All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Read online

  I met her gaze and signaled ‘yes, I’ll have a problem, it’s the scariest thing I’m scheduled to do before the Wedding’. “I see,” Keaton said. “The payoff is that in my opinion the United Toxicol lab is going to be too dangerous for one Arm. So you’re going to have my help on the snatch.”

  “I’ll present early, no problem, ma’am,” I said, burying a sigh.

  Yup, dropped into the deep deep shit again.

  It was my destined lot in life.

  Part 2

  Games of Numbers

  “Pain is life – the sharper, the more evidence of life.”

  – Charles Lamb

  Chapter 3

  “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

  – The Buddha

  Carol Hancock: December 29, 1968 – January 1, 1969

  Keaton now lived in a two-story house on the outskirts of Detroit. Her house and extra-large lot sat near what was once a quiet country road, now busier and pothole pocked due to encroaching development. The house sat well back from the road on a couple of acres, and was hidden by a row of overgrown boxwoods. The house itself was rectangular and badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. The porch out front might have been friendly, but instead creaked, empty and cold.

  Keaton had finished moving here a little over a week ago. At first she wouldn’t say why she moved, but later confessed she had been bribed with a ridiculous amount of military weaponry, enough to even make me lustful. I followed my boss up the weed infested gravel path to the house, and then up the three stairs to the porch. An old maple tree beside the front porch, naked to the winter cold, dusted me with a fine powder of snow as I passed. Hank, Gilgamesh and Sky followed me in, Sky the most disconcerted of the three. He didn’t like us dragging him into this latest Arm adventure, and disliked it more when Lori had given him an ultimatum: this was important for the Cause, so do it or scoot. Therefore, he was here. I had sent Tom and Raindorf back to Houston to keep my operations running.

  I looked around Keaton’s new place and tried to get a sense of it and her. She had kept her old San Francisco furniture and arranged it exactly the same way as her previous house. This was another pale palace, except the wood was painted instead of bleached, and the floors were old and dark and ruined the effect.

  Keaton sat down in her easy chair, while I chose the ottoman. She would have let me sit at the end of the couch, but under the circumstances, I decided a little extra humility might be in order. This was the defense of my dissertation on controlling people, something I had already fucked up once, and, no, I didn’t understand my boss’s current mindset. She had been icy and closed off ever since we left Boston. Part of it was Haggerty’s absence. The house showed no hint that Haggerty had ever been a student here. Perhaps she hadn’t, in the two weeks between Keaton’s arrival in Detroit and Haggerty’s graduation.

  After I sat, Keaton waved Hank and the two Crows over to the couch. “I know this is esoteric and Arm specific, but the three of you have been around Arms more than anyone else I know.” She had told them, on the tense mobile home trip from Boston to Detroit, to treat what they read in my dissertation as private and privileged information they weren’t supposed to pass on. All three agreed, Hank’s agreement a formality as he already knew the information. Without his help I wouldn’t have gotten this far. “Comments and criticisms are expected and appropriate.”

  I once considered my techniques for controlling people to be so personal that Keaton wouldn’t want anyone but the two of us knowing about them. I later came to realize, after my earlier botched presentation, the only people she didn’t want knowing about my tricks were the Feds and the Focuses.

  Keaton turned to me and started the grilling. “On page five, you mention the use of tells to discern recruitment receptivity states, but didn’t mention them later. What are they?”

  The mention of receptivity states had been item six in a nine item comma-separated list about the uses of tells…in a footnote. Keaton went after details, which I took as a good thing. It meant she didn’t have any problems with my overall approach. “Ma’am, they’re mentioned later in section 9.1” which covered the pre-recruitment phase “paragraphs 7 through 10, on page 74.”

  “Alright,” Keaton said. She didn’t need to leaf through my dissertation, having memorized it Arm style. Hank and Sky both flipped pages, which told me Sky hadn’t bothered to memorize my dissertation. “You didn’t use the term ‘recruitment receptivity states’, though.”

  I hadn’t used any term. “Yes, ma’am, an oversight on my part.”

  Keaton kept this going for seven hours, punctuated by two meals and three short exercise sessions. I passed – that is, I wasn’t invited down into her basement afterwards for any painful ‘attitude corrections’. All four of them critiqued my dissertation, but none of them found any real holes. I had no idea if Sky realized how much he told us about the Canadian Arm and her recruitment methods during this session, which turned out to be much closer to Keaton’s than mine, but more sexually oriented than either Keaton or I used.

  Sky’s information, of course, was the reason why Keaton invited Sky to my grilling in the first place.

  The next day Sky and I flew to Kansas City to do a quick recon of the United Toxicol lab and the Patriarchs, Wandering Shade’s Kansas City contingent of Chimeras, to determine what we faced. We flew back the next morning, New Year’s Eve day, and quickly got down to business. I would rather have taken Gilgamesh, but he couldn’t do airplane flights. Sky was the only Crow who ever did plane flights, and he was a complete wreck by the time we returned. While he recovered, I busted my ass in Keaton’s basement darkroom. Said darkrooms are one of the least known pieces of early Arm trivia; all of us early Arms had them. Arms did too much espionage not to need them. Hell, by this time I had my photo development chemicals tagged, naturally, much to my disgust.

  “You want me along?” Hank said. From his worn and sated state, it was clear how my boss had been amusing herself during my mission with Sky.

  “Of course,” Keaton said, paging through my spy camera photographs from her white throne in the front room. The evening sun shone from only barely above the horizon, and illuminated a golden band across Keaton’s pale carpet and aged floor. This time I took advantage of my rank and grabbed the end of the couch. Sky took the other end, leaving Hank on the ottoman. “Fuck. Listen to this: ‘December 19th, 1968. Successfully completed Detroit espionage for the Master. Sparkles is the one we want: she has quite a large number of gainfully employed Transforms as well as two easily deduced illegal money making schemes in place, making for ample blackmail material. My analysis of the situation leads me to believe that Focus assassination is the only way forward, and although Sparkles’ people do not impress they should be able to handle ventilating Steelcase if the situation presents itself. In addition, because of the idiot Hunter’s mid-November spree in Detroit, Detroit’s boss Focus has greatly increased security on her foul place. She has a private army of thirty camped out in all the buildings near her hellhole, and they are running constant patrols. I do worry that her insane project may be too far along to stop by any means; however, the Master disagrees.’ Damn, you two: getting into the Patriarch Loess’ place and copying his records was an insanely good piece of improvisation. I do wonder what in the hell Loess is up to, though.”

  The ‘two’ were Sky and I. We looked at each other and shrugged. I basked in the praise, but truthfully, if you team me up with Sky, we’re going to do such things. It hadn’t even been dangerous, not with Sky’s tricks: not only was he able to cover his own scent and metapresence, he could cover mine.

  The boss Focus was Adkins, and I feared the ‘insane project’ was the salt mine Focuses. I read in Keaton an identical fear, but neither of us had the urge to talk about this bit of speculation right now. The bigger fear was that the ‘Steelcase’ name referred to the nearly defenseless Focus Rickenbach, but Loess was no Twain
and I could easily make the argument that Steelcase was Adkins.

  “Ma’am, I’m…” Hank said, attempting to weasel his way out of the danger.

  “Baby Arms are your specialty, and we’ll keep you safe,” Keaton said, quickly flipping through the rest of the pictures I had taken of Loess’s personal journal. I had also taken several hundred other pictures, but those weren’t immediately useful, as they detailed the Patriarchs’ illicit business dealings. From my analysis, I suspected the Patriarchs were locked in their man-forms, true ‘male Arms’, and were Rogue Crow’s two-legged cash supply. Which the Patriarchs got the same way us Arms did, by theft and aggressive business practices. “From what I’m seeing here, we’re going to need you.”

  Hank thinned his lips, still not convinced.

  “I didn’t find any evidence tying Loess to United Toxicol or to Bass,” I said. “I might have missed it.”

  “I don’t see anything either,” Keaton said, finishing her speed read of the pictures of Loess’s documentation. “I think we can do the snatch with only a small chance of Rogue Crow complications.”

  “Ma’am,” Sky said. Keaton turned toward Sky. “There isn’t much left of this new Arm. They’ve been cutting out her muscles as they grow and she’s being kept unconscious, in a continuous healing trance.” It took a lot to keep an Arm unconscious, even a baby Arm. Living dissection would do it.

  “You said her juice count was nearly maxed out, though,” Keaton said. “Based on everything I’ve learned about Arms, if you keep us juiced up there’s virtually nothing we can’t live through.”

  “Starvation will be a problem, ma’am,” Hank said. “She’s too new an Arm for the starvation survival mechanisms to kick in.” He had learned about the estivation trick from Arm Eissler in West Germany.

  Keaton nodded and waved her hands. “What are these creeps doing to her, then?”

  “I’d need to examine the place in person to tell you,” Hank said.

  “Perhaps I can help,” Sky said. “Let me draw you a picture.” He headed off to the kitchen, to return with a pad of yellow legal paper and a pencil. Leaning over the end table, he drew. We hadn’t gotten anywhere near Bass in the United Toxicol compound, but we had easily gotten close enough for Sky and me, using shared metasenses, to get a complete picture of how United Toxicol held Bass. It wasn’t pretty, and appeared to be far worse than anything I had ever suffered through. “I have no idea what all this equipment Bass was hooked up to does. These two” he pointed at his drawing “were nearly loud enough to drown out my metasense.”

  I had heard far too much about this from Sky, on site. Fancy modern electronics interfered with his detailed metasense far more than they interfered with mine, simply because he got more from his than I did. Alone, all I picked up from Bass was a glowing blob signifying ‘Arm’. The computer center nine hundred feet away was far worse on both of our metasenses, shutting them down whenever we glanced that way. Someday the Feds would figure out the trick and all us Major Transforms would be up shit creek.

  Hank abandoned his ottoman to take a good look at Sky’s picture, turning on the light to see better. The room was evening dark now, but the rest of us didn’t really need the light and hadn’t bothered. “Heart – lung machine,” Hank said, after a moment. “That’s a feeding tube.” He tapped the appropriate squiggle, and then tapped another. “That’s a dialysis machine. My guess is they’re using the latter not to keep her alive, but to filter interesting chemicals out of her blood and figure out how she reacts to various stimuli.” He paused, attempting to hide his personal demons, the ones who wanted to be there and help these researchers take an Arm apart. If he had an enemy Major Transform captured like this, he wouldn’t hesitate. Hank was not a nice man. “It’s possible that Bass is brain dead. I can’t think of any other reason why they would hook her up to a heart-lung machine.”

  “Can an Arm draw juice while brain dead?” Keaton said.

  “I hadn’t thought so,” Hank said. “But I could easily be wrong.”

  Keaton paced her front room hard after we had gone through all of my data. “This is bad. If the Feds were holding her, I’d say ‘let her die’. Unfortunately, Tonya’s spent far too long filling my head with bad things to look out for, and this is one of them.”

  “Which is?” I said.

  “Corporations deciding to view Transforms as raw materials.” She tapped her fingers on her thigh as she paced. “Legally, we’re all Monsters, and so the usual ethical problems regarding human experimentation can be waived. In the minds of many. With so much money involved, especially if people start putting pieces together about Major Transform health and our seeming immortality, corporate interest in us is inevitable. If experiments like these cough up a major success, we’re screwed. We will have acquired well-funded enemies we might need to overthrow the government to shake free from.”

  I nodded in understanding. Legally, Transforms had no more rights than pigs, goats or chickens. Or lab rats. The only thing keeping us from becoming chattel slaves was the lack of a market large enough to overcome people’s ick factor. Given the history of the United States and slavery, I understood the paranoia, and grunted in disgust.

  “If we simply steal Bass, ma’am, then they’ll know we’re on to them, and they’ll take more serious precautions next time,” I said. Keaton nodded. This was her big worry. I also wondered what it said about Focus Fingleman, if she was as involved with this mess as we feared.

  However, being sold out by one’s own kind was also inevitable.

  “Ma’am, I may have a solution,” Hank said. He turned to Sky as Keaton gave Hank the anticipatory ‘here comes a goodie’ glance. It was for moments like this that she had worked so hard to keep Hank alive. “Do the Patriarchs keep harems?”

  Ah hah. I liked the way Hank thought.

  Sky nodded. “I metasensed four Patriarchs in the area, but only two harems of part-Monster Transforms. I may sound like a traitor for saying this, but the Patriarchs’ harem women aren’t anywhere near as well-kept as the Hunters’. I suspect their harem women are dying all the time from maltreatment and botched élan draws.”

  Hank nodded.

  “This has a lot of promise,” I said, following up on Hank’s idea. “We should grab one of the Patriarchs’ harem women who’s nearly used up, put her out of her misery, let her do the Monster goop thing after she dies, then substitute the Monster remains for Bass,” I said. Monsters had the very interesting property that their bodies decomposed rapidly after they died, and their remains were a toxic dross stew most right thinking people avoided like a nest of plague-infested rats in a cloud of fleas. The damned stuff could induce Transformations and fatally poison normals.

  With any luck, United Toxicol would think that they had pushed Bass into Monsterhood because of all the juice they shoved into her. No way would they be able to identify the remains as anything other than hers. I hoped.

  “Let’s do it,” Keaton said. “Tomorrow.”

  I nodded. I didn’t like it, but we would do the snatch without Gilgamesh, as time was of the essence. I hated doing capers without him.

  Gilgamesh: December 30, 1968 – January 2, 1969

  Gilgamesh lasted in Keaton’s house until ten in the morning. Then he left a short note for Carol, apologizing again for his inability to handle plane flights and his need to do some Crow business, and slipped out. He hadn’t felt so awkward since he met up with Carol in Houston. Fifth wheel. An extra part in a some-assembly-required children’s toy.

  He didn’t trust Kali’s mood, either, and Carol had caught it as well, almost too Tiamat for him to deal with. He got his bicycle out of the back of Sumeria and pedaled off through the cold, slush-trimmed streets.

  Detroit still bothered him. Something was wrong with this place. No matter what he did, he couldn’t figure it out. Sky hadn’t helped, needling him about it incessantly, saying Gilgamesh was becoming a mystical Crow instead of an adventuresome Crow. It gave him a lot of sym
pathy for Carol and her distrust of the Commander nickname.

  Crow business. Not exactly the truth. He simply wanted out, wanted away. He would have rather stayed in Boston. Was making love to Lori a mistake? Was he too monogamous for it to work? He didn’t know. His love for Carol and his love for Lori lived in different parts of his mind, both incomplete and both nagging sores. Something was missing. Damned if he knew what.

  As he bicycled past snow-covered suburban homes, he thought about Sinclair’s latest letter. His friend posited that Crow advancement wasn’t about an increase in the power of a Crow at any point in space and time, but an increase in the amount of space he was able to affect and the amount of time he was able to do his tricks. The individual tricks were personal to each Crow and open to him as soon as he learned to do more with dross than skunk things.

  If true, Gilgamesh feared he might be doomed to eternal mediocrity. He could do so little, compared to the older Crows.

  A half hour of pedaling later, he finally got within metasense range of the Detroit Transform community. No dark mysteries or occult Crow business stared back at him. Nevertheless, he felt the signs. Keaton’s choice to set up her headquarters outside Detroit was one. Second, Watchmaker still lived near Stalin, the name among Shadow’s Crows for first Focus Adkins, just as in Gilgamesh’s previous visits. He couldn’t believe Stalin knew Watchmaker existed, but Watchmaker’s location made a pattern. His instincts screamed ‘link’. The other Focus households felt as they always had, just a little edgier than they should, especially Hard Luck and her household. The Clumsy Angel, Focus Rickenbach, still lived in the ancient church. Her people seemed happier than before their move to Detroit, which wouldn’t take much given their previous home, camped out on a farm.

  He couldn’t find Newton. This had been what had crystalized Gilgamesh’s urge to flee Kali’s home. Newton was supposed to be Kali’s Crow, and Gilgamesh hadn’t seen any sign of him in Detroit. Gilgamesh hoped nothing had happened to him. He metasensed again for Hunter sign and again found none. Nor was there any sign of the ‘salt mine Focuses’. Unless he missed them because he didn’t know what to look for.