The Good Doctor's Tales Folio One Read online

  Even if the FBI didn’t catch me, then what? How would I get juice? Withdrawal would finally catch up with me in some lonely place, fruitlessly waiting for a hapless Transform to walk by and donate juice and their life to me. I shivered, and my mind skittered away from even thinking about it.

  Running away, on my own, would only be a more elaborate way of committing suicide.

  Still, going with Keaton would be my biggest gamble ever.

  Keaton. Her way was a chance at life, as she had survived as an Arm so far. I would put myself in her hands and let her do what she wanted with me. She was evil, I knew it, and she knew it. She didn’t care. I couldn’t decide, anymore, whether I cared or not.

  The choice? Keaton or death. Keaton at least offered me a chance, a slim chance, at life. None of the other options did.

  A half hour later, I grew scared. Why did Keaton agree to take me? Dr. Zielinski said, after I turned her down, that she would never even consider helping me again. When I sent the note I had been desperate, and I prepared myself for rejection, for something horrible to happen, or for a long drawn out negotiation. Keaton agreed to take me, without hesitation, only requiring me to escape first.

  I couldn’t figure her out. She should have negotiated. She had the power position. I offered her myself, but such offers are meaningless unless the negotiators built specific terms into the deal.

  Perhaps I had spent too much time looking over Bill’s shoulder when he did his deals. Perhaps Keaton didn’t look at things that way. Perhaps she did look at my offer as an offer of eternal slavery.

  If she did, she was a fool, and I couldn’t believe that. If I did survive, I would end up as her peer. Nobody could enslave an Arm. So my gut said.

  My gut might be wrong. My imagination might be failing me.

  Okay, look on the bright side of things. For one, perhaps she was lonely. Perhaps she wanted a peer, wanted companionship, wanted someone to help her hunt.

  Or someone to distract the FBI away from her.

  Keaton’s evil gave me a bigger problem. Not only had she killed, what, a hundred or more Transforms in her career – if I had worked out the numbers correctly – but according to the press and the TV news, she had killed at least as many innocents. The authorities and press labeled her as the most heinous killer of all time. They even invented new words to describe her: serial killer, spree killer. She wasn’t the sort of person who went to confession once a month.

  I would at the least end up as her accomplice if I went with her. I wouldn’t kill innocents, of course, but as her accomplice, I would be legally, morally and ethically aiding her in her murderous rampages. What sort of person would do such a thing?

  Someone desperate, someone willing to do anything to survive. That’s what I had become.

  Death with dignity was not for me. Nor was suicide.

  Mother

  “Mother, I beseech you,” Dr. Henry Zielinski said. “Make me forget.”

  He had even gone so far as to take Mother’s hands over the kitchen table in her Focus household, a ramshackle place on the bad side of the tracks outside of Montpelier, Vermont. She wasn’t his mother in the biological sense. Everyone just called her Mother. When she became a Focus back in ’60, looking ten years older than God, Zielinski had cared for her, becoming the first to understand her and help her. Before she Transformed, Mother had senile dementia, failing kidneys, and inoperable cataracts. A woman of her age surviving a Focus transformation by itself was enough to make her a patron saint of the younger generation of Focuses. Her obscure talents as a Focus and her caring ways only served to enhance her reputation. Since her Focus transformation, she had served as Dr. Zielinski’s touchstone.

  “You’ve overheard my friends talking, have you, Hank?”

  He nodded. Her ‘friends’ were the 55 Transforms and 34 normals in her Focus household. Yes, 89. Her Focus household was the largest, not just in the United States, but also in the world. No one understood how she did it, and Dr. Zielinski had written four speculative papers on the subject. Whatever she did, none of the other Focuses understood either.

  Her Transforms often asked her to make them forget. She could, a trick unique to her, or at least unique among those Focuses willing to tell the world their tricks.

  Mother patted his hands. “I can’t make you forget, Hank, because you aren’t a Transform. I don’t make them forget. The juice does.”

  Dr. Zielinski sighed. Mother often said such things, utterance that didn’t make sense to anyone else. She had a different way of looking at the universe.

  “Besides, you probably need to remember whatever happened.”

  “No,” Dr. Zielinski said. “What happened is nothing anyone would want to remember, save perhaps one particularly sadistic Arm.” When he spoke the word ‘Arm’, the young woman Transform serving them dropped the cookie plate in her hand.

  “Ingrid, for shame. We can’t afford to be wasting plates,” Mother said.

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” Ingrid said, ashamed, but her hands still shook. Dr. Zielinski had never thought about how terrifying an Arm must seem to a Transform. To Transforms, an Arm must be a demon straight out of hell, with their name on her little list.

  “One of my friends had been a room away from Keaton several years ago, back when he was held in a Clinic,” Ingrid said. “She came to take her juice from one of the newly transformed men, and killed the man in the cell next to him. So close. One cell over, and he would have been the one to die. He had nightmares.” Until Mother took the dreams away, of course.

  Mother’s Focus household was, despite its size, about the poorest Focus household Dr. Zielinski he had encountered. Like nearly all Focus households, they had to move often to keep the juice flowing. Unfortunately, because Mother’s transformation hadn’t brought back her dementia-lost memories of her old life, she was too friendly and empathic to avoid con artists. They were attracted to her like dogs to the lone tree in a park. In every move, Mother’s household lost their shirts.

  Dr. Zielinski tended to come by to Mother’s often, for counseling, as well as to perform free medical services. Mother wasn’t in good shape; unlike the more normal Focuses, she didn’t look like someone in her late teens. She looked like someone in her late 40s. Most Focuses healed and regenerated much faster than Mother did, but Mother was, well, atypical. She still was a fount of wisdom. Something wise in her subconscious had survived her Focus transformation.

  “Arms, dear Hank, are predators. Violent. You should have grown to expect their violence, by now.” She gave him another hand pat. “Did she rape you again?”

  Sometimes he wished he hadn’t told Mother everything that happened to him. Mother’s memory was perfect, another anomaly, the only Focus without some sort of memory problem.

  “Not quite. I was present at…” He stopped. He couldn’t face what he had seen and experienced. He thought he would be able to talk about it, but he couldn’t. Not easily. He turned away from Mother.

  “My. The last time you were thrown like this was when the Council grilled you about Rose Desmond’s death.” Dr. Zielinski hadn’t fully recovered from his own gunshot wounds at the time he had been brought before the Focus Council to explain what had happened to the Arm.

  “This episode was worse,” Dr. Zielinski said. “Stacy made me participate.”

  “So, why did you stay? How did you get into such a position, anyway?” Mother asked.

  “How familiar are you with the politics associated with our new Arm?”

  “Not much. My political position among the Focuses is rather close to the bottom of the barrel. I’m more likely to read about it in the newspapers than learn about it from a Focus.”

  Dr. Zielinski nodded. “The new Arm is being held against her will by the Arm Task Force and being used as a lab rat. Keaton will rescue her, but I had to bribe her to help. With juice. Normally, these juice volunteers are in periwithdrawl and don’t care, but this case was special. He was a real volunteer. Keaton
was going to try to keep him alive by slowing her draw rate down and having intercourse with him as she drew. She made me stay and take notes.”

  “This ‘volunteer’? Did he live?”

  Dr. Zielinski paused, looking firmly out the window, his face a dark mask. “No. Keaton said, afterwards, she had experienced a holy sacrament. Me, I would rather forget the experience.”

  Mother laughed. “Is that all, Henry? Did you take good notes?”

  “Unfortunately, that isn’t all.” Dr. Zielinski turned red. “Keaton cornered me and made me choose between helping her and the other Arms, all in, and never seeing her again.”

  “I think I see,” Mother said. “You’re not sure you want to hold to your end of the deal.”

  Dr. Zielinski nodded. “It will mean the end of my career.”

  “You’re saying if you can’t use the Arms, it means the end of your career,” Mother said.

  He nodded.

  “Keaton’s got a point. I certainly wouldn’t be happy if you were helping me and my household simply to advance your career.”

  “But if I lose my career, how can I help anyone?”

  Mother shrugged and took sip of tea. “If anyone can find a way, it’s you.”

  Dr. Zielinski shook his head and stared at the green and gold striped wallpaper, covered by far too many Hummel plates. She had more faith in him than he had in himself.

  “So, do you think Keaton be able to save your new Arm?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, happier to be on firmer ground. “My new Arm is well educated, but she’s a small-town Missouri girl. She’s read all the literary classics, can speak French at least a little bit, and can whip up formal dinners at the drop of a hat. She’s naive, though, and has almost no self-discipline. I have no idea how someone like her will even be able to survive Keaton’s rough ways, not to mention mastering being an Arm.”

  Mother laughed. “So animated you are, Henry! So forceful. You’re hooked on her, aren’t you? A little in love?”

  Dr. Zielinski shook his head. “I can barely stand to be around her. She’s not a nice person.” He paused. “But something about her is different. She has a presence, and she’s the sort of person who fills up a room just by being there. Now that I’m off her case, I find myself missing her. I have no idea what’s going on in my head.”

  “I think you’ve found someone to protect,” Mother said. “You would make a good father figure, Hank. Start talking like a man instead of like a PhD, stop fretting about your bald spot, start wearing dumpier clothes. You’ll do fine.”

  He turned away from Mother, with a sigh. She was likely right, as she often was, but still, her advice was often hard to accept.

  Tonya’s Last Monster Hunt

  (1964)

  “Holy moly,” Ronda said. “Boss, ma’am, big emergency. Some damned Monster’s moved into the Bronx.”

  Tonya looked up from the household paperwork, bleary. Ever since the episode with Keaton, she had been beating up on herself. She didn’t like the direction of her life, but she couldn’t pin down the exact problem. She had been biting everyone’s heads off ever since her broken arms and legs healed.

  “What?” Tonya asked, not much more than a grunt.

  “Got a phone call, and a parcel delivery person. We’ve got a certified letter invitation, from the honest to goodness New York City mayor’s office, to take a shot at this Monster.”

  “We don’t normally do the city Monsters,” Tonya said. They were far too dangerous for her tastes.

  “Ma’am, you’ve got to see the bounty they’ve put up on this Monster. High five figures.”

  Damn.

  ---

  Tonya’s household consisted of nine triads and one extra, that is, nine male Transforms and eighteen woman Transforms, and one extra woman Transform. Eleven of the women had spouses, as did seven of the nine male Transforms, and two of her Transforms were married to each other. Nineteen men in total. Of those nineteen, ten of the fittest served as part of her tiny private army – for bodyguard duty and for helping with Monster hunts. Ten men, just ten. Not enough, in Tonya’s mind, to hunt down a who-knows-how-old lion-form Monster somehow loose in the Bronx. Because of the Monster, the south Bronx became a ghost town around dusk and dawn, the Monster’s preferred time to hunt. People panicked, called in the National Guard, but so far the Monster continued to elude them.

  Tonya stood over a table with her men in a corner of the warehouse. Bare bulbs hung from the high ceiling to provide harsh illumination below. Her household was using the warehouse for transitional housing as they waited to finish the build out of her latest new home. Three other long tables stood beside this one, to constitute what passed as a dining room. Luxury housing this wasn’t, but she only expected to live here for a couple of weeks. “We’re going to catch it at dusk or early night,” Tonya said. Her men would be at a disadvantage, but not Tonya. Her Focus capabilities: her ability to move juice, her ability to metasense, her charisma, and the occasional screwy talent to pick up information she shouldn’t be able to pick up, all worked better at night. The true predator Monsters, Tonya knew, were weakest at night. Nobody knew why, but Tonya job wasn’t to solve mysteries. Her job was to get things done.

  “Okay, ma’am,” Bobby Harper said. “Are we going to bother with the dogs?”

  “We’ll take one, just in case. That, and a herd of sheep.”

  The mayor’s office wouldn’t like the sheep, but if you wanted the best, you lived with their tools.

  Bobby frowned. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. We’ll end up with sheep guts on the front pages of the tabloids again.”

  “Better than Transform guts any day,” Tonya said. “Now, here’s the plan.” She pulled over the map of the Bronx and gave the orders.

  The phone rang, the private phone, and Tonya stopped counting her Hail Mary. Anything to quiet the nerves. She hadn’t been so nervous before a Monster hunt since the third one. Her four months of guilt-dreams, ever since the rat-Monster episode, paled before this. The night before this Monster hunt, she couldn’t sleep a minute.

  “Biggioni,” Tonya said, as she answered her private phone. The warehouse had one private room with walls and Tonya used it for her office. And bedroom.

  “It’s a trap.”

  Tonya took a deep breath. Keaton. Again. She never suspected Keaton would turn out to be a chatterbox who needed to talk to her regularly and often. Keaton, the mass murderer and excessively lonely Arm. At least the Arm understood security and didn’t want to talk to her again in person. Tonya had managed to talk Keaton out of pestering the other Focuses in the Network, at least until the current political fracas abated. So far, her rough agreement with Keaton held; Keaton no longer took household Transforms.

  “What’s a trap?”

  “Monster lion. Bronx. I have an underworld contact who heard a rumor that someone hired the Antonella crime family to bring it into the Bronx. I smell that damned bitch Julius again, Tonya.”

  “No names.” Well, perhaps she didn’t understand security as well as Tonya thought.

  “I don’t care right now. Not if they’re going after my favorite Focus.” She broke my legs and arms, tied my legs into a pretzel, and now she considers me her favorite Focus? Tonya winced. Keaton’s babbling pretty much answered any questions about what would happen to any Focuses Keaton disliked, now, didn’t it.

  “I’ve got a contract myself, with the government, and I’m in no mood to back down,” Tonya said.

  “Idiot. I want to help, but I can’t get anywhere near your bodyguards and you know why,” Keaton said. “I’ll be around, though…hunting enemy Transforms.” Click.

  Just great. Just fucking great.

  Tonya looked up and noticed Rhonda standing in her office doorway, a shocked look on her face. Tonya realized she had said the last comment aloud.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she actually swore out loud. It wasn’t ladylike.

  The hunt didn’t
start to go bad until they approached the lion Monster. She took the bait on the third day, at dusk, gorging herself on the small herd of sheep they had penned into the intersection of Hunts Point Avenue, Halleck Street and East Bay Avenue. According to the evidence provided them, the lion Monster confined her hunting to the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx.

  They hadn’t seen Keaton, or any hit squads, either mobster related or from their Transform enemies in the Lucy Peoples Society. One less thing to worry about, Tonya decided. She waved her people forward, stopped praying, and started the attack. They ran in to within a block and started blazing away with their rifles loaded with .707 caliber monster rounds.

  The Monster didn’t drop. Instead, she loped off into the shadows of early evening and started to hunt them.

  Tonya got a good look at the Monster when she dropped Bobby Harper. Tonya’s charisma hadn’t been able to stop her.

  She got another look when the Monster ripped John Cizina in half. Again, her charisma she hadn’t been able to stop the Monster.

  Claude Oliver, a normal spouse of Clair Oliver, died helpless when the lion Monster attacked him and ripped his throat out before he could flinch. Tonya missed another chance at an eyeball grab, stuck trying to get Todd’s attention when Claude bought it.

  Now Tonya stood alone. Tommy was down with a broken leg a block back. Robert Dawson tried to hold his insides in, clawed in passing, about twenty yards back. He wasn’t a Transform and he wouldn’t survive his wound. Tonya met the Monster’s gaze for the fourth time in the alleyway. The rest of the world was still lit by the remnants of the day, but the alley was dark. Tonya had tried to use the alley to circle around the Monster to get the drop on her, hoping if she closed her charisma might have more effect. That had been no more effective than anything else she had tried. Now the monster came for Tonya.