A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) (34 page)

Just after the Arm fell into her coma, word came in from the FBI.  Special Agent Bates had captured Zielinski at the airport several hours previous while Zielinski waited for a flight to Boston.  Tonya was surprised.  Secret agent Zielinski should have been trivially able to avoid the FBI and go underground.  Bates’ involvement stank as well.  Did Zielinski try to get himself arrested?  This smelled to Tonya almost like a plan.

The phone rang in her office while the doctors
continued to attempt to rouse the Arm out of her coma.  Tonya picked up the phone.

“Private,” the melodious calming voice said.  Tonya obediently waved her people out of her borrowed CDC office.

“Yes?”

“Time to go home, Tonya.  You’ve done your job and all is well.”

“But…  But…  I need to make sure the Feds do their job and Hancock gets juice.  I don’t trust their competence.”

“That’s all been taken care of.  You have no need to worry.”  Pause.  A heavenly choir sang hosannas and Tonya fel
t herself spiritually uplifted.  “As usual you will forget this phone call ever occurred.”

Tonya smiled and hung up the phone.  She looked around her office and wondered where her people had gone.  It annoyed her so much when she lost track of things like this.

“Everyone!” she said, loud.  Delia and the crew came streaming in from outside the office.  “We’re done here today.  Pack up.  We’re heading home.”

Marty came over and gave her a funny look.  “Ma’am?  Weren’t we going to stay until the Feds got the Arm juice?”

Tonya frowned.  She vaguely remembered something along those lines.  “I’ve just been reassured that everything is all taken care of.”

“The phone call?  Was that what
the phone call was about, ma’am?” Marty said.

Tonya frowned again.  “What phone call?”

Interlude: March 25, 1968

In a small Transform clinic in Charlottesville, the phone call came just as they loaded Gordon Wilhame into the ambulance.

“Stop!
Stop!” the nurse called as she ran out into the crisp predawn darkness of the parking lot, holding onto her hat, her skirt flapping in the wind.  The doctor turned away from the men loading Gordon’s drugged and unconscious body into the ambulance.

“They found a Focus!  He needs to go to Jacksonville, not Washington!” the nurse shouted as she came closer.

“You’re sure?” the doctor asked.

“I’m sure.  We got
a call from Doctor Absoth.  He found out through some Focus Adkins that the Focus there got a female Transform, and so she now has an extra slot for a man.”

The doctor’s face broke out in a slow, illuminating smile, and he waved his hands at the men loading Gordon into the ambulance.

“Sorry, boys, but the FBI doesn’t get this one.  He’s going to Jacksonville.”

The glowing smile never left the doctor’s face and he looked down at the unconscious man.  “It turns out you’re going to live after all, Gordon.”

Part 3
Rescues and Recriminations

Emptiness here, Emptiness there,

but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.

Infinitely large and infinitely small, no difference,

for definitions have vanished

and no boundaries are seen.

– from the Hsin Hsin Ming

Chapter
11

In 1967 2 Arms transformed in the United States.  Both died within 3 months of their transformation.

“Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

Sky: March 25, 1968

Did Keaton ever do anything that didn’t break a half dozen laws?  Sky couldn’t figure the Arm.  So reasonable one moment, so
psychotic the next.

The
y found the CDC complex out in the middle of nowhere, in the back of beyond, in an off-the-beaten-path area seventy-five kilometers to the west northwest of Washington DC, near the comatose town of Round Hill.  The authorities had probably decided to put their fancy medical centerpiece out in the forested hills of Virginia for reasons of safety, back when Transform Sickness was new.  Keaton’s chosen route to Round Hill went through Scranton, avoiding the metropolises between Boston and Washington – just in case anyone watched.  Keaton needed to exercise every hour or so, a significant inconvenience, and so they stopped in numerous small towns, parks and wild areas for that purpose.  Somewhere northeast of Scranton, their vehicle of choice, a VW van painted in flowers, asterisks and peace signs (all in bold primary colors), needed gas. They stopped to let the Arm exercise again, about two miles past the gas station, in an empty roadside park along the twisty two-lane truck route they had been following, US 6.

“No paper trail,” Keaton said, pacing in front of the five of them.  Drill sergeant Arm.  “I can’t believe you were going to pay for the gas with a credit card!  Where the hell did you leave your brains?”

“Ma’am, we were just…” Tina said, her face pale.

“Following your standard procedures.”  Keaton got into Tina’s face, the muscular woman being the one who
had almost paid for the gasoline with a credit card.  “Dammit, you’re on your way to break an Arm out of a fucking fort!  We’re going to be killing people!  If you leave a paper trail behind you, you’re going to spend the rest of your short miserable lives in jail.”

Keaton wasn
’t a shouter.  She barely raised her voice, barely put any anger into her voice.  Contempt, yes, quite often.  Exasperation, continual.  Sky stood ramrod straight and tried not to think too much.  If he thought too much, he might slip and start running, letting the panic take him.

“We don’t do illegal very well, Stacy,” Lori said.  Keaton still treated Sky like a Transform.  He couldn’t believe she hadn’t figured out there was something unusual about him, but if she did,
she gave no sign.  He wondered if his love had done something subtle with her charisma to make the Arm a little more susceptible to Sky’s disguise.

“Why do you have all these goddamned weapons then, anyway?”  Inferno’s arsenal was extensive.  Sky had been appalled the first time he watched them open up the armory.  They
seemed so peace-loving.  Only people on active bodyguard duty went armed, and not with any of the arsenal’s weapons.  When he asked what they needed the anti-tank weapons for, they told him ‘Monsters’.

He knew they collected Monster bounties but
their explanation was a bit much.

They wanted him armed as well, but he
objected.  Firearms went ‘bang’.  He wasn’t sure what went faster, the bullet going toward the target or the Crow running the other way in panic.  Did Lori or anyone else listen?  No.  Of course not.  Instead, they hauled him out to a firing range and taught him to work out his firearm panic issues in several long sessions.  Eventually, he did lose the panic.  Of course, he was a natural, with his Crow senses and Major Transform fine muscular control.  By the time Keaton showed up he was minimally proficient in several of their firearms, enough to provoke Sadie to mutter obscene things about Major Transforms and their unfair advantages.  Of course, if they expected him to kill something with a gun, they would be in for a surprise.  They might not follow all the Buddhist precepts, but he did.  Subject to his liberal interpretation, of course.

“Self-
defense.  Hunting Monsters.  Intimidating Transforms,” Tim said, answering Keaton.  “I’m not sure we’ve ever shot at anyone who might take us to court afterwards.  Or who the police might care about us shooting.  Ma’am.”

“You understand what we
’re doing is different?  You’re not going to give me any grief about shooting at normals, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” Tim said.  “We know what we signed up for.”

Keaton turned back to Tina.  “You, shit for brains.  Follow me.  You need to learn a little discipline.”

Tina paled further and
she spoke with a tremor in her voice.  “Ma’am, I’ll do better, please, I’ll…”  The Arm glared at Tina and Tina fell silent.  Tina liked the Arm, Sky had noted.  Tina was single, rough, and a little difficult for Sky to figure out.  He once thought she was a lesbian.  No, there were three in the household, but she wasn’t one of them.  Tina slept with both men and women, but only on Friday nights.  She mingled with a small group of singles; Sky never quite figured out what went on among them, save for the fact they didn’t seem to do sex at all save on Friday nights.  Tina’s crowd belonged to the engineering crew, and the engineer crew had a different culture and feel to them compared to the rest of the household.  One of Tina’s crew was a normal who had no other ties to the household save that he was part of Tina’s crew.  They hung out with the goddamn doctor, Zielinski, by choice.  Insane.

“Damned straight you will, after I’m through with you.”

“Wait,” Lori said.  “We don’t punish people in Inferno that way.”

“I do.”

“Wait,” Lori said to Keaton.  She turned to the four of them.  “Did she mess up, in your eyes?”  Tim and Eileen nodded.  Sam shrugged.  “You accept punishment, Tina?”

“Yes, Focus.”

Lori waved her hand and Tina fell over in pain.  Sky avoided wincing, but only barely.  Lori had stripped Tina of her juice.  The hand waving affectation had confused Sky the first time he saw Lori do the gesture.  Focuses didn’t need gestures to move juice.  He figured it out, eventually.  Lori used the gestures as a sign of formality and finality.

“Not good enough,” Keaton said
, quiet and growly.

“Fine,” Lori said, arms folded.  “I discipline my people.  No one else.  If
my discipline doesn’t satisfy you, you discipline me.”

Keaton smiled.  “Fine.  You eat the pain.  None of your fucking Focus tricks.”

Lori nodded.

Keaton frowned.
“Don’t push me, Focus.  I’m not going to hold back because you’re a Focus.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.  I meant what I said.  Only I discipline my people.  If you have a discipline issue, you go through me.”

Keaton thought about this for a moment and shrugged. “Okay.”

Crap, there they went again!  They were both raving lunatics.  What got into you to agree to something like that, my love?  Don’t you know what you’re in for?

Keaton dragged Lori off into the woman’s restroom, a primitive outhouse with barely more than a hole in the ground for sanitation.  The screaming started momentarily.  Tim’s hand clamped hard around Sky’s upper arm before Sky had a chance to think.

“Let’s talk,” Tim said, and dragged Sky around to the other side of the VW, past Tina, still curled up on the ground.  “Hold on to yourself, Sam.  Don’t interfere.”

Sky looked into the back of the VW bus, at the two humps under the blankets.  Two Transforms, tied and gagged, tagged by Lori.  One, a small white man in a business suit, murmured ‘Mary’ every once in a while when his misery became too great, or sometimes ‘don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right’.  The other, a medium-sized black man, held his hands together in a position of prayer and kept trying to mindlessly lever himself into a kneeling position.  Lori had called Focus Biggioni and gotten the locations of two Transforms likely to go unclaimed, within shouting distance of Boston.  They had grabbed them.  Disguised.  With a little help from Lori to supply the Focus presence, Eileen masqueraded as a Focus, in this case a fictitious Focus Smith.  Lori masqueraded as a woman Transform.  In fact, the entire crew turned out to be masters of disguise.  Sky wondered what sort of jobs Inferno normally did, especially since they didn’t do showy illegal activities.  He suspected there was far more to Inferno’s activities than he had seen, and he had seen enough to keep his head spinning for the next year.

“How can you let Lori do this?” Sky
said.  He knew Arm hearing capabilities well enough to keep his voice down.

“She’s the Focus. 
This is her job,” Tim said.  “Besides, it’s Lori’s way of punishing all of us, Tina especially.  What do you think this is doing to Tina?”

Sky nodded and didn
’t reply.  He metasensed exactly what Keaton did to Lori.  It wasn’t pretty.  If he, with his minimal links to the household, was about ready to burst, he shuddered to think what this did to Lori’s Transforms.  Especially Tina, who now writhed on the ground, on the other side of the VW.  Sky still boggled at Lori’s control of the juice.  Neither Eileen or Tim’s juice levels wiggled even a bit.

“What’s this about ‘eating the pain’?” Sky whispered.  What madness could make his love accept Keaton’s torture?  No matter how much she despised herself
, she shouldn’t accept pain like this.

“The Focus doesn’t feel pain if she doesn’t want to.  She learned t
o eat pain when the regional council punished her for trying to prove that Transforms like you existed,” Tim said, copying Sky’s whisper.  That only made the guilt worse, Sky realized.

Keaton was a bloody walking nightmare.

Lori pointed and Keaton nodded.  They
approached the CDC facility, on foot, at night.  Lori had pointed out a pair of state police well up ahead of them.  Keaton motioned for the Inferno crew to follow her, and they did, trying to circle around the state police.  The police were about a kilometer away from the CDC Detention Center.  Sky couldn’t say anything, but he could tell Hancock wasn’t conscious.  She appeared to be in a coma.  Something was wrong with her and her glow.  Some of the problem was the Detention Center itself; the place was a dross disaster, years of unclaimed sludge dross caked to everything, even the ceilings.  The rest of Hancock’s problem was internal, far beyond his abilities to comprehend.