The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six

by Randall Farmer

  Combat. Nothing was as pure in life as real combat, with your life on the line and tasting the blood of an enemy. Combat became a whirling painting of bright primary colors, a wild sexual dance where the release in the end was death. The more deaths, the better. Sellers allowed himself to lose part of himself in the fight, letting loose the beast as the Duke called it, losing the part that kept him polite and Noble. His combat training, though, didn’t allow him to lose the part who knew friend from foe, even their new friend, Brick. The world whirled kaleidoscopically around him as from his perspective he stayed still, all in one place, and meted out swift damage, one bite at a time.

  All too soon, the fight was over.

  None of the enemy got any shots off before they were all subdued, or dead. Sellers sighed. Too quick. He had barely got into the spirit of the fight.

  “Huh. Only two dead, and of them, none of the three Transforms,” Brick said. He turned to the Duke. “So, since this is your home turf, I’ll let you decide what to do with these yobbos.”

  Sellers didn’t understand the ‘home turf’ statement, but he did have an idea. “Boss,” he said, to the Duke. “We’ve been looking for an auspicious opportunity to properly meet Focus Rizzari. We should present these traitorous enemies as a gift to her, my Duke.”

  He swore Brick covered up a snicker. “I agree, Viscount,” the Duke said. “These shall make a wonderful introduction.”

  Brick cleared his throat. “From my dealings with the Focus, I suspect you might want to leave the dead ones behind. As far as I know, the only corpses she’s interested in are Monster corpses.”

  “Stop here,” Brick said, when they reached a back parking lot of the corner dry cleaners, three blocks away from Inferno. The Sport waved and pointed.

  “That won’t work,” Hoskins said. “The Crow who used to live there vanished a few months ago, and the strange new powerful Crow who visited last week didn’t stay in town.”

  “The Focus has tricks, and is fucking touchy about people violating her territory,” Brick said. Sellers dumped the Transform he carried onto the asphalt parking lot and scratched at his flea-bitten ear again. Territory. This strange Sport was far too worried about territory. However, Sellers did metasense activity in the Inferno palace. Within five minutes, a half dozen Inferno Transforms, and the Focus, were on their way to them, all wary. He expected a similar number of normals would be with them. He hoped Focus Rizzari wasn’t too upset at what they had done. He didn’t want to fight them. They were his friends.

  Indeed, when Sellers saw the Focus and her people coming toward them, there were ample numbers of normals among them, and all of them, including the Focus, were well armed. They exuded wariness, but not overt hostility. Good.

  Hoskins stepped forward as the Inferno party appeared around the corner of the dry cleaners. “Ma’am, I’m Duke Jeremy Hoskins.” The Duke introduced the rest of them, including Sport Brick. “We’ve subdued some of your enemies for you.”

  “Brick?” The Focus, who was rapturously beautiful, both in her glow and her looks, didn’t appear happy with Brick. “What were these idiots of Teas doing, anyway?” Sellers’ knees shook to be around such a wondrous Major Transform.

  Nothing escaped the ancient and powerful Focus Rizzari. She was truly their queen, naturally assuming command over all of them.

  “I believe they were moving into position for an attack on your palace,” the Duke said.

  Master Occum appeared without warning in Sellers’ metasense, three miles distant. He was agitated, and signaling. Run. Dangerous Arm.

  Strange.

  “Noble Peers,” Sellers said. “Our Master is signaling us to run. He seems to think there’s a dangerous Arm in the area.”

  “I don’t metasense any Arms around,” the Duke said. “Do you?”

  “Not I,” Sellers said. He turned to Brick, and to Focus Rizzari. Brick had gone cold and distant, and Focus Rizzari appeared to be amused.

  “Don’t worry,” the Focus said. “If any dangerous Arms show up, I’ll make sure they behave.”

  Brick cracked his knuckles. “No need to worry on my account,” he said. “Arms are tough, but I’m tougher. Fighting Arms is my specialty.”

  “Just perfect,” Focus Rizzari said. “Anyway, back to our real problem. Why don’t we find out what these idiots know?” She, along with two of her bodyguards and a woman Transform, stepped forward, to inspect one of the three juice-pattern carrying male Transforms. The Transform froze, watching her with wide eyes. “Nasty,” she said. “Although not tagged, Teas found a way to supply them with juice: that’s what the juice patterns are for. They’ve got about two weeks left, unless someone disrupts the patterns.” She touched the male Transform, a slender index finger to the forehead. “What did Focus Teas order you to do?”

  To Sellers’ shock, the Transform answered, without having to be tortured in any way. “I don’t know any Focus Teas. The Focus who recruited us, from the Clinic in DC, didn’t give us her name. She wore a dark cloak, and kept her face hidden. She promised us that if we did this mission, and survived, she would make us a part of her household.” The Transform paused, agitated. “Our mission was to kidnap a woman Transform.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a photo. “Her.”

  “That’s me, dammit,” the woman Transform on Queen Rizzari’s left, said. Sellers didn’t see the resemblance. The hair was all wrong, as was the face. He gave this puzzling comment some thought, and realized the woman Transform at the Focus’s left was wearing an artful disguise. He had seen her before, appearing different every time. She did have one consistent trait, though – she agitated Master Occum the most, every time she appeared.

  “Anything else?” the Focus asked the captive Transform.

  “We were supposed to do the snatch in the daytime, when the woman was outside your household, and kill anyone from your household who got in the way.” Pause. “Nothing else.” The rain, which had dwindled to a drizzle, now stopped.

  “They need to die for their temerity,” the Duke said. In the distance, Master Occum gave up on his signaling, sat down, and buried his head in his hands. “Attacks of this nature are not allowed.”

  “I agree with your sentiment, but I’m afraid killing these idiots will give my enemies far too much information.”

  Brick elbowed his way forward, pushy and unstoppable. “You seriously can’t be thinking we let them go free, Focus,” he said.

  “I am, but only after I play with their minds,” she said. “None of them are going to remember reaching Boston, or running into you or the Nobles. The three Transforms will believe they got attacked by an army of Monsters, say, near the Philadelphia area. I’ll send these three back to Teas, and let her cope with the results of her little experiment.” True. Focuses were supposed to care for male Transforms by tagging them and supporting them with juice. What would Teas do when these returned, anyway? Sellers didn’t have any good guesses. “The goons I’ll just memory wipe and scatter.”

  “You can do all that now?” Brick said. Sellers didn’t get the feeling that Brick and Focus Queen Rizzari were friends. They had worked together in the past, and had their difficulties. They needed some naturally polite intermediaries to help them through their problems…like them, the Nobles. Alas, both Major Transforms were years older than them, and it would not be right for them to interfere.

  “Certainly not. Doing the three Transforms is easier, because they’re Transforms, and I can do them now. The rest, if you don’t mind, I’ll take back to Inferno and send them off at my leisure.”

  “Dumb, real dumb,” Brick said. “You don’t want them anywhere a cop with a search warrant can find them.”

  “Do you have a better idea, then, Brick?”

  Sellers’ tail curled, and he fought his anger. Brick and Queen Rizzari looked ready to fight each other at an instant. He looked over at the Duke for instructions, and the Duke signaled to keep quiet.

  “Kill them.”

  The
Focus sighed. “Unacceptable, and you know why.” She paused and rubbed her chin. “However, there may be another way to handle this. If you do your, um, scary trick, their minds will be suggestible enough for me to do the memory wipe.”

  Brick looked at the three Nobles, and turned back to the Focus. “That might not be wise, given the circumstances here. However, your Noble allies have a similar scary trick that you need to experience, that might accomplish the same thing.”

  Focus Queen Rizzari turned to the Duke. “Can you do this? If I’m intruding on something private, forgive me for asking.”

  “No, this isn’t private,” the Duke said. “However, when aimed at a single creature at short range, they may not be at all functional afterwards. Also, even when not aimed at you and your people, you might find it discommoding. Your people are well armed, and I wouldn’t want to accidentally start a fight.”

  “I can make sure there is no accidental fighting,” she said. “You might want to drag your first target over that way a bit, though.”

  The Duke followed the Focus’s suggestion, and dragged one of their normal captives five paces away. As he did, the Focus said a few quiet words to her people, calming them. Sellers metasensed a Focus trick in use; he thought about it, and realized he had metasensed the Focus’s charisma. Master Occum’s lessons said it wasn’t possible to sense Focus charisma in use. Sellers wagged his tail and grunted a low bark. One for him!

  The Duke’s Terror sawing, a combination of vocalization and scratching his claws on each other, instantly knocked out the captive. This was somewhat unfair; the poor captive, a normal, didn’t stand a chance against the Terror from short range. The poor captive also let loose his bowels and peed himself. The Duke’s Terror also startled the Focus’s people, but not as much as Sellers expected. Several of them even knew what was coming. So, where had they run into Chimera Terror calls before? Probably Hunters.

  Yes, Focus Queen Rizzari and the Inferno household were dangerous.

  “Interesting,” the Focus said. She walked over to the fallen captive. “Definitely easier to command now.” She whispered into his ear, and he regained consciousness, but with vacant eyes. “Perfect. He won’t remember a thing.”

  “You want to join us for the rest of our patrol?” the Duke asked Brick, once the Inferno mob bundled off the captives for the Philadelphia area. “We have three hours left.” Master Occum was still present, in the distance, now pacing and, Sellers guessed, cursing.

  “Nah, I have other business to attend to,” Brick said. He did look and feel a bit peckish, to Sellers. Despite being a Major Transform, Sellers guessed one of Brick’s detriments as a Sport was being a heavy-duty juice consumer. He likely needed to get back to his Focus and pick up some more juice. Sellers could sympathize; he needed some snuggle time with his Commoners himself. “So, why are you guys doing so much patrolling, anyway?”

  “We need to prove ourselves as allies in the Cause,” the Duke said. “To our Master, Occum. To Focus Rizzari, of course. And, lastly, to the Commander.”

  Brick froze in place. “The Commander? That idiot DeYoung? She’s an enemy Focus, a captive of the bitch in Pittsburgh.”

  “No, not her,” the Duke said. He turned to Sellers. “Viscount, this one’s yours. All I can see in the sky on this subject is that you’re right.”

  Sellers sat on his haunches, stifling his happy wagging tail, and attempted to ignore the city lights and distant automobile noises. “Someone important appeared to me a few months ago in my long-vision,” Sellers said. “A military person, an organizer, one of us. Earlier this month, this person was reborn somehow, and Master Occum knew from my description I was talking about the legendary Commander. I hadn’t heard of any legends of this nature before, and I got Master Occum to tell me the whole story. I think he suspects he knows who this Commander is, but he’s of the opinion we’re not ready to meet the Commander, yet. We’re not good enough.”

  “You’ve got to be mistaken,” Brick said, a tense bark. “It can’t be her.”

  “Her?” the Duke said. “You know the Commander?”

  “I thought I did, but if this is true, no, I don’t,” Brick said. “I’m going to have to think about this, though. This is nearly too appalling for words. You can’t be right.” He turned to them. “Thank you for inviting me along on this mission, but I have to leave.”

  “The pleasure was all ours. Take care,” the Duke said. Brick trotted off, to the south, not to either the Inferno palace or to the parked motorcycle.

  “Come on, my friends,” the Duke said. “Let’s go find out why Master Occum is so upset.”

  Talking With Dynamo

  The Bakersfield Transform Research Complex was located just to the north of Bakersfield, on the site of an old airport, decommissioned after WW II, and used for a few years as a civilian airport before the Federal Government claimed the place for its current use. Gilgamesh parked his car in town and walked the rest of the way, sweating through his shirt under the hot mid-morning sun and lost in thought.

  He missed Tiamat, and to be so close but not be able to visit hurt. He tried not to think about his Arm too much, because his memories made him both cranky and sad. All the time he had spent comforting her had grown on him. He just hoped his love for her didn’t mess up his judgment. He worried that Lori’s reaction to him, and his to her, occurred because they both missed Carol.

  Dynamo wasn’t a senior Crow, but old enough to have claimed the entire research complex. This puzzled Gilgamesh greatly, until he realized how few Transforms lived in the place. He wondered whether the Research Complex did more than lab work anymore. Typical Fed stupidity about Transforms – an official Transform Research Complex with almost no Transforms in residence.

  One was Dynamo, who lived there.

  Following Dynamo’s instructions on how to get around the complex’s security, Gilgamesh tracked down Dynamo to a small two-story building that looked suspiciously like a small laboratory. Gilgamesh snuck in; once inside, Dynamo came to get him.

  Dynamo wore a suit with a lab coat over it.

  “Gilgamesh,” Gilgamesh said, a bit put out and wondering if Dynamo wore a disguise or actually worked here, and if the authorities here knew he was a Crow.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” Dynamo said. Dynamo was Oriental, five eight, medium build, with a thick mop of black hair as unruly as Gilgamesh’s. “Sorry I couldn’t mention my particulars in my letters. Guru Chevalier forbids it.”

  From what Gilgamesh had learned, in his travels in California, Chevalier forbade a great many things. That particular senior Crow was far too much into ‘forbidding’ for Gilgamesh’s tastes.

  “I understand. So, if I may indulge my curiosity, is this a disguise or are you an employee?”

  “Let’s go back to my lab and I’ll explain everything.”

  Said the spider to the fly? He didn’t pick up any sense of danger from Dynamo, though. Just the normal Crow twitchies about labs and Feds.

  Dynamo’s lab was a chemistry lab, on the small side, filled with lab equipment Gilgamesh didn’t recognize. “I got my PhD five years before I transformed, and when I transformed I’d been working for three years as a research chemist at Chevron, in Los Angeles. I work here under my original identity, adding in a four year long sabbatical for a ‘nervous breakdown’.”

  “One might call being a young Crow a nervous breakdown,” Gilgamesh said. He half winked. “If one were being kind. Don’t you have any trouble with Focuses?”

  “In this place? After the quarantine breakout, I doubt there’s an established Focus who would come here. The Transform living quarters are solid tar.”

  Tar. Guru Innocence terminology. Yet Dynamo looked to Guru Chevalier. At times Crow politics made Gilgamesh’s brain hurt nearly as much as Focus politics.

  “They must send new Focuses here, though.”

  Dynamo nodded. “I pity the poor new Focuses stuck in this place and make sure they’re told to get themselves and
their people out on long walks away from their living quarters,” Dynamo said. “Truthfully, new Focuses are trivial to fool. I haven’t met one yet who’s figured out that I’m a Crow.” He paused. “Have a seat. I hear you want to learn more about Crow life. I, for one, want to hear more about your rotten egg tricks.” Gilgamesh wanted to beat his head on the wall. They weren’t ‘tricks’, they were weapons, dammit.

  They talked. He learned (again) about the California Crows and the Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Utah Crows not getting along, and the Northwestern Crows (as they were called) having a reputation as being unfriendly and unsociable.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time on the East Coast and Midwest, and many of the Crows out that way are greatly worried about a series of local Crow kidnappings. Any Crow kidnappings out here?”

  “Not a one,” Dynamo said. “The most interesting thing recently was the Arm who lives out here, the Skinner, managed to capture and torture some crazy young Crow for a few months before he barely escaped with his life.”

  “I hadn’t heard the story,” Gilgamesh said. He couldn’t help but laugh. Dynamo, disquieted, skittered away for a moment. “I’m not being callous. I was the ‘crazy young Crow’. I wasn’t physically detained, but lured in to help the Arm. I didn’t escape, either; we came to an amicable agreement once I’d finished helping the Arm finish her project. Although to convince you I haven’t totally lost my mind, I must say there were quite a few moments when I worked with the Skinner that I feared she would take too much of a liking to me and never let me go.”

  Dynamo vanished; Gilgamesh picked him up several labs down. “Excuse me, I just had a sudden case of the runs,” Dynamo whispered, barely audible. Gilgamesh practiced patience and reflected on terminology differences. The ‘sudden case of the runs’ was local Crow slang for fleeing in panic. “I can see why you were prompted to develop your rotten egg tricks if you get into scrapes on a regular basis.”

  “How far have you gotten with the rotten eggs?” Gilgamesh said. The question calmed Dynamo down, and he soon returned to work through the technical details of rotten eggs and their effects. Dynamo had figured out how to make them from Gilgamesh’s letters, but he made the eggs differently, and his lasted for nearly a week. Gilgamesh traded all his accumulated stash of rotten egg effects to get Dynamo to cough up the details of how he managed the extended duration.