Subliminal form. Now, for the first time, I comprehended the purpose of my nasty experience with the gross subliminal messages I had managed to transliminate. That, regrettably, had been necessary; I had to become consciously aware – in a manner I could never forget – of what could be done with subliminal cueing in popular music. People listening while half asleep, absorbing by night what they would soon think and believe the next day!
Okay, I said to Valis in my head. I forgive you for putting me through that ordeal. You made your point, all right. So it’s fine. I guess there was no way to inform me of everything at once; it had to unfold in successive stages.
A further insight came to me, sharp and lucid. My friendship with Phil, him and his dozens of popular science fiction thrillers bought in drugstores and Greyhound bus stations, is a false lead. That is what the authorities are looking for: something showing up in those pulp novels. Those are winnowed thoroughly by the intelligence community, every single one. We, too, in the recording industry, are winnowed, but more for pro-dope subtracks, pro-dope and sexually suggestive stuff. It is in the field of science fiction that they look for political material.
At least, I thought, I hope so. I don’t think we could get away with this as material stuck into a book, even subliminally. I think in pop tunes we have a better chance. And evidently that is what Valis feels too.
Of course, I realized, if we’re caught they’ll kill us. How will Sadassa feel about that? She’s so young … and then I remembered the sad fact that she was in temporary remission from cancer; she could only expect to live a little while. It was a deeply sobering thought, but Sadassa did not have that much to lose. And probably she would see it that way. Before they could get her, the lymphoma would.
Perhaps this was the underlying reason why Sadassa had approached a recording firm for a job. An unconscious awareness that at a recording firm her story might be -but I was speculating now. The AI operators had not coached my thinking along these lines. Nor had they led me to wonder if Sadassa had been afflicted with cancer in order to push her to make public what she knew; it was my own individual mind conjecturing about that. I doubted it; more likely that was coincidence. And yet, I had heard it said that God brought good out of evil. The cancer was evil and Sadassa had it; wasn’t this something good which Valis had managed to extricate from it?
The next day at work I stepped into the personnel office and had a chat with Allen Sheib, who had told Mrs Silvia that we were overstaffed.
“Hire her,” I told him.
“Doing what?”
“I need an assistant.”
Til have to check with payroll and with Fleming and Tycher.”
“Do it,” I said. “And if you do, I owe you one. A favor.”
“Business is business,” Sheib said. Til do what I can. As a matter of fact, I think I owe you a favor. Anyhow, I’ll try to swing it. What sort of wages?”
“That isn’t important,” I said. I could, after all, help finance her out of the funds I controlled – our under-the-table funds, so to speak: payoffs we did not report. In our confidential bookkeeping, Sadassa would be listed with a variety of local DJs. No one would be the wiser.
“You want me to interview her, see what she can do, so she thinks the job is legitimate?” Sheib asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“You have her number?”
I did. I gave it to Sheib with instructions to say there was now a job opening and to come in to be interviewed.
Just to make sure there was no foul-up I telephoned her myself.
“This is Nicholas Brady,” I said when she answered. “At Progressive Records.”
“Oh, did I leave something behind? I can’t find my -”
“I think we have a job for you,” I said.
“Oh. Well, I’ve decided I really don’t want a job. I put in an application for a scholarship at Chapman College and since I talked to you they accepted my application, so I can now go back to school.”
I was at a loss. “You won’t come in?” I said. “And be interviewed?”
Tell me what kind of job it is. Filing and typing?”
“As my assistant.”
“What would I do?”
I said, “Go with me to audition new performers.”
“Oh.” She sounded interested.
“And possibly we could use your lyrics.”
“Oh, really?” She perked up. “Maybe I could do both: go to school and that too.”
I had a strange feeling that in her guileless, innocent say she had bumped us up ten notches in the kind of job she could expect from us. This interchange gave me a different impression of her. Perhaps coping with – and surviving – cancer had taught her lessons. A certain kind of grit, a certain tenacity. And she had, probably, only a short time left to fulfill her needs, to extract whatever she was going to extract from life.
“Please come in and talk to us about it,” I said.
“Well, I could do that, I guess. I really should … I had a dream about your record company.”
Tell me.” I listened intently.
Sadassa said, “I dreamed I was watching a recording session through the soundproof glass. I was thinking how wonderful the singer was, and I was impressed by all the professional mixers and mikes. And then I saw the album jacket and it was me. Sadassa Silvia Sings, it was called. Honest.” She laughed.
There wasn’t much I could say.
“And I got the strong impression,” Sadassa continued, “when I woke up, that I’d be working for you. That the dream was a good omen.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Most likely so.”
“When should I come in?”
I told her at four o”clock today. That way, I figured, I could take her to dinner afterward.
“Have you had any other unusual dreams?” I asked, on impulse.
“That wasn’t really unusual. What do you mean by unusual?”
“We can talk about it when you get here,” I said.
Sadassa Silvia showed up at four o”clock wearing a light brown jumpsuit, a yellow sweater, hooped earrings to match her Afro-natural hair. She had a solemn expression on her face, as before.
Seated across from me in my office she said, “As I drove up here I asked myself why you might be interested in any unusual dreams I have had. I keep a notebook for my shrink in which every morning I’m supposed to write down my dreams-before I forget them. I’ve been doing that as long as I’ve been seeing Ed, which is almost two years.”
Tell me,” I said.
“Do you want to know? Do you really want to? All right, I’ve had the feeling for three weeks now – it began on a Thursday – that someone is talking to me in my sleep.”
“Man? Or woman?”
Sadassa said, “In between. It’s a very calm voice, modulated. I only retain an impression of it when I wake up … but it’s a favorable impression. The voice is very lulling. I always feel better after I’ve heard it.”
“You can’t remember anything it says.”
“Something about my cancer. That it won’t come back.”
“What time of night – “
“Exactly three thirty,” Sadassa said. “I know because my boyfriend says I try to talk back to it; I mean, converse with it. I wake him up trying to talk, and he says it’s always the same time of night.”
I had forgotten about her boyfriend. Oh, well, I said to myself; I have a wife and family.
“It’s as if I’d left the radio on very low,” Sadassa continued. “To a faraway station. Like you get on shortwave late at night.”
“Amazing,” I said.
Sadassa said calmly, “I came to Progressive Records in the first place because of a dream, very much like the one I had last night. I was in a lovely green valley with very high grass, out in the country, fresh and nice, and there was a mountain. I floated along, not on the ground but weightlessly floating, and as I came toward the mountain it turned into a building. On the building they had put words, on a plaque over the entrance. Well, one word: PROGRESSIVE. But in the dream I could tell it was Progressive Records because I could hear the most incredibly dulcet music. Not like any music I have ever heard in actuality.”
“You did the right thing,” I said, “to act on that dream.”
“Did I come to the right place?” She studied my face intently.
“Yes,” I said. “You interpreted the dream right.”
“You seem sure.”
“What do I know?” I said jokingly. “I’m just glad you’re here. I was afraid you wouldn’t show up.”