The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Five (7 page)

Wicked Witch Time (1964)

“The reason I called you here, Tonya, is to te
ll you they’re working together,
”
Suzie
Schrum said.  The first Focus radiated agitation as she sat across from Tonya
in the living room of
her double-wide trailer.

Tonya had never liked her visits to the Schrum trailer park.  As far as she could tell,
bad juice didn’t bother
Suzie
.  The bad juice never got so bad here that Tonya would have needed to move out because of it, implying
Suzie
possessed some level of control over the noxious stuff.  Still, if Tonya lived in a place this bad, she wouldn’t be
half
the Focus she was.  The level of bad juice was enough to interfere with her thinking as well as her ability to move juice.

“Who’s working together?” Tonya asked, gently
, as she crossed her legs and attempted to appear calm and professional
. 
The chair was cheap and uncomfortable.

Suzie
’s agitation bothered Tonya.  Normally, the first Focus was one of the more emotionally contained people Tonya knew.  Brusk and undiplomatic, yes, but always under emotional control.  As with several of the older leading first Focuses, such as Wini, Donna and Mary Beth Julius,
Suzie
used her Focus charisma only upon herself, for self-control.

“
Mary Beth and Focus DeYoung,”
Suzie
said.  “Right under our noses.  This is a disaster, and more dangerous to us than any of us had realized.”
  She tapped her forefinger on the wooden arm of the sofa for emphasis.

“I’ve met one of Focus DeYoung’s ‘representatives’.  They need to be smacked down for their absurd Transform Rights agitation.  That’s Council business, not theirs.  But dangerous?  Focus DeYoung’s not even a good enough Focus to keep her household in line.”

Suzie
barked a sneering laugh.  “Their Transform rights bullshit is just the foot in the door.  The
biggest ‘right’ they want is to free Focuses from the edicts of the Council; they believe what a Focus does in her own household is
her
own business, even if
she’s
experimenting or allying with our male counterparts.”

Tonya winced.  One of
Suzie
’s old hollow-eyed gap-toothed Transforms meekly shuffled up with a plate of refreshments and laid them out on the off-kilter plywood trailer table.  Burnt hot dogs, stale ripple-cut chips, and store-bought chip dip. 
Suzie
dug in, pleased.  Tonya followed
Suzie
’s lead, at least with the chips and dip.

“With aims like that, how can they be allying with Julius?” Tonya said.  She knew more about the aims of Mary Beth Julius.  She, the third Focus in the United States to survive, had once led the Focuses, before Shirley Patterson came into her own power and took over.  Julius believed all non-Focus Major Transforms should be shot on sight.  Especially the Crows.

“Our old crazy friend Mary Beth had an epiphany: it’s possible to
defeat
a Crow and enslave them.  Make them your dog.  She still wants to kill the free Crows, and all the Sports and Arms, of course.” 
Suzie
laughed
and
Tonya shiver
ed
.  “Crows in dog collars!  On leashes!  That’s got to be a sight to see, but even those betraying monsters deserve better.  Let them live in the shadows and help us from the shadows, as always
, that’s what I say.”

Tonya didn’t live in the same mental world as
Suzie
.  Being politic, she just nodded.
  The first Focuses
’
visceral hatred of the Crows was full of exceptions and holes, she well knew, but to he
a
r
Suzie
saying relatively nice things about the Crows was a shock.

“The Nuttylips rebellion will go after all
the leading Focuses
, not just my peers, but yours on the visible Council,”
Suzie
said.  Nuttylips?  Tonya took a moment,
and then
smiled at the word concoction.  DeYoung’s commie idiots called themselves the New Transform International, while Mary Beth ran a group called the Lucy Peoples’ Society, named after the Focus that the first Arm, Mary Chesterson, accidentally killed.  NTI plus LPS did sort of equal Nuttylips. 
Suzie
took a swig from a can of Pepsi, covered her mouth with the back of her left hand and burped.
  Unlike Polly, Suzie didn’t much care for the benefits of civilization, or any civilized niceties.
  “We’ve got others covering the Crow and Sport angle.  Both of them are going to owe us for this, which pains me no
t at all
.
” 
Suzie
’s mouth twitched as she repressed a smile.
 
“
On the other hand, there’s the Arm and your stumbling progress toward taming her.”

“It’s going slowly because I’m doing it right,” Tonya said.
  Tonya always did things slowly, and she always did things right.
  “She’s holding to the agreement she and I made regarding poaching household Transforms, and in payment I’m helping her.  At a distance.  Slowly, but surely, I’m teaching her to love the Focuses and love the Focus Network.  She won’t be able to avoid being seduced into our service.  In six months, nine months at the latest, you’ll be able to offer her the sort of rough jobs we currently have to hire mobsters to handle, and with her love of violence, she’ll lap them up like a
kitten
laps up milk.  Better, once I’ve finished training her, she’ll even do a better job.”

Suzie
nodded. 
Suzie
’s charisma sucked, at least for influencing a
nybody but herself, but
as with many of the first Focuses,
she was a master at lie detection.  Tonya had to be on her best behavior around
Suzie
.  Tonya’s charisma was strong, but not strong enough to lie to
Suzie
.

Her statements about the Arm were as true as Tonya knew.

“We don’t have six months,”
Suzie
said.  “The Nuttylips will have killed her by then.  Even if the Arm survives, nine months from now there won’t be a ‘we’ to hire this weapon you’re providing us. 
Things are getting desperate.  These rebels are capturing too many ears, and forcing things none of us want forced. 
Tonya, bring her in and leash the Arm.  Yesterday.  Use whatever means you can think up, but we need this done.  Whatever it takes.”

Tonya grew ice cold.  She had heard stories of the old days, of course, from Wini and Shirley.  ‘Whatever it takes’ was a phrase used in the dark days of the Transform Quarantine, from a time when the first Focuses tossed morality out the window, and life devolved down i
nto a simple ‘us versus them’.

The founding charter of the United Focuses of America stated ‘To never again need to do whatever it takes.’  They were civilized, now.  The bad days were gone for good.  Slowly, over time, the first Focuses who had done too much of ‘whatever it takes’ and scarred their souls
and morality
,
retreated into the background, retiring from everyday leadership.  Wini’s resignation and Polly’s recent ascension to the Council President post was just another in a long series of civilized replacement of the old order with the new.

“I… I can’t.  I’m not…” Tonya said, stammering, caught flat-footed.  This wasn’t her.  Dark she was, but not that dark.

The
old cracked black
phone beside
Suzie
rang.  “Shirley said you would have moral qualms.” 
Suzie
smiled.  “Her timing is, as always, impeccable.  Tonya, pick up the phone.  Shirley wants to have a few words with you.” 
Suzie
licked her lips, now radiating anticipation, as if she was going to witness a famous nightclub show.

Tonya, hands shaking
at the unexpected turn of events
, picked up the phone.  How could anyone know to call?  How…

“Tonya.”  Shirley’s voice.  “Wicked witch time.”

Tonya’s world went blank.

She didn’t remember anything from Shirley
saying her name
to when she got handed back into her car, by Danny, a half hour later.

Tonya was resolved and ready.  The die was cast, and it was time to act, time to prove to everybody she was the strong Focus people thought she was.

Time to take down an Arm.

---

“Dr. Henry Zielinski.”

“Hank?  Tonya.  I’ve got an offer for you.”

“I’m
listening
.  Does it pertain to our
young troubled Major Transform?”

“Peripherally.  I know you would rather not meet her again in person, but like all
beginning
Major Transforms, she remains young and stupid.  There’s going to come a time when she need
s
help.”

“I was hoping the person to help her would be you.  I’m not built to survive the sort of damage our young acquaintance can dish out.
  You are.
”

“I’ll be doing my part in helping her, including in person, but I can’t help her with her medical issues, the way you can.
  I’ll do my part, and I’m hoping you’ll do yours.
”

“Okay, I understand.  I’m listening.”

“I’ve learned of a Focus in the Midwest District with a unique skill, one right up your alley.”

“Hmm?  What’s her age?”

“She’s a year out.  Her name’s Beth Hargrove, and she lives in Detroit.  She reports she can tell the difference in her Transforms between whether they have a cold or the flu…with her metasense.”

“She can diagnose with her metasense?  That shouldn’t be possible!
  I’m impressed.
”

“Exactly.  The deal
I’m offering
is simple: I’ll arrange for you to meet with her,
and
I’ll
handle
all the leg-work and politics to make
your visit
possible and safe. 
In return, you’ll
agree to a visit with our dangerous young Major Transform friend when I ask.”

“Well.
  I can’t say I’m not interested.  The world, however, is not a perfect place, and some Focuses are not the paragons of reason that you are.
  How, uh, dark is this Hargrove?  Or how enslaved?”

“She’s Focus Adkins’ star pupil,
except
that Focus Adkins reports she
has moral problems and is too nice to her people.  From Focus Adkins point of view.  She’s apparently a decent human being, intelligent…oh, and also, young.”

“The best combination.  You have yourself a deal, Tonya.”

“I was hoping you would say that.”

The Breaking of Keaton
(1964)

Tonya
followed her gut, just as she did while Monster hunting.  If what she feared had happened, she was ready.  The wild-eyed police officers knew nothing.  The smell of fear
suffused
the
area.  The faint odor of juice, where no juice should be
, caught in her nose
.
  The world around her became a whirling nonsense corridor of noise, sa
v
e for her true path, the one she followed toward her goal.

She led her team into a neighborhood
’s
unpaved alley, suburban style, an easement for some power lines
, overgrown with waist high grass, the seed pods not yet spread and ready for dispersal
.

The damned Arm ought to be around here close.

Her nose caught t
he faint odor of blood.

Next, the
stronger odor of juice
mixed with
the blood
.

Lastly, she
me
tasensed juice
.

“Got her,” Tonya
said, whispering
.  “Into the next door neighbors’ backyard.”  The backyard of a house in
the suburbs of Washington, DC.
She wouldn’t hole up here
if she was an Arm, but if everything had worked out correctly…

A cat yowled, and ran through the low evergreen bushes.  Her bodyguards
tensed, but Tonya stayed steady
, lost in her sensory kaleidoscope
.  She waved her team forward, and with them
at her side, she walked forward, up to the house. 
Tonya now smelled
fresh
blood
.
  Copious amounts of blood.

“Wait here.  There’s nothing you can do to protect me from the Arm,” Tonya said.
  Her plans had worked.  At
Suzie
’s
order
s
, seconded by Shirley Patterson,
she had stalked Keaton like a game animal, strewing baits, treats and traps in front of every path she might take. 
Tonya’s
hirelings,
the
PIs and
the
mobsters,
hadn’t
know
n
their target; they
simply
harass
ed
someone unknown to them. 
At
Suzie
’s
orders, she had cornered the Arm and taken away both her support and her sanity
, turning her into a ripe flower of opportunity
.

The Arm now
waited
ready
to be picked and stuck in a vase.  Tonya’s vase.

She stopped at the door
and hesitated.  Horror waited inside.  She had directed Dr. Henry Zielinski, long-time friend of
the
Focuses, into this trap.  He would either come out of this owning the Arm (wh
o
the Council would then buy from him), or he would come out dead, at Keaton’s hand
, his death enslaving Keaton to the Council for all time
. 
A win either way.  Whether Dr. Zielinski survived
or not
was up to him and his multifaceted skills.
  Ordinarily, she would have given a normal a zero chance of survival, but he was
Zielinski
, the only normal she would be hesitant to take on in a battle for survival.

Tonya regretted her actions, but only barely.  The Council needed Keaton
now
, and she had agreed. 
The damned Nuttylips R
ebellion sucked up more Focuses each day.  Without an edge, they
would
d
ie or be enslaved
– not only the existing Council members and their backers, but any non-Focus Major Transforms, and also all leading Network members.  Such as Dr. Zielinski.

Dead now, instead of later, appeared more likely
, Tonya thought as she surveyed the mayhem inside the small house
with her metasense
. 
Recent events
had spread the remains of juice around
the living room so thick that her metasense functioned almost like vision
.  The loops hanging from the curtain rods like giant sausages had to be intestines.
  She
would
be confessing
her sins
and saying Hail Marys for years because of her part in this
slaughter
.  She couldn’t say she actually liked Zielinski, but nobody deserved to die
in such a way
.

Tonya
almost turned away,
to flee and
attempt to
forget
this house and its contents
.  The blood, gore and slaughter were why she
had
abandoned Monster hunting.  The choices she had to make
,
required to hunt Monsters
, still
ate at her soul.

No,
though,
she
hunted Keaton
at the Council’s behest
.
  They would bear the greatest responsibility for what happened, not her.
  She
overcame her hesitations,
opened the door, and walked in.

The inside of the small house was an abattoir, a reeking, rotting mess, strewn with gore,
and as she feared
intestines draped over the doors and furniture.
  Hank’s portable operating room, his oversized steamer trunk, lay in splinters across the room, surgical tools scattered everywhere.  Tonya forced herself not to look for the head associated with the remains.

“Biggioni.” 
Keaton’s
voice was hoarse and rough, from someone no longer used to speaking.  Someone
regressed to nearly
an
animal.  “
Help. 
Help me.”
  Someone nearly
turned into an
animal because of Tonya’s machinations.  Her soul quivered
in guilt
at her own deeds.

Was Keaton’s
voice
b
egging, or command
ing
?  Tonya wasn’t sure.
  She
didn’t care
. 
She followed the voice, to a bedroom, trying not to step in the gore.

Whatever sh
e did here would help Keaton
, she told herself
. 
Keaton would become a tool of the Council.  Tonya would find a way to protect her from the rebellion until the Arm healed, save Keaton’s miserable life
, and then employ Keaton to help stop the rebellion before the rebel fires consumed them all and left them in servitude, in
the involuntary
employ of the Federal government
.

Tonya didn’t have the strength to control a healthy Keaton with her charisma, and her juice skills weren’t
remotely up to the job
.  The only way she
knew of
to
take control of Keaton was to break her
,
and
as with any broken Transform facing an angry Focus,
leave her no other path forward.

When she did such a thing to a recalcitrant Transform, for hire, the other Focuses called her the Wicked Witch of the East.  She couldn
’
t imagine what they
would
call her if they learned
what she
was
doing here.

Tonya walked into the
juice-fouled
bedroom. 
Keaton
sat on the floor.  Her lower left leg was missing, and bone showed, below the kne
e.  Shattered, exposed to air.  The missing leg was the medical problem Tonya had
bargained
Dr. Zielinski into coming here to fix.
  Too bad
the
price
she
had
offered
for this,
a
visit with Focus Hargrove, had been a chimera to begin with; she had known the Council would never
permit
any researchers
to
publish any information about
Hargrove’s screwy metasense before she had dangled the offer in front of Dr. Zielinski.

He should have known better.  Too bad his ambitions got in the way of his good
judgment
…again.  Every Ahab had their whale
, every Huck Finn their river
.

Keaton
looked different than Tonya remembered
from their one and only meeting.  Her muscles were more symmetrical than before, and her physical presence was much more human.
 
Not fully symmetrical or fully human, though.  The Arm had shaved h
er head, and she held a blonde wig in her hands. 
She
sat among
k
nives and guns spread out on the floor.  Tears rolled down the
Arm’s
face.

Broken.  Defeated.  Ripe for the picking.
  Just as Tonya had ordered.

Time to pluck.

She prayed to God nobody would ever find out how she
had
arranged this – that she was behind the Arm’s insane run of bad luck, which left her wounded, low on juice, and bereft of all her previous companions and thug hirelings.

Tonya took in the bedroom again, wary of traps and other dangers.  Wait!  A man lay on the bed
in a pool of blood
, heart
slowly
beating.  Zielinski! 

Tonya’s self-
control relaxed
, bringing her
closer
back to herself from the mental rigors of the Monster hunt.  Zielinski, alive?  Who the hell did the intestines belong to, then?

So much for using his death to bind the Arm to the Council for all eternity
.

This changed everything.  Of all the appalling and annoying things, secret agent Zielinski had found a way to s
urvive
yet another impossible situation.
 
Maybe. 
Damn his skills!
  She was a Focus, he was a friend of the Focuses. 
Since he remained alive, s
he would have to save him. 
Despite the nagging
suspicion
that someone, somewhere, wanted otherwise.

Dammit, she was a
Focus!
  Saving lives was what she did!
  Despite the contrary insinuations some people made.

Dr. Zielinski
looked
to be
in bad shape
.
  He had a black ey
e,
bled from a cut on his forehead
, and one
of
his arms hung funny.  His pants were shredded and showed blood
, leaking into the puddle around him
.  Lots of blood.

“Fix the doctor,” the Arm said.  Trying to be commanding, and failing.  So dangerous, so predatory.
  So utterly broken.
  “I’ll do what
ever
you want.
”  The magic words.  Tonya’s heart thrilled.  “
Please.  I’m dying.  Don’t let me die.”

The Arm was at her last wits, just as Tonya
planned
.
  Yes!

“I will help,” Tonya said
.
  The Arm
met
Tonya’s gaze and f
e
ll into Tonya’s charismatic grasp
.  “For a price.”

Keaton looked away.  She had to
realize what
was coming. 
Her subconscious
certainly
did.

“Politically, you need to become a Focus,” Tonya said.

Keaton didn’t answer.

“You’ve already agreed to stop taking household Transforms.”  Keaton nodded.  “Right now, it’s just an agreement.  We need to make the agreement formal.”  Keaton nodded again.  “But that isn’t all.  From here on out, y
ou need to treat Focuses as your friends and allies, unless proven otherwise.”

“That’s it?”

“You’ll be a member of the Focus Network.  I’ll be your contact,” Tonya said.  “There are Focuses who want to hire you.”

“Hire me?”  Keaton laughed, the
insane
laugh of the condemned.  “What the fuck for?”

“Intimidation.  Espionage.  Assassination.”

“Your group of bleeding-heart biddies wants to hire me to be a
monster
?”