“Your grace,” Sinclair started, but he stopped when he saw the expression on Duke Hoskins’ face.
“Don’t you feel the change?” Hoskins said, in a true Crow whisper. “The revelation of the Eskimo Spear has stirred up a storm, a big storm, and we belong out in the wilds when it hits. The pine forests of Michigan, maybe, or the Adirondacks, or the Appalachians. That’s where we’re strong. We need to be on our home ground.” The Nobles had picked up their equivalent of Crow pheromone flow meditation and the Focus dreaming capabilities from Occum, and it had taken a very strange form: they ‘saw things’ in the weather. Cloud vision, some Nobles called it.
“Yes, I’ve also seen signs of trouble in the flow, among all our enemies, and some new ones as well. You want to fight?” Of course a Noble would see the conflict as a fight. They saw everything as a fight. Or as sex.
The Duke nodded. “Fighting’s our job. What does the title mean without responsibility? You’re already doing what you’re meant to do. Let us do the same.”
Sinclair heard Occum, from back in his apprenticeship. ‘Pay attention,’ the old lobsterman had said. ‘If you’re to go raising Nobles, don’t you dare think you can do a half-assed job. Your job is to provide them with what they need, whether you like it or not. If you can’t cope, then you walk out the door right now, because they depend on you, and you’d damned well better have the same commitment to them.’
He had agreed back then, thinking he understood his promise. He wondered sometimes how he could have been so naive.
“All right. We’ll go as soon as Page Alexander is ready to be made Squire.” That would be when he could be trusted without constant watching, and they wouldn’t need to lock him in the shed at night. Traveling would be nearly impossible before then. The Squiring should take five or six weeks. He would miss the companionship of Focus Keistermann, but the Duke was right.
The Duke nodded. “Very well, Master Sinclair.”
---
“So this is your new room, which you’ll share with Angie and Hazel.”
“Geez, Crow Master Sinclair sir, this sure is dinky,” Jane said. “I knew your group was going to be a step down, but really!”
For one of the spitfires, Jane wasn’t half bad. Hell, Callie herself had taken a swing at Sinclair when she discovered the depths of Noble poverty and her minimal chances of long-term survival. Only Duke Hoskins’ intervention had prevented Callie from gutting him or from Sinclair skunking Callie to death. Now Callie was one of the best.
Behind him, Sir Randolph grunted. “Commoner Jane, you be nice.”
“Yah, and about that ‘commoner’ shit. Can’t you come up with something less medieval? That makes me feel like a goddamned serf!”
“Once you’ve accepted the fact you’re going to be living with us, we’ll drop the term,” Sinclair said. Patterns.
“Crap!” She turned on him, and shook her index finger under his nose. “Damn you! I’ll get a lawyer. I’ll call the newspapers. This just isn’t right, and you have no right to be doing this to me!”
Jane stood about five three, and had what could best be described as a nasty glare. Her long black hair was gathered by two barrettes, and hung down to just below her shoulder blades. She wasn’t petite – actually, rather chunky, though she was no wallflower or shirker, not with those muscles of hers. Her chapped pale white skin perfectly set off her faint moustache. Sinclair guessed she was around twenty-five or so.
“So, commoner Jane,” Sinclair said, “why did Focus Cottsfield’s traveling circus ask you to leave?”
Jane turned and mumbled something. Given time, his calm voice could do wonders, that and the charismatic presence of a long established Major Transform.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t make that out,” Sinclair said. “Something about a punch?”
Sir Randolph gently put his hand on Jane’s shoulder, and turned her around. A couple of stray tears streaked down her face, outlining her clenched jaws. “Alright, I punched out one of the guys. Again,” she said. “After punching out Marina. Being a Transform’s made me more aggressive or something. Hell, I hadn’t fought anyone since high school.” Her voice didn’t break or crack as she admitted her transgression.
Sinclair nodded. “Good.”
“Good? That I punch people out?”
“Look, Jane, you’re free to walk if you want. Of course, since you would be a free Transform woman not under anyone’s care, the police are going to look askance if I don’t call them and tell them what you’re doing. We can’t let prospective Monsters run loose to become a menace to society, after all. On the other hand, you can stay here and help us. Dammit, we need strong willed women Transforms. The weak ones fall apart so quickly.”
“Go Monster, you mean? I talked to a couple of Focus Keistermann’s people, and they did fill me in.”
“Monsters happen,” Sinclair said. “Our training techniques have gotten us to the point where most of our commoners stabilize. The only danger comes from the mistakes, botching a draw in one way or another. We have quite a few Crow Masters, and several others, working on improving our techniques. Intelligent and strong willed commoners like yourself are a great help to us. Eventually, with your help and the help of those like you, we’ll be able to stabilize all the commoners, men and women. Perhaps even improve them to past their normal human mental capabilities.”
Jane shook her head, and balled her fists. “What’s this about training? Transforms like me are nothing more than juice fodder. Right?”
“Oh, no,” Sir Randolph said. “We love you, too!”
Jane rolled her eyes.
“We use the most advanced training techniques known to the Focuses, to help the commoners train themselves, strengthening your ego and sense of self. The better trained you are the better your chance of living through a mistake.”
“What’s with that Diane creature, then? She looked pretty far gone into Monster to me.”
Sinclair nodded. “Her choice. Commoners can stabilize as human normal women or as Monsters. As a Monster, you lose the ability to talk. However, stabilizing mentality and intellect is actually easier if we allow the Monster shape to take over. Diane can’t speak, but she’s as smart as I am and you are. Until we perfect the human normal stabilization, you can expect to lose some of your intellect if you go that route, but you’ll retain the ability to talk.”
“Ah, right, Crow Master sir. That’s a hell of a choice, you know. I’m surprised any of your commoners chose the Monster path, though.”
“Nearly half of them do. They don’t lose the ability to understand language, you understand. Diane can still read, believe it or not.”
“Fuck,” Jane said, suddenly realizing how bad her life had just become. “You think that eventually you’ll be able to bring my mind back?”
“I’m certain, and not long from now, either. We’ve already reduced the IQ loss from sixty percent to twenty percent in the past eighteen months. With all the people we have working on the problem, we’ve made great strides.”
“I’ll take the human path, then,” Jane said. “Focus Keistermann set my juice real low before she sent me over, so I’ve got nearly two weeks before you need to draw me down. I’d better start work on this training, now, shouldn’t I?”
Sinclair nodded. Jane would be one of the real good spitfires, one of the ones who had seen enough hell under a Focus to understand the fragility of her survival. Motivation was key to everything as a commoner.
Sinclair: June 24, 1972 – June 26, 1972
Guru Shadow examined Jane again with his metasense, while Sinclair watched and fretted. They waited in the living room of the barony’s old farmhouse. Greta had been at the windows recently, and the afternoon sun brightly illuminated the shabby, comfortable furniture. Sinclair and Duke Hoskins wanted Callie to be the subject for the test they were about to perform, but Shadow declared Callie too far gone. Shadow’s analysis left their newest commoner, Jane, as the only legitimate candidate. Sinclair
still half-hoped Shadow would find Jane wasn’t acceptable. Sinclair didn’t particularly like Jane, at least not yet. Too much time in a Focus household set her in her ways, leaving her uncomfortable with the Barony’s routines.
On the other hand, the test did require someone with enough self-centered brass to have her own viewpoints and opinions, even in the worst of situations. Jane didn’t lack. If the test proved successful, the Barony would have another voice of leadership. The Baronies desperately needed more voices of leadership. A Barony was no place for petty jealousies. Baronies were team efforts, not some sort of half-assed dictatorship.
“Perfect,” Shadow said, lifting his hands from Jane’s bare shoulders. She settled her blouse back over the still-human skin and looked up unhappily at the three men standing over her. “If anything, the seasoning Jane here received as part of a Focus household is our ace in the hole. Her experience may make the difference between success and failure. You did note how little mental degradation Jane suffered from her first draw, Sinclair? Part of the reason for that was her year of experience as a Transform.”
“I’d hoped her success was from the last set of changes in the draw technique, Master Shadow,” Duke Hoskins said.
“Unfortunately not,” Shadow said. The older Crow Guru stood about five foot nine, with an oval face, dark hair, and olive skin, and he carried that aura of peace and power that all the oldest Crows seemed to possess.
Jane rolled her eyes, probably not used to being talked about like a piece of furniture. Sinclair made a note to go over with Jane the number of times ‘furniture’ happened to him. “Let me guess,” Jane said. “The fact I busted my ass off training this shit didn’t make any difference at all.”
Sinclair frowned at Jane. She remained impolite, even after her first harrowing experience with a draw. Last time he called her on it she said something about the male locker room atmosphere of the barony and how her politeness didn’t matter given how none of the women in the Barony had a say anyway. Just what he hadn’t needed, a woman’s libber for a commoner. Still…
“Much to the contrary, Jane,” Shadow said. “Your training increased your chance of success. Without training, commoner women stabilize at about a forty percent IQ deficit, no matter the talents of the Noble. You had an exceptionally good first draw.”
“Good first draw! What I went through was hell, Shadow! Absolute stark raving terrifying hell! Don’t give me that smug ‘exceptionally good’ shit. Let’s see you go through something like that and then we’ll see if you can talk so calmly, afterwards.”
“I’ve been through much worse,” Shadow said, calmly settling himself in the Duke’s favorite chair. Jeremy sighed and sat at the end of the couch nearest Jane. Sinclair sat at the other end, tucking a little piece of stuffing back where it came from. “No, I’m not going to talk about my experiences, either.” Rats, thought Sinclair. He certainly had never gone through anything as harrowing as a commoner draw, and he would have loved to hear Shadow say anything about the bad old days of Crowdom. Or how he escaped the attack on him by the followers of his former and now deceased boss, Innocence, in the lead-up to the Battle in Detroit.
Hints of this darkness sat in a clearing at the edge of the barony. Sinclair watched Gilgamesh through one sparklingly clear window, sitting at the edge of the barony property and practicing with dross constructs. Gilgamesh, pissy about everything all of a sudden, refused to practice with Beasts breathing down his neck, and demanded someplace ‘safe’ to work ‘where I don’t need to worry about being someone’s dinner’. Although Sinclair didn’t understand the details of Gilgamesh’s practice, he did metasense dangerous dross constructs. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to squeeze out of either Gilgamesh or Shadow why Gilgamesh suddenly needed to learn such dangerous dross manipulation techniques. At least so far.
“However, Jane, you do need to know that you are the first human-stabilized commoner to go through her first draw and retain the ability to read. Or to remember what happened during the draw process. Human stabilization is unnatural, and the élan fights against it. Thus, the pain.” Shadow arched an eyebrow at Jane. Élan was the mixture of juice and dross that Chimeras survived on, what a woman Transform produced when her juice structure overloaded and she went Monster. In the Noble baronies, they stabilized commoners not by keeping their juice level constant, but by letting them cross the boundary into Monster and then protecting them from the effects. Mostly. “It’s your choice whether you want to continue along these lines or not.”
“Sinclair says that I’ll lose my ability to read in the next draw, no matter what,” Jane said, eyes suddenly downcast, as she gripped her hands into fists. “I’ll probably start to forget the pain, too. If this is so unnatural, why go this route at all?”
“Retention of humanity,” Duke Hoskins said. “What Nobles do to be able to keep human shape and human thought patterns is also painful. The natural route for Chimeras and their consorts has no place at all in the modern world. The natural route leaves Chimeras in beast forms, unable to speak, with packs of tamed unspeaking Monsters for élan. Even the uncivilized brutish Hunters refuse to go that route. The real question is whether you’re committed to this test procedure.” The Duke turned away for a moment. “This procedure is very dangerous. If we mess this up, you’ll end up as one of our Monsters, or, truthfully, more easily end up dead,” he said, with a catch in his voice. This was hard on the Duke. As a Noble, his responsibility was to protect the Commoners, not to risk them for a not particularly large chance they might end up improved.
“Awwwh,” Jane said, and patted the Duke on his hairy forearm. “I know, I know. But you guys have already convinced me to give this a shot. I know this is dangerous, but I think it’s worth the chance.”
“What’s the theory behind this attempt, Shadow?” Sinclair said.
“As you know, what we’ve been looking for is the symbolic analog to Pack Alpha creation,” Shadow said, crossing his legs and pressing his fingers together. “When the Hunters create a Pack Alpha, they imprint the ‘whole Law’ on a stable woman half-Monster. We’ve been stuck on figuring out what the term ‘whole Law’ means. Our working hypothesis for this test assumes that the term ‘whole Law’ means the Law the Hunters themselves get. The symbolic analog of that, for the Nobles, must be the patterning that a Chimera must learn to become a Noble, coupled with the Crow Master’s symbolic joining of the Chimera into the Noble Barony.”
Jane shivered suddenly. She hadn’t realized there had been other, failed, tests. Sinclair had participated in one of these tests nine months ago, and he still had nightmares. Until Arm Haggerty became the leading Arm in the Cause, and demanded they all resume their experimentation, he had assumed he would never experience another of these tests.
“So I’m going to have to listen to a bunch of drumming, after you do the Crow Master thing to my mind and my juice to open myself up?” Jane said. “Where’s the danger?”
Shadow rubbed his chin, and gazed off into infinity. “With this test, the danger is in the side effects of the opening. We have no idea what side effects are possible. The procedure itself is quite simple, one any Crow shaman can do once taught. This is based on a form of hypnosis discovered by accident by a quite important human doctor who was treating a Crow stuck on the edge of withdrawal.”
“Let me guess,” Jane said. “You’re talking about this Good Doctor person the Nobles carve busts and statues of, to sit next to their statues of the Crow Occum.” Shadow frowned, and Duke Hoskins had the grace to blush. Sinclair wondered if Hancock’s pet researcher even knew how important he had become in the Noble belief set.
Shadow took a deep breath, and projected calm across the room. “So, are you ready to start the test? We don’t have the slightest clue what sort of effect this will have, even if we’re successful. I’m hoping this will at least aid your draw stability and allow you to keep more of your humanity. Beyond that, we’ll just have to see.”
Jane nodded.
“Yes. Let’s give it a try.”
Sinclair steadied himself. This wasn’t the first Transform he had condemned to a high chance of death, and certainly not the last. Birthing the Noble society wasn’t for the squeamish. Not at all.
Sinclair paced in the hallway, as worried as a father awaiting the birth of a newborn child. Despite Shadow’s reassuring comments, the part he fretted about the most was the joining of a commoner to the Barony ‘as if she was a Noble’. The joining involved a great deal of new symbology, and after they joined her, Jane had indeed passed out. They had made some sort of deep alteration to Jane’s juice structure, all a part of the plan. Now Sinclair waited. And paced.
Did they destroy her? Or did they turn her into a Monster with a Monster metacampus, as the Hunter’s pack alphas possessed? Or did they just plain fail? Complete failures weren’t uncommon, either.
“Pacing won’t help, Sinclair.”
Sinclair jumped in the air, damped his panic and his urge to defend himself, and turned to the voice. Gilgamesh sat in a chair against the wall of the room outside where Jane lay in a coma. Sinclair hadn’t heard or otherwise sensed his friend approaching. Gilgamesh had turned into a very spooky Crow.
“Do you think Jane will be alright?” Gilgamesh’s exceptionally detailed metasense, gained from his long-time association with Arm Hancock and his in-depth work with his dross rotten eggs, allowed him to do Focus-like metasense tricks that drove all the other Crows batty with envy.
Gilgamesh shrugged. “You’ve greatly complexified her juice structure, to the point where it practically reeks of your Noble household. She’s not a Monster, though, if that’s what you’re worried about. Nor about to turn into a Chimera, thankfully.” Sinclair shook his head slightly at Gilgamesh’s snark. His old friend had never liked Chimeras of any variety.
“Any sign of metacampus development?” The metacampus, the small growth on the hippocampus allowing the sensing and manipulation of juice, was the major difference between a Major Transform and a Transform. Monsters developed a metacampus after several years, if they survived that long, which seemed to imply that there was some way for run-of-the-mill Transforms to develop the capabilities of Major Transforms. The ‘why’ remained a mystery.
The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) Page 9
