Galactic Pot-Healer (12 page)

The deep yellow glaze. He had never seen such a rich yellow before; it surpassed even the yellows of Delft tiles—surpassed, in fact, Royal Albert yellow. That made him wonder about bone china. Are there bone beds here? he asked himself. And, if so, what percentage bone are they using? Sixty percent? Forty? And are their bone beds as good as the peoples’ bone bed in Moravia?

“Willis,” he said.

“Yassuh.”

Questioningly, Joe said, “‘Yassuh’? Why not ‘Yessir’?”

The robot said, “I jes’ done bin readin’ Earth history, Massah Fernwright, suh.”

“Are there bone beds here on Plowman’s Planet?”

“Well, Massuh Fernwright, I don’ rightly know. Ah gues’ dat you’all kin as’ de central computator iffen—”

“I order you to talk correctly,” Joe said.

“You’all gotta say ‘Willis’ fust. Iffen you’all wan’ me tuh—”

“Willis, talk correctly.”

“Yes, Mr. Fernwright.”

“Willis, can you take me to my work-area?”

“Yes, Mr. Fernwright.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Take me there.”

• • •

The robot unlocked the heavy steel and asbestos door and stood to one side, permitting Joe Fernwright to enter the enormous, dark room. Overhead lights came on automatically as he crossed the threshold.

He saw, at the far end of the room, a major workbench, and fully equipped. Three sets of waldoes. Glare-free lighting which operated from a pedal console. Self-focusing magnifying glasses, fifteen inches and more in diameter. The separate heat-needles, all the known sizes. To the left of the workbench he saw protective cartons, a kind which he had read about but never seen. Going over, he picked up one, dropped it experimentally…and watched it float downward, gently landing, without impact.

And the sealed containers of glazes. Every tint, shade, and hue was represented; the row of containers lined one side of the room in four rows. With them he could match virtually the glazes of every pot coming onto his bench. One more item. He walked over to it and inspected it with wonder. A weightless area, where gravity was balanced by a ring of invisible counterspin: this was the ultimate workshop device for a pot-healer, this weightless area. He would not need to secure the pieces of pot in order to meld them together; the pieces, in the weightless chamber, would simply remain where he put them. By means of this he could handle four times the number of pots he had turned out in former times, and those were times of prosperity. And the positioning would be absolutely exact. Nothing would slip, slide, or tilt during the healing process.

He noted, too, the kiln, which might be needed if a shard were missing and the need to create a duplicate came into being. Thus he could complete pots of which he did not have all the pieces. This aspect of the craft of pot-healing was not generally dealt with publicly, but—it existed.

Never in his life had he seen such a well-equipped shop for pot-healing.

Already, a number of broken pots had been brought in; a pile of filled protective cartons had accumulated at the incoming end of the bench. I could start right now, he realized. All I have to do is to flip a half-dozen switches and I’m in business. Tempting … He walked over to the rack of heat-needles, took one down, held it. Well balanced, he decided. Quality product; the best. He opened one of the filled cartons, gazed down at the potsherds. His interest became emergent instantly; setting down the heat-needle he took the shards out one by one, enjoying the glazes and the glaze texture of the pot. A fat, short pot. A funny pot, perhaps. He put the pieces back in the carton and turned, with the idea of carrying them over to the weightless area. He wanted to begin. This was his life. Never did I think, he thought, that I would have access to, the use of—

He halted. And felt, inside, as if some animal had gnawed at his heart. Gnawed it with greed. And delight.

A black figure, like a negative of life itself, stood facing him. It had been watching him, and now that he faced it he thought it would go away. But it remained. He waited a little longer. It still remained.

“What is this thing?” he asked the robot, who still stood at the threshold of the workroom.

“You have to say ‘Willis’ first,” the robot reminded him. “You have to say, ‘Willis, what—’”

“Willis,” he said, “what is it?”

“A Kalend,” the robot said.

With them, Joe Fernwright thought, there is not life but merely a synopsis of life. We are a thread that passes through their hands; always in motion, always flowing, we slip by and are never fully grasped. The slipping away is continuous, and carries all of us with it, on and on, toward the dreadful alchemy of the tomb.

To Willis he said, “Can you contact Glimmung?”

“You have to say—”

“Willis,” he said, “can you contact Glimmung?” Across the room from him the Kalend stood silently—not silently as an owl might stand, absorbing and subduing noise with its feathers, but silent in the mechanical sense: as if its audio portion had been severed. Is it really there? Joe wondered. It appeared to be substantial; it did not have a ghostly, vaporous, wraithlike quality. It really is there, he said to himself. It has invaded my work-area before I have placed a single shard into the weightless chamber. Before I have ignited one heat-needle.

“I can’t contact Glimmung,” Willis said. “He’s sleeping; this is his time for that. In another twelve hours he’ll wake
up and then I can contact him. But he’s left a large number of servo-assist mechanisms ready, in case of an emergency. Do you want any of them activated?”

Joe said, “Tell me what to do. Willis, tell me what the hell to do.”

“About the Kalend? There is no existing record of anyone doing anything about Kalends. Do you want me to research this further? There is one particular computer which I can tie into; perhaps it can make an analysis of your abilities in relation to the nature of the Kalend, and formulate a new interaction which—”

“Do they die?” Joe said.

The robot remained silent.

“Willis,” he said, “can they be killed?”

“That’s hard to say,” the robot said. “They’re not your standard living creature. Also, they all look alike, which makes the problem even more complicated.”

The Kalend laid a copy of The Book on the table beside Joe Fernwright. And waited for him to pick it up.

Silently he picked up the book, held it for a time, and then opened it to the page marked. The text read:

That which I will find in the cathedral, Joe said to himself. Down there, under the water. Already down beneath the sea. Waiting for me…

He thought, I had better get under the water as soon as I can. Will Glimmung let me? he wondered. Especially after he has read this—and he is probably reading it right now, as I stand here; certainly he follows every alteration of the text as it grows, changes, corrects itself day after day. Hour by hour.

If he is smart, Joe thought, he will kill me first. Before I go under water. Kill me, in fact,
now
.

He stood there, waiting for Glimmung’s violence to come onto him.

It did not come. That’s right, he remembered. Glimmung is asleep.

On the other hand, he meditated, maybe I should not go down there. What would Glimmung recommend? Perhaps that should decide it; if Glimmung wanted him to go under water and inspect the sunken cathedral then he would … if not, then not. Odd, he thought, that my first reaction would be to want to go under water. As if I can’t wait to make my discovery—a discovery which will destroy Glimmung and with him the project of raising the cathedral. A perverse response, he decided. A slip on the part of unconscious inhibitions. Maybe this told him something about himself, something which he had not known. Something evoked by the Kalend and its Book. The Kalends woke this in me, he realized; this is the principle on which they operate. By this, they make their prophecy come true.

“Willis,” he said, “how does one get down to Heldscalla?”

“One descends via suit and mask or via a prolepsis chamber,” the robot said.

“Can you take me there?” Joe asked. “I mean, Willis—”

“Just a moment,” the robot said. “There’s a call coming through to you. An official call.” The robot was silent for a moment. Then it said, “Miss Hilda Reiss, Glimmung’s personal secretary. She wants to talk to you.” A door in the robot’s chest popped open and, out on a tray, came an audio telephone. “Pick up the receiver,” Willis said.

Joe picked up the receiver.

“Mr. Fernwright?” a practiced, competent, female voice said, “I have an urgent request for you from Mr. Glimmung, who is now sleeping. He would prefer it if you did
not
go down to the cathedral right now. He wants you to wait until someone can go with you.”

“You say ‘request,’” Joe said. “Am I to assume that that’s actually an order? That he’s ordering me not to go below water?”

“All Mr. Glimmung’s instructions,” Miss Reiss said, “come in the form of requests. He does not order; he always merely requests.”

“So this is, actually, an order,” Joe said.

Miss Reiss said, “I think you understand, Mr. Fernwright. Sometime tomorrow, Mr. Glimmung will contact you. Goodby.” The phone clicked, became dead.

“It’s an order,” Joe said.

“That’s right,” Willis the robot agreed. “That’s the way he handles everything, as she cleverly pointed out.”

“But if I tried to go below water—”

“Well, you can’t,” the robot said flatly.

“I can,” Joe said. “I can do it and get fired.”

“You can do it,” the robot said, “and become killed.”

“‘Killed,’ Willis? Killed how and who by?” He felt frightened and angry, a peculiar mixture of emotions that started his vagus nerve into spasms; his breathing, his peristalsis, and his heart rate—all changed radically. “Killed by who?” he demanded.

“You first have to say—aw, the hell with it,” the robot said. “Yes, many feral life-forms. Many hazards.”

“But normal for a task of this kind,” Joe said.

“I suppose you could say that. But a request like this—”

“I’m going under water,” Joe said.

“You will find terrible decay down there. Decay which you cannot imagine. The underwater world in which Heldscalla lies is a place of dead things, a place where everything rots and falls into despair and ruin.
That is why Glimmung intends to raise the cathedral
. He is unable to endure it down there; neither will you be able to. Wait until he goes under water with you. Wait a few days; heal the pots in your workshop and forget about going below. Glimmung calls it the ‘Aquatic
Sub-World.’ He is right; it’s a world made up of its own self, entirely separate from ours. With its own wretched laws, under which everything must decline into rubbish. A world dominated by the force of unyielding entropy and nothing else. Where even those with enormous strength, such as Glimmung, become vitiated and lose their power in the end. It is an oceanic grave, and it will kill all of us unless the cathedral can be raised.”

“It can’t be all that bad,” Joe said, but, as he spoke, he felt fear rustle through him and lodge inside his heart, fear generated in part by the vacuity of his own remark.

The robot looked at him enigmatically, a complex look that gradually became that of scorn.

“Considering you’re a robot,” Joe said, “I don’t see what you have emotionally involved in this; you have no life.”

The robot said, “No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.”

Joe said, “And Glimmung expects to halt this process? If it’s the ultimate fate of everything, then Glimmung can’t halt it; he’s doomed. He’ll fail and the process will go on.”

“Down below the water,” Willis said, “the decay process is the only force at work. But up here—the cathedral raised—there will be other forces which do not move in a retrograde manner. Forces of sanction and repair. Of building and making and form-creating—and, in your case, healing. That is why you are so needed. It is you and the others like you who will forestall the decay process by your abilities and work. Do you see?”

“I want to go down there,” Joe said.

“Suit yourself. I mean that literally; put on diving gear and descend into Mare Nostrum, alone, in the night. Descend into the subworld of decay and see it for yourself. I’ll take you to one of the staging centers floating on Mare Nostrum; you can descend from there—without me.”

“Thanks,” Joe said. He uttered the word with what he intended to be irony; however, it emerged in a weak wheeze, and the robot did not seem to catch his tone.

The staging center consisted of a platform within hermetically sealed domes, three of them, each large enough for life-forms to gather, with their equipment. Joe gazed about him in expert appreciation at the size of the construct. Built with robot labor, he decided. And recently; the domes seemed new, and probably were so. This installation had been created for him and the others, and would not be used until he and they began to operate out of them. Space, he reflected, is not at a premium, here, as it is on Earth. These domes can be as large as they want…and Glimmung, of course, had wanted them large indeed.

“And you still won’t descend with me,” he said to the robot Willis.

“Never.”

“Show me the diving gear,” Joe said. “And show me how to use it. Show me everything I need to know.”

“I will show you the minimal—” the robot began, and then broke off. On the roof field of the greatest dome a small airship was landing. Willis scrutinized it intently. “Too small for Glimmung,” he murmured. “It must be a more meager and hence lesser life-form.”

The airship came to a stop; it remained immobile and then its hatch slid back. Taxi, it proclaimed from its stem to its stern. And out of the taxi stepped Mali Yojez.

She descended via the elevator and came directly toward Joe and the robot Willis. “Glimmung spoke to me,” she said. “He told me what you’re doing here. He wanted me to go along with you. There was some doubt in his mind as to whether you could make it alone—I mean physically survive the experience of the Sub-World down there.”