GALACTIC POT HEALER

"No," Joe said.

"No what?" Smith glanced up, frowning. "You haven't tried; you just sit there. I'll give you time. The rules say five minutes; you've got five minutes."

Joe said, "I'm quitting."

"Quitting what? The Game? But you're way up there!"

"I'm quitting my profession," Joe said. "I'm going to give up this work area and I'm going to cancel on my phone. I won't be here; I won't be able to play." He took a plunging breath, then spoke on. "I've saved up sixty-five quarters. Prewar. It took me two years."

"_Coins?_" Smith gaped at him. "_Metal_ money?"

"It's in an asbestos sack under the radiator in my housing room," Joe said. I'll consult it today, he said to himself.

"There's a booth down the street from my room, at the intersection," he said to Smith. I wonder, he thought, if in the final analysis I have enough coins. They say Mr. Job gives so little; or, put another way, costs so much. But sixty-five quarters, he thought; that's plenty. That's equal to—he had to calculate it on his note pad. "Ten million dollars in trading stamps," he told Smith. "As per the exchange rate of today, as posted in the morning newspaper... which is official."

After a grinding pause, Smith said slowly, "I see. Well, I wish you luck. You'll get twenty words from it, for what you've saved up. Maybe two sentences. ‘Go to Boston. Ask for—‘ and then it clicks off; then it'll cap the lid. The coinbox will rattle; your quarters will be down there in that maze of viaducts, rolling under hydraulic pressure to the central Mr. Job in Oslo." He rubbed beneath his nose, as if wiping away moisture, like a schoolboy heavy with rote-labor. "I envy you, Fernwright. Maybe two sentences from it will be enough. I consulted it, once. I handed fifty quarters over to it. ‘Go to Boston,' it said. ‘Ask for—‘ and then it shut off, and I felt as if it enjoyed it. That it liked to shut off, as if my quarters had stirred it to pleasure, the kind of pleasure a pseudolife-form would relish. But go ahead."

"Okay," Joe said stoically.

"When it's used up your quarters—" Smith continued, but Joe broke in, his voice blistered with harshness.

"I get your point," Joe said.

Smith said, "No prayers—"

"Okay," Joe said.

There was a pause as the two of them faced each other.

"No prayers," Smith said at last, "no nothing, will get that godbedamned machine to spit out one additional word."

"Hmm," Joe said. He tried to sound casual, but Smith's words had had their effect; he felt himself cool off. He experienced the winds, the howling gales, of fright. Anticipation, he thought, of winding up with nothing. A truncated partial statement from Mr. Job, and then, as Smith says—blam. Mr. Job, turning itself off, is the ultimate visage of black iron, old iron from antediluvian times. The ultimate rebuff. If there is a supernatural deafness, he thought, it is that: when the coins you are putting into Mr. Job run out.

Smith said, "Can I—hurriedly—give you one more I've got? This came via the Namangan translator. Listen." He pawed feverishly with long, classic fingers at his own folded sheet of paper. " ‘The Chesspiece Made Insolvent.' Famous movie circa—"

"_The Pawnbroker_," Joe said tonelessly.

"Yes! You're right there on it, Fernwright, really right there and swinging both arms and a tail as well. Another? Don't hang up! I have a truly good one, here!"

"Give it to Hirshmeyer in Berlin," Joe said, and hung up.

I am dying, he said to himself.

Seated there, in the tattered, antiquated chair, he saw, dully, that the red warning light of his mail tube had come on, presumably as of the last few minutes. Odd, he thought. There's no delivery until one-fifteen this afternoon. He thought, Special delivery? And punched the button.

A letter rolled out. Special delivery.

He opened it. Inside, a slip of paper. It said:

POT-HEALER, I NEED YOU. AND I WILL PAY.

No signature. No address except his, as destination. My god, he thought, this is something real and big. I know it.

He carefully moved his chair around so that he faced the red warning light of the mail tube. And prepared to wait. Until it comes, he said to himself. Unless I physically starve to death first. I will not voluntarily die, now, he thought harshly. I want to stay alive. And wait. And wait.

He waited.

2

Nothing more came down the mail tube that day and Joe Fernwright trudged "home."

"Home" consisted of a room on a subsurface level of a huge apartment building. Once, the Jiffi-view Company of Greater Cleveland came by every six months and created a 3-D projection, animated, of a view of Carmel, California. This "view" filled his room's "window," or ersatz window. However, of late, due to his bad financial situation, Joe had given up trying to imagine that he lived on a great hill with a view of the sea and of towering redwoods; he had become content—or rather resigned—to face blank, inert, black glass. And in addition, if that wasn't enough, he had let his psycho-lease lapse: the encephalic gadget installed in a closet of his room which, while he was "home," compelled his brain to believe that his ersatz view of Carmel was authentic.

The delusion was gone from his brain and the illusion was gone from his window. Now, "home" from work, he sat in a state of depression, reflecting, as always, on the futile aspects of his life.

Once, the Cleveland Historical Artifacts Museum had sent him regular work. His hot-needle device had melded many fragments, had re-created into a single homogeneous unit one ceramic item after another as his father had before him. But that was over, now; all the ceramic objects owned by the museum had been healed.

Here, in his lonely room, Joe Fernwright contemplated the lack of ornamentation. Time after time, wealthy owners of precious and broken pots had come to him, and he had done what they wanted; he had healed their pots, and they had gone away. Nothing remained after them; no pots to grace his room in place of the window. Once, seated like this, he had pondered the heat-needle which he made use of. If I press this little device against my breast, he had ruminated, and turn it on, and put it near my heart, it would put an end to me in less than a second. It is, in some ways, a powerful tool. The failure which is my life, he had thought again and again, would cease. Why not?

But there was the strange note which he had received in the mail. How had the person—or persons—heard of him? To get clients he ran a perpetual small ad in Ceramics Monthly... and via this ad the thin trickle of work, throughout the years, had come. Had come and now, really, had gone. But this. The strange note!

He picked up the receiver of his phone, dialed, and in a few seconds faced his ex-wife, Kate. Blond and hard lined, she glared at him.

"Hi," he said, in a friendly sort of fashion.

"Where's last month's alimony check?" Kate said.

Joe said, "I'm onto something. I'll be able to pay all my back alimony if this—"

"This what?" Kate interrupted. "Some new nuthead idea dredged out of the depths of what you call your brain?"

"A note," he said. "I want to read it to you to see if you can infer anything more from it than I can." His ex-wife, although he hated her for it—and for a lot more—had a quick mind. Even now, a year after their divorce, he still relied on her powerful intellect. It was odd, he had once thought, that you could hate a person and never want to see them again, and yet at the same time seek them out and ask their advice. Irrational. Or, he thought, is it a sort of superrationality? To rise above hate...

Wasn't it the hate which was irrational? After all, Kate had never done anything to him—nothing except make him excessively aware, intently aware, always aware, of his inability to bring in money. She had taught him to loathe himself, and then, having done that, she had left him.