“Right,” I said. “We’ll have some clean stampers and some with the subliminal material—maybe they’ll get a clean one. Maybe luck will be with us.”
“It will all depend,” Sadassa said, “on which they seize, one with material or one without it.”
She was right. And over that we had no control. Nor did they.
“By the way,” Sadassa said. “I want you to wish me luck; I have an appointment the last day of the month to see my doctor. To find out if I’m still in remission.”
“I wish you all the luck in the world,” I said.
“Thank you. I’m sort of worried. I’m still losing weight . . . I just can’t seem to eat. I’m down to ninety-two pounds. And now that the satellite no longer exists—” She smiled wanly at me.
I put my arm around her, hugged her against me; she was light and frail, like a mere bird. I kissed her, then, for the first time. At this she laughed a tiny, low laugh deep in her throat, almost a chuckle, and pressed against me.
“They will arrest your friend Phil,” Sadassa said. “The one who writes the science fiction.”
“I know,” I said.
“Is it worth it? To abolish his career along with yours?”
And, I thought, his life . . .
Part Three
Phil
28
. . . Along with mine, I thought to myself. Nicholas and I are going down the tubes together, if he goes through with this. What a thing to find out.
“You think it’s worth it?” I asked him. “To destroy yourself, your family, and your friends?”
“It has got to be done,” Nicholas said.
“Why?” I demanded. I was in the middle of writing a new novel, the best yet. “Nicholas,” I said, “what’s in the material you’re putting on the LP?”
We were sitting together in the stands at Anaheim Stadium, watching the Angels play. Nolan Ryan was pitching; it was one hell of a game. Pittsburgh was screwing up badly. My last baseball game, I said to myself bitterly as I drank from my bottle of Falstaff beer.
Nicholas said, “Information that will eventually cause Fremont’s fall from power.”
“No information could do that,” I said. I didn’t have that much faith in the written or spoken word; I wasn’t that naive. “And in addition,” I said, “the police will never let you get the record out. They probably know all about it.”
“Admittedly,” Nicholas said. “But we have to try. It may be only that one FAPer, that gung-ho Vivian Kaplan; she may have developed this as a personal, private lead to feather her own nest. Her suspicions may not be police policy.”
“All suspicions are police policy,” I said.
“Our illustrious President,” Nicholas said, “has been a sleeper for the Communist Party.”
“Is that just a slur,” I said, “or can you prove it?”
“We’re putting names, dates, and places into the material and God knows what else. Enough to—”
“But you can’t prove it,” I said. “You have no documents.”
“We have the details. Or anyway the person working with me has. They’re all going on the record, in subliminal form.”
“And then you saturate America.”
“Right.”
“And everybody wakes up one morning,” I said, “singing, ‘Fremont is a Red; Fremont is a Red; better a dead Fremont than a Red,’ and so forth. Chanting the material in unison.”
Nicholas nodded.
“From a million throats,” I said. “Fifty million. Two hundred million. ‘Better he’s dead than red; better—’ ”
“This is no joke,” Nicholas said starkly.
“No,” I agreed, “it’s not. It means our lives. Our careers and our lives. The government will forge documents to refute you, if they take notice of the smear at all.”
“It’s the truth,” Nicholas said. “Fremont was trained as an agent of Moscow; it’s a covert Soviet takeover, bloodless and unnoticed. We have the facts.”
“Gee,” I said, as it began to sink in. “No wonder there’s no criticism of him from the Soviet Union.”
“They think he’s great,” Nicholas said.
“Well,” I said, “do it.”
Nicholas glanced at me. “You agree? That’s why I had to tell you. She said I had to.”
“Did you tell Rachel?”
“I’m going to.”
“Johnny will have different parents,” I said. And, I thought, someone else will have to write the great American science fiction novel. “Do it,” I said, “and do it good. Press a million of the damn things. Two million. Mail a copy to every radio station in America, AM and FM. Mail them to Canada and Europe and South America. Sell them for eighty-five cents. Give them away at supermarkets. Start a mail order record club with it as a freebie. Leave them on doorsteps. You have my blessing. I’ll stick the material in my new novel, if you want.”
“No, we don’t want that,” Nicholas said.
“Valis told you to do this? He’s guiding you?”
Nicholas said, “Valis is gone. An H-warhead got him, got his voice.”
“I know,” I said. “Do you miss him?”
Nicholas said, “More than I can ever express. I’ll never hear the AI operator again, or him again—any of them, as long as I live.”
“Good old Moyashka,” I said.
“It must be wonderful to be a nation’s foremost astrophysicist and shoot things down out of the sky. Things you don’t understand. In the name of communicating with them.”
“But you have the information on Fremont anyhow.”
“We have it,” Nicholas said.
“You are now part of Aramchek,” I said. I had guessed who the “we” was, what organization.
Nicholas nodded.
“It’s a pleasure to know you,” I said.
“Thank you,” Nicholas said. And then he said, “Vivian came to see me.”
“Vivian?” I said, and then I remembered. “What about?”
“The record we’re producing.”
“Then they do know. They know already.”
“I’m providing her a hoked-up sample without the material. We’ll see if that does it long enough to get the real thing out.”
“They’ll come in and take your master stampers.”
“Some will be clean.”
“They’ll grab them all.”
“We’re banking on their taking a representative one.”
“You have no chance,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Nicholas said; he did not argue it.
“A quixotic attack on the regime,” I said. “Nothing more.
