Healer, page 10
part #3 of LaNague Federation Series
(“It’s necessary, I’m afraid. I’ll need every ounce of reserve function to stay oriented once I get in there, and I may even have to draw on your meager psi power.”)
Dalt hesitated. The thought of confronting madness on its own ground was deeply frightening. His stomach lurched as he replied, Okay, let’s do it. But be careful!
(“I’m frightened too, friend.”)
The thought flashed across Dalt’s mind that he had never before considered the possibility of Pard being frightened of anything. Concerned, yes … but frightened—
The thought disappeared as his view of Sally Ragna and the room around them swirled away and he entered the place where Sally was spending her life:
/countless scintillating pinpoints of light that somehow gave off no illumination poured into treelike shapes/ a sky of violet shot through with crimson flashes that throw shadows in paradoxical directions/an overall dimness that half obscures living fungus forms that crawl and leap and hang from the pointillistic trees/ /moving forward now/
/past a cube of water with schools of fish each made of two opposing tails swimming forever in stasis/mountains crumble to the right/breach-born ahead is a similar range/which disappears as they step off a sudden precipice and float through a dank forest and are surrounded by peering, glowing, unblinking yellow eyes/ /descent/
/to a desert road stretching emptily and limitlessly ahead/and suddenly a town has sprung up around them, its buildings built at impossible angles/a stick man walks up and smiles as his form fills out and then swells, bloats, and ruptures, spewing mounds of writhing maggots upon the ground/the face and body begin to dissolve but the mouth remains, growing larger and nearer/it opens to show its double rows of curved teeth /and growing still larger it moves upon them, enveloping them, closing upon them with a SNAP/
Dalt next found himself on the floor with Webst and a technician bending over him. But it was Pard who awakened him.
(“Get up, Steve! Now! We’ve got to go back in there as soon as possible!”)
Dalt rose slowly to his feet and brushed his palms. “I’m all right,” he told Webst. “Just slipped out of the chair.” And to Pard: You must be kidding!
(“I assure you, I am not. That was a jolting experience, and if we don’t go back immediately, we’ll probably build up a reflex resistance that will keep us out in the future.”)
That’s fine with me.
(“But we can do something for this girl; I’m sure of it.”)
Dalt waved Webst and his technician away. I’m going to try again,” he muttered, and repositioned himself before the girl. Okay, Pard. I’m trusting you.
/and then they were in a green-fogged bog as ochre hands reached up for them from the rank marsh grasses to try to pull them into the quicksand/
/the sun suddenly appeared overhead but was quickly muffled by the fog/it persisted, however, and slowly the fog began to thin and burn away/
/the land tilted then and the marsh began to drain/the rank grasses began to wither and die in the sun/slowly a green carpet of neatly trimmed grass unrolled about them, covering and smothering the ever-clutching hands/
/a giant, spheroid boulder rolled in from the horizon at dazzling speed and threatened to overrun them until a chasm yawned suddenly before it and swallowed it/
/dark things crept toward them from all sides, trailing dusk behind them, but a high, smooth, safe wall suddenly encircled them and sunlight prevailed/
Dalt was suddenly back in the room again with Sally Ragna, only this time he was seated on the chair instead of the floor.
(“We’ll leave her in that sanctuary by herself for a few minutes while I get the lay of the land here.”)
You made all those changes, then?
(“Yes, and it was easier than I thought it would be. I met a lot of resistance at first when I tried to bring the sun out, but once I accomplished that, I seemed to be in full control. There were a couple of attempts to get at her again, but they were easily repulsed.”)
What now?
(“Now that we’ve made her comfortable in her sylvan nunnery—which is as unreal as the horror show she’s lived in all these years, but completely unthreatening—we’ll bring her back to reality.”)
Ah, but what is reality?
(“Please, Steve. I haven’t time for such a sophomoric question. Just go along with me, and for a working definition we’ll just say that reality is what trips you up when you walk around with your eyes closed. But no more talk … now comes the hard part. Up until now we’ve been seeing what she sees; the task at hand is to reverse that situation. Here goes.”)
They were back in again and apparently Pard’s benign reconstruction had held—and had been improved upon; the wall had been removed and a smooth grassy sward stretched to the far horizon. Pard set up a bare green panel to the left; three more panels appeared and boxed them in … a lighted ceiling finished the job. An odd piece of metallic machinery overhung them, and there, just a short distance before them, sat a man with a golden hand and a flamestone slung at his throat, whose dark hair was interrupted by a patch of silver at the crown.
A sudden blurring and they were looking at Sally again. Only this time she was looking back—and smiling. As tears slid down her cheeks, the smile faded and she collapsed into unconsciousness.
IX
“You’ve done something,” Webst said later at the office after Sally had been examined and returned to her bed, “something beneficial. Can’t be sure just yet, but I can smell it! Did you see her smile at you? She’s never smiled before. Never!”
Webst’s enthusiasm whirled past Dalt without the slightest effect. He was tired, tired as he’d never been before. There was a vague feeling of dissociation, too; he’d visited the mind of another and had returned home to find himself subtly altered by the experience.
“Well, I certainly hope I didn’t go through all that for nothing.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” said a voice behind him. He turned to see El walking across the room. “She’s sleeping now,” she said, sliding easily into a chair, “and without a hypnotic. You’ve gotten through to her, no question about it.”
Webst leaned forward on his desk. “But just what is it you’ve done?” he asked intently. “What did you see in there?”
Dalt opened his mouth to protest, to put off all explanations and descriptions until tomorrow, but Pard cut him off.
(“Tell them something. They’re hungry for information.”)
How can I describe all … that? (“Try. Just skim the details.”)
Dalt gave a halting summary of what they had seen and done, then:
“In conclusion, it’s my contention that the girl’s underlying lesion was not organic but conceptual. Her sense of reality was completely aberrant, but as to how this came to be, I do not know.” He hesitated and El thought she saw him shudder ever so slightly. “For a moment I got the feeling that I was working against something … something dark and very alien, just over the horizon. At one point I thought I actually touched it, or it reached for me, or—” He shook himself. “I don’t know. Maybe it was part of her fantasy complex. Anyway, what matters is that she was a very sick girl and I think I’ve helped her.”
“I take it, then,” Webst said, “that we can assume that these acute, unremitting, chemonegative schizophrenics are actually only conceptually deranged. Okay, I’ll buy that. But why are they deranged?”
Dalt remembered the dark thing he had sensed in Sally’s mind and the word “imposed” rushed into his thoughts, but he pushed it away. “Can’t help you there as yet. But let’s get her back on her feet and worry about why it happened later on. Chemotherapy was no good because her enzyme chains are normal; and psychotherapy has been useless because, as far this patient was concerned, the psychotherapist didn’t exist. Apparently, only a strong psionic thrust and subsequent reconstruction of the fantasy world is of any value. And by the way, her mind was extremely easy to enter. Perhaps in erecting an impenetrable barrier against reality, it left itself completely open to psionics.”
El and Webst were virtually glowing with the exhilaration of discovery. “This is incredible!” Webst declared. “A whole new direction in psychotherapy! Mr. Dalt, I don’t know how we can repay you!”
(“Tell him what he can pay you.”)
We can’t take money for helping that poor girl!
(“He’s going to ask you to do it again … and again. That was no sylvan picnic in there—it’s risky business. I won’t allow us to enter another mind unless we’re compensated for it. Value given for value received, remember?”)
That’s crass.
(“That’s life. Something that costs nothing is usually worth the price.”) That’s trite.
(“But true. Quote him a figure.”)
Dalt thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll require a fee for Sally … and any others you want me to try.” He named a sum.
“That sounds reasonable.” Webst nodded. “I won’t dicker with you.”
El’s face reflected amusement tinged with amazement. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
Webst smiled too. “He’s welcome to every credit we can spare if he can bring those horrors patients around. We’ll even try to get a bigger budget. I’ll talk to Dr. Hyne and have you transferred to this department; meanwhile, there’s an ethical question you should consider. You are in effect performing an experimental procedure on mentally incompetent patients who are incapable of giving their consent.”
“What about their guardians?”
“These patients have no guardians, no identity. And a guardian would be irrelevant as far as the ethical question is concerned—that is up to you. In the physician role, you’ve got to decide whether an experimental procedure—or even an established procedure—will have a greater chance of benefiting the patient than doing harm to him, and whether the possible benefits are worth the risk. And the patient must come first; not humanity, not science, but the patient. Only you can decide.”
“I made that decision before I invaded Sally,” Dalt replied with a touch of acid. “The gains were mutual: I would learn something, she would, hopefully, receive therapeutic value. The risks, as far as I could foresee, would all be mine.”
Webst considered this. “Mr. Dalt,” he said finally, “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.” He extended his hand and Dalt grasped it firmly.
El came to his side and hooked her arm around his. “Welcome to the department,” she said with a half smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “This is quite a turnaround from the man who swore a few hours ago that he was taking the next shuttle out.”
“I haven’t forgotten that episode, believe me. I can’t quite accept the code you Tolivians live by as yet, but I think I’d like to stick around and see if it works as well as you say it does.”
The viewphone had beeped again while they were talking. Webst took the call, then suddenly headed for the door. “That was Big Blue—Sally just woke up and asked for a drink of water!” Nothing more needed to be said; El and Dalt immediately fell in behind him as he made his way to the carport.
The last sanguine rays of the sun slipping into the plaza found the ambulatory patients clustered in hushed, muttering knots. And all eyes suddenly became riveted on the car that held Webst, Dalt, and El as it pulled up beside Big Blue. An elderly woman broke away from a small group and came forward, squinting at the trio in the waning light.
“It’s him!” she cried hoarsely as she reached the car. “He’s got the silver patch of hair, the flamestone, and the golden hand that heals!” She clutched the back of Dalt’s suit as he turned away. “Touch me with your healing hand!” she cried. “My mind is sick and only you can help me! Please! I’m not as sick as Sally was!”
“No, wait!” Dalt said, whirling and shrinking away. “It doesn’t work that way!”
But the woman seemed not to hear him, repeating, “Heal me! Heal me!” And over her shoulder he could see the other patients in the plaza crowding forward.
Webst was suddenly at his side, his face close, his eyes shining in the fading darkness. “Go ahead,” he whispered excitedly, “touch her. You don’t have to do anything else, just reach out that left hand and lay it on her head.”
Dalt hesitated; then, feeling foolish, pressed the heel of his palm against her forehead. The woman covered her face at his touch and scurried away, muttering, “Thank you, thank you,” through her hands.
With that, it was as if a dam had burst. The patients were suddenly swirling all around him and Dalt found himself engulfed by a torrent of outstretched hands and cries of, “Heal me! Heal me! Heal me! Heal me!” He was pushed, pulled, his clothes and limbs were plucked at, and it was only with great difficulty that El and Webst managed to squeeze him through the press of supplicants and into the quiet of Big Blue.
“Now you know why he’s at the top of his profession,” El said softly, nodding her head toward Webst as she pressed a drink into Dalt’s hand, a hand that even now, in the security of Big Blue, betrayed a slight but unmistakable tremor. The experience in the plaza had unnerved him—the hands, the voices, reaching and crying for him in the twilight, seeking relief from the psychological and physiological afflictions burdening them; the incident, though only moments past, was becoming increasingly surreal in retrospect.
He shook himself and took a deep gulp of the drink. “I don’t follow.”
“The way he sized up the situation immediately as mass hysteria and put it to good use: the enormity of placebo effect in medicine has never been fully appreciated, even to this day. There were a lot of chronically ill patients in that plaza who had heard of a man who performed a miraculous cure and they all wanted a piece of that miracle for themselves.”
“But how did they find out?”
El laughed. “The grapevine through these wards could challenge a subspace laser for speed of transmission!”
Webst flicked off the viewphone from which he had been receiving a number of hurried reports, and turned to them, grinning. “Well, the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk,” he announced, then burst out laughing at the horrified expression on Dalt’s face. “No, nothing as dramatic as that, I’m afraid, but we have had a few remarkable symptomatic remissions.”
“Not because of me!” Dalt snapped, his tone betraying annoyance. “I didn’t do a thing—those people only think I did.”
“Exactly! You didn’t cure them per se, but you did act as a catalyst through which the minds of those people could gain some leverage on their bodies.”
“So I’m a faith-healer, in other words.”
“Out in the plaza, you were—and still are, now more than ever. We have a rare opportunity here to study the phenomenon of the psychosomatic cure, something which fascinates the student of behavior more than anything else. It’s the power of the mind over the body in action … we know almost nothing of the dynamics of the relationship.”
(“I could tell them a few things about that,”) Pard muttered.
You’ve said quite enough tonight, friend.
“And you’re a perfect focal point,” Webst added. “You have a genuine healing ability in a certain area, and this along with an undeniably unique appearance evidently works to give you an almost messianic aura in susceptible minds.”
(“Defensively worded in the best scientific tradition.”)
Webst continued in lowered tones, talking to himself more than to anyone else. “You know, I don’t see why the same phenomenon couldn’t be duplicated on any other planet in the human system, and on a much larger scale. Every planet has its share of horrors cases and they’re all looking for a way to handle them. If we limit the amount of information we release—such as keeping your identity a secret—the inevitable magnification that occurs with word-of-mouth transmission will have you raising the dead by the time you finish your work here. And by then every human planet will be clamoring for your services. And while you’re reconstructing sick minds, Dr. Lettre and I will be carefully observing the epiphenomena.”
“Meaning the psychosomatic cures?”
El nodded, getting caught up in Webst’s vision. “Right. And it would be good for Tolive, too. He-Who-Heals-Minds—pardon the dramatic phrasing—will come from Tolive, and that should counteract some of the smears being spread around.”
“How does that sound, Mr. Dalt … or should I say, ‘Healer’?”
What do you think?
(“Sounds absolutely wonderful to me, as long as we don’t start to believe what people will be saying about us.”)
“Interesting,” Dalt replied slowly, “very interesting. But why don’t we see how things go here on Tolive before we start star-hopping.” He had a lot of adjustments to make, physically and intellectually, if he was going to spend any time here.
“Right!” Webst said, and headed back to the view-phone. “And I’m sure it’s been a long day for you. I’ll have the plaza cleared and you can return to your hotel as soon as you like.”
“That’s not the place I had in mind,” Dalt muttered to El, “but I guess the sunset’s long gone by now out there on the plain.”
El shrugged warmly. “The sunrise is just as good.”
Interlude:
A SOLILOQUY FOR TWO
Can’t you do anything?
(“I’ve already tried … a number of times. And failed.”)
I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you tell me?
(“I know how much she means to you, so I made the attempts on my own. The most recent was yesterday. When you entered her body, I entered her mind—that seems to be her most vulnerable moment.”)
And?
(“The cells won’t respond. I’m unable to exert any influence over the components of another body. They simply will not respond.”)
