All Beasts Together (The Commander) (23 page)

Third, it’s improper for people to live in an attic, Sky filled in for Lori what she left unsaid, but otherwise believed.  Raised in luxury, he bet.  Had this mansion been her girlhood home?  That would make sense, if she inherited it.  Lucky for her she learned about Crows soon enough to avoid having to do the Transform household shuffle.

“Focus Abernathy sounds like a real winner,” Sky said.
“But she’s not the sort who would be able to think up her mutie mill project.  I don’t know if you’ll agree or not, but I think someone else is behind the mutie mill and is using her.”

“Oh, I agree,” Lori said.  “Most likely my boss, Focus Schrum
, who essentially owns Focus Abernathy.  She’s hard enough to put together an atrocity like that without batting an eyelash.”

“Your boss.”  Marde!  There goes the mission
, the whole thing undone in an instant because, by coincidence, the Focus he chose had the same boss as the perp.  Ah, why couldn’t he live a normal life?  Why hadn’t Annie or Focus Russell noticed they had sent him out to do the impossible?

“No, I’m not going to back out,” Lori said, with a lilt to her Boston Brahmin voice.  Sky relaxed.  “She’s one of those first Focuses I told you about that I’m having trouble with due to the researcher I’m protecting.  We’ll just have to work our way around her.”

“Won’t this get you into trouble?”

“Not if I play
things right.  Or, at least, any more trouble than I’m already in.”

Ah, you don’t mind trouble, my ice queen Focus with the heart of a star!  I’ll show you trouble, if you
would be so kind as to burrow down here with me.  Sky barely repressed a laugh.  “So, what’s next?”

“There’s a meeting of the local members of the Northeast Regional Council, a bunch of nearby pushy Focuses like myself, in early January. 
Business, planning for the next national Council meeting in March, boring stuff.  I’m the Northeast Region VP.  If we play this right, I can have the votes in my pocket already to get Abernathy shut down before the meeting starts.  I can spring this on Focus Schrum, who’s the Northeast Region Council President, and she won’t be able to do a thing about it.  I’m going to need real proof; my political partner, a very straightforward woman, is going to require it.

“
So we’ll need to examine the place ahead of time.”

“Okay,” Sky said.  “So that’s
why you invited me to work with your people for the next few weeks?”

“Yes.  You need to get comfortable working with them.  We’ll need your Crow metasense range on the actual mission.  You also need
some training.  My people don’t have any patience with laggards.”

“Training?  As in
self-defense and the like?”  He was appalled.

“You’re a Major Transform, Sky.  There’s no reason why my Transforms should be able to toss you around like a sack of flour.  The respect of all Major Transforms is on the line here.”

What a waste of time.  He was a Crow, not an Arm or Beast.  Sack of flour was his middle name.  “Yes, my lady, it shall be as you desire.”

Lori rolled her eyes, stood, and started to leave the attic.  “I’ll be gone until Friday dinner doing the Professor thing,” Lori said, calling behind her.  “While I’m gone, Connie is in charge.  Your training session starts Monday morning at 7:30.  Don’t be late.  If you get hungry, you know where the kitchen is.”  Lori went down the stairs, leaving Sky alone in the attic.

What, Sky, you thought all Focuses would be as easy to handle as Hennie?  You thought you would never fall for a Foyer?  You utter fool.  Falling for this Foyer is going to be the death of you.

Chapter 6

A Focus may have the shortest range metasense of all the Major Transforms, but she also has the most detail.  Some Focuses can metasense not only when a Transform ate their last meal, but also
what he or she ate.

“Inventing the Future”

Sky: December 18, 1967

Sky nodded.  “Tim, Ann.”  The two Transforms nodded back.  They were two of Lori’s brain trust, he noted, people he was supposed to be able to speak with about Major Transform politics.  “I hadn’t expected Transforms of your importance to the household to be tasked with teaching remedial tomfoolery to the neighborhood Crow.”  He had expected ordinary household members, people who wouldn’t mind any mistakes he made in his efforts to master the American idiom and accent.  He had spent his time watching sports shows and news broadcasts the past several days to help him.

“Connie picked the two of us for the mission,” Tim said.  “Since we’re going to work with you, Connie thought we’d best get started now.” 
His mild hostility lay barely buried.  Ann was unreadable.

“May I ask what
might be an impertinent question?” Sky said.  They stood in a small circle out by the obstacle course, in the shadow of the climbing wall.  The two Transforms dressed warmly, befitting the frosty December morning.  He wore a robe he had found in the attic, over swimming trunks and bare feet.  He hoped the robe didn’t belong to either of them.

“I can’t see how we’re going to stop you,” Tim said.  Ann glared at Tim
and smiled a false smile at Sky.

“Ah,
there are so many things I don’t understand.  Why you want me to exercise with you.  Train, as the Focus said.  Why Connie is choosing who goes on this mission, and not your Focus.”

“First,” Tim said, “why don’t we warm up?”  He
settled into a runner’s stretch, and Ann did the same.

Well, Tim never said he
would
answer
my questions, Sky realized.  He decided to play along, do some stretching, meditating while he did so on restraining himself.  Walking Zazen.  The enigma of Inferno was almost as paradoxical and doubt inducing as the more difficult Zen koans.  Doubt was good.  To understand the true world, one must doubt the message of one’s senses.

To aid himself, he dialed up eleven different dross constructs deal
ing with muscle preparation, stretching, and metabolic optimization for exercise.

“Are those supposed to be stretches?” Ann asked.  “Perhaps I need to instruct…”  She stopped
and stared as Sky took off his robe, being careful not to disturb the muscle and tendon stretcher dross construct.  “How in heaven’s name are you doing that?”  To the uninitiated, his tricks would appear to be stretching the muscles and tendons without his otherwise having to move or exert any effort.

“I am Crow,” said Sky.  “Once I was more human.”  And less pissy, he reminded himself. 
A sudden sharp pain cut his hissy pissy short.  “Oh, oh, dammit,” he said, his voice a half octave higher as he stopped one of his dross construct stretchers.  That hurt!  He must have pulled something in his lower back sometime recently.  Sky twisted around his body to check his lower back, brought up a dross construct to outline his muscles, then brought up a healing dross construct (visualized as an electric steam iron) and ironed out the slight tears in the offended muscles.  This was not a quick process.

“That
’s not physically possible,” Tim said.  “The human spine doesn’t contort itself that way.  Are you spinning an illusion to fool us, Sky?”

Sky kept ironing.  “Feel free to touch.  I don’t bite.”  Save with irony, sarcasm, and witty repartee I promised not to carry to
too much excess.  Tim took two steps back, declining the offer, but Ann availed herself of opportunity to grab a feel.  Her hands lingered muchly.

Hmm, Sky noted. 
A potential problem.  Ann had become interested in him without his even trying.  He hadn’t even spent a full day in Inferno!  Not fair!

“You’re healing yourself, aren’t you?” Ann asked, ever the anthropologist.  She smiled at him prettily, although Sky thought her face too wide for her body. 
She was pleasant looking in a plump sort of way.  Okay, not that plump.  Muscular.  Well fed.  Rather normal looking, actually.

Life had warped his
perspectives.  Canadian Transforms just didn’t get enough food.

Sky nodded to Ann and finished.  “Crows are the worst of the Major Transforms at healing.  Even with advanced tricks such as this we can’t keep up with any of the other Major Transforms.”

“Can you heal anyone else but yourself?” Ann asked.  She gave up on her stretches, now focused on a far more interesting topic.  “We have a major lack there.”

“Sure,” Sky said.  “Cuts, bruises, small muscle pulls, no problem.  Bullet wounds, big problem.”

“That trick with twisting the spine implies your bones are significantly more loosely connected than normal.”

He nodded.  “Except for the legs.”  He offered one up to Ann, who examined it.

“Your leg muscles and tendons are very tight.  Why?”

“For this,” Sky said, and took off.  Two steps and a hop
put him twelve feet up, on top of the obstacle course wall.  He could hop higher, but there was nothing…wait.  Over there.  That tree, and the garage roof, and then the house…

On the house roof he flattened out instinctively.  Strange.  Someone outside the compound watch
ed the house.  He skittered around on the roof about thirty feet to his left and peered over.  Slaving his sight to his metasense he picked out two normals about 400 meters away, barely in line of sight of the house.  The spies had two pairs of binoculars on tripods, one with a piggyback telephoto camera attached.  They hadn’t seen him, based on their emotions.  Sky clambered down the side of the house spider-style.  Bricks were easy to climb and he didn’t want to upset anyone in the house by jumping the ten meters to the ground.

Both Ann and Tim st
ood with their hands on their hips, glaring at him.

“What?”  How had he disturbed them,
this
time?  He was just doing what mature Crows did.  “That’s why my legs are so tight…so I can jump.”

Tim was not amused.

“I’d like to examine your legs, again,” Ann said.  She had Sky stand with one leg next to hers.  Even Sky saw the differences in muscle attachment points and muscle shape.  He had never thought much about muscle shapes, but he knew his body had changed in shape since his transformation, slowly over the years.  Ann paid close attention to the ankle structure, the width and shape of the Achilles tendon, and a large bulge on the top left of his right foot and ankle, mirrored on the other side.  She examined the calluses on the bottoms of his feet.  “You’ve spent years in the countryside, haven’t you, Sky.”

“Yes.”  There.  A legitimate one word answer.  Just to prove he could do it.

“How much do you weigh?”

“About 55 kg.  I know, I look like I should weigh about 90 kg.  Then again, everyone’s always considered me somewhat of a lightweight.”

“That’s impossible,” Ann said.

“What’s 55 kg
. in pounds?” Tim said.

“About 120.”

“Damn.” Tim shook his head.

“Hollow bones,” Sky said.  “Air filled. 
I broke a leg once and it took forever to heal.  The place of the break turned into powder.  Of course, that was long before I learned to use dross constructs to heal.”

“Can you fight?”  Ann asked.

“Don’t know.  Never tried,” Sky said.  “Wouldn’t running away be easier?  I mean, in a fight, I’d just be spending my time trying to repress my panic.”  He remembered a game of toss the Crow over the tree between Beast and Arm.  Fight them?  You’ve got to be kidding.  He remembered the words he repeated over and over again, as they tossed him:  Don’t.  Drop.  Me!

Tim sat down on the ground and laugh
ed hysterically.  “You were right, Ann,” Tim said, eventually.  “This is a legitimate first contact situation after all.”

They figured out how to exercise Sky anyway.  Sky didn’t mind.  His arm strength had deteriorated over the years, as had his endurance.  He tired out after only a half dozen decent jumps.  They worked on bodyguard skills as well.  Anyone with the Focus had to be able to help guard her body.

“Hey, she can shred me physically,” Sky said.  “Why don’t you have her guard me?  I’m the Crow.”

“If the Focus dies, Sky, she takes down the household.  Not the same for you.”  Ann kept grabbing at him any chance she got and giving him big goofy grins, at least when Tim wasn’t looking.  Sky wasn’t sure but he suspected Tim was doing the same when neither of them was looking at him.  Sky wasn’t sure what to do about that.  Tim had a legitimate monogamous relationship with some normal named Donald.  As far as Sky knew, Ann didn’t have anybody.  It broke his heart that Ann didn’t have somebody.

“How about if I die there are four Focus households in Canada who are going to be drowning in dross in six months.  Given their combined yearly household income is about the same as your weekly household income,
les problèm
might actually be fatal.”  Sky paused and turned red.  “Oh, right.  Forget I said anything.  The gracious ladies did ask me to not bandy that sort of information about to their brother and sister Transforms in the States.”

Ann and Tim looked at each other.  “We might be able to spare one bodyguard for him,” Ann said.

“You get to tell Connie,” Tim said, to Ann.