Now We Are Monsters (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  Wire’s convinced me, against my better judgment, that I have a place in this, beyond my nearly exhausted store of stories to tell. He wants me to put together the engineering manual for Transform Sickness I always griped about not having. I pleaded to Wire that I wasn’t a much of a writer, but he said “Engineering manuals should be concise, not entertaining. I’ll tell you, we certainly lack ‘concise’ in this group.” I hope I don’t make a fool of myself.

  Gilgamesh

  Gilgamesh walked home after mailing his letter to Midgard, wondering again at his good luck in finding this group. As far as he knew, no one in the world looked at Transform Sickness like this group of Crows, certainly not the other Crows he had met. He hoped he would be able to contribute to their developments, eventually. All through the history of mankind, there had been brief centers of art and thought: Soho in New York, Paris, Renaissance Italy. He wondered if, someday, people would think of five Crows in Philadelphia. Gilgamesh hoped, with all his heart, he would be able, someday, to grow to where he could hold his weight in this group and appreciated the good luck finding them.

  Just so long as Wire’s warning letters didn’t turn from words into deeds.

  Tonya Biggioni: June 1, 1967

  “…and after the third letter, I realized neither of us got the full benefits out of our household models, so I called Focus Webb to consult. I can’t say we’re friends, but we did work together professionally enough to be able to redefine the household structure of our model,” Tonya said. She and Connie Webb had independently developed a household model based on a mid-sized corporation. The woman was grating to the extreme, but her information was priceless.

  An hour ago, Tonya had moved the discussion from Tonya’s cramped office to the common room in Tonya’s household, after Johnny had told his last joke of the evening and most of the household had gone to bed. Two teenagers hunched over with their heads down in the far corner, working on homework together, and Marty sat by the window reading a fat history book, leaving the common room about as quiet as it ever became. The kitchen night staff provided the two Focuses enough food to feed five Focuses, enough to stuff Tonya. Almost.

  Focus Geraldine Caruthers nodded, but Tonya sensed the other Focus was wary. “I’m not trying to come up with excuses for my household not to follow this model – the model appears to be quite efficient, and I’m open to it – but I do wonder ‘why?’” Geraldine smiled. In the intervening months since their last meeting, Geraldine’s transformation had continued to progress. She was no longer ‘plain’; she had become striking. Oh, her nose was still too large for her face, but the yearling Focus’s face had become more angular, a better match for her nose. Her hair was now a rich and luxuriant light brown, now with a natural wave. As with nearly all Focuses, her skin had become flawless. With her narrow waist and small bosom, she would never be a classic American beauty, but Tonya imagined Geraldine might be able to strut down the runway at a Paris fashion show with the best of them.

  “According to Focus Webb, the corporate household model works better if you have a cooperative network of local corporate model households working together,” Tonya said. “Unfortunately, fewer than one in four Focuses has the mental toughness and self-assurance to cope with the model. After I hit up all the local Focuses, I had to start in on the Baltimore and New Jersey Focuses to get the needed numbers.” What might appear to be serious arm-twisting from the outside turned out to be another of Tonya’s give away programs in her effort to build up a cadre of local Focuses who both owed her and whom she owed, her hidden supporters for a rainy day.

  “So, what’s old?” Geraldine said. Tonya smiled. Geraldine’s sales background supplied her with ample rhetorical quirks and an instinctive desire to see around corners and outside of any box you tried to put her in. Geraldine grabbed a stalk of celery and dipped the stalk in the onion dip before she ate it.

  “You up for a walk?” Tonya asked.

  “What’s this?” Geraldine asked. They had walked the grounds of Tonya’s small household while they talked and Tonya tried to get a sense of how Geraldine might be able to help her. Now, they passed by what Tonya considered an ordinary scene, and Geraldine had snapped to it like a small child to candy.

  “Delia’s our new kitchen manager.” Based on Connie’s advice, Tonya had tripled the number of people in her household with management roles. The reorganization supposedly increased buy-in and commitment, but given Delia’s tears in the small household chapel, it didn’t look like the change worked in this case.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Delia nodded at both Tonya and Geraldine watching her from the doorway as she scrambled to her feet. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  Geraldine glanced at Tonya for permission, and Tonya nodded. “Oh, no disturbance at all,” Geraldine said, stepping into the chapel, a large closet that no one since the original owners had found a good use for until now. “What’s wrong?”

  Delia glanced up to where Jesus gazed down on her from the cross. She looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. It’s about the promotion, ma’am. I’m worried I’m not up to the job.”

  Tonya carefully kept a frown off her face. In her estimation, if someone didn’t think they were up to a promotion, they were probably right. Tonya motioned for Delia to continue.

  “Ma’am, shouldn’t a man be running things? I’m also worried I’m too new to the household to be holding a position like this. I don’t want to cause any resentment.”

  Tonya didn’t respond, her mind running through suggestions to give to Honey, her household manager, for possible replacements. Geraldine twitched her nose, uncomfortable, and carefully inched forward a half step.

  “Delia, you’ve been a Transform for what, eighteen months?” Geraldine asked. Tonya had the sudden desire to lead Geraldine away and keep her from interfering with Tonya’s household – but stopped. This was exactly what Focus Webb had been talking about, what she termed multi-Focus synergies. In a corporate household, the Focus delegated enough of the standard Focus time-eating responsibilities to her managers that the Focuses had time to work with other Focuses and gain the benefits of each other’s strengths. Tonya agreed with the theory, but in practice? Well, she hadn’t foreseen this as its first test. Having another Focus deal with an internal household matter made Tonya twitchy. Especially a Focus talented enough to read the approximate age of a Transform. Not that Geraldine’s doing so surprised Tonya, as she had taught Geraldine the trick herself.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Delia said, answering Geraldine’s question.

  “I transformed just over a year ago,” Geraldine said. “None of the Transforms in my household have as much experience as you do and we’re going to switch over to this household model as well. I think, with your ample experience, you’ll do fine. And trust me, women can manage people as well as any man can.” Then she leaned forward, right up to Delia, and spoke quietly. “Don’t let Tonya intimidate you. She’s just compensating for her exquisite beauty and forceful charisma. I know she thinks the world of you.”

  Tonya had to use her ‘forceful charisma’ to keep from laughing, as Geraldine knew Tonya could hear her. Geraldine’s sales technique shined, the reason why Tonya wanted Geraldine on her team. Tonya now understood how Geraldine had been able to be a successful Avon lady before her transformation.

  Delia’s eyes flickered around Geraldine for a moment, to check if perhaps Tonya was about to explode in anger. Tonya kept a straight face.

  “I’m worried I’ll make mistakes,” Delia said, her eyes downcast after she made sure Tonya didn’t have steam shooting out her ears.

  “We all make mistakes,” Geraldine said. “So what wonderful ideas are you sitting on that you’re afraid will get you in trouble?”

  Now Tonya smiled. She wondered that, herself. “Trust me, Delia,” Tonya said. “You won’t get in trouble.” Two cooperative Focuses, both almost good enough to read a person’s innermost thoughts, was not what any Transform ever wanted
to face. Delia’s hair practically flattened in despair, a woebegone rat who had just stepped in out of the rain.

  “I’ve been looking through the old kitchen records, ma’am, and I noticed that until mid ’65, the household used to go to a farm just west of Philly to do hand-picking of crops for our kitchen.” Delia dabbed off some forehead sweat with a handkerchief. “If we went back to doing so again, it would cut out much of the middleman costs and we should be able to afford to have more meat in our meal budget. Plus we’d be getting better quality produce.”

  “Oh, right,” Tonya said. “We stopped because the trips were difficult to organize, logistically, and I didn’t have time to arrange them anymore.” Delia looked resigned to going back to washing dishes. “Delia, I’ll tell you what. You talk to Honey about this, and if the two of you can work out the logistics, we’ll do the farm trips again. I think it’s a good idea and a good test of our new improved household model.”

  Delia’s idea was good enough for Tonya to cancel her mental note to bump Delia back to supervising kitchen clean up. She, Delia and Geraldine chattered for a few more minutes. Behind her eyes, Tonya lost herself in thought, wondering why Focuses worked together so easily and the Arms did not. Even nearly enemy Focuses, such as her and Webb, found common ground for cooperation.

  There had to be a way for the Arms to do so, but for the life of her, Tonya couldn’t think of any way to get Arm cooperation to work they hadn’t already tried.

  Henry Zielinski: June 9, 1967

  He had called Sam for the first time in years back in mid-May, looking for the location of a hot poker game. Zielinski needed the money and he didn’t have any other way to get it. Sam came through twice and his information had given Zielinski enough money to live on, even after Sam’s fifteen percent cut. This time, the game was in Atlantic City. Despite the damned Monopoly street signs, Hank thought he had found a good game. The game would keep him from thinking about the still ongoing Arab-Israeli War, which he fervently hoped wouldn’t escalate into a nuclear holocaust.

  Lorenzo was the smart guy in the game, the organizer. Lorenzo the Stick, according to Sam. You didn’t mess with Lorenzo. The easy money, the reason why Sam pointed out the game, turned out to be a guy named Tony Fratello, a rich man not half as bright as he thought. Zielinski expected to have to kick back some of his winnings to Lorenzo at the end of the game, just the price of admittance into a mob-sponsored game.

  The game was located in a bar in an older middle-class Italian neighborhood. Zielinski came in through the back door, opened by a guy named Joey. Joey led him down the stairs to the basement and into a hallway with cracked linoleum and gray stained walls. The poker game turned out to be located in a converted wine cellar. Cases of beer were stacked along one wall, and along another, boxes of Havana cigars. The fourth man involved in the game, Ricky, was young and cocky. By the time the trouble started the other three had already cleaned him out.

  Zielinski heard the commotion long before the door opened. Joey the mob bouncer wasn’t having much luck keeping a couple more people out of the poker den. Zielinski poked his eyes up with his hand surreptitiously close to his shoulder holster. When he got a look at the lead intruder, his hand froze.

  Keaton. Disguised as a man, but Zielinski had seen her disguise many times. Blue-light special K-Mart suit, a little worn, a tired expression on her face, and a real need for a shave. She hesitated for a moment when she made him, a tiny hesitation few others would have the expertise to see.

  Keaton’s companion had the expertise, because she caught Keaton’s hesitation as well. This attracted Zielinski’s attention to her. His first thought when he glanced at Keaton’s companion had been ‘Focus’: woman, skin of a Major Transform, vaguely radiating Major Transform charisma. Now, he hesitated in stone-faced shock. Hancock! Sure, she wore ratty clothes, short blonde hair, with heavy makeup plastered on her face, and they had done something to her chin or mouth, but that was Hancock under the wonderful disguise. Hancock didn’t appear happy, likely in part because she couldn’t do a man’s voice and thus couldn’t pull off a male disguise, much to her disgust and embarrassment. Still, the two Arms had found some way to make Carol look feminine again, a marked improvement.

  Damn. There likely went his chance of any profit tonight.

  “Hey, this’s Pete,” Lorenzo said, taking Keaton’s hand and shaking it. “Pete Angeleoni – and what’s this? The little lady?” Lorenzo took a puff of his sausage-width cigar and fumigated Hancock. “No dames, remember?”

  Sounded like this wasn’t the first time. Zielinski hadn’t realized that high-stakes poker was part of Keaton’s training. Not in his wildest dreams.

  “She’s with me,” Keaton said, her voice a nasal Bronx baritone. “She wants in onna game tonight. Joey, go getta couple more chairs.” The last she said to the door guard, who came into the room behind the two Arms.

  Joey glanced at Lorenzo. The heavy-set man sized up Keaton. “We’re playing serious poker here. We don’t need no dames coming in an’ screwing things up.”

  “She’s with me and she stays,” Keaton said, with a visceral threat behind her words. The newly minted term ‘predator effect’ leapt into Zielinski’s mind. Impressive, he decided. Keaton hadn’t grown stronger, but she had gained more control than she had before. “You gotta problem with that, you can keep it to yourself.”

  The men shifted and looked at each other. They didn’t want Hancock here, but they didn’t want to challenge Keaton, either. Impasse.

  “She got money?” Zielinski asked. His comment attracted Hancock’s attention, and she nearly crawled out of her outfit when she finally recognized him. He wore a muted disguise, nowhere near as complete as hers. Hancock showed worry, probably as to whether he and Keaton had set this up for some harsh lesson or other.

  Keaton nodded. “She’s got money. Show’m your money, Suzie.”

  “Okay,” pause, “Pete.” Hancock said, the pause just long enough to have been an inappropriate ‘ma’am’. None of the other men noticed anything strange about the pause, much to Zielinski’s relief. Hancock brought out five grand and showed it to them. Zielinski smiled and let greed fill his eyes, playing the part of some stranger who didn’t know them.

  “We’d love to have you join us, Suzie,” Lorenzo said, the skin around his eyes crinkling in repressed glee. “Joey, get ‘em some chairs. We can show the lady how poker is played, can’t we?”

  The men around the table smiled and nodded, sensing easy money. Joey went and got the Arms chairs.

  Zielinski realized his fears were correct. This wasn’t the first game Keaton had dragged Hancock into and they were both excellent poker players. Not only did the predatory Arms pick up on the normal tells, they also picked up on all the damned extras, including hormone spikes and body heat changes.

  However, bluffing wasn’t everything. The tendencies, the habits poker players got into, were just as important. Tendencies took a great deal of experience and mental discipline to figure out. For instance, it didn’t take him long to realize Hancock undervalued strong hands and overvalued medium hands. On the other hand, he swore that Keaton specifically played with him, changing her tendencies from hour to hour. It didn’t help her half as much as she thought it should, as he knew several of Keaton’s tells from earlier encounters with the Arm. Of the two, Hancock grew the most annoyed with him. He had broken a few more of her precious assumptions regarding how normals behaved.

  About an hour in, Keaton signaled something to Hancock about Lorenzo the Stick. After the signal, Hancock gently began to play up Lorenzo. Not sex, not aggression, but as a mystery woman. Hancock chatted without saying much, save she did drop a few hints that her father gambled for high stakes, she wasn’t Pete’s dame but a cousin, and although she knew the poker lingo she didn’t have any skill at all. Truly, no skill at all…

  That is, she grabbed control of Lorenzo, Arm charisma style. In addition to reading people, she was well on the way to mastering m
anipulation and intimidation. Progress!

  Zielinski wanted a movie camera, or, failing that, a tape recorder. Hell, he would settle for a notebook and a pen. Even a pencil and a napkin.

  Because of Carol’s work, Lorenzo didn’t realize he had been taken to the cleaners along with poor defenseless Tony Fratello.

  After a while, only the three of them remained at the table, while Lorenzo ventured off to recruit some other mark to get skinned. Fratello had vanished long ago. Keaton dealt the hand out and Zielinski, dealt crap, folded immediately. He frowned at his dwindling pile of chips. Slowly but surely, with Lorenzo and Fratello out, the damned Arms had been eating into his winnings.

  With him out, that left Keaton and Hancock in, alone against each other. Intrigued, he paid close attention. A round after he folded, Keaton and Hancock began to bluff each other. He watched in amazement, wondering if either of the two of them could tell the other was bluffing. Surely, Keaton could tell Hancock was bluffing. He had a very hard time convincing himself Keaton couldn’t tell.

  Keaton called and Hancock showed her hand. Four queens. She hadn’t been bluffing! Damn, that was a good trick, faking a bluff. He had this asinine urge to get up and do a little dance. She was his Arm, dammit!

  Keaton slapped her hand down in disgust and twitched a shoulder at Zielinski, as if to say, “As you see, this is Hancock’s specialty.” Something Hancock proved better at than Keaton. Fantastic! For several months, he had been secretly afraid the Arms were worse than Focuses about the benefits of age.

  To his surprise, the two Arms backed out of the game shortly after, leaving Zielinski with his winnings.

  They got him in the parking lot.

  “How’d you find out we would be here?” Keaton asked. Predatory stalk. He backed off slowly. Keaton cornered him against his car. Hancock waited, off to one side, obedient, well behaved and Arm observant.