Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2)

by Randall Farmer

  “I’ll… Sure, Arm Sibrian.” Gail mentally applauded Beth’s courage.

  “Gail,” Haggerty said, quietly, holding out her hand. Arm Haggerty wanted use of Gail’s metasense, to see what Arm Sibrian sensed. Gail nodded and took Amy’s hand. The two of them had done this several times before, and they had discovered a full Affinity link overwhelmed both of them. By restricting physical contact to no more than a touch of hands, they could generate a much more limited link. The partial link took but a second, and Amy’s metasense world leapt into Gail’s mind.

  After Hargrove settled into Arm Sibrian’s arms, there followed the usual ‘wow’ and ‘neat’ reaction from Beth, and since this was Beth, the ‘wows’ and ‘neats’ went on for nearly ten minutes before Mary got to metasense Gail and Lori’s juice pattern work.

  Meanwhile, Lori had been watching Gail and Amy, and her face lit up with excitement and curiosity. “You’re like Sky and attuned to the radio spectrum,” Lori said to Amy. Amy nodded.

  “Want to see?” Amy held out her other hand. “My guess is that a full Affinity link with you would overwhelm us both, as it does with Gail. This allows a partial link.” Lori moved into Beth’s now unoccupied spot on the sofa beside Amy. She linked in, and Gail noted the subtle differences between hers and Lori’s metasense. For one thing, Lori picked up on something in Mary that neither Amy or Gail picked up, alone or together.

  “It’s élan,” Lori said. Given the location of the élan, Gail decided Mary had been being a naughty Arm with Hector, her tagged Chimera. “I’m sensitized to élan due to some, well, bad events in my early Focus career, the same way you’re sensitized to dross because of your interactions with Crows as a baby Focus.” Which wasn’t something she had ever told Lori about.

  Amy snorted and shook her head. “Do you want to listen to some AM radio? I’ve got a trick that allows me to pick up strong local AM stations.” Amy was a strange Arm as well. Gail kept a falsely attentive expression on her face as Amy and Lori chattered about science and frequencies and waveforms and Amy’s inability to crack FM radio signals.

  “Got it,” Mary said, a little over five minutes later. “Two of the notes in your ‘octave’ are carriers, not actual active chemical fractions. You’ve got several tones, defined by the equivalent of the waveform – one of those carrier notes – and the other by the tone shape, just as with a music synthesizer. Put them together and you’ve got instrument voices.”

  Gail nodded. Good old ASDR notation. Modern Music Theory 1 had been the most useless course she had taken at U of M, until she stumbled into the juice pattern project. Now, she tried to use what she remembered, and wished she had gone farther into music theory.

  “So instead of Gad-Whats-That Three, we can generalize those patterns as coming from a musical instrument?” Lori said.

  Arm Sibrian nodded. “Yes.

  Gail met Amy’s eyes and indicated she was going to break the link. Amy didn’t object, so Gail stood and moved to examine the mess of papers Lori and Dr. Zielinski scratched together last night. “There’s five of these voices in your mental marching band. Call them trumpet, trombone, flute, drums, and clarinet.”

  Mary rearranged notations, scribbling with inhuman speed, still holding Beth on her lap. “You can represent this with a seven tone scale, A through G, with non-duplicating sharps and flats on each note, and a second sharp on the G. Not your mother’s piano, but close enough to analogize. You can scrap your vibrato and forte – those are just the other octaves on each voice. I’d adjust your center point down an octave, as well – you want middle C to be in the first octave where you get enough intensity to extend your effects outside the Focus.”

  Mary worked with them a bit longer. She figured out the basic whole note was out of line – and if they didn’t change the notation, they would end up with 1/512th notes for sure. A little adjustment later and the shortest note was a 1/32nd.

  “What about this?” Lori said, and showed Mary and Beth’s shared metasense something odd. Non-standard. “How does this fit in?”

  “Well, I would say the experienced witches likely go beyond the five basic voices. Did that take you long to learn?”

  Lori nodded. “Several months.”

  Beth winced. A moment later, Gail did as well, just to be polite. She doubted the extra voices were as difficult as Lori let on.

  Arm Sibrian dumped Beth off her lap. “So, if there’s anything more I can help you with, I’ve got several more hours before the Commander requests…” A knock at the door interrupted her.

  Gail frowned. “I’m busy,” she said.

  Zielinski opened the door. “You wanted to see me when I woke up? Oh, hi, Mary, Amy, glad to see you. Get anywhere on last night’s disaster?”

  Arm Sibrian nodded at Dr. Zielinski, and if Gail was correct, relaxed.

  “Excellent!”

  “You’re staying in the Branton now?” Lori said, to Zielinski. “That’s a good idea. Your old apartment was nearly indefensible.”

  Gail forbore to mention that this was Gilgamesh’s idea, and he okayed the move without even checking with her.

  Zielinski came in and sat down in the unoccupied chair. “Gail, I finished the pattern for drawing juice from your buffer for you.” He took several sheets from his briefcase and laid them on top of the other diagrams on the coffee table. The diagram for drawing from the buffer covered three sheets. “Is it true you’re adding more people to your household? Are you sure that’s wise? The first Focuses can get to you through the clinics.”

  Gail shook her head. “I’m not getting them through the clinics. Carol’s dropping them off.”

  “Carol? She’s giving you her own kills?”

  Gail blinked. “Is there a problem?”

  Zielinski just stared at her for a moment, and then turned to Lori for support, but Lori stared intently at the Zielinski diagram for drawing from a juice buffer, oblivious. “Arms don’t give up their kills. It’s a basic property of Arms.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t be able to do that,” Arm Sibrian said. Amy nodded as well. “The Commander, though? I’m not surprised. She seems to be able to do nearly anything she wants to, these days.”

  Zielinski nudged gingerly at one of Lori’s feet. She looked up.

  “Don’t look at me,” Lori said, with a low growl. “Carol’s been avoiding me like the plague ever since this mess started.”

  Zielinski stared thoughtfully across the room at one of Gail’s Peter Maxx prints, and steepled his fingers. “This must be an effect of the tags you share, Gail. Since she’s giving them to you, and she owns you – in her view, of course – she’s not really giving them away. I wonder, would any Arm be willing to give people to her tagged Focuses? If so, we’ve changed the entire paradigm of how Transforms are assigned to households.”

  “Yes,” Gail said, as she thought through the implications. She sincerely hoped Carol didn’t think of Gail’s household as a refrigerator for preserving her Transforms for later use… “Arms find people before they realize they’re sick. Also, Carol is cherry picking for me.” Thankfully, she wasn’t asking Gail to consult with her on the quality judgments. One judgment, Sibrian’s lesson, had been enough to convince her she wanted nothing to do with those decisions. “With an Arm, only the best Transforms find their way to Focus households.”

  Zielinski frowned. “I’m not sure how good an idea that is, to let the Arm decide who lives and who dies.”

  “Who else is so intimate with death?” Amy said. Zielinski nodded, radiating reluctance.

  Lori shook her head. “Forget about that – I don’t want to think about such things, now. Do you understand how important this household redefinition project is becoming? Everything seems to be snowballing together. I can’t keep track of all the changes it’s allowed. Now it’s Arms dropping off kills!”

  Gail nodded. “Taken as a whole, it does seem to be rather dramatic.”

  “Just look at this one piece, this repeatable juice pattern c
odification project.” She frowned. “RJPCP? Now there’s a terrible name.”

  “Juice music,” Arm Sibrian said. Beth nodded. Gail smiled. She hated even the hint of having to call it RJPCP.

  “You’re changing juice patterns from an art form to simple engineering with this juice music project,” Lori said, waving a Zielinski diagram in the air. “This’ll change the entire way Focuses deal with their own capabilities.”

  Zielinski smiled, crinkling wrinkles from his chin to his forehead. “I certainly recognize the potential benefits of this project.”

  “The witches need to learn this,” Rizzari said.

  Gail’s mind continued, thinking about the previous topic, of Carol playing God with the lives of Transforms. Carol would ‘play God’ without a moment’s hesitation; she would make a good avatar of life and death. Lori didn’t seem to mind at all. Neither did Zielinski, as he plunged into his own dark Mengele mode of thought. Beth couldn’t keep her eyes off Arm Sibrian.

  Zielinski hesitated. “I’ll need to check with Carol.”

  Gail frowned, surprised at Zielinski’s hesitation and trying to catch up with Lori, but then realized the problem. Lori and the witches were on the other side now.

  Except, of course, Lori came here to Chicago specifically to teach Gail, so it wasn’t as if they were going to be able to hide anything from her. So who was on whose side anyway? When she couldn’t tell her friends from her enemies, they were just inviting problems to come visiting. She met Amy’s eyes, and the Arm nodded, following along with Gail’s thoughts. Gail could almost read Amy writing another item on her mental to-do list.

  Zielinski’s hesitation stopped the conversation cold, and Lori returned to silently reading through the new diagrams. Gail metasensed the agitation in Lori’s juice structure, but the emotions reflected in the juice structure weren’t what Gail expected. Lori wasn’t angry with them. Instead, she fought herself in some obscure fashion. Struggling with a decision. She had seen that sort of agitation before, in Lori. Long ago, in the wedding reception. Just before Lori killed Focus Anderson…

  “Under the circumstances, are you going to be willing to continue to help with the project?” Zielinski asked Lori.

  Lori put the sheet down. “I’m here to help Gail learn. I’ll contribute whatever you need, even some of the more complex juice patterns.”

  Zielinski glanced down. “That’ll help.”

  Mary stood and eased toward the door. “If there’s anything I can do for you, just call for me through Amy or the Commander.”

  “I’ll do that,” Zielinski said. Amy left with Mary, asking for a full rundown of Mary’s pending projects and wanting to know why some random normal down in the gym wore her tag partial. Lori just muttered something about the Commander becoming nothing but a myth and Amy little more than an infinite report sink. Beth seemed sad to see Arm Sibrian go.

  “Let’s see how you can handle the juice buffer draw pattern,” Lori said, to Gail.

  Gail played.

  Isabella’s lunch today was stupendous. A few days ago, the household had been eating noodles and soy-burger, but now with Jeff Casson the lawyer, they had money, and Isabella was buying veal, at least to feed to her Focus.

  “Gail?” Zielinski said, after a moment of peaceful eating.

  “Yes?” Gail had finished her own veal parmesan, and was working on a big piece of chocolate cake. Isabella made an excellent cake.

  “What’s going on between you and Gilgamesh?” Rizzari raised an eyebrow and Gail stiffened. Beth turned red, and Gail knew exactly why.

  “Why do you ask?” Gail said. Shit. Beth was easy to read, and what she read was that Beth and Newton were sleeping together. Why did that annoy her?

  Zielinski false calm mask lowered over his face. “Gilgamesh seemed unusually stressed. I wondered if there was some difficulty between you.”

  Gail caught her breath sharply. “I don’t think that’s anyone else’s business.”

  Zielinski and Rizzari looked at each other. Beth stuck her right hand over her mouth, and with her left, did a zipper motion.

  “How much do you know about Crows?” Lori asked Gail.

  Gail found herself frowning defensively and made herself stop. “I’ve been dealing with Crows since I was a baby Focus. They’re skittish and polite, and you need to be skittish and polite to deal with them. They hate having to deal with you when you need to be the Focus. What’s more to know?”

  “Ah,” Lori said. “As it turns out, quite a lot. Why don’t you let me give you some background information?”

  “All right, I lost my temper. At Gilgamesh. I’d never done that before. So what do I do?” Gail said, pushing crumbs around her plate with her fork, many minutes later.

  “How damaged is your relationship with Gilgamesh? If you treat him gently, do you think it’s salvageable?” Lori said.

  “How the hell should I know?” Gail threw up her hands. “He’s been so damned formal ever since, and I don’t understand what he’s thinking.” They had worked much better together as ‘just friends’. Wasn’t the tagging stuff supposed to solve all these problems?

  “I’ll bet that will get better after you start sleeping with him,” Beth said. Lori gave Beth a strange look, then whispered ‘which one did you pick up?’ to Beth, and got ‘Newton’ as an answer. Lori rolled her eyes and made some comment about the Newt being impossible to deal with, even for a Crow.

  Gail’s jaw dropped and her voice vanished into a long stammer. “I’m not sleeping with him! I’m married!” she said. Eventually.

  “That may be part of the problem,” Lori said. “I can’t see how you can have a stable relationship with a Crow in your household without sleeping with him. It’s like a man and a woman trying to share an apartment without sleeping together. Do you want to sleep with him?”

  Gail drew herself up stiffly. “That’s a rather personal question.” Especially with Dr. Zielinski in the room.

  Zielinski nodded, oblivious. “There are lots of things we don’t understand about the nature of transformations, and one of them is sexuality, especially when it relates to Major Transforms. Major Transforms have the same impulses as any normal human, but for Major Transforms there’s a juice component as well, and juice attractiveness can engender a strong, ah, need to procreate.” He and Rizzari exchanged pointed glances, and Rizzari nodded in agreement.

  “Speaking of which, you ought to let him get you pregnant,” Rizzari said. “Babies are very fulfilling for a Focus.”

  “I don’t want to sleep with him!” Gail said. She stalked over to the big window and stood with her back to them. Lunchtime traffic buzzed along the streets outside.

  Neither Beth, Zielinski nor Rizzari spoke.

  “All right, so maybe I do want to sleep with him. But I’m married, and I’m not going to do any such thing.”

  “What if Van agreed?” Lori asked.

  “Van isn’t going to agree to any such thing.”

  “But what if he did?”

  “Fine. If Van thinks this is a good idea, I’ll think about it. But he won’t.”

  “Let me work on that,” Lori said, eying the ceiling. “Several of my people get on quite well with him.” She smiled. “He’d fit in well in my household. He’s got the right personality type.”

  “Good,” Zielinski said. “How soon? There isn’t much time, and we need to get this sorted out as quickly as we can.”

  Gail yipped in protest about her personal life being spread out on a petri dish for everyone to examine, but after a short ‘behave’ glance from Lori, she decided to keep quiet.

  “Ah,” Lori said. “This may take a bit. My household isn’t pleased with me. The emergency move to Chicago didn’t go over as well as I’d hoped, and we’re still discussing some – ah – touchy strategic aspects of the situation.”

  ---

  F-flat, A-sharp, and a G-flat, and the entire sequence done as eighth notes, on a clarinet. Sweat dripped down Gail’s cheeks as
she tried to assemble the complex pattern. She had already gotten three voices going in her subconscious. Two days of mind-numbing practice with this ridiculously complex piece of juice music, and she had nearly got it. The flow of the juice sucked at her mind with a numbing pleasure, but the tortured moans of the man not three feet away sickened her, and left her barely clinging to consciousness. Why Carol had chosen her torture chamber for this exercise was beyond Gail. There was a subtle hint of punishment in Carol’s eyes when the Arm heard Gail and her household still weren’t getting along with Inferno.

  Carol said Gail needed to learn to use this piece of juice music in the most appalling situations. This place certainly counted: lying on the floor of Carol’s torture chamber, cycling juice with Carol, and trying to play a complex piece of juice music. She couldn’t imagine worse circumstances. At least here she didn’t have any problem staying conscious while cycling juice. She had no desire whatsoever to relax her defenses in this pit of horror.

  Carol snuggled against her, caught in her own pleasure but far more in control of herself. “That’s it, Gail. Keep it up,” she said.

  The F-flat again, and a second time after that, then the G-flat eighth note and another F-flat. Fast, all so fast. Gail had the pattern memorized, but the problem was execution. Fast, smooth, with no mistakes at all. With the juice cycling through her, she felt like her mind was in overdrive, but the horror of the basement torture chamber kept her from losing herself in the work.

  Blood oozed on the floor, not Gail’s blood, but the congealing blood still coated her bare skin. Carol seemed to enjoy the sensation, but Gail couldn’t suppress her shudders. Carol writhed in her arms again, and Gail knew they were in Carol’s idea of heaven. Gail tried to push the thought away.