'But you know."

Elias nodded.

"You could make everything very simple," Emmanuel said, "by saying."

"You must say it yourself," Elias said. "When the time comes you will know and you will say it."

"I am-" the boy said hesitantly. Elias smiled.

She had heard the voice issue forth from her own womb. For a time she felt afraid and then she felt sad; sometimes she cried, and still the nausea continued-it never let up. I don't recall reading about that in the Bible, she thought. Mary being afflicted with morning sickness. I'll probably get edema and stretch marks. I don't remember reading about that either. It would make a good graffito on some wall, she said to herself. THE VIRGIN MARY HAD STRETCH MARKS. She fixed herself a little meal of synthetic lamb and green beans; seated alone at her table she gazed out listlessly through the dome's port at the landscape. I really should clean up this place, she realized. Before Elias and Herb come back. In fact, I should make a list of what I have to do. Most of all, she thought, I have to understand this situation. He is already inside me. It has happened. I need another wig, she decided. For the trip. A better one. I think I'll try out a blond one that's longer. G.o.ddam chemo, she thought. If the ailment doesn't kill you the therapy will. The remedy, she thought acidly, is worse than the malady. Look; I turned it around. G.o.d, I feel sick. And then, as she picked at her plate of cold, synthetic food, a strange idea came to her. What if this is a maneuver by the Clems? she said to herself. We invaded their planet; now they're fighting back. They figured out what our conception of G.o.d involves. They're simulating that conception! I wish mine was simulated, she ruminated. But to get back to the point, she said to herself. They read our minds or study our books-never mind how they did it-and they fake us out. So what I have inside me is a computer terminal or something, a glorified radio. I can see me going through Im- migration. "Anything to declare, Miss?" "Only a radio." Well, she thought, where is this radio? I don't see any radio. Well, you have to look real hard. No, she thought; it's a matter for Cus- toms, not Immigration. What is the declared value of this radio, Miss? That would be hard to say, she answered in her mind. You're not going to believe me but-it's one of a kind. You don't see radios like this every day. I should probably pray, she decided.

"Yah," she said, "myself, I am weak and sick and afraid, and I really don't want to be involved in this." Contraband, she thought. I'm going to smuggle in contraband. "Lady, come with me. We're going to conduct a complete body search. The matron will be in here in a minute; just sit down and read a magazine." I'll tell them it's an outrage, she thought. "What a surprise!" Feigned amazement. "I have what inside me? You're kidding. No, I have no idea how it got there. Will wonders never cease. A strange lethargy came over her, a kind of hypnagogic state,even as she sat reflexively eating. The embryo inside her had begun to unfold a picture before her, a view by a mind totally different from hers. She realized, This is how they will view it. The powers of the world. What she saw, through their eyes, was a monster. The Christian-Islamic Church and the Scientific Legate-their fear did not resemble her fear; hers had to do with effort and danger, with what was required of her. But they- She saw them consult- ing Big Noodle, the Al System that processed Earth's informa- tion, the vast artificial intelligence on which the government relied. Big Noodle, after a.n.a.lyzing the data, informed the authorities that something sinister had been smuggled past Immigration and onto Earth; she felt their recoil, their aversion. Incredible, she thought. To see the Lord of the universe through their eyes; to see him as foreign. How could the Lord who created everything be a foreign thing'? They are not in his image, then, she realized. This is what Yah is telling me. I always a.s.sumed-we were al- ways taught-that man is the image of G.o.d. It is like calling to like. Then they really believe in themselves! They sincerely do not understand. The monster from outer s.p.a.ce, she thought. We must be on guard perpetually lest it show up and sneak through Immigration. How deranged they are. How far off the mark. Then they would kill my baby, she thought. It is impossible but it is true. And no one could make them understand what they had done. The San- hedrin thought the same way, she said to herself, about Jesus. This is another Zealot. She shut her eyes. They are living in a cheap horror film, she thought. There is something wrong when you fear little children. When you view them, any one of them, as weird and awful. I don't want this insight, she said to herself, drawing back in aversion. Take it away, please; I've seen enough. I understand. She thought, This is why it has to be done. Because they see as they do. They pray; they make decisions; they shield their world-they keep out hostile intrusions. To them this is a hostile intrusion. They are demented; they would kill the G.o.d who made them. No rational thing does that. Christ did not die on the cross to render men spotless; he was crucified because they were crazy; they saw as I see now. It is a vista of lunacy. They think they are doing the right thing.

CHAPTER 6.

The girl Zina said, "I have something for you."

"A present?" He held out his hand, trustingly. Only a child's toy. An information slate, such as every young person had. He felt keen disappointment.

"We made it for you," Zina said.

"Who is that?" He examined the slate. Self-governing facto- ries turned out hundreds of thousands of such slates. Each slate contained common microcircuitry. "Mr. Plaudet gave me one of these already," he said. "They're plugged into the school."

"We make ours differently," Zina said. "Keep it. Tell Mr. Plaudet this is the one he gave you. He won't be able to distin- guish them from each other. See? We even have the brand name on it." With her finger she traced the letters I.B.M.

"This one isn't really I.B.M.," he said.

"Definitely not. Turn it on."

He pressed the tab of the slate. On the slate, on the pale gray surface, a single word in illuminated red appeared. VALIS "That's your question for right now," Zina said. "To figure out what 'Valis' is. The slate is posing the problem for you at a cla.s.s-one level . . . which means it'll give you further clues, if you want them."

"Mother Goose," Emmanuel said. On the slate the word VALIS disappeared. Now it read: HEPHAISTOS.

"Kyklopes," Emmanuel said instantly. Zina laughed. "You're as fast as it is.,'

"What's it connected to? Not Big Noodle." He did not like Big Noodle.

"Maybe it'll tell you," Zina said. The slate now read:

SHIVA.

"Kyklopes," Emmanuel repeated. "It's a trick. This was built by the troop of Diana."

At once the girl's smile faded.

"I'm sorry," Emmanuel said. "I won't say it again out loud even one more time."

"Give me the slate back." She held out her hand. Emmanuel said, "I will give it back if it says for me to give it back. He pressed the tab. NO "All right," Zina said. "I'll let you keep it. But you don't know what it is: you don't understand it. The troop didn't build it. Press the tab."

Again he pressed the tab. LONG BEFORE CREATION "I-" Emmanuel faltered.

"It will come back to you," Zina said. "Through this. Use it. I don't think you should tell Elias either. He might not under- stand."

Emmanuel said nothing. This was a matter that he himself would decide. It was important not to let others make his choices for him. And, basically, he trusted Elias. Did he also trust Zina? He was not sure. He sensed the mult.i.tude of natures within her, the profusion of ident.i.ties. Ultimately he would seek out the real one; he knew it was there, but the tricks obscured it. Who is it, he asked himself, who plays tricks like this? What being is the trickster?

He pressed the tab. DANCING To that, he gave a nod of a.s.sent. Dancing certainly was the right answer; in his mind he could see her dancing, with all the troop, burning the gra.s.s beneath their feet, leaving it scorched, and the minds of men disoriented. You cannot disorient me, he said to himself. Even though you control time. Because I control time, too. Perhaps even more than you.

That night at dinner he discussed Valis with Elias Tate.

"Take me to see it," Emmanuel said.

"It's a very old movie," Elias said.

"But at least we could rent a ca.s.sette. From the library. What does 'Valis' mean?"

"Vast Active Living Intelligence System," Elias said. "The movie is mostly fiction. It was made by a rock singer in the latter part of the twentieth century. His name was Eric Lampton but he called himself Mother Goose. The film contained Mini's Syn- chronicity Music, which had considerable impact on all modern music to this day. Much of the information in the film is conveyed subliminally by the music. The setting is an alternate U.S.A. where a man named Ferris F. Fremount is president."

Emmanuel said, "But what is Valis?"

"An artificial satellite that projects a hologram that they take to be reality."

"Then it's a reality generator."

"Yes," Elias said.

"Is the reality genuine?"

"No; I said it's a hologram. It can make them see whatever it wants them to see. That's the whole point of the film. It's a study of the power of illusion."

Going to his room, Emmanuel picked up the slate that Zina had given him and pressed the tab.

"What are you doing?" Elias said, coming in behind him. The slate showed one word: NO.

"That's plugged into the government, Elias said. "There's no point in using it. I knew Plaudet would give you one of those." He reached for it. "Give it to me."

"I want to keep it," Emmanuel said.

"Good grief; it says I.B.M. right on it! What do you expect it to tell you? The truth? When has the government ever told any- one the truth? They killed your mother and put your father into cryonic suspension. Let me have it, d.a.m.n it."

"If this is taken from me," Emmanuel said, "they will give me another."

"I suppose so." Elias withdrew his hand. "But don't believe what it says."

"It says you're wrong about Valis," Emmanuel said.

"In what way?"

Emmanuel said, "It just said 'no.' It didn't say anything more." He pressed the tab again. YOU "What the h.e.l.l does that mean?" Elias said, mystified.

"I don't know," Emmanuel said truthfully. He thought, I will keep using it. And then he thought, It is tricking me. It dances along the path like a bobbing light, leading me and leading me, away, fur- ther, further, into the darkness. And then when the darkness is everywhere the bobbing light will wink out. I know you, he thought at the slate. I know how you work. I will not follow; you must come to me. He pressed the tab. FOLLOW ME "Where no one ever returns," Emmanuel said.

After dinner he spent some time with the holoscope, studying Elias's most precious possession: the Bible expressed as layersat different depths within the hologram, each layer according to age. The total structure of Scripture formed, then, a three- dimensional cosmos that could be viewed from any angle and its contents read. According to the tilt of the axis of observation, differing messages could be extracted. Thus Scripture yielded up an infinitude of knowledge that ceaselessly changed. It became a wondrous work of art, beautiful to the eye, and incredible in its pulsations of color. Throughout it red and gold pulsed, with strands of blue. The color symbolism was not arbitrary but extended back in time to the early medieval Romanesque paintings. Red always represented the Father. Blue the color of the Son. And gold, of course, that of the Holy Spirit. Green stood for the new life of the elect; violet the color of mourning; brown the color of endurance and suffering; white, the color of light; and, finally, black, the color of the Powers of Darkness, of death and sin. All these colors could be found in the hologram formed by the Bible along the temporal axis. In conjunction with sections of text, complex messages formed, permutated, re-formed. Emman- uel never tired of gazing into the hologram; for him as well as Elias it was the master hologram, surpa.s.sing all others. The Christian-Islamic Church did not approve of trans.m.u.ting the Bible into a color-coded hologram, and forbade the manufacture and sale. Hence Elias had constructed this hologram himself, without approval. It was an open hologram. New information could be fed into it.Emmanuel wondered about that but he said nothing. He sensed a secret. Elias could not answer him, so he did not ask. What he could do, however, was type out on the keyboard linked to the hologram a few crucial words of Scripture, where- upon the hologram would align itself from the vantage point of the citation, along all its s.p.a.cial axes. Thus the entire text of the Bible would be focused in relationship to the typed-out information.

"What if I fed something new into it?" he had asked Elias one day. Elias had said severely, "Never do that."

"But it's technically possible."

"It is not done."

About that the boy wondered often. He knew, of course, why the Christian-Islamic Church did not allow the trans.m.u.ting of the Bible into a color-coded holo- gram. If you learned how you could gradually tilt the temporal axis, the axis of true depth, until successive layers were super- imposed and a vertical message-a new message-could be read out. In this way you entered into a dialogue with Scripture; it became alive. It became a sentient organism that was never twice the same. The Christian-Islamic Church, of course, wanted both the Bible and the Koran frozen forever. If Scripture escaped out from under the church its monopoly departed. Superimposition was the critical factor. And this sophisticated superimposition could only be achieved in a hologram. And yet he knew that once, long ago, Scripture had been deciphered this way. Elias, when asked, was reticent about the matter. The boy let the topic drop. There had been an acutely embarra.s.sing incident at church the year before. Elias had taken the boy to Thursday morning ma.s.s. Since he had not been confirmed, Emmanuel could not receive the host; while the others in the congregation gathered at the rail Emmanuel remained bent in prayer. All at once, as the priest carried the chalice from person to person, dipping the waf- ers in the consecrated wine and saying, "The Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee-" all at once Emmanuel had stood up where he was in his pew and stated clearly and calmly: "The blood is not there nor the body either."

The priest paused and looked to see who had spoken.

"You do not have the authority," Emmanuel said. And, upon saying that, he turned and walked out of the church. Elias found him in their car, listening to the radio.

"You can't do that," Elias had said as they drove home. "You can't tell them things like that. They'll open a file on you and that's what we don't want." He was furious.

"I saw,"Emmanuel said. "It was a wafer and wine only."

"You mean the accidents. The external form. But the essence was-"

"There was no essence other than the visible appearance," Emmanuel answered. "The miracle did not occur because the priest was not a priest."

They drove in silence after that.

"Do you deny the miracle of transubstantiation?" Elias asked that night as he put the boy to bed.

"I deny that it took place today," Emmanuel said. "There in that place. I will not go there again."

"What I want," Elias said, "is for you to be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove."

Emmanuel regarded him.

"They killed-"

"They have no power over me," Emmanuel said.

"They can destroy you. They can arrange another accident. Next year I'm required to put you in school. Fortunately because of your brain damage you won't have to go to a regular school. I'm counting on them to-" Elias hesitated. Emmanuel finished, "-Consign anything they see about me that is different to the brain damage."

"Right."

"Was the brain damage arranged?"

"I- Perhaps."

"It seems useful." But, he thought, if only I knew my real name. "Why can't you say my name?" he said to Elias.

"Your mother did," Elias said obliquely.

"My mother is dead."

"You will say it yourself, eventually."

"I'm impatient." A strange thought came to him. "Did she die because she said my name?"

"Maybe," Elias said.

"And that's why you won't say it? Because it would kill you if you did? And it wouldn't kill me."

"It is not a name in the usual sense. It is a command."

All these matters remained in his mind. A name that was not a name but a command. It made him think of Adam who named the animals. He wondered about that. Scripture said: ... and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them... .

"Did G.o.d not know what the man would call them?" he asked Elias one day.

"Only man has language," Elias explained. "Only man can give birth to language. Also-" He eyed the boy. "When man gave names to creatures he established his dominion over them."

What you name you control, Emmanuel realized. Hence no one is to speak my name because no one is to have-or can have -control over me. "G.o.d played a game with Adam, then," he said. "He wanted to see if the man knew their correct names. He was testing the man. G.o.d enjoys games." "I'm not sure I know the answer to that," Elias said. "I did not ask. I said." "It is not something usually a.s.sociated with G.o.d." "Then the nature of G.o.d is known." "His nature is not known."

Emmanuel said, "He enjoys games and play. It says in Scrip- ture that he rested but I say that he played."

He wanted to feed that into the hologram of the Bible, as an addendum, but he knew that he should not. How would it alter the total hologram? he wondered. To add to the Torah that G.o.d enjoys joyful sport . . . Strange, he thought, that I can't add that. Someone must add it; it has to be there, in Scripture. Someday.