Halting, she stared at me in amazement.
“I wouldn’t have recognized you,” she said finally.
They didn’t want me to leave.” I walked toward the car, motioning her to accompany me.
“Can you leave? I mean, are you well enough? The doctor said you’d undergone major surgery on your chest -”
“I’m fine,” I said. „The satellite healed me.”
“Then the satellite is what you’ve been experiencing.”
“Yep,” I said, getting into the car.
“You do seem physically okay . . . but you certainly look funny in those clothes.”
“You can pick up my personal effects tomorrow,” I said, slamming the car door after me. “Hi, Johnny,” I said to my son. “Recognize Daddy?”
My son stared at me sourly and with suspicion.
“The satellite could have provided you with better clothes,” Rachel said.
“I don’t think it does that,” I said. “You have to find your own. That’s what I did.”
“Maybe you should have waited until it thought of something,” Rachel said. She shot me a glance as she drove from the hospital parking lot. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
As we found our way out onto the freeway, I thought to myself, I certainly got a printout while I was under the anesthetic. Did Valis engineer my accident so he could speak to me? No, Valis engineered my recovery so he could work through me. He took advantage of a bad situation and brought something out of it: the best colloquy we have had and probably will ever have. What I know now, I realized, is boundless. The major pieces are in place. The delight of finding each other, Valis and I. Father and son, together again. After millennia. The relationship restored.
But I understood something else which was not good. We really did not have a chance of toppling Fremont. Not really. Because of my position at Progressive Records we could do something; we could distribute what we knew in subliminal form on an LP, buried in subtracks and backup vocals, scrambled about in the sound-on-sound that our mixers provided us. Before the police got us we could pass on what we knew, Sadassa and I, to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of Americans. But Ferris Fremont would stay in power. The police would destroy us, would forge counterdocumentation and proof; we would go and the regime would survive.
Still, it was worth doing. I knew that absolutely; Valis had set this in motion and Valis could not err. He would not have brought Sadassa and me together, flooded me with help and information, if it wasn’t worth it. To make it worth it, we did not have to win completely. We needed only a certain victory, one within reason. We could, perhaps, initiate a process that others more numerous and powerful would complete someday in the future.
Valis’s will was not fully realized on Earth. This was the adversary’s realm, the Prince of this world. Valis could only work within this world, work with a small remnant of men; he was the minority party, here, speaking as a still small voice to one man or a handful, from a bush, in sleep, during an operation. Eventually he would win. But not now. These were not the end times after all. The end times were always coming but never here, always nearby and influencing us but never realized.
Well, I decided, we would do the best we could. And know by faith that it was worth it.
As we drove along, I said to Rachel, “I have met this girl. I’ve got to work with her. You may not approve -no one may approve – but it has to be done. It may destroy us all.”
Rachel, driving carefully, said, “Valis told you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do what you have to do,” Rachel said, in a low, tight voice. “I will,” I said.
I had not talked to Sadassa Silvia yet about her mother. As far as she knew I had no information about her past. That was the first step to be taken, to discuss Mrs Aramchek. To get her to tell me openly what Valis and the intercommunications network had already transferred from their information banks to my mind. We could not work together otherwise.
The best place to talk to her, I decided, would be at a good quiet restaurant; that way we could avoid the possibility of being picked up by a government bug. I therefore phoned her from work and invited her out to dinner.
“I’ve never been to Del Key’s,” she said. “But I’ve heard of it. They have a cuisine like the San Francisco restaurants. I’m free Thursday night.”
On Thursday night I swung by her apartment, picked her up, and soon we were seated in a secluded booth in the main dining room at Del Key’s.
“What is it you want to tell me?” she said, as we ate our salads. “I know about your mother,” I said. “And Ferris
Fremont.”
“What do you mean?”
In a voice low enough for our safety, I said, “I know that your mother was an organizer for the Communist
Party.”
Sadassa’s eyes flew open behind her thick glasses. She stared at me; she had stopped eating.
“I know further,” I said quietly, “that she signed up Ferris Fremont when he was in his late teens. I know that she trained him as a sleeper, to go into politics with no sign of his real views or his real affiliations.”
Still staring at me, Sadassa said, “You are really crazy.”
“Your mother is dead,” I said, “and so the Party – Ferris Fremont – thinks the secret is safe. But as a child you saw Fremont with your mother and you overheard enough. You’re the only person outside the higher ranks of the Party who knows. That’s why the government tried to kill you off with cancer. They found out you’re alive despite your name change and that you know. Or they suspect you know. So you have to be killed.”
Sadassa, frozen in one spot, fork half-raised, continued to gaze at me in stricken silence.
“We are intended to work together,” I said. “This information will go onto a record, a folk LP, in the form of subliminal bits of data distributed so that in repeated playings a person will unconsciously absorb the message. The record industry has techniques to accomplish that; it’s done all the time, although the message has to be simple. „Ferris Fremont is a Red.“ Nothing elaborate. One word in one track, another in the next – maybe eight words maximum. Juxtaposed in the playback. Like code. I will see that the record saturates this country; we’ll flood the market with it – a huge initial pressing. There will be only one pressing and one distribution, because as soon as people begin to transliminate the message the authorities will step in and destroy all -”
Sadassa found her voice. “My mother is alive. She’s active in church work; she lives in Santa Ana. There’s no truth in what you say. I never heard such garbage.” Standing, she set down her fork, dabbed at her mouth; she seemed on the verge of tears. “I’m going home. You’re completely spaced; I heard about your accident on the freeway; it was in the Register. You must have gotten your marbles scrambled; you’re crazy. Good night.” She walked rapidly away from the booth, without glancing back.
I sat alone in silence.
All at once she was back, standing by me, bending over and speaking in a low, grim voice into my ear. “My mother is a down-to-earth Republican and has been all her life. She has never had anything to do with left-wing politics, certainly .not the Communist Party. She never met Ferris Fremont, although she was present at a rally at Anaheim Stadium where he spoke – that’s the closest she ever got to him. She is just an ordinary person, saddled with the name „Aramchek,“ which means nothing. The police have investigated her repeatedly because of it. Do you want to meet her?” Sadassa’s voice had risen wildly. Til introduce you to her; you can ask her. It’s saying crazy things like this that gets people into -oh, never mind.” Again she strode off; this time she did not return.
I don’t understand, I said to myself. Is she lying?
Shaken I managed to finish my meal, hoping she would show up again, reseat herself, and take back what had been said. She did not, I paid the check, got in the Maverick, and slowly drove home.
When I opened the apartment door, Rachel greeted me with one brittle sentence. “Your girlfriend called.”
“What did she say?” I said.
“She’s at the La Paz Bar in Fullerton. She told me to tell you she walked there from Del Key’s, that she doesn’t have any money for cab fare, so she wants you to drive back to Fullerton, to the bar, and pick her up and take her home.”