No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5)

by Randall Farmer

  “Hank?” Hancock said. He blinked and realized he had been standing in the middle of the kitchen with a sandwich in his hand. Hancock stood right in front of him and Keaton stood over by the kitchen table watching with her cold, evaluating eyes.

  “Sorry, ma’am, and ma’am. I was doing math in my head.”

  “A situation has come up in which I would like your input,” she said. Flat stone face, utterly unreadable. Overly formal in her speech pattern. Her tone got his attention. “Ma’am Keaton wishes to borrow you for a day for some expert consultation. Without my presence,” Hancock said. “We’ve worked out a deal, but the recompense is going to be based on how useful your consultations are.”

  Interesting. Sounded like a compromise to him. Keaton would want his services, free, because Hancock was her subordinate. Hancock would want payment, agreed to in advance, because he was her subordinate. From an Arm’s perspective, it made sense that what Hancock possessed wasn’t automatically at her superior’s disposal; their dominance was more of a pack carnivore dominance structure than a normal human hierarchy. Focuses worked similarly, though Focuses acted more like a pack of ravenous wolves than a pride of well-fed lionesses.

  “I have no problems with this, ma’am.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, then,” Hancock said.

  On the way out Keaton buttonholed Hancock. “I want you back here on July 1, understand?” Hancock nodded. “Anything else comes up, use my PO Box or my answering service, just like everyone else.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hancock said. She nodded at him and departed, leaving him alone with Keaton.

  He turned to Keaton, whose stone face revealed nothing. She didn’t say a word to him. Instead, she went back down to the basement, after indicating with her eyes that he was supposed to stay where he stood. He heard some banging, the scraping of metal on metal, and the sound of a heavy chain slithering across the floor. Some sound of defiance in Haggerty’s voice, followed by the sound of a few slaps. Keaton came up the stairs, seething. She snarled at him under her breath, then sighed, exasperated. Again, she wasn’t annoyed at him, but at Haggerty. She motioned for him to follow and he did, quietly. She led him out the back door, and then down a steeply sloping trail to what he thought was the next-door lot. Not to a house, but to what appeared to be an abandoned stable. A third place she owned, all in a row.

  Inside the stable was more exercise equipment, and a few items too big to fit into Keaton’s basement. Also, he found a small medical lab, catered to Keaton’s level of expertise, which didn’t extend much beyond drawing blood, reading juice numbers and taking blood pressure. He found two TI juice level analyzers, one of which was bagged for storage. He recognized the bagged beast as the one he taught Keaton to use back when they first met. The converted stable was a quiet place, and Zielinski breathed a sigh of relief to be out of hearing of Keaton’s miserable Monster. The medical equipment and lab setup made the place seem comfortable, far more pleasant than the house up the hill.

  Keaton sat in an old wooden chair, and motioned for him to sit on the lab bench.

  “How much have you figured out?”

  Zielinski sat. Thought for a moment. “You’re having juice problems.”

  Keaton grunted. “How much has Carol figured out?”

  “Nothing.” He was sure of that. Hancock seemed to believe Keaton could walk on water if she wanted. The idea that Keaton might be having problems of her own never entered into her mind. “How much do you want to talk about it?” Always a safe question to Arms. He needed to pay attention, here. No woolgathering. Not paying attention to an unsafe Arm would bring about the threat cycle. Luckily, he wasn’t suffering through one of his periodic bouts of depression. From experience, he knew Keaton had no patience for those.

  “Some. More than is wise.” Keaton put her head in her hands. “I got a huge dose of bad juice, as bad or worse than Monster juice.”

  “From the CDC’s Detention Center?”

  She glowered at him and nodded. “I thought I could throw it off by just washing the shit out of my system, but the old trick didn’t work.”

  “What sort of symptoms are you exhibiting?”

  “Here,” she said, pulling up her sleeve to expose her right elbow. Zielinski took it, carefully, and examined it. A patch of skin on her elbow, extending about three inches up her arm, had become heavily calloused. Almost leathery. Stubbly, as well, save that elbows normally didn’t have a five o’clock shadow. He held up his hand for a moment, searched her desk until he found something that would magnify – a jeweler’s loupe. He examined her leathery patch again. Thick, bristly hair, wider than normal human hair, and recently shaved.

  “Hmm.”

  “Speak.”

  “How long does it grow?”

  “About six inches. It’s almost quill like, but not quite.”

  “Anything else?” The evidence was bad. The implications were worse.

  “Unfortunately, yes. I’m having worse muscle problems than normal, including nodule growth. It’s messed with my senses, as well. About half the time now I miss tags on Transforms until I’m within short range. Yesterday, I flat out missed the fact that Haggerty was an Arm.”

  “Short range being a hundred yards?” he asked. All of this troubled Keaton greatly, and he understood why. Problems of this nature might be fatal to an Arm.

  Keaton nodded. He waited. She didn’t say anything.

  “When I got injected with Monster juice during the assassination attempt it took the combined efforts of a Focus, a Crow and a Chimera to reduce the problem from life threatening to a chronic annoyance,” he said. “However, I’m not a Transform. What worked for me might work better on you.”

  She slapped her hand on the lab bench. “You expect me to go up to a Chimera and say ‘fix me’?”

  “Um, right.” He remembered Rover, now named Sir Robert Sellers. “The one who cured me can keep his instincts in check under normal circumstances, but still regresses when working with the juice.” Sellers’ subconscious wouldn’t let him retain a fully human shape, at least the last time he had seen the older Noble in person. Taking bad juice from an Arm, and not taking the rest, would likely be impossible.

  “How about the Crow? Do you think one of them might be able to help? The fucking Chimeras killed the Crow who followed me. Back in Philadelphia.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “Gilgamesh. Who is too fucking young to be able to manipulate bad juice the way the older Crows do.”

  Zielinski nodded. He really wanted to meet Gilgamesh in the flesh after hearing so much about him from Carol.

  “Meaning that to deal with an Arm, the Arm would probably have to be tied up and knocked out,” Keaton said. “So unless we can get one of the older Crows working for us, which isn’t damned likely, your solution is right out. Any other ideas?”

  Zielinski closed his eyes and thought, reviewing what little Keaton told him. “Do you have any data on your juice use? Graphs of your juice count by time, from before and after?” He opened his eyes, but Keaton had vanished. In the distance, he heard something large and metal opening, then closing. Some sort of safe. In a moment, Keaton came back with one graph, which she put on her lab bench beside him. She rustled through some papers on the bench and from the bottom of one stack, came up with another graph.

  “Before and after,” she said. He studied them and whistled.

  “This says you have three points more of fundamental juice than before.”

  “What? Explain. Fully.” She was in his face, where she didn’t need to be. He already knew the importance of this. On the other hand, threat displays were second nature to her. Zielinski wasn’t about to give Keaton his line about not having to follow her instincts. She was the first Arm he told that to, while she hung him by one foot fifty feet over an asphalt parking lot. Repeating the advice would be insulting. He was sure she remembered.

  Instead, after attempting to quiet his panic, he slowly
went through the mathematics of what he had instinctively figured out. She nodded and followed the derivation, although she hadn’t been able to figure it out for herself.

  “What does this mean?” she asked, when he finished.

  “Burn it out.”

  Keaton backed off, thinking through the details.

  “More.”

  He knew she could work out the logic. Instead, she wanted confirmation. “You have bad juice masquerading as fundamental juice. It isn’t. If you take your juice count down to the normal point where you go into withdrawal, you’ll be burning out the bad juice on the way.”

  “Medical explanation.”

  He gave it. “In conclusion, these bad juice fractions,” what the Crows termed élan, “that are masquerading as fundamental juice should get burned off first because they shouldn’t be there to start with. However, even if they aren’t, burning a few percent of them off by taking yourself down into a near withdrawal state, then repeating as necessary, would still work, though such a process would take longer.”

  “Less risky than leaving the crap there,” Keaton said. “Any other ideas?”

  “Give me a research lab, some researchers, and a few years, and we might be able to come up with some other ideas.”

  “Fuck.” Keaton paced. “I can live with this insanity if I can just burn enough of this shit off to regain my ability to sense tagged Transforms at range again. It would be nice if I could stop the muscle nodule development, but that isn’t fully necessary.” Starvation and excessive exercise. A pain in the derriere, but not risky.

  “Don’t forget that there may be some hidden problems, as well,” Zielinski said.

  Keaton nodded.

  “Have you and Hancock discussed her research idea?” she said.

  Zielinski’s breath caught. He hadn’t dared ask what they had decided. “Yes.”

  “She’s going to be officially in charge, but I want you to be actually in charge.”

  He clamped down tight on his reactions. “How do I arrange this?” Without getting his throat slit, he didn’t have the nerve to ask.

  “The usual.” Meaning he would need to manipulate Hancock into letting him make the scientific decisions. Just the usual tightrope of razor blades associated with dealing with Arms, nothing out of the ordinary…

  “There is one thing I feel necessary to point out, ma’am,” Zielinski said.

  “Stacy.”

  “Stacy,” he echoed, and controlled his urge to smile. He knew Keaton hated the formality, which put her in a bad mood, and her bad moods made everyone be even more formal. So on and so forth. “Ma’am Hancock…”

  “Puh-lease.”

  Oh. Right. “Carol got bad juice when she took the Monster, back when she was with you. Some of her Chicago quirks might have been due to this bad juice. On the other hand, she spent enough time in withdrawal…”

  “Damn,” Keaton said, quietly. “Undoubtedly correct. However, the CDC gave her juice in the same CDC Detention Center that gave me such trouble. She could be having more bad juice problems right now.”

  “I’ve seen nothing to indicate anything of the sort. On the other hand, I haven’t been able to come up with a normal baseline on Carol, yet. She’s still recovering from withdrawal.”

  Keaton nodded. “Keep your eyes out for anything suspicious. I’ll give you some back door methods of getting in contact with me, through the Network.” Zielinski nodded back. “So,” she continued, “would access to a two million dollar offshore bank account suffice as payment for a day of your work? The account dedicated to this research effort? Of course, since Hancock doesn’t have a clue about how to deal with bank accounts in the Caymans, this will all be in your hands…”

  Keaton never spared any possibility to yank Hancock’s chain. What a mess! Of course, he had been dealing with such minor illegalities for years, with the significantly smaller anonymous grant support he formerly picked up. In fact, he wondered if some of his anonymous grants had come from Keaton… He raised an eyebrow at Keaton, who did the stone face routine. Bingo!

  “I don’t believe that Carol will have any objections.”

  “In any event, I’ve got a whole bunch more tests I want you to run on me,” Keaton said. “After that, perhaps you can do some experimenting on Eissler’s advice about making Arms happy,” she said, with a broad leer. “And, if you’ve been a good boy, I’m going to give you a good long session with my pet talking Monster, Jane.”

  Here we go again, Zielinski said to himself, with a repressed wince and a surge of excitement. Another way for Keaton to yank Carol’s chain. She would not be thrilled. On the other hand, he would get a better crack at the Monster…

  While he worked on Keaton’s problems, he spent some time thinking. Keaton and Hancock’s relationship had definitely evolved for the better. However, he picked up on another element, something new and difficult for him to comprehend. It seemed to confirm Eissler’s impenetrable comment about Arms and territory. He swore the Arms now treated him as a piece of shared territory – impossible at first glance, as Arms didn’t normally share. What did this mean? What did this imply, for Arms?

  Finally, when he finished everything that Keaton wanted from him, he let himself smile. There would be a research organization, and his life was about to become truly meaningful again.

  Chapter 8

  We understand how most churches do not want to offend anyone at any cost, but we still must ask ourselves a few questions. How is it that all of a sudden and all at once, the churches started expressing a strong desire to bring Transforms into the fold? Why would they ever take such a deep financial risk? Why are they even considering Transform pastors? Is there a conspiracy? If so, who is behind it?

  “Hunter Activity Near Chicago and Media Responses”

  Sky: June 5, 1968 – June 8, 1968

  Sky woke in his Inferno attic home, not sure how he got here. A dross sign in his mind said ‘repressed memory, on purpose, do not touch’, so he ignored the sign, remembered, and winced.

  A curse. One Arm after the other. He might as well learn German, fly to Munich and ask Eissler to do him violently.

  No Lori. Hmm. Must not be a weekend. He metasensed a Focus in the house, though, in the library with Connie and Tim. He glanced at the Apocalypse Clock by way of Tina, who was standing next to it. 8:50 P.M. He must have slept for hours. Days, maybe.

  He found some mostly unsoiled clothes, trying to remember how long since he had slept in the Inferno attic. Six weeks? Seven weeks? His clothes smelled musty. He had lost weight.

  He raided the kitchen, unnoticed, and parked himself in the entertainment room to take in some television. A Beverly Hillbillies rerun, which meant this was Wednesday. Sky winced and watched anyway. As he sat he remembered his work and discussions with the Good Doctor, and idly fixed Transform glows, about as mentally stressful as knitting. Of all the unexpected things, his work attracted first Shelly Darcie, and Rose Marie, and a bleary eyed Ann Chiron, all of whom cuddled up with him without noticing his presence.

  That night he lay on the roof and studied the clouds and stars.

  As he slept, Anne-Marie danced with him, which broke his heart.

  By day he put on a groundskeeper crew uni and tended estate. He loved to work with his hands and body, and his mind wasn’t up to doing anything else. The Good Doctor was right. Every Transform in Inferno carried extensive glow damage. Worse, he had even started to think in Philadelphian technical terms: ‘juice structure’, ‘metapresence’, the alphabet of ‘bands’, ‘flows’ and ‘blockages’.

  In the evening he started work on Sadie, the worst of the lot. She came over. Sadie had been around too many Crows for the Crow ‘don’t notice me’ tricks to work on her.

  “Don’t say I’m here,” Sky said.

  Sadie shook her head and touched his lips, quieting him. “Bad Crow. Bad Crow. You’ve changed, though, Bad Crow.” She led him off to a dark corner of the great room. “Tell me what you’re do
ing, Bad Crow, or…” her voice elided from poetry to prose “…I swear I’ll strangle you with your own intestines.”

  “I’m fixing your juice structure,” Sky said. “No more dross leakage. With your extensive C-band damage, you should be having memory problems, you know.”

  Sadie cocked her head to the side. “This is the first time you’ve ever acted like a real Crow. Quiet. Unnoticeable. Impossible not to cuddle. Distracted in mind, not all here. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “Not chatty, either.”

  He nodded again.

  “Okay, fix away.”

  The fix took him four hours, huddled together in a secluded corner of the dark great room. Painful for Sadie, but she wanted this. She no longer hated him. He asked why.

  “Your background ‘make all women interested in you’ trick is gone,” she said, her voice a hushed Crow whisper in the darkness. “That and losing the non-stop blather makes you easier to like.”

  Hmph.

  “The non-stop blather will be back after I recover,” he said. “I recently got abused by half an Arm and had a total panic flashback to the Hancock Rescue.”

  “Which half?”

  “The mindless instinctive half. Hancock did the dirty work. She hasn’t fully recovered, either.”

  The bustle of Lori arrived earlier on Friday than he expected, mid-afternoon. For some reason she spent an hour re-tagging her Transforms. She grew angrier and angrier, until she cornered Sadie and forced the obvious out of her. Lori sensed as different. Emotionally and as a Focus. Almost as if someone had rewired her juice structure. Or he could metasense more details.

  “That’s strange,” Sky said. He crawled out of his attic hole, found a pile of newly washed clothes, and changed. He sniffed. He hadn’t showered since immediately after he had been raped. “I’m synching with Lori’s metasense without touching her.” His realization was worth a head-scratch. No wonder he sensed more about Lori’s juice structure. Then he saw…