No Small Dreams

By Randall Allen Farmer

Carol, Lori and Sky have found the legendary first Chimera, Beast, but he captured them. While they attempt to dig their way out of this mess, the Hunter Empire, led by Enkidu, begins to strike back for the first time since Carol and her allies chased the Enkidu and the Hunters out of Chicago. Amy Haggerty, the Arm known of as the Hero, is on the front lines of this conflict, and she, along with the overmatched young Arm, Del, gather allies for what appears to be an inevitable major conflict against the Hunters. Focus Gail Rickenbach, now called The Director, has sent the best of the Transform forces west, leaving her current home, Chicago, woefully undefended. Portents and espionage show that Chicago is a likely target, and they are preparing for conflict as well. The Inferno household, newly relocated to California, along with Gail’s estranged husband Van Schuber and new Transform Henry Zielinski, appear to be far from the front lines of the Hunter conflict. Their current task is the rehabilitation of two mentally wounded Focuses. On the north side of the San Francisco bay area, Count Dowling, Focus Ellen O’Donnell and their two households begin an experiment – a merged Focus household and Noble barony under the direction of four Major Transforms. They and their partners in this experiment, Arm Rose Webberly and Crow Master Zero, need to work out their personality differences and stabilize this new experimental household structure before they can take their places in the conflict against the Hunters.

Then the Hunters attack.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Allen Farmer
• Release date: Oct 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370436231

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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No Small Dreams

Book Four of The Cause

Randall Allen Farmer

Copyright © 2016, 2020 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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No Small Dreams

Book Four of The Cause

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Part One

The Fire of Spring

"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing." – Omar Khayyam

Never, ever, use an Arm’s most powerful trick against her

Dolores Sokolnik (1/21/73 – 1/27/73)

Whooeee! Del laughed with joy, and leapt on top of the semi. The two half-Monsters who had been trying to corner her weren’t able to shed their momentum, and pasted themselves on the truck’s Mack grill with a sickening whap. Yowza!

Del hadn’t had so much fun, real fun, since she transformed. Her body tingled with lust as she danced along the top of the truck. Lust for life, lust for a fight. Wondrous! Beautiful!

More of these critters guarded the hostages inside the back of the semi’s trailer. Del metasensed them all, the half-Monster guards, the Transform captives, the ripped-up Focus, and the few surviving normals. The normals metasensed as holes in the élan soup that permeated the inside of the trailer, and the poor voided-bladder things radiated emotions beyond terror. Del grabbed one of her automatics, flipped the safety off, clicked to single shot, and started firing at the guards below through the metal roof of the truck trailer.

The guards fired back. Del whooped again as she danced ahead of their shots. Orgasmic fun! She had been in real combat only once before, in Pittsburgh, in the attack on Focus Patterson’s compound, an exhilarating experience but not fun at all. As an aide to the Commander she had followed her orders, forbidden to improvise. The Commander had told her that she wasn’t ready to fight independently. The comment hadn’t make any sense then, but now Del understood. Real fights, as this one, intoxicated. True combat was like sex, and like the kill, much more fun than the hunt and the stalk. At least for her, perhaps for the Commander as well. The hunt and the stalk, running down Transform prey and procuring juice? Too tied to the juice and to survival for fun. This, though…

Del skipped on her toes along the top of the trailer, plinking guards one or two shots at a time, anticipating, anticipating, anticipating, just ahead of the shots of the guards. Varying speed, weaving back and forth, not allowing her movement to show any pattern. Anticipating, anticipating, anticipating…now! Random shots at her, no intelligence, mind gone, flustered thought, and she ran like hell toward the far end of the trailer. Yaaah-hoooooo!

This was Arm. Fighting in the out of doors, not in some damned building or some damned city. Only dumb luck allowed one of Haggerty’s patrols to find these idiots tooling west along US 18. Only dumb luck allowed them to scramble the senior Arm’s full crew and run down the Hunter and his Monsters before they vanished into the icy night. Only dumb luck landed Del in the absolute most special and phenomenal experience ever.

Haggerty’s crew had caught the Hunters at dusk in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, about ten miles south of Wounded Knee. They forced the Hunters to the side of the road, attacked them, and the enemy didn’t surrender. Fight! Haggerty and her people didn’t know about the captives or anything else to start with. All they knew was what the Corpseriders, Arm Haggerty’s normal motorcycle gangsters, learned from Crow Midgard’s élan sensors placed on disposable aluminum pie plates. The plates squawked when they caught a sniff of élan, and élan in a semi meant Hunters, at least in this part of the world. They only learned of the captives when Midgard personally metasensed them. This wasn’t the first crew of Hunters Haggerty’s crew found with this trick, but was the first crew going west, the first with serious captives, and the first they successfully ran down.

Haggerty wanted to figure out what in the hell was going on with the Hunters with their phony war, as Van Schuber, the normal savant of all things strategic, named this. Hidden among the goals of Del’s boss’s game lurked the idea of running down Arm traitor Bass and killing her. Just thinking about Bass, Del’s own personal nemesis, made Del sweat with near-fear, despite the fact Haggerty had the talent to destroy Bass. In an unfair fight. Del could force the fear away, but every Arm she talked to, after leaving Ma’am Keaton’s school, had hinted, suggested, or ordered her not to thrust fear away into the quiet pools in her mind. The quiet pools kept Del sane and put a lid on her mental voices, but some of the uses of the quiet pools, such as banishing fear, they judged to be counter-survival.

The hints, suggestions and orders often grated. Del, as a young and recently graduated Arm, would rather the freedom to find herself, get her own feet on the ground, and put some of Ma’am Keaton’s voluminous teachings to use. She wanted to grab a city, make a territory, recruit some Focus and Crow allies, do the Arm thing and build a new life. However, being an apprentice to The Hero, currently the top active Arm and the only active Arm able to beat Bass in an unfair challenge, got her into this fight. That, all by itself, was worth all the grating loss of freedom Del could imagine. A messy chaotic fight like this, where she could cut loose, was icing on the cake of life and, overall, damned good fun!

Del metasensed the Hunter ahead, guarding the back of the trailer. Perfect. The idiots shooting at her didn’t think any more; they just followed her footsteps and their emotions, and shot through the roof of the semi’s trailer at where she had been a moment before. She let out another whoop as she realized that she could walk the gunfire from the Hunter’s guards right into the Hunter. The gunfire wouldn’t kill the Hunter, a scythe-clawed dinosaur only a little larger than man-sized, but the wounds might distract him enough to allow someone else to take him out. Hell, Del wouldn’t mind a shot at him, herself…

She leapt off the back of the trailer. She realized her mistake immediately, as the gunfire she so carefully walked into the Hunter also hit her boss, Arm Haggerty.

Idiot! Haggerty said, and smashed another elbow into Del. That made five knife wounds, two bullet wounds, a poke from a twenty-pound dumbbell (Haggerty prided herself on never going into a battle with a combination of weapons she had previously used in a fight), and innumerable bruises from Haggerty’s fists and legs. Del had taken far more damage from Haggerty’s punishment than she took in the fight.

She had misjudged Haggerty. Yet again. Amy was so good-natured. Rough edged, powerful, intellectual, but even tempered. Del didn’t consciously consider good natured to be a weakness for an Arm, but her cheating subconscious certainly did. Haggerty was the third oldest Arm, the second of Ma’am Keaton’s students to live through the early hunt-and-peck style Arm training, and from the horror stories told of those early days, there was no way she could be weak. Del’s experiences in Ma’am Keaton’s school said otherwise, though.

Foolish.

Her boss’s IQ didn’t dwarf Del’s, but Haggerty never stopped thinking. The difference made Del’s perceptual world simply quake.

You should have realized we used circling tactics, and kept circling, Haggerty said, flipping a knife in her hand and doing her own circling tactic, round and round Del, just inches away. Arm Haggerty was five foot ten and Focus beautiful, with rich chestnut hair and a perfect, sculpted face. Even her massive Arm muscles got lost in her long, leggy frame. She wore black leather pants and a black shirt, as well as a black leather bomber jacket, now torn and bloody. Del had never seen her dressed any other way.

They trampled an out-of-season wheat field that now was just a wide expanse of dirt, accented with occasional patches of grainy melted, refrozen snow, and spatters of blood and gore. Everyone else in Haggerty’s crew stood on the other side of the Hunter’s rig, firmly not paying attention to Del’s lesson. Going down the back of that truck was a linear tactic, and screwed up the tactics the rest of us were using. Your mistake put us all at risk, not just me.

And Haggerty expected Del to be able to notice this amidst the chaos of a fight? When having so much fun? Haggerty expected too much of her. Ma’am, Del said, hitting the ground in a full prostration grovel. I apologize, ma’am. I enjoyed the fight too much, and missed…

Haggerty tossed daggers, pinning Del’s legs to the ground, through flesh and muscle. If I wanted you to grovel, I would have told you to grovel! You don’t grovel for crap this minor, or next time I’ll cut your fucking feet off and make you regenerate them!

Del got to her feet immediately, and handed the daggers temporarily pinning her legs to Haggerty. Hilt first. Del had mistakenly believed the vicious rumors and innuendo Ma’am Keaton’s crew spread about Haggerty. The weak Hero. The do-gooder. The ‘nice Arm’. The headblind Arm. The soft Arm.

She should have known better than to believe emotion-tinged propaganda.

The fact Arm Haggerty had been at the time Ma’am Keaton’s chief competitor should have been an alert not to believe the propaganda stories, but Del’s Arm instincts told her to believe anything any Arm superior said to her. And so she had.

Arm Haggerty wasn’t the least bit soft. Nor headblind, as she read Del as easily as any other senior Arm. In the month after the Pittsburgh fight, this wasn’t the first time Haggerty needed to discipline Del, despite the half-tag Del wore. Each time, Del unlearned another of her assumptions about Haggerty. This one, the assumption that Arm Haggerty’s well-known aversion to torture and Arm beastliness meant she didn’t do gratuitous violence when disciplining her people, became now a very painful lesson. Arm Haggerty could beat the crap out of Del in about ten seconds, if she wanted to. No, Haggerty drew this out, over nearly five minutes. The precision of her physical discipline was itself a lesson.

Ma’am, Del said.

You said you were having fun in this fight? You expect me to believe this? Now, the head games. Haggerty read people differently than Ma’am Keaton and the Commander, but the difference in technique meant nothing.

The result was the same.

Del didn’t understand what Haggerty wanted. Ma’am, I apologize. I’ve never been in a chaotic fight like this with any freedom of action. I found I enjoyed it greatly.

So how the fuck is anyone supposed to know this?

Subject change. Subject changes by an Arm superior always meant trouble, at least in Del’s limited experience. Ma’am. I’ve been told I need to improve my socialization talents. An understatement and a constant refrain of Del’s Arm career.

This is a mirror, Haggerty said, producing an eight by ten mirror from somewhere. That Haggerty anticipated the need for the mirror, and managed to keep it whole during the discipline session, spoke unnervingly of her immense physical capabilities. And her uncanny and almost supernatural analysis capabilities. Look at yourself. Look at your face.

Del did as Arm Haggerty ordered. Del’s face remained a silent mask, showing none of the enjoyment she felt in the fight or the pain of the punishment session. She tried to express disgust, and found she didn’t remember how. In the mirror, her face remained a mask.

Horror at herself exploded in Del’s mind. In truly heartfelt anger, she broke the mirror with a scream and a slap of her hand. Haggerty did nothing to stop her.

What have I done to myself? Emotions stirred inside her, emotions she didn’t understand, an unknown sense of shame waking and attempting to escape its cage.

I don’t know, but it appears to be my responsibility to fix the problem, Haggerty said. You’ve got the voice back – from those ‘woo hoo’s in the fight, I knew you enjoyed yourself. Looking at your face, though, Sokolnik. Nothing. You could have been taking a crap.

Ma’am?

You should at least be able to smile. You should also be able to put a fearsome-death-to-my-enemies gaze on your face. Something. Anything. As far as I can tell, the best you can do is predatory zombie.

Ma’am, this is how I managed to survive. I… Del stopped talking. Haggerty vanished from sight, not by moving, but by doing something with the juice. She vanished from Del’s metasense, as well.

Del went flying head over heels from a vicious head kick. She scrambled to her knees and burned a minute amount of juice to fight off the effects of a nasty concussion. Haggerty stood over her, staring down.

"You won’t survive me with your attitude, Arm Haggerty said. Seduce me to be your friend?"

Her subconscious had indeed tried that with her last statement. Ma’am. My mistake.

"So you’ve discovered two uses of your predator – predatory zombie, and some obscure form of recruitment seduction. Neither one is worth shit, at least to me. Think on what I just did to you."

Del thought, and in her thoughts she understood the truth in Haggerty’s livid anger, the first time she had seen such a strong emotion on the senior Arm. Fuck! Del had screwed up, and badly. The invisibility? A use of the predator. By implication, there were more uses of the predator effect than fear and friendship, uses part of each Arm’s secret arsenal. Ma’am, you’re correct, and I apologize. By locking away my reactions, I’ve crippled my predator. Ma’am, can you teach me…

Yes, Haggerty said. I can. If I can avoid killing you. Your attempt to seduce me into your friendship with your predator was a grotesque insult. Now… Arm Haggerty bent down to Del’s ear. "grovel!"

Del groveled and wrote note number 473 into her mental store of important observations: never, ever, use an Arm’s most powerful trick against her.

---

Ma’am, my name is Cynthia McGorman, the Focus, or what was left of her, said to Haggerty. With the Arm’s predator effect tuned to command, and the ominous black she wore, Arm Haggerty was profoundly intimidating.

The Focus was missing an eye, an arm, and both breasts. She suffered from deep incisions in her abdomen and legs. They did something to me, ma’am, to keep me conscious. I want to go to sleep, but I can’t.

The inside of the truck reeked of death and fear, and too many people in too small a space. Save for the two least monstrous of the enemy, and one who referred to herself as a Pack Alpha, nothing remained of the Hunters. The part-Monsters would be the Arms’ reward, as an Arm could draw from a part-Monster Transform woman if she had a Crow available to clean her up afterwards. Arm Haggerty and Del had carefully sequestered the two part-Monsters for later, the senior Arm insisting they not flaunt the fact they saved two of the enemy to use as juice fodder. For one thing, Arm Haggerty’s crew included a Focus, a not fully hardened bitch named Hargrove, as well as her household Transforms. Del didn’t understand what drew Haggerty to the almost motherly Hargrove, but the attraction was there.

Del wanted to take the part-Monster now. The fight and subsequent discipline left her uncomfortably low on juice, around 94.5. Haggerty said ‘later’, though, and so later it was. This kind of order would have been a hell of a lot easier to accept if Haggerty kept a full tag on Del to back her orders. With only a half-tag, though, and with her juice so low, Del’s instincts wanted her to push the point, which would have been appallingly stupid.

The half-tag bothered Del. Back when Del signed on as Haggerty’s apprentice, she assumed Haggerty would put a full tag on her, and had been delighted to find Haggerty wanted only a half-tag. Del’s freedom turned out to be an illusion. Haggerty ruled, and Del still needed to take orders just as completely as she would have under a full tag, except for the fact she didn’t have the effects of a full tag making the situation comfortable. In addition, a full tag would have made Del a possession of Haggerty’s, with all the links of affection that implied for Arms.

Again, though, Haggerty ruled. If she didn’t want to put a full tag on Del, then Del didn’t get a full tag.

Haggerty, Focus Hargrove and Del knelt by the ripped up Focus. The rest of the captive Focus’s household quivered miserably at the far end of the truck, grotesquely damaged by their ordeal. Without help, they were too crazy to be worth saving. Hunters, living their master’s dream of enslaving the world, weren’t conducive to anything resembling continuing sanity.

Dealing with the remains of a Focus household wasn’t what they planned for when Haggerty organized the attack.

Élan contamination, Focus Hargrove said. Distractingly beautiful, even for a Focus, but flawed by her lack of discipline and her obvious empathy. How long have you been a Focus? Del did wonder if her latter observation might reflect a problem she had, not Hargrove.

Twenty months and nine days, Cynthia said. Am I going to die?

Hargrove twitched and did something with her juice, probably a self-charismatic order. Focus Hargrove wore her hair up today, but even the severe hairstyle couldn’t hide her perky attractiveness, an incongruous sight on a battlefield. She had red hair and freckles. She had dimples. She smiled and perked and simpered. She would have a hard time physically defending herself against a newly transformed sedentary woman.

Well, okay, the last wasn’t fair. Like many red-haired women Focus Hargrove had a temper, and when her temper was up, she did fine in a fight. Such as less than two hours ago, when she beheaded a Monster with her sword. Right now, with her empathy dominating her emotions, she would let the enemy win.

Del didn’t yet understand Focuses. Learning to do so was already on her mental to-do list, sitting near the top, at item 3. The range of Focus personalities and capabilities far exceeded that of the Arms, an opening to many potential errors.

For one thing, Focus Hargrove’s current lack of physical aggressiveness didn’t matter in the slightest. Hargrove was a trained Focus witch who could tie Del into knots with the juice, if she wanted. She would probably be able to do so and still keep a smile on her face. She didn’t need to defend herself physically.

I certainly hope not, Cynthia. Hargrove looked up at the two Arms. Either of you heal?

Meaning, could they heal others. I’ve never managed to learn that, Haggerty said. Del knows how, but the self-healing capabilities of any Focus dwarfs what she can do. She can help the Transforms and normals, though.

Ah, ah, please, then, ma’am, Focus McGorman said, agitated but without charisma. My father needs help. You need to heal him!

Del caught Haggerty’s gaze and looked over to one of the normal men, prone and pale at the far end of the truck, in with the terrified household. She examined his wounds and quailed. Her Arm boss shook her head.

His wounds are far too severe, Haggerty said.

Well, fuck you! Focus McGorman said. Now what the fuck is my household going to do for money?

Okay, this verified some of the crasser observations in Ma’am Keaton’s literature about twisted Focuses. Her father lay dying of unhealable wounds, just a few feet away, and all this Focus thought about was money? There was a vague familiarity to this sort of behavior, in Del’s mind. She decided to figure that out, later.

So, Focus, where was your home base? Where were you being taken? Haggerty asked. McGorman appeared young for a Focus, a high school kid with a layer of baby fat on her. She wasn’t ugly, but struck Del as plain for a Focus. Badly applied make-up, as well. Bottle red hair, a pink barrette, and non-matching pink enameled hearts as earrings. Del was briefly glad of her less than optimal juice count; with her juice count this low she didn’t have any urge to jump the young Focus.

Sex had been an issue in the three weeks since Haggerty’s small army left Chicago. A big issue. Del’s transformation left her with an exceptionally active libido, even for an Arm, which said a lot. She found herself desperate enough to sleep with men again, for the first time since just after her transformation.

Sioux City was my home, the Focus said. The Monsters and the Hunter said we were going to Denver. Denver? That wasn’t even Hunter territory.

What happened? Haggerty said.

Well, I had some bad dreams, and saw them coming, Focus McGorman said. "The dream voices told me I was in danger, and I tried to run, but I only got a few hours head start and they ran me down anyway. By the time the fucking Monsters got me, they already had my household. What you see here is what remains of them. I think the Monsters killed a few of the household people, a couple of the damned men I think. I think they ate them."

Haggerty motioned, and the three of them hopped out of the truck and away from the wounded Focus, Hargrove clenching and unclenching her fists as she walked. Del scanned the area for threats, and found none. Haggerty had sent out two squads of her motorcycle gang to patrol the area, close in, to warn them of any interference from other Hunters, or the authorities. The whole mess of them stayed in radio communication with each other, which was how Hargrove’s Transforms, in their motley mess of trucks and cars, found them near the end of the fight.

They stopped about fifty feet from the Hunters’ rig, next to the woebegone RV serving as Hargrove’s home. The afternoon sun had raised the temperature almost to freezing a couple of hours earlier, but the sky clouded up and the temperature dropped again. Any ideas? Haggerty said, restlessly flipping her knife between her fingers.

Midgard should be able to clean off the Focus, so she can drop into a healing trance and fix herself up, Hargrove said. Wisps of red hair found their way loose from her hairpins and wound their way around her freckled face. She irritably pushed them back. "I don’t like this, though. She ran, dammit. What sort of Focus runs to save herself and leaves her household behind? Was she telling the truth about the Dreaming? Focuses of her age shouldn’t be able to do squat with the Dreaming. Certainly not hear voices."

She told the truth as she knew it, Del said.

Haggerty nodded, as well. Scum sucking bottom feeder Focus. Pardon my anger, she said, to Hargrove.

Hargrove threw her hands in the air. Be my guest, be angry. So it wasn’t just me?

She reminds me of some of my younger self-centered high school students, Del said, her mind finally making the connection across the great chasm of her transformation. At Hargrove’s quizzical look, Del said I was an old maid high school teacher before I transformed. A little different from my current state.

You’re still a little severe, Arm Sokolnik, Hargrove said.

Del’s interest in Hargrove increased. If you can be more specific, it would be a help to me, Del said. I encountered some difficulties after my transformation, and to survive I shut down many of my normal human emotions. She had gone insane and turned herself into a robot, to be blunt about it. I’m trying to regain my emotional humanity, but as Arm Haggerty recently pointed out to me, I still have some ways to go.

Later, Arm Haggerty said. Here comes Midgard.

Right. Crow Midgard walked toward them, right out in the open, showing none of the fear dominating the younger Crows. He appeared exceptionally handsome, compared to some of the ratty Crows Del met in the Pittsburgh attack. However, he was the only person in Haggerty’s crew Del considered less human than her. His black leather trench coat and black shades were impressive against his dark skin, but Del already knew Haggerty was responsible for those. The inhuman part was the way he didn’t look ahead of him as he walked. His face and eyes constantly roamed as he used his metasense to scan for threats, off to one side or the other, or just, well, unfocused.

Right now he appeared exceptionally inhuman. Hunters, Del guessed. Crows could metasense for miles, unlike Arms or Focuses.

Amy, Arm Sokolnik, Focus Hargrove, Midgard said, his voice as free of emotion as Del’s. His head continued to swivel. He didn’t look at any of them. I trust we aren’t going to stay here long? There’s a squad of Hunters circling us. Exactly.

How far? Haggerty asked. Her knife vanished and she became all business.

Well out of metasense range, say twenty miles or so. I can metasmell the bastards. They’re waiting for reinforcements.

You go see if you can help a few of the élan drenched folks, such as the Focus, and I’ll get this crew moving.

Amy? Hargrove asked. A moment. Several of Focus McGorman’s Transforms are in pretty bad shape. What do you want me to do with them?

Bad shape how?

Hargrove blushed. Several of her men are down in low juice, and four of her women are nearing oversupply. She paused. "I suspect that Focus is doing so on purpose."

Del, Haggerty said. Seduce the Focus into fixing her people, if you would.

Yes, ma’am, Del said, before her logic kicked in. Okay, now how was she going to do that? Did Haggerty just order her to befriend the idiot Focus, or tag her?

Arm Haggerty headed over to her Corpserider patrol, Hargrove with her. Del heard Hargrove going on at length about the condition of McGorman’s people, until the roar of revving Harleys drowned out the sound of her voice. Hargrove didn’t appreciate McGorman’s household management techniques. Midgard stalked ahead and ignored the byplay, head swiveling slightly, eyes unfocused. Del followed, without the head swiveling. Hargrove’s people had moved most of McGorman’s household to a triage area while Hargrove and the Arms talked, and Del and Midgard headed that direction. As she walked into the collection of miserable people, Del finally forced the last of Haggerty’s bullets out of the back of her left thigh. The slug dropped out a hole in her jeans and fell to the ground with a tiny plop and a puff of dust.

Midgard turned back and his eyes flickered over the bullet. More of your infernal tricks?

Del nodded. She knew enough about Crows not to bother to ask how he noticed. Crows were, well, interesting to deal with. At least the ones who didn’t hide from her, which was most of them, most of the time. One of the Crows followed Del around these days, sopping up the dross she left behind. He went by the name of Scout, according to his night whispers. She had taken to telling him where she overused her capabilities and dropped dross. Or buried her kills. He claimed her to be a wonder among Arm-dom.

Internal muscle control, taught to me by the Commander. Part of her advanced healing training.

Advanced healing? You’re that good?

Control wise, not power wise. Too young, Del said.

Midgard laughed. Impatient, too. All the best ones are impatient. So, here’s our Focus.

McGorman didn’t notice, browbeating her mother over some trifle. Something about the lack of the right kind of deodorant, it sounded like. McGorman wanted aerosol, and all they had was stick. You’ve hidden us? Del asked.

It’s easy to hide from those who’d rather not deal with you.

Unfortunately, I need to deal with the Focus. Haggerty’s orders.

Step forward, and I’ll stay back and clean this élan crap off the Focus. I can’t do this with an auto dross construct. I’m afraid they started the process of turning her into a Pack Mistress. You need to be on the lookout for unexpected side effects.

Interesting.

Del stepped forward and squatted down next to the Focus. Focus McGorman? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable? The Focus shrugged, paused in thought, and let loose with several dozen complaints and suggestions. Del listened with mock patience and studied the teen while prompting her with inconsequential comments. She took only ten minutes to seduce the Focus into friendship, but took a hell of a lot longer than that to convince the Focus to move some juice from her oversupplied women to cover the shorted men.

McGorman didn’t even know the names of her own Transforms.

---

Del walked into Focus Hargrove’s gypsy camp on the outskirts of the ranch Haggerty used as her team’s current headquarters, and knocked on the door to Hargrove’s RV. A male Transform bodyguard answered. Del wasn’t impressed with him. No edge.

From behind him, Focus Hargrove called out Come on in, Del. Del didn’t know how she got to be on a first name basis with Focus Hargrove, but things like that often happened around Del. The male Transform motioned for Del to come in. He didn’t know her.

The RV needed a serious cleaning and smelled of juice. Del felt a sudden lust for juice and quickly buried the urge in her quiet pools. The inside of some senior Focus’s household was the last place she needed to be having trouble with the juice lust. Especially since she ran a high juice count today; the part-Monster women saved for later were no more.

The Focus sat at a fold-down table, next to two Transform women. Her red hair glistened in the sunlight that slipped in through the dusty window. What can I do for you, Del? Hargrove said. Del stepped forward, careful not to step on the remains of what looked like four Big Macs and a couple of shakes.

Arm Haggerty informed me that she’s too busy for today’s training session, ma’am, so she assigned it to me.

Focus Hargrove nodded and looked at her wristwatch, but the bodyguard gasped in sudden panic.

Damn, Hargrove said. Sorry, I lost track of the time. We should already all be out on the practice field and ready.

Ma’am, the bodyguard said, interrupting. I didn’t know Arm Sokolnik was able to teach, and… Hargrove turned and appraised him, noticing his agitation for the first time. Ma’am, he said.

Meaning, actually, if Del read him correctly, he feared that Del, as a young Arm, might slip and suck his juice. Or get angry and suck his juice. Or just decide to suck his juice for fun. The other two Transform women boggled at Del as well, similarly terrified. The older woman, a bottle blonde, started leaking juice in fear, a juice structure flaw, and Del watched curiously as the juice escaped her body and began its decay into dross as it slid airily toward the floor of the RV. From previous experience, Del knew that juice, in open air, began its chemical transformation to dross almost instantly, reacting with free oxygen and water vapor. In minutes, it would vanish from Del’s metasense, presumably as dross. One of the myriad Crows haunting Haggerty’s ranch would have a feast, tonight.

Del practiced her smile. Some of the true predator must have shown, though, as the women Transforms’ heart rates spiked. I have enough self-control to prevent any accidents of the nature you fear, she said, to the bodyguard and the two Transform women. She knew some young Arms lacked this control, but of her many issues, self-control wasn’t one of them.

Accidental juice sucking wouldn’t be a problem in general, and was less of a problem, now. Last night, after they returned to Haggerty’s ranch, she and Haggerty drew from the now dead captives, giving Del a nice juice high. Not the most pleasant affair, for despite Haggerty’s comments on the subject, the Monster taint in the half-Monster captives nearly made Del gag. Apparently, this sort of thing didn’t bother Haggerty. Before Del found some time to spend with Mickey the motorcycle mama, she had lain in the cold dirt, about a half mile from the ranch house, where Crow Scout cleaned the dross from her. From a safe distance. Scout promised he would be able to talk to her in person, soon. Not last night, though.

No, what Del really wanted to do was drag the two women off to bed. Damn, she really needed to do something about the sex situation, if she could only figure out what. The only woman in the entire camp with a taste for other women was Mickey, a normal, which meant that she couldn’t absorb the full brunt of Del’s lust. The lack left her with men as her only other option, and she used the option, but not very damned often. Which meant she remained so horny she could barely think.

Uh, right, Hargrove said. She noticed the fear in her people, and pumped their juice to help them cope. Del – Arm Sokolnik – is a very talented young Arm. She won’t be any problem. A polite way of saying their Focus would turn Del into a pretzel if she got out of line. Del approved. Perhaps there was hope for the older Focus.

Too bad the Focus wasn’t interested in women.

Del, let me introduce you to Marcia Ellis, my number two, the older woman with the flawed juice structure, Cherilyn Bystry, who handles operations, and at your side, Rex Hennessy, my chief bodyguard. We’ve been talking about Focus McGorman. McGorman had fallen into a healing trance once Midgard cleaned off the Hunter crew’s changes. Del hoped she would remain so for a few months, but unfortunately, that wouldn’t likely happen.

Focus McGorman is rather peculiar for a Focus, ma’am, Del said, careful not to cut down a Focus in front of another Focus.

Have a seat, Hargrove said, and call me Beth.

Del nodded, moved a pizza box off a chair, and sat.

We’ve been trying to figure out what sort of Focus household she’s running, Beth said. According to her Transforms, her father and mother did most of the actual household management.

Second order tin pot dictator, then? Del asked. She had read enough about Focus households in Ma’am Keaton’s library to last her several lifetimes. Enough to figure out that Focus Hargrove’s household followed the classic juice manipulator model, though Hargrove’s charisma was strong enough to utilize any of the stronger charisma based models if she so desired. She was so good as an instinctive juice manipulator, though, that she didn’t need to switch over. Hargrove dimpled and smiled at Del, encouraging her to join into the conversation. Blatant charisma use, but Del had asked for it, when she asked Hargrove to help her with her ongoing quest to regain her lost humanity.

The best we’ve been able to come up with is that it’s a variant on the weak Focus model, Cherilyn said, no longer terrified because of the support from her Focus. The variant comes from the fact that Focus McGorman has her own interests in life. For instance, she’s been accepted at Yale, and decided to go there in the fall and drag her entire household with her. However, whenever her household duties interfere with her interests, she goes on a tear worthy of the worst tin pot dictators, hedonists or sadists.

Did you know she doesn’t even know the names of most of her Transforms? Del asked.

Hargrove nodded. That’s what her people said. I think what she has is a cross between the anarchist and weak Focus model.

She doesn’t deserve the responsibility she’s been granted, Rex said. He remained terrified of Del, despite Hargrove’s juice support. Shouldn’t we get on with the training session, ma’am? He wanted them out of the close confines of Hargrove’s RV.

What we really need is a training school for Focuses and their households, something beyond the one-on-one mentoring Focuses normally get, Beth said, ignoring Rex. With a little training, McGorman wouldn’t be that bad as a Focus. What I think McGorman needs is a strong leader Transform to run the household, someone strong enough to stand up to their own Focus. With a dynamic like that, she’d fall into a proper weak Focus model, like Focus Rizzari and Inferno. McGorman’s horror household actually isn’t that far off from the way Focus Rizzari ran her own household early on, according to the stories. The problem is, in the current system, each Focus goes through a ‘re-inventing the wheel’ phase and messes up her Transforms in the process. Unless you end up with a good local mentor, like Focus Rickenbach back home, you’re screwed.

Arm Keaton, Del said, harnessing the thoughts that, as always, flew like lightning across her quiet pools. At the blank looks, she amended with Arm Keaton and Focus Biggioni, working together, in person, should be the ones in charge of such a thing. Arm Keaton has already trained several new Focuses in appropriate household models, using training techniques she developed for Arm training, as well as learning how Focus Rickenbach made her mentoring decisions.

What sort of Focus does that produce? Hargrove said, suddenly quite cold. Del could see rivers of blood running through Hargrove’s imagination.

Focus Mann is the best case I know of. She started out as a tin pot dictator, but Arm Keaton trained her in the military model, which Focus Mann runs quite expertly. With the first Focuses out of the way, perhaps the nonsense about ‘Arm pets’ can be done away with, allowing something like your training school idea to be established. Del paused, inwardly amused at Hargrove’s barely suppressed horror at Del’s idea and her poorly hidden dislike of Focus Mann. Perhaps Beth believed the silly rumors about Keaton, who only abused Major Transforms when they needed abusing, which to Del, wasn’t a problem at all. So, has Arm Haggerty been working with you, Beth, or just your Transforms?

Just my Transforms.

Hmm.

---

So you heard about what the Commander put Focus Rickenbach through, and didn’t want anything like that for yourself? Del said, recalling some of the Commander’s lessons. Beth was an old friend of Focus Rickenbach’s, close enough to her to be aware of what was going on when the Commander trained Rickenbach.

Del had Beth meditating, eyes closed, and adjusting juice on her Transforms as they practiced. While holding a conversation at the same time. They sat in the secondary barn, because it remained far too cold to practice outside. The air still carried the faint odor of cows and hay from a time long past when this had been a working ranch. A friendly sort of smell.

Gail’s training sounded like torture to me, Beth said. Beads of sweat covered her face and dribbled down her cheeks or into her hair, robbing it of its native Focus beauty. Del forbade Beth from using overt juice patterns to automate her support during this exercise. The training would only succeed if the Focus did everything manually.

It’s all a matter of perspective, and figuring out what needs to be trained. The Commander said Gail’s biggest weakness was self-control, so she hit Gail hard on control issues. I can see how much of what she did would look like torture. Del suspected the Arms would be spending a great amount of time training Focuses over the next few years. Based on her observations, the Focuses needed a lot of training. New Focuses need to be broken of their emotional dependence on others, the same way new Arms need to be broken free from their instinctive arrogance. However, you’re not even close to being a new Focus. You lost your emotional dependence the hard way, probably rather painfully, over the years. Nor do you lack self-control, having mastered yourself with self-charisma use. What you lack is precision. Which is why I’m having you do the juice support manually.

This was all obvious to Del, drawn from her many years of experience at mundane teaching, amplified by her Arm mind and senses.

I don’t have the native talent to be a top end Focus, Del, Beth said.

Hmmm. Lacking a little self-confidence. She would fix that as well.

So? You can still be a better Focus, no matter your native talents. You’re also going to need some physical training, so your body has more endurance.

Combat training? She had received combat training in the past, and found a way to ignore it ever after.

Only as a training tool, to help you engage your mind and body. But not now. Use your juice to pick out each of your Transforms, identify them individually, and tell me the state of their physical health. Hargrove possessed an apparently unique ability to metasense whether her Transforms were healthy or ill, something she should be able to do with anyone she metasensed, and in far greater detail. Del suspected she would be able to train Hargrove in this. You should be able to do that without looking and without using any juice patterns…

The stress sat inside Hargrove’s mind, right where it needed to be.

---

Del bowed. Arm Sibrian climbed out of her Jaguar, nodded to Del, and looked around the snow-covered barrenness of the ranch. The wind whipped the snow into dunes, and made it so cold that even an Arm needed a coat. Where’s Amy? Sibrian asked. Sibrian held a half-tag on Del, from back when they fought together in Pittsburgh. The half-tag removed the dominance issues, thankfully.

Out with the gang, looking into another Hunter sighting. If they actually find something, I’m supposed to bring the rest of the crew. Since they rescued Focus McGorman, the patrols had picked up three more sightings of Hunters. From their contacts, they had learned about two more attacks on Focus households, both outside Hunter territory, one in Santa Fe and another in Kansas City. The Kansas City attack had been pathetic, beaten off by the Focus’s bodyguards, while the one in Santa Fe lost their side a Focus. Haggerty remained frustrated in her attempts to figure out why the Hunters continued with the random harassment of the phony war, and what she could do about it.

I’ve got some extremely important news to pass along, Arm Sibrian said. Is there any chance we can contact Amy?

Radio.

Good, Sibrian said, and started to walk toward Amy’s ranch house, red boots crunching in the snow. She dressed completely in red, as always. Even her leather jacket was red. Del didn’t see her guitar, but it would be around somewhere. Arm Sibrian never went anywhere without her guitar or her katanas. Several of us think the Hunters have started the war we’ve been afraid of. There’ve been attacks and harassment all over the place, much more than you’ve likely heard about. Individually insignificant, but on the whole it’s a coordinated attack, more of a guerilla war than what we’d been expecting Enkidu would do. As the senior Arm in the Commander’s chain of command, Amy needs to know this. We need to respond to the Hunters’ attacks. In addition, Amy needs to know that Inferno’s left Chicago, heading to the San Jose area. They’re going to pick up Focus Pitre there. Focus O’Donnell and Count Dowling have also left Chicago, heading to the San Francisco area, where they’re going to be picking up the remains of a Focus household who lost their Focus to the Hunters. The exodus has left Chicago woefully undefended.

Not good news, but not unexpected. Del allowed herself an inward smile, though, and practiced expressing it on her face. The news almost guaranteed more fights!

Sinclair (1/28/73)

Sinclair stopped the lead