All Beasts Together (The Commander) (11 page)

Tonya took a deep breath, allowing herself enough time to cool down and resist the urge to fire back in kind at Claunch.  She didn’t want to talk about
her project Transforms, one of the many ongoing sore points between them.  “I wasn’t happy with Focus Rizzari either, but she did say she was going to maintain contact with this new Arm and forge closer ties with her once she’s matured.  Don’t forget what Keaton was like early on.”

“Such as the incident where that loony bitch broke your legs and kept you unconscious while your legs healed into a pretzel knot?”
Claunch laughed.  Tonya gritted her teeth, wishing her secrets would do a better job of staying secret.  As the Network boss, Claunch was supposed to know everything, and she excelled far more than Tonya liked.  “It would serve Rizzari right if she ended up in a similar situation.”

“Focus Rizzari said this new Arm had a different personality than Keaton: much chattier, much more curious, less paranoid about law enforcement and more paranoid about the Transform community.  Hancock did accept the task of coming up with a method of getting the Arms under control as penance…”

“Tonya, you’re not telling me everything.  Spill.”

Claunch also had good information instincts.  “Michelle, there’s nothing I can tell you officially that will do either of us any good,” Tonya said.

“I see.  Them, eh?  One of the predators or one of the shifty ones?  Tell me.  I won’t bite and I won’t pass it along to anyone else.”  Which Tonya didn’t believe for one instant, but given her political position, she felt compelled to answer.

The politics might
have been worse, though.  Although she and Claunch hated each other and Claunch despised Tonya’s boss Suzie Schrum, Tonya’s old job as Keaton’s Council contact had forced the two of them to learn to work together.  Claunch had turned out to be a realist, unlike many of the other first Focuses.  Necessary, to deal with the motley crew of non-Focus members of the Focus Network.  Claunch’s only ideology was ‘political power increase, personal’.

“Both.”

“And she came out of those contacts free willed?  At such a young age as a Major Transform?  I don’t trust this, no I don’t,” Claunch said.

Tonya hadn’t thought of that angle.  Claunch
, shifty snake that she was, thought of it first.  She did have a point, though, which annoyed Tonya.  “She fought the predator and came out of it severely wounded, which Rizzari directly verified.  You may have a point about the other, though.  The contact happened in Pittsburgh.”

“Dear me.  Well, I had been looking forward to meeting this new Arm myself, but now you’ve mentioned that particular appalling bit of information, I think I might take a pass for now. 
Far too dangerous in the current political climate.  There’s no telling who’s
really
controlling her.”  Claunch paused, hand over the telephone, talking to someone else.  “Thank you, Tonya.  Perhaps I won’t be so quick with the knife next time you get out of line.”  Click.

Tonya hung up the phone and closed her eyes,
said a Hail Mary and used her charisma to calm herself down.  She wished, again, as she had for years, she had some way to strike back at any of the first Focuses, Claunch especially.  She failed, again, to come up with anything.

Henry Zielinski: October 9, 1967 – October 10, 1967

The note said due to the danger to his life he should change the destination of his plane flight from Boston to Montreal and he should seek out the writer of the note, the Madonna of Montreal.  The name didn’t ring a bell to Henry Zielinski, but the situation did.  He
had heard about the death threat before he left and he had been worrying about his return ever since.

When he stepped off the airplane
, into the airport concourse, he half expected someone to greet him.  Or an assassin.  He wasn’t traveling under his own name and he was disguised as a doddering old man.  He caught a cab and found a hotel.  All he had was an address, not even a phone number, for this Madonna of Montreal.

The next day, not disguised, he took a cab to the address.  The location was in Pont Viau and turned out to be a large and somewhat rundown brownstone on the Rue Lahaie.  Zielinski went up to the doorman and stated his business.  The place looked like a Focus household; Zielinski recognized all the signs, starting with the twenty garbage cans when the neighboring brownstones only had four each.  After a few moments wait, a household Transform greeted him, introducing himself as Faber.

“The Madonna would like to see you in person, Mr. Zielinski,” Faber said, in English now, after hearing only a few sentences of Zielinski’s passable Parisian French.  Zielinski nodded and followed the man into the crowded Focus household.  A small Focus household, Zielinski noticed, at most thirty or so people in residence.

Henry Zielinski wasn’t an imposing man.  He had been educated as a medical doctor, a surgeon, though currently stripped of his license.  He stood five feet nine and weighed in at about a hundred and sixty pounds.  His face was lean, leaner than in previous years.  Much to his disgust, he had developed a small potbelly since his recent divorce.  His angular face didn’t possess the traits found in his uncles and cousins, not round, no strong wide jaw, no bushy eyebrows.  All his life his relatives told him he resembled his maternal grandfather, an immigrant English sailor of French and Belgian ancestry.  His head was long, his forehead high, his nose narrow, his eyes deep set and dark brown, his features weathered.  Despite the loss of his medical license, he hadn’t lost his medical doctor’s aura of confidence.  In recent years he had begun to bald, his hair slowly graying.  Due to incidents beyond his control he now appeared about ten years older than his calendar age of fifty one.

He followed Faber up two flights of
narrow stairs, past a typical household dormitory, a converted household kitchen, and into a private sitting room.  A little room, filled with shabby but comfortable furniture.  White curtains drifted in the light breeze that crept through the two partly open windows, and the morning sun shone cheerily through the gaps.  He was quite shocked when he recognized the Focus in question.

“Anne-Marie!” he said, and smiled, switching to the Parisian French
of Anne-Marie’s native tongue.  She, at least, wouldn’t mind.  “I didn’t know it was you.”

“Glad you could make it, Hank,” she said.  Anne-Marie stood and gave him a hug.  She
stood perhaps an inch shorter than Zielinski and a wide smile covered her round face.  As with most Focuses she was intensely beautiful, in Anne-Marie’s case, beautiful in a motherly sort of way, a little wide eyed and round of face to pass as a chiseled French model.  She wore her dark brown hair in a bun, which made her seem much older than her Focus-stabilized nineteen-year-old appearance.

“They don’t know me by that name, Henry,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.  “I’m just Annie, the Madonna of Montreal.  That other name died back in France and up north”
using the name of ‘Focus’ “and I prefer to leave it well dead.”  She had eluded her enemies in Europe only to fall into a trap run by an empire builder businessman.  After she escaped her captivity with the help of some friends she fled into the frozen tundra of the north, becoming part of the legendary ‘Lost Tribe’ of Transforms.

“What’s with the Madonna business, anyway?”

She sighed, took Zielinski by the arm, and led him over to her couch.  The laughter of a group of children on their way to school drifted in through the open windows.  “I give people advice these days.  Through the Dreaming.  My longevity gives me an edge with the Dreaming no other Focus can match.”

“Your sister Focuses in America distrust that capability.”

“I distrusted it once, myself.  As you well know,” Annie said.  “Erica doesn’t.”  Erica being Erica Eissler, the Arm he had just met in West Germany.

Five years ago, Zielinski had been part of a delegation from America to help the Canadian Department of Transform Welfare reintegrate the Lost Tribe survivors back into society.  The Lost Tribe had spent two years in the wilds of northern Ontario until violence among the Transforms had dismayed the Major Transforms of the group and sent them scurrying back to civilization. 
The authorities had invited him along as a doctor, one of several, a person of no great import.  As an expert on Focuses, he had helped Anne-Marie cope with people again.  Part of the job of the delegation had been to investigate the other Major Transforms supposedly part of the Lost Tribe and prove their existence, which turned into a big bust.  In fact, only one, the Arm, had been willing to talk to anyone, and she hightailed it to Toronto before he had a chance to meet her.

“I wasn’t sure what Eissler was describing was the same as your talent.  Or that you even knew each other,” Zielinski said.

“We’ve never met in person, but before I fled Europe we talked on the telephone.  These days, we’ve worked out a sign language for communicating through our dreams.  Erica is of the opinion the Major Transform dreaming capabilities are similar to radio.”

“In part,” Zielinski said.  “That can’t be all, though.”  Zielinski was convinced
the dream vision capabilities of the Major Transforms had a strong chemical component, though he had a hard time reconciling chemistry with the long distance characteristics of dreaming visions.  Other, more esoteric components also likely contributed.

“I wondered.  In any event, I can guide my dreams and
learn things.  Even concerning normals like yourself.”

“How?” 
Transform capabilities of this nature shouldn’t interact with normals at all.

“Well, through your interactions with Transforms.  You have Transform friends who are looking out for you.  Tell me what has been happening to you, Hank.  Why are you showing up in my dreams?”

Zielinski outlined the events of the last year and a half of his life: aiding Carol Hancock, jousting with the FBI and losing, the assassination attempt on his life involving an injection of bad juice, the subsequent loss of his medical license and his research position, his divorce, his stint as an itinerant doctor, and his trip to visit Eissler.  “Before I left to visit Erica I received a warning, stating this visit would hazard my life.  My guess is the first Focuses in the States want me dead, though I don’t understand why.  Why are they so afraid of Erica and her information?”

“I don’t understand the fears of the American first Focuses, save that they are strong,” Annie said.  “They are waiting for your arrival to do you harm.  That is why I called you here.”

“So what can I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“My researching days are over.  I need to find Arm Hancock and offer up my services as her doctor and advisor,” he said.  “From what I’ve seen of young Arms, she’s going to need my help.”

Annie shook her head.  “You would not survive.”

“It’s dangerous, but…”

“Two reasons,” she said.  “First, she has many powerful enemies, and if any of them found out about you, they’d kill you.  She’s not powerful enough yet to protect you.  Second, you’re arrogant beyond belief, stubborn and independent.  She’s too far along in her development for you to control, but not
powerful enough to rein you in.  She’ll kill you for just being
you
.”

He frowned, noticing some of the more subtle aspects of Annie’s reactions.  “You think she’s important in the greater scheme of things, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Annie said, with a ‘point proven’ smile.  “There isn’t another normal human on the planet who would have heard what I didn’t say.  Right now, if you pulled that trick or one of your
many
other tricks on Arm Hancock, she’d kill you, because she doesn’t yet have any other way of dealing with you.  Also, you already know she’s potentially an important player in the greater scheme of Transform life.  To find her way to her importance she needs to do it by herself, without your interference.  Stay away from her until she comes to get you.”

“I’m not sure I fully agree,” Zielinski said.  “For the short term, you’re probably right, though.”
He remembered his early interactions with Stacy Keaton, who hadn’t been too much older an Arm when he started to deal with her.  She had nearly killed him on far too many occasions.  “So, Annie, what is Carol’s importance?”

Annie’s face went blank.  “None of that, Hank,” she said.  “I’ve seen a danger, though. 
A competitor has arisen, one of the Beast Men, and he shares many of Arm Hancock’s strengths.  They have clashed, recently, with inconclusive results.  If you want something to think about, consider how bad it would be to live in a world where the Focuses were reduced to Beast Man slaves.”

“I don’t understand your point,” Zielinski said.  “What does this have to do with me?”  He wasn’t even sure she was making a point.  She
might have just been giving him information to work with, later.  Annie often viewed the world in an oracular manner.

Annie’s face stayed blank. 
“You have an offer to join Focus Rizzari’s household, yes?”

Zielinski nodded.

“Take her up on it.”

“That makes sense. 
Perhaps I could offer Focus Rizzari some grandfatherly advice about how to run a better household.”

Annie laughed and patted Zielinski on the leg.  “
You’re convinced your research days are over, but I think your research career is just starting.”  She looked away, paused, a frown slowly covering her face.  “I once thought my dreams showed me the future.  You convinced me they were showing the present, yet I understand now that what I can see of the present does give me hints about the future.  As it would give hints to anyone possessing the information I have available to me.”  It sounded like he was going to get an explanation anyway.