Well, I decided, we would do the best we could. And know by faith that it was worth it.
As we drove along, I said to Rachel, “I have met this girl. I’ve got to work with her. You may not approve—no one may approve—but it has to be done. It may destroy us all.”
Rachel, driving carefully, said, “Valis told you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do what you have to do,” Rachel said, in a low, tight voice.
“I will,” I said.
25
I had not talked to Sadassa Silvia yet about her mother. As far as she knew I had no information about her past. That was the first step to be taken, to discuss Mrs. Aramchek. To get her to tell me openly what Valis and the intercommunications network had already transferred from their information banks to my mind. We could not work together otherwise.
The best place to talk to her, I decided, would be at a good quiet restaurant; that way we could avoid the possibility of being picked up by a government bug. I therefore phoned her from work and invited her out to dinner.
“I’ve never been to Del Rey’s,” she said. “But I’ve heard of it. They have a cuisine like the San Francisco restaurants. I’m free Thursday night.”
On Thursday night I swung by her apartment, picked her up, and soon we were seated in a secluded booth in the main dining room at Del Rey’s.
“What is it you want to tell me?” she said, as we ate our salads.
“I know about your mother,” I said. “And Ferris Fremont.”
“What do you mean?”
In a voice low enough for our safety, I said, “I know that your mother was an organizer for the Communist Party.”
Sadassa’s eyes flew open behind her thick glasses. She stared at me; she had stopped eating.
“I know further,” I said quietly, “that she signed up Ferris Fremont when he was in his late teens. I know that she trained him as a sleeper, to go into politics with no sign of his real views or his real affiliations.”
Still staring at me, Sadassa said, “You are really crazy.”
“Your mother is dead,” I said, “and so the Party—Ferris Fremont—thinks the secret is safe. But as a child you saw Fremont with your mother and you overheard enough. You’re the only person outside the higher ranks of the Party who knows. That’s why the government tried to kill you off with cancer. They found out you’re alive despite your name change and that you know. Or they suspect you know. So you have to be killed.”
Sadassa, frozen in one spot, fork half raised, continued to gaze at me in stricken silence.
“We are intended to work together,” I said. “This information will go onto a record, a folk LP, in the form of subliminal bits of data distributed so that in repeated playings a person will unconsciously absorb the message. The record industry has techniques to accomplish that; it’s done all the time, although the message has to be simple. ‘Ferris Fremont is a Red.’ Nothing elaborate. One word in one track, another in the next—maybe eight words maximum. Juxtaposed in the playback. Like code. I will see that the record saturates this country; we’ll flood the market with it—a huge initial pressing. There will be only one pressing and one distribution, because as soon as people begin to transliminate the message the authorities will step in and destroy all—”
Sadassa found her voice. “My mother is alive. She’s active in church work; she lives in Santa Ana. There’s no truth in what you say. I never heard such garbage.” Standing, she set down her fork, dabbed at her mouth; she seemed on the verge of tears. “I’m going home. You’re completely spaced; I heard about your accident on the freeway; it was in the Register. You must have gotten your marbles scrambled; you’re crazy. Good night.” She walked rapidly away from the booth, without glancing back.
I sat alone in silence.
All at once she was back, standing by me, bending over and speaking in a low, grim voice into my ear. “My mother is a down-to-earth Republican and has been all her life. She has never had anything to do with left-wing politics, certainly not the Communist Party. She never met Ferris Fremont, although she was present at a rally at Anaheim Stadium where he spoke—that’s the closest she ever got to him. She is just an ordinary person, saddled with the name ‘Aramchek,’ which means nothing. The police have investigated her repeatedly because of it. Do you want to meet her?” Sadassa’s voice had risen wildly. “I’ll introduce you to her; you can ask her. It’s saying crazy things like this that gets people into—oh, never mind.” Again she strode off; this time she did not return.
I don’t understand, I said to myself. Is she lying?
Shaken, I managed to finish my meal, hoping she would show up again, reseat herself, and take back what had been said. She did not. I paid the check, got in the Maverick, and slowly drove home.
When I opened the apartment door, Rachel greeted me with one brittle sentence. “Your girlfriend called.”
“What did she say?” I said.
“She’s at the La Paz Bar in Fullerton. She told me to tell you she walked there from Del Rey’s, that she doesn’t have any money for cab fare, so she wants you to drive back to Fullerton, to the bar, and pick her up and take her home.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you think you and she can throw Ferris Fremont out of office?” Rachel called after me sardonically. “You and she and Valis? That satellite?”
Pausing at the door, I answered, “No. I don’t. Maybe some lesser tyranny in another universe. Some despotic ruler of America in an alternate world that’s not so bad as this—but this world, this tyrant, no.”
“I envy the people in that universe.”
“Me too.” I left the apartment and
