No form of Transform had life easy, and Hoskins did a hell of a good job with a bad hand. Probably better than Gilgamesh. Hoskins had managed to become a decent person, mostly, which said a lot given the barbarity and beastliness of most of the other Beast Men.
Given how difficult a path Hoskins walked, it seemed petty all of a sudden for Gilgamesh to make his path harder. Hoskins could no more help what he was than Tiamat.
“Your grace,” Gilgamesh said. Just a small courtesy.
Hoskins gave no hint that he heard, for which Gilgamesh was grateful. He simply broke his small stick into smaller pieces and tossed it to the side.
“What happened with you and Chimeras, anyway?”
Gilgamesh settled, and stared out at the mute stars.
“Have you ever heard of the Philadelphia Massacre…”
“…not just my relationship with Tiamat. Every Arm, save for Kali, has at least one Crow following her around, so for Crows, that’s a genie firmly out of its bottle,” Gilgamesh said. “When the evil Crows cast out Sinclair they listed three crimes: consorting with Beast Men, consorting with Focuses, and ignoring the instructions of his elders. Substitute ‘Arms’ for ‘Beast Men’ and I’m so much worse than Sinclair it isn’t even funny, your grace. My relationships with Gloria Frasier, Linda Cooley, Gail Rickenbach, Lori Rizzari, Flo Ackerman and Geraldine Caruthers are all as close as Sinclair’s with Council President Keistermann. Only Sky is worse than I am with Focuses.”
“You’re afraid your days are numbered,” Hoskins said. He cracked his knuckles and stared at the stars.
“I’m afraid I’m next,” Gilgamesh said. The air tasted of acrid dust. “I’ll let you in on a big secret, your grace: I’m no more suited to being a standard Crow Guru than you are.” Once he started talking about his fears, the fears he kept locked away inside for so long, he couldn’t stop. “Chevalier and his cronies sent the letter to me, knowing that. I only got about a third of the way through Guru Shadow’s training before I, well, something happened. My progress slowed to a crawl. Give me a decade, and I might…” Gilgamesh’s voice trailed off as the pain of his failures crawled through his mind, hungry and biting.
“So you’re not standard,” Hoskins said. “I guess it’s a benefit of being one of the first Nobles, but to me being ‘non-standard’ is normal. Truthfully, ‘standard Nobles’, of which there are far too many these days, bug the crap out of me.”
“Too many Crows came before me,” Gilgamesh said. He guessed for a predator, this had to count as sympathy. “You’re right, though. One of the reasons Shadow wanted me gone was his own frustration at not being able to follow along with me on my objectified dross construct work. He thinks of me as ‘almost a Guru’ simply because I can do things he can’t do, even if such things are, in the long run, tricks pre-Guru Crows of my ilk will someday learn as young Crows. On the other hand, any of the other Gurus can swat me like a fly. Until I can self-train my own unique tricks to Guru level, I’m going to be looking over my shoulder far more often than is healthy for me.”
“You’ve got one advantage, one you shouldn’t discount, Master Gilgamesh,” Hoskins said. “Most Crows don’t swat flies. Even when the enemy Crows cast Sinclair out, they did so as a group just to steady themselves and ward off the panic. If you don’t mind me saying so, you appear to have the nerve and attitude of an Arm. Which to me is a very good thing.”
“I don’t mind you saying that at all, your grace,” Gilgamesh said. Now if he only had the physical talents of an Arm, then he would feel much better about this Guru nonsense.
His Guru proving quest wasn’t all about talent. Much of the test concerned his ability to project the attitude of imperturbability all Crow Gurus possessed. He wasn’t anywhere close, yet, to imperturbable.
---
“Okay, she’s turning left,” Gilgamesh said. Hoskins turned Sumeria to follow. Gilgamesh’s cues were for Sinclair’s sake. Hoskins could follow the young Arm perfectly well himself.
The young Arm, unfortunately, wasn’t Kali. If they had found Kali, they wouldn’t be following one of her students through the streets of Los Angeles. Approaching the baby Arm they trailed presented a few challenges.
The young Arm rode a high juice count, and Hoskins swore he read a driving desire for sex from her smell and juice structure. If the three of them approached her directly, she would almost certainly sense them before they came close and either run or attack. Instead, they took advantage of the longer metasense range of Crows and Chimeras. The plan was to wait until she found someone to sleep with, and then approach her while she remained distracted with other things. Just to talk.
“We want the drop on her,” Hoskins said. “An Arm isn’t going to give us the time of day unless we have her boxed into a corner.”
“Yes, she’s definitely doing the hooker strut,” Gilgamesh said. “It looks like she picks up her johns on the strip. Ah, look, she’s getting into a car now. We’ve got her!”
Hoskins came through the window, and Sinclair and Gilgamesh through the door. They were careful to wait until she finished.
“What the hell?” she said as she turned to them, stark naked except for a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. She was a short Arm, just over five feet tall, with a small build for an Arm. Gilgamesh blinked for a moment before realizing she was young. Really young, early teens at most, probably fourteen or so. She must have caught Transform Sickness only months after she finished puberty.
Seeing a murderer’s eyes in a fourteen year old girl hurt.
“No, no way,” the man said, attempting to cover himself. “I thought she was sixteen. I swear it.”
The Arm shifted to a more defensible corner of the room, leaving the man on the bed. “I don’t know who you are, but you’ve just bought yourself a lot of trouble.”
“Honorable Arm,” Hoskins said. “I’m Duke Jeremy Hoskins, and these are Crow Masters Sinclair and Gilgamesh. We’ve come to see your teacher.”
The man on the bed gaped, and his face turned odd colors. The Arm looked at them as if they were idiots. “Here?”
“We don’t know where she is, Honorable Arm, and thus we require your assistance. We need to make contact with her.”
“You know who my teacher is?”
“Yes, Honorable Arm,” Hoskins said.
“She’s in Oakland right now. I can call her, but if she comes back and you’re not worth her time, I don’t think you can imagine how much trouble you’re in.”
“Even so, we would appreciate it if you would call her.”
The Arm nodded and relaxed her wary stance. Then she looked over at the john, still gaping on the bed, and Gilgamesh could see on her face when she decided he knew too much. Her belt snaked loose from the pile of clothes on the chair, in a motion almost too fast to follow. Then the belt wrapped around his neck. A jerk, and he died.
“All right, if you want to see Ma’am Keaton, you can help me clean up my backtrail first.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Gilgamesh, one of your Major Transform organization projects?” Kali said, putting enough predator into her voice to make her question a demand. She took one look at Hoskins and insisted they meet on the deck out in the back. The boards weren’t meant to support a Noble, and they creaked under the Duke’s weight.
“Yes, ma’am,” Gilgamesh said, and told her the basics of the ‘quest’. Kali asked questions. Then she wanted everything Sinclair knew, especially about the attack. Then she wanted the same information from Hoskins. Then she wanted to examine Sinclair.
Hours of this. Then the rehash. By the time they finished, the moon had risen, Gilgamesh had sweated through his shirt, Sinclair had retreated to a fetal position in the corner, barely conscious, and Duke Hoskins metasensed as ready to kill someone at the first hint of an excuse. He wanted to protect both Sinclair and Gilgamesh, and the fact he couldn’t drove him nuts.
Kali took her hands down from where she had been probing at Sinclair’s head and turned to Gilgamesh.
“So I assume you don’t expect me to fix him. Why are you here?”
“Honorable Arm Keaton, we believe the right Focus will be able to fix him, a Focus specializing in fine-control mental-oriented juice manipulation. We don’t know which Focus might be appropriate, and we would like you to identify such a Focus for us,” Gilgamesh said.
“Well,” she said, as she perched lazily on a bright red deck chair. “What would you be willing to pay for such a thing?”
The grilling had been bad, but this was worse. He hated negotiating with Arms, especially Kali.
“We’ve given you a great deal of information just now about Crows, Honorable Arm Keaton.”
She smiled her predatory smile. “That was just the price of admission. Try again.”
“We have a box of notes on Crow research and theories regarding Transform Sickness.”
Her smile grew wider. “Ah, tell me about this box of notes.”
Carol Hancock: July 25, 1972
Damn, did Gail dress up pretty. On Tuesday she showed up at my house in an elegant formal gown, to all appearances the queen of the world. Her magnificent chestnut-colored hair was piled high on her head in ornate loops and curls, and then fell down her back in a river running to her knees. Her hair and makeup were perfect and she glowed with the superhuman beauty only a Focus could achieve.
Sibrian looked at her as if a club had hit her in the face, and I was glad of the tag marking Gail as my territory. Mary Sibrian, I noted to myself, needed more contact with high end Focuses.
“Be polite,” I said, prompting her under my breath. She stared, nevertheless. Sibrian was a two-year-old Arm, about five foot five or so, with dark hair and brown eyes, and features that came from well south of the border. She possessed at least four legal identities predating her Arm transformation, not counting her real identity as Fillipa-Estella Portillo-Torres, which she left behind as a teen. She wore silk today, all red, with her katana at her back. She had signed on with me about a year ago, and possessed tons of potential in my weak areas. For instance, she had almost mastered the dream shit before leaving Keaton’s training. She was also artistic, an area I pushed her to improve and expand on. She had helped me design this ceremony, for instance.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Gail, come in,” I said. Gail entered my living room with wide eyes, looking around eagerly. She appeared to be a little overawed, not to my surprise. My house, much roomier than my thankfully vacated safe house, was more than half the size of her entire household’s living space.
I kept the living room stark for the ceremony. Except for the single easy chair I would use as a throne, and two tall floor lamps for lighting, we had packed all the other furniture away in a bedroom upstairs. We hadn’t set out the food yet, not with just a couple of Mary’s people in attendance, added to my six. Ila bustled nervously, attending to last minute details.
Greg, freshly broken out of jail, along with his wife Ying, helped people get comfortable. After what happened in Chicago, and the amount of work created by a move of only part of my organization to Detroit, I decided Ila needed some help running my day to day operations, and I chose Ying. She had been bird-dogging my chain of Chicago car dealerships, and did a good enough job to deserve a promotion. Ying’s husband Greg was, well, Greg. He handled large purchases for me, and at least didn’t go overboard as much as he used to. He schmoozed well, his specialty, so I sent him after Gail’s entourage.
I didn’t bother to invite my two latest recruits to this affair. These young men, filled with curiosity, technical skills and no ability to deal with people, had been all too willing to follow Candy’s lure when she sauntered in front of them, and she recruited them for me as robbery researchers. Candy was here. She, a former low-class whore and drug addict, had become, under my tutelage, a high-class whore and top-end intelligence operative. Tom and Hank both attended, of course. Mary Beth, my new housekeeper, ran the kitchen, attempting to survive a trial by fire without having a nervous breakdown. A party for forty or so was a huge event even without all the Arms. She had shaved, bound her privates, and well-stuffed her chest, but I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that in a house full of Major Transforms, every one of them would figure out what she tried so hard to conceal.
Gail brought five people with her in her entourage: her husband Van, her security chief Kurt, his wife and Gail’s number two, Sylvie, Melanie as a bodyguard and set of eyes and ears, and lastly an older normal man named Bart Wheelhouse. He didn’t want to be here, and Gail didn’t want him here, but here he was. I picked up the faint air of dominance fight, and frowned. Gail’s loose hold on her people often bugged the crap out of me, yet another Inferno and Lori parallel.
I watched from by the window and attempted to restrain my urge to bounce up and down in excitement. A tagging ceremony, two at once. The anticipation fed off my high juice count, and left me feeling alive to every tingling nerve.
Progress. The two more Arms signing on tonight would triple the size of my command. I didn’t count Chrissie, and wouldn’t, not until she graduated from Webberly’s training.
The addition of two Arms in my organization also represented major progress on Keaton’s initiative to rebuild the Arm organization, and would hopefully keep Keaton off my ass for a while. Satisfying two superior Arms with separate agendas was starting to cause me serious constipation.
“Boss,” Mary said. I raised an eyebrow, and reminded myself of my station as a big nasty senior Arm.
Sibrian looked over at Gail. “I’m very impressed with your Focus, ma’am.”
“Hmm?” This was a lead-up to something.
“I didn’t know an Arm could tag a Focus.”
“You learn something new every day.”
“It’s quite a trick. Very beautiful.” She wanted something, and hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask.
“Mm hmm. So what is it you want?”
“Can I have one?”
I looked at her. She was serious.
“I don’t exactly have spares in my back pocket.”
“Yes, ma’am. Can you teach me how to recruit my own?”
I nodded, slowly. “You’ll need the right leverage. If my latest project works out, perhaps I can provide what you need.”
Across the room, Gail spotted Zielinski and stalked over to him. I spotted his wince, but I doubted anyone else could have.
“Dr. Zielinski,” she said, a little cold.
Oh, hell. I knew she was a Focus journalist, but hoped she would take a few months to crack his identity.
Next to me, Gail’s husband Van walked right up to Sibrian and introduced himself.
“Hello, I’m Van Schuber. Am I correct that you’re an Arm, ma’am?” He had the curiosity bug nearly as bad as Gail did. Well, I should know to expect trouble when I picked up a Focus. Sibrian put on her stone face, and I could practically hear her repeating to herself ‘polite,’ ‘polite.’ I kept a tiny bit of notice on them as they chatted, wondering how a mere Focus’s spouse got to be so good at Major Transform chit-chat.
Gail’s two bodyguards followed their Focus as she circled the room, being sociable. Greg doted on Melanie, showing far too much interest for his health. Over by the kitchen, Gail’s Bart Wheelhouse character zeroed in on Tom as the highest ranking male in the room and headed over to talk him up. Accurate and perceptive, given the reaction of most white men to Tom’s skin color. Then my boss arrived and things got busy.
Haggerty brought several of her people with her, including two FBI agents. Tommy Bates and another I didn’t recognize, but both of them broadcast serious leadership like a shipping buoy in a thunderstorm. Haggerty didn’t do more than hesitate an instant when she spotted Gail, and then came the rest of the way in without showing any reaction at all.
“Ma’am,” I said, and nodded respectfully.
“This is perfect,” she said, her voice quiet. “I can already see the results of your training on Rickenbach.” Haggerty wore a black silk
shirt and loose pants, and looked damned near as good as Gail. I never understood how Haggerty managed the trick with an Arm’s heavy muscles, and truthfully, I don’t think she put any more effort into her appearance than a normal woman, but she was always striking. Long, lean and leggy, she seemed to be able to pack an amazing amount of muscle on that frame without looking more than athletic. Topped with a handsome face and rich, dark brown hair, she almost possessed a Focus’s looks. “I have news: Gilgamesh, Hoskins and Sinclair made it to Keaton, and survived the meeting.”
Well, damn. I wondered how she found out before I did.
With any Arm but Haggerty, the presence of one’s Arm boss would be tense, or worse, but the two of us had been around this wagon wheel before. The wheel would turn, I would be her boss again, and she prepared for the day by being as pleasant as any Arm could be, given the situation. Keaton, for instance, never would have tolerated the show of dominance by a subordinate required by a tagging ceremony in her presence.
Besides, my gathering these tags would help Haggerty’s stature. She would now be bossing around four Arms.
I nodded, relieved at the news. Haggerty, taking on her behind-the-scenes-boss persona, tilted her head back toward the door to signal Webberly and Betsy Wetsy – no, Arm Whetstone – into position.
“Ila,” I said. Ila came running. “We’re ready.”
Mary fell into place naturally, catching Haggerty’s signals. Ying, Ila and Greg arranged Gail and the normals.
My people all stood behind me, with Zielinski to my right and Tom to my left, both slightly behind. Haggerty stood behind me, the regal but in-the-background boss, with her two Feebs behind her, a towering pile of power and stability. Gail stood along the wall to my left with her people behind her, and Sibrian along the wall to my right, with her people behind her. At first Gail’s people tried to organize themselves, but Ila straightened them out. Ila turned down the lights to their dimmest setting, to turn the mood serious, and we waited. No music, according to Sibrian’s plan, but Sibrian arranged the Transforms in a very special pattern, a pattern coordinated with some specific scents along the path, set up so someone coming toward me would feel extremely humble. A tagging was an initiation, and someone going through it should damn well feel initiated.
The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) Page 26
