First off, he had to admit that she was probably right. He did have a talent. Where she was mistaken was in thinking that she did not. Every person had a talent. In some—and maybe he was one of these—it was obvious and accessible. In others it was sleeping, hidden or submerged. His job, he felt, was to coax Vecque's talent to the surface, to make it visible and useful to her. He also wanted to apologize. Whatever the problem was, he was determined to set it right.
He left a note on his door saying where he was going, then made his way to the saddle and the rail line that linked the One and Two Prime operations. The camp looked strange to him, nonsensical—concealed and at the same time enlarged. Like one of the snow geese he'd once seen with its chest ballooned out in courtship: magnificent and half again its normal size, a promise built on puffs of air. Despite the presence of men and plows, there was a stillness that pervaded everything. Sounds were muted, as though this beautifully feathered concoction were too delicate and fragile to be disturbed by noise.
The rail line had been cleared, but not the roads beyond it, and for the final half mile or so, he had to make his way on foot. The snow was not as deep as it was on his side of the mountain, for the northern escarpment had acted as something of a shield against the storm. Still, there was enough of it to make walking a chore, and by the time he reached his destination, he was winded and thus annoyed to see that he had further work to do. There was a chest-high bank of snow that ran a good twenty feet from where he stood to the door of the healing center. Vecque, apparently, had not yet seen fit to shovel out a path.
It was left to him, then, to make his own way in, and by the time he did, he was hot and sweaty. The room, by contrast, was frigid cold. Which was odd, because there should have been a fire going. Vecque, it seemed, was either out or sleeping in.
He pressed his ear to the connecting door to her quarters, listening for signs of life. He heard what sounded like deep breathing, and with apologies for waking her, knocked.
The creak of bedsprings was followed by a groan. And then a tired, slurred voice. “Who is it?”
“It's me,” he said.
But Vecque was already struggling to her feet. Even half-asleep she understood that it didn't matter who it was, only that there was someone, and that that someone was waiting for her. Asking who had been a lapse.
“Never mind. I'm coming. Have a seat.”
A minute later she appeared. She was wearing her customary outfit, a loose fitting shirt and pants, although the shirt was rumpled and in need of cleaning and the pants seemed a shade too big.
“You,” she said.
“Me,” he replied with a smile. To his eye it seemed that she'd lost weight.
She yawned, then lost her balance for a second, steadying herself against the door.
Instantly, he was at her side. “Are you all right?”
She mumbled something beneath her breath.
“Vecque?”
“What?”
“I said are you all right.”
“Why shouldn't I be?” she snapped.
This, at least, was familiar territory. He allowed himself to relax.
“Hello, Vecque.”
“Hello yourself.” She rubbed her eyes and then her arms. “It's cold in here.”
“There's no fire.”
She frowned, glancing at the stove. “Should be. I had one going just a while ago.”
Payne went to see if he could stir it back to life. The ashes, though, were cold and gray. There hadn't been a fire for some time.
“It's dead,” he said, a little puzzled.
Vecque frowned again, then shrugged it off. “Blankets work.” She went into her room and brought one out, wrapping it around her shoulders. “Guess I've been in bed longer than I thought.”
“How long's that?”
She didn't know, nor did she seem to care. “I'll tell you something, this storm's the best thing that could have happened to me.”
“How's that?”
“I finally got some rest.”
“I'm glad,” he said.
“And it kept the wolves away.”
“You saw a wolf?”
“Every day,” she said. “Lots of them.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What wolves?”
“You know. The two-legged ones.”
She took a chair but had trouble getting comfortable. She drew her blanket tighter across her chest.
“So, what brings you?”
“I came to apologize.”
“For what?” she asked.
He explained as best he could. She listened to him patiently, although he got the sense she didn't know exactly what he was talking about. As if she hadn't thought about it near as much as he had. Maybe not at all. Still, when he was done, she thanked him. She seemed touched by his words.
“You're a good man,” she told him, then got a little teary-eyed. Embarrassed, she looked away.
“I haven't been myself lately. As you can see.” She wiped her eyes. “It's been rough.”
“I'd like to help you.”
“I think you just did.”
“More,” he said.
“That's sweet. Unfortunately, I don't believe it's possible.”
“It is,” he said. “I can. I know I can. I want to.”
He was so earnest and well-meaning, and she, so not herself, that it took a moment for her to grasp what he was saying. And then her hands flew up to ward him off.
“Oh no. No no no. Not that again.”
“I don't mean that,” he said, although, in fact, he had been thinking of the very thing. Healing the miners was so easy for him. He was ready for something harder and more challenging, something new.
But he had to be more clever if he was going to persuade her. Or maybe just more patient, let her come to it on her own.
“What I mean is, I could help you with your own healing. Help you make it easier.”
She doubted this. Moreover, he was annoying her. “Do you know what's going on with me? Do you understand what's happening? I'm being drained, Payne.”
As soon as she said it, he knew that she was right. She had the symptoms: the lassitude, the fatigue, the weight loss, the malaise. But this didn't stop him from denying it. Nor from trying to talk her out of it.
“Work is an enormous burden. Some of these illnesses are close to Level Three. It's natural to be tired. I'm tired, too.”
“No you're not.”
“Sure I am. And another thing. You said that it was happening before, and it wasn't. What makes you think that this is any different? It could be another false alarm.”
“It's not.”
“How do you know?”
She glared at him. “Look. I'm sorry, but it's happening. Please don't argue with me.”
Despite everything he knew of the Drain, everything he'd heard and now, through Vecque, was witnessing, Payne believed it could be stopped, or at least slowed down. He was like a man who, never having been sick, does not believe in illness. Instead, he believed in the power of the will, most notably, his own.
“I can still help you.”
“You can't.”
“I can. But you have to trust me.”
“But I don't.”
She might as well have slapped him.
“I'm sorry, but you don't understand me, Payne. You don't know what I'm going through. You're different.”
“I'm not.”
“No? You know what it's like, the way it drags you down and saps your strength? The way that everything's an effort. The way you lose your will? All you want to do is rest, but rest doesn't make you feel any better. Familiar, Payne? Tell me you know how it feels.”
“You have to stand up to it,” he said. “You have to fight. You can. You have the power to resist.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what? Have the power?”
“Do you fight? Do you even know what it means?”
“Sure I do. Sure I fight.”
She w
ould have liked this to be true, even if it meant that he, too, was under siege. Just to feel, if only for an instant, that she wasn't all alone.
“Liar. You don't fight. You don't have to.” With a sigh she pulled the blanket tighter, huddling in its thin cocoon. “I hate you, Payne.”
The weeks passed, and he kept at her, not satisfied with no for an answer. She told him to mind his business, called him names, refused to speak to him, but in the end threw up her hands and let him have his way. She couldn't compete with him: he was tireless, and she was not. She needed to preserve her strength for work.
For a while, then, he became her teacher. Which took some getting used to, because it was a reversal of their customary roles. What he lacked in a concrete plan he made up for in gusto. And while Vecque remained skeptical that anything would work, for nothing in the history of healers and healing ever had, she agreed to give it a try.
One by one they went through the steps and then the stages of a healing, comparing notes, discussing styles, dissecting subtle differences between the two of them. The most important one Payne found, the only one that seemed significant, was in their attitude. He enjoyed the work. Vecque despised it.
This, he guessed, made everything more difficult for her, from identification to enhancement, which naturally affected all the other, downstream stages of a healing. She was like a runner throwing obstacles in her own path. Of all things, the Drain did not require such assistance.
But how to change a person's attitude and feelings? Especially a person so committed and attached to them? Vecque was fueled by her anger and hatred the way that other people were fueled by food. They seemed to prop her up and keep her going when little else did. She claimed they gave her bearing and a sense of identity and even comfort, like an old familiar friend.
“But those feelings are hurting you,” Payne pointed out.
That, she said, was putting the cart before the horse. “Humans are the thing that's hurting me.”
“Don't let them. Don't fight them so hard.”
This brought a scowl to her face. “Make up your mind. Before, you said I had to fight. Now you say I shouldn't. Which is it?”
“Don't fight yourself,” he said.
“And how exactly do I do that?”
He took a breath. “Don't hate so much.”
He tried to teach her by example, modeling tolerance and compassion for even the most lowly miner. For him this was a matter of personal integrity, but that, he learned, was not the way to reach Vecque. He tried appealing to her intellect. She was smart, and he sought to reason with her.
“Don't think of them as humans,” he suggested.
“No?” This was a novel idea. “What then?”
“Think of them as cousins.”
She gave him a look. “In what possible sense?”
“In an evolutionary sense.”
“You don't believe that story?”
“It's not a story. We're related, and you know it.”
“I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my memory doesn't go back that far.”
“You don't have to remember anything. All you have to do is look.”
One by one he enumerated all the things they shared, from the structure of their long bones to their skin to their internal organs; their metabolism, too. In almost every respect tesques and humans were alike, and their minds worked more or less alike, as well. Their speech was similar, and all the other sundry sounds they made—from whimpering to laughing to squealing to crying—were virtually the same.
Vecque acknowledged this, while observing that she much preferred to hear a human whimper than a tesque. The sound was almost pleasing to the ear. And it had the ring of justice, for they deserved to be in pain.
Payne gnashed his teeth. Was she trying to make it difficult for him?
“They're the same as us,” he snapped, losing his patience. “If they deserve it, we do too.”
“Well I am in pain,” said Vecque.
“Well you don't deserve to be.”
“Well all right.”
“So do something about it.”
Her eyes flashed. “Are you blaming me?”
Blame was strong, he said, unfair, oversimplified.
“I'm being drained,” she reminded him. “If you think it's my fault, I'd say the teacher needs a lesson of his own.”
It was a standoff, one of many. Vecque usually outlasted him, but on this occasion it was she, not he, who gave in.
“You say that we're the same,” she said, “but you're leaving out the most important part.”
“What? This?” He slapped his frontal boss, the swollen hump of skull that set him apart from every human. For Vecque it was the narrowness of her head. For every tesque it was something. It had never before been a subject of conversation between them because it was a given. They lived with it day in and out; it was not worth mentioning. But now, apparently, it was.
“It's not the most important,” he said heatedly. “It's superficial. A quirk of nature. Close your eyes, it's gone.”
She'd touched a nerve, which had not been her intention. Nor was his head, or hers, or any of theirs, the part she meant. Turning her attention to herself, she placed her hand below and to the side of her right breast, atop her os melior, pressing down as if to blot it out, or at the least to stanch its flow.
“But why?” he asked. “Why is that the most important? Why the one thing that does make us different? Why not all the things that are the same?”
There was something plaintive in his voice, a cry, a plea for understanding, that gave her pause. It made her feel, strangely, that he was worse off than she was, and her heart went out to him. Her life was destined to be short, but his, she sensed, would be more difficult. He had no shields, and she feared that he would suffer a great deal before he found any.
Every day there were accidents in the mine, mostly minor ones. Mashed fingers, bruised muscles, cuts, sprains. Major accidents happened only rarely. The worst that Payne had seen in his brief career was a broken leg. Which is more or less what he expected when the siren started up. When it didn't stop, he began to think he might be in for something more serious, and he dropped what he was doing and raced outside, then to the adit, where he joined a group of anxious, grim-faced men.
There had been an explosion. One of the jackleg operators had inadvertently drilled into a pocket of methane gas. The gas had been ignited by an errant spark from a faulty electrical wire. The force of the explosion had thrown the miner back some twenty feet, which had saved his life, because it landed him on the far side of the resulting fireball. His partner had not been so lucky. Word was that he was severely burned.
Before long a skip appeared, flanked by half a dozen men. Their headlamps bobbed as they trod forward, the lamplights fading as they emerged from the darkness of the adit into the light of day. On the floor of the skip was the injured miner. His hair was singed and his face was burnt. Kneeling beside him, another miner held an oxygen mask to his face.
The driver brought the skip adjacent to the healing center, where the man was lifted out and carried inside by his companions. Not sure yet what he might need, Payne had them lay him on the healing bed. Rapidly, he checked for a pulse and briefly removed the mask to look for signs of breathing. Where the man's skin wasn't charred, it was gray and dusky. His blistered lips were blue.
Payne clamped the mask back over his mouth and hurriedly joined him on the bed. Rapidly, he wrapped their arms together, then lay down, closed his eyes, and commenced a healing. He hadn't time to pull the curtain, but the miners who had carried the man inside knew enough to turn their backs. Outside, as news of the accident spread, a crowd grew.
Payne did absolutely everything he could. He labored for half an hour, and then, exhausted, labored more. He made it through the first three stages before being stymied, then without a break tried again, this time making it only through the first two. The longer he worked the less progress he was able to make. Soon he was m
aking none at all. At length he stopped, for there was nothing more he had to offer. Nothing more to do. The man was dead.
Slowly, he unwrapped their arms. His was hot and sweaty; the man's, clammy and cool. He sat up, and had to brace himself against a wave of dizziness and exhaustion. After it passed, he gave a sigh and stood.
Stirred by the sound of his movement, the two miners who'd remained in the room turned and looked at him. For a second there was hope in their eyes, but rapidly this fled.
“I'm sorry,” Payne said softly. “I did everything I could.”
The men nodded, and one of them heaved a sigh. “He was pretty far gone when we brought him up.” A moment or two passed. “Hell, the man was dead.”
Payne bowed his head while the men shifted on their feet. All were at a loss for words.
At length one of the miners said, “I'll go tell the men.”
He left. The remaining miner couldn't take his eyes off the dead man. After a while he cleared his throat. “Maybe you should put a sheet on him or something.”
Payne had never handled death before and reproached himself for not having thought of this. There were sheets in a cabinet, and he got one out and proceeded to unfold it, beginning at the dead man's feet. When he reached his waist, the miner stopped him.
“Seems like we should say something.” He glanced at Payne. “You got any words?”
Again, this was something Payne had not thought of. He was as unprepared for eulogies as he was for death, and to makes matters worse, his mind chose that moment to go blank.
But the miner didn't seem to notice. He had bowed his head, hard hat in hand, and stood beside the bed, waiting patiently.
“What was his name?” asked Payne.
“Rinker.”
“What about his first name?”
“Rinker's all I know.”
Payne gave a nod and drew a breath. The fragment of a childhood lullaby came to him.
“Go to sleep, Rinker,
Find a happy place and slumber.
No dreams disturb you,
No worries encumber.”
This seemed to satisfy the miner, who whispered a word of his own, then raised his head. “I expect there'll be a service, but that'll do for now. I thank you.”
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