“There’s a file on all of us,” I said.
“If they know about Johnny’s overbite and what Rachel’s been saying to me, they undoubtedly know about my contacts with Valis. I’d better burn my notes.”
“What,” I said, “would a file on Valis look like? A file on a superior life form in another star system … I wonder how it’d be cross-indexed. I wonder if it’d have a special marking.”
“They’ll get at Valis through me,” Nicholas said.
“Valis will protect you,” I said.
Then you don’t think I should do it?”
“Hell, no,” I said. I was amazed at him.
“But they’ll think I’m disloyal if I say no. That’s what they’re after: proof of disloyalty. They’ll have it!”
“Fuck “em,” I said. “Say no anyhow.”
Then they’ll know. And I’ll be in Nebraska.”
I said, They’ve got you, then. Either way.”
That’s right,” Nicholas said. “Ever since the two FBI agents closed in on me back in the fifties. I knew it would catch up with me, my disloyal past. My Berkeley days -the reason I left the university.”
“You broke your gun.”
“I disabled my gun! I was a war protestor even then, one of the first. I knew Fremont’s minions would find me out; they only had to examine their files. The computers popped me up, the first antiwar activist in America. And now it’s cooperate with them or be arrested.”
“I was never arrested,” I said, “and I’ve done a lot more antiwar stuff than you. In fact, you haven’t done any since you left Berkeley. Since the FBI came by that day.”
That proves nothing. I’m a sleeper. They probably think it’s Aramchek that contacts me in the night. Valis is my name for Radio Free Aramchek.”
“Aramchek is a word on a sidewalk.”
“Aramchek is anything that opposes Fremont. Listen, Phil.” Nicholas inhaled a deep, ragged breath. “I think I’m going to have to play ball with them, or anyhow appear to.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Nicholas said, “look what happened to you. Your place broken into, half your papers gone – you haven’t been able to write since, for psychological reasons, for practical reasons; good lord, look at you -your nerves are shot. I know you’re not able to sleep any more, expecting them to come back and do it again, or maybe arrest you. I can see what it’s done to you; after all, I’m your best friend.” Til live,” I said.
“You don’t have a wife and little boy,” Nicholas said quietly. “You live alone, Phil; you don’t have any family-. What if the night they broke all the back windows and smashed down the doors your little son had been home, alone? They might have – “
“They waited,” I said, “until I was out of the house; they were outside for a week getting ready – I saw them. They waited until the house was empty.”
Nicholas said, “The government hires ex-”Nam special forces veterans for commando raids like that. Search and seize, they call it. A military operation with military personnel using plastic military explosives – I saw the combat boot point they left in the closet of your study; you showed it to me. Phil, those were armed soldiers who hit your house. And I have Rachel and Johnny.”
“You go along with them,” I said, “and maybe your body lives, but your soul dies.”
Til feed them names they can’t use,” Nicholas said. “Lurid rock lyrics that don’t mean anything.”
“And how’ll you explain it to yourself when they arrest one of the loser artists you rat on?”
Nicholas gazed at me unhappily. In all the years I had known him I’d never seen such a wretched expression on his face.
“Because they will,” I said. “And you know it. They may still arrest me. It’s still hanging over my head.”
That’s what I mean,” Nicholas said. “And I don’t want that hanging over my head, for Rachel’s sake and for Johnny’s sake. I want to be with my little son as he grows up; it’s the most precious thing in my life. I don’t want to be in a forced labor detention camp in the boondocks hoeing turnips.”
“Ferris Fremont hasn’t just taken over the country,” I said. “He’s also taken over human minds. And debased them.”
The Bible says don’t judge,” Nicholas said.
The Bible says, „My kingdom is not of this world,““ I answered angrily. “Which means there’s a lot of explaining to do later on.”
Tve got plenty of explaining to do right here.”
“Not half of what comes later. Have you asked Valis what to do?”
“I don’t ask Valis; he, they, tell me.”
Tell them to tell you not to cooperate.”
“So far they’ve said nothing. If they say nothing then I go ahead as I normally would.”
“You cooperate with Mission Fuck-Up,” I said (this was what we all derisively called it), “and I’ll bet you a buck Valis never communicates with you again.”
“I will have to do what I have to do,” Nicholas said.
“Are you going to report to them about me too?” I said. “About my writing?”
“They can read your writing; it’s all published.”
“You could clue them in about Flow My Tears, since it isn’t out yet. You know what it’s about.”
“I’m sorry, Phil,” Nicholas said. “But my wife and child come first.”
“For this,” I said bitterly, “I moved to Southern
California.”
“Phil, I can’t afford for them to find out about Valis. I’m sorry, but that is too important. More important than you or me or anyone else.”
I didn’t like the notion of a close friend of mine reporting regularly, for money, to the minions of Ferris Fremont. When I considered to myself that Nicholas knew everything there was to know about me, it became oppressively close and menacing in a very personal way. “If Valis exists,” I said, “he’ll protect you, as you told me a long time ago. And if he doesn’t exist, then you have nothing to protect and therefore no motive for cooperating with them. Either way you should tell them to go shove it.” In actuality I was thinking of my own self. I hadn’t really done all that much antiwar activity, or contemplated that much yet to be done, but in the eyes of the FAPers it would be sufficient. And Nicholas had been informed of every iota of it.
It was the beginning of the first real rift in our friendship. Nicholas reluctantly agreed that he could hold out against the FAPers with their dossier on him, and still keep his family and job, but I could see that not only was he divided against me but against himself as well. The fact of the matter was that I could no longer trust my dearest friend Nicholas Brady, whom I had known and loved since the old days in Berkeley. The authorities had done their assigned job: they had driven another wedge between two men who had always trusted each other completely.
The destruction of our relationship was a mini-cosmos mirroring what was going on at all levels of American society under F.F.F. On the basis of what had happened to us I could infer that terrible tragedies were taking place everywhere. For instance, what about the young artists coming to Progressive Records to play and sing? The record company official who auditioned them was a paid cop, informing on them to higher police authorities. Undoubtedly this was taking place at all the other record companies as well. What about Nicholas’s fellow employees? They now had – or potentially had – a paid informer in their midst, who augmented his salary at the expense of their safety and freedom. All this, so that little Johnny could go to the dentist. What a rationale.
The real motive, of course, was Nicholas’s concern for his own freedom and safety. In effect it was a trade-off: he jeopardized, or proposed to jeopardize, the freedom and safety of others to secure his own. But the net effect of a lot of people doing this would be mutual hazard. For instance, suppose a couple of FAPers now approached me and asked me to report on Nicholas. I already knew that there was a fair chance he was reporting on me. What, then, would my reaction be? My ability to resist them would be substantially undermined.
The well-known police tactic of whiplashing would be coming into play; they would soon be saying to me, “You better report on Nicholas Brady before he reports on you,” which meant, You had better get your friend before he gets you. We’d been put at each other’s throats; the only winner would be Ferris F. Fremont. The police have been using the same tricks since the time of the Medes, and people are still falling for them. As soon as Nicholas reported on anyone, especially for money, he would be vulnerable to police blackmail forever. The police had laid a noose out before him, and Nicholas was obligingly placing his head in it. He was doing most of the work. Where was the man who had damaged his gun rather than submit to taking military training involuntarily as a price for his college degree? Gone down the drain of prosperity, evidently; now Nicholas had a cushy job and great prospects, not to mention power over other people. That was what had done it. Idealism had given way to more realistic motivations: safety and authority and the protection of a family. Time had worked a dismal magic on my friend; he no longer strode along the pavement chanting old marching songs from the Spanish Civil War; in fact, if some young artist were to come to him with such lyrics, Nicholas would be in a position to pick up an easy hundred dollars.