With reluctance I told him.
“Sufferin’ succotash,” Phil said, when I had finished. “A totally different human personality from yours. Taking over, acting and thinking. You know . . .” He rubbed the snuff from his nose, reflexively. “There’s that business in the Bible: in Revelation, I think it is. The first fruits of the harvest, the first Christian dead coming back to life. That’s where they get the figure of 144,000. They return to help create the new order, as the Bible calls it. Long before the others are resurrected.”
We both pondered that.
“How does it say they’ll return?” I asked. I had read it but couldn’t remember; I had read so much.
“They will join the living,” Phil said solemnly.
“Really?”
“Really. In a way not specified. I remember when I read that I wondered where they’d get their bodies from. Do you have a Bible here I can look it up in?”
“Sure.” I gave him a copy of the Jerusalem Bible, and he soon had the passage.
“It doesn’t say what I thought it said,” Phil said. “But the rest is somewhere in the New Testament scattered about in different places. At the end times the first Christian dead will begin to return to life. When you consider how few of them there were in the apostolic age, ten or fifteen, then a hundred, I would think the first appearance of them—assuming this all has some relevance—would be like one here, another there, then maybe a fourth, fifth, and sixth. Scattered around the world. . . . But in what kind of bodies? Their bodies, the original ones, wouldn’t be the ones they’d return in; Paul makes that clear. Those were corruptible bodies. Sarx was the Greek term he used.”
“Well,” I said, “the only other bodies around are ours.”
“Right,” Phil said, nodding. “Let me suggest the following to you. Suppose one of the first fruits returned to life, not outside in his own body, of whatever sort, but like the Holy Spirit does—manifests itself inside you. Tell me, how would this differ from what you’ve experienced?”
I had nothing to say; I just looked at him as he sat surrounded by his ubiquitous yellow tins and cans of snuff.
“You’d suddenly find an entity talking to you in Koine Greek,” Phil said. “Ancient Greek. From inside your head. And it would view the world the way an early—”
“Okay,” I said irritably. “I see your point.”
“This ‘telepathic sender who overpowered you with his personality’ is in your own head. Broadcasting from the other side of your skull. From previously unused brain tissue.”
“I thought you favored the alternate universe theory,” I said, surprised.
“That was fifteen minutes ago,” Phil said. “You know how I am with theories. Theories are like planes at LA International: a new one along every minute. Instead of another parallel universe, more likely it’s a parallel hemisphere in your head.”
“In any case,” I said, “it’s not me.”
“Not unless you somehow learned ancient Greek as a child and have forgotten it consciously. And all the rest, like the information you suddenly had about Johnny’s birth defect.”
“I’m going to look up Sadassa Silvia,” I told him. Rachel was not around to hear, fortunately.
“You mean look her up again.”
“Yeah, well, I did buy her a fountain pen.”
“Something to write with,” Phil said meditatively. “An odd thing to buy a girl the first time. Not flowers or candy or theater tickets.”
“I explained why—”
“Yes, you explained why. You buy someone a fountain pen so they can write. That’s why. That’s called final or teleological cause—the purpose of something. All this that you’re involved with ultimately has to be judged in terms of its goal or purpose, not its origin. If a flock of philanthropic baboons decided to oust Ferris F. Fremont we should rejoice. Whereas if angels and archangels decided tyranny was nice we should groan our hearts out. Right?”
“Fortunately,” I said, “we don’t have that dichotomy to worry about.”
“I’m just saying,” Phil said, “that we shouldn’t become too embroiled as to the identity of your mysterious friends; it’s what they intend we should concern ourselves with.”
I had to agree. The only thing I had to go on was the statement about the conspirators by the Roman sibyl, which is to say, the embodiment of the intergalactic communications network—I still saw it as that. For now, that had to be enough.
20
That night I received, in my sleep, further information about Sadassa Silvia. In the dream, which shone in vivid sparkling lit-up colors, a great leather-bound book was held up to me. I saw its cover clearly. In gold leaf was stamped:
ARAMCHEK
The book was opened by invisible hands and then laid on a table. All at once, who should show up but Ferris F. Fremont, with his sullen face and heavy jowls; scowling, Ferris Fremont took a large red fountain pen and wrote his name in the book, which, I could see, was a lined ledger.
Now came an old lady with white hair tied up in a bun; she wore a white uniform such as nurses wear, and she peered through thick glasses, like Sadassa’s. Smiling in a busy, efficient way, the old lady shut the ledger and hurried off with it under her arm. She resembled Sadassa. And, as I witnessed all this, a voice spoke, the familiar quasi-human AI voice I had come to recognize.
“Her mother.”
That was all. One printed word, two spoken words—just three words in all. But, instantly awake, I sat up in bed, then got up and left the bedroom, to fix myself a cup of coffee.
Aramchek was of course her mother’s name. Aramchek—Sadassa’s mother. Her mother signing up none other than Ferris F. Fremont, but signing him up to what? Aramchek, the ledger had said. Her name, the name of a covert subversive organization. A red fountain pen much like that I had bought Sadassa.
Red, subversive, signed up, Sadassa’s old mother.
Jesus Christ! I said to myself as
