All Beasts Together (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  When Gilgamesh was a mile down the Edens the Beast Man following him stopped cold and vanished. Damned good metasense shielding. Gilgamesh almost turned on the JFK when he got there. He could take the JFK directly to the Tollway. The JFK wasn’t finished, though, and he dreaded running into a construction zone and being forced down to the surface roads. If he got stuck in traffic and the Beast Man appeared out from underneath whatever masked him, Gilgamesh would be a dead Crow.

  His only chance was to go through downtown Chicago and take the Eisenhower out to the Tollway. Nearly as bad as fleeing Chicago.

  Gilgamesh passed through downtown and exited to the Eisenhower without sensing the Beast Man. He drove the twelve long miles out to the Tollway, as fast as he could stand while cars rushed by him too close and the draft from the huge rigs sucked at his rattling truck. Every other moment he metasensed for any sign of the Beast Man. Nothing.

  Had the Beast or his master aborted the attack? Did the Beast know or care about Tiamat? The parallels to the Philadelphia Massacre didn’t escape him. He half expected a second Beast Man to leap up from nowhere any time now. He actually expected Enkidu to be the one to cut him off. Was Enkidu’s and Odin’s Master the Crow Killer?

  Gilgamesh exited to the Tollway and turned north. Just after seeing the first O’Hare exit signs, he picked up Tiamat. Gilgamesh wanted to collapse in exhausted relief once he metasensed Tiamat’s glow. She sat in the China Garden, writing something and eating, with no knowledge of him at all. He wasn’t secure yet, though, and he couldn’t allow himself to relax; he had five more miles to cover before her glow would conceal him.

  He swung by Tiamat and came in close from behind for concealment, parking in the lot of an auto parts store right across the street from the China Garden. His truck looked like a perfectly ordinary truck, left here for repairs or for later pick up. Not suspicious or unusual at all. He hoped. He slipped down in the seat to be invisible from outside, to make sure.

  The roaring panic finally eased his grip on him as Gilgamesh waited in his truck and saw no sign of the Beast Man. How had the Beast Man found him to start with? Finding a Crow was difficult and Gilgamesh had ample practice reducing his glow. Somewhere in the distance, the Beast Man lurked. Would he simply wait until Gilgamesh left Tiamat’s protection? Even if the Beast Man left Chicago again, how long would Gilgamesh need to wait before he would trust the Beast was gone?

  He would wait here all night if he needed to. After that, he would stay near Tiamat every hour of every day for the next week and flee Chicago if she left, until he was sure the Beast Man was gone. The minutes passed, but Gilgamesh didn’t relax his vigilance.

  Just before midnight Gilgamesh metasensed the Beast’s flickering glow a mile and a half distant, almost overwhelmed by the spectacular intensity of Tiamat’s close presence. Gilgamesh got out of his truck and sprinted to the China Garden.

  More flickers. No charge.

  The flickers stopped about a half mile out. Gilgamesh shivered in fear and knelt, hugging the wall of the China Garden. A minute passed, then another. This was bad. The Beast’s good metasense protections became excellent when he stopped moving.

  Suddenly, the Beast Man appeared in Gilgamesh’s metasense, full on, no flickering. The Beast leisurely walked now, at right angles to its former path. After several minutes Gilgamesh realized the Beast circled the China Garden.

  He didn’t understand the Beast Man’s purpose, and fear of the unknown made him sick-up a little, which he cleaned up once he realized what he had done. After a moment, he realized the Beast now hunted Tiamat. The Beast hadn’t picked her up on his metasense until he came within a half mile of the Arm.

  Gilgamesh almost sicked-up everything in complete panic now, barely controlling himself. This Beast was a specialist in hunting Crows, but was out after the Arm! Gilgamesh had led the Beast right to her.

  On the other hand, he had seen the Skinner kill a Beast Man back in Philadelphia. Any Beast Man who attacked an Arm risked his life.

  As the Beast Man continued his slow circle, Gilgamesh watched the angles carefully, moving to keep hidden behind Tiamat’s glow. This Beast Man seemed on the dim side; this low on juice he should be running from the Arm. The Beast’s stalk had to be part of a mission. The Beast had gone after Gilgamesh first, to take Gilgamesh’s juice and improve his odds against the Arm.

  Something needed doing about these Beasts, Gilgamesh decided. Otherwise Crows would find themselves nothing more than Beast Man emergency juice supplies.

  Thirty seconds later Tiamat put down her pen and her fork and closed her book. She stood and talked for a moment longer before heading out the door of the China Garden.

  Gilgamesh clung tight to the wall of the China Garden, around the corner and out of Tiamat’s dangerous view. Panic hit him like a brick. She was leaving! The worst of all possibilities. He had worried over this possibility since he first spotted her in the restaurant. He still had no solution. If she left him he was dead, naked to the Beast Man and helpless. He froze and tried to figure out what to do next. He was too far from his truck. Without his truck he couldn’t trail Tiamat.

  Tiamat came out the door then, ignorant of the activity around her, tall, strong, and murderous. She went straight to her car, a gold Mercury Cougar, with no pauses or delays.

  The Beast Man was too close for this. Tiamat was leaving him to die. The only way to stop her from leaving was to reveal himself. That might easily be fatal. The Beast Man or the Arm. They were both predators. Either might kill him as easily as breathe. He had to cast his lot with one or the other and he had no time at all to think.

  This was ‘The lady or the tiger’ choice he had feared, except Tiamat was no lady and the Beast Man wasn’t a tiger.

  Gilgamesh had followed Tiamat almost since he first transformed. She was dangerous, but familiar. The Beast Man was the unknown. He had seen Beast Men kill Crows with his own eyes. Even the Skinner had been motivated more by curiosity than violence when they met for a brief moment in Philadelphia.

  “Carol,” he said, a Crow whisper.

  Tiamat had been climbing into her car, but she moved like lightning.

  Gilgamesh’s heartbeat spiked in terror when he sensed her move. He knew how fast she moved but it was different to see it in person. Her head snapped toward him with the speed of a striking snake. She paused as she searched, no more than a fraction of a second. He felt naked under her spotlight of attention. When she moved, she moved quickly, coming around the corner of the China Garden, to the alley along the side where Gilgamesh hid. So fast. She barely touched the space in between. He hadn’t even breathed since he spoke her name. The sick-up started rising as his panic did. He would vomit his sick-up on her out of pure instinctive reaction.

  That made the panic worse, because he remembered the sick-up’s effect on the Skinner. If he incapacitated Tiamat the same way, they would both die. However, he couldn’t stop it in a situation this stressful. The minute she came close enough he would lose control and sick-up all over her.

  She stopped. Just out of range, thank heavens. Gilgamesh teetered precariously, only barely holding the backflowing dross inside of him and blessing whatever blind luck had made her stop short of disaster. If his involuntary reactions took him she stood just feet from where the edge of the effect would be. Of course, she was still within range if he decided to direct the vomited dross at her.

  She stepped back, three long paces. To just out of range of his directed sick-up.

  Gilgamesh’s stomach dropped in shock: blind luck had nothing to do with this. Somehow, she knew his range exactly. He thought he knew her, but he didn’t know her like this. He thought she was as dangerous as he could imagine, and it turned out his imagination lacked.

  “Crow. Who are you?” she said, her soft demand reeking of threat. Hunting him. She dressed as a man. Some part of him was surprised; he never metasensed her clothes with any clarity. She wore a business suit and a fedora over crew-cut dark blonde hair
. She even wore careful makeup to coarsen her skin and give the illusion of a five-o’clock shadow. Her shoulders of the dark suit were broad even for a man. He might have believed she was a man if he didn’t know her.

  He was encouraged she knew he was a Crow, but frightened also, because as far as he knew Tiamat had never dealt with any Crows. How did she learn of his kind?

  “A Beast Man is coming,” he said, as sweat streamed down his face.

  She ignored his warning and shifted over to the right with a stalk like a tiger’s, circling in odd counterpoint to the Beast Man only a scant half mile away now, creeping closer, lured by the sudden activity at the China Garden.

  “You know who I am, Crow,” she said in her soft, threatening voice, watching him so carefully with those predator eyes. “What weapon do you have that you think will work against me?”

  He didn’t think, he knew. How did Tiamat know about Crows but not the sick-up?

  “A Beast Man is coming,” he said again, his whisper low to keep it from quavering. “He’s coming closer right now and he’s hungry. He’ll kill us for our juice.”

  Tiamat kept circling, ominous, slow. Gilgamesh found himself with his back flat against the brick wall of the China Garden. Tiamat stopped her circling at the rickety wooden fence that formed the other side of the alley. To go further would bring her back within his range. She started circling back the other way, graceful and dangerous and barely controlled. Her heartbeat was slow and strong and gave no hint she might concerned about the Beast Man. Gilgamesh watched her like a deer watches the headlights of an oncoming car.

  “A wise man once told me that although your instincts may serve you well in a fight, you can choose not to follow your instincts. You don’t have to attack me, Crow,” she said, her voice soft and speculative. He realized Tiamat was confirming or denying her suppositions by watching his reactions. He wished for the hard stone face of an older and colder Transform, but couldn’t summon it past his terror. “You’re a young Crow, aren’t you?”

  The soft voice turned harder and the cold light of anger appeared in her eyes. All of a sudden she had a gun in her hand. “So why are you poaching on my territory?”

  She thought he threatened her juice supply!

  Tiamat was much worse than he had thought over those long months watching her from a distance. He never expected her to be able to read faces as if she read minds, or the intense personal presence of her. In his mind, he knew how terrible she was, and even mostly in his heart. He had never been her prey before.

  He shook and the sick up tried to come up again, when and where it would have no effect on anyone. She could kill him with that gun. Shoot him from out of his range and he had no way to fight back.

  “I’m not poaching. I’m a scavenger,” he said. “I live off what you leave behind.” He hoped not to give away more than he had to, but he needed to convince her he didn’t threaten her juice supply.

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment and he wondered if he had startled her. She never stopped her cat-like stalk, back and forth, just out of range.

  “Hey, I’m a neat freak. I’m not at all sloppy with the juice,” Carol said, suddenly sardonic. “Perhaps when I accidentally drained that Monster, but not normally.”

  Gilgamesh froze, surprised by her sudden change of tone and her wit. He hadn’t suspected wit. He couldn’t respond. He didn’t have any wit in him right now.

  “So what kind of juice do I leave behind, Crow?” she asked, her voice soft and threatening again. The Beast Man came closer, almost into Tiamat’s metasense range.

  “Please,” he said, plaintive, pleading and shaking. “The Beast Man is coming. I live off your kills when you’re done with them. I don’t want you to die.”

  “Do you eat them?” Tiamat said. The threat from Tiamat diminished as her curiosity increased.

  She only knew such a tiny amount about Crows, he realized. Damn it! Wasn’t she afraid of the Beast Man? Or did she simply have nerves of steel? The Beast Man had to be in her range, now. Why couldn’t she metasense him!

  Tiamat was so cold, so controlled, and her face gave nothing away. He remembered watching her in the Skinner’s warehouse and recognized the results of those long months of cruelty.

  Something changed inside of him, then, as the constantly increasing terror grew suddenly too much. He felt like he floated, all connection to his body gone. His body shivered and stammered and shook, but it wasn’t his anymore. A foreign thing, only loosely driven by his will. The fear disappeared, replaced by a giddy, buzzing high.

  “How do you sense him when I can’t?” Tiamat said. She seemed distant, as if the whole tableau in the alley had moved far away from him.

  The Beast Man charged and would be here in a matter of seconds.

  Gilgamesh understood now. The Beast Man masked himself from Tiamat. Masked from an Arm! His trick only masked him from one Major Transform at a time.

  “He’s masked himself from your metasense. I love you,” he heard himself say, as if his voice came from someone else. His body laughed madly. “You are the Goddess of Death and Destruction. You should go back to the parking lot to fight the Beast Man. You don’t want to fight him trapped in this alley.”

  Tiamat stopped and looked at him with narrowed eyes. He laughed harder. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized he had gone too far. He had damaged something inside of him, either mental or physical, or both. He wondered if he would heal or if he would always be like this. Tiamat flattened against the side of the alley and cartwheeled back to the parking lot, where she could both watch for the Beast Man and keep an eye on Gilgamesh.

  The Beast Man’s charge brought him close enough for Tiamat to metasense, and she tensed, battle ready. Close, only a hundred yards away. Her head turned slightly toward him and then turned back.

  “Run if you have to, but promise me you’ll contact me later,” she said, in no particular hurry. Nerves of steel. Gilgamesh laughed again at her incongruous order.

  “Yes, Carol, of course.” If he ever stopped running.

  Tiamat crouched as the Beast Man hove into view amid the squealing of tires as some passer by fled from what looked like a Monster. Tiamat flicked the pistol back at the Beast Man and emptied the magazine. Every shot hit and every shot bounced off.

  The Beast Man was a chitinous thing, covered in hard, shiny black. His arms and legs split in a way Gilgamesh’s mind had trouble seeing. The long bones in his calves and forearms had separated, to produce four legs below the knee, and four feet, and four arms below the elbow and four hands. Each hand a construct of impossibly long fingers, each finger a rasp of razor sharp file at the tip. He wore a loose coat, but he ran on all fours. Eights.

  The coat fell away in tatters as he came close, torn apart by the bullets. His hard outer exoskeleton wasn’t even scratched. He roared as he charged, a hissing and clicking sound louder than a jet engine that froze Gilgamesh’s muscles in place. Tiamat put her pistol away and came up with a knife in each hand. She crouched to receive his charge.

  Didn’t Tiamat know how to fight? The Beast Man outweighed her three times over and charged at 40 miles an hour, a speed Tiamat couldn’t maintain for any real distance, even if she burned juice. Even with her immense strength, the Beast Man would hit her like a freight train. Gilgamesh cowered in fright, imagining the impending collision.

  Hancock didn’t move an inch. The Beast Man didn’t question his luck. He lowered his horned insectoid head and put on more speed. She would be plastered across the asphalt pavement like road kill. Gilgamesh heard the rising rasping growl of triumph from the Beast Man.

  The Beast Man was bare inches from her when she jumped. Up and over him she went as he passed beneath her. Her hands flashed and one of his finger tentacles bent and bled. A wounded stripe on her thigh appeared where that tentacle had torn her with its saw-like edge. Whatever she had tried with her other hand hadn’t worked and the Beast Man showed no wound for it.

  The Beas
t Man was going too fast to stop once she jumped out of his way and he slammed headfirst into the hard brick wall of the China Garden with a thump that rattled the ground. Tiamat darted close before he recovered and sliced at his rear legs where they joined his torso. She didn’t do more than minor damage as the exoskeleton protected the Beast Man, even at the joints.

  The Beast Man still hadn’t recovered so she darted in again, this time aiming at the case covering the Beast Man’s oversized genitals. The Beast Man spun on his rear legs and attacked her again with his finger tentacles. The fingers sliced several shallow cuts in her torso before she slipped out of their reach, safely distant from twenty feet away across the pavement.

  She laughed then, a cruel, predatory sound that sent shivers down Gilgamesh’s spine. He wondered what went through her head, and if the fight went as poorly as it appeared. Those two, the Arm and the Beast Man, looked far too evenly matched.

  The Beast Man charged again but Tiamat was too fast for him. She darted in from the side, again going for the finger tentacles. She suffered several more long, shallow slashes, but broke three more of the fingers. She was damned lucky those cuts were shallow. Those saw-edged tentacles could have laid her open to the bone.

  Gilgamesh finally realized what had been bothering him all along.

  She wasn’t burning.

  Didn’t she consider the Beast Man a threat? Or was she feeling him out for weak spots before she committed herself?

  Gilgamesh realized Tiamat would win this fight. If she fought the Beast Man evenly without the burn, she would tear him apart when she finally did decide to use it.

  So during the Beast Man’s next charge, Gilgamesh ran, counting on the combatants not to notice his departure. The buzz still sounded in his mind, his balance was shaky, but he still made inhuman speed as far as he could in the other direction. Distantly, he regretted the loss of his truck, now known to Tiamat and therefore lost to him.

  He stumbled several times and ran out of breath and energy far before he should have, while the buzzing grew to overwhelm everything else. A quarter mile away, as he passed out of Tiamat’s range, he sensed the massive explosion of dross as the Beast Man died. He kept going anyway, incoherent and lost to everything but the need to flee.