Philip Dick - THE DIVINE INVASION

"You can see her better from here," Manny said.

It was true. He was now much closer to the stage. He and the boy stood together in silence as Linda Fox sang "Weep You No More Sad Fountains."

When the song ended, Manny said, "You don't remember, do you? She has enchanted you. Wake up, Herbert Asher. You know me well, and I know you. Linda Fox does not sing her songs at an obscure cocktail lounge in Hollywood; she is famous throughout the galaxy. She is the most important entertainer of this decade. The chief prelate and the procurator maximus invite her to-"

"She's going to sing again," Herb Asher interrupted. He barely heard the boy's words and they made no sense to him. A babbling boy, he thought, making it hard for me to hear Linda Fox. Just what I need.

After the song had ended, Manny said, "Herbert, Herbert; do you want to meet her? Is that what you want?"

"What?" he murmured, his eyes-his attention-fixed on Linda Fox. God, he thought; what a figure she has. She's practi- cally falling out of her dress. He thought, I wish my wife was built like that.

"She will come this way," Manny said, "when she finishes. Stand here, Herb Asher, and she will pass directly by you."

"You're joking," he said.

"No," Manny said. "You will have what you want most in the world ... that which you dreamed of as you lay on your bunk in your dome."

"What dome?" he said.

Manny said, " 'How you have fallen from heaven, bright morning star, felled-'

"You mean one of those colony-planet domes?" Herb Asher said.

"I can't make you listen, can I?" Manny said. "If I could say to you-"

"She is coming this way," Herb Asher said. "How did you know?" He moved a few steps toward her. Linda Fox walked rapidly, with small steps, a gentle expression on her face.

"Thank you," she was saying to people who spoke to her. For a moment she stopped to give her autograph to a black youth nattily dressed.

Tapping Herb Asher on the shoulder a waitress said, "You're going to have to take that boy out of here, sir; we can't have minors in here."

"Sorry," Herb Asher said.

"Right now," the waitress said.

"Okay," he said; he took Manny by the shoulder and, with unhappy reluctance, led him back toward their table. And, as he turned away, he saw out of the corner of his eye the Fox pass by the spot at which he and the boy had stood. Manny had been right. A few more seconds and he would have been able to speak a few words to her. And, perhaps, she would have an swered.

Manny said, "It is her desire to trick you, Herb Asher. She offered it to you and took it away again. If you want to meet Linda Fox I will see that you do; I promise you. Remember this, because it will come to pass. I will not see you cheated."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Herb said, "but if I could meet her-"

"You will," Manny said.

"You're a strange kid," Herb Asher said. As they passed below a light fixture he noticed something that startled him; he halted and, taking hold of Manny, he moved him directly under the light. You look like Rybys, he thought. For an instant a flash of memory jarred him; his mind seemed to open up, as if vast spaces, open spaces, a universe of stars, had flooded into it.

"Herbert," the boy said, "she is not real. Linda Fox-she is a phantasm of yours. But I can make her real; I confer being-it is I who makes the irreal into the real, and I can do it for you, with her."

"What happened?" Rybys said, when they reached the table. "Manny has to leave," Herb said to Zina Pallas. "The wait- ress said so. I guess you'll have to go. Sorry."

Taking her purse and cigarettes, Zina rose. "I'm sorry; I guess I kept you from seeing the Fox."

"Let's go with them," Rybys said, also rising. "My head hurts, Herb; I'd like to get out ofhere."

Resigned, he said, "All right." Cheated, he thought. That was what Manny had said. I will not see you cheated. That is exactly what happened, he realized; I have been cheated this evening. Well, some other time. It would be interesting to talk to her, maybe get her autograph. He thought, Close up I could see that her eyelashes are fake. Christ, he thought; how depressing. Maybe her breasts are fake, too. There're those pads they slip in. He felt disappointed and unhappy and now he, too, wanted to leave.

This evening didn't work out, he thought as he escorted Rybys, Zina and Manny from the club onto the dark Hollywood street. I expected so much.. . and then he remembered what the boy had said, the strange things, and the nanosecond ofjarred memory: scenes that appeared in his mind so briefly and yet so convincingly. This is not an ordinary child, he realized. And his resemblance to my wife-I can see it now, as they stand together. He could be her son. Eerie. He shivered, even though the air was warm.

Zina said, "I fulfilled his wishes; I gave him what he dreamed of. All those months as he lay on his bunk. With his 3-D posters of her, his tapes."

"You gave him nothing," Emmanuel said. "You robbed him, in fact. You took something away."

"She is a media product," Zina said. The two of them walked slowly along the nocturnal Hollywood sidewalk, back to her fly- car. "That is no fault of mine. I can't be blamed if Linda Fox is not real."

"Here in your realm that distinction means nothing."

"What can you give him?" Zina said. "Only illness-his wife's illness. And her death in your service. Is your gift better than mine?"

Emmanuel said, "I made him a promise and I do not lie." I shall fulfill that promise, he said to himself. In this realm or in my own realm; it doesn't matter because in either case I will make Linda Fox real. That is the power I have, and it is not the power of enchantment; it is the most precious gift of all: reality.

"What are you thinking?" Zina said.

'Better a live dog than a dead prince,' "Manny said. "Who said that?"

"It is simply common sense.

Zina said, What is your meaning?"

"I mean that your enchantment gave him nothing and the real world-"

"The real world," Zina said, "put him in cryonic suspension for ten years. Isn't a beautiful dream better than a cruel reality? Would you rather suffer in actuality than enjoy yourself in the domain of-" She paused.

"Intoxication," he said. "That is what your domain consists of; it is a drunken world. Drunken with dancing and with joy. I say that the quality of realness is more important than any other quality, because once realness departs, there is nothing. A dream is nothing. I disagree with you; I say you cheated Herbert Asher. I say you did a cruel thing to him. I saw his reaction; I measured his dejection. And I will make it up to him."

"You will make the Fox real."

"Is it your wager that I can't?"

"My wager," Zina said, "is that it doesn't matter. Real or not she is worthless; you will have achieved nothing."

"I accept the wager," he said.

'Shake my hand on it." She extended her hand.

They shook, standing there on the Hollywood sidewalk under the glaring artificial light.

As they flew back to Washington, D.C. Zina said, "In my realm many things are different. Perhaps you would like to meet Party Chairman Nicholas Bulkowsky."

Emmanuel said, "Is he not the procurator?"

"The Communist Party has not the world power that you are accustomed to. The term 'Scientific Legate' is not known. Nor is Fulton Statler Harms the chief prelate of the C.I.C., inasmuch as no Christian-Islamic Church exists. He is a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church; he does not control the lives of mil- lions."

"That is good," Emmanuel said.

"Then I have done well in my domain," Zina said. "Do you agree? Because if you agree- "These are good things," Emmanuel said. "Tell me your objection."

"It is an illusion. In the real world both men hold world power; they jointly control the planet."