Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (35 page)

“You know the other Arm, Stacy Keaton, is rumored to be involved in the new Arm’s detention?” a voice asked from the farmhouse.  Gilgamesh guessed it was from the same person who had whistled earlier.

“Yes.  Zaltu’s terrifying, but she can’t metasense me,” Gilgamesh said.  Like the voice of Thomas the Dreamer, this Crow’s voice was comforting and kind, and again, terrifying, for what he knew and implied.  Although Gilgamesh didn’t have the feeling Thomas could ‘read his mind’ as Rumor had, he did have a sort of itchy feeling this hidden Crow had no problems reading Gilgamesh’s mind.

“My name is Shadow, son,” the voice from the cabin said.  “You’re one of mine, like Occum, though the question at hand, which is one of propriety, falls into Thomas’s domain.  Someday you need to come visit me.”

“Yes, sir,” Gilgamesh said.  So both of the East Coast senior Crows were involved with this Beast Man affair.  Gilgamesh took a slow breath and tried to relax.  ‘One of mine’ sounded promising and disquieting.  What sort of Crow dealt with Crows who mastered Beasts and Monsters, or dealt with Crows who dealt with Arms, like himself?  From his conversations with Midgard, Gilgamesh guessed this Shadow Crow liked things interesting.

His nerves only held a moment, but broke when he noticed dross pooling at Sadie’s feet.  So much for calm; the sudden appearance of dross was too much of a surprise and he was under too much stress.  He panicked and ran.  He was only able to stop himself after fifty paces.

“What’s the problem?” Thomas the Dreamer asked in his calm voice, still sitting comfortably on the porch.

Gilgamesh found himself in the harvested field again, among the dry, brown stalks.  “I thought you were steadying me, the way Rumor did in Philadelphia.”

Thomas shook his head.  “None of us have been able to learn Rumor’s trick.  Come on back.  Shadow here’s just having a bit of stress tonight, after he got a surprise metasense glimpse of the Beast Man, and he’s reverted to the behavior that earned him his name.”  Gilgamesh didn’t move.  “With his tricks, Shadow’s metasense range is about nine miles, at least outside of New York City.  The Beast Man is nowhere close, now.”

“That isn’t the problem, sir,” Gilgamesh said.  “It’s just, um, I’ve never dealt with a Focus before.”

Sadie frowned.  “I’m not a Focus, Gilgamesh.  I’m a woman Transform.”

Gilgamesh crept back, his face red, and sat back down on the stool.  “I humbly beg your pardon, then, ma’am.  You’re producing dross and I sensed it gathering around your feet.”

“You sensed the dross?” Thomas asked.  “Through my protections?  I find myself intrigued.  Can you tell why Sadie’s producing dross?”

Gilgamesh took another metasense glance at Sadie.  Now he knew what to look for, he vaguely metasensed she was a Transform through what Thomas the Dreamer called ‘his protections’.  “Sadie, ma’am, you appear to have a juice flaw, just under your ribcage on your left side.  It’s about four inches long, and my guess is your juice flaw is related to an old wound.  I’ve seen that on Tiamat.”

He heard some rustling from inside the cabin.  There goes Vizul Lightning again, Gilgamesh decided.

Sadie’s eyes opened wide, but she didn’t run (Thomas the Dreamer didn’t even twitch, not that Gilgamesh had expected him to).  “I got the wound eight months ago while Monster hunting.  The Monster’s claws didn’t touch me, but she used a short range juice weapon to knock me out.”  She smiled.  “Now you’re supposed to say ‘Monsters can’t do anything like that’, just like the other Crows have said.”

Gilgamesh shook his head.  “The media and academic information on Transforms is either incomplete or a lie.  I’m not surprised.”

“Can you fix it?”

Gilgamesh shook his head.  “All I can do is sense these strange things,” he said.  “I can’t do anything as a Crow besides gather dross.  I’m sorry.”

“Yes, he’s yours, Shadow,” Thomas the Dreamer said, and sighed, an overly expressive ‘I don’t understand and I’d rather not understand’ sigh.  “Back to the real question.  Gilgamesh, what is your concern for the fate of this Arm?”

Gilgamesh looked around uneasily.  Tiamat was a killer, and he knew he should condemn her for it, but… “I would rather she lived,” he said in a small voice.

Much to Gilgamesh’s surprise, Thomas the Dreamer didn’t seem bothered by Gilgamesh’s support of a killer.  “Why?”

Gilgamesh had thought about his reaction to Tiamat a lot during his meanderings since St. Louis.  He took a breath and wrapped his arms around his torso.  “Because it isn’t her fault that she’s the way she is.  Because she provides huge quantities of wonderful dross.  Because she’s another Transform.  Because… because nothing they say about Transform Sickness is right, and I don’t believe they know what they’re talking about with Tiamat either.”

Gilgamesh shivered, but Thomas the Dreamer nodded.  “As it happens, I agree with you, though it took me far longer than it’s taken you to learn such wisdom.”

“What?”

Thomas ignored Gilgamesh’s interruption.  “I’ve been considering the question myself as we discussed other subjects.  I believe Echo is in the wrong.  Nothing good comes of betraying other Major Transforms; I know this personally.  Among the senior Crows, we
do
have an agreement not to interfere.  In fact, that’s why I’m here, to judge whether what Occum is proposing to do with this Beast Man counts as interference.  Tentatively, I have judged his actions are not interference, as this Beast Man can speak but a couple of words and is a menace to all.  You’re not the first to notice that the Arms are much more civilized than Beast Men and can talk and pass as human – and, yes, I understand how the common wisdom on the subject has been skewed by those who consider Arms to be mindless Monsters.  Gilgamesh, you are free to stop Echo.”

Gilgamesh nodded, delighted and surprised that Thomas agreed with him.  He thought further and leaned forward with a frown.  “Thomas, sir, I’m not capable of stopping Echo.  He said ‘scat’ and I ran.  He seemed to me to be a very dangerous Crow.”

“Chevalier’s cheating again, pushing the limits,” Shadow whispered, from inside the house.

“And you’re not?” Thomas said, to this Shadow Crow.  “Also, not proven.  But, old friend, I do have a test.  Gilgamesh, did Echo do something like
this
?”

Suddenly, Thomas was
fierce
.  Gilgamesh skittered back off the stool several steps, and nodded.

“How very unfortunate,” Thomas said, his voice sad.  The
fierce
went away, and he was the calm, unmemorable Thomas the Dreamer again.  “Shadow is right.  Chevalier should not be tricking up a follower who cannot himself do such things.  Such a trick is against many of our agreements.”

“If you would be so kind, Guru Thomas, perhaps it would be prudent for you to aid Gilgamesh in a similar fashion, as to balance the situation,” Shadow said.  “As you correctly said, with your wise comment earlier, nothing good ever comes of betraying other Major Transforms.”  It took Gilgamesh a few moments to parse Shadow’s oddly formal request.  If Gilgamesh understood the intimations, Shadow had suggested that he, Gilgamesh, be ‘tricked up’ so he might right this wrong.  Being tricked up actually sounded like fun, if he could avoid the panic long enough to receive said trick.

“And, friend Shadow, how many agreements will I break if I similarly aid Gilgamesh?” Thomas asked.  He drummed his fingers on the porch step.  “Yet, you’re right.  It’s proper for Echo to be stopped.  Gilgamesh, come back and have a seat.”

Gilgamesh did. 

“If you wish, I can help you against Echo.  Unfortunately, we’re busy here and none of us can go with you.  Nor are there enough other Crows at my, ahem, command that I can send anyone else with you.”  The last sounded like a joke, though it was hard to tell what with not being able to see Thomas’s face.  “Would you be willing?”

“Yes,” Gilgamesh said.  “I’m not sure what you’re asking of me, though.”

“I can make you immune to Echo’s trick, and give you a similar method of chasing him off,” Thomas said.  “However, my trick will look like dross to you.  With your youthful lack of control, you can’t draw any dross until you’ve settled the affair.  You’d drain away my trick.  It won’t last more than a month in any event.”

“I’m not sure I can last a month without dross,” Gilgamesh said.  He was already down low enough so the fresh dross by Sadie’s feet enticed him.  “Other than that, I’m in.” Striking back at Echo would suit Gilgamesh fine.

“Take what you want from here, first,” Thomas said.  “Take a walk with Sadie.”

Gilgamesh blinked and Sadie smiled.

“So,” Gilgamesh said, as he poked at a rusted wheelbarrow in the half of the barn that still had a roof.  “You have a Focus, don’t you?”

Sadie settled gingerly on the still-sturdy remnants of an old-fashioned wooden barrel.  “Of course I do, silly.  This juice leak isn’t anywhere near large enough so that I could go without a Focus.”

“So this Focus knows all about Crows?”

“She’s never met one in person,” Sadie said, a tiny smile on her face.  “That’s my job.  Oh, don’t worry.  I’m perfectly good at keeping Crow secrets.”  Pause.  “So, what can you tell me about yourself?”

They talked.

Three hours later, with an impossibly complex cloud of dross hanging off him like a backpack, Gilgamesh was on a freight train, en route back to St. Louis.  By way of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland…

Dr.
Henry Zielinski: November 6, 1966

Dr.
Zielinski shuffled papers in his office at Harvard Medical, anxious after finishing his daily teaching responsibilities.  Focus Ackermann had passed on the word that someone among the first Focuses had made sure he wouldn’t get a surplus Clinic Transform to pay off Keaton.  He saw no way to prevent Hancock from dying, or preventing his career, circling the toilet for the last time before the final plunge, from perishing as well.

His phone rang and he answered it.  “
Dr. Zielinski, this is Lori,” the voice on the other end said.  Focus Rizzari.  He hadn’t expected to hear from her so soon.  “I know this is short notice, but could you come by my lab tonight?  I have something I want to talk to you about.”

“No problem,” he said.  He would do anything to avoid the damned paperwork, especially paperwork this unpromising.  This was the second go-round on his St. Louis expenses, after the Dean had refused to cover the department’s normal share of his travel money.

He found Focus Rizzari’s lab in the basement of the Biology building on the Boston College campus.  Beside the door were several cheery drawings done by young children, and above the drawings, “
Dr. Lorraine Rizzari”.  He knocked, and a woman bodyguard opened the door for him.  She stayed in the room with them.  Not the same woman bodyguard as before.  This one wasn’t even a Transform.

“Come on in,” Focus Rizzari said, without even a glance in his direction.  She and a woman assistant were on the other side of the room, studying a set of three X-Rays hung in front of a light.  Another bodyguard, male and likely a Transform, sat in a far corner and gave
Dr. Zielinski the eye.  Dr. Zielinski walked over, took a quick peek over the shoulders of Focus Rizzari and her assistant, and identified what they were looking at as X-Rays of a Monster.  Focus Rizzari quickly took down the X-Rays and stuffed them into a large folder.

The lab was about as
Dr. Zielinski had expected for a microbiologist: glassware, distillation tubes, microscopes and the like.  He hadn’t expected the autopsy table, an oversized model with shackles, built for Monsters, some of whom maintained disturbing and dangerous involuntary reflexes even after death.  That is, if they didn’t turn into poisonous sludge immediately.

Eventually all dead Monsters turned into poisonous sludge.  Perhaps Focus Rizzari was attempting to figure out why.

“Come on over and sit down,” she said, and led him over to her old, stained lab desk.

He settled into the chair opposite.  “I hope this isn’t too much of an inconvenience for you,” Focus Rizzari said, as she pushed her microscope over to the side, to join the racks of slides and the remains of a sandwich.

“No, not at all,” he said.  He had researched Focus Rizzari after their first meeting, and found he had been thoroughly wrong about her.  Far from being a ‘nothing Focus’, she had turned out to be the vice president of the Northeast Region Focus Council.  Not only did she have excellent Focus charisma, but she also had her charisma so fully under her control he hadn’t caught a whiff of it when they had met the first time. 

He had also learned she was a rebel, which didn’t surprise him given the content of their earlier conversation.  She had been pushing the issue of male Focuses – Crows – for years.  As usual, for reasons he still didn’t understand, the other Focuses had reacted with their standard hostility.

“What can I do for you, today, Focus Rizzari?” he asked.

“Lori,” she said, and took a deep breath.  “How’d you like to get involved in the potential capture and taming of a Chimera?”

He paused momentarily, surprised at Focus Rizzari’s words.  “What possible use could I be?” he asked.

“I need warm bodies.  Warm bodies with guns, to be exact, more than I have available in my household.  The people who are going to be attempting to tame the Chimera are Crows, and I’ve been called in to help.  They need people to help them hem in the Chimera so he can be approached and tamed using some secretive Crow talents.” 
Dr. Zielinski frowned at Focus Rizzari’s glib words.  He had the sudden feeling he had stepped from one world into another.  “I did some research on you, as you’d suggested I do,” Focus Rizzari said, “and I happened to find out who you work with.”  She tapped a manila folder in front of her with a blunt fingernail.