The Healer by Michael Blumlein Page B

a sign of progress. “They were kidding around. It was a joke. I can take a joke.”
    â€œYou're not getting it,” said Vecque. “It wasn't a joke. They were teaching you a lesson.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? What lesson?”
    â€œFor what you did to that miner. The one with the failing kidneys.”
    â€œCovert?”
    â€œThat sounds right.”
    â€œHe was sick. I healed him.”
    â€œYou took away his livelihood.”
    â€œNo. I did the opposite. He could barely walk and hardly work. Now he can do what he wants. He even runs around with that crazy group of his…” He stopped, remembering their confrontation in the snow. “What livelihood?”
    â€œMusk,” she said.
    â€œWhat's musk?”
    She shook her head. At what point, she wondered, did innocence become ignorance and something to be disdained? “Musk is what they make when they get sick. They collect it and then they sell it. An ounce is worth a week of wages. More than a week. It's precious stuff.”
    â€œSo that's what they were doing in the field? Musk is frozen sweat?”
    â€œSweat plus what their kidneys make. Frozen just because it's easier to collect.”
    â€œSo all those guys were sick?”
    Vecque hadn't seen them but imagined so. “Not everybody gets that far. You have to inhale a lot of dust. And it has to be a certain kind of dust. Not copper, but one of the rarer ores. Rokonite, I think. Or gravellium. And even then, most of them just get the breathing problems. Only a handful get the kidney changes, too. For most of the guys it isn't worth the trouble to find out if it's going to happen the way they want it to. It takes a long time to get sick enough to start producing musk. And it makes them feel awful.”
    â€œSo why do it?”
    â€œI told you why. The money. It's a business venture. I guess you could call it an investment.”
    â€œWhat do they use it for? The musk.”
    â€œPerfume,” she said with half a smile. “What else?”
    Payne was incredulous. “They make themselves ill so someone else can dab themselves with perfume?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “You're not listening. They make themselves ill to make money.”
    â€œThat's just as bad.”
    â€œHow is it bad?”
    â€œTrading in your health for money? Getting rich by getting ill? It's perverse.”
    â€œI doubt they're getting rich. For all we know, they're sending money home to their families. Making life easier for the wife and kids. Raising more snotty humans to lord it over us.”
    â€œI'm sorry, but I can't condone that.”
    â€œWho cares?” she said, leading Payne to believe that it made no difference either to the miners or to her. “It's their choice. That's the difference between them and us. They get the freedom to be stupid. We get the freedom to do what they say.”
    â€œBut not that. We don't have to do that.”
    â€œOh yes,” she said. “We do. Unless you want to have more adventures like the one you had.”
    But Payne was not convinced. Healing was a precious thing to him. It was a gift. In a way it was the only one he had. And he would not have it for long. No healer did. Which was all the more reason not to be reckless with it, or to squander it, or to practice it unscrupulously.
    â€œThey need us, Vecque. We can use that as leverage. When they come to us, we can talk to them. We can teach them. There have to be other ways to make money. Higher wages, better prices for the ore, I don't know. But I do know that they don't have to walk around half-sick.That's no way to live. It has to take a toll on them. If they stay that way too long, the condition might become permanent. They might not ever be able to be fully healed.”
    â€œYou're missing the point again. They don't want to be fully healed. And if at some point they change their minds and do, and can't be, well, that's the risk they