Valis

"There is no more. Go back home, and I will instruct you as the time requires." She smiled at us.

"You're how old?" I said.

"I am two years old."

"And you're reading that book?" Kevin said.

Sophia said, "I tell you in truth, in very truth, none of you will forget me. And I tell you that all of you will see me again. You did not choose me; I chose you. I called you here. I sent for you four years ago."

"Okay," I said. That placed her call at 1974.

"If the Lamptons ask you what I said, say that we talked about the commune to be built," Sophia said. "Do not tell them that I sent you away from them. But you are to go away from them; this is your answer: you will have nothing further to do with them."

Kevin pointed to the tape recorder, its drums turning.

"What they will hear on it," Sophia said, "when they play it back, will be only the SEPHER YEZIRAH, nothing more."

Wow, I thought.

I believed her.

"I will not fail you," Sophia repeated, smiling at the three of us.

I believed that, too.

As the three of us walked back to the house, Kevin said, "Was all that just quotations from the Bible?"

"No," I said.

"No," David agreed. "There was something new; that part about us being our own gods, now. That the time had come where we no longer had to believe in any deity other than ourselves."

"What a beautiful child," I said, thinking to myself how much she reminded me of my own son Christopher.

"We're very lucky," David said huskily. "To have met her." Turning to me he said, "She'll be with us; she said so. I believe it. She'll be inside us; we won't be alone. I never realized it before but we are alone. Everybody is alone -- has been alone, I mean. Up until now. She's going to spread out all over the world, isn't she? Into everyone, eventually. Starting with us."

"The Rhipidon Society," I said, "has four members. Sophia and the three of us."

"That's still not very many," Kevin said.

"The mustard seed," I said. "That grows into a tree so large that birds can roost in it."

"Come off it," Kevin said.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

Kevin said, "We have to get our stuff together and get out of here; she said so. The Lamptons are whacked out flipped-out freaks. They could zap us any time."

"Sophia will protect us," David said.

"A two-year-old child?" Kevin said.

We both gazed at him.

"Okay, two-thousand-year-old child," Kevin said.

"The only person who could make jokes about the Savior," David said. "I'm surprised you didn't ask her about your dead cat."

Kevin halted; a look of genuine baffled anger appeared on his face; obviously he had forgotten to: he had missed his chance.

"I'm going back," he said.

Together, David and I propelled him along with us.

"I'm not kidding!" he said, with fury.

"What's the matter?" I said; we halted.

"I want to talk to her some more. I'm not going to walk off out of here; goddam it, I'm going back -- let me the fuck go!"

"Listen," I said. "She told us to leave."

"And she'll be inside us talking to us," David said.

"We'll hear what I call the AI voice," I said.

Kevin said savagely, "And there'll be lemonade fountains and gumdrop trees. I'm going back."

Ahead of us, Eric and Linda Lampton emerged from the big house and walked toward us.

"Confrontation time," I said.

"Aw shit," Kevin said, in desperation. "I'm still going back." He pulled away from us and hurried in the direction from which we had come.

"Did it work out well?" Linda Lampton said, when she and her husband reached David and me.

"Fine," I said.

"What did you discuss?" Eric said.

I said, "The commune."

"Very good," Linda said. "Why is Kevin going back? What is he going to say to Sophia?"

David said, "Has to do with his dead cat."

"Ask him to come here," Eric said.

"Why?" I said.

"We are going to discuss your relationship to the commune," Eric said. "The Rhipidon Society should be part of the major commune, in our opinion. Brent Mini suggested that; we really should talk about it. We find you acceptable."

"I'll get Kevin," David said.

"Eric," I said, "we're returning to Santa Ana."

"There's time to discuss your involvement with the commune," Linda said. "Your Air Cal flight's not until eight tonight, is it? You can have di

Eric Lampton said, "VALIS summoned you people here. You will go when VALIS feels you are ready to go."

"VALIS feels we're ready to go," I said.

"I'll get Kevin," David said.

Eric said, "I'll go get him. " He passed on by David and me, in the direction of Kevin and the girl.

Folding her arms, Linda said, "You can't go back down south yet. Mini wants to talk over a number of matters with you. Keep in mind that his time is short. He's weakening fast. Is Kevin really asking Sophia about his dead cat? What's so important about a dead cat?"

"To Kevin the cat is very important," I said.

"That's right," David agreed. "To Kevin the cat's death represents everything that's wrong with the universe; he believes that Sophia can explain it to him, which by that I mean everything that's wrong with the universe -- undeserved suffering and loss."

Linda said, "I don't really think he's talking about his dead cat."

"He really is," I said.

"You don't know Kevin," David said. "Maybe he's talking about other things because this is his chance to talk to the Savior finally but his dead cat is a major matter in what he's talking about."

"I think we should go over to Kevin," Linda said, "and tell him that he's talked to Sophia enough. What do you mean, VALIS feels you are ready to go? Did Sophia say that?"

A voice in my head spoke. Tell her radiation bothers you. It was the AI voice which Horselover Fat had heard since March 1974; I recognized it.

"The radiation," I said. "It -- " I hesitated; understanding of the terse sentence came to me. "I'm half-blind," I said. "A beam of pink light hit me; it must have been the sun. Then I realized we should get back."

"VALIS fired information directly to you," Linda said, at once, alertly.

You don't know.

"I don't know," I said. "But I felt different afterward. As if I had something important to do down south in Santa Ana. We know other people... there are other people we could get into the Rhipidon Society. They should come to the commune, too. VALIS has caused them to have visions; they come to us for explanations. We told them about the film, about seeing the film Mother Goose made; they're all seeing it, and getting a lot out of it. We've got more people going to see Valis than I thought we knew; they must be telling their friends. My own contacts in Hollywood -- the producers and actors I know, and especially the money people -- are very interested in what I've pointed out to them. There's one MGM producer in particular that might want to finance Mother Goose in another film, a high-budget film; he says he has the backing already."

My flow of talk amazed me; it seemed to come out of nothing. It was as if it wasn't me talking, but someone else; someone who knew exactly what to say to Linda Lampton.

"What's the producer's name?" Linda said.

"Art Rockoway," I said, the name coming into my head as if on cue.

"What films does he have?" Linda said.

"The one about the nuclear wastes that contaminated most of central Utah," I said. "That disaster the newspapers reported two years ago but TV was afraid to talk about; the government put pressure on them. Where all the sheep died. The cover-story that it was nerve gas. Rockoway did a hardball film in which the true tale of calculated indifference by the authorities came out"