Zach Hughes: The Stork Factor

lifted his face. Above him the night was hidden by the reflected glow of the old lights of Old Town on the eternal blanket of choking smog. Luke closed his eyes, saw, in his mind, beyond the smog, the stars, the heavens. He mouthed a silent, sincere prayer. He leaped down, took the old Tired's hand. «My lungs,» said the old Tired. «My lungs.» His voice was raspy. He coughed. Blood flecked his lips. Luke knew the man should have been in

MedCenter. He felt a hint of despair, but he controlled it. It was not, after all, his fault that the old Tired had the lung failure. It came to most, sooner or later. «Yea, friend,» Luke said. «How old are you?» «I've done my twenty,» the Tired said, not without pride. «I went to work for the City when I was twelve. Got my Watch last year.» Luke added. «Then you're thirty-three.» «Yes, Brother.» «I'll pray,» Luke said. He put his hand on the old Tired's head. He lifted his head and his voice. «Lord, look down on this, your lamb. Here he

stands in the fullness of his years with faith in his heart and the death in his lungs. Here he stands, Lord, asking this, your humble servant, for healing help. I ask you, Lord, giver of gifts, healer of ills, sender of happiness, is it right that his poor servant, this man who has done his duty to his fellow men, this servant who has toiled in the canyons for twenty long years to cough up his life's blood from his poor, charred lungs? I beg you. Lord, Jesus, redeemer, heal this poor servant of God. Help him, Lord.» Luke lowered his head. «Pray, friend,» he said quietly. Around him, the crowd was silent. The fighting men had moved away, chasing the fleeing Techs. The roar of ground traffic was loud. Onto the bared heads of the crowd rained the waste of the vastness of the East City, soot, carbon, particles carrying sickness and death, the efflorescence of their civilization. «Heal,» Luke said, giving the Tired's head a shake. «Heal!» He pressed down hard. The old man's knees buckled, but he fought back to stand upright under the shaking, pressing pressure of Luke's strong hand. «Heal!» Luke roared. «Heal! Heal! HEAL!» Then, with one final shake which rattled the old Tired's eyeballs, he released the quaking head. «Feel

it friend,» Luke shouted joyfully. «Feel the power of God slowly flowing into

your pain. Feel it heal.» But he knew it wasn't working. He cursed silently. He hated the lung cases. There was no helping them. Oh, now and then one of them got carried away and said he felt better and that helped with the other marks, because if a man can be cured of the lung sickness, there is no limit to the power of the healer. So Luke used his most persuasive voice. «You feel better, friend,» he said. «You feel the soothing power of God soaking into your lungs.» «Amen,» said the Tired, a mesmerized glaze to his eyes. «Praise God!» «You are healed!» Luke exhaulted. «Healed! Do you hear?» he shouted to the awed crowd. «God, in his mercy, has healed this dying Tired.» «Amen,» they shouted. And they crowded around him, wanting to touch him. The Tired was pushed aside. A buxom Negro Fare with a short, kicky shirt, pressed soft breasts against Luke's shoulder and screamed at him. He singled her out. «Yes, sister?» he asked. «Do you have faith?» «I got this pain in my side,» the Fare said, putting Luke's hand onto her waist. « 'Bout here.» «Heal!» Luke shouted. He was beginning to feel it now. The power. The gift. He knew he hadn't healed the old Fare with bloody lungs, but he could

heal a pain in the side. «Heal,» he said, shaking the soft female flesh under his hand, knowing a sensuous power as he felt her warmth, heard her excited breathing. «The pain is slowly going away,» he told her, his face close to hers. The crowd was silent, watching in awe. «Oh, God,» she screamed, «it's going away!» «Heal!» Luke shouted joyfully. «Let the devil out and let the Lord in!» «Oh, God,» the Fare screamed. «I can feel the devil leaving!» An old Fare woman with a cancerous nose was pressing her sickening face close to Luke. He pulled away. Another of the ones he couldn't help. But he had to put on a show. «Faith, sister!» he told the cancerous woman. «And slowly, slowly, the Lord will help.» He put his hand on her head, shook her head vigorously. «Let the Lord in!» he shouted. «Don't expect instant miracles, sister, but wait until morning. Then you'll see a change. Let the Lord in. Kick the devil out!» And then it was time to make the pitch. «I am but a poor, wandering Brother,» he told the crowd, after working his miracles. He'd felt it with the Negro Fare and the pain in the side. He'd actually felt the little, wrinkled think deep inside which was causing her pain and he'd ironed out the wrinkles and he'd felt the pain subside. He'd had the gift during

the brief moment, and he'd tried to feel it with the more serious cases, the lungs, the cancers, the slobbering, retarded child which they'd pushed into his arms. He had put his hand on the jerking, spastic head. He'd said the magic words. He'd felt the sheer idiocy radiating from the jumbled brain of the idiot. And he'd said, «This is too much, friends. The devil in this child is too strong!» And now he was making his pitch, holding out his

hands. «All I need is food,» he said. «Just a few dollars for the basic needs of life, for even a man of God must eat.» And they dug into frayed pockets and gave him useless coins. Dimes, quarters, half-dollars, two metal dollars. You'd need a truckload to buy a steak. «Help me, friends,» he pleaded. «Don't let me starve because I serve our God.» There was one dollar bill, more coins. He sighed. Not even enough for a bottle of Soul Lifter. Then two Fares carried a man into the park. He was bleeding. Blood dripped and splattered onto the sidewalk and soaked the sick grass at Luke's feet when they placed him there. It was the big Fare who had first challenged the smartaleck Techs. He was holding his stomach. His eyes were glazed. «Got a blade in the gut,» one of the bearers said. «Can you do anything for him, you'd better do it fast. Brother. He was helping you, making those bastards keep quiet so's you could preach.» «He will have his reward in heaven.» Luke said, recognizing the glaze of death in the Fare's eyes. «That don't cut it, man,» the bearer said. «He needs help here. He's got a wife and a new baby and with him gone the Fare checks drop fifty percent.» «I'll do my best,» Luke said, kneeling. He took the dying man's hands. When he lifted them, obscene things tumbled out of the vast slit in cloth and flesh, pulpy, purple things with pulsing veins and an overwhelming carnal smell. «Oh, God,» Luke said. «Brother,» the dying man whispered. «Brother.» «Oh, God,» Luke prayed, hopelessly, his face upturned to the glare of reflected light on the blanket of smog. «Oh, God, help this poor brother. Make him whole. Mend his wounds. Heal him.» But his voice was soft, hopeless. It trailed off. He felt the man spasm under his hands. He looked mindlessly at the lighted white curtain over the city. And a mindless anger filled him. The man was dying. Pain was making his face white. His breath was coming in hard, choking gasps. And for what? Mindless, blithering bastards of Techs going around making asses of themselves because they thought they were better than anyone, proud of their mindless little jobs where they sat or stood beside belts and tightened screws on endless moving pieces of new cars or refrigerators. Mindless everyone to let the world be so fouled up that a fight to the death in Old Town didn't even bring the Brotherfuzz. Mindless, bleeding man with his guts hanging out expecting him to do something, expecting the impossible. As if he could undo the vast, bleeding slit in the gut. As if he could put the intestines back in place. He was a healer, but he wasn't Jesus Christ. He could, sometimes, feel the cause of pain and, sometimes, when all things were right, he could remedy the cause. Sometimes it was as if he actually did have the divine power and could look into the vitals of a suffering fellow human and know, instinctively, what to do and be able to send something, a thought, a force, into the heart of the area and heal and now they all stood and looked and expected him to work a miracle and he was no miracle man, just a healer who could do it sometimes and the man. was dying, gasping. «Bro—» His voice weak. Begging for help. Luke felt tears trickle warmly down his cheeks. They cleaned white paths through the accumulation of soot on his skin. «Oh, God,» he said, his