All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Two)

by Randall Farmer

  Mistake. I was five paces into the zombie shuffle toward the Focus’s household before I overcame my lust with sheer willpower and stalked myself back to the car. I took a deep breath and stared Keaton in the eye for a mere moment, before dropping my eyes to her feet. I needed a hint. Something.

  “Ma’am, how did you fight this when you first encountered this problem?”

  “Pain,” she said, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Which is what you’re going to get this evening, unless you solve this now.” Pain and I were intimates, thanks to my full-bore sadist teacher. Intimates, yes, friends, no.

  I nodded. My first mental flicker had been on the right track; I just gave up too soon. I forced myself through my memories until I found the right moment…and relaxed.

  Keaton nodded at my success and her big honking pistol vanished. “Orgasms, eh? Well, at least there’s something in life you enjoy. I was afraid it would be cooking.” I did like to cook, but not that much. “Get in the car, candyass.”

  I got. Keaton put the car in gear and motored off. I sighed. We never got close enough to those Transforms to see them with our eyes. I would have liked that. Their lingering beauty pulled at me, even as we drove away. Beauty to me meant hope.

  Perhaps it was better we drove away. I wasn’t ready for hope.

  “The first problem with hunting is finding a Transform to kill,” Keaton said, several minutes later, continuing the lesson.

  Did I complain? Not hardly. I hung on her every word. This was the information I had sold my soul to get. Did she congratulate me for learning her lesson? No way. Keaton and positive reinforcement weren’t on speaking terms. “Your next lesson, fuckface, is going to be learning to metasense the pattern in a Transform which indicates they’re members of a Focus household when the Focus is not around. Learning this one is going to take more than remembering good orgasms.”

  I winced and shrank away from Keaton again.

  Inwardly, I smiled.

  Despite the difficulties along the way, despite the fear and pain, Keaton was finally teaching me the tricks a real Arm needed.

  “The first problem with hunting is finding a Transform to kill,” Keaton said, several minutes later. “You want check out as many people as you possibly can with your metasense. There’s only a very small chance that any one person will come down with Transform Sickness, so you need to look over a lot of people. The more people you cover, the greater your chance of finding a potential kill.”

  I looked outside at the people walking along the sidewalk, and wondered if one of them would be transforming soon. Any of them could become a Transform, the victim of my hunt. Yum.

  “You need to know your territory,” Keaton said, as she drove through the slow downtown traffic. “The locations with the greatest density of people. The busy areas, and when they’re busy. For instance, office areas and downtowns are good between 8:00 and 5:00 on weekdays, and worthless otherwise. Ghettos and densely packed apartments are good late at night. Spend time with a map. Also, spend some time driving around before you even try to hunt. You need to get a feel for the area you’re hunting and a good idea of where people are spending their time. Plan out your search pattern ahead of time. You have a metasense range of about a quarter mile, so you need to design a search pattern where each band of your sweep is about a half-mile away from the last one. Large office buildings will sometimes interfere with your metasense, so checking an office multiple times a day isn’t a complete waste of time.”

  Keaton continued to instruct me as we went from Focus household to Focus household, exposing me to different Transforms. She went through endless details about the hunt: traffic patterns, when people were out and when they weren’t, the proper amount of coverage you needed in an area, how often to hunt an area, and how to avoid duplicate scans of an area; for instance, you only had to hit one rush hour in any one area. She went on and on, far more information than I could absorb and understand. Slowly, I began to understand Keaton’s strength, why she succeeded: she was able to take all this detailed information and make sense out of it. I was impressed.

  She didn’t tell me everything. For instance, after every stop for food, she made one or more phone calls. Who could an anti-social monster like Keaton call, anyway? With a glare, she made it clear I wasn’t to ask about them, though.

  “You need to be efficient about hunting,” Keaton said, many hours later. On the right, we passed by Independence Square, green and beautiful and populated with tourists, across from shops, small restaurants, and signs to the Athenaeum. A group of tourist mothers with small children gathered around a cart selling pretzels. “There aren’t enough kills, so you can’t afford to be sloppy. One of the easy mistakes is the idea of complete coverage. For instance, say you’re covering an area where the streets don’t quite run nicely parallel, and aren’t a half mile apart. You’re going to want to go back and cover the small gaps you left. You’ll keep thinking your next kill is in the gaps and you’ll miss a kill if you don’t check out every last corner. Bad move. Always remember you’re going for numbers, rather than completeness.”

  I nodded and soaked everything in.

  “A man who’s come down with Transform Sickness will stay in the general population for about five or six days after he’s up from the initial illness before he either goes into withdrawal or realizes he’s a Transform. That’s average. He could stay in the general population for as long as two weeks or as short as immediate. Some researchers think a new Transform can come out of his transformation in withdrawal. For a woman, the average time she spends in the population is twelve to thirteen days. A woman who gets lucky may go as long as four weeks.”

  People. She hunted people, and I needed to learn to do the same. I waited for a twinge of reluctance from my conscience at this absurd idea, but the only twinge was from my burning need for juice.

  “So, after you make a single pass over the best spots, you should go somewhere else. Find a different city. Don’t hunt the old area again for at least a week. Longer if possible. You’re much more likely to find a kill in a place you didn’t check recently.

  “Understand?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” No cringe from me. I knew of no more interesting subject in the world than juice. I wished I wasn’t so far out from my last kill. My mind remained groggy and slow.

  I wanted to get to some actual hunting. I wanted a kill.

  “Anyway, let’s say you find a potential kill in your territory, a Transform without a Focus tag,” Keaton said. “Some palooka who probably doesn’t even know he caught Transform Sickness. Here’s where things get dangerous. When you’re searching, you need to be careful, but the danger level is relatively low. When you actually get to the kill, you’re running a real risk. It’s incredibly easy to do something stupid and get yourself killed.”

  I needed juice, and Keaton’s words brought the craving in me to a driving peak. I wondered if she noticed how much I needed juice.

  “First problem, your judgment’s going to be bad, worse than even now,” Keaton said. Yes, she noticed, damn her. “You need to learn to deal with this, since thinking on your feet isn’t your strength.” She noticed. “So plan ahead and follow your plan. Worse, when you find a potential kill in range, your need for juice can easily overwhelm everything else. Follow your plan, despite how screwed up you are by kill lust. Since you’re not a think on your feet type, skag, you need to work out ahead of time dozens, perhaps hundreds of scenarios for taking a kill, and you need to know them cold. Before you move on your kill, you need to decide what you’re going to do and which scenario to follow.”

  “Ma’am? You imply…”

  “Our transformations amplify our native mental strengths and weaknesses,” Keaton said. “No, I don’t need hundreds of scenarios. Even if I had them, I wouldn’t remember to use them.”

  This last scared me. Keaton sounded like even she had trouble with her control at times. I dug my fingernails into my palms as I remem
bered how little control I had around a kill.

  “With a kill in range, you need to think P.D.D.,” she said. “That’s Privacy, Disposal, and Diaphragm. This may sound stupid, but it’s not.

  “After you kill, you’re going to be out for some amount of time. You need to work on getting this down, by the way. The longer you’re out, the more danger you’re in. Several hours is grossly excessive. You should be able to get the out time down to well under an hour. In any case, your plan needs to include your out time. First thing, you need to figure out how to get privacy for the kill itself and for your out time afterwards. This means you may need to convince the kill, while the kill’s still alive, to come with you to your chosen spot. Sometimes you have to create privacy. Occasionally you can maneuver people out of the way, but that isn’t usually an option.

  “If you get desperate, kill everyone else around. Indiscriminate slaughter isn’t usually a good idea, because extra bodies add complications, but don’t forget about it as an alternative. The most likely scenario where you’ll see this as a good solution is when you find your kill at home in bed with a spouse. Kill the spouse before you take your juice.”

  She glanced over at me and I “Yes, ma’am”ed her. I thought of old historical novels I had read, of old, sadistic, and very talented Victorian-era teachers. Keaton fit the mold.

  “I’m supposed to kill other people, too?” After the lesson of the nurse, I half expected her to order me to do senseless things, such as killing one innocent per hunt.

  “You want to try to avoid killing other people. But if killing someone is what you need to do to get your juice, you certainly can’t let a little extra killing stop you.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t like this, but I didn’t know how to object without setting her off.

  “Yes, ma’am. But, ma’am, I’m…I’m not sure I know how to decide when it’s right to kill other people.”

  Keaton ran her fingers through her hair. Despite her workman’s clothing, she still spoke in her normal voice, a medium alto, rather than her man’s voice. “This is complicated. Later, when we get home, I’ll run through a bunch of sample scenarios with you, to help you understand. Damn. This is a lot to teach in a short amount of time, and there’s no way a twit like you would be able to survive the mistakes I made during my early hunts.”

  I shifted uneasily, filled with worries.

  “Look, dammit,” Keaton said. “Ask your damn questions. How the hell am I supposed to teach you if you don’t hold up your end?”

  “Um,” I said in a small voice, “What if I have trouble killing some normal?”

  She looked over at me again, shaking her head. “Are you seriously trying to claim you’ll have trouble killing a normal between you and your juice?”

  I opened my mouth to say something and stopped. My worry hadn’t been about morality, but about ability. Given her comment, though, I did wonder if I could kill an innocent to get to some juice. The bloody streak Keaton put on my chest still ached. I huddled against the door, wrapped my arms around my torso, and focused my mind on my real question. “Ma’am, what if the person’s a big guy and he’s too skilled for me to kill?”

  “Teaching you to fight is a lesson for another day,” she said. “I promise.” A lusty grin of anticipation filled her face and I had to avert my eyes. Her lessons would be painful.

  Keaton went on. “Finding privacy isn’t as difficult as you might think. Sometimes you’ll follow the kill as he moves around, for instance, if you spot him while he’s in a car driving somewhere. Sometimes you wait. You should be prepared to wait for hours if necessary. You’ll need to wait that long fairly regularly.”

  Keaton finished her sandwich and reached for another bottle of Coke. She cracked the cap with her teeth and spat it out. The bottle cap hit me right in the middle of my forehead. Hard.

  “The worst, though, is sometimes you can’t set up a good kill situation. Sometimes when you find a kill in range you can’t set anything up. Then, you have to let the kill go. That’s the hardest thing in the world to do, but if you can’t take down the kill in the right way, you’re dead.”

  I looked over at Keaton. “Just walk away?”

  “Yes, sometimes taking a kill is too dangerous. You need to know how much risk is too much, because if you don’t know ahead of time, you’ll always want to go an extra little bit. The juice will make you, and that’ll get you killed.”

  We drove down a business street near the edge of downtown. Keaton pulled the car into an empty parking space in front of factory-reject clothing store, and turned to face me. I looked back at her. I really didn’t want to accept the idea of turning away from a kill.

  “The problem is the same as why you don’t kill a lone Transform who has a Focus,” she said, then sighed. “Just because the knife isn’t physically at your throat doesn’t mean the knife isn’t there. Damn. You don’t understand the danger, and my telling you won’t be enough. Damn.” Keaton rubbed at her forehead with the end of the Coke bottle.

  “I learned by making mistakes, bad mistakes,” she said. “If you learn the same way, you’ll probably die. And if you don’t, you’ll bring all the Feds in the world down on me.”

  “How did you survive, ma’am?” I asked, unnerved by my own presumption.

  “With difficulty. The memories of bullet wounds and those goddamned manhunts makes you a lot more willing to walk away from high-risk situations. Also, I got help from some of the most unlikely places.”

  Keaton shook her head and pulled the car back out into the road. “We need to work on getting you more experience,” she said. “I don’t know how else to get you to appreciate the danger.”

  Actually, her explanation did a good job by itself. Keaton was invulnerable. I had a hard time imagining her being shot, being the victim of a manhunt, or accepting help from anyone. I wanted to ask for the stories behind those incidents. Actually, she did say I was supposed to ask questions…

  Keaton said, “We’ll get back to this problem later.”

  Or maybe not.

  “The next problem is disposal of your kill,” Keaton said. “Like everything else, you need to plan out the disposal beforehand. Your main responsibility is to cover your tracks to keep the Feds or the local police from getting too close. An autopsy will show your kill was a Transform killed by an Arm; a simple blood test can show that within a day. You don’t want this to happen. It alerts the authorities to the fact an Arm is around, which not only can lead them directly to you but can also endanger any other non-hunt-related activities you’re doing. Leaving behind a kill also gives the authorities more information on Arms in general.”

  Damn. I was a wanted criminal now. Neither the Feds or the local police cared about the fact I had recently been a suburban housewife, a pillar of the community. All they would see is a murderess and a dangerous Major Transform.

  “To avoid notice you need to cover your tracks,” she said. “You’ll need to come up with a lot of scenarios in advance. You don’t want to do your body disposal the same way every time, because that in itself will make people suspicious. The best solution is something to make the authorities think they figured out what happened, allowing them to go on to their next case. This trick is often hard to arrange. Next best is a mystery. People do occasionally disappear. If the body’s gone, and you left no other evidence, they have no way to associate the death with an Arm. Even better is to plant evidence hinting that something else happened. For instance, say you kill a single man at his apartment. After you’re done you take the body, but also a suitcase filled with some of his clothes, and his car. So long as none of this ever turns up again, no one will consider an Arm kill to be a real likely possibility.

  “Understanding how the police could catch you is very important. Their initial investigation might turn up some useful leads leading them directly to you. In other circumstances, they might get too busy to follow up on their initial leads, but later turn up something entirely unrelated to your kil
l they can use against you. They also might turn up some relevant information for their long-term effort to catch you. The less the Feds know about you, the better.

  “The big thing for all these scenarios is body disposal. So long as there’s no body to run blood tests on, there are always other possibilities for the authorities to consider.” She went on to give a half dozen sample disposal scenarios, some elaborate, some not. “The big trick is to make sure you carry out your disposal plan before you go have fun. Or at least enough of the plan so you can finish up later. You get all that?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, I think so,” I said.

  “The last issue is the diaphragm. You need to put it in before you go for your kill. You won’t remember afterwards, and getting pregnant is a serious pain in the ass.” Keaton burped. I began to see how she portrayed Larry Borton so well. “After your preparations, go find somebody live to fuck. Don’t try it with your kill. He’s convenient, but not very responsive.”

  I stared at Keaton, appalled at the thought. Keaton looked at me with a twisted smile, and I realized she was joking. God. A joke. I couldn’t deal with jokes from Keaton.

  Keaton continued to drive as she taught.

  “You’ll need to hunt when your juice count goes down to 115,” Keaton said. “At the moment, I take about three days on the average to find prey. Hunting took longer when I first started out – in part because I learned better hunting techniques, and second, because the number of Transforms is increasing. There’s plenty of prey Transforms these days, if you can find them. What’s your juice count?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. Low.”

  “You’re at 101 right now, pretty lousy but not low. You need to be able to get a good estimate on your juice count. Your life depends on it.” I yes-ma’am-ed her. “If you’re at 130, you’ll be feeling real good. 120 is about normal. Hmm. Maybe on the high side. Actually, I think 117 is exactly normal. By 110, you’re starting to be irritable and depressed. You’ll want to get a kill soon. Generally, I start hunting at about 115. At 110, if nothing’s come up, I get real serious about hunting. Between 100 and 110, you can still function, but it isn’t pleasant. There’s no reason to spend time in a marginal state if you can avoid doing so. You need to work on this, by the way. You’re doing a lousy job of functioning at your current juice level. You need to be able to function better than you are now, because you have to be able to hunt.”