All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (17 page)

“Sure.  No problem,” she said.  By her count, she had agreed to his request three times already.  Either Whisper had memory problems or he just needed extensive reassurance.  “I know you can’t live here, but I talked it over with my people, and they decided that we could provide you with food.  We don’t know what else you lack, though.”

“Hmmph.”  Whisper paused.  “I’d hoped Gilgamesh would have gotten into this subject, but now that I think about it, I just realized that in his exalted position as an Arm’s partner, he hasn’t had to worry about living the real life of a Crow for quite a while.”

Arm’s
partner
?  Gail tried to visualize someone as skittish as a Crow partnering with someone as forward and rude as Arm Keaton, and couldn’t make the image work.  Whisper had to be mistaken, likely exaggerating how closely Gilgamesh worked with the Arms.

“All I know is that you live ‘out of town’, sir,” Gail said.

“Sir?  You honor me too much,” Whisper said.  “I don’t live in Detroit proper, but that’s beside the point.  I don’t live in a functional building.”

“No shelter?  That’s horrible.”

“You wouldn’t mind either, once you got used to it,” Whisper said.  He had a point; she had just taken a cold shower and hadn’t minded at all.  “Your Transforms wouldn’t enjoy my home, but they’d probably live; unfortunately, the normals in your household would die.  I enjoy my place most of the time, but I do have a room to hide in during the rain and snow.  Besides, I have Marla to keep me warm.  If I want to get warm.”

“What or who exactly is Marla, anyway?” Gail said.  Whisper often mentioned Marla in his letters; her household had a betting pool going on over what Marla was.  Kurt, doubling as house bookie, had ‘blanket’ giving even up odds.

“Gilgamesh didn’t explain this, either?  Kid’s far too young as a Crow,” Whisper said.  He continued muttering comments under his breath, none of which sounded friendly.  Gail made an encouraging noise to prompt Whisper, and he continued.  “Marla’s a Sweater.”

Damn.  John Bracken’s guess would win the pot, then.

“Well, if you need any more clothes, we can provide some.”

Whisper bubbled confusion.  “No, no, no, Focus Gail.  A Sweater is a type of Monster.  Marla’s my friend, or at least she is after I tamed her.  We look out for each other.”

Well.  Helen’s bet that the Crow was delusional would take the pot, then.  “I see,” Gail said.  “How about a little cash, then?”

“Cash?  I could use some cash.  Loose change, nothing big.  Don’t have a bank account, of course.”

Of course.

---

Focus Wendy Mann’s household lived in an older Hamtramck house, large enough for an extended family, but not a Focus household.  After they parked, Kurt and the day’s bodyguards escorted Gail and Sylvie up to the front door, where they rang the doorbell.  Wendy’s people let them in and escorted them to Wendy, who supervised the kitchen and looked hassled.

“There you are,” Wendy said.  “I thought that was you at the door.”

This was the first time Gail had been invited to Wendy’s place, and she didn’t like the tense and oppressive ambience.  She already knew Wendy followed Focus Adkins’ advice, becoming the household dictator.  Gail hadn’t realized this household would get under her skin so quickly.

“Hi,” Gail said, forcing out the politeness.  “You wanted to talk?”

Wendy nodded.  “Let me finish up here for a moment.”

Gail and her crew kept back as Wendy gave the kitchen crew detailed instructions for lunch and corrected one of the lunch crew, a woman Transform in her late twenties, who tried to fry boloney at too high a temperature.  The woman grew so flustered by her Focus’s attention the boloney ended up on the stove.

Wendy was a short and petite woman, with a long beakish nose and dark brown hair, nearly black, that turned from luxurious to lifeless about five inches from her head.  She was starting to develop the Focus accentuated good looks, but still had a few wrinkles; Wendy had been in her late thirties when she transformed.  Given the smattering of gray in her old pre-transformation hair, Gail guessed Wendy had several children as well.

Wendy led them off to the covered back porch of the house.  “Sorry about the mess,” she said, dumping newspapers off the old wicker furniture, “but this is the only place in the house quiet enough for me to think.”

Gail weighed a response as she sat, wondering about what it said about a Focus so bothered by her own cramped and crowded household.  “No problem.”  She repressed the urge to bark about Wendy’s Nazi ways.  Kurt, Sylvie, and the bodyguards stood, as did a couple of Wendy’s people.  No extra chairs.

“I’ve come up with some problems, and I’m wondering if you can help,” Wendy said.  Right down to business.  Good.  The shorter the time Gail had to stay here the better.

Gail bit back the socially expected ‘I’ll be glad to help’, which among Focuses probably wasn’t the right thing to say under any circumstances.  “What sort of problems?”  She did wonder what help she or her household might be able to give; Gail wasn’t a paragon of household organization, nor did her household roll in cash.  Much the opposite.

Wendy glanced around the porch.  “Is it okay to talk around your people about, well, strange things?”

“Yes.  Although if it would make you feel better, Gordon and John don’t need to be hovering here,” Gail said, indicating the two bodyguards.  Wendy looked relieved, so Gail sent them off, leaving her with Kurt and Sylvie.  “Sylvie’s my number two, and Kurt is her husband and my head of security.  Everything I know they know as well.”  Which was worth at least two snorts, perhaps three.  Any attempts to keep things from her still somewhat friendly old best friend, current Focus’s aide and fellow cub reporter, Sylvie, was futile, and Kurt was nearly as bad about being nosy.

“I see.” Wendy sat up straight, stiff and formal.  “Arm Keaton, who decided to befriend us and train us, thinks the household model my mentor provided me isn’t good enough, and she directed me to ask you for help.  She also told me she worked with you, but not in the same way.”  Pause.  “Arm Keaton isn’t chatty, so if I’m reading more into her words than she intended, I apologize.”

Gail sat back for a moment to think, parsing Wendy’s comments, which invited at least fifty questions.  However, the other Focus’s emotions, black and fearful, didn’t invite any questions at all.  Underneath Wendy’s surface emotions was one obvious question: ‘Why the hell did the Arm order me to try and learn anything from this crazy hippie chick?’

“First, I wouldn’t advise you to copy my household model,” Gail said.  “It’s too personal to my own personality and style.” Beat.  “Sylvie, it isn’t
that
funny.”  Sylvie tried to hold back her mental laughter but couldn’t; at least she kept her giggles inside.  Gail flickered her eyes back to Wendy.  “Can you tell me about your days?  How you spend your time?”  Gail had given household organization quite a bit of thought during her time as a Focus, and she had sent many of her questions and ideas on the subject past Tonya, who either feigned amazement over them or shot them down as utterly impractical.  Often at the same time.

“Sure,” Wendy said.  She gave Gail a detailed description of her day.  Gail winced.

“You’re not delegating at all, are you?”

Wendy shook her head.  “How can I delegate?  I can’t trust any of them.  Besides, Wini thinks it’s too early for me to be deviating from the basics.”

The problem emerges.  “I suspect Arm Keaton disagrees,” Gail said, gently prodding.

“I don’t think so,” Wendy said.  Unsure.  “She didn’t say anything specific.”

Yah.  “This is a test.  She wants you to figure this out.  Arms do that, from my limited experience.”  Goddamned Arm Keaton was one test after another, at least for Gail.

“But how can I delegate anything to this batch of fools?”  Wendy radiated exasperation.

“I have a question,” Gail said.  “How many kids did you have, before?”

“Four,” Wendy said, a low whisper.  This was part of her inner blackness; she had lost her children after her transformation.  Many Focuses did; this problem was one of the few reasons Gail was glad she transformed so young.  “The oldest, Mike, is eleven.”  Wendy looked ready to give up on the crazy hippie chick and start barking; she didn’t see the relevance of Gail’s question.

“All of us Focuses start out limited by our pre-transformation experiences,” Gail said.  “I was always the self-reliant one and didn’t know anything about taking care of people, which caused a few problems for my household early on.”  Kurt and Sylvie didn’t say a thing, thankfully.  “Your experience is with young children, who are notoriously difficult to delegate things to.”  Gail guessed Wendy’s style of mothering hadn’t leant itself to any delegation to her children; Gail’s obnoxious parents delegated far too much to her at an early age.  Although they had built up her self-reliance by doing so, her well-expressed self-reliance still caused quite a few problems.

Gail paused and tried to think like a dictator Focus stuck in Wendy’s position.  To her disgust, the solution came easily to her.  “You need to find someone smart and talented among your people, someone good enough to keep down a job if it wasn’t for the anti-Transform prejudice.  The person doesn’t have to be a man.  For you, the person has to be a Transform.  Give them a household responsibility, say kitchen management.  Watch them, don’t correct them, but do punish them when they make management mistakes and support them when they don’t.  Cut them slack at first about the mistakes their underlings make until they have the basics of management down, then do the punishment and support routine for the mistakes their underlings make until they master this, as well.”

“If they get good at kitchen management, won’t they try and take over the household?” Wendy said, parroting something Focus Adkins must have said to her.

“You want them to take over the household,” Gail said.  “That’s the goal.  What you don’t want them to do is take over
you
.  You have the juice on them.  If you’re firm, they won’t be able to, no matter how successful they are at managing the rest of the house.”

Sylvie’s face turned the brightest shade of red Gail had ever seen.  Gail reached over and took Sylvie’s hand.  “I could have done this.  I always knew how,” Gail said.  Sylvie nodded, slowly.  “All I have to do is think of how my bleeping father would do things and remember all the stories he told about car dealership politics.  But this isn’t right for me.”  Morally wrong and grotesquely evil, she didn’t say.  Gail didn’t have any problem giving advice to Wendy; Gail would rather see a well-run dictatorship than a badly run one any day.  Wendy appeared stretched so thin by shouldering all the responsibilities she had to be making her people miserable.  Thus, her tense household.

Wendy took a deep breath.  “But if they’re running the household, then they’re getting the prestige of doing so.  It’s not my household anymore.”

“Uh, no,” Gail said.  If Adkins gave Wendy this advice, she was either an idiot or giving bad advice on purpose.  “Sorry.  I learned all this as a kid.  If you’re the boss, and regularly and publicly boss around your number two, you’ll get the prestige as well.”  This was easy.  Just tell Wendy to do everything Gail had vowed she would never do.  “‘Honor and prestige are like car keys; you can always make more’,” Gail said, quoting her father, leaving off what followed: ‘but if you lose the only copy, you’re screwed’.  “Start small, with something you don’t like having to boss around.  You may have to go through several people before you find a number two you can trust to do a good job.”

Sylvie looked ready to punch something.  Gail gave her an eyebrow wiggle and eye twinkle; she knew that if she pulled anything similar with Sylvie, Sylvie would likely hector her own Focus to death.

“That might work,” Wendy said.  She sighed.  “Thanks.”

Wendy didn’t trust Gail at all, but Gail’s advice did make sense to her.  Gail suspected Wendy just didn’t understand how someone who knew all this would still do what Gail did with her household.  Or be a crazy young hippie chick.

“Now for the hard part,” Wendy said.  Gail tensed.  “Arm Keaton also ordered me to convince you to learn how to defend yourself.  And teach you, as well.”

Gail’s eyes bugged.  “What?”

“A Focus can defend herself as well as her bodyguards can defend her, once she learns how.  I know, this isn’t womanly at all, but, well, I did have an Arm holding me in the air and bouncing me off her index finger at the time.”  Pause.  “It was very convincing about the power of women.”

“Er, okay,” Gail said.  “Women.  Powerful.  Gotcha.”  She hadn’t expected to hear this bit of women’s lib cant from an old lady, in her late thirties and firmly on the other side of the generation gap.  She found herself liking Wendy for once.  “But what does this have to do with me?  I’ve never been in a fight in my life.  Nor do I want to.  I’m not exactly the dumb jock type.”  Perhaps this was too harsh, but Wendy nodded.

“Look at me; do you think I was?”  True.  Wendy had the bone structure of an underfed bird.  She sported a decent set of muscles these days, though.  “We’re Focuses, Major Transforms, and I was as surprised as you’ll be when I started to pick up this fighting stuff
quickly
.  As Arm Keaton said, this is a Major Transform trick essential for all Major Transforms.  This is even true a little for women Transforms; Arm Keaton insisted I have mine trained up as bodyguards.  At least the sturdy ones.”