“So you have a groovy job,” I said, as he and I and Rachel sat around their apartment in Placentia.
“I’m driving to Huntington Beach to take in Uncle Dave Huggins and His Up-Front Electric Jugs,” Nicholas said. “I think we should sign with them. Sign them up. It’s folk rock, really. A little like the Grateful Dead does on some of their tracks.” We were listening to an LP of the Jefferson Airplane at that moment, quite a jump from the classical music Nicholas had loved back in Berkeley. Grace Slick was singing “White Rabbit.”
“What a groovy broad,” Nicholas said. “One of the best,” I said. I had just become interested in rock. The Airplane was my favorite group; one time I had driven over to Marin County to the town of Bolinas to gaze at the house reputed to be Grace Slick’s. It was up over the beach but back away from the people and noise. “Too bad you can’t sign her,” I said to Nicholas.
“Oh, I see plenty of groovy broads,” Nicholas said. “A lot of folksingers, aspiring folksingers, are broads. Most of them are what we in the industry call strictly no-talent. They’ve maybe listened repeatedly to tracks by Baez and Collins and Mitchell and imitated them – nothing original.”
“So now,” I said, “you have power over people.”
Nicholas was silent, fooling with his glass of Charles Krug wine.
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“Well, I – “ Nicholas hesitated. “I hate to see the expression on their faces when I say no. It’s – “ He gestured. “They have such high hopes. They come to Hollywood from all over the country with such high hopes. Like in the song by the Mamas & Papas, „Young Girls Are Coming ,to the Canyon.“ There was one girl today . . . she hitch-hiked from Kansas City, Kansas, with a fifteen-dollar Sears practice guitar . . . she knew perhaps five chords, and she had to read out of a songbook. We don’t generally audition them unless they’re booked somewhere already. I mean, we can’t audition everybody.” He looked sad as he said this.
“What’s Valis have to say these days?” I asked. Perhaps with his new, more expanded life he was no longer hearing voices and seeing printed pages in his sleep.
Nicholas got a strange look on his face. For the first time since the topic came up he seemed reluctant to discuss it. “I’ve – “ he began, and then he motioned me to go along with him, out of the living room of the apartment and into their bedroom. “Rachel has a rule now,” he explained, shutting the door after us. “I’m not to ever mention it. Listen.” He seated himself on the bed facing me. “I’ve discovered something. The clarity with which I can hear him – or her, or them; whichever it is – depends on the wind. When the wind is blowing – it blows in here from the desert to the east and north – I receive the communication better. I’ve been taking notes. Look at this.” He opened a dresser drawer; there lay a stack of papers, typed on, about a hundred sheets. And in the corner of the bedroom stood a small typing table with a Royal portable on it. “There’s a lot I haven’t ever told you,” he said, “about my contacts with them. I think it’s them. They seem to be able to come together and form a single body or mind, like a plasmatic life form. I think they exist in the atmosphere.”
“Goodness,” I said.
Nicholas said earnestly, “To them, this is a polluted ocean we live in; I’ve had dream after dream from their viewpoint, and always they’re looking down – I’m looking down – into a stagnant ocean or pond.” „The smog,” I said.
“They hate it. They won’t descend into it. You’re a science fiction writer; could life forms exist unsuspected in Earth’s atmosphere, highly Evolved, highly intelligent life forms, which take an active interest in our welfare and can help us when they choose? You’d think there would have been reports over the ages. It doesn’t make sense; someone would have discovered them long ago. Maybe – this is one of my theories – maybe they recently entered our atmosphere, possibly from another planet or plane. Another possibility I’ve considered is that they’re from the future, come back here in time to assist us. They’re very anxious to assist us. They seem to know everything. Christ, I guess they can .go anywhere; they don’t have material bodies, just the energetic plasmatic forms, like electromagnetic fields. They probably merge, pool their information, and then separate. Of course I’m just theorizing. I don’t know. That’s the impression of them I get.”
I said, “How come you can hear them and no one else can?”
“I have no theory about that.”
“Can’t they tell you?”
Nicholas said, “I really don’t understand much of what they say. I just get impressions of their presence. They did want me to move down here to Orange County; I was right about that. I think it’s because they can contact me better, being near the desert with the Santa Ana wind blowing a lot of the time. I’ve bought a bunch of books to do research, like the Britannica.”
“If they exist, somebody else would have-”
“I agree.” Nicholas nodded. “Why me? Why wouldn’t they talk to the President of the United States?”
“Ferris F. Fremont?”
He laughed. “Well, I guess so; I see what you mean. But there’re so many really important people . . . One time – listen to this.” He began rummaging among the sheets of paper. “They showed me an engineering principle, a motor with two shafts turning in opposite directions. They explained the whole principle to me; I saw the damn thing, round and very heavy. With no centrifugal torque, because of the opposed shafts. The shafts worked through a gear train to a common drive, finally, I guess, but I couldn’t see that; it was on the other side. In the dream I held the whole unit in my hands – it was painted red. I don’t know what the power source was, probably electricity. And I remember this: it had a cam system, a chain with weights that was tossed from one spinning rotor to the other very rapidly, to act as a brake. They wanted me to write all this down when I woke up; they showed me a very sharp pencil and note pad. They said – and I’ll never forget this – they told me, „This principle was known in your time.“ You see what that implies?” Nicholas had become very excited; his face was animated and flushed, and the words spilled out. “It tells me they’re from the future.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “It could just mean that in the future the motor you saw becomes well known. It may merely mean that they know our future.”
Nicholas stared at me, his mouth working silently, in perplexity.
“See,” I explained, “beings of that high order could have transcended the barrier of – “
“This is real,” Nicholas said quietly.
“Pardon?” I said.
In a low, steady voice, Nicholas said, “This is not a story. I’ve got over twenty thousand words of notes I’ve taken on this. Theories, research; what I’ve seen, heard. What I know. You know what I know? This is moving toward something, but I can’t see what. They don’t want me to see what; I’ll find out when the time comes, when they want me to. They’re not telling me very much, not really; sometimes I think as little as they can. So don’t screw around with spinning science fiction theories, Phil. You understand?”
There was silence. We faced each other. “What am I to say?”I asked finally. “Just be serious about it,” Nicholas said. “Just take it for what it is: a very serious, maybe a very grim, matter. I wish I knew. I sense that they’re in deadly earnest, playing a deadly game, on a scale beyond me, beyond all of us. Here for a purpose that – “ He broke off. “Christ,” he said, “this whole thing is getting to me. I wish there was someone I could tell; that’s what bothers me, that I can’t tell anyone. They moved me from Berkeley to Orange County … I can’t even tell that.”
“Why can’t you tell that?”
“I’ve tried.” Nicholas did not elaborate.
“You seem more mature,” I said.
“Well, I got out of Berkeley.” He shrugged.
“You have real responsibilities now.”
“I had real responsibilities then. I’m beginning to realize that it’s not a game.”
“Your job -”
“What I’m being told. When I’m asleep. Just because I don’t remember it when I wake up means nothing. I’ve read enough to know it’s remembered somewhere in the brain. It goes into the unconscious and is stored. Listen.” He gazed at me intently. “Phil,” he said, “I think I’m being programmed. I catch a phrase, a word; nothing more. Nothing I can go on either way. Just enough to make me think so. If I am being programmed, then it’s inhibited, which is the way programming works, either in the brain or in electronic circuitry, and eventually I’ll run into the disinhibiting stimulus, and all the programming will fire, either correctly or not, depending on how well it’s laid down.” He paused and then added remotely, “I’ve been reading about it. I’d never know.”