The answer to the above dilemma was imparted to us by Ferris Fremont the next week. How did a nation with typically inept technology become stronger than ourselves? Through subversion here at home, a sapping of the will of Americans through the guile of defeatism. There was a question on the next card about that:
The greatest enemy America faces is (1) Russia; (2) our high standard of living, highest the world has ever known; (3) secret infiltrators in our midst.
We knew to put (3). However, Nicholas that night was in a crazy mood; he wanted to check (2).
"It's our standard of living, Phil," he told me with a wink. "That's what's going to doom us. Let's all three of us check (2)."
"What's going to doom us is screwing around with these answer cards," I told him. "They take these answers seriously."
They never read them," Rachel said. "It's just to make sure you listen to Fremont's weekly speech. How could they read all these cards? Two hundred million of them every week."
"Computer read," I said.
"I vote we mark (2) on that question," Nicholas said, and did so.
We filled out our cards, and then on Nicholas's suggestion he and I walked to the mailbox together, the three cards in the pre-franked envelope which the government provided.
"I want to talk to you," Nicholas said to me, as soon as we were outside.
"Okay," I said. I thought he meant about the cards. But it was not the cards he had on his mind. As soon as he began to talk I understood why he had behaved so erratically.
"I received the most compelling reception of Valis so far," he said in a low, very serious voice. "It completely shook me up. Nothing so far has - well, I'll tell you. What I saw visually was the woman again. She was seated in a modern living room, on the floor near a coffee table. A bunch of men were around on all sides of her, all wearing expensive Eastern-style suits, establishment suits.
The men were young. They were deep in discussion. The woman suddenly, when they were aware of her, she - " He paused. "She turned on her third eye, the one with the lens instead of the pupil; she turned it on them, and, Phil - she read into their hearts. What they had done and weren't admitting, what they intended to do: everything about them. And she kept on smiling. They never guessed she had that eye with that all-seeing lens and was reading deep into them. There were no secrets left, nothing she didn't know. You know what she learned about them?"
Tell me," I said.
"They were conspirators," Nicholas said. "They had plotted the murders of everyone who's been assassinated: Dr King, the two Kennedys, Jim Pike, Malcolm X, George Lincoln Rockwell the Nazi Party leader ... all of them. Phil, I tell you as God is my witness, she saw that. And as I looked at her I was made to understand what she was: the sibyl. The Roman sibyl who guards the republic. Our republic."
We had reached the mailbox. Nicholas stopped there, turned toward me, and placed his hand on my shoulder.
"She made me understand that she had seen them and she knew what they had done, and they would be brought to justice. The fact that she had seen them ensured that. There's no way they can escape paying for what they've done."
I said, "And they weren't conscious of her."
They didn't even guess that their deeds are known, and known to her. It never entered their minds - they were still joking and laughing, like a bunch of pals, and there she was overseeing them with that third eye, that lensed eye, and she was smiling along with them. And then the eye and its lens disappeared and again she looked like an ordinary person. Same as anyone else."
"What is the purpose of the conspiracy?"
Nicholas said hoarsely, They are all cronies of Ferris Fremont. Without exception. I was given to understand -I did understand - that the scene was in a Washington, DC, hotel room, a lavish hotel."
"Jesus," I said. "Well, I see two separate pieces of information in that. Our situation is worse than we thought; that's one piece. The other piece is that we're going to be helped."
"Oh, she'll help us, all right," Nicholas said. "I tell you, man, I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. And they were still grinning, still shooting the bull back and forth. They think they have it made. They don't. They're doomed."
"I thought we were the ones who were doomed."
"No," Nicholas said. "It's them."
"Do we do anything?"
"I don't think you do," Nicholas said. "But - " He hesitated. "I think I'm going to have to. I think they're going to use me, when the time comes. When they begin to act."
I said, "They're already acting now; they told you, for one thing. If they tell enough people, that's it there. The truth about how our present regime got into power. Over a bunch of corpses, the corpses of some of the best men of our times."
"It's heavy," Nicholas said.
"Are you sure you didn't just dream this all up?" I said.
"It did come in a dream," Nicholas admitted. There never was anything like this beamed at me before. Phil, you saw what happened that night about Johnny. When - "
"So Ferris Fremont arranged their deaths," I said.
That's what the sibyl discovered, yes."
"Why you?" I said. Of all people to pass it on to.
"Phil," Nicholas said, "how long does it take to get a book out? From the time you start writing it?"
"Too long," I said. "A year and a half minimum."
"That is too long. She's not going to wait that long; I could tell. I could feel it."
"How long is she going to wait?"
Nicholas said, "I don't think she is going to wait. I think that for them to plan is the same as acting. They plan and act simultaneously; to think it is to do it. They are a form of absolute mentation, pure minds. She is an all-knowing mind from which nothing is hidden. It's scary." ,
"But this is very good news," I said.
"Good news for us anyhow," Nicholas said. "We won't be mailing in these damn cards much longer,"
"What you ought to do," I said, "is write Ferris Fremont and tell him he and his henchmen have been seen by the Roman sibyl. What do you know about the Roman sibyl? Anything?"
"I researched her this morning in my Britannica" Nicholas said. "She's immortal. The original sibyl was in Greece; she was an oracle of the god Apollo. Then she guarded the Roman republic; she wrote a bunch of books which they used to open and read when the Republic was in danger." He added, "I'm thinking now of the great Bible-like books I saw held open to me originally, when my experiences began. You know, the sibyl became sacred to the Christians. They felt she was a prophet like the Hebrew prophets. Guarding God-fearing good men against harm."
It sounded like the exact thing we needed. Divine protection. The guardian of the Republic had answered from down the corridors of time, in her customary way. After all, was the United States not an extension through linear time of the Roman republic? In many ways it was. We had inherited the Roman sibyl; since she was immortal she had continued on after Rome vanished... vanished but still existent in new forms, with new linguistic systems and new customs. But the heart of the Empire remained: one language, one legal system, one coinage, good roads - and Christianity, the later legal religion of the Roman Empire. After the Dark Ages we had built back up to what had been and even more. The prongs of imperialism had been extended all the way to Southeast Asia.
And, I thought, Ferris F. Fremont is our Nero.