The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) (28 page)

“So, how goes your latest Focus experiment?” Lori asked, with an odd tone to her voice.

“So far, just fine.  I’ve only worked with her a few times, though.”

“But you’re getting along all right?  You like her?”  When Lori first met Gail, at Gail’s wedding, she had actually needed to restrain herself.  As a young Focus, Gail had been the proverbial bull in the china shop, much worse than Gilgamesh and I.  I wasn’t sure if they had met, since.

“Yes, I do, actually.  She’s young, but she has a lot of passion and idealism.”  I smiled, glad to be distracted from the Spear.  I didn’t share my awe over Gail’s magnificent juice structure.  “She’s cute.”  Not unlike a certain other Focus sitting right in front of me.

Lori looked away, unhappy, and her reactions suddenly made sense.  I laughed.

“You’re jealous,” I said.

“I am not jealous.”  She glared as she spoke.

“Hah.”

“I am not jealous,” she said, exasperated.

“You’re going to have to get used to it,” I told her.  “Remember the numbers.”

Her eyes went wider for just a second, before she glared harder.  She understood immediately, of course.  It was one of the reasons I lo— respected her.

“One Arm for every twenty some-odd Focuses, more if you count the mortality rate,” I said, rubbing it in with a grin.  “I’ll get to insist on faithfulness, the Focuses don’t get any such thing.”

“I am
not
jealous.”  Lady Death crept into her persona, radiating darkness like a reverse light bulb.

“Ohhh,” I said.  “Of course not.”

“But you can tell that little Detroit princess of yours that if she hurts you, I’m going to use her guts for suspenders.”  Lady Death indeed.  No brag, coming from Lori.

I laughed so hard I needed to put the pork chop down.  “I think you’re mixed up about who’s likely to hurt who.  I’ve gotten her pretty firmly under my control.”

“Good.  Keep her there.  Don’t let her out from under your thumb until she knows how to behave herself.  Back when I was about her age as a Focus, I nearly killed Keaton out of sheer annoyance, remember, and Gail’s as powerful now as I was then, just in different areas, some unique to her.”  I barely avoided snorting at her comment.  I thought she seriously overestimated Gail.

Lori said her comment with a fierce and only half-serious glare on her petite pixie face, and I felt the heat tightening between my legs.  Four days past kill, my numbers only average, and still, I wanted to crawl into bed with her and make beautiful juice art together.  Or just cycle juice.  Or, finally, some good old fashioned sex.

The misplaced reactions were just confusion on the part of my poor abused body.  Hank’s damned aborted draw experiment yesterday messed with both my mind and my control.  Her juice tickled along my metasense, beautiful and inviting.  I wanted her juice, and my nerves ached for the delight of the juice flowing in.

I dropped my fork as I stood, and the chair fell backwards.  I turned away to stare at a shelf of books, my fingernails gouging holes in my palms.  Medieval history, the War of the Roses, twelfth century Wales, French feudalism.

“Carol?” Lori asked, all concern.

“Back off,” I said, my predatory Arm snarl.  She went silent.  Vulnerable.  Flush with abundant juice.

Vulnerable.  Hah.  I smiled to myself, bitterly.  Maybe the older lust wasn’t so bad after all.

I was going to have to be very careful around Gail.  An accident would be a very bad thing.

“We still have some work to do around Focus-Arm relationships,” I said, after the long moments necessary to bring all my lusts under control.  I turned back to her, hoping that my face no longer showed my emotions.

“Can I ask what that was all about?” Lori said.  Honest concern filled her eyes, and no fear at all.

“No.”

Lori raised an eyebrow and waited patiently.

“Maybe someday,” I said.  “Not today.  If you want to know the trigger, talk to Hank about yesterday’s tests.”

She nodded and accepted my non-explanation.

“Have your people gotten anywhere on the Chrysanthemum issue?” I asked.  I had requested her help after my Toxicol bounty.

“Chrysanthemum is currently registered in Delaware, and is supposedly owned by the First National Bank of Nashville,” Lori said, happy to talk business.  “Only the paperwork’s all fraudulent, the bank accounts referenced are to people who aren’t business owners and who have never heard of Chrysanthemum, and the addresses given are to organized crime fronts who specialize in white collar crime.  Oh, and they do pay taxes, but not much.”

“They’re far too active.  There’s got to be something.”

Lori shook her head.  “Sorry, nothing.”

“So, are you willing to help Gail out?” I said, frustrated and desperately wanting to put the Chrysanthemum issue to bed.  Haggerty had no interest in following up on either United Toxicol or Chrysanthemum, and I feared we were missing something important by not following up.  I hated the sense of hidden enemies lurking in the background, waiting, ready to pounce.  Last time I felt the sensation this bad, I had ended up captured by the FBI and sent into withdrawal.  “Do you have any pointers on what a talented Focus might be expected to learn?”

Lori leaned away from me after my latest growl of frustration.  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.  Don’t worry about it.  What can I teach my student?”

Lori raised an eyebrow, but she accepted the change of subject.  “What are you teaching her already?”

“Hank’s got her started on juice patterns.”

“He does?  He’s far enough along with his new synthesis to produce some results?”  I saw dreams of complex juice patterns and armies of witches dance in her eyes.

“Close.  He’s planning to finalize his research by using Gail as a test subject.  My big idea this time is to combine the juice pattern and juice-to-an-Arm projects to see if they can synergize.  I expect he’s got several more months before it’s ready for public distribution.”

“Still,” Lori said.  “I never believed he’d actually succeed.  It’s such a complex project, and will make a huge difference if he can actually get this to work.”  Hank would be getting a very long phone call from Lori just as soon as I left.  “So what else are you going to be teaching Gail?”

“Physical training and remedial self-control,” I said.

“That sounds like a good start.  The physical training will open her up to learning new things, and will directly increase her juice manipulation potential.  Self-control is critical for doing advanced juice patterns.  I have some recommendations for ways to help Focuses develop the needed self-control.”

I smiled a half-smile.  “The Arms do have some experience with the teaching of self-control.  Between your ways and mine, I suspect that we can put some steel into that Focus.”

She nodded.  “The next most important area to work with is her Focus charisma.  From what I know of her, that’s her strength.  I can show you how to do advanced charisma training.”

“She has a very strong presence,” I said.  “As good as a Focus twice her age, but she doesn’t use her charisma well, at least not around me.”

“Well, that’s what training is for, isn’t it?  Next would be juice manipulation.  At her age, she should be able to maintain her household at good juice levels with only minor maintenance, but that’s a control issue, so I expect trouble there.  She ought to be able to separate her emotions from her household’s juice level most of the time.  Again, that’s a control issue.  She ought to be able to independently manipulate juice levels in over a half-dozen of her people with ease, for long periods of time.  Another control issue.”

“Hmm,” I thought.  “A lot of control issues there.  She can do all of the things you mentioned, but only if she isn’t stressed.  I’ll need to work her hard, there.”

“Yes.  Also, you’ll want to develop her metasense.  Accuracy, sensitivity, scope.”

I nodded.  “I’ve picked up hints about her metasense, and I think it’s pretty good.  I’m not sure how good, though.”

“I’ve got some metrics you can use.  Metasense can always get better.”

“I’ll want details on all of this,” I said.

“Yes, just a minute.  I have a whole series of research papers on this I can give you.”

“You
publish
this sort of information?”

Lori rolled her eyes.  “Hah!  Best I can do is to pass this on to the Focuses I train directly.”

I leaned back in my chair and polished off the last of the pork chops.  “You’re asking for trouble if you pass these on to me.”

She shrugged with a cynical smile.  “Just consider this more
pushing the Cause
.”

“I won’t make any promise about who I’ll spread the information to.”

“I wouldn’t expect any such thing.”  The smile never wavered.  Focus politics.  Subtle challenges to the powers-that-be in the Focus organization.  Focus power games were far more shadowy and nebulous than the clean dominance struggles of Arm relations, but I understood them, at least as well as any non-Focus could.  As the originator of the Cause, Lori was the most public of her generation of Focuses, and she constantly challenged the Focus leadership.

Now, under Haggerty’s frenetic command, Lori pushed the Cause
faster
.  Dangerous, yes, but the wider Lori spread her knowledge and skills, the stronger the Cause would be.

Lori nodded as she watched me work out the implications.  Yes, leverage against Suzie Schrum, Wini Adkins and their cronies would be an excellent idea.

“I’ll want all the information you can give me.”

“Every last paper and note.”

“So a Focus can actually use her juice buffer to supply juice for herself?” I said, flipping through papers and attempting to ignore the two-year-old pulling on my hair.  Despite the years of rumors and exaggerations, I had never metasensed the trick in person.

“Yes, but buffer access is an advanced trick.  I only know of three Focuses in the entire country, all advanced witches, who can – plus Her Nibs.”  The latter was the Focus Shirley Fucking Patterson, the leader of the first Focuses, a Focus so terrifying anyone with any brains stayed out of her home city, Pittsburgh.  “Gina, come over here to Mommy.”

“No.”  Little Gina climbed further up my shoulder, using my hair as a handhold.  All right, I acknowledged, not two, two and a half.  You could tell by the tone of the ‘no’.  Cloud sat under the table cutting an old copy of Time magazine into small pieces, and William gnawed toothlessly on a piece of Melba Toast.

“She’s fine,” I said, referring to the two-year-old, and then: “You know, Gail did the buffer access trick when she gave me juice.”

“Did she?” Lori had been pre-occupied at the time, being dead and all that.

“Yes.  I drew from her, not her juice buffer.  I didn’t metasense how she did the trick.”  All Focuses with households supported juice buffers, the repository of their household’s supplemental juice.  According to Lori’s papers, normal household juice buffers contained hundreds of points of juice.  The two-year-old yanked out a fist-f of hair.

“You’re sure she isn’t bothering you?”

“No, it’s fine, really.”  I shifted forward slightly, so the teetering child didn’t fall.

“Gail can’t duplicate the juice buffer access, can she?”  Lori now radiated worry vibes.

“No, she only did so once, in the middle of a crisis.  I doubt she even remembers doing the trick.”  Massive trauma always gives us Major Transforms situational amnesia, and at the time Gail more closely resembled hamburger than a human being.

“Hmm, so she’s going to have to learn the trick the hard way.  That will take work, because she doesn’t have the basic witch skills or instincts.”

I also had some work to do, I realized, because the ability to abort a draw had suddenly become no longer optional.  Not with the insane amount of juice held in a normal household juice buffer.  I remembered the chaotic scene back in the Battle in Detroit, when Gail was dying and I healed her.  She offered me her juice, and I took it all, no more capable than I ever was of refusing juice when offered.  I burned the juice as I drew, using the energy to heal her.  I kept none of the juice for myself, and even burned about twenty points of my own juice in the frantic struggle to keep her alive.

I boggled to realize exactly how much juice I must have burned in Gail’s healing.  If I accidentally drew that much juice for myself, I would be so far into Monster I would never come back.  Or, if Hank and Eissler were right, the extra juice would spill out of me, wasted.  Blech.  I’m not sure which would be worse.

“You can draw from your buffer, correct?” I said, remembering ancient conversations.

She smiled a half-smile and didn’t answer.

“Can you teach the trick?”

“Teaching the trick is, unfortunately, specifically forbidden.  The trick is the one thing I’m forbidden to teach.”

Unfortunate, and a pain in the ass to work around.  I looked at her, though, speculating.  “You know, since you already know the juice-buffer trick, we might try…”

“No.”  I raised an eyebrow.