The Healer (14 page)

Her name was Nome. Petite, dark-haired and micrognathic, she
stood a safe distance away, looking unsure of herself and ill-at-ease. She lived across the street, she said. Could she bother him for just a minute of his time?

Payne was curious but guarded. Given his reputation, he was suspicious of anyone showing an interest in him. He cracked the door enough to listen but not so much that she could possibly mistake it for an invitation to come in.

“I need advice,” she said.

“I don't give advice.” And then, “Why me?”

“They said.”

“Who said?”

“A lot of people.”

“Who?”

She scuffed at the floor with the toe of her shoe. “I need help.”

“I don't give that either.”

“They said you can.”

“They're wrong.”

She raised her eyes, braving a look at him. “They said you did before.”

This was the rumor he hated most of all.

“At the Pannus mine,” she said, but that was it. Before she had time for another word, he cut her off, shutting the door in her face.

He paced the room, then went and stood by the window. Across the street was the building where she claimed to live, a boxy piece of work, hatched, it seemed, of someone's dead imagination, gray and flat and drab, like his. A minute later he saw her on the street. She paused, then turned and raised her face in his direction. He stepped away from the window. A moment later he crept back and peeked out, but she was gone.

There was another section of Aksagetta, less frequented than the gambling halls but just as noble, just as fine. It lay across an ancient bridge that spanned a slotted gorge that cut the city in two. Through an arch and down a broad, marble-tiled boulevard, this was the city's spiritual heart, its second kingdom.

Here, like sphinxes, sat the bastions of religion, huge elaborate complexes of breathtaking proportion and imagination, as well as more modest structures of a simpler, but no less celestial, design. There were pointed pyramids and lofty steepled cathedrals, dome-shaped temples, flying tabernacles, marble-pillared citadels with ramparts and chiseled battlements, minarets, mosques and mausoleums. There was a hilly park with a granite dolmen at its crest and a wetland park with a lacquered wooden shrine. There were chapels that catered to the well-to-do and chapels that catered to the indigent. Corner churches, storefront churches, missions for the meek and ministries for
the mighty. There was something for everyone, a smorgasbord of offerings for those with a spiritual hunger and a taste for religion.

And were these havens utilized? Were they ever. While nothing could approach the verve and volume of people parting with their money, the traffic in the Aksa half of Aksagetta was never less than brisk. Faithlessness, once rife, had fallen out of fashion. The gamers and the gamblers, the pleasure seekers and the sybarites, the true believers and the agnostics flocked like geese to these holy houses. Pilgrims from afar and city-folk alike. With such a feast there was simply no reason for belief and honest prayer to go begging.

In a sense it was an extension of the laws of gambling. The odds of anything were mathematical and could be calculated, and any decent gambler would know them cold. But beyond the odds or apart from them was something else, luck or chance or accident, something that could not be predicted or foreseen. And while over time the odds—and the gamblers using them—would have their way, any single moment was a moment unto itself, a chance for something wholly unexpected and extraordinary to occur. Beginner's luck. Dumb luck. The hand of fortune. Blind chance. It happened in cards and dice and bones and the desiccated eyeball games that the fabulously wealthy played behind closed doors. And it happened in the field of faith. Experience showed that the laws of mathematics and science couldn't explain everything. It was only logical to realize that logic wasn't all there was. Miracles did happen.

Payne didn't expect one, but he was curious what drew people to the Aksa districts. He had never been a religious man, but he was not on principle opposed to religion, particularly if it did what it seemed to do: bring people together, create a sense of community and belonging, fill a void, light a path. He was in a muddled state of mind and could use some light.

He took to crossing the Bridge whenever he had the time, exploring the different faiths, sampling whichever ones would let him in. For
a tesque this typically meant those that were beset by one misfortune or another, that were foundering, as it were, and needed new blood in order to survive. In the course of history, tolerance had been known to flourish under such conditions, and so it was that Payne, a tesque, was welcomed into a number of sanctuaries.

In every one he listened diligently to what was said. There was much to understand and decipher, points of fact as well as metaphor, historical references, homilies and parables, calls for mercy and calls for action, rhetoric, litanies, pleas for strength and pleas for help, and always, prayers that pleas be heard. Each house of worship had its message and its messenger, chosen by virtue of talent or calling or, in some cases, it appeared, by default. Quite a few knew how to wake the spirit and stir it up, but only a handful seemed to have the gift of actually lifting it.

It was on one of these journeys that Payne got his first glimpse of a healer fully drained. The man lay at the foot of the statue of St. Pitay—a grim-faced, solemn saint—in the Plaza Gorga, a stone's throw from the doors of the fabled Cathedral Abolique. He had seen the cathedral on other occasions; it was hard to miss. No other structure in either half of Aksagetta was so magnificent or intricate or beautiful, with flying buttresses and steeples topped by dove-shaped finials and stained-glass windows and pointed spires and doors the size of castle gates. He had never known that human beings were capable of such craftsmanship, or such dedication and devotion to a piece of work. Or such whimsy: there were statues and pillars of humans in every pose and with every manner of expression. And other creatures too, imaginary ones, fashioned from a hodgepodge of wings and snouts and tails and claws. Some resembled tesques, or caricatures of tesques, and Payne's blood rose, until he saw that some were caricatures of humans, too. The Cathedral Abolique, at least at the time of its construction, seemed to have been egalitarian about whom it mocked. He'd thought, perhaps, this might extend to whom it admitted, but when he'd tried to enter it, he was turned away.

Tesques aside, it was a popular destination for tourists, as was the Plaza Gorga, and even, to a certain extent, the statue of St. Pitay. The drained healer was only one of many visitors, but to Payne at least, he was by far the most conspicuous. His hair was all but gone, revealing the wing-shaped contour of his exposed parietal skull. His skin was a sallow gray. He wore no shoes, and his toenails were thick and yellow, curling over the tips of his toes like horns. His pants were put on backward, and his shirt was tattered and torn.

Payne's first impulse was to stare; his second, to help the man; his third and possibly strongest, to pretend he hadn't seen him and hurry past. A group of humans came out of the cathedral and crossed the plaza, passing the fallen healer as if he didn't exist. He held a hand out to them, but they ignored it, and he let it drop. After that, he seemed to lose interest in begging. His head drooped to his chest, his eyes closed, and he began to snore.

Payne felt a welter of emotions—indignity, disgust, pity, sympathy, shame. Minutes later, when a second group of humans paused near the statue and stared, first at the prostrate healer and then at Payne himself, he felt mortification as well. Could they possibly believe that the two of them were in any way connected? The one able-bodied and productive, the other fallen and expended. Couldn't they see the difference?

He fled the plaza, putting as much distance between himself and the downed man as speedily as possible. But for days afterward he was troubled, and when he finally got the chance, he returned. The healer was gone, which was no surprise, nor was it likely that he could have prevented this. But he felt guilty for his behavior and, leaning against the pedestal of the statue of St. Pitay, he hung his head and closed his eyes, unintentionally mimicking the posture of the bronzed saint. His thoughts spiraled downward. Half a minute later, something like a prayer rose inside of him, and he asked forgiveness of the poor depleted healer he had spurned.

After that he left the plaza, wandering the streets and alleyways of
Aksa, continuing his search for meaning, feeling somber and morose. It was an aimless sort of search, and depended, it seemed, as much on him and his state of mind as on anything he might find. A major drawback was that he wasn't sure what he was looking for. He wasn't sure in general, didn't trust himself the way he once had. He should have helped the downed healer. He shouldn't have tried to help Vecque. He was making one mistake after another.

The morning wore on. He dragged himself halfway around the city, it seemed, ending up not far from where he'd started, in a small park of unkempt bushes and dried-up grass. He was exhausted, and he hadn't eaten all day, which was another mistake, and sagging to the ground, he promptly fell into a swoonlike sleep. When he woke from it, he was hungrier than ever, and sitting up, he rubbed his eyes, then blinked them in astonishment. Across the street was an old building that looked to be a church of some sort, with wooden stairs leading to a porch and a set of arching black doors. On a small table beside the doors, plain as day, was a tray with a glass of water and half a loaf of bread. He did not recall having seen the tray (or the church, for that matter) prior to falling asleep; they seemed to have popped out of thin air. Was he still asleep? He rubbed his eyes again and looked around.

Beyond the park was a quiet, little-used street. There was no one else in sight. Some weeds, some garbage, some poorly kept-up homes, some nicer ones. It didn't look particularly dreamlike. It seemed, in fact, quite real. He stood and made his way across the street.

The bread was a little hard, and there was a small, drowned gnat floating in the water. This, too, seemed quite real. Before helping himself, he looked around to make sure he wasn't the object of some antitesque prank, then tried the doors to the building, which were locked. He knocked, but no one came. On a whitewashed wooden plaque beside the doors was written, in faded letters, “The Church For Giveness,” and beneath it, in an equally faded hand, “The Reverend I. F. Banisher Presiding.”

Payne decided to take the offering. If it was meant for him, then he was meant to have it. If not, it would be easy to replace. And he would certainly apologize. Food and water were the two things he needed most right then, and that alone seemed reason enough to have them.

He tore the bread into chunks, chewed and swallowed them ravenously. The water he drained, all but a mouthful, in a single gulp. He saved that mouthful, as well as a small piece of bread, in the event that another starving, parch-tongued supplicant happened by. Then he left.

But returned, drawn first by the mystery of the manna and later, by the purveyor of that mystery, not the Reverend I. F. Banisher, as the plaque announced, but the Reverend C. L. Meeks, who for various reasons had decided not to place his name on the church.

But he had brought his message, and it was an ancient one, Payne came to learn, of an ancient faith that had spawned hundreds of other faiths in its time. The church itself was ancient, or relatively so. It was the first built in all of Aksa, and in its heyday one of the finest, attended by the finest people, a source of neighborhood and civic pride. In those days the neighborhood had been the seat of the city's aristocracy, a realm of palatial homes, tree-lined streets and fancy gardens. It had sported a watercourse, a weather-making tower, a zoologic park and a xenofloric arboretum. The first mayor of Aksagetta had lived in the neighborhood. His grandfather had been one of the founders of the church.

As the city grew, the neighborhood changed. More homes were built, not quite so elegant and grand. Trees were cut to make room for them. Other trees succumbed to diseases. To supply the growing population, the watercourse was tapped for water. The weather tower malfunctioned one time too many and was finally disassembled. The zoologic park became a dusty barnyard petting zoo.

The old and moneyed families began to drift away, and with the coming-of-age of Aksagetta as a tourist attraction, the drift became a full-fledged flight. Their homes were broken up into apartments, and
businesses that reflected the city's new, pervasive theme park mentality cropped up on once strictly residential streets. The neighborhood pulsed with life, a different sort of life than before, and then in time it changed again.

Driven from the city center in Getta, a poor and disenfranchised element began to trickle in. Beggars and bagmen appeared on corners. Squatters took up residence in doorways and abandoned buildings. Muckers high on muck, or running low, prowled the nighttime streets.

Metal bars began appearing on store windows and locked gates in front of residential doors. Garbage, along with human waste, became a common sight on the streets. The first mayor's mansion, which had long been vacant, was converted into a treatment center for muckheads and the like. Another mansion became a halfway house and thrift store. The Church For Giveness, which had survived primarily through the continued patronage of its loyal core of now absentee (and dwindling) first families, entered a period of accelerated decline.

Once the jewel of the neighborhood, it was now an eyesore. Its roof looked like a swaybacked old horse, its siding was loose, its paint all cracked and peeling. It leaked when it rained, it was drafty in a wind, and its plumbing dripped continually. All of this would have been tolerable had its members not been in a similar state of disrepair. When the Reverend Meeks arrived, membership was at its lowest point ever. He was not the man to turn it around either; probably no single man could have. Fortunately, this was not what was asked of him. If it had been, he would never have applied for the job.

As a young man the Reverend Meeks had been exceptional. At home and at school he had excelled. He had chosen the ministry over a promising career in the arts, and had risen rapidly in the ranks, outdistancing many older colleagues and all of his peers. At the age of twenty-three he'd been awarded his first position, and at the age of twenty-seven had been lured from it by an offer to assist the Pomossus Jocoband himself, who had tutored him in the more
advanced, refined and political aspects of the profession. Three years later, he was rewarded with a large and influential congregation of some thousand members, which he'd led until an ill-conceived decision lost him its support. It was the first in a string of ill-conceived decisions, and in the span of ten years the Reverend Meeks saw his fortunes plummet. He lost his confidence, and eventually he lost the will to lead. By the time he made his way to the Church For Giveness, he had ceased to hope that he would find either.