The Healer (29 page)

They rounded a thumb of sandstone and came into the mouth of a broad, sandy wash, when all at once the convoy slowed. To the right, up the wash that they were crossing, was a transport truck, partly hidden by a large creosote bush a month or two past its bloom. Both the front and rear tires of the truck were beached in sand. Its rear door was closed, but the driver door hung open, lolling on its hinges like a tongue. Its chrome handle was the source of the reflection Payne had seen.

“That's it then,” said Bolt.

Meera audibly exhaled.

Payne rolled down his window to get a better look, but Bolt snapped at him to put it up.

“What is it? What's wrong?”

“What's wrong is you don't know what you're doing. You're disobeying orders. You don't know what's out there. You don't know what you might be letting in.”

“Easy, Bolt,” said Meera.

“Easy nothing. Wouldn't be no Conks if no one made ‘em. Wouldn't be none of this if it weren't for him.”

“It's not his fault. You know it isn't. It's not any of theirs.”

“Tell Gird that.”

“Who's Gird?” asked Payne.

“The driver of that truck,” answered Meera.

“Where is he? What happened to him?”

Bolt gripped the wheel. “You got eyes. You tell me.”

It seemed plain that he'd driven off the road and up into the canyon. Why he had wasn't clear.

Payne suggested they take a closer look.

The convoy was moving out again. Bolt gestured to the door. “Be my guest.”

“Stop it,” Meera ordered, then grabbed Payne by the arm. “You stay right here.”

From the rear compartment came a tooth-rattling groan.

“Calling to its master,” muttered Bolt, throwing the truck in gear and falling in line.

“What's that mean?” asked Payne.

Meera took the liberty of answering. “They think there's something out there. Something different. Something new.”

“Don't think,” Bolt said darkly. “Know.”

Tactfully, she disagreed. “There've been rumors ever since there's been a Pen. Ever since there've been Concretions. Superstitions. Humans have them, too. No one's ever seen a thing.”

“Gird did,” said Bolt. “Or heard. More likely that. He was right behind me, bringing up the rear last night. I heard something, too.”

“What?” asked Payne.

“I don't believe I could describe it.”

“The wind,” suggested Meera.

He gave her a look. “You want to think that, you go ahead. And while you're at it, you can tell your friend here how the wind took the others. And why you wouldn't let him go and look for Gird.”

“Because you would have left him.”

Bolt grunted.

“Why did Gird stop and you didn't?” asked Payne. “Last night. The sound you heard. Were you tempted to stop? Was it a call?”

“Tempted to get the trip over with is what I was. And yes, it was a call. But it wasn't meant for me.”

“For Gird?”

Bolt shrugged.

“He can't have gone that far.”

“Far enough.”

“In a day? We could at least look for him.”

Despite himself, Bolt was moved. This healer, for all his foolishness, had a good heart.

“It won't help. Besides, you've got business elsewhere. Save your strength.” He shifted gear and picked up speed, heading east along the lip of a wide canyon. After three or four miles, the road turned abruptly north. The sun was on their right now, fat and yolky, and the mountains, hardly closer than when they'd set out, had taken on an amber glow. The wind was dying off. The sky was filled with golden particles of dust.

They switchbacked up a steep escarpment that crested on a rock-strewn ledge. Several hundred feet below, the dirt and gravel road petered out at the head of a long, gently upsloping canyon. At its head was a barrackslike building, and beyond it, teardrop-shaped and at least half a mile in length, the Pen.

Inside it were a myriad of shapes and forms, some moving slowly but most fixed and still. Payne searched for his brother, not knowing where or what to look for. It was too far away to make out details. But not too far to make out sounds.

There were a plethora of them, and the canyon walls echoed them back and forth, doubling and tripling their number. Some were sweet, but most were not. In the van of their truck their cargo answered with a wail.

Bolt now did avail himself of the earplugs, and Meera did the same. But Payne chose not to, demanding of himself the full experience. The sounds might hurt his ears, but he didn't believe that they would hurt his person. These were his creations, after all, his and his fellow healers. In a way he couldn't express, he felt in tune with them.

They reached the canyon floor, then waited their turn to be unloaded. Two helmeted, gloved and armored guards worked the job. Usually, Concretions came out as soon as the rear doors of the van were opened, tumbling down a slanted chute into the Pen. Occasionally, they remained inside, or else, because of something on their undersurface that interfered with motility (tentacles, claws, a sticky or gooey secretion), they got stuck on the chute, and then they had to be coaxed and prodded down. This explained the long and pointed pikes the guards carried, although it didn't explain the pleasure they sometimes took in using them.

At the end of the chute the day's deliveries huddled in a sort of pack, which grew as each truck discharged its load. Payne had never seen such a concentration of Concretions. Few tesques, and fewer humans, had.

There was a fleshy-looking cylinder that had invaginated into itself, like a telescope in reverse, and was writhing on the ground; a two-foot-wide corpuscle whose oozing surface popped and bubbled; a pint-sized, vaguely human-looking pod; a larger pod, shaped like a human torso and covered with lips; a delicately veined purple vapor that flickered with
light; a ball of greenish pinlike projections; a branching fan of multijointed filaments that moved across the ground spasmodically, in fits and starts; a brain shaped bit of protoplasm that quivered like a bowl of jelly as it gradually disintegrated.

And more. Many more. There was a staggering variety of shapes and forms, a bounty of the most deadly Concretions known to man. It was a testament to the creative breadth of the healing art. By giving form to illness, a healer could neutralize the most dreadful threats to human life, restoring health to that noble, but imperiled organism. Here, before Payne's eyes, was object proof of the majesty and greatness of his profession, and he felt honored to be a part of its tradition. Indebted, too, to all the healers who had gone before him and done their deeds of healing. They had paved the way, though few had lived to see what he was seeing now. And none had ever been able to help their own kind. On their behalf, and on his own, he felt cheated.

The truck in the front of them dispatched its cargo, a long and wriggling iteration of interdigitated, mandible-shaped joints that shrieked as soon as it hit the chute, undulating down it like a spastic worm. Payne broke out in a sweat, unaccountably seized with a desire to run after it. He grabbed the door handle, and Meera, in turn, grabbed a pair of earplugs from the box on the seat and jammed them in his ears.

“I know that one,” he gasped.

She unpeeled his fingers from the handle, locked the door and told him not to look, but he did anyway.

He'd extruded it that very morning. The woman had been crippled by arthritis and was now walking somewhere on her own, free of her debilitating disease. Likewise, her disease was now free of her, but judging by its cries of woe, none too happy about it. It joined the other Concretions, some of which had begun to wander off. Payne breathed easier. Was that a call? he wondered.

The truck in front of them pulled away, and theirs took its place.
Bolt backed up to the chute and rolled down his window. The symphony of sound grew louder.

“Got a visitor,” he called to one of the guards.

Meera was bending over Payne. “You okay?”

He gave a nod, but she was not so sure and glanced at Bolt. “What do you think?”

Bolt shrugged. “You do what you want. You know my opinion.”

“Thanks. I appreciate the vote of confidence.” She turned to Payne. “Listen closely. I'm going to get out. You stay here and wait until I come back to get you. After that, stay next to me. Don't go wandering off. And don't do anything without asking.”

He promised this, and she had him open the door, climbing swiftly over him and out of the cab, then shutting the door behind her. Walking to the rear of the truck, she greeted each of the guards by name. Like every other guard and every driver, they were spooked by the recent disappearances. While neither of them had ever had a problem with the lady, both were happy, once she had the information she wanted, to be rid of her.

Fetching Payne, she headed for the perimeter trail around the Pen, which followed the line of the fence. From up-canyon came the whisper of a breeze, soft and dry in their faces. The sun was close to setting, its line of shadow creeping steadily across the ground, and she set a brisk pace, for they didn't have time to dawdle. The drivers were always impatient to get back, and with what had happened the night before, they wouldn't wait a second longer than they had to.

They passed a mound of sand and dirt inside the Pen, as if some large animal had recently been burrowing. And then a section of the fence that had been freshly repaired. Meera noted this while stubbornly resisting the rumors. Wyn was troublesome, and he was changing, but not the way they said.

After years of relative stasis, during which he had, remarkably, kept the thing, or the process, or whatever it was, at bay, the balance
seemed to be shifting against him. Her hope was, at the very least, to shift the balance back. She worried she had waited too long.

They reached a pocket in the canyon wall where the trail curved away from the fence, skirting a clump of cacti. Meera halted just beyond this spot. Inside the Pen, less than ten feet away from them, was a crystalline Concretion in the process of sublimation. It was polyhedric; its prismlike facets, once sharp, were now mostly melted. A dying ray of sunlight caught one of its remaining edges and broke into a rainbow on the ground. Nearby sat a shaggy-headed, dark-skinned creation. It was crouched on its haunches and seemed frozen in place.

No matter how she prepared herself, how much she screwed up her courage and steeled her nerves, the first glimpse was always an ordeal for her. Payne was studying the crystalline Concretion, his expression one of interest, when she said, “That's him.”

He followed her finger, then took a step forward, but she put a hand on his arm.

“Be patient. He'll come. He knows I'm here. He smells me.”

As if on cue, the creature raised its nose. It sniffed the air around it, quickly honing in on the source of the scent. Rising, it approached them.

“Hello, Wyn,” Meera said evenly. “I've brought someone to see you.”

Payne gaped. Wyn? In what way, what possible way, could this be his brother?

The creature looked more beast than tesque. It was wiry and lean. Its ribs poked through its skin in the way of an animal living in the wild, existing at the edge of survival. Its body was coated in a layer of dust and grime. There were scrapes and scratches on its arms and legs, and its hair was knotted in long and ropy cords.

It made no sound, and Payne wondered if it had lost the capacity to speak. It stood erect, chin slightly raised, nostrils flared, sniffing in their direction.

This was not his brother. It couldn't be. And yet it was, or at least some semblance of him. It had his mouth and lips. It had his bulging forehead. It stood in a vaguely familiar pose.

It also had a pale blue knob projecting from its side, its meli, like the tip of some appendage, or something grafted on. And it had the strangest colored eyes. His brother's had been as black as coal, but these were a cold, dull blue. And their aim was slightly off, as if the creature couldn't see or focus.

“He's blind,” said Meera. “I talk to him, but I'm sure he's deaf, too. He's losing his senses. It's taking them over one by one.”

“Wyn,” Payne whispered, and then again, a little louder. He took a step forward. His heart was in throat. Another step, and then another, until he was up against the fence.

Dimly, he heard Meera urging him not to get so close. But he wanted to get close; he had questions for this thing, his brother, questions best asked face to face.

He started climbing the fence. Got all of two feet off the ground before his progress was abruptly halted. Meera had him by the legs, and eventually she managed to coax him down and away from the fence. But half a minute later, like a sleepwalker or a bloodhound, he tried again, lunging forward. This time she was prepared, planting her body squarely in front of his, blocking his way.

“I told you it's not safe to get close. He's unpredictable.”

Gently, she steered him away and started talking to him, telling him a story to get his mind off what he was seeing, to soften the blow. Bit by bit he came around. It was her voice that did it, that brought him back. The story turned out to be about her father, who'd been sick and had come to Rampart in search of a cure. He tried one healer, then another, but both had failed to help him.

“He was very ill,” she said. “He was close to dying. Your brother had only been in Rampart for a little while. He was young to be assigned to the Tower. Too young, I think. But he was confident—he was
brimming with confidence—and that convinced people that he was able. At any rate, my father had nothing to lose, and he put himself in your brother's hands. The healing took two days and a night. It was grueling, Payne. By the end he could barely move.”

“Who? Your father?”

“No. My father was healed. Wyn had cured him.”

Payne tried to digest this. Two days and a night were scarcely imaginable. “Why did it take so long?”

Down by the gate the trucks were lined up to depart. Above the cacophony of the Pen a horn sounded.