The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six by Randall Farmer Page A

was my mission.
    “Not really.”
    “Bummer.”
    We both sat back in our chairs and shared the joint. Neither of us said anything for a long while. We used up the joint, and Red took the last good toke and snuffed it out.
    “I have a friend, though,” I said.  “Someone like me.  She’s sort of interested in people like your friends.  Tell you what – give me some names and phone numbers of these friends, and I’ll see they get to her.”  He hesitated.  “She’s a good person to know, in this business,” I said, letting my voice go husky.
    I reached over to him and brought him to me. Two days had passed since my second kill on this mission (seventeen year old girl a couple days from going over, who died with a needle in her arm because I put it there to cover my tracks), and we had done enough talking. There, in the common room of the co-op, I took Red to me, and I showed him how good sex might be. I did things with his body far beyond his mundane dreams. Those men had thought I was good before. They never knew how good I could be. I would figure in Red’s wet dreams for the rest of his life.
    Red fell asleep on the couch after we finished, too exhausted even to move. When he woke up, I was gone, along with his list of SDS contacts.
     

Gilgamesh Meets Focus Rizzari [expanded version]
    Only one day after his meeting with Thomas the Dreamer, and already a mystery.  He expected juice patterns from Gymnast, and he found them.  He knew about Sky’s relatively recent dalliance with Gymnast and her household.  However, even after dodging the juice patterns decorating the ground near her household and approaching to within a hundred yards of her home, he still couldn’t find any sign of gristle dross.  Transforms had lived in the estate for years.  The place should have been a cesspit of gristle dross, beyond the ability of any Crow to remove.
    The common wisdom said that Crows could not work with Focuses, and yet, all the signs here pointed to Crows working with Focus Rizzari for a very long time.  Was this mystery tied in to the disappearance of the Crows?  He wouldn’t have thought so, but he certainly couldn’t say for sure.
    The tiny Focus waited for him on the front steps of her mansion, leading up to a covered porch, as he had arranged in his last phone call to her.  A single light in the ceiling of the porch illuminated her in the evening darkness.  His ability to read her emotions came and went, more variance than simply a distance related function.  While she waited for him to nerve himself up to approach her, he suspected she wove juice patterns, some form of experimentation, given the negligible amount of juice in use.
    He wasn’t terrified of Focus Rizzari, nor she of him.  She exuded strength, not the dark strength of Hera or Icon, but a different, almost familiar strength he found comforting.  He suspected she knew exactly where he was at any point in time, and was polite enough to give no sign.
    Too soon to approach, he backed off, taking refuge behind the hedges of a smaller estate across the road.  His hands shook, which he thought silly.  He had coped with Keaton far more easily, and Icon as well.  What was different about this situation?
    His mission.  He suspected he hadn’t yet accepted the mission as his.  The task to ferret out evidence of Crow Killer’s identity wasn’t one he wanted.  What he wanted to be doing was helping Tiamat recover.
    Yet, here he was.
    Gilgamesh sighed and shook his head.  He forced his mind back to the situation at hand.  He had to.
    For instance, how did a Focus household manage to live in such a large estate?  How did they get the money?  This was a millionare’s estate; despite the relative narrowness of the streetfront, the estate covered about an acre and a half.  Much of the estate wasn’t visible from the street; he picked out five other buildings out back, including a garage and what had to have once been a horse barn (no