The Power of Five Oblivion

gold around his neck – he could always feel it dragging him down – and he clutched it in both hands, dropping to his knees. The crucifix had a precious stone, an amethyst, in the middle, and as was his habit, he stroked it with his thumb, trying to find comfort there.
    He knelt beside the desk and prayed.
    “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come…”
    The words came out in a soft whisper. The priest had tears in his eyes and as he thought about the state of the world, the tears trickled down his cheeks. He felt the pain of the world as if it were his own. He hoped that he was a good man. It horrified him that there was so little good around him.
    He knelt there, praying intently, for two hours. Then, finally, he went home.

FORTY-THREE
    Pedro woke up feeling a lot better. He was clean, he had eaten and he had slept for a solid five hours. His only disappointment was that he hadn’t returned to the dreamworld. He was still very much on his own. But as he sat up, throwing back the covers, he noticed that Carla had come into the room while he was asleep. There were new clothes, folded on the floor next to the door; jeans, a jersey, a belt and trainers. Pedro tried them on. The trousers were a little loose and he had to tighten them using the last hole of the belt, but otherwise he looked – and felt – human again. What now? Carla had said that her son would be home soon. She had said that the two of them would talk. Once again, Pedro wondered how much he could safely tell them, how much they already knew.
    He heard movement in the house. Somebody had arrived. Softly, Pedro opened the door and stepped out onto the upper landing. Yes, there was a man here. He could hear voices a long way away, perhaps in the kitchen, talking in Italian. He was about to go down when he noticed that the door opposite his was ajar. He remembered Carla telling him to keep his voice down. She had a daughter, Maria, who was sick.
    Acting on an impulse, Pedro crossed the landing and pushed open the other door. He found himself looking into a room identical to the one he had just left, except that this one contained a hospital bed surrounded by medical paraphernalia that he recognized at once. There was a saline bag with a drip hanging from a metal frame, a heart and pulse monitor, bleeping softly, an oxygen tank, a tray with various pills and liquids. In the middle of all this, a young woman lay on her back, breathing so faintly that it would be hard to tell when she stopped breathing at all. She was wearing a white nightgown with a silver cross around her neck. There was a cross on the wall opposite her too. Her long hair was brushed back and rested on her pillow, forming a crown around her head and shoulders. Her face was very thin and pale. Pedro knew at once that she was close to death. She had been ill for a very long time and she had stopped fighting. And now she was patiently waiting for the end.
    She was too young to die, Pedro thought. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six. She must have been a late arrival, given her mother’s age. He thought for a moment, then stepped quietly forward. There was a wooden chair beside the bed. He could imagine Carla Rivera spending many hours sitting here. He sat down himself. Then he reached out and rested a hand on the unconscious woman.
    This was Pedro’s gift, his power. He was a healer. For much of his life in Lima, he had looked after his friends – the other thieves, pickpockets and street urchins who surrounded him – without even knowing that it was his power that was keeping them well. It was only when Matt had been hurt in the Nazca Desert that he had begun to understand what he could do. He had deliberately set out to save Matt, to bring him back from the brink of death. He would do the same now to heal this woman he had never met.
    It was a strange feeling … as if he was allowing some sort of heat or energy to flow out of himself, through his hand and into the woman. At the same time, it could have been the other way round. He could have been drawing something out of her. The truth was that he had no idea how it worked. The two of them were together, in a sort of vacuum, and nothing else mattered. Pedro no longer had any idea of the passing of time. He was only aware of his own hand and arm, stretched out with the palm facing down, and the soft rise and fall of the woman’s stomach. Without even knowing it, his heart was