of sickness and the lung thing and there's something terribly wrong with all of it. Something should be different.» «I don't know,» Luke said.
«All I know is that I don't feel as if I've lived a full life, Luke. Oh, I'm no pervert. I'm not going to be bad. God knows, the very thought of it makes me sick to my stomach. But I am a female. Am I just supposed to live out my life and do what I can, nursing the underground people, waiting for that long-distant day when something can be done?» «Don't fight it too hard,» Luke said. «You do understand a little of what I'm saying?» «I think I do. I know that I'm not satisfied,» Luke said. «I was, once. Just one time. The night I made that Fare whole again I felt, well,
complete. I felt, I dunno, I guess I felt as if I'd finally done something.» The rain stopped at midafternoon. In the early evening, Luke preached again in the small park. He laid his hands on an aging Tired and prayed for the healing power. When it wouldn't come, he felt despair. He walked away. Caster took his arm. «You can do it,» she said. «You can do it if you believe.» But he couldn't. He tried. He tried night after night. A Lay woman said she was healed. She sang and praised God. She danced. But Luke hadn't felt it. Her faith alone had made her feel better, he thought. Not his. Caster was encouraged. For the first time she took out her instruments, small, compact things hidden in a bedraggled shoulder bag, and measured Luke's bodily processes. She found no change. Two weeks after they had entered Middle City as man and wife, Luke realized that he had come to like Irene Caster better than he'd ever liked another human being. Their long, soul-searching conversations in the tiny room had become a source of pleasure. He looked forward to them. For the first time in his life he was entering a new day with expectations of something pleasurable. Breakfasts, fish meal and coffee, were not just the tasteless meals of the past. They were made almost enjoyable by the presence of Caster. They talked and ignored the bitter taste of the fish meal and laughed and dreamed together about what would come to pass when the Brothers were overthrown and the world was made into a better place. They walked, exploring the city. They visited the museums and walked along the great, stinking river, their nostrils now numbed to the
smells, their lungs taking in the black, evil pollution of the poisoned air. Caster developed a cough. Her lungs, hit once by the lung sickness, were more sensitive than Luke's. Concerned, he told her she would have to go back. She said she would be all right. She would not leave him and she would not allow him to go back until he'd rediscovered the power to heal. Luke preached. He prayed. He looked for his sign and he put his hands on the weak and the sick and said, «Heal!» In his mind, he screamed, «Heal, damn you, heal,» but there was no sign. After three weeks, Caster's cough was bad. One morning, when they first went down into the streets, she coughed blood. Luke held her arm and she leaned on him weakly. When the spasm passed, she smiled. «It's all right. When we get back they can fix it. Don't worry.» «Let's go back to the room. You can rest.» «No. I don't want to. I don't want to sit inside on a day like this.» It was a beautiful day, as days went. The ever-present smog had lifted to a height which made it seem that there was clear air above them. Luke held her arm, no longer embarrassed by personal contact with a female. After all, it was only his friend Caster. And she needed his support. She seemed to be recovered from her coughing spasm and she talked brightly, helping Luke plan what he would preach that night. Luke walked a half pace ahead, pushing his way through the swarms of people, making a way for her. Traffic was unusually dense. Ground cars and huge landships roared and smoked and stopped and growled into motion. At an intersection, they joined a swarm waiting for the lights to change. When the light went green, they joined the crowd moving in hurried masses across the street, being pushed, spilling out of the crosswalk, hurrying, fighting, looking nervously up as the pent vehicles roared in impatience and eased forward until their bumpers brushed the crowd and then, like a scream from hell, a Brotherfuzz vehicle roared through, zigzagging in and out of traffic, ignoring the massed people in the crosswalk, scattering them, coming directly toward Luke and Caster. «Watch out!» Luke yelled, reaching for her arm. Panicked people pushed him, engulfed him, as the Brotherfuzz vehicle screamed and its engine roared and it leaped forward and just as Luke went down under the panicked crush of people he saw Caster, eyes wide, mouth open, being felled by the speeding vehicle. He screamed. His fingers were stepped on as he crawled, pushed, fought his way toward her. People yelled and cursed and screamed and the lights changed and the waiting vehicles leaped forward. She was lying in a pool of her own blood, her hair falling from under the faded cloth, blood matting it. He lifted her, the way suddenly cleared as people ran, scratched, fought their way to the safety of the sidewalk. A huge, red groundship growled toward them. Luke lifted her, finding the strength with the aid of massive injections of adrenal fluids into his bloodstream. He dodged the landship, danced through a maze of roaring, honking ground cars, reached the sidewalk, and then he could pause, his lungs spasming for air, his heart pounding, his stomach aching with the force of the glandular action. Her head had been crushed. Her hair was matted with blood and, when he put her gently down onto the sidewalk and felt her head, there was an open wound through which he could see the white of bone and the frightening, fatal gray of her very brain matter. She was gasping, her body still except for spasmodic jerkings. She was, he realized with a painful certainty, dying. He screamed. He raised his fist. He cursed. «I hate you,» he screamed. «God, I hate you. And I hate them. All of them. I wish they were all dead and I wish you were dead and—» And he could look at her and see the fatal wound and know that sharp pieces of skull had pierced her brain and that only the last, desperate efforts of her being kept her breathing in those fitful gasps and then he saw, with his stomach spasming with the rush of adrenal fluid, the order
of things inside her head, could see the damage, and his fingers flew to her head and pushed and his mind went into her brain and dislodged the splinters and all the time he was crying and cursing and people stood by gaping and making sounds and he was not even aware of them because he felt the power and pushed and probed with his mind until the splinters were pushed out and the intricate gray matter grew back into its little whorls and cells and the bone rejoined bone and the break-split closed and the blood stopped and Caster opened her eyes and said, «Luke!» Then he was leaning over her, putting his face near the gutter to vomit bile and acid, because his stomach was full of it and she was looking up at him in wonder and the people were silent, awed. Then the storm broke about him. «Did you see?» «He healed her?» «Dead if I ever saw one. Head split open.» «Healed!» «Healed!» «He healed her.» «Heal me!» A babble of voices, grunts as people pushed, fought to be near him, cried out, begged. «Help me, brother. Heal me, brother Heal! Heal! Heal!» Caster, with her hand on her head, bringing it away bloody Looking at Luke with wonder in her eyes. «I saw the landship—» «Help me, brother. Heal. Help. Help. Heal—» «You did it, Luke,» Caster was saying, as Luke sat up weakly, wiping his mouth. The realization hit Luke. He laughed through tears, his voice rising toward hysteria. «Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Lord Oh, God, thank you.» And a new sound in the babble of the gathering crowd, an awed outrush of wind from diseased lungs, a low, awe-stricken gasp and, looking up, his face ecstatic, Luke saw his sign. An angel it was, a female angel with blazing red hair and a diaphanous, long garment which clung and revealed without being vulgar because she was sent from God, lowering, moving, looking down, descending from the cloud of smog and the crowd falling back and Luke on his knees beside Caster, his hands clasped, saying, «Thank you sweet Jesus.» And the angel, his angel, sent from God, coming lower and lower and then her feet touching and no words, just a look at Luke and a beckoning gesture. Trembling, Luke arose. She beckoned. He took two tremulous steps forward and she reached out in impatience and her hand on his arm was soft and yet like fire filled with the power of God and then Luke was crying and praying because below him he could see them, the people, and Caster, standing now, holding up her arms, her lips moving, but Luke couldn't hear as she cried out, «Luke, Luke.» And ever swifter, rising. Angel-borne, her hand on his arm. Like the time he was in the Brotherfuzz atmoflyer and seeing the city below and this time there was no atmoflyer, only a solidity under his feet and the feeling of being enclosed, and down below the Brotherfuzz vehicles moving in and before he was so high he could no longer tell one
from another, the little ants on the streets, the Brotherfuzz seizing Caster and him saying, «We've got to help her. Don't you see, we've got to help her.» But the angel was silent, looking past him, looking up, her beautiful face expressionless. «Please, please help her.» And God opened up his heavens and sent down a ship which opened for them, taking them in. CHAPTER ELEVEN Brother Kyle Murrel, President of the Republic by the grace of God and
a long wait for his father to die, stalked into Colonel Ed Baxley's study with a scowl on his face. His long robe swished with his powerful strides. His cleric's cap was low on his forehead at a somewhat rakish angle. Baxley, trim in a white uniform much like that worn by his cadets at University One, stood. «Brother President,» he acknowledged. Murrel, without
waiting for an invitation, sat in the chair facing Baxley's desk, his long legs outthrust. «You read the report?» «I read it,» Baxley said. «Then you realize the urgency involved.» «Urgency?» Baxley was fingering the thick sheaf of papers stamped TOP SECRET—EYES ONLY. «Yes, dammit,» Murrel said. «Something's going on, colonel. We've got to move before it goes any further.» «The measures you've suggested seem rather drastic to me,» Baxley said.
