The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Five (3 page)

She nodded
, formal
.
“Thank you.
Thank you for everything you’ve done while you’ve been here.
Thank you for being willing to be so frank with me.
Good luck.
And call.
I want to hear everything that’s going on over there.”

“Don’t worry,” he said.  “I will.”

She turned and walked away, giving him neither hug, nor handshake, nor kiss. 
By rejecting her, and likely in some small way breaking her heart, h
e had successfully pissed her off.

Tonya at the March Focus Council Meeting, Day 1

Tonya came out of her tent into the pre-dawn darkness of the Georgia cow pasture.  She stepped out into the dewy grass still wearing her long flannel nightgown and rubber boots over her bare feet.  She carefully avoided a large cow patty by the entrance to her tent and stretched.  Dawn wasn
’
t due for another hour and her breath steamed in the 40 degree early March air.  Her troupe had arrived yesterday, on a Friday.  In theory, these meetings start
ed
late on Friday and end
ed
before noon on a Sunday
, under t
he assumption that the Focuses would fly in late Friday and fly out late on Sunday, missing a minimal amount of work in their real world jobs.

The Focuses based their
assumption on a big dream, a dream that the leading Focus households would be financially self-sufficient.  The dream had never panned out; save for a few Focuses who could afford to travel with their entourages by air, everyone else came by cars and busses.  This stretched the weekend meeting to between a week and ten days of travel and missed work, far too long for any Focus to be away from her household.  So, the tradition had been born and the Focuses showed up at these meetings with their entire households.  The cost in disrupted work (and wasted vacations) was immense, a cost the Council Focuses were willing to pay.  The prestige and power a Focus gained by sitting on the Council
did
compensat
e
.

At least Tonya thought so.

Delia
,
already awake, cook
ed breakfast
in the open area the
ir
tents surrounded.  Tonya picked up her nightgown to clear the dew covered grass and went to join her.

Delia
, oblivious to the world,
flipped several
pancakes
from the batch she cook
ed
on a Coleman stove set up on an old card table.  Her brown hair, still tangled from sleep, lay limply on a worn woolen coat she
wore
over a faded housecoat.  She turned when she noticed Tonya behind her and smiled.

“Ma’am, the first batch of pancakes is done if you’re hungry,” she said in her back-hills Appalachian accent. 
“
Would you like some hot chocolate to go with them?”

Tonya smiled in response.  “Thank you.”  She loved hot chocolate.  At the same time, without even thinking, she pumped Delia a little.  Delia felt th
e
warm glow of pleasure
of
a better juice count and knew, in
a
way that counted,
that her Focus approved of her.

Delia’s plain face beamed with delight.  Tonya frowned to herself.  Th
e
juice surge had been a little stronger than she
had
intended.

Delia did deserve it.  Waking up
early
to
serve
breakfast to
her ever-hungry Focus deserved a little extra reward
, but
Tonya wasn’t normally so casual about
blatantly
manipulating her people.

But Delia did love it.  She did deserve it.

Tonya took her plate of pancakes over to a second card table
and
pulled a folding chair from the stack to sit in.  Delia brought her the syrup and butter
, and
went off to make the hot chocolate while her Focus ate.  Tonya sat at the table, the legs of her chair sinking deep into the damp ground, and thought about the juice she manipulat
ed
.

Here, in
their
Georgia pasture home away from home, the juice flowed like water.  This always happened when she
stole
away from their current
residence
.  Tonya shook her head,
fighting
the lure of going gypsy like so many of the other Focuses, never to stay in the same place more than a week.  She
would
need
to be
extra-
careful how she handled the juice if she didn’t want to hurt her people.

The pancakes
tasted
good this morning.  A few minutes later Delia came with the hot chocolate.  Tonya didn’t have
the
headache
she lived with
back home.  The juice flow
ed
with ease
.  Life was good.

Tonya looked around at
her
motley collection of tents, shining in the moonlight.  Only the Transforms were with her now, twenty women and nine men.  All the spouses and children had stayed home to save money.  The dilapidated old school bus they
had
rented for the trip stood parked beyond the leftmost row of tents.  Beyond th
e bus
sat
the tents of Jill Bentlow’s household.  Up slope Esther Weiczokowski camped with her people, with Connie Webb next to her.  Connie and her small entourage
had
actually
fl
own
in
by plane because Connie was a partner in a viable law firm
and brought in real money
.  It was nice to see a household actually comfortably well off for once.  Polly Keistermann camped at the top of the hill, just outside the small farmhouse.  The farm belonged to the sister of one of Polly’s people; she and her family were delighted and honored to share it with the Focuses.

Cathy Elspeth and Virginia Mansfield were due in the morning, the last of the Council members.
The meeting itself was due to start at 10:00
, the
semi-annual meeting of the Council of the United Focuses of America, the UFA.  The UFA served as a front organization for the more informal Focus Network, which linked the Focuses together with their families, their governmental support (
minimal as it
was) and their friends in the medical, research and business community.  The Council, often spoken of with dread, was the visible face of the Transform community in the United States, and because of the Cold War, the visible face of the Transform Community in the entire free world.

Maybe in the summer they
woul
d do
the meeting
up in the northeast and she wouldn’t
need
to travel so far.  She wondered what idiot
had
decided these meetings needed to be in the winter and summer, instead of the spring and fall.  At least
the meeting
wasn’t in California this time.

Tonya finished off her first plate of pancakes just as Delia showed up with the second plate.  Tonya lathered on the butter,
planning
the day’s events in her mind.

In a half hour her people were up and moving.  Tonya set up a chair outside her tent, sat down, and pulled out her notes for today’s meeting, to review and prepare.  She didn’t get far before Honey Landis slowly walked over and unfolded a chair for herself.  Honey was a petite woman with a narrow face and hair the color of her name.  Tonya looked up,
metasensing
Honey’s agitation as she sat down.  “What is it?”

“Got the word from Dr. Stauffer.  Not good news.”  Honey turned away from Tonya, so Tonya wouldn’t see her cry.  Tommy, her husband as of two years ago, one of the few Transform-Transform marriages in Tonya’s household, rushed over, knelt down, and let his wife cry on his shoulder as he hugged her.  Tonya waited, patient.  She owed both of them more than
even
her life.  Tommy was the head of her security and he
ha
d been around in the bad old days when Tonya had been a real tyrant, ruling her household with an iron hand.  Actually, come to think of it, Tommy had been around even from before then, back nearly to the beginning, long before she c
a
me under the sway of Wini Adkins, one of the first Focuses.  Not that Tonya was much of a late-comer, not as US Focus number 22.  In the beginning, the household ran Tonya, not vice versa.  They even voted on minor things such as
responsibility for
laundry each week.  After Wini beat Tonya into shape, Tonya had taken control of the household with Tommy as her chief enforcer. 
The coup
had
worked
as planned
, but
those
had been rough time
s
.  Tonya’s household ran much smoother
now, years later, because
Tonya
had
adopted a more corporate structure
and began to delegate
.  A lot of their current success was due to Honey.  Tonya took Honey’s hand and squeezed it.

In time, Honey cried herself out.  “It’s the dystrophy, ma’am,” Honey said.

Terrible news.  Like polio, Transform Sickness
sometimes
cause
d
problems years after the transformation, the actual illness phase of Transform Sickness,
had passed
.  In particular, Transforms who transformed after their late thirties occasionally developed a complex neurological disorder termed
T
ransform
D
ystrophy.  The dystrophy was a chronic wasting disease with no known cures or effective treatment, affecting about one in thirty Transforms who transformed after the age of thirty five. 
The dystrophy
manifested itself differently in each affected Transform, always involving nerve damage and paralysis.  The dystrophy was progressive; when it reached the lungs and heart, the end came fast.  Honey had been complaining of numbness in her legs for weeks and
was beginning to
have problems walking.  If the dystrophy ran its normal course, Honey would be dead in three years.  Perhaps sooner.

“Oh no,” Tonya said, and started crying herself.  She took Honey in her arms and they both cried together. 
Tonya let her pain free, knowing it would only fester if she held back.  Hard on her people now, but better in the long run. 
Tonya knew she got to be a real bitch if she repressed her strong emotions for too long.

“Ma’am,” Honey said, drying her eyes, twenty minutes later.  “I’m going to have to resign immediately.”

“I understand,” Tonya said.  Honey was the house president, Tonya’s number two, the top of the household org
anization
chart save for Tonya. 
Tonya’s
only house president ever.  Tonya wasn’t sure what she
would
do without Honey.  “Do you have any recommendations?” 

“Yes, ma’am.”  Honey was good at what she did and
always came ready with
contingency plan
s
.  “Marty to replace me, Rhonda to replace Marty, and Delia to replace Rhonda.  The other major officers would stay the same.”

“Hmm,” Tonya said, and thought.  Marty Fenner was currently the house financial officer, the
moneyman
, as they called him.  Very bright, probably
well suited for the position.

Probably a little difficult to get used to, at least to start with. 
She found the thought of a male president disconcerting
, given the two to one ratio of women to men.  Tonya had never bought into the idea that men should be running everything just because they were men.  Actually, given the way things worked in the outside world, Transform men in Transform households
often struggled with
fairly large adjustment problems.  Most were unemployed and unemployable in non-menial real world jobs; in Tonya’s household, with her political duties and her tendency to get involved in the affairs of the world and the affairs of other Transforms, she needed more bodyguards than the
average
Focus, which tended to suck up many of the able bodied household Transform men.  Men who didn’t end up with large ego problems due to their lack of power in a household were fairly rare, Tonya had noted over the years.  Marty was one of those, one of the best she
ha
d ever seen.

Rhonda was the current house secretary, which meant she served as Tonya’s secretary, aide, and number one gofer.  Not very important from the household’s
perspective
, but from Tonya’s, the house secretary was the most important position.  Tonya would hate to lose Rhonda, but the ability to handle money was a talent in short supply and Rhonda
was a
proven
master
.  Besides,
house treasurer
was a major promotion
,
and Tonya knew Rhonda would be happy to put
in
the extra time the job deserved.

Delia’s switch
would be trickier
.  Kitchen manager and house secretary were on the same level
of
the org chart, a lateral transfer.  They were different positions, though.  Kitchen manager was a supervisory position and highly structured, while the house secretary was non-supervisory and unstructured.  On the other hand, the house secretary often sp
o
k
e
with Tonya’s voice.  Tonya thought about the suggestion for a few moments; the more she thought about it the better the choice felt to her.  Delia was relatively new to the household and had risen through the ranks at a rapid clip in the two years she
ha
d been here.  More importantly, she was one of Tonya’s favorites, one of the people Tonya could talk to and
felt comfortable
with, the most important prerequisite for the house secretary position.  She had the brains and the talent for nearly any household position.