The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Four Page 5

  Such sexcapades wouldn’t be good for him, though. I wasn’t good for him. Every day he stayed with me I consumed a little more of his strength. He would heal better if he stayed away from me, but he could no more leave me than a moth could leave the candle flame. He needed me like a junkie needs his horse. All the while, his candle burned down and I didn’t know how to stop it.

  Oh, and I needed him. He was mine.

  I knew better than to stand in his room and watch him sleep while the fires of post-kill lust raged along my nerves. Just waiting here on the edge, until something pushed me over and I crawled into bed with him and burned his candle down a little bit farther. The look of him, and the sound of his breathing held me here, and I didn’t have the strength to leave.

  Bobby’s breathing remained ragged from the pneumonia. I couldn’t keep him, but I couldn’t let him go, either. I was a predator, but Bobby had become the one person in the entire world who cared for me in any form at all.

  Now I cared for him. I didn’t know how I would be able to survive losing him. Despite all my good intentions, I couldn’t stay away from him. I needed him too badly.

  I turned away. The guilt finally grew large enough to surpass my desire and I left him to his sleep.

  Focus Rizzari Talks with Henry Zielinski

  “…and normally, I work in my lab at night during the week. I came home today because of you,” Focus Lori Rizzari said. She had been exchanging stories with Zielinski for several hours in the library of her oversized house. Late in the evening, silence finally made its rare appearance in the Inferno halls.

  “I would like to examine the hand,” Zielinski said. Carol had run into a talking Chimera and they fought. Interesting about the former, inevitable about the latter.

  “Later,” Lori said. “I don’t want to keep you up past your bedtime, Henry.”

  “Me?” Zielinski said. Then he yawned. “Sorry. I’ve just been having so much fun with your household I got myself fatigued. Normally…”

  “Workaholic?”

  Zielinski nodded and glanced at the stack of papers on the low table between them. “I looked through a few of your unpublished papers, and…”

  “These old things?” Lori said. She picked through them and skimmed his comments, wincing at the repetition of ‘crap’ over and over again on the second paper. “I’ll bet you had a nasty reputation among your grad students.”

  Zielinski had seen enough of Focus Rizzari’s work to know he needed to edit his thoughts and put as good a face on his reactions as possible. Lori wouldn’t ever be a top-end researcher, not with her mind so often curbed by low juice. She would be perfect working for someone like himself, as part of a hot research team. Not quite a plodder or bottle washer, but also not a research genius. She was good enough to get a few grants, perhaps even keep a Professorship, but she wouldn’t ever change the world as a researcher. She worked hard enough. However, she didn’t possess the spark to ‘see things sideways’ enough to find her way through the research obstacles. Zielinski knew he could, but he also knew his limitations. He had produced a few medium important discoveries and many low-end ideas, more than enough in his relatively short research career to get him a name in the field. Nothing huge, though. He often wondered if he hadn’t blown his chance at ‘the big one’ because he started so late, in his mid-thirties, at the research game.

  “I chased away a few in my time,” he said. Blandly.

  Lori took the offending marked-up paper between her thumb and forefinger, as if it was a nasty smelling piece of garbage, and deposited it in a trashcan. “I thought I’d discovered something important regarding mitochondria and juice, back when I was doing my post-doc work. My advisor told me to write it up but I was never convinced I had found anything real. I nearly had as bad a time with my juice overuse work, following up on your paper.”

  Juice overuse was a discovery of his. Long ago, he discovered Focuses could overstrain their ability to use juice after his favorite Focus, Mother, started to have slurred speech problems after too many attempts to recover lost memories. Mother, a Focus who transformed late in life after suffering from early senile dementia, had no need of incentives to crank through her juice. She was mercilessly self-driven. From Mother’s maladies, he obtained the data for his last important paper regarding Focuses, published in the JAMA three months after Carol’s transformation. This paper would likely be the last paper he would ever publish.

  Focus Rizzari used herself as a test subject, but she didn’t find a way to keep her own feelings from interfering with her work. Nor did she discover the biological cause of juice overuse.

  Lori grimaced and led him down to her small basement laboratory. She moved quietly and didn’t speak; Zielinski was starting to get a feel for her. She liked the quiet.

  “You can stay here as long as you want, Henry,” Lori said as she flicked on the lights in the lab. “My contacts indicate the first Focuses still have a contract out on you. I’m not sure what we can do about this problem, if anything, but at least neither the UFA Council nor the Network is gunning for you.”

  Zielinski nodded. If the Focus Council and Focus Network weren’t gunning for him, it meant the first Focuses after him were doing so as individuals.

  “Sounds like a faction fight among the Firsts,” Zielinski said. He had run into a similar problem several years ago. Keaton had kidnapped him; he survived and ended up as the then young Arm’s resource. This sparked a chain of events ending up with Focus Biggioni using him as bait to reel in Keaton. The whole lot of them had gotten caught up in a deadly faction fight between Focus Patterson and Focus Julius, in what the Focuses commonly termed “the Julius Rebellion”. He had been lucky to survive that mess.

  “That’s the only reasonable conclusion. I suspect the best strategy would be to wait them out, wait until there’s another faction realignment,” Focus Rizzari continued, with a quick shake of her head and hair that made him smile. Zielinski repressed a sigh. Dammit, he wasn’t supposed to be responding to her as man. Not Professional!

  Hank didn’t say anything more on the subject. Too unsafe to discuss. Instead, he looked around the lab at the paucity of equipment. Besides the centrifuge, microscopes, microtome, freezers, juice meters and non-working gas chromatograph, there wasn’t much else. The freezers, though, with all those Monster cadavers, did have their possibilities.

  “So, do your living arrangements suit you?” Lori asked.

  Connie was a wizard at people management and getting at the inside of people’s heads. She pegged him as being more comfortable with the engineering crew, as they were called, than with the other subgroups within the household, and that’s where she had placed him.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve lived in a dorm,” Zielinski said. “Bob and Jim seem to be pleasant roomies.” Good experience, living in a Focus household, after all those years telling Focuses and their households what to do. At least that’s what he told himself. Firmly.

  Tails

  (1964)

  Hank fiddled with the car radio until he found New Haven’s classical music station, an attempt to find a way to relax despite the upcoming meeting and the traffic on the recently completed Connecticut Turnpike. He shouldn’t be doing this. Tonya, somehow, had talked him into a face-to-face session with Keaton. He wasn’t sure how Tonya had managed to convince him to do something this stupid this time, but she had. She, of course, had played on his self-interest, his desire to regain some career momentum, but he was positive he hadn’t let his ambitions trump his good sense. Or so he told himself.

  He concentrated on the music, attempting to lose his worries. He understood Arms – Armenigar Syndrome Focuses – well enough to understand the dangers posed by dealing with a free Arm. Arms were aggressive, acquisitive, rash, harsh and touchy. A free Arm, forced to hunt down her own juice, would have all those characteristics, and more, derived from the strict danger of her life. Keaton, though, was far worse than his idealized image of a free Arm. He
had barely escaped with his life the one time he dealt with her in person, two months ago. She had misplaced her humanity; her ethics and morality reduced to ‘might makes right’. As just one terrible possibility, she might decide to keep him as a slave, an obvious extension of standard Arm acquisitiveness, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. His imagination refused to stop coming up with terrible possibilities.

  His worried mind followed along with the phrases in the music, AB, ABB – and his eyes opened wide. The blue Ford Custom passing him now had passed him twice before. The wood-toned Chrysler Town and Country wagon, two vehicles back and filled with sturdy looking men, had passed him twice as well. He had passed both vehicles himself at least twice.

  They were tailing him with a standard and far too obvious AB tail pattern.

  Hank licked his lips and tried to quell his growing panic. The only possible reason for such a tail was Keaton. The tail raised questions, though: were these Keaton’s people, or were these people using him to lead them to Keaton? Keaton currently associated with a man she had recruited, a former Monster hunter. Had she, either directly or indirectly, recruited more people?

  That’s what he would do as an Arm – but he wasn’t an Arm. He could be way off base with his guess. However, he did wonder why any Arm would bother having her people tail him. He wasn’t worth the effort, as he posed no physical danger to any Arm more than a few months past her transformation. On the other hand, something nasty was going on behind the scenes among the Focuses, caused by an aggressive faction of Focuses who didn’t like Keaton and had made at least one attempt on her life. So far, all his attempts to squeeze the necessary information about the Focus faction alignments had fallen flat.

  The original summons for this meeting had come through the Focus Network, coded as always. However, he had refused to respond until Focus Biggioni called and talked him into this idiocy. An unknown Focus faction at odds with the powers-that-be would certainly have found a way to place their people in Focus Claunch’s Network, and if they were familiar with him and his Arm interests, they would know enough to monitor any messages to and from him. If they wanted Keaton dead, finding her through the Network would be the easiest way to get to her.

  Stupid of Keaton, though, to go through the Network for something like this. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her, though. Or explain to her why he had to turn back and not meet her.

  Hell, if he turned back, though, he would disappoint the Arm. He didn’t want to disappoint her. If he did, he would just invite the Arm payback emotions. Arms never forgot a slight and could be insanely petty upon occasion. At least the young Arms he had worked with.

  Leading a group of enemies to an unsuspecting Arm waiting for a friendly doctor visit – in some damned abandoned building in Queens – would be just as fatal. At least to the doctor, if not for the Arm.

  He stewed as he drove, trying to find a way out of his conundrum. He could stop and surrender. His gut told him that would be the last thing he ever did. He could try an impromptu exit from the freeway. He glanced to his right at a deep roadside ditch, and the fence beyond it. His low-clearance Mercedes would end up bogged down, at best. Well, there’s always the old standard, the bootlegger’s turn and driving the wrong way down the freeway…

  A voice echoed in his memories: “Despite your tricks and skills, you need to avoid any physical confrontations, Dr. Zielinski. Living through one of those takes months of training and continual practice, neither of which you’re getting here.” That is, he would most likely get himself killed if he tried any damned fool stunt like that.

  Yes, this was the aspect of his work with the Focuses he disliked the most.

  Memories

  (1959)

  “Quite an eclectic group we have here today,” Hank whispered, wiping the sweat off his forehead and wishing for a breeze through the two story windows. Special Agent Tommy Bates nodded and eyed the other students, likely attempting, as did he, to identify them. Hank took a moment and scanned the audience again. He still didn’t recognize anyone else stuck here in the gym of this dusty run down closed-for-the-summer Trenton High School. “I’m surprised you’re here, though.”

  Tommy grimaced and took a drag on his Camel. “I hate this crazy spook shit. After the FBI Academy I haven’t spent a day working on domestic surveillance cases. This Cold War crap is not my specialty.”

  His specialty, if Hank remembered correctly, was homicide. Well, solving homicides, not causing them.

  “Unfortunately Gauthier, damn him, knows this all too well,” Tommy said.

  Special Agent Paul Gauthier was the one arranging this, well, lesson. Gauthier and Hank went way back. They met first in Korea, and formed a standard wounded Major befriends the interesting doctor relationship. A few years ago, after Transform Sickness showed no sign of going away, Paul sought out Hank and invited him to help the Quarantined Focuses and their Transform Households. By then, Paul was already a rising Special Agent with the FBI, with Transforms as relatives, and a bug up his ass about how badly society treated these disease victims. Hank had already been working on Transform Sickness when Paul contacted him, but from an epidemiological prospective. He hadn’t yet met a Transform. To prove his point, Paul gave Hank a tour of the CDC’s Virginia Transform Detention Center, and introduced him to the Focuses and the Transform households stuck there. The plight of the Transforms and their utter strangeness hooked Hank immediately.

  Paul had just received a promotion to Major Case Inspector, giving Gauthier more than enough pull to arrange a meeting like this. If Hank read the tea leaves correctly, the Focuses and their households had found a way, through Paul, to secure their own clandestine FBI backing. Officially, the Transforms were on the lam, illegal escapees from the Transform Quarantine for five months now, but unofficially, the last thing the Eisenhower administration wanted was to capture the newly free Transforms. Cutting support for the expensive-to-run Transform Detention Centers had freed up quite a bit of free cash in a budget squeezed tight by the ongoing recession.

  When Gauthier walked into the gym, a young and forceful Oriental woman accompanied him. “Shit,” Tommy said, with not as much of a whisper as would normally be socially appropriate. Hank gave him the eye, and Tommy shook his head. “That’s Woo. She’s ex-CIA. One of Focus Fingleman’s Transforms.”

  Well, this was going to get interesting, now wasn’t it, Hank thought.

  “Okay, Dr. Zielinski, it’s time you and I had a little chat,” Dahlia Woo said. He was surprised it took her until the third day of this impromptu training course to pick him out of the crowd and drag him off somewhere private. Dahlia was young, late twenties, short and wiry, a mutt, likely with an Anglo father and Chinese mother. She had her black hair tied back in a tight bun, and she walked with a posture that screamed martial arts training. “You’ve seen far too much of what we’re teaching already. These aren’t the first forged IDs you’ve made, either. So…who are you?”

  Hank chuckled. “I have my history, the same as you do.” He had looked forward to this conversation. Yet another lecture on the intricacies of tailing, not so much. ‘If the target ducks into an elevator, you must get on the elevator with them…’ Yawn.

  She led him into the deserted teachers’ lounge and sat him down at an ancient cigarette-burned wood table, leaving petite dust footprints behind as she walked. She plunked herself down opposite him. “I need this information. The Focuses need to know.”

  Focus Fingleman understood the dictum about knowledge being power. As he didn’t trust her, he couldn’t trust her Transform, either. “I assure you, I will do nothing to betray their trust.” He wanted to help. Always did. The Transform politics and paranoia he could do without.

  He couldn’t imagine a more interesting area of research. Transform research had already helped his career. He wanted more. Lots more.

  Woo grew exasperated, noticed Hank notice her exasperation, and let her face go stone cold. “Are you an active agent?
” At least she was competent ex-CIA. Well, at least ‘ex’ as far as field operations was concerned. He wouldn’t put it past the CIA to keep her on the payroll, even though domestic surveillance was supposed to be an FBI responsibility. On the other hand, she was here on Gauthier’s say-so. She might be on FBI retainer now.

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “I really am a doctor, researcher and Professor. You can check with Harvard Medical, if you want.”

  “I already have.” Dahlia’s eyes bored into his. “Funny thing, their records on you have some unsurprising gaps.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been a doctor my entire career.”

  “A statement that means nothing. The Agency employs many doctors, some of whom are field agents.” Dahlia’s glare intensified, and her right hand lowered into her ever-present purse. Dammit! “Who do you work for?”

  Hank decided he didn’t have any choice but to come clean. “I served in the Army in the Korean War. Because of my family background” his mother’s family, several of whom still held high State Department and Defense Department positions “I was considered trustworthy enough to do my medical work with a group called the Liaison Detachment.”

  Dahlia nodded and took her hand out of her purse, thankfully without the concealed firearm. “Army intelligence, then.” He nodded back. “You patched up spooks, talked to them, and picked up some of what we’re teaching by osmosis, I take it.”

  “I never did any field work, but” he shrugged “my skills as a surgeon attracted some interesting attention, and I occasionally did get drafted into helping with document forgery.” Being willing to lend a hand, off the books, got him into the better, higher stakes, poker games, as well as putting him in a position to listen to some of the most amazing stories.

  The Far East Command Liaison Detachment didn’t last past the end of the fighting in the Korean War, and Hank had never before been exposed to the CIA’s newer Cold War tricks. However, even the new aspects of what Woo and Gauthier taught felt familiar to Hank. So far, they had covered brush passes, live letter drops, dead drops, car tosses, simple cryptography, cut-outs, simple interrogation techniques, surveillance methods, both vehicle and on foot, and how to ditch tails. This afternoon, they had covered the basics of how to create a fake driver’s license. Several more days of the same would follow, and each day would include more and better real world practice.