Galactic Pot-Healer (13 page)

“And he thinks you can,” Joe said.

“He thinks that two of us going together and having each
other to rely on—he thinks that that would probably work. And I’m more experienced than you. Vastly more.”

“Mrs. Lady,” Willis said to her, “did Glimmung want me to go undersea, too?”

“He didn’t mention you,” Mali said tartly.

“It’s just as well.” The robot scowled in heavy gloom. “I dislike it down there.”

“But soon,” Mali said, “it will all be changed. There will
be
no ‘down there.’ Only up here, in this world, where other laws operate.”

“The best-laid plans of mice and men,” the robot said, with frigid skepticism.

“Help us into our gear,” Joe said.

The robot said, “Down there in the Aquatic Sub-World, you will be in a place that Amalita has forgotten.”

“Who is ‘Amalita’?” Joe asked.

Mali said, “The god for whom the cathedral was built. The god who was worshiped in Heldscalla. When the cathedral is restored, then Glimmung can call upon Amalita, as in earlier times, before the Catastrophe in which the cathedral sank. The defeat of Amalita by Borel—a temporary defeat, but a major one. I am reminded of a Terran poem by Bert Brecht called, ‘The Drowned Girl.’ Let’s see; if memory serves… ‘And gradually God forgot her, first her arms, then her legs and body until she was—’”

Joe said, “What sort of deities are these?” There had been no mention of this before, but of course it was obvious and logical; a cathedral was a place in which to worship, and someone or something had to be the object of the worship. To Mali, he said, “Do you know anything more about this angle?”

“I can fully inform you,” the robot said, annoyed.

To it, Mali said, “Had it ever occurred to you that it might be Amalita, working through Glimmung, who is raising the cathedral? So that worship of him here on this planet can resume?”

“Hmm,” the robot said, in a nettled fashion; Joe could almost hear it whir and click as it cogitated. “Well,” it said all at once, “anyhow you asked about the two deities, Mr. Sir. However, you once again neglected to say—”

“Willis,” Joe said, “tell me about Amalita and Borel. How long have they been worshiped, and on how many planets? And where did the cult begin?”

“I have a brochure,” the robot said, “which will exhaustively cover these matters.” It slid its hand into its thorax pocket; from the pocket it lifted out a mimeographed pamphlet. “I wrote this in my spare time,” the robot said. “With your permission I will refer to it. That way I don’t have to overtax so much in my memory spools. To begin with, Amalita existed alone. That was roughly fifty thousand Terran years in the past. Then, in a spasm of apotheosis, Amalita felt sexual desire. But there was nothing to feel sexual desire toward. He felt love, and there was nothing to love. He felt hate, and there was nothing to hate.”

“He felt apathy. And there was nothing to feel apathetic about.” Mali spoke without emotion; it did not involve her.

“Let’s tackle sexual desire first,” the robot said. “As is well known, the most enjoyable form of sexual love is that which pertains to incest, inasmuch as incest is the fundamental taboo throughout the universe. The greater the taboo, the more sheer excitement. Hence, Amalita created his sister, Borel. The next most exciting aspect of sexual love is love for someone evil, someone who, if you didn’t love them, you would abominate them. So Amalita caused his sister to be evil; she began at once to tear down everything which he had, over the centuries, built.”

Mali murmured, “Such as Heldscalla.”

“Yes, Mrs. Lady,” the robot agreed. “Now, the next most powerful stimulant to sexual love is to be in love with someone stronger than you. So Amalita caused his sister to be capable of destroying his edifices one by one; he tried to intervene, but she was by now too strong. As he had intended.
Finally, the last element: the love object forces one to descend to its level, where its laws, unethical and violent, obtain. This is what we have here in the Raising of Heldscalla. Every one of you will have to descend into the Aquatic Sub-World in which Amalita’s laws do not operate. Even Glimmung himself will inevitably sink into the Sub-World where Borel’s travesty of reality cloaks everything and is everywhere.”

“I thought of Glimmung as a deity,” Joe said. “Because of his immense power.”

The robot said, “Deities do not fall ten floors to the basement.”

“That seems reasonable,” Joe admitted.

“The criteria involved,” the robot said, “start with immortality. Amalita and Borel have that; Glimmung has not. The second criterion deals with—”

“We are aware of the two other criteria,” Mali interrupted. “Unlimited power and unlimited knowledge.”

“Then you’ve read my pamphlet,” the robot said.

“Christ,” Mali said with withering disdain.

“You mention Christ,” the robot said. “He is an interesting deity because he has only limited power; he has only partial knowledge; and he could die. He fulfills none of the criteria.”

“Then how did Christianity come into being?” Joe said.

“It came into being,” the robot said, “because this is what Christ did: he worried about other people. ‘Worry’ is the true translation of the Greek
agape
and the Latin
caritas
. Christ stands empty handed; he can save no one, not even himself. And yet, by his concern, his esteem, for others, he transcends—”

“Just give us the pamphlet,” Mali said wearily. “We’ll read it in our spare time. As of now, we’re going under the water. Get our diving gear ready, as Mr. Fernwright asked.”

“There is a somewhat similar deity,” the robot said, “on Beta twelve. This deity learned how to die whenever another creature on his planet died. He could not die in place of
them, but he could die
with
them. And then, as each new creature was born, he was restored. So he has endured countless deaths and rebirths. As compared with Christ, who died only once. This, too, is dealt with in my pamphlet. Everything is in my pamphlet.”

“Then you’re a Kalend,” Joe said.

The robot eyed him. Long and carefully. And silently.

“And your pamphlet,” Joe said, “is the Book of the Kalends.”

“Not exactly,” the robot said, at last.

“Meaning what?” Mali demanded sharply.

“Meaning that I have based my various pamphlets on the Book of the Kalends.”

“Why?” Joe said.

The robot hesitated and then said, “I hope to be a freelance writer someday.”

“Get our gear,” Mali said, with overwhelming weariness.

An odd, random thought entered Joe’s mind. Possibly it had emerged because of the discussion about Christ. “‘Worry,’” he said aloud, echoing the robot’s term. “I think I know what you mean. A strange thing happened to me, once, back on Earth. A very small thing. I got down a cup from the cupboard, a cup I hardly ever used. In it I found a spider, a dead spider; it had died because there was nothing for it to eat. Obviously it had fallen into the cup and couldn’t get out. But here’s the point. It had woven a web, at the bottom of the cup. As good a web as it could weave under the circumstances. When I found it—saw it dead in the cup, with its meager, hopeless web—I thought, It never had a chance. No flies would ever have come along, even if it had waited forever. It waited until it died. It tried to make the best of the circumstances, but it was hopeless. I always wondered, Did it know it was hopeless? Did it weave the web knowing it was no use?”

“Little tragedy of life,” the robot said. “Billions of them,
unnoticed, every day. Except that God notices, at least according to my pamphlet.”

“But I see what you mean,” Joe said. “About worry. Concern; that’s closer to it. I felt it concerned me. It
did
concern me.
Caritas
. Or in the Greek—” He could not remember the word.

“Can we go below, now?” Mali asked.

“Yes,” Joe said. Obviously she did not understand. But, oddly, the robot did. Strange, Joe thought. Why does it understand when she doesn’t? Maybe
caritas
is a factor of intelligence, he reflected. Maybe we’ve always been wrong:
caritas
is not a feeling but a high form of cerebral activity, an ability to perceive something in the environment—to notice and, as the robot had put it, to worry. Cognition, he realized; that’s what it is. It isn’t a case of feeling versus thinking: cognition is cognition.

Aloud he said, “Can I have a copy of your pamphlet?”

“Ten cents, please,” the robot said, holding out the pamphlet.

Joe fished out a cardboard dime and handed it to the robot. To Mali he said, “Now let’s go below.”

The robot touched a switch; a wall locker opened its sliding door and Joe saw, within, complete sets of diving gear: oxygen masks, pedal flippers, plastic skinsuits, waterproof light sources, weights, pry bars, crossbows, oxygen and helium tanks—everything. Including many assorted items of equipment which he could not identify.

“In view of your lack of experience in deep-sea diving,” the robot said, “I would suggest you descend by spherical prolepsis chamber. But, if you want to suit up—” It shrugged. “I have no control over that; the decision is yours.”

“I’ve had sufficient experience,” Mali said briskly. She began bringing equipment out of the locker; presently she had a formidable heap stacked neatly before her. “Get out what I got out,” she instructed Joe. “Put the segments of the suit on in the order I’m putting them on, and in the same way.”

They suited up and then, led by Willis, they made their way to the staging chamber proper.

“Some time,” the robot said as it unscrewed the great plug-valve
in the floor of the chamber, “I intend to write a pamphlet on deep-sea diving. There is a basic assumption that the chthonic world is in the ground—you find this in every religion. But in actuality it’s in the ocean. The ocean—” It dragged the huge plug away. “—is the actual primordial world, out of which every living thing came a billion years ago. On your planet, Mr. Fernwright, this error is found in many religions—for instance, the Greek goddess Demeter and her daughter Kore—they come up from the earth.”

Mali said to Joe, “There is attached to your belt an emergency device in case of failure in the oxygen circuit of your rig. If you lose your air, if the conduit loosens or bursts or the tanks run dry, activate the hypo plunger of the belt unit.” She pointed to the one mounted on her own belt. “It swiftly drops metabolic processes so that your need for oxygen is minimal; little enough so that you can easily float to the surface before you suffer any brain damage or experience any other lasting physiological effect from the curtailed oxygen supply. When you float to the surface you will of course be unconscious, but your mask is designed to let in air automatically; it will respond to the altered condition, the presence of outside air. And then I’ll be up to steer you back here.”

“‘I must be gone,’” Joe quoted, trying to remember how it went. “‘There is a grave where daffodil and lily wave.’”

The robot said, “‘And I would please the hapless faun, buried under the sleepy ground.’ A favorite of mine. Yeats, I believe. Do you think, Mr. Sir, that you are descending into a grave? That what stands before you is death? That to descend is to die? Answer in twenty-five words or less.”

“I know what the Kalend told me,” Joe said somberly. “What I find in Heldscalla will cause me to kill Glimmung. So it is into death that I’m going; maybe not
my
death, but someone else’s. To permanently halt the raising of Heldscalla.” Grimly, the words flowed within his mind, always at
the surface. Always available. They would not sink out of sight for a long, long time. Perhaps, he thought, never. The stigma is upon me and I will carry it the rest of my life.

“I will give you a lucky charm,” the robot said; again it rummaged within its chest pocket. It presently brought out a tiny packet, which it handed to Joe. “A token which represents the purity and sublimity of Amalita. A symbol, so to speak.”

“And it’ll ward off evil influences?” Joe asked.

The robot said, “You must say, ‘Willis, will it ward—’”

“Willis,” Joe said, “will this charm help us down there?”

After a pause the robot said, “No.”

“Then why did you give it to him?” Mali asked caustically.

“To—” The robot hesitated. “Never mind.” It seemed, then, to retract into itself; it became silent. Distantly inert.

“I’m going to lash us up in tandem,” Mali said to Joe as she attached a cable from her belt to his. “This will give us twenty feet of free line. That should be enough. I can’t risk getting separated from you; that might be the last we’d see of you.”

The robot wordlessly handed Joe a plastic carton.

“What for?” Joe said.

“You probably will find a broken pot or two down there. And you’ll want to bring the shards up.”

Stalking catlike to the aperture in the floor of the staging chamber, Mali said, “Let’s go.” She snapped on her helium-powered torch, glanced briefly at Joe, and then dived out of sight. The twenty-foot cable attached to him stretched taut, pulled him; it walked him to the aperture, propelling him, and then, his mind blank of any real thoughts, he dived, too. Passively.

The light of the staging chamber faded out above him. He snapped on his own torch and allowed himself to be tugged along, down and down; the water became utterly black, except
for the vague, seemingly half-real quadrant illuminated by his torch. And, below him, Mali’s torch glowed, like the phosphorescent light of an exceedingly deep sea-fish.

“Are you okay?” Mali’s voice sounded in his ear; it startled him and then he realized that a two-way intercom connected them.

“Yes,” he said.

Various fish floated past him, incurious and pompous; they gawked at him and traveled on, disappearing into the void surrounding his illuminated path.

“That windbag robot,” Mali said scathingly. “My god; we must have conversed with it for twenty minutes.”

But, Joe thought, we are here, now. Within the waters of Mare Nostrum, spiraling down and down.

I wonder, he thought, how many theologically inclined robots there are in the universe. Perhaps Willis was the only one…put there by Glimmung to talk at extended length, thus interfering with the attempt to go below the surface.