Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (16 page)

“Excellent!”  Lori smiled.  “It’s about time.  I’ll inform the Commander immediately.”

“Now, you know to be careful,” Polly said.  “No word of this to anyone outside of our little group.”

“Polly, we’ve been playing this game for years,” Tonya said.  “We understand secrecy.”

Dolores Sokolnik: September 17, 1972 – September 19, 1972

“Arm Bass, Arm Rayburn,” Del said, and bowed.

“Student Sokolnik,” Rayburn said.

Neither of the older Arms had ever acknowledged Del before.  Of course, she had been a functional Student Arm for only one month.  Her rapid progress, though, got her invited to various talks and meetings, including the humbling of Focus Biggioni.  Ma’am Billington, in her visit that had coincided with Focus Biggioni’s appearance, told Del that Ma’am Keaton often favored certain Student Arms in this way, and she had similarly honored Ma’am Billington.

Ma’am Keaton waved the other two Arms back in their seats.  Del knelt at Ma’am Keaton’s feet; although invited to these meetings, she didn’t rate a seat at the meticulously polished teak table.  The pattern the maneuvering generated among the tags everyone wore Del found quite interesting, in the quiet pools in her mind.

“Ma’am,” Bass said, talking to Ma’am Keaton.  “I put together a recommendation for your next move, as you requested.”

Keaton nodded, and speed-read the documentation.  After she finished, she passed the document to Rayburn.  When Rayburn finished, she passed it to Del.

Del read.  She couldn’t say much about the plan, as the plan’s details were based heavily on information Del didn’t know how to judge.  When she finished she put the plan on the table.

“Why the Barony of Fog?” Ma’am Keaton said.

“Their Crow Master, Whisper, is an imbecile,” Bass said.  “He alienates everyone he deals with except his enslaved Chimeras.  They are the least well put together of any of the so called Baronies, and thus the least hazardous for us to probe.”

“What’s the rationale for this?” Rayburn said.  Del controlled her body to blank her reactions when she realized she could read Rayburn, the number five Arm.  She expected an Arm as old as Rayburn to be better controlled.  By viewing Rayburn’s reflection in the quiet pools in her mind, Del realized Rayburn despised Bass.

“We’ve heard from Hancock how cute and pretty these so-called Noble households are,” Bass said.  “They go on quests and they fight in tournaments, tra lah lah.  In the battles since my graduation, they’ve fought out of our sight, with little success.  I believe the Nobles are significantly weaker than the Hunters.”

“Shall we compare the Nobles to the Hunters as they are now, or the Hunters as they were before the Clearing of Chicago?” Rayburn said.  Outwardly, she remained as poised and neutral as Ma’am Keaton.  Inwardly, she thought Bass’s idea idiotic.

Del let this wash from one quiet pool to the other.  Her instincts said to choose Rayburn over Bass, but she didn’t trust her instincts.  She would wait until she accumulated better data.  Just because Rayburn had been less cruel to her than Bass shouldn’t sway a decision of this importance.

“We won’t be able to distinguish such fine detail,” Bass said.  “All I’d like to show is that the Hunters are significantly stronger than the Nobles.  We should co-opt the Nobles, train them and use them in our opposition to the Hunters.”  As frontline cannon fodder.

“You think the Noble dependence on Crows is disynergistic?” Keaton asked.

Blank expressions from both Rayburn and Bass.  “One plus one is less than two,” Keaton continued.

“Yes,” Bass said.

“Let’s say we do this.  What sort of response might occur?” Keaton said.

“Baronies are joint Crow and Noble operations and are sponsored by Guru Shadow.  We would piss off both Shadow’s Crows and Nobles,” Rayburn said.  “Neither are currently annoyed at the Arms.  Quite unlike the situation when we probed Focus Schrum, who we knew to already be an enemy.”

“Whether they’re allies or enemies doesn’t matter!” Bass said, leaning forward and staring hotly at Rayburn.  Ma’am Keaton yanked on Bass’s tag to quiet her.  Bass sat down and took a deep breath.  Del found this disturbing.  Unlike Rayburn, she couldn’t read Bass, even when Bass openly displayed anger.

Less angry, Bass continued.  “The other Major Transform groups are our enemies, all of them.  We’re constrained not because they humbled us, but because we gave up and left our respective dominance positions undetermined.  Only the Hunters gave us proper battle, and only the Hunters earned my respect.”

“And only after you killed them,” Ma’am Keaton said.  Bass stiffened momentarily.  Del added ‘thin skinned’ to her mental list of Bass’s flaws.

“The Nobles deserve no respect, because they’re a Crow creation.  Without Crows, they wouldn’t exist.  I say we hit the Barony of Fog and make off with their usable Transforms.  Hit enough Baronies and they’ll surrender to us.”

Keaton turned to Rayburn.  “Flo?”

Rayburn stared straight ahead.  “I have no alternative proposal.  I just don’t think the time is right for such a probing attack.”

Keaton turned to Del.  “Del?”

A storm whipped across the quiet pools in Del’s mind, and then dissipated.  Del recognized the vanished emotion as what should be panic at contributing to such a high-level discussion.  “Ma’am?  I would like to clear up some facts, before I state any opinions.”

“Ask away.”

“The entity who sent the threat to reveal Ma’am Bass’s activities has been deduced to be a first Focus, not Crow Chevalier?”

Ma’ams Keaton and Rayburn nodded.  Ma’am Bass did not.

“Have you gotten any information contradicting the Crow notes regarding the origins of the anti-‘Arm Pet’ movement, ma’am?”  Also the first Focuses.

Keaton shook her head.

“From what I’ve read in your library, the ratio of information on Focuses to information on Chimeras runs about a thousand to one.  A similar ratio exists regarding information on the leading Focuses versus information regarding the leading Hunters and Nobles.  Am I correct?”

Ma’am Keaton nodded.

“Then my opinion is that a similar probing attack on the Nobles has a similar ratio concerning predictability of outcomes.”

“Too hazardous?”  Bass said.  “The whole point is to find out information, not…”

Ma’am Keaton shook her head.  “Don’t forget that when we find out information on those we attack, we also give them information about us and our capabilities.  We attacked Focus Schrum to test data we had acquired from other sources – a belief she was weaker than advertised – not to just gather information and exact vengeance.”

Bass didn’t answer, her face blank.

“I have a suggestion for an alternative plan,” Rayburn said.

“Let’s hear it.”

“We’ve already challenged the first Focuses, ma’am.  They’re not going to forget, and neither should we.  I think we should penetrate the organization of one of the weaker first Focuses.  We’ve probed militarily.  Let’s hit them another way.  I think their
organizations
are also weaker than advertised.  I base this on their overall poverty, which we’ve validated from several sources.”

“Well, then, write it up.  Find us a target, Flo.  We’ll jaw about it then.”

Bass’s gazed locked on to Del.  Although Del couldn’t read Bass, a sudden flux of fear washed through her.

Ma’am Bass’s notice wasn’t a good thing.

---

Bass pulled the intestines around Del’s neck tighter, again cutting off Del’s air.  Del finally spotted what she had been waiting for, the faint flickering of Ma’am Keaton’s presence at the edge of Del’s metasense range.  Against all her instincts, Del began to flood her lungs with her own blood.

Del regularly got tortured in Ma’am Keaton’s basement.  Ma’am Keaton had broken Del down here several times, and Ma’am Hancock once, attempting to torture Del’s voices out of her.

This session with Bass was worse.  She used pain far more effectively than the other Arms, much better at turning pain into forced juice use.  Del suspected she wouldn’t survive this session.

She played a dangerous game with Bass.  She could have kept screaming and not revealed her mastery over pain.  She could have kept silent, instead of making the comments that provoked Bass enough to cut Del’s tongue out.  Del’s tricks roiled her quiet pools, threatening to let loose the voices and undo Del’s progress.

Necessary risks.  Without the provocations, Bass would have quit torturing her long ago, leaving her in control, and with the implied right to torture Del whenever Bass desired.  These repeated torture sessions would have set back Del’s progress as a student Arm and opened Del up to Ma’am Keaton’s ire again, a likely fatal outcome.

Unfortunately, without outside help, Del would soon die.  If Bass cut Del’s throat, severed a femoral artery or did more brutal damage to Del, she would bleed to death.  She needed juice to regenerate blood, juice she no longer possessed.  However, if the blood sat safely in Del’s lungs…

The situational crux came when Ma’am Keaton entered Bass’s shorter metasense range.  Ma’am Keaton had planned to be away for four days, leaving Bass in charge of the Arm school.  Shock flushed Bass’s face at the surprise return of Ma’am Keaton, and with an angry slice of her knife, Bass did cut Del’s throat.  Fait accompli were difficult to argue with.

Ma’am Keaton floored the accelerator of her vehicle, ditched her ride outside the gate to her Los Angeles estate and started a running burn toward her own basement.  Bass hesitated for a moment, unsure what to make of the fact that Del’s blood didn’t bathe her from Del’s cut throat.  Bass reached for a longer knife, one suitable for beheading Del, and started the motion of the cut.  Del heard her inner voices for the first time in a month, as they began to overwhelm her quiet pools.  Not good.  Beheaded, she would need immediate help from Ma’am Keaton to survive, a hell of a gamble based on Del’s reading of Ma’am Keaton’s personality.  With her inner voices loosed, even Ma’am Keaton’s help wouldn’t be enough.  Del burned precious juice to steady her quiet pools and willed Ma’am Keaton to continue her burning run.

Ma’am Keaton did as Del hoped, catching Bass’s arm before Bass severed Del’s head.

Bass fell to her knees.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Keaton said, her face dark with anger.

Bass replied with one word.  “Punishment.”

“Maynard!”  Student Maynard skidded to a stop on her knees in front of Ma’am Keaton a moment after Ma’am Keaton’s roar.  Del had never heard Ma’am Keaton raise her voice before.

“Ma’am!”

“You called to report this.  Why?”

“Ma’am!” Student Maynard said.  “Student Sokolnik predicted Arm Bass would attempt to kill her while you were gone, Ma’am.  When Arm Bass began to torture Student Sokolnik just like she said…”

Bass roared and reached toward Student Maynard with her hand.  Student Maynard fell back, curled into a fetal ball, her heart racing faster and faster until it stopped.

Ma’am Keaton tapped her foot on the ground.  “I begin to see.”  She picked up the groveling Bass and tossed her across the room.

“No!  No!  I was within my rights to torture Sokolnik.  I’m not challenging…”

Ma’am Keaton hit Bass again, then lifted Bass and held her, her nose just inches from Ma’am Keaton’s.  “Your teaching privileges are revoked,” Ma’am Keaton said.  “Your visiting privileges in my territory are revoked.  From now on, you are only welcome here when I am here, personally, and only when I invite you.  Explicitly.  Each time.  What you did to Student Maynard was your mistake, not what you did to Student Sokolnik.  Now, give me your juice.”

“Ma’am, of course, I…”

Bass ceased her struggle and followed orders.  Ma’am Keaton drew Bass down to around ninety-six, and then put her hand on Bass’s forehead.  Bass stopped moving and fell into the blood and gore on the basement floor, paralyzed by something Ma’am Keaton did to her with the juice.

Ma’am Keaton stalked back to Del.

“Put your fucking blood back in your fucking bloodstream, student.”  Del obeyed, after first healing her cut throat.  Her efforts took her juice count down to near withdrawal.  While she did this Ma’am Keaton examined the gory remains of Del’s body, now strewn about the basement.  “I thought I was the only Arm who’d figured out the blood in the lungs trick,” Ma’am Keaton said, grumbling.  “Do you know what happened to your tongue?”

It’s under my left breast, next to the blowtorch,
Del thought.

Keaton kicked Bass out of the way, knocked aside the mangled remains of Del’s left breast and picked up Del’s severed tongue.  She stuck the tongue in Del’s mouth, and began to unhook the surgical apparatus keeping Del’s ruined jaw open.

“Let me sew this in place,” Ma’am Keaton said.  She finished in a moment.  “I can give you juice, but only if you don’t make any attempt to draw more than I give you.”  Del indicated assent with her eyes.  “Heal just the tongue, and nothing else.”

Del did as ordered.  The procedure was intensely unsettling, to give over so much control of her body to another Arm, even if the Arm was Ma’am Keaton.  She doubted a graduate Arm could tolerate the procedure.  Ma’am Keaton took Del up to a juice count of 110, some of which had to be from Ma’am Keaton personally.  Del felt both surprised and honored by this exceptional gift.