"Sylvia," my mother said. "Please."
But Sylvia went on--she was in an overwrought state because her guy
hadn't called her, though that was no reason to take it out on me.
"Who needs healing power now? The machines can cope with all peacetime
ailments. Better take your loot while the getting's good, Kev."
"Nevertheless, Kevin is right, Sylvia," my mother said. "He mustn't
prostitute his talent."
"And we don't actually need the money the testimonial could bring in,
no matter how much it is," my father said a little wistfully. "I can
support my family."
Tim sighed.
The months went on. Once again there was nothing for me to do, only
it was worse for me now because I had tasted usefulness and fame.
People did come for a while with their headaches and cut fingers for
me to heal, and I was happy healing them until I realized they were
just coming to make me feel good. They didn't really need me. Anybody
who had anything seriously wrong with him went to a psychiatrist or a
machine, same as always. I healed them too quickly for them to have
time to take pleasure in it. They couldn't talk for days about a
three-second operation.
* * * * *
By and by, even the cut fingers didn't come. Maybe I hadn't been
exactly gracious toward the end. Maybe the whole thing was my fault.
Even the Lucy business. My mother said it was, anyhow.
You see, Lucy lived quite a distance away and we couldn't call each
other up because of my not being able to use the tellies. We wrote and
I went to see her a few times, and then she came to meet my family.
Once.
It was a ghastly evening. We all sat around stiffly, my family being
excessively polite to her, thinking, I knew, that this was my only
chance to get myself a wife and so they'd better be nice to the girl,
no matter what she was like. And seeing her with what I fancied to
be their eyes, I realized that she wasn't outstandingly pretty,
particularly bright, or even very talented.
And what was she thinking? That she had got herself virtually engaged
to a useless half-sense because he had had a brief moment of glory as a
war hero? Trapped with this imbecile and his dull, stuffy family, and
not being able to get out of it without being cruel?
What were they _actually_ thinking? I didn't know. But _they_
did--Mother knew what everybody was thinking, right down to the last
convolution of the subconscious mind and Sylvia knew what everyone else
was feeling, and the others ... they knew or at least sensed part of
what was going on. But I was impercipient, I couldn't tell anything, I
was excluded--out in the cold--and, being unable ever really to know,
was forced to draw the worst conclusions.
I took Lucy home that evening. They had to trust me that far alone
because it would have looked absurd for Danny or Tim to come along as
chaperone, and anyway I had been there alone before, when I had gone to
see her.
"Lucy," I said as we stood awkwardly before her door, "I don't want you
to feel, just because of what might have happened in a burst of--of
patriotic fervor, that you're bound or--"
"No, Kevin," she murmured, without looking at me. "I understand. I
don't feel bound or--committed in any way. And you mustn't feel bound,
either."
"That's good." I felt a deep sense of sorrow working its way down to
settle in my viscera and, if she'd had much perceptiveness, things
might have been different then. But she hadn't. I took a deep breath,
determined to carry my heartbreak off with dignity. "Well, good-by,
Lucy."
* * * * *
Although she had never really been close to me--in fact, I had never
so much as kissed her--I felt lonelier now, without even the hope of
her, than I ever had before. I began to take my long walks in the
park again, brooding over the power that might have been mine, if
only I hadn't been such a damn fool as to give freely without asking
anything in return. During the war, I could have got anything I wanted
in exchange for what I'd done, or, rather, for what I could do, but I'd
been too busy healing. Now it was too late for asking.
Nature, being all I had left, became closer to me than ever before. And
one morning, after a violent storm the night before, I mourned over the
fallen trees and smashed flowers as I had never mourned over fallen
and smashed men--first, because I hadn't cared, and then because I had
known I could help.
Come to think of it, how did I know it was only people I could help?
"Mother," I said eagerly when I came home that evening, "I can heal
other things besides people! Trees and shrubs and--"
"That's nice, dear. Perhaps we can get you a job with the Park
Department if you're tired of sitting home, and in the meantime you'd
better comb those leaves out of your hair. Sylvia, did you call that
techno?"
"Yes, Mother," Sylvia said gloomily. Her guy still hadn't called.
Knowing now how she must feel, I could feel sorry for her. "It said
it'll be over as soon as it can, but that it might take days."
"We'll have to eat synthetics for dinner if that stove isn't fixed
soon," my mother said fretfully, and went off into the kitchen to mess
around with the machinery and thus make certain the techno had a real
hard job on its hands when it finally did show up.
Oh, the devil with it, I thought. No use hoping to interest the family
in any extension of my gift that had no practical value except for
nature lovers. I might as well seize such meager chances as were still
open to me. I wasn't going to be an idealistic idiot any longer.
"Sylvie," I said to my sister, "I've changed my mind about that
testimonial."