Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (26 page)

“This was in the pipeline from before,” Hancock said, holding up a couple of acorn squashes to be split and seeded.  “You want to give me a hand with this?”

Tonya blinked.  “I don’t cook.”

“What, you’re above
cooking
now?”  Hancock gave Tonya the eye, and Tonya sighed.  She walked over to the cutting table and picked up another couple of squashes.

“Old habits,” Tonya said.  “Cooking is what housewives do, and there was a time when avoiding those stereotypes mattered a lot to me.  You don’t need to remind me how to take advantage of my Major Transform senses when cooking, either.”

“Good,” Hancock said.  Tonya split squash as Hancock sliced vegetables and mushrooms with an Arm’s speed and precision.  When Tonya finished the squash, Hancock pointed her at the roasts and baked potatoes, then gave her instructions for what to do with them.

“I’m not too worried about the information in the book,” Tonya said.  “The publisher has a bad reputation for not checking up on his authors’ veracity.  Besides, all the specifics are well out of date, and I don’t leave leads behind.  These breathless revelations are old news.”

“Well, if this doesn’t bother you, then it won’t bother me,” Hancock said.  The Arm was still giddy from the recent tagging, and Tonya eyed her suspiciously.

“Does Gail know how much danger she’s in from your breakthrough?” Tonya said, as she turned the ovens on to preheat.  “She’s going to catch Focus Council-member level heat over this, especially from the Crow-haters among the first Focuses.”  Adkins and Patterson likely didn’t care, but Schrum and Teas were going to explode and she couldn’t predict Fingleman’s reaction.

“Them, Chevalier’s Crows, the Nativists, the FBI’s Transform Task Force, the media, the old-guard researchers, and probably a few Major Transforms we don’t know about with agendas of their own.  If you can give Gail some pointers on how you Council FB’s manage to survive this sort of shit, she needs it.”

“I can do that,” Tonya said.  “What about Keaton?”

Hancock snorted.  “This is what Keaton’s been demanding for years: leverage on the Focuses.  The new household paradigm doesn’t work without an Arm pledging to back up the skittish Crows involved.”

Tonya shook her head.  “I’m not so sure about Stacy.  I visited her a month ago and it didn’t go well.”

“I heard.  Join the club.”  Despite Hancock’s effusive mood, Tonya caught a flash of exasperation and deep anger.

“I don’t think Keaton’s mood involves cooperation among Major Transforms this year, Carol,” Tonya said.  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Hancock put a golf ball on the kitchen counter and tapped it twice.  The room filled with a painful metasense static.  The Arm leaned over to Tonya and whispered in her ear.  “I put a box with a thick loose-leaf folder and some other documents in your private safe.  The box contains everything Inferno’s been doing with their household tuning project, everything Hank’s been doing on his secret project, the training techniques that turned Gail into a Focus who can handle this shit, and the exact procedures we used to create Gail’s instant version of an Inferno-class household.  I’m giving this to you to use in case of an emergency, such as Keaton deciding to rid the world of the Commander and her organization.  If Keaton’s reasonable about me, but still being a Cause-hating hard-ass, you may need to pay for the privilege of reading and using the information.  It’s insurance all the way around.”

Tonya nodded and didn’t say a word.  Hancock leaned back and slapped the golf ball again, turning off the painful metasense static.  “I passed the word along to Keaton about the firm deadline for pulling the coup on the firsts.”  Her voice was passionless, the enthusiasm and happiness gone.

Tonya shivered.  “You sound bothered.”

“Keaton didn’t react well.”

“How?”

“To quote her exactly: ‘A year! La di dah! A year!  Oh, all right, ten months.  So much can happen in ten months that Polly’s strike date is meaningless.  Don’t even bother bringing up the subject until June, assuming you and I and everyone else is still around’.  Bass has warped her good sense.”

“I don’t like this,” Tonya said.

“You, me, and everyone else I’m on speaking terms with.”

Tonya and Hancock cooked for the next half hour, mixing, slicing, and sautéing.  Gossiping like fishwives as well.  Then Delia Vinote, Tonya’s personal assistant, stuck her head into the kitchen and signaled,
Can I give the all clear?

Tonya looked from Delia to Hancock.  Delia didn’t seem to have any difficulty seeing the Arm. 
Yes.  And get Marty.  I need you both in here
.

Delia returned with Marty in a few seconds.

“Delia, Marty, the information in that document shouldn’t go any farther than the two of you,” Hancock said.  Tonya bristled when Delia and Marty nodded.  Hancock was getting far too good at her charisma tricks; she had mimicked Tonya’s personal charisma perfectly.

Delia sat, shocked, when she finished, and Marty whistled.  “Arm Hancock, this is wonderful news, even in its preliminary form.  Dangerous, though.”

“It is at that,” the Commander said.  “Is this worth fighting for?”

“Do you think we’ll end up in an actual physical fight against the first Focuses and Chevalier’s Crows?” Delia said.

“Yes.  Perhaps even with Keaton and her west coast Arms.”

“A fight would be a disaster,” Tonya said.

“I don’t think we can avoid a fight with
certain people
.”  Tonya’s boss, Suzie Schrum. Likely Sara Teas as well. Tonya nodded.  “The rest is negotiable.  Still, you and your people do need to prepare.”

“Preparing would telegraph our intentions.”

Hancock sighed.  “Listen to your Commander.”

Tonya wanted to spit nails.  “We’ve got to be able to act better than a bunch of hyenas squabbling over dinner.”  She sighed.  “This can’t be helping you with a certain, um, status issue.  You just proved that
pushing the Cause
is the correct thing to be doing.”

“Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  There’s a lot of status involved in actually
carrying
Crow and Focus tags.  My instincts say ‘get more’, not ‘run away, you fool’.”

“I’ll trust you on that.  I do worry about the timing of your presentation.”

“Life as an Arm is always a gamble.”

Tonya frowned.  “Sit on it.  Don’t present this to Keaton.”  She didn’t bother using her charisma.  Her charisma worked only on Hancock when she was attempting to push the Arm in a direction she wanted to go.  At times, she had almost no resistance at all to that sort of persuasion.  Anything else?  A complete waste of juice.

“That’s suicide.”  Carol growled and paced the kitchen.  “Keaton ordered me to show her a major success from the
push the Cause
project.  She’s choosing between my way or Bass’s way, remember.”  And if Stacy chose Bass’s way, well, that’s why Hancock had broken into her safe.

Silence stretched for many minutes.  It wasn’t Tonya’s place to vehemently disagree, no more than it would have been Hancock’s place to disagree about some bit of insanity that Schrum dropped on Tonya.  Hancock took Tonya’s silence as agreement, and as she prepared some sort of Middle Eastern grain dish, she calmed down.  A little.

“Arm Hancock?” Delia said.

Glare.

“By any chance, have you been watching any television this year?”  Hancock shook her head at Delia’s query, as did Tonya, who didn’t watch television either.  “In that case, perhaps there’s something you need to see tonight, after dinner.”

“So, there.  Her.  Recognize her?” Delia said, and pointed.

Delia hosted both Tonya and Hancock in her quarters, watching some absurd crime drama named Mod Squad.  According to Delia, one of the originals, the actress who played the woman undercover cop, had been replaced this season by a different actress, who portrayed a Transform undercover cop.  The change seemed to fit the social message of the show, where these not very realistic but quite diverse young undercover cops worked together to solve society’s ills.  The team consisted of one traditional young white man, one modern colored gentleman, and a liberated woman – now a liberated woman Transform.

Interestingly enough, they hadn’t mangled the Transform.  The woman was well muscled, and for a moment, Tonya thought they were portraying her as an Arm, but they did a quick segue to her Transform household, and she realized they just portrayed her as a well-trained woman bodyguard.

Tonya did a double take.  There, disguised under various makeup and wigs, was Focus Wendy Mann’s household!  Wendy had a cameo, herself, about five seconds worth, all muscled up in the athletic-fit Focus mold, and ravishingly beautiful to boot.  Tonya felt a momentary flash of jealousy; Wendy wasn’t good looking for a Focus, but professional makeup artists could turn a normal twenty-something into a goddess, and what they had done to Wendy was almost obscene.  The household was thoroughly unrealistic, though.  Although crowded on the screen, the place was still far too luxurious and comfortable for a real Focus household.

“The actress’s real name is Sara Jenkins, and she’s one of Wendy Mann’s Transforms,” Hancock said.  “The Focus is Wendy in a wig and pro makeup.  You can tell by the way they all move: the Transforms are all super-athletic and received combat training from Keaton.”  Hancock then laughed.  Tonya frowned at her.

“Their Focus household is a close steal of the Inferno household, down to the polished wood slide beside the stairway,” Hancock said.  Tonya nodded, seeing it now.  All they needed was the Apocalypse Clock ticking backwards and the Buddhist statuary.  “For a Focus household, an acting gig like this should have them rolling in oats.  So why isn’t Keaton bouncing around and being happy about her Focus making good?”

“Something else happened,” Tonya said.  “I caught it too, in my last visit.  I’m guessing she learned something nasty, likely about the first Focuses or Focus Schrum in particular.  I couldn’t get her to say, though.”

“Don’t let it bother you,” Hancock said.  The Arm had regained her good cheer during dinner.  “So, Tonya, when are you going to pick up a Crow as a partner?”

For the rest of the evening, Tonya got to sit through Hancock proselytizing to her on the benefits of the Crow – Focus symbiosis.  Her enthusiasm was infectious, especially the part about increasing the size of Tonya’s household.  The idea was an easy sell, though Tonya didn’t understand how a Focus of her nasty reputation could go about getting a Crow to partner in a household.

They had really done it!  Tonya hadn’t believed, early on, that Haggerty’s
push the Cause
project would ever amount to anything directly useful.  Now they had something with the potential to avert the coming disaster.  Saving lives, real progress for once.  If everyone kept working together, they would be able to save the lives they had long worried they wouldn’t be able to save.

They never did come up with a potential Crow for Tonya, though.

That night, Tonya’s dreams were just as bad as they had been for the past week.

Carol Hancock: October 17, 1972

I jogged up to Keaton’s immaculate California split-level house with a bounce in my step and trepidation in my heart.  Under my right arm I carried a box with almost a thousand pages of well written reports, leading off with all the benefits of mutual tagging.  If this worked, I would wipe Bass’s idiotic plans away like the markings on last semester’s blackboard; if not, I suspected my days as the Commander were over.

Despite the preliminary nature of much of my report, the mutual tagging benefits were quite real and quite extraordinary.  Keaton had ordered me to give her data on a real
push the Cause
success, and now I had one, and promised more.  With the endemic Focus and Crow weakness for saving lives and enhancing fertility, this gave us Arms the (pardon the pun) armlock Keaton always wanted.  Add in the progress on the ‘Focus giving juice to an Arm project’ and Hank’s juice pattern codification project, and the sum would place us Arms at the center of Major Transform society.  Then, as Arm-friendly tasty cake icing, because this broke all the old order’s restrictions on Focuses and Crows working together, our success would likely precipitate the blood-drenched war Keaton wanted.  Presents for everyone!

I metasensed Keaton’s three students, one of whom was brand new, as well as Bass, Rayburn and a Focus.  Keaton herself was down in the basement talking to the Focus, which said something.  The Focus wasn’t being tortured, but even so, Keaton’s basement wasn’t a place for a friendly conversation.

Keaton headed up the stairs the minute she sensed my presence, Bass and Rayburn following behind.  They left the Focus in the basement.  As I came to the front door, the damn kid Arm opened the door and then got out of the way.  She appeared hard used, not what I expected of a later stage student.  I wondered if there was some sort of problem with her.  I took a sniff to check the ambience, which proved to be low in stress for a single dwelling crawling with a pride of Arms.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Hancock?” Keaton said as I walked across the foyer.  As she stopped and snarled at me, Bass and Rayburn carefully slid to the side, stony expressions on their faces.  Bass was blood-spattered, but blood on her didn’t mean anything.  Bass started her day by torturing people, before breakfast and exercises.