“How long?”
“There’s no way to tell.”
He thought, You are going to die. He knew it and she knew it. They did not have to talk about it. The complicity of silence was there, the agreement. A dying girl wants to cook me a dinner, he thought. A dinner I don’t want to eat. I’ve got to say no to her. I’ve got to keep her out of my dome. The insistence of the weak, he thought; their dreadful power. It is so much easier to throw a body block against the strong!
“Thank you,” he said. “I’d like it very much if we had dinner together. But make sure you keep in radio contact with me on your way over here-so I’ll know you’re okay. Promise?”
“Well, sure,” she said. “Otherwise-” She smiled. “They’d find me a century from now, frozen with pots, pans and food, as well as synthetic spices. You do have portable air, don’t you?”
“No, I really don’t,” he said.
And knew that his lie was palpable to her.
CHAPTER 3
The meal smelled good and tasted good but halfway through Rybys Rommey excused herself and made her way unsteadily from the central matrix of the dome-his dome-into the bath- room. He tried not to listen; he arranged it with his percept sys- tem not to hear and with his cognition not to know. In the bathroom the girl, violently sick, cried out and he gritted his teeth and pushed his plate away and then all at once he got up and set in motion his in-dome audio system; he played an early album of the Fox.
Come again!
Sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces, that refrain
To do me due delight .
“Do you by any chance have some milk’?” Rybys said, standing at the bathroom door, her face pale.
Silently, he got her a glass of milk, or what passed for milk on their planet.
“I have anti-emetics,” Rybys said as she held the glass of milk, ‘but I didn’t remember to bring any with me. They’re back at my dome.”
“I could get them for you,” he said.
28 Philip K. Dick The Divine Invasion
“You know what M.E.D. told me?” she said, her voice heavy with indignation. “They said that this chemotherapy won’t make my hair fall out but already it’s coming out in-”
“Okay,” he interrupted. ‘Okay’?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Rybys said, “This is upsetting you. The meal is spoiled and you’re-I don’t know what. If I’d remembered to bring my anti-emetics I’d be able to keep from-” She became silent. “Next time I’ll bring them. I promise. This is one of the few albums of the Fox that I like. She was really good then, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” he said tightly.
“Linda Box,” Rybys said.
“What?” he said.
“Linda the box. That’s what my sister and I used to call her.” She tried to smile.
He said, “Please go back to your dome.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well-” She smoothed her hair, her hand shaking. “Will you come with me? I don’t think I can make it by myself right now. I’m really weak. I really am sick.”
He thought, You are taking me with you. That’s what this is. That is what is happening. You will not go alone; you will take my spirit with you. And you know. You know it as well as you know the name of the medication you are taking, and you hate me as you hate the medication, as you hate M.E.D. and your illness; it is all hate, for each and every thing under these two suns. I know you. I understand you. I see what is coming. In fact it has begun.
And, he thought, I don’t blame you. But I will hang on to the Fox; the Fox will outlast you. And so will I. You are not going to shoot down the luminiferous ether which animates our souls.
I will hang onto the Fox and the Fox will hold me in her arms and hang on to me. The two of us-we can’t be pried apart. I have dozens of hours of the Fox on audio and video tape, and the tapes are not just for me but for everyone. You think you can kill that? he said to himself. It’s been tried before. The power of the weak, he thought, is an imperfect power; it loses in the end. Hence its name. We call it weak for a reason.
“Sentimentality,” Rybys said. “Right,” he said sardonically. “Recycled at that.” “And mixed metaphors.” “Her lyrics?” “What I’m thinking. When I get really angry I mix-”
“Let me tell you something,” Rybys said. “One thing. If I am going to survive I can’t be sentimental. I have to be very harsh. If I’ve made you angry I’m sorry but that is how it is. It is my life. Someday you may be in the spot I am in and then you’ll know. Wait for that and then judge me. If it ever happens. Meanwhile this stuff you’re playing on your in-dome audio system is crap. It has to be crap, for me. Do you see? You can forget about me; you can send me back to my dome, where I probably really belong, but if you have anything to do with me-”
“Okay,” he said. “I understand.”
“Thank you. May I have some more milk? Turn down the audio and we’ll finish eating. Okay?”
Amazed, he said, “You’re going to keep on trying to-”
“All those creatures-and species-who gave up trying to eat aren’t with us anymore.” She seated herself shakily, holding on to the table.
“I admire you.”
“No,” she said, “I admire you. It’s harder on you. I know.”
“Death-” he began.
“This isn’t death. You know what this is? In contrast to what’s coming out of your audio system? This is life. The milk, please; I really need it.”
As he got her more milk he said, “I guess you can’t shoot down ether. Luminiferous or otherwise.”
“No,” she agreed, “since it doesn’t exist.”
“How old are you?” he said.
“Twenty-seven.”
“You emigrated voluntarily?”
Rybys said, “Who can say? I can’t reconstruct my earlier thinking, now, at this point in my life. Basically I felt there was a spiritual component to emigrating.. It was either emigrate or g into the priesthood. I was raised Scientific Legate but-”
The Divine Invasion
30 Philip K. Dick
“The Party,” Herb Asher said. He still thought of it by its old name, the Communist Party.
But in college I began to get involved in church work. I made the decision. I chose God over the material universe.”
So you’re Catholic.”
“CIC.. yes. You’re using a term that’s under ban. As I’m sure you know.”
It makes no difference to me,” Herb Asher said. “I have no involvement with the Church.”
‘Maybe you’d like to borrow some C. S. Lewis.”
‘No thanks.”
“This illness that I have,” Rybys said, “is something that made me wonder about-” She paused. “You have to experience everything in terms of the ultimate picture. As of itself my illness would seem to be evil, but it serves a higher purpose we can’t see. Or can’t see yet, anyhow.”
“That’s why I don’t read C. S. Lewis,” Herb Asher said.
She glanced at him dispassionately. “Is it true that the Clems used to worship a pagan deity on this little hill?”
“Apparently so,” he said. “Called Yah.”
“Hallelujah,” Rybys said.
“What?” he said, startled.
“It means ‘Praise ye Yah.’ The Hebrew is Halleluyah.”
“Yahweh, then.”
‘You never say that name. That’s the sacred Tetragrammaton. Elohim, which is not plural but singular, means ‘God,’ and then later on in the Bible the Divine Name appears with Adonay, so you get ‘Lord God.’ You can choose between Elohim or Adonay or use both together but you can never say Yahweh.”
“You just said it.”
Rybys smiled. “So nobody’s perfect. Kill me.”
“Do you believe all that?”
“I’m just stating matters of fact.” She gestured. “Historic fact.”
“But you do believe it. I mean, you believe in God.”
“Yes.”
“Did God will your M.S.?”
Hesitating, Rybys said slowly, “He permitted it. But I believe he’s healing me. There’s something I have to learn and this way I’ll learn it.”
“Couldn’t he teach you some easier way?”
“Apparently not.”
Herb Asher said, “Yah has been communicating with me.”
“No, no; that’s a mistake. Originally the Hebrews believed that the pagan gods existed but were evil; later they realized that the pagan gods didn’t exist.”
“My incoming signals and my tapes,” Asher said.
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I am.”
“There’s a life form here besides the Clems?”
“There is where my dome is; yes. It’s on the order of C.B. interference, except that it’s sentient. It’s selective.”
Rybys said, “Play me one of the tapes.”
“Sure.” Herb Asher walked over to his computer terminal and began to punch keys. A moment later he had the correct tape playing.