“We’re not done yet, Tonya,” Suzie said. She sneered. “I’m teaching you. Pay attention.”
Tonya turned back. She didn’t bother to answer. Beside her, Delia shivered.
The man kept his eyes open now, and stared unblinking at Suzie. His face was different somehow. Different muscle tension, a different kind of expression on his face. A different person, now.
“Now, John, tell my friends here what you do,” Suzie said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, in a voice so wounded it made Tonya cringe. The timber and cadence had completely changed. Even his accent was different. “I’m a janitor down at the VFW hospital.”
Tonya wondered how many people John actually was.
“Do you appreciate my technology, Tonya?” Suzie said. “Do you understand how useful this can be?”
“Ma’am,” Tonya said, at a loss for words.
Suzie’s mocking smile disappeared, and her face became cold as ice. “Do your job for me, Tonya. Give me your real best effort. If you can’t manage to make my work important to you, then one of your own people can lie here on this bed.” She looked over at Delia’s shivering form and smiled her cruel smile. “Delia, here, for instance. She would fit nicely in my household.”
Delia gasped and stepped back. “Suzie…” Tonya said, cringing from Suzie’s verbal gut punch.
“Don’t ever think you can get sloppy about the work you do for me,” Suzie said, arctic cold. “If you want to protect your people, you do your job right.”
“Yes, Suzie. I understand,” Tonya said, forcing the air into her lungs by the force of her charisma. “I understand completely.”
She wanted to weep.
Gail Rickenbach: September 3, 1972
“By time of day?” Gail asked. She peered over Mary Sibrian’s shoulder as the Arm plotted out their next several hours of driving, stone faced, on maps laid on the steering wheel of the motionless car. Mary wore all red: a red silk tunic, loose red pants, and red boots. She had dark hair and dark eyes and spoke with a faint Spanish accent. Gail always found it odd the Arms didn’t acquire physical beauty the way the Focuses did, and Arm Sibrian’s appearance was only ordinary at best, except for the magnificent presence of her Arm predator charisma.
“Time of day is necessary. There’s…” Poke. Gail’s attempted juice pattern to damp her automatic flinch response didn’t work, and she flinched yet again, sending papers flying across the front seat of the car. Mary’s knife, which Gail didn’t see before or after the poke, drew blood from her leg. Gail healed the wound closed and growled to herself. Anti-flinch training, to teach Gail not to give openings to an enemy when surprised. Gail wasn’t, so far, passing Mary’s tests. “…distinct patterns to where people are and aren’t by time of day. At work, at home, shopping.” Mary’s voice hadn’t hesitated an instant. Arm self-control was insane, and Gail was envious. “You also need to factor in rush hour traffic patterns. If you’re stuck in traffic, you’re not hunting.”
Hunting. Mary believed that if Gail accompanied the Arm on a hunt she would better understand Arm psychology and motivations. Oh, and Mary was low enough on juice to give her problems with Gail’s Transforms, what Mary termed ‘going into a stalk’. Seeing just one of those gave Gail quite a bit of motivation to help Mary get juice.
“Do all Arms do this?” Gail asked.
“When an Arm knows her territory, the information becomes automatic and you don’t need hunting grids.” She switched out her red pencil for a blue one and drew another set of lines near the river. She didn’t draw on the Commander’s maps. She traced her own versions on blank paper and marked up those. “You just know. You still take the hunting grids with you, though, in case your juice falls so low you drop into periwithdrawal. When my juice gets that low, all I’m doing is hunting, and I need the maps because I’m not thinking well.” Mary’s juice count was nowhere near periwithdrawal. It was barely under 120. Gail didn’t ask, as asking would be disrespectful, but since this was the first time she had ever heard of a non-student Arm having a problem around tagged Transforms, she decided that dealing with tagged Transforms was an advanced Arm skill. “These are the Commander’s maps. All the other Arm bosses would force a subordinate to make her own maps if given permission to hunt in their territory, but the Commander only keeps her maps around for emergency situations, and so she’s not possessive about them with her tagged subordinates.” Teacher kept them for when or if she lost her ability to sense juice traces, an ability Gail had discovered only after trading the information on twenty of her tricks.
“And if I spot an untagged Transform before you do? Is there some etiquette or protocol?”
“Your metasense range isn’t…” Mary stopped and narrowed her eyes at Gail for an instant, a momentary crack in her Arm composure. Not for the first time for Mary, and Mary was the only Arm Gail interacted with who ever showed cracks in her composure. “You have a trick.”
“I have a trick. If all you need is ‘is this a tagged or untagged Transform?’, and I’m not worried about the spherical, I can focus my metasense into a narrow cone, and…”
Mary shook her head. “How far?”
Gail shrugged. “It, um, gets random. I’ve picked out Crow Gilgamesh at a mile and a quarter, when he wanted to get my attention but didn’t want to interact with, um, Arm Keaton. On the other hand, I once lost contact with Sylvie at two hundred yards in the Detroit Free Press Building, even though I knew exactly where she was.” Gail loved the Freep’s HQ, an art deco style giant simply crawling with interesting bas-relief figures.
“I see,” Mary said. “As far as etiquette and protocol are concerned, that’s part of the lesson and the test.”
Great.
“At your two o’clock,” Mary said. “Eight hundred and twenty feet away, driving down Sorento.” Two o’clock. Right. Bodyguard-speak. Mary turned off MacKenzie and onto Sorento. This was the suburbs, an older suburb north of Dearborn, filled mostly with larger brick houses from the pre-WW II era, all with small city lots and garages in the back yard. An upscale neighborhood back in the day, and not showing too much age.
“Got him. Uh huh, untagged and holy shit he’s just a day or two from periwithdrawal.”
“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Mary said. “He’s mine, now that I metasense him. He’s my prey. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gail said. Instincts brought out the ‘ma’am’, which she had never before given to Mary. Her instincts also said ‘save this man’. Gail wasn’t full up. She had room in her household for another triad, two women and a man, a benefit of her recent Arm and juice pattern training. She held off informing the Clinics she needed another triad until things quieted down, fearing Focus Adkins or one of the other Bitch Patrol Focuses would insert a ringer. “I’m nervous, ma’am. Worried.”
She had never been, before, in a situation where she had an opening and needed to turn down a Transform. The devious part of her mind started spewing ideas on how she might grab the man anyway, despite Mary. Inside her mind, ‘No, I’m not going to do that’ mental comments warred with ‘why the fuck not’ instincts.
She swore Mary was amused. “Tell me about him,” Mary said.
Gail focused on her metasense while Mary pulled closer. “Male, early twenties, six foot one, lots of muscles, factory worker, lives with his parents, two girlfriends,” Gail said, nervously spilling more than she wanted to say. Tagged or not, visible or not, Transforms were easy to read, especially now that he was within Gail’s normal metasense range. Mary sensed as discommoded, which puzzled Gail. “He’s tired, a bit shaky, doesn’t know he’s a Transform, and he’s a bit angry with the world because he’s suffering from low juice.” New Transform, low juice, no Focus. Never a good combination, in Gail’s experience.
Poke! This time Gail didn’t flinch. Mary poked her again, in the same thin knife wound. “Hey!” Flinch.
“Your predictability is worrisome.”
Mary pulled her car in f
ront of the young man’s car, cutting him off. The man swerved up almost on to the sidewalk in front of a red brick house with a couple of wood sided extensions, and he leapt from his car, yelling, shaking his fist and stalking toward them. “Take his keys and his car, and follow me. We’re going back to the Boss’s place.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Right now, Gail wanted to smack Mary for her abrupt impoliteness, not that she would succeed if she tried. She had sparred and lost to Mary far too many times to think otherwise. Instead, she followed Mary’s lead and exited the car.
Mary met the man’s gaze and did something with her predator effect. The man froze in place. Mary simply bundled the man into the front seat of her car, never letting her eyes off him, and drove off.
The man had left his keys in his car, so Gail got in, adjusted the seat forward, and took off after Mary. “Son of a fucking bitch! What’s the lesson she’s trying to teach me, anyway? How to deal with Arms when they get annoying and stupid?” She gave the steering wheel a few pounds as she turned the corner to take the car back onto MacKenzie.
Keep up close. Don’t forget we’re committing a crime. Gail nodded.
Understood, Gail sang back. Mary called this method of communication juice singing, a form of metasense signaling dependent on an odd, almost non-existent tag link Mary taught Gail. The underpowered tag was fragile; Gail had accidentally removed it twice while practicing juice patterns; whatever technique Mary used was a long way from mature. It didn’t confer either dominance or ownership of juice. It was just there. ‘Good, it works on a Focus,’ Mary had said, after she showed it to Gail. If Gail had realized the tag was experimental, she might have asked more questions first. As it was, this bit of experimental Arm tag technology simply served as a ‘here I am’ marker, and as a carrier for Mary’s juice singing. Gail wasn’t thrilled with juice singing, as she needed to learn how to sing each word, a relatively slow process. Hearing was easier. So far, Gail’s juice singing vocabulary remained under a hundred words.
---
Mary parked her car in front of Teacher’s place after waving Gail forward, and into the oversized three car garage. Probably so the authorities wouldn’t connect the stolen car to them. She had so many questions she didn’t know the answers to. Wouldn’t the Transform be missed? What would happen to his car? What happens to the dead body afterwards?
The worst was: are you going to make me watch? The thought of being anywhere near an Arm as she drew juice gave Gail the shakes.
Teacher’s house was deserted. None of her people were around, which felt odd. Gail stuck her hands in her pockets to hide her nervous shaking. Crazy fears replaced her anger. She didn’t want to watch the Transform die. She also didn’t want the Arm to take her juice, which was a crazy thought. Gail had never feared for her juice around an Arm before.
Mary smelled different now. She moved different as well. Metasensed different, too. Gail tried to understand the differences. The smell was wild, dangerous, and feral. The subtle scent of a caged wild animal in a zoo. A caged wild carnivore. Mary’s movement was more precise and graceful, more forward on her feet, more weight on her toes. In Gail’s metasense, Mary radiated lust, only the more Gail studied this unexpected emotion, the more she realized it was more like lust squared than simple lust, and it wasn’t sexual, but everything-xual. The young man’s juice structure now echoed Mary’s, some sort of inadvertent tag-like juice operation. She doubted Mary realized the change.
The young man didn’t give Mary any trouble. She told him what she wanted, and he did what she said. Her words sounded seductive and raised Gail’s hackles.
“Sit, Focus.”
Gail nodded and sat on a couch in Teacher’s living room. Mary smiled and sat on the far side of the couch, and directed the man to sit between them. The Arm carefully didn’t touch the man. Instead, the man squeezed as close to Gail as possible. At his touch, Gail shivered even harder.
“What’s your name, kid,” Mary said.
“Mark.” Pause. “Mark Shardonofsky.”
“Do you know what’s going on, Mark? Do you understand what I told you on the way here?”
“I’m a Transform. You’re an Arm, and you’re going to kill me. There’s no Focus for me. If you don’t kill me, I’m gunna turn into a juice zombie guy and go on a mindless ranpage.” ‘Ranpage?’ Rampage. Gail licked her lips. Mark here wasn’t very bright.
“I lied to you, Mark,” Mary said. “The young woman beside you is a Focus. If she can talk me out of killing you, she’ll take you into her household and you’ll live.”
What! Gail flinched and almost flew out of the couch before she understood Mary’s trick. More flinch training, except with words instead of weapons.
Arm Sibrian was doing an excellent job of showing Gail she had a lot left to learn. Gail clenched her teeth and used her charisma to mute her temper.
“Oh m’God!” Mark said. He turned away from Mary, though doing so made him sweat harder. “Focus? Ma’am. You’re a Focus? Please! Whadda yah want from me?”
Gail could barely breathe. Of course she wanted to save him. Her instincts screamed at her to save him.
If she did, her logic answered, some other person would die. Mary would hunt down somebody else today. Perhaps at greater risk to Mary. And likely to Gail, because Mary would make Gail go with her if she talked Mary into letting this man go.
“Please, ma’am. Ma’am? Tell me you’re going to save me!” Pause. The man’s face reddened with anger when Gail didn’t react. He showed all the signs of wanting to take a swing at Gail, which would decide the question immediately, as Gail would deck him first and give up on him completely. Gail suspected Mary was preventing him from trying to throttle Gail. “Save me, dammit!”
“I…I...”
She didn’t want this man in her household.
But how could she even think that? She was a Focus, and her responsibility was to save Transforms. Any Transforms. All Transforms.
This young man wasn’t right for her or her household.
“Gail, I don’t hear you making a case for this man.”
Gail turned away. She couldn’t bear to look at the man. Something about him wasn’t right, and she didn’t understand how she knew, or why. She bit her lip and fought back tears.
If he died, a better man might live. Or a worse man. The Clinics worked on a first come first served basis. So, was he a better or worse man than the men already in her household? How could she judge? Logic, here, sucked, and didn’t give her the answer the way it was supposed to. This was impossible!
Gail’s self-control failed and her tears started to roll. If she understood how to send please don’t make me decide this in juice singing to Mary, she would have done so.
“All people are born of woman and in the end pass away into the earth, Mark,” Mary said. “Our lives are all the same in length, from the day we are born until the day we die. Length of life is an illusion. Choice is an illusion. We choose neither when nor how we are born or die. Normally. Today, you do. The Focus isn’t speaking on your behalf and my way involves no pain. Letting you go, letting you die in withdrawal, involves an unconscionable amount of pain.”
Gail shook and the tears continued to roll down her face.
“What do you want, Focus, ma’am? I’ll do anything!”
“Look at him, Gail,” Mary said. Gail obeyed and turned her head. “Can you say anything about this man?”
What could she say? He was about to die, and saying ‘sorry, I’m not going to save you’ wasn’t exactly polite. Saving him just to be polite would be, well, stupid. Soft. Cowardly.
And there it was. Something rattled open inside her and Gail let loose a tiny inappropriate giggle. Now she understood the Bitch Patrol, the older nasty stone-faced stone-hearted bitch Focuses. When you saved someone, you owned them. They were yours to do with as you pleased. Focus Adkins’ women, working all day and all night on their sewing machines, doing piecework to help the household for a few pennies an
hour, weren’t being abused or punished or tortured. They were paying off the debt of life to their Focus.
Slave labor wasn’t what Gail wanted from her people. She bought their lives so they could save others.
What rattled open inside her was the realization that her kind desires still counted as ownership. She was one of the Bitch Patrol, just a little different, and not that much different.
Thanks, Mary, for showing me I’m just another piece of shit, Gail thought. “Mark,” Gail said, her voice deceptively calm. “Your girlfriends. Which one would you marry?”
The Transform blinked at Gail, baffled and terrified. “Ma’am? How’d you know about m’girlfriends?”
Gail didn’t answer. She gazed into his eyes, and bent her charisma toward making him tell her the truth.
He shrugged. “They’re just girls,” he said. “I wasn’t think’n about marrying either of’m.” He shrunk back from Gail. “But I’ll marry the one you want me to marry if that’ll save me.”
“Focus?” Mary said. She wanted Gail’s decision, not that Gail’s decision would buy this man his life, just a chance for Gail to argue for his life.
Gail shook her head. He would do well in Focus Adkins household, or in the household of any of a large number of Focuses Gail had mentored over the years. In hers, he would be just another Transform she wanted to get rid of.
“You can’t!” Mark said, tensing, ready to run or fight.
Mary reached over and stroked Mark’s forehead. “Relax, relax,” Mary said…and smiled as Mark’s juice slowly flowed into her while he still gazed into Gail’s eyes.
There, on Teacher’s couch, Gail watched, teary eyed, as a Transform died as she gazed into his soul, his juice slowly taken from him by an Arm. Touching the young Transform, she felt him dying, and through him, felt the pleasure both he and Mary felt.
My life is in your hands, Mary sang. The decision is yours. Become what you will become.
Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) Page 7