A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  I exercised and waited. McIntyre’s absence disturbed me the most. I had been sure he was the Fed in charge of my interrogation. Did the first Focuses fire him, too?

  At lunch I found another letter from Zielinski, again in white wax on a paper napkin.

  There’s a storm moving in and you might want to take cover. The storm looks like it’s going to blow down the entryway and I expect any new entryway to be much sturdier. If by some miracle you get this before the old entryway gets blown down, understand that despite what it may appear the riSK is much smaller if you go through the entryway than if you take shelter.

  Crap. Zielinski intimated he would be able to break me out of Teas’ clutches far easier than breaking me out of the CDC. Oh, and Teas was no Keaton. I didn’t trust his judgment. The tag offer still bothered me. I didn’t have any interest in working against Lori or any confidence in Teas being able to keep me out of her boss’s hands. Especially given my fear that Teas’ boss was Focus Patterson, the ‘honorary leader’ of the first Focuses and she of the Pittsburgh hellhole.

  I expected a nighttime visit from the new Focus in charge, and got nothing.

  I had a very bad suspicion I knew exactly where this headed.

  Tonya Biggioni: March 19, 1968

  Tonya’s most pressing current household problem walked into her makeshift sitting room a half hour before dawn, following her orders of last night. His name was Snake, and he was all attitude and cockiness. She understood why Alliniece, his original Focus, had trouble with this one. Tonya suspected she would have a little trouble with him herself.

  For this mess she gave up Shot? She was still pissed at Polly over the strong-arm tactics that lost her Shot, her favorite loaner Transform.

  Snake was a little over six feet tall, in his late twenties, heavily muscled and covered with tattoos. His nickname came from the tattooed cobra winding its way up his right arm. His long greasy hair partly covered mean dark eyes. He stood, wary, in the center of the room, and tried to hide the fact he studied her.

  “Come, sit down,” she said, from her position on the couch. He would relax some if she got him to sit.

  “I’ll stand,” he said.

  Tonya kept his juice count high despite his attitude. This was the introduction and welcome. She needed to start things out on a positive note.

  “Your choice,” she said. “I’m glad to have you in my household, and I think you’ll like it here.” Eventually. She goosed up his juice count as she spoke.

  “You’re doing something to my mind.”

  “Yes.”

  Snake narrowed his eyes, ready to do something dangerous. Tonya didn’t worry about any physical danger. She was quicker than he was, and stronger.

  Plus, of course, she was his Focus. She had the ability to lay him out without lifting a finger.

  Snake controlled his temper, crossed his arms and eyed her with eyes of ice.

  “Leave my mind alone. It’s mine and nobody else fucks with it.”

  Tonya shrugged. “Not your call.”

  Snake’s jaw clenched. He looked ready to say something more, but Tonya interrupted him.

  “You’re a Transform and the rules are different. Let me tell you how this is going to work.”

  “You can tell me all you want. That don’t mean I’m gonna let you screw with my head.”

  Tonya leaned back in the couch and indicated the other end again. “You should sit,” she said.

  “Go to hell.”

  Tonya smiled. He couldn’t get beyond his surface reaction to her, a mere nineteen year old slip of a girl in a man’s world.

  She would change his attitude soon.

  “You don’t want to be a Transform. You don’t want to take orders, especially from any woman. You don’t want to get along with people. You don’t want to cooperate and obey rules. A normal can get away with your attitude, but you’re a Transform now, and you no longer can. You don’t like the hand fate dealt you? Tough. Live with it…or die. You’re going to choose life, and I’m going to teach you how it’s done.”

  “The hell you say, lady. Alliniece tried to screw with my mind, too, and she got nowhere,” Snake said. The snake on his arm writhed, as his muscles clenched and loosened.

  Tonya shrugged again. “The mind screwing, as you call it, must be done. You’re going to find what I do disconcerting under the best of circumstances, and unpleasant if you try to fight me. You’ll find you appreciate my work once we start working out the knots in your head. I see a lot in you that’s good, and I think you have a lot of potential.”

  She didn’t lie. He was a strong one and the strong ones always did well once Tonya cleaned them up.

  “Fuck you.”

  Tonya smiled. “You’ll see it, too, after a while.”

  Tonya had more to say, but a knock on the door interrupted her. Delia stuck her head in before Tonya had a chance to answer. She felt a flash of anger and barely caught herself before she let it out on Delia. As her aide, Delia knew better, and wouldn’t interrupt without good cause. She didn’t deserve a dose of her Focus’s irritation with Snake.

  “It’s the CDC,” Delia said. “They want you down there as soon as possible. The Arm just got someone killed.”

  Oh, hell.

  Tonya looked over at Snake, his attitude and rough edges, and hoped he knew enough not to do anything stupid while she was gone. He needed a lot more of her time and attention before he would be safe to leave alone.

  “Get Ralph to stay with him,” she told Delia, wishing she still had Shot. “Get the team moving. I want to be out of the house in fifteen minutes.”

  ---

  Thirteen people filled the conference room at the Professional Building, a room with only space for nine. Dr. Ascot led her in, whispering names and titles as he went.

  “Special Agent Clay Ellicot, with the FBI. The man next to him is his boss, Assistant Director Joe Patrelle, the head of the FBI’s Transform division. Dr. Jeffers is my boss. Ed Wilson, Rack Schweitzel, and Maurice Dupree also work for Dr. Jeffers. Wayne Leeson is head of Security here. Richard Bentwyler is a psychologist. DuBois is from Baylor, Cooper is from Harvard, and O’Brien and Riddelhauser are from Johns Hopkins. Major Meade is from the Army.”

  Tonya recognized Bentwyler and Cooper from her Council-level master Network directory. She had never met either of them before, but she knew they had both worked with Zielinski in the past; after she looked them over, she decided it would be a cold day in hell before she would count on them to follow her orders in a hot situation like this. Neither of them impressed her, save cerebrally. Joe Patrelle was an old adversary, an opaque man with significant hidden political backing and little interest in keeping Transforms alive.

  Dr. Ascot didn’t bother to introduce the secretary taking notes in the corner. Zielinski wasn’t there; nor were any of the Network’s FBI people. Nor was Special Agent McIntyre, or any representatives from the Federal Marshals, the bureau who controlled Hancock’s legal status. Tonya tried to get a read on the room and repressed a shiver. The room was an adrenaline, testosterone, and cortisol cocktail, steeped in the foul stench of nasty politics at work.

  Dr. Ascot managed to find seats at the table for the both of them, bumping Dupree and Schweitzel off the table and to a pair of chairs at the back of the room. Tonya recognized Riddelhauser as the alcoholic. Riddelhauser also sat in the back of the room and looked like he wanted to fade into the wall. She wondered if he would smell of alcohol to her, or if only an Arm would be able to notice his affliction.

  Except for the secretary, Tonya was the only woman in the room. The men would resent her presence here. Most of these people weren’t used to dealing with Transforms. She read the room again, and as she feared, most of the participants looked at her, from the corners of their eyes, with more than token distrust. She ignored their attention with the comfortable ease of someone used to an entire household of people watching her every move for years on end. She weighed the use of her charisma and
decided she would save her juice tricks for later. In no way would she make herself the target for later backbiting and blame-gaming.

  “If everyone would please be seated I’d like to get started,” Assistant Director Patrelle said, calling everyone to order.

  “Yesterday, Dr. White, a visitor here from the Baylor College of Medicine, killed Dr. Vance, a junior doctor in his entourage,” Patrelle said. “Hancock had goaded him into it, by first insulting him about the end of his marriage, and then later by pointing out the junior doctor as the man his wife was having relations with.” If he based his assertion on what Tonya had seen in the tape, his claim was absurd. All Hancock did was mention Dr. Vance’s absence. “Dr. White confronted the accused doctor, the doctor admitted the liaison, Dr. White shot and killed the doctor, and confessed immediately to the FBI. We can’t charge Hancock with murder, but morally and ethically, we know she’s the one to blame. After a long discussion with Dr. Jeffers, I’ve concluded, because of her manipulations, Hancock broke the agreement she made with Special Agent McIntyre regarding her behavior. We’re here to decide what to do about this.”

  The room of unhappy men started arguing as soon as Patrelle finished. Tonya didn’t say anything. She just sat back in her chair and observed.

  One faction, led by Leeson, the head of Security, believed Hancock too dangerous to keep incarcerated; they wanted to execute Hancock yesterday. Another faction believed anything they got out of the Arm was worth the grief, even if Hancock manipulated her interrogators. A third group believed they needed her, but before they would be able to move forward they needed something more than Hancock’s minimal cooperation. Patrelle and Ellicot of the FBI, part of the third group, in specific wanted more information from Hancock regarding criminal issues, which Tonya translated as ‘more information about Stacy Keaton’.

  The men argued for almost an hour before they managed to reduce the number of their problems to one: they needed the Arm’s real cooperation, but they didn’t know how to get it. Tonya listened as they argued, wrestling with her conscience.

  If Tonya followed the spirit of Wini’s orders, she needed to volunteer her expertise and break Hancock for them. Hancock, broken, would finger Rizzari and Zielinski, and they would catch grief from the Feds. Their fall wouldn’t be a bad thing, not with Tonya possessing the power to save them and extract favors from them.

  Her conscience nagged. Hancock might be a murderer of innocents, but her captivity stopped her depredations and satisfied the authorities’ need for justice. Worse, the thought of breaking another Major Transform, in public, made her feel physically ill. Worse, Hancock’s coerced answers might even expose Tonya’s dealings with Keaton.

  Tonya decided she had little choice in the matter. She didn’t see any easy way to dodge her responsibility or her orders. Offering to help, though, didn’t mean she had to force these men to accept the offer.

  When the discussion wound to another halt Tonya tapped on Dr. Ascot’s sleeve and indicated an interest in speaking. Dr. Ascot turned to whisper to Dr. Jeffers. Dr. Jeffers shook his head.

  Fine. Tonya shifted her attention to her mental to-do list, working on the details of how she planned on expanding her household’s real estate business.

  The mention of her name startled her out of her reverie five minutes later.

  “You know, the one thing we haven’t tried is to sic Focus Biggioni at the Arm,” Dr. Jeffers said. “She told me yesterday that if we put her in charge of getting the Arm’s cooperation, she would win the Arm over.” Jeffers turned to Tonya. “Is your offer still open?”

  She nodded. Damn Jeffers. He knew she wasn’t a joke. He was even open minded enough to consider her an asset, at least after all the other assets crapped out.

  “Who cares?” Assistant Director Patrelle said. “This isn’t a job for a political hack. Focus Biggioni’s just another politician, albeit farther up the sewing circle hierarchy than our previous totally useless Focus advisor.”

  She blinked and let a coy, almost flirtatious look settle on her face. “Focuses do have different specialties. One of mine is mending recalcitrant Transforms so that they can get along better with their Focuses. I have enough experience with this to make a difference here.” She gave Patrelle a smile, a message she knew he would be able to read as ‘this ballbuster breaks men’. He had impugned her honor. In her mind, she started to see the psychological resemblance between Patrelle and her newest, Snake.

  “I don’t want Hancock mended, Biggioni,” Patrelle said. His harshness won her friends around the table, without her needing to use her Focus charisma. “I want her broken. Do you think you can do something like that?”

  Tonya didn’t answer, indicating the question was beneath her. Given her often-proclaimed comments to the Council and to Polly that she did not ‘break’ Transforms, this and Patrelle’s behavior would be perfect cover for her to weasel out of this mess.

  Dr. Cooper cleared his throat. “Assistant Director, you’re insinuating that just because Focus Biggioni’s a woman she couldn’t do anything so harsh. In that you’re wrong.” Tonya cleared her own throat, trying to attract Cooper’s attention and charismatically shut him up. She hadn’t expected any of this group to stick up for her. Worse, Dr. Cooper didn’t meet her gaze. “Her nickname among the Transform community is the Wicked Witch of the East, because of what she does to Transforms.” Dr. Cooper’s real argument was the opposite of his stated comment: this woman is too powerful and of course you don’t trust powerful women, do you? Nasty. His comment elicited the expected male salty laughs.

  Perfect. Dr. Cooper was one of Flo Ackermann’s contacts, and Flo didn’t want Tonya to break Hancock while the Feds held the Arm, so in a bass-ackwards sort of way they had become allies on this matter.

  “Don’t dismiss Focus Biggioni’s talents so quickly,” Richard Bentwyler said. “As you all know I’ve worked with the Transform community for many years and worked with Hancock in St. Louis before the FBI took over her treatment and hardened the Arm beyond salvation.” Now someone had to go and ruin the effect. She caught his gaze, about to charismatically order him to shut up, when several old facts rattled into place. St. Louis. Wini Adkins’ old Transform Detention Center home. Bentwyler was Adkins’ eyes here and off limits for her manipulation. Dammit!

  “Your point?” Dr. Jeffers said, before Patrelle leapt down Bentwyler’s throat and cut him a few new orifices from the inside out.

  “Breaking this Arm, though not stated in such a crude manner, is what the Focus Council sent Focus Biggioni here to do,” Bentwyler said. “Hancock’s a renegade Transform, at least from the point of view of the Transform community. My backers aren’t at all opposed to the authorities making a lesson out of her.”

  Darn it! Bentwyler had stated Wini’s position with eloquence. Tonya couldn’t wiggle out of her assigned tasks now.

  Dr. Jeffers turned to Tonya. “Can you do what Assistant Director Patrelle wants and break Hancock?”

  Tonya answered his question with a question. “Can you verify that the medical data you’ve given me is accurate?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then if you put me in charge, she’ll be completely cooperative by the 25th, six days from now.”

  “She’ll be needing juice by then,” Dr. Jeffers said.

  “Have it ready.”

  “Focus Teas was the one…”

  “As I said before, different Focuses have different strengths, and different political contacts,” Tonya said, a tiny conspiratorial smile on her face. Let these fools do the dirty work involved in getting juice for the Arm. They would need to learn how, if they wanted Hancock usable, long term. Tonya wasn’t interested in volunteering to do anything outside of the confines of the signed contract.

  Dr. Jeffers nodded. The juice problem was now his to deal with.

  “We can’t give you carte blanche, Focus Biggioni,” Patrelle said.

  “I’m not going to need to interview Hancock in person. N
or am I going to need to move Hancock, interfere with her security, or hinder whatever legal efforts you have going,” she said. “I’m not going to do anything you haven’t done. I’m just going to do things right.”

  Patrelle licked his lips and decided, resigned to what he thought was an unnecessary delay. He nodded to Dr. Jeffers, the other person here who had to sign off on the deal.

  “So, what is it that you’re suggesting, Focus Biggioni?” Dr. Jeffers said.

  Tonya took a deep breath. Here we go. Success or failure. Choose your poison. Once in motion, there would be no way to stop the process.

  “Gather round, and I’ll draw this out for you,” Tonya said.

  Chapter 7

  The number of actual secondary Monster transformations in 1967 was estimated to be 875. This number, larger than either the number of surviving male or female Transforms for 1967, is typical percentagewise for all years before the middle 1970s, and was much abused by those members of society who agitated for the termination (judicial execution) of all Transforms. It is, however, a misnomer. The first year mortality rate among all Monsters is estimated to be over 95%, most occurring in the first month.

  “Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

  Carol Hancock: March 19, 1968

  The intercom clicked on a half hour after dinner.

  “Carol Hancock?” the intercom voice said. I recognized the voice, but not from my incarceration.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” I said, sardonic. Where else would I be?

  “I’m Dr. Lewis Jeffers, head of the CDC’s Transform Research Division.”

  “I’m honored.” I was. Now I knew where I had heard his voice before: on television, from innumerable appearances on the evening news and Sunday morning pundit shows. “What can I do for you?”