Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2)

by Randall Farmer

  Ma’am Billington stopped pacing. “That doesn’t make sense. Wait. Mutual tags?”

  “Ma’am?” Del said. “One cannot sense the tags that an Arm controls, just the tags that control her. I wasn’t informed as to whether Ma’am Hancock held tags on the Focus and Crow. Her presence was much increased, though, relative to the last time I’d metasensed her, which implied she held more tags.”

  Ma’am Billington grunted. “I see. Let’s go back to the obstacle course, Sokolnik. Since I’m taking over teaching here for a few days while Ma’am Keaton is out, let’s see how you’re progressing.”

  Del complied. Ma’am Billington had come to the same conclusion as Del: by not formally presenting those she had tagged to Ma’am Keaton, as evidence they were in a mutual tag situation, Ma’am Hancock had opened herself up to Ma’am Keaton’s ridicule and punishment. Yet this constant jostling for position in the Arm hierarchy felt normal to Del. Why did this so disturb Ma’am Billington?

  “You’ve progressed to where you’re nearly caught up, physically, to where you should be, Sokolnik,” Ma’am Billington said, three hours later. Del lay on the ground on the obstacle course, staring up at the tightrope and the almost full moon behind it while her body shook with exhaustion. Ma’am Billington was fair, but had for some reason pushed Del today farther than any of her other teachers ever had. Ma’am Billington knelt beside Del, and spoke quietly into her ear.

  “I thank you for the information you provided earlier, Student Sokolnik. I have something to pass along to you. Don’t answer.” Her breath was a whisper across Del’s ear, so faint Del barely heard it. “Ma’am Bass confided in me, nearly a month ago, that she’s intrigued by information she found in the Crow research notes regarding withdrawal imprinting. She said she’s looking forward to experimenting with the trick. Later, she also expressed an interest in forcing you to accept her tag, once you graduate, and she implied she had attempted to force a tag on you once, and failed, and compared your intractability to mine.” Ma’am Bass had been threatening Ma’am Billington, implying she possessed better methods of forcing tags on people now. “On another note, you likely already realize Ma’am Bass’s tags aren’t standard, as they allow her to torture her underlings with impunity, since in Ma’am Bass’s mind she is doing them a favor by shaping their minds and bodies. You should be able to put this information to good use.”

  Ma’am Billington stood and walked to the edge of the obstacle course. “Rest period over, Sokolnik. I want to see three more climbing runs. After that, I’m going to spar with you. I see you recently acquired a great deal of incentive to improve your pathetic combat talents, and so I feel obliged to help you, by pounding the spit out of you.”

  Del sprang to her feet, indeed filled with a great deal of incentive. From the safety of her quiet pools, she immediately understood Ma’am Billington’s point.

  As Sun Tzu said: ‘in death ground, fight’.

  Gail Rickenbach: October 21, 1972

  Gail spotted Beth and her entourage near a playground in the nearly deserted River Rouge Park, and motioned for Ralph to stop and park the car. Ralph opened the door for her, and he and Sylvie checked out the area, doing the bodyguard thing, as she glanced around, enjoying the sunny but cold October afternoon.

  Beth sat at one of the old wooden picnic tables, her own bodyguards close but out of listening range. Gail sat down across from her.

  “Sorry about this,” Gail said. “I ran into some problems.”

  Beth nodded, and watched some ducks lazily waddling near the water. “You didn’t say this was an emergency, but I sort of guessed,” Beth said.

  “Uh huh. I need to leave.”

  Beth turned to Gail, startled. “You just got here!” Her freckled cheeks were rosy in the brisk air.

  “I mean leave Detroit.”

  “Shit,” Beth said. Focuses didn’t move from city to city. “Politics?”

  “Sort of. I can’t talk about what’s going on.”

  Beth bit her lip. “Okay, I guess.” She paused. “Say, the Crow you gave me the PO Box of, Newton, didn’t turn out to be shy.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. I sent him a letter, and as soon as he got the letter, he called me and we talked. Did you know he transformed when he was sixteen? I thought all the male Major Transforms did their transformations when they were older. You know, actually, Gail, we’ve been talking every day, since. Yesterday, I invited him out to a quiet restaurant, and he accepted. He’s, well…”

  Beth’s cheeks turned even rosier.

  “Great!” Gail said. “I’d gotten the impression from Gilgamesh that Newton was a little reticent about dealing with Focuses.” Truthfully, based on what Gilgamesh had said, Gail suspected Newton was terrified of her, due to some old history involving Newton’s capture by Focus Adkins three years ago. Terrified of Carol, as well, but who wouldn’t be? “So, what’s he like?”

  “Well, he’s quiet, soft-spoken, well mannered, and thoughtful,” Beth said, her eyes focusing on infinity and her hands absently brushing back her luxurious red curls. “He’s been through a lot over the years. We traded stories about being Major Transforms, none of the gory stuff, of course. He’s kind of overwhelmed by a Focus taking an interest in him. Sort of the prom queen taking an interest in the school geek sort of thing.”

  “Cool! Tell me more,” Gail said. She had never seen Beth dreamy-eyed before. She suspected Beth’s reaction to Newton was the same as hers with Gilgamesh. With Beth having the low libido problems from being a Focus, and being unattached for so long, this was wonderful news. What was a problem for Gail, because Gail was married, would be no problem at all for Beth.

  “Uh, what?” Beth said.

  “More about Newton?”

  “Oh, right. You know, Gail, there was a lot you didn’t tell me about Crows.”

  “Ah, well, probably ‘cause I was being polite.”

  Beth reddened. “Uh, I’m probably being silly. Imagining things.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not getting off that easy,” Gail said, and laughed. “And I don’t think you’re imagining things, either. You know about Focus Rizzari’s Crow partner, Sky?”

  “I’ve heard a few rumors, yeah,” Beth said. Gail smiled at Beth’s understatement.

  “If a Crow and Focus are compatible, it’s instant fireworks. Which, for me, is a big problem, because I’m married. So Gilgamesh and I just sit and smolder at each other, and try and be polite. I was hoping you…”

  “Hey! Nothing’s happened. Yet.” Beth’s eyes went dreamy again.

  “You think Newton has the same attraction?”

  Beth nodded. “Trust me. I didn’t forget everything I learned in high school.”

  “So what are you waiting for? You should jump…” Gail stopped and pounded her fist on the picnic table. “Damn!”

  “What?”

  “Dammit! Everything’s messed up.”

  “Gaiiil.”

  “You’re gonna kill me. This isn’t what I’d planned, not at all.”

  “I’m going to kill you if you don’t spill what’s going on. Come on, Gail. Spill.”

  “Gilgamesh is Newton’s teacher now, what Crows call a Guru. They’re both leaving Detroit with me.”

  Beth drummed her fingers on the picnic table, staring at Gail out of the corners of her eyes. “You know, this sounds like another of your standard fucked up messes, like with your wedding, or the car dealership fiasco. You need to tell me what’s going on. You can’t just set me up with a Crow and then yank him away like this. It’s not fair!”

  Well.

  Gail didn’t consider her wedding her fucked up mess. She wasn’t the one who scheduled a war to happen at her reception. The car dealership fiasco was, well, her bright idea, to schmooze one of the local car dealerships into giving all the local Focuses a significant volume discount. Only it hadn’t been her fault the dealer made sure the Focuses ended up dealing with one particular car salesman who resisted charisma be
tter than any of the Focuses realized.

  She saw another problem. Beth might be in just as much danger as Gail, because Adkins already knew Beth was Gail’s close friend. If she decided Gail moved to Chicago to get out from under her thumb, of course Adkins would go after Beth.

  “Changed my mind,” Gail said, using Carol’s ‘Teacher’ voice. “You need to leave Detroit, Beth, when I do. You and your household.”

  “What?”

  “My enemies will try to get to me through you. Think ‘The Godfather’. I wouldn’t put it past them to send me a severed finger of yours in a box and threaten to send me more Beth parts unless I cooperated. Only I wouldn’t be able to.”

  Beth cleared her throat. “You’re spending too much time near the Commander.”

  Although Beth was talking about Gail becoming harder and meaner, there was a different way to take her statement, equally true. “Exactly.”

  “I see,” Beth said, a moment later, her voice a whisper.

  Gail once thought Beth as hard as nails, but over time, she realized her older Focus friend was, really, just too nice to be as hard as she needed to be. And this was before Gail ran into Teacher. Beth could use a real big dose of Teacher. “You did want to help and get involved in the bigger picture,” Gail said.

  Beth paused, and thought. Gail let Beth think things through. The wind caught Beth’s red curls and she pulled her jacket tighter. “Our household emergency plan is to go gypsy,” Beth said. “We’ve done a bunch of preparation for it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Will Newton be there?” Beth said. Gail nodded.

  “Count me in.”

  Tonya Biggioni: November 1, 1972

  Tonya sat in Polly’s sitting room and stewed. Connie Webb laid her head back against her chair and attempted to rest from the emergency plane flight. Polly tapped restlessly on her leg and Corporal somebody or other brought them all petit fours.

  Lori walked into the room a good four steps ahead of her escort, one of Polly’s people futilely trying to keep up. “So does anyone know what’s going on?” she said.

  “Sit down, Lori. Corporal Holly, Private Keith, can you make sure we’re not disturbed?” Polly said.

  She waited until her people left the room, and Lori found a seat. “It seems we have a little problem here, something more earthshattering than Focus Teas’s kidnapping three of Focus Claunch’s people yesterday,” Polly said. Teas and Claunch had been involved in a Hatfield and McCoy border war for the last six weeks, making everyone a little extra nervous. “Tonya, you start.”

  Since she had talked to Polly late yesterday about her most recent problem, Tonya had been wondering why Polly summoned her to this emergency meeting. She suspected now she wasn’t the only one with a problem.

  “You all know I had to promise Keaton an unspecified favor after that unfortunate incident with the multi-Arm predator effect.” Everyone nodded.

  “Yesterday, she called it in.”

  Connie frowned. “What does Keaton want?”

  “She wants my Council vote.”

  “What?” Lori said. “What the hell would Keaton do with a Council vote?”

  Tonya shrugged. “She just called in the favor she won from me, with no explanation.”

  “Shit,” Lori said.

  “That’s one,” Polly said. “Lori, you’re next.”

  Lori frowned, still thinking. “A week ago I got an odd phone call from Carol. She said she’s got new orders, she’s cutting off contact with me and ‘the witches’, her term. She and Gail Rickenbach are moving to Chicago, and she doesn’t expect to have much time to work with Gail any more. She hung up on me before I could ask any further questions. She told me to remind you, Tonya, about your safe. The conversation didn’t make any sense.”

  Tonya paled and shivered. “So what’s the emergency that made you bring me in from California?” Connie said, after giving Tonya a slitty-eyed glare indicating her notice of Tonya’s unexplained shiver. “The only thing I can report is that Arm Webberly cancelled out of her training sessions, and said if I had a problem, I was supposed to call Arm Hancock.” Webberly had been training Connie’s people in modern military ordnance use, in return for Connie’s usual private investigation training course.

  “I can answer your questions,” Polly said. “For the last couple of weeks, my dreams have become more violent, and I’m getting a sense that something’s happening. When I meditate, I sense a growing darkness in southern California. Until I received the messages from the two of you, I had nothing but a growing uneasiness, but when I heard from you both with your news, I asked Connie to join us, because I knew she lived right next to Keaton, Bass and Rayburn’s territory.”

  “I’ve been having nightmares recently, and difficulty contacting anyone distant in the Dreaming,” Lori said. “The Commander’s Dreaming presence has gone missing. I also dreamed my people were being attacked, but I got no information about location.”

  “I don’t follow this,” Connie said.

  “I don’t follow it either,” Polly said. “But maybe we can figure something out.”

  Time to tell the bad news. “A couple of weeks ago the Commander went to visit Keaton,” Tonya said “Before she did so, she left a box of progress reports on the push the Cause research in my safe, just in case something went wrong.” She paused. “I think something went terribly wrong during the visit.”

  “So what’s Keaton doing, then?” Polly said.

  The Focuses looked at each other, stumped.

  “Whatever it is, it’s clearly evil,” Lori said.

  “Oh, Keaton doing evil. Now there’s something new and different,” Connie said with a roll of her eyes.

  “So what evil thing could she be doing?” Polly said.

  “You know, Carol’s been worried sick recently about some idiotic proposal Bass made to Keaton,” Lori said. “Bass thinks the Arms should be more active as predators. She’s been trying to convince Keaton the philosophy of the unconstrained predator is a good idea.”

  Everything came together in Tonya’s head, much of it prompted by her conversation with the Commander. Tonya had always understood how Keaton’s mind worked. “We’re in trouble,” Tonya said. “Let me give you my thoughts, and maybe you can pick holes in my logic. Keaton picked up Bass after the Commander and Bass had a fight, because the Commander held Bass accountable for the Phoenix Church Massacre. What did Keaton do? She didn’t stage a massacre, she went after one of Suzie Schrum’s people.”

  Polly froze. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. I go visit Keaton and Keaton proves she’s capable of taking on a top end Focus and winning. Then Carol comes to visit me to show the first real successes resulting from Haggerty’s push the Cause project.” That wasn’t news, as the first thing Tonya did after Carol had left was to call her three co-conspirators with congratulations to Lori and news of success to the others. “Now, we’ve got a bunch of activity, and what do we see? Keaton claims my Council vote, Carol vacates Detroit with Gail and cuts contact with Lori, and Webberly cuts off contact with Connie.”

  “Keaton’s reigned in Hancock and her organization, and thinks she’s going to take over the Focuses,” Polly said, horrified.

  Tonya nodded. “I do believe she does.”

  “So are we in imminent danger of attack?” Connie said. Polly looked at her and didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, no,” Connie said. “I can take Keaton or Bass one-on-one, but I have no more idea than Tonya does about how to stop a multi-Arm predator effect.”

  Polly nodded. “Much as I hate to say so, I don’t think southern California is safe for you. You’re another Council vote, and thus too tempting a target.”

  “My people! What if the Arms go after them when I’m not there? I need to get back there!” Connie stood, but Polly stopped her before she made it to the door.

  “No! Think first. Let’s work this out before we go haring off in all directions.”

  “Polly,” Connie s
aid, almost pleading. “My people!”

  “It won’t do you a damned bit of good to hurry back there,” Polly said, letting her ample charisma into her voice. “Keaton with a crew of flunky Arms can roll over your people just as effectively whether you’re there or not. We need a unified approach, not a piecemeal panic. Sit down.” Connie sat. Polly turned to Tonya. “Tonya, any ideas about what Keaton’s next step will be?”

  “The first thing Keaton did,” Tonya said, quietly repeating herself, “was to take out one of Suzie Schrum’s people.”

  “You think Keaton’s going to take down the first Focuses? By herself?” Polly said.

  “Yes. Keaton’s impatient, and since the multi-Arm predator effect gives her a method for taking out the first Focuses, why wait for us? Besides, that way, when she gets the first Focuses’ blackmail stashes, she gets leverage on the rest of us. We need to help out the firsts, or we’ll be next.”

  Lori shook her head. “There’s something to be said about Keaton’s approach, Tonya. The firsts are going down, one way or another, and I don’t think anybody can help them,” Lori said, her voice gone soft. “They let the rot grow too large. I’m not convinced the Arms would be worse than the first Focuses. If we were free to train ourselves the way we know we can, Bass’s idea about living off tagged Transforms would be just hot air, and lead to at least one dead Arm.”

  Tonya winced. She had a lot of respect for Lori these days, but Lori still took the occasional trip back to Lori-land.

  Connie nodded, though, a nod that chilled Tonya. “The first Focuses made too many enemies, and they consider leading the Transforms their God-given right. They’re too vulnerable for us to save, physically or politically. Tonya, we can’t help them.”

  “So what’s Keaton’s plan, Tonya?” Polly asked, changing the subject.

  Tonya shrugged. “She’ll capture the first Focuses she wants to use, and the rest will die. Two decent Arms working together should be able to cow most Focuses, and three ought to be able to handle anyone save Her Nibs. To get those numbers, Keaton will need to drag all the Arms in and delegate out some responsibility. Note Hancock’s move out of Detroit, and the fact she took Gail with her. I suspect Wini Adkins will have an unpleasant encounter with Carol Hancock soon. For the others, Haggerty would be the obvious person to lead a group of Arms after Suzie Schrum, given she’s already in New York. No guesses about who will attack the rest, though.”