“What have these two young people been doing? Fighting a war?”
“Thank you for coming, DrNourry.”
“Well, call me day or night. I’ll come immediately.” The doctor sighed. “I think you should prepare yourself. It seems to me that he’s hanging onto life by a thread – and that thread could snap at any time.”
Professor Chambers waited until the doctor had gone, then went back into the house. Inside, everything was cool, the air circulated by fans in every room. Slowly, she climbed a wooden staircase and went into a large, square room with rush mats on the floor and bright plaster walls. Two open windows looked over the garden. There was a sprinkler just outside, rhythmically pumping water onto the lawn.
Matt was lying in bed with his eyes closed, covered by a single sheet. There was an oxygen mask strapped to his face, and a plastic bag hung over him with a saline drip connected to his arm. He was very pale. The rise and fall of his chest as he breathed was so slight as to be almost imperceptible. Professor Chambers thought about what the doctor had just said. Matt didn’t just look close to death – he looked dead already.
“What did he say?” Richard asked.
The journalist had been sitting beside the bed for the past thirty-six hours, apart from a few hours in the early morning when the professor had forcibly sent him to get some rest himself. He had aged ten years since the two of them had driven out to the desert and found Pedro, lying in the wreckage of the helicopter with a broken ankle and the beginnings of a fever, and then Matt, sprawled face down in the dust. There were deep lines in Richard’s face and his eyes were bloodshot. Nobody knew what had happened in the desert but it was obvious to Professor Chambers that he blamed himself for allowing the two boys to set off on their own.
“It’s not good news,” she said. “He doesn’t think Matt’s going to make it.”
Richard let out a single breath. He could see Matt’s condition for himself but he had been hoping against hope for good news. “I should never have let him come to Peru,” he said. “He didn’t want to come. He didn’t want any of this.”
“You should get some lunch. It’s not going to help Matt, making yourself ill.”
“I can’t eat. I don’t have any appetite.” Richard looked down at the silent boy. “What happened to him out there, professor? What did they do to him?”
“Maybe Pedro will be able to tell us.” Professor Chambers glanced at her watch. “I’m going to the hospital to pick him up this afternoon.”
“I’ll stay with Matt.” Richard ran a hand across his cheek. He hadn’t shaved for two days and he had the beginnings of a beard. “When I first met him, you know, I didn’t even believe him. I thought he was just a kid with an over-active imagination. So much has happened since then. And now this…”
There was a commotion outside in the garden. While the two of them had been speaking, a car had drawn up and the driver was unhappy about something. He was shouting and one of the gardeners was trying to sort him out. Professor Chambers went over to the window and looked out. The car was a taxi. The driver was demanding payment. She frowned.
“It’s Pedro,” she said.
The two of them hurried out of the room, reaching the foot of the stairs just as Pedro came in through the front door, supporting himself on crutches. He was still wearing hospital pyjamas. There was a brand-new plaster cast on his left foot.
“Que estas haciendo aqui?” Professor Chambers exclaimed. She spoke fluent Spanish. “What are you doing here? I was coming for you this afternoon…”
“Donde esta Matteo?” Pedro demanded. Where’s Matt?
It seemed to Richard that he, too, had changed since whatever had taken place in the desert. Pedro had always been quiet. He’d had no choice when so much of the conversation had been in English. But he had also seemed detached, somehow on the edge of events. Now, for the first time, he was in command. He knew exactly what he was doing. He had marched out of the hospital and into a taxi. He had persuaded the driver to bring him here. He knew what he wanted and he wasn’t going to let anyone stand in his way.
Professor Chambers must have sensed this too. “Matt’s up there,” she said, pointing at the stairs, then realized that Pedro would never make it up there on his own. She held out an arm. Pedro gathered up his crutches and the two of them began to climb up together awkwardly. As he went, Pedro turned and glanced briefly at Richard, and in that moment Richard felt a sense of relief that he couldn’t begin to understand. But suddenly he was sure that Matt was going to be all right.
Pedro rested briefly against the door of Matt’s room. He took everything in. Professor Chambers wanted to go in with him but Pedro shook his head, then muttered a single word, in English. “Alone.”
The professor hesitated. But there was no point arguing. She watched as Pedro dragged himself into the room. The door closed behind him.
Pedro didn’t move.
He still wasn’t sure what had brought him here and now that he had arrived he didn’t know what he was meant to do. The English boy looked dead. No. That wasn’t quite true. His chest was moving and Pedro could hear the rasp of his breath behind the oxygen mask. Apart from the last day and a half, Pedro had never been in hospital in his life and the sight of the equipment unnerved him: the metal cylinder pumping out its carefully measured quantities of air, the liquid dripping down the plastic tube into Matt’s arm.
He knew that he had to be here. The two of them had spoken, of course. Pedro asleep in the hospital. Matt unconscious here. They had met one last time and Matt had urged him to come.
“I need you, Pedro. I’ll die without you…”
But why? What could he possibly do?
Pedro limped over to the bed and sat down on the edge, letting his crutches slide gently to the floor. Now he was leaning over Matt, who was spread out beneath him, underneath the white sheet. The oxygen hissed. The plastic mask briefly misted. Otherwise everything was silent and still.
Pedro reached out.
He knew. It was as if someone had given him a book of his entire life and he was reading it and understanding it for the first time. He had once told Matt that he had no special powers but he knew it wasn’t true. After the flood, when his entire family had been killed, he had been aware of something inside him. A new strength. And over the years it had grown.
He was a healer.
Living in Poison Town, there were so many diseases. People were getting ill and dying all the time. But not those who lived close to him. They were never sick and Sebastian had often remarked upon it. He had said as much when Matt was there.
There is no illness in this house or in this street And nobody understands why…
He had been aware of it again when Matt had been brutally beaten up by the policemen at the hotel in Lima. After just one day together, all the bruises had gone. The cracked ribs had somehow healed themselves. Pedro hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t needed to. Just being there was enough.
Gently, Pedro placed a hand on Matt’s chest. At last he was fully aware of his power and now he was going to use it.
But would it work? Had he left it too late?
Pedro closed his eyes and let the energy flow.
A week had passed.
The sun was beginning to set over the town of Nazca and the air was heavy and warm. Professor Chambers came out of the house carrying a jug of iced lime juice and four glasses. She had lit a barbecue and the flames were leaping up, filling the garden with smoke and the smell of charcoal.
Richard, Matt and Pedro were waiting for her, sitting in wicker chairs around a table. Pedro’s crutches were lying on the grass. He would need them for a couple more weeks but his ankle was already on the mend. But it was Matt’s recovery that had been all the more remarkable. He had woken up just a few hours after Pedro’s return. A day later he had been eating and drinking. And now, here he was, sitting as if nothing had happened.