A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  The Skinner nodded. She had been concentrating on his story in a way that by itself unnerved him. “Let’s go back to the point where Hancock got taken down. You said right at that point you had a hard time metasensing her. What sort of ‘hard time’?”

  Gilgamesh went back to the memory. “She faded in and out. Irregularly. This happens at times due to interference from buildings and electronics.”

  “The whole area was crawling with buildings, all about the same size. No more than six stories.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Yet you didn’t have any problem with the other buildings, earlier.”

  “Correct, ma’am.”

  “The building in question is a set of apartments above a storefront, a place selling picture frames and similar sorts of things. The only electronics I know of that causes my metasense to go haywire are large telephone exchanges and computers.”

  Gilgamesh paused and thought. She was right. He knew of nothing special about the building in question to cause such a problem. “Ma’am, I agree. I speculated earlier the Beast Master of the Beast Men might have been in the area, since his or her Beast Men were also in the area. Another possible reason for the glow fading may be the active metasense protections on a Major Transform. It’s possible the Beast Master was present among the FBI and State Troopers. This would fit with my other hypothesis, that the Beast Master and Officer Canon are one and the same.”

  The Skinner got all predatory and tense. Gilgamesh, waiting for something like this, readied himself to bolt back into the rocks and farther up the slope. “One of the things puzzling me was how Carol got taken down,” the Skinner said. “They had a fucking limp-dick shooting gallery set up. They set it up way too fast to be any good. The odds of her escaping from such a shit job was pretty damn high. She should have escaped them at least 9 out of 10 times, likely more.” The Skinner looked around. Metasensed around. Pinned Gilgamesh with her gaze. He backed off, but her eyes opened wide at his reaction and she waved at him to sit back down in a dismissive fashion.

  She wasn’t angry at him. If anything, she felt protective. Far more comforting than a Focus sitting at a desk in her household working on household paperwork. He sat.

  Tiamat would have said “Jumpy, aren’t you.” The Skinner said, instead: “I think Officer Canon, a known Major Transform, took the shot that took down Hancock. While specifically hiding from you.”

  Gilgamesh had another flash of Arm thinking: if Officer Canon could hide from him, then, then Officer Canon could use him to get at the Skinner now.

  Which meant he possessed some important information he needed to pass along now, information giving him a chance of staying alive and free. “Ma’am, I’ve run into what I believe to be the Beast Master’s metasense shielding trick, before, in a tense situation. He or she didn’t possess the skill to tune this trick to cover from both my metasense and Carol’s metasense at the same time.”

  The Skinner relaxed a tiny bit. Only, with the Skinner relaxed, Gilgamesh now panicked over the Skinner’s revelation. “This Officer Canon Beast Master is too powerful!” Pause. “Why hasn’t he or she taken me out?”

  “That’s what minions are for,” the Skinner said. She spat in disgust. “Typical Focus bitch attitude, only this Focus bitch keeps a household of Chimeras – your Beast Men – alive, along with at least one harem of part-Monster Transforms – and considers law enforcement officers her minions. I smell yet another killer internal Focus fight. From this noxious Focus perspective us Arms, Crows and Beast Men are big weapons, and a chance to take out one of the other side’s weapons and get vengeance would be irresistible.”

  Implying there had been other, similarly deadly, internal Focus fights. No wonder Shadow and the other Crows didn’t trust the Focuses.

  “Ma’am, you’re in similar danger.”

  “Huh.” Oh. She knew that already, didn’t she?

  “So, ma’am, have you…”

  “Yes. Hancock wasn’t being her usual fuck-up self. She was taken out by a cuntlicking Major Transform with a motherfucking plan. She could have done better, but hell so could we all when we get attacked by other Major Transforms.”

  It was obvious, so he had to say it. He didn’t want to, but he had to. “Ma’am, when do we leave?” He can’t imagine how stressed working with the Skinner would make him, but he couldn’t refuse. He would worry about the recovery later.

  “We?” The Skinner laughed. She picked up a fist-sized rock and smashed it, hard and loud, on the boulder she sat on. Gilgamesh jumped and skittered, to end up behind a rock about fifteen feet upslope. “You’ve got potential, Crow, but you’re not ready for the big leagues yet. You’re perfect for Hancock. Unfortunately, despite how much I need your metasense, you’d be too much of a liability and you’d slow me down and endanger me. So…there is no ‘we’.”

  Gilgamesh reddened and slunk down farther behind the rock. His reaction to her rock made a very good point.

  The Skinner stood and leapt down the slope and into the sand, leaving a crater where she landed. She retrieved her weapons, then on the way out turned to him. “Go ahead and stick around to do whatever you Crows do. I’ll bring Hancock back to my place. We have some talking to do.” Gilgamesh winced. Said ‘talking’ would likely involve fighting, groveling and egregious torture. “Just stay out of my house!”

  “Yes, ma’am. Of course, ma’am.”

  When the Skinner drove off Gilgamesh slumped down, allowing himself to melt into a puddle of warm Crow goo. He hadn’t expected to end up humiliated. Scared, yes; humiliated, no.

  He must get better, and stop being so much the young Crow. He had some practicing and experimentation to do.

  Part 2

  Breaks and Failures

  Said one among them – “Surely not in vain

  My substance of the common Earth was ta'en

  And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,

  Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again.”

  Then said a Second – “Ne'er a peevish Boy

  Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy,

  And He that with his hand the Vessel made

  Will surely not in after Wrath destroy.”

  — from ‘The Rubaiyat’ of Omar Khayyam

  Chapter 6

  The mortality rate among new male and female Transforms can be divided into three parts. First, roughly 15 percent of these deaths occur within four days after completion of the transformation; these deaths appear to be unavoidable even if the male or female Transform is placed immediately in a Focus household. Second, roughly 15 percent more occur from four days to eight days after the completion of the transformation. These deaths are the result of an abnormal transformation, but are avoidable if the male or female Transform is placed in a Focus household before death occurs. The other 70 percent of the deaths occur from juice withdrawal (male Transforms), juice oversupply followed by a Monster transformation (female Transforms), or judicial execution (“Transform Euthanasia”) before withdrawal or oversupply occurs.

  “Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

  Tonya Biggioni: March 18, 1968

  “Focus Biggioni, come in. I’m so glad you could make it.” Dr. Lewis Jeffers rose to greet her as she entered his office in the CDC Admin building. He was tall, with distinguished white hair and a wise face. Dr. Jeffers, the head of the Transform Division of the CDC, had long served as the public face of Transform science in the United States.

  Tonya sat in one of the two high-backed leather chairs that faced the large mahogany desk. Jeffers reigned from the corner office, large, with windows on two sides, paneling, and polished wooden shelves to hold his leather bound books.

  She was glad Dr. Jeffers didn’t make his lair in the Detention Center proper. The last time she had visited the Virginia Transform Detention Center, for a conference President Kennedy called on Transform Sickness, the place had made her skin crawl. The building had been horrific, the epitome of all Focu
s households gone bad. Now, the place was presumably much worse.

  “My pleasure,” Tonya said. She wasn’t much fond of Jeffers and his doctors. The Focuses had too much history with these particular doctors, from the early days of Transform Sickness, when they and their Transforms suffered through being Jeffers’ doctors’ lab rats. She would be polite, though.

  Tonya wished her politeness toward Dr. Jeffers didn’t include having to leave her bodyguards outside. Without them, she felt naked.

  “What can I do for you?” Tonya said, crossing her ankles underneath the chair.

  “We really appreciate your coming,” he said. “Our previous Focus advisor left with no warning late last night and we have an issue we’d like to discuss with the Focus establishment.”

  Well. Teas’s departure would save Tonya a kettle and a half of grief. She had feared she would need to evict Focus Teas, physically, from the CDC complex.

  “What sort of issue?” Tonya said.

  “You’re familiar with the fact that the Federal Marshals and the FBI captured one of the most wanted fugitives in the country, the Major Transform Carol Hancock?”

  “Congratulate them for a job well done,” Tonya said. She didn’t want to admit anything to Dr. Jeffers. Too many dark undercurrents flowed beneath the already odd surface of this situation for Tonya to let her guard down even a little.

  Dr. Jeffers nodded. “We’re seeing some odd behavior, though, and we’re starting to suspect she might have somehow gotten to the operation’s chief interrogator, Special Agent Thomas McIntyre.”

  “Gotten to how? Blackmail?” Tonya said.

  “Unclear,” Dr. Jeffers said. “Although none of our doctors noticed any problems of this sort with Hancock, they did note almost Focus-like charisma effects regarding the relationship between the Special Agent and Hancock. They hypothesize Arm charisma only works on compatible people with a warrior or soldier mentality.”

  Your doctors don’t know shit, Tonya said, but not out loud.

  She wasn’t hearing the entire story.

  “Why do you even care?” Tonya said, doing a little prodding to get a more meaningful response. “Isn’t this a law enforcement problem? If your doctors are getting the information they need, they should be happy.”

  “This is a high profile effort with an exceptional level of Executive Branch involvement. Because of the magnitude of the case even President Johnson himself has been advised of Hancock’s capture.” Jeffers’ deep voice always sounded so trustworthy and wise. She was supposed to feel flattered at being included.

  He also hadn’t answered her question.

  She decided to answer it for him. “She’s being held under medical quarantine, then, and is not under arrest.”

  Jeffers reaction mixed surprise with wariness. No, Focus Teas hadn’t impressed him at all. Probably not for years, as he had been the Transform Detention Center chief during the Quarantine years, when Teas and quite a few other prominent Focuses were held here.

  “I can’t comment on that,” Dr. Jeffers said. “National security.”

  “I see,” Tonya said. “The UFA Council authorized me to strike a deal with you regarding my services,” she said. Time to shake down the CDC. “In particular, the UFA Council requires access to all the information you have and will gain from Hancock. We also have several questions of our own that we want answered. In addition, a consulting fee will be required for my personal services.”

  Jeffers grimaced at her mercantilism, but, alas, didn’t immediately turn down her demands. “We’ll certainly pass all the useful information on to you. We’ll do our best to see your questions addressed.”

  Tonya ignored his air of disappointment. If she worried about what people thought of her, she wouldn’t be the Wicked Witch of the East. “All the information. Every word the Arm said and will say, every medical test, every picture. We’ll decide what’s useful, not you. Also, our questions go on the top of the queue, with the same right of follow-up as any of the other questions on the list.”

  Jeffers managed to convey the impression that he was both insulted at her lack of trust and too mature to argue with her. “That’s quite a bit of information. I’m not certain what you’ll do with it all. But we can certainly supply it to you if you’re interested.” He smiled, like a father indulging some childish request.

  “I want this in writing.”

  Jeffers ran his hand through his hair and gave up on his expectations of meek Transform community compliance to his demands. He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “All right, then. What are you willing to do as part of your consultation?” Now he let his hard edges show. This was business.

  Tonya leaned back in her own chair. “I’ll review your materials, make suggestions, and answer questions about the best way to get information from a Major Transform.”

  Jeffers leaned forward. “The previous Focus involved here only wanted personal access to Hancock. The advice she provided us was useless.”

  Teas, you idiot! “Did she get access?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a Focus with a different philosophy. I won’t go within range of the Arm. Neither will my Transforms.” Focuses were supposed to be officially terrified of Arms, as per the orders of the Council. Teas, of course, thought herself above all Council orders and suggestions. “I’ll commute down from Philadelphia with up to six of my people attending. You’ll be responsible for expenses, as well as a consulting fee of $50 per hour.” $50 an hour was outrageous, the cost of hiring a top of the line lawyer. Tonya hoped her demand would scare Jeffers off, so he would cut off negotiations and let her wiggle out from under Wini’s ridiculous order. She caught Jeffers’ eyes and bent her charisma to the task of making him toss her out on her ass.

  Jeffers had dealt with too many Focuses, alas. The only effect of her charisma on him was to spark the desire to negotiate. “We can hire some other Focus for a lot less than $50 an hour.”

  Tonya repressed a smile. “Are you looking for good or are you looking for cheap? If you’re looking for cheap, I’m sure the Council would be willing to recommend someone else.” Be cheap. Try Flo Ackermann. This job is perfect for her.

  Jeffers smiled sardonically. Tonya smiled back.

  “How long are you available for consultation?” he asked, implicitly agreeing to her demands.

  Dammit. The bastard knew quite well her reputation as a top-end Focus.

  “Two weeks, or until you don’t need me any longer, whichever comes first. Weekdays only.” She had a trip scheduled this Saturday to visit her daughter Deborah. Perhaps this demand would toss enough sand in the gears to stop this nonsense cold.

  “Four weeks, including weekends.”

  “Three weeks, and I can turn down anything that isn’t directly related to the capture of the Arm.”

  “Two weeks including weekends, and no right of refusal.”

  “Four weeks, and with the right of refusal.”

  Jeffers sighed again. “Done.”

  Dammit!

  Two hours and a signed contract later, Tonya finally settled in, in a private conference room on the third floor. Boxes of records from the Arm’s incarceration, including two boxes of reels, buried the conference room table. She had wrangled a real office out of Jeffers when he insisted on the right to remove the names of the FBI agents from the CDC transcripts, but the office wasn’t ready yet. Tonya had Marty and Delia with her. This would be a good time to break the both of them in on her dealings outside the household, as both of them would be, long term, up to their juice-suffused eyebrows in Tonya’s external problems. Delia would get to run errands and take notes, one of the main duties of the house secretary. Marty was here because she wanted someone to bounce ideas off, the traditional job of her household president. Danny and Pete were currently out in the lobby, taking a break from bodyguard duty, but they would be back soon. Pete was Delia’s husband rather than a Transform himself, but he still made a good bodyguard. Marty had bo
dyguard training as well and made a good backup.

  Besides her own people, Dr. Ascot sat with her. Ascot was just shy of thirty, too young to have been involved in the Quarantine, with an unfortunately baby-round face. He was the junior-most doctor on the team and because of his youth, he rated the dog duty of dancing attendance on her. He didn’t appear at all happy about the situation. Focuses were supposed to be patients, not expert consultants, from his godly MD perspective. However, his freedom from the taint of the Quarantine, unlike Dr. Jeffers, made Dr. Ascot easier to deal with.

  “Elaine will be back with dinner for you shortly,” he told her. “There’s a sandwich shop in town, and she’ll pick up something there.”

  “Is she going to bring back enough for all my people?” Tonya said. The doctor nodded. “Did you remember to tell her that I eat more than a normal?”

  The doctor nodded again. “Of course,” he said, more than a little nervous and quite put out by her use of the term ‘normal’. Tonya put on the show, her full Focus presence and charisma. No one in the entire building would miss the fact an important Focus was involved in this effort. She even had Danny slip a few copies of the old Time magazine, where her face had graced the cover, in a few strategic locations around the Professional Building. Tonya fought dirty when she needed to fight.

  Tonya studied him and smiled honest approval. “Good,” she said. There was hope for this one yet.

  Dr. Ascot smiled back, awkward, and surprised to find himself feeling pleased at her approval. She nodded to him, gathering little bits of loyalty almost out of habit. There was work to do, though, and Tonya buried her smile again, and turned to the stack of files. This promised to be a long day.