Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2)

by Randall Farmer

  “I work a lot with meditation,” Gilgamesh said. Gail smiled. She smiled a lot when he was around, which worried him. They had always been attracted to each other, two Major Transform freaks against the world, but after Tiamat convinced him to join Gail’s household, their attraction began to move to a different and more intimate level. If Gail hadn’t already been married, and after his experiences with Lori, he knew where this growing attraction would end up. Ann Chiron of Inferno’s speculations, that Focuses and Crows were made to be mated pairs, appeared to be correct.

  Gail, unfortunately, was already married to Van. Worse, she and Van were more than in love, they were a strong team, one of the few working Major Transform and normal human teams he knew of. Breaking them up would not only be a disgusting personal failure on his part, it would be a criminal disservice to the Transform community.

  “Tell me,” Gail said.

  He told Gail the story of how, four and a half years ago, he had made the decision to become an active Crow. He had tried many things to allow him to go out in the world, and do things without panicking, and the only thing he found to work was meditation. In his experimentation, he found three different meditation modes, each with their own benefits.

  “The best thing is to show you,” Gilgamesh said. “Show me your meditation and I’ll follow along and see if it’s one of my three.”

  Gail pulled her legs up underneath her to sit cross-legged on the chair, and closed her eyes. “What I do is let myself go and defocus my metasense.” She did so. “Then I visualize someone I know and put myself in their place. Live their life as if I were them. On a different level of my mind, I’m focusing on wishing them well. ‘Be happy. Don’t suffer. Understand what makes you happy, so you can seek such things out. Understand what makes you suffer, so you can avoid them.’ After a while I lose the sense of individuality and I begin to visualize people as a concept. My household. The household superorganism, according to Lori.”

  “Compassion,” Gilgamesh said. He followed along with Gail, dropping his metasense and visualizing Sylvie DeYoung to start with. Gail could talk and meditate simultaneously, a trick that didn’t work for normal people and Transforms, but something he, Lori and Sky did as well. He had enough data now to consider this to be a proven standard Major Transform capability. “I’m doing this style of meditation a lot recently. I need to do this before I visit any Focus household.”

  “The household superorganism doesn’t think you’re part of us, yet,” Gail said.

  “I know. Do you have any ideas on how to fix this?” He had run into the same problem in his Inferno visits, and he now suspected the problem was something in him.

  “Nuh uh.”

  Time passed and Gilgamesh relaxed into the compassion of the household, until his metasense woke up, detecting a powerful charismatic command from Gail. At herself. Dampening her attraction to him again. He wondered how long she would need to continue doing that, or if she would at some point give up and give in to her instinctive urges. “So, you said you did three types of these? This is the only one I know. What’re the others?”

  He opened his eyes. “Is there a phrase you say to yourself when things get tense? Something that helps calm you but isn’t profanity?”

  “Sure. The chorus to ‘Yellow Submarine’. ‘We all live…’”

  Gilgamesh had to laugh. Gail glared, but couldn’t hold it and joined in with his laughter. “What you do is meditate on your phrase, what’s officially termed a ‘mantra’. As you do so, you focus on your breathing and your juice, how the juice flows through you as your heart beats and you breathe, and let go of all your other thoughts.”

  Gail closed her eyes again, following his suggestion. He followed along. “Wow,” she said, dreamily. “Wow. Wow. Wow.”

  “When I first did this, I didn’t know I needed to focus on my internal juice as well, but it was still useful,” Gilgamesh said. “But only after hours and hours of meditation on my mantra. For a Crow, this quiets the panic enough to allow him to go out in daylight and interact with people in a meaningful manner. Even after all my years as a Crow, I still need to do this.” He waited as Gail’s mind floated away wherever. By focusing on his internal juice, he found the place of reduced panic quite quickly. “What does this do for a Focus?”

  “I’m looking for the words,” Gail said. Slowly. “I’m putting bad memories to bed, where they won’t bother me anymore. There’s soup on the stove and it needs to cook. Patterns of the day don’t need to be patterns in my thoughts. Challenge Sylvie, she barks at me, I apologize, she deflects, I bark at her, we make up. The pattern is familiar, and we do it, even if it’s hurtful, because the pattern is easy. Here, in this meditative state, I keep finding other possibilities. What’s this called?”

  Gilgamesh smiled. “Focused attention. Or ‘breathing’.”

  Gail opened her eyes. “Useful and calming, but I’m not sure I need to do this often,” she said. Gilgamesh nodded, more in understanding than agreement. This didn’t fit with Gail’s personality. She didn’t like to be calm, despite the benefits she would gain for herself and her dealings with her household. “What’s the third?”

  “Mindfulness. It’s what I use, as a Crow, to prepare for battle or for dropping into the pheromone flow.”

  “Tell, tell,” Gail said. “Getting into the Dreaming is a big problem for me. If this helps…”

  “Perhaps,” Gilgamesh said. From his work with Lori, he was convinced the pheromone flow and the Dreaming weren’t the same, at least in their outer levels. “What you do when you start this meditation form is to become one with your senses, your normal senses and your metasense, but you need to not let them distract you or carry you away. Instead of letting go of your thoughts, treat them as another sensory input. This meditative form possesses many useful sub-forms I’ll tell you about later; one of these subforms is how I found my ex-wife before the Battle in Detroit.”

  Gail nodded, remembering one of their earliest poignant moments together. She closed her eyes and Gilgamesh felt Gail fall into her senses and her metasense. He did the same…and there they were, together in the flow, the Princess and the Frog. In this meditation mode they weren’t alone, but mindful of each other. She signed at him – deaf signing? – and by following along with her emotions and mental state, he picked up on the signing business in seconds. He wondered why she bothered, or how she knew deaf signing to begin with. Why not just communicate directly, metasense to metasense. Or was that just a Crow thing?

  “This isn’t the Dreaming,” she signed.

  “This is the kaleidoscope, the outer edge of the pheromone flow,” Gilgamesh signed back, using Gail’s expectation for what the signs should be to guide what he signed. The world dipped and swirled around him, hot sensations that always reminded him of tar bubbling on a summer street. “The flow is here.” He led her out of the kaleidoscope, as it was too personal to share with another, and into the relative calm space of the flow.

  “It’s like a map, only a hallucinogenic map that’s distorted and moving and flowing and what’s Carol doing, anyway?”

  “I see the flow as a collection of game boards, an affectation of Shadow’s Crows,” Gilgamesh said. “You’ll likely see this differently.” He hunted down Carol’s game token, crossing giant red and black squares like the layout of an oversized chess board. Today her token was a meat cleaver. “She’s recovering from something bad,” Gilgamesh said. “Ah, another attempt at juice draw interruption. Makes me glad I’m here and not in Chicago.”

  “It’s like she’s chopped off her arms and legs,” Gail said. “There’s strings between everyone on the map, and little push pins, and…” She paused. “This isn’t real time, or just real time, as there’s memories here. You’re a private investigator? A PI?”

  “Carol and I aren’t legally registered as such, but we did get extensive training in those skills, and many similar ones involving police procedures and bounty hunting from Focus Connie Webb.” He led Ga
il in the flow over to Focus Webb’s home in San Diego, which appeared in the flow to him as a Chutes and Ladders game. Gail attempted to attract Focus Webb’s attention, but Gilgamesh doubted Focus Webb even knew the flow existed.

  “Who’s that, and why is he chiding us?” Gail said. He followed Gail’s attention back to the grand chessboard and the black king, Shadow.

  Teaching a Focus the flow? Shadow sent to him.

  I didn’t think she’d be so good at this, Gilgamesh sent back to Shadow. As always, direct flow communications ate dross in quantity. Much more of this and he would need to snack on Gail’s office dross just to keep from passing out.

  You wouldn’t be attracted to her if she wasn’t talented. Be careful!

  “You and Shadow were communicating somehow,” Gail signed.

  “A communication method that uses far too much juice,” Gilgamesh signed back. “He reminded me of the dangers someone new to the flow might face. There are monsters here, unknown things able to drive people insane.”

  Shadow didn’t leave. Instead, he came over (as a hopping chess king) and inspected the two of them. “Inventive. Deaf signing in the flow,” he signed. “Greetings, Focus Rickenbach-Schuber. This is an extremely efficient method of communication, albeit prone to signal loss. Slow, though.”

  “So, are you my Dreaming friend, Polaris?” Gail signed.

  “No, I can’t make such a claim.” Shadow was most amused, which puzzled Gilgamesh.

  Gail led them to the danger lands to the west. “It’s bad. The entire mountain chain from down in Mexico all the way through Canada and into Alaska is bad.”

  “Yes,” Shadow signed. “Yet sense to the northeast. The ones who look back when you look at them.”

  “The Progenitors,” Gilgamesh signed. As he signed, the Progenitors did look back at him, and as they did they directed his flow presence back to some place in the mountainous west. He recognized the signature and the subsidiary game board, the new children’s game, Hungry Hungry Hippos. The Hunters.

  “Oh,” Gail signed. She waved at the Progenitors and beamed good cheer. To Gilgamesh’s surprise, they answered with the same. “They don’t like the Hunters, do they?”

  “No, not at all,” Shadow signed. “The fact they don’t is one of the best advertisements for the Cause I know of.”

  ---

  “The idea is also to help my people understand the benefits of having a Crow in the household,” Gail said, twisting around to face him. They were nearly to Dayton, where Gail, Van, Sylvie and Kurt were going to get his help at securing them an interview. “So, when we’re done with this, make sure you tell our people everything, for instance on one of our story nights.”

  “Everything?” Gilgamesh said. He sat squished against the left rear door, with Sylvie in the middle and Van on the other side. Kurt drove and Gail sat in the front seat. “You do know what I’m like when I’m ready for battle, don’t you?” He dropped into the mindfulness meditative state that made him hyper-aware and jumpy, and from other’s descriptions, made him vacant eyed and offputting. “This may not be the best thing for convincing people.”

  “Yippidy yips!” Sylvie said, shrinking back and crowding Van even further. She shook her head and took a deep breath. “Well. I’ll need to get used to that. It isn’t as bad as an Arm in a stalk or a Focus doing the Focus.” She snorted. “Then again, there’s nothing worse, as a Transform, than an Arm in a stalk.”

  “Hunters who’ve lost themselves in combat and terror are far worse,” Gilgamesh said. Even saying those words made him want to flee in terror.

  The car quieted. Gilgamesh listened to the vehicle hum; the left rear tire was slightly out of balance and it gave the car a subtle shake when it got up to speed. The shake was the least of the car’s problems. The vehicle, a beat up 4-door ’66 Pontiac Bonneville, robin’s egg blue, was what Gail’s people called a Buddy Attendale special. The left rear side body panel was from a similar Bonneville, only newer and still shiny. The automatic transmission was shot and couldn’t shift up to 3rd gear, and so the Bonneville had a top speed of about 50. There was a small hole in the floor panel under the back seat, from too much salt corrosion, and the hole occasionally leaked dust and the occasional drop of water. To tie the ribbon into a bow, the wipers made an appallingly loud clattery gear stripping noise when they wiped to the left.

  “So, this trip comes from the Arms?” Gilgamesh said. “The missing baby Arms problem?”

  “Uh huh,” Van said. “Some group or company calling themselves Chrysanthemum is grabbing them. The person we’re going to interview, a Mr. Todd Collins, is a retired manager who once managed United Toxicol’s special projects department in Kansas City. If anyone knows anything about Chrysanthemum, it’s him. He retired rich, and he lives in an eight acre forested estate near Dayton, along with his wife, a maid, a caretaker, and a wheelchair bound old Army buddy of his.”

  Gilgamesh thought through things. Sylvie and Kurt were more than just bodyguards, they were Gail and Van’s best friends and talented investigative reporters, though Kurt was more of an investigator than a reporter. Van was a different form of investigator, an interviewer, and experienced in the ways of Major Transforms. Add in Gail and him, both Major Transforms. They should be able to handle this without a problem.

  “Telephone repair?” Gilgamesh said.

  Sylvie smiled. “That will do.”

  Gail made an interesting telephone repairman, with curves one didn’t usually see in more traditional examples of the breed. Even better was her ability to work her way past the maid and the wife using her charisma. Gilgamesh used his aura (his charisma, as Carol termed it) to calm the family and make them ignore the five person home invasion.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Collins wasn’t any help. “I know, I know,” he said, taking a sip of hot tea. He sat in a non-reclined recliner, with tables on either side, and a small Afghan over his legs. Although he was in his middle 60s, he appeared to be a man in his 80s. “I thought I was going senile, but I can remember what I was doing around the house back then. The names of my new grandchildren, too. I just can’t remember anything about the three years I spent as the head of Special Projects. Well, I can remember movies and plays, and that vacation to Iceland. Man, was that a vacation. I never knew there were places with so many volcanoes.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Van said. He sat in the chair beside Mr. Collins while the rest of them found seats farther away, except for Gilgamesh, who hid in the corner by the fireplace. Van’s simple, direct and kind manner made him the best interviewer in their group, especially with Gail’s charisma backing him up. “How much did you know about Special Projects before you became the director?”

  “A little,” Mr. Collins said. “Confidential things, of course. All those failures, spiced by the hints of tiny successes promising lucrative successes just over the horizon.”

  “Does the name Chrysanthemum mean anything to you?”

  Mr. Collins frowned. “You know, it should. It’s…it’s…naw. The name doesn’t ring a bell. Except as a flower.”

  Gilgamesh excused himself then, suspecting the worst. Their unknown Major Transform enemies had gotten to this manager, and no matter how much Van, Sylvie and Gail pried, he wouldn’t be able to tell them a thing. They had wiped his memory clean.

  ---

  “That was a complete waste,” Sylvie said, the first comment about business since they left Mr. Collins’ estate. The car headlights lit up another exit sign for Lima. They were all frustrated, frustrated enough to spend an hour badly singing car songs. It was possible Kurt had the worst singing voice Gilgamesh had ever heard. Sylvie turned to Gilgamesh. “Where were you, anyway? I know you said you wouldn’t be visible during the interview, but where did you go?”

  Gilgamesh smiled. He hadn’t wanted to intrude on their angst, or brag. His little side adventure would give them a lot of work to do, likely all fruitless.

  Gail sighed. He couldn’t hide his emotions from Ga
il. Never could. “Gilgamesh, what did you do?”

  “A minor amount of breaking, entering and searching. You see,” Gilgamesh said, pleased with himself. He just hoped Gail and her crew valued initiative as much as Carol did. “Men of power tend to take papers with them when they retire. Not official records, but their own notes. Their own records. Mostly it’s junk. Business trip mementoes. But often the information needed to write memoirs from.”

  “And…” Gail said.

  “They’re in the trunk. Six boxes of them.”

  ---

  That night he still wasn’t able to sleep peacefully in Gail’s household.

  Carol Hancock: September 30, 1972

  “Can you get me a glass of water, Amy?” Gail asked.

  “Get your own water, Focus,” Haggerty said.

  Excellent. Gail put out Focus charisma like a fire-hose, and Haggerty finally beat it off. I had wondered if my boss would ever develop any resistance. Haggerty, Webberly, Sibrian, Whetstone, and Gail all sat with me in the living room of my house in Detroit. I ached after my extended sparring session with Webberly from earlier today; I was close to perfecting my new combat capabilities and she didn’t KO me even once. Chrissie Duval huddled in a corner, watching and learning and attempting to avoid any attention. The late afternoon sun made the pale furniture glow golden. We had spent the early afternoon in combat training, including Gail, who we all worked on mercilessly to train up her speed, quickness and hand to eye coordination. The only one who thought Gail shouldn’t be here had been Duval, but only before Gail decked her. Gail would never be as combat capable as a mature Arm, but with a little more work we could make her as capable as a young Arm not burning juice, and nearly as good as Lori.