The Healer

by Michael Blumlein

  The Tower was known by other names as well. Some called it the Citadel, some the House of Hope, some the Temple, some the Tomb. It was all of those, but more than anything it was a last resort, a magnet for those who, by virtue of circumstance or habit or simply time, were afflicted with the worst diseases of the human body and the human mind, the gravest and the most recalcitrant, the most embedded and advanced. Some who came were crippled beyond endurance, some demented, some hideously cachectic, some incapacitated by intractable pain. A fair number were on the verge of death. Whatever the provenance, all came by way of desperation, out of options, almost out of hope, their one unanimous request, simple and straightforward: heal me.

  For healers, being summoned to Rampart was the ultimate recognition, and it required, on a daily basis, the greatest performance of their lives. Of all healings these were the most demanding, the most exacting and also the most exciting, the most intense and the most extreme. They were also the most debilitating, which had prompted an enlightened Board of Regulators to institute a rather liberal policy of rest and recuperation. For these were the finest healers of their kind, the most talented and skilled and practiced, and the hardest to replace. They were as precious, literally, as life itself. The Drain would take them all in due course, but there was no need to hurry it along.

  She waited as long as she could wait, as long as she could stand it, as long as anyone in her position could possibly stand it, and then she waited longer. He needed time to learn that Sixes were within his power, well within it, time to prove himself but not so much time that he became too tired, that he lost, if it was possible, his edge. Fortunately, she had other things to occupy her time. There was the house to care for. There was Bolt to keep in touch with. There was the Oversight Committee on Research and Experimentation. There were her parents, who were getting on in years. There was Wyn.

  But Payne was preeminent in her thoughts and in her plans. She needed him, and while she had made her peace with this, she still on occasion felt it as a weakness, for she was not the sort of person who liked to be in need. She preferred to handle things herself. This gave her both the pleasure of accomplishment and the certainty of a job done the way she wanted it. Not that she was unwilling to delegate authority, only that she was careful how and to whom she did. She lived a careful life. This, in contrast to the high-spirited, daring, and, in at least one respect, reckless days of her youth. Now, in sustained reaction to those days, she played it closer to the vest. Politically, she remained outspoken, but personally, she kept to herself. This had gained her a reputation for being aloof, which, like most reputations, had its germ of truth while missing much of the underpinning and substance of that truth, but this did not concern her. Solitude at one time would have seemed a sentence to her, but now she welcomed it, or at least had grown accustomed to it. She wore it as a sort of cloak, likening it in her mind to a vow of abstinence, self-imposed and just.

  But being private did not mean that she was out of touch. She had many sources of information, and it was a point of pride with her and in some cases of necessity to stay on top of things. Change was in the air: with the Committee; with her aging parents; with the guards at the Pen, who were getting antsy; with Payne. After years of shepherding him behind the scenes, she was about to set him loose, and as she contemplated this, she considered what her responsibility was to him. That she had deliberately kept her distance from him had not prevented her from having feelings for him, nor had she deluded herself into thinking it would. What surprised her, though, was how strong her feelings were. She liked him, more than liked him, and wanted him to like her. Short of that, she hoped he wouldn't end up despising her. But he deserved to make his mind up for himself, which was to say he deserved to know the facts. He had to know them, and she was about to lay them out for him, even to the point of baring her heart if it came to that, although she hoped it wouldn't. But maybe this was wrong. Maybe the best and most responsible thing—responsible in the sense of considerate, decent and kind—was not to tell him anything, to keep him in the dark. Knowledge was a snake, and ignorance could protect him from its bite. She could orchestrate this as she had orchestrated so much already in his life. Take the high road and bear the burden by herself, suffer nobly, silently and alone.

  Except she wasn't alone. Wyn was suffering, too. Which was why she needed Payne.

  Accordingly, she made plans to visit him in his apartment, which was in the Tower, near his healing room. But as the date approached, she had second thoughts, wondering if this, in fact, was the best place to break the news to him. As a rule, she liked to visit people more than to receive them. It gave her the opportunity to gather information on how they lived—their tastes, their sense of order (or disorder), their means, their private worlds—and it came at little expense to herself. It was a way of seeing into someone else's mind, which was more than an amusement to her. She was never bored by other people's minds. Disappointed sometimes, disgusted, but never bored. Visiting a person at home, or at work for that matter, had the added advantage that she could leave when she wanted. It was the optimal situation, one over which she had the most control.

  But she had seen how Payne lived. Moreover, she knew his mind, maybe better than he knew it himself. It was time to open hers to him, time for him to learn something about her own life, since, if all went as planned, he would soon be inextricably bound up in it.

  Her house then. She would open her doors to him. It was a relief to come to this decision, and it made her glad. She had not had a visitor in oh so long a time. Change was coming to her, too. The ice of her long wait was breaking.

  Hers was a handsome house—thick-walled, whitewashed, haciendalike—with picture windows and flowering vines and palms for shade. It lay several kilometers from the Tower, on a bluff above the Lac du Lac, what some called the Lacrimal Sea. There were other, more ostentatious homes nearby, trophy homes that sat unoccupied for the majority of the year. There were also several rooming houses for temporary visitors to the Rampart hub, most of whom were patients on their way to treatment, who afterward needed a place to recuperate. Frequently, they had their families with them, and at times the small seaside community had the feeling of a resort. At other times, it seemed more like a sanatorium. Some used the sea for its purported healing properties. Its waters had a high mineral content and, to the degree they puckered the skin and kept a body afloat, were said to be restorative. Others took walks, though now that it was summer, only at the margins of the day. The noonday sun brought reptiles out, but the sensible human stayed inside. Dawn and dusk and balmy night were the hours for mammals.

  Meera had an old-fashioned broadbeam desk with inlaid wood and carved clawfoot legs that had been in the family for generations. She had an old-fashioned pen, too, and heavy vellum stationery that welcomed ink and absorbed a little of a person's scent. The desk was in a study with a lazy ceiling fan and a window on the Lac du Lac, where she liked to gaze while gathering her thoughts. It was midmorning, and the sea was smooth, in contrast to her state of mind, which was excited. She thought a minute what to say, and when she had the tone just right set pen to paper and composed her invitation. “Dear Payne,” she wrote, “I have news to share with you. Please come and join me at my home for a visit.” Short and simple, it struck the proper balance, she thought, between formality and friendliness. She added a day and a time, then considered how best to sign it, settling on her full name, which seemed businesslike. She slid the invitation into an envelope, which she sealed and put aside, then, with a glance out the window, turned her attention to the Oversight Committee.

  Valid had a new proposal on the table. It was worded in a way that made it sound pressing, almost dire. He, along with a sizable faction of the committee, wanted more tesques for their experiments, many more, and he wanted more liberties and less restrictions on what they were allowed to do. More funding too, all of which she was stridently opposed to. Years before, she and Valid had been allies, committed to a bett
er system of health, which at that time meant to them improving the working conditions of healers. That remained her goal, but his had shifted: he now favored medical research and breeding trials, the former to discover a way to activate inactive melis, the latter to generate new and better healers—healers, that is, less inclined to be drained. He himself was engaged in this very research and was convinced that it would bear fruit, despite the fact that in the long history of human-healer relations, it never had, and not for lack of trying. Scientific research and investigation had been the source of many miracles and wonders, but sadly, a longer-lasting healer was not one of them. Nor had anyone ever found a way to create a greater number of healers. The experiments had been abandoned, not once but many times. Now they had been resurrected, along with the same old hollow claims. In Meera's eyes Valid and his cronies had fallen victim to amnesia.

  In drafting a response to the proposal, she considered another fact that might explain the urgent tone of it. Valid, she had heard, was ill. Seriously ill. He had no offspring and if and when he died would leave no legacy but his ideas, his work. This measure, were it to pass, would not go unnoticed. It would change the landscape of tesque and human relations and quite likely lead to protests and counterprotests and possibly even another uprising, one to rival that of ‘09. She doubted this was his intent, although with men like Valid, one could never be sure. The proximity of death did funny things to people, and she wondered if he feared being forgotten.

  This suggested, along with a formal response, a more personal note, wishing Valid well and expressing hopes for a recovery. She did this first, while the thought was fresh, reminding him of their past friendship. He was a man of conviction, she wrote, not to mention a formidable opponent, and, despite their differences, she held him in high regard. She was careful not to go overboard with her praise, for he had a keen and discerning ear when it came to flattery. Too much kindness from a woman who through the years had steadfastly refused his advances would instantly raise his suspicions.

  Satisfied with the effort, she turned her attention to the proposal itself. It was many pages long, but soon she had outlined a response. She had a facile mind and a way with words, and the language of opposition, honed by many years of practice, came easily to her.

  Payne was chagrined. Despite his reverent care, the invitation was showing signs of wear and overhandling. Two of its corners were dog-eared, and there was a smudge along its lower edge. Worse, from taking it out of its envelope several times a day and pressing it against his nose and cheek, its scent, her scent, was disappearing. Fortunately, he would soon get to experience that scent in the flesh. He had worked overtime to be in a position to see her at the time she requested. He had one more patient for the day, and then he would be free.

  Leaving the invitation within sight on his desk, he called that patient in. It was a woman, a large and overweight one, with pale eyes, swollen, encumbered joints, and thickened skin. At first glance her illness seemed of her own making, a result of gluttony and its handmaiden, shame. This, however, was not the case. She turned out to be suffering from an inner metabolic process, an infiltrative disease where normal tissue was replaced by a fibrous protein. In response, her body had stiffened and her skin and joints had turned into a kind of stubborn paste. It was difficult for her to walk and nearly impossible to get herself on the healing bed. Payne administered a potent anodynic sporophyte to kill her pain, which would help in moving her. While he waited for it to take effect, he indulged in thoughts and fantasies of his upcoming visit to Meera's.

  His reveries were interrupted by a knocking at the door. He asked the woman if she was expecting company. She said no and mentioned that the medicine was working, the pain was less, perhaps it was time that they get started. Payne agreed and, putting the knocking, which had momentarily stopped, from his mind, helped her to the bed.

  It was a large and comfortable bed. The room itself was large and comfortable, and it contained all the various equipment that a human making his way to the Tower, the pinnacle of the craft, would expect. The Boomine synthesizer, the retinal harmonic generator, the tantalus olfactus, the transdermal euphoid pump, as well as other, more trendy devices. Though here, more than anywhere else, it was the healer who was central to the healing process, a fact that most of the patients who made their way to the Tower seemed implicitly to understand, for in the end these gadgets, more often than not, went unused.

  As Payne prepared to lie beside the woman and wrap their arms together, the knocking started up again. He heard raised voices: there seemed to be some sort of commotion in the waiting room. Before long, the knocking became a pounding, and seconds later, the door burst open.

  In stumbled a wild-eyed and haggard Dr. Valid, looking like something the cat had dragged in.

  “Who are those people?” he snarled, gesturing behind him with a trembling, bony finger. “Has reason deserted us completely? Don't they know what Diplomate means?”

  He fixed a jaundiced eye on Payne. “Never mind. It's you I want. It pains me to say it, but I need your help.”

  He paused as he became aware that Payne was not alone. There was a woman on the healing bed. Half-dazed, she was struggling to sit up.

  Valid apologized for the interruption. “You'll have to excuse me, but this is an urgent matter. If you'd be so kind, please wait outside.”

  Payne was shocked, both by Valid's rudeness and by how he looked, how much he'd changed. His face was drawn, his cheeks hollow, his skin etched and pale. His thick and wavy hair, such a source of pride to him, had been reduced to scattered clumps. The cane he'd carried for effect was now a necessity, for he'd lost both weight and strength and depended on it for support. His voice alone remained unchanged, as sharp, imperious and demanding as ever.

  “I'm sick,” he said to Payne. “Come look at me.”

  Instead, Payne looked at the woman, who was now sitting. Their eyes met.

  Valid scowled. “You think I'm lying?” He tugged at the skin of his face, then held out a trembling hand. “He'll do you next,” he told the woman. “After me.”

  There was no doubting that Valid told the truth. He was most certainly ill, but Payne refused to jump at his command. The man was overstepping his authority. Furthermore, he could have—and clearly should have—come in sooner.

  “This didn't happen overnight. Why did you wait so long?”

  “What does it matter? I'm here now.”

  Both of them knew that it did matter, or that it could. But that was business better left for later.

  “Let me heal the lady first,” said Payne.

  “No. First me.”

  “Yours might take some time.”

  “I'm not an idiot,” replied Valid, eyes flashing. Then he grimaced. “This is Sixth Degree. I know what Sixes need.”

  Payne's mind was on his date. He was determined not to miss a minute of it.

  “I should rest first, Professor.”

  “Diplomate,” interjected Valid.

  “Diplomate. The healing would go much better if I did.”

  “How long a rest?”

  “A few hours at the least. Why don't you come back first thing tomorrow morning?”

  “Tomorrow? Me? You put me off?” Outraged, Valid clutched Payne's hand as if he were a hawk and Payne, a rabbit. “There's no rest for me. Why should there be for you? No, my friend, not tomorrow. Now. We'll do it now.”

  The woman was by this time standing. Payne looked to her for help, but she seemed reluctant to intervene. Standing up to Valid took an effort that she did not have, and she was not alone. Sick or well, this was a man adept at bullying.

  On her behalf then, and on his (mostly his), Payne objected to Valid's interference. He had no right to take her place. It was unnecessary, unethical, improper and just plain wrong.

  Valid couldn't believe his ears. He sent a look to Payne that had turned other men to stone. Payne braved the look, but then his heart betrayed him. Without thinking, he stole a glanc
e at the invitation.

  Whatever his weaknesses, current or past, Valid knew how to read a glance, and he knew about hunger and longing. He followed the upstart healer's darting eyes, and before Payne could stop him, had seized the envelope and withdrawn the invitation. He read it rapidly, eyes dancing.

  “Ah. I see. Meera desires an audience with you. The great Meera Libretain. What, I wonder, does she want?”

  Payne tried to snatch the invitation back, but Valid held it out of his reach. “She writes of news. What news?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Is she the precious rest you need? Is she the reason you put me and this good woman off? That you delay us?” Valid scanned the note again, an old desire flickering in his leaden eyes, then surrendered it to Payne. “She's not worth it, my friend. Believe me. She's crafty. Whatever she says, it's herself that she's serving.”

  “And who are you serving?” asked Payne.

  Valid gave him a look. “Fair enough. Myself as well. I said that in the beginning. I need your help, Payne. I say it again now, plainly. And what has Meera said? Has she been equally frank with you?”

  A cough arrested him, rattling through his chest and dislodging phlegm, which he lacked the strength to expectorate. When he recovered from it and caught his breath, he took a more conciliatory tone.

  “I have no personal quarrel with her. She's a smart and determined woman. Her faults we needn't dwell on. But have you ever wondered why she engineered your release from prison? And why she arranged to have you brought here?”

  He had wondered, and she had explained it to his satisfaction. “They needed healers in Aksagetta. And here, they need healers here. Healers who can handle Fives and Sixes.”