All That We Are

By Randall Allen Farmer

Book Seven of "The Commander"

Among the Transforms, Carol Hancock is one of only three Arms. Reluctantly resigned to the Commander title, Carol organizes her allies to fight the Hunter Chimeras and their secret Crow Master, Wandering Shade. She must contend with her boss, the Arm Stacy Keaton – who demands more from Carol than Carol can deliver; her reluctant allies – some of whom do not even admit to the existence of the Hunters, active traitors within the ranks, and spies. The identity of Wandering Shade and his goals remain the last unanswered mysteries. Uncovering the answers to these will confound Carol and her allies, and cause dissention and weakness in a time where they cannot afford any – the time for the final confrontation with Wandering Shade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Allen Farmer
• Release date: May 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301727537

Randall Allen Farmer

Greetings.I am an author, science nerd, an amateur photographer, a father, and a pencil and paper game designer and gamemaster. My formal education was in geology and geophysics, and back in the day I worked in the oil industry tweaking software associated with finding oil. Since I left the oil industry, I've spent most of my time being a parent, but did have enough time to get two short stories published (in Analog and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine). Now I'm giving epublishing a try, and I have an ample supply of novel-length publishable material to polish and publish.

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All That We Are

Book Seven of The Commander

Randall Allen Farmer

Copyright © 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 by Randall Allen Farmer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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Contents

Part 1 – Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas

Part 2 – Games of Numbers

Part 3 – Words to Deeds

Part 4 – The Happiest Day of My Life

Epilog

Books By this Author

Author’s Afterword

All That We Are

Book Seven of The Commander

The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage.

– Thucydides

Part 1

Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chapter 1

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

– The Buddha

Carol Hancock: December 21, 1968

I ran to clear my head, a wonderful night run through my current hometown and territory of Houston. At the far end of Memorial Drive I stopped for a breather before I turned around to run back to my house. Here, beyond the end of the suburbs, I could smell the distant Gulf, the stubble of cotton and cane fields, the fallen leaves of a late fall, and mold. Tomorrow I would run through downtown and into the industrial district south of the Houston Ship Channel, a place of a million different chemical reeks that added up to a great deal of petrochemical money.

After two harrowing months, I had finally won the fight with my personal nemesis, Focus Tonya Biggioni. Then, when I held her in my grasp, I found she had been a tool of Shirley Patterson, the shadow boss of the Focuses, the white witch. She had tagged Biggioni, controlled her, and partly enslaved her. With the tag gone, Biggioni was now on my side, at least for the moment. I didn’t trust her, not at all.

I paid a price for my triumph in blood and pain, mostly to my Arm boss, Stacy Keaton. I paid another price to my psyche – people called me the Commander now, and I didn’t know how to escape the name. I wasn’t good at being a piece on someone else’s game board. It made me cranky.

I heard a bicycle rattle to a stop just outside my metasense range, an uncommon occurrence after 1 AM. The stopped bicycle had that feel to it, though, so I waited and focused my hearing.

Arm Hancock, a gruff male voice whispered from just over a quarter mile away. I am Crow Snow, and I would like to talk to you.

I went stone-faced and prepared myself for an attack. Snow was a suspect, a senior Crow of immense power and talent, with a decent chance of being the enemy, Rogue Crow.

Just the usual deep deep shit that was my life.

My name is Carol Hancock, and I’m an Arm. If this sounds like a cadence from an AA meeting, you’re partly right, as being an Arm, a victim of Armenigar’s Syndrome, does have many similarities to being a substance abuser. We call the substance in question ‘juice’, the set of chemicals all Transforms produce and which keeps Transforms alive. Arms are Major Transforms, as are Crows, Focuses and Chimeras. I get my juice by taking it from Transforms of the non-Major variety, and they don’t survive the process. This would make all Arms socially unacceptable parasites, save there aren’t enough Focuses to keep even a quarter of the Transforms alive (after their transformations caused by a disease cunningly labeled ‘Transform Sickness’) and what happens eventually to a Transform without Focus support is not pretty in the least. So the Transform Community tolerates us Arms. Sort of. Right up there with hawks and the more noxious insecticides.

I had been an Arm for two years and four months, and I felt like I was coming into my own as a mature and important Major Transform. Houston was my territory and the center of the extensive organization of people I had recruited to help me, serve me, or just plain work for me. There were those who would have liked to see me dead, such as nearly any law enforcement officer in the country, the leader of the Hunter Chimeras we had named Rogue Crow, the Hunters Enkidu and Odin, and a few members of the nasty clique of old Focuses who secretly ran the Focus community (Patterson included). But I abided. Mostly.

My strength was that I had found a way, as a nasty predatory Arm, to ally the few existing Arms with the much larger community of secretive Crows. Contact with new Crows often went down like this, a nighttime meeting, and was always tricky. Nearly any senior Crow had the ability to take me down if he wanted, but Crow psychology worked in my favor. Most Crows would never start a fight.

I’d love to talk to you, I said. I kept my voice to a trained whisper, designed to carry long distances, at least if you had Major Transform ears. I had dealt with enough Crows to learn the trick. Here or anywhere else.

Here is where we’ll talk, Snow said, barely louder than the armadillo rooting at the edge of the shoulder beside me. Meaning he wasn’t going to show himself, meaning he might be someone masquerading as Snow. This sort of behavior didn’t throw me, not any more. Crows were impossible, from the most cowardly to the bravest.

What can I do for you, Guru Snow? I said. The only rank the Crows recognized among themselves was ‘Guru’, meaning ‘teacher’, ‘trendsetter’ and ‘celebrity’. Snow was – by the estimation of my more reasonable Crow contacts, and my Crow partner, Gilgamesh – a senior Guru, a Guru of Gurus, a position without an official name. Or, at least an official name us peons knew.

Snow had a distinctive voice: low pitched, gravelly, with a hint of a deep South drawl. Many Crows weren’t skilled enough to disguise their voices, and many of the remainder had no interest in such things. Of my Crow associates, only Sky could do such a trick. I decided I was hearing Snow’s real voice.

First, let me apologize for bothering you this way, Snow said, still hidden and outside my metasense range. I wouldn’t be accosting you at night, excepting that secrecy is absolutely necessary; because of my protections only us two will know this meeting ever happened. I also need to apologize to you for what I don’t know regarding your situation: I know you’ve gotten yourself into some sort of contest between yourself and Crow Wandering Shade, who you’re calling Rogue Crow. When stressed, Crows grew formal in their speech; when they got formal, they were long winded. Sky would go on for an hour this way, but he was the worst of the bunch. Snow? Snow got into parentheticals. I practiced my patience and watched the armadillo consume an unlucky grub.

We believe Rogue Crow is behind the kidnapping and murder of a few Crows and Focuses, as well as many Transforms, I said. We have ample evidence of this. If Snow wanted, I could give him the presentation. I had given it, what, seven times now? It was a good presentation.

I understand, Snow said. You’ve convinced Shadow of the truth of what all you’re claiming, but this isn’t what I’m worrying about, excepting I am, as are a lot of folks, greatly perturbed by the actions of the Beast-Men supported by Wandering Shade. Beast-Man was Crow-speak for Chimera; my enemies, the Hunters, were a variety of Chimera. My worries are two: first, you have someone in your organization who is leaking information to your enemies, and second, you and your cabal have agitated the first Focuses to the point where they’re edging back toward Crow-hunting behaviors. Excepting for such dire worries I would never dream of such a meager person as myself bothering a Major Transform of such eminence as you.

I repressed my Arm urges to bark at this nonsense. Crows cheated, you see. Common wisdom stated you didn’t push Crows if you wanted to get along with them. That never stopped them from pushing you, although they were unfailingly polite about it. Sir, I do hope you’re not attempting to tell me this in order to convince me and my allies to back off. His revelations weren’t a surprise, and I and my boss Arm, Keaton, had anticipated the first one. I wasn’t at all surprised to discover that the first Focuses were able to hunt down Crows, either, and had done so in the past, as Snow implied.

I judge such an action to be both futile and in opposition to my own goals, Snow said. Instead, I wish to offer you a deal.

This was better, and more in keeping with what I understood about Crows. I’m listening. Light rain began to fall on my head, carrying along the smell of warmer air. Although the temperature was in the low 60s now, I had a bad feeling we were in for another bout of so-called-winter weather with highs in the 70s tomorrow. Thankfully, I was leaving town tomorrow for a visit with Focus Rizzari, who had invited me and mine to come for Christmas and ogle her newborn baby. I trusted they would have some real winter weather for me in Boston. If they didn’t, I would pitch a fit.

There is no need to be angry, Snow said. Damned Crows, able to read people’s emotions. I wiped drizzle off my face and banished my annoyance at Houston’s weather. I want to trade information on who is likely infiltrating your organization, and how. If you pardon my forwardness, I’m looking in return for protection from Crow-hunting.

Thankfully, Keaton had assigned me the task of dealing with the Crows. Otherwise I would have to refer this to her. She had become a stickler about protocol. I didn’t blame her. I wouldn’t want my underlings making deals without my say so, either. Nor could I blame her for not wanting to have to deal with Crows in a diplomatic fashion. Every time I negotiated with a Crow, I got so aggravated I had to do an extra-violent workout afterwards.

My local Focus contact, Focus Laswell, still hadn’t found a supplier able to provide a punching bag I couldn’t ruin in a week.

By protection from Crow-hunting, do you mean active opposition to the Crow-hunters, or passive protection for the Crows? I stared out over the dark Texas prairie but didn’t see the Crow, or even his bicycle. My night vision was good, but not sufficient. Off to my left a maze of roads crossed an empty prairie, soon to grow houses and become a subdivision. Presumably, he was in there somewhere.

The latter, of course, Snow said. The tremor in his voice told me he hadn’t even considered active opposition. I wasn’t surprised. Crows dealt with danger by running, not by fighting.

I’d be willing to provide cover for any hunted Crows willing to relocate to Houston, I said. The rain fell harder, and I predicted I would be drenched by the time I got home. Wouldn’t this cause a problem in the long run, though, because of lack of dross? ‘Dross’ was what Crows consumed, their equivalent of Arm juice consumption. Dross was a byproduct of juice use. Crows were scavengers.

I listened to the rain patter on the tall grass. The armadillo wandered off.

Yes, Snow said. After a minute. From a different location. I guessed it was one thing for a Crow to know in theory that other Major Transforms knew some of their secrets, such as what dross was, and a different thing to deal with the fact in person. It is a concern, but a lesser concern than Crow-hunting. He sounded panicky.

I understand, I said, now putting work into being less Arm-like. I had gotten a lot of mileage out of my willingness to protect Crows and I wasn’t going to stop now. I can provide food, shelter and safety without any difficulties. I’ll let you Crows work on the problem of lack of dross.

For providing such shelter I thank you, and hope this shelter is never needed, Snow said. About my end of the bargain: the mind behind the espionage is Guru Chevalier, his operative is named Echo, and Chevalier is providing Echo with tricks good enough to fool nearly any Major Transform into believing that Echo is a normal.

I grimaced. I had heard of this sort of behavior and technique from Gilgamesh. But Chevalier? I’m aware of the fact that Guru Chevalier is no friend of what we Arms are doing, but I thought he was equally opposed to what Rogue Crow is doing. Note that I didn’t bother asking for proof. Unlike the Focuses, I trusted Crows, at least until they proved otherwise. None of them had so far.

He is, Snow said. In fact, his missives to Wandering Shade, or Rogue Crow if you like, are more strongly worded and much fiercer than even his missives to Guru Shadow. Wandering Shade shows all the signs of being clinically insane, at least according to Chevalier, and because of this Chevalier believes Wandering Shade threatens Crow society in more ways than just his interference in non-Crow affairs. Ah. Snow knew that Wandering Shade, although likely a Guru, was operating in a non-Guru identity. This was the first I had heard about ‘clinical insanity’, though. I would have to consider this in my planning. However, or maybe because of this, evidence has come to my attention that the information Guru Chevalier is collecting is being passed along to Wandering Shade. I’m thinking maybe one of Chevalier’s Crow students is also in the employ of Wandering Shade.

Such as Echo himself, I said, guessing. Gilgamesh’s read on Echo was that Echo was a Crow of low character, as duplicitous and mercenary as a Focus with a starving household.

My guess as well, Snow said. I have no proof, though. This is a troubling situation, and painful to contemplate, as it implies a movement from words to deeds among us Crows.

Yark! I practically dropped into a stalk. I thank you greatly for this information, Guru Snow, I said. Now he had me spooked. The ‘words to deeds’ comment ached with juice and resonated strongly with my Arm instincts. I had seen Sky do his ‘Crow crow’ thing just once, where he used some big Crow trick to create thousands of dross illusions of crows, the illusions in some way potent enough to chase off a demonic bear projection of Rogue Crow himself. My instincts said this was what Snow implied with the ‘deeds’ comment, and, no, I didn’t want to be alone anywhere near a senior Crow willing to aim such tricks at me. As one of my least favorite Crows, Occum, once said, buzzards would be picking at my bleached bones from here to Albuquerque. You’ve given me much to think about, Guru Snow, and unless we have further business, I need to complete my run and head back home.

Then I’ll be letting you run in peace, Snow said. I’m thinking conflict is coming to all of us, though, no matter which direction we choose to run.

With that bit of half-expected snarky Crow psychological analysis, I ran off. I heard Snow pedal off on his bicycle, the other direction. Thunder boomed above me. Yup, drenched.

The encounter had been disquieting, but productive. At least Snow hadn’t called me ‘the Commander’. Perhaps that absurd problem would just go away, forgotten.

Hah. Never would I be so lucky.

Gilgamesh: December 22, 1968 – December 24, 1968

Gilgamesh realized he was caught hook line and sinker when Carol gave him a motor home for Christmas. Perfect for a Crow, I’ll bet, she said. It was. The damned thing took up so much space on the road that it was easy to drive – just stay in the right lane of the Interstate and follow the speed of traffic. For once, everyone avoided him. Crow heaven.

The gift also meant that Carol had figured out Crow psychology better than at least one Crow – himself – had managed. Grumble grumble grumble. He did get to tell Shadow all about it, again denying that he was enslaved, dominated, held prisoner, coerced or blackmailed.

The motor home had a second use, as well. He could move his home whenever he got antsy. Which was often. Unlike the still-crazier-than-he-was Sky, Gilgamesh couldn’t live with Carol. Or her people. Or anyone else, to tell the truth.

The motor home, which he christened ‘Sumeria’, also solved the problem of how to get to Boston. It got even easier when Carol offered to go with him, with her people. Her entourage this time included her thuggish bed partner Raindorf, her military chief Tom Delacort, and the Good Doctor. In addition, she managed to talk Midgard into coming along. Gilgamesh wasn’t sure how, as neither of them were talking about whatever agreements had been made. Midgard stuck to Gilgamesh like used chewing gum, radiating fierce, unwilling to talk to anyone but him, Carol and the Good Doctor. Gilgamesh certainly couldn’t blame him for not wanting to talk to Raindorf, but Tom was a treasure, save when he and Zielinski, the Good Doctor, sparred for Carol’s attentions.

Gilgamesh ended up sharing the Sumeria driving duty with Carol. Much to his surprise, Carol didn’t have any issues with the way he drove Sumeria. She was on especially good behavior, about the best he had ever seen, all due to her success at taking down and turning Focus Biggioni. He even got Carol to sing. Her voice was nothing special, but she did know every Patsy Cline song and could passably mimic Cline’s voice.

They didn’t stop until they reached Boston, though as always he felt as if he needed to be going to Detroit, an urge he still didn’t understand. He had called ahead and got Inferno, Focus Lori Rizzari’s household, to arrange a place for him to park Sumeria, in a commercial boat and RV lot barely within metasense range of the Inferno household. A crew from Focus Ackerman’s household, Charade, ran a van out to pick them up and drop them off at Inferno. After far too long in Houston, Gilgamesh had hoped for snow, but the weather didn’t cooperate. Instead, the air drizzled a cold rainy mist, powered by a tight cold wind off the Atlantic. Carol was annoyed at the weather, but she kept her visible ire in check.

The Inferno household hadn’t changed since he had last visited. Terry Bishop welcomed them in, along with an adolescent kid, Parker Maybray, one of the omnipresent mob of teen Transforms who populated Lori’s household.

First things first, Terry said, as they gathered in the busy great room, a huge open space filled with almost a dozen people from Lori’s household, plus lots of chairs and couches set up in little conversation groupings. Everyone’s got to ogle the baby.

So they all trooped over to the corner by the window, where Lori sat near Sky, nursing little Cloud. Only a week old, a true newborn, with wide brown eyes and an astonishing shock of black hair almost two inches long standing out straight from her head. The infant lost interest in her nursing with the excitement, and stared round at them all.

Crazy Lori. She had refused to go to a hospital to have the kid. She leaned on her local doctor to be present at the delivery, and that was all the help Focus Rizzari needed. She just said, Okay, the baby’s ready, induced labor on herself, and four relatively painless hours later, out popped the baby, perfectly healthy. Lori had boasted that if worst came to worst, she would have performed a C-section on herself, the thought of which made Gilgamesh gag.

Lori stood up and adjusted her shirt, grinning proudly and holding her treasure so everyone could see. The baby gurgled and waved her arms obligingly, and everyone cooed appropriately and told Lori how wonderful the baby was. The Good Doctor took the baby to hold and surreptitiously check over, and Lori gave Carol a huge hug. The hug did something subtle to Carol’s glow, but Gilgamesh couldn’t tell what. Lori barely looked like she had just had a baby at all. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

Congratulations, Gilgamesh said, to Sky. You’re looking chipper, given the situation. ‘Situation’ was a code word for the Inferno household’s latest antics with Sky. In their opinion Sky’s relationship with them had fallen into a rut, limited to sex, meditation lessons and ‘adventures’, roughly in order of relative occurrence. They wanted him to be a real household member, so they had been pressing him. Gilgamesh had even had to listen to Sky complain over the phone after he had been assigned basement clean-up duty after one of his pranks.

As are you, Sky said. Travel normally puts you through the wringer. And is that Midgard hiding behind you?

Yes, Midgard whispered, still hiding. Tiamat gave Gilgamesh a motor home for Christmas. He drives it with almost Arm-like confidence. You’d have to see it to believe it.

Sky’s eyes lit up. Oh ho! What’s next, Gilgamesh, fighting with Arm-like confidence?

Gilgamesh noticed the members of Lori’s household watching him and Sky uneasily. He and Sky both had complicated relationships with Lori; although Cloud was Sky’s daughter, Sky and Lori had officially broken up. Did the Inferno household members think the two Crows would fight? Or push Lori about her personal life?

They didn’t understand Crows.

Ann Chiron, as usual, took notes. Just what he had always wanted, to end up in a scholarly paper on Crow anthropology. Gilgamesh shook his head in response to Sky. You have a beautiful child, Gilgamesh said, ignoring Sky’s dig.

They exchanged short glares and Sky backed off, starting a conversation with one of the other Transforms. Lori licked her lips and shook her head. Gilgamesh feared his small confrontation with Sky had looked about as silly as two squirrels hissing at each other.

We’ve got a few hours before dinner, Lori said, and you’re just in time to hear our carolers. After a juice signal, the music started.

Carol Hancock: December 24, 1968

Ma’am, I said, bowing formally to Keaton. Five foot two of muscle and mean, she was my boss. She and her student Arm Amy Haggerty had showed up in Inferno just after dinner, and found me in the great room talking to Ann Chiron and Tim Egins, two of the Inferno household leaders and both mine. Haggerty had her blank face on and I smelled the stress. She had been around Transforms in number before, but never the Inferno Transforms, who considered Arms in a different light. For some reason they liked us. Even Keaton. At least a little.

It all had to do with the Inferno household cause: promoting inter-Major Transform cooperation. As a practical practitioner of the Cause, I was an Inferno favorite. The fact their Focus, Lori, got gooey about me didn’t hurt, either.

Hancock, Keaton said. I heard a rumor you have something for me.

I nodded and pulled my faux-dissertation on Arm control techniques out of my travel bag beside the sofa. All three hundred and twenty seven pages of it, not counting the ancillary documentation. I’m ready to go over this any time you’re ready.

Keaton flipped through it and smiled. January 1st, in Detroit. She wanted time to read it and absorb it. She glanced at the Inferno audience – Ann, Tim, and a half dozen others – who carefully listened without staring. I want to formally congratulate you for the work you did resolving the Biggioni situation. You not only provided us with a new and important ally, but you also explained some of Tonya’s more troubling prior behaviors. Behaviors resulting from Focus Biggioni’s partial enslavement under first Focus Patterson’s tag. Good job.

Her comment was for the audience. And me. Praise from my Arm boss was a wonderful thing. As were Arm tags: without them, Keaton and I would be circling each other, verbally and physically, searching for advantages. There are no Arm peers. One must be dominant, and that was her, not me. Which is why I valued her praise so much. She didn’t give it out often.

Thank you, ma’am, I said.

On to business, Keaton said. Student Arm Haggerty has a graduation presentation to make. I’ve arranged it with Lori for later this evening, once the more mundane festivities are over. Keaton let me read her; she was proud of Haggerty, but she didn’t like the news Haggerty was about to present.

Very well, ma’am, I said. I let my intentions flow through my mind, and Keaton gave me permission to carry them through. I turned to Haggerty.

She tensed up, as she didn’t wear my tag. A tag was a subtle change to her juice to mark her as mine, and it produced all sorts of nice side effects to allow two Arms to get along with each other in a comfortable dominance arrangement. I wanted to tag her, and I thought I had the necessary bait. Student Haggerty, congratulations on your upcoming graduation. From experience, I know you’re about to enter into the most hazardous part of your career. I’d like to offer you some help, if you’d be willing to listen to the offer.

Ma’am, Haggerty said. Because of my years of experience I was dominant even without the tag. Haggerty didn’t like the situation. May I ask that the offer be made in a less public location?

She should have asked non-verbally. I realized that although she was graduating, she still wasn’t able to read me at all. I had no idea how an Arm could survive out in the cold cruel world with such a lack, but I trusted Keaton to have judged Haggerty ready based on her other talents. For one, Haggerty’s fighting capabilities appeared to be much more advanced than mine had been when I graduated. I suspected she had other compensating skills as well.

Certainly. I signaled the Crows and led Haggerty outside, to the Inferno obstacle course area. A private place in this weather, as anyone but a Major Transform had enough sense to stay inside. Slow cold rain dripped from the monkey bars and turned the dirt around the tires to frigid mud.

Haggerty, clueless, crouched into a fighting stance once we were outside. Keaton stayed back, giving me ‘this is what I have to put up with every day with this twit’ signals.

I had a rough start to my career as an independent Arm, I said, ignoring Haggerty’s crouch. What saved me was an alliance I forged with Crow Gilgamesh. I would like to introduce you to a Crow who is interested in allying with you, Student Haggerty.

Ma’am, Haggerty said, standing up straight, now thinking quickly. She made her decision and bowed to me. I thank you for this gift, and will accept the introduction. Clunky, from another of Keaton’s internal mental scripts, but it worked. I was hoping to convince Haggerty to let me tag her, but there weren’t any protocols for this yet, so I was just feeling my way forward.

The Crows approached as a group: Sky, Gilgamesh, Midgard, and to my surprise, Sinclair. They had responded to my signal and had been listening from the back porch. I hadn’t known our most famous Crow author was involved, but I wasn’t shocked, either. Sinclair, like Gilgamesh, had an amazing nose for ‘interesting’ and the curiosity to back it up. He normally wasn’t happy about palling around with Arms and Focuses, but he was here and not overly skittish, even with Keaton observing. At least she was on her best Crow behavior: the ‘quiet statue’.

I introduced the four Crows, who had stopped just outside skunking range, over by the climbing wall. The Crow skunking weapon was instinctive when a Crow was startled, and unknown predators outside of a Crow’s association, such as Haggerty, were the entities most likely to trigger this instinct. The Crow Midgard wishes to make your acquaintance, I said, my voice a Crow whisper.

Midgard was a tall black man with short-cropped hair; like Haggerty he dressed in black, primarily to aid in being unnoticed. His quick dark eyes flickered nervously at Haggerty, but he managed to gather the nerve to step forward. He was to Haggerty what Gilgamesh was to me, in that he had fallen in love with Haggerty’s metapresence and style. Would he be able to stand Haggerty the person? I had my doubts. I found her insufferable at best.

Ma’am, he said.

Crow, Haggerty said. She studied him for a moment and changed, almost as if she had switched from one personality to another. I have time for a short conversation, in private, she said. Would you care to join me? I had never heard Haggerty speak this way before, almost unguarded. Not a Crow whisper, but also not threatening. She had read Midgard, and instantly knew he was someone she would be able to befriend. Interesting. She wasn’t totally head-blind. As always, I was amazed at us Arms; none of the four Arms I had met, including the one who hadn’t lasted two weeks, were anything like any of the others.

I would love to, Midgard said. The two headed off together toward the cabana, not exactly arm in arm but within each other’s personal space. As far as I knew, Midgard had never been alone with any other Arm before this.

I decided to wait until later on the tag.

Crow Sinclair, Keaton said. She stood quietly, by the door back into the Inferno mansion. She didn’t do whispers, but she had her ‘tolerant, dealing with Transforms’ persona on. Sinclair backed up a step, wary. We’ve never met, but I’ve heard a great deal about you. I’ve exchanged several testy messages with a Crow in Detroit named Watchmaker, and I was wondering if you would be interested in talking to me about him.

She had tried to buttonhole Gilgamesh on the subject and gotten nowhere. Well, not ‘nowhere’, but she got nothing more than a growl of disgust and a comment about impossible Crows who were silly enough to think they had to point firearms at other Crows to get them to behave.

I would be glad to do that, ma’am, Sinclair said. He didn’t appear happy in the slightest, but we were all allies here. I hoped he wasn’t too flustered to remember to get something out of my boss. If he did remember, I would probably be stuck having to cough up the payment. Again.

Henry Zielinski: December 24, 1968

To his amazement, Inferno had converted the basement television room into a formal meeting-space just for them, with abundant well-used chairs arranged in a loose semi-circle facing a small table. The Inferno basement was a huge place, and if he had been in charge, he would have held this meeting in the fallout shelter, or perhaps Lori’s morgue laboratory. Although recently cleaned, the television room still smelled like old pizza and spilled Pepsi, with ratty second-hand furniture and piles of overstuffed pillows in the corners; the place was primarily a hangout for the Inferno teens, often with the door locked for private activities. The non-Arm attendees included Lori, the Crows Sky, Gilgamesh, Midgard, Sinclair, plus Connie Yerizarian and himself.

He was extremely happy to get this invitation from Stacy, Arm Keaton. Arms were his life, and as Haggerty was about to graduate and go off on her own, he valued the opportunity to study her. She was tall, leggy, basketball-player muscular and Focus beautiful, nothing like any of the other Arms. She was also intense and extremely intelligent, and faced the world with a social awkwardness common to many a young university student of similar intensity and intellect.

Haggerty set up an easel to the left of the table and started her talk. As my graduation exercise, I was tasked to solve the mystery of an unknown variety of Major Transform who Ma’am Keaton metasensed in late ’64. They are Focuses, but Focuses without households and household juice buffers. There are at least five of them. I find my discoveries to be disquieting at an instinctive level.

Hank’s eyes widened and he leaned forward as the stone-faced Haggerty told her story. The tale itself was amazing, involving Haggerty sneaking into the abandoned salt mine lair of these no-household Focuses, rifling their records and escaping unharmed. The salt mine Focuses excelled at hand-to-hand combat, manipulated juice in a non-standard fashion, and possessed various non-standard methods of increasing their juice production. They had excellent Focus charisma, which they bent toward recruiting normals, not influencing other Transforms. More interesting to him was the way Haggerty told her tale: as an adventure, with herself as the do-gooder hero at the story’s center. Haggerty was a different Arm than Hancock and Keaton. He caught Keaton’s resigned annoyance; she hadn’t been able to beat this non-Arm-like attitude out of Haggerty. Hank suspected she had tried.

According to their records, these no-household Focuses have been selectively recruited from Clinics across the country at the rate of one a year, starting in ’64. The one Ma’am Keaton sensed in ’64 was new at her trade; the reason why the others have not been sensed is, I believe, because they’ve gotten better at masking their metapresence. I found them quite difficult to metasense, even when I was looking at them. They too have a master, referred to in their records as ‘the Teacher’. Who this Teacher is, I wasn’t able to discover. In addition, and much to my surprise, two of these no-household Focuses and their troops had a near-fatal encounter with a Hunter and his pack in Gary, Indiana, on November 12th of last year. According to their records, a different member of their group had learned by unknown means about Ma’am Hancock’s espionage mission against the Hunters. They as a group decided to interfere, along with their troops, with a goal of disabling Ma’am Hancock’s vehicles before they reached their targets. The implication I took from this is that these no-household Focuses can hide themselves from Arms and Crows, and know they can, but that they cannot hide from Chimeras, and didn’t know they couldn’t.

Hank glanced over at Carol, who as he expected looked most annoyed.

After Haggerty finished the talk and opened it up for questioning, there were the usual Arm-rude questions about the details and inane digressions that often ended up as subtle digs at Carol by Keaton, and vice versa. He took notes, not tremendously interested, instead watching the audience. Carol was eating this up, as was Connie Yerizarian, Inferno’s household boss, but the Crows had lost interest early on and spent the time signaling and speaking voicelessly with each other. If he read their expressions correctly, they were telling dead Focus jokes.

There’s one thing I didn’t follow, Lori said, about twenty minutes into the questioning. Why did the salt mine Focus that, um, Ma’am Keaton metasensed metasense differently enough to fool her into thinking she was a different form of Major Transform? I’ve metasensed several new Focuses and they didn’t metasense differently, nor do Focuses who temporarily lose their household juice buffer due to one accident or another.

There is no definitive answer to that question, Haggerty said. She turned toward Stacy. Ma’am?

Go ahead and speculate, Keaton said, waving her hand in the air.

Haggerty reached into her materials box and dragged out a presentation board from the bottom of the stack. Hank read it and sat up straight, as this built on some work he and Gilgamesh had been doing. Gilgamesh and Sinclair noticed and sat up straight, as well. Sky and Midgard continued with the dead Focus jokes, oblivious to the radical theory Haggerty had so casually set on her easel.

These no-household Focuses manipulate juice differently and they experience the world differently, Haggerty said. I’ve put together a theory Ma’am Keaton terms a working hypothesis. In my hypothesis, each of the Major Transform forms come in sixteen varieties, based on four affinity sets: instinctive versus overt juice/dross/élan manipulation, objectified versus personal juice/dross/élan stabilization, mystical versus rationalist thought processes, and charismatic thinking gestalt versus metasense thinking gestalt. The ‘basic’ or ‘standard’ Major Transform uses all the right-side versions of these: overt, personal, rationalist and metasense. These no-household Focuses are all instinctive, personal, rationalist and charismatic.

I’ve seen some of this before, Lori said. For instance, Rogue Focus was also instinctive instead of overt. I’d thought this was training based, though.

Cross training is possible, but what I’ve found are affinities, what comes easily for each Major Transform. I suspect someone else figured this out, figured out that instinctive-juice-manipulating charismatic-thinking Focuses didn’t work out well as standard Focuses but are trainable in hand-to-hand combat and symbolic juice manipulation, without households.

Hank? Carol said. Spill. She didn’t believe Haggerty’s work, but read his agreement. She wanted to know why.

He took a deep breath. "Gilgamesh and I identified the first three affinities,