Galactic Pot-Healer Read Free

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