“As you feared, ma’am, Chrysanthemum’s had many dealings with United Toxicol,” Bass said, many minutes later.
I nodded and didn’t bother to comment. The worst I had found was from four months ago, when Chrysanthemum bribed United Toxicol to give a bogus report to Zielinski on one of his farmed-out biochem analysis projects. I wouldn’t be telling Bass anything on that subject. I kept information on Zielinski’s projects close. “What do you have?” Stacy Keaton had pounded standard debriefing and analysis procedures into our heads so deep they were automatic, and this caper had been about as standard a mission as any Arm might dream up.
“I’ve found five analysis jobs they hired United Toxicol for, including one regarding Monster amygdalas. Aren’t those one of the brain parts that changes in a Major Transformation, ma’am?”
“Uh huh, and in the older Monsters as well.” Zielinski believed the Major Transform’s transformed amygdala lay behind the Major Transform ability to harness juice, the same way the much better known change to the hippocampus lay behind our metasense, our long-range ability to sense juice or its derivatives. Some Monsters, if they survived long enough, developed such things.
“Who the hell is Chrysanthemum, though?” Bass said, frustrated. “I’d expected the Hunters were behind my family’s troubles, not some other crazy. I’ve killed too many Hunters over the years. I even had to relocate from Denver to the Dallas area to escape their attempts at payback.”
I weighed the odds, the costs and the benefits, and decided to toss her a bone. More tag-wooing. “Chrysanthemum was Wandering Shade’s front company. We thought we closed the company down after the Battle in Detroit” back when Bass had been a baby Arm with an animal torture fetish, under Keaton’s tutelage “but we didn’t get all of it. I’ve looked into Chrysanthemum” at Keaton and Tonya’s orders and suggestions, respectively, “and we suspect one of the hidden Major Transforms uses the company as a cash cow, selling Transform secrets to various governments.” Tonya suspected Focus Shirley Patterson, the hidden head of the first Focuses and the woman who ran all the Focus organizations from behind the scenes. Keaton suspected Chevalier, a hidden senior Crow who despised the Cause. I suspected Arm Erica Eissler of West Germany, mostly because I knew she didn’t trust me or the US Major Transform establishment, and because whoever backed Chrysanthemum possessed enough talent and skills to thwart my considerable investigation abilities.
Amy Haggerty, my long-tagged partner in crime, believed (because of Chrysanthemum’s continuing existence and far too many other unexplained incidents) we faced a new unknown and ultrapowerful enemy, one nasty enough he or she would draw together all the Major Transforms in an alliance. She regularly thought of events in too heroic a fashion, befitting her nickname, the Hero. Keaton, boss of all us American Arms (and nicknamed The Boss, but never to her face) thought Haggerty addled.
They didn’t get along at all well.
“There’s something that crazy out there? Ma’am, why haven’t we done more to shut down this Chrysanthemum outfit?”
I growled, irritated by the question, and didn’t answer.
In classic and tense untagged Arm silence, we shuffled papers and read like fiends until we reached Chicago.
Author’s Afterword
Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Maurice Gehin, Alex Farmer, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer. Without their help this novel would have never been made.
Cover credit goes to Jebulon for the parquet floor, Jo Naylor for the faux blood pictures and pixelman at Shutterstock for the wedding veil.
After I collected many helpful but non-monetary responses from various other publishing venues regarding my novels, I decided the best way to introduce the Commander series to a wider audience was via the ebook market. I have two traditionally published short stories, one in Analog and the other in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.
I hope you enjoyed reading this series.
If you enjoyed this novel, you can find out further information about the Commander series, the background mythos of the Commander series, and about other fiction, on http://majortransform.com. Interesting and helpful comments are encouraged. Tell your friends. Post reviews.
The memoirs of Carol Hancock continue in “The Shadow of the Progenitors”, the first novel of The Cause.
Randall Allen Farmer
All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Page 41
