Radio Free Albemuth

  Sadassa cleared her throat. “When do you expect to have a tape?”

  “At the end of the month.”

  “And the master discs?”

  “First the mother and then the masters. It won’t take long, once we have the tape. I have nothing to do with that. My part will be over when the tape is prepared and authorized.”

  Sadassa said somberly. “Be prepared for them to show up and seize a stamper at any time. Right in the middle of production.”

  “Right,” I said. “We’ll have some clean stampers and some with the subliminal material—maybe they’ll get a clean one. Maybe luck will be with us.”

  “It will all depend,” Sadassa said, “on which they seize, one with material or one without it.”

  She was right. And over that we had no control. Nor did they.

  “By the way,” Sadassa said. “I want you to, wish me luck; I have an appointment the last day of the month to see my doctor. To find out if I’m still in remission.”

  “I wish you all the luck in the world,” I said.

  “Thank you. I’m sort of worried. I’m still losing weight… I just can’t seem to eat. I’m down to ninety-two pounds. And now that the satellite no longer exists—” She smiled wanly at me.

  I put my arm around her, hugged her against me; she was light and frail, like a mere bird. I kissed her, then, for the first time. At this she laughed a tiny, low laugh deep in her throat, almost a chuckle, and pressed against me.

  “They will arrest your friend Phil,” Sadassa said. “The one who writes the science fiction.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Is it worth it? To abolish his career along with yours?”

  And, I thought, his life…

  Part III

  PHIL

  28…ALONG with mine, I thought to myself. Nicholas and I are going down the tubes together, if he goes through with this. What a thing to find out.

  “You think it’s worth it?” I asked him. “To destroy yourself, your family, and your friends?”

  “It has got to be done,” Nicholas said.

  “Why?” I demanded. I was in the middle of writing a new novel, the best yet. “Nicholas,” I said, “what’s in the material you’re putting on the LP?”

  We were sitting together in the stands at Anaheim Stadium, watching the Angels play. Nolan Ryan was pitching; it was one hell of a game. Pittsburgh was screwing up badly. My last baseball game, I said to myself bitterly as I drank from my bottle of Falstaff beer.

  Nicholas said. “Information that will eventually cause Fremont’s fall from power.”

  “No information could do that,” I said. I didn’t have that much faith in the written or spoken word; I wasn’t that naive. “And in addition,” I said, “the police will never let you get the record out. They probably know all about it.”

  “Admittedly,” Nicholas said. “But we have to try. It may be only that one FAPer, that gung-ho Vivian Kaplan; she may have developed this as a personal, private lead to feather her own nest. Her suspicions may not be police policy.”

  “All suspicions are police policy,” I said.

  “Our illustrious President,” Nicholas said, “has been a sleeper for the Communist Party.”

  “Is that just a slur,” I said, “or can you prove it?”

  “We’re putting names, dates, and places into the material and God knows what else. Enough to—”

  “But you can’t prove it,” I said. “You have no documents.”

  “We have the details. Or anyway the person working with me has. They’re all going on the record, in subliminal form.”

  “And then you saturate America.”

  “Right.”

  “And everybody wakes up one morning,” I said, “singing, ‘Fremont is a Red; Fremont is a Red; better a dead Fremont than a Red,’ and so forth. Chanting the material in unison.”

  Nicholas nodded.

  “From a million throats,” I said. “Fifty million. Two hundred million. ‘Better he’s dead than red; better—’”

  “This is no joke,” Nicholas said starkly.

  “No,” I agreed, “it’s not. It means our lives. Our careers and our lives. The government will forge documents to refute you, if they take notice of the smear at all.”

  “It’s the truth,” Nicholas said. “Fremont was trained as an agent of Moscow; it’s a covert Soviet takeover, bloodless and unnoticed. We have the facts.”

  “Gee,” I said, as it began to sink in. “No wonder there’s no criticism of him from the Soviet Union.”

  “They think he’s great,” Nicholas said.

  “Well,” I said, “do it.”

  Nicholas glanced at me. “You agree? That’s why I had to tell you. She said I had to.”

  “Did you tell Rachel?”

  “I’m going to.”

  “Johnny will have different parents,” I said. And, I thought, someone else will have to write the great American science fiction novel. “Do it,” I said, “and do it good. Press a million of the damn things. Two million. Mail a copy to every radio station in America, AM and FM. Mail them to Canada and Europe and South America. Sell them for eighty-five cents. Give them away at supermarkets. Start a mail order record club with it as a freebie. Leave them on doorsteps. You have my blessing. I’ll stick the material in my new novel, if you want.”

  “No, we don’t want that,” Nicholas said.

  “Valis told you to do this? He’s guiding you?”

  Nicholas said. “Valis is gone. An H-warhead got him, got his voice.”

  “I know,” I said. “Do you miss him?”

  Nicholas said. “More than I can ever express. I’ll never hear the AI operator again, or him again—any of them, as long as I live.”

  “Good old Moyashka,” I said.

  “It must be wonderful to be a nation’s foremost astrophysicist and shoot things down out of the sky. Things you don’t understand. In the name of communicating with them.”

  “But you have the information on Fremont anyhow.”

  “We have it,” Nicholas said.

  “You are now part of Aramchek,” I said. I had guessed who the ‘we’ was, what organization.

  Nicholas nodded.

  “It’s a pleasure to know you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Nicholas said. And then he said. “Vivian came to see me.”

  “Vivian?” I said, and then I remembered. “What about?”

  “The record we’re producing.”

  “Then they do know. They know already.”

  “I’m providing her a hoked-up sample without the material. We’ll see if that does it long enough to get the real thing out.”

  “They’ll come in and take your master stampers.”

  “Some will be clean.”

  “They’ll grab them all.”

  “We’re banking on their taking a representative one.”

  “You have no chance,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” Nicholas said; he did not argue it.

  “A quixotic attack on the regime,” I said. “Nothing more. Well, do it anyhow. What the hell; they’re going to get us all anyhow. And who knows? Some FAPer might listen to it and wake up to reality. For a little while. You can never tell about these things…sometimes an idea catches on and no one can say why. Or it can fail, even if everyone hears it, and no one can say why. You’ve gone too far anyhow to pull out, haven’t you? So do it and do it right; when FAP listens to the record maybe the subliminal material will get into their minds and that alone will do it. They’ve got to listen to the record to know what you’ve done; even if it goes no further—”

  “I’m glad you don’t mind my dragging you down with me,” Nicholas said. He put his hand out and we shook hands.

  The Angels won the ball game, and Nicholas and I left the stadium together. We got into his green Maverick and joined the mass of cars maneuvering out onto State College. Presently we were driving toward Placentia.

  A large blue car pulled
in front of us; at the same time a marked police car flashed its red light at us from behind.

  “We’re being pulled over,” Nicholas said. “What’d I do?”

  As we reached the curb and stopped, the blue car’s doors opened and uniformed FAP Special Investigative Unit militiamen leaped out; in a moment one of them was in front of the Maverick with us, his gun against Nicholas’s head.

  “Don’t move,” the cop said.

  “I’m not moving,” Nicholas said.

  “What’s this—” I began, but I fell silent when the muzzle of a police pistol was shoved into my ribs.

  A few seconds later Nicholas and I had been hustled into the unmarked blue Ford; the doors shut and were electrically locked. The car moved out into traffic and made a U-turn. We were on our way to Orange County FAP headquarters—I knew it and Nicholas knew it. The cops did not have to tell us.

  “What,” I said as we drove into the underground garage at FAP headquarters, “have we done?”

  “You’ll be told,” a cop said, indicating for us to get out •of the car; they still held their guns, and they looked mad and mean and hateful. In all my life I had never seen faces so twisted up with hate.

  Nicholas, as he got from the car, said to me. “I think we were followed to the ball park.”

  The ball park, I thought in fear. You mean they can tape your conversation at the ball park, in the middle of a baseball game? In that crowd?

  Presently we were taken down a damp, dark concrete tunnel, under the offices on the ground floor; we ascended a ramp, reached an elevator, were held there for a time, and then we entered the elevator. A cop pressed a button and a moment later we were in a brightly lit hall with waxed floors, being led into a large office.

  Vivian Kaplan and several other FAPers, including one high-ranking police official with stripes and gold braid, sat or stood around, looking grim.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Vivian Kaplan said, her face pale. “We put a recording device on you, Nicholas, when you two were in line at the ticket window. We recorded your entire conversation during the ball game.”

  The high police official said hoarsely. “I’ve already given orders for Progressive Records to be closed down and their property and assets seized. No record will be made or released. It’s over, Mr. Brady. And we’re in the process of picking up the Aramchek girl.”

  Both Nicholas and I were silent.

  “You intended to put subliminal material in a record,” Vivian said, in an incredulous voice, “saying that President Fremont is an agent for the U.S. Communist Party?”

  Nicholas said nothing.

  “Ugh,” she said, shivering. “How insane. How perverted. That miserable satellite of yours—well, it’s gone now, gone for good. We caught it shooting down subliminal material into prime-time TV broadcasts, but it only had the power to override small areas at a time. It never said anything like this. It told you this stuff? It said to say this?”

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” Nicholas said.

  “Take him out and shoot him,” Vivian Kaplan said.

  In terror I stared at her.

  The high-ranking police officer said. “He might be able to tell us—”

  “There’s nothing we don’t know,” Vivian said.

  “All right.” The police officer made a sign; two FAPers took hold of Nicholas and propelled him from the office. He did not speak or look back as he departed. I watched them go, powerless and paralyzed.

  “Bring him back,” I said to Vivian, “and I’ll tell you everything he has told me.”

  “He’s not a human being any more,” Vivian said. “He’s controlled by the satellite.”

  “The satellite is gone!” I said.

  “There’s an egg been laid in his head,” Vivian said. “An alien egg; he’s a nest for it—we always kill them when we find them. Before the egg hatches.”

  “This one too?” A FAPer asked her, pointing a gun at me.

  “He’s not part of Aramchek,” Vivian said. To me she said. “We will keep you alive, Phil; we will release books under your name which we will write. For several years we have been preparing them; they already exist. Your style is easy to imitate. You will be allowed to speak in public, enough to confirm them as your books. Or shall we shoot you?”

  “Shoot me,” I said. “You bastards.”

  “The books will be released,” Vivian continued. “In them you will slowly conform to establishment views, book by book, until you reach a point we can approve of. The initial ones will still contain some of your subversive views, but since you are getting old now it won’t be unexpected for you to mellow.”

  I stared at her. “Then you’ve been planning all this time to pick me up.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And kill Nicholas.”

  “We did not plan that; we did not know he was satellite-controlled. Phil, there is no alternative. Your friend is no longer a—”

  “Vivian,” I said, “let me talk to Nicholas before you kill him. One final time.”

  “Will you cooperate afterward? Regarding your books?”

  “Yes,” I said, although I did not intend to; I was trying to buy time for Nicholas.

  Vivian picked up a walkie-talkie, said into it. “Hold up on Nicholas Brady. He’s to be taken to a cell instead, for now.”

  The walkie-talkie sputtered into response “Sorry, Ms Kaplan; he’s already dead. Wait—just a minute and I’ll check.” A pause. “Yes, he’s dead.”

  “Okay,” Vivian said. “Thanks.” To me she said calmly, “Too late, Phil. It’s police policy not to delay in—”

  I lunged at her, trying to hit her in the face. In my mind a fantasy wiped out reality; in my mind I hit her in the face, right in the mouth, I felt teeth break and fly into bits, I felt her nose and features collapse. But it was a dream, a wish and nothing more; immediately the FAPers were all over me, between me and her, hitting me. A gun butt slammed against my head, and the scene—and the dream—were gone.

  29I RECOVERED consciousness, not in a hospital bed but in a jail cell.

  Sitting up, I felt pain everywhere. My hair was matted with blood, I presently discovered. They had given me no medical attention, but I did not care. Nicholas was dead, and by now Rachel and Johnny, who had done nothing, had been rounded up. Progressive Records no longer existed; they had been ground into the dirt, abolished, before their record had even come into existence. So much for the great project, I said to myself. So much for the idea of a handful of people overthrowing a police tyranny.

  Even, I thought, with the help of Valis.

  My friend is dead, I said to myself. The friend I have had most of my life. There is now no Nicholas Brady to believe crazy things, to listen to, to enjoy.

  And it would never be rectified. No force, no superior entity would arrive and make everything right. The tyranny will continue; Ferris Fremont will remain in office; nothing was achieved except for the death of innocent friends.

  And I will never write a book again, I realized; they will all be—have been, in fact—written for me, by the authorities. And those who followed my writing and believed what I had to say will be listening to the voice of anonymous flunkies in Washington, DC, offices, men wearing fashionable ties and modern expensive suits. Men saying they are me but who are not. Creatures rasping like snakes in imitation of my own style and getting away with it.

  And I have no recourse, I said to myself. None.

  Two cops entered the jail cell. They had been watching on closed-circuit TV; I saw the scanner mounted on the ceiling and realized that they had been waiting for me to regain consciousness.

  “Come with us.”

  I went with them, slowly, painfully, down a corridor, having trouble walking. They led me down hall after hall, until, ahead, I saw a double set of doors marked MORGUE.

  “So you can see for yourself,” one said, pressing a bell.

  A moment later I stood gazing down at the body of Nicholas Brady. There
was no doubt that he was dead. They had shot him in the heart, making identification of his features easy.

  “All right,” one of the cops said. “Back to your cell.”

  “Why was I shown that?” I asked, on the way back.

  Neither cop answered.

  As I sat in the cell I realized that I knew why they had shown me Nicholas’s body. It told me that it was all true, what they had done to him, what they would do to me, what they were probably doing to the others. It was not a fakery to frighten me; it was grim reality. This time the police were not lying.

  But, I thought, maybe some of the Aramchek organization still remains. Just because they got Nicholas doesn’t mean they got them all.

  The death of men, I thought, is a dreadful thing. The death of good men is worse still. The tragedy of the world. Especially when it is needless.

  I half dozed for a while, aching and miserable, still in shock from the loss of my friend. Finally I was awakened from my trance state by Vivian Kaplan entering the cell. She carried a glass in her hand, which she held down to me.

  “Bourbon,” she said. “Jim Beam. Straight.”

  I drank it. What the hell, I thought. It was the real thing—it smelled and tasted like bourbon. It made me feel better at once.

  Vivian seated herself on the cot facing me; she held a handful of papers and she looked pleased.

  “You got everyone,” I said.

  “We got the record company before they even had a tape. We got the material to be inserted, too.” Examining a typed sheet of paper she read, “‘Join the Party!’ No, it’s called ‘Come to the Party!’ They say ‘join the party’ later on. And here’s another: ‘A grand chick saved me, put back together my whole world.’ The background turns into ‘Aramchek saved the world.’ Isn’t that gross? I mean, really.”

  “It would have worked,” I said,

  Vivian said bitingly, “‘Is everybody president at the party?’ I wonder which of them made up this stuff. And they intended to flood the market with this garbage. Maybe it would have influenced people subconsciously. We use this technique too, but not as crudely.”