Philip Dick - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

"That's nonsense," Bill said. "All that about unconscious motivation. You can posit anything by reasoning that way. You can attribute any motivation you want, since there's no way it can be tested. Tim was looking for that mushroom. He sure picked a funny place to look for a mushroom: a desert. Mushrooms grow where it's moist and cool and shaded."

"In caves," I said. "There are caves there."

"Yes, well," Bill said, "it wasn't actually a mushroom anyhow. That, too, is a supposition. A gratuitous assumption. Tim stole that idea from a scholar named John Allegro. Tim's problem was that he didn't really think for himself; he picked up other people's ideas and believed they had come out of his own mind, whereas, in fact, he stole them."

"But the ideas had value," I said, "and Tim synthesized them. Tim brought various ideas together."

"But not very good ones."

Glancing at Bill, I said, "Who are you to judge?"

"I know you loved him," Bill said. "You don't have to defend him all the time. I'm not attacking him."

"It sure sounds like it."

"I loved him, too. A lot of people loved Bishop Archer. He was a great man, the greatest we'll ever know. But he was a foolish man and you know that."

I said nothing; I drove and I half-listened to the radio. They were now playing "Yesterday."

"Edgar was right about you, however," Bill said. "You should have dropped out of the university and not finished. You learned too much."

With bitterness I said, "'Learned too much.' Christ. The vox populi. Distrust of education. I get sick and tired of hearing that shit; I am glad of what I know."

"It's wrecked you," Bill said.

"You can just go take a flying fling," I said.

Bill said calmly, "You are very bitter and very unhappy. You are a good person who loved Kirsten and Tim and Jeff and you haven't gotten over what happened to them. And your education has not helped you cope with this."

"There is no coping with this!" I said, with fury. "They all were good people and they are all dead!"

"'Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are all dead.' "What's that?"

"Jesus says that. I think it's said during Mass. I attended Mass a few times with Kirsten, at Grace Cathedral. One time, when Tim was passing the chalice around-Kirsten was kneeling at the rail-he secretly slipped a ring around her finger. No one saw but she told me. It was a symbolic wedding ring. Tim had on all his robes, then."

"Tell me about it," I said, bitterly.

"I am telling you about it. Did you know-"

"I knew about the ring," I said. "She told me. She showed it to me."

"They considered themselves spiritually married. Before and in the eyes of God. Although not according to civil law. 'Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they are all dead.' That refers to the Old Testament. Jesus brings-"

"Oh, my good God," I said, "I thought I'd heard the last of all this stuff. I don't want ever to hear any more. It didn't do any good then and it won't ever do any good. Barefoot talks about useless words-those are useless words. Why would Barefoot call you a bodhisattva? What is all this compassion and wisdom you have? You attained Nirvana and came back to help others, is that it?"

"I could have attained Nirvana," Bill said. "But I turned it down. To return."

"Forgive me," I said, with weariness. "I don't understand what you're talking about. Okay?"

Bill said, "I came back to this world. From the next world. Out of compassion. That is what I learned out there in the desert, the Dead Sea Desert." His voice was calm; his face showed a deep calm. "That is what I found."

I stared at him.

"I am Tim Archer," Bill said. "I have come back from the other side. To those I love." He smiled a vast and secret smile.

AFTER A MOMENT of silence, I said, "Did you tell Edgar Barefoot?"

"Yes," Bill said.

"Who else?"

"Almost no one else."

I said, "When did this happen?" And then I said, "You fucking lunatic. It will never end; it goes on and it goes on. One by one, they go mad and die. All I want to do is Tun my record store and turn on and get laid now and then and read a few books. I never asked for this." My car's tires squealed as I swerved to pass a slow-moving vehicle. We had almost reached the Richmond end of the Richardson Bridge.

"Angel," Bill said. He put his hand on my shoulder, tenderly.

"Get your goddamn hand off of me," I said.

He withdrew his hand. "I have come back," he said.

"You have gone crazy again and belong back in the hospital, you hebephrenic nut. Can't you see what this is doing to me, to have to listen to more of this? You know what I thought about you? I thought: There, in a certain real sense, is the only sane one among us; he is labeled as a nut but he is sane. We are labeled as sane and we are nuts. And now you. You are the last one I would have expected this from, but I guess-" I broke off. "Shit," I said. "It's out of control, this madness process. I always said to myself: Bill Lundborg is in touch with the real; he thinks about cars. You could have explained to Tim why one does not drive out on the Dead Sea Desert in a Datsun with two bottles of Coke and a gas station map. And now you are as crazy as they were. More crazy." Reaching, I turned up the radio; the sound of the Beatles filled the car-Bill at once shut the radio off, entirely off.

"Please slow down," Bill said.

"Please," I said, "when we get to the toll gate, get out of the car and hitch a Tide with somebody else. And you can tell Edgar Barefoot to go stick his-"

"Don't blame him," Bill said sharply. "I only told him; he didn't tell me. Slow down!" He reached for the ignition key.

"Okay," I said, putting my foot on the brake.

"You will Toll this sardine can," Bill said, "and kill us both. And you don't even have your seat belt fastened."

"On this day of all days," I said. "The day they murder John Lennon. I have to hear this right now."

"I did not find the anokhi mushroom," Bill said.

I said nothing; I simply drove. As best I could.

"I fell," Bill said. "From a cliff."

"Yes," I said. "I read that, too, in the Chronicle. Did it hurt?"

"By that time, I had become unconscious from the sunlight and the heat."

"Well," I said, "apparently you are just not a very bright person, to go out there like that." And then, suddenly, I felt compassion; I felt shame, overwhelming shame at what I was doing to him. "Bill," I said, "forgive me."

"Sure," he said, simply.

I thought through my words and then I said, "When did-what am I supposed to call you? Bill Or Tim? Are you both, now?"

"I'm both. One personality has been formed out of the two. Either name will do. Probably you should call me Bill so that people won't know."

"Why don't you want them to know? I would think something as important and unique as this, as momentous as this, should be known."

Bill said, "They'll put me back in the hospital."

"Then," I said, "I will call you Bill."

"About a month after his death, Tim came back to me. I didn't understand what was happening; I couldn't figure it out. Lights and colors and then an alien presence in my mind. Another personality much smarter than me, thinking all sorts of things I never thought. And he knows Greek and Latin and Hebrew, and all about theology. He thought about you very clearly. He had wanted to take you with him to Israel."

At that, I glanced sharply at him and felt chilled.

"That night at the Chinese restaurant," Bill said, "he tried to talk you into it. But you said you had your life all planned out. You couldn't leave Berkeley."

Taking my foot from the gas pedal, I allowed the car to slow down; it moved more and more slowly until it came to a stop.

"It's illegal to stop on the bridge," Bill said. "Unless you're having motor trouble or run out of gas, something of that sort. Keep on driving."