Heal Thyself - Orson Scott Card, ebook
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HEAL THYSELF
by Orson Scott Card
There's a limit to how much you can shield your children from the harsh
realities of life. But you can't blame parents who try. Especially when
it's something you have to go out of your way to discuss. My parents assure
me that they would have talked about it someday, but it's not like the birds
and the bees-there's not a certain age when you have to know. They were
letting it slide. I was a curious kid. I had already asked questions that
could have led there. They dodged. They waffled. I understand.
But then my childhood friend, Elizio, died of complications from his leukemia
vaccination. I had been given mine on the same day, right after him, after
jostling in line for twenty-minutes with the rest of our class of ten-year-olds.
Nobody else got sick. We didn't know anything was wrong with Elizio, either,
not for months. And then the radiation and the chemotherapy; primitive
holdovers from an era when medicine was almost indistinguishable from the
tortures of the Inquisition. Nothing worked. Elizio died. He was eleven by
then. A slow passage into the grave. And I demanded to know why.
They started to talk about God, but I told them I knew about heaven and I
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 wasn't worried about Elizio's soul. I wanted to know why there wasn't some
better way to prevent diseases than infecting us with semi-killed
pseudoviruses mixed with antigen stimulants. Was this the best the human
race could do? Didn't God give us brains so we could solve these things?
Oh, I was full of righteous wrath.
That was when they told me that it was time for me to take a trip to the
North American Wild Animal Park What did that have to do with my question?
It will all become clear, they said. But I should see with my own eyes. Thus
they turned from telling me nothing to telling me everything. Were they wise?
I know this much: I was angry at the universe, a deep anger that was born of
fear. My dear friend Elizio had been taken from me because our medicine was
so primitive. Therefore anyone could die. My parents. My little sisters.
My own children someday. Nothing was secure. And it pissed me off. The way
I felt, the way I was acting, I think they believed that nothing but a
complete answer, a visual experience, could restore my sense that this was,
if not a perfect world, then at least the best one possible.
We leftSaltillo that weekend, taking the high-speed train that connected
MonterreytoLos Angeles . We got off inEl Paso , the southern gateway to
the park During the half-hour trip, I tried to make sense of the brochures
about the park, all the pictures, the guidebooks. But it was dear to me,
even at the age of eleven, that something was being left out. That I was
getting the child's version of what the park contained. All that the
brochures described was a vast tract of savannas, filled with wild animals
living in their natural habitat, though it was an odd mixture of African,
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 South American, European, and American fauna that they pictured. Of course,
to protect the animals against the dangers of straying and the far greater
menace of poaching, the park was fenced about with an impenetrable
barrier-not illustrated in the brochures-of fences, ditches, wires,
walls. The thing that made no sense at all, however, was the warning about
absolute biosecurity All observations of the park inside the boundaries were
to take place from within completely biosealed buses, and anyone who tried
to circumvent the bioseal would be ejected from the park and prosecuted. They
did not say what would happen to anyone who succeeded in getting out into
the open air.
Biosealed buses suggested a serious biohazard. And yet there was nothing in
the brochures to indicate what that biohazard might be. It's not as if herds
of bison could sneak onto the buses if you cracked the seal.
The answer to this mystery was no doubt the answer to my question about why
Elizio died, and I impatiently demanded that my parents explain.
They urged me to be patient, and then took me right past the regular buses
and on to a nondescript door with the words --in small letters-- "Special Tours."
"What's so special?" I asked.
They ignored me. The clerk seemed to know without explanation exactly what my
parents wanted. Then I understood that my parents must have called ahead.
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 It was a private tour. And not on a bus. We were taken down an elevator into
a deep basement, and then put aboard a train on which we rode for more than
an hour-longer than the trip fromSaltillo toEl Paso , though I suspect we
were going much slower. Underground, who can tell?
We came up another elevator, and, like the underground train, this one had no
trappings of tourism. This was a place where people worked; gawking was only
a secondary concern.
We were led by a slightly impatient-looking woman to a smallish room with
windows on four sides and dozens of sets of binoculars in a couple of boxes.
There were also chairs, some stacked, some scattered about almost randomly.
As if someone hadn't bothered to straighten up after a meeting.
"Are they close?" asked Mother.
"We're here because the water is nearby," said the woman. "If they aren't
close now, they will be soon."
"Where's the water?" asked Father.
The woman pointed vaguely in a direction. It's clear she didn't want us there.
But Mother and Father had the gift of patience. They were here for me, and
bore the disdain of the scientist. If that's what she was.
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 The woman went away.
My parents picked up binoculars and searched. I also picked out a set and
tried to figure out how to focus it.
"It senses your vision automatically," Father explained. "Just look, and it
will come into focus."
"Bacana," I said. I looked.
There was a lot of dry grassy land, interspersed with drier, sagebrushy land.
In one direction were some trees. That must be where the water was.
"Spotted them yet?" Mother asked.
"To the left of the trees?" asked Father.
"There too?"
"Where did you see them?"
"In the shade of that rock"
I searched and finally found what they were looking at.
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