Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2)

by Randall Farmer

  Gail Rickenbach: November 26, 1972

  Wow, if she felt any higher she would be on the top of the world. Gail wanted to lose herself in the ecstasy, but that wasn’t what she was here for. She tried to remember the notes – a D clarinet, an F-flat trombone, and then that complex series of trumpet chords that was so much fun. There, she got the pattern dead on, and at sufficient speed.

  “That’s the link,” Carol said. Gail could never understand how Carol could seem so unaffected by the pleasure of the cycling juice, but her eyes never lost their hard edge.

  Okay, Gail successfully linked to her juice buffer. The next step would be to transfer juice to Carol, but she didn’t know the pattern required. Instead, the plan was to instinctively try patterns until she got something, ran out of steam, or something drastic happened.

  Fortunately, except for one time last night when a pattern of hers produced an incredible quantity of dross, drastic results were rare. Arms natively resisted attempts to mess with their juice of all kinds, harmful and beneficial, so accidents of any sort were unlikely.

  They were in one of the spare bedrooms, and Gail and Carol occupied the bed, holding each other tight. Gilgamesh was on guard, ready to identify promising juice effects and to try to prevent disasters. Zielinski stood ready with his vials and instruments. He had a shunt installed in the top of her foot, and every ten seconds, he took a small vial of blood. Van sat in a chair, opposite, taking notes for his own research and for Zielinski.

  “Ready?” Gail whispered in Carol’s ear. She nodded.

  Gail began to play complex, beautiful improvisational juice music. Music for the metasense. Over the last couple of weeks, she had slowly developed a feel for juice music improv, and the better her feel the more beautiful the juice music became. She used a few standard themes as a base, along with appropriate chord sequences: the incredibly complex trombone chord sequence that meant Arm, and Carol in particular, her personal signifier, the juice buffer signifier, and the simple beat associated with moving juice from her buffer to a household Transform.

  Gail added endless variations and complexities to the last, trying to make them into a more complex pattern. She could spend hours like this, flush with the pleasure of the cycling juice, able to draw on her juice buffer to keep herself functional, and attempting to make beauty out of juice patterns.

  Carol twitched, a small tightening of her entire body. “There,” Carol said. Whatever Gail did vanished, but for a split second, the juice had moved.

  “That was it,” Gail said, with wide eyes. “The juice moved!”

  “Hank, did you get the pattern?” Carol snarled. Not the reaction Gail expected. Carol gripped Gail’s forearm in a grip tight enough to hurt.

  Zielinski held up a small vial. “Yes, ma’am. Somewhere in this vial is the juice pattern for moving juice to an Arm.”

  Carol dumped Gail to the side and stalked to the door. “Carol? What’s wrong?”

  The Arm turned at the door and glowered. “All this time and you’re still fucking ignorant.”

  “What did I do?” Why aren’t you happy?

  Carol’s predator turned on and Gail felt Carol’s beast focused at her. She approached Gail, but this wasn’t a stalk, or at least a stalk ending in violence and death. Gail’s breathing tightened, she flushed and her mouth went dry. The world vanished as Gilgamesh, Van and Dr. Zielinski fled her thoughts and the room. “We’re the same deep down inside,” Carol said, her words caressing Gail like hot fingers against her flesh. “We desire the same things, we want the same things. Power, pleasure, love, leisure.” The Arm spoke slowly, as slow as her approach, and when she reached Gail she ran her fingers along Gail’s arms. Gail’s loins exploded in warmth, with a want and a need surprising to her. “But we know the truth, you and I.” Carol’s mouth found hers, and her tongue found hers, and the world collapsed into Gail, carrying pleasure. Carol backed away, mouth now a half inch from Gail’s. “The juice is the ultimate core of our existence. With enough juice, we could live without breathing or even our hearts beating.” Carol’s arm-strokes went from fingertips to a vicious tight grip. The pain became pleasure, bringing Gail to the brink of orgasm. “And when it’s taken away…”

  The world yawned wide before Gail, the sensuous intensity of pleasure vanishing in an instant, replace by the mundane. Overheard voices, cars passing in the street, an argument on the floor below between the Attendales and Betha Ebener, a discussion between Gilgamesh and Van on Lori’s fall into darkness, and whether Carol would drag Gail down as well. She bent over double in the pain of the abrupt absence of pleasure. Carol no longer touched her. Instead, she had returned to the doorway. Gail’s balance almost failed her, and she leaned back abruptly on the bed, fighting the urge to vomit.

  “That’s what an interrupted juice draw feels like,” Carol said. “Now, excuse me. I need to find someone to kill before I decide to go after some innocent you love just because they’re convenient to where I’m standing.”

  The tears came as Gail collapsed back on the bed and curled up into a tight ball, tears from Carol’s abuse, tears that hadn’t come at any point since they had all tagged each other. Eventually the tears stopped, exhausted, leaving behind an unfamiliar urge inside of Gail, an urge to get even with the world and make the world pay for her pain.

  Stupid. Seductive, though…

  ---

  “It’s one of these twenty-seven juice patterns,” Zielinski said. Lori and Gail stood, nervous and wary with each other, in Zielinski’s laboratory. Their bodyguards stood by the door, and the two Focuses sorted through the sheets of scores spread over the laboratory bench. Lori’s presence reminded Gail of the instant the pleasure stopped. Carol’s lesson. Jealousy over the fact Lori and Carol had made love so soon after…

  Gail vowed to use her jealous moments to make herself work harder, longer, and better, no matter the cost to her and those around her.

  “I think it’s this one,” Gail said, picking up a particularly complicated diagram.

  Lori frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “No. I think so, though. This pattern just feels right.”

  ---

  “Carol?” Gail said.

  “Hmm?” They had been cycling juice again, not for laboratory tests this time or any other grand purpose, but just for the pleasure. The evening was dim and quiet in the small room, and their voices slow and lazy. Neither allowed themselves to remember or speak of Carol’s lesson from earlier in the day. Mutual wordless apologies, in an attempt to regain the lost intimacy.

  Carol was always easier to talk to after they had been cycling juice.

  “You need to know I can’t find you in the Dreaming any more,” Gail said. “I think Focus Patterson may have gotten to you again.”

  Carol didn’t react, and when Gail repeated her comment, still didn’t react.

  “Carol?”

  “Did you say something?”

  Gail shivered, not understanding Carol’s lack of reaction.

  “When this is all over, are you going to come back to me?”

  “Hmm? Come back to you? I’ve never been gone.”

  Gail touched Carol’s cheek. Even her cheek had muscles under the skin.

  “Yes you have. You were with me in the beginning, but you were Teacher then, and I never really knew you. Then for a little while, you were with me so often, and I’d grown stronger, it seemed for just a little while that we had something. Some connection. Something that mattered. The tagging ceremony was like magic. The community of Arms is magic.”

  Gail shook her head. “But then that thing with Bass and Keaton came up and everything fell apart.”

  “You know I can’t spend much time with you anymore,” Carol said, in her gentle voice. Gail could almost believe Carol regretted the lost time.

  “I know. But there’s more. You’re turning into a different kind of person. You’ve always been hard, but it’s different now. You didn’t have a torture chamber in your basement in Detro
it. You’ve sucked Lori into, well, whatever.” She wanted to know, to understand, why this was so seductive. To understand by experience. These emotions pushed her away, and Gail never liked barriers.

  Carol didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know this new Carol Hancock,” Gail said, so soft.

  “What do you want from me, Gail?”

  “I want you to come back to me. When this is all over, I want the old Carol Hancock back.”

  Carol was silent for a long time. “I don’t know, Gail,” she said, at last. “I don’t know. You might get the old Carol Hancock back…or, I might just get a new Gail to join me.”

  Pictures of Home

  “No one calls himself a barbarian, that’s what your enemy calls you.” – David McCullough

  Dolores Sokolnik: November 29, 1972

  “Well, well, well, Student Sokolnik. Sit.”

  Del sat on the small ottoman, not daring to claim a chair. Her voices echoed across her quiet pools and the pools shivered restlessly in the face of an open enemy like Bass. Del drew on the power of the tag she held and the tag on her and forced the pools back to stillness. According to the information in Ma’am Keaton’s library, Del’s experience with tags appeared to be different from the experiences of the other Arms.

  The information in the library implied Arms of lesser stature should expect to purchase a tag in some fashion from an Arm of higher stature. The information didn’t jibe with Del’s personal experience, which led her to believe the more subsidiary Arms an Arm acquired, the better.

  Del’s relations with Bass had been tense ever since Bass’s attempt on her life. Ma’am Keaton kept them apart, protecting her from Bass. Del didn’t understand why Ma’am Keaton let Bass have access to her now, and suspected that Bass had purchased the time somehow. They met in meeting room two, and Ma’am Keaton remained in the house. Del feared Bass would someday arrange a meeting with no other prying eyes or metasenses present. That hadn’t happened. Yet.

  “Ma’am,” Del said.

  “You were present when Focus Rodriguez met with Ma’am Keaton several days ago.” Bass sat in the second best chair, her greater than Arm-normal muscle mass making the chair creak. Not Ma’am Keaton’s chair. Bass was clean, but Del still smelled the ever-present odor of blood and other people’s misery.

  Del nodded.

  “Consider Ma’am Keaton’s response.” Bass’s face was unnaturally calm, and showed no sign of her thoughts.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Since Del’s transformation, Focus Rodriguez came to visit every month or so, during which time she and Ma’am Keaton closeted themselves in a room and traded information. Those visits were always tense, because Ma’am Keaton and Focus Rodriguez viewed themselves as reluctant allies, and the students needed to be on their most excruciatingly best behavior during the visits.

  This last visit had been different. Ma’am Keaton had reneged on her arrangement with Focus Rodriguez. Ma’am Keaton claimed the right of power, told Focus Rodriguez all deals were off, and from then on Focus Rodriguez would continue to provide information, but Ma’am Keaton would no longer provide payment of any sort. Ma’am Keaton then forced Focus Rodriguez through a submission display, highlighted by the threat of the Arm group predator, and extracted her acquiescence to the new arrangement.

  “You should know, Sokolnik, that Ma’am Keaton followed my advice when she restructured her relationship with Focus Rodriguez.”

  Del nodded, disturbed.

  “You were present the last time Ma’am Hancock visited Ma’am Keaton, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re cognizant of Ma’am Hancock’s other progress-related phone calls?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am Hancock is involved in many projects, yes?”

  Del nodded.

  “Surely you’ve noted Ma’am Keaton’s reaction to Ma’am Hancock’s progress. Think on what you’ve seen, both regarding reports of ongoing work, and reports of success.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” As ordered, Del thought through the witnessed events. When Ma’am Hancock reported a lack of success with her ongoing work, Ma’am Keaton chided her for failure, and pushed her to move faster. When Ma’am Hancock reported a success, Ma’am Keaton accepted the success without speaking, unlike her positive reaction to the success of her other tagged Arms.

  “You should know, Student Sokolnik, that I pointed out the dangers of Ma’am Hancock’s success to Ma’am Keaton, and made clear how each success makes both Ma’am Haggerty and Ma’am Hancock more of a threat to us. Ma’am Keaton didn’t disagree with me.”

  Bass let Del think through this for several moments. Bass had placed Ma’am Hancock in a situation where she couldn’t prosper, whether or not she succeeded at her assigned projects. Ma’am Keaton now saw Ma’am Hancock’s successes as a threat to her. Bass claimed she had engineered the destruction of Ma’am Hancock’s position among the Arms.

  “Consider that the Arm dominance hierarchy, arranged by the age of the Arm, isn’t immutable.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Also true. Del herself held the tag of an older Arm, her fellow student Maynard. She also knew that Arm Sibrian wore Arm Billington’s tag, though Arm Billington was a younger Arm than Arm Sibrian.

  “Think on how this relates to the recent events concerning Arm Hancock and Arm Haggerty.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bass was the number four Arm, by age. She possessed a screwy tag-that-wasn’t-a-tag on Ma’am Hancock already. Bass, however, indirectly stated her maneuvers would soon force Ma’am Hancock and Ma’am Haggerty into positions where they would need to take Bass’s proper tag to survive.

  Bass would soon be the number two Arm, and sitting in a position to strike at Ma’am Keaton the instant Ma’am Keaton relaxed her guard.

  “In a few months, Student Sokolnik, you’ll graduate. At that point, your current protected status will end. You’ll be without protection. Who would be willing to protect such a willful, unlovable and robotic Arm such as yourself?”

  Del had been right to fear Bass’s intentions. Ma’am Billington had been correct. After Del’s graduation Bass would either kill her or make her accept Bass’s tag.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Student Sokolnik, I’ll offer you protection, and give you my tag. If you offer appropriate recompense to me. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to face a dangerous world all on your own.” At this, Bass smiled.

  “I’ll think on this, ma’am.”

  “Excellent. Dismissed.”

  Del left the meeting room, and thought. Bass, hungry for revenge, wanted Del as an experimental subject for her withdrawal imprinting project. This was obvious. What wasn’t obvious was what Del could do about the threat.

  She needed to do something, though.

  Gilgamesh: November 30, 1972

  “I changed my mind about you,” Enkidu said. He and Gilgamesh met on neutral ground about once every six months, their old interpersonal links stronger than their enmity. He suspected their meetings drove Enkidu’s compatriots as batty as they drove Tiamat. Save for their first meeting, they had both behaved with perfect politeness. Now, as a Crow Guru, he no longer feared Enkidu at all.

  Which was crazy, since all the other Hunters scared the crap out of him, and he would never meet any of them in a random suburban Chicago restaurant.

  “Yes?” Gilgamesh said. For the last two years, Enkidu had been trying to convince Gilgamesh to spy on the senior Arms for him, not including Tiamat, because, in Enkidu’s words, ‘I would never be able to trust anything you said to me about her anyway.’

  “I want you as the Hunter’s chief Crow. Crow Guru Gilgamesh, Master Crow of the Hunters.”

  This was different, and unlike Enkidu. “I thought you never wanted another Crow Master,” Gilgamesh said.

  Enkidu shrugged. “I know you don’t like the Law and what it does,” Enkidu said. He had ordered the largest steak on the menu, a giant porterhouse meant for two. The steak was so large it
drooped over the edges of the plate. Gilgamesh ate a hamburger. “Fine. Let’s remake the Law together. As the Crow Master of the Hunters, you would be the one in charge of the Law.” Enkidu speared his steak with a knife and brought it up off the plate to gnaw. His teeth were perfectly human these days in his human form, although if he didn’t shave he would still wear an all-body pelt.

  “Your offer does sound intriguing,” Gilgamesh said. Then again, so did skydiving, which he would never do unless someone threw him out of a plane. However, if Tiamat kept backsliding into her beast, this position with the Hunters might become more appealing for much the same reason. “Let me posit a test case, one that should be obvious to you. The first thing I would do, if I was in charge of the Law, would be to put in a restriction on cannibalism.”

  Enkidu nodded. “I thought of that, too. How about only eating our enemies?”

  “Isn’t everyone your enemy, your prey?”

  “No,” Enkidu said. “Being prey doesn’t make one an enemy.” He thought for a moment while pushing the half-eaten steak around on his plate. “Most aren’t. People who we’re capturing to convert? They aren’t. People who get in our way when we’re doing one of our missions? Not really. The police, the FBI, the Focus Bitches and their mindless minions? Definitely.”

  Gilgamesh kept his face blank. Enkidu let a bit of information through there – their ‘missions’, those wonderfully nasty Hunter slaughters that made the news, they weren’t random mayhem. Much as the Arms once did, the Hunters made a significant amount of their money by serving as mercenaries for people they didn’t like or trust. If Tiamat’s speculations were correct, the one most likely hiring them was Focus Donna Fingleman.

  “That’s more flexibility than I suspected,” Gilgamesh said. “Perhaps we do have more to talk about on this subject. Would I need to ‘become the Law’ Wandering Shade style?”

  Enkidu surprised him by shaking his head and revealing some of his perpetual anger. “Absolutely not.” His words came out as a growl that raised Gilgamesh’s hackles and sent two tables of people fleeing for the exit. “I survived one insane Crow Master in my life, and I hope to never see another. Gilgamesh, what I want is a peer, a collaborator. The Hunter civilization shows a lot of promise, but it’s stalled because nobody’s at the tiller, guiding the Law.”