No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) Read online

  She was also pregnant. He hadn’t realized that Focuses could become pregnant. Typical Sky, doing the impossible.

  “At least four Crows utilize your household, Focus Rizzari,” he said, after his meditation revealed the general lack of dross outside of her house. “Though only one of them has been inside at the good stuff recently, as far as I can tell.”

  For the first time, Gilgamesh thought about the size of the task he had taken on. Thomas the Dreamer’s idea to go talk to people, collect random bits of information, and sort through them looking for the relevant bits sounded so good in theory. In practice, the task felt daunting. How much information would he need to sift through? There could be thousands of mysteries, most of them having nothing to do with Crow Killer. Without access to Arm dross he would need to write down everything he discovered, or he would forget things. His journal would extend into volumes.

  He tried not to think about the dangers circling all these other mysteries he might stumble across.

  “That would be Sky,” Focus Rizzari said. She was a short woman, less than five feet tall, with short black hair and as expected a gymnast’s body. Beautiful, like all Focuses, but she covered it with dowdy clothes and an academic awkwardness, a subtle disguise making her feel less dangerous. “Occum, Sinclair and Midgard have also made nighttime visits in the past month.”

  Interesting. Last he knew, Occum was holed up with his Beast Men. He knew he would need to visit Occum on his mission, but because of Occum’s work with his terrifying Beast Men, Gilgamesh planned to save the Occum visit for later.

  “Focus, ma’am, I do wonder about the complete lack of bad dross here.” She had said her household had lived here for five years. This place ought to be a cesspit.

  “The gristle dross?” Focus Rizzari said. “I’ve had contact with Occum since before I moved back here. Although we’ve never formally met, a long and involved story all on its own, ever since I moved back here he’s been doing full twice yearly cleanings, when we’re on vacation.” Gymnast let her voice tail off. She studied the nearly starless night sky, dimmed by the city lights around them. A cool breeze rustled the trees, and the dark hair on her head. He found her presence comforting, a surprise. She was a Focus.

  Hmm. Gristle dross was a Crow term. The fact Occum had worked with Gymnast for so long was a major point in her favor. The information also provided an important bit of data, implying a stout Crow had the capability to do full dross removal over the long haul. Gilgamesh didn’t have the capability, yet; despite his best efforts the Skinner’s San Francisco mansion already had a few places where the dross had gone over to gristle.

  His observation led to another interesting idea. Gilgamesh had involved himself with an Arm at a young age and his involvement allowed him to advance faster than normal for a Crow. Occum had also involved himself with a Major Transform, a Focus, for many years, presumably when both were young Major Transforms. Did this involvement contribute to Occum’s effectiveness? Was it good for a Crow to have early involvement with other Major Transforms? An interesting idea, one he needed more data points to prove.

  “He won’t meet you? Occum, from what he sounds like in his letters, is one of the least skittish Crows I know of. He even works with Beast Men.”

  Gymnast gave him an awkward smile. “Occum considers Beast Men far easier for a Crow to deal with than Arms and, um, certain darker Focuses.”

  Gilgamesh closed his eyes and let his metasense expand around him, paying close attention to the Focus. Gymnast wasn’t dark enough to produce slippery dross, as Hera had. Another mystery. Did different Crows have different definitions of dark? Maybe some Crows out there didn’t consider Crow Killer to be evil. Now that was an awful thought.

  He actually found Gymnast’s glow beautiful and nicely defined, having many of the same attractive aspects as Tiamat’s glow. His observation illuminated another mystery: shouldn’t a Focus with an Arm-like glow have an Arm-like personality?

  “Doesn’t not having to move cause problems with the other Focuses?” Gilgamesh asked.

  Focus Rizzari nodded and moved her chair a little closer to Gilgamesh, deliberately crowding him. When she wasn’t meditating, she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him. Sometimes he swore the looks she gave him were of shocked awe, other times she appeared to be lost in rapturous meditation. Surely he couldn’t be that interesting. He worked on restraining his panic.

  “Yes. I can’t tell any other Focuses the truth about how I keep this place and why I don’t have to move. So I tell them it’s because I can think in differential equations.” She grinned at him. “Can you believe it? No bad juice buildup because I think in differential equations? A crazy explanation, yes, but I have to tell them something.” He was glad she told him that the differential equation explanation was a fiction. He winced inside to think of running across such a story as fact and trying to understand how the data fit in. He wondered how many of the unsolved mysteries waiting for him would turn out to be deliberate obfuscations. For that matter, how much ‘common knowledge’ would turn out to be false, intentionally on someone’s part, or otherwise.

  His task was starting to look appallingly complex.

  “I thought you were rebelling against the senior Focuses in part because they refuse to believe Male Major Transforms exist.”

  Such an innocent question. Such an exasperated slap of her forehead by the back of her right hand.

  “Does everybody know?” Focus Rizzari said. “We haven’t even made our formal ‘Declaration of Independence’ yet!” Her reactions showed him a glimpse of her hotter more Arm-like emotions, which naturally attracted him. He did boggle at Gymnast’s level of emotional self-control, which masked those emotions until now. Since he had learned to sense emotions with his metasense he had never run into someone who could mask them so thoroughly.

  “I’m sorry,” Gilgamesh said. “Your rebellion seemed to be common knowledge.” He drummed his fingers on the wooden arm of his chair and haphazardly petted one of the cats in his lap. The cat was shedding. He didn’t understand politics and Focus politics seemed even more incomprehensible than normal human politics. This didn’t bode well, if Carol’s hypothesis was correct, and Officer Canon slash Crow Killer turned out to be a Focus.

  “So, if I may ask what may be a personal question, did you call the cats to you, or did they seek you out on your own?”

  “I didn’t call them,” Gilgamesh said. He metasensed the cats for the first time and noticed a tiny haze of dross about them. “Some other Crow’s befriended them, though.” He refused to believe any mysterious affinity to animals might be related to the Crow Killer puzzle.

  Or maybe not. He sighed inside, and made a mental note to write down his affinity. The cat Gilgamesh was petting kneaded his leg and purred.

  “That would be Occum.” Gymnast thought for a moment. “Strange. Our housecats never show their tails when Sky’s around. Do you Crows have individual animal affinities?”

  Gilgamesh shrugged at the strange question. Many Crows kept dogs, he knew, but he had never felt the urge. There always seemed to be cats around, though, wherever he went. “If we do, I think for me it’s cats.”

  “So. Sky says you’re trying to be an adventurous Crow, like he is. What’s your mission?”

  “I have two. One is personal, the other is from my Guru, Shadow.” Gymnast smiled in recognition. Gilgamesh wondered if she had met Shadow or just exchanged letters with him. “My personal mission is to figure out what’s going on with Crows as Major Transforms. As I hinted at over the phone, my other mission is to figure out who’s been killing and kidnapping Crows.”

  He didn’t mean to blurt that out. Right after Thomas the Dreamer told him to be secretive. Had he fallen for the tiny Focus’s charisma? That was easy to believe. He found her quite likeable. Her personality was as magnetic as her glow.

  “Hold on,” Focus Rizzari said, more forceful. “When did this killing start?”

  “After the Philadelphia
Massacre. I think the mastermind behind it is the Beast Master of the Beast Men, who Carol knows as Officer Canon. I also think Officer Canon and those Beast Men are behind the tagged Transform kidnappings you Focuses are so worried about. Stacy Keaton shares my views on the subject, but neither of us has any real data to back it up.”

  The Focus bit her lip. “So they can sneak up on Crows as well. I didn’t think anyone could sneak up on a Crow.”

  “Neither did the Crows,” Gilgamesh said. “Wait. As well? The Transform kidnappers are using Transform stealth tricks?”

  “Yes. In several cases the Transforms were kidnapped from within a Focus’s metasense and eyesight range.”

  Gilgamesh tried to contain his glee. A real, obviously relevant piece of information! Maybe this questioning business would work, despite his doubts.

  ---

  The Focus led him up the stairs. The crowded second floor averaged more than two beds a room. Whole families lived in rooms set up for a single child. Still, crowded rooms beat camping out in the hallways and back yards, as some Transforms did in some Focus households. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  “The crowding, or the lack of crowding?” Lori said.

  “The lack of crowding.” He looked around. “Four bathrooms?” They had carved two from a single bathroom, the others likely linen closets before their conversion. They were all tiny. He stuck his head into one and marveled at the architecture.

  “Fold down sinks?” They did amazing work in this household.

  Gymnast sighed. “They leak. As an invention they work, but I don’t think we’re going to be selling them on the open market any time soon. The rubber pipes need replacing every four months from all the use.”

  “I could probably design you a folding commode able to fit in a shower, if you’re interested. Save you some more space,” Gilgamesh said. The Focus put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

  “That isn’t funny,” she said. Her glow now colored with annoyance; she thought he mocked her house’s problems.

  “I hadn’t thought of this before, but there’s a huge opportunity waiting for someone interested in re-engineering American houses to fit the needs of Transform households,” Gilgamesh said. “In my former life I was an industrial engineer; these days” he sighed “I’ve been reduced to repairing appliances for a living.”

  Gymnast froze for a moment and cocked her head. “I only know two Crows who aren’t artists, and you’re both considered adventuring Crows. This can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Plenty of Crows aren’t artists,” Gilgamesh said. “Most are street bums or living off the land. All Crows start as bums, because of the panic. We learn to live off the land, or, well, we don’t. Many get used to living off the land and never go back. I once considered a restaurant’s dumpster as my territory because of their high quality garbage. Early on I considered a reasonably clean and dry culvert to be my home.”

  The Focus turned away, not answering. Gilgamesh thought he heard a surreptitious sniff. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I,” she said, after a couple minutes. “I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to avoid sticking my foot in my mouth when Crows are around.”

  “No need to apologize.” He realized Focuses must have as much difficulty dealing with Crows as the Crows had with them.

  She stalked off down the hall, waving for him to follow. “Yes, there is. I keep forgetting that no matter how bad off Focuses and Transforms are, you Crows have everything worse.” The hall ended in a tiny room, immaculate, richly appointed, but still miniscule. Gymnast entered the room and folded down a child sized Murphy bed. She sat down on it and let her emotions roil inside her while keeping a pleasant smile on her face. “This is my room.”

  The room itself wasn’t a converted closet, as Gilgamesh first thought, but a converted end of a hallway. Take a hallway that ended with a window, and block off the end and convert the space to a room. Add a Murphy bed, a fold out desk, a folding chair, stick storage up high where someone as short as Lori couldn’t reach without standing on a chair, and this was what you got.

  His heart ached for her, and some Crow instinct surfaced from the depths and longed to comfort her, bring beautiful order back to her currently roiled glow. Gilgamesh sat down beside her on the tiny bed and patted her shoulders. She turned to him and her emotional roil went crazy, chaotic, beyond Gilgamesh’s understanding. The false smile on her face broke and a couple of tears seeped out of her left eye, but he didn’t see sadness, just mixed hope and joy. She took his hands in hers; when he didn’t flinch or back off, she moved over next to him and hugged him tightly.

  He stroked her back and held her, and found tears streaking down his own face. Her emotions quieted, as did her glow, now echoing his compassion. It was comforting to hold her like this, to be able to give comfort to someone else. So many of his Crow instincts were so selfish; he was pleased to discover that he had instincts urging him to help someone else. Caring for her made him feel warm inside. He had been so lonely for so long.

  “I’m not sure where that came from,” she said, in a whisper. “I’m not living up to my reputation as a hard case Focus. In fact, if you divide Focuses into nasty Focuses and nice Focuses, I’m one of the nastier of the sorry lot. Most of the time, when I look at myself in the mirror, I see a monster.”

  “All Transforms do, Focus Rizzari,” he said.

  “Please, call me Lori.” She gave his right hand a quick squeeze.

  “Lori,” he said. “I think all the Major Transforms hate themselves. We rely too much on our instincts and our reliance reflects badly in the mirror of civilization.”

  She nodded against his chest and snuggled closer. She seemed almost to purr with pleasure from his comfort. “Our instincts can save us when things get dangerous,” she said. “But we aren’t primitive humans any more. We can choose to ignore our instincts and act in a civilized manner.”

  “Not many Major Transforms have learned how.”

  She took her head from his chest and looked up into his eyes. “I’m lost, Gilgamesh.” Her warm brown eyes drew him in. He nodded, not understanding, but sympathetic all the same.

  “I used to have everything under control, my head, my heart, my emotions, the juice. I knew what I was doing. I had this Focus thing down cold. Then Sky came along and tore my life apart.”

  Before he transformed, Gilgamesh had been married. He knew the proper answer to Lori’s statement was a grunt of encouragement.

  “Now the responsibilities I’d juggled so easily before are starting to crush me. My Professorship has turned into a political nightmare. For the first time since I started the Cause I’m actually driving more people away from Inferno than I’m attracting. I’ve long been the aloof Focus, watching from a distance as my people dealt with their relationships, but I find I can’t stay aloof any longer and I’m having trouble coping.”

  Gilgamesh understood. Major Transforms were the ultimate voyeurs.

  “Lori, you do know you’re pregnant, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “My problems started before I got pregnant. You could say I got pregnant because of them.”

  Uh oh. Gilgamesh realized he had walked into a morass. Those weren’t the words of a woman missing the father of her unborn child, those were the words of a woman who had decided to break up with her man. Now he remembered where he had seen Lori’s vacant stare before. He had seen the stare on Carol whenever someone mentioned Focus Rizzari.

  Oh, hell, the Focus had fallen for him. Sky was going to kill him!

  His realization should have had him panicky and fleeing, but something about Lori’s arms around him quelled his panic. Had he fallen for her, too?

  “We both see a bit of Carol in each other, don’t we,” Gilgamesh said. His separation from Carol created an unfillable hunger, along with an aching sadness and an occasional urge to find a safe place and scream in agony at the unfairness of the universe. He had just gotten his Tiamat back, dammit! He wanted to be with her.
/>   So, he guessed, did Lori.

  Lori wiggled around and looked into his eyes. Held the look for a long moment, and looked away, her face flushed, her breathing ragged. “When I met Carol for the second time, after Sky did to me whatever he did, I was entranced. I’d never met another Major Transform who had the same spark I have inside me, the unnamed thing which makes me different. You have the same spark, as well. It’s irresistible, this need to associate with others like yourself.”

  “When I metasensed Carol’s glow for the first time I thought she was a goddess. Much of the time I still do.”

  Lori rearranged herself back to her original position, with her head no longer on his chest. She didn’t attempt to wiggle free of his arm. “We’re all being messed up by the juice. Like that never happens.” She slapped his knee. “Okay. Tell you what. I apologize for my bad behavior. I’ll be a good girl from now on. Really. I promise. I’m glad you held me, though.” She turned and smiled at him with her hypnotic eyes aglow, stood and took him by the hand. Her masks settled back into place, his ability to sense her emotions gone again. “You want to see some more of Inferno, Gilgamesh?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Lori continued the tour of her household, introducing him to her Transforms one at a time.

  He recognized the third, which led to a humorous exchange.

  “You?” she, Sadie Tucker, said, echoing his “You?” at her.

  The trim thirty five year old woman bounded up to Gilgamesh, twirled him in the air and set him down before he could react. Last time they had met, eighteen months ago, she had been eighty pounds heavier. She had changed in many ways, all for the better. “Focus! Gilgamesh is the young Crow I met during the Rover capture,” Sadie said. She smiled at him, not letting go. “I apologize, but because of my dross leak I’d forgotten your name by the time I got home. Which put me in quite a bit of hot water.”