Read The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Four for Free Online Page B

had never encountered
in any of the technical or popular literature.  Yet, he had written nothing new
or creative, just a synthesis of many different sources, Crow and normal.  As
dry and dull as an old dishrag.  With one big flaw – the Philadelphians hadn’t
produced anything on the subject of Monsters.
    He couldn’t send his book off to Shadow written like
this.  Nobody would be able to get past the first chapter!  He had to redo it. 
Make it real.  Somehow.
    Gilgamesh shrugged.  If he ever finished his book, he
would collect his thoughts about the organization of Focus households.  He had
avoided tackling the household organization subject to start with, because of
the complexities involved.  The subject interested him, though.  He had thought
Focuses would end up with an infinite number of household organizations, but his
observations and those of the other Philadelphians showed only nine
organization types.
    His second book would probably be just as dry and soporific. 
    He gathered his available small bills and coins, and
totaled them up.  Yes, he had enough to get his précis copied.  Once.  Chicago
wasn’t being good on his finances.
    Why was the nature of Transform Sickness so complex?  It
didn’t seem logical to him Transform Sickness could be a sudden evolutionary
mutation, or a biological experiment gone wrong. 
    The only thing he knew was the Transform community had
only started to plumb the complexities of their transformations.
     

Bobby’s Illness (early December ‘67)
[Carol Hancock POV]
    I arrived home just before midnight, home being the
perfect spot to be one day post-kill.  I had hunted Indianapolis this time, and
successfully.  I slammed the door of the Buick with that little extra edge of
anticipation and glided past the stacks of old newspapers Bobby kept ignoring.  I
swore when I noticed them, my good mood gone, and then swore again when I
realized I had left my coat in the car.  I turned back and fished it out.
    It was a man’s coat, because I had been Mr. Beacon
today, a dark brown coat made of heavy wool.  I was tempted to carry the coat
and not wear the thing, but I knew better.  The cold didn’t bother me, but the
walk from the garage to the house was long enough and cold enough that a normal
would have wanted the coat.  I sighed and shrugged into the coat, slamming the
car door again with my foot.
    A mouse rustled in the stacks of newspapers, burrowing
underneath for warmth.  In a brief fit of aggravation and kill lust, I grabbed
the ragged broom from the corner and jabbed it down with a snap, butt end
first, into the little rustle under the papers.  The mouse died with a crackle
of small bones, giving me a brief surge of satisfaction.
    A bit of disgust with myself followed my satisfaction.  Carol
Hancock, the dangerous Arm, kills a mouse in her own garage!  Next, I would be
chasing the cockroaches.
    Damn.  I couldn’t even manage my own reactions.  Somewhere
along the line, I had lost the connection between my juice count and my
emotional state.  Thinking back, I realized I lost my sense of correlation after
my encounter with Enkidu.  Probably the little bit of Monster juice I took from
him, I guessed.  I also had more trouble with my juice monkey, at ever-higher
juice counts.  The overwhelming hunger for juice started to creep in even when
I was immediately post-kill, and became nearly intolerable when I was low.
    I stalked across the driveway and back to the house, and
stopped cold when I opened the kitchen door.  There, as I stood in the kitchen
doorway, dripping on the worn tile, the smell hit me, a sick, putrid smell, the
smell of death and disease, overpowering in its intensity.  The odor hit me
like a club and made me gag.  The stench was like a thick reeking cloud,
poisoning the air of the entire house.  I knew of only one thing in my house
big enough to make a stink like this.  The panic hit me with the same club the
smell used and I