A minute later, it was over, the tension, or at least the threat of physical violence, gone. A peacemaker had emerged, separating the men, both of whose egos and reputations were thus allowed to survive intact. That's the way it usually went, said Vecque, sounding a little disappointed. Lots of posturing but never any blood.
Payne recognized one of the two fighters as his very first patient, the one he'd treated for the leg gash. He'd seen him more recently for a different reason, which he thought Vecque might find amusing. Briefly, he gave her the backstory, explaining how he'd copiously washed the wound but how little bits of rock had gotten stuck inside. Stained the man's skin all up and down the scar, tattooing him.
“Happens all the time,” she said.
“He came back a few days ago.”
“Sure. Wanting you to get rid of it.”
“No. Actually he liked the way it looked. What he wanted was for me to touch it up and do the other leg the same. Said it reminded him of a snake. Wanted me to add a pair of fangs.”
“And did you?”
Payne pulled a face. “I did not. I'm a healer, not a cosmetician.”
Vecque almost laughed. “I think you lost an opportunity there, boy. I would've cut him good. Biggest, dullest scalpel I could find.”
A group of miners fresh from work arrived and passed by their table. Payne got a heady whiff of them and glanced at Vecque, whom he was certain found the smell repugnant. But to him it had a different effect. It reminded him how much he liked to lie beside these men on the bed and do a meli healing, how quickly he became absorbed in the raft of physical sensations, how deeply he felt connected. It was a privilege to be allowed to touch a human, to be mandated to probe beneath their skin. In all other ways he was subordinate to them, and even this was a kind of subordination, but to him it was a rich and even joyful one.
He watched the new arrivals being greeted warmly by their friends. Drinks were passed around, and space was made for them to sit. He envied the camaraderie.
“I don't understand you, Vecque. Why do you hate them so much?”
“They hate us,” was her reply. “We're ugly and misshapen and have holes in our sides where no self-respecting hole should ever be. It's unsightly. We're unseemly. I'd hate us too.”
He figured this as sarcasm, although with Vecque you never could be sure. Meanwhile, his hand had unaccountably found its way to the frontal boss upside his head, the grapefruit-sized protuberance that marked him unmistakably as tesque. Unconsciously, he raked his hair to try to hide it, as if he ever could.
Watching him, Vecque smiled. “I think the question isn't why I hate them, but why you don't.”
“It doesn't help to hate.”
She rolled her eyes. “Look at you.”
“What?”
“You're embarrassed to be seen in public.”
“I'm not.”
“Wake up,” she said. “They think of us as animals and treat us like indentured servants. Like slaves. How would you suggest I feel?”
It was true, the part about being looked upon as animals, singled out and plucked from their families and trained to heal, then discarded when they dried up and no longer were of use. As for being slaves, there was truth to that as well. Humans had the upper hand in every aspect of healer life. Payne felt intimidated and sometimes frightened of them; at other times he simply seethed. But then there were still other moments, almost always in the healing center, when a fleeting gesture or expression revealed another side to humans, a fragile, vulnerable, approachable one. And in these moments he was drawn to them. He felt a bond. It was true they used him, but the reverse was also true. In some ineffable way the two of them were linked.
“I could help you, Vecque.”
“Help me not hate them? I doubt it.”
“What I mean is, I could help you feel better.”
“I doubt that, too.” But she was curious. “How?”
“I healed a man the other day of a kidney problem. It was fairly serious, but it wasn't hard. In fact, it was easy.”
“So?”
“I could heal you.”
She almost choked.
“I could.”
“A meli healing?”
“Yes.”
“Are you crazy?”
Strangely, he didn't feel crazy, which, in retrospect, was probably proof he was.
For Vecque it was as though the bad news that seemed constantly to dog her had just, impossibly, gotten worse. The conversation was over for her, right then. When he tried to continue, she stiff-armed him into silence.
“Enough,” she said. And then, “I was wrong about you, Payne. You're not an idiot. Or not only an idiot. You're dangerous. And you're out of your mind.”
A few days later, he stood before the mirror in the healing center, staring at himself. He regretted what he'd said to Vecque about healing her. It was boastful and foolish, as she'd so trenchantly pointed out. As much as it upset him not to be taken seriously, she'd been right to snap at him.
What wasn't right, or at least what bothered him more, was what she'd said about his being embarrassed to be seen in public. He didn't like it, and wondered if it was true. Which is why he was looking in the mirror, hoping to find out. Hoping, actually, to convince himself it wasn't true. Out of habit, he compared himself to the men.
They were symmetric—all humans were—their features balanced, their heads and faces proportionate and beautifully arranged. Tesques, by any definition, weren't. His own head was a parody of symmetry, lopsided and ballooned out on one side, nicely smooth and rounded on the other. Vecque claimed that she was ugly. He had never thought so, but if she was, then so was he. Naturally. He was Grotesque.
Except he didn't feel grotesque, not in other ways, not in the ways that he'd been taught as a child were all the most important ones. And as far as that went, humans could sometimes be far uglier than any tesque would ever attempt to be.
It was puzzling, and it made him wonder, and all through that day, and the next one, and the next, he kept coming back to the mirror, and at the same time studying and analyzing the men who came in to be treated, comparing them to himself, himself to them, grappling for some insight, a change of perspective, a way for his eyes to see what his heart believed, that he and they were not as different as everybody claimed.
The breakthrough, when it came, surprised him. It was, in fact, a shock. He'd expected it to come from the mirror, and maybe by some roundabout route it did. But it originated in the men, in their faces and their bodies. That's where it was centered. It was as if a mist had suddenly lifted from his eyes, and he saw what he had never seen, or allowed himself to see, before.
These human beings were not symmetric, not perfectly, not the way he'd always thought they were. It stunned him when he saw it, and at first he thought it couldn't be true. But the closer he looked, the more he discovered that it was. One man had an ear that was set a little lower than the other. Another had an eye that was flecked a slightly different color than its mate. This one's eyebrow was tufted out and upturned, while the eyebrow on the opposite side lay straight and flat. Moles in all the men were scattered about at random, legs were different lengths, veins took different paths on right and left, and the testicles always hung aslant. The more Payne looked, the more a human body announced its side-to-side asymmetry. Cut it down the middle, duplicate each half, then stitch the halves back together, and the two resulting wholes would never look the same.
It was a revelation to him. He had been deceived. He had deceived himself. Was it possible that beauty was a matter of perspective? It was a scandalous idea.
But it gave him insight into a particular way the men acted when they were together, a sort of asymmetry of behavior that he'd always found perplexing. They loved to mock each other and fight each other, put down, humiliate and trick each other, and then in the blink of eye they would turn around and extend a helping hand, pick someone up, even sacrifice themselves in time of need. And consider
ing the pure aggressive force they brought to bear on all the mountain's rock, the joules of energy they unleashed every minute of every working day, true fights were rare. Confrontations were mostly verbal, not physical. The men loved to strut and posture, which, as the one responsible for patching and sometimes sewing those who went too far and came to blows, Payne had thought a fine and useful pastime. Now he was able to see the beauty in it, too. And the verbal abuse, when it came down to it, didn't seem to bother anyone all that much. It seemed, in fact, to do the opposite: forge friendships and create a kind of unity, afford these disparate, thrown-together hardrock tramps and travelers a sense of place and status and belonging. Which is all anybody wanted, tesque or human.
It was summer when he'd arrived, but now the days began to shorten. Autumn came and went so fast he barely noticed, and on its heels the dog of winter settled in. Temperatures fell to levels he had not thought possible. Snow transformed the camp.
Timbers, roofs and ancient headframes, blackened by years of soot and oil, were suddenly whitewashed clean. The sloppy, mud-encrusted streets first froze and then became carpeted in a deep layer of what looked like down. Edges softened, and familiar landmarks took on unfamiliar shapes. Greens and browns and yellows turned to whites and grays. As the snowdrifts rose, buildings seemed to shrink into the ground.
Work in the mine continued unimpeded; aboveground, surface crews were dispatched to plow the major roads and keep the rail lines clear. Payne did his part by shoveling out a path from the healing center to the street. The physical exertion was a novelty, and he liked it. In a small way the sweat and toil made him feel like the other working men.
But winter had its drawbacks. Daylight was in short supply, while nights dragged on and on. The nighttime sky, when clear, was a wonder; the stars sparkled and the constellations shone. But there was only so much stargazing a man could do before wishing for the sun, and in that far northern reach the winter sun was hardly a wish come true. It was wan and weak, about as warming as a fire of ash. And every day it seemed less willing to appear, and when it finally did, it seemed to sulk and pout instead of shine.
For much of the time there was no sun at all; dense clouds or a thick mist or falling snow obscured the sky. On windless days the snow fell in great silent sheets, as if the sky were quietly shedding its skin. But on stormy days, which were not infrequent, it rode in like a beast, howling, screeching and wailing.
The men dug in. When they weren't at work or at meals or hunkered in their cabins, they hung around the rec hall and the saloons. The playing field was plowed for sports, but as winter deepened, it was rarely used. For the most part, it was too cold to be outside. Frostbite was a constant hazard, and every few weeks it claimed at least one poor and witless soul who spent too many unplanned hours in a snowdrift on his way home from one of the saloons.
But there was a group of miners, about sixty in number, that routinely braved the elements. Once a week they assembled near the mess hall and, bundled in their greatcoats, mittens and wool-lined caps, took off at a bracing jog for parts unknown. Payne sometimes watched them pass, and one day during a lull in work, he decided to follow them.
It was the first clear day after two stormy ones, and bitterly cold. He pulled his hat down and his scarf up until he had only a slit of watery eye exposed. The men were headed out of camp on the road that swung down past the staging yard. He couldn't keep up with them and didn't try, staying out of sight a safe and respectful distance behind them.
Below the yard was the playing field, which seemed their destination. It sat on a sill of roughly level ground under a thick base of old snow and a foot or more of fresh powder. Surrounding it on two sides was forest, and at one end was an equipment shed, where Payne halted. There were long and tapered icicles hanging from the shed's roof that reminded him of canine teeth. He thought of the wolves that he'd been hearing lately and fancied that these were nature's echo of their fangs.
The miners were making their way around the field, kicking up snow. A few jogged briskly, but most plowed slowly and deliberately along, huffing and puffing from the effort. Payne recognized Covert among the front-runners, pleased to see he had his health back. The others seemed to have less energy, and most were strangers to him.
They took another lap around the field, picking up the pace a little; then all at once they stopped. They were close enough for him to hear their panting and to see their breaths condense and cloud the air. Together, as though scripted, each man reached into his pocket and pulled out a clear glass jar and some sort of wooden scraper, comb-shaped but without teeth. The scraper went in the jar, and the jar was then placed upright in the snow. Then, to Payne's astonishment, the men disrobed.
Hats and mittens were followed by coats and shirts. Using these to stand on, boots and socks came next, then pants and long underwear. Some of the men went so far as to remove everything.
Payne pressed himself against the back wall of the shed, quite certain that he shouldn't be seen but equally certain that he wasn't going to miss this. Such tender bodies! Fat and thin, hairy and hairless, all pink and mottled and glistening with sweat from their run. Within a minute the sweat froze, coating their skins in a layer of rime. It had a faintly greenish tint to it, which was odd, for frozen sweat was ice and should have been a frosty white. Or better still, thought Payne, no color at all, no frost to begin with, for to be naked in this cold was madness.
But this madness seemed to have a purpose, for as soon as they were covered in their coats of ice, the men bent down and picked up their toothless combs and began to scrape it off, building up little piles on the edge of the scraper, which they then carefully scraped into the jars. They were thorough and meticulous in their collection: not a single inch of their suits of frost was left untouched. For areas they couldn't reach, a partner helped them.
It was over quickly. The men obviously had done this many times before. And what exactly was it they were doing? Payne wondered. Some sort of bonding ritual? A rite of passage? A bizarre new sport? By now he knew a thing or two about humans, but he'd never seen or heard of this. It was a mystery, as baffling as no doubt it was profound.
Once they had their clothes back on, they slowly left the field, carrying their jars with great care, some in their pockets, some in the crooks of their arms. Most of the jars were about half-filled with the pale green ice. There was no running now, no jostling in the line, no jogging. They were more like weary monks, plodding homeward. At one point the sun happened to strike a number of the jars, kindling them with an emerald glow, and then it seemed that they were carrying lanterns.
Their path from the field took them by the shed, and it didn't take long for Payne to realize his danger. He'd read stories of what happened to people who stumbled onto secret rituals or rites. How they were flayed alive and had their tongues cut out and were hung from trees and disemboweled, and not necessarily in that order.
Unfortunately, there was nowhere to hide, so he did the only thing he could think of, quickly retracing his steps up the snowbound road, then turning around and pretending to be just arriving. Whether it fooled anyone, he never knew. The men didn't seem to care about him one way or the other. All save one.
Covert halted in his tracks when he saw him.
Payne responded with a timid smile. This was a man he liked, more courteous than most, a man whom he'd done well for. His smile, however, was not returned. Covert waited for the other men to pass, then made his way over.
Payne welcomed him. “It's good to see you. You look better.”
But Covert's face was dark with anger. He shook his jar in Payne's face. “Look at this! Look at what you done!”
Like the other jars his was half-filled, but the contents, instead of being a pale green, were opalescent. As they should have been, thought Payne.
“I don't understand.”
“You said you'd do me right. That's what you said. But look. Look.” Covert could barely control himself. “Three years. Thre
e long years, that's what it took me. Now look what you done.”
“You were sick,” said Payne. “I healed you.”
“You took what was mine is what you did. You robbed me.” He sounded so distraught. “Never trust a healer. That's what they say, and now I know why.”
He held up the jar, gazing at it with a kind of longing, then hurled it against a tree, where it shattered. He started back up the hill, but after a few steps stopped. “I've got a memory, healer. Being ignorant's no excuse. I owe you one.”
That night Payne had a dream. Or part dream, for part of it he was sure had happened. He was back in Gode. His brother Wyn was walking down a dusty road to join up with his friends. It was nighttime, and Payne was tagging along behind him. Wyn kept telling him to get lost, but Payne kept pestering him, until finally Wyn gave up and said fine, do what you want, you will anyway, but don't blame me if something happens, you're on your own, don't look to me for help. Which is how it often went. They rounded a corner and came into an open space, a field outside of town, flat and empty. Wyn's friends were waiting for him, five or six of them, all boys, all dressed in the hooded robes that grown-ups wore on special occasions. The moon was out, and as soon as Wyn joined them, they took off their robes and dropped them on the ground. And then they started dancing in the moonlight, naked.
It was a funny dance, and they were goofing around and clowning it up, but then from somewhere a drum began to beat, and they formed a circle and started twisting their heads and stretching out their necks and presenting them to one another, and darting their tongues in and out and hissing. Payne sat outside the circle, mesmerized and a little frightened. He had never seen this dance before. None of the boys had, though every single one of them had heard of it. The Viper Dance was infamous. More than a century before it had spawned riots and was, some claimed, responsible for the uprising of ‘09. Ever since that time, it had been banned. This was how the boys imagined it, what they thought it might or should be.
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