The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine Read online

  He had no idea how doomed he was. “I’ll be waiting for your army,” she said, radiating false fear. “The day you come for me, you’ll finally understand true Major Transform power.” Her lie was as bald as one of his giant grains of sand.

  She slunk away and left Wandering Shade behind, as he openly celebrated what appeared to him as a massive psychological victory.

  Wandering Shade expected the Detroit fight to be an easy win. Without realizing it, the fool had given her a weapon of unimaginable proportions.

  Trust

  “Guru Shadow!” Master Occum said.

  Earl Sellers looked down from where he was working on fixing up the Commoners’ house. He liked working in the out-of-doors in winter; hell, he liked being in the out-of-doors in winter, regardless of the excuse. Years ago during the Depression, the CCC had built numerous cabins in the National Forest like this. Only a few of them were still in use. The rest, like this one, had turned out to be too far from roads and access. Seldom used and too expensive to maintain, they had been left to slowly decay. The roof on this one had partly fallen in years ago. Sellers redid the roof; he had the plywood down and the roofing felt down, and was a quarter of the way through the shingling.

  Yes, that did look like Guru Shadow at the edge of the trees. Sellers metasensed nothing, though. Guru Shadow looked wounded, which meant trouble, so Sellers leapt off the roof and took a guard position five paces from the older Crow and protectively close to Master Occum.

  “I’m sorry to impose on you this way, kind Occum, but I have unknowns after me, and need shelter,” Guru Shadow said.

  “What sort of unknowns?” Master Occum said.

  Guru Shadow’s wounds stank; he hadn’t been taking proper care of them. Sellers studied Guru Shadow and found a single bullet wound, extensive burns on his right side, as well as several partly healed cuts and bruises. How had Guru Shadow managed to make it here? Crows were fragile, barely able to survive battle damage better than a Commoner or Transform, and Guru Shadow was one of the physically weaker Crows.

  “Gun-wielding thugs, at least two dozen of them,” Guru Shadow said. “They ambushed me in my shop in Manhattan, and I thought I lost them, but they rousted me again in Springfield.”

  “Impossible,” Master Occum said. Earl Sellers considered such attacks perfectly possible, but wondered how Shadow had survived a second rousting. Or for that matter, how he had survived a first.

  “Not if a senior Crow or Focus is directing them,” Guru Shadow said. “Or an Arm and a decently powerful Crow or Focus working together.”

  “Guru Shadow?” Duke Hoskins said, walking out of the woods where he had been doing a perimeter patrol. The Duke today was in his part-beast form, walking mostly upright and with a human head, but with a bit of a forward lean; his right arm was a crab-claw arm and his back shell not only covered his back, but extended down to thigh level and up above the Duke’s head. All of the Duke’s part-beast forms were impossible and hurt the eyes to look at. “Sir! How close are they following you?”

  “If I’m lucky, your grace, not at all,” Guru Shadow said. His composure broke, and he began radiating fear and sadness. “I fear, alas, I may not be so lucky.”

  “If I may ask, sir, how did you make it out of either ambush alive?” the Duke said, echoing Sellers’ thoughts. “Not to be too rude to either of you, but Master Occum would have a hard time escaping an ambush by a single thug.” Ah. Sellers nodded at Hoskins, agreeing with his suspicion.

  Master Occum sighed. “Crow Gurus have tricks. Some I haven’t told you about, others I don’t know about.”

  Guru Shadow waved off the question and found a place to sit near their smoldering campfire, after wiping a half inch of slush off a log. “The thugs didn’t have juice or dross on them, but someone found a way to ferry them inside my defenses without me noticing. I was on the roof of my stationery shop before the thugs made it two steps inside. They understood enough about Crows to have someone waiting for me on the roof, which is where I got shot. I disabled the attacker, and the thugs torched my place. I had to run.”

  Guru Shadow shook his head. “When they found me in Springfield, they were using the Crow-hunting tactics the Focuses once used – a loose line of searchers, each within eye contact of at least two others.”

  “So we have Focuses after us?” Master Occum said. That’s what he had concluded about the police and FBI attack on them as well, based on information from the attack and a phone call to Shadow after they had fled Boston.

  “The thug assault is an Arm tactic, the Crow-hunting is a Focus tactic,” Guru Shadow said. Fresh blood seeped into his shirt from the bullet wound in his side. “The fact they can hide from my tricks implies at least one senior Major Transform is involved, and as the Arms have no senior Major Transforms among them, that implies senior Crow or Focus. Worse, someone’s found a way to isolate me in the Pheromone Flow, which implies a seniormost Crow or Focus.”

  “We can’t trust anyone, then,” Master Occum said.

  “Which may be exactly what they want.”

  Sellers and Hoskins exchanged glances. Why, then, should we trust you, Guru Shadow?

  Hung up on the Words

  “Something else is bothering you, isn’t it?” Hank said, still standing by his displayed material. He had finished his talk about Lori’s health during her recovery from the lab ambush, but although Amy Cizek had the ready-to-leave twitch going, neither Ann Chiron, Dr. Bob Masterson or Bill Fentress did. All three still sat in their metal folding chairs as if they had taken root.

  Ann tensed for a moment, and forced herself to relax. “Where’s Sky?”

  “Patrolling with Arm Keaton, I suspect,” Hank said. “Isn’t that what you assigned him?” He thought Sky was a functional member of Inferno these days. In his last visit here, at Christmas, he had gotten to hear Sky grousing, in private, about being assigned bathroom cleanup duty by Connie Yerizarian, the Inferno household president, after one of his escapades fell flat. From personal experience, he knew you couldn’t be any more ‘house-member’ than being assigned bathroom cleanup duty.

  Ann fumed and didn’t answer. “None of us assigned him anything,” Bill said. “After he returned with Ann and Arm Hancock, after Hancock’s dominance contest with Haggerty in New York, Sky wouldn’t even come inside. He’s apparently pissed at us.”

  “For what?” Hank said. If Sky had estranged himself from the Inferno leadership, this would be bad. He was, in some screwy sense, their household Crow.

  The three household leaders looked at each other, perhaps doing a little juice-based signaling. “Sky’s always thought we abuse our Focus,” Dr. Bob said. Interesting choice of spokesman, Hank decided. A normal. He used a hard-earned trick he needed for his Arm work, and repressed the realization that Inferno now had a way to include normals in their juice signaling network. “He thought we had an agreement: if he got the Focus with child, then we’d start treating her with slavish devotion, like in a ‘proper’ Transform household. When we didn’t, he got aggravated with us. This time, I believe he’s annoyed at us because we haven’t gone overboard in caring for the Focus after the attack.”

  Yes, bad. Hank did wonder, though, what was going through Sky’s mind if he thought there was any chance in hell of Lori allowing anyone, household Transforms or not, to wait on her with any form of slavish devotion. The Focus was as bad as any Arm about confusing ‘care’ with ‘weakness’.

  “Lori’s changed a lot since I lived here,” Hank said, careful with his word choice. “She’s much more open and inclusive in her discussions than she used to be, and…” Hank paused, looking for the right way to say it. There wasn’t a right way, so he plowed on, hoping not to step on too many toes. “The Focus is allowing the older household members to touch her and to do things for her. She didn’t allow that, before. You also used to assign Lori punishment duty when she went off on her own, but you don’t anymore, even when she runs off and leaves her bodyguards behind, as in th
e Rogue Focus fight. The external political games during the Rebellion didn’t leave you and the Focus snarling at each other, like they once would have. Pardon me if I’m reading this incorrectly, but aren’t these the changes you were hoping for when you supported Sky wooing her.”

  “Yes,” Ann said, after a few moments of thought. “What you described was our goal. Getting the Focus to unbend a little around us allows us to unbend around her. Help all of us love her, allow her to love us. We’ve made a lot of progress, and we’re hoping we can keep the process going and keep reducing the household tension. Sky’s just being an idiot.” Ann was daring him to agree with Sky.

  “I have a suggestion,” Hank said, watching Ann’s brows come down and her blood pressure rise. “I think you need to figure out more about Sky. He’s a much older Transform than the Focus, and he’s been through much worse periods in his life than you can imagine. He also suffers from extensive mental scarring from multiple low juice episodes. Civilizing any Major Transform is hard; I’ve gotten my mind shredded by Focuses and my body scarred up by Arms so regularly I consider this part of my job description. However, I’ve never been able to make a personal connection with Sky, despite the amount of time we’ve spent together. The Crow Gilgamesh, who will be arriving soon, is much easier to deal with and understand because he’s so much younger as a Transform.” Hank kept a hawk’s eye on Ann. She hadn’t anticipated where Hank was going, and as he hoped, he had engaged her professional mind as well as her emotions. He was manipulating her, but as always, she understood and tolerated it. In Ann’s eyes, Hank was the perpetual underdog because he wasn’t a Transform.

  “Despite what you may have learned from Sky’s example, there are certain shared Crow characteristics, just as there are shared Focus characteristics. For instance, Crows like calm and quiet,” Hank said. “They love being appreciated. They’re empathic, and invite empathy, as well. You’ll want to befriend them, cuddle them, and vice versa – men and women. They don’t like fights and confrontations. They appreciate beauty, though each Crow seems to have a different definition of it. Gilgamesh, for instance, gets misty eyed around intricate machines and mechanical devices, and you’re missing a major opportunity if you don’t befriend him and get him sucked into the Bob’s Barn crew,” Hank said, looking at Bob. When Hank had arrived in Inferno, Connie had shoved him at Dr. Bob, knowing they would hit it off. Connie, as good as she was with Transforms and normals, hadn’t figured out Crows, yet. From Hank’s conversations with Gilgamesh, the Crow didn’t even know Bob’s Barn existed.

  “Before Gilgamesh transformed, he was a professional engineer, and before he moved to Detroit he worked at an oil field service firm he founded in Houston, with Focus Laswell’s help. He and Carol had been teaching each other – at Arm speed, if you’re familiar with the term – all about modern electronics, especially electronic surveillance systems.”

  “You’re kidding,” Ann said. “I would have never pegged him for being an engineer.”

  “Crows don’t give off any of the normal signals you’re used to. I was able to dig this out of Gilgamesh after a lot of work, but Sky is so scarred up I can’t figure him out at all. That’s your job, Ann. You and Connie, that is. Figure out Sky.”

  Ann, Bob and Bill stood without thanking him and retreated to the doorway, where they conversed, partly in whispers and partly by juice signals. Hank put away his materials, slowly, not at all missing the fact the trio were blocking the doorway and keeping him from leaving.

  Amy Cizek walked over, grabbed him by the elbow, and motioned with her eyes for him to follow her to the far side of the lab, hidden from the doorway and the three adults by a ratty equipment cabinet. “Gilgamesh.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve actually talked to him?”

  “Quite a bit, Amy,” Hank said. “Is there a problem?”

  “Well, I know the Focus likes him, and has gotten intimate with him, but, well…” Amy’s voice trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “He barely talks to any of us,” Amy said. “You know, Sky is interested in us, but Gilgamesh isn’t at all. Or…” Amy reddened “we’re not interested in him. Like that, you know what I mean? Any idea why?”

  Hank’s eyes opened wide. “I wouldn’t use Sky as the measure of all Crows. Gilgamesh possesses a more typical Crow personality. Still…” Not to have attracted any interest from any of the women in the household? With the amount of time Gilgamesh had spent inside Inferno, he should have attracted some attention. On the other hand, this did partially illuminate a recent discussion he had with Gilgamesh, just before Gilgamesh left for Detroit.

  ---

  “Doc, do you have a moment?”

  Hank looked up from his work in his Houston office to see Gilgamesh standing in front of his desk and took a deep breath to steady himself. “I didn’t hear you come in, Gilgamesh,” he said. He never did.

  On the other hand, he always had time for Crows. He still understood too little about them. He also liked Gilgamesh.

  Gilgamesh smiled, and didn’t say anything. Instead, he just sat in one of Hank’s well-worn second hand office chairs. The office door shut on its own accord behind him. Either that, or Gilgamesh had done something he hadn’t seen.

  “I have a problem.”

  “What sort of problem,” Hank said, softly, echoing Gilgamesh’s quiet voice.

  “Sexual.”

  Hank clamped down hard on his emotions and reactions. Carol had been right; Gilgamesh had consummated his budding relationship with the Focus. How did this work with two Crows and one Focus? Or had Lori stopped seeing Sky? Or…

  Doctor. Think doctor, Hank told himself. Not gossip columnist.

  “Can you describe the problem for me?”

  Gilgamesh nodded, and described. Hank hummed and listened intently, his mind churning. Premature ejaculation, a problem Gilgamesh hadn’t had before his transformation or with Carol. He immediately thought of one of Ann’s predictions. She expected Crows without a juice linkage to a Focus would find themselves in the position of stealth lovers. Stealth lovers in nature were low-rank males who mated with a dominant female behind the back of the dominant male. Not uncommon among primates, though not something seen before in humans – but, then again, wasn’t that true for many Transform behaviors?

  “How important do you consider this problem to be?” Hank said.

  “Critical,” Gilgamesh said. “My partner finds this annoying.”

  Hank repressed a snort of laughter. The Focus was quite capable of being extremely annoyed about many diverse subjects, and quite capable of acting on her annoyances, as well. He remembered Sky’s description of the Focus’s first meeting with him; she had shot at Sky just because he had been fresh. The Focus could be a very dangerous woman.

  One primary property of stealth lovers was they needed to be fast. “I believe this to be a juice induced problem,” Hank said. “Like many similar problems, you should be able to combat it with your Major Transform talents. In addition, I know of some literature regarding this problem that might be of some help.” He wrote down a couple titles of hard-to-find books dealing with the subject of carezza and extended foreplay. They hadn’t done much for him, but he was a normal. A Major Transform ought to be able to make fine use of those techniques.

  “Thanks doc,” Gilgamesh said.

  ---

  Amy’s comments, though not the sort of comments he was comfortable hearing from a fifteen year old, explained why Gilgamesh was stuck as a stealth lover. “I suspect Gilgamesh doesn’t count as being a member of Inferno at the juice level – and Sky does.”

  Amy shrugged. “That matters? I mean, becoming a household member is just a bunch of words. There isn’t anything going on at the juice level when we welcome someone into the household. You’ve been through it, Doc.” He had – the ‘words’ were part of a ritual where you accepted that being a member of Inferno meant there was a price on your head. The ritual was a mock funeral.

>   “It matters at the household superorganism level,” Hank said. Amy’s eyes lit up; they had talked about this earlier, regarding the Focus and her recovery. “Not all juice use is overt. In fact, I have a hypothesis…

  “That’s it,” Ann said. “Sky’s hung up on the words.” Hank blinked, turned toward the voice, and realized that Ann, Bill and Bob had walked over to within hearing distance. Eavesdropping, and in Ann’s case, thinking.

  Hmm. He could believe it. If this were the case, civilizing Sky would be more difficult than he had hoped. It meant Sky had entangled his adaptations to his Crow-ness in his Buddhist beliefs. Tied up in the words, in what Sky called the immanence of existence. Sky’s personal epistemology, reinforced by the juice to shape his reality and close it off from change. Sky was going to fight this tooth and nail, not for an instant knowing why he was having such problems.

  “I’m not sure how you’re going to get to Sky, if you’re correct,” Hank said. “You might also think about how to better make Gilgamesh a part of Inferno. There’s a lot he might be able to do to help you, if you can make him more comfortable here.”

  Bill smiled at Hank’s statement, while Ann remained tense, and Bob looked utterly lost. “Tim says you’re more of a danger to us than Focus Biggioni at her worst,” Bill said. “I never understood, until now.”

  Hank didn’t react. He translated Bill’s comment as ‘we’re not interested in having Gilgamesh as a part of Inferno’. After a short juice signal exchange, he and Ann walked away.

  Dr. Bob didn’t leave, and neither did Amy. “Since you’re in one of your voluble moods, Doc, do you have any problems with giving us a heads up about what really happened at the Plattsburg meeting?”

  “We couldn’t get anyone to spill,” Amy said. “Focus Keistermann is actually going to push the male Major Transform recognition through the Council? This is why the Focus got attacked, isn’t it?”