Chapter Sixteen
Controversial Cure

Malcolm Reed

I struggle back to consciousness shortly after dawn, not feeling particularly pleased to be deposited back in the land of the living.

How shitty I feel in the head and stomach departments is testament to the fact it was not a natural sleep. After lying quite still for a while, slowly investigating the clearing clouds of fog that pass for my brain functions, I recall Grandmother giving me something to drink. After that I don't remember anything much, but as I gradually retrieve one image after another from before that, I'm not surprised. Not many people would particularly relish allowing a homicidal maniac to run loose in the house, and as tolerant as she is, I think even she would draw the line at that. After all, she's got Liz to consider.

And Beans, of course. I register a small, furry weight pressed up against my belly (Liz is spooning against my back) and in a rush of remorse I start stroking the sleeping cat. She never seems to mind being woken up, and responds with a sleepy little chirrup, angling her head towards me so I'll comb the ginger-and-cream stripes on her forehead gently with my fingernails – something she seems to particularly like, for some reason. Not wanting to wake my other half, I whisper an apology and oblige.

I don't know if she heard my voice or feels the tiny movements of the muscles in my arm, but Liz wakes up soon after. She wishes me 'Good morning, sleepyhead!', trying so hard to sound as if nothing at all is out of the ordinary that I'd be instantaneously alerted even if I remembered nothing at all of what had happened.

Apologising to Beans, who – much as I love her – is definitely not top of my Important People list, I turn over and put a hand on Liz's arm as she sits up.

"I know we need to talk," I say softly. "I messed up yesterday. Let's just see what Grandmother has to say about it, right?"

She searches my eyes, her own anxious. Then she nods and presses a kiss on my nose. "Stay in bed for a while today, sweetie. I'll get breakfast."

Grandmother, of course, is already up and about. It's half an hour or more before she comes back into the cabin, and in that time Liz has made the pancakes we like. The days are long gone when we had the choice of any of the foods the Empire produced to put on them, but I've got used to wolfberries instead of blueberries and such, and chia sage seeds are highly nutritious. The flour itself comes from mesquite pods rather than wheat.

Absolutely nothing is to be gained from putting off the inevitable, so as soon as we've eaten breakfast the three of us sit down to talk.

Although Grandmother is reticent about going into details about what happened yesterday, I see no good reason why Liz shouldn't know exactly how much of an out-of-control prick I was. In the interests of complete disclosure I tell her about the thieving buzzard and the luckless goose, and that necessitates me confessing to my aquaphobia. Squirming internally with mortification for what a wuss I must sound, not daring to swim a few metres in a perfectly still pond to get hold of an injured bird that would make us all a good dinner, I try my best to skim over that part, but I don't make any attempt to hide how completely unbalanced my reaction to events had become by the time I got home. And last of all (not without a wash of shame that's made even worse by the fact that Beans has climbed into my lap by this time and purrs forgivingly against my belly) I tell her how I ended up trying to kick this poor bloody cat just for being glad to see me.

"I just … lost it," I mutter. "I totally and completely lost it. If Grandmother hadn't been able to deal with me the way she did…"

'…I would quite probably have killed her.' The unspoken words hang in the air, as cold as the fact of murder.

Liz puts her hand on my arm. "Sweetie, I…"

"Love, don't say I wouldn't have done it. You weren't there. And you don't know… you don't know what I'm capable of." She and damned near everyone else in the Empire once witnessed me slicing a man to death, and yet I can tell her she can't even imagine the worst I could do. As terrible as some of the things were that I did to her back in the bad old days aboard Enterprise, she mattered enough to let her live. In the early days, when the association between sex and death was stronger, I'd taken an absolute delight in killing my victims – sometimes after sex, sometimes during it. Erotic asphyxia gave me the best of both worlds, and I used it to the full. As I moved up the ranks I had to control my urges, had to be careful that my 'perversions' didn't come to the knowledge of the authorities, but that simply honed my cunning. Though my opportunities to kill became fewer and further between (at least until I became one of the Triad), soon the point came where I got more of a kick from inflicting fear and pain than I did from ejaculating; almost anyone can rape, but reducing your victim to a terrified, bleeding, half-suffocated wreck who won't dare tell on you is an art.

I know she wants to argue, but she can't. And for all that she long ago denied that she pitied me, how can she help me now? Her utter incomprehension, her sadness, her helplessness and yes, her pity, is like salt in the wounds. I'm so warped and inhuman she can't even get near me to help me.

To tell the truth, on these days I don't think even Ginny could reach me, not even if by some miracle I got the chance to meet her again, told her everything and put myself completely into her hands. I haven't heard anything about her since the shit hit the fan on Jupiter Station but I doubt if she'll have come under serious suspicion; God knows there's enough call for treatment of mental casualties as well as physical ones who get disgorged from our ships returning from the battlefield, and now that Liz's protocols are in place and Jupiter Station Memorial is fully in service, I wouldn't be surprised if she was still employed there from time to time, though now under Jeremy Lucas's aegis.

It's unbearable. It really is. There are people who say they don't want to be part of the human race any more – Lucifer, they ought to try it before they say any such thing. They ought to experience the utter loneliness of having nothing like yourself in existence. Of having nobody who can understand you, nobody who can just touch you at this absolute nadir and say it's going to be all right. I suppose that's what people like to believe in God for, but any inclination I might have had to believe in him got crushed out of me the day of the windflowers. If he existed at all he definitely didn't listen to me, and I heard enough people screaming and crying for his help afterwards to know that even if he's there to hear, he does bugger-all about it. He certainly never stopped me.

"Nineteen." Grandmother speaks gently, and I resist the urge to tell her to drop the pretence. I remember her using my name and the absolute panic it caused that led to the final explosion, but if she isn't going to tell Liz about it, neither am I. I still believe we're all safer if she never acknowledges our true identities, especially mine. I only want her to call me by name because I'm full of shame and frustration over having reverted to type, and my misery is not sufficient reason to ask an old woman to put herself at greater risk. As it is, she only uses my number when shit has gone completely sideways. Usually, she calls me Stuart or Grandson, or child when she's feeling affectionate or a little tipsy from some of her homemade spirits. "There is a way to help you."

I've buried my face in my hands, but at this I drop them and look at her incredulously. I have enormous respect for the knowledge she's acquired over her long lifetime, but if probably the best psychologist in the business couldn't work the miracle, I honestly don't know what she thinks she could achieve.

Liz is equally taken aback. "What do you mean?"

"Child, it's not the bad medicine in Stuart's brain that's doing this to him. It has nothing to do with his brain or his mind. It's his spirit that's sick and needs healing."

It's only the respect I have for her that stops me from laughing. 'Bad medicine'… Lucifer, if Phlox could only hear that expression. But Grandmother continues quite serenely, reminding us that she is a shaman and saying she has a potion and a ceremony that will heal me.

As a nurse, Liz's attention immediately focuses on the 'potion' end of things. She asks for the details of what this contains, and is aghast by the number of hallucinogens and alkaloids in it. Even I know some of the ingredients are potentially lethal, and Grandmother thinks poisoning me is going to improve matters?

Passing over the matter of the potion, we ask about the 'ceremony' bit. It turns out that this requires fasting, meditation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and finally the use of a sweat lodge.

It hardly needs saying that none of these things score highly on Liz's approval list. She warns me that if the fasting and dehydration don't kill me, the sweat lodge could give me heat stroke and the potion could fry my brain. For all that up to this point she's been very happy to defer to Grandmother's experience, I'm actually surprised by how emphatic her counter-arguments become, including some outright disparaging terms like 'voodoo' and 'mumbo-jumbo'. Given that my relative lack of the relevant background knowledge means I'm not in much of a position to put in my ha'porth on the subject, I mostly listen to Liz's arguments and am secretly both impressed and touched by how swiftly she's become the lioness defending her cub – even against Grandmother.

In her turn, Grandmother concedes that the procedure can be dangerous, which is why it should only be undertaken under the guidance of an experienced shaman – like her. The cure isn't chemical or psychological, it's spiritual, and therefore relies on wisdom handed down the ages from one shaman to the next; wisdom that was ancient long before the rise of the Terran Empire, even before Man looked at the stars and imagined himself capable of travelling among them.

Not unnaturally, Liz is worried about the strain it will put on my body. After the stresses and traumas I've endured over the last few years, I'm not the fit young thing I used to be. She also has more than a few reservations about dosing me with stuff that could quite easily kill me even if I were as fit as a fiddle, as part of a process that will lower my resistance to it even further. "Half a dozen of the things you've mentioned could poison him all by themselves!" she says hotly.

"Ain't all your magical modern drugs just small doses of poison anyway?" retorts Grandmother, and as she continues her argument, I'm reminded that the fact that she chooses to live simply does not make her a simple woman. "An' 'ccording to you, didn't they have a part in doin' this to him? Your antibiotics're grown from mould, most of your drugs're just tiny amounts of dangerous acids an' toxic metals mixed with some kind of filler, others'll make healthy people sick 'cause they're meant to interfere with what the body does naturally. An' how many of 'em cause side effects that jus' git treated with another drug that has its own side effects?" I've never known her to be so argumentative, but then neither Liz nor I have ever disagreed very strongly with her about anything before; and while I know she's instinctively defending her own skill and craft against Liz's disparaging comments, I really do believe she's also fighting for my right to choose her treatment if I want it. But she does admit that the ceremony can be physically and spiritually draining, which is why it has to be done under the supervision of a skilled shaman.

"We're gonna have to prepare him for it," she continues. "First git him used to fastin' by skippin' breakfast. Then he cuts back on lunch, then skips it. Eventually, he'll work up to fastin' two days at a time so's it won't be a shock to his system when it's time for the ceremony. I'll teach him to meditate, have him spend a few hours at a time in the sweat lodge, until he's ready." She knows it works, she says, she's seen it many times and supervised it herself more than a few over the past several decades. She is a shaman and has been one longer than the two of us together have been alive (which makes me wonder how old she really is). And given the evidence of how my mental state is deteriorating, can we afford not to try?

Liz can hardly deny the deterioration issue, but she's not at all happy about the dismissal of modern medicine being as dangerous as a shamanic potion made up from eye of rat, wing of bat and whatever else the ancients – whose demise may well have been hastened by their reliance on this kind of treatment – thought fit to include.

"But modern drugs are all highly refined and precisely titrated and delivered in carefully measured doses," she protests. "Just because your potion is natural doesn't mean it doesn't contain dangerous compounds, and using the whole herb or mushroom or root or whatever instead of a titrated extract, who knows how much of which compounds he's getting?"

"I know." Grandmother says firmly, and she is just that confident. She'll toss some seeds and herbs, a mushroom or two, some roots and leaves, eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat (and tongue of dog, for all I know), splash in some boiling water, let it steep a few minutes, and have me pinch my nose and gulp it down.

Actually, I've seen her tasting her ingredients as she grinds her powders, so perhaps that's how she knows their potency and determines how much to use. Perhaps it also accounts for her otherworldly calm and contributes to the aura of wisdom that hovers around her; a perpetual buzz probably works wonders for one's disposition, especially when one is already quiet of spirit and predisposed to kindness and good cheer.

"The Great Spirit will not let me harm him."

Now this definitely gets my attention. Up till now I've been more or less resigned to sitting to one side and letting the two of them fight it out over me – a humbling experience, I must say, especially for one who has been such a malignant bastard that it's a miracle anyone cares what happens to one. But when we're getting to theology – relying on some supernatural being getting in on the act to make sure I don't get my insides burned out – I have some quite legitimate reservations. At least, I think they're legitimate, and it's going to be me drinking this stuff; and as I've already remarked, I've heard more people than I can remember scream for God to rescue them and nary a one was answered.

"Excuse me, but, what if I don't believe in your Great Spirit?"

She's quite unoffended, and her tolerance of my status as a non-believer is one of the many lovely things I've noticed about her. She's far more interested in one's deeds and efforts than in one's professed beliefs, or in my case, the lack thereof. In other words, as far as Grandmother is concerned, talk is cheap. "He goes by many names. Allah, God, the Creator, and he has feminine aspects as well: Mother Nature, Mother Earth, Gaia..."

I know. I heard most of them in the few years of my life before organized religion was outlawed. Even if they were described mostly as heretical pagan beliefs, they merited a mention at Sunday school. But even then I couldn't see how one was necessarily better than another, or what proof there was that any of them existed.

Clearly Grandmother does, and given her kindness to us I'm reluctant to offend her. I know that for people who do believe this kind of thing it's a sensitive issue. Still, even for the sake of politeness I'm not eager to pretend to be someone I'm not. "But … if I don't believe in anything like that…" Maybe I've never really been desperate enough to believe, never felt so completely helpless and hopeless that surrendering myself to the whim of some supernatural guardian seemed like a good idea – especially after seeing how little reward for it seemed to be forthcoming. I've always relied on myself or credited good fortune or bad luck when things happened without my involvement.

"You don't have to believe," she assures me. "It is enough that the Maker of the Universe believes in you, unless you want to question whether you're really here."

I shake my head. Metaphysical questions on that scale were never my thing – the theory of evolution seemed to account for my existence quite well enough, without dragging divine intervention into it. Still, I can't deny that her confidence in her ability to achieve something with me is convincing, and her astonishingly broad knowledge of medicinal plants is the clearest possible indicator that if she inherited even some of this knowledge from 'the ancients' then they weren't stupid. As a matter of fact, some of the processes she uses are quite astonishingly sophisticated, given the poverty of our surroundings and the available materials.

Then I turn to Liz, who's clearly as conflicted as I am. "I don't really know what to think of it either, but I have to try something. If you forbid me to do this, I won't, but then I'll have to leave here without you. As things stand, I'm still a danger to myself and those around me. I'd rather abandon you than live with the guilt of accidentally killing you."

She looks piteously at me. She really does not want to believe I could kill her without even realising I was doing it, but I could, and what's more after this morning I know I would. I'm not just failing to improve, I'm getting worse. And if we're to stay together, something has to change.

Yes, it's a risk. But I've lived most of my life on a knife edge, and this is a risk I'm going to have to take whether I want to or not. It's either that or walk away from the only thing I have to live for now.

And that, I can't even contemplate.

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