The Healer (7 page)

But moving kept him warm, and not moving felt too much like giving up. And in the back of his mind he worried that he'd strayed far away from everybody, into some burnt-out, unused abandoned section of the mine.

So for a second time he turned around and headed back the way he'd come, or at least the way he thought he'd come, following the drift as it took a leftward turn. Half a minute later, he heard a noise ahead, and, heart racing, he rushed forward. But when he rounded the bend, his hopes were dashed. At the center of a cloud of billowing yellow dust lay a pile of newly fallen rock. The sound had come not from any rescuer, but from the mine itself. It was a cruel disappointment. But not as cruel as what came next.

As he stared and cursed his luck, the dust began to flicker, the sort of flicker that a moth made with a candle as it danced back and forth around the flame. But he saw no moth in the light of his headlamp, and in fact could think of no good reason why one would live three thousand feet beneath the ground. For a second the flickering stopped, and he put it out of his mind, for there were other, more pressing things to be concerned with. Then suddenly, his light went out.

To his shame he panicked. And by some miracle tamed the panic. In the darkness he felt for his lamp and then its cord, making sure that they were still connected. He checked the battery connection too, then unclipped the battery from his belt and, reasoning that a heart, which was a sort of battery too, could sometimes, when stalled, be jump-started with a thump to the chest, banged it on the wall. It made a dull
thudding sound not so very different from what a chest would make but, sadly, did not spring to life. He went through the motions of doing everything again, to no avail. The battery and lamp were dead.

With his hand against the rib as a guide he inched forward, until he banged his head on a nasty overhang of rock and nearly knocked himself out. After that, he decided to stay put: if he couldn't find his way in the light, what possible chance was there to find it in the pitch black? He had his brass, which at least was something. When the men brassed out and his was found unaccounted for, they would send a party out in search of him. And Slivey, of course, would already be looking. Unless something had happened to him, too. Which is how his mind had started to work, imagining things that in other circumstances he would never have thought of. He couldn't understand how they'd ever gotten separated to begin with. The whole thing beggared reason.

The cold was starting to get to him, and he huddled in a ball against the rib, knees drawn to his chest to conserve heat. His teeth began to chatter, and every now and then he heard the disconcerting moan of shifting rock. It was not hard to imagine that the mine was speaking, and it did not sound happy, seemed in fact displeased. He felt so stupid for getting lost. So cold and frightened.

He had never been in darkness so complete. It seemed like something new on earth, to night as night was to day. It swallowed up his cries for help, making them sound futile and pathetic. How could anything hope to penetrate such blackness? And little by little a new fear arose.

All this noise of his might not be so smart. It might be stirring something up that shouldn't be stirred, waking something that shouldn't be woken. His imagination? Maybe, but maybe not. There were many things that skulked and lurked in darkness.

He began to shiver, small involuntary tremors in his arms and legs and chest. And then he started having trouble breathing. The stale, heavy air offered little in the way of nourishment, but more than that, the mine seemed to be closing in on him. He could feel its imponderable
weight of rock, millions upon millions of tons of it, pressing against his ribs, bearing down and constricting him. It was as if the mountain itself sat upon his chest, squeezing out the air, and in a panic he started hyperventilating.

He couldn't understand why they hadn't found him yet. Surely by now the shift was over and they knew that he was lost. But maybe not; maybe the men were still at work. He had no idea how much time had passed, except that it seemed forever.

He was shivering freely now, and his fingers and toes were numb. How much longer would he last? People died like this, and he didn't want to die. He gulped air and took deep breaths, trying to master his fear, forcing himself to calm down and breathe slower.

And now the cold began to get to him. It had seeped deep into his body, and now it started working on his mind. He began to have trouble thinking clearly. A lethargy came over him. He felt more tired than he had reason to be. Tired and sluggish and apathetic. He began having thoughts not of rescue, but of escape and release.

His eyelids drifted slowly downward, then closed. Terrified, he snapped them open, knowing he had to fight the urge to sleep. But seconds later, they closed again, and he promised himself it would only be a minute. Just enough time for a little nap.

It lasted longer than he planned, and would have lasted longer still, too long, had it not been broken by a dream. It was a bothersome, annoying dream: a swarm of insects was buzzing in his ears. He tried in vain to swat them away and stop the buzzing, but the sound persisted, and then they, or something, was jostling him. This was even more annoying, and he shrank from it and tried to get away. All he wanted was to be left alone.

And then a voice was saying, “There you are,” and then a light was shining in his face.

“Been wondering where you wandered off to. Guess you forgot rule number one.”

It was very real sounding to be a dream, though waking up to it was quite a struggle. He finally got his eyes to open but couldn't get his tongue to work. His lips and jaw were numb.

The voice turned out to be Slivey's; clustered around him were other men, Covert among them. No one looked particularly alarmed or worried about his being lost. If anything, and this was strange, they seemed amused.

“Up you get now,” Slivey said, offering his hand. “No more sleeping on the job. Shift's over. Everybody's tired and hungry. Time to brass out.”

He was having dinner in the mess hall several days later when Vecque entered. They had not spoken since the incident in the mine, although everybody else seemed to know about it, and so he assumed she did. She wound her way past the tables to the serving line, getting teased by the miners in the process. They called her uppity for not joining them, not that they wanted her to or would have known what to do if she had. For one thing, she was tesque, and for another she was their healer, both of which set her well apart. She was also female, which to many of the men was the most alien thing about her.

As a rule, she had the sense to ignore their catcalls. From her point of view, responding only encouraged them and made things worse. Payne was a man, but he was different from the miners. He wasn't hostile and didn't ever laugh at her. If he had a fault (and Vecque was not one to let a fault go unnoticed), it was that he was so damn upbeat.
And so fervent sometimes. But she was almost always glad to see him, especially when she compared it to the alternative of eating alone.

After getting herself some food, she joined him at his table, pulling up a chair. “I heard about your little escapade.”

“News travels fast.”

“Like lightning. How are you? Recovered yet?”

He didn't really want to talk about it, mostly because he didn't want the miners to overhear and get started in on him again. They were ruthless with their hazing. Emotionally, he was still a little raw.

“I'm fine,” he said.

She knew he wasn't. “You should have listened to me. I told you not to go.”

He shrugged. “Nothing wrong with going. Only with what happened.”

“I'll say.”

“And nothing even wrong with that. It was a learning experience. No harm done.”

“Oh stop.”

“It was.”

“Admit it. You were scared to death.”

“Not really.”

“No? I would have been.”

This was as close to sympathy as Vecque had ever gotten, and it loosened something up inside of him. All at once he was gushing.

“I was terrified. Beyond reason. And afterward, when we were coming back, they were cracking jokes about it. I felt so embarrassed and so incredibly dumb.”

“That's just the way they like it. Makes ‘em feel smart.”

Heads were turning toward their table, and he lowered his voice and leaned forward. “They are smart, Vecque. Down there at least. They know exactly what they're doing. I'm the one who made the mistake of getting lost.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It's what happened. You can't blame them for that.” It seemed stupid, but here he was defending them.

Vecque regarded him, wondering how anyone could be so out of touch. Was the point even worth pursuing? She had her doubts.

“I hate to burst your bubble, but you didn't get lost.”

“Yes,” he answered stubbornly. “I did.”

“They ditched you.”

“You're wrong.”

“I'm not,” she said. “They did. Intentionally.”

He didn't believe her. “Why do you say that? How do you know?”

“Because I know these men. I know what humans are capable of.”

It was just as he thought. This was Vecque speaking; it was prejudice, not fact.

“That's your fantasy. It isn't mine.”

“It's no fantasy, Payne. I heard them talking.” She hesitated, not thrilled to be the bearer of this news. “Look, I'm sorry, but I heard.”

“Heard what?”

“That they let you get lost. That they left you there.”

“They said that?”

She nodded.

“Oh,” he said, then “oh” again. “So that's why they were laughing.”

“I imagine so.”

He considered this, and at length he brightened. “It was all a joke.”

“Not exactly.”

“Sure it was.” He had heard of pranks being played on new miners, harmless things like bolting down their lunch pails or serving them grease sandwiches. Humiliating in the moment but not to be taken personally or confused with the intention of doing a person harm. More like rites of passage, required for acceptance in the group. Which had to be what this had been.

He took it as a sign of progress. “They were kidding around. It was a joke. I can take a joke.”

“You're not getting it,” said Vecque. “It wasn't a joke. They were teaching you a lesson.”

“What do you mean? What lesson?”

“For what you did to that miner. The one with the failing kidneys.”

“Covert?”

“That sounds right.”

“He was sick. I healed him.”

“You took away his livelihood.”

“No. I did the opposite. He could barely walk and hardly work. Now he can do what he wants. He even runs around with that crazy group of his…” He stopped, remembering their confrontation in the snow. “What livelihood?”

“Musk,” she said.

“What's musk?”

She shook her head. At what point, she wondered, did innocence become ignorance and something to be disdained? “Musk is what they make when they get sick. They collect it and then they sell it. An ounce is worth a week of wages. More than a week. It's precious stuff.”

“So that's what they were doing in the field? Musk is frozen sweat?”

“Sweat plus what their kidneys make. Frozen just because it's easier to collect.”

“So all those guys were sick?”

Vecque hadn't seen them but imagined so. “Not everybody gets that far. You have to inhale a lot of dust. And it has to be a certain kind of dust. Not copper, but one of the rarer ores. Rokonite, I think. Or gravellium. And even then, most of them just get the breathing problems. Only a handful get the kidney changes, too. For most of the guys it isn't worth the trouble to find out if it's going to happen the way they want it to. It takes a long time to get sick enough to start producing musk. And it makes them feel awful.”

“So why do it?”

“I told you why. The money. It's a business venture. I guess you could call it an investment.”

“What do they use it for? The musk.”

“Perfume,” she said with half a smile. “What else?”

Payne was incredulous. “They make themselves ill so someone else can dab themselves with perfume?”

“No,” she said. “You're not listening. They make themselves ill to make money.”

“That's just as bad.”

“How is it bad?”

“Trading in your health for money? Getting rich by getting ill? It's perverse.”

“I doubt they're getting rich. For all we know, they're sending money home to their families. Making life easier for the wife and kids. Raising more snotty humans to lord it over us.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't condone that.”

“Who cares?” she said, leading Payne to believe that it made no difference either to the miners or to her. “It's their choice. That's the difference between them and us. They get the freedom to be stupid. We get the freedom to do what they say.”

“But not that. We don't have to do that.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “We do. Unless you want to have more adventures like the one you had.”

But Payne was not convinced. Healing was a precious thing to him. It was a gift. In a way it was the only one he had. And he would not have it for long. No healer did. Which was all the more reason not to be reckless with it, or to squander it, or to practice it unscrupulously.

“They need us, Vecque. We can use that as leverage. When they come to us, we can talk to them. We can teach them. There have to be other ways to make money. Higher wages, better prices for the ore, I don't know. But I do know that they don't have to walk around half-sick.
That's no way to live. It has to take a toll on them. If they stay that way too long, the condition might become permanent. They might not ever be able to be fully healed.”

“You're missing the point again. They don't want to be fully healed. And if at some point they change their minds and do, and can't be, well, that's the risk they take. I'm not a teacher, Payne. Even if I thought that what they're doing is wrong, which I'm not sure I do, I wouldn't interfere. It's not my place for one thing, and it's a waste of breath for another. Besides, I'm not interested.”

“That's our job,” he said. “We have to be interested.”

“Not mine,” said Vecque.

Payne hated it when she acted like this. She could be such an unreasonable, exasperating, bull-headed person.

Vecque, in turn, hated it when Payne told her who to be and what to do. As far as she was concerned, as soon as he started preaching, that was it for her.

She turned her attention to her food, which in a world where she was either being lectured or being used, was one of the few predictable pleasures. Lately, though, it hadn't been tasting that good. And her appetite, which had always been robust, was slightly off, too. It would help, she supposed, if she weren't so tired all the time. It made eating, as well as nearly every other activity, a chore.

She pushed the food haphazardly around her plate. For the past week, the smell alone was enough to make her stomach turn.

“You know, I didn't ask to be a healer, Payne. I never wanted to be one.”

“A part healer, you mean.”

“You make it sound so contemptible. But it's not. Think of it as a kind of maintenance therapy. It keeps them going, which is what they want. If it were you, maybe you'd want the same.”

He couldn't imagine such a thing. If he were sick, he'd want to be healed completely. And by the same token, if he could heal a human fully, how could he stop at healing only part?

“I doubt it,” he replied.

She sighed. Talking to him was like talking to a wall.

“You really don't understand, do you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I think I do.”

“I'm not just doing it for them.”

“Who then?”

“Myself.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it's easier for me.”

“What? Healing them partway?”

The boy was relentless. “Yes. It's not such an effort. Such a strain.”

“That's a pretty lousy reason not to do what's right.”

“Right for you maybe. Not for me.”

“It doesn't work like that,” said Payne, high atop his horse. “There's right and there's wrong.”

She stared at him. “Is that so?”

He stared right back. “Yes. It is.”

He was making it personal. Well, she could make it personal, too.

“So,” she said. “I'm morally delinquent. I'm glad to have that clarified. It explains so much. But enough about me. Let's train the spotlight on you for a minute. Such a pillar of virtue. I'd love to know more. What goes on inside that brain of yours? What makes Payne the healer tick?”

“I won't heal anybody partway,” he said, oblivious to her tone of voice and the daggers flying. “For me that's not an option.”

“I understand,” she said. “It's too…what? Easy? Charitable? Indulgent?”

“It's dishonest,” he said. “It's not why I'm here.”

“Of course,” she said. “Let's talk about that. Why exactly are you here? You're a conscientious boy. Ambitious, one might even say. You're always looking for more work. Harder work, too. Is that intentional? Is that your plan?”

Healers didn't make plans. They went where and when they were told. Personal ambition only hastened the inevitable and was disdained by other healers, few of whom lasted long enough to see the distant future, much less make a plan about it. Taking on added work was like slitting one's own throat. It was a nasty and inflammatory thing for Vecque to say.

But, deaf to insult, Payne took no offense. Instead, he answered her sincerely.

“I'm here to do my job. That's all. To do it as well as I can.”

“Which is very well indeed, I'm told.”

He looked to see if she was making fun of him, and finding nothing in her face to suggest it, gave a modest little shrug.

“I do my best. It helps, I guess, to like what you're doing.”

“You like to heal.”

She knew he did. He'd said as much.

At the risk of offending her, he nodded.

Vecque smiled. This was really much too easy. “No you don't.”

She glanced around the room as if to make sure nobody was listening, then leaned across the table and cupped her mouth with a hand. She had a secret for him, along with a twinkling eye and an evil grin.

“You
love
it.”

It sounded dirty how she said it. Wicked.

“Don't you?”

He didn't answer.

“It's intense, isn't it? You feel attached.”

He shrugged.

“Connected,” she said, so close that he could smell her breath. “Don't lie.
Connected
, Payne.”

It was true, but the way she said it made him feel that it was wrong. Lowering his eyes, he gave a guilty nod.

Satisfied, she sat back in her chair, a look of pity on her face. “So does a prisoner with his guards. And a victim with his torturer.”