Healer lf-3 Read online

  "So you followed me not in spite of my threat to smash the godling but because of it!"

  Anthon nodded and began advancing again. "I also had a score to settle with you, Racso! I couldn't allow you to betray my trust and the trust of my father and go unpunished!" With the last word he aimed a vicious chop at Dalt, who ducked, spun, and dodged out of the way. He had not been wearing his sword when he left his room back at the keep, and consequently did not have it with him now. But he had the dagger.

  Anthon laughed at the sight of the tiny blade. "Think you can stop me with that?"

  If you only knew! Dalt thought. He didn't want to use the blaster, however. He understood Anthon's feelings. If there were only some way he could stun him and make his escape.

  Anthon attacked ferociously now and Dalt was forced to back-peddle. His foot caught on a stone and as he fell he instinctively threw his free hand out for balance. The ensuing events seemed to occur in slow motion. He felt a jarring, crushing, cutting, agonizing pain in his left wrist and saw Anthon's blade bite through it. The hand flew off as if with a life of its own, and a pulsing stream of red shot into the air. Dalt's right hand, too, seemed to take on a life of its own as it reversed the dagger, pointed the butt of the hilt at Anthon, and pressed the hidden stud. An energy bolt, blinding in the darkness, struck him in the chest and he went down without a sound.

  Dalt grabbed his forearm. "My hand!" he screamed in agony and horror.

  ("Give me control!") Pard said urgently.

  "My hand!" was all Dalt could say.

  ("Give me control!")

  Dalt was jolted by this. He relaxed for a second and suddenly found himself an observer in his own body. His right hand dropped the dagger and cupped itself firmly over the bleeding stump, the thumb and fingers digging into the flesh of his forearm, searching for pressure points on the arteries.

  His legs straightened as he rose to his feet and calmly walked toward the concealed shuttlecraft. His elbows parted the bushes and jabbed the plate that operated the door to the outer lock.

  ("I'm glad you didn't lock this up yesterday,") Pard said as the port swung open. There was a first-aid emergency kit inside for situations such as this. The pinky of his right hand was spared from its pressure duty to flip open the lid of the kit and then a container of stat-gel. The right hand suddenly released its grasp and, amid a splatter of blood, the stump of his left arm was forcefully shoved into the gel and held there.

  ("That should stop the bleeding.") The gel had an immediate clotting effect on any blood that came into contact with it. The thrombus formed would be firm and tough.

  Rising, Dalt discovered that his body was his own again. He stumbled outside, weak and disoriented.

  "You saved my life, Pard," he mumbled finally. "When I looked at that stump with the blood shooting out, I couldn't move."

  ("I saved our life, Steve.")

  He walked over to where Anthon lay with a smoking hole where his chest had been. "I wished to avoid that. It wasn't really fair, you know. He only had a sword. ..." Dalt was not quite himself yet. The events of the last minute had not yet been absorbed.

  ("Fair, hell! What does 'fair' mean when someone's trying to kill you?")

  But Dalt didn't seem to hear. He began searching the ground. "My hand! Where's my hand? If we bring it back maybe they can replace it!"

  ("Not a chance, Steve. Necrosis will be in full swing by the time we get to the mothership.")

  Dalt sat down. The situation was finally sinking in. "Oh, well," he said resignedly. "They're doing wonderful things with prosthetics these days."

  ("Prosthetics! We'll grow a new one!")

  Dalt paused before answering. "A new hand?"

  ("Of course! You've still got deposits of omnipotential mesenchymal cells here and there in your body. I'll just have them transported to the stump, and with me guiding the process there'll be no problem to rebuilding the hand. It's really too bad you humans have no conscious control over the physiology of your bodies. With the proper direction, the human body is capable of almost anything.")

  "You mean I'll have my hand back? Good as new?"

  ("Good as new. But at the moment I suggest we get into the ship and depart. The brain has called the Duke and it might be a good thing if we weren't here when he arrived.")

  "You know," Dalt said as he entered the shuttlecraft and let the port swing to a close behind him, "with you watching over my body, I could live to a ripe old age."

  ("All I have to do is keep up with the degenerative changes and you'll live forever.")

  Dalt stopped in midstride. "Forever?"

  ("Of course. The old natives of this planet knew it when they made up that warning for their children: 'Of every thousand struck down, nine hundred and ninety-nine will die.' The obvious conclusion is that the thousandth victim will not die.")

  "Ever?"

  ("Well, there's not much I can do if you catch an energy bolt in the chest like Anthon back there. But otherwise, you won't die of old age—I'll see to that. You won't even get old, for that matter.")

  The immensity of what Pard was saying suddenly struck Dalt with full force. "In other words," he breathed, "I'm immortal."

  ("I'd prefer a different pronoun: We are immortal.")

  "I don't believe it."

  ("I don't care what you believe. I'm going to keep you alive for a long, long time, Steve, because while you live, I live, and I've grown very fond of living.")

  Dalt did not move, did not reply.

  ("Well, what are you waiting for? There's a whole galaxy of worlds out there just waiting to be seen and experienced and I'm getting damn sick of this one!")

  Dalt smiled. "What's the hurry?"

  There was a pause, then: ("You've got a point there, Steve. There's really no hurry at all. We've got all the time in the world. Literally.")

  Part Two: HEAL THY NEIGHBOR

  YEAR 218

  It is difficult in these times to appreciate the devastating effect of "the horrors." It was not a plague in the true sense: it struck singly, randomly, wantonly.. It jumped between planets, from one end of Occupied Space to the other, closing off the minds of victim after victim. To date we remain ignorant of the nature of the malady. An effective prophylaxis was never devised. And there was only one known cure—a man called The Healer.

  The Healer made his initial public appearance at the Chesney Institute for Psychophysiologic Disorders on Largo IV under the auspices of the Interstellar Medical Corps. Intense investigative reporting by the vid services at the time revealed that a man of similar appearance (and there could have been only one then) was seen frequently about the IMC research center on To-live.

  IMC, however, has been steadfastly and frustratingly recalcitrant about releasing any information concerning its relationship with The Healer, saying only that they gave him "logistical support" as he went from planet to planet. As to whether they discovered his talent, developed his talent, or actually imbued him with his remarkable psionic powers, only IMC knows.

  from The Healer: Man & Myth by Emmerz Fent

  IV

  The man strolls slowly along one of Chesney's wide thoroughfares, enjoying the sun. His view of the street ahead of him is suddenly blotted out by the vision of a huge, contorted face leering horribly at him. For an instant he thinks he can feel the brush of its breath on his face. Then it is gone.

  He stops and blinks. Nothing like this has ever happened to him before. He tentatively scrapes a foot forward to start walking again and kicks up a cloud of—

  —dust. An arid wasteland surrounds him and the sun regards him cruelly, reddening and blistering his skin. And when he feels that his blood is about to boil, the sky is suddenly darkened by the wings of a huge featherless bird which circles twice and then dives in his direction at a speed which will certainly smash them both. Closer, the cavernous beaked mouth is open and hungry. Closer, until he is—

  —back on the street. The man leans against the comforting solidity of
a nearby building. He is bathed in sweat and his respiration is ragged, gulping. He is afraid ... must find a doctor. He pushes away from the building and—

  —falls into a black void. But it is not a peaceful blackness. There's hunger there. He falls, tumbling in eternity. A light below. As he falls nearer, the light takes shape ... an albino worm, blind, fanged and miles long, awaits him with gaping jaws.

  A scream is torn from him, yet there is no sound.

  And still he falls.

  V

  Pard was playing games again. The shuttle from Tarvodet had docked against the orbiting liner and as the passengers were making the transfer, he attempted to psionically influence their choice of seats.

  ("The guy in blue is going to sit in the third recess on the left.")

  Are you reading him? Dalt asked.

  ("No, nudging him.")

  You never give up, do you? You've been trying to work this trick for as long as I can remember.

  ("Yeah, but this time I think I've got it down. Watch.")

  Dalt watched as the man in blue suddenly stopped before the third recess on the left, hesitated, then entered and seated himself.

  "Well, congratulations," Dalt whispered aloud.

  ("Thank you, sir. Now watch the teenager sit in the same recess.")

  The lanky young man in question ambled by the third recess on the left without so much as a glance and settled himself in the fifth on the right.

  ("Damn!")

  What happened?

  ("Ah, the kid probably had his mind already made up that he wanted to sit there ... probably does a lot of traveling and likes that seat.")

  Possible. It's also possible that the guy in blue does a lot of traveling, too, and that he just so happens to like to sit in the third recess on the left.

  ("Cynicism doesn't become you, Steve.")

  Well, it's hard to be an ingenue after a couple of centuries with you.

  ("Then let me explain. You see, I can't make a person part his hair on the left if he prefers it parted on the right. However, if he doesn't give a damn where it's parted, I can probably get him to do it my way.")

  A slim, blond beauty in an opalescent clingsuit strolled through the port.

  ("Okay, where should we make her sit?")

  I don't care.

  ("Oh, yes you do. Your heart rate just increased four beats per minute and your groin is tingling.") I'll admit she's attractive—

  ("She's more than that. She bears a remarkable resemblance to Jean, doesn't she?") I really hadn't noticed.

  ("Come now, Steve. You know you can't lie to me. You saw the likeness immediately ... you've never forgotten that woman.")

  And he probably never would. It was over 140 standard years since he'd left her. What started as a casual shipboard romance during the Kwashi expedition had stretched into an incredible idyll. She accepted him completely, though it had puzzled her that he'd refused disability compensation for the loss of his left hand on Kwashi. Her puzzlement was short-lived, however, and was soon replaced by astonishment when it became evident that her lover's hand was growing back. She'd heard of alien creatures who could regenerate limbs and there was talk that the Interstellar Medical Corps was experimenting with induced regeneration, but this was spontaneous!

  And if the fact that the hand was regenerating was not bizarre enough, the manner in which it regenerated bordered on the surreal. No finger buds appeared; no initial primative structures heralded the reconstruction of the severed hand. Instead, the wrist was repaired first, then the thenar and hypothenar eminences and the palm started to appear. The palm and the five metacarpals were completed before work was begun on the thumb phalanges; and the thumb, nail and all, was completed before the fingers were started. It was similar to watching a building being constructed floor by floor but with every floor completely furnished before the next one above is started. It took four standard months.

  Jean accepted that—was glad, in fact, that her man had been made whole again. And then Dalt explained to her that he was no longer entirely human, that a new factor had been added, had entered through that patch of silver hair on the top of his head. He was a dual entity: one brain but two minds, and that second mind was conscious down to the cellular level.

  And Jean accepted that. She might not have if it weren't for the hand which had grown back where the old one had been sliced off. No question about it: the hand was there—discolored, yes, but there nonetheless. And since that was true, then whatever else Dalt told her might also be true. So she accepted it. He was her man and she loved him and that was enough ...

  ... until the years began to show and she watched her hair begin to thin and her skin begin to dry. The youth treatments were new then and only minimally effective. Yet all the while the man she loved remained in his prime, appearing to be not a day older than when they had met. This she could not accept. And so slowly her love began to thin, began to dry, began to crumble into resentment. And from there it was not far to desperate hatred.

  So Dalt left Jean—for her sake, for the sake of her sanity. And never returned.

  ("I think I'll have her sit right here next to you.")

  Don't bother.

  ("I think I should bother. You've avoided a close male-female relationship ever since you left Jean. I don't think that's—"

  I really don't care what you think. Just don't play matchmaker!

  ("Nevertheless ...")

  The girl paused by Dalt's shoulder. Her voice was liquid. "Saving that seat for anyone?"

  Dalt sighed resignedly. "No." He watched her as she settled herself across from him. She certainly did justice to the clingsuit: slim enough to keep the suit from bulging in the wrong places, full enough to fill it out and make it live up to its name. He idly wondered how Jean would have looked in one and then quickly cut off that train of thought.

  "My name's Ellen Lettre."

  "Steven Dalt," he replied with a mechanical nod.

  A pause, then: "Where're you from, Steve?"

  "Derby." Another pause, this one slightly more awkward than the first.

  ("Have mercy on the girl! She's just trying to make friendly conversation. Just because she looks like Jean is no reason to treat her as if she's got Nolevatol Rot!")

  You're right, he thought, then spoke. "I was doing some microbial research at the university there."

  She smiled and that was nice to see. "Really? That means you were connected with the bioscience department. I took Dr. Chamler's course there last year."

  "Ah! The Chemistry of Schizophrenia. A classic course. Are you in psychochem?"

  She nodded. "Coming back from a little field trip right now, as a matter of fact. But I don't remember seeing you around the bioscience department."

  "I sort of kept pretty much to myself—very involved in the work." And this was true. Dalt and Pard had developed a joint interest in the myriad microbial life-forms being found on the explorable planets of the human sector of the galaxy. Some of the metabolic pathways and enzyme systems were incredible and the "laws" of biological science were constantly being revamped. Alien microbiology had become a huge field requiring years to make a beginning and decades to make a dent. Dalt and Pard had made notable contributions and published a number of respected papers.

  "Dalt ... Dalt," the girl was saying. "Yes, I believe I did hear your name mentioned around the department a few times. Funny, I'd have thought you'd be older than you are."

  So would his fellow members of the bioscience department if he hadn't quit when he did. Men who had looked his age when he first came to the university were now becoming large in the waist and gray in the hair and it was time to move. Already two colleagues had asked him where he was taking his youth treatments. Fortunately, IMC Central had offered him an important research fellowship in antimicrobial therapy and he had accepted eagerly.

  "You on a sabbatical from Derby?" she was asking.

  "No, I quit. I'm on my way to Tolive now."

  "Oh, then y
ou're going to be working for the Interstellar Medical Corps."

  "How did you know?"

  "Tolive is the main research-and-development headquarters for IMC. Any scientist is assumed to be working for the group if he's headed for Tolive."

  "I don't consider myself a scientist, really. Just a vagabond student of sorts, going from place to place and picking up what I can." So far, Dalt and his partner had served as an engineer on a peristellar freighter, a prospector on Tandem, a chispen fisher on Gelc, and so on, in a leisurely but determined search for knowledge and experience that spanned the human sector of the galaxy.

  "Well, I'm certain you'll pick up a lot with IMC."

  "You've worked for them?"

  "I'm head of a psychiatric unit. My spesh is really behavior mod, but I'm trying to develop an overview of the entire field; that's why I took Chamler's course."

  Dalt nodded. "Tell me something, Ellen—"

  "El—"

  "Okay, then: El. What's IMC like to work for? I must confess that I'm taking this job blindly; the offer came and I accepted with only minimal research."

  "I wouldn't work anywhere else," she stated flatly, and Dalt believed her. "IMC has gathered some of the finest minds in the human galaxy together for one purpose: knowledge."

  "Knowledge for knowledge's sake has never had that much appeal for me; and frankly, that's not quite the image I'd been given about IMC. It has a rather mercenary reputation in academic circles."

  "The practical scientist and the practicing physician have limited regard for the opinions of most academicians. And I'm no exception. The IMC was started with private funds—loans, not grants—by a group of rather adventurous physicians who—"

  "It was a sort of emergency squad, wasn't it?"

  "At first, yes. There was always a plague of some sort somewhere and the group hopped from place to place on a fee-for-service basis. Mostly, they could render only supportive care; the pathogens and toxins encountered on the distressed planets had already been found resistant to current therapeutic measures and there was not much the group could do on such short notice, other than lend a helping hand. They came up with some innovations which they patented, but it became clear that much basic research was needed. So they set up a permanent base on Tolive and started digging"