Healer (8 page)

“What an extraordinary word!” said Mrs. Butterfield.

“Until you see it's only named after some bloke called Roscoe,” said Barry. “It's supposed to be yellow, but Mr. Stott's managed to breed a white one.”

“I'm afraid I don't know whether it's a canary or a fish,” said Mrs. Butterfield.

Yeah, thought Barry. And Pinkie's told you all about me but never said anything about her granddad's alpines. He explained, easy and smiling, Foundation-style.

The conversation went on that way. Mrs. Butterfield, though not quite a gusher, was certainly a talker. Naturally she talked mostly about the Foundation. Everybody did. Everybody seemed to share the same enthusiasm, the same trust, and the same rather down-to-earth approach about the mystery they were supposed to be dealing with. It was as though by talking about it in a no-nonsense way, calling it H.E. and so on, they were somehow helping make it more real. But they believed all right. From nobody he'd talked to—Sergeant Coyne, Karen, several other Sphere Fours and Sphere Fives, and now Mrs. Butterfield—had Barry had the slightest hint that they were in any kind of plot or conspiracy. They didn't have to be, of course—the fewer who knew, the better, from Freeman's point of view—but it was unnerving. Barry wasn't sure how long he'd be able to go on smiling and agreeing without some flicker of his eyes, some twist of his mouth or note of sourness in his voice giving him away, showing that he wasn't really one of them, but only pretending. It was just the sort of situation you'd expect would stir old Bear up, but Bear, since that moment up on the moors at Ferriby, seemed to have gone back into hibernation. So Barry was able to look Mrs. Butterfield straight in the eye and nod and smile and agree that it was wonderful to be here and they were all extraordinarily lucky people.

Pinkie said nothing. At one moment Barry tried to draw her into the conversation. As he finished his first mouthful of the walnut cake, he said, “Almost as good as your mum used to make, Pinkie.”

Pinkie looked at him.

“Mum's in America,” she muttered.

“And doing marvellous work,” said Mrs. Butterfield. “A lot of our clients are coming from there now.”

“Mum likes it in America,” said Pinkie. “She wants me to go.”

“I don't think there's any question of that for the moment,” said Mrs. Butterfield, “not until the next stage in the program. There's still a lot of basic research to be done, Sphere One says. Then he'll be able to start looking for other people with Pinkie's gifts and other places where the flow lines converge, the way they do here.”

She chatted on. Pinkie retreated into herself after her two brief remarks about her mother. Barry could only glance at her from time to time, but he became more and more convinced that something had happened to her, and it wasn't just that she was older. He couldn't make up his mind what, but he felt that she had lost, or was losing, part of whatever it was that had made her special—not her healing powers, which he'd always thought, even if they were real, were only a sort of by-product of this other quality, but the quality itself. He remembered travelling back with her on the first bus trip from Dallington, and the idea that she had inner landscapes which only she could visit. Now it was as though she found those places harder to reach and the land, when she got there, less welcoming, colder and poorer.

He was guessing. It was only a feeling. She didn't do or say anything which he could use as a clue that he was right, but he thought also that he detected in Mrs. Butterfield's tone, when she mentioned Pinkie, that she was troubled about something too.

After tea he and Pinkie carried the trays out to the hatch. Pinkie pulled at a rope on the other side of the door opening, and the lift began to slide down. Under the cover of its steady rumble Barry muttered, “Still want to get away from this place?”

She looked sideways at him, as though it was the first time that anybody had suggested such an idea to her. Then she nodded.

“Not going to be easy,” he said.

“Want to see Granddad.”

“I know, I know, but … Look, we've got to talk sometime. Alone. Can you get them to let me take you for a walk or something? It'll have to be you does the asking. I'm the lowest of the low.”

She looked puzzled. He felt that she wasn't really understanding; somehow it was an effort for her to mesh into the real world. It always had been, slightly, of course, but she'd been quick enough about setting up codes and systems to get around Mrs. Proudfoot.

“Are we going to play a game now?” she said. “I'll get Louise's wheelie.”

She darted off down the corridor, leaving the lift still rumbling down under its own momentum. Inquisitive about its workings, Barry craned into the gap and peered up. In the dimness he could just make out the central rope unwinding from a wooden drum. The ropes on either side of the door were spaced too far apart to go directly over the drum, so presumably they ran over some sort of wheel, and the drum was really the axle of the wheel. The rumbling came from wooden bearings. Plenty of friction there. The momentum ran out in a few seconds, but when Barry pulled experimentally at the side rope, he found there was very little resistance. The lift itself must have a counterweight, of course, running up the side of the shaft. Always amused and curious about the workings of things, he was still leaning into the shaft, peering down into darkness, when Pinkie rammed his calf with the step of Mrs. Butterfield's wheelchair.

The game barely worked. Barry managed to push the furniture into positions which made quite a promising maze, but though Pinkie could dodge, there were very few places she could really hide. Besides, Barry found that wheelchairs aren't at all easy to control and manoeuvre without practice, and he soon realised that for all Pinkie's apparent excitement, her heart wasn't really in it, any more than his was. They tried. Barry crashed and blundered around the sofa, and Pinkie dodged and screamed; for a moment it sounded as though she was working herself into another fit of hysteria, but all at once she straightened from where she'd been crawling behind the table, pushed her glasses straight, and said, in a tired voice, “Let's stop.”

Mrs. Butterfield, who had been sitting in a defensive position between her precious harp and the action, laughed with obvious relief.

“I was beginning to worry about my poor chair,” she said. “You've no idea what a good one costs. Where on earth did you learn that extraordinary game?”

Barry explained about Mr. Stott and his garden and the trenches. Mrs. Butterfield shook her head, still smiling.

“It's a mistake to try and go back,” she said. “You can't do it, not with anything—places, love affairs, careers, friendships, anything. They're always different. I used to be quite a good harpist, you know. I played with a very good orchestra. I only gave it up and became a teacher when my fingers started to stiffen. And later, when my illness got really bad, I used to sit and stare at my hands—they were all curled up like the claws of a bird, you know—and tell myself stories about what my life would have been like if it hadn't happened. I thought that was all I longed for, to get well and pick up my career. I was good enough, and I think I still am, but now that it's possible, I don't want to do it. You see, something else has happened, something I could never have imagined when my head was full of dreams. Yes, I might become a rich and famous soloist, I might believe I was happy and lucky, but it would be a disaster because I would be missing this.”

She really meant it, Barry saw, though she spoke easily enough, without making an emotional meal of what she said. She'd staked a lot on the Foundation, hadn't she, so for her it had to be true. Her life here had to be worth while, so in her own mind the career she had given up for it needed to be a starry one. The same applied with all the people at the Foundation, in their different ways. If H.E. was a fairy tale, if Freeman was a crook or a phony or both, then their whole lives would fall apart. Barry would find no allies here. He really liked Mrs. Butterfield, for instance, despite her fluty upper-class voice. He thought she wanted to do the best she could for Pinkie, but nothing he could say or do would persuade her to help him, ever. He was alone. He'd been aware of this all along, really, but what Mrs. Butterfield said made up his mind.

She caught his eye, flicked a glance toward Pinkie, and said, “You mustn't try and go back. It is always a mistake. Always.”

They pushed the room straight, then sat down and talked for a bit, mostly Barry answering Mrs. Butterfield's questions about his home life and why he'd chucked his school, things like that. Pinkie said nothing but sat beside him on the sofa toying vaguely with his fingers and then leaning against his shoulder like a large dog. He only realised she had fallen asleep when he noticed how heavy her head had become.

“She seems to find the Harmony Sessions more and more tiring,” whispered Mrs. Butterfield, “especially the ones that don't go very well. And seeing you again. No wonder she was a bit hysterical. I've never seen her like that before.”

Carefully Barry eased himself free and let Pinkie down onto the cushions. He rose and stood looking at her, a pasty, pudgy kid in glasses, nothing to notice. But everyone wanted to own her, to use her. She frowned in her sleep and gave a little shudder like the twitch of a sleeping dog. Something inside her dream had done that, but you'd never get there, never know what.

“I hope you'll come again soon,” whispered Mrs. Butterfield. “On a day when she hasn't had a session.”

“I thought I might take her for the odd walk. Must be good walks around here.”

“Oh, yes, that is a good idea.”

“Don't come to the door. I'll let myself out.”

“I might as well. We're not going out again, so I'll set the alarm now.”

“Alarm? Up here?”

“Oh, yes. We have to keep our treasure safe, don't we?”

She hobbled with him down the corridor and smiled with extra sweetness as she said good-bye, but the latch clicked sharply as the door closed between them.

10

Mrs. Butterfield's remark about treasure preyed on Barry's mind. Of course, he had known Pinkie was important to the Foundation, but he hadn't really thought what it actually meant when it came to getting her out. For a start the place was very well guarded. There was a high brick wall all around the grounds. Inside it, at night, roamed a savage-looking Alsatian named Norah. The building itself formed another ring of defences, with security catches on all the downstairs windows, and alarms on windows and doors. All the male staff members, who slept in the stable block, had to be out of the main building by half past eight in the evening, so that the alarms could be switched on. Barry had already begun to think about this last point because of the obstacle it put in the way of simply getting Pinkie out of the house and running off with her when everyone was asleep. (Running off? Oh? Nine miles to the nearest station—no car—couldn't drive one anyway…) But he had simply assumed that all this was just a way of keeping out nuts and journalists and people like that. Now he discovered that there was yet another ring, inside the building, around Pinkie. It made him see that the whole system was there to guard her, like the princess in a fairy story, locked in the top-most room of the highest turret of the dragon-guarded castle. She was so precious to them. The whole thing depended on her. People didn't come here because of Mr. Freeman, or his theories, or the gadgets in the Hall of Harmony. They came to see the Healer.

Barry was in the entrance hall, sorting the letters into the residents' rack, when Sergeant Coyne put down the phone in the porter's booth and came out.

“Okay, lad,” he whispered. “I'll take over that. Sphere One wants a word with you.”

He didn't take the letters at once but looked Barry over, picked a speck of something off his shoulder, walked around behind and tugged at his uniform collar, looked him over again.

“You'll do,” he said. “Off you go, then.”

When Barry tapped at the door, there was a longish pause before Mr. Freeman called him in. No question of being asked to sit this time, not a Sphere Five talking to Sphere One, but Mr. Freeman looked friendly enough.

“You're finding your feet with us, I hear,” he said. “Sergeant Coyne speaks well of you. I am not at all surprised.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“So does Mrs. Butterfield.”

Barry managed to suppress a grunt of surprise. Being reported on by Sergeant Coyne was one thing, but somebody who'd asked you to tea to talk to a kid who'd been your friend …”

“I want to make that point before I go on,” said Mr. Freeman. “I particularly don't want you to feel that any blame attaches to you over what happened yesterday afternoon. As I say, Mrs. Butterfield tells me you handled the situation very well.”

He looked up inquiringly, but Barry said nothing. What was coming now? The sack? After only four days?

“Since Pinkie had specifically asked to see you, it seemed best to allow that to happen, but I must tell you that both Mrs. Butterfield and I were anxious about it. Pinkie, as you are of course aware, is central to the functioning of the Foundation. She is extremely precious to us. Anything likely to place an emotional strain on her is a cause for anxiety. Listen.”

He reached out and pressed a button on his cassette player, then turned full toward Barry and watched him with a cold, penetrating stare, neither friendly nor hostile, but more like a scientist watching a laboratory rat go through its maze. The tape made vague thumping sounds. A man's voice gave a startled yell. Feet scuttered. Suddenly the room was filled with a strange, whooping cry, shrill and painful. There was pain actually in the noise, though Barry couldn't tell whether the animal that made it was causing the pain or suffering it—hyena at the kill or monkey in a trap. Neither of those anyway. Too shrill.

Mr. Freeman reached out to turn the volume down, but the noise stopped short almost at once. Faint shuffling sounds followed, and then a man's voice, still too loud, said, “Okay. You want to play a game?”

Mr. Freeman clicked the player off.

“You had the volume right up,” said Barry.

“Yes.”

“It wasn't like that. She just got a bit wild when she saw me and started laughing.”

“It was like that, I'm afraid, Barry. Only you did not have ears to hear it at normal volume. You were pleased to see Pinkie again?”

“Course I was. I used to be fond of the kid. Don't know why.”

“She has that effect upon those who need her.”

“Any case, I'd hardly got in the room. I …”

“Certainly, as I said earlier, it was not your fault. If it was anyone's, it was ours, mine. We are putting a severe strain on Pinkie. It was a risk on my part taking you onto the staff, and it remains a risk keeping you here. If I thought you were likely to do anything, consciously or unconsciously, to exacerbate the strain on Pinkie, I would ask you to leave. But I would do so with very great reluctance because I am genuinely impressed with your personality. I believe that you may have a really worthwhile future with us, Barry. I would not be at all surprised to see you ascending quite rapidly through the spheres.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But you will understand why I have decided that it would be in everyone's interest if for the time being you did not see Pinkie again.”

“But …”

“For the time being only. I recognize the strength of her feeling for you, and yours for her. I am genuinely sorry to have to take this line. But the work we are doing here is far too important—important for the whole of mankind, for all living creatures, indeed—for me to let such considerations interfere with it.”

There was a gleam in the gold eyes, a throb in the voice. He was really putting it over now, the way he did in the Harmony Sessions. Suddenly Barry saw that he wasn't pushing out all this energy to impress one Sphere Five, a mere hail porter. He was telling himself that his work was that vital. If he was a fraud, then he was one of his own victims.

“Yes, I see,” said Barry. “But, er, I mean, how long's the time being?”

Mr. Freeman jerked himself out of his mild trance.

“The time being? Oh, a few weeks? It is a question of adjustment, and the energies that flow through this place are such that we all adjust very quickly to the great central harmony.”

“What'll you say to Pinkie?”

Mr. Freeman smiled. He'd worked it out.

“That you've transferred to night porter duties,” he said.

“It would have been your turn before long, and I will ask Sergeant Coyne to adjust the roster so that the changeover happens at once. Mrs. Butterfield will explain to Pinkie that you are having to sleep while she's awake. Suppose you do four weeks of the night shift. Then in a month's time I may be in a position to decide whether the Harmonic Energy has done its work and you can safely see Pinkie again. I hope you agree to this scheme.”

Agree? What else could he do?

“I suppose Mrs., er, Freeman will be home by then,” he said.

“I doubt it. She is doing extremely useful work. And to be frank with you, Barry, I persuaded her to go to America for much the same reasons that I am asking you to go on night duty. She is an excellent woman, and I am fond of her. I would like to have her here. But her relationship with Pinkie—much more profound than yours, of course—also distorts the Harmony flow. I think you will understand.”

The stress on the word was very slight, the smile warm, the gaze friendly.

“Yes, sir,” said Barry.

“I think that's all. Been having any more headaches?”

“Nothing to notice. Just being here's a help.”

“So most of us find. But if you do have any trouble, be sure to let me know. I have some ability in focusing the Energy, and I will give you a personal session. I wouldn't like you to suffer in silence because you felt I had forbidden you to attend a Harmony Session with Pinkie.”

“That's all right, sir.”

“Thank you, Barry.”