Philip Dick - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

"You could drive me."

"There are drivers there in Israel who know the desert. I don't know anything about the Dead Sea Desert."

"You have an excellent sense of direction."

"I get lost. I am lost. I'm lost now. I wish I could go with you but I have my job and my life and my friends; I don't want to leave Berkeley-it's my home. I'm sorry but that's God's truth. Berkeley is where I've always lived. I'm just not ready to leave it at this time. Maybe later." My martini came; I drank it down, all at once, in a spasmodic gulp that left me panting.

Tim said, "The anokhi is the pure consciousness of God. It is, therefore, Hagia Sophia, God's Wisdom. Only that wisdom, which is absolute, can read the Book of the Spinners. It can't change what is written, but it can discern a way to outwit the Book. The writing is fixed; it will never change." He seemed defeated, now; he had begun to give up. "I need that wisdom, Angel. Nothing less will do."

"You are like Satan," I said, and then realized that the gin had hit me in a rush; I had not meant to say that.

"No," Tim said, and then he nodded. "Yes, I am. You're right.

"I'm sorry I said that," I said.

"I don't want to be killed off like an animal. If the writing can be read, then an answer can be figured out; Christ has the power to figure it out, Hagia Sophia-Christ. They're homologized from the Old Testament hypostasis to the New." But, I could see, he had given up; he could not budge me and he knew it. "Why not, Angel?" he said. "Why won't you come?"

"Because," I said, "I don't want to die there in the Dead Sea Desert."

"All right. I'll go alone."

"Someone should survive all this," I said.

Tim nodded. "I would want you to survive, Angel. So stay here. I apologize for-"

"Just forgive me," I said.

He smiled wanly. "You could ride on a camel."

"They smell bad," I said. "Or so I've heard."

"If I find the anokhi I will have access to God's wisdom. After it has been absent from the world for over two thousand years. That is what the Zadokite Documents speak of, that wisdom that we once had open to us. Think what it would mean!"

The waiter approached our table and asked us if we were ready to order. I said I was; Tim glanced about him in confusion, as if just now aware of his surroundings. It made my heart ache to see his bewilderment. But I had made up my mind. My life, as it was constituted, meant too much for me; most of all, I feared involvement with this man: it had cost Kirsten her life, and, in a subtle way, my husband's. I wanted that all behind me; I had started over; I no longer looked back.

Wanly, without enthusiasm, Tim told the waiter what to bring him; he seemed oblivious of me, now, as if I had faded into the surroundings. I turned to my own menu, and saw there what I wanted. What I wanted was immediate, fixed, real, tangible: it lay in this world and it could be touched and grasped; it had to do with my house and my job, and it had to do with banishing ideas finally from my mind, ideas about other ideas, an infinite regress of them, spiraling off forever.

The food, when the waiter brought it, tasted wonderful. Both Tim and I ate with pleasure. My customers had been right.

"Mad at me?" I said, after we had finished.

"No. Happy because you will survive this. And you will stay as you are." He pointed at me, then, with a commanding expression on his face. "But if I find what I am after, I will change. I will not be as I am. I have read all the documents and the answer isn't in them; the documents point to the answer and they point to the location of the answer, but the answer is not in them. It is at the wadi. I am taking a risk but it's worth it. I am willing to take the risk because I may find the anokhi and just knowing that makes it worth it."

I said suddenly, with insight, "There haven't been any more phenomena."

"True."'

"And you didn't go back to Dr. Garret."

"True." He did not seem contrite or embarrassed. "That was to get me to come with you."

"I want you along. So you can drive me. Otherwise-I'm afraid I won't find what I'm looking for." He smiled.

"Shit," I said. "I believed you."

"I have had dreams," Tim said. "Disturbing dreams. But no pins under my fingernails. No singed hair. No stopped clocks."

I said, falteringly, "You wanted me to come with you that badly." For a moment I felt a surge in me, a need to go. "You think it would be good for me, too," I said, then.

"Yes. But you won't come. That's clear. Well-" He smiled his old familiar, wise smile. "I tried."

"Am I in a rut, then? Living in Berkeley?"

"Professional student," Tim said.

"I run a record store."

"Your customers are students and faculty. You're still tied to the university. You haven't broken the cord. Until you do, you will not fully be an adult."

"I was born the night I drank bourbon and read the Commedia. When I had that abscessed tooth."

"You began to be born. You knew about birth. But until you come to Israel-that is where you will be born, there in the Dead Sea Desert. That is where the spiritual life of man began, at Mt. Sinai, with Moses. Ehyeh speaking ... the theophany. The greatest moment in the history of man."

"I would almost go," I said.

"Go, then." He reached out his hand.

I said, simply, "I'm afraid."

"That's the problem," Tim said. "That's the heritage of the past: Jeff's death and Kirsten's death. That's what it's done to you, done permanently. Left you afraid to live."

"'Better a live dog-' "

"But," Tim said, "you are not genuinely alive. You are still unborn. This is what Jesus meant by the Second Birth, the Birth in or from the Spirit; the Birth from Above. This is what lies in the desert. This is what I will find."

"Find it," I said, "but find it without me."

"'He who loses his life-"'

"Don't quote the Bible to me," I said. "I've heard enough quotations, my own and others'. Okay?"

Tim reached out and we solemnly, without speaking, shook hands. He smiled a little, then; after a bit he let my hand go and then examined his gold pocket-watch. "I'm going to have to get you home. I've still got one appointment left this evening. You understand; you know me."

"Yes," I said. "It's okay. Tim," I said, "you are a master strategist. I watched you when you met Kirsten. You brought it all to bear on me, here, tonight." And you almost persuaded me, I said to myself. In a few more minutes-I would have given in. If you had kept up just a little longer.

"I am in the business of saving souls," Tim said enigmatically. I could not tell if he spoke in irony or if he meant it;

I simply could not tell. "Your soul is worth saving," he said, then, as he rose to his feet. "I'm sorry to rush you, but we do have to go."

You always were in a hurry, I said to myself as I also got up. "It was a wonderful dinner," I said.

"Was it? I didn't notice; I'm preoccupied, apparently. I have so many things to finish before I fly to Israel. Now that I don't have Kirsten to arrange everything for me ... she did such a good job."

"You'll find someone," I said.

Tim said, "I thought I found you. The fisherman, tonight; I fished for you and didn't get you."

"Some other time, maybe."

"No," Tim said. "There will be no other time." He did not amplify. He did not have to; I knew that it was so, for one reason or another: I sensed it. Tim was right.

When Timothy Archer flew to Israel, the NBC network news mentioned it briefly, as they would mention a flight of birds, a migration too regular to be important and yet something the viewers should be told about, by way (it would seem) of a reminder that Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer still existed and was still busy and active in the affairs of the world. And then we, the American public, heard nothing for a week or so.