An Age Without A Name

By Randall Allen Farmer

The leader of the Arms, Carol Hancock, returns to the Transform community following her successful quest to find a Chimera ally, only to find the Transform community in chaos and despair. The Hunters strike against Chicago has left the Transforms vulnerable and nearly defenseless due to the many dead and wounded. As she begins to pick up the pieces from the wreckage of the war, she faces two problems – how to defeat the Hunters and their growing power, and how to best utilize Mizar, the ‘Beast’ she, Focus Lori Rizzari and Crow Guru Sky fetched from the Canadian arctic.

The west coast Transforms find they are now on the front line against the Hunters and their depredations. Led by the Arm Rose Webberly and her innovative four Major Transform household, and distantly aided by the small but very mobile army of Arm Amy Haggerty and her Noble partner Duke Hoskins, the west coast Transforms are woefully lacking in the resources necessary to stop the Hunters. Worse, they find they are facing new and unexpected enemies.

The Hunters’ war against the Cause and the Transform community enters its final weeks. The Hunter Empire’s victory, which appears certain, will end the Cause and, as they promise, enslave or kill all the Transforms in the United States. Carol and her people must find some way to save the Transform community or it will perish under her command.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Allen Farmer
• Release date: Jul 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370968824

Randall Allen Farmer

Greetings.I am an author, science nerd, an amateur photographer, a father, and a pencil and paper game designer and gamemaster. My formal education was in geology and geophysics, and back in the day I worked in the oil industry tweaking software associated with finding oil. Since I left the oil industry, I've spent most of my time being a parent, but did have enough time to get two short stories published (in Analog and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine). Now I'm giving epublishing a try, and I have an ample supply of novel-length publishable material to polish and publish.

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An Age Without a Name

Book Five of The Cause

Randall Allen Farmer

Copyright © 2017, 2020 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.

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An Age Without a Name

Book Five of The Cause

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,

Throughout the sensual world proclaim,

One crowded hour of glorious life

Is worth an age without a name." -- Sir Walter Scott

Prolog

(3/7/73, before the retaking of Chicago)

Dolores Sokolnik

Bruja Martinez, regarding the Hunter pleasure palace we found in Denver. Could it have been set up by their Shamans? Del said, with caution. She glanced around the church basement reading room again. The faces around her remained grim.

The Las Cruces Baptist church had been their home for the last three days. A dry, barren place, for a dry, poor congregation. The little room smelled of chalk, for reasons Del didn’t understand, and the only sign of warmth was the small library of Bible commentaries on a worn bookcase. By their captive Crows?

Bruja Martinez thought for a moment. She represented the Familia, the people of the Brujas and Duende. Their group of Major Transforms controlled the Transforms in the Chihuahuan desert area of northern Mexico and south, through the mountains, to the Guadalajara area. As well as some of the dryland Transforms of southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. They were Arm Amy Haggerty’s new allies, and both sides remained cautious with each other, as they were still learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I don’t believe so. I metasensed one of their captive Shamans. It was a talent-less thing, crippled by the same demonic possession as the Hunter-beasts. That is, ‘the Law’, the juice construct imprinted in all the Hunters. If their other Shamans are like that, the Denver pleasure palace would have been far beyond them.

Amy’s group had only this morning received word from Chicago of the latest battle between the Hunters and the followers of the Cause. In it, the Hunters attacked the Transform refugee encampment outside of Chicago, and, much to everyone’s surprise, lost. The Chicago defenders were half-heartedly chasing the remains of General Enkidu’s army and preparing an attempt to retake Chicago. They expected the city to be minimally defended, and wanted to grab the opportunity to free the local captive Focuses. The news lifted everyone’s spirits except Amy’s.

Amy distrusted the good news. Del, after much thought, agreed with the older Arm. She wasn’t sure why, but her subconscious refused to consider the Chicago fight as a victory for the good guys, despite the Hunters’ retreat.

Del turned to Amy. Ma’am, my insight is that the Crow faction we know of as the Judges is actively helping the Hunters. The pleasure palace was Crow technology, and if it was beyond the capabilities of the Hunter’s own Crows, then some other Crows must have been responsible.

Last November, one of the Judges, going by the name La Brea, had contacted Dr. Zielinski and passed him information about first Focus Fingleman. They wanted an alliance with Arm Keaton. At least, that’s what they said. They were a secretive crew, and clearly playing their own game. I think the Judges are doing the high-end Crow support for the Hunters, and doing so without being marked by the Law. It’s this Guru-level Crow support that’s allowing the Hunters to increase their numbers so quickly and effectively, though I don’t know the means they’re using. Arm Keaton suspected Wandering Shade hadn’t been working alone, and in her notes, she hypothesized Wandering Shade once led a Crow faction, and needed them in order to be able to do what he did. I believe the Judges are this faction.

Amy met Del’s eyes and studied her, using capabilities Del didn’t yet understand. A large group of Transforms sat around the meeting table in the borrowed church basement. Focus Hargrove, Sinclair and Midgard, Page Stidman the former Hunter, Duke Hoskins, Warden Jane, Bruja Martinez, and Bruja Torres and her partner, Duende Poder. A room filled with grim faces.

Del appreciated her brand new tag from Amy Haggerty, and the protection it offered. She lived a dangerous life these days as part of the fight against the Hunter Empire, an enemy even Amy’s large army wouldn’t be able to defeat without a large number of reinforcements. Del noticed a hardness to her boss recently, a new edge. Haggerty was one of the old Arms; Keaton had never liked her, and yet Haggerty survived her training despite the dislike. Haggerty pushed the Cause and brought the revolution, likely the most consequential individual action any Major Transform had ever accomplished since Focus Seiurs figured out how to move juice from female to male Transforms. Haggerty had taken on the FBI all by herself, fought them to a standstill, and converted a not inconsiderable number of them to her service. Her reputation, as the best pure fighter among the Arms, was self-evident to Del.

For shelter from the coming storm, Del could do worse than Amy Haggerty. She drew comfort from the tag. The Haggerty tag was a hot thing, as alive with energy as Haggerty herself, and sometimes it seemed to burn as it drove Del beyond her limits. Today, though, that heat comforted, a bonfire on a cold night.

A great many cold nights would soon come, Del predicted. Chicago was, somehow, a loss, and that meant more hard battles lay ahead. She would need to develop her own edge. Haggerty didn’t tolerate mistakes in general, and would be less tolerant now.

At least Del contributed something today, her insight from her now fixed-up quiet pools. At Del’s side sat Bruja Modesty, with a patch over her almost re-grown eye, here to show off the changes in her, and so she and Del could support each other. Except for the eye, and the length of her right arm, she looked both healthy and sane, a long step up from her appearance a month and a half ago.

For the first half-hour of the meeting, Sinclair and Amy had grilled Bruja Modesty regarding her recent sessions with Bruja Torres. Following their grilling, and an extensive set of questions to the new Bruja, at Del’s request Amy granted Modesty three new triads, in addition to the five Transforms Modesty won for good behavior. They would hit the clinics shortly if the current crisis allowed.

Yes, Amy said. Her face remained intent and hard as she flitted from one person to the next with her eyes. More than one person paled during their turn under her gaze. I got some information from Zielinski late last year. Sinclair, have you ever heard of a Crow by the name of Athabasca, supposedly a Guru?

Sinclair nodded, and frowned. Yes. Guru Athabasca supports and teaches many of the Crows in the coastal cities of Washington and Oregon. The Crow grapevine refers to them as ‘those jerks’, and no Crow I know of will visit those areas voluntarily. It makes sense to me that those Crows are the Judges.

How about Crow Jester, supposedly a Mentor? Amy asked.

I’ve only heard the name, Sinclair said. And only in the last year or so; the first letters mentioning him appeared in my mailbox two weeks after your successful return from the Eskimo Spear quest. To give you a feel for how nebulous this Jester is, I don’t know or have any letter writing contacts that have met him, or have even talked or wrote to someone who’s met him.

We should hunt them down and take them out, Duke Hoskins said, his voice a deep growl. If we do that, we can cripple the Hunters’ support. Perhaps we can learn enough from them to do some real damage to the Hunters afterwards. He turned to Page Stidman. You ever hear of any Judges, Page?

Page Stidman, in his man form, squirmed. From what Del had seen, the senior Nobles treated the young Nobles (which the former Hunter counted as, despite his age as a Hunter) as roughly as the senior Arms treated the younger Arms. He was well disciplined, though, at least for someone who wasn’t an Arm, and Hoskins’ gaze forgave less than Haggerty’s. Sir. Yes, I’ve heard rumors of Crows, termed the cloaked ones, who aid the Hunters. I believe I even met one, named La Brea. He dressed as a normal human judge, come to think of it.

They hadn’t gotten nearly as much information from Page Stidman as either Amy or Del liked, in part because Hoskins claimed the new Page’s time, and didn’t allow anything proper and Arm-like to be done to the new Noble. Del had a request in with both Amy and the Duke for permission to accept one of the Page’s many combat challenges. She had no doubt she would be able to defeat him, and once defeated and humbled, she might gain enough Major Transform leverage to get him to spill more information.

Their other problem was ignorance about which questions to ask. Page Stidman gave them the names of the leading Hunters, the Hunters’ forces, in part, and the location of several Hunter strongholds, including the street address of Enkidu’s mountain hide-away in Montana. That was where the Hunter leadership kept Focus Elspeth, and yes, Page Stidman verified that ‘The General’ had set up the place to be a trap specifically for them.

This La Brea Crow did seem to get around, though, and since no one had mentioned Doctor Zielinski’s encounter with La Brea to Page Stidman, Stidman’s information was a strong confirmation of Del’s theory.

I believe it’s time we go to the Pacific northwest, Hoskins said. He looked first at Amy, who didn’t flinch or react. This decision was his but not his alone, as he claimed ownership of overall strategic questions, part of his agreement with Haggerty. No Arm appreciated anyone ordering her around, and taking orders from a peer was almost impossible, or so Del thought, without a tagged relationship. Yet, those two had slowly, over the years, beat an alliance between them into shape. Literally beat, in this case. With the added spice of post-combat sex. Nearly as good as a tag would have been, proving the Commander’s dicta that there was nothing a tag could do that couldn’t be done in other ways, albeit much more slowly. Del had seen the senior-most Noble follow Amy’s orders without question in several hot situations, enough to grasp how the strange balance between the two of them had been achieved.

Hoskins then turned to Bruja Torres and Duende Podor. Bruja Torres, an elfin Focus, didn’t react for a moment, weighing her responsibilities before giving a slow nod. Duende Podor, a short hairy mustachioed man with a physique that could only be called ravishingly beautiful, nodded much faster when Duke Hoskins turned to him. As a fellow Chimera, he anticipated combat and wanted hot bloody revenge for the past depredations of the Hunters.

Del relaxed. This was it, proof that the unstated formal alliance between their disparate and foreign Major Transform groups could work at the strategic level. This was new, and filled with stature for everyone in this room, most especially Amy and the Duke.

With any luck, this would give them the edge they needed against the Hunters and their backers. Given the numerical advantage the Hunters possessed, they would need it.

Part One

The Emperors’ Magician

"If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them

by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and

moreover will become good." – Confucius

"You owe it to me, beast"

Henry Zielinski (3/8/73)

Tiny arcs of static electricity coursed across the one millimeter of air between Hank’s thumb and index finger. Or so it seemed. Healing energies. Visible through borrowed metasense, he suspected, although his ability to otherwise borrow metasense remained nonexistent. Obscure, too, as only Guru Chevalier had been able to verify the existence of what Hank metasensed. An observation verifying his sanity. He hoped.

Up before the dawn again, Hank sat in his office. His relatively new ability to heal others, as a Transform, represented power. Something provoking speculation and self-examination. What could he do with such power? What were its limits? Was this something he needed to borrow explicitly from Arm Webberly, or were the chemicals behind this new ability available from any Arm, or perhaps any Major Transform? Might one Transform pass this to another similarly talented Transform?

From his analysis came a new insight on the nature of power as a Transform, Major and otherwise. For years, he had bought into the second and third generation Focus conclusion that the root of evil in the Transform community had been impunity, the power of their leaders to do whatever they wanted. Now, with a true and tangible Transform ability of his own to utilize and ponder, he found a different conclusion.

Evil in the Transform community came from the power to stop, arbitrarily, other Transforms from using their abilities. This was more than just a subset of impunity, but a particular evil all in itself, enabled by the blocker’s impunity.

A bit of juice rattled around in his mind, yanking him out of his distracted cogitation and reminding him of the other early risers in Inferno. The bit of juice in his mind that was his own personal copy of the daily household leadership schedule now showed a newly entered meeting. 9:15, with Arm Webberly, a discussion on the recent events in Chicago.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. Nine days ago, Enkidu and the largest Hunter army yet seen had attacked the Chicago Transform community. The Hunters killed, captured or chased all the Transforms out of Chicago, but failed in their attempt to capture Focus Gail Rickenbach, currently referred to as the Director and the current head of The Cause. Nor did they manage to kill or capture many of Gail’s personal entourage of Focuses, Crows and Transforms. Unfortunately, many of those defending her and her entourage against the Hunters, including the first Noble Chimera, Earl Sellers, did die. Two nights ago, the Hunter army again attacked the Cause’s refugee camp south of Chicago, seeking additional slaughter and captives. This time, the Hunters lost, though Hank still didn’t know the details. Yesterday, somehow, and again doing the seemingly impossible, the Director’s much-reduced army retook Chicago. Focus Rickenbach’s people, many of whom Hank personally knew, had been out of telephone contact ever since the night attack on the refugee camp began. His only information came from those who Dreamed, the Major Transforms able to distantly communicate with other Dreamers. In his case, and that of the Inferno household, his information came from Focus Mimi Minton, a powerful Dreamer and one of the two Focuses who now supported Inferno.

Hank stood, stretched, and left his cramped basement office, not for the meeting, but for breakfast. He ignored his tiny next-door lab and the larger bulk food storage room beyond that, trying not to think too hard about all his shelved researched projects. He missed his old lab in the Littleside complex, and he missed the Commander’s much larger research budget even more.

The idea of a mental schedule still discommoded him, often prompting him to wonder if he had fallen asleep Rip Van Winkle-like and awakened in the future, a future where he assumed all Transform households would utilize these disquieting tricks. This was his life now, though. He had been a Transform for less than three months. Coping hurt, but he soldiered on anyway. Coping.

The Inferno household, his home since late January, currently occupied the Oak Valley nursing home in San Jose, California. Oak Valley had been so mismanaged it went bankrupt, allowing Inferno to acquire the property for an astonishingly small amount of money. The previous owners built this place on an extravagant scale, with wide hallways even in parts of the basement (not his parts of the basement, but some parts). He smiled at the clank of weights from the Inferno gym as he walked over to the elevator, which he took to the first floor. Seeing the early morning twilight outside, he exited the building’s south wing for a short morning stroll. Oak Valley contained two residential floors and was irregular in shape, a crazy quilt of small boxy-shaped buildings linked by short covered walkways, separated roughly into a south wing and north wing, joined by an ugly box of a building with a two story entry area, a central meeting room complete with an unused bandstand, a kitchen, cafeteria and several small meeting rooms and parlors. Hank walked along the winding path through the ill-maintained courtyard between the two wings, overgrown with weeds and dryland scrub, some poking up through cracks between the concrete.

He reached the back entrance to the north wing, nodded at the door guard, and turned to the left, toward the kitchen and group dining area. The night cleaning crew had, as usual, failed to clean all the scuffmarks off the linoleum. Despite their six weeks here and despite the year the bankrupt nursing home sat vacant, the place still reeked of antiseptic and urine. More strolling took him to the central building and into the two story lobby. The lobby sported several recent bullet holes in the walls, left unpatched in memory of the dead.

Through the front lobby windows, he saw Peter Sanders and the grounds maintenance crew already hard at work, toting wheelbarrows of gravel from the gravel pile over to the parking area. Filling in potholes. Behind them sat the thirty foot tall hill that lay to the northwest of the four acre Oak Valley complex, across the street, dotted with a few commercial buildings and blocking the view of most of San Jose proper. A new six hundred acre suburb lay to the east of Oak Valley, about a quarter of the way built out. Oak Valley sat on the south edge of San Jose’s development, and to the south of them sat tall scrub-infested hills that hadn’t changed much since the days of the Conquistadors.

He followed the scent of bacon to the cafeteria, and spotted Van and Daisy Schuber awake and eating breakfast. After collecting his banana and cold cereal, he sat down and joined them. Daisy, Van’s sister, served as Hank’s ‘lab assistant’, though she worked more often these days with Inferno’s depleted bodyguard crew. Van, the estranged husband of Focus Gail Rickenbach, was one of the many house diplomats, and he sat at the table with his usual combination of agitated awkwardness and intense concentration, his left elbow resting on a small document portfolio. Both were normals, and had followed Hank out west with Inferno.

Arm Webberly’s called a meeting this morning to go over the results of the Chicago battles, Hank said. He missed drinking morning coffee, as his newly Transformed body inexplicably made him immune to caffeine. Which annoyed him greatly.

Not for us, Daisy said. Tall for a woman, she towered over Hank while sitting. Her breakfast included a large stack of pancakes and, currently, the remains of one rasher of bacon. Her comment came accompanied by a mild glare. Just you leader types.

Given the circumstances their personal connections to the Chicago crew I’m sure I can get both of you in.

Daisy rolled her eyes, and Van shrugged. I’ll probably get an invite, later, via more normal methods than your invite, Van said, tapping the side of his head. As a normal, he didn’t have access to the household superorganism-based schedule. Have you made any progress figuring out why us normals aren’t connected to the schedule? We know Focus Fingleman’s household’s normals were able to pick up on such things.

One of the passersby stopped, turned, and decided to join them at their breakfast table. How do you know that? the woman, Ann Chiron, said. She sat, smoothed her blue jeans, and began to pick at her breakfast of yogurt-doused granola. She said it with a hint of Focus charisma in her voice, which Van, with long experience resisting his estranged wife’s powerful charisma, ignored. For the moment, he sipped coffee and nibbled at the fruit in his fruit cup. Ann, as always a bit annoyed at Van, waited him out. The two had become quite competitive in their attempts to intellectually one-up the other.

Two ways, he said, after finishing his fruit cup. The most important is what you witnessed in San Diego. He referred to the superorganism-directed joint suicide of part of Focus Fingleman’s household, which included several normal non-Transforms. Nobody else in Inferno would discuss this topic. Ann nodded.

The other?

Dahlia Woo chewed me out a few days ago for not responding to a question she sent to me via the superorganism, Van said. She didn’t realize the Inferno normals couldn’t do more than feel the presence of the household.

Interesting, Ann said. Dahlia’s been very reticent. She doesn’t like to talk about her former household, and won’t say anything about their superorganism capabilities. Ann found Dahlia frustrating to deal with, Hank knew. Which he sympathized with. Dahlia, before her transformation, had been a spy, a femme fatale, or something close to it. Although in her late 40s, she aged well, one of the Transform benefits he had seen in a few, and one he feared to write up for publication. Dahlia appeared stuck in her late 20s or early 30s in apparent age.

I’m not sure that’s a superorganism thing, Daisy said. You know my hypothesis on the subject. They all nodded. Daisy suspected they missed an axis of Transform capabilities, some method or methods of Transform juice interactions beyond that of the household superorganism. Why? Her most embarrassing assertion that her orgasms felt different and more intense in Inferno than during her time as a member of Focus Rickenbach’s household, the Abyss. She didn’t have any Inferno superorganism access at all, and couldn’t even ‘feel the household’ as Van could. Yet, according to her, her orgasms felt different.

You need a better test case, Ann said. Daisy smirked.

Hank shook his head. Daisy’s smirk, though, triggered a few memories of his own on the subject, which led him to an unexpected realization that, as a true Inferno household leader because of his household research and combat experiences, he was now a leader among all Transforms. But how? He hadn’t been a Transform for long enough, and compared to Ann, one of the few people he knew of smarter than him, he remained ignorant about too much of Transform life. Yet, according to his gut instincts, he was such a leader.

He caught Ann looking at him. Reading him. Anyone who’s a Savant is a true Transform leader, Hank, she said. Regardless of their experience.

Ann’s comment elicited a snicker from both Van and Daisy, not at his discomfort, but at the ‘Savant’ term. ‘Savant’ was Ann’s term for a Transform who had mastered at least some aspect of the art of borrowing Major Transform abilities. Nobody else used the term. Ann ignored the snickers. Don’t denigrate yourself, Hank. Yeah, you’re a short-timer here, everyone expected the Commander to reclaim him as soon as she returned from the Yukon, but you’re making amazing progress at superorganism access. Plus, your research is extremely important to Inferno.

He wasn’t the only one with short-timer syndrome sitting at the table. Ann, he knew, was getting bored with Inferno; her position as behind-the-scenes household leader was based on the need for someone to interpret and ‘manage’ their old Focus, Lori Rizzari, a need currently superfluous. Ann needed a new challenge in her life. I think…

Van interrupted. Here’s another one, Ann.

Another what?

Another example of something Transform that falls outside of the standard superorganism definitions. He smiled. Ann smiled back. The two of them smiled at each other for far too long, their smiles getting falser by the moment. Eventually, Van gave in without any further prompts by Ann. Cold brewed coffee.

Hank frowned, not understanding the reference.

It was okay, but not that good, Ann said. Hank’s frown turned into a smile. Daisy laughed.

No, not the coffee, but people’s reaction to it, Van said. Back in the Abyss, I couldn’t even get fridge space for it. Everyone thought cold brewed coffee was just wrong. Everyone, normals and Transforms alike, with amazing uniformity. Here, though, not only could I get fridge space for it, but also I could get people to try it, both normals and Transforms. It’s even become one of the staple Inferno drinks. A tiny minority here even like it. Now that I think about it, I suspect these reactions were and are juice-based.

Ann studied Van for a moment, her head gliding a bit to the left and right, a snake eyeing a prey mouse. You’re right. That’s beyond the ambit of the household superorganism. Either we’re wrong about how the household superorganism works or we’ve got a new phenomenon to study.

---

Do you have a moment? Van asked. He followed Hank out of the dining area. Daisy followed Ann, giving Ann more graphic details about Daisy’s orgasm observations. Hank was glad to be out of hearing range of that conversation.

Of course, Hank said. He looked around for a place to settle and found the parlor off the entryway, saving them the long trip back to his cramped office.

Van and Hank settled into a couple of comfortable Queen Anne chairs in the tastefully decorated parlor. It was a beautiful place – Mrs. Ardoin had been busy, despite the chaos in the rest of the world.

What’s up? Hank said.

Van leaned back and peered over his glasses. Gallup just finished a survey a couple of days ago. They were putting together figures on people’s attitudes toward Transform Sickness. I have a friend who knows someone who works for Gallup.

You’ve got the results?

Van took papers out of his small document portfolio and spread them on the table between them, at the foot of the beautiful Japanese style arrangement of dried flowers.

Hank looked at the figures and frowned. This doesn’t look good. People are starting to panic.

Van shook his head. We knew this would happen as soon as we hit the public consciousness. No way around it, not after Calgary and Chicago. Look over here at this figure. Van shuffled through the papers and pulled one to the top.

Hank shook his head. I don’t see it. What’s wrong with these results?

Not what’s wrong. What’s right. Look, over here. The question about ‘all Transforms should be confined for public safety’. That’s twenty-two percent.

That doesn’t sound good to me, Hank said.

It’s expected. Contrast that with ‘The Hunters are a clear danger to humanity’. That’s over fifty!

Yes, Hank said, and frowned. He didn’t understand Van’s insight.

Yeah, well, the difference is significant. This means people are differentiating the Hunters from the rest of the Transform community. Given how recently the Hunters hit the public eye, it’s fabulous. It’s also critical. It means that we might be able to avoid being tarred by the evil crap the Hunters do. If we’re real lucky, we might even come off as the good guys, because we’re ‘the other side’.

Hank nodded. The television appearances are working. Including his. Hank flipped through to another barely glimpsed page. ‘Arms are a clear danger to humanity.’ This one is seventy-three.

"They didn’t ask this question a year ago, but I bet if they did, the response would have been over ninety. Somewhere out there, Hank, twenty-seven percent of this country doesn’t think Arms are a danger to humanity."

Yes, but seventy-three percent does. We have a long way to go, Hank said. Still, Van did have a point. Given the history of the early Arms, it surprised Hank the number wasn’t a hundred percent.

Yeah. We’re going to be fighting attitude issues until the Transform population takes off. But we’re a hell of a lot better off than I thought we would be right now.

Hank pulled the papers into his lap and started leafing through them. Bad, yes, but better than he expected. Probably good for a few more survivors, when the real panic hit. Maybe one or two percent.

Hank? Van said.

Yes? Hank put the papers down.

What do you think of Mimi’s progress?

I’m quite pleased. She’s gaining confidence and expertise quite nicely, and so far seems to be avoiding the wild swings of temperament we’d initially feared. Why?

Van took his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt. So how human is a Focus, anyway?

Ah, Hank thought to himself. There was a lot festering underneath Van’s little question, difficult emotions regarding Gail. Love, fear and anger, the same emotions Hank felt toward the young, now so-important Focus. It didn’t help that Mimi’s earlier trauma made her less emotionally attached to Inferno than a Focus normally would be. Despite the fact she had physically helped defend the household, and thus gained her the undying adulation of well over 90% of the household members, the empathic closeness wasn’t there. You know, I have a mental model of Major Transforms I’ve been using for the last five years or so that’s stood me in pretty good stead.

Which is?

I think of a Major Transform as a complete human being, with a few extras mixed in. They’re not less than human, they’re more.

Van leaned back and put his glasses back on. So do you think they still love the way a normal does?

Hank sighed and ran his hand over his bald spot. He had worn his toupee for so long he felt odd to be without it, or to wear his now snowy white hair undyed. Now, exposed in what turned out to be a nationwide television broadcast about the Cause, he no longer bothered with the toupee. No more living as a secret identity for him. You’re thinking about Gail, right?

Van shrugged. Gail, Mimi, and Denise. Focus Denise Pitre was the second Focus currently attached to the Inferno household. Broken by Arm Keaton, she slowly recovered from her earlier suicidal state. And the Commander. Van paused. I talked to Gail before the attack in Chicago. Not the first phone conversation between the two of them, and hopefully not as bad as some. Van wouldn’t elaborate, Hank realized, but knowing Gail and Focuses, he heard the imagined conversation in his head – Van was vulnerable, and needed to be somewhere safer than with Inferno. Somewhere without Transforms. I couldn’t understand where she was coming from. She wasn’t being very logical.

Hank nodded. The emotions are all still there. Sometimes even more so. Carol certainly loves. Passionately. With Arms, it isn’t the same as normals, but it’s still there. The Focuses are only now learning how to love, because they’re only now escaping from the hell of low juice. However, in my experience, they love more when they come to themselves. More people, more passionately. Gail had been a human tornado ever since she got access to her juice buffer and a reasonable juice count. Sufficient juice turned her into a hugger, not Hank’s favorite variety of person, but he had definitely noticed the beneficial effects of this on the Abyss, Gail’s household. For one thing, their household had remained nameless until Gail’s transformation into a hugging Focus.

Unfortunately, the person who named the household, Van, now sat across from Hank, estranged from both Gail and the Abyss.

But locked into patterns defined by their Major Transform juice structure, Van said, pushing his glasses farther up his nose.

A subject dear to Hank’s heart. Among those Major Transforms who’ve gained control over their juice and have left their instincts behind, the spread of personalities has proven to be wider than the personality spread between the Major Transforms. Someday soon, I predict we’ll see a Crow as predatory as an Arm, and an Arm as skittish as a Crow. His long association with Cindy Lederer, the Arm-Crow Sport, spoke to that. The power of humanity was to rise above the physical, and Hank doubted the stereotypes, the physical restraints of the Major Transforms, would be able to hold them within the tiny buckets the physical defined.

Van stared at the marble sculpture on the other side of the room and didn’t answer. Beside it stood a glass case, and in the glass case, the Eskimo Spear, no longer hidden away in a shielded box, at Gail’s demand-like request. Even Chevalier couldn’t convince it to spill its many secrets, though he revealed more of the first memory than anyone else. Hank walked over to it and opened the case. Touch it. Take it in your hands.

That’s a Crow thing, Van said, hesitating, but then he reached toward it, prompted by Hank’s charisma. It won’t do anything…

Van stopped talking, because after he picked it up he had seen. The spear itself was recovering, growing over time to become both what it had once been, and something new, besides. Normals were no longer immune to its larger message.

The Eskimo Spear was the heart of The Cause.

"It’s true that all we see when we pick up the Eskimo Spear is the one memory of the last Crow shaman who used it. Yet, even that one tiny vision is enough. They may have been primitives, but those Eskimo Transforms thrived, along with the normal tribe members. The survival program the Cause promulgates does work.

If we take this household redefinition to its logical conclusion, Hank said, and we get households with four Major Transforms, think what that will mean. A Focus is equipped to love a Crow, a Chimera, an Arm, and all the Transforms of her household. I suspect they have enough in them to love husbands, too.

That’s an awful small piece of a Focus to be left with, after she’s divvied up the pot to so many other people.

Hank nodded. But it’s an awful big pot. Major Transforms, especially top quality Major Transforms, are bigger than us more normal people – and they’re still growing. For instance, they can’t yet make things like what you hold in your hand.

Van didn’t answer.

Hank took a moment to look again at the small gap between his right thumb and index finger, and the tiny static sparks he metasensed running between them. Healing! The possibilities for helping others seemed almost endless. Guru Chevalier hadn’t been worried about the display, which used almost no juice. He did worry about the psychological effects on Hank of being able to heal others. ‘Giving a Crow an unnatural capability to satisfy his desires is almost always hazardous, if not fatal,’ the older Crow Guru had said, in warning. Of course, the Crows were overly paranoid.

---

The last thing Hank expected from Arm Webberly was a long presentation. Not that he found her presentation boring; she spent over an hour at the chalkboard, going over the military maneuvering involved in the penultimate stages of the Chicago battles, emphasizing the effects of attrition and reinforcement on both sides of the fight. The details of General Enkidu’s slow retreat and the failure of the Hunter ghost trick to allow a small number of senior Hunters to hold Chicago was new to everyone in the room. Hank hadn’t been the only Inferno household leader to squeeze a few extras into the meeting, and the Oak Valley meeting room ended up being the only room large enough to hold the crowd.

The casualty lists were sobering, though.

Although Enkidu remains in the wind, uncaptured, I believe the Hunter momentum is now spent, Arm Webberly said. She was tall, and black, and heavy with muscle, but even in front of a chalkboard, she moved with an Arm’s athletic grace. He was forced to slink away from a defeat for the first time since the start of their vile offensive. I suspect General Enkidu and the Hunters will need to regroup. They may need to return to their Montana mountain strongholds for several weeks, if not months, before they’re ready to strike at us again. By that time, I am assured that the Commander, Focus Rizzari and Guru Sky will have returned from the Yukon, and the Hunter Empire’s brief window of opportunity will be forever shut.

Hank breathed a sigh of relief. Since the fall of Focus Patterson two and a half months ago in the Pittsburgh battle, and his transformation, the one question that never left Hank’s mind was ‘where will the Hunters strike, and how hard?’. First came the probing attacks, including in San Jose. Then came their first major strike, on Calgary, not only chasing Arm Armenigar out of her long-held territory but also taking over the town from the normal authorities, running them around like puppets. Next, the full force of the Hunters fell on Chicago, an initial victory that led to their eventual defeat.

Van, sitting on the other side of Daisy, raised his hand. Hank caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, the unfamiliar expression on Van’s face, and Daisy’s studied wince.

This didn’t look good. Daisy almost never winced, well, unless Hank was handing out a disgusting and onerous task to her.

Mr. Schuber? Arm Webberly asked.

"I’m