Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (12 page)

He studied Carol with researcher eyes.  She was physically a mature Arm.  He suspected from the way she moved and the fact she hadn’t yet threatened him meant she had gotten juice between her last visit and now.  Her hair was short and ragged, her eyes haunted, and as during the bad periods in St. Louis she didn’t keep up her appearance.  She showed plenty of scars, and they had to be from Keaton.  Given how fast Arms healed, the most recent would be from last night.

On the other hand, Carol’s muscles were perfectly symmetric and proportional.  Keaton may have been rough, but she had fixed Carol’s muscle problems, likely early in Carol’s training.

“So, how can I help you?” he said.  “I assume you’re interested in no longer being Keaton’s toy.  I may be able to help.”

Carol frowned and shook her head.  “I’ve got that covered.  Besides, helping me isn’t why she gave you to me.  I’m supposed to learn from you.”

She was easier to read than Keaton and far easier than the top-end Focuses he often had to deal with.  Carol didn’t want to talk about her situation with Keaton.  Zielinski slowly nodded and took a sip of water.  He also noticed the muscles and tendons on her right arm standing out like cables, which drew his gaze to her right hand’s tight grip on the chair arm.  He decided he should go slowly on his necessary but nosy personal questions.

“Where do you want to start?” he said.  He understood her reluctance.  For all he knew, Keaton might be forcing Carol out of the nest and charging her a torture session for each lesson.  Keaton was dangerous, sadistic and perverse.  A little over a year ago, Keaton
had held him by his feet over the roof edge of the Harvard Medical School Transform Research Center and threatened to drop him, simply because he didn’t have as much information on Eissler, the West German Arm, as she expected.

“What’s the Network?” she said.  “If it’s so important, why didn’t you tell me about it back in St. Louis?”  Anger had crept into her voice, which made him more than a bit nervous.  Carol wasn’t a baby Arm able to be bluffed into submission or incapable of killing him during a temper outburst.  Now, she could kill him five different ways before he had an instant to react.  His life depended on learning how to calm her down, the same way he had learned to calm Keaton down.  At her age as an Arm, the violence came easily, often without prior thought.  From a conversation with Tonya, he knew Carol had been the California Spree Killer.  He needed to be on his best behavior if he wanted to get through this undamaged.

“I’ll answer your question, ma’am, but first, I need to ask you a question,” he said, eyes downcast.  “My question relates to Arm behavior, so it could be taken as insult.  I don’t mean any insult or offense, ma’am.”

“I’m all ears.”  His submission gesture worked; although the anger remained, she kept a firmer leash on her emotions now.  He hoped she didn’t harbor ill will toward him from her time in the St. Louis Transform Detention Center.  He chose his words carefully.

“You’ve chosen, if I’m correct, not to prey on Focuses or the Transforms under their control.  Am I correct?”  Carol nodded.  “Why?”

“Keaton ordered me not to.  She said, and I quote: ‘The Focus would instantly metasense what you’d done, that an Arm had killed one of her own, because nothing else looks like that.  There you would be, out cold with post-kill reaction, and an entire household of people would know there was an Arm out there who just killed one of their people.  You would never wake up again.  That’s the surest way of getting yourself killed I know of.  You
never
touch a Transform within range of their Focus.’  End quote.”

Arm memory, perfect as always.  “After Keaton escaped FBI confinement, she took a Transform from a Focus,” Zielinski said.  At least one.  He suspected around a half dozen.

The anger drained from Carol’s face, replaced by awe.  Hope?  He couldn’t tell.  “She lived?”

Zielinski nodded.  “The Focuses sent one of their top people after Keaton to talk to her.”  Zielinski wasn’t ready to reveal anything about the dangerous Tonya Biggioni.  Yet.  “They made a deal.  Keaton agreed not to prey on Transforms in the care of Focuses and agreed to keep in contact with the Focuses; in return
, the Focuses wrote off her earlier killing.  The deal was her introduction to the Network.”

“Oh
,” Carol said, and nodded.  Zielinski could almost see the gears turn in Carol’s head as she worked out the unspoken details.

“I’ve always wondered how Keaton would know whether a Transform was in the care of a Focus or not,” Zielinski said, a slight smile on his lips.  “I’ve often suspected Arms can metasense a Focus tag.”

Anger filled Carol’s eyes again but she didn’t otherwise respond, enough to confirm Zielinski’s hypothesis.  He decided he needed to stop his digression and answer her question.  Don’t provoke adolescent Arms!

“The Network is an organization of Focuses, their households and their trusted contacts,” Zielinski said.  “I told you about it in St. Louis but didn’t mention it by name.”  He smiled and leaned toward Carol, and she reflexively leaned forward as well.  “Just think of it! 
Just a couple of dozen Focuses existed, and they weren’t quarantined together, but scattered among a half dozen regional Transform Detention Centers.  What was worse, many of the Quarantined Focuses were also enslaved by their Transform households.  Yet they found methods to learn about each other, get messages to each other, and recruit people like me to help them escape from the Quarantine.  Extraordinary, now that I think back on those days.  At the time I wasn’t anything special as a recruit; back then I was just a part-timer, consulting on Transform issues as I worked up my first papers on Transform Sickness epidemiology.”  His story, abbreviated as it was, focused Carol’s full attention on him.  He guessed she was a sucker for this sort of romanticized adventure nonsense.

“Once the Focuses escaped the Quarantine, their problems actually got worse,” he said.  In this period he had come to his own in the Network.  “If you recall,
President Kennedy didn’t make their escape from Quarantine legal for over two years after they escaped.  The Focuses and their households lived underground, and because they lived underground, the Focuses and their households needed an extraordinary amount of help.  The modern Network got its start, then, as a community organization as well as a secure communications network.  The UFA – the United Focuses of America – is the official Focuses-only organization, incorporated and everything.  They’re the Network’s board of directors, but day-to-day the Network is run by Focus Michelle Claunch, one of the first Focuses.  The Network is a much larger organization than the more official UFA, and it’s the Network which has the real power to do things.”

“Makes sense,” Carol said.  “What’s in it for us Arms?”

“If a Major Transform gets the Network angry at her, all the Network has to do to make her life miserable is cut her off from support.  The same is just as true for Keaton as any Focus,” Zielinski said.

“What sort of support is Keaton getting?”
Carol asked.  She leaned back in the chair, a faint smile on her face.  She had worked out the answer and wanted confirmation.

“Paying jobs.  Juice draws.  Help in hiding from the authorities who are out to get her,” he said.  “Information, which may be the most valuable support of all.”

“What’s my status?”

“You’re Keaton’s student,” Zielinski said, and spread his hands wide.  “As far as Network help, I’m it, as assigned by Arm Keaton and the Focuses she deals with.  You won’t get anyone else contacting you until you’ve graduated.”  Carol didn’t comment and studied him, her face blank.  “Do you need any water.  Food?” he asked.

“Food.  Only if you didn’t cook it, no offense.”  Complete with a nose wrinkle.  “I stripped your refrigerator on the way in.  Do you have anything else?  A separate freezer, perhaps?”  He shook his head.  These Arm visits were going to bankrupt him simply from the amount of food they ate.

“I do have some V-8 in my pantry.  Gallon…”

Carol waved him off in disgust.  “Who holds the political power among these Focuses and how powerful are they, anyway?”

He took a deep breath.  “From my limited perspective, Focus Claunch, the Network head, is the top Focus.  She’s an executive – think small town mayor or city manager, vaguely apolitical.  Focus Polly Keistermann, a second generation Focus, is the UFA Council President and I think is the second most powerful.  Think of her as the leader of the conservative party, a legislator.  Third would be Donna Fingleman, the West Region President.  Don’t think of her as the leader of the opposition party but as a ward boss and behind-the-scenes string-puller.  The Focuses total political power is disproportionate to their numbers because of the attention Transform Sickness
attracts.  Don’t forget: Major Transforms are few in number.”  So far.  “The United States holds a little over five thousand surviving Transforms, supported by about a hundred and seventy five Focuses.  Oh, and beyond those three leading Focuses, things get difficult to understand and impossible to explain.  I don’t trust my information.  I do know the old breakout leader, Focus Patterson, although officially retired, can get things done if she needs them done because she’s so revered.”  And feared.

“Pah. 
They’re a cliquish sewing circle working only at the School Board level.”  Carol shook her head, unreadable.  “So, what’s the anecdotal information you want to tell me about, Zielinski?”

“Hank,” he said, and met her gaze.  I’m trying to help you, he thought.  Read this emotion with your Arm senses
.  I’m trying to help you!

“Hank,” Carol echoed, with less anger and suspicion than before.

Good, she could read him at least a little.  An image of trying to tame a tiger cub too big for the tamer’s own good came through his mind.  This would not improve until Carol learned enough to be able to read him.

“My best anecdotal information is personal,” Zielinski said.  “In the time since I left you in St. Louis, I’ve managed to meet both varieties of male Major Transforms, the self-named Crows and the Arm equivalents, who we’ve named Chimeras.”

“Well okay, whatever you say,” Carol said.  She leaned forward, aggressive.  She didn’t believe a nebbish like him could have done any such thing.  “Give me the details.”

If she only knew the real life he led…

“I have several stories,” Zielinski said.  He started by telling Carol the story of Focus Lori Rizzari and how her household’s Monster hunting duties had turned into a hunt for a talking Chimera named Rover, and how he helped them corner Rover for the Chimera to be tamed by a Crow.  “All of this happened during the period when you were escaping from the St. Louis Detention Center.”

“I understand why Keaton sneers at your anecdotal stories.  You didn’t actually meet either the Crow or the Male Arm…Chimera, that is.”

“Not then,” Zielinski said.  “The problem started when I was working in my Harvard office late one night…”

A swab of antiseptic cold followed by a sharp hot pain as someone said “Say hello to Jesus for me
.”

A tunnel of light, narrowing, narrowing.  Screaming at a telephone.

Darkness.

Dr. Zielinski opened his eyes to a lathe and plaster ceiling above him.  Daylight.  He tried to sit up and didn’t succeed.  A good-looking short young man sat beside the bed.

“Dehydrated.  Water,” Dr. Zielinski said, his voice weak.  His whole body ached.  The last he remembered, he had been in his office at Harvard Medical.

The little guy nodded and flipped a thick shock of hair out of his eyes.  He got a glass pitcher of ice water, poured a fresh glass and handed the glass to Dr. Zielinski.

This wasn’t a hospital.  For one thing, he wasn’t even on an IV.  Dr. Zielinski drank two sips of water.  “You’re in terrible danger,” he said to the man.  “I’ve got a huge load of juice in me.  I could go Monster or psycho on you at any moment.”

“Not hardly,” the man said.  “The Focus took care of your problem, hours ago.”  The man paused.  “I’m Tim Egins.  I’ve been waiting to meet you for months, but I hoped for better circumstances than this.”

Ah.  Although his head swam, Dr. Zielinski did know when someone spoke of ‘The Focus’ in such reverent terms, they meant Dr. Lorraine Rizzari.  Speaking formally was an affectation of her household.  “If Focus Rizzari took care of the Monster juice, why do I feel like shit?”  He held out his hands.  They shook.  “The lights are too bright and I ache like I’ve been run over by a truck.”

“Eh.  Damn.  The Focus was afraid something like this might happen,” Egins said.  He pushed Dr. Zielinski back down with an index finger.  “Lie down and rest.  I’ll go get The Focus.”

“If we’re going to keep him here, we need to get real about it.  At least an IV,” a woman’s voice said.  Dr. Zielinski recognized the voice, but didn’t remember her name.

“I hear you, Ann.”  A much more beautiful voice.  Again, he couldn’t remember her name.

“Does either of you two addled heroes know how much trouble we can get into for this?” a third woman’s voice said.  Her young and forceful voice held no beauty.  “You extracted him from the Transform section of
Harvard Medical
.”

Dr. Zielinski opened his eyes.  He found his right hand in both of Focus Rizzari’s hands and his heart melted into Lori’s eyes.  The world held its breath for quite a long time as he fell into her pain-draped eyes.