The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (19 page)

He leaned forward, looked
at me and said, “In this country, in medicine, for healing
ourselves we have legitimately available only what doesn’t work
because everything that does work is banished by the Mafia medical
monopolizers into your pitch darkness. Partly this is so we can
never compare the unavailable good that works with the available
bad that doesn’t, because if we ever did we’d kill all the
doctors.”

I was supposed to applaud,
I guess. But instead I said, “Frankly, Hank, that sounds like a lot
of crap to me. That is, if I know what you said. But if what I
think you meant was actually true, why would millions of people
keep on going to the same old doctors for the same old—”

I stopped, because Hank’s
expression fascinated me. He had squeezed his teeth and lips
together, and his eyes together, pulling the top of his skull down
toward his chin, and kind of scrunching all his face into the
middle of it. That, of course, wasn’t what he’d actually done, but
it did look painful.

After a few seconds his
features slowly smoothed, and he stretched them around as though to
bring blood back into his chops, then got up from his chair. He
pushed back the bottom of his blue jacket so he could jam both
hands into his rear pants pockets, then walked around his desk and
across the room, turned, strode back.

He stopped about three
feet from where I sat, and said, “Sheldon, I have said things to
you that you may consider shocking, maybe even crazy.”

He was looking down at me,
obviously waiting for an answer, so I said, “Some, but I haven’t
decided yet whether you’re a basket of fruit cakes or not. The
jury’s still out.”

He bobbed his head in that
brisk nod of his, sharp nose slicing the air. “I knew, before we
began, you would hear many terrible things about me, some true,
mostly lies. You have already heard a little, from the two police
officers at least.”

“
I suppose you mean
there’ll be more.”

“
Yes. The big guns—big
mouths—have not fired themselves off yet. When they do, most minds
are captured quickly and imprisoned in delusion. I have seen this
many times. It is difficult to resist, even for one so strong of
mind as you.”

I smiled. He wasn’t such a
bad old duck, maybe.

“
Attend this, then,
Sheldon, with your ears and also with the magical universe between
them: In this country, for healing ourselves, we are forbidden the
ninety-nine percent that works and allowed only the one-percent
that is useless.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Henry Hernandez, M.D.,
continued looking at me. Expectantly. Smiling and nodding his
head.

Unfortunately, although my
ears were working nicely, the magical universe between them
apparently wasn’t. Because I was still waiting for Hank’s “key,” or
some kind of dynamite revelation. Hell, I hadn’t even known he’d
finished; but he had, and clearly was waiting for my profound, or
enthusiastic, comment.

“
How about that?” I said
finally. “Umm... maybe I could squeeze onto the significance of
what you just said if you led me up to it a little more, ah,
gently?”

Hank didn’t get bugged. He
merely said, “Gently, then. You agree there are many—many,
many—ways of healing, curing, restoring wellness to the
unwell?”

I nodded.

“
One healing method seldom
mentioned, homeopathy, is true healing science, total-person curing
without harm. Another, Ayurveda, is magnificent very old wisdom, as
is the ancient and good healing of Taoism. Another in the long list
is allopathic medicine, which is what we’ve got, what everybody
knows about, even if they call it something else. Allopathy is a
fraction, one almost invisible piece of ways to go. Grasp that as
beginning.” He waited until I nodded again. “Next, in the United
States, in official medicine, we have an almost-total, powerful,
criminal, multi-trillion-dollar monoploy:
medical/pharmaceutical/governmental. What is a monopoly? Whether
legal or illegal, it is when one is all, when the letter A becomes
the entire alphabet and each of the other letters is eliminated one
way or another, ignored, damned, crushed or destroyed. And in
medical practice that has happened here for many decades, and is
still happening now, this minute. With the result that
bassackward-named healthcare is a medical alphabet with only one
letter: A. Allopathy—this little one-percent of available methods
for healing—is ninety-nine percent of what we are allowed. Indeed,
much of the other ninety-nine percent that works, that heals
without harm, is prohibited by law, made a crime, its curing of
people an act of severely punishable feloniousness.”

He paused, then went on
rapidly, “I will once again say it, and this time maybe you will
cry out ‘Of course!’ Well, my words were that, for healing in this
free country: We are denied the ninety-nine percent that works and
allowed only the one percent that is useless. You see?”

After a while I nodded.
“True. Except....”

“
Except?” he interrupted.
“Except? There are no excepts. It is true, absolutamente.” He
continued quite calmly, much more softly than usual, not even
looking at me as he said, “Sheldon, listen closely to me now. I
wish you to grasp once and forever the difference between healing
and what pretends to be healing, cure and what pretends to be cure.
For you, for all of us, it is truly a matter of life and death. The
symptoms are not the disease.”

He stopped. I was puzzled.
I said, “That’s it?”

“
That’s it. It is all you
need. That’s it.”

“
What is all I need? What’s
this stupendous secret?”

“
I will say it again: The
symptoms are not the disease.” He paused, rapidly flicking his
mustache with one finger.

There was about half a
minute of silence then. And I began to realize that, while I sure
couldn’t buy everything Hank had said, I’d bought quite a bunch
without being aware I was doing it.

After a minute I said,
“Well, I won’t say you’ve transformed me into a militant
vegetarian, or that I’m going to start picketing drugstores, but
maybe you’re only half-crazy.”

“
Is good enough. I think
maybe you are now ready for Wintersong.”

“
Wintersong? Is that what
you’ve been doing with me—to me? Turning me into some kind of
holistic pseudo-doc so I can...can what?”

“
This Wintersong is very
smooth, very good, very convincing. I did not think he would, if
you talk with him, eat you alive as he does most people. But if I
had not informed you about much of this upside-downness and cruel
ugliness in medicine, and his own doing of evil as with Jock-Jock,
he might have bitten you severely. He is not only most
convincing—he will not rave or shout, instead will quietly reveal
great intelligence, brilliance. Maybe genius, but warped genius,
icy cold, cold with evil.”

“
There is another advantage
over most others that you, Sheldon, have with one like Dr.
Wintersong. Most people—even most doctors, including most
allopathic doctors—are good people. Maybe they make mistakes and
blunders, believe wrong things, but inside they are basically good.
And, being good, it is hard for them to accept that others can be
so different from themselves, that some others are evil, inside
themselves truly evil. But you, Sheldon, because of the work you
do, I would guess you can accept that there are such
people.”

I nodded. “I sure can.
It’s odd, but I was thinking pretty much the same thing earlier,
just before noon when I met Kell and Grinner.” I paused. “One more
thing, Hank, then I’ll call the evil Dr. Wintersong. Incidentally,
when I do call him it might help if you’re handy, so is it okay if
I use your phone?”

“
Of course. What is this
one more thing?”

“
When I leave here, people
will undoubtly be telling me slanderous things about Henry
Hernandez and his medical practice, and I know you wouldn’t want a
bunch of little doubts bugging me. So there’s one other thing we
ought to discuss before I split.”

“
Discuss.”

“
Okay, until I came in here
this morning—until I talked to you and maybe got a little
bassackward brainwashing from you—I’d never heard anybody say IFAI
was curable. Or AIDS, and a lot of other terminal diseases. But you
claim to have reincarnated a whole bunch of these dead people,
including the Vungers. What I need to know is: How come you can
cure all these incurables when nobody else can? If you really did
cure any of these people, how did you do it? Specifically the
Vungers, if they’re really alive and well somewhere now, how did
you cure their IFAI?”

“
Oh, that, the protocol.
The method. Well, first, Sheldon...” He paused, smiling oddly, and
finished, “in truth, I did not cure anybody’s IFAI.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Here it comes, I
thought—feeling a peculiar kind of disappointment. Because it
seemed Hank was at last going to admit that, for some as yet
unexplained reason, he had not before now been entirely truthful
with me. That’s what I assumed. But I was wrong; and, oddly, that
pleased me.

“
You have misplaced your
memory again for a little moment, Sheldon. Why should anyone try to
cure a disease, which is merely a name doctors make up for a
complex of symptoms that baffles them? No, what I did was guide the
Vungers in allowing the power within them—I have spoken to you of
this, the power or force or God or spirit which made them, and
still repairs their cuts and bruises, and sighs upon their breath
and beats with their hearts—to heal them. And it did.”

“
How—?”

“
As to the how, the
protocol, you must comprehend, Sheldon, it will be somewhat
different for each person because each person is different. As you
understand, now, a true physician treats the person, not the same
‘disease-name’ the same way ten thousand times in a row. Anyone
except allopath drug-pushers would consider this merely common
sense. For example, because I am a homeopath, I gave each of the
Vungers their indicated remedy, or remedies, including oxygenation,
ones most closely matching the totality of their complaints. This,
again, is the opposite of allopathy, which hammers all round pegs
into square holes.”

“
I see.” Maybe a part of me
actually was beginning to see. After a moment I said, “No more of
this for me. I’m splitting the hell out of here. Work to do. First,
maybe you can help me get in to see Wintersong?”

Hank stood up, put both
hands at the small of his back and stretched. “Would it be helpful
if I phoned Wintersong for you? Probably he would hang up on me. Or
maybe have a cerebral vascular incident—little stroke. Big would be
better.”

“
Let me try him myself
first.”

He nodded.

“
But first, just one other
small thing, Hank. I gather you checked up on me, before hiring me
for this job—whatever this job really is. Maybe talked to some of
my chums, and even guys who’d like to kill me?”

“
No maybe. You would be
astonished with hearing what some disreputable persons told
me.”

“
Probably I wouldn’t. You
really checked up on me, huh?”

“
Very diligently, over many
days. There is something wrong with this?”

“
Well, no, I
guess.”

“
I hope this does not
offend you, Sheldon. I believe you are beginning to understand I am
in the fight of my life now, and after this there is much more I
envisage, great and needed things to be done. About all of which,
probably, I will tell you when the time for it is here. But right
now I must survive this present peril, avoid assassination from the
Medical Mafia and drivers of green vans also, plus who knows what
besides? So, just the same as I asked many people and searched the
best ways I could to discover the attorney most capable of
confronting and defeating my enemies, so also I endeavored to
find—as I suggested to you earlier—the most capable and competent
investigator available for my various purposes. And I believe I
have done that.”

“
Well, that’s flattering.
Who’d you ask about me?”

“
Many people. Most names I
cannot say to you, for some were criminal persons who agreed to
talk with me only after affirming that, if I spilled my guts, they
would spill my guts, word of that unfriendly nature.”

“
Criminals—crooks...hoods?
You mean you actually went out amongst...you were meeting and
yacking with hoods?”

“
Yes, in bars, clubs, on
streets. Sometimes one crook led to another. A few were very
helpful.”

“
Hank, that’s nuts. Some of
those guys out there would blow you away for nickels.”

“
I told them I was a
doctor. That scared hell out of them.” He laughed uproariously,
clapping his hands before his face. “Should scare hell out of
anybody, true?” And off he went again.

When he’d simmered down I
said seriously, “Hank, no matter what you told them, you were a
babe in the woods with those eggs. Taking chances like that was,
well, damned unwise. If you ask me.”

“
I suggest you are wrong
again, Sheldon. Not unwise. Instead wise. How else could I find the
truth?”