After Gilgamesh left, bemused again about the horrible reputation he had picked up in California, he wondered if he would ever make any progress on his real mission.
After the Addi
[Carol’s POV]
By the time we passed Albany, the sun had risen and my mood improved a bit. Nothing had blown up yet and I had ample roads to choose from, safer somehow. Everyone in the car knew I remained on edge, not in a talking mood. They had made a few attempts at conversation, early on, but I responded only with barks, and so, now, not a one of them would say a thing to me, or to each other.
Out of the Adirondacks, and onto the winding rural roads west of Albany, I tried to figure out what my instincts were telling me. I thought of several things.
The first thing bothering me was the cellmate of Zielinski’s I had left behind. He had seen through my disguise and recognized me as the killer Arm I am. He wasn’t a Transform, thug, or doctor, and yet he approved of me at a visceral level. I burned a fraction of a point of juice to help my mind figure out why this bothered me and came up with the insight that he had to be a member of the Focus Network, one of their non-Transform friends. I would have loved to go back and chat with him. My curiosity had definitely been piqued and I hated not being able to satisfy my curiosity. More instincts.
The second thing bothering me was the captive tagged Transform, a short blocky guy about my height. American Indian? Half-oriental and half-mulatto? Whatever his ancestry, he was one hell of an exotic looking American. I swore he wore a Rizzari tag, but the tag was wrong, off far more than I ever remembered for a Focus tag. He wouldn’t calm down, and he refused to believe me when I told him I didn’t poach on tagged Transforms, Keaton rule number one. I did warn him not to bump into me. An accident might happen. I had drawn a Monster’s juice by accident once, and though I had lived through the experience, the Monster hadn’t.
He didn’t appreciate my comment one bit. He got all Crow-skittish on me, forcing me to glare him into submission. I did wonder if he was a Crow, playing tricks on me, but if so, why did he let me take him captive? Why hadn’t he sicked-up on me?
Hell. I hated having to burn juice to come up with words to understand my own instinctive questions.
My third problem was Zielinski. I wanted to kill him on the spot, and my emotions didn’t make any sense at all. Keaton had given me the mission to rescue him and I knew he would help fix me, so my deadly anger had to be wrong. He didn’t smell right or look right and didn’t jog my memory properly. He was supposed to be mine. Part of the problem had to be that I couldn’t read him worth shit. Another part of the problem came from the fact he appeared to be a decade older than when I last saw him, only six months ago. He also felt dangerous to me, so I kept his hands bound.
Fred spent a long time watching me and an equally long time watching Zielinski and Sam. Fred I understood. At least I understood something in this mess. He took it on himself to manage my two captives at the stops, only one untied at a time. He escorted them to the bathrooms when we stopped, held their arms and steered them when we picked up food, and manhandled them with a rough cruelty mixed with occasional abuse. Occasionally he would look over at me as if looking for my approval.
Zielinski was a little too old and fragile to take this kind of abuse, so I stopped the worst. I didn’t interfere with the little things. Zielinski never said a word, and took the abuse in stoic silence. Sam looked ready to kill Fred, especially when I didn’t look at Sam directly. He remained cautious, though.
While in New York and Pennsylvania I stayed off of the freeways and toll ways, and drove on the old US highway system through numerous stupid small towns hardly worth spit. In Ohio, we picked up the Interstates and things sped up. Sam asked if I needed to stop and exercise, and I said “No”, which disturbed him. My driving speed disturbed him as well, but it also disturbed Zielinski. Speed limits were for sissies.
We stopped in Knoxville to eat and spend the night. I spent some time in a gym and we left again the next morning. I first wanted to leave Zielinski with Fred and room with Sam, but I began to doubt my own control around Sam. Some tiny part of me whispered ‘he’s a tagged Transform. Prey. No one will miss him if you take his juice’; another part whispered ‘that’s not a real tag and his bad juice wouldn’t be good to take’. When confused, ignore the subject and hope it goes away. I did love the way he remained so terrified. Terrified of me and of something else besides. Himself? Not much of a talker, but when he spoke, he spoke with a Canadian accent.
I finally decided Sam did wear a Rizzari tag, degraded because of some bad juice Sam had picked up somewhere. How, though, had one of her Transforms ended up in prison? Focuses couldn’t support a Transform in prison. Was the bad juice in him the reason why he got tossed in prison? Even more confusing, Sam’s juice level never seemed to change. Strangest thing I ever metasensed.
On the other hand, as time went on, he grew more terrified of me. I hadn’t done a thing to him, save enjoy his fear. Perhaps he sensed my enjoyment. However, sensing my enjoyment would take a Crow and Sam didn’t metasense like a Crow, so he couldn’t be one.
Second, even after my wonderful visit to the gym, my anger at Zielinski remained. What in the hell was wrong with me? He didn’t provoke me, and remained passive and deferential. He had to be angry, exasperated, uncomfortable, or something, but he didn’t show a thing. My anger didn’t make sense. Nor my ongoing juice lust for Sam.
Dammit, I was acting like a baby Arm a month past my transformation. What happened to my self-control? The rule was: don’t take tagged Transforms. Real simple, no wiggle room. I had personal experience with the cost of breaking that particular rule, and didn’t have any urge whatsoever to explore the costs of such a mistake, again. Once was enough, thank you very much. Therefore, I roomed with Zielinski. He tried to talk to me once or twice, but I didn’t want to talk with him.
The next morning, before we left the hotel room, I grabbed Zielinski and glared at him. I still wanted to kill him. However, I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to kill Zielinski. My memory fugued to the St. Louis Transform Detention Center, when I had been a brand new Arm, ignorant and helpless. I begged him for juice. He had me strapped to a bed for a bone marrow test. I remembered being chained, low on juice, waiting for withdrawal in a padded room. No, that happened later.
I had hunted Zielinski down, and now he was my prey. He hadn’t come back to me, like he should have, but I had him now. Keaton hadn’t forbidden me to kill him. No, she had, by ordering me to go free him. Yes, but she hadn’t said I couldn’t hurt him. No, he was already mine…
…so what was I doing?
God dammit, I knew this was stupid. Keaton had no sympathy for idiocy like this, and the price she would exact would be a passage through hell. Wearing her tag meant Keaton would no longer torture me casually – but for punishment…
The torture would be worth it. Any price would be worth it. I needed Zielinski’s blood on my hands.
“Get in the car,” I said. “Now.”
He didn’t argue, and did as told. Good thing. If he hadn’t, I would have started in on him that instant.
Transform Ecology
[Carol’s POV]
“They may be powerful, they may be organized, but they are not prompt,” Keaton said. She tossed her heavy body into her throne-like chair, growling. Lori and her crew were ten minutes late. I wanted to have words with them myself, about their penchant with changing itineraries and leaving important business, such as choosing their bodyguard contingent, for the last moment. How could anyone count on you in a crisis with a work ethic like that?
My boss, of course, blamed me for anything Lori and Inferno did that didn’t measure up to her exacting standards.
“Ma’am,” I said. I read her for her wants and desires, went straight to the kitchen, and came back with my newest Arm-friendly hors d’oeuvres, highly spiced warmed marinated chicken strips wrapped in lettuce and cilantro. She eyed them warily, tried on
e, and smiled.
“Damned waste of time,” she said, mouth full. “Have you come up with anything more about your Transform ecology idea? Talk to me.”
Talk to me, I’m bored, she meant. Entertain me with your speculation.
I followed her eyes and sat on the white couch, near her knees. The morning sun gave the pale room a golden glow and specs of dust shimmered in the sunbeams. She didn’t call Haggerty, which meant this wasn’t a formal presentation. The young student Arm had been going in and out all morning, combat training in the Arm gym or something.
“Major Transforms break the human tribal ‘rules’,” I said, my canned starting line. “Arms and Chimeras are predators, obviously, but we can’t think of us as single-style predators. Unlike animal predators, we’re intelligent and social. We can hunt alone, or as a pack; we can hunt with a far wider set of strategies and tactics than any other animal predator. We hunt for juice and for food, and I believe this is why normal human ideas of good and evil don’t work for us.”
Keaton grunted, and pounced on another of my appetizers.
I leaned forward, tense and focused as always while under Keaton’s gaze. “I learned this the hard way. I know we can’t be ‘good’, by human definitions. For a while, I tried to be evil. Evil, again by human definitions.” Keaton snorted. She didn’t care much, one way or the other. “After a while, I decided attempting to try and fit myself within the human definitions and constraints was a trap. Humans are tribal omnivores, and we’re not. Arm and Chimera behaviors, ethics and morality, whatever they turn out to be, will be different from anything normal humans can ever imagine.”
“More.”
I took a breath and steadied myself. This was a difficult subject for me to understand, much less to explain to another Arm with this worthless English language.
“How do humans figure out right and wrong?” I found myself gesturing with my arms, struggling to convey my thoughts. “A lot is built in, but some is purely a social construct. ‘Good actions’ are usually things that help the tribe. Doing good to your neighbor. The Golden Rule. ‘Evil actions’ hurt the tribe’s survival. Murder, theft, adultery. However, look at how killing becomes all right when you kill the tribe’s enemies. It’s called war, then, and not evil at all. The same is true for all forms of evil, from a human perspective.”
Keaton’s face was like stone. She didn’t like the implications of where I was going with this, something I suspected from her personal history.
“We’re predators, though. There’s nothing wrong with being a predator. There are many predators in the world, and predators serve a function. It’s just different than being a normal tribal human, and the rules of survival, and of good and evil are different for predators. A ‘good’ tiger does different things than a ‘good’ rabbit. Or a ‘good’ monkey.”
Keaton grunted again. I nodded and shifted position, easing muscles tense from my intense focus. Leaned forward and moved the few remaining appetizers to the side of the plate closest to Keaton, more convenient for her to reach. Rested my elbows on my knees and tried to find the right words.
“The reason my speculation is important is because of the impact on our survival. If we can figure out our predator morality, the equivalent of right and wrong for an Arm, then we’ll also be figuring out what things are good for our own survival. Long term survival, not just day to day survival.”
I stopped, and there was a long pause. Keaton didn’t say anything at all. She leaned back in her chair with an unreadable expression on her face.
“What rules have you figured out so far?” she said.
My nerves were getting worse, as I tried to explain something this shaky. I took another deep breath. I was unsure about the applicability of my ideas; what I wanted but wouldn’t be able to get was some time outside of urban areas. How did an Arm survive outside of cities? Was right or wrong for an Arm different in such circumstances? I suspected as much, but, dammit, I didn’t have the data I needed to say, one way or the other.
“We’re predators. We hunt. We kill. This is who we are.” I paused. “Children are not our natural prey. Children don’t ever contract Transform sickness, and there is no biological need to ever kill children.”
I paused again, searching for a third point, and found one in my memories. “It’s a mistake to hurt our own people, the ones we recruit to serve us.”
I stopped; I didn’t have a fourth point. It seemed like so little. I waited for Keaton’s response, her withering contempt, as she tore through all the holes in my theory.
What I got was: “So, have you managed to fit the Focuses into this?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Much easier than coming up with Arm versions of right and wrong. “Consider the how the great cats hunt,” I said, “or at least the National Geographic magazine level explanation of how they hunt, which works for this extended analogy. Great cats mostly hunt herd herbivores. They don’t go after the herd. They go after the stragglers – the sick, the injured, the old, occasionally, the young. The herd is dangerous. The herd can kill or gravely wound a great cat stupid enough to tangle with the herd.
“Focuses and their tagged Transforms are the herd. We prey on the stragglers. However, don’t take this analogy too far, because only on the funny pages can great cats talk to the herd or the leaders of the herd. Because we Arms can talk to the herd leaders, the Focuses, it puts us in an extremely advantageous position relative to the position of the great cats and their prey. We can negotiate with the Focuses for access to our prey.”
“I’ve done that,” Keaton said. I bowed my head and did the yes ma’am routine, acknowledging her vast superiority. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right?
“So, if the Focuses actually ran their herds, we wouldn’t have to hunt. There are plenty of extra Transforms to go around. The problem is that our government, our normal human government, runs the Focuses. Free the Focuses from government control, we can work with the Focuses, and they will provide us with what we need, after proper negotiation.”
“Why don’t you free the Focuses for me, next month,” Keaton said.
My heart practically stopped, after I heard her impossible order. Did she need someone to torture? Because that was what was going to happen when I failed at that task. I carefully peeked over at Keaton, and realized she was barely repressing laughter. I bowed my head to her, abashed. Keaton barked one short laugh, clapped me on the shoulder, and told me to get the fuck back into the kitchen to do some more cooking.
Information Trade
“Tell me again why what we’re doing here is at all intelligent,” Gwen said. She swatted a mosquito and shook her head. A half dozen more buzzed around her head in the evening dimness of the forest clearing.
“What, you don’t think I can protect you from the psychotic pipsqueak?” Arm said. The tall muscular woman paced, unquiet, unwilling to share her real thoughts, which Annie knew contained far more worries than she would ever reveal.
The dagger-filled look Focus Gwen Larson gave Arm almost caused Annie to giggle, another of those disquieting hormonal surges she had been fighting ever since Arm delivered the baby walrus skull artifact to her several months ago. Giggling girlishly, though, despite the momentary satisfaction of doing so, would ruin her reputation as the calm, distant and motherly Madonna of Montreal. She hoped the highway noises, four kilometers distant, drowned out her almost-giggle.
Gwen’s unstated question hung in the air: ‘Who, pray tell, will protect me from you?’ Gwen was perfectly capable of protecting herself. However, her self-confidence still suffered from the results of her encounter with the Predecessors’ trap.
Even Annie no longer thought of the Predecessors as an unproven hypothesis. The Predecessors were, or had been, quite real, and their name for them quite worthy of capitalizing.
Her woolgathering stopped as her metasense shivered, and she heard scraping. On the far side of the clearing where they waited, a short shadowed Major Transform walked a lin
e, dragging the tip of a sword in the damp ground.
Annie nodded, immediately seeing what the foreign Major Transform was doing. Arm, though, took two steps forward, a muted growl in her throat.
“What the fuck are you doing, Keaton,” Arm said.
Keaton radiated exasperation and looked down at the line, not meeting Arm’s gaze. “Over here, mine. Over there, yours.”
Arm strode up to the line, but didn’t step over. “Where’s the fun in that?” she said. “I was looking forward to kicking your ass up through your nose yet again.”
“You can try, but I thought we might want to save the fighting until later, without the audience, and after we’ve done this information trade we’ve worked so hard to set up.”
“You and Annie worked so hard for, that is,” Arm said, guffawing, but stepping back from the line. “I’m just here to make sure nothing stupid happens.” Every word between these two predatory Major Transforms was a veiled insult, as bad as Annie had feared.
‘Here’ was the approximate border between Quebec and the United States, a border also marking the edges of the Highgate State Park of New York and the Philipsburg Bird Sanctuary.
Keaton crossed her arms and waited. The part-moonlit warm spring night settled in around them, which didn’t bother any of the four Major Transforms present, but did discommode her and Gwen’s normal bodyguards, who waited behind them, torches ready to be switched on to light up the American Arm if she did anything violent.
“I thank you for agreeing to this meeting,” Annie said, projecting calm to the best of her capabilities. The American Arm was far more forceful in person than Annie had anticipated, living concentrated fury trapped in a body barely a meter and a half tall. The American Arm dressed as a man, in work jeans and a blousy shirt, and carried muscles as large as Arm herself, despite Arm’s half meter height advantage. A permanent sneer covered the American Arm’s broad and unwomanly face, and her hooded eyes flicked back and forth nervously, paranoid and untrusting. “If you wish, I can go first,” Annie said. Keaton had appeared to them, to their eyes and their metasenses, only when she wished. Annie hadn’t known Keaton had progressed so far as a Major Transform; being able to mask her presence made the already dangerous and mentally unstable woman far more dangerous.
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six Page 10