The Provocateur had, spread out on the table, photographs of six Transforms. I recognized two of the photos, one of a Noble, Viscount Kevin of the Borealis Stonehold in London, Ontario, and the one of the Arm Amy Haggerty. I guessed the identity of another one of the photos, the photo of a whippet-thin Negro, as that of Midgard, the Crow rumored to follow Haggerty around. I was impressed. Crows instinctively avoided the camera. “So, what can I do for you fine fellows?” the Provocateur said.
Colonel Loess turned to me. I hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with my plans for this meeting. “Sir,” I said, to the Provocateur. “You once worked with my old Master, Wandering Shade.”
“I did.”
“Is it possible that we might renew this association?” I asked.
“Who is doing the asking?” the Provocateur said. “And quit calling me ‘sir’. Call me Roger.” He smiled.
I smiled back. Rolled. Fuck. “Roger, I’m doing the asking, as the leader of the Hunters.”
“Not as the Jester’s pawn? Interesting.”
“The Jester?” I said, playing ignorant.
“The Jester is false Mentor Athabasca’s so-called Mentor identity,” Roger said, and laughed. I didn’t recognize the ‘Mentor’ term. Roger was a powerfully built but smallish man, perhaps five nine if he stood straight. He had pale skin from lack of sun, but also the deep wrinkles and creases of a man who had spent decades in arid areas. His close cropped salt and pepper hair set off his long head, making him handsome despite his age. His full beard was more salt than pepper, and just as close cropped. His eyes were of a piercing blue you more normally found on towheaded children, not ancient old men. In looks, you would say he was around 70, but my information put him at over a hundred. Given that he only loosely matched Guru Athabasca’s description, I wondered what, if anything, about him was real. “Yes, you’re here on your own. You possess far more curiosity and willpower than I realized.” He paused. “The answer is ‘no’, by the way.”
“May I ask why, Roger?”
“I’m retired,” he said, and sighed. “I can barely keep up with my existing responsibilities, General Enkidu. I can’t afford to take on any new ones.” He waved his hands at the pictures on his desk. “I should have been able to stop them. I couldn’t. My talents are fading.” I wondered what horror Haggerty was working on this time.
“Roger, that sort of help is what the Hunters can offer you—stopping Noble and Arm idiocy.” Did the Provocateur adjust his voice, personality and appearance to match the prejudices of the viewer, and if so, what was rattling around in my head to make him appear this way to me?
Or was Loess’s understanding of him in control here?
He laughed, and I understood, hearing his laugh, why Loess referred to him as Jolly Roger. “You would fail, General. The movers behind them weren’t either Nobles or Arms, but secretive and powerful Crows and Focuses.” He wheeled around his wheelchair and met my gaze, fearless and direct. “I’m not your friend. I’m not anyone’s friend.”
“Who then do you serve, Roger?” I asked. “We all serve someone, or something. I serve the Law.”
“The Law is a lie, General Enkidu,” Roger said, his voice now rolling with contempt. “The Hunters, like the first Focuses and the Pleiades Council in Japan, serve the Transform Community as object lessons of incorrect advancement methods.”
I bristled in anger, and barely held my temper in check. “We have enemies, Roger. The Arms and the Focus Council. Is there something we can do for you to make you more unfriendly toward them?”
“Give me another twenty years of full health,” Roger said, and laughed. Colonel Loess laughed with him. I didn’t join in. “You want the Hunters to be stronger? Here’s some free advice: if any of the Arms defect to you, take her on. Same for the Crow Masters of the Nobles. Don’t kill them or ruin them with the Law. Gently turn them and add their strength to yours. Diversity! Diversity is the only way for the Transforms to prosper. Dividing by type will just get you killed, as the Pleiades Council, which enforces rather absurd non-interaction limits, will soon learn.”
The chair arm under my right hand creaked under the tension from my right hand. “You sound like Arm Hancock. Are you her secret protector?” That would make sense; Hancock had coincidentally scraped through far too many close calls. Someone had to be helping her.
“That menace? The sooner she’s disposed of, the better.” Well. “If you had it in you to dispose of her, that might be worth a reward. But you don’t.”
“Why the fucking hell not!” I said. “I’m smarter, stronger, faster and more inventive than she is.”
“But she’s more seductive,” Roger said. “You’re just a big hairy brute with delusions of Commanderhood. You have few friends and many enemies; and those who follow you do so only because you dominate them, or because they give up in despair of ever shaking free of you. Hancock, the bitch, creates acolytes who love her, and if someone doesn’t stop her, she and her acolytes are going to create a thousand year Reich modeled on Dante’s Inferno.”
I growled and leaned toward him, ready to end this my way, and rip his guts out of his body. The lying bastard refused to help us, or harm our enemies, and had thus revealed himself to be an enemy.
I did not succeed at ripping his guts out.
Impossible auroras arced around him as I swung, and when my blow should have connected, it passed through him…and we were no longer in Roger’s secret library, but in a dim twilight place of bare rock and dark blue sky, bare rock that didn’t extend out more than a hundred yards in any direction. “Only worse,” Roger said, completing his anti-Hancock diatribe.
Shit.
“What is this place?” Colonel Loess asked.
“The place you are going to stay forever, unless you juice-pledge to me to leave, never come back and never work against me again,” Roger said. “General Enkidu, there is no hope for you, none at all, either personally or organizationally, unless you find a way to curb your temper. I see the promise Guru Innocence once saw in you, and also the flaw he ever feared. Your anger is destined to destroy you unless you find a way to master it.”
What anger? Idiot. “What the fuck are you?” I said. “How can you be doing this? You’re no Major Transform. You don’t have the power to be doing any of this.” As I spoke, I understood. This was my doing, something I could do if I possessed the necessary skills and knowledge. He had wielded me to call this place into being.
“As you can see, General, I don’t need personal power. My enemies give me all that I’ll ever need.” He paused and smiled at my growing discomfort. “Frustrating, isn’t it? Live with it; frustration is the way of all Transforms, including myself. They told me I would be able to start the ball rolling, but that not only would I die before the necessary end, but that no matter how I strived, I would not be able to control where the ball rolled. I’ve been playing pachinko, a mere observer, attempting to change events, and failing, always failing. The little changes I make, the nudges here and there? Worthless. In the greater scheme of things, I’ve accomplished nothing. And now I fade, and soon I will die.”
“You admit you caused Transform Sickness?” Colonel Loess said.
“I’m the first of this era, but like the poor, Transform Sickness has always been with us,” Roger said. “I spread it simply by being who I am. By working and wandering.”
“Who?” Colonel Loess said. “Who do you serve? Who is your they?”
Roger laughed at Colonel Loess. “I serve no one and nothing, that which to a Transform is everyone and everything.”
“The juice?” I said, penetrating his cryptic words that just confused Colonel Loess. “The juice is alive?”
“You are alive, at least for the moment,” Roger said. “Isn’t that enough?”
He faded from sight. “Say my name when you’re ready to do the juice pledge. Until then, abide.” I cursed him and asked to speak with him, but I refused to say his name. Neither he nor the sound of his voice reap
peared.
My so-called anger faded after several minutes. Colonel Loess waited patiently for me.
“I believe we must make the pledge, General,” he said, when I looked at him. I shrugged and inspected our trap home. Yes, the world ended a hundred yards in any direction, the edge a steep cliff. When I climbed down the cliff I ended climbing up the cliff on the other side of the trap. None of my juice manipulations affected the place. I tried everything.
Whoever and whatever the Provocateur represented, he had won. Six hours later, I gave in and had Colonel Loess say Roger’s name. The Provocateur appeared, we took the pledge, and the trap around us vanished. When the real world reappeared around us, Colonel Loess and I stood in the woods, a hundred yards away from Mr. Collins’ house. Neither of us could fight the juice, and so we left, never to return.
The Provocateur was nothing more than a distraction. The Hunters had real work to do, disgusting and arduous work. Research and training.
Then we would strike.
{one year later}
War Warning (December 30, 1972)
I walked over to the television, marveling again at how the Amazons had managed the news media after their violent war in Pittsburgh. Snow swirled around outside, frosting the insides of the giant windows of the hunting lodge.
“Time for the meeting,” I said. Slaves scattered ahead of me, as I marched down to the great room of the hunting lodge, the only meeting room big enough for the six Colonels and myself.
I stood at the head of the table and stared down my six Colonels. They all nodded to me, though the nods from my personally trained Hunters – Montana Winter, Orion and Quiet Creeper – were more heartfelt than those from Leo, Ursus and Loess.
I nodded at the crew and sat. Servants huddled around me, serving me roast venison from the hunting lodge’s stores. The servants would serve the others momentarily. Rarer delicacies from my own human hunting expeditions would follow. Cleo stood guard behind me, too low in rank to claim a place at the table, but too important to leave out. Tangiers stood guard behind Loess, also too important to leave out of any meeting of this import.
“Colonel Loess, why don’t you start off,” I said, after taking a bite of venison.
Loess nodded. “Sir. As you ordered, I managed to piece together what happened in Pittsburgh last week. The story sounds crazy beyond belief, but I corroborated it through several sources.” Apparently Kali, the crazy head Arm, had attempted to take over all the Focuses by co-opting the first Focuses. Focus Patterson defeated her. The Commander, as always moving quickly, took over the Arms, set up a new cross-Transform alliance, attacked Patterson, and freed over a half dozen captive Crows and Arms. “The leader of the first Focuses, Patterson, is dead. The second generation of Focuses is rejoicing over their new freedom. The Crows idolize the Commander and her faction, due to the rescue of Patterson’s captive Crows. My own Shaman, Urine, confirmed Patterson’s death for me, in person. Sir, I must report that our enemies are now united, for the first time ever.”
I growled in disgust. I had feared this might happen, someday. “I thought you had good news, Colonel Loess.”
“Yes, sir. I do. The battle casualties among our enemies were high. The most powerful of the second generation of Focuses, Keistermann, died outright, as did many of the Nobles. The Commander and Lady Death, and their obnoxious Crow, Sky, were also casualties. They live, but the fight ruined their minds in some arcane fashion. They’ve been exiled to Canada, as best as I was able to determine. My sources don’t believe they will ever recover from whatever Patterson did to them. Lastly, Kali sustained grave damage to her mind while Patterson’s captive, and she’s been reduced to a mere servant of TB, the Council Focus from Philadelphia.”
“Oh ho!” I said, tension changing to anticipation in my heart. “That’s not good news, that’s great news! Our enemies may be united, but in the process, they decapitated themselves. Wonderful! Wonderful! Colonel Leo, you also said you had important news.” I would save my own disquieting news for later.
“Yes, sir,” Leo said. Leo, his man-form tall and Nordic, still resented his demotion from General. He wouldn’t meet my eyes save in the most extraordinary circumstances. Still, while working on our research projects, I had come to appreciate his excess of humanity, which did make him easier to deal with. I had put work into making all the Hunters follow Leo’s example and become easier to deal with.
Even the obnoxious Judges approved of my reforms. I would have rather had Gilgamesh in charge of the Law changes, as I trusted Gilgamesh far more than I trusted the Judges, but my old compatriot had yet again denied his true destiny. The Hunters’ distasteful juice-level alliance with the Judges, recently concluded, was a necessary evil.
“I have a present for you, honorable General,” Colonel Leo said, his voice deep enough to cause the table to tremble against my hand. “A mighty present. Servant Aimes, the presentation, please?”
Servant Aimes, one of Leo’s tuxedo-clad butlers, hurried out. A minute later, he returned, leading a short woman Transform behind him, nearly hidden in a cream-colored cloak. I reached out with my metasense, anticipating a Pack Mistress, and instead found an Arm. Before I could stop myself, I found myself standing, claws out and teeth bared. After several deep breaths I sat back down, licking my lips. An Arm, truly, but an Arm marked with the Law, and thus a forced ally.
Oh, this was a great day!
“Sir, may I present Hecate, the Arm formerly known as Sylvia Bass,” Leo said. The cloaked Arm stopped, bowed, and then shook off the hood of her cloak. The former Arm Bass had changed, now more pleasing to the eye then when she had come, earlier in the year, begging for alliance. Her skin shone silver now, and her eyes were wide and dark. Her fingers showed small claws at the ends, and when she smiled, I saw the beginning of fangs coming in. She was a creature hungry for death. Beautiful. Her changes confirmed several of my theories about the ability of Arms to change their shape, and made the absurd height of the type Arm, Armenigar, much more understandable.
“General Enkidu,” Hecate said, kneeling. “I am yours.”
“Yes. Of course you are,” I said, puzzled by Hecate’s formalism. “Is there anything you can offer the Hunters besides your combat skills?” Beside me, Cleo snarled at the Arm. She was usually a good judge of people, but this time, I marked her reaction as due to jealousy. Bass was little danger to us, even when free. I had dealt with Bass several times in the past, and considered her little more than a crazy anarchist blowhard. Under the Law, she would be no danger at all.
Hecate nodded and rose to her feet. “I’m quite skilled at interrogation and torture, sir, and the many skills associated with withdrawal imprinting. In addition, I have Keaton’s research records, looted from her lair after she fell to Patterson. Including all her records on the strengths and weaknesses of the leading Focuses, the surviving Arms, and several of the leading Nobles and Crows. I also possess the secrets of tagging, an Arm specialty you may not be aware of, as well as the secrets of the Arm predator effect.” Her voice was soothing and respectful. Yes, the Law was good for Arms.
“General? May I?” Colonel Loess said. I turned to Loess, and nodded. Loess turned to the Arm. “Hecate, my contacts indicate that you betrayed Keaton to Patterson, and that you escaped Patterson’s compound with another Arm. Is this true?”
Hecate didn’t answer, and stood utterly still and emotionless. “Answer,” I demanded.
“Sir, I didn’t betray Keaton, I challenged her and won,” Hecate said, falling to my will. She stank of fear. I smiled. “After my victory, which made me the boss Arm, Keaton disobeyed my orders, challenged Patterson and lost. The Arm, Ingrid Sandell, is mine. I personally rescued her from the clutches of the US government and gave her to Focus Patterson to train. When I surrendered to Colonel Leo, I presented Ingrid to him as a gift. I haven’t seen Ingrid since.”
I turned to Leo.
“Sir,” Leo said. “This Arm Ingrid is too young to give to you as a pre
sent, with no idea of proper deference, decorum or civilization. She’s being trained by my people at the moment.” Crap. Leo was clutching at straws again, trying to see what he could get away with.
“We’ll talk on this, later,” I said. “I accept your present. You did well, Leo.” An Arm was a mighty present, and the first of her kind among us. How she would fit in was to be determined, but I doubted an Arm would be willing to be subordinate to the Pack Mistresses or Shamans. Also, I needed a name for them, to mark their new status within the Hunter civilization. Huntress? Yes, that fit, properly subordinate to the Hunters. “Huntress Hecate, kneel here beside me.” She did, gracefully and comfortably, almost as if the Great Hunter made her to be my subordinate. I placed my hand on her tiny shoulder, and felt her juice, wild and hungry for violence. Already, she felt like a well-made tool, perfectly fitted to my hand, a tool aching for use. Her knowledge about the enemy would be priceless.
“General?” Colonel Ursus said. “I also wish to report some news. I hadn’t realized its import before, but hearing the other news, I believe my news would be better given in person, rather than buried in a report.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Sir. I finally managed to trace the origins of the Nobles.”
“Yes. Continue?”
“The Nobles aren’t another experimental line originated by Wandering Shade, as we believed. Instead, they’re the product of another Crow, an apostate lesser Crow named Occum. According to what I learned, he and Wandering Shade exchanged information on stabilization techniques early on, but broke with each other after Wandering Shade discovered the Law. Occum continued with the stabilization techniques Wandering Shade used before his discovery of the Law, and much later, perfected them. As we feared in our worst nightmares, Occum’s stabilization method, what the Nobles term the ‘great enabler’, requires ongoing Crow intervention.”
I shuddered at the news. The Crows had indeed enslaved the Nobles, as I had long suspected and long spouted as propaganda. “Thank you, Colonel Ursus. I’ve got news of my own, and it isn’t pretty,” I said. “There’s been a shake up among the Crows.” My Colonels quieted, as they all understood the danger the older Crows represented. An older Crow could stop a Hunter completely, if the Hunter didn’t get the drop on the Crow, and could rip the Law out of him, given time. “The Crow Shadow, the traitorous betrayer of Wandering Shade and the subversive ally of the Arms, has become a Guru of Gurus. He’s won the elder Crows Chevalier and Thomas the Dreamer to his cause, making his vision the dominant one among the Crows. Shadow’s current cause is cooperation with the Focuses. He claims to be able to build Focus households three to five times their current size. He has the backing of the Commander, Lady Death and TB, as well. Because of this we’ve lost the support, if you could call it that, of one of the two groups of Crows willing to deal with us, the Watchers of Guru Chevalier.” The Watchers had been willing to sell out the Focuses and Arms for cash for years, mercenary bastards all.
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