The Healer (13 page)

“Two wrongs don't make a right,” he said.

“What's wrong is letting someone suffer needlessly. What's wrong is not acting for fear of making another mistake.” She spoke forcibly and with authority, as if she had firsthand knowledge of this. “There's killing and there's mercy killing. The first is a crime. The second is an act of charity. It's a generosity. A blessing.”

“By whose authority?”

“The heart's authority,” she said. “By order of the laws of kindness and compassion and basic human decency.”

Payne felt obliged to point out that he wasn't human.

A look of impatience crossed her face. “Stop it. You're not ignorant, so don't act it. Tesque, human, what's the difference? Mercy's mercy. And as for you and your so-called mistake, a healer's job is to intervene. The outcome of what you do is not always what you planned or hoped for, but that doesn't mean it was wrong to act.”

He appreciated her support, though he was a little taken aback by the heat of its delivery. It was also slightly strange: was she condoning what he'd done? Whatever she meant, it didn't change his mind. The
idea of helping Vecque by intentionally taking her life was an oxymoron.

“The poor thing's begged you to put her out of her misery,” she said. “She's pleaded. She wants to die. For both of you, in the deepest and maybe truest and most abiding sense, her death would be a healing.”

“You're telling me to kill her then? Is that the cost of my train trip out? Is that the price of my ticket?”

“No,” she said. “There is no price. We're leaving and you're coming with us, and I doubt that you'll ever be coming back. As for Vecque, you're free to do as you please. You can leave her as she is or you can help her find some peace. It's a difficult decision, but it's the only one you get to make.”

She headed for the door, then stopped for a final word. “It's an unfair world, Payne, and not just here. There're problems everywhere. Solutions, too. That's the good news. The bad news is, there are no perfect ones.”

The man had silver hair and a ruddy, intemperate face. His eyes were bloodshot and wild. In front of him lay a dwindled pile of checkered chips; ahead of him, if his luck didn't turn, a cold tomorrow. But he had a hunch, which came to him in the form of a voice that seemed to originate outside his body but to be lodged in the very center of his being, and clutching his remaining chips, he reached across the felted table to place his bet on Number Five. Five fingers in a hand, five prayers, five combos to the Big Money, five paths to glory. But suddenly, the hand seized up, became a fist, a knot of clenched and trembling muscle. It was the right hand, the hand farthest from the heart but closest to the avid, thinking brain. In the gaming halls of Aksagetta, where thought was captive to desire and cupidity ran rampant, this rebellion of the distal forelimb happened frequently enough that it had a name, the Claw, sometimes also called the Tetany. To this some people tacked on Greed, the Tetany of Greed, as greed was felt
by many to be the cause behind the reflex, rooted as it was in the fear of letting go. But when the spasm moved from the puzzled man's hand to his forearm and then to his shoulder, someone suggested that perhaps this was a different sort of tetany, and when it moved to his face and jaw, an aisle was cleared in the clamorous hall and he was wheeled out on a serving cart swept clear of drinks and condiments and rushed by elevator to a room thirty floors below. Where a healer waited.

The aisle closed up in seconds. No holding back the press of humans, surging through the doors, streaming in from all directions to fill the gaps and take their places, to feel the heat and play the games. The plushly carpeted floor, the dim, forgiving light, the vast pavilion and hundreds like it in dozens of buildings crowded side by side like stacks of chips—all this and more defined the city, beckoning any and all to take a chance, have a little fun, loosen up the joints, live a little beyond your means for once in your penny-pinching lives, share the wealth, dig deep, buy in.

Aksagetta, poco loco, diablo puro, paradise for games and gambling of every sort. Aksagetta, caterer to the wanton best of human nature, the optimus eternus, the pleasure-loving, self-indulgent creature unwilling to be tamed or denied. Aksagetta, where avarice was not a naughty word. Aksagetta, where fun was the ripe fruit and conscience, podrido, rotten. Aksagetta, spun of gold. Aksagetta, built on promise. Aksagetta, shameless, brash and fine.

The city had it all: the tables and the tracks, the hippodromes and elevated circuit jumps, the faux dirt fighting pits, the bandstand relays, the filamented bowling greens. And more: the crap-shoots, the funnel races, the futures toss, the psychic lift, the winking jacks of opportunity, the betting parlors, the chambers of hyperbole and accident. And more still: the six-two montes, the pea and princess games, restitution bingo, extreme assault and sanction, the pools of exactitude, the final lottery, the roving pony shows. There was a game, a shuck, a fantasy for everyone, and the people came in droves, young and old alike, filing into the vast halls and casinos like ants to sugar, hungry for the sweetnesses
of life, liking their chances, ready for a roll, and for the most part orderly, like the good citizens they were. Although sometimes a wave of panic would come from nowhere and sweep the lines, causing a frantic rush to get at things that were never in short supply on Aksagetta, as though implicit in plenty lay the fear of scarcity, and elbows would be thrown and bodies pushed and shoved, and people would get hurt. Which was one reason to have healers in the buildings, to tend to the fallen.

There was another reason, slightly more sobering: of the humans who came to Aksagetta a fair number were elderly, enjoying an extended vacation, perhaps one last final fling. Of these, some would fall ill, or be ill on arrival but not know it, or know it but be in denial, hiding it from their loved ones or themselves. And, as was often the case with old and worn-out flesh, these illnesses were sometimes grave and advanced. Healers were needed to combat them, healers of something more than modest skill, to ensure that these holidays were not beset by misery, or worse, demise.

Payne was one such healer, and nothing he had seen since his arrival had caused him undue trouble or alarm. Healing was his element, and the conditions under which he worked were much better than at the Pannus mine. The hours were long but not interminable; a part of every day was his to do with as he pleased. And the equipment at his disposal was new and up-to-date. Principally, this was for the benefit of his clientele, who demanded it, although there were advantages that accrued to him as well.

The healing bed, for one, was downy soft and heated. Far more comfortable than the worn and lumpy bed he'd known at Pannus, especially if a session lasted long. The walls and ceiling of the healing chamber were backlit with retinal-harmonic light that had a mild, analgesic effect on patients in pain. Similarly, there was a Boomine synthesizer to soften or disguise the healers' voices, as certain humans could not relax in the presence of the gamey diction and rhythm of unmodified tesque speech. Every room was stocked with an epidermal
barrier spray for those who on principle decried skin-to-skin contact with a tesque (and were willing to accept the decreased efficacy that accompanied its use). And for those too squeamish or genteel to lay eyes on their own concreted illnesses (which applied to virtually all humans), there was an entirely separate extrusion room.

These amenities made the work go smoothly, as innovations, in health as elsewhere, often did. Of course, with improved technology went heightened expectations, the paradox being that the patients of Aksagetta, on the whole, were less satisfied than the Pannus miners had ever been. For after all was said and done, the act of healing fell to the healer. And healers—their patients' wishes, desires, demands and presumptions notwithstanding—were the flesh, bone and brain they'd always been.

When Payne first laid eyes on the stricken gamer from the casino, the man was stiff as a board, though anything but still. Underneath the thin blanket of his skin his muscles twitched and popped like static. From his throat came a panoply of grunts and gasps as he tried in vain to move air in and out of his lungs. In one respect his condition was a blessing, for rigid bodies were much easier to move than limp ones. With the help of the floor manager who'd brought him, Payne had little trouble transferring him from the makeshift gurney to the healing bed.

His larynx incapacitated, the man could not express himself in words, but the pupils of his eyes, spared the paralytic tetany, spoke volumes. He was terrified, not merely, Payne surmised, by the sensate imminence of death, but by the closeness of the tesque who hovered over him. Without time to activate the Boomine synthesizer or coat him with the barrier spray, Payne uttered a word of encouragement, tied him down to avoid being flattened by an errant, spastic limb, then joined him posthaste on the healing bed.

It was hard at first to relax, for the man himself was so tense, his body wound so tight it seemed about to snap. This worried Payne. The stress of muscles contracting all at once, agonists against antagonists, flexors against extensors, could fracture bone. Not to mention what it
did to breathing, which was to make it simply impossible. The man was turning blue for lack of air. Fortunately, he was also sweating, providing the crucial electrolytic bridge for Payne to start his work. Quickly, he wrapped their arms together, lay back and began.

It didn't take long to identify the problem. It was coil-shaped and finely toothed and sat astride the hypothalamus with trailing fibers that stretched into the nearby mammillary bodies and beyond. When he enhanced the signal by increasing the area of neuroepidermal contact (thereby recruiting additional recognitive buds), he found a similar lesion in the man's premotor cortex and a third one in his pons.

In an orderly, stepwise fashion he defined the epitopes, synchronized himself harmonically and began the process of capture and exchange. Extraction followed, and abruptly, as if a rigid pike had been removed from him, the man went limp. He sagged into the bed as if deflated and drew a gasping breath, and then another and another. The chips that he was clutching in his palm fell clattering to the floor.

Remodeling and concentration could take from hours to a day, depending on the level and complexity of the Concretion. Payne completed his in thirty minutes, then went into the inner room to extrude.

Each stage of healing had its pleasures, but to him the last stage, extrusion, was the best. He got to see the fruit of his labor. He got to make a thing, an entity, that was singular and had not been made before. Best of all, for however long it took, his meli was alive, and the feeling that that gave him was like no other. Visceral, and utterly sublime.

What came out was long and thin and straight, like fishing line. It had a liquid coating, a sheen that dried upon exposure to the air. And as it dried, the Concretion slowly twisted on itself, until it resembled on a larger scale what he had visualized inside the man.

For most healers, this similarity in appearance was uncommon, for while Concretions in theory derived equally from both parties, in practice, because of the effort put into extraction and extrusion, they typically bore the imprint of the healer more than the healed. But Payne was not like most
healers. He found it better not to force the issue, preferring to allow his Concretions to take their natural forms, shaping them only subtly, with a deft, almost feathery touch. He teased his creations but did not coerce them, and the results he found more beautiful and striking for such restraint.

By the time the Concretion had reified and he'd disposed of it, the man he'd saved from death was gone. He'd left a chip behind him, a tip, it seemed. Being relatively new to Aksagetta, it was the first one Payne had received.

He eyed it with uncertainty. Was it ethical, he wondered, to accept a gratuity for services that, for the pure pleasure of it, he would have done for free? Was it honorable, or principled, to be paid for one's enjoyment? Was this a form of bribery? In the future would the man expect a favor and would he, Payne, feel obliged to bestow it? Would he feel pressed to cater to him in lieu of someone else who was in greater need?

In fact, they never saw each other again, for after returning to the hall from whence he came, the man put all his chips on chance, and when he lost, he moved to restitution bingo, where, deeming it most unlikely that fate would curse him twice in a single day, he wrote a promissory note for all his worldly goods and savings, and was a heartbeat away from realizing his wildest dreams when the same inner voice that had previously whispered to him spoke again, this time with a force that seemed to shake the hall, causing the bingo ball to pop improvidently from one slot to the next, so that instead of winning, he came in second, which is to say, he bought the farm. Scarcely two hours after being pulled from the brink of death, he was faced with death again, this time self-appointed, as he balanced on a ledge thirty floors above the teeming street and contemplated suicide, while below him Payne finished his shift and left the building, unaware of the danger of falling objects, tired but satisfied with another day's work.

There were places where a healer could blow off steam, basement joints and backroom parlors off the beaten path for those with energy
to burn. Principally, these were newcomers who, not yet affected by the Drain, were in the market for short-term situations, personal but fluid, friendly but not too involved. Given a healer's future, there was much to recommend a relaxed, low-maintenance level of commitment, and, freed from the straitjacketed world of Pannus, Payne initially had been an avid participant. But after several months he tired of the life, which, for all its pleasures, left him feeling hollow.

Now after work he went directly home to his apartment, which was small and austere. He ate alone and had begun to wonder if solitude might not be best for him, might, in fact, not be his natural state. He'd heard the rumors circulating among the healers about him. That he was a lone wolf, a recluse, that he set himself apart. That he didn't like the company of others. That he thought that he was better.

And more, that he was different from the rest of them. Invulnerable, they said. Immune to the Drain. An aberration among healers, an anomaly, a Grotesque among Grotesques. He would raise the humans' expectations and make all of them have to work that much harder. He was a threat to their already abbreviated lives. He was a menace.

And other rumors, too, contradictory ones, that, in fact, he was no different than the rest of them, only treated differently, which was why he didn't get drained. He was someone's favorite, it was whispered, someone's pet, and not required to work so hard. His quota was lower. He saw less, they said, than half his fair share. No wonder he kept to himself. Who under such circumstances would dare to show his face? And it was just as well because he couldn't be trusted. He had a temper. He'd killed another healer. And not just one.

All of which explained why the other healers, on the whole, kept their distance from him, and why he, in turn, kept his from them. They had a low opinion of him, which mirrored his opinion of himself. They rarely approached him, and never outside of work. Which made it all the more remarkable when one of them came knocking at his door.