Healer by Peter Dickinson Page B

darling?”
    Pinkie steadied her by the wrists as she lowered herself into an upright chair. There was a moment in the process when the calm, sweet face twitched, as if with a stab of pain. She sighed as she settled.
    â€œI didn’t realise you could walk at all,” said Barry.
    â€œI couldn’t. Six months ago. It’s living with Pinkie. The Energy streams through her even when she’s not thinking about it. I’m an extremely lucky woman.”
    Pinkie’s face was blank, bored.
    â€œIs Granddad all right?” she asked.
    â€œFine last time I saw him. Sends his love. He was over the moon a few weeks back because he’d won an award with his new Roscoea.”
    â€œWhat an extraordinary word!” said Mrs. Butterfield.
    â€œUntil you see it’s only named after some bloke called Roscoe,” said Barry. “It’s supposed to be yellow, but Mr. Stott’s managed to breed a white one.”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t know whether it’s a canary or a fish,” said Mrs. Butterfield.
    Yeah, thought Barry. And Pinkie’s told you all about me but never said anything about her granddad’s alpines. He explained, easy and smiling, Foundation-style.
    The conversation went on that way. Mrs. Butterfield, though not quite a gusher, was certainly a talker. Naturally she talked mostly about the Foundation. Everybody did. Everybody seemed to share the same enthusiasm, the same trust, and the same rather down-to-earth approach about the mystery they were supposed to be dealing with. It was as though by talking about it in a no-nonsense way, calling it H.E. and so on, they were somehow helping make it more real. But they believed all right. From nobody he’d talked to—Sergeant Coyne, Karen, several other Sphere Fours and Sphere Fives, and now Mrs. Butterfield—had Barry had the slightest hint that they were in any kind of plot or conspiracy. They didn’t have to be, of course—the fewer who knew, the better, from Freeman’s point of view—but it was unnerving. Barry wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to go on smiling and agreeing without some flicker of his eyes, some twist of his mouth or note of sourness in his voice giving him away, showing that he wasn’t really one of them, but only pretending. It was just the sort of situation you’d expect would stir old Bear up, but Bear, since that moment up on the moors at Ferriby, seemed to have gone back into hibernation. So Barry was able to look Mrs. Butterfield straight in the eye and nod and smile and agree that it was wonderful to be here and they were all extraordinarily lucky people.
    Pinkie said nothing. At one moment Barry tried to draw her into the conversation. As he finished his first mouthful of the walnut cake, he said, “Almost as good as your mum used to make, Pinkie.”
    Pinkie looked at him.
    â€œMum’s in America,” she muttered.
    â€œAnd doing marvellous work,” said Mrs. Butterfield. “A lot of our clients are coming from there now.”
    â€œMum likes it in America,” said Pinkie. “She wants me to go.”
    â€œI don’t think there’s any question of that for the moment,” said Mrs. Butterfield, “not until the next stage in the program. There’s still a lot of basic research to be done, Sphere One says. Then he’ll be able to start looking for other people with Pinkie’s gifts and other places where the flow lines converge, the way they do here.”
    She chatted on. Pinkie retreated into herself after her two brief remarks about her mother. Barry could only glance at her from time to time, but he became more and more convinced that something had happened to her, and it wasn’t just that she was older. He couldn’t make up his mind what, but he felt that she had lost, or was losing, part of whatever it was that had made her special—not her healing powers, which he’d