Valis (19 page)

"The third eye closed," Fat said.

"Yes," Mini said. "We relinquished the third eye, our prime evolutionary attribute. It is the third eye which VALIS re-opens."

"Then it's the third eye that gets us back out of the maze," Fat said. "That's why the third eye is identified with god-like powers or with enlightenment, in Egypt and in India."

"Which are the same thing," Mini said. "God-like, enlightened."

"Really?" I said.

"Yes," Mini said. It is man as he really is: his true state."

Fat said, "So without memory, and without the third eye, we never had a chance to beat the maze. It was hopeless."

I thought, Another [sic]
Chinese finger-trap. And built by our own selves. To trap our own selves.

What kind of minds would create a Chinese finger-trap for themselves? Some game, I thought. Well, it isn't merely intellectual.

"The third eye had to be re-opened if we were to get out of the maze," Mini said, "but since we no longer remembered that we had that ajna faculty, the eye of discernment, we could not go about seeking techniques for re-opening it.
Something outside had to enter,
something which we ourselves would be unable to build."

"So we didn't all fall into the maze," Fat said.

"No," Mini said. "And those that stayed outside, in other star systems, reported back to Albemuth that we had done this thing to ourselves... thus VALIS was constructed to rescue us. This is an irreal world. You realize that, I'm sure. VALIS made you realize that. We are in a living maze and not in a world at all."

There was silence as we considered this.

"And what happens when we get outside the maze?" Kevin said.

"We're freed from space and time," Mini said. "Space and time are the binding, controlling conditions of the maze -- its power."

Fat and I glanced at each other. It dovetailed with our own speculations -- speculations engineered by VALIS.

"And then we never die?" David asked.

"Correct," Mini said.

"So salvation
--
"

"'Salvation,'" Mini said, "is a word denoting 'Being led out of the space-time maze, where the servant has become the master."

"May I ask a question?" I said. "What is the purpose of the fifth Savior?"

"It isn't 'fifth,'" Mini said. "There is only one, over and over again, at different times, in different places, with different names. The Savior is VALIS incarnated as a human being."

"Crossbonded?" Fat said.

"No." Mini shook his head no vigorously. "There is no human element in the Savior."

"Wait a minute," David said.

"I know what you've been taught," Mini said. "In a sense, it's true. But the Savior is VALIS and that is the fact of the case. He is born, however, from a human woman. He doesn't just generate a phantasm-body."

To that, David nodded; he could accept that.

"And he's been born?" I asked.

"Yes," Mini said.

"My daughter," Linda Lampton said. "Not Eric's, however. Just mine and VALIS'S."

"Daughter?"
several of us said in unison.

"This time," Mini said, "for the first time, the Savior takes female form."

Eric Lampton said, "She's very pretty. You'll like her. She talks a blue streak, though; she'll talk your ear off."

"Sophia is two," Linda said. "She was born in 1976. We tape what she says."

"Everything is taped," Mini said. "Sophia is surrounded by audio and video recording equipment that automatically monitors her constantly. Not for her protection, of course; VALIS protects her -- VALIS, her father."

"And we can talk with her?" I said.

"She'll dispute with you for hours," Linda said, and then she added, "in every language there is or ever was."

Wisdom had been born, not a deity: a deity which slew with one hand while healing with another... that deity was not the Savior, and I said to myself, Thank God.

We were taken the next morning to a small farm area, with animals everywhere. I saw no signs of video or audio recording equipment, but I saw -- we all saw -- a black-haired child seated with goats and chickens, and, in a hutch beside her, rabbits.

What I had expected was tranquility, the peace of God which passes all understanding. However, the child, upon seeing us, rose to her feet and came toward us with indignation blazing in her face; her eyes, huge, dilated with anger, fixed intently on me -- she lifted her right hand and pointed at me.

'Your suicide attempt was a violent cruelty against yourself," she said in a clear voice. And yet she was, as Linda had said, no more than two years old: a baby, really, and yet with the eyes of an infinitely old person.

"It was Horselover Fat," I said.

Sophia said, "Phil, Kevin and David. Three of you. There are no more."

Turning to speak to Fat -- I saw no one. I saw only Eric Lampton and his wife, the dying man in the wheel chair, Kevin and David. Fat was gone. Nothing remained of him.

Horselover Fat was gone forever. As if he had never existed.

"I don't understand," I said. "You destroyed him."

"Yes," the child said.

I said, "Why?"

"To make you whole."

"Then he's inme? Alive in me?"

"Yes," Sophia said. By degrees, the anger left her face. The great dark eyes ceased to smolder.

"He was me all the time," I said.

"That is right," Sophia said.

"Sit down," Eric Lampton said. "She prefers it if we sit; then she doesn't have to talk up to us. We're so much taller than she is."

Obediently, we all seated ourselves on the rough parched brown ground -- which I now recognized as the opening shot in the film
Valis;
they had filmed part of it here.

Sophia said, "Thank you."

"Are you Christ?" David said, tugging his knees up against his chin, his arms wrapped around them; he, too, looked like a child: one child addressing another in equal conversation.

"I am that which I am," Sophia said.

"I'm glad to
--
" I couldn't think what to say.

"Unless your past perishes," Sophia said to me, "you are doomed. Do you know that?"

"Yes," I said.

Sophia said, "Your future must differ from your past. The future must always differ from the past."

David said, "Are you God?"

"I am that which I am." Sophia said.

I said, "Then Horselover Fat was part of me projected outward so I wouldn't have to face Gloria's death."

Sophia said, "That is so."

I said, "Where is Gloria now?"

Sophia said, "She lies in the grave."

I said, "Will she return?"

Sophia said, "Never."

I said, "I thought there was immortality."

To that, Sophia said nothing.

"Can you help me?" I said.

Sophia said, "I have already helped you. I helped you in 1974 and I helped you when you tried to kill yourself. I have helped you since you were born."

"You
are VALIS?"
I
said.

Sophia said, "I am that which I am."

Turning to Eric and Linda, I said, "She doesn't always answer."

"Some questions are meaningless," Linda said.

"Why don't you heal Mini?" Kevin said.

Sophia said, "I do what I do; I am what I am."

I said, "Then we can't understand you."

Sophia said, "You understood that."

David said, "You are eternal, aren't you?"

"Yes," Sophia said.

"And you know everything?" David said.

"Yes," Sophia said.

I said, "Were you Siddhartha?"

"Yes," Sophia said.

"Are you the slayer and the slain?" I said.

"No," Sophia said.

"The slayer?" I said.

"No."

"Then slain, then."

"I am the injured and the slain," Sophia said. "But I am not the slayer. I am the healer and the healed."

"But VALIS has killed Mini," I said.

To that, Sophia said nothing.

"Are you the judge of the world?" David said.

"Yes," Sophia said.

"When does the judgment begin?" Kevin said.

Sophia said, "You are all judged already from the start."

I said, "How did you appraise me?"

To that, Sophia said nothing.

"Don't we get to find out?" Kevin said.

"Yes," Sophia said.

"When?" Kevin said.

To that, Sophia said nothing.

Linda said, "I think that's enough for now. You can talk to her again later. She likes to sit with the animals; she loves the animals." She touched me on the shoulder. "Let's go."

As we walked away from the child, I said, "Her voice is the neutral AI voice that I've heard in my head since 1974."

Kevin said hoarsely, "It's a computer. That's why it only answers certain questions."

Both Eric and Linda smiled; Kevin and I glanced at him; in his wheel chair Mini rolled along sedately.

"An AI system," Eric said. "An artificial intelligence.
"

"A terminal of VALIS," Kevin said. "An input, output terminal of the master system VALIS."

"That's right," Mini said.

"Not a little girl," Kevin said.

"I gave birth to her," Linda said.

"Maybe you just thought you did," Kevin said.

Smiling, Linda said, "An artificial intelligence in a human body. Her body is alive, but her psyche is not. She is sentient; she knows everything. But her mind is not alive in the sense that we are alive. She was not created. She has always existed."

"Read your Bible," Mini said. "She was with the Creator before creation existed; she was his darling and delight, his greatest treasure."

"I can see why," I said.

"It would be easy to love her," Mini said. "Many people have loved her... as it says in the
Book of Wisdom.
And so she entered them and guided them and descended even into the prison with them; she never abandoned those who loved her or who love her now."

"Her voice is heard in human courts," David murmured.

"And she destroyed the tyrant?" Kevin said.

"Yes," Mini said. "As we called him in the film, Ferris F. Fremount. But you know who she toppled and brought to ruin."

"Yes," Kevin said. He looked somber; I knew he was thinking of a man wearing a suit and tie wandering along a beach in southern California, an aimless man wondering what had happened, what had gone wrong, a man who still planned stratagems.

"In the last days of those kingdoms,

When their sin is at its height,

A king shall appear, harsh and grim, a master of
stratagem.
..
"

The king of tears who had brought tears to everyone eventually; against him something had acted which he, in his occlusion, could not discern. We had just now talked to that person, that child.

That child who had always been.

As we ate dinner that night -- at a Mexican restaurant just off the park in the center of Sonoma -- I realized that I would never see my friend Horselover Fat again, and I felt grief inside me, the grief of loss. Intellectually, I knew that I had re-incorporated him, reversing the original process of projection. But still it made me sad. I had enjoyed his company, his endless tale-spinning, his account of his intellectual and spiritual and emotional quest. A quest -- not for the Grail -- but to be healed of his wound, the deep injury which Gloria had done to him by means of her death game.

It felt strange not to have Fat to phone up or visit. He had been so much a regular part of my life, and of the lives of our mutual friends. I wondered what Beth would think when the child support checks stopped coming in. Well, I realized, I could assume the economic liability; I could take care of Christopher. I had the funds to do it, and in many ways I loved Christopher as much as his father had.

"Feeling down, Phil?" Kevin said to me. We could talk freely now, since the three of us were alone; the Lamptons had dropped us off, telling us to call them when we had finished dinner and were ready to return to their large house.

"No," I said. And then I said, "I'm thinking about Horselover Fat."

Kevin said, after a pause, "You're waking up, then."

"Yes." I nodded.

"You'll be okay," David said, awkwardly. Expression of emotions came with difficulty to David.

"Yeah," I said.

Kevin said, "Do you think the Lamptons are nuts?"

"Yes," I said.

"What about the little girl?" Kevin said.

I said, "She is not nuts. She is as not nuts as they
are.
It's a paradox; two totally whacked out people -- three, if you count Mini -- have created a totally sane offspring."

"If I say
--
" David began.

"Don't say God brings good out of evil," I said. "Okay? Will you do us that one favor?"

Half to himself, Kevin said, "That is the most beautiful child I have ever seen. But that stuff about her being a computer terminal
--
" He gestured.

"You're the one who said it," I said.

"At the time," Kevin said, "it made sense. But not when I look back. When I have perspective."

"You know what I think?" David said. "I think we should get back on the Air Cal plane and fly back to Santa Ana. As soon as we can."

I said, "The Lamptons won't hurt us." I was certain of that, now. Odd, that the sick man, the dying man, Mini, had restored my confidence in the power of life. Logically, it should have worked the other way, I suppose. I had liked him very much. But, as is well known, I have a proclivity for helping sick or injured people; I gravitate to them. As my psychiatrist told me years ago, I've got to stop doing that. That, and one other thing.

Kevin said, "I can't scope it out."

"I know," I agreed. Did we really see the Savior? Or did we see just a very bright little girl who, possibly, had been coached to give lofty-sounding answers by three very shrewd professionals who had a master hype going in connection with their film and music?

"It's a strange form for him to take," Kevin said. "As a girl. That's going to encounter resistance. Christ as a female; that made David here pissed as hell."

"She didn't say she was Christ," David said.

I said, "But she is."

Both Kevin and David stopped eating and gazed at me.

"She is St. Sophia," I said, "and St. Sophia is a hypostasis of Christ. Whether she admitted it or not. She's being careful. After all, she knows everything; she knows what people will accept and what they won't."

"You have all your weirded-out experiences of March 1974 to go on," Kevin said. "That proves something; that proves it's real. VALIS exists. You already knew that. You encountered him."

"I guess so," I said.

"And what Mini knew and said collated with what you knew," David said.

"Yeah," I said.

Kevin said, "But you're not certain."

"We're dealing with a high order of sophisticated technology," I said. "Which Mini may have put together."

"Meaning microwave transmissions and such like," Kevin said.

"Yes," I said.

"A purely technological phenomenon," Kevin said. "A major technological breakthrough."

"Using the human mind as the transducer," I said. "Without an electronic interface."

"Could be," Kevin admitted. "The movie showed that. There is no way to tell what they're into."

"You know," David said slowly, "if they have high-yield energy available to them that they can beam over long distances, along the lines of laser beams
--
"

"They can kill us dead," Kevin said.

"That's right," I said.

"If," Kevin said, "we started quacking about not believing them."

"We can just say
we
have to be back in Santa Ana," David said.

"Or we can leave from here," I said. "This restaurant."

"Our things -- clothes, everything we brought -- are there at their house," Kevin said.

"Fuck the clothes," I said.

"Are you afraid?" David said, "of something happening?"

I thought about it. "No," I said finally. I trusted the child. And I trusted Mini. You always have to go on that, your instinctive trust or -- your lack of trust. In the final analysis, there is really nothing else you can go on.

"I'd like to talk to Sophia again," Kevin said.

"So would I," I said. "The answer is there."

Kevin put his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry to say this like this, Phil, but we really have the big clue already. In one instant that child cleared up your mind. You stopped believing you were two people. You stopped believing in Horselover Fat as a separate person. And no therapist and no therapy over the years, since Gloria's death, has ever been able to accomplish that."

"He's right," David said in a gentle voice. "We all kept hoping, but it seemed as if -- you know. As if you'd never heal."

"'Heal,'" I said. "She healed me. Not Horselover Fat but me." They were right; the healing miracle had happened and we all know what that pointed to; we all three of us understood.

I said, "Eight years."

"Right," Kevin said. "Before we even knew you. Eight long fucking goddam years of occlusion and pain and searching and roaming about."

I nodded.

In my mind a voice said, What else do you need to know?

It was my own thoughts, the ratiocination of what had been Horselover Fat, who had rejoined me.

"You realize," Kevin said, "that Ferris F. Fremount is going to try to come back. He was toppled by that child -- or by what that child speaks for -- but he is returning; he will never give up. The battle was won but the struggle goes on."

David said, "Without that child
--
"

"We will lose," I said.

"Right," Kevin said.

"Let's stay another day," I said, "and try to talk with Sophia again. One more time."

"That sounds like a plan," Kevin said, pleased.

The little group, The Rhipidon Society, had come to an agreement. All three members.

The next day, Sunday, the three of us got permission to sit with the child Sophia alone, without anyone else present, although Eric and Linda did request that we tape our encounter. We agreed readily, not having any choice.