The Healer (24 page)

He hadn't thought of this. It was a new reason for self-reproach.

“No offense intended,” she added, “but you're a precious commodity.”

“If we're so precious, why do you treat us so badly?”

“That's a good question. Why do people bite the hands that feed them? Why do we hurt the ones we love? Because we don't love ourselves? Because we love ourselves too much? I don't know why. Because you let us? Because we can?”

For the first time she appeared less than fully in command of herself, as though he'd touched a nerve. She fingered her necklace, then rose and fixed herself a drink, which she carried across the room to a steamy, mullioned window. Crimson light spilled in from the building's thousand-bulbed facade, giving her face a harsh, inhuman look.

“Do they hate me?” Payne asked.

“Do who?”

“The other healers.”

She stared out the window for a while before answering. “I expect some do. You're an easy target for hate, and the Authorities are more than happy to keep it that way. They're very good at nursing grievances, creating smoke screens and misdirection. Lies and propaganda run in their blood. They love it when people are up in arms about something, as long as it's not them. Which is not to say that I agree with what you did. It's caused a tremendous amount of suffering. But very few are pointing the finger where it belongs.”

“Where's that?”

“At us. At humans. We're the ones to blame for this. We use you mercilessly. We take and take until you've no more to give. We're the ones who drive you to extremes, because we're the ones who drain you.”

“You have no choice,” he said.

“But we do. We could use you less. Let you rest more. Give you time to recover.”

“That would be better, but it wouldn't stop it.” He thought of Vecque, who was stricken after a mere two years of service. “There're some whom even rest won't help.”

“There're other things we could do.”

“What things?”

She hesitated, as though reluctant to speak of them.

He asked again.

“We could find a way to make more healers.”

“More? How?” Then he remembered the experiments that humans were so fond of doing.

“Valid thinks we can,” she said. “Others, too. I don't agree with them. I don't agree with their experiments.”

“Why not?”

“They're cruel, that's why. Barbaric. And no one's ever shown they help.”

Suddenly, without warning, a human figure plummeted past the window. It was followed by several more, all roped together and shrieking. Payne leapt up and rushed to the window, prepared to race outside to help if he was needed. He saw some people dangling by a rope, and then with a jerk they vanished.

“Circuit jumpers,” Meera muttered. “What a waste. Sometimes I think that humans have a death wish.”

“It's supposed to be fun,” he said, which is what he'd heard. “It's not?”

“One or two die every year.”

“But that can't be what they wish for.”

“No. Probably not. Probably they expect to live forever.”

“Have you ever tried it?”

She shook her head, staring out the window. “No. When I was young, I took other risks. Just as stupid.”

He longed to ask her what they were. They were standing near each other, and he longed to stand closer.

“Now I try to be more careful,” she said. “Life, I've discovered, has plenty of thrills without manufacturing them.”

She turned from the window, and in the process their eyes met for just a second. She seemed surprised to see him there so close and gave a self-conscious little smile, as though she'd been caught at something. But she quickly recovered her composure, crossing the room and distancing herself from him.

“So,” she said. “Do we have a deal?”

“A deal?”

“You agree to stay out of trouble. To avoid confrontation. To avoid controversy of any kind. You keep a low profile. The lower the better.”

“And in return I go free.”

She nodded. “Do you need another incentive? I have one, if you do.”

“No. Freedom's plenty.”

“That's good, but I have one anyway. What Levels do you see here, Payne? Threes? Fours?”

It took a second for him to understand what she was talking about. It had been so long since he'd done a healing, save with his friend the rat, and those had not involved his meli.

“Some Fours. Mostly Threes.”

“And it's easy for you, isn't it?”

“Easy?”

“Let me put it this way. Do you feel challenged?”

It was an opportunity to show her what he'd learned. Choosing tact over truth, he replied, “Humans are always challenging.”

She gave a little smile. “Bravo. Very good. But Threes are hardly worth the effort—not for someone like you. Wouldn't you like to work with something more demanding? A Level Five, say? A Six?”

“Sixes don't come here,” he said.

“I know that. But you could go to them.”

“Rampart?”

“Why not?”

He wondered if she made a habit of this, of tempting people, enticing them with daring invitations, luring them to greater heights. He felt similar to how he'd felt at Pannus when she and Valid had commuted his sentence: the same flutter in the chest, the same sense of being swept away, the same thrilling, vertiginous feeling of his world expanding.

“You'll need to practice,” she said. “Hone your skills. Improve your talent. And of course you'll have to stay out of trouble. You'll have to prove you can be trusted. That will take some time.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Why? Because trust's a fragile thing. Once lost, it takes time to earn it back.”

“No. Why me?”

“You? Because you have a gift. I told you that before. No sense to waste it here.” She stopped, then corrected herself. “I don't mean that. Healing's never wasted. But sometimes people use it frivolously.” 

“Frivolously?”

“Yes. Haven't you seen it? People who come to you on a whim. Who use you capriciously.” She gestured toward the window. “Like them. Young people. Thrill seekers. Daredevils.”

There was a note of contempt in her voice, and Payne sensed that not all of it was directed outward.

“People who don't know any better,” she said.

In the weeks that followed Payne threw himself into his work. The need was there, and he was willing, even grateful, to oblige. But he was weak from prison, and it took some time for him to regain his strength. Healing was demanding work; both physically and mentally, it required stamina, endurance and concentration.

He had to focus in a way he never did in other circumstances. First on himself, and then he had to lose himself and center on his patient. Empathy was implicit in the act of healing. In a way it was its core. It generated the power for the first three stages of a healing, and lesson number two spoke of it directly. Payne remembered all his lessons, and some that he had once thought puerile he had since learned to see in a different light. The second lesson taught that to identify one must first show interest, and to capture one must first release. As his strength returned and he practiced this, he found his empathic powers heightened. Perhaps he had matured; certainly, having been imprisoned for
so long and confined solely to himself, he was grateful for any contact he could get, be it glancing or that most intimate kind that came on the healing bed.

Sometimes what afflicted a person was not restricted to that individual but symptomatic of a more general condition. Something that affected others, an epidemic of some sort. A single human, like a single tree infested with disease, could be saved, but it helped to know about the state of other humans; it helped to keep an eye on the forest. The narrow field of vision required in the healing chamber was often best understood in the context of the larger view.

In the world of disease, as in the worlds of music and art and other disciplines, there was always the element of fashion. Interest in pathologies (as well as pathologies themselves) waxed and waned from public consciousness. What was in vogue one year was out of vogue the next. In part, this was determined by what was actually out and about in the world, what nasty germs (and usually it was germs) posed a threat to life and limb. But beyond this, there was an interest and a buzz that had less to do with the prevalence of an illness than the perception of the prevalence. And perception, as a product of the imagination, could be manipulated. This was not something that was taught to healers, but every one of them experienced it. How humans could be swayed by fear and fantasy and fashion. For more than anything they seemed to love a story, and the ones they loved best seemed to be of threats that didn't materialize, imminent disasters narrowly averted, as well as illnesses that had some glamour to them and epidemics that turned out to be false alarms. Sometimes it seemed to Payne that the people he treated lived expressedly to be saved.

Currently in vogue was a nebulous affliction, purportedly of the central nervous system, that went by a variety of names, the most common of which, Impaired Cognitive Excitation, had found favor less for the aptness of its description than for its acronym. Symptoms ranged from a buzzing in the ears to a tingling in the skin to a nocturnal
twitching of the muscles of the trunk. Some complained of a dry mouth and metallic taste on the tongue; others swore the taste was sweet and their salivation profuse and frothy. Commonly, there was a sense of bloatedness and abdominal fullness, but just as commonly a sense of being empty and needing to be filled. Mentally, many described amnesia for unpleasant occurrences and events, while others, remarkably, were quite capable of recalling even the most trivial, glancing and ancient wounds. There was insomnia and there was polysomnia. Lassitude and fixation. Sloth, mania, ennui, obsession, lackadaisy and a kind of hypervigilance that suggested paranoia.

From an epidemiologic standpoint, the most consistent thing about ICE was its inconsistency. That, and the paucity of physical findings. In many ways it resembled the notorious Cryptogenic Protein scare of several decades earlier, which itself resembled the so-called Laughing Man Disease of a century before that. Certain maladies seemed to reside in the human psyche, if not in the actual spongy matter of the brain, and had a habit of resurfacing. Like styles of hair and clothes and speech, they had a way of coming back.

Curiously, Payne found the Boomine synthesizer quite useful in the treatment of the syndrome. Apart from its intended purpose of making him more palatable to his clientele, there was something in the way it seemed to penetrate and ease the human brain. By adjusting its intensity, he could override almost any interference. By adjusting its pitch and timbre, he could simulate virtually any sound.

Different patients responded to different auditory input. Some did well with bird sounds, some with the wind, some the sea. Some liked to hear a soothing voice, reminiscent, perhaps, of a loved one. Some preferred a loud and harsh reproach. The range of sounds able to affect a beneficial outcome seemed, indeed, as limitless as the range of people to receive them.

Payne was called upon to disguise himself so frequently that whole days could pass without his hearing his own voice. And then when he
did, it was apt to stop him in his tracks, as though he were someone else. It took time to get the other voices out of his head, and until he did, he always felt slightly apprehensive, worrying that one or two of these impersonations, these false identities, might decide to stay.

Fortunately, not everyone who came to him had ICE, and not all of those with ICE required the synthesizer. A fair number of his patients suffered the misfortune of a more prosaic ill. But all were in the throes of one thing or another, and humans in the throes of one thing or another were not happy humans. They were often cross and grumpy, having neither time nor patience nor tolerance for being ill.

Nor for waiting, and since the New Day debacle and subsequent reduction in the healer population, waiting had become a fact of life. Before his incarceration Payne had been busy. That was the nature of the job. Following his release, he was swamped.

He hated it, hated always being behind. His patients were testy enough without being told they had to wait. Their constant carping and the neverending rush and pressure to please them wore on him, even after he'd recovered his strength. He needed help, and since he couldn't turn to any of the other healers, all of whom were wearing down at least as fast as he was, he turned to the only other place that he could think of: his clientele.

The idea of asking patients to assist in their own healing wasn't new. It was as old as healing was, as old as wisdom. It was logical that people learn to take care of themselves. It was good medicine, and it was also common sense. The incentive was obvious (health), the methods practical, the lessons simple and easy to learn. His patients, on the whole, were all for it. He gave advice, and dutifully, diligently, they listened.

Where they had more trouble, where in fact they continually faltered, was in putting what he said (or what they heard of what he said) into practice. This they simply couldn't seem to do.

The problem was that healing oneself was work. Hard work. It
took time and effort and energy. It took commitment. Most challenging of all, it usually required change.

His patients, despite their best intentions, fought change tooth and nail. They fought it nodding yes to him and nodding no. They fought it knowing full well they shouldn't be fighting. It was remarkable how they fought it, but more remarkable still, how much discomfort and suffering they were willing to put up with to avoid having to do anything about it, to avoid having to change.

They resisted out of laziness. They resisted out of inertia. They resisted out of fear. His patients—patients everywhere—clung to pain and suffering because, quite simply, the alternative looked worse. And when they'd had enough, when they couldn't stand it anymore, even then they tried to negotiate and compromise and gain concessions. It was just too damn hard and inconvenient and bothersome to change.

Still, some patients tried, and Payne never stopped encouraging them. It was personally rewarding when someone actually listened to him, then did what he suggested and got better. For others it was a hopeless undertaking, but even these he tried to reach. Like the woman with the pimple on her chin. A single pimple, small and white and fluctuant, ready to burst any day. He reassured her that before she knew it, the blemish would be gone, but she could not wait. Frantically, she begged him to get rid of it. It was her honeymoon. She feared the groom, who only days before had betrothed himself to her body and soul, in sickness and in health and in every other state, would be displeased.

Or the man who was losing his hair. Not much of it to be sure, a few strands on the pillow and in the teeth of his comb, hardly more than a minor, transitory shed. But his hairline, he was convinced, was receding. It made his forehead stand out unattractively. When Payne pointed out that this particular form of baldness was a manly attribute and thus a manly virtue, he scoffed. It was grotesque, he said, without apologies to a man whose head defined grotesque. It made him look top-heavy, like a breaching whale.

But for all of this, the small and large, the trivial and the consequential, Payne felt a fondness for these humans. Even after everything they'd done to him. He sympathized with their anxieties. He felt a kinship with their strengths and weaknesses. Their vanities, petty as they were, he found endearing, and their pains, whether rooted in the body or the mind, he understood.

Between work and sleep he had little time for other activities, which suited him, for he had little interest in them. The city had lost much of its fascination for him. He was weary of the crowds and of the gaming houses, and the houses of religion were better left alone. Sometimes he took walks, which were bittersweet, for they reminded him of Brand. He kept his distance from the other healers, who, with one exception, did the same with him.

Nome was overjoyed at his release from prison. She insisted on personally nursing him back to health, which principally required that he eat more to put back on the pounds he had lost, a feat that he was quite capable of doing on his own. But he allowed her solicitude because it seemed to make her happy, or at least it made her feel useful, which in her case amounted to the same.

She took to staying with him, in violation of a law against cohabitation among healers. The law, in actuality, was against impregnation, which in a female interfered with healing. In the same way that tesques could not be trusted to govern themselves, healers could not be trusted to live with one another, as it led (by all accounts) to uncontrolled fornication. To head off any possible misunderstanding, Payne made it clear from the beginning that they would sleep in separate rooms. In the event he left Aksagetta, a hope he nurtured in private, he didn't want her any more attached to him than she already was. As for sex, she did not attract him physically. He had yet to meet a tesque who did.

The weeks passed, and one day there came a knock at his door. Nome was sleeping in the bedroom. Fearing the Authorities, Payne
didn't answer, hoping they would go away. But the knocking persisted, and then he heard her voice.

His heart raced as he unlocked the door.

She wore a sleeveless dress this time, a pale blue that matched her eyes. Her hair was loose, not pulled back as before, and it brushed her shoulders.

Politely, she asked if he was busy. She didn't want to intrude.

No, he said. Not busy. Come in, come in.

She had some business to discuss with him. But first she asked how he'd been doing. How he was. Any backlash from his patients? From other healers? Any visits from the Authorities? Any word?

Everything was fine, he said (expecting she would have known if it hadn't been). He was keeping the lowest possible profile. Working hard and staying out of trouble. In many ways, most ways, it was a relief.

She was glad to hear it. And glad, too, that he seemed to have recovered his health. He looked well, she said. More rested.

He thanked her.

She went further. He looked almost happy. Thriving, anyway. No?

He followed where she seemed to want to lead him, replying that he couldn't complain.

“And not everyone can say that, can they?” she answered. “Certainly not every healer.”

“Every healer's different, if you're talking about the Drain.”

She took a few steps around the room, inspecting this and that in a casual, offhanded way. “The girl at Pannus. The one you tried to heal. What was her name?”

She asked it nonchalantly, as if the question had just occurred to her, which Payne doubted. Nonchalance was certainly not his response.

“Vecque,” he said.

“Vecque. Yes. What made you decide to do it? To try?”

“Stupidity,” he answered curtly.

“Of course. But at the time. What were you thinking at the time?”

“I was bored. I wasn't thinking.”

“I doubt that's true.”

He shrugged. “I don't know. I don't remember.”

She glanced at him, caught, it seemed, between the impulse to prod and the impulse to let him be. “Is this too hard for you?”

Her solicitude annoyed him. “No. It isn't hard at all. I just don't see what difference it makes.”