Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick Page A

on the planet; Diamond Head, it’s called, because it’s on a winding prominence that goes fifty milies out into Mare Nostrum.”
    “What’s ‘Mare Nostrum’?” Joe asked.
    “‘Our Ocean.’”
    He showed the item in the
Journal
to her and then, silently, to the rest of the passengers. They all read it and then they all looked at one another for sign of a reaction.
    “We made the right choice,” Harper Baldwin said. The others nodded. “That’s good enough for me,” Baldwin said. He shook his head and scowled, disgust and anger contorting his face. “And we built such a society,” he rasped.
    Strong-armed members of the ship’s crew manually unscrewed the hatch; outside air eddied in, smelling odd and cold. It seemed to Joe that the ocean was close; he sensed it in the air. Shielding his eyes he gazed out against a weak sun; he distinguished the outline of a reasonably modern-looking city, and, past it, hills in a mixture of brown and gray. But the ocean is somethere nearby, he said to himself. Mali is right; this is a planet dominated by an ocean. And it is in the ocean that we will find everything that matters.
    Smiling with mechanical courtesy, the stewardesses escorted them to the open hatch and the flight of stairs which led down to the damp surface of the field. Joe Fernwright took Mali by the arm and led her down; neither of them spoke for a time—Mali seemed absorbed in herself, taking no notice of the other people or the spaceport buildings. Bad memories, Joe reflected. Maybe what happened to her happened here.
    And for me, he thought; look what this is for me. The first interplanetary or intersystem flight in my life. This groundunder me is not Earth. A very strange and important thing is happening to me. He smelled the air. Another world and another atmosphere. It feels strange, he decided.
    “Don’t say,” Mali said, “that you find this place ‘unearthly.’ Please, for my sake.”
    “I don’t get it,” Joe said. “It is unearthly. It’s completely different.”
    “Never mind,” Mali said. “A little game Ralf and I had. A long time ago. Thingisms, we called them. Let’s see if I can remember some of them. He thought all of them up. ‘The book business is hidebound.’ That’s one. ‘Plants are taking over the world sporadically.’ Let’s see. ‘The operator let me off the hook.’ I always liked that; it made me think of a giant hook, in fact a whole giant phone. ‘In 1945 the discovery of atomic energy electrified the world.’ Do you see?” She glanced at him. “You don’t,” she said. “Never mind.”
    “They’re all true statements,” Joe said. “As far as I can make out. What’s the game part?”
    “‘The senate inquiry into modern use of side arms was muzzled.’ How do you like that one? I saw that in a newspaper. I think Ralf found the others in newspapers or heard them over TV; I think all they were real.” She added somberly, “Everything about Ralf was real. For the beginning. But then later, no.”
    A careful, brown, large creature resembling a rat approached Joe and Mali. It held what appeared to be an armload of books.
    “Spiddles,” Mali said, pointing to the careful ratlike creature, and to a second one which had accosted Harper Baldwin. “One of the native life-forms, here. Unlike Glimmung. You will find—let me see.” She counted on her fingers. “Spiddles, wubs, werjes, klakes, trobes, and printers. Left over from the old days … all of them older species, when the Fog-Things of antiquity passed away. It wants you to buy a book.”
    The spiddle touched a tiny tape recorder mounted on its belt; the tape began to speak for the spiddle. “Fully documented history of a fascinating world” it said in English, and then evidently repeated this in a variety of other tongues; anyhow it had stopped speaking in English.
    “Buy it,” Mali said.
    “Pardon?” Joe said.
    “Buy its book.”
    “You know this book? What book is it?”
    Mali