Free The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Three by Randall Farmer

fucked.
    Of course, I couldn’t do a damn thing about this.  I
couldn’t ever do anything about what Keaton wanted.
    I did wonder at the changes in myself.  A few months
ago, I hadn’t considered my kill to be a private thing.  I did, now.
    I stood up and faced Keaton, after I shackled the man to
the squat rack.  Her expression remained cold and judgmental.  I wondered how
much of my thoughts she read.  Probably too much.
    I stood, attentive, as she came toward me.
    “Make him afraid.”
    I did so, following Keaton’s orders.  He scrabbled back
from us in terror.
    She did something dismissive with her predator effect,
and the fear left him.  She leaned toward me.  “Tell me what he’s thinking.”
    “Ma’am?” I said.  I glanced at our victim and shook my
head.  “He’s scared and trying to escape.  A part of him suspects he’s drunk
and hallucinating.  He thinks you’re a man and I’m your slavegirl.  He…”
    Keaton grabbed me by my ear and led me into the kitchen.
    She sat.
    I sat.
    “This is going to be hard,” she said.  “But it’s
important, and for you, I suspect very important.  I want you to do your thing
with him in a way I can understand.”
    Oh, crap.  This sounded like an invitation for a pain
orgy.  My pain.
    Perhaps I should have taken longer to master Keaton’s
mind reading and people-controlling lessons.
    I guess I had showed off a bit much.
    “Ma’am, how do you want me to do this?”
    “Joe is yours.  Learn him.  Use all your senses as an
Arm.  Think about what you’re doing as you do it, so you can explain what you
did later.”
    No profanity.  Keaton was deadly serious.  Keaton must
have tried to duplicate what I did with Bobby, and failed.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said.  This, I realized, was a test of
my worth.  What use is your groundbreaker, if you can’t understand what the
groundbreaker is doing?  My ass was on the line here.  If I didn’t satisfy Keaton’s
unstated needs, I would pay for my failure with pain.
    “By the way,” she said, an exasperated parent lecturing
a dense ten year old, “keep Joe out there alive for several days.  This is a
wonderful opportunity for you to be of some worth to me for once, and earn my
good will.  Don’t waste it.”
    I had a problem, though.
    “Ma’am, I’m low on juice.  I need to hunt,” I said.
    “Damn.  How low are you?” she asked.
    “I think about 107.”  Keaton blinked, hostile.  “Uh, below
110, as best I can determine.  Please, ma’am?”  I needed juice, but Keaton had
no patience with my weaknesses.  I went down to my knees on the floor,
desperate.
    Keaton watched me thoughtfully.  “107 isn’t that low.  You
can restrain yourself a little bit.”  A low whimper tried to come from my
throat.  I forced it back down.
    “Ma’am,” I said.
    “You can hunt Newark tomorrow night.  You can hunt
Baltimore the following night.  You stay here during the days and work with Joe. 
By the time you finish with Baltimore, we will have gotten about as much as we’re
going to get out of Joe, and you can kill him and get serious about hunting.”
    Damn.  Three days at my current burn rate would put me
below 100.
    I glanced at Keaton’s cold hard face.  I thought about
what argument I might use, about how I might react if an Arm underling of mine pushed
the way I wanted to push, and blanched.  Yes, I needed the juice.  No, she
wasn’t punishing me.  I had already tried every bit of groveling and pleading I
could come up with without going overboard.  I stated my case; she made her
decision.  This was Monster Arms again.  In her typical sadistic fashion, she
was giving me another lesson on how to function with low juice.  I understood the
logic, but her lesson irked the crap out of me anyway.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying to control the shaking in
my voice and my body’s stubborn refusal to ignore my intellectual acceptance of
her lesson.  “I’ll get right on