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

him.
    “We don’t know that he did. I think we’re experiencing panic.
I think Glimmung planned this Undertaking to save us
. I think he saw us all, the futilities of our various lives, and where they were leading, and he loved us, because we were alive. And he did what he could to help us. The Raising of Heldscalla is only a pretext; all of us—and there may be thousands—are the real purpose of this.” She paused a moment and then said, “Three days ago I tried to kill myself. I attached the tube of my vacuum cleaner to the tailpipe of my surface car, and then I put the other end of the tube inside the car and I got in and started the motor.”
    “And then you changed your mind?” a slender girl with wispy, cornsilk hair asked.
    “No,” Miss Yojez said. “The turbine misfired and knockedthe tube loose. I sat for an hour in the cold for nothing.”
    Joe said, “Would you have tried again?”
    “I planned to do it today,” she said levelly. “And this time in a fashion that wouldn’t fail.”
    The red-faced red-haired man said, “Hear what I have to say, for what it’s worth.” He sighed, a ragged, hoarse noise of resignation and unease. “I was going to do it, too.”
    “Not me,” the gray-haired man said; he looked exceedingly angry; Joe felt the strength of the man’s wrath. “I signed on because there was a great deal of money involved. Do you know what I am?” He glanced around at all of them. “I’m a psychokineticist, the best psychokineticist on Earth.” Grimly he reached out his arm and a briefcase at the rear of the compartment flew directly toward him. Fiercely, he grabbed it, squeezing it.
    —Squeezing it, Joe thought, the way Glimmung squeezed me.
    “Glimmung is here,” Joe said. “Among us.” To the gray-haired man he said, “You are Glimmung and yet you’re violently arguing against our trusting him. You.”
    The gray-haired man smiled. “No, friend. I’m not Glimmung. I’m Harper Baldwin, psychokineticist consultant for the government. As of yesterday, anyhow.”
    “But Glimmung is here somewhere,” a plump woman with tangled doll-hair said; she was knitting and had said nothing up until now. “He’s right, that man there.”
    “Mr. Fernwright,” the stewardess offered helpfully. “May I introduce you to one another? This attractive girl beside Mr. Fernwright is Miss Mali Yojez. And this gentleman…” She droned on, but Joe did not listen; names weren’t important, except, perhaps, the name of the girl seated beside him. He had, during the last forty minutes, become more and more favorably inclined toward her spare, sparse, even bleak beauty. Nothing at all like Kate, he thought to himself. The opposite. This is a truly feminine woman; Kate’s a frustratedman. And that’s the kind which castrates right and left.
    Harper Baldwin, the introductions over, said in his overbearing, ultrafirm voice, “I think our status, our true status, is that of slaves. Let’s stop a minute and review this whole matter, how we happen to be here. The stick and the carrot. Am I right?” He glanced from side to side, seeking confirmation.
    “Plowman’s Planet,” Miss Yojez spoke out, “is not a backward, deprived planet. It has an advanced society active and evolving on it; true, it’s not yet a civilization in the strict sense of the word, but it’s not herds of food-gatherers nor even clans of food-planters. It has cities. Laws. A variety of arts ranging from the dance to a modified form of 4-D chess.”
    “That’s not true,” Joe said, with scathing anger. Everyone turned toward him, startled by his tone. “One vast old creature lives there. Apparently infirm. Nothing about an advanced city society.”
    “Wait a minute,” Harper Baldwin said. “If there’s one thing Glimmung is not it’s infirm. Where’d you get your information, Fernwright? From the government encyclopedia?”
    Joe said uncomfortably, “Yes.” And secondhand, too.
    “If the encyclopedia