In The House Of Secret Enemies

'This is most important to me, Dr. Frederickson,' the senator said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. 'I will double your usual fee.'

'That won't be nec-'

'At the least, I must have access to Esteban if you fail. Perhaps your brother could arrange that. I am willing to donate ten thousand dollars to any cause your brother deems worthy.'

'Hold on, Senator. Overwrought or not, I wouldn't mention that kind of arrangement to Garth. He might interpret it as a bribe offer. Very embarrassing.'

'It will be a bribe offer!'

I thought about that for a few seconds, then said, 'You certainly do a lot for your constituents, Senator. I'm surprised you're not president.'

I must have sounded snide. The flesh on the senator's face blanched bone-white, then filled with blood. His eyes flashed. Still, somewhere in their depths, the fear remained. His words came out in a forced whisper. 'If Esteban Morales is not released, my daughter will die.'

I felt a chill, and wasn't sure whether it was because I believed him or because of the possibility that a United States senator and — presidential hopeful was a madman. I settled for something in between and tried to regulate my tone of voice accordingly. 'I don't understand, Senator.'

'Really? I thought I was making myself perfectly clear. My daughter's life is totally dependent on Esteban Morales.' He took a deep breath. 'My daughter Linda has cystic fibrosis, Dr. Frederickson. As you may know, medical doctors consider cystic fibrosis incurable. The normal pattern is for a sufferer to die in his or her early teens-usually from pulmonary complications. Esteban has been treating my daughter all her life, and she is now twenty-four. But Linda needs him again. Her lungs are filling with fluid.'

I was beginning to understand how the medical establishment might get a litde nervous at Esteban Morales' activities, and a psychic warning light was flashing in my brain. Senator or no, this didn't sound like the kind of case in which I liked to get involved. If Morales were a hoaxer-or a killer-I had no desire to be the bearer of bad tidings to a man with the senator's emotional investment.

'How does Morales treat your daughter? With drugs?'

Younger shook his head. 'He just. . touches her. He moves his hands up and down her body. Sometimes he looks like he's in a trance, but he isn't. It's. . very hard to explain. You have to see him do it.'

'How much does he charge for these treatments?'

The senator looked surprised. 'Esteban doesn't charge anything. Most psychic healers-the real ones-won't take money. They feel it interferes with whatever it is they do.' He laughed shortly, without humor. 'Esteban prefers to live simply, off Social Security, a pension check, and a few gifts-small ones-from his friends. He's a retired metal shop foreman.'

Esteban Morales didn't exactly fit the mental picture I'd drawn of him, and my picture of the senator was still hazy. 'Senator,' I said, tapping my fingers lightly on the desk, 'why don't you hold a press conference and describe what you feel Esteban Morales has done for your daughter? It could do you more good than hiring a private detective. Coming from you, I guarantee it will get the police moving.'

Younger smiled thinly. 'Or get me locked up in Bellevue. At the least, I would be voted out of office, perhaps recalled. My state is in the so-called Bible Belt, and there would be a great deal of misunderstanding. Esteban is not a religious man in my constituents' sense of the word. He does not claim to receive his powers from God. Even if he did, it wouldn't make much difference.' The smile got thinner. 'I've found that most religious people prefer their miracles well aged. You'll forgive me if I sound selfish, but I would like to try to save Linda's life without demolishing my career. If all else fails, I will hold a press conference. Will you take the job?'

I told him I'd see what I could find out.

It looked like a large photographic negative. In its center was a dark outline of a hand with the fingers outstretched. The tips of the fingers were surrounded by waves of color-pink, red and violet-undulating outward to a distance of an inch or two from the hand itself. The effect was oddly beautiful and very mysterious.

'What the hell is it?'

'It's a Kirlian photograph,' Dr. Janet Mason said. She seemed pleased with my reaction. 'The technique is named after a Russian who invented it about thirty years ago. The Russians, by the way, are far ahead of us in this field.'

I looked at her. Janet Mason is a handsome woman in her early fifties. Her shiny gray hair was drawn back into a severe bun, highlighting the fine features of her face. You didn't need a special technique to be aware of her sex appeal. She is a tough-minded scientist who, rumor has it, had gone through a long string of lab-assistant lovers. Her work left her little time for anything else. Janet Mason has been liberated a long time. I like her.

'Uh, what field?'

'Psychic research: healing, ESP, clairvoyance, that sort of thing. Kirlian photography, for example, purports to record what is known as the human aura, part of the energy that all living things radiate. The technique itself is quite simple. You put an individual into a circuit with an unexposed photographic plate and have the person touch the plate with some part of his body.' She pointed to the print I was holding. 'That's what you end up with.'

'Morales'?'

'Mine. That's an 'average' aura, if you will.' She reached into the drawer of her desk and took out another set of photographs. She looked through them, then handed one to me. 'This is Esteban's.'

I glanced at the print. It looked the same as the first one, and I told her so.

'That's Esteban at rest, you might say. He's not thinking about healing.' She handed me another photograph. 'Here he is with his batteries charged.'

The print startled me. The bands of color were erupting out from the fingers, especially the index and middle fingers. The apogee of the waves was somewhere off the print; they looked like sun storms.

'You won't find that in the others,' Janet continued. 'With most people, thinking about healing makes very little difference.'

'So what does it mean?'

She smiled disarmingly. 'Mongo, I'm a scientist. I deal in facts. The fact of the matter is that Esteban Morales takes one hell of a Kirlian photograph. The implication is that he can literally radiate extra amounts of energy at will.'

'Do you think he can heal people?'

She took a long time to answer. 'There's no doubt in my mind that he can,' she said at last. I considered it a rather startling confession. 'And he's not dealing with psychosomatic disorders. Esteban has been involved in other research projects, at different universities. In one, a strip of skin was removed surgically from the backs of monkeys. The monkeys were divided into two groups. Esteban simply handled the monkeys in one group. Those monkeys healed twice as fast as the ones he didn't handle.' She smiled wanly. 'Plants are supposed to grow faster when he waters them.'

'What did you have him working on?'

'Enzymes,' Janet said with a hint of pride. 'The perfect research model; no personalities involved. You see, enzymes are the basic chemicals of the body. If Esteban could heal, the reasoning went, he should be able to affect pure enzymes. He can.'

'The results were good?'

She laughed lightly. 'Spectacular. Irradiated-'injured'-enzymes break down at specific rates in certain chemical solutions. The less damaged they are, the slower their rate of breakdown. What we did was to take test tubes full of enzymes-supplied by a commercial lab-and irradiate them. Then we gave Esteban half of the samples to handle. The samples he handled broke down at a statistically significant lesser rate then the ones he didn't handle.' She paused again, then said, 'Ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the population can't affect the enzymes one way or the other. On the other hand, a very few people can make the enzymes break down faster.'

''Negative' healers?'

'Right. Pretty hairy, huh?'

I laughed. 'It's incredible. Why haven't I heard anything about it? I mean, here's a man who may be able to