GALACTIC POT HEALER

15

The hoop of fire had been extinguished. Only one hoop turned, the hoop of water, and it grated piercingly... as if, Joe thought, a machine is dying, not a living creature.

The others of the group made their way to the wharf. "He's failed," the red jelly supported by the metal frame said. "You can see; he's beginning to die."

"Yes," Joe said, aloud, and was surprised to hear his own voice; it rang harshly in the midst of the moans rising from the injured Glimmung. Several others in the group echoed his word; it was as if he had pronounced a ban, as if it was his decision to make, whether Glimmung would live or not live. "But we can't be really sure until we get out there," he said. He set down his torch and descended the wooden ladder to the parked boat. "I'm going to go and find out," he said; he reached for his torch and then, squatting and shivering in the chill night wind, started the engine of the boat.

"Don't go," Mali said.

Joe grated, "I'll see you in a little while." He guided the boat from its dock, out into the furiously lapping waves created by the thrashing bulk of Glimmung's body.

An enormity of injury, he thought as the boat rose and fell, put-putting its way anxiously forward. Injury on a scale which we really can't understand. Damn it, he thought with bitterness. Why does it have to end this way? Why couldn't it have been otherwise? He felt numb, as if death were assailing him, too. As if he and Glimmung--.

The huge shape wallowed in the water, and, as it lay, blood poured from it; like Christ on the cross it bled eternally, as if its blood supply was infinite. As if, Joe thought, this moment is going to last forever: me in the boat, trying to get close, and him floundering and bleeding and dying. God, he thought; this is awful, truly awful. And yet he guided the boat on, closer and closer.

From the depths of himself Glimmung said, "I—need you. All of you."

"What can we do?" He continued on, closer and closer; now the periphery of the body strained and twisted only a yard from the prow of the boat. Water and blood swamped its way into the boat; Joe felt it sink below him. He gripped the sides, tried to shift his weight. But blood and water continued to pour in. I will be drowned, he thought, in another few seconds.

Reluctantly, he reversed direction; he backed away from Glimmung. The boat ceased taking liquid. And yet he felt no better. His fear and agony remained the same, his empathic identification with his dying employer.

Glimmung sputtered, "I—I—" He slobbered, now, rolling on his side, unable to control the thrashing of his maimed body.

"Whatever it is," Joe said, "we'll do it."

"That's—inordinately receptive—of you," Glimmung managed to whisper, and then he revolved entirely; he sank below the surface, so that speech, for him, became impossible.

The end, Joe thought, has come.

Wretchedly, he turned the boat about and, misery weighing him down, steered for the wharf once more. It was over.

As he tied up the boat, Mali and Harper Baldwin and several nonhumanoids reached to help him.

"Thanks," he said, and clumsily ascended the wooden ladder. "He's dead," Joe said. "Or almost dead. Virtually dead." He let Miss Reiss and Mali sweep a blanket over him, a warm cloak which settled into place over his foam- and blood-drenched body. My god, he realized. I'm soaking wet. He had no memory of it; at the time he had been concerned with what he saw only. With Glimmung. Now he turned his attention on himself... and found that he was wet, freezing, and filled with despair.

"Here's a local cigarette," Mali said; she placed it between his trembling lips. "Get inside. Don't watch. There's nothing you can do. You tried."

Joe said, shakily, "He asked for our help."

"I know," Mali said. "We heard him." The others of the group nodded silently, their faces bleached with unyielding pain.

"But I don't know what it is," Joe said. "The help we can do. I don't see anything we can do, but he was trying to say. Maybe if he could have said it we could have done it. The last thing he said, did, was to thank me." He let Mali lead him under the hermetically sealed dome and into the radiant heat of the staging center.

"We'll leave this planet tonight," Mali said presently, as the two of them stood together.

"Okay," he said. He nodded.

"Come to my planet with me," Mali said. "Don't go back to Earth; you'd be so unhappy there."

"Yeah," he agreed. It was true. Beyond any doubt, any possible doubt whatever. As W. S. Gilbert would have put it. "Where's Willis?" he asked, looking around. "I want to trade quotes with him."

"Quotations," Mali corrected.

He nodded in agreement. "Yes," he said. "I meant to say quotations."

"You're really tired."

"Hell," he said, "I don't know why I should be; all I did was paddle out there in a boat to try to talk with him."

"The responsibility," Mali said.

"What responsibility? I couldn't even hear him."

"But the promise you made. Regarding us all."

Joe said, "Anyhow I failed."

"_He_ failed. It's not your fault. You were listening—we all were listening. He never managed to say it."

"Is he still on the surface?" Joe asked; he peered past her, across the wharf, at the water beyond.

"He's on the surface, slowly drifting this way."

Joe tossed down the cigarette, ground it out with his heel, and started for the wharf.

"Stay in here," Mali said, trying to stop him. "It's sealed against the cold. You're still wet; you'll die."

"Do you know how Gilbert died?" he asked her. "William Schwenck Gilbert? He had a heart attack trying to rescue a girl who was drowning." He pushed past her, through the thermal barrier, and outdoors onto the wharf once more. "I won't die," he said to her as she followed after him. "Which in a sense is too bad." Maybe it would be more useful, he thought, to die with Glimmung. That way, at least, we could show how we felt. But who would notice? Who is left to notice? Spiddles and werjes, he thought. And robots. He continued on, pushing his way through the group, until he reached the edge of the wharf.

Four torches illuminated the expiring hulk which had once been Glimmung; in their light Joe watched, as the others watched, silently. He could think of no comment, and no comment seemed to be needed. Look at him, he said to himself. And I brought it about. So the Book of the Kalends was right after all; by going down below I caused his death.

"You did it," Harper Baldwin said to him.

"Yep," Joe said stoically.

"Any reason?" the multilegged gastropod lisped.

"No," Joe said. "Unless you want to count stupidity."

"I'm ready to count it," Harper Baldwin rasped.

"Okay," Joe said. "You do that." He looked; he looked; he looked; Glimmung came closer; closer; closer. And then, at the edge of the wharf, almost against it, the body reared up.

"Watch out!" Mali screamed from behind him; the group broke, scattered, hurried toward the security of the hermetically sealed dome.

Too late. Glimmung's bulk descended on the wharf; the wood splintered and sank. Joe, gazing up, saw from outside into the immense body. And then, a moment later, saw from inside the body out.

Glimmung had enclosed them. All. No one had escaped, not even the robot Willis, who had stood far off to one side. Caught up, trapped. Included in that which was Glimmung.

He heard Glimmung speak—heard not through his ears but in his brain. And, at the same time, heard the babble of the others, of the remainder of the group; their voices, the unceasing din, muttered beyond Glimmung's own voice, like crosstalk. "Help me? Where am I? Get me out of here!" They babbled against one another, like disturbed, frightened ants. And Glimmung's voice boomed, overpowering but not quenching them. "I have asked you here today," Glimmung declared, bombarding Joe's brain, "because I need your help. Only you can give it to me."

We're a part of him, Joe realized. A part! He tried to see, but his eyes registered only a swirling, jellolike image, a film which obliterated rather than revealed the reality around him. I'm not on the edge, he thought; I'm at the center. So I have no vision. Those at the edge can see, but--.

"Please listen to me," Glimmung interrupted, fragmenting his batlike flittering thoughts. "Concentrate. If you do not, you will be absorbed and finally vanish, and hence be of no use to me or to anyone else. I need you to live, as separate entities combined within my one somatic presence."

"Will we ever get out?" Harper Baldwin yammered. "Are we going to have to remain in here forever?"

"I want out!" Miss Reiss cried in panic. "Let me loose!"

"Please," the immense dragonfly implored. "I want to fly and sing; I am held down in here, pushed and compressed and made not alone. Sanction my flight, Glimmung!"

"Free us!" Nurb K'ohl Daq begged. "This is unfair!"

"You're destroying us!"

"We're being sacrificed for your ends!"

"How can we help you if we're destroyed?"

Glimmung said, "You are not destroyed. You are engulfed."

"That's being destroyed," Joe said.

"No," Glimmung boomed, "it is not." He began to lumber away from the remains of the wharf, the scattered bits of wood which he had not absorbed. Down, Glimmung thought, and the thought impressed itself in Joe's brain—as well as in the other brains around him. Down to the bottom. The time has come; Heldscalla must be raised.

Now, Glimmung thought. What sank down centuries ago will be spewed up, once more, to the surface. Amalita and Borel, he thought. You will be free and on the shore; it will all be as it was before, worlds without end.

Depth. The water became dull. Forms darted or crept by, a multitude of them, no two alike. The snowflakes of the sea, he thought. A winter of vegetable life which crawls over and hangs onto. Let go.

Before him Heldscalla lay. Its pale turrets, its Gothic arch, its flying buttresses, its red-stained glass made from gold—he saw all of it from a dozen eyes. It was intact, except for the engineering divisions, from another time, when he had planned to raise it externally. Now, he thought, I will enter you; I will become a part of you and then I will rise. You will go up with me, and we shall die on the shore. But you will be saved.

He made out the jagged ruins of the Black Cathedral. Broken into bits, he thought. Destroyed where I left you; rotten and unusable debris which serves no purpose and which no longer can block me, weak as I am. Because of all of you, he thought, I can function again. Can you hear me? He spoke distinctly. "Say if you can hear me."

"Yes we can."

"Yes."

"Yes." The answering voices rattled on and on; he counted them and they were all there, all alive and functioning as subforms of himself. "All right," he said, and triumph filled him as he dove directly at Heldscalla.

"Will we survive this?" Joe Fernwright asked. He felt fear. You will, Glimmung thought. But not me. Raising his perimeters he extended himself so that his front end served as wide an area as possible. Now you are me, he thought, and I am you, Heldscalla. It has happened, despite The Book.

He held within him the sunken cathedral.

Now, he thought. He listened; he had ceased moving. Mr. Baldwin, he thought, and Miss Yojez, Mr. Daq, Miss Fleg, Miss Reiss—can you hear me?

"Yes." Begrudging but genuine responses; he felt their presence, their agitation, as they held out against his pull. Come together, he told them. To survive we must go up, and to go up requires you to act. There is no other way. There never was.

"How can we act?" the voices asked.

Combine with me, Glimmung said. Add your skills, your capacities, your strengths... add everything to my mind. Mr. Baldwin; you move matter at a distance. Help me. Help them. Miss Yojez; you understand the art of removing objects from coral encrustation. Do that, now; unbind the coral reaches. Mr. Fernwright; you must knit the ceramic surfaces of the cathedral together... they are clay and you are the potter. Mr. Daq; you are a hydraulic engineer. No, Daq replied; I am a graphic archaeologist; I deal in recovered art objects. I can identify them, catalog them, and estimate their cultural value. Yes, Glimmung thought; it is Mr. Lunç who is the hydraulic engineer. I forgot. The similarity of names.

We will make our first run now! Glimmung told them, told the parts of himself who possessed separate identities. Probably we will sink back down. But we will try again. As long as we live? Mali Yojez asked. Yes, he thought. We will try as long as we are alive. Until the last of us is dead. But that's not fair, Harper Baldwin thought. Glimmung thought, You offered me everything you had; you yearned to help me when I lay dying. Now you are doing it. Be glad; rejoice. He grasped the uncut floor of the cathedral with his many somatic extensions. Before, he thought, when the Black Glimmung and the Black Cathedral were down here, I could not take the risk of lifting with my own girth. Now I can.

The lift failed. The cathedral remained rooted to the coral. Held fast by its mass, its weight, and bonds. He gasped, spent by the faulty effort. Everywhere within himself he ached, and all the separate voices cried out in panic and despair. And pain.

It doesn't wish to come, Joe Fernwright thought.

Is that so? Glimmung asked. How did you know that?

I found it out, Joe thought. When I came down here. I read it on the pot; remember?

Yes, Glimmung thought. I remember. He felt weary terror, the overwhelming submission which involved everything which came down here. Even himself. Once again, he thought. And then he thought, Faust always fails. But, he thought, I'm not Faust. You are, a multitude of voices came, a desperate din of defeat and refusal.

Let us go upward, Glimmung said. We are going. He felt the base of the cathedral resist. Perhaps you are right, he thought. I know I am, the voice came. It has happened before; it will happen again; it will always happen. But I can raise Heldscalla, Glimmung said to himself and to them. We can, all of us.

Using them, making them his arms, he lifted; he tugged the body of the cathedral to him and forced it to rise, against its own desires. Feeling it resist he felt bitterness and dismay. I did not know this, he thought. Perhaps this knowledge will kill me; perhaps this is what The Book meant. Perhaps, he thought, I should leave it down here; perhaps it is better the way it is.

It won't lift.

He tried again. No. It will not lift; I say it will not. At any time. For anyone. Under any combination of circumstances.

It will rise, Joe Fernwright said, when you are recovered from your injury, the damage done to you by the Black Cathedral.

"What?" he said, listening. Other voices joined Joe's. When you are stronger. Wait until then.

I must make myself stronger, he realized. Time must pass, authentic time over which I have no control. How can they know this when I do not? He listened, but heard no voices; they had quieted into silence as soon as he ceased striving. So be it, he decided. I will rise to the surface alone, and some day, not long from now, I will try again.

And once again, he decided, I will absorb you. All of you. Once more you will be parts of me as you are now. All right, the voices squeaked. But let us go; prove to us you can release us. I shall, he told them. And let himself rise to the surface.

Cold night air plucked at him and he saw feeble, distant stars.

On a wild shoreline, with nocturnal water birds striding about, he deposited the strident voices, he disgorged all of them, those whom he had incorporated, and then he lunged out again into the water—an aquatic world which was now safe: he could stay here forever and not be endangered by any hostile force. Thank you, Joe Fernwright, he thought, but now no answer came; internally he was again alone. So he spoke the words aloud, and, as he spoke, felt lonely. For a time he had been inhabited. But... it would come again, the warm, interior babble.

He examined his wounds, made himself comfortable in a half-submerged position, and waited.

Shivering, his feet in sandy mud, Joe Fernwright listened and heard Glimmung's voice. "Thank you, Joe Fernwright." He continued to listen, but there was no more.

He could see Glimmung, as the big creature lay a few hundred yards from shore. He would have killed us, Joe thought. And himself, too. In trying to bring up the cathedral. Thank god he listened.

"That was too close," Joe said to the other creatures near him, deployed here and there along the sandy beach. And especially to Mali Yojez, who huddled close to him, trying to get warm. "Much too close," he said, half to himself. He shut his eyes. Anyhow he let us go, he reflected. And now it's just a question of walking until we come to a house or a road. Unless he tries to get us back.

But that did not seem likely. Not, anyhow, for some time. "Are you going to stay on Plowman's Planet?" Mali asked him. "You know what it means; he'll reabsorb all of us who stay here."

Joe said, "I'm staying."

"Why?"

"I want to see The Book proved wrong."

"It's already been proved wrong."

"I mean finally," Joe said. "Once and for all." As of now, he thought, it could still be right... because we don't know what will happen tomorrow or the day after. I could still kill Glimmung, he realized. In some indirect way.

But he knew that would not happen. It was too late. Like many things, it could not now be recalled. The Kalends were doomed. Their power was gone.

"But The Book was almost right," he said. Obviously the Kalends played the percentages. Generally, in the long run, they were correct. But in given instances—such as this—they were wrong. And this was important; this had to do with Glimmung's literal, physical death and the literal, physical raising of Heldscalla.

In relation to this, final events, such as the planet falling back into the sun from which it had arisen, did not really matter. They were too remote. In the final analysis the Kalends might be correct; their prophecies had to do with cosmic trends such as the laws of thermodynamics and terminal entropy. And, of course, Glimmung would eventually die. So would he himself. So would they all. But in the here and now Heldscalla waited for Glimmung to recover. And he would. And—the cathedral would come up from the water, as Glimmung planned.

"We were a polyencephalic entity," Mali said.

"Pardon?" Joe said.

"A group mind. Except that we were subordinate to Glimmung. But for a little while—" She gestured. "All of us, from at least ten star systems; we functioned as a single organism. In some ways it was exciting. To not be—"

"Alone," Joe said.

"Yes; it makes me realize how isolated each of us normally is, how cut off. Separated from everyone else... in particular separated from other life. That ended when Glimmung absorbed us. And we were no longer individual failures."

"It ended," Joe said, "but it's begun again. As of now."

Mali said, "If you stay here on Plowman's Planet, so will I."

"Why?"

"I like the group mind, the group will. As they say on your planet, this is where the action is."

"They haven't said that on Terra," Joe said, "for close to a hundred years."

"Our textbooks were very old," Mali said contritely.

Loudly, to the group members as they stood here and there, Joe said, "Okay; let's get started back to the Olympia Hotel. So we can get a hot bath and some dinner."

"And then sleep," Mali said.

He put his arm around her. "Or whatever else," he said, "that humanoids normally do."