All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (2 page)

“Then I’ll be letting you run in peace,” Snow said.  “I’m thinking conflict is coming to all of us, though, no matter which direction we choose to run.”

With that bit of half-expected snarky Crow psychological analysis, I ran off.  I heard Snow pedal off on his bicycle, the other direction. Thunder boomed above me.  Yup, drenched.

The encounter had been disquieting, but productive.  At least Snow hadn’t called me ‘the Commander’.  Perhaps that absurd problem would just go away, forgotten.

Hah.  Never would I be so lucky.

Gilgamesh: December 22, 1968 – December 24, 1968

Gilgamesh realized he was caught hook line and sinker when Carol gave him a motor home for Christmas.  “Perfect for a Crow, I’ll bet,” she said.  It was.  The damned thing took up so much space on the road that it was easy to drive – just stay in the right lane of the Interstate and follow the speed of traffic.  For once, everyone avoided
him
.  Crow heaven.

The gift also meant that Carol had figured out Crow psychology better than at least one Crow – himself – had managed.  Grumble grumble grumble.  He did get to tell Shadow all about it, again denying that he was enslaved, dominated, held prisoner, coerced or blackmailed.

The motor home had a second use, as well.  He could move his home whenever he got antsy.  Which was often.  Unlike the still-crazier-than-he-was Sky, Gilgamesh couldn’t live with Carol.  Or her people.  Or anyone else, to tell the truth.

The motor home, which he christened ‘Sumeria’, also solved the problem of how to get to Boston.  It got even easier when Carol offered to go with him, with her people.  Her entourage this time included her thuggish bed partner Raindorf, her military chief Tom Delacort, and the Good Doctor.  In addition, she managed to talk Midgard into coming along.  Gilgamesh wasn’t sure how, as neither of them were talking about whatever agreements had been made.  Midgard stuck to Gilgamesh like used chewing gum, radiating
fierce
, unwilling to talk to anyone but him, Carol and the Good Doctor.  Gilgamesh certainly couldn’t blame him for not wanting to talk to Raindorf, but Tom was a treasure, save when he and Zielinski, the Good Doctor, sparred for Carol’s attentions.

Gilgamesh ended up sharing the Sumeria driving duty with Carol.  Much to his surprise, Carol didn’t have any issues with the way he drove Sumeria.  She was on especially good behavior, about the best he had ever seen, all due to her success at taking down and turning Focus Biggioni.  He even got Carol to sing.  Her voice was nothing special, but she did know every Patsy Cline song and could passably mimic Cline’s voice.

They didn’t stop until they reached Boston, though as always he felt as if he needed to be going to Detroit, an urge he still didn’t understand.  He had called ahead and got Inferno, Focus Lori Rizzari’s household, to arrange a place for him to park Sumeria, in a commercial boat and RV lot barely within metasense range of the Inferno household.  A crew from Focus Ackerman’s household, Charade, ran a van out to pick them up and drop them off at Inferno.  After far too long in Houston, Gilgamesh had hoped for snow, but the weather didn’t cooperate.  Instead, the air drizzled a cold rainy mist, powered by a tight cold wind off the Atlantic.  Carol was annoyed at the weather, but she kept her visible ire in check.

The Inferno household hadn’t changed since he had last visited.  Terry Bishop welcomed them in, along with an adolescent kid, Parker Maybray, one of the omnipresent mob of teen Transforms who populated Lori’s household.

“First things first,” Terry said, as they gathered in the busy great room, a huge open space filled with almost a dozen people from Lori’s household, plus lots of chairs and couches set up in little conversation groupings.  “Everyone’s got to ogle the baby.”

So they all trooped over to the corner by the window, where Lori sat near Sky, nursing little Cloud.  Only a week old, a true newborn, with wide brown eyes and an astonishing shock of black hair almost two inches long standing out straight from her head.  The infant lost interest in her nursing with the excitement, and stared round at them all.

Crazy Lori.  She had refused to go to a hospital to have the kid.  She leaned on her local doctor to be present at the delivery, and that was all the help Focus Rizzari needed.  She just said, “Okay, the baby’s ready,” induced labor on herself, and four relatively painless hours later, out popped the baby, perfectly healthy.  Lori had boasted that if worst came to worst, she would have performed a C-section on herself, the thought of which made Gilgamesh gag.

Lori stood up and adjusted her shirt, grinning proudly and holding her treasure so everyone could see.  The baby gurgled and waved her arms obligingly, and everyone cooed appropriately and told Lori how wonderful the baby was.  The Good Doctor took the baby to hold and surreptitiously check over, and Lori gave Carol a huge hug.  The hug did something subtle to Carol’s glow, but Gilgamesh couldn’t tell what.  Lori barely looked like she had just had a baby at all. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

“Congratulations,” Gilgamesh said, to Sky.  “You’re looking chipper, given the situation.”  ‘Situation’ was a code word for the Inferno household’s latest antics with Sky.  In their opinion Sky’s relationship with them had fallen into a rut, limited to sex, meditation lessons and ‘adventures’, roughly in order of relative occurrence.  They wanted him to be a real household member, so they had been pressing him.  Gilgamesh had even had to listen to Sky complain over the phone after he had been assigned basement clean-up duty after one of his pranks.

“As are you,” Sky said.  “Travel normally puts you through the wringer.  And is that
Midgard
hiding behind you?”

“Yes,” Midgard whispered, still hiding.  “Tiamat gave Gilgamesh a motor home for Christmas.  He drives it with almost Arm-like confidence.  You’d have to see it to believe it.”

Sky’s eyes lit up.  “Oh ho!  What’s next, Gilgamesh, fighting with Arm-like confidence?”

Gilgamesh noticed the members of Lori’s household watching him and Sky uneasily.  He and Sky both had complicated relationships with Lori; although Cloud was Sky’s daughter, Sky and Lori had officially broken up.  Did the Inferno household members think the two Crows would fight?  Or push Lori about her personal life?

They didn’t understand Crows.

Ann Chiron, as usual, took notes.  Just what he had always wanted, to end up in a scholarly paper on Crow anthropology.  Gilgamesh shook his head in response to Sky.  “You have a beautiful child,” Gilgamesh said, ignoring Sky’s dig.

They exchanged short glares and Sky backed off, starting a conversation with one of the other Transforms.  Lori licked her lips and shook her head.  Gilgamesh feared his small confrontation with Sky had looked about as silly as two squirrels hissing at each other.

“We’ve got a few hours before dinner,” Lori said, “and you’re just in time to hear our carolers.”  After a juice signal, the music started.

Carol Hancock: December 24, 1968

“Ma’am,” I said, bowing formally to Keaton.  Five foot two of muscle and mean, she was my boss.  She and her student Arm Amy Haggerty had showed up in Inferno just after dinner, and found me in the great room talking to Ann Chiron and Tim Egins, two of the Inferno household leaders and both mine.  Haggerty had her blank face on and I smelled the stress.  She had been around Transforms in number before, but never the Inferno Transforms, who considered Arms in a different light.  For some reason they liked us.  Even Keaton.  At least a little.

It all had to do with the Inferno household cause: promoting inter-Major Transform cooperation.  As a practical practitioner of the Cause, I was an Inferno favorite.  The fact their Focus, Lori, got gooey about me didn’t hurt, either.

“Hancock,” Keaton said.  “I heard a rumor you have something for me.”

I nodded and pulled my faux-dissertation on Arm control techniques out of my travel bag beside the sofa. All three hundred and twenty seven pages of it, not counting the ancillary documentation.  “I’m ready to go over this any time you’re ready.”

Keaton flipped through it and smiled.  “January 1
st
, in Detroit.”  She wanted time to read it and absorb it.  She glanced at the Inferno audience – Ann, Tim, and a half dozen others – who carefully listened without staring.  “I want to formally congratulate you for the work you did resolving the Biggioni situation.  You not only provided us with a new and important ally, but you also explained some of Tonya’s more troubling prior behaviors.”  Behaviors resulting from Focus Biggioni’s partial enslavement under first Focus Patterson’s tag.  “Good job.”

Her comment was for the audience.  And me.  Praise from my Arm boss was a wonderful thing.  As were Arm tags: without them, Keaton and I would be circling each other, verbally and physically, searching for advantages.  There are no Arm peers.  One must be dominant, and that was her, not me.  Which is why I valued her praise so much.  She didn’t give it out often.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

“On to business,” Keaton said.  “Student Arm Haggerty has a graduation presentation to make.  I’ve arranged it with Lori for later this evening, once the more mundane festivities are over.”  Keaton let me read her; she was proud of Haggerty, but she didn’t like the news Haggerty was about to present.

“Very well, ma’am,” I said.  I let my intentions flow through my mind, and Keaton gave me permission to carry them through.  I turned to Haggerty.

She tensed up, as she didn’t wear my tag.  A tag was a subtle change to her juice to mark her as mine, and it produced all sorts of nice side effects to allow two Arms to get along with each other in a comfortable dominance arrangement.  I wanted to tag her, and I thought I had the necessary bait.  “Student Haggerty, congratulations on your upcoming graduation.  From experience, I know you’re about to enter into the most hazardous part of your career.  I’d like to offer you some help, if you’d be willing to listen to the offer.”

“Ma’am,” Haggerty said.  Because of my years of experience I was dominant even without the tag.  Haggerty didn’t like the situation.  “May I ask that the offer be made in a less public location?”

She should have asked non-verbally.  I realized that although she was graduating, she still wasn’t able to read me at all.  I had no idea how an Arm could survive out in the cold cruel world with such a lack, but I trusted Keaton to have judged Haggerty ready based on her other talents.  For one, Haggerty’s fighting capabilities appeared to be much more advanced than mine had been when I graduated.  I suspected she had other compensating skills as well.

“Certainly.”  I signaled the Crows and led Haggerty outside, to the Inferno obstacle course area.  A private place in this weather, as anyone but a Major Transform had enough sense to stay inside.  Slow cold rain dripped from the monkey bars and turned the dirt around the tires to frigid mud.

Haggerty, clueless, crouched into a fighting stance once we were outside.  Keaton stayed back, giving me ‘this is what I have to put up with every day with this twit’ signals.

“I had a rough start to my career as an independent Arm,” I said, ignoring Haggerty’s crouch. “What saved me was an alliance I forged with Crow Gilgamesh.  I would like to introduce you to a Crow who is interested in allying with you, Student Haggerty.”

“Ma’am,” Haggerty said, standing up straight, now thinking quickly.  She made her decision and bowed to me.  “I thank you for this gift, and will accept the introduction.”  Clunky, from another of Keaton’s internal mental scripts, but it worked.  I was hoping to convince Haggerty to let me tag her, but there weren’t any protocols for this yet, so I was just feeling my way forward.

The Crows approached as a group: Sky, Gilgamesh, Midgard, and to my surprise, Sinclair.  They had responded to my signal and had been listening from the back porch.  I hadn’t known our most famous Crow author was involved, but I wasn’t shocked, either.  Sinclair, like Gilgamesh, had an amazing nose for ‘interesting’ and the curiosity to back it up.  He normally wasn’t happy about palling around with Arms and Focuses, but he was here and not overly skittish, even with Keaton observing.  At least she was on her best Crow behavior: the ‘quiet statue’.

I introduced the four Crows, who had stopped just outside skunking range, over by the climbing wall.  The Crow skunking weapon was instinctive when a Crow was startled, and unknown predators outside of a Crow’s association, such as Haggerty, were the entities most likely to trigger this instinct.  “The Crow Midgard wishes to make your acquaintance,” I said, my voice a Crow whisper.

Midgard was a tall black man with short-cropped hair; like Haggerty he dressed in black, primarily to aid in being unnoticed.  His quick dark eyes flickered nervously at Haggerty, but he managed to gather the nerve to step forward.  He was to Haggerty what Gilgamesh was to me, in that he had fallen in love with Haggerty’s metapresence and style.  Would he be able to stand Haggerty the person?  I had my doubts.  I found her insufferable at best.

“Ma’am,” he said.

“Crow,” Haggerty said.  She studied him for a moment and
changed
, almost as if she had switched from one personality to another.  “I have time for a short conversation, in private,” she said.  “Would you care to join me?”  I had never heard Haggerty speak this way before, almost unguarded.  Not a Crow whisper, but also not threatening.  She had
read
Midgard, and instantly knew he was someone she would be able to befriend.  Interesting.  She wasn’t totally head-blind.  As always, I was amazed at us Arms; none of the four Arms I had met, including the one who hadn’t lasted two weeks, were anything like any of the others.