The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Nine (13 page)

Bothering Focus Webb
(Carol Hancock’s POV)

“Keaton
orders you to do insane things like this all the time?”  Gilgamesh said.  He had both of us covered from metasense detections as we snuck into the apartment’s grounds.  Jealousy of Shadow and Sky, who were able to mask the metapresence of those with them, drove Gilgamesh into learning how to do this trick, himself.  He wasn’t happy having to test it out in real life, though.

“Essentially. 
In addition to the cash rewards involved, what I get out of these deals is Arm training.  Earlier on, she provided a large amount of monetary support as well.”  Gilgamesh and I were being careful to tell each other more about our day-to-day business as Major Transforms.  We didn’t want another professional mess like the one that ended up with Gilgamesh and I on the outs, on which I blamed our ignorance and excessive secret-keeping.

We were already inside Focus Webb’s outermost layer of security, such as it was. 
We carried no weapons more potent than our battle knives.  Gilgamesh and I were doing the stealth routine.  We crept around the back of the rear apartment building, skulking past the garbage cans.

“Lori wanted to train me in combat, as well.  She kept getting distracted, though.”

“Distracted?  Lori?  Never!” I said, giving Gilgamesh a silly grin.  I would need to watch myself, or I would also end up distracted by Gilgamesh.  I wasn’t overly worried.  As an Arm, I had plenty of experience mixing business with pleasure.  Now we just needed to find someone able to teach Lori the same.  Damn, that Focus was dangerous!

Other than messing up the personal lives of every Crow and Arm she dealt with, Lori was doing fine as the behind-the-scenes leader of the Cause.  Even if
Inferno had a hard time coping with their now somewhat darker leader-Focus.  Tonya bitched and moaned and wiggled, but she did represent us well on the Council and to the media.

Unfortunately, the Feds weren
’t listening.  In fact, they weren’t happy with Transforms this year, and it wasn’t all just the Battle in Detroit.  The current administration was all gung ho about law and order, and had started to turn all Transform problems into law and order problems.  Some of the suggestions coming out of the White House were flat out scary, and the Focuses were scrambling, trying to get their political support in order.  Rabblerousing Arms, Crows and Nobles had better stay quiet, the Council said, or we’re all going to be dead or in internment camps.

Still, I
sensed our momentum growing.  We had won on both the physical and political level.  Rogue Crow was dead.  The Focus Council and the Focus Network now recognized both the Crows and the Nobles as positive contributors to the Transform community.  The Cause was public among the Transforms, and had a seat at the table at the Focus Council.  We had finished the heavy lifting – now, everything else was just details.  For the moment, even the first Focuses were part of the Cause.

U
ntil the next big crisis hit, of course.  I still dreamed of the holy grail of Arms – unlimited juice from a Focus.  As everyone predicted, Gail couldn’t reproduce her trick, and had no idea how she had done it.  But she had.  All it takes is once to prove the possible.  I wanted to try some more experiments with Gail, but Tonya objected, saying Gail was too young.  Worse, Detroit was Keaton’s territory, and so Gail was hers, and she ordered me to keep my damned hands off
her
Focuses.  Someday, though, either with Gail or with some other Focus, I was going to track the grail down and claim it.

Fanatic?  Me?  After a lot of thinking, I
decided the Cause was my personal redemption.  I had taken Inferno’s foundation as my own, and what I had done with the Inferno house cause was to introduce it to the rest of the world, sell it and promote it.  Oh, I knew I had a long way to go.  You need to start somewhere, though.

I
had gone far into the world of cruelty, madness and sadism as a young Arm, and the Cause had allowed me to pull myself back.  It amazed me how everything worked together, as my top recruits, Hank, Ying, Tom, and Ila, pulled me away from my internal beast as hard as my connections to the other Major Transforms pulled.  They all contributed, from my intimate connections with Lori, Gilgamesh and Sky, to my more business-like connections to Guru Hephaestus and Focus Laswell, to my edgy dealings with Focus Biggioni and Gurus Shadow and Arpeggio.  Yet, this was no conspiracy.  Each of them worked on their own, for their own reasons.  The way it fell together so synergistically reminded me of the way I had viewed the world as magic, before my mind had recovered from the withdrawal effects.  Yes, I had fallen into thinking of things using Lori and Hank’s superorganism theory, despite the fact I found the juice-based nonsense disquieting.

“It’s a breach of decorum,” Gilgamesh said, bringing me back from my internal reverie, as we made it around the apartment building. 
I barely heard his voice from two feet away.

“Focus Webb is supposed to be a hot shot Focus, ahead of Tonya talent-wise, and she’s got the lamest excuse for security I’ve seen yet.  She’s got to beef this up.  This just
isn’t safe, for her or her household.”

Webb had money, I’ll give you that.  Her Focus household was upper middle class, and not internally stratified.  From what I
had seen, everyone got treated exactly the same, down to the same furniture.  The same
good
furniture.  Focus Webb did not use Crows, yet, for dross maintenance.  Her system, of building high-class apartment buildings, moving in, building the next, selling the old one, had worked for at least four years.  Why fix something that isn’t broken?

No security, though.

No dealings with any other Major Transforms other than Focuses, and save for her local Focus clique in San Diego, few dealings with any other Focuses.  Everyone willing to talk about her regarded her as frosty.

Each Saturday evening, the whole household h
eld a group dinner on the lawn in the courtyard of their complex.  Gilgamesh and I had snuck in and now mingled, just another pair of Transforms.  I messed with minds so people thought they knew us.  Gilgamesh handled our metapresences.  There was Focus Webb herself, having a deep philosophical conversation with her husband, on the nascent women’s rights movement.  Oblivious to an Arm and a Crow, now with food-laden paper plates in our hands, about to sit down beside them and introduce ourselves.

I carefully met the eyes of the person sitting at Focus Webb’s right, a normal household member of no particular import.  I want your seat!  Mine!  No juice involved, just an Arm’s understanding of human psychology.  The normal gave me a dirty look, and vacated the seat.

Webb and her husband droned on and on.  Women would never be able to be elite members of society.  Yes they could.  No they couldn’t.  Height matters.  No, it doesn’t, we’re no longer club-wielding savages.  Yammer yammer yammer.  My solution was easier – you don’t like a closed boy’s club or men’s club?  Assassinate the leaders.  Make it known why the idiots were dead.  Get their attention enough, they would change.

Sorry.  I’m an Arm.  I’m not one to talk to about winning legal rights for
Transforms.  Let the Focuses work on Transform rights to their heart’s content.  Meant I wouldn’t need to.

Eventually, there was a lull in the conversation, and I cleared my throat.  “Ma’am, my friend and I would like to have a word with you.”

There was no gasp of surprise from Focus Webb.  Instead, she just turned and gave Gilgamesh and me the iciest stare I had ever received.  Even on a Saturday, Webb looked like a corporate lawyer.  Now she looked like a corporate lawyer facing two kids who had peed on her briefcase.

“Arm Hancock and Crow Gilgamesh, I was wondering if you
would summon the nerve to speak to me in person, or whether you would just sneak around all day, making nuisances of yourselves.”

Oops.  Double oops – the Focus had done some sort of trick to freeze me in place.  Gilgamesh panicked, frozen as well.  Well, I
knew some Focuses did tricks like this, via Gilgamesh’s conversations with Polly.  According to Polly, who should know, Focuses couldn’t heal directly because they couldn’t access anything outside themselves but juice and brains.  This implied they could access other people’s brains.

Here was proof positive
of this assertion.  Focus Webb had locked down our brains, at least the part of our brains that let us move.  She had rolled us, yes, but I decided not to fight it.  We were trying to make friendly contact with Focus Webb.  “Does this answer your question about why I seem to have so little security?”

“Yes, ma’am,” my mouth said, even though I hadn’t
decided to translate my thoughts to words.  This was a rather impressive trick.

She turned to her husband.  “Honey, I think I
need to go and interrupt my leisurely Saturday dinner to go deal with some ornery pressing business.  I’ll be back, soon.”  Arch, nasty, and unhappy.

Focus Webb marched us to her apartment, no more opulent than any of the others, with its standardized high quality furniture and household items.  She sat us down, and released control over our mouths.  Good.  It was getting harder and harder to keep myself from fighting back.

I started to snarl, but I remembered ‘diplomatic’ and cut it off.  “Thank you, Focus Webb,” I said.  I hoped my civil comment convinced her I wasn’t an out-of-control Arm.

You see, she still kept her mental hold on us –
she still held us, paralyzed.

She smiled.  “Think nothing of it.  I wanted to see how you would attempt to contact me, when I was so rather pointedly ignoring the hints you and Arm Keaton kept dropping about making contact. 
Enlightening, about both of your talents.”

“Focus Webb, I find this type of mental control
to be panic inducing,” Gilgamesh said.

“Too bad.”

I studied this Focus more closely.  Webb had the Focus beauty, but she played it austere and distant.  Her juice structure was enticing, complex and firm.  Beautiful, but not overwhelming; less loveable than even Focus Laswell.  I didn’t pick up any hostility from her, nor even the low-grade annoyance at the universe that seemed to dominate many of the Focuses I studied.  She was centered and self-assured, but not hard-edged like Lori and Tonya.  Driven, but not fanatic.

“Like what you see?” she
said.  Add: real fucking good with juice and the metasense.

“You’re different from the other Focuses
,” I said.

“You haven’t seen enough Focuses.  Call me Connie.  Now that I’ve got a hold of you two, I expect to be seeing a lot more of you in the future.”

Um, right.  “I…”  I wanted to bluff and bluster.  Instincts, again.  I’m the big bad Arm, I killed Rogue Crow, I’m a predator and you are just a sheep.  Was this going to work?  No way.

“You’re wondering what I’m going to extract from you?”

“Yes.”

“I pride myself in being a good judge of character, at working with the facts,” Connie said.  “I may be only a small time corporate lawyer, but I have my dreams and aspirations as well.  There is a temptation for
Major Transforms, and I include both of you in this criticism, to think too much of themselves, to make their dreams too grandiose.  Skill and talent are fine, but skilled and talented people often overlook luck as a factor in success.  Overlook hard work as a factor in success.  Coast and dream.  Often, whether a person becomes a success depends on the times, their hard work, and their luck.  You two may be successful, or just good, or just ordinary.  Preparation, in the form of hard work, ensures that if you get called on, you will have something to contribute.  I sit on the Council and see quite a few Focuses, on the Council and off, who aren’t doing the preparation.  You two – you’ve done some of the hard work, but not enough.  Do you understand what I’m getting at?”  She stared at me, reading me as much as I was reading her.

“Training.  You’ll train us in something, we’ll train you or your people in something.”

“Yes.  I’m going to assign you to one of my businesses, Hamilton and Rauch.  Private investigators.  You need some training in this area, I fear.  My people, well, they are a little weak on their fighting capabilities.”

I was surprised, and I showed it.

“You thought I was talking about training using juice, weren’t you?” Webb said.  “This is a bad habit I’ve been running into recently.  We’re civilized human beings, not animals.  The raw ability to manipulate juice is important, but the abilities of civilization, especially military and paramilitary skills, are being overlooked by certain people who plan fights and rebellions.”  Me, for instance.  Sigh.  Every time I ended up dealing with the older Major Transforms, I got my ass handed to me.  “It’s not enough to say ‘well, I have such and such a juice talent, so I don’t need to learn about police procedure, or surveillance techniques’, to name two examples.”

“What possible use am I, then?” Gilgamesh asked.  “What I know about fighting isn
’t worth teaching anyone else.  I run from fights, if I can.”

“You’re a Crow.  Have you seen bad times?”

“Do you mean living in cardboard boxes types of bad times, Focus Webb?  Yes.”

“Then you have something to teach.  Don’t sell yourself short.  If you end up learning more than you teach, now – well, later, pay someone else back the favor of teaching more than you learn.”  Connie put her index fingers together and leaned her chin on them.  “You and your allies have sucked me into this Cause of yours, a game I was hoping
to avoid.  However, if I’m stuck in this game, I’m going to play it my way.  I’m going to improve our side.