“I’ll bet she had some Crow spies on us during the attack,” Sinclair said, from his wheelchair. He had demanded to be here during Gail’s interrogation. Gilgamesh’s healing cast healed the older Crow Master quite nicely.
“We need to tell the other Baronies to move and keep moving,” Duke Hoskins said. He had been in his man-form during the entire fight, and although he was back to being mobile, he did limp. He reeked of dross, and his left eye, which currently didn’t match his right eye in color or shape, twitched. Gail didn’t want to know. “This probing attack is part of the prelude to the Hunters’ coming attack. The lone Barony strategy won’t cut it in the war.”
“If you don’t mind a bit of nasty Focus trickery, there’s another option besides killing them,” Gail said.
“Yes, Director?” Hoskins said.
“I can send these idiots back with false information in their heads, if you want.” Lori had taught her this trick, and they had created a juice music score for this before Pittsburgh. Gail hadn’t ever had a chance to use it, but given how simple the score was, she could just read it without having to explicitly learn it.
“Such as ‘they won, but only barely, the last three mercs killing the last of us’?” Sinclair said, in a strong, normal voice. “I like.” Sinclair, it turned out, only spoke in a Crow whisper when he was too wounded to do otherwise.
“How obvious will this be? If they figure it out, will they be able to find the real memories?” Count Dowling asked.
Gail eyed the Count and kept a smile off her face. In the hours since his arrival he had significantly changed his shape back toward that of his man-form, and she liked what she saw. She knew temptation when she saw it, though, and told herself to resist. Gail’s Arm was Carol, and Carol was out attempting to snag a Chimera, Beast, for their family. Gail bet that Focuses only got one Chimera’s attention, the same way they only got one Arm’s attention, and despite her temptations, she knew Count Dowling was out of bounds.
Which was really too bad. For a Noble, the guy was top end smart. He might even be smart enough to learn to be the mythical army commander she needed.
“It would be obvious to a Focus who knows the trick. I don’t know if Bass knows of this Focus technique, but if she doesn’t, it’s subtle enough to fool her. There’s no ongoing juice support. Nor will she be able to recover the lost memories. In a normal, these memories are gone for good.” The morality of this bothered Gail, not in their use against an enemy, but the temptation of having something like this in her arsenal. This would make a wonderful way of curing some annoying household problems of hers. Or meddling with some of the more annoying local Focuses.
“Then do it, though I don’t want them to think they won,” Duke Hoskins said. “Instead, these three broke and ran as the last of the mercs fought the last of the defenders. Make it sound like we barely won and didn’t have anyone able to hunt them down and stop them from reporting.”
“Why, your grace?” Gail asked.
“That way their story will match that of their Crow spies.”
“A suggestion, my Duke,” Count Dowling said.
The Duke rolled his eyes. “Yes?”
“Whoever interrogates these mercs is going to want details about the fight. Let’s give them details – and lie like a rug about them. For instance, it might play into the Hunters’ egos to learn we can barely control our Monster women, say keeping them on long leashes with choker collars. We may also want to hide the fact that our male commoners are functional. Etcetera.”
“Okay, okay, that’s a good idea,” Duke Hoskins said. Count Dowling smiled in anticipation. The Duke sighed. “Okay, you win. You not only saved our asses in the fight, you’re getting much better on selling me on your ideas. Go set up your Barony.”
“Thank you, my Duke.” Count Dowling could barely contain his glee, bouncing up and down on the balls of his bare feet. He wasn’t much into shoes. “Are you going to be doing what you talked of, before?”
The Duke turned to Master Sinclair. “I think it’s time.”
“Despite the fact that you and Amy don’t know how you’re going to work together without tearing each other’s heads off?” Sinclair said.
“It’s time for me to stop letting my petty needs get in the way of the needs of Noble society and Transform society,” the Duke said. “As soon as we get healed up, we’re going to go out west and help Arm Haggerty probe the Hunters.”
Destiny (1/9/73 – 1/10/73)
“I sense an undercurrent of something-else-going-on, Gail,” Count Dowling said, shifting the smallest of his panel trucks into third gear. She had pulled strings and massaged tempers enough to allow him to drive her to Littleside today. Her normal bodyguard crew followed in a separate vehicle. They weren’t happy, and they didn’t understand. “And it isn’t the obvious.” He gave her a hot bedroom look.
They had hashed that issue out a few days back. ‘Imagine you do end up bedding me and joining up with my Chicago crew,’ Gail had said. ‘Then imagine the oldest Chimera in the world showing up with a prior claim.’ Dowling had blanched so much you could see the blood pulsing in the veins near his suddenly bloodless skin.
“It’s an experiment,” she said, watching with close detail how Dowling drove, the position of his hands and right foot, and how his brain echoed his motions in her metasense. He was an excellent driver, which seemed to be a property of all the predators, and she barely bounced as she sat in the tall truck passenger seat. “You’re looking for a Focus for your Barony, an idea I support. Well, I have a few Focuses to introduce to you. No guarantees, of course.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “Along with watching me drive with the most amazing metasense scans I’ve ever experienced. You could have just told me, instead of fibbing with the ‘you need to get a feel for Littleside if you expect to help us guard Chicago.’”
“That wasn’t a fib.” She snickered. “It’s just that we’ll have different priorities in this visit.”
“Touché,” he said. “How many of these Focuses have ever met a Noble before?”
“Only two, so, yes, there’s going to be some of that as well.”
Dowling frowned. “Did you exchange notes with Master Sinclair or something? This sounds far too much like one of his proving quests.”
She spent a few moments admiring Dowling. He used the same parts of his brain to drive as normal people and Transforms did. Carol didn’t, and neither did Duke Hoskins, the only other Noble she had gotten a chance to scan while driving. She had been comparing this to her study of what brain parts people used when eating. Again, Carol and Hoskins were different, but so were Focus Geraldine Caruthers, Gilgamesh, Crow Master Sinclair and Crow Master Zero, although Zero’s differences were only minor. She had a working hypothesis going that Major Transforms with the uncommon affinities among the 16 physically used their brains differently. It did make her wonder what variety of ‘different’ was Hoskins.
“That’s nice to know, if I ever need to give one of those out,” Gail said. Dowling’s mouth puckered, and she could practically hear him think ‘poor sucker’.
“So, did you figure out how I’m different from the other Nobles?” Dowling asked, after a long stop at a slow stoplight.
Gail shook her head. Dowling took a sharp corner with the barest sway, as if he was the world’s best chauffer. “There’s either an affinity variable that’s somehow remained undiscovered, or, more likely, another of the sliding variables, which we know we’re missing a few of.”
“So I’m an instinctive Chimera. You call that a sliding variable?”
“Because the ability to pick up instinctive information is part of the mental makeup of all the Focuses I’ve examined,” Gail said. She wished she had better data points on the Arms, but few of the Arms had been willing to hold still for one of her examinations. “The Focuses think only low IQ Focuses pick up instinctive Focus. Based on my examinations, that’s a misnomer. It’s just that higher IQ Focuses learn Focus
tricks faster. When they can find someone to teach them.”
“So my problems, back when I was a puppy of a Noble, were from lousy teaching techniques?”
“The pioneer effect, we Focuses call it. The first Focuses ended up with similar problems simply because they were the first. Strange things happened to all the first Major Transforms of any variety.” Dowling frowned at her comment as he pulled into the Littleside parking lot and parked.
“I only wish the Nobles didn’t sneer so much at my talents,” Dowling said. “I had hoped you would find something to set me apart on the ‘16 Varieties’ scale.”
Gail nodded. “I understand, and I’ve looked in that funhouse mirror too long, myself. Count, there’s only one way forward for us prodigies: success.”
Geraldine made a beeline toward Dowling the instant he and Gail entered the classroom. Littleside contained four classrooms of various sizes, and Gail had claimed the largest for her juice music training, as well as the gym as a practice lab. This classroom was built to hold 50 students, and Gail had reconfigured the front with tables in a classroom configuration, and the back as a small scale practice lab. Beginning experimentation with simple notes could be done here, but full scale patterns required the gym.
“Well, Count Dowling,” Gerry said, putting down a sheaf of juice music diagrams. Her voice reminded Gail of the metasense memories of the Inferno orgies. “You certainly look a lot better when you’re in one piece.” Gerry wore her standard outfit, a tiny black dress that left very little to the imagination. She was one Focus who appreciated having access to her juice buffer. Gail still wondered what Gerry’s household thought of their Focus going barhopping several nights a week, though.
“Why, thank you, ma’am,” he said. His eyeballs did a quick up and down on Gerry, and he smiled a faint smile.
“Listen up, Focuses,” Gail said, interrupting Gerry’s latest adventure. “This is Count Dowling. He and his Noble Barony are staying in Chicago for an indefinite period of time, and while he’s here he’s going to be helping us defend the place, including Littleside.” She paused for the expected squeaks and squawks about Beast-Men, but only heard a few low mutters. Her current crop of students lined up nicely for Gail to introduce with only the mildest of charismatic signals. “From left to right, this is Linda Cooley of Chicago, Grace Johnson of Detroit, Ellen O’Donnell of Worcester, Rita Cagle of Chicago, Gloria Frasier of Chicago, Henrietta Korenek of Chicago, and Tillie Martin of Cincinnati. You already know Gerry.” She didn’t introduce the dozen and a half Transforms also present. They weren’t students, and honestly, Gail only knew the names of about half of them. Gail expected more Focuses after Addie and Esther Weiczokowski approved her school, as they had inserted a proviso allowing them to send Gail their most promising students.
The Count greeted the Focuses one at a time, along with hand sniffs. Gail noted that Ellen didn’t leave the Count’s side after the hand sniff. Other than that, the tall and austere Focus didn’t change her expression at all. Gail knew better than to believe Ellen’s public face, though, and inwardly smiled.
“Let’s get started,” Gail said. “I know several of you are only here to see if you think this form of training is for you, so don’t worry too much if what I’m teaching today seems daunting or strange. There will be catch-up lessons later, if you choose to join in.”
This was to Rita, Gloria and Henrietta, who hadn’t attended any of Gail’s earlier classes. They all wore their fear like a perfume today.
“I’m sorry,” Henrietta said. She lasted only through the first half hour of Gail’s note training lesson. Before she could do juice patterns, the Focus first needed to learn how to identify and duplicate the notes, that is, the specific chemicals that made up the individual pieces of a juice music-based juice pattern. All were juice fractions, and any Focus could identify and move juice. The trick was learning to differentiate the juice into its myriad components. If, before she started her experimental training with Zielinski, someone had asked her if such a thing might be possible, she would have laughed uproariously. Surprisingly, juice fraction component work turned out to be relatively easy to learn, not just for her, but for all the Focuses exposed to this teaching. “Nothing you said today, in your lesson, makes any sense at all.”
Gail came over to where Henrietta sat with her simple diagram of notes in front of her. A few basic notes in really large print, like a book for a three year old. “I understand. Tell me, how do you tag a Transform?” The mental ‘muscles’ that allowed a Focus to tag, when combined with the mental ‘muscles’ involved in moving juice, were what made juice patterns, and thus juice music, possible.
“I suppose like any other Focus,” she said. “I never thought much about it.”
“Tell me. Pretend you’re explaining this to a baby Focus.”
“Well, okay, I guess.” Henrietta blinked a couple of times. “To tag a Transform, you put your hand on their head and ask them if they want to be tagged. Once they say ‘yes’, you say ‘I tag you’, and push, the same way you push when you’re moving juice. The tag just happens.”
Purely instinctive. Gail had of course been metasense scanning Henrietta when she spoke, using the trick to make the metasense pattern in the brain mirror the words the Transform spoke, as if the Transform was doing what she was saying. Gail wasn’t sure she had ever met a Focus with such an inarticulate grasp on her own abilities. Hennie was a bottom five percenter. She wouldn’t be doing juice music until it became part of the instinctive Focus repertoire, and that day would be a long time in the future.
“You could learn juice music, Henrietta,” Gail said, fibbing a bit. “I’m not sure it would be a good use of your time, though. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” she said, eyeing the Count with a jaundiced gaze. “Can I leave, now?”
“I’m not ready for this, yet,” Rita said. Her forehead furrows could grow corn. Her left hand clenched in an involuntary fist. “Even if it’s been approved by Esther and Addie. Thank you for the introduction, Gail, but I don’t feel comfortable with the potential danger to my household.” What Rita feared was Focus Wini Adkins sudden reappearance, in power.
“I understand,” Gail said. “I’ll keep in touch, in case you change your mind.”
“Thank you,” Rita said, twisting on one foot and backing away. Quickly. Focus Cagle grabbed her wary people and fled, almost in terror.
“Huh,” Gloria said, a one-note giggle. “Try me on another.”
The Hunters had grabbed Gloria Frasier when she was a newly transformed Focus. Carol rescued her and had hauled her around to each of her Territories over the years. Gloria coped. Barely. Carol felt responsible for Gloria, but didn’t love her. Gloria had been the second most real ‘Arm pet’ in the Arm pet flap, and she had showed the most reasonable response, quitting the UFA after giving them a piece of her mind and an upraised middle finger. Later, Carol used Gloria in her first attempts to find a way for a Focus to move juice to an Arm, which always amused Gail in as much as Gloria wasn’t even close to being a top-end Focus. Apparently, Gloria had learned a lot from Carol, mostly in the area of household organization and household defense. Her people were well treated and deathly loyal to their Focus, and they were all crack shots and excessively athletic.
Now she understood why Carol chose Gloria. Gail tilted her head toward the practice lab in back and Gloria followed. The Transforms hanging out there while the Focuses studied in the front hastily evacuated the vicinity. The other Focuses abandoned their own studies and turned to watch. Dowling leaned against a wall on the far side of the room, just grinning.
“Let’s try an actual juice pattern,” Gail said. “Identify and duplicate the five components that make up the pattern.” This was the classic ‘identify tagged Transforms’ metasense enhancer juice pattern. That is, the pattern identified whether a Transform in a Focus’s metasense range wore a Focus tag or not.
Gloria concentrated on her metasense as Gail created the pat
tern. Gloria nodded, then duplicated the notes, one after the other, and to Gail’s shock, managed to instinctively couple them with her personal identifier and create the juice pattern. “Neee! Hee hee hee!” Gloria said, blinking, smiling and bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. The audience, Gail’s other students, didn’t say a thing, but they didn’t need to for Gail to hear their loud mental groans. “This is real simple, isn’t it? I thought it would be difficult with all my experience doing juice patterns the old fashioned way.” Apparently, according to Carol’s notes, Gloria instinctively did juice patterns as a baby Focus. Simple ones, but in a vast number.
“How about this, then?” Gail said. She tried to ignore the annoyance, frustration and horniness she was picking up from the other Focuses in the room. Ellen and Gerry were the horny ones, not paying much attention to anything except Dowling. After she tuned out the other Focuses, Gail did a complex juice buffer examination pattern, one involving her entire mental orchestra.
Gloria’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Hell, that’s as bad as those crazy juice patterns Lady Death always wanted me to learn, the ones I never could.” She shook her head. “It was as if you were doing a dozen of your ‘notes’ simultaneously. How can you follow them all?”
“Practice. Lots of practice,” Gail said. Gloria frowned. Gail had a bad feeling that finding a way to teach compartmentalization to Gloria would be a Sisyphean task. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll get you the basic do-it-yourself manual I’m working from. When you’re done with this, I’m going to get you to help me teach.”
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