The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine (12 page)

“To earn enough of our respect to be our leader, you’re going to have to do better,” I said.  “You’re an ice queen, Focus.  You’re a passionless eunuch.”

“Not when Crows are around, ma’am.”

Slap.  “I was getting to that.  When there are Crows around, you’re shameless.  You’d sleep with any Crow who walked across your doorstep, I’ll bet.”

“So?”  Slap.  She had gotten a lot more defiant in the psychological sessions than she had been when we started.

“You’re inconsistent.  Everyone you deal with, you deal with inconsistently.  The net effect is to make nearly everyone pissed off at you.  This is as hard on you as it is on those you’re linked to.  Consider Zielinski.  How long did you know him before you realized he preferred to go by ‘Hank’?”

She wept for the first time.  She had never before seen herself from the outside and she didn’t like what she was seeing.  “I offered him shelter, but ended up chasing him out of my house by treating him as any other normal, ma’am.  Just another researcher.”

“Right.  Like Eleanor Roosevelt was just another president’s wife,” Keaton said.  “Can’t you do anything right?  Are you as inept as you look?”

“I’m an academic!  I…”

“Mere academics can’t wave their hands and kill Focuses and Transforms.  You realize, Focus, that you
’ve killed more Focuses and tagged Transforms than us two mass murdering Arms?  Combined?”

More yowling from Lori.  The truth hurt.  Literally.

“What are you doing?” Lori
said, panic seeping into her voice again.  Still naked, but now with a kitchen knife in her hands.  With her feet hobbled by chains.

Keaton picked Lori up, and walked (hopped) her through a
cabana doorway, to where Keaton had our murderous serial rapist chained to the ceiling.  Keaton let out the chains, releasing him to kneel piteously on the floor.  He sobbed and begged.  He had burn marks over much of his body, and numerous wounds too brutal to describe.  A recently humbled student Arm Bass had been playing with him, and had managed not to kill him – Bass definitely had promise as a top-notch interrogator.  Keaton and I went back to the doorway.

“Kill him, Lori.  In cold blood.  Understand murder for once,” Keaton said.  “You can see him for what he is.  Watch his reactions.  Serial rapist.  Occasional murderer.  Accountant.  Notice the lack of reaction to ‘accountant’.  He isn’t an accountant.”

“Kill him with the juice attack,” I said.  “Or your knife.  Your choice.”

She dropped the knife, put her head in her hands and sobbed.

I walked forward, whispered in her ear.  “I’ll loosen the chains some more on this guy.  Look at his dick.  Long and twisted.  You aren’t going anywhere.  Kill him.  Or don’t and as punishment for disobeying an order, we’ll let him rape you – and then it will be too late to kill him, because we won’t let you stop him.”

She shook her head.

“Do you think the first Focuses won’t be able to see this weakness in you, and exploit it?  ‘Oh, she can’t kill in cold blood, not even those who clearly deserve to die’.”  I paused, mocking.  “Or don’t you trust the Transform point of view on death.”

“My baby is still in its first trimester, ma’am.  The level of juice use she’s
already seen is far too dangerous; anything more excessive will likely make her into a Monster.  I’ll have to abort.  That’s murder.  Murder of an innocent.  I pledged to not murder again.”  Keaton and I had pushed Lori to the edge of madness, and insanity filled her voice.  As with Tom, we had to unfreeze her before we could change her.

“No.  Untake
your pledge.  Otherwise, we might as well surrender to the first Focuses.”

“What are our limits, ma’am?  As Transforms?”

“We decide.”

Lori sighed.  “I like killing, ma’am.  I like the power.”

“So do I, Focus.”

“I’ll make a terrible world e
mpress.”

“You won’t get to be world
empress working by yourself, and all your friends like the killing and the power, as well,” I said.  “Even Tonya.  We aren’t the good guys in white hats.  Not yet, perhaps not ever.  We’re the
better
guys.”  Quoting Keaton.  “You know what Tonya had to do to herself to get on the Council.”  She killed herself.  Twice.

She nodded.  “Toughening me up is
the same thing the first Focuses were doing to Tonya and Polly.”

“No,”
Keaton said.  “They were breaking them.  The first Focuses took Tonya and Polly apart to see who they were, broke them according to their own twisted specifications, and left them broken.  The scars are evident on both of them, years later.”

“That’s just tactics and strategy, though, their means to their end,” I said.
“The first Focuses real evil is in turning their backs on the Transform community.”

“We aren
’t breaking you, Focus,” Keaton said. “We are punishing you as you wish to be punished.  We’re disciplining you as you need to be disciplined.”  And toughening her up, as she had intimated.  Keaton and I knew what it took to make the tough decisions.  An Arm who couldn’t make tough decisions couldn’t survive.  Lori wasn’t getting everything – she hadn’t started out as an ambulatory hunger for juice as an Arm did – but she wouldn’t be lying to herself any more.  At least not anywhere near as much.

“I may already be broken, the same as Tonya and Polly,” Lori said, eyeing the normal man.  Keaton signaled for her to elaborate.  “During the incident where Focus Schrum did the withdrawal scarring, Focus Adkins, I believe,
changed my supplemental juice into Monster juice.  They were trying to destroy me as a Focus, and it almost worked, save that Occum and I came up with a fix.  That’s where I picked up my blood lust, ma’am.”

“You might consider what you have
as ‘blood lust’, but from my perspective, an Arm’s perspective, you’re just a bit temperamental,” Keaton said, and laughed.  “An Arm must control far worse, and be willing to act on it against a necessary target, without going berserk and killing everyone in the area.”

Lori paused and thought, her eyes fixed on our serial rapist.  I wondered if we would need to let Lori go on a killing spree, to get her awakened urges out of her system, the same way all of us Arms – including Haggerty –
had needed.  Knowing Lori’s proclivities, Boston’s supply of serial rapists might soon end up well depleted.

“You’re saying I will likely have to kill, or order the deaths of the first Focuses, ma’am?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What if I like killing too much?  I think, ma’am, I already do.”

“So be it.  We don’t have the luxury of having only perfect people in the Cause.”

She nodded and looked over at the cowering rapist with a look of determination.  Five seconds later the normal fell to the ground
, limp.  Dead.

The amount of juice she used was so small it was beyond my ability to metasense.  For the first time, I began to wonder what in the hell I had awakened, here, in Lori.

Th
is was just the first day.

We didn’t let Lori get any sleep until the second night, and only the meager amount of sleep an Arm needed.  Lori had come to my place, originally, to make up with me and to have me seduce her.  She did not like it one bit when I refused to be the seducer.  If she wanted my love, she would have to seduce me.  She couldn’t.  More truth she didn
’t like.

I did let her seduce me into sleeping with her.  Not sex,
only juice cycling.  It wasn’t as intense as it had been at her place, the first time, because I wasn’t panicked and stressed.  After a few minutes, instead of feeling like a never-ending juice draw from my prey, the juice transfer made us into one, utter bliss of a separate sort.

Needless to say, all of Lori’s wounds of the previous two days were gone after our three short hours of rest, as was a small but noticeable amount of my juice.

No problem.  Keaton and I repeated the damage the next day, and the day after.  The forge was hot, but by the end, even the sword Keaton and I were forging was enjoying the fire.

The Cause Meeting

Hancock’s California palace awed Tonya.  The Houston place had been too much.  This
place was ridiculous.  Tonya still didn’t understand why Hancock was willing to invite them here.  Only once, as Keaton was leaving Philadelphia, had Keaton ever revealed the location of her lair.  Didn’t Hancock care about the security risks?  There was something screwy going on with this Arm, and Tonya hoped she wasn’t overreaching.  Next time the Feds caught her, they were going to kill her immediately.  She had seen the FBI memo.

Tonya feared Hancock had succumbed to
hubris.  The laurel wreath upon her brow, metaphorically placed there by the Transform community, made her a Transform celebrity.  The Commander.  Slayer of Rogue Crow.  Healer of Focus Rickenbach.  Savior of an entire wedding reception worth of Focuses and Transforms.  The potential for hubris was large.

Slayer of Innocence as well.  Tonya smiled.  She directed Frank and Billy, her new traveling bodyguards, to join with the others.  Two other sets of bodyguards were there as well.  After a moment of thought, she decided one set were Carol’s guards – she recognized one of them, the weasel guy, Ricky.

She walked in, and one of Carol’s people greeted her, a woman who introduced herself as Ila.  New as a guard, Tonya read.  No, not guard.  Officer.  She held herself with the air of someone recently promoted, unsure of herself, but with potential to keep climbing.  Interesting.  Ila led Tonya to the dining room, in use as a meeting room, with one last chair open for her, and not at the head of the oversized table.

The biggest surprise was the attendance of Duke Hoskins, Earl Sellers, and their Master, Crow Occum
, joining the expected Crow contingent of Guru Shadow, Gilgamesh and Sinclair.  Crow Occum was physically twisted, warped almost out of human shape, with bandy legs and powerful arms and shoulders.  According to Lori, the damage was something done to him by the senior Crows.

There were some serious grudges sitting here at this table.

Keaton was there, on crutches, her regenerating leg extending awkwardly down to her lower calf.  Carol, of course, sat at the far end of the table, but not at its head.  Lori sat beside her, at the head of the table, un-Lori-like in appearance.  Closed, unreadable, with sunken eyes, black-smudged from lack of sleep, hair shortened and frizzy, and a miniature set of almost Arm-like muscles evident on her spare frame.  Scary, intense, hard-edged and hard used.  Dressed in black, practically death incarnate.  Another Arm sat at Carol’s side, Haggerty by name if Tonya remembered correctly.  Haggerty looked like Lori’s big sister, huge, muscular, similarly beautiful, dressed in the same death incarnate clothing style as Lori and just as hard edged and hard used.  Haggerty would have made a hell of a Focus.  Tonya didn’t know anything about her as an Arm.  Secret agent Zielinski, dangerous, sad and angry, sat in a wheelchair next to Haggerty, and she knew his wheelchair confinement would be bringing back some of his foul old memories.  Tom, Carol’s normal second in command, sat on Carol’s right.  Ann Chiron sat at his side.  The only other Focus at the table was Focus Thelma Laswell of Houston.  She too looked tougher than before, not from Arm-abuse, but from responsibility.  If Tonya’s spies were correct, Laswell was now in charge of all three Arms’ money-laundering operations.

Tonya sat.  Ila came by with a stack of papers, professional looking reports, regarding the Cause.  The one on top was a detailed explanation of the functioning of a Noble household.

“Sorry, folks, my plane was delayed,” Tonya said.

“No problem.  D
id you get any further word about how the first Focuses are reacting?” Lori asked.

“Yes.  Wini Adkins gave us all a glowing report, and they’ve decided to stand back and watch without interference.  They
also shelved their plan to unseat Polly, Bentlow, Webb and I.  Polly is talking about getting representatives of the Arms, Crows and Nobles on the Focus Council as non-voting members, and I’m fairly sure, after talking to several other Council members, there won’t be much of a fight over that.  For the moment, we’ve won.  On the other hand, I also heard a rumor that the idea of a Focus tax – official up front and expensive dues to the Council – is back on the table.”

“The consensus here is to take things slow, and not push the Cause too aggressively,” Lori said.  “I represented your position as desiring to go slow as well.  Did I overreach?”

“No, not at all,” Tonya said, and then gulped.  Lori had rolled her.  She hadn’t planned on being so forthcoming about Polly’s plans or the firsts.  In her head to head charisma matches with Lori over the years, every time Lori had caught up to her, Tonya had managed to find some way to get back ahead.  Lori had never found a way to get ahead of her before, and certainly never to the point where she had rolled Tonya.  Then Tonya saw it, a minor tell, the precision of Lori’s hand motions, added to Carol and Stacy’s obvious approval of what Lori was doing.  The bitch Arms had been training Lori!  Hard, hard training, it looked like.

What
did they do to you, Lori? Tonya thought.

What needed to be done
, Lori answered, wordlessly.

Hell.  Lori hadn’t
been able to do this trick before.  The Arms must have been honing Lori’s metasense as much as they had been honing her charisma.  Tonya focused in on Lori’s fingernails, knowing what Keaton’s training often led to.  Indeed, they were mostly gone, with just a start of new growth at the base.

Tonya wanted to curse.  She
had underestimated Hancock from the beginning, she had kept underestimating Hancock, and even after Hancock saved the damned wedding reception, she
still
underestimated Hancock.  Arm training for a Focus!  Who else might have thought something so insane would work?  And so quickly.

Galling.

“I also think we need to consolidate our winnings,” Tonya said, giving in to the inevitable.

“
Wonderful.  There are a few things along those lines I’d like to get to later today, including a question I have about how legal we are going to be able to keep ourselves, and Carol’s idea about having the Arms paying Focuses instead of the reverse.”  Lori turned to the large Crow contingent, thankfully not including Sky.  “Guru Shadow?  You have news?”

He nodded.  “I have verified that none of us are facing any retribution over the death of Wandering Shade from the more senior Crows,” he said.  “However, I was not able to negotiate a consensus change on the issue of Crow training of Chimeras.  Such training is still to be labeled ‘experimental’,
which leaves it vulnerable to a revoking of approval at any moment.”  He paused, and Tonya felt the anger wafting off the two Nobles and Crow Occum.  “I, with Crow Master Occum’s help, will be training more Crow Masters.  The process of training Crow Masters is not codified, yet, and should legitimately be considered experimental, but I do have three Crow volunteers for this training, each with different levels of commitment, expertise and experience.  One is with us: Sinclair.”  Sinclair kept a straight face, and nodded acknowledgement.

“
Wonderful – and good luck, Sinclair,” Lori said, a real smile on her face.  “Do you have any idea how long this will take?”

“None at all
,” Shadow said.  “All three Crows involved possess at least some aptitude for symbolic juice and dross manipulation, what we term Shaman skills.”  His comment brought a thin smile from Arm Haggerty.  “All three will need to unlearn what they have already been taught, and of the three, the most mentally flexible is our friend Sinclair.”

“I hope I
’m not being too optimistic, ma’am, but I believe I’ll be able to master the basics within six months,” Sinclair said.  “I’m a younger Crow than the other two, and have less to relearn.”

“I’ll be looking forward to seeing a second Noble household by the end of the year, if all goes well,” Lori said.  “Feel free to ask around for help.  Inferno has quite a bit of experience helping the Nobles, and Crow Master Occum.”

“I’ll keep your offer in mind,” Crow Sinclair said.  If Tonya read him correctly, he was quite anxious to get back to his training.

She just hoped the senior Crows were more forgiving of push
y underlings than the first Focuses.

“
There is one other important issue I need to bring up,” Tonya said, after extracting implicit permission from Lori to raise a point.  “We’re going to need to put some work into protecting and guiding Focus Rickenbach.  In a few years, she’s likely to be one our more important assets.”

“How good is she, anyway?” Hancock said.  She still lusted for a Focus able to feed Arms juice.

“I did some thinking on the subject, and I’m convinced she has about the same innate potential as Polly,” Tonya said.  “She has no weaknesses I can tell, save for lack of training and experience.”

“Even with
her joke of a household?” Keaton said, shaking her head.  “Focus households always mirror the strength of their Focus, in my experience.”

“
It’s still a young household, but Stacy, think – how many other Focuses’ Transforms have you ever known who would volunteer to be juice-sucked and die for a worthy cause?”  Keaton sat back, frowned, and then nodded.  “The problem we’re going to be facing is that she’s different, as is her household.  We can’t step in too often, or too hard, or we’ll end up creating a rebel; yet if we don’t interfere, we risk having other Focuses destroy her because, in her, they see a threat.”

“What are you suggesting, then?” Keaton said.

“Talk to her,” Tonya said.  “Drop hints of things you might be willing to have her involved with, and let her take the bait.  I’ll make sure I’m around when her charisma comes in; that’s the most dangerous time for any powerful Focus.”

“For the time being, I think I should keep my distance,” Lori said.  “I’ve seen how she idolizes you, Tonya, and a variant on your household would fit her well.  On the other hand, I and my household are just too different.”

Tonya caught Carol and Stacy exchanging glances, easy to read as a ‘please?’ from Hancock and a ‘she’s my Focus, keep your hands off’ from Stacy.

Gilgamesh wiggled his juice and caught her eye.  “Crow Whisper nerved himself up to make contact with Gail.  We should be able to funnel advice through him, if we need to.”

“Great,” Lori said.  She looked around the table.  “Next?”

The meeting helped, Tonya decided, but she did worry about what this would do to her household’s bank account.  The Cause, if anything, was wordy.