The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Four Read online

  The Good Doctor’s Tales

  ~ Folio Four ~

  Randall Allen Farmer

  Copyright 2012 by Randall Allen Farmer

  The Good Doctor’s Tales

  ~ Folio Four ~

  Author’s Introduction

  This novella length document is a collection of short pieces, stand-alone and otherwise, related to “All Beasts Together” (Book Three of the Commander series). As with the extra features common to DVDs, the various parts of “The Good Doctor’s Tales” are not essential to the story “All Beasts Together” tells; instead, they add to it.

  The Horaces

  The Inferno diplomat Transform, Sadie Tucker, marched back to their juice-stinky Inferno loaner vehicle, a newspaper over her head to keep off the rain. Some damned weather system from the tropics, long degraded to a heavy rainstorm, had washed out the bridge they originally planned to take to cross the Greenbriar River. She climbed into the front passenger seat of the hippy-painted VW bus, a vehicle much too small for Sir Sellers and Hoskins.

  “There’s another crossing in Bellepoint, five miles further down State 12,” Sadie said.

  “Bellepoint? Where’s Bellepoint? It’s not even on this damned map,” Occum said, annoyed and grumbling as usual. Sadie found a pencil nub on the floor of the VW bus, from under a six month old newspaper want-ads section, and circled a location on Master Occum’s map, just south of a town on the map named Hinton. “Well, dammit, I guess that’s not too bad.”

  She passed the newspaper to Hoskins. “Take a look, Crabby,” she said. Hoskins suffered Sadie’s abuse without comment. Sir Sellers knew his boss Beast, not yet Noble, felt down and chastised. He had wanted to do this mission by himself, a quest to make himself Noble, but Master Occum decided one lone semi-civilized Beast versus two wild Beast Men would be too much of a risk.

  Sir Sellers glanced at the newspaper, not a local paper but one all the way from Charleston, a goodly fraction of a hundred miles north of their hunt location in southern West Virginia, and noted an article near the bottom of the front page about howling and fighting Monsters. Yep, those two idiots were attracting too much attention. He hoped Occum’s crew would get to the Beast Men before some damned Monster hunters shot them to shit. Dead Beast Men wouldn’t make a good addition to Master Occum’s Boston family.

  He leaned forward and looked at the map in Master Occum’s hands, glad to be able to read maps again. All thanks to Master Occum’s work. Sadie drew a pencil line on the map, north of the Greenbriar River. “There are county roads that follow the river all the way to Bellepoint, and according to the gas station manager, they’re all open.”

  “Good enough for me,” Occum said. He started up the weak-motored vehicle, backed it up with a clashing of gears, and started it back up State 12, their third time down this most annoying road.

  Sir Sellers put his left hand-like paw on Sadie’s shoulder, on the checked blouse she wore today above her calf-high leather skirt. He made sure not to knock the purple beret off her head, as he did last time he tried this. “You did good, Sadie,” he said, attempting to speak normally, and not get flustered and leave out any essential sentence parts. “Thank you.”

  She flinched away, again. He had been talking to their household women Transforms, at least the ones they had been able to stabilize in a human enough form to talk, about proper ways to woo women. Difficult conversations, as most of the women in Occum’s Noble household had lost more words than Sir Sellers, but still interesting. He was advised to ‘remain calm’, ‘be attentive and helpful’, ‘go slow’, and ‘talk to her and tell her she is beautiful’. The latter would be a stretch. He had no idea why he was attracted to Sadie, save that his feelings ran deeper than his ‘available woman, have sex’ emotion.

  He couldn’t understand her reactions, though. She liked him, and even called him ‘Sir Sellers’ instead of something derogatory like ‘Doggy’. But if she liked him, why did she keep saying she would never have sex with him? Or saying things like ‘Ewwww’. She tried to tell him why, several times, but her explanations went over his head.

  So he kept trying.

  They found Bellepoint, a one gas station town not worthy of a name, and crossed the Greenbriar River without problems. Both he and Hoskins admired the raging river, more appreciative of nature in its rawest forms than either Master Occum or Sadie. Soon, both he and Hoskins rode with their heads out the van’s windows, sniffing for their targets. Master Occum drove them up into the hills and the nearby low mountains, the chugging van struggling to gain the necessary thousand feet of elevation.

  “There,” Sir Sellers said. “I’ve got them.” He was good at hunting. He found targets much farther away than anyone else. Sadie called him ‘Farsight’, the same name the other Inferno Transforms used, but only in her notes. “Not far away. Three miles. South.”

  Master Occum abruptly stopped the van on the side of the road, where it widened as it went around a curve over a three hundred foot valley. “I’m not getting anything, dammit. I should be able to pick up any Transform at three miles. What’s going on, you two?”

  “It’s all this rock,” Hoskins said. Sir Sellers nodded. The hard rock in these mountains messed up their metasense. He had known this instinctively when he had still been Rover, and needed places to hide. Now he could almost understand and explain the problem. He tried to put together a sentence, but couldn’t come up with anything better than Hoskin’s ‘rock’ comment. “Sir Sellers, where are they, exactly?”

  “See that big mountain right there?” Sellers said. He pointed. Master Occum got out a different map, one with extra curvy multi-colored lines and incorrect road positions. Some government map from a generation ago. “Wolf Creek Mountain,” Occum said. “Three thousand feet elevation, about five hundred feet up and three and a half miles south. I sure as hell hope we can get closer on these damned twisty roads, or we won’t be able to make the capture before sunrise.”

  Capture was their goal. Two new Beast Men for the family. They didn’t worry about the Beast Men noticing them. Master Occum said he had that problem covered.

  These were stupid Beasts. Sir Sellers couldn’t help but pity them, stuck with their minds going bad, and fixated on just one thing – each other. They fought. Where one went, there went the other. Even Monsters were smarter than unstabilized Beast Men. Lots smarter, according to their most recent captured Monster, Suzie. As soon as Master Occum had found a way to help Suzie become human enough to have speaking parts – a trick of the élan draw process – she had been able to talk intelligently. A bit complainy, Sellers thought, unhappy that becoming more human was making her less smart. Last week, Master Occum sold an interview with Suzie to Focus Rizzari’s household, Inferno. Sir Sellers got to sniff around Ann of Inferno again, but he was beginning to lose interest. He suspected Ann of Inferno liked her men less Beastly than his current stable form.

  They drove across the next valley and up the other side, the van complaining the entire way. “Got them,” Occum said. He had them on his metasense, the old Crow better with his true metasense tricks than either Sir Sellers or Hoskins. “They’re close together, on the top of the mountain.”

  An image popped into his mind of two oversized gorillas clinging to a sharp mountain peak, beating at each other. “Won’t they fall off?” Sir Sellers asked.

  “No, you big galumph, the top of this mountain is fairly flat.” Master Occum shoved the old map in front of Sir Sellers’ eyes. “The red lines indicate elevation.”

  Sir Sellers examined the area on the map. “No red lines there.”

  “Uh huh, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  Sir Sellers scratched his head
. He didn’t understand. He would have Master Occum explain this later, when Master Occum had time to repeat his explanation several times.

  “No roads go there,” Hoskins said. “We must carry both of you.”

  Sir Sellers smiled. This sounded like fun, and a good opportunity.

  Master Occum stopped the van and they got out. First, Master Occum had him and Hoskins kneel, while they went through the hunting Rules. Important, as this was a real hunt. The dreaded fiasco demon would be after them again, in any open situation like this.

  After some arranging of their specially made packs, Master Occum ended up on Hoskins’ shoulders, sitting on his pack, while Sadie sat on his shoulders and pack.

  Perfect. Time for more wooing.

  “I like you. You are very beautiful,” Sir Sellers said, as they started up the mountain. They followed a wet creek bed, a part of the old map where the red lines weren’t so close together. Having Sadie on his shoulders stiffened his manhood, but the household women warned him not to mention that sort of thing. So he didn’t.

  Sadie sighed.

  “Pardon me, Sadie. I still do not understand. You asked us to treat you like a man,” Sir Sellers said. “You are a woman. You have woman parts.”

  She rested her much smaller head on the top of his much larger head. When they stood next to each other, the top of her head came barely six inches taller than his belly button. Sadie being on his shoulders worked much better. She sighed again, and he could sense her exasperation.

  “I like women for sex, the same as you do,” she said. She had said that before, but he still didn’t understand. How could that possibly work?

  “You must be mistaken,” he said. “This I can fix.”

  Sadie snorted. “Next time, I’m going to see if I can convince Connie to send Tina on one of these.” That didn’t sound good at all. His wooing must not be going well.

  “Quiet, you two non-lovebirds,” Occum said. “I can cover your glows from these idiots’ metasense, but I can’t cover your big yaps.”

  Sir Sellers nodded, sending Sadie bouncing on his shoulders. No, she had to be mistaken. Those were definitely woman parts bouncing on him.

  Perhaps he should nod again.

  After hiking uphill for a half hour, the creek bed above them filled with boulders, forcing them to clamber up the last bits of steep slope, slowly, boulder to boulder. Soon they reached the top of the mountain, and as Master Occum amazingly predicted, the land was indeed flat up here. The rain picked up, as did a gusty east to northeast wind. Master Occum kept them downwind as they approached the Beast Men, which Sir Sellers had no trouble smelling now. He also smelled Monster, and blood.

  Master Occum stopped them; with hand signs, he indicated Sadie should climb down. Sir Sellers knelt and readied himself. He metasensed the two Beasts clearly, a quarter mile ahead. The two Beast Men pawed and growled at each other, a dead and partly eaten Monster between them. Ah. The source of their current disagreement.

  The Beast on the left was bear-like, a black furred Beast with armored plates where skin should be over much of its body, with its fur growing out of the armored plates. The Beast on the right had just as much heavy armor, but his armored plates were red, and covered by scales. The Beast on the right stood on two legs, his body humanoid, his face naked feline, also as red and armored as the rest of his body. Demon, already flame-broiled.

  Sir Sellers turned to Hoskins and followed his signaled instructions. They crept forward, to within four hundred feet. Great rounded rocks covered this part of the top of Wolf Creek Mountain, as did numerous trees. Flat it wasn’t, with rocky undulations twenty to thirty feet deep all around them. They wouldn’t have an easy charge.

  Hoskins pointed out a path, to the left, and finished his point showing a place where a sharp right turn would lead them the last hundred feet to the Beasts. He held up fingers: one, two, three!

  They charged.

  Their targets finally noticed the two of them after they made the sharp right turn. The two armored beasts turned at them and charged, the bear-Beast growling magic fear, the flame-broiled Demon hissing like an angry cat, a hiss with barely any magic in it. Sir Sellers growled, his magical growl far more powerful than either Beasts’. Hoskins joined in, with an instinctive scrape of his chitinous claws on his own tough skin, a sound reminding Sir Sellers of fingernails on a chalkboard. Hoskins had found his magic! Both Beasts froze.

  Sir Sellers’ opponent outweighed him and out-muscled him. However, the Beast Man felt weak, low on juice, and half starving. Sir Sellers knew well how hurting this poor flame-broiled demon must be, as he had been in a similar position not so long ago. Sir Sellers bowled over the terror-frozen Beast Man, and, fighting much faster than the demon, pummeled him about the head until the Beast collapsed. Sir Sellers doggy-sighed. He had hoped for a better fight, but silly Beast Men such as this were no contest for a stabilized trained Noble.

  “See what I mean, Sadie?” Occum said. “The advantages of keeping my charges well-fed and up on élan vastly outweigh the detriments of their near-human shapes.”

  Sir Sellers sat on his former opponent; whenever the Beast twitched, he bashed him in the head with a rock. He agreed with Master Occum’s statement, save that he was certain he and Hoskins weren’t as far up on élan as Master Occum thought.

  Hoskins hadn’t won yet, getting in a much better fight. Hoskins would trip the bear-Beast, give him a few swift kicks, back off, and wait for the bear-Beast to get up on a couple of his feet. Then Hoskins would knock down the bear-Beast again. “Remind me to never grow armor,” Sellers said, to Master Occum. “Makes you slow.”

  Master Occum and Sadie scrambled over to Sir Sellers just as Hoskins finished off his opponent. Master Occum did his thing, the Crow dross trick Sir Sellers could barely metasense. The fight went out of the flame-broiled demon Beast. A moment later, Master Occum did the same to Hoskins’ opponent.

  “Master Occum, how will we get these Beasts home?” Hoskins said. “With this armor, my guy weighs a ton!”

  “Damn, you’re right, Hoskins,” Occum said. “Perhaps…”

  Sniff. Sniff sniff. Monster!

  Acting on instinct, Sir Sellers turned to his right, growled with magic, and charged. Hoskins, a moment slower, did the same. Intruders! A man in a police uniform riding a bipedal Monster that looked like a bulked up ostrich!

  The man in the police uniform waved his hand and Sir Sellers’ world turned black. He fell, hard, to the rocky ground.

  Sir Sellers awoke, his ears ringing, the rest of him dizzy and nauseated. Danger! He rose to his knees and looked around. Sadie lay slumped on the ground beside him, unmoving but still alive. The flame-broiled demon Beast also lay flat and unmoving, a few feet away.

  Master Occum stood behind a properly protective Hoskins, facing the police officer, who still sat on his Monster steed. What were they? He could metasense neither of them. He only recognized the ostrich as a Monster by her looks.

  “Well, we tracked them, too,” Occum said. Sir Sellers had awakened in the middle of a conversation. “Only we tracked them, fought them, subdued them, and after all that joined them to our family.”

  “So you did, but my claim takes precedence,” the police officer said. “Besides, what good can you make of these? Turn them into more of your still-Beastly horde? As I am the true expert in this area, you have no claim.”

  “Still Beastly?” Hoskins said, ignoring a ‘shush!’ from Master Occum. “There is more to being a civilized Beast than looks. Hear me talk, Mr. Wandering Shade. My half-Beast form lets me fight and deal with Transforms. Can you do better?”

  “So it talks and reasons,” the police officer, this Wandering Shade person, said. “Your other one isn’t worth tossing a doggie bone to.”

  “Hey,” Sir Sellers said. His world still swam around him, keeping him from being able to charge this obvious enemy. “I talk, too. What’re you, anyway?”

  The police officer laughed. One instant he was a
male police officer riding a Monster, the next a bus-sized dragon with smoke streaming out of his mouth, the next a short scantily-clad woman with the most absurd muscles Sir Sellers had ever seen on a human, the next a tall white-blonde haired fairy princess riding a white charger. “I am what I am, weak one.” The fairy princess turned back into a police officer.

  Sir Sellers shook his head in annoyance and, yes, fear. Throughout the display, he metasensed no juice, élan or dross use.

  “I would rather keep this simple, Wandering Shade,” Occum said. “But you are out of line here. Your provocations will lead to a fight, against all four Beasts and myself.” To mark Master Occum’s point, both of the recently humbled Beasts stood, ready to fight to defend Master Occum. Sir Sellers managed to make it to his feet as well, and of the lot, he was the least steady.

  Their opponent noted Master Occum’s trick with mild admiration. “Your methods may have their advantages, but my strength and skill dwarfs yours,” Wandering Shade said. The night sky above them began to writhe, becoming a mass of fire breathing dragons. “Leave me to my new charges, and I will forget this ever happened.”

  Sir Sellers readied to charge, as did the flame-broiled demon Beast who now served Master Occum.

  Hoskins didn’t ready a charge. Instead, he stood tall and strong, his glow as if the light of the world was upon him. Sir Sellers paused, wondering what Hoskins was doing.

  “Master Wandering Shade…may I call you that?” Hoskins said.

  “You may,” the police officer said. “Do you have something to add? Some other purile threat?”

  “You are similar to Master Occum, are you not? The other Major Transform master of Beasts?”

  “Why, yes,” the police officer said. Sir Sellers recognized what Hoskins was doing. He was being charming. For a Beast who wasn’t yet Noble, the charming trick was quite potent.

  “You live in the west, my Master says.” Hoskins must have been paying attention to Master Occum’s lessons while Sir Sellers had been off frolicking with the women. Sir Sellers was ashamed he didn’t know what Hoskins even referred to. “How far east have you ever grabbed a Beast Man?” Hoskins gently lowered his right arm to where he could hold back Master Occum, who felt nearly as beastly as the Beasts, right now.