Healer Read Free Page B

and the assistant behind him stepped forward and pressed a purple blob, a Foundation badge, onto the fat girl’s shoulder. The same kind of thing was happening with a yellow-faced man sitting in the second row on the far side.
    Something about the process infuriated Bear. He was working up into one of his rages, those sudden inward tornadoes, terrifying but thrilling, which had been part of Barry’s experience ever since he could remember. He gripped the rail and tried to master the rising pressure. Last thing he wanted now. Cool it he whispered. Sure, it’s only a con, a slick trick with a lot of shiny apparatus to fool us. Only we’re not fools, Bear. Nobody thinks you’re a fool, Bear…
    He gripped the rail tighter yet. The pain in his head was appalling. He had to scream, and if he began to scream, old Bear would get out…
    The man on his left stirred, as if he’d noticed something happening next door to him. Barry jerked his head away, fighting the Bear-rage. He saw Pinkie sitting in her chair, drawn into herself, still, waiting, a pallid, plain little girl nobody would ever notice. He stared at her, and as he did so, the pressure inside him collapsed. The pain in his head dulled to an ache.
    Sorry, grumbled Bear.
    The room became real again, something he had to see and study. Dr. Geare seemed to have found another high scorer and was adjusting the knob on his aerial while the assistant at the pedestal called out numbers. Geare would know it was all a con, of course, and the Moses-man and Baldie. But the others? The women calling out the numbers? Suppose Geare could press something on his aerial to produce a reading at the pedestal and then, when he turned the knob, make the readings change … Yeah, that’s how it would look if he was picking up genuine signals and tuning them in …
    Barry breathed out a slow sigh and managed to relax a little. As he did so, he became aware that what was happening in the room wasn’t only Geare and Baldie messing around with their gadgets—not even mainly that. As the two men moved steadily toward the centre of the curve and the women at the pedestals called out the numbers in calm, chanting voices, a kind of group tension had begun to build, stronger and stronger, a slow tautening, like a guitar wire being tuned. Touch it, and it would hum with the harmony natural to its length. Even outside it, distrustful of it, fighting not to be part of it, Barry was aware of the group excitement rising and rising. Each time a fresh representative was chosen, it notched itself up a further pitch. The “readings” varied from 3.4 to 7. There was only one 7. The cut off point was 5. If you didn’t register 5 or more, steady, then you didn’t get a badge. Barry lost count of how many had been chosen. Four or five on his side, at least. Probably about the same from Baldie. Say nine. Not many to go.
    It was a slow process, five seconds a patient when there wasn’t a reading and more than a minute when there was. Almost there now. The aerial pointed at the baby on the woman’s lap. “Response. High response, Six-point-two. Point-three-five. Point-four. Steady.” The woman sagged as though she was going to faint from relief. The assistant whispered in her ear as she pressed the badge onto the baby’s frock, and she managed to pull herself straight. The aerial moved up the rows. Nothing from the shivering woman. Nothing from the balloon man. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. It pointed at Barry.
    The process was hypnotic. He’d no time to get ready. He’d spent the whole time doing just what he’d been ordered not to, watching what was going on, working out the odds on getting chosen … Now, at this last instant, he realised it was no use just looking like a sick lad who’s hoping for a miracle. You have genuinely to long for the miracle, be that person, believe like the others believed, forget that it’s