’s note to me said, “I have a great deal of anecdotal evidence to share with you. Come talk to me without Keaton.” He knew she was present, dammit! I needed to get him to teach me his trick.
I was not sure if he knew exactly how much of a risk he took when he passed me the note. Keaton couldn’t have missed it, but he implied the note contained his phone number, which Keaton already possessed. He trusted her to not double-check, which in my mind was too large a risk. On the other hand, he wasn’t gibbering insane already from dealing with Arms. And, Keaton hadn’t asked to see the note.
Zielinski was used to playing with fire.
More than a year would pass before I realized exactly how hot that fire was.
Chapter 4
Never run from an Arm. The Arm instinctively wants to give chase, like any large vertebrate predator. She may cry after she has run you down and killed you, and feel great remorse, but that won’t stop her from doing so in the first place.
“The Book of Arms”
Henry Zielinski: April 7, 1967
“Aren’t you ever home, Zielinski?”
Zielinski jumped, his heart rapidly beating. He looked up from his office desk and found Hancock seated across from him, a frown on her face.
“I’m sorry I missed you the first time,” he said. She had left a note. “I was away on Network business.”
Anger crossed the Arm’s face. “Don’t you do anything but work?”
Ever since his personal life had cratered, black moods and painful memories had plagued him. The only way he held them at bay was to bury himself in his work. “I normally watch the news around dinner time,” he said. A half million anti-war crazies, gathered in New York, marched on the United Nations building. He had turned the news off.
Between blinks, Carol grabbed his paperwork. She looked it over with a few flicks of her eyes, tossed it back to him and shook her head. “Is this normal?”
“The Atlanta Focus who keeps growing extra fingers, or the fact she refuses to pay for the surgery?” he returned.
Hancock laughed. “That’s the spirit,” she said. “So, what was with the note you gave me last time?”
“I have some anecdotal information about male Major Transforms Keaton would not appreciate hearing about.” In his mind, he still visualized her as the Carol Hancock from in the Detention Center, but in reality she had changed too much. Almost a different person, all because of Keaton’s training. He needed to be on his toes.
“Explain. What’s with her distrust of anecdotal reports?”
She even sounded like Keaton now.
“Some Major Transforms, including Focuses, can mess with people’s heads, creating illusions of the unreal and covering up the true reality. Keaton’s run into a few situations where things weren’t as they appeared to be and no longer trusts what she sees.”
“Well, that’s taking paranoia a bit far.” Pause. “In my not so humble opinion.” Ah, the famous Carol Hancock humor. He had been afraid Keaton had beaten it out of her.
He studied Carol with researcher eyes. She was physically a mature Arm. He suspected from the way she moved and the fact she hadn’t yet threatened him meant she had gotten juice between her last visit and now. Her hair was short and ragged, her eyes haunted, and as during the bad periods in St. Louis she didn’t keep up her appearance. She showed plenty of scars, and they had to be from Keaton. Given how fast Arms healed, the most recent would be from last night.
On the other hand, Carol’s muscles were perfectly symmetric and proportional. Keaton may have been rough, but she had fixed Carol’s muscle problems, likely early in Carol’s training.
“So, how can I help you?” he said. “I assume you’re interested in no longer being Keaton’s toy. I may be able to help.”
Carol frowned and shook her head. “I’ve got that covered. Besides, helping me isn’t why she gave you to me. I’m supposed to learn from you.”
She was easier to read than Keaton and far easier than the top-end Focuses he often had to deal with. Carol didn’t want to talk about her situation with Keaton. Zielinski slowly nodded and took a sip of water. He also noticed the muscles and tendons on her right arm standing out like cables, which drew his gaze to her right hand’s tight grip on the chair arm. He decided he should go slowly on his necessary but nosy personal questions.
“Where do you want to start?” he said. He understood her reluctance. For all he knew, Keaton might be forcing Carol out of the
nest and charging her a torture session for each lesson. Keaton was dangerous, sadistic and perverse. A little over a year ago, Keaton had held him by his feet over the roof edge of the Harvard Medical School Transform Research Center and threatened to drop him, simply because he didn’t have as much information on Eissler, the West German Arm, as she expected.
“What’s the Network?” she said. “If it’s so important, why didn’t you tell me about it back in St. Louis?” Anger had crept into her voice, which made him more than a bit nervous. Carol wasn’t a baby Arm able to be bluffed into submission or incapable of killing him during a temper outburst. Now, she could kill him five different ways before he had an instant to react. His life depended on learning how to calm her down, the same way he had learned to calm Keaton down. At her age as an Arm, the violence came easily, often without prior thought. From a conversation with Tonya, he knew Carol had been the California Spree Killer. He needed to be on his best behavior if he wanted to get through this undamaged.
“I’ll answer your question, ma’am, but first, I need to ask you a question,” he said, eyes downcast. “My question relates to Arm behavior, so it could be taken as insult. I don’t mean any insult or offense, ma’am.”
“I’m all ears.” His submission gesture worked; although the anger remained, she kept a firmer leash on her emotions now. He hoped she didn’t harbor ill will toward him from her time in the St. Louis Transform Detention Center. He chose his words carefully.
“You’ve chosen, if I’m correct, not to prey on Focuses or the Transforms under their control. Am I correct?” Carol nodded. “Why?”
“Keaton ordered me not to. She said, and I quote: ‘The Focus would instantly metasense what you’d done, that an Arm had killed one of her own, because nothing else looks like that. There you would be, out cold with post-kill reaction, and an entire household of people would know there was an Arm out there who just killed one of their people. You would never wake up again. That’s the surest way of getting yourself killed I know of. You never touch a Transform within range of their Focus.’ End quote.”
Arm memory, perfect as always. “After Keaton escaped FBI confinement, she took a Transform from a Focus,” Zielinski said. At least one. He suspected around a half dozen.
The anger drained from Carol’s face, replaced by awe. Hope? He couldn’t tell. “She lived?”
Zielinski nodded. “The Focuses sent one of their top people after Keaton to talk to her.” Zielinski wasn’t ready to reveal anything about the dangerous Tonya Biggioni. Yet. “They made a deal. Keaton agreed not to prey on Transforms in the care of Focuses and agreed to keep in contact with the Focuses; in return, the Focuses wrote off her earlier killing. The deal was her introduction to the Network.”
“Oh,” Carol said, and nodded. Zielinski could almost see the gears turn in Carol’s head as she worked out the unspoken details.
“I’ve always wondered how Keaton would know whether a Transform was in the care of a Focus or not,” Zielinski said, a slight smile on his lips. “I’ve often suspected Arms can metasense a Focus tag.”
Anger filled Carol’s eyes again but she didn’t otherwise respond, enough to confirm Zielinski’s hypothesis. He decided he needed to stop his digression and answer her question. Don’t provoke adolescent Arms!
“The Network is an organization of Focuses, their households and their trusted contacts,” Zielinski said. “I told you about it in St. Louis but didn’t mention it by name.” He smiled and leaned toward Carol, and she reflexively leaned forward as well. “Just think of it! Just a couple of dozen Focuses existed, and they weren’t quarantined together, but scattered among a half dozen regional Transform Detention Centers. What was worse, many of the Quarantined Focuses were also enslaved by their Transform households. Yet they found methods to learn about each other, get messages to each other, and recruit people like me to help them escape from the Quarantine. Extraordinary, now that I think back on those days. At the time I wasn’t anything special as a recruit; back then I was just a part-timer, consulting on Transform issues as I worked up my first papers on Transform Sickness epidemiology.” His story, abbreviated as it was, focused Carol’s full attention on him. He guessed she was a sucker for this sort of romanticized adventure nonsense.
“Once the Focuses escaped the Quarantine, their problems actually got worse,” he said. In this period he had come to his own in the Network. “If you recall, President Kennedy didn’t make their escape from Quarantine legal for over two years after they escaped. The Focuses and their households lived underground, and because they lived underground, the Focuses and their households needed an extraordinary amount of help. The modern Network got its start, then, as a community organization as well as a secure communications network. The UFA – the United Focuses of America – is the official Focuses-only organization, incorporated and everything. They’re the Network’s board of directors, but day-to-day the Network is run by Focus Michelle Claunch, one of the first Focuses. The Network is a much larger organization than the more official UFA, and it’s the Network which has the real power to do things.”
“Makes sense,” Carol said. “What’s in it for us Arms?”
“If a Major Transform gets the Network angry at her, all the Network has to do to make her life miserable is cut her off from support. The same is just as true for Keaton as any Focus,” Zielinski said.
“What sort of support is Keaton getting?” Carol asked. She leaned back in the chair, a faint smile on her face. She had worked out the answer and wanted confirmation.
“Paying jobs. Juice draws. Help in hiding from the authorities who are out to get her,” he said. “Information, which may be the most valuable support of all.”
“What’s my status?”
“You’re Keaton’s student,” Zielinski said, and spread his hands wide. “As far as Network help, I’m it, as assigned by Arm Keaton and the Focuses she deals with. You won’t get anyone else contacting you until you’ve graduated.” Carol didn’t comment and studied him, her face blank. “Do you need any water. Food?” he asked.
“Food. Only if you didn’t cook it, no offense.” Complete with a nose wrinkle. “I stripped your refrigerator on the way in. Do you have anything else? A separate freezer, perhaps?” He shook his head. These Arm visits were going to bankrupt him simply from the amount of food they ate.
“I do have some V-8 in my pantry. Gallon…”
Carol waved him off in disgust. “Who holds the political power among these Focuses and how powerful are they, anyway?”
He took a deep breath. “From my limited perspective, Focus Claunch, the Network head, is the top Focus. She’s an executive – think small town mayor or city manager, vaguely apolitical. Focus Polly Keistermann, a second generation Focus, is the UFA Council President and I think is the second most powerful. Think of her as the leader of the conservative party, a legislator. Third would be Donna Fingleman, the West Region President. Don’t think of her as the leader of the opposition party but as a ward boss and behind-the-scenes string-puller. The Focuses total political power is disproportionate to their numbers because of the attention Transform Sickness attracts. Don’t forget: Major Transforms are few in number.” So far. “The United States holds a little over five thousand surviving Transforms, supported by about a hundred and seventy five Focuses. Oh, and beyond those three leading Focuses, things get difficult to understand and impossible to explain. I don’t trust my information. I do know the old breakout leader, Focus Patterson, although officially retired, can get things done if she needs them done because she’s so revered.” And feared.
“Pah. They’re a cliquish sewing circle working only at the School Board level.” Carol shook her head, unreadable. “So, what’s the anecdotal information you want to tell me about, Zielinski?”
“Hank,” he said, and met her gaze. I’m trying to help you, he thought. Read this emotion with your Arm senses. I’m trying to help you!
“Hank,” Carol echoed, with le
ss anger and suspicion than before.
Good, she could read him at least a little. An image of trying to tame a tiger cub too big for the tamer’s own good came through his mind. This would not improve until Carol learned enough to be able to read him.
“My best anecdotal information is personal,” Zielinski said. “In the time since I left you in St. Louis, I’ve managed to meet both varieties of male Major Transforms, the self-named Crows and the Arm equivalents, who we’ve named Chimeras.”
“Well okay, whatever you say,” Carol said. She leaned forward, aggressive. She didn’t believe a nebbish like him could have done any such thing. “Give me the details.”
If she only knew the real life he led…
“I have several stories,” Zielinski said. He started by telling Carol the story of Focus Lori Rizzari and how her household’s Monster hunting duties had turned into a hunt for a talking Chimera named Rover, and how he helped them corner Rover for the Chimera to be tamed by a Crow. “All of this happened during the period when you were escaping from the St. Louis Detention Center.”
“I understand why Keaton sneers at your anecdotal stories. You didn’t actually meet either the Crow or the Male Arm…Chimera, that is.”
“Not then,” Zielinski said. “The problem started when I was working in my Harvard office late one night…”
Henry Zielinski’s Story (December 18, 1966)
A swab of antiseptic cold followed by a sharp hot pain as someone said “Say hello to Jesus for me.”
Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) Page 9