Radio Free Albemuth Read online

  “I’m not a preacher any longer,” Leon said, “since it isn’t worth anything. I’ll tell you one further instance, though, where Jesus talks about it. Your friends that died, they are now a single creature together instead of separate. Did they tell you that before they died?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Nicholas had told me about their future merging into a composite life form, all of them in Aramchek. The corporate existence that would come.”

  “That’s from John, chapter twelve, verse twenty-four. It goes ‘Unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain’—for ‘single’ read ‘solitary’—‘but if it dies, it yields up a rich harvest’—read ‘corporate life’ for ‘rich harvest.’ And—‘Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life.’ See? In each case something small—a treasure, a mustard seed which is the smallest seed of all, the sower sowing seeds in rich soil, a grain of wheat—something is placed in the ground, which is a secret symbol of the early Christians for the human head, the brain, the mind, and it grows there until it hatches, or sprouts, or is dug up, or it leavens the whole mass, and then it brings eternal life—the kingdom which no one can see. It’s what your Aramchek friends were talking about, probably without knowing it, that happened to them, before they died and caused their condition now, after they have died.”

  “All the parables of Christ have to be decoded, then?” I asked.

  “Yes,” preacher Leon said. “The Master says he’s speaking cryptically so the outsiders won’t understand. Matthew thirteen—twelve.”

  “And you know what he said is true.”

  “Yes.”

  Amazed, not understanding, I said. “And yet you still—”

  “Still I say,” Leon said, “that hating this world and forgetting this world is not enough. The work must be done here. Let me ask you this.” He gazed at me intently with ancient but clear eyes. “Where did the Master teach? Where did he do his work?”

  “Here in this world?” I said.

  “You see, then,” Leon said, and returned to his bologna sandwich. “These sandwiches get staler every day,” he muttered. “We ought to complain. Those red-white-and-blue ladies shouldn’t get away with so much; they’re getting lazy.”

  Having finished eating, I got out my sole cigarette and carefully lit up.

  “Can I have half of that?” Leon asked.

  I tore the cigarette in half and gave one part to my friend. To the only friend I had, now that the others were to the old ex-preacher who had shown me, so compellingly, that all that we had done, Nicholas and I and Sadassa Silvia, was worthless. The man who, as if speaking for Valis himself, had brought me the truth.

  “What kind of stuff did you write?” Leon asked me.

  “I’m still writing it,” I said jokingly. The government forgeries of my work were already beginning to appear. They made it a point—probably Vivian made it a point—to send me a copy of each one.

  “How do you do that?”

  “It’s easy when you know how,” I said.

  Leon leaned over and nudged me. “Look,” he said. “Kids watching us.” Sure enough, beyond the rusty cyclone fence inside which we worked, a group of schoolchildren were staring at us with a mixture of fascination and fear. “Hey, kids!” Leon yelled to them. “Don’t you ever wind up like this. Do everything you’re told, you hear?”

  The kids continued to stare.

  One of them, an older boy, had a portable transistor radio; Leon and I could hear the raucous rock music blaring from its tiny speaker. The announcer, a local Los Angeles DJ, was babbling on excitedly about the next cut, the latest release, he was saying, already a bullet on the charts, from the rock group Alexander Hamilton, the San Francisco performers who were number one these days.

  “Okay, here we go,” the announcer dinned, as the gang of kids gazed at us and we gazed timidly back. “It’s Alexander Hamilton with Grace Dandridge featured in ‘Come to the Party!’ All right, Grade—let us have it!” The music swirled out, and, seated with my bologna sandwich, hunched over and weary, I heard the words stray across to us through the smog-drenched midday air:

  Evubody present,

  Hey hey.

  Evubody present,

  The people say.

  Evubody’s president at

  PARTY TIME.

  Evubody here

  Have a good climb.

  Leon turned to stare at me with disgust.

  I said. “That’s it!”

  “That’s what?” Leon said.

  “He—they—got another record company to press it,” I said. “And it’s already out, it’s already a hit. So—” I calculated, from what I knew of the record business. It must have been at virtually the same time, I realized. As Progressive was preparing its tape, another company, another group, other members of Aramchek, guided by the satellite, prepared another.

  Nicholas’s efforts had served as a diversion. Those efforts had fitted into a plan none of us saw or understood. While they were killing him, him and Sadassa, and imprisoning me, Alexander Hamilton, the hottest rock group in the country, was recording the material at Arcane Records. Progressive had nobody to equal Alexander Hamilton in their entire catalog.

  Suddenly the music ceased. There was absolute silence. Then another tune began to play, this one instrumental: obviously whatever the station had at hand.

  A mistake, I realized. The DJ wasn’t supposed to air “Come to the Party!” He forgot his instructions—what the authorities had told him. But the records were pressed, I realized, pressed and shipped, and some of them—for a time at least—played. The government had moved against Arcane Records too late.

  “Did you hear that?” I said to Leon.

  “That garbage,” Leon said. “I never listen to AM radio. At home, before they arrested me, I had a big quad set, worth maybe three thousand dollars. That stuff is for kids—they like it.”

  The kids continued to stare at us. At the two political prisoners, old men to them, worn and dirty and defeated, eating their lunches, now, in silence. The transistor radio continued to play. Even more loudly. And, in the wind, I could hear others starting up everywhere. By the kids, I thought. The kids.