by Gayle Greeno
“But he can’t overcome pulmonary anthrax without penicillium, it’s fast and fatal!” She wanted to bluster, tantrum until she got her way. “Mahafny Annendahl would authorize it,” she snapped and then realized her error, wished the words back, wished to swallow them.
He tilted back in his chair, the springs creaking, his expression bland. “But Annendahl’s not here, and she’s left me in charge. Is that perfectly clear?” He didn’t look angry, but he sounded tired and defensive. “You know it’s too precious to waste. We have to use it so sparingly.” She could hear the pleading in his voice. She’d seen him pushed before, seen him turn obdurate and hard, refusing at last for the sake of refusal. He was a strong second to back Mahafny Annendahl, but a weak first on his own.
She backed slowly out of the room, hands gripping her opposite cuffs to keep anxiety at bay. “Well, when you check in on him later, please keep it in mind as a possibility.” Nothing more she could say, no one else she could appeal to unless she went over his head and over Mahafny’s head to the Staff Senior. She would if she had to, but she hoped she’d prodded Terence to act, even if only at his own speed, on his own terms.
But by the time di Siguera had acted, Edam Sellicote was in shock and had slipped into a coma; the penicillium had been wasted, used too late. She had pulled the sheet over his blue-cast face and stormed from the ward, back to her room to rage and hide from her failure.
“He should have known,” her voice puzzled, fist measuring out the cadence of her words. “How could di Siguera have overlooked anthrax, given the man’s medical history? Tell me that!”
Clothes travel-stained, skin drawn tight around her eyes, Mahafny stared at the far wall, not yet ready to answer.
Doyce scrambled off the bed, forced her way in front of Mahafny, tried to break through the shell of fatigue that surrounded the older woman, cloaking all response. “If I could diagnose the disease without trancing, why couldn’t he!” Until a thought so heretical swept through her that she fell backward, managed to perch herself on the desk. “Terence can’t achieve a true mindtrance, can he?” Mahafny sat rigid. “Can he?” And the final puzzle piece locked in place. “Can you achieve a mindtrance?” She flung the words out as a challenge, but they weren’t meant to be; she was begging, pleading for the acerbic voice to chastise her, convince her of her error, her lack of faith.
The ghost of a smile flittered across the eumedico’s face, but never touched any higher, gray eyes like clouded ice. “Well done. You’ve finally figured it out. Did it come to you in a shattering bolt of revelation or have you suspected all along?”
Each word came hesitantly as a step on cracking lake ice, too thin to sustain the weight of knowledge she bore, each word further fracturing her brittle composure, until she would plunge through, bereft, drowning in chill certainty. “I didn’t ... mean to.... Of course you can ... have I ever doubted your skills?” She reached out, desperate for the consolation of flesh against flesh, and Mahafny brushed her arm away absently as if it were a distracting fly.
“You would have been instructed soon, been informed that the ‘mystery’ contained no mystery, but why the ritual was deemed necessary. It would have served as the culmination of your training, the final, still center of the maze of learning.” She sighed, a long, drawn-out sound of anguish. “I’m sorry it had to happen like this. But you’ve always quietly doubted so much within yourself that perhaps this doubt was not unnatural.”
“Then only Gleaners can ... ?” The question had been surprised out of her, though it wasn’t the question she had meant to ask. She dared not finish, not when Mahafny’s assessing look flayed like a whip, as if to lash the very thought from her head, analyze what else she knew. Where was safe ground? “But, why? Why the subterfuge? Why perpetrate a lie? And all the other eumedicos as well? If you lack the power, I doubt that any of the other Senior Staff have it either.”
“Perfectly correct.” Confirmation brought no joy. “We live a lie to help others as much as we possibly can.”
The taste of blood on her lip brought her back to herself, forced her to concentrate on what Mahafny was waiting to tell her. “Explain it to me. Please, I beg you, I have to understand, not flounder in another lie.”
Mahafny walked to the door, cracked it open to check who roamed the halls, then closed it soundlessly, pitching her voice low so that Doyce was forced to lean forward, feeling trapped in some sort of illicit intimacy. The whispered words came tripping light and fast, ready to shoot by her if she relaxed her concentration.
“You ask why.” Mahafny twisted her head back and forth slowly, almost wonderingly. “Do you have any conception of what it was like when our ancestors came to this planet and unexpectedly found themselves stranded here? They came from a world of high technology, demanding as a God-given right the most advanced resources a society of that caliber could provide. They—our forebears, the doctors, the medics, the technicians—reveted in being thought of as omnipotent, all-knowing, all-wise, and they insured that their patients viewed them that way. But as the medicines ran out, as the hypersensitive life-support machinery, the laser scalpels, the image resonators died—things we can only dream of now and barely comprehend their workings—we had to fall back on something.”
The words hissed in Doyce’s ears. “We had to create something, a mystique, if you will, to offer people security, hope, confidence. If a patient doesn’t trust you, you’ve already lost half the battle. We’ve been over that time and again.”
Doyce attempted a smile, failed. “One of the cardinal rules.” But the words fell on deaf ears, the first time she had ever seen the eumedico ignore a pupil’s response.
“It is possible that a few of the first doctors, especially some of the psychiatrists, boasted telepathic powers. Any space contingent usually carried a few people with various psionic powers for empathic purposes with indigenous life forms. But the Plumbs destroyed so many records that we are not sure if any of our doctors did or not. I’ve done hundreds of genealogical charts tracking the descendants of those doctors, curious to see if any of them transmitted such abilities to their offspring.” She shook herself as if awakening. “That’s another story, I’m sorry. Maundering again.”
“But what the psychiatrists taught us to do, the heritage they gave us—that you strove so eagerly to possess until today—was the ability to attain a trance state, and to convince everyone that we could visualize the cause of a particular disease or the extent of an injury while we were in the trance.
“We relearned skills that had been forgotten or ignored because of technology. We built our laboratories to the highest standards we could attain, ludicrous imitations of what we’d lost, knowing that at best they resembled the antiquated labs of hundreds of years past. And finally, we realized that if you listen, truly listen,” she slapped the desk twice, causing Doyce to jump, “to the patient, the patient will give you the diagnosis. And with no technology to bolster us, we had to learn how to become hypersensitive to every fragile clue the body and mind of the patient could provide us with, and then utilize that information and trust in our intuitions.” She stood in front of Doyce, arms folded across her chest. “Do you begin to understand? Now do you understand what we lost and what each new generation of eumedicos tried to substitute in its place?”
Doyce pushed herself off the desk, brushed past Mahafny to seek safety and distance at the far end of the bed, then realized she had cornered herself. These revelations jeopardized her, whether in mind or body, she couldn’t judge, but she longed to escape, yet compulsively wanted to hear more. Would a question let her step to solid ground or would the ice again crack beneath her feet?
“You said I would have learned eventually, that I would have shared the secret, shared in the lie. What happens if a trainee refuses to accept it, refuses to live a lie? Decides to denounce you as frauds?”
“Very few even consider such a thought, let alone attempt it. The people we train are dedicated to saving human lives,
even if it comes at the expense of their own integrity, through living a lie. I remind you that on Olde Earth doctors selflessly aided patients suffering from the plagues of the time, even if it cost them their own lives, a greater sacrifice than we ask you to make. And I will tell you that no one becomes a diagnostic eumedico who doesn’t have the best training, as well as sensitivity and intuition honed sharp to determine what ails a patient.”
“What about Terence di Siguera?”
“You’ve hurt yourself in this, Doyce, and Terence as well, I’m afraid, though it’s all for the best in Terence’s case. I had hopes for that man—when he’s on target, he’s incredibly sensitive and acute. But he tends to fade under stress or tiredness, something that can’t be allowed to happen. No, another place will be found for Terence, out of harm’s way. There are always those who train with us whose strength fails or who lack that intuitive knack, that sixth sense. They either leave early without completing training—we see to that if we possibly can—or they are shifted to some other area of endeavor within our community. Pure or applied research, anatomical studies, even surgery for those with a knack for the knife. I’d hoped Terence would learn to steady himself, keep on an even keel, but it’s clear he hasn’t. I think he’ll be more than happy to devote all his time to some genetic studies he’s been working on with me.”
She pushed her shoulders into the comer, twisted back and forth as if burrowing deeper, but her back remained tight against the wall. No escape. “And ... what about me?”
“Yes, what about you?” Mahafny asked, and Doyce searched hard for some unspoken warmth, ready to embrace her with the open, caring arms of shared complicity. Except that she had to choose for herself. The tears started down her cheeks again, amazing that she had any moisture to spare.
“You are a good diagnostician, you have the skill to listen and assess, make the connections. Are you willing to give up part of yourself to become a full-fledged diagnostic eumedico or even continue your research in herbal medicines if you can’t bear to face the patients with a deception that must become a part of you, until that falsehood becomes as automatic as sleeping or breathing? Can you do that?”
“And if I can’t manage that? If I can’t accept any of it any longer? What then?” Traitor! her mind screamed. And more than her treachery, she feared death, feared the shining slim scalpel sliding between her ribs, the air-filled syringe plunged into a vein. Would they—did they—kill to preserve the mystery?
Her face must have shown transparent, revealing every fear that dashed across her mind. Mahafny smiled, a genuine smile of amusement, and the gray eyes flickered with empathy, not the cold, cloaked guilt she had carried into the room. “No, Doyce, we save lives rather than taking them. It is part of the creed, you know.” She looked thoughtful, far away for some moments, then seemed to reach a decision. “And you cannot accept either alternative I’ve offered?”
Dumbly Doyce shook her head, unable to speak. At last she managed to croak a response. “Not ... in my heart. It would gnaw at me like a canker from within, until I’d feel an empty shell.”
“Too fine a moral sense can be more debilitating than any disease. You’ll always be disappointed in yourself and in others. And you’ll have selfishly stolen from others in need all the good you could accomplish here.”
“Please, don’t make me.” She stood up tall, straight, refusing to cower in the corner any longer. “Is there another way? Please, tell me.”
Mahafny opened the clothes cupboard, tossed down the worn bottle-green carpetbag, the more recent canvas tote she’d acquired. With a booted foot she toed the expensive leather eumedico bag from its place by the desk, the bag that Doyce had saved for so long, to the center of the room, jumbling the narrow space between bed and desk. “Then I expect you should pack and leave. Discover something else to do with your life. But remember this, it does not end when you walk out the door. You must make—and keep—one promise, and I mean that with all my heart. You must never tell another living soul what you have learned here today. You do not have to live the lie by remaining a eumedico, but you must keep that lie on your sacred honor. When we formally convene tomorrow morning to cast you out, you must swear never to tell why. Do I have your word?”
“You have my word. Your lie is still a burden, but at least I don’t have to live it with my every breath.” And then the tears flooded in earnest, and she collapsed on the bed, crying for everything she would lose by giving up the eumedicos, for whatever scrap of dignity she’d retained, and for any number of things she couldn’t even begin to explain.
And through the night Mahafny stayed with her, rocked her, held her close as she sobbed, stroked her hair, whispered endearments and encouragement. Though she wondered once as sleep claimed her where Mahafny’s mind really dwelt despite her physical presence. “Evelien didn’t cry when I left her today,” she murmured once into thin air, but Doyce didn’t care what it meant, because Mahafny held her safe, safe in the arms of her teacher, her love.
“Yes, Doyce, it is I. And no, I don’t read minds, as well you know. It’s just that your face is so transparent sometimes.” A faintly tanned hand with long, thin fingers tidied Doyce’s hair back from her forehead, fingertips a brief kiss at the hairline. The touch promised peace, understanding, a chance to yield the burdensome responsibility. “Now, I believe you need some help here.” The slightest hand gesture served as a command. “You gentlemen over there, four of you, if you please. Can you assist the good Shepherd to his quarters?” Her still dark eyebrows quirked with the faintest trace of condescension. “I assume he has quarters nearby?”
Two husky farmers and a stonemason, from the looks of his dusty, heavy canvas clothes and leather-looped chisels and mallets hanging from his tool belt, volunteered. Joining a reed-thin lay brother, they strained to lift the just beginning to stir Harrap and carry him in the direction the young man indicated with a jerk of his chin, his breath and concentration needed for more important matters as he strained under the unaccustomed weight. Parm staggered up and walked slowly behind, ears and tail at half-mast, never letting the Shepherd out of his sight.
“Shall we accompany them, do you think?” Mahafny commented.
The procession wound its awkward way through the cramped side gate, Mahafny uttering brisk instructions and running commentary as they maneuvered through. Doyce, Khar, and Claire, still clutching her basin, her package of wool secured in the bib of her apron, trailed at the end of the procession. Claire’s dark hair hung loose in exuberant waves, her kerchief long gone in the melee, or so Doyce thought until she realized that Claire had sacrificed it to bathe Harrap’s face. Resourceful of her.
The stonemason muffled an oath as his tool belt caught and hung on the door casing, yanking him back like a hooked fish. He shifted his grip on Harrap, eased backward and swung his hip free, nodded to continue forward. The low, thatch-roofed building whose narrow doorway they had crowded through appeared to serve as some sort of communal dormitory, luckily deserted at this time of day. Built of the same limestone as the Bethel itself, it washed them with a blessed coolness, the air unmildewed but overlaid with a lingering aroma of myrrh. Groaning in concert, the four men lowered Harrap onto the cotlike, coarsely blanketed bed nearest the door, unwilling to carry their burden any farther. Five other beds lined the room, three to a side, each with a stout, scarred wooden chest at its foot and an unadorned, octagonal Lady’s Shield pinned on the wall over its head. The young lay brother mopped his brow with his sleeve and spoke in an undertone with Mahafny, gesturing with butterfly hesitations to emphasize his words, his hands the most fluent and lovely thing about him, far more expressive than his solemn face, still in the throes of late adolescent acne. He came as close to a bow as his Order allowed and left.
“I’ll examine him, perhaps sedate him as soon as the young man fetches some fresh water and my ’script case.” Doyce felt entrapped in Mahafny’s gaze, the cool gray eyes, the long eloquent neck with its twist of silver hai
r rising above it, caught near the nape with a wood and leather clip. Putting her hands into the pockets of her long white eumedico’s coat, she rocked back on her heels, examining Doyce from top to bottom as frankly as if conducting a physical. “Perhaps it might be less distressing if you and the two ghatti were elsewhere when he comes around? And if the young lady would stay and assist further?” She raised her chin in Claire’s direction to indicate her preference.
Doyce knew the polite tones, the rising inflection at the end of each utterance, the “perhaps” at the beginning, stood as Mahafny’s equivalent of a command. She expected obedience, in truth, assumed immediate compliance with each directive. But now Doyce doubted her readiness to obey as pliantly or as quickly and as unquestioningly as she had done in the past. Too many years separated them and their relationship: pain, growth, and change, for better or for worse. She had changed through the years, learned to take control of herself to avoid the hurt; whether Mahafny had changed remained to be seen. Yet no matter what she told herself, Mahafny still retained enough power to make her feel obscurely guilty, unsure of herself. That was how the older woman had always treated the eumedicos-in-training, making them feel beholden yet gratified that she had befriended them and guided them. And no one could say that she did not genuinely care for and, in some instances, love her charges, but Doyce wasn’t her charge any longer. Not here, not now, not with the world turning upside down beneath her feet again as it had done once before so long ago in another dormitory hall. Now she had a right, a sanctioned duty to seek the truth, not obscure it.
“No, I know Parm will feel more secure if we remain close by where he can watch, be sure that Harrap fares well.” She surprised herself with her firm steadiness as she met the abruptly frosty regard of the eumedico’s eyes, expertly masked chagrin at the contradiction.
“I don’t see the relationship. Why does the ghatt require the presence of a Shepherd of Our Lady?” The scornful lift of her dark brows and her phrase, “I don’t see the relationship,” had been enough to cow hundreds of eumedico trainees through the years.
