“Pretty good for a mere normal, eh?” Henry said. Lori’s point was fair and drove home Ann’s point about his own stereotyping mistakes. Ann looked pleased.
“You put some thought into this before, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes. After an episode with Stacy Keaton nearly left me in traction a couple of years ago, I spent several weeks in Focus Biggioni’s household while she covered up the ‘accident’. I had never seen a Transform household from the inside before, although I was definitely the outsider and Tonya and her people weren’t being anywhere near as open with me as the two of you. Which I thank you for, by the way. I saw enough to pique my interest and I started to dig through the literature. The idea that Transforms come with enough biological wiring to be functional cells in a social superorganism is a fringe idea, but only marginally. Researchers often use the social superorganism to describe social insect behaviors, and extend the concept, in a weaker form, to other social animals, though the authors do catch some grief about over-reach. Even, um, normal humans apparently possess a strong social superorganism and some consider humanity on its way to being fully eusocial, even without adding in any Transform extras.”
Lori winced. “But… Is such a thing even possible without the flood of pheromones present in Transform households?”
Zielinski smiled, as did Ann. He realized the superorganism concept was something Ann pushed and Lori resisted.
“The connections are just more noticeable within a Transform household. However, has your Focus charisma ever failed simply because you targeted your trick on a non-Transform?” he asked. Lori shook her head. “Did you ever notice any difference in the way non-Transforms, and Transforms who haven’t encountered Focus charisma before, react to your charisma?” Lori shook her head again. “What led you to this, Ann?” he asked.
“Our household formalisms work more strongly than I think would be possible if they were just psychological,” Ann said. She knew more, he decided, but she sat on the information. Probably household secrets. “I think it’s a huge avenue of research we need to stop neglecting.”
Lori sighed – elaborately, for show – and held up her hands. “I give. I’ll start reading up on these superorganism things immediately.” She paused and muttered: “Even though I find the concept of incipient human eusocialty philosophically repugnant. We’re autonomous individuals, not friggen naked mole rats where only the queen breeds.” Her muttering trailed off into incoherent disgust.
“So, if I may ask, why did you decide to answer all of my questions today?” he asked.
“Told’ja,” Ann said, and pointed at Lori.
Lori made a showy disgust face, ending with a tiny smile. “I recently came across some information indicating you were about to take a long and dangerous trip, and you would need help,” Lori said. “I figured the best help I could provide was to answer some of your questions.”
Zielinski tapped his fingers on Lori’s lab desk. “As far as I know I’m not taking any long trips,” he said. Lori shrugged. “So you Dream?” Many Focuses, after several years, learned a trick allowing them to communicate with each other in their sleep. They called the trick ‘the Dreaming’ and tried to keep it a secret. He had known about the Dreaming for years.
Lori nodded. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“Then you should know this isn’t something I can talk about,” Lori said. Her comment was proof enough for him. “I do wonder, Henry, who told you about this subject?”
His head started to pound.
“That isn’t fair, Lori,” Ann said, noticing her Focus’s charisma at work.
His head continued to pound.
To succeed, Lori needed to work much harder with her charisma than this. “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” Zielinski said with a wink and a smile. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.” He told no one about his conversations with this particular ‘first Focus’. No one.
“That’s supposed to be my line,” Lori said, exasperated, referring to his first statement. She backed off her charisma. Zielinski sighed with relief.
Gilgamesh: August 10, 1967
Gilgamesh
I’m sorry to hear about your group’s encounter with a Beast Man. Occum’s assured us the Beast wasn’t one of his. He’s also said it wouldn’t be wise for him or anyone else to try and recruit the beast in question.
As you know, Occum is in indirect contact with a local Focus we call Gymnast. Through this contact, he learned your Hera Focus ran into a Beast Man about the same time that Sinclair metasensed his. Only she didn’t run into just a Beast Man, but a Beast Man with a whole herd of half-Monster women Transforms. In Occum’s humble opinion, harem-gathering isn’t the behavior of a normal Beast Man, but the behavior of a Beast Man who’s found a way to retain much more of his humanity than is standard. He thinks your precautions are quite warranted, and such a Beast Man is far too dangerous to approach for any kind of recruitment attempt.
I also got to meet the Sadie Tucker woman Transform you’ve mentioned to me. Finally. Did you know she’s a poet? Check this out:
“Brilliant night shines with Monster eyes
Darkness becomes the Focus’s friend
A willow drooping readies weapons
Africa has come to America”
Neat, huh?
Midgard
Gilgamesh showed the letter to Sinclair. “I don’t understand Sadie’s poem at all,” Gilgamesh admitted. “I guess I’m not very poetic.”
Sinclair smiled and turned away for a moment. “The poem is about a Focus and her Transforms hunting a Monster, alluding to it being like big game hunting in Africa. Gymnast, the Boston Focus, is a Monster hunter. A drooping willow has many branches, an allusion to the Focus’s household.”
“If you say so,” Gilgamesh said. He had watch duty this afternoon and had convinced Sinclair to come visit. There had been no slacking off on the watch schedule. They were all Crows, and with a Beast Man hunting them, they kept watch regularly and religiously.
Chapter 11
Never get between two Arms who have not worked out their dominance.
“The Book of Arms”
Tonya Biggioni: August 13, 1967
The Dream was vivid, a memory from four years previous. Toronto, late winter, a mission of mercy at the behest of the Council. Not a memory she had ever revisited. The terrifyingly powerful Lost Tribe of Transforms, recently returned to civilization from their years in the barren north, save one, had agreed to submit to medical tests and accept help, in of all places a parking garage next to the Toronto Transform Center. Under no circumstances would any of the Lost Tribe go inside a building, especially a Transform Center. Tonya had come with a new household of Transforms for the Focus, all of them gathered from Quebec City and Montreal, at the request of the Toronto Focuses. None of them had the strength to support a second household, even a small one of four triads, even temporarily.
Not counting the Lost Tribe’s Focus, who answered only to the name ‘Focus’, Tonya scared nearly everyone she met in Canada half to death.
To her surprise, the man she sat next to was the second not to be so scared, a comfort. He was no more scared of her than he was of anything or anyone else.
Of course, his relative lack of fear wasn’t the whole story. The man beside her radiated anger and malevolence at such a level that no one else could approach him, especially not the normal doctors (one of whom was Dr. Henry Zielinski, but back then, Tonya didn’t know his name or his reputation; she had forgotten he was there). “You’re a Crow?” Tonya asked.
The fierce man, disfigured by frostbite and paper-thin due to malnutrition, gave her a gap-toothed smile. His gums still bled from whatever horror he had put himself through. “No. I’m the Crow. My name is Crow. The rest of them are named after me.” He spoke in French Canadian, which Tonya understood but couldn’t speak.
“Why are you so angry? Is there anything I can do to
help?” Tonya asked. She understood enough about Crows, from the horror stories that Wini and the other Firsts had told her, to keep her hands to herself. Still, she couldn’t bear to let him suffer alone, unable to be helped.
“Don’t bother about me, mademoiselle Focus,” he said, still in French. “I’ll do just fine, if I can get some help for Focus.”
Tonya looked over to where they had ‘Focus’ laid out on a stretcher. Only some damned doctor (Zielinski of course, who else? How could he have won over that one’s trust so fast!) had found a way to stop her whimpering and screaming, get her to half sit up and take some food and liquid. ‘Focus’ was as frostbit and starved as Crow.
At the other end of the parking garage, a car door slammed and a fracas began. Whoever sat in the car bent down, and the car started. He had hotwired it.
“That’s Arm,” Crow said. “Definitely not a he.”
“You’re kidding,” Tonya said. Crow read her as easily as Shirley or Polly did. She found his trick disconcerting.
The car and its driver spun around a barricade, scattering Canadian security and the bodyguards of a Focus household, then exited the parking garage. Tonya hadn’t met a survivor of Armenigar’s Syndrome before, certainly not one who went by the name of ‘Arm’. She did not know any who had survived, as this was the past: Keaton hadn’t yet transformed and Eissler’s survival hadn’t yet made the rounds.
“I’m surprised she held out this long,” Crow said. “Her temper was completely fucked, just like Beast’s.” She never learned who or what ‘Beast’ was. “Keep talking in English, mademoiselle Focus. I seem to have temporarily mislaid it.”
“The Canadian authorities want to deport the lot of you to the United States, but I need to tell you the UFA Council’s forbidden it. You’re too dangerous. You’ve done impossible things they would rather not think about.”
“Ah, yes, the famous uncooperative Major Transforms of the United States. You need not worry. I’ll find a way to sweet talk the Provincials into giving me shelter, even if the national government is going to turn up its nose at me again,” Crow said, and blew his nose. Tonya didn’t think she had ever seen a Major Transform sick with a cold before. If she only knew the full story of what they had done to themselves! “Baah! Your stupid Focus – Crow tiff is going to be the death of both of your groups if you don’t take care, mademoiselle Focus. There’s far more things Transform that go bump in the night than you’ve ever imagined in your worst nightmares.”
Tonya shrugged at the truth that rang through Crow. “I inherited it, I didn’t…”
The phone rang.
“Hey, Tonya,” Lori said. Tonya fumbled the telephone for a moment and took a deep breath. Five in the friggin morning, interrupting a dream likely sent to her by ‘Focus’ herself. “Got the word in from the you-know-who.”
The Crow who took the Chimera as a pet, Lori meant. So, Tonya asked herself, after she quieted her anger over the Dream interruption, did Lori think her phone was bugged, or did she think my phone was bugged? How did she figure out she needed to ring my private bedroom phone, anyway?
“Good,” Tonya said. She sat up in bed, losing the meaning of her Dream. “What did your friend say?”
“My friend said the problem wasn’t one of his,” Lori said. “My friend also said the lizard shape you described isn’t among those known of his kind.”
“This means there’s more of them wandering around.”
“Yes. I have more news.”
“Go on.”
“My friend asked some of his compatriots who live in Philadelphia if they had picked up on anything of this nature, and they said they had. They’re worried.”
“Your friend’s kind would be. They’re paranoid about everything.”
“Tell me about it,” Lori said. “My friend won’t even talk to me in person or over the telephone because of that paranoia. I have to go through one of my women Transforms.” She paused and rustled through papers. “My friend also said the Pepacton dog who introduced the two of us to this little problem figured out how to, ahem, befriend and not kill a sturdy Monster before my friend made the dog’s acquaintance. Thus, it’s entirely possible that your lizard acquaintance is working alone and has figured out a bunch of these tricks by himself.” Translated: the damned Chimera knew how to tame Monsters without any Crow help. Crazy, but no worse than any of Tonya’s ideas.
“Any idea why they’re crawling around Philadelphia?”
“When my go-between asked my friend your question, my friend clammed up and got evasive,” Lori said. “I suspect our paranoid friends know quite well what’s going on and aren’t going to tell us Focuses why.”
“Somehow, we need to find some way to cooperate with…”
“…which won’t happen until your Council recognizes their existence.”
Tonya stewed for a moment and took a deep breath. “If any openings come up, I’ll toss it on the table for discussion, but don’t hold your breath.”
“Just do it, Tonya.”
“I’m not interested in professional suicide, Lori.” They could go on for hours on the subject, the source of most of their political disagreements.
“Speaking of that,” Lori said. “Have you considered siccing the Arms on this new Philadelphia problem of yours?”
“Yes, I did, and they failed.” Their failure was another high annoyance stuck in Tonya’s craw. “Keaton hasn’t been returning my calls ever since. I think she’s embarrassed. Oh, and according to Zielinski, she suffered one of her psycho episodes and carved up Hancock a bit, which I’ll bet she’s also embarrassed about.”
“It was more than ‘a bit’,” Lori said. “The good doctor sewed Hancock back together in my Boston College lab and the place simply reeked of juice, blood and feces for days until I got a crew of my paranoid friends to clean the place out.” Her voice dropped an octave. “I got a tissue sample of the Pepacton dog out of the deal. Most definitely a peer of ours, yes in-deedie.”
Tonya winced as Lori edged over into Lori-land. “Feces? Damn Keaton! No wonder she’s clammed up.” Tonya often wanted to wring the Arm’s neck because of her excesses. “Any word on Hancock’s progress on her graduation test?”
“Not a peep.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Tonya said, tried to make small talk, failed, and hung up.
Carol Hancock: August 14, 1967
When Keaton was out I went through my options again. I stalked the warehouse back and forth, angry because of lack of progress on Keaton’s graduation test and because I had just wasted yet another hour failing to figure out how to burn juice.
I followed Zielinski’s suggestion and read up on the differences between psychological and physical addiction. Useful, but not a road map. I understood his point: my juice monkey was both psychological and physical, and I needed a psychological trick to counter the psychological aspects of my juice addiction. But, what trick?
Back in the gym stood the squat rack, massive, threatening, and silent. I walked over, put my arms up to the upper corners, where I had hung for so long, and let the horror of my memories wash over me. I relived the cuts of Keaton’s knife as it went into me, and again experienced the tight belt around my neck. I faced the gleam of sadistic cruelty in Keaton’s soulless eyes and froze in place.
Ever since Keaton hung me on the rack I had been working on my graduation test. She cut me down every time I failed to make progress, beating down my ego and mind. Well, good for her. She helped in an ass-backwards way by providing me incentive on a regular basis.
Much better incentive than regular psychotic episodes, for damned certain.
I touched the bar. I remembered the blood and the smell. The pain and the horrible slow draining of the juice. The need and the overwhelming terror.
Keaton taught me only superficial lessons these days – tricks and talents – but everything she taught me built up my internal strength. My will and strength as an Arm. Soon I would be so willful and so much an Arm that the �
��student’ status and the Catholic schoolgirl uniforms would lose their worth. Then I would be back to mightily irritating her. Soon after, I would probably die.
I owed it to Keaton to pass her final test.
I left the squat rack and walked through the corridor towards the kitchen. When I got to the clothing room, I turned in. There, off to the right, lying on top of the dresser, were eight old, blood soaked belts, all too stiff to be useful. Keaton’s belts, the ones she used to beat me. She never threw them out. She saved each one of them, treasured mementos of my pain.
I took the topmost one, the last one she used on me. I bent the belt and flexed it in my hands to work the stiffness out. I had little success. The blood had soaked too far into the leather.
I snapped the leather across my arm. I noticed the pain on some distant part of my mind. I deserved the pain. Pain was good.
The belt didn’t work. Not enough pain and the belt was too stiff to beat myself with effectively. I left the belts and went back into the hall.
From the hall I paced into Keaton’s workshop, her chamber of horrors. Knives lay scattered around the room. Tiny instruments covered the leftmost worktable. Little bits of blood still clung to some of them. To think that once I thought those instruments were for working with machines.
Over to the right, a soldering iron lay on a table. A spool of lead lay near it. I went over to it and picked up the iron. A distant part of me gibbered in horror.
I plugged the iron into an extension cord and squeezed the trigger to make the iron hot. While I waited, I traced the extension cord with my eyes, back to the wall and one of the few electrical outlets that the warehouse supported. The soldering iron tip turned from dead gray to red-hot. I took the spool of lead and touched the tip. A bead of melted metal slowly formed, and dropped to the wooden table. The bead burned into the table.
Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) Page 27