“That is eternal. What more could we hope for? Bonded to that. If your body or my body is destroyed, firebright escapes into the atmosphere and our own spark goes with him. There we will gather, ultimately, as one entity, always together. Until Valis returns. All of us: you, me, the rest. However many.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sounds good to me.”
“Let me ask you,” Sadassa said. “Of all that the satellite showed you, what was the … I don’t know how to say it.”
The final view of things?”
“Yes. The deepest. Penetrating farthest. Because when it overpowers you it shows you so much about the universe.” I said, Tor a little while I saw the universe as a living body.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding somberly. “And we are in it. The experience was so strange – it’s hard to express it. Like a hive of bees, millions of bees, all communicating over vast distances by means of colored light. Patterns of light, exchanged back and forth, and us deep inside. Continual signaling and response from the -well, bees or whatever they were; maybe they were stars or star systems of sentient organisms. Anyhow, this signaling went on all the time, in shifting patterns, and I heard a humming or a bell-like sound, emitted by all the bees in unison.”
“The universe is a great group mind,” Sadassa said. “I saw that too. The ultimate vision imposed on us, as to how things are in comparison to how they simply appear.” I said, “And all the bees, as they signal across great distances to one another, are in the process of thinking. So the total organism thinks by means of this. And throughout it exerts pressure, also across great distances, to coordinate every part, so it’s synchronized into a common purpose.”
“It is alive,” Sadassa said. “Yes,”I said.”It is alive.”
“The bees,” Sadassa said, “were described to me as stations. Like transmitting and receiving on a grid. Each lit up as it transmitted. I guess the colors were prearranged different frequencies of the light spectrum. A great universe of transmitting and receiving stations, but, Nicholas, sometimes many of them, differing at different moments, were dark. They were temporarily inactive. But I kept watching lit-up stations receiving transmissions from distances so far off that – I guess we use the word parsecs for distances like that.”
“It was beautiful,” I said. “The pattern of shifting lights formed by the active stations.”
Sadassa said, “But into it, Nicholas, had crept something which snuffed out some of the stations. Abolished them so they never lit up again. And replaced them with itself, like a cloak falling over them here and there.”
“But new stations were opened up to replace them,” I said. “In unexpected spots.”
This planet does not receive or transmit,” Sadassa said, after a moment. “Except for the few of us – a few thousand out of three billion – governed by the satellite. And now we’re not. So we’ve gone dark.”
“Until the replacement satellite arrives.”
Sadassa said, “Did we see a kind of brain?”
“More like a jungle gym that kids play on,” I said, “with colored buttons stuck all over.” Her analogy was too heavy for me: the universe as a giant brain, thinking.
This is a very great thing we were shown,” Sadassa said. To see from that vantage point, the ultimate vantage point. We should always treasure it. Even if the stations in this local region or sector are all overshadowed and don’t light up any longer, it is a sight to remember. With this the satellite presented us with its final insight into the nature of things: synapses in a living brain. And the name we give to its functioning, its awareness of itself and its many parts – “ She smiled at me. “It’s why you saw the figure of Aphrodite. That’s what holds all the trillions of stations into harmony.”
“Yes,” I said, “it was harmonized, and over such distances. There was no coercion, only agreement.”
And the coordination of all the transmitting and receiving stations, I thought, we call Valis: Vast Active Living Intelligence System. Our friend who cannot die, who lies on this side of the grave and on the other. His love, I thought, is greater than empires. And unending.
Sadassa cleared her throat. “When do you expect to have a tape?”
“At the end of the month.”
“And the master discs?”
“First the mother and then the masters. It won’t take long, once we have the tape. I have nothing to do with that. My part will be over when the tape is prepared and authorized.”
Sadassa said somberly, “Be prepared for them to show up and seize a stamper at any time. Right in the middle of production.”
“Right,” I said. “We’ll have some clean stampers and some with the subliminal material – maybe they’ll get a clean one. Maybe luck will be with us.”
“It will all depend,” Sadassa said, “on which they seize, one with material or one without it.”
She was right. And over that we had no control. Nor did they.
“By the way,” Sadassa said, “I want you to, wish me luck; I have an appointment the last day of the month to see my doctor. To find out if I’m still in remission.”
“I wish you all the luck in the world,” I said.
“Thank you. I’m sort of worried. I’m still losing weight … I just can’t seem to eat. I’m down to ninety-two pounds. And now that the satellite no longer exists – “ She smiled wanly at me.
I put my arm around her, hugged her against me; she was light and frail, like a mere bird. I kissed her, then, for the first time. At this she laughed a tiny, low laugh deep in her throat, almost a chuckle, and pressed against me.
“They will arrest your friend Phil,” Sadassa said. „The one who writes the science fiction.”
“I know,” I said.
“Is it worth it? To abolish his career along with yours?” And, I thought, his life …
PART THREE
Phil
. . . along with mine, I thought to myself. Nicholas and I are going down the tubes together, if he goes through with this. What a thing to find out.
“You think it’s worth it?” I asked him. “To destroy yourself, your family, and your friends?”
“It has got to be done,” Nicholas said.
“Why?” I demanded. I was in the middle of writing a new novel, the best yet. “Nicholas,” I said, “what’s in the material you’re putting on the LP?”
We were sitting together in the stands at Anaheim Stadium, watching the Angels play. Nolan Ryan was pitching; it was one hell of a game. Pittsburgh was screwing up badly. My last baseball game, I said to myself bitterly as I drank from my bottle of Falstaff beer.
Nicholas said, “Information that will eventually cause Fremont’s fall from power.”
“No information could do that,” I said. I didn’t have that much faith in the written or spoken word; I wasn’t that naive. “And in addition,” I said, “the police will never let you get the record out. They probably know all about it.”
“Admittedly,” Nicholas said. “But we have to try. It may be only that one FAPer, that gung-ho Vivian Kaplan; she may have developed this as a personal, private lead to feather her own nest. Her suspicions may not be police policy.”
“All suspicions are police policy,” I said.
“Our illustrious President,” Nicholas said, “has been a sleeper for the Communist Party.”
“Is that just a slur,” I said, “or can you prove it?”
“We’re putting names, dates, and places into the material and God knows what else. Enough to -”
“But you can’t prove it,” I said. “You have no documents.”
“We have the details. Or anyway the person working with me has. They’re all going on the record, in subliminal form.”
“And then you saturate America.”
“Right.”
“And everybody wakes up one morning,” I said, ‘singing, „Fremont is a Red; Fremont is a Red; better a dead Fremont than a Red,“ and so forth. Chanting the material in unison.”
Nicholas nodded.
“From a million throats,” I said. “Fifty million. Two hundred million. „Better he’s dead than red; better – „“
„This is no joke,” Nicholas said starkly.
“No,” I agreed, “it’s not. It means our lives. Our careers and our lives. The government will forge documents to refute you, if they take notice of the smear at all.”
“It’s the truth,” Nicholas said. “Fremont was trained as an agent of Moscow; it’s a covert Soviet takeover, bloodless and unnoticed. We have the facts.”
“Gee,” I said, as it began to sink in. “No wonder there’s no criticism of him from the Soviet Union.”
“They think he’s great,” Nicholas said.
“Well,” I said, “do it.”
Nicholas glanced at me. “You agree? That’s why I had to tell you. She said I had to.”