All Beasts Together (The Commander) (19 page)

I have been doing some watching and thinking recently, and
uncovered several new puzzles.  Would you mind if I told you of them, and asked for your advice and help?

The first is on the subject of evil.  We know the Beast Men and the Arms are evil
, from direct observation.  I didn’t think of the younger Focuses as evil, but while watching the local Focus households, I noticed a sizeable fraction of them treat their household Transforms badly, often by punishing them through withholding juice.  Even the best Focuses are cruel on occasion, and the bad ones are horrifying.  The only conclusion I can come to is the Focuses are also evil.

So where does that leave Crows?  I always thought
us Crows were good people, good to each other and good to normals, or at least not harmful.  However, with three of the other forms of Major Transform evil, how did the Crows find a way to remain good and uncorrupted?  Are things going on that I don’t know about?  Or is my logic flawed?  Any help you could give me on this subject would be appreciated.

That’s not the only puzzle I’ve seen.  Why don’t Crows care about subjects that matter?  Back in Philadelphia, the five of us spent hours discussing Transform Sickness, its origins, why we are what we are, our problems with memories, all the basic mysteries of our existence.  Since then, I haven’t found a single other Crow
who is interested in those subjects.  They all want to discuss music, modern and classical art, architecture, literature, religion, philosophy, politics, science and, of course and at length, sports.  The more esoteric and irrelevant the subject, the better.  One Crow even wrote back to me ‘boring, boring, boring’ when I tried to bring this up in my letters.  Polaris told me to go look up nursery rhymes and fairy tales for the answers to my questions.  Why the disinterest?

Another puzzle is the Crow Sky.  He seems to me to be a Crow who does significant and dangerous things, and I admire him for
his efforts, but it seems I’m the only one.  Among the rest of the Crows he’s an object of ridicule.

None of this makes sense to me.  Please, Shadow, can you help?  If you can help me understand any of these puzzles, I’ll be profoundly grateful.

Sincerely,

Gilgamesh

Dear Gilgamesh,

I received your letter with your questions and I’d like to give you some important advice.  Some questions are not good to discuss in letters.  I’d like to recommend you avoid a number of subjects in your missives, especially such things as how many Crows there are and who was the first Crow.  Also, anything about Crows in other nations, names of Crows who look into their own abilities, what Crows can do with their Transform capabilities, and how Crows in general earn money.

I
understand your questions and I appreciate your concerns, but some subjects are best not brought up.  Stick to existential philosophy, semiotics, quantum physics, professional baseball and modern art, please.

Sincerely,

Shadow

Gilgamesh let the letter fall from his hands and sank down on his bed.  The implications of Shadow’s letter were terrifying, and every moment he thought about them, he
caught more implications and they were worse.  Don’t ask questions?  The shivering started, and he curled around himself in a ball.  What was so bad about his questions?  The answers, obviously, as were the answers to every question Shadow listed.

Oh, no, Crows weren’t the good guys.
Not at all.

Enkidu: November 30, 1967

Dearest Enkidu,

My friend, I have bad news to report: Hunter Odin failed in his attempt to negotiate with the Talking Arm.  The two of us were right in thinking the Arm isn’t interested in reason.

In other news, The Skinner (a common name for the mute Arm) has taken her reign of terror nationwide.  The secretive Arm hit assets of mine in the Great Plains and mountainous Northwest, and
killed one of my civilized Beast Men.  As of yet no one knows where she lairs, and she is now difficult to sense, essentially invisible to the senses when not moving.  Beware!

I trained
up a new civilized Beast Man, in an attempt to deal with our mutual problem.  This new Beast is more of a fighter than a hunter, and he will soon be ready for an attempt on the Talking Arm.  If you meet him, be kind and helpful.

Enkidu, you
r job is to continue what we talked about before – building up the size of your pack to the point where you have so much extra juice you can quickly change your shape.  We need to learn the limits of this, as well as what forms you can take to enhance your capabilities.  Recruit only to the south and east of where you are.

Be well.

Master Wandering Shade

Henry Zielinski: December 3, 1967

“Hell, Doc, I’m not sure how anyone is going to believe the old disease theory of Transform Sickness once your Transform training methods hit the public,” Jim said.  Hank took a sip of Bob’s Barn’s excuse for coffee, which they claimed was much better when aged several days.  By comparison, this stuff was fresh, made only yesterday.  He repressed a grimace.

He wanted to shout “What Transform training methods?”, but didn’t.  They believed in him, despite his lack of results.  He
had observed the training techniques already used in Inferno and tested the Inferno Transforms for six weeks.  He had collated his results and run the statistics, amazed at what he found: if he could crack the secret, his results implied he would be able to create a training regimen able to compress five years of off and on training into a week or two.  He had seen hints he might be able to take the training enhancements even farther.

Unfortunately,
he didn’t know much about
training
anyone except the naturally fast-learning Arms.  From what he had learned so far, Transforms trained the same way as normals, taking years of intense training to develop bodyguards as capable as what Inferno already had.  Theories and statistics fell short of useful, though.  He needed hard results.  The Focus’s occasional hot glares had become quite worrisome.

His other problems also nagged for attention
.  The rigid structure of Inferno grated on him; he wasn’t used to being so constrained in his actions, and he didn’t at all appreciate the households’ no-alcohol stance.  Also, despite his extensive experience, he had somehow become disconnected from Lori, Ann, Tim and Connie.  He couldn’t even guess what was going on, politically or otherwise, in the Transform community, except for the fact that something important was distracting the Focus from her normal interest in his research.

He found th
e isolation strange.  They had been open to his advice and speculations when he had been an independent outsider, but no longer.

At least he
lived in an interesting household subgroup, the engineering crew.  Their boss, Dr. Robert Masterson, was talented enough to be teaching in a university somewhere.  Dr. Bob (his nickname) had volunteered to live in the household for the cause.  His crew had taken over the ground floor of the barn a year and a half ago, and Bob’s Barn was one of the more amazing engineering workshops Zielinski had ever encountered.  Dr. Bob and Tina Williams churned out an average of one patent a month in the field of engineering lab equipment, which they sold to engineering firms and government labs on a regular basis.  Most of the proceeds went to the household, and they used the remainder to purchase more equipment.

“
You think it might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?” Hank said.  He had wondered the same ever since Keaton started showing the world her true mature Arm capabilities.  He put his camera down, pleased with the pictures he had taken, and grabbed a cream filled chocolate glazed milk-free doughnut, an Inferno house special.  Hank had no idea how they managed stable non-dairy cream that didn’t taste like chalk.  He wasn’t about to ask.  The answer might induce a transformation.

Hank
sat in a corner of Bob’s barn, away from the ruckus surrounding an experimental cloud chamber’s leaky cryogenics.  With him were Jim Simpson, Forrest Darcy, and the normal kid, Einstein, who in the last month had attached himself to Hank whenever the kid had any free time.  Einstein was one smart thirteen year old and a non-Transform who had grown old enough and smart enough to realize how bad things would get in another ten to fifteen years.  He wanted reassurance, in the form of attention from any sympathetic adult.  They sat in old vinyl chairs around a stained formica table, except for Einstein, who claimed the broken recliner.  It sat neglected by the coffee pot, stuffing and the occasional spring protruding through the faded fabric, with the footrest permanently half-extended.  Einstein lounged cross-wise, with his gangly legs hanging over one arm.

“Yeah,” Jim said.  “
People can ignore the Major Transform capabilities because there are so few Major Transforms.  There’s thousands of Transforms.  If a bunch of us start turning into Supermen, Doc, people won’t be able to ignore us.”

“Never underestimate the resilience of a false idea once learned,” Hank said.  The American public was quite capable of holding on
to utterly nonsensical beliefs for quite a long time after the scientific community had debunked or discarded them.

“So, Doc, do you think you doctors will ever give up the disease theory?”  Einstein said.  “I’ve read the Focus’s dissertation and her other papers on Transform biochemistry.  They pretty much show the medical explanation of the Transform Sickness is false.”

“How so?” Forrest asked.

“Uh,” Einstein said, turning red.  “It’s obvious?  Sorry.  I can barely follow the biochemistry when I’m reading it.”

They all turned to Hank.  He smiled.  “These days, I don’t put much credence in any of the theories.”

“
So how does the Focus’s research invalidate the disease theory?” Jim asked Zielinski.

“Well, for Transforms,
she says juice isn’t the important substance, but, instead, the trace chemicals in the juice,” he said.  “There are, apparently, hundreds of them, at a minimum, and she identified quite a few of them as likely pheromones.”

The Focus.  Even he was thinking of Lori as ‘the Focus’ these days.  Embarrassing but necessary
; Inferno was an abnormal Transform household, one where the household members ran themselves and their lives.  The Focus controlled her household indirectly, as she had the responsibility for recruiting people to join the household and letting them loose when they burned out.

“Uh, so?” Jim said.

“A disease might cause a body to produce one new important chemical to interact with someone’s biochemistry and mind,” Zielinski said.  “Perhaps even a small number of important chemicals.  Transform Sickness produces hundreds of important chemicals, many of which are new pheromones, far beyond the capabilities of a disease.”

“What’s a pheromone, exactly?  Why
can’t a disease produce many pheromones?”  Forrest said.  He winced as something metal crashed to the floor behind him, then rolled in circles and fell over, with a distinctive wah-wah-wah-koing sound.

“A pheromone is a chemical secreted by an animal for signaling purposes, such as attracting the opposite sex or marking the edges of territories.  Although they haven’t been identified,
researchers believe normal humans produce several varieties of pheromones.  Transforms use and produce over a dozen, all easy to find.”  And at times smell.  “All pheromones need receptors to work.  One, perhaps, might be possible for a disease to take over – but not many.”

“How in the hell did Transforms end up with so many pheromones, then?  That sounds insane,” Einstein said.  He fidgeted with a super-ball, doing a three cornered bounce off an upended wooden pallet.

“I reacted the same way, initially,” Hank said.  “However, I’ve looked over the Focus’s research and I don’t see any holes.  The only way so many pheromones could develop is through time and evolution, which leads to your mother’s and the Focus’s myth theory.”  Ann Chiron, the co-author of the myth theory with Lori, was Einstein’s mother.  They believed, without hard evidence, that Transform Sickness had appeared before.

The other three didn’t say a thing, prompting Hank to continue with his lecture.  “The reason Transform Sickness is so dangerous is
because these extra pheromones have somehow – and we don’t know how, yet – become tied into basic Transform metabolism, not just signaling.  We do know all Transforms withstand stress better, and withstanding stress better is very beneficial in bad times.”  He suspected stress involvement in triggering the increased training speeds, but so far he had struck out with his uses of stress.  “What seems to be a deadly disease in a non-stressful situation becomes a beneficial disease in a highly stressful situation, such as a nasty multi-generation drought.  When the stress is over, the survivors, the better Transforms, including Major, go on to repopulate the area.  Non-Transforms only come back in numbers after the area has been repopulated, and force out the Transforms.”

“Is this testable?” Jim said.  “Scientifically?”

Einstein looked smug.  He had probably heard his mother and the Focus talking about this particular little problem for months.