An Age Without A Name

by Randall Farmer

  “What!” Beth said, in the RV below, and then continued with an unintelligibly angry tirade, amid shouting and screaming among her people. Del looked at Scout, who shrugged. Then one of the RV’s folding chairs slammed through the RV windshield, and a moment after that, the side door of the RV opened, and several of Beth’s people leapt out and took cover. Scout’s hand vanished from Del’s hand as the skittish Crow fled into the shadows.

  Del sighed. Scout had only recently nerved himself up to where he could work with Del in an affinity link. It would be quite a while before he would be calm enough around her to fight at her side. Well, without a Crow, that fucked her job of watching the enemy movements. She looked over the front edge of the RV and wondered what was wrong with Beth. Had someone gotten into the RV under Del’s watch? That would be embarrassing and earn her extensive punishment. She radioed ahead the fact that Scout had boogied and the potential problems this opened up, then swung herself off the RV’s roof and inside, through the hole in the windshield.

  Once inside, Del’s eyes confirmed what her metasense already told her: Beth trashed her own RV. Several of her people tried to calm her, and it looked like one or two had tried to grab Beth and restrain her, to no avail, collecting various bumps and bruises in the process. Beth’s rant concerned Sinclair, starting with ripping his head off and stuffing it up his rear end, and going on from there. Del tried to project calm through her predator but failed to calm even the normals, including one who tried to get in Del’s way as she wound her way through the cramped RV toward Beth. All of which proved something that Del already knew: in a hot situation, she couldn’t pull the Arm charismatic tricks common to the older Arms. Her battle-heat instincts left Del little more than the Arm basics to work with, and she switched her orientation to project predator at the normals. Phil, Beth’s current house boss, gave Del a dirty look along the lines of “You gave her Arm physical training, you deal with her,” as he backed off. He sported a nasty bruise high on his right cheekbone.

  Del’s predator cleared the RV, leaving Del alone with Beth. “…his legs I’ll ring his scrawny neck I’ll rip him two new assholes and rip his dick…” Beth said, right into Del’s face as Del approached. Del gently took Sinclair’s spare typewriter out of Beth’s hands before it went through the windshield, and grabbed the Focus’s arms. Del hadn’t taught Beth to fight, not really. More like ‘got the Focus a little closer to being in shape and better able to defend herself from Monsters’. Beth stopped shouting and glared at Del, breathing heavily and ready to fight, flush faced…and ignored Del’s predator. In return, Del ignored Beth’s attempts to wiggle free, as if the Focus wasn’t even trying.

  Beth really was beautiful, even when angry, Del noticed. Sparkling red hair, freckled red cheeks. A few sweat-damp strands in the front curled tight along her temples.

  “Did you know what Sinclair was going to do?” Beth said, voice suffused with anger. Her hair crackled with static electricity.

  Del shook her head. “What did Sinclair do?”

  “He went with La Brea on the exchange, as a hostage for our good behavior. So we don’t have to leave Oregon and Washington. The bastard! What the fuck is it with these goddamned Crows that as soon as you get close to one they fucking run away every goddamned fucking time this is twice in six months I’ve opened myself up to a Crow and let myself get close to him and there he goes I wonder if he has some Hunter Gal he’s fallen for the two timing piece of shit Sinclair!”

  Well. That improved the strategic situation immeasurably, buying the senior Crow entourage enough time to mosey in from the Chicago area. Del had been afraid that if Amy abandoned Oregon and left Crow Thomas without backup, he would fail to win against the Judges and their obnoxious tricks. That was one hell of a brave thing for Sinclair to do.

  “He’s a hero, Beth, at least for a Crow,” Del said, and let go of the Focus.

  Beth grabbed Del’s shirt and tried to shake her, although the result was that Beth just shook herself. “How dare you take his side! He has no business running off like this dammit I’m supporting five more triads than I can support without his help dammitall anyway…” Del let Beth bluster on with her Detroit harridan routine, and practiced self-calmness. Why, Del hadn’t known how much of a low-life piece of shit she, Del, was, and how she had failed Beth time and time again, this being the worst failure of all. She actually believed it all for a moment, until she realized that her grief was nothing more than Beth’s Focus charisma playing on her emotions.

  She needed to find some way to bring Beth back to sanity. First, she grabbed Beth’s arm and linked their metasenses, to check on Beth’s people. No problem there. Del wouldn’t be able to use juice moving failures to get on Beth’s case. Despite the emotional turmoil, Beth’s Transforms remained at their normal juice levels.

  “You’ve been a hero yourself, Beth, ever since you left Detroit,” Del said, taking an entirely different tack. “Risking your life and that of your Transforms. Making the hard choices. Shouldn’t Sinclair…” Del caught Beth’s other arm, not particularly interested in being bitch slapped by the Focus.

  “Let go of me,” Beth said, growling at Del.

  Much better.

  “Make me,” Del said, and let loose her aggression.

  “I think I’m going to need a new RV,” Beth said. She lay with her head in Del’s lap, and Del’s own head swam. Still. She felt warm and happy inside, and remained far too giddy to figure out why. She would be horny, too, what with the Focus’s head in her lap, except that she was too low on juice to be horny. She looked over the RV, and agreed with Beth. She probably shouldn’t have thrown Beth through the side of the RV. Del hadn’t realized the RV was that flimsy.

  Del wondered where she would get a new juice structure from. They didn’t sell those down at the local Woolworth’s. What Beth did to her wasn’t the sort of thing that anyone should ever do to a nice Arm juice structure. She didn’t metasense like herself any more.

  Her juice structure rebuilt itself, thankfully, or at least Del thought it rebuilt itself. Amy wouldn’t be happy, though. Beth had played hard to get for too long, and Amy refused to back down and give in. Now it was too late. Beth was Del’s.

  Del smiled, understanding where the feeling of happiness came from. Between the warm glow of the fresh tag and the depressive effects of middling-low juice, she felt drunk. Drowsy, contented, with the nagging hunger for juice a distant thing.

  Then she sighed. The entire affair with Beth had been a damned soap opera. Amy claimed Beth, but didn’t tag her with a full tag as she should have. Then she ordered Del to help Beth finish learning the Focus-Arm juice transfer. So Beth got pissed because she found herself caught inside Arm dominance games and flirted her juice at Amy and Arm Sibrian. Del didn’t think any of them realized a Focus could be flirtatious with her own juice structure, but it figured that if anyone would be able to come up with a sneaky trick like that, it would be Beth. The juice flirting annoyed Sibrian to no end, likely one of the reasons Sibrian fled to Chicago, in pursuit of Enkidu.

  Beth and Amy barked at each other twice about the problem, which ended when Amy stalked off and proclaimed she didn’t have time for Focus head games, leaving Beth to storm around and proclaim that she wouldn’t prostrate herself in front of any damned perfectionist Arms who demanded perfect juice transfer accuracy. Del kept her head low in that one, but later learned of Amy’s new twist to delay a mutual tag with Beth: Beth needed to guarantee full control over the juice transfer, with no dropping out after ten or fifteen points.

  That, Del had realized, would take practice. Lots and lots of practice. Giving juice to an Arm was as pleasurable to a Focus as the Arm juice draw was to the Arm. The process overwhelmed Beth completely. It was folly to expect Beth to be able to control a juice transfer as well as Amy, with four years of experience as an Arm, could control a juice draw. That sort of control wouldn’t happen any time soon.

  Well, Beth and Del could temp tag each other only
so many times before some sort of link formed by itself. Perhaps the juice couldn’t think for itself, but in Del’s experience it damn well could act for itself.

  Even with temporary tags, Del hadn’t been interested in being tagged by a Focus with a one way tag. So in their practice sessions, they had moved over to temporary mutual tags. Less emotionally harmful to both of them. Now? Far too late. The juice had made deep and strong full tags for them, not even slightly under their control.

  “New RV, and an apology to your people,” Del said. The Transforms and normals who had been in the RV with Beth huddled together in a group, up against a camper that was part of Del’s gypsy entourage, all terrified out of their minds. They had probably never seen an Arm go after their Focus for real before. Well, almost for real. At least during part of the fight.

  Beth snickered, and then started to laugh, and Del joined in, unable to stop.

  “Took you two long enough.”

  Del looked up to see the black-clad figure of Amy Haggerty staring down at her from the door of Beth’s RV. Del blinked, surprised that she was surprised. Even a half hour after the fight, her metasense, it seemed, hadn’t recovered enough that she could pick up an Arm. About two thirds of the way through the fight, Beth had grabbed Del’s juice and yanked it almost out of her body. Del ended up chasing her own juice like a puppy chasing its tail, until she did an Arm juice draw on the responsible juice pattern. At least Del thought that was when she lost the use of her metasense. It could have been when she broke Beth’s arm and thought she had broken her own.

  “What are you talking about, Amy?” Beth said. The smile on Beth’s face was so bright it glowed. She was beautiful, and happy, and didn’t remotely understand the misery in store.

  “The mutual tag,” Amy said. Del felt the old robot coldness descending on her mind, defense against pain too great to bear, and held Beth tighter. Del trod on Amy’s turf when she tagged Beth. Amy would order Del to drop the tag, and Del wouldn’t be able to obey. The tag was too deep and too tightly knotted into Del’s soul.

  The next step would be for Amy to beat the tag out of Del. Amy could do it, too, with enough brutality and the force of the tag she held on Del. Appropriate punishment for the offense of violating her superior’s territory. Then, forever afterwards, Del would strive for Amy, charging off on an endless series of heroic quests, each one for the reward of gazing for a few moments at her lost Beth.

  If Del remained sane. If Beth remained sane.

  Del watched Amy like a deer watched the headlights of an oncoming car, looking for those hard predator eyes, and the hints of punishment to come. She couldn’t find anything of the sort. Amy seemed relaxed and easygoing as she answered Beth. “It’s easier to take juice from Del than from you. That way, I’m in control of the whole operation, and I can take as much or as little as I need. You two deserve each other, after all the good work you’ve done on this project.” She dropped a thick manila folder in Beth’s lap, a thinner one in Del’s, then whistled an off-key rendition of some heavy metal rock tune as she sauntered off. “Too bad your little bit of Major Transform chaos didn’t induce Bass and her crew of losers to attack,” she said, over her shoulder. “I have this bad feeling Echo saw through Midgard’s illusion. Too bad. It would have been damned helpful if Bass’s Crow would tell Bass I was knocked out. Instead, the whole crew of them boogied ten minutes ago, when we started to set up to take them.” Then Amy vanished, invisible.

  Del blinked as she realized that Amy wouldn’t be forcing her to drop the tag, then blinked again as she processed the insult. Her boss Arm didn’t consider Beth worth claiming as territory. Beth was just a juice-creation appliance to her, now dealt with one-step removed. No affection, no commitment. No link at all. Even Del herself was just a tool in her boss’s toolbox to control the juice.

  Once, long ago, many months, when Del was still a student in Ma’am Keaton’s house, Ma’am Keaton said Amy was as flawed as all the other older Arms, headblind and twisted. Del hadn’t understood, back then.

  Now she did.

  “What a bitch!” Del and Beth said, together. Amy reappeared, looking back at them through the hole in the side of the RV, her gaze hot for an instant, yanking hard on Del’s tag. “Ma’am,” Del and Beth concluded. Amy stopped yanking on the tag, and vanished again into the night.

  Beth opened her manila folder, and took out a sheaf of papers. From Sinclair, an apology, a half inch thick double-spaced manuscript of an apology. Not a surprise, as Del had seen Sinclair type, at Crow speed, and he used his Crow manual dexterity at a typewriter with great aplomb. Sinclair wasn’t the love’m-and-leave’m type. No, if you wanted someone with a fear of commitment, that would be Amy.

  Del waited until Beth settled herself before opening hers. Then she whistled. Amy had assigned Del diplomatic duties, both to the senior Crows and to some yahoo named ‘Courtier Dan Freeman’, who needed to meet up with them ASAP. Yet another promotion Del wasn’t qualified for. Beth glanced at Del’s folder contents, read them sideways, and groaned.

  “He’s impossible,” Beth said, about Freeman, her voice filled with exasperation.

  This did sound interesting.

  ---

  “…the Duke’s off skirmishing with renegade Arm Bass’s pet Hunter squad, Arm Haggerty’s off doing something with the local police and FBI” installing her own favorites in the local chain of command, including several senior FBI agents “and Crow Master Sinclair’s under the care of the Judges, serving as a hostage for our good behavior,” Del said. I may be a junior Arm, but you VIPs are going to need to deal with me, she didn’t say.

  “Very well,” the tall Crow said. At least six other Crows clouded the forested meet point near the North Fork Reservoir. “My name is Rumor, and I’m here as the voice of Crow Guru Thomas.”

  This ‘voice’ business was new to Del. “Sir?”

  “He has conditions.”

  Fears, he meant. Reasonable, given Sir Freeman’s Beast Man charges, Bass’s local activities and the Hunters. The Mt. Hood wilderness was a good place for everyone to hide.

  “Tell me, sir,” Del said. Crow Rumor did. Del took mental notes.

  ---

  “Sir Freeman,” Del said, after she left the Crow contingent on the other end of the reservoir-side campground. “Crow Master Coriolis.” Coriolis had not been pleased to learn he would need to deal with Del in person. He hung on to Sir DeWitt like a scared three year old. “I have a request from the senior Crows about your charges.”

  “I can imagine, ma’am,” Freeman said. He was, as advertised, ‘just a Transform’, what Ma’am Keaton’s books termed a Goldilocks. Del had heard rumors that some of the more advanced Transforms could borrow Major Transform tricks and abilities, but this was ridiculous. The fake juice buffer, stuffed with around fifty points of juice, was the most astonishing. Such a thing had to be impossible. “They aren’t normal Beast Men, though. They’re something new, or at least new to us.” Freeman didn’t stand much taller than Del, about five six, and despite his recent adventures he was impeccably groomed, with a full beard. He carried military gear with him, though, not civilian knockoffs. Fully auto M-16. Four grenades under his jacket. Knives in his boots. His body’s muscles sang with the prowess of advanced Transform training as well as what appeared to be borrowed Crow reflexes.

  Del turned to Crow Master Coriolis, who stood with Sir DeWitt on the other side of the campground fire pit from Freeman and his charges. “They need to be turned Noble.” This was Guru Thomas’s demand.

  “I can’t do it without their cooperation,” Coriolis said. He didn’t say it out loud, but used the Crow whispering trick that utilized the metasense instead of using sound waves.

  “They want to become Nobles, Master Coriolis,” Sir Freeman said. “Unfortunately, they don’t understand the details of the process, and they remain a bit skittish.”

  Del turned to the four Beast Men, who had taken the shapes of a wolf, a dog, and two oversized mount
ain lions. “Their shapes are very, um, natural, for Beast Men.” One of the mountain lion Beast Men had found a way to open a dark brown bear-proof trash can and was examining, and eating, the trash inside. To Del’s metasense, their emotions remained calm for Beast Men, as well as eerily synchronized.

  “Perhaps I can help,” Del said. When no one objected, she walked over to the four of them, projecting friendship. They looked at her, and didn’t attack. “My name is Del, and I’m an Arm. Can any of you talk?”

  “Me, a little,” the wolf said, his words slurred and barely understandable. He sniffed at her and bowed his head slightly. “I’m Wolf.” Uh huh, a Beast Man without much in the way of IQ. “We’re the True Hunters.”

  “I see,” she said. The name felt right, and instinctive. They supported a natural version of the Hunters’ Law, but minimal and tuned to the concept of ‘pack’. The four approached her, slowly, their thoughts turning from food to, well, sex.

  She flickered on her predator and all four hunched their shoulders down in full submission, instinctively seeking her acceptance. Perfect. She doubted she would have any trouble bullying them into full cooperation.

  ---

  “Arm Sokolnik, do you mind if I watch while you exercise?” Now with a peace treaty in place with the Judges, Amy had tried again to arrange lodgings in the Portland area, and this time, succeeded. For now, they camped in some hunter’s deer lease, out by Gladstone. Their tents, Del noticed, showed far too much wear for the weather.

  Del glanced to the side and found Thomas the Dreamer, just inside the tent canopy. Del exercised in one of the large pavilions, the one with a tendency to leak a steady series of drips from the left-front top seam whenever it rained. Like, for instance, today. Useless for paperwork, Amy had set it up as a small gym.