The Wilderness of Mirrors

By Randall Allen Farmer

The renegade Arm Sylvia Bass switches to guerilla war style attacks after the destruction of her army. Inciting chaos, disorder and betrayal, the number of problems and disasters rise, threatening to overwhelm the Cause. Most at risk are Arm Dolores Sokolnik and her household, facing a juice-based attack unlike anything the Transform community has ever faced before. The Arm Carol Hancock faces her own challenges, problems striking at the heart of her family and organization, greatly weakening her ability to lead and threatening to fatally fracture the Cause.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Allen Farmer
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463453353

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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The Wilderness of Mirrors

(Book Seven 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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The Wilderness of Mirrors

Book Seven of The Cause

"In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do

Suspend its operations, will the weevil

Delay?"

T.S. Elliot

Part One

Mirror

"We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done" – a confession, from the Book of Common Prayer

Thinking is hard work, you know.

Gilgamesh (October 5, 1973)

She moved like a dancer. So graceful, so dangerous, so beautiful. Gilgamesh could watch her for hours. The thrust, the parry, the unexpected move. The speed.

She reminded him of Tiamat, when Tiamat was a young Arm. He remembered, so many years ago, when Tiamat was a baby Arm in the St. Louis Transform Detention Center, how he would spend hours simply watching her move. He still spent time watching her practice, on those occasions when they found themselves in the same location. Rare occasions these days. Too rare.

Irene, though. Irene was beautiful like Tiamat was beautiful. Not in physical appearance – honestly Tiamat hadn’t been particularly attractive as a young Arm, and Irene wasn’t either. Both were so beautiful in other ways, though. Juice structure, grace, presence. Gilgamesh was startled to find such beauty in a Transform.

In a move almost too fast for Gilgamesh to follow, Melanie fell on her back on the hard garage pavement, her legs swept out from under her. Irene fell with her, pinning her to the pavement. Melanie tapped out.

Gilgamesh underestimated Irene, he recognized. Before the Bass hunt in the Texas Hill Country, Gilgamesh thought of Irene mostly like he thought of all the Transform women of his household. Talented, true, but still just a Transform. Someone to be loved and protected.

Then Irene, as a six-month-old Transform, killed an Arm older than she was. Gilgamesh still worked on processing that. How did a Transform turn out to be stronger and more dangerous than a predator Major Transform as old as she was?

The same way, as a seven month Transform, she defeated Melanie, a fully trained five-year Transform.

The conclusion was inescapable. Gilgamesh needed to consider Irene in the same mental category he would consider a young Arm. As he considered Carol so long ago.

Now Irene sparred with John Guynes. Gilgamesh smiled, and watched Irene move, from his refuge in the shadow of a pillar in the Branton parking garage. So graceful. So beautiful. So magnificent.

He and Irene walked out of the Elmwood Park Plaza hand in hand. The evening sky was clear, and the stars leant an air of romance to the night. Gilgamesh found the temperature pleasant. Irene wore a jacket. Gilgamesh spotted an abundance of weaponry hidden under that jacket, and suspected she carried more he didn’t see. He let himself relax a bit from his usual wariness, trusting she would be capable of defending him if trouble arose.

This was the first time he had ever trusted anyone but a predator Major Transform to protect him. The sensation felt odd.

Elmwood Park was one of the few theaters in Chicago still showing Paper Moon five months after its release. They had been too busy to see it before.

In all the years he had spent with Carol, he couldn’t remember a single time they went to a theater together. It was too bad, really. He suspected they would have enjoyed it. But she didn’t have time for such things even as a young Arm, and she had less time now.

It felt to me like a remake of the Grapes of Wrath, Gilgamesh said. He kept his footsteps soundless and his voice low.

The Grapes of Wrath? Irene asked. Gilgamesh loved her voice. Crisp, with no ambiguity, carrying only the faintest hint of a Russian accent. The accent gave her voice character. The plot was nothing similar.

The plots in either movie wasn’t as important as their themes or setting. Sort of ‘this is what life was like when we were children’.

Irene turned to Gilgamesh, quizzical for a moment, and covered up her reaction. Quickly. Learning English in kindergarten and first grade is what I think of as life when I was a child.

Gilgamesh nodded. Irene Michaels, born in the Soviet Union as Irina Mikulenka, left with her mother when her mother defected to the United States in 1956. Just because Major Transforms don’t usually talk about our lives before we transformed doesn’t mean we can’t, Gilgamesh said. Like all mature Crows, Gilgamesh appeared to be in his early twenties. He was much older, and Irene deserved to know. Life when he was a child was a long time ago.

Her hand was warm in his. He felt a little guilty for taking her warmth when she needed it more, but not so guilty he dropped her hand.

You okay with that? Irene asked. That is, if I ask you nosy questions?

I’ve lived with Abyss for a year, Gilgamesh said. The first anniversary of his acceptance into Gail’s household would be in a few weeks. He reminded himself to give Gail an anniversary gift. It would both surprise her and please her. Now that Gail’s finished trading out the Transforms who didn’t fit the Abyss mold, I’d swear nearly every last Abyss Transform has the curiosity bug. I’m used to nosy questions.

Gilgamesh opened the passenger side door of the car he had borrowed from the Abyss motor pool for the night, a rusty Chevy Impala. Irene gave him a knowing look, understanding now why he was so polite and formal. She gracefully seated herself in the car.

When Gilgamesh took the wheel and cautiously pulled into traffic, Irene turned to him, a sparkle in her eyes. So how old are you, anyway?

Roughly the same age as Hank, Gilgamesh said. Traffic was light, but he was still careful. I hope that doesn’t bother you.

No, not at all, Irene said, no pause. I guess there’s more of the old country in me than I like to admit. The average American man of my age seems so unpolished. She grimaced. I meant that as a compliment, not a criticism.

If Irene were an Arm, she would have insisted on driving. Instead, she seemed to appreciate the formal courtesy, where he as the gentleman asked her out and did the driving.

When did you Transform? she asked.

The middle of ‘66, about the same time Carol transformed, Gilgamesh said, and gripped the steering wheel tightly. The terror of those years was little more than a distant memory. But Gilgamesh had an excellent memory.

Bad year to transform?

Gilgamesh nodded. Irene had overheard several conversations between Tom and Rumor on the history of the Crows, and the inferences were there to be made. From Mimesis’s fall in ’62 until Gilgamesh shook Shadow out of his lassitude in ’68, not only had no one looked out for the Crows, Crows hadn’t even existed, officially. Even among the other Crows. Rumor saved me from Patterson. Later, Carol and Lori saved me from myself. I barely survived, Gilgamesh said.

Uh huh, Irene said, disbelieving. You were an engineer?

In his previous life. Yes, Gilgamesh said. Mechanical engineer, specializing in hydraulic systems. Nothing special. They passed Malvano’s Pizza, one of Irene’s favorite restaurants, and for an instant, Gilgamesh thought of stopping. He didn’t, not wanting to ruin the moment.

There aren’t many technically oriented Major Transforms, Irene said.

Irene’s response wasn’t part of the expected dance of words, and he gave Irene a sidelong glance while he kept his eyes on the road. You’ve been looking over Van’s shoulder?

Yes, Irene said. She found Van both intensely interesting and easily understandable, a combination that made her nearly unique. He’s interviewed enough of the Major Transform varieties to conclude, to his satisfaction, that on the average the Major Transforms are significantly skewed toward verbal intelligence and away from logical and mathematical intelligence, after you adjust for juice level.

That’s odd, Gilgamesh said, not sure he believed the data. The top Crows were uniformly good with math. Then again, they were the top Crows, not the average Crows. Though if it had been the other way around, given the mental boost a person gets from being a Major Transform, I guess we’d be seeing quite a few successful Major Transform inventors and hard scientists. He did glance over at Irene for a moment, to study her reaction. Normally, she didn’t mention Van around him, at least since she started to sleep with Van. As usual, Gilgamesh didn’t have any idea what was going through Irene’s head on the subject, or why she steered the conversation this direction.

I guess I owe you an explanation on this personal stuff, Irene said, able to read him better than he could read her. Unless you’d rather I not talk about it.

Ah, time to bury his emotions, because here comes the old ‘I just want to be friends’ speech. He had been expecting one of these for about a month, ever since she and Van hooked up, but it hadn’t happened. Irene still went out with him and worked with him on his Crow research. He wondered how Irene was going to phrase the ‘friends’ speech, given that someday, she would likely want children, and need to turn to him. Awkward.

I’m interested, Gilgamesh said. He concentrated harder on his driving, the only way to keep his hands from shaking.

Van’s overwhelmed by Carol. Whenever he’s been with her, his head spins for days, Irene said, and stopped.

That was it?

He turned her comment around in his mind a few times until he understood. You’re afraid you’re going to be overwhelmed by me? Gilgamesh said. He certainly didn’t consider himself overwhelming. He also considered her highly unlikely to be overwhelmed by anyone. I’m only a Crow, and unlike Van, you’re a Transform. Didn’t she realize how special she was?

Which makes me more vulnerable. I’ve managed to pin Dr. Zielinski down on the subject. He was shocked when he realized he’d been better at resisting Focus charisma as a normal than as a new Transform.

I haven’t noticed any of the other women Transforms in Abyss being overwhelmed by me.

That’s because they see you as a Crow, and only a Crow, dummy, Irene said.

Oh.

I’m sorry, Gilgamesh said. What else could he say? I hadn’t realized that made a difference.

The juice emotions are ‘more’, not ‘in substitute of’, Irene said. She turned her head toward the window and watched the streetlights pass by. "Even those emotions. To tell you the truth, I don’t quite know what to do with you. You see, I’m more than just a little fond of you. I hadn’t expected I’d be."

Gilgamesh parked the Impala in a spare curbside parking space outside the Longhorn Steak House, a quarter mile away from the Branton. He couldn’t drive any more.

She loved him.

Love wasn’t allowed. Women Transforms he tagged lusted after him, they didn’t love him, not in the standard way. Love for a household Crow wasn’t the same as romantic love. This was different.

Irene, this beautiful, graceful, dangerous, exceptional Transform, loved him, and she couldn’t even say she did. She was overwhelmed.

What was he going to do?

What had you expected? Gilgamesh said.

Back when I’d been a foolish idiot and volunteered to try to solve a problem no one else saw? Irene bit her lip, and Gilgamesh realized she fought off tears. I expected you and I would end up doing the household Crow thing, save that I was going to take precautions, so I wouldn’t end up jilting you as soon as I got pregnant. I figured you deserved to have something better than…

Slam.

Irene was out of the car, stalking away. He hadn’t even seen her move. He wondered what he had said or done wrong.

Nothing. The Commander’s hard lessons on how to read people paid off here: Irene fought herself and didn’t want him to see the young Transform she was peek through her world-wise façade. Gilgamesh got out of the car and jogged after her, hoping she would wait for him. Given Irene, if she didn’t want to be caught, there was no way he would be able to run her down.

His fears didn’t materialize. After two blocks, Irene sat down on a bus stop bench. Once he reached the bench, Gilgamesh sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. She stared straight ahead, in control of herself again, and not in the slightest bit ruffled. She didn’t pull away from his arm.

Hugging Irene was like hugging a rock, like Carol in some of their tenser moments. Gilgamesh hesitated, not sure what to say, or even if he should say anything.

Irene spoke first. How much did I mess up by sleeping with Van?

If it had been politic, Gail would have held a nationwide celebration, Gilgamesh said. She’s been trying to get Van hooked up with someone ever since I joined Abyss.

I wasn’t talking about Gail, I was talking about you, Irene said.

Why would I… Gilgamesh stopped. No, can’t go there. Crow jealousy is… No, that wouldn’t do, either. I’m glad for you and Van and wouldn’t dream of interfering.

"No, Gilgamesh. I’m asking you what you feel, Irene said. I know about the Crow distancing shit, but what I want to know is how you, Gilgamesh, as a person, feel."

Sad. Exasperated, Gilgamesh said. He reddened. He hadn’t meant to blurt out his last word.

Good, Irene said, and nodded.

And that was the last she would say on the subject.

---

Gilgamesh had planned on spending the rest of the evening teaching two of his new student Crows some lessons about Arms, but neither Flatbush nor Blue China were anywhere near the Branton when he returned from the Sandburg, and Irene had left him in a troubled mood. In fact, his two students left him a note at the front desk, which boggled Gilgamesh’s mind: first that the Branton front desk was now willing to take notes from random Crows, and second, that there were youngish Crows willing to deal with Beulah.

What’re those two eediots up to, Master Gilgamesh? Beulah asked. The note had been in a sealed envelope. Beulah was one of Mizar’s pack, a gorilla. She remembered, as a Monster, the Kennedy assassination. Because of things like that, there were times when Gilgamesh himself was a little leery of Beulah. Beulah could have opened the note and read it, but she was too correct to do such a thing.

The old survivor Monsters were not only talented at combat, but also highly controlled and intelligent. Beulah was good enough to have sought out Mizar back when he had been grabbing Hunters.

Gilgamesh read the note and sighed. They decided to go haring off after the Commander, who’s out inspecting the Gary industrial district. Carol worried about Bass going after her territory and spent quite a bit of time hunting around for clues.

Isn’t that redundant? Beulah asked, and scratched her chest. You said ‘Gary’, you didn’t need to say ‘industrial district’.

Gilgamesh raised an eyebrow. Monster humorists, who would have thought it possible?

The Director’s been heating up the phones for hours ever since Focus time started, Beulah said. Focus time was any time at night after the long-distance phone rates went down. I’ll bet she could use a break. Gilgamesh nodded to Beulah, and turned to excuse himself again to Irene, but Irene had vanished on him. He smiled. She left a metasense ghost in his mind where she had been, a decent Crow trick.

Gail’s new night office was on the eighth floor, in a double sized room which functioned as a kids’ recreation room during the daytime. With the Commander’s immediate people now moved to the Sandberg, the overcrowded Abyss people expanded into their space immediately. Now Gail took advantage of Lori’s former office to do some close-quarters juice moving if the spirit moved her, and sub in for Sylvie as Abyss night manager if necessary.

Come in, Gilgamesh, Gail said, his knuckles just above the door to knock. She had spent months convincing him to knock first instead of gliding into workrooms unobserved, and now this. He snorted, hid the opening of the door and himself, and as Irene had done, left a metasense ghost of himself stalking away in the hallway as he slid into the room.

Oh, for Christ’s sake, Gilgamesh, Gail said, and rushed to the door to open it. I’m sorry, I was just thinking in automatic and… She stopped when she reached the hallway and couldn’t find him.

By then, he had snagged her office chair. Nice – still warm. He curled up. He tried to pull his thoughts away from the warmth and the delight of walking by Irene’s side. He failed.

Gail, you still there? the phone said. Beth Hargrove.

Gilgamesh couldn’t resist. It’s me, he said, after he picked up the phone. Did Chevalier solve the volumetric boundary value problem that was stumping him? Before you could do dross recycling, the dross needed to be preprocessed. That is, mixed and oxygenated. Chevalier was attempting to automate the time-consuming preprocessing step, but dross constructs requiring internal motion always involved hairy differential equations, as Gilgamesh knew from his household cleaning service work, and…

Gilgamesh? Gail stalked back into the room, hands on hips, a smile fighting its way onto her face.

Yes, Gilgamesh said, to Gail.

How can you tell? Beth said, over the phone. Whenever I talk to him, he jabbers on and on and on, and he never actually says anything.

Is he more long-winded than normal? Gilgamesh asked.

Uh huh.

He’s still stumped.

Gail sat herself on her desk and motioned for the phone. Gilgamesh gave it to her.

Beth, looks like I’ve gotta run. I’ll make sure that Scout’s taken care of. After the obligatory Focus long goodbye, Gail eventually hung up the phone.

What about Scout? Gilgamesh said.

The Crow researchers currently at Arm Sokolnik’s place sent Scout here to attend Saul’s talk on his paper tomorrow.

Scout? Gilgamesh said, incredulous. "That kid’s barely been a Crow for a year and a half. They sent him here by airplane? Let me guess. They also sent him without Del." Voices – the Crow name for Arm Sokolnik – was busy with the dross recycling project and with analysis of Bass’s activities. There was no way she would have time to attend Saul’s minor presentation regarding the evolutionary markers reflected in juice components.

Gail shrugged. They sent him by Amtrak, actually. Chevalier, it turns out, is loaded, and they bought him a sleeping compartment of his own.

Good for Chevalier, Gilgamesh said. Chevalier had been a Crow and a successful artist for years, but he had played the part of an impoverished artist. The current extended crisis had finally awakened Chevalier’s compassion and opened his wallet and secret bank accounts. Gail lay down lengthwise on her desk, knocking a mostly empty cocoa mug and a few papers on the floor, and gave Gilgamesh her undivided Focus attention.

I’m supposed to talk you into looking out for him, Gail said, and smiled.

No problem.

Gail blinked at Gilgamesh. You think I need a break from running up the phone bill, don’t you?

Gilgamesh nodded. He reached into his suit jacket pocket and gave Gail the letter he received in today’s mail. He hadn’t been sure who to show it to, if anyone, but, somehow, it felt right to share this bit of extreme Crow nonsense with Gail.

Dear Guru Gilgamesh

Beware! The water is rising behind the ice dam, and the cracks are beginning to show. When the ice dam gives, the flood may sweep away the Cause.

Crow Guru Nameless

Dear Guru Gilgamesh

My dear friend Nameless is agitated and is having a hard time coping with what he’s seen. Whatever that is. I can tell you my Noble charges are similarly worried, but in a much more straightforward manner. They fear a fire, a great conflagration, that will change everything. If the Cause is shattered, that is. They too think the Cause is at risk, but don’t know from what. I’d rather not have to speak about warnings of this nature, but if I can’t give this to you, then who?

Crow Master Icestorm, Borealis Barony

Gail read the short letter twice and slowly passed it back to Gilgamesh. Here we go again, she said, in a sing-song voice.

But what? Gilgamesh said. I can’t imagine anything Bass could do that could shatter the Cause. The fires and floods of the two warnings were metaphorical, but whatever they stood for wouldn’t be pretty. If they occurred.

They’re sure something’s already happened, like another Phoenix Church Massacre, but worse and as yet undiscovered, Gail said, and shivered. Let’s get out of my office. The air’s too close in here.

---

They’re such angels when they’re asleep, Gail said, looking in on her daughter Sharon. Tricia Bluen smiled.

You on for the next feeding? Tricia asked.

Sure, Gail said. Go catch some sleep.

Tricia waved, and staggered off. She had almost been traded out of Abyss – she really didn’t fit, despite her work as Gail’s personal secretary – but she had begged to stay, even pledged to work double shifts, and Sylvie eventually acquiesced. The crisis gave Tricia a new maturity that Gilgamesh approved of.

She’s still being tentative with me, Gail said. That thing with my attendants at the end of my pregnancy really got to Tricia. During the last month of Gail’s pregnancy, Sylvie had assigned Tricia to wait on Gail for the dinner-to-midnight shift. Unfortunately, in the last week of Gail’s pregnancy, Tricia got chewed up by Sylvie, Melanie and Helen Grimm several times, as all Gail’s attendants became overprotective. Just our luck the only pregnancy-experienced Focus had ditched her attendants, Gail said, nonchalant.

Ah. Gail had finally gotten over her anger at Lori, Gilgamesh realized.

Attendants are a different variety of woman Transform than the type Tricia is, Gilgamesh said.

I know that, Gail said. She knew about his and his various students’ noodling on the subject of multiple types of Transforms, and she remained a skeptic. She grabbed Gilgamesh by the arm and led him into the suite’s bedroom.

So, how’d your date go, tonight? Gail asked, plopping down on the bed with a bounce.

A flicker of Gilgamesh’s metasense showed that Irene and Van had found each other.

Of all things, progress. Of a sort, Gilgamesh said. Irene is a serious and dangerous person with serious and dangerous goals. She reminds me a lot of an Arm. Gilgamesh wondered how long Irene would remain interested in him, and if she would grow tired of him. Or find him too odd for her tastes.

Gail laid back on the bolster pillows and studied the back of her left hand, in particular, the base of her fingers. Took you long enough to figure that out. Are you going to give in to the Crow willies on the subject, or…

Gilgamesh shrugged and sat down on the bed. Gail’s voice tailed off. What do you think I should do? Gilgamesh said. He suspected Gail knew why Irene had been so recalcitrant. He didn’t want to hear about it now. But Gail was Irene’s Focus. The juice was going to have an impact. It’s more than Crow willies. This is uncharted territory.

If you’re looking at me to get in the way, you’re out of luck, Gail said. Gilgamesh, seriously, the flip side of Major Transforms being able to love more people is that we need more people to love. Carol hasn’t been enough for you since she figured out how to build tag relationships in number. I love you, but you need more than me. Go for it.

Gilgamesh caught Gail flickering her metasense at Van and Irene, a shadow of worry on her face.

If you don’t mind me asking, Gail, doesn’t this bother you? Gilgamesh said. He wondered if Gail was right. He had plenty of relationships with all sorts of people, but still, in a way, he felt lonely. Would there ever be anyone for whom he came first? How do you feel about the two of them?

Gail turned away. Inhuman.

Gilgamesh flinched at the unexpected answer. Inhuman?

He’s my husband, and I missed him horribly while he was with Inferno, and while he was gone, I was horribly jealous of the imagined affairs he didn’t have. She paused. Not now. If anything, now that he and Irene have found each other, I love them both more. That’s what’s inhuman. It’s worrisome, Gilgamesh. I was crazy enough as a low-juice Focus, but even with the charisma and the juice moving responsibilities, my behavior was still recognizably human. Ever since I gained use of the household juice buffer, though, I’ve been slowly drifting farther and farther from humanity. I’m terrified I’m going to end up like Patterson or Bentlow. Or Keistermann. No longer recognizably human.

I understand, Gilgamesh said. Irene’s description of Focus Bentlow’s household did portray Bentlow as one of the more inhuman Focuses. After his long years of following his Tiamat, though, he suspected ‘inhuman’ wasn’t necessarily bad, in and of itself. In the end, they would be expanding the definition of humanity, and not by a few small scribbled lines around the edges, which would be a good thing. Becoming a Guru changed me similarly. He shook his head. I’d better properly tag Van, though. With this push toward Mentor, it was only going to get worse, and the last thing he wanted to do was to treat Van badly because he and Irene found a little time for some happiness together.

I see, Gail said, and smiled. So, from one inhuman to another – do you have any time tonight before your big confab with Guru Snow tomorrow down in Kentucky? The shit hasn’t hit the fan yet, and I’ve got a few hours open after Sharon’s next feeding…

Saul Crashell (October 6, 1973)

Greta, have you heard anything about when they’re planning to open Littleside to the public? Saul asked.

Greta frowned. Me? You’re the one who should know.

Saul sat at the Elspeth household leadership table in the Branton dining room. Given his truly minor responsibilities associated with household training, he was never sure why they included him, but Greta gave him a hard time every time he tried to retreat into the background. Something about shirking his responsibility.

The room was noisy with the clatter of dishes and the murmur of conversation. They ate tuna casserole today and the air was thick with the smell of cooked tuna, Brussels sprouts, boiled cabbage and the occasional cigarette. Saul wondered who had pissed off the cook, as the food was nearly always better than this. He despised tuna casserole and planned to scrounge a sandwich later in the evening. He suspected he would have a lot of company.

He just hoped tuna salad sandwiches didn’t end up being the only option.

I wish I did. We’ve had workers fixing up Littleside for months, and I’m positive it’s ready to be reopened to the public, but all I can find out is that the opening has been postponed until ‘the current crisis is over’. The question was ‘what crisis’? As far as he knew, Bass hadn’t done anything big since the fight in Texas.

Hank doesn’t have any better information? Permelia said. She was a part-Monster, half-way gone into an ape form. A woman who was part-ape was heart-stopping ugly, a fact thankfully balanced by her outrageous intellect.

You’d think, but no. I talked to him this afternoon on the phone, and he didn’t know anything new on the subject. Hank remained off in Los Angeles, helping with the Crows’ dross recycling project.

Mm. Doesn’t sound like he thinks Littleside is about to open, does it? Greta said.

As Greta speared a sprout, Saul got a strong sense of something important happening. A summons. Saul still felt a giddy thrill whenever he felt the superorganism at work. This was the sort of thing he transformed for.

All four of the people at the table perked their heads up and hustled toward the door, leaving half-eaten food and a tipped over chair behind them. Most of the people in the dining room turned to stare after them, as they didn’t miss the fact that every member of Cathy Elspeth’s leadership group in the dining room abandoned their dinner in a rush.

What’s up? Saul asked, as he got to the door.

Melissa smiled. Cathy says she’s not feeling well and went to bed early, she said. I’ll tell you what I think. I think she’s about to have her baby!

Ann Chiron (October 6, 1973)

Ann wouldn’t have believed this even if she had come back in time and told herself this was going to happen. The entire audience of student Arms, and about a quarter of the student Nobles, sat in rapt attention as Hank spoke in excruciating detail about the dross recycling project.

This was Arm Waits’ graduation ceremony, or the after-party of it, and the partiers inhabited the wine tasting room of the Stone Point Winery. Ranks of bottles lined the walls, and the audience sat at small, high tables. A few of them even drank glasses of wine, though not many. Much of the audience consisted of Major Transforms, who didn’t feel the effects of the wine.

The talk was apparently Arm Waits’ idea. Her idea of a graduation present.

If the researchers figured out a way to make dross recycling work, they would increase the number of Transforms a Focus household could support. By a lot. This would bring the Transform Sickness mortality rate way down, which would save millions of lives when the world entered the Apocalypse. All they needed to do was figure out a way to recycle the extra dross that a household normally produced back into usable juice again.

So simple in concept. In practice, well, it was a major research project.

Ann’s mind wandered, as she already knew this stuff. Hell, as an apprentice Crow Savant, she knew enough about dross constructs to create a few simple ones. She had, alas, also learned enough to realize she would never become good at them. Not only couldn’t she move, with borrowed Crow skills, more than six pieces of dross at any one time, she had learned that even the simplest dross constructs required more mathematics than she possessed to set up correctly. Either that, or so many years of experience that setting them up came instinctively.

The world refused to cooperate with her, making her crankier than normal. The dross recycling project down in Los Angeles had sucked up nearly all her time after the fall of Bass’s Insurrection, over two months ago, and it refused to let go. Bass remained free and alive, but had only spent two or three weeks laying minor traps and pulling off nasty assassinations, such as that of Zeke Burnstead, one of the Commander’s chief spies. The rest of the time the rebel Arm spent in hiding. However, if the rumors were correct, she did make a habit of collecting the wanted posters of her from as many post offices and police stations as she could burgle. According to the Commander, Bass was down to a single trainee Arm, a couple of resurrected Hunters and a couple of Crows.

At least the Feds backed off their legal and extralegal efforts against the Transform community after the fall of the Insurrection. The same couldn’t be said about the state governments, though. The worst was Mississippi, which still detained most of its legal Transforms in work camps. The lawsuits fighting this numbered in the hundreds, and the damages claimed neared a hundred million dollars. She was glad nobody assigned her to that mess.

…and it takes four or more units of recycled dross to create one unit of élan, and the process produces a hazardous waste product that the Crows must handle carefully, Hank said, after slapping a new transparency on the projector. He projected from one end of the bar onto the chalkboard at the other, making a small image over the chalky remnants of a list of wine selections. Hank yammered on and Ann had to stick a figurative juice icepick in her brain to keep from nodding off.

This really works? Dowling said. He didn’t feign his interest, though Ann wondered how much of it was fueled by the Count’s open interest in becoming an Earl. Something about a new form of dross and an increase in conversion efficiency to 60 percent. Habanera dross. Cute. Someone else must have come up with the name. Hank would have called it HECD, for Highly Efficient Catalyzed Dross, or some such. Plus, the top Crows had recently figured out a use for that habanera dross.

Hank nodded. It really does. We’ve managed eight different small-scale catalyzation methods so far, and we suspect there are others we’ve missed. The only remaining step is to scale up the lab work to full household amounts and figure out which one works the most efficiently in its scaled-up mode. Which turns out to be a non-trivial activity.

So, what are the numbers? Webberly asked. She took this personally, likely disgusted at the amount of dross piling up around her quadrature household.

With the addition of the dross recycling, we expect to get another forty-two Transforms per household. All male, because what we’re doing here is providing more juice, and male Transforms are juice consumers. Our example household now contains eighty-seven women and eighty-five men. This gives us a total household size of 173 Transforms per Focus. A survival rate of fifty-eight percent.

That’s it? Focus Ellen O’Donnell said. She wanted a full solution, something to allow her to support the 300 people who transformed for each Focus transformation.

That’s it for this project, Hank said. We’re going to need to come up with some more tricks if we’re going to get to full survival.

Arm Waits, who preferred to go by the name ‘Hark’, raised her hand. Hank smiled and motioned for her to speak. Those two seemed to get along famously, a budding camaraderie that worried Ann – if they shared too many of the same personality quirks, it meant the Arm community had another dark, secretive and dangerous Arm on their hands.

Dr. Zielinski, Hark said. How much skill are you assuming on the part of the Focuses and Crows? I don’t mean to demean the Crow and Focus community, but I’ve seen some of the math involved in this project, and I doubt more than one in twenty can follow it. It’s far worse than the household tuning math, from what I’ve seen.

Hank continued to smile. That’s the nicest part about this project, Arm Waits – although our current work does require some nasty mathematics, the procedure we’re coming up with won’t be any more complicated than a cake recipe. We need only one Focus in the household with enough skill to pass juice to an Arm or utilize equivalent complexity juice music, and one Crow with enough skill to do household tuning. Any Crow-Focus pair able to do both can work the recycling. Every other Crow and Focus in the extended household can be junior, incompetent, or otherwise non-functional. All it takes is those two.

Lives. Real lives. A survival rate of 58% was a hell of a lot better than the 10% survival rate back when Ann transformed.

Meaning the households will be getting even more hierarchical than they already are, Arm Sokolnik whispered in Ann’s ear. She and Ann had been passing snarky comments back and forth throughout Hank’s long talk about the sociological implications of the Cause’s successes. The young Arm was in San Francisco not only to help celebrate Arm Waits’ graduation, but also to petition for permission to exchange tags with True Chimera Thunder, permission she had won and the tags already exchanged. Thunder sat on the other side of Arm Sokolnik, mostly asleep and occasionally softly snoring. Ann didn’t know how he managed to fall asleep while sitting on a backless bar stool, but Chimeras were good at sleeping.

I know, Ann said, whispering back as Hank and Ellen wrangled about the technological differences between what the ancient First Peoples’ tribes used and what they were using. It’s as if the juice wants appalling hierarchies and stratified elite-run societies.

Isn’t that what most regular people want as well? Sky whispered back from his seat on the other side of Ann. Ann glared. Thinking is hard work, you know.

Carol Hancock (October 6, 1973)

I startled, fully alert, from my half-awake meditations. A possible enemy Arm hunted Chicago, and not the least bit hidden! At least if I trusted Gilgamesh’s wood armband, a dross object that held fifteen different tricks, all based on the fact I owned Chicago as my official Arm territory. An official dominance challenge!

This I didn’t need.

I stood, awkwardly. The seventh month of my pregnancy was enough to interfere with even an Arm’s natural grace. Until I expended a little juice to regain my equilibrium, I felt like I went three rounds with Enkidu and lost. I took stock to try and scramble my people, and sighed. I didn’t have many people to scramble. Too many of them were out on various ‘missions’.

The challenge pissed the crap out of me. Here I was trying to save the world, and some damned idiot Arm wanted to use that against me? Blood would spill tonight. I would make sure of it.

It’s Bass, Gail said, groggy. We let Van sleep, as he rarely contributed anything useful to one of our emergencies if they occurred between midnight and six AM. We did manage to extricate Irene from his arms without waking him up, though. We now gathered in the basement armory of the Branton, and the air smelled of oil, steel, and explosives. The reassuring odors helped me keep control of my temper. A little.

Do you have any evidence behind this? I said, cranky. Old Carol would have run off like an idiot to defend her territory, alone. The fact I didn’t made me cranky, despite the stupidity of my instinctive defensive response. My power was in my people, and I would make damned sure I had my power with me.

Nope, Gail said, doing a couple of deep knee bends. Lori, just as groggy, ran wake-up juice patterns instead. She had just hustled over from the Sandburg with Rumor and a couple of guards, and even managed to grab a few more moments of sleep on the brief trip. It’s Bass, though.

I sighed. Where’s her army of juice slaves, then? Bass, during her three weeks of insane activity in the last two weeks of August and the first week of September, never went anywhere or did anything without a flak jacket of fifty juice slaves around her. Of course, she had gone quiet in the month since, so she could have changed tactics. I did wonder, though, about the logistics. Someone in the government spent a lot of effort covering up a missing persons nightmare. Those juice slaves we kept killing were once normal people, dammit, and they must have come from somewhere. Thank heavens for Watergate and the efforts of our media crew, though; us Transforms were getting good press again, despite the fact Bass remained out there.

Gail shrugged and continued her calisthenics.

Logically, it’s Eissler, I said. I’ve been expecting a visit from her ever since we took down the Insurrection. Eissler and I managed a rather snotty Dreaming relationship, her with her ‘your crazy Cause and New Humanity religion crap is going to enslave us’ comments and my standard ‘anything is better than letting the Transform apocalypse take hold’ rejoinders. She needed to smack me down, and I refused to go to Europe to be smacked. Next best guess would be Stacy. My former boss had eyed a challenge ever since Mizar, that idiot, charged Leo in the Texas fight and let Bass escape a couple of months ago. She had cause to challenge, and I made sure I possessed the support necessary to humble her. Then Haggerty, who’s always itching for a challenge and still supposedly on vacation. A vacation she demanded, a demand a mere inch short of a formal challenge, after Bass went quiet last month. She had been going full tilt for far too long and her life, territory and personal relationships had all fallen apart. Then Bass, if she’s decided to commit suicide. Bass barely survived a personal confrontation with Gail. Against Lori, Gail, Rumor and me, she would die. Don’t forget human stupidity, though, or in this case juice-addled Arm stupidity. It could be nearly any Arm. The last two Arms I had reamed out and meant it were Billington and Whetstone. I could easily believe they held grudges.

It’s Baaaasss, Gail said. She looked around the Branton basement armory and found only Rumor getting ready to fight, among the various Abyss and Command Quad household people gathered here to coordinate. Nora, my Monster Arm follower, was here but wasn’t gearing up. She didn’t need to. This is it for Major Transforms? We’re going to get our asses pasted. Visions of small armies of powerful nasties filled her head.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any other combat qualified Major Transforms available, and I ordered most of the marginally qualified to protect the Branton. Upstairs, Focus Cathy Elspeth endured the early stages of labor, and I refused to leave her unprotected.

Whoever this is is either working alone, or has at best a small entourage of at most a half dozen, Gail, Rumor said. It took my Arm-trained Crow forever to work himself up to it, but he was now on a first name basis with both Lori and Gail. There is no army.

Me, I wanted Gilgamesh, Sky and Mizar with me for this one, in addition to the crew with me. Eissler was going to laugh at my support before she made me grovel, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Fools. It’s Bass, and she has more than a small entourage with her, Gail said. "This is not going to be fun."

---

My name is Carol Hancock, the Commander. Not much of a Commander right now, as we weren’t in a war or even a mild armed conflict. So, I got to do my thing as boss Transform of the United States, a not unpleasant task in and of itself. I’m an Arm, one of the predator and juice consumer varieties of Transform. And pregnant, of all things. I had a Chimera mate these days, the former Beast now named Mizar. My fellow predatory Major Transform and I weren’t