Before I could execute plan B I needed to finish my tagged Transform resistance training and visit Focus Laswell.
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Focus Laswell and her household lived on the southwest side of Houston, near where the city was building a new freeway. Her household was a well-appointed smallish place on Jackwood Street, and the tiny back yard backed up on the Westwood Country Club. Too small for a Focus household, but I figured out their arrangement when I sensed tagged Transforms in four separate houses all in a row. Something about Houston and its weather made them build their suburban houses close together, close enough to touch both houses if you stretched your hands out wide. Many houses would fit within the hundred-yard range of a Focus in Houston.
I rang the doorbell at the address indicated, a two-story brick house with a bright red door, and a lawn of bright green St. Augustine. A kid answered, a bratty pre-teen with a Marine cut. Houston was like a time warp in many ways, still stuck in the fifties. Or perhaps the forties. I noticed a few longhaired youth around, but not as many as in the rest of the country. Most of the teenage boys looked like they had just stepped out of a recruiting poster. For World War II. “You must be mom’s visitor, Miss Parks. Gladtameecha, ma’am.”
I nodded. Miss Parks was the identity I used at the lady gym. The identity was supposed to be well muscled, but I wore a baggy long sleeve blouse and mid-calf skirt for this meeting.
Zielinski had described Focus households to me, with the tight structure and the sense of everyone in everyone else’s hair. I sensed some of that, but not as much as I feared. The kid took me back to the combined kitchen dining area, where a mob of people greeted me and then went about their business as if I wasn’t there. One of them, a Transform, even bumped into me, which made me break out in a cold sweat. I stifled my juice monkey while some unnamed Transform introduced me to Focus Laswell. She took one look at me, read my tension as if I had written it on my face with a pen, and suggested we find a quiet place to talk.
Focus Laswell led me back to a bedroom office, clearly her room, with a bed, a desk, and a few old office chairs, squeezed into a space not quite large enough to fit, and cheery blue curtains over windows looking out into the tiny back yard. From what I saw, hers was the only room in the place not stacked deep in bunk beds. Some of her people must work off hours and share beds in shifts, I decided. She led me to a couple of the chairs and we both sat.
“Glad you could come. I hope you aren’t havin’ too many problems. From the letter the other Arm sent out I thought it might be her nosin’ around, but when I figger’d out it was you I thought an invite might be nice. I hope I wasn’t bein’ too pushy and lettin’ my waggin’ tongue git me in trouble again, but well, here we are anyway!”
Oh.
Focus Laswell was, um, cute. She had wavy black hair, half teased up in that style they called the Texas poodle. Darkly tanned, she had a button nose and big rosy cheeks. Save for heavy red lipstick of a style I hadn’t worn since Junior High, she didn’t use any make-up at all. Didn’t need to. She bubbled.
“I’m sorry I caused Rosenda those problems.” I felt horribly out of place here. Whatever nice social polish I once possessed had vanished in my withdrawal and what I had learned since didn’t fit. I had become one of the guys, or, among women, comfortable only among the flower children. Social niceties with a Texas-bred woman were out of my league.
“Ahw, ‘twas nothing. She’s just a big scaredy-cat. What did you do to her anyways?”
“I gave her a look like this,” I said, and flashed a bit of predator at Thelma.
“Whoo!” She didn’t even jump back. “I want you on my team, but there’s a problem.”
What, had I lost my touch or something? No. I had certainly gotten to Rosenda. I doubted I would be welcome back working for her. Lori did know her stuff. I had asked for a Houston Focus who wouldn’t panic because I was an Arm and she had delivered.
“A problem?”
“I cain’t talk about the details, but you aren’t safe here,” she said.
I didn’t respond, working on reading her. Not easy. All I saw was honest concern for my wellbeing.
“How much do you know about Arms?” Focus-level dangers meant little to me.
“Enough to know that if you and I have problems, lots of people’ll suffer. So I don’t want any problems. I’ve got enough problems as it is. But you aren’t safe, especially if you try and set up shop here in town.” Keaton always waxed poetic about how talented a good Focus needed to be to survive, so I wasn’t too surprised she had figured out I wanted to move here.
“Are you talking problems with the law?”
She shook her head, and I picked up a bit from the shift of her eyes and the lines of her frown. She wasn’t the threat. Someone was blackmailing her. Who?
“I thank you for your kind warning.”
“Well, us girls’ve gotta stick together, you know,” she said, smiling in friendly and probably false relief. This wasn’t just about protecting me. If she dealt with me, she endangered her household. Like Arms, Focuses, or at least the successful ones, had to grow eyes in the back of their heads to survive.
My paranoia ran a different direction. “Is my relocation common knowledge in your household?”
“Oh, dearie me, no. You haven’t spent much time around Focuses, have you?” I had her now, and I realized she wasn’t as difficult to read as Keaton, Zielinski or Lori. She told the truth.
“No.”
“Well…” She stopped short. “You know, I don’t know what to call you. If you were another Focus, you’d be Focus Hancock. Mrs. Hancock’s just wrong. Carol’s too informal. I mean, you’re an Arm…”
Ma’am Hancock worked around Keaton and her crew, but around a Focus? Not hardly. Arm Hancock? Zielinski had used that one on me on occasion, so the term was probably legitimate.
“Arm Hancock would be just fine, Focus Laswell.” There. At least my statement didn’t sound like a bald faced lie.
Thelma frowned and the bubbles disappeared. “Well, Arm Hancock, in a Focus household the Focus is the repository for a household’s secrets. We may not have the same exact problems as an Arm, but we probably have just as many. There’s just things that would disturb people if they knew. The happier people are, the easier it is to move the juice.”
Move the juice. Those three simple words overflowed with emotional content, words tinged with juice. Like the words prey, stalk, and withdrawal for an Arm. This was a whole different world, I realized. A world as close to the edge as mine. Focus Laswell presented herself nothing at all like Focus Rizzari or Focus Teas. My meetings with Focus Rizzari had been shows, and my meetings with Focus Teas too colored by the meeting-place, the former CDC Detention Center.
I understood now why Focus Rizzari wanted me to visit her. She wanted me to understand, to know beyond the show.
Focus Laswell was cute, charismatic, tough and driven. Someone out of the same Focus mold as Focus Rizzari. Nothing like the loser Focuses I remembered from Chicago, the best barely able to keep her household in food and the worst enslaved by her household. Thelma was far more successful, enough to be strategizing her relationship with an Arm at a quite high level.
What was the difference between her and Focus Rizzari? Sure, I could sit, close my eyes and bask in Focus Laswell’s juice ambience all day. Hypnotic. Being here made me feel better about myself. The reverse was true, as well. Somewhere deep inside Focus Laswell something clicked when I showed up, and unless she deceived me, which I didn’t believe, my physical presence comforted her. To her, Arms were dangerous, but also to her, Arms and Focuses were sisters.
This all paled, though, compared to the emotions that Lori, Focus Rizzari, stirred in me. Memories of my meetings with her surfaced again, from where they had been lost in withdrawal, and my self-doubts faded. With Lori, it was love. This was just sex. Of course, it was neither, in both cases. Whatever I shared with Rizzari hit so deep I needed entirely new words to describe my emotio
ns.
Based on Hank’s description, Keaton and the bitch Focus Biggioni shared the same sort of relationship. Scary. Knowing that also told me all I ever needed to know about Focus Biggioni.
“So Rosenda doesn’t know I’m an Arm?”
“Arm Hancock, Rosenda doesn’t even know you’re a Transform.”
Interesting.
“So, Focus Laswell,” I said. “What you’re saying is you can’t do business with me now because doing so might endanger your household.”
“I was just fixin’ to suggest that, Arm Hancock,” Focus Laswell said aloud. What she said to me, inside, was ‘save my ass and you won’t be sorry’. “Ah do want to be polite.”
“I’ll stop wasting my time here, then,” I said, harsh. I let down my guard enough to convey an acceptance of her unstated offer.
Yup, here I was again. As usual, I hadn’t taken long to find my old best friend: deep deep shit.
Dammit, Gilgamesh, where are you?
Gilgamesh: June 16, 1968
“Master Gilgamesh, so glad to see you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Gilgamesh fought the panic, lost, and skipped back about fifteen feet from the barred metal door, between two parked cars and into the quiet street. He had hoped Occum still kept his Beast Men chained in the basement. He certainly hadn’t expected the Beasts to be doing door duty, or to be able to mimic the glow of a Transform. He found his rotten eggs in his hands, as well as a super-sized sick up ready to direct. The Beast Man didn’t attack or appear at all threatening, so Gilgamesh took a glance to see which eggs he had picked up instinctively. Female Monster #2 and Panicked Crow Running Away Quickly. The latter he had picked up in trade from Waveguide in Fort Lauderdale. The results of their use would have been amusing at best.
Waveguide was a Crow entrepreneur and he had managed to create a rotten egg variant to work on humans. To increase sales, of all things. He called it ‘spend money’. Gilgamesh wasn’t interested; he couldn’t imagine what ‘spend money’ would do to a charging Beast Man and didn’t want to find out. Waveguide had said the rotten egg variant hadn’t worked as well as he hoped, in any event. Dynamo, another Crow who worked as a chemist (officially, at a paying job!) at the Bakersfield Transform Research Complex, had figured out how to make the rotten eggs last for an entire week. Gilgamesh had traded his entire stash of rotten eggs to Dynamo for that knowledge.
It was heartening to see how his discovery of the rotten egg technique had spread so quickly among the Crows, though. He had made a difference.
“Ah,” the Beast Man said, waiting patiently at the door. “No problem. I know there are more of my kind who are enemies of Crows instead of friends of Crows. Allow me to introduce myself: I am Count Horace Knox, in the tutelage of the Crow Master Occum, serving the Guru Shadow, the greatest of us all.” Surreal. Life had taken yet another turn away from reality. The Beast Man stood about six and a half feet tall and looked human, save that he filled the doorway and possessed the sort of bulgingly huge chest and hairy pelt more often seen in B movie Neanderthals. Not very beastly at all, save that once Gilgamesh came close, he realized the creature was too monstrous to be human. Count Horace possessed a Major Transform glow unlike any he had ever metasensed before. Civilizing a Beast Man clearly had its benefits, and teaching them to be polite made them at least mildly comforting. Interesting. The Beast Man wore outrageously formal clothes, dressed in what was probably one of the largest tuxedoes ever made.
The question was, then, how many others in Occum’s huge menagerie of twenty-six Transforms were Beast Men? Could Beast Men masquerade as female Transforms?
Gilgamesh steadied himself. Count Horace (or would it be Count Knox?) might be comforting, but Gilgamesh’s captivity in Philadelphia had written panic deep into his soul and his feet tried to carry him off.
Dammit. He stopped. Gilgamesh had talked to so many Crows and Focuses, and heard so many stories. He was getting a good Crow reputation, fast becoming one of the Crows everyone knew, the Crow storyteller and writer of crazy dull books.
“Is, um, Master Occum in?” Gilgamesh said.
“Master Occum is expecting you, but wishes a few precautions when dealing with a dangerous Crow like yourself.”
Gilgamesh repressed a sigh. “Such as?” He had thought better of Occum than to fall for the ‘dangerous adventuring Crow’ nonsense.
“He wishes to meet you in the darkroom. He wants us to talk to you, as well. Wise Master Occum believes we may be able to help you with your chivalrous quest.”
Chivalrous quest? Such as the one he wasn’t telling anyone about? Well, Gilgamesh had to expect that a Crow smart enough to figure out how to tame Beast Men would be able to figure out other things, as well. Occum did have a reputation as a Crow of many talents.
“May I introduce you to my fellow Nobles?” the Beast Man said, with an oversized sweep of his arm. Gilgamesh couldn’t help himself. He found himself drawn into Occum’s house. Once the place had been an abandoned brownstone storefront, with boards on the windows, bars on the door, and a fading sign still proclaiming the place to be Zachariah’s Camera Shop. Gilgamesh stepped inside. Occum’s menagerie had totally redone the interior, not expensively, but with sort of high-class shabby opulence. Heavy brocade drapes blocked the three windows, and two underpowered lamps gave the room a Crow-friendly dimness. Two other Beast Men calmly stood in the large room, and bowed to him. They too dressed formally, one in a modern business suit, the other in the sort of suit one might see in a turn of the century English drawing room play. “May I present,” pause, “Viscount Robert Sellers, and my noble master, Duke Jeremy Hoskins.” The Viscount had a canine look to him, enough of a beast that he couldn’t pass as a normal human even on a dark night, save perhaps to other normal humans. The Duke was nothing more than a powerfully built tall human, though he did have a mild fishy odor to him and reddish skin.
Gilgamesh felt chilled to meet a Beast Man who could pass as human. He did appreciate the formality and attempted to follow along as best he could. Anything to help keep the Beast Men’s claws sheathed.
“Please, sit,” the Count said, waving his oversized hand expansively toward the shabby velvet chairs.
Gilgamesh cautiously perched on the edge of the chair nearest the door, while the Beast Men settled into two others and the end of a worn sofa. The chairs groaned under the weight. “Kind sirs, I do have several questions. First, may I inquire what happened to a person serving Master Occum once named Rover?”
The Viscount bowed to him from the waist. “That was I, Master Gilgamesh. Before Master Occum discovered the Enabler and with Dr. Henry Zielinski’s help turned it into the Great Enabler.”
This must be some incomprehensible Crow Shaman stuff. Zielinski, though? When did the Good Doctor ever get enough time to sleep?
“When I hunt in the outside world, for that is my way and not the way of my fellow Nobles, I am called Farsight.”
Gilgamesh hadn’t felt so confused since he visited Focus Rizzari. Nobles, he realized, must be the name these Beast Men used to describe themselves. Good psychology, as the name ‘beast man’ implied a loss of control. “Noble sirs, may I then ask about the Transforms I sense below?”
Duke Hoskins straightened in his chair. Tassels on the small lamp next to him shivered, casting tremors in the shadows of the room. “Why yes, they must be a shock to you, but a properly trained Noble has the ability, as a Focus has, to be able to save Transforms from death due to Monsterhood or withdrawal. Those we care for are our Commoners, our charges whom we protect.”
Okay. Commoners? Protect? Strange. More civilized than the Hunters and their harems, though.
Gilgamesh concentrated and counted nineteen women and five men. Not the Focus two to one ratio. “Why so many women?” He paused, trying to think of the right honorific. “Sirs.”
“We are still learning, though our lack shames us. We find it difficult to keep Commoner men alive and out of withdrawal, more difficult than
keeping the Commoner women from going Monster.”
“Might one inquire of the process?” He wondered if they would be equally polite when they gnawed on his corpse like the Monsters they were.
The Nobles looked at each other, not sure if he was on the ‘to tell’ list, and came to a decision. “Yes, of course sir, perhaps a visual explanation might be in order,” Duke Hoskins said.
Duke must rank Count and Viscount, Gilgamesh decided. He had thought it was the other way around. Why was it Count Dracula as opposed to Duke Dracula or whatever?
The three Nobles led him down a set of creaky wooden stairs into the basement beneath the old store. The place reeked like the basement of Keaton’s hidden house of horrors. The brightly lit room hid little, and Gilgamesh would have preferred dimness. Eleven different incandescent lamps illuminated a mix of clutter and filth on a bare concrete floor.
“I must apologize for all of us,” Duke Hoskins said. His voice was comforting, low in tone, and quiet. Likely Occum had taught him to be quiet, to suit a Crow’s preferences. He had seen no signs of aggression from any of the three, though the aggressions must be there. How else did Rover – oops, Viscount Dracula or whatever – hunt, unless he had the aggression? “We are still feeling our way with our charges.”
Some of their charges lived in large cages, eight feet to a side and scattered well away from each other along the cinderblock walls of the basement. The uncaged five, all women, looked woebegone. The caged ones looked worse. Insane. Gibbering, moaning, catatonic. One of the men gnawed on one hand, sucking his own blood, perhaps eating his own meat. His other arm was entirely gone. The five free women looked up at Gilgamesh, rushed over, and grabbed his hands. Knelt. Rubbed his hand against their faces.
“Great master,” one said. “Are you here to help Master Occum?”
Gilgamesh didn’t like anyone touching him these days, especially not random Transforms. His heart went out for these women Transforms, though. They were so pathetic. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with them, but something was. Their glows were off. He had seen this before, and…
No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) Page 24
