The Healer

by Michael Blumlein

  He replaced his hard hat and turned to go, then stopped and turned back. Reaching underneath the sheet, he removed the dead man's brass, stared at it a moment, then pocketed it.

  “They'll want it back,” he explained. “Not that anyone's going to use it.”

  He made his way out, leaving Payne alone. He drew up the sheet until it completely covered the man, then closed the curtain and sat down. He was exhausted, though inside he was shaking like a leaf. It was true what the miner had said, the man had been dead by the time Payne got to him. But this didn't stop him from second-guessing himself. Surely, there was something he could have done to save the man. Something different from what he had. He'd tried his best, but his best obviously wasn't good enough. His best had failed.

  The miners felt differently. They felt, in fact, that he had done a hero's work. Word spread that he had almost brought a dead man back to life. That he hadn't was beside the point, or at least it paled before the more important point that he had tried.

  After that, their attitude toward him changed. His currency rose, and with it came a measure of respect that previously had been absent. He noticed it in the way the men looked at him and inclined their heads if he happened to catch their eye. And the way they lowered their voices when he was nearby, as though not to sound crass or stupid. They were more polite to him, sometimes even deferential. A few even took to calling him by name.

  Payne welcomed the change with open arms. It was a step, he believed, toward being fully accepted by the men. But as time went by, this didn't happen, and gradually he came to understand that being held in high esteem kept him outside the circle of their friendship as surely as being held in low did. In a world where weakness was ridiculed, a special talent or intelligence did its damage, too. As much as ever, the miners kept their distance from him.

  As his only friend, Vecque had the job of listening to his troubles and his woes. Normally, she wouldn't have had the patience, but thanks to him, or to something, she'd been feeling better lately, and she felt she owed him at least this much. Like everybody else, she had heard the story of the dead man nearly coming back to life. When he complained that this had done nothing to bring him any closer to being accepted, she surprised him by siding with the men.

  “You're a dreamer if you expect their friendship,” she told him. “It's like asking a man to consort with a god.”

  “I'm not a god,” he said.

  “Of course not. But you have a power they don't, and it scares them.”

  They were at a table at the periphery of the mess hall, not far from one of the two big drum-shaped wood-burning stoves. Winter was on its way out, but there were still cold days, and this was one of them. The stove was crackling, and Vecque shed her coat and rolled up her sleeves. A month before she would have been chilled to the bone despite this added heat, but now she was getting her own heat back. Her body was able to warm itself. And her plate was full: her appetite was returning, too.

  “I don't want to scare them,” said Payne.

  “Then don't try to heal a dead man.”

  “I had to try something.”

  She shrugged at this, prompting him to defend himself.

  “The men who brought him, they expected me to act. You should have seen their faces. I couldn't just let him lie there. I had to do something.”

  “So you lay down beside a dead man. You want the truth, that gives me the creeps. It's bad enough we have to lay beside the living ones.”

  He had tried so hard. He could still feel the effort in his body, his meli. It was part ache, part longing, a physical sensation, emotional too. How the men would have talked about him if he'd succeeded! How his brother, if he'd been there, would have looked upon him, the praise in his eyes, the admiration.

  A voice broke his reverie. He only half heard it.

  “Did you say something?” he asked Vecque.

  “I said, you thought you could, didn't you?”

  “Could what?”

  “Bring him back.”

  He considered what to say and thought it best to say nothing.

  She couldn't believe it. “All right. Now I'm scared, too.”

  “Why? What did I do?” He raised his hands in a gesture of innocence.

  “You tell me.”

  “Nothing. I didn't do anything.”

  “But you tried. You did. Admit it.”

  “So? Nothing happened. No one got hurt.”

  She stared at him. “Who do you think you are? Mobestis? Emm?”

  The invocation of the legendary healers, one the father, the other the son, took some of the starch out of his sails. He felt a little sheepish and ducked his head. No, he muttered, he didn't think that he was them.

  Vecque was glad to hear it. She liked him, and he had given her good advice. She was definitely better. But as a result, and somewhat to her dismay, she had found herself beginning to depend on him, and she didn't want to find out that she couldn't.

  “There's enough craziness around here already. Don't add to it, all right? I want to be able to trust you, Payne.”

  “You can.”

  “Then use your head.” She brandished her fork at him in mock menace. “I'll be keeping my eye on you.”

  The hall had filled, and it was a rowdy crowd. Previously, this would have driven Vecque to distraction, but under Payne's tutelage she had found a way to keep the men from getting under her skin and bothering her quite so much. It was a combination of mindfulness and inner strength. She was learning how to be more possessed of herself and less by them. It was remarkable, really, how much they could be tolerated. They still got on her nerves, sometimes deeply, but between love and hate, there did, indeed, seem to be a middle ground.

  Not that it was ever easy: occupying this ground required constant vigilance and effort. She had her good days and she had her bad ones. So far today was good. But that, she knew, could change in a heartbeat. She had to continually be on guard. She walked a razor-thin line. Her state of mind and body had improved but remained precarious.

  Out of habit she glanced around the room, looking for potential trouble spots, anything that might erupt and spill over to involve her. Or be aimed at her to begin with. Her eye was drawn to a nearby table, where there was some heavy drinking and hazing going on. She only recognized a few of the men. Of the ones she didn't, most were young and had the bewildered and slightly overwhelmed look of new recruits, fresh off the train. One, a pimply boy with sandy hair and eyes a bit too dreamy, she thought, for blasting rock, was being harassed by some of the old-timers. It was in their nature to be drawn to weakness, and they were plying him with drinks and goading him. It was up to the boy to stand up to them and prove himself a man.

  At length he took whatever bait it was that they were dangling and got up from the table. Hitching up his pants and puffing out his skinny chest, he sauntered over to the only female in the hall.

  “I got a pain,” he said.

  Vecque had seen him coming and had prepared herself. She pointed out that she was eating. “I'll be happy to take care of you when I'm done.”

  “Happy” was pressing the point, and she congratulated herself on sounding so convincing and remaining so composed. The boy glanced back at the other men, looking to see if he'd completed what was required of him. Fat chance. They were watching him like hawks. Apparently, he'd just begun.

  He turned back to Vecque. “This thing won't wait.”

  She closed her eyes and counted, praying that when she opened them, he'd be gone. It was such a pleasure to be eating. The food, at long last, tasted good again.

  “I'll be finished soon,” she said. “Fifteen minutes. Let's do it then.”

  “It can't wait that long.” The drinks had made him unsteady on his feet, and he braced himself against the table edge. “It's urgent.”

  “Urgent, is it?”

  “Yes.” His voice had taken on a nasal whine.

  She sighed. “I see.”

  The only area wher
e a healer had any say, the only one where his or her word came close to being law, was in healing. Except in emergencies, patients were not treated outside the healing room. There were good reasons for this, and it was a rule that humans didn't challenge. After looking him up and down, Vecque returned her attention to her plate, where a juicy cutlet sat begging to be eaten. Deftly, she sliced a piece and lifted it to her lips. In her book, initiation into manhood was no emergency. And she hated it when people whined.

  “It'll wait,” she said.

  “It won't.”

  She placed the slice in her mouth and started chewing. Closed her eyes and savored its rich and aromatic taste. Next to her the boy hovered like a bird afraid to land. Tensions rose.

  “She'll see you soon,” Payne promised him. “It'll be better if she's not so hungry. Just let her finish eating.”

  Across the room the miners had started jeering. One was banging his cup, demanding action. Another mocked the poor boy's mother.

  “Look,” he said. “I'm sorry, but you need to do it.”

  Vecque ignored him.

  He insisted.

  “Later,” she said.

  “No. Now. You need to do it now.”

  She cut another piece, then stabbed it with her fork and held it up, considering her options. She could go on eating. She could put the food down. Change, she knew, came slowly. Progress didn't happen overnight. Even the best of people had their setbacks.

  Raising the fork to eye level, she levered it back with a finger, paused a moment, then let it fly, catapulting the bloody morsel of meat into the young man's face.

  For all intents and purposes, this ended the conversation. He was stunned.

  Instantly, Payne was on his feet. Reaching for the boy's wrist, he tried to coax him away from Vecque. “I'll do it. Please. I'm done here. I'll heal you now. Let's go.”

  But the boy wasn't moving. Bloody red juice trickled down his cheek. His face had hardened.

  Pulling out the empty chair beside Vecque, he swung into its saddle, straddling it like a horse. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, then leaned in close to her and said, loud enough for all to hear, “I got a pain that can't wait. Don't make me ask again.”

  At his table the men erupted. Drawn by the drama, men at other tables were clamoring for action, too.

  Desperately, Payne tried to head things off.

  “This isn't necessary. Really. Let me help you. I can take care of this right now.”

  But Vecque had crossed the line and knew it was up to her. The boy was an annoyance and could be handled, but the other men, who so far were only ugly individually, could, with little further provocation, turn ugly collectively. She didn't fear one man, but she did a mob.

  Steeling herself, she rose, prepared to lead the boy to the healing center and do whatever stupid thing he wanted her to do. But the boy did not rise with her.

  She felt a momentary panic.

  “C'mon,” she said. “Let's go.”

  “Sit down,” he commanded, not budging.

  When she didn't, when she took a step away, he grabbed her wrist and forced her down into her chair. He had surprising strength, and before she could react, he had taken her hand and interlocked his fingers with hers, then planted his elbow against his side so that their forearms were locked in place and touching.

  It was a shocking thing to do, and everyone knew it. Vecque, Payne, the miners, everyone. Even had it been consensual, a meli healing was not an act to perform in public. It was a breach of common decency, a violation of the most basic level of conduct and respect.

  Payne was dumbstruck. The miners, to a one, transfixed. Vecque tried in vain to free herself but could already feel the healing process starting. Had she had a few more weeks to strengthen herself and solidify her gains, she might have stopped it. But among its other effects, the Drain removed that option.

  He was not a bad boy, but insecure and more concerned with what he wasn't than what he was. She identified several problems in the making, one in his liver, one his heart, and two in the small of his back where a joint was out of place. What overshadowed everything, however, was in his dick, or more precisely, in what she had come to identify as the dick brain, which ran roughly from the corpus cavernosum of his penis to his spinal cord and thence to the primitive underbelly of his brain. It was not a problem so much as a condition, a universal one and, as far as she could tell, incurable. She had tried without success to capture and extract it from other of the men.

  Still, she toyed with trying again to do something about it, at least that obnoxious part of it that made him, that made all of them, so loathsome. It would serve him right, a fitting climax to this pathetic little show.

  Unfortunately, she couldn't get a hold of it, much less wrest it from him. She didn't have it in her; it was unclear if anybody had. She was left with healing him of one ridiculously minor malady, and even that effort, in the wake of everything that had gone before, was enough to nearly do her in.

  When she came out of it and disengaged herself, she felt assaulted. The hall was in an uproar. All around her men were clapping, hooting, making noise. Beside her, the boy had staggered to his feet. She watched him shake his head as if to clear it, then grin and raise a fist in triumph.

  A part of her knew that even now, especially now, she must sit tall and not give in to them, not quail or flinch, but she couldn't do it, she lacked the strength. Why her? she asked herself. Why this? A wave of nausea swept through her body and seemed to wash away all the good that she'd accomplished. She felt battered. She wanted to strike out at someone. She wanted to curl in a ball and disappear.

  Several minutes later she got a contraction in her side, and shortly after that she extruded a Level One Concretion. Reaching underneath her shirt, she removed it from her meli and placed it on the table beside her plate. It was bean-sized, gray and shriveled. She wasn't even sure what it represented, what she'd cured him of. Dully, she watched it wriggle for a few seconds before becoming still. Coiling her finger against her thumb, she flicked it to the floor in disgust. Then she struggled to her feet.

  Immediately, Payne was at her side, reaching out to help.

  She shrugged him off. “I'm fine. It's no big deal.”

  But she wouldn't meet his eyes. Nor would she look at any of the men as she made her way past their tables. What use was it standing up to them anyway? What good did it do her being tolerant and nice? They would have their way regardless. There was no escape, either from humans or the Drain.

  Following this incident, Payne began to see more miners at the healing center. This was due, he subsequently discovered, to a downturn in Vecque's ability to treat the men. He was desperate to talk to her, but she had stopped coming to the mess hall, and work kept him too busy to get away. He was worried about her, and he felt responsible for what had happened, that having raised her hopes, he had somehow primed her for a fall. The look on her face and her body language as she'd left the table haunted him.

  A week passed, and he didn't see her once, which was odd though not entirely surprising. Then he heard a rumor that she was actually turning patients away. This sounded ominous and forced him into action. The next time there was a lull in work, he closed the door to the center, left a note, and made the trip to the Two Prime site.

  She wasn't in the healing center, but he found her close at hand. She was in her quarters, propped on a pillow in her bed.

  Her appearance shocked him. How could a person change so much, so fast? Her cheeks were hollowed out and sunken, her hair disheveled, her eyes as dull as doorknobs. She looked as if she hadn't slept or eaten in a week.

  “Hello,” she said in a whisper.

  He stared at her, barely able to muster a response.

  “It's not as bad as all that.” She managed a weak smile. “Actually, it's better this way.”

  “Better? What's better?”

  “No more pretense. No more stupid fighting. It is what it is.”

&nbs
p; “You need to eat,” he said.

  “Not hungry.”

  “And you're wrong. It's not what it is. It's not inevitable.”

  Another wan smile. “It's good to see you, Payne.”

  “It's what we make of it. It's how we respond. You have to resist this, Vecque.”

  She sighed, then patted the bed. “Come sit.”

  He did as she asked, perching on the edge of the mattress, feeling strangely like a suitor, pleading with her not to give up.

  “It is better,” she insisted. “For both of us.”

  “It's not.”

  “Yes. You finally get your wish. You can have all the work you want.”

  “That's not my wish.”

  “It is. Don't you remember? You like it. It's what you look forward to most.”

  “Not like this.”

  All week long she'd been wondering if he'd come, hoping that he would. In this new and dreary world of hers, ever more difficult and diminished, he was the only light, the only one she cared to see. But now that he was here, she found herself resenting him.

  “So next time be more careful what you wish for,” she said sharply.

  “That's unfair.”

  “Life's unfair,” she snapped.

  Payne stiffened but refused to be intimidated. He had come to help, and help he would. For her part, Vecque was surprised and even a little pleased to discover that she still had some bite left. If it was any consolation to him, soon she wouldn't have the strength to be so nasty. She'd be as dumb and docile as a doormat, with no teeth or bite at all.

  The Drain was on her, and despite her pose, she was terrified. Already it had robbed her of ability, and soon it would rob her of dignity, too. It was a crippling process. Her senses would eventually falter and then desert her. Her mind and then her spirit would collapse. The Drain was not a death per se, but it was like a death. It was a slow and torturous depletion, a life without a life, humiliating, deadening, and prolonged.

  “You want to know what I wish for,” said Payne, “I'll tell you.”

  She saw the look in his eyes and felt a quiver of fear. “I do know,” she said, looking away.