The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six (4 page)

“Yes, Anne?” Suzie said.

“Ma’am, I’d like to request that, um, ma’am, that, uh, ma’am I’m going to resign,” Anne said.  The poor Focus looked like she was about to be sick.  To Tonya, Anne looked like the stress of just this one meeting had gotten to her.  Suzie shook her head at her fellow first generation Focus.  “I’m resigning my position on the executive council, ma’am.”

“I heard you the first time, Anne,” Suzie said.  She crossed her arms and glared at her fellow Focus.  “Fine.  Fine.  I guess it was inevitable.”  Anne Trail had never become comfortable acting outside of what she considered a woman’s role in life.  The more serious Focus politics became, the farther back Anne backpedaled from power.  She hunched her shoulders now, timid and meek as always.

“Madam President?” Polly said
, a helpful but false smile on her face.  “This leaves two vacancies, and as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think there are two suitable members of either the first or second generation of Focuses in our region who can take them.”

“Your point?” Suzie
said, her voice now a low growl.  Unplanned, but predictable – Polly grabbing immediate payback for her support of Suzie against Christina.

“There are younger Focuses…”

“Untrustworthy younger Focuses who’ve never been under the thumb of the government,” Suzie said, tapping her fingers on the picnic table.  Although the government hadn’t quarantined any of the second generation Focuses, the government hadn’t recognized the right of Focuses to live freely until after Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.  All of the second generation of Focuses had been under house arrest, confined to their places of residence from the time they left the overcrowded Transform Clinics until the day Kennedy signed the executive order.

“Correct as always, Suzie,” Polly said.  “However, I believe quality matters as well as loyalty – and with proper use of charisma, I can ensure loyalty.”

Tonya raised her hand.  Suzie acknowledged Tonya, with a mild sigh.  Tonya had learned to keep quiet in open meetings, at least most of the time – because whenever she got active, she created a ruckus.  Suzie did not appreciate ‘ruckus’.  “Speaking of younger Focus loyalty, have any of you been approached by a representative of Focus Martine DeYoung?” Tonya said.

Marcia, Lynn and Polly answered in the affirmative, while Suzie and Anne shook their heads.  “I don’t know if this is as serious a problem as Focus Julius’s rival organization, but…” Tonya went on to give a complete description of Poe and the goals of Focus DeYoung’s lobbying group.  “Lastly, for some ungodly reason having to do with her supposed self-resurrection after an auto accident, Focus DeYoung’s now calling herself ‘the Commander’.  Crazy stuff.”

Suzie froze for an instant.

“I thought the idea of Transform rights was a fine notion at the time, though Poe didn’t mention anything about her Focus being ‘the Commander’,” Polly said.  Dammit!  Polly knew what was going on with this ‘Commander’ nonsense.  “
I told this Poe character that I would bring up their idea of lobbying for Transform rights in the Council.  I suspect the Council won’t be particularly interested in DeYoung’s ideas concerning household rights, but should find the idea of lobbying for Transform rights within normal society to be a good idea to back.”

“Crap,” Suzie said.  “That’s idiocy.  We don’t have anywhere near enough Transforms to be asking for any sort of official recognition or status.”

“But our numbers are increasing,” Polly said.  “We don’t have enough numbers to win any status, but we do have enough to start laying the groundwork for later.  Besides – if we refuse, we’re just going to have another Focus splinter group to worry about.”

“We’ll have them anyway,” Tonya said.  “Poe seemed to be just as forceful regarding rights within a household as rights within society – and that’s a nonstarter.  Isn’t it?”

Polly nodded.  “I didn’t tell that to Poe in so direct a fashion, but I agree.”

“Fine, fine,” Suzie said.  “I’m not going to try and stop you from bringing that up in the Council.  I can even see quiet lobbying for
Transform rights being a worthwhile distraction.  However…”  She licked her lips.  “You did notice this Poe contacted none of the first generation of Focuses, didn’t you?”

Tonya nodded, and a moment later, so did Polly and Lynn.  Marcia and Anne looked blank and uncomprehending.  “This says to me they
’re writing us firsters off,” Suzie said.  “Like Julius, they’re going after the Council, trying to split the Council in some fashion.  So, my friends, I want you to be very careful in any of your dealings with any of Focus DeYoung’s people.  I want you to report any further contacts directly to me – before you contact anyone else.  So, Polly, who do you see as replacing Anne and Christina?”

Suzie had given ground on the issue of the younger Focuses and let Polly claim her favor.  Good.  Tonya hoped and prayed there wasn’t any rift developing between Suzie and Shirley.  Such a rift might not only sink her political career, bu
t also endanger her household.

“Focuses Lorraine Rizzari and Flo Ackermann of Boston,” Polly said.  “They
’re the two best of the younger Focuses.”

Tonya winced at the first name mentioned – she found
the young and energetic Focus Rizzari insufferable.  “Are you willing to vouch for their loyalty?” Suzie said.

“I think all of us can vouch for Focus Ackermann’s loyalty,” Polly said, “and Focus Rizzari is too talented to be excluded, loyal or not.  Let her prove herself with a stint on the executive council.  The presentation she made to us last year, although impolitic and impractical, was at least honest and forceful.”

“Okay, I can live with that,” Suzie said.  Tonya didn’t say a thing – she knew her boss’s opinion on Rizzari and her presentation, which was a hell of a lot more favorable than Tonya’s.

“Suzie,” Tonya said, with charisma inadvertently in her voice.  Everyone turned to her – they knew Tonya’s rep for seeing problems, and how she tended to announce her ideas.  “I just had a real bad idea cross my mind.”

“No surprise,” Suzie said with a grimace.  In private, Suzie often called her ‘bad news’.  “Spill it.”

“I
suspect Focus DeYoung and Focus Julius will end up in conflict with each other, ma’am,” Tonya said.  “There isn’t room for two splinter groups among the Focuses, especially with both of these dissident Focuses living in the South Region.”  The Focuses had organized in four separate regions – Northeast, Midwest, South and West – because of personality issues among the leading first Focuses.  “In my mind, they have to fight, and given the regional personality differences among the Focuses, I fear any conflict between these two factions might end up bloody.”  The South Region Focuses had a reputation for being intransigent, stiff-necked, and unwilling to compromise…and their households were all arsenals.  Their leader, first Focus Teas, made this worse with her inconsistencies and tendency to turn her latest schemes into life-or-death political questions among the region Focuses.  “Whatever comes out of this inevitable conflict may be far worse.”

Focus Suzie Schrum’s eyes widened at Tonya’s remarks,
hot with hostility for a moment, before she relaxed and cocked her head at Tonya.  “Damn me for a fool, but you’re right, Tonya.  I’ll pass that along.  I’d been mostly worried about which other first and second generation Focuses Julius might grab.  The possibility of this becoming a shooting conflict, especially with Focus DeYoung’s claim, would make things far worse.”

“Suzie, could I have a moment of your time?” Tonya said.  She had found Suzie behind her car, talking to one of her people and snacking on a cold hot dog and a glass of lemonade.  The official meeting had finished ninety minutes ago.  Now the Focuses were milling about, organizing the minor cleanup needed, and dealing with one-on-one personal issues with the other Focuses.  Tonya had already buttonholed Polly about this Commander nonsense, and learned nothing.  That left bracing Suzie, which Tonya would never normally do.  Nevertheless, she needed an answer.  Every time she thought about the Commander name her juice shivered.

“Certainly,” Suzie said, turning from her normally growly self to pleasant in an instant.  “You’ve done good work recently.  Ask away.”
  The Transform slipped away to let the two Focuses talk undisturbed. 

Suzie didn’t have the chops, charismatically, to read other Focuses.  She was, however, cunning.  Tonya realized Suzie knew what Tonya was about to say.

“What’s with this ‘Commander’ business, Suzie?”

Suzie smiled. 
Tonya didn’t find the smile comforting.  “The name is new, clearly Focus DeYoung’s invention, but you know what she’s referring to: Shirley’s supposed Messiah, the one we’ve all been hoping would show up and save us, since we were in quarantine.”

Tonya froze in place.  Unlike some Focuses, Tonya’s dreams weren’t informative.  For instance, Polly’s talents with the Dreaming were legendary, serving as her own private spy network.  Tonya’s dreams appeared to be stuck on religious matters, matters of the soul, and of heaven, but she, too, had
the dreams of a Transform savior, one who would lead a Transform revolution of sorts.

This dream-charged Transform savior wasn’t someone she wanted to oppose.

“This isn’t good,” Tonya said.

“Well, that’s the understatement of the century,” Suzie said.  “Just remember, though, just because this Focus DeYoung is making the claim doesn’t mean she’s right.”

A Day In The Life of a Recovering Arm
[Carol’s POV]

“You will not make this mistake again,” Keaton said
. 

I stood straight, holding on to my mop.  Soapy water pooled on the
truly disgusting garage floor at my feet.  “Ma’am?”  She sighed, exasperated.  I didn’t understand her logic.  Or any logic, for that matter.  Worse, when she got all hard and tight, I lost track of her mind, which made me dumber than stupid.

Welcome to another day in the recovery of Carol Hancock, Arm.  Right now, I had about ten yesterdays to choose from as memories, several containing giant beds, knives and balloons, which I suspected
had bubbled up from my dreams.  Just saying.

“Okay, I’ll say it directly,” she said.  “You didn’t put enough work into self-improvement when you lived in Chicago.”

She paused for a tiny Arm moment, making sure I understood.  “The world of Transforms and their abilities is always changing and improving.”  Pause.  I understood her statement as well.  “In the future, you will allocate time to improve yourself, and do so.”

I understood.  I didn’t understand how all three of her sentences fit together
, though.  “Yes, ma’am.”

“I guess we’ll have to work on the why, later.”  Keaton stalked out, leaving me alone, to clean.

I pushed the mop and thought about her words.  Keaton’s garage had been my home during my first week back here after my rescue from the CDC.

My first week must have been hell
for her and Gilgamesh.  I hadn’t been able to move.  I soiled myself constantly.  I couldn’t feed myself.  Keaton wasn’t interested in spoon feeding me, and I had been too dangerous for Gilgamesh to spoon feed.

The big problem
had been water.  If I didn’t get enough water, I would start running a fever and switch over to something Keaton called ‘juice metabolism’ that for some reason – according to Keaton – wasting juice that should have been going into healing me.  Keaton had solved the problem by hooking me up with an IV and a saline drip.

In a Keaton
ic bit of exasperation, once I was able to move but not able to control my bowels, she left me bowls of dog food to eat while I remained chained up in the garage.  Despite all my cleaning, the garage remained a hell of a mess.

With Gilgamesh gone, my logic
regressed to purely magic, but if I remained patient, and paid attention to the omens, I could figure some things out.

Keaton’s
comments about self-improvement, the ones I understood and the ones I didn’t understand, I translated as this: the other Major Transforms were getting better, so us Arms also had to get better, or we would end up dead.  I hadn’t been holding up my end of the deal.  I hadn’t wanted to get better, I had wanted to live to get older.

The m
op didn’t get the job done; I had to get down on my hands and scrub.  At least Keaton would let me use the shower when I finished.

“You’re woolgathering, skag!  Get the fuck out of your memories and put in some god damned effort!”  Keaton pushed her face to mine, spittle flying.  “You’re going to die out there if you don’t get your muscle tone back.  Hell, if you aren’t going to put that effort into your recovery, I may as well take you over to my little room of pain and see what you look like from the inside out!” She grabbed my hand and pressed, something about the knuckle, and pain like lightning shot through me.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. 
Keaton never repressed her sadistic nature for long.  I quit woolgathering and put some real effort into my lats and delts.

“Hancock!” Keaton said. While I exercised, she had read her correspondences, leaving her severe, unforgiving, and not in a good mood.

I came running in from the kitchen, arms soapy up to my elbows.
Keaton sat in her throne-like white chair, newspapers and junk mail scattered around her on the pale carpet.  “Yes, ma’am.”

“I thought I told you to pick up the newspapers in here!”
Dammit, I thought, irritated. She also told me to clean up the kitchen. I could only do one thing at a time!

A
heartbeat later, I realized with horror where my thoughts led. Resentment! Where had that come from? In a panic, I knelt at her feet and laid my head on her shoes.

“Oh, hell.
Don’t be so damned sensitive. You’re just getting your Arm nature back.  I’m supposed to be annoying, remember? You’re supposed to be pissed at me!  Just clean up the living room when you’re done with the kitchen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”
How could I have been so stupid as to feel resentment? “Ma’am, I’ve noticed you’re a little tense.”

“Huh,” she said, staring down at me.  “I need to hunt.”

I got up from my grovel at her feet. “What can I do to help?”

Keaton
gave me a strange look.  Hadn’t I been properly helpful before?

Anger lurked behind her icy facial mask.  She didn’t understand the new me.  “You’ll hunt when I get back, and if you’re successful, then we’ll do this tagging thing.  Today, I have to hunt.”  She
stood and paced.  “Alone.  You’re still too much an accident waiting to happen.”  Glare.  “Stay out of trouble, and stay out of my things.”

Of course. 
“I can clean and cook while you’re gone, ma’am.”

“Not much more cleaning to do.  Cooking, though…” 
She smiled.  “Here’s three hundred dollars.  Call this number, and get groceries delivered here.  I’ve done that before, they know what to expect.  Make as many meals as you can freeze.  When I’m done hunting, I’ll call and you can start up one of my favorites.”

“Lobsters Thermidor and Beef Wellington?”
Did I remember that correctly?  Didn’t I already fill several freezers with this stuff?

Keaton
smiled wider.

“Keep up your exercises, dammit!” she
said, as she left her place.

I watched her leave
.  I called the number for the grocery delivery service before I lost too much IQ from her departure.

They delivered the groceries promptly, deferential.  I thought as I worked.

Resentment! What was wrong with me? Keaton had saved my life. She taught me. She protected me. She exercised surpassing willpower to shelter me from her darker side. I vaguely remembered from the time before my troubles that even then I knew I needed her. Here I had everything I wanted and needed.

Arm emotions, she said.  I remembered the fighting and struggles, but I hadn’t remembered the emotions.  They were new to me, now.  Again.  They made me resent her orders.  I poked and prodded them, and soon I realized I also resented being on her turf.  I wanted
my
turf.

I liked the
my
emotion.  Keaton wouldn’t.  Or would she?  The food I prepared and froze was
mine
.  They served as gifts for Keaton, for when I left, a little part of
mine
left behind, making part of
hers
into part of
mine
.  She had saved my life, making part of
my life
into
hers
.

Magical gift exchange made things better between Arms.  I d
idn’t think I understood this before.  Perhaps it was too magical, before.

The more I healed, the more I would challenge her.  I didn’t quite fully understand the connection, but challenging her would lead to fighting her.

I cooked.  Pans of lasagna.  Roasted Chickens by the henhouse.  A whole chef’s convention worth of other things.

Keaton returned for dinner, after calling ahead.  “You’re not going to believe this, but I found two,” she said.  “I’m saving one for you, for tomorrow.”  Her post-juice reactions didn’t match mine.  Subdued.  Not overwhelming.

Perhaps.  She ate her dinner as if the eating was an overwhelming sexual experience.

Afterwards, we migrated to her living room and talked.

“So
, do you think my training techniques worked?  You didn’t like them at the time.”

I had my head in Keaton’s lap, and she rubbed my hair.  I
had asked about sex, earlier, and she said one of her current improvement projects involved taming her sex drive.  “I refuse to allow anything to control me, not even my own damned urges.”  I understood the emotion she radiated as she had spoken.  Very Arm.  I was a long way from such self-control.

The head in her lap helped me control my growing Arm emotions.  Submission.
  Right now, I wanted to be submissive.

“Ma’am, I do have some observations and advice.  If you think I am being out of line in any way, ma’am, I will keep my place.”

“Go ahead.  Let’s see if they match mine,” Keaton said.

I couldn’t just do my fumble-sentences
on something so important, so I burned a little juice as I talked to make my words come out better. “Ma’am, I believe my time in St. Louis was bad for my development as an Arm.  It gave me a false sense of independence.”  Keaton didn’t stiffen, so I went on.  I had been bone stupid back then as a baby Arm, all hormones and no self-control. Independence was the last thing I needed.

“I believe it was detrimental for me not to be working toward a clear goal.  I believe I
was pushed too soon into hunting on my own.  I also think a better understanding of when to torture students, and when not to, is needed.”

Keaton
wove my short hair around my ear.  “You didn’t mention that since you were my first student, I made some rather hilarious mistakes,” she said, quietly.

“Someone has to be the first student.”

“Huh,” Keaton said.  I wondered if this was an apology, at least as close to one as I would ever get from her.  “My next student Arm is going to get hit a lot harder in the beginning.  Whether she’ll get tagged or not will depend on how you react to my tagging you.”

We sat in the quiet of Keaton’s
white living room, and thought our separate thoughts.  Keaton liked quiet, and lots of time for contemplation.  Lots more than I remembered I did.  I tended to go buggy with just my own thoughts for company.  I always had to be doing something.  However, I was recovering from withdrawal, and I had burned juice just to be able to speak in a logical manner.  Galling.

On the other hand, something about the quiet here was soothing.  I was changing
, seeing things in myself.  I could do things, or I could think.  When I did things, I shouldn’t think, just do.  Thinking got in the way of doing. True for normals, yes, but doubly true for Major Transforms.  Thoughts made us what we are – and on the other hand, silence, the perfect silence of the mind, enabled us to do, to be what we are.  To act as Arms, to use the juice to remake the world in our image, one stalked prey, one knife thrust, one controlled victim at a time.  The perfect silence allowed me to focus my actions into one event.

I sought my perfect silence, in the quiet of Keaton’s living room, in meditation.