Radio Free Albemuth Read online

  “Write a letter to Orange County Drug Abuse,” he told me. “Tell them the situation.”

  “Will that—?”

  “They may still bust you, but when they find the letter in their files they may be lenient.”

  Anyhow, nothing happened. I began to sleep at night again. Vivian evidently had been bluffing; I was beginning to notice a lot of bluffing going on. The police seemed fond of that tactic; it had to do with getting the suspect to perform the hard work himself, as I had demonstrated my willingness to.

  They eat people like me for breakfast, I said to myself. My engineering a roll in the hay with Vivian had severely crippled my faith in my own tactics. I could not regain the conviction that in the end I, and people like me, would prevail. To prevail I would have to become a lot less stupid.

  I of course told Nicholas the whole thing. He of course was incredulous.

  “You did what?” he said. “You went to bed with an underage FAP girl who was carrying dope in her purse? My God; if they gave you a hacksaw in a cake you’d saw your way into jail. You want me to provide the cake? Rachel will be glad to bake it. Get your own saw.”

  “Vivian was working so many numbers on me at once that I got confused,” I said.

  “A seventeen-year-old girl puts an intelligent grown man in jail. Even when he’s being super-cautious.”

  I said, truthfully. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Stay away from her from now on,” Nicholas said. “Entirely away. Spend your time with knotholes, if necessary. Anything but her.”

  “Okay!” I said irritably. But I knew I’d see Vivian Kaplan again. She would seek me out. There would be another round with the authorities—perhaps several. Until they had netted Nicholas and me to their satisfaction. Until we were harmless.

  I wondered if the alleged protection which Valis supplied Nicholas extended to me. After all, we were in it together: two major stations in the network of pop culture, as the FAPers had put it. Kingpins, so to speak, in the vox populi.

  Perhaps the only entity we could turn to for help in this tyrannical situation was Valis. Valis against F.F.F. The Prince of this World—Ferris Fremont—and his foe from another realm, a foe Fremont didn’t even know existed. A product of Nicholas Brady’s mind. The prognosis was not comforting. I would have preferred something or someone more tangible. Still, it was better than nothing; it provided a certain psychological comfort. Nicholas, in the privacy of our intimate rap sessions, could envision vast operations by Valis and his transcendent forces against the cruel bondage we were in. It certainly beat watching TV, which now consisted mostly of propaganda dramas extolling the police, authority in general, war, car crashes, and the Old West, where simple virtues had prevailed. John Wayne had become the official folk hero of America.

  And then there was the weekly ‘Conversation with the Man We Trust,’ Ferris F. Fremont speaking from a firelit alcove in the White House.

  It was a real problem to get the masses to watch Ferris Fremont deliver his speeches, because he spoke in such a dull way. It was like sitting through an endless lecture on some obscure aspect of economics—exactly like that, since Fremont invariably gave a rundown of figures from all departments. Evidently, behind his nondescript figure a powerful White House staff lurked, never seen, who fed him an infinitude of typed information on every topic bearing on his rule. Fremont did not appear to regard all this as dull. ‘Iron production,’ he would stumble along, reading half the words off the cue card wrong, ‘is up three percent, giving rise to a justified optimism in agricultural quarters.’ I always had the feeling I was back in school, and the tests we had to fill out afterward reinforced this sensation.

  This did not make Ferris Fremont a figurehead, however, fronting for the staff who fed his facts to him; on the contrary, when he departed from his prepared script the real savagery in him came out. He liked to depart when matters concerning America and its honor and destiny were mentioned. East Asia was a place where American boys were demonstrating that honor, and Fremont could not let a reference to that topic pass without an extempore comment, at which times his sallow face would furrow with intensity and he would stumble out words of grim determination to all who would challenge American might. We had a plethora of American might, to hear Fremont speak of it. Half his time was spent warning unmentioned enemies of that might. I usually assumed he meant the Chinese, although he seldom saw cause to mention them by name. Being from California, Fremont kept a special place in his heart for the Chinese; to hear him speak you would have thought they had overcharged us in their laying of railroad track—a matter he could not, and honor would not allow him to, forget.

  Really, he was the worst speechmaker I had ever heard. I often wished the invisible White House staff who formed his compatriots would rise up, select one of their number who could talk, and delegate him to finish Fremont’s prepared speech. Given the right pinstriped suit and loud tie, few people would notice.

  These synthetic chats were carried by all networks in prime time, and it was a good idea to listen. You were supposed to do so with your front door open, so that roving bands of FAPers could make spot checks. They passed out little cards on which various simple-minded questions about the current speech were asked; you were to check the right answers and then drop the card in a mailbox. The enormous White House staff scrutinized your answers to make sure you understood what you were hearing. It was mandatory to put your social security number on the card; the authorities had taken to organizing all their files on the basis of social security numbers. Your mail-in cards went into your permanent file, for what reason no one knew. We calculated that these cards must be making the files very large. Maybe there were subtle trick questions, such as the K scale in the Minnesota MultiPhasic, the so-called ‘lying’ scale.

  Sometimes the questions did seem devious, with the high possibility of making an accidental incriminating answer. One went:

  Russia is becoming (1) weaker; (2) stronger; (3) about the same in relationship to the Free World.

  Naturally, Rachel and Nicholas and I, doing our cards in unison, marked (2). The ideology of the authorities always stressed Russia’s increasing strength, and the need for the Free World to continually double its arms budget in order just to keep up.

  However, a later question rendered this one suspect.

  Russian technology is (1) very good; (2) adequate; (3) typically inept.

  Well, if you marked (1) you seemed to be paying the Communists a compliment. (2) was probably the best bet, since it probably was true, but the way (3) was worded seemed to suggest that the right-thinking citizen would reflexively mark it. After all, what could one expect from captive Slavic minds? Certainly, typical ineptness. We were very good, not them.

  But if their technology was typically inept, then how could (2) be the correct answer on the previous question? How did a nation with typically inept technology become stronger than ourselves? Nicholas and Rachel and I returned to the previous question and changed our answers to (1). That way it dovetailed with typically inept. The weekly questionnaire had many pitfalls. The U.S.S.R., like a Japanese wrestler, was both dumb and clever at the same time, strong and weak, likely to win and a sure bet to lose. All we in the Free World had to do was never falter. We managed this by turning in our cards regularly. It was the least we could do.

  The answer to the above dilemma was imparted to us by Ferris Fremont the next week. How did a nation with typically inept technology become stronger than ourselves? Through subversion here at home, a sapping of the will of Americans through the guile of defeatism. There was a question on the next card about that:

  The greatest enemy America faces is (1) Russia; (2) our high standard of living, highest the world has ever known; (3) secret infiltrators in our midst.

  We knew to put (3). However, Nicholas that night was in a crazy mood; he wanted to check (2).

  “It’s our standard of living, Phil,” he told me with a wink. “That’s what’s goin
g to doom us. Let’s all three of us check (2).”

  “What’s going to doom us is screwing around with these answer cards,” I told him. “They take these answers seriously.”

  “They never read them,” Rachel said. “It’s just to make sure you listen to Fremont’s weekly speech. How could they read all these cards? Two hundred million of them every week.”

  “Computer read,” I said.

  “I vote we mark (2) on that question,” Nicholas said, and did so.

  We filled out our cards, and then on Nicholas’s suggestion he and I walked to the mailbox together, the three cards in the pre-franked envelope which the government provided.

  “I want to talk to you,” Nicholas said to me, as soon as we were outside.

  “Okay,” I said. I thought he meant about the cards. But it was not the cards he had on his mind. As soon as he began to talk I understood why he had behaved so erratically.

  “I received the most compelling reception of Valis so far,” he said in a low, very serious voice. “It completely shook me up. Nothing so far has—well, I’ll tell you. What I saw visually was the woman again. She was seated in a modern living room, on the floor near a coffee table. A bunch of men were around on all sides of her, all wearing expensive Eastern-style suits, establishment suits. The men were young. They were deep in discussion. The woman suddenly, when they were aware of her, she—” He paused. “She turned on her third eye, the one with the lens instead of the pupil; she turned it on them, and, Phil—she read into their hearts. What they had done and weren’t admitting, what they intended to do: everything about them. And she kept on smiling. They never guessed she had that eye with that all-seeing lens and was reading deep into them. There were no secrets left, nothing she didn’t know. You know what she learned about them?”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “They were conspirators,” Nicholas said. “They had plotted the murders of everyone who’s been assassinated: Dr. King, the two Kennedys, Jim Pike, Malcolm X, George Lincoln Rockwell the Nazi Party leader…all of them. Phil, I tell you as God is my witness, she saw that. And as I looked at her I was made to understand what she was: the sibyl. The Roman sibyl who guards the republic. Our republic.”

  We had reached the mailbox. Nicholas stopped there, turned toward me, and placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “She made me understand that she had seen them and she knew what they had done, and they would be brought to justice. The fact that she had seen them ensured that. There’s no way they can escape paying for what they’ve done.”

  I said. “And they weren’t conscious of her.”

  “They didn’t even guess that their deeds are known, and known to her. It never entered their minds—they were still joking and laughing, like a bunch of pals, and there she was overseeing them with that third eye, that lensed eye, and she was smiling along with them. And then the eye and its lens disappeared and again she looked like an ordinary person. Same as anyone else.”

  “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’.”

  “I’ll ‘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 Fremo
nt 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.

  14DURING 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.