Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick

never consumed. And, like a star, he was beautiful; he was a fountain, a meadow, an empty twilight street over which dwelt a fading sky. The sky would fade; the twilight would become darkness, but Glimmung would blaze on, as if burning out the impurities of everyone and everything around him. He was the light who exposed the soul and all its decayed parts. And, with that light, he scorched out of existence those decayed portions, here and there: mementos of a life not asked for.
    Seated there in the waiting room of the spaceport, seated upon the unpleasant plastic chair, Joe heard rocket motors winding up. He turned his head, saw through the great window an LB-4 rise upward, shaking the building and everything in it. And then, in a matter of seconds, it had gone; nothing remained.
    I gaze across the silence of the marshes, he thought, and out of them, mysterious and wild, pops the sound of giant vehicles.
    Getting to his feet he crossed the waiting room to the Padre booth; seated inside he put a dime into the slot and dialed at random. The marker came to rest at Zen.
    “Tell me your torments,” the Padre said, in an elderly voice marked with compassion. And slowly; it spoke as if there were no rush, no pressure. All was timeless.
    Joe said, “I haven’t worked for seven months and now I’ve got a job that takes me out of the Sol System entirely, and I’m afraid. What if I can’t do it? What if after so long I’ve lost my skill?”
    The Padre’s weightless voice floated reassuringly back tohim. “You have worked and not worked. Not working is the hardest work of all.”
    That’s what I get for dialing Zen, Joe said to himself. Before the Padre could intone further he switched to Puritan Ethic.
    “Without work,” the Padre said, in a somewhat more forceful voice, “a man is nothing. He ceases to exist.”
    Rapidly, Joe dialed Roman Catholic.
    “God and God’s love will accept you,” the Padre said in a faraway gentle voice. “You are safe in His arms. He will never—”
    Joe dialed Allah.
    “Kill your foe,” the Padre said.
    “I have no foe,” Joe said. “Except for my own weariness and fear of failure.”
    “Those are enemies,” the Padre said, “which you must overcome in a
jihad;
you must show yourself to be a man, and a man, a true man, is a fighter who fights back.” The Padre’s voice was stern.
    Joe dialed Judaism.
    “A bowl of Martian fatworm soup—” the Padre began soothingly, but then Joe’s money wore out; the Padre closed down, inert and dead—or anyhow dormant.
    Fatworm soup, Joe reflected. The most nourishing food known. Maybe that’s the best advice of all, he thought. I’ll head for the spaceport’s restaurant.
    There, on a stool, he seated himself and picked up the menu.
    “Care for a tobacco cigarette?” the man next to him said.
    Horrified, Joe stared at him and said, “My god—you can’t smoke a cigarette out in the open—especially here.” He turned toward the man in agitation; he started to speak on. And then he realized whom he was speaking to.
    In human form Glimmung sat beside him.
    • • •
    “I never intended,” Glimmung said, “for you to be so troubled. Your work is good; I’ve told you that. I picked you because I consider you the finest pot-healer on Earth; I’ve told you that, too. The Padre was right; you need something to eat and a chance to calm down. I’ll order for you.” Glimmung nodded to the robot mechanism from which the food came—nodded as he openly smoked his tobacco cigarette.
    “Can’t they see the cigarette?” Joe asked.
    “No,” Glimmung said. “And evidently the food-dispensing mechanism can’t see me either.” Turning toward Joe he said, “You order.”
    After he had eaten his bowl of fatworm soup and had drunk his caffeine-free (it had to be so, by law) coffee, Joe said, “I don’t think you understand. To someone like you—”
    “What am I like?” Glimmung said.
    “Don’t you know?” Joe said.
    “No