The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six (11 page)

Transform Ecology
[Carol’s POV]

“They may be powerful, they may be organized, but they are not
prompt
,” Keaton said.  She tossed her heavy body into her throne-like chair, growling.  Lori and her crew were ten minutes late.  I wanted to have words with them myself, about their penchant with changing itineraries and leaving important business, such as choosing their bodyguard contingent, for the last moment.  How could anyone count on you in a crisis with a work ethic like that?

My boss, of course, blamed me for anything Lori and Inferno did that didn’t measure up to her exacting standards.

“Ma’am,” I said.  I read her for her wants and desires, went straight to the kitchen, and came back with my newest Arm-friendly hors d’oeuvres, highly spiced warmed marinated chicken strips wrapped in lettuce and cilantro.  She eyed them warily, tried one, and smiled.

“Damned waste of time,” she said, mouth full.  “Have you come up with anything more about your Transform ecology idea?  Talk to me.”

Talk to me, I’m bored, she meant.  Entertain me with your speculation.

I followed her eyes and sat on the white couch, near her knees. 
The morning sun gave the pale room a golden glow and specs of dust shimmered in the sunbeams.  She didn’t call Haggerty, which meant this wasn’t a formal presentation.  The young student Arm had been going in and out all morning, combat training in the Arm gym or something.

“Major Transforms break the human tribal ‘rules’,” I said, my canned starting line.  “
Arms and Chimeras are predators, obviously, but we can’t think of us as single-style predators.  Unlike animal predators, we’re intelligent and social.  We can hunt alone, or as a pack; we can hunt with a far wider set of strategies and tactics than any other animal predator.  We hunt for juice and for food, and I believe this is why normal human ideas of good and evil don’t work for us.”

Keaton grunted, and pounced on another of my appetizers.

I leaned forward, tense and focused as always while under Keaton’s gaze.  “I learned this the hard way.  I know we can’t be ‘good’, by human definitions. For a while, I tried to be evil. Evil, again by human definitions.” Keaton snorted.  She didn’t care much, one way or the other. “After a while, I decided attempting to try and fit myself within the human definitions and constraints was a trap. Humans are tribal omnivores, and we’re not. Arm and Chimera behaviors, ethics and morality, whatever they turn out to be, will be different from anything normal humans can ever imagine.”

“More.”

I took a breath and steadied myself. This was a difficult subject for me to understand, much less to explain to another Arm with this worthless English language.

“
How do humans figure out right and wrong?”  I found myself gesturing with my arms, struggling to convey my thoughts.  “A lot is built in, but some is purely a social construct. ‘Good actions’ are usually things that help the tribe. Doing good to your neighbor. The Golden Rule. ‘Evil actions’ hurt the tribe’s survival. Murder, theft, adultery. However, look at how killing becomes all right when you kill the tribe’s enemies. It’s called war, then, and not evil at all.  The same is true for all forms of evil, from a human perspective.”

Keaton’s
face was like stone.  She didn’t like the implications of where I was going with this, something I suspected from her personal history.

“
We’re predators, though. There’s nothing wrong with being a predator. There are many predators in the world, and predators serve a function. It’s just different than being a normal tribal human, and the rules of survival, and of good and evil are different for predators. A ‘good’ tiger does different things than a ‘good’ rabbit. Or a ‘good’ monkey.”

Keaton grunted again
.  I nodded and shifted position, easing muscles tense from my intense focus.  Leaned forward and moved the few remaining appetizers to the side of the plate closest to Keaton, more convenient for her to reach.  Rested my elbows on my knees and tried to find the right words.

“
The reason my speculation is important is because of the impact on our survival.  If we can figure out our predator morality, the equivalent of right and wrong for an Arm, then we’ll also be figuring out what things are good for our own survival. Long term survival, not just day to day survival.”

I stopped, and there was a long pause. 
Keaton didn’t say anything at all. She leaned back in her chair with an unreadable expression on her face.

“What rules have you figured out so far?”
she said.

My nerves were getting worse, as I tried to explain something this shaky.
I took another deep breath. I was unsure about the applicability of my ideas; what I wanted but wouldn’t be able to get was some time outside of urban areas.  How did an Arm survive outside of cities?  Was right or wrong for an Arm different in such circumstances?  I suspected as much, but, dammit, I didn’t have the data I needed to say, one way or the other.

“We’re predators.
We hunt. We kill. This is who we are.”  I paused.  “Children are not our natural prey. Children don’t ever contract Transform sickness, and there is no biological need to ever kill children.”

I paused again, searching for a third point, and found one in my memories. 
“It’s a mistake to hurt our own people, the ones we recruit to serve us.”

I stopped
; I didn’t have a fourth point. It seemed like so little. I waited for Keaton’s response, her withering contempt, as she tore through all the holes in my theory.

What I got was: “
So, have you managed to fit the Focuses into this?”

“Yes, ma’am.”
  Much easier than coming up with Arm versions of right and wrong.  “Consider the how the great cats hunt,” I said, “or at least the National Geographic magazine level explanation of how they hunt, which works for this extended analogy.  Great cats mostly hunt herd herbivores.  They don’t go after the herd.  They go after the stragglers – the sick, the injured, the old, occasionally, the young.  The herd is dangerous.  The herd can kill or gravely wound a great cat stupid enough to tangle with the herd.

“Focuses and their tagged
Transforms are the herd.  We prey on the stragglers.  However, don’t take this analogy too far, because only on the funny pages can great cats talk to the herd or the leaders of the herd.  Because we Arms can talk to the herd leaders, the Focuses, it puts us in an extremely advantageous position relative to the position of the great cats and their prey.  We can
negotiate
with the Focuses for access to our prey.”

“I’ve done that,” Keaton said.  I bowed my head and did the yes ma’am routine, acknowledging her vast superiority.  Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right?

“So, if the Focuses actually ran their herds, we wouldn’t have to hunt.  There are plenty of extra Transforms to go around.  The problem is that our government, our
normal human government,
runs the Focuses.  Free the Focuses from government control, we can work with the Focuses, and they will provide us with what we need, after proper negotiation.”

“Why don’t you
free the Focuses for me, next month,” Keaton said.

My heart practically stopped, after I heard
her impossible order.  Did she need someone to torture?  Because that was what was going to happen when I failed at that task.  I carefully peeked over at Keaton, and realized she was barely repressing laughter.  I bowed my head to her, abashed.  Keaton barked one short laugh, clapped me on the shoulder, and told me to get the fuck back into the kitchen to do some more cooking.

Information Trade

“Tell me again why what we’re doing here is at all intelligent,” Gwen said.  She swatted a mosquito and shook her head.
  A half dozen more buzzed around her head in the evening dimness of the forest clearing.

“What, you
don’t think I can protect you from the psychotic pipsqueak?” Arm said.  The tall muscular woman paced, unquiet, unwilling to share her real thoughts, which Annie knew contained far more worries than she would ever reveal.

The dagger-filled look Focus Gwen Larson gave Arm almost caused
Annie to giggle, another of those disquieting hormonal surges she had been fighting ever since Arm delivered the baby walrus skull artifact to her several months ago.  Giggling girlishly, though, despite the momentary satisfaction of doing so, would ruin her reputation as the calm, distant and motherly Madonna of Montreal.  She hoped the highway noises, four kilometers distant, drowned out her almost-giggle.

Gwen’s unstated question hung in the air: ‘Who, pray tell, will protect me from you?’  Gwen was perfectly capable of protecting herself.  However, her self-confidence
still suffered from the results of her encounter with the Predecessors’ trap.

Even Annie no l
onger thought of the Predecessors as an unproven hypothesis.  The Predecessors were, or had been, quite real, and their name for them quite worthy of capitalizing.

Her woolgathering stopped as her metasense shivered, and she heard scraping.  On the far side of the clearing
where they waited, a short shadowed Major Transform walked a line, dragging the tip of a sword in the damp ground.

Annie nodded, immediately seeing what the foreign Major Transform was doing.  Arm, though, took two steps forward, a muted growl in her throat.

“What the fuck are you doing, Keaton,” Arm said.

Keaton radiated exasperation and looked down at the line
, not meeting Arm’s gaze.  “Over here, mine.  Over there, yours.”

Arm strode up to the line, but didn’t step over.  “Where’s the fun in that?” she said.  “I was looking forward to kicking your ass up through your nose yet again.”

“You can try, but I thought we might want to save the fighting until later, without the audience, and after we’ve done this information trade we’ve worked so hard to set up.”

“You and Annie worked so hard
for, that is,” Arm said, guffawing, but stepping back from the line.  “I’m just here to make sure nothing stupid happens.”  Every word between these two predatory Major Transforms was a veiled insult, as bad as Annie had feared.

‘Here’ was the approximate border between Quebec and the United States, a border also marking the edges of the Highgate State Park of New York and the Philipsburg Bird Sanctuary.

Keaton crossed her arms and waited.  The part-moonlit warm spring night settled in around them, which didn’t bother any of the four Major Transforms present, but did discommode her and Gwen’s normal bodyguards, who waited behind them, torches ready to be switched on to light up the American Arm if she did anything violent.

“I thank you for agreeing to this meeting,” Annie said, projecting calm
to the best of her capabilities.  The American Arm was far more forceful in person than Annie had anticipated, living concentrated fury trapped in a body barely a meter and a half tall.  The American Arm dressed as a man, in work jeans and a blousy shirt, and carried muscles as large as Arm herself, despite Arm’s half meter height advantage.  A permanent sneer covered the American Arm’s broad and unwomanly face, and her hooded eyes flicked back and forth nervously, paranoid and untrusting.  “If you wish, I can go first,” Annie said.  Keaton had appeared to them, to their eyes and their metasenses, only when she wished.  Annie hadn’t known Keaton had progressed so far as a Major Transform; being able to mask her presence made the already dangerous and mentally unstable woman far more dangerous.

She did feel more stable
in person than Arm had described, though.

“I first want to thank you for your help in Arm Hancock’s recovery,” Keaton said.  “Though she still has issues, she
’s a functional Arm again.”

“No thanks to you,” Arm said, Crow-quiet, earning her a glare from Annie, Gwen and Keaton.  Based on what Annie had dreamed, Arm’s snipe was untrue, as well.

The American Arm’s statement, though, was as much of a challenge as a thank-you; Annie hadn’t told anyone, either in her dreams or via any other method of communication, about how she had helped Hancock.  Or that she had helped.  This had to be something the always surprising Hancock had figured out.  “You’re welcome,” Annie said.  She pushed forward the ornate carrying case at her feet, unlatched it – which broke the Faraday cage around the contents – and opened the case, for the American Arm to see and metasense.  “This is an artifact of a previous efflorescence of Transforms we have named the Predecessors, for lack of a better name.  This is a baby walrus skull, altered by ancient Crows and Focuses to be, well, juice and dross active.  This discovery changes everything, and give strong proof to the Van Reijn hypothesis about us Transforms.”

Keaton spat.  “Fuck me,” she said.  “So they didn’t like Arms, either.”

Interesting.  Not that Keaton picked up on such things; the fact Keaton was the sort of semi-mystical Major Transform who picked up on such things was the reason Annie had showed her the baby walrus skull.  What was interesting was the fact the Predecessors hadn’t liked Arms.  Annie had assumed the Predecessors more socially advanced.

Sadly, though, Keaton, who should have cared about the proof of the existence of the Predecessors, didn’t.  She radiated annoyance, not curiosity.

“This is a dangerous device,” Annie said.  “If you don’t mind…”

“Not at all,” Keaton said.  “Stick it back in its metasense-proof case.”  She paced, and her gaze speared Gwen.  “You’re Focus Larson, aren’t you?”

Gwen nodded and whispered a “Yes, ma’am.”

“I take it you had a reason
for bringing this one here, Focus,” Keaton said, to Annie, using her old Lost Tribe name.

“Gwen and Arm recently finished a hazardous mission I talked them into,” Annie said.  “I was going to let Gwen tell the tale, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Keaton said.  She turned to Gwen.  “Come on over here so I can get a good look at you.”

Gwen stepped forward, unthinkingly responding to Keaton’s charisma
tic suggestion.  Arm, however, stepped in Gwen’s way before Gwen crossed the line in the dirt.

“What sort of shit is this, short stuff?” Arm said.  “That’s my Focus you’re messing with.”

Keaton snorted.  “If anything, you’re hers.”

Arm crouched down in a wrestling stance, and started forward
, to initiate the inevitable fight.  “Back off,” Gwen said.  Arm stopped.

“But you wanted my protection, earlier.”

“That’s before I got a good look at Arm Keaton,” Gwen said.  “Go stand back with Annie.”

Annie stayed quiet, attempting to untangle this mess in her mind.  Keaton’s charisma wasn’t Focus-like, but it was powerful, mid-range Focus powerful – unlike Arm’
s lesser charismatic talents.  Keaton was also far smarter than Arm, but Annie already had known that.  What she hadn’t known was Keaton’s deviousness: she had set up a situation to test the lot of them by inviting Gwen ‘over the line’, and she was likely learning more from their reactions than anything they had told the American Arm thus far.  The American Arm had also sensed a compatibility with Gwen, which Annie had earlier suspected.  She hadn’t, though, suspected any Arm would be deft enough to sense compatibility.  Was it a waking dreaming adjunct, as Annie used, or did Keaton utilize some other talents, such as whatever passed for the mystical among the Arms?

Arm stepped back,
barely, and Gwen stepped forward, touching hands with Keaton momentarily.  After touching hands, they circled each other, slowly, appraisingly.  “I like what you’ve done with your hair,” Keaton said.  “I can’t tell how much is juice-illusion and how much isn’t.”

Gwen, who prided herself on her appearance experiments, smiled.  “Thank you.  The base white-blonde color is real, the golden highlights are illusions.  The way I get it to stick up in the air is male hair gel.”  Gwen’s normal hair color was mousy brown, and normally she didn’t wear it sticking straight up in the air like some sort of bird plumage.  “I can also
control the length of my hair, and create patterns in it, but I use modified healing tricks to do so.”

“I’d like to learn that one,” Keaton said.  “I’ll pay.”

Gwen laughed.  “I have no idea if anyone else can learn my trick.  One morning a few years ago I decided I wanted longer hair, and I had it mastered by noon.”

Keaton and Gwen continued to circle.  The Arm held out her hand, and in it, a knife appeared.  “This is what I can do.”

“Nice,” Gwen said.  The basics of an implied deal passed between Keaton and Gwen – the forced hair growth trick for the weapon hiding illusion trick.  “Anyway, the story.”  Gwen stopped her circling, and told the story of how an unknown thing in the Arctic had called Sport Nancy Racshke to it.  “Annie then convinced Arm and me and my household to go investigate it and rescue Racshke.  Finding Racshke and the trap wasn’t much of a problem – once we got within fifty klicks of the trap, it sang to us in our minds.  Not, thankfully, drawing us in, though.  Trying to scare us away.  Unfortunately, when we got there, we found Racshke unconscious, alive, and unreachable, behind a twenty meter wide juice barrier neither of us found a way to penetrate.  Worse, all my Transforms got sick and vomited when they got within a hundred meters of the damned juice barrier, and none of them could force themselves to get any closer.”

“I hope you charged Focus a
fortune for dragging you into this mess,” Keaton said, eyes hooded and wary.

Arm had been watching the exchange
from her position a few feet to the side, equally wary.  “How compatible is Gwen with the psychotic pipsqueak?” Arm signed, to Annie, using the dreaming sign language they both now knew well.  There weren’t any signs in their syllabary for ‘psychotic pipsqueak’, but Annie understood the unknown sign with ease.

“About the same as you and
me,” Annie signed.  “Much less than you and Focus Stockstill.”  Instant friendship, not instant love.

“Uh huh,” Gwen said, answering Keaton’s question about Gwen’s price for the mission.  “I got her help taking over the Ontario ISF leadership from Focus Russell.  I’d been telling people for years that Focus Russell isn’t good enough to be our local boss in this more dangerous day and age, and that I am.”  She smiled.

“You do look like a difficult piece of gristle,” Keaton said, and smiled back.  Arm’s frown became even harsher.

“Gawd, now there
’s two of them,” Arm said, and continued to mutter obscenities.  Annie wasn’t sure she wanted to pass along to Arm just now that Focus Biggioni was as bad with the jump-into-the-meat-grinder attitude as Gwen – which made three, not two.

“Do you think the two of us might have any better chance at this rescue?” Gwen said.

Keaton shrugged.  “Let me think about this for a moment.  I have a trick I can show you, as part of our info exchange.  Focus, can you do us a favor and open up the
thing
again?”

“If you wish,” Annie said.  She did so.  Keaton took Gwen’s hand in hers.  Gwen smiled.
  Arm begin fidgeting with her knife, and Annie doubted the conversation would last more than a few more minutes before collapsing.

“Concentrate on your metasense,” Keaton said.  “Think of it as opening your eyes wider.”

Annie stopped breathing and studied what Keaton was doing, shocked.  This was the same trick Lori and Sky did!  She hadn’t expected Arms and Focuses would be able to do the recognition trick, as Sky termed it.  She had half-expected the recognition trick required a sexual connection.

This would have its uses.  She looked over at Arm, who
had missed the entire recognition interaction.  Damn.  Likely yet another of Arm’s juice structure flaws resulting from the bad days during their Lost Tribe ‘adventure’.

“Wow,” Gwen said.  “Arm metasense is different.  Unfortunately, I can’t make out anything new about the baby walrus skull.”

“I can metasense enough more about it to know that if this juice barrier you ran into is using the same style and flavor as the juice around the
thing
, then I won’t be of any more use than, um, Arm was.  Too much bad juice.”

“Darn,” Gwen said.  “I was hoping I might be able to extract more from Annie, but you’re right.  The juice barrier was the same sort of thing.”  Her grin and Keaton’s grin, at Gwen’s words, were eerily similar.  Arm growled in disgust.

“I know who might,” Keaton said, shaking loose of Gwen’s hand.  Gwen chased a pout from her face, shook her shoulders, and straightened her skirt – all causing her head plumage to wave back and forth, almost seductively.

“Which, as a mercenary bitch, you want payment for,” Arm said.

Annie held up her hand.  “I understand.  You’re looking for favors, from me, in the future.”

“They’ve
worked well, so far,” Keaton said.