Galactic Pot-Healer (16 page)

“It’s the old fellow,” Willis said, showing no anxiety. “I asked him to come. Or did he ask me? I forget. Anyhow the two of us conversed, but it’s a little blurred, now, in my mind. We have that problem, my colleagues and I.”

Mali said, “He’s landing.”

The bird came to rest in the air, its beak working in spastic agitation; the yellow eyes glowered at Joe—specifically at Joe and no one else—and then from the huge craw of the bird, words came, shouted into the darkness of the night. Words sharp and wild, a screech of interrogation.
“You,”
the bird
yelled at him. “I didn’t want you to go into the ocean. I didn’t want you to see what’s there, buried at the bottom. You are here to cure pots. What did you see? What did you do?” The shrieks of the bird had a frantic quality about them, an overpowering urgency. Glimmung had come here because he could not wait to find out; he had to know at once what had happened at the ocean bottom.

“I found a pot,” Joe said.

“The pot lied!” Glimmung shrieked. “Forget what it said; listen to me instead. Do you understand?”

Joe said, “The pot only told me—”

“There’re a thousand lying pots down there,” Glimmung broke in. “Each has a separate, false tale to tell to anyone who happens to come by and notice it.”

“A great black fish,” Joe said. “It showed that.”

“There is no fish. Nothing is real down there except Heldscalla. I can bring it up any time; I can do it alone, with no help from you or from anyone. I can bring each pot up myself; I can free them one by one from the coral, and if they break I can repair them or get someone who can. Shall I send you back to your cubicle to play your game? To deteriorate over the years? To sink into decay gradually over the years until you become debris, without mind or plans? Is that what you want?”

“No,” Joe said. “That’s not what I want.”

“You are going back to Terra,” Glimmung shrilled; the beak snapped open and shut, open and shut, biting the air savagely.

“I’m sorry I—” Joe began, but the bird cut him off with ruthless fury. And, as before, with overwhelming agitation.

“I will return you to the crate in my basement,” Glimmung declared. “You can stay there until the police catch up with you. Further, I will tell them where you are; they will get you and they will reduce you to tatters. Do you understand? Didn’t it occur to you that if you disobeyed me I’d expel you? I have no use for you. As far as I am concerned you
no longer exist. I’m sorry to yell at you this way, but this is the way I get when I’m thoroughly teed off. You’ll have to excuse me.”

Joe said, “It seems to me you’re going overboard. What in fact have I done? I went below; I found a pot; I—”

“You found the pot I didn’t want you to see.” The frigid eyes of the bird bored relentlessly, stultifyingly down at him. “Don’t you see what you’ve done?
You’ve forced my hand
. I have to react
now;
I can’t wait!” All at once the bird wheeled upward, spinning and realigning itself, turned now toward the sea, rather than Joe. The bird shot outward, at tremendous velocity; its massive wings flapped with violent rage and the bird soared, rose, and hovered. It hung in the sky above the sea, shrieking in wild, determined bursts of ear-piercing noise. “Cavorting Cary Karns and his six phones won’t help you now!” the bird shrilled as it hung in the dark sky, merging with the fog which rolled in, like waves, above the ocean surface. “The radio audience doesn’t know about you! The radio audience doesn’t care about you!” The bird wheeled, dropped lower…

Something rose from the sea.

“Oh god,” Mali said, standing close to Joe. “It’s the Black One. Coming to meet him.”

From the sea the Black Glimmung ascended, meeting the authentic Glimmung in midair. Feathers flew in all directions as the two creatures raked each other with their claws; then, almost at once, the tangled mass of the two of them dropped like a stone into the water. On the surface they thrashed momentarily, and it seemed to Joe—unless it was an illusion—that the authentic Glimmung was struggling to extricate himself.

Both Glimmungs disappeared. Out of sight, into the depths of Mare Nostrum.

“It pulled him under,” Mali whispered in a stricken voice.

To the robot, Joe said, “Is there anything we can do? To help him? To get him free?” He’s drowning, Joe realized. This will kill him.

“He will emerge,” the robot said.

“You can’t be sure of that,” Joe said; Mali, beside him, echoed his words. “Has this ever happened before?” Joe demanded. “Glimmung pulled under?” Instead of lifting
Heldscalla up, he realized, Glimmung had been dragged down … to join the Black Glimmung and the Black Cathedral forever. Like
my
corpse; a lifeless thing floating about in the form of mere debris. Dwelling in a box.

“I can fire an HB cartridge into the water,” the robot said. “But a warhead like that would kill him, too.”

“No,” Mali said emphatically.

“This did happen once before,” Willis said, reflecting. “In Terran time—” It calculated. “Late in 1936. About the time of the summer Olympics, held in Berlin, that year.”

Mali said, “And he made it back up?”

“Yes, Mrs. Lady,” Willis answered. “And the Black One slid back down to the bottom again. Where it has remained until now. By coming here, Glimmung took a calculated risk; he knew it might disturb the Black One. That’s why he said, ‘You’ve forced my hand.’ You did. It’s been forced; he’s down there now.”

Flashing his torch out onto the water, Joe saw something bobbing about. An object which reflected light. “Do you have a power boat?” he asked Willis.

“Yes, Mr. Sir,” the robot said. “Do you want to go out there? What if they come boiling up?”

“I want to see what that is out there,” Joe said. He already had a good idea.

Grudgingly, the robot went off in search of the boat.

A few minutes later the three of them put-putted their way out onto the dark and turbulent surface of Mare Nostrum.

“There it is,” Joe said. “A few yards to the right.” He held the object fixed with his torch as the boat approached it. Reaching out, he groped for the thing; his fingers closed over its handle and he lifted it back, into the boat.

A large bottle. And, in the bottle, a note.

“Another message from Glimmung,” Joe said acidly as he unscrewed the lid of the bottle and dumped the note out; it fluttered onto the bottom of the boat and he retrieved it carefully. Holding it in the light of the torch he read it.

“Why does he do this?” Joe asked the robot. “Why does he leave notes in bottles and reach people via radio programs and—”

“An idiosyncratic method of interpersonal communication,” the robot answered as they put-putted back toward the staging center. “As long as I’ve known him he’s dribbled out opaque, elliptical chunks of information in indirect ways. In your opinion, how ought he to communicate? By satellite?”

“He might as well,” Joe said, and felt gloom descend over him in a morbid, taciturn cloud. He withdrew silently into himself; shivering with cold he awaited their arrival back at the staging area.

“He’s going to die,” Mali said quietly.

“Glimmung?” Joe asked.

She nodded. In the dim light her face seemed ghostly; across it vague shadows flitted, like ebbing tides.

“Did I ever tell you about The Game?” Joe said.

“I’m sorry; at this moment I—”

“It works this way. You take a book title, preferably one well known, and you feed it orally into a computer in Japan, which translates it into Japanese. Then you—”

“Is that what you’re going back to?” Mali asked.

“Yes it is,” he said.

“I should feel sorry for you,” Mali said. “But I can’t. You brought this on all of us—you’ve destroyed Glimmung, who meant to save you from your puerile pastimes. He meant to restore the dignity of work to you in a heroic enterprise, a joint enterprise involving hundreds of us, from a multitude of planets.”

“But Mr. Sir had to go below,” the robot said.

“Exactly,” Mali said.

“The Book of the Kalends made me do it,” Joe said.

“No it didn’t,” the robot said. “You had it in your mind to go below Mare Nostrum before the Kalend showed up and got you to read that passage in The Book.”

“A man must do what aids his humanity,” Joe said.

“What does that mean?” Mali demanded.

“A figure of speech,” Joe said lamely. “What I mean is: like with the mountain climbers … it is there.” And now, he thought, I have killed Glimmung, as The Book foretold. The Kalend was right. The Kalends are always right. Glimmung is dying as we sit here in this boat, put-putting back to the staging area. Without me, without my descent into Mare Nostrum, he would be alive and functioning. They are right. It’s my fault—as Glimmung himself said, there at the end, before the Black Glimmung rose from the sea to do battle with him.

“How do you feel, Joe Fernwright?” Mali asked him. “Knowing what you did, knowing what you are responsible for?”

“Well,” Joe said, “I suggest we keep watching the hourly progress reports.” It sounded weak even to him; as he said it his voice faded away, ebbed at last into silence. The three of them continued on, no one speaking, until they reached the dock of the staging area and Willis was securing the boat.

“‘The hourly progress reports,’” Mali said sardonically as they climbed up onto the wharf. The bright lights of the staging area blazed around them, giving Mali and Willis an unnatural cast, a kind of blanched-lead aspect, as if they were mimicking human life in a macabre, unnatural way. Or, he thought, as if I’ve killed them, too, and these are their corpses. But a robot, he decided, does not have a corpse. It’s the lighting and the fact that I’m tired. He had never felt such exhaustion in his life; as he climbed he wheezed for air,
his lungs aching. It was as if he had tried, by his own muscles, to lift Glimmung out of the sea and back onto dry land—and safety.

Which, he thought, Glimmung deserves.

“It’s an interesting story,” Joe said, to change the subject, “about how Glimmung first contacted me. I was sitting in my cubicle, with nothing to do, and the mail light lit up. I pressed the button, and down the pipe came—”

“Look,” Mali interrupted quietly; her voice was low but deeply intense. She pointed out over the water, and Joe turned his torch in that direction. “It’s frothing. From the struggle underneath. The Black Glimmung swallows Glimmung; the Black Cathedral swallows the cathedral; Amalita and Borel are forgotten, and so is Glimmung. Nothing survives; nothing comes back up out of the water.” She turned her back and continued on into the staging area.

“Just a moment,” the robot said. “I think a call is coming through for Mr. Sir. As before, an official call.” The robot became silent and then it said, “Glimmung’s personal secretary. She wants to talk to you once again.” The door of the robot’s chest swung open and, as before, on its tray appeared the audio telephone. “Please pick up the receiver,” the robot instructed.

Once again Joe picked up the receiver. He felt weights, attached to his arms, drag him down; he had to struggle to hold the receiver up high enough so that he could hear.

“Mr. Fernwright?” The professional, adequate, female voice. “This is Hilda Reiss, again. Is Glimmung there with you?”

“Tell her,” Mali said. “Tell her the truth.”

Joe said, “He’s at the bottom of Mare Nostrum.”

“Is that so, Mr. Fernwright? Do I understand you correctly?”

“He went down into the Aquatic Sub-World,” Joe said. “All of a sudden. None of us expected it.”

“I don’t think I’m understanding you properly,” Miss Reiss said. “You seem to be saying—”

“He’s fighting with everything he’s got,” Joe said. “I’m sure he’ll emerge eventually. He says he’ll be sending up hourly progress reports. So I don’t think there’s really too much to worry about.”

“Mr. Fernwright,” Miss Reiss said briskly, “Glimmung only sends out hourly progress reports when he’s in distress.”

“Hmm,” Joe said.

“Do you understand me?” Miss Reiss snapped.

“Yes.” Joe nodded.

“Did he go under voluntarily or was he dragged under?”

“A little bit of both,” Joe said. “There was a confrontation.” He gesticulated, finding it difficult to bring forth the right words. “Between the two of them. But Glimmung decidedly seemed to have the upper hand. Or should I say pseudopodium?”

“Let me talk to her,” Mali said; she seized the phone, tugged it from his hand, and spoke into it. “This is Miss Yojez.” An interval of silence. “Yes, Miss Reiss; I know that. Yes, I know that, too. Well, as Mr. Fernwright says, he may emerge victorious. We must have faith, as the Bible says.” Again a prolonged period of listening. Then she glanced up at Joe, held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, said, “She wants us to try to get a message down to Glimmung.”

“What message?” Joe said.

Into the phone Mali said, “What message?”

“No message,” Joe said to Willis, “is going to be of any help to him. There isn’t anything we can do.” He felt utterly impotent, more so than at any other time of his life. The sense of the proximity of death, which had haunted him during his depressed periods, dilated in him, and in undismayed fury; he felt it numb his guts, his heart, his nervous system. Awareness of guilt clung to him like a satin, ornate
cloak. Shame so pure that it had virtually an archetypal quality to it, as if he were reexperiencing the primordial shame of Adam, the first sense of conspicuousness before the sight of God. He felt hatred for himself, for the fecklessness of his conduct; he had brought his benefactor into jeopardy—and the entire planet as well. I’m a Jonah, he said to himself. The Kalends are right; I have come here to blight this planet with my presence. And Glimmung must have known…yet, he brought me here anyhow. Perhaps because I needed this; for my sake. Christ, he thought. And this is now the end. Look how I’ve paid him back: with death.