No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) (19 page)

“Arm,” he said.  “I regularly did this with Arm to help her control her temper.”

Oh.  Arm.  From Gilgamesh’s stories I knew that a Crow by the name of ‘Crow’ had been companions with an Arm named ‘Arm’, a Focus by the name of ‘Focus’ and a Chimera by the name of ‘Beast’, the I-once-thought-legendary Lost Tribe of Transforms.  I had just raped a goddamned legend.

He had done this for Arm regularly, he said.  Sky led a rough life.

“I’m still coming back to myself,” I said, quiet.  “I’m kind of a mess.”  I didn’t feel much like apologizing, so this was as much as he would get from me.  Just thinking of Gilgamesh had made my heart ache.  The heartache made me cranky.

“Lucky for Gilgamesh, unlucky for me,” Sky said.  His voice dropped to an even lower whisper.  “Ma’am, you should know that Major Transform sex, when done right, is far more pleasurable, but can lead to pregnancies.”

“Thanks,” I said.  I think.  Sky was a tough old buzzard.

I left Zielinski a spare set of my workout clothes, so he came back into the living room wearing my shorts and t-shirt.  I sent Sky off for his shower.

Zielinski’s legs were hairy and thin, absurd in my clothes.  A wounded and vulnerable look haunted him, wary but not afraid.  I searched for a mad light in his eyes, indicating something broken inside of him.  I didn’t see it.

“Come in,” I told him, my voice gentle again. “Tell me what it is you’re worrying over.”

He glanced quickly at me, hesitant about whatever passed through his mind.

“Don’t worry,” I said, still gentle.  “We’re done with that other.  I won’t bite.”

He looked doubtful about my statement and hesitated again, but he spoke.

“Ma’am,” he said.  “Wasn’t that supposed to end with you taking me the way you took Sky?”

So much for inadvertently breaking him.  How much did he need me to be his Madam Dominatrix?

“Let’s say I’d done you like I did Sky,” I said.  “Where would that lead us?”

“For me, as I’m a normal, this would lead to a form of sexual enslavement,” he said.  “Which might last a few months at best as a method of control.  Amorous passion has never been an overwhelming interest of mine.”  Good.  He knew himself.

From experience.  Keaton had raped him at least once, I saw in him.  I also realized Keaton had tortured him, at least once.  I watched his memories at war in his mind.  The former had been far nicer than the latter.  He found both very disturbing.

“I hope this has convinced you that tagging is a much safer option,” I said.  “The other way needs frequent repetitions and I doubt we’ll have Sky around much longer.”

Zielinski shivered.  “Have you ever seen this work on anyone besides Fred?  Ma’am, I have a lot of respect for the power of juice.  Too many of the chemical components in juice are analogs of the chemicals that regulate our intellect and keep us sane.  This is dangerous stuff you play with.”

“Good.  This will give you more respect for what us Transforms go through every day.”  I paused.  “The answer to your question is ‘yes’.”

“Okay,” he said.  “I’ll agree, but on one condition.  I want a suicide option.  If I get too messed up, and we can’t undo it, I want the right to die.”

Dealing with Zielinski was like trying to ride a bucking bronco.  Everyone else I controlled wanted the right to back out of my little agreements.  Save for Bobby, I never agreed to their demands.  Zielinski wanted the right to off himself if his precious mind got messed up too much.  Dealing with Zielinski was like trying to deal with a different species or different sex of human.  I didn’t understand what to make of him.

“I agree,” I said.  I mean, what was he going to do if I backed out?  No.  Wrong way to think.  My instincts protested again.  If I made this promise, I would have to keep it.  I needed to think more clearly.  Someone like Zielinski would probably find a way to make a much worse mess if I backed out on a personal deal.  Unlike the other yobbos I dealt with and controlled, Zielinski was competent.  Very competent.

“So what do I do?”

“Come sit next to me,” I said.  He did so, and I took his still-wounded hands in mine.  I looked him in the eyes.  “Tell me you’re mine.  Mean it.”

“I’m yours.”  Zielinski didn’t have to even think hard.  He meant it.  Shit.  He had been mine from the start.  I just hadn’t been able to see the link.  Of course he was mine.  I was his only, unique, Arm success story, his pride and joy, the trainee Arm who survived.

“You’re mine,” I said, completing the pattern.  The juice moved.  Things happened I had no control over, things Zielinski could not sense.

“Ma’am,” he said.  His voice no longer hurt my ears.  The challenge of his presence vanished.  “How much has Keaton told you about my role in the rescue?”

I frowned.  As with Keaton, after she tagged me, I now read Zielinski far more easily.  “I got your letters,” I said.  White wax on napkins.  “You never explained why in God’s name you were at the CDC.”

“I wanted to help you,” he said.  “Eventually Keaton and I got together, but no matter what we tried we couldn’t come up with a way to get you out.  I have to apologize.  If we’d realized how impossible freeing you would turn out to be, we would have involved Inferno earlier and gotten you out before you’d been sent into withdrawal.”

I growled.  Good thing he had waited until he had become mine before bringing up this point.  I might have gotten rash.  He nodded at my growl.

“I thought you were in hiding at Rizzari’s,” I said.  “Remember?  Contracts out on your life?”

He shrugged.  Damned fool.

“How’d you get in to gather your information?”  He couldn’t just go up to the FBI or CDC administrators and ask.

He smiled.  “I talked Focus Biggioni into providing me with the access I needed for some of the information and I got the rest while disguised as Dr. Bentwyler.”

“You were Keaton’s inside man?” Sky said.  In admiration.  He hadn’t finished toweling off, but couldn’t resist the conversation.  Hmm.  He was a nice bit of distraction, wasn’t he?  “No wonder the FBI’s gunning for you, Doc.”

“Yes,” he said.  “That and the fact they hadn’t known how much help I gave Keaton over the years.”

Which I had told them.  Ouch.  Having him tagged wouldn’t stop his incessant mind games, I realized.

“I hope you’re not too attached to Biggioni,” I said.  “She dies for what she did to me.”

Zielinski shook his head.

I grabbed him by the collar and shook him.  “
She must die!
”

“As wrong as she is, as much harm as she cost you and the Network and the Focuses overall, she’s too important to kill.”  I controlled myself, at least enough so I didn’t shake Zielinski to death or cut off his words.

“Why?”  Rationality.  I had to focus on rationality.

“There are lots of reasons, but the best is that she’s the Focuses’ best leader.”  Zielinski smiled, a little.  He didn’t like Biggioni, either.  He admired her.  Big difference.

He might have said a lot more, but didn’t.  “You should be able to get some sort of recompense out of her.  Revenge, of a sort,” he said.

“I’ll give this some thought,” I said.  Maybe someday I would be able to think again.

Then he said something sweet to me, bringing up a distant fluttering of the same sort of Arm-love that Bobby had brought out in me.  He asked me to call him Hank.

Hank Zielinski was another tough old buzzard.

Gilgamesh: May 28, 1968

Five Crows and none of them lived near the massive South Main Transform Clinic.  In fact, all of them lived east of Houston proper, in the eastern industrial suburbs of Channelview, Baytown, Pasadena and South Houston.  Gilgamesh mentally flipped a coin and it didn’t come up on its edge, so he didn’t do an up-close investigation of the area of Houston near the South Main Transform Clinic.  He made a beeline to the Crows.

One of the Crows wasn’t a Crow, though.  It was a piece of dross art, a Crow-sized dross-statue in a huge vacant lot large enough to plunk down two shopping malls or a small airport.  Gilgamesh couldn’t resist, so he parked nearby at nightfall and went to investigate.

He had sweated through his now thoroughly beat up suit by the time he reached the statue, a pleasant reminder of his old home town of Miami, where even the evenings were warm and humid.  No, the dross art wasn’t a real Crow.  Or even a scarecrow, which he half expected.  Now
that
would be a priceless bit of social commentary!

He didn’t understand how the Crow artist had done his magic, but the dross-statue was a perfect mimic of a senior Crow, bedecked with dross constructs and ready for, well, action.  Which meant a dozen nifty ways of distracting an enemy while he ran away, if he was a standard senior Crow.

The Crow dross-statue stood six one, had blonde hair, was gaunt, tanned and weathered, and old looking for a Crow.  Said Crow wore his hair in a crew cut, an actual flattop, and looked at the world through narrow slitted eyes.  Something tickled Gilgamesh’s metasense and he focused it on the statue – and heard words.  “My name is Arpeggio.  I welcome you with all my heart and hope your journey will be safe.”

Gilgamesh shook his head and noticed two of the four real Houston area Crows on their way, together, to visit.  No, three.  One just ‘appeared’ as a metasense flicker three miles away.

Ah.  A senior Crow.  Gilgamesh predicted he would have a flattop crew cut.

Ten peaceful yet sweaty minutes later, a beat-up pickup truck rumbled into the vacant field from a back entrance and bounced across the ruts toward him.  The vehicle stopped a polite distance away and the Crows finished the approach on foot.

“I’m Gilgamesh,” he said, when the three got within two hundred yards.  Two of the three fled at his words.  The third actually yelled at the ones who fled.

“Get back here, you roving pustules of fear!  He’s a Crow, you imbeciles.  Save your panic for something real.”  Pause.  “Well, okay, but if you’re not willing to exert your tiny little Crow-hearts and squeeze out enough courage to stay with the truck, you might as well keep on running, because I’m gonna tan your hides.”

The source of the yelling walked away from Gilgamesh and whispered something to his companions.  Then he started to back his way toward Gilgamesh, still whispering.  He did a quick turn and wave to Gilgamesh, and continued the whispered conversation.  He finally finished.

From the quality of his metasense shields Gilgamesh decided this unknown Crow was a recently trained Guru.  He was a stout young man, about five nine, heavily muscled and weather-worn.  Nothing like the statue.  He wore his black hair in a ponytail.  “I’m Hephaestus,” the Crow said, in a more normal tone of voice, “and no I don’t walk with a limp, at least not any more.  What can I do you for?”

Gilgamesh took an immediate liking to this particular Crow.  “I’m doing research for another book, sir,” he said, guessing his book had made its way through here, or at least some of the Gilgamesh tall tales.  “It’s to be on Crow life.  How Crows live.  Completely non-technical and anecdotal.”  He needed to stick in the last.  The explanation saved panicking his listeners.

“Well,” Hephaestus said, coming closer across the scrub grass and packed dirt.  “I guess you’ve come to the right place.  My Guru, Arpeggio – yah, that’s him right there in the dross – has me paying off my Guru training by showing baby Crows the ropes.  Only I seem to be stuck with the most cowardly excuses of Crowdom who’ve ever transformed.  There’s got to be a better way.  There’s just gotta.”

“Oh,” Gilgamesh said.  Hephaestus was forceful as well as humorous.  Hmm.  “How would you like a challenge?”

“You’re challenging me to what, a duel?”

Gilgamesh shook his head.  “No, no, no.  Certainly not.”  He shivered a moment, realizing Hephaestus was serious and Crow duels did indeed exist.  Unbelievable.  ‘Duels’ had to go in his book.  “I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on many topics, including the Arms.  Arms need Crow companions.  I think it keeps them saner and certainly more juiced up.  Which keeps the temper down.”  He had used every wile he possessed to make sure the Skinner never went below her juice optimums.  “You have the power and presence to do the job right.”

Hephaestus backed off.  “Are you insane?”

“Aren’t we all?” Gilgamesh said.  He had been on the other end of one of these Crow conversations not too long ago, but he never imagined he would panic a Guru.  “My idea sounds crazy, and I once thought so as well, but after I spent a little while with probably the worst Arm of all I realized Crows and Arms are a perfect fit.  Arms have a bad reputation because they have this unquenchable urge to be in charge.  Since us Crows
never
want to be in charge, the partnership really works.”  Pause.  At least Hephaestus didn’t run away farther.  He didn’t laugh, though.  “I mentioned this because you remind me of the Skinner’s former Crow follower, Wire.  To start with, you wouldn’t even need to let the Arm know you exist.”

Hephaestus took a deep breath.  “Yup, you’re Gilgamesh.  Sorry, but I don’t think I’m interested.  Greatest apologies and all that.  You’re more than welcome to stay and talk, but if you wouldn’t mind doing a favor for me, could you mute your presence a bit?  My baby Crow charges seem to have a weensy problem with your glow.”