Now We Are Monsters (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  “I didn’t. This was just luck. Ma’am, I assumed you’d found me out,” Zielinski said.

  “Fuck, Zielinski,” Keaton said, nose wide, enjoying his discomfort. “I don’t believe in luck like this.”

  “Did both of you know the Tony guy would be here?” Hancock said.

  The older Arm nodded along with Zielinski.

  “This was no coincidence, then,” Hancock said, sharp as a tack as always. Then she held out her hand, practically sticking it through his ribs. “Our territory, our mark, our winnings. Fork it over.”

  Dammit, that was his money now! Enough to cover his mortgage, alimony and food money needs for the next month. “I’ll be of no use to you poor,” Zielinski said, as he handed over the money. He knew not to argue. Not with two Arms.

  “Tell you what,” Keaton said. “You tell us all the tells and tendencies you picked up from us. I’ll give the money back.” Pause, but only long enough for politeness. “Hancock isn’t close to being ready to face professional poker players. You took advantage of her.” To Hancock. “He built the beginnings of his now lost family fortune taking money from soldiers in Korea and from far too many gullible doctors over the years. He told me he’d sworn off the high stakes games after he got involved with the fucking first Focuses.”

  “I have to do something to earn money. Playing Doctor isn’t paying at all well these days,” Zielinski said. Keaton smiled and Hancock chuckled. He licked his lips. “Keep the money,” he said to Keaton.

  “Smart man,” Keaton said. “You need all the help you can get if you’re going to survive us.” She rode up against him, pinning him to the car. “We’re both much more predatory now.” Crap. Now she played with sex. Of all things, he felt sweat bead on the back of his knees. Had to be a reaction from lack of sleep.

  “Some other time, perhaps?” he suggested. “I’m Arm Hancock’s, ma’am.”

  “Student Apprentice Arm Hancock’s too busy counting your money to be bothered by what I’m doing,” she said, her voice husky. “So, does Tonya and the Network know about your little gambling habits?” With her comment, she tickled him under his chin.

  Typical Keaton sideways question. “It’s not a habit, it’s a way of earning money,” Zielinski said, starting to get exasperated. This had already been a long night.

  “Perhaps it was, but not anymore,” Keaton said.

  He was afraid his night would soon be a long morning, as well. The two Arms appeared to be out to have some fun, and his damned luck had made him their target.

  Chapter 8

  Never play poker with an Arm. You will lose. Never play poker with an Arm and supply marked cards. You will die.

  “The Book of Arms”

  Gilgamesh: July 5, 1967

  Gilgamesh

  …on to other news: two days ago, Occum had the unpleasant experience of getting to meet our old nemesis from St. Louis, Echo. I learned about their meeting second hand from Occum – Mr. Rude didn’t even bother to extend us the courtesy of talking to the rest of the Boston Crows. It seems this Chevalier character’s a mite peeved with the fact Occum’s been taming Beast Men. Not very ‘Crow’, in Chevalier’s mind. Not ‘proper’. All this despite Occum’s okay from Thomas the Dreamer. Occum got so hot under the collar he nearly became as beastly as his Beast Men!

  Speaking of which, the Hoskins beast convinced Rover he should take a human name to help him keep his humanity. Rover flipped through a trashed phone book and chose ‘Robert Sellers’. Yawn. I must say I don’t understand the minds of these Beast Men. I thought ‘Crab Guy’ and ‘Rover’ were far better names.

  Midgard

  ---

  “This is appalling, Gilgamesh,” Wire said. Gilgamesh had talked Wire and Sinclair into his experiment by promising to tell them the only mildly terrifying tale of how he figured out this test might be interesting. Neither Ezekiel nor Tolstoy proved interested enough to show up. Gilgamesh, proud, drove here in his recently purchased ’59 Chevy pickup. His truck turned out to be a maintenance nightmare and he had curled into a fetal ball for hours after the first time he drove the vehicle, but the clanking junk heap proved to be quite worthwhile for his free-lance appliance repair business. For one thing, he didn’t have to sponge use of Sinclair’s truck anymore, nor collect any more comments from Sinclair about ‘you’re the famous Crow hero, learn how to drive’. Having a vehicle also gave him more time for his ‘project’. He had sponged off the other Crows for too long and he felt he needed to pull his own weight now.

  He owed the Philadelphia Crows far more than money.

  “I can’t believe sludge dross is so useless we can’t do anything with the stuff,” Gilgamesh said. They gathered on the ground floor of an old apartment building one of the nicer local Focuses had moved out of last month.

  Wire shrugged. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  They started. “So here’s my tale. It relates well to what we’re doing tonight,” Gilgamesh said.

  Gilgamesh’s Story (1): January 4, 1967

  Gilgamesh huddled in the culvert in Cincinnati and watched. Cars ran over the bridge above him and made a hollow echoing sound in the steel pipe where he hid. A small dribble of water ran through the oversized pipe and over the toes of his shoes. Ice formed at the edges of the little stream. Midnight had passed, but morning was a long way off.

  He had stopped shaving again, but his beard hadn’t come in the way he expected. His beard came in scruffy and fine haired, the beard of a seventeen year old. He hadn’t changed clothes in a month; filthy, they hung loose on him. He stank. Gaunt, his eyes now held a hollow look to them. He hadn’t had a meal of real food in two months, not since he lost track of Tiamat.

  A half-mile away the one Focus in Cincinnati worked at a desk. The other Transforms in her household slept but she had been hard at work for three hours so far and hadn’t slowed down. Every few minutes she would put her head in her hands, and twice she had thrown something at the wall in a fit of temper.

  Each time, afterwards, she would take a deep breath and spend long moments forcing juice through the thick sludge of dross surrounding her. Gilgamesh liked this Focus, a Focus one step up from Ishtar, back in St. Louis. Her stubborn determination touched something in him.

  The thick sludge of dross in her household meant she needed to move soon. Even her bright glow dimmed because of the cloying darkness. It spread up and out from the household like some kind of poison.

  Gilgamesh shook his head at the sludge dross. He couldn’t use any of it, and some Crow had been through recently to clean out most of the usable dross. What little usable dross remained mixed in with the sludge, lost among the darkness. The craving drove him, though, unsatisfied by more than a few sips since Chicago. However foul the dross, he would take it.

  In Detroit, a Crow named Whisper kept the city picked clean of dross. Gilgamesh hadn’t found a Crow in Toledo, but neither did he find Focuses or dross. In Dayton, he found a small patch of dross, just enough to get his attention. Some ‘radical elements’ in the Monsters Die movement had exposed a Transform, what they called ‘outing’, costing the man his job. He had confronted them, they taunted him into attacking them, and they beat the fool Transform to within an inch of his life.

  Gilgamesh hadn’t found any Focuses in Dayton, a puzzle. He followed the Transform’s trail to Cincinnati, where he found this Focus. The long distance commuter Transform lay near death in a Cincinnati hospital, leaking almost enough dross to keep Gilgamesh functional, but not enough to satisfy the craving.

  A small bleak part of him wished the man would hurry up and die. Then Gilgamesh would have enough good dross to last a week. He didn’t much like himself for his wish, but there it was.

  Not that the man’s death looked likely; this Focus possessed enough talent to help the man heal from his wounds. Her ministrations left Gilgamesh with the one last source of dross in Cincinnati, this cesspool of a Focus household. He decided to do this Focus a favor and help himself at the same
time, by taking as much of her household’s foul dross as possible.

  The city slowed, the bars closed, the streets became deserted, and the Focus fell asleep on her tear-stained account books. Gilgamesh crept out from the culvert, more nervous than any time since he confronted Echo. He approached the Focus’s household, in an out-of-business gas station and large country store behind the Love is a Rose florist. A rusty old chain link fence surrounded the gas station, though several sections had fallen down in the winter storms. A huge red oak sat just outside the fence with a trunk nearly four feet around. Gilgamesh crept over to the tree and hid, a good place to do his work. He settled with his back to the tree and reached out, trying to filter the good dross from the bad. The exercise turned out to be fouler than anything he had done before as a Crow, and hard work as well.

  Gilgamesh lasted for only two hours before he exhausted himself, the exhaustion deep enough to bring tears to his eyes. After he recovered from his exhaustion, he realized he had failed in his attempt to filter out the sludge dross; instead, he had filled himself up with the stuff. He knew from experience the useless sludge dross would not sustain him. In a day or two, this dross would fall off of him and puddle away as some useless ‘waste dross’ variety that broke down in full sunlight. Gilgamesh suspected some trick or tricks might exist to allow him to use the sludge dross, but he didn’t know what they might be.

  Well, at least he had done a good deed and taken a good hunk of the sludge dross messing up this Focus’s household.

  Then he metasensed again.

  Worthless. Compared to the amount of sludge dross that remained, the bit of sludge dross he removed was so small he could barely discover the spot the sludge dross came from. The Focus would never notice.

  He laughed bitterly and crept away from the household to slide off into the night. He had deluded himself to think he could help a Focus. He was just a Crow who ate the shit the other Transforms produced. He shouldn’t have expected anything different.

  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” The voice was clear and awestruck, but far away. Gilgamesh jumped and took cover behind an ancient abandoned propane tank. “Their beauty is a lure. Sad, so sad, but Crows who fall to the lure of Focuses often are never seen again, slain or turned into pets. It’s such a shame their reality does not match their beauty.”

  “Who are you?” Gilgamesh said. Only a Crow would be able to catch his whisper. He had never before heard a Crow’s voice filled with such sadness, though.

  “My name is Innocence, young Crow. An old old Crow, wandering by in the cold night and visiting old friends.”

  Gilgamesh’s heart began to pound wildly and the world spun around him as the sludge dross sloshed inside him, sickening him. He couldn’t sense Innocence at all! Innocence must be a senior Crow. Gilgamesh shivered at the danger, if not physically then from the insane political games the senior Crows played with each other. He wasn’t even sure which way to run.

  “I meant no harm,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Of course, my young friend, and I mean you none, either. I just wanted to speak to you after I metasensed you take the tar from a distance, over at Focus Anderson’s household.”

  “Tar?” Gilgamesh thought. “The sludge dross?”

  “Yes. Each group of Crows has their own names for things,” Innocence said. The older Crow’s voice, meek and mild, sounded weary. “I was surprised at such a wondrous thing. You’re strong for one so young. Quite a few of the older Crows can’t move tar from a distance.”

  Gilgamesh nodded. Other Crows had told him he was talented for one so young. He shuddered to think what weak young Crows must go through.

  “You’ve met some of the other senior Crows, haven’t you,” Innocence said.

  “Yes, sir,” Gilgamesh said. “One, by the name of Thomas the Dreamer.” He pressed up against the rusty propane tank. He most fervently hoped Innocence would be terrified of Thomas the Dreamer’s name. Go away and leave him alone.

  “Oh! Ahh! Another surprise! Such fun! You must be Gilgamesh,” Innocence said, happily. “I hoped to meet you some day. Have you had a bad experience, recently? I mean you no disrespect, most certainly not, but I envisioned you to be much less skittish.”

  Gilgamesh’s terror receded; if Innocence knew his name through Thomas the Dreamer it meant they played on the same team. Gilgamesh unwound himself from the propane tank and stood. “I had a bad experience with a Beast Man last month, sir.”

  “You did?” Innocence said, serious and interested. “Tell me.”

  Gilgamesh told the senior Crow his story. He couldn’t stop himself.

  “Thank you,” Innocence said. “It’s always good to learn of new Beast Men. Most of them don’t last long, fortunately. They regress to dumb beasts, do dumb things even Monsters are smart enough to avoid, and get themselves killed. Only a few Beast Men retain enough brainpower to survive, and those are the dangerous ones. The one you encountered may be one of those.” Even though he couldn’t metasense Innocence, Gilgamesh sensed the shiver of fear in the older Crow’s voice. “Beast Men are the reason why it’s unwise for us to try and help Crows through their transformation; in that I follow Rumor’s lead. Some Crows end up being Beast Men.

  “So, Gilgamesh, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for a place to settle down,” Gilgamesh said. He paused, and nerved up his courage. “In particular, I’m looking for the two Arms.” And their Arm dross. He knew the danger the Arms represented, but he would take ‘Arm danger’ over the life he currently lived and not look back.

  “I don’t know where either of them lair, but I know who does: Occum in Boston,” Innocence said. “The Skinner, the older one, is a cannibal. I would avoid her if I were you. She scares me.”

  Innocence’s comment rattled Gilgamesh, awakening many unsettling memories, and hints of memories of forgotten things. “Boston!” he said, followed by an involuntary shiver. He had left the Midwest only once and gotten himself caught in the spider web of Crow politics for his efforts. He hoped to avoid the East Coast for the rest of his life.

  “Oh dear me,” Innocence said, sounding, well, innocent. “You’ve suffered too many panic stresses for one so young and even the idea of approaching the Arms again gives you panic. I share your fears.”

  “Actually, sir, I find the idea of the East Coast, with all of its Transforms, a bit panic inducing.”

  Innocence whispered a grandfatherly laugh. “Gilgamesh, my new friend, you need a vacation. Tell you what. I am familiar with a Transform Clinic ten miles east of downtown Columbus. I foresee my travels will be extensive for a goodly long while, based on some of the information you told me. I have many things to check up on. Why don’t you go visit this Clinic and rest up until you’re ready to head to Boston?”

  “I can do that,” Gilgamesh said. “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” Innocence said. “The information you provided fills in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. Oh, and you probably want to know that Occum did succeed in his attempt to tame the Beast Man he and Shadow hunted. If we can find or train ourselves more Occums, we might be able to solve the Beast Man problem.”

  The world became still. Innocence was gone.

  Gilgamesh’s heart quieted after a few more minutes, giving him time to think about why Innocence’s comments seemed so familiar. Then he understood. He had encountered Innocence at least once while he lived in St. Louis, and Innocence had made him forget.

  Gilgamesh didn’t stop running for five miles.

  Gilgamesh: July 5, 1967 (continued)

  They worked in silence for a while after Gilgamesh finished his story. A warm June breeze drifted in through the broken window they had used to enter the house. “You know,” Gilgamesh said, “I swear this is getting easier as we go. Is it us, or the sludge dross?”

  Wire growled. “It’s the dross.” He spat. “It’s like this tarry crap’s decayed into some crystalline pattern and now that we’ve broken the pattern, it’s behavi
ng more like gristle dross. Not that gristle dross is particularly usable.” Hmph, Gilgamesh grumbled to himself. Tar was Innocence’s term for this form of dross. Double hmph!

  “Now let’s see if we can move the stuff out of the house,” Gilgamesh said. They worked, and to their surprise, they found they could indeed move the sludge dross. The dross swirled around them like toxic waste as they carried it out and dumped it in a mockery of a skunking outside the house.

  “Fine,” Sinclair said. “We can dislodge it. We can move it. We can even ingest this crap, where it will clog up our dross sinuses and reduce our ability to transmogrify our extant dross into juice, before this dreck falls off on its own in a few days.” Sinclair had his own personal constellation of technical terms that no one could understand. He only used them when stressed or angry. “But what’s the point? What possible use do you see in this exercise?”

  This was just so embarrassing. “Think of it from a Focus’s viewpoint,” Gilgamesh said. “Those poor Focuses have to move every six months or so because this sludge dross builds up in their houses, unless Crows take dross and slow down the rate of buildup. Moving costs them a ton of money. Imagine if they could hire a group of Crows to clean this crap out for them. We would get rich.”

  “Who among us would be brave enough to approach a Focus to arrange such a deal?” Sinclair said, exasperation creeping into his voice. Sinclair often thought Gilgamesh’s ideas flat out impossible. “Can you do that, Gilgamesh?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Gilgamesh said. “I’m just an Engineer. Focuses scare the crap out of me. I would rather cuddle up with Tiamat than talk to a Focus, even over a telephone.”

  Wire laughed. “You want to cuddle up with Tiamat? You’re crazy.”