Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (35 page)

“I like her style,” Carol said.

Now he had Carol talking, he turned to his favorite subject.  “So, what’s Keaton been teaching you recently?”

“Well, I can catch thrown knives now.”  Carol paused.  “Keaton’s picked up on the visualization technique you taught me.”  Zielinski had told her about a trick some athletes used, visualizing their performance ahead of time as a way of improving their skills and keeping them from wilting under stress.  “And, no, I haven’t mastered my graduation task.  In fact, I swear I’m getting worse at dealing with captured prey Transforms.”

“Interesting.  You might want to do some reading on the differences between physical and psychological addiction.  That may give you some ideas,” Zielinski said.  He took a deep breath.  “If I directly help you graduate, Keaton’s going to kill me.”

“Yah,” Carol said.  “In fact, all of my recruits are at risk if Keaton has one of her bad psychotic rages.  That’s another problem I need to solve.”  She paused.  “Dammit, Hank, these Chimeras are becoming as much of a problem as Keaton is.  You need to dig up all the information you can on this.  Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Zielinski said.

“And clean up this pigsty.  That’s an order.”

He looked up, but the Arm was gone.

He immediately started to clean his office.  Five minutes later, he paused for only a moment.

“Good God,” he said aloud as he cleaned, talking to himself for lack of anyone else.  “It’s three in the morning and I can’t stop cleaning!  Her comment wasn’t a cheap psychological trick, but a direct juice-powered charismatic order.  Keaton’s command charisma didn’t show up until two and a half years after her transformation and it wasn’t anywhere near this strong until recently.”  He started to file the newer journals in their proper places on the shelves in his library.  “Keaton was right, but didn’t go far enough.  Carol’s good at all forms of Arm Charisma.”

Woozily, he moved into the kitchen and started to do the dishes.

He didn’t notice his depression had vanished until the next day.

---

“…and so that’s what I meant when I made the comment about post-human morality,” Lori said.  Zielinski found himself beet red in embarrassment.  He wished he had the self-control of an Arm or a top Focus.  Instead, he fidgeted with his notepad and pen as he sat alone across from Lori, who had commandeered the desk in her lab for this discussion.

Lori had shown up early today, Ann Chiron in tow.  He initially suspected Lori would grill him on security arrangements again, but instead she had shown up ready to answer questions.  Zielinski had a sneaky suspicion Ann was the one behind
Lori’s new cooperation.  Ann wasn’t embarrassed at all about post-human morality.  Instead, she studied him like a hawk as she sipped from a bottle of Coke.

“We consider this private household business,” Lori said as she slouched in her office-surplus desk chair and snacked from a paper lunch bag filled with horse-food she called ‘granola’.  “You would need to be initiated into our household first before you
get to see or experience this.  Friday nights are one of our formalisms.”

Lori had already explained the elaborate household initiation ceremony.  “You do understand what you’ve done with these powerful formalisms, don’t you?” Zielinski asked.

The Focus shrugged.  He rattled off the titles of a few papers on the subject, all from far afield of Lori’s specialization, three from invertebrate zoology and one from vertebrate zoology.  “There’s a well-known concept called…”

Lori’s eyes widened in surprise.  Ann growled angrily and he turned to her.  Her face was red, and not from embarrassment.  “What am I, chopped liver?  I’ve read two of those, dammit!  I even had a paper rejected on this subject with regard to Transform households.”

Zielinski’s face flushed at his mistake.  “I apologize, Ann.  I know up here you should have a PhD and a Professorship,” he said, and tapped his forehead.  “I was condescending because my gut says ‘woman Transform, discount her’.  I’m sorry.”  He felt about two inches high.

“It’s because I’m a Transform that I don’t have those damned credentials, but,” snarl, “it’s because I’m a woman and because I’m not a Focus that you’re discounting me,” Ann said.

Zielinski nodded.  Lori did something silent with her Focus charisma, attracting his and Ann’s attention.  She straightened up from her slouch and pushed the bag of oats to the side.  “Wait just a second, Henry.  How in the blue blazes do
you
know this?  This isn’t your specialty, or even close.”

“Pretty good for a mere normal, eh?” Henry said.  Lori’s point was fair and drove home Ann’s point about his own stereotyping mistakes.  Ann looked pleased.

“You put some thought into this before, didn’t you?”

He nodded.  “Yes.  After an episode with Stacy Keaton nearly left me in traction a couple of years ago, I spent several weeks in Focus Biggioni’s household while she covered up the ‘accident’.  I had never seen a Transform household from the inside before, although I was definitely the outsider and Tonya and her people weren’t being anywhere near as open with me as the two of you.  Which I thank you for, by the way.  I saw enough to pique my interest and I started to dig through the literature.  The idea that Transforms come with enough biological wiring to be functional cells in a social superorganism is a fringe idea, but only marginally.  Researchers often use the social superorganism to describe social insect behaviors, and extend the concept, in a weaker form, to other social animals
, though the authors do catch some grief about over-reach.  Even, um, normal humans apparently possess a strong social superorganism and some consider humanity on its way to being fully eusocial, even without adding in any Transform extras.”

Lori winced.  “But…
Is such a thing even possible without the flood of pheromones present in Transform households?”

Zielinski smiled, as did Ann.  He realized the superorganism concept was something Ann pushed and Lori resisted.

“The connections are just more noticeable within a Transform household.  However, has your Focus charisma ever failed simply because you targeted your trick on a non-Transform?” he asked.  Lori shook her head.  “Did you ever notice any difference in the way non-Transforms, and Transforms who haven’t encountered Focus charisma before, react to your charisma?”  Lori shook her head again.  “What led you to this, Ann?” he asked.

“Our household formalisms work more strongly than I think would be possible if they were just psychological,” Ann said.  She knew more, he decided, but she sat on the information.  Probably household secrets.  “I think it’s a huge avenue of research we need to stop neglecting.”

Lori sighed – elaborately, for show – and held up her hands.  “I give.  I’ll start reading up on these superorganism things immediately.”  She paused and muttered: “Even though I find the concept of incipient human eusocialty philosophically repugnant.  We’re autonomous individuals, not friggen naked mole rats where only the queen breeds.”  Her muttering trailed off into incoherent disgust.

“So, if I may ask, why did you decide to answer all of my questions today?” he asked.

“Told’ja,” Ann said, and pointed at Lori.

Lori made a showy disgust face, ending with a tiny smile.  “I recently came across some information indicating you were about to take a long and dangerous trip, and you would need help,” Lori said.  “I figured the best help I could provide was to answer some of your questions.”

Zielinski tapped his fingers on Lori’s lab desk.  “As far as I know I’m not taking any long trips,” he said.  Lori shrugged.  “So you Dream?”  Many Focuses, after several years, learned a trick allowing them to communicate with each other in their sleep.  They called the trick ‘the Dreaming’ and tried to keep it a secret.  He had known about the Dreaming for years.

Lori nodded.  “Doesn’t everybody?”

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“Then you should know this isn’t something I can talk about,” Lori said.  Her comment was proof enough for him.  “I do wonder, Henry, who told
you
about this subject?”

His head started to pound.

“That isn’t fair, Lori,” Ann said, noticing her Focus’s charisma at work.

His head continued to pound.

To succeed, Lori needed to work much harder with her charisma than this.  “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” Zielinski said with a wink and a smile.  “Doctor-patient confidentiality.”  He told no one about his conversations with this particular ‘first Focus’.  No one.

“That’s supposed to be my line,” Lori said, exasperated, referring to his first statement.  She backed off her charisma.  Zielinski sighed with relief.

Gilgamesh

I’m sorry to hear about your group’s encounter with a Beast Man.  Occum’s assured us the Beast wasn’t one of his.  He’s also said it wouldn’t be wise for him or anyone else to try and recruit the beast in question.

As you know, Occum is in indirect contact with a local Focus we call Gymnast.  Through this contact, he learned your Hera Focus ran into a Beast Man about the same time that Sinclair metasensed his.  Only she didn’t run into
just
a Beast Man, but a Beast Man with a
whole herd
of half-Monster women Transforms.  In Occum’s humble opinion, harem-gathering isn’t the behavior of a normal Beast Man, but the behavior of a Beast Man who’s found a way to retain much more of his humanity than is standard.  He thinks your precautions are quite warranted, and such a Beast Man is far too dangerous to approach for any kind of recruitment attempt.

I also got to meet the Sadie Tucker woman Transform you’ve mentioned to me.  Finally.  Did you know she’s a poet?  Check this out:

“Brilliant night shines with Monster eyes

Darkness becomes the Focus’s friend

A willow drooping readies weapons

Africa has come to America”

Neat, huh?

Midgard

Gilgamesh showed the letter to Sinclair.  “I don’t understand Sadie’s poem at all,” Gilgamesh admitted.  “I guess I’m not very poetic.”

Sinclair smiled and turned away for a moment.  “The poem is about a Focus and her Transforms hunting a Monster, alluding to it being like big game hunting in Africa.  Gymnast, the Boston Focus, is a Monster hunter.  A drooping willow has many branches, an allusion to the Focus’s household.”

“If you say so,” Gilgamesh said.  He had watch duty this afternoon and had convinced Sinclair to come visit.  There had been no slacking off on the watch schedule.  They were all Crows, and with a Beast Man hunting them, they kept watch regularly and religiously.

Never get between two Arms who have not worked out their dominance.

“The Book of Arms”

The Dream was vivid, a memory from four years previous.  Toronto, late winter, a mission of mercy at the behest of the Council.  Not a memory she had ever revisited.  The terrifyingly powerful Lost Tribe of Transforms, recently returned to civilization from their years in the barren north, save one, had agreed to submit to medical tests and
accept help, in of all places a parking garage next to the Toronto Transform Center.  Under no circumstances would any of the Lost Tribe go inside a building, especially a Transform Center.  Tonya had come with a new household of Transforms for the Focus, all of them gathered from Quebec City and Montreal, at the request of the Toronto Focuses.  None of them had the strength to support a second household, even a small one of four triads, even temporarily.

Not counting the Lost Tribe’s Focus, who answered only to the name ‘Focus’, Tonya scared nearly everyone she met in Canada half to death.

To her surprise, the man she sat next to was the second not to be so scared, a comfort.  He was no more scared of her than he was of anything or anyone else.

Of course, his relative lack of fear wasn’t the whole story.  The man beside her radiated anger and malevolence at such a level that no one else could approach him, especially not the normal doctors (one of whom was Dr. Henry Zielinski, but back then, Tonya didn’t know his name or his reputation; she had forgotten he was there).  “You’re a Crow?” Tonya asked.

The fierce man, disfigured by frostbite and paper-thin due to malnutrition, gave her a gap-toothed smile.  His gums still bled from whatever horror he had put himself through.  “No.  I’m
the
Crow.  My name is
Crow
.  The rest of them are named after
me
.”  He spoke in French Canadian, which Tonya understood but couldn’t speak.

“Why are you so angry?  Is there anything I can do to help?” Tonya asked.  She understood enough about Crows, from the horror stories that Wini and the other Firsts had told her, to keep her hands to herself.  Still, she couldn’t bear to let him suffer alone, unable to be helped.

“Don’t bother about me, mademoiselle Focus,” he said, still in French.  “I’ll do just fine, if I can get some help for
Focus
.”