The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Five (2 page)

“
Are you comfortable?” the Good Doctor asked Suzie.  “If you want, we can go somewhere more comfortable to talk.”

“I’m fine here.  Hips hurt again.”

Interesting.  She spoke better with the Good Doctor than with him.

“You’re part way back to a better shape for walking.  Until Occum and the Nobles take you on your next step toward what they’re doing, you might try leaning on something about chest high, with your weight more on your arms.”

“What you mean?”

The Good Doctor went over to a table and showed Suzie.  She stood, swayed over – still wary – and mimicked what he did.  She smiled.

“Better.”  She turned to the Good Doctor.  “What you ask?”

“First, do you remember anything about before? 
From w
hen you were a Monster, and before that, as a human?”

Suzie nodded.  “Smarter as Monster.  Words come walk with price.  Not happy being smaller smart.”  She sighed.  “I remember all Monster life.  Nobles say I once human, but no remember anything but four legs, snout and tail shape.”

“Some Monsters form loose packs, I’ve recently found out, sharing the same living territory, but not willing to come within several hundred feet of each other.
”  The Good Doctor spoke calmly, revealing neither fear nor disgust.  Very matter of fact, though without anything feeling of sympathy.  “
Other
Monster
s fight anyone or anything who comes within their territory.  Do you know why this is?”

“Yes, sir,” Suzie said.  “Scents.  A Monster with a pleasant scent shares.  Unpleasant?  Fights.”

“What’s the difference?”

Suzie shook her head.

Why did Suzie open up for him, then?  The Good Doctor did speak to her as she was, and he was intensely curious about all their stories, no matter how silly or embarrassing.  Why, he had told Sir Sellers several times not to be embarrassed about what he had done as Rover.  “Young Major Transforms are never at their best, and if they’re on their own they often make horrendous mistakes.
”

A commotion broke out behind Sir Sellers; in his metasense he picked up the arrival of another Inferno Transform.  A few moments later, the ugly woman Inferno Transform named Tina rushed up, Master Occum in tow.  “Doc!
” Tina said.  “
You’ve got to come back, now!”

“What’s going on?” the Good Doctor asked.

“We’ve just got word.  The Feds caught your Arm, Hancock.”

The Good Doctor’s face fell, and he
now
looked years older
and far less curious about the Barony
.  “I’ve got to go,” he said to Master Occum.

Master Occum nodded.  “Go, go.  This isn’t good, no not at all.”

If anything, it looked to Sir Sellers
like
the Good Doctor was holding back tears.

Carol In Transit

Something was wrong.  I
ha
d been in transit for hours, drifting in and out of consciousness
, only somewhat lulled by the constant rumbling of the latest truck over endless miles of highway
.  I
had
easily registered the transfers, from truck to truck.  I couldn’t
tell
anything else
.  They
kept
me blindfolded. 
T
he murderous rage in my eyes ate at their nerves, and the jungle monkey inside of them could
n’
t stand the predator, even bound.

Four men rode in the back of the truck with me, laden with weaponry and stinking of fear and aggression. 
I lay flat on a steel slab, three feet wide, six feet long, and an inch thick, set with heavy rings and with wide holes drilled around the edges.  Wide metal bands held me around my chest and waist and hips.
Another steel band went around my head, and a thinner one across my neck.  More bands immobilized my non-responsive legs.  Chains held my shackles tightly to the steel stretcher, and they
ha
d placed more chains on my arms and legs.
Someone had put a lot of thought into this.
I couldn’t move at all.

I
lay shackled
in misery.
The burn kept up until my wounds healed enough
for me to
live.
After the burn faded away
,
I became
naked to
my
pain.
A
sea of molten iron washed through me in waves
, eating
at my mind like the tide ate at the shore.  I tried to stay unconscious, but I couldn’t.  My instincts kept waking me. 
D
anger, constant danger!

I
ha
d been lucky in the capture, if you can call it luck.
Yes, t
he cops shot me
,
and
after they shot me they
beat me, but
they
were used to dealing with
normal
s
,
and the beating they gave me a normal might possibly
have
live
d
through.
I was bruised and broken,
as
damage
d
on the inside as
on the
surface, but my body was tougher than a normal
human’s body
, and I would recover from the beating fairly quickly.
The beating
hurt.
The aftereffects
still hurt, but Keaton
had
once
beat
en
me regularly
, and she beat harder
.
I knew th
e
pain
of beating
.

The other wounds
would be
a
worse problem.
I didn
’
t know how many bullets
now lodged inside of
me.
My left shoulder was a ruin.
H
oles in my chest tore through organs never meant to see air.
I didn’t even
want to
think about my legs
or
what had gone wrong with
them
.
Whatever
happened, the
ir
paralysis
put me here.

The immobility was torture
;
Arms aren’t made to be still for long periods of time.  My muscles already scream
ed
at the abuse.
Most of the pain
would be
temporary, I knew, and would go away if I could exercise.
S
ome of that pain
, though,
spoke of real damage.
Muscle nodules forming in my joints.
Bones healing the wrong way.  The wrong muscles growing, causing muscle hypertrophy. 
L
ittle instruments of torture
to
hound me for the rest of my life.
However long
I had left
.

Juice seeped out of me unending
.
I
had
spent several
days’ worth
of juice in those few brief minutes while I burned.
T
he burn was gone, but the injuries
remained
, and
healing used far too much
juice.
I was probably down to 110 already.
Normally I started hunting when I reached 115.
When I got down to 110, I dropped everything else and did nothing but hunt.
I expected that with all my injuries, I would be down to 100 in just a few days.
I would hit 90 just a few days beyond that.
I would go into withdrawal at 88.
I
woul
d cease being functional long before th
en
.

The craving burn
ed
in me, eating at my will and reason.
I needed juice.
I ached with longing.
Th
e
consuming need made everything worse, the pain, the fear, the terrible despair.
I
careened down
the steep slope toward madness, falling out of control.
Fear ate at my gut like a cold little monster, clawing at my insides.
Fear
of pain, of withdrawal, of death
, of the unknown
.
I
feared
my captors
,
their cruelty and their ignorance.

This was Hell.
Things were bad now and
would soon get far
worse.
Much worse.
I expected I
would
die soon, and
the death
would
be
horrific
.

The nightmares started somewhere during my transit.  I needed less sleep than a normal, and could go for days without, but I
remained
exhausted from my injuries.
Even despite the lights and the people and the hunger and the grinding pain, I found my way into sleep.

My sleep
didn’t last long.

Moments after my mind left my control and sleep took me, the nightmares started.
They were old enemies, these nightmares
,
endlessly varied
yet
always the same
.  T
hey all featured Stacy Keaton
, Officer Canon, and the Hunters
.

I paid a high price for my survival, and this was part of it.
Bad as my situation
was
,
my Major Transform enemies were
worse.
They
ruled the dark places of my mind
, dark places I couldn’t escape
.

I woke up shaking and gasping for air, my heart racing.  I was safe, I told myself.
My Major Transform enemies weren’t
here.
They weren’t
coming after me, and my captors didn’t understand me well enough to really hurt me.
Anything short of withdrawal would be less than what Keaton had done to me, and
Keaton had done far worse than Officer Canon and the Hunters. 
I was all right, I told myself.
I was all right.
I took deep breaths and tried to calm my heart.

In my mind, Officer Canon transformed into the terror clown, and began to giggle.

Lori Tries
Bribery

Zielinski was packed and waiting
in the great room
for the taxi to arrive
when
the Focus tracked him down and cornered him.  He
ha
d been waiting for
Lori to try again
. 
She didn’t agree with his plans
, and he knew she couldn’t let that sit.

Hank hadn’t predicted this approach, though.  The Focus had
added so much
sexual heat to her presence
he caught
his breath.

“
Here
, Henry
.  Take a look at this
,”
t
he Focus said
, in her husky voice
, settling next to him on the couch with her hip against his
. 
She took out a diagram, what appeared to be from a preliminary document at the pre-blueprint stage
and leaned close to show it to him
.

“I’m not sure what I’m seeing,” he said.
  She smelled of soap, and flowers, with a faint heady odor of healthy woman.

“It’s a plan for the expansion of my home lab.  We’re going to move the armory out of the basement and into the bomb shelter, which is currently being utilized for storage.”

Hank looked at the diagram again, seeing the possibilities. 
The expansion would free up enough room for a real laboratory. 
“
Focus, are you trying to bribe me?
”

“You’re a researcher, Henry. 
Investigating what’s happening to Hancock is going to be dangerous, and you’re not
a private detective.”  The Focus licked her lips,
too slow,
and gave him
an alluring
half smile
, annoyingly alluring
.  She didn’t used to be annoyingly alluring. 
When he arrived, she didn’t even
know how.

Why him, and why now, though?  His time here in Inferno had cured him of his inappropriate infatuation with the Focus, an infatuation acquired during the
Monster Juice assassination attempt.

“
Correct
,” Zielinski said.
  “I know a few tricks, though.”

“
I’m willing to equip the expanded laboratory with the sort of equipment you use,
”
the Focus said.
  Zielinski shrugged and didn’t answer. 
H
er offer was ingenious
; h
e didn’t lack for Transform issues to investigate. 
“
Give me a list of what you need most, and I’ll
scrape up what I can
.  I promise to make the rest of your stay here worthwhile.
”  The Focus gave him a dimpled smile
, a quite
disquieting
dimpled smile
.  Experience had inured him to the snares and attractions of mature Focuses over the years, but
he had never faced a problem like this. 
Against his will, he found his old infatuation with her rekindled.

Before he came to Inferno
,
he never suspected a
sensible Focus like
Lori would aim the allure show at him
.
  While he
had be
en
attracted to her,
she hadn’t been attracted to him
.
  Worse, g
iven their age difference, her double-entendre laden bribe was almost creepy.

“
You know I have other issues with staying here, Focus
.”

“Yes?”  The Focus was pushing again.  You would think someone might tire of pushing him around, as he wasn
’
t the easiest person to push under the best of circumstances, but she never stopped.

“I don’t fit into your household,” Zielinski said.

The Focus frowned.
  A bedroom invitation frown.  He wasn’t sure he had ever seen
the
combination before.
  “You’re talking about something more than just the problem with not being on the leadership team.”

“Yes,” he said.  “I hate to brag, but I’m not an ordinary person.”

“I would have never guessed,” she said, laughing.  “You mean being a department head at Harvard Medical isn’t a sinecure position?”  The Focus took him by the arm and his manly interest in her increased greatly. 
Damnation!  He had no idea her mastery of the subtle nature of Focus charisma was so complete
.  “I’m not an ordinary person, either…and an acquaintance of mine you haven’t met strongly hinted I should find other extraordinary people to
be
close
to
when he wasn’t around.”

Damn.  If
her comment
meant what he thought
her comment
meant,
this
was a serious
problem
.

He needed to get out of Inferno
now
.  He had few doubts about what
would
happen to him, an outside
r
, in a place like this, during an inevitable relationship tiff.

“That isn’t what I was getting at, Focus,” he said.  “I’ve had to catch myself several times from saying or doing something foolish that would harm our professional relationship.”

Zielinski suspected she didn’t
understand
the problem
.  He knew she couldn
’
t read him well, and after several rounds of training him to resist her charisma, her ability to read him had suffered even more.

The Focus
increased the
allure,
put her left arm around his waist
, and gave him a set of bedroom eyes that
would give
a corpse an erection.  “I really mean
this
, Henry.”

Zielinski
almost
laughed at the Focus’s forwardness, but didn’t.  The last time he laughed at such an obvious piece of manipulation he
ha
d gotten himself tortured by Hancock.  He still cursed
his old
loss of control, having made the mistake of letting false camaraderie fool him into believing he had made enough of an emotional linkage
with
Hancock to share
laughter over a verbal gaffe.

“As do I,” he said.  “
My
biggest problem is that I’m bored here.”  No,
and
extra bathroom cleaning duty didn’t cut it, either.  “I truly am a workaholic.  Your people are wonderful and amazing, but they aren’t up to my standards as far as effort is concerned.”

She nodded.  “You would have fired them for laziness.”  She blinked, fetchingly.  “You know from experience that I’m not that way, of course.”

“How easy would it be for you to take orders from me, as a researcher?”

The Focus took
her hand from around his waist, and her allure vanished
.
  Her mask of self-control partly down, he realized Lori was working out of near-panicked desperation, possibly not even realizing she was projecting the level of allure she projected.
  Perhaps she was doing
so
subconsciously.
“I could do it.  I
woul
d probably make a mess of things to start with, though.
  I’m sure we would be able to work through it.
”
  She smiled.  “I even
came up with
a solution to the household leadership team problem: I’ll get Connie to create a new position – head of household medical research, to match Dr. Bob’s position of head of engineering.”  Dr. Bob Masterson’s position was real enough to run a household department, but as a normal, it wasn’t real enough to get him included in the real household leadership team.

Her compromise tempt
ed him
.  A lab, a small staff, a small budget, and tasked to produce Transform advances and information able to be traded to other households for non-monetary favors.  If Carol hadn’t been captured, he
likely wouldn’t have been able to resist
, even knowing Focus Schrum had gotten to Lori, somehow.

“
How would we deal with the problem that
I see far too much for my own
safety?
  I
understand
your decision
to keep me out of the real leadership loop
: I’m not a Transform
,
and you don’t have any handles on me at all, save friendship.  Let me mention a few words to you
to help you understand
the problem
: lover, dojo, and rebellion.”  His comment died in a moment of silence.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” the Focus whispered.
 
From outside, he heard the honk of his cabbie’s horn
.  Hank had the sudden desire to go join Lori’s dojo and learn martial arts.

More of the Focus’s charisma.  Mildly out of control charisma; and, yes, this explained
the earlier breathless allure.  She didn’t want him to leave,
and she
panicked, which she didn’t show. 
Her control suffered, though, and her charisma slipped out of her grasp
.

The Focus
tensed, making fists with her small hands.  “I hate this disease, I just hate it, I hate being a Focus and I hate having to go through scenes like this every goddamned time things start looking up!”  She
turned her eyes heavenward
.  “
You could marry someone in the household.  Ann.  Tina.  Hell, even me. 
Marriage
would provide the handle you think I need;
I’m positive
marrying in would make you one of us at the juice level
.”

Zielinski sighed. 
Here we went back to the creepy again.  Rizzari’s household didn’t follow a true Weak Focus model; she and Connie had incorporated aspects of the corporate model, the charismatic model and, what he found disturbing, the hedonist household model. 
“
Would that truly solve anything? 
I hadn’t realized how deep you swam in th
e political
cesspool before I came here.
  I had hoped you
and your household
were
a
politic
al
backwater
, but you’re not, and neither is Inferno
.
  Focus politics, Council politics and Cause politics are difficult at best. 
Ever since Carol escaped from St. Louis, I’ve become a lightning rod for
many dangerous
problems. 
My being here
makes things more dangerous for your household.”

“
True, but necessary
,” the Focus said
.
 
“You’re not the worst danger, by far, and Inferno and I are going to be attracting more problems as time goes on.” 
She met his gaze
, and this time he felt her charisma wash over him.  “Lay it out then, Henry.  What will it take to keep you here?”  H
er voice crawl
ed
deep with heartfelt emotions.
  She did love him, in her own screwy way, but her love for him lived in the Focus-only emotions.  Nothing like a normal woman’s love for a normal man.  He didn’t understand its ramifications, and he suspected the Focus didn’t, either.

He couldn’t answer her question without binding himself to the answer.  This deep into her charisma, even if h
e
answer
ed with an
absurd
ity
, she would
be able to negotiate it into
a lever big enough to own him.

The Arms already owned him, and he had decided over the past year and a half that he much preferred
Arm ownership
to
Focus ownership
.
  He suspected he had a better gut feel for the Arm-only emotions than the Focus-only emotions.

“You are what you are, doing what needs to be done,” he said.
  His non-sequitur froze the Focus in place.
  “I still count Keaton as my friend.”

Her face fell an octave as she worked out the implications of
his
statement.  “
Ouch
,” the Focus said.
  As he watched, the Focus’s iron mask of self-control came over her, the one she used when dealing with strangers.
  “
I guess you have been too burned by the Focuses to be able to trust me.
”

He heard the honk of the horn again, repeatedly now
.

“Just remember the advice you
often
give your own people when they’re down in the dumps: Transform Sickness makes things difficult, but it’s not an insoluble trap.”