All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (3 page)

“I would love to,” Midgard said.  The two headed off together toward the cabana, not exactly arm in arm but within each other’s personal space.  As far as I knew, Midgard had never been alone with any other Arm before this.

I decided to wait until later on the tag.

“Crow Sinclair,” Keaton said.  She stood quietly, by the door back into the Inferno mansion.  She didn’t do whispers, but she had her ‘tolerant, dealing with Transforms’ persona on.  Sinclair backed up a step, wary.  “We’ve never met, but I’ve heard a great deal about you.  I’ve exchanged several testy messages with a Crow in Detroit named Watchmaker, and I was wondering if you would be interested in talking to me about him.”

She had tried to buttonhole Gilgamesh on the subject and gotten nowhere.  Well, not ‘nowhere’, but she got nothing more than a growl of disgust and a comment about impossible Crows who were silly enough to think they had to point firearms at other Crows to get them to behave.

“I would be glad to do that, ma’am,” Sinclair said.  He didn’t appear happy in the slightest, but we were all allies here.  I hoped he wasn’t too flustered to remember to get something out of my boss.  If he did remember, I would probably be stuck having to cough up the payment.  Again.

Henry Zielinski: December 24, 1968

To his amazement, Inferno had converted the basement television room into a formal meeting-space just for them, with abundant well-used chairs arranged in a loose semi-circle facing a small table.  The Inferno basement was a huge place, and if he had been in charge, he would have held this meeting in the fallout shelter, or perhaps Lori’s morgue laboratory.  Although recently cleaned, the television room still smelled like old pizza and spilled Pepsi, with ratty second-hand furniture and piles of overstuffed pillows in the corners; the place was primarily a hangout for the Inferno teens, often with the door locked for private activities.  The non-Arm attendees included Lori, the Crows Sky, Gilgamesh, Midgard, Sinclair, plus Connie Yerizarian and himself.

He was extremely happy to get this invitation from Stacy, Arm Keaton.  Arms were his life, and as Haggerty was about to graduate and go off on her own, he valued the opportunity to study her.  She was tall, leggy, basketball-player muscular and Focus beautiful, nothing like any of the other Arms.  She was also intense and extremely intelligent, and faced the world with a social awkwardness common to many a young university student of similar intensity and intellect.

Haggerty set up an easel to the left of the table and started her talk.  “As my graduation exercise, I was tasked to solve the mystery of an unknown variety of Major Transform who Ma’am Keaton metasensed in late ’64.  They are Focuses, but Focuses without households and household juice buffers.  There are at least five of them.  I find my discoveries to be disquieting at an instinctive level.”

Hank’s eyes widened and he leaned forward as the stone-faced Haggerty told her story.  The tale itself was amazing, involving Haggerty sneaking into the abandoned salt mine lair of these no-household Focuses, rifling their records and escaping unharmed.  The salt mine Focuses excelled at hand-to-hand combat, manipulated juice in a non-standard fashion, and possessed various non-standard methods of increasing their juice production.  They had excellent Focus charisma, which they bent toward recruiting normals, not influencing other Transforms. More interesting to him was the way Haggerty told her tale: as an adventure, with herself as the do-gooder hero at the story’s center.  Haggerty was a different Arm than Hancock and Keaton.  He caught Keaton’s resigned annoyance; she hadn’t been able to beat this non-Arm-like attitude out of Haggerty.  Hank suspected she had tried.

“According to their records, these no-household Focuses have been selectively recruited from Clinics across the country at the rate of one a year, starting in ’64.  The one Ma’am Keaton sensed in ’64 was new at her trade; the reason why the others have not been sensed is, I believe, because they’ve gotten better at masking their metapresence.  I found them quite difficult to metasense, even when I was looking at them.  They too have a master, referred to in their records as ‘the Teacher’.  Who this Teacher is, I wasn’t able to discover.  In addition, and much to my surprise, two of these no-household Focuses and their troops had a near-fatal encounter with a Hunter and his pack in Gary, Indiana, on November 12
th
of last year.  According to their records, a different member of their group had learned by unknown means about Ma’am Hancock’s espionage mission against the Hunters.  They as a group decided to interfere, along with their troops, with a goal of disabling Ma’am Hancock’s vehicles before they reached their targets.  The implication I took from this is that these no-household Focuses can hide themselves from Arms and Crows, and know they can, but that they cannot hide from Chimeras, and didn’t know they couldn’t.”

Hank glanced over at Carol, who as he expected looked most annoyed.

After Haggerty finished the talk and opened it up for questioning, there were the usual Arm-rude questions about the details and inane digressions that often ended up as subtle digs at Carol by Keaton, and vice versa.  He took notes, not tremendously interested, instead watching the audience.  Carol was eating this up, as was Connie Yerizarian, Inferno’s household boss, but the Crows had lost interest early on and spent the time signaling and speaking voicelessly with each other.  If he read their expressions correctly, they were telling dead Focus jokes.

“There’s one thing I didn’t follow,” Lori said, about twenty minutes into the questioning.  “Why did the salt mine Focus that, um, Ma’am Keaton metasensed metasense differently enough to fool her into thinking she was a different form of Major Transform?  I’ve metasensed several new Focuses and they didn’t metasense differently, nor do Focuses who temporarily lose their household juice buffer due to one accident or another.”

“There is no definitive answer to that question,” Haggerty said.  She turned toward Stacy.  “Ma’am?”

“Go ahead and speculate,” Keaton said, waving her hand in the air.

Haggerty reached into her materials box and dragged out a presentation board from the bottom of the stack.  Hank read it and sat up straight, as this built on some work he and Gilgamesh had been doing.  Gilgamesh and Sinclair noticed and sat up straight, as well.  Sky and Midgard continued with the dead Focus jokes, oblivious to the radical theory Haggerty had so casually set on her easel.

“These no-household Focuses manipulate juice differently and they experience the world differently,” Haggerty said.  “I’ve put together a theory Ma’am Keaton terms a working hypothesis.  In my hypothesis, each of the Major Transform forms come in sixteen varieties, based on four affinity sets: instinctive versus overt juice/dross/élan manipulation, objectified versus personal juice/dross/élan stabilization, mystical versus rationalist thought processes, and charismatic thinking gestalt versus metasense thinking gestalt.  The ‘basic’ or ‘standard’ Major Transform uses all the right-side versions of these: overt, personal, rationalist and metasense.  These no-household Focuses are all instinctive, personal, rationalist and charismatic.”

“I’ve seen some of this before,” Lori said.  “For instance, Rogue Focus was also instinctive instead of overt.  I’d thought this was training based, though.”

“Cross training is possible, but what I’ve found are affinities, what comes easily for each Major Transform.  I suspect someone else figured this out, figured out that instinctive-juice-manipulating charismatic-thinking Focuses didn’t work out well as standard Focuses but are trainable in hand-to-hand combat and symbolic juice manipulation, without households.”

“Hank?” Carol said.  “Spill.”  She didn’t believe Haggerty’s work, but read his agreement.  She wanted to know why.

He took a deep breath.  “Gilgamesh and I identified the first three affinities, though we used somewhat different terminology.  However, we were only working with Crow abilities, and had no idea it might apply to other Major Transforms.”  Up until now, he thought he had discovered what made Crows so different from the other Major Transforms.  So much for his theory.  Phaaah.  “As one example, Occum uses instinctive symbolic dross manipulation.”  A Shaman, as opposed to Wizard, in Gilgamesh’s terminology. “Gilgamesh does objectified dross manipulation, and Crow Nameless does mystic instead of rationalist thinking.  From a Crow point of view.”

His comment elicited a nervous titter from the non-Crows.

“I’m puzzled by the charismatic versus metasense thinking gestalts,” Hank said.  “Do you have any examples of these, ma’am?”  If Haggerty was using Tonya as an example she was wrong, as Tonya’s reliance on charisma was based on Patterson’s orders, because of her now-vanished Patterson tag, not a native affinity.

“This one is trickier, because it’s easy to confuse with raw strength of charisma, which is one of several sliding variables I’ve found for describing Major Transforms,” Haggerty said.  “The best example I am familiar with is your boss, Ma’am Hancock.”

Carol didn’t look pleased with this observation.

“Oh, that’s why our Commander has a glow like an exploding supernova when she doesn’t shield,” Sky said.  “Her glow itself is charismatic.  That makes sense.  Lots of sense.”

Carol looked even less pleased.

Keaton snorted.  “I’m willing to buy the first three, but the fourth so-called affinity bothers me.  A lot.  It’s a minor difference at best.  I still don’t think it belongs with the others.”  They had argued this one before.  At length.

Haggerty ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.  “But it’s just as important,” she said.  “It’s a way of thinking about the world, about how your innate capabilities as a Major Transform influence how you build world-models in your mind.”

“Mystical garbage.”  Keaton, who Hank suspected fell into the mystical worldview, glowered.  Well, at least as mystical as possible for an Arm.

“No, actually, overly rationalist, ma’am,” Haggerty said.  “I will admit to being at times unclear if I’ve chosen the right words to describe this affinity, though.  Another way of looking at it is people-oriented versus process-oriented, but this introduces complications due to the innate differences between Major Transforms…”

Stacy waved her hands, shutting Haggerty up.  “It’s a pointless digression,” she said.

Not true, Hank thought.  Nevertheless, it was something he needed to bring up later.  “You mentioned sliding variables, ma’am, which I’ve also studied,” he said.  “I don’t think I’ve identified all of them, though.”  Keaton sighed, leaned back in her chair and studied the ceiling.  She thought this digression too theoretical.  “Which ones have you identified?”

Haggerty smiled, the first real emotion she had shown in her presentation.  “Charismatic strength and durability.  I’m sure there are others as well.”

“Durability?” he said.  “There’s a real difference?”  Haggerty nodded.

“An important one,” she said.  “I suspect the first surviving members of any group of Major Transforms all have exceptional durability.  This is true for Ma’am Keaton and the oldest surviving Hunter, Enkidu.  I suspect this is also true for the Focuses and Crows, but I don’t have any data to back this up yet.”

“It’s true for the first Focuses,” Lori said.  “They’re all exceptionally tough, physically, although with Focuses you see it more with the ability to tolerate bad juice than with physique, but it’s all the same, based on my observations.”  She turned to Sky.  “I could say much the same about you.”

Sky shrugged.

“There’s a third important variable: metasense range,” Hank said.  “Another thing to note is that among Crows, instead of a single metasense range variable you have a set of independent variables, which isn’t true among the Arms and Focuses, whose metasense talents appear to be all dependent variables.  I think…”

“
Hank
,” Keaton said, glaring at him.  He shut up.  “Thank you.  You can tell us about this later.  In a report.  A con
cise
report.”  She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, moody, intolerant.  “Back to the real problem: who is the Teacher?  Is this Rogue Crow, or someone else?”

“Ma’am, if it’s Rogue Crow, then why did these no-household Focuses end up in a fight with what had to be Enkidu?” Haggerty said.  Another old well-chewed argument.

“Lack of coordination,” Keaton said.  “Rogue Crow sponsors at least three geographically different groups of Chimeras: the Hunters, Patriarchs and Mountain Men.  There have been fights between these groups in the past.  Why couldn’t he be also sponsoring a group of Focuses?  This is his style: hidden, metapresence masking, and non-standard.”

Hank licked his lips, ready to jump in, but Sky beat him to the punch.  “Did you sense any withdrawal scarring on these aberrant Focuses, ma’am?” Sky said, to Haggerty.

“Crow, I’m not familiar with withdrawal scarring of any variety.”

Sky pointed at Gilgamesh, who tapped one of his tennis balls on the floor in front of him.  Whatever he created Hank could not see.

“This is an illusion of Enkidu’s glow, what you call a metapresence,” Gilgamesh said.  “Here, and here,” he pointed at nothing, “are the W bands.  They mark the withdrawal scarring done by the Law.”

Haggerty studied the space in front of Gilgamesh.  “They had withdrawal scarring, then, but instead of metasensing as nodules and stripes, the scars appeared as small tangled knots.”

“So it could be Rogue Crow, but if it is he’s using a different trick than the Law on them,” Keaton said.