Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (22 page)

Never run from an Arm.

“I can help you with Keaton indirectly,” he said.

Now she
stood next to him again, angry.  “Why did you laugh?”

Arms.  They always know
.  And he had hurt her, emotionally.  “You caught me off guard.  I apologize,” he said, as sincere as possible.  Of all the questions he anticipated, a question about how the Network would take down Keaton was not on his list.  He was a doctor, not a secret agent.

“Why didn’t you quiver in terror when I did this?”  She struck her ‘I am Death’ pose again, close enough for him to see the outline of her body.

Best he speak the truth, this time.  “Oh, your pose is terrifying enough.  You aren’t doing anything wrong, save using this on the wrong person.  Some people can learn to deal with fear.”  Some people had no choice!

She frowned and disappeared again, silent.  Zielinski listened for any hint of her thoughts.  Nothing.  He had lost whatever rapport he
had managed to forge with her in their previous meetings.  His laughter had been a grave insult, something he needed to paper over, if that was even possible.  He couldn’t afford to keep thinking of her as a helpless newly transformed Arm.

He wasn’t just a resource to her any more.  Now she saw him as he was, as a potential danger to her.  He needed to convince her that the danger was well worth the risk.

“There’s a trap you need to watch out for,” Zielinski said, presuming she remained close enough to listen.  “Folk wisdom says heroes have no fear.  Because you can make someone fear you, you may conclude that if he fears you, you have him.  You don’t.  A veteran soldier, for instance, will shoot anything he fears.  The same is true for well-blooded police officers and FBI agents.  Many will never face live fire often enough to overcome the natural fear of death, but some will.  Heroes still become afraid; what separates a hero from a normal person is the hero still can fight back even when he’s petrified.”

“I figured that out, okay, from watching you,” she said, exasperated.  “You don’t need to lecture me about the obvious.”

A much better response.  He held up his arms in mock surrender.  “I know, I know.  I lecture, a long standing fault.”

Carol didn’t respond.  Zielinski decided that any further attempts to connect with her would be unwise, and waited the silence out.

“I’m not sure what questions to ask,” she said, a few minutes later.  “I need help.  I can’t protect myself from Keaton.”

“If I may ask, ma’am, what did she do to so anger you?”

Carol paused before she spoke again.  “First she gives me Baltimore and Newark as my own territories.  Then she teaches me to read people.” Another pause. “So, after I go and get myself a new man in my territory, I learn that Keaton already knew, including his name.”

So much for territories calming down the two Arms.  Keaton should know better, but couldn’t resist taking advantage.

“I can’t fight this battle for you, ma’am.”

“What use are you, then?”  Poke, prod, poke prod.  He had seen this from Keaton.  Next, he suspected she would grill him about his sex life or something equally intrusive.

“Well, I’m good for many hours of boring lectures.”  No reaction.  He smiled.  “Would you like to learn some medical techniques?”  Again, no reaction.  “That ties into your personal strengths.”

“Go on.”

“Arm transformation benefits, like all of the benefits from Transform Sickness, are relative to your base state before your transformation.  For instance, an athlete such as Peggy Fleming is a much better athlete than you were as a normal.  If she became an Arm, she would be a much better athlete than you are as an Arm.  Your high school records show you as having an IQ in the 145 to 150 range.  My file on you says you were Vice-President of the Jefferson City PTA, Chairwoman of the Jefferson City Library Volunteers, and Secretary of the Jefferson City Junior League before your transformation.

“Now, as an Arm, you are smarter and more charismatic than you were as a normal.”  The term ‘genius leader’ came to his mind, but he decided not to mention it and muddy the waters.  “With enough information to work with, you should be able to figure out an answer to your problems.  Even if no one else has ever faced these problems before.”

“I find it hard to believe that I’m smarter than Keaton.”  Did he hear hope in her voice?

“You are.  Enough to make a difference.”

Carol didn’t respond.  Zielinski kept silent, leaving her to her thoughts.  He could only guess what battles she fought inside her own mind, what memories she relived.

“I’ll keep your observation in mind,” she said, after many minutes.  She gave him no further hint of her thoughts.  “So, tell me, Zielinski, how in the hell did you get so good at covering up your reactions and emotions?”  She had a smile in her voice this time, likely meant to put him at ease.  It didn’t.  She made no effort to find a more comfortable position for his fifty-year-old body than where he lay, slumped under the heavy steel bar.

“My expertise at covering my reactions and emotions arrived out of necessity,” Zielinski said.  “As you know, I’ve been dealing with Focuses for almost a decade, and many Focuses have a juice-powered charisma capable of tying a person into knots.  Talented Focuses have no problems reading people, either.  The method the Focuses use isn’t the same as what Keaton and now you use, but the effects are.”  The best Focuses were better at reading people than the two Arms, due to their extensive experience.

“You can read people as well, can’t you?” Carol asked.

Zielinski nodded.  “Nowhere near as well as a Major Transform, because I don’t possess your sensory enhancements.  All I have to work with are my eyes, my ears, and my mind.”

Carol appeared in his vision and struck a pose, indicating he should stand and follow her.  The pose wasn’t a command or an attempt to get him to follow.  She used a simple non-verbal communication style, one used by certain talented and motivated Focuses.  He stood, signaled the affirmative non-verbally, and walked toward Carol.

“Nice,” she said when he got to her.  “You and Keaton did this when she gave you to me in Boston, didn’t you?”

He nodded.  He knew he had won back at least a tiny bit of her former trust.  He hoped this would suffice.

“Other normals can do this too, can’t they?”

“Some people can even control their heartbeat and involuntary responses.  Even with help from a few friendly Focuses I’ve never managed to gain control of myself at that level.”

She led him to an office in the old factory, picked the lock, and let him in.  Turned on the light, finally.  The place appeared to be a mini-Arm’s lair, clean, stacked with emergency food and medical supplies.  Places to sit and sleep.  Her home away from home.  She pointed him at the couch with a shoulder twitch.  He sat.

Carol pulled up a narrow kitchen chair, twirled it around and sat on it backwards.  The effect was indecent, given what she wore, but Zielinski guessed modesty didn’t even cross her mind.

“I’ve figured out one lever I have in my relationship with Keaton,” Carol said, her voice conspiratorial and controlled.

“Can you tell me, ma’am?”  Zielinski said.

“Of course,” Carol said.  This time her smile was genuine.  Unless she fooled him.  “It might save your life, someday.  I’m an information resource, someone to take on some of the groundbreaking risks.  She’s using me and learning from me.”

Zielinski chewed his lip.  “Ah.  I’m alive for the same reason.  Keaton hates doctors and authority figures with a passion because of her experience as a government captive.  By luck, the first time she entered my life, I taught her something that helped with her problems.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”

“What’s this lucky bit of information?”

“How to operate a TI 1228 juice analyzer so she could measure her own juice levels.”

Carol frowned.  “That’s just as silly as what I taught her.  The predator effect.”  She did the ‘I am death’ pose again.  “Keaton had no idea she did it, or that the trick’s a juice effect.”

“You’re kidding,” Zielinski said.  “She’s always been able to produce her ‘I am death’ pose.  How did she…”

“Only another Arm would think to mention it,” Carol said, interrupting him.  For grins, she dinked at him with variations of the ‘I am Death’ pose – hell, might as well call it the predator effect, Zielinski decided – fear for your life, fear for your property, fear for your sanity, and one that looked like an invitation to a black widow romp.  Just to see how he reacted.  He had a sudden vision of himself as a practice target for Carol’s Arm innovations for the rest of his likely short life.

“You’ll never be free of her, then,” Zielinski said.  “She’s never let me go.”

“But…” Carol paused.  “She did put me in charge of you.  Which means her graduation requirement wasn’t a lie, which I was beginning to wonder about.”  Ahh.  “Instead, she’ll be keeping tabs on me after I graduate.  Makes sense, from an Arm point of view.”

“Well, there you go.  Problem solved.”  Carol studied him again.  He kept himself as unreadable as possible, but he watched the Arm figure out what he
really
said, that she needed to graduate
yesterday
.  She decided to relax enough to give him a real smile, a fleeting thing which flickered away as soon as it appeared.

“I don’t believe she wants me to graduate,” Carol said, a nearly inaudible whisper.  “I’m hers.  It’s an Arm thing.  Everything hers must stay hers.  Of course, if I stay hers, the more mature I become as an Arm, the more I threaten her.  Oh, and another Arm thing: no Arm can tolerate competition.”

He knew all that already.  He didn’t have any good answers.  “Then you must trust the agreement the two of you made.”

Carol nodded.  “If I live that long,” she said.  “Keaton’s no longer holding back.  She expects more from me now.  She expects me to
be
a real Arm.”

Carol was proud of the last.

“Good,” he said.  Keaton’s actions sounded sane and rational.

“Figures you would see things that way.  There are times when I have a hard time telling the two of you apart,” Carol said.

Zielinski’s stomach clenched in disgust.  Then he stopped and thought.  When Keaton first met him, she was a shell-shocked psychopath with little personality left.  How much of her current personality came from him?  Enough to notice.  The rest came from Tonya Biggioni, who also supplied the Transform tricks.

He couldn’t even say he never hurt anyone on purpose.  He had.  Not for his personal pleasure, though.

“What’s Keaton been teaching you, besides mind reading and how to control people?” Zielinski asked, adding in a little extra to test if Carol would refute him or not.  Carol gave him a momentary annoyed look, but didn’t fight the subject change or tell him she couldn’t control people.

“She’s taught me more combat techniques and weapons tha
n you’d ever want to think about.  Her latest is reaction time training,” Carol said, with a ‘can you top this’ half-grin.  “It’s a real bitch.  Every once in a while, with no warning, she throws a knife at me.”  Pause.  “So far, I’m just catching knife wounds.”  Pause. Smile.

Zielinski smiled back.

“I have about six more hours before I need to go back,” Carol said.  “Let’s go break into a lab and find out what you can teach me about basic medical lab procedures.”

Zielinski blinked twice, trying to follow the last.  Finally, he figured out Carol’s comment.  She had taken him up on his teaching offer and changed the subject as well.  She didn’t want to talk any more about herself.  That was fine with him.

To preserve symmetry, and for grins, he decided to start Carol off by teaching her how to operate a TI 1228 juice analyzer.

Midgard

I hope you’re doing well back in Boston.  Last night, Wire invited me to his apartment to talk to me and pass on a few pointers.  This, of course, was not something I could turn down.  If you don’t know already, Wire’s learning how to become a Crow Guru, and he told me a little about Gurus as a whole.

Each Guru teaches many things, such as how to live in a world of normals, how to use one’s Crow enhancements to be a better artist, how a Crow can be more efficient at gathering dross, how to run a small business, and so on.  Wire teaches two inter-related specialties – how to survive off Arm dross and investigation of the mysteries of Transform Sickness.  Wire says he’s received several angry Crow letters warning about the dangers of investigating the second subject, so I don’t think I should pass along the details.  All the Crows gathered here in Philadelphia are interested in Transform Sickness issues, a coincidence he cannot explain.

In overview, Tolstoy’s working on a way to describe juice and juice structures – a Focus term for the shape of the juice inside a Transform.  His main problem is coming up with a shared terminology we can agree on, and as we’ve both noted before, the Crow confused terminology issue is involved.  Tolstoy’s scheme is elaborate enough to allow Wire or Sinclair to read off the details on a Focus’s household Transform’s glow and have Tolstoy pick out which Transform they were talking about.  Juice structures are very complex.