Gail slumped in disgust as she metasensed Haggerty zooming away on her motorcycle. Played. Definitely played. Complete with a distracting ‘reward’.
“Our people need to examine this,” Gail said. Sylvie nodded and smiled, glad not to need to argue that point. “Move it out of here. Hell, move it to Littleside and make sure Inferno knows about it. We’ve got that place better defended than the Branton.” Gail paused. “So, what’s the problem?”
“Zielinski’s unconscious again. I think you and Gilgamesh need to start tuning his juice structure, or you’re going to lose him.”
Even in a hospital bed the damned Dr. Mengele clone was a pain in the ass.
---
“Okay, you said I wouldn’t believe what she left us,” Gail said. “So tell me.” She sat down and began to eat the overly spicy Littleside cafeteria food. She had assigned Inferno to run Littleside, not trusting that Zielinski’s trained monkeys wouldn’t make a mess of things. Only a few of the Littleside staff used the cafeteria for dinner, and Gail enjoyed the temporary quiet, at least until her husband Van and his brilliant sister Daisy sat down opposite her, both excited enough to make them jittery. Gail wasn’t sure she could cope; she had spent the late morning and all afternoon on Littleside issues – sorting out the logistics to train Focuses in juice music and making sure she and Gilgamesh didn’t step on each other’s toes as he set up his training classes to teach Crows how to do household tuning. Much to Gail’s disgust, Gilgamesh attracted more Crows than he could teach, and with both Sky and Newton gone, he didn’t know anyone who knew the techniques to help. Some Crow named Orange Sunshine, who had learned the techniques while tuning Focus Ackerman’s household in Boston, and who later ‘donated’ the household to a different and, in his words, ‘more malleable’ Crow, was Gilgamesh’s only potential help, but they still negotiated.
Then there was the phone call from Arm Naylor, interrupting Gail the last time she tried to take some time to eat. Amy had tried to force Arm Naylor out of Chicago, Christine resisted, and she called to make sure Gail wouldn’t support Amy. “Dumb cunt,” Christine had said, referring to Arm Haggerty. “Attempting to sell me on the idea that I shouldn’t be here since it’s the Commander’s territory. I told her that if she wanted me out of Chicago she should claim it and challenge me. Which she wouldn’t do, of course.” Gail backed Christine’s play, which she suspected would cause her grief with Amy, eventually, but she remained pissed over Amy’s earlier game playing.
“There’s a guy,” Van said. “An unknown Transform, perhaps a Goldilocks, who’s Amy’s number one candidate for her ‘great unknown Major Transform enemy’. It turns out he was the one who founded Chrysanthemum.”
“What?” Gail said, milk spurting out her nose. “She was sitting on this?”
Daisy nodded, and her multicolored hair waved. She was almost as tall as Van, which put her over six feet, and too many adventures with hard drugs had left her gaunt. She was still one of the smartest people Gail had ever met. “Her evidence is suggestive, probably good enough to win a court case with, but not good enough for a scientific publication. That’s the only reason that I can think of for her to sit on it.”
“Add in the amount of grief she kept getting about her ‘crazy wacko theories about a great unknown enemy’ and the fact we sorta proved this was Arm Bass, and her decision might be understandable,” Gail said. “You’re talking ‘the man’, aren’t you, the perhaps Goldilocks who’s also known of as the Provocateur. He tried to stop the Eskimo Spear quest, and in fact did mess things up. His interference is the reason the Spear remains locked up and showing only one memory, when it’s clear it has more.” Though she was just about the only one on the continent who remained convinced of this. She put ‘convince Ann Chiron the Spear possesses more info’ back on her mental agenda. If she could convince Ann, she could delegate the entire problem to her.
“Yes,” Van said. “Hank told me he saw him here, in Littleside, when…”
“Don’t listen to him,” Gail said. Van and Daisy froze in place. Gail puzzled for a moment then relaxed her inadvertent charismatic blurt. “Sorry about that. Sore subject.”
Van and Daisy glanced at each other, frowning and unhappy. They thought Gail was being too harsh on Zielinski, which Gail thought impossible. For one thing, she wasn’t torturing him with the juice or torturing him in Carol’s currently abandoned basement, though he definitely needed the torture. “So Haggerty left us a bunch of information on him along with her other crap, more than she learned on her quest?”
Daisy nodded. A bit nervous, she tried to flatten out her ‘No Backstage Passes’ message tee that rode up in back. “There’s a lot to take in. Apparently nearly all the older Focuses ran into him at one time or another, and according to Amy, he’s able to borrow Major Transform abilities. Sylvie and Connie think we need to beef up our defenses, as nothing in our setup can stop someone using his tricks.”
“Okay,” Gail said. She suspected she knew where this was going. Connie had already mentioned a crazy Hank idea about how a household could tag a Focus, and how she wanted to try it someday soon. “I’m a little busy now for one of our old-fashioned snipe hunts, though. Why don’t the two of you work on collating the information and give me a report.” Don’t bother me until then, she didn’t say.
Van and Daisy left her alone to eat her dinner in peace, allowing her to leaf through another dozen letters and two Inferno reports. Work didn’t cooperate with her desire for peace, though, as she needed to take a call from Focus Esther Weiczokowski, the local unremoved region Council rep, before she finished her food.
Gail doubted she would find time to sleep, tonight. She hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since she returned from Pennsylvania.
Falling into the Abyss (1/6/1973)
“What the hell happened?” Gail asked, tired of the lack of answers she had been getting. The line of nine vehicles, all small and medium sized panel trucks, slowly wound its way into the Branton’s tiny service entrance parking lot, rumbling and spewing diesel exhaust. The overcast sky threatened snow, and slush in the parking lot soaked Gail’s boots.
An imposing woman, significantly shorter than Gail, stepped forward out of the mob of Transform women and Monsters milling around the first vehicle. “We need help with our wounded, Focus Gail,” the imposing woman said. Finally, an answer. Gail ran through her memories until she fished up the name: Warden Jane, the Blue Ridge Barony’s equivalent of a Hunter’s Pack Alpha. Warden Jane’s denim overalls covered layers of warm, winter shirts and were more bloodsoaked than not, from her own wounds. She needed a good face scrub and some makeup. Hell, she needed a facelift, to tell the truth. Or two. “Including Crow Master Sinclair.”
Shit. “Freddy, set the screens up,” Gail said. Her household had built a dozen ten-foot-tall canvas screens they could set up around the back entrance, allowing them to move Transforms into and out of the Branton without attracting attention from the passers-by. Gail and Sylvie directed traffic, Sylvie attempting to convince Gail that this was a household matter she could handle, and Gail explaining why this crew, which would normally need be sent over to Littleside, couldn’t be sent there today because the Region President Addie Hocutt was doing an inspection. They needed a new Region President, but remained stuck with Addie. She successfully portrayed herself as a victim of Focus Adkins, instead of as Adkins’ main collaborator, her true role. Van was in charge of the diplomacy, at least until Gail extricated herself from this mess. They needed Addie’s approval for their juice music school. If they didn’t get it, they would work around her, which she knew, so Addie had at least a little incentive to be reasonable.
“This is bad,” Gail said, as an Inferno stretcher team passed by Gail on their way to the Littleside service entrance, carrying Duke Hoskins. Blood dripped from the stretcher, and he resembled Swiss cheese more than a Transform. He didn’t move, closer to ‘dead’ than ‘unconscious’. She hoped his head wounds wouldn’t leave him hav
ing to start over as a Noble. “This can’t be a Hunter attack, though. The wounds are all wrong.”
“Thank heavens,” a deep male voice said. “Ma’am, I must apologize. I’ve never dealt with you in person before, and I wasn’t looking forward to explaining the basics. Not in my current condition. I’m a little short on the ol’ brain cells myself right now.”
She turned to the voice and found a tall and scruffy Noble limping over to her from the third vehicle, balanced on an oversized crutch. His left leg and his right leg didn’t match in appearance or height. Blond Baloo, she thought. Bloody blond Baloo, complete with killer claws on his hands and feet, an ursine snout, razor sharp teeth and classic bear ears. He walked fully upright, though, so this had to be something besides his combat form. “Can you tell me what’s going on, Sir Noble? This looks like the aftermath of a merc fight.” Bullet wounds and shrapnel wounds.
“Yes, Director,” the Noble said. “Ah, you don’t recognize me in my half-human form. It’s me, Count Dowling.”
Dowling. She placed the name and the reputation; she had only exchanged a few distant hand-sniff greetings with him. He looked like much less of a hunk after being shot to shit while part of the way into his combat form. “Director?”
“Let’s move everyone inside and I’ll explain everything,” Dowling said.
They gathered in the River Room, and Dowling worked his way through his third omelet. The room normally functioned as a reading lounge for Abyss, and was a homey place, with comfortable chairs, dozens of books and magazines, and several newspapers, one of which lay in sections all over the floor. “Director is the name we’ve given you, Focus Rickenbach,” Dowling said. He seemed to be perfectly capable of eating and talking at the same time. “Or, at least, the name of the position you currently hold.”
The Crow in the wheelchair, Master Zero, chuckled. Gail smiled, recognizing the Nobles’ tendency to never let anything go untitled or unnamed at work.
Abyss and Inferno had quickly turned the basement gym into an impromptu hospital and Gail had Sylvie put in the call for Zielinski to move his ass over here. He would be cranky, as this was only his second day out of his hospital bed. Gail hoped they could save everyone, but some of the people on those stretchers hadn’t looked good at all.
“It’s the name you gave her, Count,” Master Zero said. His voice was exceptionally quiet for one of the Crow Masters. “No false modesty.” Dowling nodded, abashed.
“Director,” Gail said. She didn’t appreciate being among the public nickname crew, but at least this was a functional nickname, unlike ‘Clumsy Angel’. “I guess that’s a better name for my position than anything else that’s come up.” Certainly better than Sylvie’s ‘Boss Lady of Everything But Van’ jape. “Who staged the attack?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Dowling said, followed by an ursine growl, then an awkwardly long pause. “Ma’am. Sorry. My mind’s on other things at the moment. I swear every time I arrange things so I can go out and found my own Barony, something like this comes up. It’s wrong for me to take this personally, and I know it, but…” Gail noted that his nervous bear paw mangled the chair arm where he sat. Stress. “If you want, Director, we captured three of the attackers to be, um, interviewed by the Arms.”
“Unfortunately, the Arms are gone.” Dowling nodded. Gail sighed. “When you’re ready, I can dig out the information you need.” At the muted look of horror in Dowling’s eyes – Gail’s rep apparently didn’t include torture – she smiled. “No torture necessary.”
“Tell me what this one does,” Crow Master Sinclair said in a low Crow whisper, to Gilgamesh. He lay on a cot masquerading as a hospital bed, and eyed the cast in Gilgamesh’s hand suspiciously.
In normal times, this area served as the Branton laundry facilities, and several baskets of dirty laundry still sat by the heavy commercial dryers, pushed aside to make room for cots. The smell of blood and antiseptic overwhelmed the usual laundry odors, and the normally busy machines stood silent. Gail paced, keeping a close eye on Zielinski as he did his doctoring. Even as one of her Transforms, the Nobles trusted their ‘Good Doctor’. They shouldn’t.
Gilgamesh sat in a hastily requisitioned oversized lobby chair, black leather, and lounged by Crow Master Sinclair’s cot, bemused by Sinclair’s Barony’s ability to attract fights. Gail spent a moment studying Sinclair’s X-Rays and shook her head. Either Sinclair was tougher than most Crows, or someone had already helped him heal, because his wounds were beyond what Gail thought a Crow might survive. In any event, it was clear they had nearly lost the Nobles’ number two Crow Master in this fight. As it was, Sinclair would be in a hospital bed for weeks.
“Emulated Arm healing,” Gilgamesh said. “You feed it dross and it heals wound damage. It only works on Crows, because only Crows need such things. It works about 15% as fast as Carol.” Eh, make that days.
Sinclair took the dross object, a plaster cast with an inked-in red cross on one side, care of Gilgamesh, and a smiling buxom nurse drawing on the other, care of Melanie, and shook his head. “I see you’re turning whimsical, my Guru Gilgamesh,” Sinclair said, letting Gilgamesh tuck the cast under his arm. “I’ll take it, though. How does it work on broken bones?” Sinclair had taken two through the left leg and one through his ribcage.
“Not at all. Nobody’s willing to let me experiment on them with one of these.”
“Can’t imagine why.” Master Sinclair noticed Gail and her pacing. “Director. There’s no need for you to wait on me.” He didn’t raise his head from his pillow, Gail noticed. Except for the small motion to take the cast, he hadn’t moved at all.
“Yes, there is. You got attacked by unknowns. Whoever sent them is a threat.”
“And you heard I know who did this, and why.” Gail came to stand next to Gilgamesh’s chair, the better to hear Sinclair’s soft voice.
“And I also heard that your household isn’t willing to tell me because they think the whack on the head you took in the fight scrambled your brain. However, I know my Crows.” And she trusted her metasense.
That’s what the disputed ‘social gestalt’ variable in Amy’s sixteen varieties of Major Transforms was all about. Amy initially termed the two affinities associated with the social gestalt variable ‘Charisma’ and ‘Metasense’, terms nobody liked. She later renamed them ‘Juice Link’ and ‘Superorganism’. The new names were more technically correct, but the originals were more practical, in Gail’s opinion. A Major Transform who instinctively leaned on her metasense – as most Major Transforms did – understood and interacted with Transforms using the metasense along with sight, hearing and smell. Doing so always involved group Transform dynamics, which fell within the general idea of ‘superorganism’. A Major Transform who instinctively relied on her charisma used her charisma as a sense, along with sight, hearing and smell. She preferred to interact one on one, via charismatic juice links, than with groups, because of the limitations of charisma use as a sense. Gail didn’t fully understand how this worked, although she had shared metasenses enough with Carol (who did act this way) to understand that there was a difference. Gail had attempted to convince Haggerty that she should use the labels ‘metamygdala’ and ‘metacampus’ instead, the altered brain area associated with (in order) charisma use and metasense use, but Amy balked, likely because the Arm couldn’t even metasense the existence of metamygdalas, and certainly couldn’t sense the brain organ differences between a Charismatic and a Metasenser.
Sinclair sighed. “Director, yes, you do deserve the name Count Dowling’s dropped on you.” He paused. “We got hit by two hundred and twenty mercenary soldiers. The person behind this was once known of as Arm Bass, but I’m sure she goes by a different name among the Hunters now. The mercs were the remains of Arm Keaton’s west coast crew.”
Gail’s eyes opened wide in shock. How did the Barony win the fight? Far fewer of Bass’s mercs nearly took out Carol, Duke Hoskins and Arm Whetstone in New Orleans, and they had a well
-armed Focus household backing them up.
Sinclair took a moment to regather his strength. “Bass’s merc army didn’t know about Count Dowling and his household,” he said. Even near death, the uncanny Crow Master read her like a pro. Gail relaxed a bit, glad to be among the talented. “The Count’s been stalking in and out of our Barony ever since Pittsburgh, attempting to arm-twist the Duke into releasing him to form his own Barony.” Sinclair paused again and rested for a moment. “The Count was out cooling his heels and patrolling when he picked up signs of the attack. He and his household charged, Master Zero riding in on Monster-back, another of the Count’s innovations. They arrived just as the mercs downed the Duke and were about to massacre the rest of us. Taken by surprise and already well shredded by my Barony, the mercs didn’t stand a chance.”
The basement storage room holding the merc captives was only feet from the temporary hospital. Gail had made several trips between them over the last day. “That’s it,” Gail said, putting the last of the merc captives to sleep. Vic put him down to join the rank of other sleeping mercs lying side by side on blankets on the bare concrete floor. They had run out of cots supplying the hospital. Gail left the merc to his slumbers and went out into the wide basement hallway, followed by Count Dowling and a limping Duke Hoskins wheeling Crow Master Sinclair, and then Vic and Melanie. Today, she kept bodyguards in her own home.
The mercs’ experiences matched Sinclair’s story. Yes, they had been recently headquartered in southern California. Yes, about a month ago, their employer took their best people on a mission, none of whom ever returned. This time, their employer took them all on what he termed a ‘revenge mission’, giving them only rough specifications on what they faced. Their employer, a short man, didn’t come on this mission, but sent them in, alone, against the enemy. Oh, and their employer had interviewed the leader of the mercs for two days before the mission, and he came back crazy-hyped and damn near suicidally aggressive. “Bass,” Gail said to the gathered crew, dodging wheeled laundry carts now lining the near wall of the hallway in a neat row. “Arm Webberly’s report mentioned that Bass tried to talk the Arms into probing the Nobles and exposing their weakness well before Keaton’s decision to take down the first Focuses. I would say that Bass just got her chance to do her probing attack.”
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