The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six Read online

  Suzie had given ground on the issue of the younger Focuses and let Polly claim her favor. Good. Tonya hoped and prayed there wasn’t any rift developing between Suzie and Shirley. Such a rift might not only sink her political career, but also endanger her household.

  “Focuses Lorraine Rizzari and Flo Ackermann of Boston,” Polly said. “They’re the two best of the younger Focuses.”

  Tonya winced at the first name mentioned – she found the young and energetic Focus Rizzari insufferable. “Are you willing to vouch for their loyalty?” Suzie said.

  “I think all of us can vouch for Focus Ackermann’s loyalty,” Polly said, “and Focus Rizzari is too talented to be excluded, loyal or not. Let her prove herself with a stint on the executive council. The presentation she made to us last year, although impolitic and impractical, was at least honest and forceful.”

  “Okay, I can live with that,” Suzie said. Tonya didn’t say a thing – she knew her boss’s opinion on Rizzari and her presentation, which was a hell of a lot more favorable than Tonya’s.

  “Suzie,” Tonya said, with charisma inadvertently in her voice. Everyone turned to her – they knew Tonya’s rep for seeing problems, and how she tended to announce her ideas. “I just had a real bad idea cross my mind.”

  “No surprise,” Suzie said with a grimace. In private, Suzie often called her ‘bad news’. “Spill it.”

  “I suspect Focus DeYoung and Focus Julius will end up in conflict with each other, ma’am,” Tonya said. “There isn’t room for two splinter groups among the Focuses, especially with both of these dissident Focuses living in the South Region.” The Focuses had organized in four separate regions – Northeast, Midwest, South and West – because of personality issues among the leading first Focuses. “In my mind, they have to fight, and given the regional personality differences among the Focuses, I fear any conflict between these two factions might end up bloody.” The South Region Focuses had a reputation for being intransigent, stiff-necked, and unwilling to compromise…and their households were all arsenals. Their leader, first Focus Teas, made this worse with her inconsistencies and tendency to turn her latest schemes into life-or-death political questions among the region Focuses. “Whatever comes out of this inevitable conflict may be far worse.”

  Focus Suzie Schrum’s eyes widened at Tonya’s remarks, hot with hostility for a moment, before she relaxed and cocked her head at Tonya. “Damn me for a fool, but you’re right, Tonya. I’ll pass that along. I’d been mostly worried about which other first and second generation Focuses Julius might grab. The possibility of this becoming a shooting conflict, especially with Focus DeYoung’s claim, would make things far worse.”

  “Suzie, could I have a moment of your time?” Tonya said. She had found Suzie behind her car, talking to one of her people and snacking on a cold hot dog and a glass of lemonade. The official meeting had finished ninety minutes ago. Now the Focuses were milling about, organizing the minor cleanup needed, and dealing with one-on-one personal issues with the other Focuses. Tonya had already buttonholed Polly about this Commander nonsense, and learned nothing. That left bracing Suzie, which Tonya would never normally do. Nevertheless, she needed an answer. Every time she thought about the Commander name her juice shivered.

  “Certainly,” Suzie said, turning from her normally growly self to pleasant in an instant. “You’ve done good work recently. Ask away.” The Transform slipped away to let the two Focuses talk undisturbed.

  Suzie didn’t have the chops, charismatically, to read other Focuses. She was, however, cunning. Tonya realized Suzie knew what Tonya was about to say.

  “What’s with this ‘Commander’ business, Suzie?”

  Suzie smiled. Tonya didn’t find the smile comforting. “The name is new, clearly Focus DeYoung’s invention, but you know what she’s referring to: Shirley’s supposed Messiah, the one we’ve all been hoping would show up and save us, since we were in quarantine.”

  Tonya froze in place. Unlike some Focuses, Tonya’s dreams weren’t informative. For instance, Polly’s talents with the Dreaming were legendary, serving as her own private spy network. Tonya’s dreams appeared to be stuck on religious matters, matters of the soul, and of heaven, but she, too, had the dreams of a Transform savior, one who would lead a Transform revolution of sorts.

  This dream-charged Transform savior wasn’t someone she wanted to oppose.

  “This isn’t good,” Tonya said.

  “Well, that’s the understatement of the century,” Suzie said. “Just remember, though, just because this Focus DeYoung is making the claim doesn’t mean she’s right.”

  A Day In The Life of a Recovering Arm

  [Carol’s POV]

  “You will not make this mistake again,” Keaton said.

  I stood straight, holding on to my mop. Soapy water pooled on the truly disgusting garage floor at my feet. “Ma’am?” She sighed, exasperated. I didn’t understand her logic. Or any logic, for that matter. Worse, when she got all hard and tight, I lost track of her mind, which made me dumber than stupid.

  Welcome to another day in the recovery of Carol Hancock, Arm. Right now, I had about ten yesterdays to choose from as memories, several containing giant beds, knives and balloons, which I suspected had bubbled up from my dreams. Just saying.

  “Okay, I’ll say it directly,” she said. “You didn’t put enough work into self-improvement when you lived in Chicago.”

  She paused for a tiny Arm moment, making sure I understood. “The world of Transforms and their abilities is always changing and improving.” Pause. I understood her statement as well. “In the future, you will allocate time to improve yourself, and do so.”

  I understood. I didn’t understand how all three of her sentences fit together, though. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I guess we’ll have to work on the why, later.” Keaton stalked out, leaving me alone, to clean.

  I pushed the mop and thought about her words. Keaton’s garage had been my home during my first week back here after my rescue from the CDC.

  My first week must have been hell for her and Gilgamesh. I hadn’t been able to move. I soiled myself constantly. I couldn’t feed myself. Keaton wasn’t interested in spoon feeding me, and I had been too dangerous for Gilgamesh to spoon feed.

  The big problem had been water. If I didn’t get enough water, I would start running a fever and switch over to something Keaton called ‘juice metabolism’ that for some reason – according to Keaton – wasting juice that should have been going into healing me. Keaton had solved the problem by hooking me up with an IV and a saline drip.

  In a Keatonic bit of exasperation, once I was able to move but not able to control my bowels, she left me bowls of dog food to eat while I remained chained up in the garage. Despite all my cleaning, the garage remained a hell of a mess.

  With Gilgamesh gone, my logic regressed to purely magic, but if I remained patient, and paid attention to the omens, I could figure some things out.

  Keaton’s comments about self-improvement, the ones I understood and the ones I didn’t understand, I translated as this: the other Major Transforms were getting better, so us Arms also had to get better, or we would end up dead. I hadn’t been holding up my end of the deal. I hadn’t wanted to get better, I had wanted to live to get older.

  The mop didn’t get the job done; I had to get down on my hands and scrub. At least Keaton would let me use the shower when I finished.

  “You’re woolgathering, skag! Get the fuck out of your memories and put in some god damned effort!” Keaton pushed her face to mine, spittle flying. “You’re going to die out there if you don’t get your muscle tone back. Hell, if you aren’t going to put that effort into your recovery, I may as well take you over to my little room of pain and see what you look like from the inside out!” She grabbed my hand and pressed, something about the knuckle, and pain like lightning shot through me.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. Keaton never repressed her sadistic nature for long. I q
uit woolgathering and put some real effort into my lats and delts.

  “Hancock!” Keaton said. While I exercised, she had read her correspondences, leaving her severe, unforgiving, and not in a good mood.

  I came running in from the kitchen, arms soapy up to my elbows. Keaton sat in her throne-like white chair, newspapers and junk mail scattered around her on the pale carpet. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I thought I told you to pick up the newspapers in here!” Dammit, I thought, irritated. She also told me to clean up the kitchen. I could only do one thing at a time!

  A heartbeat later, I realized with horror where my thoughts led. Resentment! Where had that come from? In a panic, I knelt at her feet and laid my head on her shoes.

  “Oh, hell. Don’t be so damned sensitive. You’re just getting your Arm nature back. I’m supposed to be annoying, remember? You’re supposed to be pissed at me! Just clean up the living room when you’re done with the kitchen.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” How could I have been so stupid as to feel resentment? “Ma’am, I’ve noticed you’re a little tense.”

  “Huh,” she said, staring down at me. “I need to hunt.”

  I got up from my grovel at her feet. “What can I do to help?”

  Keaton gave me a strange look. Hadn’t I been properly helpful before?

  Anger lurked behind her icy facial mask. She didn’t understand the new me. “You’ll hunt when I get back, and if you’re successful, then we’ll do this tagging thing. Today, I have to hunt.” She stood and paced. “Alone. You’re still too much an accident waiting to happen.” Glare. “Stay out of trouble, and stay out of my things.”

  Of course. “I can clean and cook while you’re gone, ma’am.”

  “Not much more cleaning to do. Cooking, though…” She smiled. “Here’s three hundred dollars. Call this number, and get groceries delivered here. I’ve done that before, they know what to expect. Make as many meals as you can freeze. When I’m done hunting, I’ll call and you can start up one of my favorites.”

  “Lobsters Thermidor and Beef Wellington?” Did I remember that correctly? Didn’t I already fill several freezers with this stuff?

  Keaton smiled wider.

  “Keep up your exercises, dammit!” she said, as she left her place.

  I watched her leave. I called the number for the grocery delivery service before I lost too much IQ from her departure.

  They delivered the groceries promptly, deferential. I thought as I worked.

  Resentment! What was wrong with me? Keaton had saved my life. She taught me. She protected me. She exercised surpassing willpower to shelter me from her darker side. I vaguely remembered from the time before my troubles that even then I knew I needed her. Here I had everything I wanted and needed.

  Arm emotions, she said. I remembered the fighting and struggles, but I hadn’t remembered the emotions. They were new to me, now. Again. They made me resent her orders. I poked and prodded them, and soon I realized I also resented being on her turf. I wanted my turf.

  I liked the my emotion. Keaton wouldn’t. Or would she? The food I prepared and froze was mine. They served as gifts for Keaton, for when I left, a little part of mine left behind, making part of hers into part of mine. She had saved my life, making part of my life into hers.

  Magical gift exchange made things better between Arms. I didn’t think I understood this before. Perhaps it was too magical, before.

  The more I healed, the more I would challenge her. I didn’t quite fully understand the connection, but challenging her would lead to fighting her.

  I cooked. Pans of lasagna. Roasted Chickens by the henhouse. A whole chef’s convention worth of other things.

  Keaton returned for dinner, after calling ahead. “You’re not going to believe this, but I found two,” she said. “I’m saving one for you, for tomorrow.” Her post-juice reactions didn’t match mine. Subdued. Not overwhelming.

  Perhaps. She ate her dinner as if the eating was an overwhelming sexual experience.

  Afterwards, we migrated to her living room and talked.

  “So, do you think my training techniques worked? You didn’t like them at the time.”

  I had my head in Keaton’s lap, and she rubbed my hair. I had asked about sex, earlier, and she said one of her current improvement projects involved taming her sex drive. “I refuse to allow anything to control me, not even my own damned urges.” I understood the emotion she radiated as she had spoken. Very Arm. I was a long way from such self-control.

  The head in her lap helped me control my growing Arm emotions. Submission. Right now, I wanted to be submissive.

  “Ma’am, I do have some observations and advice. If you think I am being out of line in any way, ma’am, I will keep my place.”

  “Go ahead. Let’s see if they match mine,” Keaton said.

  I couldn’t just do my fumble-sentences on something so important, so I burned a little juice as I talked to make my words come out better. “Ma’am, I believe my time in St. Louis was bad for my development as an Arm. It gave me a false sense of independence.” Keaton didn’t stiffen, so I went on. I had been bone stupid back then as a baby Arm, all hormones and no self-control. Independence was the last thing I needed.

  “I believe it was detrimental for me not to be working toward a clear goal. I believe I was pushed too soon into hunting on my own. I also think a better understanding of when to torture students, and when not to, is needed.”

  Keaton wove my short hair around my ear. “You didn’t mention that since you were my first student, I made some rather hilarious mistakes,” she said, quietly.

  “Someone has to be the first student.”

  “Huh,” Keaton said. I wondered if this was an apology, at least as close to one as I would ever get from her. “My next student Arm is going to get hit a lot harder in the beginning. Whether she’ll get tagged or not will depend on how you react to my tagging you.”

  We sat in the quiet of Keaton’s white living room, and thought our separate thoughts. Keaton liked quiet, and lots of time for contemplation. Lots more than I remembered I did. I tended to go buggy with just my own thoughts for company. I always had to be doing something. However, I was recovering from withdrawal, and I had burned juice just to be able to speak in a logical manner. Galling.

  On the other hand, something about the quiet here was soothing. I was changing, seeing things in myself. I could do things, or I could think. When I did things, I shouldn’t think, just do. Thinking got in the way of doing. True for normals, yes, but doubly true for Major Transforms. Thoughts made us what we are – and on the other hand, silence, the perfect silence of the mind, enabled us to do, to be what we are. To act as Arms, to use the juice to remake the world in our image, one stalked prey, one knife thrust, one controlled victim at a time. The perfect silence allowed me to focus my actions into one event.

  I sought my perfect silence, in the quiet of Keaton’s living room, in meditation.

  Thoughts About Crows

  While Sky rested, his mind elsewhere, Zielinski had nothing to do but think. No big problem there: he liked quiet moments of thinking. He had lots of those, recently, ever since he arranged to be imprisoned.

  Chimeras were as male as the day they were born, male to the point of caricature and stereotype. Bestial, dangerous maleness, the seed behind armies that raped, pillaged and burned. Violent, excessively egocentric and obsessively possessive.

  He had met dozens of Focuses. Focuses were women and flaunted it. Every womanish role imaginable they took, held, and amplified. A Focus that had the ‘oh please protect me from the world I’m a woman’ attitude took it to absurd extremes, to where some had household members who cut up the Focus’s food and fed it to her. Motherly Focuses treated everyone as children with smothering suffocation. The leaders of the Focuses were all shrewish backstabbing bitches with hearts of ice.

  Arms and Crows, though, exhibited partial gender reversal. Arms mixed male aggression with female protectiveness, w
ith the territoriality of a lion or some other social predator species of either gender. The male personality traits appeared dominant. His subconscious told him what to expect of Crows, but he had refused to believe. His own prejudices made him believe a man with a woman’s attitudes would be some sort of ineffectual pansy boy, an archetypical wrist-flipping homosexual. Since by definition all the Major Transforms were powerful, the Crows wouldn’t follow the pattern and couldn’t be men who acted like women.

  Crows, though, were a slap upside the head. Like Arms, they mixed male aggression with female protectiveness, but mixed up in a different way, and added to it the skittishness of a wild animal. The female personality traits appeared dominant, but they weren’t pansy boys, not in the slightest.

  The flaw was in him. He, the enlightened refined and civilized Henry Zielinski, assumed femaleness meant weakness. So, he asked himself, how many Focuses had his attitude pissed off over the years? He suspected he owed apologies to many of them and knew he owed one to Lori. He had walked into her Focus household and expected to be treated like a big shot male expert, wise old Grandfather Zielinski, and he had gotten snippy when the household didn’t cooperate. He hadn’t said “There, there, Lori, you’re just following your weak female Focus instincts, you can do better”, but he had come close. Jesus Christ almighty, he had made a mess of that relationship! Friendship didn’t automatically mean intimacy, even if they had the same enemies. He could just kick himself.

  His new insights into his own prejudices weren’t a miracle cure, he realized. He needed to start collating his old notes, looking for examples of unique Major Transform emotions in play. He knew of some, and needed to know about more.