"The--you know, the Panacetic Pills."
She laughed and patted me on the shoulder, not unkindly, because she
could probably feel a sympathy in me now that she never could before.
"Too late for that, honey. Your name wouldn't mean a thing any more."
So many of them owed their lives to me--and yet they had forgotten me.
Tim looked at me. "Be careful, Kev," he said anxiously.
"Careful of what?"
"I don't know exactly." He ran his hand through his hair. "But be
careful, won't you?"
Just at that moment, an easy chair floated in from the next room,
banged into me, swerved, and crashed into a table. Danny, who had
been thinking of going into interior decoration as a sideline to his
business, had been making the furniture leap without looking first.
* * * * *
I gave Tim a reproachful glance as I used my gift to heal my bruised
shin. "You might have been a little more explicit," I complained. "I'm
no 'path."
"I didn't mean--" But Danny caromed into Tim on his way to inspect the
damage. My whole family was so used to relying on their psi powers that
they were pretty clumsy when it came to using the merely physical ones.
Danny looked sadly at the wreckage. The chair was only nicked, but the
table was pretty well smashed. "Gee, Kev," he said mournfully, "if only
you could fix furniture the way you fix up people."
"I can heal trees," I said. "And they're wood."
"So try the table," Sylvia proposed. "It's going to cost you anything?"
Danny looked at me hopefully.
I went over and touched the table. At first nothing happened. And then
the shattered bits of wood sort of shimmered together and it was whole
again.
Danny's and Sylvia's eyes bugged out. So did mine, as a matter of fact.
Only Tim didn't look surprised, just a little sadder.
Mother appeared from the kitchen so fast, you'd think she'd caught
teleportation from Father. "Kevin!" she cried, her eyes shining with an
enthusiasm that my healing of people had never evoked in her. She was
a conscientious psychiatrist, but a passionate cook. "Come in here and
see what you can do with this stove."
My siblings treading on my heels, I went in and fixed it. Like that.
She looked at me with genuine mother love in her eyes. "My boy," she
breathed adoringly.
"Pianos!" Danny yelped suddenly. Everybody looked at him. "If you
worked along with me, Kev," he explained, "nobody would ever have to
know if I dropped 'em. I could be a senior executive and no questions
asked."
"But that wouldn't be ethical," Sylvia suggested, with a sidelong
glance at me.
"My ethical values have come down to Earth," I said. "Be glad to help
you out, Dan. And the same goes for you, Sylvie. 'Use Kevin Faraday. A
Million Times More Efficient than Glue.' Nothing for nothing any more,
though--I have to be as professional as everybody and I've got a career
to get started."
Sylvia sighed. "I wish there were other things you could fix besides
people and furniture. Intangibles."
"Like broken hearts, maybe?"