A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Read online

  A Method Truly Sublime

  Book Four of “The Commander”

  Randall Allen Farmer

  Copyright © 2012, 2013 by Randall Allen Farmer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  A Method Truly Sublime

  Book Four of “The Commander”

  Dragon and tiger, monkey and horse --

  They take effort to corral;

  Let them fly and leap a little bit,

  And their actions obstruct and obscure.

  By perfect silence, being as is,

  A method truly sublime,

  Capture and transform them

  Into a heavenly wind.

  by Cui Shaoxuan

  Part 1

  Incarceration and Negotiation

  How can Satan drive out Satan?

  If a kingdom is divided against itself, the kingdom cannot stand.

  And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand;

  His end has come.

  Mark 3:23-26

  Chapter 1

  In 1967 there were an estimated 14,500 Listeria B and C infections out of a population of 199 million people in the United States. Of these roughly 12,600 survived the initial disease (Listeriosis B and C) and of those roughly 11,400 made Transformations.

  “Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

  Gilgamesh: March 3, 1968 – March 4, 1968

  “Shadow, they got her! They got her. They got her last night!” Gilgamesh whispered into the telephone, unable to hide the intensity in his voice.

  “Gilgamesh, slow down. They got who?” Shadow’s voice came through thin and tinny over the long distance line.

  “Tiamat. The police captured Tiamat. There must have been a thousand of them. Someone betrayed her. They knew exactly where she was! Shadow, what are we going to do? They captured her!”

  “Slow down, slow down,” Shadow said. Gilgamesh shook, huddled into a corner of his Racine Wisconsin motel room, hunched over the phone as if he held a baby.

  “Shadow, what do we do? They took her out of town and I lost track of her. They might have killed her. They shot the hell out of her when they captured her and some of them beat her up some more after that.”

  “Gilgamesh, slow down! The panic’s got you. Just take a breath and …”

  “What do we do?”

  “Gilgamesh, listen to me! I’ll help you, but you need to listen to me. The panic’s got you. Listen to me!”

  Gilgamesh stopped talking and listened. He heard his breath and realized he was panting.

  “Better, better,” Shadow continued, encouraging. “We’ll work this out. Take a deep breath. Let it out. There you go. You’ll be all right. Breathe, breathe. In. Out. Let the panic go.”

  Gilgamesh took several long slow breaths, relaxed his death grip on the telephone, and realized he was acting like an idiot.

  “Oh, hell, Shadow, I’m sorry. I metasensed them take Tiamat and I got chased by Enkidu and I haven’t been reacting rationally. But I still don’t know what to do.” His voice faltered as he spoke.

  “You’ll be all right. This is just the panic. The panic happens to all of us. You deal with first things first. Are you in any physical danger right now?”

  “No,” Gilgamesh said. “I got in my truck and drove off once the shooting started. Enkidu showed up and chased me. I sicked-up this immense mess on him, enough to get him to stumble, and I got away.”

  “Hmm.” Shadow sounded impressed. “Are you injured in any way? Did anyone else notice you? Is Enkidu or anyone else still after you?”

  “I’m not injured. Several State Troopers saw me but didn’t see me, if you know the difference.” People tended to forget Crows. He took another deep breath. “Shadow, I don’t understand why Enkidu was there. I metasensed a whole pack of Beast Men with him. They weren’t in on the attack on Tiamat. Instead, they watched from a distance. I don’t understand any of this!”

  “First things first,” Shadow said, calming. “Do you have enough dross? How’s your juice level?”

  Gilgamesh laughed, hoarsely. “I’m the only Crow feeding off five Focus households and an Arm. My juice level is fine.” He had cleaned out Focus Warren’s place after his immense sick-up.

  “Excellent. No immediate emergency. We can afford to take a minute to think things through.” Worry echoed through Shadow’s thin voice.

  “Right,” Gilgamesh admitted. His mind whirled as he remembered. He thought he might be imagining things, but swore he had felt pain when they took Tiamat. Phantom pains, like the phantom emotions he experienced sometimes when he focused his metasense too tightly on Tiamat. “Right,” he said again, stronger this time. He took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves some more.

  “Good, good. Start at the beginning, please, and tell me everything.”

  Gilgamesh told the entire story, from the first distant metasense flickers of the Beast Men, his warning to Tiamat, to his flight and Enkidu’s chase.

  Shadow asked questions and drew him out. After Gilgamesh finished the story, Shadow thought for a long time. Gilgamesh leaned against the wall of the small hotel room and waited through the silence. Outside, he heard the sounds of cars and the steps of the maids coming by for the daily clean up.

  When Shadow finally spoke, his voice was a shock, almost.

  “I don’t like this, not at all,” Shadow said. “I suspect our unknown Beast Master may have been somehow involved in this. I fear the Beast Master fingered Tiamat, and possibly you, to the authorities. This is a betrayal of the highest order, the sort of thing only a Focus might do.”

  Gilgamesh, confidence shattered by Tiamat’s capture and fuzzy from panic, hadn’t thought of that. Only, instead of panicking him, Shadow’s conjecture made him mad. “You think Tiamat’s right, that Officer Canon is the Beast Master?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I do.” In the background, Shadow shuffled papers. “If the FBI’s going to keep Tiamat, I can think of only three government facilities capable of holding her: the Bakersfield Transform Research Complex in California, the CDC’s Virginia Transform Detention Center, and the place the FBI held the Skinner, the James Mead Transform Sanitarium in New York State. Since they didn’t kill Tiamat outright, they probably hope to gain something from her. Information. Such as your dealings with her.”

  Oh, bad, bad. Gilgamesh hadn’t thought about that possibility. “I’ll need to move out of Chicago. The authorities are going to find out everything Carol knows about me. Oh, Shadow, I visited Carol’s graveyard too many times and I might have accidentally left something that would lead them to me!” The panic grabbed him again, the Crow paranoia. Gilgamesh curled up on the floor, scanning futilely with his metasense and clutching the telephone so tight his hands ached. “I’ve lost my cover against the Beast Men and their Beast Master. And Crow Killer.”

  “We don’t have any reason to believe your hiding near an Arm helps against Crow Killer. Certainly, though, you need to worry about Beast Men. No other Crow has reported as many Beast Man sightings as you, in Chicago. It’s possible the Beast Master is targeting you in specific.”

  Gilgamesh had to close his eyes to wall off the terror. “You’re not helping the panic, Shadow,” he said, after a long gap.

  “I’m sorry, but my worry had to be stated,” Shadow said. “Yet, you’ve met Tiamat twice and the Skinner once. No Crow can match this number. Are you still dedicated to the Arms? Sky was once enslaved by an Arm, if you
recall. They’re extremely acquisitive.”

  Gilgamesh opened his mouth to bark at Shadow, and decided to let his anger go. Embarrassed at his behavior, he sat up and tried to answer Shadow’s question reasonably.

  “Yes. I understand the danger, Shadow. It’s just, well, I would rather be enslaved by Tiamat than be a captive of Enkidu.” He pointedly didn’t mention the Skinner.

  Shadow pointedly didn’t mention her, either.

  “Just so you understand, some Crows still consider Crow Killer to be an Arm with a new skill. Also, some Crows fear the Arms will eventually figure out how to take juice from Monsters, Crows and Beast Men. They think we’re doomed if this ever happens, if we’ve revealed ourselves to the Arms.” Gilgamesh shuddered. Shadow’s fears were horrible to contemplate, even if Gilgamesh thought it highly unlikely the Arms could ever learn to take juice from Crows.

  “There is another argument to consider, Shadow,” Gilgamesh said. “You know we still don’t understand everything about either ourselves or Transform Sickness. We do understand a few things with clarity. The Beast Men kill us. Focuses betray us. Arms terrify us. We often see the other Major Transforms as obstacles, the lot of them better off dead. Yet, without the other Major Transforms, the only dross would be from Monster kills. I think we should be working on figuring out how to help the other Major Transforms so they can help us. Now, Tiamat is captured. She may know enough to doom the Skinner. Unless we can help Tiamat, we may lose both the Arms. I think the world will be a much worse place for all the Crows if the Arms go under.”

  “Hmm,” Shadow said, thoughtfully. “Let me think about this.” He was silent for a long time before he asked: “Do you have any more reasons for us Crows to involve ourselves in this non-Crow business?”

  Ouch. A standard Crow dictum was to never involve yourself in any one else’s business. Gilgamesh paused and thought. “Yes, for me I guess there is. Tiamat and I are linked; we’ve both saved each other’s lives. I tried to save her this time, even though my attempt didn’t work. For me, this is personal.”

  Shadow quietly grunted. “I keep getting that from those I advise, especially from Occum. Not that your argument’s wrong, mind you. I do wonder what this says about me, though, and whether my advice is any good anymore.”

  “Do you remember our discussions when I was recovering?” Gilgamesh said, surprised at his own vehemence. “You were surprised a Crow as young as me was able to do so much and you said my rapid advancement must be because of Tiamat. You told me I was the wave of the future, and I should find a path for us. Well, I don’t know if what I found is the path, but I did find a path: helping the Arms.”

  “I said that, did I?” Shadow murmured. “I say some stupid things sometimes.”

  “You said it.”

  “Hmm.”

  “One more thing, though, a totally unsubstantiated hypothesis of mine: I believe the Beast Master of Enkidu and the other Beasts is also Crow Killer. Why posit two enemies where there may be only one?”

  Shadow remained silent for a long time. “Well,” Shadow said, finally. “Maybe you’re right. I’d rather you weren’t. The Beast Master and Crow Killer scare me. Those Arms scare me. But, still, even if you are right, what else can we do except hide and be vigilant?”

  Gilgamesh swore to himself as the crushing loss came storming back, after he and Shadow said the pleasantries and Gilgamesh hung up the phone. Despite all they saw or knew, they were only Crows. Weak, helpless, Crows. Unable to do anything.

  Maybe he would need to do something about that.

  Enkidu: March 4, 1968

  “It is done,” Wandering Shade said, as Enkidu arrived at the hidden clearing. The Wandering Shade stood on the picnic table, a podium for his pronouncements. “Your nightmare, the talking Arm, is now in the hands of the FBI.”

  “She didn’t find a way to escape the normals? Excellent,” Enkidu said. The Wandering Shade had requested Enkidu come to the Spring Lake Forest Preserve, nearly forty miles to the northwest of the Loop, but hadn’t stated a reason. “Shall we claim Chicago, then?” It was evening, and the stars glittered brilliantly above the cool night.

  “Not until the FBI is finished with the talking Arm and dispose of her,” Wandering Shade said. “Despite all my efforts, this mess is steeped in nasty Focus politics and their moles in the FBI might still be able to spring her. If the Feds screw up, the talking Arm might be back here next week.”

  Enkidu growled. This wasn’t what Enkidu had expected his Master to say. He sounded like he had somehow helped the Focuses, his sworn enemies. “So why did you call me here, Master?”

  “I have a gift for you.”

  He hated surprises, and his Master’s gifts were always surprises, but he didn’t let his feelings show. “So…how did you do it, Master?” Enkidu said. The talking Arm, this Hancock woman, hadn’t fallen in a fight with Transforms of any variety. The humans had taken her down. He had his guesses, but he needed them confirmed.

  His Master chuckled. “It’s all as you suspected – I involved the authorities, the same way I’ve been covering your depredations.”

  Wandering Shade wasn’t just the Law from a Hunter’s point of view. He was an actual police officer, with fake identities in a great many law enforcement organizations. Enkidu hadn’t figured this out until after the last set of mental improvements the Wandering Shade provided, several months ago. “You used the police organizations to take out the talking Arm?” This is what he had feared…that all those normals he had sniffed around the Arm bitch had been an army of police.

  His Master smiled. “I’ll tell you, setting this up wasn’t easy. The goddamned student anti-war protests have the National Guard out everywhere and I had to work like a sonabitch to keep their nose out of the tent.” This fit what Enkidu knew: his Master didn’t have the military infiltrated, and the National Guard was military, not law enforcement. “Getting the Illinois State Troopers inside Chicago was a bitch and a half as well and I had to do it on the QT because the goddamned talking Arm had the local cops in her back pocket.” The last his Master said with anger. Enkidu understood. His Master claimed the police as his possession. The talking Arm’s muscling into his Master’s turf must have given him the final impetus to act. “I didn’t have to do anything to get the FBI involved. They were already hunting the talking Arm with far too many resources because of pressure from the Focus bitches. As soon as their spies picked up a hint that someone had fingered the talking Arm they were there, taking over and running things, in just a few hours.”

  Wandering Shade continued in a similar vein at considerable length, silhouetted by the stars atop his wooden podium, detailing his tricks, tactics and thinking behind his victory over the talking Arm. Enkidu lost interest. The damage was done. His Master, by drawing the authorities into an intra-Transform dispute, had crossed the bright line of custom. Disputes between Transforms were about to become a whole lot more difficult, and Enkidu would need to expect Transform-backed attacks from the authorities coming at the Hunters now, too.

  After several minutes, he felt a powerful Hunter presence approach through the darkness, Odin and his depleted entourage of wolfling trainee Hunters. In Enkidu’s opinion Odin’s experiment wasn’t working. Despite all of Odin’s efforts, the same appalling percentage of young Beast Men died before becoming real Hunters. Fifteen minutes later Odin stood at attention in front of Wandering Shade. Odin wore a new form, now an eight foot giant. Odin had finally managed to shuck his beast, able now to pass as human, well, at least as well as any of the Hunters in their man-form. Wandering Shade nodded, and Enkidu and Odin prostrated themselves before their Master. The juice moved. All was well. They stood and faced the Wandering Shade, happy.

  “Odin? Bring Hoffman forth,” Wandering Shade said. Odin whistled and a shambling bear with a human head and a tufted lion tail exited the pack of wolflings. “Enkidu, as you have requested. Your services and your tricks played a large part in our recent successes, and in honor of
your accomplishments, I present you with a new responsibility, the trainee Hunter still known by his man-name, Hoffman.

  Enkidu walked forward to the picnic table, took Wandering Shade’s hand, and rubbed it on his almost manlike face. “Thank you, Master. I shall train him properly, by the Law.”

  Hoffman looked up at Enkidu and growled. With a terrifying bark, Enkidu leapt on the trainee before his new trainee had time to flinch. The fool trainee tried to fight back but Enkidu had his neck in his teeth in but an instant. “Uhhh. ‘O Orrr.” No more. The trainee went limp under Enkidu’s vice grip.

  Enkidu released his grip. “Say it,” Enkidu said.

  “I shall serve you as my Master, Hunter Enkidu, until I am given a name or I perish,” Hoffman said, his words barely understandable. Despite his human-like head, he had grown a long tongue and could barely speak. His fractured mumbles were enough. The juice moved. The Law was served.

  Enkidu looked away from the trainee, proud of the humbling. Except Odin and the Master weren’t paying attention, deep in discussion over what had to be Odin’s latest proposal.

  Despite all his travails, he had reclaimed enough honor to win a trainee, but he hadn’t climbed high enough to win his Master’s trust again. He doubted he ever would.

  Gilgamesh: March 4, 1968

  Gilgamesh thrashed in the front seat of his truck, unable to sleep. He had pulled into a parking lot on the far north side of Madison, Wisconsin, to get a little rest. Sleep refused to come. The cold didn’t bother him. Nor did his hunger. Nor, unexpectedly, did the capture of Tiamat.

  The entire crisis kept him awake.

  His Crow friends had called him a young Crow hero back in Philadelphia, partly joshing and partly because they didn’t know what to make of him and what he did. Yet, for all his activities, he seldom did more than react, a following along with the flow of life. What made him special was the fact he didn’t give up as easily as the other Crows.