Philip Dick - THE DIVINE INVASION

"Of course I will," he said.

She smiled. And her dark eyes danced.

"No problem," he said. "I'll go back to the store and type it there. We can mail it off together."

From her mail-pouch purse, Zina brought out an envelope. "Manny wrote out the letter for you. This is what he wants you to say. Change it if you want, but-don't change it too much. Manny worked real hard on it."

"Okay." He accepted the envelope from her. Rising, he said, "Let's go back to the shop."

As he sat at his office typewriter transcribing Manny's letter to the Fox-as Zina had called her-Zina paced about the closed- up shop, smoking vigorously.

"Is there something I don't know?" he said. He sensed more to this; she seemed unusually tense.

"Manny and I have a bet going," Zina said. "It has to do with -well, basically, it has to do with whether Linda Fox will answer or not. The bet is a little more complicated, but that's the thrust of it. Does that bother you?"

"No," he said. "Which of you put down your money which way?"

She did not answer.

"Let it go," he said. He wondered why she had not re- sponded, and why she was so tense about it. What do they think will come of this? he asked himself. "Don't say anything to my wife," he said, then, thinking some thoughts of his own.

He had, then, an intense intuition: that something rested on this, something important, with dimensions that he could not fathom.

"Am I being set up?" he said.

"In what way?"

"I don't know." He had finished typing; he pressed the key for print and the machine-a smart typewriter-instantly printed out his letter and dropped it in the receiving bin.

"My signature goes on it," he said.

"Yes. It's from you."

He signed the letter, typed out an envelope, from the address on Manny's copy ... and wondered, abruptly, how Zina and Manny had gotten hold of Linda Fox's home address. There it was, on the boy's carefully written holographic letter. Not the Golden Hind but a residence. In Sherman Oaks.

Odd, he thought. Wouldn't her address be unlisted?

Maybe not. She wasn't well known, as had been repeatedly pointed out to him.

"I don't think she'll answer," he said.

"Well, then some silver pennies will change hands."

Instantly he said, "Fairy land."

"What?" she said, startled.

"A children's book. Silver Pennies. An old classic. In it there's the statement, 'You need a silver penny to get into fairy land.' "He had owned the book as a child.

She laughed. Nervously, or so it seemed to him.

"Zina," he said, "I feel that something is wrong."

"Nothing is wrong as far as I know." She deftly took the envelope from him. "I'll mail it," she said.

"Thank you," he said. "Will I see you again?"

"Of course you will." Leaning toward him she pursed her lips and kissed him on the mouth.

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

He looked around him and saw bamboo. But color moved through it, like St. Elmo's fire. The color, a shiny, glistening red, seemed alive. It collected here and there, and where it gathered it formed words, or rather something like words. As if the world had become language.

What am I doing here? he wondered wildly. What happened'? A minute ago I wasn't here!

The red, glistening fire, like visible electricity, spelled out a message to him, distributed through the bamboo and children's swings and dry, stubby grass.

YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR

HEART, WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL

"Yes," he said. He felt fright, but, because the liquid tongues of fire were so beautiful he felt awed more than afraid; spell- bound, he gazed about him. The fire moved; it came and it passed on; it flowed this way and that; pools of it formed, and he knew he was seeing a living creature. Or rather the blood of a living creature. The fire was living blood, but a magical blood, not phys- ical blood but blood transformed.

Reaching down, trembling, he touched the blood and felt a shock pass through him; and he knew that the living blood had entered him. Immediately words formed in his mind.

BEWARE!

"Help me," he said feebly.

Lifting his head he saw into infinite space; he saw reaches so vast that he could not comprehend them-space stretching out forever, and himself expanding with that space.

Oh my God, he said to himself; he shook violently. Blood and living words, and something intelligent close by, simulating the world, or the world simulating it; something camouflaged, an en- tity that was aware of him. A beam of pink light blinded him; he felt dreadful pain in his head, and clapped his hands to his eyes. I am blind! he realized. With the pain and the pink light came understanding, an acute knowledge; he knew that Zina was not a human woman, and he knew, further, that the boy Manny was not a human boy. This was not a real world he was in; he understood that because the beam of pink light had told him that. This world was a simulation, and something living and intelligent and sympathetic wanted him to know. Something cares about me and it has penetrated this world to warn me, he realized, and it is camouflaged as this world so that the master of this world, the lord of this unreal realm, will not know; not know it is here and not know it has told me. This is a terrible secret to know, he thought. I could be killed for knowing this. I am in a- FEAR NOT

"Okay," he said, and still trembled. Words inside his head, knowledge inside his head. But he remained blind, and the pain also remained. "Who are you?" he said. "Tell me your name.

VALIS

"Who is 'Valis'?" he said.

THE LORD YOUR GOD

He said, "Don't hurt me."

BE NOT AFRAID, MAN

His sight began to clear. He removed his hands from before his eyes. Zina stood there, in her suede leather jacket and jeans; only a second had passed. She was moving back, after having kissed him. Did she know? How could she know? Only he and Valis knew.

He said, "You are a fairy."

"A what?" She began to laugh.

"That information was transferred to me. I know. I know everything. I remember CY3O-CY3OB; I remember my dome. I remember Rybys's illness and the trip to Earth. The accident. I remember that whole other world, the real world. It penetrated into this world and woke me up." He stared at her, and, in return, Zina stared, fixedly, back.

"My name means fairy," Zina said, "but that doesn't make me a fairy. Emmanuel means 'God with us' but that doesn't make him God."

Herb Asher said, "I remember Yah."

"Oh," she said. "Well. Goodness."

"Emmanuel is Yah," Herb Asher said.

"I'm leaving," Zina said. Hands in her jacket pockets she walked rapidly to the front door of the store, turned the key in the lock and disappeared outside; in an instant she was gone.

She has the letter, he realized. My letter to the Fox.

Hurriedly he followed after her.

No sign of her. He peered in all directions. Cars and people, but not Zina. She had gotten away.

She will mail it, he said to himself. The bet between her and Emmanuel; it involves me. They are wagering over me, and the universe itself is at stake. Impossible. But the beam of pink light had told him; it had conveyed all that, instantly, without the passage of any time at all.

Trembling, his head still aching, he returned to the store; he seated himself and rubbed his aching forehead.

She will involve me with the Fox, he realized. And out of that involvement, depending on which way it goes, the structure of reality will- He was not sure what it would do. But that was the issue: the structure of reality itself, the universe and every living creature in it.

It has to do with being, he thought to himself, knowing this because, and only because, of the beam of pink light, which was a living, electrical blood, the blood of some immense meta-entity. Sein, he thought. A German word; what does it mean? Das Nichts. The opposite of Sein. Sein equaled being equaled exis- tence equaled a genuine universe. Das Nichts equally nothing equaled the simulation of the universe, the dream-which I am in now, he knew. The pink beam told me that.