“I’m inviting you to comment,” she said. A charismatic demand.
“May I ask a question, first?”
“Certainly.”
“Why don’t you delegate, Tonya?”
“Because I don’t need to,” she said. She straightened her blouse collar, and then leaned forward, her eyes hypnotic. “The fact I can keep everything being done in the household in my head is part of my political stature.”
He nodded. “Despite the fact this hurts your household?” Biggioni didn’t quite repress all of her anger at his comment. She didn’t answer, though. “I didn’t expect your household to be so balanced, based on your public persona. I expected a harsh dictatorship and, save for your bodyguard crew, a household treated badly. You’re extremely egalitarian for a Focus using the dictator model. Save for your office, a necessary perquisite for any of the stronger Focuses, you have your people treat you the same way everyone else in your household is treated. I’m surprised you haven’t taken your egalitarianism further, though.”
Tonya didn’t answer, instead, studying him intently. Reading him, and reading him deeply, he realized. Well, if she didn’t want his sort of commentary on Focuses and households, she shouldn’t have prodded him with her charisma, to make him speak.
“Tell me about this ‘taking it further’,” she said. “I’m hoping you have more to say on the subject than ‘delegate more’. That isn’t an argument, that’s an opinion.”
Well, she certainly can put some sizzle into her words, Hank thought, attempting to ignore his aching sinuses, caused by Tonya’s charisma use. “Let me give you two arguments. First, you keep an exceedingly large number of your household Transforms employed, and many with better paying jobs than most Focus households. To me, this implies you’re greasing the skids with your charisma, and I believe…”
“Greasing the skids?” Tonya said, arch. “You’re accusing me of cheating?”
He shook his head. “No more than any human with non-Transform charisma cheats by using their charisma.” Tonya gave him an ‘I find your attitude surprising and refreshing’ look. “I believe that if you delegated much of the day-to-day running of your household to the best of your Transforms, doing so would free you up to be able to increase the number of your Transforms who are employed, enough to balance the stature lost by delegating.”
“Your second argument?” She wasn’t sold.
“Let me use Focus Roscoe’s household as an example.”
“If you must,” Tonya said. “She isn’t much of a Focus, in my book.”
Hank pushed himself up in the wheelchair to shift position. “From an entirely political perspective, I’m sure you’re correct,” he said. Focus Roscoe hated Focus politics with a passion, an attitude that didn’t sit well with the more politically active Focuses. “However, her household is as well-off as yours, and she maintains it so by delegating. As she explained to me, a year ago, she had gotten so bogged down in running her business empire” her chain of quickie combo dry-cleaning shops and tailors “it was hurting her ability to keep her people from snapping at each other. Her solution was to train and delegate her people into running more of the business, keeping control over things by getting them to produce weekly reports.”
“Are you saying I should run my household like some sort of corporation?”
“I hadn’t thought in those words, but, yes, I do believe you should look into Focus Roscoe’s model.”
Tonya rubbed her chin. “I’m not sure. Focus Roscoe’s model isn’t one of the approved household models, and her model is seen as automatically disqualifying her from any form of political say among the Focuses. Who am I to push such a thing?”
Hank hadn’t expected Tonya’s comment. Her words hinted at tensions in the Focus community beyond what he already knew. He leaned forward, starting to enjoy the confrontation. “Why the hell not, Council Representative Biggioni? If not you, then who?”
“Well, how about you?” Tonya said. “You’ve got more charisma as a normal than half the Focuses on the Council.”
“Because, Tonya, one leading Focus with a grudge against me could destroy my career in a week. Or worse. If my work with the Arms has taught me anything, I can’t afford too much exposure among the leading Focuses.” Otherwise he wouldn’t be here, in your office, right now – he didn’t say. He would let this far too perceptive Focus read that from his mind.
“True enough,” Tonya said, looking away. “I’ll consider your arguments; I’ll at least look in to the details of Focus Roscoe’s operation. You missed one, though.”
“An argument?”
“Yes, about a problem I’ve been working on solving for about a year – stress,” Tonya said. She turned back to him and turned on the Focus headlights – her full-on charisma and her icy out-in-public persona. “Being spread too thin increases my stress and makes me harsher with my people than I need to be. At least that’s what you’ve been thinking while you’ve been sitting here in my office. I’ve learned, as a Focus, that moderation is no virtue, but I do think you’ve convinced me I need to take my hunt for a way to reduce my stress level a little more seriously.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His temples started to throb, his typical Focus charisma induced headache.
Tonya let a tiny smile cross her face. “Good enough for now. Dismissed. Oh, and get your damned pistol out from hiding and where you can get it quickly. If some of the chatter I’ve picked up is correct, you’re going to need it.”
During the Latter Stages of the Mind Scrape (3)
Tonya closed her eyes and looked away; Hank’s story of her old harsh self didn’t put her into a good light.
“Tonya saw too much of herself in Keaton, and didn’t like what she saw,” Hank said, continuing. “To civilize Keaton, she had to civilize herself first. She saved me from my own arrogance as well, though it was a close call.” Tonya couldn’t help but wince; she had almost gotten Hank killed several times when she used him to get close to Keaton.
“So in this period you kept your Transforms in a low juice state until they loved you?” Carol said.
“Much more than that,” Tonya said. “So are you ignorant of what I mean by juice manipulation? Or did you think I was just threatening them?”
Carol shook her head and Lori turned away, appalled. “That’s a Keaton non-answer,” Carol said. “I bet you’ve always talked that way.” Tonya shrugged. “Did you know Keaton’s picked up your verbal intimidation techniques?”
Tonya wasn’t sure what to make of Carol’s observation. “I’m not too surprised. As I’ve said, I did try to civilize her, along with Hank’s help.”
“Truly the blind leading the blind. So, Tonya, did it run both ways? Did you pick up on Keaton’s sadism?”
This wasn’t a question she would normally answer, but this was a time for confession. “I’m afraid I have, at least a little,” Tonya said. “As I told you, the Focus Council has been having me cure recalcitrant Transforms, so they can fit in better with their Focus. I’ve grown to enjoy those situations where I get to hammer them with low juice. Even though I know it’s wrong to enjoy it so.”
“Say it,” Carol said. “Admit it.”
The words were wrenching. “I’m a sick old lady, Carol. Little more than a sick old lady.”
Eventually, Carol got back to real topics. It was afternoon again, and Tonya felt pleasantly stuffed from Carol’s lunch. Carol was a spectacularly good cook.
“Well, I guess I’ve put this off long enough,” Carol said, resuming her pacing on the other side of the room. “I need to know more about the rest of the first Focuses. The damned details.”
Tonya leaned her head back against the chair and thought. “Nine first Focuses matter: Mary Beth Julius, Faith Corrigan, Shirley Patterson, Suzie Schrum, Wini Adkins, Donna Fingleman, Michelle Claunch, Sarah Teas and Suzanne Morris, in the order of oldest to youngest as Transforms.” Tonya went on to specify the nature of each, though there was a certain monotony to
her descriptions. All of them wielded political power, gathered over the years simply by being the first Focuses. None of them openly admitted to having any personal power as Focuses, and nearly all had quirks brought on by the stresses of the early years.
“So the ones you don’t get along with are Julius, Fingleman, Schrum, Teas and Morris,” Carol said, reading her. “Which of them do you get along with?”
Tonya let herself redden. “My strongest supporter among the first Focuses is Wini Adkins. Or at least was.”
Carol turned away, growling. “Figures. What sort of internal society do the first Focuses have? What are their goals? Personal enrichment and survival carry you only so far. If that was all they were into, they would have fallen apart into backbiting and bickering long ago.”
“I’m not sure,” Tonya said, “But I can hazard a few guesses. Consider the question of why they broke out from government control. It couldn’t be security; they were perfectly capable of manipulating their ‘captors’ into getting whatever they needed, and they were better protected in captivity than they were outside of captivity. They were actually better off monetarily as captives than they are working free – the first Focuses are terrible at making money because of the way they abuse their own household Transforms. The cover story was that they couldn’t get their captors to admit they had the household juice problems, but that doesn’t wash. They got their captors to admit that Transforms needed more food than normals without any big fights occurring, so they could have gotten recognition of the household bad juice problems if they had put any real effort into it. The truth is that they didn’t realize the bad juice problems were location based until after they broke out of the Quarantine. It’s a justification after the fact. The reason for the breakout has to be something else.
“It was back in the late fifties, when everything seemed to be changing. I transformed in ‘58, before the breakout. The Eisenhower administration was having budget problems, and I and several other ‘58 Focuses ended up outside the system because the Feds didn’t have any money to support us with. The planning for the breakout started in ‘57, as did the Network. The core of the Network formed in two places – the FBI headquarters and Johns Hopkins, which was one of the two big Transform research centers. The Virginia Transform Detention Center Focuses – Teas, Patterson and Julius – didn’t get involved until ‘58. The FBI group was a tiny minority within the FBI, and they were involved because they thought the new Transforms were getting a raw deal. The Hopkins’ doctors and researchers held a minority opinion that Transform Sickness wasn’t just an aggressive food poisoning outbreak, but something else entirely.” Tonya shook her head. “The medical community still thought it was food poisoning back then, and that it was just peaking and would start trailing off any day. I suspect Patterson learned about the Hopkins’ doctors’ ideas, realized the numbers of Transforms would keep growing, and decided the Feds would soon start to treat them as an exploitable resource instead of as victims. That’s when she took over the leadership of the Focuses from Mary Beth Julius. Even before the breakout, the firsts were expanding the Network – that was when Hank here got recruited.”
“Mid fifty-eight, about four months before the Breakout,” Hank said. Both Carol and Lori were surprised, and Carol gave Hank an appraising look Tonya interpreted as an invitation to one of these mind scrapes later. As the target. Hank hesitated for a moment, and then continued. “Although I was ostensibly brought in as a medical consultant, the Focuses also used me to find areas in the New England region where they could live undercover, among other nefarious activities I…”
Carol waved him off and indicated that Tonya should continue.
“The actions of the first Focuses since the breakout support this,” Tonya said. “The first Focuses act as parasites, reducing the strength of the run of the mill Focuses and enriching the strength of their households. As I’ve said, they quash Transform Sickness research, especially about the male Major Transforms, in part to make the Transforms as a whole appear to be weaker. They work on their own pet projects in secret and horde the results, because they don’t want the normals to know how powerful the Transform community is. They manipulate the media, keeping little secrets such as the general infertility of Transform women out of the public eye. To ensure control, not only do they deal in assassinations and blackmail, but they also teach young Focuses sadistic and cult-like household models prone to creating bad juice, forcing Focuses to move their households often and live in poverty. They teach young Focuses to hate Crows, keeping them away and making the bad juice problem worse. When a Focus starts to succeed, they often find some way of siphoning off the excess money the Focus is making, essentially stealing the money for their own uses.”
“Why did you ever consider this system worth supporting?” Lori asked. Tonya knew Lori had to pay a rather stiff ‘successful Focus tax’ to the Council and had never been happy about the payments.
“Mostly, I didn’t know what I was getting into until it was too late. I never realized how much blackmail material the first Focuses had on me, nor did I know how much control they already wielded over me. Then it was a case of deciding not to fight city hall, just playing along and seeing if I could inject some sanity into the system.”
“You failed,” Carol said.
“I know. That’s why I decided to join Lori’s Cause. There is no other way forward. None.”
Author’s Afterward
Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Maurice Gehin, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer. Without their help this document would have never been made.
As stated earlier, The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio 8 is a companion piece to my novel “In This Night We Own”. Some of the pieces in here are here for completeness, others for fun, and they all serve to flesh out the story.
You can find out more information about the world of the Transforms and other stories published by this author on http://majortransform.com. You can also follow me on my Facebook author page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Randall-Allen-Farmer/106603522801212.
The Commander series continues (and ends) with “All That We Are”. With this will come Folio 9 of The Good Doctor’s Tales.
Randall Allen Farmer
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Eight Page 12
