‘Easy,’ David murmured. ‘We’ve been through a lot.’
To me, Kevin said, ‘She’s not the Savior. We’re all as nuts as you, Phil. They’re nuts up there; we’re nuts down here.’
David said, ‘Then how could a two-year-old girl say such – ‘
‘They had a wire running to her head,’ Kevin yelled, ‘and a microphone at the other end of the wire, and a speaker inside her face. It was somebody else talking.’
‘I need a drink,’ I said. ‘Let’s stop at Sombrero Street.’
‘I liked you better when you believed you were Horse-lover Fat,’ Kevin yelled. ‘Him I liked. You’re as stupid as my cat. If stupidity kills, why aren’t you dead?’
‘You want to try to arrange it?’ I said.
‘Obviously stupidity is a survival trait,’ Kevin said, but his voice sank, now, into near-inaudibility. ‘I don’t know,’ he murmured.’ “The Savior.” How can it be? It’s my fault; I took you to see Valis. I got you mixed up with Mother Goose. Does it make sense that Mother Goose would give birth to the Savior? Does any of this make sense?’
‘Stop at Sombrero Street,’ David said.
‘The Rhipidon Society holds its meetings in a bar,’ Kevin said. “That’s our commission: to sit in a bar and drink. That’ll sure save the world. And why save it anyhow?’
We drove on in silence, but we did end up at Sombrero Street; the majority of the Rhipidon Society had voted in favor of it.
Certainly it constitutes bad news if the people who agree with you are buggier than batshit. Sophia herself (and this is important) had said that Eric and Linda Lampton were ill. In addition to that, Sophia or VALIS had provided me with the words to get us out of there when the Lamptons had closed in on us, hemming us in – had provided words and then tinkered expertly with time.
I could separate the beautiful child from the ugly Lamptons. I did not lump them together. Significantly, the two-year-old child had spoken what seemed like wisdom ... sitting in the bar with my bottle of Mexican beer I asked myself, What are the criteria of rationality, by which to judge if wisdom is present? Wisdom has to be, by its very nature, rational; it is the final stage of what is locked into the real. There is an intimate relationship between what is wise and what exists, although that relationship is subtle. What had the little girl told us? That human beings should now give up the worship of all deities except mankind itself. This did not seem irrational to me. Whether it had been said by a child or whether it came from the Britannica, it would have struck me as sound.
For some time I had held the opinion that Zebra – as I had called the entity which manifested itself to me in March 1974 – was in fact the laminated totality of all my selves along the linear time-axis; Zebra – or VALIS – was the supra-temporal expression of a given human being and not a god ... not unless the supra-temporal expression of a given human being is what we actually mean by the term ‘god,’ is what we worship, without realizing it, when we worship ‘god.’
The hell with it, I thought wearily. I give up.
Kevin drove me home; I went at once to bed, worn-out and discouraged, in a vague way. I think what discouraged me about the situation was the uncertainty of our commission, received from Sophia. We had a mandate but for what? More important, what did Sophia intend to do as she matured? Remain with the Lamptons? Escape, change her name, move to Japan and start a new life?
Where would she surface? Where would we find mention of her over the years? Would we have to wait until she grew to adulthood? That might be eighteen years. In eighteen years Ferris F. Fremount, to use the name from the film, could have taken over the world – again. We needed help now.
But then I thought, You always need the Savior now. Later is always too late.
When I fell asleep that night I had a dream. In the dream I rode in Kevin’s Honda, but instead of Kevin driving, Linda Ronstadt sat behind the wheel, and the car was open, like a vehicle from ancient times, like a chariot. Smiling at me, Ronstadt sang, and she sang more beautifully than any time I had ever heard her sing before. She sang:
‘To walk toward the dawn
You must put your slippers on.’
In the dream this delighted me; it seemed a terribly important message. When I woke up the next morning I could still see her lovely face, the dark, glowing eyes: such large eyes, so filled with light, a strange kind of black light, like the light of stars. Her look toward me was one of intense love, but not sexual love; it was what the Bible calls loving-kindness. Where was she driving me?
During the next day I tried to figure out what the cryptic words referred to. Slippers. Dawn. What did I associate with the dawn?
Studying my reference books (at one time I would have said, ‘Horselover Fat, studying his reference books’), I came across the fact that Aurora is the Latin word for the personification of the dawn. And that suggests Aurora Borealis – which looks like St Elmo’s Fire, which is how Zebra or VALIS looked. The Britannica says of the Aurora Borealis:
The Aurora Borealis appears throughout history in the mythology of the Eskimo, the Irish, the English, the Scandinavians, and others; it was usually believed to be a supernatural manifestation ... Northern Germanic tribes saw in it the splendor of the shields of Valkyrie (warrior women).’
Did that mean – was VALIS telling me – that little Sophia would issue forth into the world as a ‘warrior woman’? Maybe so.
What about slippers? I could think of one association. an interesting one. Empedocles, the pupil of Pythagoras, who had gone public about remembering his past lives and who told his friends privately that he was Apollo, had never died in the usual sense; instead, his golden slippers had been found near the top of the volcano Mount Etna. Either Empedocles, like Elijah, had been taken up into heaven bodily, or he had jumped into the volcano. Mount Etna is in the eastern-most part of Sicily. In Roman times the word ‘aurora’ literally meant ‘east.’ Was VALIS alluding to both itself and to re-birth, to eternal life? Was I being -
The phone rang.
Picking it up I said, ‘Hello.’
I heard Eric Lampton’s voice. It sounded twisted, like an old root, a dying root. ‘We have something to tell you. I’ll let Linda tell you. Hold on.’
A deep fear entered me as I stood holding the silent phone. Then Linda Lampton’s voice sounded in my ear, flat and toneless. The dream had to do with her, I realized; Linda Ronstadt; Linda Lampton. ‘What is it?’ I said, unable to understand what Linda Lampton was saying.
‘The little girl is dead,’ Linda Lampton said. ‘Sophia.’
‘How?’ I said.
‘Mini killed her. By accident. The police are here. With a laser. He was trying to –’
I hung up.
The phone rang again almost at once. I picked it up and said hello.
Linda Lampton said, ‘Mini wanted to try to get as much information –’
Thanks for telling me,’ I said. Crazily, I felt bitter anger, not sorrow.
‘He was trying information-transfer by laser,’ Linda was saying. ‘We’re calling everyone. We don’t understand; if Sophia was the Savior, how could she die?’
Dead at two years old, I realized. Impossible.
I hung up the phone and sat down. After a time, I realized that the woman in the dream driving the car and singing had been Sophia, but grown up, as she would have been one day. The dark eyes filled with light and life and fire.
The dream was her way of saying good-bye.
Chapter 14
The newspapers and TV carried an account of Mother Goose’s daughter’s death. Naturally, since Eric Lampton was a rock star, the implication was made that sinister forces had been at work, probably having to do with neglect or drugs or weird stuff generally. Mini’s face was shown, and then some clips from the film Valis in which the fortress-like mixer appeared.
Two or three days later, everyone had forgotten about it. Other horrors occupied the TV screen. Other tragedies took place. As always. A liquor store in W
est LA got robbed and the clerk shot. An old man died at a substandard nursing home. Three cars on the San Diego Freeway collided with a lumber truck which had caught on fire and stalled.
The world continued as it always had.
I began to think about death. Not Sophia Lampton’s death but death in general and then, by degrees, my own death.
Actually, I didn’t think about it. Horselover Fat did.
One night, as he sat in my living room in my easy chair, a glass of cognac in his hand, he said meditatively, ‘All it proved was what we knew anyhow; her death, I mean.’
‘And what did we know?’ I said.
‘That they were nuts.’
I said, ‘The parents were nuts. But not Sophia.’
‘If she had been Zebra,’ Fat said, ‘she would have had foreknowledge of Mini’s screw-up with the laser equipment. She could have averted it.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘It’s true,’ Fat said. ‘She would have had the knowledge and in addition – ‘ He pointed at me. Triumph lay in his voice; bold triumph. ‘She would have had the power to avert it. Right? If she could overthrow Ferris F. Fremount –’
‘Drop it,’ I said.
‘All that was involved from the start,’ Fat said quietly, ‘was advanced laser technology. Mini found a way to transmit information by laser beam, using human brains as transducers without the need for an electronic interface. The Russians can do the same thing. Microwaves can be used as well. In March 1974 I must have intercepted one of Mini’s transmissions by accident; it irradiated me. That’s why my blood pressure went up so high, and the animals died of cancer. That’s what’s killing Mini; the radiation produced by his own laser experimentations.,
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Fat said, ‘I’m sorry. Will you be okay?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘After all,’ Fat said, ‘I never really got a chance to talk to her, not to the extent that the rest of you. did; I wasn’t there that second time, when she gave us – the Society – our commission.’
And now, I wondered, what about our commission?
‘Fat,’ I said, ‘you’re not going to try to knock yourself off again, are you? Because of her death?’
‘No,’ Fat said.
I didn’t believe him. I could tell; I knew him, better than he knew himself. Gloria’s death, Beth abandoning him, Sherri dying – all that had saved him after Sherri died was his decision to go in search of the ‘fifth Savior,’ and now that hope had perished. What did he have left?
Fat had tried everything, and everything had failed.
‘Maybe you should start seeing Maurice again,’ I said.
‘He’ll say, “And I mean it”.’ We both laughed.’ “I want you to list the ten things you want most to do in all the world; I want you to think about it and write them down, and I mean it!” ‘
I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ And I meant it.
‘Find her,’ Fat said.
‘Who?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ Fat said. ‘The one that died. The one that I will never see again.’
There’re a lot of them in that category, I said to myself. Sorry, Fat; your answer is too vague.
‘I should go over to World-Wide Travel,’ Fat said, half to himself, ‘and talk to the lady there some more. About India. I have a feeling India is the place.’
‘Place for what?’
‘Where he’ll be,’ Fat said.
I did not respond; there was no point to it. Fat’s madness had returned.
‘He’s somewhere,’ Fat said. ‘I know he is, right now; somewhere in the world. Zebra told me. “St Sophia is going to be born again; she wasn’t – “ ‘
‘You want me to tell you the truth?’ I interrupted.
Fat blinked. ‘Sure, Phil.’
In a harsh voice, I said, ‘There is no Savior. St Sophia will not be born again, the Buddha is not in the park, the Head Apollo is not about to return. Got it?’
Silence.
‘The fifth Savior –’ Fat began timidly.
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘You’re psychotic, Fat. You’re as crazy as Eric and Linda Lampton. You’re as crazy as Brent Mini. You’ve been crazy for eight years, since Gloria tossed herself off the Synanon Building and made herself into a scrambled egg sandwich. Give up and forget. Okay? Will you do me that one favor? Will you do all of us that one favor?’
Fat said finally, in a low voice, ‘Then you agree with Kevin.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I agree with Kevin.’
‘Then why should I keep on going?’ Fat said quietly..
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘And I don’t really care. It’s your life and your affair, not mine.’
‘Zebra wouldn’t have lied to me,’ Fat said.
There is no “Zebra”,’ I said. ‘It’s yourself. Don’t you recognize your own self? It’s you and only you, projecting your unanswered wishes out, unfulfilled desires left over after Gloria did herself in. You couldn’t fill the vacuum with reality so you filled it with fantasy; it was psychological compensation for a fruitless, wasted, empty, pain-filled life and I don’t see why you don’t finally now fucking give up; you’re like Kevin’s cat: you’re stupid. That is the beginning and the end of it. Okay?’
‘You rob me of hope.’
‘I rob you of nothing because there is nothing.’
‘Is all this so? You think so? Really?’
I said, ‘I know so.’
‘You don’t think I should look for him?’
‘Where the hell are you going to look? You have no idea, no idea in the world, where he might be. He could be in Ireland. He could be in Mexico City. He could be in Anaheim at Disneyland; yeah – maybe he’s working at Disneyland, pushing a broom. How are you going to recognize him? We all thought Sophia was the Savior; we believed in that until the day she died. She talked like the Savior. We had all the evidence; we had all the signs. We had the flick Valis. We had the two-word cypher. We had the Lamptons and Mini. Their story fit your story; everything fit. And now there’s another dead girl in another box in the ground – that makes three in all. Three people who died for nothing. You believed it, I believed it, David believed it, Kevin believed it, the Lamptons believed it; Mini in particular believed it, enough to accidentally kill her. So now it ends. It never should have begun – goddam Kevin for seeing that film! Go out and kill yourself. The hell with it.’
‘I still might -’
‘You won’t,’ I said. ‘You won’t find him. I know. Let me put it to you in a simple way so you can grasp it. You thought the Savior would bring Gloria back – right? He, she, didn’t; now she’s dead, too. Instead of –’ I gave up.
‘Then the true name for religion,’ Fat said, ‘is death.’
‘The secret name,’ I agreed. ‘You got it. Jesus died; Asklepios died – they killed Mani worse than they killed Jesus, but nobody even cares; nobody even remembers. They killed die Catharists in southern France by the tens of thousands. In the Thirty Years War, hundreds of thousands of people died, Protestants and Catholics – mutual slaughter. Death is the real name for it; not God, not the Savior, not love – death. Kevin is right about his cat. It’s all there in his dead cat. The Great Judge can’t answer Kevin: “Why did my cat die?” Answer: “Damned if I know.” There is no answer; there is only a dead animal that just wanted to cross the street. We’re all animals that want to cross the street only something mows us down half-way across that we never saw. Go ask Kevin. “Your cat was stupid.” Who made the cat? Why did he make the cat stupid? Did the cat learn by being killed, and if so, what did he learn? Did Sherri learn anything from dying of cancer? Did Gloria learn anything –’
‘Okay, enough,’ Fat said.
‘Kevin is right,’ I said. ‘Go out and get laid.’
‘By who? They’re all dead.’
I said, ‘There’re more. Still alive. Lay one of them before she dies or you die or somebody dies, some person
or animal. You said it yourself: the universe is irrational because the mind behind it is irrational. You are irrational and you know it. / am. We all are and we know it, on some level. I’d write a book about it but no one would believe a group of human beings could be as irrational as we are, as we’ve acted.’
‘They would now,’ Fat said, ‘after Jim Jones and the nine hundred people at Jonestown.’
‘Go away, Fat,’ I said. ‘Go to South America. Go back up to Sonoma and apply for residence at the Lamptons’ commune, unless they’ve given up, which I doubt. Madness has its own dynamism; it just goes on.’ Getting to my feet I walked over and stuck my hand against his chest. ‘The girl is dead, Gloria is dead; nothing will restore her.’
‘Sometimes I dream –’
‘I’ll put that on your gravestone.’
After he had obtained his passport, Fat left the United States and flew by Icelandic Airlines to Luxembourg, which is the cheapest way to go. We got a postcard from him mailed at his stop-over in Iceland, and then, a month later, a letter from Metz, France. Metz lies on the border to Luxembourg; I looked it up on the map.
In Metz – which he liked, as a scenic place – he met a girl and enjoyed a wonderful time until she took him for half of the money he’d brought with him. He sent us a photograph of her; she is very pretty, reminding me a little of Linda Ronstadt, with the same shape face and haircut. It was the last picture he sent us, because the girl stole his camera as well. She worked at a bookstore. Fat never told us whether he got to go to bed with her.
From Metz he crossed over into West Germany, where the American dollar is worth nothing. He already read and spoke a little German so he had a relatively easy time there. But his letters became less frequent and finally stopped completely.
‘If he’d have made it with the French girl,’ Kevin said, ‘he’d have recovered.’
‘For all we know he did,’ David said.
Kevin said, ‘If he’d made it with her he’d be back here sane. He’s not, so he didn’t.’