All Beasts Together (The Commander) (29 page)

“What you’re going to find out, Doc, is that I’m going to be sticking to you like a leech.  You’re going to be seeing a lot of Bob’s Barn.”  She grinned.  “I’m going to tell you all about the neutron spin polarization detector I’m building for Scandia.  Make up for the time I’ve spent listening to you go on about medical shit.  So you got Occum squared away?”  They stopped at a stop light.  For a brief moment the idling truck was quieter.

“For the moment,” he said, his voice
now too loud.  “He picked up the calibration talents rather quickly.  Now he can stop the Chimeras’ draws before they take too much and drive the ladies into withdrawal.”

Occum’s enabler, as Occum referred to it,
he based on a variation of the Crow’s attack, what Occum referred to as skunking.  Normally, when a Crow skunked someone, he intended to disable them or drive them off.  However, patterns in the Crow élan projection reacted to the target, if the Crow understood the proper symbolic manifestations of himself and his target.  The symbolic patterns interfaced with Transform metabolisms, especially their juice metabolism and their metacampus, if they had one.  The Chimera metacampus had to have evolved specifically to resonate to this trick.  More surprisingly, Suzie the Former Monster, old enough to have the Monster version of the metacampus, resonated with this trick as well.

Hank could think of
only one explanation: Monsters, Chimeras and Crows had coevolved to help each other.  The Chimeras and Crows were a symbiotic partnership, and he suspected some Monsters might fit in, as well.  Were the Arms and Focuses also a symbiotic partnership?  Not unless a Focus really had a way to give juice to an Arm.  He had seen hints of the possibility, but he had never explored those potentials due to the disastrous failure after Chesterson, the first American Arm, tried to take juice from Lucy Peoples, one of the first Focuses.  What, exactly, was the Focus equivalent of the enabler?  Zielinski had no idea.

“Didn’t seem like much, just an introduction to calibrated juice levels,” Tina said.

Zielinski laughed.  “Calibration of the metasense to measure juice is a basic skill I’ve taught to, now, three of the four varieties of Major Transforms.  As far as I know, I’m still the only researcher who considers this important.  To me, it’s the basis of all the non-instinctive learned capabilities of the Major Transforms.  It saved my life once, as well – from Arm Keaton.”  He didn’t want to think about that episode.  It still gave him nightmares. The light turned and the grumble from the truck became a roar again.

He wondered, suddenly, if
he needed the same level of juice control for his project as well.  He had borrowed ten minutes of the Focus’s time Thanksgiving weekend to test whether the juice level needed to be at the stimulation or functional optimums for speedy training, but that hadn’t panned out.  Both of those juice levels were relatively easy to hold in place and common knowledge among the Focuses.  However, what if speedy training required a different juice level, a level difficult for a Focus to maintain?  He needed to figure out how to test the approach without requiring weeks of a Focus’s time.  A stress variable was almost certainly involved as well, and…

“So, what’s it like to be an Arm, doc?” Tina shouted as she manhandled the shift
, breaking his reverie.  “They can’t be dumb animal-like killers like the media portrays them.”  Tina was looking for him to tell her Arms were less dangerous than they seemed.  He was going to disappoint her.

“Life for an Arm is utter hell.  Arms must kill or die.  Humans, especially civilized humans, are too divorced from the hunter aspects of their omnivore lifestyle.  Meat comes in a plastic wrapped package at the supermarket, not from a living creature.  The term ‘predator’ has become synonymous with evil.  The changeover to being an active predator, or at least an active killer, can be a crippling shock to a civilized woman
, one who’s been trained to be a nurturer instead of a provider.  No one comes through unchanged or unscathed.  They don’t, however, lose their intellects.  They actually gain in brain power.”

Tina shivered.  As a Transform she was potential Arm prey.  Potential Chimera prey as well, though that fear did not seem as instinctive with a Crow around to ride herd on the Chimera.

“Why did the Crow need the anatomy lessons?” Tina said.  “Shouldn’t a Crow be able to instinctively feel what’s human and what’s not, if what they’re doing is as instinctive as it seemed to me?”

“I found that surprising, as well,” Zielinski said.
  Not too surprising, though, as he had once taught anatomy to Keaton, for a far different reason.  “The implication is that human isn’t the only correct shape for a Chimera.  Their shape alteration isn’t a curse, like going Monster is for a woman Transform.  It is a tool.”

“Werewolves.  They need to find their correct animal shape.  Each of them probably has one,” Tina said.

Zielinski’s eyes opened wide.  He hadn’t thought of that and he should have.  Tina was no slouch in the brains department.  He had seen enough of her work in the lab to know.  In any event, he needed to quit rejecting the myth hypothesis just because it didn’t have any direct proof.  Indirect proof, though…

For what else could
he call his Transform training hypothesis other than ‘a method for turning Transforms into legendary heroes’?

Sky: December 28 1967

“What?”  Sky blinked.  The team had just finished another practice maneuver
in the yard, skirting among obstacles, landscaping, and buildings, in and out of range of Connie, or what would have been range if Connie had been a Focus.

“We’re going.  Now,” Ann said
to the sweating group gathered around her by the climbing wall.  “Focus Abernathy’s slaves aren’t getting any younger.”

Sky
checked the watch on his wrist to find the time was 10:40.  He hadn’t worn a wristwatch since he transformed and found the weight annoying.  What could possibly make them suddenly decide to start the mission on a Thursday morning?

The team consisted of Ann
, the leader, Tim, Bill Fentris, Shelly Darcie, Eileen Stevens and Deborah Jarrell.  And Sky.

“Ah.”  Sky looked around, sensed around.  No Lori.  “Where’s the Focus?” he asked Ann.

Ann clapped Sky on the shoulder and stuck her index finger in his ribs.  “Right here.”

“Me?  I can’t even support your juice signaling tricks.  I certainly can’t move juice.”

“Slight change of plans,” Ann said.  “Lori did some politicking with the Focuses, and she says the consequences would be bad if we get caught with her, or she helps us fight our way out of a trap.  So the story is, she doesn’t know what we’re doing, at least until we succeed.  We’re not going to wait for you to learn to support our juice signaling tricks.  Maybe Crows can’t ever learn how, and besides, Lori doesn’t have the range we need anyway.  We’ll just rely on walkie-talkies like we normally do.”

Inferno politics again.  Ann hadn’t said
so explicitly, but the Inferno household leaders had debated for days about whether they should include Lori at all.  Lori wasn’t particularly interested in gallivanting about and causing trouble.  If Connie said ‘go’, Lori would go, but she wouldn’t like it.  More, ownership of the responsibility wasn’t clear, and some thought the rescue was a household Cause responsibility, while others thought Lori should ask for volunteers.  Sky had overheard a number of discussions on the subject, several of which the participants would have had a heck of a kerfuffle over if they had known he had been listening in with his metasense.  In general, Lori owned science and politics, which included hunting Monsters for their bounties and for dissecting, and the household claimed responsibility for everything else.  Sky’s mission had started as politics, as Sky was another Major Transform, and it would end up with politics.  In the middle, though, they were gathering information to free some enslaved Transforms.  The household grabbed it.

Sky translated Ann’s statement as “We’re going in and Lori doesn’t know.”

After his time living in Inferno he damned well felt the name was appropriate.

“Abernathy is walking out the side door, two bodyguards in tow.  Looks like she’s heading for the horse barn,” Sky said.  Ann relayed the info to the inside team with a hiss and buzz of the walkie-talkie.  The outside team consisted of Ann, Sky and Eileen, with Eileen guarding Ann and Sky, neither of whom rated as high as any of the other team members in physical combat.  Aggressive cultural anthropology, Ann termed her duties on missions like this.  Officer in charge, Sky translated.

Abernathy’s household
was located in a rocky small farm in Connecticut, in a semi-rural area with large lots and cheap homes.  The outside team sheltered in the garage of a house a half-mile away and across the dirt road.  Sky sat on the cold dirt floor with his back against the rotted boards of the side wall and his eyes closed as he watched the inside team, inhaling the rich odors of dirt and decay.  He doubted this garage had held a car in thirty years.

The inside team,
Tim, Bill, Shelly and Deborah, make their way over to Abernathy’s tool shed, where Sky had picked up the anomalous juice structures.  Eight Sports.  Living Sports were uncommon, not much more common than Arms or Beast Men, and everyone had been shocked to learn Abernathy possessed eight of them.  Such a grouping was highly unnatural and patently evil; the Sports were enslaved, little more than prisoners.  Anger filled him…free them,
free them now
…as well as tears of sorrow to see a Focus anywhere fallen to such a depth of evil.  He had heard the horror stories about the evil Focuses in the States who abused their Transforms, and considered them exaggerations.  No longer.

Two normals stood guard near the tool shed,
where some topic generated heated discussion.  They weren’t paying much attention to the proceedings.  “The normals are still jawboning and haven’t moved.  Two household Transforms are near windows in sight of the team if they happen to look outside,” Sky called out.  His metasense was keen enough to pick out normals, even outside of a Focus’s household.

Ann
had been shocked when he told her about his metasense tricks during the training sessions.  She had arranged some tests to find out what Sky sensed from the normals, as metasense was supposed to pick up only juice.  Sky had no idea how his metasense worked.  He did explain that he didn’t know of any other Crow able to metasense normals as he did.  Or able to pick up all animals of cat size or larger.  The tests Ann ran showed he sensed the electrical activity of their minds.  Her explanation sounded absurd, but it did explain why normals not surrounded by juice or dross showed up as undifferentiated blobs instead of people-shaped figures in his mind.  She tested further, and in a few hours, Sky learned to sense walkie-talkies as well – as blobs.  He couldn’t pick up what they were transmitting.  He either couldn’t pick up 60-cycle line noise or had filtered it out.

The inside team approached the tool shed from the rear, then stopped.  The whole point of the operation was to get pictures of the Sports, along with pictures of the rest of Abernathy’s compound and pictures of Abernathy.  They
had already managed to get the pictures of Abernathy, taking full advantage of the relatively short range of the Focus’s metasense.

“Deborah is going to stand on Bill’s shoulders to sneak some pictures through an air vent,” Ann said.  “Be ready to call out, Sky, if you see any of the Sports getting agitated.”

If one of the Sports identified, either by scent or by their metasense, that the inside team weren’t members of Abernathy’s household, they might blow the mission right there.  Sky had been able to find out the capabilities of the Canadian Sports and neither one of them knew how to pick out a tag, much less identify it.  Deborah might attract attention, as none of Abernathy’s people were black.  They worried about snow, but the temperature had risen above freezing two days ago and stayed there, and so the inside team left no snowy tracks.

“Transform coming out from the house toward the kitchen garden,” Sky said.

Ann passed the warning along.  “They say they’re fine as long as the Transform doesn’t go past the garden.”  She paused.  “They’ve got the pictures.”

“The Transform has stopped by the root cellar and she’s unlocking it,” Sky said.  “Her back is to the tool shed but they’ll be in her line of sight if she turns once they’re a hundred and twenty meters back on the path out.”

“They’ve got cover to work with that far out,” Ann said.  “They’re going.”

Five minutes later, the inside team was back.  “Let’s go,” Ann said.

They went.

Sky shook his head.  “All that practice for this little run, eh?  May I ask why we bothered?” he said, to Bill.  “This was a cakewalk, not an adventure.”

Bill smiled.  “We don’t do adventures, Sky, we do cakewalks.  That’s why we practice.”

Sky snorted.  Bill would have made a good Crow.  A good
standard
Crow.

When they got back to the refurbished Inferno school bus –
well saturated with dross from every Transform variety known to Sky, which Sky didn’t even want to think about – both Eileen and Ann cuddled up next to him and surreptitiously sniveled.  “I’m really glad you dragged us into this,” Ann said, later.  “Undoing this kind of evil has to be part of the Cause.  It just has to be.”