The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) (52 page)

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“Why me, Lord?” Gail prayed, in the silent sanctuary of St. Paul’s.  “Why me?”  She knew she was an exceptional Focus, but she was still a kid, not even thirty yet, and hadn’t even been a Focus for five years.  Why had she been called on to endure this sort of misery?

Rizzari’s household called itself Inferno, and they, not the Focus, chose the name.  Independent cusses, the lot of them.  Their presentation had been very convincing.  They had all the facts and figures to back up all of Gail’s gut worries.  Gail had suspected the world was going to hell.  Rizzari’s people owned the accounting books on the end of the world.

Worse, all they offered were scant chances, scary chances.  The project Inferno worked on, now almost complete, had nearly ruined them as a household, leaving many of the Transforms with shredded juice structures.  Their work made Gail’s training look like a trip to a preschooler’s amusement park.  Rizzari had one of her Crows living in the Inferno household while she was gone, specifically there to fix the withdrawal scarring and accidental élan contamination resulting from their juice efficiency experiments.

The entire household had turned themselves into lab rats.  To Gail’s utter astonishment, Focus Rizzari hadn’t initiated the project, but three Transforms and one disassociated normal they called Dr. Bob did, the day after Focus Rizzari and her fighting people returned from helping the Arms chase the Hunters out of the Midwest.  Torture us for a good cause, they demanded of their Focus; Focus Rizzari had meditated for nearly a week, wrestling with her conscience, before agreeing.  So far, only one of her household members had died.  Several had been maimed badly enough to need to be transferred out of Rizzari’s household.

Hearing about the death brought tears to Gail’s eyes, and a sense of having fallen through the ice to the frigid waters below.

Worse, Rizzari’s people couldn’t tell if her work with Teacher would succeed, or would matter on the larger scale even if it did succeed.  All they could say was if her work proved compatible with what they were doing, great things would happen.  If.

Rizzari wanted her to sacrifice herself and her household for no more than a hope.  Rizzari and her household had already made that choice; they had even showed Gail the Inferno induction ceremony, how they made someone a member of Inferno.

The ceremony was a funeral.  They literally pledged their lives to the Cause.

They thought her work with Teacher had a better chance than most ideas, though, to produce something positive.  They knew about her reputation as one of the top, or the top, Focuses in raw power.  They expected her to earn that big red ‘S’ on her chest pretty damn quick.  They counted on her…and they trusted Zielinski with their lives.

The bastard had been sending them detailed reports on Gail’s progress the entire time.

Gail wished God would answer back to her sometimes, but if he did, she didn’t hear.  All she gained was a sense of perspective.  God looked at a bigger picture, and he valued all his children.  He sent Jesus to die for his children.

Sometimes, God called on people to sacrifice for others.  Ordinary people, some no more than kids.  The history of Christianity was full of martyrs, and people who suffered for the good of others.

Gail didn’t want to join any such list, but this wasn’t the sort of list people volunteered for.  She had never thought of herself as martyr material.

She almost had to laugh.  If she hadn’t stepped in front of a bullet meant for Tonya, she wouldn’t be in this position.  She guessed she had volunteered after all.  So had her household, it seemed.  Lori’s people said the Transforms in a Focus household should be, must be, more powerful as a group than their Focus was individually, for a household to accomplish anything meaningful.

Each household had its own personality, they explained.  The household superorganism, in their terms.  As if the household was alive, but Lori’s people thought this quite a bit more than a mere analogy.  They had already identified the strength of Gail’s household by their tendency to volunteer, from Matt’s sacrifice to the volunteering they did now as victims for Teacher’s torture.  They hadn’t said anything about Gail, though.  They let her tell them.

How much of this was real?  The damned Eskimo Spear pointed the way and proved the Cause was real.  If she believed the reality of the Eskimo Spear.  Still, if she decided to march into hell for the sake of so many lives, she would do it proud.  None of this half-hearted, heel-dragging resistance, all done for the sake of her ego and self-importance.  She would go with her head high and a firm step.

But she was damned well going to make sure the Eskimo Spear wasn’t some modern Crow’s practical joke.  She might have to reveal some of her tricks, but she would find out.  She was a reporter.

Gail laughed and felt a weight lift off her shoulders.  Doing the reporter thing.  Bothering the high and mighty.  Leaping in front of bullets.  So what if it hurt?  She would be able to look herself in the mirror in the morning.

And maybe, just maybe, God would make this work out well in the end after all.

---

Lori shook Ann awake and explained Gail’s request, all while attempting not to awaken the other ten Inferno members snoring on the living room floor of the Wheelhouse’s apartment.  “Gaah.  Bed hair,” Ann said, after she stood and allowed her Focus to march her to the bathroom.  “It’s gotta be three in the morning.  Can’t this wait?”

“I need to know, now,” Gail said.  “And Focus Rizzari says you’re in charge of the Eskimo Spear.”  Inferno had taken the Spear away from their Focus the instant they returned home from the Spear ceremony.  Otherwise The Focus would still be playing with it, day and night, and ignoring everything else.

And people complained about her household being difficult.  Inferno took
difficult
to heights unimaginable.

“I am,” Ann said.  “You won’t get anything off of the Spear.  Only the top witch Focuses and talented Crows do.”

“Trust me on this,” Gail said.  After what appeared to be a tag-link based conversation with her Focus, Ann shrugged.

“Just don’t get too mad when nothing happens.”

Ann left them silently awkward in the drafty inter-apartment hallway, went to her supplies and came back with a leather case, about four feet long and six inches wide and tall.  She undid the combo lock and opened it up.

Gail metasensed the Spear instantly; she had never encountered mechanical metasense shielding before, but this case somehow shielded the Spear from her metasense.  Ann picked up the Spear and held it out to Gail.  “Knock yourself out.”

Here.  Now.  She would rather run naked through her house than reveal her true self to Focus Rizzari and her people, but this was the only way forward.  Gail closed her eyes to quiet her fears and to better focus on her metasense, tuning her extra sense over to the realm of dross.  The Eskimo Spear glowed brightly, most of its trapped dross internal to the Spear and beyond her comprehension, the rest normal old dross some Crow should have already removed.  She backed away to a place in the hallway with little ambient dross, and pushed what little dross remained out of the way.  Gilgamesh had laughed when she showed him her dross moving trick, saying she shouldn’t use the trick too often because her trick
generated
extra dross.  She still did dross clearing when she needed a clear area to think and meditate, though.

“Bring the Spear here, please,” Gail said, keeping her eyes closed.  When she reached out to take the Spear, she did so in a way to separate the Spear from the ambient dross.

The metasense world opened up in an artificial sunrise, showing three scenes.  The first scene was the Dreaming, and there, in Gail’s Dream-garden, the Madonna danced a jig, egging Gail on.  The second was the scene described by Focus Rizzari, the ancient Eskimo tribe of Transforms.  She memorized what she metasensed of the complex scene; she couldn’t get at the rest, though, the other thousands of scenes stored in the Spear.

The third scene was impossible, reminding her of Gilgamesh’s description of the Pheromone Flow.  Instead of gazing from on high down at the modern North American Major Transforms, though, she metasensed a web of dross and juice connections, bounded in a rough triangular shape by the Dakotas, the Alaskan north slope, and Greenland.  Hundreds of nodes dotted the rough triangle, each connected to a half dozen to a dozen other nodes, reminding Gail of an air carrier’s route network.  The nodes were a mind, of sorts, and when they spoke the aurora danced, their words pure Dreaming symbology, concepts Gail understood.

Gail’s eyes flew open in shock, and she almost fell to the ground in surprise when she saw the aurora dancing around her
inside her house
.  Focus Rizzari’s eyes had turned to stone, Lady Death again.  Ann’s, on the other hand, were big wide Os, and she had backed off two paces.  Sylvie, Melanie and Helen Grimm, Gail’s three Attendants, had as always appeared from nowhere, summoned by Gail doing one of her impossible tricks.  They smiled rapturously at the aurora dancing around Gail and lighting the ceiling inside the house, caught up in the wonder until Sylvie shook her head, walked over to Ann and gave her a nudge that nearly sent the older woman flying.

“See,” Sylvie said.  “
This
is what I was talking about.  Now do you understand?”

Gail put the Spear back in the box and closed it up tight.  “Now I believe,” Gail said.  “Now I have hope.”

Anger flashed for an instant across Focus Rizzari’s face, but when she spoke, her voice held none of her anger.  “The Progenitors spoke to you, Gail.  What did you hear?”

Ann backed away, but Gail’s attendants gathered close.  “‘You will do.  Get better.  Survive the risks.  Learn from us.  You are not doomed to fail, as are the Hunters.’  And what did you hear, Focus Rizzari?”

Rizzari shook her head, not agreeing to tell all.  “I should expect changes in my life, and if I survive the many changes, then I’ll be ready for my part.  Oh, and the Hunters are doomed, but if we’re not careful, they could take us with them when they fall.”

Melanie gave Gail a big hug, her feet dancing with joy as she did so.

“Thank you for letting me examine the Spear,” Gail said.  “If you would excuse me, I have some thinking to do, in private.”

---

“You look like hell, Gail,” Beth said.  Beth Hargrove was cute rather than beautiful, with freckles, a cheerful smile, and acres of curly red hair.  She had been Gail’s first Focus friend, back in her early miserable days right after her transformation.  Beth and Tonya had been life-savers back then, and Beth had been Gail’s best friend ever since.  With typical good cheer, Beth invited Gail into her office and made her sit, even though the sun hadn’t risen yet.

Gail nodded, and settled into the old office chair that had graced Beth’s office for as long as Gail had known her.  Beth’s household wasn’t wealthy, but they thrived anyway.  Because of Beth’s many plants, the place smelled of gardening soil, always.

“Going to tell me about why?”

“Some.  Focus Rizzari is visiting my household.”

“Oh ho!  She came to you, eh?  Why am I not surprised?” Beth said, sitting herself down in the chair beside Gail, not in the chair behind her desk.  “Me, I got to go to Boston.”

“I hadn’t realized…”

“What?  That someone like me might qualify for training by Lady Death?”

“No, not that.”  Here she was, stepping on toes, again.  Beth had been the one who infected Gail’s household with their belief in ‘Gail, Super-Focus’.  Beth tried to be good-natured about Gail’s secret talents, but that had never kept Beth from kicking Gail in the shins when she thought her friend was being boneheaded.  “I hadn’t realized your hush-hush training had been from
her
.”

“Yup.  It was.  So, how far have you gotten?  I’m still working on Level Three stuff.”

Gail furrowed her brows.  “Levels?  No one’s talked to me about Levels.”

Beth furrowed her eyebrows.  “Huh.  I thought the only thing Lady Death taught was juice patterns.  Wait,” Beth said, and stood.  She walked over to her desk and opened a desk drawer, and leafed through some papers.  She took out a set of stapled mimeographed documents and handed them to Gail.  “Here.  Do these look familiar?”

Gail looked through the mimeos, trying to make sense of them.  All results oriented, with nothing on the process.  Quite a few comments about how each Focus needed to find her own way, and how learning one level built the skills needed to attempt the next.

“No, these don’t look familiar.  I’m working with juice patterns, but…” Gail shook her head at what she was reading, letting her voice trail off.

“But what?”

“I’m not sure.  I think I’m being used as a guinea pig on a brand new more efficient training technique.”  She couldn’t mention the juice transfer project.

“Figures,” Beth said, with an eyeball roll.

Gail ignored the jab, moved the fern on Beth’s desk and spread out the documents, open to a list of level requirements for graduation from each level.  “For instance, I can’t do this one,” she said, pointing to a level one capability involving background juice adjustment, “but on the other hand, this one,” she said, pointing to a level five pattern dealing with holding each of her Transforms to a different juice level, “I can do.”  The pattern was easy if you wrote it out as a Zielinski diagram.  Two notes, a hold, and a volume scale, just repeated for each Transform.  Repetition was trivial.