All That We Are (The Commander Book 7)

by Randall Farmer

  “She’s not being rescued because it’s too dangerous,” I said, standing myself. I refused to negotiate from the floor. “Look at what happened here today.” I waved my good arm at the blood soaked carpet. “Tell me how not-dangerous this is.”

  “I can give Guru Hephaestus and you protections potent enough to hide you from Rogue Crow and his Hunters. He’s Guru enough to guide them, ongoing. They won’t last through any sort of battle, of course.” Of course. Crows! “But it shouldn’t take a battle for you to corral a young Focus and free her.”

  Who was paying who, here? I gave this some thought, and realized that, yes, if I showed up one day and presented Focus Frasier to the Focus Council, that would be quite a coup for our side. My deed would also mightily brass off Odin and Shadow.

  If I rescued Frasier just before the wedding, it might induce Shadow and his Hunters to react in a stupider manner than their current activities. “I’ll need to talk to my boss about this, but unless I’ve missed something important, I think we have a deal. Not that I’ll be able to do anything about it for a while, given what remains of my right arm.”

  “Understood,” Arpeggio said.

  Hephaestus nodded in agreement.

  “So,” I said, turning to include the talking pictures. “Can you do anything about Rogue Crow, now revealed to be Shadow?” I said. Gilgamesh wiped his nose and moaned quietly.

  “We will need to discuss this among ourselves,” Thomas the Dreamer said. “I’m sure you can understand.”

  They didn’t know what to do.

  I very much understood the feeling.

  Gail Rickenbach: January 29, 1969 – January 30, 1969

  “I think that’s the place,” Vic Crawford said, pointing out the apartment building coming up on their right. The building sat in a bleak section of inner Detroit, an area filled with housing projects, broken down apartments, misery and despair. Rats and underfed dogs scrabbled among broken bottles and rotted trash, and children with cold eyes watched them drive by. Only a little snow covered the street margins, the result of a mid-winter warm snap that had deluged the Detroit area in cold rain for the past week. Gail dreaded this meeting, and the ambience of a cold January early evening in inner city Detroit didn’t help.

  The apartment building was small, three stories of five apartments each, the apartments themselves no more than a single room, the building surrounded by a chain link fence topped by barbed wire. Hard-edged men, some of them Transforms, stood guard at the gate and on the roof, watching the neighborhood with cold suspicion.

  Vic pulled the car up to the gate and consulted quietly with one of the guards, a broad-shouldered Transform in his forties who looked at everything as if it might spring up at any moment and attack his Focus. They were expected, the details worked out first through Beth Hargrove, then through a formal and strained phone conversation between Gail and Focus Adkins herself.

  Vic passed the guard’s inspection, and the guard opened the gate and let them into the small parking lot. The lot had room for only ten cars, fewer cars than apartments, but even those ten spots remained unfilled. The only cars were a couple of sedans, a station wagon, a pickup truck, and an expensive Oldsmobile that looked like it had gotten lost on its way to some suburban garage. Vic parked the car beside the Oldsmobile, and the guard hurriedly followed them, unwilling to leave them unescorted. Whether from courtesy or suspicion, Gail couldn’t quite tell. She guessed suspicion.

  Gail fought terror, attempting to ignore her fears and keep the juice steady. She didn’t succeed. Focus Adkins’ household held the ambience Gail imagined of a Nazi death camp, far worse than Focus Mann’s place, so steeped in bad juice that the foulness was everywhere, even in the parking lot. Gail told herself to stop going down this line of thought; she was here to make peace with Focus Adkins, not judge her. Punishment of some sort was coming. The thought made Gail shiver. Beth had spent days trying to calm Gail’s nerves, trying to distract her with talk of politics or Focus gossip. Beth’s distractions hadn’t worked. Even the Nixon administration and their antics didn’t distract Gail. They had cut off federal funding to all Transform Clinics, saying just because Congress appropriated the money, this didn’t mean the administration had to spend it. Gail expected the Supreme Court would toss Nixon’s trick so hard it bounced.

  Punishment. Gail shivered again and hoped she was doing the right thing. Tonya warned her that making up with Wini Adkins would be rough. Surrender, and then negotiate. Her household needed all the help they could get, and no fights they could avoid. She most certainly needed the senior Focus in Michigan supporting her rather than working against her.

  Whatever it took. As long as she, not the household, paid the price.

  They had arrived at exactly 7:00 in the evening, the time Focus Adkins had chosen. The sun was long down and the temperature rapidly fell. The overcast sky threatened snow again. Gail let Kurt hand her out of the car, and Vic and Sylvie followed.

  “Focus Rickenbach, welcome,” the guard said, with no welcome in his voice at all. He was a big man, his face closed and unyielding. Not hostile, particularly, but Gail had the strong sense of a mind as fenced as the household. Gail reeled in her metasense; not only did the bad juice of this place hurt, but it moved and reacted to Gail almost as if alive.

  “If you’ll come with me, I’ll lead you upstairs,” the guard said. Although Gail and her people were supposedly here for a social occasion, the guard omitted many of the niceties. Gail had been surprised to learn from Beth that Focus Adkins had been actively working against her. Focus Adkins wasn’t an enemy she could afford to have. Back when she was young and naïve, Gail thought Adkins had written her off as a lost cause, never to think of her again. The fact Adkins’ hadn’t forgotten told Gail quite a bit about how the older Focuses operated. That and a non-negotiable demand regarding an inspection team of Adkins’ that would be investigating Gail’s household from top to bottom next week. Full disclosure. No more hiding of Kurt’s side business.

  Sylvie stayed at Gail’s side in her position as Focus’s aide, while Kurt and Vic were her main bodyguards. The guard led them up the steel and pitted-concrete stairs. As they passed by the first floor, Gail saw and heard rows of women working at sewing machines. Even at 7:00 on a Friday night, they still worked. Gail hesitated a moment, to look in through the window of one room. There were six women there, both Transform and normal, and a couple of teenagers fetching and carrying for them. They worked with a mindless monotony, sewing child-sized shirts and pants and dresses. The Transforms had the glassy-eyed look of low juice, at the mindless work optimum, something Gail had discovered while experimenting with juice manipulation with Sylvie. Not low enough to incapacitate, but low enough to sap the will and the mind. A Transform might work indefinitely at the work optimum, if the task was mindless enough, too drained to do anything else.

  Their Focus did this to them intentionally. Gail managed not to puke. Barely.

  Said Focus waited for Gail in a room up on the third floor. The intense pressure of bad juice fled as soon as Wini Adkins came into sight. Somehow, Adkins had control over the bad juice in her household, a chilling realization Gail buried deep in her mind.

  “Come in, Focus Rickenbach,” Wini Adkins said. She was a woman of medium height, several inches shorter than Gail, with beautiful chestnut hair. She dressed like a modern queen. Gail caught Focus Adkins’ disapproval in her tight-lipped frown, but forced herself to smile at the welcome anyway.

  “I’m sorry I made a mess of things when we first met,” Gail said, a remorseful expression on her face she had practiced in front of a mirror for hours to perfect. “I was so ignorant at the time. I’ve learned better.”

  Focus Adkins looked over Gail’s bodyguards, and Sylvie. “So, you have learned some discipline. Have you eaten?” Adkins said, leading Gail into a fabulous room, opulent with the splendor of expensive good taste. Antique Queen Anne chairs, crystal vases, and cherry end tables vied with an exquisite sofa and
an oriental rug for extravagance in excess.

  More opulence lay beyond the door that connected through the wall to the next room over, and through the next door beyond that. Gail realized with a shock that Focus Adkins claimed three full apartments in this tiny fifteen-room complex for her personal use.

  Gail didn’t let her reaction show, using Tonya’s Transform Doublethink principle to fill her mind with appreciation of the beauty of the place. Focus Adkins carried herself regally because, to her people, she was their queen, with all the perks one could imagine from her elevated station. Judgment would have to wait until later.

  “I ate an hour ago, but I thank you for the offer,” Gail said, still all smiles and pleasure.

  “Well, I imagine you wouldn’t object to dessert, then,” Adkins said. “Claude, tell Dee in the kitchen to send something up for us.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Claude snapped, with an eager agreement. His spine straightened the instant Wini looked at him, and he watched her with an expression near to worship. Wini was pumping him. By the man’s expression of devoted worship, Gail guessed this was normal. Adkins made her people love her by manipulating their juice supply, a method, according to Tonya, used by many Focuses since the early days. For all Gail knew, given how early Adkins transformed, she might have actually invented the method.

  “Take Focus Rickenbach’s men with you. Give them the tour,” Focus Adkins said to Claude. Beth had warned her that Focus Adkins would separate Gail from her bodyguards, and they would get to stand guard duty with Adkins’ people. Gail found it hard to let her protection go, in one of the first situations where she needed them.

  Focus Adkins turned to Gail.

  “I know you want to talk to me about our previous difficulties, so I’ve cleared a room for you just down the hall. I trust you have no problem?”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much,” Gail said. Her cheeks were beginning to ache from the social smile. This wasn’t an expression she used much.

  “Excellent.”

  Claude attempted to escort her people away. Kurt turned to Gail, unhappy, unwilling to leave her alone in this strange place. Gail made a tiny hand motion, and Kurt subsided and went with the guard, along with Vic.

  Focus Adkins didn’t miss the hand gesture. She nodded approval, both for the hesitation and the obedience. Gail was here for Adkins to judge her, she and her people, and everything they did would be weighed in the balance.

  “Come, sit down on the davenport and let’s talk,” Adkins said, after she led Gail down the hall to the aforementioned room. The comment wasn’t phrased as an order, but Gail recognized an order when she heard one, no matter how phrased. “I have a household meeting at eight, and my people would be terribly crushed if I didn’t attend, but we have a few minutes before then, and we can talk more afterwards. Would that be all right?”

  “No problem,” Gail said. “That sounds perfect.” Adkins sat down on an elegant chair, and Gail took the end of the couch, amazed at the beauty in Adkins’ sitting room. Gail had spent too many years living with plywood and cheap vinyl as a student, and living in tents and mud as a Focus. She had forgotten people lived like this.

  “You need to join us for the household meeting, Focus Rickenbach. Given your discussions with Wendy on household management issues, I suspect you’ll be very interested,” Focus Adkins said. Gail expected more lectures, but Adkins seemed more interested in showing than telling. She couldn’t escape this household meeting.

  “Thank you. I’m definitely interested.”

  “Good, good. Now tell me about the household you’ve set up in this church of yours. I want to hear all about what you’ve done. We can save the unpleasant things until later.”

  Adkins’ people had moved all the furniture, except for two chairs, out of the dining apartment. Despite the floor space, there still wasn’t enough room for all the people who attempted to squeeze in. People stood in the doorway, and in the bathroom, and peered in through the large, plate-glass window. An air of excitement, of breathless anticipation, filled the area.

  An air of fanaticism, too. The crowd was edgy, an air of something dangerous, only barely contained. Sylvie sensed it, too, and stayed protectively close to Gail. Gail eyed the crowd warily while she sat in the smaller of the two chairs and attempted to project an air of regal calm.

  She remembered the old stories of the Quarantine. Wini Adkins had been one of the Focuses who led the breakout, and these were the people she had led. Looking at them now, Gail understood how these people managed. So much focused fanaticism seemed capable of anything.

  Not just the Transforms. The normals picked up the tone of a household and adapted themselves, or if they couldn’t adapt, they left. They worshipped their Focus and would do anything for her. They would die for her, all of them, if necessary. Gail understood how Transforms might be willing to die for their Focus, but she had a hard time understanding how normals could become so fanatic.

  Focus Adkins lived in three rooms filled with expensive furniture, while her people bunked fifteen to a room next to her. To her people, this was how things should be. They were proud of themselves for the comfort they maintained for their Focus, and they were convinced they were happy with the way they lived.

  Gail winced at the household’s living arrangements, but seeing the fanaticism, she realized they hadn’t been forced. Adkins had saved them from the hell of Quarantine, from clinics and detention centers as bad as the clinic where Gail had been stuck after she transformed, and a decade later they still worshipped her. Gail tried to imagine what it must have been like back then, and how hard it would have been to coordinate the escape of twenty Focuses spread out all over the country without giving any hint of their intentions to the authorities. An organized effort of hundreds of ordinary people over many months.

  People didn’t do things like the Quarantine escape and remain ordinary, because ordinary people didn’t do such things. Not only were Adkins’ people fanatically loyal to their Focus, but they were also fanatically loyal to each other, for the same reason combat veterans stayed loyal to the men who shared their foxhole.

  Gail remembered the guard when they came in, and the way he hadn’t been nervous of her, and she understood why. She was no threat to him, and never would be, because no path in the universe would place him at her door. His Focus and his household defined his world, and the rest of the world, the other, lived on the other side of the barbed wire fence surrounding their household.

  She looked over at Sylvie, who wore a puzzled air on top of her uneasiness, as if she saw something more in this place, something she might want herself. Gail would have to have a serious talk with Sylvie later.

  The path of the fanatic was a powerful lure. Gail understood this from her associations with the anti-war protesters, especially the ones trying to convince themselves they were communists. The path gave such benefits: freedom from doubt and uncertainty, absolute trust in some authority, and the chance to throw away your own self-interest for some higher cause.

  Hardly human at all.

  What did the authorities create by treating the first Focuses that way? What monsters did they breed? Gail took mental notes in her head by the score, as Van would want to know everything she learned.

  The meeting started at quarter after eight, silence falling when Adkins raised her hand. The air waited with anticipation.

  “I’d like to welcome a special guest tonight,” Wini said, speaking from her much larger throne. “Focus Rickenbach and I will be meeting afterwards. I hope you will all make her and her people feel welcome.”

  Silence followed a murmur of greeting, as they waited for her to say something. Shit! The crush of people and emotion in the room unnerved Gail, and she feared whatever she said would come out badly. Gail took a deep breath and tried to master the graceful reserve Beth and Tonya projected so effortlessly. She decided to base what she said off what she had seen and figured out.

  “Thank you all for w
elcoming me into your household,” Gail said with a gracious smile. “It’s always an honor for a young Focus like myself to be invited to visit another household, and it’s a special honor to be welcomed by a household with such an exceptional history and by a Focus as exceptional as yours.”

  Another low murmur, this time approval for Gail’s kind words towards their Focus. Silence again followed. Focus Adkins smiled at Gail’s words, but Gail sensed a little surprise in Adkins’ emotions. She had expected Gail to embarrass herself.

  “And now,” Focus Adkins said into the silence, “discipline.” Tension gelled the air so hard it almost shivered.

  As Focus Adkins led Gail back upstairs, Gail thought about both the beneficiaries of Adkins’s evening rewards and the subjects of her discipline. Adkins had disciplined three people, two normals and one Transform, and they all wept piteously and begged forgiveness for their minor sins. The Transform now endured the misery of low juice, the two normals were bound, blindfolded and locked in two of the many unused bathrooms. Adkins sentenced one of them to three hours alone, and the other, nine. A sensory deprivation technique, used as punishment.

  The rewards reached more people, almost a third of the household. They paired off in a room set aside for the purpose, downstairs, the passion of the Transforms’ good juice counts enough to carry them all along. All overheated intensity, all focused at one place and time. Gail took special care that she did not boost Sylvie enough to make her interested in such activities. Not in this place.

  They sat. “I’ve seen you understand the depth of your earlier indiscretions. I have no need for further apologies. However, discipline must come to Focuses as well,” Adkins said. Adkins’ smile was one of anticipation. “I think you’ve earned about six hours of discipline.”