No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) (31 page)

“You were a lobsterman before your transformation, weren’t you?” Gilgamesh said.

“I don’t need your pity, boy.”  Occum paused, a little shocked perhaps that Gilgamesh had made the connection to Occum’s poetry.  “Nor do I want it.”

Gilgamesh nodded.  He understood, quite well.  “There will come a time,” Gilgamesh said, “when we’ll have to fight Crow Killer.  Your Nobles might be our best weapon, maybe our only weapon, against,” Gilgamesh paused, and took the obvious and fateful step, “him.”

All these months he had been seduced by Carol’s story of Officer Canon, the Focus in disguise, and the red herring of the directed withdrawal scarring, a known Focus technique.  From what he had metasensed today, directed withdrawal scarring naturally fell out of the techniques used by Beast Men to preserve their women Transforms.  Carol originally thought Officer Canon was a man, but when she picked up his effeminate personality, she had reclassified him as a Focus.

So how many Crows had Gilgamesh met who were effeminate?  Perhaps twenty percent?  More?

Crap.

His original wild guess had been right.  The Beast Master Crow named Wandering Shade and Officer Canon were the same.  He was Crow Killer
and
the Transform killer.  Wandering Shade’s weapons were his Beasts.  He could both make them and mask them.  As Gilgamesh had feared from the start, Wandering Shade was a senior Crow.

Two pieces of evidence said Occum wasn’t Wandering Shade.  One, his Beast Men didn’t have directed withdrawal scarring, just the Commoners.  Two, Occum wasn’t a senior Crow.  He couldn’t mask himself.  Hell, he couldn’t even illusion his broken body whole.  He didn’t have the skill set.

Or so Gilgamesh fervently hoped.

“Of course I’ll help,” Occum said, and then laughed.  “Won’t be because you asked, boy, though.  Focus Rizzari’s going to ask me and I can’t refuse her anything.  Except to meet her in person.”

“Thank you, sir,” Gilgamesh said, meaning his words.  “I have a hard question for you, one I’m hoping you will not take umbrage at me asking: what do you know about the Crow named Wandering Shade, sir?”

This was a terrible gamble.  If Gilgamesh had guessed incorrectly and Occum turned out to be Crow Killer, he wouldn’t be leaving this place a free Crow.  Yet, he had committed himself when he nerved himself up for the visit.  No reason to back away from the danger now.

“Son of a bitch!” Occum said.  The mutilated Crow stalked over to Gilgamesh, brushing aside the net and stepping into the remains of Gilgamesh’s light.  He stuck a finger on Gilgamesh’s chest.  “You figured it out.  You
are
too smart to be wandering out on your own.”

Climax stress almost took Gilgamesh’s mind away.  “I find I must be leaving, now.”  He stepped backwards, but Occum followed.

“Not so fast.”

Gilgamesh had guessed wrong.  He practically felt Count Chocula’s hands on his shoulders, dragging him into one of those reeking cages.  He stuck his hands in his pockets, and felt around for a ‘dazzle metasense’ rotten egg.

“They’ll hunt you down and kill you,” Occum said, grabbing Gilgamesh’s arm and whispering.  “You’re in terrible, terrible danger.”  Oh.  This was a proper warning, Crow style.  Perhaps he had been hanging around the Arms for too long.  “Yes, Wandering Shade is a Crow.  Yes, Wandering Shade is the Crow who made the Hunters, the Patriarchs and who knows how many other small gangs of Beasts.  However, Wandering Shade isn’t a
known
Crow.  He’s a hidden Crow
identity
.  He’s nasty, paranoid, despises Arms, sneers at Focuses, and is deathly afraid of being discovered.”

Ah.  “You and Wandering Shade have exchanged letters, haven’t you?”

Occum nodded.  “Yes.  Foolish of me, but I did.  I needed help with my charges.”

“You don’t use his techniques, though, the directed withdrawal scarring.”

“Shit, boy, you’ve definitely done enough detective work to get yourself killed.”  Occum shook his head.  “My techniques are far more efficient.  Safer, too.”

“Then Wandering Shade isn’t a Crow Shaman, like you are.”

“Shaman?  Okay, okay, yes, that’s what I am, technically speaking.  No, Wandering Shade is your standard issue dross construct slinging psychopath Crow Wizard from hell.”  Pause.  “You think he’s Crow Killer, too?”

“Yes.”

“Based on what evidence?”

Gilgamesh explained what he had pieced together from his wanderings, from the FBI, from the Arms, and from what he discovered in his visit to Focus Innkeep.  “The masking at a distance trick shows insane power and control, something only a senior Crow could do.”

“Shit dammit fuck dammit crap!” Occum said, stomping his feet and hopping up and down in his Skinner-like anger.  “Who the fuck is Wandering Shade, though?  Which of the senior Crows?”  Occum started to pace, and with his metasense, Gilgamesh could sense the Nobles shifting restlessly.  “If it’s Shadow, we’re goners.  He’s our Guru, damn it!  Why the crap did you have to figure this out!  I was just starting to make real progress with my Nobles!”  Occum grabbed him by the shirt, and shook him.  Then let go and went back to pacing.  “Dammit.  We’re screwed.  We’re so screwed our bones will be gnawed on by varmints from here to Albuquerque!”

“If I vanish, could you pass this information along to Shadow, Thomas the Dreamer and Innocence?  Those three are the ones who sent me out to hunt down the identity of Crow Killer.”

“Only if you vanish,” Occum said.  “There aren’t that many top end senior Crows, my boy, and the ones you named are half of the ones I know of.  That means there’s about a fifty percent chance that one of them is Crow Killer and the highest odds are with Shadow.  You’re talking a life or death coin flip, boy!  Crap you’ve made a mess of things!”  Occum growled, and paced, and cursed some more.

Shadow said, once, that there are skittish Crows, angry Crows, and leader Crows.  Occum had turned out to be one of the angry Crows.

“We need to stop Wandering Shade, Occum,” Gilgamesh said.  “I’m not sure how, but he needs to be stopped.”

“You’re crazy.  There’s nothing us standard-issue Crows can do about the games the big boys play,” Occum said, and frowned at Gilgamesh.  “Consider how much trouble one of Sky’s exaggerated stories just caused the both of us?  If we start spreading stories about the senior Crows, they’ll flatten us.”  As they’ve done before
to me
, Occum didn’t say.

“Nevertheless.”

Occum sighed.  “You’re going to involve the Arms, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“Hell and damnation.  Get outta here.  You’re too dangerous to be here,” the gnarled Crow said. “Write, though.  And put in a good word with the Arms for me.  I wouldn’t want them thinking all Crows are like Wandering Shade.”

Occum did know how to deal with predators.  He expected to be dealing with Arms soon.  Gilgamesh suspected he was right.

Carol Hancock: June 19, 1968

My Austin hotel room phone rang at two in the morning, right in the middle of my first bit of sleep in four days.  Timing, as always, was impeccable.

“Hi Carol.” Lori.

She must have gotten the phone number from Zielinski.  I would have words with him, later.  Focus phone calls were Frances’s job.

“Something exciting going on?”  I hoped, for Zielinski’s sake, this was an emergency.

“I believe so.  Gilgamesh came by to talk to me about personal things, and I decided all of us needed to talk.”  She covered the phone and told someone to pick up.  A click and now I heard two phones on the other end of the line.

“It’s me.”  Gilgamesh!  His voice perked me up and made me smile, a warm glow coursing through my body.  “I just told Lori you were going to live in Houston.”  When I had asked Lori about Houston Focuses, she hadn’t asked why and I hadn’t volunteered.

“You’re getting better at your meditating,” I said.  Too many people in my life knew my secrets.  I wasn’t sure why I bothered.  “Let me guess.  There’s at least one more problem with Houston.”

Another line picked up.  “So, midget, how does this setup work, anyway?”

Keaton?  I sat up sharply, then stood up to pace, naked, carrying the phone with me.

A Focus and her household were arranging a cross-country party-line phone call?  I was impressed.  Jealous as well.

“We all talk and have a noisy conversation,” Lori said.  “Carol?”

“Oh, and it’s informal, too?” Keaton said, before I restated my last sentence.  “This is just the sort of thing I’d expect from Inferno.”  She wasn’t in a good mood either.  Must be an Arm thing.

I took a deep breath and plunged in.  “Focus Laswell of Houston is being blackmailed.  She couldn’t say who, but I’m predicting she’s being blackmailed by another Major Transform.”

“Ma’am, I know the answer,” Gilgamesh said.  “As of a month ago, a Focus Peshnak was extorting protection money from all the Houston area Focuses.”

“Focus Peshnak is a known problem,” Lori said.  “She’s not a member of the UFA or ISF and she’s a hazard.  Unfortunately, the Federal Government supports her.  The bitch and her core household are here with political asylum papers and she has the support of at least the CIA, who use her to further their clandestine efforts.  The Focus Council has been dithering about Peshnak for two years now.  Like most problems of this nature, the only thing the Council does is order the extorted Focuses to pay and threaten them if they admit to anyone they’re paying extortion money to a non-UFA Focus.”

“Ma’ams, this is worse,” Gilgamesh said.  “This Focus uses techniques I’ve never seen before in a Focus.  She’s a Focus Shaman, doing symbolic juice manipulation the same way Occum is a Crow Shaman.  The core of her symbolism is Freudianism and she uses a vile trick whereby she keeps her male Transforms just above withdrawal so she can support more of them.  Her household is huge and insane.”

I blinked a half dozen times, trying to put everything together.  The conversation tugged on my emotions, the team thing again.  That’s why Keaton participated in this phone session.

“Ahh.  This all becomes clear,” Keaton said.  “As this will be your territory, Hancock, I’ll let you tell us the obvious.”

Tests, always tests from my former teacher.  “Ma’am, I would like permission to take down this rogue Focus,” I said.  “If we do this right, we’ll gain support among the rank and file Focuses for your plans.”

“More,” Keaton said.

I had hoped I wouldn’t need to go into this within Focus hearing.

Lori saved me.  “The ‘more’ is that this is also a bald threat to the first Focuses and Wandering Shade that a new power’s arisen they can no longer ignore.”

“Wandering Shade?” Keaton and I said, simultaneously.  Shit on the proverbial shingle.  Officer Canon aka Crow Killer aka Transform snatcher was a Crow.  I felt bad for Gilgamesh that the information I gave him turned out to be wrong, but as Keaton says, remorse over getting your ass kicked by an older Major Transform is a waste of time.  “So, hotshot, you finished your crazy mission those three senior Crows sent you on?” Keaton asked.

“Yes, ma’am, but there’s a problem, ma’am,” Gilgamesh said.  “Occum and I are now convinced there’s a fifty fifty chance that one of the three who sent me on my mission is Wandering Shade.  Wandering Shade isn’t a real Crow, but a Crow
identity
.”

Profanity filled my mind and I kept my mouth shut.  This was
not
want I wanted to learn.

“Fuck.  Gilgamesh, for maximum safety, you need to get down to where Carol’s temporarily staying and glue yourself to her,” Keaton said.  “Carol: I want a preliminary work up on this Houston problem by the first of July.  I’ll make the go no-go decision then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Rizzari: what kind of politics are we dealing with?  If we go up against this Focus, will the Council actively oppose us?”

“You’ll get the public wet noodle beating and a basement ticker tape parade,” Lori said.  “If you solve the Peshnak problem they’ll owe you one.”

“Lori, if you participate, can we use this to get some traction on your rebellion?” I said.

Keaton hissed.  I don’t think she had thought of this particular gamble.  “I’d need to work in secret, or at least secret as far as the government is concerned,” Lori said.  “I believe the answer is yes.  This won’t be a panacea, though.”  Pause.  “I’ve recently been actively spreading my enhanced Transform training techniques among the rebel Focuses.  If push comes to shove I might be able to borrow a few of them as well.”

“You’ve got your work cut out for you, Hancock,” Keaton said.  “I’d suggest you get right on it.”

She was right.  I had less than two weeks to get my shit together and produce the preliminary workup Keaton wanted.  Zielinski’s solution to my juice-damage woes had hit the top of my to-do list.

Part 3
Renaissance

Ceaselessly the river flows, and yet the water is never the same,

while in the still pools the shifting foam gathers and is gone, never staying for a moment...

– opening of the Hōjōki, by Kamo no Chōmei

Chapter 9

The Carmichael Truck Company reported the theft of four 1966 Freightliners and trailers from their Calumet office on the night of June 3, 1968, between the hours of 1 AM and 5 AM.  In addition, several thousand gallons of gasoline were also somehow stolen from that location the same night.

“Hunter Activity Near Chicago and Media Responses”

Gilgamesh: June 19, 1968

Dear Shadow,

I’ve made great progress on the three Crow tune, but the song is not finished.  I am about to join up with Tiamat, which may cause concern among the other Crows involved.  Don’t be alarmed; this is quite what I desire.

Tiamat is now over 90% recovered from her ordeal, a much faster recovery than I’d anticipated.  She is both herself as she was as well as a new Arm.  Most of the changes caused by her time in withdrawal are physical.  She is faster, for one.

I’m making personal progress as well.  Several Major Transforms have pointed out to me I am now natively hiding myself from their metasense, even without rotten egg use.  I suspect my ongoing practice with my rotten eggs has improved my control over my ambient dross.  I am, of course, continuing to practice with these, and I have progressed to the point where I can produce primitive dross art as well.

Now the hard stuff.  Focus Innkeep in Georgia almost lost a Crow to a Major Transform in a police officer’s uniform, someone who roughly matches Tiamat’s description of her Philadelphia Major Transform assailant, which connects those two dots.  Another connection comes when comparing the physical areas where Crows and Transforms ceased their singing.  They are the same, connecting another dot.

I possess some other similar information I’m going to want to talk to you about, later.  I may be delayed, though, and if any delays occur, contact Occum.  He knows my suppositions.

Gilgamesh

Carol Hancock: June 20, 1968

Boston was a welcome relief from summer, at least compared to the Houston steam bath.  I found a normal human with a sign with one of my identity’s names on it waiting for me at the Boston airport.  I greeted the man, some sort of artistic type with a sly sense of humor, who knew I was an Arm.  He led me to one of the household cars.

His name was Steve and he wanted to trade stories.  So I made stuff up, and so did he.  We amused ourselves for the twenty-minute trip to Inferno, the name Rizzari’s Transforms had given to their household.

What a household it was.  I swore Hank told me all Focuses were poor and needed to move every year or two.  Not Rizzari.  The main house was about five thousand square feet, and there were two other livable buildings on the estate, not including the cabana by the pool.  The place looked like her household had lived in it for years, patently impossible.  She greeted me at the doorway, the big show and all.  Hank had been right: Inferno was a hell of a Transform tourist attraction.  I wanted more.

When I saw Rizzari, my heart melted again.  Cute, short, black hair and gymnast’s body dressed in a yellow halter top and white shorts, with a tummy that barely showed her pregnancy.  Her presence was as pleasant as I remembered.  No, pleasant didn’t cut it.  Wonderful.  Awe inspiring.  We hugged, became one for a moment, and then stepped apart.  She shook her head.

“In our second meeting, I thought this sort of thing had to be the standard response of a Focus with her head on straight to an Arm,” Rizzari said.  “Then this didn’t happen when I met Keaton and I sort of assumed this was just something random.  But, golly, this just happened again.  Why the two of us?”

I shrugged.  The first time we had met the situation had been beyond tense, and ‘it’ didn’t happen.  She had offered me a handshake and a warning that she could lay me out cold if I got out of line.  The second time, we were both hot from fighting Chimeras, and although we had fallen into each other’s eyes, we did spend more time barking at each other than enjoying ourselves.  This time, I suspected she wanted to stand in front of me and protect me from anyone trying to lay me out.  I, too, had grown more comfortable with Lori than with anyone else who wasn’t mine.  I couldn’t imagine giving Focus Laswell a hot ol’ hug.

“Where’s Gilgamesh?”

“Let’s go inside,” Rizzari said, quiet and cautious.  “I think we have many things to talk about.”

Unnerving: A thirteen year old woman Transform comes up to me and says: “Hey, there, Arm Hancock.  Watch this!”  She climbs the normal plastered wall, gets about half way up to the eighteen-foot ceiling, then tumbles back down, landing on her toes.  “Can you climb walls like this?”  The wall was normal, no handholds.

“Go on, Amy.  Later,” Rizzari said.  “Kids these days.  They just can’t help but show off.”

The meeting room Rizzari selected was the house’s library.  The place wasn’t stacked up with bunk beds.  Her household used the room as intended, as a library.  Five kids hanging out in the room took one look at me, shrieked “Ohmygod it’stheArm!” and fled screaming.  A few feet out in the hall, they had hysterics.  Hysterical laughter.

“So, should it be Focus Rizzari or Lori?” I said, trying to ignore the chaos around me, sort of half wondering what sort of Focus household would consider a visit by an Arm to be a fun occasion.  Surely when Keaton visited…naw, her visit couldn’t have been a fun occasion.  Their reaction had to be to me as a person.

“Whatever you’re the most comfortable with,” Lori said, a little distracted.  Moving juice?  “So, Carol, are you as affected by my presence as I am by you?”  ‘So, Carol’, indeed.  Zielinski had warned me Lori was pushy, powerfully charismatic, and far more than just a ‘rebel Focus Professor’.  He was right.  I sensed a lot more depth to Lori than in our earlier meetings.

“Yes,” I said, and put some emotion into that one simple word.

We met gazes and our wills sparred with each other.  Love and dominance.  Passion and quiet.  An even contest.

“You didn’t react this way to Focus Laswell, did you?”

I decided to try something.  Instead of shaking my head and saying ‘no’, I indicated the negative in the non-verbal shorthand Keaton, Zielinski and I used at times, which involved relaxing the muscles over my cheekbones.

She got the message, no problem.  “I’d love to know why this sort of thing occurs.  Does it involve just me, or is the household superorganism involved?  Is the affinity purely biochemical or does it involve our personalities as well?  Our subconscious?  Is there a difference yet?  Is this something my former houseguest” Zielinski  “figured out a way to arrange?”  She paused and indicated a pair of high backed leather chairs in the far corner of the room, on either side of a low table, an elegant little sitting area.  We sat.

I wasn’t even sure I understood her comments and questions, save for her mildly exasperated comment about Zielinski.  I just wanted to lose myself in her and enjoy the warm and anxious arousal she called up.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Lori said.  “I don’t want to glue you to me, the same way Gilgamesh didn’t want to glue me to him.”  Which explained why Gilgamesh wasn’t here now.  The juice apparently didn’t have any issues with creating impossible interpersonal problems.  Why was I not surprised?

I agreed with her worry; if I stayed here too long I would never leave.  The more I thought about the idea, the better this sounded.  Staying here felt so right.

The juice had way too much control over me.

“I do have an ulterior motive.  So do you.  You want Arm help with your rebellion.”

Lori nodded and her short black hair waved attractively.  “You know the public reason I’m rebelling.  There’s a private reason: you.  Your incarceration affected me deeply and sent me over the edge.  I vowed to make the powers-that-be pay for what they did to you.”

“You want to kill them.”  I sympathized.  Killing them slowly would almost be too easy on them.

“No,” she said.  “I’m sorry, but I’m not an Arm.  I’ve never killed a Focus, nor do I want to.  I’m not sure what crossing that line would do to me and I’d rather not find out.”  She took a deep breath, happy that I didn’t explode in Keatonic rage, which I suspected she had seen far too much of.  “I just want to take away all their political power and stick them in the Old Focuses Home.”

I smiled.  “I like,” I said.  “I’m into control, too.”

Lori shivered in sympathy and other deeper, older emotions.  “It’s justice.  If I take away their power they can’t cause any more harm.”  Focuses saved lives, their purpose as Major Transforms.  They couldn’t ignore ‘saving lives’ any more than I would be able to stop killing.  “Look, Carol, I don’t need to take all their power away right now.  This is why my manifesto seemed so tame, compared to what I’m revealing to you.”

“I have no problem with a long game,” I said.  “So, Gilgamesh explained to you what sort of mission he’s on and what evidence he’s been collecting?”  The ‘Wandering Shade’ comment yesterday implied this.

“It’s rock solid and horrifying, good enough to satisfy his mission.  Only…”  Lori leaned over the table and grabbed my hands.  “It’s not good enough to convince Tonya and she’s the most open minded of the Council Focuses.  I don’t know how we’re going to get anything more, but we need the ‘more’.”

“I don’t understand.  Isn’t the Council our target?”  Tonya Biggioni I wanted dead.  Lori wouldn’t agree, so I didn’t say anything.

Lori shook her head.  “If my own work on the subject is correct, at this point in time every last member of the Council is at least an indirect flunky of one of the active first Focuses, and a majority are wholly owned subsidiaries.  Tonya, for all her flaws, is only an indirect flunky.  You wouldn’t believe how little free will some of the other Council Focuses have.”  She still wanted to replace the bitch.  Bully for Lori.

“So anything freeing the Council Focuses from being controlled helps our side.”

Lori nodded.  “The idiocy that took you down was driven by a small faction of the active first Focuses.  Just two: Focus Wini Adkins and Focus Donna Fingleman.  Adkins wanted Focus Claunch’s power base, the Network, destroyed; Fingleman wanted Tonya’s reputation destroyed.  You ended up as nothing more than a pawn, the wrong Arm in the wrong spot.  Their evil?  People’s lives mean nothing to them.”  An important consideration for a Focus, I began to understand.

“Especially since it left the real perp, Wandering Shade, free to continue his depredations.”

“I have another hypothesis,” Lori said.  “Wandering Shade’s timing, taking Focus Adkins favorite Transform right before you graduated, strikes me as not a coincidence.  I believe he actively wanted to frame you.”

I smiled the death smile.  Lori blanched and nodded.  So far, I hadn’t heard anyone defend Wandering Shade and say he didn’t have to die.  Lori looked at me, opened her eyes a little wider than normal, dilated her pupils slightly, tensed the muscles in her right arm, and then tensed the muscles around her mouth.  Ah.  She thought I was edging into things too dangerous to talk about, even here.  Given what I had already revealed, her implications troubled me.  The first Focuses might have her place bugged, she couldn’t do anything about the fact, and nothing I was likely to casually say would give these first Focuses any more information about the Arms because they knew so much about us already.

Based on her comments over the phone, I decided she was worried about the Feds.

“Anyway, I never told you why I’m here,” I said.  “I have a problem.  A medical problem.”

“Normally, I would refer you to a Henry Zielinski, but he seems to have dropped out of sight following a jailbreak.  I’ve heard rumors he perished attempting to escape.”

Her comment was worth a sardonic grin, save I possessed better control than that.  Lori and Zielinski had been in near constant communication since I let Sky go.  She kept this information to herself.  She did some eyebrow wiggling, indicating surprise about Zielinski’s inability to fix my problems.  No stop sign, though.

“Are you familiar with bad juice?”  She nodded.  I stopped, and tried to signal to her about my personal problems with this juice.  Perhaps a little complicated a message to send non-verbally.  She relaxed her face slightly, which indicated to me the subject was safe.

“I have some that I can’t seem to get rid of.”  I wasn’t about to say what problems the bad juice caused.

“Have some how?” she said, worried.  The problem was familiar to her.

“The damned stuff is masquerading as fundamental juice.  There’s an obvious way for me to deal with the problem, but I’m real skittish about using that method.  I can take my numbers right down to where the floor should be, but I can’t force myself to take them any lower.”

She nodded.  “I might be able to help you, but…”  Lori didn’t ask what problems the bad juice caused, which indicated to me the problems weren’t something the first Focuses already knew about.  At least as far as Lori knew.

She winced, though, just a bit.  Something about this procedure of hers bothered her.  “Go ahead,” I said.  “I won’t get angry, whatever it is.”