The Healer (9 page)

“But those feelings are hurting you,” Payne pointed out.

That, she said, was putting the cart before the horse. “Humans are the thing that's hurting me.”

“Don't let them. Don't fight them so hard.”

This brought a scowl to her face. “Make up your mind. Before, you said I had to fight. Now you say I shouldn't. Which is it?”

“Don't fight yourself,” he said.

“And how exactly do I do that?”

He took a breath. “Don't hate so much.”

He tried to teach her by example, modeling tolerance and compassion for even the most lowly miner. For him this was a matter of personal integrity, but that, he learned, was not the way to reach Vecque. He tried appealing to her intellect. She was smart, and he sought to reason with her.

“Don't think of them as humans,” he suggested.

“No?” This was a novel idea. “What then?”

“Think of them as cousins.”

She gave him a look. “In what possible sense?”

“In an evolutionary sense.”

“You don't believe that story?”

“It's not a story. We're related, and you know it.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my memory doesn't go back that far.”

“You don't have to remember anything. All you have to do is look.”

One by one he enumerated all the things they shared, from the
structure of their long bones to their skin to their internal organs; their metabolism, too. In almost every respect tesques and humans were alike, and their minds worked more or less alike, as well. Their speech was similar, and all the other sundry sounds they made—from whimpering to laughing to squealing to crying—were virtually the same.

Vecque acknowledged this, while observing that she much preferred to hear a human whimper than a tesque. The sound was almost pleasing to the ear. And it had the ring of justice, for they deserved to be in pain.

Payne gnashed his teeth. Was she trying to make it difficult for him?

“They're the same as us,” he snapped, losing his patience. “If they deserve it, we do too.”

“Well I am in pain,” said Vecque.

“Well you don't deserve to be.”

“Well all right.”

“So do something about it.”

Her eyes flashed. “Are you blaming me?”

Blame was strong, he said, unfair, oversimplified.

“I'm being drained,” she reminded him. “If you think it's my fault, I'd say the teacher needs a lesson of his own.”

It was a standoff, one of many. Vecque usually outlasted him, but on this occasion it was she, not he, who gave in.

“You say that we're the same,” she said, “but you're leaving out the most important part.”

“What? This?” He slapped his frontal boss, the swollen hump of skull that set him apart from every human. For Vecque it was the narrowness of her head. For every tesque it was something. It had never before been a subject of conversation between them because it was a given. They lived with it day in and out; it was not worth mentioning. But now, apparently, it was.

“It's not the most important,” he said heatedly. “It's superficial. A quirk of nature. Close your eyes, it's gone.”

She'd touched a nerve, which had not been her intention. Nor was his head, or hers, or any of theirs, the part she meant. Turning her attention to herself, she placed her hand below and to the side of her right breast, atop her os melior, pressing down as if to blot it out, or at the least to stanch its flow.

“But why?” he asked. “Why is that the most important? Why the one thing that does make us different? Why not all the things that are the same?”

There was something plaintive in his voice, a cry, a plea for understanding, that gave her pause. It made her feel, strangely, that he was worse off than she was, and her heart went out to him. Her life was destined to be short, but his, she sensed, would be more difficult. He had no shields, and she feared that he would suffer a great deal before he found any.

Every day there were accidents in the mine, mostly minor ones. Mashed fingers, bruised muscles, cuts, sprains. Major accidents happened only rarely. The worst that Payne had seen in his brief career was a broken leg. Which is more or less what he expected when the siren started up. When it didn't stop, he began to think he might be in for something more serious, and he dropped what he was doing and raced outside, then to the adit, where he joined a group of anxious, grim-faced men.

There had been an explosion. One of the jackleg operators had inadvertently drilled into a pocket of methane gas. The gas had been ignited by an errant spark from a faulty electrical wire. The force of the explosion had thrown the miner back some twenty feet, which had saved his life, because it landed him on the far side of the resulting fireball. His partner had not been so lucky. Word was that he was severely burned.

Before long a skip appeared, flanked by half a dozen men. Their headlamps
bobbed as they trod forward, the lamplights fading as they emerged from the darkness of the adit into the light of day. On the floor of the skip was the injured miner. His hair was singed and his face was burnt. Kneeling beside him, another miner held an oxygen mask to his face.

The driver brought the skip adjacent to the healing center, where the man was lifted out and carried inside by his companions. Not sure yet what he might need, Payne had them lay him on the healing bed. Rapidly, he checked for a pulse and briefly removed the mask to look for signs of breathing. Where the man's skin wasn't charred, it was gray and dusky. His blistered lips were blue.

Payne clamped the mask back over his mouth and hurriedly joined him on the bed. Rapidly, he wrapped their arms together, then lay down, closed his eyes, and commenced a healing. He hadn't time to pull the curtain, but the miners who had carried the man inside knew enough to turn their backs. Outside, as news of the accident spread, a crowd grew.

Payne did absolutely everything he could. He labored for half an hour, and then, exhausted, labored more. He made it through the first three stages before being stymied, then without a break tried again, this time making it only through the first two. The longer he worked the less progress he was able to make. Soon he was making none at all. At length he stopped, for there was nothing more he had to offer. Nothing more to do. The man was dead.

Slowly, he unwrapped their arms. His was hot and sweaty; the man's, clammy and cool. He sat up, and had to brace himself against a wave of dizziness and exhaustion. After it passed, he gave a sigh and stood.

Stirred by the sound of his movement, the two miners who'd remained in the room turned and looked at him. For a second there was hope in their eyes, but rapidly this fled.

“I'm sorry,” Payne said softly. “I did everything I could.”

The men nodded, and one of them heaved a sigh. “He was pretty far gone when we brought him up.” A moment or two passed. “Hell, the man was dead.”

Payne bowed his head while the men shifted on their feet. All were at a loss for words.

At length one of the miners said, “I'll go tell the men.”

He left. The remaining miner couldn't take his eyes off the dead man. After a while he cleared his throat. “Maybe you should put a sheet on him or something.”

Payne had never handled death before and reproached himself for not having thought of this. There were sheets in a cabinet, and he got one out and proceeded to unfold it, beginning at the dead man's feet. When he reached his waist, the miner stopped him.

“Seems like we should say something.” He glanced at Payne. “You got any words?”

Again, this was something Payne had not thought of. He was as unprepared for eulogies as he was for death, and to makes matters worse, his mind chose that moment to go blank.

But the miner didn't seem to notice. He had bowed his head, hard hat in hand, and stood beside the bed, waiting patiently.

“What was his name?” asked Payne.

“Rinker.”

“What about his first name?”

“Rinker's all I know.”

Payne gave a nod and drew a breath. The fragment of a childhood lullaby came to him.

“Go to sleep, Rinker,
Find a happy place and slumber.
No dreams disturb you,
No worries encumber.”

This seemed to satisfy the miner, who whispered a word of his own, then raised his head. “I expect there'll be a service, but that'll do for now. I thank you.”

He replaced his hard hat and turned to go, then stopped and turned back. Reaching underneath the sheet, he removed the dead man's brass, stared at it a moment, then pocketed it.

“They'll want it back,” he explained. “Not that anyone's going to use it.”

He made his way out, leaving Payne alone. He drew up the sheet until it completely covered the man, then closed the curtain and sat down. He was exhausted, though inside he was shaking like a leaf. It was true what the miner had said, the man had been dead by the time Payne got to him. But this didn't stop him from second-guessing himself. Surely, there was something he could have done to save the man. Something different from what he had. He'd tried his best, but his best obviously wasn't good enough. His best had failed.

The miners felt differently. They felt, in fact, that he had done a hero's work. Word spread that he had almost brought a dead man back to life. That he hadn't was beside the point, or at least it paled before the more important point that he had tried.

After that, their attitude toward him changed. His currency rose, and with it came a measure of respect that previously had been absent. He noticed it in the way the men looked at him and inclined their heads if he happened to catch their eye. And the way they lowered their voices when he was nearby, as though not to sound crass or stupid. They were more polite to him, sometimes even deferential. A few even took to calling him by name.

Payne welcomed the change with open arms. It was a step, he believed, toward being fully accepted by the men. But as time went by, this didn't happen, and gradually he came to understand that being held in high esteem kept him outside the circle of their friendship as surely as being held in low did. In a world where weakness was ridiculed, a special talent or intelligence did its damage, too. As much as ever, the miners kept their distance from him.

As his only friend, Vecque had the job of listening to his troubles and his woes. Normally, she wouldn't have had the patience, but thanks to him, or to something, she'd been feeling better lately, and she felt she owed him at least this much. Like everybody else, she had heard the story of the dead man nearly coming back to life. When he complained that this had done nothing to bring him any closer to being accepted, she surprised him by siding with the men.

“You're a dreamer if you expect their friendship,” she told him. “It's like asking a man to consort with a god.”

“I'm not a god,” he said.

“Of course not. But you have a power they don't, and it scares them.”

They were at a table at the periphery of the mess hall, not far from one of the two big drum-shaped wood-burning stoves. Winter was on its way out, but there were still cold days, and this was one of them. The stove was crackling, and Vecque shed her coat and rolled up her sleeves. A month before she would have been chilled to the bone despite this added heat, but now she was getting her own heat back. Her body was able to warm itself. And her plate was full: her appetite was returning, too.

“I don't want to scare them,” said Payne.

“Then don't try to heal a dead man.”

“I had to try something.”

She shrugged at this, prompting him to defend himself.

“The men who brought him, they expected me to act. You should have seen their faces. I couldn't just let him lie there. I had to do something.”

“So you lay down beside a dead man. You want the truth, that gives me the creeps. It's bad enough we have to lay beside the living ones.”

He had tried so hard. He could still feel the effort in his body, his meli. It was part ache, part longing, a physical sensation, emotional too. How the men would have talked about him if he'd succeeded! How his brother, if he'd been there, would have looked upon him, the praise in his eyes, the admiration.

A voice broke his reverie. He only half heard it.

“Did you say something?” he asked Vecque.

“I said, you thought you could, didn't you?”

“Could what?”

“Bring him back.”

He considered what to say and thought it best to say nothing.

She couldn't believe it. “All right. Now I'm scared, too.”

“Why? What did I do?” He raised his hands in a gesture of innocence.

“You tell me.”

“Nothing. I didn't do anything.”

“But you tried. You did. Admit it.”

“So? Nothing happened. No one got hurt.”

She stared at him. “Who do you think you are? Mobestis? Emm?”

The invocation of the legendary healers, one the father, the other the son, took some of the starch out of his sails. He felt a little sheepish and ducked his head. No, he muttered, he didn't think that he was them.

Vecque was glad to hear it. She liked him, and he had given her good advice. She was definitely better. But as a result, and somewhat to her dismay, she had found herself beginning to depend on him, and she didn't want to find out that she couldn't.

“There's enough craziness around here already. Don't add to it, all right? I want to be able to trust you, Payne.”

“You can.”

“Then use your head.” She brandished her fork at him in mock menace. “I'll be keeping my eye on you.”

The hall had filled, and it was a rowdy crowd. Previously, this would have driven Vecque to distraction, but under Payne's tutelage she had found a way to keep the men from getting under her skin and bothering her quite so much. It was a combination of mindfulness and inner strength. She was learning how to be more possessed of herself and less by them. It was remarkable, really, how much they could be tolerated. They still got on her nerves, sometimes deeply, but between love and hate, there did, indeed, seem to be a middle ground.

Not that it was ever easy: occupying this ground required constant vigilance and effort. She had her good days and she had her bad ones. So far today was good. But that, she knew, could change in a heartbeat. She had to continually be on guard. She walked a razor-thin line. Her state of mind and body had improved but remained precarious.

Out of habit she glanced around the room, looking for potential trouble spots, anything that might erupt and spill over to involve her. Or be aimed at her to begin with. Her eye was drawn to a nearby table, where there was some heavy drinking and hazing going on. She only recognized a few of the men. Of the ones she didn't, most were young and had the bewildered and slightly overwhelmed look of new recruits, fresh off the train. One, a pimply boy with sandy hair and eyes a bit too dreamy, she thought, for blasting rock, was being harassed by some of the old-timers. It was in their nature to be drawn to weakness, and they were plying him with drinks and goading him. It was up to the boy to stand up to them and prove himself a man.

At length he took whatever bait it was that they were dangling and got up from the table. Hitching up his pants and puffing out his skinny chest, he sauntered over to the only female in the hall.

“I got a pain,” he said.

Vecque had seen him coming and had prepared herself. She pointed out that she was eating. “I'll be happy to take care of you when I'm done.”

“Happy” was pressing the point, and she congratulated herself on sounding so convincing and remaining so composed. The boy glanced back at the other men, looking to see if he'd completed what was required of him. Fat chance. They were watching him like hawks. Apparently, he'd just begun.

He turned back to Vecque. “This thing won't wait.”

She closed her eyes and counted, praying that when she opened them, he'd be gone. It was such a pleasure to be eating. The food, at long last, tasted good again.

“I'll be finished soon,” she said. “Fifteen minutes. Let's do it then.”

“It can't wait that long.” The drinks had made him unsteady on his feet, and he braced himself against the table edge. “It's urgent.”

“Urgent, is it?”

“Yes.” His voice had taken on a nasal whine.

She sighed. “I see.”

The only area where a healer had any say, the only one where his or her word came close to being law, was in healing. Except in emergencies, patients were not treated outside the healing room. There were good reasons for this, and it was a rule that humans didn't challenge. After looking him up and down, Vecque returned her attention to her plate, where a juicy cutlet sat begging to be eaten. Deftly, she sliced a piece and lifted it to her lips. In her book, initiation into manhood was no emergency. And she hated it when people whined.

“It'll wait,” she said.

“It won't.”

She placed the slice in her mouth and started chewing. Closed her eyes and savored its rich and aromatic taste. Next to her the boy hovered like a bird afraid to land. Tensions rose.