Galactic Pot-Healer Read Online Free PDF Page B

fired, and out of it special delivery letters, thousands of them, addressed to various life-form individuals throughout the galaxy.
    And oh god, he thought. The police are spotting it; they barged into my room minutes after I consulted the bank. Last night, those two; they knew already what these letters and weird note floating in the water closet of the toilet mean. They could have told me. But of course they wouldn’t; that would be too natural, too humane.
    His phone buzzed. He lifted the receiver.
    “I contacted the encyclopedia,” Smith said, as his image appeared on the screen. “Plowman’s Planet is space argot for Sirius five. Since I had hold of the encyclopedia I took the opportunity of asking it more. I thought you might appreciate it.”
    “Yes,” Joe said.
    “One vast old creature lives there. Apparently infirm.”
    “You mean it’s sick?” Joe asked.
    “Well, you know…age and such like. Dormant; that’s what it’s been.”
    “Is it menacing?”
    “How could it be menacing if it’s dormant as well as infirm? It’s senile. Yes, that’s the word—senile.”
    Joe asked, “Has it ever said anything?”
    “Not really.”
    “Not even the time of day?”
    “Ten years ago it came to briefly and asked for an orbiting weather-station satellite.”
    “What did it pay for it with?”
    “It didn’t. It’s indigent. We contributed it free, and wethrew in a news type satellite along with the weather one.”
    “Broke and senile,” Joe said. He felt glum. “Well,” he said, “I guess I won’t be getting any money out of it.”
    “Why? Were you suing it?”
    “Goodby, Smith,” Joe said.
    “Wait!” Smith said. “There’s a new game. You want to join? It consists of speed-scanning the newspaper archives to come up with the funniest headline.
Real
headline, you realize; not made up. I have a good one; it’s from 1962. You want to hear it?”
    “Okay,” Joe said, still feeling glum. His glumness had oozed throughout him, leaving him inert and spongelike; he responded reflexively. “Let’s hear your headline.”
    “ELMO PLASKETT SINKS GIANTS,” Smith read from his slip of paper.
    “Who the hell was Elmo Plaskett?”
    “He came up from the minors and—”
    “I have to go, now,” Joe said, standing up. “I have to leave my office.” He hung up. Home, he said to himself. To get my bag of quarters.

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 inactivehumanity 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