Healer (10 page)

Each rung was covered with a velvety coating of dust. As he disturbed it, it spilled with a faint rustle down the wall beyond. One or two rungs creaked as they took his weight. He heard no other sound. He saw no chink where the shaft might have opened onto the intermediate floors, nor did he remember seeing doors in the walls of those corridors at this point. He reached the top in less than two minutes.

There was a problem here. The lining, as he'd suspected, ran down a foot below the level of the hatch, and the last rung came two feet below that. The doors were slightly ajar. It was a question of heaving up, much the way he'd been doing all the way up the shaft, but then twisting and reaching sideways to grab the shelf of the hatch, but it would have to be done all in one movement. If there were alarms attached to the doors, he'd set them off…

The hell with it.

He heaved and grabbed. There was a mild rattle and a thump, but no sudden clanging. He hung, panting, slantwise across the shaft, and then worked his feet onto the last rung, gave another heave and twist, and was kneeling on the shelf looking out into the nursery corridor. All quiet.

He worked himself to a sitting position, took his shoes off, dropped to the floor, and shut the doors of the hatch. Still no sound. A strip of polished wood ran along each side of the corridor carpet. There might be alarm pads under the carpet. What next? The Harmony Session had been going for about twenty minutes or less. He had nearly two hours to explore in. Then they'd come up, have lunch, Pinkie would rest … Which was Pinkie's room?

He stole along by the wainscot, tried a door. Bathroom. The next was a toilet. Other side.

The second door was half open. The moment he peered inside he knew this was it. A kid's room obviously. Yes, and there was the same old black teddy on the bed, wearing the yellow bow tie Barry's mum had made. A bright, clean room, big enough for several kids. Probably been the night nursery in the old days, with half a dozen cots. Huge old built-in wardrobes, more than one kid could possibly need

He opened them, one by one. A few frocks, a coat or two, and some jeans on hangers, looking lost in the big space. Shelves with T-shirts, socks, underclothes, pyjamas. But in the one on the corner a dry, dusty smell as if the door was seldom opened. There were suitcases on the floor, and on the other side shelves of winter blankets and spare pillows and so on. Barry piled the suitcases on top of each other and took an eiderdown and a couple of pillows to make himself a nest in the space he'd cleared. He curled himself into it and pulled the doors shut. He felt warm, quiet, comfortable, happy to wait. It was a Bear place, a lair. He did not remember falling asleep.

He twitched awake. Something had touched his cheek. He couldn't think where he was as he blinked at the brilliant pillar of light with the black shape in it. He heard Pinkie's soft giggle.

“You snorted,” she whispered. “I heard you.”

From beyond the room came the tinkle and plunk of harp scales. Barry shook his head, forcing himself wide awake, and started to uncurl, but Pinkie slipped into the cupboard and wriggled down beside him.

“I thought you weren't ever coming,” she said, keeping her voice so low you could hardly have heard it outside the cupboard.

“Sorry. I couldn't think of a way. They put me on night shift.”

“That's what Louise said.”

“You didn't believe her?”

“I thought they'd sent you away probably.”

“But you just said—”

“I knew you'd think of somehow.”

“I didn't. Not by thinking anyway. What'll Mrs. B. do if she finds me here?”

“I like Louise.”

“Me too. You think she'll come on our side?”

“She'll tell Dad.”

“Dad?”

“I've got to call him Dad.”

“I've got to call him Sphere One.”

“I know.”

“Do you like him?”

“He's the only one who understands. He's clever.”

“Understands? You mean, you think he's got it right? H.E. and all that?”

“He knows what it's like.”

“I think he's a crook.”

She didn't say anything but sleepily smoothed the fur of her teddy. She sounded all right, happy in her quiet way, much more like the old Pinkie than she'd seemed a fortnight ago when he'd had tea with her. He nodded toward the sound of the harp.

“How long have we got?” he asked. “I've got to have a good long talk with you. There's problems, Pinkie.”

“I'm supposed to rest till four. She's only just started. I was scared when I heard you snorting. I couldn't get to sleep. I think it's because Dad gave me something. It made me feel very excited.”

She was really rattling on by her standards. It was a relief hearing her so chirpy. On the other hand, it was disturbing the way she talked about Mr. Freeman, apparently without fear or dislike, calling him Dad quite easily.

“Some kind of present?” he asked.

She stirred against his side, hesitated, then held her arm into the slot of light that came through the cupboard door. She pulled up the sleeve of her yellow pyjamas. On the inside of her forearm he saw three or four small red spots. None of Barry's friends were that far into drugs, not that he knew, but his mind leaped to the connection.

“Jesus!” he said softly. “He's mad! What's he think he's doing?”

“Sometimes it's pills. Different things. Once I was almost sick. Sometimes I'm just sleepy. It was funny today. I saw things which weren't there, and all the people had a kind of light around them, like angels. It was lovely.”

“He must be mad! Listen, day I came to tea with you—had he given you something then?”

“I expect so. I don't remember. It's always before the sessions.”

“He must have. You were on a crazy kind of high. Does Mrs. Butterfield know?”

“Yes, I told her, and she asked him. He said it was protein to help me in the sessions. They're tiring sometimes.”

“Protein wouldn't make you sick or sleepy. And see things.”

“You see, when we started having the sessions, it was lovely. Lots of people got better. I could feel it happening. Where I held their hands, I could feel the Energy rushing through. I was so happy helping all those people. It's the only thing I ever want to do. Mum's never liked me doing it, but he sent her away…”

“Why did she marry him?”

“She just wanted to. He's clever. I don't know. People are funny.”

“Does she know about him, er, giving you things?”

“I don't think so. I don't think she'd like it.”

Barry puffed his breath out and tried to think. You couldn't have told from Pinkie's tone that she was talking about something that mattered to her. His instinct—not only Bear rage but natural human impulse—was to barge in on Mrs. Butterfield, shove her stupid harp away, and yell at her about what was happening. She must half know, surely; she'd obviously been worried that teatime …

What the hell was Freeman up to? What had he been giving the kid? This last lot sounded like LSD or something … Yeah, from what Karen had said and other bits he'd heard, the sessions weren't working the way they used to. Freeman could try faking the odd miracle cure, but that might mean letting some of the staff know…and besides, he believed, he really believed in H.E. So he'd start tinkering with his apparatus, tuning it up. And Pinkie was part of it. If he could find a way of heightening her awareness or damping down her contact with the real world …

“Why don't you wear your glasses at the sessions?” he said.

“He just tried that out. I do now. We haven't had a good session for ages—not since the one you came to. That was lovely. I told him I thought it was because you were there. I said why couldn't you come to all the sessions, push one of those stupid carts or something. He said one day, when you were ready.”

“Stupid?”

“They don't do anything. It's the people who come.”

“And you? You do something?”

“I suppose so. I don't like thinking about it. Explaining gets in the way. It isn't like that.”

“And you think you're losing it?”

“Losing?”

“As you get older, for instance. Some kids—”

“Oh, no! Please, no! It's the only thing that matters!”

She went rigid. Her fingers tightened around her teddy so that the knuckles whitened. Barry had never heard her sound upset like that.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean—”

“Only I feel so tired. All that part of me. So tired.”

“That's why you want to get away?”

“I want to talk to Granddad.”

“Is that all? You mean you don't mind Freeman filling you up with chemical muck, and the sessions wearing you out, and being shut up here like a princess in a tower, provided you can talk to that old nut?”

“Don't be angry. It's only a way of saying.”

“Okay, okay, but … You want to get out of here, right? How long for? A couple of days? A month? Forever?”

“I don't know. Till I've stopped being tired, I suppose.”

“And when you come back, you want it fixed so you can see your granddad sometimes, and Freeman stops giving you shots of muck, and he doesn't wear you out with more sessions than you can take, and so on?”

“I suppose so.”

“But you don't mind coming back in the end? On those terms?”

“If it's like it used to be. It was lovely then.”

Problems. It couldn't be done, not like that. Freeman had to work her the way he was doing in order to get the cash flow. Suppose they got clear away, suppose they found somewhere to hole out, even then … He hadn't thought about Pinkie's actually wanting to come back, to be part again of something crooked and corrupt … if it was … surely what Freeman was doing with the drugs proved …

“I'm not sure we're going about this the right way,” he said. “Perhaps we'd do better starting off writing to your mum, telling her …”

Pinkie nuzzled sleepily against his shoulder.

“Don't bother about Mum,” she said. “She's no use. You're the only person's any use, Bear. You and Granddad.”

“No, but …” he began. Then he registered what she'd said.

“How did you know?” he whispered.

“‘What?”

“About Bear?”

“Oh. Do you mind? I always call you Bear. Inside my head, I mean. You growled at me the first time I saw you. You're my big bear and this is my little bear.”

She stroked her teddy and put it into his hands. He turned it over. It was getting a bit bald. Somehow this gave it a scowl. Just a coincidence then.

“I don't mind,” he said. “Just don't do it when there's people around, will you? I'll tell you about it sometime. I want to, anyway, when we've got your problems sorted out.”

“Is it going to be difficult?”

“Actually getting you away from here—if that's what we decide to do—looks like being tricky, but I'm beginning to see how it might go. Then, provided we get enough of a start, we ought to be able to make it up to somewhere near Dallington and meet up with your granddad. He says he's going to try to find us somewhere to hide up for a bit. We've got to be lucky, but it isn't that that's got me worried. It's the consequences. You realise, for a start, we're going to have half the police in England after us?”

“We haven't done anything wrong.”

“They don't know. Listen, I bet your mum told you not to talk to strangers, didn't she? Not to let them give you sweets? Especially not to get in their cars? Right? Do you know why—I mean, what people like that sometimes do to kids?”

“Sort of. But, Bear, I'd
tell
them.”

“They mightn't believe you. Anyway, they wouldn't know until they'd found us. That's what they'd think. And after that it could be really nasty for a while. But okay, suppose they do believe us. You see, it won't only have been the police. The newspapers are nuts on manhunts, especially when there's a sex angle. It'll be all over them, and on TV and radio, too. And then, when we're caught and we try and explain why we've done what we did, they're going to find out about you. I'm worried about what might happen to me, right, but I'm more than worried about what's going to happen to you when everybody in England suddenly hears there's this kid who cures your cancer by touching your hands. I don't go for old Freeman much, but I've got to admit he's been pretty clever about keeping reporters and people off your back. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“What'll they do to you, Bear?”

“It depends. It'll be pretty rough at first, I suppose, but then when they've sorted out I haven't done anything to you, it should be all right. I'm a bit scared of all that, I got to admit, but really … No, it's about you, Pinkie. What'll happen to you. Till you told me about Freeman giving you drugs, or whatever, my idea was you should just go on strike. You've got the whip hand. They can't do anything without you. You wouldn't have to make a great thing about it, not a confrontation. You could just act up being tired and say the only thing would do you any good is going up to Dallington …”

She didn't seem to have been listening.

“If they don't believe us, what'll they do to you then?” she said.

“I don't know. But they will. Why shouldn't they?”

“He's clever.”

She murmured the words in a dreamy way, as if she was in some kind of trance. With an inward shudder Barry remembered his joke notion of Superbear at the Conspirators' Dance and Gala, how all the heads had turned towards him, all with Mr. Freeman's strange gold eyes. If he ran off with Pinkie and was caught, he would be in the cogs of the system, almost helpless, while his enemy was at home in the system, able perhaps to make the cogs turn the way he wanted. He might be able to persuade the people who worked the system that Barry was…