GALACTIC POT HEALER

16

Eight twenty-six-hour days later Glimmung asked the group to assemble under the hermetically sealed domes of the heated, illuminated staging center. The robot Willis checked the list as each arrived; when they had all come he notified Glimmung, and, collectively, they waited.

Of them all, Joe Fernwright had been the first to arrive. He made himself comfortable in one of the sturdy chairs and lit a cigarette made from Plowman's Planet grass. It had been a good week; he had seen a lot of Mali, and he had become friends with Nurb K'ohl Daq, the warmhearted bivalve.

"Here's one they're telling on Deneb four," the bivalve said. "A freb whom we'll call A is trying to sell a glank for fifty thousand burfies."

"What's a freb?" Joe asked.

"A kind of—" The bivalve undulated with effort. "A sort of idiot."

"What's a burfle?"

"A monetary unit, like a crumble or a ruble. Anyhow, someone says to the freb, ‘Do you really expect to get fifty thousand burfies for your glank?'"

"What's a glank?" Joe asked.

Again the bivalve undulated; this time it turned bright pink with effort. "A pet, a valueless lower life-form. Anyhow, the freb says, ‘I got my price.' ‘You got your price?' the interrogator interrogates. ‘Really?' ‘Sure,' the freb says. ‘I traded it for two twenty-five-thousand-burfle pidnids.'"

"What's a pidnid?"

The bivalve gave up; it slammed its shell shut and withdrew into privacy and silence.

We're tense, Joe said to himself. Even Nurb K'ohl Daq. It's getting to us all.

He rose to his feet, then; Mali had entered the room. "Here," Joe said, getting a chair for her.

"Thank you," Mali murmured as she seated herself. She seemed pale, and, when she lit a cigarette, her hands shook. "You should have lighted that for me," she said to him half jokingly and half accusingly. "I guess I'm the last to arrive." She glanced around the chamber.

"You were dressing?" Joe asked.

"Yes." She nodded. "I wanted to look right for what we're going to be doing."

Joe said, "How does one dress for polyencephalic fusion?"

"This." She rose to show him her green suit. "I've been saving this. For a special occasion. This is a special occasion." She reseated herself, crossed her long, trim legs, and smoked vigorously; obviously she was deep in thought: she hardly seemed aware of him.

Glimmung entered the room.

His form was new to them; Joe studied the prim, bagshaped entity and asked himself why Glimmung had imitated this particular form of life. To what star system is this indigenous? he wondered.

"My dear friends," Glimmung boomed. The voice had not changed. "First, I want you to know that I am fully recovered physically, although psychologically a trauma remains, making my memory erratic. Second, I have had tests run on all of you, without your knowledge and at no inconvenience to you, and I have the data which tell me that you, too, are physiologically in top form. Mr. Fernwright, I want to thank you especially for halting my premature efforts to raise the cathedral."

Joe nodded.

After a pause the bag-shaped object reopened its slitlike mouth and continued. "You all seem very quiet."

Getting to his feet Joe confronted Glimmung. "What are our chances of living through this?"

"Good," Glimmung said.

"But not excellent," Joe said.

Glimmung said, "I will make a compact with you. If I feel my strength waning—if I feel I can't make it—I will return to the surface and disgorge you."

"And then what?" Mali asked.

"And then," Glimmung said, "I will go back down and try once more. I will try until I can do it." Three morose eyes snapped open in the center of the baglike shape. "Is that what you mean?"

"Yes," the reddish jelly supported by a metal frame said. "You are really only concerned with that?" Glimmung asked them. "Your personal safety?"

Joe said, "That's right." He felt odd, saying it. By this he had voided the dedicated atmosphere which Glimmung had brought with him; instead of the joint effort the individual lives had become paramount. And yet he had to do it. It was the consensus of the group. And, in addition, it was his own feeling.

"Nothing will happen to you," Glimmung said.

"Assuming," Joe said, "that you can get us up to the surface in time. And on dry land."

Glimmung, with his three centrally located eyes, regarded him for a protracted interval. "I did it once," he said.

Examining his wristwatch, Joe said, "Let's get started."

"Are you timing the universe," Glimmung asked, "to see if it is late? Are you giving breadth and measure to the stars?"

"I'm timing you," Joe said truthfully. "We have polled one another and our decision is to give you two hours."

"'Two hours'?" The three eyes gaped at him in disbelief. "To raise Heldscalla?"

"That's right," Harper Baldwin said.

For a time Glimmung reflected. "You know," he said at last, "I can force polyencephalic fusion on you, on all of you, at any time. And I can refuse to release you."

"It won't come to that," the multilegged gastropod piped up. "Because even in fusion we can refuse to help. And if we don't give you that help you won't be able to do it."

The baglike entity swelled with pompous rage; a Luciferous sight: the indignation of an forty-thousand-ton creature contained by this frail vessel. Then gradually, Glimmung ebbed; he slid by degrees into comparative calm.

"It is now four-thirty in the afternoon," Joe said to Glimmung. "You have until six-thirty to raise Heldscalla and get us back on dry land."

Extending a pseudopodium, the baglike creature brought a copy of the Book of the Kalends from its pouch; it opened the volume and studied the text carefully. Then, thoughtfully, it closed the book and put it away in its pouch once more.

"What does it say?" the sharp-faced middle-aged woman asked.

Glimmung said, "It says I can't do it."

"Two hours," Joe said. "Less than two, now."

"I will not need two hours," Glimmung said, drawing himself up in dignity. "If I haven't done it in one hour, I will give up and deposit you back here." Turning, he stalked from the chamber and out onto the newly repaired wharf.

"Where do you want us?" Joe asked him, following him out of the hermetically sealed, warm region, into the lateafternoon cold.

"At the water's edge," Glimmung said. He sounded angry but at the same time contemptuous; the group's conditions seemed to have enlarged his determination.

Joe said, "Good luck."

The others flew, crawled, or walked out onto the wharf, now; as Glimmung had requested, they lined up at the water's edge. Glimmung surveyed them one last time, then descended the wooden ladder into the water. At once he disappeared beneath the surface; only circles of water and bubbles marked the place where he had gone. Possibly forever, Joe thought. He—and we—may never come back up.

Standing close to Joe, Mali said, "I'm scared."

"It won't be long, now," the plump woman with tangled baby-doll hair said.

"What's your specialty?" Joe asked her.

"Slabbing rock."

After that they waited in silence.

Fusion came to him as a monumental shock. And, he discovered, it came to the others the same way; the frightened babble of their composite voices washed over him—their voices and then the overpowering presence of Glimmung, his thoughts, his desires. And, Joe realized, his fears. Beneath the anger and contempt there was a core of anxiety that had not been evident before fusion. Now they all knew it... and Glimmung was aware of their knowledge; his thoughts altered as he deftly sought to evade their scrutiny.

"Glimmung is scared," the matronly woman declared.

"Yes, very scared," the timid little fellow piped.

"More," the quasiarachnid said, "than we are."

"Than some of us are," the immense dragonfly answered.

"Where are we?" the red-faced heavyset man demanded. "I'm disoriented already." Panic filled his voice.

Joe said, "Mali?"

"Yes." She seemed very near him, close enough for him to touch. But he had no manual extremities; like a worm in a cadaver he found himself, as before, rigidly placed within the magnasoma that was Glimmung. Separate motion was impossible, for any of them. They existed as mentational entities only... a weird sensation that he found unpleasant.

And yet—once again deeply augmented. Multiplied by all the others and, more than anything else, by Glimmung. He was helpless and in addition he constituted a supranormal organism whose potentialities were beyond calculation. For Glimmung, too, there had been a radical enlargement; Joe listened carefully to Glimmung's cerebral activity and marveled at the new acuity of it... acuity and power.

They dropped into the depths of the ocean.

"Where are we?" Harper Baldwin said nervously. "I can't see properly; I'm too far in. Can you see, Fernwright?"

Through Glimmung's eyes Joe saw the shape of Heldscalla grow before them. Glimmung moved rapidly, wasting no time; evidently he took the two-hour limit seriously. Reaching out, Glimmung sought to embrace the cathedral; he discharged, in a split second, his entire fund of energy in an attempt to hug the cathedral in a grip which could not be broken.

Suddenly Glimmung halted. Something rose from Heldscalla and confronted him, a dim figure. Glimmung's micescurrying thoughts poured over Joe, drenching him. From the thoughts Joe understood why Glimmung had ceased to move; he knew what the dim figure was.

A Fog-Thing. From antiquity. Which still lived. And it stood between Glimmung and Heldscalla.

Physically, literally, the Fog-Thing blocked the way.

"Questobar," Glimmung said. "You are dead."

The Fog-Thing said, "And, like everything else on this planet which is dead I live here, now. In Mare Nostrum. Nothing on the planet completely dies." The Fog-Thing raised its arm, then pointed directly at Glimmung. "If you raise Heldscalla from out of the depths to dry land, you will bring back to life the worship of Amalita and, indirectly, Borel. Are you prepared for that?"

"Yes," Glimmung said.

"And with it ourselves? As we were before?"

Glimmung said, "Yes."

"You no longer will be the dominant species on the planet."

"Yes," Glimmung said. "I know." Through him rapid thoughts traveled, but they were thoughts of tension, not of fear.

"And you still intend to raise the cathedral? Knowing this?"

"It must be put on dry ground," Glimmung said. "Back again where it belongs. Not down here in a world of decay."

The Fog-Thing stepped aside. "I will not stop you," it said. Joy filled Glimmung; he rushed forward to seize Heldscalla, and with him they all plunged, too. All of them reached with Glimmung. All of them grasped the cathedral together. And, as they did so, Glimmung began to change. He devolved, rushing backward into time, becoming once more what he had long since ceased to be. He became powerful, wild, and wise. And then, as he lifted the cathedral, he changed again.

Glimmung became an enormous female creature.

Now the devolution reached the cathedral; it changed, too. In Glimmung's arms it became an encased fetus, a small, sleeping child-creature wrapped tightly in the cocoon whose strands enveloped it. Without effort, Glimmung raised it to the surface; all of them cried out in delight as, in a glimmering instant, the cathedral broke through into the cold lateafternoon sun.

Why the change? Joe wondered.

Glimmung answered. Because, she thought back to Joe, at one time we were bisexual. This part of me has been suppressed throughout the years. Until I obtained it again I could not make the cathedral my child. As it has to be.

Under the weight of the child-creature the dry ground sagged and failed; Joe felt the ground sink away under the majestic weight. But Glimmung did not seem alarmed; gradually, she released the cathedral, unwilling to let it go, to let it once again be separate from her. I am it, she thought, and it is part of me.

A clap of thunder sounded and rain began to fall. Quietly, heavily, the rain soaked into everything; water gushed from the cathedral and wound a tortuous route back to Mare Nostrum. Now, by degrees, the cathedral regained its customary form. The child-creature gave way to concrete and rock and basalt, to flying buttresses and a soaring Gothic arch. Once again the red-stained glass, derived from gold, shone in the erratic light of a rain-clouded sunfall.

It is done, Glimmung thought. Now I can rest. The great fisherman of the night has received its victory. Everything has been set in order once again.

Let us go, Joe thought. That ever yet remains.

"Yes!" others of them dinned. "Release us!"

Glimmung hesitated; Joe felt her conflicting thoughts ebb back and forth. No, she thought. Because of you I have great authority; if I release you I will sink again, dwindle into smallness.

You must, Joe thought. That was our compact.

True, Glimmung thought. But you have so much to gain as portions of me. We can function for a thousand years, and none of us will be alone.

"A vote," Mali Yojez said.

Yes, Glimmung thought. A vote among you, to see who wishes to remain within me and who chooses to separate into an individual entity.

I'll stay, Nurb K'ohl Daq thought.

So will I, the quasiarachnid thought.

The vote continued; Joe listened to them, some of them electing to remain, some of them electing to break free. I want to be released, he said, when his time came to vote. At this Glimmung shuddered with dismay. Joe Fernwright, Glimmung thought. You are the best of them; won't you remain?

No, Joe thought.

He walked a shadowy shore with dark shapes looming, a dense and permanent swamp somewhere in the wilds of Plowman's Planet. How long had he been here? He did not know. Sometime before, he had been within Glimmung, and now he trudged painfully, the sharp sand lancing his feet as he struggled on.

Am I alone? he wondered. Halting, he peered into the twilight, trying to make out another life-form in his proximity.

The multilegged gastropod wriggled toward him. "I left with you," the gastropod said.

"Anyone else?" Joe asked.

The gastropod said, "In the final vote only the two of us. All the others remained. I consider it incredible, but it is so—they remained."

"Including Mali Yojez?"

"Yes," the gastropod said.

So that was that. He felt the weight of centuries on him; the task of raising the cathedral and now the loss of Mali were too much. "Do you know where we are?" he asked the gastropod. "I can't walk much farther."

"Neither can I," the gastropod said. "But there is a light to the north; I have drawn a paralactic fix on it and we are peregrinating in that direction. In another hour we should reach it, if I have computed our velocity correctly."

"I can't see the light," Joe said.

"My vision is superior to yours. You will see it in another twenty minutes. It winks almost out; it is very fragile. Probably a spiddle colony, I would guess."

"Spiddles," Joe said. "Are we going to live the rest of our life with spiddles? Is that how we wind up after leaving all the others and Glimmung?"

The gastropod said, "From there we can go by hovercar to the Olympia Hotel, where our possessions can be found. And then we can return to our own planets. We did a good job; we did what we came here for. We should rejoice."

"Yes," Joe said somberly. "We should rejoice."

"It was a great feat," the gastropod insisted. "You can see that the legends which maintain that Faust must fail are not only false in relation to reality, but in addition—"

"Let's talk about it," Joe broke in, "when we get back to the Olympia Hotel." He trudged on. After a moment of hesitation the multilegged creature followed after him.

"Is it very bad on your planet?" the gastropod inquired. "On Earth, as you call it?"

‘On Earth,' "Joe said. "As it is in heaven." "It is bad, then."

"Yes," Joe said.

The gastropod said, "Why don't you come with me to my world? I can get you a task... you're a pot-healer, aren't you?"

"I am," Joe said.

"We have many ceramics on Betelgeuse two," the gastropod said. "Your services would be in great demand."

"Mali," he said, half to himself.

Perceptively, the gastropod said, "I understand. But she's not coming; she's staying within Glimmung. Because, like the others, she is afraid to return to failure."

"I think I'll go to her planet," Joe said. "From what she said about it—" He ceased speaking, continued to trudge.

"Anyhow," he said presently, "it would be better than Earth." And, he thought, I'd still be among humanoids. Maybe, he thought, I'll meet someone like Mali there. There is at least a chance.

In silence, the two of them continued on. Toward the faroff spiddle colony which, with each exhausted, halting, meager step, grew nearer.

"You know what I think your problem is?" the gastropod said. "I think you ought to create a new pot, rather than merely patching up old ones."

"But," Joe said, "my father was a pot-healer before me."

"Observe the success of Glimmung's aspirations. Emulate him, who in his Undertaking fought and destroyed the Book of the Kalends and thus the tyrannic rule of fate itself. Be creative. Work against fate. Try."

Joe said, " ‘Try.' " He had never thought about it, a new pot of his own creation. Technically, he knew how; he understood exactly how a ceramic piece was made.

"In the workshop Glimmung provided you," the gastropod said. "You have all the equipment and materials. With your knowledge and ability it should be a good pot."

"Okay," Joe said harshly. "Okay I will. I'll try."

In the new, gleaming workshop he stood, the overhead lights flooding down on him. He studied the major workbench, the three sets of waldoes, the self-focusing magnifying glasses, the ten separate heat-needles, and—every glaze: every tint, shade, and hue. The weightless area; he inspected that. The kiln. Jars of wet clay. And the potter's wheel, electrically driven.

Hope welled up within him. He had all he needed. Wheel, clay, glazes, kiln.

Opening a jar he got out of it a dripping lump of gray clay; he carried the clay to the potter's wheel, started it turning, and plopped the clay down dead center. And on my first try, he said to himself, feeling pleased. Using his strong thumbs he began to dig into the lump, meanwhile, with his fingers, drawing the lump into something high. And virtually symmetric. Higher and higher the mound grew, and deeper and deeper his thumbs sank into it, hollowing out the center.

At last it was done.

He dried the clay in an infrared oven and then, taking a simple glaze, he ornamented the pot. One more color? He selected a second glaze, and that was enough. Time to go into the kiln.

He placed it in the already hot kiln, bolted the door, and seated himself at the workbench to wait. He had plenty of time. A lifetime, if necessary.

An hour later the kiln's timer pinged. The kiln had shut off; the pot was done.

With an asbestos glove, he tremblingly reached into the still-hot kiln and brought out the tall, now blue-and-white pot. His first pot. Taking it to a table, under direct light, he set it down and took a good look at it. He professionally appraised its artistic worth. He appraised what he had done, and, within it, what he would do, what later pots would be like, the future of them lying before him. And his justification, in a sense, for leaving Glimmung and all the others. Mali most of all. Mali whom he loved.

The pot was awful.