The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) (47 page)

“What I wonder is how they got them past Eissler,” Gilgamesh said.

“Eissler?  Why would Eissler care about something like that?” Sinclair asked.

“They did the assassination on her turf.  I’ve never met an Arm who wouldn’t be pissed as hell at someone pulling crap like that on her turf.  I’ll tell you, she may not have managed to stop the attack, but I wouldn’t want to be any of those terrorists when she catches up with them.”

The three of them thought about that as they ate their gumbo.  The soup was tasty, but not exceptional, made better by the sauce of hunger.  Gilgamesh’s hunger surprised him.

After a few minutes of concentrated eating, Hoskins frowned.

“There’s some kind of juice effect going on,” he said.

“What?” Gilgamesh said.  “I don’t metasense anything.”

Hoskins shook his head.  “I can’t metasense anything either, but something affected me.  I shook off the effect, and now I’m not nearly as hungry.”

Gilgamesh frowned and concentrated on his metasense.  He sensed the six Transform waiters, the hostess, and the three Transforms plus the Focus in the kitchen.  A thin layer of dross covered the restaurant, not enough to be an issue.  He did metasense something in the air that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  A juice something.  He looked deeper.

Ambient juice patterns, not attached to the Focus, her Transforms or any objects.  Amazing.  He had known these sorts of things existed, but he had never been able to metasense them before.  Must be a side effect of his Guru training.

He didn’t understand these ambient juice patterns.  They sensed different and acted different.  Gilgamesh attempted to manipulate one as it wafted by, the way he manipulated dross, about as useful as attempting to hold vapor.  He attempted to push the pattern away from him and the pattern didn’t go.  He tried to resist the pattern by force of will, and it went, and then Gilgamesh didn’t feel so hungry either.  A few seconds later when his attention wandered the pattern slipped into him again.

Hell, Gilgamesh swore, disgusted.  He noticed the effect extended onto the street outside the restaurant, and gently insinuated its way into everyone who entered the area.  The pattern affected people until they either left the area or ate until their stomachs bulged, whereupon they wore looks of blissful contentment.

Everyone except Hoskins.  The effect stayed completely away from him.

Hmph.  The restaurant
was
far busier than the quality of the food would justify.  Gilgamesh suspected the extra income made a big difference to the household.  He wasn’t sure if he disapproved or not, but a trick like this meant Focus Daumarie did have the delicate manipulative skills they needed to fix Sinclair.

His stomach rumbled, and he resigned himself to a post-dinner dessert.

“So you think this Focus can fix Master Sinclair?” Hoskins asked.

“I sure as hell hope so,” Sinclair said.

“Keaton thinks so,” Gilgamesh said.  “So does my already full stomach.”

“This is taking too long,” Hoskins said.  Gilgamesh sighed, frustrated, and ran his hand through his hair.  Here they sat, a target for senior Crows and other enemies, and they couldn’t do a damned thing about it.  They stayed in a different location every night, but not one of them expected such minor tricks to matter.

“We have to wait.  There’s channels.  She won’t see us unless we’re cleared through the Focus organization, and Focus Rizzari is working on the issue.”

“This is ridiculous, Guru Gilgamesh.”  Gilgamesh thought Hoskins’ promotion premature, as they hadn’t gotten Sinclair fixed, yet.  Predictable, though.  All the predators overvalued the tests of combat.  “The Focus is less than fifty feet away, she metasenses us, we metasense her, and we can’t talk to her.  Why are we waiting?  We should just go talk to her.”

Gilgamesh winced.  “I’m sorry, but no.  If we barge in on her, all we’ll get is trouble.”  He told the story of his encounter with Focus Gladchuck, back when he was a young Crow.  She had gotten him arrested and tossed in jail.

Hoskins tapped his fingers on his leg, and glared, unappreciative of the humor of the story.  Gilgamesh worried he really would do something stupid, despite all advice to the contrary.

“Think Rules, your grace,” Sinclair said.  “The Focuses have their own set of Rules.  We’re supplicants.  We have to follow their Rules.”

“Oh, hell.  I’ve been to too many Council sessions to believe that.  They don’t have Rules.  All they have is some idea of the way things should be done, and they all know the proper way to do so, and they don’t bother to tell anyone else, and half of them have a different idea than the other half.”

“Nevertheless,” Sinclair said.  “They do Rules differently than we do, but they’re still Rules.”

“Shit,” Hoskins said, disgusted.  “It’s Rules, it’s not Rules.  No one can explain what the Rules are, except we’re supposed to follow them.  Give me a nice, clear, written set of Rules that a man can learn and understand, not this nebulous Focus crap.”

“They call it ‘courtesy’ and think everyone should understand how they do business,” Sinclair said.  “It’s still Rules.  Right now, we’re eating politely in her restaurant, paying plenty of Gilgamesh’s money and leaving a fat tip.  Courtesy.  We’ll be polite and friendly and we’ll go through channels, we’ll get in eventually, and hopefully she’ll even like us, because we’re so polite.”  And hopefully no one would kill them in the meantime.

“Shit,” Hoskins said again, and slouched down in his chair.  “
Courtesy.
”

“Guru Gilgamesh?” Hoskins said.

Gilgamesh sat outside of Sumeria, in the little RV park just to the west of New Orleans.  He shaded himself under a huge old magnolia and worked on new dross constructs, improvements to his rotten eggs.  The old rotten eggs, he realized, were really just a very primitive form of a floating gradient dross construct.  Combining his Guru training and his recent combat experience, he now understood how to make them properly.

He had spent most of the last couple of days, besides the time he spent standing watch, plotting out a good structure and working out the proper derivatives. He had finally finished the derivation earlier this evening.  The new rotten eggs weren’t eggs at all, or even tennis balls.  He used golf balls now and suspected he could go even smaller.  Plus, his new treasures would last longer, hold more, and tolerate more rough handling.

He had picked up a sling shot yesterday.  When he constructed his first golf bomb this evening, ‘dazzle metasense’, he had tried it out in the slingshot and the golf bomb worked wonderfully.  Twice as potent as his old ‘dazzle metasense’, and now he had real range.  He would be spending enough time with the long-range sling shot to get pinpoint accuracy.  The training wouldn’t take long; the adage of ‘never play poker with an Arm’ was matched by the adage of ‘never shoot billiards with a Crow’.  Crows were no stronger than a male Transform, but after a few years of learning how to gather dross more efficiently, they all had exceptional hand to eye coordination.

“Your grace?” he said.  He was actually getting used to the huge Noble.

Hoskins squatted down across from Gilgamesh.  “Guru Gilgamesh, do you remember when I described how the Crow did some kind of dross effect on me that made me unconscious, back when they attacked Master Sinclair?”

Gilgamesh nodded.  “I remember.”

“Is this something you can do?”

Gilgamesh thought.  “I can see how such an attack might be theoretically possible, but I don’t know how.”

“Would you be willing to try?”  Hoskins was intent.

“I suppose I might make a start, but why do you want me to?  I wouldn’t think you’d want me to learn dross constructs that affect Chimeras.”

Hoskins shook his head.  “The attack would have been damned useful two days ago if you could have knocked those Hunters out to start with.  But that’s not why I’m here.  You see, if you can learn how to duplicate the attack, you can teach me how to resist it.”

“Of course, but you’d only know how the resist the one particular effect.  Our enemies might try something different.  Also, I’m not up to the power level of whatever they used on you.  I won’t be able to knock you unconscious.  I’ll be lucky to make you a little drowsy.”

“Yes, but if I can resist your effect, I might have better luck resisting similar attacks from these enemy Crows.  If they ever attack Master Sinclair again, at least I want to make them need to come up with new tricks.  I’ll be damned if I want them to be able to use the same one twice.”

Gilgamesh nodded thoughtfully.  “Then we shall do this, your grace.”

“Good,” Hoskins said, satisfied.  “If you’re willing, we can do the same thing with any other constructs you have or want to learn.  That way, our side gets better offense and better defense, both at once.  Good all the way around.”

“Yes.”  Definitely yes.  A chance to train with a Chimera who was willing to teach him how to affect other Chimera?  Definitely, definitely yes.  “Practice your Terror on me, as well,” Gilgamesh said.  “Recent events have reminded me that I’m nowhere near as Terror-resistant as I should be.”  Hoskins nodded.

He wondered if Tiamat would ever be willing to go for such a deal.

---

“So what do you want from me?” Focus Helen Daumerie asked.  Nine in the morning, time for Focus Daumerie to hold court in her empty restaurant, attended by her ranks of bodyguards and aides, eight men and two women who would serve as waiters, cooks and hostesses later in the day.

Focus Daumerie was a short woman with dark brown eyes, light brown skin, and black hair falling in curls all the way down her back.  She was the only one seated.

“Focus Daumerie,” Gilgamesh said, respectfully, and hoped Hoskins would manage to control his impatience.  “We have a wounded Crow, and we hope that you might be able to heal him.”

“Let me see this Crow.”

Sinclair came close, and at her order, knelt at her feet.  Her guards shifted restlessly, nervous to have him so close to their Focus.  Hoskins managed to remain perfectly still, but Gilgamesh metasensed the stress rolling off him.  The Focus laid her hands on Sinclair’s head and closed her eyes.

“Tell me about his injuries,” she said.  Gilgamesh described everything they knew, and then fell silent.  No one said anything then for a long time as the Focus did whatever she did to examine Sinclair.  Gilgamesh metasensed juice moving, but nothing beyond the basics.  Outside, the distant noises of Canal Street traffic sounded, along with the ding of a trolley’s bell.  A fly buzzed through the upended chairs.

“Someone laid a pattern on his mind,” Focus Daumerie said, not opening her eyes.  “The power that once held the pattern in place is gone, but the pattern itself remains inside his juice structure.”

“Can you fix him, Honorable Focus?” Gilgamesh asked.

She nodded, slowly, as if she were not completely sure.  “If I had time, and another Crow to compare him to.  I won’t be doing this for free.  What do you have to offer, to make it worth my time?”

Focus bargaining.  Gack.  Gilgamesh hoped they had enough of whatever she wanted.

“We can clean the dross from your restaurant and household, so that it will take considerably longer before it goes bad.”

“We just moved three months ago.  How much is there to clean?”

“Not much,” Gilgamesh said, chagrined.  The dross cleaning was the best offer he had been able to think of.  “What other price would you consider worthwhile?”

“Money.  I’ll attempt to fix your Crow for $60,000.”

Sinclair choked.  Gilgamesh winced and mentally added up his assets.  Counting real estate, he barely cleared five figures.  “I’m sorry, Honorable Focus, but we aren’t wealthy.  We don’t have money in those quantities.”

Focus Duamerie frowned.  “What do you have to offer, then?”

Sinclair turned back to them, and Gilgamesh and Hoskins looked at each other, stumped.

Gilgamesh smiled.  “I think I have something you might be interested in.”

---

“You want me to do what?” Tiamat said.  They sat in the living room of her Detroit home, and Tiamat’s people, Tom and Ila, attended as well.  Unlike Focus Daumerie, at least Tiamat let them all sit.

“I want you to go to New Orleans for a week and teach Focus Daumerie and her household how to cook.  Plus whatever else you want to teach them.”

Tiamat raised a single eyebrow and watched him for a long moment.  “Bullshit,” she decided.  “That’s not all you want and you know it.”

Gilgamesh felt miserably unhappy.  His idea would work only if Tiamat cooperated.  She was right, though, and he needed more from her than his simple request.  “Sinclair is crippled, and she can heal him,” he said.  “All she wants is a week of your time.”

“All,” Tiamat said, flat.

Gilgamesh hung his head, and Hoskins spoke up.  “We do seem to have acquired some enemies, Commander Hancock, and it does so happen there is some chance of fighting in New Orleans.  If we’re sitting in one place for a week.”  Tiamat leaned back in her chair, more relaxed.  “Is there something we can do for you to compensate you for your time?”