Healer Read Free Page A

for the first time what her mother’s face looked like. I have seen a man crippled in the prime of his life with rheumatoid arthritis stand up from his wheelchair and walk, and leap for joy. Both these events took place where you are standing or sitting, while the Healer was in contact with a representative. The contact with the representatives is the final stage in the process of concentrating the Harmonic Energy. So you must not waste your own precious powers in worrying whether you are going to be one of those chosen. In fact, if you do so, you will not be chosen because your reading on our meters will be low. More important, if you do that, your presence here will be of little benefit to you.
    â€œNow I have finished. If you are selected for physical contact with the Healer, wait for an assistant to come and help you out. Answer any questions in a low voice, so as not to disturb the concentration of the others. Be as brief as you can. What you say will be recorded for use in our research but will otherwise be kept totally confidential.
    â€œAbove all, I beg you to concentrate on Harmony. The harmony you know best. The harmony of your own bodies. You are that magnet you saw in the film, gathering the lines of force. The Healer is the lens, concentrating them yet further. Between you you can achieve marvellous things.”
    He nodded and moved behind the control panel on the cart.
    Crank, snarled Bear. And crap.
    Barry agreed. Despite the beam of pain that pierced his head, he’d listened to every word. If he’d been well, he’d probably have thought it was amusing rubbish at first and then become impatient with the lack of actual facts and the vagueness: about whether the horseshoe curve which he was a part of worked like a reflector or a magnet—you couldn’t have it both ways. As it was, he was most aware that he was being sold something, something he didn’t want, by a super-salesman … TV ads … Harmony wouldn’t be a bad name for a shampoo … more money in this, though? How many in the room? Bit under a hundred? Say eighty. Times four hundred. Thirty-two thousand pounds a session. Times three a week times fifty a year. Almost five million. Jesus! Place like this cost a packet to run, of course …
    The harpist was making a quiet, rainy plink-plunk. The man on Barry’s left was breathing deeply, with closed eyes, as if he’d dropped off. His way of concentrating? His face was a muddle of yellow-grey folds, as if it had been round and rosy until illness had wrinkled it like a leaky balloon. A woman sitting in the row in front couldn’t stop shivering. In front of her was a healthy-looking young woman with a pale, drowsy baby in her lap. Better not keep staring around like this. You concentrating, Bear? Yearrgh.
    Head bowed, hands on the rail, Barry watched what was happening out of the corner of his eye. Dr. Geare and the little bald man who’d come in beside him were in action now. Apart from the Moses-man, they were the only two of the white-coated staff who looked much more than thirty. The rest of them might have come pretty well straight from the Job Centre , been given a haircut and a white uniform, and told what to do, but Geare and Baldie could have been real doctors. They stood at opposite ends of the horseshoe, holding the aerial gadgets as if they were ray guns and pointing them at each patient in turn. A woman assistant stood just behind them. Nothing happened until Dr. Geare was aiming his gadget at a grossly fat young woman in a wheelchair, two along from the end. The assistant who was watching the box on the pedestal on that side called out in a clear voice, “Response. Medium response.”
    She made an adjustment. Dr. Geare turned a knob at the side of his aerial.
    â€œFour-point-eight,” called the woman at the pedestal. “Five-one. Five-two. Five-two-five. Five-one-five. Five-two plus. Steady.”
    Dr. Geare nodded,