Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (23 page)

Sinclair’s the fact checker.  He’s a bit testy at times, but he can puncture episodes of Crow groupthink with ease – a born skeptic.  His skepticism is one of the reasons he’s a good writer.  Did you know he’s actually been published in both magazines and newspapers?  Simply amazing.

Ezekiel’s working on the changes Transform Sickness is making in politics, the sciences, the arts and religion.  He’s a devout Jew, and he fears anti-Semitism is increasing along with the number of Transforms.  I was surprised to learn about any changes in society resulting from the presence of Transform Sickness, but Wire’s convinced euthanasia would have never become legal anywhere in the United States without Transform Sickness.  Ezekiel says he’s also seen changes due to Transform Sickness in the Catholic Church (more wary); in the resurgence of violent racism and in the Klan; the appearance of the mad Transform as a stock villain in literature, movies and television; lastly, in the sciences, where various competing theories about Transform Sickness turned medicine and biochemistry from a quiet scientific backwater into the most public, vocal, fractious and politicized segment of the science establishment.

Orange Sunshine, the Crow who left after I arrived, was their idea person.  Wire said Orange Sunshine was able to churn out dozens of ideas for any unanswered question.  Few had merit, but the ones that did proved to be worth
the time spent discarding the others.  I’m nowhere prepared to fill those shoes!

Wire serves as their editor, able to separate the wheat from the chaff.  We also talked about the origins of the Shakes.  None of the local Crows believes Transform Sickness is a disease (or ‘just a disease’).  They’re convinced the Shakes was designed.  No consensus about the designer, though.  Tolstoy and Ezekiel favor religious explanations: Tolstoy considers the Shakes a curse from God while Ezekiel considers the Shakes a gift from God that we don’t properly appreciate yet.  Sinclair thinks the designer is natural selection.  He thinks all the Transform varieties already existed and we just missed them, and the current spread of Transform Sickness is somehow amplified by such things as industrial pollution and
aboveground nuclear testing.  Orange Sunshine thought the Shakes was a biological warfare experiment gone bad.  Wire’s not convinced any of these explanations is correct and I agree.

Wire’s convinced me, against my better judgment, that I have a place in this
, beyond my nearly exhausted store of stories to tell.  He wants me to put together the engineering manual for Transform Sickness I always griped about not having.  I pleaded to Wire that I wasn’t a much of a writer, but he said “Engineering manuals should be concise, not entertaining.  I’ll tell you, we certainly lack ‘concise’ in this group.”  I hope I don’t make a fool of myself.

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh walked home after mailing his letter to Midgard, wondering again at his good luck in finding this group.  As far as he knew, no one in the world looked at Transform Sickness like this group of Crows, certainly not the other Crows he had met.  He hoped he would be able to contribute to their developments, eventually.  All through the history of mankind, there had been brief centers of art and thought: Soho in New York, Paris, Renaissance Italy.  He wondered if, someday, people would think of five Crows in Philadelphia.  Gilgamesh hoped, with all his heart, he would be able, someday, to grow to where he could hold his weight in this group and appreciated the good luck finding them.

Just so long as Wire’s warning letters didn’t turn from words into deeds.

“…and after the third letter, I realized neither of us got the full benefits out of our household models, so I called Focus Webb to consult.  I can’t say we’re friends, but we did work together professionally enough to be able to redefine the household structure of our model,” Tonya said.  She and Connie Webb had independently developed a household model based on a mid-sized corporation.  The woman was grating to the extreme, but her information was priceless.

An hour ago, Tonya had moved the discussion from Tonya’s cramped office to the common room in Tonya’s household, after Johnny had told his last joke of the evening and most of the household had gone to bed. 
Two teenagers hunched over with their heads down in the far corner, working on homework together, and Marty sat by the window reading a fat history book, leaving the common room about as quiet as it ever became.  The kitchen night staff provided the two Focuses enough food to feed five Focuses, enough to stuff Tonya.  Almost.

Focus Geraldine Caruthers nodded, but Tonya sensed the other Focus was wary.  “I’m not trying to come up with excuses for my household not to follow this model – the model appears to be quite efficient, and I’m open to it – but I do wonder ‘why?’”  Geraldine smiled.  In the intervening months since their last meeting, Geraldine’s transformation had continued to progress.  She was no longer ‘plain’; she
had become striking.  Oh, her nose was still too large for her face, but the yearling Focus’s face had become more angular, a better match for her nose.  Her hair was now a rich and luxuriant light brown, now with a natural wave.  As with nearly all Focuses, her skin had become flawless.  With her narrow waist and small bosom, she would never be a classic American beauty, but Tonya imagined Geraldine might be able to strut down the runway at a Paris fashion show with the best of them.

“According to Focus Webb, the corporate household model works better if you have a cooperative network of local corporate model households working together,” Tonya said.  “Unfortunately, fewer than one in four Focuses has the mental toughness and self-assurance to cope with the model
.  After I hit up all the local Focuses, I had to start in on the Baltimore and New Jersey Focuses to get the needed numbers.”  What might appear to be serious arm-twisting from the outside turned out to be another of Tonya’s give away programs in her effort to build up a cadre of local Focuses who both owed her and whom she owed, her hidden supporters for a rainy day.

“So, what’s old?” Geraldine said.  Tonya smiled.  Geraldine’s sales background supplied her with ample rhetorical quirks and an instinctive desire to see around corners and outside of any box you tried to put her in.  Geraldine grabbed a stalk of celery and dipped the stalk in the onion dip before she ate it.

“You up for a walk?” Tonya asked.

“What’s this?” Geraldine asked.  They had walked the grounds of Tonya’s small household while they talked and Tonya tried to get a sense of how Geraldine might be able to help her.  Now, they passed by what Tonya considered an ordinary scene, and Geraldine had snapped to it like a small child to candy.

“Delia’s our new kitchen manager.”  Based on Connie’s advice, Tonya had tripled the number of people in her household with management roles.  The reorganization supposedly increased buy-in and commitment, but given Delia’s tears in the small household chapel, it didn’t look like the change worked in this case.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”  Delia nodded at both Tonya and Geraldine watching her from the doorway as she scrambled to her feet.  “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Geraldine
glanced at Tonya for permission, and Tonya nodded.  “Oh, no disturbance at all,” Geraldine said, stepping into the chapel, a large closet that no one since the original owners had found a good use for until now.  “What’s wrong?”

Delia
glanced up to where Jesus gazed down on her from the cross.  She looked decidedly uncomfortable.  “I’m sorry.  It’s about the promotion, ma’am.  I’m worried I’m not up to the job.”

Tonya carefully kept a frown off her face.  In her estimation, if someone didn’t think they were up to a promotion, they were probably right.  Tonya motioned for Delia to continue.

“Ma’am, shouldn’t a man be running things?  I’m also worried I’m too new to the household to be holding a position like this.  I don’t want to cause any resentment.”

Tonya didn’t respond, her mind running through suggestions to give to Honey, her household manager, for possible replacements.  Geraldine twitched her nose, uncomfortable, and carefully inched forward a half step.

“Delia, you’ve been a Transform for what, eighteen months?” Geraldine asked.  Tonya had the sudden desire to lead Geraldine away and keep her from interfering with Tonya’s household – but stopped.  This was exactly what Focus Webb had been talking about, what she termed multi-Focus synergies.  In a corporate household, the Focus delegated enough of the standard Focus time-eating responsibilities to her managers that the Focuses had time to work with other Focuses and gain the benefits of each other’s strengths.  Tonya agreed with the theory, but in practice?  Well, she hadn’t foreseen this as its first test.  Having another Focus deal with an internal household matter made Tonya twitchy.  Especially a Focus talented enough to read the approximate age of a Transform.  Not that Geraldine’s doing so surprised Tonya, as she had taught Geraldine the trick herself.

“Yes, ma’am,” Delia said, answering Geraldine’s question.

“I transformed just over a year ago,” Geraldine said.  “None of the Transforms in my household have as much experience as you do and we’re going to switch over to this household model as well.  I think, with your ample experience, you’ll do fine.  And trust me, women can manage people as well as any man can.”  Then she leaned forward, right up to Delia, and spoke quietly.  “Don’t let Tonya intimidate you.  She’s just compensating for her exquisite beauty and forceful charisma.  I know she thinks the world of you.”

Tonya had to use her ‘forceful charisma’ to keep from laugh
ing, as Geraldine knew Tonya could hear her.  Geraldine’s sales technique shined, the reason why Tonya wanted Geraldine on her team.  Tonya now understood how Geraldine had been able to be a successful Avon lady before her transformation.

Delia’s eyes flickered around Geraldine for a moment, to check if perhaps Tonya was about to explode in anger.  Tonya kept a straight face.

“I’m worried I’ll make mistakes,” Delia said, her eyes downcast after she made sure Tonya didn’t have steam shooting out her ears.

“We all make mistakes,” Geraldine said.  “So what wonderful ideas are you sitting on that you’re afraid will get you in trouble?”

Now Tonya smiled.  She wondered that, herself.  “Trust me, Delia,” Tonya said.  “You won’t get in trouble.”  Two
cooperative
Focuses, both almost good enough to read a person’s innermost thoughts, was not what any Transform ever wanted to face.  Delia’s hair practically flattened in despair, a woebegone rat who had just stepped in out of the rain.

“I’ve been looking through the old kitchen records, ma’am, and I noticed that until mid ’65, the household used to go to a farm just west of Philly to do hand-picking of crops for our kitchen.”  Delia dabbed off some forehead sweat with a handkerchief.  “If we went back to doing so again, it would cut out much of the middleman costs and we should be able to afford to have more meat in our meal budget.
  Plus we’d be getting better quality produce.”

“Oh, right,” Tonya said.  “We stopped because the trips were difficult to organize, logistically, and I didn’t have time to arrange them anymore.”  Delia looked resigned to going back to washing dishes.  “Delia, I’ll tell you what.  You talk to Honey about this, and if the two of you can work out the logistics, we’ll do the farm trips again.  I think it’s a good idea and a good test of our new improved household model.”

Delia’s idea was good enough for Tonya to cancel her mental note to bump Delia back to supervising kitchen clean up.  She, Delia and Geraldine chattered for a few more minutes.  Behind her eyes, Tonya lost herself in thought, wondering why Focuses worked together so easily and the Arms did not.  Even nearly enemy Focuses, such as her and Webb, found common ground for cooperation.

There had to be a way for the Arms to do so, but for the life of her, Tonya couldn’t think of any way to get Arm cooperation to work they hadn’t already tried.

He had called Sam for the first time in years back in mid-May, looking for the location of a hot poker game.  Zielinski needed the money and he didn’t have any other way to get it.  Sam came through twice and his information had given Zielinski enough money to live on, even after Sam’s fifteen percent cut.  This time, the game was in Atlantic City.  Despite the damned Monopoly street signs, Hank thought he had found a good game.  The game would keep him from thinking about the still ongoing Arab-Israeli War, which he fervently hoped wouldn’t escalate into a nuclear holocaust.

Lorenzo was the smart guy in the game, the organizer.  Lorenzo the Stick, according to Sam.  You didn’t mess with Lorenzo.  The easy money, the reason why Sam pointed out the game, turned out to be a guy named Tony Fratello, a rich man not half as bright as he thought.  Zielinski expected to have to kick back some of his winnings to Lorenzo at the end of the game, just the price of admittance into a mob-sponsored game.

The game was located in a bar in an older middle-class Italian neighborhood.  Zielinski came in through the back door, opened by a guy named Joey.  Joey led him down the stairs to the basement and into a hallway with cracked linoleum and gray stained walls.  The poker game turned out to be located in a converted wine cellar.  Cases of beer were stacked along one wall, and along another, boxes of Havana cigars.  The fourth man involved in the game, Ricky, was young and cocky.  By the time the trouble started the other three had already cleaned him out.