Philip Dick - The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Bill haltingly said:

'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

Che la diritta via era smarrita.' "

I smiled. "That's how the Commedia begins."

"There's more," Bill said.

" ' ... Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate!' "

"'Abandon all hope, you who enter here,"' I said.

"He wants me to tell you one thing more," Bill said. "But I'm having trouble catching it. Oh; now I have it-he thought it again very clearly for me:

" 'La sua voluntate e nostra pace. ..' "

"I don't recognize that," I said.

"Tim says it's the basic message of the Divine Comedy. It means, 'His will is our peace.' Meaning God, I guess."

"I guess so," I said.

"He must have learned that in the next world," Bill said.

"He certainly didn't learn it here."

Approaching us, Harvey said, "I'm tired of the Queen tapes. What else did we bring?"

"Did you manage to pick up Radio Moscow?" I asked. "Yeah, but the Voice jammed it. The Russians switched to another frequency-probably, the thirty-meter band-but I got tired of looking for it. The Voice always jams it."

"We'll be going home soon," I said, and passed the remains of the joint to Bill.

IT BECAME NECESSARY to rehospitalize Bill sooner than I had expected. He entered voluntarily, accepting this as a fact of life-a perpetual fact of his life, anyhow.

After they had signed Bill in, I met with his psychiatrist, a heavyset middle-aged man with a mustache and rimless glasses, a sort of portly but good-natured authority-figure who at once read me my mistakes, in order of descending importance.

"You shouldn't be encouraging him to use drugs," Dr. Greeby said, the file on Bill open before him across the surface of his desk.

"You call grass 'drugs'?" I said.

"For someone with Bill's precarious mental balance, any intoxicant is dangerous, however mild. He goes into the trip but he never really comes out. We have him on Haldol now; he seems able to tolerate the side effects."

"Had I known the harm I was doing," I said, "I would have done otherwise."

He glanced at me.

"We learn by erring," I said.

"Miss Archer-"

"Mrs. Archer," I said.

"The prognosis on Bill is not good, Mrs. Archer. I think you should be aware of that, since you seem to be the one closest to him." Dr. Greeby frowned. "'Archer.' Are you related to the late Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer?"

"My father-in-law," I said.

"That's who Bill thinks he is."

"Sufferin' succotash," I said.

"Bill has the delusion that he has become your late father-in-law due to a mystical experience. He does not merely see and hear Bishop Archer; he is Bishop Archer. Then Bill actually knew Bishop Archer, I take it."

"They rotated tires together," I said.

"You are a very smart-assed woman," Dr. Greeby said.

I said nothing to that.

"You have helped put Bill back in the hospital," the doctor said.

I said, "And we had a couple of good times together. We also had some very unhappy times together, having to do with the death of friends. I think those deaths contributed more to Bill's decline than did the smoking of grass in Tilden Park."

"Please don't see him any more," Dr. Greeby said.

"What?" I said, startled and dismayed; a rush of fear overcame me and I felt myself flush in pain. "Wait a minute," I said. "He's my friend."

"You have a generally supercilious attitude toward me and ,toward the world in all aspects. You obviously are a highly educated person, a product of the state university system; I'd guess that you graduated from U.C. Berkeley, probably in the English Department; you feel you know everything; you're doing great harm to Bill, who is not a worldly-wise, sophisticated person. You're also doing great harm to yourself, but that is not my concern. You are a brittle, harsh person, who-"

"But they were my friends," I said.

"Find somebody in the Berkeley community," the doctor said. "And stay away from Bill. As Bishop Archer's daughter-in-law, you reinforce his delusion; in fact, his delusion is probably an introjection of you, a displaced sexual attachment acting outside his conscious control."

I said, "And you are full of recondite bullshit."

"I've seen dozens like you in my professional career," Dr. Greeby said. "You don't faze me and you don't interest me. Berkeley is full of women like you."

"I will change," I said, my heart full of panic.

"That I doubt," the doctor said, and closed up Bill's file.

After I left his office-ejected, virtually-I roamed about the hospital, at a loss, stunned and afraid and also angry-angry mostly at myself for lipping off. I had lipped off because I was nervous, but the harm was done. Shit, I said to myself. Now I've lost the last of them.

I go back now to the record store, I said to myself, and check the back orders to see what did and didn't arrive. There will be a dozen customers lined up at the register and the phones will be ringing. Fleetwood Mac albums will be selling; Helen Reddy albums will not be. Nothing will have changed.

I can change, I said to myself. Lard-butt is wrong; it isn't too late.

Tim, I thought; why didn't I go to Israel with you?

As I left the hospital building and walked toward the parking lot-I could see my little red Honda Civic from afar-I spotted a group of patients trailing along behind a psych tech; they had gotten off a yellow bus and were now returning to the hospital. Hands in the pockets of my coat, I walked toward them, wondering if Bill was among them.

I did not see Bill in the group, and I continued on, past some benches, past a fountain. A grove of cedar trees grew on the far side of the hospital, and several people sat here and there on the grass, undoubtedly patients, those with passes; those well enough to exist for a time outside of stern control.

Among them Bill Lundborg, wearing his usual ill-fitting pants and shirt, sat at the base of a tree, intent on something he held.

I approached him, slowly and quietly. He did not look up until I had almost reached him; suddenly, aware of me now, he raised his head.

"Hi, Bill," I said.

"Angel," Bill said, "look what I found."

I knelt down to see. He had found a stand of mushrooms growing at the base of the tree: white mushrooms with-I discovered when I broke one off-pink gills. Harmless; the pink gilled and brown-gilled mushrooms are, by and large, not toxic. It is the white-gilled mushrooms that you must avoid, for often they are the amanitas, such as the Destroying Angel.

"What have you got?" I said.

"It is growing here," Bill said, in wonder. "What I searched for in Israel. What I went so far to find. This is the vita verna mushroom that Pliny the Elder mentions in his Historia Naturalis. I forget which book." He chuckled in that familiar good-humored way that I knew so well. "Probably Book Eight. This exactly fits his description."

"To me," I said, "it looks like an ordinary edible mushroom that you see growing this time of year everywhere."

"This is the anokhi," Bill said.

"Bill-" I began.

"Tim," he said, reflexively.

"Bill, I'm taking off. Dr. Greeby says I wrecked your mind. I'm sorry." I stood up.

"You never did that," Bill said. "But I wish you had come to Israel with me. You made a major mistake, Angel, and I did tell you that night at the Chinese restaurant. Now you're locked into your customary mind-set forever."

"And there's no way I can change?" I said.

Smiling up at me in his guileless way, Bill said, "I don't care. I have what I want; I have this." He carefully handed me the mushroom that he had picked, the ordinary harmless mushroom. "This is my body," he said, "and this is my blood. Eat, drink, and you will have eternal life."