In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6)

by Randall Farmer

  They made it to the relative isolation of the far side of the house and Gail turned to Sylvie.

  “Uh,” she said, her train of thought long gone. Sylvie looked at her and waited.

  Gail shivered in buried embarrassment. “Why don’t we sit down?” she said. The ground didn’t look too wet, so she sat beside the straggly-looking boxwoods. Sylvie followed, clutching her jacket close with her one free hand.

  “Do you need some more of my time for your experimentation?” Sylvie said, nervous. She would volunteer for more target duty, if needed, but now dreaded experimentation like the plague.

  Gail paused a moment to gather her courage. “I have a question for you.”

  Sylvie nodded and didn’t say anything.

  This was a lot harder than she thought it would be, because of Sylvie’s fears. Gail decided she might as well do the usual: grit her teeth and plow right in.

  “All right, look,” she said. “There’s a problem with food. With the transformation, I eat more than I used to. You’ve seen me eat. But the household has a problem with getting enough food for everyone and so, uh, I don’t eat as much as I need to. I’m hungry all the time, but I figure, everyone is hungry, so it’s only fair.”

  Sylvie didn’t say anything, so Gail took another breath and continued on.

  “A few days ago,” Gail said, and looked away. This hurt. This would sound so selfish. “A few days ago Focus Hargrove told me that hunger interferes with my ability to control the juice. So my question is…”

  “What!”

  “Um,” Gail said. “Focuses can’t control the juice when they’re hungry. I know, despite all our research, we never picked up on this. I believe Focus Hargrove, too. So…”

  “Here,” Sylvie said, thrusting her plate at Gail. “Eat.”

  “What? Sylvie, I don’t want to…”

  “Eat the God damned food, dammit!”

  “Sylvie, this is yours. I…”

  “No. It’s yours. I’m not taking it back. Eat it,” Sylvie said, shaking the plate at her. “If you don’t eat it, I’m going to toss the plate on the ground and do a dance. So you might as well eat it.”

  The discussion would stay stalled until she ate Sylvie’s dinner, Gail realized, and gave in. She took the plate and started in on the hot dog. She was so hungry even the boiled hot dog tasted wonderful, and she found herself pumping Sylvie’s juice a bit.

  Dammit!

  Gail stopped as soon as she noticed. She refused to manipulate her people with her cheap Focus tricks.

  Sylvie waited until Gail was about halfway through the hot dog.

  “So you mean to say you shorted yourself on food and screwed up your ability to control the juice in the process?” Sylvie said, no longer nervous about the experimentation issue.

  “I didn’t know, Syl,” Gail said. “I didn’t want to take more than my fair share, and I was already eating far more than anyone else. Certainly not with all the grumbling I hear about how much I eat.”

  Sylvie fell back on the damp cold grass, rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to say something. She changed her mind and shut it again, and whacked her forehead with the heel of her hand.

  “All right,” Gail said. “Out with it.”

  Sylvie didn’t need much prodding. She never did when she had something to say.

  “This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done in your whole life!” Sylvie wasn’t much on tact, either. Gail checked to make sure she hadn’t messed up Sylvie’s juice count, but found no issue. She was used to Sylvie’s blunt pronouncements. If those bothered her particularly, they never would have been friends to start with.

  “I mean, what do you think you’re doing?” Sylvie said, thumping her forehead some more. “You’re screwing up everyone else in the household so you can play saint? Saint Gail wants to screw herself up, so she takes everyone else with her?”

  “All right, all right. I get the point. I didn’t know being hungry affected my ability to control the juice, and I didn’t want to take any more advantage than I already was.”

  “Fine. Saintly attributes duly noted. Now, are you going to eat enough?” Sylvie sat up, grabbed Gail’s right arm, and squeezed along her elbow and shoulder. “Shit. Shit. Shit! Gail! Paint you black and give you one of those funny big bellies and you’d make the cover of National Geographic as a ‘starving mother in Africa’. Jesus, Gail, if you starve yourself to death we’re all going to die! You need to eat more!”

  Gail turned away again. “That’s my question, actually. I mean, what would you think if I did want to take unfair advantage and eat enough to keep me from being hungry? Like, would you be willing to give up a little bit of your food so I would be able to control the juice better? I suspect I’ll need to eat quite a bit more food to keep me from being hungry.”

  “Dammit, Gayyyl,” Sylvie said, and banged her head with the heel of her hand again.

  “I mean, I feel bad about even asking the question. I know how this must sound. It’s just that other Focus said…”

  “Gail, move the God damned juice! You need food to control the juice better? You got it. You can have every bite I eat and I’ll graze on the bushes if more food will allow you to control the juice better.”

  Gail looked at Sylvie doubtfully.

  “You’re sure? What about the other people?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Sylvie said. “I don’t know of a Transform in this place who wouldn’t cut off their own arm to help you control the juice.”

  “Really?” Gail said, hunch shouldered and furtively gazing at the ground beside Sylvie. Her stomach grumbled at even the thought of extra food, piled higher and deeper.

  “Yes, dammit! Look, Gail, we’re all depending on you to control the juice. Give up this damned saint thing you’re stuck on, and move the damned juice. Do whatever it takes. If you need to eat three times as much as the rest of the household combined, then fine, we’ll all go hungry so you can eat, if that’s what it takes to keep the juice from jumping around like a grasshopper in a tornado. Hell, we’ll put you on a pedestal and bow down to you six times a day if that’s what it takes!”

  “No pedestals, please,” Gail said. This was what she feared. Too much of this kind of temptation and she would give in, and end up as evil as Focus Adkins. “You think so about the food, though?”

  “Hell, yes,” Sylvie told her. “The juice is the only thing that matters. Everything else is a distraction. If you think anything else is as important as the juice, you’ve got your priorities screwed up.”

  Gail looked away and sighed. She had thought things were looking up, with winning her own freedom from the household leader, Bart, and finally getting in real contact with other Focuses. However, no matter what she did, what choices she made, she kept messing up. Was this the secret to leadership – since you were going to mess up, somehow, no matter what you did, you might as well forge straight ahead and do things the way you wanted them done anyway? Gail, the slave plantation overseer. She winced. This damned disease was going to seduce her into voting Republican if she didn’t watch herself. She took another bite of the hot dog and finished it off.

  “Okay,” she said, meek again. Still hungry.

  “Good,” Sylvie said, satisfied.

  ---

  “Uh, hi, Tonya,” Gail said into the phone, less than enthusiastic. She had blown her own tiny cash allowance to buy an extra-long phone cord, allowing her to retreat to the Ebener’s bedroom, a dim place in the faint light from the outside. Light rain drizzled along the window. She sat on the floor with her back up against the wall, right under the casement.

  It was past 6 P.M., when the phone rates went down for the evening. Van still wasn’t back from U of M, and Gail had no idea how long he would be out, tonight. She was on her own, lonely and as usual, feeling abandoned.

  Gail still didn’t know what to say to Tonya, which was why she dreaded Tonya’s next phone call. She couldn’t forget what Beth said about the things Tonya did to Transfo
rms. She visualized crushed minds and twisted personalities. She wondered how much Tonya enjoyed her work. She wondered how much of what Beth had said was true.

  “Gail, are you all right?” Tonya said.

  “I’m fine,” Gail said, trying to cover her discomfort.

  “Good, good. How did your visit with Beth go?”

  “Fine.” Gail wanted to say more, but a knock on the door interrupted her. “Could you hold on for a second,” she said to Tonya.

  “Come in,” Gail said. Betha came in carrying a heaping plate of tonight’s dinner, spaghetti and meatballs, with green beans and garlic bread.

  “Gail, here’s some…” Betha said, and then cut herself short when she saw Gail was on the phone. She crept in on exaggerated tip-toes and laid the plate on the nightstand near Gail and scurried out.

  Gail sighed. Since her conversation with Sylvie, she wasn’t hungry anymore. She couldn’t even imagine being hungry. Any time she moved, everywhere she went, someone appeared with food. After dinner, there would be a dessert, often just for her, as someone had figured out how cheap sugar, flour and a few eggs were. After dessert, an evening snack. Someone would leave food out for her later, just in case she got hungry while everyone else was asleep. In the morning, someone would be awake fixing breakfast for her.

  Worse, her household nagged. They watched her food intake like beady-eyed hawks and any time they thought she didn’t get enough food, they gave her gentle reminders. Or maybe firmer visits from Bart and some of the other normals to remind her of her responsibilities.

  She liked having enough to eat, but the hovering embarrassed her a lot.

  “I’m glad to hear the visit went well,” Tonya said. “Did Beth give you any pointers?”

  “Yes,” Gail said, and tried to push the image of Tonya torturing Transforms out of her head. “Yes, she did.”

  Gail regurgitated Beth’s advice, and to her surprise, Tonya agreed with everything Beth had said, and often went much farther. Tonya sounded so normal while she said such astonishing things. It left Gail disconcerted and uneasy.

  “Beth also mentioned about how you earn money,” Gail said, half an hour into the conversation, unable to delay her questions about the hardest issue of all any further.

  Her comment didn’t come out nearly as casually as she had intended.

  “Oh, she did,” Tonya said, her voice notably cooler. “What did Beth say about the way I earn money?”

  Gail knew immediately she had put her foot in her mouth. She couldn’t think of any way to get it out again.

  “Uh, well, you know. I didn’t, uh, believe her or anything. I mean, you’re one of the good guys,” she said, trying to backpedal. “This whole ‘taming Transforms’ thing, that would be just awful. Manipulating their personalities with the juice. I know you can’t be doing anything along those lines.” Gail cringed to hear herself babble. With all the times she had put her foot in her mouth, she wondered if she would ever learn to stop chewing.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Tonya said, after a pause. Her cool, almost indifferent voice turned to rock hard ice. The thin layer of artificial good cheer covering her words only made things worse. “When you get your household in order, and the people in your household are as happy and stable as the people in mine, I’ll be interested in your opinions about how I should manage my people.” Tonya’s voice cut like a knife and shivered Gail’s juice. “Until then, why don’t you hold your opinions to yourself? Do you think you can manage that?”

  Gail winced miserably and wanted to crawl in a hole somewhere and pull the top in after her. She had managed to say plenty of boneheaded things in her life, but she couldn’t remember the last time she got herself into this much trouble. The juice flowed into her juice buffer like water down a waterfall, and her Transforms began to curse and moan throughout the Ebener house.

  “Uh, yeah,” she said, at loss for anything else to say.

  “Good. So why don’t you spend a little time trying out Beth’s advice, and see if this helps you manage your household a little bit better. I’ll call you back some other time to check on you.” Tonya’s voice remained glacial under her artificial pleasantries.

  “Uh, yes. Yes, it’s fine, thanks.”

  “Good. I’ll talk to you later,” Tonya said and she hung up.

  Gail didn’t hang up. She sat on the floor and stared at the phone and wished she could throw it against the wall. She wasn’t sure which was worse: that Tonya did ‘tame Transforms’, or the fact Gail had just alienated one of the few people since her transformation who had managed to give her real help.

  ---

  “Van, can I talk to you for a minute?” Gail said. They were out on the porch, where Van sat in the midst of a pile of papers and books and the remains of dinner. Around them, the steady Michigan rain dripped from the eaves. It was cold enough for even Gail to need a coat. So much for summer.

  Van looked up from the legal pad in his lap, but he didn’t really see her. His dissertation was due soon and it was tough to get his attention.

  “Uhh?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Hmm? Oh, hey, I’m going to need to go back to the library again this evening. It might be kind of late before I return.”

  “Okay. Look, I’ve got this problem.”

  “Uh hmm,” Van said, and he looked back down at his legal pad and started writing notes into it.

  “Van?” Gail said.

  “Could you hold on for a few minutes, cutie? I need to get these thoughts down…” His voice drifted off as he lost track of her, flipping pages in the book propped against his left knee.

  Gail sighed, frustrated, and gave up on Van.

  Her next choice was Rev. Narbanor, and she metasensed him in the kitchen picking up his dinner. She made her way to the kitchen, attempting to ignore the way everyone pulled away from her and stared. She had fixed the juice after her last nasty mistake a half hour ago, but everyone remained jumpy.

  “Matt?” she said to him, as he leaned over his youngest child to help her hold the plate steady.

  “Gail,” he said politely, and smiled. He was always so patient with her, despite her earlier troubles with him. Gail wondered how he managed the patience. He was less afraid of her than the others were, but then, she hadn’t found herself angry with him since his first few weeks in the household. She and ministers, preachers and priests didn’t exactly get along. Matt Narbanor, Methodist reverend that he was, had won her over anyway.

  “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  “Of course,” he said, and turned to put his plate down, but he couldn’t find an empty spot on the counter. His wife Ruth turned to take it, but the next youngest child interrupted with “But I don’t want any beans” as the spaghetti on his daughter’s plate started sliding slowly off her plate and down to her chest.

  Vera Bracken stepped forward to level the little girl’s plate with a “Let me hold this for you, sweetheart.” Bart Wheelhouse, noticing the exchange, took Matt’s plate from him. Matt followed Gail into the Ebener’s bedroom.

  Rain still dripped along the window of the dim room, and the room remained cold enough to notice. Gail turned the light on and sat down on the floor, because she saw nowhere else to sit but the bed and she knew Matt wouldn’t want to sit on a bed with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

  “Sit,” she said, and smiled. “Talk to me where I can see you.”

  Rev. Narbanor sat down and leaned against the wall. His clothes were still damp from the rain.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Gail looked down at her hands. “I have a moral question,” she said, after thinking things through.

  Narbanor nodded and waited for more. Gail ran her hands through her hair. Her short hair still felt strange.

  “What do you do,” she said, “if someone you know a little bit, who’s been pleasant and helpful, turns out to be doing something really awful?”

  “I assume this isn�
��t a theoretical question?”

  Gail shook her head.

  “So is there any chance you might convince this other person to stop doing the awful thing?”

  Gail remembered Tonya’s cold voice on the phone and winced. “No.”

  Narbanor nodded. “Does this other person recognize they’re doing something wrong?”

  Again, Gail shook her head. “She thinks that she’s doing the right thing, and that I’m ignorant and inexperienced.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “So you think what she’s doing is immoral and she thinks it’s perfectly correct?”

  “Uh huh,” Gail said.

  “Well, it’s quite possible that you’re right and she’s wrong, but you do always need to consider the possibility she might be right.”

  Gail looked down at her hands and didn’t answer for a long time.

  “She’s another Focus,” she said eventually. Narbanor nodded, encouraging.

  “One of the things she does for a living is the bad thing I’m worried about. It’s called ‘taming Transforms’.”

  “Ah,” Narbanor said, unhappy.

  “I recently learned there’s some kind of business going on among the Focuses. If some Focus has a Transform she can’t deal with, she can pay money and send him to this other Focus. This other Focus fixes, um, changes his personality and sends him back.”

  Narbanor turned pale. “This goes on among the Focuses? You can pay money and get someone’s personality changed?”

  “Uh huh,” Gail said. “Uh, Matt, I’m sort of new at being a Focus, and well, don’t look at me that way. I can’t do any such thing.”

  Narbanor drew a breath. “Knowing about this doesn’t make me feel comfortable.”

  “Uh huh. Me, either. That’s why I brought up this, uh, rumor, with this Focus. She confirmed it.”