A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) (9 page)

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“How did she
react?”

“Poorly.  I think she realized how much I
understand about her to say even that much, and she didn’t like it at all.”

“Did she try and track you down?”

“Absolutely she tried to track me down.  She’s still trying.  But after I dropped off the letter I’ve stayed at least four miles away from her house.”  The time since he slid the letter under the door had been terrifying.  He had given her almost nothing to work with, but knowing so didn’t help.  He couldn’t sleep, instead watching her constantly for any suspicious activities, or for whatever had spooked her.  Hyper-alert.  His things were packed and in his truck, all ready to leave the city at the least hint of anything suspicious.

“You’re taking awfully large risks, Gilgamesh.  Are you sure you
understand what you’re doing?”

Gilgamesh closed his eyes and didn’t answer.  His nerves had been asking him the same question ever since he made his decision to act and he still didn’t have an answer.

“It’s all right,” Shadow said gently. “It’ll be all right.”

Neither of them believed it.

With the Skinner unwilling to act on his request his next task was to find an apartment near the Arm’s place…and send the Skinner another letter.

---

The Skinner acted before he finished his second letter.  The Skinner drove into downtown San Francisco and went into a random building, the only Transform or Major Transform present, according to his metasense.  There, of all things, she did a pantomime routine pointing at something in the building.  Five times.  Including flapping her arms like a bird.

Like a crow, perhaps?

Gilgamesh waited as the Skinner went back home and very firmly stayed home.

He had to check, dammit.  He crumpled up his partly written letter and left his new apartment.

The building turned out to be an unemployment office and the place where she
did her pantomime was right in front of a job board.  Gilgamesh checked the papers and index cards haphazardly thumbtacked to the job board until he found the Skinner’s message.

Crow Eradication Service

Work in the extermination industry.  Minimal pay, long hours, lots of hunting.  Often futile.  Call xxx-xxx-xxxx for more information.

Gilgamesh skedaddled until he was far away from the unemployment office before he broke down and called the phone number.  Long distance.  With a Los Angeles area code.

“Rodriguez Message Service,” a woman said.  “How may I help you?”

Shit.  Gilgamesh held the phone away from him, fighting panic.  He stammered for a moment.  “I don’t have an account with you, but I believe someone may have left a message for me.  For, um, ‘Helpful Crow’.”

“Of course, sir.  Let me check.  Yes, here it is.  For liability purposes, understand that we aren’t responsible for the content of any of the messages we deliver, but we are responsible for the veracity.  Do you wish to copy this down?”

“No, I’ll remember.”

“The message reads: ‘You are out of your god damned mind.  No, I won’t rescue my dipshit former student; you don’t get rescued when you fuck up that bad.  If you want to discuss this further use the apple press statue in the park.’  Anything else, sir?”

“No thank you, ma’am,” Gilgamesh said.  He blinked and fought off panic, wondering if he had been too hasty and should try
to send a message back through whatever strange message service the Arm used.  As he thought through his options he heard over the phone, likely through a hand over the handset on the other end: ‘Lupe!  Focus!  You’ll never guess!  There’s a goddamned Crow on the message line!’ followed by some rapid-fire Spanish.

Gilgamesh shrieked and ran.

He found
a park with an apple press statue within an hour: Golden Gate Park, in downtown San Francisco, less than two miles from his phone booth and about eight miles north of the Skinner’s house.

He left the following for the Skinner:

SK

Thank you for your quick response.  I witnessed the fall of the Student.  She was taken by surprise by a vast number of hornets, who appeared out of nowhere, with no warning.  I have never
before heard of an operation involving more than 200 hornets.  In addition I heard the terrifying howls of several large dogs like the ones we experienced in Philadelphia, including the one that got away, who personally chased me and almost caught me on the way out.

Helpful Crow

The next morning the Skinner left the following for him:

HC

Fuck, that’s a lot of hornets.  I don’t like the implication of the doggies, either.  However, I am not a trusting sort and I have run into other less helpful of your fine companions before.  I believe one fibbed to me; the other made me think wooden furniture was prey.  You’ll need to do better to convince me.

SK

Gilgamesh replied:

SK

Yes, there are other members of my tribe who do not agree that your tribe can be dealt with, and they can be a bit fierce at times.  I don’t agree with them.  I am willing to help you in whatever way a person of my limited experience can pitch in.  What can I tell you about my experiences that can help explain my assertions?

Helpful Crow

Later, Gilgamesh called Shadow.  “I’m making some progress exchanging messages with the Skinner,” he said, after making small talk.  “The problem is: she doesn’t believe my story.  I have a question for you: what about our Crow capabilities can I pass along to the Skinner?”

“Ordinarily I’d say none,” Shadow said.  “But I understand the position you’re in.  Here’s a list, from least worrisome to most.”

Gilgamesh focused his mind and memorized the list.  Full up on Arm dross, memorization presented no problems at all.

Chapter
4

In 1967 there were an estimated 5,500 newly transformed male Transforms.  Of these an estimated 310 survived to become members of Focus households, with an estimated mortality rate of 94.4 percent.

“Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

Carol Hancock: March 12, 1968 – March 14, 1968

I smiled to the cameras as
Mr. Michaels led me into my new cell.  He had become my favorite and I had him good.  McIntyre had figured this out, damn him, so if I did anything funky like using Mr. Michaels as a hostage or a human shield, he was dead meat.  Everyone in here now, save McIntyre, had signed the death waivers, just like the good old crew back in St. Louis.  Mr. Michaels drew my blood, weighed me, poked me, prodded me, stuck things in me in places I would rather not talk about, and generally followed doctors’ orders.  We kidded about making sure the CDC put his hazard pay in a secure bank account.

I liked my new cell
; well appointed, large and clean.  No shackles, and I had access to running water, a real bed and exercise equipment.  The only thing they didn’t give me was the shower I wanted.  No fools they.

They
would be able to talk to me over the intercom and through an ingenious arrangement involving thick steel rolling doors and a Monster-proof net.  The latter arrangement allowed people to interview me in safety; after they shackled me to the floor at a welded-to-the-floor steel table and chair, they would roll back the steel doors and expose the net woven from half-inch thick steel rods.

McIntyre paid me a visit an hour later.

“Good news, Carol,” Agent McIntyre said, cheery. “Your request for food on demand has been approved.  If you need some reading material, or nearly anything else we allow in medical detention, as long as it’s within reason, you’ll get it.  You should decide what you need and make requests to the aide who brings you your food.  Sound good?”

“Sure, Agent McIntyre.”

“There’s one hitch.”  There always was.

“I have to cooperate and talk.”

“More than that.  You have to cooperate, talk and be polite with some interrogators who are far more skittish than I am.  If you upset them by pulling any of your stunts, like you did with your fingernails or with Riddlehauser and White, the deal’s off.”

“Fuck this,” I said, no predator in my voice at all.  “What if they don’t like my answers?  What if they don’t like
how with low juice I sometimes forget what I’ve already said.  The deal’s worthless.”

“I don’t care whether they like your answers or not,” he said.  “Dammit, just be truthful, Carol, don’t play any of your games, and you won’t have any problems at all.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, beaten.  I bowed my head in shame.

Pure
act.  With my juice this low, what I wanted was to have a shit-kicking temper tantrum.

The first set of visitors came in a half hour later.  Not ‘in’, of course, but safely on the other side of the Monster-proof net, with me shackled down.  Three Army officers, all Generals.

“Mrs. Hancock, we’re here to ask you some questions.”

“Go ahead,” I said, meek and calm.

They
didn’t introduce themselves and the names on their uniforms were taped over, as if that would keep me from remembering them.

“Have you ever had any contact with a Colonel Nate Richardson?”

Oh.  These sorts of questions.  I would make McIntyre very happy, as I would be able to answer these sorts of questions truthfully all day long.

“Nope.  No contact, never heard of him.”

As I said, easy.  I hadn’t as much as talked to a member of the military since I transformed.

The next group, men in suits from an unnamed government agency, asked me about foreign contacts and my ideological beliefs.  No problems there, as I didn’t have any foreign contacts and I certainly wasn’t a goddamned communist.  They left pleased, two of them wondering if they would be able to hire me to serve in the clandestine services.

This
sort of shit happened every time the Feds got me in custody.

After the agency men came the FBI, including one I remembered from St. Louis, Special Agent Paul Gauthier, the coffee addict.  With Gauthier I feared detailed questions about my Transform life, but I didn’t get those.  Instead, he asked me questions about a wide range of subjects, including money laundering, wire fraud, robbery, kidnappings, contact with anti-war protestors and other subversive groups.  I lied my ass off about the robberies and money laundering and told the truth about the rest.  As per Zielinski’s request I stayed at my politest behavior.

With low juice
I took a long time to figure out the important element about these questions: not a one about the California Spree Killer’s rampage.  They didn’t even suspect the California Spree Killer was me.

“We know about your McIngle identity,” one nameless FBI Agent said, eventually.

I had guessed they might.

“We know about some of your activities, but not all of them, in Chicago.  Why don’t you tell us what you were doing as McIngle?”

“I was cleaning up the part of town I lived in,” I said.  “I can’t just walk down to the stockyards and get a job.  I did some work, and figured out the best people to steal from are those who have the money illegally in the first place…if you’re willing to fight back when they get hacked off and go after you.  They don’t complain to the police either.”  My theft from organized criminals was only a tiny fraction of my activities, but I spun it up to make this look like the only thing I had been doing.

They hadn’t found any bodies.  As far as they knew, I hadn’t done a damned thing in Chicago except
avoid attention and run my thugs against the other thugs.  They hadn’t penetrated the Mr. Beacon side of my operation.  They didn’t know about my bank robberies.  Save for the fight where they captured me, I had been a virtual Girl Scout.

Only, why did they even care?  I
had killed a hell of a lot of officers in the takedown fight.  They had enough on me to put me away forever, or, given the lack of rights for Transforms, declare me a Monster and just shoot me.

Something stank.

Given my sordid history, my first thought was: ‘who’s trying to recruit me?’

I got the answer later, at night, when I metasensed a Focus and her Transform entourage enter the bowels of the Detention Center, on their way to visit me.

---

The Focus’s entourage appeared first, all beefy crew-cut men in expensive suits, all ex-military.  They professionally secured the viewing area on the far side of the Monster-proof net, and opened the door for their Focus.  I knew this Focus through her metapresence as the Focus from Jackson, Mississippi, a Focus Keaton had once dismissed with a derisive one-word comment: ‘lightweight’ and hadn’t bothered to name.