Radio Free Albemuth Page 8

  “Yep,” I said.

  “We’re not interrupting your writing, are we?” the boy said. They were the epitome of grooming and politeness.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “You’ve certainly written some important novels,” the girl said. “Ubik, Man in the Castle—”

  “The Man in the High Castle,” I corrected her. Obviously they’d never read my work.

  “You and Mr. Brady together,” the girl said, “have certainly contributed a great deal to our popular culture, you with your stories and he selecting which artists are to be recorded. Is this why you’re both living down in this area, the entertainment capital of the world?”

  “Orange County?” I said.

  “The Southland.”

  “Well, it makes it easy to meet people,” I said vaguely.

  “You and Mr. Brady have been friends for years, haven’t you?” the boy said. “You lived together in Berkeley, as roommates.”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “And then he moved down here, and after a few years so did you.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re good friends.”

  “Would you be willing to sign a notarized statement, under oath, as to his and his wife’s political loyalty?”

  Taken by surprise, I said. “What?”

  “Or would you not be willing to?”

  “Sure I would,” I said.

  “We would like you to draft such a statement during the next few days,” the girl said. “We’ll help in the preparation of the final draft down at our headquarters. And we will leave you several models to base yours on, as well as an instruction manual.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “To help your friend,” the girl said.

  “Why does he need help?” I said.

  The boy said. “Nicholas Brady has a suspect background, from his Berkeley days. If he is to retain the position he now holds, he will need the support of his friends. You’re willing to give that support, aren’t you? You are his friend.”

  I said. “I’ll give Nicholas any and all help I can.” As I said it I knew instinctively that I had taken the bait; I was in some vague police trap.

  “Good,” the girl said, and smiled, whereupon both of them rose to leave. The boy placed a plastic package down on the coffee table.

  “Your kit,” he said. “Instructions, helpful hints, models; as an author you’ll undoubtedly find this very easy. Along with your statement about your friend we’d like you to draft a short autobiographical sketch, so the person who reads your statement will know a little about you too.”

  “A sketch covering what?” I said, and now I was really afraid, really sure I had fallen into a trap.

  “There’s instructions covering that as well,” the girl said, and both of them left. I was alone with the red-white-and-blue plastic kit. Seating myself, I opened the kit and began looking through the instruction booklet, which was printed on fine glossy paper. It bore the Presidential seal and the printed signature of F.F.F.

  Dear American:

  You have been invited to write a short article on the subject you know best: yourself! It is entirely up to you what matters you consider pertinent and what you feel should be left out. However, you will be graded not only on your inclusions but on what you omit.

  Perhaps you have been asked to do this by a delegation of your friends and neighbors, the Friends of the American People. Or perhaps you wrote for this kit on your own initiative. Or perhaps your local police suggested it to you as a way to…

  I turned to the instruction booklet oh the preparation of a notarized statement about a friend’s loyalty.

  Dear American:

  You have been invited to write a short article on a subject well known to you: a close friend! It is entirely up to you what matters you consider pertinent and what you feel should be left out. However, you will benefit your friend by the greatest inclusion. What you write about him will, of course, be kept completely confidential; this article is for official use only.

  Perhaps you have been asked to do this by a delegation of your friends and neighbors, the Friends of…

  I went to my typewriter, put paper in it, and began to compose the autobiographical sketch.

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

  I, Philip K. Dick, being of sound mind and reasonably good health, wish to admit to being a high official for a period covering many years of the organization known to its enemies as Aramchek. In the course of my training for subversion and espionage, I have learned to lie and if not outright lie to distort so effectively that what I say is worthless to those who hold power in this our target nation, the U.S. of A. With these provisos in mind, I will now make a statement about my lifelong friend Nicholas Brady, who has, to my recollection, been a covert advocate and supporter of the policies of Aramchek for years, changing his mind as the official line of Aramchek continually changes in order that it be in accord with the policy of People’s China and other Socialist powers, not excluding the U.S.S.R., one of our earliest acquisitions in the power struggle against man which we have waged since our inception in the Middle Ages.

  Perhaps I should speak further of Aramchek, in order to better clarify my own situation. Aramchek, an offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church, is devoted to the principle that the means justify the end. We therefore employ the highest means possible, with no regard to the end, knowing that God will dispose of that which mere man has proposed. In connection with this we employ and have employed every artifice and strategy and resource available to us to thwart the goals of Ferris F. Fremont, current puppet tyrant of these the U.S. of A. During his childhood, to cite one example, we arranged to stencil an indentation of the name of our organization on the sidewalk down the street from the house in which he was born, for the purpose of spooking him in a most forceful way as to the fact that eventually WE WOULD GET HIM.

  I signed this document and then sat back to consider the situation I was in. It wasn’t good. I recognized this red-white-and-blue plastic kit; it was the notorious ‘voluntary information’ kit, the first step in drawing a citizen into the active intelligence system of the government. Like an income tax audit, sooner or later every citizen got one. This was our lifestyle under F.F.F.

  If I failed to turn over my autobiographical sketch and statement about Nicholas, the FAPers would be back, and next time they would be less polite. If I turned in an inadequate report on Nicholas and myself, they would politely request more material. It was a technique first employed by the North Koreans on captured American prisoners: you were given a piece of paper and a pencil and told to write down anything about yourself you felt like, with no suggestions from the jailers. It was amazing what revelations prisoners made about themselves, far surpassing what they would have confessed under suggestion. When it came time to inform, a man was his own worst adversary, his own ultimate rat. All I had to do was sit before my typewriter long enough and I would have told them everything there was about myself and Nicholas, and probably after I had told them the facts I would go on with fantastic inventions, all designed to nail the attention—and admiration—of my audience.

  The human being has an unfortunate tendency to wish to please.

  I was in effect exactly like those captured Americans: a prisoner of war. I had become that in November 1968 when F.F.F. got elected. So had we all; we now dwelt in a very large prison, without walls, bounded by Canada, Mexico, and two oceans. There were the jailers, the turnkeys, the informers, and somewhere in the Midwest the solitary confinement of the special internment camps. Most people did not appear to notice. Since there were no literal bars or barbed wire, since they had committed no crimes, had not been arrested or taken to court, they did not grasp the change, the dread transformation, of their situation. It was the classic case of a man kidnapped while standing still. Since they had been taken nowhere, and since they themselves had voted the new tyranny into power, they could see nothing wrong. Anyhow, a good third of them, had they known, would have thought it w
as a good idea. As F.F.F. told them, now the war in Vietnam could be brought to an honorable conclusion, and, at home, the mysterious organization Aramchek could be annihilated. The Loyal Americans could breathe freely again. Their freedom to do as they were told had been preserved.

  I returned to the typewriter and drafted another statement. It was important to do a good job.

  TO THE AUTHORITIES:

  I, Philip K. Dick, have never liked you, and I know from the burglary on my house and the fact that you are busily at work hiding dope in the light sockets and telephone as I sit here that you don’t care for me either. However, as much as I dislike you, and you me, there is someone whom I dislike even more, to wit: Mr. Nicholas Brady. I suggest that you dislike him too. Let me outline why.

  First of all, Mr. Nicholas Brady is not a human being in the usual sense of the word. He has been taken over by (or more accurately will one of these days to the surprise of us all be taken over by) an alien life form emanating from another star. Far-ranging speculations can begin from this premise.

  Perhaps, because my profession is that of a science fiction writer, you imagine that I am spinning a trial fantasy to see how you react. Not so, authorities. I only wish it were so. I have myself with my own eyes seen Mr. Nicholas Brady demonstrate fantastic supernatural powers, bestowed on him by the alien suprahuman entity known as Valisystem A. I have seen Mr. Nicholas Brady walk through walls. I have seen him melt glass. One afternoon, to demonstrate the staggering magnitude of his powers, Mr. Nicholas Brady caused Cleveland to materialize in the open pasture along the side of the 91 freeway and then disappear again with no one save ourselves the wiser. Mr. Nicholas Brady abolishes the bounds of space and time when the mood seizes him; he can return to the ancient past or leap ahead centuries into the future. He can, if he wishes, transport himself directly to Alpha Centauri or any other…

  Fuck it, I thought, and ceased writing. It had been my intention to so thoroughly overstate the case in lurid hyperbole that the FAPers wouldn’t give it an instant’s credence.

  I began then, to think about the boy and girl who had brought me this plastic kit, this lethal thing. At the time I had hardly noticed them on a conscious basis, but the impression of their two faces had remained anyhow. The girl, I thought, hadn’t been bad-looking: dark-haired, with green eyes, rather bright-looking, many years younger than me, but that hadn’t bothered me before.

  Picking up the red-white-and-blue kit I found a white card glued to it. On the card were their names and telephone numbers. Well, I thought to myself, maybe there is another way out of this. Other than complying. Maybe I should ask for further help in preparing these statements.

  While I was getting my act together in regard to the black-haired FAP girl, the phone rang. It was Nicholas.

  I told him what had happened that evening.

  “Are you going to do it?” he asked. “Write a statement about me?”

  “Well,” I began.

  Nicholas said. “It’s not so easy when it’s you, is it?”

  “Shit, man,” I said, “they’ve been hiding dope in my house; a cop tipped me off last night. I spent the whole night looking for it.”

  “They’ve got something on me too,” Nicholas said. “They either have it or they arrange to have it, as in your case. Well, Phil, we’re in the same boat. You better decide what to do. But if you inform on me—”

  “All I’m being asked to do is write a statement of support,” I said, but I knew he was right. They had us both, really, in the same grip. The pressures were the same.

  Nicholas was right when he said, It’s not so easy when it’s you. “Fuck ’em,” I had advised him. Well, so much for advice. The shoe was now on the other foot. And it hurt; it hurt deep into my soul, piercing and twisting and burning. And no solution lay at hand—none.

  None except to call the FAP girl up and sweet-talk her. My freedom, my life, depended on it. And so did Nicholas’s.

  12THE girl’s name was Vivian Kaplan. I waited an hour, to be sure she had arrived back home, and then dialed.

  “Hello?”

  I said hello, told her who I was, and then explained that I had tied myself up in knots trying to write my statement about Nicholas. “Maybe,” I said, “it’s because I know so much about him. More than anyone else does. It’s hard to know what to put down and what not to. After all, I want a good grade.” I figured that would get her.

  “I’m certain you can do it,” Vivian Kaplan said. “You are a professional writer; why, housewives and mechanics are getting the knack of it.”

  “Maybe it is precisely because I am a professional writer,” I said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Well, I am a fiction writer. I’m used to making things up.”

  Vivian said. “You’re not to make anything up on these documents, Phil.”

  I said. “Some of the truth about Nicholas reads like the wildest fiction, so help me God.”

  That did gaff her. “Oh?”

  “The disgrace,” I said, “that forced him—the three of us—to leave Berkeley and migrate down here. Most of the secret he’s still kept locked up in his heart.”

  “‘Disgrace,’” Vivian echoed. “‘Secret.’”

  “He couldn’t remain in Berkeley. Do you suppose you could come back here and we could talk about it?”

  “For a little while,” Vivian said. “But not for long.”

  “Just to help me get started,” I said, pleased.

  Half an hour later a small red Chevy II pulled up in my driveway. Vivian Kaplan got out, purse in hand, wearing a short imitation leather coat. I guided her into the house.

  “I really appreciate this,” I told her as I seated her in the living room. I took her coat and hung it in the closet.

  Producing a small writing pad and pen from her purse, Vivian prepared to write. “What caused Mr. Brady’s disgrace back in Berkeley? You dictate and I’ll transcribe it.”

  From the kitchen I brought a bottle of wine, a five-year-old Louis Martini.

  “None of that for me, please,” Vivian said.

  “Just a taste. It’s a good year.”

  “Maybe a taste.”

  I poured us both wine. In the background I had music playing, and low lights. Vivian, however, did not seem to notice; she was waiting intently for what I had to say. She did not touch her wine.

  “Nicholas,” I said, “talks to God.”

  She stared at me, mouth agape.

  “He started it in Berkeley. As a child he was a Quaker, you know. I’m sure you have that in your records. The Quakers believe that the Holy Spirit can come to you and talk to you. All his life Nicholas waited for God—which is the same as the Holy Spirit, especially if you are a trinitarian, which Nicholas and I are—to come to talk to him. A couple of years before we left Berkeley, in the early sixties it was, God first spoke to him.”

  Vivian, listening, had written nothing.

  “Since then,” I said. “Nicholas has maintained an intimate relationship with God. He speaks to him as you and I are speaking to each other now.”

  “Christ,” Vivian said impatiently, “that isn’t any good; I can’t report that.”

  “Do you know anybody else who communes regularly with God?” I said. “Nicholas’s whole life is built around it; speaking with God and hearing God speak back is everything to him. As well it might be. I envy his experience.”

  Vivian put her pen away. “Are you sure he isn’t crazy? It sounds crazy to me.”

  “You should be writing this down,” I said. “I’m going to reveal to you some of the things God has told him.”

  “I don’t care about that!” Vivian said, with agitation. “It has no political bearing! What can we do with information like that?”

  “God said,” I told her, “that he is going to cause plagues to fall on this entire order of things and wash it away; Wet plagues, I’d guess, from the sound of it; something about water.”

  “Oh, balls,” Vivian said.<
br />
  “I believe he also said he would place a rainbow in the sky,” I said. “Afterward, as a sign of peace between God and man.”

  Sharply, Vivian said. “Is this the best you can do?”

  “I told you I was having trouble getting things down. This is why I wanted you to come over.” I seated myself on the couch beside her and took her ballpoint pen from her. “I’ll put down the opening sentence. ‘Nicholas Brady—’”

  “You got me over here for a religious thing? There’s nothing we can do with a religious thing; there’s nothing unpatriotic about God. God is not on our list. Can’t you come up with anything else?”

  “In Berkeley,” I said, “talking to God is a disgrace. Nick was ruined there, when he confided it to people. They drove him off like an animal.”

  “That’s Berkeley,” Vivian said. “Where there’s nothing but atheists and Commies. I’m not surprised. But this is Orange County. This is the real world.”

  “You mean down here it’s okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then Nicholas is safe at last.”

  “Phil,” Vivian said, “there must be other things you know about Nicholas which would—you know what I mean—would offset this about God.”

  “It is not possible,” I said, “to offset God. He is all-powerful and all-knowing.”

  “I mean in terms of the political file we’re drawing up.”

  “Have some of the wine,” I said, holding her glass toward her.

  “No, I don’t drink wine,” Vivian said in agitation. “But I brought some good grass with me.” She opened up her purse and rummaged inside.

  I really wasn’t surprised. It figured.

  “I need a small box,” she said, “to manicure it in. And a card such as a credit card. Here, this will do.” She found a white business card in her wallet.

  “Let me see that,” I said, extending my hand. Vivian placed the lid of grass in it; I then carried the grass from the living room into the bathroom, where at once I locked the door behind me. In an instant I had dumped the marijuana into the toilet and had flushed it down; the contraband would not be found in my house, not this lid of it.