Blood's Shadow

By Randall Allen Farmer

After a short period of relative tranquility, the renegade Arm Bass and her enslaved allies, who are mostly remnants of the old Hunter Empire, strike at both civilization and the Transform community. As the Commander, Arm Carol Hancock, and her allies in the Cause begin to respond, they face numerous threats from the United States government as well as from a sizeable number of unhappy members of the Transform community. Facing steep odds, the various members of the Cause begin to improvise in many different areas, taking risks they normally would not take. Carol, in her position as the leading Transform, must cope with ever-increasing responsibilities as the situation deteriorates and events spiral out of her control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Allen Farmer
• Release date: Aug 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463698983

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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Blood’s Shadow

(Book Six of The Cause)

Randall Allen Farmer

Copyright © 2019, 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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Blood’s Shadow

Book Six of The Cause

"Blood’s shadow lay beneath the light green shade

The chestnut branches by the meadow made

The field of beets became a battlefield,

The plough’s fair share fell to another blade."

Sir Walter Scott

Prolog

The Savant (May 27, 1973)

The Savant’s pumps clicked with business-like efficiency on the tile floor of the Birch building, announcing to everyone near that she knew exactly where she was going and had important affairs to conduct when she arrived. She stood five foot six, with an athletic build, died black hair in cornrows, and carried her treasure in a gun case at her side. The guards at the private elevator glanced at the gun case, noted it was securely locked, and dismissed the woman from their minds.

The Birch building stood exactly nine hundred and eighteen feet to the south of the Branton Hotel and twenty-seven stories tall. A normal office building, the bottom floors filled with company names, a third of which anyone well-read would recognize.

The Savant glanced over at the guards. They looked exactly as her briefing described, a couple of well mind-fucked normals not part of any household. They turned back to her again when she came close, but with no special wariness. The Savant mimed a stumble, and speared them with her eyes.

Got them.

I’m going up. I was never here, she said, blending charisma from all four Major Transform varieties into her words. The two men did their thing, and sent the elevator up.

As the elevator rose to the top floors, the Savant bowed her head for a moment to clear her thoughts and let the silence she had learned to summon surround her. The no-mind, she called it, a place to be one with the world and the juice. She learned it from a Crow who learned it from an Arm who had learned it from its discoverer, another Arm. The Arms termed this the quiet pools. The Savant found them helplessly addictive and necessary for her task.

No guards guarded the top. The masters of this place didn’t consider them necessary.

The elevator opened into an open area three stories tall. The owners had redesigned it to be one large floor, with wide-open curved stairways between sublevels. The sublevels surrounded an open atrium around the central elevator pillar. The conversion had removed as much concrete, rebar and structural steel as possible, replaced by wood and other materials. The mind-warping architecture was stylistically Crow, in fact, from one of Thomas the Dreamer’s Crows. Some of what the woman saw was illusion and some real. She metasensed the area, using metasense borrowed from all four Major Transform types and from two Sports, and she quickly separated the real from the illusionary. Although invisible to the naked eye, about a quarter of the open area remained under construction, started only two months or so ago, long before anyone knew the owners were, ahem, back in business.

Someone wielded big dreams, and the excessive suitcases of money to turn those dreams into reality.

The Savant knew she wouldn’t be able to identify the people here with her borrowed metasense suite. Instead, she ducked deeper into no-mind and allowed the talents of others to come through. Her own metasense shields deepened and expanded to shield her from normal senses as well. This was the limit of her capabilities. Invisible, she could do nothing else.

Now she skulked, slowly and carefully. Certain people who worked here she didn’t want to bother. Their work was too important for her to interrupt them.

The first she found was the True Chimera Mizar, the former Beast of the Lost Tribe, who taught two converted Hunter students in a great amphitheater-like section open to the western sunset. The subject was the pheromone flow; Mizar weaned the converted Hunters from their fixation on the Hunter mode of the flow. The Savant didn’t find the second of her list of people she didn’t want to disturb, Crow Guru Gilgamesh. Thankfully, he was absent. She took a quick look at his messy workstations and incomprehensible dross apparati, shook her head, and slipped away. The Savant found the third-to-avoid in a metasense-shielded vampire-chic ornate coffin under a section of the roof replaced by a glass dome. Here, Focus Gail Rickenbach could examine the Dreaming without the access problems normally plaguing her. She found other Transforms distracting. Or so she said.

The Dreaming wasn’t a place the Savant was allowed, despite her ample protests.

The Savant continued to search the floating sublevels. She found her target in the northeastern corner of the middle sublevel, the corner nearest the Branton.

Fuck, she whispered. Not only was her target, the Focus Lori Rizzari, busy, she was busy with the Crow Sky, the Major Transform the Savant associated with most closely. The two of them had obtained several dentist chairs from somewhere, put them on low dollies, and arranged a pair of them head to head along a straight line. The Focus and Crow reclined with their eyes closed, heads separated by perhaps two inches, and their hands and fingers interlocked, the only points where their bodies touched. They were working élan in some complex fashion, and despite her talents and knowledge the Savant couldn’t even come close to figuring out what in the hell they did. Their working did make them supremely oblivious to the outside world, though.

They need better defenses if someone like me can get in here, the Savant said, very softly. She sighed, and realized she would need to wait until the two of them finished before she made her presentation. The Focus and the Crow had just returned to Chicago to check on the progress of the various projects they had assigned others. Instead of greeting their extended family, though, they had gone and hidden in their ‘secret’ lair.

The Savant decided that since she was here she might as well take the opportunity to explore.

There were three other work-areas in the northeast corner of the sublevel, deserted, one filled with Crow dross artwork. Newton’s work area? Most likely. She gritted her teeth, not happy some near-do-well like the Newt could get official access to this place when she couldn’t.

The south end of the three-story complex kept the original offices preserved: there wasn’t anything to the south of the building anyone would be interested in metasensing. She walked down the long hall in search of anyone else, or a place conducive to her own meditation. Perhaps she should leave. She meddled in the affairs of those who pointedly excluded her, unwise without good reason.

However, this entire hidden goddamned lair implied a bias, an attitude problem, one still dramatically uncorrected. Even after said bias and problem had been pointed out to these people in exacting detail by a woman Transform significantly more forceful than the Savant.

The Savant spotted a movement out of the corner of her eyes. People, in one of the offices. The door to the office was open, but a faint shimmer suffused the air where a door normally resided, visible to the woman even without the use of her borrowed metasense suite.

A sound barrier! She had never seen an example of this recent technology developed by the Crow Mentor Arpeggio, so she stopped to examine it. Somehow, this thin sheet of dross, a lipid-based aerogel three molecules thick with gaping nanometer holes in it, was able to damp sound both ways. Up to around eighty decibels. She was enough of a chemist and physicist for this to bother her. It couldn’t work. No way.

But it did, despite the fact that none of the lab bench types could figure out how. Supposedly, the barrier wore out after about four days, and could generate a twenty volt two milliamp current if you put test leads in the right places. Sound, though? Not just messing with people’s senses, but actually stopping a decent decibel level of sound waves? Preposterous.

Not only that, but objects and people could pass through the barrier multiple times without disturbing it. The barrier also ‘knew’ how to heal itself, but then again, so did surface tension on water, if you looked at the question in a cockeyed fashion. The edges of the sound barrier, for it did require solid surfaces at the edges, teemed with mitochondria. Nothing else of the living cell except an impressive number of mitochondria, but still. Transform science and engineering appeared to be slowly progressing into a realm of science fiction crap she had never read about and certainly never anticipated. She stopped, thought, and christened it ‘the demi-life sciences’. If they managed to survive the now-inevitable Transform Apocalypse, the world on the other side portended to be very strange indeed.

After she placed her gun case down in the hallway, the Savant passed through the barrier into the office. Inside she found a utilitarian Steelcase desk, a couple of office chairs, and a small typing table along the left wall. The Savant wondered if she should bother the man and woman in the room. At the moment, she would just settle for kicking the man for being here. It wasn’t fair that her so-called peer, Hank Zielinski, weaseled access to this place, even if he was Mizar’s confidant and friend. The Emperor’s Magician? Bah! Hank sat at the small table, typing away, as oblivious to the world as everyone else in this place and as relaxed as he ever got. The Savant looked over his shoulder at his typing. Some scene from the early days, she gathered. One of the early Arms, one of the ones who had died. His memoirs. He currently blamed the late Focus Shirley Patterson for ordering him to kill her. She doubted his conclusions, born of his guilt; she doubted Shirley Patterson had ever cared about any of the Arms until the Commander’s transformation, or even bothered to learn any of their names. Why would she? To Patterson, they were just Beast Women and Failed Focuses, simply tools. Valuable only because they kept Hank from continuing his investigations into the advanced capabilities of Focuses, Patterson’s real worry about ‘the Good Doctor’. Barf!

The Savant stole a glance at the other person in the room, not wanting to interact with her at all. The Commander, Arm Carol Hancock, sat behind the writing desk. She wrote away in her elegant cursive script, which the Savant couldn’t avoid reading, something concerning alternate Apocalypse scenarios, including one which resulted in deaths by the millions…

Too much interaction.

The Commander leapt from her chair with a leg kick and a passing knife thrust. Without thinking – events happened far too fast for thinking – the Savant leaned back away from the Commander’s attack, not fighting the momentum of the attack but letting the attack turn her. As she fell, her motion allowed her a moment’s grab at the Commander’s elbow and side to push herself farther along. Something the Commander had personally taught her, a move stolen from ju-jitsu.

What the Commander had said was that if a hostile Arm surprises you, you should be able to shock the hell out of her with a ju-jitsu move like this one, giving you enough time to pull your piece, take a head shot, and die about nineteen times out of twenty. Because you aren’t an Arm, and there isn’t much we can do about that. At least your death would be quick and relatively painless.

The Commander held the Savant’s piece. She had lifted it on the way by.

Son of a fucking bitch, the Savant said, mostly to herself.

You think I wouldn’t recognize my own moves, Ann? the Commander said.

Ann? Ann Chiron? Hank said. He blinked and turned from his typewriter. Where?

Oh, right. Ann belatedly relaxed her borrowed metasense and vision shields.

Right here, she said, with a half-smile on her face. The Commander’s kick had clocked her left biceps on the way by, a designed part of this move, but that wouldn’t keep Ann from having a hell of a bruise there tomorrow. She would have another one on her calf, from the damned office chair, which now lay on its side on the floor.

So, who invited you in, Ann? Gilgamesh? the Commander said. She hoisted herself up to sit on the desk and gave Ann a slitty exasperated look, fiddling with Ann’s firearm the same way the Commander juggled a knife when put out.

Ann shook her head. I deduced the existence of this place and got pissed, pissed enough to see if I could crack your defenses using all the superorganism tricks I collected on my hegira. Her hegira was her ongoing attempt to teach as many who would listen about the benefits of borrowed Major Transform tricks, what she termed being a Savant.

She had been more successful than even she anticipated.

You blew it reading over my shoulder. Metasense shields or not, when the words I’d just put down on paper started to flow through your mind, the pattern in the juice just sprung out…

Ann shrugged. I knew that would happen, but I couldn’t stop myself. Curiosity.

Why are you so angry, Ann? Hank asked. He looked honestly confused, the bastard.

Well, there’s the fact you’re here, and not me, she said. This bit of anger got into personal shit she didn’t really want to speak about in public. Hank saw her as a colleague, and she saw him as an interesting and available older man. They spent several months earlier in the year working together on the superorganism project, until the Commander had reclaimed Hank from Inferno. Hank didn’t do colleagues, much to Ann’s disgust. She wasn’t sure he did casual sex at all, even more disgusting. She could have used a lover who didn’t mangle the English language when he spoke or who didn’t consider her a competitor who needed to be bested.

There was also the fact they were both Transforms accustomed to wandering in the orbits of Major Transforms. She was the one with over a decade’s experience as a Transform, and he was the damp-eared newcomer, but he got the goodies. It made her so mad she wanted to spit.

The Commander hopped down from the desk and circled Ann, making small working noises as she did. You do realize we’d safed this place to prevent hostile Transforms, such as Bass, from getting in here.

You failed, and if Bass got in here, you’d be dead, Ann said. The Commander yanked Ann’s tag, hard, the same way she might yank the tag of a lesser ranking Arm. Ann didn’t care. Instead, she said: You missed a few holes.

You’re lucky I didn’t skewer you.

You trained me, you should know, Ann said. Snippy, and she pushed her luck to be snippy with an Arm, but the Commander shrugged. I really didn’t want to bother you while you were working; I know how much I hate to be bothered when I’m working. Lori’s the one I need to talk to, and I was just looking for a place to rest and meditate…

The Commander shook her head. Consider her interrupted. Ann winced. She could imagine what the Commander had done, a massive tag yank, and how much this would piss the Focus off. Not what she wanted for her presentation and request. If a mere Transform like you can get into here, then…

"I’m not sure I appreciate being called a mere Transform," Ann said, frosty. ‘I’m the Savant,’ she wanted to say, right before she ripped the Arm a new asshole and shoved her bloated head into it. The goddamned ‘we’re Major Transforms, kneel to us’ attitude annoyed her a lot. Perhaps she should have gotten an Inferno battle squad together, taken this place out, taken them all prisoner, and then started negotiating.

Of course, that would have required her to still be a member of Inferno instead of an itinerant Savant, teaching all the Savant learning techniques she had mastered to any household who would take her in. Before this return to Chicago, she had been in Atlanta, alternately teaching the leading Transforms of five households the Savant techniques as well as collaborating with Crow Guru Merlin on several important projects.

Her hegira hadn’t stopped her from spending last Friday night in the Inferno household, though. Part of her still thought of the place as home, and she definitely had needed to stop by and trade tricks.

You think you could have pulled that off? the Commander asked, responding to Ann’s unvocalized comment about the Inferno battle squad, and more than a little contrite.

Yes, though it would be a gamble, Ann said. Too many unknowns, like Mizar’s converts, or Gilgamesh’s students. Or the other things we don’t know about this place. The top hex – that’s Inferno’s best trained sixteen – have made substantial progress in the last six weeks on merged Major Transform superorganism battle and stealth use. The top hex no longer included Ann. Or needed her.

The Commander sniffed. So Flowerpot’s had a chance to make your acquaintance? Arm verbal tactics 101: the annoying subject change to the personal to keep you off balance.

Last Friday night, Ann said in reference to the current Inferno Crow. He had partnered with Focus Mimi Minton in the San Jose fight, and made enough of an impression on their overly emotional Focus to get him into the household. Carol always gave Ann grief about her sexual escapades – as a forty-something marriage-abandoned Transform, Ann thought herself entitled – while the Arm slept around at least as much as Ann did. I think…

How’d you get in here, Ann? the Focus said, from right behind Ann’s left ear. Ann jumped. She forced herself back under control a moment later.

Blended four Major Transform superorganism.

Who’s the Chimera? Lori tapped her foot on the floor.

Mimi found being courted by Mizar to be irresistible, Ann said. The inevitable happened about a week after Inferno moved back to Chicago, and several times thereafter.

Focus Minton isn’t on the list, the Commander said. A growl. Inferno wasn’t exactly part of the Commander’s not-so-little Chicago in-group.

I’m sorry that Mimi doesn’t meet your standards, Commander, but she met Mizar’s. Enough for him to support Inferno. He thinks Inferno Friday nights are a blast. Mizar hadn’t slept with Ann. Instead, they had spent the midnight hour swapping stories. He thought there was something comforting and Chimera-like about her self-appointed quest.

The Commander muttered obscenities, and Sky, who appeared out of nowhere with Lori, shook his head.

Nice disguise, Ann, he said. She glowered at him until she forced him to turn away. I told the two of you that you wouldn’t be able to ditch Inferno, Sky said. Inferno has their own agenda and interests, and they don’t like being ignored.

The Commander’s obscenities turned into a growl as she stared down Sky.

Lori shrugged. She didn’t care about protocol as much as the Commander. Why are you here, Ann? Here in specific, that is. Lori lowered her eyebrows. And what have you done with your hair, makeup and clothes?

Ann ignored the personal distraction for now. I didn’t want to present this in public, but there’s a certain project I and a few others have made some excellent progress on that you need to see.

Lori’s eyes widened. The Eskimo Spear?

Ann nodded.

Where is it? Lori said, breathlessly intense. Even though Ann didn’t wear Lori’s Focus tag at the moment, Ann’s heart melted anyway. Less than a point of juice and some borrowed Focus charisma took care of that weakness. Ann, as the Savant, refused to play the helpless Transform any more.

Over here, she said, and led Lori out of the shielded office. The two of them took the gun case into the room next over; neither wanted the spear anywhere near the sound barrier and its unknown dross construct techniques. The Commander, Sky and Hank didn’t follow them. If Ann’s lip reading was correct, Hank had taken up the ‘quit ignoring us Transforms’ gauntlet to push his own cause.

The room was completely empty, stripped down to painted drywall and understated carpeting. Lori laid the gun case on the carpet, Ann handed over the key, Lori undid the locks, unzipped the gun case and reverently took out the Spear. It wasn’t much to look at: forty-one inches long, tipped in stone. There was more, a tracery of thin native copper wires so delicate as to be nearly invisible, woven into the wooden shaft of the spear by some ancient Crow. Impossible, save that it had been done, along with layered dross constructs beyond anyone’s current capabilities, and a method for wood preservation that worked for years beyond anyone’s imagining. Two years ago, a group of Transforms led by the Hero, Arm Amy Haggerty, had tracked the aura of the Spear all the way up to northern Ontario. Several miles from the Hudson Bay shoreline, just above the Arctic Circle, they found a cairn of stones, the Spear buried inside. The Spear sang with dross, a reaction to the new world Transform community after lying dormant for centuries. An object made fifteen hundred years previous, by the last Transform of a dying tribal Transform efflorescence. By an Eskimo Crow shaman.

He had made the Spear to last.

Have you figured out what it does? Lori asked. Besides put scenes of the shaman who made it into the brains of Transforms who pick it up?

It’s a memory device, as we hypothesized, Ann said. It’s got years of projected memory illusions inside. Some have decayed and some are from the tribal myths, memories of things that never occurred.

How much information on Transforms? Transform survival? Lori asked. The reason the Spear was so important.

Ann smiled, elbow to shoulder with the Focus – well, Focus no more – and took a deep breath. I haven’t had a chance to look at everything yet, but at first glance, there are a few things I’ve figured out. As far as I can tell from the Spear memories, their tribes didn’t include any Arms. The ‘no Arms’ issue was more than a technicality; the Commander said that it was the lack of Arms in the opening scene that triggered Arm Bass’s exit from the Cause and her descent into madness and evil. There were nine tribes who worked as one, one Focus a tribe, ten percent normals when the memory records start. Within two generations, though, Transforms stopped being born. That’s the big shocker from Merlin’s point of view, by the way, the swiftness of the decline of the Transforms. We suspect yet more unknown genetic programming. Ann paused and savored the moment. The Eskimo Focuses supported about a hundred and eighty Transforms each, Lori. The information we’re looking for is in this thing, just waiting to be deciphered.

Lori smiled. Merlin? Crow Guru Merlin of Atlanta?

Ann nodded. He, Focus Innkeep and I were the ones who found the way in.

Lori pointedly looked at Ann’s hair again and nodded. Just the three of you? Lori was impressed.

We also had the help of Focus Darla Nicosia, in trade for helping her maneuver her way into a full-ride scholarship at Georgia Tech. Now that Darla’s household could run themselves without Darla telling them what to do, she could pursue things that interested her more, such as the biosciences behind Transforms. Ann was fairly sure that the Abyss household hadn’t even noticed that the Focus they were torturing was a fucking genius; unfortunately, as with many overly bright people, Darla had the social skills of a turnip. Ann certainly could empathize with that, as well as with Darla and her household’s disastrous attempt to join the Houston Focus community and ally with Arm Billington. The Atlanta Transform community, a haven for the downtrodden and the outcast, would work out much better for Darla and her household.

The Commander and the others still hadn’t joined Lori and Ann.

What do you want for this? Lori said. You could have kept it to yourself or gotten an impressive price from Thomas the Dreamer. Merlin’s Crow boss. Lori gave Ann a studied look. Huh. I smell some Inferno involvement. They’re not trying to get me to take them back, are they?

Inferno is involved, as they rightly consider my earlier work with the Inferno research team as the basis for my final success. Their price is the same as mine: we want back in the Commander’s extended family.

That sounds like a demand.

Ann nodded. It is. If the Commander doesn’t take them up on it, Inferno’s going to go back to California and join up with Arm Webberly. And I’m going to continue my hegira out there. For one, she was certain the Eskimo Spear had some deeply hidden information she hadn’t found yet, or perhaps some hidden Crow capabilities, and she wanted to give the nation’s senior Crow, Chevalier, another crack at it.

"That sounds like a threat."

Ann nodded again. You betcha.

Don’t blame the Commander, Lori said. I’m the one who’s been trying to keep away from Inferno. She looked down at the Spear in her hands, and shrugged.

I figured that out by myself, Ann said. You failed. Oh, and there’s something I need to make clear is part of the deal. If I’m going to base my work out of Chicago, I want in on whatever you’re doing personally. Your pack.

I’m not a Pack Mistress, Lori said, suddenly arch. I’m an Élan Focus.

You need a better name. The Focus was good at many things, but names weren’t one of them.

I can’t accept you in my household unless you’re a Monster.

According to some, she said, speaking specifically of Van Schuber, I’ve been a monster for quite a long time. He, in specific, had accused her of succeeding only because of her ‘passive-aggressive’ nature. She had had to look up the relatively new term to figure out exactly what he meant, and after she did, well, it wasn’t pretty. Part of what she had been doing on her hegira was attempting to edit that out of her personality with the help of psychologically talented Focuses, such as Focus Innkeep. She was done with hiding behind the others and ‘leading from behind’.

Lori shrugged. You’re crazy to want in. The more I learn about élan, the less I like it. It’s dangerous.

I’m your partner, Lori, Ann said, again borrowing Focus charisma to keep her emotional distance. With only limited success. You’re as much a part of me as, well, pardon me for bringing this up, as being a public teaching Professor was a part of you. I can’t let you go. You’re in both my mind and my heart.

Lori’s face fell and Ann watched the Focus struggle with her buried emotions. Something inside Lori gave way, and she grabbed Ann in a strong embrace. Damn, Lori said, and shook. I can’t refuse you. Tell me the other Inferno leaders aren’t about to all come following in your footsteps. I don’t think I could refuse them, either.

Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, Ann said. Lori’s Focus emotions battered Ann’s borrowed indifference into the depths of Lake Michigan. She rested the side of her head on Lori’s head, world gone blurry with the mists of emotion, not caring at all about the Spear digging into her back. In your absence, they’ve gotten a taste for independent power. The whole reason for getting back into the Commander’s Family is to regain that seat at the big table they lost when they lost you. Not for whatever Focuses and Crows they’re training, but for Inferno itself. For Connie, who can wield a quadrature’s juice talents as well as anyone. She’s as much a Savant as I am. Better, not that Ann would ever admit so in public. Certainly more forceful. Better than most Major Transforms, I’d bet.

I’m game, Lori said. But how are we going to sell this? Our predators are going to be reluctant to admit that Transforms belong.

The Spear will make a good argument. It’s still the embodiment of the Cause, perhaps more so now, Ann said and straightened her back. "I’m the Savant, and I cracked the secrets of the Eskimo Spear using borrowed quadrature capabilities. If the Commander drags her feet, I’ll just turn the Spear off and challenge her to turn it back on."

---

She’s mine! You can’t have her, the Commander said, after Ann announced she was joining the Focus’s household. Ann took a moment to realize the Arm was pulling Ann’s leg. At least a little. "So, what are you bringing to the table, if you want to join my household? It isn’t as if there’s a lack of grit here, as there was in Inferno."

Ann tapped the Eskimo Spear and waited.

The Commander looked at the Spear and shrugged. That’s a one-time thing.

She decided that if the Commander wasn’t difficult about something like this, she wouldn’t be the Commander. I’m the best Transform researcher on the planet, for one thing.

Hank growled, his Arm nature echoing the Commander’s.

Hank, you’re a researcher who’s also a Transform, Ann said. You’ve got a long way to go before you can base your research off of your Transform nature.

Lori and Sky had retreated to the other side of the unused office the Commander grabbed for this meeting after Ann refused to allow the Eskimo Spear to be brought through the sound barrier. They watched Ann’s confrontation with the Commander and Hank sports-fan style.

Hank nodded, accepting Ann’s comment.

The Commander though, changed the subject. She walked over to Ann and batted at Ann’s hair. You’re going to need more than your success with the Spear and finally acknowledging your ancestry to get into my household. It was Lori’s household, but Ann suspected anyone who tried to join Lori’s household would have to go through the Commander, unlike those who Lori recruited. It was a trust thing.

How about this? Ann said. As a mature Savant I use up enough juice to no longer need Focuses to draw down my juice. That frees up a slot for another woman Transform. The more woman Savants there are, the more lives end up being saved.

Okay, I hadn’t expected that, though if I’d thought through the ramifications of Savanthood I could have predicted it, the Commander said. We really are heading toward a matriarchy, aren’t we? Yet more reasons why the normals are going to go after us.

I’ll worry about the fairness of it all only after we’ve had as many years on top as the men did after the dawn of agriculture turned women into property. The Commander rolled her eyes at Ann’s overly feminist comment. You want another reason why I’m qualified to join your household, one that may be a bit touchy as it involves the Arms?

Sure. The Commander paused, but not long enough for Ann to speak. Were you the one who talked Webberly into not going apeshit over Mona Fairly’s request to be turned black?

Ann nodded. Hank, Lori and Sky all went ‘what?’. She and the Commander eyed each other for a moment before the Commander signaled to her to continue.

I’m sure you noticed my new look, Ann said to Hank, Lori and Sky. It’s not a disguise, and it’s more than Focus Innkeep’s teen women Transforms deciding to have fun with me. When I asked her if I could teach Savant tricks to her Transforms, she told me she would allow it only if I joined her household for a while and stopped trying to hide my ancestry.

Ancestry? Hank asked.

My granny Wilson was black enough to have a lot of trouble passing as white, Ann said. That had been a problem back in Wisconsin. I take after her more than a little. She shrugged. I suspect that bit of family dynamics was what got me interested in anthropology in the first place. Anyway, Focus Innkeep was right; I had been denying that part of my background ever since I transformed and lost track of my extended family. The polite way of putting it. So, dressed like this and made up like this, in a crowd of black people I can pass as black. It’s a perception thing. In any event, my ‘transformation’ made the Atlanta gossip network, and thus to Arm Whetstone the Atlanta Arm and through her to Arm Webberly. Ann swore that over half of the attraction of any Arm to any group of Focuses, and vice versa, was the need to gossip. So after Arm Fairly made her request, and Arm Webberly kept getting advice on the subject she didn’t trust, she called me and Focus Innkeep.

Pardon me, but I’m not sure I understand the problem, Sky said. Why would it bother anyone if an Arm decided to turn her skin color black? I mean, we’re all Major Transforms and none of us exactly looks like we did before we transformed.

Arm Fairly is a very junior Arm, for one, Ann said. Second, she wanted to change for the intimidation advantage strong black women get in our society. This bothered Arm Webberly, though she didn’t know why, save for giving her a strong desire to thrash Arm Fairly. However, after talking to Pearl I realized it was akin to white actors wearing blackface. That is, being both cheating as well as being insulting. The solution, which was my idea, was that if Arm Fairly wanted to appear black, she needed to do it right and become black for real. Hang out with blacks, socialize with them, hire them, and act like them.

I thought the Major Transforms were past all that, Hank said.

They may be, among themselves, but us Transforms and certainly the normals are not, Ann said. And this was all about interacting with normals.

Lori snorted. "The Focuses certainly were not beyond all that, especially the first Focuses. It’s only since Pittsburgh that the tide has changed." Hank reddened a bit and studied his feet. Ann suspected Hank had some issues that way as well.

So you interjected yourself into a bit of Arm business and changed things for the better, is that your claim? the Commander said. Or is this another one-off?

I do think I changed things for the better, but I don’t think this was another one-off, Ann said. Consider that I did get a visit from Arm Billington while I was in Atlanta. She wanted to understand my reasoning and motivations. Arm Billington had been white when she transformed, before Arm Keaton got her kicks torturing her into being black. After talking to me she decided to support Arm Webberly in this. And I’m pretty sure she’s going to be getting ‘blacker’ herself, too.

The Commander shook her head. Okay, okay. You’re in, if only so I can keep an eye on you.

Meaning she was saying Ann was too dangerous and disruptive to be out on her own, not a part of any household. Ann couldn’t disagree with that assessment, not at all.

Part One

The True Enemy Is She Without Family

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness. – Werner Herzog

Things like this didn’t happen. Ever.

Carol Hancock (June 17, 1973)

There it is, Mizar signaled. He indicated the sheltered cabin with a tilt of his head. Juice signaling, not voice. His deep voice would have shivered the Colorado aspens.

I nodded and picked out the two Monster lookouts hidden among the trees, feeling the tingling excitement of the hunt. Mizar followed my gaze and nodded. We lay side by side just below the top of the ridge overlooking the cabin. Mizar’s warmth was comfortable against my side.

He was a big man, though neither ‘big’ nor ‘man’ did him justice. He was huge, almost seven feet tall, muscular and broad chested, a giant with off-white hair speckled with gray, and cold blue eyes. If you looked closely at his teeth, you would see they were larger than they should have been, with fine serrations on some. He was a killer, but then so was I.

As far as the ‘man’ part, he was a Chimera, not a normal human. Non-standard Chimera at that, although I could make the case that he was the standard and the other Chimeras were abnormal.

He was my husband. Sort of. It’s complicated.

He’s got a Focus in there. A Pack Mistress. Fewer than fifty Transforms, and less than half a dozen Monsters, Mizar signaled to me.

We can take them out, but there are few enough we could probably cow them if we try. Your call. They were his people and I didn’t want to step on his toes. We had barked our way through enough fights on that subject already.

Mizar watched the cabin for several minutes as the moon came up over the rustling aspens. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. The beauty out here lured me, drove me, and the air smelled clean and alive, so unlike the rank odor of the city. For the last few months, I had treasured these trips with Mizar. Every moment seemed like I cleaned another layer of accumulated sludge from my soul.

I felt an odd rumbling in the ground underneath me, too low for normal ears to hear. It went on for thirty seconds. I looked over into Mizar’s eyes, but he didn’t know what the rumble was either. It wasn’t an earthquake. It had the wrong pitch.

Let’s try to cow them, and see if we can skip the stupidity.

I nodded, and we slipped backwards over the ridge to bring in the others.

My name is Carol Hancock and I’m an Arm, currently the boss Arm in the United States. I’m nicknamed The Commander because I’m a military specialist, although as an Arm what I really am is a predator, preying on unwanted Transforms and anyone else who gets in my way. Several months ago I and my family thwarted the Hunters, a rival so-called civilization of Transforms, by transforming a no-hope battle into a challenge contest between my new Chimera partner, Mizar, and General Enkidu, the leader of the Hunters.

Mizar won.

Now it was time for the clean-up, to finally rid the world of the Hunter remnants and their appalling mockery of civilization they called The Law. Our quest (sigh) went slowly, as the Hunter remnants didn’t want to be found. All the while our other enemies, of which there were far too many, continued to plot and gain strength.

Oh, and I was pregnant, about at the end of my first trimester. Being a pregnant predator wasn’t exactly optimal, but, well, things like that did happen.

The Hunter himself came out to greet us, with only two of his Monsters as an escort. He was one of the real old ones, in his mostly lizard combat form, with retractable fangs and chameleon-like skin that adopted the coloration of whatever he stood beside. He stood upright to greet us, which looked decidedly odd. His Monsters were paltry things, barely a year old and not fully developed.

Emperor Mizar, the Hunter said, with more than a hint of cringe in his voice. It’s an honor to have you here. My name is Thunder. What brings you here to my humble house?

Mizar smiled. On a predator, a smile is not necessarily a good thing. I like to visit all my subjects. See how you’re doing. Make sure you aren’t having any difficulties. In theory Mizar led all the Chimeras in the United States, ever since he defeated the former leader of the Hunters, Enkidu, and earned his title, Emperor of the Chimeras. The point of our little expedition out into the wilderness was to turn the theory into hard reality.

To tell the truth, I was tired of hunting down Hunters. The wilderness was glorious, but the actual dealing with former Hunters ruined our every trip out of wretched urbanity. Plus, I had responsibilities I needed to deal with, and the weight of them pressed on me. We had been on Hunter hunts two out of every three days since the beginning of April, after the San Jose Challenge. It made it hard for me to run everything I needed to run. Not impossible, and grabbing Hunters before anyone else snagged them or they reorganized into a new Hunter Empire was an important responsibility. Mizar’s responsibility, thankfully, and one I supported wholeheartedly. The Law had to be destroyed, restricted to use only by those already mentally infirm, and only under the strict supervision of a Crow Master of Nobles.

But still, I would really value some more time to deal with my own responsibilities.

This Hunter piqued my interest, though. Thunder had been a Hunter for a very long time, long enough for him to have been a participant, on the other side, in the Battle in Detroit. I bore him no ill will in particular; he had just been a soldier, albeit a leading soldier, on the other side. He reeked of power, held in abeyance by the Law he wore, a far too common occurrence among the senior Hunters.

No difficulties. We’re fine. Just fine. No problems. None at all. He stank of extreme nervousness.

Wonderful. I wish all my followers were so lucky. Aren’t you going to invite us in?

Oh, certainly, sir. Come in, come in. It, ah, may be a little small. We’re, ah, just a small pack. We’re not, uh, exactly prepared for such important, uh... Thunder wasn’t sure of himself. He hadn’t been at San Jose, lucky him, and he had never met Mizar in person. Being unsure about Mizar wasn’t a sign of weakness, given what Mizar did to Enkidu. A Chimera in his man-form beating a leading Chimera in his beastly combat form carried with it a pee-inducing amount of stature.

Oh, no problem at all, Mizar said as he strode confidently toward the cabin. Thunder scrambled to keep up. Let me introduce you to my pack, Mizar said. My Pack Mistress is the Focus Lorraine Rizzari, also known as Lady Death. You may have heard of her.

Lori was a cute little Focus, not even five feet tall. She had long luxurious black hair and a gymnast’s body. She rode on top of Nora, our Arm Monster. She smiled at the Hunter, a picture of gracious nobility.

Lori was an exceptional actress. In the San Jose Challenge, she had supported a ten square mile illusion that had been potent enough to fool the entire Hunter army into misdeploying, a crucial part of their defeat. In the chase that followed the Clearing of Chicago fight, years earlier, she had slain a half dozen Chimeras and dozens of pack Guys and Gals. And not with firearms, but with ‘mere’ juice patterns.

The Hunter proved to be less gracious. The green chameleon skin became decidedly pale.

My Crow, Sky. Sky appeared for long enough to wave. He didn’t like to be seen. When visible, he was a stocky man of medium height, with Asian eyes and golden skin, courtesy of an extremely mixed heritage. Despite four years spent in the States, he still hadn’t lost his French Canadian accent. Thunder paled further at the mention of Sky’s name. Even if I hadn’t seen the records, I would have guessed from his reaction to Lori and Sky that the poor guy had personally participated in the Clearing of Chicago fight.

And, of course, my Huntress, Carol Hancock, also known as the Commander, Mizar said, indicating me, walking beside him. Huntresses were what the Hunters called Arms, or at least the Arm associates of Hunters. And, no, I didn’t look like I normally did; as always on these trips I experimented with my looks. My fur, which I wore instead of clothes while in the wilderness, showed black and white stripes radiating from the black fur around my eyes. Like Arms Fairly and Billington, I wasn’t being ‘white’ any more. In my case, I was being a Monster, as terrifying as I could be without altering my basic human shape. The Command Quadrature, at your service, he said.

I smiled. As I said, on a predator, a smile is not necessarily a good thing. Thunder looked about ready to piss himself. Ooh, I did like having a rep. Everyone knew who I was, down to my last minor beastly and bloody peccadillo.

The Command Quadrature term was Sky’s idea, or one we selected from a dozen of Sky’s ideas. He hated the old ‘first family’ name with a passion. Some of his alternate ideas, such as the Four Transform Gods of the Apocalypse, were strictly for humor’s sake. I hoped.

Our pack followed us while we all trooped down the trail to the Hunter’s cabin. We were a ferocious crew. We had brought six Monsters back down from the Yukon last winter besides Nora, old Monsters, big, tough, and dangerous. Jill had converted back to human and could pass as a tall mature Arm, but the others liked their Monster forms. Patricia (not Patty) was a rat, and after she managed to change her throat enough