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

“You’re mine.”

Carol introduced him as Doctor Frank Madison, a man of many names, to Greg and Ying, who had left their last names behind.  These two were inner circle people who knew Carol as an Arm.  They appeared to be at least a step up from Fred Raindorf, Ricky Sanchez and Frances Casaubon.  Thank heavens.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked Carol, once the introductions were over.

She licked her lips and paced the room.  “Start the on-the-ground planning on the research center.  We’re going to start moving on it within two weeks.  Help me figure out what’s going on in the Transform community.  We’ve upset a lot of apple carts with what we’ve done here and I don’t know the details.  Oh, and we need to set aside a bunch of time for you to run me through your tests.  I got dipped in shit again during the fight, the usual, and it’s time to see what stuck to me
this time
.”

Carol was back at full Arm speed, the immediate aftereffects of the Rogue Focus fight completely gone.  “So Houston’s now officially yours?”

She nodded.  “Yes.  I finally have a real territory again.  You would not believe how good this makes me feel.”

“You and everyone around you,” a soft voice said.  Startled, Zielinski turned and found Gilgamesh in the hotel room with them.  He had been sitting on a hotel bed
the entire time.  Reading.  Technical documents for electronic devices, it looked like.  Zielinski wasn’t sure how he had missed the Crow.  “Pardon, but Arms do share with Crows the need for a good place to call home.”

Carol laughed.  “4 PM in the warehouse, Hank
.  For the tests?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

---

“I’m surprised Hancock’s willing to let
you talk to me,” Tonya said.

“Phone conversations only; she’s convinced I’m the only one of us who can handle you without knuckling under or dropping into a stalk,” Hank said.  “I’m calling for several reasons.  First, I’d like to formally pass along to the Focus Council that Arm Hancock has declared a territory in southeast Texas.  If you need to contact her on official business, the contact should come through Arm Keaton.”

“The Council won’t accept any such restriction, Hank,” Tonya said.  “They’ll demand to deal with her directly.”

“This is your prerogative, certainly, but proper dealings with the Arm organization requires you accept their internal rules of organization, not just your own.”

Tonya didn’t respond.  This wasn’t good.  He had gotten the opinion the Council had matured regarding its dealings with the Arms.  He hadn’t expected Tonya to be one of the holdouts.  “The other reason I called was to get your opinion and the Council’s opinion about the recent events in Houston.”

“You know the drill, Hank,” Tonya said.  She snorted.  “We’ve already decided that our official opinion, should anyone bother to ask, is
that the events in Houston happened without Council approval and we are opposed to any future activities of that kind.  We all know Focus Northwest Region President Fingleman approved the action ahead of time and is quite pleased with the results.”  The last sentence practically came with spit attached.  “Hank?”

“Yes?”

“Focus Fingleman is not my friend, nor is she Hancock’s,” Tonya said.  Dark emotions leaked through the phone, causing him to shiver.  No, Tonya wasn’t at all happy.  “She’s one of the ones who leaned on the Council to get the FBI to capture Hancock.  She’s specifically the one who forced the other first Focuses to trap me in a no-win situation when I was sent in to clean up after Focus Teas’ mess.  She’s even now tacitly supporting negotiating an end to the Rizzari Rebellion, trying to talk up acceptance of a majority of Rizzari’s points of contention, and replacing me on the Council with Rizzari.”

There had to be a way to defuse this needless fracas.  A negotiated end of the Rizzari Rebellion would be good news, dammit.  “Tonya, you need to look at this from the Arm perspective,” Hank said.  “Carol knows your opinions about Focus Fingleman, but the Arms’ goal is to no longer be hunted and hassled.  If what it takes to secure their goal is doing business with a powerful Focus who’s dealt with them badly in the past, then that’s what
’s going to happen.  But you of all people shouldn’t mistake doing business for alliance.”

“It would be foolish of you, and Hancock, and Keaton, and Lori to continue with what you
’re doing.  You’re making powerful enemies who won’t back down from a fight.”

“The last thing we want to be doing is making any enemies at all,” Hank said.  “If anything, we’re interested in making friends and helping the Network recover from…”

Tonya hung up the phone the instant he said the word ‘Network’.

That didn’t go well.  No, not at all.

---

“Yes?” Zielinski said, looking up from the architectural plans of three of the places he was considering for the research facility.  Frances slipped him a note saying ‘Caller, male, no name’.  He walked over to the hotel phone in the room he shared with, alas, Fred Raindorf, and picked up the phone that lay on the low dresser beside the bed.
  At least Fred spent most of his time elsewhere.

“Hello?”

“I hope you don’t mind the phone call, but I was able to bargain for this phone number from Hephaestus.  My name is Shadow.”

Zielinski sat up straight and pulled out his notepad.  Shadow!  He had been trying to find a way to contact the Crow Guru who taught Gilgamesh, Sinclair and the others for months.  “I’m currently working under the name of Doctor Frank Madison, but I’m still answering my Crow correspondences as the Good Doctor.”

“Yes, of course,” Shadow said.  “I’m afraid I must pass along a warning as well as ask for information.”

“A warning?”

“Yes.  Although I have no problems with what transpired in Houston, I’m afraid certain other senior Crows are not of the same opinion.  I’m not sure how far your group can continue along the road you have been traveling without attracting negative attention and action.  I must also admit that I and your friend, Occum, have received identical warnings.  Furthermore, Hephaestus has been told he will lose his Guruhood if he participates in any more large scale activities such as what just happened in Houston.”  Zielinski wasn’t sure who was worse, the senior Crows or the first Focuses.  They were running a damned annoyance race.

“I recently learned it isn’t wise to present challenges of that sort to the Arms,” Zielinski said.  Carol had practically bitten his head off
when he reported his conversation with Tonya, and was muttering about learning to fly F-4 Phantom jets just so she could steal one and bomb Tonya’s household into rubble.  He hadn’t been able to calm Carol at all.  “I recently had a similar conversation with a Council Focus, one that didn’t go well when I relayed the conversation to the Arm.  You might want to consider that if the hand of friendship is shot at, it won’t be extended again.”

Shadow chuckled.  “I feel the same way.  I personally approve of what your group is doing and I’m doing my best to support it, in a safe and politic way.  I believe the other senior Crows are acting like fools.  However, it would be remiss of me not
to pass along the warnings of the other senior Crows to those I consider my friends.”

Well, this was a surprise, a very direct statement from a Crow who had a reputation for reticence and hesitation.  “Thank you, then, sir,” he said.

“You are quite welcome.  Unfortunately, I must press on to a more difficult topic,” Shadow said.  “Several of my students have recently relocated to the Houston area, one of whom who is stuck on an uncompleted mission of moderate import.  I was wondering if I could draw on your knowledge of my students’ doings, as they hold you in high regard.”

“Certainly, Guru Shadow,” Hank said.  He got out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.  ‘Moderate import’ his ass.  Shadow wanted the information on Gilgamesh’s completed mission; as Shadow was one of their prime suspects, Zielinski would need to obfuscate to an unusual extent.  He did owe Shadow, as Shadow had been the one who had helped him the most while he was in the Addison.

Coming up with things he could say that weren’t overt lies wasn’t going to be easy.  But, then again, was it
ever
easy?

Healing Revenge
(Carol Hancock’s POV)

“Office space in Houston’s fancy pork-built medical center turned out to be too expensive,” Hank said.  “So, with Ying and Frances’ help, and after consulting with Focus Laswell and her people, we’ve leased this place.”  He pushed a folder of pictures, blueprints and legal documents over
the dining room table to me.  ‘This place’ was the second floor of a three-story twenty year old run-down office building just southwest of Houston’s downtown.  I had seen better, but we were on a tight budget, with most of the money already allocated for lab equipment.

Hank’s eyes twinkled today, excited at some tangible progress on our Transform research ‘center’ as well as getting to work with Ying.  Although he followed the
old-fashioned look-but-do-not-touch rules for dealing with fancy young women, he certainly had a thing for them.  They definitely brightened his day.  His skeezy weakness explained a bit how he got on so well with Focuses.  He certainly had Focus Laswell charmed.

He was less enthusiastic about his fresh new identity, complete with fake MD and medical license.  “I can’t decide if it’s a dream or a nightmare,” he had said.  “I’m going to pretend it’s a dream, at least for now.”

“Sign the lease,” I said, after looking over the documents.  This would come out of Keaton’s research account.  I would be on the hook for the plane flights and his new identities, and I was starting to get extended again.  I would need to pull some kind of major job sometime soon, which was going to be a pain in the ass, because I hated the big heists.  They weren’t something I was good at.

“Thanks,” he said.  He gave me a stern and pained look.  “I guess it’s time for some more experimentation on duplicatin
g Arm Eissler’s healing trick.”

“That it is,” I said, and got out my knife.

---

“You look like shit,” I said, when Hank came in.  I was going to have to insist that Zielinski take better care of himself.  Better eating, sunshine and some work in the weight room would make a new man out of him.  Perhaps a few Arm incentives wouldn’t hurt, either.  I swore he looked almost fifteen years older than his calendar age these days.

He mumbled dark things about politics and the state of the world.  “I used to be a life-long Republican,” he said as he planted himself on the couch, “But with the Kennedy assassination, I don’t see any way Nixon won’t be elected.  He wants to take us back to the days of the Quarantine, and…”  He was still shook up about Robert Kennedy’s assassination.  There were damned few people out there who would speak up for the rights of Transforms.  It hit him hard to lose one of the few.  It wasn’t as if either of us upstanding citizens was going to be voting, though.

“So,” I said, “it’s time you told me what you were doing at the CDC when I was incarcerated.  What was going on there, anyway?”

The interruption caught him off guard, and he started to talk before he had a chance to worry about how I was going to take it.  Hearing the story from his perspective chilled me, even though he left before the good part started.  That is, before I broke and starting spilling all I knew.  By that time, he had arranged for Agent Bates to take him into protective custody.

Some of the things he mentioned I couldn’t recall, even after burning a little juice to heal my mind.  I told Zielinski about this, and he wasn’t surprised.

“All major trauma done to a Major Transform will involve memory problems, as will low juice,” Hank said.  He then threw in some technical explanation of why this was to be expected for all Major Transforms, due to the fact the metacampus was nothing more than an enlargement of the hippocampus, the part of the brain that controlled the acquisition of memories.  I boiled it down to ‘when the metacampus is busy healing a sucking chest wound or a blown off leg, it’s too busy to aid in memory production’.  He followed that with a digression into something he called ‘allostatic load’, the fact that all Major Transforms were so loaded down with stress hormones that we all were an adrenaline surge away from a psychotic break.  Having suffered too many of those at Keaton’s hands, I interrupted him with a more pertinent question.

“I’d also like to know about your history with me,” I said.  “I remember you from my time at the St. Louis Detention Center, and visiting with you with Keaton, while I was training with her.  You implied there was more.”

He blinked at me, shocked, and then turned away, in a futile attempt to hide his hurt.  “Okay, Carol,” he said, then paused to take a breath.  “Well, I found out about your transformation the day before you arrived in St. Louis…”

I kept the weeping hysterics hidden until later, when I was safely alone.  There had been so much history between us, and he had helped me so much.  What I had done to Zielinski when I recruited him had been horrible repayment for all the good he did for me.  I had
mentally misplaced so much, even the crucial episode where we broke into Focus Rizzari’s lab so he could sew me back together after Keaton had taken me apart.  I owed him, and I wasn’t sure how to make it up to him.