The Healer (30 page)

“It was Sixth Degree,” said Meera. “Embedded Sixth. It was all over his body. Locked in and advanced.”

“Still,” said Payne, for he himself had never needed more than half a day. And there was nothing in his and his brother's all-too-brief life together, no game or activity or relationship, in which Wyn, his chief competitor and idol, had not bested him.

“He was new to Rampart,” said Meera. “He hadn't done that many Sixes.”

The creature, his brother, made a noise—part mewl, part growl—then thrust his chin forward and stuffed his fingers into his mouth in mimicry of being fed, of eating.

The horn sounded a second time.

“That's Bolt,” said Meera. “We have to go.”

Reluctantly, Payne let himself be led away. The shock and horror of seeing his brother were beginning to wear off, or rather, in self-defense he was walling them off. Reason was a refuge, or had been in the past, but when he tried to understand what he'd seen and heard, he couldn't. Meera's explanation seemed inadequate. Knowing Wyn, or having known him, he suspected there was more to it than what she'd said. Then again, he wasn't thinking very clearly. More than anything, he felt numb.

Meera had her own walls when it came to Wyn, and in contrast to Payne's, hers were coming down. For the first time in years she felt vulnerable. She kept waiting for Payne to say the words she wanted to hear but that she didn't want to have to drag from him. With every step his silence became more worrisome and oppressive to her. The Pen was full of noise, but the only sound from him was the crunch of sand and pebbles beneath his feet. It was strange, she thought, how a person could learn and practice patience, could weave and watch and wait for years, only in the end to lose that patience in a heartbeat. It was a sign, she felt, of something flawed inside her.

She held out to the last second. The trucks were rumbling out, and Bolt was frantically motioning for them to get inside the cab. She turned and faced her only hope.

“Please, Payne. Help him.”

Two days later, a storm blew in from the south; a storm of wind, striking like a fist, stirring up the earth and flinging it into the sky. It was as if the world had been turned upside down. Sand filled the air in great sheets and billows, blotting out the sun, making breath itself a hazard. People shuttered up their doors and windows and huddled in their homes. Commerce ground to a halt. City life, such as it was, came to a standstill.

The storm raged for three full days before exhausting itself. When it finally did, and the people of Rampart ventured out, they found the city's pristine streets a waste of sand dunes overrun by rats, whose nests and tunnels had been destroyed by the storm. And these rats, deposed of hearth and home, were in no mood for play. They were angry rats, disoriented and snappish rats, and they bit whatever flesh happened to come their way. And in their mouths, their bites, there lived a quiet and unassuming little microbe, content to coexist in harmony with its
host, but which on contact with the blood of humans multiplied and turned offensive. As if, like the rats themselves, it was not happy being evicted from its natural home, as if, in fact, it bore a grudge. So that just as the good people of Rampart were digging out and cleaning up from the storm, they were forced back inside, for the epidemic of rats and their fellow travelers was not a trifling matter.

And then a strange thing happened. Snakes appeared. Adders mostly, chestnut-backed and stout, themselves dislodged by the storm. But also tempted out by the patter of little feet, by the heat of mammalian blood and the promise of a tasty meal. Wave upon wave of them materialized, swarming across the dunes, twitching their brightly colored tails to lure their prey. In the history of Rampart no one had ever seen so many snakes.

They had a field day with the rats. A bona fide, down-home feast. And when they had gorged themselves, and sunned themselves, and mated if so inclined, they crawled back underground. Or else they left the city completely, for like a flock of migratory birds, they disappeared from sight. It happened overnight. One day they were everywhere; the next, nowhere to be found.

At last, after being trapped inside for days on end, the people of Rampart were able to leave their homes. They could go outside without being pummeled by wind and sand, gnawed upon by a rat, or bitten by a snake. The sun was as fierce as ever, the heat as relentless, but those were everyday occurrences; they were predictable, not fickle like the minds of reptiles and mammals.

No one was more relieved to get out than Meera, who'd been steadily going mad cooped up inside her house, thwarted by the elements. She had to talk to Payne, but first she had to substantiate a disturbing new rumor. But before either of these, before anything, she simply had to get outside and breathe.

A thick layer of sand covered the tiles of her patio. The beach below the bluff was altered by the storm, flattened, as if it had been
scoured. The Lac du Lac alone was unchanged; it shone like a medallion. She could see for miles and miles, as if the air itself had been scrubbed clean.

There was one other thing that needed doing before she left, and she went inside to change her clothes, then hurried to the water's edge to have a swim. She swam often, and always before important business. It was a release for her, the sea a calming influence. It put her in the proper frame of mind. Her habit was to swim for a while, then turn and float on her back. She did this, but sadly, it didn't bring the peace she wanted. She was too nervous; she couldn't relax. Had she been a fish, perhaps, with a fish's deep and timeless mind. But hers was human and excited.

She had not been inside the Tower since accompanying her father years before. She'd had no reason or interest in returning. But as soon as she set foot inside, it was as though she'd never left. The long, forbidding corridors, the echoing footsteps, the lines of patients waiting to be healed: all came back to her in a rush. She heard their hushed voices and remembered her own hushed voice. She saw their weary, shuffling gaits and remembered her father's walk. She half expected to see him shuffling by her side, reaching out to steady himself on her arm.

Wyn's healing chamber had been on the fourth floor; Payne's was three flights higher, on the seventh. His waiting room was furnished in the standard way, with comfortable chairs, a couch and a pair of beds. It was large as waiting rooms went, consistent with the fact that he was in demand. Wyn's, she recalled, was smaller.

Nearly every chair was occupied when she arrived, and there was a woman in one of the beds, tended by a man. All save the bedbound woman, who seemed to be asleep, glanced up and eyed her as she entered.

Getting seen by a healer of the Tower was a matter, first, of getting to the Tower, the admission to which, provided that a number of fairly easily obtainable documents were in order, was open to any human. After that it was a matter of waiting. Patients were taken in turn, except for those rare few in whom a delay might prove fatal. The people in the waiting room were sizing her up to see if she was one of these, which clearly she was not. Relieved, they returned to the business of waiting.

All save the man beside the bed, who cleared his throat and introduced himself. He also introduced his wife, the bed-bound woman. They'd been waiting since the night before to see the healer. They were second in line, he made a point of saying. There was one other woman ahead of them. She'd just stepped out to take a shower.

Meera had forgotten that there were baths and showers, as well as food and kitchens. It came back to her how long the waits could be.

“She showers every hour,” the man added.

“Oh,” she said, not so very interested in the bathing habits of a woman she had never met. But he seemed to want to talk.

“Every hour on the hour. That's thirteen since we've been here. Just when she dries out, she gets up and showers again.” He shook his head. “Never seen anything like it.”

“She must be very clean by now.”

He looked to see if she was joking, but her mind was elsewhere. She was trying to think of a way to jump the line.

“It's been packed since we got here,” said the man. “He's a very busy guy.”

“Every healer's busy,” she pointed out.

“Sure. That's their job. But this one…” He wagged his thumb at the door to the healing room. “He's something else.”

“I have to talk to him.”

“Sure you do. So does everybody.”

“It's not about me,” she said, as though this would make a difference. “It's about a friend.”

“You're here to help a friend?”

“Yes,” she said, brightening. “That's right.”

Clearly, he didn't believe her. “That's good of you. It really is. Me, I'm here to help my wife. Everybody's here for help. So you might as well do like the rest of us, sit back and wait your turn.”

But Meera had had enough of waiting, and half an hour later, when the door to the healing room opened, she was prepared to make her presence known. Every eye snapped to the healer who emerged, hers included, and all talk and activity in the waiting room ceased.

This was a part of the job that Payne hated, the one that was hardest to bear. The imploring looks, the tense silence, the neverending well of want and need. Apologizing for the wait was by now routine, and he always felt he should do more: work harder, work faster, work more efficiently. He was sorry, so very sorry, that they needed him so much, that they were all so sick.

“Who's next?” he asked wearily. He was in his eighteenth straight hour of work. The storm had closed the Tower, and in its aftermath patients were arriving in droves.

The cleanest woman in the city stood up and claimed that right. The man caring for his wife announced that they were after her.

Meera leapt up. “I need to talk to you.”

The man shot her a withering look. “She's last. She's not even sick.”

The sight of her was a jolt to Payne. His heart began to race. He scanned the room to be sure that there was nothing that couldn't wait and promised to be brief. The man, whose wife had yet to stir, was visibly upset. The woman of the showers left the room. Payne stood away from the door and ushered Meera in.

She apologized for arriving unannounced. She had news for him. They didn't have much time.

Payne told her not to worry. “They can wait a little.”

“That's not what I mean. They're after him, Payne.”

“Who?”

“Your brother.”

“Who is?”

“The guards. The drivers. They've formed some kind of vigilante committee. They think it's him.”

“Him? What do you mean?”

“The drivers who've disappeared. They're blaming Wyn.”

“But he's locked up.”

“They think he has some way out. That he escapes.”

“And does what?”

“I don't know. Calls them. Traps them. Kills them.”

“Wyn wouldn't do that.”

“No. Wyn wouldn't. But that thing, it's growing all the time. In the beginning you couldn't see it. If you didn't know firsthand, you could barely tell there was anything wrong. But lately…the last few months…it's taking over. Every day there's more of it and less of him.”

Payne could remember roughhousing with Wyn as a boy, how sometimes Wyn would fly off the handle and strike out at him. He had a streak of anger, or of something, but it was impulsive, not premeditated or cruel. It was inconceivable to him that his brother would trap and kill.

“If he escapes, then why go back? Why voluntarily let himself be caged? It doesn't make sense.”

“For food,” said Meera.

“Food?” He didn't understand.

“He has to eat. That's why he comes back. They feed him. I pay them to. Sometimes I do it myself. He comes for food.”

“You feed him?”

She nodded.

He was very tired, and his mind was not sharp. Something about this bothered him; he couldn't exactly put his finger on it, and it was strange, because he should have been happy that she was caring for his
brother. And he was. But at the same time he had a premonition of danger, as if her kindness were a threat or a warning.

“How long have you been doing that?”

“A long time.”

“How long?” he repeated. It seemed important.

“Since I put him there,” she said.

Half a minute passed. Noises filtered in from the waiting room.

She ignored them. “There's more to the story than I told you.”

This did not come as a huge surprise. A healing, even a difficult one, should not have turned his brother into a beast. It made no sense.

She leaned against the healing bed, which was still warm from its previous occupant, and with a sigh unburdened herself.

“After my father was healed, he felt indebted to your brother, and he offered him a gift. A present for what he'd done. Your brother had the audacity to ask for me. This made my father quite angry. It made me angry, too.

“But I was also curious, and, I confess, a little flattered. Or maybe titillated is a better word. And for saving my father's life, I felt indebted to your brother, too.

“So without my father's knowledge, I went to him and asked what he had in mind. What did he want with me?

“He said he only wanted to talk to me, and for me to talk to him. He'd never known a human outside the healing chamber. He was curious about us. Wasn't I curious about him?

“We talked all night, and when morning came, it was time for me to go, but he wouldn't let me leave. He threatened to tell my father that I'd disobeyed him. Then he bragged that he would make it worth my while to stay.”

“How?” asked Payne.

“I'm coming to that.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“It seemed enough for you to see him. To absorb one thing at a time.”

“Did you think I wouldn't have agreed to help him? If I knew he treated you like that? Do you think it would have mattered?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Would it have?”

“He's my brother,” said Payne, which to him said it all.