All Beasts Together (The Commander) (12 page)

“
A bad time is coming, Hank, especially for the Transforms in the States.  Some of the older Transforms who hold the power in their hands are unhappy with what the younger Transforms are doing and are taking steps.  I fear a general conflict among the Transforms is inevitable, probably across generational boundaries.  Somehow, Arm Hancock has become the center of the conflict, as has this as yet unnamed Beast Man.  You’re caught up in it as well, as is Focus Rizzari, as are many others.  You and Lori need to work together and pool your talents.”

“I’m not going to be able to retire?  That’s a shame,” Zielinski said.  He
didn’t see any way to avoid retiring.  He was no longer a professor, no longer a researcher, no longer a doctor, no longer even a full-fledged member of the Network.  Even worse, he would no longer be able to work with newly transformed Arms, his true calling.  The government would likely kill any newly transformed Arms they found now, either in cold blood, or, worse, by allowing them to go into withdrawal and die.  They were making a huge mistake, but he had lost the last few government contacts who would even listen to him on the subject.

“You underestimate your importance
, Hank, as a researcher,” Annie said.  “I don’t think things are as grim for you as you fear.  If you can avoid being assassinated, of course.”

Annie then explained how she
had found a way for Zielinski to get to Boston: as a back-up truck driver on a big rig.  She had already arranged it, down to the clothes he was supposed to wear.  “You’ll be meeting up with Jean-Pierre Laurent.”  Zielinski just shook his head in amazement.  Anne-Marie Sieurs, the oldest surviving Focus on Earth, the discoverer of how to move juice, had always been a most amazing person.  “Spend a few days here.  Let me help you.  I have an idea I would like to try out.”

Henry Zielinski had a bad feeling about that last part.

Sky: October 16, 1967

In his long association with Anne-Marie, he had been amazed how successfully she killed three birds with one stone.  The big rig itself represented one bird, its contents supposedly wine casks from France, going to Kentucky.  Hidden in several of them were…well, Sky wasn’t sure, but they were metal and looked like weapons.  Some other operation would pick them up in Kentucky.  His job was to drop them off in Boston, one pass through customs and a simple 400 kilometer haul.  That made him a smuggler.  Not for the first time, either.

He himself
the Crow made the second bird, on a mission Anne-Marie had arm-twisted into undertaking.  Anne-Marie said he should be able to figure out the next step by himself if he played truck driver for a while.  Anne-Marie had somehow gotten hold of his real passport and a valid driver’s license, in his real name.  Typical.  Luckily, he had enough years as a Crow he didn’t panic around normals, and he could drive an eighteen wheeler.  Truck driver was only one of the many odd jobs he had held over the years to keep money in his pockets.  Rather illegal, but his existence was rather illegal.  The government preferred to remain ignorant of the existence of Crows.  Too much of a hassle.

Bird three was h
is passenger, a Mr. Paul Langdoc.  Riiight.  A fiftyish gentleman who spoke like a poofy French academic yet dressed in a red checked long sleeve shirt and grubby khaki pants.  He was no more a real backup truck driver than he was a Focus.  Not an ordinary normal, this Paul Langdoc.  To Sky’s metasense, Langdoc had spent far too much time around the wrong sorts of Transforms.

“So, Paul, why are you going to visit the Foyer Rizzari?”  Foyer
meant Focus in French, one of Anne-Marie’s devious puns, as she had thought up the name herself.  Technically, it meant ‘focus’, as in lens, as well as the entry-room of a house.

“You know this?” Mr. Paul Langdoc said. 
He shrugged. “I’m acting as a courier, delivering some information from Europe.”

Sky chuckled. 
Ahead of him, traffic slowed as they approached the border.  “I understand, Mr. Langdoc, quite well.  There are things we need to not let certain American Foyers learn, eh?  The less they know, the better.”

“True.”

Sky wondered how much this Mr. Langdoc knew.  What linked him and Anne-Marie.  What name he called her.  Sky’s disguise should be able to fool most anyone, but this Mr. Langdoc seemed rather more interested in him than was healthy.  Sky suspected his partner in crime at least noticed Sky wore a disguise.

This did warm Sky’s heart, because
the disguise he wore was the way he had appeared before his transformation.  Complete with his scraggly old beard.  Sky also had the odd sensation he had run into Mr. Langdoc before but couldn’t remember when or where.

“I too need to make discrete contact with Foyer Rizzari or her household, but I haven’t come up with a good method,” Sky said
as he pulled the rumbling truck to a ponderous stop.  Four trucks waited ahead of him in the customs line.  “Do you have any ideas?”

Mr. Langdoc thought, likely wondering how much to trust him.  “May I ask who you’re representing?” Mr. Langdoc asked.
  He perched awkwardly on the vinyl bench seat of the truck, as out of place as a tropical parrot in a Toronto winter.

“I cannot, alas, divulge that information.  However, I am working through Mm. Foyer Madonna de Montreal.”  Anne-Marie’s current public working name.

“Did you try writing or phoning?” Mr. Langdoc said.

Anne-Marie’s name was good enough, it seemed.  “Not discrete enough.  Nor can I approach Foyer Rizzari’s place of residence.”

“The Foyer Rizzari teaches at Boston College and keeps an office as well, in Higgins Hall.”

“I may
need to use that approach, although I am deathly afraid even such an approach would not be sufficiently discrete,” Sky said.  Another truck pulled in behind Sky with a scream of bad brakes.  Sky inched his truck forward as the line moved.  The stench of diesel exhaust and the chuff and rumble of the big rigs drifted in through the cracked window.

Mr. Langdoc laughed.  “I’ve got one for you, then, if you’re feeling chancy.  Several members of the household, including Foyer Rizzari herself,
recently became interested in a medievalist fad.  The Boston area medievalists are holding their first tournament at the end of October, a celebration of All Souls Day or something equivalent and pagan.  In any case, many in the Rizzari household, including the Foyer, have been planning to attend for months.”

“Now that sounds interesting,” Sky said.  “Thank you very much.”  He continued to chat with Mr. Langdoc on the particulars of this medievalist tournament as their truck idled through American customs.  As usual, Anne-Marie was correct in her assessment.  This was exactly what he had been looking for.

Gilgamesh: October 17, 1967

Gilgamesh blinked.  He thought he had seen about everything, but this was different.  A Crow was driving a tractor-trailer rig, a full-sized eighteen-wheeler, into a trucking warehouse in south Boston.  Not one of the Boston Crows, either.  Someone new.

Gilgamesh couldn’t resist.

He trotted out of Columbia Park, where he had been hiding, observing, and hunting for signs of Tiamat.  He had tried to work up enough nerve to visit Occum and his Beast Men earlier today, but failed, because of the Beast Men.  Courage enough to chase down the new Crow might make him feel a little less like a complete wimp.

Or so he hoped. 
He ran up Old Columbia to Dorchester, and trotted right on Broadway.  The new Crow spotted him and gave him a friendly wave.  This had to be an older Crow, though what an older Crow was doing not masking himself from twerps like him, Gilgamesh couldn’t fathom.

The other Crow left his tractor trailer in the trucking warehouse and briskly walked south
before turning southeast through a working-class Irish community into what turned out to be Independence Square Park.  Gilgamesh slowed to a walk as the other Crow settled on a park bench.  Gilgamesh approached within whispering distance, not at all minding the sea breeze blowing in.  Storm coming tomorrow, an early season nor’easter.  Perfect mid-October weather.  Low clouds drifted in overhead, lit on their undersides by the lights of the port area nearby.  He rounded the last building, a corner grocery, and spotted the Crow, a powerfully built short man.

“Gilgamesh,” he said.

“Sky.”

Gulp.  Sky was one of his correspondents, or had been, before Gilgamesh started out on his journey to find Tiamat.

Sky the adventurous Crow.  The Crow many other Crows thought Gilgamesh most resembled.

“What brings you here, Gilgamesh?  I thought you were still recovering with Shadow.  Come on over.  I have some dinner.”  Sky
spoke with a French accent, elegant and distinguished.

Crows normally didn’t share food
with strange Crows, but Sky’s breach of etiquette didn’t surprise Gilgamesh.  Sky’s reputation preceded him, and more, he lived in Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City, or at least he maintained post office boxes in each of those cities.  Foreign.  Disquieting.

On the other hand, Gilgamesh decided he could use some real food.

“Thanks.”  Gilgamesh sat down on the other side of the bench.  Sky passed over a bag of apples, bananas, raw yams, carrots, and some other root vegetable Gilgamesh couldn’t identify.  “I’ve decided to try and hunt down Tiamat.”

“The baby Arm?  Whatever for?  Arm dross?”

“Yes.  It helps me think.”

Sky frowned.  “Too much moving around, Gilgamesh.  Find a decent Focus, rest, take her household dross, and you won’t lack.”

“I seem to need more than a single Focus household can provide.”

“Oh.”  Sky looked Gilgamesh over, hmm-ing and haw-ing.  “You’re one of those.  Your metasense is overpowered.  You need to learn to control it, force
the cost down, or you’ll run dry of juice constantly.”

Gilgamesh scratched his head.

Sky laughed. “Sorry.  When I was your age as a Transform I had similar issues.  Of course, I was a pet of an Arm at the time.  You need to watch out for that.  We’re not Arm prey, but Arms are attracted to us like five year old boys are attracted to puppies.  They can’t resist us, and the boy may not be what’s best for the puppy.  I suppose the personality of the Arm makes all the difference.  I’d hate to be Stacy Keaton’s pet.  Painful.  Hancock?  Well, from what I’ve seen, she looks a bit, um, temperamental.  She might benefit from having a Crow pet.  She’s smart, too, and in a Major Transform, smart can be dangerous.  Luckily, no one has ever called me a genius, eh?”

“Uh?”  Gilgamesh said.  Sky was a strange bird, chattering away
with a pronounced Canadian accent and not making a lot of sense.  Pet of an Arm?  “I’m not sure I ever want Tiamat to know I exist.  She’s intimidating enough as it is.”

“Hah!  Help her hunt, warm her bed, help her work through her head problems.  She won’t be as intimidating then,” Sky said.  “The downside is until she gets older, your Tiamat isn
’t going to be willing to give you up or let you go.  Arms are possessive.”

“You talk like this sort of arrangement can be done rationally?”

“But of course, young Gilgamesh.  We are Crows, are we not?  Powerful, the most powerful of all the Major Transform variants.  Sane, wise and confident.”

Sky lived in a different world than Gilgamesh.  “Panicked, poor and physically weak,” Gilgamesh answered.

“Everything has its downside.  Panic is good, Gilgamesh.  It keeps you alive.  Meditate, obviously, but override your panic only when you have a logical reason to.  Never otherwise.  Poor?  That’s good as well.  We’re not tied to possessions, our needs are easily satisfied, and the elements don’t bother us.  We can move if and when we need.  Physically weak?  There’s a lesson you can learn from the Arms on that subject, my friend.  Crows can train themselves to be as physically talented as any of the other Major Transforms.  Not that we’re going to deck our opponents with our fisticuffs, but we do have our strengths.”

He thought meditation was obvious?  “Name one,” Gilgamesh said.

Sky jumped.  Before Gilgamesh could reorient his metasense, Sky was a half mile away.  Then he returned, leaping down from a nearby oak tree, creating his trademark starry image artwork above the two of them.  “How about that?”

Gilgamesh found himself backing away from Sky.  He took a deep breath, and forced himself to walk back to the bench.  “
That’s – ah – disconcerting.  You think I should practice my running and leaping like an Arm practices combat?”

“Yes
, but only when you’re full up on dross.  Never let your internal juice supply get too low.”

Gilgamesh nodded.  “I hate it when that happens.  It makes me dim.” 
He closed his eyes and thought.  “You know where Tiamat is, don’t you?  All I know for certain is that she wandered through Boston a few weeks ago.”

“You’re pretty sharp yourself, aren’t you, youngster.  Yes, I suspect I do know where she is.  You do too, if you have any of your Crow correspondence with you.  Look for a major city where the Crows suddenly moved out.  That’s where your Arm is.”

Uh oh.  Cold fear sweat covered Gilgamesh.  Sky had indeed given him enough information.  “Chicago.”

Sky nodded.  “Why do you fear Chicago so, Gilgamesh?”