The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1)

by Randall Farmer

  Sometimes, God called on people to sacrifice for others. Ordinary people, some no more than kids. The history of Christianity was full of martyrs, and people who suffered for the good of others.

  Gail didn’t want to join any such list, but this wasn’t the sort of list people volunteered for. She had never thought of herself as martyr material.

  She almost had to laugh. If she hadn’t stepped in front of a bullet meant for Tonya, she wouldn’t be in this position. She guessed she had volunteered after all. So had her household, it seemed. Lori’s people said the Transforms in a Focus household should be, must be, more powerful as a group than their Focus was individually, for a household to accomplish anything meaningful.

  Each household had its own personality, they explained. The household superorganism, in their terms. As if the household was alive, but Lori’s people thought this quite a bit more than a mere analogy. They had already identified the strength of Gail’s household by their tendency to volunteer, from Matt’s sacrifice to the volunteering they did now as victims for Teacher’s torture. They hadn’t said anything about Gail, though. They let her tell them.

  How much of this was real? The damned Eskimo Spear pointed the way and proved the Cause was real. If she believed the reality of the Eskimo Spear. Still, if she decided to march into hell for the sake of so many lives, she would do it proud. None of this half-hearted, heel-dragging resistance, all done for the sake of her ego and self-importance. She would go with her head high and a firm step.

  But she was damned well going to make sure the Eskimo Spear wasn’t some modern Crow’s practical joke. She might have to reveal some of her tricks, but she would find out. She was a reporter.

  Gail laughed and felt a weight lift off her shoulders. Doing the reporter thing. Bothering the high and mighty. Leaping in front of bullets. So what if it hurt? She would be able to look herself in the mirror in the morning.

  And maybe, just maybe, God would make this work out well in the end after all.

  ---

  Lori shook Ann awake and explained Gail’s request, all while attempting not to awaken the other ten Inferno members snoring on the living room floor of the Wheelhouse’s apartment. “Gaah. Bed hair,” Ann said, after she stood and allowed her Focus to march her to the bathroom. “It’s gotta be three in the morning. Can’t this wait?”

  “I need to know, now,” Gail said. “And Focus Rizzari says you’re in charge of the Eskimo Spear.” Inferno had taken the Spear away from their Focus the instant they returned home from the Spear ceremony. Otherwise The Focus would still be playing with it, day and night, and ignoring everything else.

  And people complained about her household being difficult. Inferno took difficult to heights unimaginable.

  “I am,” Ann said. “You won’t get anything off of the Spear. Only the top witch Focuses and talented Crows do.”

  “Trust me on this,” Gail said. After what appeared to be a tag-link based conversation with her Focus, Ann shrugged.

  “Just don’t get too mad when nothing happens.”

  Ann left them silently awkward in the drafty inter-apartment hallway, went to her supplies and came back with a leather case, about four feet long and six inches wide and tall. She undid the combo lock and opened it up.

  Gail metasensed the Spear instantly; she had never encountered mechanical metasense shielding before, but this case somehow shielded the Spear from her metasense. Ann picked up the Spear and held it out to Gail. “Knock yourself out.”

  Here. Now. She would rather run naked through her house than reveal her true self to Focus Rizzari and her people, but this was the only way forward. Gail closed her eyes to quiet her fears and to better focus on her metasense, tuning her extra sense over to the realm of dross. The Eskimo Spear glowed brightly, most of its trapped dross internal to the Spear and beyond her comprehension, the rest normal old dross some Crow should have already removed. She backed away to a place in the hallway with little ambient dross, and pushed what little dross remained out of the way. Gilgamesh had laughed when she showed him her dross moving trick, saying she shouldn’t use the trick too often because her trick generated extra dross. She still did dross clearing when she needed a clear area to think and meditate, though.

  “Bring the Spear here, please,” Gail said, keeping her eyes closed. When she reached out to take the Spear, she did so in a way to separate the Spear from the ambient dross.

  The metasense world opened up in an artificial sunrise, showing three scenes. The first scene was the Dreaming, and there, in Gail’s Dream-garden, the Madonna danced a jig, egging Gail on. The second was the scene described by Focus Rizzari, the ancient Eskimo tribe of Transforms. She memorized what she metasensed of the complex scene; she couldn’t get at the rest, though, the other thousands of scenes stored in the Spear.

  The third scene was impossible, reminding her of Gilgamesh’s description of the Pheromone Flow. Instead of gazing from on high down at the modern North American Major Transforms, though, she metasensed a web of dross and juice connections, bounded in a rough triangular shape by the Dakotas, the Alaskan north slope, and Greenland. Hundreds of nodes dotted the rough triangle, each connected to a half dozen to a dozen other nodes, reminding Gail of an air carrier’s route network. The nodes were a mind, of sorts, and when they spoke the aurora danced, their words pure Dreaming symbology, concepts Gail understood.

  Gail’s eyes flew open in shock, and she almost fell to the ground in surprise when she saw the aurora dancing around her inside her house. Focus Rizzari’s eyes had turned to stone, Lady Death again. Ann’s, on the other hand, were big wide Os, and she had backed off two paces. Sylvie, Melanie and Helen Grimm, Gail’s three Attendants, had as always appeared from nowhere, summoned by Gail doing one of her impossible tricks. They smiled rapturously at the aurora dancing around Gail and lighting the ceiling inside the house, caught up in the wonder until Sylvie shook her head, walked over to Ann and gave her a nudge that nearly sent the older woman flying.

  “See,” Sylvie said. “This is what I was talking about. Now do you understand?”

  Gail put the Spear back in the box and closed it up tight. “Now I believe,” Gail said. “Now I have hope.”

  Anger flashed for an instant across Focus Rizzari’s face, but when she spoke, her voice held none of her anger. “The Progenitors spoke to you, Gail. What did you hear?”

  Ann backed away, but Gail’s attendants gathered close. “‘You will do. Get better. Survive the risks. Learn from us. You are not doomed to fail, as are the Hunters.’ And what did you hear, Focus Rizzari?”

  Rizzari shook her head, not agreeing to tell all. “I should expect changes in my life, and if I survive the many changes, then I’ll be ready for my part. Oh, and the Hunters are doomed, but if we’re not careful, they could take us with them when they fall.”

  Melanie gave Gail a big hug, her feet dancing with joy as she did so.

  “Thank you for letting me examine the Spear,” Gail said. “If you would excuse me, I have some thinking to do, in private.”

  ---

  “You look like hell, Gail,” Beth said. Beth Hargrove was cute rather than beautiful, with freckles, a cheerful smile, and acres of curly red hair. She had been Gail’s first Focus friend, back in her early miserable days right after her transformation. Beth and Tonya had been life-savers back then, and Beth had been Gail’s best friend ever since. With typical good cheer, Beth invited Gail into her office and made her sit, even though the sun hadn’t risen yet.

  Gail nodded, and settled into the old office chair that had graced Beth’s office for as long as Gail had known her. Beth’s household wasn’t wealthy, but they thrived anyway. Because of Beth’s many plants, the place smelled of gardening soil, always.

  “Going to tell me about why?”

  “Some. Focus Rizzari is visiting my household.”

  “Oh ho! She came to you, eh? Why am I not surprised?” Beth said, sitting herself down in the chair beside Gail, not
in the chair behind her desk. “Me, I got to go to Boston.”

  “I hadn’t realized…”

  “What? That someone like me might qualify for training by Lady Death?”

  “No, not that.” Here she was, stepping on toes, again. Beth had been the one who infected Gail’s household with their belief in ‘Gail, Super-Focus’. Beth tried to be good-natured about Gail’s secret talents, but that had never kept Beth from kicking Gail in the shins when she thought her friend was being boneheaded. “I hadn’t realized your hush-hush training had been from her.”

  “Yup. It was. So, how far have you gotten? I’m still working on Level Three stuff.”

  Gail furrowed her brows. “Levels? No one’s talked to me about Levels.”

  Beth furrowed her eyebrows. “Huh. I thought the only thing Lady Death taught was juice patterns. Wait,” Beth said, and stood. She walked over to her desk and opened a desk drawer, and leafed through some papers. She took out a set of stapled mimeographed documents and handed them to Gail. “Here. Do these look familiar?”

  Gail looked through the mimeos, trying to make sense of them. All results oriented, with nothing on the process. Quite a few comments about how each Focus needed to find her own way, and how learning one level built the skills needed to attempt the next.

  “No, these don’t look familiar. I’m working with juice patterns, but…” Gail shook her head at what she was reading, letting her voice trail off.

  “But what?”

  “I’m not sure. I think I’m being used as a guinea pig on a brand new more efficient training technique.” She couldn’t mention the juice transfer project.

  “Figures,” Beth said, with an eyeball roll.

  Gail ignored the jab, moved the fern on Beth’s desk and spread out the documents, open to a list of level requirements for graduation from each level. “For instance, I can’t do this one,” she said, pointing to a level one capability involving background juice adjustment, “but on the other hand, this one,” she said, pointing to a level five pattern dealing with holding each of her Transforms to a different juice level, “I can do.” The pattern was easy if you wrote it out as a Zielinski diagram. Two notes, a hold, and a volume scale, just repeated for each Transform. Repetition was trivial.

  “Riiiiight,” Beth said, shaking her head. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Focus Rizzari doesn’t think much of me. In specific, she doesn’t think I’m committed to the training.”

  “Well, the fact she had to come to you instead of you going to her implies that.”

  “Beth, I would have gone to her! They didn’t give me a choice! It’s all too fast.” Gail let her anger slip through, then covered herself after she finished speaking, forcing the anger back down. “Sorry.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? If I can ask,” Beth said. Worried.

  “Focus Biggioni, for one.”

  “Her, again?” Beth said, and then thought for a minute or so. “Going around Esther’s back? You shouldn’t be telling me any of this, Gail. I smell some nasty bitch patrol politics at work.”

  Gail nodded. Esther Weiczokowski was the UFA Midwest Region representative, Tonya’s peer. Beth wanted Gail to go after Esther’s Council seat, despite her lack of support from Wini Adkins, the Region President. “It’s not what you’re thinking, but yes, there’s upper-end politics involved.”

  “They want you and your household, then, and you’re not sure you can commit everyone on a chance at something?”

  “You know me too well, Beth.”

  “And you came by to talk to me because you’ve decided you’re going to commit, and wanted to run this by me first because you’re afraid you’re being an idiot.”

  Yes, Beth knew her too well. “Yes. I’m afraid.” She paused. “No, I’m terrified.”

  Beth took Gail’s hands in hers. “You can’t even tell me what’s really going on.” Gail nodded. “Is the benefit worth the risk?”

  Gail nodded again.

  “Do it,” Beth said, her voice now a whisper. “You know my feelings about what you’re meant to be doing. Dammit, we need everyone with potential like yours to be doing their utmost for the cause. Do it!” Beth paused, and looked into Gail’s haunted eyes. “How long have the two of us been going to the sham Midwest Council meetings, sitting in the seats in the back of the room, and grousing about being cut out of any real decisions? Neither of us is going to get out of those back seats without taking some big risks. I may not have the potential to change the world that you do, Gail, but if there’s anything I can do to help, once you can tell me what the hell is going on, that is – I’ll help.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, Gail. Go get ‘em, girl!”

  ---

  “Focus Rizzari,” Gail said as she entered her office. Rizzari turned toward Gail with her eternal disapproving stare.

  “I’m in,” Gail said. Rizzari raised an eyebrow and put her pencil down beside her small HP-35 scientific calculator. Underneath lay a legal pad filled with scientific squiggles and hairy calculus far beyond Gail’s understanding. When she averted her eyes, she swore the characters wiggled menacingly.

  “I’m in,” Gail said again. “Whatever you all think is necessary, let’s do it. Full speed ahead. Toughen me up, torture me, I’m ready. If we don’t have much time to work with, then we’d better get a move on.”

  Focus Rizzari’s frown of disapproval faded into a look of surprise, and then, for the first time, an honest smile took its place.

  “Well then, welcome aboard. Sit down. Let’s talk. I have some things to show you.”

  ---

  Focus Rizzari’s mental illusion receded and Gail shook her head. “Lori, I hope you don’t ever expect me to be able to duplicate these illusions.” Her hands shook. She had followed some of Focus Rizzari’s illustration of juice pattern inner workings, enough to know her work with Zielinski was on the right track. But the illusion itself?

  Focus Rizzari laughed. “You were supposed to be focusing on the content of the illusion, not its substance. You’re hopelessly indefatigable.”

  “But how? How is such an illusion even possible?” She had known Focus Rizzari’s talents lay far beyond hers, but this was ridiculous.

  “Mental programming. The content is in my memories. Programmed illusions are a relatively simple outgrowth of the secret trick you use to give yourself photographic memory. The trick illustrates what I put in panel 3 of the training illusion, the piece about the correspondence between computer programming and advanced juice pattern design, mirroring the way the Crows’ advanced dross construct design mirrors higher mathematics.”

  Gail’s shaking hands found each other in her lap and she sat up straight, almost knocking a brace of pizza squares off their plate and on to Focus Rizzari’s pad of menacing scientific doodles. How did Focus Rizzari know about Gail’s photographic memory trick? “Oh.” Focus Rizzari smiled a shy smile at her. “Oh! Because you use something similar.”

  “A trick I developed the same way you did, via force of will, long before I mastered juice patterns. Which raises a thorny question: how many of your secret tricks are you willing to show me?”

  Gail opened her mouth to say ‘none’, and then shut her mouth with a snap. “If you buy into Dr. Zielinski’s hypothesis that everything a Focus does is a juice pattern, then, well, sure, everything,” she said, hesitant and terrified.

  “He’s wrong, but he’s not far off,” Focus Rizzari said, and patted Gail’s knee. “Let’s start small. What in the hell did you do last night with Carol, anyway? In the Dreaming.”

  “Uh, oh, right,” Gail said. She reddened and turned her eyes away from Focus Rizzari to study a stack of boxes in the northeast corner of her office, all containing duplicate kitchenware. “Uh, I think I helped.” Focus Rizzari made ‘more, more’ hand motions. She was so tiny she even fit properly in Gail’s undersized office. “Okay. You know Teacher’s been under attack in the Dreaming?”

  “Uh huh.”


  Good. Focus Rizzari, with her talents, had to be good at the Dreaming, though she had never identified herself to Gail. “She, uh, pulled on my tag and whoosh I was there and whoosh we were fighting the, uh, chokeweed dream symbol, and…”

  “We? Carol was active in the Dreaming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whoh. That’s great!” Now Focus Rizzari smiled, ear to ear. “What happened next?”

  “The chokeweed dream symbol turned into the Evil White Queen. She grabbed both of our hearts out of our chests, Teacher went dormant, I grabbed our hearts back and chased off the Evil White Queen.” Gail turned even redder. “Are we even supposed to be talking about this in public?”

  “We’re not in public any more. Metasense around your office.”

  Gail did. Both of their guard retinues had gone elsewhere. Nobody knew where they were, and didn’t care. “You’ve got us warded by one of your insanely powerful juice patterns. Check.” Focus Rizzari made the ‘more, more’ motion again. “There may be a problem. Our hearts ended up mushed all together and I just sorta divided them up fifty fifty when I put them back. I’m not sure what this symbolically represents.”

  “The ‘mushing together’ represents an Affinity link,” Focus Rizzari said. “Something Sky and I still can’t fully describe at the biochemical level. Yet. From a practical standpoint, you and Carol are going to feel a strong emotional attachment to each other.”

  “I thought we already did,” Gail said, and reddened. “It’s going to get worse?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Gail reddened to a fine full flush. “What did the Dreaming fight look like to you, Lori? I’m assuming that since you knew about it, you witnessed the encounter somehow.”

  Focus Rizzari ran her hands through her short dark hair and took a deep breath. “Promise me you’ll keep this to yourself, at least until we get a chance to talk with Carol and Amy.” Gail nodded. “Shorn of all symbols, this is what I witnessed: you attacked the spell causing Carol’s nightmares, in the process revealing the person who created the spell, Focus Patterson. She appeared in the Dreaming to defend her spell, you attacked her, won, which is a pretty nifty trick, I must say, and then banished her and the spell from Carol’s mind.”