A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) (22 page)

“I’m in charge now,” Tonya said.  Wini gave a little ‘heh’ of approval.  “After watching the tapes I decided breaking the Arm in person
would be too dangerous.  Instead, I put a plan into motion I’m sure will work by Sunday night.”  Tonya shook her head.  Wini sounded almost hungry for Hancock’s pain.

“Tell me,” Wini said.  Tonya outlined her plan.  When she got to the kicker at the end, Wini cooed in almost orgasmic glee.  “I like it, Tonya.  Ohh,
this is a good one.  She’ll break real nice for you.  Tell me, how’s she doing so far?  Has the Arm figured out anything about what you’re going to do with her?”  Tonya winced at the open pleasure in Wini’s voice.  Her former mentor had a few kinks, but again, Tonya had known so for many years.  The hellish years in the Quarantine had given all of the first Focuses far too many quirks.

“I’m sure she’s figured out her captors are going to use the juice weapon against her properly.  Last I saw of Hancock, she
was sitting on a bench, glaring at the walls and twitching with a suppressed rage that would have fooled anyone but one of us.  Her skin is still covered with open sores from the bad juice in her first cell here, but they’re healing.”  Very slowly; even the Arm’s current cell had to be crawling with bad juice.  “She’s been trying to get her body back into shape with excessive exercise.”  Tonya attempted to keep her voice as flat and free of emotion as possible.

“Don’t you go backsliding on us and start identifying with th
e Arm,” Wini said.  Her former mentor’s charisma was piss poor, but she was a crackerjack parlor psychologist and knew Tonya’s mind nearly as well as Tonya did.  “I know she’s hurting, but Tonya, the Arm is a serial killer of tagged Transforms.  You have no reason to feel guilty.”

Tonya had
no safe answer, so she didn’t.  Wini kept barreling along.

“You’re saving the lives of countless Transforms by what you’re doing with this Arm.  Arms will never, ever poach tagged Transforms from Focus households once this gets out!  And when she sings
, we’re going to learn all we’ll ever need to know about keeping the damned Arms in line.”

Wini might be gleeful at th
e prospect at the Arm singing, but Tonya knew the risks.  Wini viewed the Hancock exercise as a way to threaten Keaton and get a lever over her: do what we want, gratis, or we’ll do this to you.  Foolish.  If Tonya couldn’t talk Keaton down, Keaton would declare war on the Focuses over such treatment.  But getting back in charge of Keaton was a problem for another day.  First, Tonya had to succeed at her current task…and survive the political aftermath.

“It’s hard to imagine the Arm was so dangerous once,” Tonya said.  “She doesn’t
appear capable of hurting a fly.  Even when she does those appalling exercises, she looks like she’s holding her mind together with scotch tape and frayed string.”

“Tell me more
,” Wini said.

“The exercises?  She’s fighting her juice cravings by exercising,” Tonya said.  “Her exercises are so vigorous I’m surprised she does
n’t injure herself.  Several of the doctors wanted to stop her, to save her from herself, but that wasn’t part of the plan.”

Wini snorted.  “I would bet money her exercise drills didn’t even come close to her real capabilities.  Pardon my interruption – please continue, Tonya.”

Tonya took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from her brow.  Too long talking on the phone with Wini.  Much longer, and she would start shivering.  “The Arm exercised for three solid hours.  She worked her muscles so hard she collapsed to the floor.  Twice.  Despite her reactions, each time she picked herself up and kept going.

Tonya searched her mind for something to distract Wini from her sadistic voyeurism and remembered a conversation with Agent Patrelle from earlier today.

“You know, Wini, I ran into something strange today.  The FBI Agent in charge here doesn’t have the remotest clue how Focus households work.”

“Discipline, you mean?”

“Yes.  It was the oddest thing. He couldn’t believe I had any experience in extreme discipline.”  Neither did any of the other men here.  Only Patrelle had enough nerve to ask her.

“Extreme for you, that is.”  Wini couldn
’t resist.  Wini had killed people in her house with her discipline.  She considered the power of life and death a prerogative of being a Focus.  As Wini would say, there are always more Transforms.

“Patrelle, the FBI agent, had no idea.  Here he is, in charge of the FBI’s Transform department, and he had no idea we’re stuck taking whatever Transforms we get from the doctors.  Murderers, rapists, the works. 
The idea we might need to discipline recalcitrant Transforms never even crossed his mind.  He had a vision of Focus households as little islands of peace and tranquility, where meek Transforms coddle some gentle Focus mother figure.  It doesn’t even occur to him that women might wield real power.  It doesn’t occur to any of them.  I had to tell him the story of that child molester I got in my household about two years ago.  You remember the one.  I had to take him down to the edge of withdrawal several times before he quit with the little girls.” Sometimes Tonya suspected the doctors worked to make sure the Focuses got stuck with the worst of the dregs.

“Ah, yes,” Wini said.  “I liked that story, too.”  Yes, Wini would.

“You know what Patrelle said?”

Wini laughed.  “He told you to take them to court.  That’s what the straight-arrows always say.  Can you imagine going to court
, when your proof is based off your metasense and what you’ve read on his face?”

“I
would have been laughed out of court so fast I would have gotten a speeding ticket on my way through the door.”

“Exactly,” Wini said.  “So, have you figured out how to get the Arm out of the Detention Center?  We wouldn’t want the doctors to use her as a lab rat forever or let the Feds
send her into withdrawal and waste her wonderful potential.”

This was too much for Tonya.  Was there an emergency she could invent?  “The Feds have assured me they can supply an unclaimed Transform when the time comes.  Once the law enforcement men are done here and leave the Arm to the doctors, I figure I can just convince them to move the Arm into my custody.”

“Oh, that’s just too rich for me,” Wini said, and laughed.  “They’re going to take
good
care of the Arm for us.”

Gilgamesh: March 19, 1968

After two days of preparation, Gilgamesh tried his first experiment.  He hid himself in the brush a mile away from his apartment building and took in the ambience of the area.  Carefully, oh so carefully, Gilgamesh let fly a small sick-up.  A special sick-up: it was tuned.

Gilgamesh had been re-reading his old Crow letters, the ones
talking about all the wonders of dross art.  Some Crows claimed to be able to include actual emotional triggers within their dross art.  Gilgamesh had missed the significance of their boasts the first couple of times through.  Not until after the Skinner humiliated him and he decided to do something about his many weaknesses did he realize the capability might be a useful tool.  If dross could trigger emotional effects, why should its use be limited to art?

Gilgamesh badly needed a weapon.

He tuned this particular sick-up to fear.  Following the instructions in the letters about tuning, he had practiced focusing his metasense on his own sick-up store until he could sense the emotions.  The fear came from him; the tuning hadn’t worked well back in the apartment, though, because his fear was fake.  Now, at three in the morning, out in the open, he knew he would be able to find his fear.

So, sick-up, and into the air went the dross, while Gilgamesh shivered and worried
about secret predators lurking in the dark.

The sick-up fell flat.  No emotional trigger, no nothing.  Just a small mass of undifferentiated dross.

Gilgamesh kicked at a leafless bush in frustration and recoiled back, appalled by his loss of control.  He didn’t lack fear; nor had he gone too far into panic.  He examined his results and groaned.  He had produced the fear dross, but only a miniscule amount, enough to scare off a mouse.  A small mouse.  Whatever tricks the other Crows used to produce tuned dross in quantities, he didn’t have them.

He had some other ideas to try, both on the dross fear effect and on other matters, but not tonight.  He was too frustrated and, well, too afraid.

Henry Zielinski: March 20, 1968

Zielinski waved good night to Tommy Bates, opened the door to his cheap motel room and slunk in.  Tonya was scarily good at breaking people; Carol had spent an hour this afternoon screaming obscenities over the intercom and showing the CDC and the other Feds the darker side of the Arms.  Dr. Jeffers, still following Tonya’s sick plan, judged Carol’s display ended phase one.  He started up phase two, turning off the lights on Hancock and piping in soft, soothing and repetitive music over the intercom.  Carol
didn’t react well.  She found a way to start a fire with her reading materials, but the CDC crew turned on the cell’s sprinkler system, leaving Carol wet, cold and miserable.

Hancock trashed her cell after the sprinklers turned on, or so he surmised, based on what he heard over the intercom
.  He couldn’t blame her one bit.

Three steps into the room a strong hand covered his face and yanked him back to the hotel room’s bathroom.  The door shut, the lights went on and the shower started.

Keaton.  Thank God.

“Talk softly,” she said, the totally demanding predator.  He nodded and she took her hand off his face.  “We don’t have time for personal stuff, so be quick.”

Zielinski didn’t attempt to fight off Keaton’s control.  “I called your answering lady because I wasn’t sure you knew Tonya had taken over,” Zielinski said.  “She’s got a plan I guarantee will break Carol.  When Carol breaks, she will be nearing withdrawal and I suspect problems.”

He hadn’t seen Keaton in over six months.  He couldn’t see much of her now because she
wore head to toe black loose fitting clothing, including a black hood over her face only showing her eyes.  Ninja clothing?  Always something new from Keaton.  An outfit like this would be good at sneaking around the outsides of the CDC’s Transform Detention Center.

“I figured as much,” Keaton said, voice muffled behind the cloth.  “I tried twice to get into the place
, but the place is locked down tighter than a nun’s pussy.  I’m going to keep probing, but it looks like they’ve learned far too much about Arms for this to be easy.  How goes your attempt to gain access?”

Keaton’s one request to him so far, left through the message lady.

“Tonya’s sitting on it,” he said.  “She thinks I’m up to something, but she’s not sure what.  When she’s been around she’s made sure she knows what I’m doing.  One piece of luck, though: Tonya has to go back to Philly to handle some household business and won’t be back until Sunday.”

“Four days.  Hell, if I can’t do it in four days, we’re going to
need to write off Carol.”

“I’m not prepared to do that,” Zielinski said.

“You’re going to need to come up with a hell of a lot better intel than you’ve come up with so far if we’re going to do this.  A few good ideas wouldn’t hurt either.”  She paused.  “Write down everything you’ve learned and leave it behind the hotel’s newspaper box.  Maybe I can come up with something.  Keep working on finding a way into the Detention Center.  Don’t worry about being legal.”

Zielinski nodded and nodded and nodded.  “We need to talk, Stacy.  I have several complicated ideas I
would like a chance to pass along to you.”

“
Huh.  The whole CDC complex is a trap for me and the FBI’s got everyone involved under full time surveillance, including you.  From the FBI’s perspective, Hancock’s nothing but bait.  Otherwise she would already be dead.  The CDC people don’t realize this and you’re not to tell them.  Hell, the only reason you’re still alive is the fact they’re using you as bait, too.  Whatever you want to talk to me about, write it down and leave it with whatever else you’re passing along to me.”

Keaton vanished, the only sign she physically had moved when she left the room was a muted whoosh of air as the bathroom door opened and closed faster than he could see.

Gilgamesh: March 20, 1968 – March 22, 1968

“Hello, Enid?  How do you do?  I’m a Crow.”

The telephone pole didn’t respond.

Gilgamesh was getting better. 
The first time he first attempted to converse with a telephone pole, he practically panicked himself out of his shoes. How much of the past year or two had he forgotten because of utter embarrassment?

Enid Gladchuck
, a Bay Area focus, lived in the sleepy bedroom community of Cupertino, a suburb of San Jose.  As far as Gilgamesh could figure out, based on his metasense work and his time at the library reading old newspapers, Enid was an average Focus, not involved in Focus politics or mundane local politics, with about six years of Focusing under her belt.  She wasn’t a monster, just a fastidious mover of juice who kept a well-run household filled with eminently sane and well-adjusted Transforms.  He should be able to handle Enid.  Right?