“I don’t believe an Arm can do any such thing if we’re trying to stop her.”
“Ann, I could do that, and I’m a Crow, dammit!” Sky paused. “I just did. Tonight. Tell me, how do you think I got here? I didn’t knock on the front door.”
Ann pursed her lips, realizing the obvious. “Nonsense. If Arms are so powerful, why don’t the Arms have the Focuses enslaved?”
“Eh, why should I tell you?” Sky said, openly pissy now. “Perhaps I have some secrets I’m not willing to divulge because you’re not a part of my household.”
Ann frowned, not saying a thing.
“Ann,” Lori said. “Normally I don’t like to pull rank as a Focus, but seriously, the reason why the Arms don’t have the Focuses enslaved is because a Focus, wielding a household, is more powerful than an Arm. Only a few Focuses, myself included, have the spine to stand up to an Arm without a household backing them up.”
“You think Inferno can’t stand up to an Arm without you? I thought the whole point of the way you have things set up…”
“You will be able to stand up to an Arm, but only after you figure out how. Taking many casualties in the process. Sacrificing fellow housemates,” Lori said. “We’re dealing with an entirely different question, though: setting up a working relationship with an Arm we’ve never dealt with before.”
“What do we do about Sky?”
“How about just accepting him as he is?” Lori said. “For one thing, assume whatever Sky wanted to learn about the household, he’s learned. He’s the foremost Crow as far as metasense and enhanced normal senses are concerned, if I’ve figured out what passes for Crow society enough to make such a judgment. Forget about our precious secrets and go on.”
“Thank you, my love. Someday, I’d like to know how you figured this out, since I haven’t exactly blabbed any such thing.”
Sky thought for a few moments more.
“Ann doesn’t trust me, my love,” Sky said. “I’m not sure I blame her.” Sky paused, thought for a moment. “I’m moving to Boston.”
“You are?” Lori said. “Why?”
“You. A baby who’s going to show up in about nine months. Things like that.”
“Can you move in? Live here?”
“I’ll live in a nearby culvert. Let the rain and snow fall on me as they will. Hide from the scary squirrels and field mice. Such things don’t bother a Crow. We eat garbage, remember?”
“You’re welcome to move in.”
“I can’t. Not full time. Crows need space.”
“There’s got to be a way. Otherwise the goal we’re working towards doesn’t make sense,” Ann said.
“Perhaps there is,” Sky said. “Does this mean we know all the answers we need already? Certainly not.” He took a deep breath, and rested his left hand on Lori’s chin. “The idea of marriage between a Crow and a Focus appeals to my instincts. I would normally love to drag this out in a more romantic setting, my love, but would you marry me?”
“No.”
“Eh?”
“Although to make you happy, I’ll answer ‘yes’.”
“I’m lost,” Sky said.
“I’m arguing semantics, my love. Marriage is a word loaded with many meanings and virtually none of them mean a thing to either of us. I was raised Catholic. Shall we do a formal Catholic marriage then? Do you want to trust the juice not to destroy us while we’re trying to carry out any of the standard Catholic marriage vows? You think Buddhist would be any better?”
“Point to you,” Sky said. “I propose to you that we raise our children together, openly, within your household.”
“I accept your proposal.”
The juice moved. Sky blinked.
“You knew that was coming, didn’t you, my love?”
“Of course.”
“What did we do?”
Lori closed her eyes and leaned against his shoulder. “I think we’ve just arranged to share our metasense when we’re very close to each other. I can sense dross now. Who knows what else will fall out of this? We just made permanent whatever we did in the attic, something new and unexpected: not a tag, not charisma, not a juice pattern, but something else we haven’t run into before. Welcome to the household, Sky.”
Sky shivered, glad to be under the comforter. Too fast! Too fast! Letting the juice ‘just do things’ was too risky.
Still, Sky suspected he had just participated in one of those appalling Transform discoveries that ended up changing everything for all the Transforms. Eventually. The fact he could practically metasense Anne-Marie watching and cheering him on, through the Dreaming, didn’t help, either.
Chapter 9
In 1967 40 new Focuses were registered in the United States. It is estimated there were in actuality 45 Focus transformations.
“Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”
Carol Hancock: March 23, 1968
I had lost track of time, but enough time had passed to take me down to low juice levels. The evidence? The return of my rashes. I couldn’t trust my own juice count sense – too much juice monkey. I had also figured out a long-shot way to get the information out about my discoveries: I burned the information into my memories using a couple of tenths of a point of juice I couldn’t spare. If I got out alive, no matter how bad off I was mentally, my burned-in memories would someday surface.
I woke up from a half sleep half meditation when something flickered on my metasense. A Transform! Untagged. Male, with low juice.
I barely believed my own metasense. Were they about to back down from their bluff? The Focus bitch who thought this out had a good plan, but giving me a Transform so early would ruin everything. They must have gotten cold feet, afraid I would press myself into withdrawal. These people were too weak. I let anticipation build inside.
They wheeled the Transform around the Detention Center building, down into the guts of the place, the basement, where they stopped. Dammit. I was up here, on the second floor.
Ah. I got it. They put the Transform in my old cell. My turf.
A moment or two later I caught the scent of the Transform through the building’s air circulation system. Oh, the Transform smelled wonderful. Perfect. I guessed they were pissed at me for destroying my current cell and would be moving me back to my old fouled place. I would cope. I could cope with nearly anything if they got me more juice.
The floor rumbled underneath me and it took me a moment to figure out why. They were opening the heavy rolling doors. I wondered if they were about to apologize or conduct some sort of formal interrogation. I imagined their tactics: “Here’s your juice. You want the juice, you’ll have to tell us everything, no games.” This was the trick I had anticipated, the trick they needed to push me over the edge and break me. Only they had jumped the gun by at least a day.
Nevertheless, this would be bad. I wouldn’t have to fake being broken. Hell, I already was, at least somewhat. However, I would be able to hold out and still keep my secrets.
The rolling doors finished their rumbling open…and everything remained dark.
Nothing.
More nothing.
Then a hum and a flash, the light of a television screen coming on, blinding bright after so long in the dark. A television on the other side of the Monster-proof fence. I blinked tears out of my eyes and glanced at the screen.
The Transform.
My Transform.
Holy mother of God.
I closed my eyes and meditated. Minutes passed and became a half hour. Nothing changed. No contact. Every minute I fought to maintain my control and composure, but as each minute passed, the stark realization that they would be waving my juice supply in front of my nose, and nothing more, sank further into my soul. Drop by drop, each of the hard lessons of control I learned from Keaton and on my own in Chicago frayed away from me. Outwardly, save through my inaction, I betrayed nothing of this. I refused to shatter, refused to contemplate showing any sign of surrender. I wanted to pray but refraine
d, still unwilling to deal with the avatar of Satan pretending to be God here.
The minutes continued to pass. Despite my meditation, I became hyper-aware of my prey, all aspects of his scent and his emotions. He was in agony. Lost, not knowing what was happening to him. He was a good man, a normal man, an average man, caught in the bloody gears of hell. No Focus awaited him. Death was his only option, and unless I came to him, his death would be painful and horrifying.
Hours crept by. To me, minutes became hours. My control continued to slip, until only a barest thread of control remained.
Hours later, the Transform slipped into peri-withdrawal and began to twitch and moan.
My gut fell in free fall, as if kicked out of an airplane. Words left me, thoughts left me, leaving nothing but raw emotion. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the television. When the Transform moaned, I moaned. When he twitched, I twitched. He went from being mine to being me.
Tears ran down my face.
He breathed. I breathed.
A pain spike ran through him. I felt his pain.
I entered the world of dream while still awake. The white princess played pinball. Today I saw her haunted and evil sea-green eyes. The pinball changed from chrome steel to white burning fire and chased me still. Around the evil white princess the Madonna stalked, the Christ child in her arms today my male Transform. Today she couldn’t even fight the evil white princess.
I thought without words, just emotions. I wanted the Madonna to win, to banish the evil white princess and take the waking dream world away from me. Without words I did something I would have never thought to do if I had words to speak – I burned juice in the waking dream to get my way. Not much. A little.
A little proved enough. The last thing I saw of the dream world, before it vanished, was from my place in the arms of the Madonna. She marked my forehead with the sign of the cross…and I came back to myself.
I remained in my cell, pressed up against the Monster-proof net. The closed circuit television still showed the volunteer Transform and he remained in peri-withdrawal. I rode the A-Train on the fast track to hell, and there would be no escape.
The Madonna had blessed me, though, and the incessant whispering had gone away.
Without warning, I shivered in fear, realization and exultation. Thousands of pieces of disparate information suddenly congealed into one true fact: the person behind this torture understood Arms, thoroughly and completely. This wasn’t some random Focus bitch with delusions of grandeur that got her rocks off torturing her household. This Focus bitch not only knew how to break people, she knew how to handle Arms. A Focus bitch who understood our strengths and weaknesses. Who handled Arms, in specific, one Arm. Who broke Transforms for a living. No, the mastermind behind this wasn’t Focus Patterson. Only one Focus bitch on the entire planet would be able to pull this off and I knew who she was.
“You’re dead, Biggioni!” I shouted. She was Zielinski’s nightmare, Teas’ leading candidate for being Officer Canon, and if my detective work was correct, Keaton’s secret Network contact in Philadelphia.
Sometime in the past, she had broken Keaton to the reins. This time she got me.
“You’re dead! Dead! Dead!”
Exhausted, I sank to the floor of the cell, still clutching the Monster-proof fence. Words left me again; again I fell into the mind of the volunteer Transform. No waking dream this time. Only the Arm emotions and Arm instincts remained. As I clutched the Monster-proof fence I drew juice, and drew and drew and drew and got nothing.
Tonya Biggioni: March 23, 1968
“So what did the Arm do when the Transform got into range and it wasn’t given to her, Hank?” Tonya asked Zielinski, over the phone. She had returned from Deborah’s around seven and now tried to catch up on all the business she had ignored to make her trip to Queens.
Her wonderful trip to Queens. Every time she thought about the trip, a happy glow washed through her. Deborah had actually invited her to visit when the baby was born. As often as Tonya wanted. She had even considered the possibility of coming to visit Tonya.
Tonya found it tough to concentrate on business this evening. Her mind kept lingering on Deborah’s smile, and imagining the face of a newborn grandchild.
Luckily, Tonya found Zielinski at their shared office at the CDC. The phone connection was bad, unfortunately. She suspected the FBI had the phone bugged, as well. Back to the real world, the world of nasty people doing nasty things.
She and Hank remained on a first name basis, despite what Tonya did to the Arm. Zielinski didn’t approve, and his revenge consisted of milking Tonya for every bit of information. Tonya found it difficult to cut him off.
“Hmm?” he said, not answering her question.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, over the faint static of the long distance connection.
“Hank, you’re not fine. You’ve been acting oddly since I set my plan in motion. Is what we’re doing with the Arm bothering you?”
He paused, and Tonya would pay almost anything to see his face right now. “No, no, I’m fine,” he said, but his voice sounded forced.
“It does bother you,” she said.
“Does it bother you?”
All right, so maybe she was probing a little too personally. But, “a little,” she said.
“Why?”
Tonya rotated the empty cup of cocoa in her hands and looked out the window of her home office. Adjusted the juice flow yet again. She was embarrassed about how badly the juice had been flowing in the past week. Too much stress. Too long in this house. “What I put into motion here is a terrible thing to do to a person. Just because it’s justified doesn’t mean what I’m doing isn’t terrible. The lesser of two evils is still evil.” She paused for a moment. “I keep thinking we’re missing something.” The evidence showing the Arm was the person behind the tagged Transform killings and kidnappings refused to sway Hank. He had tried hard to convince Tonya of the Arm’s innocence and failed. Specifically, he couldn’t understand the kidnappings. They didn’t fit what he understood about Arms.
Tonya would prove him wrong soon enough, as soon as the Arm broke and stopped lying.
“Do you wish you hadn’t given the CDC this plan of yours?” Zielinski said.
Tonya licked her lips. “No. This needed to be done.” She couldn’t tell him about Wini’s pressure. “I feel bad, but that’s nothing to how I would feel if more people died because I hadn’t done this.”
Zielinski didn’t respond.
“So, your turn,” Tonya said, returning the question, knowing she showed too much of her bitch side. “What bothers you about this?”
“We don’t understand what we’re doing,” Zielinski said, after a pause, over a burst of phone static. “I’ve harped on this before. Hancock shows many anomalous reactions to low juice. There’s no predicting what might happen. She could easily go into withdrawal unexpectedly. Also, if you’re really trying to figure out a way to get us all past the upcoming Transform Sickness demographics bomb, killing the Arms isn’t going to help. If the Arms and Focuses declare open season on each other, neither of you is going to win. And Keaton is going to take what you’re doing as a provocation.”
Tonya drummed her fingers on her desk and chewed her lower lip. “You’re not making this any better.”
“Ummm.”
“But you know,” Tonya continued, “sometimes you just have to make the best decision you can with the available information. Then we just have to pray that we’re making the right one.”
“I hope you’re good at those prayers.”
Tonya grunted agreement. He must be depressed over something, his big weakness.
“I’m interested in what the Arm will tell us when she eventually does talk, though. We’re looking for the information about the people she’s killed, but think about what else she might know.” Tonya envisioned Rizzari’s embarrassment over her mistaken vetting of the Arm. “How did she live? Who did she
deal with? How did she decide who got to live and who got to die? How did she and Keaton stay underground so successfully so long? She must be dealing with other people, but somehow she managed to hide from the Network for months. We didn’t think that was possible, especially for a young Arm like her. Why didn’t anyone report her? How did Keaton stay hidden in Philadelphia, right under my nose, for so long? Dammit, Hank, Keaton trained a new Arm right under my nose for nine months, with the new Arm making the typical young Major Transform many mistakes, without my picking up even the slightest clue. I think when we start getting the truth from her, the truth will shock everyone.”
Zielinski didn’t answer. Tonya suspected that her attempt to break through his depression didn’t have the effect she intended.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Tonya said, standing and stretching. The phone came skittering across the desk to follow her.
“I’m fine. You need to know something, Tonya.”
“What?”
“Some time after the closed circuit television screen turned on to show Carol the live picture of the volunteer Transform she shouted your name. Somehow, even with the low juice effects on Carol’s mind, she figured out you were the one behind the plan.”
“My god.”
“She threatened your life, actually.”
Tonya sat down, heart pounding. “Thanks for telling me this.”
“Any time.” Zielinski hung up. There was an air of finality in his words.
Sky: March 24, 1968
Sky picked up the Arm at full range and gave the signal. They had discussed Arm psychology for hours and finally came to the conclusion that if Lori left herself a target, instead of doing the standard Focus ‘hide behind walls of bodyguards’, Keaton’s curiosity would be piqued and she wouldn’t follow through with her veiled threat to go after the household.
They discussed other possibilities for Keaton’s approach, including the option she might dress up as a male and ring the front doorbell. The odds were Keaton would still be in a bad mood after failing to penetrate the CDC by herself. Sky assured them that in this case, Keaton would be too aggravated to pull off the front doorbell approach.
A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Page 20
