The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine Read online

  Gilgamesh turned into a driveway, to reveal a well off but not opulent suburban house behind the concealing boxwoods.

  “We’re here,” Gilgamesh said. “Go to the front door, please. Just go in.”

  “You’re not going with us?” Gail asked.

  “I wasn’t invited,” Gilgamesh said, audibly snarky.

  She and Van exchanged worried looks, and she watched as he put on his serious professional face, the one he used for academic jousting or public speaking. She did the same, she hoped.

  She had reason to worry. She metasensed no Transforms, Major or otherwise, inside the house.

  Van opened the front door for Gail, and as they had discussed earlier, didn’t do the paranoid bodyguard ‘go in first’ routine. Gail entered, immediately picking up the faint odor of juice, and something else, something off. Rot and death. Arms lived here, Arm Keaton and her twice mentioned but never named student, and Arm Keaton had never denied the darker Arm stories circulating in the media.

  “Hello?”

  “Over here,” a woman said, with an awe-inspiring voice that could only belong to a Focus. Van was right about a senior Focus being here for the ahem interview; now would the Focus end up being Professor Lori Rizzari, the exceptionally intimidating Focus they had identified as the head of the Major Transform political faction Keaton and Gilgamesh belonged to? Or would she be Tonya, Council Focus Biggioni, the head of the Focus mentoring program and Gail’s seniormost Focus contact? Gail couldn’t tell from the voice; both Focuses spoke with similar-to-Gail’s-ears east coast accents, and voices didn’t sound the same in person as over the phone.

  Gail led Van toward the voice, down a sparsely decorated and immaculate hall, past a living room Keaton had set up as a study, and to a smallish sitting room. Keaton in her white easy chair was her usual dour self. The imposing Focus sitting on the couch was drop-dead gorgeous, with long wavy black hair, and of obvious Italian extraction. No clue yet.

  Keaton’s brows were down, the look Gail associated with several instances where she had inadvertently and metaphorically stepped on the Arm’s toes. “I’m Gail Rickenbach, and this is my fiancé, Van Schuber.”

  Neither answered, or stood. “You were not invited,” Keaton said, her face growing colder and blanker, focusing on Van. Gail couldn’t read the emotions of either Major Transform; they remained as emotionally shuttered as they remained hidden from Gail’s metasense.

  “Ma’am,” Gail said. “We, Van that is, figured out this wasn’t a social occasion, but a professional one, and why. Doing things this way saves you the work of separate examinations.” She and Van had rehearsed those two lines ahead of time, but hadn’t been able to come up with anything beyond them.

  Gail saw the Arm start to stand, murderously angry. Before Gail had time to blink, Keaton separated Van from Gail, pushing him up against the far wall of the room. She turned to follow, but she couldn’t move her legs.

  Dammit!

  “This is what you brought him here for,” the Focus said. Only she didn’t say anything; instead, the Focus communicated through her emotions, which Gail metasensed with ease. “Let the Arm do her job.”

  Gail overrode her panic to focus her emotions, so she could try to answer without words in a similar fashion. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded at saying “Ma’am, are you Tonya or Lori?” Too much of her mind whirled through undisciplined thoughts of “How many Focuses can communicate this way?”

  I’m Tonya, and you’re only the third Focus I’ve met who can do this. Shit!

  “No, ma’am,” Van said, responding to a guttural whisper of Keaton’s Gail had missed. Gail turned her head slightly to focus on Van and the Arm. Van stood with his back against the ivory-colored wall with the Arm’s hand gripped around his neck. “Yes, ma’am, but only as a backup bodyguard. I’m too slow at hand to hand combat.” Uncoordinated as well.

  “Why bother, if you’re not going to pull your weapon on someone as threatening as I am?”

  “Ma’am,” Van said. Gail could smell Van’s fear and see, already, sweat beading on his brow and his knees minutely quivering. “You have enemies. We all have enemies. If they’re watching us, they could have followed us here, and could attack.”

  “Huh,” Keaton said. Her expression didn’t change, but her emotions did – her urge to kill Van was gone. She dropped her hand from his neck, but did not step away from him. “What Focuses have you met?”

  “Focuses Hargrove, Mann, Stell and Johnson.”

  “Crows?”

  “Only Gilgamesh.”

  “Any other Major Transforms?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You fear losing Gail. Why?”

  Gail blinked at the unexpected question. Van practically fainted. “She’s growing as a person faster than I am, or can,” Van said, speaking his mind in a way he would normally never do. “She’s also too beautiful for someone as plain as I am.”

  “Hey!” Gail said, before she realized what was going on, and how this explained why Van had been putting extensive work into his appearance. She hadn’t before realized Keaton had any variety of Major Transform charisma other than her pee-inducing predatory nature. This sort of digging didn’t produce results she wanted other people to know about.

  Keaton flickered her eyes at Gail, with one of her patented ‘if you didn’t know this already you’re a fool’ gazes, and then flickered her eyes back to Van.

  “You’re a normal and you haven’t peed your pants yet,” Keaton said. “Why?”

  “Professor Gazaway, ma’am.” Van paused, and Keaton’s will forced him to continue. “He thought my dissertation topic was rubbish, my conclusions specious, and my data suspect. As department head, he…” Gazaway was nearly as pee-inducing as the Arm, from Gail’s limited perspective.

  “Got it. Topic?”

  “Social changes resulting from and the response of women and minorities to the Seven Years War, ma’am.”

  “Useless, save to yank the chains of the white male establishment,” Keaton said. “Anything about the guys carrying their flintlock rifles off to war?”

  “Ma’am, they used smoothbore flintlocks.”

  “Why?” Keaton, for the first time, asked a true question, about something she didn’t already know. “They had rifles back then.”

  “Ma’am, this was before breach-loading weapons and metal cartridges. You had to pound, hard, the bullet into the rifle before you fired, because of the rifling grooves, and clean the barrel of the rifle after each shot. Snipers did use flintlock rifles, but they were too slow for the common soldier.”

  “Huh.” The Arm studied him, cocking her head to the side momentarily, and then leaned toward him, almost nose to nose, except since she was almost a foot and a half shorter than Van, she had to pull his head down to her level. Gail shivered with the force of the Arm’s presence. “You came in here uninvited, counting on the fact that if I offed you, doing so would negate our trap.”

  “Ma’am. I would have never said such a thing.”

  Keaton laughed and backed off. She flickered her eyes over to Tonya, then back to Van. “I’m going to want to talk to you, so for your safety I’m going to tag you.”

  Gail wanted to object, but when she started to speak, nothing came out. Tonya had found a way to use her juice tricks to keep Gail from talking. Dammit and double-dammit!

  Van looked over at Gail.

  Nod ‘yes’, Tonya sent, through the strange metasensed emotional link.

  Gail nodded ‘yes’.

  Keaton motioned with her eyes, down, and Van knelt. “Say ‘I’m yours’.”

  “I’m yours.”

  “You’re mine.”

  Gail wanted to scream in protest, but the juice moved, and now Van wore a screwy Arm tag. Gail’s protests died as she metasensed how the Arm’s tag changed both Van and the Arm – as her possession, he now felt as if he was under the Arm’s protection. The Arm tag was beautiful, and lost in its beauty, Gail relaxed.


  This was how Arms arranged alliances. Neat!

  “I want to show you something, Van,” Keaton said. She led him out of the sitting room and down the hall, to her workroom living room. She unrolled something, out of sight. “This is St. Luke’s, and this is the Hyatt.” The location of the wedding reception. “These are our enemies. How would you defend the place?”

  Paper rustled. “Not this way,” Van said. “Holding those doorways invites the enemy to go around, say through those windows. They…”

  Gail found Tonya standing next to her. “This was a hell of a gamble you and Van took,” Tonya said, aloud. “Challenging an Arm in any way is extremely dangerous.”

  “How was this a challenge?” Gail said, happy to be allowed to speak. Are Arms this touchy?

  Yes, Tonya answered, wordlessly. “I apologize for what I’m going to have to do next,” the older Focus said. “Let’s sit.”

  “Okay,” Gail said, following Tonya over to the white couch. “Don’t apologize. If one of the nasty Major Transforms has gotten to me, I want to know as well. The last thing I want to end up doing is poisoning the punch or stealing some bodyguard’s pistol and shooting at people.”

  Tonya gave Gail a cockeyed smile and sat. Gail followed her lead and sat as well. “You are a strange one, aren’t you? I’m glad you figured this out ahead of time.”

  Actually, Van figured this out ahead of time. Gail just hoped for a chance to find out about some of the upper end Major Transform tricks.

  That isn’t going to happen, either, Tonya sent. “Relax,” Tonya said.

  Gail found herself speaking, answering questions, and not remembering either the questions or her answers. Or how, exactly, Tonya was getting her to talk in such an unguarded manner.

  “Can Focus Adkins actually do such a thing?” Gail said, what had to be over ten minutes later. Strangely, she couldn’t remember what Tonya had said to prompt her response.

  “So you can resist my charisma,” Tonya said. “The answer is ‘yes’, but beyond that, I’m not going to say. Why are you letting me do this to you?”

  “Why not?” Gail said.

  “You shouldn’t trust me,” Tonya said. “You shouldn’t trust any Major Transform. So, has…”

  Gail, though, wasn’t ready to let her mind fall back under Tonya’s word-spell. “You’ve earned the trust, and, no, I wouldn’t be allowing anyone else to do this.”

  Tonya frowned at Gail’s sudden resistance. “How did you think this was going to happen, then?”

  “I thought I’d be questioned, and give cooperative answers, and not try to hide whether I’m telling the truth or not.”

  “You can already tell whether people are lying or not?”

  “Most of the time. Why?”

  “That’s a Focus charisma trick.”

  “Which I don’t otherwise have,” Gail said. “Or I think I don’t. Do I?”

  “Only minor flashes,” Tonya said. “Anyway, back to…” She paused and frowned, radiating a mixture of disgust and awe. “You can read me, can’t you?”

  “A little. Okay, more than a little. Actually, I can read you a lot better because of whatever you did to get into my head during your questioning.”

  Tonya sighed and glanced at the ceiling. “And this is why I insisted to Stacy I had to do the questioning.”

  Oh. The Arm would have taken this as a challenge.

  “Yes,” Tonya said. “You need to be careful about such things.”

  Gail nodded. In her own way, Tonya was far more terrifying than the Arm, but the Arm was more physically terrifying. Instinctively terrifying.

  They put work into that, Tonya sent. “I think I’m satisfied that nobody has gotten to you,” she said, exasperated. For one thing, Gail, I’m not sure they could, unless you let them. “The other thing I want to talk to you about are household models. There’s a lot more I could have been saying on the subject I didn’t want going over the phone lines.”

  Wiretapping, eavesdropping, right.

  “Yes, please,” Gail said. Van and Arm Keaton still discussed military matters in the other room. Gail hadn’t bothered to listen or remember what was being said; she couldn’t understand any of that sort of thing anyway. When Van tried to explain such things to her, she fell asleep. What Tonya radiated, though… “The household model system itself is bad?”

  “Yes, and leads to easy and incorrect stereotyping, and bad decisions,” Tonya said. The older Focus relaxed enough to grab a thick pastrami sandwich from a tray on the end table to her left. Gail looked over the food selection on the tray – was that raw hamburger? Ewwh! – and decided to pass. She had gotten out of the habit of eating garbage.

  “What’s the real household model system, then?” Gail had always wondered where the models came from, and why there were so few.

  Tonya leaned forward, intense, her charisma tuned toward not to persuasion, but to making sure Gail paid attention. “There are three household model types, which I call ‘command and control’, ‘juice mover’ and ‘charismatic’; each has a wide spread of possible sub-types. The command and control model includes what the public model system terms ‘corporate’ and ‘military’ models, as well as the ‘weak Focus’ model varieties that have a normal or Transform running the household in a dictatorial fashion. The juice mover model includes the ‘dictator’ and ‘hedonist’ public model types, and the ‘weak Focus’ model subtype where the household leaders run the household by having the Focus control the rest of the household with the juice. The charismatic model includes what the public model system terms ‘charismatic’, as well as the ‘weak Focus’ model subtypes where the Focus spends most of her time dealing with outside-the-household issues and uses her charisma only to set up and maintain a household leadership team she doesn’t otherwise order around.” The older Focus brushed back a strand of hair and waited as Gail thought.

  “I like your explanation better,” Gail said. “But, based on some earlier comments you’ve made, aren’t all households in some way ‘juice mover’ households?”

  “If you restrict juice moving to, for instance, a one hour time period in the morning, or do continual juice moving all day and all night long, at a subconscious level, you’re not following the ‘juice mover’ model.”

  “Oh,” Gail said. “I’ve never run into any Focuses who do that.” Pause. “Well, I know you do, but I can’t metasense…” Only she did, once she concentrated on it. “There they are. You can hide your Transforms’ metapresences?”

  “That’s five hundred you owe me, Tonya,” Keaton said, from the next room over. “I told you her metasense was deadly.”

  Aargh!

  “Sorry.”

  “To be expected,” Tonya said, papering over another bit of exasperation. “The way I think of the juice mover models is this way: a dictator primarily uses negative reinforcement with the juice in running her household, while a hedonist primarily uses positive reinforcement.”

  “This seems a little loosely defined…” Gail’s voice tailed off as she thought, remembering one of Tonya’s comments a month or so ago, where she said Gail’s household model wasn’t as unique as she thought it was. “Wait just a second. I’m running a hedonist model, under your definitions.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “But, ick! My household’s nothing like…” Gail reddened.

  “You’re stereotyping, thinking all hedonist households are the same. You’re running your household with a light hand, but it’s still a hedonist household.” Tonya paused. “Which is why it’s better to think of all of these as juice mover households.”

  Gail wasn’t sure this was better.

  “So, tell me, how are you coping with the wedding preparations?” Tonya said, her point made.

  Gail welcomed the subject change. “It’s wearing. I get distracted into wedding issues so easily, and when I do so, there goes the juice, off to do its own thing. Let me tell you…”

  She and Tonya continued to chat on mundane
issues for the next hour, while Van and Keaton strategized in the next room.

  No, this wasn’t how Gail had envisioned this meeting.

  The Negotiation Experiment (Carol Hancock’s POV)

  Keaton’s arrangement of a formal Crow meeting on my territory had cost her nearly a quarter million dollars and far too much of my time. This was tricky for me, since Keaton doing the ‘boss Arm’ routine in my house wasn’t at all natural. I didn’t remotely appreciate having to subordinate myself to her dominance on my own turf.

  On the other hand, this little experiment involved the senior Crows as well as the Arms, and it was a good test of the Cause and the Arm-Crow alliance. Guru Arpeggio had been willing to meet Keaton in person, but only on neutral territory, for which my place counted. If one senior Crow could do it, and spread the information around that it was both safe and possible, others could follow. To save us time and effort, Keaton also did our March 1st meeting here. I not only detailed my ongoing recruiting efforts, but the gory details of arranging the Arpeggio and Keaton meeting.

  As this was another test of my alliance with the Crows, I was willing to do nearly anything the circumstances required. Even to the point of tolerating Keaton doing the ‘boss Arm’ routine in my own territory.

  I only wished Gilgamesh were here. I only wished my nerves would quiet down – Keaton had warned me to expect surprises.

  Hephaestus stood at my side, exactly eleven feet away from Keaton. As Hephaestus put it, accidental sick-up insurance. We were in the living room of my house, spare, elegant, and immaculate. The chairs were comfortable and inviting, but no one was sitting. It was night, and the lights were set to a reassuring dimness, bathing the room in a low yellow glow. None of my other people attended.

  Arpeggio, who I had earlier greeted warmly when he arrived, now radiated hurricane force fierce and hovered near the front doorway. He carried with him enough dross firepower to level us ten times over, enough that even with my meager metasense-based dross-sensing capabilities, he glowed like a small sun. Keaton, who only knew of this second hand, by reading me, thankfully didn’t know of the level of Arpeggio’s danger. Otherwise, she might have gotten testy. Arm testy.