GALACTIC POT HEALER

4

Along the sidewalks of the city the vast animallike gasping entity which was the mass of Cleveland's unemployed—and unemployable—gathered and stood, stood and waited, waited and fused together into a lump both unstable and sad. Joe Fernwright, carrying his sack of coins, rubbed against their collective flank as he pushed his way toward the corner and the Mr. Job booth. He smelled the familiar vinegarlike penetrating scent of their presence, their overheated and yet plaintively disappointed massiveness. On all sides of him their eyes contemplated his forward motion, his determination to get past them.

"Excuse me," he said to a slender Mexican-looking youth who had become wedged, among all the others, directly ahead of him.

The youth blinked nervously, but did not move. He had seen the asbestos bag which Joe held; beyond any doubt he knew what Joe had and where Joe was going and what Joe intended to do.

"Can I get by?" Joe asked him. It seemed an impasse of permanent proportions. Behind him, the throng of inactive humanity had closed in, blocking any chance of retreat. He could not go back and he could make no progress forward. I guess the next thing, he thought, is that they'll grab my quarters and that will be that. His heart hurt, as if he had climbed a ridge, a final ridge of life itself, a terrible hill strewn with skulls. He saw, about him, gaping eye sockets; he experienced a weird visual distortion, as if the ultimate disposition of these people had made its appearance palpably... as if, he thought, it can't wait; it must have them now.

The Mexican youth said, "Could I look at your coins, sir?" It was hard to know what to do. The eyes—or rather the hollow sockets—continued to press in at him in a complete circle; he felt them encompass him and his asbestos bag. I am shrinking, he thought in surprise. Why? He felt weak and glum, but not guilty. It was his money. They knew it and he knew it. And yet the vacant eyes made him small. As if, he thought, it doesn't matter what I do, whether I get to the Mr. Job booth or not; what I do, what becomes of me—it won't change things for these people.

And yet, on a conscious level, he didn't care. They had their lives; he had his, and his included a sack of carefully saved-up metal coins. Can they contaminate me? he asked himself. Drag me down into their inertial storm? This is their problem, not mine, he thought. I'm not going to sink with the system; this is my first decision, to ignore the two special delivery letters and do this: take this journey with this sack of quarters. This is the start of my escape, and there will be no new bondage.

"No," he said.

"I won't take any," the youth said.

A strange impulse overcame Joe Fernwright. Opening the bag he rummaged, got out a quarter; he held it out toward the Mexican youth. As the boy accepted it other hands appeared, on all sides; the ring of hopeless eyes had become a ring of outstretched, open hands. But there was no greed conspiring against him; none of the hands tried to grab his sack of coins. The hands were simply there, merely waiting. Waiting in a silence made up of trust, as his own earlier waiting at the mail tube had been. Horrible, Joe thought. These people think I'm going to give them a present, as if they've been waiting for the universe to do this: the universe has given them nothing all their lives and they have accepted that as silently as now. They see me as a kind of supernatural deity. But no, he thought. I've got to get out of here. I can't do anything for them.

But even as he realized this he found himself digging into the cloth sack; he found himself putting a quarter into one palm after another.

Overhead, a police cruiser whistled loudly as it lowered, like a great lid, its two occupants in their slick, bright uniforms, wearing riot helmets that sparkled, holding, each of them, a laser rifle. One of the two cops said, "Get out of this man's way."

The pressing circle began to melt back. The extended hands disappeared, as if into a numbed, intolerable darkness.

"Don't stand there," the other cop said to Joe in his thick cop's voice. "Get moving. Get those coins out of here or I'll write you out a citation after which you won't have one goddam coin left."

Joe walked on.

"What do you think you are?" the other cop said to him, as the cruiser followed after him, holding its position directly above his head. "Some sort of privately endowed philanthropic organization?"

Saying nothing, Joe continued on.

"You're required by law to answer me," the cop said.

Reaching into his asbestos cloth sack, Joe got out a quarter. He handed it up toward the nearer of the two cops. And, at the same time, saw with amazement that only a few quarters remained.

My coins, he realized, are gone! So there is only one door open to me—the mail tube and what it has brought in the last two days. Whether I like it or not—by what I've done just now it's been decided.

"Why did you hand me this coin?" the cop asked.

"As a tip," Joe said. And, at the same time, felt his head burst as the laser beam, on stun, hit him directly between his eyes.

At the police station the swank young police official, blondhaired, blue-eyed, slim, in his swank clean uniform, said, "We're not going to book you, Mr. Fernwright, although technically you're guilty of a crime against the people."

"The state," Joe said; he sat hunched over, rubbing his forehead, trying to make the pain stop. "Not the people," he managed to say. He shut his eyes and the pain flooded over him, radiating out from the spot where the beam had touched him.

"What you're saying," the young police official said, "constitutes in itself a felony and we could book you on that, too. We could even turn you over to the Political Control Bureau as an enemy of the working class, engaged in a conspiracy to advocate agitation against the people and the servants of the people, such as ourselves. But your record heretofore—" He studied Joe with professional intensity. "A sane man doesn't start handing coins out to total strangers." The police official examined a document which had come unreeling itself out of a slot of his desk. "Obviously you acted without deliberation."

"Yes," Joe said. "Without deliberation." He felt nothing in the way of emotions; he experienced only bodily discomfort, acute and still growing. It had preempted any feeling, any mental activity.

"However, we're going to impound your remaining coins. For the present at least. And you'll be on probation for a year, during which time you will report here, once a week, and give us an account, a full account, of your activities."

"Without a trial?" Joe said.

"Do you want to be tried?" the police official eyed him keenly.

"No," Joe said. He went on rubbing his head. The QCA material apparently hasn't been fed to their computers yet, he decided. But eventually it'll all be combined. They'll put it all together, my tipping the cop, my finding notes in the water closet of my toilet. I'm a nut, he said to himself. I've gone mad from inactivity; the last seven months have destroyed me. And now, when I made my move, when I took my coins to Mr. Job--_I couldn't do it_.

"Wait a minute," another cop said. "Here's something on him from QCA. It just rolled down the circuit from their computer bank central."

Turning, Joe ran toward the door of the police station. Toward the mass of people outside. As if to bury himself among them; to cease to be a finite part.

Two cops appeared ahead of him and they lunged toward him as he ran; they came closer unnaturally rapidly, as if on video tape speeded up. And then, suddenly, they were under water; they, like slender silver fish, gaped at him and rhythmically maneuvered themselves among—good god! coral and seaweed. And yet he himself felt nothing, no water; but here was a tank of water, instead of the police station, all the furniture like sunken wrecks, half-buried in sand. And the police twisted and streaked by him, lovely in their glittering gliding movements. But they could not touch him, because he, although standing in the center, was not in the tank. And he heard no sound. Their mouths moved, but only silence reached him.

Bobbing and undulating, a squid swept past him; it was, he thought, like the soul of the sea. The squid all at once ejected clouds of darkness, as if meant to efface everything. He saw no police officers, now; the darkness propagated itself until it filled up the panorama and then it became more intense, as if it were not opaque enough before. But I can breathe, Joe said. "Hey," he said aloud—and heard his own voice. I'm just not in the water, he realized, like they are. I can identify myself; I'm split off, a separate entity. But why?

What if I try to move? he wondered. He took one step, another, and then clunk; he rebounded off a wall-like surface. Another way, he said; he turned and took a step to his right. Clunk. In panic he thought, I'm in a box like a coffin! Did they kill me? he asked himself. When I tried to run for the door. He reached his arms out, into the darkness, groping... and something was placed in his right hand. Small, square. With two disklike knobs.

A transistor radio.

He turned it on.

"Hi there, folks!" a happy, tinny voice sounded in the darkness. "This is Cavorting Cary Karns here with six phones sitting in front of me and twenty switchboard circuits going, so that I can hear you all, all of you good people who want to discuss something, anything. The number is 394-950-911111, so call in, folks, about anything at all, whatever's on your mind, good, bad, indifferent, interesting, or dull—just call Cavorting Cary Karns at 394-950-911111 and the whole radio audience out there will hear you and what you have to say, your opinion, a fact that you know that you think everyone else should know—" From the speaker of the transistor radio came the sound of a phone ringing. "Hello—we've got a caller already!" Cavorting Cary Karns declared. "Yes sir. Yes ma'am, I mean."

"Mr. Karns," a shrill female voice said, "there ought to be a stop sign placed at the intersection of Fulton Avenue and Clover, where all the little schoolchildren, and I see them every day—"

Something hard, some dense object, bumped Joe's left hand. He took hold of it. A phone.

Sitting down, he placed the phone and the transistor radio in front of him and then he got out his cigarette lighter and zipped the butane flame on. It illuminated a meager circle, but within the circle he could make out the phone and the transistor radio. A Zenith transistor radio, he noted. Evidently a good one, from the size of it.

"Okay, folks out there," Cavorting Cary Karns merrily prattled. "The number is 394-950-911111; that's where you'll reach me and through me the whole world of—"

Joe dialed. At last he had painstakingly dialed the whole number. He held the receiver to his ear, listened to a busy signal for a moment, and then heard, from both the receiver and the radio, the voice of Cavorting Cary Karns. "Yes sir, or is it ma'am?" Karns asked.

"Where am I?" Joe said into the phone.

"Hey there!" Karns said. "We've got somebody out there, some poor soul, who's lost. Your name is, sir?"

"Joseph Fernwright," Joe said.

"Well, Mr. Fernwright, it's a downright pleasure to talk to you. Your question is, Where are you? Does anybody know where Mr. Joseph Fernwright of Cleveland—you are in Cleveland, aren't you, Mr. Fernwright?--does anybody out there know where he is, at this moment? I think this is a valid question on Mr. Fernwright's part; I'd like to hold the lines open for anyone who can call in and give us some idea, at least a general idea, of the vicinity in which Mr. Fernwright is currently. So you other people, who don't know where Mr. Fernwright is, could you not call in until we've located Mr. Fernwright? Mr. Fernwright, it shouldn't be long; we've got a ten million audience and a fifty-thousand-watt transmitter going and—wait! A call." Tinny sound of a phone ringing. "Yes sir or ma'am. Sir. Your name, sir?"

A male voice, from the radio and from Joe's phone, said, "My name is Dwight L. Glimmung of 301 Pleasant Hill Road, and I know where Mr. Fernwright is. He's in my basement. Slightly to the right and a little behind my furnace. He's in a wooden packing crate that came with an air-conditioning unit that I ordered from People's Sears, last year."

"You hear that, Mr. Fernwright?" Cavorting Cary Karns whooped. "You're in a packing crate in Mr. Dwight L.—what was the rest of your name, sir?"

"Glimmung."

"Mr. Dwight L. Glimmung's basement of 301 Pleasant Hill Road. So all your troubles are over, Mr. Fernwright. Simply get out of the packing crate and you'll be just fine!"

"I don't want him to bust the crate, though," Dwight L. Glimmung said. "Maybe I better go down there into that basement and pry a few boards loose and let him out."

"Mr. Fernwright," Karns said, "just for the edification of our radio audience, how did you happen to get into an empty packing crate in the basement of Mr. Dwight L. Glimmung of 301 Pleasant Hill Road? I'm sure our audience would like to know."

"I don't know," Joe said.

"Well, perhaps then Mr. Glimmung—Mr. Glimmung? He seems to have rung off. Evidently he's on his way down into the basement to let you out, Mr. Fernwright. What a lucky thing for you it was, sir, that Mr. Glimmung happened to be listening to this show! Otherwise you probably would be in that crate until doomsday. And now let's turn to another listener; hello?" The phone clicked in Joe's ear. The circuit had been broken.

Sounds. From around him. A creaking noise and something wide bent back; light flooded into the box wherein Joe Fernwright sat with his cigarette lighter, his phone, and his transistor radio.

"I got you out of the police barracks the best way I could," a male voice—the same that Joe had heard on the radio—said.

"A strange way," Joe said.

"To you strange. Strange to me have been a number of things you've done since the time I first became aware of you.,,

Joe said, "Like giving away my coins."

"No, I understood that. What strikes me as odd is your having sat for all those months in your work cubicle, waiting." A second slat slid away; more light flooded in at Joe and he blinked. He tried to see Glimmung, but he still could not. "Why didn't you go to a nearby museum and break a number of their pots anonymously... and you would have got their business. And the pots would be healed as new. Nothing would have been lost and you would have been active and productive over these days." The last slat fell away, and Joe Fernwright saw, up in the full light, the creature from Sirius five, the life-form which the encyclopedia had described as being senile and penniless.

He saw a great hoop of water spinning on a horizonal axis, and, within it, on a vertical axis, a transversal hoop of fire. Hanging over and behind the two elemental hoops a curtain draped and floated, a billowing fabric which he saw, with amazement, was Paisley.

And—one more aspect: an image embedded at the nucleus of the revolving hoops of fire and water. The pleasant, pretty face of a brown-haired teen-age girl. It hung suspended, and it smiled at him... an ordinary face, easily forgotten but always encountered. It was, he thought, a composite mask, as if drawn on a blank sidewalk with colored chalk. A temporary and not very impressive visage, through which Glimmung apparently meant to encounter him. But the hoop of water, he thought. The basis of the universe. As was the hoop of fire. And they revolved on and on, at a perfectly regulated speed. A superb and eternal self-perpetuating mechanism, he thought, except for the flimsy Paisley shawl and the immature female face. He felt bewildered. Did what he see add up to strength? Certainly it gave no aura of senility, and yet he had the impression that, despite the jejune face, it was very old. As to its financial status, he could make no estimate at this time. That would have to come later, if at all.

"I bought this house seven years ago," Glimmung—or at least a voice—said. "When there was a buyers' market."

Joe, looking for the source of the voice, distinguished an oddity which twitched his blood and made him cold, as if ice and fire had mixed together in him, a pale analog of Glimmung.

The voice. It came from an ancient wind-up Victrola, on which a record played at a peculiar high speed. Glimmung's voice was on the record.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Joe said. "Seven years ago was a good time to buy. You do your recruiting from here?"

"I work here," Glimmung's voice—from the ancient windup Victrola—answered. "I work many other places as well... in many star systems. Now let me tell you where you stand, Joe Fernwright. To the police you simply turned and walked out of the building, and for some reason they seemed unable, at the time, to stop you. But an APB has been sent out regarding you, so you can't go back to your rooming house or your work cubicle."

"Without being caught by the police," Joe said.

"Do you want that?"

"Maybe it has to be," Joe said stoically.

"Nonsense. Your police are feral and malicious. I want you to see Heldscalla, as it was before it sank. Youuuuuuuuu," and the phonograph ran down. Joe, via the handcrank, wound it up again, feeling a mixture of feelings, each of which he would probably, if asked, be unable to describe. "You will find a viewing instrument on the table to your right," Glimmung said, the record now playing at its proper speed. "A depth-perception mechanism originating here on your own planet."

Joe searched—and found an antique stereoscope viewer, circa 1900, with a set of black-and-white cards to be put into it. "Couldn't you do better than this?" he demanded. "A film sequence, or stereo video tape. Why, this thing was invented before the automobile." It came to him, then. "You are broke," he said. "Smith was right."

"That's a calumny," Glimmung said. "I am merely parsimonious. It is an inherited characteristic of my order. As a product of your socialistic society you are used to great waste. I, however, am still on the free enterprise plan. ‘A penny saved—‘

"Oh Christ," Joe groaned.

"If you want me to quit," Glimmung said, "merely lift the mica-disk playback head-and-needle assembly from the record."

"What happens when the record comes to an end?" Joe said.

"It will never do so."

"Then it's not a real record."

"It's a real record. The grooves form a loop."

"What do you really look like?" Joe said.

Glimmung said, "What do you really look like?"

Nettled, Joe said, gesticulating, "It depends on whether you accept Kant's division of phenomena from the Ding an sich, the thing in itself which like Leibnitz's windowless monad—"

He halted, because the phonograph had run down again; the record had ceased to turn. As he rewound it, Joe thought, He probably didn't hear anything I said. And probably on purpose.

"I missed your philosophical discourse," the phonograph declared, when he had finished rewinding it.

"What I'm saying," Joe said, "is that a phenomenon perceived is done so in the structural percept-system of the perceiver. Much of what you see in perceiving me—" He pointed to himself for emphasis. "—is a projection from your own mind. To another percept-system I would appear quite different. To the police, for instance. There're as many worldviews as there are sentient creatures."

"Hmm," Glimmung said.

"You understand the distinction I'm making," Joe said.

"Mr. Fernwright, what do you really want? The time has come for you to choose, to act. To participate—or not participate—in a great historical moment. At this moment, Mr. Fernwright, I am in a thousand places, committing or helping to commit an enormous variety of engineers and artisans... you are one craftsman out of many. I can't wait for you any longer."

"Am I vital to the project?" Joe asked.

"A pot-healer is vital, yes. You or someone else."

Joe said, "When do I get my thirty-five thousand crumbles? In advance?"

"You will get them whennnnnn," Glimmung began to say, but again the old Victrola became unwound; the record slowed to a halt.

Cagey bastard, Joe said to himself grimly as he rewound the phonograph.

"When," Glimmung said, "and if, only if, the cathedral is raised once more as it was centuries ago."

That's what I thought, Joe thought.

"Will you go to Plowman's Planet?" Glimmung asked.

For a time Joe considered. In his mind he considered his room, the cubicle in which he worked, the loss of his coins, the police—he thought about it all and tried to make it add up. What ties me here? he asked himself. The known, he decided. The fact that I am used to it. You can get used to anything, and even learn to like it. Pavlov's theory of learned reflex is correct; I am held by habit. And nothing more.

"Could I have just a few crumbles in advance?" he asked Glimmung. "I want to buy a cashmere sports jacket and a new pair of wash-and-wear shoes."

The phonograph split apart; pieces of it rained everywhere, lancing Joe's arms and face. And, in the center of the hoops of water and of fire, a huge contorted furious face manifested itself; the feeble female countenance disappeared, and what glared at Joe now glared with the force of a sun. The face cursed at him, cursed in a language he did not know. He shrank back, appalled by the anger of Glimmung; the ordinary objects through which Glimmung had up to now manifested himself disintegrated into bits, the Paisley shawl, even the two elemental hoops. The basement itself began to crack apart, like a declining ruin; pieces of cement fell to the floor and then the floor itself broke like dried clay.

Jesus, Joe thought. And Smith said it was senile. Now huge chunks of the house were dropping around him; a section of pipe banged him on the head and he heard a thousand voices singing a thousand songs of fear. "I'll go," he said aloud, his eyes shut, hands enwrapping his head. "You're right; it's not a joke. I'm sorry. I know this has great importance to you."

The fist of Glimmung clutched him around the waist; it lifted him up as it squeezed him like a roll of newspaper. He saw for an instant the raging, melting, burning eye—a single eye!--and then the firestorm ebbed. The pressure around his waist relaxed, just a trifle. But enough. He thought, I probably didn't get any ribs cracked. I better get a medical examination before I leave Earth, though. Just to be sure.

"I will set you down in the main lounge of the Cleveland Spaceport," Glimmung said. "You will find that you have enough money for a ticket to Plowman's Planet. Take the next flight; do not go back to your room for your things—the police are waiting for you there. Take this." Glimmung thrust something into his hand; in the light it reflected many colors; the colors blended into one shape and then trickled out in threadlike streams to re-form in another pattern. And then another, which leaped up at him wildly.

"A potsherd," Glimmung said.

"This is a piece of a broken vase of the cathedral?" Joe said. "Why didn't you show it to me right away?" I would have gone, he thought, if I had seen this... if I had had any idea.

"Now you know," Glimmung said, "what you will be healing with your talent."