“The barbules? Cold weather adaptation. I spent too much time in the Territories when I was a young you know what.” Sky thought. “Pardon me if I’m misreading a situation, but aren’t the businesses in the States a little leery of hiring women managers, executives and the like? Not to mention Transforms?”
“Oh, that? I’m not talking normal businesses, I’m talking other households. One of the necessary parts of the Cause involves inter-Focus cooperation. Multi-Focus households. We don’t have any yet, but Focus households in an area should cooperate economically. In preparation. More Focuses transform all the time, you know; one new Focus a week this year. This is how people in immigrant communities cooperate, by patronizing each other’s businesses. Besides, I’m planning ahead. The apocalypse is not far off.”
Apocalypse. Nine years in the future, or was it eight? The apocalypse marked the point where Transform Sickness became unstoppable and started its rapid climb to near its maximum societal numbers. To be planning for the apocalypse, nine years in the future, was scary. Scary and smart.
“Well, besides shoot at Monsters, what else do you do with your life? Where did you get your start?”
She bent down and stuck her mouth right up against Sky’s ear. “If you promise me you’ll take me out to walk in the park next time the Focus is stuck working late in her lab and tell me some of your story, I’ll tell you mine.” Eileen made things clear about what she wanted, oh yes, Sky. Very clear. She understood as well the right way to entice him into a relationship. Being smart enough to figure out his alien psychology this far in advance did make her more desirable as a partner. Even at his most roguishly outrageous Crow behavior, he had never before juggled more than four lovers at any one time. Most of the time, he tried not to juggle more than two.
Sky nodded. “You have a deal, mademoiselle.”
Eileen whispered “My turn” and indicated he should rub her back. Interesting ritual. She unrolled one of the sleeping bags and lay down, less comfortable on the lumpy canvas floor than he. He started rubbing Eileen’s back. Interesting muscles. Woman Transforms with muscles as Eileen’s did seem strange to Sky. For one thing, his mind kept incorrectly thinking of women shaped like this as fat. However, the more he thought about Transform Sickness, and how the members of Inferno looked at the Transform benefits as an unlimited cookie jar of possibilities rather than a horrid curse, the more he got used to absurdities, such as muscular women. Eileen was tense, too. Too much Arm, which he sympathized with. He barely made a dent in her muscles.
“I transformed three, no, dammit, four years ago,” Eileen said. “I made an utter disaster of it. I still don’t know if my disaster happened because I was too pushy or not pushy enough.” Sky didn’t say a thing about his opinion. Besides, her pushiness was what made Eileen interesting. “I suspect if I hadn’t been pushy enough, I’d be dead.” Sky stopped. He hadn’t expected her comment.
“Oh, keep rubbing. It’s not that big a sob story. When we do our ‘my transformation was worse than yours’ conversations, mine doesn’t even make the top ten in the household.
“The disease got me just before my thirtieth birthday. Steve, my husband, had a big bash planned, a huge surprise party. A few of my relatives, my friends, our friends, even a few of his friends from the tire plant. I had just tested positive for my third pregnancy, about two months along. Wham, there I went.”
Oh, crap, Sky thought. Second month of a pregnancy. He had been around too many Focuses and their households not to know what transforming during a pregnancy meant: about a fifty fifty chance of losing the baby and about a one in four chance of having a Monster baby. Hard on the prospective mother. Women Transforms regularly died from this. From his Canadian Focus friends he knew few problems happened if the transformation occurred later in the pregnancy.
“Steve couldn’t cope with my transformation. He had spent too much time sneering at Transforms not to. Freeloaders. Slackers. Professional victims. He was a nice man, but not exactly, um, college educated, if you catch my drift. The nearest Focus with an opening lived in Columbus, and there I went. Steve refused to quit his job in Akron and commuted. To start with, I kept the kids, but once Steve got a look at Focus Mergenthaler he went nuts. Sarah Mergenthaler was – gasp – a Jew. He twisted my arm and convinced me, until things got straightened out, to let my sister in Akron take the kids. ‘Straightened out’ was getting me moved back to Akron. Nothing else would count. Steve didn’t understand I didn’t have a say in anything.
“Then I started ballooning out. Something was wrong with my pregnancy, the doctors said. They showed me X-Rays. When a woman transforms early in her pregnancy, sometimes the child becomes a Monster. I looked nine months along only four months out and every new doctor they brought in practically fainted when they saw me. Eventually, they brought in three docs who could cope, Doctors Sellstrom, Kochanek and Zielinski.”
Zielinski again? Sky wondered what absurd level of coincidence was at play. Perhaps the doctor was just good.
“All three of the doctors were from the Harvard Medical School and they said I needed to abort the Monster or my baby would kill me. No hemming or hawing.” Sky sucked in breath. His father had been Catholic, and Sky knew what a horrible decision this must have been.
“This was the end of the line for me, one way or another. Absolutely no one could cope. Not Focus Mergenthaler, who couldn’t imagine the concept of a Monster baby, or paying for an abortion; my husband, who flatly refused to allow me to abort the Monster; my family, my friends…” Eileen sighed. “The verdict was unanimous. They all would rather I died.” Old story, oft repeated among Transforms. The waggish Canadianism stated the Shakes was a 100% fatal disease – to families.
“The doctors couldn’t even do an abortion in Ohio. At the doctors’ own expense, they took me to some place in the state of New York and did the procedure gratis, but only after I signed a bunch of waivers. They thought I had a good chance of dying, despite their best efforts. Those were damned good doctors. I lived. Did you know Zielinski stayed at Inferno for several months, around the time you first started showing up? Save we weren’t supposed to tell him about you, not sure why.”
Well, how about the fact your goddamned Focus rolled me so I would demand she keep the doctor away from me. Be interesting to find out some day why Lori didn’t want the good doctor to find out about him. He swore he had run into this particular doctor before, years ago, but he suspected that was back in the low juice bad memory days and he was just imagining things. His recent encounter with the doctor in his ‘Paul Langdoc’ identity was also worth a good giggle or two.
“Man, the Monster in my womb was ugly, a cross between a fish and a rat. Huge, too. The doctors had some fancy terminology for what the thing was, but it would have been the death of me, and not much farther along.
“I was a wreck. My previous life was so gone that I didn’t have a single person I once knew I could even talk to any more. Focus Mergenthaler refused to have anything to do with me; she even let my tag drop. The doctors’ contacts were all in Boston, of course and they tried to find a place for me. No such luck. I got shipped to the Massachusetts Detention Center to die.
“Not many women Transforms end up in detention centers these days, normally only when the luck of the draw drops too many women Transforms into the system in an area at once. The idea of a formerly tagged woman Transform ending up in such a place struck everyone as absurd, something that should be illegal, but wasn’t. Focus Mergenthaler got in hot water because of what she did, but I didn’t learn about her problems until later. Anyway, I got a visit from Focus Rizzari about six days before I was to go over.”
Eileen turned her head to the other side and shifted, settling into a better position on the lumpy sleeping bag. “We talked. The Focus isn’t an easy person to talk to in the best of circumstances and this was about the worst of circumstances imaginable. I was desperate, but the Focus does this combination of extreme politeness and arctic coldness. S
he was so frigid I didn’t even think of doing any begging and pleading. Instead, I told her the truth: I had given birth to one Monster and so I refused to become one myself. I wasn’t even going to wait until the last minute, for fear I would be too incapacitated to kill myself.
“The Focus eventually laid out the bargain. I was a nothing. She had a dozen volunteers begging to get into her household, all more talented than me. The only thing in my favor was Focus Morgenthaler’s behavior; if the Focus took me on, Focus Morgenthaler would owe her. ‘Focus Mergenthaler will accept a woman Transform of mine who burned herself out hunting Monsters for my household,’ the Focus told me, about half of what Focus Morgenthaler ended up paying. ‘If you agree to train up some skills, so I can trade you out for one of the Transforms on my waiting list, I’ll take you on.’ How about I train to become a Monster hunter? I asked. The Focus told me she would accept my offer, but Monster hunting was harder than I gave it credit for.”
“Was Lori truly that hard and mean?” Sky said. “Surely not.”
“Oh, Sky,” Eileen said. Sighed. “You’ve never really seen her bad side.” She said the last nearly noiselessly, so only Sky could hear. Sky had feared that, yes.
“You succeeded,” Sky said. “With you I could hunt Monsters.”
“Pah,” Eileen said. “If I get my degree I’m getting on the damned list to get out of Inferno.”
---
“I hope you’re not going along with this idea just to humor me,” Lori said. Keaton had everyone, including Lori, disguised as male. Lori, four eleven in sock feet, did not disguise well. She looked like a sixth grade boy.
Keaton gave her a strange look. “I just bet Focuses might do something that stupid. Trust me, midget, if I thought this was a bad idea, you would have heard about it.”
“Well, good,” Lori said. Stalked off.
“How can you stand her?” Keaton said to Sky. Sky shrugged. “You look more like Tim’s type, besides.” Then Keaton stalked off herself.
Was that supposed to be an insult? Didn’t the Arm just spend some major cuddle time with a woman? Sky turned it around in his mind several times and decided the Arm was just crackers in the head.
They tried a straightforward approach this time. They stole a late-model sedan large enough to fit six comfortably. They stuffed the two captive Transforms in the trunk. (Sky refused to even think about the trip back to the DC area to raid a Transform clinic and get a replacement juice supply for the Walking Nightmare. The new Transform was a boy this time, not more than sixteen. He hadn’t done more than shiver since they grabbed him.) They would go in with stolen ATF duds and papers. Keaton didn’t ask, likely assuming Sky and Eileen had killed the ATF agents to get their stuff. Instead, Sky had just skunked the ATF agents, and put them in a Transform clinic with unexplained symptoms that looked like the Shakes. Given the hellish pit that was the CDC’s Detention Center, such an event was eminently plausible.
They planned to drive up to the front door around sunset. They would do the dirty deed and flee on foot, assuming their dirty work would attract too much attention to allow them to escape in the stolen car.
The plan got them through the outer perimeter gate. Unfortunately, Sky’s metasense was already ringing with bad news. By the time they reached half way to the inner perimeter gate, Sky realized they were seriously sunk, and he was about ready to throw a major Crow panic. He finally managed to get Lori’s attention and conveyed the incipient disaster to her, without words. Their most immediate threat loomed not too far ahead. A group of FBI agents had pulled a car across the road up ahead, and hunched down in shooting positions behind the car.
Hancock was in withdrawal. He didn’t know how to tell Lori, or anyone else.
Save for state police, the FBI and the CDC guards, the other jurisdictions had left.
“We’re screwed,” Lori said. “They’re on to us.”
Keaton pulled the car to the shoulder and stopped it. “Say what? What evidence do you have?”
“There’s a trap around here, somewhere. I can smell it,” Lori said. She sat next to Keaton, in the middle of the front seat, the only one who willing to sit so close to the Arm.
“Don’t lie to me. You’re not good enough.” Keaton grabbed Lori’s chin.
“I have a source of information I haven’t revealed,” Lori said.
Keaton looked at Lori, cold as ice. “You don’t hold out on me when we’re going into a combat situation. That’s fucking stupid and you risk your own people as well as me.”
Lori didn’t say a word. “Traitorous Focus bitch,” Keaton said, softly, and then she turned away. Sky realized Keaton was as angry as she had been when she first came to Inferno. She got out of the car and then turned back to Lori. “This is not acceptable behavior,” Keaton said. “Our deal no longer holds. Goodbye.”
The Arm started walking cross-country, across the terrain it had taken Keaton and Lori, working hard together at messing with minds, hours to traverse. They watched her until she disappeared into the trees. Tina spoke first.
“Now what? We’re screwed, blued and tattooed without the Arm. Why’d you…”
Lori did something with the juice that froze Tina’s jaw. Lori motioned ‘shh’ with a finger across her mouth and Tina nodded.
“Grab the Transforms from the trunk,” Lori said, whispering. “We’re ditching the car. Wipe it down on the way out.”
They took off cross-country, going the opposite way from Keaton. Sky metasensed Keaton closely. Once away from the car, Keaton turned to move toward the Detention Center. She reached the inner fence relatively quickly, moving at Arm speeds. She stopped and waited.
“Keaton is using us as bait,” Sky said. “She’s about two kilometers away from us now, almost on the other side of the Detention Center. I’ll bet she’s counting on us making a mess of things, attracting the attention of the authorities, and allowing her to get in.”
“We will not make a mess,” Lori said. Without warning, she gagged, bent over and vomited. The wind had shifted, now coming over and around the Detention Center. Tim bent over double himself.
“What the hell?” Lori said. She fell down on her hands and knees and vomited again.
“You smell the dross from the CDC building. I told you the place was bad.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She paused and gasped, attempting to control her nausea. “We’re a half mile away. How can anything be so bad?”
“We’ve never been downwind of the CDC before. The place has always been bad.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Lori said. Sky raised an eyebrow, but Lori glared, gritted her teeth, and did something with the juice. She stood up then, no more vomiting, her face pale and her jaw tight.
They got, back through the trees to the outer perimeter wall. “Do I have your permission, my gracious lady, to cover us with dross constructs?” Sky asked.
“Will they work against police?”
“This set will. Not against any Transforms and certainly not against the Arm.”
“You have my permission.”
Sky gave it some thought, then decided to use his ‘lost Canadian girl scouts’ illusions.
“We’re little girls,” Sky said, referring to the illusion.
“Compared to Keaton we’re goddamn toddlers,” Tim said, referring to their competence.
Sky didn’t correct Tim at all.
“Halt! Stop right there!”
Four state troopers poured over the rise to their left, weapons in their right hands, flashlights in their left. Sky stopped, as did the others.
“Can you help us?” Lori said, her voice mimicking a grade school child. “We lost our mommies.” Needless to say, she used her charisma. Big time.
“Why certainly, little ladies,” the victim said. The other three policemen nodded in agreement. Yes, yes, the one policeman would escort them back to civilization and their mommies.
In a few moments, they continued on their way, their ranks now swelled by on
e policeman.
“Get him good, Lori,” Sky said. “These disguises won’t last much longer. I’m not that good a Crow, you know.”
“I’m not that good a Focus either,” Lori said.
Despite her comment she had no problem with the policeman: ‘Yes, mistress.’ ‘No, mistress.’ ‘Whatever you desire, mistress.’ Not much mind left, but obedient.
“This is extremely distasteful,” Lori said. “There’s one Arm who’s going to regret this little escapade.”
Sky winced.
With Sky’s help they managed to avoid the rest of the police, state troopers, CDC guards and FBI agents combing the area. Keaton wasn’t so lucky. On the far side of the compound, now four kilometers away, Sky metasensed Keaton streak toward the CDC building and rip through the inner wire like confetti. She drew fire. Soon a helicopter took off after her, forcing her to duck right against the building. Eventually, she realized Hancock was in withdrawal. She might be able to get to Hancock with her lone assault. She wouldn’t be able to get out again while dragging Hancock like a sack of spuds. Keaton had counted on Hancock being at least marginally functional.
Keaton fled toward the opposite side of the compound from her entry, toward Sky and Lori and the rest of the crew. She ripped through the inner wire again and didn’t stop running until she reached two kilometers out. As far as Sky could tell, Keaton took only two bullet wounds, neither of which would count as more than a scratch for an Arm.
Keaton returned to the campground two hours later, just before dawn. The only sounds were the calls of a few early-rising birds. The night stayed clear and Sky would have considered the pre-dawn sky beautiful except for the miserable quest and the Walking Nightmare.
“I want the Transforms,” Keaton said. “Our partnership is over.”
Lori stood, shook the dew off her, and walked over to Keaton. The rest of the team stood. Wary. Exhausted. Too much stress and too much failure. “Tell me, Arm Keaton, did you reveal everything you can do?”
A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Page 27
