Philip Dick - THE DIVINE INVASION

"You're married."

"I can dream," Herb said.

"Maybe you'd like to invite her to an autograph party at the store."

"We're the wrong kind of store."

"It's an audio store; she sings. That's audio. Or isn't she audible?"

"As far as I know she hasn't made any tapes or cut any records or been on TV. I happened to hear her last month when I was at the Anaheim Trade Center audio exhibit. I told you you should have come along."

"Sexuality is the malady of this world," Tate said. "This is a lustful and demented planet."

"And we're all going to hell."

Tate said, "I certainly hope so.

"You know you're out of step? You really are. You have an ethical code that dates back to the Dark Ages."

"Oh, long before that," Tate said. He placed a disc on the turntable and started up the component. On his 'scope the pattern appeared to be adequate but not perfect; Tate frowned.

"I almost met her. I was so close; a matter of seconds. She's better looking up close than anyone else I ever saw. You should see her. I know-I've got this intuition-that she's going to soar all the way to the top."

"Okay," Tate said, reasonably. "That's fine with me. Write her a fan letter. Tell her."

"Elias," Herb said, "the boy I met last night-he looked like Rybys."

The black man glanced up at him. "Really?"

"If Rybys could collect her goddam scattered wits for one second she could have noticed. She just can't goddam concen- trate. She never looked at the boy. He could have been her son."

"Maybe there's something you don't know."

"Lay off," Herb said.

Elias said, "I'd like to see the boy."

"I felt I'd known him before, in some other life. For a second it started to come back to me and then-" He gestured. "I lost it. I couldn't pin it down. And there was more ... as if I was remembering a whole other world. Another life entirely."

Elias ceased working. "Describe it."

"You were older. And not black. You were a very old man in a robe. I wasn't on Earth; I glimpsed a frozen landscape and it wasn't Terra. Elias-could I be from another planet, and some powerful agency laid down false memories in my mind, over the real ones? And the boy-seeing the boy-caused the real mem- ories to begin to return? And I had the idea that Rybys was very ill. In fact, about to die. And something about Immigration offi- cials with guns.

"Immigration officers don't carry guns.

"And a ship. A long trip at very high speed. Urgency. And most of all-a presence. An uncanny presence. Not human. Maybe it was an extraterrestrial, the race I'm really a part of. From my home planet."

"Herb," Elias said, "you are full of shit."

"I know. But just for a second I experienced all that. And- listen to this." He gestured excitedly. "An accident. Our ship crashing into another ship. My body remembered; it remembered the concussion, the trauma."

"Go to a hypnotherapist," Elias said, "get him to put you under, and remember. You're obviously a weird alien pro- grammed to blow up the world. You probably have a bomb inside you.

Herb said, "That's not funny."

"Okay; you're from some wise, super-advanced noble spiri- tual race and you were sent here to enlighten mankind. To save us.

Instantly, in Herb Asher's mind, memories flicked on, and then flicked off again. Almost at once.

"What is it?" Elias asked, regarding him acutely.

"More memories. When you said that."

After an interval of silence Elias said, "I wish you would read the Bible sometime."

"It had something to do with the Bible," Herb said. "My mission."

"Maybe you're a messenger," Elias said. "Maybe you have a message to deliver to the world. From God."

"Stop kidding me."

Elias said, "I'm not kidding. Not now." And apparently that was so; his dark face had turned grim.

"What's wrong?" Herb said.

"Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us to be. Which in turn means that we have no genuine existence. We're at the mercy of some kind of whim."

"Strange," Herb Asher said.

His business partner said, "Yes. Very strange."

----------------------------

At the end of the work day, as Herb Asher and his partner were preparing to close up the store a young woman wearing a suede leather jacket, jeans, moccasins and a red silk scarf tied over her hair came in. "Hi," she said to Herb, her hands thrust into the pockets of her jacket. "How are you?"

"Zina," he said, pleased. And a voice inside his head said, How did she find you? This is three thousand miles away from Hollywood. Through an index of locations computer, probably. Still ... he sensed something not right. But it did not pertain to his nature to turn down a visit by a pretty girl.

"Do you have time for a cup of coffee?" she asked.

"Sure," he said. 170

Shortly, they sat facing each other across a table in a nearby restaurant.

Zina, stirring cream and sugar into her coffee, said, "I want to talk to you about Manny."

"Why does he resemble my wife?" he said.

"Does he? I didn't notice. Manny feels very badly that he prevented you from meeting Linda Fox."

"I'm not sure he did."

"She was coming right at you."

"She was walking our way, but that doesn't prove I would have met her."

"He wants you to meet her. Herb, he feels terrible guilt; he couldn't sleep all night."

Puzzled, he said, "What does he propose?"

"That you write her a fan letter. Explaining the situation. He's convinced she'd answer.

"It's not likely."

Zina said quietly, "You'd be doing Manny a favor. Even if she doesn't answer.

"I'd just as soon meet you, ' he said. And his words were weighed out carefully; weighed out and measured.

"Oh?" She glanced up. What black eyes she had!

"Both of you," he said. "You and your little brother."

"Manny has suffered brain damage. His mother was injured in a sky accident while she was pregnant with him. He spent several months in a synthowomb, but they didn't get him in the synthowomb in time. So..." She tapped her fingers against the table. "He is impaired. He's been attending a special school. Because of the neurological damage he comes up with really nuts ideas. As an example-" She hesitated. "Well, what the hell. He says he's God."

"My partner should meet him, then," Herb Asher said.

"Oh no," she said, vigorously shaking her head. "I don't want him to meet Elias."

"How did you know about Elias?" he said, and again the peculiar warning sensation drifted through him.

"I stopped at your apartment first and talked to Rybys. We

spent several hours together; she mentioned the store and Elias. How else could I have found your store? It's not listed under your name."

"Elias is into religion," he said.

"That's what she told me; that's why I don't want Manny to meet him. They'd just jack each other up higher and higher into theological moonshine."

He answered, "I find Elias very levelheaded."

"Yes, and in many ways Manny is levelheaded. But you get two religious people together and they just sort of- You know. Endless talk about Jesus and the world coming to an end. The Battle of Armageddon. The conflagration." She shivered. "It gives me the creeps. Hellfire and damnation."

"Elias is into that, all right," Herb said. It almost seemed to him that she knew. Probably Rybys had told her; that was it.

"Herb," Zina said, "will you do Manny the favor he wants? Will you write the Fox-" Her expression changed.

'The Fox,' " he said. "I wonder if that'll catch on. It's a natural."

Continuing, Zina said, "Will you write Linda Fox and say you'd like to meet her? Ask her where she'll be appearing; they set up those club dates well in advance. Tell her you own an audio store. She's not well known; it isn't like some nationally famous star who gets bales of fan mail. Manny is sure she'll answer."