The Healer

by Michael Blumlein

  The days wore on, one after another, monotonous despite the richness of his inner life, dead and dreary despite his hallucinations. He lost track of time and on occasion would get the nerve up to speak to the guards and brave their scorn. What day was it? he'd ask. What week? What month? What of the world outside? What was going on? Did anyone remember him?

  Their answers were the same, regardless of the question, and delivered with the same impenetrability. It made no difference what day it was. It made no difference what was happening in the world. He was living in his world. Prison would always be his world. Now and forever. He might as well get used to it.

  Then one day, suddenly, he was free. Without comment or explanation the guards unlocked the door to his cell, hauled him out, threw him under a shower, then gave him a fresh set of clothes and transported him under cover of darkness to the basement of the Crimson Crag. From there, by elevator, they took him to a suite of rooms.

  The senior guard knocked on the door, then disappeared inside. A minute later he reappeared and warned Payne not to try anything funny. Then he pushed him in.

  She was standing beside an upholstered sofa, one hand resting on its quilted arm, the other dangling loosely at her side, a casual, inviting, homey, and possibly prearranged pose. Her name, he'd learned, was Meera. Her father was a Senator, her mother a distinguished social scientist. The family name of Libretain was widely known.

  “Hello,” she said. “We meet again.”

  Payne swallowed. “Hello.”

  She smiled, he managed to smile back, and after that they lapsed into a silence that she seemed more than happy to inhabit, taking time to look at him and wait to see what he would say or do. He felt horribly self-conscious and was glad at least to have showered and be wearing clean clothes. He would have scrubbed himself a good deal more if he had known his destination, though no amount of scrubbing or fine clothes would have ever made him feel on a level with her.

  He tried to think of something to say, something smart, at least not dumb. The room was warm and seemed to dull his senses. The floor was carpeted. He wasn't used to carpets. The room was bright, and he wasn't used to light. After months of isolation he wasn't used to speech. And there was a smell—a dry, sweet smell—a perfumed, human smell that made him woozy. He felt light-headed and worried that he might faint. How embarrassing, he thought, to faint in front of her.

  “Please,” she said, gesturing to a chair. “Sit down.”

  He did, gratefully.

  “Something to drink?”

  There was a tray with bottles of different colors, shapes and sizes. There was a bowl with twists of fruit, a long glass swizzling stick, a bucket.

  He felt illiterate. “Whatever you are.”

  “I'm not,” she said.

  “That's fine.”

  “You're not in jail anymore. Feel free.”

  He didn't, which is to say he felt about as free as he'd felt before, except that now everything was magnificently plush and beautiful.

  “How about a glass of water?” she said.

  “Water's fine.”

  She wore silk trousers and a short-sleeved blouse, stud earrings and a thin gold chain necklace. She poured the water from a pitcher into a long, tall glass. After serving him, she settled on the sofa and folded her hands in her lap. She sat as if suspended from a string, straight-backed, elegant and poised.

  “You've been busy since I last saw you.”

  Had he? Was rotting away in prison being busy? “Are you the one who got me out?”

  “Yes. I helped arrange it.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn't right. You were there unjustly.” Spoken as if justice were an expectation, not a pipe dream.

  “No one else seemed to mind,” he said.

  “That's not exactly true. But it's immaterial. The point is you're out.”

  Yes. He had to agree. If this wasn't another of his hallucinations. “I'm grateful.”

  “There's a string attached,” she said.

  “What sort of string?”

  “I vouched for you. I promised you wouldn't do anything to land yourself in jail again.”

  “I didn't do anything this time.”

  She gave him a look. “Really. What an interesting thing to say.”

  “I wasn't responsible for what happened.”

  “The immolation? No, I don't believe you were. The rest? I'd say that's using the term ‘responsible’ rather loosely. At any rate, I managed to convince some people, the right people, you weren't the ringleader. A pawn, I said, although I suspect that you were more. Not innocent…who could believe that? But misled and certainly naive.”

  He had accused himself of this very thing, and would continue to, but he hated hearing it from her.

  “Your release is provisional on your future conduct,” she said.

  “I'm on probation?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. They'll be watching every move you make. My advice is, don't make any wrong ones. Do your job. Keep out of trouble. Don't join any crazy groups. Any groups, period.”

  “They weren't crazy,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “That, I'd have to say, is a bad start.”

  “Not in what they wanted. Maybe in how they went about it.”

  “And which do you think people will remember?”

  “I know what humans will,” he said. Then fearing that he'd said too much, he said more. “They were desperate. People do extreme things out of desperation. They think differently. They see things differently. They act in ways that might look crazy but to them make sense. To them it might be the only thing that does make sense. It's another world.”

  He had thought long and hard on this in prison. How events had taken such a turn. What his role had been, what he did and didn't do, what he could have done differently. Loyalty was an admirable quality, perhaps the most admirable, but to cling to it dogmatically was to turn a virtue to a vice. Somewhere, somehow, something had gone wrong. He felt guilty to be the sole survivor and guilty now to distance himself, talking about “them,” not “us.”

  “I'm all for change,” she said, “but it's irresponsible to take an action when there's not a chance of its succeeding. You didn't have the numbers or the slightest notion of how to follow through. The fires and then that horrible burning were shock tactics, and shock wears off. It's childish. Brutally childish. It accomplishes nothing.”

  From the angry way she spoke one might have thought that she, not he, had been the one to lose her friends. “What you did just frightens people. It makes them turn away. Or worse, it makes them retaliate. The world needs messengers, not martyrs. Less violence, not more.”

  “Retaliation?” He almost laughed. “What worse can you do than drain us?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Much worse. Much much worse. We humans have a remarkable capacity for cruelty and revenge.”

  “We're not responsible for that,” said Payne.

  “We? We? There is no we.” Her voice rose in frustration. “Your group is gone, Payne. Get it through your head. No one talks about it anymore. I'd be surprised if anyone remembers. That squalid little room you met in? It's bricked up. The sidewalk where you made your mark? It was scrubbed clean the next day. The only thing that matters from here on out is you. How you act. What you do and, more importantly, what you don't.”

  “I don't intend to set myself on fire, if that's what you want to know.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  He wasn't sure what it was, or why they seemed to be arguing. He much preferred it when she smiled.

  “I'm not looking to make trouble,” he assured her, “but I don't understand, why take the chance? Why not leave me where I was as a lesson? Why set me free?”

  “Six healers went up in smoke. The city can't absorb that loss. The ones who are left are working round the clock—that's their reward for having better sense than you. And they're suffering: you know what it does to a healer to work so
hard. No one should have to pay that price.”

  He hadn't thought of this. It was a new reason for self-reproach.

  “No offense intended,” she added, “but you're a precious commodity.”

  “If we're so precious, why do you treat us so badly?”

  “That's a good question. Why do people bite the hands that feed them? Why do we hurt the ones we love? Because we don't love ourselves? Because we love ourselves too much? I don't know why. Because you let us? Because we can?”

  For the first time she appeared less than fully in command of herself, as though he'd touched a nerve. She fingered her necklace, then rose and fixed herself a drink, which she carried across the room to a steamy, mullioned window. Crimson light spilled in from the building's thousand-bulbed facade, giving her face a harsh, inhuman look.

  “Do they hate me?” Payne asked.

  “Do who?”

  “The other healers.”

  She stared out the window for a while before answering. “I expect some do. You're an easy target for hate, and the Authorities are more than happy to keep it that way. They're very good at nursing grievances, creating smoke screens and misdirection. Lies and propaganda run in their blood. They love it when people are up in arms about something, as long as it's not them. Which is not to say that I agree with what you did. It's caused a tremendous amount of suffering. But very few are pointing the finger where it belongs.”

  “Where's that?”

  “At us. At humans. We're the ones to blame for this. We use you mercilessly. We take and take until you've no more to give. We're the ones who drive you to extremes, because we're the ones who drain you.”

  “You have no choice,” he said.

  “But we do. We could use you less. Let you rest more. Give you time to recover.”

  “That would be better, but it wouldn't stop it.” He thought of Vecque, who was stricken after a mere two years of service. “There're some whom even rest won't help.”

  “There're other things we could do.”

  “What things?”

  She hesitated, as though reluctant to speak of them.

  He asked again.

  “We could find a way to make more healers.”

  “More? How?” Then he remembered the experiments that humans were so fond of doing.

  “Valid thinks we can,” she said. “Others, too. I don't agree with them. I don't agree with their experiments.”

  “Why not?”

  “They're cruel, that's why. Barbaric. And no one's ever shown they help.”

  Suddenly, without warning, a human figure plummeted past the window. It was followed by several more, all roped together and shrieking. Payne leapt up and rushed to the window, prepared to race outside to help if he was needed. He saw some people dangling by a rope, and then with a jerk they vanished.

  “Circuit jumpers,” Meera muttered. “What a waste. Sometimes I think that humans have a death wish.”

  “It's supposed to be fun,” he said, which is what he'd heard. “It's not?”

  “One or two die every year.”

  “But that can't be what they wish for.”

  “No. Probably not. Probably they expect to live forever.”

  “Have you ever tried it?”

  She shook her head, staring out the window. “No. When I was young, I took other risks. Just as stupid.”

  He longed to ask her what they were. They were standing near each other, and he longed to stand closer.

  “Now I try to be more careful,” she said. “Life, I've discovered, has plenty of thrills without manufacturing them.”

  She turned from the window, and in the process their eyes met for just a second. She seemed surprised to see him there so close and gave a self-conscious little smile, as though she'd been caught at something. But she quickly recovered her composure, crossing the room and distancing herself from him.

  “So,” she said. “Do we have a deal?”

  “A deal?”

  “You agree to stay out of trouble. To avoid confrontation. To avoid controversy of any kind. You keep a low profile. The lower the better.”

  “And in return I go free.”

  She nodded. “Do you need another incentive? I have one, if you do.”

  “No. Freedom's plenty.”

  “That's good, but I have one anyway. What Levels do you see here, Payne? Threes? Fours?”

  It took a second for him to understand what she was talking about. It had been so long since he'd done a healing, save with his friend the rat, and those had not involved his meli.

  “Some Fours. Mostly Threes.”

  “And it's easy for you, isn't it?”

  “Easy?”

  “Let me put it this way. Do you feel challenged?”

  It was an opportunity to show her what he'd learned. Choosing tact over truth, he replied, “Humans are always challenging.”

  She gave a little smile. “Bravo. Very good. But Threes are hardly worth the effort—not for someone like you. Wouldn't you like to work with something more demanding? A Level Five, say? A Six?”

  “Sixes don't come here,” he said.

  “I know that. But you could go to them.”

  “Rampart?”

  “Why not?”

  He wondered if she made a habit of this, of tempting people, enticing them with daring invitations, luring them to greater heights. He felt similar to how he'd felt at Pannus when she and Valid had commuted his sentence: the same flutter in the chest, the same sense of being swept away, the same thrilling, vertiginous feeling of his world expanding.

  “You'll need to practice,” she said. “Hone your skills. Improve your talent. And of course you'll have to stay out of trouble. You'll have to prove you can be trusted. That will take some time.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why? Because trust's a fragile thing. Once lost, it takes time to earn it back.”

  “No. Why me?”

  “You? Because you have a gift. I told you that before. No sense to waste it here.” She stopped, then corrected herself. “I don't mean that. Healing's never wasted. But sometimes people use it frivolously.”

  “Frivolously?”

  “Yes. Haven't you seen it? People who come to you on a whim. Who use you capriciously.” She gestured toward the window. “Like them. Young people. Thrill seekers. Daredevils.”

  There was a note of contempt in her voice, and Payne sensed that not all of it was directed outward.

  “People who don't know any better,” she said.

  In the weeks that followed Payne threw himself into his work. The need was there, and he was willing, even grateful, to oblige. But he was weak from prison, and it took some time for him to regain his strength. Healing was demanding work; both physically and mentally, it required stamina, endurance and concentration.

  He had to focus in a way he never did in other circumstances. First on himself, and then he had to lose himself and center on his patient. Empathy was implicit in the act of healing. In a way it was its core. It generated the power for the first three stages of a healing, and lesson number two spoke of it directly. Payne remembered all his lessons, and some that he had once thought puerile he had since learned to see in a different light. The second lesson taught that to identify one must first show interest, and to capture one must first release. As his strength returned and he practiced this, he found his empathic powers heightened. Perhaps he had matured; certainly, having been imprisoned for so long and confined solely to himself, he was grateful for any contact he could get, be it glancing or that most intimate kind that came on the healing bed.

  Sometimes what afflicted a person was not restricted to that individual but symptomatic of a more general condition. Something that affected others, an epidemic of some sort. A single human, like a single tree infested with disease, could be saved, but it helped to know about the state of other humans; it helped to keep an eye on the forest. The narrow field of vision required in the healing chamber was often best unders
tood in the context of the larger view.

  In the world of disease, as in the worlds of music and art and other disciplines, there was always the element of fashion. Interest in pathologies (as well as pathologies themselves) waxed and waned from public consciousness. What was in vogue one year was out of vogue the next. In part, this was determined by what was actually out and about in the world, what nasty germs (and usually it was germs) posed a threat to life and limb. But beyond this, there was an interest and a buzz that had less to do with the prevalence of an illness than the perception of the prevalence. And perception, as a product of the imagination, could be manipulated. This was not something that was taught to healers, but every one of them experienced it. How humans could be swayed by fear and fantasy and fashion. For more than anything they seemed to love a story, and the ones they loved best seemed to be of threats that didn't materialize, imminent disasters narrowly averted, as well as illnesses that had some glamour to them and epidemics that turned out to be false alarms. Sometimes it seemed to Payne that the people he treated lived expressedly to be saved.

  Currently in vogue was a nebulous affliction, purportedly of the central nervous system, that went by a variety of names, the most common of which, Impaired Cognitive Excitation, had found favor less for the aptness of its description than for its acronym. Symptoms ranged from a buzzing in the ears to a tingling in the skin to a nocturnal twitching of the muscles of the trunk. Some complained of a dry mouth and metallic taste on the tongue; others swore the taste was sweet and their salivation profuse and frothy. Commonly, there was a sense of bloatedness and abdominal fullness, but just as commonly a sense of being empty and needing to be filled. Mentally, many described amnesia for unpleasant occurrences and events, while others, remarkably, were quite capable of recalling even the most trivial, glancing and ancient wounds. There was insomnia and there was polysomnia. Lassitude and fixation. Sloth, mania, ennui, obsession, lackadaisy and a kind of hypervigilance that suggested paranoia.

  From an epidemiologic standpoint, the most consistent thing about ICE was its inconsistency. That, and the paucity of physical findings. In many ways it resembled the notorious Cryptogenic Protein scare of several decades earlier, which itself resembled the so-called Laughing Man Disease of a century before that. Certain maladies seemed to reside in the human psyche, if not in the actual spongy matter of the brain, and had a habit of resurfacing. Like styles of hair and clothes and speech, they had a way of coming back.