No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) (14 page)

“Former doctor Henry Zielinski and a rather stout Crow.  Not what I expected to find here.  At least in this cell.  You Crows are supposed to be down at the Monster pens and helping out the Transforms.”

“You know?” Sky said.

“Of course.  I set it up.”

Zielinski glared at Focus Claunch and didn’t say a thing.

“This is truly amazing, then, and contradicts much of my knowledge on the subject,” Sky said. “Many years of learning appear to be incorrect.  You claim, then, Mademoiselle Focus, that you deal with Shadow?”

“I know of no Crows by that name.  Nor do I deal with Crows, of course.  Certain edicts of my sisters and the UFA Council restrict me from such activities, of course.”

Right.  Major Transform doublethink, the savior of many a Crow in desperate straits.  Focus Claunch had powerful enemies.

She turned to Zielinski.  “You misjudge me, Hank,” she said.  Claunch was disconcerting, and not just because she thought herself to be on a first name basis with the Good Doctor.  Just a minute ago, she was living sexual allure.  Now the sex appeal vanished completely, and she became pure Focus Bitch, diamond hard, incongruous as always on a woman who appeared to be only nineteen years old.

“How so, Focus Claunch?” Zielinski said.  He finally found his voice and his way around Claunch’s charisma, which Sky pegged as somewhere between Focus Ackermann’s and Lori’s capabilities.  Good, but not outstanding.

“I’m not a toady of the other firsts.  For one thing, I don’t want you dead.  For a second thing, I could care less what information you’ve gotten from Arm Eissler and who you spread it to.  Actually, if you could bring our Arms up to speed a little more quickly, I would much appreciate your efforts.  There’s trouble afoot, as you well know, and we need all the
free willed
allies we can get.”

Ah hah!  She didn’t have Focus Patterson’s little tag on her!  She was freer than Focus Biggioni was of Patterson’s malign influence.  And she dealt with Crows, and rather amicably, based on Sky’s reading of Eye Candy.  Well, at least one Crow.

“In fact, I’ll extend you the same offer, Hank, as I extended Mr. Goldstein.”  Wink wink nudge nudge.

“Ma’am, I put myself here on purpose,” Zielinski said.  Unlike Rick, he ignored Claunch’s forwardness.  “I fear I would be too dangerous for you to support.”

“Hmm.  You’re probably right,” Focus Claunch said.  “I’ll have to think about this distressing situation.  If I found a way to get my colleagues to settle their differences with you, would you be willing to come work for me?”

“I would be delighted to work for you, Focus Claunch, in a city with research facilities and an active medical community.”

At this, she laughed and laughed.  “Heavens.  I believe I’ve been rolled by a normal!  You’ve certainly gotten more talented over the years at balking Focuses, haven’t you, Hank?”

Sky thought that Zielinski overplayed the sheepish ‘oops’ reaction a bit much.  “I have my good days and my bad days.”

“Precious.  Simply precious.  I’d love to make promises, but once her nibs says sayonara, sayonara it is.  I doubt that even I could arrange appropriate penance with my colleagues for your past misdeeds – and the next time you came up with something earth shattering, as you inevitably do, my colleagues would be on your case again.  This prison might be the best place for you, out of the way and well protected, ready to help if an emergency comes around requiring some of your many talents.”

She did the hand signal thing again, and her entourage took the flower, the vase, the glass, the pitcher, the tablecloth, the table (and after the Focus stood, the chair) and made them vanish.  “Before I leave, I want you miscreants to think about something: who was the target of the Arm Flap, anyway?  An Arm?  Perhaps it was Focus Biggioni?  Or your friend the rebellious Focus Rizzari?  Who do you think, Hank?”

“You were the target, Focus Claunch.  Your power base is the Focus Network and the Arm Flap left the Network in tatters.  You can try and rebuild your organization, but it will never be as strong as beforehand.”

“I didn’t say that.  You did.”  She walked through the doorway and stopped.  She leaned her head to stare back into their ‘cell’.  “Remember this, the two of you.  Remember that I didn’t disagree with your surmise, either.”

With that, Focus Claunch left.

‘Her Nibs’ indeed, Sky finally let himself think.  He turned to the Doc and noticed that he was more than a bit pale himself.  There was no need for Sky to mention the obvious: Shirley Patterson herself, the head of the first Focuses, evil incarnate and Sky’s personal boogey-Focus, backed Focus Adkins’ contract on Zielinski’s life.

“Pardon me, my dear friends,” Sky said.  “I need to go somewhere private and have the Crow panic hysterics.”  Which he did.

Gilgamesh: April 24, 1968

It was a pleasant night for late April in Boston, though Gilgamesh suspected it would rain tomorrow.  He sat at one end of the front porch, meditating, two of the household’s pet cats in his lap, three others rubbing up against his legs or asleep at his feet.  Opposite, Gymnast meditated with him.  Her people stayed mostly in her oversized house, though several were out in back, working on repairs to the wrecked cabana next to the pool or just enjoying the night air.  He hadn’t entered the oversized house yet, but he had walked the grounds.  Good dross suffused the cabana area, hot Keaton dross, a month old but not fully dried out.

A meeting with Gymnast seemed a perfect place to start his investigations and establish his cover.  It helped that Gymnast was a quiet woman.  Her glow felt strong, but she was nowhere near as dark as Hera of Philadelphia or as different as Icon of Los Angeles.  She had also been as patient with him as Shadow and Thomas the Dreamer.

She was also pregnant.  He hadn’t realized that Focuses could become pregnant.  Typical Sky, doing the impossible.

“At least four Crows utilize your household, Focus Rizzari,” he said, after his meditation revealed the general lack of dross outside of her house.  “Though only one of them has been inside at the good stuff recently, as far as I can tell.”

For the first time, Gilgamesh thought about the size of the task he had taken on.  Thomas the Dreamer’s idea to go talk to people, collect random bits of information, and sort through them looking for the relevant bits sounded so good in theory.  In practice, the task felt daunting.  How much information would he need to sift through?  There could be thousands of mysteries, most of them having nothing to do with Crow Killer.  Without access to Arm dross he would need to write down everything he discovered, or he would forget things.  His journal would extend into volumes.

He tried not to think about the dangers circling all these other mysteries he might stumble across.

“That would be Sky,” Focus Rizzari said.  She was a short woman, less than five feet tall, with short black hair and as expected a gymnast’s body.  Beautiful, like all Focuses, but she covered it with dowdy clothes and an academic awkwardness, a subtle disguise making her feel less dangerous.  “Occum, Sinclair and Midgard have also made nighttime visits in the past month.”

Interesting.  Last he knew, Occum was holed up with his Beast Men.  He knew he would need to visit Occum on his mission, but because of Occum’s work with his terrifying Beast Men, Gilgamesh planned to save the Occum visit for later.

“Focus, ma’am, I do wonder about the complete lack of bad dross here.”  She had said her household had lived here for five years.  This place ought to be a cesspit.

“The gristle dross?” Focus Rizzari said.  “I’ve had contact with Occum since before I moved back here.  Although we’ve never formally met, a long and involved story all on its own, ever since I moved back here he’s been doing full twice yearly cleanings, when we’re on vacation.”  Gymnast let her voice tail off.  She studied the nearly starless night sky, dimmed by the city lights around them.  A cool breeze rustled the trees, and the dark hair on her head.  He found her presence comforting, a surprise.  She
was
a Focus.

Hmm.  Gristle dross was a Crow term.  The fact Occum had worked with Gymnast for so long was a major point in her favor.  The information also provided an important bit of data, implying a stout Crow had the capability to do full dross removal over the long haul.  Gilgamesh didn’t have the capability, yet; despite his best efforts the Skinner’s San Francisco mansion already had a few places where the dross had gone over to gristle.

His observation led to another interesting idea.  Gilgamesh had involved himself with an Arm at a young age and his involvement allowed him to advance faster than normal for a Crow.  Occum had also involved himself with a Major Transform, a Focus, for many years, presumably when both were young Major Transforms.  Did this involvement contribute to Occum’s effectiveness?  Was it good for a Crow to have early involvement with other Major Transforms?  An interesting idea, one he needed more data points to prove.

“He won’t meet you?  Occum, from what he sounds like in his letters, is one of the least skittish Crows I know of.  He even works with Beast Men.”

Gymnast gave him an awkward smile.  “Occum considers Beast Men far easier for a Crow to deal with than Arms and, um, certain darker Focuses.”

Gilgamesh closed his eyes and let his metasense expand around him, paying close attention to the Focus.  Gymnast wasn’t dark enough to produce slippery dross, as Hera had.  Another mystery.  Did different Crows have different definitions of dark?  Maybe some Crows out there didn’t consider Crow Killer to be evil.  Now that was an awful thought.

He actually found Gymnast’s glow beautiful and nicely defined, having many of the same attractive aspects as Tiamat’s glow.  His observation illuminated another mystery: shouldn’t a Focus with an Arm-like glow have an Arm-like personality?

“Doesn’t not having to move cause problems with the other Focuses?” Gilgamesh asked.

Focus Rizzari nodded and moved her chair a little closer to Gilgamesh, deliberately crowding him.  When she wasn’t meditating, she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him.  Sometimes he swore the looks she gave him were of shocked awe, other times she appeared to be lost in rapturous meditation.  Surely he couldn’t be
that
interesting.  He worked on restraining his panic.

“Yes.  I can’t tell any other Focuses the truth about how I keep this place and why I don’t have to move.  So I tell them it’s because I can think in differential equations.”  She grinned at him.  “Can you believe it?  No bad juice buildup because I think in differential equations?  A crazy explanation, yes, but I have to tell them something.”  He was glad she told him that the differential equation explanation was a fiction.  He winced inside to think of running across such a story as fact and trying to understand how the data fit in.  He wondered how many of the unsolved mysteries waiting for him would turn out to be deliberate obfuscations.  For that matter, how much ‘common knowledge’ would turn out to be false, intentionally on someone’s part, or otherwise.

His task was starting to look appallingly complex.

“I thought you were rebelling against the senior Focuses in part because they refuse to believe Male Major Transforms exist.”

Such an innocent question.  Such an exasperated slap of her forehead by the back of her right hand.

“Does everybody know?” Focus Rizzari said.  “We haven’t even made our formal ‘Declaration of Independence’ yet!”  Her reactions showed him a glimpse of her hotter more Arm-like emotions, which naturally attracted him.  He did boggle at Gymnast’s level of emotional self-control, which masked those emotions until now.  Since he had learned to sense emotions with his metasense he had never run into someone who could mask them so thoroughly.

“I’m sorry,” Gilgamesh said.  “Your rebellion seemed to be common knowledge.”  He drummed his fingers on the wooden arm of his chair and haphazardly petted one of the cats in his lap.  The cat was shedding.  He didn’t understand politics and Focus politics seemed even more incomprehensible than normal human politics.  This didn’t bode well, if Carol’s hypothesis was correct, and Officer Canon slash Crow Killer turned out to be a Focus.

“So, if I may ask what may be a personal question, did you call the cats to you, or did they seek you out on your own?”

“I didn’t call them,” Gilgamesh said.  He metasensed the cats for the first time and noticed a tiny haze of dross about them.  “Some other Crow’s befriended them, though.”  He refused to believe any mysterious affinity to animals might be related to the Crow Killer puzzle.

Or maybe not.  He sighed inside, and made a mental note to write down his affinity.  The cat Gilgamesh was petting kneaded his leg and purred.

“That would be Occum.”  Gymnast thought for a moment.  “Strange.  Our housecats never show their tails when Sky’s around.  Do you Crows have individual animal affinities?”

Gilgamesh shrugged at the strange question.  Many Crows kept dogs, he knew, but he had never felt the urge.  There always seemed to be cats around, though, wherever he went.  “If we do, I think for me it’s cats.”

“So.  Sky says you’re trying to be an adventurous Crow, like he is.  What’s your mission?”

“I have two.  One is personal, the other is from my Guru, Shadow.”  Gymnast smiled in recognition.  Gilgamesh wondered if she had met Shadow or just exchanged letters with him.  “My personal mission is to figure out what’s going on with Crows as Major Transforms.  As I hinted at over the phone, my other mission is to figure out who’s been killing and kidnapping Crows.”