No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) (23 page)

She didn’t answer for a long moment.  I waited for her, working on my signals and trying to keep them firmly within the confines of the tag.

“Hell,” she said.  “They’re risks. There are ways to reduce the risks, but you can’t eliminate them completely.  Are you willing to let Hank make the technical decisions?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then let’s work through this.”

We didn’t sleep that night.  Keaton and I hashed through an amazing number of contingency plans, first thinking them up then tearing them apart.  She pointed out an appalling number of risk factors and she came up with solutions for many of them.

I was amazed.  I had never worked with Keaton on this level before, fully professional and on the top of her game.  This sort of paranoid organization creation was her specialty.  I learned her tricks as fast as she handed them out.

While we talked she let me clean her house of pain, after which I cooked breakfast for her and we did another round of exercises.  I was cleaning up the kitchen again when she came in from her shower.

“Hancock,” she said. Her hair was dripping and she smelled like soap.  Her voice ached with formality and juice.

“Ma’am,” I said, respectfully.  I bowed to her, dish soap covering my hands up to my elbows, and still holding a dirty spoon.

“Here are your orders.  First, I’m not willing to let you do this without oversight.  I want a detailed report, every month, of exactly how you manage each of those researchers.  In addition, what you did by bringing the baby Arm here without warning was unconscionably sloppy.  So in addition to your monthly report on the research project, I want you to visit me, in person, every month, for a personal report on what else I’ve assigned you, and for further orders.  After you call ahead.  There’s to be no more showing up unannounced.  Period.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  And then, “Thank you, ma’am.  I know that with you watching over me, I’ll be careful.”  She didn’t trust me simply because I wasn’t as professionally paranoid as she was.  I did worry about these scheduled monthly visits.  Not because I disliked the punishment; as punishment her task was fair and made perfect sense to me.  What worried me was that a pattern like this might attract unwanted juice effects, and ‘unwanted juice effects’ was where my paranoia lived.  Nevertheless, orders were orders.

“Second, I want every bit of information you gather.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Third, you will manage this effort.  I’ll have no contact whatsoever with your organization.  If I have any contact with Zielinski, it won’t be in regard to this organization.  You’re the fuse before any trouble you generate gets to me.  You understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Fourth, you take it slow.  Fully investigate every single researcher you try for, and take all possible steps to minimize the risk.  Don’t try for any but the most likely.  Go for the easy ones first, because the first time you blow a recruitment and have to kill the researcher, you’re done.  No more, because you will not establish a pattern.  Before you start, I want to see a contingency plan for what you’re going to do when you blow a recruitment and have to kill that researcher.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  Keaton was being more careful than I would have been.  With an effort this major, she was probably right.

“Stop recruiting at any time,” she said. “If you for any reason at all think it’s time to stop, do so.  Under no circumstances are you to push for complete coverage.  If you do get to where you think complete coverage is a possibility, you come talk to me first, because right now I think you’re dreaming a stupid dream, and you’ll blow everything up if you try to take things that far.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Fifth, implement the dead man switches we talked about last night.  You need to be able to take out each node at a moment’s notice, and also take out the entire network.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Sixth, don’t ignore the Focuses,” she said.  “Don’t forget about my overall goal of getting us out from under the thumbs of the senior Focuses.  Anything we can pick up regarding the Focuses that isn’t public knowledge we can use as a lever on them, one way or another.  Never forget that however much it bores him, Zielinski’s good at figuring out Focus tricks.”

She stopped talking then, and I looked over to her.

“Ma’am?”

“Do it right, Hancock.  Don’t fuck this one up.  Among many other things, you’ve convinced me our future depends on controlling the research on Arms.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I did some more cooking.  I made sure my cooking was excellent.

Gilgamesh: June 2, 1968

Gilgamesh knocked on the front door to the shotgun shack.  He had heard the phrase ‘Crows hiding under the Focus’s house’ before, but he had never before seen it.  All three of them fled the crawlspace under the house as he approached.

“Yes, yes, hmmm,” the woman answering the door said, blocking the way in.  She was a Transform, late twenties, a tad stout but not too much, and black.  Although Merlin hadn’t said anything on the subject, Gilgamesh had suspected as much from the neighborhood.  “What can I do for you?”

“Merlin sent me,” Gilgamesh said.

The magic words.  “Okay.  I’ll be right back.”  She gently closed the door, and all sorts of shouting erupted inside the tiny shack.  From the sound, dozens of people lived in there.

The door opened, again.  This time, an older black man, short haired and thin.  A Transform.  Brandishing a shotgun.

“Well, what have we here,” he said.  Gilgamesh barely understood his accent.

“I’m here to visit Focus Innkeep,” Gilgamesh said, hoping he hadn’t screwed up the address.  Transforms lived in the house, and in four houses nearby.  No Focus, though.

“She ain’t here.  She’ll be back after dark.”

“Can I wait?”  Gilgamesh glanced at his watch.  Half past seven in the evening, still daylight.

“Come ‘round back,” the man said, and stepped off the porch, gun still in hand.  “Paulie’s my name.  What’s yours?”  Paulie led him around the shotgun shack.  Eyes followed him from inside, and from next door, as well.  Out back he found six unmatched beat up chairs, three occupied by older adolescents.  They eyed him suspiciously as Paulie motioned to one of the chairs for Gilgamesh to sit in.  Paulie sat next to him.  Half a dozen trees, otherwise unkempt, shaded the back yard of the place.  A car on blocks in the back among the grown up weeds rusted away, and another, a mid-fifties vintage pickup truck, not on blocks but still sitting in an overgrown patch of yard, aged more gently.

“Gilgamesh,” Gilgamesh said.

Paulie’s eyebrows raised.  “Crow?  Like you?”

“Well, Merlin did send me.”

“Yah, yah, I know, Merlin’s a Crow.  But he’s never sent another Crow to visit who’s shown up in the day.  Thought you was an artist’r sumtin.”

“Why would he send artists?” Gilgamesh said, mostly to himself.

Paulie chuckled.  “Wait ‘till you eyeball Pearl.  What’chu do, sir?  Before the Shakes’ got ya.”

Gilgamesh blinked.  He had been a Transform for what, nearly a year and a half, and this was the first time anyone had ever
asked
.  “Engineer, worked for the Port of Miami.”

“You don’t say.  I done some railroad maint’nence in my time,” Paulie said.

They swapped work stories for about an hour, until Gilgamesh picked up the approach of the Focus on his metasense.

“Hey, Johno,” Paulie said, waving to one of the adolescents.  “Go getcha ma’am, tell’r she’s got a visitor out back.”

Pearl Innkeep stood about five four.  She was a stunner, even for a Focus.  Unbelievable.  Focus Rizzari hadn’t been ugly, but not, well, a stunner.  Lori was short, cute and perky, but put a lot of work into dressing ‘older’ and ‘dowdier’.  Probably so she could teach and be respected.

Focus Innkeep went the other way, accentuating her beauty.  Thin, muscular, and graceful would be the words Gilgamesh would have used – beyond the word ‘beauty’.

She didn’t seem conceited or arrogant, though.  She just pulled up a chair out back, after chasing the adolescents off, and grabbed his attention directly.  “So, Crow, what can I do for you?  I hope you aren’t here for d’bad juice, cuz we got ourselves enough Crows for the
problem
.”  She concentrated for a moment.  “Though you scared ‘em off.”  Although well into evening, the glow from the windows of the shack provided plenty of light for a Crow’s eyes.  Bullfrogs roared somewhere in the distance, and crickets chirped much closer.

“Ma’am, the Crow Merlin told me you might be able to help me.  I’m putting together a survey on Crow life, and I happened to overhear you may have witnessed an attempted kidnapping…”

Focus Innkeep crossed her arms and stared at Gilgamesh.  Her entire house went silent.

“Don’t you lie to me none, boy,” she said.  “You don’t have the knack.”

Gilgamesh gulped.  “It isn’t prudent for me to…”

“Forget it, then,” she said, shaking her head.  “Truth, or I send you away.  You’re gonna have to trust me, one way or the other.”

The odds were Merlin hadn’t sent him to Focus Innkeep to get rid of him in a permanent fashion.  Surely.  Merlin was, well, distracted by his work, though Gilgamesh couldn’t understand a single thing the Guru tried to tell him about the intricacies of dross construct creation.  He had to beg off, at least until he learned more and got older.

“Truth, then.  I’m trying to hunt up evidence about an entity or entities who are killing Crows.”

“There’s one kill’n Crows?  Since when?”

“The first death got reported in late September of last year.  As far as we know, Crow Killer has killed eight Crows.  We might be missing a few.”

“Hmm.  Same period a bunch of unexplained attacks on Transforms been happening, too.”

“Yes, ma’am.  I think it’s the same person or people.”

She shook her head.  “Not if it’s like what I witnessed.  One of my Crows, Iron Rick, was out walking, and I happened to be out getting some fresh air, myself.  Two in the morning, back in early April.  Police man came up, started to hassle Iron Rick.  My boys walked over to investigate – and then the Man took off.  Only, Iron Rick he remember nothin’.  No po-lice man, I say.”

Officer Canon?  Interesting.

“I don’t know much about the attacks on Transforms, ma’am,” Gilgamesh said.  “What was different?”

“Why, everything, Crow.  Those’re attacks.  Struggles.  Several got actually runned down.  Focuses think its Arms, or Monsters or somethin’ else Transform, ‘cause a couple happened in plain sight and the Focus didn’t notice nothin’.  Not po-lice men.”

“Can you show me where Iron Rick got approached, ma’am?”

“I’ll have Paulie do it, sure.  Come back and talk, after, okay, Crow?”

Gilgamesh nodded, and waited until Paulie and three other men came out to lead him to the spot where the ‘policeman’ approached Iron Rick.  The spot was at the corner, around five hundred feet from Focus Innkeep’s residence.  Just out of the Focus’s metasense range.  Gilgamesh metasensed a faint trace of old dross in the area, and he got down on his hands and knees, and sniffed.  “Here,” he said, whispering to himself. “Right here, there was a Beast Man.”  Not recently.  Took a leak or something.  Marking territory?

“No, no,” Paulie said.  “Iron Rick was over here.”  Paulie was standing about forty feet down the road.

Gilgamesh nodded.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  “I’ve got all I can get.”

They led him back to the Focus.  “Whatchu find, Crow?”

“Beast Man trace, out a ways from where Iron Rick got approached.”

“Beast Man?  What’s a Beast Man?”

“Male Arm.  All the one’s I’ve seen are big and Monster-like.  The Beast stood about forty feet away from the policeman.  To the left.”

“I din’t see nothin’ over that way, Crow.  What this mean?”

“This means the policeman was an older Major Transform, good enough to make other Transforms invisible to the metasense.  The Beast Man stayed outside of your metasense range.  In the dark, some Beast Men can blend into the night, just like Crows can.”  It fit the pattern.

Focus Innkeep frowned.  “One thing.  I wasn’t here.  I was walkin’ behind the Nelson’s right then, keeping track of things.”

Right.  Focus Innkeep’s household sprawled out over a small neighborhood.  Gilgamesh winced.

“The older Major Transform was good enough to hide a Beast Man from a Focus’s metasense while separated by forty feet or more.”  That realization nearly brought on a full panic.  He doubted fewer than a dozen Crows and Focuses in the United States possessed the skill and power for such a trick.

“I don’ like to hear those words, Crow.  That’s not good news.”

Gilgamesh couldn’t have agreed more.  They were up against one of the
top
hidden Major Transform leaders.

Henry Zielinski: June 2, 1968

The tableau in Keaton’s basement reminded him of something out of Hieronymus Bosch.  The place stank of shit, piss and old blood, as well as captive Monster.  The Monster was of the chimp-Monster variety, with black fur and a saggital crest anchoring jaw muscles powerful enough to bite through a leg or arm. She moaned and cursed when Keaton was absent, but when Keaton approached, the Monster didn’t make a sound.  He had talked to her and engaged her in rough conversation.  She missed her master, one Ursus the Mountain Man.  She had never had a Focus.  She didn’t eat people because of something called the Law, something the Master gave to the Mountain Men and their Monster Gals.