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

  Sky groaned from where he lay curled in a ball on the small bed. Zielinski opened his eyes and paid attention. In a moment, Sky opened his eyes. The old Crow had been out nearly thirty-six hours. He sat up and blinked.

  “It worked, Hank. Your hypnotherapy worked this time.”

  “Good. Is your metasense back?” Zielinski said. The secret to fixing Sky was to get him to relax his Crow vigilance, to turn his juice-intensive metasense off, and give him a chance to rest and naturally heal whatever obscure damage he had suffered from the bad juice. Or at least some of the damage.

  Zielinski had fixed Sky with hypnosis. If he ever got to the point where he wrote papers again, he had a winner. Although Crows were juice producers, when you added in their powerful metasense they turned into net juice consumers. They got extra juice by converting dross, a juice waste product, into usable juice. Efficiently, too, though most of them were so tolerant of skating on the edge of withdrawal they nearly all ran low juice counts. The long-term effects of Sky’s bad juice contamination in the CDC had somehow damaged this efficiency.

  “Yes,” Sky said. “I can damp my metasense down so I don’t use up dross so quickly, even turn it off when I want to.” Sky shivered. “I don’t want to, though. It’s dangerous.” Sky reached over and gave Zielinski a big teary hug that seemed to last forever. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! The government stripped you of your title, but you’ll always be a doctor to me.”

  Crows didn’t like physical contact, except when they needed it, and when they needed physical contact they went overboard. Now what does that remind me of? Zielinski asked himself, remembering his rules on Arm behavior. Still, he felt uncomfortable having a weeping man hug him.

  Sky backed off. “So, we finally meet in person, at least in a situation where I can properly speak as I was meant all along to speak, in clear sentences of excessive length and appropriate virtuosity. Did you know I was being kept away from you while you were visiting Focus Rizzari?”

  “I was being kept away from you, as well. I’m sure you know where else we met?”

  Sky nodded. “Focus – my name for Anne-Marie, who terms me Crow – must be howling in hysterics. One might almost suspect she planned this whole thing.”

  “I’m sure she did, including the matchmaking aspects of the deal.” Zielinski wondered if the theories were correct about a match between a Crow and a Focus being able to result in children. Only time could tell. He would need to keep an eye on the situation.

  “Okay, Doc, I believe you. Anne-Marie can do nearly anything,” Sky said with a smile. “Do you have any idea how important your discovery is? Not just for us Crows, but for Occum’s Beast Men?”

  Zielinski nodded. From what he had seen in his time with Occum, the Chimeras were as suggestible as the Crows, though likely in a different area of their Transform abilities. This was a male Major Transform feature. “You’re right. Occum’s already using psychological conditioning with his Enabler. This will fit right in and improve things immensely.”

  Sky smiled. “I’ve got a deal for you, Doc. How about you teach me about these American Focuses and their nasty tricks, and I teach you about Crows. Have you ever heard of the dross construct?”

  “Never.” Zielinski smiled. He hoped Sky’s openness never got back to his Guru Shadow, who had clearly ordered the other visiting Crows to keep their mouths shut. Shadow didn’t trust him.

  Hell, Zielinski thought, I don’t blame him one bit. I’m not sure I trust myself, either.

  Chapter 3

  Bizarre Theft Perplexes Authorities

  An entire boxcar of cattle went missing yesterday, we have learned. Not just the cattle, the entire boxcar. “The only thing that would make any sense is if someone pushed the thing down the track without using a locomotive,” an anonymous railroad worker said.

  “Hunter Activity Near Chicago and Media Responses”

  Gilgamesh: April 17, 1968

  “Gather ‘round,” Keaton said. Gilgamesh finished toweling off; Keaton had him out running in the evening twilight with Carol again. Carol didn’t exude Keaton’s air of predator breathing down his neck (which was truly a Skinner trick). Carol instead focused on her running, holding a low burn to fight off exhaustion and quicken the recovery of her stamina. Despite his own stamina improvements, he barely kept up. Worse, unlike Keaton, Carol avoided city streets and took to the countryside and parks, preferring rocky and hilly terrain, which pushed him to his limits. After ninety minutes of steady running, Carol found a vineyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean and started doing quarter mile sprints, back and forth, back and forth. Gilgamesh followed her down the rows of vines, but not only couldn’t he come close to keeping up with her no-burn sprints, he hit the wall after just four, reduced to a jog for the remainder. She kept up her sprint practice for a full half hour.

  Keaton’s lesson? He and the other Crows shouldn’t count on quick getaways. Her pithy comment on the subject was “run early and run long.” She had an uncanny knack for picking out what he, as a Crow, was naturally good at and getting him to improve it.

  “Outside,” Keaton said. She had her emotions locked down tight, which made Gilgamesh tense.

  The elder Arm had set up a huge picnic dinner on a patio overlooking the ocean. The setting reeked of formality, down to the good china in use, china Gilgamesh had washed too many times. Keaton was an excessively disciplined person, and she had put work into teaching Gilgamesh the same.

  “Ma’am, if I may ask, what’s the occasion?” Gilgamesh said. Carol sat down, quiet, following a pattern that started after her visit to Focus Rodriquez. She wandered, lost in her own head, remembering, thinking, emoting, planning and recovering.

  “Eat first. Talk later.”

  So they ate at the wrought iron patio table and enjoyed Carol’s exquisite preparations. He relaxed a little as he ate, again thinking about how his time as an Arm pet hadn’t been anything like he had feared. Of all things, his time with Keaton reminded him of his time in Philadelphia, although the emphasis here in this grouping was on the practical, not the theoretical. Special, none the less.

  The moon rose in the east, four days past full. As Major Transforms, this provided more than enough light for all of them.

  “Perfect,” Keaton said. “I’ve made a decision. Gilgamesh, the Crow powers-that-be have given you a mission. It’s time you started on it.”

  Just like that, his Arm pet days were over. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “You may not thank me in a moment.” She turned to Carol. “You are not to help Gilgamesh on his mission.”

  “What?” Carol said, half standing. Enraged. “Who are you to say what I can or…”

  Keaton was on Carol in a flash. Pleased, happier than Gilgamesh had ever metasensed her. The elder Arm picked Carol up and went full predator. Gilgamesh practiced his chanting, his latest trick for handling inadvertent Arm induced panic. Damn but he had so many occasions to practice it.

  “Respect,” Keaton said, edging over into the Skinner.

  Carol, held in the air by the much shorter elder Arm (a strange sight to behold in the best of circumstances) paled in terror. “I apologize, ma’am. I won’t lose control again.”

  “Damn straight you won’t,” the Skinner said, and put Carol down. Carol groveled and apologized some more. The Skinner grew tired of Carol’s ministrations three minutes later and aimed a swift kick at Carol’s head. Carol twitched out of the way, still humbled and groveling. A moment later she stood up into a half bow, then carefully took her seat.

  Rituals, Gilgamesh realized. At least half of what he had sensed the Skinner do to Tiamat in Philadelphia had been rituals, not random egregious torture sessions. The grovel followed by the swift kick at Carol’s head had clearly happened dozens of times before. He even faintly sensed juice in the ritual.

  “Ma’am, may I have permission to ask a question?” Tiamat said. After the ritual, or during it, she had slipped over into her Tiamat-hood.

  “
This is a night for questions.”

  The juice in Keaton’s statement shivered the air, but it didn’t panic him. He was in this gang, not outside. Which, he predicted, was likely at the core of what happened here tonight.

  “Why are you separating Gilgamesh and I?” Tiamat asked. She paused and tacked on a belated “Ma’am,” a carefully calculated pause. Not quite an insult, but as close as possible without the actual insult.

  This was true Arm social behavior. Gilgamesh put some work into remembering every nuance here, physical, psychological, and juice. This he must remember. He had been full up on juice for so long he didn’t even worry about using the juice any more. He would, soon, if he was off without Carol, he realized.

  “You’ve grown emotionally dependent on him.”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted, ma’am.”

  “I did. Until now. But you’re nearly recovered, and in my opinion you won’t be able to finish your recovery until you spend some time out on your own. Remember how much you owe me.”

  Oh. Right. He identified an undercurrent he had seen once or twice already. The Skinner wasn’t being fully truthful, and he didn’t blame her. Squatting like an unseen toad in the center of her analysis was one desire: to do the Arm tagging in private. Gilgamesh didn’t begrudge the Skinner at all; he suspected each of the Major Transforms needed their own private rituals that none of the others should see.

  What was private changed over time. He knew, not so long ago, the Skinner considered juice draws – the hunt, the kill, the feeding and the aftermath – to be intensely private. This was no longer the case. A certain Crow’s ability to peg untagged Transforms at five miles had shattered that ritual’s privacy for good, he suspected.

  Tiamat frowned and defiantly took Gilgamesh’s hand. “But, ma’am, going along on Gilgamesh’s mission…”

  The Skinner growled, not much, but enough to raise the hackles on Gilgamesh’s neck. He now understood why the Skinner’s training needed to be so rough. His Tiamat was, um, almost divinely stubborn.

  The Skinner turned to him and he knew exactly what she was going to say. He restrained his urge to run, but only barely. Instead, he held up his hand. She didn’t say a thing.

  Gilgamesh turned to Tiamat. “The painful truth is you aren’t ready for this mission, Carol. I apologize.”

  She took her hand from his. She kept her face blank but he sensed she pouted inside. “I know that, dammit. I thought this mission would give me an outline of what I needed to fix, and in what order. So I would be able to fix myself. But why the rush?”

  “My call,” the Skinner said. “Carol, what do you make of our political situation?”

  Back from the brink. Tiamat’s mind turned from pouting to problem solving. She didn’t have her old edge and she knew it. The Skinner almost never called Carol by name; there was juice in that as well. These Arms were incredibly manipulative. He no longer thought they could avoid their manipulations.

  “We’re screwed, ma’am.”

  “More.”

  “Two Arms. At least three fully adult Chimeras and an ungodly number of trainees. Over two hundred Focuses. Over fifty Crows.” Tiamat paused. “These aren’t fair numbers, ma’am. We’re outnumbered. Even if we find more Arms to train, we’re going to be outnumbered for years. The other Major Transforms are made more often.” Her logic had improved over the past week, but he sensed the magical thinking behind much of what she said.

  “Correct,” the Skinner said. “What are our options?”

  “We could leave the country.”

  “Do you want such a thing?”

  “No, ma’am.” Tiamat licked her lips. This questioning was also a ritual, he realized. “We could go underground.”

  “How well did that work for me in Philadelphia? How well did that work for you in Chicago?”

  “Piss poor. But what you’re doing here, wherever here is, seems to work.”

  “You’re not looking at it closely enough, dipshit,” the Skinner said, voice dripping scorn. “You’ve seen what I’m doing. What’s missing?”

  Tiamat’s face turned stone, covering an emotional wince. “Oh. Ma’am, you’re not making money. If what I’ve seen is typical, you’re spending money much faster than your investments could possibly be producing.”

  “Correct. I have at most another year left before my resources are tapped out,” the Skinner said. “What I tried here isn’t viable either.”

  “Another option is we go on the offensive, ma’am. But for that option we need allies and a target.” Tiamat paused and bowed her head. “Pardon me, this is too complex for my mind right now.”

  “Who are our enemies?”

  “The Feds. The Chimeras. The ruling Focuses and Crows. Basically, the world.”

  “Who are our allies, then?”

  “Uh, the anti-war protesters.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” Carol tapped her head. “Uh, the non-ruling Focuses and Crows, ma’am?”

  “As a group? No way,” the Skinner said. “We have no natural allies. Until the first Focuses turned on us, our natural allies were the Focus Network, and they were only a minimal alliance at best. Now the Network’s neutered and I can almost hear a chorus of younger Focuses singing ‘filthy predators must die’ from here. We showed too much power getting you out of that Detention Center.”

  Tiamat blinked. “Oh. You’re saying we should ally with Focus Rizzari and join her ‘all Transforms must cooperate’ cause?”

  The Skinner tapped her finger on her plate, focusing attention. “My goal is to have a life free from harassment. My goal requires cover from the Feds, cover the more numerous Focuses and their households can provide if they desire. Since the senior leadership of the Focuses no longer provides this, my goal is to in some fashion lever them back into doing so. The senior Crows are also a problem, but their power is hidden and for the moment they lie outside of my calculations. Focus Rizzari is going to force the hand of the senior Focuses; Focus Rodriguez has already referred to what Rizzari is doing as the ‘Rizzari Rebellion’, even though Rizzari hasn’t made her move yet.”

  “Ma’am, how can this be?” Gilgamesh said. Information from nowhere? Her comment made no sense.

  “Later,” the Skinner said. “Ignore the ‘how’ for now. Back to my original point: if Rizzari rebels in some fashion, she’ll need support and she’s going to need to attract allies. My plan is to offer up our services. All three of us.”

  “Oh,” Tiamat said. “If Gilgamesh and I are working separately then the three of us can have more to offer.” Tiamat could do logic. No, not exactly. Tiamat’s subconscious did logic, why she called it ‘magic’.

  “Exactly,” the Skinner said. She turned to Gilgamesh. “I have a hypothesis the Crow Killer, the Beast Master of the Chimeras and the Focus’s enemy who’s been snatching and killing tagged Transforms are all one and the same: Carol’s Officer Canon and her Chimeras.”

  “I agree, ma’am,” he said. Finally, someone who took his ideas on the subject seriously. “You need me to prove this.”

  The Skinner nodded. “Proof on this may be enough leverage to flip quite a few Focus and Crow opinions about what’s going on.”

  The burdens of the world fell weightily on Gilgamesh’s shoulders. “Ma’am, I’m not a senior Crow. Working alone will greatly reduce my chances of success and survival.” The Skinner glared at him, predatory. He leaned back, suddenly sweaty. He took Sky’s letter out of his pocket, where it had sat nagging at him to show it to the Skinner. Now he did. “The last Crow who got involved in greater Transform affairs didn’t come out of the adventure in working order.”

  The Skinner read the letter quickly, then aloud for Carol. Carol still hadn’t recovered her ability to read. “I still haven’t figured out which one he masqueraded as: Tim the homosexual beanpole or Sam the lightweight brick. I like his style, though. Kali. The Walking Nightmare. Good names.”

  Gilgame
sh didn’t think Sky meant either of them as a compliment. He kept his mouth shut, though.

  “Sam, then,” the Skinner said, watching Gilgamesh. She went back to glaring at him. “You thinking of backing out on your mission?”

  “No, ma’am,” Gilgamesh said. “The mission must be done. Unfortunately, this feels like a suicide mission and I don’t have any ideas for how I might be able to improve my chances of success and survival, ma’am.”

  “I do,” the Skinner said. “I’m going to go public. Okay, not public public, but I’m going to formally let the Network know my lair is in the greater San Francisco area and that I’m open for business again.”

  “Ma’am, aren’t you worried about the Feds?” Tiamat said.

  “Damn straight I’m worried, scag,” the Skinner said. “But I can’t do anything about it in secret with you two hanging around here and watching my every move.” She paused. “I expect that my attention attracting device will work, I’ll get Feds and Chimeras on my case, and I’ll have to move territories at least once before this is over. But I think going public will be worth it. It might give me a much better idea of which Focuses are out to get me, for instance.”

  “What’s my role in this to be, ma’am?” Tiamat said.

  “I want you to organize us an army,” the Skinner said. “I want it ready by this time next year, or sooner if possible.” Tiamat paled. “Step one for you is to finish recovering, which you have to do under any circumstances. Step two would be to secure yourself a new territory. Then the army.” She paused. “Scratch that. There’s no need for you to turn down recruits during the first two steps if they walk across your path.”

  “Ma’am,” Tiamat said, her voice actually shaky. “How big an army? What sort of army?”

  “I want 40 to 60 real recruits and a lot of stooges, perhaps as many as a thousand. The real recruits need to be people tied to you who won’t betray you, even by accident. The stooges need to be in small groups, so we can use them as needed, in small numbers. The stooges shouldn’t even know we exist. Remember how you were betrayed in Chicago.”