The Healer

by Michael Blumlein

  “I wasn't trying to change the world. The idea never occurred to me.”

  “Of course not. And to me it did, when I made my own little attempt. The lesson being what? There are limits to a person's powers of perception? One cannot swim in the river and simultaneously see where the river is going? Certainly, I think we'd have to say that from different starting points we achieved more or less the same result. Mine will be at most a footnote in history. Yours: who can say? I doubt Mobestis or Jewl ever thought of themselves as revolutionaries. Or Ract, who failed. Or Soo, who failed miserably. Now they're legends.”

  “I'm not sure I want to be a legend.”

  Brand laughed. “It does have a grisly connotation, doesn't it? As if you have to endure horrid things in order to achieve such a lofty status. Better, I think, if we concentrate on what's in front of us. Enjoy the time we have. Try not to see so far into the future that we lose our motivation and sense of purpose. But far enough that we don't do something brash now that will only make things worse in the days to come.”

  Their walk had taken them away from the city center to a weathered road that paralleled the gorge, six or seven meters from its lip. On one side of them were scattered warehouses and empty lots; on the other, a tall barrier fence to keep the unwary and unmindful from stepping off the edge and falling in. It was a breezy part of town, and bits of garbage and debris had lodged against the fence. There was a breeze now, a gusty one, stirring up the dust and papers. It triggered a memory in Payne: he was back on Gode, in the midst of a sandstorm. It was summer, the season of such storms, which could blow for days at a time, driving sand into every crack and cranny, piling it into drifts against the walls of buildings, sending paper, clothes, trash—anything not tied down—flying. This particular storm had struck so fast and unexpectedly that he had been caught outside and within minutes had been engulfed. It was a frightening thing to be lost in a sandstorm, and he was duly frightened, until Wyn somehow had found him and led him home.

  In some ways it was Brand more than Shay who reminded him of his brother.

  “Do you remember the day that you were chosen to be a healer?” Payne asked the older man.

  “Chosen? I don't think there was choice involved.”

  “Identified, I mean.”

  “Yes. That I do remember. Vividly.”

  “Were you frightened?”

  “I think we all were frightened.”

  Payne nodded, glad to know he wasn't alone. “It was the first time I ever touched a human. It was a woman. She clung to me like she would die if she let go. They had to peel her off.”

  “It wasn't quite like that for me,” said Brand. “Nothing so dramatic.”

  “I liked it,” Payne confessed. “I liked the feeling I got inside, and I liked the power. And the touch. I wanted to be a healer. To be close to humans. Is that wrong?”

  “In what way?”

  “I'm not sure. It seems wrong.”

  Brand shrugged. “I wanted to be a healer, too. For different reasons than yours. For me it was a way out of Gode. Out of my life. I never worried about the Drain. That was for other people. Older and weaker and more susceptible.” He paused, then gave a wry smile. “Life does catch up with you, doesn't it? I'm those people now.”

  “What about a revolutionary? Did you always want to be one of those?”

  “Ah. That. A fine word, ‘revolutionary.’ Though misunderstood. By everyone, myself included. As soon as you think you have a grasp of what it means, it changes.”

  There was another gust of wind, and Brand lifted the hood on his jacket. Payne, who had trouble fitting into hoods, raised his collar.

  “Did I always want to be a revolutionary? The answer, I think, is yes. Perhaps because I was deprived of my parents at so early an age. I was raised on stories about them, and wanted to make a story for myself. Something worth hearing. Worth telling. Sometimes now, when I think back on the days of the Rising Tide—that's what we called ourselves, we were ready to drown the world—I see them as my attempt to relive my parents’ lives. To somehow join them.”

  “They were executed,” said Payne.

  “Not join them like that.” He paused. “Well, maybe a little like that: I was so angry then. So self-destructive. What I meant, though, was to join them as in to love them and bring them back. And since I couldn't—and can't—bring them back physically, I do it through their ideas and what they stood for. I honor them by honoring their principles. When I try to understand who we are and where we're headed and how to get there, I try to remember our history. Which was what my parents believed, that you couldn't go anywhere without knowing where you'd been. The Gode Uprising was a product of the times. So was the Rising Tide, my own personal rebellion. And ever since, or maybe all along, the Authorities have been tightening their grip. Appealing to every imaginable fear. Spreading misinformation. My mother and father believed in fighting fear. They believed in building community and nurturing tolerance. It was one of their most cherished beliefs. And how do you nurture tolerance? By being tolerant yourself. Which is the answer to your other question.”

  “What question?”

  “Why I'm willing to listen to Shay. Why I have such patience with him.”

  Payne had not asked this question, but he did wonder about it. More than wonder. Shay could be so disruptive sometimes, so antagonistic, and it sometimes bothered him that Brand did not do more about it.

  But Brand was a teacher, not a disciplinarian, and now he was in the teaching mode. “We have to model what we want from humans. It starts with us. Shay is speaking the truth as he sees it. He's not lying when he says he favors confrontation. He's an angry man. I was an angry man myself. I understand the temptation to act through anger. I understand the impulse for violence and retaliation.”

  “He watches you,” said Payne.

  “Yes. I know. He's waiting. And while he is, I'm working on him. Showing him another way. He doesn't know it though.” He grinned. “Devious, aren't I?”

  After that, Payne and Brand took frequent walks together when they had the time, ranging all around the city. Brand was a sturdy walker and a good companion. He had stamina and endurance that belied his years.

  At one point Payne remarked on this. How was it that he managed to stay in such good health when other healers his age were long since drained? Brand's reply was typically humble. He didn't deserve it. He was fortunate. Considering the havoc he had wreaked on his body, he should have been dead years before.

  Which brought up the topic of drugs. Muck, in particular, which Brand new intimately. Was it as bad, Payne wondered, as everyone said?

  “Muck? Oh no. Muck is good. It's wonderful. What's bad is that it's hard to get. What's bad is being forced to be a criminal. Don't ever put yourself in a position of depending on something beyond your control. A drug, a political movement, or a person.”

  “But it made you sick.”

  “It did do that. But I got well. So you could also say it made me strong. Sometimes, in fact, I think that it's the source of my longevity.”

  “What? The drug?”

  “Maybe the drug. Maybe the struggle. Maybe both.”

  If it was the drug, Payne thought, maybe more healers should be using it. “I worked at Pannus.”

  “Yes,” said Brand. “I know.”

  “The men claimed they were making a perfume.”

  “They were,” said Brand. “It is. Sweet and fragrant and deadly. Isn't that the way things are? Poison's only poison if you take too much of it, or in the wrong way. Take just a small amount and it's a remedy, or a potion. Take it with care and it can be a blissful and sublime experience. It can be a journey.”

  “They called it musk.”

  “Yes. The source. And you helped them make it?”

  “I wouldn't. Not at first. There was another healer who did. But then she couldn't, and I was the only one left.” His voice trailed off, and the silence grew.

  At length Brand said, “And thi
s bothers you.”

  “It made them sick. I was being asked to sanction that. To collude in it. And this was before I even knew about muck.”

  “What would have happened if you hadn't helped?”

  “I wanted them to understand the consequences of what they were doing. I was hoping they would stop.”

  “You wanted to teach them a lesson.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the only way you could think of was not to help. To let them stay sick. Or possibly get worse.”

  “Talk didn't work. They wouldn't listen.”

  “I understand. But you couldn't do it.”

  Payne shook his head, remembering how bad he felt the first time he half healed a miner, how compromised. But then, after a while, how he gave in and stopped fighting each and every time they came to him, how he allowed his resolve—his morals—to weaken.

  “Was I wrong?”

  In reply, Brand told the story of two different healers he had known, each of whom, on the pretext of being drained, had refused to heal a human. In both cases the humans were quite ill. The first healer felt no compunctions whatsoever; the second was plagued by guilt for years afterward.

  “I think I would have been the second one,” said Payne.

  “Then that's your answer. Sometimes the only choice is the lesser of two evils.”

  “It would be a lot easier to be the first.”

  “Amoral?” Brand gave a rueful nod. “Wouldn't it.”

  They were nearing the end of their walk. Brand's building, an older and less institutional version of Payne's, was within sight. Beside it was the polyhedral Crimson Crag, a nouveau gaming house and the site of the elevated circuit jumps and funnel races. Its angular and slightly concave glass facade reflected the nearby city landscape, bizarrely distorting it, making random human passersby appear grotesque.

  Brand slowed. He had something on his mind.

  “I have a confession to make,” he said. “I'm not quite as healthy as I look.”

  “Don't say that.”

  “It's coming. After all this time. I can feel it. Its fingers, its evil little rootlets, they're working their way in. Up to now I've had the strength to stave it off. But I don't know that I will for that much longer. There's something I want to show you while I still can.”

  Payne did not want to hear this. “Do the others know?”

  Brand waited for a twist of eager circuit jumpers, already roped together and glossed in crylic, to pass before responding. “Maybe one or two. The more perceptive ones. I haven't spoken openly of it. I haven't wanted to cause undue alarm.”

  “Shay?”

  “No. Shay certainly not. But please, let's not talk politics. That's not why I brought this up. I want to teach you something.”

  Already Payne could feel himself withdrawing. He felt wounded, the all-too-familiar sense of losing something that he loved.

  “Don't be angry,” Brand said gently. He laid a hand on Payne's shoulder and gestured toward his building. “Come inside instead.”

  It was a dance. That's what Brand wanted to show him and, moreover, to teach him, and Payne was annoyed. This was no time for dancing. It was a time for talk and planning for the future, and if there was any time left, for kind, courageous words. But Brand refused to be drawn in by this, and before Payne knew it, the healer had removed his shoes and coat, pushed the furniture against the walls to clear the floor, and started dancing.

  He began by swaying side to side, dipping his shoulders and gently rotating his hips and torso. After a while he lifted his arms above his head, twined them together and began to weave them in and out of one another. With his squat body, he looked a little like a stubby blade of grass, waving in the breeze. He raised his chin, exposing his neck, and slowly started turning.

  He was not without a certain grace, though it was strange to see a grown man dance, and stranger still to see him dance in silence. When he closed his eyes and let his tongue slide out and in as though he were a snake, it was the strangest thing of all. This was not just any dance. It was the Viper Dance, and Payne remembered it.

  Brand invited him to join in, but he could not do it. His body, suddenly, felt cold.

  “Close your eyes,” said Brand. “Pretend I'm not here.”

  Out of respect for him Payne tried this, taking a few tentative and uneasy steps before stopping. “I'm sorry. I'm not a dancer.”

  “But you are,” said Brand. “This is your legacy.” And he proceeded to explain what he meant.

  The Viper Dance that Payne remembered, beyond being an adolescent fantasy and satire, was based on a bastardized version to begin with. The version that his parents knew, and his parents’ parents, and his parents’ parents’ parents, was only the most recent incarnation of a much more ancient rite. It was a dance, Brand said, that Mobestis had brought to them in his first and elemental form, the snake. He had taught it to his enemies to turn their minds from thoughts of violence. It had the power to heal. It could transport a person into an ecstatic state.

  Brand had learned the dance from an unlikely source, a human, an anthropologist interested in tesque and healer culture. Her name was Matai; he remembered her clear as day. She had come to him because she was unable to conceive. He had found a blockage in her body and removed it (it was a globe-shaped, membranous Concretion covered with thin sharp spines—he remembered that, too), and in her gratitude, she had taught him a piece of his own history. He remembered watching her dance, how enchanted and entranced he'd been, and how close he had come to violating his personal code of ethics and making a fool of himself in the process.

  “She was a human who liked tesques,” he said. “A remarkable and determined woman. She gave me another gift. I should have thought of it before.”

  He left the room for a minute, returning with what looked to be a thimble. “I don't need this anymore; for me there's music in the silence. But you'll do better with a rhythm. It'll be easier for you.”

  He offered it to Payne, inviting him to give it a try.

  Payne was skeptical. “Whatever it is, I don't think it will help.”

  “You know what it is.”

  He frowned, looking closer. “It's not an ortine.”

  Brand smiled.

  “But they're not real. They're make-believe. You only hear about them in stories.”

  “Some people say that ort are make-believe. That any animal so peaceable could never survive. And being no such thing as ort, there obviously can't be an ortine.” Grasping the thimble between his thumb and forefinger, he held it in front of Payne's lips. “It's always a challenge to know who to believe. Very softly now. Like a thrown kiss. Blow.”

  Payne held his breath, afraid to injure the delicate instrument, to rupture the fragile and fabled tympanic head. Then, ever so slowly and carefully, he let his breath out. If he'd been an ant, or smaller, a microbe, he might have had the eyes to see the drumhead bulge.

  A minute went by. At the very periphery of sound he sensed a vibration. Gradually it gathered energy and grew louder, until it was easily audible: a deep, repetitive and pleasing thrum.

  Brand began to dance again. At first he held his arms overhead and intertwined like before, but then he dropped them to shoulder level, stretched out his neck and threw back his head. “Like this,” he said, and starting turning, revolving slowly with his elbows bent and his palms uplifted. “It takes practice. You can do it.” Pumping off the ball of one foot, he picked up speed and began to spin.

  Payne did his best to copy him. At first he felt self-conscious and ill-at-ease, and the turning made him dizzy. When he spread his arms and threw back his head, strangely, the dizziness lessened. The longer he danced the better he felt, and when he finally gave himself up to the drumbeat, surrendered to it completely (which wasn't that hard, after all, for this was an ortine), the dizziness vanished and his head cleared.

  He closed his eyes. The drumbeat heaved and throbbed. It was, he discovered, his own internal beat, the p
ulse of his own body and of the forces that held him together, that heated him and nourished him and gave him life. It was a deeply personal, intimate and pleasurable sensation. He and the beat were synchronized; they were one and the same. This was the ortine's gift and its magic.

  Sometime later, he stopped. His heart was beating like a bird's. His cheeks were flushed. He felt radiant and happy.

  Gradually, the drumbeat faded, leaving in its wake an afterglow of sound.

  Brand, who had also stopped, was smiling. “That didn't take long to learn. I've shown others. Few take to it so quickly.”

  Payne pressed his hands to his chest in astonishment. “I feel so…good.”

  Brand's smile deepened. “Do it longer and who knows what might happen.”

  “I want to.”

  “You will.”

  “Now,” said Payne. “Let's do it now.”

  Brand laughed. “Don't tempt me. In my younger days I could spin for hours. Even a year ago an hour or two was not hard. But these days I tire much faster. I have to make do with less. If I were to dance too long, I'd exhaust myself, and I can't afford that. I've learned to concentrate my energy. Half an hour, or less, a quarter, is enough to get what I need.”

  To spin for an hour, thought Payne. He could scarcely imagine it.

  Brand seemed pleased. “It does feel good, doesn't it? I'm glad that I could show you. It's not a meli healing—nothing so fine and noble as that—but it does work its magic. Sometimes I think this, more than anything, is the secret to my longevity. Wishful thinking maybe, but I know it doesn't hurt.”

  The following week Payne danced again with Brand, and this time two other cadre joined them. It was another exhilarating experience, though not quite as profound and euphoric as the first. For one thing, he was self-conscious having other people besides Brand in the room. For another, the ortine was set in rhythm by someone else's breath, and he found it difficult to let himself go. Brand explained that this took practice. It was a question of learning—despite many perfectly good reasons not to—how to surrender.

  They danced again the next week, but the week after that Brand was too tired. This kept him from dancing the following week as well, and Payne danced alone, but it wasn't the same. Thereafter, the dancing became sporadic. There were days Brand had the energy for it and days that he did not. The Drain had him in its grasp. His condition deteriorated slowly until it reached a certain point, after which it entered a much more rapid and precipitous decline.