Read Online Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick - Free Book Online

all said. Well, what finally they—”
    Miss Yojez broke in, “Of the forty-five of us aboard this ship thirty are in Glimmung’s pay.” She laughed. “Perhaps now is the time for us to establish a union and work collectively.”
    A stern-looking gray-haired man at the front end of the section said, “That’s not a half bad idea, actually.”
    “But he’s already paying so much,” a timid little fellow on the left side pointed out.
    “Is it in writing?” the gray-haired man said. “He’s made oral promises to us and then he’s threatened us, or at least so I gather. Anyhow he threatened me. He came on like the day of judgment; it really took the wind out of my sails, andif you knew me you’d know it’s rare when anyone can do that to Harper Baldwin.”
    “So anyhow,” Joe said, “they finally managed to trace it back to the original paper, in Russian, and you know what it was? It was ‘hydraulic ram.’ And it came out in English as ‘water sheep.’ Now, on the basis of this, I and a number of distinguished colleagues—”
    “Oral promises,” a sharp-faced middle-aged woman toward the rear of the section said, “are not enough. Before we do any work for him we should have written contracts. Basically, when you get down to it, he’s gotten us on this ship by intimidation.”
    “Then think what a threat he’ll be when we get to Plowman’s Planet,” Miss Yojez pointed out.
    All the passengers were silent for a moment.
    “We just call it The Game,” Joe said.
    “In addition,” the gray-haired man said, “we must remember that we’re only a small part of the work force that Glimmung’s been recruiting all over the galaxy. I mean, we can act collective to hell and gone, and what does it matter? We’re just a drop in the bucket, we here. Or eventually we’ll be, when he gets the others onto his damn planet, which could be any time.”
    “What we’ll have to do,” Miss Yojez said, “is to organize ourselves here, and then, when we reach Plowman’s Planet, we’ll probably be staying at one of the major hotels, and once there we can contact some or all of the others he’s recruited and then possibly we can form a union effective.”
    A heavyset red-faced man said, “But isn’t Glimmung a—” He gestured. “A supernatural creature? A deity?”
    “There are no deities,” the timid little fellow on the left side of the compartment said. “I used to put strong faith in them at an earlier age of my life, but after keen and very recurrent frustration and disappointment and disillusionment I gave up.”
    The red-faced man said, “In terms of what he can do.What does it matter what you call it?” Vigorously, he declared, “In relation to us, Glimmung has the power and nature of a deity. For example, he can manifest himself simultaneously on ten or fifteen planets all over the galaxy, and yet still remain on Plowman’s Planet. Yes, he manifested himself to me in a scary fashion, as that gentleman up front just pointed out. But I’m convinced it’s the real thing. Glimmung
made
us come here; he coerced us—I know he did. In my case the police became peculiarly interested in my affairs about the same time that Glimmung first approached me. The way it worked out was that I more or less wound up having a choice between picking up on Glimmung’s proposition or going to jail as a political prisoner.”
    In the name of god, Joe thought. Perhaps Glimmung played a hand in getting the OCA to drop in on me. And then the harness bulls who hung over me when I was giving away quarters, the cops who busted me—they may have been steered there by Glimmung!
    Several people were talking at once, now. Listening intently, Joe made out the general drift of their discourses; they, too, were telling about rescues from police vehicles and stations by Glimmung. This changes everything, Joe said to himself.
    “He got me to do an illegal act,” a matronly woman was saying. “He got me to write a check to