The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine (5 page)

Keaton grunted again and continued to pace.  No other reaction.

“You knew that, too?”

“Lori gave me a Focus’s point of view analysis of the Washington disaster,” Keaton said.  “If I had slipped up and killed Hank,
I would have given you enough psychological leverage for you to charisma me into complete slavery.”  Keaton paused, and Tonya didn’t comment on the correct analysis.  “Now you’re supposed to say that in the state I was in, there was no thought involved, that Hank’s survival had nothing to do with my actions, but a combination of luck and Hank’s skills.”

Oh, hell.  Now Tonya understood.  “You’ve decided to not accept my apology, or grant any form of absolution, and your punishment is to let me stew in my own moral juices over what I did all those years ago.”

“You don’t understand Arm psychology very well yet, do you,” Keaton said, now emotionally engaged and reacting.  She stopped her pacing and sat down beside Tonya, too close, and predator threatening.

“Given my track record, it’s safe to say I don’t understand much at all about Arm psychology.”

Keaton barked a laugh and put her hand possessively on Tonya’s neck.  Tonya did not let herself react.  “Ain’t that the truth.  You see, confessing and apologizing to me gives me status, over you and over the other Arms.  Only inferiors need to apologize.”

Oh.  “I accept that.”  It almost made sense from a Focus’s perspective.  “Focuses work the same way, but we
’re far wordier about such things.”

Keaton rolled her eyes
and squeezed Tonya’s neck.  The grip might almost have been affectionate.  Or not.  In either case, Tonya expected bruises.  “You missed one part of this exchange, though.  If you hadn’t confessed, I would have eventually taken it out of your hide.  You would have deserved Arm-style physical punishment then, because you would have proven you hadn’t completely shucked your old politics and your self-serving lying to yourself and others.”

“I do understand that,” Tonya said.  “It’s the same for Focuses.  Well, save for the Arm-style physical punishment.”

“No, you bitches just do things like rip each other’s hearts out, or bury each other underground in an attempt to drive other Focuses insane.”

Tonya nodded.  “True.  So, what are
you
worrying about?”

“Rickenbach.  There’s no telling what’s going to happen if we push her too hard. 
I’m surprised she hasn’t killed anyone in her household by accident yet.  She could lay either of us out or ferret out our deepest secrets, if we’re not careful.”

“You’re overestimating her capabilities.”

Eyeball roll.  “I see you haven’t lost your arrogance, have you?  You want to put some money on my little prediction?”

“Sure.”

Mind Scrape

“I know you’re not snooty, but the combination of metasensing and concentrating on your self-control does make you
look
snooty,” Van said.  He kept his hands in his jacket pockets, cold.

“Juice-based putting on airs?  Just
ducky,” Gail said.  “So, what’s your excuse?  I mean, having a pistol in a shoulder holster shouldn’t make you give off the ‘mean and tough’ vibe.”

Gilgamesh
repressed his laughter and carefully navigated the car around a group of children walking to school in the middle of the street.  Gail knew he hated to drive, but he didn’t trust any of them either, and Gail had decided not to pressure the Crow when he wanted to do something his way.  When she remembered.  Back at the meetpoint, Kurt had been livid when Van announced he was going with Gail to Keaton’s home, or lair, or whatever it was the Arm called it.  Gilgamesh hadn’t commented on the change of plans on their end, but he had conveyed his exasperation clearly.  He didn’t appreciate Gail and her household’s tendency toward chaos.

Gail didn’t care.  Van had convinced her
of the fiction of the stated reason for this meeting, and she believed he was correct in his assessment of the true purpose.  So, yes, they had changed the arrangement.

The Crow didn’t understand their bantering.  How it defused the obvious tension.  If Van was right, they were walking into something far more dangerous than Gail’s apology visit to Focus Adkins.

“It’s unfamiliar,” Van said, about the shoulder holster and pistol.  “I have to think about how to stand correctly in this thing.”  He paused.  “I wonder if this is part of what makes the bodyguards so daunting, the uncomfortable nature of the various concealed weapons they have to wear.”

Gail snorted.  “Only for those who aren’t regularly going out armed.”  She thought the beard did the trick;
without Van’s current three quarters of an inch of facial hair his attempted bodyguard routine would make him look silly.  As it was, his current look, with his well-trimmed beard, his long hair in a ponytail, and his no-longer-rail-thin physique from almost a year of manual labor in a Transform household made him almost romance novel handsome.

At least she thought so. 
So did her breasts, and things lower, at least when she wasn’t feeling low on juice.  She swore being engaged had reduced the libido-reductions of low juice, which couldn’t be right.  That is, unless one believed in the crackpot theory she had run into positing Transform Sickness had evolved and had struck in the past.  Which she didn’t.

Gilgamesh turned into a driveway
, to reveal a well off but not opulent suburban house behind the concealing boxwoods.

“We’re here,” Gilgamesh said.  “Go
to the front door, please.  Just go in.”

“You’re not going with us?” Gail asked.

“I wasn’t invited,” Gilgamesh said, audibly snarky.

She and Van exchanged
worried looks, and she watched as he put on his serious professional face, the one he used for academic jousting or public speaking.  She did the same, she hoped.

She had reason to worry.  She metasensed no Transforms, Major or otherwise, inside the house.

Van opened the front door for Gail, and as they had discussed earlier, didn’t do the paranoid bodyguard ‘go in first’ routine.  Gail entered, immediately picking up the faint odor of juice, and something else, something off. 
Rot and death.  Arms lived here, Arm Keaton and her twice mentioned but never named student, and Arm Keaton had never denied the darker Arm stories circulating in the media.

“Hello?”

“Over here,” a woman said, with an awe-inspiring voice that could only belong to a Focus.  Van was right about a senior Focus being here for the ahem interview; now would the Focus end up being Professor Lori Rizzari, the exceptionally intimidating Focus they had identified as the head of the Major Transform political faction Keaton and Gilgamesh belonged to?  Or would she be Tonya, Council Focus Biggioni, the head of the Focus mentoring program and Gail’s seniormost Focus contact?  Gail couldn’t tell from the voice; both Focuses spoke with similar-to-Gail’s-ears east coast accents, and voices didn’t sound the same in person as over the phone.

Gail led Van toward the voice, down a
sparsely decorated and immaculate hall, past a living room Keaton had set up as a study, and to a smallish sitting room.  Keaton in her white easy chair was her usual dour self.  The imposing Focus sitting on the couch was drop-dead gorgeous, with long wavy black hair, and of obvious Italian extraction.  No clue yet.

Keaton’s brows were down, the look Gail associated with several instances where she had inadvertently and metaphorically stepped on the Arm’s toes.  “I’m Gail Ric
kenbach, and this is my fiancé, Van Schuber.”

Neither answered, or stood.  “You were not invited,” Keaton said, her face growing colder and blanker
, focusing on Van.  Gail couldn’t read the emotions of either Major Transform; they remained as emotionally shuttered as they remained hidden from Gail’s metasense.

“Ma’am,” Gail said.  “We, Van that is, figured out this wasn’t a social occasion, but a professional one, and why.  Doing things this way saves you the work of separate
examinations.”  She and Van had rehearsed those two lines ahead of time, but hadn’t been able to come up with anything beyond them.

Gail saw the Arm start to stand
, murderously angry.  Before Gail had time to blink, Keaton separated Van from Gail, pushing him up against the far wall of the room.  She turned to follow, but she couldn’t move her legs.

Dammit!

“This is what you brought him here for,” the Focus said.  Only she didn’t
say
anything; instead, the Focus communicated through her emotions, which Gail metasensed with ease.  “Let the Arm do her job.”

Gail overrode her panic to focus her emotions, so she could
try to answer without words in a similar fashion.  She wasn’t sure if she succeeded at saying “Ma’am, are you Tonya or Lori?”  Too much of her mind whirled through undisciplined thoughts of “How many Focuses can communicate this way?”

I’m Tonya, and you’re only the third Focus I’ve met who can do this.
  Shit!

“No, ma’am,” Van said, responding to a guttural whisper
of Keaton’s Gail had missed.  Gail turned her head slightly to focus on Van and the Arm.  Van stood with his back against the ivory-colored wall with the Arm’s hand gripped around his neck.  “Yes, ma’am, but only as a backup bodyguard.  I’m too slow at hand to hand combat.”  Uncoordinated as well.

“Why bother, if you’re not going to pull your weapon on someone as threatening as I am?”

“Ma’am,” Van said.  Gail could smell Van’s fear and see, already, sweat beading on his brow and his knees minutely quivering.  “You have enemies.  We all have enemies.  If they’re watching us, they could have followed us here, and could attack.”

“Huh,” Keaton said.
  Her expression didn’t change, but her emotions did – her urge to kill Van was gone.  She dropped her hand from his neck, but did not step away from him.  “What Focuses have you met?”

“Focuses Hargrove, Mann, Stell and Johnson.”

“Crows?”

“Only Gilgamesh.”

“Any other Major Transforms?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You fear losing Gail.  Why?”

Gail blinked at the unexpected question.
  Van practically fainted.  “She’s growing as a person faster than I am, or can,” Van said, speaking his mind in a way he would normally never do.  “She’s also too beautiful for someone as plain as I am.”

“Hey!” Gail said, before she realized what was going on
, and how this explained why Van had been putting extensive work into his appearance.  She hadn’t before realized Keaton had any variety of Major Transform charisma other than her pee-inducing predatory nature.  This sort of digging didn’t produce results she wanted other people to know about.

Keaton flickered her
eyes at Gail, with one of her patented ‘if you didn’t know this already you’re a fool’ gazes, and then flickered her eyes back to Van.

“You’re a normal and you haven’t peed your pants yet,” Keaton said.  “Why?”

“Professor Gazaway, ma’am.”  Van paused, and Keaton’s will forced him to continue.  “He thought my dissertation topic was rubbish, my conclusions specious, and my data suspect.  As department head, he…”  Gazaway was nearly as pee-inducing as the Arm, from Gail’s limited perspective.

“Got it.  Topic?”

“Social changes resulting from and the response of women and minorities to the Seven Years War, ma’am.”

“Useless, save to yank the chains of the
white male establishment,” Keaton said.  “Anything about the guys carrying their flintlock rifles off to war?”

“Ma’am, they used smoothbore flintlocks.”

“Why?”  Keaton, for the first time, asked a true question, about something she didn’t already know.  “They had rifles back then.”

“Ma’am, this was before breach-loading weapons and metal cartridges.  You had to pound, hard, the bullet into the rifle before you fired,
because of the rifling grooves, and clean the barrel of the rifle after each shot.  Snipers did use flintlock rifles, but they were too slow for the common soldier.”

“Huh.
”  The Arm studied him, cocking her head to the side momentarily, and then leaned toward him, almost nose to nose, except since she was almost a foot and a half shorter than Van, she had to pull his head down to her level.  Gail shivered with the force of the Arm’s presence.  “You came in here uninvited, counting on the fact that if I offed you, doing so would negate our trap.”

“Ma’am.  I would have never said such a thing.”

Keaton laughed and backed off.  She flickered her eyes over to Tonya, then back to Van.  “I’m going to want to talk to you, so for your safety I’m going to tag you.”

Gail wanted to object, but when she started to speak, nothing came out.  Tonya had found a way to use her juice tricks to keep Gail from talking.
  Dammit and double-dammit!

Van looked over at Gail.

Nod ‘yes’
, Tonya sent, through the strange metasensed emotional link.

Gail nodded ‘yes’.

Keaton motioned with her eyes, down, and Van knelt.  “Say ‘I’m yours’.”

“I’m yours.”

“You’re mine.”

Gail wanted to scream in protest, but the juice moved, and now Van wore a screwy Arm tag.  Gail’s protests died as she metasensed
how the Arm’s tag changed both Van and the Arm – as her possession, he now felt as if he was under the Arm’s protection.  The Arm tag was beautiful, and lost in its beauty, Gail relaxed.

This was how Arms arranged alliances.
  Neat!

“I want to show you something, Van,” Keaton said.  She led him out of the sitting room and down the hall, to her workroom living room.  She unrolled something, out of sight.  “This is St. Luke
’s, and this is the Hyatt.”  The location of the wedding reception.  “These are our enemies.  How would you defend the place?”

Paper rustled.  “Not this way,” Van said.  “Holding those doorways invites the enemy to go around, say through those windows.  They…”

Gail found Tonya standing next to her.  “This was a hell of a gamble you and Van took,” Tonya said, aloud.  “Challenging an Arm in any way is extremely dangerous.”

“How was this a challenge?” Gail said, happy to be allowed to speak. 
Are Arms this touchy?

Yes
, Tonya answered, wordlessly.  “I apologize for what I’m going to have to do next,” the older Focus said.  “Let’s sit.”

“Okay,” Gail said, following Tonya over to
the white couch.  “Don’t apologize.  If one of the nasty Major Transforms has gotten to me, I want to know as well.  The last thing I want to end up doing is poisoning the punch or stealing some bodyguard’s pistol and shooting at people.”

Tonya
gave Gail a cockeyed smile and sat.  Gail followed her lead and sat as well.  “You are a strange one, aren’t you?  I’m glad you figured this out ahead of time.”

Actually, Van figured this out ahead of time.  Gail just hoped for a
chance to find out about some of the upper end Major Transform tricks.

That isn’t going to happen
, either,
Tonya sent.  “Relax,” Tonya said.

Gail found herself speaking, answering questions, and not remembering either the questions or her answers.  Or how, exactly, Tonya was getting her to talk in such an unguarded manner.

“Can Focus Adkins actually do such a thing?” Gail said, what had to be over ten minutes later.  Strangely, she couldn’t remember what Tonya had said to prompt her response.

“So you can resist my charisma,” Tonya said.  “The answer is ‘yes’, but beyond that, I’m not going to say.  Why are you letting me do this to you?”

“Why not?” Gail said.

“You shouldn’t trust me,” Tonya said.  “You shouldn’t trust any Major Transform.  So, has…”

Gail, though, wasn’t ready to let her mind fall back under Tonya’s word-spell.  “You’ve earned the trust, and, no, I wouldn’t be allowing anyone else to do this.”