Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (12 page)

Then Teacher surprised both of them by ordering Van to participate in Gail’s training, taking notes and making observations.  Gail was glad Teacher waited this long in the training to recruit Van’s participation.  Early on, Gail would have died of embarrassment to have Van around while she trained.

“So what was your training like?” Gail asked.  “What’s it like for an Arm?”

Teacher’s smile faded, and stared thoughtfully at the bedroom wall for a long moment, absently rubbing Gail’s head.  Then she shook her own head and spoke.  “Baby Arms aren’t civilized creatures, and there’s not a lot of rational mind there when they first start out.  You met Duval.  She’s a prime example of what happens to an Arm without adequate supervision, all snarl and spit.  You need to do a lot to an Arm to get through to her.”

Gail shivered as she remembered.  Arm Duval still carried a beastly feel to her, all ‘grrr’ and glare, despite Arm Webberly’s work.  If Keaton and Hancock had once been like Duval, Gail understood how the old stories about Arms being a variety of Monster started.  “Can you tell me how this works?”

Teacher leaned back against the headboard and didn’t say anything for a long moment.  Then one side of her mouth tilted up in the hint of a smile.  “I bet I’ve never told you about the first time I ran into Keaton.  I was so young and so stupid, and she’d been hanging around for weeks in disguise.  Well then, here I was, all full of myself and…”

Stories.

Teacher had a thousand of them.  Stories from the early days of her training, stories from the days before that, when she was a lab rat at a Transform Detention Center.  Stories from her later days.  People she met, some dangerous, some ludicrous.  Idiot fights as a young Arm with equally young Hunters, neither knowing what to do.  Organized torture by the FBI.  Meeting Gilgamesh, Gail’s long time Crow friend, when they were both young and ignorant.  Funny stories mixed with exciting stories and horrifying stories.  Gail listened, rapt, as Teacher spun her tales.  Five minutes in, Van gave up taking notes, and with Teacher’s permission and caveats about what was legal to pass along in his books and in her household’s story time sessions, started up his tape recorder.

Gail couldn’t imagine going through a transformation like that, with all its terror and pain and misery.  Or dealing with someone like Keaton as a teacher.  She had known the temperamental and sadistic Arm for years, and she was appalled to realize Keaton had once been worse.  The stories let her understand Teacher in a whole new light, when she realized what Teacher had been through.  Or having enemies like the Hunters, knowing absolutely nothing about them in those early days save that they were trying to search you down, rape you, kill you and eat you.  Not necessarily in that order.

Or the knife edge of disaster she walked by being the first Arm to befriend a Crow.  How, Gail wondered, did Teacher avoid spooking Gilgamesh into skunking her?

Worse, somehow, was the FBI.  Agent McIntyre and his crew, working under Joe Patrelle’s dark shadow.  Keaton and the Hunters at least could blame their transformations for their cruelty and bestiality, while Patrelle and McIntyre had nothing at all.  She didn’t trust the fascists in the government to start with, but it was different to realize how bad they really were.

“You must hate them,” Gail said, as Teacher’s tales wound down.  Dogs.  McIntyre and his cronies had attacked her with dogs, just to watch her fight.  Unbelievable.

Teacher shrugged, just a bit.  “McIntyre?  I have plans for McIntyre.”

Gail shivered, catching the edge of threat in those words, and worrying about Van’s sudden feral smile.  She wouldn’t want to be in McIntyre’s shoes when Teacher caught up with him.  Then other memories surfaced, linked with the name of McIntyre.

“Hey, wasn’t he involved in the Arm Flap, about four years ago?”  The Arm Flap happened just before her transformation, and she didn’t remember the details well.  “He must be making himself real popular with the Arms.  What was the name of the Arm involved in that?”  She frowned, trying to dig the name out of her memory.  Then Teacher’s face turned to unyielding stone, and the name came.

“Oh God,” Gail whispered.  “That was you, wasn’t it?  I thought they said the Arm died.”

“‘Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated’,” Teacher said, quoting Twain with a twisted smile.  “Many times.”

Teacher hadn’t told any stories of that part of her life.  Gail looked at her twisted smile and understood why.  “McIntyre’s really dead, isn’t he?”

Teacher nodded, and Gail believed her.

“Why isn’t he dead already?”

“Sometimes the world interferes with your dreams,” Teacher said, her twisted smile growing even more predatory.  “The world is scheduled to stop interfering not too many months from now.”

Gail was unnerved to find herself in the presence of someone who seriously intended to commit cold-blooded murder on a scheduled date.

However, Teacher was an Arm.  She committed murder every couple of weeks or so.

Gail remembered the dogs, and the stories of the Arm Flap, and discovered she had no sympathy for McIntyre.

“Good luck.”  If he abused her teacher, he deserved what he got.

Teacher smiled again, her smile less twisted this time.  “Let me tell you about Focus Teas’ visits while…”

A half hour later, Teacher turned things around.  “What do you want, Gail?” she said, with her gentle voice.  “We’re all training you based on what we think you need to succeed at giving juice to me, but what do you want out of the training?”

Gail stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling.  What did she want? She hadn’t given this any thought since her Arm-based training started.

Van caught her signal and paused the tape recorder.  “I would like to stop being a pawn,” she said, hesitant.  “The powerful people come by, playing their grand games, and they use me without thinking.  Just a pawn, moved from place to place, without any say in the matter.  Maybe sometimes it’s even good for me, but I still don’t have a say in what happens to me.  Keaton.  Adkins.  Tonya.  Cathy.  Even you do it.”  Gail caught Teacher’s hate reaction when Gail mentioned Wini Adkins’ name.  Gail couldn’t help but echo Teacher’s reaction.  “Every year I think I’m going to grow up, but it never happens.  Everyone else is growing, too.”

“You get what you pay for,” Teacher said.  “Seats at the table are expensive, and we’re too immature as a society to understand the price we end up paying.”

Gail thought of Teacher’s hard life and took a deep breath.  “Uh huh.  Even so, if I don’t have to completely shatter what remains of my morality, that’s what I want.”

---

Gail stuck her head in the kitchen, surprising Isabella Wheelhouse, stuck as usual doing more than her share of the after dinner clean-up.  Gail had mostly recovered from yesterday’s teaching extravaganza, except for a tiny ache in her right hamstring.  “I’m going to be spending a few hours in my darkroom, so if you could rustle up Kurt or Buddy for me for bodyguarding, I would appreciate it.”  Isabella nodded and rushed off.  Gail grabbed some of the leftovers specifically saved for her, and ate.  Her Transforms understood her strange needs and interest in her darkroom, but insisted on bodyguards.  Prudent, since her darkroom was specifically out of metasense range from her people.  Both Kurt and Buddy were normals, and their presence nearby wouldn’t bother her.

Gail wandered to the back of the apartment’s property, ignoring the last vestiges of the summer heat and the dark shadows of late evening, to a locked shed where the household stored various maintenance supplies.  Another small shed sat behind the main shed, Gail’s darkroom.  She aired the place out for a moment, and after she saw Kurt coming, she waved at him and went inside.

The inside of the darkroom was small, dark and quiet, with lots of extra soundproofing, just the way Gail liked.  Close and claustrophobic, save she was far more of a claustrophile than a claustrophobe.  She wadded herself into a tiny corner and closed her eyes.

In a moment, her Dreaming garden appeared around her.  She still hadn’t learned whatever tricks allowed one to speak in the Dreaming.  She remained a signer, part of the larger circle of Dreamers who communicated using the deaf signing language.  The biggest limitation remained the fact that the only people available to talk were those either asleep or meditating.

The large circle of the Dreaming included more than Focuses.

Tonight, after checking on Teacher first (she remained awake, a common problem with attempting to guard the mind of an Arm at night) and chasing off the aphids that often infested Teacher’s bushy clump of butterfly weed (probes by the White Witch, Gail suspected) Gail flew to the foggy vale, a hollow lined with gloriously blooming rhododendrons.  A group of people gathered by the small pool at the center of the vale.  Gail landed with a rush of Dreaming air and made her way down a mossy slate walkway, identifying those already here.  The Lieutenant, the Madonna, the White Witch, Polaris and Thomas – all talented speakers.  Pearl was there, also a signer, as was the Singer.  Only after training under her for several days did Gail recognize the Singer as Mary Sibrian.  Of the rest, she only knew the real identity of one other, Thomas, a Crow Guru she knew from Gilgamesh’s stories.  He and Polaris were the only Crows involved in the circle tonight.

The White Witch and the Madonna argued, as usual.

“What do you expect them to be doing?” the White Witch signed.  Goldfish flickered in the pool at her feet, and a couple of fallen leaves drifted on the surface of the water.

“Behaving themselves.  That is grotesque impoliteness, at best,” the Madonna signed.  “At worst, their actions may trigger a war.”  Both she and the White Witch used signing as a courtesy to those Dreamers without the skill to hear in the Dreaming.

The White Witch sneered at the Madonna.  “They don’t have the nerve for war.  This is just some sort of political maneuver against Shadow’s associates.  They do that regularly among themselves, and it’s not our fault Shadow’s associates are so vulnerable.”  The White Witch both annoyed and terrified Gail, and if Focus Rizzari named her correctly, she was Focus Shirley Patterson, the reclusive head of the opposition to the Cause.

Gail fervently hoped Focus Rizzari erred in her naming.

“Not this impolitely,” Thomas signed.  “You and I count each other as enemies, but I would not be so impolite to you.  At some level, our linkages as Transforms are more important than our petty political differences.”

“So you say,” the White Witch signed.  “I will forbid the Council to examine this, as this is
none of our business
.  Good Night.”  The White Witch emphatically disappeared.  Interesting, Gail thought.  Was the White Witch a Council member or a Region president?  Focus Patterson was neither.  Asking about such things would be impolite, though, so she wouldn’t.

“Good evening,” Gail signed.  “What’s the problem?”  After the White Witch vanished the Madonna’s polar bear companion wandered into Gail’s garden for a sniff.  None of the others noticed, and the polar bear wandered off, likely to find the fishpond again and amuse herself.  Gail did wonder what strange bit of her current mental anxiety gave the polar bear oversized chicken legs to go along with her lizard-like front legs.

“I got exposed,” Pearl signed.  She sat on a weathered stone bench underneath a cascade of purple hydrangea flowers.  “Every one of my people with a job got exposed as a Transform.  About two thirds of them got fired.”

Gail signed appropriate swear words.  “Who did this?”

“Crows, Gail.”

“Crows?”  She turned to Thomas and Polaris.  “Why?”

“A group of Crows has decided to go after the Focuses important to the Cause,” Thomas signed.  “No, not me or any close friends of mine.  I may oppose the Cause, philosophically, but I would never act in such a manner.”

Polaris shook his head.  “Yes, the idiot patrol has decided to ride out in force.  Unfortunately, your Cause appears to be little more than a house of cards.”  Polaris was, well, nasty and snarky, but he was at least amusing.  “Poof!”

“This isn’t the first such annoyance, either,” the Lieutenant signed.  The Madonna signed agreement.  “Just the first outside of the Northeast Region.”

“Is this the same group of Crows who put the whammy on Crow Sinclair?” Gail signed.

“No, just the leader of that group, and his well-intimidated flunkies,” Thomas signed.  The normally imperturbable Thomas appeared upset, a first for him.

“The situation isn’t good,” the Lieutenant signed.  “If the Council won’t be allowed to fight back, even diplomatically, this creates a power vacuum.  I fear our Crow miscreant annoyed too many of the wrong people, who might step into the power vacuum and act outside of the purview of the Council, in far too rash a manner.”

“Mollifying them and talking down the, um, miscreant will be up to me,” Thomas signed.  “I feel dishonored by these activities, placing me in debt to many who I would rather not be in debt to.”  Gail, from previous meetings, knew Thomas despised certain Focuses, especially first Focus Suzie Schrum.  “This form of harassment must stop, or I will be forced to choose sides – and It Won’t Be Their Side.”

“Is there anything I can do, to help or protect myself?” Gail signed.

“For a source of good will, such as yourself, the best thing to do is stay away from the Cause.  The last thing we need are more Focuses looking like targets,” Thomas signed.