While he metasensed, the Skinner stood over Tiamat, pointed at him in his apartment, made Crow flapping motions, and pointed to Tiamat. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Gilgamesh said to himself.
The Skinner went back to her house and sat.
Tiamat didn’t move. The more Gilgamesh metasensed Tiamat, the more he felt her pain. She needed his help, although he knew it would be foolish to give her any help. He turned his metasense away, but within a couple minutes he found his metasense focused on Tiamat yet again. Guilt over not being strong enough to go with the Skinner on the rescue began to eat at his will.
Gilgamesh found himself moving before he realized he had made a decision. “I just need to check,” he said. “Just once.” He knew the Skinner’s garage. He could get in unnoticed.
The Skinner thought Tiamat needed him. Gilgamesh needed to see this with his own eyes. Perhaps only after seeing her could he pull Tiamat out of his heart.
Gilgamesh ran close, and when he reached the Skinner’s metasense range, he damped his glow and quietly padded over to the Arm’s garage. He entered noiselessly.
Tiamat lay naked on the garage floor. She had soiled herself. Scars covered her body, of healed sores and worse. She smelled foul. She quietly moaned.
A hole opened up in Gilgamesh’s soul as Tiamat’s moaning broke his heart. He couldn’t help himself; in an instant he found himself on the floor, beside Tiamat, her still hugely muscled hands in his. He fought back tears by biting his cheek. He had been following her for so long she had become a part of him.
“Don’t run,” the Skinner said. He turned and found her standing beside him. He did twitch, but the Skinner knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. She projected calmness, nothing he ever expected of the Skinner. “I’ve talked to the Focus expert in this, and she’s of the opinion that although Carol’s memory may return, whatever personality comes back will depend on those who care for her during her recovery. Gilgamesh, if you want Carol to be the Arm she was beforehand, you’re going to need to be here with her, helping me to take care of her.”
The Skinner knew he loved Tiamat! She had either figured it out or found a way to metasense love. He didn’t understand the Skinner’s limits; she certainly hadn’t been able to mask her glow from him before. Or get him with her Arm charisma tricks. Okay, get him with her non-predatory Arm charisma tricks.
He looked at the Skinner and read nothing from her blank face. Her glow, on the other hand, reeked of triumph.
She had him and she knew it.
Never give a lever to an Arm, Sky had written in his letters. That’s how you become an Arm pet.
Someday he hoped he would be able to write Sky back and tell him that he was right.
Sky: March 29, 1968
“You have to come. They won’t deal with me alone.”
Sky nodded. Lori had crawled into the tiny drainage culvert to talk to him and comfort him. He wouldn’t let her take him anywhere near her household. The shame of his worsening condition overwhelmed him. He would rather not have Lori see him like this either, but her hold on his heart remained too strong. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if she had been overwhelmed by pity, but Lori, his beautiful lady, channeled her compassion into action.
The last time he tried to talk, he had kept talking for nearly an hour, unable to stop, a single non-ending run-on sentence, all about why Focus Patterson was the root of all evil. He hadn’t convinced his love, and it didn’t help when he slipped in too many strange non-sequiturs regarding their relationship into his prattle. How he thought she read too much. Liked the quiet too much. How she overreacted when she loosened up a little. How easy it would be for her to be exceptionally beautiful if she tried.
Lori slipped away from him every minute he and his uncensored mouth were with her.
Lori didn’t have to pick him up and carry him around, at least. He had recovered the ability to move. His metasense was shot, though, and his mind was going. With his reduced range he metasensed Lori, but nothing else. He feared that if she didn’t visit him often enough he would forget about her entirely. He feared she might not mind.
Somehow, somewhere, the little spark of the juice that had made them fall in love had died. Consumed by the white Focus and the CDC, burned in the giant conflagration. Only real love now remained, normal and mundane. Sky feared it wouldn’t be sufficient.
She took him by the hand and led him out of the culvert, across the road to her sedan. Tina and Tim waited in the front seat and he tried not to metasense them and their pity. Pity was too shaming.
They drove over to the arboretum. Sky couldn’t sense the Crows waiting for him until he got within a kilometer, but when he did the size of the flock shocked him. Shadow, sweet-talked into visiting Boston by Lori. Sinclair, a wandering Crow now, learning from Midgard, who was also here. Zero and Orange Sunshine from New York. Newton, one of the Boston Crows. Lori walked with Sky across the arboretum to where the Crows gathered under the trees. Only Sinclair seemed skittish around Lori. Newton seemed entranced.
The sky was gray and clouds hid the moon. The bare trees rustled in the cold wind and Sky could smell the distant salt odor of Boston harbor, miles away. A night for whispers in the dark.
“I’m Shadow,” Shadow said, to Lori. He introduced the other Crows. Lori smiled at them, her charisma turned to harmony instead of control.
“Lorraine Rizzari, a Housebound in your terminology,” she said. Sky reddened. That was a private derogatory Crow term for Focuses. He must have slipped at one point or another.
Shadow laughed. “So the ever-present Gilgamesh has made contact with you, as well.”
Lori nodded. That explained the term ‘housebound’. Sky had the urge to wring Gilgamesh’s neck, not the first time he had that desire. If being a Guru meant having to deal with Crows like Gilgamesh, Sky wanted to give up and head back to the Northwest Territories.
“Can you fix Sky?” Lori said.
Shadow came over, to within touching distance of him. And Lori, which was amazing. The other Crows hung well back, exhibiting the normal fear of a new Transform. Lori wasn’t the easiest Focus to interact with, not with her extremely forceful personality. He remembered their first meeting, how he had to nerve himself up and how poorly things turned out.
Shadow examined Sky for a few minutes. “I have something to try,” Shadow said. Sky nodded.
Whatever dross construct Shadow used put Sky flat on his back. He awoke in Lori’s lap, looking at the cast-iron gray of the clouds. Shadow stood several meters away. The other Crows had fled to the far end of the arboretum, out of Lori’s metasense range.
“I’m not willing to say,” Shadow said, answering a question of Lori’s.
Lori growled. Sky winced. “Not only did whatever Crow trick you tried fail, you’ve drenched me in dross as well,” Lori said. “Do you have any idea what this is going to take to get it off of me?”
“Actually, yes, Focus…”
“You could warn someone when you’re going to skunk them like that. It’s only polite.” Lori paused. “I’d thought Crows were polite.” It wasn’t actually much of a skunk and Lori didn’t show any visible effects.
“My apologies, Fo…”
“Furthermore…” Sky reached up with his hand and put it over Lori’s mouth. She frowned at him, and tried to calm herself down. Something had changed inside him. All that extra dross he couldn’t do anything with had been yanked out of him, leaving him pretty much dross depleted. He wanted to test this solution before Lori chased Shadow away.
“I think it worked, Shadow, don’t mind Focus Rizzari she’s pregnant and oh shit it didn’t work completely and I’m screwed and I still can’t stop saying the wrong things.” He stopped. “Hot damn, it is better, I couldn’t stop before when I was talking and Lori gets protective of me because I love her and she’s a Focus and Focuses really really know how to be protective and…” Sky barely got his mouth turned off.
“Congratulations, Focus Rizzari, on
your pregnancy,” Shadow said. “If you wish, I can clear you of that dross.”
Lori took a deep breath. “Yes, please.” She took another deep breath. “Iapologizeforyellingatyou.” She took another deep breath. “I do feel protective of Sky. Too protective.” She closed her eyes, and waited. Sky looked at Shadow and shrugged. Shadow spent several minutes clearing the dross off Lori. During that time, the other Crows crept back nearby. Except Newton, who skittered up to stand right beside Shadow.
“Focus Rizzari?” Newton said. “Polaris? I want to thank you for your advice about contacting Focus Bernard. Talking with Mr. Dobbs, her Transform, at his office, worked.”
Lori opened her eyes and looked at Newton in shock.
“I didn’t think any of the Crows except Sky knew I was Polaris.”
Newton grinned sheepishly and studied his feet. “I figured it out.”
Several months ago, Shadow had said Newton emulated Gilgamesh. Crap. Another Gilgamesh, figuring things out and causing a ruckus. This is not what the Crow community needed.
“So,” Lori said, to Shadow. “Do you think there’s any merit to my other idea?”
What other idea? Sky didn’t have a clue and he wasn’t willing to open his mouth to ask.
“Yes, I do,” Shadow said. “My friends here have agreed to check out your captive doctor in that New York facsimile prison. If he’s worthy, we’ll see what he can do for Sky.”
Prison?
With a chaste hug Lori left him lost and alone with the other Crows.
Enkidu: March 30, 1968
“Who are we meeting, Master?” Enkidu said.
Hoffman, Enkidu’s new bear-like trainee Hunter, snuffled among the trees about two hundred feet away, likely wondering if Enkidu would let him chase after a deer he had scented. Hoffman hadn’t yet proven himself worthy of a name.
“The other Hunters you’re going to be working with in Chicago, Hunter Enkidu. Odin and Joshua.”
Enkidu growled. Odin had proven his worth after his baiting attack on the talking Arm. Joshua was damned disconcerting. His man-form was all too manlike for Enkidu’s taste. His Hunter-form, an oversized brick-red gorilla, was nearly as powerful as Enkidu’s wolf form. Joshua had survived an attack by a Focus and her household, quite a feather in his cap.
“You won’t be called upon to share territory, Hunter,” the Wandering Shade said. His form, today, as for the last several months, was of an Illinois State Trooper. “Remember the Law. A true Hunter doesn’t have to share.”
Enkidu nodded. The Wandering Shade would explain his cryptic comments in his own good time.
They waited. Soon Enkidu felt two other powerful Hunter presences approach the Spring Lake Forest Reserve: Odin with his growing entourage of always replaceable wolfling trainee Hunters from the north and Joshua and his much larger entourage of eleven full Pack Gals and nineteen Monster women from the south. Joshua parked his tricked up tractor-trailer rig in a parking lot near the edge of the forest preserve and walked in alone. He had no trainee Hunters now.
Fifteen minutes later, the three full Hunters stood at attention in front of Wandering Shade, Enkidu in the center, Joshua to his left and Odin to his right. Wandering Shade nodded from his position on top of the picnic table, and all three prostrated themselves before their Master. The juice moved. They stood and faced the Wandering Shade, happy.
“The talking Arm fell into withdrawal and is no more. The mute Arm took her mindless remains to the West Coast. She won’t be a problem for us until she wins herself a new name. Her own supposed friends, the Focuses who did this to her, are celebrating. I foresee conflict between the surviving Arm and the Focuses,” Wandering Shade said, formal, from his picnic table podium. “Chicago is ours.”
As they said on the television, Arms were nothing more than animals, like the lesser Beast Men who weren’t Hunters. When he had encountered Keaton, the most she could do was growl and curse. His Monsters were more human than she was. The encounter with Hancock, the talking Arm, had been a shock. She was as human as he was. She needed to be destroyed. Now she was.
“Thank you, Master,” Enkidu said. “To have my home city back again is a wondrous gift. I’m yours to command.”
“Odin,” Wandering Shade said. “I believe you now have the floor.”
Damn. Odin remained the ranking Hunter, meaning Enkidu would still need to participate in Odin’s screwy schemes. His gut said this new one would be a pain in the ass.
“Master, I thank you.” Odin faced his two Hunter peers. “In all of the world, only the three of us are full Hunters. Our Master has given us the Law, and new Law-Beasts must earn their way to full Hunter status. We train our young Hunters and set them loose. Despite our training, most die before becoming full Hunters. Because of this we are weak. Hunter civilization falters at its birth because so many die.
“I have a plan,” he continued. “I don’t propose to change how we train Hunters or how we test them for full Hunter status. Instead, I wish to give them gifts when we set the trainees loose as lesser Hunters.”
At the edge of the clearing, the four trainee Hunters, his one and Odin’s three, all quivered in attention. Of those four, likely only one or two would survive the more rigorous training and culling that was now the Law. Losers, like his dearly departed scaly companion Grendel the elder, would no longer be recognized as full Hunters. You now needed a full Human intellect to be a named Hunter.
“The gifts I propose are a Pack of Gals, led by a full Pack Alpha. Our strength is our Pack, Master. They and us, not just ourselves, form the basis of the Hunter way; Torma’s failure proved this. When a trainee Hunter is set loose to prove himself in the world, I believe he deserves the resources to succeed. I believe we, the named Hunters, owe it to you and them to provide our trainees with these resources.”
Joshua and Enkidu bowed. Damn, Enkidu thought. This sounded like real work.
“How are we to gather these resources?” Joshua said. “We have a hard enough time providing for ourselves.” Joshua must be still incapable of stabilizing his Pack Gals. If he followed Enkidu’s discoveries he wouldn’t have any problems.
“Ah, that’s where Chicago comes in, my Hunters,” the Wandering Shade said. “You think of Chicago as a smelly urban mess, filled with teeming worthless humans. A place you raid for easy food because of the cattle yards and slaughterhouses. I, however, think of these teeming worthless humans differently.
“These masses of normals are a pool of potential Transforms. Every day, from now on, all three of you, and your trainees, are going to hunt Chicago. Every day. You will not let any unclaimed Transforms pass through your grasp. We will not bother the Focuses and their brood. Yet. I have others for that. To pass their proving quest to become full Hunters, our trainees must take a tagged Transform and survive. We will not bother the clinics in the Chicago area either, as we aren’t interested in attracting the attention of the authorities.” Who, because of Wandering Shade’s actions, now watched them closely. “We’ll just take unclaimed Transforms. Tens, no, hundreds of them. From the survivors, you will make Packs and create Pack Alphas for your trainees. I’ll bring you more trainee Hunters as you succeed, and we’ll send the trainees off into the world to fend for themselves as lesser Hunters.
“We’ll seed the other large heartland metropolitan areas with new Hunters who will do the same: Minneapolis, St. Louis, Dallas and Houston. You’ll leave Kansas City and Denver alone for now, because I have other business there I don’t want you to disturb. The new Hunters will do the same and scour these other large cities for recruits.
“I know you would rather be running wild in the open plains, away from cities, but we cannot ignore this opportunity. As Odin says, we’re weak, too weak, as a group. We’ve broken the Arms for the moment, but there will be more. Dangerous humans now know the secrets for training talking Arms. The Crows, as well you know, remain difficult to break to our cause. The Crows talk among themselves, grow uneasy at our provocations, and
may strike. The Focuses, by far the weakest of the Major Transforms, have hobbled themselves. By our actions we’re causing them to destroy their own support.
“Because of our weakness, the Crows or the Focuses could organize against us and destroy us. We cannot permit them to do so. To become what we should be, the bosses of all Transforms, we must strike at them first. To do that, we need numbers. This plan shall provide us the numbers we need.”
The Wandering Shade jumped to the ground, plucked a rolled up map out of the invisibility he carried with him, and rolled it out on the picnic table he had been standing on. A map of Chicago, with hunting territories marked on it. Enkidu got the part of Chicago he requested, the central third, from the loop to the west. All three Hunters acknowledged their Master’s choice.
“Master,” Joshua said. “Where is my prize?”
The nerve! Odin and Enkidu both growled as they faced the Hunter Joshua. Wandering Shade didn’t seem upset. Instead, he clapped his hands.
Five lesser Hunters, masked from Enkidu’s metasense, stepped forward through the trees, a naked woman in chains dragged between them. The prize they held between them chilled Enkidu’s heart. What had his Master wrought? What horror was this, to feed Joshua’s lusts?
“Joshua, I present you the former Focus Abernathy, Focus number thirty in the United States. I and my other charges rescued her from the awfulness of first Focus Schrum’s torture and punishment pit, deep in withdrawal, her mind broken into the perfect silence we all know so well, where all things are possible.”
The Wandering Shade continued. “We left the corpse of a woman Transform, already gnawed upon by wild dogs, to confuse the Focuses and cover our tracks. I personally remolded Focus Abernathy and brought her within the Law. She is now our first Pack Mistress and is now yours, Joshua. Use her as she was meant to be used, my Hunter. Do not give in to your abhorrence and treat her as an élan source.”
A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Page 33
