Valis Read online

  I said, irritably, ‘I can handle it.’

  Chances were, there wouldn’t be anything to handle. A week later I received a letter from Mother Goose himself, Eric Lampton. It contained one word. KING. And after the word a question mark and an arrow pointing to the right of KING.

  It scared the shit out of me; I trembled. And wrote in the word FELIX. And mailed the letter back to Mother Goose.

  He had included a stamped self-addressed envelope.

  No doubt existed: we had linked up.

  The person referred to by the two-word cypher KING FELIX is the fifth Savior who, Zebra-or VALIS-had said, was either already born or would soon be. This was terribly frightening to me, getting the letter from Mother Goose. I wondered how Goose-Eric Lampton and his wife Linda – would feel when they got the letter back with FELIX correctly added. Correctly; yes, that was it. Only one word out of the hundreds of thousands of English words would do; no, not English: Latin. It is a name in English but a word in Latin.

  Prosperous, happy, fruitful ... the Latin word ‘Felix’ occurs in such injunctions as that by God Himself, who in Genesis 1:21 says to all the creatures of the world, ‘Be fruitful and increase, fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds increase on land.’ This is the essence of the meaning of Felix, this command from God, this loving command, this manifestation of his desire that we not only live but that we live happily and prosperously.

  FELIX. Fruit-bearing, fruitful, fertile, productive. All the nobler sorts of trees, whose fruits are offered to the superior deities. That brings good luck, of good omen, auspicious, favorable, propitious, fortunate, prosperous, felicitous. Lucky, happy, fortunate. Wholesome. Happier, more successful in.

  That last meaning interests me. ‘More successful in.’ The King who is more successful in ... in what? Perhaps in overthrowing the tyrannical reign of the king of tears, replacing that sad and bitter king with his own legitimate reign of happiness: the end of the age of the Black Iron Prison and the beginning of the age of the Garden of Palm Trees in the warm sun of Arabia (‘Felix’ also refers to the fertile portion of Arabia).

  Our little group, upon my receiving the missive from Mother Goose, met in plenipotentiary session.

  ‘Fat is in the fire,’ Kevin said laconically, but his eyes sparkled with excitement and joy, a joy we all shared.

  ‘You’re with me,’ Fat said.

  We had all chipped in to buy a bottle of Courvoisier Napoleon cognac, seated around Fat’s living room we warmed our glasses by rubbing their stems like fire sticks, feeling pretty smart.

  Kevin, hollowly, intoned, to no one in particular, ‘It would be interesting if some men in skin-tight shiny black uniforms show up and shoot us all, now. Because of Phil’s phonecall.’

  ‘Them’s the breaks,’ I said, easily fielding Kevin’s wit. ‘Let’s push Kevin out into the hall with the end of a broom handle and see if anyone opens fire on him.’

  ‘It would prove nothing,’ David said. ‘Half of Santa Ana is tired of Kevin.’

  Three nights later, at two A.M., the phone rang. When I answered it – I was still up, finishing an introduction for a book of stories culled from twenty-five years of my career1 – a man’s voice with a slight British accent said, ‘How many are there of you?’

  Bewildered, I said, ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Goose.’

  Aw Christ, I thought, and again I trembled. ‘Four,’ I said, and my voice shook.

  ‘This is a happy occasion,’ Eric Lampton said.

  ‘Prosperous,’ I said.

  Lampton laughed. ‘No, the King isn’t financially well-off.’

  ‘He –’ I couldn’t go on.

  Lampton said, ‘Vivit. I think. Vivet? He lives, anyhow, you’ll be happy to hear. My Latin isn’t very good.’

  ‘Where?’ I said.

  ‘Where are you? I have a 714 area code, here.’

  ‘Santa Ana. In Orange County.’

  ‘With Ferris,’ Lampton said. ‘You’re just north of Ferris’s mansion-by-the-sea.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘Shall we get together?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, and in my head a voice said, This is real.

  ‘You can fly up here, the four of you? To Sonoma?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll fly to the Oakland Airport; it’s better than San Francisco. You saw Valis?’

  ‘Several times.’ My voice still shook. ‘Mr Lampton, is a time dysfunction involved?’

  Eric Lampton said, ‘How can there be a dysfunction in something that doesn’t exist?’ He paused. ‘You didn’t think of that.’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Can I tell you that we thought Valis is one of the finest films we ever saw?’

  ‘I hope we can release the uncut version sometime. I’ll see that you get a peek at it up here. We really didn’t want to cut it, but, you know, practical considerations ... you’re a science fiction writer? Do you know Thomas Disch?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘He is very good.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, pleased that Lampton knew Disch’s writing. It was a good sign.

  ‘In a way Valis was shit,’ Lampton said. ‘We had to make it that way, to get the distributors to pick it up. For the popcorn drive-in crowd.’ There was merriment in his voice, a musical twinkling. ‘They expected me to sing, you know. “Hey, Mr Starman! When You Droppin’ In?” I think they were a bit disappointed, do you see.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, nonplussed.

  ‘Then we’ll see you up here. You have the address, do you? I won’t be in Sonoma after this month, so it must be this month or much later in the year; I’m flying back to the UK to do a TV film for the Granada people. And I have concert engagements ... I do have a recording date in Burbank; I could meet you there in – what do you call it? The “Southland”?’

  ‘We’ll fly up to Sonoma,’ I said. ‘Are there others?’ I said. ‘Who’ve contacted you?’

  ‘ “Happy King” people? Well, we’ll talk about that when we get together, your little group and Linda and Mini; did you know that Mini did the music?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Synchronicity Music’

  ‘He is very good,’ Lampton said. ‘Much of what we get through lies in his music. He doesn’t do songs, the prick. I wish he did. He’d do lovely songs. My songs aren’t bad but I’m not Paul.’ He paused. ‘Simon, I mean.’

  ‘Can I ask you,’ I said, ‘where he is?’

  ‘Oh. Well, yes; you can ask. But no one is going to tell you until we’ve talked. A two-word message doesn’t really tell me very much about you, now does it? Although I’ve checked you out. You were into drugs for a while and then you switched sides. You met Tim Leary –’

  ‘Only on the phone,’ I corrected. ‘Talked to him once on the phone; he was in Canada with John Lennon and Paul Williams – not the singer, but the writer.’

  ‘You’ve not been arrested. For possession?’

  ‘Never,’ I said.

  ‘You acted as a sort of dope guru to teenagers in – where was it? – oh yes; Marin County. Someone took a shot at you.’

  ‘That’s not quite it,’ I said.

  ‘You write very strange books. But you are positive you don’t have a police record; we don’t want you if you do.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said.

  Mildly, pleasantly, Lampton said, ‘You were mixed up with black terrorists for a while.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘What an adventure your life has been,’ Lampton said.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. That certainly was true.

  ‘You’re not on drugs now?’ Lampton laughed. ‘I’ll withdraw that question. We know you’re squared up now. All right, Philip; I’ll be glad to meet you and your friends personally. Was it you who got – well, let’s see. Got told things.’

  ‘The information was fired at my friend Horselover Fat.’

  ‘But that’s you. “Philip” means “Horselover” in Greek, lover of horses. “Fat”
is the German translation of “Dick”. So you’ve translated your name.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Should I call you “Horselover Fat”? Are you more comfortable that way?’

  ‘Whatever’s right,’ I said woodenly.

  ‘An expression from the Sixties.’ Lampton laughed. ‘Okay, Philip. I think we have enough information on you. We talked to your agent, Mr Galen; he seemed very astute and forthright’

  ‘He’s okay,’ I said.

  ‘He certainly understands where your head is at, as they say over here. Your publisher is Doubleday, is it?’

  ‘Bantam,’ I said.

  ‘When will your group be coming up?’

  I said, ‘What about this weekend?’

  ‘Very good,’ Lampton said. ‘You’ll enjoy this, you know. The suffering you’ve gone through is over. Do you realize that, Philip?’ His tone was no longer bantering. ‘It is over; it really is.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, my heart hammering.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Philip,’ Lampton said quietly.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve gone through a lot. The dead girl ... well, we can let that go; that is gone. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see.’ And I did. I hoped I did; I tried to understand; I wanted to.

  ‘You don’t understand. He’s here. The information is correct. ‘The Buddha is in the park.” Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Gautama was born in a great park called Lumbini. It’s a story such as that of Christ at Bethlehem. If the information were “Jesus is in Bethelehem,” you would know what that meant, wouldn’t you?’

  I nodded, forgetting I was on the phone.

  ‘He has slept almost two thousand years,’ Lampton said. ‘A very long time. Under everything that has happened. But – well, I think I’ve said enough. He is awake now; that’s the point Linda and I will see you Friday night or early Saturday, then?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Fine. Probably Friday night.’

  ‘Just remember,’ Lampton said.’ “The Buddha is in the park.” And try to be happy.’

  I said, ‘Is it him come back? Or another one?’

  A pause.

  ‘I mean –’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean. But you see, time isn’t real. It’s him again but not him; another one. There are many Buddhas, but only one. The key to understanding it is time ... when you play a record a second time, do the musicians play the music a second time? If you play the record fifty times, do the musicians play the music fifty times?’

  ‘Once,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lampton said, and the phone clicked. I set down the receiver.

  You don’t see that every day, I said to myself. What Goose said.

  To my surprise I realized that I had stopped shaking.

  It was as if I had been shaking all my life, from a chronic undercurrent of fear. Shaking, running, getting into trouble, losing the people I loved. Like a cartoon character instead of a person, I realized. A corny animation from the early Thirties. In back of all I had ever done the fear had forced me on. Now the fear had died, soothed away by the news I had heard. The news, I realized suddenly, that I had waited from the beginning to hear; created, in a sense, to be present when the news came, and for no other reason.

  I could forget the dead girl. The universe itself, on its macrocosmic scale, could now cease to grieve. The wound had healed.

  Because of the late hour I could not notify the others of Lampton’s call. Nor could I call Air California and make the plane reservations. However, early in the morning I called David, then Kevin and then Fat. They had me take care of the travel arrangements; late Friday night sounded fine to them.

  We met that evening and decided that our little group needed a name. After some bickering we let Fat decide. In view of Eric Lampton’s emphasis on the statement about the Buddha we decided to call ourselves the Siddhartha Society.

  ‘Then count me out,’ David said. ‘I’m sorry but I can’t go along with it unless there’s some suggestion of Christianity. I don’t mean to sound fanatic, but –’

  ‘You sound fanatic,’ Kevin told him.

  We bickered again. At last we came up with a name convoluted enough to satisfy Fat, cryptic enough to satisfy Kevin and Christian enough to satisfy David; to me the subject wasn’t all that important. Fat told us of a dream he had had recently, in which he had been a large fish. Instead of an arm he had walked around with sail-like or fan-like fins; with one. of these fins he had tried to hold onto an M-16 rifle but the weapon had slid to the ground, where-upon a voice had intoned:

  ‘Fish cannot carry guns.’

  Since the Greek word for that kind of fan was rhipidos – as with the Rhiptoglossa reptiles – we finally settled on the Rhipidon Society, the name referring elliptically to the Christian fish. This pleased Fat, too, since it alluded back to the Dogon people and their fish symbol for the benign deity.

  So now we could approach Lampton – both Eric and Linda Lampton – in the form of an official organization. Small though we were. I guess we were frightened at this point; intimidated is perhaps the better word.

  Taking me off to one side, Fat said in a low voice. ‘Did Eric Lampton really say we don’t have to think about her death any more?’

  I put my hand on Fat’s shoulder. ‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘He told me that. The age of oppression ended in August 1974; now the age of sorrow begins to end. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Fat said, with a faint smile, as if he could not believe what he was hearing, but wanted to believe it.

  ‘You’re not crazy, you know,’ I said to Fat. ‘Remember that. You can’t use that as a cop-out.’

  ‘And he’s alive? Already? He really is?’

  ‘Lampton says so.’

  ‘Then it’s true.’

  I said, ‘Probably it’s true.’

  ‘You believe it.’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘We’ll find out.’

  ‘Will he be old? Or a child? I guess he’s still a child. Phil –’ Fat gazed at me, stricken. ‘What if he isn’t human?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’ll deal with that problem when and if it arises.’ In my own mind I thought, Probably he’s here from the future; that’s the most likely possibility. He will not be human in some respects, but in others he will be. Our immortal child ... the life form of maybe millions of years ahead in time. Zebra, I thought. Now I will see you. We all will.

  King and judge, I thought. As promised. All the way back to Zoroaster.

  All the way back, in fact, to Osiris. And from Egypt to the Dogon people; and from there to the stars.

  ‘A hit of cognac,’ Kevin said, bringing the bottle into the living room. ‘As a toast.’

  ‘Damn, Kevin,’ David protested. ‘You can’t toast the Savior, not with cognac’

  ‘Ripple?’ Kevin said.

  We each accepted a glass of the Courvoisier Napoleon cognac, including David.

  ‘To the Rhipidon Society,’ Fat said. We touched glasses.

  I said, ‘And our motto.’

  ‘Do we have a motto?’ Kevin said.

  ‘ “Fish cannot carry guns”,’ I said.

  We drank to that.

  l The Golden Man, edited by Mark Hurst, Berkley Publishing Corporation, NY., 1980.

  Chapter 11

  It had been years since I’d visited Sonoma, California, which lies in the heart of the wine country, with lovely hills on three sides of it. Most attractive of all is the town’s park, set dead-center, with the old stone courthouse, the pond with ducks, the ancient cannons left over from used-up wars.

  The many small shops surrounding the square park pandered by and large to weekend tourists, bilking the unwary with many trashy goods, but a few genuine historically-important buildings from the old Mexican reign still stood, painted and with plaques proclaiming their ancient roles. The air smelled good – especially if you emanate from the Southland –
and even though it was night we strolled around before finally entering a bar called Gino’s to phone the Lamptons.

  In a white VW Rabbit both Eric and Linda Lampton picked us up; they met us in Gino’s where the four of us sat at a table drinking Separators, a specialty of the place.

  ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t pick you up at the airport,’ Eric Lampton said as he and his wife came over to our table; apparently he recognized me from my publicity pictures.

  Eric Lampton is slender, with long blond hair; he wore red bellbottoms and a T-shirt reading: SAVE THE WHALES. Kevin, of course, identified him at once, as did many of the people in the bar; calls, shouts and hellos greeted the Lamptons, who smiled around them at what obviously were their friends. Beside Eric, Linda walked quickly, also slender, with teeth like Emmylou Harris’s. Like her husband she is slender, but her hair is dark and quite soft and long. She wore cut-offs, much washed, and a checkered shirt with a bandana knotted around her neck. Both of them had on boots: Eric’s were sideboots and Linda’s were granny boots.

  Shortly, we were squeezed into the Rabbit, sailing down residential streets of relatively modern houses with wide lawns.

  ‘We are the Rhipidon Society,’ Fat said.

  Eric Lampton said, ‘We are the Friends of God.’

  Amazed, Kevin reacted violently; he stared at Eric Lampton. The rest of us wondered why.

  ‘You know the name, then,’ Eric said.

  ‘Gottesfreunde,’ Kevin said. ‘You go back to the four-teenth century!’

  ‘That’s right,’ Linda Lampton said. ‘The Friends of God formed originally in Basel. Finally we entered Germany and the Netherlands. You know of Meister Eckehart, then.’

  Kevin said, ‘He was the first person to conceive of the Godhead in distinction to God. The greatest of the Christian mystics. He taught that a person can attain union with the Godhead – he held a concept that God exists within the human soul!’ We had never heard Kevin so excited. ‘The soul can actually know God as he is! Nobody today teaches that! And, and –’ Kevin stammered; we had never heard him stammer before. ‘Sankara in India, in the ninth century; he taught the same things Eckehart taught. It’s a trans-Christian mysticism in which man can reach beyond God, or merges with God, as or with a spark of some kind that isn’t created. Brahman; that’s why Zebra –’