All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (9 page)

Ah hah.  I liked the way Hank thought.

Sky nodded.  “I metasensed four Patriarchs in the area, but only two harems of part-Monster Transforms.  I may sound like a traitor for saying this, but the Patriarchs’ harem women aren’t anywhere near as well-kept as the Hunters’.  I suspect their harem women are dying all the time from maltreatment and botched élan draws.”

Hank nodded.

“This has a lot of promise,” I said, following up on Hank’s idea.  “We should grab one of the Patriarchs’ harem women who’s nearly used up, put her out of her misery, let her do the Monster goop thing after she dies, then substitute the Monster remains for Bass,” I said.  Monsters had the very interesting property that their bodies decomposed rapidly after they died, and their remains were a toxic dross stew most right thinking people avoided like a nest of plague-infested rats in a cloud of fleas.  The damned stuff could induce Transformations and fatally poison normals.

With any luck, United Toxicol would think that they had pushed Bass into Monsterhood because of all the juice they shoved into her.  No way would they be able to identify the remains as anything other than hers.  I hoped.

“Let’s do it,” Keaton said.  “Tomorrow.”

I nodded.  I didn’t like it, but we would do the snatch without Gilgamesh, as time was of the essence.  I hated doing capers without him.

Gilgamesh: December 30, 1968 – January 2, 1969

Gilgamesh lasted in Keaton’s house until ten in the morning.  Then he left a short note for Carol, apologizing again for his inability to handle plane flights and his need to do some Crow business, and slipped out.  He hadn’t felt so awkward since he met up with Carol in Houston.  Fifth wheel.  An extra part in a some-assembly-required children’s toy.

He didn’t trust Kali’s mood, either, and Carol had caught it as well, almost too Tiamat for him to deal with.  He got his bicycle out of the back of Sumeria and pedaled off through the cold, slush-trimmed streets.

Detroit still bothered him.  Something was wrong with this place.  No matter what he did, he couldn’t figure it out.  Sky hadn’t helped, needling him about it incessantly, saying Gilgamesh was becoming a mystical Crow instead of an adventuresome Crow.  It gave him a lot of sympathy for Carol and her distrust of the Commander nickname.

Crow business.  Not exactly the truth.  He simply wanted out, wanted away.  He would have rather stayed in Boston.  Was making love to Lori a mistake?  Was he too monogamous for it to work?  He didn’t know.  His love for Carol and his love for Lori lived in different parts of his mind, both incomplete and both nagging sores.  Something was missing.  Damned if he knew what.

As he bicycled past snow-covered suburban homes, he thought about Sinclair’s latest letter.  His friend posited that Crow advancement wasn’t about an increase in the power of a Crow at any point in space and time, but an increase in the amount of space he was able to affect and the amount of time he was able to do his tricks.  The individual tricks were personal to each Crow and open to him as soon as he learned to do more with dross than skunk things.

If true, Gilgamesh feared he might be doomed to eternal mediocrity.  He could do so little, compared to the older Crows.

A half hour of pedaling later, he finally got within metasense range of the Detroit Transform community.  No dark mysteries or occult Crow business stared back at him.  Nevertheless, he felt the signs.  Keaton’s choice to set up her headquarters outside Detroit was one.  Second, Watchmaker still lived near Stalin, the name among Shadow’s Crows for first Focus Adkins, just as in Gilgamesh’s previous visits.  He couldn’t believe Stalin knew Watchmaker existed, but Watchmaker’s location made a pattern.  His instincts screamed ‘link’.  The other Focus households felt as they always had, just a little edgier than they should, especially Hard Luck and her household.  The Clumsy Angel, Focus Rickenbach, still lived in the ancient church.  Her people seemed happier than before their move to Detroit, which wouldn’t take much given their previous home, camped out on a farm.

He couldn’t find Newton.  This had been what had crystalized Gilgamesh’s urge to flee Kali’s home.  Newton was supposed to be Kali’s Crow, and Gilgamesh hadn’t seen any sign of him in Detroit.  Gilgamesh hoped nothing had happened to him.  He metasensed again for Hunter sign and again found none.  Nor was there any sign of the ‘salt mine Focuses’.  Unless he missed them because he didn’t know what to look for.

Bah.

He found Whisper living in the same place Whisper had lived for ages, an abandoned apartment complex just north of Highland Park.  He still lived with his tamed Monster, Marla.  Gilgamesh pedaled close, stopped in the parking lot of Greenfield Union Elementary School, empty for the Christmas holidays. He undamped his glow and waited for Whisper to metasense him.  Whisper took half an hour, an appalling bit of Crow laziness.

As a polite Crow, at least for the moment, Gilgamesh didn’t press.  As another polite Crow, Whisper came out to meet him, Marla in tow.

“Gilgamesh.  I hadn’t expected to run into you in person, so soon,” Whisper said, making his way past the chain link fence into the empty lot.  Marla came up to sniff him, filled with happy emotions.  Marla was a Sweater, the Crow name for the common sheep-mimicking Monsters.  Sweaters only mimicked sheep to the untrained eye; they were actually bears, with omnivore dentition and nasty claws.  Marla was an old Monster, and although she couldn’t speak she understood pretty much everything people said.  Gilgamesh had gotten over his fears on his first visit to Detroit and Marla no longer bothered him.

“I hope you’re well,” he said.  “Have you seen Newton around?”

“Nah.  I expected him to show his pimply face when Kali showed up, but nothing.”  One good result of Gilgamesh’s work with the Arms was that Crows no longer fled when an Arm showed up.  Well, some Crows.  Two Crows who had avoided Gilgamesh in the past had left Detroit, or at least shifted locations.  One of them, the Crow who currently fed off Hard Luck, the older Focus who was Clumsy Angel’s friend, would be missed.  “Are you moving here?”

“No, just visiting, doing business and hunting up mysteries,” Gilgamesh said.  “Have you ever metasensed any extremely non-standard Focuses here?  Or any groups of Sports?”  The latter was a guess about the salt mine Focuses; he feared they might metasense as Sports instead of Focuses to a Crow.

“Just Stalin,” Whisper said.  “She’s got the most changeable glow I’ve ever metasensed on a Focus.  Always on the move, always making me nervous.  Nothing else.”

Hmm.  “And the Lions?”

“They only won four games this year,” Whisper said, disgusted.  “I’d swear…”

They talked football in the icy parking lot until Whisper groused himself out.

“So,” Gilgamesh said.  “Have you made any progress with Clumsy Angel?”  He had hoped his phone conversation with Focus Rickenbach had cleared up Whisper’s problems.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Whisper said.  “I’ve given up on her.”

“What did she do this time?”  The Clumsy Angel and her people didn’t have the first idea how the Transform community worked.  There were times when he thought Focus Rickenbach might be as spectacularly impossible as his personal annoyance, Focus Gladchuck.

“In her last letter, she flat out told me to stay away from her household,” Whisper said.  “Just because I can’t meet her in person!”

Gilgamesh sighed.  “Let me talk to her again and see if I can get this straightened out.”

---

“No, nothing like that,” Invalid said, answering Gilgamesh’s question about non-standard Focus and Sport sightings.  His Crow nickname came from the fact he had been wheelchair bound before his transformation.  Invalid, an older but not particularly talented Crow, lived off the Detroit Transform Clinic, and had for years.  “Just the damned Beast Man who rampaged through town a couple of months ago, and good old peripatetic Stalin.  She’s actually been doing Crow-hunting around her place, starting right after the Beast Man rampage.”

---

“Focus Rickenbach?” Gilgamesh said, speaking into a supermarket pay phone on the corner of Joy and Schaeffer.

“Speaking,” Clumsy Angel said.  This time her people kept him on hold for only five minutes.  “What can I do for you today?”

“I’ve heard you and Whisper haven’t made any progress,” he said.  “I think…”

“He won’t agree to talk it out like adults, in person,” she said, interrupting him, loud.  He bit the inside of his cheek and barely kept from fleeing in a mixture of panic and annoyance.  He also didn’t answer.

“With all the ruckus going on in town, I’m not sure I want to deal with anyone who can’t meet me in person,” she said, barreling on.  “Including you.”  Pause.  “Not that you’re doing anything more than arranging things.  Still.”

“I see,” Gilgamesh said.

“Would you be willing to meet me in person?” Clumsy Angel said.

Anything for the Cause.  “Yes.”  This was going to turn out bad, he just knew it.  “I’m not going to be in town for long, though, and…”

“How about tonight?”

Gilgamesh blinked twice.  He hadn’t expected this very un-Focus-like response.

“I can do that.”

They arranged to meet in Dingeman Park in three hours.  Very puzzling.  What sort of Focus would be willing to meet a Crow at midnight, on almost no notice?  Perhaps this wasn’t another Focus Gladchuck.

---

“Okay, beanpole, what are those things you’re carrying in your backpack and hands, anyway?” Watchmaker said, as he appeared in the alley behind the Woolworth.  As before, Watchmaker came armed to a Crow meeting, and as before, he had his pack of mangy street dogs ringing him and patrolling nearby.  This time Gilgamesh was able to pick up seventeen of the curs.  Either Watchmaker had increased his security or Gilgamesh had missed half of the watchdogs the last time.

“Sir, they are my protection,” Gilgamesh said.  Given the dogs and the way Watchmaker swung his gun around, Gilgamesh would have rather stayed hidden among the garbage cans, but unfortunately, that didn’t make for good conversation.

“Protection?  What sort of protection can you get from what appear to be dross illusions stuck inside tennis balls, anyway?”

“Distraction, so I can run.”

“Oh, right, you’re one of Shadow’s Crows.  Stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong and then run when you piss people off.  I know your type.  Just like that fool, Whisper.”  Whisper had joined up with Shadow, mostly on Gilgamesh’s recommendation.  Watchmaker followed Thomas the Dreamer, though Gilgamesh wasn’t sure how the laid-back Thomas could stand Watchmaker.

Gilgamesh made small talk and stated his questions.

“No Sports, no abnormal Focuses, nothing along those lines,” Watchmaker said.  “Beast Men, though.  Too many of them.  All the time.”

“Really?”

“Yah,” Watchmaker said, punctuating his words with a wave of his handgun.  One of his dog pack, a poodle-collie mix, came up to sniff Gilgamesh’s legs, then walked away.  Gilgamesh held his ground, but he did change his rotten egg selection from a metasense scramble to one able to cause fear in animals.  “The others don’t believe me because they don’t have the metasense to pierce the masking they or the Beast’s Crows are furnishing.”

“Are there any out tonight?”

“Nope.  Actually, I haven’t sensed any of them since the damned Arm moved in a few weeks ago,” Watchmaker said.  “There’s one Beast who was real strange, though.  He was spying on Hard Luck’s place and he wore the form of a man.”

“Interesting,” Gilgamesh said.  “Any idea why?”

“Not a clue.”  Watchmaker paused.  “Now be a fine Crow and hand over the tennis ball in your left hand to Rex.”

Gilgamesh sighed and handed the fear rotten egg to a disquieting German shepherd, who took it back to his master.  Payment, he suspected.  “Has Stalin been doing anything strange recently?”

“That bitch?”  Watchmaker shook his head.  The older Crow lived close enough to Stalin’s place for Stalin’s tamed gristle dross cloud to weigh heavily on Gilgamesh’s mind.  He wondered if Stalin was able to move it to here, a mile and a half away.  Or how fast she could move it.  “She’s been quiet, housebound as normal, with her usual meetings with politicos and hard cases.”

This didn’t match the other stories.

“I heard a rumor she’s been doing Crow-hunting.”

Watchmaker snorted.  “Beast hunting, my guess.  She and her storm troopers canvassed the area around her dark tower for a week or two after the Beast Man rampage.  Nothing since.”

“Thank you very much, sir, for the information,” Gilgamesh said.  “I’m sorry, but I have to leave.  I have an appointment I need to get to.”

“Thanks?  For what?  Whatever mystery you’re hunting this time, it won’t be found around here,” Watchmaker said.  He holstered his pistol.

Gilgamesh waved and got on his bike.  Mystery solved.

---

Dingeman Park wasn’t much of a park, a few acres of frozen grass and naked trees, along with a few dingy piles of snow near the small parking lot.  The Focus and her seven uncomfortable people had arrived early, gotten bored, and were having a snowball fight while they waited.  Only two of her people stood, doing guard duty.