The Healer (10 page)

“She'll see you soon,” Payne promised him. “It'll be better if she's not so hungry. Just let her finish eating.”

Across the room the miners had started jeering. One was banging his cup, demanding action. Another mocked the poor boy's mother.

“Look,” he said. “I'm sorry, but you need to do it.”

Vecque ignored him.

He insisted.

“Later,” she said.

“No. Now. You need to do it now.”

She cut another piece, then stabbed it with her fork and held it up, considering her options. She could go on eating. She could put the food down. Change, she knew, came slowly. Progress didn't happen overnight. Even the best of people had their setbacks.

Raising the fork to eye level, she levered it back with a finger, paused a moment, then let it fly, catapulting the bloody morsel of meat into the young man's face.

For all intents and purposes, this ended the conversation. He was stunned.

Instantly, Payne was on his feet. Reaching for the boy's wrist, he tried to coax him away from Vecque. “I'll do it. Please. I'm done here. I'll heal you now. Let's go.”

But the boy wasn't moving. Bloody red juice trickled down his cheek. His face had hardened.

Pulling out the empty chair beside Vecque, he swung into its saddle, straddling it like a horse. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, then leaned in close to her and said, loud enough for all to hear, “I got a pain that can't wait. Don't make me ask again.”

At his table the men erupted. Drawn by the drama, men at other tables were clamoring for action, too.

Desperately, Payne tried to head things off.

“This isn't necessary. Really. Let me help you. I can take care of this right now.”

But Vecque had crossed the line and knew it was up to her. The boy was an annoyance and could be handled, but the other men, who so far were only ugly individually, could, with little further provocation, turn ugly collectively. She didn't fear one man, but she did a mob.

Steeling herself, she rose, prepared to lead the boy to the healing center and do whatever stupid thing he wanted her to do. But the boy did not rise with her.

She felt a momentary panic.

“C'mon,” she said. “Let's go.”

“Sit down,” he commanded, not budging.

When she didn't, when she took a step away, he grabbed her wrist and forced her down into her chair. He had surprising strength, and before she could react, he had taken her hand and interlocked his fingers with hers, then planted his elbow against his side so that their forearms were locked in place and touching.

It was a shocking thing to do, and everyone knew it. Vecque, Payne, the miners, everyone. Even had it been consensual, a meli healing was not an act to perform in public. It was a breach of common decency, a violation of the most basic level of conduct and respect.

Payne was dumbstruck. The miners, to a one, transfixed. Vecque tried in vain to free herself but could already feel the healing process starting. Had she had a few more weeks to strengthen herself and solidify her gains, she might have stopped it. But among its other effects, the Drain removed that option.

He was not a bad boy, but insecure and more concerned with what he wasn't than what he was. She identified several problems in the making, one in his liver, one his heart, and two in the small of his back where a joint was out of place. What overshadowed everything, however, was in his dick, or more precisely, in what she had come to identify as the dick brain, which ran roughly from the corpus cavernosum of his penis to his spinal cord and thence to the primitive underbelly of his brain. It was not a problem so much as a condition, a universal one and, as far as she could tell, incurable. She had tried without success to capture and extract it from other of the men.

Still, she toyed with trying again to do something about it, at least that obnoxious part of it that made him, that made all of them, so loathsome. It would serve him right, a fitting climax to this pathetic little show.

Unfortunately, she couldn't get a hold of it, much less wrest it from him. She didn't have it in her; it was unclear if anybody had. She was left with healing him of one ridiculously minor malady, and even that effort, in the wake of everything that had gone before, was enough to nearly do her in.

When she came out of it and disengaged herself, she felt assaulted. The hall was in an uproar. All around her men were clapping, hooting, making noise. Beside her, the boy had staggered to his feet. She watched him shake his head as if to clear it, then grin and raise a fist in triumph.

A part of her knew that even now, especially now, she must sit tall and not give in to them, not quail or flinch, but she couldn't do it, she lacked the strength. Why her? she asked herself. Why this? A wave of nausea swept through her body and seemed to wash away all the good that she'd accomplished. She felt battered. She wanted to strike out at someone. She wanted to curl in a ball and disappear.

Several minutes later she got a contraction in her side, and shortly after that she extruded a Level One Concretion. Reaching underneath her shirt, she removed it from her meli and placed it on the table beside her plate. It was bean-sized, gray and shriveled. She wasn't even sure what it represented, what she'd cured him of. Dully, she watched it wriggle for a few seconds before becoming still. Coiling her finger against her thumb, she flicked it to the floor in disgust. Then she struggled to her feet.

Immediately, Payne was at her side, reaching out to help.

She shrugged him off. “I'm fine. It's no big deal.”

But she wouldn't meet his eyes. Nor would she look at any of the men as she made her way past their tables. What use was it standing up to them anyway? What good did it do her being tolerant and nice? They would have their way regardless. There was no escape, either from humans or the Drain.

Following this incident, Payne began to see more miners at the healing center. This was due, he subsequently discovered, to a downturn in Vecque's ability to treat the men. He was desperate to talk to her, but she had stopped coming to the mess hall, and work kept him too busy to get away. He was worried about her, and he felt responsible for what had happened, that having raised her hopes, he had somehow primed her for a fall. The look on her face and her body language as she'd left the table haunted him.

A week passed, and he didn't see her once, which was odd though not entirely surprising. Then he heard a rumor that she was actually turning patients away. This sounded ominous and forced him into action. The next time there was a lull in work, he closed the door to the center, left a note, and made the trip to the Two Prime site.

She wasn't in the healing center, but he found her close at hand. She was in her quarters, propped on a pillow in her bed.

Her appearance shocked him. How could a person change so much, so fast? Her cheeks were hollowed out and sunken, her hair disheveled, her eyes as dull as doorknobs. She looked as if she hadn't slept or eaten in a week.

“Hello,” she said in a whisper.

He stared at her, barely able to muster a response.

“It's not as bad as all that.” She managed a weak smile. “Actually, it's better this way.”

“Better? What's better?”

“No more pretense. No more stupid fighting. It is what it is.”

“You need to eat,” he said.

“Not hungry.”

“And you're wrong. It's not what it is. It's not inevitable.”

Another wan smile. “It's good to see you, Payne.”

“It's what we make of it. It's how we respond. You have to resist this, Vecque.”

She sighed, then patted the bed. “Come sit.”

He did as she asked, perching on the edge of the mattress, feeling strangely like a suitor, pleading with her not to give up.

“It is better,” she insisted. “For both of us.”

“It's not.”

“Yes. You finally get your wish. You can have all the work you want.”

“That's not my wish.”

“It is. Don't you remember? You like it. It's what you look forward to most.”

“Not like this.”

All week long she'd been wondering if he'd come, hoping that he would. In this new and dreary world of hers, ever more difficult and diminished, he was the only light, the only one she cared to see. But now that he was here, she found herself resenting him.

“So next time be more careful what you wish for,” she said sharply.

“That's unfair.”

“Life's unfair,” she snapped.

Payne stiffened but refused to be intimidated. He had come to help, and help he would. For her part, Vecque was surprised and even a little pleased to discover that she still had some bite left. If it was any consolation to him, soon she wouldn't have the strength to be so nasty. She'd be as dumb and docile as a doormat, with no teeth or bite at all.

The Drain was on her, and despite her pose, she was terrified. Already it had robbed her of ability, and soon it would rob her of dignity, too. It was a crippling process. Her senses would eventually falter and then desert her. Her mind and then her spirit would collapse. The Drain was not a death per se, but it was like a death. It was a slow and torturous depletion, a life without a life, humiliating, deadening, and prolonged.

“You want to know what I wish for,” said Payne, “I'll tell you.”

She saw the look in his eyes and felt a quiver of fear. “I do know,” she said, looking away.

“Then say yes. Let me do it. Let me help you.”

She needed some kind of help, that was certain, if there were such a thing for her. Either that, or to be left alone. But what he wanted truly frightened her.

“You never stop barking, do you?”

“It's up to you,” he said. “You can make me stop.”

“And if it's a trap?”

“If what's a trap?” Unlike her, he was not dominated by wariness and suspicion. To his eyes the world was plain to see. All he wanted was a chance to heal her. To use his meli. To bring her some relief.

“Hope,” she answered. “Thinking there's nothing to lose.”

“It's never wrong to hope. It's never wrong to try. That's the Drain talking. That's not you.”

“Is it?” The thought had not occurred to her, or if it had, she'd forgotten. It was hard to tell the difference between the one and the other anymore.

“It's no trap if we go in with our eyes open. If we know what we're doing. If we're prepared.”

This made a certain sense to her. She sat up in bed, buoyed by his confidence.

“And the fact that it's never worked before? Not ever. Not once.”

“Mobestis healed Emm.”

“That's a story.”

Payne was not so sure. In his zeal, fact mingled freely with fiction. At this stage it seemed irrelevant to draw too fine a line.

“It's a good one, if it is. And if it isn't…well, that's even better, because then it really happened; it's true.”

He took her hand, sandwiching it between his own. “How old are you, Vecque?”

She blinked, caught off guard by both the question and the touch. In all their time together, their intimacy had been limited to words. She had never known a person's skin to be so hot. He burned, while she felt deathly cold.