The Healer by Michael Blumlein Page A

only for an instant, that she wasn't all alone.
    â€œLiar. You don't fight. You don't have to.” With a sigh she pulled the blanket tighter, huddling in its thin cocoon. “I hate you, Payne.”

    The weeks passed, and he kept at her, not satisfied with no for an answer. She told him to mind his business, called him names, refused to speak to him, but in the end threw up her hands and let him have his way. She couldn't compete with him: he was tireless, and she was not. She needed to preserve her strength for work.
    For a while, then, he became her teacher. Which took some getting used to, because it was a reversal of their customary roles. What he lacked in a concrete plan he made up for in gusto. And while Vecque remained skeptical that anything would work, for nothing in the history of healers and healing ever had, she agreed to give it a try.
    One by one they went through the steps and then the stages of a healing, comparing notes, discussing styles, dissecting subtle differences between the two of them. The most important one Payne found, the only one that seemed significant, was in their attitude. He enjoyed the work. Vecque despised it.
    This, he guessed, made everything more difficult for her, from identification to enhancement, which naturally affected all the other, downstream stages of a healing. She was like a runner throwing obstacles in her own path. Of all things, the Drain did not require such assistance.
    But how to change a person's attitude and feelings? Especially a personso committed and attached to them? Vecque was fueled by her anger and hatred the way that other people were fueled by food. They seemed to prop her up and keep her going when little else did. She claimed they gave her bearing and a sense of identity and even comfort, like an old familiar friend.
    â€œBut 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.”
    â€œDon'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?”
    â€œDon't fight yourself,” he said.
    â€œAnd 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.
    â€œDon't think of them as humans,” he suggested.
    â€œNo?” This was a novel idea. “What then?”
    â€œThink of them as cousins.”
    She gave him a look. “In what possible sense?”
    â€œIn an evolutionary sense.”
    â€œYou don't believe that story?”
    â€œIt's not a story. We're related, and you know it.”
    â€œI'm sorry to disappoint you, but my memory doesn't go back that far.”
    â€œYou don't have to remember anything. All you have to do is look.”
    One by one he enumerated all the things they shared, from thestructure 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?
    â€œThey're the same as us,” he snapped, losing his patience. “If they deserve it, we do too.”
    â€œWell I am in pain,” said