No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) (21 page)

“Remember my comment about the difference between a politician and a philosopher?”

Not this again.  “I know, I know.  Focuses are politicians, not philosophers.  I should consider my problems as practical, not philosophical.”  Blech.

“It
’s the ‘why’ that’s important,” Van said.  “Any politician who wants to get things done can’t afford to follow a strict ideology and belief set, the way a philosopher can.  Our culture considers political horse-trading and compromise as a bad thing, not realizing that without them, the governmental process freezes up…which invites
anarchy
.”

Gail wasn
’t sure about the last, but didn’t call Van on his reach.  She knew his personal dislike of anarchy colored many of his arguments.  “It’s back to Reverend Narbanor’s ‘good king David’ argument, then.  Being a ‘good Focus’ is going to require me to do things a ‘good Gail’ would never do.”  The argument would ease her worries a lot more if she
liked
the King David stories, or King David himself.

“Not the way I would have
argued, but, yes.”

“Where do I stop, though?  How do I know when to stop?”

Van gently lifted her to her feet from where she had been sitting, on a beat-up fifty year old straight-backed kitchen chair from Van’s parents’ barn.  He led her over to her cot, where he laid her down on her stomach, and resumed his massage.  “Knowing where to stop is a question of morality, not ideology.  Morality, of course, from the perspective of a Focus, and a Focus’s responsibilities.”

Gail groaned.  “
Yah, right.”  She didn’t like what she came up with when she thought about things from the perspective of a Focus.  Instinctive Focus morality sucked, big time.  “If I end up as a typical tyrant Focus, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”  She sighed, and attempted to enjoy the massage.  “I guess it’s time for me to get you and the gang together and tell you all what I’m going to be doing, and what I’m going to need all of you to do.”

Every step she took down this lonely path bothered her
more, and filled her with fear.  Where was she going?  What would this make of her?  How could she do any of this and not end up alone, and unloved?

---

“The queen is high, I trump the spade, and you get the last trump.  We make,” Kurt said, laying down his hand.  They sat on the floor, in the tiny space at the foot of the bed in one of the tiny bedrooms in the Ebener house.  Gail had to relax somehow; the fact they would likely be stuck living in tents and shacks all winter had her antsy.  Doomed, they were all doomed.

Van sighed and scribbled at the notepad on his knee while Gail collected the cards.

“That’s rubber,” he said.  “One more, or are we done for the night?”

“I
’m up for another,” Sylvie said, false enthusiasm in her voice.  Kurt nodded, so Gail started dealing.  Her new hand, she noted, disgusted, had all of four points, and no five card suits.

  Sylvie’s knuckles turned white and her face paled, and she turned to Gail, wary. 
“So is it cheating when I know your hand sucks?” she said.

“Oh, crap,” Gail said
, as she fixed the juice count.  “I’ve been trying to watch that.”

“You
’ve been doing fine until just now.  You must be getting tired,” Sylvie said.

Gail shrugged.
  She wasn’t physically tired, but mentally exhausted from too many discussions about winter survival.  The household was thinking ahead, and too much thinking and too much stress made keeping the juice count steady much harder.

“Let
’s take a break,” Kurt said, stretching.  Gail threw her cards in and leaned back.  Van got up and made for the bathroom.  Gail noticed Kurt watching her.  She raised a single eyebrow, and noticed, surprised, that she could do that.  Always before, her eyebrows moved together.

Kurt pulled his wallet out and started extracting money. 
A lot of money.  He put the cash on the floor in front of Gail.

“The take from my side business,” he said.

Gail frowned and quick counted the pile of worn bills.  “Kurt, this is almost three hundred dollars.  This isn’t just from selling pot to a few friends.”

Kurt shrugged.  “$287.  A few more friends, and I found a source for LSD.”  So
this was what Kurt and Daisy had been talking about for so long, in the Schubers’ last visit.  “Since Ricky graduated and went off to do the corporate thing, lots of folks have needed a supplier.  I know most of his clients, so I do pretty well.”

“Shit.  What happens if you get caught?” Gail
said.  She looked over at Sylvie, and Sylvie was silent and unhappy.

“I
’ve thought about that,” Kurt said.  “I can be careful, and I can make sure there’s no risk to the household.  I’ll never bring the business home, and never tie the household in.  The only thing the household gets is the money.  If we’re smart about how we use the money, it won’t even show up strange in the bank records.  We need this.”

Kurt was right.  They did need th
e money.  But the risk…

“Don
’t tell me you’re getting all moral on me about the stuff,” Kurt said.  “All that religion you’ve picked up’s made you into a square.  I know what you think about the drug laws.”

Gail nodded.  “A bunch of suits with a control fetish.  Fascists trying to stamp out freedom wherever they can find it. 
However, those fascists in uniform could still haul you off to prison.  While we’re all young and can take that crap, think about what this would do to little Ruthie Narbanor if her family got in trouble with the law.”

Kurt
’s eyes were hard.  “Little Ruthie Narbanor’s looking awful hungry these days.  She can take her household in trouble with the law better than she can take losing her toes to frostbite because she’s stuck outside in the winter.”

Gail
turned to Sylvie.  “You’re not saying anything.  What do you think about all this?”

Sylvie still
frowned.  “We talked.  I’m not happy, but we decided this is your call.  I don’t like the risk, and I wish somebody else’s husband was sticking his neck out, but we do need the money.”

Gail leaned back, and Van came back in from the bathroom.  He frowned
at the money on the floor and started to say something, but Kurt waved him to silence.  Gail thought.

They did need th
e money.

“Go for it,” she said.

Kurt’s decision to volunteer touched her, as well as Sylvie’s support of his decision.  Worse, she couldn’t help but volunteer on her own.  She had been putting off the inevitable for too many days.  “People, I’m going to do it tomorrow,” Gail said.  ‘It’ being her plan to win her freedom.  She had presented the plan to her inner circle, and then got cold feet. She blamed herself for pushing things too quickly over the household books, and part of the blame for Virgil’s skipping town with the household money lay heavily on her shoulders.  The mistake, or at least her fears about making more mistakes along the same line, had made her hesitant to push.  She was terrified the confrontation would explode in her face, and make an even bigger mess for her and her household.

Sylvie took a deep breath and gave Gail a hug.  “Finally.”

Gail nodded.  “Sorry about taking so long to make up my mind.  Doing this scares the piss out of me.”

“Me, too,” Sylvie said.

“We’ll all be there for you,” Van said, nervous and lukewarm in his support, surprising after he had pushed so hard a week ago.  Kurt smiled, though, an actual real Kurt smile.

“Don
’t feel bad about what you’re going to be doing,” Kurt said.  “This has to happen.”

---

Gail gave the signal after Bart pulled in after his work shift, and as with his normal routine, stopped by the bathroom to wash his hands and face.  Helen and Melanie walked off to corral Isabella Wheelhouse, while Sylvie skipped off to start corralling the other Transforms.  Gail went to the dining room to wait; Bart would come there next.  Van wandered off to intercept Buddy Attendale; she and her inner circle had talked this out and decided having Van stand next to Gail would send the wrong message.  Van hadn’t liked the decision, though.

Her knees wobbled as she rocked back and forth, waiting.  Her arms
trembled jelly-like, and she tasted stomach acid in the back of her throat.  Was she doing the right thing?  If things went wrong, she feared she would lose what support she had in the household.  Her situation was bad, confined to the Ebener farm, but as Virgil Conte had said, things could get worse.  Focus bitch Adkins words echoed in her mind: “When you’ve screwed your household up so badly that you’re their slave, come talk to me again.  If they’ll let you out of your closet.  Maybe then you’ll be ready to listen to reason.”  Did an actual closet await her?  The Ebener farm was a mighty big closet, and she still couldn’t forget Virgil’s threat, or ignore Bart’s growing fear of her.  Who was she to complain?  Perhaps she should back off.  She was just the household’s Focus.

Focus.  Center.  The necessary one.  By
chaining her, figuratively, her household was shackling themselves.  The fact they were stuck living in a Michigan cornfield, with no money for a real solution, was a piece of evidence that the household, by chaining her down, was hurting themselves.

Or was this all just rationalization on her part, a simple annoyance over being confined to the farm?  This wasn
’t what she had wanted to be doing with her life, this crazy politics and power games and whatnot.

What if she…

Her thoughts and fear fled when she spotted Bart entering the small Ebener dining room.  “I have a question, Bart,” she said, before her own fears quieted her voice and kept her from speaking.  “I have some research I need to do at U of M tonight, and I’d like to take Van and Helen with me to help.  This isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”

Bart winced.  He looked hungry and unhappy already, and Gail bringing up this
well-worn subject now didn’t help.

Exactly as Gail planned.

The fact this was her plan didn’t keep her knees from wobbling and the acid taste from the back of her throat as she waited for Bart to speak.

“We already settled this, Gail,” Bart said.  “The household can
’t afford to have you and whatever bodyguards we’re forced to send with you going gallivanting around whenever you want.”

Gail nodded.  “You
’re sure about this?”  She wanted him to back down.  She didn’t want to do what she planned to do to Bart unless she had no other choice.

“Of course I
’m sure about this,” Bart said.  Damn.  Gail crossed her arms, the pre-arranged signal.  Her arms shook as she did, but she didn’t back down.  “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to…”

Bart
’s voice died when he saw Helen and Melanie escorting his wife Isabella into the dining room.  Unwillingly.  His eyes flickered to the two other dining room open doorways, where per Sylvie’s work, the other household Transforms now gathered, curious.  More came than Sylvie personally gathered, drawn by Gail’s emotional mixture of strong agitation and inner resolve.

“You said you wouldn
’t use the juice to control the household,” Bart said, his voice rough with instant fear.  His eyes settled on his wife.  “Are you breaking your agreement?”

“I did, and I
’m not,” Gail said.  She needed to get everyone’s attention, right here, right now, before things got out of hand.  Right here, right now, if Bart wanted, was the point where he could throttle her plan.  All he had to do was lay the hammer down, physically take her and confine her.

The next bit was hard, and she shivered with her own fear
, fear she didn’t have time to acknowledge.  She had to act now, before Bart realized he was out of options that didn’t involve shoving Gail in a closet.  As Daisy said, she had to strike first.

This could go wrong in so many different ways.  From one experiment with Sylvie, which ended with Sylvie
’s arms clutched around Gail’s knees, and Sylvie bawling her eyes out, Gail knew this would be rough on all of them.  She had nearly upchucked on Sylvie when she had finished the test…and what she had done to Sylvie hadn’t held even the slightest hint of hidden pleasure.  It was all bad, all the way down.

The morality of
what she was about to do nagged at her, as well.  She wanted to be bluffing, but both Van and Kurt, past masters of and occasional victims of nasty male behavior, convinced her that she had to do this for real if she wanted to succeed.

Gail took a quick inhale of breath and pushed her will forward, trying to be brave,
to ignore the instinctive wrongness of her actions, and do what she needed to do.  She reached out through her metasense, and made the change in Isabella that removed Gail’s tag from her.  “I’m doing this,” Gail said.  Her knees shook, harder.  She had to hold back her vomit.

Her finely crafted plan didn
’t work.  Isabella didn’t fall to the dining room floor in a dead faint or go clutching for Gail’s knees, as Sylvie had, during the test.  Instead, Isabella blinked twice and gave a little shiver…and otherwise didn’t react.  Gail didn’t have the same reaction as when she had untagged Sylvie, either.  Instead of reaching into the toilet to fish out some turds, this time it was as if she held a hot bloody knife in her hands, a knife covered in Isabella’s blood.  Ewww and worse.