Giff was whimpering now and flopping around on the floor.
("He's got to be a far-gone button-head to have to tune in at a time like this ... and right in front of a stranger, at that.")
I understand some of those cassettes are as addictive as Zemmelar and chronic users become impotent in real sexual contexts.
("How come we've never tried one?")
Dalt gave a mental sniff. I've never felt the need. And when the time comes that I need my head wired so I can get a little—
There was a groan in the corner: Giff had reached the peak of the recording. His body was arched so that only his palms, his heels, and the back of his skull were in contact with the floor. His teeth were clamped on his lower lip to keep him from crying out. Suddenly he slumped to the floor, limp and panting.
That must be quite a cassette!
("Most likely one of those new numbers that combines simultaneous male and female orgasms—the ultimate in sexual sensation.")
And that's all it is: sensation. There's no emotion involved.
("Right. Superonanism.") Pard paused as they watched their sated guard. ("Do you see what's hanging from his neck?")
Yeah. A flamestone. So?
("So it looks exactly like yours—a cheap imitation, no doubt, but the resemblance is remarkable. Ask him about it.")
Dalt shrugged with disinterest, then noticed Giff stirring. "Are you quite finished?"
The man groggily lifted his slight frame into a sitting position. "I disgust you, don't I," he stated with a low voice, keeping his eyes averted to the floor as he disconnected the cassette from his scalp.
"Not really," Dalt replied, and sincerity was evident in his voice. A few centuries ago he would have been shocked, but he had learned in the interim to view humanity from a more aloof vantage point—a frame of mind he had consciously striven for since his days as The Healer. It had been difficult to maintain at first, but as the years slid by, that frame of mind had become a natural and necessary component of his psyche.
He didn't despise Giff, nor did he pity him. Giff was merely one expression of the myriad possibilities open to human existence.
Dalt moved the gravcuffs downward and seated himself crosslegged on the floor. When Giff had stowed the cassette in a sealed compartment in his overalls, Dalt said, "That's quite a gem you have tied around your neck. Where'd you steal it?"
The fidgety man's eyes flashed uncharacteristically. "It's mine! It may not be real but it's mine. My father gave one to all his children, just as his own mother gave one to him." He held out the stone and gazed at its inner glow.
"Hm!" Dalt grunted. "Looks just like mine." Giff rose to his feet and approached Dalt. "So you're a Son of The Healer, too?"
"Wha'?"
"The stone ... it's a replica of the one The Healer wore centuries ago. All Children of The Healer wear one." He was standing over Dalt now and as he reached for the cord around his neck, Dalt idly considered ramming the gravcuff upward into Giff's face.
("That won't work,") Pard warned. ("Even if you did manage to knock him unconscious, what good would it do us? Just play along; I want to hear more about these Children of The Healer.")
So Dalt allowed Giff to inspect his flamestone as he sat motionless. "I'm no Son of The Healer. As a matter of fact, I wasn't aware that The Healer ever had children."
Giff let go of Dalt's gem and let it dangle from its cord again. "Just a figure of speech. We call ourselves his children—great-great-great-grandchildren would be more accurate—because none of us would have been born if it hadn't been for him."
Dalt gave him a blank stare and Giff replied in an exasperated tone, "I'm a descendant of one of the people he cured a couple of hundred years ago. She was a victim of the horrors. And if The Healer hadn't come along and straightened her out, she'd have been institutionalized for all her life; her two sons would never have been born, would never have had children of their own, and so on."
("And you wouldn't be here standing guard over us, idiot!") Pard muttered.
"The first generation of Children of The Healer," Giff went on, "was a social club of sorts, but the group soon became too large and too spread out. We have no organization now, just people who keep his name alive though their families and wear these imitation flame-stones. The horrors still strikes everywhere and some say The Healer will return."
"You believe that?" Dalt asked.
Giff shrugged. "I'd like to." His eyes studied Dalt's flamestone. "Yours is real, isn't it?"
Dalt hesitated for an instant, engaged in a lightning conference. Should I tell him?
("I think it's our only chance. It certainly won't worsen our situation.")
Neither Pard nor Dalt was afraid of physical violence or torture. With Pard in control of all physical systems,
Dalt would feel no pain and could at any time assume a deathlike state with a skin temperature cooled by intense vasoconstriction and cardiopulmonary activity slowed to minimal level.
Yeah. And I'd much prefer getting out of these cuffs and turning a few tables to rolling over and playing dead.
("That would gall me, too. Okay—play it to the hilt.")
"It's real, all right," Dalt told Giff. "It's the original."
Giff's mouth twisted with skepticism. "And I'm president of the Federation."
Dalt rose to his feet, lifting the gravcuff with him. "Your boss is looking for a man who's been alive for two or three centuries, isn't he? Well, I'm the man."
"We know that."
"I'm a man who never sickens, never ages ... now what kind of a healer would The Healer be if he couldn't heal himself. After all, death is merely the culmination of a number of degenerative disease processes."
Giff mulled this over, accepting the logic but resisting the conclusion. "What about the patch of silver hair and the golden hand?"
"Pull this skullcap off and take a look. Then get some liquor from the cabinet over there and rub it on my left wrist.
After a full minute's hesitation, wherein doubt struggled in the mire of the afterglow of the cassette, Giff accepted the challenge and cautiously pulled the skullcap from Dalt's head. "Nothing! What are you trying—"
"Look at the roots," Dalt told him. "You don't think I can walk around with that patch undyed, to you?"
Giff looked. The roots in an oval patch at the top of Dalt's head were a silvery gray. He jumped away from Dalt as if stung, then walked slowly around him, examining him as if he were an exhibit in a museum. Without a word, he went to the cabinet Dalt had indicated before and drew from it a flask of clear orange fluid.
"I ... I'm almost afraid to try this," he stammered, opening the container as he approached. He poised the bottle over Dalt's wrists where they were inserted into the gravcuff, hesitated, then took a deep breath and poured the liquor. Most of it splashed on the floor but a sufficient amount reached the target.
"Now rub," Dalt told him.
Without looking up, Giff tucked the flask under his arm and began to massage the fluid into the skin of Dalt's left wrist and forearm. The liquor suddenly became cloudy and flesh-colored. Giff took a fold of his coveralls and wiped the solution away. From a sharp line of demarcation at the wrist on down over the back of the hand, the skin was a deep, golden yellow.
"You are The Healer!" he hissed, his eyes meeting Dalt's squarely for the first time. "Forgive me! I'll open the cuff right now." In his frantic haste to retrieve the key from his coveralls, Giff allowed the liquor flask to slip from beneath his arm and it smashed on the floor.
"Hey! That was real glass!" Dalt said.
Giff ignored the crash and the protest. The key was in his hand and he was inserting it into its slot. The pressure around Dalt's wrists was suddenly eased and as he pulled his hands free, Giff caught the now-deactivated cuff.
"Forgive me," he repeated, shaking his head and fixing his eyes on the floor. "If I'd had any idea that you might be The Healer, I would've had nothing to do with this, I swear! Forgive—"
<
br /> "Okay! Okay! I forgive you!" Dalt said hurriedly. "Now, do you have a blaster?"
Giff nodded eagerly, reached inside his coveralls, and handed over a small hand model, cheap but effective at close range.
"Good. Now all we've got to do—"
"Hey!" someone yelled from the other side of the room. "What's going on?"
Dalt spun on reflex, his blaster raised. It was Hinter and he had his own blaster ready. There was a flash, then Dalt felt a searing pain as the beam from Hinter's weapon burned a hole through his chest two centimeters to the left of his sternum. As his knees buckled, everything went black and silent.
XII
Rushing to the upper level at the sound of Giff's howl, Kanlos came upon a strange tableau: the prisoner—Dalt, or whatever his name was—was lying on his back with the front of his shirt soaked with blood and a neat round hole in his chest ... very dead. Giff kneeled over him, sobbing and clutching the empty gravcuff to his abdomen; Hinter stood mutely to the side, blaster in hand.
"You fool!" he screamed, white-faced with rage. "How could you be so stupid!"
Hinter took an involuntary step backward. "He had a blaster! I don't care how valuable a guy is, when he points a blaster in my direction, I shoot!"
Kanlos strode toward the body. "How'd he get a blaster?"
Hinter shrugged. "I heard something break up here and came to investigate. He was out of the cuff and holding the blaster when I came in."
"Explain," he said, nudging the sobbing Giff with his foot.
"He was The Healer!"
"Don't be ridiculous!"
"He was! He proved it to me."
Kanlos considered this. "Well, maybe so. We traced him back to Tolive and that's where The Healer first appeared. It all fits. But why did you let him loose?"
"Because I am a Son of The Healer!" Giff whispered. "And now I've helped kill him!"
Kanlos made a disgusted face. "Idiots! I'm surrounded by fools and incompetents! Now we may never find out how they kept him alive this long." He sighed with exasperation. "All right. We've still got a few rooms left to search."
Hinter turned to follow Kanlos. "What about him?" he said, indicating Giff.
"Useless button-head. Forget him."
They went below, leaving Giff crouched over the body of The Healer.
XIII
("C'mon. Wake up!") Wha' happen?
("Hinter burned a hole right through your heart, my friend.")
Then how come I'm still alive?
("Because the auxiliary heart I constructed in your pelvis a couple of hundred years ago has finally come in handy.")
I never knew about that.
("I never told you. You know how you get when I start making improvements.")
I'll never object again. But what prompted you to build a second heart?
("I've always been impressed by what happened to Anthon when you blasted a hole in his chest, and it occurred to me that it just wasn't safe to have the entire circulatory system dependent on a single pump. So I attached the auxiliary organ to the abdominal aorta, grew a few bypass valves, and let it sit there ... just in case.")
I repeat: I'll never object again. ("Good. I've got a few ideas about the mineral composition of your bones that I—") Later. What do we do now?
(We send the button-head home, then we take care of those two below. But no exertion; we're working on only one lung."
How about waiting for them with the blaster?
("No. Better idea: Remember the sights we came across in the minds of all those people with the horrors?")
I've never quite been able to forget.
("Neither have I, and I believe I can recreate enough of them to fill this house with a concentrated dose of the horrors ... concentrated enough to insure that those two never bother us or anyone else again.")
Okay, but let's get rid of Giff.
XIV
Without warning, the body in front of Giff suddenly rolled over and achieved a sitting position. "Stop that blubbering and get out of here," it told him.
Giff's mouth hung open as he looked at the obviously alive and alert man before him with the gory front and the hole in his chest where his heart should be. He looked torn between the urge to laugh with joy and scream with horror. He resolved the conflict by vomiting.
When his stomach had finally emptied itself, he was told to go to the roof, take the emergency chute down to the ground, and keep on going.
"Do not," the body emphasized, "repeat: do not dally around the grounds if you value your sanity."
"But how ..." he began.
"No questions. If you don't leave now I won't be responsible for what happens to you."
Without another word but with many a backward glance, Giff headed for the roof. At last look, he saw the body climb unsteadily to its feet and walk toward one of the chairs.
Dalt sank into a chair and shook his head. "Dizzy!" he muttered.
("Yeah. It's a long way from the pelvis to the brain. Also, there's some spasm in the aortic arch that I'm having trouble controlling. But we'll be all right.")
I'll have to trust you on that. When do we start with the horrors?
("Now. I'll block you out because I'm not sure that even you can take this dose.")
I was hoping you'd say that, Dalt thought with relief, and watched everything fade into formless grayness.
And from the bloody, punctured body slumped in the chair there began to radiate evil, terror, horror. A malignant trickle at first, then a steady stream, then a gushing torrent.
The men below stopped their search and began to scream.
XV
Dalt finished inspecting the lower rooms and was fully satisfied that the two gurgling, drooling, blank-eyed creatures that had once been Kanlos and Hinter were no longer a threat to his life and his secret. He walked outside into the cool night air in a vain attempt to soothe his laboring right lung and noticed a form slumped in the bushes.
It was Giff. From the contorted position of his body it was evident that he had fallen from the roof and broken his neck.
"Looks like this Son of The Healer couldn't follow directions," Dalt said. "Must've waited up on the roof and then went crazy when the horrors began and ran over the edge."
("Lot's son.")
"What's that supposed to mean?"
("Nothing. Just a distorted reference to an episode in an ancient religious book,") Pard said, then switched the subject. ("You know, it's amazing that there's actually a cult of Healer-followers awaiting his return.")
"Not really so amazing. We made quite an impression ... and left a lot undone."
("Not because we wanted to. There was outside interference.")
"Right. But that won't bother us now, with the war going on."
("You want to go back to it, don't you?") "Yes, and so do you."
("Guess you're right. I'd like to learn to probe a little deeper this time. And maybe find out whoever or whatever's behind the horrors.")
"You've hinted at that before. Care to explain?"
("That's all it is, I'm afraid: a hint ... a glimpse of something moving behind the scenes. I've no theory, no evidence. Just a gnawing suspicion.")
"Sounds a little farfetched to me."
("We'll see. But first we'll have to heal up this hole in the chest, get the original heart working again—if I may quote you: 'What kind of a healer would The Healer be if he couldn't heal himself!'—and try to think up some dramatic way for The Healer to reappear.")
After a quick change of clothes, they went to the roof and steered their flitter into the night, leaving it to the Meltrin authorities to puzzle out two babbling idiots, a broken button-head, and a respected physicist named Cheserak who had vanished without a trace.
They blamed it on the Tarks, of course.
Part Three: HEAL THY NATION
YEAR 1231
The horrors persisted at varying levels of virulence for well over a millennium and during that period certain individ
uals with the requisite stigmata of flamestone, snowy patch of hair, and golden hand, purporting to be The Healer, appeared at erratic intervals. The efforts of these impostors were somehow uniformly successful in causing remissions of the malady. And although this was vigorously dismissed as placebo effect by most medical authorities (with the notable exception of IMC, which, for some unaccountable reason, refused to challenge the impostors), the explanation fell on deaf ears. The Children of The Healer would have none of it. Rational explanations were meaningless to them.
And so the cult grew, inexorably. It crossed planetary, commonwealth, and even racial barriers (we have already discussed the exploits among the Lentemians and among the Tarks during the postwar period), spreading in all directions until ... the horrors stopped.
As suddenly and as inexplicably as the phenomenon had begun, the horrors came to a halt. No new cases have been reported for the last two centuries and the cult of The Healer is apparently languishing, kept alive only by the fact that various individuals in Healer regalia have been spotted on vid recordings in public places here and there about the planets. (The only consistency noted in regard to these sightings is that, when interviewed later, no one in these scenes could ever remember seeing a man who looked like The Healer.)
The Children of The Healer say that he awaits the day when we shall need him again.
We shall see.
from The Healer: Man & Myth by Emmerz Fent
XVI
Federation Central: first-adjutant's office, Federation Defense Force.
Ros Petrical paced the room. He was fair, wiry, and prided himself on his appearance of physical fitness. But he wasn't trying to impress the other occupant of his office. That was Bilxer, ah old friend and the Federation currency coordinator, who had been passing the time of day when the report came in. Bilxer's department was responsible for tabulating and reporting—for a fee, of course—the fluctuations in the relative values of the member planets' currencies. There had, however, been a distinct and progressive loss of interest in the exchange rates through recent generations of currency coordinators, and consequently Bilxer found himself with a surfeit of time on his hands.
Healer lf-3 Page 12
