She did feel more stable in person than Arm had described, though.
“I first want to thank you for your help in Arm Hancock’s recovery,” Keaton said. “Though she still has issues, she’s a functional Arm again.”
“No thanks to you,” Arm said, Crow-quiet, earning her a glare from Annie, Gwen and Keaton. Based on what Annie had dreamed, Arm’s snipe was untrue, as well.
The American Arm’s statement, though, was as much of a challenge as a thank-you; Annie hadn’t told anyone, either in her dreams or via any other method of communication, about how she had helped Hancock. Or that she had helped. This had to be something the always surprising Hancock had figured out. “You’re welcome,” Annie said. She pushed forward the ornate carrying case at her feet, unlatched it – which broke the Faraday cage around the contents – and opened the case, for the American Arm to see and metasense. “This is an artifact of a previous efflorescence of Transforms we have named the Predecessors, for lack of a better name. This is a baby walrus skull, altered by ancient Crows and Focuses to be, well, juice and dross active. This discovery changes everything, and give strong proof to the Van Reijn hypothesis about us Transforms.”
Keaton spat. “Fuck me,” she said. “So they didn’t like Arms, either.”
Interesting. Not that Keaton picked up on such things; the fact Keaton was the sort of semi-mystical Major Transform who picked up on such things was the reason Annie had showed her the baby walrus skull. What was interesting was the fact the Predecessors hadn’t liked Arms. Annie had assumed the Predecessors more socially advanced.
Sadly, though, Keaton, who should have cared about the proof of the existence of the Predecessors, didn’t. She radiated annoyance, not curiosity.
“This is a dangerous device,” Annie said. “If you don’t mind…”
“Not at all,” Keaton said. “Stick it back in its metasense-proof case.” She paced, and her gaze speared Gwen. “You’re Focus Larson, aren’t you?”
Gwen nodded and whispered a “Yes, ma’am.”
“I take it you had a reason for bringing this one here, Focus,” Keaton said, to Annie, using her old Lost Tribe name.
“Gwen and Arm recently finished a hazardous mission I talked them into,” Annie said. “I was going to let Gwen tell the tale, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Keaton said. She turned to Gwen. “Come on over here so I can get a good look at you.”
Gwen stepped forward, unthinkingly responding to Keaton’s charismatic suggestion. Arm, however, stepped in Gwen’s way before Gwen crossed the line in the dirt.
“What sort of shit is this, short stuff?” Arm said. “That’s my Focus you’re messing with.”
Keaton snorted. “If anything, you’re hers.”
Arm crouched down in a wrestling stance, and started forward, to initiate the inevitable fight. “Back off,” Gwen said. Arm stopped.
“But you wanted my protection, earlier.”
“That’s before I got a good look at Arm Keaton,” Gwen said. “Go stand back with Annie.”
Annie stayed quiet, attempting to untangle this mess in her mind. Keaton’s charisma wasn’t Focus-like, but it was powerful, mid-range Focus powerful – unlike Arm’s lesser charismatic talents. Keaton was also far smarter than Arm, but Annie already had known that. What she hadn’t known was Keaton’s deviousness: she had set up a situation to test the lot of them by inviting Gwen ‘over the line’, and she was likely learning more from their reactions than anything they had told the American Arm thus far. The American Arm had also sensed a compatibility with Gwen, which Annie had earlier suspected. She hadn’t, though, suspected any Arm would be deft enough to sense compatibility. Was it a waking dreaming adjunct, as Annie used, or did Keaton utilize some other talents, such as whatever passed for the mystical among the Arms?
Arm stepped back, barely, and Gwen stepped forward, touching hands with Keaton momentarily. After touching hands, they circled each other, slowly, appraisingly. “I like what you’ve done with your hair,” Keaton said. “I can’t tell how much is juice-illusion and how much isn’t.”
Gwen, who prided herself on her appearance experiments, smiled. “Thank you. The base white-blonde color is real, the golden highlights are illusions. The way I get it to stick up in the air is male hair gel.” Gwen’s normal hair color was mousy brown, and normally she didn’t wear it sticking straight up in the air like some sort of bird plumage. “I can also control the length of my hair, and create patterns in it, but I use modified healing tricks to do so.”
“I’d like to learn that one,” Keaton said. “I’ll pay.”
Gwen laughed. “I have no idea if anyone else can learn my trick. One morning a few years ago I decided I wanted longer hair, and I had it mastered by noon.”
Keaton and Gwen continued to circle. The Arm held out her hand, and in it, a knife appeared. “This is what I can do.”
“Nice,” Gwen said. The basics of an implied deal passed between Keaton and Gwen – the forced hair growth trick for the weapon hiding illusion trick. “Anyway, the story.” Gwen stopped her circling, and told the story of how an unknown thing in the Arctic had called Sport Nancy Racshke to it. “Annie then convinced Arm and me and my household to go investigate it and rescue Racshke. Finding Racshke and the trap wasn’t much of a problem – once we got within fifty klicks of the trap, it sang to us in our minds. Not, thankfully, drawing us in, though. Trying to scare us away. Unfortunately, when we got there, we found Racshke unconscious, alive, and unreachable, behind a twenty meter wide juice barrier neither of us found a way to penetrate. Worse, all my Transforms got sick and vomited when they got within a hundred meters of the damned juice barrier, and none of them could force themselves to get any closer.”
“I hope you charged Focus a fortune for dragging you into this mess,” Keaton said, eyes hooded and wary.
Arm had been watching the exchange from her position a few feet to the side, equally wary. “How compatible is Gwen with the psychotic pipsqueak?” Arm signed, to Annie, using the dreaming sign language they both now knew well. There weren’t any signs in their syllabary for ‘psychotic pipsqueak’, but Annie understood the unknown sign with ease.
“About the same as you and me,” Annie signed. “Much less than you and Focus Stockstill.” Instant friendship, not instant love.
“Uh huh,” Gwen said, answering Keaton’s question about Gwen’s price for the mission. “I got her help taking over the Ontario ISF leadership from Focus Russell. I’d been telling people for years that Focus Russell isn’t good enough to be our local boss in this more dangerous day and age, and that I am.” She smiled.
“You do look like a difficult piece of gristle,” Keaton said, and smiled back. Arm’s frown became even harsher.
“Gawd, now there’s two of them,” Arm said, and continued to mutter obscenities. Annie wasn’t sure she wanted to pass along to Arm just now that Focus Biggioni was as bad with the jump-into-the-meat-grinder attitude as Gwen – which made three, not two.
“Do you think the two of us might have any better chance at this rescue?” Gwen said.
Keaton shrugged. “Let me think about this for a moment. I have a trick I can show you, as part of our info exchange. Focus, can you do us a favor and open up the thing again?”
“If you wish,” Annie said. She did so. Keaton took Gwen’s hand in hers. Gwen smiled. Arm begin fidgeting with her knife, and Annie doubted the conversation would last more than a few more minutes before collapsing.
“Concentrate on your metasense,” Keaton said. “Think of it as opening your eyes wider.”
Annie stopped breathing and studied what Keaton was doing, shocked. This was the same trick Lori and Sky did! She hadn’t expected Arms and Focuses would be able to do the recognition trick, as Sky termed it. She had half-expected the recognition trick required a sexual connection.
This would have its uses. She looked over at Arm, who had missed the entire recognition interaction.
Damn. Likely yet another of Arm’s juice structure flaws resulting from the bad days during their Lost Tribe ‘adventure’.
“Wow,” Gwen said. “Arm metasense is different. Unfortunately, I can’t make out anything new about the baby walrus skull.”
“I can metasense enough more about it to know that if this juice barrier you ran into is using the same style and flavor as the juice around the thing, then I won’t be of any more use than, um, Arm was. Too much bad juice.”
“Darn,” Gwen said. “I was hoping I might be able to extract more from Annie, but you’re right. The juice barrier was the same sort of thing.” Her grin and Keaton’s grin, at Gwen’s words, were eerily similar. Arm growled in disgust.
“I know who might,” Keaton said, shaking loose of Gwen’s hand. Gwen chased a pout from her face, shook her shoulders, and straightened her skirt – all causing her head plumage to wave back and forth, almost seductively.
“Which, as a mercenary bitch, you want payment for,” Arm said.
Annie held up her hand. “I understand. You’re looking for favors, from me, in the future.”
“They’ve worked well, so far,” Keaton said.
“I agree,” Annie said, to Keaton’s offer. Arm spent nearly all of her time in Calgary, her home territory. She rarely got to see Annie doing her Madonna of Montreal bargaining, and she wasn’t happy. Too mercenary for the purist Arm.
“There’s a Crow in Boston named Occum,” Keaton said. “I suspect you know this already, but he’s found a way to stabilize Chimera minds and make them useful. They call themselves Nobles, and Occum’s mind stabilization tricks have turned them into Boy Scouts. Well, on their good days. In a fight, they’re still Beasts.”
“You checked them out, personally?” Annie said.
“Yes,” Keaton said. “It took work, but I got along with them.”
“Son of a bitch,” Arm said. “Son of a bitch.”
“I think, with a combination of their Boy Scout natures and their still-Beastly hungers for juice of every variety, they might be able to eat their way through this juice barrier of yours. And they’re looking for a big enough challenge to prove themselves to the, ahem, Commander. Their words.”
Ah, so this is how Keaton learned they had at least one Commander-style talent currently active. Annie had wondered, when Keaton had sent inquiries on the subject in one of her recent letters.
“I suspect you’re right, Arm Keaton,” Annie said, impressed. “However, I didn’t think they were ready for something real.”
“They never will be unless we – meaning you – challenge them,” Keaton said. “Their big flaw, from a pushy Arm perspective, is lack of personal initiative. They need the challenges.”
“Hell, I should just go beat the crap out them,” Arm said. Annie held up her hand, but Arm ignored her signal and slid toward Keaton.
“Boston’s mine,” Keaton said, striding toward the line in the dirt.
“The hell you say, short stuff.” Arm stomped forward, her temper shot, ready to fight. This time, Gwen skittered back instinctively. “I go where I want to, when I want to, and there’s nothing…”
Annie whistled, loud, and put some juice into her whistle. The two Arms stopped, as Annie wanted, just before they crossed the line.
“Later,” Annie said. “Please.”
The ‘later’ got to Arm, while the ‘please’ got to Keaton. They backed off, reluctantly. Annie wasn’t sure she would be able to stop the two predatory idiots a second time.
“You promised me you had something to trade worth more than I would be able to imagine,” Annie said, holding Keaton’s angry gaze.
“Yes, ma’am,” Keaton said, rapidly clenching and unclenching her fists. Annie wasn’t sure, but based on Keaton’s internal emotional reaction, she doubted the Arm had ever ‘yes-ma’amed’ a Focus before. Good. It was time someone found a way to convince this mentally unstable Arm she had betters in the world. “The discovery is how Arms can get along. The dominant Arm tags the less dominant Arms. Arm tags are also useful on Transforms and normals. Both establish command dominance, and a tag on a Transform prevents any accidents.” ‘Accidents’ meaning accidental juice draining.
“You have Hancock tagged?” Annie said. Keaton nodded. “She doesn’t have you tagged?” Another nod. “You get along better?”
“Much better. Our relationship has become professional for the first time.”
Annie nodded. Keaton was right. Her information was worth the trade.
“Tags!” Arm said, ruining the moment. “Tags are evil. They mess up everyone involved, the tag holder and the tagee. They’ll destroy you. Drop them, and that’s an order!” The last bit of nonsense Arm shouted at Keaton, surprising Annie. She hadn’t realized how badly Arm disliked tags.
Keaton shook her head in response – and then her eyes lit up like beacons.
“You’ve been tagged,” Keaton said. She let a shit-eating grin cover her face. “That’s the big secret nobody would tell us American Major Transforms about how you managed to survive as a young Major Transform. You were tagged.” As if tagging was demeaning. Annie tried to work out the puzzle, as for her, tagging was just a method of enabling juice transfers and juice control. On the other hand, if this was part of the American Major Transform gestalt, it practically screamed that the multi-Focus household in Pittsburg, the one Focus Patterson ran, was a hellhole because of abuse of Focus-Focus tags. What Focus Patterson did to her subsidiary Focuses was extremely demeaning. She suspected images of misused tags haunted the dreams of all the American Major Transforms.
Arm popped her knuckles, one after the other, and shook back her shoulders. She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
“I did it, and there’s nothing to be ashamed about, as by doing so I saved your bloody life, Arm,” Gwen said.
Keaton nodded, now understanding how Gwen had stopped Arm’s first bit of aggressive behavior. In Keaton’s mind, Gwen had dominance over Arm. Not true – their relationship was old and far more complicated – but Keaton’s inference had been true, once upon a time. Arm and Gwen were able to work together, currently, at least after Annie arm-twisted the both of them to behave.
“How’d you keep from taking all her juice into your juice buffer?”
Gwen blushed. “Practice. Worse, I never did figure out how to give it back to her once I took it. However, if you feed the Arm no-hope Transforms, the Focus’s juice buffer will eventually get filled up, and then any spud can keep the Arm alive, if she has a supply of no-hope Transforms.” Gwen’s blush deepened. Gwen held ample darkness inside her, far too much do-whatever-it-takes marde from the olden days, but she wasn’t proud of it. “It took me three months to get enough control over my instinctive juice-grabbing to keep her tagged without accidentally stripping her.”
Three months Arm refused to speak about. Period.
“You kept Arm caged, didn’t you?” Keaton said. Gwen nodded, and Keaton turned to Arm, with dagger eyes. “Was it a nice cage? Did you…”
Arm bellowed and charged, over the line in the dirt in an instant. Keaton went flying, crashing through the trees and taking down several hundred kilos of branches on the way by. She landed on her feet and charged Arm, quiet, radiating hot anger.
No, they weren’t going to solve the Keaton – Arm problem with any tags. Not any time soon. Annie suspected she would be sweet-talking Arm for months simply to convince Arm to try tagging someone. She waved Gwen over, keeping a wary eye on the fight. The two crazies were already going at it with swords.
“She’s a hell of a lot nicer than Arm, isn’t she?” Gwen said.
“She’s better at putting on a show. And you might not want to mention your observation to Arm, ever,” Annie said. “Oh, and duck!”
She and Gwen bent down, and their normal bodyguards flicked the switches on their torches, as Keaton when flying, spinning, over their heads, Arm in pursuit, bellowing like an angry bear.
The worst thing about it was that both
of the Arms were better at this sort of idiotic fighting than before.
Author’s Afterward
Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Maurice Gehin, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer. Without their help this document would have never been made.
As stated earlier, The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio 6 is a companion piece to my novel “No Sorrow Like Separation”. Some of the pieces in here are here for completeness, others for fun, and they all serve to flesh out the story.
You can find out more information about the world of the Transforms and other stories published by this author on http://majortransform.com. You can also follow me on my Facebook author page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Randall-Allen-Farmer/106603522801212.
The Commander series continues in “In This Night We Own” (Book Six of “The Commander”. With this will come Folio 8 of The Good Doctor’s Tales.
Randall Allen Farmer
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six Page 11
