Part 5 (1/2)

”Show me,” I said, turning on her. ”Heal me!”

”I'm to have a sign!” she wailed.

Well, she got one. I took her to my room, pointed at the dresser. One of the gla.s.ses on the tray beside a pitcher rose, floated into the bath and, after we had both heard the water run, came back through the air and tilted to trickle a few drops of water onto her head.

Her words gave her away--she was no mystic. She swung her eyes back to me: ”TK!” she gasped. She recoiled from me. She'd had a viper to her bosom.

”Heal me!” I snapped at her. ”You've had your sign, and I'm your darlin'

Billy.”

”I got to find it,” she said desperately. ”The weak place.”

I flopped on the bed, stretched my arm out against the counterpane. She ran her fingers over it--the old ”laying on of hands.” If she were the real thing, I knew what it was--perception at a level a TK can't match.

The real healers feel the nerves themselves. I'd been worked on before.

The more hysterical healers, some really creepy witches, had given me some signs of relief, but none could ever find the real ”weak place,” as she called it.

She was mumbling to herself. I guess you could call it an incantation. I got a picture of a nubile waif, too freakish to fit where she'd been raised. What had her Hegira been like? In what frightful places had she found herself welcome? From her talk, it could have been an Ozark backwater. I didn't want to know what backwoods crone had taught her some mnemonic rendition of the Devil's Litany.

Her hands pa.s.sed up beyond my shoulder, to my neck. ”It's in yore haid,”

she said. ”In yore darlin' haid!” Fingers worked over my scalp. ”Oh, there!” she gasped. ”Hit's ahurtin' me! Hurtin', hurtin', and I'm a draggin' it off'n yuh!” Her backwoods tw.a.n.g sharpened as she aped some contemporary witch.

Hurt? She didn't know what it meant. She fired a charge of thermite in my head, and it seared its way down my arm to my fingers. My right arm came off the bed and thrashed like a wounded snake. She wrestled it, climbed onto the bed, and held it down with her boney knees. Her fingers kneaded it, working some imaginary devil out through the fingertips, till the hurt was gone.

We sat close together on the edge of the bed at last, as I worked and moved my arm, one of us more in awe of what had happened than the other.

It was weak--with those flabby, unused muscles, it had to be. But I could move it, to any normal position.

”I never done like that before,” she breathed. ”Jest small ailin'.”

”You're a healer, all right,” I said. ”And a prophetess, too, from what I saw at the dice table. You know what a Psi personality is?” I asked her. ”Say, what is your name, anyway?”

”Pheola,” she said. ”Yes, I've heard of them,” she said.

”You're one,” I told her. ”You can heal many people.”

She shook her head. ”Only could do it because I love you, Billy Joe,”

she said.

”We'll teach you,” I promised her. ”Would you like to learn? You've heard of the Lodge, haven't you?”

”Lordy!” she gasped.

”You're as good as in it,” I told her. ”Now tell me, what am I going to do tomorrow morning?”

She got up and started to pace the room, sniffling. ”Why would you do that?” she said at length. ”You are going to the bank, first thing.

You've got all that money. It's thousand dollar bills! And you're writing on them.” She frowned at me, sniffling again. ”Do I _really_ see it?” she asked. ”Is that right?”