GALACTIC POT HEALER

3

When he reached his work cubicle the next morning he found a second special delivery letter waiting for him.

SHIP OUT TO PLOWMAN'S PLANET, MR. FERNWRIGHT, WHERE

YOU ARE NEEDED. YOUR LIFE WILL SIGNIFY SOMETHING; YOU

WILL CREATE A PERMANENT ENDEAVOR WHICH WILL OUTLAST

ME AS WELL AS YOU.

Plowman's Planet, Joe reflected. It rang a bell, although dimly. Absentmindedly, he dialed the encyclopedia's number.

"Is Plowman's Planet—" he began, but the artificial voice interrupted him.

"Not for another twelve hours. Goodby."

"Just one fact?" he said angrily. "I just want to find out if Sirius five and Plowman's—" Click. The robot mechanism had rung off. Bastards, he thought. All robot servo-mechanisms and all computers are bastards.

Who can I ask? he asked himself, that would know, offhand, if Plowman's Planet is Sirius five? Kate. Kate would know.

But, he thought as he started to dial her office number, if I'm going to emigrate to Plowman's Planet I don't want her to know; she'll be able to trace me re my back alimony payments.

Once more he picked up the unsigned note, studied it. And, in a gradual, seeping fashion, a realization concerning it suffused his mind and entered into his field of awareness. There were more words on the note in some kind of semiinvisible ink. Runic writing? he wondered; he felt a sort of wicked, animal excitement, as if he had found a carefully protected trail.

He dialed Smith's number. "If you got a letter," Joe said, "with semi-invisible runic writing on it, how would you—you in particular—go about making it visible?"

"I'd hold it over a heat source," Smith said.

"Why?" Joe said.

"Because it's most likely written in milk. And writing in milk turns black over a heat source."

"Runic writing in milk?" Joe said angrily.

"Statistics show—"

"I can't imagine it. I simply can't imagine it. Runic writing in milk." He shook his head. "Anyway, what statistics are there on runic writing? This is absurd." He got out his cigarette lighter and held it beneath the sheet of paper. At once, black letters became visible.

WE SHALL RAISE HELDSCALLA.

"What's it say?" Smith asked.

Joe said, "Listen, Smith; you haven't used the encyclopedia in the last twenty-four hours, have you?"

"No," Smith said.

Joe said, "Call it. Ask it if Plowman's Planet is another name for Sirius five. And ask it what ‘Heldscalla' consists of." I guess I could ask the dictionary that, he said to himself. "What a mess," he said. "Is this any way to conduct business?" He felt fear overlaid with nausea; it did not appeal to him. It did not seem effective nor funny; it was merely strange. And, he thought, I have to report this to the police, so I'll be back cloistered with them again, and now there's probably already a file on me—hell, he thought, there has been since my birth—but now the file has new entries. Which always was bad. As every citizen knew.

Heldscalla, he thought. An odd and somehow impressive verbal integer. It appealed to him; it seemed totally opposed to such conditions as cubicles, phones, walking to work through endless crowds, fiddling his life away on the veterans' dole, meanwhile playing The Game. I am here, he thought, when I should be there.

"Call me back, Smith," he said into the phone. "As soon as you've talked to the encyclopedia. Bye." He rang off, paused, then dialed the dictionary. "Heldscalla," he said. "What does it mean?"

The dictionary—or rather its artificial voice—said, "Heldscalla is the ancient cathedral of the once-ruling Fog-Things of Sirius five. It sank under the sea centuries ago and has never been placed back, intact and functioning, with its old, holy artifacts and relics, on dry land."

"Are you hooked into the encyclopedia right now?" Joe asked. "That's an awful lot of definition."

"Yes, sir or madam; I am hooked into the encyclopedia."

"Then can you tell me any more?"

"No more."

"Thank you," Joe Fernwright said huskily. And hung up.

He could see it. Glimmung—or the Glimmung, if that was correct; evidently there was only one of them—intended to raise the ancient cathedral Heldscalla, and to do so, the Glimmung needed a wide span of skills. Such as his own, for example; his ability to heal ceramic ware. Heldscalla obviously contained pots—enough of them to cause the Glimmung to approach him... and to offer him a good sum for his work.

By now he's probably recruited two hundred skills from two hundred planets, Joe realized. I'm not the only one getting peculiar letters et cetera. He saw in his mind a great cannon being fired, and out of it special delivery letters, thousands of them, addressed to various life-form individuals throughout the galaxy.

And oh god, he thought. The police are spotting it; they barged into my room minutes after I consulted the bank. Last night, those two; they knew already what these letters and weird note floating in the water closet of the toilet mean. They could have told me. But of course they wouldn't; that would be too natural, too humane.

His phone buzzed. He lifted the receiver.

"I contacted the encyclopedia," Smith said, as his image appeared on the screen. "Plowman's Planet is space argot for Sirius five. Since I had hold of the encyclopedia I took the opportunity of asking it more. I thought you might appreciate it."

"Yes," Joe said.

"One vast old creature lives there. Apparently infirm."

"You mean it's sick?" Joe asked.

"Well, you know... age and such like. Dormant; that's what it's been."

"Is it menacing?"

"How could it be menacing if it's dormant as well as infirm? It's senile. Yes, that's the word—senile."

Joe asked, "Has it ever said anything?"

"Not really."

"Not even the time of day?"

"Ten years ago it came to briefly and asked for an orbiting weather-station satellite."

"What did it pay for it with?"

"It didn't. It's indigent. We contributed it free, and we threw in a news type satellite along with the weather one."

"Broke and senile," Joe said. He felt glum. "Well," he said, "I guess I won't be getting any money out of it."

"Why? Were you suing it?"

"Goodby, Smith," Joe said.

"Wait!" Smith said. "There's a new game. You want to join? It consists of speed-scanning the newspaper archives to come up with the funniest headline. Real headline, you realize; not made up. I have a good one; it's from 1962. You want to hear it?"

"Okay," Joe said, still feeling glum. His glumness had oozed throughout him, leaving him inert and spongelike; he responded reflexively. "Let's hear your headline."

"ELMO PLASKETT SINKS GIANTS," Smith read from his slip of paper.

"Who the hell was Elmo Plaskett?"

"He came up from the minors and—"

"I have to go, now," Joe said, standing up. "I have to leave my office." He hung up. Home, he said to himself. To get my bag of quarters.