The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine

by Randall Farmer

  Webb and her husband droned on and on. Women would never be able to be elite members of society. Yes they could. No they couldn’t. Height matters. No, it doesn’t, we’re no longer club-wielding savages. Yammer yammer yammer. My solution was easier – you don’t like a closed boy’s club or men’s club? Assassinate the leaders. Make it known why the idiots were dead. Get their attention enough, they would change.

  Sorry. I’m an Arm. I’m not one to talk to about winning legal rights for Transforms. Let the Focuses work on Transform rights to their heart’s content. Meant I wouldn’t need to.

  Eventually, there was a lull in the conversation, and I cleared my throat. “Ma’am, my friend and I would like to have a word with you.”

  There was no gasp of surprise from Focus Webb. Instead, she just turned and gave Gilgamesh and me the iciest stare I had ever received. Even on a Saturday, Webb looked like a corporate lawyer. Now she looked like a corporate lawyer facing two kids who had peed on her briefcase.

  “Arm Hancock and Crow Gilgamesh, I was wondering if you would summon the nerve to speak to me in person, or whether you would just sneak around all day, making nuisances of yourselves.”

  Oops. Double oops – the Focus had done some sort of trick to freeze me in place. Gilgamesh panicked, frozen as well. Well, I knew some Focuses did tricks like this, via Gilgamesh’s conversations with Polly. According to Polly, who should know, Focuses couldn’t heal directly because they couldn’t access anything outside themselves but juice and brains. This implied they could access other people’s brains.

  Here was proof positive of this assertion. Focus Webb had locked down our brains, at least the part of our brains that let us move. She had rolled us, yes, but I decided not to fight it. We were trying to make friendly contact with Focus Webb. “Does this answer your question about why I seem to have so little security?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” my mouth said, even though I hadn’t decided to translate my thoughts to words. This was a rather impressive trick.

  She turned to her husband. “Honey, I think I need to go and interrupt my leisurely Saturday dinner to go deal with some ornery pressing business. I’ll be back, soon.” Arch, nasty, and unhappy.

  Focus Webb marched us to her apartment, no more opulent than any of the others, with its standardized high quality furniture and household items. She sat us down, and released control over our mouths. Good. It was getting harder and harder to keep myself from fighting back.

  I started to snarl, but I remembered ‘diplomatic’ and cut it off. “Thank you, Focus Webb,” I said. I hoped my civil comment convinced her I wasn’t an out-of-control Arm.

  You see, she still kept her mental hold on us – she still held us, paralyzed.

  She smiled. “Think nothing of it. I wanted to see how you would attempt to contact me, when I was so rather pointedly ignoring the hints you and Arm Keaton kept dropping about making contact. Enlightening, about both of your talents.”

  “Focus Webb, I find this type of mental control to be panic inducing,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Too bad.”

  I studied this Focus more closely. Webb had the Focus beauty, but she played it austere and distant. Her juice structure was enticing, complex and firm. Beautiful, but not overwhelming; less loveable than even Focus Laswell. I didn’t pick up any hostility from her, nor even the low-grade annoyance at the universe that seemed to dominate many of the Focuses I studied. She was centered and self-assured, but not hard-edged like Lori and Tonya. Driven, but not fanatic.

  “Like what you see?” she said. Add: real fucking good with juice and the metasense.

  “You’re different from the other Focuses,” I said.

  “You haven’t seen enough Focuses. Call me Connie. Now that I’ve got a hold of you two, I expect to be seeing a lot more of you in the future.”

  Um, right. “I…” I wanted to bluff and bluster. Instincts, again. I’m the big bad Arm, I killed Rogue Crow, I’m a predator and you are just a sheep. Was this going to work? No way.

  “You’re wondering what I’m going to extract from you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I pride myself in being a good judge of character, at working with the facts,” Connie said. “I may be only a small time corporate lawyer, but I have my dreams and aspirations as well. There is a temptation for Major Transforms, and I include both of you in this criticism, to think too much of themselves, to make their dreams too grandiose. Skill and talent are fine, but skilled and talented people often overlook luck as a factor in success. Overlook hard work as a factor in success. Coast and dream. Often, whether a person becomes a success depends on the times, their hard work, and their luck. You two may be successful, or just good, or just ordinary. Preparation, in the form of hard work, ensures that if you get called on, you will have something to contribute. I sit on the Council and see quite a few Focuses, on the Council and off, who aren’t doing the preparation. You two – you’ve done some of the hard work, but not enough. Do you understand what I’m getting at?” She stared at me, reading me as much as I was reading her.

  “Training. You’ll train us in something, we’ll train you or your people in something.”

  “Yes. I’m going to assign you to one of my businesses, Hamilton and Rauch. Private investigators. You need some training in this area, I fear. My people, well, they are a little weak on their fighting capabilities.”

  I was surprised, and I showed it.

  “You thought I was talking about training using juice, weren’t you?” Webb said. “This is a bad habit I’ve been running into recently. We’re civilized human beings, not animals. The raw ability to manipulate juice is important, but the abilities of civilization, especially military and paramilitary skills, are being overlooked by certain people who plan fights and rebellions.” Me, for instance. Sigh. Every time I ended up dealing with the older Major Transforms, I got my ass handed to me. “It’s not enough to say ‘well, I have such and such a juice talent, so I don’t need to learn about police procedure, or surveillance techniques’, to name two examples.”

  “What possible use am I, then?” Gilgamesh asked. “What I know about fighting isn’t worth teaching anyone else. I run from fights, if I can.”

  “You’re a Crow. Have you seen bad times?”

  “Do you mean living in cardboard boxes types of bad times, Focus Webb? Yes.”

  “Then you have something to teach. Don’t sell yourself short. If you end up learning more than you teach, now – well, later, pay someone else back the favor of teaching more than you learn.” Connie put her index fingers together and leaned her chin on them. “You and your allies have sucked me into this Cause of yours, a game I was hoping to avoid. However, if I’m stuck in this game, I’m going to play it my way. I’m going to improve our side.

  “The first Focuses, and I suspect the first Crows, have a very warped and twisted view of humanity and the future, coming from a warped and twisted view of themselves,” Connie said. “Rogue Crow isn’t the only bad apple out there; nor do the first Crows hold a monopoly on twisted and evil schemes.”

  I thought of the crazy Battle Focus training center in the salt mine, and Rogue Crow’s insane Monster-centered replacement for civilization. I had a horrible thought of a dozen such plots out there, hidden from view, festering and waiting to boil up and cause all sorts of problems.

  “I’ll agree to this,” I said. I did need a source of training to expand my skill sets. With the Feds after me, and every police force in every city I visited after me, Connie’s suggestion made sense.

  “I as well,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Then we’re agreed,” Connie said, and released her hold on me. I flexed my fingers, and hoped Gilgamesh would be able to keep his panic down. “One last thing I’m going to demand. Next time you think of pulling a silly stunt like this, come talk to me first. The next Focus you drop in on unexpectedly may not be so tolerant. There are some Focuses out there who would kill you without batting an eye. I’m not just
talking about first Focuses or Council members, either. Juice capabilities and political capabilities often go hand in hand for Focuses – but not always.”

  I nodded. There were some lessons I could teach Webb about hubris on the issue of security and a little concept called ‘defense in depth’. She might not have any overt enemies now, but she damn well should have contingency plans ready, because new enemies weren’t going to send her an engraved home invasion invitation ahead of time. Strategic preparation – my specialty. I would save my advice until a quieter moment, though.

  “So, how would you two like to come get some more dinner with me? I’d like to introduce you around and get my people used to dealing with other Major Transforms.”

  “That would be just fine,” Gilgamesh said. I nodded as well. By the smell of the food, I suspected I would also be able to teach Connie’s cooks a few things about proper food preparation, as well. There was a lot more to the Cause than battles and fighting.

  The Future

  She screamed herself awake, and nothing had changed. Cinderblock walls. Concrete floor. Metal door with an ominous slot at the bottom. Dim indirect lighting. Fur on her arms and legs and torso. Trash in the corner. Metal grate in the floor.

  The last time she had awakened, she had misplaced her name and screamed her throat raw. She remembered her name now – Sharon Carreon. Too much of her former life vanished from her mind as the days rolled by. The name of her husband. The appearance of Ellie, her oldest child.

  She screamed again, ululating anger. She still couldn’t speak. She had lost the ability to speak during the dark time, when her mind had gone and she had grown fur. This had to be Transform Sickness, but what was she? She couldn’t be a Monster – the authorities killed Monsters.

  Nothing made sense.

  She was hungry, always hungry. When the hunger grew too large, she flew into a rage, and her mind stopped thinking and making memories. She never remembered what happened when the rage came, and the rage came far too often. Even the smallest things would set it off. Only, she thought she might be getting better. If she wasn’t mistaken, the rage was coming less and less often.

  Someone slid food through the under-door slot. Two bananas, a mango, a pear, a small bunch of romaine lettuce and some unknown leaves that tasted good. She carefully ate all but the center of the pear and the banana skins, and put them in the corner with the trash. They would rot and attract insects – cockroaches – which she would eat as well.

  A loud metallic clank from near the door interrupted her watchful waiting over the rotting fruit. No cockroaches yet. The door cracked open.

  Ah. Cleaning time. She scampered over to the open door and went through, not wanting to fight the inevitable. The way she scampered these days annoyed her, moving on her hands and feet, or, more precisely, knuckles and feet. Into the other room…where a metal panel slid from the ceiling behind her, closing her off.

  Only it wasn’t the other room, but a much smaller room. This wasn’t hers! It didn’t smell like her! This smaller dark and all metal room, smelled like some other creature.

  She lost herself in rage.

  She came back to herself still in this other, smaller, all-metal room. Hungry. The rage made her hungry. The room rumbled, like a distant earthquake that never ended. She steadied herself, and forced herself to remember her name. Sharon. Sharon…something.

  Sobs broke from her throat, and wouldn’t stop. Tears followed. More of her past had gone. Vanished into the horrors of whatever insanity possessed her. Beyond the sobs and sadness, she raged inside, raging at God for letting her fall into such horror.

  She was on a train, she realized. On a train, in a metal box. In her endless sobbing sadness, nothing. No food. No water.

  She slept, and when she awoke, she found food on the floor, a bunch of bananas, a grocery bag of apples, and of all things, spinach. A cardboard container, labeled as milk, but with water in it. She savored all of these as long as she could, but the hunger was too demanding, and she consumed all of them in short order.

  She studied her hands in the darkness. Furry, yes, but not on her palms, and not on her knuckles. She ran her hands all over her body, as much as she could reach. Her arms were too long. Inhuman. Her hands were too long, and she no longer stood straight, but hunched over. Her head was pointy.

  She was a chimp, she realized. A chimpanzee with an oversized head. She sobbed again, her stomach sick. She was a Transform, but not something new, as she had hoped – she was a Monster.

  The rage didn’t come. The rage slowly turned, over time, into sadness and deep deep anger. In the quiet sadness, she remembered her last name – Carreon. She remembered her husband’s name – Milton. She remembered her heritage – a quarter Shoshone, of the eastern branch sometimes named the Comanche. A quarter Mexican, highlands stock, and that was where her mother was born and raised. Half American, her father’s family, the…dammit, she couldn’t remember her father’s family name, her maiden name. Her father’s family was typical American mutts with no interest in where they came from or why. White folk.

  Her husband’s family was old stock Spanish settlers from California. They knew their ancestors back to the 1700s, and savored every one.

  She forced herself to remember, and remember, and remember. The past was her anchor to her crumbling self.

  The train lurched under her, and lurched again. Stopped. Metal scraped, and then squeaked. Minutes of squeaking, and rolling side to side. Faint sounds of voices from outside filled her ears. More clanging, more banging.

  With a thud, the motion stopped.

  Was this it, she wondered. Would they finally kill her, the way they killed all the Monsters? She vaguely remembered waiting for death before, in a cell. Death hadn’t come, but only insanity. The dark times where she had lost herself.

  With a wince-inducing scrape, the metal panel at the end of her small room opened, bringing with it a flood of bright light. She slunk back, and waited for her eyes to adjust. The new air, let in with the light, screamed ‘enemy’ to her, and she waited for an attack.

  None came.

  Other smells did, the smells of humans, and human cooked food, and wet humid forest air. Not California air. She knuckle-crept forward, and looked around.

  She was at the near end of a six foot long passageway, also metal, leading to an open and lit area. A large area. She didn’t like the short passageway, and rushed as fast as she could into the open area. Metal clanged behind her.

  No way back. She was stuck in this new place.

  She examined the large expanse. Fifteen feet wide, she guessed. Forty feet long. Twenty five feet tall, with a corrugated metal roof over half, and over the other, thick bars and an open sky. The wall behind her was metal, with several doorways of varying sizes. The walls on the other three sides were cinderblock, and a double-run of cinderblocks angled from the left wall, under the roof, to make a small enclosed semi-private place. Water dripped from a hidden pipe through a small area on the right wall, and gathered in a raised area, a chipped concrete basin. The floor was dirt and weeds in the area open to the sky, save for a dug up patch that a foot and a fraction down revealed concrete. Under the corrugated roof, the floor was bare concrete, covered in thick smelly straw. The smell of enemy came from the bare concrete floor, and some of the straw.

  She was alone, though. A smell was not a real enemy.

  She went to the cinderblock alcove and made a nest for herself in the straw, and slept.

  Food arrived once a day, from the metal wall. More than she had seen before, enough to fill her. No people visited, but she heard people nearby, and she often fell into a rage at their voices.

  She worked on remembering. The aching sobs came often, when something in her mind went missing. Sometimes she remembered new things, though. Sad things, like the day her father’s grocery store went broke.

  One morning she woke up without the rage.

  Its loss was like an empty tooth socket, unnatural. She gra
bbed an apple from the morning food pile and hid in her straw nest. Without the rage, the world was a scary place, leaving her feeling as helpless as an infant.

  “Hello.”

  A man was in her cinderblock home with her. She peeked her eyes up out of her nest and looked at him. He wasn’t a scary looking man. He was short, dark haired, and reeked of fear. He was hard to notice; her mind kept trying to forget he was there if she turned away from him.

  “You can come out. I won’t harm you. My name is Zero.”

  This was strange, and his name was strange. Instinctively, repetitively, she tried to speak and tell him her name, but only a soft cry came out, not words.

  This should have sent her into a rage, but it didn’t. She crept out of her straw nest, and circled the man, fearful. He only smelled of fear, and only faintly. How could he have no other scents?

  “I’m here to help you.” He paused, and looked her over. “You’re more scared of me than I am of you. Guru Shadow hadn’t told me this would happen.”

  Sharon decided this strange man was a Transform. A Major Transform? But weren’t they all women? The man who called himself Zero sat down in a clean area near the metal wall.

  She stopped her circling and crept forward; the closer she got to him, the calmer she became. He was the reason she had lost the rage! He had taken it away. She came up to him, and he held out his arms. She cuddled up to him and shivered in wonder and another emotion, one she had no name for. Not love, but something similar.

  He was home.

  He also liked to talk, and as he chatted about this and that and many other things, she made more and more sense of his nonsense words. A great battle between Transforms in Detroit. The fall of an evil Crow – and, yes, Crow was the name Zero used to name himself – and the rise of a Transform military leader, an Arm now titled the Commander. The place that held her, this place, named the Addison Federal Penitentiary.