Healer (9 page)

11

Ears pricked, nose snuffing the faint remains of daytime odours, Bear prowled the empty rooms and long, blank corridors. Sometimes he turned out a light or shut a door so that he could stand at a window, face close to the pane, and, undistracted by reflection from inside the room, stare out at the dark. There were rainy and moonless nights when he could see nothing at all, but still he stood there half an hour on end. On nights of clear skies the grounds gradually took shape, but not their daytime shape. Now the shadows became caves of blackness beneath the cedar trees and the lime trees and along the banks of rhododendrons. Anything might be there, dangerous, deadly, in those caves.

Norah was there, somewhere, but he never saw her. He imagined her, often, prowling her rounds outside just as he did his inside, with the same pricked ears and sharpened senses. He felt more like her than any of the sleeping humans. But he never saw her, a wolf shape, lean and quick, slipping across a patch of moonlit lawn between shadow and shadow. At last, after long waiting, he would turn from the window and go on with his round, the conscientious hall porter.

On his third night he had found the door of Mr. Freeman's office slightly ajar. It had been locked the two previous nights. He went in, turned on the lights, looked around. Nothing unusual, nothing special. His first thought was to leave things as they were and come back in the early hours of the morning to see if he could find anything useful. Something prickled at the back of his neck, a Bear feeling, a sense of distrust. He turned out the light, closed the door, and went up the back stairs toward Mr. Freeman's private apartment. Before he got there, he met Mr. Freeman strolling towards him along the upper corridor. Mr. Freeman nodded as though he meant to pass by without speaking.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Barry. “You've left your office unlocked.”

“Have I now? That's careless. Be a good chap and lock it for me. This key here. Leave the keys with Sergeant Coyne. I'll pick them up in the morning.”

Barry did exactly what he was told, reasonably sure it was some sort of test. Mr. Freeman wasn't careless. If he could set up a hidden mike in the nursery, he could see that his own office was electronically watched and guarded. How had he come to be walking along the corridor at that moment? Barry checked the office window but deliberately didn't stare around for hidden cameras. As he closed the door, he saw that there was an electric contact low down on the jamb and another on the door itself.

It was after that episode that he began deliberately to let Bear come to the surface, to do the night rounds with him, for him. He wasn't at all sure of his own motives for letting this happen. They seemed to change, the same way Bear seemed to change. There seemed to be several Bears, varying from the meaningless pet name Barry used for himself to an almost solid alternative person (creature?) who was waiting, more and more impatiently, to take him over. Somewhere halfway between these two came Superbear. The loner. The only one who knew. Knew what? Knew that the Foundation was a con. Bear against the Foundation. Bear against the system. Bear against the mighty intergalactic conspiracy. Conspiracy what for? If they're all in it, where are the goodies, apart from old Bear and a few nuts like Mr. Stott? Conspiracy to conspire, that's what. All the baddies—the politicians and the schoolmasters and the doctors who are too bloody indifferent to tell your mum about chocolate allergies—there they are, met for the great annual Conspirators' Dance and Gala, when suddenly in their midst a silence falls! Who is it? What is it? Why, it's Superbear with a great big B on his furry chest! Do they tremble and turn pale? Do they, hell! Their golden eyes gaze contemptuously. Voices like Sergeant Coyne's whisper, “Get yourself out of that suit, lad, and put on your uniform and go and empty the wastepaper baskets in the sun lounge. And mind you don't go outside or Norah will have your throat out!”

Superbear was an experiment, a way of coping with Bear, of getting control. It didn't really work. Bear was more than that and different. He was like a scab you can't help picking, a dream that returns and returns against your will, a cliff you keep going back to, to stand on the brink of the huge drop, sweat on your palms, wondering if you dare climb down. You're going to have to, one day. So Barry let him out of his lair, partly for company on those lonely nights, partly in an attempt to learn about him and find ways of controlling him and dealing with him, partly because there was a strange, satisfying excitement about actually being Bear for a while, and partly because he would have got out anyway.

It wasn't only the loneliness and the dark, and Norah out in the dark, that stirred Bear up. Stronger and stronger each day there was the frustration of being Barry, of having got this far quite easily and now being faced with a problem he couldn't solve. He had actually settled down in his cubicle one afternoon and written out a list of things to think about:

1. Talking to Pinkie alone

2. Getting her out of the Foundation

3. Getting clear away

4. Finding somewhere to hide

5. Then what?

(1) and (2) he got nowhere with. (3) he had some ideas about—that was the easiest. (4) depended on Mr. Stott. (5) was a blank. He stared at the paper for a while, then went out for a ride on the Galaxy. On the downs above Harting he tore the paper into shreds and stuffed them down a rabbit hole. But he continued to fret obsessively at the problem during his hours of duty. More and more it was item 5 that bothered him. It wasn't just the problem of how to hide, how to stay alive, after the escape, with half the police of England looking for them. He and Pinkie weren't the only ones. There were Mum and Dad, for instance. What about them, having to cope with the police, for hours on end, and reporters on the doorstep, and not knowing what was going on and whether their son had done what the papers hinted?

Pinkie, too. Suppose it all happened, and then suppose they got caught—pretty well bound to—Barry would have to try and explain why he'd done it. Then it would all come out, what was happening at the Foundation, what was so special about Pinkie. You had to say this for Mr. Freeman: In spite of needing to bring the cash customers in, he'd managed to see the place wasn't besieged by reporters wanting to write sob stuff about Miracle Cures by Child Saint. Of course, the stories might have been Callous Fraud on Crippled Pensioner—he wouldn't want that. But once Barry had turned Pinkie into a sensation by running off with her, what hope was there of keeping quiet any longer that she had this freak knack? Did she realise that? Did she realise anything? How could he go ahead without having a long talk with her first?

So it came back again to the same old cycle of problems without answers, a weary, boring trudge around and around, thinking the same thoughts over and over and getting nowhere new—rather like the rounds Barry did inside the Foundation, along the same unpeopled corridors, into the same silent half-lit rooms, checking the same doors, over and over. No wonder that he would find himself standing in the dark at some window, not knowing how long he had stood there staring out into the dark, sniffing the night air, being not Barry but Bear. Bear wasn't troubled by thoughts. Bear just felt. When thought got you nowhere, it was better being Bear for a while.

One morning, after just such a night as this, Barry came late into the staff canteen for his breakfast and found Karen was there, only just starting on her cornflakes. He carried his tray over to sit with her.

“You're a bit behindhand, aren't you?” he said.

“What about you? I overslept, that's all.”

“Hope I do. This night duty is getting to me, and then I had trouble with Norah.”

“Norah?”

“The guard dog. Couldn't get her into her cage. She's still got the idea I'm some kind of enemy. She's thick.”

“Aren't you scared of her?”

“A bit. Sergeant Coyne says she's trained to knock you down and stand over you and bark till someone comes, but I'd be happier if I'd seen her doing it. To someone else. How are you keeping?”

Karen told him, starting with her weight. He'd heard most of her story before. Her father was a consultant engineer who spent most of his time abroad, and her mother sounded like a typical middle-class bitch whose one idea was that Karen should think and look and dress and behave the same way she did. Karen wasn't up to fighting her, so she'd found a way out by not eating, becoming an anorexic. Got herself down to sixty-eight pounds, she said, before her mother had heard about the Foundation. She was plump enough now, in a bouncy, strapped-in way, and mildly sexy in her white uniform. Drowsy as he was, Barry enjoyed her physical nearness. He didn't imagine she felt the same for him. She just liked talking, mainly about herself. Time drifted by until a sharp tone sounded.

“Oh, goodness!” said Karen, bouncing up and grabbing her crockery. “Only twenty minutes and I haven't done anything!”

She scampered off. Barry, too sleepy to bother, sat where he was until Mrs. Foxe, the fat canteen overseer, came over.

“Off you go now, me boy,” she said. “Got to get cleared up before the session starts, haven't I?”

“Sorry,” said Barry. “I'd better get back to my room, I suppose.”

It was one of the rules: all staff to keep still and quiet while the Harmony Sessions were in progress. The telephones were cut off, and a notice went up on the gates saying that there was no admittance for the next two hours. Normally Barry would have been in bed and asleep by now, so the rule had hardly affected him till this morning.

He practiced his Foundation smile on Mrs. Foxe and left. He dropped into a slouch only as he strolled down the corridor that led toward the back of the building, past what must once have been pantries and sculleries and storerooms. Some were still used for this kind of purpose, but others had become offices and laboratories. The two-minute tone sounded. The building seemed hushed, deserted. He was almost at the door into the stable yard when something he had just passed nagged at his mind, something both strange and familiar. He turned and looked. It was nothing—well, it was a cupboard in the wall at the darkest point of the corridor, Why…oh, yes. It was an odd shape, not quite right for a cupboard somehow…but the same as the doors that opened onto the lift up in the nursery.

With no particular purpose he opened the doors. The shelves were inside, bare. He tugged at the rope and listened to the grumble of the wooden wheel far above. The lift slid on down about eighteen inches and jarred to a stop, leaving a slot of black above the top shelf. By getting his knees onto the bottom rim of the hatch he could poke his head through, twist, and peer up. The shaft was pitch-dark.

The last tone took him by surprise. Either they'd cheated over the two minutes, or his timing had gone wrong, but from now on the Harmony Session was in progress. Of course, there was nothing to stop him from slipping out of the back door and across the yard; nobody was likely to spot him, and even if they did, it was too trivial a bit of rule-breaking to bother about. Still, somehow, he didn't fancy having it happen. As much from a childish impulse to hide as from any serious intention of doing something about the Pinkie problem he scrambled up through the slot onto the top of the lift, then reached down to pull the doors shut below him. With a sigh of weariness he settled down, leaning his back against the timber lining of the shaft.

This was no use. This was stupid. The longer he stayed here, the later he'd be getting back to his cubicle, and if he was spotted, the worse the rule-breaking would have become. With another sigh he got to his feet and stood upright. Far above now he could see a faint glimmer of light. The upper doors must have been left slightly ajar. Still without any serious intention of making any use of what he had found, he heaved at the rope by the door. The wheel above groaned, and the lift stirred beneath him. Because of the gearing, he was having to lift only about a third of his own weight, plus a hefty allowance for friction. It should in theory be possible to heave himself up the whole way, assuming that the mechanism would take the load, but it was no use. The whole shaft would boom with the racket, and in the totally silent building somebody was bound to hear. He eased the lift back down the couple of inches it had risen. There was no point in staying.

But he stayed. He stayed because this was a Bear kind of place, in its darkness, its musty smell, its unvisited secrecy. Now, just like a zoo bear reaching up the walls of its pit, he began to feel his way around the timber lining, solid tongue and groove, unclimbable. Then, on the third wall his paws—his hands—reached through where the lining should have been and touched rough brick beyond. What? Why? Barry took over, inquisitive, and felt around. There was lining on all four sides of the shaft at the top, he was sure. Down here … yes, the lining rose about a foot above the top of the door opening. Then it stopped, only on this side of the shaft. But at both edges of the opening, running on down inside the lining, was a deep slot, worn smooth. The two slots faced each other. Something must fit between them, must run between them to wear them so smooth.

The counterweight, of course.

As he ran his fingers up the left-hand slot, his knuckles banged into a crosspiece, a horizontal bar of wood which spanned the gap an inch or so from the brickwork. That was right. When they'd put the lift in, they'd realised the counterweight might jam sometimes. They didn't want to have to go ripping out timber to find it, so they'd left this gap. But they'd wanted to make sure that the slots stayed plumb opposite each other, so they'd put these crosspieces in …

How many? How close?

If there had been fur on his spine, hackles, it would have stood upright. He felt the skin there prickle with excitement, the certainty of action after long waiting. The next crosspiece was about two feet six above the first. He took hold of it, put his foot on the bottom one, heaved, reached up. There was the next rung, waiting for his grasp. He was on a giant ladder, running right up through the building. Very likely the builders had put it here for this very reason, again in case the weight or the lift jammed. They'd need to be able to get up to the problem. Carefully he started to climb.