Del hadn’t metasensed Thomas, nor heard or smelled him.
“Be my guest,” she said, continuing with her set. Outside the pavilion, the campsite was the normal never-ending bustle of planning, training, and surviving, all mostly drowned out by the steady pat, pat, pat of rain on canvas.
After Del befriended the four Beast Men and leaned on them to cooperate with Crow Master Coriolis, Thomas had appeared and begun his examination. The Crow VIP studied all of Amy’s crew, including the Duendes and their Familia. The other Crows who came with him stayed far away, under Crow Rumor’s care. The Crows eschewed all requirements of sustenance, shelter, and bodyguards, but Thomas demanded clearance to poke into everything. Del could practically see the teeth prints on Amy’s tongue after Del passed along Thomas’s demand, but the older Arm had agreed.
Del finished her set of lying high-bench close-grip barbell curls, made no easier by the thick humidity, and put the barbell down with a puff. “So, Crow Guru Thomas, why the intense studying?” The scuttlebutt was that this was his payment for helping them with the Judges, but Del didn’t really buy that. A Crow with Thomas’s obvious talents – the trick he used to inhibit short term memory acquisition on those who tried to get a good look at him was both appalling and revealing at the same time – had certainly seen and metasensed Arms, Focuses and Nobles before. Recently, too, in the Chicago battles. According to rumor and some information from Keaton’s notes, Thomas the Dreamer was something called a Mentor, but Del knew very little of what that meant, except that it seemed to outrank Guru. The Crows wouldn’t say a word on the subject. They wouldn’t even admit that the concept of Mentor existed.
“All groups have an identity different from the individuals who make up the group,” Thomas said. “Before I contact the Judges in person, I need to know who they’re dealing with. The group you belong to.”
Meaning, Del decided, that appearances can be deceiving, he didn’t trust us worth a lick, and if he judged us to be the guilty party, he would help the Judges against us. Eminently reasonable, if one was paranoid and unable to survive even the slightest bit of treachery. She settled down on the damp, canvas-covered ground to do some inter-set stretches, and took the opportunity to study Thomas for the first time since he arrived.
Del decided Thomas had arbitrated cases like this before. Certainly, no one who invited him in would have been foolish enough to lie to him. At least not in the last ten years or so. “I take it then, Crow Thomas, that Crow groups have a rather large capacity for self-deception?”
“From an Arm’s point of view, an extremely high capacity,” Thomas said, not missing a beat and understanding her point. “The average Crow often deceives himself to satisfy the needs of survival. According to Shadow, Focuses often do the same to aid the survival of their household.”
Thomas did an excellent job of concealing himself, Del noted with frustration as she tried to get a good look at his juice structure. At first glance, she couldn’t sense him at all. Even at second glance, she barely metasensed more than a general blur. She had gotten far more off Arpeggio and Snow, both similarly senior Crows. This was ridiculous. Nobody should be able to block her so well. She shot him a hot look.
“You’re correct in assuming my statement was incomplete,” Thomas said. “When Focuses deceive themselves, they most often know they’re doing so, unlike Crows.”
That she understood, and nodded. “An Arm of my inexperience might still make that mistake as well. Have you noticed anything along those lines you might be willing to share with me?” This wasn’t the first time he had observed her, though it was the first time she had been able to talk to him.
Thomas chewed on that for several minutes, while Del went on to her next set on the high bench. From his reaction, Del concluded that Crows likely did not sit around, as Arms did, and rip into each other’s weaknesses in Ma’am Keaton’s time-tested brutal manner.
For Arms, even small self-delusions could be fatal. The margin of error was much smaller for predators than for the conservators.
“Conservators?” Thomas said. Damn. Del hadn’t realized he was that good at mind reading! She must have inadvertently sub-vocalized, or something equally embarrassing.
“Dividing the world into predators and prey is insufficient,” Del said. “Arm Keaton used that term to describe Crows and Focuses, at a broad-brush functional level.”
Thomas nodded. “I see, and formally thank you for your observation.” He paused for a moment. “Since you asked, I should point out to you that Focus households are far more malleable than you’re giving them credit for.”
Del stopped, mid-way through her curl, surprised. She knew exactly what problem he referred to, although she had never spoken of it to anyone. The inscrutable Crow was right, dammit. She had been letting her emotional attachment to her two Focuses get in the way of dispassionate logic. Now that wasn’t something she had much experience with since her transformation!
“Thank you,” she said, and resumed her curl before her muscles yowled protest. Three more and the set was done. Thomas watched dispassionately as she settled herself back on the ground for her next round of stretches.
This time when she tried to study the Crow, she put a little effort behind it. She was supposed to have a first-rate metasense, and she would be damned if anyone would hide from her while standing less than five feet away, even if he was a Crow Mentor. She concentrated, and his juice structure almost became clear, but not quite. There was a hint of something especially attractive about it, but she couldn’t sense it. In frustration, she burned a small amount of juice, less than a point, into her metasense. That did it, and he became suddenly clear.
And, oh, he was beautiful. His juice structure was the most complex juice structure that Del had ever encountered, an endless fractal maze of mystery and astonishment. She could gaze deeper in and find layer after layer of dazzling beauty. She could pull out into infinity, and Thomas remained there, huge and magnificent, like looking into the universe itself from outside.
Her juice structure rang as if she was a gong struck by some greater power. He was her soul mate, the one person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, not necessarily for sex, but for the meeting of compatible souls. She needed him, loved him, and became engrossed by him.
This, she thought, must be what true affinity felt like, not the mundane affinity link so common between Transforms. What Mary Sibrian and Enkidu experienced in Denver. Wonderful and terrible, beauteous and overwhelming. Never in her life had she understood how lonely she had been. Until now.
Thomas the Dreamer opened his eyes wide as she gazed at him, honest shock in the carefully controlled Crow, shock that she had found a way through his defenses. Then his eyes softened in gentle affection, as the affinity link coursed through him as well.
The linkage moment lasted all of a second. Then he did something with the dross, and his metapresence faded from her gaze again. The affection in him disappeared, and he pulled away. He rejected her and their connection, and closed down all those changes that the juice made to his emotions.
He was a senior Crow, at least a decade more senior than Del. He could control the juice and what the juice did to him. He had no reason or desire to involve himself in the life of a junior Arm with dubious mental stability.
The decision took him almost no time, and afterwards he gazed at her with his normal dispassionate calm. Del’s affection touched him not at all.
Del could do nothing but watch in horror as he rejected her. When he cut off her vision of his juice structure, he left her with nothing but the memory of fantastic beauty, and the soul mate that would never be hers. She loved him. She could never stop loving him. And he would never be hers.
“If you will excuse me, Arm Sokolnik?” he said. Gentle compassion, but nothing more. “Under the circumstances, you might be more comfortable if I left you on your own.”
Del didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.
---
&n
bsp; Del sat down at the meeting, held in what Corpserider slang referred to as the command tent and was really another pavilion, this one with canvas walls and excellent metasense and illusionary defenses to keep conversations private. She repressed the urge to shake herself like a dog to fling off the rain that clung to her, as she doubted the others at the table would take kindly to even more wet. The inside of the tent was stuffy with the smell of damp fur, damp clothes, and cranky predators. Outside, the rain pat-patted on the canvas, sounding like it would keep weeping from the sky for the next week.
She had just spent over two hours being grilled by Duke Hoskins about what she had done to the True Hunters. The True Hunters were all now Pages, all fully Noble, and all well on the way to mastering their man-forms. He had agreed to distribute the new Nobles to the many Noble Baronies currently short of new blood, but the former True Hunters refused to allow themselves to be split up. “They came linked that way, sir,” she had explained. “It wasn’t anything I did.” The Duke hadn’t been convinced. He still thought her friendship trick had somehow reinforced their group link. He called her friendship trick a ‘stealth tag’, in an accusatory fashion, and it had taken her nearly twenty minutes to show him, at the juice level, that it wasn’t any form of tag, but something living in a different area of the juice, something she didn’t consciously create but something the juice created for her in certain obscure circumstances.
Just another of her typical snafus.
All the group’s leaders were here, all the Major Transforms and the leading Transforms and normals. In front of her and to her left, Bruja Torres and Bruja Martinez sat with their heads together, trying surreptitiously not to look at Del. She wasn’t surprised. Young Arms like herself, who occasionally accidentally let their predators slip free, had to be unnerving if you weren’t used to Arms.
After Del sat, Bruja Modesty sat down to Del’s immediate left, her lost eye now finally re-grown and functional again. Scout sat down on Del’s immediate right. This was Scout’s ‘coming out’ meeting, the first time he had worked himself up to a real public appearance. He even agreed to a temporary full tag, so Del could steady him with her predator and help him control his panic.
“Fellow Transforms,” Thomas said, standing at the opposite end of the table from Haggerty. The people in the command tent instantly quieted.
Del stared stonily straight ahead. Even she recognized the old robot-face she wore again. Haggerty would give her trouble if not for her other twenty problems. The worst was Bass’s Hunter group, now fifty percent larger than during the La Brea exchange but also farther away, dug in defensively to the east of Mt. Hood. Apparently without Arm Bass, according to the Crows, and now led by at least one senior Hunter.
Del didn’t know what else to do, though. Every time she looked at Thomas, she saw that incredible juice structure in her mind, every detail held forever in an Arm’s perfect memory. She ached with the loss of him, and didn’t know how to stop the pain. If she concentrated on her mutual tag with Beth it helped, but only enough to keep her from permanently diving back into robot.
“I’ve finished my inventory of your group, and I and my friends have made contact with several of the Judges. At this point in time, I need to disclose what I’ve learned, and open the floor for discussion of what steps should be taken past this point.” Del looked for some sign of recognition in his tone and expression, but the only hint of his emotions that she could gain was from his word choice, and from them Del guessed something had unnerved him.
“The Judges have refused to cooperate with my friends and me,” Thomas said. “In particular, they’ve stated that their alleged dealing with the Hunters is none of our business. The evidence your group has presented is impeccable, and needs refutation. The Judges refuse to present any evidence to refute your allegations.” Good. Del had hoped Thomas wouldn’t challenge Amy or Duke Hoskins’ assertions, one of the reasons he might have been a little unnerved.
“In fact, the Judges threatened violence against Guru Arpeggio, in specific, unless he left the area. I have no option but to consider their threat to be a tacit acknowledgement of guilt,” Thomas said, and sat.
He remained engrossing, even without the lure of his juice structure. She wanted to sit next to him and puzzle him out. Cuddle next to him and have him hold her. Her body ached with the constant tension of unsatisfied need, and she didn’t know what to make of it. The thought of sleeping with him appealed, but the thought of sleeping with anyone right now appealed. She wondered if the juice had decided to play with her sexuality, and resented the interference.
It wouldn’t be the first time the juice messed up her sex drive. Before her transformation, she had been a professional virgin. Solitary, all her energy channeled into her work. Men never appealed to her, and women hadn’t appealed much, either.
Then she transformed, and suddenly her libido rocketed up to the stratosphere. She became so horny she would sleep with anything, but discovered she preferred women. She dealt with the discovery well enough. Now, she didn’t want the juice playing games with her again. She was a lesbian now, dammit. She liked women.
Except for Thomas, and she didn’t understand what she wanted from him. The only thing she was sure of was that, whatever she wanted she wouldn’t get.
Amy and Duke Hoskins eyed each other for a goodly long while after Thomas’s pronouncement. “Do you have any recommendations, sir?” Amy asked Crow Thomas.
“Do you wish this handled quickly or slowly?” Thomas said. Del found his thoughtful deliberations to be soothing after the intense activity that Amy and Duke Hoskins constantly generated. She found nearly everything he did to be pleasant. Appealing.
She pushed the thoughts away as best she could, and retreated into her robot coldness, even though she knew it couldn’t be good for her.
“Quickly. This is war,” Amy said.
“Then I must confess weakness,” Thomas said. “I possess little strength at the moment, due to my actions in Chicago, and my Crow companions all share the same issue. I know of no way for us to handle this quickly.” That explained Scout’s comment, earlier, about the sudden and utter lack of dross in the Portland area. These senior Crows appeared to need all the dross they could gather up.
“Would you be willing to accept our help? Would that aid you in handling this quickly?”
“Yes,” Thomas said.
“Might I suggest we re-capture the Crow La Brea, then,” Duke Hoskins said. Amy nodded. “Crows of his stature are good enough at screening to mask their scents in casual situations, but I had the Crow in captivity for long enough for me to penetrate his tricks. With your help, Crow Guru Thomas, I believe we should be able to easily recapture him.”
Del had a sudden image of Crow La Brea getting the shock of his life, as Duke Hoskins nabbed him from right out of one of Thomas’s invisibilities. “If we do so, we need to be ready to retake Crow Sinclair immediately,” Amy said.
“Yes,” Thomas said. “I believe that it would take me only a minute or two to convince La Brea to reveal where Crow Master Sinclair is being held.”
Amy looked around the damp table, and marked several Transforms with her eyes, not including Del. “We’ll need to split our group,” she said. “Duende Poder, would you be willing to coordinate defenses on the group we’re leaving behind?” The Chimera nodded. “Those of you I’ve indicated, to me. We have an attack to plan.”
Oh, well, Del thought. It wasn’t realistic to think she would end up in all the attacks. However Thomas had said earlier that if they stayed in one place, he and his Crow companions would be able to put up defenses that would make even Enkidu’s command cadre fear attacking. For the moment, their days of constant moving were over.
---
Amy’s attack group left, leaving the rest of the army with the rain. Del’s clothes remained wet, and the air was so humid that nothing would dry out. Every tent in the camp was lined with clotheslines, as people made their futile attempts to dry ou
t sleeping bags, socks, underwear, pants, and anything else waterlogged.
With Amy gone, Del took the liberty of commandeering the command tent. This was the biggest tent they owned, and Del had plans for the next few hours. She wanted to dance on her toes, from excitement and her aching, unresolved sexual tension. In a moment of giddy abandon, she even let herself take a few steps.
Del had been preparing this ever since her minor stumble when she befriended the True Hunters and Thomas gave her the hint she needed about Focus households. The preparation was a hell of a test of her capabilities, but Del had so far managed to avoid any mistakes. She had grabbed three prey – untagged Transforms – and refrained from draining them. This itself was almost impossible. The Commander had once told her that she had managed to hunt down one prey and give it to Ma’am Keaton when she graduated, as proof of her readiness to be an independent Arm. Del thought of herself as a talented young Arm, not at all lacking in self-control, but she knew that even now, she wouldn’t be able to give her own prey to some other Arm she didn’t have a tagged relationship with. What she did here was almost as bad, but for a good cause, and the emotions helped a lot.
She needed to link herself to all the Transforms in Beth and Modesty’s households. They needed to, finally, understand the Arms, as well. She had heard about the Commander’s tagging ceremonies with Inferno and Abyss, and thought they were far too weak. A good first attempt, but not deep enough into the juice. When Del set a tag, she wanted it real, all the way down to the bottom of someone’s subconscious.
“Focuses already have ways of doing this, Del,” Beth said, again, about the other part of the plan. “Perfectly good ways.” Beth’s breath on Del’s cheek sent her nerves tingling in a wave, all the way from her face to her toes.
“It’ll be alright,” Del said, in a whisper, not wanting to go into the technical details. Beth’s people started to trickle in, dripping water from wet clothes onto the canvas floor. “You know how unhappy he is, even if he won’t talk about it.”
An Age Without A Name Page 10
