A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  Well. The high secrets of the ruling first Focuses on display, just for me.

  “But tagging an Arm?”

  “No problem.” Laugh. “I’ve even seen it done.” Pause, at my quizzical look. “Of course this was a disaster, because poor old Focus Peoples didn’t know to stop the automatic juice-sequestering response, but we can handle the problem with a simple juice pattern, one even I can do.”

  What in the bloody blue blazes was a juice pattern? My instincts said ‘spell’, as mythologically Focuses were supposed to be witches, but I hadn’t carried Lori and Ann’s myth hypothesis to that level of absurd conclusion. This was getting a little freaky, unless Lori knew about juice patterns, because she could do them.

  Heh. I’ll bet she did. Given her personality similarities to yours truly, I bet she was extremely good with them.

  “I’m sorry, but none of this is making any sense to me at all,” I said, prompting Teas for yet more information.

  “Focus Peoples was one of our gang of Focuses,” Teas said. “Here, in the bad old days.” This Detention Center. Yikes. “I transformed in February of ’57 and the Feds brought me here shortly afterwards.” Shit. She had been a Focus for over eleven years! No wonder she rolled me with her charisma when I didn’t resist. “Focus Peoples transformed a year earlier. In late ’57, the Feds brought us Mary Chesterson. We didn’t understand what to do with an Arm back then; we thought she was a failed Focus of some variety. We had several failed Focuses here already, some of whom we only later realized were actual Focuses screwed by the juice. Focus Holder for one. Anyway…”

  Teas got wound up when she got going.

  “You know the drill. Chesterson couldn’t move juice, just take it from Transforms and kill them. Based on my work – I was always experimenting back then – I suggested that since we could tag anyone, one of us should tag Chesterson and pass her juice. Focus Peoples volunteered and the tag succeeded. That is, she tagged Chesterson, but the tag drove Chesterson crazy, psychopathically enraged. You see, once she tagged Chesterson, she accidentally stripped Chesterson of all her juice.”

  “Justifiably enraged, then,” I said. I, on the other hand, wasn’t going to reveal anything I didn’t think necessary to reveal. I recognized the no-juice state as the same one I fell into in Pittsburgh.

  “Anyway, Chesterson grabbed Focus Peoples and took back her juice. Only Chesterson took the juice Arm style, taking Focus People’s fundamental juice and killing her. Of course, we didn’t understand anything about what happened at the time, as we didn’t even understand the difference between fundamental and supplemental juice, or even what a Focus’s juice buffer was.”

  “So Chesterson went Monster?”

  Teas shook her head. “Nope. I saw what was going on, and me and my people pulled them apart in a few seconds.”

  She believed her words, but to me they sounded strange. “When I draw juice, it’s instant.”

  Teas nodded. “When Chesterson drew from Transforms, she took juice instantly. However, a Focus can fight back and slow the process down.” She sighed. “Chesterson went crazy with grief and killed herself later the same day. Anyway, when I felt Focus Peoples dying I tried to grab her household with a mass household tag.” Focus Teas lifted up her dress to show me a still vivid red welt that stretched for over a foot, from the top of her left hip to just below her right breast. “What I’d tagged was Focus People’s household juice buffer, but as I’ve already said we didn’t know those terms back then or what in tarnation was going on. I couldn’t hold what I tagged and the buffer destabilized, turning into bad juice right in front of me and partly inside of me. This disaster nearly killed me, and as you see, I still wear the scar.”

  I wonder if her scar grew feathers, scales or funky hair. Fresh bad juice was just another term for fresh Monster juice.

  I did wonder about the truth of the story. The scar was real and did feel odd to my metasense. Teas believed everything she said. However, I didn’t trust her knowledge or her judgment.

  “Wow! Amazing! It’s a wonder any of you survived when none of you knew what was going on.”

  Teas nodded. “Several of us didn’t.”

  “This doesn’t give me any warm fuzzies about being tagged by a Focus, though.” To put it mildly.

  “Carol, this is a matter of safety.” Laugh. “You’ll be around tagged Transforms every day. I suffered through two ‘Arm accidents’ with Chesterson and I’d rather never suffer another. Besides, Transforms are people with rights as well.” For Teas, a stretch. I did not want this twisted bitch to own me. Not that I had much right to complain. Glass houses… “If you’re about to have an accident, I can keep you from…”

  I could only keep up the act so long. “You’ll stop me by sending me into withdrawal, the same way you punish your own Transforms? Forget it. I’d rather rot here the rest of my fucking life.”

  Teas didn’t stop her panic run until she reached the back of the viewing area. “Dammit, Carol! There’s no need to get all nasty.”

  “That’s my juice you’re so casually threatening!”

  She pulled herself together, although it took a minute. “Okay, okay, I understand the ‘mine’ business. Chesterson was the same way.” She paused and tucked her hair back into place. “You think about this, ‘kay? You’ll have to trust me that I won’t use the tag as an everyday leash. Doing so wouldn’t be right. You’re another Major Transform. But I need the tag for emergencies. Our deal depends on the tag; I won’t help you without one.”

  “I’ll think,” I said. Damned straight I would think. I didn’t relax my predatory pose one bit.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Teas said. She and her crew of spooked bodyguards departed, leaving me to wonder whether I had screwed everything up with my threat display, and whether I would be able to keep from killing Teas for being an annoying callous bitch even if she did get me out of here.

  Gilgamesh: March 16, 1968

  Gilgamesh squatted by a phone booth outside a Safeway in Oakland, attempting to quiet his terror. He made the phone call, waited through the rings, and firmly managed to not sick-up. Shadow finally picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Gilgamesh said. “How are things going?”

  “Fine. Tiamat’s been given juice and is being treated much better.” Shadow paused. “You sound a bit panicked.”

  “Uh huh. The Skinner’s in my apartment.”

  “Hmmm. That would bother any of us. I’m surprised you’re not here on my doorstep.”

  “Me too,” Gilgamesh said, faintly annoyed at Shadow’s sarcasm. His hands still shook. “Things were going so well, then…she stopped sending me messages, about 30 hours ago. Now this.”

  Shadow’s earlier comment finally hit his brain. Tiamat got juice! Gilgamesh hadn’t expected her to get juice. He expected them to run Tiamat into withdrawal and dispose of her afterwards, the reason he thought he worked with a deadline. If the authorities gave Tiamat juice, that meant someone wanted to recruit her and turn her into a resource. The information also explained why the Skinner was giving him the run-around. She probably viewed this as a test, whether Tiamat could arrange her own escape.

  “Well. What are you planning on doing?”

  “Before I called you, I believe the answer was: panic, more panic, then panic some more,” Gilgamesh said. “However, knowing Tiamat’s been given juice changes everything. I think the Skinner knew this, and she’s playing with me.” He paused. “I must assume the Skinner knows my scent.” Likely on the damned apple press statue. He thought he had been careful enough, but there was a reason this was the Arm who had survived. “However, despite her best efforts, she can’t damp her glow enough to hide from me, save perhaps in skyscrapers. I think I’m going to play back.”

  “Gilgamesh! That’s utterly crazy!” Shadow said. “You’ll destroy yourself in panic if you get into some sort of dominance game with an Arm.”

  “She doesn’t respect me.” He
couldn’t blame her. He was the one huddled by a phone booth, chased out of his own apartment, so terrified he feared he might wet his pants. “I need to earn her respect somehow.” Otherwise he ought to give up and go find some damned Focus household and nibble on their dross like a nervous rabbit.

  “If she knows your scent she can run you down! You must leave town.”

  Gilgamesh grinned. His panic receded. How very Crow of Shadow to suggest such a thing. “I learned a big secret in Philadelphia,” he said. “It’s on page 7 of chapter 14 of my book.” He had sent the last chapter of his first draft to Shadow a week before Tiamat’s capture.

  “Oh,” Shadow said, easily recalling the passage. “This is, um, very like Sky, you know.”

  “Thanks,” Gilgamesh said. Shadow hadn’t meant it as a compliment. Gilgamesh took it as one, anyway.

  Gilgamesh rang the public phone in his apartment complex lobby. It rang twenty three times before Rafe, the overweight apartment manager picked up. “Star Star Rentals: hourly, daily, weekly and monthly! Cash in advance only.”

  “Message for unit 4, please.”

  “Whadda yah want me to do?”

  “Knock on the door to unit 4 and say there’s someone who wants to speak to the teacher’s pet.”

  “Crazy sonofabitch.” Rafe didn’t hang up, went and delivered the message.

  The phone picked up a little over a minute of panic suppression later. “Here.”

  The voice was male, unknown. Metasense, though, informed him the voice belonged to the Skinner.

  “It’s me.”

  “Huh.” Pause. “You’re calling from my place!”

  “You have good ears. I assume your visit to my place was in response to my request to speed things up?”

  The Skinner didn’t hang up the phone. Instead, she ran toward her house, burning juice all the way.

  Gilgamesh, who had taken the time to appreciate the Skinner’s new place – opulent, especially compared to her old warehouse – and to strip it of as much dross as possible, got in his car and drove off. The car was stolen; he ditched it most of the way back to his apartment, after yet another stop to wash off in the Pacific. He hadn’t forgotten the Chimera trick of dunking themselves in the Delaware to lose their scent. Although confident his trick would work, he still edged ever closer toward climax stress.

  He could always be wrong about the dunking trick.

  After a suitable amount of time to gather his courage, he called the Skinner’s home phone from a pay phone outside a seedy bank on the edge of downtown. The handset was cracked and almost falling apart; the phone books shredded long ago. The Skinner picked up after the second ring. “These are my capabilities,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Motherfucking Crow!” the Skinner said. Loud. Gilgamesh nearly dropped the phone. “Don’t you ever do that again if you want to live!” He winced at the predatory command. No, she wasn’t standing right in front of him, but his panic spiked as if she was. He calmed himself, floating on a warm sea of freshly scooped up Arm dross.

  “Ma’am, I didn’t invite you over to my apartment, either.”

  The Skinner didn’t immediately reply. He did hear heavy breathing, which he imagined would be terrifying as all hell if the phone connection was at all good. Then the Skinner laughed. “Fuuuck me,” the Skinner repeated through her laughter, over and over again.

  Gilgamesh had to join in. He had to admit the situation was hilarious, as long as neither of them got hurt.

  “Ma’am, I think I know what’s going on now with Carol’s incarceration,” Gilgamesh said. The unfailing politeness actually reduced the stress. A lot. “If you wouldn’t mind me explaining, I shall.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’re of the opinion Carol can handle the Focus who’s involved and you’re testing her to find out if she can escape on her own,” Gilgamesh said. “You’re stringing me along just in case the Feds chase away the Focus and do what they did in St. Louis, trying to test Carol to death.”

  The Skinner laughed again. “I can see why you and Hancock get along. You’ve both got similarly twisty minds and a tendency to overthink things.” The Skinner’s voice grew harsh. “What I’m worried about is what might happen if a more competent Focus takes over. The question isn’t whether I’ll rescue her or not, but when and how much she’s going to owe me for fucking up.”

  Well, he was talking to the Skinner. Truth and calmness were optional for this Arm. “So what do you want to know?”

  “There’s nothing you can tell me over the phone that’s going to matter,” the Skinner said.

  Oh.

  Oh crap.

  “You need to meet me in person so you can use your Arm mind-reading trick on me.”

  “Huh.”

  “That’s going to be difficult. For me. Your physical capabilities dwarf mine.”

  “Well, I’m not at all interested in being on the receiving end of your Monster-juice spray again, so we’re even.” The Skinner paused. “We’re both Major Transforms with deadly capabilities. That’s true of all the Major Transforms. I’ve managed to meet amicably with many Focuses without any problems. Ask the Focus Network if you want my bonafides.”

  Gilgamesh almost dropped the phone. “Uh, ma’am. I don’t deal with Focuses. I vastly prefer Arms.”

  His response received a low chuckle as a response. “You have good sense, Gilgamesh.”

  She knew his name! This time Gilgamesh did drop the phone. He didn’t run, though. Tiamat told her. Tiamat told her. He repeated his mantra until his panic receded enough so that he could pick up the phone again. “Sorry. Crows panic when surprised. It keeps us alive.”

  “Huh. Tell you what. Would you be willing to meet me if I was unarmed?”

  Gilgamesh thought for a moment. “Yes.” She counted on him being able to metasense whether she was armed or not.

  “Public or private?”

  “Neither. Secluded. An open area in a park at night would work best.”

  “Pacifica State Beach? Tonight?”

  “The place would work,” Gilgamesh said. “Tomorrow night? I must apologize, but…”

  The Skinner interrupted. “But you’ve worn out your panic buffer for the day. I’ll meet you there tomorrow night.” She hung up. Impolite cuss, wasn’t she? She understood Crows far too much.

  Gilgamesh hung up the phone, and called Shadow, metasensing the Skinner closely to make sure she didn’t go after him. He wouldn’t go back to his old apartment, not unless things got settled between him and the Skinner. Perhaps not even then.

  “Shadow,” Gilgamesh said. “You’ll never believe what just happened.”

  Shadow, of course, thought Gilgamesh had gone stark raving mad.

  Chapter 5

  In 1967 there were an estimated 6600 newly transformed female Transforms. Of these an estimated 630 became members of Focus households, a mortality rate of 90.4 percent (counting a secondary Monster transformations as a form of mortality).

  “Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

  Carol Hancock: March 16, 1968

  “I’ve got a counter-proposal for you, Sarah,” I said. I was on my best behavior right this moment. I had been thinking. And bored, as I had just suffered through another day of interrogation after interrogation by men in suits with no provenance. The medical tests weren’t too bad, and I had also picked up the level of my exercises to about half.

  By my calculations, I would need juice again somewhere between eight and ten days from now, and I would want juice sooner, such as ‘tomorrow’. I remained in shit shape, still healing. I had been through this before; my left shoulder wouldn’t be full strength until after my next juice draw.

  Nor did my nightmares or the goddamned whispering go away. Both were getting worse.

  “Okay, I’m listening,” Focus Teas said. This evening she had a large picnic lunch with her. She ate as I talked, sitting at a small interrogation table with her bodyguards beside her.

  “I have
an enemy, most likely a Focus. I call her Officer Canon; she was the person behind my capture. She’s also the one behind the Chimeras and their depredations, the ones your bosses are trying to pin on me.” I paced as a talked, back and forth in front of the net, and tried to ignore the rumbling in my stomach from the odor of chicken salad with walnuts and pineapple.

  “Mmm mmm,” she said, with her mouth full. She already had figured this out from everything else I had already said, though I never stated my case so plainly, and not to her. She might be a flake, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “What I haven’t told you about is the directed withdrawal scarring Officer Canon is using to keep these Chimeras functional.” She snapped to attention at my comment, hurriedly swallowing sandwich. I stopped pacing and faced her intently. “This Focus is your enemy as much as she’s mine. My offer is a true alliance between equals.” Not some ridiculous faux-enslavement arrangement.

  “How do you know any of this?” Teas said.

  “I have a friend, a researcher, who autopsied one of the Chimeras I killed, Bug-Boy, and discovered the scarring.”

  Teas squinched her eyes closed, shook her head and talked to the ceiling. “Hank, you idiot! I swear you’re trying to get yourself killed.”

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t believe Zielinski listened in on this conversation. Her response was simple exasperation. I did heartily empathize with her response, though.

  “Okay, I think I can verify this from the source,” she said. “What you don’t understand is how useless such an alliance would be.”

  “How so?”

  “Because I’d be dead.” She took a deep breath. “The master of this particular technique is Focus Schrum, a rival VIP Focus. I doubt she’s doing this herself; she probably has one of her wholly owned subsidiary Focuses doing the dirty work. Biggioni, most likely. She’s got the nerve and the nastiness, and she’s already well known as the number one Transform breaker.”

  Teas was blowing smoke. Even she didn’t believe her own comment, save about Focus Biggioni being a Transform breaker.