“What is the purpose of the conspiracy?”
Nicholas said hoarsely, They are all cronies of Ferris Fremont. Without exception. I was given to understand -I did understand – that the scene was in a Washington, DC, hotel room, a lavish hotel.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Well, I see two separate pieces of information in that. Our situation is worse than we thought; that’s one piece. The other piece is that we’re going to be helped.”
“Oh, she’ll help us, all right,” Nicholas said. “I tell you, man, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. And they were still grinning, still shooting the bull back and forth. They think they have it made. They don’t. They’re doomed.”
“I thought we were the ones who were doomed.”
“No,” Nicholas said. “It’s them.”
“Do we do anything?”
“I don’t think you do,” Nicholas said. “But – “ He hesitated. “I think I’m going to have to. I think they’re going to use me, when the time comes. When they begin to act.”
I said, “They’re already acting now; they told you, for one thing. If they tell enough people, that’s it there. The truth about how our present regime got into power. Over a bunch of corpses, the corpses of some of the best men of our times.”
“It’s heavy,” Nicholas said.
“Are you sure you didn’t just dream this all up?” I said.
“It did come in a dream,” Nicholas admitted. There never was anything like this beamed at me before. Phil, you saw what happened that night about Johnny. When – “
“So Ferris Fremont arranged their deaths,” I said.
That’s what the sibyl discovered, yes.”
“Why you?” I said. Of all people to pass it on to.
“Phil,” Nicholas said, “how long does it take to get a book out? From the time you start writing it?”
“Too long,” I said. “A year and a half minimum.”
“That is too long. She’s not going to wait that long; I could tell. I could feel it.”
“How long is she going to wait?”
Nicholas said, “I don’t think she is going to wait. I think that for them to plan is the same as acting. They plan and act simultaneously; to think it is to do it. They are a form of absolute mentation, pure minds. She is an all-knowing mind from which nothing is hidden. It’s scary.” ,
“But this is very good news,” I said.
“Good news for us anyhow,” Nicholas said. “We won’t be mailing in these damn cards much longer,”
“What you ought to do,” I said, “is write Ferris Fremont and tell him he and his henchmen have been seen by the Roman sibyl. What do you know about the Roman sibyl? Anything?”
“I researched her this morning in my Britannica” Nicholas said. “She’s immortal. The original sibyl was in Greece; she was an oracle of the god Apollo. Then she guarded the Roman republic; she wrote a bunch of books which they used to open and read when the Republic was in danger.” He added, “I’m thinking now of the great Bible-like books I saw held open to me originally, when my experiences began. You know, the sibyl became sacred to the Christians. They felt she was a prophet like the Hebrew prophets. Guarding God-fearing good men against harm.”
It sounded like the exact thing we needed. Divine protection. The guardian of the Republic had answered from down the corridors of time, in her customary way. After all, was the United States not an extension through linear time of the Roman republic? In many ways it was. We had inherited the Roman sibyl; since she was immortal she had continued on after Rome vanished . . . vanished but still existent in new forms, with new linguistic systems and new customs. But the heart of the Empire remained: one language, one legal system, one coinage, good roads – and Christianity, the later legal religion of the Roman Empire. After the Dark Ages we had built back up to what had been and even more. The prongs of imperialism had been extended all the way to Southeast Asia.
And, I thought, Ferris F. Fremont is our Nero.
“If it didn’t take so long to produce a book,” Nicholas was saying, “I’d think Valis told me so I could tell you and you could use it for a plot idea. But the time factor rules that out . . . unless you’ve already done so.” He eyed me hopefully.
“Nope,” I said, in all candor. “Never used a thing you told me. Too fucked.”
“You believe this, don’t you?”
“I believe it all. As an FBI agent once said to me while shaking me down, „You believe everything you hear.““
“And – you can’t use it?”
“It’s for you, Nicholas,” I said. “They want you, not me. So start truckin”.”
Til „start truckin”“ on the signal,” Nicholas said. “The disinhibiting signal.” He was still waiting for that. The wait must have been hard, but certainly not as hard as having to choose what to do and when. All he had to do was wait until the signal came of its own accord and disinhibited the centuries-old entity slumbering within him.
“If Valis is going to throw Ferris Fremont out of office,” I said, “I wonder how he’s going to accomplish it.”
“Maybe by giving his sons birth defects.”
At that I laughed. “You know who that sounds like, don’t you? Jehovah against the Egyptians.”
Nicholas said nothing. We continued to walk.
“Are you positive it isn’t Jehovah?” I asked him.
“It’s hard to prove a negative, that it isn’t something.”
“But have you seriously considered the possibility that it is? Because if it is, we can’t lose; they can’t win.”
“They are doomed,” Nicholas said.
“Do you know what they are going to get?” I said. “Blood clots, high blood pressure, heart trouble, cancer; their planes will crash; bugs will eat their gardens; their swimming pools in Florida will get lethal mold growing on the surface – do you know what it’s like to try to stand against Jehovah?”
“Don’t tell me,” Nicholas said. “I’m not doing it. I wouldn’t be caught dead doing it.”
“You’d be better off caught dead,” I said.
Suddenly Nicholas ducked his head, caught hold of my arm. “Phil – all I can see are dazzling pinwheels. How”m I going to get home?” His voice shook with fear. “Pinwheels of fire, like fireworks – my good God, I’m practically blind!”
It was the beginning of the transformation in him. How inauspiciously it had started: I had to lead him home, as if he were a child, to his wife and son. All the way he muttered in fear, cringing and hanging onto me. I had never seen him so frightened.
During the next week the fiery pinwheels remained, obscuring Nicholas’s vision, but only at night; it was his night vision that had become impaired. A doctor who examined him told him that it resembled poisoning by alkaloids of belladonna; had he taken a lot of allergy medicine recently? No, Nicholas said. He had to stay home from work, after a few days; he was becoming dizzy, and when he tried to drive his car his hands shook and there was no sensation in his feet. His doctor suspected some form of poisoning or intoxicant, but he could not determine which one it was.
I checked up on Nicholas every day. One day when I showed up at his apartment I found him seated with several bottles of vitamins, including an enormous plastic container of vitamin C.
“What’s all this about?” I asked him.
Seated there pale and worried, Nicholas explained that he was attempting in his own way to flush the toxin out of his system; water-soluble vitamins, he had learned from his reference books, acted on the system as a diuretic; he hoped, by taking enough of them, he could rid himself of the flashing wheels of jagged, colored fire that plagued him at night or when he blinked.
“Are you sleeping?” I asked him.
“No,” he admitted. “Not at all.” He had tried leaving his bedside radio on to mild bubble-gum rock, but, he said, after a few hours the music assumed an ominous, menacing sound; the lyrics underwent a grotesque change, and he had to shut the radio off.
The doctor thought it might be blood pressure problems. He also alluded to the possibility of drugs. But Nicholas wasn’t on anything; I was certain of that.
“And if I do get to sleep,” Nicholas said shakily, “I have dreadful nightmares.”
He told me one of them. In the dream he was shut in a tiny cage under the Colosseum in ancient Rome; in the sky overhead, huge winged lizards were searching for him. All at once the flying lizards detected his presence under the Colosseum; they swept down and in an instant were tearing open the door of his cage. Trapped, with death at hand, all Nicholas could do was hiss at the lizards; evidently he was a small mammal of some kind. Rachel woke him from that dream, and partially awake, he had extended his tongue and continued his hissing in a furious, inhuman way, even though, she told me, his eyes were wide open. After that he had come to and had told her a rambling story about walking toward the cave in which he lived, guided by his cat, Charley. Looking around their bedroom, Nicholas had begun to lament in fear that Charley was missing; how could he find his way, now, without the cat, seeing as how he was blind?