And, within its sentient works, the interstellar ship moaned.
During the ten long years remaining in the trip to the LR4 System, the ship had plenty of time to track down Martine Kemmings. It explained the situation to her. She had emigrated to a vast orbiting dome in the Sirius System, found her situation unsatisfactory, and was en route back to Earth. Roused from her own cryonic suspension, she listened intently and then agreed to be at the colony world LR4–6 when her ex-husband arrived—if it was at all possible.
Fortunately, it was possible.
“I don’t think he’ll recognize me,” Martine said to the ship. “I’ve allowed myself to age. I don’t really approve of entirely halting the aging process.”
He’ll be lucky if he recognizes anything, the ship thought.
At the intersystem spaceport on the colony world of LR4–6, Martine stood waiting for the people aboard the ship to appear on the outer platform. She wondered if she would recognize her former husband. She was a little afraid, but she was glad that she had gotten to LR4–6 in time. It had been close. Another week and his ship would have arrived before hers. Luck is on my side, she said to herself, and scrutinized the newly landed interstellar ship.
People appeared on the platform. She saw him. Victor had changed very little.
As he came down the ramp, holding on to the railing as if weary and hesitant, she came up to him, her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her coat; she felt shy and when she spoke she could hardly hear her own voice.
“Hi, Victor,” she managed to say.
He halted, gazed at her. “I know you,” he said.
“It’s Martine,” she said.
Holding out his hand, he said, smiling, “You heard about the trouble on the ship?”
“The ship contacted me.” She took his hand and held it. “What an ordeal.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Recirculating memories forever. Did I ever tell you about a bee that I was trying to extricate from a spider’s web when I was four years old? The idiotic bee stung me.” He bent down and kissed her. “It’s good to see you,” he said.
“Did the ship—”
“It said it would try to have you here. But it wasn’t sure if you could make it.”
As they walked toward the terminal building, Martine said, “I was lucky; I managed to get a transfer to a military vehicle, a high-velocity-drive ship that just shot along like a mad thing. A new propulsion system entirely.”
Victor Kemmings said, “I have spent more time in my own unconscious mind than any other human in history. Worse than early-twentieth-century psychoanalysis. And the same material over and over again. Did you know I was scared of my mother?”
“I was scared of your mother,” Martine said. They stood at the baggage depot, waiting for his luggage to appear. “This looks like a really nice little planet. Much better than where I was . . . I haven’t been happy at all.”
“So maybe there’s a cosmic plan,” he said grinning. “You look great.”
“I’m old.”
“Medical science—”
“It was my decision. I like older people.” She surveyed him. He has been hurt a lot by the cryonic malfunction, she said to herself. I can see it in his eyes. They look broken. Broken eyes. Torn down into pieces by fatigue and—defeat. As if his buried early memories swam up and destroyed him. But it’s over, she thought. And I did get here in time.
At the bar in the terminal building, they sat having a drink.
“This old man got me to try Wild Turkey bourbon,” Victor said. “It’s amazing bourbon. He says it’s the best on Earth. He brought a bottle with him from . . .” His voice died into silence.
“One of your fellow passengers,” Martine finished.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Well, you can stop thinking of the birds and the bees,” Martine said.
“Sex?” he said, and laughed.
“Being stung by a bee, helping a cat catch a bird. That’s all past.”
“That cat,” Victor said, “has been dead one hundred and eighty-two years. I figured it out while they were bringing us out of suspension. Probably just as well. Dorky. Dorky, the killer cat. Nothing like Fat Freddy’s cat.”
“I had to sell the poster,” Martine said. “Finally.”
He frowned.
“Remember?” she said. “You let me have it when we split up. Which I always thought was really good of you.”
“How much did you get for it?”
“A lot. I should pay you something like—” She calculated. “Taking inflation into account, I should pay you about two million dollars.”
“Would you consider,” he said, “instead of the money, my share of the sale of the poster, spending some time with me? Until I get used to this planet?”
“Yes,” she said. And she meant it. Very much.
They finished their drinks and then, with his luggage transported by robot spacecap, made their way to his hotel room.
“This is a nice room,” Martine said, perched on the edge of the bed. “And it has a hologram TV. Turn it on.”
“There’s no use turning it on,” Victor Kemmings said. He stood by the open closet, hanging up his shirts.
“Why not?”
Kemmings said, “There’s nothing on it.”
Going over to the TV set, Martine turned it on. A hockey game materialized, projected out into the room, in full color, and the sound of the game assailed her ears.
“It works fine,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I can prove it to you. If you have a nail file or something, I’ll unscrew the back plate and show you.”
“But I can—”
“Look at this.” He paused in his work of hanging up his clothes. “Watch me put my hand through the wall.” He placed the palm of his right hand against the wall. “See?”
His hand did not go through the wall because hands do not go through walls; his hand remained pressed against the wall, unmoving.
“And the foundation,” he said, “is rotting away.”
“Come and sit down by me,” Martine said.
“I’ve lived this often enough now,” he said. “I’ve lived this over and over again. I come out of suspension; I walk down the ramp; I get my luggage; sometimes I have a drink at the bar and sometimes I come directly to my room. Usually I turn on the TV and then—” He came over and held his hand toward her. “See where the bee stung me?”
She saw no mark on his hand; she took his hand and held it.
“There is no bee sting,” she said.
“And when the robot doctor comes, I borrow a tool from him and take off the back plate of the TV set. To prove to him that it has no chassis, no components in it. And then the ship starts me over again.”
“Victor,” she said. “Look at your hand.”
“This is the first time you’ve been here, though,” he said.
“Sit down,” she said.
“Okay.” He seated himself on the bed, beside her, but not too close to her.
“Won’t you sit closer to me?” she said.
“It makes me too sad,” he said. “Remembering you. I really loved you. I wish this was real.”
Martine said, “I will sit with you until it is real for you.”
“I’m going to try reliving the part with the cat,” he said, “and this time not pick up the cat and not let it get the bird. If I do that, maybe my life will change so that it turns into something happy. Something that is real. My real mistake was separating from you. Here; I’ll put my hand through you.” He placed his hand against her arm. The pressure of his muscles was vigorous; she felt the weight, the physical presence of him, against her. “See?” he said. “It goes right through you.”
“And all this,” she said, “because you killed a bird when you were a little boy.”
“No,” he said. “All this because of a failure in the temperature-regulating assembly aboard the ship. I’m not down to the proper temperature. There’s just e
nough warmth left in my brain cells to permit cerebral activity.” He stood up then, stretched, smiled at her. “Shall we go get some dinner?” he asked.
She said, “I’m sorry. I’m not hungry.”
“I am. I’m going to have some of the local seafood. The brochure says it’s terrific. Come along anyhow; maybe when you see the food and smell it you’ll change your mind.”
Gathering up her coat and purse, she came with him.
“This is a beautiful little planet,” he said. “I’ve explored it dozens of times. I know it thoroughly. We should stop downstairs at the pharmacy for some Bactine, though. For my hand. It’s beginning to swell and it hurts like hell.” He showed her his hand. “It hurts more this time than ever before.”
“Do you want me to come back to you?” Martine said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll stay with you as long as you want. I agree; we should never have been separated.”
Victor Kemmings said, “The poster is torn.”
“What?” she said.
“We should have framed it,” he said. “We didn’t have sense enough to take care of it. Now it’s torn. And the artist is dead.”
THE ZEBRA PAPERS
February 11, 1977
[TO MARK HURST, VALIS editor]
Dear Mark,
Having told you that I am preparing a major new theme for VALIS I called Sydny [Weinberg, Bantam Books] and told her, too. She asked what the new theme was and I told her. I’d like now to outline it for you.
Ten years ago (by way of preamble) John Brunner sent me a French scientific book called THE MASKS OF MEDUSA, which studied the phenomenon of insect mimicry. The author’s main conclusion was that no theory existed by which such mimicry could be explained; a spinoff conclusion was that if high-order mimicry existed (e.g. at a level to fool humans, not just birds and other insects) we would probably not be aware of it, any more than the birds are aware of the insect mimicry at their level. John thought I’d be interested because of my preoccupation with the question, What is reality? and secondarily, Are some of us not really human but merely appear human?
For years I reread the book, annotating the margins throughout, but no idea for a novel came out of it and finally I gave the book away. However, I had virtually memorized it. Well, Mark, about a month and a half ago, while reworking VALIS, the idea—not an idea but THE IDEA—suddenly popped fullblown into my mind, having germinated subconsciously over the years. What I call it is the Zebra Principle. It is (to me anyhow) terribly exciting and fantastic, and I have literally hundreds of pages of notes on it now. I talked to Jack Scovil at SMLA and he thought it’d make an entire complete novel on its own, and that I should hold it for that, not using it in VALIS. But in my opinion it would go perfectly into VALIS. In point of fact it was produced by my mind for VALIS. Viz.
Houston Paige is employed by the Fremont Administration as a top-ranking scientist probing possible enemies of the state. In conjunction with police computers Paige has developed the Zebra Principle: that it is possible, even likely, that high-order mimicry exists, undetected. (1) The mimicking organism is undoubtedly benign; (2) There is no reason to suppose that it mimics humans but rather that it mimics inanimate objects. Houston Paige supposes that there must be tests which can be arranged which will smoke Zebra out (Zebra being their code word for the mimicking organisms). Sciencefiction writers are especially suspected of knowing of—of having contact with—Zebra, who, in the minds of the government, has become just one more enemy of the state. Because of this, Houston Paige approaches s-f author Philip K. Dick with a commission, through a government-owned publishing house, to write a novel about Zebra. Phil Dick accepts the advance but never gets anything actually written. This makes Paige very suspicious.
Paige is an interesting person, being a total fuckup and a lush as well. He never, even at the end of VALIS, even gets near to detecting Zebra. But Zebra does in fact exist.
Zebra is enormous in physical size, which is one reason why Paige never manages to detect it. Zebra, in fact, spans thousands, possibly even millions of miles of our space, having grown very large over the past three thousand years. Paige can’t detect Zebra because he is inside Zebra every day of his life. In fact a portion of Zebra has assimilated the police computers which predicted the theoretical existence of Zebra. When Paige drinks an Old Fashioned, Zebra is the bottle of bourbon, the ice, the slice of orange, the bitters, the glass. When Paige takes notes on the probable characteristics of Zebra, Zebra is the ballpoint pen, clipboard and paper.
The relationship of this Zebra plot to the main plot of VALIS is not visible offhand; I will have my customary twin threads which eventually I weave together. In point of fact, Zebra is the Aramchek satellite—as well as the police computers. It allows itself to be blown up (i.e., the satellite portion of it) by the Russians. This overcomes a great weakness of the present plot: the fact that the Russians so easily shoot the satellite down. Another, much smaller weak point is that Phil Dick the character in VALIS is not working on anything. The Zebra theme overcomes both.
The new, final version of VALIS will be much longer. As it stands, the ending is weak. The new ending will consist of a manifestation by Zebra of itself to one of the characters in the novel, probably to me (in the slave labor camp). The satellite is gone, but Zebra remains. Its body is plasmatic and invisible. It is always there, no matter what happens. It made use of a portion of itself to become what seemed to be a communications, teaching satellite. There is no way that the tyranny can perceive Zebra, much less blow it up.
By means of this superimposed theme I can edit out much of the merely Christian material and bias (as well as explanation at the end of the novel), which I would like to do. Zebra, if it can be said to resemble the contents of any religion, resembles the Hindu concept of Brahman:
“They reckon ill who leave me out,
When me they fly I am the wings.
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahman sings.”
The Zebra theme will also enable me to add the elements of black humor which are presently missing from VALIS. We will have a lot of fun with Houston Paige as he constantly encounters Zebra, never realizing it and always drunkenly theorizing as to the nature and location of Zebra. Paige who seeks to apprehend Zebra is denied that very vision, and Phil Dick (in the novel) who has ripped off the tyranny and doesn’t care a shit about Zebra—he just needs the money—gets finally to see it.
One ability which Zebra has that Paige doesn’t suspect is its capacity to restructure human memory. Every time Paige sets up a test to detect Zebra and obtains positive results, Zebra lays down a false memory template in Paige’s head so that he is deluded into thinking the results are negative. This ability to delude is a major aspect of Zebra. It does not assimilate humans but it can and does tamper—not just with their percept systems—but their memories as well. Zebra creates what the Hindu religions call Maya; it lays a veil over the world so that its enormous plasmatic body cannot be distinguished. “Zebra” is indeed the right term for it . . . which is natural, inasmuch as Zebra itself programmed the computer’s findings.
Zebra is in fact a non-terrestrial life form which came here to live and grow, but being as benign as it is it aids all life as much as it can. Every now and then the characters get a glimpse of a dreadful “alternate world” which is just a cruel, crushing prison (represented in the novel already by the visionary encounter with A.D. 70 Rome); this is our world as it would be without Zebra; it allows the characters a glimpse of this non-Zebra world with the purpose of eventually disclosing not only itself to man but what it has achieved for man. Zebra regards the biological and historic forces on this planet as malign, and seeks to ameliorate them. It is finally revealed to one of the characters—probably Phil Dick—what this black iron prison world actually is (or would have been).
Part of Zebra’s ability to disguise itself grows out of its ability to move
along a fourth orthogonal spatial axis unknown to us, in fact denied to us; thus Zebra can appear and disappear at will, without our understanding how. To our eyes, any object moving along this fourth axis is simply invisible. From our standpoint, then, Zebra is capable of transcending time, which permits it also to move retrograde in time, or to leave the temporal world, be “not there” and then to reenter wherever (to us, whenever) it wishes. Thus Zebra spans three thousand years of an extended present; to it both past and future are now. Like the vast life form which took over Palmer Eldritch and could extend itself between star systems, over millions of miles, Zebra extends itself in the fourth axis world, and thus, to us, is godlike (but in fact it is limited; it is merely superior by one whole spatial dimension to us, giving the impression of infinite power and knowledge—but it is an impression only).
Through the manifesting of Zebra into visibility, Phil Dick in the novel realizes that what has always been called “god” by mankind is in fact merely a superior life form.
However, Zebra is so superior that it might as well be god. But it is timid and retiring (like Lord Running Clam in CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON), and can be destroyed—although not by us. If it could not be destroyed it would not need to hide itself continually. The character Phil Dick understands that on its lofty level Zebra has enemies which could destroy it; hence the religious myths about Satan. Phil Dick conjectures that there may exist in the universe life forms even superior to Zebra, since Zebra has come here and hidden itself from sight as best it can. There may well be hostile life forms which can better distinguish Zebra, Phil Dick realizes. Part of Zebra’s sympathy for man derives from its own vulnerability.
However, I will not treat this theme with the continual seriousness which it would seem to entail. For instance, one of the characters (Phil Dick, Nicholas Brady or Houston Paige) finds himself able to obtain answers from Zebra by means of bowls of alphabet soup. The letters swim to the surface and form words (which is of course a parody on the I CHING, but also something like the way Glimmung speaks to them in GALACTIC POT-HEALER and the way Runciter communicates in UBIK; this should be a lot of fun—and I no doubt will be able to find other “trash in the gutter” ways by which great Zebra communes with man). (As you know, Mark, this is a favorite theme of mine: the sentient universe speaking to us in these trite ways. Each time I use this theme I find new ways to do it, and new explanations—such as Zebra—to account for the phenomenon. It all goes back to the early sixties when I was trying to find an explanation for how the I CHING works.)