Healer by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page B

a scheme to provide free treatment in case of genuine hardship, where the commitment has been expressed by other means. In view of what you have told me, I am prepared to refund your fee.”
    Barry felt his eyes widen and his jaw hang open. It wasn’t just that the offer was unexpected. It was as if the whole basis of his certainty that the Foundation was a fraud had been suddenly taken away. He could feel against his right buttock a rectangle of stiffness where the receipt for his fee was pressed against the upholstery of the chair. All morning that bit of paper had been a sort of talisman, magically helping him see through the benign-looking masks of people like Dr. Geare and Mr. Freeman, see them for the greedy crooks they were. Now the magic was taken away. He had nothing to go on. Nothing to tell him he was doing the right thing. Except that Pinkie had wrinkled her nose.
    â€œNo?” said Mr. Freeman, more amused than ever.
    â€œEr, it doesn’t seem right … I mean … can I think about it?”
    â€œI have an alternative suggestion which you might think about at the same time. I see that you are sixteen and a half but have already left school. Would you mind telling me why? You are clearly an intelligent young man.”
    Barry shrugged. It wasn’t only a question of how to make the best impression; it just wasn’t easy to explain. He could remember the exact moment when he had been climbing the echoing concrete stairs on his way to the physics lab at Marsden Ash Senior and had suddenly known, with total certainty, that no power on earth was going to force him to come back here for another term. It had been a Bear decision, really. Mr. Freeman was looking at him. He would have to say something.
    â€œI did all right,” he said. “They wanted me to stay on. My parents were furious. I don’t know. I had a row with a teacher, but …”
    He was beginning to mumble, conscious of becoming just another inarticulate jerk under that golden gaze, when the mention of the row with Mr. Elias suggested a possibility, which then seemed to explode in his mind into a whole chain of connections.
    â€œI suppose it was that mostly. I was just sick of the way we got taught. All dead, you know? All worked out, printed in the textbooks, and you learn it, and that’s what you’re there for. If it’s not in the textbooks, it’s rubbish. I’d been reading in a magazine about evolution, about how when a new species starts to evolve somewhere, the same sort of thing happens other places in the world, no connection—”
    â€œI know the work. There were some very significant figures about the learning behaviour of rats in laboratories remote from each other.”
    â€œYeah, but it was evolution I had the row about. I just mentioned the idea, and Mr. Elias blew up. It was like I’d spat in his face or something.”
    â€œNew ideas are always seen as threats, especially by those whose profession it is to teach old ideas. You are threatening both their self-esteem and their livelihood. I take it that this episode was not your sole reason for deciding to leave school but that it helped you crystallise that decision?”
    â€œThat’s about it.”
    Mr. Freeman nodded, looked again at the paper in the file, and then sat still, apparently thinking. Barry watched him and tried to make up his mind. Crooked or only cracked? Or onto something? Fake or genius? Or, somehow, both? Funny how you wanted him to like you, even supposing he was a crook and fake. And if he was a genius after all …
    The gold eyes turned to him.
    â€œWhat are your immediate plans, Mr. Evans?”
    â€œMe? I hadn’t thought. It depends if my headaches start coming back. If they don’t, I suppose I’ll try and get a job, though there’s not much chance around us, with eighty people going for one vacancy.”
    â€œUnless you are committed to living with