All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Read Online Free PDF Page A

she said.
    Not true, Hank thought.  Nevertheless, it was something he needed to bring up later.  “You mentioned sliding variables, ma’am, which I’ve also studied,” he said.  “I don’t think I’ve identified all of them, though.”  Keaton sighed, leaned back in her chair and studied the ceiling.  She thought this digression too theoretical.  “Which ones have you identified?”
    Haggerty smiled, the first real emotion she had shown in her presentation.  “Charismatic strength and durability.  I’m sure there are others as well.”
    “Durability?” he said.  “There’s a real difference?”  Haggerty nodded.
    “An important one,” she said.  “I suspect the first surviving members of any group of Major Transforms all have exceptional durability.  This is true for Ma’am Keaton and the oldest surviving Hunter, Enkidu.  I suspect this is also true for the Focuses and Crows, but I don’t have any data to back this up yet.”
    “It’s true for the first Focuses,” Lori said.  “They’re all exceptionally tough, physically, although with Focuses you see it more with the ability to tolerate bad juice than with physique, but it’s all the same, based on my observations.”  She turned to Sky.  “I could say much the same about you.”
    Sky shrugged.
    “There’s a third important variable: metasense range,” Hank said.  “Another thing to note is that among Crows, instead of a single metasense range variable you have a set of independent variables, which isn’t true among the Arms and Focuses, whose metasense talents appear to be all dependent variables.  I think…”
    “ Hank ,” Keaton said, glaring at him.  He shut up.  “Thank you.  You can tell us about this later.  In a report.  A con cise report.”  She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, moody, intolerant.  “Back to the real problem: who is the Teacher?  Is this Rogue Crow, or someone else?”
    “Ma’am, if it’s Rogue Crow, then why did these no-household Focuses end up in a fight with what had to be Enkidu?” Haggerty said.  Another old well-chewed argument.
    “Lack of coordination,” Keaton said.  “Rogue Crow sponsors at least three geographically different groups of Chimeras: the Hunters, Patriarchs and Mountain Men.  There have been fights between these groups in the past.  Why couldn’t he be also sponsoring a group of Focuses?  This is his style: hidden, metapresence masking, and non-standard.”
    Hank licked his lips, ready to jump in, but Sky beat him to the punch.  “Did you sense any withdrawal scarring on these aberrant Focuses, ma’am?” Sky said, to Haggerty.
    “Crow, I’m not familiar with withdrawal scarring of any variety.”
    Sky pointed at Gilgamesh, who tapped one of his tennis balls on the floor in front of him.  Whatever he created Hank could not see.
    “This is an illusion of Enkidu’s glow, what you call a metapresence,” Gilgamesh said.  “Here, and here,” he pointed at nothing, “are the W bands.  They mark the withdrawal scarring done by the Law.”
    Haggerty studied the space in front of Gilgamesh.  “They had withdrawal scarring, then, but instead of metasensing as nodules and stripes, the scars appeared as small tangled knots.”
    “So it could be Rogue Crow, but if it is he’s using a different trick than the Law on them,” Keaton said.
    “Which would be something new, as his captive Focuses among the Hunters do have the Law on them,” Gilgamesh said.
    “There’s another possibility,” Lori said.  “The first Focuses.  Look carefully at my metapresence; I have almost identical scarring, although mine’s muted because of some work Sky and I have been doing to remove it.  This is Focus Schrum’s work.”
    “You knew about this?” Hank said.  He had deduced this over a year ago, and practically fled Inferno in terror, Crow fashion, when he figured it out.  Later, he passed the information along to Sky, who had seen the