The Touch

Sylvia

"Charles!"

Sylvia was shocked to see him at her front door. She glanced behind him. "Isn't Alan with you?"

He shook his head and walked past her. He was still in his white lab coat and obviously upset. His normally high coloring was higher than usual. "He was supposed to be, but they're keeping him there."

"Keeping him?" Her heart tripped over a beat, paused to catch itself, then went on in rhythm. "How long?"

"Till after high tide, I imagine, If he cooperates."

"Charles, what are you talking about? Why isn't he with you?"

"They kicked me out! Just like that!" Charles snapped his fingers and talked on at breakneck speed. " 'Here's your severance pay and please leave the premises now, thank-you-very-much.' Must have found out I was snooping into his personal-access-only files."

"Charles!" Sylvia was frightened and baffled and Charles wasn't making any sense.

"Okay! Okay! I'll tell you in a minute!" he said, heading for the library. "Just let me get a bleeding whiskey!"

Eventually he told her. She sat on the arm of the leather sofa while he paced back and forth the length of the library, swirling and sipping from the glass of Glenlivet clutched in his hand as he told her incredible things—about a man with metastatic cancer to the brain who suddenly didn't have a tumor cell in his body, about abnormal scans and EEG sine-wave artifacts coinciding with high tide and Alan's Hour of Power, and an Alzheimer's-like syndrome that Alan's use of the Dat-tay-vao seemed to be causing.

"You mean it's damaging his brain?" She wanted to be sick. Alan… senile at forty. It was too awful to imagine.

"I'm afraid so."

"But that fits in with the poem Ba showed me. Something about 'keeping the balance.' If only I could think of it."

She stepped over to the intercom and called Ba in from the garage, asking him to bring the Dat-tay-vao poem. Then she wandered the room, rubbing her tense palms together.

It was all frightening and bewildering to Sylvia, yet she still hadn't had her question answered.

"Why is he still there?"

"Because our great and wonderful friend, Senator James McCready, who has used all of us so very neatly, wants to use Alan as well and then throw him to the wolves!"

Another explanation followed, this one even more fantastic than the first, concerning McCready's manipulation of events to get Alan into the Foundation and the subsequent destruction of all the data.

"Then it's true?" Sylvia said, finding her voice at last. "He really can… cure? With a touch? I'm hearing this from you of all people?"

She watched Charles nod, saw his lips tremble.

"Yes." His voice was barely a whisper. "I believe."

"What happened?"

"Julie—" His voice broke. He turned and faced the wall.

Sylvia's heart leaped. She came up behind him and put both her hands on his shoulders.

"Julie's cured?"

He nodded but remained faced away.

"Oh, Charles!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. The burst of joy inside her brought tears to her eyes. "That's wonderful! That's absolutely wonderful!"

Sylvia had only met Julie a few times, but had been deeply touched by the child's quiet courage. There was, however, another more personal reason for her joy: If Julie could be cured, then there was real hope for Jeffy.

Charles seemed to read her mind. He turned around and gathered her in his arms.

"He says Jeffy's his next patient."

"But didn't you say the Dat-tay-vao was damaging his mind?" The realization was like a dark cloud drifting past the sun. Would Alan have to trade a part of his mind to break through Jeffy's autism? She didn't know if she could allow that.

She didn't know if she could refuse.

She pushed it all to the rear of her mind, to be dealt with when the time arose. Right now she had to concentrate on getting Alan back to Toad Hall.

But there was something different about Charles. She noticed a change in him. He had mellowed in the past few days. His hard, glossy facade had peeled away in spots, leaving soft, vulnerable areas exposed.

"He touched you, too, didn't he?" she said after watching him for a long moment.

"Rubbish! I didn't have anything that needed curing."

"No. I mean the other way—with his own personal touch— the one he's had all along. His empathy, his caring."

"He really does care, doesn't he?" Charles said. "I thought it was an act, part of the dedicated, hardworking family doctor role he was playing. You know: foot soldier on the front lines in the neverending battle against death and disease, and all that sort of rot. But he's the real thing. And I always thought someone like him would be a wimp who'd carry his devotion to his practice like a cross. But he's a man.'" Charles bit his lower lip. "Jesus! The things I thought about him! Said about him!"

Sylvia gave him a hug. "Now maybe you can understand why he's been staying here."

Charles looked at her. She saw pain in his eyes, but it was distant, and fading. "I daresay I do. And I hope you're both very happy together."

"You called for me, Missus?" Ba said from the doorway.

"Oh, yes, Ba. Did you bring that poem—the one about the Dat-tay-vao?"

He handed it to her and she read it to Charles: